He really is a latter-day Jannie Smuts, at least in terms of courage, prescience and breadth of vision. It is humanity's loss that, like Smuts, he leads only a relatively unimportant country on the world stage.

In a sane world, Howard would be the Secretary-General of the United Nations and that oily cretin Annan would be a filing clerk in his office. Certainly on Howard's watch there would be no rampant financial corruption or organised rape of children by UN "peacekeepers."

I have been personally involved in campaigning for Mr. Howard and proudly have a letter of thanks. He is the best they've got downunder and would put a stop to this, from Sydney, speaking of London:

The open contempt some Muslims have for non-Muslims is a common thread throughout the world where Muslims communities rub against the kafirs, or non-believers.

This is especially so in Britain, where Western liberalism, freedom and the rule of law have been used as tools to help make it an operational centre of global jihad. A report by British intelligence estimates a quarter of the 1.6 million Muslims living in Britain support jihad at least somewhere in the world.

It is a place where fanatical intolerance hides in plain sight. On February 3, between 500 and 700 men marched from the Regent's Park mosque to the Danish embassy in Knightsbridge to protest against the publication of cartoons deemed insulting to Islam. Demonstrators carried posters stating "Exterminate those who slander Islam", "Be prepared for the REAL holocaust."

James agrees with me? I'm going to have to rethink my position.

STOP PRESS Black Quill reports:

As by now reported on lots of sites, the president of Iran, Ahmadinejad, has a blog. Some question its authenticity, but a quick WHOIS look up reveals the servers are ns1.nisn.ir and ns2.nisn.ir where ir=Iran; the domain holder is Mahdi Ahmadi Nejad; his registered address is Motahari Ave. at Raham St. Tehran, IR 1567718571 and he may be reached for confirmation at president.irsite@gmail.com.

Write to him and have a heart to heart.

Joshua - hi.

On reflection, the parallel between Smuts and Howard is even more striking. From the main Wikipedia entry about Smuts:

"In 1932, a kibbutz in Israel was named after him. Smuts was a vocal proponent of the creation of a Jewish state, and spoke out against the rising anti-Semitism of the 1930s"

"As by now reported on lots of sites, the president of Iran, Ahmadinejad, has a blog."

Ahmadinejad's Blog is Dangerous

Little Green Footballs suggests that this blog may well be dangerous:

"But before you click through to the site (from somewhere else, I won’t post the link here), make sure your virus prevention software is up to date—because it may try to exploit a weakness in Internet Explorer to install a “back door” in your computer: Pres. Ahmadinejad trying to infect Israelis with web viruses?"

http://tinyurl.com/hdlmq

Howard is truly a model for all politicians. Any other able to sum up a positon so concisely?

"Mr Howard made it clear Wednesday the government had no intention of removing the militant arm of Hizbollah from its official list of terrorist organisations.

"No chance, full stop. No chance at all (of removing Hizbollah from the list)," Mr Howard told reporters.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/08/02/1154198198226.html

"Mr Howard made it clear Wednesday the government had no intention of removing the militant arm of Hizbollah from its official list of terrorist organisations."

Would that the EU possessed a scintilla of Howard's decency:

EU rejects U.S. call to label Hezbollah 'terrorist' group

"In a rebuff to Washington, the European Union will not add the Islamist Hezbollah movement on its list of terrorist organizations, the EU president says."

http://tinyurl.com/zd29p