Australia's Political Malaise

With Election 2016 well underway (but still with about 6 weeks to go… yeesh), it’s looking increasingly like we’re going get more of the same. What happened to Australia’s politics that made it so insipid, so unable to hold forth a discussion in which some may be worse off, but the result would be better for the country? The MacroBusiness blog has a theory on the 8 factors that have contributed to the dire political straits we find ourselves in: ...

May 23, 2016 · 2 min · karan

Comparing economic records

May 2016 marks 43 years and 6 months since the election of the Whitlam Labor government in 1972, and conveniently provides a mid-point for the two political parties - 21 years and 9 months of government each. Stephen Koukoulas uses this pivot point to provide a detailed comparison of their respective economic performances, and he comes up with more-or-less a dead heat, with a slight edge to Labor: The overall weighted average quarterly GDP growth rates since 1972 are 0.80 per cent for the Labor Party and 0.77 per cent for the Liberal Party. This shows that the economy grows faster, on average, under Labor than the Coalition by 0.03 per cent per quarter, which is a touch over 0.1 per cent per annum. ...

May 2, 2016 · 1 min · karan

The (true) killing of Bin Laden

Not sure if this is the kind of article that sparks revolts or is conveniently ignored for real politik - Bin Laden’s location was known to Pakistan, his killing was more about managing political realities than it was about the Americans finding him and taking him out: ‘The compound was not an armed enclave – no machine guns around, because it was under ISI control.’ The walk-in had told the US that bin Laden had lived undetected from 2001 to 2006 with some of his wives and children in the Hindu Kush mountains, and that ‘the ISI got to him by paying some of the local tribal people to betray him.’ (Reports after the raid placed him elsewhere in Pakistan during this period.) Bank was also told by the walk-in that bin Laden was very ill, and that early on in his confinement at Abbottabad, the ISI had ordered Amir Aziz, a doctor and a major in the Pakistani army, to move nearby to provide treatment. ‘The truth is that bin Laden was an invalid, but we cannot say that,’ the retired official said. ‘“You mean you guys shot a cripple? Who was about to grab his AK-47?” ...

May 11, 2015 · 2 min · karan

Ring ring

First Dog on the Moon so brilliantly captures the absurdity of the situation in Gaza: If you couldn’t laugh, you’d cry. Love that the Guardian Australia has this as a permanent fixture.

July 23, 2014 · 1 min · karan

First Dog on the Moon budget cartoon

First Dog on the Moon points out the smaller programs which have been slashed in the budget: Read it all. Crying with laughter.

June 11, 2014 · 1 min · karan