Some short comments. The "children overboard" deceit is being revisited as public servants are stepping forward. Australian government legislates where no government has legislated before - the ongoing growth of the nanny state. John Stuart Mills on freedom of opinion.

Shorts

• A funny blog . Taswegians might get upset about it though as it looks like it is someone "playing a character" blog.
• Bah, I use Id . And Xml, Snmp, etc - too many caps in a function name is as bad as too few. It is for readability anyway and if the convention doesn't aid readability .... it won't be followed.
• I am working with Python again today. Such a pleasurably concise and terse language to work with. The link to the python page is for symmetry. All the "self" references are a pain in the arse when writing classes. Apple might have been wiser to incorporate Python natively into OSX rather than Java.
• Courtesy of Google Ad-Sense; missilethreat.com
• Saw the Olympic 200m Freestyle final. It was a good race, it surprised me how deep their kicking was when they were on the underwater camera's. I tried that today when swimming. It certainly adds power, but my legs and back are feeling it this afternoon.

Children Overboard, the Tampa Affair Revisited

A prominent public servant has come out and said that he told John Howard that the refugees were not throwing their kids in the water . Howard decided to run a fear campaign on refugees, thanking the gods for this modern day Petrov Affair to get him re-elected. Howard has denied it, but another public servant has come out of the woodwork and backed it up . Now there is the potential for a Senate probe .

Everyone knew he was lying, and there was no children being thrown into the water. Refugees don't travel halfway across the world to throw their kids in the water off the continental shelf. Everyone knew that the lie was used to steal the One Nation voters that were being siphoning off from the Liberals. An appeal to prejudice, xenophobia and racism in order to get re-elected is not cool. Australians know that, but many were happy to hear the lie and use it as justification for their isolationism and xenophobia.

But it wouldn't be fair and balanced unless Australia's Ann-Coulter/Bill-O'Reilly got her wonderfully Murdochian say in; "Howard haters in over their heads" . Got to love it, these people aren't rational people seeking truth in government, no - instantly discredited by their hate. Stupid mass media. It gets better though;

Hating John Howard has become an industry. You just have to log on to the anti-Howard website Johnhowardlies.com to see the spin-offs. You can pledge amounts from $2 to "keep the site running", a poor-man's Michael Moore litany of conspiracy theories and dastardly Johnny deeds.

To summarize for Miranda Devine; "You stupid little people, how dare you attempt to keep politicians accountable for their words, just think yourselves lucky that we still let you paupers vote. We know what we are doing so shut up". I think that final shut up has to be said thirty five times consecutively to qualify for the Murdoch media.

There is no defending the indefensible. The "Pacific Solution" for refugees is a xenophobic and discriminatory policy, founded on deception, with no care for human rights and implemented by the institutionalised racism inherent in the Australian government.

Nanny State Gone Wild

Alan Anderson laments that the nanny state has come back into fashion . The government acts as an agent in all things and sees no end to its ability to legislate into people's lives. Howard throws out $3000 to anyone that can produce a kid, throws out $7500 to anyone that is buying a house for the first time, and does with an upper tax bracket of 45c on the dollar. Anderson writes;

With an election approaching, the party of small government[Liberals] is hard to find. Despite delivering welcome improvements, the Liberals seem unwilling to make the moral case for serious income tax reform. Taxation may not be theft, but at 48.5 cents in the dollar it's a fine line.

The Liberals as a party of small government is myth, the previous diary had figures which showed Howard had increased government spending per person by 13%. Latham is no better, he seeks to intrude on obesity as a government issue, Carr has laws against drinking standing up in NSW, hairdressers cannot cut hair without qualifications and now the NSW government is looking to set curfews for young drivers. The over-intruding government is alive and well in Australia. Anderson writes;

Who is to blame for this orgy of tainted revenue and the relentless onslaught of patronising, paternalistic regulation? We are. Every election, the pollies throw money around almost as if it belongs to someone else. Get ready for, "Government to spend extra $400 million on hospitals", followed by the inevitable "Opposition promises $600 million boost for health". Headlines such as "Government to establish clean windows fund" are greeted by sample voters on the TV news: "Ooh, that's nice Doris; they're going to clean our windows", leaving Australia's handful of libertarians screaming at their screens, "You're paying for it, you idiot!" As policy, it's a failure. As politics, it works a treat.

Anderson requests that the government look for todays forgotten people - the forgotten ones who want to pay less taxes, have less state intrusion, seek the maximum liberty and less oppression from the nefarious and coercive political legislators.

John Stuart Mills - On Liberty

Mills' work is hard to read, it is textually very dense. To Mills the mental well-being of not only an individual, but mankind rested upon freedom of opinion and freedom of expression of opinion. Mills based the reason for no opinion to be silenced on human fallibility. If an idea is silenced there is the very real possibility it is a correct opinion that is being silenced.

To cover against incorrect opinions being silenced, Mills makes the point that even opinions in error may contain a sliver of truth. Alternatively the general or prevailing opinion on a subject is never the whole truth anyway. Mills uses this to defend the freedom of even errorful opinion.

Mills also sees any opinion or doctrine that doesn't need to be defended as an inherently weak. An opinion that isn't argued against to Mills becomes "enfeebled", static, weak dogma - it is only through rigorous challenge of an opinion by others that the promotion of human knowledge and reason occur.

By these arguments Mills not only places the well-being of mankind on the principles of freedom of opinion, but also the progress of humankind. They become necessities not options.

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