The Middle Eastern world, it is exploding Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’ You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’ You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun you’re totin’ And even the Todd River has bodies floatin’ But you tell me Over and over and over again, my friend Ah, you don’t believe We’re on the eve of destruction. Well Bush don’t understand what I’m tryin’ to say If he calls that freedom they should commit him today If the button is pushed, there’s no runn...

The women of Mutitjulu are understandably scared that their children are going to be taken away. This tells us that they are loving, caring mothers who do their best while living in poverty. What will the Government do to alleviate their fears? The Government is right to act to end alcohol and drug abuse. In the short-term, this will stop a lot of the fighting and sexual abuse from happening. But as Noel Pearson says, if this is going to work long-term, Aboriginal people themselves have t...

Mal Brough's "new paternalism" is hardly different from the old paternalism that failed dismally in the past. He acts from concern and compassion, but so did the Governments that removed indigenous children from their families in the hope of giving them a better life in urban white families. The issues of welfare dependency, drugs and sexual abuse are issues that must be addressed, but surely it would make more sense to try something that has a chance of working, rather than having another go...

The jokes the Americans will get are highlighted in bold. Dolphins are being used by the US Navy to monitor waters for enemy ships. Animal rights experts protested and asked whether we really want wild animals in charge of America’s national security. Looking at the last Presidential election, evidently the answer is yes. Education Minister Julie Bishop has suggested Australia should adopt performance pay for teachers. Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews has also suggested we ...

For the second time in a month a right winger has whinged to me about our left-biased media and I'm going to get this off my chest because it's ridiculous. When I described the media of today as right biased, I was asked "which newspapers have you been reading?" (Sorry fishhead). Link In response: The Australian, which even John Howard recently thanked for having been widely supportive of his economic reforms. The same Australian that has run a "war on critical literacy" because it is l...

What made me laugh in 2006? The news as always! Here’ the US version of my satirical wrap up of 2006. And the Good News? Former Seinfeld star, Michael Richards was caught on a mobile phone camera yelling racist insults at black members of an audience he was delivering stand up to. Richards yelled at the people “N**gers! N**gers! Kick em out, they’re n**gers!”. At first the audience thought they’d accidentally walked into a Bill Cosby gig, but then he continued “50 years ago we’d have had ...

This is the cartoon I would draw if I had time to draw right now: Saddam hears news of Rumsfeld Saddam: In my country, you lose war, your head roll. In America, you win war, your head roll. This America is strange country. FULL-TIME chaplains would be installed in government schools to lift religious standards and provide mentoring for students under a plan backed by the federal Education Minister. http://www.vucthy-mors.dk/pb/Edb%20layout/F%E6lles%20filer/Charles%20Chaplin.jpg B...

I'm a lefty as my username makes painfully obvious. I used to be a commy. I still believe thee is an important truth to the old adage that if you're not a commy when you're 20, you don't have a heart. Uni students should always try to be as left as they can personally manage and get active in demonstrations. But I digress. I am not a commy (at the age of 24 :> ) . I am not a commy for the same reasons I was a commy. I always maintained that it was not communism that was flawed, but the peo...

I sit in my air-conned office all day Pushing paper, slaving away People don't realise how hard I work. I wish I could be on the dole with no pride from achieving goals and no reason to get up in the morn. If it weren't for the f**king poor people I wouldn't have to pay tax so I could afford to get a pool If it weren't for the damned working class I could put Bailey's in my glass, so I wouldn't be stuck getting pissed on beer. These dole bludgers ruin everything for me Life's ...

Remember New Orleans and all the black gangs raping people in their hour of need? And let's face it, it's not the only time we've seen that a very large proportion of criminals are BLACK. There I said it. I hate to be the person that points it out. I'm not racist. I just constantly point out the bad things that some blacks do and then make generalisations about how race affects the situation. You can't deny that race is a factor. You just have to look at the news, and there it is. Black peopl...

I don’t get why people get such a major hang-up about homosexuality. I can understand people believing that there is a God who outlaws non-procreative sex. But I don’t understand why denouncing homosexuality seems to be such a high priority for many Christians. You don’t see Bishop Pell rushing out to say what a blight adultery is on our society. Nor do you see blokes who go out gay-bashing also going out adulterer-bashing. Yet no matter what religion you are, adultery’s a bad thing. The abho...

Something I realised recently about why I got so stressed out last year during election time. All my favourite comedians have gone serious. Paul McDermott hosts Strictly Dancing. James O’Loghlin hosts The Inventors. Peter Berner hosts the Einstein Factor. Andrew Denton hosts Enough Rope. * These are all worthwhile and good projects, but my coping strategy has gone. The way I used to cope with a World Gone Right was to have a laugh at it. It made me feel like it was cope-with-able....

Liberal philosophy is based on the assumption of the free, autonomous individual. Adam Smith helped give rise to the French ideal of Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite and developed an economic theory (liberalised capitalism) based around this youthful ideal as it was then. It was thought that by abolishing the enforced, legalised markers of class distinctions (like royalty, servants) that were present under feudalism that this would allow people to become free, to act as they want. It was as tho...

There is a controversial plan to allow individual Northern Territory Aboriginals to lease or sell their own homes on native title land . Link . The idea is that this will improve health in communities where many people live in sheds, tents and shoddy housing. Although I admire Mundine’s attempts to move forward and empower Aboriginal communities for the future, I like many, am concerned that the new plan imposes Western culture on indigenous communities. Most Aboriginal cultures were noma...

There's been a lot of fuss in the past few weeks about the influence of postmodern philosophy on current literacy education. Everyone's very worried about this evil "critical literacy" thing that is poisoning our kids' minds. Unfortunately very few of the critics (or loudest proponents for that matter)seem to have any idea what they are talking about. Our Education Minister recently spoke out against it, painting it as some sort of Communist indoctrination or something, and everyone's favouri...