Friday, August 29, 2003

Further on fathers and family: see this.
Kids Hate Divorce

Experts have "discovered" that kids need both parents and are distressed by separation from either one.

Perhaps we should have more emphasis on saving marriages than on easy divorce.

The article does make one good point: that after divorce:

"The great irony is that as family law experts quibble over how much contact fathers should be allowed to have with their young children, these children will not be cared for exclusively by their mothers. These days, many such infants and toddlers will spend long periods cared for by unfamiliar child-care workers, and will often be farmed out to relatives, friends or mum's boyfriend, even for overnight stays. Unrationed care is permitted by one and all - with rigid controls only on the child's actual father."

Wednesday, August 27, 2003

No Laughing Matter

I see that the Canadian government has banned smiling on passport photos. Some attempt to force the government's grim style on everyone else, I suppose. Or is this a first step towards banning smiling altogether? After all, to allow some to smile surely discriminates against those who cannot smile because they are victims of oppression.

Sunday, August 24, 2003

When the UN building in Iraq was blown up, everyone blamed the Americans for not providing more security. Turns out beefed-up security including armoured cars had been offered to the UN but refused.

Friday, August 22, 2003

More barely reported attacks on innocent civilians in Israel: here, and here. And here, Israel arrests Israelis suspected of attacking Palestinians. But elsewhere, blanket coverage continues of Israel's latest 'incursion' into Gaza.

Thursday, August 21, 2003

Behind the Veil

A Saudi woman writer argues for respect and rights for women in the Kingdom.

Meanwhile, also in Saudi Arabia, residents fought a 'fully-fledged battle' to stop firefighters from entering their house to gain access to a neighbour's property that was on fire. The reason? There were women in the house.
Recall Fever

Expect to see more left-leaning political groups jump on the recall bandwagon in reaction to the California recall. This group, so-called 'Fair and Balanced PAC' (a rip-off of Fox News' slogan) wants to treat the next election as a 'recall'. But this is another tired old group with familiar mainly pro-abortion players. What I expect to see is more actual recall efforts to unseat Republican governors or judges.

Tuesday, August 19, 2003

After the grieving over the Baghdad blast the question the UN must ask is: "Why do they hate us?"
Re: More Nuclear (See below)

There may be technological solutions to nuclear waste disposal problems.
Caring Community - by Order of the State

The Age gives a forum to Labour politician Mark Latham to advocate state-sponsored (read: 'imposed') village community in place of the dreaded globalization.

"I grieve for the paucity of social capital in Australia, particularly under the policy neglect of the Howard Government." "Policy neglect"? What he means is that the Howard government does not have enough policies, enough programmes, enough social engineering.

Latham's programme includes the following gems:

"The most important goal government can achieve is to give people things to do. " Oh leave us alone, we're busy enough already.

"The evidence again shows that where people live in conditions of material disadvantage they turn in socially. A new national campaign, indeed a new national war against poverty, would be a very important public policy initiative." Haven't we been down this road before? Aren't we always hearing that village and community life is more not less integrated in poorer countries? Let's see, a war against poverty would involve...hmmm...higher taxes by any chance?

"The fourth agenda is to cut down on commuter travelling time. People with busy lives do not have the time and capacity to do a lot of things locally if they are stuck in traffic jams day and night. We need to develop edge cities - move the jobs, the services, the infrastructure and the opportunities much closer to the urban fringe - and cut down commuter travelling time to give people the capacity to work in their neighbourhoods."
Again, this was tried in the 70's. Ever heard of 'new towns'. And imagine the outrage if we started carving up the countryside for more industrial and infrastructure space.

"The sixth initiative is to recognise a natural limit on the market. Market forces sometimes can be destructive of social capital. For instance, individual employment contracts, individualistic arrangements in the workplace, obviously work against the collective solidarity of society."
Union man strikes again!

"The final area of public policy initiative is corporate social responsibility - building social partnerships, building bridges from the economic to the social and ensuring that we have much more than passive philanthropy in Australia. I do not want executives writing out cheques on the 25th floor, thinking they have discharged their responsibilities to the disadvantaged at that point. I want them working face to face, developing and dedicating their skills to help people, to build relationships of trust across class barriers, across economic divides, and to build genuine partnerships and corporate social responsibility."
In other words--note this requires 'public policy initiative'--force corporations to run social welfare programmes. Good thinking!

Mark Latham is stuck in a 1970s time warp.

Monday, August 18, 2003

More Nuclear

No less a person than Sir Alec Broers, an Australian, the vice-chancellor of Cambridge University, and the president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, is calling for the building of more nuclear power stations. Right now 23 per cent of Britian's electricity comes from nuclear stations, but by 2020 only one nuclear plant will be still working. Will 'renewables' pick up the slack? I don't think so. Britain will simply become even more dependent on fossil fuels.
"I have an obligation to the 8 million people who went to the polls last November,” Gray Davis said during one stop last week. “They asked me to do a job in California. I’m going to do it every day they allow me."

We only wish he had being doing his job.

Saturday, August 16, 2003

According to the Guardian, Iraqis are running out of patience with the deficiencies in their power supply. and other problems. In other news, Iraqis blow up their own oil pipelines. An Iraqi sociologist "blames the violence in his country on a multitude of sources and causes in which politics, ideology, culture, poverty and blunders by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)." Well that's incisive analysis. Everything is to blame--therefore no-one is to blame.
Travel warning: If you die while on vacation in Spain you may come back minus your internal organs.

Friday, August 15, 2003

What the LA Times calls militants and the Hindustan Times calls terrorists have killed 34 people indiscriminately in North-East India. If this list, admittedly a couple of years old, can be trusted, there may be more to come.
California teachers' union leaders are expecting their members to pressurize them for guidance on the Gray Davis recall ballot. Oh great leaders, give us guidance. More likely, California teachers are expecting their union leaders to pressurize them on how to vote and where to send their money.
Now scientists have discovered that men and women are different.

Thursday, August 14, 2003

Meanwhile in Saudi Arabia, a woman is beaten unconscious by other women for taking their pictures with her cellphone. I guess some people really don't like having their picture taken.
Turns out that cattle breath is a greenhouse gas. What about the rest of us?
So the only winner in the affair of the comedian who kissed the prince is the hairy comedian. According to the BBC, "the chief inspector in charge on the night has been moved to another post, and eight are under disciplinary investigation", but Aaron Barschak, who dressed up as Osama bin Laden and planted a kiss on Prince Willam's cheek at his 21st birthday party, "has been told he will not be prosecuted over his actions". Mr Barschak "was happy his antics could lead to improved security around the Royal Family." What a public servant.