There are those "values" again.....

We have heard our PM Howard speak of the "values" [never defined!] immigrants to Australia must adopt. This "value" thing must be yet another thing Howard has learned from his good and "close" friend George W Bush.

Just read this report, in today, from Yahoo News:

"New arrivals to this country must adopt American values and learn English, President Bush said Wednesday, pushing anew for his proposal to overhaul immigration rules."

"On Wednesday, aware that lawmakers are hearing from constituents alarmed by the added burden immigration sometimes places on police, schools and hospitals, Bush touted the importance of assimilation — immigrants' adoption of American culture".

Seems like it didn't quite work out "right" for George though....as the Yahoo News report goes on:

"The president may have undermined that message somewhat while at the Juan Diego Center, as he joined in a class preparing students for their U.S. citizenship tests. Though the instructor addressed students in English, Bush mostly chose their native Spanish to greet and quiz them. When the students couldn't answer his question — how many father-son duos have served as president — Bush explained in Spanish that there have been two, the Bushes and "Juan Adams y su hijo Juan Q."

Read the complete article here.

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Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives? In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t

The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

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#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas stopped him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed behind his back into their patrol car, where they say he shot himself in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story, says in an interview that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?

Mahler's Prodigal Son

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