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Category: Politics (Page 15 of 43)

Rape, Lies and Socialism

August 23, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Dominique Strauss-Kahn is the former head of the International Monetary Fund. Whatever happened in his New York hotel bedroom on May 14th, prosecutors are right to drop rape charges against him.

“The nature and number of the complainant’s falsehoods leave us unable to credit her version of events beyond a reasonable doubt, whatever the truth may be about the encounter between the complainant and the defendant,” the motion states. “If we do not believe her beyond a reasonable doubt, we cannot ask a jury to do so.”

Among those falsehoods was that she had been gang-raped by soldiers in Guinea.

Prosecutors said that at one point when she was confronted with untruths, “she dropped to the floor and physically rolled around while weeping” before saying she did not know the answer to their questions.

Even her insistence that no one could “buy” her, and that she had no interest in earning money off the case, was greeted with suspicion by prosecutors.

“The complainant had a recorded conversation with her incarcerated fiance, in which the potential for financial recovery in relation to the May 14, 2011, incident was mentioned,” the document says. “Although there is nothing wrong with seeking recovery from a defendant in a civil suit, the complainant’s disavowal of any financial interest is relevant to her credibility.”

The sad thing is that she may very well have been raped. But her history of lying about sexual assault, and her myriad changes of story in this case, put prosecutors in the position where they were no longer certain beyond reasonable doubt, and consequently, could not put the case to a jury.

Before the accusations, Strauss Kahn was considered the leading Socialist Party candidate in the next French presidential election.

How the heck does a socialist become head of the International Monetary Fund?

What Oakeshott and Windsor Should Be Saying Now

August 23, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Andrew Wilkie wouldn’t recognise a pimple on his own nose. But Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor just might. This is what they should be saying:

After the general election I believed the interests of my electorate, and the people of Australia, would best be served by a Labor government.

I was wrong.

This government has been the most inept in Australia’s history. Its major projects and policy announcements have been a series of expensive and embarrassing failures.

Whatever you may think of the carbon and mining taxes as policy, the government has no mandate for them, and in the case of the carbon tax, can only introduce it by breaking a clear pre-election promise.

The government’s reluctance to act over allegations involving the member for Dobell have made it clear that the leadership of the Labor Party is more concerned with holding onto power than with justice, or the rights of ordinary Australian workers.

Anthony Albanese’s description of hundreds of truck drivers and their families and supporters as ‘the convoy of no consequence,’ demonstrated the contempt the Labor Party feels for the concerns and aspirations of Australian families and small business owners.

A government can only function fairly and effectively if it governs with the consent of the people. The Labor Party has lost the right to claim that consent.

As a result, I have to announce that I intend to support the Leader of the Opposition in a motion of no confidence in the government.

Not only would Oakeshott and Windsor be doing the right thing, and earning the gratitude of the entire country, this is the only conceivable way their own political careers have any chance of continuing past the next election.

A Government of No Consequence

August 23, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese today threw his support behind Mr Thomson, saying he “absolutely” believed the Member for Dobell’s denial of wrong-doing.

“I have the view in life that when someone tells you something you believe them,” Mr Albanese said today.

That would be fine it Mr Albanese applied the same rules to everyone. I too believe in the presumption of innocence. Although the only thing that makes that possible in Craig Thomson’s case is the presumption of idiocy.

But Mr Albanese, while willing to believe someone who is either a lying, thieving, sleazebag or a lying, irresponsible moron, is not willing to grant the same courtesy to hundreds of truck drivers and their supporters, some of whom have travelled thousands of miles to put their views to the government.

These are not your typical leftist Canberra rent a crowd. It is easy to drag to together a few thousand people who have nothing better to do than play computer games, whine about John Howard and line up for their dole money.

These are mostly small business people, the ones who drive the Australian economy, people who pay taxes and employ other Australians. Many of them are already struggling, yet they have given up days of time and thousands of dollars in lost income and expenses, to come and talk to the government they elected.

For the Labor government to dismiss them as a bunch of whingers whose views are of no consequence, is rudeness driven by a pungent blend of arrogance and stupidity.

No one from the Government appeared before the group.
 
Inside Parliament federal transport minister Anthony Albanese criticised the event.
 
“The convoy of no Consequence, Mr Speaker, the convoy of no consequence where a couple of hundred people gathered with no support from the mainstream organisations, the people who believe in one world government.”

I guess most Australians have already worked out that the Federal government thinks their views and livelihoods are of no consequence, but for the Minister for Transport publicy to despise ordinary people in this way is an indication of how hollow and isolated from reality this government really is.

How To Prevent Riots

August 21, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Systemic social problems are not an excuse for rioting and theft.

But changing some of our social systems to encourage personal responsibility may make ‘entitlement’ riots and opportunistic looting less likely.

That is the gist of Michael Coren’s new column in the Toronto Sun:

If the British riots disaster is not to be replicated elsewhere, here is a manifesto of advice. Ignore it at your smug peril.

1) Reduce the role of the state and, as a balance, increase the role of the family.

For many years in Britain, parents have been told their children’s social, sexual, moral and cultural formation was better achieved by schools and social workers than mothers and fathers. Not only is the notion flawed philosophically, in practical terms it emasculates parents and enables children to act out every aggressive and narcissistic fantasy imaginable.

In West Indian families, for example, there are numerous cases of poor but good and responsible parents who, in trying to discipline their children, are prosecuted by white, middle-class lawyers for spanking a kid who goes on to join a gang and spend years in prison. Equally, parents are not informed by law if their underage daughters tell doctors or teachers they are sexually active, but they are left to face the consequences when teenage pregnancy or STDs occur.

2) State-supported education and health care may, arguably, serve a purpose, but state-supported welfare and social services have become so all-embracing that individual self-reliance has evaporated. The balance is important here. Neither the fanatical libertarian nor the obsessive socialist model works.

3) Stop the war on religion. Whatever your view of faith and God, the massive decline of religious observance and community in Britain has removed one of the glues that held the country together.

When churches disappear, the vacuum is filled by gangs or tribes. Beyond this is the disappearance of moral standards and ethical absolutes. Witness how in the black community it is the Christian evangelical youths who are least touched by the anarchy.

4) Control immigration, so it is based on the cultural and social needs and unity of the host population as well as on compassion and economic growth. The privileged people who decide our immigration policy seldom live in those areas where the mass of newcomers settle. A nation is more than an assembly of financially viable shopping malls, and without some sort of national and emotional fraternity we see inevitable decay.

5) Liberate the police from the whims of political correctness and government fashion. If London police had reacted swiftly and harshly to the rioting, there would not have been copy-cat incidents throughout Britain. Because of years of “racial sensitivity” training, they were held back in Tottenham, meaning — irony of ironies — law-abiding local people were attacked and robbed.

The police are not guardians of the state but protectors of the people. Their job is not to arrest storekeepers protecting their property, not to hand out traffic tickets, not to control controversial speech, not to be empathetic, but to stop crime and arrest criminals.

6) Do not romanticize the worst of lower-class antics on TV and in cinema and music. Entertainment once presented a world worthy of aspiration, now it glorifies the mud and muck. It makes the rich richer, keeps the poor poorer.

In conclusion, will any of this be achieved? Keep the baseball bat handy.

Durban 3, Israel and Chocolate

August 21, 2011 / / 0 Comments

‘Zionism’ is simply the assertion that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state. This is no more racist than saying that Jordan or Saudi Arabia have the right to exist as Arab states.

Jews have an unbroken connection with Israel that goes back between three and four thousand years. If anyone can claim to be the indigenous people of that part of the world it is the Jews.

The League of Nations gave Britain a mandate to make the old Ottoman province of Palestine, the historical home of the Jewish people, into a Jewish homeland and state. Britain did so, but carved off 80% of the mandated territory – everything East of the Jordan River – to create the state of Jordan to be a homeland for the region’s Arab people.

The 20% left to the Jewish people was reduced again in a proposed partition which gave a further 30%, Gaza and the West bank of the Jordan, to local Arabs.

The Jews accepted this arrangement, which left them with only 15% of the mandated territory, less than one 6th of 1% of the land of the Middle East. Leaders Golda Meyerson and David Ben Gurion repeatedly affirmed their desire to live in peace with their Arab neighbours. Arabs living in Israel would be given the full protection of the law, and full rights of Israeli citizens.

Arabs leaders rejected this plan, and told Arabs living in Israel to leave, since the Jews would soon be defeated, and they would then be able to return to take over the farms, schools, roads and hospitals the Jews had built.

The state of Israel was proclaimed in a declaration of independence on May 14th 1948. The following day Israel was attacked on all sides by the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League, said “This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the crusades.”

Israel survived, as it has survived the relentless attacks on its territory since that time, including three more major conflicts (1967,1973 and the Intifada) and ongoing terrorism.

Israel is the only non-racist state in the Middle East. Arab citizens still have full rights of citizenship. Arabs can be, and are, members of parliament, judges, police officers and soldiers. Jews are not even allowed to live in Jordan, Saudi Arabia or the Arab occupied territitories of Israel.

There are temples, mosques, and churches throughout Israel, as well as synagogues.

Yet Israel is constantly attacked by the UN, and nowhere more viciously and dishonestly than at the Durban Conferences.

It is an disgrace that Australia is still considering sending a delegation to the planned Durban conference in New York.

It is bizarre and embarassing that while talking about moral leadership in imposing a pointless tax on ‘carbon,’ our government is considering legitimising a conference which is itself grossly racist.

It is especially important that the government give a clear lead given the recent spate of boycotts and blockades of Jewish businesses in Australia. Nineteen ‘protestors’ (read thugs) were arrested and three police officers injured during a rally outside Max Brenner’s chocolate shop in Melbourne in July.

Even if the government won’t, some Australians are taking a stand against anti-Jewish bullying:

Gerard Henderson, Jana Wendt, Paul Howes, Warren Mundine, Sandy Gutman and Michael Danby at Max Brenner's Chocolate Shop

I will be in Melbourne next weekend to visit the theatre and to see the Tutankhamun exhibition. I think I’ll call at Max Brenner’s for a coffee as well.

The Episcopal Church – Casting Swine Before Pearls

August 20, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Reason number 12934618 to get the heck out of the Epsicopal church, if not the entire gluey mess that is worldwide Anglicanism.

Episcopalians will mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11 with a three day memorial including readings from the Koran.

Robert Spencer has selected some verses which might be appropriate:

Qur’an 98:4-6: “Nor did the People of the Book make schisms, until after there came to them Clear Evidence. And they have been commanded no more than this: To worship Allah, offering Him sincere devotion, being true (in faith); to establish regular prayer; and to practise regular charity; and that is the Religion Right and Straight. Those who reject (Truth), among the People of the Book and among the Polytheists, will be in Hell-Fire, to dwell therein (for aye). They are the worst of creatures.”

Qur’an 5:14: “From those, too, who call themselves Christians, We did take a covenant, but they forgot a good part of the message that was sent them: so we estranged them, with enmity and hatred between the one and the other, to the day of judgment. And soon will Allah show them what it is they have done.”

Qur’an 9:29: “Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.”

In words as slippery as fish oil, presiding ‘bishop’ Katherine Jefferts Schori said: “The anniversary is an opportunity for reflection” adding that the Episcopal Church “continues to work for healing and reconciliation. The greatest memorial to those who died 10 years ago will be a world more inclined toward peace.”

Well, yes. Except that peace and reconciliation have their foundation in truth, something the Epsicopal church seems to have lost track of completely.

Let’s Overlook Obama’s Failures – Mariela Castro

August 20, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Yep, Obama gets a ringing endorsement from the pampered niece of Fidel Castro.

“Let’s overlook President Obama​’s failures during his first term,” advised Raul Castro’s daughter Mariela to Congresspersons Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey and Sam Farr recently in Havana. “We must support him for a second term so that he can have a better opportunity to accomplish better things.”

While being feted by a Stalinist regime that shoots and imprisons labor leaders, outlaws strikes and burns Orwell’s “Animal Farm” as “seditious,” the three smitten U.S. legislators were acting as honored plenipotentiaries of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

While delighting in the company of a regime that jailed and tortured the longest suffering black political prisoners in modern history, that to this day jails and tortures Cuban blacks for the crime of quoting Martin Luther King, Jr​., and whose co-founder (Che Guevara​) declared, “The Negro is indolent and spends his money on frivolities and drink, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent,” — while swooning in this august company, California Rep. Barbara Lee also acted as plenipotentiary of the Congressional Black Caucus.

This Congressional delegation’s respectful visit to the Stalinist regime that jailed political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin’s, murdered them at a higher rate than pre-war Hitler’s and bans elections under penalty of torture chambers and firing squads, was sponsored by the California-based Center for Democracy in the Americas.

Mariela Castro, 49, serves as head of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education, which is dedicated “to enlightening people against  traditional sexual prejudices,” and is run by the only regime in the modern history of the Western hemisphere to herd gays into forced labor camps for the crime of being gay, and to herd HIV sufferers into isolation camps until they died.

More on the economic and human disaster that is communist Cuba at The American Spectator.

Dim witted leftists who gush over Castro’s ‘achievements’ are in the same category as the useful idiots who came back from Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia with glowing reports about new industries and a workers’ paradise.

Pornography and Terrorism

August 18, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Jennifer S Bryson notes the high proportion of captured terrorists who have had large amounts of pornography in their possession.

Pornography makes women and men masturbation aids. The actors cease to be human. Their only purpose is to provide physical stimulation. If they don’t do their job, they disappear – the page is turned, the next website clicked.

Pornography de-humanises both actors and users.

If we want to understand the inner workings of terrorists and would-be terrorists, we must seek to understand their entire person, including the relationship—or inconsistencies—between their words and actions. In the case of the 9/11 hijackers who visited strip clubs, and in the case of Abdo and among what seems like an increasing number of terrorists, actions include sexual perversions and pornography use that cannot be squared with what these ideological terrorists and their supporters espouse.

Terrorist acts rely on the ability to dehumanise planned victims. Victims are less than real, less than people. They are to be blotted out.

Bryson asks:

Are there security costs to the free-flow of pornography? If so, what are they? Are we as a society putting ourselves at risk by turning a blind eye to pornography proliferation?
 
I wonder further: Could it be that pornography drives some users to a desperate search for some sort of radical “purification” from the pornographic decay in their soul? Could it be that the greater the wedge pornography use drives between an individual’s religious aspirations and the individual’s actions, the more the desperation escalates, culminating in increasingly horrific public violence, even terrorism?

What Does the Australian Labor Party Stand For?

August 18, 2011 / / 0 Comments

It can no longer claim to stand for Australian workers.

If it did, it would have come down on Craig Thomson like a ton of batts.

This guy (allegedly) stole from health services workers to give himself cash bonuses and $2000 sessions at a brothel.

Then he lied about it.

Instead of standing up for the workers, the Labor Party paid Thomson’s legal bills, lent him another $50,000, and told everyone else to shut up.

Gillard and Labor will no longer be able to form a government if Thomson has to stand down, so it is understandable that they don’t want that to happen.

But they seem to have no comprehension that by acting as they have, Gillard, Swan, etc, have confirmed what is now the standard public view – that they are in this for themselves and cannot be trusted to act in the best interests of ordinary Australians.

The Labor Party will win people’s trust again, and their votes, when it acts in a trustworthy way.

Kicking Our Allies

August 17, 2011 / / 0 Comments

A few days ago communist China launched its first (albeit recycled) aircraft carrier. Whatever else this is, it is an attempt to project Chinese authority over the Western Pacific.

A renewed reason to demonstrate and affirm moral and material support to our non-communist allies in Asia.

But virtually simultaneously, the news that the US has bowed to pressure from communist China, and will not supply F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan as expected.

China has called the sale a “red line.” A recent editorial in the state-controlled People’s Daily called for the use of a “financial weapon” against the U.S. if new F-16s were released.

The U.S. decision comes as a blow to the self-ruled island’s effort to counter China’s growing military, whose first aircraft carrier began sea trials last week, and therefore to its independence.

There are fears that losing Taiwan could spell the end of U.S. power projection in the region. Losing Taiwan would “change everything from the operational arch perspective to the posture of Japan and the U.S.” in the region, said Raytheon’s Asia president, Walter Doran, a retired admiral who once commanded the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

An ordinary level of commonsense financial management would not have left the West so vulnerable to the pressure of a threatened ‘financial weapon.’

A set of balls in the White House would also help.

Craig Thomson – Time to Call the Police

August 16, 2011 / / 1 Comment

For last four months allegations have been made that Federal Labor MP and former Federal Secretary of the Health Services Union Craig Thomson had used his union credit card to make make unauthorised cash advances, and to pay for prostitutes.

He has denied those allegations, claiming the cash withdrawals were made by someone else, or if made by him, were appropriate and properly accounted for, and that the signatures appearing to be his on credit card vouchers for ‘escort services’ are forgeries.

Forensic handwriting expert Paul Westwood has examined the vouchers and says there is no evidence of this, and that he ‘would be very surprised if the signature was a forgery.’

The signatures on the license and credit card slip look identical to me:

Craig Thomson - Signature a Forgery?

Radio station 2Ue’s Michael Smith points out that in either case, a crime has been committed, and the police need to be called:

One – Mr Thomson did it. 

Two – Someone knocked off his card, then knocked off his licence, then forged his signature.   They also knocked off his phone, and used his phone from the area where he lives up the Pacific Highway, then used the phone coming down the highway to Sydney and used that phone to call the same escort agency where the knocked off credit card, forged signature and knocked off licence were presented.   Then his card, his licence and his phone were returned to him without him even noticing they were missing.

Then when that $2,745 bill came in as a result of scenario two he just authorised it for payment.   Didn’t ask what it was about.   Didn’t investigate.   It’s just $2,475 anyway.

The NSW Police must be involved in this investigation in either case.   In either scenario one or two it is a clear case of fraud.

And the victims here are the poor buggers who go to work every day cleaning hospitals.   It’s their union dues.   And Craig Thomson was the man who signed off on the way the money was spent.

….

I just rang the number that appears on Craig Thomson’s mobile phone records on the night that the $2,475 was paid to Keywed Pty Ltd, trading as Sydney Room Service escort agency.

The phone was answered “Sydney Room Service.”

I said “I’m Michael Smith, I’m from 2UE and we’re doing a story on the use of credit cards for escort services.   Can you tell if your clients need to show any further ID if they pay for your services with a credit card?”

The lady who didn’t want her name used said, “Yeah, if you pay with a credit card you must produce photographic ID.   That’s a standard practice throughout the industry.”

I said, “Are your staff instructed to check the photographic ID against the face of the person in front of them, the person who signs the credit card voucher?”

She said, “Yes, absolutely.   They know that if that’s not done they don’t get paid.   It happens 100% of the time.”

The Labor Party has so far paid some $40,000 defending Mr Thomson from these allegations. If he has to resign, this will force a by-election, which Labor will lose. If Labor loses one seat, they lose government.

I’m also a bit curious – what on earth would you get for $2475 at Keywed Restaurant aka Sydney Outcalls Network?

Facts on CO2 and Climate Change

August 16, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Facts have defeated the climate alarmist juggernaut. It still lumbers on like a gigantic zombie looking for brains to devour. Poor thing. It does most of its lumbering in universities and Labor Party gatherings, where brains are in short supply.

This is part of a speech to be given by Perth geologist David Archibald at the no carbon tax  rally in Canberra today:

My first duty to you today is tell you what is happening to the climate.  What is happening is cooling.  The oceans started cooling in 2003, and the atmosphere is following.  There has been no warming since 1998.

In fact, the temperature of planet today is almost the same as it was when satellites first started measuring it in 1979.  No one under the age of 32 has experienced global warming.  Some of us predate that and remember the heavy frosts of the nineteen seventies.  Those frosts are returning, and worse.  Solar activity is weakening, and will remain weak for another 22 years.

We in this blessed country will be spared the worst of it, but a large portion of the grain belt in the northern hemisphere will have crop failures due to longer winters and early frosts.  Canada will go from being a large exporter of grain to becoming a frequent importer.  As long as Australia remains a net food exporter, we will benefit from the shorter Northern Hemisphere growing season.

For us, climate is a non-problem.  Carbon dioxide’s heating effect is real, but minuscule.  The one hundred parts per million that we have added to the atmosphere in the last one hundred years has heated the planet by one tenth of a degree.  We will add another hundred parts per million over the next fifty years.  The total of two tenths of a degree will be very welcome by mid-century.

In fact, the more carbon dioxide we add to the atmosphere, the better.  During the ice ages of the last three million years, the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere got as low as one hundred and seventy-two parts per million.  Plant growth shuts down at one hundred and fifty parts per million.  Life above sea level was almost snuffed out due to a lack of carbon dioxide.  We were only twenty-two parts per million from extinction …

Click here to download David Archibald’s Speech in MS Word format.

Sauce for the Turkey

August 12, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Stop Islamisation of Europe has issued the following advisory to the government of Turkey:

The organizations “Stop Islamisation of Europe” and “Stop the Islamization of Georgia,” report that they are going to hold a rally of humanitarian assistance in support of ethnic minorities living in Turkey.

Both organisations note the Turkish government permits flotillas sailing to Israel to embark from ports in Turkey with no interference., In this regard, we ask the Turkish government not to interfere in the promotion of the convoy.

SIOE pre-states that among the passengers and volunteers will be well-known personalities: journalists and members of legislative bodies of both Georgia and other European countries.

The column of cars and trucks is for peaceful purposes and called “Rights and Freedom.”

We are purely a humanitarian and an information group acting to expose to the world the status of national minorities living in Turkey and to provide assistance to such minorities.

The date for moving “Rights and Freedom” convoys will be stated later.

Cool! Can’t wait to see how Turkey responds.

The Good Samaritan Did Not Use a Government Credit Card

August 12, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Those dastardly right-wing Christians are at it again.

This time they are claiming that we serve the poor best by being financially responsibile:

… we do not need to “protect programs for the poor.” We need to protect the poor themselves. Indeed, sometimes we need to protect them from the very programs that ostensibly serve the poor, but actually demean the poor, undermine their family structures and trap them in poverty, dependency and despair for generations. Such programs are unwise, uncompassionate, and unjust.

The group calls itself Christians for a Sustainable Economy. Here is a bit more of their letter to President Obama:

All Americans – especially the poor – are best served by sustainable economic policies for a free and flourishing society. When creativity and entrepreneurship are rewarded, the yield is an increase of productivity and generosity.
 
Compassion and charity for “the least of these” is an essential expression of our faith, flowing from a heart inclined towards God. And just as the love of God frees us for a more abundant life, so our charity must go beyond mere material provision to meet the deeper needs of the poor. To suggest that Matthew 25 – or any commandment concerning Christian charity – can be met through wealth redistribution is to obscure these truths. We encourage you to consider the whole counsel of scripture, which urges not only compassion and provision for the poor but also the perils of debt and the importance of wise stewardship.

Amen.

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