Guilherme wrote:
> Newsweek has one too:
>
> http://www.pollingreport.com/wh04gen.htm
>
> 52-41. registered voters. includes leaners.
What's Australian emigration policy like?
Doug
********************* Pretty tough....
Which reminds me, there’s an election taking place down here on October 9, 2004. John Howard of the Liberal Party will be facing off against Mark Latham of the Labor Party. The core right/left issues are, as usual these days, how much to cut from social programs in order to funnel more wealth back to the ruling capitalist class, so they in turn can “make more jobs”. That’s what it’s all about, right. Make the capitalist 'Arbeitgebers' happy and they trickle jobs down on the rest of us. The pollies are just trying to help the workers by creating a better business climate. So, for instance, the Libs will be expected to make more cuts in Medicare than the Labor Party. But the Labor Party will insist that they will do better by business by providing the Arbeitgebers with healthier wage-slaves.
The focus so far has been on image–much like the US. Down here, the image battle seems to be centring on who the voters ‘invest’ more trust in. Howard is thought to have squeaked by in the last election by claiming he was tougher on illegal immigrants–another image battle. He accomplished this by claiming that he had evidence that some illegal boat people had thrown their children overboard while on their way to Australian shores. Nobody endorsed throwing children overboard–not even the softer-on-crime Labor Party candidate, Kim Beazley. Nevertheless, the impression had been made that Howard was tougher on this kind unspeakable crime.
After Howard was elected, it was learned that no children had been thrown overboard and in the past week or so, one of Howard’s government bureaucrats came out to say the he had told Mr. Howard three times by phone that no children had been thrown overboard. This was well before Howard had come out with the “children overboard” as an election issue. But Howard has the tapes and claimed this week that the official only told him two times, not three.
So far, polls show the Liberals with a slight edge over Labor.
So it goes down here. Oh we have a different system bourgeois democracy, one where minor parties actually have a chance of getting elected to parliament. So, for example, we have Greens, Democrats and Nationals. There may be one or two One Nation Party types left in parliament. Not sure about that. Pauline Hanson is making noises that she may run again in the future, not this election, as an independent.
Best, Mike B)
===== "Formally, authoritarian ethics denies man's capacity to know what is good or bad; the norm giver is always an authority transcending the individual. Such a system is based not on reason and knowledge but on awe of the authority and on the subject's feeling of weakness and dependence; the surrender of decision making to the authority results from the latter's magic power; its decisions can not and must not be questioned. Materially, or according to content, authoritarian ethics answers the question of what is good or bad primarily in terms of the interests of the authority, not the interests of the subject; it is exploitative, although the subject may derive considerable benefits, psychic or material, from it." Eric Fromm, MAN FOR HIMSELF http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal
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