Retired infantry officer. Conservative by nature and politics; Happily married and father and grandfather of eight. Loves V8 powered Range Rovers, Golden Retrievers, good books and technology and think there should be open season on Greenies. Born in the mid forties and overdue for servicing but most parts still work.

Backdoor Polls

Over at Back Pages, when the polls say Latham is ahead all discussion and comments are about the joy of Australia without Horrible Howard. Conversely, when the polls suggest Howard is ahead all discussion and comments are about how the polls are wrong. Uptrend, outlier, blah blah blah. They’re only polls and shouldn’t be treated so seriously but if Back Pages devotees want a hint as to why the voters appear to be dropping Latham they might go here and take a quick refresher course. Via Tim Blair

Homosexual Partnerships

MPs fear backlash on gay marriage. I don’t think that the twenty or so people in each electorate who believe marriages can be anything you want them to be when you wake up on any particular morning will impact on the upcoming election. Misha Schubert, who must have a degree in Social Engineering conjures up dissent where there is none in this article in the Australian I posted on this subject some months ago and have found no arguement to change my mind. I said then;
The Prime Minister rules out supporting ‘Gay Marriages’. Way to go John. Stick with it. Same sex relationships are just that – relationships. Marriage is between a couple, male and female, for the purpose of procreation and providing a secure base for the next generation. Relationships, including ones legaly defined, certainly don’t need to borrow ‘Marriage’ as a base. Why do a small proportion of society feel a need to change that? Maybe they fight to get ‘alternative’ lifestyles accepted as the norm. Well it isn’t, they aren’t and never will be. This is not an anti-gay post as I’m happy to accept ‘different stroke for different folks’ but hey, us hetro’s thought up marriage – you think up something else.
The important matters have been dealt with.
The superannuation changes would allow gay couples, elderly siblings who live together, or parents of a disabled child to leave their superannuation to each other without the present 30per cent tax penalty for someone other than a spouse, de facto spouse or child.
That’s as it should be. Misha quotes Howard as ‘Defending his plan’. Against whom, Mischa? You?

Statue of Mary Weeps.

Well you would too if you were forced to live at Inala. The Courier Mail has an article about a statue ‘weeping‘ in a Brisbane suburb. Amazing, isn’t it?
The Christian Supplies store in Elizabeth St, Brisbane City, has sold more than 120 statues of the Miraculous Our Lady and tens of kilograms of rosary prayer beads to devout Vietnamese Catholics.
“I would estimate that we have sold between $6000 and $10,000 worth of stock because of this,” Mr Salvati, the manager, said.
The Catholic Church is expected to conduct an investigation into the mystery within days.
But not too soon.

Letters to the Editor

Andrew Coley from Prospect, SA
THE rise in human rights abuses around the globe since the media and coalition countries became obsessed with the debacle in Iraq has now been confirmed by Amnesty International (“Rights worst in 50 years”, 27/5).
Mmmm …50 years. Wouldn’t that include the communists killing something like a 100 million of their own citizens. Never mind..small detail.
we need to encourage nations to develop their own sense of democracy and security through international aid in areas such as trade, health and education
I agree with Andrew that international aid in areas such as trade, health and education is agreat idea and one that should be pursued after the West can develop the circumstances where aid will make a difference. Bush could have chosen not to go to war and give Saddam say, US$500 million aid to build schools and health centres. The fact that all the schools and health centres Saddam would’ve built with the aid looked remarkedly like palaces and the playground equipment like tanks and missiles wouldn’t have worried Andrew. And even if some of the change was spent on schools, they would be Schools of Hate with Clerics inciting mayhem and murder. We could have also given the Taliban aid but I think they would have given it to Osama who would have sent it back to the US in a missile loaded with 10,000 gallons of aviation fuel. Straight back to the Whitehouse Still, good idea Andrew. As US troops invaded the heartland of the AL Queda in Afghanistan I argued then that they should, amongst a whole lot of other things, secure Kabul, set up schools, let girls in and start educating the whole population. Sorry Andrew, but your faith in human kindness is not a subject in Iraq or Afghanistan seats of learning. Still, the Editor of the Australian thinks it’s good enough to print. Makes me wonder if any of these people have ever had to make a plan work. On the same page Christian Leavesly from Carlton Vic points out that;
Human rights have been fought for and won the hard way over hundreds of years. They did not spring up overnight, and their existence is proof of their necessity.
One part of history where human rights were won the hard way was during World War Two and I can promise Christian that the human rights he talks about were not uppermost in the minds of Roosevelt, Churchill, Menzies or Curtain. If a enemy POW had info that was important to the war cause then he was interrogated until he coughed up. WW2, for the younger set, was when the US gave thousands of their sons to provide a safer world where Human Rights lawyers could call them evil and not be beheaded. I like the line from Secretary Powell recently when argueing that the US were not colonising the Middle East when he suggested that the…only land we have ever kept after any invasion was a small plot for our dead. Otherwise they went home after peace had been established. Could I also mention the Marshal Plan that rebuilt Europe and the efforts that went into demilitiarising Japan. Nah. Not Anti-American enough.

Amnesty International

Whenever I hear the words Annesty International I am reminded of a world map they produced years ago with small icons depicting human rights abuses across the globe. It was on the notice board at Nudgee College Brisbane and what struck me as odd was there were no icons in the USSR, China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Africa or the Middle East. Plenty in Europe, The US and Australia though. The report is available here. Read it but it doesn’t contain much that hasn’t been said previously. I see the AmnestyUS site has a photo of Susan Sarandon pleading for funds to stop torture. Sarandon on Bush;
We stand a chance of getting a president who has probably killed more people before he gets into office than any president in the history of the United States.
Enough said.

It’s do or die

The US is fighting a fairly good war considering they are fighting on two fronts; in Iraq against the terrorists and over the rest of the world against the media. I get the opinion that some amongst us believe that Rumsfeld actually gave orders to Pte Lynndie England to parade with a naked man on a leash. It simply doesn’t happen that way. All Rumsfeld would have said was ‘Get these interrogations moving. Iraqi’s and our troops are dying. Get some intelligence. The people in Abu Ghraib aren’t traffic fine defaulters, they are people who may know from whence the explosives for the terror attacks are being sourced. They may know the pipe line the terrorists are using to infiltrate weapons and troops. They may have some answers but they are never going to answer these questions out of a desire to help Iraq. They are not there to help Iraq. This is not LA Law, you morons, its war. No clever court room debates -life isn’t a TV series. If Intelligence doesn?t get the answers to these questions then innocent Iraqis are going to die in the hundreds. US troops will die as well but more importantly, if we don’t win this war then thousands of westerners will die. All the tin pot terrorist leaders will be buoyed by any defeat of the great Satan. Recruiting will boom and you will see the result in downtown Sydney, London and New York. It’s not a bloody ratings game – its life or death. If Intelligence held a terrorist who they knew had detail about the WTC slaughter prior to Sep 11 what would you have them do. Read him his rights? Call up the local human rights lawyer? Ask him nicely if he could help? Wake up! While I would argue that it is going to take a lot of Abu Ghraib’s to equal one Nike Bergin others would say “..but the formula isn’t balanced. Nick Bergin doesn’t make Abu Ghraib right”. They are only half right right, the issue is deeper than that. What does bring some perspective; some balance to the issue is this; The US forces recognized the problem well before the media did and they reacted positively before the media attacked. They run an investigation, found there was a case to be answered, charged the offenders, have already found one guilty, sentenced him to a dishonourable discharge after he serves 12 months in prison and then the President of the US, Bush, actually apologised to the people of Iraq. Meanwhile, the terrorists in Iraq are indiscriminately targeting woman and children, they are decapitating US civilians and they are using kids as young as eight on the firing line. And they are not all Iraqis; they are from all of the far flung reaches of the Islamic world, all congregating to kill the infidels. They are there to create as much havoc and mayhem as they can to de-stabilize the march of democracy into the Middle East. People talk of moral equivalence and that the US cannot demand a high standard when they stuff up in Abu Ghraib. Well, they can. The behaviour of the guards is not the norm and the US is doing something about it. I don?t see the terrorists holding inquiries and charging people with crimes against humanity. And, aided and abetted by the media, they are making it extremely difficult. Like tone deaf, out of beat drummers, they are keeping the marchers out of step. The media are bogged down in the minutia of war and cannot see the big picture or are deliberately obscuring the big picture. They recycle the events of at Abu Ghraib time and time again. The Army acknowledged the problem in January and took remedial action straight away and it still gets front page treatment. They virtually ignore anything positive out of Iraq (and believe me there is a lot), to concentrate on a small incident. The media are fighting an American Presidential election seemingly saying anything is better than Bush in the Whitehouse. And they are very, very wrong. Not that Bush is the greatest leader ever to occupy the Whitehouse, he isn?t, but he is a leader. The war is much bigger than Bush or Kerry in the Whitehouse, it?s about civilization. This from Real Clear Politics
The decapitation of Nicholas Berg – which, it merits reminding, required several cuts of the knife to stop his screaming – was a front-page story for just one day. Only one newspaper that I know of, the Dallas Morning News, plus the Weekly Standard magazine, made the point that Berg’s murder is “why we fight.” By now, Abu Ghraib has been a lead story for weeks. And Congress has gone so far as to pull top U.S. commanders back from the battle zone to grill them about it – just as America’s enemies are launching what they hope will be the Iraqi equivalent of the 1968 Tet offensive, hoping to undermine the June 30 handover of power to Iraqis.
Common tactics. In Vietnam in 1968 the North Vietnamese were crushed in the 68 Tet Offensive but in a Presidential Election year, the media, led by Walter Cronkite, snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and saved the day for the Communists. They helped convince the voters that the war was unwinnable. There are a lot of similarities about Vietnam and Iraq, but not what the left would have you believe. The similarities are in the media assault on the Presidential Election to affect an outcome that they think is best for America. The arrogant, elitist bastards. Update: Check out Defence for the Government’s thoughts on the matter. Extreme Right wing or Looney Left you owe it to yourself to be informed Update II: For good news on Iraq visit Chrenkoff. He is doing the work of the Western Media

Darwin Awards

Confirming what a small leap it is from apes to humans, a women is in hospital after her dogs attacked her.
Neighbours said Daniella Donaldson, 34, was trying to separate the dogs when they attacked her. She managed to flee inside her home after a neighbour heard her screams and came to her aid. As Ms Donaldson lay bleeding inside, the dogs turned on other terrified neighbours. Armed police finally escorted rescue crews on to the property, where they treated her.
The four of them had attacked and killed the neighbour’s 10 year old jack russell. A council dog catcher arrived just before 8pm and captured one of the dogs about an hour later. She had four. Yep..four pit bulls..like a pride of lions. He then dropped this classic understatement
“Pit bulls are most affectionate dogs, but they have a tendency to snap, especially when in a pack,” the council officer said.
Understatement of the year. Yes… they do have a tendency to snap especially when in a pack and kill people and other dogs In fact they will turn on anything that’s still moving. People will still buy them and train them to kill. Makes it hard to feel sorry for them. Don’t jump in front of speeding buses, don’t go into lion cages, don’t front up to poisonous snakes and don’t buy pit bulls. Simple, isn’t it?

Howard on a winning streak

Never thought there could be so much hatred in just one person. Over at Backpage Christopher Sheil holds nothing back.
Let’s be honest. Apart from his wife, no-one, and I mean no-one, likes John Howard. Underneath, almost all Australians hate John Howard.
Makes me wonder who it is that keeps voting him back in. Observa leaves a comment;
Crikey! What a mess this country’s in. With this heinous fiend in command, it’s a wonder you lot haven’t sought asylum overseas, or made a run for dictator yourselves. If you do ship out, you just might notice a bloody great queue to get in and be tyrranised.
I’m of the opinion that the measure of Howards success is directly proportional to amount of hate he generates in the loony left. Seems he’s doing well.

The Australian loses it!

The Australian continues it campaign on behalf of the terrorists by slowly cycling though their pics of jail-house ‘torture’ and their Thesaurus of superlatives. Horrific…disturbing..shocking. Apparently seven US soldiers are involved. Pretty weak stuff really, when compared with the Bergin killers. Fancy the Australian doing its best to impede democracy and not realizing that the world are over it. One soldier has been charged and goaled and others will follow although the animals who decapitated Nick Bergin will be unlucky if they all meet justice. Four have been arrested but I can’t see any pressure from the Western press to pursue justice with the alacrity that they demand for theTorturers Slats is getting sick of it and so am I. Two days ago they place a front page piece based on allegations from a Taliban ex-prisoner about Hicks being beaten up and now today they recycle the piece with Habib as the fall guy. Hicks’ lawyer, Stephen Kenny, says;
… that allegations of abuse against enemy combatants were now so overwhelmingthat there needed to be a “full and proper” inquiry into the treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.
I think the word Stephen was looking for was underwhelming If The Australian publishes one ‘torture’ pic every three days they should be able to drag it out until the handover due late June. In the meantime they can maintain the rage about Gunatanamo by quoting some other reliable source, maybe another Taliban terrorist in Afghanistan. Hang on…Osama Bin Laden would most probably be willing to say his troops are being treated badly as well. That’s it, quote Bin Laden. Over to you Editor. Meanwhile, after a lot of searching for some truth on the Iraq War, I came across this piece. Surprisingly, not in a newspaper and definitely not in the Australian An extract;
I looked over and saw the two little kids that were on the bridge earlier, they were firing at me again. The older one, who had shot me earlier, was firing at the trailer and the semi, and the younger kid was firing two to three rounds at a time directly at me. I fired another round over their heads but they didn?t budge, and apparently they were not about to. Then I aimed at the younger kid’s chest and fired the round. It went into his throat and out the other side, and he dropped to the ground dead.
Read the whole piece before you demand he be sacked for shooting at innocent kids. Go read..it is a very intense account of the 9 Apr ambush of a fuel convoy.
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