Gnu Hunter

The reaction of the media to the Russian hostage drama has been an amazing thing to behold as they excuse the muslim extremists and instead direct their criticism toward the Russian authorities.

The Russian terrorist attacks of recent weeks have presented a serious challenge to most journalist's world view, and they have been unsure how to react.

The challenge arises because the Russian situation demonstrates that the "so called war on terror" is a real war on terror waged against barbarians who want nothing less than a world-wide islamic empire.

The millions of dollars poured into Chechnyan mosques from Saudi Arabia and Osama bin Laden has had its effect.

Does the Chechnyan struggle for independence justify the slaughter of hundreds of children held hostage in Russia.

I listened to the ABC this evening and they pretty much presented the entire crisis and subsequent slaughter of the innocents as the fault of the Russian authorities, and not of the murderous bastards that shot the kiddies in the back as the little ones fled in terror. The bullets bursting open and ripping the flesh from their little bodies.

The waifs had bolted when given a chance at freedom after being crammed in together by their hundreds for days.

For almost two days they had been denied anything to drink but their own piss, although plenty of water was available. The water was withheld by the terrorists as a bargaining chip to assist their negotiations with the Russian authorities.

The ABC had heaps of commentary this evening without knowing anything at all about the sequence of events that lead to the carnage inside. The reporter I heard said that fighting had broken out when two explosive devices set by the 'fighters' had detonated possibly by accident and this led the Russians to attack with great slaughter.

Emphasis has been placed on ill-preparedness of the Russian authorities. Great was the detail about the slovenly look of the Russian soldiery.

So, the Russians were taken by surprise, were ill-prepared, and handled it badly.

So?

Is the resulting slaughter therefore the Russians' fault ?

If the Russians did not attack the terrorists and did not free 800 of the 1,000 hostages, what then? What would the outcome have been if they had not acted? One more day and the children would have started dying of thirst. What then?

The 'fighters' - as the liberal media likes to call them - had threatened to kill 50 hostages for every one of their own number killed.

At the end of their "martyrdom operation" what's to say that they wouldn't have just killed everyone anyway ?

On Day 1, people got a tiny bit of water to drink, but no food. From Day 2, Alla said, nothing.

When she asked the rebels for water for her mother, they laughed at her.

''My mother was terrified, and I thought she was having a heart attack. When I saw my son, my mother ... go unconscious, so tired, so thirsty, I wanted it all to come to an end,'' she said.

''When children began to faint, they laughed,'' Alla said. ''They were totally indifferent.''

The media are in full campaign mode now. Here and in the USA they are campaigning none too subtly via their stories in favor of the politicians or parties of their choice.

In the USA the Associated Press ran a story in which they claim that the Republican audience of thousands booed when they heard President Bush wish Bill Clinton a speedy recovery from heart surgery.

This is the original Associated Press story:

WEST ALLIS, Wis. - President Bush (news - web sites) on Friday wished Bill Clinton (news - web sites) "best wishes for a swift and speedy recovery." "He's is in our thoughts and prayers," Bush said at a campaign rally. Bush's audience of thousands in West Allis, Wis., booed. Bush did nothing to stop them. Bush offered his wishes while campaigning one day after accepting the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in New York. Clinton was hospitalized in New York after complaining of mild chest pain and shortness of breath. Bush recently praised Clinton when the former president went to the White House for the unveiling of his official portrait. He lauded Clinton for his knowledge, compassion and "the forward-looking spirit that Americans like in a president."

You can listen to the very clear audio of Bush's speech here (it downloads quickly). You can hear every sound from the crowd of thousands and there ARE NO BOOS.

When confronted the Associated Press withdrew their story and then put up a revised version, minus the bit about the booing.

News made to order, while you wait.

via Powerline.

Democrats Leader, Andrew Bartlett is a tee-totaller and respecter of the female right not to be manhandled, poked, pushed or abused in the parliament. He has turned from the demon grog and now invests his enthusiasm in his own BLOG. A hot pink blog.

Not overly prone to listening to the people, Bartlett confesses:

Someone wrote to suggest I should just take some time out to watch crap TV - to show I'm always willing to listen to the people, I gave it a go, but it was too crap, so I've returned to writing some of my own.

Bartlett has 'outed' himself as a vegetarian:

The press conference turned into a feisty session about the Greens' drugs policy, where I finally got asked another question on preferences - as in whether I'd ever had a preference for an illegal drug. I said I hadn't ever used an illegal drug, but I didn't condemn anyone who did. Bob said he'd inhaled once, which didn't bother me obviously. However he also said he ate steak, which caused me more concern.

It was rather ironic that the Greens were being attacked in the paper for (among other things) encouraging vegetarianism and Bob was defending himself by inviting people to have a steak with him, whilst I was sitting next to him as the main 'out and proud' vegetarian in the Parliament.

Demonstrating the Stateman's craft at the dinner table:

I finish the day having dinner with a few people discussing the Senate, the Democrats, housing and a range of other issues. During some casual banter, I try to prove my value as an enjoyable dinner companion by make a fleeting reference to the immense cruelty that intensively farmed ducks suffer to the fellow across the table (who by an amazing coincidence happened to be eating duck). He agrees to watch the video of a duck farm that I promise to send him and I promise to think more about how to get better policies developed with housing related matters.

That's what I call a win-win outcome (although now that I think of it, he only said he'd be happy for me to send him the video, he never promised to watch it - some people are just so tricky with words).

Bartlett appears to compose his blog before going to sleep of a night, and I confess that it had the very same effect on me.

Stung by claims of bias Australia's national broadcaster, the ABC, has resorted to hiring a media monitoring agency to spin the broadcaster's impartiality.

However, no improvement of its continuing bias has been detected.

An estimated two thirds of journalists at the broadcaster vote Greens or Labor and are ill-disposed to John Howard and the Liberal Party. And it shows.

The monitoring agency was asked to monitor "share of voice" for the government and the opposition.

Rehame said the Coalition had 57 per cent share of voice on ABC TV compared with Labor's 39 per cent. ABC Radio gave the Coalition 53 per cent of air time and Labor 40 per cent, while online figures were 54 per cent for the Coalition and 38 for Labor.


The Rehame report was a pure share of voice measurement and did not judge whether the content was favourable or otherwise to the parties.

The statistic being measured is obviously one of equal "face time".

One would expect that the government of the day would have the larger "share of voice" because it is the government that makes decisions and implements policy, but the difference observed was only 18%.

Using the ABC's method to prove its non-bias, it would be possible for the ABC to allocate the Liberal government 100% "share of voice" - all of it hugely negative, and claim it can do no more to increase "share of voice".

Clearly in election mode, the ABC's managing director, Russell Balding, joined with the leader of the ALP today to deride the accusations of bias.

Said Balding, the results showed the ABC had "competently and extensively covered the diversity of political views in the pre-election period".

Liberal bad. Labor good. Where's the bias in that?

The campaign for fair treatment at the ABC is having some effect though, because at least now they are making a show of accountability.

The next step is for genuine accountability. Not to the government, but to the Truth.

The Al Jazeera satellite TV network plans to launch an English-language news channel by the end of next year to counteract what it says is unbalanced reporting from Western networks like CNN and the BBC.

'We don't like the spin placed on the news from the Western media. They mean well but there's not enough spin and it's entirely the wrong sort. Al Jazeera always delivers the good stuff to our subscribers.'

"We believe there's a gap in the market," said Nigel Parsons, the London-based managing editor of Al Jazeera International.

'The Western media is preoccupied with truth. Is this true, or is that not true? Delivering a product like that is expensive and time consuming and we're not sure that the whole market wants a product like that. The gap in the market is in the non-truth brand and we think we can fill it. Al Jazeera has a reputation for delivering and we mean to capitalise. We have a range of products that will exploit the non-truth marketplace.'

'Delivering non-truth across international satellite networks is expensive but we hope to turn a profit one day, maybe in about ten years or so. Could I just thank the Qatar government for having confidence in the good work that we do and for funding us for so long with almost all of our cash.'

Ivan Milat is a scoundrel.

Milat is a convicted serial killer who raped, painfully tortured and degraded his victims before killing them in frenzied attacks.

John Marsden is a lawyer who defended him on a couple of occasions.

In 1974 Marsden defended Milat when he was on trial for raping two girls.

On an evening during the course of the court trial Marsden was visiting a gay wine bar with his best friend. Marsden explains, in his new book, what happened next:

...by the time the rape and kidnapping trial began the following day, our luck seemed to have run out. Identification wasn't an issue and I was casting around for a plausible defence. At the end of the first day, Ivan asked me: "How do you think we'll go?"

I let him have it: "Bloody awful. You are going to serve time on this one, mate."

I was staying in Sydney for the duration of the trial and later that night I went to dinner with my best friend Rob Cooper at a Bondi restaurant called the Little Snail. After dinner we went to a gay wine bar called Chez Ivy's and settled down with a glass of red each. To my astonishment, sitting in the corner near us were the two alleged victims from the rape trial, holding hands and sharing a lot of intimacy.

The following morning I rose to my feet and asked one of the women, whom I will call Greta, where she had been the night before. She replied that she had been at home with her parents. I responded: "Of course, you wouldn't have gone to a gay and lesbian bar, would you?" At first Greta denied it, but when pressed she admitted where she'd been and broke down. Then I put to her something that has haunted me to this day (and one that would never be allowed in a court room now): I suggested that her sexuality may have had something to do with what had occurred with Ivan Milat. Crying and under stress, she ended up agreeing - and, in that moment, I knew we had won. Juries in those days were extremely prejudiced against gays and lesbians, and on top of that, we had put into their minds the possibility that the sex may have indeed been consensual.

I am not proud of my conduct that day, but as a solicitor operating in a courtroom environment at that time, I had no choice but to go down that path. I had to act according to the ethics of the profession. That said, I don't believe I should receive any praise for the win. I had a job to do and I did it.

Twenty-two years later Marsden had a job of convincing the Police Task Force to drop its investigations of him.

A police task force investigating the solicitor John Marsden over under-age sex allegations was compromised by a leak, he alleges in his forthcoming autobiography.

The task force, led by Superintendent Bob Inkster, was set up after pedophile allegations against Mr Marsden were broadcast on Channel Seven in 1995 and 1996.

In his book, to be published on Monday, Mr Marsden says that he and one of the task force officers shared a mutual friend. After meeting the officer for a drink, Mr Marsden says, the friend, who has since died, "would then ring me and give me all the details of what was going on in the task force".

"Inkster just couldn't source the leak in his task force - he failed to appreciate the loyalty of gay people when they sense that actions stem from homophobia," Mr Marsden writes.

Mr Marsden has been invited to join the team of lawyers who will be defending Saddam Hussein.

A self deprecating politician? George Bush.

After a four-day celebration that sought to put Bush in the pantheon of the nation's greatest presidents, Bush acknowledged that some voters are put off by his personal traits.

"You may have noticed a few flaws," he said. "People sometimes have to correct my English. I knew I had a problem when Arnold Schwarzenegger started doing it.

"Some folks look at me and see a certain swagger, which in Texas is called walking. Now and then I come across as a little too blunt - and for that we can all thank that white-haired lady sitting right up there," he said, referring to his mother, former first lady Barbara Bush.

Miss Universe, Jennifer Hawkins, our own Aussie bombshell, "accidentally" trod with a stiletto heel on her lovely blue gown which, god be praised, disintegrated and fell around her ankles.

She was left standing in just a g-string thong.

The brave little darling's cheeks were only slightly blushing as she stepped delicately out of her dress and wiggled her way off stage in front of her attentive cat walk audience.

A man in the crowd said she appeared to trip as she turned away from the crowd.

"She came and said a few words and she went to walk off and seemed to trip on her dress," the man said last night.

"The dress fell about her knees, she giggled and then rushed off."

Another witness in the crowd said Hawkins was still smiling as she left the centre, just before 8pm.

"She looked happy, she was still smiling and waving as she left with her minders," he said.

She's happy and smiling. I'm happy and smiling. Every body is happy and smiling.

Please do not look at these pictures of Ms Universe displaying her smile on stage.

Fun things like this happen all the time with my mate Jenn.

What with all the changing in and out of flimsy clothes and them not really being all that substantial, by way of material anyway, a girl can get so confused about what she is or isn't wearing. Like for instance during the Ms Universe competion.

Jennifer Hawkins admitted to a very "Aussie stuff-up" moments before winning Miss Universe 2004, when she returned home for the first time since being crowned.

She said she accidentally kept her bikini bottom on when she changed into her evening gown - the final outfit of the Donald Trump-sponsored pageant watched by millions around the world.

She told the story to hundreds of people at a welcome home party at a Sydney Maserati showroom last night.

"I come off the stage and one of the guys from Miss Universe went 'What is under your dress? It's blue, it's ... you've still got you're swimmer bottoms on,' " she said.

"I'm like, oh my God, in the rush of it all I left my swimmer bottoms under a $25,000 gorgeous dress and I didn't even know about it.

"I always have to do something like that."

Grrowwwl.

The best method to defeat the Greens is to expose their policies to the light of day.

Daylight is a good antiseptic.

RATTLED Greens leader Bob Brown yesterday rushed to distance himself from his party's policies on hard drugs.

Senator Brown, who admitted smoking dope in his mid-20s, denied some of his own party's policies.

"I don't back the illegal drug trade. I don't back an open slather, over-the-counter system," he said.

"I advise people not to (smoke marijuana) - the medical evidence is not good."

But the Greens website advocates the controlled availability of cannabis at "appropriate venues". It proposes to investigate regulating the supply of ecstasy and unspecified drugs in controlled environments, and the removal of illicit drug use from the criminal framework.

Senator Brown's outburst follows a Herald Sun expose of his party's soft-on-drugs policy.

The revelations prompted wide debate about the Greens, whose recent polling indicates they might win the balance of power in the Senate in the new Parliament.

The Greens' other controversial proposals include a push to make Australians eat less meat but ride bicycles more frequently. They advocate higher taxes and new ones, such as inheritance taxes.

Inheritance taxes? You work your life paying near 50% taxes and manage to build up a nest egg to give to your kids and then... Wham. Death Tax.

I think people are waking up to the danger posed by the Greens.

THIS election will probably see the emergence of the Greens as Australia's most important third party. This will be a sad and a bad day for our political culture, for the Greens represent the triumph of extremism over moderation, of the paranoid style over commonsense, and the flight from that civic responsibility which characterises a mature polity.

The Greens are essentially left-wing Hansonites, simultaneously reactionaries and revolutionaries, who combine a hatred of modern society as it actually exists with a conspiracy-laden, fantastical view of how the world works. They offer nothing positive beyond dreamlike cliches and slogans, but their negative power is quite great. They can build nothing, they can damage much. But they may hold the balance of power in the Senate. It is conceivable, though not likely, they will hold the balance of power in the House of Representatives. Bob Brown, the canny, ruthless, manipulative politician who leads the Greens, says 1million Australians may vote for them.

It is hard to believe 1million Australians really support the anti-growth, anti-modern prejudices of the Greens. Many will just be lodging a protest vote, but it's sad that the vehicle of protest should be so disreputable.

Arnie speaks a great speech.

And maybe -- just maybe -- you don't agree with this party on every single issue. I say to you tonight that I believe that's not only OK, but that's what's great about this country.

Here we can respectfully disagree and still be patriotic, still be American and still be good Republicans.

My fellow immigrants, my fellow Americans, how do you know if you are a Republican? Well, I tell you how. If you believe that government should be accountable to the people, not the people to the government, then you are a Republican.

If you believe a person should be treated as an individual, not as a member of an interest group, then you are a Republican.

If you believe your family knows how to spend your money better than the government does, then you are a Republican.

If you believe our educational system should be held accountable for the progress of our children, then you are a Republican.

If you believe this country, not the United Nations, is the best hope for democracy, then you are a Republican.

And, ladies and gentlemen, if you believe that we must be fierce and relentless and terminate terrorism, then you are a Republican.

Now, there's another way you can tell you're a Republican. You have faith in free enterprise, faith in the resourcefulness of the American people and faith in the U.S. economy. And to those critics who are so pessimistic about our economy, I say: Don't be economic girlie-men.

The Gnu Hunter is iritated and particularly ill-disposed towards dumb people today.

They consume far too much oxygen and occupy way too much space. They devour time and space. They are a waste of space.

Now, I'm not talking about your average Joe here. Average is good, in fact average is great. It was Joe Average that invented fire and John Citizen the wheel. I look up to average. Average is your mum and dad who work hard and bring you bread. Average is brilliant.

No, I'm talking about chimps here. Chumps. Dumb chumps.

POLICE arrested a woman and man who left girls aged 11 and 12 in an airport car park and left on vacation after discovering the girls' passports were about to expire.

The kind of people who make goldfish or ducks look bright.

Northern Territory police and Australian Search and Rescue Authorities are continuing to search for a US national presumed missing in the Timor Sea.

Police say the man set out on Monday in a canoe bound for Indonesia.

He launched his canoe at Dundee Beach about 70 kilometres south-west of Darwin.

He told local residents that he was unhappy with US President George W Bush and he intended to paddle to Indonesia to do something about it.

The kind of people who vote for the Australian Democrats. (Cheap shot. Not allowed. - Umpire. Play on!)

The SMH has acquired the services of an actual caveman to scratch out an "election blog" the purpose of which appears solely to promote the Labor Party and the Greens.

The wild-eyed caveman leans so far to the left he stoops and cannot walk upright. He calls Margo Kingston's ravings "analysis".

Kingston demolished virtually every so-called argument put forward by the Murdoch tabloid and suggested:

"How have the Greens deceived the public? By putting their extremely controversial, detailed drugs policy on their website in full, that's how. Some voters might be shocked (if they've missed the Greens' regular public advocacy of harm minimisation, including at the NSW parliament's drugs summit), disapproving or even outraged - but cynical? Why on earth would they be cynical about a party that's willing to lose votes by stating a policy it believes in - after a fierce internal policy battle, I might add - but that most people don't?"

Imagine having the weight, authority and publicity of a major daily behind the rantings of your personal blog.

Do you think the caveman gets paid for it? That would be nice.

I'm thinking of revamping the decor of the den and redesigning my site. Maybe a nice zebra skin over there, and a set of antlers on the wall perhaps? First I gotta catch 'em.

Anyhoo, I've looked through my web stats and I'm amazed at just how many visitors (fully 25%) are still using the old screen resolution of 800x600.

Guys, come into the 21st century. Get yourself a bigger monitor and bump up the resolution a bit.

Try 1024 x 768. You can fit much more text on the screen.

Andrew Bolt writes an acerbic word or two about the Greens and their Drugs for the Dole policy.

Get it? Here's a leader unable to face the logical results - spelled out on his own party notepaper - of his toxic ideology.

Perhaps the man who is best able to tell us what the Greens' vision means for us is Peter Singer, philosopher, former Greens Senate candidate and co-author with Brown of The Greens.

It is Singer who developed the key Greens belief -- that man is not at the pinnacle of creation, as Christians and Jews believe, but is just one of the animals, with no more rights than any other.

Human life is no longer sacred, but should be judged in a utilitarian way. Is that life a burden to someone? Is that being conscious enough to let live?

And Singer judges with a merciless eye: "If the fetus does not have the same claim to life as a person, it appears that the newborn baby does not either, and the life of a newborn baby is of less value to it than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee . . .

"If we can put aside these emotionally moving but strictly irrelevant aspects of the killing of a baby we can see that the grounds for not killing persons do not apply to newborn infants."

Or even much older ones: "A three-year-old is a grey case," says Singer, author of Should the Baby Live?

Mr Mike "Scruffy" Scrafton suffered a credibility implosion today when official records from Mr Howard's phone showed that there were only two phone calls instead of the three that Scrafton had claimed. Scrafton also claimed that during the second phone call he had discussions with the PM about three serious issues of contention. The phone records show that the phone call was just 51 seconds in duration.

Government members on the committee questioned Mr Scrafton's recollections and his credibility.

They claim he has given contradictory accounts of his role in the children overboard affair

Liberal Senator George Brandis made public some details of the Prime Minister's telephone records.

"Those three topics, as you've discussed them, couldn't possibly have been discussed in 51 seconds could they?" he asked.

"I suspect you're right," answered Mr Scrafton.

Labor senators on the committee question the accuracy of the phone records.

The hearing is now adjourned.

Twelve ordinary workers from the quiet country of Nepal were brutally murdered today.

The father of one of the victims, Ramesh, was totally devastated by the news that his son had been brutally murdered by his Iraqi captors.

Like many youngsters, Ramesh had left poverty stricken Nepal in search for some quick money.

"He called me and told me he would send money. He said all his troubles would be over in the next two years," said Ramesh's father, Jit Bahadur Khadka.

In school my horrid teachers made me read Aldous Huxley's "A Brave New World". I am so glad they did.

At the time, despite the reality of Communism, it was fashionable to describe threats to democracy as coming from the Right, but as time has gone by the reality has sunk in, that the threat is actually still on the Left.

Huxley's brave new world was a scary distopia where modern trends we can all recognise have been taken to their extreme:

Love and marriage are forbidden. Promiscuous sex, only for pleasure is the norm.

Babies all genetically modified and decanted from bottles, not born.

Mistakes are discarded.

Babies are engineered into Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc. capability and indoctrinated from birth to be happy with their role in life and the policies set by their leaders.

The Alphas are, of course, the intelligentsia.

No voting is necessary.

Everyone is wealthy, or are at least very comfortable.

People are in perfect balance with the environment. The authorities are in complete control.

Ten intelligentsia control the world and decide what's best for everyone.

And just in case, to ensure that everyone is happy all of the time, there are drugs.

The drugs (called Soma) are supplied to everyone by the government.

This is the very vision of the distopian world of the Australian Greens.

Oh, what a brave new world! and such people in it.

The infants were unloaded.

"Now turn them so that they can see the flowers and books."

Turned, the babies at once fell silent, then began to crawl towards those clusters of sleek colours, those shapes so gay and brilliant on the white pages. As they approached, the sun came out of a momentary eclipse behind a cloud. The roses flamed up as though with a sudden passion from within; a new and profound sigruficance seemed to suffuse the shining pages of the books. From the ranks of the crawling babies came little squeals of excitement, gurgles and twitterings of pleasure.

The Director rubbed his hands. "Excellent!" he said. "It might almost have been done on purpose."

The swiftest crawlers were already at their goal. Small hands reached out uncertainly, touched, grasped, unpetaling the transfigured roses, crumpling the illuminated pages of the books. The Director waited until all were happily busy. Then, "Watch carefully," he said. And, lifting his hand, he gave the signal.

The Head Nurse, who was standing by a switchboard at the other end of the room, pressed down a little lever.

There was a violent explosion. Shriller and ever shriller, a siren shrieked. Alarm bells maddeningly sounded.

The children started, screamed; their faces were distorted with terror.

"And now," the Director shouted (for the noise was deafening), "now we proceed to rub in the lesson with a mild electric shock."

He waved his hand again, and the Head Nurse pressed a second lever. The screaming of the babies suddenly changed its tone. There was something desperate, almost insane, about the sharp spasmodic yelps to which they now gave utterance. Their little bodies twitched and stiffened; their limbs moved jerkily as if to the tug of unseen wires.

"We can electrify that whole strip of floor," bawled the Director in explanation. "But that's enough," he signalled to the nurse.

The explosions ceased, the bells stopped ringing, the shriek of the siren died down from tone to tone into silence. The stiffly twitching bodies relaxed, and what had become the sob and yelp of infant maniacs broadened out once more into a normal howl of ordinary terror.

"Offer them the flowers and the books again."

The nurses obeyed; but at the approach of the roses, at the mere sight of those gaily-coloured images of pussy and cock-a-doodle-doo and baa-baa black sheep, the infants shrank away in horror, the volume of their howling suddenly increased.

"Observe," said the Director triumphantly, "observe."

Books and loud noises, fiowers and electric shocks�already in the infant mind these couples were compromisingly linked; and after two hundred repetitions of the same or a similar lesson would be wedded indissolubly. What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder.

"They'll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an 'instinctive' hatred of books and flowers. Reflexes unalterably conditioned. They'll be safe from books and botany all their lives." The Director turned to his nurses. "Take them away again."

Still yelling, the khaki babies were loaded on to their dumb-waiters and wheeled out, leaving behind them the smell of sour milk and a most welcome silence.

One of the students held up his hand; and though he could see quite well why you couldn't have lower-cast people wasting the Community's time over books, and that there was always the risk of their reading something which might undesirably decondition one of their reflexes, yet � well, he couldn't understand about the flowers. Why go to the trouble of making it psychologically impossible for Deltas to like flowers?

Patiently Senator Bob Brown explained...

If you've never read the book, or seen the movie, I highly recommend both.

Does this sort of thing make you tired.

The introduction to the linked story claims:

"PRIME Minister John Howard is facing uproar after one of his MPs compared asylum-seekers to cats and dogs trying to enter Australia.

But reading the quotation in the very same story the woman did not say what they are claiming.

I heard the news story covered on the radio this evening, saying that she had "likened refugees to cats and dogs".

An idiot that would start a sentence in the way she did, in front of a hostile crowd, does not appear suitable for a seat in politics, but in her defence she appears not to have said anything like what the media and her political enemies (same thing really) are claiming she said.

Ms Worth said during a public meeting in Adelaide there were "some very practical reasons" for the detention policy.

"I mean, if you bring a dog into this country or a cat from some countries ...," she continued before shouts and jeers from the audience drowned out her comparison with Australia's tough quarantine rules for animals.

"Look, can you just hear me out, please," she said. "There are certain tests to be carried out, there are health checks...," she added before again being shouted down.

And that was all she needed to say. You can imagine the roars of the partisan crowd, rending their clothes and pouring ash in their hair, pointing and crying blasphemer!

Let me finish the sentence she never got a chance to speak, "I mean, if you bring a dog into this country or a cat from some countries they have to be quarantined and given medical checks, why not humans who pose a potentially more serious health risk," she could have said.

Sounds like a reasonable argument. Certainly not demeaning, racist or in any way stigmatising of the poor old refugees.

Effective quarantine is one of the major reason for having strong borders.

No one honestly believes that she was likening them to animals or that she was suggesting that they be treated like such.

Not her enemies, not the media, not anyone. They are all just role playing.

She tripped upon sophistry.

She displayed her unsophistication in public and like unto the Greek debates of old this was her greatest sin.

Her naivete was apparent for everyone to see. She did not know how to play their game, so according to their rules they roared and shouted her down before she could finish.

Labor is calling for a new Senate enquiry even as word starts to filter through the media cone of silence about the findings of the last Senate enquiry. The enquiry found that at least one kid WAS thrown in the water and two women actually drowned the day before the last election when fellow asylum seekers set fire to their boat in a bid to force the navy to rescue them and take them to Australia.

Peter Costello has warned of a terror attack designed to influence the election (as happened in Spain) while Mark Latham's announcement made us a target by restating that if he is elected the troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by Christmas.

There seems to be consensus that debate about the US alliance will be a prominent feature of the election.

Mark Latham was accused of lying over claims the ALP was not planning any new payroll tax. John Howard educated Mark about the ALP's actual policy which is a plan to fund its 100 per cent employee entitlements policy with a 0.1 per cent payroll levy. When confronted with this news he said it was a levy and not a tax. When asked what the difference was he could not say. The SMH website helps out with dictionary definitions proving that a levy is a tax.

The stock market fell after fears arose of a possible ALP victory and higher interest rates.

John Howard has warned home owners who have borrowed heavily of the risks posed by high interest rates.

The Greens have emerged as the new third force in Australian politics with possibly 11% of the national vote, while the Democrats are facing oblivion with possibly no senators being elected.

The Greens and the ALP are making an "unprecedented" move to have the Senate sit while the election campaign is underway. Since the ALP and the minor parties have total dominance of the Senate they can abuse the parliamentary process and have the Senate vote in favor of any motion they think will help them during the election. Almost daring them to raise the "Children Overboard" affair the PM has asked the Governor General not to dissolve the Senate until the opposition have voted to begin the new enquiry.