In political fortune telling self-delusion is not helpful — the stakes are too high. This is my reading of the available evidence of our immediate political future. I think that we are witness to a frightening convergence of forces in Australian political and social life.

It is billed as the greatest show on earth. But the closer you get to the London stadium that will be the centre of the Olympic Games in just over a fortnight, the more it's starting to look like a militarised occupation zone.

East London has become lockdown London. The Olympics are the focus of Britain's largest security mobilisation since the Second World War.

A few hours after the Supreme Court upheld his signature health care legislation last week, President Barack Obama approached a White House podium, addressed the camera and declared that the nation's top justices had reaffirmed an important guiding principle of his presidency.

The Australian Defence Force stands accused of gross breaches of behaviour in regard to sexual harassment and assaults. There can be no doubt that instances of sexual abuse of young men and women occurred during the six decades examined by DLA Piper in its seminal report delivered to the government in October last year. The question now is: what to do about it?

The Armed Forces are to provide up to 3,500 extra troops for security duty at the Games after a private firm admitted it could not supply enough guards.

In a humiliating move, Home Secretary Theresa May has been forced to plead with the Ministry of Defence to release thousands more service personnel to work as security officers at London 2012.

I've been hesitant to write about the LIBOR scandal because what I want to say goes so much further. We now know that Barclays and other major global banks have been manipulating the calculation of LIBOR through the quotation data they provided to the British Bankers Association. What I suspect is that this is not a flaw but a feature of modern financial markets. And if it was happening in LIBOR for between 5 and 15 years, then the business model has been profitably replicated to many other quotation-based reference prices.

from the Drum …..

"You are the sort of man this act aims at," Magistrate Laidlaw told a 30-year-old Sydney man, George Harris, as he sentenced him to six months' hard labour.

from Crikey …..

The thoughts of Chairman Don - same old, same old

Many may wonder what in today’s world can writers and investigative journalists actually change. At the very least, they can chronicle the truth. And that’s no mean feat. The truth matters. Dissention can not only provide an alternative to official propaganda, but also a historical account for future generations of the deceptions and barbarity currently being carried out in the names of justice and freedom.

Missing those not interested ….

from politicoz ….

When it comes to asylum seekers, the government is at an impasse, and the situation is not helped at all by the absurdities served up by the opposition.