4 September 2009 Thought for the Week: “…But no one talks about all this, thanks to the Israel Lobby's unquestioned influence over mass media and government. We have been collectively lobotomized by the Lobby. We are virtually brain-dead when it comes to asking basic questions, and demanding rational answers. Any brain-dead social body can persist on life support for a period of time, but its days are surely numbered. Financial collapse is a sign that our vital organs are shutting down. - - “Why are we in Afghanistan?” David Skrbina, lecturer in philosophy, University of Michigan -Dearborn. |
A THOUGHTFUL SPEECH BY THE MEMBER FOR WILLSMr. Kelvin Thomson MP drew attention to the reality of excessive immigration and massive urban growth in parliament (17th August 09) in the following extracts from his speech :- “According to Melbourne Water, water shortages in and around Melbourne is being driven by both climate change and population growth. Housing affordability in Australia has undergone a period of dramatic decline. John Edwards, an economist with HSBC, has noted that Australia’s high level of migration, the highest level in our history, is going to keep upward pressure on house prices. The same goes for rent. In my home city of Melbourne, a lot of people of goodwill have supported high-rise as preferable to urban sprawl. What they do not realise is that it is not halting any urban sprawl at all. Suburbs continue to continue to march out onto the horizon. Property developers are having their cake and eating it too. We are growing upwards and outwards. Melbourne is becoming an obese hardened-artery parody of its former self. There is something intangible but important about the personal space of a backyard. I believe the children who grow up in concrete jungle suburbs are subject to more bullying and harassment and are more vulnerable to traps such as crime and drugs. More people equals more cars, and the more cars there are out on the roads the longer it takes us to get anywhere. The time that motorists spend on the roads in and out of Brisbane, for example—to the Sunshine Coast, the Gold Coast or Ipswich—is truly appalling. Each suburb we build out of the city fringes means more traffic coming through the inner suburbs, more congestion, more pollution and more noise. It does nothing for our calm, our quality of life or our sanity. We think we have no choice but to grin and bear it. It is not true… Increasing population consumes resources and makes them scarcer, leading to price rises. The rising price of petrol is a clear function of scarcity fuelled by population growth, and the increased cost of basic resources such as water and petrol feeds into everything they contribute to—food costs, transport costs, insurance, housing et cetera. Editor’s comment: Mr. Thomson is to be congratulated for his speech. The growth of cities is a travesty of natural law. It is driven by financial policies which foster bigness. A drastic re-think is required to give people a more natural lifestyle. Read “The Money Trick” to see a better policy. Borrowing to pay the banker? |
BOB BIRRELL: EARNINGS OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTSby James Reed Consider Glenn Withers response to Birrell (The Australian 12/8/09 p.34). Withers is a big immigration supporter and is now chief executive of Universities Australia. In his article he makes some technical objections to Birrell. Withers adopts a globalist economic position which rejects the idea that ‘exports are good’ and ‘imports are bad’. That is the philosophy that has led to the Asian economies rising and the West falling. Now if Withers truly believes that, let him resign from his job, give all his super and assets to Aborigines and refugees, and let him sit the Year 12 exam again with Asian students. Let him compete to get a place, in say medicine or dentistry. I wonder how he would go? |
ISRAELI GAY CLUB MASSACRE: BUT NO CALL FOR GUN BANSby John Steele At present there is a complete police-blackout on details in this case. Now leaving aside the homophobic line, what I find interesting is that the gun control lobby did not, as far as research revealed, follow its usual pattern. Why no call for a ban on firearms in Tel Aviv? Do you want to deprive Israelis of the right to own firearms – if so, why and if not, won’t this undercut your basic gun control position? | OUTRAGED DENIALS THAT ISRAEL PLUNDERS PALESTINIANS ORGANSIsraeli 's have expressed outrage at the claims by photographer Donald Bostr 'm in a Swedish newspaper (Aftonbladet) that they (the Israelis) 'plundered young Palestinians organs. 'You could call me a 'matchmaker, said Levy Yitzhak Rosenbaum, from Brooklyn, USA, in a secret recording with an FBI-agent whom he believed to be a client. Ten days later, at the end of July this year, Rosenbaum was arrested and a vast, Sopranos-like, imbroglio of money-laundering and illegal organ-trade was revealed. Rosenbaum 's matchmaking had nothing to do with romance. It was all about buying and selling kidneys from Israel on the black market. Rosenbaum says that he buys the kidneys for 10,000 dollars, from poor people. He then proceeds to sell the organs to desperate patients in the States for 160,000 dollars. The accusations have shaken the American transplantation business. If they are true it means that organ trafficking is documented for the first time in the US, experts tell the New Jersey Real-Time News. On the question of how many organs he has sold Rosenbaum replies: 'Quite a lot. And I have never failed, he boasts. The business has been running for quite some time. Francis Delmonici, professor of transplant surgery at Harvard and member of the National Kidney Foundation 's Board of Directors, tells the same newspaper that organ-trafficking, similar to the one reported from Israel, is carried out in other places of the world as well. 5-6,000 operations a year, about ten per cent of the world 's kidney transplants are carried out illegally, according to Delmonici. Countries suspected of these activities are Pakistan, the Philippines and China, where the organs are allegedly taken from executed prisoners. But Palestinians also harbour strong suspicions against Israel for seizing young men and having them serve as the country 's organ reserve - a very serious accusation, with enough question marks to motivate the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to start an investigation about possible war crimes. Israel has repeatedly been under fire for its unethical ways of dealing with organs and transplants. France was among the countries that ceased organ collaboration with Israel in the nineties '
Israel Shamir (member of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem) writes:
Carla Del Ponte had seen the house where such surgeries were done and had met with the people involved, one of whom "personally made an organ delivery" to an Albanian airport for transport abroad.
More importantly, Israeli outrage is a proof that - despite approval for it by radical Cabbalists and neoliberals - transplantation of human organs is an immoral dreadful thing, too close to cannibalism, and we all know that. Yes, it is awful if Israeli soldiers tear kidneys out of Palestinians and kill them afterwards. LA Times 24/8/09 - 'Organ harvesting sparks Israel-Sweden tiff - Richard Boudreaux: latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-israel-sweden24-2009aug24,0,6566414.story 'Sweden, citing a right to free expression, refuses to condemn suggestions that Israeli troops harvested the organs of dead Palestinians. Israel says the article could incite violence against Jews. Israel, already on the defensive over European criticism of its policies, has picked a diplomatic fight with Sweden over an unsubstantiated newspaper "expose" suggesting that Israeli soldiers harvested the organs of Palestinians who died in army custody. The article in the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet on Aug. 17 drew little attention until Israel demanded, two days later, that Sweden's government condemn it. Swedish officials refused, saying the newspaper has a constitutional right to free expression.
Two of the tabloid's reporters were told Sunday their applications for press credentials in Israel would be delayed for 90 days.
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt is to visit Israel on Sept. 10, but Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz suggested he may not be welcome. Israel's reaction is a measure of sensitivity to strong international criticism of its offensive in the Gaza Strip and the policies of Netanyahu's 5-month-old government. Israel is resisting U.S. and European demands to halt all growth of Jewish settlements in the West Bank as a prelude to peace talks with the Palestinians. The Swedish article repeated Palestinian allegations, dating to the early 1990s and denied by the Israeli military, that troops removed dead prisoners' organs. The writer, Donald Bostrom, said the allegations should be re-examined in light of last month's arrest of an American Jew charged with plotting to buy a kidney from an Israeli and sell it to an American patient. Bostrom later told Israel Radio he could not vouch for the accuracy of the accounts of his Palestinian informants. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the article had "an odour of anti-Semitism." The Swedish government's refusal to condemn it, he said, recalled Sweden's neutrality during World War II.
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MOUNT CLINTON BLOWS ITS TOP !by James Reed It turns out that the student really meant “Mr. Obama,” not “Mr. Clinton.” But even so, over-the-top feminist and egoist Hillary could have delivered the reply: I am here as Secretary of State, I’m not going to channel the president’s opinion, only official US policy. |
THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG-DISTANCE ESSAY WRITERby James Reed The essay persona is all about appearance, the appearance of saying something profound, the appearance of being an intellectual. That is what Rudd wants to be, a man of letters. In general, the Left loves intellectuals, words, books, essays and all that talk. |
IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THIS: ABORIGINAL COURTS ?by Ian Wilson LL.B. Only Tasmania does not have an Aboriginal sentencing court: Western Australia has only one Aboriginal court in Kalgoorlie. At present this court is under evaluation by the WA Attorney General and a report will be available next month. It is not clear at present whether or not reoffending rates have decreased. I have no objection about Aboriginal elders confronting offenders, if it can be shown that this lowers reoffending rates. My concern is that there may be a politically correct desire by the legal reform lobby to lower Aboriginal imprisonment rates by making such courts a “soft option”. These Aboriginal people, however “dispossessed” are still breaking the law. So the real issue as Chief Justice Martin also observes, lies outside of the justice system. But that puts us squarely in the wild world of politics, where Aboriginal issues have been quietly regarded as too hard, for too long. |
'SCIENCE AND ORGANIC FOODby John Steele There was no investigation of other factors such as chemical residues and the health benefits of various plant nutrients. Organic foods are often fresher than conventional foods : some fruits in supermarkets may be up to many months of age, dwelling in ‘controlled atmospheres”. The nutritional content can hardly match fresh food. |
THE WHITE HOUSE BEER SUMMITby James Reed Gates showed his arrogance by threatening the police officer saying he didn’t know who he was dealing with. And just as suddenly, the black president intervenes. If Gates had been white, Crowley would have been seen as just doing his job. Welcome to the post-white world. It’s only beginning… |
GREENPEACE LEADER ADMITS ARCTIC ICE EXAGGERATIONIn an interview with the BBC’s Stephen Sackur on the “Hardtalk” program, Leipold initially attempted to evade the question but was ultimately forced to admit that Greenpeace had made a “mistake” when it said Arctic ice would disappear completely in 20 years. Sackur accused Leipold and Greenpeace of releasing “misleading information” based on “exaggeration and alarmism,” pointing out that it was “preposterous” to claim that the Greenland ice sheet, a mass of 1.6 million square kilometres with a thickness of 3 km in the middle that has survived much warmer periods in history, would completely melt when it had stood firm for hundreds of thousands of years. “There is no way that ice sheet is going to disappear,” said Sackur. “I don’t think it will be melting by 2030. … That may have been a mistake,” Leipold was eventually forced to admit. Greenpeace Leader Admits Arctic Ice Exaggeration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC7bE9jopXE&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww. |
SEEKING TO REGAIN RIGHTS FILCHED BY 'BIG-BROTHER 'The Age newspaper reported, “Victoria’s leading employer group has told Attorney-General Rob Hulls to butt out of Melbourne's men-only clubs.” (“Hulls warned on men's clubs”: Paul Austin, 11/8/09). “The Victorian Employers' Chamber of Commerce and Industry has also warned the reformist Attorney-General against interfering in the internal affairs of the churches. Mr Hulls has commissioned a review of exemptions in the Equal Opportunity Act that allow private clubs and churches to discriminate against people on grounds such as gender and religion. Mr Kayler-Thomson said Mr Hulls' ''political correctness'' also posed a threat to the principle of separation of church and state.
''We do not have a state religion in Australia, and we are grateful that the church does not interfere in state matters - the trade-off is that an overweening state keeps its distance from religious organisations,'' he said. Mr Kayler-Thomson said industry leaders were happy to work with the Government to reinforce non-discrimination ''as a tool of business excellence - but we do not believe that civil society should be turned on its head in the process''. The Islamic Council and the Catholic and Anglican churches oppose reducing religious exemptions to the Equal Opportunity Act, and the Presbyterian Church has warned it will defy the law if an ''intolerant secular agenda'' is imposed on Victoria. Mr Hulls, who last night emphasised no decision had been made on changes to the exemptions, acknowledges many people believe religious schools should be free to select their staff ''on whatever basis they determine in order to remain true to their religious beliefs''. |