FINTA

It is somewhat ironic that the Foreign Minister of Australia called the Dutch short film FINTA "racist." What race exactly is Islam?

The voices and images, with the exception of a tiny bit at the end, were all from followers of Islam. The quotes from the Koran were accurate and while the Foreign Minister said "I strongly reject the ideas contained in the film" he was refering to the film maker not those making the comments in the film.

Why then is it OK to speak out against everything but Islam in the Western World these days?

The Case of the al-Saadi family

The case of the Iraqi al-Saadi family raise so many issues it is difficult to know where to start.

The basic story is that the family car did not stop when directed to in a conflict zone and ignoring the posted warnings was fired upon. There were some injuries. The incident occurred in an area close to the Australian Embassy where a car bomb had been set off a few weeks earlier.

The civilian passengers who were injured received a mercy donation (charity) of about $7000 to help with medical expenses. Not being able to get good care in Iraq the family was flown to Australia to receive medical attention there where they have remained.

Now they are attempting to sue the military and the Australian Government for compensation. This could cost millions of dollars.

If successful it means that a decision made in the field by soldiers in a conflict zone has been arm-chaired in Australia. This would also mean that any future action of a similar nature taken by any soldier in battle could be subject to civilian judgement.

The problem for the soldier is that they would have to be second guessing themselves from that point onwards. For a soldier this is just about an automatic death sentence and the whole of the Australian Army might as well be disbanded. Perhaps this is the aim of those pressing the case or perhaps it is just another scumbag lawyer trying to get richer at the expense of Australian soldiers in this case.

The other issue is that there is a growing list of people who have been given charity and have sued the government. The cost to the taxpayers of Australia is growing and this is taking health care, education etc. away from the Australians and into the hands of lawyers and foreign people of doubtful nature.

Apology to Aboriginals in Australia

The government of Australia has made a formal apology to the local Aboriginals over what has been shown to be a myth, that of the "Stolen Generation." To date there has been no case taken to court where the plaintiff has demonstrated or proven their case. In one notable instance the mother of the child came out and said that she willingly gave the child up. To this day that child is still claiming that she was one of the "Stolen Generation."

It should be noted that the majority of children were simply abandoned to the elements as half casts. These children were rescued, fed, clothed, educated and generally taken care of. For this they are now complaining and want money.

The bottom line has always been money and the apology has opened up the door to the potential for millions of dollars in payments in the future. If success is measured by return on investment then if what has been given back to Australia for all of the money that has already been poured into the process the current level of success has been very close to zero.

Yes I did read the Stolen Generation Report which I found to be full of emotive statements and based on mostly oral tradition and reports. The validity of such sources has been challenged e.g. the Hindmarsh Island fiasco.

Why HD-DVD Should Be Winning the War

Blu-ray keeps claiming victory but I am still questioning why people are going for this format other than PS3 users.

HD-DVD is
backwards compatible
cheaper to manufacture and change over from a DVD manufacturing process
not a proprietary solution

Blu-ray
has Sony proprietary components
is more expensive in all parts of the manufacturing process

In real terms as far as the end user is concerned there is no difference in quality and potential features and the whole who can store the most issue is not really relevant.

I think the answer to this is that Toshiba dropped the ball with their marketing and getting partners like Microsoft to include the technology in their products. The movie producers are simply following the numbers they don't care about a particular format.

Toshiba and partners should have flooded the market with inexpensive machines a lot sooner and encouraged the Chinese manufacturers to being out sub $100 machines. The market in Asia has yet to be decided however and the population numbers will really count there.

I don't see the adoption of Blu-ray happening in the majority of Asia because of pricing and I suspect that it will got the way of SACD, isolated adoption and penetration but something else will take the real position sometime in the future.

Racism

Racism: Anything said about any other race when said by a white person.

Let's face it when you see any claim of racism it always involves a white Western individual saying something about another race.

Consider the recent cricket 'racial' slur event in Australia. Teams sling off at each other all the time, they can call each other's mother a c*nt and denigrate each other all day long.

In this case however it was against a player described by the media as "the only black member of the team." In Australia the indigenous population gets all kinds of special treatment and people are so scared to upset them that they are handled with kid gloves and get away with just about anything.

In this case it was only because the player, who many do not even consider to be 'black', i.e. he is just a regular Australian member of the team, was looked upon by some as being different and so had to be treated in a special way.

In summary, if I called any non-white and idiot I am a racist, if they call me one that is perfectly OK in today's PC, no equality environment.

DNA Database

Here is a very simple proposal.

From every baby born a tiny sample of DNA is taken that goes into a country wide database, with sharing agreements between countries. When a crime is committed it will make is easier to track down criminals.

Let's examine who could have any reason to object to this:

Criminals - D'uh of course they would not like such a system, they are after all criminals.
Spies - OK I can kind of see a point here, their names can be temporary removed from the larger database.
Privacy Advocates: see criminals above. Regular people should have nothing to fear from having their DNA on file what possible use could it be put to to give problems to regular, honest people.

If the data is misused, e.g. stolen and sold etc. all parties in the chain should receive automatic life sentences (real ones, e.g. not the Australian pretend versions).

Journalism and Reporters

The seas will rise by 50 meters, he can get a 20 year sentence, Diana may have been killed, My father was an alien.

These kinds of headlines, apart from that last checkout rag one, are becoming more and more common. As news watchers we are getting less and less actual news, a smaller number of stories and less and less information upon which to make any kind of reasoned opinion.

The process of journalism or the recording and presenting of facts and information has been replaced my marketing and the opinions of those who read the news or the magnates behind the talking heads.

News and reporting, for the most part, has become entertainment. In the examples above the missing information would be "as predicted by one climate modelling program," "that is the maximum rarely if ever applied," "or so one man wishes to be accepted in English society," and well that one might be possible in an alternate universe.

The result is individuals who are being pushed in a certain direction by a minority of people. Instead of getting the facts and making up our own minds we get only what others want us to get so the conclusions are forced.

You can do the research on your own and trace down the real facts but how many people actually do that, only a tiny percentage of the whole. The result is a pre-programmed society that believe what special interest groups want you to believe be it the number of deaths in Iraq or the effects of man made CO2 or which person is best to vote for in the next election.