MK’s Views - Down under on the right side

MNF-Iraq - Operation Sawlat al-Fursan, or Charge of the Knights, entered a new phase of operations in Basrah. The operation, which began March 24, has now started the process of clearing strongholds previously dominated by criminal militias. A deliberate house-to-house clearance operation of the south-western Basrah district of al-Qiblah was conducted without major incident. It resulted in significant quantities of arms, ammunition and explosives being found.

Continue reading Charge of the Knights…

FOX News - Federal authorities say a South Carolina teen accused of plotting to blow up his high school told police that he wanted to die, go to heaven and kill Jesus.

Hasn’t this fool read the Bible. Did he miss the part about Jesus sitting at the right hand of the father. Apart from that incident 2000 or so years ago, I really don’t think that the good Lord will tolerate any fast moves around the apple of his eye. Another thing, why blow up the school, alright you’ve got beef with the son of God, well fine then, why must the school go with you, why must everyone else be blown to pieces as well? Why can’t you just build your fancy bomb, take it to a field somewhere and blow yourself to pieces and try your thing at the pearly gates. Lunatics!

IHT - Across Europe, people in the middle layer of the labor force - from office workers, civil servants and skilled laborers to low-level managers - are coping with a growing sense that they are being pushed to the margins like never before, as a combination of rising costs and stagnant wages erodes their purchasing power. Prices for basic goods from gas to milk are rising sharply, outpacing pay rises linked to official rates of inflation. More worrisome, a generation of European workers is grappling with a rising sense of injustice as they face the reality that they may be becoming worse, not better, off than their parents.

Much of the story of declining purchasing power can be traced to policy decisions and economic developments that have taken place within the last decade, when the forces of globalization began to reshape the European and global landscapes. Governments and employers, especially in industrial sectors, have kept pay rises modest, a trend that was manageable as long as inflation did not accelerate in a surprisingly sharp manner. In addition, more of each country’s income has gone to the wealthiest individuals, underpinning the acute feelings of inequality across the broad middle class. Continue reading Hows it going Europe…

Daily Telegraph - PREMIER Morris Iemma’s office gave written assurances via email to unions three weeks before the 2007 election that it had no intention of privatising the power industry and that it would remain in public hands. The unions have now released the correspondence to accuse Mr Iemma of lying to workers - and voters - who had no idea the power sell-off was on the agenda ahead of polling day.

LiveNews - A key election promise to install high speed broadband across the country is about to come to a grinding halt. Labor needs more than $4 billion to fund its broadband agenda, but half the money has been locked away in a special communications fund. It means the government won’t have enough money to roll out its high speed internet plans, and could risk breaking a key election promise.

Really! I can’t believe this, telling lies and breaking promises, who would have thought that, no way, not lefties, say it ain’t so…

News.com.au - THE prime suspect in yesterday’s callous killing of a Frankston mother was sentenced to death in 1968 for the stabbing murder of a 17-year-old girl. Robinson’s death sentence for murdering the teenager was commuted in 1969, and he was released on parole in 1983. In 1991 he pleaded guilty to 14 charges of handling over $100,000 worth of stolen goods. He received a two-year sentence with a minimum of 18 months.

Actor Gil Tucker - who played a policeman in the popular TV drama Cop Shop - gave evidence on Robinson’s behalf, saying Robinson’s life had been ”a great tragedy” and that he had made a “made a great fist of having a go at it” after being released for the 1968 murder. Detectives are continuing to hunt for Robinson who they describe as “armed and dangerous” more than 30 hours after he blasted the mother of two to death with a shotgun yesterday. Continue reading When you spare murderers…

el universal - The Venezuelan Ministry of Housing plans to build socialist cities this year. Progress in this field is expected to be made under international agreements. Minister of Housing Edith Gómez pointed out that the first phase of a program to build socialist cities is slated to start under an agreement with Belarus. She added that a number of Ministry specialists would travel to Belarus to learn about the construction of such cities.

The creation of socialist cities has been planned under social welfare program Misión Villanueva, which is focused on developing town-building projects. Under Misión Villanueva, socialist towns are intended “to promote the endogenous potential and prioritize social economy.” Therefore, small- and medium-size businesses, cooperatives, family businesses, micro-businesses, and any other form of communitarian associations have to be promoted.

I call upon all those lefties who wish the western world would abandon this wretched capitalism that’s infected us for social justice. I call upon all those America haters and all those yearning for social justice, yes social justice! I call upon all of you to pack your bags, there is a glorious socialist empire utopia being set up in South America. Your dreams are but a flight away, the glorious Hugo will bring heaven on earth, he will finally bring social justice to you who have been oppressed and trampled upon by the capitalist pigs. Here is your opportunity, to finally stick it to the filthy capitalist bourgeoisie, you can build your shining beacon of hope, hope for social justice that millions, no billions around the world yearn for. Why waste your precious time with us, we are lost, lost I tell you, to the greed, the consumerism, colonialism, imperialism and all that. Go forth, join the proletariat and build your shining cities of social justice [have I said this enough times?] and perhaps our children will follow you when they tire of all this capitalist slavery & drudgery.

By AR - Sydney Morning Herald environment reporter, Ben Cubby ominously writes, “Something strange is happening to our weather.” Cubby recently came to our attention when he published statistics purporting to show that Australians each used one tonne of plastic bags per year, or that they were using bags weighing 5.5kg each. The article was belatedly corrected with national plastic bag usage reduced by a factor of 1000, but not before the hyped-up message got through.

Now under the hyped-up headline, “Extreme weather is here to stay,” Cubby tells us that, “Sydney has endured the most sodden school holidays in living memory,” and, “the longest unbroken spell of April drizzle for 77 years,” and, “unseasonably early snow fell in the mountains at the weekend.” That’s what passes for “extreme” these days. It reminds me of then-ALP leader Kim Beazley telling us how Howard planned to replace his “extreme IR laws” with something, well, “even more extreme”.

Continue reading Something Strange Explained…

Daily Mail - An Iraqi teenage girl was brutally murdered by her father in an “honour killing” after she fell in love with a British soldier in Basra. Seventeen-year-old Rand Abdel-Qader told her best friend how she had fallen for Paul, a 22-year-old she met at a charity where she worked as a volunteer. The Ministry of Defence was last night trying to trace the soldier. Officials stressed he appeared to have done nothing wrong by befriending the girl. Army insiders said they needed to establish the full facts to help prevent such a tragedy happening again.

Rand Abdel-Qader confided to her closest friend Zeinab that she fell in love the moment she saw the young soldier at the charity for displaced families, and she dreamed of a future with him. On March 16 - two months after Rand last saw Paul - her father Abdel-Qader Ali heard from a friend that his daughter had been seen speaking to the soldier at the charity project. Recalling Rand’s murder, her weeping mother Leila Hussein said: “I screamed and called out for her two brothers so they could get their father away. But when he told them the reason, instead of saving her they helped him end her life.” Continue reading How the hell do you get through to these savages…

Yahoo!7 News - An Australian special forces commando has been killed and four others have been wounded in a firefight with Taliban militants near the Australian base in southern Afghanistan’s Oruzgan Province. Twenty-seven-year-old Lance Corporal Jason Marks was killed last night (Afghan time) during an attack on a Taliban position 25 kilometres south of the Australian base at Tarin Kowt.

Lance Corporal Marks was a married father-of-two who was born in Broken Hill in the far west of New South Wales and was raised in Yeppoon in Queensland. Defence Force head Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston said Lance Corporal Marks was part of a Special Operations Task Group (SOTG) platoon which was leading a company-level “deliberate assault” at the time of the firefight.

He said they were attacked while they were out in the open and preparing for their own assault on the Taliban. Lance Corporal Marks enlisted with 4RAR as a gunner in 1999 and later served in the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps as a medical assistant before joining special forces in 2005.

MNF-Iraq - Operation Marne Piledriver launched in the Mahmudiyah area April 15 as Iraqi Army and Coalition forces conducted joint clearance missions. Soldiers with 1st and 2nd Battalions, 25th Brigade, 6th IA Division and 3rd Battalion, 320th Field Artillery, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) combined to conduct dismounted patrols and an air assault. “The Iraqi Soldiers took initiative from the start,” said Pfc. Nathan Krueger, from St. Clair, Mich., Battery A, 3-320th FA.

“Every time I went into a building, there would already be an IA Soldier clearing or searching the area. Once we got on-site, they took the lead.” Marne Piledriver is the first Task Force Marne major operation focused on capacity-building projects throughout the Rakkasans’ area of operation. This Iraqi Army-led operation will continue efforts to root out insurgency and stimulate economic growth and development throughout the Mahmudiyah Qada. “Our role was to support the Iraqi Army,” said Capt. Ryan Mayfield, from Culver, Ind., commander of Battery A.

Continue reading Iraqi Army Takes Lead in Operation…

SMH - Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon has blamed the former Howard government for the rise in teenage binge drinking. Ms Roxon said the decision to cut taxes on premixed alcoholic drinks eight years ago helped fuel the surge in excessive drinking by young people, particularly teenage girls. Ms Roxon said she did not know why the Howard government had cut the excise in the first place.

I think that’s a smear on the Howard government and a move towards a nanny state. Why are teenagers drinking, isn’t there a law that they aren’t supposed to drink until 18. Who is selling them the alcohol and where are the parents? Why isn’t the law being enforced, who do the police fall under, ah yes those Labor party controlled states, they are in government in all states, law and order in the states is their job isn’t it. Every time we get one of the police ministers to waffle a bit, they’re putting more money into frontline policing, passing tough new laws and what not, doesn’t that mean it’s their responsibility. Moving on, what about the parents, perhaps the Howard government thought that people should be left alone to make their own decisions about what their children can and cannot drink. Continue reading Behold, the nanny state rises…

Yahoo! News - U.S. Marines are crossing the sands of southern Afghanistan for the first time in years, providing a boost to a NATO coalition that is growing but still short on manpower. Some of the Marines that make up the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit helped to tame a thriving insurgency in western Iraq. The newly arrived forces hope to move into regions of Afghanistan now controlled by the Taliban. The troops are working alongside British forces in Helmand province — the world’s largest opium-poppy region and site of the fiercest Taliban resistance over the last two years.

Thirteen of the 19 Marines in the platoon of 1st Lt. Adam Lynch, 27, served in 2006 and 2007 in Ramadi, the capital of the Anbar province in western Iraq. The vast region was once al-Qaida in Iraq’s stronghold before the militants were pushed out in early 2007. “If you flood a city with Marines, it’s going to quiet down,” Lynch said in between sets of push-ups on Helmand province’s sandy ground. “We know for seven months we’re not here to occupy, we’re just here to set conditions for whoever comes in after us.”

Hopefully it’ll be a Petraeus style clear and hold operation. Most important of all, they’ll have to get real results happening before the presidential elections over in the US. If a Democrat wins office, no matter what they say about Afghanistan being the just war and all that, we all know they’ll be looking for excuses to raise the white flag. They don’t have what it takes in Iraq and will definitely cut and run from there, so there will be tremendous pressure on whoever it is the head honcho to quit Afghanistan too. God speed and good hunting Marines.

IOL - Special Assignment, a weekly investigative documentary show, planned to broadcast a story on the death of 25-year-old UCT [University of Cape Town, South Africa] graduate Buntu Majalaza, who went to the bush to be initiated into adulthood, but died two weeks later on January 6 from septicaemia because of a botched circumcision. The programme focuses on the dangers of informal initiation schools where some students died. The show was meant to be aired on Tuesday but was retracted two hours before the scheduled time. It is believed that the SABC [South African Broadcasting Corporation, state owned broadcaster] refused to allow the show to go on air because of its controversial nature and its potential to offend traditional leaders.

In Black South African culture you only become a man when you are circumcised, like they say in the article, you go with other boys into the bush and they do a couple of other things and eventually your foreskin is cut off and because of poor hygiene like using the same freaking unwashed blade on each boy the above can happen. And because of the stifling cancer of political correctness, brought about and championed by the left, people won’t be told about this, so they can change their ways. Because we’re not allowed to bloody offend anyone, no matter how backward and stupid, Buntu Majalaza has to die for nothing and more will have to die because of ignorant customs and fancy new-age all-are-equal crap. Here’s to hoping one day soon they’ll put that dirty, blunt knife to the cancer of Political Correctness!

IHT - In the new nonsmoking France, where café-goers and restaurateurs have made a remarkably quiet transition to the regime of not lighting up indoors, there remains an unexpected pocket of resistance: hookah bars. Hookah bars, which began springing up in France more than a decade ago, became increasingly popular across Europe, both among immigrants from Islamic countries and among the hip student crowd. Helou’s union estimates that France had 800 hookah bars before the smoking ban, half of them in Paris or its suburbs, but that perhaps one-third have closed since the ban took effect. The Hookah Professionals’ Union has been holding talks with the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy in hopes of finding a solution, so far without success. Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot has shown no inclination to negotiate since declaring in December that there would be no exceptions to the smoking ban. “It’s a matter of public health,” she said. Continue reading PC Brigade shoot themselves in the foot…

Reuters - China is to hold talks with envoys of the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism whom it blames for a wave of unrest, state media reported on Friday, as the Olympic flame arrived in Japan. The move comes after concerted pressure from the West on China to talk to the Dalai Lama and marks the first serious step to defuse tensions aside from coming down hard on protesters and lambasting Tibetans’ spiritual leader. An envoy to the Dalai Lama said on Friday he had received notice of China’s offer to hold talks with representatives of the Dalai Lama.

FOX News - German Talis, 22, was shouting obscenities at the Bushes, who were leaving the building Tuesday, when he crossed paths with Wendy and John Lovetro and their daughter Maureen, 18, who has cerebral palsy. They had been in the audience to hear the Bushes talk about their children’s book, “Read All About It.” “He began yelling about Iraq and Iran at Jenna Bush. She was waving at the crowd. I told the guy, ‘What are you doing? Shut up. This is about a child and books,’ ” said John Lovetro. “He was unperturbed. I said, ‘Get out of here! You’re being a moron!’ ” The next thing he knew, Talis was allegedly punching Maureen, a fan of the first lady since meeting her in 2004.

Daily Mail - Savaging Labour’s prisons policy, Glyn Travis told how inmates benefit from satellite television, free telephone calls, breakfast in bed and officers who treat them with kid gloves for fear of breaching their human rights. Mr Travis, assistant general secretary of the Prison Officers’ Association, warned that every jail in the land was overcrowded and under-resourced, and that the entire system was “snowballing out of control”. Mr Travis said: “Drugs are coming into prisons at a rate that’s so dramatic that drugs in prisons are actually cheaper than on the outside. “There’s a classic case in Yorkshire where members of the public were climbing over the prison walls to take drugs into the prison. Continue reading Life IN a British Jail better than life outside…

This is the poem written by 12-year-old Blake Morgan to commemorate Anzac Day and honour his Digger ancestors.

Lest we forget? Lest we forget what?
The beach, the bush and the freedom Ive got!
Its always been here, since I was a boy.
My clothes, my friends, my family, my toys! Continue reading Lest we forget…

Brisbane Times - Constable Rawson James Armitage and his girlfriend Michelle Renee Dodge were beaten by almost a dozen youths as they walked on Dutton Street, Coolangatta, in November last year. Crown prosecutor Stuart Shearer today told the court several of the accused had jumped on the constable’s head as he lay unconscious on the ground, in what the prosecutor labelled a “foolish and gutless act”. He said tufts of Ms Dodge’s hair were pulled out. In a victim impact statement read to the court, Const Armitage said the attack had forever changed his life.

“Every time I close my eyes I can recall fists hitting my face and parts of my body,” Const Armitage said in the statement. “Words could not describe how Michelle must have felt seeing me on the ground with a pool of blood around my head.” Although Const Armitage had returned to work, he said it was an ongoing battle to maintain confidence in his abilities. Ms Dodge said in her statement that she would require ongoing medical treatment. Continue reading Very little justice for victims of crime too…

The Australian - Featherstone, 58, who lived at Chatswood on Sydney’s north shore at the time of his crimes, pleaded guilty to 12 sex offences involving indecent acts against four boys aged between 11 and 14, from 1983 to 1989. In November 2006, he was jailed for 16 years 11 months, with a non-parole period of 12 years 11 months. But the appeal court today re-sentenced him to a total term of 12 years and seven months, reducing his non-parole period to seven years. Because of time spent in custody before sentencing, the term was backdated to September 2004 - meaning he will now be eligible for release on parole in September 2011. Continue reading Very little justice for the victims of pedophilia…

MNF-Iraq - Rock throwers are being warned, they will now face jail time whether they hit a target or not. Under the new laws anyone caught engaging in the practice could face up to five years in jail, even if they don’t hit a car. The legislation will also apply to those who throw objects at bikes, animals, trains or boats.

This is also like all the huffing, puffing and chest-beating by the authorities at the scumbags shining lasers at planes. After all the threats, finger wagging and promises of centuries spent in a Siberian gulag, what did the scumbags do, they shone a laser at a police chopper. Roughly translated, that’s like showing both middle fingers to the authorities and the public, if they had 3 hands then it would have been 3 middle fingers at the law and the public. They just don’t get it, laws are useless unless you can enforce them. Who will enforce them if you don’t have a police man on every street corner, apart from the public, no one.

The public have been disarmed and left defenceless, so why should they put their asses on the line for a state that’s too stupid to see the obvious. And honestly, do you see a 12 year old rascal serving 5 years in a jail somewhere for throwing a rock at a bus, if you do you must have come down in last weeks rain. The only way to fight this is to empower the law-abiding, give us our guns and we’ll sort these bastards out, until that happens, we’ll just be going round and round in circles, trying this, trying that, wasting a whole lot of money along the way and still have the problem.

MNF-Iraq - President Bush posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor to Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor Tuesday, a Navy SEAL whose mortal sacrifice in Iraq saved the lives of two fellow SEALs and several Iraqi soldiers. The fallen SEAL’s parents, George and Sally Monsoor, accepted the honor on their son’s behalf during a White House ceremony. The Medal of Honor, awarded for gallantry in combat exceeding the call of duty, is the nation’s highest military decoration.

“In September 2006, Michael laid down his life for his brothers in arms,” Bush said. “Today, we remember the life of this faithful Navy SEAL, and on behalf of a grateful nation, we will present Michael Mansoor’s family with the Medal of Honor that he earned.” Monsoor, a 25 year-old machine gunner with SEAL Team 3, was providing security at a sniper lookout post on Sept. 29, 2006, in Ramadi, Iraq, when a fragmentation grenade hit his chest and bounced to the floor. Positioned next to the single exit, only Monsoor could have escaped harm.

Continue reading You cannot take my brothers. I will go in their stead…

China Daily - The country’s rural population is poised to have a larger say in its political, economic and social issues, with the coming amendment of the Election Law giving equal representation to residents in the countryside and urban areas. The amendment has been scheduled for December, an annual legislative agenda of the National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee released Tuesday stated. The present Election Law stipulates that the number of people represented by a rural NPC deputy is four times that of an urban deputy. Many academics have argued that such a rule is unfair to the country’s 700 million rural residents, as they do not have the same say in congress as their urban counterparts.

Correct me if I’m wrong folks, but I thought Communism was about the peasants, overthrowing the filthy bourgeoisie and freeing the proletariat or the peasants. Sorry, I get confused with all these fancy terms, with so many corpses and gulags in its wake, it’s hard not to get distracted. I thought Communism was supposed to give them the power to lord over the filthy bourgeoisie and all that. So how come, after all these decades, the peasants are only just getting closer to their fair representation, let alone the only representation, which is what they’re supposed to be getting right? Image thanks to Yahoo Images.

By AR - Al Gore is despairing over the lack of action taken to combat global climate warming since his alarming movie, An Inconvenient Truth. He tells the London Sun that despite being scared witless, the public still prefers to deal with real issues:

“But then if you give them a list of 25 or 30 issues and ask them to rank them in order of seriousness, climate change comes at the bottom or near the bottom.
I remember one poll where it came under dog litter.”

If only Al Gore could outrank dog-turds, maybe we’d do something about the climate.

MNF-Iraq - Iraqi security forces acquitted themselves well, in view of their relative inexperience, in recent fighting against terrorists and criminals in the southern part of the country, including Basra, as well as in parts of Baghdad, the top U.S. military officer in Iraq said.

“The deployment was very impressive, … certainly not something Iraqis could have done a year ago,” Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of Multinational Force Iraq, said during a conference call with military analysts.

Continue reading Petraeus Gives High Marks to Maliki’s Anti-terror Offensive…