A GOOD TRADITION

I went to a local Sunday market this morning and, as I walked in, was greeted by the lush sound of a Salvation Army brass band playing some wonderful Christmas Carols from our great Christian past. No multicultural rubbish there! Thank God for the Sallies!

As an expression of tolerance for different customs, languages, foods etc, multiculturalism is a perfectly sound idea. But when the obscene Left turn it into an attack on all that we hold dear it is a cause for anger.

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MUSLIM "HONOUR"

Speaking of anger, I grit my teeth in anger every time I hear of some Muslim moron killing his own daughter BECAUSE SHE HAS BEEN RAPED!. They supposedly do it to save their family's "honour". If that is their concept of honour I cannot help thinking that they will be no loss to the world if we have to end up nuking the whole lot of the cockroaches. Muslim �civilization� indeed!

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ISLAM AND THE HINDU HOLOCAUST

How many people have heard of the Hindu holocaust? No? Well, what the Muslim barbarians did in India makes Hitler seem like an amateur. There are around a billion people in India who will never buy the lie that Islam is a religion of peace.

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ITALIAN FASCISM

I grew up in Innisfail -- a place that was 50% an Australian country town and 50% an Italian village. Since then I have always had an affection for Italians. Italian was even one of my matriculation languages (Ho studiato Italiano a scuola ma ho quasi tutto dimenticato). So I have always thought it in keeping that Mussolini�s Italian Fascism appears to have been the mildest of all the many Leftist dictatorships of the 20th century. The Italian Fascist response to political rivals was not to torture them to death but simply to give them a large dose of Castor oil! Almost funny! Here is a link about another instance of Italian humaneness in the Fascist era.

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THE DOW JONES "THIN-END" NONSENSE

A lot of people seem to have bought the scary argument put forward by Dow Jones in Gutnick v. Dow Jones, to the effect that their liability in Australia is a "thin-end of the wedge" phenomenon and that Americans will now have to obey the laws of rogue states like Zimbabwe. This is utter nonsense. It is of course true that an infinite extension of the Australian judgment would be problematical but any such extensions will have to be fought out case by case -- with no certain outcome. All we have at the moment is a judgment that when you defame someone you have to consider the defamation law in that person's own country. That does not seem to me at all onerous -- particularly where the truth of what you say will normally be an adequate defence in any subsequent proceedings.

And the impact of any future judgements similar to the Australian one will be very much dependant on whatever law-enforcement treaties the USA has with the countries concerned. The USA could for instance renegotiate all such treaties to exclude defamation from their ambit. Such a move would probably succeed in most cases though probably not in the case of Australia. I can well imagine that any Australian government would refuse to renegotiate a treaty if the result was to leave Australian citizens effectively unprotected against defamation just because the defamation emanated from the United States.

So now that the internet has made the world into the "global village" long ago envisioned by Marshall McLuhan, we may have to accept that a small body of global law will grow up to deal with that.

Iain Murray has reproduced a letter from an English lawyer that expresses a view similar to mine.

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TRASHY COLLEGE COURSES

Marc Miyake has been having a lot of fun about some crazy college course where students are allowed to pick up trash as part of their credit for studying English composition! Everybody already knows that a lot of educational qualifications are pretty useless so one wonders what sort of favour the college thinks it is doing its students by now totally demolishing the credibility of any credentials that any student will receive from it: Typical Leftist failure to consider the disastrous consequences of their "compassionate" policies.

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WELFARE REFORM

Bovination has some informative comments on Australia's latest efforts to inject more sense into its welfare system.

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China hand has just posted some more tales of everyday life in modern China.

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