IT HAD been his passion since he was a boy, inspired by his mother's love of antiques, but after collecting a vast array of Napoleonic objets d'art and recreating his very own ''Imperial palace'' in South Yarra, Liberal party powerbroker Michael Kroger is finally over his ''Napoleon complex''.

At an auction in the shadow of the grand Chateau de Fontainebleau just outside Paris yesterday, the Michael Kroger Collection, including imperial eagles, towering bronze candelabras, antique clocks, vases, paintings, chairs, sideboards, elaborate gilt mirrors and military paraphernalia, went under the hammer, raising more than $500,000 for the businessman.

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — As the board of Amgen convened at the company’s headquarters in March, chief executive Kevin W. Sharer seemed an unlikely candidate for a raise.

Shareholders at the company, one of the nation’s largest biotech firms, had lost 3 percent on their investment in 2010 and 7 percent over the past five years. The company had been forced to close or shrink plants, trimming the workforce from 20,100 to 17,400. And Sharer, a 63-year-old former Navy engineer, was already earning lots of money — about $15 million in the previous year, plus such perks as two corporate jets.

from Crikey .....

Tanya Plibersek takes the pledge

Charles Richardson writes

The gambling industry is up in arms about the Gillard government's proposed poker machine reforms; of course they are. Clubs NSW is leading the charge; understandable. But what about the Catholic clubs?

You see, there's several registered clubs in NSW that are known as the Catholic clubs. They were started years ago, generally by prominent Catholic businessmen or parents from the local Catholic school, and grew to a point where they took on a life of their own. They are well respected, very successful and, as far as I know, still hold true to their original Catholic ideals.

Politicians could be in for a pay raise but the government is shying away from responsibility because the decision is in the hands of an independent tribunal.

The independent Federal Remuneration Tribunal is undertaking a comprehensive review of politicians' pay.

It is expected to recommend MPs trade their current generous allowances for increases in base salaries.

Backbench salaries are tipped to almost double to $250,000.

And the pay packets of Prime Minister Julia Gillard, her ministers and also shadow ministers could be a whole lot fatter.

It was first reported in January of last year that the Obama administration had compiled a hit list of American citizens whom the President had ordered assassinated without any due process, and one of those Americans was Anwar al-Awlaki. No effort was made to indict him for any crimes (despite a report last October that the Obama administration was "considering" indicting him). 

one of the various end credit comments from the show "Two and a Half Men" written by Chuck Lorre.

Tony Abbott is a sore loser, afflicted by ''innate and deeply embedded sexism and misogyny'', and would use a future prime ministership to impose his simplistic views on the country, according to a provocative new book to hit the shelves tomorrow.

The new polemic by academic Susan Mitchell paints an intensely unflattering portrait of the man who would be Australia's next prime minister, sketching Mr Abbott as a graceless, obsessively competitive ''man's man''; a ferocious partisan imbued with conservative Catholic social values.

Randwick residents prepared a petition and wrote 37 separate objections opposing plans by the Coach and Horses Hotel to play amplified music in an outdoor area seven nights a week.

But when they turned up to voice their complaints to a full council meeting, the council refused to hear them with half of the councillors claiming conflicts arising from political donations made by the pub.

Seven of 14 councillors present claimed pecuniary and non-pecuniary interests prevented them deliberating on the application and, with no quorum to consider the issue, the frustrated residents were turned away.

Palestinian statehood bid signals long struggle ahead for equal rights .....

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas returned from New York to occupied Ramallah on the weekend as "an Arab leader of significant standing", according to writers from the liberal Israeli paper Haaretz.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan says the West practices double standards in regard to Israel's nuclear arsenal.

In an interview with CNN on Sunday, Erdogan noted that Israel is the only player in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons and asked, "Why is it that countries banning Iran from having nuclear weapons don't also ban Israel from having nuclear weapons?"

Turkey downgraded ties with Israel after Tel Aviv refused to apologize for its attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which left nine Turkish citizens dead on May 31, 2010.

I suppose I'm not alone in being part of a growing camp of media consumers who fall into the category of being perennially disappointed by the 21st century mainstream media's complete inability to produce any investigative material with real teeth. With all their access, budgets and resources, I still expect that once in while they will score a goal for the people who they are meant to be acting as 'watchdog' for.