Australian authorities are gathering more than 300,000 contact lists a day from personal email and instant messaging accounts, on behalf of the US National Security Agency, a new report has claimed.

I have quite a few friends who are politicians. A decent chunk of them earn much less than they could in the private sector. Some of them left much more lucrative jobs to go into politics. Others that I know undoubtedly obtained a pay rise by going into representative politics, and I wonder whether they would ever have earned as much in any other pursuit.

from john passant ….

Imagine any other election where one group’s vote is worth 350 times that of other constituents. To call that democratic would engender howls of laughter. And yet that is what happened today when the 86 Federal Labor Party parliamentarians voted 55 to 31 in favour of Bill Shorten as Labor leader.

FROM CHRIS FLOYD.... As we all know, the use of chemical weapons is the most heinous crime that can be committed by a brutal, aggressive government: a brazen act of state terror, an offense against all humanity. Those who perpetrate such actions put themselves beyond the pale; indeed, they rank themselves with Hitler himself, as a succession of America’s highest officials has pointed out in recent weeks.

from the stringer …..

As we will never return to 'business as usual' 23 international thinkers, government advisors and Wall Street money-men break their silence and explain how to establish a moral and just society.

Four Horsemen is an independent feature documentary which lifts the lid on how the world really works.

One of the most intriguing and challenging question that intelligent people ask me when discussing global warming is "WHAT TRIGGERED THE END OF THE LAST ICE AGE, considering humans were not indulging in burning fossil fuels?"...

Very very good question if you ask me... The answer of course is complex and not specifically due to a singularity... but to a confluent of happenings... There is a "natural" carbon cycle which has been observed through the record by studying ice cores. In this "natural" cycle there are ice ages and warmer climes... We know that. 

from the ante-empire report …

What if China was beating the US at its own super-power game in the Pacific and we didn’t even notice?

from politicoz ….

Tony Abbott declared that he offered an apology to Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak for drawing his country into the ugly Australian asylum seeker debate.

Oil and gas giant Chevron is under fire for asking prospective employees if they have ever had a miscarriage or an abortion.