The Guardian 8 November, 2006
Dingo bytes
The runaway best seller Jonestown by ABC investigative journalist Chris Masters was dumped by the ABC board because of fears of legal costs i.e. that the book’s subject, radio shock jock Alan Jones, would sue the national broadcaster and thus legal costs would exceed the book’s profits. That was the official reason, anyhow. Publishers Allen and Unwin had no such qualms. The political bias of Howard government appointees on the board appeasing influential air wave spruikers wouldn’t have had anything to do with the ABC’s refusal to publish, would they?
I don’t know about you, but isn’t a university chair in science and religion a bit sus? The push to impose religious conclusions on science is well under way i.e. "intelligent design". The bloke who has been the philosopher of religion at Bond University, a private institution set up and run for the benefit of big business, now has such a chair at Oxford University. Peter Harrison sees science and religion as "overlapping". Here’s a bit of his obscurantism: "If you say God created the world, for example, it does seem to me that that’s a factual statement of some kind that may have scientific implications, and if it doesn’t, you have to wonder what kind of claim it is."
The funeral industry cleans up big time in the profit stakes. Like every corporate cowboy out there it cuts corners to cut costs, but it has a low public profile. In NSW a previously secret report into the industry has found a whole range of unethical behaviour. The Greens forced the release of the report and Greens MP Lee Rhiannon says it reveals a very shabby inquiry, simply taking just one written statement from a crematorium worker and phone statements from three other witnesses. Nonetheless, even that revealed such things as multiple cremations and the disposal of ashes in garbage bins. Lee Rhiannon said the Iemma Government has done nothing to dig deeper into claims. "This is a small and powerful industry so it’s not surprising funeral workers are reluctant to blow the whistle", she said.
CAPITALIST HOG OF THE WEEK: is ASIO. A secret ASIO assessment that allowed the Howard Government to detain and then deport US peace activist Scott Parkin and lock up asylum seekers Muhammad Faisal and Mohammed Sagar last year can now be examined by the three men’s lawyers. The Federal Court decision gives ASIO and the lawyers until November 17 to reach agreement on access to the files. The Government has refused to reveal the reasons for their assessment as security risks. Mr Faisal was taken to a Brisbane hospital in September when he became suicidal after five years locked up in Nauru, and Mr Sagar remains locked up there, the last refugee from the Government’s "Pacific Solution".