WHAT THE PEOPLE THINK ABOUT CRIME

I once did some academic studies of this subject (See here and here and here and here) and not much seems to have changed. There are still too many court sentences that treat criminals as needing sympathy rather than deterrence. The following reports the results of a survey carried out for a Brisbane Sunday newspaper but there is no doubt that similar results would be obtained in many other parts of the Western world

Queenslanders have savaged the state's judiciary for going easy on criminals. Just 3 per cent think Queensland courts impose sentences that reflect the crime, while 92 per cent think violent criminals should be dealt with more harshly. About 87 per cent support the introduction of a "three strikes and you're out" policy of mandatory jail terms for criminals convicted of the same offence three times. Four-fifths support convicted child sex offenders being jailed for life. Fifty-four percent support re-introducing the death penalty.

"There's a genuine concern that punishments do not fit the crime," said social analyst David Chalk of AustraliaSCAN. "Underpinning this whole thing is a sense that we know we are vulnerable and we rely on the system to protect us." .....

Ninety-two per cent of respondents say homeowners should be allowed to use any force necessary against burglars in their homes. While 91 per cent of people feel safe in their homes, only 12 per cent think the state is safer than it was in 2000, and two-thirds say police are losing the battle against crime.....

More here

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ELSEWHERE

There are transcripts here and here of two good speeches which were delivered on the Israel / Palestine conflict in the Australian Parliament recently. Also, there is a fascinating extract from an article by Caroline Glick. In this longish article she points out that Gaza - which now has no sovereign power laying claim to it apart from the Palestinians, IS actually a sovereign Palestine under conventions of international law.

France's rising political star and probable next President, Nicolas Sarkozy, is a free marketeer, in a French sort of way. He's also surprisingly pro-American and very popular.

Protesters condemn Canada's sharia court plan: "Hundreds of human rights campaigners staged protests yesterday in 11 cities in Europe and North America against Canadian proposals to set up the first court in the Western world to use Islamic law to settle family disputes. The demonstrations registered outrage over the recommendations of a government report which advocates the introduction of voluntary tribunals based on sharia -- the strict Islamic code -- into the legal system of Canada's most populous province."

Not that '70s show : "The story of Hurricane Katrina is first and foremost a tale of Mother Nature's wrath and the resulting human misery: thousands of deaths, destroyed homes and businesses, family break-ups, psychological demoralization and other hardships too painful to recount. But Katrina is also an economic story in terms of its effect on U.S. commerce, trade, energy, shipping and overall growth. Here the doomsayers and pessimists will again be proven wrong. This is not the 1970s. After more than 20 years of deregulation the U.S. economy is flexible and resilient -- even in the face of short-run shocks. ... In the 1970s, government-applied price controls and supply rationing created a dysfunctional economy that looked like a pinball machine on permanent tilt. Today, with few exceptions, price controls have been rejected. Auto and truck drivers would rather pay $4 a gallon for gas they can get, than have government mandate $2 a gallon for gas that's unavailable."

Reliapundit says: "The failure of Governor Blanco to allow the Red Cross or Salvation Army into Nalwins and to resupply the 'dome or the Convention Center - and the failure of the MSM to adequately report that this was the cause of the terrible suffering we all witnessed for 4 days after Katrina hit - is a scandal and it's called BLANCOGATE! The failure of Mayor Nagin to follow his city's Hurricane Evacuation Plan is a scandal and it's called NAGINGATE. Together, these scandals - which togther were responsible for the horrific scenes of suffering at the Superdome and the Convention Center - are called KATRINAGATE! Blanco and Nagin should resign IMMEDIATELY."

U.N. says Australia a great place to live (A bit arbitrary but nice anyway) "Petrol prices might be soaring and house prices falling but Australians don't really have much to whinge about. We live in one of the healthiest, richest and most highly educated places on earth, a UN report said this week. Our life expectancy has climbed to 80.3 years, fifth-highest in the world, income per person is the eighth-best in terms of buying power, and we are as well educated as any other nation. When these indicators are put together, the UN's measure of human development ranked Australia third out of 177 countries - only Norway and Iceland surpassed Australia at the vanguard of human progress... The human development index, prepared by the UN Development Program, assumes wellbeing is about more than the rise or fall of national incomes. It tries to create a broader indicator of achievement by combining income with health (measured by life expectancy) and education (measured by literacy and enrolment levels)".

Anglicans rediscover God -- when it suits them: "In an all-too-predictable twist Middle East studies, and scholars such as American Lawrence Davidson, have been enlisted to justify an ancient manifestation of anti-Semitism revived: replacement theology, sometimes called supersessionism. This doctrine, as proposed by St. Augustine, asserts that the Jews fell from divine favor when they refused to accept Christ, and that God chose the Church to replace them. In the updated version of replacement theology, Palestinians are the new chosen people. The modern Jewish state is considered an occupying power because the Jews forfeited their right to the promised land. But modern adherents to replacement theology would find their hatred a hard sell if they relied solely on New Testament imagery; instead, they describe Israel as a Nazi state or compare it to apartheid South Africa, making sure that Israel's status as the new Rome is clear. And of course, the Palestinians are cast as the new Jews. The Anglican Consultative Council recently affirmed its support for replacement theology when it accepted the September 22 divestment recommendation by the Anglican Peace and Justice Network (APJN)."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. And on Social Security see Dick McDonald

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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