Forget Hallowe'een...

This is the real scary stuff:

The Patriot Act allows American authorities access to normally protected US company information, even from foreign subsidiaries. Three Canadian provinces are already considering measures to specifically counter the US law over concerns about companies such as EDS, which in Australia manages federal taxrecords and all South Australian Government records.

Trick or treat.

Now The Australian always has interesting sydicated photos on their front page, but I've never seen one which was so appropriate to the headline... 

The West Suburbian?

Today's West's Alston cartoon (p4) looked VERY similar to one in the Western Suburbs Weekly last week (19 Oct). (I can't seem to find them online, but the both cartoons had Howard in a big car being dictatorish and saying "Ve must not let ziss go to our heads" etc.)

Is this a sign of things to come? If so, I'm looking forward to hearing more about the Cottesloe bowling clubhouse fiasco.

Sen Ian Campbell wrote to WSW to complain about the cartoon last week, as did some other dorkus from Claremont (and I'm sure even more went unpublished). They should be grateful they live in a society where we can still make a joke about politics.

Should also be marginally interesting if any copyright issues come out of this.

Update: Ooo hoo hooo! Dean Alston just emailed me in response to my letter to The West about the cartoon. He's been in India for the last fornight, so it can't be "wanton plagiarism". But the cartoon shouldn't have been published!

Could this be where I leave my indelible mark on the blogging world? Probably not, since I'm the only person who reads this and it's about political cartoons in wee Perth rather than Monica Gate (hey Rob: do you think if the Nixon thing happened at the DC Hilton it'd be "Monicaton" and "Ratherton" etc?), but I hereby declare that this is officially my Matt Druge moment :-D

:(

Well, it's official. Maybe the Tories do own God/Whatever? Nothing we do seems to work.

Is this man serious?

...if somebody came to me and said we have got some intelligence information which suggests that young people are being used in a particular way and we need to be able to address that, one might well come back in those circumstances with that sort of advice and say we need to look at this again...

says AG Ruddock, Australia's poster-boy for due process.

'This' being allowing kids as young as 12 to be strip searched and questioned about terrorist threats.

I'm sorry, but why are we still even talking about this?

Oh, that's right, because the foreign policy agenda of the Howard/Downer regime has made this country into legitmate targets from terrorists. Woops, brain like a sieve over here.

And obviously there's no point in trying to stop terrorism by fixing its social causes of poverty, imperialism, marginalisation and endless hopelessness; we just have to make sure we can force pre-teens to spill the beans on any impending attacks (about which our brilliant intelligence agencies have found real, accurate information).

There's not going to be much left...

The Australian: Human rights 'at a crossroads' [October 23, 2004]

There's not point crying over spilt milk, I know, but the prospect of the next three years just really sucks.

And here's something that makes me cranky: the Customs Officers strike (more from Rob). Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but in the 'current security environment' we need to protect ourselves from threats, right? But... hey, we don't really need people to do that for us, right? Or at least we don't have to give them proper pay and conditions; after all, Industrial Relations is lame, right?

Everyone's freaked out about terrorism, so fair enough we need more protection at airports and the rest of it. So... employ enough people and pay them properly to protect us, you morons. You can't eat the cake, people, you can't eat the cake.

And in news I wasn't able scoff at on Wednesday due to internet-oddness: Murdoch-owned paper rejects ad for 'Outfoxed'. Aren't they embarrassed? Seriously, it's just so stupid! Media Watch picked it up on Monday.

Oh really?

Pre-election economic predictions were optimistic: Costello. -- ABC News Online

I cannot even start to articulate how annoyed this makes me. Your department's predictions were 'optimistic'? So... Does that also mean your party's predictions about interest rates were 'wrong'?

Actually, let's not beat around the bush here, kids. They lied.

The Libs will have ostrich egg on their face by 2007. Mark my words.

Why do we only have one daily national?

The Australian -- Scrapbook: These guys should eat their words [October 12, 2004]

What, none of Murdoch's Media Minions ever pointed out what was pretty obvious at the time? Well Ross Fiztgerald got through, but otherwise, I guess not.

The Chaser team got it right last week with the Tampa 2; no matter what reason people come up with to negate it as a lame sour-grapes excuse, they know it's the only reason why Howard won.

13 Oct -- PS: A friend of mine told me she didn't want to go see Outfoxed today, because she'd read a really bad review of it. Where did you read it, I asked. Where else. It's really very scary.

George W[ired] Bush

It was ... alleged that on several occasions Bush stopped speaking for a period and stared ahead as if listening to a voice.

*Snort*

Let's give G-Dub's team the benefit of the doubt here and say he was listening to God...

More from This Modern World.

The Welcome Mat

Well. It's a new week and a new term of government. And because it's not a Latham Labor Government, it's time for a new... something. A new blog, that's it.

The 2007 Election Campaign started on Sunday 10 October 2004. Because Australia deserves better. And the only way we can get it is if people understand what is happening to our country.

This is my way of trying help everyone to open their eyes and understand. I hope it's not propaganda, though some people may think it is. After all, the line between what propoganda is and what it isn't seems to be blurring by the second.