[. . .] I used to be a traditional Labor voter by default as I would rather have bicycled from Perth to Sydney for no reason than voted Liberal. But it's just as hard to vote for Labor these days.

Voting Liberal is difficult for those with an aversion to conservatism. At best, conservatism is a timid way to achieve continuity, but at worst it's regressive and stunts natural progress. [. . .]

As some in the Labor Party are every bit as conservative as those in the Liberal Party, a second reason is probably needed to justify an anti-Liberal stance. For me this is that the Liberal Party will always be associated with John Howard and his politics of division. [. . .] It's a shame for his legacy because Howard was at times a dignified leader.

But Labor has been more disappointing in recent years than this summer's One Day cricket. The Rudd Government doesn't even pretend to live up to the economic reform legacy of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. [. . . ]

Those unable to vote Liberal and uninspired by Labor are in a voting quandary and have no choice but to swallow major party pride and look the way of minor parties. The Greens are superficially appealing if you've grown attached to this planet, and see some merit in preserving it for future generations. [. . .] Family First and Steve Fielding are also amusing and that is all that will be said about them. The Shooter's and Fishing Party is not the most logical candidate for those who don’t shoot, fish or have time for absurd single issue parties. The Citizen's Electoral Council at least have a broad focus and a website [but] seem to worship US rabble rouser, Lyndon LaRouche, as some sort of prophet.

With political parties like these, democracy isn't all that it's cracked up to be, and a benevolent dictatorship seems more palatable.

Timber! Gunns could be headed for the chipper
David Symons

The market has been kind to Gunns this week, marking the timber company's shares down by just 32 per cent since the surprise announcement that net profit tumbled by 98 per cent to $420,000 in the first half due to weak woodchip demand in Asia and currency pressures. With no improvement in operating conditions on the horizon, and little investor confidence in the company's ability to manage its assets, Gunns' survival is in question. The company has just four months to deliver a solution before bank covenant breaches, with ugly consequences, become a possibility.

The company is pinning its hopes on a planned corporate reorganisation into four divisions in a bid to attract investment into its long-delayed $2 billion Bell Bay pulp mill and to highlight the underlying value of its plantation assets. The challenge of completing the restructure and attracting external investment is out of step with the tight timetable, so Gunns' management and advisers from Nomura Australia should not be expecting much sleep between now and the end of June.

Shareholders turning their minds to disaster scenarios may take some comfort from the value of assets on the Gunns balance sheet. Plantation assets have a book value of around $1.2 billion, while debt and hybrid securities total around $780 million. So shareholders would share in around $420 million of net assets (about 52¢ per share, a little shy of the current share price of 58.5¢) on a winding up — provided that the plantations can be sold for book value. And there's the rub. With the woodchip market in the doldrums, buyers are unlikely to place full value on the plantation assets without a nearby pulp mill.

Watch out below.

"The opposition's approach", Mr Harris says, "has been adopted by the usual frenzied commentators, none of whom has ever administered more than an opinion. All of this means the opposition has succeeded: the electorate is given self serving accusations in place of considered facts. When we see the evidence, we might come to agree that Garrett failed. Until then, judgements are prejudicial, especially those as rabid as the opposition's.

"This is a pretty clear-cut reason why there are plenty of people in the federal government who are deeply worried about the idea of taking over the hospitals," Dr Denniss said. "There's plenty of people in the federal departments and the federal government itself who can see the real risk of taking over the hospitals if they become responsible for them."

Dr Denniss's comments come amid growing concern about the Prime Minster's heavy demands on the bureaucracy in terms of delivering services . . . Dr Denniss said Canberra traditionally focused on policy development, creating programs delivered on the ground by states.

[T]he Church see[s] in the saints nothing more than friends and servants of God whose holy lives have made them worthy of His special love. She does not pretend to make gods. . . . Canonization, generally speaking, is a decree regarding the public ecclesiastical veneration of an individual. . . . If the decree contains a precept, and is universal in the sense that it binds the whole Church, it is a decree of canonisation.

Kevin Rudd and his team are diving into the policy bottom drawers — and some top drawers — to find a political game changer that will allow them to play the governing card and divert attention from Tony Abbott's successful attack on their climate change plan.

[T]he Government is going into overdrive to find issues which put governing on parade; whether it's ending the banking guarantees, using My School website information to funnel money to disadvantaged schools or boosting diabetes pump subsidies — as happened yesterday — or a great big diversion like tax or hospitals.

They are the game-changing issues ready for loading into Government policy missile silos.

[. . . ] Hospitals policy is being put in the fast lane. Bureaucrats working on the reform package say the interest level in the ministerial wing has leapt in the past week and the response time to memos and briefing papers has hit "warp speed". Hospital reform — to answer the question of a federal takeover — is pencilled in for the next Council of Australian Governments meeting.

But there is no sense of panic in Government ranks [. . .]

If only more churches would do this. Walking with Palestinians, experiencing their pain, seeing their loss — human rights organisations can write reports, UN departments can release endless statistics, and lobbying organisations can pick up on individual issues, but going to see the reality and walking even just for a short time with Palestinians is a different issue altogether.

"because it deprives the Palestinians of their basic human rights, bestowed by God. It distorts the image of God in the Israeli who has become an occupier just as it distorts this image in the Palestinian living under occupation." (2.5) No legitimate theology can be premised on such an understanding. Instead, the Kairos Palestine authors call for love and resistance in love: "Love is the commandment of Christ our Lord to us and it includes both friends and enemies . . . Love is seeing the face of God in every human being. . . However, seeing the face of God in everyone does not mean accepting evil or aggression on their part. Rather, this love seeks to correct the evil and stop the aggression." (4.2-4.2.1)

How can the international churches respond? Here, the Kairos Palestine Document is clear, clearer than most international churches seem to want it to be.

It is to this that international churches should be paying heed " boycotts, divestment and sanctions are simply a non-violent expression of this love and resistance. Walking with Palestinians means learning from them about their situation " "come and see" " and also learning from them about what it is that can be done to help them. They are the ones suffering, and they know what is needed to help themselves. [. . .] The international churches can choose to listen and act and walk with their Palestinian sisters and brothers, or they can choose to turn away and ignore them " these are both active choices, and prevaricating or sitting on the fence is not an option. Our God calls us to repent of our sin, and if the occupation is a sin, we must repent of it and resist it, in love, as the Kairos Palestine authors have called on us to do.

After the drum and cheering lesson, Official Opening Ceremony Host and Hot Weather Girl Tamara Taggart asked us to welcome, as the evening's first entertainment, The Irrepressible Jully Black, Canada's Premier R&B singer! To which I wondered: Who!

Ms. Black came out on stage to a hard pop beat and proceeded to scream a song, the words of which immediately floated up into the cavernous roof of BC Place Stadium, where they were lost forever. Then Ms. Black shouted out "Peace!" two or three times into her mike, then held her mike out for the audience to shout "Peace!" back at her. A few people humoured her, and then the music stopped, and Ms. Black, mercifully, left the stage.

Then some other guys came out and sang. I didn't catch their names

Finally, the real show started . . .

Then came the Canadian flag and the national anthem sung by jazz prodigy Nikki Yanofsky . . . it was a disaster, the stately O Canada! mangled by the Warbling School of Pop Phrasing . . . the rendition robbed the ceremonies of what could have been one of its best moments.

The aboriginal part? Was it just me or did the giant translucent totems rising out of the floor look monumentally phallic? . . .

Then came the interminable march of the athletes—who knew there were so many letters in the alphabet?—which was marked by two remarkable moments: the entrance of the tragedy-touched Georgian team, which caused everyone, even the press corps, to stand up and clap, which seemed odd and appropriate at the same time; and the entrance of the Canadian team, the appearance of which touched off a roar so loud the kids on the Canadian team seemed cowed by it. . . .

The floor show? The aurora borealis draped from the ceiling was nice, and the giant sparkling polar bear rising above the ice drew oohs and aahs from everybody. The Emily Carr forest was imaginative and beautiful

but the guy in the floating canoe, aka The Fiddler Under The Roof? What was with the Batman hairdo? And billions around the world are now under the impression that Canada is populated by punk step dancers that are into multiple piercings

The loveliest and simplest moment in the show came with the lone kid floating above a canvas of golden grain fields to Joni Mitchell's haunting rendition of Both Sides Now.

The "We Are More" speech about Canada and the outsized expression of nationalism it carried left me cold, because it was needless . . .

As for the lighting of the flame? . . . when that fourth stylized icicle

failed to come up . . . was that the biggest snafu in Olympic history? The most embarrassing? Eight years to get things right and we get the Olympic Tripod?

She knew the words she wanted to say—about seeing Morse or at least her mind knew. Yet she was aware that those words had homodyned little, if at all, with the words she'd actually used.
—Colin Dexter. The daughters of Cain. London: Pan, 1994, p.362.

Homodyne, adj. of or pertaining to reception by a device that generates a varying voltage of the same or nearly the same frequency as the incoming carrier wave and combines it with the incoming signal for detection.

We the undersigned wish to show our support for an end to commercial whaling. We believe that the slaughter of whales for so-called 'scientific reasons' is wrong. We wish to add our voices to the global campaign to protect these precious mammals from extinction.

People commended unto Zarathustra a wise man, as one who could discourse well about sleep and virtue . . . [a]nd thus spake the wise man:

"Respect and modesty in presence of sleep! That is the first thing! And to go out of the way of all who sleep badly and keep awake at night!
"Modest is even the thief in presence of sleep: he always stealeth softly through the night. Immodest, however, is the night-watchman; immodestly he carrieth his horn.
"No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day.
"Ten times a day must thou overcome thyself: that causeth wholesome weariness, and is poppy to the soul. Ten times must thou reconcile again with thyself; for overcoming is bitterness, and badly sleep the unreconciled. Ten truths must thou find during the day; otherwise wilt thou seek truth during the night, and thy soul will have been hungry. Ten times must thou laugh during the day, and be cheerful; otherwise thy stomach, the father of affliction, will disturb thee in the night.
"Few people know it, but one must have all the virtues in order to sleep well. Shall I bear false witness? Shall I commit adultery? Shall I covet my neighbour's maidservant? All that would ill accord with good sleep.
"And even if one have all the virtues, there is still one thing needful: to send the virtues themselves to sleep at the right time. That they may not quarrel with one another, the good females! And about thee, thou unhappy one!
"Peace with God and thy neighbour: so desireth good sleep. And peace also with thy neighbour's devil! Otherwise it will haunt thee in the night.
"Honour to the government, and obedience, and also to the crooked government! So desireth good sleep. How can I help it, if power like to walk on crooked legs?
"He who leadeth his sheep to the greenest pasture, shall always be for me the best shepherd: so doth it accord with good sleep.
"Many honours I want not, nor great treasures: they excite the spleen. But it is bad sleeping without a good name and a little treasure.
"A small company is more welcome to me than a bad one: but they must come and go at the right time. So doth it accord with good sleep.
"Well, also, do the poor in spirit please me: they promote sleep. Blessed are they, especially if one always give in to them.
"Thus passeth the day unto the virtuous. When night cometh, then take I good care not to summon sleep. It disliketh to be summoned—sleep, the lord of the virtues!
"But I think of what I have done and thought during the day. Thus ruminating, patient as a cow, I ask myself: What were thy ten overcomings? And what were the ten reconciliations, and the ten truths, and the ten laughters with which my heart enjoyed itself? Thus pondering, and cradled by forty thoughts, it overtaketh me all at once—sleep, the unsummoned, the lord of the virtues.
"Sleep tappeth on mine eye, and it turneth heavy. Sleep toucheth my mouth, and it remaineth open. Verily, on soft soles doth it come to me, the dearest of thieves, and stealeth from me my thoughts: stupid do I then stand, like this academic chair. But not much longer do I then stand: I already lie."