Category: General Musings

I agree, Latham, Singleton (and Keating as well), could all do with some remedial ‘English language useage’ to lift their game above ‘arse licking, scumbag’ type comments in the House. They are all ‘the same type of fellas’. ‘Bovver boy’ Latham, the same title I gave Keating, needs to lift his language to climb higher. Publicity from poor language doesn’t sit well with mainstream Australia and is indicative of poor debating skills. ‘My sort of fellow’ indeed – they deserve each other. I love and encourage the Labor Party infighting – bodes well for the economy. Read more if you must but it’s only on NSW League clubs and NSW taxes.

PETER Costello should be silently hoping Simon Crean is not hit by a commonwealth car after the Treasurer’s rather tasteless joke in question time yesterday. Costello explained how he was occasionally asked what would happen should the Opposition Leader fall under a truck: “To which I said he would not be run over by a truck – if he is run over, it will be by Carr.” Come on, Matt, it’s not that tasteless, not particularly funny but it’s drawing a long bow to call it tasteless. I just hope it raised a smile on poor Simon’s face….. he needs something to lift his spirits. >>more

Update from yesterday. Australia wants to send a large contingent of federal police to ensure law and order in Papua New Guinea and place its officials in high-level positions in key ministries. Wow! The government is listening to me at last. Australia now tells PNG that aid comes with reponsibilities. They want to send over 200 Australian Federal Police (AFP) with the aid cheque. PNG is a hot-bed of trouble that needs to be sorted out very quickly. The last thing Australia needs is discontented uneducated, unhealthy people on our northern flank. That flank is already too busy! The problem centres around corruption being endemic in PNG. The AFP will be good at sorting that rot out and setting an example for the locals – this is how you do it. Discussions with government ministers and heads of departments starting with..’the aid money is actually for the country and the people, not you personally’…would be a good starting point. <<more

Foreign Minister Downer risks inflaming tensions with Papua New Guinea over Australia’s hardline aid policy when he reads them the riot act tomorrow. Michael suggests we are ‘disrupting’ PNG’s sovereignty while our government is suggesting that corruption is incompatable with aid and the money is for the people, not the PNG ministers holiday homes in Cairns. I trust it will eventually sink in to PNG and all the other small Pacific nations we help – receiving aid from Australia has certain responsibilities associated with it. Update: Reader Dave points to a political development in PNG and leaves some good links in ‘comments’.

The Australian page one -Simon Crean scores the lowest of any opposition leader ever in the preferred Prime Minister stakes. The Australian page two SImon Crean attacks Howard over “going to war on a lie” There’s a connection Simon, and you and your scaley mates on the left need to make the connection reasonable soon to be considered by any voter as an opposition. The fact that one of a thousand intelligence assessments suggested that a collapse of Sadam’s regime would increase the chance of terrorist attacks is of little importance when read in isolation. Does the report suggest things would get worse in a post-regime vacuum and if so it drops from ‘of little importance’ to ‘irrelavent’ as any vacuum has been well and truley filled by the US. Yes,I know, your scaley mates think that’s the problem but I’d rather have the terrorists swarming to Iraq to have a go at the Great Satan than flying aircraft into the Pentagon or worse, Russel Hill in Canberra (I’ve got mates there!). You need to move on, Simon, Australia has.

The western world will always back Israel while the Palestinians target women and children and Israel retaliates by only targeting Hamas. There are no clever words words that make Palestinian actions acceptable and even though Israelis have killed women and kids they were not targeted. There is a huge difference. This has to be a given and yet Rob at Mentalspace starts a reevaluation of his Paletine/Israel opinions with; I’ve been trying to reformulate my opinions about Israel and Palestine lately. In part, they are a response to Simon Crean’s disgracefully one-sided speech about the issue,….. Well, yes, his speech was one sided but so is the battle. The Arab world expects Israel to negotiate with terrorists while the terrorists only want Isael to cease to exist. That’s never going to work. Crean said; Destroying the peace process is what the terrorists want. That is precisely why they cannot and must not be allowed to succeed. It might be one sided to condemn Hamas, the IRA, al Quaida, the Taliban, and a host of like minded terrorist organizations but I can live with that. I’m not looking for balance anymore. All my reading on Arafat screams TERRORIST and while he is in the chair in Palestine things are never going to change. His hand shows in a long list of atrocities including the Lod Airport massacre, the Munich Games massacre, the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, (remember the guy in the wheelchair?) the Entebbe hijacking etc, etc, etc. How do you negotiate with someone who is using his women and children to murder your women and children? Until they stop – you don’t. For some light reading you can check Arafat’s CV here and here. Pro terrorists and the scaley left will claim it’s a right-wing plot but hey, facts are facts.

Joan, my wife, comes home in the morning (0200) from five weeks away in London, Ireland, Scotland and bits of Europe. I’ve been washing, ironing, mopping, shopping (buying flowers – yeh, I know -snivelling, but I did miss her) and now I can really appreciate my father going those extra yards 50 odd years ago to find the Y-Chromosome to kick me off. Both daughters have left London and are heading home, albeit slowly. All five kinder should be home for my birthday next month – on the periphery of terrorism rather than the centres. I’ll be busy tomorrow – no blogging.

Over at Troppo Armadillo, Wayne Wood has a good piece on Capital and how it is an answer to impoverished people. Go read, it’s good stuff.

I like it! Hat tip to Glenn Slaven for the source The Australia as I grew up in: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he is a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The shivering grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold. The Australia I grow old in: The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he is a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others less fortunate like him are cold and starving. The ABC and Channel 9 show up to provide live coverage of the shivering grasshopper, with cuts to a video of the ant in his comfortable warm home with a table filled with food. Australians are stunned that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so while others have plenty. The Democrats, the Greens and the Coalition Against Poverty demonstrate in front of the ant’s house. The ABC, interrupting an Aboriginal cultural festival special from North Queensland with breaking news, broadcasts them singing “We Shall Overcome.” Bob Brown rants in an interview with Yana Went that the ant has gotten rich off the backs of grasshoppers, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his “fair share.” In response to polls, the Liberal Government drafts the Economic Equity and Grasshopper Anti-Discrimination Act, retroactive to the beginning of the summer. And the ALP quickly passes it through the Senate. The ant’s taxes are reassessed and he is also fined for failing to hire grasshoppers as helpers. Without enough money to pay the fine and his newly imposed retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government. The ant moves to Asia, and starts a successful Agribiz company. The TV stations later show the now fat grasshopper finishing up the last of the ant’s food though Spring is still months away, while the government owned house he is in, which just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around him because he hadn’t maintained it. Inadequate government funding is blamed, Kim Beasley now is appointed to head a commission of enquiry that will cost $10,000,000. The grasshopper is soon dead of a drug overdose, the Sydney Morning Herald blames it on obvious failure of government to address the root causes of despair arising from social inequity. The abandoned house is taken over by a gang of immigrant spiders, praised by the government for enriching Australia’s multicultural diversity, who promptly terrorize the community. Who says we do not live in a democracy?

Announced by the Jakarta Post at 2:20 pm local. DENPASAR, Bali (Agencies): Imam Sumudra alias Abdul Azis, 33, was sentenced to death at the Denpasar district court at about 2.20 pm local time on Wednesday for masterminding the Bali bombings which killed 202 people last October. Samudra was found guilty of plotting, organizing and committing the October 12, 2002, bombing of two popular Bali nightspots previously boasted that he would welcome a death sentence as it would allow him into die a martyr. “We sentence the defendant…to the death penalty,” said chief judge Wayan Sugawa, saying Samudra had been proven guilty of all four charges against him. “Allahu Akbar!” (God is greatest) a defiant Samudra shouted three times in response, shaking his fist in the air. Good. One more on the way out.