The Greatest Traitor: The Secret Lives of Agent George Blake
Roger Hermiston
Aurum, 2013
362 pages, $39.99 (hb)
George Blake was smart, resourceful and committed.
A teenage courier with the Dutch anti-Nazi resistance during the war and a British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) spy after it, Blake then picked the wrong cause, says Roger Hermiston in The Greatest Traitor, converting to Marxism and becoming a Soviet mole in the SIS.
1033
Going round in circles
Like the fans overhead
His mind can鈥檛 get the words out
And the spirit weighs like lead
Join the team,
Recurring dream,
Kill Team,
Kill Team
The heat it has no ending
And the isolation stings
Is this what they call 鈥楻&R鈥,
A bird with shattered wings?
Join the team,
Recurring dream,
Kill Team,
Kill Team
The face of that civilian
Lurks in fragile fits of sleep
They murdered him for sport
And laughed to hear his widow weep
Join the team,
Recurring dream,
Kill Team,
Kill Team
Routine operation,
Chopper dust-off, village street,
Next year will see the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, the charter of rights that the barons of old England forced King John to sign when they cornered him at Runnymede-on-Thames in 1215.
While we may doubt that the barons intended that the rights they sought should apply to ordinary folk, Magna Carta nevertheless effectively introduced the legal concept of the presumption of innocence 鈥 the principle that an accused person is innocent until found guilty beyond reasonable doubt by a jury.
The Victorian Coalition government looks set to go down in an ignominious defeat at the November 29 state election.
Several recent polls have given Labor a healthy lead of about 56% to 44% in two-party preferred terms.
The Coalition was narrowly elected 鈥 to everyone鈥檚 surprise (including their own) 鈥 in 2010, and thus look like being the first one-term government in Victoria since 1955.
This statement was released on November 12 by Socialist Alliance candidate for Pascoe Vale, Sean Brocklehurst, and Socialist Alliance candidate for Geelong, Sarah Hathway, in the November 29 Victorian elections.
* * *
Ford, General Motors Holden and Toyota all plan to close their vehicle manufacturing operations in Australia over the next two or three years. Tens of thousands of workers will lose their jobs in car factories and in factories making car components.
Supporters of women's reproductive rights gathered outside NSW Parliament on November 13. The push to amend the NSW Crimes Act to grant a foetus personhood rights is likely to collapse after a controversial Private Member鈥檚 Bill failed to be debated in the Legislative Council.
In February, an immigration database containing the identities of almost 10,000 asylum seekers was mistakenly published on the department鈥檚 website.
An investigation by another government office found the immigration department 鈥渂reached the Privacy Act by failing to put in place reasonable security safeguards to protect the personal information it held against loss, unauthorised access, use, modification or disclosure and against other misuse鈥.
The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre released the statement below on November 12 in response to the commissioner鈥檚 findings.
***
The Tony Abbott government has refused to establish a Royal Commission into the Commonwealth Bank, despite the clear recommendation of a landmark Senate inquiry into financial planning scandals at the CBA.
"The inquiry, which spanned 12 months and attracted a record number of submissions, scrutinised the performance of the corporate regulator [the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC)] in the wake of revelations by a whistleblower of misconduct and fraud in CBA's financial planning arm," the October 24 Sydney Morning Herald reported.
About 2000 people gathered at Roma St Forum in Brisbane for the Peoples' March against the G20 Summit on November 15.
Pride
Directed by Matthew Warchus
Written by Stephen Beresford
Starring Bill Nighy, Imelda Staunton, Dominic West & Ben Schnetzer
In Australian cinemas now
If you haven't seen the recently released Pride yet, you need to get to a cinema. It'll moisten your eyes, swell your heart, make you tap your feet and inspire you to join the next pride parade.
The Australian public has to foot a $500 million bill for hosting the G20 summit in Brisbane last weekend. Just before that, the public funded a delegation 鈥 including our Rambo Prime Minister, Tony Abbott 鈥 to the APEC summit in Beijing. We don't know what that excursion cost the public, but you can be sure it wasn't peanuts.
So was it worth it? After all, Abbott did not even try to shirtfront Russian President Vladimir Putin.
One of the more important promises that Prime Minister Tony Abbott made in September last year was to create jobs at a rate of 200,000 a year. But the scorecard for the first year is just 105,500.
The official Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) October national unemployment figure remained the same as in September at 6.2%. However, in the ACT, which usually has the lowest unemployment rate in the country at less than 4%, this has increased over the last four months to 5.4%. This is a direct result of the federal government鈥檚 sacking of public sector workers.
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