SPECIAL POSTING FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO HAVE AN INPUT INTO THE CARBON TAX/CLIMATE CHANGE ISSUE

Andrew Bolt wrote on his blog: Politicians scared of anti-tax rally, but why the journalists, too?
– Tuesday, March 08, 11 (05:31 pm)

And then continues: Fascinating. The moppets at GetUp!, the Left-wing activist group, used to preach grass-roots democracy, but are suddenly terrified when they see it for real. Indeed, GetUp! head Simon Sheikh is apparently not the only one, as he lets slip in this appeal that reveals more than is wise:

"I was in Canberra last week and almost every politician and journalist I met with talked to me about the anti-climate action rallies. They’re spooked. I assured them that the campaign for climate action was just as strong—and now, we need to demonstrate this. That’s why it’s so important we join together for a few hours this Saturday March 12—not to have a louder, angrier rally, but to show the difference in both size and tone.
While they’re shouting their angry slogans and misinformation, on the other side of Melbourne we’ll hold a positive, family-friendly gathering to stand up for our vision for clean energy and preserving a safe climate for our kids.
With your help, we’ll prove there are more of us than there are of them and in doing so we’ll make a powerful statement. See you this Saturday.
- - Simon Sheikh National Director for the GetUp team

What’s revealing says Andrew is not just that politicians are spooked, but that journalists are, too. Why? What is it that they fear from their readers, viewers and listeners?
I have refrained from giving the rallies publicity, not least because I don’t know precisely who is behind them and what other agendas they may have. Having told this to the organisers of the protest outside Julia Gillard’s electorate office on Saturday, I received this reply:
This is a true community response from the Lalor electorate with all members of the organising committee living within the electorate, admittedly from the growing conservative base that is developing in the Point Cook and Werribee South region. There are 5 members of the organising committee:
Randal Killip – Senior executive with a media analysis company : Tarun Singh – IT specialist : Bud Growcott – Former State Manager of Coles Myer Adelaide, now retired : Alice Flint – Office Assistant : Tony Hooper – Senior executive with a media advertising company
There are no radicals within the organising committee, and I know each member personally, and I can ensure you that I would not work with anyone who holds a view of extremity, whether that be to the right or the left of the political spectrum.
As with any organising committee there must be a link somewhere or we would not have gotten together, and we all have some link to the local liberal party in Altona, and I hold the strongest link as I have been recently elected Chairman of the Altona SEC. As such I will not either address the rally nor make any public comment in the lead up to the event as I do not want this reported as a Liberal event, and there is no involvement by either the local branch or 104 Collins Street in the organising or promotion of the rally.

Details of the protests - some with the apparent involvement of Liberal party members, rather than GetUp’s Labor party ones - are here:
CANBERRA - the big one! Date: 23 March Time: 12:00pm Location: Parliament House Go to: https://www.nocarbontaxrally.com/
MELBOURNE Date: 12 March Time: 9:30am for 10:00am start Location: Julia Gillard’s Electorate Office, 6 Synnot Street Werribee, Vic Email: stopcarbontax@gmail.com
Date: 23 March Time: 10:30am Location: Parliament House, Spring Street, Melbourne Register/more info:
SYDNEY Date: 2 April Time: 10:30am Location: NSW Parliament House, Macquarie Street, Sydney
BRISBANE Date: 23 March Time: 10:30am Location: Qld Parliament, Cnr George and Alice Streets
ADELAIDE Date: 23 March Time: 10:30am Location: Parliament House Email: shirl.162@bigpond.com
PERTH Date: 23 March Time: 10:30am Location: Parliament House, Harvest Terrace, Perth Contact: Janet Thompson 0417 815 595, mmattjanet@westnet.com.au

HOGES COMPARES AUSTRALIAN TAX OFFICE TO THE TALIBAN

A furious Paul Hogan has lashed out at the Australian Tax Office (ATO) during Channel Nine's A Current Affair program. Hogan repeatedly insulted members of the ATO, calling them “ego-tripping mongrels” and saying the level of public enmity against them was so high “I may as well have picked the Taliban to take on”.
“They’re used to having people roll over,” Hogan told host Tracy Grimshaw. “I’m not going to roll over, I may lose but I’m taking some of them with me.” Hogan was referring to his ongoing five-year battle with the ATO and Australian Crime Commision (ACC) over unpaid taxes.

While the ACC dropped its criminal investigation into Hogan and friend John “Strop” Cornell, for alleged fraud and tax evasion in November last year the ATO is continuing its parallel investigation. At least $150 million hangs in the balance and Hogan told The Australian he was being treated as "guilty until proven innocent" alleging the ATO had cut off his sources of income and imposed limits on his overseas travel.

Hogan said his anger comes after an alleged request to see detail surrounding his case was responded to with pages of blacked out documents. Displaying the documents to host Tracy Grimshaw he quipped he wasn't sure if they were an attempt at a joke or if the department was "flipping me the bird". "Are they bad jokers or are they just treating me with contempt," he said.
He said he now felt he “must go public” because the ATO were “arrogant bullies” and he realised “you can’t talk with these people”. “If I was Fred Smith and I was copping this treatment I wouldn’t be here talking to you I’d just be coppin’ it,” he said. “It’s become very personal, I hate bullies – and that’s what these people are.”

Hogan said the five-year battle had destroyed his reputation. "They've declared me a criminal all round the world," he said. “It’s over, I used to be Hoges the funny man or Crocodile Dundee. “But now I’m the tax man. Google it, they’ve turned me into the tax man and that never goes away.”
Hogan even showed some flashes of the humour and flair that made him a star. He directly addressed the “front line troops” of the ATO and ACC assuring them he knew they were “decent, hardworking people” and it wasn’t their fault if “their boss was an ego-tripping mongrel”.
He even apologised to clowns everywhere for comparing them to the high-ranking bureaucrats of the ATO. “Clowns may be creepy-looking but they’re just trying to give you a laugh,” he said. “I’m sorry clowns for comparing you to these fools.” It is ATO policy not to comment on individual taxpayer cases.

- - Watch the video interview
'Paul Hogan hits back': http://aca.ninemsn.com.au/celebrity/8221243/paul-hogan-hits-back

A SELL-OUT OF THE PEOPLE TO DISASTROUS CORPORATE-CAPITALISM?

The Sunday Age 6/3/2011, had an article by Chris Berg based on a book “The Long Divergence: How Islamic Law Held Back the Middle East” by Timor Kuran. The author claims the Islamic legal framework is the underlying reason for the lack of democracy and such poverty. And the answer? According to the author Timor Kuran, writes Chris Berg:
“Kuran argues Islamic law primarily failed to develop the concept of a corporation: an economic and legal construct, separated from family and tribal loyalty, designed to encourage investment and profit sharing…

As corporations multiplied in Europe from the 17th century, the Arab world's relative success disappeared. It needn't have been so. There's nothing particularly un-Islamic about the corporation - the organisation was embraced by Muslims in the 20th century. Kuran shows Islamic law is flexible enough to change, but a failure to encourage economic growth meant Arab nations slipped behind the West. First Tunisia, then Egypt, and now Libya: Muammar Gaddafi looks set to join the cohort of fallen Middle East dictators. And about time too.

Under Gaddafi's tribe-centric Stalinism, Libya has consistently ranked in the bottom 10 countries for economic, social, political, and press freedom. Libya is not alone. The Arab world fills the lower ranks of all these indexes.”

Further reading here….

THE ADIVASIS, THE NATIVE PEOPLES OF EAST INDIA WOULDN’T AGREE

But not all share such a favourable idealistic view of ‘corporations’. The authors of “Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel” present a far different viewpoint and from personal experience at that. Frances Hutchinson reviewed the above book in The Social Crediter, Volume 86 p.93, and writes:

Written from the perspective of the Adivasis (first peoples of India), this compendium of research on the impacts of the global corporate institutions of the ‘developed world’ right across the earth covers the activities of the aluminium cartel not only in India but also in Canada, Australia, Iceland, Jamaica, Hungary, Russia, China, the U.S.A., throughout Africa and elsewhere. Careful reading of this tome goes some way to providing answers to the conundrums posed in the following quotations.

“What is the shape of aluminium’s history? Has modern society become too dependent on aluminium too quickly for us to comprehend the industry’s full impact?
‘Wonder metal’ of the twentieth century … Conductor of electricity through elements and cables … Revolutionising transport and packaging … Duralumin and other alloys used in making aircraft, taking humans to the skies … Explosive properties of aluminium in the thermite process enable mass bombing of civilians … Mega-consumer of electricity, prime purpose of the big dams … Major polluter of water, earth, air and outer space … Destroying mountain ecosystems through strip-mining bauxite … Underminer of countries’ economic independence … Invading Adivasi territories and evicting them from their land …”

Corporate capitalism: most disastrous form of social organisation in history:
Hutchinson continues: “The authors of “Out of This Earth” set out to document the ecologically and culturally destructive nature of the aluminium industry, especially in its impact upon the Adivasis (First People) of the East Indian state of Odisha in East India. Seven years of thoroughgoing research have produced a well-rounded critique of corporate capitalism, the most disastrous form of social organisation in history.

Bauxite plays vital role in natural locations: In place within the mountain eco-systems in which it is found, bauxite plays a vital role in the maintenance of water flows through forests and surrounding country-sides. Its removal in vast quantities for the extraction of aluminium for use in consumer goods, transport and above all the armaments industry, is destroying the earth’s ability to sustain plant, animal and human life. Removed from its natural locations, the bright metal becomes toxic and harmful.
Furthermore, the mining and processing of aluminium consumes vast quantities of water and electricity, supplied by dams created by the industry’s complex network of institutions operating behind closed doors. Thus mining companies, investment bankers, governments and metal traders are related through traders in derivatives in the major financial centres of the world, creating the contracts and deals which endorse the right to exploit ‘undeveloped’ lands regardless of the best interests of local peoples.

Multinationals originated in 17th Century: The institutional structures of the multinational corporations now encircling the globe have origins which date back as far as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The French, and later the British East India Companies took forceful control over Indian politics through “intrigue, murder and war”. The pattern of divide and rule tactics established by colonialism has been used ever since.
Nominally, power is thought to reside with local elected representatives through the judiciary and the police. In reality powerful multi-national corporations determine outcomes through their financial control over judicial, political and information systems. Huge corporations constitute the most totalitarian institutions in human history…

The history of exploitation in India is related to the world patterns, through examples in Russia, China, Africa, Iceland and the West Indies. As country after country falls for the promises of unlimited prosperity, across the world country after country is plunged into powerlessness, exploitation and debt. Detailed case histories of countries and people affected by ‘development’ occur throughout the book.
To take just one example, the dramatic crash of Iceland’s three main banks in October 2008 is well known. Less well known is the process of deception involved in development of secret plans and deals which would allow some of Europe’s last undamaged wilderness to be destroyed by dams, geothermal plants and smelters. Typical of aluminium capitalisation, huge loans were taken by the Icelandic government, banks and companies, to pay for the infrastructure needed by the aluminium companies…

Empty value of ‘money’ recognised: Those who recognise the empty value of money to compensate for the loss of produce from the land, and hold out against the ‘development’ are driven away as mines and factory buildings destroy their forest environment. Those who forcibly resist find the full force of law turned upon them, as trouble-makers standing illogically in the path of progress, and face being murdered by contract killers.

Women play a dominant role in the resistance, being the first to recognise the necessity to treat the earth’s resources with respect. Individual stories spring to life in the pages of this book. The sense of the futility and loss in the name of ‘progress’ is depicted with journalistic skill by the authors. These ordinary people offer a powerful message which goes well beyond their individual protest to highlight the plight the whole world faces at this point in time.
Ecologically sustainable lifestyles such as those practised by the Adivasis are being destroyed, leaving in their wake unprecedented material, cultural and spiritual poverty. In this tale of intrigue and corruption, of greed and collusion in high places, the authors turn the spotlight onto the world’s ruling elite who are in process of committing all the sins depicted in Dante’s Inferno in the name of progress and development.

The question raised in these pages is, how well do we know the earth which sustains us in this life here and now? How well do we understand the workings of the institutions of the global financial-military-industrial complex through which we work together to draw upon the earth’s resources and our own skills and labour to produce the necessities for human survival?  

Further reading also here

THE ANTI-DISCRIMINATION DOUBLE STANDARD

by Ian Wilson LL.B.
Sydney artist Sergio Redegalli has painted an anti-burka mural “that has infuriated left-wing and Islamic activists”. (“Artist Defies ‘Bullies’ Over Burka Material”, The Australian, January 19, 2011, p.6). The mural is outside his studio in Newtown and it has been graffitied over 40 times. Redegalli refused to remove the mural saying: “I’m not going to let the bullies win. I’m not doing it for pride…and I don’t believe bullies have the right to stand over people and deny our freedoms”. For his troubles a Muslim woman who claims that his mural is racially vilifying has lodged a complaint with the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board. Let us pray that he defeats the complaint.

But then we have Islam preacher Ibrahim Siddiq-Conlon who hates the Parliament of Australia and who advised the parliament” that they have no right to legislate. They should immediately step down and let the Muslims take over”. (“Gillard Should Step Down and ‘Let Muslims Take Over’”, The Australian, January 20, 2011, p.7). Siddiq-Conlon, an Australian-born convert to Islam, educated at the University of Technology, Sydney, formed “Sharia4Australia” last year.
Here’s a further sample of his thought:
“One day Australia will live under Sharia; it’s inevitable. If they [Australians] don’t accept it, that’s not our problem. We hope, and our objective is to have a peaceful transition, but when you look at history that has never been the case. There’s always been a fight. It is inevitable that one day there will be a struggle for Islam in Australia”.

Siddiq-Conlon supports people hating democracy and taking “action against it”. He also supports punishments such as stoning adulterers and chopping off the hands of thieves – which is a mercy to them as it is an expiation for their sins. Oh – American and Australian troops “deserve to die”. Also in another article he elaborated upon the inevitability of a violent struggle.
“People don’t give up [their land without a fight]. There’s always been a fight. It is inevitable that one day there will be a struggle for Islam in Australia. We don’t shy away from it. Whether it means we get put in jail, kicked out of the country. If it means harm to us, so be it”. (The Australian, January 21, 2011, p.11)
Siddiq-Conlon says that he has never been approached by the Australian Security Agencies. Presumably there have been no complaints made to any Anti-Discrimination Board. There is a pattern to this.

Last year a Birmingham Conservative Party councillor, in what he later described as an “ill-conceived attempt at humour”, posted on Twitter that someone should stone a certain Muslim journalist, “I shan’t tell Amnesty if you don’t. It would be a blessing really”. He was arrested. But on Remembrance Day, Muslims in London burnt giant poppies and chanted that “British soldiers burn in hell”. A police escort was offered to the protestors “Muslims Against Crusades”. The same group previously held a demonstration in central London, chanting for Sharia law to replace democracy “whether you like it or not”. (Source Endeavour, January-February 2011, p.3)

In France the daughter of a former French nationalist leader Jean Le Pen, and now leader of the party her father founded, Marine Le Pen, faces a civil lawsuit by the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship between Peoples, for her comments about Muslims praying in the streets of France. She described this as an “occupation”.
The media then ran headlines such as this one from The Australian, December 14, 2010, p.9: “Praying Muslims like Nazis, says Le Pen Daughter”.
No, she did not say that. Marine Le Pen believes that she will beat Nicolas Sarkozy in the next French presidential elections and after her father eliminated the socialist favourite in the 2002 elections, the system is nervous to say the least. (“Far-Right’s ‘Daughter’ Rattles France”, The Weekend Australian, January 15-16, 2011, p.11), truth is no defence.

Joining up the dots it seems that anti-discrimination laws’ race hate component only applies to Northern European (Nordic) people and that minorities are exempt. This does not give me a lot of faith in the rule of law.

THE NILE INQUIRY ON ELECTRICITY POWER STATIONS

from Australians for Constitutional Monarchy website: The Rev Fred Nile MP chaired the NSW Legislative Council's Inquiry into the Gentrader (Electricity Power Stations) Transactions in 2010-2011.
The Final Report was tabled on 23 February. The Inquiry almost did not proceed after the Premier, the Hon Kristina Keneally MP, advised the Governor to prorogue the Parliament on 22 December 2010, although elections were not due until 26 March 2011. This was widely believed to be an attempt to prevent this Inquiry from going ahead.

The Crown Solicitor then advised the Premier that the inquiry could not proceed. But following contrary advice from the Clerk of the Parliaments that the Committee could still meet and transact business during a prorogation, the President of the Legislative Council announced that she would allow the Inquiry to proceed.

The Committee was nevertheless stymied in its efforts to uncover the facts surrounding the Gentrader transactions. Despite multiple efforts to hear evidence from the directors who resigned from Delta and Eraring, these directors declined to appear before the Committee due to concerns about the application of parliamentary privilege during prorogation.

While the Committee sought reassurances from the Premier that she would not bring legal action against the directors for giving evidence to the Inquiry, the Premier would not give such an undertaking.  

ALICE SPRINGS: THE FACE OF MULTICULTURALISM?

by Peter West
At the time of another great fake multiculturalism debate, where the joys of plural cultures are paraded by the chattering class, the real face of the clash of cultures is seen in Alice Springs. Alcohol and drugs are fuelling Aboriginal violence: stabbings, shootings, rapes and beatings.
The heart of town is a no-go area for mainstream people as roaming gangs take to the streets. Razor wire lines the fences of businesses as Alice Springs becomes a new South Africa. An editorial in The Australian (February 22, 2011, p.13) says: “who will stand up for the boys and girls as young as ten marauding about Alice Springs at midnight, especially the girls who are “for sale” and those “checked out” by the African gangs…”

It seems that no-one cares, certainly not our politicians such as Gillard and Abbott, who are glaze-eyed over the word “multiculturalism” but too far removed from the reality of Alice to smell the gunfire. But Alice Springs is the future of multicultural, multiracial societies which ultimately collapse. When the social glue of affluence goes, such worlds fall apart like a badly glued box.  

BOLT ON MULTICULTURALISM AND THE MUSLIMS

by James Reed
Here’s a good one for the Muslim file by journalist Andrew Bolt (The Advertiser, February 9, 2011, p.20). The headline: “Our multicultural commissars have encouraged Muslim Australians to loathe their new home and recruit others for jihad”. Yes, yes we know that. But what I did not know is the level of government funding spent on this task.

Here are some choice paragraphs from the Bolt article for those who came in late:
“The Islamic youth Movement used to meet in Australia’s biggest mosque, the one in Sydney’s Lakemba presided over by Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, for years the Mufti of Australia, despite praising suicide bombers, backing the Hezbollah terrorist group, calling the September 11 attacks “God’s work against the oppressors” and saying uncovered Australian girls invited rape”

“Among its activities, the IYM published a magazine called Call to Islam, edited by Bilal Khazal”. “In it appeared fawning interviews with members of some of the world’s worst terrorist groups, including the one that bombed the World Trade Centre in 1993 and another that killed 58 tourists in Luxor, Egypt.”

“It even interviewed – and praised – al-Quaida chief Osama bin Laden, who’d already declared war on the West and was planning his September 11 attacks on the United States. It also published articles by extremists such as its translator, Keysar Trad, now head of the Islamic Friendship Association, who wrote: “The criminal dregs of white society colonised this country, and now, they only take the select choice of other societies, and the descendants of these criminal dregs tell us that they are better than us” .

“Now here’s how our government funded prophets of multiculturalism and their fellow travellers dealt with this hotbed of imported hatred and us-against-them separatism. Mr Khabal’s youth movement was not punished (at first) but given three government grants. Two were multicultural grants totalling nearly $7000 from the NSW Government, to teach its supporters not English but Arabic. The other was a federal work-for-the-dole grant to spruce up its office and arrange its library of propaganda. “

But wait – there is more! “With $10 million a year in multicultural grants on the Somaliland Society of Australia, Burmese Muslim Community Association, United Women’s Group of Liberia, Helenic Writers Association, Mexican Social and Cultural Association, and 2000 more of the like.” I, for one, long for the days of pre-World War II Australia.

ROTTEN UNI RESEARCH

by James Reed
Many of Australia’s universities are squealing over the government’s Excellence in Research results (“Most Unis Below Par on Research”, The Australian, February 1, 2011, p.1). Over two thirds of Australia’s universities fail to reach international benchmarks. Only twelve universities performed at or over that standard. The arts, humanities and social sciences, generally performed poorly.

The education in revolution under John Dawkins, Hawke’s education minister, created universities out of CAEs and other colleges. The idea was that they would grow up as universities if watered with dollars. But Asianisation meant that funding had to be primarily from Asian students.

This was the beginning of the end for the maintenance of research standards because it meant that the universities existed to service international students, merely to exist. I say, better to do without the international students and begin culling out the universities, for 41 universities in Australia are 41 universities too many.  

GAYS, GAGA AND GENES

by Peter West
Lady Gaga, the latest music sensation among those who are still interested in pop music, has upset many with her “new gay anthem”, Born This Way. The message is that homosexuality is biological, not cultural. The reason for this swing among the trendy set, away from a cultural cause is not a respect for mounting scientific evidence, but the belief that biologicism will encourage respect for homosexuals.

I cannot see why this would be so: if people want to criticise someone, seldom are ultimate causes relevant – it is enough for them to dislike the behaviour. Nevertheless, for the liberal this reality cannot be contemplated because people must, according to the catechism of the “new morality”, have a liberal reason for something, or else they have no reason at all. And that is a philosophy as gaga as it gets.