The decision to depose Rudd without destroying him showed decent restraint in the bloody context of those days.

from Crikey ......

Crikey Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

MASTERCARD, NEWS CORP, NEWS INTERNATIONAL, RUPERT MURDOCH, VISA, WIKILEAKS

Kevin Rudd's wife Therese Rein joined the Labor leadership war today, urging "ordinary people" to back her husband in the campaign against Julia Gillard.

Mr Rudd consistently outpolls Ms Gillard as preferred Labor leader but has been savagely criticised by Labor ministers who worked closely with him as prime minister for having a chaotic and dysfunctional leadership style.

As if noting a change of seasons, many Israelis are talking about a possible war come summer, or later this year, with an air of inevitability born of years of festering conflict that has periodically flared up into full-blown hostilities. The prospect of devastating counter-strikes and possible mass casualties seems to be taken in stride, seen as a lesser evil than facing a nuclear-armed Iran.

picture by Gus Leonisky (2011)

In a major victory for public health and what will hopefully lead to other nations taking action, a French court decided today that GMO crops monster Monsanto is guilty of chemically poisoning a French farmer. The grain grower, Paul Francois, says he developed neurological problems such as memory loss and headaches after being exposed to Monsanto’s Lasso weedkiller back in 2004. The monumental case paves the way for legal action against Monsanto’s Roundup and other harmful herbicides and pesticides made by other manufacturers.

What is loyalty in politics? Whatever you want it to be, if you're in the Labor Party. Ministers and other MPs working to keep Julia Gillard as Prime Minister have this week launched a sustained attack on Kevin Rudd for what they say is his disloyalty.

Minister and former leader Simon Crean is making a habit of castigating Rudd in public. His mini blitz of the media on Monday morning, in which he urged Gillard to sack Rudd, was a remarkable intervention. Here is one member of the cabinet publicly denigrating a fellow cabinet member comprehensively and with purpose - repeatedly. It is the public nature of it that is so breathtaking.

The Gonski report on school funding is excellent. But better outcomes depend less on money, ideology and theory than political courage and love of learning.

Poor old David Gonski, chairman of the committee advising government on school funding, who has had the cheek to think that first principles and common sense might be a good starting point in trying to unpick what Emma Macdonald described yesterday as ''Australia's decrepit, illogical and ad hoc school funding system''.

Former federal politicians have threatened to launch court action to prevent the federal government from reining in their taxpayer-funded travel entitlements and from blocking ''windfall'' pension increases to retired MPs and senators.

The Association of Former Members of the Parliament of Australia has attacked plans to impose new limits on the number of free air and rail journeys taken by former politicians and their spouses.

Australia's education sector has become a two-tier system of advantage and disadvantage, the Gonski review into schools funding shows.

In a recent article, Barbra Streisand asked: Where is the Fourth Estate when you need them?

Church leaders, health and charity groups have joined the federal government in condemning claims that conditions for asylum seekers living in flats and houses as part of community detention are ''luxurious''.