One of these men is a “terrorist”.

Spot the Terrorist » The Road to Surfdom

Bannerman doesn’t often do this, but does believe in credit where it’s due. The above linked post is an absolute cracker-jack. Now get over there and pay homage.

Bannerman wound up being quite touched by the interview on 7:30 Report this evening between David Hicks’ military defence lawyer, Marine Major Michael Mori, and Kerry O’Brien. Clearly, Mori wasn’t going to respond to several of Kerry’s questions as Kerry would have liked, but the one telling point in the entire interview came with the very last question. When he returned to his military career, would there be a price to pay for Mori, as a result of his staunch support for and defence of his client over the past four-and-a-half years?

The look of resignation and inevitability which passed across Mori’s chagrinned face spoke volumes, even if his mouth uttered a non-committal platitude. That one question and one facial expression is proof positive, as far as Bannerman is concerned, that the Hicks issue impacted negatively on more than just David Hicks. Kudos to you, Michael Mori. May your legal career rise to great heights upon your exit from the military. May that day come soon and bring you the justice you deserve. Bannerman applauds.

So, the RBA has left interest rates alone. For the time being. Was it the right decision for today's economy, where disposible income is almost entirely absorbed in debt maintenance? Where a balance of trade deficit continues to exist despite a supposedly booming economy?

Scientists close to Potter-style invisibility cloak

Science is a truly wonderful endeavour, and more children ought to be encouraged to undertake it's study, but why, oh why, does every single new theoretical discovery have to have a military application?

"They took everything from me apart from my knickers. Then some cotton pyjamas were thrown in for me to wear and four filthy blankets. The metal door slammed shut again."

NEWS.com.au

So says Leading Seaman Faye Turney, youngest of the recently released Royal Navy personnel from Iranian captivity.

PRIME Minister John Howard has announced a major new deployment of Australian troops to Afghanistan, building up to a 1000-strong presence by 2008.

NEWS.com.au

Noted on the ABC news site:

The US-led war on terror is only fuelling more violence by focusing on military solutions

Prime Minister John Howard says he will not be moving to take control over state ports as they struggle to keep up with demand for coal exports.

"We're not about winning elections in a year, we're about winning debates over a decade. The conservative ideas experiment has been tried and it's failed. They've left Australia with fragile prosperity based on a boom, far too many kids left behind, a changing climate, a divided culture and knee-jerk responses to real security threats." - Michael Cooney, Policy Director, Per Capita Thinktank

BB picks OCD contestant | NEWS.com.au
Yes, reader......it's that time of year again...

You're a joke, PM tells sheik - National - smh.com.au

"Well, I'm tempted to say we should start treating the man as a joke and in relation to his comments about me, well I've been insulted by experts so I'm rather untroubled by them," Mr Howard said.

PM credits IR laws for jobs surge - National - smh.com.au

"I do believe, after a year - and a year in which 276,000 new jobs have been created - it is reasonable to assert that one of the contributions made to this spectacular growth in employment has been the removal of the unfair-dismissal provisions under Work Choices," - Little Johnny Howler

And now Bannerman is wondering just what he's done. And why?

Spotted this on Vox

"Nobody should be thrown out of work or lose their business or lose their home because of a zealot, or zealotry in relation to policy" - Peter Costello

So, permit Bannerman a moment of misunderstanding here. It’s not okay to be concerned about the damage that business and industry is doing to our climate on a global scale, but it is okay to deliberately weight the balance of probabilities in favour of the very same businesses and industries when it comes to industrial relations? Those who show their concern for the impacts of climate change, according to the conservative ideology, are zealots. Meanwhile, those same conservatives who champion the ability of business and industry to strip away the earning capacity, lifestyle and benefits of having a job consider themselves friends of the working class.

Of course, Workchoices is good for Australia and not ideologically driven, whereas the zealots championing the resolution of climate change causes are the antithesis. Ideologues.

There’s something wrong with this scenario, Australia. Can you spot what it is?

and now for something completely different....

Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd and Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey have ended their weekly spot on Seven's Sunrise morning program.

Blog bullies propel state of the internet into the spotlight - The Independent

Yes, Virginia, cyber-bullies are real. At the end of the day, they'll always be there and not just in the ether either, now get back to that keyboard and let 'em have it!

32 killed in America's worst campus shooting

THIRTY-two people have been killed at a Virginia university in the bloodiest school shooting massacre in US history.

Howard questions authenticity of AWA data.

Well, he would, wouldn't he. When we get right down to tin tacks, rejection of bad numbers is all Howard has. He surely doesn't have anything concrete to counter the claims in the SMH, or we'd have seen them up in lights. Joe Hockey says the stats 'don't tell the whole story'. Well, c'mon Joe.....we're waiting.

Howard says he's realistic about his position in the polls and claims the underdog position in the leadup to this years federal election.

BBC, Geldof to catalogue all human existence

Geldof, the former frontman for rock group the Boomtown Rats, says he was first inspired to act after hearing about disappearing languages in Africa 20 years ago.

Support for Labor IR plans

"It is not possible to see how any of the major announcements are a forward step for jobs or productivity from where we are today,"

Just when Bannerman thought it was safe to open the comments door - after it was mended - it seems this blog has been attacked by a swarm of spambots. The host has aborted any connection to Moveable Type comment scripts, but has offered some salient advice on how to fix the problem. To those of you who so badly want to click that comment button, (yes, there are one or two) fear not! A remedy will be in place tout de suite.

According to today's Fin Review, yet another property development and investment entity is poised to go under.

Space shield to block radiation

The idea has been likened to the deflector shields which protect the USS Enterprise and other spacecraft in Star Trek. Like their fictional counterparts, these shields could also be switched on and off.

Hicks father may defy gag order

Well, excuse the exclamation, reader, but WHAT FUCKING GAG ORDER!??

To the best of Bannerman’s knowledge, it was David Hicks, not Terry Hicks who wound up being shang-hai’d into holding up his hand when the Yanks asked who wanted to go home in exchange for calling ’terrorist’. Gag order, indeed! Any hold the Yanks think they might have over David Hicks is nothing more than a smoke-shrouded mirror anyway. Phillip ’I-may-look-dead-but-I-don’t-smell-that-way’ Ruddock even confirmed it for us earlier this month.

Apparently, this lecture thingo at University of Melbourne’s Law School tomorrow is being streamed. Bannerman has contacted the convenor with a view to obtaining the relevant URL. If he get’s a reply in time, it’ll be advised here.

Rudd tells AMWU boss to 'get real' about IR.

Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has told a major union boss to 'get real' with his criticism of Labor's new industrial relations (IR) policy.

PM touts new nuclear reactor as 'triumph'.

"If a nation is unwilling to make a capital investment in projects of this nature, then it's really not interested in our future"

That vast difference isn't likely to stop JWH from blowing the nuclear tuba though.

A sad way to leave Pukekohe for the V8 Supercar circus, but even sadder is the way race three of this weekend's round three event in New Zealand was run in concert with, and undoubtedly controlled by, television programming.

In the previous entry, Bannerman wrote that he was about to complain to Network Seven re: their motorsport coverage. He did. He rang Seven at Epping to seek a means of access, as Seven don't have a corporate email address. (Shock! Horror!)

Lawyers most depressed

"Law, unfortunately, is a high-pressure profession.''

Surely, dealing with a person's life, their ability to walk, talk and even think holds a far greater responsibility than litigation, building design or insurance.

Anzac controversy 'will increase crowds'

"Anzac Day's got to stop being just seen as another public holiday,"

Apparently this guy is denying these guys their due recognition from their career industry. No reasons given for this denial, but Bannerman supposes that when you own the theatre of recognition involved, you can pretty much let in and keep out whoever you like. Regardless of petty banalities or simple personal dislikes.

As Ned Kelly said.....'such is life'

"As a Government, we've made decisions in the past 11 years that impact directly on the lives of Australians. No doubt we've made our mistakes. All governments do." - John Winston Howard.

The power and the glory of the source of all life within it’s realm. Sol, or as we commonly call it, the Sun, now scanned in three dimensions by NASA’s very own stereopticon, STEREO, or to give it’s full title, Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory. The multimedia animations on the NASA STEREO site are particularly fascinating, and just a little awesome.

New IR body will be 'hand-picked by unions': Howard.

"I tell you what the problem of that is, is that those people will be hand-picked by the union bosses."
"This is a political device to give the impression of modernity but in reality it will hand back even greater power to union bosses,"

Pet pooch scam is baa-king mad

"My name’s Kevin, I’m from Queensland, I’m here to help,"

Seriously, if I’ve^* heard that opening line from Kevin Rudd once today, I must have heard it twenty times.

Australia’s only feasible options are clean coal technology and nuclear power.

ABC News Online

and the light on the hill, according to Anthony Albanese, isn’t the glow from a nuclear waste dump. Yet the 44th Australian Labor Party’s national conference has ratified a policy change, albeit on a slim margin, which will see the ’three mines’ policy consigned to the historical wastebasket.

Actor James Doohan, who played the starship Enterprise’s chief engineer Scotty on Star Trek, finally made it to space on Saturday (local time) as a rocket with some of his ashes was launched in New Mexico.

ABC News Online

When I first read this headline, I felt quite touched. James Doohan, alias ’Scotty’ or Leiutenant-Commander Montgomery Scott late of the United Federation of Planets starship U.S.S. Enterprise, registry NCC 1701-A, had at last reached the stars.

But if you read on, the flight was barely sub-orbital, reaching just 115 klicks before falling back to Earth, the containers with the deceased’s ashes parachuting to the surface, to be mounted on some glitzy plaque by the flight’s organisers for the benefit of the rellies. Well pardon me, but BIG FUCKIN’ DEAL! If Jimmy Doohan could have anything to say about the experience, I dare say he’d snort and claim he’d been gypped. Space be buggered! 115 klicks is barely non-atmospheric, let alone sub-orbital.

This is yet another example of capitalistic American business entrepreneurialism making a killing from the gullible. If you’re going to send a loved-one’s remains into space, or more to the point, if said loved-one WANTS their ashes sent into space, it has to be a one-way trip. Ashes, in rocket, light fuse, wave bye-bye and rocket leaves the Earth’s gravitational pull to sail onward forever and ever, amen. Not a brief trip akin to a reversed bungy jump.

If a launch into the upper stratosphere is the best I could ever hope for, being a trekker and all, I’d rather my genetic successors took my remains out to luggage point, dumped ’em and then spent an equivalent sum of money to the ’space flight’ on getting absolutely plastered in the old fart’s memory. I dare say Stephen Hawking went further and faster earlier this week. What a rort!!