WTF?

How can Family First defend giving Senate preferences to Pauline Hanson when their leader in the last federal election was Aboriginal woman Andrea Mason?

From the ABC:

Family First has defended its decision to hand its Senate preferences to Pauline Hanson over the Greens and the Democrats in Queensland at this month's federal election.

The Democrats have attacked the decision, saying it means Ms Hanson could be back in Federal Parliament wreaking havoc with what they say are her outrageous statements and discriminatory remarks.

But Family First Senator Steve Fielding has told Channel Nine parties do not have to have things in common to preference each other.

"I think that this election is going to be more about who's going to hold the balance of power, and I think shifting it from the Coalition into the Greens is like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire," he said.

"Most Australians would be very shocked to know that the Greens could hold the balance of power in Australia, and that's not what people want."

They're a joke I tell you! I hope Senator Fielding loses his Senate seat. To call the Greens too radical and then give preferences to everyone's favourite black-basher?

Luckily Democrats Senator Lyn Allison has some common sense:

"We can only assume that Family First are like-minded towards the far right and Pauline Hanson," Senator Allison said.

Ms Hanson has said that African immigrants were spreading HIV in Australia and called for a moratorium on Muslim immigration.

Senator Allison argued that if Family First's preferences were not needed to gain a Coalition quota for Senate seats then its preferences could help elect Ms Hanson.

"It is highly likely that all of Family First's preferences could go to Pauline Hanson, and they're (Family First) not going to win a seat in the Senate but Pauline Hanson is polling 7.5 per cent.

"It could certainly deliver a seat for Pauline Hanson. So she'd be back in our Parliament, wreaking havoc with her outrageous statements and discriminatory remarks," Senator Allison said.

-The Age

Your Jesus said you're supposed to give the oppressed a better deal Senator Fielding!

On another note, does anyone find the King of Spain telling Venezualen President Hugo Chavez to shut up seriously disturbing?



For those who take little notice of the growing Socialist movement in Latin America, here is what happenned, as told by the Guardian:

When Hugo Chávez is in full flow, politicians and diplomats know better than to try and cut him dead. But not kings. As the Venezuelan president was in mid-harangue, excoriating his "fascist" foes at a summit of leaders from the Latin world, Juan Carlos, the Spanish monarch, could take no more. He flashed a withering look at the president and uttered five words likely to go down in diplomatic history: "Why don't you shut up?"

The stunning breach of protocol, did shut up the socialist revolutionary. For about two seconds. Then he regained his voice. However brief, it was a moment Chávez's detractors have dreamed of: the comeuppance, as they see it, of a motormouth autocrat who regularly obliges all of Venezuela's television stations to broadcast his marathon speeches.

Hugo is not my favourite leftist president. After all, I am the one who is going to marry Bolivia's first Indigenous President Evo Morales (the former Cocoa farmer and 40-something bachelor). The reason I like Chavez is because he is a champion of the poor and a Socialist. But the reason I am scared by Chavez is my belief he has many dictatoral qualities. But still, he's great for a quote and he's better than Bush.

But anyway, I think the fact that a Spanish monarch told the Venezualen head of state to "shut up" was a bit rich. Why the colonialist attitude? Hadn't Spain done enough in 1499 when Spanish explorer Alonso de Ojeda named the place and the SPanish began settling in the country in 1567? Unlike King Juan, Chavez was DEMOCRATICALLY elected, and therefore has more than a right to speak on behalf of his country. What does a monarch have beside a crown and a good looking daughter in law? I mean Chavez was overwhelmingly elected in 2006, gaining about 70 percent of the vote.

And Chavez made such a good point about the 2002 coup that sought to overthrow him:

"The debate is now under way, Mr King," Mr Chavez told journalists.

"Were you aware [in advance] of the coup... against the legitimate, elected, democratic Government of Venezuela in 2002?" he said, the latest development in an increasingly bitter spat between Spain and Venezuela.

Why, in this day and age, do we even bother having kings and queens and princesses and princes? There sole purpose seems to be filling the gossip columns. I tell you- Chavez is gonna do a lot more for the world than an old Spanish King.

And look what the Crown Prince of the United Arab Emerites was getting up to two years ago! Just for the sake of hunting, he was gonna push an estimated 400 Hadzabe from their traditional land in Tanzania!

One of Africa's last hunter-gatherer tribes has won a “great victory” after an Arab royal family dropped plans to use the people's ancestral land for commercial hunting.

A company acting on behalf of Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed of the United Arab Emirates has pulled out of a deal made two years ago with the Tanzania government to hunt wildlife in 2,267 square kms of remote bush in the Yaeda Chini region of Tanzania, east Africa.

Campaigners feared if a hunting concession was granted to the company then the 400-estimated Hadzabe hunter-gatherers of Yaeda Chini would have been criminalised as poachers and driven off land their ancestors have lived on for 10,000 years.

To the Crown Prince's credit, the company pulled out.

And this entry has been long and pointless but I was in a ranting mood after reading about Family First. Blame Fielding, not me.