Month: June 2008

Heal me now…..with money

Posted by Chief Blogger – 16 June, 2008

I could do with some healing like this:

The federal government should establish a “healing fund” to pay for services to members of the stolen generations, a Senate committee has recommended.

Well before the ‘healing’ starts, the Government should attempt to establish the veracity of those claiming to be ‘stolen’, but that does not seem to be a priority. Instead, the usual members of the club for victim hood are out asking and demanding for more:

Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation national director Gary Highland said the recommendations fall short of what is needed to deliver justice to the stolen generations.

In other words, super size my healing! From the ABC:

A member of the Stolen Generations has slammed a parliamentary committee’s decision to establish a “healing fund” rather than provide compensation payments.

Indigenous businesswoman Sharon Firebrace says she believes the Government is avoiding costly compensation….

“I just think it’s a tricky way of tricking Aboriginal people,” she said.

“As I said, it’s trinkets and beads. I think it’s a cheap way for the government to get out of costly compensation.”

If the Government wanted to give me money for nothing I’d be happy to be tricked into taking it, I’m sure most people would. And BTW, the ABC describes Sharon Firebrace as a member of the ‘stolen’ generation, as if they had verified the claim. By contrast:

AUSTRALIA’S richest man, Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, has described the lives of many Aborigines as crap and criticised successive governments for giving welfare not opportunities.

When it comes to advice, I think I’d be taking Twiggy’s over Firebrace’s. Twiggy’s thoughts reflect Helen Hughes’ book Lands of Shame, where she outlines how leftist Aboriginal policies created welfare dependency and the other spate of problems now facing Aboriginal communities. Hughes writes:

Communal land ownership and the consequent absence of private housing, communal health services, indigenous education and ”customary law” support for assailants against their weak victims have led to the stultification and degradation of traditional culture so that it has not moved from sorcery to the rule of reason, from polygamy to the equality of women with men and from ”pay-back” to the rule of law. Welfare dependence has led to widespread alcoholism and violence, particularly against women and children.

Is anything likely to change under Rudd? Remember, he’s “…an old-fashioned Christian socialist.” – Kevin Rudd, Australian Financial Review, February 2003.

Who’s nice now?

Posted by Chief Blogger – 15 June, 2008

Avid readers may remember my earlier post about conservatism and happiness, linked here. The basic story, as pioneered by Arthur Brooks, is that conservatives demonstrate many of the charitable characteristics that their small l liberal friends don’t; Charity leads to happiness, so the more liberal you are the unhappier you are. Well a similar study has just been released that confirms the same story, entitled Makers and Takers by Peter Schweizer. He writes:

Those surveyed were asked: ‘Is it your obligation to care for a seriously injured/ill spouse or parent, or should you give care only if you really want to?’ Of those describing themselves as ‘conservative’, 71 per cent said it was. Only 46 per cent of those on the Left agreed. To the question: ‘Do you get happiness by putting someone else’s happiness ahead of your own?’, 55 per cent of those who said they were ‘very conservative’ said Yes, compared with 20 per cent of those who were ‘very liberal’.

So liberals are less likely to be concerned about the welfare of others, including children, because they see it as the states responsibility. That’s one explanation. Others include the socialistic preoccupation with class envy, victim hood and resentment. Relativism may also have something to do with it – honesty becomes subjective. Schweizer outlines his thesis in this video.

In the Sixties, we saw the beginning of a narcissism and self-absorption that gripped the Left and has not let go. The full-scale embrace of the importance of self-awareness, self-discovery and being ‘true’ to oneself, along with the idea that the State should care for the less fortunate, has created a swathe of Left-wing people who want to outsource their obligations to others…

Billionaire Ted Turner, a self-described socialist, publicly regrets that he had five children. ‘If I was doing it over again, I wouldn’t have had that many,’ he says. ‘But I can’t shoot them now they’re here.’ All of this should not come as a surprise to anyone watching the drift of progressive thinking over the past 40 years.

Starting with British anthropologist Edmund Leach, who said: ‘Far from being the basis of a good society, the family, with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all its discontents’, feminists, progressives and others have seen the family as an oppressive force. Feminist Gloria Steinem says on behalf of women: ‘The truth is, finding ourselves brings more excitement and wellbeing than anything romance can offer.’

Scary. I recently browsed through a great site called Kevin Rudd Lies. And he does lie like a great leftie should:

“It’s critical that when we say to the Australian people that we want to construct an alternative vision for Australia, that they know the values for which we stand. Socialism isn’t one of them…I am not a socialist. I have never been a socialist and I never will be a socialist.” – Kevin Rudd, The Age, December 14, 2006. “I am an old-fashioned Christian socialist.” – Kevin Rudd, Australian Financial Review, February 2003.

Yes, a little embarrassing. Rudd also once harped on about the golden socialist ideals of “equity, solidarity and sustainability” during an October 2006 article in The Australian. So who is kidding who?

Climate change: crisis or canard?

Posted by Chief Blogger – 15 June, 2008

The Spectator has an article that highlights the over blown nonsense surrounding the ‘climate change’ agenda. Bjørn Lomborg with his Copenhagen Consensus, includes some of the best economists in the world, states that climate change is not the number one challenge facing the world. In fact, it does not even make a top ten list of challenges. Instead, as Lomborg would argue:

Far better to spend our limited pool of development aid money, say the economists, on schemes like micronutrient supplements (vitamin A and zinc) for malnourished children. For an annual outlay of only $60 million this would result in yearly benefits (through improved health, fewer deaths, increased earnings) worth more than $1 billion.

And:

What non-economists tend to have difficulty understanding, says Lomborg, is the concept of marginal benefit. ‘We tend to think in terms of absolute magnitude, so people will say, “Global warming is overall a bigger problem than micronutrition so we should deal with that first.” But what economists say is, “No. If you can spend a billion dollars and save 600,000 kids from dying and save about two billion people from being malnourished, that’s a lot better than spending the same amount to postpone global warming by about two minutes at the end of the century.”’

So while here in Australia we have an entire Ministry devoted to ‘climate change’, if you wanted to save the world, according to Lomborg, the Government should focus on the following top 5 issues:

1. Micronutrient supplements for children (vitamin A and zinc);

2. The Doha development agenda;

3. Micronutrient fortification (iron and salt iodization);

4. Expanded immunization coverage for children; and

5. Biofortification Malnutrition.

The cultural war lives on…

Posted by Chief Blogger – 13 June, 2008

Yes I know a blog of a blog, but this is the latest in the Australian cultural wars…linked here. It is an explanation as to why Australian academics have so long ‘clinged’ to the Australian aboriginal genocide thesis, in spite of the overwhelming evidence against it. As I have long suspected, most of Australia’s historians have written history with the aim of promoting a contemporary political agenda – in this case Aboriginal land, legal and special welfare rights. So it is a case of not letting the facts getting in the way of a sad story.

League of Democracies and Iraq

Posted by Chief Blogger – 11 June, 2008

Interesting snippet from Hoover fellow Tod Lindberg, speculating that a League of Democracies institution, as promoted by John McCain, may have been more effective at enforcing the original sanctions on Iraq. Presumably without China, Russia, and other like-minded typically undemocratic nations playing blockage on the sanctions enforcement agenda, Saddam may have been brought to account through peaceful means.

audio-here

I would further speculate that if the sanctions against Saddam had been effectively enforced, the need for the Iraq War would have dissipated in favour of more limited military action.

Iraq War Won?

Posted by Chief Blogger – 11 June, 2008

The New York Post published an article recently outlining the impending victory in Iraq for allied forces. I’m a little more cautious given the length of time it normally takes to complete a counter-insurgency campaign. The average in modern times is around 12 years – so it will be a while before US forces leave Iraq – much like during the Malayan Emergency which lasted over 12 years but petered out towards the end of the campaign. From the New York Post:

AMERICA has won, or is about to win, the Iraq war.

The latest proof came last month, as the Iraqi army – just a few months ago the target of scorn and abuse from Democratic politicians and journalists – forcefully reoccupied three cities that had served as key insurgency bases (Basra, Sadr City and Mosul).

Sunnis and Shias alike applauded as their nation’s army compelled insurgent militias to lay down their arms. The country’s leading opposition newspaper, Azzaman, led the applause for the move into Mosul – a sign that national reconciliation in Iraq is under way and probably irreversible.

Note that very little coverage is given to the Iraq War in Australia now.

2020 Summit on national security

Posted by Chief Blogger – 10 June, 2008

The final reports on the 2020 Summit are now available. If you’d like a good laugh then they are linked here. I have not read them all, but the forum on national security is a stand out. It has some real doozy suggestions to protect and secure Australia.

Overall there seemed to be a preponderance with Australia becoming Asian, forcing children to learn an Asian language and promoting a feminist agenda throughout Australia and the rest of the region. More paragraphs seemed to be devoted to “women’s” issues than to any other single matter, with quotes like the following:

The group believed that the treatment of women was a good litmus test of emerging security threats, and that empowering and protecting women should be a primary concern across all policy objectives.

What clap trap.  There is the irony of the left wanting to promote feminist values throughout Asia, a very socially conservative part of the world, and at the same time wanting Australia to be a part of Asia. So much for what our neighbours want.

So to the report. Virtually none of the issues discussed and sentiments expressed had anything to do with a serious look at national security, as you’ll see first up:

By 2020 Australia will be well placed to survive as a functioning and safe nation and society because our geography and policies protect us from the global chaos created by the pandemic of 2012, the financial crash of 2013, and the oil war of 2016.

In 2020 Australia has withstood the consequences of a pandemic that struck in 2012 and the twice yearly Cyclone Larry–like events.

 

 

More→

The latest UN goings on

Posted by Chief Blogger – 10 June, 2008

Why do we continue to suffer with the UN? It has become a forum for some of the most undemocratic regimes to use the quasi democratic rules of the UN to rile against the US and Israel. The latest is the appointment of Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann as the next President of the General Assembly:

D’Escoto will arrive at the UN with a record of active support not only for anti-Americanism but also Marxism-Leninism. An ardent defender of Liberation Theology, D’Escoto achieved prominence in the struggle to topple the Somoza dynasty in the late 1970’s. As a member of Los Doce (“the 12”), D’Escoto helped mask the communist orientation of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and played a key role in the Marxists’ rise to power. After the Sandinistas began installing a Cuban-style dictatorship and marched comfortably with Fidel Castro, the Soviet Union and a bevy of Third World despots, D’Escoto served as Nicaragua’s foreign minister, taking the U.S. to the International Court of Justice over its support for the Nicaraguan Contras. For these efforts, D’Escoto was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize by the Soviets in1985.

Sounds like fun, but it doesn’t end there. A representative of the Burmese military junta is now a vice president for the General Assembly. And what does the new President have to say on the matter:

Addressing a press conference, D’Escoto Brockmann said his focus would be on the issue of more democratization within the United Nations.

“It is good to talk about democracy, but even better to practice it,” he said. “A concerted search is necessary in order to find ways to revitalize and democratize the organization, including the Security Council.”

More→

Iraq and retreat

Posted by Chief Blogger – 10 June, 2008

I’ve yet to read an article that makes a convincing argument for withdrawal/retreat in Iraq. Even Rudd has not made the argument with his decision to leave over 1000 military personnel in support of Iraq, despite the withdrawal of the 500 strong Army battle group.

The number of prominent journalists coming out in support of the War is growing. The latest is 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner Lawrence Wright, who despite being opposed to the invasion is now saying:

… I am in the awkward political position of being opposed to withdrawing. I think we should stay there as long as we can to try to hold this entity together until they are able to remain stable, create a fairly reliable electoral process, police force, and that kind of thing, and take care of themselves. I don’t know if we can achieve that, but it’s hopeful to see that Iraq has been, you know, I don’t want to say that they’ve been put to death completely in Iraq, but they certainly are in retreat. And that’s critical, because if al Qaeda won in Iraq, who knows how far it would go.

So why can’t Rudd make a statement along a similar vein?

The Iraq War and the so called lies

Posted by Chief Blogger – 9 June, 2008

A recent report by the Democrat dominated US Select Committee on Intelligence found that the following pre-war claims about Iraq ”were substantiated by intelligence information” :

  • Iraq’s nuclear weapons program, biological weapons, production capability and mobile laboratories;
  • Chemical weapons;
  • Weapons of mass destruction overall;
  • Delivery vehicles such as ballistic missiles;
  • Unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to deliver WMDs;
  • Iraq’s support for terrorist groups other than al-Qaeda;
  • Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda; and
  • Iraq’s contacts with al-Qaeda.

So the issue is about judgement, not about misleading the public. As the Washington Post put it:

In the report’s final section, the committee takes issue with Bush’s statements about Saddam Hussein’s intentions and what the future might have held. But was that really a question of misrepresenting intelligence, or was it a question of judgment that politicians are expected to make?

And yet we continue to suffer with the following reporting:

THE withdrawal of Australian combat troops from Iraq reopened old wounds yesterday, when Kevin Rudd accused the Coalition of taking the nation to war based on a lie.

Well Rudd did not say the ‘L’ word, but he did say the following in Hansard:

Of most concern to this government was the manner in which the decision to go to war was made: the abuse of intelligence information, a failure to disclose to the Australian people the qualified nature of that intelligence…

Abuse, and when has that claim ever been proven? Who is abusing the truth now?