The launch of Gina's book was a love affair... Barnaby was so enamoured he could not stop himself lauding the small print... 

Deputy Opposition Leader Julie Bishop has dramatically upped the ante over the AWU affair by claiming Prime Minister Julia Gillard was involved in a breach of the law.

The opposition’s accusation followed Ms Gillard’s seizing of the initiative before question time with her second feisty marathon news conference on the affair in three months.

You better not poke, you better not reply, 

you better not tag, I'm telling you why- 

Facebook's Clause is coming to town! 

They're making a list, and checking it twice, 

then selling your profiles as consumer advice- 

Facebook's Clause is coming to town! 

picture by Gus Leonisky — central Australia (heat on the ground near 50 degrees C "in the shade")

This is a short critical analysis of a presentation by the famous meteorologist and climate change skeptic Richard Lindzen. 

From Richard Lindzen:

The public perception of the climate problem is somewhat schizophrenic. On the one hand, the problem is perceived to be so complex that it cannot be approached without massive computer programs. On the other hand, the physics is claimed to be so basic that the dire conclusions commonly presented are considered to be self-evident.

The more the Merde-och media tries to make a scandal out of dust, the more it's losing to the "social media"... Actually the social media is made of two major folds. One is the "people media" — thinking erudite smart, knowing shovels for what spades are — and the other fold is the "airhead stratosphere"...

The mass media is trying to confuse us by telling us that the "people media" is the same as the airhead loopy transmission about the colours of high heel shoes...

Meanwhile the mass media is having to put brakes on extroardinary "revelations" that have no substance except that:

from Crikey ….

No photos, please: Nauru 'unlike anything ever seen in Australia'

Tony Abbott has access to more focus-group polling than I do, and he's clearly doing something right because he still looks like romping home at the next election. But I really wonder if he is listening to the big message.

The Gillard government might have been rounding out a year of achievement with the Abbott opposition in retreat, but instead goes into the last week of Parliament facing its greatest crisis.

from Crikey …

Keane: deterrence goal locks us onto a path of cruelty

If fuels were drugs, then coal would be heroin. It is to environmental good health what smack is to personal good health. Industrial civilisation has been addicted to coal for centuries, and it’s killing us.

The vision is of an open processing centre, where asylum seekers live in cabins, are free to come and go as they please during daylight hours, and can speak to the media if and when they choose to do so.

But, two months after the first asylum seekers arrived on this tiny dot in the Pacific, the reality is very different to the expectation - and the build-up of frustration and despair among the 387 detainees is palpable.

How brilliant to see ICAC finally doing its job. All over town, decent people are rubbing their hands with glee. Not in revenge. More from the sense that, at last, the truth may come out about the self-serving ratbaggery that for so long ran this state.

Like captives in a slime-cave we scent nostril-quivering fresh air, and we want some.

A beautiful mosaic pilfered from the Palestinian front during World War I now hangs in Canberra’s Australian War Memorial, shoved awkwardly behind a newly built wall, testament to a growing national embarrassment. The mystery of Australia’s Elgin Marbles.

It was supposed to lay the foundation for a huge Free Trade Agreement, but the East Asia Forum has exposed a rift between ASEAN nations over control of the South China Sea, writes Damien Kingsbury.