How re-assuring to hear PM Howard tell the people of Australia [well, those in employment - bearing in mind that working for 1 hour a week qualifies as being employed!] that the new IR laws will, in effect, readily allow employees to go and look for another job. In what orbit the PM and his side-kick, Kevin Andrews, live is debateable. More to the point, how far are they removed from the real world? To say the least Australia is on the cusp of needless disputation, anguish and division in the community as the proposed IR laws are debated. And to proceed on the basis of the PM's assurance that people should rely on his record is down-right scary. Wasn't this the PM who invented core and non-core election promises? See what even the SMHs' blogger has to say on the whole IR matter.
There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives? In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...
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