Mrs Clinton is in Libya congratulating National Transitional Council bosses, Jalil and Jibril, for disempowering/killing ex-dictator, Colonel Gaddafi.

“The future belongs to you,” she said.

They know that.

“We will support a process of democratisation that respects the rule of law etc.,” she added.

They don’t know so much about that.

Nobody seriously expects a democratically-elected government to be in charge in Libya, soon or ever.

Look at Egypt. Look at Afghanistan. Liberated in the name of democracy. Corruption all the way to the top after months and years respectively.

* * *

Why should these people want democracy?

If you mean by “democracy”, rule by US-style media-brainwash, billionaire candidates and politicians lying 24/7 — they could hardly be blamed for not wanting it.

The results of democracy is having people like Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton’s husband rising to the surface.

Or like the Gillard.

Or like the reverend Mr Silvio Berlusconi, for goodness sake.

* * *

Mrs Clinton will probably never be heard telling Libyans that what they need is to become Christians — to stop following a beheading Prophet and to start following One who gave his life on the cross to redeem our race.

Nor would she say it to the people of the USA.

Or to herself.

Anyway, we don’t need politicians lecturing us on what to believe and how to conduct our lives.

We know it already.

But it is not so easy to do it.

Ultimately it is between oneself and God.

Iranian actress, Marzieh Vafamehr, has been sentenced to 90 lashes and a year in prison for acting in an Australia-produced film.

One of her “crimes” was to appear on screen without traditional head-covering.

Surely 90 lashes is too many – but does that mean she should go entirely unpunished?

Marzieh was using the media to undermine an aspect of her nation’s culture.

Letting her off entirely would, it might be argued, be turning a blind eye to the destruction of something precious.

We Anglo-Celts etc., who comprise the bulk of Australia’s population, don’t see female head-covering as something of critical importance . . . .

* * *

Let’s consider a different example.

Some months ago, a photographer, Bill Henson, displayed an exhibition of pictures of pubescent girls and boys naked and near naked.

He was condemned for using the notion of “art” as a cover for child porn.

I think he was never punished.

A few lashes — not 90 – might have been very appropriate to deter him and potential imitators from a repeat effort.

Is not the modesty of children and adolescents something to revere and vigorously protect?

* * *

Culture is what guides community members regarding what behaviour is acceptable.

A culture can be cruel or unjust and need change.

It can be right to challenge aspects of a culture — but it must be done with respect.

Those seeking change must constantly examine their own motives.

Ultimately our culture should be the practical means of  keeping ourselves focussed on God and his will.

During September, a 15-person group of archaeologists from Flinders University did some digging in Penola at the site of the first school set up there by Mother Mary MacKillop in 1866.

They found about 50 relics, including an 1839 coin, a thimble, a marble, a lamp base and what seem to be writing slates and slate pencils.

Local organiser of Penola’s “Mary MacKillop Interpretive Centre”, Claire Larkin, says the number of visitors to Penola seeking info about Saint MMK is up 20 percent on last year:

“People are just taken with the story and they are finding they can learn a lot more in Penola.”

* * *

Are they? We should all learn more about Saint Mary of the Cross.

If we were all more like Saint M, Australia would be a happier, more just and more holy place.

A visit to Penola might help(?)

Reading her writings certainly would — available through any religious bookstore.

Readers will discover that she isn’t quite like what we’ve been told.

She was no rebel, no multiculturalist . . . .

 She was thoroughly Catholic — a traditionalist —  nothing whatever in common with the spirit of the 1960s Second Vatican Council.

Shortly before she died, she wrote, “I have not changed with the times, and with God’s help, never shall.”

The MK minders at Penola and the whole hierarchy of the Australian Church may try to modify and modernise her message — but we should try to avoid being duped.

God will find ways to get the real message of Saint Mary MacKillop through to the people of Australia . . . in his own time and in his own way.

Jeff Kennett, head of Beyondblue, a charity devoted to fighting the epidemic of depressive illness in Australia, has made a tactical error.

He said something without prior approval from the media and the feminist/homosexual lobby.

He said that, “Clearly the best environment in which to bring a child into the world is a stable, loving environment in which a male and female are married to each other.”

A welcome bit of common sense.

* * *

Now, of course, he is being told to resign — blackmailed by past donors threatening to pull out unless he knuckles under.

His CEO has resigned without explanation.

Anyway, Mr Kennett has said he will neither apologise nor step down.

So far . . . .

* * *

There is a condition called “coprophagia”, which affects some unfortunate children. They eat their poo.

Few continue doing so into adult life. But coprophagia is said to be observed in small numbers of patients with schizophrenia, depression and autism.

It is normally treated using strategies aimed at reversing the underlying condition.

What is NOT done is tell them they’re doing the right thing — and to organise poo-eating Mardi Gras-type celebrations.

Some things are not just “diversity”, they are wrong, unhealthy and abnormal.

Mr Kennett didn’t say all that about homosexual practices, but his enemies may fear that one day he will.

Melbourne journalist, Andrew Bolt, was found guilty on Wednesday of having contravened the Racial Discrimination Act.

The Judge said that two articles he wrote in the Melbourne Herald Sun contained “errors of fact” and were “inflammatory and provocative”.

Mr Bolt had spoken about what he termed “political Aborigines” – i.e. white-skinned people, with minimal Aboriginal blood in their family tree, who choose to identify as Aboriginal in order to receive benefits, scholarships, awards, celebrity status etc. on the strength of it.

The Prime Minister has declined to comment.

The Attorney General says the government supports the Act.

The Opposition says it will amend the Act — so as to preserve some vestiges of free speech in this country.

* * *

The question is not whether Mr Bolt’s remarks were inaccurate or impolite . . . .

Listen to Australia’s Parliament on radio — or to anything at all on television — and you’ll encounter a wall-to-wall torrent of lies and rudeness exceeding anything Mr Bolt ever descends to.

No doubt he could have made his points less abrasively, and perhaps he should have.

But criticism is something everyone has to put up with at times.

Special laws protecting certain minorities from criticism are classic examples of the mentality that Mr Bolt rightly wants to protect Australia from.

* * *

God has made the human race – with all its variations — one in status and value in his sight.

He requires of us all, regardless of race, to keep his Ten Commandments and seek him through the Sacraments of his Church.

That is what really matters.

Two weeks ago, 200 school students, mainly from Western New South Wales, accompanied by 40 teachers, visited Lake Mungo to “celebrate their Koori heritage”.

The project has grown out of the 2006 Mungo Festival held to “celebrate the listing of the Willandra Lakes (including Lake Mungo) as a World Heritage Area” 25 years earlier.

All at taxpayers’ expense. Was it money well spent?

This celebrating is to be followed up by sending to schools in the region Aboriginal elders to encourage students to do “Lake Mungo projects”.

In charge is Stephen Albert, an Aboriginal elder who acted in the film “Bran Nue Dae”.

Bran Nue Dae?  A film so full of simplistic, blatant and virulent hatred for everything Catholic that it self-destructed as any kind of contribution to thought.

* * *

Many Aborigines are respectful of Christianity.

It’s a pity if our money is being spent pushing them back into paganistic mentalities – subjecting them to a double-pronged anti-God brainwash.

Prong One: anti-Catholic media which mention the Church only when they unearth a priest who molested children.

Prong Two: pressuring them to return to the least valuable aspects of the old culture, many aspects of which will make them less, not more, fitted to cope with today’s world.

* * *

Not just Aborigines are suffering from the eradication of the last vestiges of respect for the Christian culture that has made Australia a relatively compassionate place.

Last week, Edgewater Primary School, WA, banned students from reciting the Lord’s Prayer (the “Our Father”) because it “contravenes the WA Education Act” which prohibits favouring one religion over another.

Run through the words of the Lord’s Prayer in your mind.

Is there anything in it except positive thoughts and respect for our Creator?

Nothing whatever to offend anybody who wants a better world.