| The ALS organises libertarian dinners monthly in some Australian cities. In Canberra we meet on the first Friday of the month. For more details, please contact John Humphreys | |||||
Opinion is split on whether the Taliban used to allow opium to be grown in Afghanistan during their mad reign. While fascist control freaks invariably want to control or prevent the use of drugs by their subordinate population, opium was also a nice little earner, allowing the islamicists to continue to arm themselves via an income of US dollars. What is agreed though, is that opium production is flourishing in Afghanistan under the not-so-watchful gaze of US troops. With heroin hitting over $US100 per gram on the Streets of San Francisco, growing a few poppies looks like a far more more attractive prospect that herding goats. Previously, when confronted with a poppy farm, the US marines adopted a .. well .. a US marines approach, and demolished the poppies. It finally occurred to someone that destroying someone's crops while presenting yourself as champions of Freedom was a tad hypocritical, and wasn't making friends in the local rural community. Richard Holbrooke, U.S. envoy for Afghanistan is quoted "Eradication is a waste of money". What? Next they'll be telling us the War on Drugs is unwinnable! So how do you wage a war on drugs if you can't destroy opium poppies? Well, if you thought the old policy was confused, the new one is bizarre. They are no longer doing to destroy opium crops. They are going to pay opium farmers to NOT grow opium, and crack down on their buyers. It's not clear whether someone who doesn't grow 10000 poppies gets paid more than someone who doesn't grow only 5000 poppies. Perhaps people can start out not growing 100 poppies, and gradually grow their business to not growing thousands of poppies. Confused? Well .. apparently growing opium and then selling it is okay, but buying it is evil and deserving of severe punishment. But don't 'addicts' (victims) buy drugs, and don't 'pushers' (perpetrators) sell drugs? Why does it work the other way around for Americans? I guess Americans really are special! Generally, the leftist mindset dictates that people are evil if they employ someone to do something.
But sometimes inexplicably, it works the other way around.
Confused? There is a hidden rule: the person who is more hardworking and successful is is always the perpetrator. Obviously. It's called the tall poppy syndrome. Best understood through an opiatic haze.
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Westerners have long criticized China and the quality products made in the People's Paradise Republic, but those critics should be silenced by news from a Shanghai building site. A 12 story building fell over and stayed intact! How many Western buildings do that?! Hmm?! This is proof that countries with big Socialist governments produce high quality products that mere running-dog lackeys of the military-industrial complex (er .. that's us, Dear Reader), could only ever hope to emulate. The inhabitants of the neighboring identical structures on the same site
are also very happy, knowing they are living in such solid structures.
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For anyone who has been in a coma over the last few weeks, there is some political upset in Iran. Some Muslims pretended to set up a democratic government. Some Muslims objected to the farce and started to protest in the streets. Some other Muslims didn't like the protests, and so started shooting them. Or maybe it was the first bunch. Or something. This of course is markedly different to every other upset in the Middle East. And before you all say "of course it's different - this is one is a struggle between freedom and oppresion, between good and evil", well think again. Actually it's just different because of cell phones. Iran is a wealthy country (compared to most of the other poverty stricken Islamic cess-pits in the world), and protestors and passers-by have cheapo cell phones, which do two interesting things which conventional phones don't. Firstly, they do texting, so written reports of bloodshed and oppression can be thumbed out in glorious 160 character sound-bytes (er .. I mean text bytes). Secondly, and more importantly, they have cheapo video cameras in them. Video cameras which can actually record the bloodshed in even more glorious (if low resolution) color. Humanitarians all over the world were outraged by the youtube vidoe of a murder of a pretty young girl called 'Neda', shot through the chest by government forces, and bleeding out of her mouth and nose as she died on the street. Then we learned that the Iranian government was using technology supplied by Nokia and Siemens to detect 'subversive activity' on the internet, and the cell phone network. And they used it to censor data and shut down the protests. Naughty Nokia and Siemens. Now Slashdot reports that two US senators (Schumer and Graham) want to punish Nokia and Siemens for providing that technology. Apparently supplying governments with the technology to restrict internet access is an evil thing to do. Funny thing is, there are many governments with that this kind of technology. Including the US, and including Australia. In fact Uncle Kevin is part way through an internet filtering trial which would stop us mere citizens from accessing 'unwanted' material (so 'unwanted', apparently that we wouldn't want to access it anyway). Are they willing to punish multinationals for selling that technology to Australia as well - or just to Axes of Evil? Selling internet censorship technology must be only evil if it it is sold to bad governments, not to good governments. Because we all know that the likes of Uncle Kev would never abuse their power. Remember: Other governments are evil, but YOUR government only wants what's good for you.
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Every intellectual Leftist is well aware of the faults of their government. The endless whining and bitching about what the government should and could do features highly over the morning latte. But like a bitter wife complaining about a dead-beat hubby who she refuses to divorce: all would be better if only hubby was nicer to her and had more money and power. The answer to government failure is always the same: bigger and more powerful government will solve the problem. There are two recent laughable examples of this belief. And while they don't actually involve the four riders of the Apocalypse (pestilence, plague, famine and war), they do involve plague and fire. The first example was the political stumble from Queensland's Premier, Anna Bligh. On the threshold of a swine-flu epidemic she suggested that people might like to stock up on food. Common sense suggests that a few extra tins of soup and some dried milk powder might be a good thing to keep in the back of the pantry. But there was an immediate outcry at the mere suggestion. Apparently people would panic. And in the panic they would buy, well .. food. And then the shops would run low on food, and then that would cause even more panic and then people would stock up on even more food, and then the children would starve (apparently because there was so much food about), and the dead would walk the earth, and .. well .. it would be better just to make people feel safe. Of course if she had stuck to her guns and there had been mass scale food buying, several things would have actually happened.
All of which would have undermined people's confidence in the Gummint. So she 'clarified' her statement to say that she had only meant 'a day or two worth of food'. Right. The second example was the number of calls which were ignored during the Victorian bush fires. Some 80% of calls to the 000 emergency number went unanswered on the day. Apparently people who's houses were being engulfed in flame were ringing 000 emergency in the belief that the Gummint would (or even could) come and rescue them. Why would anyone think, as their homes and all their neighbours' bush homes burned, that the Gummint fairy God mother type force .. er .. thing would magically appear and protect them from Mother Nature's fury? Apparently they believed that spending 20 minutes on hold to the Gummint was better than spending 20 minutes protecting themselves and their families from dying. And die they did. Clearly the Gummint is a more powerful force than Mother Nature. Or it would be - all they need to do is to create a new law. Right? Well actually, people's faith in the government kills them.
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There is an old joke about the Rear-admiral's vice being the Vice-admiral's rear, (and the Vice-admiral's rear being the Rear-admiral's vice). But in the case of Rear-admiral Geoff Smith, his vice seems to have been of a quite different nature. Apparently the chief executive of Sydney Ferries made some $237,000 worth of questionable purchases on his corporate credit card. Now, all of us who have a corporate credit card know the score. The card is a bit of a perk. You can make a few questionable purchases on the card, and effectively avoid a bit of income tax. Think about it - you make a few grand of purchases on the card - a few taxi fares, some boozy lunches, a new set of clothes, and even the occasional interstate trip, and these quietly get charged to the plastic, with the silent approval of The Boss. The money is charged to the company (your employer) instead of having to be paid as bonuses. You end up better off because you don't have to pay income tax on the money (it shows up as a company expense, not taxable income), and your employer doesn't have to pay payroll tax on the money. Every one ends up better off. Everyone except for Wayne Swan that is, and let's face it - he'd just use the money to lend to his used-car-selling mates anyway. So The Corporate Card is a functional tool in tax minimisation, as well as being a powerful symbol of status and trust. Trust, that is, that you won't over spend on school fees, alcohol, furniture, trips to the theatre and overseas trips for the wife - like the Rear-admiral did. His excuse was that "No one told me I shouldn't", and that he thought that using the cards for personal expenses was "an entitlement". Many public servants claim to have a strong sense of 'social justice'. Apparently it's not as strong as their sense of entitlement. Of course it's one thing for a private company to give a little extra to a loyal employee. It's quite another for those in government to give a little extra to their mates. That's why the public service has much stricter guidelines about employee conduct than the mere public who pay their wages. The endless (and expensive) paperwork, the double and triple checking that goes into just buying a paper clip - it's all for the common good to protect your taxes. But where were the checks and balances on the Admiral's vice? Apparently no-one was taking up the Vice-admiral's rear. Apparently no-one told them they should. Or maybe the vice goes further than the Rear-admiral? Or maybe privatization would mean that at least it wouldn't be the tax-payer's problem.
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Indians are taking over! Not the indigenous North American variety, but the subcontinental variety. It will come as no surprise to some that over two hundred thousand Indian 'students' are enjoying Australian hospitality. This wouldn't have been newsworthy several weeks ago, but apparently some are enjoying it less than others. Some have found themselves the victims of assault. The voice of reason might suggest that any population of two hundred thousand is bound to have members who find themselves the victim of assault. But, as the good Chairman pointed out, 'the voices of the many will drown out the voices of the few'. And two hundred thousand voices can drown out a lot of reason. Especially when they are helped by a Leftist political agenda. Suddenly the immigrant groups are up in arms, and are back to branding Australians as racist, and reminding everyone about the White Australia Policy. Apparently there were gangs of shaven headed white supremacists roaming the streets seeking ethnic victims. Then some of our Indian guests got their mates to start burning Australian flags back in India, and even started burning effigies of Chairman Rudd. .. well, even a fool is now and then right by chance, but burning the Australian flag? Fair shake of the sauce bottle! But a few attacks later, a much maligned and indignant police force came out and reported the whole truth - that the attacks are not by shaven headed white supremacist hate groups, but by Lebanese gangs. Oops. Whether the Indians are over-represented as victims of crime is not really clear. And whether they are specifically overrepresented as victims of Lebanese violence is not clear either. In fact, the suggestion that Lebanese gangs would favour Indian victims (over any group) would be tantamount to accusing them of racism. And since racism is such a bad thing, the suggestion itself could be construed as racist. And that would never do. Modern political correctness only allows someone's ethnicity to be identified when they are victims, not when they are perpetrators. Acts of violence are never perpetrated by an individual against an individual - they are perpetrated by mainstream society, and are against a minority group. Apparently the individual victims don't matter - just that fact that they belong to an identifiable minority group. The identity of the perpetrators doesn't matter - they are part of the 'racist' (and predominantly white) society. Of course the possibility that two immigrant groups are waging a religious war on Australian soil goes quietly unstated. It wouldn't support the underlying agenda for an open-door immigration policy. Everyone loves sacred cows, but surely we don't need to import any more of them.
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Another day another fatal dog attack. Your ABC reports that a three year old girl was mauled to death by pet dogs in the the NSW Riverina. According to everybody's ABC, the local community is (collectively I presume) shocked that this happened. How could anyone be shocked by a dog attack? I mean - if you were the actual victim, and suddenly found yourself having your flesh ripped off faster than an Abu Ghraib inmate you might go into shock. But shock is normally regarded as a state of great surprise. How could people possibly be surprised at another vicious dog attack? Haven't enough children been killed, maimed or permanently scarred by vicious dogs for people to understand that keeping large pack animals around small children will result in many of them being eaten alive? Apparently not. Dogs are of course, much like Leftists.
This, of course, qualifies them to be 'man's best friend', or maybe even 'friends of the Earth'. And in this case a woman looking after another someone else's children decided to leave the meat out. And the pack of cute little lovable doggies helped themselves. The woman herself claimed to be 'in shock' (no point in letting the police interview you until you get your story straight eh?). Her husband was later quoted on the ABC as saying that it was just an accident, and was no-one's fault. Presumably 'society' is to blame. Somehow. Again. It might baffle some that people would want to keep such animals as pets - in their houses, around their children (or in this case around other people's children). But the reason is actually quite obvious. There is a popular notion that the Left need peace, tranquility
and calm. They don't. In fact, they crave conflict, confrontation and
aggression. That's why they surround themselves with it.
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Solving the problem of poverty is easy. All we need to do is to get the government to buy plasma TVs and give them to poor people. Everyone knows that rich people have plasma TVs, and poor people don't. Plasma TVs are what separates the rich from the poor. Giving poor people a plasma TV would make them rich people. Or even if it didn't actually make them rich, this would be the most effective first step to address the serious imbalances in economic and social injustice in today's world of have and have-nots. Well, actually, any intelligent person knows that the previous paragraph is utter nonsense. But substitute the word 'notebook computer' for 'TV', and you will become the darling of the leftist elites, who are intent on forcing tax payers to buy millions of notebook computers so they can be distributed to those more worthy than themselves. We have the international OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project, Australia's determination to give a notebook to every Aboriginal child, and then Kevin (Pixie) Rudd's election promise to give one notebook to every school child. Apparently the average destitute Aboriginal child, struggling with substance abuse, domestic violence, sexual molestation and chronic ear infections will get onto the internet to research the solution to his community's problems. "Hey Dad, it says here on www.social-workers.gov.au that you should stop getting drunk and bashing mum and I. How about going off to AA?". "Hey Mum - it says here on www.healthy-eating.gov.au that diet is an important lifestyle choice. How about some fresh food for dinner?" "Hey bros, I read on www.say-no-to-drugs.gov.au that sniffing petrol can damage your brain. I guess we'd better stop doing it now." Fly. Pigs. Might. In African nations, there is a plan to give free notebooks to children who don't even have electricity. 'No problem,' say the scheme's advocates, 'we can attach wind-up generators to them. And they could even be use to supply light in their mud-huts after dark!' Are there any intelligent people who find this anything other than totally perverse? Even The Pixie's proposal to supply notebooks to bogans in a first world country is faltering. It seems that the rubbery figures used in estimating the cost of the one-laptop-per-bogan scheme didn't take into account that the notebooks have to maintained. You need IT support for them. IT people, dear reader, are those people who command obscene salaries for doing something that the rest of the population don't even understand. IT support is expensive. More expensive, in fact, than the computers themselves. The cost of buying a notebook for a motivated, middle-class brat is just the cost of the notebook itself. Within a day, a teen-age computer nerd will strip off the firewall protection and censorship filters, and be happily surfing www.horny-cheerleaders.com in between downloading his homework from essays-for-sale.com, and still have time to post party invitations on MySpace. But how long is a notebook going to last in a mud hut? Or even a tin hut? Or even a bogan's school bag, getting thrown around with the footy boots? Answer: not even until the next federal election. Oops. And the destitute African children? Apart from sending Nigerian 419 scam letters, there is little in the way of local industry which can benefit from information transfer. Social networking is a great way for bored western teenagers to kill time, but when there are animals to feed, crops to grow and water to fetch, on-line gossip about pop stars is pretty much irrelevant. Commodity prices on the other side of the world won't help you if you are merely subsistence farming. And great literature is of no interest to someone with an empty stomach. Doubtless these elitist initiatives will result in someone, somewhere doing something useful, and the proponents will declare the whole fiasco a success. But does anyone think that the hundreds of dollars per unit would not have been better spent on food, medicine, conventional education or even on a mercenary force to topple their corrupt thieving governments? And that applies for governments other than Australia's too.
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Try as they might, the followers of the Religion of Peace can't seem to avoid controversy. Some particularly devout Allah fanboys decided to conduct their own little Jihad in Mumbai, and kill as many Westerners as they could. On second thoughts, maybe these ones weren't trying that hard. Anyway, the local police followed procedure - rushing to the scene and standing around looking for opportunities to take bribes. Unfortunately the guy in charge got shot, and so did two of his deputies. Total chaos ensued. But at least our own government officials responded appropriately. Kevin (Pixie) Rudd stood up in parliament and branded the perpetrators as "murderers and cowards" (he was, presumably, talking about the terrorists and not the local police). Good on ya, Kev! Here is a true leader! Someone who will ignore several decades of politically correct cultural relativism and call a spade a spade! But hang on, did he say 'cowards'? Isn't a coward someone who runs away from personal danger? These terrorists were quite prepared to die for their beliefs. Their beliefs might be little radical (that Allah wants them to kill as many kaffirs as possible), but they are prepared to die for those beliefs. And that doesn't make them cowards. Religious extremists maybe. Sadistic lunatics probably. Murderous psychopaths definitely. But not cowards. The coward rhetoric may sound good. And many alert-but-not-alarmed people may be comforted by the words. But they illustrate a fundamental lack of clarity of thought, and understanding of the enemy. The first step in winning a war is understanding the enemy. To predict his strategy, you must understand what he will do in a given situation. To understand what he will do, you must understand what motivates him. The motivation of a coward is totally different to that of the irrational religious zealot. Of course fuzzy thinking is, and always has been, the choice weapon for the lovers of bigger government. The Pixie is merely continuing the tradition. The idea that higher minimum wages will create jobs, or that a welfare state will make us rich, or that socialism will create equality, or that government declared wars on poverty, obesity or drugs will make us free and happy. Running away from personal danger might be undesirable, but running away from reality is surely worse. What a pity there is no war against ignorance and fuzzy thinking.
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There's something funny about blood. People get emotional about it. Whether we are spilling it, or ensuring that it's thicker than water, or adding it to our sweat and tears, we are pretty close to it most of the time. Blood is clearly very important. That's why it's critical that the government makes so many rules about it to stop us doing what we want with our own blood. For instance, the government has laws against actually paying any poor people for donating blood. Until recently there were also rules against selling blood. It's not that no-one was allowed to profit from the blood industry. The doctors who administer the blood, the nurses who service them, and the many many health administrators who take their immodest salaries to keep us safe - they are all allowed to benefit from the blood industry. The recipients presumably benefit from the blood industry too - by receiving blood. Actually the only people who aren't allowed to benefit from the blood industry were the people who actually donate the blood. Which may be why blood supplies are always critically low, and the supply system is always in crisis. In fact the blood supply situation has gotten so critical, that the government has a new mechanism to deal with it: making blood recipients pay for the blood (at least at private hospitals anyway). Exactly how having the government charge people for consuming blood will increase the number of people supplying blood is a bit of a mystery for us mere voters. But clearly the government must have the answer. The government is very smart. That's why they are the government. The Daily Telegraph is running a typically hysterical front page article complete with an ailing blond child called 'Ruby' on the cover. Apparently Ruby is an immunoglobulin transfusee (that's medicarati for 'needs lots of blood'). It's good that the paper cleared that up because 'Ruby' doesn't look anemic. Actually her cheeks are quite rosy, and she doesn't look underweight either. In fact, in a few years, people will probably be describing Ruby as 'Rubenesque'. Regardless, the blood-thirsty Ruby attends a private hospital, and the government has decided to make private hospitals pay for blood. The embattled NSW government (which is unable to balance their budget even in the wake of unprecedented revenue surges) has resorted to the desperate measure of charging private hospitals for blood. So on the one hand we have a government which forbids people selling their blood, but still forces people to pay for it, and on the other side we have people who want to ban both the buying and selling of blood. Isn't it supposed to be the capitalist elites growing obscenely fat by sucking the blood of the hard working proletariat who are victims of their needs?
No Dear Reader. It's your socialist government, and their blood tax.
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The Daily Telegraph reports that hundreds of women who have duped men out of years of child support for children that are not theirs can now be forced to pay back the money. DNA techniques can, of course prove conclusively who the father is, and isn't. Needless to say, WIMMIN!'s groups are outraged that WIMMIN! will have to actually take responsibility for their actions. Angry women's groups said last night that it would be the children at the centre of the disputes who would suffer most if money were paid back. Apparently these loving mothers are going to take it out on the children. The money has already been spent on rearing the child, If the mother is forced to pay it back, its hard to imagine the child won't be disadvantaged. Apparently WIMMIN! shouldn't have to pay their debts if they have already spent their ill gotten gains on raising children. Does that mean they don't have pay mortgages, or car loans or credit cards too? Or is this a special exemption which only applies to men they have lied to? While the knee-jerk reaction might be to have some sympathy for 'confused women acting in good faith', perhaps women who have have so many partners in the space of a month that they don't know the paternity of their child should speak up about their uncertainty before pursuing a man they claim to be responsible. While people may not have an obligation to let a partner know about their infidelities, they surely have an obligation to report relevant factors when suing them for child support. She said men should raise doubts about paternity when they are first told they are a father. Serves them right for believing the word of a woman I guess.
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Amrozi, was a bit of an enigma. The continually grinning Bali Bomber inhabited the pundit space somewhere between the smiling assassin and the village idiot. Regardless, the smile was wiped off his face last night as he and two of co-conspirators faced a firing squad for his efforts in promoting the Religion of Peace. Media reports described his final moments as 'pale and afraid'. Maybe he was starting to suspect that the whole thing was a trick. Maybe there weren't 72 virgins for waiting him - maybe he was the virgin. Several generations of Indonesians, of course, have been taught to hate Australians by both their Islamic leaders and their corrupt government. Focusing the hate toward the rich, hardworking and comparatively uncorrupt nation to the the south was a good strategy both for the survival of the dictatorship, and the religious elite. But murdering 202 people in a nightclub was a bit excessive even if 88 of them were Australians. This went way beyond the call of duty. Embarrassingly so. The Indonesian government was shamed into accepting the help of the Australian Federal Police in tracking the bombers, and their judiciary were then sullenly forced to convict and then execute them - or have their hypocrisy and corruption exposed to the whole world. This is the cynical view of course. The un-cynical view is that the Indonesian power bloc realized that the Bali bombers represented a zealotry which could destabilize the government. Hatred of westerners is good, but must be moderated. Government sanctioned protests outside the Australian embassy with the occasional incursion into embassy grounds while burning the Australian flag; spitting on foreigners in the street - that kind of stuff. Regardless, the really interesting thing (as usual) was the reaction to the executions. Most of Balinese Muslims seemed to be on Australian TV screaming for more infidel's blood. No surprise there. This is pretty much what Australians have come to except from Religion of Peace. Unfortunately some Australians had the bad taste to celebrate with a beer. Faux pas! Whether The State should be in the business of executing people is a question of debate. One of the most powerful arguments is 'we are no better than them if we kill too'. A little contrite perhaps. But celebrating the spilling of Muslim blood because the Muslims are celebrating the spilling of Christian blood? Hmm .. there but for the grace of Allah .. There is something disturbing about celebrating the execution of someone with a beer. It is one thing to shrug, and say 'who cares?', or even 'at least it's over', or even a 'hoist by his own petard'. It's quite another to actively celebrate someone's execution. Even an evil psychopath like a Bali bomber. But at least it's over.
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Most Australian taxpayers wouldn't have been surprised to see the weekend's headlines 'ABC given $22M handout'. The ABC gets hundreds of millions of dollars of your hard-earned every year, so what's another 22 between pork barrels? But there might have been a little confusion about which ABC was getting the money. It wasn't the media broadcasting giant created to spread the gospel of collectivism to the masses. No dear reader this was the other blood-sucking tax-leaching namesake 'ABC Learning'. ABC Learning is a private company which caters to parents who value their career above caring for their own children. It's all about outsourcing. If outsourcing is good enough for the public service, then why not outsource Junior's upbringing too? Leave the job of child raising to government-approved experts! Need a well deserved rest? Why not just pay someone to take a well deserved rest for you. Actually they do that already - it's called 'the dole', but we digress. ABC Learning was so badly run, that it couldn't even make a profit by sucking on the inexhaustible corporate welfare tit, and has been placed into receivership by the banks, which are owed over half a billion dollars. The childcare centers are (of course) still running, money is coming in (much of it from the government) children are being cared for, carers are still caring. But thousands of parents are terrified that they might have to take responsibility for their own children if the centers start closing. Perhaps they should think again. The banks might be greedy, but they are not stupid. The centres are worth far more as going concerns than they were if the assets were liquidated. Consider:
Ergo, it would be far more profitable to sell the centers as going concerns than to liquidate. Even giving the centers away for nothing would be cheaper than paying out the remainder of the leases on the buildings! This is a situation which bankruptcy laws (and market forces) will take care of all on their own. The government didn't need to give the banks $22M of tax payers money to keep things going until Christmas. But once again, the (supposedly Leftist) government is determined to socialize the losses and privatize the profits. And thousands of supposedly loving parents nod approvingly and dote on the latest government intervention. Infants need to grow up sometime. Companies do too. Maybe it's time for this whole industry to
be weaned off the government tit.
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Dealing the race card has been a time honoured favorite for a generation of ethnic minorities. Whenever you don't get something you asked for (like someone else's money for instance), just throw yourself on the floor and scream 'racism' repeatedly. It works for small children, so why not victims of racial discrimination? Of course time marches on, pets die, children grow up, and societal attitudes to things like institutionalized racial discrimination evolve. But not always for the better. Like in the case of former ATSIC commissioner Alan Wolf, who is suing the Tasmanian Aboriginal Council for not being racist. Yes, dear reader, for not being racist. The Australian reports that Alan Wolf, who has presumably based his entire career on claiming to be a member of the institutionalized racial minority (that would be the Australian Aborigines for anyone who doesn't get out much), has suddenly found that the Tasmanians don't accept his qualifications as an Aboriginal and won't give him preferential treatment in his application for a fishing licence. He may have apply with all the white people at the back of the bus. If this all seems a little confusing to anyone with a logical mind, It really is totally logical. You just aren't considering the bigger picture. Remember that Aborigines (by weighted genetic proportion) are actual less than two percent of the population. That's not much to support a political movement. [Actually it's probably about the same as the Libertarians, and look how spectacularly ineffectual they have been in changing Australian politics]. Even as a special interest group, the percentage is too low to have much effect. So in the heady '80s, Aboriginal lobby groups decided that the best special interests of the Aborigines were served by an 'inclusive policy'. That is, get as many people as possible to claim to be victims of the Aboriginality, regardless of whether they were, or weren't actually of pre-European ancestry. Even in Tasmania. And boy it worked. Never was there so much hand-wringing and self flagellation for such a small minority group. And the buckets of money started flowing into 'Aboriginal concerns'. This might have been a surprise to those of us unfortunate enough to have been educated by the Tasmanian State education system. We were taught that the last full blooded Tasmanian Aboriginal was a woman called Truganini, who died in an Aboriginal settlement in 1876 (far too soon to have given birth to modern political correctness). But the money still flowed. And nothing exceeds like success. Once money (and affirmative action policies) were flowing. Then a new strategy was effective - to maximize your share of the trough by locking people out. Suddenly, people of questionable ancestral qualifications were having that ancestry questioned. One of the fastest growing populations in the world has suddenly started shrinking. A new genocide, or just a mercy culling of a stupid political movement? Normally leftist political movements shrink when the government money supply is
cut. But in this case the movement is just reeling from a reduction in blood
supply.
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Your ABC headline is Bailout approval fails to boost US stocks And the article begins: United States stocks have fallen heavily after Congress passed a huge financial rescue plan, as investors remained nervous about a global credit squeeze and the weak economy. After giving Treasury 700 Billion to buy trash for cash, which was supposed to restore everyone's faith in capitalism to the extent that they would re-invest their life savings in the stock market. Of course turning to a socialist solution would save capitalism. Obviously. We knew this was true. George Bush told us so! Oops. At least it's only tax-payer's money.
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