The concept of an Asia Pacific community and its reflection in the new composition of the East Asian Summit...
My message today, is that in an increasingly globalised order, on what might be called the age of globalisation of everything, this Australian foreign service will become more important to the prosecution of our national interests...
Ideas count in foreign policy.
... we also need to be in the business of “ideas brokerage” around the world...
Building coalitions of support around ideas is also a core task of our future diplomacy.
This is precisely what we did with the formation of the G20 when there were many other competing ideas in the field.
This is also what we did with our proposal to reform our region’s political, strategic and economic architecture.
File under: this Australian foreign service will become more important to the prosecution persecution of our national interests.
Australia has lost its appeal against a WTO ruling which ordered Canberra to change restrictions on imports of New Zealand apples.
"The Appellate Body upheld the panel's findings that... Australia's measures, regarding fire blight and apple leafcurling midge, as well as the general measures, are inconsistent," the WTO's appeal body said in a statement.
The WTO had earlier found Australia's restrictions on New Zealand apples, dating from the 1920s, breached global rules.
File under: inconsistency with global rules is a crime, resistance is futile, diseases must be shared, you will be assimilated.
I have a book review in this week’s Catholic Herald of Roger Scruton’s The Uses of Pessimism. Professor Scruton is the leading conservative political philosopher of our age... His latest book explains how unscrupulous optimists have brought disaster on the world, from the Jacobins to the Bolsheviks, Nazis and Eurocrats, but his most controversial assertion is that mass immigration is the latest example of this utopian thinking, and doomed to never realise its unachievable aims
... the optimists are behind two related utopian ideas that dominate their age. The European Union, like Soviet Communism ...
As Scruton notes: “Since the 1960s western countries have adopted policies in the matter of immigration that no person schooled in the elementary truths of pessimism would have endorsed. Anybody who has studied the fate of empires, and the difficulties of establishing territorial jurisdiction over communities that differ in religion, language and marital customs, knows that the task is all but impossible, and threatens constantly to break down in fragmentation, tribalism or civil war.”
Like Communism, mass immigration was based on a denial of human nature, and an inability to distinguish between what might work in individual human relationships and in society as a whole. Just because people of different groups are capable of getting on perfectly well as individuals, becoming friends and falling in love, it does not mean that a multicultural society ... can become a racism-free paradise; anymore than the willingness of people to give money to perfect strangers means Communism can work.
File under: immigration is based on a denial of human nature.
It was a time of great optimism and extraordinary change. It was Sydney in the Edwardian years: a twilight zone between the restrictive Victorian era and the devastation of WW1.
File under: a time of "great optimism", homogeneity and civility. Coincidence?
Yet another unsuccessful terrorist attempt by a Muslim in the U.S., this one a naturalized U.S. citizen from Somalia. In fact, there was no risk of the attack being carried out, as he was being shadowed by FBI undercover agents the whole way and the bomb he attempted to explode was inert. Think of the months and years of effort, the hundreds of thousands of man hours, that our law enforcement agencies invest in tracking, arresting, and trying each individual terrorist, instead of just throwing them out of the country. It's mad.
Question: what is this total alien doing in the United States? Answer: he's here solely as a result of the liberal principle that all Americans now embrace or accede to, and that none questions: that America should not discriminate against anyone when admitting immigrants into this country, but treat all nationalities, religions, cultures, and races the same.
Officers can no longer use details such as a suspect's nationality, race or religion when seeking public help.
Instead, they have been told to say if the person is light or dark skinned.
WA Police Union president Russell Armstrong wants the rule overturned ...
Mr Armstrong said using "scant descriptions" made it harder to catch criminals ...
Police spokesman Insp Bill Munnee defended the rule.
"The continued use of ethnic descriptors enforces stereotypes, does not promote understanding between cultures, damages police-community relationships and is not considered a sound investigatory practice," Insp Munnee said.
File under: high ethnic crime rates give immigrants and diversity ideology a bad name; hide reality to protect feelings of immigrants and reputation of ideology at the expense of solving crimes; public safety is compromised; go figure.
European Parliament, Strasbourg - 24 November 2010 Speaker: Nigel Farage MEP, UKIP, Co-President of the Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) Group
Transcript:
Good morning, Mr van Rompuy,
You've been in office for one year and in that time the whole edifice is beginning to crumble, there's chaos, the money's running out - I should thank you; you should perhaps be the pin-up boy of the Eurosceptic movement.
But just look around this chamber, this morning. Just look at these faces. Look at the fear. Look at the anger. Poor old Barroso here looks like he's seen a ghost.
They're begining to understand that the game is up and yet in their desperation to preserve their dream, they want to remove any remaining traces of democracy from the system. And it's pretty clear that none of you have learnt anything.
When you yourself, Mr van Rompuy, say that the euro has brought us stability. I suppose I could applaud you for having a sense of humour, but isn't this, really, just the bunker mentality?
Your fanaticism is out in the open. You talked about the fact that it was a lie to believe that the nation state could exist in the 21st Century globalised world. Well, that may be true in the case of Belgium, who haven't had a government for six months, but for the rest of us, right across every member state in this Union - and perhaps this is why we see the fear in the faces - increasingly people are saying, 'We don't want that flag. We don't want the anthem. We don't want this political class. We want the whole thing consigned to the dustbin of history.'
And we had the Greek tragedy earlier on this year, and now we have this situation in Ireland. Now I know that the stupidity and greed of Irish politicians has a lot to do with this. They should never ever have joined the euro. They suffered with low interest rates, a false boom and a massive bust.
But look at your response to them. What they're being told, as their government is collapsing, is that it would be inappropriate for them to have a general election. In fact Commissioner Rehn here said they had to agree their budget first before they'd be allowed to have a general election.
Just who the hell do you think you people are?
You are very very dangerous people, indeed. Your obsession with creating this Euro state means that you're happy to destroy democracy. You appear to be happy for millions and millions of people to be unemployed and to be poor. Untold millions must suffer so that your Euro dream can continue.
Well it won't work. Because it's Portugal next, with their debt levels of 325% of GDP, they're the next ones on the list, and after that I suspect it will be Spain. And the bailout for Spain would be seven times the size of Ireland's and at that moment all of the bailout money has gone - there won't be anymore.
But it is even more serious than economics. Because if you rob people of their identity. If you rob them of their democracy, then all they are left with is nationalism and violence. I can only hope and pray that the Euro project is destroyed by the markets before that really happens.
And that's the spirit that Big Kev wants to bring to this hemisphere.
The European Union of course does not represent an identikit model of what we would seek to develop in the Asia Pacific.
But what we can learn from Europe is this – it is necessary to take the first step.
In the 1950s, sceptics saw European integration as unrealistic.
But most people would now agree that the goal of the visionaries in Europe who sat down in the 1950s and resolved to build prosperity and a common sense of a security community has been achieved.
It is that spirit we need to capture in our hemisphere.
Our special challenge is that we face a region with greater diversity in political systems and economic structures, levels of development, religious beliefs, languages and cultures, than did our counterparts in Europe.
Fairfield City's residents are among the most diverse and culturally unique in Australia, resulting in a rich and special ambience best reflected in the City motto, Celebrating Diversity.
From the many places of worship such as temples, churches and mosques to the City's Aboriginal heritage and vibrant commercial centres, a visit to Fairfield City has something for everyone.
Hey, you forgot to mention comedians posing as journalists!
File under: humourous fatalism - the coping mechanism of choice in the lawless towns that ideology built.
Advocates for Sharia in the West, such as the Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, are never confronted about their views on aspects of Sharia such as the amputation of the hand for theft, which is not negotiable in Islamic law since it is rooted in the Qur'an (5:38). This story shows, however, that Muslims are bringing such elements of Sharia to Western countries -- along with a substantial dose of conspiracy paranoia vis-a-vis the Jews, the "worst enemies" of the Muslims (cf. Qur'an 5:82).
File under: Muslim community turns ... Islamic. Who was to know?
The very nature of globalisation means that there is no longer a clear and clean delineation between the foreign and the domestic, the national and the international, the internal and the external.
These were effective taxonomies for the 20th century.
That is no longer the case for the 21st century.
We find ourselves operating in an increasingly seamless policy space which no longer respects an artificial divide.
The international relations theorists have been on to this for two decades.
Institutionally, foreign ministries around the world are struggling to catch up.
This is hard. It’s not easy.
It challenges so many of the traditional bureaucratic silos both within and between departments that we have inherited from the past...
Institutionally, we are creatively responding to this.
We will need increasingly to do so across the traditional policy domains.
Properly “joined-up” policy is now more imperative than ever, placing an absolute premium on synthesised advice, integrated advice, and coordinated advice.
I am confident that this institution will continue to rise to that challenge...
And always in pursuit of the enduring national interests of this Commonwealth.
Big Kev lurches back into character as if nothing has changed.
"Joined-up" in an open-borders Asia-Pacific Union like the demented EU? I'd rather eat my shoe. Note the brainwasher-in-chief's relentless regional-identity language: synthesised, integrated, and coordinated. Just don't notice the contradictory last line: that's to pacify us nationalists who naturally fall asleep at the sound of Kev's voice, only to awaken at the end.
File under taxonomy: dangerously vacuous man without identity who should be kept away from pens, treaties, and gullible children.
I'm looking at this country... and what's happened in terms of respect. I have many people from China that I do business with, they laugh at us, they feel we're fools.
You know they're getting away with absolute murder, they're making the products that we used to make in this country, they're making them in China. We're rebuilding China...
I'd tax China, they manipulate the currency, by manipulating the currency it's very hard to compete with China...
If we tax China we'd pay off that debt very quickly...
It's us, we have the cards because we're the ones who are spending all this money in China … I've had bankers over the years, I don't think they have the cards.
When people tell me from other countries that they no longer respect our country, now whether you like Ronald Reagan ..., there was a level of respect for this country that we had.
We cannot let the rest of the world beat us up. I mean we're like a whipping post right now.
"Look, I know lots of folks in China. They think we are the dumbest son-of-a-bitches in the world, alright. They think our representatives don’t know what they’re doing. They laugh at us behind our back... If we tax China fairly substantially... you would have so much money in this country you wouldn't have the big deficits like you do..."
VAN SUSTEREN: ... the economy, the unemployment rate not getting better. If you were advising the president, what would you tell him to do?
TRUMP: Obviously the word is "jobs." How do you get jobs? I hear so many people talking so many different things. The problem is our jobs have left this country. We are making our products in China and in other places.
And what the politicians have done to this country, they should be ashamed of themselves. The other day I was watching "60 Minutes" I see a place, Newton, Iowa, beautiful place, beautiful people they lost Maytag. The jobs went to Mexico, most of the jobs to Mexico.
I'm saying to myself, isn't that a shame. Here you have this beautiful community with these incredible people and the jobs went to Mexico.
So the problem with this country is between China and other places, we just don't make product any more. We do health care here, but that's not the kind of product I'm talking about. I'm talking about where you really make product. If I build a building many of the materials and things I get are made in China. It is very, very sad...
We are rebuilding China. Our economy is just getting killed. And you look at China it is going through the roof. A friend of mine went to a pretty much new city in China. They said unbelievable the airport and everything else. They come back to LaGuardia. They said it is like coming into a third world country. It is horrible what has happened.
... You are not going to solve unemployment unless something very, very stringent is done with regard to China and other countries...
I would tax Chinese products. People say that's not free trade. What is free trade when they have billions and billions of dollars of surplus over us? So we don't want free trade with people that are ripping us.
... first of all their product isn't as good as ours... But they manipulated their currency so it is hard to compete with Chinese dollars, cost...
What I would do is I would tax like 25 percent tax... People are going to start creating jobs in this country because they are not going to pay that tax.
People tell me, Donald, that's not free trade. We don't have free trade right now. We have a country, China in particular, that is ripping us like nobody's ripped us before. And we are rebuilding China. Our country is so big in terms of what we buy that we are rebuilding China.
And in 10 years to 12 years China will have a bigger economy than us which was unthinkable five years ago.
VAN SUSTEREN: We are totally in the wrong direction ...?
TRUMP: It's amazing. I listen to your show and other shows. I listen to certain politicians, who I know. I know most all of them. They are so different when they are talking to me and when I see them on television. And they don't bring up the world. They are not bringing up the world. They are saying yes, we've got to create more jobs. They never say how.
We've got to create more jobs. Oh, yes, they are all moving to Mexico, China. They don't say we got to stop that... Why aren't we making toys in Alabama and in North Carolina? ...
The fact is we should be making these things, which, by the way, are also in many cases unsafe with the lead poisoning and the paint poisoning because the standards are different -- why aren't we making toys in this country for our children? ...
And perhaps we have to say, guess what folks, you can buy toys from China, you are going to pay a 25 percent tax. And all of a sudden you are going to have things being made in this country. Nobody ever mentions it.
... I had people that I know in China, because I do a lot of business with the Chinese ... They cannot believe what they are getting an way with. They tell me at dinner, "Donald, we cannot believe that we're able to get away with this." They tell me that privately... they can't believe how stupid our representatives are, let me put it nicely. They can't believe that our representatives let them get away with what they are doing. And, I will tell you, we are rebuilding China.
I don't get it. I really don't get it, unless they are just not smart. Whenever I go -- when I do a show like yours and bring up this, I get hundreds of letters saying "Thank you, Mr. Trump." And I don't see the politicians pick it up. It's hard to believe.
... I just can't believe how people can be so stupid.
VAN SUSTEREN: ... does that give you the itch to run for president?
TRUMP: ... I will say for the first time I am actually thinking about it. Somebody has to do something. And I don't hear people saying why do we not have jobs? Because we are making our product in China. Why don't they say that? It's like Newton, Iowa -- why don't they have jobs? Because Maytag moved to Mexico because our geniuses gave them incentives to leave this country and go to Mexico. Are we running Mexico or this country?
This country has to be rebuilt. This country is in serious trouble. This country is no longer respected like it was. We love our country. We are proud of our country, but our country is not the force it used to be. It's no longer respected like it used to be. And in fact, just the opposite. People laugh at us. They laugh at the stupidity of the people running this country.
STUART VARNEY: November 9, 1989, the world witnessing an American president talking up capitalism, as a wall came down. Twenty-one years later, did the world just witness the reverse? ...
President Obama telling the world today, we want China to succeed and prosper, and we are not interested in containing that process...
DONALD TRUMP: Well, I think it is absolutely terrible, Stuart. It's just unbelievable, unthinkable.
Can you imagine Ronald Reagan making that statement? Can you imagine almost any president making that statement?
China is succeeding. They are rebuilding their country off our money... they're building new cities that are bigger than any of our cities.
It's absolutely insane to have made that statement...
We are now destroying the dollar in order to try and compete with them. We shouldn't be doing that. We should be keeping the dollar strong and stable and we should tax Chinese products.
And the people that talk about free trade, we don't have free -- I am a big free trade believer, by the way -- but we don't have free trade with China.
China is, literally, going to destroy this ... country. If we don't get smart quickly, China will destroy our country. And they will do it with a smile. And our people have no idea what is happening.
... we are losing hundreds of billions of dollars to China. We are rebuilding China. And in 10 to 12 years, China is going to make us look like small- timers. And it's off our back...
I would love to have a trade war with China. Because, if we did no business with China, frankly, we will save a lot of money. We're losing a fortune to China...
Mr. Obama lamented the "search for drama" and disagreement at international summit meetings. If there is a reason for the discord, he said, it is because emerging powers are no longer satisfied with letting the United States take the lead.
"We are a very large, very wealthy, very powerful country," Mr. Obama said. "We have had outsized influence over world affairs for a century now. And you are now seeing a situation in which a whole host of other countries are doing very well and coming into their own, and naturally they are going to be more assertive in terms of their interests and ideas. And that's a healthy thing."
Margaret Thatcher once said that being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't...
The president again casually confirmed his belief in the decline of America's "outsized" influence in world affairs, noting, "We are now seeing a situation where a whole host of other countries are doing well and coming into their own and naturally they're going to be more assertive." The president thinks this greater assertiveness is "a healthy thing" but did not elaborate for whom it was healthy - certainly not the United States. For some inexplicable reason, Mr. Obama welcomes the decline of America's role on the international stage. It is his most notable accomplishment.
The lesson is that liberal U.S. presidents never learn their lesson. As liberals, they believe that America has too much influence and power, and that this has created resentment toward us on the part of other nations, and that therefore progress in international relations requires that America's influence and power be reduced. But as U.S. presidents, they seek to influence world events, and if America's influence and power has been lessened--if, indeed, the liberal U.S. presidents themselves insist on America's lessened influence, how can they, uh, have any influence?
It's a contradiction that liberals can never resolve. Liberalism posits equality as the most important of all values. But equality is incompatible with power, because power by its very nature is unequal, and requires inequality.
The age of the nation state is over and the idea that countries can stand alone is an ‘illusion’ and a ‘lie’, the EU president believes. In one of the most open proclamations of the goal of a European superstate since the heyday of Jacques Delors, Herman Van Rompuy went on to denounce Eurosceptism as the greatest threat to peace.
... Mr Van Rompuy’s speech in the German capital told his audience that ‘the time of the homogenous nation state is over’. He added that the ‘danger’ of Euroscepticism was spreading beyond the confines of countries such as Britain and was becoming a stronger force across the whole continent. ‘We have together to fight the danger of a new Euroscepticism,’ he declared. ‘This is no longer the monopoly of a few countries.
So now it’s cards on the table, the big lie exposed, all pretence over. After decades during which the peoples of Europe were told that the EU posed no threat to the sovereignty of member states, the European Council President Herman von Rompuy has finally stated that the real purpose of the EU is nothing less than to destroy the nation state...
So the greatest danger to the EU is... democracy, and those who support the right of a country to govern itself. Nations lead to nationalism; nationalism leads to war; abolish the nation and you abolish war. This is a clear exposition of the doctrine of ‘transnational progressivism’ that has become the orthodoxy in western ‘progressive’ circles. It is, of course, as absurd as it is sinister.
Officials in a California school district said a middle school student was told to take a U.S. flag off his bike to avoid "racial tension."
Denair Unified School District Superintendent Edward Parraz said Cody Alicea, 13, was told not to fly the U.S. flag from his bike while at Denair Middle School after complaints from other students ...
Parraz said racial tensions boiled over at the school this year around the Cinco de Mayo holiday.
May whites have a racial identity? Are they allowed to be glad they are white or to think about what is good for them as a group?
Shelby Steele, a black scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University doesn’t say “no”; he says “hell no”.
“[B]eyond an identity that apologizes for white supremacy, absolutely no white identity is permissible. In fact, if there is a white racial identity today it would have to be white guilt—a shared, even unifying, lack of racial moral authority.”
Dr. Steele continues: “Black children today are hammered with the idea of racial identity and pride, yet racial pride in whites constitutes a grave evil. Say ‘I’m white and I’m proud’ and you are a Nazi.”
Dr. Steele means all whites everywhere: “Today’s whites, the world over, cannot openly have a racial identity.”
So party while you can, but mind the increasingly loud clock ticking away in the corners of your consciousness.
The clock that reminds you how little time you and yours have left...
you will lose...
It is coming, and soon.
This isn’t hubris. It isn’t ideology. It is not wishful thinking.
It is math...
The kind of math that proves how your kind -- mostly older white folks beholden to an absurd, inaccurate, nostalgic fantasy of what America used to be like -- are dying.
You’re like the bad guy in every horror movie ever made, who gets shot five times, or stabbed ten, or blown up twice, and who will eventually pass -- even if it takes four sequels to make it happen -- but who in the meantime keeps coming back around, grabbing at our ankles as we walk by, we having been mistakenly convinced that you were finally dead this time.
Fair enough, and have at it. But remember how this movie ends.
Our ankles survive.
You do not...
... in the pantheon of American history, conservative old white people have pretty much always been the bad guys, the keepers of the hegemonic and reactionary flame, the folks unwilling to share the category of American with others on equal terms.
Fine, keep it up. It doesn't matter.
Because you’re on the endangered list.
And unlike, say, the bald eagle or some exotic species of muskrat, you are not worth saving...
It's OK. Because in about forty years, half the country will be black or brown. And there is nothing you can do about it...
Do whatever you gotta do, but remember that those who are the victims of your greed and indifference take the long view.
They know, but you do not, that justice is not for the sprinters, but rather for the long distance runners who will be hitting their second wind, right about the time that you collapse from exhaustion...
Because those who have lived on the margins, who have been abused, maligned, targeted by austerity measures and budget cuts, subjected to racism, classism, sexism, straight supremacy and every other form of oppression always know more about their abusers than the abusers know about their victims...
And they know how to regroup, and plot, and plan, and they are planning even now -- we are -- your destruction.
And I do not mean by that your physical destruction...
We just have to be patient.
And wait for you to pass into that good night, first politically, and then, well...
Do you hear it?
The sound of your empire dying? Your nation, as you knew it, ending, permanently?
Because I do, and the sound of its demise is beautiful.
File under: transnational progressivism - as absurd as it is sinister.
JULIA GILLARD's election pitch to avoid a "big Australia" is to be abandoned after a Treasury warning that strong future immigration is "probably inescapable"...
A senior Labor source said business groups had been pressuring the government to adopt a default position ''where the issue of specific targets is not addressed''.
"I believe the government has accepted the reality that it is not prepared to cut migration to the extent needed to significantly reduce population growth," the source said.
HALF of Victoria's voters believe Melbourne's population is growing too fast - and only 1 per cent think the city should be growing more quickly.
With issues relating to population pressure dominating the state election campaign, a Nielsen poll taken for The Age has found 50 per cent of voters across Victoria want the capital city's growth pegged back.
A Muslim pilgrim prays at Mount Arafat, south-east of the Saudi holy city of Mecca, on November 15, 2010. At least 2 million pilgrims flooded into the Arafat plain from Mecca and Mina before dawn for a key ritual around the site where Prophet Mohammed gave his farewell sermon on this day in the Islamic calendar 1,378 years ago. Pilgrims spend the day at Arafat in reflection and reading the Koran or Muslim holy book.
Oh but, Dear Aunty, why were there no beautiful words of Mohammed's last sermon to accompany the beautiful picture? You must have overlooked it so, in the interest of interfaith dialogue, let me fill the gap.
A dispassionate study of the beginnings of Islamic history reveals clearly that Muhammad’s objective was first to conquer his own people, the Arabs, and to unify them under his rule, and then to conquer and rule the world. That was the original cause; it was obviously political and was backed by military force. “I was ordered to fight all men until they say ‘There is no god but Allah,’” Muhammad said in his final address. He did so in accordance with the Koranic command in sura 8:39: “Fight them until there is no more dissension and the religion is entirely Allah’s.”
What!? Sorry, sorry. I forgot Wilders is a Nazi trouble maker. Let me go direct to a reputable source ...
The Farewell Sermon also known as the Prophet's Final Sermon or The Last Sermon, was delivered by Muhammad (peace be upon him) on 9 Dhu al-Hijjah, 10 AH (632) in the Uranah valley of Mount Arafat (in Mecca, seventy-two days before his death, at the end of his final pilgrimage.
The Farewell Sermon is mentioned in almost all books of Hadith. Sahih Al-Bukhari refers to the sermon and quotes part of it...
Allah's Apostle said: "I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is Allah's Apostle, and offer the prayers perfectly and give the obligatory charity, so if they perform that, then they save their lives and property from me except for Islamic laws and then their reckoning (accounts) will be done by Allah."
Awww, such lovely words. Now wouldn't that picture look so much better with those words beside it?
And here's a beautiful video by Robert Spencer all about Muhammad's beautiful deeds to go with the beautiful photo.
What!? Sorry, sorry, I forgot Spencer is a Nazi too. Sheesh, they're everywhere.
OK, I finally found a beautiful video. It turns out Wilders and Spencer were right, Muhammad was an intolerant psycho, but it's OK because Islam became peaceful after him. The answer is in this video...
What has changed since Charles Martel in 732 AD?
Here is the quote about the exact date that Islam became peaceful:
The same threat from 732 AD still exists today, nothing has changed, except we don't have Charles Martel to protect us any longer. But what we do have are insane politicians that don't stop them at the borders, but import them, import their culture, and import the very same extremism that is responsible for all the death and bloodshed before and after 9/11. And for what reason is this being done? For cheap labour?
What!? Oh, oh, oh ... Now I get it. Best leave that pretty picture all by itself. My bad.
File under: the ideology of beautiful pictures masks an evil prophet, but it is a pretty picture, and that's what counts.
Australia lost the final of the 4 Nations rugby league to New Zealand on Saturday. Watching the highlights you may notice a couple of tries were scored down Lote Tuqiri's wing.
Tuqiri's selection created controversy when he was selected at the last minute ...
CLIVE Churchill Medallist Darius Boyd has been left out of Australia's Four Nations side for a player who only arrived in the Kangaroos camp on Tuesday afternoon...
It will be a bitter blow for Boyd, who was named on an extended bench but is unlikely to play, after a magnificent season with the Dragons.
St George Illawarra's Boyd was one of the form players in the NRL throughout the season. He ran third in the Dally M Medal count behind Todd Carney and Robbie Farah.
He was player of the match in the grand final and one of the first players chosen in the original Kangaroos squad.
He has been a member of the virtually invincible Queensland State of Origin team for the past three years and has regularly outplayed his NSW opposites on the wing. Tuqiri wasn't even considered good enough when the Roos squad was originally named two weeks ago.
He marched into camp on Tuesday afternoon after Jarryd Hayne was ruled out and 24 hours later was in the Test side.
Lote had a great season for the Wests Tigers ... But he wasn't good enough to play for Queensland under Mal Meninga, yet he's now good enough to play for Australia under his club coach Tim Sheens.
Work that one out.
Rothfield smells a rat, but he's not allowed to consider the other possibility i.e. that Tuqiri was selected to keep the Australian side from looking too white.
If the bias in some media is any indication, there is a favouritism for Tuqiri that defies reality. For while there was no shortage of gushing praise when Tuqiri was selected, the media is strangely silent after his substandard performance on Saturday.
USMAN Khawaja has taken a giant step towards becoming Australia's first Test cricketer of Muslim faith by gaining selection in Australia's Ashes squad this morning.
Australia today surprisingly unveiled a 17-man Ashes squad at a rain-affected gala event at Circular Quay.
Surprising? The proximity of those two paragraphs tells you something. Cricket is still a bastion of whiteness. I'm sure the diversity ideologues have been hounding Cricket Australia for years now to diversify. At last they can get the monkey off their back by finally naming a Muslim in their (conveniently extended) squad.
File under: sport, or agent of ideology? You decide.
The US Secretary of State also claimed that any strategic bet on China is a punt on a geopolitical uncertainty - the future stability and continuity of China: "There's no doubt about its economic success. But any fair reading of history would argue that unless that economic success is matched by growing political space and openness, there are going to a lot of tensions within China that will have to be dealt with.''
The Gillard government has decided that it agrees with Clinton. The two countries concur that the best chance of avoiding a major clash with China is not to yield to its new assertiveness, but to strengthen the network of alliances to better temper its demands.
Bzzz! Politician and journalist fail. So long as we continue to support China's economic and military rise by trading with it, we are strengthening China's arm. Non-yielding assertive posturing is a bugger-all brainless left-hand policy if it refuses to acknowledge the right-hand which is feeding the monster. But what else do you expect from ideologues other than denial of reality?
But at least there is some acknowledgement of the rising menace ...
Mrs Clinton squarely confronted the question of whether Australia should reassess its American alliance to give greater weight to a fast-rising China.
"I think that the core values of the Australian people, the quality of life, the standard of living, the aspirations that Australians feel are very much in line with the way Americans think and act," she said in Melbourne yesterday.
"So our relationship is essential to both of us. That doesn't mean we won't have relationships with others, but it does mean that this will remain the core partnership.
"And it is important to recognise that just because you increase your trade with China or your diplomatic exchanges with China, China has a long way to go in demonstrating its interest in being - and its ability to become - a responsible stakeholder.
Alas, there are those who are ready to ditch the alliance.
... China is already strong enough economically to challenge American power in Asia, it is already acquiring the military and diplomatic muscle to compete directly for leadership, and it is showing its determination to do so...
China's rise presents the US with a serious challenge to its leadership of Asia for the first time in decades, and presents Australia with an impossible choice between our traditional alliance and our economic future. The two allies are as a result pulling further apart. Washington wants Australia to help resist China's challenge by increasing military and diplomatic co-operation, while Canberra just wants to avoid taking sides between our major ally and our major trading partner.
The result is an alliance that, despite the warm words, is rapidly losing strategic and political coherence...
The more the rest of us try to constrain China, the more disruptive it will become.
So we should be asking the US to strike a delicate balance, playing a strong role in Asia while allowing China scope to satisfy its legitimate aspirations for more influence. We have to be careful not to appease aggression, but we must also be sure we do not incite aggression by refusing to accommodate legitimate ambition. This will not be easy, but a peaceful future for Asia, and for Australia, depends perhaps more than anything else on the US getting this balance right.
... there are real risks that it would become out of control, with serious danger of war... Australia would find itself forced to choose whether to follow the US into an increasingly intense strategic competition with China, or abandon the alliance.
So we keep supporting the rise of China with our trade, only we're going to pull a magical diplomatic solution out of our proverbial to calm the monster we have created? I'd say that's a solution definitely lacking "coherence".
And finally we come to biggest ideologue of them all: Big Kev. When there are only two clear choices ahead, you can count on the ideologue to concoct a magical "third way".
TONY JONES: Now, you've talked recently about a third way of dealing with China that involves neither conflict nor kowtowing. What do you mean exactly by that?
KEVIN RUDD: What I mean, Tony, is that for many, many years now, the debate in Western countries in particular, and to some extent even within China itself, has said that there's only two ways of approaching the rise of this great power.
One is that we're in some sort of incipient or emerging conflict with China, and the other is the only way forward is to kowtow, in other words to comply with everything China says.
I don't think either of those paths is productive. I think there is a rational third way to proceed, and I believe that can be done through a comprehensive political and economic relationship where we agree on our common interests, both in the region, both at a world stage and bilaterally as well, but also not walking away from those areas in which we disagree.
I think that's the right and rational way to proceed, rather than having this simple, black/white alternative which frankly doesn't lend itself to the great complexity that is modern China.
KEVIN RUDD, FOREIGN MINISTER: ... the Asia Pacific region, which is in a state of huge change. Yes, we do have the rise of China, and we to have of course burgeoning military expenditures in many other countries in the region. So one of the things that we engage in is: how do you build for the future a stable, rules-based order for East Asia and the Pacific for this 21st Century? That's one of the things that we engaged in substantively during these discussions in Melbourne...
I think it's important that we're all contributors to the regional and global order. China has come from being an impoverished state 30 years or so ago to being one of this region's great powers and is on track to become a global great power. Therefore, it's entirely right that the Americans, ourselves and others talk about how these rising powers, including India, contribute to a regional and global rules-based order. And the reason is that provides the stability for the future, and that strategic stability then makes economic growth and jobs possible as well. So therefore, this is not specifically targeted at the PRC; it's targeted at the region as a whole, and that's what we're in the business of doing with our American friends...
Foreign policy is looking ahead and seeing where we're likely to be in a decade's time, and how do we make appropriate preparations? If we look at this region of ours, it's replete with strategic uncertainty. Why? Here, unlike in Europe, we've outstanding territorial disputes - on the Korean Peninsula, in the East China Sea, in the South China Sea and going further round to India of course in Kashmir. So you ask: why are we so keen on developing a rules-based order which enables us to have confidence in security building measures among us, greater predictability of military budgeting, military exercising and the like? It's because this region is much rawer - or much more raw - whatever the correct English is - than is the case in Europe. Therefore, we've got a whole lot of building to do. That's why we've been such strong supporters of this concept of an Asia Pacific community, which now has its form and shape through the East Asia Summit. We've gotta develop its agenda and establish those rules. We don't want conflict in our region.
... therefore the idea of some zero sum game, head to Washington or head to Beijing, is frankly nonsense. That's not the way in which you conduct a foreign policy of a robust, independent and proud state such as ours, Australia.
... we believe therefore that by enhancing the dialogue one-on-one with the Chinese, but also regionally, through this emerging institution, the East Asian Summit, we can obtain greater predictability, greater consistency and we believe greater stability in terms of military operations within the region. As I said before, right now, it's all a bit brittle. We've not had these sort of institutions on the political and security front. Our job now as builders of the region's architecture is to get that right, and that includes with our friends in China as well.
Awww, that's so nice. A rules-based order sounds so strong, when now there is only brittleness. Kevin is so nice, he must be right. No need to change our suicidal trade policy which is feeding a monster. No, the monster will follow the rules. No, really. Kevin said it so articulately it must be true. He speaks Mandarin, so he must be right.
Here is the great ideologue denying our suicidal trade policy and pulling a magical third-way out of his proverbial.
File under: relax, the suicidal ideology of indiscriminate trade comes equipped with magical solutions which can be pulled from the proverbial at the last minute to calm any monsters that we may have blindly created in full view and plain sight because (a) the ideology of free trade is never wrong and (b) bullies just need more love and time to develop and (c) a rules-based order will fix everything anyway and (d) the mindless groupthink that will come with the Asia-Pacific Community will put everyone to sleep and herald an open-borders nirvana just like the EU, just wait, you'll see.
America has long been a country of limitless possibility. But the dream has now become a nightmare for many. The US is now realizing just how fragile its success has become -- and how bitter its reality. Should the superpower not find a way out of crisis, it could spell trouble ahead for the global economy...
The United States is a confused and fearful country in 2010. American companies are still world-class, but today Apple and Coca-Cola, Google and Microsoft are investing in Asia, where labor is cheap and markets are growing, and hardly at all in the United States. Some 47 percent of Americans don't believe that the America Dream is still realistic...
The Desperate States of America are loud and distressed. The country has always been a little paranoid, but now it's also despondent, hopeless and pessimistic. Americans have always believed in the country's capacity for regeneration, that a new awakening is possible at any time. Now, 63 percent of Americans don't believe that they will be able to maintain their current standard of living...
The country is reacting strangely irrationally to the loss of its importance -- it is a reaction characterized primarily by rage. Significant portions of America simply want to return to a supposedly idyllic past. They devote almost no effort to reflection, and they condemn cleverness and intellect as elitist and un-American, as if people who hunt bears could seriously be expected to lead a world power. Demagogues stir up hatred and rage on television stations like Fox News. These parts of America, majorities in many states, ignorant of globalization and the international labor market, can do nothing but shout. They hate everything that is new and foreign to them...
The unemployment rate is at 12 percent in Florida. Many people are leaving, running away and leaving everything behind, not just their dreams, but also their furniture, their keys and, most of all, their debt. Others are taking everything with them, from toilets to copper cable...
The beginning of the 1980s offered conservatives the opportunity to reshape the country as they saw fit... When air traffic controllers went on strike for higher pay, Reagan fired them and banned them from federal service for life. He also deregulated the telecommunications industry, the shipping industry, banks and commercial aviation, and he lowered the maximum tax rate from 70 to 28 percent...
The United States became a different country, a radical, free, forward-looking and bold country -- a triumphant country, or so it appeared.
Exporters from other countries surged into the American market, first from Japan and later from China and India...
But was it healthy and sustainable? ...
All of this is making radicals more vocal. "I think what we're seeing now in America is an outbreak of isolationism, nativism and xenophobia," Reich says, pointing toward animosity toward immigrants, accusations against China and growing skepticism of foreign trade...
"The US economy has been losing momentum for the last decade," says Edmund Phelps, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for economics. According to Phelps, it has been increasingly clear, since the beginning of the millennium, that no new jobs are being created on balance, because the US economy has undergone structural change. Companies are dominated by investors interested only in the kinds of quick and large profits that can be achieved by reducing the workforce. Almost 6 million jobs have been eliminated since 2000. Today only 9 percent of Americans work in the manufacturing industry -- half as many as in 1985.
"America has to change," says Obama's economic advisor Paul Volcker in New York. "I wish we had fewer financial engineers and more real engineers instead, like mechanical engineers." America, according to Volcker, must "rebuild its industrial sector." Since World War II, job growth has kept up with population growth, ranging from 10 to 20 percent per decade. The country was firmly convinced that it could continue to do so. In the last decade, the population grew by 25 million, but there were no new jobs, or at least no net job creation...
Can he find a different job? "There are no jobs," he says. The Petersons haven't been able to make their mortgage payments for the last 16 months.
"It's all so frustrating," says Marc. He is referring to their imminent move, his sons' anxiety, their debt, of course, and, most of all, the realization of not having made any progress after working for 20 years. "Salaries did not rise, but the cost of living did," says Amie. "We scaled back, even our dreams. The things we hoped for will not come true."
The naked fear of the undertow is palpable throughout the entire country, where people who once considered themselves part of the middle class, the solid center of the country, now feel threatened. These are the people who, now that the smoke has cleared, are suddenly realizing that 30 years of economic growth, all the boom years, have virtually passed them by. In 1978, the average income for men in the United States was $45,879. In 2007, it was $45,113, adjusted for inflation...
The unemployment rate in the United States is at about 10 percent. But when the people who have stopped looking for work and are not registered anywhere are included, the real number is likely to be closer to 20 percent. For the first time since the Great Depression, Americans have a problem with long-term unemployment...
Almost 45 million Americans are considered poor, with 4 million falling below the poverty line in 2009 alone. The Department of Agriculture warns of growing "food insecurity." One fourth of all children in the United States depend on government food stamps...
Uh oh, I just thought of a way for Obama to become very popular: to indulge the protectionist instinct, raise tariffs and rebuild America's manufacturing sector. He has hinted at such policies before. Maybe the newly elected Republicans would support him. I support a return to protectionism, but I don't like Obama regaining popularity...
... the loudest cheer in the early stages of the Australian innings came when Victoria captain Cameron White was bowled for a golden duck.
The unique circumstances of the match against Sri Lanka meant White and his teammates were effectively the away side ...
Cricket authorities were quietly muttering their thanks that Melbourne's Sri Lankan community love their cricket so much.
Sri Lankan fans dominated -- maybe by as much as 80 per cent -- the poor crowd of about 10,000 watching the match.
Colourful and noisy, the Sri Lankans even had a small brass band to help create a carnival atmosphere on a cool, bleak spring afternoon yesterday.
The article then lists the alleged reasons why Australian fans didn't turn up. Alas, it didn't list the one reason I rarely go nowadays: because I don't like watching 'away' games in my own country. If I want to hear people speaking in tongues, I can catch a train and get an earful, so why would I pay money to get that with added screams and drums? Bugger that for a joke.
Here's how a couple of news sources titled their articles (but have since retitled them... probably because reality is too confronting) ...
I guess we can at least be thankful they aren't booing our national anthem, yet.
The NSW goverment wants to destroy some of the most productive farming land in Australia by allowing mining companies to drill for coal seam gas there.
The Liverpool Plains have average crop yeilds 40% BETTER than the national average. It's as close to drought proof as you can get in Australia. Some farmers on the plains say that they haven't had a crop failure in three generations. How rare is that in drought ravaged Australia?
By allowing coal seam gas mining on the Liverpool Plains, the government is basically putting a stop to broad acre farming. The gas wells would be a close as 300m apart with roads and other infastructure going to each well.
Coal seam gas mining also produces millions of litres of waste salty water which would be poisonous to any living thing. The ming companies won't say how they will dispose of this water.
The gas would only last a few decades, farming can last forever. It's yet another example of the NSW goverments total incompetance. Another example that a quick buck is king to them, regardless of the damage it will do.
THIS MADNESS CANNOT BE ALLOWED TO GO AHEAD!!
Please write to the NSW premier at:
premier@nsw.gov.au
AND the opposition leader at:
barry.ofarrell@nsw.liberal.org.au
and voice your disapproval.
Public campaigns can work, but the pollies need to hear from YOU!
How can I help? We really need your help in reaching 5,000 people to tell Premier Kristina Keneally ...
