I think you are right in some of your notions, but conceptually you have no idea why their is much nervousness over this.

Its simple common sense. If Australia was doing the nuclear weapons thing do you think it would recive the same international outcry? Hardly.

You have a rougue state with a history of baffling decissions that have placed their nation in much dissaray. An irresponsible government with different fundamental beliefs and a bee in their bonnet is a recipe for disaster when nuclear capabilities are obtained.

North Korea have proven they have acted on impulse many times in the last 2 regimes, so why allow them the most powerful and destructuve weapons on earth and risk them making off the cuff decisions?

People with your philosophy forget we are not all level headed, similar thinking, rational people. You have a dictator who solely makes the decisions and is already making threats of war after recieving just political pressure at this point.

I hope you take a good hard look at the situation again and think of it as the US and most of the world doing us a favour by confronting the issue now.

My fullest compliments on a very interesting, well balanced and accurate article which doesn't unthinkingly jump on the "lets destroy another sovereign state" bandwagon as so many other stories have done of late. look at the most powerful countries today the official nuclear club members are all on the list and not just because it takes money and brains to build nukes. Military capability and political clout go hand in hand because war is the ultimate expression of politics and always a factor in international negotiations. Countries without any serious muscle to back their demands can be safely ignored.

Ultimately might is right. You need only look at America to see this is true. Iraq had a weak military force and was easily defeated but N.Korea has always been very strong in this regard. America would never seriously consider invading them after the last embarassing attempt showed this to be so. A nuclear N.Korea is unassailable.

The Non-Proliferation Treaty was never going to work. It ignores the fundamental make up of human beings. Every country wants to be able to stand on its own two feet and not be dictated to by others. In a world of haves and have nots the nuclear club has too much power over the rest of us. Proliferation was always going to continue. Treaties are just paper. Secret programs are certainly going on in many more countries than those who have been caught out or admitted their research.

The world will never be free of nukes. That is a utopian fantasy. In the valley of the blind the one eyed man is king. In a nuclear free world any country with hidden nukes would rule supreme. At risk of sounding a wacko we should remember that this universe is probably inhabited by other intelligent life and to disarm ourselves of our most advanced weaponry could in fact be the dumbest move we ever make.

If Kim Jong-Il is not a complete madman, he can’t be far from it. Last week, I was in Peace Park at Hiroshima being reminded of the hideous damage the A-bomb – a mere fire cracker compared with its nuclear upgrade – did to human beings.

Anyone, Korean, Iranian or Western, who deals with nuclear weapons and nuclear power, must be considered deranged. And calling the US hypocritical, when it is still the only Western nation capable of protecting us from less scrupulous non-Western countries and cultures is plain stupid. The West also has the right to self-preservation, and it does not pose the threat to the rest of the world Bagaric claims. And, if self-preservation is OK for Korea etc, why the hell should we be worried about their ‘rights’ to the detriment of our own?

As Bagaric says, people are not divided into good and evil (we can hardly blame the starving Koreans for their country’s nuclear lunacy) but anyone who thinks that there is no difference between Kim Jong-Il and George Bush or John Howard has really lost touch with reality.

The basic thrust of Mirko Bagaric 's article makes sense. George W.Bush has managed to spread the prevailing idea of evil Korea versus good U.S.A. People worldwide, and especially in the US, are waking up to the double standards of US foreign policy. The doctrine of pre-emptive strike is pretty mich discredited now.
The 1994 agreed framework between the US and Korea was never implemented, because the new Bush administration in 2001 reassessed the policy, and then came out with the "axis of evil" statement.
No wonder Kim Jong-il followed his confrontational path on nuclear weapons development.
No, Australia should not "start towing the US line" or even "toeing it". the US should not "illicit" or even "elicit" the support of the Security Council and European nations. Diplomacy is the only sane way to go, and the aggressive posture of the Bush administration is looking sillier every day. Christina Macphseron www.antinuclear.net

To begin, "No nuclear power has ever had its territorial sovereignty invaded by another country." The Falklands, need I say more. Secondly, and more importantly: what a load of garbage.

Who honestly believes good and evil can be placed on a binary scale? Also, how can the author use history to put the actions of the US in context. You cannot compare actions in Nicaragua, Vietnam, Guatemala, Cambodia, Korea, Grenada, Afghanistan and especially Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why not include the American Revolution or the American/Spanish war. A state is not a living thing. Governments change, people die and policies become irrelevant.

Present administrations cannot be blamed for past events. You can bet the people of the former South Vietnam envy the people of South Korea, and wish the Americans won the war.

The US has had a few problems with human rights abuses, G Bay, etc. As have all countries. Kim Jong-Il ostracises the international community, kidnaps foreign citizens, starves, tortures and murders its citizens, and earns hard currency through counterfeiting and smuggling. The simple fact is, no country, ever, will be able to take the absolute moral high ground, and every country, always, will act in its own self interest. Failure to do so would be in breach of the social contract with its citizens

In the author’s blind demonisation of the US, he has sided with some of the worst dictators in power. Of course it is rational for NK to have nuclear weapons. Of course it is rational for other countries to wish to remove them. North Korea and Iran are dangerous states. If one of my neighbours who repeatedly called for my destruction, and supported others with the same ideals, suddenly gained possession of a firearm, I would be justified in trying to remove it. Likewise, if my neighbour was an unpredictable person, who had a history of harming their family, I would be justified in doing the same thing. At the end of the day, NK and Iran are dangerous states, everything that can be done to limit the damage they can do should be done, in this respect, the aims of the US are in line with out own.

As for the demobilisation of all nuclear weapons, and world peace: It is a nice goal, but completely impossible. Any game theorist will tell you of the marvellous incentives to cheat in proliferation, the result of which would be unimaginable if the only states left with weapons are the ones most likely to cheat, like Iran and North Korea. Like it or not, nuclear weapons in the hands of the Security Council leads to a global balance of power and encourages peace. Nuclear weapons in the hands of dictatorships and terrorist groups are a frightening, and real, prospect

Mirko

Why do you think the U.S. has been the only power to use a nuke? And why do you think none has been used since 1945? How do you think the post WW2 world might have played out if the U.S. had upped sticks and stayed home over the past 60 years?

What a load of rubbish. Does it not strike you as ironic that you are freely (and without any penalty) railing against the US government? What separates Western democracies from so called "Communist" regimes is the ability of Western democracies to a) openly criticise their governments and power structures, and b) elect their governments. I don't see such freedoms being available in North Korea. Yet the US is the tyrant?

Here is a country that has constantly violated human rights, has put the maintenance of the regime in front of the rights of it's own people, has caused countless suffering to millions of people, while the regime leaders live in luxury which is excessive even by Western standards, and yet you claim that the US is a tyrant which must be reigned in?

Articles like this really make my blood boil. This article is yet another example of what happens when theory is privileged over reality. Yes, IN THEORY, each state should have sovereign rights, and should be allowed to co-exist peacefully. In reality, when human rights abuses are occurring on an unprecedented scale, when even the most basic needs of a large section of the population are not being met, and when the ruling elite decides that they want to make erratic and dangerous decisions which affect not only their own country, but neighbouring states, then surely it is time for the world community to step in.

Gekko

I share you rage. These outbursts are thsoe of spoilt children who have cocooned from the realities of the world of the past sixty years. Of course anybody can say whatever they like about Australia, the US, Israel, etc. because they know damn well that those very societies who did all the hard work and won the Cold War are the same societies who do all the hard work in providing them with a platform and a lifestyle to bitch and moan all they want.

To solve social and power differences impose might, it being right. Well internationally anyway at home perhaps the rule of law and common human empathy operates.

America was happy with dictatorships often embracing them; similarly Saddam until his usefulness as bulwark to Iran which we had meddled in unseating democracy imposing the terror of the Shah, to whom nuclear nohow was provided stopped when the Ayatollah arrived with his brand of terror.

So N Korea a peasant society initially helped by Russia and China. Energy deprived was using Russian supplied reactors (which produced plutonium).

American stationed nuclear weapons on its borders and threats of their use.

Korea agreed to desist from nuclear path in exchange for Light Water reactors , oil diplomatic recognition and acceptance into the world scene. A peace treaty rendering finality to the war.

These were not provided and Bush on enthronement named Korea part of the axis of evil. Rapprochement was at an end.

Korea is supposed to be narco state counterfeit state dictatorship cult of the personal and more. Some of this based on US intelligence recently shown to be less than accurate indeed the Downing Street Memo reveals it as self serving inaccurate.

America has not abided by atomic niceties anymore than Korea is doing. Each see them as weapons of diplomacy though Korea was all but weaned of them by Carter and Clinton to some degree. S Korea helped.

America has even in the present been happy to embrace and help rather nasty dictators, personal egomaniacs, when suited, Central Asian republics being the latest.

But no they are them, different and thus subject to imposition of our power as solution.

But torture is in Israel too!

How nice to be big better bolder and less caring!

One recent interpretation of USA /Korea suggests a stalking horse whose use ensures American control even at the price of an arms race.

Oh well we can all go to church safe in our righteousness and those hurt pray over the waste of life, the others can enjoy the voyeurs thrill of powers mayhem!

Queen and country guys. Come to think about it, wish I had kept those other damn photographs of that gizmo in the suitcase. Used to wonder what I was doing for my country dragging that thing around 14 years ago. Have a nice weekend.

No one can challenge professor Bagaric in his impeccable ability to mount a serious argument in the sphere of morals. And I enter this discussion with great trepidation in my contention that Bagaric in this case is morally, and more so, politically wrong. To place America and N. Korea on the same moral ground, is an exercise of moral equivalence between the GATEKEEPER of civilization and its GATECRASHER(S).

Moreover, to claim, as Bagaric does, that America "is the most aggressive nation on earth", illustrating this by its intervention in Vietnam...during the Cold War, shows that Bagaric's political nous is completely erroneous.

To allow N. Korea to posses nuclear weapons is to invite Islamofascist countries to enter the nuclear club. And to "reign in the tyrant...America", is to unleash the tyrants of Islamofascism against civilization. Can Bagaric still claim a moral equivalence between the "America tyrant" and the Islamofascist tyrant?

For an answer see--http://power-politics1.blogspot.com

Themis etc.

What has North Korea got to do with Islamofascists? Great word though I love hearing Shrub try to pronouce it. Islam... Islamo... Fash.. Islamfa... Terrorists. :)

Thank you Leigh.

This article cuts to the heart of the current debated about education standards, too. FYI, Professor, its toe the line, not tow the line, elicit not illicit, and you cant't invade sovreignty.

You do have a point about NK now being safe from invasion - but only if it does not attack anyone itself. Perhaps this is a good thing. Pity about the poor people of North Korea, though.

The core question here is why should N.Korea be condemned, villified, sanctioned and possibly invaded for doing what many major Western nations are doing?

"What separates Western democracies from so called "Communist" regimes is the ability of Western democracies to a) openly criticise their governments and power structures,"

What good is criticism if it is completely ignored? Most people are against the Oil war currently going on in the Middle East.

"and b) elect their governments."

We have a two party system where both of the available choices open to us have essentially the same policies and are entrenched thanks to a preferential voting system. Some choice! I'm only a Liberal because I approve of their mature attitude to the development of nuclear technology here in Australia.

"I don't see such freedoms being available in North Korea. Yet the US is the tyrant?"

Don't believe everything you read. Having been falsely maligned in the press for over a week, starting with a front page story in the Sydney Morning Herald, I'm highly suspicious of what I read in the newspapers now. The story calling me a Cybersquatter and accusing me of cashing in on Steve Irwin's death was pure fiction. Despite my having emailed the Irwin's weeks earlier offering them http://www.bindiirwin.com for free I was villified. I was also called anti-jewish in some stories and anti-semitic in others. I am neither. Reporters are liars and newspaper owners have no integrity. I am still awaiting an apology. These disgusting rags couldn't even post a one paragraph retraction on page 20. They just swept the whole thing under the rug.

N.Korea's government controls the press but nobody controls the likes of Rupert Murdoch in this country and people like him are dictators in their own right. Dictators capable of making or breaking Governments.

Which is worse? A government controlled press or a press controlled Government? Both are equally despicable in my opinion.

Could agree that the NK leader is acting a bit like a nut case, but the very fact that China keeps NK going economically, helping to feed most of a million men under arms alone, proves that China has the answer to calming NK down. Also, Russia, whose leader, Putin being former OGPU no doubt still has thoughts of Soviet supremism, NK ideology now only an outpost or remnant of it.

The trouble is we still have serious problems with our own supremos, whose immediate forebears were much of the trouble that brought on Communistic socialism, which did start in our West and whom philosophers still tell us was simply only the opposite side of the same coin. That is why Marx said as well as Lenin, that the way to beat capitalism was not only to challenge it but to get better at it, and beat Western capitalism at its own game.

The biggest problem today, of course, is that both sides follow the Roman idea and also the Old Testament Promised Land teachings that if you cannot convert a people it is sufficient to murder and kill as long as good comes out of it.

As was the plan of the Romans when they destroyed Carthage as well as all its people. As with the Nazis who destroyed six million Jews, somewhat with the agreement of certain Christian leaders, not taking the lessons of the Sermont on the Mount but of the slaughter of the Moabites and others in the gifting of the Promised Land.

We see this so much with modern pattern bombing, not so much to destroy a structure, but the bombs containing smaller scatter grenades out to kill or wound all people who habitate the structures.

Not to be a bleeding heart or a left-wing loonie to think like this, but as Christians we should have learnt to know better. It is so distressing to find so many of our Christians far more cold-blooded at doing away with anti-Western Muslims, than certain agnostics who are inclined to agree more with Socratic reasoning than Christian faith.

Bushbred Part Two

Moreover, we find our own supremos in the endeavour to be probably moral or ethical in the long run, breaking written laws as with the attack on Iraq, breaking laws as with the interrogation of prisoners in both Iraq and Guantomono Bay, our John Howard fully in agreement.

In fact, our leaders have been breaking so many laws and telling so many lies, as former US defence official, Daniel Ellsberg has ben saying lately, we could wonder whether we are on the right side or not?

Having an oil company magnate like Richard Cheney as US vice President certainly makes it worse, and also the fact with such a hopeless looking military mess made in Iraq, with Cheney saying they’ll still be there beyond the next ten years, can only mean one thing, that they are only there in the long haul for the oil - as well as what’s in Iran.

One wonders whether we could have better supremos than the Cheneys and the GWBs, maybe even a Bismarck father of Realpolitik, and the theory of balance of power. Bismarck gained so much without ever fighting a big war, except when taking France in 1871, frightening hell out of the people of Paris, taking big guns right up to the gates, then retreating in glory back to Prussia, after telling the French to mend their ways.

Gathered all the Germanic states together without firing a shot, and it is said of Bismarck that if still alive in 1914 not only WW1 would never have begun, nor either WW2, because as Maynard Keynes so later mentioned, it was the nastiness by the victorious allies during the Versailles Treaty that induced Hitler with the help of an angry Vermacht that brought on WW2.

Maybe some of us might do well to read a few books in university libraries, watch out for the looney lefties, however.

Interesting article but maybe it shoukd have included reference to the "framework agreement" that Clinton made with North Korea back in 1994 but then reneged on.

I think Kim is trying to get his country back to the same bargaining position they were in at that time.

Themistocles -

I'm interested to see your reference to the term "Islamofascist" as if the two words are somehow unified.

Do you really understand what "fascism" is?

There are certain warning signs that indicate when a country is drifting toward fascism.

Look at this link and then decide who the fascists really are and where the world is heading.

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm

Interesting reading.

So who is right?

Mirko’s article sounds eminently sensible. But then so does every post, across the wide spectrum of views.

I don’t mind admitting that I just don’t know what to think.

There are always two sides to any argument as you quite rightly say but to add another saying, people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Israel secretly developed hundreds of nuclear weapons. This is well known and yet they still deny it to this day. To its credit N.Korea has not denied its intentions and has quite legally withdrawn from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Anmerica cannot keep threatening sanctions against countries such as India, Iran, Pakistan and N.Korea while continuing to turn a blind eye to Israel's devious actions. It is only because of a mid-level technician bravely leaking the information to the press that Israel's arsenal was even discovered. This guy was lured by a female mossad agent into a trap and kidnapped.
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Israel/

It is believed that Israel has already conducted several nuclear weapons tests. When is America going to demand sanctions on Israel? It is a double standard to impose starvation on one nation and then sell weapons to another.

I know this is a loony suggestion, but then, it is North Korea we're talking about...

...I'd be a little surprised if one of the intelligence scenarios for this whole situation is that the nuclear test is just an elaborate bluff.

I mean, if Kim Jong Il had stuffed a couple tons of TNT down that mine shaft, and a batch of plutonium, and detonated the whole mess, how would it be detectably different from an actual nuclear test? Would the ratios of radio isotopes be different or something?

Or even if the best he could manage was a 'dirty bomb' - again, how could we, with our seismographs and air-sample tests, tell the difference?

Let's not forget that Saddam fooled every intelligence team in the world for a decade with his charade and bluff over WMD. If Kim doesn't have nukes, he'd still want us to think he does, right? And if it keeps the rest of the world from messing with him, well, that's what he wants, isn't it?

Are there no journalists with enough gumption to investigate this scenario?

Just wondering...

Alex, Gekko, Neocommie and Leigh -> I agree
Mirko has lost touch with reality.

His main thesis is that George Bush forced Kim-Jong-il's hand into getting Nuclear weapons. What a load of crap. You do not develop your first nuclear weapons in 5 years. The north korean's were working on them well before George Bush became an international motivator.

This sentence says it all
"Nearly every commentary on the North Korea nuclear issue in the increasingly parochial western press has applied the same herd mentality. United States good; North Korea evil - let’s get the bad guy for wanting to get stronger. The media has swallowed the George W. “good versus evil” folly, hook, line and distasteful sinker."

Please Mirko, North Korea is a lot more evil than the US. Simply pointing out that the US has used more violence (which may be used in a good cause or a bad cause) is irrelevant rhetorical nonsense. It is sheer stupidity to deride the international community for wanting to stop an evil and unpredictable regime from getting nuclear weapons. Just as it isn't hypocrisy for the police to try and stop criminals from getting the same weapons the police have access to, it isn't hypocrisy for the US to want to stop North Korea from getting nuclear weapons.

Mirko's anti-american and anti-rational screed is just another example of the pathetic education many people are receiving in our 'free' universities where anti-western lecturers ensure that people like Mirko continue to be fed marxist propaganda.

I alway's find it funny that in the "two" part states many of us live in, we complain that there is little difference between the two parties, and worst still many of our ideas are not reflected in either. Yet we use our ability to make a choice between two parties we don't like, as a rod to beat one party states.

it's like saying you can have beans with your meat or meat with your beans. The people have not been able to effect major change even when we wanted to without major civil unrest.

Mercurius, I for one had certainly considered the scenario that you put forward. But when it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter, because we can’t tell if he’s pulled a bluff, so we have to treat it as the real thing.

.
Kenny, you make a very good point. Our two-party ‘democracy’ is barely better than a dictatorship, for as long as the two parties are of just about the same ilk, see off competitors in the most disgusting manner (a la One Nation) and are of a mindset dominated by big business and the profit motive, and basically ignorant of sustainability issues or of what the majority of normal citizens want. What is so different about a Kim Jong Il type of regime and ours?? (oh alright, there are lots of differences (:>) )

Crikey, if the sort of democracy that the US espouses is so good, then why is the US so poor at all sorts of things – looking after its impoverished citizens, reducing profligacy in the face of climate change and other looming issues, going so awry in Vietnam and Iraq, etc, etc?

.
Grey, you’re a bit rough:

“Mirko's anti-american and anti-rational screed is just another example of the pathetic education many people are receiving in our 'free' universities…”

Why can’t we all just consider what is put forward at face value and restrict responses to the core subject and to any issues that spin off from it in within the discussion?

Wayne,

I think we're descending into semantics. In any such debate, both sides can spend the rest of their lives pointing out evil and wrong acts performed by both sides. However, my argument is not that the US is some paragon of virtue which always acts in the best interests of the world. I am arguing that, overall, it is better to live in the US than in North Korea.

Yes, there are inequities in the US, but anyone in the US can get a job, earn a basic living, can say anything they want, can openly oppose the government, and can generally live life in any way they see fit, so long as they do not interfere with the freedom of others.

North Korea does not tolerate any criticism of the regime, does not allow any freedom of speech, does not allow freedom of religion, does not allow free trade between citizens, does not allow freedom of the press, does not allow it's citizens access to outside media, cannot even provide basic needs to a large section of the population (and even more galling, does not allow the population to help themselves!), and yet there continue to be people here who want to argue semantics, by pointing out that Rupert Murdoch has influence over governments or that people still live in poverty in the west.

Give me a break! There is a huge gap between 'influence' and dictatorship. The difference is that we can post in this blog and criticise anyone we want to criticise, but North Korean citizens cannot. I think that says it all. Once again, the problem with so much 'intellectual' debate on world politics is that it conveniently ignores reality, and prefers to play in a world of theories and moral absolutes.

Ludwig -

Because the problem's and differences are really to do with the underlying beliefs and worldviews of the people.

brilliant article, simple as that,keep up the good work :)

With North Korea, the West led by GWB, is aiming at a target really nothing to do with the prey they have had their sights on for the last five years - except that going by GWB’s reckoning NK belongs to his Axis of Evil.

The North Korean problem in origin does belong to the early Cold War era. It was an era in which America after WW2, using lessons from the mistakes of Post WW1 Versailles, initiated the wonderfully beneficial Marshall Plan resurrecting our former enemies Germany and Japan as well as other war-torn countries, really proving what the early Christian doctrine of forgiviness can achieve.

Further, with the rising presence of the Soviet Union, we backed America all the way, American movies of US wartime exploits, though somewhat overdone remaining tremendously popular. A new more deadly fear of nuclear war with the Soviet Union and of its getting ahead in the space race and its quickness of matching the US with exploding a hydrogen bomb, only increased our feelings for the need of dependence on America.

Apart from the present NK problem, which most social scientists might say, is largely the cause of unchanged thought-patterns still dominating NK reasoning, as well as partly with China, considering that China still supplies 3/4s of NK’s domestic upkeep as well as possibly part of the upkeep of one million men under arms.

Not that we should totally condemn China, even with a former Soviet high-ranker like Putin possibly going China’s way a little, as well as possibly also formerly non-aligned countries like India.

Non-alignment is an interesting term because in today’s problems, which besides North Korea, are mostly to do with the Middle East with Afghanistan only just to the north east - countries like China and indeed a revitalised Russia still with a Cold War nuclear stockpile, are certainly not truly pro-America.

Japan and South Korea, of course, are virtually trusted allies of America, their post-WW2 US engineered constitutions making sure of it.

Bushbred Part Two

Today’s White House problem can be certified by using GWB’s term - if you are not with us you are against us. As with the worn-out bull-roar of the British imperialist army sergeant-major - yours is not to reason why?

There are so many of our former allied military commanders lately so critical of the decisions that have been made since 9/11, which really only killed the same number of people who die in the average large passenger aircraft crash.

Cerainly we are still all shocked and sorry, while still deeply wishing that the attack was one by us on a big Middle-East Islamic mosque killing three thousand rather than three hundred.

Though maybe we are now getting too-much negative feed-back about American mistakes right back to our defeat in the Vietnam War, which Daniel Ellsberg was so vocal about with Tony Jones on Lateline, as Ellsberg was also caustic about, not only the present mess in Iraq, but the futility of ever trying to change Iran.

The most foolish thing ever done in the Middle East by the US, was to allow Israel to go nuclear, which in Realpolitik logic means that Iran needs to go nuclear to create a much needed power balance, as happened between India and Pakistan

The sorry part about it, is that not once have we heard about our John Howard saying a cross-word to his apparently bosom friend the US President. Even the 19th century colonial statesmen Howard tries so much to emulate, who had their occasional cross-words even to royalty going by history books. Even our Labor leaders have shown very little intestinal fortitude against American presidential policy. Possibly our only leader with a bit of gumption in this respect has been our Greenie leader, Bob Brown. Yet going by most of our Onliners, he’s bottom of the barrel

All power to Mirko. I thought I was alone.
Yes I probably would prefer to live in America than NK. That doesn't make the US perfect. They are bullies.
We are all prisoners of our preconceptions. In many countries not brought up on John Wayne, Clint Eastwood and Superman, all they see is a country which doesn't hesitate to interfere in the sovereighty of any nation, for the good of the American people.
NK is doing exactly what the USSR was forced to do, all those decades ago. Bankrupting itself in a frantic effort to protect it's borders from a belligerent and aggressive super power.
Democracy and the rule of law is about protecting the weak from the strong.
Backing a rat into a corner will get you just one thing.
Bitten.

Hey Wobbles!

The list of "14 Points of fascism" reads like the hymn book for the Howard government !

Welcome to the State of Australian Facism !