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Society is like a stew. If you don't keep it stirred up, you get a lot of scum on top.
- Edward Abbey

Political-party memberships are sinking to new lows and the majority has become alienated from the political process.However there are signs of new grassroots activity in other forums. Power without people

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: ALP machine reasserts grip on power
Arrogant factionalism makes a joke of our democracy Money must talk if Iemma won't

Plucked from political obscurity, Morris Iemma will become the 40th premier of NSW on Tuesday after being handpicked by five general secretaries of the NSW ALP - Graham Richardson, Stephen Loosley, John Della Bosca, Eric Roozendaal and Mark Arbib. The only other premier to be shoe-horned into the job by the Sussex Street machine, Barrie Unsworth, led the Labor Party to a slaughter in 1988. There is another parallel: both Mr Unsworth and Mr Iemma were health minister before the factional chieftains elevated them into the premiership. At a stroke, Mr Carr's precious legacy of keeping Sussex Street out of Macquarie Street has ended and the influence of the ALP machine now overshadows the incoming administration.

• Extreme Measures: Cheerleaders, horses and jockeys [Knives are out as Iemma plans his cabinet revamp ; Premier-elect Morris Iemma's first executive decision after Tuesday's formal coronation by the Labor caucus will be to scrap the hated vendor tax on the sale of investment properties New premier to axe property tax ]
• · Douglas Rushkoff has an interesting yet disturbing take on suicide bombs and their coverage in today's mediasphere News of one suicide leads to another ; The Naked Eye of the Sun Herald fame notes: Walt Secord, Premier Bob Carr’s larger than life media minder, was in Beijing a week ago addressing the State Council Information centre as a guest of the Chinese Information Minister. It was attended by 200 budding spin doctors from the central administration and provinces. ‘We discussed dealing with the media in the lead up to the Olympic Games in 2008 and how to respond to crisis issues such as mad cow disease and the recent formaldelhyde-in-beer health scare,’ said Secord, who has spent the past 10 years wheeling ‘the truth trolley’ around the NSW Parliamentary press gallery dispensing press releases and informed leaks to the media. When Carr steps down on Wednesday, the genial Canadian-born (Indian) spinmeister will be moving to fresh pastures, but where? China? Putting a spin on the Olympics and Mad Cow
• · · A judge and a DPP: which one served the public interest? via Webdiary; If we could gather Australia's 25 dead and living PMs in this grand lecture theatre to muse on government and media, I’d specially want to hear from Alfred Deakin Grattan on gatekeepers and gatecrashers
• · · · Bob Carr woke at two o'clock yesterday morning. Even in the recent desert heat of Dubai, he had not perspired. But in the pre-dawn chill he sat up in a cold sweat. I have a sneaky way of entering people’s dreams or nightmares If you took the politics out of Bob Carr there would be nothing left ; Bob Carr returned to his grass roots on Friday night to thank his trade union "comrades" for a decade of power Praise for the workers and a parting shot
• · · · · Estate Tax Advocates Shift Moral Spotlight onto Unbridled Inheritance ; Document Release Excludes First Bush Administration White House To Withhold Nominee's Tax Returns ; A panel of 36 distinguished public policy experts and scholars—ranging from Nobel laureate Milton Friedman to Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey—has selected the Internal Revenue Code as the No. 1 item on this year’s Human Events list of the Ten Most Harmful Government Programs. Ten Most Harmful Government Programs
• · · · · · Union threats to leave AFL-CIO generate waves, new possibilities Labor Split a Mixed Bag ; Female union members are gaining clout, but are still shut out of top labor positions Women’s Work ; Let's Put the Nature of Work on Labor's Agenda

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A trend is something that appears to be happening but is in fact an illusion. All we know is what has happened; what will happen is mere speculation. Even what is happening is shrouded in mystery because it takes time to record and interpret observations. This doesn’t present a problem if history is what you are interested in, but trends are used mostly to pronounce on current affairs or to predict future ones Trends in high places

The Blog, The Press, The Media: I Need My Blogging Fix
Publishers are starting to take notice of bloggers, the art of keeping an online Web log.

Blogs are being both packaged up into books as well as getting bloggers noticed in the publishing world.Some publishers say the more a blogger gets noticed on the Web, the more they want to publish their works. An associate editor at Riverhead Books says blogging can really help writers find their voice, a key element in a saleable book.

• Bloggers Getting Publishing Attention [ Stephanie Klein's To Blog Or Not To Blog ; We're All In The Same Gang Your blog is like a pedestrian walkway: no traffic ]
• · IT'S addictive. There's compassion. There's want. There's misery. Ms. Balossini, 28, an executive secretary from Prospect Park, N.J., wasn't describing a hot summer beach read but a blog about the trysts, triumphs and heartaches of a young New York City woman named Stephanie Klein Reader, I Dated Him ; Greek tragedy
• · · Ashes blog: First and Final Tests ; Almost every person in Melbourne is caught on surveillance cameras at least 100 times a day. Pretty soon, cameras will be like smoke detectors: They'll be everywhere State of Surveillance
• · · · MY|Blog for Pocket PC ; Internet phenomena. Memes Top 10 Web fads
• · · · · Journalist fired for sexy blog ; James Snell is Experimenting with Atom feeds ; A blog is much better at tearing things down people, careers, brands than it is at building them up A Blogging Revolution? 'Give Me a Break'
• · · · · · In the era of homeland security, public safety, and sediments of lessened privacy, more and more public video surveillance and public web cameras are appearing on our street corners. They are protecting us, they are monitoring us, some cameras around Parliament Houses entertain us Cities opening more video surveillance eyes ; Video surveillance questioned

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Take two bloggers from opposite ends of the overheated political debate, then ponder the fate of an increasingly Uncivil society

Ach, as a a veteran Apple addict it is again time to tell one person at a time and in every time zone to listen to something different and a bit crazy so tune in to iTunes. Why? Well, these days discovering and enjoying podcasts is now as simple as shopping for extreme escapist and erotic eBooks or coldplay music or even text messaging Petra Gerard at the Ritz ;-) Podcasting—the ability to time-shift and download your favorite radio programs (NPR has been a pioneer here) and subscribe to a multitude of homegrown audioblogs over the Internet—has, despite a grab bag of free tools, inconsistent feed-management styles, and a hodgepodge of largely disparate content, grown rapidly over the last 12 months Crazy for iTunes 4.9: Apple Has The Technology

The Blog, The Press, The Media: The Unbearable Lightness of Blogging
Margo Kingston of Webdiary Fame was absolutely astounded when she read about the fate of a blog named "Hunter Holden Sucks"

G'day. Here's a successful legal ploy you can expect more of by people with lots of money to use to close down criticism on the web by people with little money. What do you think?

• Shutting down blogs: "sucks" and the tort of injurious falsehood [Shannon The Car Dealer & The Blogger ; Technology and IP Business No right of free speech for Australian critical website; 3g newsroom Legal threat to bloggers ; ethics forum Legal threat to online posts ]
• · Commercial searches prove a hit for Sensis ; Mark Glaser Did London bombings turn citizen journalists into citizen paparazzi? ; John Naughton Why I have serious doubts about the 'citizen reporters'
• · · A British teenager said on Monday he had launched a low-cost airline from his bedroom, becoming possibly the youngest airline boss in the world Teen launches airline ; Blogometer
• · · · Chris Abood Series on The changing face of media ; Journalists inside Rupert Murdoch's The Sunday Telegraph are comparing it to The New York Times's infamous Jayson Blair episode, when a reporter for the august newspaper was caught short on sources in 2003 and departed, taking a couple of the most senior editors with him Storyteller departs
• · · · · Now this story back in 2004, was a "real" embarrassment for the Government, over which people may well go to jail Jailed for telling the truth? ; Bush's right-hand man is dispatching his troops to smear Joe Wilson -- and save himself. He may win in Washington, but the special prosecutor will have the last word Rove's War
• · · · · · Conflict as marketing strategy ; Jay Rosen: I don’t think we as journalists can sort of pick and choose which sources and which obligations we’re going to honor, and say, well, this source doesn’t seem to have good motives, I’m not going to take his Feeding the beast

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Stick a fork in it. "Citizen Journalism," as the moniker describing John and Jane Q's ability to create their own media, is done. The shark has been jumped Shark Bites Citizen Journalism Czech out also Tim Porter’s Blogging the Beat series

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Living high on the blog
When Melburnian Darren Rowse began his first experiment in blogging a little over two-and-a-half years ago, he was part of a group starting a new church and merely wanted to keep a record of what was being done.

Today, he earns a nice round figure from his many blogs, enough to make it a full-time occupation that's catapulted him into the highest tax bracket. He advises companies that want to explore how blogging can enhance their products or services, speaks about blogging whenever he can and is part of an emerging Melbourne business network designed to support and resource micro-businesses in the inner-northern suburbs. Rowse started his first blog, the Living Room, in November 2002. "I quickly discovered nothing posted on the internet is private and that hundreds (and soon thousands) of people around the world were interested in what I was writing because they were thinking through similar issues," he said. "I discovered the power of blogging and quickly became addicted." After a year, Rowse started a digital photography blog, his biggest with daily visitors numbering between 11,000 and 16,000

• Digital photography blog [ Amazing Apple Quarterly Results ; Amazingly Crazy Why I am the Youngest Richest Man Walking on the MacPlanet ; Challenges facing fledgling democracies in Russia and Eastern Europe]
• · Three newspapers lie unopened and unread on my kitchen table London Bombings: The Unread Newspaper ; Newspaper publishers are increasingly turning to readers to spruce up their copy: citizen journalism Hold the front page! Newspaper morphs into online town square; What does News Ltd want from the Federal Government for The Daily Telegraph to support censorship of free-to-air, but not pay TV television programs? The Daily Tele's censorship hypocrisy ; Journalism, at its core, is an uncomplicated concept: Reporters find things out and tell them to other people. In that sense, then, there are two parts to the journalism: Knowing and Communicating. Engaging in one without the other breaks the equation Journalism Weather Report: Cold Front Reaches Cleveland ; Toward Freedom: a progressive perspective on world
• · · Part big sister, part flight simulator, part video game and part world atlas Google's free 3-D service ; Could Google's quest for news quality leave alternative sources in the dust? Google's Bias for Bigness ; Today, you can find what you want from the comfort of your own home, and at a fraction of the cost of hiring a private investigator Locate Anyone
• · · · A forum for political discussion for Western Sydney and beyond Katoomba of Feminism ; With a green light to open a new casino in Britain and Betfair on the boil in Tasmania, everything is going right for the Antipodean punter Kerry Packer Packer gambles on Blair
• · · · · Why are kids' online antics seen as the key to reviving democracy? It is not young people that are disconnected from formal politics, but political institutions that are disconnected from young people Searching for citizenship ; Srdja Trifkovic, Chronicles’ foreign editor, is in serious danger of his life Chronicles Foreign Editor In Danger
• · · · · · Journalists are creating public awareness of an emerging class of people called The New Republicans ; If bloggers get the same press freedoms as traditional media, what will prevent corporations like Halliburton from using blogs to pour unregulated money into politics? Beware of the "Halli-bloggers"! ; RDF is a modern technology with an active and growing body of support from academia and the digital content production and distribution industrie New Classification for Web Page

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A Sad Day for London & Liberty
O THE sad day! A series of explosions ripped through London's underground system on Thursday morning. 6 Blasts Rock London, Killing at Least 30 ... At least 90 casualties in London explosions, subway closed Terrorist Explosions rock London
The world's most powerful leaders got down to talks in Gleneagles, Scotland, on Thursday on aid to Africa and climate change, but the summit was brutally overshadowed by a series of explosions that caused casualties and at least two deaths in London London blasts upstage G8 summit - Olympic bid team devastated by London blasts news
United States: September 11, 2001
Spain: March 11, 2004
England: July 7, 2005
Today, we are all Britons

Matters Arising from the Terrorist Bombing: After the joy of winning the Olympics, Evil came swiftly , however, How to verify a terrorist group's claim of responsibility

CODA: James Bond once said, ‘You only live twice.’ Once when you are born and again when you face death. He may well have been referring to my life ... My life, all of it, comes down to 7/7

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God said to Abraham, "Leave your country, your family, your father's house, and walk inward to the land I will show you." This is what true spirituality demands: to leave everything we know; to relinquish everything we are...simply trusting that when we get "there..." we will know. Buddha did that. So did Lao Tzu, Jesus, and Mohammed. They all left home. But we do just the opposite. Worse! We take refuge in those who taught No Refuge. We imitate those who demanded No Imitation. We study each other's floor plans, and borrow each other's furniture, when what we really need is to leave home.
-Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro

Hello, and welcome to my miserable attempt at marking the day I began writing my obituary ... It is hard to believe that it was 25 years ago exactly ... Is the self that is conscious of being alive in the present meaningfully continuous with any version of the self in the past? I have journal entries from years ago, describing the exact feelings I face today. For a host of reasons the return of old feelings and reminders lurk on. Reminders aren't just tied to the calendar. They can be anywhere — in sights, sounds and smells, in the news or on television programs. And they can ambush you, suddenly flooding you with emotions when you drive by the restaurant your sister loved or when you hear a song your friend liked so much.

Since early morning I have spent quite a bit of time sitting here, trying to think how can I revisit my thoughts about a certain river incident, but I am failing miserably. I'd like to add something deep and meaningful here but I don't have the words, so I'll copy a paste my old attempt Strictly Iron Curtain: One Man Survives a Crossing

Beyond Grief: Politics is the art of the possible
When loved people die, they are agonizingly present – hyper-present – in our heads, and agonizingly absent everywhere else. All over the mind, like ink spilled on a table, cherry juice poured over ice cream, saturating everything – and nowhere at all, nowhere to be found, always always missing, gone, not there, absent – a hole, a blank, a negation, a continuous ever-renewed check, stopping, lack, gone-ness – in the real world.

Once there were three of us but now I am the only one. These were friends with whom I was certain I would grow old. We had known each other from school and ar,y days. We were one soul in three bodies. Some part of their death reached out to us all.

• So so so true. Life ebbs and flows Did I really crossed that? Destined for Immortality like a heavy axe in the distance chopping into a wet log [Ernest Hemingway, in a moment of drunken self-parody, once described world literature as a boxing circuit. The only matchups that scared him, he said, were against the traditional Russian heavyweights: Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy. I've often seen that little acts of evil come together and form a bigger one – a theme in all Slavic literature – and the same is true of little acts of kindness Dream as if you'll Live Forever; and Live as if you'll Die Today ; No one, who could have heard my emotional screams and saw the look of terror on my face could doubt for a single minute that I was actually in a place called hell! Digging up the surreal mirrors of truth ]
• · After the Velvet Revolution, I Count Myself Lucky to be Living in the Age of Digital Revolution. I want to live among the broken, because I too am broken, and I believe it's only in our brokenness that we find freedom and hope. I want to remain a dreamer ;
• · · Indifference is not a beginning, it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman ; The road to Gulags was built by hate but paved with indifference Cold River: Against all odds
• · · · No war, cold or hot, missed this tortured people ... As you all know, Czechoslovakia was then ruled by one of the most repressive regimes on earth. The conventional wisdom was that it would be the last of the Soviet satellites to undertake reform Prague's Second Spring ; The cause of Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution seems to be primarily shrouded in fog. Despite typical Western assertions, the primary building block for the Velvet Revolution appears to have been the revival of conscience and morality in Czechoslovakia A touch of velvet ; It is amazing that no person active in the cruel and murderous Communist regime in Slovakia or former Czechoslovakia was ever brought to justice. Everything is usually blamed on the "Totality". As if some abstract thing called "Totality" and not certain human beings tortured, imprisoned, deported and killed the many innocent citizens living in Slovakia from 1948 to 1989. There were a very few indictments and none resulted in a conviction Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death
• · · · · Back in September 1980, I was in Villawood, my Hollywood, when it was considered a place of hope ... In the Cornelia Rau case it looks like Immigration officials used the work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn as a guide, when they were not following Franz Kafka Cornelia Rau case a national disgrace Escape stories are not for the faint-hearted nor those who wish to remain deluded, but for everyone else political escape is a relief, like the collective popping of every helium balloon-headed star. I am way too bohemian to be razor-sharp wise, but hopefully my observations and links will cut apart why irony laced with caustic tone is sometimes necessary Where has all the water under the Cold River’s Bridge Gone? ; Like the cold there is no cure for grief. We may never be the same again. And this is an unwelcome reality Coping strategies
• · · · · · For Dvorák, the Stabat Mater was a work brought about by personal tragedy of almost incomprehensible proportions. He lost all three of his then living children: In the refrain of Just an Accident, the soprano sings: Life is fragile. Death is final. Any one of us can leave this hall, turn a corner and be no more. Dvorak Means Intense Harmony to Me; Not unlike acts of reading literature, acts of diagnostic listening enlist the listener's interior resources--memories, associations, curiosities, creativity, interpretive powers, allusions to other stories told by this teller and others--to identify meaning. 'What is wrong with me?' 'Why did this happen to me?' 'What will become of me?' This is where literary experiences come in. By partaking in the catharsis of the pity and fear of a great drama, we inevitably put our theatrical experience in relation to our emotional knowledge Through Hamlet to Narrative Escape ; How to be a perfect stranger ; Where would literature be without drowning if the remorseless deep had not closed over the head of Lycidas? or if Orpheus had not floated down the swift Hebrus, dismembered by the rout that made the hideous roar, but singing still. Rivers have received a great many things over the years as offerings - swords, flowers, blood, lamps, bullocks and girls in bridal costume Beyond Death's Door: Rivers compete in malice

Life is like a very short visit to a toyshop between birth and death.
-Desmond Morris

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On America's celebration of its declaration of freedom from despotic rule, citizens should show their colors by an act of defiance. The fact that Thomas Jefferson, who penned the document, was a free man and that his illiterate slaves were his property shows that liberation is found in the inkwell. The paradox of Jeffersonian democracy is that it works well only when everyone is free to read, write, speak and think deeply. America's cities and towns are filled with parades, fireworks, and barbecues. They celebrate the Fourth of July, the 229th birthday of America. But one hopes that -- on this fourth post-September 11 Independence Day -- the speeches will contain fewer bromides and more attention to exactly what is being celebrated. Put the "Independence" Back in Independence Day

Happy Birthday Amerika: Fourth of July
They died for their country," read the white granite memorial in the Concord, Massachusetts town square, honoring local men who died in the Civil War ... Newer headstones mourned Concord men who gave their lives in other wars
Independence Day. Here in America, we know the power of such words ... The genius of America was its independence. For most, it's connotations include fireworks, semi-annual car sales, barbecues, beer, and a bocce game on the lawn. At least that's how I was raised.

At this point, it's a forgone conclusion that we spend our Fourth of July parties blending frozen margaritas and running around the pool to facilitate our meditation on the historical significance of America's independence from England. So naturally, I ask myself exactly how things would be had our country not extricated itself from those good chaps across the pond. Let's discuss founding fathers, Liberty Bells and Samuel Adams (the patriot, not the booze).

• Declaration of 'Eccentricity' [Never forget great lessons of liberty Independence Day 2005: 'A new America' ; Google Add a freedom: To challenge status quo ]
• · Independence is an ongoing quest Why the 4th? ; Keeping alive the spirit of independence Land of the free and the home of the brave ; Troops start celebrating Fourth of July early in Iraq - ; How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes? Fourth Of July: A Cause For Celebration Or Mourning? ; This Fourth of July, while Americans are marching in parades and oohing and aahing at the fireworks, it would be a patriotic gesture to also spend some time thinking about what independence means today Celebrating Independence in the Era of Empire
• · · 4th July By Wiki ; Time to reflect on Declaration of Independence Independence Day 2005
• · · · Citizenship is the cornerstone of America's immigration success story Immigrants make us a better country ; What a way to kick off America's Independence Day: Nasa's big bang for Fourth of July Deep Impact Kicks Off Fourth of July With Deep Space Fireworks