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| Lest we forget | |
In an age where less and less people even remember The Great War, why is it
that the number of Australians who turn out to watch the event seems to grow
every year? It seems even more surprising in an environment where school
children are taught to call soldiers 'harm workers', and in which the
concept of being Australian is so confused by multiculturalism and cultural
relativism as to be meaningless at best, and something to be ashamed of at
worst.
Or maybe that's actually the reason for it. Australia celebrates
'multicultural day' every year but this isn't enough for for the lobby
groups, who seem to invade the Australia day celebrations like a cavalry
brigade. Trying food from 50 different countries, and watching traditional
Western Himalayan dancing parades is a wonderful thing - but then why do we also
need a multicultural day? As a result, Anzac day is the only day which many Australians feel they can
actually call their own. In spite of the incursions in the '80s by feminist
protest groups, Anzac day lives on in the hearts and minds of a new generation,
and gives hope that maybe, just maybe, there Australia still has the will to
make a stand and defend this country from invasion. The fact that they celebrate this by getting blind pissed and playing 2-up is a bit of
worry, but each unto his own. In the midst of the drunkenness, Anzac day is a
sober reminder that freedom has a price, that sometimes the collective has to
protect the individual, and that the Australian spirit has survived all the
attacks that The Left has thrown at it over the past few decades.
At the going down of the sun,
and in the morning,
we will remember them
As for the hangovers .. sorry soldier - self inflicted injuries don't get
sympathy. Maybe a cuppa tea, a Bex and nice lie down?
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| Bring the boys back home | |
A year on from the sacking of the House of Hussein in the cradle of
civilization, things are looking anything but. Iraq has been a learning
experience for the Coalition of the Willing. Some lessons are easy, some are
hard. Here are some things we now know - The tooth fairy, the man-friendly lesbians, and the weapons of mass
destruction are clearly well hidden in the desert sands - either that or
they don't actually exist in significantly large numbers.
- Arabs really do hate Americans - it's not just a bad
press.
- Less Americans die in war
than in the 'peace' that
follows it.
- Governments are
good at toppling governments - not good at fighting anarchic militias. There is an
impedance mismatch which greater fire power does not solve.
- Exit strategies are best determined before the war, not in the
messy aftermath.
Iraq is like a disappointing marriage. There are painful
memories, lots of emotional
commitment, the loss-of-face in being seen to fail, and the ever-present
temptation to cut and run. Should we or shouldn't we? Cut and Run One problem the Americans (and their partners) have is that they have to be
good guys. Any excess of force will be written up by Lefties and Islamicists as an atrocity; any
atrocity committed by terrorists will be rewritten
as justifiable anti-imperialist resistance. A puppet Iraqi government wouldn't
have that problem. Massacring a hundred innocent civilians in order to root out a terrorist
cell would be easy for an Iraqi government - even a democratic one. So the
solution is to train the locals in 'interrogation' techniques, hand over power
and simply say - "if you don't follow the election rules in the
constitution we wrote up for you, we'll be back to lock you all up with your
mate Saddam". It might not produce the caring, compassionate, or free democracy we have
in The West, but Iraq
isn't The West - it's the Middle East, and maybe a
faulty, corrupt, violent democracy is the best democracy a Muslim nation can
hope for. Sticking It Out The comparisons with Vietnam are pretty sound. Those who see the big
picture realize that Vietnam wasn't a war - it was a frontline military
operation in a larger war that The West won. Reagan's
'evil empire' was defeated, and socialism was totally
discredited (except in the eyes of a few die-hard losers who are unable to
admit defeat). We now have a new ideological war - with Islam (or Islamicists of we
insist on being politically
correct). Iraq is the currently the frontline for that war. The Islamic
psychos are congregating in the heart of the Middle East instead of flying airplanes into
buildings closer to home. The best place to fight a war is on someone else's territory. Ask any
vietnamese. The choice Australians (and Americans) will make their decisions at the ballot boxes
later this year. Little Johnny's supporters are adopting a stiff upper lip, and
insisting that 'victory is closer than ever', and the Mark (Maddog) Latham
supporters are rubbing their hands with glee over the blood, death, and
Floundering of the Willing in Iraq. Even the RSL is asking what Little Johnny's
exit strategy is. Which is a bit silly really. Of course Little Johnny has an
exit strategy - retirement.
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| A weighty challenge for the Libertarian mindset | |
Fat chicks are always good for a few cheap laughs. Anyone who enjoys food more than sex
must be a bit deviant, but SBS
recently screened a
documentary which stretches the envelope of deviance and decency to a new
level - literally. The show documented F.A.s (Fat Appreciators) - men who like fat women. Of
course all good rednecks enjoy a few curves, and attraction to a body in which
nothing at all wobbles would be a form of deviance in itself. But these men
like their women really big. Really big. Like - the bigger the better. Think
300Kg of of fat spreading around like a mattress. Like women who can't even
physically get off the bed. But it gets worse. Some of these men are 'feeders'. These are men who force, coerce or otherwise
persuade their padded female companions to pack on more and more to the point
where it just becomes dangerous. Some literally use feeding tubes (like those
weird fattened geese) to make their partners pack it on. These fat women are emotionally vulnerable (they don't exactly have dates
lined up), and having some man appreciate them for what they are (or at least
the bits of them made of fat) is something they have never experienced. And
being spoiled by every form of junk-food they can imagine is even better. They
have a natural propensity for weight gain, and they get even fatter. And
fatter. And fatter. And eventually they are totally helpless and can't even get
out of bed. They are totally dependent on their carers even for their basic
hygiene needs. One woman had to be rescued from her feeder by a small army of
police, firemen, social-workers and ambulance crews who had to cut holes in the
wall to get her out. Every self respecting husband gets a bit of a thrill when shrilly summoned
by the better half to kill a spider or small rodent - that warm inner glow of
having the missus admit to a slight dependence and helplessness which makes him
feel big, important and powerful ('she couldn't possibly survive without me
- I'm the man!'). But having a full-time job caring for 330Kg of fat?
That's just weird. Desire to control other people is pretty normal, but someone
who is 380Kg can't actually do much except .. well, wiggle. Perhaps the most interesting thing about feeders is the issues it raises
about consent and free
will. If a feeder is slipping 'fattening powder' into the woman's big-macs
is it consensual? When a woman gets to the stage where she can't leave the
relationship (because she can't even leave the room), is it her free will to
stay in the relationship? As the show's relationship expert pointed out - you can imprison someone in
a house, in a cellar, or in their own body. Many of us believe that the world would be a better place if society,
governments, or other people spend less time and energy prying into people's
private lives. One of the best things we can learn to do is to accept that
people can do what they want to, and just let them do their own thing. But this
level of deviance is a real test of how far we are willing to let the principle
of live and let live actually go. When should society intervene? Maybe this is just a reminder to us all to take a bit more notice of our
exercise and diet patterns. In particular, think twice about how much of that
tasty but fattening Easter egg you really want to eat. Be a nice guy - maybe
give your share to the wife instead?
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| Mark (Maddog) Latham - humanity's best friend | |
Some dogs make lovable little pets. Especially the cuddly fluffy kind which
resemble ALP policies so closely. When you cut them away and away, you realize
that there is no dog, just fluff, and Mark (Maddog) Latham's policy line-up
has been like a Chinese fluffy toy factory. But Maddog occasionally does something which actually makes it hard not to like
him - like his savaging of ATSIC today and his proclamation that under his
government, it would be axed. Racism is of course anyone's right. Anyone stupid enough to discriminate
against an individual on the basis of race merely creates opportunities for
others. Every greedy capitalist loves to see a foolish competitor turning away
that highly qualified job applicant with realistic salary expectations in favor
of someone less qualified because of the color of their skin. It creates an
opportunity to employ that persons themselves, and gain market share against
their soon-to-be-bankrupt competition. But there is something about government's institutionalized racism which truly
turns the stomach. A government department which helps a needy Aboriginal
child, while turning their back on a equally needy white child because of the
color of their skin is truly sickening. And for the last two decades,
successive Australian governments have been spending towards a billion dollars
a year doing just that in their funding of ATSIC. Now Maddog intends to disband
it. But before celebrating by breaking out the best methylated spirits and passing
it round to the 'brudders', a long sober look at the details might be in order. Unfortunately, as usual, there are none. Maddog hasn't said exactly what will
come later but there will be 'consultation on exactly what will replace
ATSIC' and that it will involve 'devolution, regional
partnerships and community empowerment'. Huh ..? Oh yes, that's ALP-speak for yet another government department. One would think that killing Bob Hawke's little colored love-child would be an
embarrassment to the ALP. It would be an admission of total failure in ALP
policy, but the mainstream media is letting his get away with simply blaming
the Coalition for not giving ATSIC enough money. Strangely enough his solution
is not to simply give it more money, but to give the money to someone else. The good thing is that this move is likely to embolden the Coalition, who
have not been brave enough to axe the dysfunctional racist department, but
have merely pursued the policy of letting it wither on the vine. In the
bidding war which invariably precedes a federal election, what policy
will Johnny (everything-in-moderation) Howard offer to top this one? One can only hope it is a cost-cutting war.
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| Leveling the playing field | |
Any great defender of democracy will tell you that
margins are unimportant in an election - 50.5% of the population can enslave
the other because they are technically the majority - but pragmatics come into
play in the real world. Taiwan's president Chen
Shui-bian's was re-elected by the slimmest of margins (less than 0.5% of the
population). In mature democracies like the USA, such a result would simply go
through the motions of arguing about dangling chaff and pregnant punched cards
before being settled by a stacked Supreme Court along appointed party
lines. However the situation in Taiwan is a little different. Firstly, Taiwan is a new democracy - punch-ups in the Parliament are not
uncommon, and democratic changes to the constitution are still
underway. Secondly, most nations don't recognize them as a country at all -
particularly China who wants to reabsorb the breakaway nation into The People's Democratic Paradise
Collective. Thirdly, the president survived an apparent assassination
attempt the day before the election. It is not clear whether the incumbent President would have won the election had
he not been shot, but the reality is that it does nothing to strengthen his
mandate in the twisted views of Chinese government officials. Previously
the president has been accused of 'abusing democracy' to promote his
pro-independence views. Apparently 'abusing democracy' means listening to
what people the public want instead of telling them what they want. They can now promote the view that he was not elected on a level playing
field, that most Taiwanese don't want to move towards independence, and that a
Chinese invasion will truly enforce the will of the people. Bent logic to most
Westerners, but
totally reasonable by the twisted standards of the Ministry of Misinformation
in the People Paradise Collective. Already there are angry protests in Taiwan by opposition supporters demanding a
recount, and your ABC reports that
Chinese officials are keeping silent about a report in the influential South
China Morning Post that the People's Liberation Army has been put on combat
alert to strike Taiwan if the island's election dispute intensifies.
The report is doubtless exaggerated, but it is still very worrying. Three years ago, the US was gearing up for a war with China over Taiwan, but
the War on Terror has taken its toll. Dubya has now realized that keeping the
war machine oiled by a petulant
Middle East would be a hard thing to do, and he has been talking a more
conciliatory tone. And in fairness, so have the Chinese. Peace can normally be ensured by rational entities by being able to predict the
actions of the opposition, and controlling their own actions accordingly.
Assassinations are disturbing because they change power structures very
quickly, and cause sudden and unpredictable political shifts. Assassinations
are the kind of things that trigger world wars. These times are not just interesting - they are downright dangerous.
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| Pig on a spit | |
Sex and footy don't really have much in common at a first glance. A dozen beer
swilling yobbos getting together on Saturday nights to watch the big match on
Davo's monster TV couldn't possibly be about sex. The mere suggestion is too
awful to contemplate. The players on the other hand, being young, fit, tall, competitive men at the
top of their professions with an over-supply of testosterone certainly seem to
get their fair share of it - few of them seem to be without girlfriends. All
the women's groups in the 1980s insisting that women wanted sensitive new age partners
didn't seem to make much of a dent in the success rates for the most aggressive
men in society. But there are some suggestions that some players are unsatisfied with the
consensual variety, and have been taking it by force. There have long been
rumors about rape victims receiving hush money to bury the complaints, but
now six of the Canterbury Bulldogs have been accused of pack rape by a woman
who was presumably unwilling to take any hush money offered to her. One has to question the common sense of a women who would go out with a pack of
footballers. It's a bit like going up to Mike Tyson's hotel room, sending your
son visiting at the Neverland Ranch, or getting into a car with a bunch of
Lebanese in Sydney's western suburbs. You can only blame the media's left-wing
bias (in failing to report the facts) so far. At some point believing in the
rumors and innuendo is a matter of survival. But blaming the victim is not the way forward. Allegations have to be
investigated and charges laid where appropriate. The police investigation
plodded along, and police actually interviewed the players after nearly a
week. In turn, the players showed their contempt of the investigative process
by using stalling tactics and turning up in shorts and thongs. The team's
Muslim captain refused to be interviewed or to give DNA samples, saying that it
was an affront to his religion. Apparently the suggestion that Muslims might be
involved in pack rape is unthinkable. Of course, as an individual he was quite within his rights - he has the
the right refuse to be interviewed, the right to not answer questions, and the
right to refuse to give DNA samples (at least until a court order is made). But football players involved are not mere individuals. They have made a career
from being team players, and through presenting themselves as examples for the
young people in society. Showing contempt for the processes of law is hardly a
good example for the greater collective. The Bulldog's management seems to have come around to this view too. They
have a multi-million dollar business which is now in a state of collapse, and
have already sacked their manager. Many sponsors have canceled deals, many more
have adopted a wait-and-see approach before extending contracts, and community
groups such as schools have disassociated themselves with the team. They are
the people that no-one wants to know. The law has failed to protect people, but the free-market is in the process
of sorting out the mess. Economically, the Doggies are dead.
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| Fleeing the ghettos of state-run education | |
Two short years ago local Leftists were running around
bleating they were ashamed to be Australian, that
Australia's treatment of asylum seekers had
shamed us before the rest of the world, and they held up northern European
nations of examples of success in tolerance and multiculturalism. It seems that facade is gently collapsing, if a report by SBS's Dateline
program, 'White
Flight' is any indication. It claims that Dutch parents are abandoning the state-run school system in
droves, and sending their children to private schools with high education
standards, which just coincidently happen to be almost exclusively native
Dutch. The private schools are referred to as 'white' schools, and the
remaining high-ethnic state schools are referred to as 'black' schools, and the
phenomena is being called 'white flight'. The Dutch population has gotten a good education about the delights of
multiculturalism over the past few decades - they have realized that the
experiment has failed and they are quietly voting with their cheque-books. The
middle classes have found a no-fuss free-market solution to buy out of the
problems they have created. Needless to say, the ever shrinking group of hand-wringing apologists are
labeling this 'Apartheid' and calling for government imposed racial quotas in
all schools. Clearly these people have no understanding of choice. Choosing
your child's school is an action of free choice, which parents
themselves choose and pay for. Apartheid was a system of government force
imposed upon people based on their race - not unlike the system the
hand-wringing apologists are screaming for. But the unusually frank SBS program gave other useful insights too. It
featured some woman with a bag
over her head saying:
AMAL FAKHOR (Translation): 'We're told "Learn Dutch so you can understand us" we
hear that all the time "Learn Dutch really well, get to know our culture", But
they forget that they should understand our culture. We can't live together if
you don't understand me. It's not enough if I understand you but you don't
understand me. Multiculturalism means that you understand me, and I understand
you.' This gives a powerful insight into the mindset of these immigrants, and also the
fact that they have been totally unable to adapt to their rapidly changing politically situation. There
is no attempt to deny that the immigrants have failed to understand Dutch
culture, but there is still the demand that the native Dutch understand them.
Turkish migrants have tried to have Turkish letters officially adopted into the
Dutch alphabet, as well as the compulsory teaching of Turkish as a second
language in Dutch schools. These demands would have attracted considerable sympathy in the wildly PC 1980s, and
even into the 1990s, but populations in 2004 are a little bit more
cynical. Some people think that immigrants have an obligation to culturally assimilate with
their chosen nation, others think they don't. But how many people in the 21st
century think that citizens in the host nation have an obligation to assimilate
to the immigrants? Walking into someone else's house and ordering them to rearrange the furniture
is frowned on by most people - except those doing the ordering, of course.
Hardly surprisingly, the Dutch population are a little miffed at their new
guests making these kinds of demands, and have made gentle moves towards their
repatriation. In February, the government introduced a plan to force around
25,000 failed asylum seekers back to their own countries. So much for Australia becoming a pariah state for adopting the same policy.
Australia just got there first.
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| Stretching the untruth | |
It is a sad reflection on human nature that all politicians lie. Every
skilled seducer knows that telling well thought out lies will get better
results, and honest politicians just won't get elected by a population who
wants to be wooed by a vision prosperity and freedom which somehow always
falls short of expectations. That's why it is so satisfying to watch when sometimes, just sometimes, they
suffer the humiliation of being caught out by their own lies. This seems to
have happened to the Spanish government after some psychos killed over 200
unwitting Spanish taxpayers on
their way to earn some more money for their tax-greedy rulers three days before
an election. Whether the psychos were recruited by Al Qaeda or by the separatist ETA
movement was a hard call at the time. Most terrorist attacks in Spain
are works of ETA, but this one seemed to be on a larger scale than most, and
had the organizational feel of an Al Qaeda operation. This caught the center-right Spanish government off guard. They had supported
the US in their recent forays into Afghanistan and Iraq against popular opinion. An
ETA attack would win them votes, an Al Qaeda attack would lose them votes, so
they directed their officials to blame ETA, hoping they could stretch the
untruth until after the election, and go into damage control later. Oops! The ref has not yet made the call, but Al Qaeda is the odds-on favorite
based on the arrests and other evidence so far - ETA denied responsibility
while Al Qaeda claimed responsibility via confused and ranting tapes about the
viper of Western imperialism being drowned in the blood of the infidels after
their deadly crusade into the heartland of Allah's chosen people .. or
whatever. The Spanish people went to the polls knowing that their government sexed up
the evidence against ETA, and the voter's wrath was swift and decisive. The result? Al Qaeda have now realized that they can force regime change in democratic
countries. Terrorism has achieved a desired political outcome. Their murdering of 200 innocent
civilians has been vindicated. And this has left Australia's Johnny ("just-coincidence") Howard a little
concerned. Little Johnny has gotten a lot of mileage talking up (he's not
capable of 'sexing' up anything) the risk that Australia faces from
terrorism. He now has to talk up the danger of terrorism, while talking down
the possibility that it might be caused by Australia's support of the US. Non
elected officials are stating the obvious - that Australia's military
involvement in Iraq popped up on the radar of Islamic psychosis. Johnny is
taking the philosophical view - que sera, sera, whatever happens would
have happened anyway. So what lessons are in this for Australia? A country that has never been invaded (if
one discounts European colonization); which has never been attacked from her own
shores and whose only real experience with civil unrest is a pack of drunken
welfare recipients throwing Molotov cocktails in Redfern. With Australians going to the polls late in the year, three days before the
election would be an ideal time to strike. With the outcome looking quite
close, enough Australians would cower to terrorists and change their vote to a
more 'multiculturally
friendly' government in the hope that they wouldn't be targeted further. Little Johnny may have a big problem. This may be Tampa in reverse. Australia's big heart may be impaled on the psychotic sword of fundamentalist
extremism and Australian
cities may become awash in the blood of an ideological war between the infidels
who wish to take The Great Satan's path to economic domination and
those who are the True
Believers .. or whatever.
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| Male bonding in crisis of masculinity? | |
Johnny (arch-conservative) Howard had a little snipe at the ALP last month with comments about
public schooling lacking values and predictably, the politically dysfunctional
ex-schoolteachers in the ALP bit back with a litany of core values which their
publicly educated children
were learning - things like 'inclusion', and 'tolerance', and 'caring', and
'empathy', and lots of new ways of saying 'political
correctness'. Predictably, words like 'honesty' and 'responsibility' didn't
feature highly. Mark (Maddog) Latham pretended to be suitably outraged, but now
that the rabid snarling has died down, he's barking a different tune. Maddog is now calling attention to a 'crisis in masculinity' among men and
boys. One is tempted to suggest a relationship with Maddog's bout with
testicular cancer, but that would really be hitting below the belt. The ball-breaker for Maddog here is the push to allow a small number of
men-only scholarships by private schools. That is - affirmative action
for men. The worm has turned. Maddog is not yet willing to admit the ALP's role in this - but even the True
Believers would have to be wearing blinkers not to see the connection. One of the big justifications for affirmative action in the '80s was that
it was necessary to have role models for girls to see and aspire to. Exactly
why a women who was obviously
less competent than her male underlings would be a good role model was always a
bit of a mystery, but that point always got lost amongst the subsequent shrill
accusations of 'chauvinist' and
'misogynist'. It was, of course, always about subsidies for educated
middle class women masquerading as compassion for other
people. But their approach to the education system was more insidious. Quiet
suggestions of child
molestation drove men out of the teaching profession while 'flexible'
selection criteria at teacher's colleges (involving interviews by panels of
women) prevented men entering it, and eventually stopped most of them from
applying. Male primary-school teachers are now rare enough to stand out like
dog's balls. Mothers now send their sons to schools in which the gardener (the
most junior position) is the only adult male, and then wonder why their sons
exhibit behavioral problems. The family law court effectively removed the ability for separated fathers
to help raise their children, and the feminization of the education system
produced a shortage of suitable role models and further alienated the boys.
Curricular tampering, girls-only IT classes, and 'control' techniques
designed to 'stop the boys getting more than their fair share of attention'
all took their toll. When they go to high school, the strongest males they see are the older
boys in gangs, and then their single mothers wonder why their sons become
gang-members. (How could this happen? Today's education system is so
.. caring.) The boys see no future in school, they see no future in
education, and they now perform worse than the girls in every subject. Men are
generally more poorly educated, they suicide at five times the rate
of women, and die on average seven years younger. And now Maddog laments that so many men suffer 'depression and
alienation in society'. The ALP not only championed political correctness, but institutionalized
it. If Maddog wants to explore what went wrong he'd better be prepared to have
his nose rubbed in it. The ALP created this problem, and can't back out of it
without admitting it. The ALP is getting another political wedgie.
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| Ignoring the signs .. | |
The key to successfully dumping garbage in an unauthorized area is
your ability to get away undetected. While Australia has been used as
human garbage dump for many years, the actual people who do the dumping have
had to pay a significant price - often involving a prison sentence. This has
helped to keep the price high, and the market small. But the latest arrival on Australia's Ashmore Reef has changed all that. 15
asylum seekers have
turned up on the tiny, normally uninhabited, island with no sign of a boat or
other vehicle which could have brought them there. Apparently someone dumped their
cargo and left. This is partially a probe to test the mettle of the government in an
election lead-up, but it is also a change of strategy. They must have seen the
1950s sitcom where the man dumps the baby on the doorstep and presses the
door-bell before running away. It's hard to know what their agreement is with their passengers, but if the
agreement is simply to deliver them to Australia, then they have fulfilled their
contractual obligations. Never mind that Ashmore Reef is excised, and that
the asylum-seeker's next stop will be Christmas Island or Nauru. All parties are trying to capitalize on this of course. Amanda (Killer
Whale) Vandstone is gloating that it vindicates the excision policy for
Australia's remote islands. The ALP's Stephen Smith is whimpering
incoherently on your ABC.
"The Government says it is strong on border protection - the truth is it is
incompetent,"
In fact, the ALP's stated asylum seeker policy of 'compassion for asylum
seekers, punishment for traffickers' has just been totally discredited. It
now equates to an open door policy, which of course is why they are screaming
so loudly about it being the government's fault, and about the government
capitalizing on it in the lead up to the election.
Well Stephen, demonstrating the inadequacy of the opposition's policies
is usually considered a legitimate thing do to in a democracy. In reality, 15 people testing the mettle of Australia's minister for
immigration is not a security threat - it's just a security probe. They were
hundreds of miles from the mainland on a tiny island with very little food or
water. And most sensible thing to do with them would have been to simply leave
them there.
UPDATE 2004-03-07 Calling them 'asylum-seekers' may have been a little hasty. Apparently these
people are Indonesian nationals who thought they would get jobs in
Australia picking fruit. There's not a lot of fruit picking gets done on
Ashmore reef, but they claim to have been 'tricked' by the people who dumped
them there. It's not actually clear whether they intended to seek asylum - they
are probably just straight-out illegals. Whatever.
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>> Please Sir, I want some more
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- ANON -- Anonymous Coward 2011-12-02
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