Losing a youth vote. Julia Gillard continues with her best efforts to lose the support of the one group that has for many years supported Labor most loyally — the country’s youth. Once again this morning the Prime Minister put the boot into WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange with her unnecessry comments trying to distinguish between the “moral force” of a whistleblower and the action of WikiLeaks in making public hundreds of thousands of classified US documents.
Whistle blowing put Watergate into the public eye, she said.
“That is conduct I can understand. WikiLeaks is something else. It’s not about making a moral case, it’s really about all of this information and just putting it up there and whatever happens happens. It’s an irresponsible thing to do.”
I am sure that there are many Australians, and an overwhelming majority of young ones, who will not agree with her.
Practising what the employer preached. The fascinating dispute between the United States and Pakistan over the status of an American citizen who shot dead two Pakistani motorbike riders in Lahore continues. The Government wants their man released from custody because he has diplomatic immunity.
Yesterday Ijaz Ahmed Chaudry, Lahore High Court Chief Justice, ordered that the man, named locally as Raymond Davis, be kept in custody and placed on the country’s exit control list while there was an investigation into whether he had diplomatic immunity or not.
Complicating the issue somewhat is that “Mr Davis” was no ordinary diplomat but apparently an employee of a Florida based company Hyperion Protective Consultants LLC that specialises in security matters.
Whatever the truth about his diplomatic status there is no doubting that he understood the wisdom of Hyperion’s advice about offense being the best form of defense. Reports from Pakistan say that Davis admitted shooting two men after they pulled alongside him on a motorbike. American officials said he saw they had a gun and he believed he was about to be robbed.
Dissatisfaction of 95%. So Ireland will be off to the polls on 25 February and the governing Fianna Fail Party will start the campaign with an opinion poll showing a dissatisfaction rating of 95%. The only real question to be resolved appears to be whether the Fine Gael party can win enough seats to govern on its own or whether it forms a coalition with Labour.
Throwing in the knickers. Italy will see a new form of political campaigning this weekend when a woman’s group plans to throw pairs of knickers at the mansion of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in protest at his attitude towards women and his involvement in an alleged prostitution ring.
The unusual campaign strategy has been organised by the left leaning La Repubblica newspaper.
The US will most likely charge Assange with “something”, therefore it’s best for any Australian PM to stay very, very far away from Wikileak.
Gillard hasn’t only lost the youth vote over this! Mind you, I’d turned away from Labour a few years back, for various reasons, but at the moment, there is no rush on my part to go back to them – this is another reason why. It has been reported that Julian Assange wants to come home to Australia – quite frankly, why would he risk it at the moment, even if he could? I’m sure this government would find a way to have him sent off to the US…..
JG makes it obvious that she does not want me in the Labor fold.
I assume she has been getting her instructuions from across the Pacific.
Julian is safer in UK than here.
All this article does is highlight why the voting age should be increased to35 plus.
Lorry, what effect do you think it would have, increasing the voting age to 35+? You weren’t thinking we’d get better government were you?