Club Troppo

In the last few years Australiaâs most lucrative export, coal, was dug up, and shovelled offshore,at a rate of 232 Million Metric Tonnes per year. Slightly more than half of that is used in steel making (metallurgical coal), and the remainder for burning as a fuel, mainly in p...

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Darwin's skyline before its latest development surge Darwin correspondent for The Australian Nicholas Rothwell had a fascinating long article in yesterday's edition, about what he argues is the crass over-development of our most northerly capital. As a resident of Australia's...

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Having read more about the Kafka Project - mentioned in an earlier post - I can say that it is really kicking some goals (pdf). For instance. The blind and visually impaired used to need a permit from the mayor of their municipality to use a white or yellow stick. In order to...

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Much as I hesitate to introduce yet another post with a plug for LNL, the interview with Chas Freeman last night obliges me to take the risk. Now retired, he was, as well as holding many other distinguished positions, US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War. Te...

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The thesis for Chalmers Johnson's book, Nemesis , is that democracy and empire are incompatible. A nation must choose between one or other as the two cannot co-exist. He writes: Over any lengthy period of time, successful imperialism requires that a domestic republic or a dome...

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Blogdom's Lazarus with a triple bypass is back on deck! As Ken pointed out a few days ago, doing justice to Missing Link was one helluva big deal solo, so he had to let it drop. Rather than have the whole thing wither on the vine, though, he figured a collaborative effort migh...

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There hasnât been much discussion of the Iraq war on Club Troppo lately. But Iâm impatient to form an opinion about what the Coalition of the Willing should do in general, and what the Labor Party should advocate in particular. Since Australia is part of that Coalition, with a...

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Thanks to F X Holden who took the opportunity of a recent grogblogging to point me towards the recent report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health and Ageing entitled " The Blame Game: Report on the inquiry into health funding ". I've not checked it all...

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Did any of you catch Inga Clendinnen on the Best of Late Night Live about ten days ago? I chanced upon the repeat halfway through -- more accurately I woke up at some ungodly hour after falling asleep with the radio on -- and was at once entranced by this quirky, lucid, sensuo...

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Who said the Belgians didn't have a sense of humour? (Well Monty Python for one - one of whose sketches was to come up with a derogatory term for Belgians.) Be that as it may the Belgians' administrative simplification plan is called the Kafka plan.

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I'm afraid I haven't been able to find time to complete Missing Link lately, despite squandering huge amounts of tiem tagging promising posts. I had hoped that using a feed reader would make the task easier, but in fact the opposite is the case. There are at least 150 new post...

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Cesare Beccaria 's reasoned argument against torture in 1764: A cruelty consecrated among most nations by custom is the torture of the accused during his trial, on the pretext of compelling him to confess his crime, of clearing up contradictions in his statements, of discoveri...

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Thanks to Nicholas for drawing my attention to this 2006 paper from Dani Rodrik , Professor of International Political Economy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government (at Harvard University) and one of the current high priests of development economics. The paper is a revie...

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German police prosecutors have finally taken action in the case of Khaled Masri . Masri was the German citizen who was kidnapped by CIA agents in January 2004 and flown to a base in Afghanistan where he was held, interrogated and beaten for five months. The agency had apparent...

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Take a gander at this series of photos showing the VW Phaeton Factory in Dresden. Then consider for a moment why Germany is the worldâs number one exporting nation , and weâre just digging up coal to flog to China. (Via Jwalk)

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In a letter to the Australian published today I raise two distrinct issues - both controversial. The first is whether Work Choices and Welfare to Work offers the ONLY way of boosting labour force participation or whether, as I believe, there is an effective alternative. This i...

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As usual a vintage performance from Krugman on Milton Friedman . Appreciative, critical, fair and informative. Enjoy.

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One of the themes of what passes for my 'professional life' in economics has been this. We're a small country and it's a big world. Now that might not be news to you, it's certainly wouldn't appear to be news to any of the politicians or officials that are endlessly intoning i...

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For no particular reason I happened upon and then started reading the Economist's guide to business etiquette in various great cities in the world. Reading this one on Paris was a little like visiting there again - so I post it over the fold for your amusement and reverie. The...

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HBO just aired Alexandra Pelosi's Friends of God . Given that the maker of the documentary is the daughter of the current Speaker of the House, it could be expected that the documentary would be politically charged - but like any good documentary maker there are no judgements:...

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