There's a very strange story that's developing in Australia, and I don't mean the one about its gold reserves, which I blogged about yesterday. As far as I know, there's absolutely no known connection between the yesterday's story and today's, other than in my always highly speculative intuitions and high octane habits of speculation. We'll get back to that, of course.
The story was noticed by Mr. J.D., who in addition to passing along the original story, did a little digging and came up with... well, you'll see.
The original story concerns the apparently quite "unusual" funding for an offshore prison...
This prison is located, conveniently enough, on an island, and perhaps one senses a bit of irony that what was once a (very large continent-sized) island penal colony is now engaged in establishing prisons on islands, in this case, Manus Island. However, it's the funding of this prison that is causing something of a political scandal for the Australian federal government. In fact, this is so bizarre that when I read it, my jaw dropped, because this is the stuff that one only reads about as taking place in banana republics, like the USA. (more...)
