NEW COLOUR SCHEME

Guess who has been playing around with his template? I think that the new colour down the side is easier on the eyes. Green and Gold are of course Australia�s national colours: Green for our vast agricultural and pastoral industries and gold because we are still a major gold-producing country. And the bit of blue sky in the corner tells you what sunny weather we usually have. Where I live in Brisbane, Queensland, we very rarely have grey skies. Queensland has long been known as �The sunshine State�. (And, as a monarchist living in a monarchy, I think that the name of my home State is a proper tribute to a great Sovereign -- Queen Victoria).

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CARNIVAL REMINDER

The �Carnival of the Vanities� is due out again this Wednesday -- at Ravenwood�s Universe -- so if you have a posting that you think deserves a re-run, email the link to Steve pronto so he does not have to work too hard on Xmas day: steve@ravnwood.com.

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THE LATEST AIRPORT HORROR

No. Not a horror perpetrated by terrorists: A horror perpetrated by the U.S. government. And it is far from an isolated incident. Conservative though I am I think it would be enough to make me vote AGAINST G.W. Bush in the next election if I were an American. The USA now has its own Gestapo and it is G.W. Bush who set it up and who lets it do what it does. American civil liberties will soon be gone altogether at this rate.

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RABBIT-PROOF FENCE

I suppose that there are still a few people around who are not aware how heavily fictionalized the recently released Australian film Rabbit-proof fence is. The film itself does assert that it tells a true story -- about a young Aboriginal girl who �escapes� from a white institution to return to her Aboriginal home.

Funny that the person whose life it was allegedly based on could not recognize her experiences in it at all! If you want the true story see here.

But perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the film is that the man who made it has himself done exactly what he portrays as evil in the film! See here.

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ANTI-RACIST DEMOCRATS

There is a great quiz about all those good old anti-racist Democrats here. It comes ultimately from a column by Thomas Oliver. Clever man!

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FRENCH �COWBOYS�

An excellent satire here about the current French military intervention in Africa.

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ANTI-GLOBOS: HEIRS OF MARX

There is a long but very thorough article in The Economist looking at the heritage of Karl Marx -- which concludes that the anti-globalization protestors of today are his direct intellectual heirs. Excerpt:

�Anti-globalism has been aptly described as a secular religion. So is Marxism: a creed complete with prophet, sacred texts and the promise of a heaven shrouded in mystery. Marx was not a scientist, as he claimed. He founded a faith. The economic and political systems he inspired are dead or dying. But his religion is a broad church, and lives on.�

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HONESTY REWARDED

The FBI agent who wrote a scathing memo on the agency's intelligence failures and women who blew the whistle on corruption at corporate giants Enron and WorldCom were on Sunday named Time magazine's Persons of the Year.

More.

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FLYING TO AFRICA

A story reported at IQ & PC yesterday suggests that terrorists may not be the only danger to aircraft at African airports.

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ABORIGINE WELFARE

The Australian government has spent BILLIONS on Aborigine welfare programs in recent years. Most of the money of course went into the pockets of white bureaucrats and social workers. I am sure that the Aborigines themselves would rather have had the money in THEIR pockets. A good way of putting an end to government racial favouritism, therefore, would be to abolish ALL the existing government agencies concerned with Aborigines and just send each Aborigine a cheque once a year for (say) $2,000 for the next 5 years.

The white bureaucrats and Leftist agitators would of course fight that tooth and nail but if the Prime Minister went on TV and appealed over their heads directly to the Aboriginal people themselves to ask THEM whether they wanted the money or not, I think the answer would be clear and the do-gooders might have to submit.

Abolishing the government agencies concerned would of course disrupt the lives of the clerical employees in them but that could be overcome by placing a moratorium of hiring into the rest of Public Service for one year so that former empoyees of the Aborigine agencies could be absorbed into other Public Service vacancies as they arose.

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KAVA KAVA

In another bit of Nanny State foolishness, the British government has banned Kava Kava on the grounds that it might damage your liver.

The Pacific Islanders would be amazed at the ban and the reasons given for it. It has been a traditional tipple there from time immemorial so one would think they would all be dead if it killed your liver.

At any event, KK could not be nearly as bad as cigarettes or alcohol: Probably a lot safer as KK just zonks you out. People will die from this decision as they turn from KK to booze. Just one alcohol-related traffic accident could kill more people than will ever die from using KK.

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Comments? Email me: jonjayray@hotmail.com.
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