With friends like this… Crikey made Antony Loewenstein’s day when we rang him with the news this morning that he’s won the praise of the League of Rights, Australia’s oldest and most influential body of the ugly right. “Loewenstein delivers critical salvos at the Australian government’s blind and unthinking ‘Israel first come what may’ policy,” the League says of his book My Israel Question. “He takes on the Australian Zionist lobby that ‘patrols the boundaries of public debate, aiming to silence anyone who occasionally strays from the accepted line’.” And just to add to the compliment, the review finishes “My Israel Question will be readily available from the League Book Services”. Much of Loewenstein’s response to the League wouldn’t get past your spam filter, but he said words to the effect that most of the people who have bought the book won’t have it on the shelves next to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Homeland security, Labor style? The Make Poverty History campaign is aiming for a Guinness World Record today for the largest number of people to stand up for a cause with a gathering outside Parliament House today, says an advisory circulated by a staffer to Arch Bevis, Shadow Minister for Homeland Security. Hmm. A large crowd of activist types outside the House? Is Arch going to wave a wand metal detector over them all to demonstrate his credentials?

Time efficient. Former PM Paul Keating hasn’t just suggested that a Labor government could effectively reverse sweeping changes to cross-media laws, although that’s what’s making the biggest news today. He’s also offered views on nuclear energy – “nasty” – and the performance of his successor, Kim Beazley – “getting results”. All that from one interview with Sky.