SOME AUSTRALIAN NEWS EXCERPTS

A big difference to the way American schools treat innocent kids: "A teenager who sparked a gun scare at his high school sat patiently in a classroom as the drama unfolded, unaware he was the person police were scouring the school for. The school, north of Brisbane, went into lockdown late yesterday morning after the boy was seen entering school grounds with what appeared to be a gun... A police spokesman said it appeared charges would not be laid against the boy with the toy gun. "He was going to the school to pick up some school work and had bought the toy as part of a Halloween costume," he said. "He was taking part in the lockdown. He didn't even realise it was a result of his actions."

An excellent satire on the New York Times here. A small excerpt: "The international community is bracing for an influx of political refugees following the collapse of democracy in Australia. Last night the UN Security Council was in emergency session on the situation in Australia, where John Howard seized power in a bloodless election on Saturday. The defeat of democracy had been long foreshadowed by the country's artists and intellectuals, as well as by some prominent columnists..."

Australian Left jolted rightwards by the election: "Mark Latham has promised to push ahead with a more aggressive pro-market reform agenda as he admitted that Labor had not done enough to win voter trust on economic management..... In his first post-mortem on the election, Mr Latham championed the need for a new wave of economic reforms - admitting Labor had to do more to enhance its "economic credentials" with the public... During a sometimes candid interview on the ABC's 7.30 Report, he signalled plans to press ahead with policies on further changes to competition laws and opening up the economy - even if it came at the expense of alienating some of his colleagues and the union movement. "We have to move forward with a new agenda for economic reform consistent with those values about competition, about productivity, about growing the market economy and building incentive and participation into the Australian economic framework," Mr Latham said."

Hooray! "The Government's grip on a historic Senate majority is tightening, with National Party candidate Barnaby Joyce steaming away in the count for Queensland's final Senate seat."

Antisemitism in the Australian Left too: "Former Bob Hawke government minister Barry Cohen has launched a stinging attack on critics of Israel within the Labor Party, saying anti-semitism is now rampant in the ALP. He said the number of Labor MPs who supported Israel were increasingly being drowned out by members of the party's hard left, whom he accuses of making exaggerated claims about the nation... Mr Cohen said his life and character were shaped by the anti-semitism he experienced in his youth. "I was proud to belong to a party [the ALP] that fought all forms of prejudice. Not any longer," he wrote."

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ELSEWHERE

Good to hear: "For the first time in the Iraq war, according to military officials, US aircraft last week directly bombed a mosque. The airstrike northwest of Ramadi ended an intense firefight in which insurgents, holed up inside the shrine with heavy weapons, held off the US Marines for three hours. Precision-guided munitions set the Sharqi mosque ablaze, but left it standing. 'The Marines couldn't even get close to the building to do anything because of the firepower that was coming out of there,' making the mosque a legitimate target, says a senior military official in Baghdad. 'The only way to stop this was with a strike.' The incident illustrates how US and Iraqi forces over the past three months have adopted increasingly tough tactics against a dug-in insurgency: raiding mosques, dropping bombs and firing rockets in cities, and conducting large-scale infantry sweeps into urban 'no-go zones.'"

This article sees Islamic terrorism as the last desperate gasp of a defeated civilization: "The madness of the Islamists' spectacular attack on the World Trade Center is self-evident; its despair lies in its inevitably annihilating impact on the plotters and perpetrators themselves, world Islamism in general, and the al Qaeda networks, organizations, and systems of support in particular (including the Taliban regime in Afghanistan).... Today the hard-core Islamists' spectacular terrorist violence reflects a no less desperate attempt to break out of the historical impasse and terminal structural crisis reached by the world Islamist movement in the second half of the 20th century. I predict this violence will be the prelude to the dissipation and final demise of militant Islamism in general. Like the armed factions in Europe who had given up on society, political parties, reform, proletarian revolution, and traditional communist organization in favor of violent action, militant Islamism has given up on contemporary Muslim society".

One result of favouring "minorities" in hiring. Loss of standards: "Five police officers in Los Angeles stand accused of pursuing a four-year armed robbery spree, using squad cars, uniforms and badges to make the brazen heists look like official raids. At least two men were shot with stun guns during the robberies, while another was beaten with a police baton, had a gun stuffed into his mouth and was burnt with a cigarette lighter. The five men, working with as many as fifteen accomplices, including a professional female boxer, stole 320kg (700lb) of marijuana and 50kg of cocaine, as well as cars, firearms and jewellery. The gang used Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) surveillance tactics to keep a look out for police or witnesses, and restrained victims with standard-issue handcuffs." See also here.

British socialism shoots itself in the foot: "Warnings that Gordon Brown will be forced to raise taxes quickly in the event of a victory in next year's general election increased yesterday after the emergence of the worst monthly public finance figures on record. Much weaker than expected tax revenues meant that government borrowing last month set a September record of o4.8 billion, almost double the figure for the same month last year. The bleak September data was blamed by the Treasury on erratic factors affecting spending. But the bad news from last month ended a highly disappointing first half to the financial year, during which the Government borrowed o22.75 billion - more than two thirds of the Chancellor's o33 billion full-year forecast".

There is an article here pointing out at length that with John Kerry, what you see is NOT what you get. He will say and do anything to gain power -- even imitate 95% of GWB's policies -- but his voting record reveals him for the far-Leftist he is.

Good augury for GWB: "In a March 2003 speech at the American Enterprise Institute, Ledeen dismissed worries that the American public would lose heart if there were too many casualties in the then-imminent Iraq war. "All the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war. . .," Ledeen declared. "What we hate is not casualties but losing.""

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH and SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftists is perfectly shown by the Kerry campaign. They have put up a man whose policies seem to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though they have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftism is for most Leftists a desire to sound good rather than a desire to do good

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