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| Afghan business opportunity | |
Opinion is split on whether
the Taliban used to allow
opium to be grown
in Afghanistan during
their mad reign. While fascist control freaks invariably want to control or
prevent the use of drugs by their subordinate population, opium was also a nice
little earner, allowing the islamicists to continue to arm themselves via an
income of US dollars. What is agreed though, is that opium production is flourishing in Afghanistan
under the not-so-watchful gaze of US troops. With heroin hitting over $US100
per gram on the Streets of San Francisco, growing a few poppies looks like a
far more more attractive prospect that herding goats. Previously, when confronted with a poppy farm, the US marines adopted a .. well
.. a US marines approach, and demolished the poppies. It finally occurred to
someone that destroying someone's crops while presenting yourself as champions
of Freedom was a tad
hypocritical, and wasn't making friends in the local rural community. Richard Holbrooke, U.S. envoy for Afghanistan is quoted "Eradication is a waste
of money". What? Next they'll be telling us
the War on Drugs is
unwinnable! So how do you wage a war on drugs if you can't destroy opium poppies? Well, if
you thought the old policy was confused, the new one is bizarre. They are no
longer doing to destroy opium crops. They are going to pay opium farmers to NOT
grow opium, and crack down on their buyers. It's not clear whether someone who doesn't grow 10000 poppies gets paid
more than someone who doesn't grow only 5000 poppies. Perhaps people
can start out not growing 100 poppies, and gradually grow their
business to not growing thousands of poppies. Confused? Well .. apparently growing opium and then selling it is
okay, but buying it
is evil and deserving of
severe punishment. But don't 'addicts' (victims) buy drugs, and don't
'pushers' (perpetrators) sell drugs? Why does it work the other way
around for Americans? I guess Americans really are special! Generally, the leftist mindset dictates that people are evil if
they employ someone to do something.
- A worker who knowingly violates safety procedures is a victim, but the
employer who repeatedly trained him in the correct procedures, and urged him to
follow them is a perpetrator.
- Asking for more money is righteous if you are employee, but exploitative if
you are selling goods for profit.
- A police officer can violate someone's rights, and hide behind 'just
doing my job', but his employer 'society', is to blame.
But sometimes inexplicably, it works the other way around.
- Someone who sells drugs (a 'pusher') is a perpetrator who deserves gaol but the people who
employ them (the drug takers), are victims who are entitled to tax-payer funded help-programs.
- People smugglers are evil people who should be imprisoned - but the people who
employ them (the asylum-seekers) are victims who deserve the rights of
welfare, free health and citizenship.
Confused? There is a hidden rule: the person who is more hardworking and successful is
is always the perpetrator. Obviously. It's called the tall poppy syndrome. Best understood through an opiatic haze.
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| Unbreakable! | |
Westerners have long criticized China and the quality products made in the
People's Paradise Republic, but those critics should be silenced by news from a
Shanghai building site. A 12 story building fell over and stayed intact! How many Western buildings do that?! Hmm?! This is proof that countries with big Socialist governments produce high
quality products that mere running-dog lackeys of the military-industrial
complex (er .. that's us, Dear Reader), could only ever hope to emulate. The inhabitants of the neighboring identical structures on the same site
are also very happy, knowing they are living in such solid structures.
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| The trouble with censorship is **** **** **** | |
For anyone who has been in a coma over the last few weeks, there is some
political upset in Iran. Some Muslims pretended to set up a democratic government. Some Muslims objected
to the farce and started to protest in the streets. Some other Muslims didn't
like the protests, and so started shooting them. Or maybe it was the first
bunch. Or something. This of course is markedly different to every other upset in the Middle East.
And before you all say "of course it's different - this is one is a struggle
between freedom and oppresion, between good and evil", well think again. Actually it's just different because of cell phones. Iran is a wealthy country
(compared to most of the other poverty stricken Islamic cess-pits in the
world), and protestors and passers-by have cheapo cell phones, which do two
interesting things which conventional phones don't. Firstly, they do texting, so written reports of bloodshed and oppression can be
thumbed out in glorious 160 character sound-bytes (er .. I mean text bytes).
Secondly, and more importantly, they have cheapo video cameras in them.
Video cameras which can actually record the bloodshed in even more glorious (if
low resolution) color. Humanitarians all over the world were outraged by the youtube vidoe of a murder of a pretty young
girl called 'Neda', shot through the chest by government forces, and bleeding
out of her mouth and nose as she died on the street. Then we learned that the Iranian government was using technology supplied by
Nokia and Siemens to detect 'subversive activity' on the internet, and the cell
phone network. And they used it to censor data and shut down the protests.
Naughty Nokia and Siemens. Now Slashdot reports that two US senators (Schumer and Graham) want to punish
Nokia and Siemens for providing that technology. Apparently supplying governments
with the technology to restrict internet access is an evil thing to do. Funny thing is, there are many governments with that this kind of technology.
Including the US, and including Australia. In fact Uncle Kevin is part way through an
internet
filtering trial which would stop us mere citizens from accessing 'unwanted'
material (so 'unwanted', apparently that we wouldn't want to access it anyway). Are they willing to punish multinationals for selling that technology to
Australia as well - or just
to Axes of Evil? Selling internet censorship technology must be only evil if it it is sold to
bad governments, not to good governments. Because we all know that the likes of
Uncle Kev would never abuse their power. Remember: Other governments are evil, but YOUR government only wants what's good for you.
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| New government mascot | |
Every intellectual Leftist is well aware of the faults of their government. The
endless whining and bitching about what the government should
and could do features highly over the morning latte. But like a bitter
wife complaining about a dead-beat hubby who she refuses to divorce: all would
be better if only hubby was nicer to her and had more money and power. The
answer to government failure is always the same: bigger and more powerful
government will solve the problem. There are two recent laughable examples of this belief. And while they don't
actually involve the four riders of the Apocalypse (pestilence, plague, famine
and war), they do involve plague and fire. The first example was the political stumble from Queensland's Premier, Anna Bligh. On
the threshold of a swine-flu epidemic she suggested that people might like to
stock up on food. Common sense suggests that a few extra tins of soup and some
dried milk powder might be a good thing to keep in the back of the pantry. But there was an immediate outcry at the mere suggestion. Apparently people
would panic. And in the panic they would buy, well .. food. And then the shops
would run low on food, and then that would cause even more panic and then
people would stock up on even more food, and then the children would starve
(apparently because there was so much food about), and the dead would walk the
earth, and .. well .. it would be better just to make people feel safe. Of course if she had stuck to her guns and there had been mass scale food buying,
several things would have actually happened.
- People would have ended up with a stock-pile of food, and be more prepared for an emergency.
- People would have realized how fragile supply mechanisms are in the short term.
- People would have realized how robust supply mechanisms are in the longer term.
- People would have realized how helpless The Gummint is to do anything about it.
All of which would have undermined people's confidence in the Gummint. So she
'clarified' her statement to say that she had only meant 'a day or two worth of
food'. Right. The second example was the number of calls which were ignored during the
Victorian bush fires. Some 80% of calls to the 000 emergency number went
unanswered on the day. Apparently people who's houses were being engulfed in
flame were ringing 000 emergency in the belief that the Gummint would (or even
could) come and rescue them. Why would anyone think, as their homes and all
their neighbours' bush homes burned, that the Gummint fairy God mother type
force .. er .. thing would magically appear and protect them from Mother
Nature's fury? Apparently they believed that spending 20 minutes on hold to the
Gummint was better than spending 20 minutes protecting themselves and
their families from dying. And die they did. Clearly the Gummint is a more powerful force than Mother Nature. Or it would be
- all they need to do is to create a new law. Right? Well actually, people's faith in the government kills them.
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| Games of chance! | |
There is an old joke about the Rear-admiral's vice being the Vice-admiral's
rear, (and the Vice-admiral's rear being the Rear-admiral's vice). But in the
case of Rear-admiral Geoff Smith, his vice seems to have been of a quite
different nature. Apparently the chief executive of Sydney Ferries made some
$237,000 worth of questionable purchases on his corporate credit card. Now, all of us who have a corporate credit card know the score. The card is a
bit of a perk. You can make a few questionable purchases on the card, and
effectively avoid a bit of income tax. Think about it - you make a few grand of
purchases on the card - a few taxi fares, some boozy lunches, a new set of
clothes, and even the occasional interstate trip, and these quietly get charged
to the plastic, with the silent approval of The Boss. The money is charged to the company (your employer) instead of having to be
paid as bonuses. You end up better off because you don't have to pay income tax
on the money (it shows up as a company expense, not taxable income), and your
employer doesn't have to pay payroll tax on the money. Every one ends up better
off. Everyone except for Wayne Swan that is, and let's face it - he'd just use
the money to lend to his used-car-selling mates anyway. So The Corporate Card is a functional tool in tax minimisation, as well as
being a powerful symbol of status and trust. Trust, that is, that you won't
over spend on school fees, alcohol, furniture, trips to the theatre and
overseas trips for the wife - like the Rear-admiral did. His excuse was that
"No one told me I shouldn't", and that he thought that using the cards for
personal expenses was "an entitlement". Many public servants claim to have a strong sense of 'social justice'.
Apparently it's not as strong as their sense of entitlement. Of course it's one thing for a private company to give a little extra to a
loyal employee. It's quite another for those in government to give a little
extra to their mates. That's why the public service has much stricter
guidelines about employee conduct than the mere public who pay their wages.
The endless (and expensive) paperwork, the double and triple checking that goes
into just buying a paper clip - it's all for the common good to protect your
taxes. But where were the checks and balances on the Admiral's vice? Apparently no-one
was taking up the Vice-admiral's rear. Apparently no-one told them they should.
Or maybe the vice goes further than the Rear-admiral? Or maybe privatization would mean that at least it wouldn't be the tax-payer's problem.
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| Celebrating patriotism! | |
Indians are taking over! Not the indigenous North American variety, but the
subcontinental variety. It will come as no surprise to some that over two
hundred thousand Indian 'students' are enjoying Australian hospitality. This
wouldn't have been newsworthy several weeks ago, but apparently some are enjoying
it less than others. Some have found themselves the victims of assault. The voice of reason might suggest that any population of two hundred thousand
is bound to have members who find themselves the victim of assault. But, as the
good Chairman pointed out, 'the voices of the many will drown out the
voices of the few'. And two hundred thousand voices can drown out a lot of
reason. Especially when they are helped by a Leftist political agenda. Suddenly the immigrant groups are up in arms, and are back to branding
Australians as racist, and reminding everyone about the White Australia Policy.
Apparently there were gangs of shaven headed white supremacists roaming the
streets seeking ethnic victims. Then some of our Indian guests got their mates to start burning Australian
flags back in India, and even started burning effigies of Chairman Rudd. .. well, even a fool is now and then right by chance, but burning the
Australian flag? Fair shake of the sauce bottle! But a few attacks later, a much maligned and indignant police force came out
and reported the whole truth - that the attacks are not by shaven headed white
supremacist hate groups, but by Lebanese gangs. Oops. Whether the Indians are over-represented as victims of crime is not really
clear. And whether they are specifically overrepresented as victims of Lebanese
violence is not clear either. In fact, the suggestion that Lebanese gangs would
favour Indian victims (over any group) would be tantamount to accusing them of
racism. And since racism is such a bad thing, the suggestion itself could be
construed as racist. And that would never do. Modern political correctness only allows someone's ethnicity to be identified
when they are victims, not when they are perpetrators. Acts of violence are
never perpetrated by an individual against an individual - they are perpetrated
by mainstream society, and are against a minority group. Apparently the
individual victims don't matter - just that fact that they belong to an
identifiable minority group. The identity of the perpetrators doesn't matter -
they are part of the 'racist' (and predominantly white) society. Of course the possibility that two immigrant groups are waging a religious war
on Australian soil goes quietly unstated. It wouldn't support the underlying
agenda for an open-door immigration policy. Everyone loves sacred cows, but surely we don't need to import any more of them.
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| .. to the dog. | |
Another day another fatal dog attack. Your ABC reports
that a three year old girl was mauled to death by pet dogs in the the NSW
Riverina. According to everybody's
ABC, the local community is
(collectively I presume) shocked that this happened. How could anyone be shocked by a dog attack? I mean - if you were the actual
victim, and suddenly found yourself having your flesh ripped off faster than an
Abu Ghraib inmate
you might go into shock. But shock is normally regarded as a state
of great surprise. How could people possibly be surprised at another vicious
dog attack? Haven't enough children been killed, maimed or permanently scarred by vicious
dogs for people to understand that keeping large pack animals around small
children will result in many of them being eaten alive? Apparently not. Dogs are of course, much like Leftists.
- They are supposedly loving, warm and only want to be friends with everyone.
- They are cowards when they are alone with something bigger and more powerful than they are.
- When they mob together in sufficient numbers they attack anything and everything weaker than they are.
- They have no responsibility for anything they do.
This, of course, qualifies them to be 'man's best friend', or maybe even 'friends of the Earth'. And in this case a woman looking after another someone else's children decided
to leave the
meat out. And the pack of cute little lovable doggies helped themselves. The woman herself claimed to be 'in shock' (no point in letting the police
interview you until you get your story straight eh?). Her husband was later
quoted on the ABC as saying
that it was just an accident, and was no-one's fault. Presumably 'society' is to
blame. Somehow. Again. It might baffle some that people would want to keep such animals as pets - in
their houses, around their children (or in this case around other people's
children). But the reason is actually quite obvious. There is a popular notion that the Left need peace, tranquility
and calm. They don't. In fact, they crave conflict, confrontation and
aggression. That's why they surround themselves with it.
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| Something to look forward to | |
Solving the problem of poverty is easy. All we need to do is to get the government to buy plasma TVs and give them to poor people. Everyone knows that rich people have plasma TVs, and poor people don't. Plasma TVs are what separates the rich from the poor. Giving poor people a plasma TV would make them rich people. Or even if it didn't actually make them rich, this would be the most effective first step to address the serious imbalances in economic and social injustice in today's world of have and have-nots. Well, actually, any intelligent person knows that the previous paragraph is utter nonsense. But substitute the word 'notebook computer' for 'TV', and you will become the darling of the leftist elites, who are intent on forcing tax payers to buy millions of notebook computers so they can be distributed to those more worthy than themselves. We have the international OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project, Australia's determination to give a notebook to every Aboriginal child, and then Kevin (Pixie) Rudd's election promise to give one notebook to every school child. Apparently the average destitute Aboriginal child, struggling with substance abuse, domestic violence, sexual molestation and chronic ear infections will get onto the internet to research the solution to his community's problems. "Hey Dad, it says here on www.social-workers.gov.au that you should stop getting drunk and bashing mum and I. How about going off to AA?". "Hey Mum - it says here on www.healthy-eating.gov.au that diet is an important lifestyle choice. How about some fresh food for dinner?" "Hey bros, I read on www.say-no-to-drugs.gov.au that sniffing petrol can damage your brain. I guess we'd better stop doing it now." Fly. Pigs. Might. In African nations, there is a plan to give free notebooks to children who don't even have electricity. 'No problem,' say the scheme's advocates, 'we can attach wind-up generators to them. And they could even be use to supply light in their mud-huts after dark!' Are there any intelligent people who find this anything other than totally perverse? Even The Pixie's proposal to supply notebooks to bogans in a first world country is faltering. It seems that the rubbery figures used in estimating the cost of the one-laptop-per-bogan scheme didn't take into account that the notebooks have to maintained. You need IT support for them. IT people, dear reader, are those people who command obscene salaries for doing something that the rest of the population don't even understand. IT support is expensive. More expensive, in fact, than the computers themselves. The cost of buying a notebook for a motivated, middle-class brat is just the cost of the notebook itself. Within a day, a teen-age computer nerd will strip off the firewall protection and censorship filters, and be happily surfing www.horny-cheerleaders.com in between downloading his homework from essays-for-sale.com, and still have time to post party invitations on MySpace. But how long is a notebook going to last in a mud hut? Or even a tin hut? Or even a bogan's school bag, getting thrown around with the footy boots? Answer: not even until the next federal election. Oops. And the destitute African children? Apart from sending Nigerian 419 scam letters, there is little in the way of local industry which can benefit from information transfer. Social networking is a great way for bored western teenagers to kill time, but when there are animals to feed, crops to grow and water to fetch, on-line gossip about pop stars is pretty much irrelevant. Commodity prices on the other side of the world won't help you if you are merely subsistence farming. And great literature is of no interest to someone with an empty stomach. Doubtless these elitist initiatives will result in someone, somewhere doing something useful, and the proponents will declare the whole fiasco a success. But does anyone think that the hundreds of dollars per unit would not have been better spent on food, medicine, conventional education or even on a mercenary force to topple their corrupt thieving governments? And that applies for governments other than Australia's too.
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| Mahem in Mumbai | |
Try as they might, the followers of the Religion of Peace can't seem to
avoid controversy. Some particularly devout Allah fanboys decided to conduct
their own little Jihad in Mumbai, and kill as many Westerners as they could.
On second thoughts, maybe these ones weren't trying that hard. Anyway, the local police followed procedure - rushing to the scene and standing
around looking for opportunities to take bribes. Unfortunately the guy in charge
got shot, and so did two of his deputies. Total chaos ensued. But at least our
own government officials
responded appropriately. Kevin (Pixie) Rudd stood up in parliament and branded
the perpetrators as "murderers and cowards" (he was, presumably, talking about
the terrorists and not the local police). Good on ya, Kev! Here is a true leader!
Someone who will ignore several decades
of politically
correct cultural
relativism and call a spade a spade! But hang on, did he say 'cowards'? Isn't a coward someone who runs
away from personal danger? These terrorists were quite prepared to die for
their beliefs. Their beliefs might be little radical (that Allah wants them to
kill as many kaffirs as
possible), but they are prepared to die for those beliefs. And that doesn't
make them cowards. Religious extremists maybe. Sadistic lunatics
probably. Murderous psychopaths definitely. But not cowards. The coward rhetoric may sound good. And many alert-but-not-alarmed people may be comforted
by the words. But they illustrate a fundamental lack of clarity of thought,
and understanding of the enemy. The first step in winning a war is understanding the enemy. To predict his
strategy, you must understand what he will do in a given situation. To
understand what he will do, you must understand what motivates him. The
motivation of a coward is totally different to that of the irrational religious zealot. Of course fuzzy thinking is, and always has been, the choice weapon for the
lovers of bigger government. The Pixie
is merely continuing the tradition. The idea that higher minimum wages will create jobs, or that a welfare
state will make us rich, or that socialism will create
equality, or that government declared wars on poverty, obesity or drugs will make us free and
happy. Running away from personal danger might be undesirable, but running away
from reality is surely worse. What a pity there is no war against ignorance and fuzzy
thinking.
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| Stop the drop | |
There's something funny about blood. People get emotional about it. Whether we
are spilling it, or ensuring that it's thicker than water, or adding it to our
sweat and tears, we are pretty close to it most of the time.
Blood is clearly very important. That's why it's critical that the government makes so many
rules about it to stop us doing what we want with our own blood.
For instance, the government has laws against actually paying any
poor people for donating blood.
Until recently there were also rules against selling blood. It's not that
no-one was allowed to profit from the blood industry. The doctors who
administer the blood, the nurses who service them, and the many many health
administrators who take their immodest salaries to keep us safe - they are all
allowed to benefit from the blood industry. The recipients presumably benefit
from the blood industry too - by receiving blood. Actually the only people who
aren't allowed to benefit from the blood industry were the people who actually
donate the blood.
Which may be why blood supplies are always critically low, and the supply
system is always in crisis.
In fact the blood supply situation has gotten so critical, that the government
has a new mechanism to deal with it: making blood recipients pay for the blood
(at least at private hospitals anyway).
Exactly how having the government charge people for consuming blood will
increase the number of people supplying blood is a bit of a mystery for
us mere voters. But clearly the government must have the answer. The government
is very smart. That's why they are the government.
The Daily Telegraph is running a typically hysterical front page article
complete with an ailing blond child called 'Ruby' on the cover. Apparently Ruby
is an immunoglobulin transfusee (that's medicarati for 'needs lots of blood').
It's good that the paper cleared that up because 'Ruby' doesn't look
anemic. Actually her cheeks are quite rosy, and she doesn't look underweight
either. In fact, in a few years, people will probably be describing Ruby as
'Rubenesque'.
Regardless, the blood-thirsty Ruby attends a private hospital, and the
government has decided to make private hospitals pay for blood. The embattled
NSW government (which is unable to balance their budget even in the wake of
unprecedented revenue surges) has resorted to the desperate measure of charging
private hospitals for blood.
So on the one hand we have a government which forbids people selling their
blood, but still forces people to pay for it, and on the other side we have
people who want to ban both the buying and selling of blood.
Isn't it supposed to be the capitalist
elites growing obscenely fat by sucking the blood of the hard working
proletariat who are victims of their needs?
No Dear Reader. It's your socialist government, and their blood tax.
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>> Please Sir, I want some more
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Always remember:
Greens protect the environment.
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Copyright © 2002,2003. All rights Reserved. |
Strawman
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