WE ARE GENUINELY SORRY MRS BESS PRICE

Why this deadly silence when our women are dying?  

"Politicians have found that, if you erode civil liberties and human rights in the name of defending them, you will not only get away with it, but even be allowed to boast about it!"
- - Professor Laughlan Chipman, writing on the Bill of Rights

“Yes, there could, and possibly will come "sanctions" against Australia for its "abhorrent" treatment of its Aborigines, and an "outraged" international community (don't ask us where you'll find this monster!) will press hard on the government of the day, at Canberra. So don't let us kid ourselves that, because of "Labor's" temporary electoral difficulties, the Bill of Rights threat has lessened. It hasn't.
Only an amendment to the Australian Constitution, in our opinion, suitably framed by freedom loving constitution law experts to protect, for all time, Australia's sovereignty from the rapacities of the United Nations - will be sufficient for our protection.”
- - On Target 15 August 1986

Now to the year 2013: Tony Abbott has promised to hold a referendum acknowledging the Aboriginal people as the first Australians! Pray tell me Tony, just what will that do for the Aboriginal communities NOW? What are you and your party going to do NOW to help Mrs. Bess Price get some help for her people? Words, words, words, they’re not enough Tony. We were told that “by their fruits you will know them”, and the bitter fruits of both main political parties are there for all to see.

Anyone who has read former communist – but patriotic Australian in the end - Geoff McDonald’s books, knows that the Aboriginal people were to be used as the means to further the communist cause. This, in turn, was to further the New World Order agenda. These people don’t care a fig for the Aboriginal people’s plight – it is all about agenda and power.  

In his column 18 May, 2013, Andrew Bolt had some very telling points to make about Tony Abbott’s promise to hold a future referendum on the “acknowledgment of Aboriginal people as the first Australians”.
Andrew writes:
Abbott knows voters are desperate to end Labor’s tactic of pitting rich against poor, women against men, everybody against miners. (It’s not just Labor that uses this tactic Andrew… ed) How better to show he’ll end this than by getting a former Labor president to say he’ll work with the Liberal leader? But don’t be misled by Mundine’s Aboriginality.

Mundine’s support does not show Abbott is ending the New Racism that most threatens to turn us into a nation of tribes.
In fact, Abbott has given into it by promising a referendum to change the Constitution to include “acknowledgment of Aboriginal people as the first Australians”.

Dividing Australians by law on the basis of the “race” of some of their ancestors is not our future. But for me, a white man, to say this won’t change many minds. In fact, it’s the kind of thing that got me sued and censored. So, hear it instead from, say, Bess Price, a Country Liberal Party politician from the NT, who, in a blazing speech to the Legislative Assembly last week pleaded for an end to the New Racism killing her relatives.

Andrew Bolt continued: Northern Territory MP Bess Price, one of a number of Aboriginal conservatives now being heard, made this brilliant, brave and shocking speech in the NT Legislative Assembly. I urge you to read it. Learn of the new racism that shields those who bash, rape and kill Aboriginal women and children in particular, and which punishes those, like Bess, who speak out against it:

Why this deadly silence when our women are dying? asks Bess

“Within the last four months, two more young mothers related to me were killed in Alice Springs Town Camp. One was injured mortally in public, in front of several families. Nobody acted to protect her. Dozens of my female relatives have been killed this way. Convictions usually lead to light sentences. I was told by a senior lawyer that no jury in Alice Springs will convict an Aboriginal person for murder if the victim is also Aboriginal and he or she is only stabbed once.

We all have done nothing effective to stop this from happening. It has been going on for decades. This week we heard outrage from the Stolen Generation Association because this government wants to put the safety and wellbeing of our children first before their (inaudible) culture. I am not talking about the children of the Stolen Generation. It is our children. Why hasn’t there been the same outrage over the continuing killing of our women and abuse and neglect of our kids? If these women victims were white, we would hear very loud outrage from feminists. If their killers had been white, we would hear outrage from the Indigenous activists. Why is there such a deafening silence when both victim and perpetrator are black? I believe that we can blame the politics of the progressive left and its comfortably middle class urban Indigenous supporters.

Because I have spoken out on this issue and others close to my heart, I have been routinely attacked by the left. Professor Larissa Behrendt claimed that what I say is more offensive than watching a man having sex with a horse. Her white professional protester colleague, Paddy Gibson, told the world that I was only doing it for the money and frequent flyer points.

The Queensland educationist, Chris Sarra, said that I was ‘pet Aborigine’ who only said what the government wanted me to say. Chris Graham, the white editor of Tracker magazine called me a ‘grub’. A white woman in Victoria, Leonie Chester, calls herself Nampijinpa Snowy River, on the internet. She tells the world that my people, the Warlpiri, are ‘her mob’. She and her friends have obscenely insulted me on the internet, over and over. Marlene Hodder, a white woman from Alice Springs and her protesting friend, Barbara Shaw, have called me a liar several times.

The Crikey blogger, Bob Gosford, who calls himself ‘the Northern Myth’, calls me Bess ‘Gaol is Good for Aboriginal People’ Price and accuses me of ‘vaguely malevolent and populist buffoonery that is designed to capture the attention of the tutt-tutterers and spouted by politicians that inevitably have a short tenure in power’. In Brisbane, Tiga Bayles, using an Indigenous community owned radio station, told the whole world that I am ‘a head nodding Jacky-Jacky for the government’ and that I am ‘totally offensive and arrogant’ because I do not want people like Tiga who know nothing about us, speaking about my people. He and his friends laughed as they told the world that I am only interested in money.

When my daughter went to Sydney for the Deadly Awards, an Aboriginal interviewer for the Koori Radio Station in Redfern advised her not to tell anybody who her mother was. This is how these people show respect for family. In the last month, I have watched three of my sisters and a grand-daughter being buried.

These racists and sexists hypocrites sneer at our grief and care nothing for our suffering, but they are the darlings of the left. I wonder what would happen if Andrew Bolt had used insults like these against any Indigenous Australian. The hypocrisy of these people is incredible. But I am in good company. When Mantatjara Wilson, a wonderful strong compassionate women I called mother, told the world about the crimes against her children on national TV, back in 2007, with tears streaming down her face. The left-wing activist moved to undermine her. They went into the communities not to protect the kids but to find women who would oppose Mantatjara. They talked about outrage and shame, not because of the crimes you all know about but because somebody else was brave enough to tell the world about them and ask for help. That was what they called shameful.

They worry about the shame felt by perpetrators once they were exposed, not because of the agony of the victims and families. It is easy to find women who will support their men even though they are killers and rapists. Families always stand up for their own and those who call themselves progressive will always find those willing to stand beside them and betray their own women and kids.

A few others have stood up and faced the vicious criticism of the left. I acknowledge the wonderful work of Dr Hannah McGlade in Perth and Professor Marcia Langton in Melbourne. Warren Mundine and Noel Pearson have also spoken out. A conference of Aboriginal men in Alice Springs publicly apologised to Aboriginal women and kids for the violence and abuse men have inflicted on them. None of those people have received support from the left or from Labor governments.

The left has tried really hard to call us liars and to put us down for speaking the truth and for wanting to stop the killing and the sexual violence. But they have put no effort, none at all, into protecting our kids and women. The exception to this has been a determination of Minister Jenny Macklin, who I acknowledge for her courage in the face of strong criticism from her own party and the Greens.

I recently went to Sydney for the launch of a book called Liberating Aboriginal People from Violence by wonderful caring friend of mine Dr Stephanie Jarrett. My words are on the cover of her book. We need to support those who tell the truth. Dr Jarrett does that and she cares, maybe too much for her own good. I have seen the tears in her eyes and heard the passion in her voice when she talks about her murdered and bashed ones. I trust her completely, but, of course, those who are not interested in the truth are out to bring her down.

She has been attacked in the Monthly magazine by its editor John Van Tiggelen in an article called Thinking Backwards. Dr Jarrett is saying there are elements to our traditional culture that we must change if we are to stop the violence that is destroying us, and she is right.
Things are much worse now than the old days because of the grog, the drugs and the awful welfare dependency that is sucking the life out of us. There are elements of our culture that are really good and should be kept, but we should be prepared to do what everybody else in the world has done and change our ways to solve the new problems we have now and that our old law has no tools to solve.

Some people call this integration, others call it simulation because they want us to continue to live in poverty, violence and ignorance so we can play out their fantasies on what the word culture means. I call it problem solving and saving lives. The left has its own agenda and liberating our people from violence is not part of that agenda.

Van Tiggelen talks about the book Black Death - White Hands written by Paul Wilson in 1982. In that book Wilson argued that when a man called Owen Peters killed his girlfriend in Queensland it was actually because of white colonialism and racism. It was not the killer’s fault it was the whitefellas’ fault. This argument worked. Peters was only given a short sentence.
Dr Jarrett started to worry about Aboriginal women’s rights when she saw David Bradbury’s film State of Shock. This was made in 1988 and was based on the same case. Bradbury brought the film to Alice Springs and brought Owen Peters with him.

In the film, Bradbury gave only the story of Peters and his family. Nobody from the victim’s family was given a chance to give their point of view. They would not have backed Bradbury’s arguments so they were ignored. I remember Alwyn Peters telling us, ‘She has ruined my life; he was talking about the one he killed’. He went on to say, ‘She comes to me in dreams’. This made me feel sick. When my husband asked David Bradbury, ‘Why did you not talk to the victim’s family, you would have got a different point of view?’. He said, ‘Alwyn Peters’ family are victims too’. In other words, all our sympathy was meant to be for the one who killed and his family, and not for the one he killed or her family.

In 1991, Audrey Bolger of the ANU’s North Australian Research Unit, wrote a wonderful little book called Aboriginal Women and Violence. At last, somebody was taking notice. At last, a white woman was trying to get governments to act. She was ignored and, as far as I know, nobody tried again after that.
Her voice was drowned out by the politically correct who took their lead from Wilson and Bradbury: just keep blaming the whitefellas and everything will be fine. When governments says sorry, everything will be fixed. Audrey Bolger said in a book way back then, that in the final analysis the problem of violence against Aboriginal women will only be solved by Aboriginal people themselves.

The report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Deaths in Custody said the same thing. In a way, she was right: my people need to act now to stop our own violence. But, in another way, this has given governments and the wider community an excuse for the big cop-out. Okay. We whitefellas caused the problem but only blackfellas will solve them, so we sit around waiting for that to happen.
She also said: The problem is a complicated one, bound up as it is with other issues connected with changing lifestyles. Working through these issues towards satisfactory solutions is crucial to the future wellbeing of all Aboriginal people.
She was right, but in the 22 years since she wrote that, there have been no satisfactory solutions found and things are much worse now. It has not happened and I am sick of sitting around waiting for my loved ones who are being killed.

We have had committees and research projects, and advisory councils, and ATSIC, and now we have A National Congress of Australia’s First People. Billions of dollars have been spent. We have had visits from the United Nations special rapporteurs, and Amnesty International Indigenous officers. Not only have solutions not been found, but the most important issues are not even raised and talked about. I want to work through these issues and find solutions. For the left and for many Aboriginal politicians on the national stage, it seemed the only issues worth talking about were the Stolen Generations and Aboriginal deaths in custody. These are real issues that have to be addressed, but they were not the only issues.

In the meantime, women still died, children did not go to school, epidemics of renal failure, diabetes, cancer, heart disease grew worse, suicides increased, young men went to gaol, and we kept killing each other and ourselves. Australians were not told that the death rate amongst our young men was higher outside custody than in, and that more Aboriginal women died at the hands of their menfolk than Aboriginal men died in custody. Since then, so many more women have died and have been sexually abused, assaulted.”

Further reading: “The Path of Legal Warfare” by Keltie Zubko.
In the chapter “Under the Red Star” Douglas Christie, who had to travel to Hungary where evidence was taken about the alleged war crimes, relived his frightening experiences which he, as a Canadian, had ever had; that was to watch Canadian legal proceedings carried out underneath the communist red star, in a courtroom that was the scene of many so-called trials…”
• https://alor.org/Volume47/Vol47No1.htm
• https://alor.org/NewTimes%20Survey/The%20Pedigree%20of%20Ideas.htm

Important DVD "The War Crimes Threat to Christian Justice", featuring Canadian barrister Douglas Christie filmed at the ALOR National Weekend in 1991. This DVD distinguishes between the type of legislation now operating that is contrary to ‘the Rule of Law’. Price: $12.00 + postage.  

USING REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT TO BYPASS REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT

by Anne Twomey. Source: Critical constitutional analysis by the CRU

CRU Associate, Amanda Sapienza, writes as follows about the Commonwealth's legislative response to the Williams case:
A court decides that government activity is invalid because it is inconsistent with representative government. The government’s response to the decision is carried out in a way that marginalises the operation of representative government. Ironic?

The Financial Framework Legislation Amendment Bill (No 3) 2012 (Cth) became law on 28 June 2012 with all of the media fanfare that legislation of that title deserves. The Bill sought to authorise spending by the Commonwealth government on more than 400 executive funding schemes by amending the Financial Management and Accountability Regulations 1997 ('the Regulations') to list all of the relevant schemes.

The genesis of the Bill in the High Court’s decision in Williams v Commonwealth [2012] HCA 23 and the level of parliamentary scrutiny (or lack thereof) that the Bill received in the House of Representatives are discussed by Anne Twomey in an earlier post on this Blog:

“The concerns raised in the House of Representatives by the Opposition and Greens members were repeated in the Senate. In the end, however, it seems that a feeling prevailed that it was better to do something than nothing to save the chaplains program. The unamended Bill was given Royal Assent less than 48 hours after being introduced. It became the Financial Framework Legislation Amendment Act (No 3) 2012 (Cth) (‘the Amending Act’) and all the concerns voiced were consigned to the relevance of extrinsic material.

What the government appears to have overlooked is that the High Court’s requirement for legislative support for the chaplains program was driven in part by concerns about representative government and the lack of parliamentary oversight of Commonwealth spending on executive funding schemes. Leaving aside the substantive provisions of the Amending Act, even the government’s choice about how to effect the changes to the Regulations suggests that giving full effect to representative government was not a priority.

Delegated legislation, of which the Regulations are an example, is commonplace in government regulation these days. Accusations of Executive usurpation of governance, at the expense of the Parliament, are frequently levelled at governments due to their increasing reliance on administration by regulation rather than legislation. The decision to locate the schemes in the Regulations rather than in an Act would have raised some eyebrows in this regard.

However, because of their ever-expanding role in administration, the making of regulations is itself strictly governed by legislation. The Legislative Instruments Act 2003 (Cth) sets out detailed requirements for the drafting, consultation, publication and parliamentary scrutiny of legislative instruments (which include the Regulations). The consultation and parliamentary scrutiny provisions apply whenever a new regulation is made, even where all the new regulation does is amend an older regulation. New regulations remain open to a disallowance motion for 15 sitting days after being tabled in each House of Parliament. A disallowance resolution can be passed by either House of Parliament within 15 sitting days of a disallowance motion being moved.

However, these provisions do not seem to apply when a regulation is amended by an Act of Parliament rather than another legislative instrument. The rationale for this distinction appears clear: why subject an Act, which has already been passed by both Houses of Parliament, to further parliamentary scrutiny? If anyone had a problem with it, the problem would have been raised during the debates or committee stages. And in ordinary cases this would be a fair and complete answer to the lack of provision for disallowance.

What does all of this mean for the passage of the Amending Act and the consequential changes to the Regulations?
Because the actual insertion of all of the schemes into the Regulations was achieved by an Act and not a legislative instrument, none of the schemes are open to disallowance by either House of Parliament. In the particular circumstances of the passing of the Amending Act the disallowance procedures might have been preferable from the perspective of representative government…”  (emphasis added..ed)

THE ULTIMATE PROBLEM OF CAPITALISM

by Chris Knight
Usually I don’t depress myself by looking at The Australian’s glossy business magazine The Deal, but the desire to suddenly feel miserable came upon me, so I dipped into the May 2013 edition. We have an article celebrating “growth” and the things that need to be done for it. Then we are told that China is the “thirsty dragon” and will be the world’s biggest consumer and importer of wine by the end of this decade. But just to balance things, there is the report of a team working away to improve US-Australia economic relations.

Spend some time reading this sort of stuff, along with a week of the Australian Financial Review and Wall Street Journal and you will see that these people are in an alternative reality, where MONEY rules. We are never told why such growth and money is a good thing because few of these corporates could fully enjoy their wealth – being busy, busy, busy, making more “wealth”.

They could easily be replaced in total by thinking machines. Indeed, the ultimate fate of capitalism could be just that: the end of life as thinking machines playing financial games with “1’s” and “0’s”. Products are made by one computer/robot and the “consumed” by being taken apart by another computer/robot. It would make as much sense as modern capitalism does today, and equally as alienated and de-humanised.  

TOXIC FOOD FROM CHINA

by James Reed
I have been looking out for material on the toxic-food-from-China issue. Natural News.com 10 May 2013, covers the issue again, quoting Mark A. Kastel before The House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats. He said:
“We don’t trust, for good reason, the Chinese to supply ingredients for our dog and cat food. Why should we trust Chinese exporters for the food that we are feeding our children and families?”

Chinese food is regularly found to contain “unapproved chemicals, dyes, pesticides and outright fraud (fake food).” Heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury are routinely found. In the communist dictatorship of China, environmental regulations are not usually enforced and food fraud is seldom detected by a state system which itself is corrupt.

Mike Adams at Natural News.com speaks Mandarin Chinese, has lived in Asia and has worked in the food health industry for a decade. His own company has tested Chinese food and rejected it from suppliers because it did not meet quality control standards. He does not trust Chinese supplied food, i.e., food from China.

Meanwhile we have our own Asianising former PM John Howard telling us that the debate about a choice between the US and China is “infantile” because “we” can have both! (The Australian 16 May 2013, p.2) “We” are not in a position to choose, even if “we” refers to our local B-grade elites.

Special offer: A package of THREE DVD/VIDEOS for $35.00 posted.
A Howard-type Neocon-Corporate-Fascist State? Twenty years in politics can make all the difference in the world to the direction of political parties as a review of this video so dramatically demonstrates. Mr. Downer should be asked when did his philosophical beliefs change so dramatically and would it now be correct to refer to the present Liberal policies as those of a "Howard-type Neocon-Corporate-Fascist State"?
All relevant to what is happening to Australia today:
Alexander Downer "Our Christian Heritage at Risk" - Bevan O'Regan "Your Council the Target" - Eric D. Butler "The Fabian Idea Throughout History".

ALL ABORTION IS MURDER?

by Mrs Vera West
A doctor who believes that all abortion is murder has refused an abortion on gender grounds (“All Abortion is ‘Murder’,” The Advertiser 30 April, 2013 p.9). In Victoria a conscientious objecting doctor to abortion is legally required to refer patients seeking an abortion to a doctor who is not a conscientious objector.
To this, it has been objected that the act of referral is to make one an accomplice to murder. At present the Victorian DLP has drafted legislation to ban Medicare rebates for gender-selective abortions.
The response from feminists has been that while gender-selective abortions are abhorrent, the legislation is just a way for “anti-choice activists” (i.e., pro-life) “to claw back the hard-fought right for women to have abortions.” (The Advertiser 30 April, 2013, p.18)
But let’s follow this illogic through. If abortion is morally just, then why should the reason for it matter? Why, that is, what moral reason is there against, say, aborting baby girls, as in China? Sexism? – well if a woman is free to abort because of economic reasons or she just doesn’t want the child, why should gender matter?
Hence feminism leads to abortion on demand, but abortion on demand leads to gender discriminations in abortion, and hence sexism. Feminism once more is seen to be inconsistent, and in fact self-contradictory.

In this context it is good to see young students – including conservative woman founding pro-life clubs at university to take on the feminists. One thing which needs to be looked at by pro-life lawyers is that in most states abortion is legal to preserve the woman from serious danger to her life or health, or if the risk to the woman’s life or health is greater than it would be if the pregnancy was not terminated. In NSW the doctor must find an “economic, social or medical ground or reason” to avoid a “serious danger to the pregnant woman’s life or to her physical or mental health”.

Now, estimates of the number of abortions performed in Australia range from about 73,000 to 100,000 or more. To suppose that even a fraction of these meet the legal conditions for abortions is absurd. Medical advances have made having a baby safer than at any time in history.
Most of these abortions are performed as matters of economic convenience. Consequently, illegal abortions – murder – is widely occurring in Australia and the system allows it because of the power of the feminist lobby.  

IS MOST MEDICAL RESEARCH FALSE?

by Brian Simpson
Back in 2005 a paper was published in PLoS (Public Library of Science) by J.P.A. Ioannidis, “Why Most Published Research Findings are False,” which gave a technical argument about the misuse of statistical methodologies. Natural News.com, 10 March 2013 reports on Marcia Ansell who is a past editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, who has published papers such as “Industry-Sponsored Clinical Research: A Broken System” and “Drug Companies & Doctors: A Story of Corruption”. Doctors are being fully integrated with Big Pharma, not only by kickbacks to physicians but by financial dealings with US medical schools.

Ansell describes the results: “Children as young as two years old are being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with a cocktail of powerful drugs, many of which were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration… No one knows the total amount provided by drug companies to physicians, but I estimate from the annual reports of the top nine U.S. drug companies that it comes to tens of billions of dollars a year. By such means, the pharmaceutical industry has gained enormous control over how doctors evaluate and use its own products. Its extensive ties to physicians, particularly senior faculty at prestigious medical schools, affects the results of research, the way medicine is practiced, and even the definition of what constitutes a disease.”

This is a good example of the way mega-corporates come to rule the world and define “reality”. It shows the immense challenge we have in returning the world to health and sanity.  

VACCINATIONS AND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

by Mrs Vera West
Let’s see if I have got the basics right – vaccines are magic bullets. You take it and bingo, you have immunity to a disease. If this is so then what justification can there be for the media campaign “No Jab, No Play” to ban unvaccinated children form social contact with other children? An Australian paper has pushed this campaign wile at the same time (Natural News.com 12 May 2013) having a conflict on interest in running ads for Big Pharma drug companies who make vaccines.

The unvaccinated child is said to put other vaccinated children at risk? How? If the vaccine really did work, then there is nothing to fear – is there? Isn’t it the case that the vaccinated children are immuned? Oops, a slip of logic there.

It is known that some vaccines have produced adverse reactions in children with seizures and resulting in autism. Admittedly these cases are a minority, but not to be discounted. Is it wrong for a parent to want their child to get natural immunity, to childhood diseases like chicken pox, by actually getting the disease (which is mild) and having life immunity?

Of course this won’t be true for all diseases (e.g., cholera, small pox, etc) but is it irrational to minimize the amount of artificial drugs consumed? Surely not. So what possible justification could there be for “No Jab, No Play”? This is a clear violation of human rights and I for one, and you should too, protest to the NSW Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.  

ONE LAW FOR THEM; ANOTHER FOR THE REST OF US

by Peter Ewer:
Exhibit One: The Federal Attorney General beginning moves to give a $46,540 pay rise to judges of the Federal Circuit Court, formerly the Federal Magistrates Court (The Australian 3 May 2013, p.25). How about closing this Federal Court down and making do with just the Federal Court? Wouldn’t that result in efficiencies from economies of scale? Oh, no, we won’t see that! And what about an increase in the dole by $46? Oh no, we won’t see that!

Exhibit Two: “Poor Slugged for Court Fees as Boatpeople Get Free Ride,” The Australian 3 May 2013, p.6. Illegals in immigration detention will be given an exemption from court fees whenever they want to take legal action to aim at staying in dopey-Australia. But, as illegal immigrant litigation explodes, court fees for ordinary Australians has almost doubled since 2010. The aim was to bring in $104.2 million, so that it could be used on – guess who? Wouldn’t it be great if the ordinary Aussie stopped suffering in silence and got angry for a change and got together in their legal protests to tell the Rulers: No more – we have had it up to here with you mob!  

ON THE PASSING OF MRS JOAN BENSON

by Bill Daly, New Zealand
Widow of former South African author and journalist Ivor Benson, Mrs Joan Benson, died 2nd May 2013. In paying tribute to the life of Joan Benson, Bill Daly wrote:

“I first met Joan Benson in Canada in 1983 where her husband Ivor was one of the speakers at a conference in Calgary, Alberta, concerning the spiritual and moral defence of our once Christian Civilisation. Two years earlier Ivor had been a speaker at a similar conference in Auckland, New Zealand. It is possible that Joan accompanied Ivor in 1981 but I cannot recall. After the Calgary Conference, I had the privilege of travelling with them by private car and bus to Vancouver where we parted company - they to their home in South Africa and myself to New Zealand.

Few young men, I suspect, get to experience, over several days, the wonderful company of such an older and generous man - a man who was totally honest in every respect; who was completely humble and yet so accomplished; and had that rare depth of Christian faith that is always able to rely on a sense of humour, no matter what the situation.

My initial impression of Joan was that she was overly stern. But I soon discovered that Joan had a deep love and care of others. While she would not put up with nonsense from anyone, I never felt that she ever carried any malice or wish for harm. And, like Ivor, she also knew that evil exists and that real battles for freedom and truth have to be fought.
Both were motivated by a love for Christ. Not the wishy-washy "imitation Christianity" of rationalist-liberalism that has swept through the modern churches, but that life-enhancing Faith that Christ espoused when he said that He had come that we might have life and have it more abundantly. That same Christ who also took a whip to the money changers of his day and who told the Pharisees (the ‘behind the scenes’ power manipulators of his time) that they were of their father the devil.

Joan was very motherly towards many others, especially younger people. During our Canadian trip she made the effort to talk to a pimple-faced young woman in a chemist shop and explain the benefits of eating a healthy diet, and that herbs and proper nutrients rather than chemicals would be helpful to her.
Occasionally Joan appeared to be undiplomatic, but I believe she simply believed that if she felt that something of good should be done or said then she should have the courage to do it.

Shortly after their Canadian trip, Ivor and Joan moved to England and bought a small cottage near the centre of the delightfully historic village of Sudbury in Suffolk. They made it into a happy home for themselves and visitors. I stayed a few days with them in the mid 1980s. A decade later I spent a few months visiting various parts of England and Joan made her home readily available for me to stay as much as I wanted. I was there on and off for a couple of weeks and we became close friends.
I spent much of the time in wonderful conversations with Joan, reading some of Ivor's unpublished works, visiting other friends and doing long country walks, and sitting on the banks of the Stour river and feeling that these scenes had likely changed little since the days when John Constable did his famous river paintings.

I saw Joan on three later visits to the UK. On the last in 2007 I did not stay with her. She was frail and not in the best of health but had slowed her advancing glaucoma with nutritional supplements and diet changes and was still relatively active and interested in political and religious issues. We went to a church service one day.

I learnt so much from Ivor and Joan Benson. They reinforced the high regard I have for the late Russian writer and Christian patriot Alexander Solzhenitsyn whose life and writings are a powerful signpost for today's world. Ivor had been a highly respected journalist with British and South African newspapers before he realised that to be completely truthful to himself and God, he had to sever those ties and enter a less lucrative existence as a freelance researcher and writer, eventually establishing his own long running journal Behind the News.

- - - May they rest in peace, Bill Daly  

LETTER TO THE PRESS

Editor of The Age, 22nd May 2013
There is only one musical composer of the first order of genius in the Western European tradition who is regularly ritually insulted in the mass media and that is Richard Wagner, so there is nothing new in Michael Shmith's application of eight insults to his name ('Wagner's curse is just as lethal 200 years on', 22/5) without a skerrick of reasoned justification.
Wagner, as Ian Dallas noted in his 1990 study 'The New Wagnerian', possessed an exceptional intellect which was manifested not only in his music dramas but also in his theoretical writings.
His work as a whole shows vastness of spirit, profundity of reflection on nature and human existence, and a healthy celebration of erotic joy.
Why then the persistent attacks on the man himself? The answer is that his penetrating critique of the European political order offended powerful interests then and still does so today.

- - Nigel Jackson, Belgrave  Victoria