OUR POLITICALLY CORRECT AND INTELLECTUALLY LOST UNIVERSITIES

by James Reed
There has been considerable debate in the printed word about Griffith University's chasing of Saudi government money for an Islamic Research Unit. The debate has been - ignoring side issues such as plagiarism of Wikipedia articles - that the institution would promote or be seen to promote radical Islamic Wahabbism. Don't take my word for it, here is The Australian of 29/4/08 p.7, "Jihad Body Linked to Saudi Uni Row":

"The Muslim cleric at the centre of Griffith University's Saudi embassy donation affair - Mohamad Abdalla - is regarded as the Brisbane leader of an Islamic group whose overseas members have been linked to al-Qa'ida and the 2005 London bombings. Dr. Abdalla who has refused to be drawn on the Tablighi Jamaat group, has been identified as its Brisbane head by Muslim community figures, including prominent Islamic leader Fadi Rahman. "He's the head of Tablighi in Brisbane," said Mr. Rahman, who attended the 2020 Summit as a delegate with Dr. Abdalla. "I know Mohamad Abdalla very well," he said. Should we be concerned about such revelations? No, not according to Queensland's Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson. Here is what The Australian 30/4/08 says about the Police Commissioner.

"Queensland's Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson last night intervened to support the Islamic scholar, who, The Australian revealed last week, had in 2006 sought $1.37 million from the Saudi embassy and offered to keep elements of the deal secret. Mr. Atkinson praised Dr. Abdalla for engaging with authorities and promoting harmony between Brisbane's Muslims and the rest of the community. He dismissed Dr. Abdalla's links to Tablighi Jamaat - whose overseas members have been linked to al-Qa'ida and the 2005 London bombings - saying the Griffith academic was a role model for young Muslim men. "His stance from what I have seen of him, is in terms of being a moderate person, a sensible person, a person who encourages the Islamic community to engage with the broader Australian community," he said. "(He) works extremely well with youth and has a very positive influence on youth."
So, there you have it. Multiculturalism will save us!

But not at expense of our kids
As for our universities, here is the real reality, put in an article by Glenda Korporaal "Foreign students, but not at expense of our kids," The Weekend Australian 26-27/4/08 p.28:
"They are the ugly side of the years of neglect of the funding of our universities: the alarming sight of hordes of well organised, red-flag carrying Chinese students bussed in from Sydney and Melbourne and other places, marshalled by megaphone-carrying organisers (whoever they were) and intimidating peaceful protesters; and a torch relay where ordinary Canberra citizens and their kids deliberately kept away from an event to which they would have loved to turn up on a sunny day on their school holidays.

Well, wake up folks, to the picture on our campuses, where full fee-paying foreign students represent 25 per cent of our total enrolments, a situation forced on the universities because of cutbacks in their federal funding and limitations on our own population: middle-class hardworking Australian families who are willing to pay for their kids' university education. It's a situation where our university leaders, who should be focussing on running top-quality educational organisations primarily servicing and educating kids of taxpaying Australians, spend too much time offshore recruiting new students and wringing their hands at the thought that their foreign students intake may fall away."

The McWorld rammed down our throats
But don't get too exited; Korporaal goes on to say: "Yes, we do want foreign students in Australia. They add to the richness of our culture. Having Asian students has always been part of our integration with the region."

To this I say: who wants a "rich" culture and who wants to be integrated with the region? Not me! The "rich" culture is the present McWorld which we have had rammed down our throats. And I for one, never voted on the issue of Asianisation.

ENTANGLED FURTHER AND FURTHER IN HUMAN RIGHTS WEB

by Betty Luks
Professor Andrew Fraser at the 2006 Inverell Forum observed: Australians now bear the burdens of having corrupt and parasitical leaders and elites - without any of the benefits! And part of their agenda is to churn out more and more 'Human Rights' legislation, encroaching further and further on our rights and freedoms.

Australians were slow to grasp the political changes.
The politics of Left-wing-Right-wing was replaced with that of a Top-Down culture. The Top-Down elite increasingly sought power and authority not just over our deeds, but over our words, thoughts and emotions. Through such an array of 'racial and religious vilification' laws, speech codes and 'hate-crime' statutes, which subjectively criminalise speech and opinion, offensive to certain designated groups, Australians found themselves further and further entangled in a web of constrictive legislation and bureaucratic controls. The latest moves in the field of 'human rights' are:

Victoria:
In Victoria there is a proposed Review of the Equal Opportunity Act 1995. The Equal Opportunity Review intends to study the 1995 Act and its "powers to prevent discrimination and enforce the law" and "the resolution of discrimination complaints; and how the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission is governed."

New South Wales:
A 'gay' couple took legal action when their application to become foster carers was refused by a welfare agency linked to the Uniting Church. "They lodged a complaint with the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board after being told an application to become foster carers would not be accepted" on the grounds "they are homosexual." (Daily Telegraph 25/4/08). The Iemma Government has since flagged it will change the law to grant lesbian parents the same parenting rights as heterosexuals.
The Uniting Church in Australia (NSW) has been told by the NSW Administrative Decisions Tribunal that "it cannot refuse to accept homosexuals as foster carers."

The psychopolitical attack:
If Christians had retained the historical knowledge of the very first foundations of the Christian Church in England they would not have been so easily deceived; if they had retained the knowledge of the struggles of their forefathers to gain the freedoms now lost; if their own Church leaders had not become infected with the Marxist-One World virus, they would have easily grasped that their own freedoms, would be in danger from the United Nations' Human Rights Conventions. But now enacted legislation and bureaucratic controls are entangling not just individuals, but the organised churches as well. Well, well, well.

How many really believed the earlier enactment of racial and religious vilification legislation was aimed only at such outspoken 'racist' groups as the Australian League of Rights? In truth, the strategy and tactics of the psychopolitical brigade suggest, the League was merely the earlier scapegoat for what was intended for all in the long-term. While the agents of change were busily indoctrinating the younger generations within the education systems, the League of Rights was used to demonstrate what timid individuals and leaders of institutions to expect should they even so much as express a 'politically incorrect' thought.

One of its founders, Eric D. Butler - a true Australian patriot - was smeared and besmirched continually by Marxist-infected church leaders, party-politicians and mainline media, but his character was such, in spite of the attacks, he continued serving his people all his active life.

The Threatened Destruction of the Federal Constitution:
In 1982 - that is twenty six years ago - appeared the following warning in an article by another great Australian, Jeremy Lee, in the League's Intelligence Survey:
"An horrendous constitutional revolution is taking place in Australia with as yet comparatively few people understanding the far-reaching implications of what can only be described as a programme of treachery designed to destroy the independence and sovereignty of the Commonwealth of Australia."

Destruction of the Family and Nation:
In a 1990s submission on proposed Human Rights legislation, the League warned:
"In the several volumes of "Towards World Understanding" an UNESCO document published nearly four decades ago, it was stated: '…it is most frequently in the family that children are infected with nationalism by hearing what is national extolled and what is foreign disparaged… As long as the child breathes the poisoned air of nationalism, education in world-mindedness can produce only rather precarious results" Thus spoken, the United Nations and its agencies obviously set out with programmes to undermine both the natural instincts of 'family' and 'nation', the first with the contrived issue of 'sexism', and the other - which concerns this submission - the evil so-called, of 'racism', meaning nationalism. The results of this dual programme can be seen today in the state of our (and other countries)…"

Neither the policies nor the direction has changed in all these years - no matter which political party has been in power.

Further study:
The League produced a CDRom "The Lion of Freedom" which contains forty years of On Target editions, as well as other League publications.
You can follow the background and history of the Human Rights Conventions and subsequent legislation and effects through a search of this historical material. $30.00 posted from all Book Services.

AND NOW FOR THE WATER: PLANS THAT WILL CREATE CARTELS

Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/02/2233307.htm 2/5/08 by Bruce Haigh:
"Water is a vital and increasingly rare commodity. It is essential for the maintenance of life which includes cities, towns, small communities, agriculture and industry. As a result of the Water Act 2007 taking effect on March 3 of this year, the Minister for Water, Senator Penny Wong, has referred the issue of the sale of water and trading in water licences in the Murray Darling Basin (MDB) to the ACCC.

Submissions from interested parties have been called for:
<https://www.accc.gov.au/content/item.phtml?itemId=815052&nodeId=4ba8d8618a5b232ff854e18facb24d95&fn=Water%20markets%20issues%20paper.pdf>

Process should be controlled and answerable to the democratic process
The process being entered into by the Minister and the ACCC implies that there is no alternative to trading in water and that it is both desirable and sustainable. I would argue that this is not so.
Ownership should be controlled by the state for equitable distribution and use by all on a sustainable basis. This process should be controlled by and answerable to the democratic process. It is the right of all citizens to have access to a life sustaining supply of potable water.

How will trading in water and water licences achieve this?
Climate change has steadily reduced the flow of water into the MDB. Over the past few years 15 per cent of irrigated vines and trees have been taken out of production in the Murray Irrigation Area due to the reduced amount of water available.
Trading in water licences came about from a perceived economic advantage in artificially increasing the availability of water in areas short of water. The greed and lack of commonsense which drove this so-called reform was compounded by the over-allocation of water licences.

Cornering the market
Even as this is being written major banks and irrigation conglomerates are buying up water licences. They are moving to corner the market on water. The intention of the major irrigators is to get enough licences to ensure a minimum supply of water in times of shortage. They also plan to spread their holdings in order to increase access to commercial and tradeable quantities of water. Any excess in any one year will be available for sale.

Leaseholder not owner takes the risks
Smaller producers are more likely to sell their licences and this will be to the major irrigators and banks because they will pay more than the Government. Buying licences from smaller producers will make available cheap land to bigger producers which they can lease back to skilled but cash strapped smaller producers, buy the shareholder crop and by so doing not only reduce their own risk but also ensure a return from the lease. If the crop fails it will be the leaseholder, not the owner, who takes the risk.
Alternatively or in conjunction with the above, land holdings will get bigger which will have the effect of shrinking towns and reducing services, particularly in the areas of health and education.

Investors and speculators hope to create a profitable market in water
For banks the acquisition of water licences represents an investment against which they can borrow, lend and trade. Controlling water will confer power. Cartels and monopolies. The head of Treasury, Ken Henry, is, in my opinion, wrong in claiming that the market will regulate and conserve water through price. It will not. It will create winners and losers, cartels and monopolies, which will only work to the benefit of the big producers and the top end of town. Such an arrangement would be feudal and one need look no further than Pakistan to see how it would operate and the extent to which equity would be lacking.

By what leap of faith is it asserted that licence holders will sell their licences to government when commercial assessments might lead to the conclusion that the market will offer six or 20 times the amount being offered in five or 10 years' time? The same considerations will apply on the purchase of water for environmental flows. By acceding power to licence holders the Government has become a mendicant, subject to the greed of the market place in relation to a scarce resource.

Faced with growing shortages for environmental and humanitarian needs the Government might move to regulate prices and minimum purchases, however government regulation of private monopolies and cartels is an imperfect instrument as we have seen with Telstra and the oil companies.

Complete Audit by National Water Authority needed
Unspoken and un-argued is the need for a complete audit of Australia's water resources past, present and future. Areas outside of the MDB, particularly WA, look askance at the eastern centric focus on the MDB as addressing the water problems of Australia.
What is needed is a National Water Authority (NWA) to conduct such an audit and maintain a scientific and research overview of Australia's water resources of which the MBD forms a part but only a part when account is taken of the NT, WA, Northern Queensland and Tasmania. It is difficult to understand how proper and informed decisions can be made in the national interest, without such an audit and without such a body to maintain a close and ongoing focus.

Any analysis of the effect of climate change on governance must lead to the conclusion that the era of the privatisation of assets of public benefit and necessity is over. Scarcity and shortage will require the intervention of government to maintain a reasonable quality of life and evenly balanced productivity.
Favouring major interest groups at expense of equity: To favour major interest groups at the expense of equity will sooner or later lead to internal unrest and the movement of people.

The ABC writes: Bruce Haigh is a retired Diplomat who now farms near Mudgee; he irrigates grapes and olives

AND WHAT ABOUT OUR WHEAT GROWERS ?

According to the Stock Journal 1/5/08 the Federal Minister for Agriculture Tony Burke claims that Labor's wheat marketing legislation is aimed at preventing monopolies. Is he to be believed? What say you gentle reader?
Would you like to name one lone farmer or industry or institution that either the Liberal Coalition or the Labor Party, when in power, has not thrown to the wolves of the Multinationals and the New World Order?

So, why is the Federal Minister for Agriculture to be believed when he insists:"The principle behind the legislation is to make sure competition works."

The multinationals have been "circling their prey" since the 2006 AWB Ltd $300m scandal inquiry, and it seems their patience will be rewarded. If the reports coming through emails from concerned farmers are 'on track' they believe the Labor government intends to hand the carcass of the AWB over to the multinationals.

The Stock Journal continues:
"Despite continuing opposition to the legislation by the Nationals and new results from a survey conducted by Rural Press Marketing Services for Independent MP Tony Windsor indicating that 80 per cent of farmers want the single desk to stay, Mr. Burke said he was staying the course with the reforms."

MULTINATIONALS MAKE BILLIONS OUT OF FOOD CRISIS:

Multinationals make billions in profit out of growing global food crisis, by Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor The Independent on Sunday, 4/5/08:
Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry. The prices of wheat, corn and rice have soared over the past year driving the world's poor - who already spend about 80 per cent of their income on food - into hunger and destitution.

The World Bank says that 100 million more people are facing severe hunger. Yet some of the world's richest food companies are making record profits. Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February this year had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543m (£275m) to $1.12bn. Its profits increased from $1.44bn to $2.22bn.

Cargill's net earnings soared by 86 per cent from $553m to $1.030bn over the same three months. And Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world's largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42 per cent in the first three months of this year from $363m to $517m. The operating profit of its grains merchandising and handling operations jumped 16-fold from $21m to $341m.

Similarly, the Mosaic Company, one of the world's largest fertiliser companies, saw its income for the three months ending 29 February rise more than 12-fold, from $42.2m to $520.8m, on the back of a shortage of fertiliser. The prices of some kinds of fertiliser have more than tripled over the past year as demand has outstripped supply. As a result, plans to increase harvests in developing countries have been hit hard.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation reports that 37 developing countries are in urgent need of food. And food riots are breaking out across the globe from Bangladesh to Burkina Faso, from China to Cameroon, and from Uzbekistan to the United Arab Emirates. Benedict Southworth, director of the World Development Movement, called the escalating earnings and profits "immoral" late last week. He said that the benefits of the food price increases were being kept by the big companies, and were not finding their way down to farmers in the developing world.

The soaring prices of food and fertilisers mainly come from increased demand. This has partly been caused by the boom in biofuels, which require vast amounts of grain, but even more by increasing appetites for meat, especially in India and China; producing 1lb of beef in a feedlot, for example, takes 7lbs of grain.

World food stocks at record lows, export bans and a drought in Australia have contributed to the crisis, but experts are also fingering food speculation. Professor Bob Watson - chief scientist at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who led the giant International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development - last week identified it as a factor.

Index-fund investment in grain and meat has increased almost fivefold to over $47bn in the past year, concludes AgResource Co, a Chicago-based research firm. And the official US Commodity Futures Trading Commission held special hearings in Washington two weeks ago to examine how much speculators were helping to push up food prices. Cargill says that its results "reflect the cumulative effect of having invested more than $18bn in fixed and working capital over the past seven years to expand our physical facilities, service capabilities, and knowledge around the world".

The revelations are bound to increase outrage over multinational companies following last week's disclosure that Shell and BP between them recorded profits of £14bn in the first three months of the year - or £3m an hour - on the back of rising oil prices. Shell promptly attracted even greater condemnation by announcing that it was pulling out of plans to build the world's biggest wind farm off the Kent coast.

ARE YOU GETTING THE PICTURE AT LAST ?

ANOTHER WEAPON OF MASS TAXATION ?

The Carbon Sense Coalition described the proposed Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) as "A Weapon of Mass Taxation".
In a submission to the Garnaut Enquiry, the chairman of "Carbon Sense", Mr Viv Forbes, claimed that the scheme would have no effect whatsoever on world climate but every Australian would feel the oppressive cost and dislocations caused by it.

"Staggering estimates of the costs of forcing industry to purchase permits to emit CO2 are just starting to emerge: Germany (100 billion euros), Australia (up to $22 billion), New Zealand ($4.5 billion). The amazing fact is that even though consumers in many countries will bear oppressive costs, there may be no reduction whatsoever in CO2 emissions, and no beneficial effects on the world climate. (The Chairman of the Australian Taxation Institute, Mr Michael Dirkis, recently estimated that the direct tax cost of an Emissions Trading Scheme could be $22 billion or 40% of company tax receipts.)

"The immediate tax revenues collected from the forced sale of the emission permits will just be the start of the ETS tax pain. This tax will feed immediately into the prices for electricity, transport, food, cement and metal products. It will be like spreading the costs of petrol excise taxes into everything we buy.

"But to administer the whole complicated scheme, with tentacles into every business in the land, will require a stifling bureaucratic overhead of administrators, consultants, regulators, statisticians, tax collectors, auditors, inspectors, enforcers and prosecutors. At a time when real industry is suffering from a shortage of labour and services, all of these people and resources will be sucked into an ETS black hole. This bureaucratic burden is yet another hidden tax.

"Then to cope with the vast increase in green/red tape, the business world will build a matching unproductive empire of corporate bureaucrats charged with complying with all the new laws, statistics, reports, taxes, regulations and audits. "All these morbid results will be followed by the growth of a parasitic class of traders, speculators and bankers already gearing up to profit from the creation of paper carbon credits - another addition to the hidden ETS tax burden paid for by consumers, taxpayers or shareholders.

"Then there is the insidious effect on the supply and cost of food. The Ethanol Obsession is already diverting grains and other foods to produce motor fuel. This stupid policy of subsidising or mandating the use of ethanol and biofuels will gobble up rapidly increasing quantities of corn, wheat, oils and sugar. Farmers all over the world are diverting land from food production and destroying forest land to produce motor fuel.

"An even more ominous threat to future food supplies is the growing plague of sterile carbon-credit plantations which are already smothering food farm land and native pastures at an alarming rate. Every farming community is watching with increasing alarm as families leave, food production ceases, farm houses are abandoned and the land is covered by a monoculture of unproductive artificial plantations. Once the ETS becomes operational, this destructive process will multiply. Some hungry future generation will have the job of eradicating this crop of woody weeds for a new race of pioneering farmers.

"Even more insidious is the fact that schemes like carbon sequestration and carbon credit plantations will rob the atmosphere of the life-producing carbon dioxide. For 100 years, the green revolution has produced more food from the same land, partly because of the free carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere by burning carbon fuels. If the world managed to be so stupid to limit or stop man's emissions of this plant food, he would surely starve all plants (and himself) - the ultimate tax blunder.

"When people notice all food products becoming scarce and expensive, they should remember the real villains - Al Gore with his baseless hysteria about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the Garnaut/Rudd emissions trading racket. Moreover, if Australia decided to become part of a world ETS, the net result will be a huge transfer of carbon credit money into dubious schemes in the third world, so Australians will never see any benefits or jobs from the spending of their own carbon tax money.

"Another inevitable result of a carbon ETS will be to force-feed inefficient, costly and environmentally destructive methods of generating electricity such as wind and solar. This will sop up capital to build these invasive facilities, and push up the cost of electricity from such expensive, intermittent, scattered and unreliable power sources. At the same time, low cost reliable concentrated power from coal will see its share of the electricity market decline - more collateral damage from the ET Weapon of Mass Taxation.

"Finally, shareholders and employees will suffer as plants and facilities made unprofitable by the cost of emissions permits or carbon taxes are prematurely scrapped or mothballed. It is amazing that our government seems prepared to turn this ET Weapon of Mass Taxation onto the Australian people without any proof that reduction in man's emissions of CO2 will bring any benefits, and without telling the Australian people what the scheme will cost."

As an American report on emissions reductions concluded recently:
'A severe global emissions-reduction policy through emissions trading could turn out to be the costliest public policy mistake in human history with costs vastly exceeding the benefits'.

"Two things must be done before saddling Australians with such costs.
Firstly, set up a Royal Commission of Enquiry into the science of whether CO2 is a driver of world temperature.
And secondly, prepare an independent cost-benefits analysis, prepared to the standard defined by ASIC for a prospectus required by law for any corporation proposing to raise such huge amounts of money from taxpayers, consumers and shareholders."
Source: www.carbon-sense.com info@carbon-sense.com

CARBON TAX:

Is this carbon tax simply a re-run of the Tobin Tax which - we suspect - was intended to finance a permanent army for the U.N.?