So much of life is a matter of pure coincidence, if that's what you think it is, just one mother of parliaments links Media Dragon, Edie Obeid, Kerry Packer, Graham Richardson ...
As far back as 2003 the former premier Bob Carr recognised that Eddie Obeid's ''untidy pecuniary interests' were a ''vulnerability for the government'' yet successive premiers, Mr Carr included, did not challenge his disclosures of his parliamentary salary as his only source of income Diaries & Special advisors
He was a Labor powerbroker, a kingmaker with an uncanny ability to bend people to his will. At the height of his power, Eddie Obeid could make and break Premiers. Now he finds himself at the centre of explosive corruption allegations that threaten his future, his family and the party that delivered him power
UpAbove : Many survivors of communism tend to stagger into a shelter or a bombed-out ruin, each eyeing the others from our shadowy corner. Wondering. Calculating ... in the good old Czechoslovakia it is Goodbye to Czech Václav Klaus
The Chinese look at Washington, and they think there must be some document somewhere, some flowchart saved on a computer in the basement of some think tank, that lays it all out. Because in China, there would be. In China, someone would be in charge. There would be a plan somewhere. It would probably last for many years. It would be at least partially followed. But that’s not how it works in Washington what China's hackers are looking for when they rifle through American digital assets
“The Gridiron is at one level a throwback, but it’s also a stylized version of the kind of old Washington social consensus that used to exist every day,” said Michael Waldman, who, as Bill Clinton’s chief White House speechwriter, helped him prepare for his Gridiron appearances. “It’s one of the only places that you get all these people in the room together anymore.” A throwback
