THE 2020 SUMMIT: AN OMINOUS NOTE

from David Flint's Opinion Column:
The introduction to the 2020 summit note on governance strikes an ominous note. It says: "19th Century Constitutional frameworks can constrain the Government's responses to 21st Century demands." That is well and truly letting the cat out of the bag. This confirms the "No" case in 1999: that the politicians' republic would give more power to the politicians.

This reminded me of a conversation I had while campaigning at Corowa in 1999. It was with Ted Mack, formerly an independent MP. He was so opposed to the parliamentary superannuation schemes he resigned from both the New South Wales and the Federal Parliaments just before he became eligible.
Ted Mack is a man of principle, as honest as the day. He is committed to a very different sort of republic to most republicans. I asked him whether the proponents of the 1999 model realised it would vastly increase the politicians' powers. His reply was that they did; in fact this was their intention in trying to impose this republic.

Note that: In Ted Mack's view, the real agenda in 1999 was to increase the politicians' powers. The 2020 summit note on governance does not say much about whatever republic is to be discussed there, other than the following questions: "And given no referendum has been passed for 40 years, what are the chances that Australia can modernise its creaky constitutional framework? Or was our rejection of the Republic at the end of the last century just healthy cynicism about the model we were asked to buy?"

...the polls....
The background paper on governance for the 2020 Summit has a graph showing responses to Newspoll's question from 1987 to 2006 over about a vague undefined republic, "Thinking about whether Australia should become a republic, are you personally in favour or against Australia becoming a republic?" The trend for support of a vague undefined republic is clearly down, and the graph shows that.
The 2007 Newspoll shows a fall in support to 45%, with those strongly in favour at only 27%. Bearing in mind that many of those strongly in favour of the concept will still vote No to a specific model, the polling is hardly encouraging for republican stalwarts.

In addition, no poll was commissioned for Australia Day 2008:
This suggests that those at The Australian who commission these polls suspect the answer will only confirm that the trend is clearly down. The paper changes the description of the uncommitted to "indifferent." This is wrong.
If they were indifferent they would either not vote or vote informally. Many people do not wish to answer a question put by the polling arm of an organisation which after all was probably the most significant and powerful campaigner for republican change. Why should they? And the plain fact is most of them voted 'No' in 1999. A glance at the polling confirms that.

The issue of Australia becoming some sort of vague undefined republic takes up half a page in the fourteen-page background paper on governance for the 2020 Summit. We suspect from the document that the desired outcome is not so much yet another call for some vague undefined republic, which will be delivered anyway. What the government really wants is a recommendation for four year fixed parliamentary terms. They will of course get such a recommendation. All of the bien pensants think that way. It is unlikely that such a proposal would be successful at a referendum, even if the Liberals support it. It is just as well there are issues other than a republic for the panel to think about.

Two prominent republican summiteers, Sir Anthony Mason and Professor Robert Manne are on the record as identifying a "robust convention" or rule as the justification for republican change. But this is a convention or rule which clearly does not exist. Rather than talking about a subject on which they are so ill-informed, it would be better to have their advice on other issues.

THE REAL STOLEN GENERATION

from Len the Cleaner:
It is good to see that the retired Supreme Court judge Mulligan QC has handed in a 600-page report to the South Australian Parliament on the plight - over decades - of the sexual abuse of children in State care. This is the real stolen generation; there is no debate here about intention. Children were exploited by what Mulligan described as the "foul undercurrent of society."

Information about 434 alleged paedophiles has been referred to police and two suspects have already been arrested. Mulligan recommended, among 54 recommendations, "conducting special police operations at known homosexual beats to arrest paedophiles and gather criminal intelligence" (The Advertiser 2/4/08 p.8). SA State Premier Mike Rann will say "sorry."

But this abuse has been well known by people in Adelaide since the 1940s. Why wasn't an inquiry conducted by the governments of Don Dunstan or Tom Playford? The Goodwood Orphanage was notorious for abuse and features in the Inquiry. Male staff and nuns would rape children. Children were taken from the Orphanage and sold for sex. (The Advertiser 2/4/08 p.11) Priests often raped children.

My mother and aunt were orphans in Adelaide in the 1920s. My mother told me stories of abuse and brutal beatings. For 'giving cheek' to a nun she was tied up and had near-boiling water tipped over her. She never got over this, but told me only one year before she died.

I am sure that all of this horror is just the tip of an ugly iceberg. Adelaide, the 'City of Churches' has a dark murky background, like something out of an occult movie. It would not surprise me if there were not a connection between the "Family" style slayings

WITHOUT GENUINE CHRISTIANITY, ALL IS LOST

by James Reed:
The 'foul undercurrent' of Adelaide society was brought to the surface by former Supreme Court judge Mulligan QC as the above correspondence from Len the Cleaner highights. In this case, it is the wicked abuse of children by persons in authority, from both Church and State. The two institutions set up to safeguard children not exploit and abuse them!

The Dianne Brimble case (the cruise ship death/public sex on the decks/pornography and date drug rape) and the Channel 10 Big Brother sexual assault controversy also have a common core: the permissive sexual era of the 1960s. I had written one of my familiar pieces on this issue and then I came across Paul Gray's "Era of Permissiveness Now Coming Back to Haunt Us," which appeared in The Australian 3/7/06 p.8.
Gray concluded: "It would be refreshing to hear some acknowledgement from the ideologues of the 60s generation that they were wrong about sex and drugs. For they were wrong. The victims of their error are piling up."

Indeed; but these generations were most fundamentally wrong in moving away from the light of traditional Christian morality - which had given hope and meaning to man for two thousand years - and moving instead into the murky shades of liberationism. The great social experiment has failed - as those at its head knew it would and intended for it to do so.

A THIRD AMERICAN WAR CRIME IN THE MAKING

by Paul Craig Roberts:
Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.

The US Congress, the US media, the American people, and the United Nations, are looking the other way as Cheney prepares his attack on Iran. If only America had an independent media and an opposition party. If there were a shred of integrity left in American political life, perhaps a third act of naked aggression -- a third war crime under the Nuremberg standard -- by the Bush Regime could be prevented.

On March 30, the Russian News & Information Agency, Novosti, cited "a high-ranking security source: "The latest military intelligence data point to heightened US military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran." 1
According to Novosti, Russian Colonel General Leonid Ivashov said "that the Pentagon is planning to deliver a massive air strike on Iran's military infrastructure in the near future."

The chief of Russia's general staff, Yuri Baluyevsky, said last November that Russia was beefing up its military in response to US aggression, but that the Russian military is not "obliged to defend the world from the evil Americans." 2.

On March 29, OpEdNews cited a report by the Saudi Arabian newspaper Okaz, which was picked up by the German news service, DPA. The Saudi newspaper reported on March 22, the day following Cheney's visit with the kingdom's rulers, that the Saudi Shura Council is preparing "national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom following experts' warnings of possible attacks on Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactors." 3.

Two massive failures by the American media, the Democratic Party, and the American people have paved the way for Cheney's long planned attack on Iran. One failure is the lack of scepticism about the US government's explanation of 9/11. The other failure is the Democrats' refusal to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush for lying to the Congress, the American people, and the world and launching an invasion of Iraq based on deception and fabricated evidence.

If an American president can start a war exactly as Adolf Hitler did with pure lies and not be held accountable, he can get away with anything. And Bush and his evil regime have. Iran is a beautiful and developed country. It is an ancient civilization. It has attacked no one. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Iran is permitted by the treaty to have a nuclear energy program. The Bush Regime's case against Iran is based on the Bush Regime's desire to deny Iran its rights under the treaty.

The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have repeatedly reported that they have found no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Despite all the disinformation from US Gen. Petraeus and other Bush Regime military lackeys, Iran is not arming the Iraqis who are resisting the American occupation.
If Iran were arming insurgents, the insurgents would have two weapons that would neutralize the US advantage in the Iraqi conflict: missiles to knock down US helicopter gunships and rocket-propelled grenades that knock out American tanks. The insurgents do not have these weapons and must construct clumsy anti-tank weapons out of artillery shells. The insurgents are helpless against US air power and cannot mass forces to take on the American troops.

Indiscriminate American violence has reduced Iraq to rubble. The civilian infrastructure is essentially destroyed--electricity, water and sewer systems, medical care and schools. Depleted uranium is everywhere poisoning everyone, including US troops. There is no economy, and half or more of Iraqis are unemployed. Literally no Iraqi family has escaped an injury or a death as a consequence of the US invasion. Millions of Iraqis have become displaced persons.
A developed country with a professional middle class has been destroyed because of lies told by the President and Vice President of the US. The Bush Regime's lies are echoed by a neoconservative media, and have gone unchallenged by the opposition party and an indifferent American public.

In Afghanistan, death and destruction rains on even the smallest village from the air. America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are wars against the civilian populations. Iranians despite all the evidence cannot believe that even the Great Satan would gratuitously attack Iran based on nothing but lies about non-existent nuclear weapons. Iran's only chance would be to strike before the US delivers the first blow.
Instead of using its missiles to take out the Saudi oil fields and to sink the US aircraft carriers, instead of closing the Strait of Hormuz, instead of arming the Iraqi Shi'ites and moving them to insurgency, Iran is perched like a sitting duck in denial even as the US and its Iraqi puppet Maliki move to eliminate Al Sadr's Iraqi Shi'ite militia in order to avoid supply disruptions and a Shi'ite rebellion in Iraq when the US attack on Iran comes.
It is important to emphasize that Iran is making no moves toward war. Having tamed, blackmailed, and purchased Congress, the US media, and US allies and puppets, Cheney might delight in the arrogance with which he can now attack Iran free of any restraint or fabricated provocation. On the other hand, he might cover himself by orchestrating an "Iranian provocation" to justify his attack as a response. But like Hitler's planned attack against Poland, Cheney's attack on Iran has long been in the works.

On March 29 the Associated Press reported that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi "poured contempt on fellow Arab leaders" at the Arab summit that day. Gadhafi told the Arab "leaders," many of whom are on the American payroll, that their American masters would turn on them all, just as America turned on Saddam Hussein after using him to fight a proxy war against Iran.

Saddam had once been an ally of Washington, Gadhafi reminded the Arabs, "but they sold him out." Gadhafi told the American puppets, "Your turn is next." Gadhafi asked, "Where is the Arabs' dignity, their future, their very existence?" If Arabs remain disunited, he predicted, "they will turn themselves into protectorates. They will be marginalized and turn into garbage dumps." Indeed, it is this disunity that permits the US to bomb and murder at will in the Middle East.

1. http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070327/62697703.html
2. https://www.mnweekly.ru/national/20071115/55289883.html
3. http://empireburlesquenow.blogspot.com/2008/03/worried-yet-saudis-

DEAR JONATHAN KAY

by Wallace Klinck (Canada):
I wish to commend you for your harsh criticism of the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission and for identifying this institution and the personnel operating them as what they are:
"Canada's human-rights censors." Anyone educated in the strategy of Bolshevik revolution would know immediately the purpose, intent and expected conduct of such extra-legal and unconstitutional bodies. Indeed, years ago when they were being proposed I composed a letter which was published in Alberta Report warning that if such obvious political kangaroo "courts" were ever instituted we would need the help of God to extract ourselves from their totalitarian clutches.

It is sad commentary on the corrupt nature of the political process and the integrity of the legal profession and media that such criminal activities have been ignored for so long. And I am afraid that claims by certain advocates and promoters of these Tribunals that they have evolved into unexpected activities does not wash with me. I give these people credit for enough intelligence that they could not help but be aware of the potential for repression which such extra-legal, illegal and unconstitutional bodies posed. They are almost identical in form and procedure with the Bolshevik "Peoples" Courts where the poor victims' fate was pre-decided and determined for purely political reasons.

In short, I believe that these bodies are seditious in nature and should be investigated from that standpoint. Our historic free society cannot function or exist in any meaningful way without the open and unrestricted flow of ideas, opinions and information, not for some but for all. If any legal action is warranted with regard to speech surely it should be directed against those who would conspire to deprive their fellow citizens of it.

As a free citizen I do not need, and will not tolerate, any arrogant body puffed up with an exaggerated sense of self-importance and claiming omniscience and moral infallibility, dictating my thought processes. Governments are to listen to electors--not dictate to them. History shows that government monopoly of information is the most dangerous of all forms of opinion-making. I do not think you enhance your case, though, by the element of gratuitous and unsubstantiated labelling of people as "hate mongers," "phobic", "neo-Nazi," etc. "Hate" is an emotional word employed for obvious political strategy and is a very subjective term. I can run into a room full of people and shout "purple" and be faced with everything from strong approval to outright condemnation, from puzzlement to hilarity.

People who have an opinion should be accorded the courtesy of being heard and their audience should be accorded the right to hear and analyze their statements. Those who are obviously unreasoning or even rabid are not likely to retain much of an audience.
If individuals cannot to be allowed freedom to communicate openly and unrestricted then the whole concept of a free and "democratic" society and the worth of the individual is just a myth and the notion justifying autocratic rule by an authoritarian elite is obviously admitted.

Personally, I do not need anyone telling me what to think, and subscribe to the idea that experts are to be on tap--not on top. In any case, I do appreciate your coming forward to condemn the activities and mind-set of these monstrosities which we in Canada have wrought in the form of pseudo Human "Rights" Commissions and I hope that you and others of like mind will not rest until they are eliminated and we can return to a civilized society based on our historic values of Christian love, realistic British common law and Constitutional principles.

The present atmosphere of totalitarian legalism is intolerable and unacceptable. I wonder where the Governor-General is under these circumstances. I thought she or he was obligated to protect the Monarch and the rights of the people enshrined in the common law Constitution from abuses by the politicians or Government of the day.

I cannot fathom how any Member of Parliament can look his or her electors in the eye knowing that these outrageous abuses have, with their leave, for so long been visited upon the People of Canada. Enough is already too much. Obviously the price of freedom is, indeed, eternal vigilance.

If Canadians willingly tolerate these blatant HRC abuses of their fundamental freedoms then surely they forfeit their rights to them and deserve their inevitable fate.

THERE WILL BE FITNA

by Brian Simpson:
Dutch MP Geert Wilder has released a 15 minute film called Fitna - an Arab word meaning 'trouble'. Wilder may get trouble for this. The film juxtaposes the Koran and Muslim violence. It was posted at www.liveleak.com but when I looked it was removed for "copyright" reasons.

A thought-provoking comment was made by the conservative Jewish commentator Lawrence Auster at his View from the Right blog: "there are two ways people can respond to Fitna. They can say that it is not true or fair because it doesn't talk about all the Muslims who are not active jihadists. Or they can say that, despite the movie's lack of nuance resulting from its short length, it is telling the essential truth about Islam.
But if they take the latter view, as I do, how can they conclude other than that Islam is a deadly threat to our civilisation, our liberties, and our very lives, and that its growth among us must be instantly stopped and reversed?"

This is a very good question, but one will not find serious discussion of this question in Australia. Our oppressive race-hate laws would not permit a Fitna style movie to circulate here and would chill all critical discussion.