We Interrupt Our Usual Broadcast...
...to ask you to digest slowly Google entries about the latest labor leadership changes as this is the kind of political event that one doesn't soon forget.
But, first things first, the politician who encouraged me to write more about politics after reading my Prague's Second Spring is also taking radical steps after his Second Coming to Parliament. Johno Johnson, the former father of the Upper House, used to humouresly describe MPs elected in the lower House as peasants. This particular MP entered Parliament the second time as the lord. (smile) The ageless lord and commander from Cronulla with the egar smile of Michael Egan is diving off Carr's Ship; Waving not drowning: Profile by Sir Humphries (sic)
Kim Beazley has announced he will stand to take back the Labor leadership, vowing he has the "energy and commitment" to unite the party in the wake of Mr Latham's retirement. Politics of one long Weekend cut short
Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Claiming the leadership : I’m a Third Time Lucky Here Myself?
Kim Beazley launched his third bid to reclaim the Labor leadership. The timing of the return of the Webdiary is almost surreal and so are some of this week's headlines or observations inside the commentariat ...
About an hour after Latham announced his resignation, Kim Beazley, predictably, announced that he wanted another shot at the top job . I guess he'll probably get in now, as well. Which, as I said in my previous journal entry, I really don't like the idea of. I'd much have preferred that Mark Latham as leader, with Rudd my preferred second choice.
One wonders whether the heat of speculations and backstabing, will be transformed into an oasis of strong alternative government ... are leaders born or created?
• Google with Hundred Leaders [Web links to leadership Changes; Gough Whitlam said today it was a tragedy Mark Latham's "agonising ailment" had cut short his public career Labor leader's early exit 'a tragedy']
• · FBI surveillance experts have put their once-controversial Carnivore Internet surveillance tool out to pasture, preferring instead to use commercial products to eavesdrop on network traffic Spy Games; [Politics of Spying How Top Spies in Ukraine Changed the Nation's Path]
• · · This is light looking at the ghost graffiti of Gustav Husak at the Svit chemical factory First signs of protest in world's top secret state: Kim Jong-il, defaced with graffiti demanding freedom and democracy; [The problem is that slower trains don't necessarily equal safer trains Ghost of Glenbrook Puts Carr off Track ]
• · · · The significant point is that it has placed a clause in the Accenture contract insisting that the company promise to be a "good tax citizen". This clause will not just be used for Accenture, but in all multi-million dollar procurement deals at the ATO. The "Good Tax Citizenship" clause will be standard in such contracts. Accenture for software and development services related to its upgrade project known as the Change Program
• · · · · Tax Compliance Costs
• · · · · · The new brave federal sentencing world: In the course of linking here to all of last week's newspaper stories about, Illiterary, Booker, I suggested it would be interesting to assemble in one place all the quotes from judges that appear in the articles. One of my terrific students (crawler :-) did me two better: she assembled quotes not only from judges, but also from prosecutors and defense attorneys, addressing last week's remarkable developments. ; [via Professor Douglas A. Berman ]