A VIEW FROM THE AUSTRALIAN LEFT

In my view, both the excerpt below from an article by a prominent Leftist Australian politician and the bipartisan legislation he is referring to show the Australian Left to be much more decent, realistic and responsible than American "liberals" will ever be -- sadly for the whole world

"We are seeing at the moment a strange state of affairs in Australian public life, in which the politicians and the people are in broad agreement both on the nature of the terrorist threat and on what ought to be done about it, while a large slice of the intellectual class is in furious disagreement. After the September 11, 2001, attacks, after Bali I and Bali II, after Madrid and London, most Australian politicians accept that the terrorist threat to Western society in general, and Australia specifically, is real and dangerous. That's why six Labor premiers [State governors] have worked co-operatively with a Liberal Party prime minister to come up with a balanced package of anti-terrorism legislation, one that will give our governments the necessary powers to protect Australia against terrorism, while preserving to the maximum extent the rights and freedoms that make Australia worth defending.

In working co-operatively to defeat terrorism, Australian politicians are doing what the Australian people want us to do. Every opinion poll shows that the Australian people expect us to do what is necessary, within the framework of our democratic system, to stop those who are planning to commit terrorist attacks as well as those who recruit, finance, organise or incite others to do so.

You would never know this from listening to some ABC [public broadcaster] commentary or reading some broadsheet commentators. In the world of Alan Ramsey and Phillip Adams and Michael Leunig, all the world's troubles an the fault of the Western democracies, or a witches' brew of Zionists and neo-conservatives; terrorism is a myth or a trick by George Bush and Tony Blair to divert our attention while they seize the world's oil. This strange disconnect between the people and the intellectual elite is dangerous and damaging.

My view is that Australia is at war - at war with a new form of totalitarian ideology as evil as the fascist and communist forms that the democracies fought during the 20th century. It is a not a war Australia sought, nor a war that we can escape by feeding others to the crocodiles in the hope that they will eat us last.... This week in Canberra, despite all the shouting, we saw a mature democracy at work. When the national interest is at stake, the parties work together to achieve an outcome that both protects Australia from terrorism and protects the safety of Australians".

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ELSEWHERE

The Iranian Mein Kampf: "Eighty years ago, Adolf Hitler published an autobiography-cum-manifesto. Its title translates as "My Struggle." In it, Hitler talked of his desire for revenge against France, the German nation's need to control more land, and the means by which his National Socialist Party could gain power. It also included, of course, a clear indication of his genocidal intentions against the Jews. Last week, Iran's president echoed those themes. He talked about his "struggle" - the word translate into both Arabic and Persian as "jihad" -- his desire for revenge against America and the West, the Islamic nation's need to control more land, and the means by which his Militant Islamist movement could gain global power. He also included his genocidal intention to wipe Israel "off the map." Of course, there are differences between Hitler in 1925 and Ahmadinejad in 2005. Perhaps the biggest is this: When Hitler made his threats he was an obscure politician whom hardly anyone took seriously. By contrast, Ahmadinejad is the president of a large and wealthy nation that operates terrorist organizations and is well on its way to developing nuclear weapons. Had Hitler's threatening words inspired serious action then, millions of people - Jews, Gypsies, Czechoslovaks, Americans, British, Russians and others - would not have been slaughtered in the 20th Century."

A good post here about Leftist bias in the French media coverage of the Paris riots.

There is a good fisking by a blunt Dutchman here of the creepy way the American Leftist media are covering the Paris riots. Excerpt: "Somehow these revolting youngsters started to think that it was normal to want it all and to want it now without sweating for it. They drop out of school in masses but nevertheless demand the welfare state to fulfill their dreams, whatever they may be. They look down at going to work as baggage handlers or asparagus diggers, and they feel they have the right to do the same things and own the same things as the kids in the better neighborhoods - the state should give it them. They have a natural right, they apparently believe, not to be neglected, not to be overlooked, not to be abandoned, not to be counted out. They think it is the state's obligation to prevent them from being bored, from being poor and uneducated".

Mark Steyn on French folly: "Ever since 9/11, I've been gloomily predicting the European powder keg's about to go up. ''By 2010 we'll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on the news every night,'' I wrote in Canada's Western Standard back in February. Silly me. The Eurabian civil war appears to have started some years ahead of my optimistic schedule. As Thursday's edition of the Guardian reported in London: ''French youths fired at police and burned over 300 cars last night as towns around Paris experienced their worst night of violence in a week of urban unrest.'' ''French youths,'' huh? You mean Pierre and Jacques and Marcel and Alphonse? Granted that most of the "youths" are technically citizens of the French Republic, it doesn't take much time in les banlieus of Paris to discover that the rioters do not think of their primary identity as ''French'': They're young men from North Africa growing ever more estranged from the broader community with each passing year and wedded ever more intensely to an assertive Muslim identity more implacable than anything you're likely to find in the Middle East. After four somnolent years, it turns out finally that there really is an explosive ''Arab street,'' but it's in Clichy-sous-Bois."

There is a rather witty commentary here on an utterly stupid anti-Israel book (The Question of Zion). Excerpt: "Rose claims that an important part of Zionism's psychopathology is its inability to criticize itself. And yet because she has little firsthand knowledge of the country, and even less of its language, she draws her critique from an impressive array of leftist Israeli critics, academics, peace activists, conscientious objectors, post-Zionists, and non-Zionists both past (Scholem, Martin Buber, Ernst Simon) and present (Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim, Uri Avnery, Amos Elon, David Grossman, Baruch Kimmerling), each of whom she quotes denouncing Zionism. She thereby implicitly--and, as it happens, accurately--gives the impression of an extremely lively tradition of Israeli self-criticism".

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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