A blog revealing the horrors of Islam,International Socialism,the misery these two evils are inflicting upon the free the world,and those it has already enslaved,along with various articles revealing the attacks from within upon the western Judeo Christian ethic by those we entrusted to preserve it. Videos and Pictures of many varied subjects from around the world, along with some jokes of mine and any funny ones you want to send me.
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Winston Churchill. Pg.310 “The Hell Makers” John C. Grover ISBN # 0 7316 1918 8
This matters above everything.
—Confucius
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--------Check this out, what an Bum WOW!!!!
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Australia's Gold Coast invaded by Muslim Tourists
Ayaan Hirsi Ali Down Under Lateline
Monday, July 26, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Australian Federal Election August 21 2010: Wrap Up of “The Great Debate” 60 Minutes Australia 25 7 2010.
The studio audience of "uncommitted voters" may have misunderstood the question, "Who do you think won the debate? with "who are you voting for in the up coming election", there is a difference believe it or not.
Laurie Oaks is no fan of Tony Abbott and is like the majority of the Canberra press core a Labor Party apologist, he gave the debate to Abbott, I guess he has to at least try and maintain some credibility from time to time.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Australia: Kakoda Trail War Memorial desecrated AGAIN!!!! No doubt by "the usual susects”
Police hunt as Kokoda Track memorial desecrated
Daily Telegraph
July 24, 2010 1:01PM
A Kokoda Track war memorial that spans an 800-metre walkway in Sydney has been desecrated.
The Kokoda Track Memorial Walkway links Concord Hospital with Rhodes railway station in Sydney's west.
The memorial includes a granite centrepiece and 22 stations along the walk that signify important battles fought during World War II.
Police say the offender sprayed graffiti on some of the structures and smashed a number of CCTV cameras fixed along the walk sometime on Friday night or Saturday morning.
Anyone with information about the attack is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
This from Comments re above story Daily Telegraph
“Fay Rutland of sydney Posted at 3:54 PM Today
Time anyone found attacking any of our War Memorials jail them.We saw what happen to the Arncliffe War Memorial on Anzac Day the flag poles were torn down...So you know what Rockdale Council have decided to do?not not put the flagpoles back up...So sad our men died for this Country and we cannot protect their War Memorials. “
Rockdale is on the outskirts of Sydney's Occupied Territories and will soon no doubt be absorbed into them.
This is not the first time Australia’s finest have been desecrated and mocked by those sent to destroy us.They do it because they can.
Maybe when they are actually raping our wives and daughters Australians will object to the Labor Party endorsed agenda of Multiculturalism and All Cultures Religions are equal maybe when the piss heads and gamblers find some “Multiculturalist” barring the entrance to some alcohol trough and gambling den aka. their local Pub they will believe they have something worth fighting for maybe then “Australian’s”will stand tall and try and impersonate those before them who actually had the Balls and GUTS to fight for,and do something about the COLONIZATION of Australia by those who DESPISE everything Australia stands for and represents.
Nazi’s Rule… well at least in “Palestine” they do, they are called “Palestinians” aka. Pious Peace Loving Muslims.
Post-American Presidency: "Palestinian" Jihad Flag to Fly at the UN
Friday, July 23, 2010
Australia: Labor’s SECRET Internet Censorship / Snoop LAWS on hold until after August 2010 Federal election “……disclosure of the document uncensored "could be misleading to the public and cause confusion and premature and unnecessary debate".
No Minister: 90% of web snoop document censored to stop 'premature unnecessary debate'
SMH
BEN GRUBB
July 23, 2010 - 1:32PM
From black list to blacked out. Documents on plans to store web surfing data are heavily censored due to the possibility of 'premature and unnecessary debate'.
The federal government has censored approximately 90 per cent of a secret document outlining its controversial plans to snoop on Australians' web surfing, obtained under freedom of information (FoI) laws, out of fear the document could cause "premature unnecessary debate".
The government has been consulting with the internet industry over the proposal, which would require ISPs to store certain internet activities of all Australians - regardless of whether they have been suspected of wrongdoing - for law-enforcement agencies to access.
All parties to the consultations have been sworn to secrecy.
Industry sources have claimed that the controversial regime could go as far as collecting the individual web browsing history of every Australian internet user, a claim denied by the spokesman for Attorney-General Robert McClelland.
The exact details of the web browsing data the government wants ISPs to collect are contained in the document released to this website under FoI.
The document was handed out to the industry during a secret briefing it held with ISPs in March.
But from the censored document released, it is impossible to know how far the government is planning to take the policy.
The government is hiding the plans from the public and it appears to want to move quickly on industry consultation, asking for participants to respond within only one month after it had held the briefings.
The Attorney-General's Department legal officer, FoI and Privacy Section, Claudia Hernandez, wrote in her decision in releasing the highly censored document that the release of some sections of it "may lead to premature unnecessary debate and could potentially prejudice and impede government decision making".
Hernandez said that the material in question related to information the department was "currently weighing up and evaluating in relation to competing considerations that may have a bearing on a particular course of action or decision".
"More specifically, it is information concerning the development of government policy which has not been finalised, and there is a strong possibility that the policy will be amended prior to public consultation," she wrote.
Further, she said that although she had acknowledged the public's right to "participate in and influence the processes of government decision making and policy formulation ... the premature release of the proposal could, more than likely, create a confusing and misleading impression".
"In addition, as the matters are not settled and proposed recommendations may not necessarily be adopted, release of such documents would not make a valuable contribution to public debate."
Hernandez went further to say that she considered disclosure of the document uncensored "could be misleading to the public and cause confusion and premature and unnecessary debate".
"In my opinion, the public interest factors in favour of release are outweighed by those against," Hernandez said.
The "data retention regime" the government is proposing to implement is similar to that adopted by the European Union after terrorist attacks several years ago.
Greens Communications spokesman Scott Ludlam said the excuse not to release the proposal in full was "extraordinary". Since finding out about the scheme, he has launched a Senate inquiry into it and other issues.
"The idea that its release could cause 'premature' or 'unnecessary' debate is not going to go down well with the thousands of people who have been alarmed by the direction that government is taking," he said in a telephone interview.
"I would really like to know what the government is hiding in this proposal," he said, adding that he hoped that the Attorney-General's Department would be "more forthcoming" about the proposal in the senate inquiry into privacy he pushed for in June.
Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, George Brandis, said the government’s decision to censor the documented showed ‘‘how truly Orwellian this government has become".
"To refuse disclosure of material that had already been circulated among stakeholders, on an issue of intense current political debate on the ground that it might provide unnecessary discussion, shows that the Gillard government has become beyond satire," Brandis said.
Online users' lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia spokesman Colin Jacobs said what was released was "a joke".
"We have to assume the worse," he said. "And that is that the government has been badgering the telcos with very aggressive demands that should worry everybody."
Jacobs said that the onus was now on government to "explain what data they need, what problem it solves and, just as importantly, why it can't be done in an open process".
"The more sensitive the process and the data they want, the more transparent the government needs to be about why it wants that data," he said. "Nobody could argue that public consultation ... would somehow help criminals," he added.
"We have to turn the age-old question back on the government: if you don’t have anything to hide, then you shouldn't be worried about people having insight into the consultation.
"This is a very sensitive and important issue. It raises huge questions about privacy, data security and the burden of increased costs to smaller internet service providers. What really needs to be debated is what particular information they want, because that's where the privacy issue rears its ugly head," he said.
According to one internet industry source, the release of the highly censored document was "illustrative of government's approach to things where they don't want people to know what they're thinking in advance of them getting it ready to package for public consumption".
"And that’s worrying."
The Attorney-General's spokesman declined to comment, referring comment to the department. The department said it had "nothing to add" to the FOI letter it provided.
Australian Federal Election: Don’t Let Her off the Hook.
Australia: Comrade Lu Kewen’s aka. Kevin Rudd’s Internet censorship almost complete
Lu Kewens’ internet censorship plans “unworkable” says Google
Rudd’s Australia : Australian Labor Party to require ISP’s to keep records of customers web surfing, in the name of “Fresh Thinking” of course
Australian Labor Party Icon and role model orders arrest of TV station owner…
Australian Labor Party’s best friend turns out the lights in Venezuela “Dear President Chávez, We, the undersigned citizens of Australia, would like to extend a warm invitation for you to visit our country…………”Rudds’ Australia: Iran,Australia and North Korea a threat to internet via censorship regulation
Rudd’s Australia: Internet censorship anti Rudd Labor Facebook site shut downAmericans BEWARE Australian internet to be CENSORED by Australian Labor Party
Australia:Former Labor leader Mark Latham says Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott more honest than Labor PM Julia Gillard
Brendan Nicholson
The Australian
July 22, 2010 12:00AM
FORMER Labor leader Mark Latham last night exploded out of retirement to launch a scathing attack on the government.
He declared Julia Gillard's population policy was a "fraud of the worst order" and her education revolution had achieved nothing.
And Mr Latham suggested that Tony Abbott was more honest than the Prime Minister, a one-time friend of his. Mr Latham told Sky News that Ms Gillard was running a phony population campaign while saying she opposed the idea of a big Australia.
"She's been going on about sustainable population growth," Mr Latham said. "That's been her mantra for the past three or four days. It's an issue that's come out of the blue and she's defining her prime ministership around it.
"Today she said it's not an immigration debate. Where does she think all these people have been coming from in western Sydney? We grow them in our back garden? I mean, for every four people who move to Sydney from other parts of Australia, seven move to Sydney from overseas."
Mr Latham, the former MP for the southwestern Sydney seat of Werriwa, said any serious debate about population had to be about immigration.
"If it's not an immigration debate, it's no debate," he said.
"And I'll tell you what it is, it's a fraud. It's an attempt to con people in western Sydney that she's going to do something about congestion. And I think some smartie in the Labor Party worked out that sending out signals on population would be a proxy for the asylum-seeker and climate change debates. It's clever politics. But it's a fraud . . . of the worst order."
Mr Latham also supports putting a stop to Sydney's expansion and he said the way to do that was to stop moving more people into the western suburbs. He said that as a resident of western Sydney for 45 years, he was aware it was "absolutely chock-a-block".
He also attacked the education achievements at the core of Ms Gillard's push for re-election, saying he's seen no evidence of any education revolution.
Mr Latham then attacked the government's health policy, saying he did not see how putting a different set of bureaucrats in charge of hospital funding would produce a revolutionary result.
He said Ms Gillard was a changed person and suggested Mr Abbott was more honest. "She used to be fairly free-wheeling and open about things," he said.
"She has mastered the art of narrowness in public life."
Australian Federal Election: Don’t Let Her off the Hook.
Part 1.
Pt.2
Pt.3
The Australian
July 21, 2010 12:00AM
The Prime Minister needs far greater media scrutiny
WEEK one of the campaign and Julia Gillard is getting away scot-free in some sections of the press. The Labor leader is doing everything by the book. She's the perfect candidate, produced to within an inch of her life with an apparently endless capacity for platitudes and recycled promises. She is, as we report today, " the girl in the bubble" created by her party machine. Many in the Fairfax media and the ABC seem mesmerised by the performance. That may be good news for Labor but it's bad for democracy, bad for the country and bad for the free press.
In March, editor-at-large Paul Kelly wrote about the progressive media's problems in reporting on Tony Abbott, whose "muscular, conservative Christianity" they found offensive. Rather than look at his policies, a Four Corners profile screened at that time focused on the Opposition Leader's religion, reflecting the ABC's dominant ideological mindset that Christianity is a "negative, repressive factor".
One might have thought, given her atheism, that these same journalists would have found it easier to focus on the things that really matter about Ms Gillard. One might have expected that, given she has been in the job for less than four weeks, the Prime Minister would have been under close scrutiny, her policies dissected along with her makeup. Not so. From day one when The Sun-Herald virtually endorsed Ms Gillard on its front page, they have failed to apply the basic rules of reporting to Labor's campaign.
There is no disputing that Mr Abbott has made it easy with his gaffe over industrial relations and his lacklustre start to the campaign. But the problem runs deeper, with the assumption that the conservative side of politics is fair game, while Labor needs not to be challenged too hard.This is not a new phenomenon. Throughout Kevin Rudd's ascendancy and his government, the ABC and Fairfax papers failed to nail his true character or understand what a mess he was in -- inside the party and in the electorate. They ignored the debacles over pink batts and the Building the Education Revolution. They swallowed the idiocy of alcopops, Grocery Choice and Fuel Watch. In short, they had no idea there was trouble at mill.
Now Ms Gillard is positioned as the new broom sweeping away the Rudd detritus. Except that since 2007 she was deputy prime minister and a member of the Kitchen Cabinet, as responsible as Mr Rudd for government decisions. Indeed, it was Ms Gillard who urged the backflip on the emissions trading scheme that helped undo Mr Rudd.
Yet her beliefs, political vision and policies are not being tested by many in the media.
Letting the Prime Minister off the hook does the nation a great disservice. We need to know what she -- and her government -- really stand for. We need to get behind Ms Gillard's carapace of genial certainty and start asking the tough questions about her policies and record. The past few days have shown both leaders are happy to focus on the diminishing horizon of reform. As Alan Mitchell wrote in The Financial Review this week, the Prime Minister is under pressure to mimic the example of former NSW premier Bob Carr and do "as little as possible for as long as possible". It is not good enough, but without more scrutiny, the Prime Minister might just get away with it. Mark Scott at the ABC and Brian McCarthy at Fairfax need to pick up the phone and tell their editors to muscle up and scrutinise both sides of politics.
Australia: The Un Holy Alliance of Gillard and Brown, Brown and Gillard preparing the road to Serfdom for Australians
Who IS Madame / Comrade Julia Gillard ?
Australia: Australian Union (ACTU) Appointed Prime Minister,Madame Gillard and her Union Financiers and Bankers Commit to Internet Filter to protect Australians from Counter Revolutionary thoughts.
Australia: What Madame Gillard did and said she thought BEFORE she was appointed Prime Minister of Australia by the Union Movement & NSW Labor’s Political ASSASSINS on June 24 2010
Australia: Comrade Lu Kewen’s aka. Kevin Rudd’s Internet censorship almost complete
Lu Kewens’ internet censorship plans “unworkable” says Google
Rudd’s Australia : Australian Labor Party to require ISP’s to keep records of customers web surfing, in the name of “Fresh Thinking” of course
Australian Labor Party Icon and role model orders arrest of TV station owner…
Rudds’ Australia: Iran,Australia and North Korea a threat to internet via censorship regulation
Rudd’s Australia: Internet censorship anti Rudd Labor Facebook site shut down
Americans BEWARE Australian internet to be CENSORED by Australian Labor Party
Australia: What Madame Gillard did and said she thought BEFORE she was appointed Prime Minister of Australia by the Union Movement & NSW Labor’s Political ASSASSINS on June 24 2010
Madame Julia’s Progress Australia “looking forward” EVERY Australian school student would be taught positive things about Islam and Muslims
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Two Faces of Australia :The Finest and the Multicultural.
To think that this courageous young man dies fighting in Afghanistan whilst the Union funded Australian Labor Party is allowing the cowards that run away from their own country to colonize Australia is too obscene to contemplate
And this Garbage (Islanders) fly’s / floats into Australia un challenged and takes over our suburbs and streets at will.
Americans be warned !!! Australia: Nationalised Health Medi DONT Care!!
The Best Third World health care system in the First World, forty years of socialised medicine has given Australians this disgusting mess, they call “FREE Health Care” Look out America
Australia: The Un Holy Alliance of Gillard and Brown, Brown and Gillard preparing the road to Serfdom for Australians
Devils inside hidden Green agenda
By Andrew Bolt
The Daily Telegraph
July 21, 2010
ONE election result is already clear - and makes this debate about Tony Abbott's "secret" plans even more brainless.
Wake up, people. The Greens will have the balance of power in the Senate.
Labor sealed that deal when it agreed to swap preferences with a party which its wiser heads know would devastate the economy if it could.
That's politics, I guess.
Winning is all, and to hell with the national interest. But how grotesquely irresponsible?
Labor is helping into power a party which demands we scrap our power stations and close industries that earn us at least $60 billion a year.
Oh, and it wants us all to have more holidays, because hard work and making money really sucks.
Some 12 per cent of voters say this is just the party for them, and even Labor now says it's the best of the rest.
Yes, that really is how infantile our society, and our politics especially, has become.
But Labor, whose primary vote has been unusually low, says this only because it badly needs Greens preferences. In exchange, it's agreed to help the Greens save its own five Senate seats - and to probably win a couple more.
It was already inevitable Labor would win back some Senate seats from the Coalition.
But this deal also kisses goodbye to Family First Senator Steve Fielding, who lucked his seat in 2004 when Labor absentmindedly preferenced him but will lose it now Labor is steering votes to the Greens.
That will be all it takes. After this election, no government will be able to pass a law against the opposition's objection without the support of the Greens, and Greens alone.
Never has this party had such a great chance to inflict on us policies that many voters treat as position statements, rather than a deliberate manifesto for the deindustrialisation of our economy and the tribalising of our society.
This now is the real issue: How much of our future did Labor sell off just to get these Greens' preferences?
Never mind this week's scare campaign about what workplace laws Abbott might secretly plan. The hapless schmuck couldn't get them through a Greens-Labor Senate even if he wanted to.
No, what really needs debate is what the Greens might now demand from a Gillard Government in exchange for its vote. And that, in turn, needs journalists especially to take seriously this party's policies.
The Greens' manifesto is not written down for a joke. It is the serious work of ideological warriors hiding behind Bob Brown's amiable front.
Vote Greens in this election and you won't get cuddlier koalas, bigger hugs and cleaner rivers. In fact, you'll be voting to "transition from coal exports", which means ending a trade worth $55 billion a year .
You'll be voting to end "the mining and export of uranium", worth $900 billion a year. You'll be demanding farmers "remove as far as possible" all GM crops, which includes cotton worth about $1.3 billion a year.
You will be voting to close down many other industries, including export of woodchips from old-growth forests, certain kinds of fishing, oil and mineral exploration in wildernesses, and new coal mines.
You'll even be voting to close the Lucas Heights nuclear facility, even though it actually produces treatments for cancer.
In fact, you'll be voting for policies deliberately intended to make us poorer. Less industrialised. Or as the Greens' policy puts it, for a "reduction of Australia's use of natural resources to a level that is sustainable and socially just".
Maybe you think it won't matter if a few industries get shut. Maybe you really are that stupid. But you haven't heard the rest of the Greens' policies yet, have you?
You see, the Greens also plan to shut coal power stations that produce 80 per cent of our electricity. They not only "oppose the establishment of new coal-fired power stations" - claiming they make the planet dangerously hot - but intend to ban new coal supplies for those we already have. And they'll hit power stations with a new tax to make electricity too expensive for you.
Do you have any idea how many businesses would be driven broke by this Green frolic? How many hundreds of thousands of jobs would be lost?
If you think the Greens must have alternative power sources in mind, you're dreaming.
The Greens want to keep Labor's ban on nuclear power. They even want to scrap government-funded research into carbon capture.
So consider. If the Greens get their way we'll have huge industries banned, businesses driven broke and power prices driven through the roof, with not enough electricity for what industries will be left.
So, with our income slashed to ribbons, what do the Greens propose? Not deep cuts in every government program but a spending spree to make Kevin Rudd seem a miser.
It's free money for everyone. If you vote for the Greens, you're voting for an extra week of holidays for all, "mandated shorter standard working hours", more pay for women workers, higher pay for casuals and better weekly benefits to students and artists.
More pay for less work, at the mere stroke of a Green pen. Isn't that a darling way to reorganise the economy? What could possibly go wrong?
They promise to lift foreign aid to "a minimum of 0.7 per cent of GDP by 2010", which means an instant rise in handouts of $4 billion a year.
Another $2 billion a year will go to scrap tertiary fees and forgiving all HECs debts.
The Greens lazily assume that the bill will be covered by hiking corporate taxes, hitting the richer 5 per cent of Australians with wealth taxes, and slugging air travellers. Show us your costings, Bob.
I'd be amazed if after a year of two of this that anyone would want to come to a country which by then would be a smoking hole in the ground.
Yet the Greens plan to do their best to attract more people to their new nation of freeloaders. Any "asylum seeker" making it here by boat would be freed into the community within 14 days, security checks permitting, and rewarded with benefits, medical services and school for children. These goodies will be offered to "environmental refugees", too.
A new, militant industrial agenda is also buried in this New Age madness, signalling the arrival in Brown's party of "watermelon Greens" - green outside and red inside.
These, like NSW candidate Lee Rhiannon, seem Green more of convenience than faith, using this doctors' wives party to smuggle in the kind of hard-Left politics that would scare voters if they saw it coming under a hammer and sickle.
This is what a vote for the Greens really means. And it's this party of vandals, tribalists and closet totalitarians that shameless Labor now helps to such threatening influence.
Who IS Madame / Comrade Julia Gillard ?
Australia: Australian Union (ACTU) Appointed Prime Minister,Madame Gillard and her Union Financiers and Bankers Commit to Internet Filter to protect Australians from Counter Revolutionary thoughts.
Australia: What Madame Gillard did and said she thought BEFORE she was appointed Prime Minister of Australia by the Union Movement & NSW Labor’s Political ASSASSINS on June 24 2010
Australia: Comrade Lu Kewen’s aka. Kevin Rudd’s Internet censorship almost complete
Lu Kewens’ internet censorship plans “unworkable” says Google
Rudd’s Australia : Australian Labor Party to require ISP’s to keep records of customers web surfing, in the name of “Fresh Thinking” of course
Australian Labor Party Icon and role model orders arrest of TV station owner…
Rudds’ Australia: Iran,Australia and North Korea a threat to internet via censorship regulation
Rudd’s Australia: Internet censorship anti Rudd Labor Facebook site shut down
Americans BEWARE Australian internet to be CENSORED by Australian Labor Party
Australia: What Madame Gillard did and said she thought BEFORE she was appointed Prime Minister of Australia by the Union Movement & NSW Labor’s Political ASSASSINS on June 24 2010
Madame Julia’s Progress Australia “looking forward” EVERY Australian school student would be taught positive things about Islam and Muslims
Australia: MSM Rejoices !!!! Tony Abbott Booed
Hey Hey crowd boos Tony Abbott
Tory Shepherd
The Daily Telegraph
July 21, 2010
TONY Abbott did not get the most friendly welcome on the set of Hey Hey It's Saturday tonight begging the question whether Prime Minister Julia Gillard made the right choice by declining to join him.
With a guitar riff and a cheesy intro by Daryl Somers, on walked ... Red Symons, to a chorus of boos, Kylie Minogue to a rousing welcome, Entourage's Rex Lee ... and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott.
Mr Somers said Prime Minister Julia Gillard had "gracefully declined" to join Mr Abbott on the set.
Mr Abbott was greeted with some applause but a majority of desultory jeers, and faced some random shouting from the audience during the show. He certainly did not look threatened by the homosexual Mr Lee sitting next to him.
Somers commended his campaigning stamina and asked whether he had further commitments. Mr Abbott said no, "no karaoke or anything like that".
The first act was some sort of awful inbred yokel performance, a woman who didn't last long before the gong was sounded.
"I quite like the Julia Gillard accent,” Mr Abbott said, giving her a score of 5.
Then there was a dear old guy doing stand-up who lasted a bit longer.
He asked Kylie to say hi to his grandkids and Kylie obliged.
“Well, he’s funnier than I am but I’m not sure he can keep up on the bike, but well done, it’s a great effort,” Mr Abbott said, and gave him a 6. Mr Lee gave him 7 for being “funnier than Tony Abbott”.
Act three was a man and a dog, or rather two – the dogs were cute, the man annoying. Kylie held her ears as the gong went.
“Look, I love animals,” said Mr Abbott, holding up a score of seven. Kylie was, again, more generous.
Next, and finally, some precocious youngsters rocked the house with Wild Thing and fine style and got the whole audience on board. Kylie laughed, Mr Abbot clapped.
Yokel Loretta something-or-other with the Gillard-esque voice won in the end.
Overall, Mr Abbott kept smiling with good cheer throughout, delivered some good one-liners, and at least he’s got the guts to do something a bit more … interesting.
It was hardly a spontaneous show of civil unrest or hatred against Tony Abbott by Hey Hey’s audience, in fact I thought it was representative of the type of results the Telegraph and the Australian, Channels 9 10 7 and Sky news are getting on their online and TV Polls minimum of 65 + % in FAVOUR of Abbott over Gillard in every poll since the Australian Council of Trade Unions appointed Gillard to the office of PM of Australia.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Medan Indonesia’s worst City, Muslims face wrong way to Mecca
Worst. City. Ever.
ADAM GARTRELL SMH July 19, 2010
Dear Medan. I hate you.
I visited you recently and found you the most unpleasant, charmless and thoroughly depressing city I've ever encountered. And I've visited plenty of s---holes in my time.
Now, when it comes to big Indonesian cities I have pretty low expectations.
I live in Jakarta, the biggest of them all, so I know what I'm in for: traffic, pollution, heat, noise, chaos, the stench of human waste.
And you, Medan - Indonesia's third biggest city - you provided all those things. In great abundance.
In fact, even though your population, at three million, is a quarter that of Jakarta's, I reckon you're worse on just about every count.
Quite an achievement.
But Medan, you're awful not just because of your many failings but because you appear to have no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
You're slim pickin's for hotels, you don't seem to boast a single, decent restaurant and from what I've heard, you've got no real nightlife.
Your airport is a Boschian nightmare, your roads a mess, your buses an embarrassment and your taxis ... well, if I ever find one I'll let you know.
And ever heard of trees?
Okay, so you have a big mosque but it's also the closest thing you've got to a tourist attraction. And you have a few shopping malls but what city doesn't?
I understand now why you consistently feature on people's "Worst. City. Ever." lists.
You're at the very top of mine.
Okay, I admit, there's a personal element to this. See, I got robbed in one of your hotels.
It wasn't a very nice hotel. It promotes itself as a four star hotel when in actual fact it's closer to a two. But that's fine. I don't need luxury and it cost less than $100 a night.
Except, in the end, it actually cost a couple of grand. Because while I was out one night scouring the streets for a decent meal - in vain, of course - someone broke into my room and stole a giant wad of company cash from my suitcase.
Why did I have a giant wad of cash, you ask? Well, because Indonesia is a mostly cash economy, so I'm forced to travel with plenty of it. But why didn't I put it in the safe? Well, because the hotel didn't provide one.
And when I brought the robbery to the hotel's attention the staff were predictably - and perhaps deliberately - unhelpful.
Security staff at first said they could give me a keycard lock report, so I could see if anyone else entered my room. But then - for reasons not properly explained - they suddenly couldn't.
But that was okay, they said. They could show me the CCTV footage outside my room instead.
Oh no, wait, sorry! We don't actually know the password to review the CCTV!
Can you say "inside job"?
Needless to say I moved to a different hotel for my final night. I woke up the next morning in blood-stained sheets. Mozzies never take any interest in me but your Medan mozzies made quite a frenzied exception.
I didn't get malaria. But I did get spectacularly, violently sick about a week later from an intestinal parasite, which I'm certain I picked up from you, Medan. I just know it.
I've never been so happy to board a plane as I was the one that whisked me away from you, Medan. And I never want to see you again.
Muslims facing wrong way to Mecca
“Indonesian Muslims have been praying in the wrong direction for months, facing Somalia by mistake.”
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