http://www.sauer-thompson.com/ respected as well as despised" G.W.F. Hegel, 'Philosophy of Right']]> en-us lyncalcutt@gmail.com Fri, 09 May 2008 16:52:46 +0930 http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2008/05/informed.php Jason at Gatewatching advises a new report on Press Freedom in Australia is out and apparently there has been some headway. I haven't read it yet, but according to Jason the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance are looking forward to improvements in freedom of information over the next year. The... http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2008/05/the-limits-of-h.php Jeremy Sammut, a research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, has an op-ed in The Australian on health prevention, lifestyle illness and wellness tha tis based on his recent monographThe False Promise of GP Super Clinics, Part 1: Preventive Care He says that Australian governments have told us to... http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2008/05/social-catastro.php Ted Mullighan's Report on sexual abuse in the Pitjantjatjara Lands in the north west of South Australia. Most of the sexual abuse of young children documented by Mullighan appears to have been carried out by indigenous people, principally men and older boys. His report will make unsettling reading for the... http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2008/05/obamas-race-spe.php This is Barak Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech delivered at the Constitution Center Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in March 18, 2008. The text is here. It was a major speech.---more than the soaring rhetoric, his talk of a new politics and declarations about change and transformation. He focused on an uncomfortable... http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2008/05/gittens-on-econ-1.php Ross Gittens has an interesting op-ed on economic growth in the Sydney Morning Herald. He says that for nearly all economists, business people and politicians the need to maximise the growth of the economy is a self-evident truth and should not be questioned. Those who do so, eg., Clive Hamilton,... http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2008/05/telstra-rules.php As Mark Pesce observes that the cities we live in are no longer streets and buildings, but flows of people and information, each invisibly connected through pervasive wireless networks. Our world is already a wirelessed world and we use it to maintain our social networks, business and entertainment. Free wireless... http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2008/05/us-presidential-10.php Will Obama deliver the knockout blow to Clinton in the forthcoming primaries in North Carolina and Indiana? Obama is expected to take North Carolina. If he can pick off Indiana - and its precious white working-class vote - then he could finally land Clinton a mortal blow. Can he do... http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2008/05/has-the-iemma-g.php Has the Iemma government left it too late to privatise its electricity assets (generators and retailers)? Though Costa and Iemma suffered a humiliating 702-107 vote against privatisation at Labor's state conference on the weekend, they are determined to proceed with the sale despite entrenched union opposition. Will the government and... http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2008/05/nations-incest.php Can you psychoanalyze a nation and its people? Many are tempted to give "definitive" readings of a national character obsessed with masks, betrayals, violent penetrations, unconscious fears and death. They continue to think in terms of what the trauma means for our national psyche. And so it is with Austria,... http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2008/05/a-note-on-black.php Poverty and racism are a problem in the United States and it is addressed by Black Liberation theologians and the black church as part of a critique of the white Christian church: Steve Bell Black Liberation theology, as expressed by Reverend Wright, a pastor in the United Church of Christ,... http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2008/05/pentagons-hidde.php David Barstow in the New York Times disclosed how the Pentagon information apparatus has used friendly military analysts in a publicity campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance. This group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or... http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2008/05/economic-troubl-1.php The official story from the economic policy elite used to be that China ensured that Australia was firewalled against bad times in the global economy, and that working families (Howard 's battlers rebadged ) would be okay. The good times would continue and the commonwealth government was looking after working... http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2008/05/national-securi.php Paul Dibb makes a good point in an op-ed Sydney Morning Herald about national security: National security is a greatly abused concept. Threats to our national security should be restricted in definition to events that could seriously undermine our territorial sovereignty, democratic freedoms and rule of law, and basic economic... http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2008/04/cardinal-pell-w.php Cardinal Pell was doing the conservative attack on human rights at the Brisbane Institute, last night. Even though he argues for absolute moral truths against liberals and relativists Pell argued that rights are best determined by common law and parliaments according to the mood and flavour of the time. This... http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2008/04/murraydarling-b.php Maybe there is some movement on water reform in the Murray-Darling Basin under the Rudd Government. I see that Penny Wong, the Water Minister, holds to the view that we have been taking too much water out of the basin for far too long, that we have overdrawn the Murray...