We are at war with an enemy who has vowed to cut the heads off our children, who mounts cowardly attacks against the defenseless, who has infiltrated our culture -- and yet some of the presidential candidates refuse to call that enemy by name!Our enemy is busy training children as young as 7 to handle automatic weapons while in this nation we suspend from school 7-year-olds who so much as draw a picture of a gun.
This enemy lacks the courage to put uniformed soldiers on the field of battle but chooses instead to use civilians to blow up other civilians. Furthermore, our national media, led by the Associated Press, call these people "insurgents" or "militants" instead of labeling them the ist cowards that they are.
We are at war with an ideology, not a country. This ideology personifies evil, and yet we have national "leaders" who tell us that we must be inclusive in our institutions and avoid offending our enemies at all cost.
The threat we face is not from the free exchange of ideas, even ideas that lack logic or wisdom. The threat comes from "political correctness." The threat comes from the suppression of ideas, the managing of the news and the manipulation of facts to suit a particular agenda...
If we are to survive as a free nation, a country where people believe in and abide by the uniqueness of an individual with inalienable rights, we must abandon the flirtation with political correctness and return to the concept of "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the your right to say it".
We must have the courage to say that merely changing the name of a wrong does not make it a right.
John Lane www.charlotte.com
There wasn't any way he could overcome the breach. He didn't know what was waiting around the corner. He was crystal clear in his call: this was defeat. The dry gums gusted in the cold wind. The smoke from the fire blew in constantly different directions, forcing him to move. It was impossible to find comfort: in his own life, in the lives of others. There was defeat: but he was not beaten. There was corruption: but he was not secretive.
These things were all that he could dream up; shafts of fear in an uncertain world. He knew he was trapped by his own past, but one step after the other was all that he could take. He was crystal clear on one thing: this was not the end. They couldn't have seriously meant what they said. He wasn't warmed by the memory of old friends. He couldn't think it was fine - remember when we were kids? He couldn't stop the shreaking, the voices of discontent. He couldn't stop taking the blame.
Everything was coming to an end. Voices groped up out of the bushes like the sound of frogs, except these were words whisked away in the wind. He couldn't understand why he was so frightened. Today was no worse than yesterday; it had been cold, windy and uncomfortable yesterday, just as it was today. He wanted to summon up a strength of purpose; to be blessed once more with a sense of direction, of outrage, of determination to uncover, even the determination to represent the poor and unrepresented.
But they were no longer there, the mystery working class who had propelled him to keep on going, thinking he was doing more good than harm, that exposing injustice to the light would be all it would take to reform the world, grant him hero status, make his life worthwhile. In that sweeping intensity, the fading van Gogh posters on the wall, the compulsory reading, Wilson's The Outsider, Tolkein's Lord of the Rings, Tubular Bells. These were moments so long ago, so lost in the twisting changes of the culture, so out of date in a world of the culutre wars; he could not at first even justify their presentation.
Perhaps it was, as some commentators had noted, just the pentup frustration of 11 years of the Howard government that brought out all the well paid Phds into such a triumphant talk fest at the 2020 Summit; perhaps it really was like Anthony Burgess's 100 best novels of the English language, you had to start somewhere, you had to start the debate. But even here, he knew reality had become a distant phenomenon. It was a brutal truth and the slavery of labour had destroyed his own soul. He had lost and there was only one route out: escape.
If everything had been warmer at heart, if he hadn't been so eroded by his own dark dreams and despairing dysfunction, if he had been able to hold his head up and look people in the eye and say: yes, my brain works like it's never worked before. I can see the details of your marriage license. I know you were married not twice but thrice. The hunt for understanding would have been much easier if it hadn't been for his own prediliction for mystery novels, which he kept downloading and reading at astonishing speed.
With everything going wrong, well not really, just not everything going right, he didn't know where to begin; where to start, where the big man lay; if indeed there was even one single centre of control. Mystified, he took lunch off, leaving his unsatisfying task of regurgitating press releases and putting in peremptory calls to people who were as disinterested as he was, and walked up past the building which he knew contained, if not the solution, then at least a clue.
He knew the cameras were watching him as he watched the building. He knew, now, he had once been a critic of the Social Policy Centre, before the implants had changed everything, had made him doubt everything, had made him think, in fact, in recent times, that the world was better this way; the way it had become; without conflicts, riots, disagreements, without surly youth in left wing university groups, each out doing the other until they were all Trotskyists. And certainly without remote little huddles of disenfranchised men, pining ofr a world where they had been fathers, lovers, providers, protectors, pining for a time when their lives had meant more as individuals and the net as they now knew it had not even begun to form. It was a long, uncertain way off. He watched the cameras and they watched him.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://news.theage.com.au/dissension-in-the-ranks-at-2020-summit/20080420-27bu.html
Dissension has emerged in the ranks at the 2020 summit with some delegates angry their ideas are falling on deaf ears, or not being heard at all.
James Houston, who disrupted the opening session of the second day of the summit in the Great Hall of Parliament House, later turned up to the discussion session on communities.
Mr Houston, a delegate on the future directions for rural industries and communities stream, again voiced his frustration, saying his ideas were not being heard...
Another delegate, Freda Briggs, from the University of South Australia, also voiced her frustrations, saying there had not been enough consideration given to children and the challenges they face.
Many delegates at Sunday's communities session appeared frustrated with the lack of progress on reaching a consensus on what ideas they would put forward.
Fellow co-chair of the communities stream Tanya Plibersek said it was always going to be a challenge, but she was adamant progress was being made.
"We've got a room full of intelligent, committed people, who are passionate about the area that they work in, or the community that they represent," Ms Plibersek said.
"It was always going to be a challenge to bring 100 people together in a room and crystallise the priorities without losing the detail."
However, she said, there had been much progress on finding the common ground.
"Our challenge today is to be able to express that common ground but to also pull out the moon landing type ideas, the things that really stand out of the conversations that we've had."
http://livenews.com.au/Articles/2008/04/20/Tim_Costello_a_better_economic_manager
Tim Costello takes a playful swipe at his brother, former Australian Treasurer Peter Costello, when presenting the Strengthening communities, supporting families and social inclusion stream ideas to the 2020 Summit.
As the 2020 summit wraps up at Parliament House in Canberra, all the 'stream' leaders are called to front the 1000 odd delegates and present their findings.
World Vision's Tim Costello said the meetings were highly productive and his stream came up with a number of cost-effective solutions centring on community hubs.
"We came up with so many cost-neutral ideas you could actually abolish treasury.”
"We could run it, although then, a Costello running treasury may not be a good idea," he joked.
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