Posts in ‘Uncategorized’

More and More Like Vietnam

Tuesday, November 18th, 2003

Iraq is looming as a huge problem for the US and Bush. And despite Howard sneaking away from it with talk about Australia ‘moving on’, the blowback may yet feature in the next election. After all, the putative new defence policy promises plenty more Iraqs. One argument that really gets me about Iraq is the […]

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Posted by Peter at 1:28 pm | Comments Off on More and More Like Vietnam |
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Power in Opposition

Tuesday, November 18th, 2003

Gough Whitlam spent a lot of time and energy persuading the ALP before 1972 that Labor could only accomplish things in government. Being in opposition, he argued, meant being impotent. And Labor had spent a lot of years in opposition by 1972. This idea, that it was all about winning government, became a mantra for […]

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Posted by Peter at 1:14 pm | Comments Off on Power in Opposition |
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High taxes lower fertility – it’s official

Tuesday, November 18th, 2003

But then a HECS debt is in effect an hypothecated tax on tertiary educated Australians. If HECS debts lead to lower fertility, then so too must higher taxes. The sound you can hear is a dog chasing its tail.

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Posted by Graham at 1:06 pm | Comments (2) |
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Order 39, Paul Bremer and the CPA

Tuesday, November 18th, 2003

Order 39 of the Coalition Provisional Administration in Iraq has reached cult status courtesy of an article by Naomi Klein of No Logo fame…Yet Klein’s reasoning is dubious and many of her facts wrong.

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Posted by Graham at 11:48 am | Comments (7) |
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Not a Warlike Nation

Saturday, November 15th, 2003

John Howard says Australians are not a warlike people. I don’t think Australians are especially warlike, but we have a history of governments sending off Australian boys to fight wars for our imperial masters. Sudan , South Africa, World War One, Malaysia, Vietnam, etc – Australia has a bad habit of going to fight in […]

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Posted by Peter at 2:44 pm | Comments Off on Not a Warlike Nation |
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The intentional fallacy

Friday, November 14th, 2003

The real question therefore is (a) whether this is a fallacy that Brandis perpetrated by intention, or (b) whether he has some more fundamental problems with reality.

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Posted by Graham at 2:01 pm | Comments Off on The intentional fallacy |
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Labor’s Foreign Policy

Friday, November 14th, 2003

“The change of government provides a new opportunity for us to reassess a whole range of Autralian foreign policies and attitudes…the general direction of my thinking is towards a more independent Australian stance in international affairs, an Australia which will be less militarily-oriented and not open to suggestions of racism; an Australia which will enjoy […]

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Posted by Peter at 11:18 am | Comments Off on Labor’s Foreign Policy |
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It’s not national security that is killing Labor, it is lack of trust.

Thursday, November 13th, 2003

There’s a comforting Labor myth (comforting if you’re a Labor supporter anyway) that the only reason John Howard is Prime Minister is because he has “dog whistled” the xenophobic vote

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Posted by Graham at 4:39 pm | Comments Off on It’s not national security that is killing Labor, it is lack of trust. |
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Spend that surplus, Mark.

Thursday, November 13th, 2003

I think Mark Latham is the biggest gun in the Labor armory, but he’s wrong about taxes. Labor should spend all the surplus, whatever it is, and not give it back in tax cuts (and especially not to the wealthy); in fact, Labor should increase taxes – or just get the rich to pay their […]

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Posted by Peter at 12:31 pm | Comments Off on Spend that surplus, Mark. |
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Iraq and Vietnam

Thursday, November 13th, 2003

There are a lot of parallels betwen Iraq and Vietnam. A deeply conservative, single-mindedly pro-US prime minister sends Australian troops into an internationally unpopular war started on the basis of lies. Then it was to defeat international communism, supposedly on the verge of destroyng the west, this time it is international terrorism. Growing dissent within […]

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Posted by Peter at 12:16 pm | Comments Off on Iraq and Vietnam |
Filed under: Uncategorized