Posted 7:41 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Tracking Policies & Investigative Stories: Pervasive Deception: Tony Fitzgerald
In order to perform our democratic function, we need, and are entitled to, the truth. Nothing is more important to the functioning of democracy than informed discussion and debate. Yet a universal aim of the power-hungry is to stifle dissent. Most of us are easily silenced, through a sense of futility if not personal concern..
· Margo Kingston: Full text of Justice Tony Fitzgerald's speech launching the book'Not happy John! Defending our democracy', at Gleebooks in Sydney on June 22
· · See Also Michelle Grattan reported on the speech today at Fitzgerald berates both sides of politics
· · · See Also The US Supreme Court affirms detainees' right to use courts
· · · · See Also The Ugliness That Blooms in Secret: Nobody has any idea whether the really momentous decisions—the Hamdi, Padilla, and Guantanamo detainee cases

Posted 7:31 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Ten years after a royal commission exposed the corruption extending to the heart of the NSW Police there has been no change in police culture, and any change would be difficult to bring about

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Let's Hear It for the Handover
It was a smart move to transfer sovereignty to Iraq, two days ahead of schedule. If the Bush administration keeps doing things this smart over the next several months, the transition to self-rule might go more smoothly than anyone has had reason to suspect.
Intelligence analysts expected new torrents of violence to erupt in the days leading up to the handover.
The distinction is not merely symbolic—or, to the extent it is, the symbolism might be sufficiently potent to alter popular attitudes and behavior. On one level, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi could order emergency measures—not on behalf of the occupiers but in the name of the new Iraqi national government. On another, more critical, level, the Iraqi people might view the insurgency in a different way—as a threat not to the occupiers but to themselves. To the extent that the insurgents are nationalists and not jihadists, the accelerated move to self-rule might even deter some from continuing to take up arms.
· Finally, Bush does something right in Iraq
· · Going: Man of Honour: Brian Harradine, the father of the Senate, announcing his retirement
· · · Coming: A massive manhood development day for Eric Roozendaal
· · · · See Also Too Many Secrets
· · · · · See Also Former opposition leader Kim Beazley was the subject of two separate plots by Australian spies to trash his chances of winning the 2001 election[ via Bulletin: Kim Beazley (Google is yet to archive this story)]
· · · · · · See Also Editorial ofInsecurity

Posted 7:26 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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As the late Roger Straus, one of the great postwar publishers, notable for his plain speaking, was fond of observing: Even a blind pig will eventually find his truffle.

Invisible Hands & Markets: The Slovak Dragon
From problematic baby brother in a fringe region to tax haven and industrial centre, the small Slovak republic has come a long way, but at least it's on the right track. It's been called the Detroit of Europe, even though the Hong Kong of Europe might be more appropriate. Recently Deutsche Welle labeled Slovakia A Monaco on the Danube. Even more importantly, it's not out of the question that soon we will hear about the Slovakias of Africa or South America (or Iraq).
Ask anyone who's been traveling in Central Europe to name the first thing that comes to mind when they think about the Slovak Republic. The most likely answer you will get is a baby brother complex. True, a hiker might think of the Tatra Mountains, and anyone with a broader historical perspective might mention the Bratislava cathedral and the fact that for a period the Habsburgs used to be crowned there. But it's still there, this feeling of inferiority. Or is it?
There are more important things than politics, and that government should not mess too much with peoples' lives or the economy.
· The Slavic Tiger [history first seen at Muddy History]
· · See Also Changing mindsets and fortunes in the poorest nations
· · · See Also Sir John Templeton donates $1 million to counter George Soros
· · · · See Also Ach Europa: Questions about a European public space
· · · · · See Also Dialogue of the deaf: Europeans talk a lot about each other but less with each other
· · · · · · See Also Housing eats up 40% of income

Posted 7:10 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Smooth Move: The early handover of authority (two days) by the Coalition to the new Iraqi government was clearly an intelligent maneuver. It also steals much of the thunder for attacks in the next couple of days. As Tim Dunlop put it: Anything that puts a dint in the plans of car bombers and armed insurgents has to be a good thing. It probably won't stop a single attack, but it does give a slight psychological edge to the provisional government that shouldn't be discounted.

To Dream a Salam Pax Dream of Democratic Iraq: No more occupation
Iraqis retook control of their country in a furtive Baghdad ceremony yesterday intended to wrong-foot any insurgency plans to disrupt a formal handover that was to take place tomorrow
· A handshake, and Iraqis are in charge
· · Paul McGeough: Now for the wrath of the oppressed
· · · Ambassador Bremer handed over sovereignty to the Iraqi people: Surprise handover decision welcomed
· · · · Bush hails transfer of power
· · · · · See Also The war was over but where was the defeated enemy? History repeats itself, though no two historians agree quite how

Posted 7:45 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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84-year-old Bob Bemer, computer pioneer who developed the code that allows computers to understand text as a series of numbers, passed away June 22 in Possum Kingdom Lake, Texas. His USA Today obituary says his personal motto was...((((DO SOMETHING!) SMALL) USEFUL) NOW!

Congo word 'most untranslatable'
Ilunga means a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Culture Wars
For years the left has dominated our cultural institutions. Now the right is fighting back. For dispatches from the front line, join The Bulletin's Tim Blair, Fairfax columnist Greg Hywood, and ABC Melbourne's Jon Faine. Are our universities, museums - and even Radio National - diverse enough?
The culture wars are the battle for ideas that's raging in our institutions, such as universities, courts, churches, schools…they involve subjects such as the environment, the right sort of marriage, Aborigines' history. Recently in the New York Times, writer David Brooks said that the university educated class in America has now split into two groups, which he calls professionals and managers. Professionals are teachers, some lawyers, academics, journalists—people who tend to work in the knowledge industry. On the other hand we have managers, who tend to work for business and corporations; often involved in making things. These two groups, he said, have different beliefs and this lies at the basis of many of the culture wars and much public debate in our time.
· Counterpoints [ courtesy of www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/counterpoint/] [[ Who are Britain's top 100 intellectuals?]]> (( Who are Dragon's 50 Coolest Blogs?)) (((Blogging: Bill Gates has a reputation for coming late to the party, then making a big splash when he arrives )))
· · See Also Bullyboy Bolt meets his match in Senator Mackay: Bolt sends dozens of emails a day, however, he probably got more than he bargained for (( LAT editor: We've got to try harder to be heard out here))
· · · See Also Editor fears gangs want him dead ((
Libya called allegations that its leader Muammar Gaddafi ordered the assassination of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah mere lies and nonsense))
· · · · See Also A libel allegation [against Seymour Hersh] has been reduced to a request for a correction, which is a little like a demolition artist placing an order for nitroglycerin but settling for nitrous oxide ((Besides choosing the highest security settings for Internet Explorer, Windows users could download an alternate browser, such as Mozilla or Opera. Mac users are not in danger)) (((Search Engine Optimization Submission Placement Ranking )))
· · · · · See Also Kobe case court reporter sends secret transcripts to media ((WT founder Moon has always had a flair for the unusual: The name of the senator who gave permission for Moon to use the Dirksen Building remains a mystery))
· · · · · · See Also We're witnessing "historic" spat between president, press
· · · · · · · See Also Britton: I thought former Sun-Times boss Radler was a snake

Posted 7:39 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Try not to regret the past too much. Most often, the past drops away from you because it’s ripe.
Colette, letter to Germaine Patat (undated)

Literature & Art Across Frontiers: You didn't care if you were brave or weak. You just became nothing
One of the great things about life is that it can always get worse, just when you think it can't. Some kinds of storytelling are built on this grim joke, and Touching the Void is a very pure and powerful illustration of it.
Indeed, it's full of the most acute moral dilemmas, terrible physical suffering and unbelievable endurance. Several earlier attempts to turn Joe Simpson's best-selling book into a feature film have failed. When life is stranger than fiction, fiction often fails. It shirks the void, trying to tame it. Non-fiction can leap over the edge, shouting: Shut up! This really happened.
Yates has been vilified, even assaulted by a fellow climber, but Simpson says Yates saved both their lives. Simpson wrote the book, while recuperating from his injuries, in order to defend his friend's actions.
Yates is no less candid and it's clear that surviving has had its own toll. Simpson has grown stronger; Yates appears to live with a terrible doubt about his own character.
Much of the writing on the film bangs on about the triumph of the human spirit. There is that, but it's just as much a great film about human frailty and regret.
· Touching the Void [link first seen at Simpson's website ]
· · Barista: The Day After Tomorrow: This movie was awful. Everything was absurdly amplified and accelerated: centuries of gradual change isn't fast enough, it had to be compressed into weeks
· · · See Also Critic: Coverage of best-sellers is like absurd comic theater (( Love in the Time of Cold War))
/· · · · See Also Transcript of The Poor Editors' regular Saturday-night poker game with Dick Cheney
· · · · · The production of souls is more important than the production of tanks…. And therefore I raise my glass to you, writers, the engineers of the human soul Summer reading suggestions with Cold War River ((Clinton Book Sets Non-Fiction Sales Record: Clinton's My Cold River sold more than 400,000 copies in the United States in its first day of release))
· · · · · · See Also What you should know about jobs in publishing ((Who'd have thought that the biggest reviewing-controversy of the year would be Cold River and the Pillar of Storge @ Amazonia))
· · · · · See Also How the terrorists' own words can help us stop them: Making two fundamental errors. The first is imagining that the enemies can be beaten back, largely unilaterally, with Cold War tools

Posted 2:30 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Vaclav Havel comments on the country's struggles for democracy

Just let me say to each of you who have worked so hard and taken such risks to cover this story, I extend a heartfelt apology and hope you will accept it,
writes Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Congressional Language
Cheney, serving in his role as president of the Senate, appeared in the chamber for a photo session. A chance meeting with Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, became an argument about Cheney's ties to Halliburton Co., an international energy services corporation, and President Bush's judicial nominees. The exchange ended when Cheney offered some crass advice
#@%* !!!!, said the man who is a heartbeat from the presidency.
· Yay! One of us! One of us! One of us! [ Parliamentary language If you can't say something dillish ... ] [[Jack Ryan and the politics of meta-sins Politician's private life is sacrosanct
· · See Also Carr's gift to Howard: Labor Party's fractured policy over US relations [ via Axis of Deceit]
· · · The state controls everything, even ridicules people for suspicion of blogging Big-Time Egan: Life after debt (( Where The New Right is Going Wrong )) ((( 2004 AD Socialism)))
· · · · See Also New head gives ALP factions ceasefire hopes
· · · · · See Also Not happy, Tony, say Britons
· · · · · · Alan Ramsey: Not only flags flying in a lot of hot wind
· · · · · · · David Hanson: Year Three Again, 9/11, summing up our current position in this disorienting war: the pulse of the strategic, tactical, and ideological theaters (( On the parallels between Russia's Chechnya and America's Iraq))

Posted 2:19 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

Greece upset defending champion France 1-0 today to produce one of the biggest shocks in soccer and reach the semi-final of Euro 2004, a tournament getting used to saying goodbye to the powerhouse teams

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Down Under you feel like you're watching ''The Sopranos'' on a bear pit scale when you watch the Stiff; (t)electorising the lives of the minders of likely suspects such as the former leader of the House, Paul Whelan or the former Speaker, John Murray...

Invisible Hands & Markets: Singleton bets on all-Australian TV stiffis
Concerned about the erosion of Australian culture, ad man John Singleton is prepared to write a very big czech for a fourth commercial TV network which would show only local programs.
· How Magician John Makes Rupert Dissapear from Antipodean Tube [link first seen at Back Pages & MEdia Dragon Prayers Answered] (((More people are rejecting traditional sales messages, presenting the ad industry with big challenges & Ocker John knows that
· · See Also Paul Krugman a wicked economist? [worth czeching The wickedly honest Antipodean]
· · · See Also Many Minorities Prove They're Unfit For Home Ownership
· · · · See Also So the Iranians seized some British warships ....Crazy action turns out to be not so crazy at all (( Economy that never sleeps))
· · · · · See Also Swedenization of Europe ((Willing Slaves: how the overwork culture is ruling our lives ))
· · · · · · See Also CBS News Confirms Amazon.com Partnership, Profiting from Clinton Book Sales

Posted 7:40 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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[The last time the Czechs beat the Germans in a competitive match was in 1934, four years before France and England sold us to Hitler. Who gathered the most points during the group stage? No, not France. The Czech Republic, who won all three matches (against Latvia, Holland, and Germany) Jesus saves...but Baros gets the rebound and scores. GOOOOAAALL! How the mighty have fallen. Ha ha. Falling to the Czech reservists 2-1 ]

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of dissenting bravery
Of Special Interest to Moravian Freudians
Page 14: Hillary says the first time she ever saw me, I was in the Yale Law School lounge bragging to skeptical fellow students about the size of Hope watermelons.
Clinton Goes to Jail
Page 175: In 1971, Clinton hits a Volkswagen and discovers he doesn't have his driver's license. They stripped me of my belongings and took my belt so that I couldn't strangle myself, gave me a cup of coffee, and put me in a cell with a hard metal bed, a blanket, a smelly stopped-up toilet, and a light that stayed on.
· Slatish Dragon reads all 957 pages of Clinton’s memoir, My Life, so you don’t have to [Larry McMurtry waxes elegantly on Clinton’s My File]
· · See Also Want to attract single voters? Drop the dragon underpants...[Do Not Mention the genetics and political correctness ]
· · · See Also Why do politicians lie?
· · · · See Also US war crimes immunity bid fails
· · · · · See Also All I ever needed to know about China I learned at BBC
· · · · · · See Also The Democratic integration of Europe

Posted 7:33 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Will we ever know the whys of evil parliamentary behavior?

Tracking Policies & Investigative Stories: Hard Labor 1995-2007: Nothing New Under the Old Girls' Network
The state's health system was plagued by medical mistakes and cover-ups and was run by an old girls' network of administrators protected by their political affiliations.
The report found there were undoubtedly serious cultural and system-related problems concerning complaints handling in south-west Sydney.
Dr Moyes described a political network of senior female administrators running the NSW health system, including the former chief of Macarthur Health, Jennifer Collins, the administrator of the South Western Sydney Area Health Service, Deborah Picone, and chief executive officer of Central Sydney Area Health Service, Diana Horvath
· New South Worries: Midwives of Labor [Do Not Mention the Parliamentary Midwives Health Care Complaints (Joint Statutory Committee) ]
· · See Also Peter Locke remembers the birth of his twin boys as the day he lost all faith in the health system and his confidence in his abilities as a doctor
· · · See Also Sartor denies receiving $100,000 discount for Melbourne unit
· · · · See Also E(l)ection of Tertiary Privacy
· · · · · See Also Judge, Jerrold Cripps, QC, given wide brief to look into ICAC, the Adoring Thorng (sic)
· · · · · · See Also How local contractors are winning no-bid government jobs by funneling millions of dollars to the campaigns of elected officials
· · · · · · · See Also Bouncing Czech: Christopher Hammond continues to get government contracts despite his habit of writing bad checks to Los Angeles politicians

Posted 7:58 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Everybody needs good budgets ...Egan rides through the turbulence of his last budget; surfing the waves Ego Inc.

Time to ponder on The Perspective of Wealth & Freedom by Amartya Sen

Invisible Hands & Markets: Poverty and income gaps
I've been alerted to this story by Miranda Devine saying that the tragic house fire in Sydney a couple of days happened because the family couldn't afford blankets. It's often been asserted that poverty is an out-of-date concept, but there is still plenty of absolute deprivation in modern societies.
Devine's article focuses on the need for more charitable effort on the part of those of us who are doing well, and this is an important point. Most of us could give more than we do without suffering too much as a result. We should all think about it and try to make more of an effort. But it's equally important to look at the economic structures and government policies that have led to growing (or, depending on how you measure it) unimproved poverty rates over a long period of reasonably good economic growth.
· Quiggin on Poverty [link first seen at John Quiggin]
· · See Also What is the secret of Ikea's success?
· · · See Also Jim Holt on the idea that happiness can harm a person's character[link first seen at The Perspective of Freedom ]
· · · · See Also Surge in claims for workplace stress (( Altruism in evil ))
· · · · · See Also A look at the New Geeks, people who are technically trained but also work in other disciplines
· · · · · · See Also Long and close look at Air America's financial troubles

Posted 7:53 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Top 10 eBooks Library Patrons Are Reading

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Google is Enough: Surf the net while surfing waves
A surfboard has now been developed that lets surfers surf while surfing. The prototype board has been built by Devon, shaper, Jools Matthews
· Surfing has come to mean browsing the net rather than riding ocean waves on a plank [ courtesy of Road to Surfdom...]
· · See Also Blogging With The Boss's Blessing[Link Poached from MEdia Dragon Under Surveillance : Roundup for 2004]
· · · See Also Robert Samuelson calls blogs the fast food of the news business
· · · · See Also See me in post-communist court... Let's see what you're made of
· · · · · By Antony Loewenstein The promise that democracy would spread from a liberated Iraq was as poorly scrutinised as the notion advanced by the administration that the Geneva conventions did not apply to the war on terror
· · · · · · See Also Google reveals its caring side: Giving away code, planning a billion-dollar float and eyeing an Antipodean office

Posted 8:12 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Last night Tony Fitzgerald launched the book Not Happy, John that soulful and caring Margo wrote @ Gleebooks. It was also great to hear Antony Loewenstein speak. Indeed, it is not every day that you hear people describing Antipodean events as almost a religious experience...Even Jack Robertson had hallo around his head (smile). Fearless Fitzgerald gave his deepest blessings to this politically charged book in which the Independent Senator Brian Harradine is described in the warmest of terms...

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Nuremberg Tribunals: Noam Chomsky
If George Bush were to be judged by the standards of the Nuremberg Tribunals, he'd be hanged. So too, mind you, would every single American President since the end of the second world war, including Jimmy Carter.
· America's Quest for Global Dominance [ via Noam Chomsky ]
· · See Also 1968: The year that changed everything: 'The Dreamers' taps into the myth of a time of thrilling sex and violence
· · · See Also Attempt to address asylum myths [link first seen at New Abuse Charges: a class action filed in California on behalf of former detainees raises the specter of brutal physical abuse ]
· · · · See Also Top 10 spy terms: Going grey - learning to become invisible
· · · · · See Also The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced [follower], but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (standards of thought) no longer exist
· · · · · · See Also Federal judge Guido Calabresi: President Bush’s rise to power was similar to the accession of dictators such as Mussolini and Hitler

Posted 7:39 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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A review of Cold War Triumphalism: The Misuse of History after the Fall of Communism.

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Powerful Global Social Movement
A growing network of international institutions - economic, social, and political - constitute a nascent global state, whose current task is to realize the interests of an emerging transnational capitalist class in the international system to the disadvantage of subaltern classes in the third and first worlds. The evolving global state formation can therefore be described as having an imperial character. Underpinning the emerging imperial global state is a web of sub-national authorities and spaces that represent, along with non-governmental organizations, its decentralized face.
· International Institutions Today: An Imperial Global State in the Making
· · See Also Why this election isn't all it's cracked up to be (Expert Analysis of the 2004 Presidential Election)
· · · See Also A review of books on Bush, from his spiritual life to his approach to war
· · · · See Also A senior US intelligence official warned Bush he is playing into Bin Laden's hand
· · · · · See Also Report Says U.S. Has 'Secret' Detention Centers
· · · · · · Germaine Greer: We can dream too: The day white Australians can look in the mirror and say 'I am Aboriginal' is the day their tormented country will start to healss

Posted 7:35 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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G'day Webdiarists. No Webdiary this week - I'm travelling and chatting on radio to launch my book, "Not happy John! Defending our democracy". Here's my itinerary. I hope I can meet some of you at the launches and that you can tune in to an interview. The book is the result of four years of conversations we've had on Webdiary. Thank you to all those who've read and contributed to Webdiary ...Not happy John!

The Blog, The Press, The Media: The Web of Power & Sources
Whether information is cited from anonymous sources or stated on the authority of the news organization, it is politically useless without trust, accuracy, and an understanding of its origin, context and purpose. To be good, journalism, whether it relies on anonymous sources or not, must meet these needs...
A few days ago, Jeff Jarvis related an exchange between Rafat Ali of PaidContent.org and an anonymous reporter from a self-described "professional publication" who accused Ali of breaking the embargo on a news story.
· Relationship between reporters and source [ courtesy of Tim Porter]
· · See Also Anxiety Attacks Pay Off
· · · See Also Banking on a blockbuster
· · · · See Also Cosgrove a leading Speaker
· · · · · See Also Read any good blogs lately?
· · · · · · See Also Amazing...since Tim Dunlop of Road to Surfdom fame linked to this link last week over 100 readers came, saw and dozen gave feedback by email
· · · · · · · See Also Online News: 7 Lessons for the Future

Posted 7:27 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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In the struggle for more freedom of expression, activists' new worry is being labelled 'political' The guessing games of civil society

Stiff Political Spirit of wide screen TV and electoral bear pits:
It sounds a bit too good to be true: John Clarke writing and directing a telemovie from one of Shane Maloney's comic detective stories, starring David Wenham as the deadpan catastrophe Murray Whelan, a Labor Party hack who becomes a reluctant sleuth.
The Murray Whelan series began about 10 years ago when writer Shane Maloney - a one-time manager of the Comedy Festival who had also worked on Melbourne's doomed bid for the Olympics - decided to invent a shambling character who ends up on the trail of murder. Stiff, which introduces Murray Whelan, is mainly set in Sydney Road, Brunswick, and is replete with Turkish characters, including the beautiful Ayisha (Tamara Searle).
Maloney is not insensitive to his luck in being adapted by his friend John Clarke. John is a man who reinvents everything he touches. He sends up politicians without ever impersonating them. He presents the organisation of the Games and makes it worse than we could ever have expected. He's not someone who'll settle for the relentlessly plot-driven puzzle.
Clarke is as equipped as anyone possibly could be to make comedy drama out of those woebegone Murray Whelan stories that soothe the mind like a drug even as they insinuate that politics is a nightmare and family life can be a sad thing. He's a man who likes to contemplate the cusp between the realistic and the fanciful. He also has the greatest respect for the common person's sophistication in the face of artistic work.
· Winter of our discontent: Comedy doesn't have have a better friend than drama... the work of Kafka is funny [SEEN @ SE7EN ]
· See Also Clever dicks of Antipodean telemovies [ via Isobel Kerr]
· See Also Free Whelans Murrays, Pauls, Johns...
· See Also Wenham back to slay
· See Also Small screen, big ambitions
· See Also The Political Games
· See Also Who dun it?

Posted 7:43 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Muqrin's group had claimed responsibility for the gruesome murder of US hostage Paul Johnson who was executed after the Saudi government failed to meet its demands to release jailed militants

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Terror fears spark plan to seal off Parliament
Intelligence chiefs are calling for the most sweeping security shake-up in the history of Westminster to prevent terrorists striking at the heart of central London.
Amid fears that government departments and tourist landmarks such as Big Ben are under threat, intelligence experts want to set up a 'sterile security zone' around a large swath of London, blocking off key roads and sealing off the Commons debating chamber with bomb-proof screens.
· London Fears [Drug barons Melbourne: Ganglands... intended victim under arrest ]
· · See Also The secrets and confidentiality surrounding his financial dealings may come back to bite Roger Cowan
· · · Paul McGeough: Planting the seeds of terror
· · · · Spies and lies: Andrew Wilkie's job was to find links between Iraq and terrorism. What he found was that the truth counted for little
· · · · · See Also His harbour view: The battlelines are being drawn over the future of Sydney Harbour
· · · · · · See Also We're here, get used to it: students give refugees younger voice

Posted 7:32 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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War and peace and fire in her blood as well as the redemption of love

Literature & Art Across Frontiers: Hazzard county
In the Great Fire, one of the leading characters speaks of his joy in escaping from Mosman to embark on the great journey, the pilgrimage, to Europe. Only when the equator had been passed did he feel safe. Hazzard points out that she is not bashing Australia, but attempting to portray the boredom of the late 1940s, when the only way to leave was on a ship that took six months.
World War I was called the great adventure. The young men must have had the feeling of so little to lose. They were destined to toil, as their fathers had toiled. There must have been the feeling that 'I could just go on having the life that everyone was having around me ... I would have gone, [but] not the second time to the Second World War.
In conversation, and in The Great Fire, Hazzard stresses the word trapped when talking of those times. Trapped, you were trapped. You couldn't leave ... This idea that there was no future.
· Shirley Hazzard: Characters who can't wait to escape [Elsewhere A diplomat's daughter ]
[Elsewhere with Jana Wendt The Great Fire I nearly died there. I died spiritually there]
· · See Also Cold River cools @ Amazon, but there's no iceberg ahead...
· · · See Also Brilliant debuts: Artistsque Bloggers
· · · · See Also The best book club
· · · · · See Also It was seventh time lucky for Australian author Anna Funder, whose book Stasiland won Britain's richest award for non-fiction
· · · · · · See Also Sydney Film Festival 2004
· · · · · · · See Also The scent of horror that can't be washed away

Posted 4:14 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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How James Hardie's spin turned to mud

Invisible Hands & Markets: AN EYE FOR AN EYE And eventually all will be blind
A Monitor article this week looks at the proposed construction project of two bridges in Alaska, in addition to other transportation improvement measures, totaling $2 billion. The project is testing lawmakers and voters' sensibilities
· Peering over a Pork Barrel: Alaska's 'bridges to nowhere' [link first seen at CS Monitor]
· · See Also Northern Lights Internet Solutions, Ltd: Darlene Fichter
· · · See Also The Working Poor: Invisible in America
· · · · See Also New Invisible Age culture
· · · · · See Also Merhan Karimi Nasseri has lived in a Paris airport for 15 years, and now Hollywood is knocking: the inspiration for a Spielberg film, The Termina, starring Tom Hanks!
· · · · · · See Also Here’s a way to get young people registered to vote: Give them free beer & Cold River

Posted 4:07 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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'The tragedy of the modern man,' Havel wrote to his wife in -In the Letters to Olga-, 'is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of life but that it bothers him less and less.'
Classic Big Brother watchers: their values are based on self, fame, novelty, the experience of me, now, and their social values are incredibly poorly developed

Tracking Trends Great & Small: Innovation city
NO OTHER CITY in America can compare to Boston as a wellspring of innovation. For more than 300 years, people have come here to learn what has been done in their field so far, stake a claim to an acre of the as-yet-undone, and begin tilling the hard ground.
· Why good ideas are born in Boston -- but don't always stay [link first seen at In an age of e-mail and Amazon, literature still needs the city ]
· · See Also Myth of the rebel consumer (( Laughing - With Tears In My Eyes: Voter apathy))
· · · See Also On how random copying explains why some cars, dogs and pop singers are fashionable
· · · · See Also A Global Business Forum conference revives the old debate on global inequality
· · · · · See Also Life Lessons From Football
· · · · · · See Also Like Saudi princes, elected officials in the Bay State regard innovation as a divine right

Posted 7:40 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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There are uncanny parallels between the Government's handling of the prisoner abuse scandal and the 'children overboard' affair: the same obstinate refusal on the part of the Prime Minister and other Ministers to seek out the truth; the same reluctance on the part of senior officials and advisers to pass on unwelcome or inconvenient advice to their political masters; the same Nixonian culture of plausible deniability

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: If people don't say where they're going after choir practice, this country is at risk
What this means in understandable English is that if a parent, in his anxiety to know where his son goes after choir practice, does something that will cause severe pain to his son, it is only "torture" if the causing of that severe pain is his objective. If his objective is something else - such as finding out where his son goes after choir practice - then it is not torture.
· This won't hurt much: Terry Jones is a writer, film director, actor and Python [ via Censorship's Trial Balloons - What happens when wartime news gets censored? By Liam Callanan ]
· · See Also Vote for Me (and I approve this blogging)
· · · See Also Bush's Political Thorn Grows More Stubborn: ...dishonesty about the war rationale [ via Being abused when nobody else knows you even exist ]
· · · · See Also Contractors in Iraq: the view from the lobby, Part I.
· · · · · See Also Bill Clinton's Very Personal Reflections
· · · · · · See Also A case study in Right Wing thought patterns: the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak

Posted 7:38 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Olympic poetry By this very Bohemian

Repeating History Classes: Winning at Olympia
With the lighting of the torch at Olympia on March 25, the final countdown to the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens began. While the torch is carried around the world and the finishing touches are put on the competition venues in and around Athens, why not catch up on the ancient Olympics with Archaeology.org?
· Archaeology's Ancient Olympics Guide.
· · See Also Around The Rings (ATR)
· · · See Also Athens News: This newspaper covers the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens
· · · · See Also International Olympic Committee 2004 Marketing Fact File (PDF)
· · · · · See Also Multimedia Gallery [Olympic Games]
· · · · · · See Also Olympic Women: Antipodean Bohemian Swimmers Gabriella & Alexandra Imrich (smile)

Posted 7:34 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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It is Friday and Blogjam #13 is being laced with bad apples & turbulent thoughts on the fastest-surfing blog in Washington...

The Blog, The Press, The Media: A Cold Medium: Political Disillusionment with the Internet
He doesn't understand, most people don't understand, the full power of the Internet. You can't use it exclusively. But the power is much more than fund-raising. There's a real community out there.
· Business Week interviews Howard Dean [ courtesy of Operation Shoe Fly: Shoes for the kids in Afghanistan]
· · See Also Trying to Motivate Young Voters, Hip-Hop Goes Political
· · · See Also Barista: But can they make their blogs wag their tails?
· · · · See Also Numerous bloggers hosted by Weblogs.com are offline and scrambling to find new hosting after blogging pioneer Dave Winer abruptly closed the free service last weekend
· · · · · See Also Turning the Tables on E-Mail Swindlers: Everyone online, it seems, has received an offer to share a fortune. For some dedicated pranksters, it's an invitation to strike back [ courtesy of On the face of it, everyone on the Internet should be rich by now just as I am! Scamorama www.scamorama.com ] (Is there an axe in your global head)
· · · · · · See Also Ancient Imrich Family Secrets, Unlocked: Every family has a mystery, and ours is Rich

Posted 7:45 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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No question: John Ashcroft is the worst attorney general in history ...

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Facing up to conflicts of interest
Lies, postage stamps and stationery brought a sad end to Richard Face's political career, but his demise has a sting in the tail for politicians.
The issue of a cooling-off period for ministers before they take up lucrative positions in the private sector not a million miles from their portfolio has been around for years.
The Greiner Government tried to introduce a two-year cooling-off period, but it was largely ignored by its own departing ministers.
IN ITS report, ICAC has recommended new rules for departing ministers. It says they should include a process for approving or advising ministers about offers of employment before or after they leave office, a specified cooling-off period before they can accept work in their former area of responsibility and, most importantly, some way of "appropriately enforcing the rules".
· Three other states have codes of conduct [ Elsewhere The Independent Commission Against Corruption: Face should be charged ] [ Which is worse:... Tough choice. ICAC report (PDF Format)
· · See Also Wild Factional Fists at Punchbowl: Liberals may sack brawling recruits
· · · See Also The political elites of Australia: France's most profound contribution to the post-Cold War order was made by doctors, not armies [ Malcolm's seen Labor's enemy - and it's Peter Garrett: Raising the spectre of the former rock singer being under the dictat of a shadowy central committee
· · · · See Also An American officer referred to the Abu Ghraib scandal as a moral Chernobyl [Link Elsewhere 50-page PDF version of the memo: We may have to start using blunt words like murder and rape to describe what we see]
· · · · · See Also Morality lost, as Australia refuses to acknowledge its implication in torture
· · · · · · See Also Failing to take into account alternative transport solutions or land-use potential
· · · · · · See Also A new independent watchdog body with royal commission powers will be established to oversee the nation's federal crime agencies

Posted 7:42 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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From ZNet, a response to Stanley Fish's recent op-ed in The New York Times

Literature & Art Across Frontiers: Revisiting the Hanan Ashrawi affair
G'day.
I'm getting pretty tense because my (second) book 'Not happy John! Defending our democracy' will be launched on Monday in Canberra, Tuesday in Sydney, Thursday in Melbourne and Friday in Brisbane. Webdiary columnists Harry Heidelberg, Jack Robertson and Antony Loewenstein have each written a chapter. Antony dissected the Hanan Ashrawi affair for the book. To refresh your memory, a director of the Sydney Peace Foundation and Prize committtee, Professor Stuart Rees, who also heads Sydney University's Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies, reflects on the scandal and the politics of media derision.
· Beyond Good And Evil [link to Second Book] [link to First Book: Off the Rails: The Pauline Hanson trip ] [Czechout Margo Kingston] [visit Antony Loewenstein ]
· · See Also Democracy's Children: Pain-in-the-ass Democracy
· · See Also Killing the Big Other: Concept of Irony and Either / Or
· · See Also Medieval Jewish Philosophy
· · · See Also First-Time Author Wins BBC Book Prize: Debut author Anna Funder, Stasiland: Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall[ courtesy of The Little Literary Magazine That Could: Border Crossings ]
· · · · See Also Doctors of Preaching or the Practicing: People with the Spirit and people with Ph.D.'s
· · · · · See Also Barista:So you thought the internet was free...
· · · · · · See Also Yann Martel: Life After The Booker

Posted 12:32 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Justice(s) Served by Royalties
The Supreme Court justices recently disclosed their 2003 income. Clarence Thomas reported $500,000 worth of his advance from Harper, as William H. Rehnquist showed more than $35,000 in book-related earnings and Sandra Day O'Connor disclosed $9,950 from publishing, according to the Washington Post.

Tracking Policies & Investigative Stories: Mix and match
The melting pot has been bubbling away as more Australians marry outside their ethnic background. So has 30 years of multiculturalism been a success?
· Culture Vultures [link first seen at Szirine: Dare to Become the 10,000th surreal reader]
· · See Also Nice Irish boy settles down [ Ugly irony lost on the marketing men at Denny's How do modern Irish walk with those cultural sausages? ]
· · · See Also UK: Best, worst police forces named
· · · · See Also Plame Case Looming: The Real Reason Tenet and Pavitt Resigned from the CIA
· · · · · See Also Love really is blind...why we can't see faults in our partners or children
· · · · · · See Also Big Brother...Free Th (sic) Refugees: I wasn't trying to destroy the show. If people want reality television then this is reality
· · · · · · · Rather than stretching, experts encourage people to warm up by jogging slowly...

Posted 12:26 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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John Ruskin, the 19th century essayist, called illth. The tragedy—the Tragedy of the Market, one might say—is that it has to create problems and needs, or the gears will grind to a halt...
But what if the Truth is that Americans don't want to know the Truth?

Tragedy & Market Across Frontiers: George Orwell… meet Franz Kafka: Theirs is the logic of criminal regimes
These are, in fact, documents of shame, symbolic of a kind of bureaucratic lawlessness let loose at the heart of our government. They are intent on creating a pseudo-legal basis for replacing the rule of law with the rule of a commander-in-chief. As Robert Kuttner put it in the Boston Globe, For nearly three years, the Bush administration has resorted to the most preposterous fictions to define either locales or categories of people to whom the law does not apply. If you connect the dots, the torture at Abu Ghraib is part of a larger slide toward tyranny as the Bush administration tries to exempt itself from the rule of law.
As justifications for torture, these are the sorts of documents one can imagine finding in the files of some grim third world dictatorship or maybe the former Apartheid regime of South Africa
· Good law is in a new drug: Lawlessness [ via All knowledge is either physics or stamp collecting]
· · See Also What is the good Luxury Fever? Rising materialism[ via But Money can buy happiness after all]
· · · See Also Land of private affluence and public poverty: When schools and libraries are begging for funds in the richest nation in the world, only a confirmed ideologue could deny that something is out of whack
· · · · See Also I hope Bush steals another election...This is America, not Denmark. In this country, tens of millions of people choose to watch FoxNews not simply because Americans are credulous idiots or at the behest of some right-wing corporate cabal, but because average Americans respect viciousness
· · · · · See Also MAKING A KILLING: New war profiteers
· · · · · · See Also How philosophy makes job of 'selling' Standard Life easier

Posted 7:57 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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German, French and British voters dealt swift kicks to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, French President Jacques Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair this weekend by electing anti-European Union candidates to the European Parliament.
Even in European countries that are new to democracy, voters find things to do other than voting for a new European Parliament. Apathy and scepticism mark first EU vote in "New Europe"
A breakdown of the 732-seat European Parliament after historic elections that saw some 150 million Europeans cast ballots across 25 member nations of the expanded European DisUnion.
Official Site of European Parliament provides raw data

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Poor Version of Democracy
While the United States wages war to expand democracy around the world, how is our own democracy doing? Not very well, says a group of distinguished scholars.
The voices of American citizens are raised and heard unequally. The privileged participate more than others and are increasingly well organized to press their demands on government. Public officials, in turn, are much more responsive to the privileged than to average citizens and the least affluent.
· Disparities in political participation, the report says, ensure that ordinary Americans speak in a whisper while the most advantaged roar. [right liberals versus false ones The Importance of Norberto Bobbio ]
· · See Also Which presidential style is best? [ via Imagined Communities: Not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings]
· · · See Also The return of Boilermaker Bill's Macquarie St musings: Pouring Oils onto troubled waters; Ta ta Totaro
· · · · See Also Carr king-maker in Garrett coup
· · · · · See Also Brereton's last revenge
· · · · · · See Also The ABC and fearless political reporting
· · · · · · · See Also Campaigns Drawn to Political Labels: e(l)ectionconnoisairs , pollsters, political scientists and media pundits create catching-phrases to coin swing voters

Posted 7:54 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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All that I have produced before the age of seventy is not worth taking into account. At seventy-three, I learned a little about the real structure of nature, of animals, plants, trees, birds, fishes and insects. In consequence, when I am eighty, I shall have made still more progress. At ninety, I shall penetrate the mystery of things; at 100, I shall certainly have reached a marvelous stage; and when I am 110, everything I do, be it a dot or a line, will be alive.
Hokusai, A Hundred Views of Fuji (Tatra Mountains)

Invisible Hands & Markets: No More Escapes Across Iron Curtains As The Next Velvet Revolution will be Bogged: Between hither and yon
Most of the youth of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are not optimistic -- social services have collapsed and life expectancy is down.
The young largely brought about the collapse of communist regimes. They were the ones who went to demonstrations and meetings, and led the strike actions.
Now their children are disappointed and mistrustful of politics. Average youth unemployment is twice the general level. Many feel they have been failed by the adults who promised beautiful living and freedom that for many has turned into poverty, fear and loneliness.
· We expected better [link first seen at Prague Post]
· · See Also America is the land of the sex-discrimination lawsuit: the world's biggest award, of $10.6m, was made by an American jury in 2002 to a former employee of Hoffman LaRoche
· · · See Also William Powers on how it pays to be wrong in the news business
· · · · See Also I find BMW's with number plates like "IMRICH" really a bit rich: How to treat corporate criminals
· · · · · See Also U.S. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell “was trying to steer a no-bid contract to a software company called Thinkstream Inc.
· · · · · · See Also Bio-terror is the name of the dream that post-modern societies dream in their self-appointed state of war, and "anthrax" the fulfilment of that wish [Extract from Cold River State of communist economy]
· · · · · · · See Also Getting pollies & crats to care about any future other than its own: Rail bureaucrats cash in as service crisis mounts [linked with ICAC: Senior ministers believe that a single command would overcome jurisdictional clashes and streamline operational activities ]

Posted 7:46 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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I will be straight about it: politics is an imperfect game... And yet it is the best game we have for making the country work better.
Petter Garrett

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Meet Joe Blog: MEdia Dragon
Why are more and more people getting their news from amateur websites called blogs? Because they're fast, funny and totally biased
· Blog Fathering [ courtesy of IHT: The Blog father of 'www' finally gets his due ]
· · See Also I Believe the National Enquirer: Why don't you?
· · · See Also How Google Took the Work Out of Selling Advertising
· · · · See Also Website Analysis Isn't a Game: VisitorVille, a website-traffic analysis package that essentially crosses the DNA of SimCity with that of the traditional chart- and graph-centric tools businesses
· · · · · See Also What purpose, apart from the blood sport that it affords readers, does savage reviewing serve?
· · · · · · See Also CRAP & WEE (WAR & PEACE) : Look within the self-organizing anagrams, double meanings, homophones, charades, containers, and hidden kabalahs...

Posted 11:28 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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David Chalmers has very good list of philosophy blogs.

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: The High Cost of...Everything
· Mr Howard did know the price of bread milk and eggs. The average shelf price of a loaf of bread at $2.80 is around three times the Prime Minister’s suggested 90c ...
There's a stealth issue in this presidential campaign that could go far in determining the election results. I'm talking about the rising gas, phone, electricity, milk and cable prices that are damaging millions of hard-working families struggling to live in George W. Bush's America. In addition to paying $2-plus per gallon prices at the pump, consumers are getting squeezed at the supermarket—shelling out as much as $4 per gallon for milk.
· Staples are going through the roof [ via Powerful And Polarized ]
· · See Also Is US like Germany of the '30s?
· · · See Also Corruption Inc, rooting out rotten cops: For decades, revelations of police corruption and links to organised crime leapfrogged from state to state
· · · · See Also Cancer, birth defects, stillbirths and more soared out of control: Rock & Radiation, not Ronald Reagan, Brought down the Soviet Union [Link Poached from Remembering Tiananmen ]
· · · · · See Also Rev. Jesse Jackson gives Democrats a to-do list for victory in November [ via The next Democratic president must recognize the obvious: that means are as important as ends]
· · · · · · See Also The Outsourcing Bogeyman

Posted 11:26 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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No bossy blogs? I shudder at the thought

The Blog, The Press, The Media: John Quiggin: A Real Bargain
For those of you who like end-of-financial year bargains, here's one that's hard to beat. The Australian government has a scheme under which it matches donations to certain aid projects on a $3 for $1 basis1.So if you give $500, the matching funds can bring the grant up to $2000 which is enough to buy books for an entire school in a poor country. In addition, the donations themselves are tax deductible, so if you're one of those groaning under our top marginal tax rate, the effective cost is only $250.
· $$$ WOW [ courtesy of VictoryOverWant ]
· · See Also BBC 'will not ask for more cash' [ We all have a crush on Bookslut]
· · · See Also Is PBS Finding New Politics? US PBS is supposed to be neutral politically. But now some critics wonder if PBS is adopting more of a political slant...
· · · · See Also Amazon Gets Into The Hollywood Movie Business (Los Angeles Times 06/05/04) [ PR Bloggers and the Evolving View of Marketing ]
· · · · · See Also Newsroom management: It should be invisible to readers
· · · · · · See Also This White House and administration are far more secretive than the Nixon crowd

Posted 11:22 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Goodwill, mutual respect, transparency... what's fuelling the blogosphere will soon fuel all markets. Bloggers are learning this faster than other people. This is the main reason we read and write them. This is the main reason people like you, me and Brad have decided to join the conversation.

Literature & Art Across Frontiers: For Budding Authors, a Rapid-Fire Publisher
Hot off the presses has taken on a newly literal meaning with the installation of the first instant book-printing machine in an American bookstore.
Take a floppy disk or CD-ROM to Bookends in Ridgewood, N.J., or e-mail the store a file, and pow! - in as little as 17 minutes a perfect-bound paperback version of your novel, family memoir, or favorite Bulgarian desserts can be printed.
Best-selling books are so outside the norm that they're an anomaly.
· The more books we print, the more salespeople we have out there [link first seen at Why the SMH is the best newspaper in the world ]
· · See Also W h a t i a c t u a l l y M e a n w h e n i s a y I l o v e y o u: T h i r t y s c e n a r i os
· · · See Also Canadians are less willing to make the imaginative leap necessary to enjoy a movie about domestic politics
· · · · See Also In Love with Sound
· · · · · See Also Never On Sunday: NewTown would have loved blogging, because he was forthright in his condemnation of his enemies
· · · · · · See Also Turning memories of a lighthouse job into a bestseller

Posted 1:51 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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So the international blogging surfdom, Tim Dunlop, has finally decided to put the devillish details about the Antipodean federal election 2004 AD on the virtual waves. The e(l)ection boils down to a race between John Howard and Mark Latham.
I just can’t wait for the debates to start. They will be quite interesting judging by the passionate maiden speeches:
The Hon John Howard MP, Member for Bennelong First Speech To Parliament - 26/9/1974
Mr Mark Latham MP, Member for Werriwa First Speech To Parliament - 22/2/1994

BTW, LOL, Unlike genealogically poor Australia, whoever wins the race to the White House this year, the president of the United States is sure to be a direct descendant of the ancient rulers of Bohemia, Premyslid dynasty

Tracking Policies & Investigative Stories: Roll up your sleeves. Let the blogging begin

For those of you who have not prospered academically, let me give you a bit of good news - you are being addressed by someone who was in the bottom half of his class at Harvard. Or, in fact, if you want to be a didactic about it, the bottom third of his class. So there is life after college; I'm proof of it.
· David Halberstam: Pulitzer-Prize winning author and social and political commentator [Let me jump to my favourite review (sic)]
· · See Also Former energy and tobacco lobbyist Haley Barbour
· · · See Also Gulf War Syndrome All 50,000 troops who served in the first Gulf war might have been exposed to low levels of chemical warfare agents during the fighting and its aftermath
· · · · See Also Halliburton Under Investigation for Nigeria $180 million Bribery
· · · · · See Also Corruption let gang war explode, says investigator
· · · · · · See Also Fat MacBank and hungrier than ever
· · · · · · · See Also Firms turn to e-tectives to combat computer crime
· · · · · · · · See Also The spectre of Big Brother from George Orwell’s 1984 watching our every move has been steadily realised
· · · · · · · · · See Also Chickens launched by former immigration minister Philip Ruddock are coming home to roost

Posted 1:42 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Morry Schwartz, Australian Developer of Black Inc, adds another story Schwartz, meaning black, has a knack for rising from the near-dead. This Antipodean publisher specialises in building circulation for literary nonfiction as well as literal office blocks

Literature & Art Across Frontiers: Quest for Good and Fight against Evil.
As popular fiction, Rowling's novels perform a feat that's a bit like what John Le Carre did when he made the world of Cold War.espionage into an endlessly fascinating game of chess.
It's also the point where the vision and the encircling atmosphere of the Harry Potter world gets distinctly darker and creepier. It's not only Voldemort and his followers who are dark and malignant. This is a world where the Ministry of Magic can let loose its Dementors on those it deems to be outside the law and allow them to suck any identity or happiness out of them.
It's potent, imaginative stuff, and these hooded, faceless ghouls who swirl through the Azkaban world are symptomatic of the way Rowling sees the wizarding world as existing on a knife edge between impulses towards good and evil; and the way the legal, official world can be very black indeed, and there is no just society for anyone to take shelter in.
· It sometimes seems that Potty Harry Potter is going to take over the world rowlingova [Are They Out to Get him? What, exactly, makes the richest author so universally unpopular? ]
· · See Also After 23 publishers' rejections silent fury for author who lifted stones of Germany's scared senseless past - Stasiland [Link Poached from In Search Of Book Buzz: political books have been gold for more than a year, and more are on the way]
· · · See Also Should we care who the next Pope is? For millions of Catholics in the developing world, it’s a matter of life and death
· · · · See Also Hegel hits the beach & Royal George pub: Basking in the blinding Antipodean light

Communism is neither an ec[onomic] or a pol[itical] system—it is a form of insanity—a temporary aberration which will one day disappear from the earth because it is contrary to human nature. I wonder how much more misery it will cause before it disappears.
Ronald Reagan, Reagan, In His Own Hand (written 1975, collected 2001)
· · · · · See Also Put aside for a moment your opinion of Reagan (either way) and think instead about the implications of these Amerikan letters
· · · · · See Also Reagan's impact on culture: mixed bag of a controversial figure with legions of detractors as well as admirers
· · · · · · See Also Lost In Translation [Link Poached from But one thing I can't live with, which I would criticize, is to be in competition with my book. A writer should allow the work to speak for itself ]
· · · · · · · · See Also Literary giants in the running for Franklin award[Link Poached from Judging A Lit Prize - Exhausting: Alpha literary transparency?]

Posted 10:27 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Text of the eulogies to freedom-loving Ronald Reagan who won America's respect with his greatness. And won its love with his goodness. The most compelling was Mulroney's Tribute to Reagan even the Iron, Curtain, Lady made soulful contribution at Reagan's last farewell

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Bestia: Neither a Fox nor a Hedgehog: a Belgian Shepherd
The use of unmuzzled dogs to terrify prisoners was approved military practice in Abu Ghraib: Smith said military intelligence personnel asked him to instill fear in detainees. He said that he would bring his dog, a black Belgian shepherd named Marco, to the tier specifically to scare prisoners ...
· Marco Ghraib [ via Andrew Sullivan]
· · See Also A badly mauled Tony Blair: Labour takes a beating [Link Poached from Newcastle upon Tyne had fallen: Losing the city which boasts Tony Blair's favourite football team]
· · · See Also US President Can Order Torture (Will Someone Send Them The Geneva Convention?)
· · · · See Also Globalisation: the dangers and the answers [link first seen at Liberal vs. illiberal democracy ]
· · · · · See Also How does capitalism as a system reproduce itself? [Link Poached from On-line fantasy games have booming economies and citizens who love their political systems ]
· · · · · · See Also Are we inherently good?

Posted 10:19 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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A matter of life and death

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Best Review So Far of RSS Agregators
Tired of browsing around the Web for timely information? RSS readers deliver exactly the news you need--fast.
Our blogging buddy Bob Stepno has authored the best general article we have seen so far about the wonderful world of RSS, including pocket reviews of all of the most popular aggregators.
· News on Demand [ courtesy of PCworld]
· · See Also Passwords can sit on hard disks for years [courtesy of Virus-proof your PC in 20 minutes, for free ]
· · · See Also Seth Godin: Needles, haystacks & magnetism: Having met some successful people, I can assure you that they didn't get that way by deserving it
· · · · See Also Free Expression Policy Project about the information commons movement: Well worth reading, though I'm sure the word "sex" in the URL will get it banned at any agency using filtering software
· · · · · See Also Are blogs coming to your library shelves?
· · · · · · See Also eMail Bankrupt: legal pundit Lawrence Lessig has thrown up his hands in the face of 200+ daily incoming personal (that's non-spam) e-mail messages
· · · · · · · See Also ExpatriateConnect, a new website database aimed at enlisting some of the nearly one million Antipodean Dunlops overseas

Posted 8:26 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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My older brother, Vladimir Imrich, who sadly passed away in March this year was named after Lenin, as during Second World War Russians were seen as liberators. By 1958 when many Czechoslovaks ended up in jail, Russians were seen as rapists. (I will not bite into the temptation to elaborate on the Iraq comparison here.)
So by the time I was born I was more likely to be named after John Lennon rather than Stalin. In fact, I was named after my father and my Polish grandfather...

My brother never left Czechoslovakia or the soil of the split brotherhood. In fact, he never travelled anywhere. But, one of the few politicians he admired was Ronald Reagan! Why? Intellectually, the facts can be twisted by the historians according to the colour of the political pendulum. Soulfully, what Reagan provided is beyond historical facts as he was one of the people who gave hope not so much to my brother Vlado, but hope to some of his four children: Aga, named after my sister who died as a result of working in a chemical communist factory, Marcel, Lukas, Tomas. The last born, Tomas came into the world four months after the Chernobyl explosion so he, like many others, was born with many disabilities. Tomas will forever be a little child who must be cared for fromthe time he opens his eyes till he goes to bed again...

Many past and present world leaders and veterans of the Cold War struggle against communism are making their way to Washington for the funeral service.
They included former Soviet communist leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who will formally represent Russia ...Reagan returns to capital for last time

Tim Dunlop came, saw, Kingstonised, and blogjammed yesterday #12 Blogjam and now more than dozen dirty penended comments rule the blogosphere.
Tim also observed that Ronald Reagan died and I would've liked former Czech citizen, Jozef Imrich, to say a bit more about his opinion of the former US president. You kind of get a sense of his feelings from this brief post...

Today, Czechs and Slovaks are full of praise for the American people who greatly influenced the fate of millions living in Central and Eastern Europe.

Way back when (pick your date), exiles had a simple goal for themselves and their country: to be politically incorrect Amerikan leaders were important, but the models for future were closer geographically and politically to Prague

It is the nature of human existence that we know that sometimes in history "things happen" unexpectedly, overnight: one day Man leaves our planet and walks on the moon; in one day, symbolising Charter 77, you rock the river and the Iron Curtain; in one day you become a beach boy and marry a balletina; in one day, the Berlin Wall crumble; in one day your daughter of Velvet Revolution, named after Alexander Dubcek is born, and the world is never the same again.

There is no history, only biography and few write about it as well as Milan Kundera!

The Unbearable Lightness of Being had a remarkable success when it was published in English in 1984, the year Lauren my soulful mate crossed the Iron Curtain by herself to meet my family.
By 1984 Orwell's dystopian vision of a world ruled by totalitarian ideologies was seen to have been frighteningly prescient, particularly from the perspective of the eastern bloc countries. The cold war was at one of the hottest stages it had ever reached, with Reagan in the White House and Andropov in the Kremlin.Yet even in those bleak years, those with hearing sufficiently sharp could detect the first faint creakings of the ice-cap as it began to shift. Kundera was one of the keenest listeners to the break-up of the international order ...

Vaclav Havel said on many occasions before his death that Ronald Reagan was certainly one of the greatest statesmen of the recent era. The Czech President Havel, recalling the experience of the people in communist Europe: "The previous circumstances in our lives could be compared to a shroud of thick, impenetrable and stifling fog hanging over our whole lives. All of a sudden, with incredible speed, the fog we used to take as something virtually irremovable dispersed. Suddenly we saw an amazingly colorful landscape that had until then remained unseen. The first moments after such a radical change were marked by a universal feeling of joy. We were amazed at the beauty of the world which had until then been hidden from us, surprised at how dazzlingly bright the light of freedom was. But soon the amazement and elation passed away and we all found that the world which the fog had for so long concealed from us contained a great deal of surprising phenomena, new interrelationships, new problems and new tasks. An urgent need to build a whole new world became obvious."

Peter Schweizer, a fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of a new book entitled Reagan's War makes many thoughtful points about the so-called bumpkin who won the Cold War.

Czech political scientist Jiri Pehe offers his assessment of the Reagan legacy in ending Soviet communism. There is an irony to Reagan's masterful intuition in that even his closest advisers describe him as uninterested in the intricacies of politics

Like the Hungarian Amerikan journalist Andras Szanto, I too realised when I was serving in the Czechoslovak army from 1977 to 1979 that the Emperor did not have clothes. There were just comedy of mismanagement errors wherever one looked. I escaped from communism in 1980 a year before Reagan became the President.
In the current orgy of commemoration, Ronald Reagan's steely resolve in the face of the communist threat is taken as an article of faith.
The Great Communicator, we're reminded, put the world on notice that he was serious about bringing down the "Evil Empire." And that he wasn't afraid to spend big to win.
But the burnished vision of Reagan as St. George, single-handedly slaying the fire-breathing dragon of totalitarianism, is an exaggeration. In fact, communism's epic meltdown was more of a suicide than a capitulation.

Crooked Timber provides a critical biographical look at the contribution of the US President. However, some of it flies in the face of what people like Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel believe was Reagan’s contribution.

Former Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel advised that He was a man of firm principles who was indisputably instrumental in the fall of Communism.

Ronald Reagan was no god. But he understood that however mortal he was, he was, for eight years, the President of the United States.
Tomorrow will mark the anniversary (June 12, 1987) of his remarks at the Brandenburg Gate. That week I was using the email at the NSW Parliamentary Library and the boss Dr Russell Cope observed on a number of occasions the foggish salty eyes on this Bohemian. There were many hopeful comments about the speech broadcast on Radio Free Europe poring in from friends who were stuck behind the Iron Curtain.
This speech was delivered to the people of West Berlin, yet it was also audible on the East side of the Berlin wall: General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

We blog and link to stories because as bloggers, many of us seem to project hope even if we link to shocking stories of our corrupt times and when we despair we just remember:
When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it, always.
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

Posted 7:37 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Poland and China and the lesson of two anniversaries ...Out of years of 'failure' can come success (reg. req.)

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Mandela: Humanitarian Hero
Nelson Mandela has been one of the few contemporary heroes whose reputation and idolized status has always remained intact.
In a recent advertising research poll, Nelson Mandela was ranked the most visible and recognizable brand in the world, followed by Coca Cola which once occupied first place. The famous prisoner who later became the first president in a democratic South Africa is a brand associated with humanitarian efforts such as championing children's education, building schools in rural communities and more recently has become involved with the safe-sex HIV/AIDS campaign in South Africa.
· Global symbol of reconciliatory politics and peaceful negotiation [ via Toward a Universal Declaration of Human Wrongs ]
· · See Also The reason candidates migrate to the center is captured in the expression, where else can they go?
· · · See Also Bremer bans cleric from Iraq elections [ First spotted @ John Quiggin ] [ via Juan Cole: Bremer's action in excluding the Sadrists from parliament is one final piece of stupidity to cap all the other moronic things he has done in Iraq ]
· · · · See Also No moral choice was in fact possible? changing the course of history: They have denied the validity of the Nuremberg Tribunal [ via Barista ]
· · · · · See Also Former DCI Robert Gates on racing to ruin the CIA & ASIO
· · · · · · See Also Those who hate 'liberals' really hate a free America

Posted 7:37 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Three strikes for bankrupt wife

Invisible Hands & Markets: How Org Charts Lie
The frustrated banker realizes all too keenly that the work of a senior manager is largely about orchestrating the work of others. So central and essential is this role that an entire industry—maybe even several—has emerged, with the goal of revolutionizing the way people get their work done. Over the past two decades, waves of initiatives—such as de-layering, reengineering, total quality management (TQM), teams, supply chain integration, alliances, and implementation of myriad technologies—have washed through the corporate landscape, with varying degrees of success. These efforts to improve efficiency and eradicate bureaucracy have indeed transformed how work gets done. Employees are less constrained than before by formal reporting relationships or overly bureaucratic processes and procedures; important work in most organizations now gets done through networks of employees.
· The Hidden Power of Social Networks [link first seen at
· · See Also He's back: CEO axed as Packer takes helm
· · · See Also Nobody ever said, 'This is the guy in charge of the public research group

Posted 6:53 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Parts of what I may say may strike readers as a statement of the obvious. Unfortunately, in an era of fiscal conservatism and lowest-common denominators, it needs to be said . . . [it is] a pressing time for Canadians to position culture at the centre of the social agenda.
– Max Wyman, Lions Bay, B.C.

Literature & Art Across Frontiers: Does culture matter? A practical guide to making it matter
Talk about the benefits of the arts in our lives is all very nice. So is talk about the value of culture and the importance of nurturing a Canadian identity (especially one that does not have Idol anywhere in its title). Unfortunately, few authors today can afford themselves the luxury to talk about art’s grandeur, all of its wonderful promises for bettering our lives and still be taken seriously the morning after.
· The Defiant Imagination [link first seen at ]
· · See Also Script Supervision: Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies, and part 3 of there's no such thing as paranoia [Are They Out to Get him? Richest Author of all Times]
· · · See Also Multinational Grab in Multicultural Garb
· · · · See Also Most everybody lies... and here's why: Men, women see it differently
· · · · · See Also A consulting firm, wins the right to compete for work advising legislatures of young democracies
· · · · · · See Also It is amazing how much you can tell about a society from its laws

Posted 7:39 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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No writer ever truly succeeds. The disparity between the work conceived and the work completed is always too great and the writer merely achieves an acceptable level of failure.
Phillip Caputo, A Rumor of War

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Lawyers Decided Bans on Torture Didn't Bind Bush
A team of administration lawyers concluded in a March 2003 legal memorandum that President Bush was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal antitorture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation's security.
The memo, prepared for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, also said that any executive branch officials, including those in the military, could be immune from domestic and international prohibitions against torture for a variety of reasons.
· Legal Memorundum [ via A bizarre set of circumstances: The Government will censor intelligence whistleblower Andrew Wilkie's insider account of the spy services ]
· · See Also Mikhail Gorbachev: A President Who Listened [link first seen at UK Parliament, the finest advocacy web-app in the world www.theyworkforyou.com]
· · · See Also It was Mr. Reagan's good fortune that during his time in office the Soviet Union was undergoing profound change, eventually to collapse [Reagan May Replace Hamilton on $10 Bill]
· · · · See Also Cigarettes Will Kill You -- Twice: Cigarette Smuggling Linked to Terrorism as not only do terrorists kill people, but they cheat on their taxes, too
· · · · · See Also Mosul Car Bomb Explosion Kills Five Troops in Iraq - Polish Army [ via Anatomy of (Another) ‘Un-newsworthy’ Story ]
· · · · · · See Also The rich have been warned to leave Baghdad. But for the poor, there is no escape from crime

Posted 7:07 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Is Nike going to see a massive increase in revenue and market share from this? No Are they going to generate some good feelings and low-level buzz? Yes.

The Blog, The Press, The Media: The Teenagers gender spilt in blog use is 50-50
Teenage boys and girls are using blogs, easily publishable online diaries, in many more similar ways than has been predicted
· Teenagers reach out via weblogs - they use them for 'self therapy' [ courtesy of NewsIsFree: Your own Advanced News Reader and Feed Publisher ] [ via Microsoft's Sacred Cash Cow ]
· · See Also Circle of self-interest hides the truth
· · · See Also Broadcasting tzar: Flint's going was surprise for everyone
· · · · See Also Making Apples More Corporate: Mac users now have an Office suite equal to Windows (Apple Airportexpress) (( Siliconvalley: Airport Express and the Reality Distortion Field ))
· · · · · See Also 101 ways to improve your news site (
Notes from Danny O'Brien's NotCon Recap of Life Hacks: 220 index cards getting a cheap laugh)
· · · · · · See Also Blogging is not about site traffic or competition about the cleverest of writing
· · · · · · · See Also The recent trend of books being adapted for the screen is making America stupid. More stupid than it already is

Posted 7:27 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Why do political theories so often fail the test of common sense?

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: America’s prayer
Can America find its universal soul in being complexly human rather than eternally innocent? And can Europe's former dissidents find a fresh language of truth in which to challenge unjust United States power?
When I first heard the Czech singer Marta Kubis?ová’s song Modlitba pro Martu (“Marta’s Prayer” or “Prayer Made for Marta”), it was just after the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. I was almost 12 years old. I awoke from my childish dreams into the world of politics and its conscience. During the next ten years, my conscience was formed by this courageous song, which was banned and yet remained a national rallying cry. I was further impressed by two essays of Václav Havel, Politics and Conscience and The Power of the Powerless, as well as by his Open Letter to Gustav Husák (Husák was the president of “normalised” Czechoslovakia, installed after the Soviet occupation in 1968).
Today, after spending half of my life in the United States, I am reminded of Marta’s prayer:
May peace remain with this land; may anger, envy and hatred, fear and strife, pass; may they soon pass, now that the lost governance of your affairs returns to you, oh people...

· May my prayer speak to the hearts that were not burned by the time of hatred. . .
· · See Also Universal soul in being complexly human rather than eternally innocent?
· · · See Also Voters who say they go to church every week usually vote for Republicans
· · · · See Also Dooh Nibor is Robin Hood in reverse, as in "Steal from the poor, give to the rich
· · · · · See Also Let the partisan and polarized talk begin!
· · · · · · See Also The pros and cons of extremist websites

Posted 7:23 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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This is the topic which is the important achievement of Karl Popper who showed that dictatorship from Sparta in Ancient Greece to Communism and Fascism of industrial world, has been in lack of acceptance of open society, and showed that from Plato's Republic, with its rule of Philosopher-Kings, to Hegel's theory of state, and finally Karl Marx, with its rule of the proletariat, the issue of allegiance to a closed society is the reason for creating despotism. In fact, even Ayatollah Khomeini in his book Velayate Faghih has used Plato's thought, and he even mentions Plato by name.
Why the problem is not utopianism, but the lack of an open society...

Repeating History Classes: How the Czech Story Plays Out
Western knowledge of 'contemporary' Czech culture often hackneyed and limited to Kundera, Klima, Havel, et al.
Today, the global prestige of mitteleuropean culture in the last years of communism and the immediate aftermath of the 1989 revolutions is a distant memory. No creative stars have emerged from these countries since the coming of democracy. Where are the books that insist on being read by an international audience? Where are the books from behind what used to be the Iron Curtain, which used to produce a classic a week?
· There [i.e., in communist Eastern Europe] nothing goes and everything matters; here, [i.e., in America and in the democratic West] everything goes and nothing matters [[The Richest writer of all His Story: Cold River]]
· · See Also Literary tango: Franz Kafka bookended by two significant dates: June 3, the anniversary of his death, and July 3, the anniversary of his birth [ via What Has Happened to Historical Literacy?]
· · · See Also There are no more villages to burn: Why Darfur's agony is the world's shame [ via The Task of the Modern Historian ]
· · · · See Also Bloody history: Historians used to ignore violence and horror, but a new generation places it centre stage [Link Poached from Historians and Economists]
· · · · · See Also Let's Get Serious About Getting Serious [Link Poached from By Lenin, from Pravda, April 11, 1913: tag cui prodest? Meaning "who stands to gain?" ]

Posted 7:28 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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The tragic irony is that while these countries may not be major players in world financial circles, their problems, if unattended tend to spread and burst open like infected boils, inevitably involving US troops and resources in cleaning up the resulting bloody messes...

Tracking Policies & Investigative Stories: Chain of Conventions & Commands
Four Corners follows the chain of command up from the cell-block floor at Abu Ghraib and assesses the evidence that may implicate the highest levels of the US military
· Geneva Conventions [link first seen at Politics And Bad Acting ]
· · See Also Well, what do you know. People use the Internet for pornography more than anything else
· · · See Also Libraries are discovering that the promise of technology brings its own troubles
· · · · See Also Accused drug baron Antonios "Tony" Mokbel is being bankrolled by the National Australia Bank
· · · · · See Also Communication and the crisis of democratic politics: a media project
· · · · · · See Also Popular appointment versus popular election
· · · · · · · See Also Our government needs to be more transparent with "secret" intelligence

Posted 7:06 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Plagiarism begins in a "receptivity to outside influence". Did Clinton influence Latham or did Latham borrow from Clinton?
Someone once said that you can add to the truth, or subtract from the truth: either way, it's no longer the truth

Read All About It, About It, About It: Just washed ashore Not Happy, John By Margo Kingston
She rages, she hammers, she explains - but most importantly she CARES
- Phillip Adams

Literature & Art Across Frontiers: Being the Time-Poor
You shop, you bank and you may even bid. But how many online services do you really know about, or would be game enough to try? Would you book a car service through cyberspace? What about logging on for Cold River?
· Special Delivery: Look @ what you can Book online [link first seen at They're out to get me, says the Richest writer of all ]
I always felt disconnected, a weirdo, an outsider. But now I feel there are lots of people who think like me...
· · Marian Keyes Corrosive nature of guilt: Keyes admits she used to spend morbid hours on the Amazon website
· · · See Also Library of Congress: If librarians don't care about their history and contributions, why do they think anyone else will care? [ There is a 1996 directory of Slavic librarians (doesn't list me, so it isn't retrospective) which is updated off site ]
· · · · See Also In the virtual stacks, pirated books find readers
· · · · · See Also Barista: Gender writing & blogging
· · · · · · See Also Boynton: When I sense that I am becoming too comfortable in what I am doing I will consciously move on to something new
· · · · · · · See Also BackPages: Ironically, Tim Blair's borrowed word count in yesterday's postings at Spleenville: 64%%

Posted 1:40 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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In my book Cold (War) River I paid tribute to Pope Paul II, Vaclav Havel, George Soros and Ronald Reagan, as the key crusaders who devoted their lives to winning the Cold War, today heartiest of tributes flow for the former President of the US of A

World pays tribute to Ronald Reagan

Posted 1:04 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Armed intervention for unilateral geopolitical reasons, without any long-term coherent gameplan eg: Russia in Chechnya, the Cuba and South Africa in Angola, the US in Iraq, etc ad nauseam, DOESN”T WORK!
It’s like treating TB or Typhus by bleeding the patient with an unsterilised knife. It’s a new century folks. Let’s stop with the gunboat diplomacy and get a little smarter here.
Nabakov

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: The rise of the independents
To IMAGINE politics without parties is like trying to imagine Australian football without teams. Politics just is the game played out by rival parties, and anyone who tries to play politics in some way entirely independent of parties consigns herself to irrelevance. That situation had undoubtedly changed by the time of the 2001 federal election, which was contested by no fewer than 29 registered political parties – only three of whom secured representation in the House of Representatives – but which saw three independents elected, the largest number to succeed at a single federal poll for decades.
· 2004 shaping Hung Parliament [ via Mr Oakeshott, MP for Port Macquarie and a defector from the Nationals]
· · See Also So far, 46 percent of the 798 Americans killed in the war as of May 26 have come from small towns outside of metropolitan areas
· · · See Also Downer Und Refugees: IT BECOMES increasingly difficult to be proud of Australia
· · · · See Also Welcome to 1984, Australia: When you don't know whether to laugh, cry or throw a brick through the window, you become numb [link first watched at Security operations: Watching them watching us ]
· · · · · See Also President Clinton's Keynote Wows 'Em at BookExpo America
· · · · · · See Also John Howard's busiest weeks as PM: Having been misled himself by those same officials
· · · · · · · See Also Ross Coulthart ...The Super Super Fraud: Australia's biggest ever superannuation fraud

Posted 11:07 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Shouldn't we expect that the rich and powerful organise things in their own interests. It's called capitalism Bilderberg: The Ultimate Conspiracy Theory

Invisible Hands & Markets: Who pays the lion’s share of personal income tax?
We have grown accustomed to the idea that so-called 'progressive taxation' is 'fair', but a proportional tax system (in which everybody pays the same proportion of their income in tax) would be much fairer. Sinclair Davidson argues not only that income tax in Australia is high by international standards, but also that higher rate taxpayers are paying much more than their fair share.
· Taxing Debates (PDF) [link first seen at The Centre for Independent Studies ]
· · See Also Curing sick hospitals: ONE THING John Menadue
has learned is that the so-called "health debate" is between insiders - doctors and minister
· · · See Also Despite marked improvement in the lives of American children, a new study finds rising numbers of [disconnected young adults]
· · · · See Also Economic measures can lead to bad decision-making
· · · · · See Also Here's a crusade sure to infuriate the vast majority of penny-pinching traditionalists
· · · · · · See Also Arabia's field of dreams: How Dubai has become one of the world's most successful business ventures

Posted 10:46 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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DidTheyReadIt didtheyreadit.com, can clandestinely track when and where their e-mail is read. When you use DidTheyReadIt, e-mails that you send are automatically and invisibly tracked.

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Bill Cosby lambastes some lower-income black parents for irresponsibility
The Cosby story — like others before it — has shown that a news story can grow legs thanks more to repackagers in the blogosphere than to "legitimate" print and broadcast outlets
· Bill Cosby & the Blogosphere [ courtesy of Where Librarians Go To Hack ]
· · See Also Bloggers Unregulated: WHAT A CRAZY MARKETPLACE
· · · See Also Boy crazy Washingtonienne, not of NSW Parliament or Nippon Club Phame: Senator sacked me over tales of congress
· · · · See Also Outsourced IT staff fingered porn stash wanker
· · · · · See Also Tax bucks, blues and blogs with Hillary Bray
· · · · · · See Also Media Dragon: weblogging is a more frequent topic in NY and Sydney news
· · · · · · · See Also wURLdBook extends your reach into the Internet!

Posted 3:33 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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CIA Director George Tenet states the obvious and (will wonders never cease?)

Tracking Policies & Investigative Stories: James Kelman: Look back in anger
The Booker winner James Kelman has been rocking the literary establishment for more than 20 years. Lesley Mcdowell talks to him about radicalism and rage
My culture and my language have a right to exist, James Kelman said in his 1994 Booker-night acceptance speech, after winning the prize for How Late it Was, How Late, and no one has the authority to dismiss that right. This foot-soldier of fiction and class warfare, it would seem, has finally won his place among the literary elite. The battle is over.
· You Have to Be Careful in the Land of the Free
· Soros: Abu Ghraib = September 11
· · See Also Fantastic Premier, Bob Carr, to introduce a ban on plastic bags [Man of Plastic Turning plastic shopping bags into steel]
· · · See Also A profound debate is taking place, amongst those connected with the tourist industry, over Australian image as tinseltown
· · · · See Also Some of the most keenly watched polls, especially in the months before an election, are those on party support, leadership and political issues
· · · · · See Also Kim Un-yong: Olympic committee vice-president jailed for embezzlement
· · · · · · See Also Rogueish Failures: President Bush likes to claim that Iraq is the central front in the war terror, but what you won't hear him saying is that it is only that because his actions have turned it into a failed state

Posted 3:30 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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A borrowed 10-year-old dress and a laid-back Antipodean attitude have swept model Jennifer Hawkins to victory in the 2004 Miss Universe competition
I just can't explain how shocked I am because I never thought this would happen to me, like, I'm just from NewCastle

Tracking Trends Great & Beautiful: Magazines devoted to the rough magic of being a bloke
A spokesman admits that the cancellation of the Saturday night sleeper from London to Aberdeen 'until the end of time' is a bitter blow for those who like to wake up on a Sunday morning to the munching of Highland cattle, but there can be no question of having the train back, say the men at Euston. They can't find a single soul who'll agree to work the shift...
These boys were often to be found floating trouserless in the Liffey at dawn, or staggering up Grafton Street, their T-shirts clinging to them with alcopops and spilled Sambuca.
· Loaded Disgrace under Pressure [Goes with this I believe in equality" has been replaced with "I believe men and women are equal, so I believe women should shut up ]
· · See Also Audrey Hepburn, Eva Herzigova, three Australians also featured in the first 10 out of 100 beauties, actress Cate Blanchett, who came in third, singer Natalie Imbruglia and model Elle Macpherson
· · · See Also “Ladies Night” bar discounts are unconstitutionally discriminatory
· · · · See Also It is an ancient debating technique: Caricature your opponent's argument, then knock down the straw man you created
· · · · · See Also Fresh warning on IT crime
· · · · · · See Also Le Pen is mightier on the net
· · · · · · · See Also No sex please -- I'm librarian: Why the well-trained tongue is mightier than the "sword"

Posted 3:27 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Capitalism is the worst system in the world to edit a cultural magazine—except for all the others... We have had to struggle with commissars and secret-police censors; you have only to deal with bank managers …and unsexy parliamentary librarians

Literature & Art Across Frontiers: Milder book review runs
It's many a disgruntled author's dream, but it almost never happens: A publication prints a second review of a book after the author complains about the first one.
This time it happened.
t seemed very personal ...It seemed a review not of the book but of me.
· Reviews [link first seen at Roland Emmerich & a new Cold River age ]
· · See Also When unprovoked niceness comes to a book review editor, there's reason to be suspicious
· · · See Also Bohemian culture 'is now the norm': pioneers of alternative lifestyle gave modern world more than literature and hedonism
· · · · See Also American Childhood: When I grow up, she declared, her eyes bright with ambition, I want to be a teenager!
· · · · · See Also Reaching for the Ring: Hard to get published
· · · · · · See Also August Highland has created 80 different personas
· · · · · · · See Also Small Publisher

Posted 6:30 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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The first installment in a five-part series excerpted from William F. Buckley Jr.'s The Fall of the Berlin Wall
part 2, par 3, part 4, and part 5)

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Keeping the contemporary threat environment in perspective
Rarely a day passes without us being told that terrorism has evolved from a tactical nuisance to a strategic threat. The attacks carried out by Al Qaeda on 11 September 2001 and throughout the previous decade represented a decisive escalation in the scale and intensity of violence used against civilian targets. One of the most striking features of mainstream commentary since the 9/11 terrorist attacks has been the frequent assertion that the present international climate is ‘the most dangerous period in living memory’
· The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts [References via The nuclear sword of Damocles was the pervasive threat of the Cold War ]
· · See Also Legisprudence as a New Theory of Legislation (PDF)
· · · See Also Margo Kingston: Avoiding the Geneva Conventions: how Australia does the job [ via The administration's gravest alleged misconduct is treating the Geneva Convention with contempt ]
· · · · See Also Professor Donald Rothwell: Our 'special responsibility' betrayed at Abu Ghraib ... Geneva IV in relation to protected persons[ via Memos to White House on Geneva Convention by Yoo/Delahunty/Philbin ]
· · · · · See Also Peter Funnell, ex soldier: Misleading Hill asks fellow Abu Ghraib misleaders to inquire into themselves
· · · · · · See Also Sections of Victoria's police force are riddled with corrupt officers who were not dealt with as far back as the 1970s and 1980s

Posted 6:25 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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We are turning our bodies into data. Since information can confer both power and wealth, we are at risk of a new slavery , with its attendants of old: loss of self sovereignty, discrimination, corrosion of individual identity, dignity denied.

Invisible Hands & Markets: How Successfully they've gamed the California energy market in 2000
He steals money from California to the tune of about a million.
Will you rephrase that? asks a second employee.
OK, he, um, he arbitrages the California market to the tune of a million
· What's far more devastating than to read these transcripts is to listen to the tapes in the story viewable in the javascript link at CBSnews.com
· · See Also Craig Unger, author of House of Bush, House of Saud, on The Great Escape
· · · See Also 10 Principles of Change Management
· · · · See Also Professional norms and the treacherous temptation of moral freedom
· · · · · See Also John Quiggin: Taxing Move to Queensland [ Tax cuts: beyond the routine mendacity ]
· · · · · · See Also Imagine again ...buying groceries in the same way that voters make political choices

Posted 6:17 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Blogjam creator Tim Dunlop is back!
Political blogjams--online journals featuring commentary, often highly opinionated--have rapidly become a presence in the campaign landscape. Now some established news organizations are hiring established bloggers or creating their own. How much impact does this instant punditry have on mainstream political reporting?

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Truth in journalism: Read All About It, About It, About It
Most people will sooner trust the Psychic Friends Network than they will your average reporter. It’s no wonder, since the mainstream media’s take on the world often bears as little resemblance to the truth as “reality TV” does to the life of anyone born outside of the planet Zoltron.
· Perhaps the day will come when journalists will climb up from the bottom of the list of the least trusted [ courtesy of ]
· · See Also Watchdog journalism keeps people in power accountable to the public. That's a vital function in a democracy, and asking astute questions is at the heart of it
· · · See Also The Memorials will continue until Morale improves
· · · · See Also Google Culture: Googol (10100), a term coined by the 9-year-old nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, who asked him to think of a name for a very large number
· · · · · See Also Page Rank
· · · · · · See Also Google offers several field searches [ Joichi Ito: Japanese entrepreneur spreads blogging gospel ]
· · · · · · · See Also Sex-driven society won't let sleeping blogs lie

Posted 7:40 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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...Reminds me of a story about a Vic/NSW police summit in Albury-Wodonga a few years ago.
After a couple of days of desultory discussion over points of difference, finally a NSW cop got up and said "Look, we'll stop taking bribes if you stop shooting people."
Apparently the motion was carried unanimously and the meeting adjourned to the pub.
Posted by Nabakov

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Lunch with the FT: Australia's John Howard
Howard, who turns 65 in July, is a product of the post-war, lower middle class. He went to a selective state school in Sydney's suburban Canterbury. I was two years ahead of him there and I can hear the school and its masters talking when he intuitively picks a policy or a theme to touch the nerve of suburban Australians, especially those over 50.
· Max Suich: The Rise of Compliance Man
· · See Also How a wedding photograph, which features representatives of 34 royal families from around the world, tells us much about our super-elites
· · · See Also What becomes of a country that loses its capacity for repulsion?
· · · · See Also All of the sudden, Compliance Man is the new alpha male
· · · · · See Also The Politics of Communion: Church leaders who admonish politicians on moral issues are doing their jobs
· · · · · · See Also Still gazing down the Tiananmen tank barrel
· · · · · · · See Also Gloomy experts believe it is only a question of time before terrorists use a "dirty bomb," a device that would spew radioactive debris over a city

Posted 7:38 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Prof Flint and that bribery allegation

Tracking Policies & Investigative Stories:
For a foreigner, it's entering the looking glass, says Post foreign news assistant managing editor Phil Bennett. Even though I read this coverage everyday, I was surprised by the profound menace that accompanies almost every step across the city. Kidnappings and attacks on foreign civilians have driven almost everyone into a bunker, into armored vehicles, behind the wire. Of course this is potentially disastrous for our journalism. So we are searching for ways not to lose contact with the heart of the story -- still the Iraqi experience -- without risking the lives of our correspondents.
· Secret War Epidemic [link first seen at Scoop ]
· · See Also Margo Kingston: Breaches of the Geneva Conventions are called war crimes
· · · See Also Road To Surfdom: Red Cross has a mandate under international law to enforce and uphold the Geneva Conventions
· · · · See Also Few Firms Control Oil Leases on U.S. Land
· · · · · · See Also a list of the top water users in the area: Ronald Gunnell’s sprawling estate used 7.1 million gallons last year
· · · · · · · See Also That old line of many commentators that one problem is bad luck, two coincidence and three a stuff-up come to mind now when looking at Sydney Water's recent history
· · · · · · · · See Also Colorado Tax Breaks
· · · · · · · · · See Also Politicians’ Voting Records
· · · · · · · · · · See Also Dead People Voting
· · · · · · · · · · · See Also The National Archives just released 20,000 pages of telephone transcripts from former National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger's private files. Kissinger wanted the sensitive records to be made public five years after his death. But...

Posted 7:36 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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The virtues of polymathy, and why Brave New World is scary.

Literature & Art Across Frontiers: Nothing lasts for ever
It is a melancholy thought for published authors that, as they speed home hopefully towards their word processors, they may be supported by crushed literary dreams. A recent newspaper report revealed that the aggregate sold by the tonne for use as landfill and in motorway foundations often includes pulped books.
In the week of the Britart blaze in east London, this strange image raises the larger question of the shelf life of culture. The way that a No 1 paperback can end up as M1 asphalt shows that publishers are ruthless about the pulping of unwanted stock. But the mere fact that a company such as Momart can make a huge business from artwork warehouses around London demonstrates the existence of a taboo about the art.
· Literary Taboos [Diving Into Ice cold river, anyone?][ A survivor can't be too careful in his choice of reviewers Unfortunately, in exile life you are often forgotten by your readers and only remembered by your enemies ]
· · See Also Anna Karenina on Oprah: The newest selection (the 5th) for classic book club choice is the first on her long list that she admits she's never read
· · · See Also [ Soulful Gianna Sharing, photographic, His Story]
· · · · See Also Excellent Research Art & Science Databases

Posted 8:00 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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How many members of the Bush Administration are needed to replace a light bulb?
The Answer is SEVEN:
- One to deny that a light bulb needs to be replaced...

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Prologue to The Multiple Abyss by James Cumes
Those of us, in the Western democracies, who grew up in the Great Depression knew a world in which almost all of us were poor and our future uncertain. We dreamed of a prosperity we were told was just around the corner; but the good times remained a dream while the threat of war became ever more real. Most of us left school early to grab what jobs we could; and even the few who went to university knew that they might soon have to abandon their studies to go to war. If we managed, miraculously, to escape both poverty and war, we were still plagued by a variety of fatal, painful and chronic diseases for which we had no remedies and we lived in environments of which we took little care. We sang such songs as Happy Days are Here Again to keep our spirits up. The movie theatre was our Camelot of fantasy and escape.
Shortly after Pearl Harbour, while still in my teens, I did indeed go off to war. At that point, nazism, fascism and militarism seemed triumphant. Hitler stood at the gates of Moscow and Leningrad and his General Rommel looked set to walk into Cairo. The Japanese spread themselves effortlessly over east and south-east Asia and the Pacific, as far west as Burma and as far south as New Guinea. Even if we should manage to turn the tide, the prospect was for ever more death and devastation and, unless we were lucky, a new and even deeper economic depression when the shooting stopped.
So, in many ways, it seemed we could only despair; but some more positive features live in my memory. Since we were almost all poor, poverty was often less a badge of shame than a mark of fellowship; and, in our innocence, we had our moral as well as our social and economic disciplines. Always, we had our dreams.
In March 1942, when I swapped university for the army, my parting editorial in our students' newspaper was politically correct in its title of Pro Patria and forward-looking in reminding students that Words are things and a small drop of ink, Falling like dew upon a thought, Produces that which makes thousands, Perhaps millions, think.
That was one of the clearest measures of the character of our times. Our duty was not only to prevail in battle but to think about what we aspired to in the future
· Like Ulysses, we called upon ourselves not only to endure but also to seek, to strive and not to yield and, above all, to think and to plan [ via VOW ]
· My Life: Bill Clinton
· See Also American Viewed by Europe, Europe Viewed by America

Posted 7:43 AM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Old Fashioned BLOGJAM#11 is coming soon...
Meanwhile, a smug president of the Canberra Press Gallery, Malcolm Farr, guffawed that he couldn't understand what it was all about, except that some journos still followed the Carl Bernstein/Bob Woodward style of journalism - What did they know and when did they know it How terribly old fashioned of them...

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Drawing parallels between Times and the case of Wen Ho Lee
It seemed inexplicable. No correction, no apology. Then, as now, the editors had seen a case collapse. Then, as now, critics had long called for an accounting
· The Transparency Era at the New York Times [ courtesy of Editors ]
· See Also One thing about journalism that is both natural, yet occasionally distorting, is the megaphone effect
· See Also News Online: 7 Lessons
· Padraic Pearse McGuinness [ via Paddy: MediaWatch]
· See Also Surfers Searching for thoughtful right-leaning Australian blogs
· See Also Joi Ito: A college dropout, he is the founder and chief executive of Neoteny Co., a venture capital firm that has raised $40 million
· See Also To Their Surprise, Bloggers Are Force for Change in Big Media
· See Also Bookmarking!
· See Also Bloggers find ways to profit: a labor of love, are becoming a moneymaker for writers who are selling advertising on their sites
· See Also Blogvertising (GapingVoid)
· See Also Back Pages: Backjamming #10
· See Also More Google:BETAR
· See Also Authoritarian (sic) Blogs
In case you haven't seen this: Google pageranks: This allows you to measure your website's standings vs other websites in terms of "Googlejuice" i.e. how highly Google ranks your sites PageRank Report Statistics
http://amediadragon.blogspot.com: 5/10

Posted 8:55 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Only the priviledged few heard the Carr explosion in Sydney: With the formidable Bob Carr in one corner, the formidable Gerry Gleeson in another, and the formidable Kerry Packer in the other,
Back Pages can't help thinking that our media is either asleep on the job or hemmed in by legal restrictions on this one

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Style over Substance
Mark Schmitt wonders why the Senate has so many problems and Senators are not Great Men™.
How did the institution come to this point? It's not because the Senators of today are lesser individuals than in the past, although that may be true also. Rather, I think, it is the way the Senate goes about its business that brings out the worst in those individuals, whereas there are things about the Senate in the past that brought out the best democratic and deliberative capacities of its members.
· A Theory About the Senate [ via It's way past time England started treating us a little better ]
· See Also The Federal Government's claim that no Australian personnel knew of abuses of Iraqi prisoners until January was demolished during an extraordinary Senate hearing yesterday amid accusations of a cover-up by the Government and military leaders
· See Also Politicians and Shopping Carts
· Don Boudreaux ponders again the subject of politicians and shopping carts
· See Also A fortuneteller told Peru's disgraced ex-President Alberto Fujimori to flee in 2000
· See Also Cheney greased big contract: email evidence
· See Also Mr Obeid accused his mainly Maronite Christian opponents of sour grapes, sectarianism and bought loyalty to William Boutros, Lebanon's king of battery chicken
· See Also Lebanese Garden: the success of Hezbollah at polls shows elections may not bring US-friendly governments
· See Also In a Digital World, Secrets Are Harder to Keep "It's just plain harder to get away with being bad anymore, whether it's a relatively minor crime like... [Link Poached from Changing World]
· See Also Back Pages: NSWelshpersons, and probably only NSWelshpersons, will recall Barrie Unsworth (Barry Howard)

Posted 8:53 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Real World, just like college, is a series of choices to be made with imperfect information

Invisible Hands & Markets: Corporate Amerika
In corporate boardrooms across America, they're warning that the sky is falling — again. Shareholders have heard this before, and it has usually been about money: companies resisted new rules to change how they account for stock options, for example, or how they value certain complex investments in corporate financial reports. And when the Securities and Exchange Commission wanted to restrict the types of consulting work an accounting firm could perform for an audit client, the cry was familiar.
· Let the Little Guy in the Boardroom [link first seen at Lost in America ]
· See Also ALP plan to put brakes on executive payouts
· See Also Why we should get rid of stop signs and red lights and let cars, bikes and people mingle together
· See Also Europe's Market Solidarity With Ukraine
· See Also Experience of living and working in the USA
· See Also Albert Einstein's essay Why Socialism?
· See Also How to lift the working poor
· See Also The longing of so many people for escape
· See Also Poor Economy Is Driving East Germans From Home
· See Also Tipping is incompatible with the notion that all men are created equal

Posted 8:47 PM by Jozef Imrich, Esq.

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Finally, a Hollywood movie where librarians are portrayed the heroes we really are...We are the Heroes in The Day After Tomorrow!
Just barely, the movie does fly. Emmerich carves out moments of humor that deepen the emotions of the story, like when the New York librarians refuse to allow frigid survivors in the library to burn books for warmth, then insist only bad books can be incinerated.
I think I will go see the movie just to see what "bad" books NYPLers use to stoke the fire.

Literature & Art Across Frontiers: Bush dynasty ex-wife set to spill the beans
A new book on the Bush dynastyis set for release just six weeks before November's knife-edge presidential election. The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty by Kitty Kelley will have an initial print run of 500,000, and the main source is believed to be Sharon Bush, the ex-wife of Neil, President George W Bush's wayward brother.
· Wayward Brothers [link first seen at ]
· See Also Be very afraid: A review of books on the environment
· See Also How to be a philosopher
· See Also When life's an open blog
· See Also Halley Suitt writes about being a woman, not a man