Category: General Musings

From The Age

The White House has disputed accusations that Italian intelligence in a 2002 meeting passed off fake documents, showing Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger, that formed part of US President George W Bush’s case for war against Saddam Hussein.

If ‘no one remembers’ what about referring to the minutes kept by the Secretary or don’t we do that anymore. Surely the US can declassify parts of the minutes just to stem the carping and even if they can’t do that, they could say “We have referred to the minutes and that didn’t happen so shut up!”

I always said we weren’t serious about the war on drugs until we brought in the military….. you know…’napalm the poppy fields’ type of war. Well, here’s a start

With a bit of luck this could save some kids life.

I don’t normally do vehicle posts but I would like one of these in the carport even if it only serves to wind up local greenies.

Looters hit the Nigerian plane crash site.

What the hell were they going to do with the body parts?

Adrian d’Hage, decorated ex army officer, theologian and darling of the left has been quoted at Margo’s and because of that, at Tim Blair’s. I once knew him well and his name popping up after all these years pushed me to do some googling for the unusual surname. I found him here, an interview with Taliban Tony at Lateline here, a speach given to the Rural Australians for Refugees here, and just to confirm a good officer’s fall into the dark side he is quoted at Sievxnews

I’m not actually sure that Adrian’s fall was all that far. We were both officers at Head Quarters, 1st Division in the 80s and the shine on his Military Cross was getting somewhat tarnished then. Not to say it wasn’t earnt in the first place but a gong will only take you so far. He subsequently commanded a battalion and then later popped up as Defence Spokesman and appeared regularly on TV. John Howards rise and Adrians fall coincided and no one I knew was surprised.

According to his bio he found and then lost God during his Theology studies but never lost the state of being ‘out of step’ with his military peers.

The AWM have a pic of a very young D’Hage here and looking at it I can only ponder going from being awarded a good gong in the field to being quoted, and indeed writing to Webdiary is a long fall.

Comments over at Tim Blairs wonder at d’Hage’s grog intake and well they should.

I’ll leave the final comment to Barney in a 2001 entry in a nondescipt anti-everything forum.

Today’s Brisbane Sunday Mail has an article on a British Policeman blogging his daily grind. Go there – it’s good. Perhaps a Queensland policeman could do something similar as I’m sure there are a million stories to tell.

Come on, one of you could do it.

In August, 2003 I posted an article on Melbourne Traffic Nazis and commented;

Well. they are at it again….at Melbourne again. This time a guy gets a ticket for overstaying his parking limit at a local shopping center. He was dead and had been for nine days.

The Traffic Nazi claims the man wasn’t visible through the cars tinted windows when the parking fine was slapped on the windscreen but the guy that sounded the alarm had no such difficulties.

Although the vehicle had tinted windows, the man clearly saw the body and went to knock on the window. Approaching the car, he detected an odour and realised the driver’s decaying body had been in the car for some time.

There’s something rotten in the state of Victoria.

Bias in academe is real
21 October 2005

EATING in the University of Queensland refectory, surrounded by communist posters and anti-IR reform propaganda and having just finished listening to a lecturer’s anti-Howard/Bush diatribe over global warming, I nearly choked when I read Professor Jan Pakulski’s call for universities to resist ideological takeovers from either side of politics (Letters, 20/10). The closest analogy I can think of is the Vichy government calling for the French to resist foreign occupation in 1944. Left-wing bias is not a conspiracy theory, it is an unchallengeable reality for anyone who has ever set foot on our campuses, or ever attended a lecture given by the sociology/political science faculty, as I have. Does Prof Pakulski care to detail how many Liberal Party voters work in the Arts department at the University of Tasmania? In the US, among registered university faculty members, 90 per cent vote Democrat and 10 per cent Republican, and they offer the same wild warnings of resurgent fascism if conservatives dare to tackle the progressives’ stranglehold on the higher education system.

Joshua Avenell (BSc student)
University of Queensland

Welcome to the world, Josh.

Shoot to kill is an emotive issue after the UK Police killed an innocent man acting guilty subsequent to the London bombings. Todays Australian lists the arguements

“We are not giving police the right to kill somebody who is escaping preventative detention,” Mr Howard said. “We are merely saying that if there is a risk to somebody else’s life or bodily injury and there is no other way, they can use deadly force.” The Prime Minister said the changes were important in allowing police to be certain about their legal osition.

But state premiers and other critics of John Howard’s draft anti-terror legislation yesterday said the Prime Minister was wrong to say it merely replicated these existing “shoot-to-kill” powers.

The debate boils down to whether police will be allowed to use lethal force against individuals who, although not suspected of criminal offences, are still sought for preventative detention under the anti-terror laws.

Law Council president John North said Mr Howard’s laws created “a new class of person” who police would be able to detain without sufficient evidence to charge with an offence.

That is irelevant. It doesn’t matter what the person is being detained for or whether the police have any evidence. What does matter is whether he draws a gun and decide to shoot it out. Let’s face it, ordinary crims have been known to draw weapons and kill police while being questioned over trivial traffic offences.

Are terrorists going to act any different? There is a chance they wont.

The Australian editorial has some advice…

Terrorism, not police powers, is the issue that matters

OPPONENTS of the proposed anti-terror legislation should get a grip, because the debate on how to protect Australia against attack is being lost in hyperbole and hysteria.

….and highlights the ABC’s political stance.

On Wednesday night on ABC TV’s Lateline program, host Tony Jones tried to enlist Steve Bracks and Peter Beattie as opponents of the proposed laws, particularly the possibility of police shooting to kill terror suspects.

Not surprised

I note that SBS are screening a “Look how wonderfull and inventive Muslims are” show soon and was reminded of a post by Zoe Brain who linked to a website extolling Islam’s virtues. She headlined the post” The Heyday of Islamic Science Appears to have ended in the 13th Century“.

What is SBS’s agenda in this issue? Some balance is fine but Zoe’s comments are relevant. Progress halted in the Middle East when the Mullahs gained supremacy and while they marked time the West advanced. The luvvies who watch SBS and believe everything will walk away from the lounge all imbued with wonder for the Islamic world. I bet that at no time will the show highlight the dearth of science that has troubled the Middle East for several hundred years.

Check this out. Warning…not for the feint hearted…pics of snake eating kangaroo!