A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill
Politics
Australian
Exclusive Club Troppo investigation reveals another Henson peddling kiddie porn. Where are you Hetty Johnson? Incidentally, the actual Henson image that’s mostly caused all the fuss is still up at The Age website (at least when I compiled this edition). I wonder if they’ll charge Andrew Jaspan with peddling kiddie porn? |
Andrew Landeryou explains why the Federal Government won’t let anti-corruption watchdogs off the leash.
Bron waits for the bloviating to start after Russian Communists threaten to beat and despise Harrison Ford if he visits Russia. After little more than six hours, the Daily Terror obliges.
Mark Bahnisch, Robert Merkel and various other tragics don’t want their Eurovision fun spoiled.
Jeremy joins a counter-demonstration.
Andrew Norton puts the reasons for Liberal voter defections to Labor at the last federal election under the microscope.
Harry Clarke laments the lapse into moral puritanism that condemns a WA politician for inviting a sheila to join a threesome (apparently he didn’t even sniff her chair afterwards).
International
Darryl Mason asks whether a war might be fought because of dodgy translations.
Jim Fryar notes that Gadhafi is making moves to free up Libya economically and socially.
Eric Martin looks at ominous developments in Iraq, with Ayatollah Sistani beginning to overtly countenance violence against US occupying troops.
If you’ve been dying to find out about Ukrainian inflation and the activities of its central bank, Edward Hugh has the post for you.
Michael Totten sees the “compromise” political deal in Lebanon as a big win for Hezbollah.
Guy Herbert highlights a worryingly authoritarian use of anti-terrorism laws against an academic researcher in the UK. Why haven’t these events received wider publicity?
Alex Harrowell looks at emergent fascistic tendencies of the new Berlusconi government in Italy.
Ken Jacobine speculates on indications of a military draft being imposed in the US after the Presidential election, irrespective of who wins.
Economics
John Quiggin is taken with the new phrase ‘peak car’.
Joshua Gans outlines his ideal FuelWatch system for consumers to get the best price (a very short-term online futures market) and cautions against entrenching a system that might stifle innovation.
Law
Helen “skepticlawyer” Dale does the hard yards on kiddie porn prosecutions in the wake of the Henson debacle and brings you links to relevant legislative provisions and a bit of analysis.
David Starkoff makes his contribution to the sordid atmosphere of this edition of Missing Link and extracts titillating sexual references in recent Federal Court judgments.
Peter Timmins examines the tightening of federal political donations laws, including closing the loophole that allowed Pauline Hanson’s erstwhile nice little earner.
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Issues analysis
Mark Richardson is critical of guest worker programs for Pacific Islanders. ((But it’s been a raging success in the NRL.~gilmae))
Joshua Gans links to a paper indicating the Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme has increased life expectancy by a year for the measly (gilmae) cost of $10,000.
Paul Frijters thinks maybe Tim Flannery is actually being a little cautious in describing large scale climate engineering projects as a last resort.
Roger Migently is appalled that Australia is fighting to exclude an ADF used munition from a cluster bomb ban. Liam believes that the munitions in question are the complete opposite of a cluster bomb.
Todd Zywicki highlights a book review purporting to analyse the demise of the humanities in universities:
He makes the case that humanities are trending down for three reasons. One, in a tougher economy, it’s not really worthwhile to spend a ton of money learning about the meaning of life instead of preparing for a career. Two, PC has taken away whatever value such moral studies used to have. Three, rather than grapple with big questions, the humanities have been focusing on minutiae.
Here at Troppo, Don Arthur continues his great series on equality and the contest of ideas surrounding it.
Will Wilkinson has a neat libertarian rejoinder for a journo who berates Cass Sunstein’s “libertarian paternalism” for being insufficiently paternalist.
Arts
Gummo is quite keen on flying penises, so I’ve included this YouTube video (via Grodscorp). I certainly hope it isn’t a child’s dicky, we wouldn’t want to offend Hetty or any of the f***wit moral panic-prone Tory bloggers highlighted at left (oops NPOV slipped again) |
Friday’s seizure of those 20 photographs by Bill Henson was the cause celebre that had everyone shrieking over the weekend:
- Tim Blair went the selective quotation on Age art critic Robert Nelson;
- Andrew Bolt turned Tim’s pair of selected quotes into a superb ellipsis, spanning four paragraphs of Nelson’s article;
- Gummo Trotsky presented a couple of Henson photos already published on the web with an assortment of other freely available images for lovers of ‘degenerate art’;
- MK was in no doubt that Henson’s work is not Art;
- Kev Gillett wasted little on the question “Pornography or Art?” – Henson’s work is pornography and that’s that;
- Currency Lad had a go at Robert Nelson and other supporters of Henson and matches their ‘tsunami of 1 apologetics’ with references to Josef Fritzl and Queensland Judge Sarah Bradley;
- Australia’s most hysterical tabloid, The Goldcoast Bulletin, hailed the police raid on the Roslyn Oxley9 gallery as a victory for decency to equal the stiff sentencing of a local ‘sex fiend’;
- Catharine Lumby and Kevin Donnelly went head-to-head in The Age – Lumby called for ‘informed and rational debate’, Donnelly was already certain that some of the seized pictures depict a child under the age of 16 in a sexual context and argued that Australia should have stood firm on the Lady Chatterley ban;
- David Tiley defended Bill Henson against the lazy charge of paedophilia;
- Saint went the selective quotation on David Tiley but left the task of arguing the case against Henson to an assortment of others;
- Bernard Slattery agreed with the expert opinion of ‘authorities and the Prime Minister’ that ‘a 12-year-old should not be free to flaunt her nakedness and sexuality’;
- Andrew Bolt revisited the issue to go the selective quotation on Michelle Grattan and started inventing facts – ‘to take the pictures, Hansen had to strip a 13-year-old, which is the most disturbing fact of all’;
- Audrey found the poses and settings in some of Henson’s other photographs sufficient evidence of pornographic intent;
- Apathetic Sarah decided that Hetty Johnson has lost the plot;
- Gary Sauer-Thompson found it an example of conservatism as farce;
- Graham Young argues for a common sense approach.
More at Alison Croggon, Chris Boyd, Nicholas Pickard and the Art Life.
David Mitchell reviews Toby Litt’s I Played the Drums in a Band Called Okay.
FX Holden celebrates Bob Dylan’s 67th birthday.
Flop Eared Mule rules the rule over the music documentaries at the Sydney Film Festival.
Bud Parr picks the hilariously odd-ball Flann O’Brien’s At-Swin-Two-Boyds as his favourite work of the literature of procastination. ((Anyone doing a research thesis should read Thomas Bernhard’s Concrete, its quite cathartic when one looks back at the doubts and uncertainties one encounters attempting to find a point of entry on starting an ambitious project. ~SH))
JourneyMuse on Esteban Salas, an 18th Century Cuban composer.
Prima la musica with ambivalent feelings about Opera Australia’s upcoming Don Giovanni.
Sport
tigtog was there to see the Waratahs win. Matt at Green and Gold Rugby also reviews the game here and here.
Tony Tannous, Mike Salter (who also reviews the Olyroos win over Ireland and a couple of other things) and Leinad all review the Socceroos versus Ghana “friendly” which sounds like it probably should have been labelled a “boring” instead.
Andrew Bartlett suggests the future of Australian Soccer lies at the feet of refugees.
Cricket-Blog keeps up a half-hearted watching brief on the Oz versus Windies First Test (it just isn’t cricket season).
Snark, strangeness and charm
Lauredhel reproduces some old advice on why kids shouldn’t be left to handle things for themselves.
Jeremy goes to church.
Geoff Robinson wishes more people – journalists, for example – read government reports.
Harry Clarke reports on the move to free, online access for the commentary journal, Agenda.
RuddRLess note the emergence of the influence of the Scores Doctrine in government policy.
Cam Riley recalls the days of swinging the prop on a plane to get it started.
dr. faustus reports on the odd development of people lining up outside of an always-open store for a product that does not officially exist yet, and wants to one-up them.
TroppoSphere, in case Missing Link email subscribers haven’t noticed, is now available as a convenient gateway to a world of news and expert opinion and analysis for those with feed reader phobia. It contains feeds to most of the blogs and other sources whose best/selected content we most regularly feature in Missing Link, as well as general news feeds and those from selected online magazines like openDemocracy, Reason, Slate, Spiked, New Matilda, Australian Opinion Online and Online Opinion. |
- hysterical[↩]
Penis aerodynamics is fascinating, ain’t it.
Just to make things clear – as far as I know, the flying penis in the video was filmed with its owner’s consent and I’d defy anyone to conclude that it was being depicted in a sexual context.
While it in no way compares with the recent titillating sexual references in Federal Court reasons for judgment, I’ve always thought this bit of somewhat-related information in Z v Minister for Immigration, a Federal Court case from 1999, was interesting:
“… it should not be thought that the fact that consensual sexual intercourse between unmarried adult Muslims is a crime in Iran is entirely surprising. During Cromwells time, fornication was a statutory crime in England (see the Incest, Adultery and Fornication Act of 10 May 1650, reprinted in Firth and Rait (eds), II Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642-1660, 387-89), although it ceased to be so on the Restoration (see Holdsworth, 6 History of the English Law (2d ed), 165-66; Blackstone, 4 Commentaries on the Laws of England, 64) and has not been so since. (Note that Blackstone was wrong to assert that, under the Cromwellian statute, a second fornication offence was a felony without benefit of clergy.) However, it would appear that legislative bodies in colonial America of like mind to the Cromwellian Parliament enacted legislation similar to the English Act of 1650: see, eg, Pollard v Lyons 91 US 225, 227-28 (1875), referring to such a Maryland statute enacted in 1715; and, even today, fornication remains a statutory crime in a not-insignificant number of American States: see 2 Am Jur 2d, ‘Adultery and Fornication’,
An erudite judge indeed.
I hate it, but I admit I appear to have been quite wrong in my post about the so-called Australian “cluster bombs”. The SMArt 155 weapon is apparently not a cluster bomb in the way we usually understand it. According to a report in The Age, “Each round contains only two sub-munitions, has independent, reliable and redundant self-destruction mechanisms, and a self-neutralisation mechanism, and as such cannot reasonably be categorised as risking unacceptable harm to civilians.” although I do wonder what acceptable harm to civilians might constitute.
I have kept the post, as a reminder to myself, and perhaps others, of the dangers of going off hot, half-cocked and unresearched, but have posted a retraction as an update.
Thanks to Liam.
No worries Roger. Any chance to let the inner war nerd out I’ll happily take.
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