Beasley clears the air

Kim Beasley has set the ground rules for the next election. It is a vote for the Coalition or a vote for the Unions.
KIM Beazley’s about-face on workplace agreements has won him a reprieve from leadership pressures and kept alive Stephen Smith’s chances of keeping his frontbench job as Opposition industrial relations spokesman.
Maybe, but I can’t see it presenting a reprieve from the voters. The Coalition wil suffer in the polls over the immediate future as the Unions throw millions into an emotive and selective TV assualt programme but in the long term, as the economy gets even better, the voters will see benefits. Kim hasn’t just rolled over for the unions; he has also rolled over for the mad left wing with Albanese getting centre stage with his anti-nuclear ranting On Insiders, he makes his position clear. While the rest of the country are busy counting the billions to be made from uranium sales dear Anthony is angling towards phasing them out
BARRIE CASSIDY: Now, I know that you maintain that it’s a mistake to refer to Labor’s policy as a three mines policy. You say it’s not. It is genuinely an anti-uranium policy? ANTHONY ALBANESE: Well, it’s a no new mines policy. It’s a policy that I believe gets the balance right in that it recognises the problems with the nuclear fuel cycle, but also recognises that an economically responsible position is to guarantee all existing contracts. So, in effect, it’s a phasing-out policy. BARRIE CASSIDY: So, when current contracts run out, that’s it? ANTHONY ALBANESE: That’s right.
The Left wing – the gift that keeps on giving The Nuclear debate has a long time to run in Australia and I for one wouldn’t like to preempt the result but with the ALP’s position being ‘close down the mines’ then it at least leaves the debate to more rational thinkers…the Coalition and the electorate.

A letter from Iraq

From the Wall Street Journal, AKA The Opinion Journal
Letter From Iraq
Here’s an email we received from a U.S. military officer who asks us to withhold his name:

I am currently stationed here in Iraq and have been here for the past 11 months; I am an adviser to the Iraqis and meet them on a daily basis. I have been in many locations in the country and am involved on a daily basis together with the Iraqis fighting the insurgency.

The media manipulation by the insurgents is brilliant and extremely effective. The press has become a puppet for the insurgents; the insurgents know exactly what they are doing with these “massacres” (quoted here because the investigation has not been completed, nor have any charges been filed) and the political nightmare they will cause the current administration. Bodies are produced for film, and there is zero fact-checking by the media–the media eat up this “news” like there is no tomorrow. A couple of hundred bucks paid by the insurgents to a few guys/ladies in the town where this “massacre” occurred to make up some bad news and pine for the BBC’s or CBS’s or whoever’s cameras is a nice month’s salary for many and money well spent by the insurgency.

All the Arabs (Sunni and Shia), Kurds and Chaldeans I have come to know well here will tell you that Arabs are emotional people who tend to exaggerate. A lot. Experience has shown that “50 insurgents hiding out in XX location” is five, at most 10. “Three hundred dead” at the morgue is at most 40. “A huge cache with WMD” is 45-50 weapons. It is a cultural norm and is accepted over here as a norm. It is reported in the West as fact. With no fact-checking.

When we convoy, all in the town/village know when and where there is a bomb/IED/VBIED that is targeting coalition forces. This is not so true in Baghdad, but in the outlying towns all know. What is the culpability for those people in the village/town? Would the Marines be guilty in the U.S. under the same circumstances?

I do not know whether or not the Marines are guilty. A Marine’s job is to “close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver,” and I can guarantee its effectiveness. But the insurgents have the ear of the press. Hopefully the politics will be put aside for the investigation and the facts will be told, whatever they may be.

We live in hope but I’m sure the media can be relied upon to take a negative view prior to the release of the report on the investigation.

Have you heard the latest Irish Joke?

This in today’s Australian
Up to a dozen Irish MPs were expected to boycott John Howard’s address to the parliament in Dublin overnight, reflecting strong concerns over Australia’s role in Iraq

The criticism of Mr Howard has been led by a range of minority groups in the 116-member Dail (the lower house), including the Greens and the parliament’s sole Socialist Party MP, Joe Higgins.

Greens and socialists are everywhere but I fail to see how there stranger than fiction activities could possibly be “an irritant” for the PM as the article suggests. I think it’s more a case of Steve Lewis wishing it were so.

Question for Bill Shorten

I like this post at Ambit Gambit so much I’m going to post it in full
Questions for Bill Shorten Bill, if belonging to a union is such a good idea why is it that you are only acting on safety problems at the Beaconsfield mine after they’ve proved fatal? Rather than just calling for an inquiry into the mine company’s management of the mine shouldn’t you be having a long hard look at your own operation? Maybe it’s time to allow alternative representatives to unions to handle industrial issues and admit that life’s been so cosy for the union movement for so long that they’ve stopped to offer a valuable service. But then, if John Howard and Alexander Downer can walk away from the AWB scandal unscathed, why should your situation be any different? It’s not as though it was your job to run the mine, just represent the interests of the workers, and if no-one directly told you that there were any problems, even though plenty of people apparently knew, then it couldn’t be your responsibility in any way…could it?

Vietnam revisited by a revisionist

Conclusion: By interfering, the USA was responsible in causation for the deaths of (correction 3)–5.1 million Vietnamese, give or take a few.
So endeth the sermon by Peter at Lavartus Prodeo. Argueing from a lawyers viewpoint he posts an article with the sole purpose of sheeting the blame for an inflated casualty rate on the US. I have just attended a reunion of the 7th Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment at Fremantle in Western Australia and can only express amazement at Peter’s naivity, or is it blinded ignorance? On the Indian Pacific a fellow traveller asks me why I was going to Perth, I mention the reunion and he says ah yes, Vietnam…such a waste. I enlighten him and for the first time in his lifer he thinks beyond the 10 second audio visual bites he was fed on the evening news. I tell him we who fought it don’t think it a waste. At the very least we stemmed the flow of the scourge of communism for a decade and depleted the coffers of the USSR and Communist China to such an extent that the events that lead to the fall of the Berlin War were set in train. Millions escaped after the fall of Saigon by boat, by plane, by anything that would remove them from the hell that was coming. Millions didn’t. Lefties still mintain the soft view of Ho Chi Minh that portays him as a nationalist with his only intention being to rid Vietnam of the French and later, the US, when from day one he was a marxist, schooled by the Soviets to take over both South and North Vietnam to form a communist bastion in the east. To view a ten year war through the statutes of law seems a strange approach to me. I see men in suits arguening the case but the backdrop, the rear wall of the court room, is enscribed with millions of names of men who died and all Peter can do is argue for the aggressors. The communists invaded; the Free World forces tried to defend. Maybe Peter was around when the war was on but somehow I doubt it. I was there and went back a couple of years ago to view first hand the results of 30 plus years of communism. The economy has been comatozed for decades and is just showing some life now the old Marxists are dying and losing power. Yet the people have a shadow over them of the millions who have disappeared or are still alive but shattered by re-education camps. Over the road from the bar I frequented a family lives on the profit from selling a dozen or so soft drinks per day…..in 2004. How can educated men defend this? School, Uni, Law School, employment with Smith, Smith and Smith, see the world through a law book. Never touch the dead just count them and use the stats to put a fallacious arguement. Makes it all worthwhile, doesn’t it?

Every cloud has a silver lining

State elections over the weekend in South Australia and Tasmania have resulted in the expected Labor returns. Rann in SA has picked up a 9.2% swing but the Democrats look like dropping out of the Upper House. The good news in Tasmania is that the Greens have been further damaged…the voters are onto them. Lennon has contained the swing against Labour to just over 2%. He holds 14 seats and the Liberals 7 with one still to decide. The Greens look like losing one seat (and party status), leaving them with 3 seats. THE Greens thought themselves king-makers but instead suffered a king hit likely to cost them at least one seat and official party status.
The Greens, who had hoped to force their policy platform on a minority government, were yesterday rethinking policy and strategy instead. Kim Booth looked likely to lose in Bass, depriving the Greens of the four members needed for the extra parliamentary resources that go with official party status. Labor believes the Greens may yet lose a second of its four MPs, Tim Morris in rural Lyons, but this appears unlikely.
Greens leader Peg Putt blamed the drop in their vote — from 22per cent in a poll four weeks ago to 16per cent on Saturday — on the “grubbiest, most vicious” smear campaign in Tasmanian political history. I don’t care how grubby the campaign was so long as they don’t have any balance of power….anywhere. They are dangerous.

Qld MP resigns

QUEENSLAND Premier Peter Beattie faces the prospect of Labor’s third by-election loss in seven months after his absent backbencher Robert Poole resigned yesterday to live in Thailand. Poole claims he was in Thailand to undergo knee surgery and to be with his family. The Thai hospital says he had an appointment on 14 Feb but hasn’t been seen since and certainly hasn’t had any surgery.
Servants at Mr Poole’s Thai house said yesterday that he had not been seen there for at least two weeks, but had been busy working in the yard in January despite being in the country for a serious knee operation.
Just love the ‘servants’ bit. Beattie gave him three months leave to sort out the problem and appointed another MP to look after his election. The other MP promptly flew off to Thailand and Beattie claims to be surprised.
The MP tendered his resignation in a handwritten letter to Mr Beattie, hand-delivered by Ipswich Labor MP Don Livingstone, who made an unauthorised trip to Thailand last week to visit his friend and colleague.
Does Beattie expect us to believe that there is so little coordination, process and disipline in the Qld Labour Party that MPs can wonder off will-nilly to anywhere in the world? There’s a couple of questions going begging here such as; when talking to the stand-in MP did Beattie state the obvious… ‘I expect you to be in your electorate whilst so appointed’ and if he did why didn’t the MP say ‘well I’m planning a trip to Thailand myself’ Of course questions should have been asked of Poole at preselection. Questions that normally people would not find a need to ask such as; ‘If elected do you intend to represent your electorate or do you plan to leave Australia and live overseas?’ Beattie is being back-footed every week and it doesnt bode well for his chances of re-election. The only fly in that ointment is the standing of the local opposition. It’s a worry.

Someone else celebrates ten years

Now …what’s his name? Ah yes Bob Brown has also spent ten years as leader of a political party. Suffering from delusions of grandeur he predicts his party could govern the country one day. Yeah…right. As if something like 50% of Australian’s are going to be stupid enought to vote in a party that is strong on saving frogs and has weak to non existant policies on, or simply hate, capitalism, jobs, commerce, the US, defence, security, education and a host of other matters that Australians think important. Nevertheless, he offers advise to the ALP that would benefit Australia;
“I think the Opposition has lost its way and I think it is going to get worse,” Senator Brown said. “The indications are that the Opposition thinks if it moves to the right it will do better,” said Senator Brown. “No, it needs to move back to the humanitarian politics that Labor once stood for and it easily could.”
The more Left the policy, the less chance of being elected. Listen to him ALP…please.

Bonfire of the inanities

John Burtis in the Canadian Free Press puts the ‘Dick Cheney shooting a lawyer mate’ press frenzy in perspective.
In their Herculean efforts to lend further “gravitas” to the beleaguered story, the media trundled out grizzled hunting experts, college-trained weather men and women, experts on color recognition and the reasons for the use of international orange on hunting outfits, the problems to be encountered from lead poisoning, ornithologists and the year of the expected Texas quail extinction, medical experts and the grave damage to be expected from the horrors of bird shot, cardiologists, Neil Young and the needles and the damage done, schematic diagrams of shooting victims, savvy attorneys to discourse on the legal ramifications of the expected charges for attempted murder and great bodily harm, pettifoggers to discuss the upcoming civil penalties, constitutional scholars to describe this latest nail in the proverbial coffin of impeachment, pundits to describe in glib detail the replacement of Dick Cheney for this strategic gaffe of immense proportions and experts in finer points of haberdashery to explain the meaning of the pink tie – the full list may never be fully tabulated because of its absolutely daunting size and the fact that it was pounded out in 24 news cycles for nearly a week.
And finishes with this;
And on the world front, as the hunting accident is still being rehashed for inconsistencies, investigated for further nefarious activities and the possible consumption of, gasp, a beer in the woods, the cartoon wars go on, Iran continues its nuclear build up, North Korea remains a menace, Hamas continues its activities to destroy Israel, we have helicopters down off the African coast, the UN remains a rotten borough, Islamist terrorists are still killing people in Iraq and the Philippines and the beat goes on.
But at home the US press burns in its own bonfire of inanities and it won’t step out of the fireplace or look outside its ridiculously small box because there was a hunting accident and somebody’s got to pay.
The story rates with SBS running their 433rd episode of Abu Ghraib prison saga. via LGF

AWB Fiasco IV

Let’s sumarise the debate. Beasely, ‘Tricky’ Rudd and their co-travellers have raised the Cole enquiry to international prominence by politicising the process in their mindless pursuit of a government. Eager for a Ministerial scalp they have pre-empted the enquiry results and given succour to our enemies. The US wheat board, also hoping for a scalp for commercial reasons, are ecstatic. It gave them ammo to go to Iraq and put pressure on tthe Iraqis to buy US wheat and not Australian. With a good percentage of the ALP hating the US, I wonder whether the irony of their aiding and abetting the US Wheat Baord will come to their notice. Probably not. The big losers in this debate are the Australian Wheat farmers and by extension, the Australian economy. Winners include the US but not the ALP. Yes…I know, Newspoll gleefully records a loss of support for the government in their latest guestimate but don’t think for a moment that it’s a long term thing. The ALP are making mileage as they defend the high moral ground but that ground is historically indefensible as Corporations and businesses of all scales realize that to trade in certain parts of the world one needs to factor in ‘fees’. Do you think it only started with the advent of the Howard’s government? Of course not, it’s been the norm for commercial enterprises to pay ‘fees’ for decades. Certainly throughout the Hawke-Keating years but I can’t, for the life of me, recall anyone demanding those two erudite ALP leaders micro-manage private enterprise contacts. The ‘crime’ was victimless. Iraqis got fed….Aussie wheat farmers got paid. On the other hand, the ALP’s hysterical pursuit of Ministerial scalps is full of victims and they are all Australians. Farmers and AWB staff to name two groups. No winners here…not good.
1 65 66 67 68 69 85