A report entitled, Not for Service, dealing with mental-health conditions in Australia, and released yesterday [by Health Minister Abbott], makes for distressing reading. A number of unquestionably impleccable organisations were involved in the extensive nationwide research leading to the comprehensive Report. On release of the Report Abbott was asked what he was going to do about what even he conceded made for sad reading. Well, yes, but it was a matter of how the health-dollar was spent, Commonwealth-State relations, etc. etc. So, probably very little, other than pious platitudes. For the practical issues which are a fact of life out there in Australia read a transcript of the "report" on the Report on The World Today program on ABC Radio National yesterday. You can even listen to the "report" or download it if you are so inclined.
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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