How tragic is the Australian political landscape when a government is caned for doing the right thing?

So the US Constitution allows its citizens to bear arms. In the days when the Constitution was written, "arms" were handguns, rifles and perhaps limited range cannons - the latter were unlikely to be kept by private citizens. 

The founding fathers could not have envisioned the evolution of weaponry and the fire-power of modern armaments.

If you extend the arguments of the pro-gun lobby, then its OK for people to have assault rifles, anti-tank armaments, mortars, and by logical extension, missles, and even nuclear weapons.

My suggestion is that the US goverment define what is meant by "Arms" to be non-assault rifles, non- military hand guns and similar. All other "arms" should be referred to as "weapons of war" (or similar) and banned from all citizens other than the military or police.

Simple!

Israel supports a separate Palestinian state for fairly pragmatic reasons: the birth rate of Palestinians will quickly cause Israelis to be outnumbered if Palestine was absorbed into Israel.

However, the recent vote in the UN to support enhanced recognition of Palestine as a state, implies a few things about those nations that voted in favour of recognition (or abstained from voting.)

Palestine is an undeniable composite of Fatah and Hamas and the recent Gaza conflict enhanced Hamas's stature even if it was badly defeated militarily. Neither Fatah or Hamas is yet the unquestioned government of Palestine, and either could prevail over the other faction under certain circumstances.

Hamas, in its charter, vows the destruction of the Israeli state and the elimination of Jews everywhere.

Therefore, a vote for a Palestinian state implies support for a potential Hamas Government.

None of the votes in support of (or abstention from voting for) the Palestinian State was conditional - that is, none said that "we will vote for recognition of a Palestinian State provided it removes from the Hamas Charter the destruction of Israel and the elimination of Jews." They all voted in favour (or abstained) accepting the Hamas Charter without pre-conditions.

This appears to compound the rabid anti-Semitism currently rampant world-wide and is fueled by two factors:

• the growing influence of Islam and the desire of most countries to "get closer" to Islamic states by appearing anti-Israel and anti-Semitic;
• the myopic uninformed liberal view that everyone deserves freedom, regardless of what they intend to do with that freedom. In their view, it appears that everyone deserves freedom except for Israel and Jews.

The Australian political experience is that people vote governments out rather than voting governments in.

On that basis, Tony Abbott is expected to win the next election.

What exactly are his policies? Unless we know, I believe that Australians will be in for a very rude shock in education, health, migration, environment, climate change, industrial relations, telecommunications, and many other areas.

If Australians vote out the Gillard Government to get an Abbot Government without knowing the policies that will come with it, then they deserve the inevitable pain that will result.

The shooting in Newtown is but another symbol of the malaise pervading the US.

The right to bear arms; the inalienable right to pursue personal maximisation above national well-being; the sink or swim culture that pervades everywhere; and the effective bankruptcy of the US; are a toxic and heady brew.

I suspect that a movement of only a few degrees in each of these attributes will inevitably lead to a  level of combustability never seen  before in the US. All it needs is a small spark to ignite the nation into a morass of lawlessness and anarchy that will make the Arab Spring seem like a child's birthday party.

Remember that sustainability and social responsibility, as noble as they may each be, are "merely" enablers for the core purpose of the organisation - i.e. the satisfaction of owner objectives (most commonly wealth generation in some form.)

I have seen scores of corporations that forget the reason they exist and invest shareholder funds in activities that are noble but unnecessary.

The corporation must abide by all legislation and regulation. Beyond that they MUST get shareholder approval.