Friday, June 01, 2007

Battery Link Farm 31-05-07

The best of the recent blog posts, crammed into pens for your convenience.

LOCAL
Surfdom:
Ken A. Lovell on Barack Obama.
Mr Lovell also goes to town on an article in the Guardian liberally sprinkled with weasel words.
Ken again, with two fantastic posts on IR: one about Howard's socialisation of IR regulation, and another ripping apart the WorkChoices talking points (in his words, "let it carry that name like a rotting albatross").
Eric Martin writing about the insurgents in Iraq learning and studying from CoW tactics and procedures; the example he gives is a coordinated attack on response teams after a helicopter was downed. Frightening stuff.
And Mr Lovell comments on Bush's admission that he intends to keep troops in Iraq indefinitely. Money quote: "I’ve begun to think that it’s pretty much immaterial now whether the CoW reduces or increases its presence in Iraq or leaves it the same as it is now … events have acquired their own momentum. It’s now a regional conflict and it’s beyond the capacity of any one country, even the Most Powerful Nation the World Has Ever Known, to anticipate the way the future will play out, let alone control it."

Blogocracy, brought to you by Uncle Rupert:
The Good Tim (as I refer to him, to differentiate him from the Evil Tim) with a post about why WorkChoices isn't popular, and it has nothing to do with Julia Gillard being prettier than Joe Hockey.
Also, the Howard Government appears to have a very low opinion of the Australian public.
Joe Hockey foams at the mouth a bit (I had the misfortune of catching him on Question Time the other day, and he speaks like that ALL THE TIME - it's like he thinks slanderous sound-bites are a legitimate substitute for reasoned debate).
Tim also posts about why interest rates aren't necessarily the big problem for Aussies.
And most interestingly, Tim takes part in a blogging experiment, where a bunch of bloggers have written responses to the same question (link goes to Tim's response, which has links to answers by other bloggers). I would have written one myself, but I wasn't paying any attention to politics back in '96 so I don't feel I could give any kind of informed comment on what happens when government changes hands.

Around the traps:
Gummo Trotsky writes about Australian aid money not making it out of Australia.
tigtog with a great roundup of blog posts about the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Referendum.
Cast-Iron Helen uncovers this brilliant globe-trotting project which is much, much cooler than the name "cubic structural evolution project" makes it sound. Check it out!
Both Broken Left Leg and AnonymousJeremy highlight the idiocy of the "disagreeing with the treatment of David Hicks = ZOMG YOU LOVE TEH TERRORISTS!!~!" crowd.
Gristmill dissects the Global Warming Denialists' arguments. Yes, all of them. (h/t tigtog)
MachineGunWeez shows that when it comes to taxpayer-funded election campaigns, what goes around comes around.
Trevor Cormack @ Solidarity puts together a great rebuttal of anti-Labor talking points.
Bryan "Ozpolitics" Palmer with his breakdown of both the polling results and the bookies' predictions for Election '07. I'll be the first to admit that single polls are virtually meaningless - but 3-4 months of steady (within polling error) 58% support for Labor is pretty meaningful in my book, as is the trend of the betting markets over time...
Radio National did a show about the political impact of blogging. You can listen to the show or read the transcript over here (h/t Andrew Bartlett).

It's late and this little blogger needs sleep. Part II with the American blogs some time this weekend. Also, I was scared to find my little blog sitting on Bryan Palmer's blogroll feed. Jeez, now I'd better make sure I write something worth reading!

Cheers,
QS.

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