The United States of America has more than a century and a half of experience in meddling in the sovereignty of foreign nations, and with that in mind I'm going to make some endorsements in Tuesday's US congressional and gubernatorial elections.

My short answer is to vote Democrat in both houses and remove Republican control of congress. That way, the gang at White House Halliburton will have to work harder at bypassing the US Constitution for their own corporate ends.

An even shorter answer: In the state Governors races, vote for candidates from the Green Party of the United States.

I certainly have no sympathy for Saddam Hussein. But he should not be executed for his crimes. No more and no less than any other human being.

Why, in any case, should anyone's monumental lack of respect for human life be even partly condoned through the state-organised termination of his?

One can only hope that further charges of crimes against humanity continue to be heard against Hussein, especially with regard to the chemical weapon attack on Kurds in 1988.

Liberals pass motion for Qld crocodile cull - The Queensland Liberals have called for crocodiles to be culled because people are being eaten. [ABC Environment]

The choice quote comes from convention delegate Brett Blade, who is reported as saying:

"You can't allow crocodiles to come into the main street of Cairns and eat people - and that is exactly what's happening"

Au contraire Brett, I think they should close one lane of the Cairns main street to traffic for the exclusive use of crocodiles.

Firstly, a declaration of slight personal regret today. I was unable to attend the Walk Against Warming in Sydney this morning because it was... er, too cold.

The fact is that I am still recovering from the effects of a rather aggressive little URTI earlier this week. Despite the weather there were still 10,000 people who did the march from Martin Place to the Botanic Gardens, which is great news. More demonstrations around the world on November 4 coming up.

Sir Nicholas Stern's costings of the impact of climate change are massive, yet I feel that they could still be an underestimate.

I'm putting some of my video archives from the last couple of years onto Youtube. (Note, however, that I have decided not to place any videos of Adara on unrestricted access.)

First up, the one video that I have previously placed onto Youtube - that of the "Stop The Bombing" rally in Sydney on August 12 during the Israeli attack on southern Lebanon.

I'm continuing to migrate my cricket site into my new Drupal-powered content management system. This will take a while as I do this in my spare time (eg, rainy Saturday mornings).

For cricket afficionados, cricket.rickeyre.com will continue to be your starting point for all things cricket. I've added a Technorati-driven list of recent posts on the blogosphere with the tags "ashes" and "cricket" as a means of following discussion of the Ashes over the coming months.

I'm not sure at the moment how much effort I will be able to devote to commenting on the Ashes. I really enjoyed doing my bloggage of the 2005 series, and I'd love to get into it again.

I'm also eager to hear your feedback on my blog and other cricket stuff. If I reach the conclusion that I'm talking to myself then I'll probably start thinking about winding it up.

Comments, either in the box below, or through the contact page.

"I can confirm that interest rates under the coalition will always be lower than under a Labor government."
- John Winston Howard, misleading Parliament during Question Time, 2.11.06

GPS-Equipped Pigeons Enlisted as Pollution Bloggers - A project known as PigeonBlog is using birds carrying high-tech backpacks to create accurate, detailed urban pollution maps. Related projects are also taking flight. [National Geographic]

Now let me get this straight... National Geographic don't have a reputation for doing April Fools Day jokes in November, do they?

Which means that Pigeonblog is for real, too.

October 31 is All Hallows Eve. Over the years it has been corrupted into Halloween. The Church of England Diocese of Manchester is promoting a campaign called Halloween Choice. It's not intended to eliminate all the gruesome "fun" of Halloween, but rather to promote the positive and Christian aspects of All Hallows Eve and lobbies retail outlets to provide more diversity in their marketing.

halloweenchoice.org has more information. I think it would be nice to see this campaign taken up by the church in other areas, including Australia.

The report by Sir Nicholas Stern on the projected impact of climate change is out, as we all know by now. It is available in full from the British Treasury web site.

I'm flagging it now till I read the 27-page executive summary and then make some comments based upon that.