In a small detached bungalow on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City a teenage girl gently cries. Her name is Que. She is 17 and pregnant, but she cannot keep her baby. "I really want to," she quietly sobbed, "but my family is too poor...
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to World  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> T WOULD be "irresponsible" for Australia to put a medium-term goal for reducing greenhouse targets on the table before the Government receives the advice of expert Ross Garnaut, the Prime Minister said.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to Environment  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> As I heard the news of the demise of the Right-wing Coalition in the Polish Elections I wondered if the fall of yet another of Bush's allies was a bad omen for John Howard, whose Australian coalition faces the voters on November 24.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to World  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> In the race for the highest office in the land, we showed the collective maturity of 3-year-olds. Mr. Gore was taken to task for his taste in clothing and for such grievous offenses as sighing or, allegedly, rolling his eyes. We’ve paid a heavy price.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> Every so often a quote comes out of the Bush administration that leaves you asking: Am I crazy or are they? Yes, those silly Democrats. They’ll raise taxes for anything, even — get this — to pay for a war!

Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> The Blackwater case fits perfectly into the broader pattern of the administration's almost total failure to enforce the law against corporations. More than in most criminal law areas, prosecution of corporate criminals has an element of deterrence.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> “In a high-profile incident in December 2006, a drunken Blackwater contractor killed the guard of Iraqi Vice President Adil Abdul Mahdi. Within 36 hours the State Department had allowed Blackwater to transport the Blackwater contractor out of Iraq.”
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> Enough is enough. Last week the Republicans showed once again just how anti-black their party really is. The G.O.P. has spent the last 40 years insulting, disenfranchising and otherwise stomping on the interests of black Americans.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> NO ONE knows more about tawny frogmouths than Gisela Kaplan. And she is smitten. "I have watched them copulate, build nests, brood and raise offspring from just metres away," says the Armidale scientist, who has spent thousands of hours, day and night...
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to Animals  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> Iraqi investigators have a videotape that shows Blackwater USA guards opened fire against civilians without provocation in an incident last week in which 11 people died, a senior Iraqi official said Saturday.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> With their automatic weapons gripped for battle, and only a slim strap securing them to the craft, the men looked as if they were self-consciously re-creating the movies of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude Van Damme.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> Right now it’s just a petition drive on its way to becoming a ballot initiative in California. But you should think of it as a tropical depression that could develop into a major storm that blows away the Democrats’ chances of winning the White House...
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> The men in this poor farming community were seething. A 13-year-old girl was brought to a doctor’s office to have her clitoris removed, a surgery considered necessary here to preserve chastity and honor. The girl died, but that was not the source...
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to Society & Culture  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> Republican operatives hired an Idaho telemarketing firm to jam the lines to prevent people who needed help in voting from getting through. The scheme was a direct attack on American democracy. The ploy may have been coordinated out of the White House...
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> The Bush administration quashed all attempts to investigate the events of 911. He said it would interfere with the war on terrorism. But --had 911 been properly investigated the disastrous and counter-productive "war on terrorism" might have been avoided.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> US President George W. Bush was a "dunderhead" for thinking that sending troops to Iraq was making the world a safer place, an outspoken Australian politician said yesterday.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to World  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> Demonstrators protesting the visit of U.S. President George W. Bush clashed with a pro-Bush group in Sydney, a day before a rally is expected to attract 7,000 people. The protesters have a range of causes from the war in Iraq to human and labor rights.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to World  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> From gay activists to his former colleagues in the Senate, few mourned the downfall of Sen. Larry Craig. But though the Republican senator from Idaho has resigned his seat, NAM Editor Sandip Roy wonders what it was exactly he did that was so wrong...
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> Internationally-recognised human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC says Australia's courts are becoming irrelevant because of the lack of a bill of rights. Mr Robertson says Australia's failure to adopt a bill of rights may explain why the nation has...
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to World  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> Apparently Bob Allen (R-FL) isn't the only homophobic right-wing loon addicted to furtive sex in public men's rooms. Idaho reactionary and well-known closet queen, Larry Craig, was arrested in a public toilet for misbehaving in a way closeted Republicans
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> Despite the revelations of Galileo – that our planet revolves around the sun, and not vice versa – human beings believe everything revolves around them. Despite the harsh lessons of Darwin – that we’re but a twig on the tree of life – we see ourselves as
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to Society & Culture  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> Much in the same way that US investors were "steered" into rip-off mortgage loans, the entire country has been "steered" into an economic crisis. The question is how to get out of it. The Bush administration similarly used promises of cakewalks and...
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> After investing a cool $84 million in devising a porn filter the Federal Government in the land down under are now reeling, thanks to a 16-year-old schoolboy. Tom Wood managed to hack the security measure within 30 minutes of it going live, last Tuesday.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to Science & Tech  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, has resigned. A senior administration official said he would announce the decision later this morning in Washington.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> Give the Bush administration credit for persistence. It just won’t let a bad idea die. On Friday, the Interior Department’s Office of Surface Mining proposed new regulations that it hopes will permanently legalize mountaintop mining
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> ..there are cops in disguise — usually as “anarchists” — trying to start shit so that the uniformed cops can smash skulls and shoot their water cannons and rubber bullets and tear-gas cannisters at the real protesters who were just peacefully protesting..
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to World  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> A friendly young antelope found cavorting with a dog along a walking path was probably picked up illegally in Wyoming and may be too tame to return to the wild, wildlife authorities say. Those who brought the animal from Wyoming could face charges.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to Animals  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> In 2000, when the Bush-Cheney administration was put in office as the result of a Supreme Court decision, we were respected throughout most of the world and also enjoying the fruits of the largest budget surplus of our nation’s history.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> It turns out that President Bush’s encounters with ordinary Americans have been micromanaged and laboriously controlled for the past five years to weed out the merest whiff of protest. ...“rally squads” of zealots are prompted to pounce on anyone...
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> The barn owl is easily recognizable with its heart-shaped facial disc. Its eyes are dark. Its back is covered with honey-golden feathers, contrasting with a cinnamon-white chest and belly. At 20 inches, it is a tall owl, with a wingspan of 46 inches.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to Animals  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> A professor has taken to ringing owls on his mobile phone. What is most remarkable is that they return his calls in a project that could revolutionise surveys of wild bird populations.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to Science & Tech  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> Most Americans remain sexually active into their 60s, and nearly half continue to have sex regularly into their early 70s, researchers are reporting today as a result of the most comprehensive national survey to date of sexual behavior among older adults.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to Health & Wellness  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> The administration’s logic-free claim about the Office of Administration follows fast on the heels of Vice President Dick Cheney’s laughable claim that he was immune to an open-government law because his office supposedly was not an executive agency.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> His aides are jumping ship, his inner circle is torn apart by feuds and his orders are being ignored. Bush has 17 months left in the White House, but he is now a rudderless leader who will soon have taken more than 436 days' holiday while in office.


Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> Always, we have betrayed them. We backed "Flossy" in Yemen. The French backed their local "harkis" in Algeria; then the FLN victory forced them to swallow their own French military medals before dispatching them into mass graves Now we are at work in Iraq
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> Children who participated in “Kid Nation,” were required to do whatever they were told by the show’s producers, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, or risk expulsion from the show, according to a copy of the contract signed by the children and their parents.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> The aftermath of the Vietnam War was brutal, but the parallels with Iraq are doubtful, write Anne Davies and Thom Shanker. For more than four years US President, George Bush, has resisted comparisons between the fighting in Iraq and the Vietnam War...
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> A dwarf performer at the Edinburgh fringe festival had to be rushed to hospital after his penis got stuck to a vacuum cleaner during an act that went horribly awry. Daniel Blackner, or Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf, was due to perform at the Circus...
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to Offbeat  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> Welcome to my my diary. I try to keep regularly updated with news and photographs of the birds, dragonflies, butterflies, etc that I see whilst out and about. On the way back I took a detour to Thornbury to see if I could photograph one of the local owls.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to Animals  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> The Bush Administration is now incriminated in the recent scandal involving Chiquita Brands International Inc. financially supporting a Colombian terrorist organization. " And of course terrorism is OK when it's not Islamic and serves U.S. interests...
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> It was raw, windy and dark on Whitefish Point, and Max Henschell was crouched in a wooden shack with a clipboard and pencil, scanning an empty beach and waiting for daybreak. There was nowhere else he'd rather be, the premier US location for owls.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to Animals  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> It can get to be 127 degrees Fahrenheit in the Australian town of Coober Pedy — and that's in the shade. The town's name comes from two aboriginal words meaning "white man in a hole." Coober Pedy bills itself as the "opal mining capital of the world,"
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to World  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> Picture this: Songbirds and squirrels have fallen silent, bedding down for the night. Bats have not yet emerged. All is still except for the crunch of your boots on the dirt path. Suddenly, something above you calls out. Hoo! Hoo-oo-oo-oo! Hoo! Hoo!
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to Animals  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> A SOUTH Melbourne brothel is trying to lure back customers discouraged by rising fuel costs by providing a discount if they produce their petrol receipt. The Pink Palace is giving clients 30 cents off their bill for every litre of petrol they buy...
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to Offbeat  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> She was wearing a Mayan dress, the traditional attire of indigenous people in central America, and the hotel's response was also traditional: throw her out. Staff at Cancun's five-star Hotel Coral Beach assumed this was another street vendor or beggar...
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to World  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> Nearly 600 volunteers have stripped for the camera on a melting Swiss glacier high in the Alps for a publicity campaign to expose the impact of climate change. The campaign is aimed at drawing attention to melting Alpine glaciers...
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to Environment  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> Barn owl and tawny owl boxes, made by Fakenham High School students for Pensthorpe Nature Reserve, have already proved their worth. The six boxes, put up in March this year on the 500 acre reserve, near Fakenham, are all occupied and one of the boxes...
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to Animals  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> A Dutch priest has been fined 5,000 euro ($A8,220) for ringing his church bells too loudly in the morning. The Catholic priest began ringing the bells at just after seven in the morning soon after arriving in Tilburg about six months ago...
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to Offbeat  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]> The Bush administration has done incalculable damage to the American political psyche, rendering previously assumed birthrights of citizenship to be nothing but superficial gifts granted at the pleasure of the all powerful Federal government.
Submitted by Samuel Clutterbuck to US Politics & Gov't  |   Note-it!  |   Add a Comment
]]>