Tim Dunlop on blogs and bloggers

Well-known blogger, Tim Dunlop - formerly of The Road to Surfdom and now blogging at News.com.au - writing on blogs and blogging. He decries any suggestion that blogging is exiting right in Australia:

"The other day Guy Rundle, writing at Crikey, suggested that the launch of this blog, Blogocracy, heralded the end of the independent blogosphere in Australia. It was actually a pretty petty article, accusing me of selling out, and suggesting the new writers at The Road to Surfdom were second rate. On the first accusation, all I can say is that it is typical of some on the left to accuse anyone who might make a quid out of something of having sold out, and it helps explain why their positions are often marginalised."

Read the full piece here. Rest assured, blogging is alive and well.....

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Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

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

The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

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#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas stopped him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed behind his back into their patrol car, where they say he shot himself in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story, says in an interview that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?

Mahler's Prodigal Son

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