Obama really is a left wing radical. Will voters care come November?

One has to marvel at the power of the mainstream media to completely ignore or paper over Barack Obama's radical past.

At least a few of them are asking questions about his supposed 'move to the centre', which has infuriated his economically and socially ignorant far left supporters at DailyKos and HuffPo etc.

The Washington Post's demolition of his foreign policy positions may well be the breaking of the dam in terms of the mainstream media scrutinising Obama more closely.

In the American Spectator, Peter Ferrara goes through the left wing positions that Obama has consistently voted for or otherwise supported.

Do American voters really understand what a radical he is?

Or do they not care?

Barack Obama has proposed increasing every major Federal tax. He supports increasing individual income tax rates, allowing the Bush tax cuts, which cut rates for all income levels, to expire. He has proposed almost doubling the capital gains tax rate, from 15% today to 28%. He supports more than doubling the tax on dividends, from 15% to as high as 39%. He has proposed numerous corporate tax increases. He supports increasing the death tax back to the stratospheric levels that applied before President Bush. He supports increasing the payroll tax on higher income earners.

In other words, if you run a profitable small business, you can expect to be plundered by the Obamanistas from every angle. If you work for a small business, you can expect to be looking for another job.

Indeed, as economics writer Amity Shlaes has written, Obama promises exactly the same economic policy Herbert Hoover used to turn a downturn in 1929 into the Great Depression. In addition to proposing steep tax increases, particularly sharply increasing the marginal rates that most affect the economy, Obama won the nomination attacking free trade all primary season, even promising voters to renegotiate NAFTA. Is this what our wobbly economy needs right now? Will this really open new opportunities for working people, or shut the door in their faces?

But Obama needs those tax increases to finance his promised massive increases in government spending approaching a trillion dollars over four years. All projections show that America cannot afford all the entitlement promises it has already made, with Federal spending projected to almost double relative to the economy over the next 35 years. Obama just ignores this looming crisis, and, instead, promises to add the largest entitlement of all, national health insurance.

All of these nationalized health programs around the world start by promising free health care for everyone, but end up with rigid, stifling bureaucracies designed to deny care to control runaway costs. Our nation's health care problems can be solved without massive new government spending and control, and the deteriorating quality and freedom of choice in health care that inevitably involves. But instead of new and innovative ideas that would increase patient power and choice, Obama serves the Left that wants to use our health care problems as an excuse for more government power and control. Instead of the promise of a new unity and hope, Obama promises to take us back to the already failed ideas of the past.

BUT THIS IS ONLY the beginning. In legislation he has already introduced in Congress, Obama proposes a new global war on poverty financed by American taxpayers. The bill would commit the U.S. to the goal of the 2000 United Nations Millennium Summit to reduce world poverty by 2015. The head of this UN project has already called for a new global tax to finance this goal. For now, Obama's bill would increase U.S. foreign aid by $65 billion a year toward this end.

Obama also supports $60 billion over 10 years for a new National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that would finance more construction and repair of highways, bridges and other infrastructure. No new thinking here either. The last Federal highway bill devoted close to $300 billion to the same thing. The Army Corps of Engineers spends over $10 billion a year for more of the same.

Obama also proposes $72 billion for increased Federal spending on education, even though Bush increased such spending more rapidly than any other area (and even though education is actually a state and local responsibility). He proposes to spend $150 billion to put people to work building new "green technologies" as if no one can find a job unless the government provides one. Then there is $60 billion for an "energy plan" that is another bureaucratic boondoggle that will not create any new energy. There is $14 billion in new spending for a national service plan. Obama proposes as well to increase "assistance to state and local governments so that they don't slash critical services like health care or education." He also says, "I'll double spending on quality after school programs."

Just last week he came up with a proposal for a second stimulus package to send everyone a check to help cover their energy costs, another giveaway of tens of billions at least. The first "stimulus" package proved only that these old-fashioned Keynesian handouts don't work. But Obama is not above pursuing the crassest vote buying payoffs pandering to those whose votes are for sale.

This is exemplified by his supposed tax cuts for workers, a series of tax credits that would mostly go to those who do not pay income taxes. He has proposed "a tax credit to low and middle income Americans that would cover ten percent of their mortgage interest payment every year." He also proposes an income tax credit for such voters of $4,000 per year for college expenses. Then there is another tax credit of $1,000 per year for working families that is apparently just a giveaway, like George McGovern's proposal in 1972 to send a $1,000 Federal check to everyone. On the Earned Income Tax Credit, which currently goes to lower income workers, Obama says, "I'll double the number of workers who receive it and triple the benefit for minimum wage workers."

But Republican tax policy over the past 30 years has already eliminated all income taxes on low income and working class voters, or the bottom 40% of income earners. The middle class, the middle 20% of income earners, now pays less than 5% of all income taxes. Under Obama's proposals, if there is no income tax liability for the tax credit to offset, the government sends the worker a check covering the full amount of the credit anyway. So these proposed tax credits are really a new form of tax welfare, in reality just new government spending programs disguised as tax cuts.

Real tax cuts reduce tax rates for those who are forced to pay them. Those rate reductions create real incentives that stimulate the economy. But a supposed tax credit that does not involve any reduction in any tax rate, and gives money to voters that they did not pay in income taxes, is just another welfare handout that does nothing to stimulate the economy. Obama proposes to spend over $300 billion on this new tax welfare.

OBAMA'S LEFT-WING EXTREMISM is not limited to economic policy, but extends to all areas across the board. He has said that as President he would appoint Supreme Court Justices like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the former General Counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union, and David Souter, two of the ultraliberals on the current court. The Supreme Court is now in a delicate balance between four conservatives and four liberals, with one, Justice Kennedy, swinging back and forth. John McCain has said he would appoint Justices like solid conservatives John Roberts and Sam Alito. A majority of the current Justices are also over 70 years old. So the balance of the Supreme Court turns on this Presidential election.

Since the Great Depression, Americans have been free to choose unions through secret ballot elections under Federal law. But for 20 years now workers have been mostly rejecting predatory unions in those elections. So Obama supports a plan that would allow unions to bypass those elections, and claim worker representation on the basis of signed check cards. Given the long history of union violence, and the real danger of forged documents American workers will tragically lose their freedom of choice regarding unions if Obama becomes President.

Obama is the most pro-abortion major party Presidential nominee in history. When he served in the Illinois state legislature, he voted against legislation that would prevent abortionists from taking the life of a baby that remained alive out of the mother's womb after an attempted abortion. He has also opposed legislation prohibiting partial birth abortion, and favors government funding of abortion for lower income women. He said that if his own daughters became pregnant as teenagers, he would favor an abortion rather than "punishing them with a baby."

He has promised homosexual organizations that as President he would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that pro-family organizations worked so hard to pass successfully when the Republicans controlled Congress. This law would shield states from being forced to recognize gay marriages mandated by courts in ultraliberal states. He opposes the initiative in California on the ballot this fall that would define marriage in that state as a union between a man and a woman. After he is elected, he will openly be the first pro-gay marriage President.

When asked what he thought about a proposal to make English the official language of America, he said he opposes it. He said instead that American children need to learn to speak Spanish. If he is elected President, that will be true.

OBAMA'S ULTRALIBERALISM GROWS out of deep roots in his life. He has said he worked as a community organizer in Chicago. In fact, he worked for the ultra-Left ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). ACORN grew out of the National Welfare Rights Organization of the 1960s, which argued that low income residents in the U.S. had a right to welfare, and demanding anything of them to qualify for public assistance violated that right.

Author Sol Stern wrote in the City Journal in 2003 regarding ACORN,

If you thought the New Left was dead in America, think again. Walk through just about any of the nation's inner cities, and you're likely to find an office of ACORN, bustling with young people working 12 hour days to "organize the poor" and bring about social change. The largest radical group in the country....It promotes a 1960s-bred agenda of anti-capitalism, central planning, victimology, and government handouts to the poor. As a result, not only does it harm the poor it claims to serve; it is also a serious threat to the urban future.

ACORN has fought for legislation restricting landlords from evicting non-paying tenants, watering down welfare reform, and seeking authority for cities to tax surrounding suburbs. It has sought to "unionize" workfare workers, welfare recipients required to work for their assistance under welfare reform, as if welfare recipients should be bargaining over the laws that apply to their assistance.

ACORN itself brags on its own website about its practice of "squatting." This involves breaking into unoccupied homes and apartments and settling low income families in them. ACORN states,

Noting that economic upheaval had forced many people to default on mortgages, ACORN sought to place needy people in the resulting vacant homes. This required the forceful and illegal (though logical and moral) seizing of the properties -- squatting.

Such is the respect for property rights of this quasi-communist organization that Obama chose to work for to advance his values. ACORN continues,

The personal needs of people without homes attracted many to advertisements ACORN placed in papers asking "Do you need a home?" The squatting campaign required a personal commitment to move into a vacant, usually poorly kept house and refit it for comfortable living. It also involved the risk of arrest if local authorities refused them the legal occupation of the home.

As for the local authorities, ACORN explains, "local officials were asked to subsidize the costs of squatting in an effort to improve the quality of life of the squatters and their neighbors."

But this is not the only illegal activity of the ACORN brown shirts. ACORN voter fraud has been documented in at least 14 states. Michelle Malkin recently reported in one of her columns,

Last July, ACORN settled the largest case of voter fraud in the history of Washington State. Seven ACORN workers had submitted nearly 2,000 bogus voter registration forms. According to case records, they flipped through phone books for names to use on the forms, including "Leon Spinks," "Frekkie Magoal" and "Fruto Boy Crispila." Three ACORN election hoaxers pleaded guilty in October. A King County prosecutor called ACORN's criminal sabotage "an act of vandalism upon the voter rolls."

Similarly, the Wall Street Journal recently reported on ACORN voter fraud in Ohio where crack cocaine was traded "for fraudulent registrations that included underage voters, dead voters and pillars of the community named Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy, and Jive Turkey."

Obama also sports now well-known ties with confessed Weather Underground terrorists William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who admit to bombing the Pentagon, New York City police headquarters, and similar targets in the 1960s and 1970s. By coincidence, on the morning of September 11, 2001, the New York Times published an interview with Ayers in which he laments not succeeding with even more bombings for the far left Weather Underground, whose once notorious exploits are now obscured by the passage of time. Obama started his political career seeking out the support of Ayres and Dohrn as mentors, trying to establish his bona fides as a true left-winger. They have held fundraisers for Obama's campaigns over the years, and spoken for him in local campaigns in the past.

Of course, Obama's close association with Trinity United Church of Christ Reverend Jeremiah Wright is also well known. But what has been obscured is that the church, where Obama has been a member for 20 years providing thousands in contributions, advocates far left black liberation theology.

So the true picture of who Obama is should now be clear. His consistently extreme left policy positions are well grounded deep into his past, dating back even to the prep school Marxism of his youth. How could America allow this man to become President of the United States? Do we not take that position seriously anymore?

Environmentalism is the enemy of freedom

It's pretty remarkable for an article attacking environmentalists as enemies of freedom to appear in the UK's leading left wing rag The Guardian. Even more remarkable is that it's written by one of your every day, garden variety left wing journalists.

Imagine a society where simply speaking out of turn or saying the "wrong thing" was openly discussed as a crime against humanity, and where sceptics or deniers of the truth were publicly labelled "criminals", hauled before the press and accused of endangering humanity with their grotesque untruths.

Imagine a society where even some liberals demanded severe restrictions on freedom of movement; where people campaigned for travelling overseas to be made prohibitively expensive in order to force people to stay at home; and where immigration was frowned upon as "toxic" and "destructive".

Imagine a society so illiberal that columnists felt no qualms about demanding government legislation to force us to change our behaviour; where the public was continually implored to feel guilty about everything from driving to shopping – and where those who refused to feel guilty were said to be suffering from a "psychological" disorder or some other species of mental illness".

Surely no one would put up with such a society? Yet today, all of the above things are happening – under what we might call the tyranny of environmentalism – and people are putting up with it.

In the current debate on liberty, we hear a lot about the attack on our democratic rights by the government's security agenda, but little about the grave impact of environmentalism on the fabric of freedom. It seems to me that green thinking – with its shrill intolerance of dissenting views, its deep distaste for free movement and free choice, and its view of individuals, not as history-makers, but as filthy polluters – poses a more profound threat to liberty even than the government's paranoid anti-terrorist agenda.

Environmentalists are innately hostile to freedom of speech. Last month James Hansen, one of the world's leading climate change scientists, said the CEOs of oil companies should be tried for crimes against humanity and nature. They have been "putting out misinformation", he said, and "I think that's a crime". This follows green writer Mark Lynas's insistence that there should be "international criminal tribunals" for climate change deniers, who will be "partially but directly responsible for millions of deaths". They will "have to answer for their crimes", he says. The American eco-magazine Grist recently published an article on deniers that called for "war crimes trials for these bastards… some sort of climate Nuremberg."

It is the mark of shrieking authoritarianism to look upon dissenting views not simply as wrong or foolish, but as criminal. Throughout history inquisitors and censors have sought to silence sections of society by labelling their words as "dangerous" and a threat to safety and stability; now environmentalists are doing the same. Their demonisation of sceptics as "deniers" has had a chilling effect on public debate. The environmentalist ethos is hostile to free movement, too. Behind the greens' attacks on road-building and cheap flights there lurks an agenda of enforced localism. What most of us experience as a liberty – the ability to drive great distances or to travel overseas, something our forebears only dreamt of as they spent their entire lives in the same town – has been relabelled under the tyranny of environmentalism as a "threat to the planet".

The Optimum Population Trust, which counts Jonathon Porritt among its patrons, says mass immigration is "a route to environmental collapse". It believes the UK is overpopulated and wants to "balance immigration with emigration".

Not surprisingly, opportunistic anti-immigrant outfits have borrowed elements of this argument. The British National Party now argues that "our countryside is vanishing beneath a tidal wave of concrete" as a result of house-building for immigrants. "Immigration is creating an environmental disaster", the BNP says.

But perhaps the main way that environmentalism undermines the culture of freedom is by its ceaseless promotion of guilt. In the environmentalist era, we are no longer really free citizens, so much as potential polluters. We are continually told – by government, by commentators, by radical activists – that everything we do, from wearing disposable nappies to using deodorant to allowing ourselves to be cremated, is harmful to our surroundings.

Liberty – true liberty – requires that people see themselves as self-respecting, self-determining subjects, capable of making free choices and pursuing the "good life" as they see fit. Today, by contrast, we are warned that we are toxic, loaded, dangerous specimens, who must always restrain our instincts and aspire to austerity. This is not conducive to a culture of liberty; indeed, it represents a dangerous historic shift, from the Enlightenment era of free citizenship to a new dark age where individuals are depicted as meek in the face of more powerful, unpredictable forces: the gods of the sea, sky and ozone layer.

And what of those individuals who say "to hell with environmentalism" and continue living the way they want to? Apparently, in the words of the Ecologist, they have a disordered "psychology"; they are victims of "self-deception and mass denial".

Some greens openly admit they are on the side of illiberalism. George Monbiot describes environmentalism as "a campaign not for more freedom but for less". Environmentalism is instinctively and relentlessly illiberal, and it is doing more to inculcate people with fear, self-loathing and a religious-style sense of meekness than any piece of anti-terror legislation ever could. If you believe in freedom, you must reject it.

It's axiomatic that those of us on the conservative side of politics value liberty above all else whereas on the left equality trumps liberty as their primary value.

It seems that the real fight for liberty - and especially in increasingly illiberal Western Europe - will be between different factions of the left.

(Nothing Follows)

Spain leads the world in creating social chaos

Check out this article from the Barcelona Reporter.

If there's a greater example of the looming death of a once prominent nation then I'm yet to see it.

Even the problems that Western Europe has with its growing, non-integrating Muslim population pale by comparison to Spain's embrace of the concept of equality of outcome rather than the societally stronger equality of opportunity.

During his first term as prime minister, Zapatero pushed through reforms including electoral parity, measures towards increasing female representation on company boards of directors

The defence of women's rights is undoubtedly a praiseworthy government policy, but just how far should it go?

The question is under debate in Spain, where the country's first equality ministry has launched initiatives that have earned 31-year-old Bibiana Aido - the youngest minister in Spanish history - more sneers than cheers so far.

Not only did Aido announce a telephone hotline to help men adapt to a 'new model of masculinity' and wife batterers to 'channel their aggressiveness' before resorting to violence. She went as far as tackling the structures of the Spanish language, proposing that the masculine-gendered word 'miembro' (member) be given a feminine equivalent, 'miembra'.

Academic guardians of the Spanish language accused Aido of not even knowing grammar, but Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero stood by his minister.

'All the fields are adequate for waging the battle in favour of equality,' said Zapatero, who wants his Socialist government to play a groundbreaking role in promoting women's rights worldwide.

During his first term as prime minister, Zapatero pushed through reforms including electoral parity, measures towards increasing female representation on company boards of directors, and strong legislation against domestic violence.

After winning a second term in March, Zapatero went even further, appointing Spain's first female-dominated cabinet and irritating conservative army officers by giving the defence portfolio to Carme Chacon, who was in her seventh month of pregnancy at the time.

The appointment of young Aido to head the equality ministry with a small budget and unclear profile raised even more eyebrows.

A 'telephone for men' initially planned for wife batterers will also help other men 'solve their doubts, because many of them feel lost' as the 'patriarchal system' begins to crumble, Aido explained.

Men will be able to call the hotline to discuss issues such as relationships, divorce, and fatherhood.

Some feminist groups welcomed the 'good initiative', while the conservative opposition People's Party (PP) lambasted the idea that violent men could be dissuaded by a telephone line as 'almost ridiculous'.

Aido elicited even more sneers and jokes and when addressing a parliamentary commission with the words 'miembros y miembras'.

Masculine-gendered 'miembro' refers to members of a group, men or women, while the feminine-sounding word 'miembra' does not exist - at least not yet.

Renowned authors slammed 'miembra' as a 'stupidity' and as an example of 'savage feminism', but feminist linguists sympathized with Aido's attempts to wage the battle of equality on the deepest level - that of language.

The Spanish language was forged over millennia of male domination over women, the daily El Pais pointed out. The word 'hombre' (man) can be used as a synonym for 'human being', to mention just one among countless examples.

As women have increasingly entered the workforce, language has become slightly more equalitarian, with words such as 'ministra' (female minister), 'abogada' (female lawyer) or 'jefa' (female boss) now forming part of everyday speech.

A police officer is no longer just 'un agente de policia' (word of masculine gender), but also 'una agente de policia' (feminine). A soldier can be 'un' or 'una soldado'.

Language could not be transformed through government orders, but it would spontaneously change to reflect new realities, commentators said.

'Language is created every day, and some words triumph, while others do not,' philologist Pilar Careaga said.

Undeterred by her critics, Aido has now launched a new campaign against domestic violence with the idea that real men are not violent.

Despite the PP's contempt for the activities of the equality ministry, party leader Mariano Rajoy recently appointed young women to top party posts, conscious that female votes contributed to Zapatero's election victory.

Now, that is truly astonishing.

Spain's economy is the basket case of Europe.

It has unemployment of nearly 10%.

If has a housing credit crisis that makes the United States' problems look relatively trivial.

What the current crop of Euro-socialists that run Spain don't realise is that they're creating exactly the right conditions for another fascist dictator to come to power.

(Nothing Follows)

Islam and Islamism

Mustafa Akyol, as I've pointed out before, is one of my favourite Turkish opinion columnists.

In his latest piece in the Turkish Daily News he takes on the notion that violence against innocents is an inherent part of Islam.

While I regularly take issue with some of his views it's good to know that people in the Muslim world are trying to deal with the issue of terror committed in their name.

Akyol also acknowledges that connection between Islamism and Marxism-Leninism, which I'm sure would make the vast majority of today's cultural relativists and moral equivalence crowd on the left squirm more than a little bit.

Of course, it comes as no surprise that the debate is being had in largely secular Turkey and not Syria, Saudia Arabia or Yemen.

Today’s militant Islamists violate the traditional rules of Islam to maximize their violence. Because their motivation comes from politics in the first place, not religion

Wednesday's bloody shootout at the American Consulate in Istanbul is still not totally solved. No organization claimed the attack, which left three Turkish policemen dead and two injured. But the evidence collected by the Turkish security forces so far makes it reasonable to assume that there was an Islamist motive in the mind of the attackers. Actually three of them died right on the spot, and the fourth one turned out to be a paid driver. So there is no interrogation-based information. But the police found out that one of the dead terrorists had traveled to Iran and Afghanistan. The other's father was arrested in 1999 for links with the shadowy “Turkish Hizbollah,” a Kurdish Islamist terror group. The general impression in the Turkish media is that the attackers were at least ideologically linked with al Qaeda. So, this seems to be a case of “Islamist terror.”

But is that an appropriate term at all?

Islamic versus Islamist:

I think, yes, it is. What I would object to would be an apparently similar but actually quite unalike term: “Islamic terrorism.” The difference between “Islamic” and “Islamist” is crucial, because while one refers to a religion, the other refers to an ideology. While Islam teaches the path to win God's consent by being a righteous believer, Islamism envisions a roadmap to establish a totalitarian political system. And while Islam has existed since the early seventh century, Islamism has been around only since the early 20th century.

To contrast the two — Islam and Islamism — let's see what their judgments would be on terrorism, which I define as deliberate attacks on civilian targets for political purposes.

It is true that Islam has a concept of jihad, which is sometimes translated as “holy war,” but it is not a war without rules. The Koran told Muslims to “Fight in the way of God against those who fight you,” yet it also warned them: “But do not go beyond the limits.” (2:190) These “limits” were explained by Prophet Mohammed in the orders he gave to Muslim armies. "Do not kill the very old, the infant, the child, or the woman," he reportedly said to his soldiers. Abu-Bakr, the prophet's closest companion and successor as the first caliph of Islam, is also on the record for saying: "Do not kill a young child, an old man, or a woman. Do not uproot or burn palms or cut down fruitful trees... You will meet people who have set themselves apart in hermitages; leave them to accomplish the purpose for which they have done this."

That's why Muslim jurists of the Middle Ages developed a doctrine of just war, according to which the life of non-combatants was valued and respected. In his book, “Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror,” Bernard Lewis, one of the prominent Western experts on the history of Islamic Middle East, notes the following:

“Fighters in jihad are enjoined not to kill women, children, and the aged unless they attack first, not to torture or mutilate prisoners, to give fair warning of the resumption of hostilities after a truce, and to honor agreements. The medieval jurists and theologians discuss at some length the rules of warfare, including questions such as which weapons are permitted and which are not. There is even some discussion in medieval texts of the lawfulness of missile and chemical warfare, the one relating to mangonels and catapults, the other to poison-tipped arrows and the poisoning of enemy water supplies. Some jurists permit, some restrict, some disapprove of the use of these weapons. The stated reason for concern is the indiscriminate casualties that they inflict. At no point do the basic texts of Islam enjoin terrorism and murder. At no point — as far as I am aware — do they even consider the random slaughter of uninvolved bystanders.”

But today's militant Islamists — from al Qaeda to Islamic Jihad — openly advocate and practice the random slaughter of uninvolved bystanders. Osama Bin Laden repeatedly said that his followers should “kill American and Jews,” without making any distinction between civilians and combatants. That's why al Qaeda terrorists unhesitantly hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. They knew they were killing civilians, but they did not care about the prophet's call for “not to kill women, children, and the aged.” And the gunmen who hit the U.S. Consulate last Wednesday would probably target the diplomatic personnel had they been able to break into the building.

But why is that? Why do today's militant Islamists violate the traditional rules of Islam to maximize their violence?

Hear what Carlos says:

They do this because their motivation comes from politics in the first place, not religion. Bin Laden tried to justify his call for indiscriminate killing by arguing, “American history does not distinguish between civilians and military, and not even women and children. They are the ones who used the bombs against Nagasaki.” This is a political argument, not a religious one. It is about the role of America in the world; not the status of non-Muslims in the Koran. A communist militant could have made the same argument.

It is no accident that there is indeed some ideological connection between Marxism-Leninism and Islamism. And no one proclaimed this as bluntly as Carlos the Jackal, who, from his prison cell, penned recently a book titled “Revolutionary Islam.” This brand of Islam, argued the veteran terrorist, "attacks the ruling classes in order to achieve a more equitable redistribution of wealth" and is the only "transnational force capable of standing up to the enslavement of nations."

This is, again, an argument about not God and salvation, but politics and revolution.

The problem is, in other words, Islamism but not Islam. Therefore the fight against terror in the name of Islam has to be focused on two goals: First one is detaching Islam from Islamism. This does not necessarily mean to separate Islam and politics all together, as secularists assume. Islam indeed can influence politics, and that's all welcome as far as this takes place within the framework of democracy. If it is possible to synthesize Islam with totalitarianism as the Islamists do, then it is possible to synthesize it with liberalism as well.

The other goal should be to solve the political problems of the Muslim world — such as the Arab-Israeli conflict — which act as engines of radicalization. The main battle cry of Islamist militants is “Islam is under attack!” And the best antidote to this is to reduce the Muslim's perception of being under attack. The next U.S. president should keep that very much in mind.

An important piece and one that should be read widely throughout the Muslim world.

Perhaps Al Jazeera should interview Akyol and get his views?

Doesn't seem likely, does it? Which just goes to show where that network stands in the grand scheme of things.

A point that is not discussed but is germane is that while it's probably true that the majority of the Muslim world reject violence against innocents it's the violent and fundamentalist aspects of the religion that are in charge.

It's true to say that many Germans rejected the violent aspects of Nazism while at the same time embracing the renewed sense of national pride that the Nazis instilled in the people after the loss in World War I, the subsequent Treaty of Versailles and then the Depression.

Similar situations existed in Soviet Russia and Communist China but that didn't stop the worst elements from taking over and inflicting awful suffering on their people, ironically, in the name of the people.

In the cases of Germany and the Soviet Union it took an external force to deal with the totalitarian, violent regimes. China is also in the process of being broken down by the external force of good old capitalism.

In none of these situations were 'the people' able to bring about change.

I don't see the situation being any different with regard to Islamic fundamentalism.

(Nothing Follows)

Sunday night rock 'n' roll

Happy Mondays are an English alternative rock band from Salford, Greater Manchester. Formed in 1980, the band's original line-up was Shaun Ryder on lead vocals, his brother Paul Ryder on bass, lead guitarist Mark Day (aka "Moose" or "Cowhead"), keyboardist Paul Davis (aka P.D), and drummer Gary Whelan. Bez would later join the band onstage during a live performance after befriending Shaun Ryder (known to him as "X") and served as a dancer/percussionist. Rowetta Satchell joined the band to provide backing vocals in the early 1990s.

The first official release from Happy Mondays was the "Forty Five E.P.", often incorrectly called the "Delightful E.P." after its first track. It was released on Factory Records in 1985.

Manchester pop impresario Tony Wilson discovered the Mondays (then managed by Phil Saxe) at a battle of the bands contest held at his Haçienda nightclub. The story goes that Wilson signed them to his label, Factory Records, even though they came in last. Their first album, Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out), debuted in 1987 and was produced by John Cale. This was followed by Bummed in 1988, produced by Martin Hannett, Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches in 1990 produced by Paul Oakenfold and Yes Please! in 1992, produced by Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth. By the late 1980s, the Happy Mondays were an important part of the Madchester music scene and personified rave culture. Shaun Ryder fought against a serious drug problem which typified the scene and the era.

And, of course, it all went downhill from there. At least they left behind some great tunes including the infectious Kinky Afro.

Kinky Afro



Step On



(Nothing Follows)

No wonder he doesn't want to relinquish power...

Can you guess who's house this is?

What a nice place to have a few friends over and have a meal.



Ahhh, at the end of a busy day you need to have somewhere comfortable to retire to




What better way to keep yourself nice and clean than in a lavish, Roman style bathroom?



Beautiful balconies are a feature of this very nice home.



Wouldn't you like to live there?

So which country is home for this stately manor?



Don't like how the President has ruined the place? I hope you can run fast!



So how do the ordinary folk live?





Why does the rest of the world continue to enable Mugabe to use violence and kill his opponents to stay in power?

Yet again the United States is leading the world in putting pressure on the worst dictators. And yet again the usual suspects are blocking the way:

Russia and China vetoed proposed sanctions on Zimbabwe Friday, rejecting U.S. efforts to step up punitive measures against its authoritarian regime linked to a rash of violence surrounding a disputed presidential election.

Western powers mustered nine votes, the minimum needed to gain approval in the 15-nation council. But the resolution failed because of the action by two of the five veto-wielding members.

The other three members with veto power, the U.S., Britain and France, argued sanctions were needed to respond to the violence and intimidation linked to Zimbabwe's recent and widely discredited presidential election.

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said sanctions would have taken the U.N. beyond its mandate to deal with threats to international peace and security.

It was the same with Saddam Hussein. The UN Security Council continued to block action until the US eventually went its own way.

Who will do the same for Zimbabwe?

No wonder Mugabe doesn't want to relinquish power. He lives a nice life.

(Nothing Follows)

It's time to shut down CSIRO

Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has been making doom and gloom predictions about climate change for years. Now they've added peak oil to the list of things that are a major threat that require urgent action leading to misery for the average person in the street.

Unfortunately, CSIRO has moved from being the provider of sound scientific advice to political advocate.

In its latest report into petrol prices they're predicting petrol prices at the pump will rise by up to 5 times.

The oil crisis and the introduction of a carbon emissions trading system could see Australians paying $8 a litre for petrol by 2018, a new report from the CSIRO says.

The study, titled Fuel for Thought, says increased demand for petrol and limited production could see Australians paying an extra $220 a week to run their cars.

The report is based on worst case scenarios of production peaking within the next five years, then declining rapidly, while demand for petrol spirals.

There you go. Worst case scenarios. What sort of scientific organisation works on a worst case scenario? One that wants to feed into public concern on the issue, surely?

It includes modelling of the impact of an emissions trading scheme on fuel prices.

A model! A model! It must be true!

The CSIRO's John Wright said the report showed Australia would need to move toward alternative fuel sources within ten years, such as diesel, gas and hybrid electric vehicles to escape higher oil prices.

Beyond that, it would have to rely on less conventional fuel types, such as hydrogen and biofuels, he told Fairfax newspapers.

What? No shale oil? There are around 2 trillion barrels of recoverable oil in the US shale deposits, which is enough to power the US economy for 200 years or so.

"Securing access to affordable and sustainable fuel underpins Australia's economy and way of life, and as a nation with relatively high vehicle use we are vulnerable to the economic, environmental and social impacts of rising oil prices and rising temperatures," he said.

The CSIRO report also said that if the development of alternative fuels did not counter the decline in oil production, travel could be cut by up to 40 per cent.

"If reduction in oil supply is rapid and alternative fuel vehicles are slow to become available, then passenger and freight travel may be reduced by up to 40 per cent," the report said.

Can? Could? May?

Why do all of these apocalyptic reports not include 'will' or 'definitely'?

I've dealt with CSIRO for many, many years. It's a dog's breakfast of an organisation. Duplicated functions, no information sharing and differing agendas across divisions make it impossible to achieve what really should be by such a body.

It's time to shut it down and build a replacement.

(Nothing Follows)

Video trailer - Not Evil Just Wrong

This ought to be a barrel of laughs when it's released.

I wonder whether Al Gore will sue?



The group of people making up the Climate Faithful certainly do include many that would best be described as evil but it's fair to say that most of these people are simply just wrong.

Here's something to think about.

Mao and Stalin are remembered as having had catastrophic impacts on their country's populations. Many would call what they did evil. I certainly would.

If the outcome of the implementation of any policy (regardless of its political doctrine) causes the death of more than 100 million people then it's fair to say that it was an evil policy.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

The 21st century environmental movement will push more people into early graves than did all of the dictators of the 20th century.

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Ssssshhhhh...don't mention the war...

A brilliant article from IBDeditorials that profoundly demonstrates the deep lack of patriotism of most major US papers.

What would happen if the U.S. won a war but the media didn't tell the American public? Apparently, we have to rely on a British newspaper for the news that we've defeated the last remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq.

London's Sunday Times called it "the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror." A terrorist force that once numbered more than 12,000, with strongholds in the west and central regions of Iraq, has over two years been reduced to a mere 1,200 fighters, backed against the wall in the northern city of Mosul.

Al Qaeda has been smashed in Iraq. A mopping up operation is now effectively under way. Does the media mention Iraq? No, it now talks about a resurgence in Afghanistan or the Taliban controlled areas in remote northern Pakistan.

The destruction of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) is one of the most unlikely and unforeseen events in the long history of American warfare. We can thank President Bush's surge strategy, in which he bucked both Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington by increasing our forces there instead of surrendering.

This, for no other reason, is why George W Bush will be remembered as a great President.

We can also thank the leadership of the new general he placed in charge there, David Petraeus, who may be the foremost expert in the world on counter-insurgency warfare. And we can thank those serving in our military in Iraq who engaged local Iraqi tribal leaders and convinced them America was their friend and AQI their enemy.

Al-Qaida's loss of the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis began in Anbar Province, which had been written off as a basket case, and spread out from there.

Remember all of the noise about Anbar? Where is the NYT now? Reduced to publishing pathetic stories on Iraq combat veterans who now struggle with alcoholism. These people are scum.

Now, in Operation Lion's Roar the Iraqi army and the U.S. 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is destroying the fraction of terrorists who are left. More than 1,000 AQI operatives have already been apprehended.

Be vewy, vewy, qwiet. We're hunting tewwowists...

Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin, traveling with Iraqi forces in Mosul, found little AQI presence even in bullet-ridden residential areas that were once insurgency strongholds, and reported that the terrorists have lost control of its Mosul urban base, with what is left of the organization having fled south into the countryside.

Meanwhile, the State Department reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has achieved "satisfactory" progress on 15 of the 18 political benchmarks — a big change for the better from a year ago.

Whoops! The media had better go quiet on that, as well...though someone should tell the Democratic Party leadership.

Things are going so well that Maliki has even for the first time floated the idea of a timetable for withdrawal of American forces. He did so while visiting the United Arab Emirates, which over the weekend announced that it was forgiving almost $7 billion of debt owed by Baghdad — an impressive vote of confidence from a fellow Arab state in the future of a free Iraq.

But where are the headlines and the front-page stories about all this good news? As the Media Research Center pointed out last week, "the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 were silent Tuesday night about the benchmarks" that signaled political progress.

The war in Iraq has been turned around 180 degrees both militarily and politically because the president stuck to his guns. Yet apart from IBD, Fox News Channel and parts of the foreign press, the media don't seem to consider this historic event a big story.

Which all goes to show what a poor decision it was by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to bring home our combat troops when they had been such terrific contributors to achieving this positive situation by the training the Iraqi military to be able to stand up for themselves. At least he left the navy and our protection forces in place.

What is really amazing, even to people like me who thought that Iraq would be alright and be able to stand on her own two feet at some point in the future, is just how quickly the Iraqi government has come into its own once they managed to get a handle on Al Qaeda.

The surge made it all possible. Well done to David Petraeus, a man who the left pilloried as a puppet of Bush and a man who "betrayed us".

Does the left realise that if Petraues is Bush's puppet and doing his bidding then Bush really must be a smart man.

And who has betrayed whom now? Does the left not want Iraq to be a successful and free nation?

(Nothing Follows)

Random thought for the day

"Change" does not mean "Reform".

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Professor John Christy calmly carves up climate hysteria

In this video Professor John Christy of the University of Alabama presents an array of numbers relating to climate science that demonstrate that the real world is not doing what the climate models predict.

Imagine my surprise at that.

From his Wikipedia entry:

(John Christy) is a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). He was appointed Alabama's State Climatologist in 2000. For his development of a global temperature data set from satellites he was awarded NASA's Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, and the American Meteorological Society's "Special Award." In 2002, Christy was elected Fellow of the American Meteorological Society.

Christy was a lead author for the 2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the US CCSP report Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere - Understanding and Reconciling Differences. He received his Ph.D. in Atmospheric sciences from the University of Illinois. He also has a master's degree in divinity from Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.

Christy is generally considered a contrarian on some issues related to global warming, although he helped draft and signed the American Geophysical Union statement on climate change. In an interview with National Public Radio about the new AGU statement, he said: It is scientifically inconceivable that after changing forests into cities, turning millions of acres into irrigated farmland, putting massive quantities of soot and dust into the air, and putting extra greenhouse gases into the air, that the natural course of climate has not changed in some way.

...A native of Fresno, CA (where he learned to pan for gold), Christy was a missionary in Kenya for two years. After earning his divinity degree he founded a Southern Baptist church in South Dakota before pursuing a career in science and teaching.

The last 25 or so minutes of the video are devoted to Q&A.

Have a listen to the statement made about Christy by the very first questioner. I won't give it away here but it really is surprising given it's coming from an academic.

What a deeply immoral man this questioner must be.

Christy powerfully demonstrates that climate models don't work and that mankind's changing of the way it uses land is a significant contributor to changes in local climate.

With last week's release of the Garnaut Report in Australia it's important that the 'lay person' (i.e. people who have not studied mathematics at anything higher what was required in high school) view this video, as it's aimed at providing information in an easy to understand way that clearly demonstrates that the world is not headed for catastrophe.

No wonder Big Green hates this guy.

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The fate of carbon trading in Australia rests with the centre left

The ABC is Australia's government owned broadcasting service. It is similar to the BBC and PBS and, like those two organisations, takes a leftist position on matters political, social and environmental.

Thus, it was something of a surprise to see the ABC's chief political correspondent Chris Uhlmann give his candid view of global warming on Insiders (which, by the way, is the best political talk show in Australia by a country mile).

Here's the segment from the show. Watch from the 3 minute mark: "As a former seminarian..."



The release of the Garnaut Report last Friday, with its clear statement that Australia must slash its greenhouse gas emissions by introducing a carbon trading system in 2010, got all sides of politics worked up.

The loopy left and Big Green, salivating at the prospect of inflicting socialist policies leading to serious economic damage on a 'capitalist' nation, cried that 2010 was too far away.

The conservative side of politics has hardened its resolve that a trading scheme that operates locally while developing nations such as China, Brazil and India are allowed to continue apace is economic suicide given Australia's reliance on energy export markets and brown coal for power.

Interestingly, the climate change battle is going to be waged in the 'sane centre' of the left and the fight will be against their Marxist shipmates.

Leading up to the election those people who could be described as belonging to the centre-left (such as Chris Uhlmann and Barrie Cassidy) used the former government's inaction on climate change as something to beat them over the head with.

Now that Labor is in power it's not the Coalition that these people are worried about; it's those who are prepared to inflict serious damage to Australia's economy in the name of environmental symbolism.

Perhaps, shortly after the election, these people would not have thought that the new government would undertake irresponsible, symbolic courses of action.

However there are now too many examples - from the Sorry to FuelWatch to an attack on plastic shopping bags to Japanese whaling - that those in the centre left must surely be nervous that, in fact, the government may well add another symbolic gesture notch to its political belt.

Thus, the fate of Australia rests in the hands of the sane centre left to recognise the threat to the country and act responsibly by not implementing a carbon trading system in advance of China and India.

Best of luck to them.

(Nothing Follows)

Sunday night rock 'n' roll

Electric Light Orchestra, commonly abbreviated to ELO, were a rock group from Birmingham, England who released eleven studio albums between 1971 and 1986 and another album in 2001. ELO (the brainchild of Jeff Lynne) were formed to accommodate Jeff's burning desire to create pop songs with heavily classical overtones. The band's direction for most of their existence was set by Jeff Lynne who, after the band's debut record, wrote all of the group's original compositions and produced every album.

It was in the United States that the band were first successful, billed as 'The English guys with the big fiddles'. They soon gained a cult following despite lukewarm reviews back in their native United Kingdom. They were managed by agent Don Arden, father of Sharon Osbourne.

By the mid-1970s, they had become one of the biggest selling bands in music. From 1972 to 1986, ELO accumulated more combined U.K. and U.S. Top 40 hit singles than any other band in the world, with 46. The group also scored twenty Top 20 U.K. hit singles, as well as fifteen Top 20 appearances in the U.S. Billboard charts. The band also hold the record for having the most Billboard Top 40 hits of any band in U.S. chart history without ever having a #1 single.

Despite the fact that the majority of the group's material was never researched, audited and certified, ELO collected 21 RIAA awards, and 38 BPI awards.

I remember seeing ELO a couple of years ago on one of those Countdown replays that Rage has every so often on Saturday night. On the show were a few Australian acts and ELO.

The difference in talent and musical quality was stark. They really were quite a band as these three videos prove.

Mr Blue Sky



Don't Bring Me Down



Strange Magic



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UK's police sniffer dogs to wear bootees in Muslim homes

The only question is - when will the UK's cultural capitulation to a backward religion end and the country rediscover its own cultural strength?

Police sniffer dogs will have to wear bootees when searching the homes of Muslims so as not to cause offence.

Guidelines being drawn up by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) urge awareness of religious sensitivities when using dogs to search for drugs and explosives. The guidelines, to be published this year, were designed to cover mosques but have been extended to include other buildings.

Where Muslims object, officers will be obliged to use sniffer dogs only in exceptional cases. Where dogs are used, they will have to wear bootees with rubber soles. “We are trying to ensure that police forces are aware of sensitivities that people can have with the dogs to make sure they are not going against any religious or cultural element within people’s homes. It is being addressed and forces are working towards doing it,” Acpo said.

Problems faced by the use of sniffer dogs were highlighted last week when Tayside police were forced to apologise for a crime prevention poster featuring a german shepherd puppy, in response to a complaint by a Muslim councillor.

Islamic injunctions warn Muslims against contact with dogs, which are regarded as “unclean”.

Police dogs at present are issued with footwear only at scenes of explosions to prevent them injuring their paws on broken glass.

Ibrahim Mogra, one of Britain’s leading imams, said the measures were unnecessary: “In Islamic law the dog is not regarded as impure, only its saliva is. Most Islamic schools of law agree on that. If security measures require to send a dog into a house, then it has to be done. I think Acpo needs to consult better and more widely.

“I know in the Muslim community there is a hang-up against dogs, but this is cultural. Also, we know the British like dogs; we Muslims should do our bit to change our attitudes.”

John Midgley, co-founder of the Campaign Against Political Correctness, said: “The police are in effect being overly sensitive to potential criminals and not being sensitive enough to the public at large who need to be protected. These sort of things have a counter-productive effect because they cause huge friction between different communities.”

Caroline Kisko, of the Kennel Club, said: “We would not condone any attempt to make search dogs wear special clothing, which could cause them distress.”

As the following map shows, Muslims are in the less than 5% of population category in the UK. How is it, then, that they wield so much power to change policies in such negative ways?



It's no wonder that the best and brightest in Europe are fleeing to the United States, Canada and Australia etc...

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Robert Mugabe owes his presidency to the international Left

The UK Telegraph's Simon Heffer gets it right on Zimbabwe.

A few years ago, when the tyrant of Zimbabwe was moving from being wicked to being downright evil, I wrote that we should invade Harare, depose him, and supervise free elections. Invited to appear on a BBC programme to defend this stance, I was assailed by an "Africa expert" who told me that diplomatic pressure on Mugabe was bound to work, that the idea of sending the Parachute Regiment in to sort the monster out was offensively colonialist, and that I was wrong.

White liberals like him are as much to blame for the terror, starvation, brutality and genocide that now scar this once-rich and stable country. The supposedly civilised world has allowed Mugabe and his horrors to happen, mainly unchecked. Sanctions on his country merely starve those who disagree with him. Zimbabwe has all the natural, and had all the human, resources to be an example to the rest of Africa. It is now merely a symbol of what happens when a dictator takes charge, and those who might rein him in simply look away.

So it is infuriating to hear some Leftists and liberals saying, through the teeth of their post-imperial guilt, that perhaps an armed intervention is the only way to rid the world of this brute. Had this been done years ago, when they took the opposite view, how many lives might have been saved? How many productive people, black and white, would have felt able to stay in Zimbabwe, rather than flee with their talents abroad? Would it still be a country with a life expectancy in the low thirties, something not heard of in Europe since the early Middle Ages? How proud does the Left, with its stupidly romantic notions of the inviolate nature of "black freedom fighters", feel about what it has so ably helped Mugabe achieve?

Of course, even now the Leftists who are recanting cannot bear the thought of a military operation being conducted by Britain alone - not that our exploited and resource-starved Armed Forces are in a position to take out Mugabe. It is argued that there should be a UN or multinational force, something that most of us old cynics will believe only when we see it. Frankly, I couldn't care less who liberates Zimbabwe - North Korea, the Taliban or Venezuela are welcome to it: they couldn't be any worse than the incumbent.

Yet the gutlessness of our Foreign Office continues. The disastrous Lord Malloch-Brown, who is to international diplomacy what a lamp post is to a dog, said this week that it would be wrong for "the mangy old British lion" to strip Mugabe of his honorary knighthood. Let us ignore for the moment the question of whether a Foreign Office minister should insult his country so, another sign that this oaf is unfit for office. Four days later the knighthood did indeed go, on a recommendation from David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, to the Queen. Mr Miliband had said just two weeks earlier that removing the knighthood was not a good idea. And the Tories are no better. This week they ordered the suspension of a prospective parliamentary candidate who made the blindingly obvious observation that the late Ian Smith was better than Mugabe. It is time these people grew up.

I know what a shock it must be to Leftists of all parties, with their uncritical adoration of African leaders from the saintly, such as Nelson Mandela, to the repulsive, such as Mugabe, to see that sometimes black people can be evil too. But that is the truth. And Zimbabwe may be the prologue to what may happen in South Africa after a decade of failure by Thabo Mbeki is followed by the rule of the dubious Jacob Zuma. It may be very uncomfortable and embarrassing for whites to intervene to stop the butchery of black tyrants. But if they don't, hecatombs of lives will be lost.

If you've never lived in Africa then you can have no sense of the corruption of the place, the power of tribalism and the lethargy of the people.

The left enabled Mugabe to snuff out his country's economic prosperity in just a couple of decades. Surely, the left doesn't think that it's OK for thugs, thieves and murderers to bludgeon their opponents into submission?

Perhaps it's exactly that feature that thrills them so much.

That's why Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Che etc are still held in such high regard by the left and why Marxism can be so prevalent in society in the form of cultural relativism and environmental fundamentalism.

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Hansen 1988 v Hansen 2008

From Climateaudit comes the following graph of temperature since 1979.

The red dots are when Climate High Priest James Hansen first predicted doom and gloom for the world based on our carbon emissions in his original 1988 testimony to Congress and where it is now, 20 years later, for his current spewing forth of Climate Agitprop.



There's nothing to add, really.

Ooh, wait. There is actually.

How about a graph from Hansen's 1988 testimony showing his Scenarios A, B & C? Scenario B has been held up by the Climate Faithful as proof that climate models work. The fact that his inputs don't reflect what actually happened and that it's now miles wrong is completely ignored by those who've well and truly swallowed the Climate Kool Aid.

I've marked 1988 and 2008 with red dots so you can compare for yourself the two graphs.



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Kevin Rudd continues to underwhelm

In the United States they had Jimmy Carter.

In Australia we were unlucky enough to have Gough Whitlam as our prime minister.

Both men were quite intelligent and there's no doubt that they meant well. However, their incompetence has seen them judged as the worst leaders in their respective country's history (though Carter might get pipped by James Buchanan from the mid-19th century).

It is no surprise that both are men of the left, that both were driven by an idealogical purity to create a better society and that both crashed and burned leaving society to bear the burden and their successors to clean up the mess.

I have written previously that Kevin Rudd is very likely to be considered Australia's most incompetent prime minister ever and is more Whitlam than Hawke or Keating. The more we get to see him the more certain I am that I will be proven correct.

Others are already starting to agree with me.

IT is very lucky for Kevin Rudd that a lot of those people who voted his party into power last year were too young to remember the economic shambles that existed in Australia under the Whitlam Labor government 30-odd years before.

There is a direct parallel with Barack Obama in the United States. People who did not live through the Carter days cannot conceive of how negative an influence a president can have on Average Joes and Jills.

And perhaps those who are old enough to remember believed that lightning couldn't strike twice in the same place.

Rudd would clearly like to be seen as following in the footsteps of the successful governments of former prime minister Bob Hawke and his treasurer Paul Keating, if for no other reason than under them Labor held on to power in Canberra for 13 years.

But as each day passes there is a growing similarity with the Whitlam government, which crashed after less than three turbulent years in office. That government's brief spell in power was characterised and bedevilled by arrogant incompetence.

'arrogant incompetence' exactly describes Kevin Rudd.

For five years before he was hoisted into the Labor leader's chair Rudd had carefully cultivated his image as a warm and understanding soul alongside Liberal minister, jovial Joe Hockey, on the Seven Network's Sunrise breakfast program.

When his party was swept into office last November he reassured the electorate with light-hearted patter that said, "Trust me, my name is Kevin and by the way I'm an economic conservative. In other words I am not going to do anything that is financially irresponsible."

Surprise!

This was part of his me-too campaign, which was aimed at riding on the coat-tails of the Howard government's record of sound economic management during its 11 years in power. But once in government he lost no time in attacking the conservatives as economic vandals who had recklessly driven up interest rates. The blame game which Rudd said would end with the election that consolidated Labor's grip on power all around Australia was really just getting under way in earnest.

One of the biggest challenges Rudd faces is controlling his own ego. But if you believe you are always right maybe it doesn't present itself as a task that needs addressing. Rudd's treatment of the public service as shirkers because they are not as work-obsessed as he is and his gratuitous advice to our influential neighbouring countries on how to better run their regional affairs gives substance to this conclusion.

And talking about substance this is something that seems to be noticeably lacking from many of his grand gestures and visions for the country's future. Forget the shower of ideas that rained down during Rudd's 2020 Summit earlier this year, and look at the FuelWatch debacle that was to be his solution to alleged inaction by the former conservative government on increasing petrol prices. Begrudgingly Rudd has now conceded that there is little the Australian Government can do against international pressure on fuel prices. And the fiasco around his promise to give computers to high school students across the country is quickly emerging as another case of all froth and no bubble.

It may well be that Rudd's determination to concentrate power in his office is blindsiding him from the growing pain that is being felt by the broad community. And this pain is not confined to the working families he has taken to his breast.

The sizeable swing against Labor in last weekend's Gippsland by-election -- unusually high for such a recently elected government -- may well reflect a growing resentment in the community at Rudd's failure to deliver on the expectations he has created.

While the Gippsland result will blunt any immediate pressure on Brendan Nelson's Opposition leadership it also will encourage the conservatives to lift themselves out of the despair that followed the November election defeat and start looking positively at the next federal poll due in 2010.

And this optimism is enhanced by recent opinion polling around the states showing that Labor is starting to fall out of favour with the electorate, particularly in NSW, where it has clearly had enough of the endless mismanagement of public services under the scandal-wracked ALP government.

In last year's election campaign Labor successfully attacked the Howard government for failing to listen to the concerns of the community. The conservatives will now turn this back on to Rudd by accusing him of adopting a "government knows best" philosophy that discourages freedom of choice and enterprise.

Launching a new book by Anne Henderson on conservative political pioneer Enid Lyons recently, shadow treasurer Malcolm Turnbull flagged a strategy focusing on freedom as an across-the-board benchmark for Liberal policy development.

"Our vision of government is to enable and to empower," Turnbull said. "Labor's is to direct and command." This sounds simplistic but Rudd's presidential style of leadership and his preoccupation with the micromanagement of government may well have the electorate wondering whether it made the right decision last year after all.

Australia needs strong leadership to address the shocking education outcomes inflicted on our children for the last 20 years, the challenge and opportunity of rising powers in the region such as India and China and the rising cost of energy that is already hurting hardest those who are least able to afford it.

Australia's go it alone attitude to addressing the non-issue of climate change is a prime example of how far out of touch with community attitudes Rudd is, let alone reality. It seems that he prefers to pander to European and United Nations institutions than do what is right for Australia.

In Kevin Rudd we do not have that strength of leadership. Unfortunately, he does not understand how limited his ability is and that will be to the detriment of all of us.

(Nothing Follows)

Lots and lots of oil for the Peak Oil worriers

With oil prices at record highs Peak Oil doom and gloomers and other assorted Environmentalist Malefactors are dribbling on about how we've reached the half way point of world oil supplies and it's all downhill from here.

Naturally, they remain willfully ignorant of options like shale oil, which has the potential to produce enough oil to power the US for the next couple of hundred years. That would leave more than a hundred years for the rest of the world if we just relied on existing known reserves.



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French fire real bullets for first time since WW2

For over 50 years the French have carefully nurtured their reputation as cheese-eating surrender monkeys. Preferring talk and negotiation to taking direct action has seen the French army become the butt of many jokes.

Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion - Jed Babbin

"Somebody was telling me about the French Army rifle that was being advertised on eBay the other day - the description was, 'Never fired. Dropped once.'" - Rep. Roy Blunt (MO).

"Do you know how many Frenchmen it takes to defend Paris? It's not known, it's never been tried." - Rep. R. Blount (MO).

War without France would be like, uh, World War II.

And my favourite...

"It is important to remember that the French have always been there when they needed us." - Alan Kent.

So news overnight that the French army had actually used live bullets and injured people comes as something of a surprise:

Seventeen people, including a child left in a critical condition, were injured when soldiers fired live bullets instead of blanks during an open day display, regional officials have told AFP.

Fifteen civilians and two soldiers were injured in the incident, of which the details remained unclear, involving a demonstration by members of a marines parachute regiment of hostage liberation exercises, the regional authority said.

Four of the 17 were seriously injured, with two described as critical following "incomprehensible" scenes at the barracks near Carcassone, in the country's southwest.

According to local authorities, five children were among the injured.

Five helicopters, 11 firefighters' first-aid vehicles and two ambulances rushed to the scene to help the injured.

One soldier had been detained, although no explanation was immediately forthcoming for why the wrong ammunition was loaded into weapons.

Let's hope that everyone injured is OK.

What lesson will the French take from the incident?

Using real bullets gets people hurt.

Another 50 years of feckless pacifism seems likely in spite of Sarkozy's noise about France rejoining NATO.

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Sunday night rock 'n' roll

The Moody Blues are an English rock band originally from Birmingham. Founding members Michael Pinder and Ray Thomas performed an initially rhythm and blues-based sound in Birmingham in 1964 along with Graeme Edge and others, and were later joined by John Lodge and Justin Hayward as they inspired and evolved the progressive rock style. Among their innovations was a fusion with classical music, most notably in their seminal 1967 album Days of Future Passed.

Nights In White Satin



The Other Side Of Life



I'm Just A Singer (In A Rock And Roll Band)



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