HOW OPPORTUNE THE STERN WARNING

by Betty Luks
Climate Change Report: I do hope you will forgive me the cynicism I feel towards politicians and their press gallery sycophants. But, just as the internet world was coming to grips with the terrible news of more and more loss of life in Iraq, Sir Nicholas Stern, head of the UK Government Economic Service and the former chief economist at the World Bank, just happened to release "The Economics Of Climate Change" report.

Just when Blair's political career was at its lowest ebb, he could now huff and puff about 'the climate change' on British television and (hopefully) take all eyes off the slaughter in Iraq.
Not to be outdone, John Howard and Kim Beazley took their cues and acted out a good verbal stoush in Parliament on climate change and the Kyoto Treaty.
Howard, the dastardly knave said his party would not sign the Kyoto agreement. This was the opening for the gallant knight Beazley to come charging in on his mount to our rescue and declare he would sign it on behalf of all Australians and save us from a fate worse than death.

The Timesonline wrote that in his assessment of global warming Sir Nicholas, head of the Government Economic Service and the former chief economist at the World Bank, said that the scientific evidence was now "overwhelming" that climate change was under way and presented "very serious risks". The report was commissioned by the UK Treasury.

Refer to "Thought for the Week" for a response to Sir Nicholas Stern's and fellow one worlders' agenda for a world tax and carbon trading.

HOWARD'S RECORD ON 'CLIMATE CHANGE' SPEAKS FOR ITSELF

A relevant article appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, 23/10/06 by journalist Paul Sheehan, "We Fiddle as the Continent Turns to Dust".
Mr. Sheehan, whilst praising the innovative grazing enterprises of Mr. George King on his property not far from Orange NSW, (he inherited a badly eroded property and turned it into a showpiece, using holistic landcare techniques) expressed his growing concerns over our collective environmental stupidity.

But he also takes the Howard government to task: in spite of increased federal taxes, including the GST, to a peacetime record of 25.7 per cent of gross domestic product, the Howard government has not used this "unprecedented flow of funds to mobilise the nation against the greatest threat to its survival."

Droughts and water shortages are merely symptoms of underlying causes:
Quoting grazier George King's comments in August of last year Sheehan wrote:
"Our politicians and bureaucrats are still illiterate about this environment. We're still treating the symptoms, not the underlying cause. Droughts and water shortages are just symptoms."

Take special note of what Mr. King went on to say:
§ We are going down to 20 per cent stocking rate, which is below our cost of production
§ Our business cannot trade for many more years if we erode our equity each year (- i.e., if financial costs of production exceed financial returns…ed)

Our salvation, our answer - is in Reality:
Geoffrey Dobbs wrote "Home" journal 1989: "Economics (national housekeeping) is now entirely dominated by money and is detached from reality. Everything must give way to it. Money-profit must be made at all costs of real waste and squandering of energy, materials, truth, common sense, etc., even normal efficiency.
Every reader will have experienced the innumerable insignificant wastes and interruptions to life which are imposed upon us all; each trivial in itself, but when multiplied by millions they give us a glimpse of the immense sabotage, both of our lives and of the world's energy and resources, which is being carried out in the name of money-profit, and of the money-slavery known as "employment".

Until the financial system is rectified there will be no turning from the disastrous direction we are headed. And who pray tell me, thinks the Labor party will do any better should they gain power at the next federal election?

THE CULT OF COSMOPOLITANISM

by James Reed
Kwame Anthony Appiah, Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University, in "Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers," (Norton, New York 2006) deals with the fundamental philosophical problems of globalisation: humans evolved in tribal groups, but we are now supposed to live as "one world", so how can this be done?

"Multiculturalism is not the answer as it "so often designates the disease it purports to cure." (p.xiii) Instead we should recognise "our" responsibility to all human beings and minimise the significant differences towards them. Appiah's position, of course, conflicts with the doctrine of multiculturalism which imposes universal altruistic commitments on Nordics (Northern European peoples) but permits ethnics and the "racial other" to pursue ethnocentric demands. Appiah's approach is of merit because it rejects the relativism of values (i.e., there is no objective truth in morality) that is associated with multiculturalism. Appiah's cosmopolitanism, fairly practised by all ethnic groups could in fact lead to a harmonious world with a "live and let live attitude".

Nevertheless like so much work in ethics, Appiah's philosophy does not connect with the real politics of this world. Anglo Saxons are seemingly prepared to accept this promiscuous altruism and thus to disappear as a people. Arabs, Zionists and the Chinese and most others are not so easily seduced. Unless everybody plays fairly and consistently by the rules of the cosmopolitan game, a type of "tragedy of the commons" situation arises where ethnocentric egoists defeat promiscuous altruists, as the biologist Garrett Hardin has detailed in many works. Cosmopolitanism, in short, is a group evolutionary strategy which involves racial suicide for those groups who adopt it, in a world of egoism. Contrary to reason forcing us to embrace cosmopolitanism, reason and principle direct us in the opposite direction: to parochialism, tribalism and nationism, identities with which we can meaningfully embrace.

Adam Smith in "The Theory of Moral Sentiments," (1759) rightly observed that the average (non-Chinese) person may be moved to sorrow about an earthquake destroying China but would not lose sleep over it. However if he were to lose his little finger tomorrow he would not sleep tonight. Likewise, love of all humanity remains an abstraction. Never worked; never will.

SEX ON THE BRAIN

by James Reed
Feminism is based on a philosophical contradiction: on the one hand there are not biological differences. However on the other hand there are differences: women are "nurturing", men are "violent", "predatory", etc., etc. Along with that, feminists have to explain how it has been that all past civilisations have been based upon patriarchy.

Biology challenges these cosy 'left' ideas. Xia Yang, head of a genetics team at the University of California, Los Angeles examined gene expression in the fat, liver, muscle and brain tissue of male and female mice. It was found that the genes were expressed differently in the males and females. This means that the treatment of diseases may need to differ between sexes. For example, aspirin seems to protect men from heart attacks better that it does women. (New Scientist, July 15 2006)

A new book by US neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, "The Female Brain," to be released around October, summarises the scientific evidence which indicates that men and women perceive the world differently. Women have 11 per cent more neurones in the area of the brain devoted to emotion. Thus women typically have a higher "emotional intelligence" than men. But it also means that women, according to Brizendine are more prone to hysteria because women become more stressed as different levels (relative to males) of hormones such as oestrogen, cortisol and dopamine flood into their brains when they are emotionally distressed. Other scientists such as Professor Richard Lynn and Paul Irwing have concluded that males have larger brains on average than females and thus a higher IQ, by 5 points. Men on average are bigger and their brains are bigger, meaning greater information processing capacity. Thus there are 5.5 men to every woman with an IQ above 145, which explains, they claim, the greater number of male geniuses winning Nobel prizes, field medals and other high achievements.
Professor Sandra Witelson believes that the female brain is hardwired so that women tend on average to get more pleasure from the care of children, whilst men's brains are less developed in this area.

Thus differences on physiology between the sexes does not imply inferiority but complementarity: the sexes are parts of a whole that need each other, each in their suitable roles for a sane, healthy, harmonious functioning society. Unfortunately the zoo masters of the new world order, as part of their necrophilic plan for death and destruction, have thrown the natural order out of balance to the detriment of both sexes. But in the end Mother Nature will win out and the scum will go down the plughole of history.
(Source on scientific material: "Why We're Hemispheres Apart," The Weekend Australian 19-20/8/06, p.26)

IMMIGRANT LABOUR AND REAL COSTS

From a social credit paper by Victor J. Bridger:
There is no doubt that immigrants are taking over jobs. In fact the trend now is not so much that immigrants are taking over jobs on less pay than locals, but the work is being outsourced to cheaper labour countries. This does no good for the domestic situation and at the same time is not assisting those in third world countries who are working for a pittance.

Social credit differentiates real cost from financial cost.
From the social credit perspective, the real cost of an hour's labour is an hour's labour, generally speaking, so that an hour's labour in China is equal to an hour's labour in Australia, or America, or in New Zealand. But in financial terms the cost to the Chinese manufacturer, for example for Chinese labour, might be 20 cents per hour at the exchange rate, whereas the cost to the Australian, American or New Zealand manufacturer might be $10 per hour for similar work. The figures are purely illustrative and should not be taken literally. The point is that due to the monetary factor alone, trade across national borders cannot be free trade in any real sense.

China has 'externalised' labour costs:
China or any other country which have greatly reduced labour rates have substantially 'externalized' the cost of labour so that it is not priced into the goods shipped to countries on higher labour rates. For most things, the 'productivity' in terms of labour utilized per unit outputted, is higher in Australia etc. than in China, so from a 'real' standpoint, Australian etc. goods should cost less than Chinese goods in the Australian, American or New Zealand market. Yet the Chinese goods are 'priced' lower. This is not a free market in any real sense, but parasitical exploitation - of the Chinese workers and those of third world countries who are enslaved - of the Australian, American or New Zealand workers who are impoverished.

It is not a matter of being selfish but of pragmatic truth:
It is not a matter of having the right to work and earn a living because that is a belief in a false policy. Everyone has the right in their own country to obtain the benefits of the productive system and that does not include the "right to work", because much of the benefits are the results of a productive system which does not rely on (human) employment. It is not a matter of suppressing "the poor little individual from a third world country in the hope to achieve a higher standard of living".
On the contrary, it is a recognition of the fact that the current system is exploiting them and this should be suppressed.

THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF THE PEOPLE

from Jeremy Lee
There are a growing number of reports about the spectacular attack on US Camp Falcon in early October by the Iraqi resistance. There appears to be a massive Pentagon cover-up of the attacks, in which, it has been reported on the internet, as many as 300 US soldiers may have been killed.

Jeremy writes:
"I think it was over two years ago that we reported in On Target that the Iraqi war was lost. It is elementary that no force can prevail against guerrillas hidden and sustained within a civilian population, unless the hearts and minds of the civilians can be turned against the guerrillas. The US never had a dog's chance of doing this while they depended on explosives, missiles and bombs to enforce their will. Having served four years in a guerrilla war I know this to be true.
They say truth is the first casualty in war. But to imagine that the disastrous attack on Camp Falcon could be kept secret is madness! Perhaps they just wanted it "hushed up" until after the congressional election - unbelievable!"

Equally 'unbelievable':
Richard Armitage, former US Under Secretary of State was heard to say in a dinner speech to the movers and shakers in Old Parliament House, Canberra, 2/10/06: "We are doing the Lord's work," (that is in Iraq). One wonders... which 'Lord'?
Source: 5.30am ABC News, Friday 3/10/06.

FURTHER LESSONS FROM ANCIENT HISTORY?

by Betty Luks
We know from history the soldiers of another ambitious world conqueror, Alexander the Great, found the region around Galilee east of the Jordan to be highly desirable, but sparsely populated. Being great opportunists the soldiers proceeded to occupy the land at once. They had yet to learn the reason why it was sparsely occupied! The soldiers were soon joined by other colonists from the Greek world.

In time, each of the ten cities they founded gathered surrounding territories which were sprinkled over with a loose scattering of villages. But in time came the realisation - they had to organise into a confederacy. Why? To resist the Arab assaults of course!
The pleasant portion of sparsely populated land they had chosen to occupy, was vulnerable to attack by their Arab neighbours! At one time the Arabs had the Greeks badly whipped and would have driven them out had it not been for the timely assistance of the Roman general Pompey and his legions.

For the Greeks of the Decapolis (i.e., ten cities) in the region of Galilee, the Roman power was welcomed as a liberator, although looked upon as an oppressor back home in Greece.

To the Arabs, both groups were aggressors and unwelcome. The occupiers were to learn another lesson the hard way. The Arabs didn't fight as did the Greeks and Romans; their tactics were based on guile and cunning. I think modern man would refer to it as 'guerrilla warfare'?

BUSH & BLAIR (DON'T FORGET HOWARD) STYMIED OVER IRAQ

by Betty Luks
While the mainline media is not reporting on the enormity of the losses in Camp Falcon - and we await official confirmation - the following report tells a sorry tale:

"Their faces alone said everything," wrote Rupert Cornwell in The Independent UK, 1/11/06:
"At his press conference on Wednesday, in the sumptuous setting of the White House East Room, George Bush was grim, bemused and aged. In the House of Commons 3,000 miles away, Tony Blair stood rooted to the same political spot he has occupied for more than three years. Two leaders, mesmerized and transfixed by the enormity of the crisis they face, searching for an exit and finding none."

Cornwell is of course referring to the bleak recent history of Iraq and he continued: "this last week may have been the most despairing for them, when the converging disasters set in motion by their misconceived invasion of March 2003 became impossible to deny and the gap between their aspirations for Iraq and the reality on the ground there became a chasm."

ABC News:
The ABC News reported just last week Howard has not asked for an Intelligence Update on the war in Iraq for something like 18 months. That is hardly believable. Could it be he doesn't want to hear about the real fruits from his decision to commit this nation to a war of aggression against the people of Iraq - just to please his little mates in Washington and London?

THE NEWS GETS WORSE

Allen L Roland: 28/10/06 https://www.opednews.com:
"Not only is the Pentagon covering up the full extent of American deaths and casualties in the Oct 10th Camp Falcon attack but it appears that the Pentagon never mentioned the explosion of Depleted Uranium Munitions (DU ) which were obviously stored at the Falcon Base arsenal. It is common knowledge that at least two dozen weapon systems use depleted uranium on their heads, such as bunker busters, because of their penetration ability…

And what about the radiation poisoning from the uranium munitions exploding and burning - Is Baghdad or even other countries currently at risk from this catastrophe?"

CAMP FALCON: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?

by Sarah Meyer, Index Research:
"Iraqis and Americans and people over the world, must ask the U.S. government for a full and open explanation of what happened at Camp Falcon, Baghdad, on the 10th of October 2006.

Index has had the following report from an Iraqi concerning the explosions at As Saqr / Camp Falcon:
"The resistance attacked Camp Falcon south of Baghdad. This camp is considered as the most important munitions camp. The explosions in the camp continued for three hours and was transmitted indirect on Al Jazeera. The resistance filmed the explosions and diffused them on the internet.

Iraq for ever of Fadhil Badrani translated the information on US Pentagon site which says that there were 5000 soldiers in this camp.
But the Pentagon the same night declared that there were only 100 soldiers. This was evidently to hide the losses…

1.10.06. Iraqi Resistance Report.
"…Just before midnight Tuesday, the Iraqi Resistance fired barrages of Katyusha and Grad rockets into the arsenal, the largest such facility in occupied Iraq, causing the ordnance to begin to explode."

THE COMING STARVATION OF SOUTH AFRICA

by Brian Simpson
From the darkening tip of the continent comes news that under pressure from the Mbeki government, as well as terrorist strikes and murders, White South African farmers are selling their farms to Blacks. The government aims to give a third of white-owned land to the Blacks by 2014 and this programme is back on track. The aim is to settle subsistence farmers on the land for ideological reasons, rather than encourage viable agricultural enterprises.
When this has been done elsewhere on the dark continent, production from farms has crashed. Starvation waits around the corner.

It is a pity that Australia has been ear-marked to be the whore of the Asian imperialist powers. A racially proud nation would have welcomed industrious Afrikaners. But then, a racially proud nation would not have allowed its elites to co-operate in the planned destruction of the Afrikaners in the first place.

Presumably the globalist elites think that around 2050, when the West has been destroyed by multiculturalism, they will be able to continue to flourish in China and/or India. (The burning ships can be abandoned.)
But they have forgotten that in a globalist, interdependent world, when one domino falls, so will all the rest. There is no new frontier and no place to run. If the ship sinks, this time we all go down.

MYSTERY OF ISRAEL'S 'SECRET URANIUM BOMB

Robert Fisk -- The Independent (UK) https://www.countercurrents.org/leb- fisk301006.htm
Did Israel use a secret new uranium-based weapon in southern Lebanon this summer in the 34-day assault that cost more than 1,300 Lebanese lives, most of them civilians? ...
Scientific evidence gathered from at least two bomb craters in Khiam and At-Tiri, the scene of fierce fighting between Hizbollah guerrillas and Israeli troops last July and August, suggests that uranium-based munitions may now also be included in Israel's weapons inventory - and were used against targets in Lebanon...
Israel has a poor reputation for telling the truth about its use of weapons in Lebanon. In 1982, it denied using phosphorous munitions on civilian areas - until journalists discovered dying and dead civilians whose wounds caught fire when exposed to air.

Footnote: The Australian Jewish News, 27/10/06 reports: "Israel admits using phosphorous": "Israel has reportedly confirmed that it used white phosphorous bombs during the Lebanon war."
So can we expect fourteen years later Israel will admit using a "secret new uranium" weapon in the latest attack on Lebanon?