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Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Majority of Citizens Face a Bridge with a Toll Too High to Pay
With their connection to civil society, I firmly believe that sociologists can assist this process of discerning new and imaginative ways that governments, corporations and international financial institutions can be held accountable for achieving the goals and fulfilling their human-rights obligations. The majority of citizens in our world face a bridge with a toll too high to pay. The wide discrepancies they face can seem insurmountable, and many no longer believe in global equity or global social justice, backed by concrete and consistent actions by all.
Fifty-five years ago, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted, Eleanor Roosevelt reminded us that if human rights are to matter at all, they must matter "in small places close to home." That is the challenge for sociologists and for human-rights activists. If we fail, we have no excuse, because we are better equipped than ever.
• Former Irish President Mary Robinson on sociology and human rights [ Soros A Cry for Human Rights and the Law: A Review of Unpopular Cases for Lawyers ]
• · A bombshell is buried deep within a biography Parliamentary Inquiry into Grove Premier 'screwed' shopping centre [He's being a bad, bad boy: It makes little difference that as governor I am gay... Politicians shocked by announcement laud gov's McGreevey honesty ; Jim O'Rourke: Rare Honest Liberal Ross Cameron ]
• · · Why the Olympics are not interesting anymore: No Cold War enemies
• · · · The Transhumans are coming! And they're promoting mito flushes, sousveillance, cyberglogging, and genetic virtue
• · · · · See Also Calvin Trillin’s political doggerel is far more engaging than most journalism
• · · · · · · Ccryptome.org: Buried Secrets of Biowarfare

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The perfect one-line response to the Marxian maxim, From each according to his abilities to each according to his needs.
What better incentive does someone need to minimize his abilities and maximize his needs?
Slogans that helped topple communism are now used to defend the welfare system...

Invisible Hands & Markets: The Invisible Hand Bites Its Nails
You know what's efficient? private companies. Much more efficient than the government. That's why we farm everything out to them, because they can do it better, cheaper and more efficiently than the government. And the nice thing is that the unions haven't made them all unaccountable and stuff.
• Can't fire people in the government, they're unaccountable.
• · New Statesman An unequal society is an unhealthy society
• · · PDF version States and Markets in an Era of Globalization [I'm going to become rich and famous after i invent a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet]
• · · · Brotherhood of St Laurence (PDF file) 2004 federal election: call to the parties
• · · · · Invisible Education Why there is no substitute to knowing your stuff Let's remind ourselves here that the UK government's response to a fall off of 21 per cent in the take up of A-level maths was the proposal to make the course easier!
• · · · · · No to moral imperialism - and moral defeatism

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He could run away, leaving to their fate the others who cannot flee or have nowhere to go. He could also stand and whine, sit and level accusations. Or he could fill the teaspoon in his hand with water, time and time again, and pour it on the flames.
These days any person of peace must draw water, in his teaspoon at least, and pour it on the fire: he must raise his voice, demonstrate, argue, work for a rational compromise. The teaspoon in the simple man's hands is very small and the fire is very big. Nonetheless...
Amos Oz, The Order of the Teaspoon, Yedioth Ahronoth (April 2002)

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Transparency Begets Trust in the Ever-Expanding Blogosphere
Without any doubt, Tim Porter is the god’s gift to the MEdia Dragon world:
The openness of Weblogs could help explain why many readers find them more credible than traditional media. Can mainstream journalists learn from their cutting-edge cousins? Why do many readers find Media Dragons more believable than mainstream news organizations?
Where I had seen dismissive skepticism of this blogging thing at similar gatherings in the past, here I found eager curiosity. And I was impressed with the desire, in varying degrees, by everyone in this group to enhance the transparency of our business, journalism," with the goal of building and rebuilding readers' trust.
• I have learned to trust the voice and judgment of my fellow citizens [NYT's Miller subpoenaed by CIA leak case prosecutor; Isn't it amazing what a raft of federal subpoenas will do to concentrate the media mind?; Journos, judges should stop staging 1st Amendment dramas; Boehlert: It seems the case is months away from completion ]
• · Ultimate Metaphor: Whoever Wins We Lose: Saturday Blog Tour [Bloglines Marks Search Milestone of 100 Million Blog and News Feed Articles; Is unsubstantiated gossip nothing more than entertaining but ultimately harmless puff... Are some contemporary popular knowledges'powerful enough to change the course of history? ]
• · · Super Maud Newton: Where do you connect with the human condition when you were chosen and everyone else is born? [Review of Real Note
• · · · Instapundit on Newspapers still requiring online registration; [Ken Parish on Tropical Topic: Just because you're paranoid.... ...doesn't mean they're not coming to get you or stereotype your blog!; Antipodean Classification Scandal ]
• · · · · C-SPAN cancels Booknotes: Finding the words; [World according to Milosz;The seamy underbelly of reviewing I remember fake Amazon book reviews going back to 1998; even today, most books get so few reviews that it pays to throw in a few fake reviews from friends of the author]
• · · · · · We're kind of that friend of yours that always knows what's happening in the city: the New York-based blog Gothamist.com; [The library where pub rock is a part of history It's the best collection of South Australiana in the world

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Wendy Lesser, Amy Tan, Bharati Mukherjee, Josef Skvorecky, and Nguyen Qui Duc are interviewed on NPR about The Genius of Language: Fifteen Writers Reflect on Their Mother Tongues. Near the beginning of the piece, Lesser raves about Gary Shteyngart’s The Russian Debutante’s Handbook. She says, “I loved it and I rarely run across a first novel that I love. I mean, if you were in the literary review business you would feel the same way. There are just tons and tons of over-hyped and not very good novels out there and then there was this gem.”
But that’s just an aside. The interview focuses mostly on the authors’ bilingualism and reveals interesting tidbits such as the fact that Josef Skvorecky started to learn English at the age of 14 so that he could write a letter to July Garland.
Also: Philip Marchand writes about The Genius of Language for the Toronto Star.
The pronunciation of our names determines how sexy Josef or Jozef is. Aha!;
Jozef’s poetic piece in the Olympic newsletter has the officials say, Whosoever believeth in me, go nuts. That alone, my friends, is well worth the free Google click

Speaking of the need for slight craziness in our strange world, it is clear that one fake story of an ordinarily crazy woman is enough to justify the next huge wave of publications of stories about extraordinarily crazy celebrities; yet we all know many celebrities are complete fakes except when they speak from their deathbeds. There is no reason that, once dead, these celebrities should create any more fake dust.
Leopold Tyrmand once wrote about an ordinary Polish writer Marek Hlasko: Even in his lies -- and he was a man built of lies, some of them scurrilous, some of them charming, he conveyed always a truth. A truth we need.
Hlasko the exile writer of the Killing the Second Dog fame observed: My future? That's a word I won't be needing anymore, says the first-person narrator, who in partnership with a failed stage director makes his living romancing older ladies and almost dying. In the face of those women beyond love or despair he finds only a kind of miserable wisdom that prevents them from doing reckless things . . . you can screen yourself from sadness and anger with the image of a face like that. I could use her face the way a child brings up his hand to shut out the view of something he's afraid of

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Requiem for a Great Slavic Poet, the Polish emigre writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980, in part for a powerful pre-mortem dissection of communism, in part for observing that the defection from the homeland would not be easy, but that it would be worth it! Czeslaw Milosz will be burried in Krakov; about odd 77 km from the village of my birth, Vrbov.
Bernard Lane's oddly timed World according to Milosz
Like Czech exile Milan Kundera and Polish exile Hlasko (meaning voice), Czeslaw believed that reading and storytelling have historically functioned as the most dependable form of nourishing our moral compass.
Ach, before we cast the first stone at Khouri, we should examine what kind of pressure the reality of the publishing industry places on migrants in order to see their bloody stories in ink. I am not sure whether Norma is a good or a bad woman, but one thing I know is that everyone has her/his Amerikan/Jordanian/Bohemian story (real or imagined) of the way he became to live a life of a surreal stranger. For what is a stranger, if she is not a wondering creator of post cards who dreams of being a gypsy? Everything inside the world of a gypsy is preordained by mysterious and implacable forces. It is a world without history or geography. In such a world even raw and powerful human-interest stories of rootless migrants are helpless. Rarely someone can help invented or true stories to see the light of the day. Back in 1999 on the 1st Floor of 20 Alfred St Milsons Point I was advised by Jane Palfreyman of Random House fame that my story was evocative enough, but too risky even for the esteemed power house of the publishing industry. When a great publisher admits such a reality, it is a blow that shatters our whole image of the world.
Shakespeare suggests to speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. Images that to others seem simple or even banal become a raging and screaming truth. Without any doubt, the act of writing stories of survival threatens the storyteller with dual curses: that the stories will be overdone, that the tragedies will be understated ...

Literature & Art Across Frontiers: Publisher pulls Khouri book
The Australian publisher of Norma Khouri's book Forbidden Love has withdrawn it from sale permanently after she could not prove her life story was true.
Earlier this week Ms Khouri submitted documents to Random House to demonstrate the book was a factual account of her life in Jordan.
• Bribery (sic) Island (Most of the time the publishing PR experts provide the tools to develop a complete public relations strategy, win media favor and deliver any message effectively); [Money plunges modern literature into chaos Are lovers of literature a dying breed in Russia?]
• · After lucky 13 years of experimenting, veteran Net publisher Adam Engst has finally stumbled on a good business model -- fast-turnaround e-books
• · · The openness of Weblogs could help explain why many readers find them more credible than traditional media. Can mainstream journalists learn from their cutting-edge cousins? Transparency Begets Trust in the Ever-Expanding Blogosphere
• · · · Arna's Children won the Best Film award at Prague's One World Film Festival in April 2004. Days later, it received the Best First Documentary award at the Canadian International Documentary Festival. The following month, it was named Best Documentary at New York's Tribeca Film Festival. Sadly, by the time Arna's Children received this international recognition, all but one of the movie's leading characters were already dead We are losing the good film habit; [Multicultural Literature Recommends Vibrant Suggestions How to Up your sex life
• · · · · Orhan Pamuk: I Was Not A Political Person... Turkey is a somewhat surreal country, where secular nationalists and theocrats compete to impose what seem to be equally dubious ideas of how to force people to be free ; [ Real reading, real writers, real issues; [Colin Friels: We are so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget that the inner value, the rapture, that is associated with being alive, is what it’s all about ... I want to try to tell our own stories in our own place]
• · · · · · Literature and Sociology Unbound: It is like a bone-deep memory that binds us deeply to each other

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We are all Olympians in the eyes of God: While My Favourite Paper tracks Exclusive Olympic Stories, Robert Scheer types at all hours at his Summer Olympics blog

OLYMPIC GAMES With the countdown entering its final phase high hopes enter our hearts: On Your Marks
Finally, someone else gets to host an Olympics and Sydney is relegated to the role of married older sibling watching with patronising amusement as a younger brother or sister prepares for the big day.
First thing first, Czech Out the official home for Athens 2004 Greece will make history once again, as it did in 1896 with the revival of the Games.
The graphics are eerily familiar and much of the information reflects all those issues we were so concerned about four years ago: tickets, transport, volunteers, etc. There is an impressive interactive schedule of every session of every sport. So if you simply have to see the Preliminary Duet Free Routine of the synchronised swimming, you'd better keep the morning of August 24 (Australian-time) free.
The other big "official" Olympics site belongs to the IOC, where you are left in no doubt that the international sporting fest is a Very Important Thing Indeed. This dry effort is short of anything resembling fun or excitement.
Here, for example, is the bizarre entry under a section entitled Passion: Over and above sporting exploits, Olympism is a source of multiple passions which unite the worlds of sport, art, culture and collections. Olympism is a state of mind and the Olympic Museum is its symbol. Glad we got that straight.
• ATHENS OLYMPICS ON LINE [A hit of escape, the suggestion of Olympic stamina, balanced with a surreal experience: If I could get every teenager to memorise it, the future world would not be peppered with bullies]
•· · Olympians barred from blogging? No blogging from Olympic village [ Making the case for Milo of Croton, winner of 6 consecutive Olympic wrestling titles before 500BC, to be named as greatest Olympic champion of all time]
•· · Great Aussie hopes for gold All that glitters is gold, they say. See who amongst the Australian team is most likely to reach glittering glory in Athens
•· · · PVRBlog: Tips and thoughts and comments; [ The idea doesn't have to be Olympic. It just has to change the world]
•· · · Will Athens win a gold for security? [ GREEK SECURITY TEAM FAILS TO NOTICE GIANT HORSE ; Security Czech and Slovak Style anti-chemical warfare specialists to help guard the Olympics: The country's specialised troops were the only ones to detect traces of nerve gas in the Saudi Arabian desert during the 1991 Gulf War]

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Margo Kingston is the Liberal with the small l and the Down Under alternative to Vaclav Havel!
For webdiarist of all political colours who already know how enthusiastic Margo happens to be this speech might mean doubling up of her caring ideas about democracy, but for people just introduced to the legend of the Webdiary, this speech to the Sydney Institute is a neat introductory package of the raw pearls of wisdom. Margo’s passionate speech should serve as an ominous wakeup call and siren warning about the dangers of capitalism without human face.
Reflections of a Webdiarist: Ode To the True Liberals i.e. Robert Menzies ... For all its faults, and there are many, I believe the election of a Labor Government and a strong Senate will give the people a breathing space to mobilise to make the health of our democracy a crucial issue during the term of the next government and at the next election. In a speech last year, the author Norman Mailer described democracy as 'a state of grace that is attained only by those countries which have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labour of maintaining it'. There are passages of raw truth as Margo documents and records factual moments when evidence catches our (mis)leaders off guard.
In a nutshell, the true webdiarists have one thing in common; the phenomenon one sees through history, of people willing to take a stand that may be costly for them but satisfies their need for integrity.
PS: The Menzies Foundation needs to get its act together and match the skills of people like Chris Sheil of Evatt Foundation fame if it wants to be a serious player in the battle of ideas. During her time as the head of the Menzies Foundation, the late Dr Marlene Goldsmith planted many breathtaking flowers at the Foundation, however, for the last five years the garden has been locked and the keys thrown away. So lets hope someone soon opens the gate and shows us around the garden of liberty and ideas.

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Blogging for Business
With readers flocking to their Web postings, execs are finding blogs useful for plugging not just their products but their points of view
Jonathan Schwartz, president and chief operating officer of server maker Sun Microsystems (SUNW ), first suspected that his blog was a success when his salespeople began reporting that customers were reading his posts and sealing deals faster. Then, the blog started getting a surge of traffic from users with e-mail addresses ending in "ibm.com" and "dell.com" -- folks who work for Sun's rivals. Schwartz saw that as irrefutable proof that his blog, started on June 28, was a gold mine.
• Blog Mine High-profile people don't have the freedom to speak with authenticity [ courtesy of Jonathan Schwartz ]
• · The dead hand of modern democracy: Extreme Democracy blog
• · · Weblog Tools Market
• · · · Kozoru It's always exciting to read about new efforts in search
• · · · · Jan Amos Comenius, the first blogger ever: Bohemian in Amsterdam
• · · · · · For many young people, caring about the world's problems can be both too painful and seemingly futile

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Minority government for Canada 2004 The Canadian election of 28 June saw the election of a hung Parliament, with the Liberal Government remaining in power with the likely support of the NDP

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Conspiracy Realities
The Internet and talk radio abound with ridiculous rumors and falsehoods dealing with conspiracy. Yet, there are many examples of the real thing.
According to New Age guru and spiritualist David Icke, our world is run by (and has been for thousands of years) a secret society of extra-terrestrial reptilians known as the Anunnaki. Mr. Icke, a former national spokesman for Britain’s radical Green Party, is a prolific author, whose books, videos and articles propagate a bizarre revisionist history of ancient civilizations, religions, world events, dynasties and famous people.
• Getting the Facts Straight [Whose Constitution Is It, Anyway? Judicial review has its limits ]
• · See Also Slovakia: The absence of a truly liberal party; [Liberal Amerika The Polarized Presidential Electorate ; The Press and Presidential Politics]
• · · The Brookings Institution: The State of Iraq
• · · · Globalist: The history of Western domination in the Middle East
• · · · · Decembrists ...What October Surprise?
Ten surprises the Bush administration proved remarkably unprepared for
• · · · · · · There are no short cuts in history. Using force to try to accelerate social progress and political change before its time will fail Pondering all the failed revolutions throughout the Third World over the last 50 years ... No shortcuts to the End of History

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2004 UK defence cuts: possible Australian implictions In mid July 2004 the UK Ministry of Defence outlined potential cuts of up to 25 per cent in existing UK combat systems and 20 per cent in UK personnel numbers within four years.

Tracking Policies & Investigative Stories: An End to Poverty?
A wealth of ideas about an age-old problem...
The poor have, proverbially, always been with us, even if ideas about who they are, what poverty is, and why it exists, keep changing. It's less clear how far back the notion of abolishing poverty goes. Probably, as Gareth Stedman Jones suggests, utopian dreams of a world without want are age-old. It was only in the late 18th century, though, that serious debates first emerged.
• By Gareth Stedman Jones [FTA Amerika and Australia Agree to Disagree ]
• · John Quiggin the election of a non-partisan President Major parties have been increasingly willing to replace party nominees with Independents, for offices including MPs, Lord Mayors ... [for legal aspect see Ken Parish ]
• · · Public V Private Schools: Go private? Not even if it were free, say loyal parents
• · · · Scott McMillan: Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, al-Qa'ida operative
• · · · · Chernobyl II Accident at Japan nuclear plant
• · · · · · Partisan Rhetoric (PDF version) David Bennett on The 2004 Election: A Watershed Moment

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Literature & Art Across Frontiers: We are not all destined to be Hemingways, nor would most of us want to be
The premise that in many cases writers entertain, move, and inspire us less by what they say (their matter) than by how they say it (their manner) would seem irrefutable. To name some obvious examples, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, and Dave Barry are read and honored hardly at all for their profound insights about the human condition, much more for their intoxicating and immediately identifiable ways of expressing themselves -- their styles.
This idea, that the how is more important and revealing than the what, goes without saying when it comes to other creative endeavors. Think of Michael Jordan and Jerry West each making a 20-foot jump shot, of Charlie Parker and Ben Webster playing a chorus of All the Things You Are, of Julia Child and Paul Prudhomme fixing a duck à l'orange, or of Pieter Brueghel and Vincent van Gogh painting the same farmhouse. Everyone understands that the content is constant, frequently ordinary, and sometimes banal; that the (wide) variation, the arena for expression and excellence, the fun, the art -- are all in the individual style.
• Style as a pleasure for the reader or the writer - Ooh, aah, look how eccentric and demanding I am [I believe a good teacher should be, that little voice inside my head pipes up, telling me ... Come on now, don't be that guy..]
• · See Also After denying Hollywood for years, Gabriel García Márquez agrees to sell the rights to his 1985 novel
• · · Kurt Vonnegut: I Love You, Madame Librarian; I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves
• · · · Books and Politics: Poli-tainment is a bizarre sort of political Cliffs Notes
• · · · · Commentary on Open Access Publishing and Its Costs: The devil you don’t know: The unexpected future of Open Access publishing by Joseph J. Esposito
• · · · · · See Also You'd call him the grandfather of stand-up comedy, if grandfather didn't seem altogether too cosy. He's Richard Pryor

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HE is a man who has lied and dissembled, and a man who has crawled. He knows the taste of boot-polish. He has suffered kicks in the tonneau of his pantaloons. He has taken orders from his superiors in knavery and he has wooed and flattered his inferiors in sense. His public life is an endless series of evasions and false pretenses. He is willing to embrace any issue, however idiotic, that will get him votes, and he is willing to sacrifice any principle, however sound, that will lose them for him. I do not describe the democratic politician at his inordinate worst; I describe him as he is encountered in the full sunshine of normalcy. He may be, on the one hand, a cross-roads idler striving to get into the State Legislature by grace of the local mortgage-sharks and evangelical clergy, or he may be, on the other, the President of the United States. It is almost an axiom that no man may make a career in politics in the Republic without stooping to such ignobility: it is as necessary as a loud voice.
H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: An End to Election-rigging in the State that Gave Gerrymander to the English language
We tell ourselves that we live in the world's greatest democracy, one whose government derives its powers from the consent of the governed. In fact we live in nothing of the sort, at least as far as our national legislature is concerned. Thanks to modern gerrymandering, most congressional districts have been turned into a Democratic or Republican monopolies -- constituencies meticulously mapped to lock in one-party supermajorities and guarantee election results long before voters go to the polls.
• The Gerrymandering scandal in American politics [ PDF version: Presidential Selection: Electoral Fallacies ]
• · That losing elitist feeling Are Most of Us Destined to Join Life's Losers? [Great Britain of Timothy Ash: Many think intellectuals begin at Calais. But we have them and need them in Britain; Lesser Amerika of Mark Schmitt: On Barbara Ehrenreich and Elites; Elitists repeat that France is in crisis: Even conferences on French national identity outnumber the striptease shows in Paris]
• · · Europe's youngest leader: Czech Prime Minister Stanislav Gross's government took office on 4 August 2004.
• · · · It was a winter's night in Iowa, round about midnight: John Kerry should have been wrapping up a town meeting, but he had decided to go into his I will answer every question mode
• · · · · EVEN as parliament workers moved into the new building at Holyrood last week, the message running round the world is how angry the Scots are about the escalating price, up from £40 to £431 million Almost 11 times the initial estimate; the Sydney Opera House cost only 10 times its original budget. Scottish Parliament: Was it worth it?
• · · · · · · Bear Pit Laboratory: Psychologists try to learn how to spot a liar

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Invisible Hands & Markets: Widespread Agreement
Abiola Lapite is somewhat nonplussed to find himself agreeing with John Quiggin:
Foreign Dispatches: Something on Which We Agree: I rarely agree with John Quiggin on political matters, so when such an instance does arise, it's worth commenting on. Today he makes an excellent case against the Australia-USA "Free Trade" Agreement, which turns out to be little more than an excuse for America to foist harsh intellectual property laws on the Australians.
I know that “Trade agreement said harmful to small faraway country” is the stereotype of a boring newspaper story, but this one is really important to Americans as well as Australians, and to anyone interested in health policy. If you ever hope to see affordable health care in the US, you’d better hope that (against all the odds) this agreement falls at the final hurdle.
• Abiola Lapite ; [via Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal ]
• · Edward Hugh writes that morale in Germany appears to be low: A Fistful of Euros: Watch Your Piggy Bank!
• · · Bob Herbert looks at the real economy and says it's time to Admit We Have a Problem.
• · · · Brad DeLong: Why Oh Why Are We Ruled by These Fools? (Fiscal Policy Edition)
• · · · · The Corporation: The film which starts from the legal conceit of corporations as legal persons, and asks, what kind of people are they? [Federal Court records obtained by the Herald show that in one year, 1980, Rivkin was successful in having his taxable income reduced from $627,610 to a mere $6763 ]
• · · · · · The first synthetic diamonds made from the ashes of a man are to be set into jewellery so they can be worn by his family Question If I have diamonds made out of my ashes, who wants one? Diamonds are a widow's best friend ...

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As the blogosphere keeps growing competition for gaffs and definitions has become cutthroat. Civility seems to be dead. However, our enemies are innovative and resourceful - and so are we...

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Hidden in the annex
American Journalism Review recently asked why the American media took so long to report on prisoner abuse in Iraq. There are reasonable excuses (dangerous conditions in Iraq made a lot of first-hand reporting almost impossible) and inexcusable ones (fear of bucking the patriotism police), but one was especially disheartening -- the press couldn't believe that our military would do anything bad.
I'm skeptical. Even a reporter with no interest in history must surely know something of the history of his profession, and in the pantheon of journalistic heroes how many people rank higher than Seymour Hersh, and his coverage of My Lai? Are there really no reporters left who remember (or at least have read of) My Lai and want to be the next Hersh -- other than Hersh himself, that is? How is it possible for anyone who doesn't depend on Fox for all his knowledge of the world to believe Americans never do anything bad?
• Were reporters naive, or willfully ignorant? [ courtesy of Body & Soul ]
• · Here’s a guide to discern what journalists really mean when they write certain things.
• · · On how the Web makes the Szirine zine
• · · · The blog busters Mighty corporations ignore the whispers on web diaries at their peril
• · · · · Syndication sold like viagra: The RSSEqualizer.com site is a piece of blisteringly cheezy marketing aimed at selling RSS to non-technical people as a site-traffic-builder
• · · · · · What is your daughter reading? A casual thumb through the August editions of Australia's top four girl glossies is revealing

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Russia introducing a new law to scrap the highly inefficient, Communist-era welfare system

Invisible Hands & Markets: Contract Figures Show Halliburton's Startling Growth
Halliburton, the giant services firm formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney, saw a sixfold increase in earnings from contracts with the Defense Department last year, making the Houston-based company the nation's seventh largest defense contractor.
Halliburton received Pentagon contracts worth $491 million in 2002; that figure shot up to $3.1 billion in 2003.
Data on the top 200 federal contractors was compiled for Government Executive by Eagle Eye Publishers Inc. of Fairfax, Va., from information collected by the General Services Administration.
The bulk of Halliburton's 2003 federal revenues derived from two contracts let by the Army to Halliburton's engineering and construction division, Kellogg, Brown and Root, before the invasion of Iraq. Under one contract, the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, which ultimately could be worth up to $5.6 billion, the company provides logistical support to troops, such as cooking, laundry, housing and other services. The other agreement, known as the RIO contract, worth $2.5 billion, was to fight oil-field fires that U.S. commanders anticipated before the start of the war and to restore Iraq's oil infrastructure during reconstruction.
Both contracts have been controversial. David Walker, the head of the Government Accountability Office, told the House Government Reform Committee in June that a GAO audit showed that the LOGCAP contract was poorly managed.
• GAO found that the Corps properly justified the sole-source contract to KBR to restore Iraq's oil infrastructure ; [To pursue profits: The American President Calvin Coolidge once said that the business of America is business ]
• · Economics does not contain all the answers of life, nor does it claim to: It does, however, show how the morally acceptable desire for profit leads to spontaneous social cooperation that obviates the need for a bloated state apparatus to direct production [ Free Raid Agreement: Interview: Tony Abbott]
• · · CickiRail Excuses for same old grind In October next year Rail of NSW will be 150 years old: Sydney trains and railway stations are like a scene from some post-apocalyptic movie -- a futuristic, industrial detention area from a Mad Max [This coincides with the death of Ruth Morrison, 82, of Bayview, Sydney, who fell from an Indian Pacific carriage early on Monday: Great Southern Railway Safety]
• · · · Invisible Marketing Reed-Elsevier Boss Defends Profits ; [Search rival Google owns one of the better Blogging solutions, called Blogger.com. And right now, when it comes to Google, all bets are off!; [Dear Media Dragons, Media Discover Promotional Potential of Blogosphere]
• · · · · Making Fatal Headlines ; [Forget the Media Dragons, it's the Video Dragons showing the way on the internet ; Internet fraud targets John Kerry supporters]
• · · · · · When oil was found in 1996 in Equatorial Guinea, the former Spanish colony in West Africa was one of the poorest countries in the world: The Boom that only Oils the Wheels of Corruption