Don’t say sorry for me, Kev……. (1)
Posted 11 February, 2008 in Politics
Despite that our PM believes there’s a ‘blight on the nation’s soul’, I’m openly stating that I don’t feel an ounce of guilt or obligation to Aboriginal people. A ‘one-way’ apology made by the great KRudster this Wednesday will not be a reflection of how I feel or any acknowledgement of guilt on my behalf.
You see, I can’t work out what I’m supposed to be apologising for. I wasn’t there when the ‘Stolen Generations’ were ’stolen’. As I wasn’t born I can’t see how I can be complicit in this terrible act. I’m apologising for the sins of my grandfathers? I’ve never met either of them, so I wouldn’t know. Stolen land? I’ve never owned or acquired land in Australia by any means, so I’m not sure how this applies to me. I’ve never taken anything from Aboriginal people or acted improperly towards them in any way.
I’ll even go so far as to say the motivations of most of the key players are dubious. Listening to an interview with Warren Mundine this morning (on News Radio, I believe - can’t find a link) the issue of forgiveness in the form of a reply from Aborignal people was raised. This seems to be a sticky issue that doesn’t get played much by our media friends despite the Libs calling for it at one stage, also reflected by the fact that the only press our religious conservative senator Steve Fielding received on this issue was in the Geelong Advertiser. Warren Mundine objected to forgiveness on a number of grounds. Firstly, it wouldn’t be heartfelt apology if we came expecting forgiveness. Secondly, a full apology couldn’t be made from all Aborigines because one person couldn’t speak for the great diversity of Aboriginal people, unlike the Australian Parliament which speaks for all Australians. I think Warren was drawing a particularly long bow with that one. I can’t remember the rest.
I’m all for reconciliation, whatever that means, I’m just not sure it applies to me. The only conflict I’ve personally had with Aboriginal people is when they used to steal my stuff growing up near Dubbo. Relax, I’m over it, and everyone’s forgiven. I certainly don’t feel the PM needs to say it for me.
Seriously, I can agree there is a role for government here. If there needs to be some serious healing and understanding so we can move forward then quite possibly the government of the day can play a role in making this happen. But that’s the clincher - is moving forward as a nation really what this is about? I don’t think it is. The real motivation is a desire for guilt from our left-wing friends (and western Judeo-Christian society in general) to be carried as a sign of their virtue. Furthermore, our muppet of a PM and his merry party are happy to play to this to prove their own virtue; to show that they’re better than the conservative government they replaced. It’s guilt all round, so everyone dive right in and feel as bad as you need to. See someone not feeling bad and getting on with a productive life? Well then, you’re clearly the better person. From the other side, the real motivation from Aboriginal people is to get that formal acknowledgement of guilt onto the white man, in a way that can’t be negated or disregarded, by getting the PM to declare it so. Then they can be the ‘victim’ for generations to come. If an Aborigine hasn’t been ’stolen’ or had their family or friends ’stolen’ - and as far as I’m aware, most of them haven’t - then I have no problems stating that they’re simply attempting to secure their welfare future and to remain the ‘victim’ for as long as possible.
In short, if there is something that needs to be said, then I’m happy to say it. Forgive me and we’ll call it water under the bridge. I’m confident that if we work together we can build a bright future. Of course, that requires the forgiveness part and generally moral behaviour from our sunburnt brothers. I suspect that’s not what they really want, and frankly, the evidence to the contrary isn’t exactly overwhelming.
Stop it early, before it gets this far (5)
Posted 20 January, 2008 in Diary, Politics
I was listening to ABC Newsradio this afternoon, to an article on Anne Frank and her diary. I can’t find a transcript on the ABC site, but I’m quoting as best as possible from memory. A fellow was being interviewed and my understanding is he was Jewish and had some experience of the holocaust, whether that was through personal experience or family I didn’t pick up.
He was speaking at 2:55pm EDT when he closed his piece. He said he was happy that the diary of Anne Frank was a school text in many places around the world. He also stated that he understood these events occurred a long time ago and that for many people this would be ‘the first and last book’ they read on the matter. When asked what the most important point he would want people to take away from this book, he replied that if this happens again we must ’stop it early’ before it gets this far.
Most readers would realise I’m raising this in the context of the War on Terror. Are the parallels between the WWII, Islamofascism and the War on Terror strong enough to make this comparison? I agree there’s a lot of room to find differences, but I don’t think the comparison is unreasonable. If we were to value this opinion then I’d be inclined to say that foreign military intervention is inevitable, sometimes, if we are going to ’stop it early’.
Give them guns (0)
Posted 20 January, 2008 in Diary, Politics
I love it when left-wingers turn on each other!
Protesters turn on each other in sea hunt for whalers
TWO anti-whaling groups harassing Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean turned on each other yesterday.
Sea Shepherd chief Paul Watson slammed Greenpeace for refusing to tell him where the Japanese whaling fleet is, even though the Greenpeace ship Esperanza is right on the tail of the whalers’ mothership.
Nearly a decade ago I was deployed on operations with the military in East Timor, which was effectively the first time I’d worked with NGOs, aid agencies and the UN. The distrust and competitive nature between the aid agencies really surprised me, as did the general disdain the aid workers seemed to have for the local population, as did the way the aid workers treated each other. I still don’t understand why they would volunteer for that work if they hated everyone associated with it and I still don’t really understand their motivation. I think for most of them it was a weird mixture of wanting to be the centre of attention while doing something important which would seem cool in left-wing circles and get their face on the news. Strangely, to me at least, the prime motivation didn’t appear to be a desire to help people less fortunate than themselves. That was just an added bonus which gave them a vehicle to fulfill their ambitions.
But that’s left-wingers for you.
Thoughts and prayers for Tim Blair (0)
Posted 15 January, 2008 in General, Politics
Australia’s most prominent righty blogger has a bit of a battle with jack-the-dancer.
The right-wing blog scene won’t be same ’till he’s back on deck. Thoughts and prayers until that occurs.
Save the Second.com (1)
Posted 15 January, 2008 in Politics
Those of you with American friends who have pro-freedom and pro-constitution tendencies should suggest that they sign this: www.savethesecond.com
In a great victory for the American People, the U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the DC handgun ban saying it was a violation of the second amendment. For the first time in years a court held that the second amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms. The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case. Defenders of the second amendment have been working hard for just this moment in history for years.
Last Friday, the United States Solicitor General filed formal briefs asking the Supreme Court not to affirm the lower court’s decision. This is just outrageous. The Solicitor General is the Federal Government’s lawyer. So, now we have the federal government using our tax dollars to argue for a delay on a ruling concerning our fundamental rights.
When a congressman is willing to make a stand like this it just proves to me that America is still the world’s greatest liberal democracy.
Quote of the decade (0)
Posted 11 January, 2008 in Politics
“My mother always said democracy is the best revenge.” - Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, son of the late Benazir Bhutto.
As much as I love to see Islamofascists and their terrorist brethren get dispatched for a trip on the Allah Express, nothing rubs it in the faces of these turds like seeing the populace embracing democracy, benefiting from it and nurturing it until it flowers in a society where hardliners had previously managed to smash it down.
Short documentary on why the UK sucks and the US rules (0)
Posted 6 January, 2008 in Humour, Politics
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt0KhGJyayM
As much as I find Jeremy Clarkson a very entertaining guy and a great presenter (although, in truth, a pretty average motoring journalist), this very ordinary effort to send up all the US as a gun-toting redneck hicksville wasteland really only serves to reveal the true differences between the homeland of the presenter and the location of the documentary. One is still a free county where a ‘rugged’ individualist can actually do what they want in their own backyard, and the other is full of euro-wusses who try too hard to be all sophisticated and who can’t actually do anything without a myriad of government approvals and political correctness checks. One has hope for a future and the other is too far gone to be saved. Now, I’m not saying ‘Billy Bob’ is the epitome of the ideal man. But I am saying that any culture that mocks individualism, self-reliance, resilience and personal freedom probably doesn’t have all that much going for it.
What Clarkson would do well to remember is that he has made a very comfortable living out of promoting a macho-ish culture where he is the rogue who operates politically incorrect machines in an irresponsible manner - in fact, this is the essence of him bagging out the Toyota Prius. What he’s got with ‘Billy Bob’ is someone who does that better than himself. So I don’t know if it’s ironic or just simply sour grapes that he chooses to mock this guy and the US gun-totin’ God-fearin’ good ole boy culture this guy reflects. Either way, as entertaining as it is, it’s a bit of a cheap shot at the US.
(BTW: this rant aside, I think Top Gear is a great show.)
Help some academics work out where rights come from (0)
Posted 3 January, 2008 in Philosophy, Politics
Academia can be a disturbing thing. Especially when a lot of the humanities types don’t actually believe in absolutes in knowledge i.e. they don’t believe you can really know anything for sure. If you think about it, this has a lot of implications in making moral decisions, because you can’t really ever know right from wrong. Probably why a lot of them are left wing.
With this epistemological position you can’t really know where rights come from either. Here’s a survey so you, dear reader, can tell some academics the good news that we can actually make accurate and reasonable moral decisions.
My answers below the fold.
SBS: taking left-wing bias to new levels of subtlety (6)
Posted 1 January, 2008 in Politics
SBS World News never fails to intrigue me with their ingenious and subtly disguised left-wing bias. The way they slip that little lefty jab into every story makes me believe the news writers are some sort of socialist special-operations psych-trained propaganda unit. Which, if you looked into the tertiary studies of the writers, probably isn’t too far from the truth; at least with regards to the socialist or psych parts.
Tonight’s edition begins with a story on the Kenyan election riots. The report states that regardless of which way they voted, ‘voters are angry that democracy has let them down’. (Note: this quote isn’t in the link but it was definitely verbally stated in the report).
Now, what is inherently wrong with this statement? Firstly, let me say it can be taken two ways. On the surface you could say that the elections have failed in that a government hasn’t peacefully been elected, hence peaceful people are angry that the democratic process hasn’t been carried out. You can’t argue that the statement couldn’t be interpreted to have this meaning. This is very clever, because the writer can’t be accused of denouncing democracy. But wouldn’t a professional writer actually say this, with something like ‘voters are angry that the democratic process has not resulted in a peacefully elected government’, if that’s what the writer really wanted to say?
What are the other possible interpretations of this statement? Well, quite frankly, ‘voters are angry that democracy has let them down’ can clearly be interpreted to mean that democracy has failed. Why do I have a suspicion - which, I admit, is completely unsubstantiated - that the writer wanted that interpretation to linger in the back of viewer’s minds? Of course, this interpretation raises the question: if the liberal democratic process has failed then what are the alternative social and political systems that might give better results? After all, it’s now clear that liberal democracy is not the ‘be all and end all’ because it doesn’t always work.
The report continues and another SBS phenomenon pops up: an unwillingness to report the brutal truth of a non-Western society. While the Kenyan opposition might have been encouraging people to riot, the government has, as per standard, got the police to quell the uprising. Our reporter advises that they’ve been doing this with ‘water cannon and live rounds’! Now, I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I can see a lot of a difference between these two methods of uprising extinguishment. One involves a non-lethal methodology to arguably support civil society, and the other is Tiananmen Square circa 1989. Strangely, our reporter didn’t clarify.
Now, upon calling up the SBS link I’ve noticed it says ‘police beat protesters with clubs, fired off tear gas and shot live bullets in the air.‘ Fine. But I also notice the article is titled ‘More than 185 dead in Kenya riots’, and it does say that ‘Three police officers independently told AP journalists that they had been ordered to shoot to kill to stop rioters.’
Personally I feel that viewers of SBS World News would have considered this point critical to the article and felt it was significant enough for a sentence or two of clarification. Which never came. Why do I have a suspicion - which, I admit, is completely unsubstantiated - that in order to have an article on SBS World News evening edition you had better not allege that a black African nation’s government is ruling via the gun. Unless, of course, they are sanctioned unfashionable enough by the UN, and generically acknowledged as such a basket case that you can’t report otherwise i.e. like Zimbabwe.
As my wife put it to me: ‘Sometimes I find it hard to watch World News. A good world round-up, but with a distinctive reddish taint!’. I couldn’t agree more. I think this guy might have the solution to what we should do with government owned media. After all, it’s publicly funded to provide balance to the popular media, and media services to those who otherwise wouldn’t have them. If it’s no longer required in these functions, and is instead pushing some other agenda, then it’s no longer required as a government provided service.
History of the Liberal Party by Dr John Hewson (0)
Posted 30 December, 2007 in Humour, Politics
Sure it’s tongue-in-cheek. But it tells you pretty much everything you need to know!