Recent controversies in Queensland and Canberra have seen the 'parliamentary clerk' appearing more regularly in the news. Martin Leet looks at the role of clerks in our democratic processes Parliament and its clerk
This is how the Soviet bureaucracy worked. It is not the way the Westminster system worked or was ever supposed to work – we were supposed to have checks and balances. But we no longer have that system. We have a Soviet-style nomenclature, where the roles of politicians and administrators are indistinguishable, and blind loyalty is the performance criterion that matters above all else Soviet-style nomenclature
Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Survey: Amerika
America is an extraordinarily dynamic country, says John Parker. But its very mobility may now be drawing people apart
On CHRISTMAS DAY 2004, Rick Warren, the pastor of Saddleback church in southern California, got a telephone call from Thailand. The caller, a pastor whom Mr Warren had trained, said a tsunami had just been reported and many people would need help. Before the tsunami had even struck Sri Lanka, Mr Warren was calling a vast network of churches in South-East Asia who got parishioners to safety, and e-mailing an even vaster network of clubs in southern California. Thousands of volunteers went into action overnight. Within a day, food and medicine worth millions of dollars were winging their way from a single church to the disaster-hit regions. This was American civic volunteerism in action, updated for the 21st century
By connecting people to their neighbours and to the wider world, argued de Tocqueville, civic associations made Americans better informed, safer, richer and better able to govern themselves and create a just and stable society
• Degrees of separation [If domestic mobility is a centrifuge, immigration is a melting pot The Amerikano dream ; The glue of society ]
• · Despite the privacy advocates’ claims, public spaces are public—fortunately Cameras and Counterterrorism ; Terrorism can only be defeated by political compromise and negotiation Talking with the jihadists
• · · We were planning to survey our Slovak situation, where liberalism lacks tradition, and is often rather freely or superficially interpreted both by the admirers and the critics Public disagreement: The greatest contribution of liberal politics ; TaxAlmanac: The free online tax research resource and community; IMHO, ID card gives everyone a false sense of security, but again ID card help the Soviet block countries to disolve into the annals of history. Is it the right time for capitalism to turn to ashes? What kind of movement will replace current regimes? Identity cards can be forged, says Costello ; The Chinese defector Chen Yonglin flew out of Australia yesterday to give evidence to a US congressional human rights committee, in a move that threatens to exacerbate tensions between Australia and China. If half of Chen’ stories are true our current intelligence gathering mechanisms are set for a very rough ride Chen's pitch to Congress may fuel row with China
• · · · Boston and New York: Each city plays political hardball, but each in its own way - In Boston, some fathers still tell their sons how New Yorkers didn't want to go to war in 1776 because there was too much money at stake The Geopolitics of Two Cities in a Peanutshell ; The Counterterrorism Blog is following news and leads Political Crisis and the War on Terror
• · · · · From Counterpunch, a special report on The Making of Halliburton: Sticky fingers; Carr's wasteful water spending
• · · · · · But to describe plausible remedies is to explain why none are likely. The webs of mutual interests connecting government, corporate boardrooms and Wall Street are too deeply woven, as are habits of thought among policy makers and politicians. So I do not expect anything fundamental will be altered in time. We are going to find out if the dissenters are right Globalisation of Disaster ; Good background material, including info on the possible London bombing suspect at Terrorism Knowledge Base