18 May 2006
Thought for the Week: A trapper, starving and
snow-bound, sat in his Arctic cabin with his faithful dog. Each day, as his hunger
increased, the dog at his side looked more appetizing. But he could not betray
the trusting, adoring eyes that were fixed on him. Finally in desperation, he took his knife and cut off the dog's tail. He shut his ears to the howls as he made a nourishing soup. But, before he took the first spoonful, he saw the dog beside him, with those trusting adoring eyes. He gave the skin off the severed tail back to the dog, and they both enjoyed their skimpy meal together. The hunter's heart never missed a beat as his dog licked his hand in gratitude! - Jeremy Lee, May 2006 |
IS THERE AN ELECTION IN THE WIND?Jeremy Lee - a HASCO report:A government raised the level of taxation to the highest point in the nation's history. Finally, it had billions of dollars in surplus, far more than it planned on spending. Did it hand this excess taxation back to the people? It decided it could spend the money more wisely than the people it had taxed. But it saw the adoring, trusting eyes of the taxpayers. So it handed back just enough to ensure it won the next election! A cynic might suspect the latest federal budget as being designed for an election. There are too many chickens coming home to roost for the Howard government to delay much longer. The report from the Cole inquiry into the Wheat Board scandal is due at the end of June. Polls show that 70% of Australians believe the government knew about the kick-backs to Saddam Hussein. Even a watered down Cole report will not leave the Howard ministry unscathed. The overwhelming opposition to the Iraq war, which is engulfing President Bush and British PM Tony Blair, will inevitably catch up with John Howard. Better to be out of the way when it happens. The plans to complete the sale of Telstra and then sell the Snowy Mountain Authority sticks in the craw of a big majority of Australians, according to the polls. If the government moves on to sell Australia Post it'll be on for one and all! The Industrial Relations legislation is unpopular, and is already swinging voters away from the Coalition. The swing will grow as more and more cases of discrimination surface. A quick election after a massive Santa Claus budget makes a lot of sense, before all the stumbling blocks become too obvious, and while there's still no Opposition to speak of. Course, we could be wrong |
WHAT HAPPENED IN THE BUDGET?by Jeremy LeeThe English language was once a reasonably precise way to convey meaning. Not any more. It is now twisted - by 'spin' - to mean exactly the opposite of reality. The latest media reports of the latest budget are designed to deceive. The headline in The Australian Financial Review (10/5/06) in its special budget lift-out, read "SUPER-SIZE TAX CUTS". The headline in The Australian, (10/5/06) read "MANNA FROM HEAVEN" We were told 2,000 years ago that no man could serve two masters. It was either God or mammon. Should the headline have read 'Mammon From Heaven"? At any rate I eagerly opened the pages to confirm the tax-cut of $43 billion. I remain utterly mystified! The government figures show that total tax receipts in the year ending will be $208 billion. Estimates for 2006-07 will be $217 billion (an increase of $9 billion, or approx. $400 for every Australian. Both income taxes and indirect taxes, which make up the total, have increased from $222 billion in 2005-06 to 231 billion for 2006-07. Of course, there was NO mention of the GST, which is imposed under Commonwealth law, but for convenience sake is called a 'State' tax. Some manna! Some heaven! |
PARTIES, ELECTIONS AND PIE-CRUST PROMISESFrom Jeremy Lee |
YES, YOU ARE WORRIED NOW!by James ReedThe Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee wants the Federal government to abandon its new sedition laws, which it fears may threaten "academic freedom". (The Australian, 3/5/06, p.23) The government will be giving academic conferences, seminars' papers and design drawings greater scrutiny in the never-ending "war on terrorism". Thus sedition includes the offence of urging a person to overthrow the Constitution. The professors in their submission say that asking students questions about "the desirability of a republican constitution must, in the course of discussion, cast aspersions on the present Constitution." They went on to say: "Should discussion among students become heated, as occasionally happens, and comments are reported outside, would it be open for parents of students, say, to report such teaching as treasonable and seditious?" Treasonable and seditious teaching in the arts and social sciences has been part of intellectual life in Australia for at least the last fifty years. As much as I disagree with sedition laws, if some of our betrayers of our young people go down with their ship, then these laws may have some positive benefits - alongside of course their overriding negatives. |
IS THIS WHAT JOHN HOWARD HAS IN MIND WITH HIS 'SMART CARD'?It
would seem the United Kingdom is much further down the Orwellian path than is
Australia. National
Identity Register By itself, you might think that this register
is harmless, but you would be wrong to come to this conclusion. This new card
will be used to check your identity against your entry in the register in real
time, whenever you present it to 'prove who you are'. Every place that sells alcohol
or cigarettes, every post office, every pharmacy, and every Bank will have an
NIR Card Terminal, (very much like the Chip and Pin Readers that are everywhere
now) into which your card can be 'swiped' to check your identity. Oyster, DVLA, BT and Nectar (for example) all run very detailed databases of their own. They will be allowed access to the NIR, just as every other business will be. This means that each of these entities will be able to store your unique number in their database, and place all your travel, phone records, driving activities and detailed shopping habits under your unique NIR number. These databases, which can easily fit on a storage device the size of your hand, will be sold to third parties either legally or illegally. It will then be possible for a non governmental entity to create a detailed dossier of all your activities. Certainly, the government will have clandestine access to all of them, meaning that they will have a complete record of all your movements, from how much and when you withdraw from your bank account to what medications you are taking, down to the level of what sort of bread you eat - all accessible via a single unique number in a central database. This is quite
a significant leap from a simple ID Card that shows your name and face. Most people
do not know that this is the true character and scope of the proposed ID Card.
Whenever the details of how it will work are explained to them, they quickly change
from being ambivalent towards it. The Government is going to COMPEL you to enter
your details into the NIR and to carry this card. The Home Secretary will
have the right to revoke or suspend your ID at any time, meaning that you will
not be able to withdraw money from your Bank Account, for example, or do anything
that requires you to present your government issued ID Card. The arguments that
have been put forward to the British voter in favour of ID Cards can be easily
disproved. If you did not know the
full scope of the proposed ID Card Scheme before and you are as unsettled as I
am at what it really means to you, to this country and its way of life, I urge
you to email or photocopy this and give it to your friends and colleagues and
everyone else you think should know and who cares. |
THE END OF HISTORY?by
James Reed Fukuyama's thesis was that history has
ended in the sense used by the philosopher Hegel: that human political ideas have
ended with liberal democracy and the market economy. They are the best that humanity
can construct. Fukuyama went on to become a leading neo-con intellectual. However
he has recently broken rank. Previously Fukuyama supported the war on Iraq but
now has written a book arguing that the war in Iraq is wrong. The book's title
is "After the Neocons". There Fukuyama opposes the entire conception of a pre-emptive
war which he views as like committing suicide for fear of death. He sees the US
involvement in Iraq as incompetent. The US has failed to be even a "benevolent
hogeman," let alone to build democracy and liberalism within Iraq. Whether democracy
will be established in Iraq is an open question he says, but if it does, the path
will be extremely muddled. Itzkoff
is a politically incorrect environmentalist: he sees the "raw weight" of people
as the real problem that will result in an ultimate "global unraveling" of the
international system. In "Rebuilding Western Civilization" Itzkoff says: "Is there
any half-educated adult today in the West
that is not aware that the global
conditions for the long-term human prosperity are silently draining away? As we
witness natural pandemics, never before experienced, esoteric and undefeated bacteria,
can we doubt that even modern scientific medicine may at some point fail? Why
is it, as we witness our hopes for a global egalitarian civilization crumble before
our very eyes that these day-to-day factual realities do not register as meaningful?
Perhaps the answer lies in the opiated utopian pronouncements of the powerful?
The down escalator increases in speed. Upward scurry the international "liberals"
and agencies. Soon, exhaustion and triage." (p.24) In a sense Fukuyama's end of history thesis has some merit. History in the sense of novel exciting prospects has largely ended. Much like the course of the intellectual life of an individual there is a sense of world fatigue about life. That suggests that the human story may well be at an end. For Christians, there is still hope even in such dark times. But for our evolutionary naturalist friends like the good Professor Itzkoff, there only lies the hope that out there in the infinity of the cosmos, another animal species when given the opportunity to live like gods, will not be as foolish as us. |
TALKING NUMBERSby
James Reed |
REPUBLICANS MEETING IN PHONE BOOTHS?Source: David Flint's ACM news updateWhen Paul Keating sent his Republic Advisory Committee around the country in 1996 to stir up interest in the republic, Tony Abbott pointed out that some of the meetings could have been held in a public phone booth. And now, John Brett from ACM's very active Toowoomba branch challenges Dr. Glenn Donnelly's claim (reported in this column on 29/4/06 ) for a record attendance for the formation of a republican movement in Canada's largest city Toronto, where only four people turned up. Mr. Brett points out that when the republicans called a meeting to establish a branch in Toowoomba, Australia's largest inland City - after weeks and weeks of media reminders - only three people turned up. And that's not all. All three declined to join! And that was according to the republican media. And last January, the centrepiece of the national celebrations of the widely promoted "Mate for Head of State" campaign, the sausage sizzle at Bondi Beach, attracted only about fifty people, including the republican heavies. John Brett suggests we could sponsor a Commonwealth competition to find the biggest city with the smallest number of republican aspirants, or republican membership. The Guinness book of records might be interested! Until further contestants apply, Toowoomba claims the record for the least number of people turning up for a public recruiting meeting. These figures amplify the fact the republican movement is not a "grass roots" movement. But ACM certainly is. Nevertheless, Mr Brett awards a bouquet toToronto and thanks Dr. Glen Donnelly . PS.. We are trying to point out what nobody wants to mention. The republican movement is a power movement! |
PHYSICS PROFESSOR SAYS 'CUTTER CHARGES' BROUGHT DOWN WTCEvidence
of Thermite Uncovered at World Trade Center by Christopher Bollyn AFP: Pools
of molten steel: Serious
investigation AFP recently
attended a presentation of Jones's 9-11 research at BYU. Jones began with footage
of the unexplained collapse of Larry Silverstein's 47-story building, WTC 7, at
5:25 p.m. Media censorship When Jones was interviewed by Tucker Carlson of MSNBC,
the producers refused to air this short but crucial video segment. "As of 21 days after the attack, the
fires were still burning and molten steel was still running," Leslie Robertson,
structural engineer responsible for the design of the WTC, told fellow engineers.
Footage taken by WABC-TV of the burning South Tower at 9:53 a.m., immediately
before the building collapsed, reveals large amounts of white-hot molten metal,
presumably iron, pouring from the 81st floor of the east corner. Jones's explosive paper is accessible on his web page (physics.byu.edu) and will be published in a forthcoming book by David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott. Reading Jones' paper on-line allows the reader to review the photographic/video evidence. https://www.americanfreepress.net/html/cutter_charges_brought_down_wt.html |