Comment & Analysis
A letter to Pope Benedict
Dear Your Holiness,
In their own words
For real conservatives, no first time for anything
“Things like this don’t happen once if they didn’t happen before.” — US Republican Congressman Darrell Issa, on reports that Secret Service agents assigned to protect the US president when he was in Colombia spent their time with sex workers.
The second strongest Liberal Party?
“The task for us is to do everything in our power to recover, to rebuild and to renew and to be everything this party has been for more than a century.” — Anna Bligh after the ALP was wiped out in the Queensland state election.”
Or for the previous century
“I do think it’s important the Queensland parliament has a balance of political viewpoints. We certainly don’t have that now.” — Anna Bligh
As a Liberal stronghold
“I will always look back on my time as premier, as minister, as deputy premier, as a time when we were busy reshaping and transforming Queensland.” — Anna Bligh
Affection
“I hope this judgment won’t change the profound affection that the French people still rightly have for Jacques Chirac.” — Defence counsel Georges Kiejman, after the former French president was convicted of corruptly paying salaries for fake jobs to political allies when he was mayor of Paris.
A tale of two conferences and an ugly attack by the bosses on Auckland wharfies
Two important conferences were held in March for waterside workers in Australia and their comrades internationally. Although the conferences had different priorities, the MUA National Conference in Sydney and a meeting of international wharfie delegates under the auspices of the International Transportworkers Federation held in Aqaba, Jordan, both had an overriding objective:
