Monday, April 04, 2005



Communists save Gross government ... If all goes well the commies will be celebrating their Best May Day for years

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Pope John Paul II and Democracy
Army officers are taught two ways of commanding a brigade or division in the field. One is Directive Control, which means laying down absolutely clear general orders and priorities and then letting junior commanders carry them out. The other is Order Command. This is sometimes called “leading from the front”, or – less kindly – obsessive interference in details ...

In his long life, the Polish pope, Karol Wojtya, was at the forefront of the struggle for liberty. But in his twenty-six years at the Vatican, where did this towering figure stand on democracy? The distinguished writer Neal Ascherson dissects an ambiguous legacy


A Warrior Commander [I really want to be rich! Paul Ricoeur famously dubbed that great triumvirate of late nineteenth - and early twentieth-century thought - Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud - "An inheritance tax is an immoral death tax!"). "Beneath" or "behind" the surface lay causal forces that explained the conscious phenomena precisely because they laid bare the true meaning of those phenomena: I don't really want lots of money, I want the love I never got as a child; survivors have no moral claim on an inheritance, but it is in the interests of the ruling classes that we believe they do; and so on. The School of Suspicion ; Patrick Macklem, Rybná 9, Praha 1: Restitution and Memory in International Human Rights Law ]
• · Tax reform, like a second marriage, is the triumph of hope over experience Despite the widespread notion that taxes harm the economy, no one has actually been able to back that up ; The line is hard to walk between being carelessly alarmist about emerging risks and challenges, attracting headlines that doomsday is nigh; and being too complacent to utter responsible warnings. Public school system in need, but not failing ; Liam Lisser-Sproule turns eight in September, and that's a milestone in Woolloomooloo. From that age a child might be expected to have considered a trade, commonly cannabis dealing or stealing from cars Streets ahead: policing that beats around the bush
• · · Recent trends in income inequality in Australia ; Be honest, new Asian role is an old idea but still a good one Paul Keating
• · · · Work and family life: what we’ve forgotten ; On this date in "How Appealing" history
• · · · · And now, with Orwellian irony, Sydney Water wants to put up the price of water, because we have all been so virtuous cutting our consumption that it's not making enough money. True. Last week we used 16 per cent less water than the 10-year average, and over the past 2 years we've dropped our consumption by 12 per cent, which means less profit for Sydney Water. So we are to be punished twice, first for using too much water and then not using enough. Naughty taxpayers. It's all our fault. Orwellian irony: Sydney Water ; The detention of Cornelia Rau: legal issues of sad irony
• · · · · · Ach, Republicanism: a trap for progressives? ; The market dictates that high oil prices are here to stay Diminishing returns