( 30 June 09) .....A sinister new equality bill is before a parliamentary committee. So far there has been surprisingly little about it in the British media, although the Catholic Church has called attention to the fact it would give the government unprecedented powers to police not only public but private religious and other activities. The Thomas More Legal Centre's director Neil Addison recently said that under this bill, "nearly every form ofdiscrimination is banned, even for private associations and churches. Christian churches are to be banned from preferring Christians in their employment practices except in the employment of priests or religious teachers. They are not going to be ableto insist that employees live in accordance with the ideals or principles of the church, and any employment ormembership decision they take can be investigated by an unelected quango, the Equality and Human Rights Commission." This is only the first stage. The Catholic bishops of England and Wales have warned that religious schools and care homes could be forced to remove crucifixes, holy pictures or other religious symbols or icons from their walls in case they offend atheist or non-Catholic cleaners. Under the terms of the bill, Catholic institutions could be guilty of harassment if they display images offensive to non-Catholics..... UK bill an attack on faith , HG.P. Colebatch, The Australian ......The draft bill defines harassment in the widest possible terms as "unwanted conduct ... with the purpose or effect of violating a person's dignity, or of creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading or offensive environment" .....The practical consequences of this are that a Catholic care home, for example, may have crucifixes and holy pictures on the walls (that) reflect and support the beliefs of the residents. A cleaner may be an atheist or of very different religious beliefs. Nonetheless, if a cleaner found the crucifixes offensive, there would be no defence in law against a charge of harassment..... Catholic schools could likewise be forced to remove crucifixes or holy pictures if atheist or non-Catholic dinner ladies found them offensive. Beyond decorations, symbols and icons, this may open the way for state interference in invisible and perhaps more profound matters of doctrine.... The bill is largely the creation of the Labour Party's deputy leader and Equality Minister Harriet Harman, one of the party's most committed left-wing social engineering activists, who probably has as much clout in the government as anyone.....There has been a string of cases of people suspended or sacked for expressing their religious convictions, wearing religious symbols such as crucifixes or, in the case of one nurse, offering to pray or a patient......
(27 June 09)......In just a few weeks time, California hits the wall. And Americans should take a good, long look at the fiscal and social wreck of the Golden Land, because California is at a place to which all of America is heading. In May, when five fund-raising proposals were put on the ballot, Gov. Schwarzenegger pleaded with the overtaxed Californians not to make their state "the poster child for dysfunction." As The Economist writes, "On May 18th, they did exactly that.".... with the state under a constitutional mandate to balance its budget, yet facing a $24 billion deficit this July, a chainsaw is about to be taken to state government. Some 38,000 of 168,000 state prisoners may be released. As Barack Obama is pushing universal health insurance, California will cut Medi-Cal for the poor. Education will be slashed, resulting in a shortened school year, thousands of laid-off teachers, school closings and an end to summer programs in a system that has plummeted from the nation's best to one of its worst, as measured by dropout rates and academic achievement. The 10 campuses of the University of California face cuts that may result in 50,000 fewer students and 5,000 fewer teachers... California, Here We Come! Pat Buchanan, Human Events.com .... Under George W. Bush and Obama, the U.S. government has undertaken huge new responsibilities: No Child Left Behind, Medicare prescription drug benefits, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the takeovers of banks and auto companies, bailouts without end and national health insurance. California, too, spent lavishly in the fat years and issued bonds when state revenues did not cover the costs, bringing its once-sterling credit rating down to the nation's lowest..... Los Angeles, which is what most large American cities will look like, is the most diverse city on earth. Has diversity been a strength? In the prisons and jails, and among the scores of thousands in street gangs and the underclass, a black-brown civil war is underway. In October 2006, the Financial Times reported the findings of the famed author of "Bowling Alone" on what diversity has wrought: "A bleak picture of the corrosive effects of ethnic diversity has been revealed in research by Harvard University's Robert Putnam, one of the world's most influential political scientists.......California today believes in Big Government, open borders, diversity, multiculturalism and the politics of compassion. But what liberalism has wrought in California, its native-born are fleeing. Still, where California is at, America is headed.....
The Climate Change Climate Change
(26 June 09).....Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation. If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming..... It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S. In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role..... The Climate Change Climate Change Kimberley A. Strassel, The Wall Street Journal .....In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.....The rise in skepticism also came as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, elected like Mr. Obama on promises to combat global warming, was attempting his own emissions-reduction scheme. His administration was forced to delay the implementation of the program until at least 2011, just to get the legislation through Australia's House. The Senate was not so easily swayed.Mr. Fielding, a crucial vote on the bill, was so alarmed by the renewed science debate that he made a fact-finding trip to the U.S... if the rest of the world is any indication, now might be the time for U.S. politicians to re-engage on the science. One thing for sure: They won't be alone. ....
Iran Election: The beginning of the End
(17 June 09)......All candidates are prescreened by the Guardian Council before they are allowed to run for office. In practice, a president of Iran is already chosen through a farce process of giving the voters a chance to elect one of the men hand-picked from the regime's functionaries, as was the case with President Ahmadinejad. During the previous "election," only a small percentage of the voters bothered to vote, since voting under the pre-screening and undemocratic system of the mullahs is more like selection than election. The result of staying away from the polls materialized in the person of the fascist Ahmadinejad. The great majority of the people of Iran are disillusioned and even disgusted by the mediaeval incompetent, oppressive, and corrupt rule of the mullahs, irrespective of which mafia gang is in power......on June 12, 2009, the Iranian people went to the polls, challenging not only the incumbent president Ahmadinejad, but the entire establishment of the Islamic regime. Iran's elections are considered extremely unfair and the Islamist government does not allow international monitors to be present. The ruling clerics put their stamp on the elections from the very beginning by deciding who can run. It is really a joke. More than 470 people sought to join the presidential race, but only Ahmadinejad and three rivals were cleared..... T he turnout was massive, a near record high 85 percent of Iran's 49.2 million eligible voters...... Iran Election: The beginning of the End , American Thinker .......Based on the information from Mousavi's website , a group of Interior Ministry employees have leaked out the following results which seem to be closer to reality than the one released by the establishment....A n Iranian journalist said, "The important event that took place in Iran is that it wasn't an election; it was a coup d'état. [They] stole 24 million votes of the nation and took them away for themselves. If there were really a winner, they would have to celebrate, but instead they beat people. They performed a coup, but they don't call it a coup." He continued, "Please don't use the word "fraud" because it is mitigation of what has happened in Iran. Fraud is what was happening in the past 30 years. This is not fraud. They haven't [counted] people's votes. Using the word fraud is like calling a deep cut a small scratch. There was no fraud; it was a coup.".... The ever-conniving mullahs dread the Iranian people. Granted that a small percentage of Iranians, known as the 3Fs -- fools, fanatics and frauds -- support the mullahs. No totalitarian rule can ever survive without a segment of the population, for one reason or another, supporting it. Yet, time is not on the side of the mullahs. By their mismanagement, thievery and oppression of the masses, they have created explosive internal conditions....It was reported and verified by a Spiegel German reporter in Iran that the regime has brought many Arab speaking Hizbollah factions from Lebanon to attack the Iranian people....The vicious attacks on people by the hired thugs of the regime are failing more and more as the mullahs' instrument of rule by terror. The police and official security apparatus are less and less willing to exercise brute force to suppress the people. That's exactly why the regime has imported Arab speaking terrorist groups such as Lebanese Hizbollah and Palestinian thugs......
(17 June 09) ........Mainstream political leaders - Tory and Labour - mutter in disgust. Newspapers mull over whether a 1920s version of militant fascism is emerging. The BNP, with its racist, anti-immigrant agenda, should be driven out of British politics as an illegitimate force, they say......For better analysis, you need only jump in a taxi to understand what happens when there is a sense that a nation has lost its way. My taxi driver from Heathrow told me he voted BNP for the first time. The next day, another taxi driver said the same. Another day, another taxi driver, another first-time BNP voter. For them, mainstream parties stopped listening to the concerns of working-class people about immigration. Likewise, you will learn more from the letters pages of British newspapers than from the reams of so-called expert analysis devoted to denouncing the BNP's success as a depressing moment for democracy......The emergence of the BNP - and, indeed, other similar anti-immigration parties across Europe - is yet another wake-up call that large swaths of the West have failed to discuss the consequences of fast-growing immigration honestly and openly..... It is easy to dismiss the concerns of the working class when you are far removed from the daily, social challenges of immigration.....Our own Mark Latham best described that disconnect back in 2002 when he said that: "In my experience, the strongest supporters of the rights agenda are those who do not have to face the daily consequences of irresponsible behaviour. They have the resources to buy themselves away from social problems ... This gives them the luxury of being able to talk about human rights without the need for social responsibility." .....Years ago now, writing in Prospect magazine, David Goodhart wrote an important essay warning liberals about the progressive dilemma that confronts many Western countries... Turning of the tide in Europe . Janet Albrechtsen, The Australian ......The more diverse that once homogenous societies become, the more the common culture is eroded. He warned that the reaction to growing diversity will happen through decades, if not generations. After last week's European elections, more people are now realising the inevitable price of diversity. In a new book, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, which could not have appeared at a better time given the gnashing of elite teeth about the European elections, Christopher Caldwell describes the revolution under way in Europe...... The march of modernity and globalisation, said the ruling political elites and much of the media, requires an unquestioning acceptance of immigration, regardless of the clash of values. The move away from the old-fashioned notion of solidarity and shared values in favour of diversity and multicultural moral relativism is most apparent in the area of women's rights, where increasing numbers of immigrants from different cultures do not share the West's commitment to equality..... Only a more honest discussion about immigration - and the importance of national identity - will prevent further political gains to parties that know how to manipulate the concerns of people such as my early morning taxi driver. Repressing these parties will be interpreted as repressing the genuine concerns of voters. If that happens, Britain - and Europe - will learn an even tougher lesson about repression when there is an even stronger, more unfortunate backlash against immigration and open borders.......
(15 June 09) .....Mr. Obama, your speech in Cairo encouraged me to reconsider my thoughts on how I view Islam as a religion in today's society. I have really thought it over and decided to fully accept Islam with just a few caveats. First, they have to stop treating women as second class citizens.....tell your Secretary of State and Speaker of the House to stop covering their heads on visits. They are supposed to be beacons of the women's movement. By covering their heads, they are not being respectful to their hosts-- they are disgracing every woman who ever fought for equal rights. Next, tell the Islamists to stop killing gays. Maybe gays are not totally accepted in this society, but we have made great progress in the last 50 years. We may not agree on gay marriage, but we certainly agree on equal rights for gays. We don't allow them to be killed just for being gay.... Next, the Muslims should stop trying to tell us they really care about the Palestinians and that the trouble in the Middle East is because of their problems. The Arabs have done nothing -- I repeat nothing -- to help them for 60 years, and we all know that. The Palestinian problem did not start in 1967. It started in 1948 when the Arabs attacked Israel and got their butts kicked..... Let's All Accept Islam , Bruce Bialosky, Townhall.com ..... These people willingly relocated out of the Israeli territory, and their Arabs friends did nothing to help them. So please be honest and stop lying to us because we both know it is a lie. Once you do that, we can all move forward. Mr. Obama, we also want an apology for all those Christians and Jews kicked out of the Arab countries. While they have been really good on creating a lie about the Palestinians being kicked out of their land, they have done an excellent job of covering up all those people they kicked out..... If anyone wonders where all those Jews in Israel came from they should check it out. Not just Europe or Russia, but from all those neighbouring Arab states where they were no longer welcome. That may answer why it is such a big deal that Jews are building settlements in the West Bank...... Mr. Obama, it is nice that you want us to accept Islam, but would you have asked us to accept Nazism or Communism with their mass murders and mistreatment of people? I suggest you remember we did not elect you to be Brown-Noser-in-Chief or Apologist-in-Chief; we elected you as Commander-in-Chief. I respectfully suggest you start acting like it because these apologies to mass murderers and intolerant sons-of-bitches are really getting tiresome......
(15 June 09) ......A strange thing happened this week. Hundreds of villagers in Pakistan's Northwest turned on Taleban fighters after an attack on a mosque killed more than 40 worshippers during the Friday prayers. As Pakistani Army cracks down on the militants in an offensive that has also killed hundreds of innocent people and displaced nearly two million, ordinary people have launched their own war on the forces that have brought so much misery and destruction to their beautiful land. After the mosque attack in Upper Dir district, tribesmen attacked the battle-hardened Taleban in their own strongholds, forcing them to run for their lives...... Ordinary people are not willing to suffer and die in silence anymore, as the Taleban and security forces fight for Pakistan's soul. This is perhaps the most critical turning point in this most unfortunate war..... While we in the Muslim world have often and justifiably taken the U.S. and its allies to task for their crimes against innocent civilians, we haven't been as brutally honest when it comes to the fanatics who claim to speak on our behalf....Our failure to condemn the terrorists in stronger terms has sent a wrong message to both the extremists as well as the rest of the world..... Confronting the enemy within , Aljazeera.com ..... What Pakistani tribesmen did to take on the Taleban menace is perhaps the most cheerful news to come out of that country in many years. The South Asian nation was supposed to have been a model Muslim society and state. And, look, what a total, mind-boggling mess they have made of Quaid-e-Azam's dream! It has emerged as a symbol of all that is wrong with the Muslim societies today: Corruption, abuse of power, violence and extremist chaos of all sorts.... In the end, if the Muslims want to clear this mess, they will have to help themselves. No angels will descend from the heavens to rescue and set things right for them. No amount of verbal entreaties and sanctimonious lectures insisting this is not what Islam is all about will do. We need action now. The Pakistanis, Afghans and Muslims everywhere will have to do more to prove that what a tiny, lunatic fringe is doing in the name of Islam is nothing but a grave injustice to the great faith. It's time to confront the enemy within....
(15 June 09) ...Emeritus Professor Garth Paltridge is an atmospheric physicist and was a Chief Research Scientist with the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research before taking up positions in Tasmania as Director of the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies and CEO of the Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre. He retired in 2002 and continues to live in Hobart. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Tasmania and a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University. His research ranged from the optimum design of plants to the economics of climate forecasting. He is best known internationally for work on atmospheric radiation and the theoretical basis of climate. He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science... The Climate Caper by Garth W. Paltridge is out in July
(15 June 09) .....Mr. Obama called for a "new beginning" in relations between the United States and Islamic civilization. He praised Islam's commitment to "peace," "justice" and "religious tolerance." He listed the Muslim world's supposed contributions to history - algebra, the compass and the printing press, among others. There is only one problem: It is all false. Mr. Obama's outreach to the Arab street is predicated on a massive multicultural fiction.... It was not Islam, but the Greeks, who invented algebra. The Chinese gave us the compass. And Johannes Gutenberg - a German - created the modern printing press. What's next: Islam invented the Internet? ....... The address, however, was more than a puerile and pathetic exercise in political correctness. It will be remembered as the pivotal moment in history when the United States ceased to be a superpower...... Political Islam is at war with us - or to be more precise, radical fundamentalists are bent on destroying America, Israel and the West........ Capitualtion in Cairo ? Jeffrey Kuhner, The Washington Times .... The liberals' mantra is that the majority of Muslims are nonviolent moderates. This is undeniably true. But it misses the point. During the 1930s, appeasement was based upon the notion that a majority of Germans were decent people who simply wanted peace and national self-determination. Thus, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made the fateful decision to give away the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia's ethnic German region, to Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime..... The fact that there were countless moderate, anti-Nazi Germans meant nothing. Their refusal to speak out against Hitler's Aryan racialism guaranteed its march to power - and destruction. History reveals that it is militant minorities - not reasonable majorities - that often drive events.... Mr. Obama is repeating Chamberlain's tragic mistake - except this time, the Israelis are to play the role of the Czechs, the sacrificial lamb at the altar of appeasement.....
Violence the way of traditional life
.....In his address to the National Press Club in 2003, Mick Dodson claimed that "violence is not and never was part of Aboriginal tradition ... We have no cultural traditions based on humiliation, degradation, and violation. Let me make this point abundantly clear. Most of the violence, if not all, that Aboriginal communities are experiencing today [is] not part of Aboriginal tradition or culture....."
(9 June 09) ......That denies the reality. Pre-contact Aboriginal society was very violent, and that violence and the cultural norms that sustained it continue to generate the extreme levels of violence in today's remote communities.....The particularly high level of violence against women in pre-contact Aboriginal Australia can no longer be denied. First-contact explorers and colonists noted with distress the terrible scars and bruises that marked the women due to the frequent brutality of their menfolk. Stephen Webb's palaeopathology studies of cranial and post-cranial remains verify that before European arrival, violence against Aboriginal women was prevalent across the mainland continent, with women suffering significantly more cranial injuries than men. The level of Aboriginal violence particularly against women remains shocking. In 2004-05 across four states where records were kept, "indigenous females were 44.1 times more likely to be hospitalised for assault than non-Indigenous females".....insistent blaming of white colonisation as a primary generator of high Aboriginal violence suppresses the uncomfortable fact that within Aboriginal culture, violence continues to have strong, traditional legitimacy. Hence, reducing Aboriginal violence to around mainstream levels will entail further shifts away from traditional beliefs, norms, power structures and behaviours..... Violence the way of traditional life , Stephanie Jarrett. The Australian .....In contemporary liberal democracies, violence is forbidden. For private citizens there is no legitimised violence apart from self-defence. Within traditional Aboriginal culture, there was considerable legitimate scope for people to use violence. Dreamtime law functioned above all else to protect country against sacrilege and to uphold the social order. Enforcement of correct ceremonial procedures and obligations included harsh violent punishment, sometimes death.... Sacred law discriminated on the basis of sex, with more prohibitions placed on women. Certainly, men faced restrictions on pain of death to many sacred places, objects and ceremonies...... Despite the misogyny of the 18th and 19th century western world, white colonial officials and explorers were shocked by what they saw.....( explorer and magistrate Edward John Eyre), ability to see the colonial injustice and aggression against Aboriginal Australia did not compromise his ability to decry the subjugated status of the Aboriginal women. "Women are often sadly ill-treated by their husbands or friends, in addition to the dreadful life of drudgery, and privation, and hardship they always have to undergo; they are frequently beaten about the head, with waddies, in the most dreadful manner, or speared in the limbs for the most trivial offences..... In her book A Fatal Conjunction, Kimm laments in her concluding chapter that "the continuing public denial that violence is part of traditional culture remains a large part of the 'root of the problem"'. Kimm also urges the need to place women's rights above cultural rights in law and sentencing....
Heaven and Earth, Climate Change: The Missing Science
(10 June 09) Brian Carlton of The Asian Business Network interviews Professor Ian Plimer about his book Heaven and Earth, Climate Change: The Missing Science Part 1 , Part 2, Part 3
(10 June 09) ...... Well, they were warned over and over again but they didn't listen . This morning, the mainstream political parties are shocked by the unpalatable fact that, after the elections to the European Parliament Britain now has two British National Party MEPs. And as usual, the rending of garments by MPs over this development has far more to do with attempting to demonstrate their own unimpeachable anti-racist virtue than honestly facing up to the real cause of this debacle themselves...... The philosophical antecedents of the BNP lie not on the right but on the left......Labour MPs are shocked that it is their own voters who have turned to the BNP. They are shocked because it is a mantra of the left that it stands in heroic and historic opposition to fascism. This is untrue.... they ( BNP) have been able to seize their opportunity and not just because of the expenses scandal. No, the rot in our culture that has let in the BNP goes far, far deeper than that. It is because it has turned attachment to national identity itself into a crime. Anyone who objects to multi-culturalism is called a bigot; anyone who wants to curb immigration is called a racist; anyone who objects to the Islamisation of Britain is called an Islamophobe; anyone who wants to leave the EU and regain the power of national self-government is called a xenophobe; anyone, in short, who wants to retain Britain's national identity rooted in the shared particulars of religion, law, history, traditions and culture and its powers as a self-governing nation finds themselves ostracised as a pariah...... The real reason for this . Melanie Phillips, Spectator ...... Voters have been told in effect that there is nothing standing between national suicide on the one hand and racism on the other. If you don't want the former, you are automatically branded with the latter. And so the BNP have been able to make hay.... All mainstream parties have colluded in this lamentable state of affairs. The nation-wrecking ideology of multiculturalism and the Marxist redefinition of racial prejudice into racism which have turned our society inside out, are the product of the left......So now the public have given their reply to this collusion. Working-class areas are particularly vulnerable to the BNP because they bear the full brunt of these policies. They are areas of very high immigration where the transformation of the ethnic, religious and cultural landscape has made indigenous inhabitants feel strangers in their own country -- and yet they are told they are racist for saying so, not least by the MPs who are now wringing their hands over the BNP success.....The willed loss of control of this country's borders, the blind eye to Islamisation, the refusal to allow the people to vote against the Lisbon treaty and the surrender of self-government to the EU these are the things that have brought the BNP electoral success.....
(9 June 09) ......In more than 10 years of writing about British politics, I have never encountered anything remotely approaching the present public fury at the revelations of wholesale cheating on expenses by members of parliament. Apart from the mass of instances of five and six-figure fiddling so far uncovered, for such things as non-existent mortgages and the enhancement of property portfolios, and "flipping" (claiming the same buildings to be second homes for expenses purposes and main homes to avoid capital gains tax) there is the plethora of grotesque details....One MP spent thousands on an ornate house for the ducks on his estate. The former chairman of the Labour Party had the taxpayer buy his champagne flutes. His colleague charged the taxpayer for the cost of a wreath he laid on a war memorial. The home secretary charged the taxpayer for the hire of her husband's porn videos..... The government has seemed bent on destroying Britain's public culture and values. At the start of his prime ministership, Tony Blair claimed proudly that Britain was no longer "living in the world of a hundred years ago, when guys wore bowler hats and umbrellas, all marching down Whitehall". Yet it was those guys with bowler hats and umbrellas who had given the British public service a reputation for incorruptibility, or at least for corruption being rare and exceptional (David Lloyd George sold honours, and there were the Marconi scandals in 1912). William Gladstone was one PM who would not use government stamps for his private letters. Winston Churchill, despite his long political career, the enormous sales of his books and his unparalleled network of high-level contacts, was never enormously wealthy. He was only able to live at Chartwell after the war because a group of friends bought it for his use..... Crooked houses of power , Hal G.P. Colebatch, The Australian ....Blair also claimed: "I am a modern man. I am part of the rock 'n' roll generation. The Beatles, colour television: that's the generation I came from." Such words implied, if they did not specifically state, a rejection of the standards and values of the past. If there were once things that it was felt a gentleman, or lady, did not do, such as lie, cheat and steal even when the rules allowed it, Stockport College in Greater Manchester, in deference to political correctness, made the use of the words lady and gentleman a sacking offence for staff or students. The government condoned this, or at least did not put a stop to it..... There is also an argument that the rot started for parliament when the John Major Conservative government began handing British sovereign power over to Europe, and the Blair government continued to downgrade parliament, handing more and more powers to the EU, to qangos, judges and "kitchen cabinets" of ministerial cronies, advisers and spin doctors. It was not, according to this argument, power that corrupted Westminster but lack of power: there was less and less worthwhile for MPs to do, or to attract or retain people with an ethic or tradition of public duty.....
(8 June 09) Armed cops patrolling Heathrow Airport have been banned from wearing tiny Union Jack badges in support of British troops. Soldiers Badge is Offensive Top brass claimed the tie-pin badges - which cost £1 with proceeds going to the Help for Heroes charity - were Offensive
(8 June 09) What an embarrassment!!! What and insult toD-Day!!! What and insult to history!!! This Freudian slip by British PM Gordon Brown just indicates how besotted, enamoured and infatuated the left is with Barrack Obama. Omaha Beach on D Day becomes Obama Beach
Gallipoli: Second Front in The History Wars
...The gauntlet has been thrown down, and the next phase of the Left's ideological onslaught on Australian society and its history is under way. The intelligentsia would no doubt like to be as successful in imposing its view of the Anzac tradition on Australian society as it has been in promulgating its fabrication of the history of indigenous Australians and requiring students at every level of education, from day care to university, to make unquestioning obeisance to a politically correct, contrived mythology....
(8 June 09) ......As 2014 approaches there will be a resurgence, intensification and expansion of the already vigorous debates about the war as historians, intellectuals, ideologues, politicians, veterans' organisations, community groups and laypersons continue to come to grips with the meaning of this titanic struggle; exploring it in terms of its origins, battles, strategies, tactics, and consequences; while addressing political ideologies, wartime cultures, battlefield experiences, memories, gender and race, national identities, the fates of empires, and the future of civilisation... Floundering, and looking for an explanation that doesn't require it to examine its own basic assumptions, the Left has concluded that the principal reason for the resurgence of the Anzac spirit is the alleged militarism and nationalism of the Howard government....The views of Mark McKenna, Associate Professor of History at the University of Sydney are also typical of the intelligentsia's position..... Such passages reveal why the Left fails to connect with the Anzac legend and why it sees it as such a threat: according to the Left's peculiar ideology and dissociated mind-set, all these qualities of patriotism, allegiance, faith, freedom, prosperity, nationalism, pride and achievement are suspect, or invalid, or even pernicious. Consequently, it devalues and even despises any cultural traditionlike Anzacthat gives expression to them..... Gallipoli: Second Front in The History Wars , Mervyn F. Bendle, Quadrant ......Confronted by the survey's findings that young people present at the Gallipoli ceremony overwhelmingly saw their pilgrimage in terms of respect, national pride, gratitude, remembrance, sadness, sacrifice, affirmation, love, reconciliation, and connection with their Australian forebears, (Joan) Beaumont objected. No, she insisted, these were merely values into which these young people had been socialised at school. In the ensuing discussion I suggested that one should not so readily dismiss what appeared to be deeply held attitudes and that these were extremely valuable results that should be addressed; Beaumont reaffirmed her view and other academics supported her. For them, it appeared, these results reveal merely shallow, ersatz values inculcated by the state, with no genuine emotional or psychological roots.ect, or invalid, or even pernicious. Consequently, it devalues and even despises any cultural traditionlike Anzacthat gives expression to them...The attack on the Anzac legend is not restricted to Gallipoli but increasingly encompasses the Second World War. Consequently, an excellent example of contemporary revisionism was provided by Peter Stanley's high-profile and relentless opposition in 2002 to the popular belief that Australia faced the threat of Japanese invasion in 1942..... The attack by the intelligentsia on the Anzac tradition is both explicit and co-ordinated. Consequently, what clearly aspires to be a manifesto was widely promulgated just prior to Anzac Day this year..... the Anzac legend is far too precious to be left to the mercy of these ideologues. The centennial of the outbreak of the Great War approaches: it may soon be time for those who value the sacrifices of their forebears, the national identity of their country, and all that its people have achieved, to follow the Anzac spirit in the battle of ideas, and go over the top....