NATIONAL

- THE GUN DEBATE

The failure of the Australian Government to legalize handguns has produced more fatalities, this time two barmaids (Perri Stratton and Rachael Merlow) in Queensland.   Victim Rachael knew that her ex was coming to kill her, but when asked the police said that they could do nothing "because there were no witnesses to the threat".  The failure of the federal government's gun restriction policy is highlighted by the use of an illegal semi-automatic rifle by the murderer.

It is just not good enough for the government to steal our civil liberties when that theft results in the death of the innocent at the hands of the guilty.  How many times must the "nobrain" solution, that "we can stop rape, murder and armed violence by making guns illegal" be disproved?

1. Does anybody seriously believe that the gun laws stop a criminal bent on crime from obtaining a handgun or semi-automatic weapon?
2. Does anybody doubt that a handgun is chiefly the weapon of the weak?  The strong have no need of weapons, they can use their strength.  That is why a gun is called an "equalizer".
3. Does anybody doubt that law abiding people who become "at risk" have difficulty finding an equalizer?  In NSW it is illegal to carry even a pen knife to fend off an attacker.

- THE JOURNALISTS & THE ABORIGINALS.

When the first fleet arrived in Australia in 1888, one of the diarists noted that the Aborigines seemed to make an art form of spinning tall stories.

In the year 2000, dissemination is still an aboriginal art form, although most Australian journalists do not seem aware of that fact.  The journalist promulgated notion that "Aborigines have a spiritual connection with the land", and that "they could never buy and sell land like white men" has by now been thoroughly discredited, most recently by the sale of aboriginal land worth many millions of dollars for residential development in the centre of Ku-Ring-Gai national park in Sydney's exclusive North Shore.

One of the most recent tales promulgated has been that of "the stolen generation", an attempt by journalists to help fringe Aboriginal activists win sympathy and compensation from the mass of Australian taxpayers.

There has recently been a massive vilification of Prime Minister Howard who pointed out that it was not a generation (i.e. 100% of children in an age group) that was institutionalized.  The most generous estimate indicates that considerably less than 10% of children were removed from their homes, and that 10% includes those that were institutionalized for good cause (child abuse etc).  The mass of Australian people do not seem quite as impressed by our elitist opinion moulder's argument, at least if the underwhelming support on talkback shows is any indication.

Another attack by elitist journalists on the Howard Government has been the attempt to force federal intervention in the state's crime and punishment process.  The states of Western Australia and the Northern Territory have recently enacted legislation prescribing penalties for crimes, thus reducing judicial diccretion.  The print journalists have claimed that this is discriminatory, because a disproportionate number of Aborigines are convicted.  They completely ignore the fact that before the legislation, the same proportion of Aborigines were convicted of the same crimes.

Only the certainty of punishment has changed.

INTERNATIONAL

MICROSOFT & NETSCAPE

Now that Microsoft has been found guilty of depriving Netscape of it's fair market share, we can expect a claim from the Netscape stockholders before it was sold to AOL for damages.  SPIN believes that damages of the order of one hundred billion dollars ($100,000,000,000.00) are in order, or about one third to one fifth of Microsoft stock.

Bill Gates can be expected to scream, but really, he was behaving like a schoolyard bully, and he deserves to lose every penny of the suggested ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS.

(That is not a misprint, ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS.)
 

This page published during the week starting 3 April 2000.

ARCHIVES.