International:

American media giant Ted Turner likens Murdoch to Adolf Hitler

"He (Rupert Murdoch) doesn't have much in the way of principles. You can have a lot of stuff without principles."

Well said, Ted, well said - does this trait perhaps run in the Murdoch family?

We are delighted to present the first of our new weekly column from Canberra:

Extract: "What a difference four months makes! Same time, same place. The plaza was deserted in the warm evening light. We were fewer in number, certainly, but the protesters had been absent for months now. A reflection on the difference in the depth of our feelings, I suppose."

Aboriginal boys who spat an Hanson to spend another Christmas behind bars.

The two young Aboriginal louts, who have criminal records as long as your arm (despite their ages of 12 and 13) and who spat at Pauline Hanson about a year ago, are likely to spend another Christmas behind bars.

Yesterday they were convicted aver an incident which took place on October 30th in which they stole a car and then led police on a high speed chase. The magistrate sentenced the boys to three months in a youth detention centre after they ran away from Boys Town in Beaudesert south of Brisbane.

Earlier this year the spitting charge against the young criminals were dropped. 

Native Title... more interesting links

University of Western Australia Native Title Archive and
Native Title Tribunal
"The Tribunal is a Commonwealth Government body established under the Native Title Act 1993 to facilitate the making of agreements among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, governments, industry and others whose rights or interests may co-exist with native title rights and interests. The Tribunal is not a court and does not decide whether or not native title exists."

Left Link's racist connections exposed.

Yesterday we took that international racist organisation called Nattyreb to task. From the "Nattyreb" link you will see the extreme left and terrorist elements that hook into the Australian Labor Party's on-line Left Link posts. Articles which (Nattyreb website) promote the Sydney 2000 Boycott campaign being established by that no-hoper Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin who was kicked out of Australia earlier this year.

It is no surprise that the web page carrying this  (Left Link post) message is an exact copy of the original Left Link post by Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin earlier this year.

They call it "brothers in arms".

Political:

Australia won concessions in Kyoto on the greenhouse gas debate at the eleventh hour yesterday.

Prime Minister John Howard congratulated Senator Robert Hill, the Coalition's Environment Minister, after he secured major variances from the general targets agreed to by most other nations at the conference.

Under the treaty which Australia has now agreed to sign Australia will be able to increase greenhouse gas emissions by 8% over the next fifteen years "protecting tens of thousands of Australian jobs". The concession came after a marathon 14 hour session which ended at 5am yesterday morning and Australia agreed to reduce the amount of land clearing.

The European Union have agreed to cut emissions by 8%; the US by 7% and Japan by 6% under the treaty.

Under the agreement thirty eight industrialised nations agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2% on 1990 levels by 2010. The gases involved include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and the three halocarbons which have replaced the ozone-damaging chlorofluorocarbons.

Some countries, like China, have done even better than Australia - being given voluntary reduction targets. 

You Say:

Subject: Comments on Australian News of the Day

Dear Editor,

You reported a certain Ms.Karen Walters as saying, “I just find [Pauline Hanson’s] views insignificant. My design is to stir some rationality back into the debate. I think we should try and move forward a progressive, advanced, sophisticated democracy."

First of all, if Ms. Walters really understood the implications of ‘rationality’, she would realise it demands reasoned debate of ALL ideas, not just those she regards as significant. The proposition, “Ms.Walters ‘finds’ certain views to be insignificant” proves nothing, and is not reasoned debate. It is called an Appeal to Authority (her own), is a logical fallacy, and is anything BUT rational. In addition it is rude, arrogant, and repugnantly elitist.

Secondly, if she thinks that by claiming her sort of democracy to be more ‘progressive, advanced, and sophisticated’ she thereby proves it to be BETTER than the older sort, she is wrong again. It proves Ms. Walters believes that NEW (‘progressive, advanced, sophisticated’) MAKES TRUE, another logical fallacy, and equally irrational. In fact the word ‘sophisticated’ comes from ‘sophistry’, which means ‘dishonest argument’, which is exactly what she has given us.

It seems to me that if any views should be ‘just found’ to be insignificant, they are her own.

Graham Strachan.

Business:

The Asian markets continue to be plunged into chaos as currencies fluctuate and, for Australia, this together with a free falling gold price has led to the dollar crashing to its lowest point in over 4 years.

Yesterday the Australian dollar stood at just 66.66 cents after standing at 80 cents (US) just months ago.

Sport:

The South African Proteas continue to beat the Australian and New Zealand sides - despite low scores- in the one day matches.

Australia's one day team is languishing at the bottom of the table after a miserable batting run in which only Mark Waugh has made any headway with the bat.

Personal trivia, from the global office:

Beautiful day in paradise after a few cloudy and rainy days.

Will be off to a bar-b-que on the Gold Coast this Sunday.

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