Political scientists are still looking for fresh answers to that hoary old staple: Why do women like old/ rich/ugly/tall men?
· Women Explained [Explained]

So who to vote for?

Political Double standards neatly divide politicians between virgins and whores. Two weeks from today, the voters of NSW go to the polls in order to decide who is who.
Carr often professes admiration for the sage detachment of the ancient Roman emperor-philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Yet he more often resembles a gladiator as he springs into the Sydney media arena each dawn, intent on winning every skirmish.
His best man, Russell, believes Carr, whom he calls Robert ( I don't recognise this person 'Bob'), has got some delusions about himself ... I never thought he wanted to come back to Australia ever again, and I think he still doesn't want to be here. At some level, he's uncomfortable here. He was disappearing every summer overseas, he likes Vienna, the galleries. There's a quotient of boredom for him here.
Hardly a morning goes by these days in Australia without an ironic headline in the press. So it is nice to be able to link those headlines to the world at large
· A stamp on democratic process [SMH]
· Opposition Forces [OLO]
· eStreets [OLO]

Now, our government is embedding journalists

If that sounds like some kind of illicit romance, well, in a way, it is. Embedding is not journalism -- real journalists go off on their own and find truth, then speak it to power. It is not a pretty site to witness how some media jornalists a.k.a. apparatchicks make the media sausages around the pigeon holes of the parliamentary press gallery.
· Pigeons, Chooks [TomPaine]

Media ANE'S GUIDE TO THE PRESS GALLERY

The 'Up-And-Comer', 'Oldtimer', 'Grumpy Old Bastard'and the 'MP Wannabe' - are just some of the species that form the unique ecosystem known as the Federal Press Gallery.
· Proof Gallery [Capitalr]

God, Satan and the Media

Claims that the news media form a vast liberal conspiracy strike me as utterly unconvincing, but there's one area where accusations of institutional bias have merit: nearly all of us in the news business are completely out of touch with a group that includes 46 percent of Americans.
· Out of Touch [NYTimes

Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful easily break through them
-- Anacharsis - (Scythian philosopher - 600 B.C.)

Solon used to say... that laws were like cobwebs -- for if any trifling or powerless thing fell into them, they held it fast; while if it were something weightier, it broke through them and was off.
-- Diogenes Laertius - (Biographer of Greek philosophers - 200 A.D.)

Police Betrayed

Five years ago, the wiretapping of GBI Agent Vickey Horton Tapley was shrugged off in Vidalia as a random case of small-town politics. But a Morning News investigation raises questions about whether the eavesdropping was part of a plan to cover up possible drug use by a city official and a suspicious death that some fear was murder. This series is a result of interviews, reviews of federal court documents and records obtained under Georgia's Open Records law.
· Wiretapping [Savannah]

The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than ...to kill a flea.
-- John Adams - Constitution of Massachusetts: Declaration of Rights (1780)

Fleas The War of the Flea

Individuals who belong to the masses seem to be powerless against the powerful ruling body that some call the state, others the establishment, while many prefer to use the word elite. Some activists do not realise that they are like fleas, minute entities that are only a nuisance. But thousands of fleabites are worse then one bite from a tiger. A myriad of individual intrusions in the private living sphere of leaders makes more impression than many thousands of people who once demonstrate in front of the office of leaders. To bite another flea is of course a waste of time.

When I was seven years old and three years before the Second Prague Spring of 1968, Robert Taber published The War of the Flea about successful mass struggles against oppressive indigenous or foreign powers. Though the present Cold Warless and the rich Western World and the poor Third World of that time differ vastly many principles of The War of the Flea are still valid for the present struggle of the masses against the privileged elite despite the fact that most past mass struggles were led by elements that later formed a new elite. Many points demand to be considered seriously in regard to a successful struggle against a powerful elite including quotes like this.

When I joined the Labor Party, it contained the cream of the working class. But as I look about me now, all I see are the dregs of the middle class. When will you middle class perverts stop using the Labor Party as a cultural spittoon?
- Kim Beazley Snr to an ALP State Conference, circa 1970

1. The first goal is mass power.
The purpose of the action is to change the mind of leaders so they take also into account the needs of the masses and only then a permanent change in the situation of the masses will occur. Direct improvements of the position of the masses are only a side effect of the struggle. The struggle is motivated by the hope for a better future.
2. As many mass people as possible have to become active.
Mass people must get confidence that they become powerful when they act on their own initiative. Political actions by populist or leftist organisations never lead to fundamental changes because a leading body controls all action. In the end this leading group merges with the old elite and denies
any autonomy to the masses. Leftist and populist leaders (communists in Eastern Europe, socialists in Western Europe, populists who assumed power in Argentine, Japan or Italy) only proved that the gap between elite and mass remained and that the masses never got any independent power.
3. The power centre has to be attacked.
Guerrilla and govern forces often clash but leaders remain untouched. Because power is concentrated in the hands of people from the elite, the elite has to be attacked in person.
4. Conflicts inside the elite must be utilized.
In the elite several groups compete for power. It is best to attack only one of these groups and to let the rest of the elite (for the moment) in peace. When the masses have demolished the power of one elite group it is obvious that the power of other groups can also be neutralised.
5. The power of the elite must be undermined.
When the elite power diminishes an improvement of the position of the masses will come by itself. The masses will gain self-esteem and leaders are forced to take decisions that are also beneficial to the masses and do not in the first place safeguard the privileged position of the elite.
6. Agreements with even part of the elite are wrong.
The power of the masses must remain independent of any influence of the elite. When the masses start to negotiate with the elite they are encapsulated and drawn into the realm of the elite (and given some crumbs of bread to remain silent). The negotiating policy of leaders of leftist parties and trade unions only resulted in the acceptation of these leaders into the old elite. To safeguard this privileged position (in average a much higher income than the masses) the interest of the masses became subordinate
to the continuation of the status quo.
7. Successes are necessary.
Small successes have to be realized. The continuous existence of an opposing force outside the realm of influence of the elite is already a success. It shows that something escapes the power of the elite. When people see that their own independent and creative actions result in a small change, they
will become self-confident and the possibility for a fundamental change will grow.
8. The final goal is a situation in which the elite cannot and does not want to live and lead anymore on the old way when it took in the first place decisions that favoured the own already privileged group.
· Remember to bite another flea is of course a waste of time [Trinicenter]

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
- Voltaire, philosopher

Common Sense What to say to people who call you Anti-American

To be Anti-American Anti-Australian Anti-Czech Anti-Slovak one would have to be against the values that the democratic nations are founded on. This is very hard to do, unless one wanted to install a king over the country, an unelected ruler. That is something the founding fathers would have opposed. It is human nature, for the untaught and unintelligent, to abuse power when they get the chance.
But let's not go there today.
· Human Nature [worldgonewrong]

The moral test of a government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life- the children; the twilight of life — the elderly; and the shadows of life -the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
- Hubert Humphrey

Democracy/Priorities Books Not Bombs" student protest hits Australia

Thousands of screaming, whistling, chanting school students staged anti-war protests across Australia on Wednesday, demonising Prime Minister John Howard as a warmonger bent on ruining their future with bombs.
In a Books Not Bombs protest, the high school students, some with permission slips from their parents, forced lunchtime traffic to a standstill in Sydney's central business district.
· Medicare, Dentistcare, Books Not Bombs [Yahoo]

Who/What Is More Popular?

GoogleFight now
Investigate this research tool from SearchDay. It's fun, but definitely not serious. If you're into ego surfing Plus Czechout Lycos50

Traditions Political Ash Wednesday

It's Ash Wednesday morning and the party is over. As if on cue, sober reality takes hold of Germany once again. When the fools have gone home, the politicians take over center stage, although some sharp-tongued critics say there is scarcely any difference between the two.
· Men wearing ties are chased by women with scissors threatening to cut them off [FAZ]

Business Kom Men of Trade: Telekoms

Lawyers have filed suit against Deutsche Telekom Chairman Ron Sommer and his company's major shareholder, the German government, claiming that the former telephone monopolist defrauded shareholders in a secondary stock market offering.
· Telekom: government sued [FAZ]

Good intentions can be evil,/Both hands can be full of grease./ You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.
-Bob Dylan

Tax Avoidance/Money Laundering Honey

Some Bloggers' thirst for knowledge and understanding of money laundering in these confusing and dangerous days is justified.
· Bartering Barter [Cyberfuddle]

The End and the Beginning
by Wislawa Szymborska

(translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak)
After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the sides of the road,
so the corpse-laden wagons
can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone must drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone must glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left for another war.

Like Swimming Upstream, The Pianist
...by Roman Polanski, is a movie we all should have the guts to see.
· Disharmony [JanaWendt]

The moral test of a government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life — the children; the twilight of life — the elderly; and the shadows of life — the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
- Hubert Humphrey

The Great Terror Our biggest enemy in relation to Hitlers of this cruel world has been a lack of resources; the nemesis of all underfunded individuals. This is not too much of a problem anymore.

Somehow even Gary Farber of Amygdala Fame succeeds in getting people to buy Robert Conquest's classic history of Soviet Communism, The Great Terror, after they read this limerick of Conquest's in Farber's posting:

There was a great Marxist called Lenin
Who did two or three million men in
That's a lot to have done in
But where he did one in,
that grand Marxist Stalin did ten in.
... and this one in Farber links to:

When his history of Stalin's purges, The Great Terror, was republished after the fall of communism, his American publisher asked him to suggest a new title. He came up with: I told you so, you fucking fools.

Now she compares her present-day life to the fascist captivity

Galina Petrovna Afanasyeva, a resident of the settlement of Kildinstroy, is a former juvenile prisoner of the fascist concentration camp in Munich. American soldiers, who released Soviet children from the camp in 1945, called them children of heaven. Americans believed that children managed to stay alive
on account of a divine miracle. Until recently, Galina Afanasyeva believed that she had already had her share of yearning. She had to survive hell, when she was a captive of a Nazi camp. Could she eve imagine that she would have to go through unbelievable tortures in Russia at her elderly age? Those tortures could only be comparable to the brutality of a fascist concentration camp.
· Catch22 [Pravda]

Terror Real Axis of Torture

Many suspect the real bombers are Saudi Islamic extremists, loyal to the Saudi-born Osama bin Laden. He has pledged to kill Jews and Crusaders. But the ruling House of Saud is afraid to admit that it's losing its absolute control over the oil-rich kingdom.
· Oil Rich: Untouchables [JanaWendt]

Policeman's admission sparks debate over threats, torture

The question of whether torture or the threat of it can be justified when a prisoner has information that could save lives, the subject of an emotionally wrought debate in the United States in the months after Sept. 11, is now raging in Germany.
· Torture Rich [FAZ]