Wayne Swan is already taking money out of people’s superannuation accounts here in Australia.
SIX years of Labor government, by this year’s election in September, will result in a new Australia. We have contracted the European disease. Labor has taken us towards the most spectacularly unsuccessful model of government in the developed world today. We will have almost all the European pathologies but none of the European security of a big local market and a benign security environment.
From our southern waters:
A JAPANESE military ship has joined its whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean, increasing tension between whalers and activists after collisions last week.
The 140m-long Shirase icebreaker, operated by the navy and described by activists as “intimidating”, arrived near the Nisshin Maru whaling ship and Korean-flagged fuel tanker Sun Laurel in Australia’s Antarctic territory early yesterday morning, Sea Shepherd Captain Paul Watson said.
Let me preface what I am about to write by stating:
Having said all that the SS are serving a public good. Like a militia unit, the SS are harassing a foreign power (Japan), which has complete disregard to our territorial claims to Antarctica. It is an insult enough that Japan is even conducting economic activities in our Antarctic waters (they claim it is for scientific purposes) without our permission and without paying the requisite license fees to the Commonwealth (if whaling was legal), even worse is that whaling is an activity that Australians generally find offensive. It is like Japan is rubbing our noses in it. So as far as I am concerned, the SS can employ the full spectrum of non-lethal militia tactics against the Japanese to discourage them from whaling in our waters.
Japan may not recognise Australia’s claims over Antarctica, but our territorial claims are more credible than Japan’s claims that their whaling operations are for scientific purposes.
UPDATE
Yes, they are pirate-like:
A court in the US has labelled conservationist group Sea Shepherd “pirates”.
Judge Alex Kozinski said the group’s “aggressive and high-profile attacks” on Japan’s whaling fleet endangered lives, ordering them to stop.
Furthermore,
He added that the illegality of whaling in Australian waters did not excuse Sea Shepherd’s activities.
“It is for Australia, not Sea Shepherd, to police Australia’s court orders.”
Sea Shepherd argues that the US court has no jurisdiction over foreign-flagged vessels sailing in Australian waters with an international crew.
Don’t you think it is time the Australian government maned-up and did something about Japan willfully ignoring Australia’s territorial waters? For me the issue is not about whaling, but the integrity of Australia’s territorial interests. If Japan can get away with conducting whaling, or whatever other activity it might be, in Australia’s waters why wouldn’t some other nation at some point in the future also take advantage of our slack attitude to our own claims to certain territories? Yes, the SS are a bunch of you know what (Sir Francis Drake come to mind?), but the issue is not about the SS. Japan is conducting scientific economic activities in our waters without our say and the Commonwealth is not doing anything about it.
The economic ‘powerhouse’ of the EU is in trouble:
The German economy contracted by a larger-than-expected 0.5 percent in the final quarter of 2012, a preliminary estimate from the Federal Statistics office showed on Tuesday, as the euro zone crisis weighed on exports and corporate investment.
The German economy is generally overrated, and still there are fools that think the UK is better off staying in the EU.
Imagine if an Australian politician told the UK to get out of the EU so we could negotiate a FTA and NZ-like CER movement of people arrangement.
After observing the rise in popularity of Ukip and the rise of anti-European sentiment generally, the issue was raised by President Barack Obama in a video-conference call with the Prime Minister on Tuesday. It was also high on the agenda of a visit by a US national security council official to Downing Street and the Foreign Office earlier this week.
Background here:
Palestine has been offered state hood four times – never by any Middle East country – and has rejected the offer every time. Palestine has also refused to recognise Israel’s right to exist.
So it is not entirely clear why the ALP would choose for Australia to abstain from a vote on granting Palestine ‘non-member observer state’ status at the UN. Australia has never done so before. Clearly the far left are now running the ALP.
WSJ, Alan Dershowitz :
Rather than condemn this pervasive violence, the U.N. has done everything in its power to reward it, including devoting special agencies entirely to Palestinians and their cause. Meanwhile, the U.N. and the international community have given the cold shoulder to Tibetans, Kurds and other stateless groups that have not used terrorism as their primary means of achieving recognition and statehood.
Yet the case for Palestinian statehood is far weaker because the Palestinians have been offered statehood on numerous occasions—1938, 1948, 2001 and 2007. On each occasion the Palestinian leadership has rejected the offer, choosing the gun and the bomb instead.
Hundreds of rockets fired into Israel in 2012, and counting.
All major Israeli political parties support a two-state solution and have done so for a long time. Hamas do not and you may as well add the ALP to that list as well.
Well, the USA has voted for failure and mediocrity…. and around $21 trillion in Federal US debt in four years time and nearly $240 trillion in unfunded liabilities.
I think the implications for Australia are pretty clear. The USA is in terminal decline due to a sluggish economy, high taxes and high debt. All of which will increase the risk to Australia’s financial and national security.
Niall Ferguson has estimated, along with our economic historians, that when a country starts spending between 40 to 50 per cent of revenue on interest payments on debt then that country goes into terminal decline.
Habsburg Spain defaulted on all or part of its debt 14 times between 1557 and 1696 and also succumbed to inflation due to a surfeit of New World silver. Prerevolutionary France was spending 62 percent of royal revenue on debt service by 1788. The Ottoman Empire went the same way: interest payments and amortization rose from 15 percent of the budget in 1860 to 50 percent in 1875. And don’t forget the last great English-speaking empire. By the interwar years, interest payments were consuming 44 percent of the British budget, making it intensely difficult to rearm in the face of a new German threat.
While “Net interest” payments are only around 10 per cent of US government revenue, this excludes interest payments on debt held by GBEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the debt the US government has lent itself. If revenues remain stagnate and if inflation picks up, then essentially within about 10 years the US government will be getting close to Niall’s threshold.
Australia’s response? Low levels of government and private debt, less welfare and more spending on national defence. We need to prepare for a post-American world.
The EU did not bring peace to Europe. Millions of dead allied service personnel, along with US tax-payers, brought peace to Europe.
Gillard told the UN today that there is still room for diplomacy to work to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. I find that hard to believe. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has along history of making provocative statements about destroying Israel (he said so again this week), Iran has already spent substantial public funds on their nuclear programme and they have given no indication so far that they intend to give it up. Furthermore, external sanctions hardly every work to change the domestic policies of a particular nation especially when the USA is led by a President as weak as Obama.
Three things make a great power: money, guns and will. The US is waning on all three. Alan Dershowitz:
There are many ways to communicate American preparedness, including by increased military planning and exercises. But there is no substitute for a firm commitment, unambiguously stated by a president whose subordinates do nothing to blur the message and, if anything, signal a steely resolve.
A lack of will only emboldens the Iranian regime and undermines hope for an internally induced regime change.
Nearly half of voting Americans pay no income tax and it is unlikely that Israel and Palestine will make peace any time soon. Apparently though these are shocking things to say. Tut tut.
Melanie Phillips via Daily Mail
….the general point that too much of America is being sucked into state dependency – and that by increasing their number Obama is effectively gerrymandering the election – remains a powerful one…..Both the Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah make it crystal clear over and over again that they want to destroy Israel as a Jewish state. That’s truly shocking…..Romney has not one opponent in this presidential election, but two: Barack Obama and the American media which carries his bags for him.
Now now, tut tut…
Well, it is not health care or education. Last time I checked we were pouring more and more treasure into those two areas. For example, total health spending is well over $130 billion per year. That’s plenty of coin. And the biggest issue certainly is not global warming or any other environmental boondoggle. Last time I check the water and air were clean and the forests green.
With the US and EU debt crisis and unfoulding events in the Middle East and South China Sea, along with the uncertainty about China’s economy; the biggest issue facing this country is financial and national security. And what’s Gillard’s response? Cut Defence and ramp up ever more unsustainable levels of public debt to fund welfare. A short video explains the current dangers.
Meanwhile, it appears that the ALP’s decision to delay the acquisition of the Ch-47F model to replace the CH-47D has contributed to the deaths of two of our soliders in Afghanistan. The Howard government planned for the F’s to be ordered but the ALP delayed that plan in order to harvest savings to fund their welfare addiction agenda.