Category: General Musings

Maha Al-Hujailan, Al-Watan, a reporter with Arab News, raises some issues about sending teenagers overseas for education.

One of the bad habits that our students take with them when they go abroad is the culture of sexual harassment. They cannot take this culture to America. American woman can easily report sexual harassment to authorities. Saudis that engage in sexual harassment can end up arrested, charged, jailed, and deported. In this system that often sides with the woman in sexual harassment cases, what do you think happens when the accused is an Arab?

Good question but a better one is why not educate your youth to respect woman and law to start with.

Furthermore, Saudi students will face a justice system that doesn’t recognize the Saudi practice of “wasta� (connections with higher ups that can get you out of trouble with the law). And what about the Saudi way of driving? With highly organized and patrolled traffic systems in America, and the West in general, I do not think Saudi students would last very long on their roads.

Well, now that you have admitted the Kingdom is failing Saudi youth what about addressing these problems. It’s not as if the law of western societies is all that radical.

I wish a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year to my supporters, detractors and those I have yet to meet and call on all of you to remember that whereas we differ in opinions we still live in a great country. Adrian at A man of Lettuce has a nice human interest post with a military bent and I commend his post to all of you. 20 plus in-laws and outlaws will be here at my place tomorrow (my own family are in West Australia) and some old Army friends will drop in. The bar is rebuilt, the fridges and eskies loaded, the pool clean and inviting. I will buy a mob of ice tomorrow morning and throw in the pool to try and bring the water temperature down from today’s 34 degC. The weather forecast promises a typical Brisbane Christmas….39 deg C. Muslims, Christians, Agnostics, Athiests, Hedonists, Caucasions, a Jew, Aboriginies, Chinese/Malay, Poms, Kiwis and Paddies. Hate Howard, laugh at Kim, Left-wing, Right Wing, Don’t know and Don’t care will all gather at my home at Taigum – symbolic of what is good about Australia. My forward scout from Vietnam days, Rob Edgell, has been our house guest for a couple of days complete with wife and daughter so if you have noticed the lack of posts then that should explain it. We had to catch up with what the guys are doing and refight the battles again. We won them all this time (and the last time for that matter) Christmas Eve 1970 I lay in ambush with very few “peace to all mankind” feelings in my heart. I was lonely, missing my wife and very hopefull that no VC would venture out of the Long Hai enemy stronghold that night…..please Santa! If nothing else, that ambush patrol gave me a base to judge all subsequent Christmases and surprisingly they have all been better ones. So tomorrow, spare a thought for all those men and woman overseas away from their love ones. Whatever you think, they know they are defending your freedoms and that is all that matters. Enjoy your day.

FORGET about maneating dingoes, poisonous death adders and sharks that can swallow people whole – British backpacker Scott Osborne reckons the most deadly things on Fraser Island are four-wheel-drives. The 25-year-old camper woke up in sand dunes on Monday morning to find a Toyota Land Cruiser on top of him. Except he wasn’t on the sand dunes he was asleep on a track.

“There was about 10 of us and we decided to have a couple of drinks in the sand dunes looking at the stars and then a couple of us decided to stay on and try and stay awake to watch the sunrise,” Mr Osborne recalled. Soon after watching the sunrise, Mr Osborne fell asleep beside a female friend from Germany. She escaped unscathed. He said they thought they were lying on a footpath, not a 4WD track.

I have sympathy for the man but getting drunk and falling asleep on a track or anything that looks remotely like a track in a strange invironment is not smart.

FAIRFAX announced a new editor of The Sunday Age last night as the publisher prepared to distribute a list to staff today of 60 journalists across its flagship titles in Sydney and Melbourne who will be made redundant as it attempts to slash costs. Just deserts for targeting a left-wing anti-Howard readership. There isn’t enough of them to pay the bills.

In the Herald’s Canberra bureau, senior political correspondent Mike Seccombe and arts writer Lauren Martin had their redundancy confirmed, but it was unclear whether columnist Alan Ramsey was leaving.

We can always live in hope that clarity prevails and Alan Ramsey is given his marching orders. Maybe the newspaper in some hippy colony like Nimbin could take him on and thus restrict his confused utterings to those who might agree. The rest of us need a break.

For what it’s worth.

MALE animals can produce a lot of sperm or grow big brains but cannot do both, according to a study that may confirm the suspicions of many women.

Dr Pitnick said: “The road to sexual success can lie in being clever, in being a dull yet well-armed brute that can fight for paternity, in being spectacularly ornamented, or in providing a rich cocktail of seminal fluids and costly sperm.”

Pretty well covers most of the male clientele cruising the night club scene on Friday nights.

IMMERSION in sewage, ripping out fingernails, sleep deprivation, cigarette burns and beatings with electric prods — these are some of the torture methods used by China’s police and prison officers to extract confessions and maintain discipline, a United Nations investigation has found. The Left are going to go beserk over this, aren’t they? It will be all over the front page of The Age and the SMH, won’t it? Bob Brown will demand a Senate Enquiry and blame it on Howard, won’t he? I mean this is real torture, not that ‘play bad music’ or ‘taking happy snaps’ girlie stuff at Abu Ghraib or Guantonamo.

Just announced on ABC Radio that Eddie Jones, embattled coach of the Wallabies, our national rubgy team, has been sacked.

THE navy pilot who inspired Tom Cruise’s movie Top Gun faces up to 10 years in jail after admitting taking $3.2 million in bribes.