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Showing posts from February, 2014

Gareth Evans gives Julie Bishop a diplomatic serve over Cambodia

It is hard to get present day Labor politicians to lift their interest in matters of foreign policy past comments about the damage that asylum seeker policy is doing to relations with Indonesia. Even the remarkable flirtation Foreign Minister Julie Bishop had with her Cambodian counterpart over his country taking some of the Australia bound regimes could not stir an interest. So enter Gareth Evans, Foreign Minister under Hawke and Keating, to remind us that the Labor Party once had principles. “Cambodia’s government has been getting away with murder,” wrote Evans ,who is now Chancellor of the Australian National University, in an article published in today’s  Phnom Penh Post  and  available on the Project Syndicate website.  ” For far too long, Hun Sen and his colleagues have been getting away with violence, human-rights abuses, corruption, and media and electoral manipulation without serious internal or external challenge.” And the man who played a major role in the Cambodian pea

How Qantas is losing to oil money and penny pinchers and other news and views for Friday 28 February

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  Qantas and its ilk are losing the Asian skies to oil money and penny pinchers  – ‘The “Flying Kangaroo,” as Qantas Airlines is known, has announced its largest cutbacks in 20 years, including laying off 5,000 staff and a six-month loss of $226 million. CEO Alan Joyce is asking the Australian government for state aid due to “some of the toughest conditions Qantas has ever seen.” Specifically, Qantas is getting killed by competition from Virgin Australia, a fast-growing, money-losing budget airline controlled by three other so-called flag carriers—Air New Zealand, Etihad Airways of the United Arab Emirates, and Singapore Airlines. Qantas’s fate is being echoed across Asia and around the world, as Emirates, Qatar Airways, and Etihad expand into new territories, and low-cost carriers (LCCs) like Air Asia, Southwest, Easyjet, and Ryanair fight aggressive fare wars against their older rivals.” Asia budget airlines: no flying profits  - “Competition escalates as more airlines enter the fr

The Daily Telegraph's page 17 sense of humour

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James Ashby can consider himself a bit hard done by this morning. Last year after a federal court judge ruled he had launched a sexual harassment claim to destroy his former boss Peter Slipper and the claim was thrown out, Ashby was treated by many as a no-good figure of fun. Not by Sydney’s  Daily Telegraph , though. The Tele, which had featured the original accusation against the one-time Speaker of the House of Representatives Slipper prominently on its early news pages, consigned a report on Ashby’s case being thrown out to page 17. With a wonderful sense of timing the full bench of the Federal Court chose yesterday to rule on an appeal that overturned the previous ruling and the Ashby case against Slipper can now proceed. The decision just happened to follow the publication that morning of a tut-tutting finding by the Press Council that the Tele was quite unfair in consigning the story on Ashby’s loss in court to page 17. So what to do with the news of the man’s vindication

Constructing new mines going down but actual mining production on the rise

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The signs that the inevitable decline in investment in new mining projects are well and truly underway was shown today when the Australian Bureau of Statistics released its survey of  Private New Capital Expenditure and Expected Expenditure  for December. The ABS found that the trend estimate for Mining fell 0.6% in the December quarter 2013. Equipment, plant and machinery fell 12.4% while buildings and structures rose 0.8%. The seasonally adjusted estimate for Mining fell 5.5% in the December quarter 2013. Buildings and structures fell 4.2% and equipment, plant and machinery fell 16.0% in seasonally adjusted terms. The decline in mining investment was a major component in the trend volume estimate for total new capital expenditure in industries overall falling 0.7% in the December quarter 2013 while the seasonally adjusted estimate fell 5.2%. It was not the reported actual falls that seem to have spooked many economists but the ABS estimates of future capital expenditure. Estim

Creating three parent babies? A new ethical debate

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An advisory committee of the US Food and Drug Administration has just concluded two days of meetings to consider whether to make legal a proposal that scientists be allowed to try to make babies using eggs that have been genetically altered to include DNA from another woman. The committee decided not to vote to determine a recommendation to the FDA after some panellists worried that not enough research has been done to know whether the experiments would be safe. ”I think there was a sense of the committee that at this particular point in time, there was probably not enough data either in animals or in vitro to conclusively move on to human trials . . . without answering a few additional questions,”  Dr. Evan Snyder  of the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., who chaired the 25-member committee, t old National Public Radio . During the hearing, the panel heard from researchers at the New York Stem Cell Foundation, the Oregon Health & Science Universit

Relations between Australia and the Indonesian military have never been better?

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The  Jakarta Post  this morning publishes an interesting theory on Australian-Indonesian relations - relations might be tense between Jakarta and Canberra, but between Canberra and the Indonesian Military (TNI), things have never been better. The commentary, written from Perth by Lauren Gumbs, described as a writer who holds a Masters in communications from Griffith University in Queensland a Masters in human rights student at Curtin University, appears on the paper's main op-ed page under the headling "Australian government bypasses Jakarta, builds ties with military". Indonesian officials are in disbelief that special life rafts carrying undocumented migrants were given by Australian authorities for the purpose of sending back migrants but concede that there might be a special agreement between Australian and Indonesian defense force chiefs. Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa remains steadfast in opposing the coalition’s boat U-turns despite six reported incident

A right for businesses to deny service to gays and lesbians

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It is front page news in Arizona but a bill passed by the state’s legislature that would allow business owners in the state to deny service to gays and lesbians is arousing controversy throughout the United States. Arizona’s Republican Governor Jan Brewer is being pressured to veto the bill under which to deny service, the business owner has to have sincerely held religious beliefs.   National Public Radio reports  that the legislation’s wording has become so controversial that even some lawmakers who voted for it are now regretting it. Jay Michaelson, who studies religious freedom for the progressive Political Research Associates told NPR a number of other states considered and rejected laws similar to Arizona’s. The Arizona law would allow business owners to refuse service to gays and lesbians if the owner’s religion says homosexuality is wrong. But Jay Michaelson says the bill could affect virtually anyone who deals with a business owner claiming religious protection. MICH

Significant drop in obesity among two to five year old children and other news and views for 26 February

Some news and views noted along the way Prevalence of Childhood and Adult Obesity in the United States, 2011-2012  – “There was a significant decrease in obesity among 2- to 5-year-old children … and a significant increase in obesity among women aged 60 years and older… Overall, there have been no significant changes in obesity prevalence in youth or adults between 2003-2004 and 2011-2012. Obesity prevalence remains high and thus it is important to continue surveillance.” - - Journal of American Medical Association Roma: Moving target  – “Antipathy towards Europe’s most ostracised minority chimes with a debate that threatens the principle of free movement.” Trading Site Failure Stirs Ire and Hope for Bitcoin  – “The apparent collapse of Bitcoin’s best-known and once-dominant trading platform has provoked outrage among its users, but it has also stirred hopes that the way may now be clear for more established players to transform and rein in a largely unregulated market.” Buffett’

Banking ethics Credit Suisse style

Credit Suisse ‘helped US tax evaders’ – FT.com . Credit Suisse made false claims in US visa applications, conducted business with clients in secret elevators and shredded documents to help more than 22,000 American customers avoid US taxes, according to a scathing report by a US congressional committee.

An Oscars election contest

For the Daily Telegraph “prick” must be a new dirty word

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Almost a new category – journalists writing about proprietors slanging off at proprietors. The  Daily Terror  this morning: IT would have to go down as the spray of the year: Sydney radio tsar John Singleton unleashed yesterday on his onetime would-be business partners at Fairfax Media, calling its chairman a “pompous pr..k” and the CEO an “idiot”… SINGLETON ON CORBETT – “He’s only got a year to go and then he can be president of the Avoca bowling club or Rotary or something, some self-important, pompous, puffed up job for him.” SINGLETON ON HYWOOD – “(He is) obviously an idiot.” FAIRFAX ON SINGLETON – “Anyone who had the misfortune of hearing John Singleton’s deluded and self-indulgent sprays … can only feel sorry for the man.” And in passing we should note the latest example of hostilities between the Tele’s senior stablemate  The Australian  and the  ABC  which made page one again today. Don’t you just love it when an organ of the Murdoch press takes up the cudgels

The tough life of the freelance journalist

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It’s a tough life being a freelance journalist and don’t I know it. My sympathies, therefore, go to Asher Wolf who at least got a moment of fame via The Oz yesterday. See more of j ournalists writing about journalists

Beheading Hindus and other things worth reading from around the web

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The withdrawal of ‘The Hindus’  - The Times Literary Supplement reports on how Penguin India’s decision to withdraw and pulp all remaining copies of Wendy Doniger’s book  The Hindus: An alternative history  has provoked outcry in the literary world. The TLS has also revived its original review by placing it on its website. The opening paragraph of the review : Keep reading the review  HERE . David Hare: ‘The security services are running the country, aren’t they?’  – “The playwright’s Worricker spy trilogy returns next month, with Bill Nighy as a British agent caught up in a tangled tale of corruption and murder. And it’s all happening in real life, he says.” Pentagon Plans to Shrink Army to Pre-World War II Level Russia needs a ‘Finland option’ for Ukraine  – “Kiev must have no participation in any anti-Moscow alliance, writes Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to US president Jimmy Carter.” For Ukraine’s revolutionaries: Beware a Russian backlash  - ”Many Ukrai

A Phnom Penh view on Australia sending refugees to Cambodia

No wonder Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is keeping publicly silent on her suggestion to Cambodia when visiting at the weekend that it help out by taking some of our surplus refugees. Despite what the Foreign Minister Hor Namhong said at a press briefing on Saturday – that it was a proposal that the government was taking “very seriously” – politicians in his country are opposed to the idea. The  Phnom Penh Post  reports today that the  Cambodian government clarified yesterday that it is not keen on taking in refugees fleeing political persecution who might seek to use the Kingdom as a “springboard” for political activities, raising questions about what protection Cambodia would actually offer to those that Australia wishes to send. “[Australia] wants to hand over its moral responsibility to Cambodia, I don’t think that’s acceptable,” Cambodia National Rescue Party lawmaker-elect Mu Sochua said yesterday. “Australia has to settle its own moral responsibility as a natio

A close run thing for control of the US Senate in November

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There’s a lengthy analysis on the  Real Clear Politics  site at the moment on  How Likely Are Democrats to Lose the Senate?  at the US mid-term Congressional elections in November that suggests the conventional wisdom of the pundits is that they are more likely to do so than retain their current majority. The problem the Democrats have, the analysis suggests, is the low approval rating of President Barack Obama, Using what has happened at past elections RCP’s Sean Trend compiled this summary of  what the Democrat losses in the Senate would be for various Obama approval ratings: This is a grim picture for Senate Democrats, suggesting that the president would have to get his approval above 50 percent by Election Day before they would be favored to hold the chamber. This is also consistent with what we’ve seen in polling, which shows the seven “red state” Democrats in truly severe states of distress, while Democrats in Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire and Colorado are exhibiting

The verdict so far on the Abbott coalition government – what the market says

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The Owl is a believer in the wisdom of crowds being superior to  pundits like himself when it come to predicting future political events. Hence he uses the assessment of the market to compile his election indicators and this is the early appraisal of the Coalition government: You will find other indicators  HERE .

Out of my post-Intrade sulk - investing on a Scottish "No" vote

When the Irish based market trading website Intrade went through the hoop last year I lost enthusiasm for betting on politics. While it ended the most interesting of the political markets the need for financial sustenance has induced me to return even if that means tackling the odds of orthodox bookmakers on events where Betfair is not operating. My first dabble for nearly 10 months is to back the "No" vote in the Scottish referendum to be held on 18 September at Betfair's $1.23 - $123 on for a potential win of $23. For details of this and other current (some of those taken before the temporary retirement are yet to run) bets, along with the Owl's historical record, see  The Portfolio  page at The political speculator's diary.

The “No” vote gains support in Scotland’s referendum election

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The latest poll published in  Scotland on Sunday  shows support for a “No” vote increasing. The Owl’s referendum indicator shows a similar strengthening in support for the “No” vote.