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- JOHN HOWARD -
Back on 3rd March 2001 & again on 18th May 2001 SPIN predicted that unless John Howard fulfilled certain conditions, he would be ousted from the treasury benches. Those conditions were repeal of the GST, and the making of peace with Pauline Hanson.
John Howard avoided the letter of those requirements by giving back huge amounts of tax on Petrol, and by adopting Pauline Hanson's platform. With the opposition's stalwart refusal to adopt a "repeal" platform, that still might not have succeeded. The straw that broke the camel's back was September 11.
There is still a huge amount of resentment about the GST,
mostly from pre GST small businesses. Many of those will fail.
The new era of business will accept GST as a problem that must be managed.
- AFGHANISTAN -
The collapse of the Taliban was mind boggling. For more than a month they had been hurling defiance at the non Muslim world. Then, seemingly overnight, they were reduced to a few diminishing pockets of ineffectual bravado.
It is a puzzle. How was this miracle was staged? One plausible explanation is omniscient intelligence married to laserpoint military excisions. Another possibility is that the Muslim world and the Taliban was fragmented by putrefaction & infighting. A very remote possibility is that God exists and Mohammed got it wrong.
The scary thing is the effectiveness of US instrumentality.