Four hours before the fight home

picture by Susi

Palm Cove just after dawn

picture by Susi

Sydney artist Ana Pollak has won the Dobell Prize for drawing: Mullet Creek

To contrive a little kingdom, in the midst of the universal muck, then shit on it, ah that was me all over. (Samuel Beckett)

From the BBC

"Fourteen US soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash overnight in northern Iraq, the US military has said. The Black Hawk helicopter, carrying 10 soldiers and four crew members, crashed after experiencing a mechanical malfunction, a US statement said."

and

"At least 15 people were killed and 50 injured when a suicide bomber rammed a fuel tanker into a police station in the northern oil city of Baiji."

Meanwhile, in The New York Times ...

Bush Takes a Step Away From Maliki

"The White House is trying to distance itself from the Iraqi prime minister before President Bush’s troop buildup is re-evaluated."

Do we laugh or cry?

INDIAN Dr Mohamed Haneef has won his bid to have his work visa returned in a stunning victory in the Federal Court in Brisbane.

Dr Haneef was successful in his court appeal which was handed down at 12.20pm.

Federal Court Justice Jeff Spender made orders quashing Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews decision to cancel the former terrorism suspect's work visa on character grounds.

He also made an order in the nature of a prohibiton and/or injunction restraining Mr Andrews from acting upon the cancellation of the visa, and ordered he pay Dr Haneef's costs.

Justice Spender said that contrary to some media commentary which he described as "almost scandalous", the case wasn't a contest between the judiciary and the Howard Government.

He described remarks making claims of tension between judges and the Federal Government as ignorant and grossly misinformed.

Justice Spender said Mr Andrews fell into jurisdictional error by applying the wrong test when determining whether to cancel the visa.

"It follows that Mr Andrews decision must be set aside," he said.

From today's Australian (and it's one of Murdoch's!!)

The beginnings of an idea

We have a Sri Lankan friend, Uma Raj, who returned to work in Tamil Eelam about three years ago. She’s a young woman with a vision impairment that will continue to deteriorate until she becomes totally blind. Uma wants to help other Tamil people with vision impairment. She has written to friends in Australia asking for help with equipment and materials provision, with training and policy development as well as other capacity building tools. A few of us who worked alongside Uma for a few years in New South Wales disability organisations want to see if we can help. We’re not really sure what or how. We realise it might be difficult to provide aid to people living in a war zone. We want to provide support but to do so in a way that fosters some kind of purposeful two way exchange because we’re not interested in perpetuating neo-colonialist dependency relationships. We do want to transfer helpful resources from our rich society to the poorer circumstances of Sri Lanka but to do so in ways that change and benefit us somehow, just as we hope we may help people in Uma’s community to change for the better their own circumstances. And, of course, we want to be ‘right on’ (to use a very old and self-deprecating term): carbon neutral, gender balancing, capacity building, local resource and skill developing, sustainable. Are we bleeding heart liberals and do-gooding busy bodies? Probably. We hope to do good (and there's nothing wrong with that) but we’ll plan to do good well. Let's see what happens.

Aletsch glacier

Naked volunteers pose for US photographer Spencer Tunick on the ice-cold Swiss glacier of Aletsch, the largest in the Alps, for an environmental campaign about global warming on 18 August 2007.

Source: Fabrice Coffrini, AFP

Published: Sunday, August 19, 2007 6:33 AEST

I climbed to the Aletsch glacier when I was a 16 year old Boy Scout. We wore clothes. No one had heard of global warming thirty-four years ago.

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