WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO GIVE UP WHAT SNOWDEN HAS GIVEN UP? 

“Would you be willing to give up what Edward Snowden has given up?” asks The Top Information Post. “He has given up his high paying job, his home, his girlfriend, his family, his future and his freedom just to expose the monolithic spy machinery that the U.S. government has been secretly building to the world. He says that he does not want to live in a world where there isn’t any privacy.

He says that he does not want to live in a world where everything that he says and does is recorded. Thanks to Snowden, we now know that the U.S. government has been spying on us to a degree that most people would have never even dared to imagine. Up until now, the general public has known very little about the U.S. government spy grid that knows almost everything about us.

But making this information public is going to cost Edward Snowden everything. Essentially, his previous life is now totally over. And if the U.S. government gets their hands on him, he will be very fortunate if he only has to spend the next several decades rotting in some horrible prison somewhere. There is a reason why government whistleblowers are so rare. And most Americans are so apathetic that they wouldn’t even give up watching their favourite television show for a single evening to do something good for society. Most Americans never even try to make a difference because they do not believe that it will benefit them personally.

Meanwhile, our society continues to fall apart all around us. Hopefully the great sacrifice that Edward Snowden has made will not be in vain. Hopefully people will carefully consider what he has tried to share with the world. The following are 27 quotes from Edward Snowden about U.S. government spying that should send a chill up your spine…

#1 ”The majority of people in developed countries spend at least some time interacting with the Internet, and Governments are abusing that necessity in secret to extend their powers b eyond what is necessary and appropriate.”
#2 ”…I believe that at this point in history, the greatest danger to our freedom and way of life comes from the reasonable fear of omniscient State powers kept in check by nothing more than policy documents.”
#3 ”The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to.”
#4 ”…I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.”
#5 “The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything.”
#6 ”With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your e-mails or your wife’s phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your e-mails, passwords, phone records, credit cards.”…” Continue reading:

WASHINGTON 'RAGES' AT 'TRAITOR' EDWARD SNOWDEN  

Washington rages at ‘traitor’ Edward Snowden as NSA faces fire over protection of secrets. Washington was in disarray last night as it attempted to determine exactly how damaging revelations of secret intelligence snooping programmes might be to American national security, as anger at the whistleblower behind them, 29-year-old Edward Snowden, continued to harden. "He's a traitor," the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, declared.
The laying bare of two surveillance programmes run by the National Security Agency – and the prospect of more leaks possibly to come – had the US government scurrying in multiple directions; reassuring restive members of Congress, heading off growing complaints about the snooping activities from European allies and prioritising a nascent criminal investigation likely to lead to charges being filed against Mr Snowden.

But while President Obama would love to get Mr Snowden in a courtroom, his administration is now facing its own legal battle. The American Civil Liberties Union yesterday filed a lawsuit arguing that its mass collection of private data is illegal and should be stopped, a move that could eventually end with the programme being tested in the Supreme Court. Top-level officials from NSA, FBI, the White House and State Department headed to Capitol Hill last night to give a behind-closed-doors briefing to the House of Representatives. They faced a likely barrage of questions about what, to some, looked like sloppy protection of secrets by the NSA…

The European Union signalled its own disquiet at some of what has been learned from Mr Snowden, notably at the Prism programme that monitors traffic such as chat, emails and photos that pass through giant US internet firms like Google and Apple, popular with European users. But an opinion poll by the Pew Research Centre found 62 per cent of Americans think it's more important for the US government to do all it can to prevent terror attacks than worry about personal privacy…

Russia could offer asylum to whistleblower
Russia has signalled its openness to giving sanctuary to Edward Snowden with President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, telling the daily Kommersant if the 29-year-old were to apply, Russia would consider granting him asylum. Iceland, the country he named as a possible port of call for sanctuary when his identity was revealed at the weekend, declined to comment.

Johann Tomasson, a spokesman for the Iceland’s interior ministry, said Reykjavik could not make a determination until Mr Snowden filed an application, which he hadn’t yet done. But Reykjavik’s Mayor Jon Gnarr, a former punk rocker, said:
“I am always happy to hear from people who want to move to Reykjavik,” he told The Independent.“If it was up to me I would look upon his request favourably.” Read further.... 

WHILE WE’RE AT IT: JUST SO THAT YOU ARE AWARE - WAZE OF ISRAEL

“Waze of Israel - Google Beats Facebook” by Roi Tov.
On June 6, 2013, Bloomberg published "Google Is Said to Be Acquiring Waze for $1.1 Billion," a few hours ahead of the formal announcement. Yet, this remarkable act of precognition, came after it was made public by Israeli financial newspaper Calcalist on May 27, that Israel's Tax Authority had requested from Waze reports on its shareholders, in order to begin the tax-collection process. Those of them holding more than 10% will pay between 25 and 30% of their income. Waze: Traffic Engineering.

At the time of that even earlier precognition act by the tax authorities, the bid for Waze was still open. The rumours on the Hebrew media claimed that either Facebook or Google would win. The outcome was decided on odd grounds, reflecting on the background of this surprisingly popular ... spying device.

Download Valley
Few people realize that Israel has conquered several internet and information-technology niche markets. This is true to the extent that most American citizens are unwillingly sharing their secrets with the State of Israel.
I reviewed that a few months ago in Microsoft Strikes Israeli Software, after the American giant limited the activity of Babylon and similar companies on their browsers.
The Israeli activity is mockingly known as "Download Valley," or in a more serious term the "field of directing users." Other Israeli players are Perion, the manager of the IncrediMail, Smilebox and SweetIM brands, VisualBee, Montiera, Fried Cookie Software, WebPick, Linkury, Bundlore, iBario and KeyDownload. These are Israel's Weapons of Mass Distraction.

Waze
Another niche market is far more dangerous. An offshoot of Golden Pages, the Israeli business phone directory company, Amdocs develops, implements and manages software and services for business support systems, including billing, customer relationship management, and for operations support systems. If your phone company is AT&T, BT Group, Sprint, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Bell Canada, Telus, Rogers Communications, Telekom Austria, Cellcom, Comcast, DirecTV, Elisa Oyj, TeliaSonera or O2-Ireland, then Israel has access to much of your communications and bills, including credit cards numbers.

Also important in this context is Check Point, a provider of software and combined hardware and software products for IT security, including network security, endpoint security, data security and security management. In other words, the supermarket near your home probably uses products from this giant to secure its transactions. Israel has access to all of them. This apparently innocent company got so rich that its CEO sits in a penthouse office atop Tel Aviv's highest tower.

"We are Social"
"We are Social," claims one of Waze's slogans, reminding us of yet another niche market favored by Israeli companies. The social network leading company is still Facebook. There is enough evidence to conclude that this company has deep connections with the Israeli intelligence, in essence being nothing but an upgraded version of Mossad's Ksharim program, described in the past by Victor Ostrovsky.

The upgrade was achieved by stealing code from Harvard students Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra; Mr. Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, made them believe that he would help them build a social network called HarvardConnection.com (later called ConnectU). Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged the theft by paying indemnifications.
Applications like Facebook are critical for intelligence services because they map the connections (that's the meaning of "ksharim") of an individual, facilitating its surveillance, entrapment, and attack.

Yet, Facebook is unlikely to lead the social networks market for much longer. As predicted in Facebook IPO Fails Mossad, people are unlikely to stick with it in the long term. People need privacy. Instead, it is predicted that specialized social media platforms will rise. For example, writing Back in Bethlehem wouldn’t have been possible without my use of such specialized social media as a safe data storage, hiding everything in plain sight but split in a myriad of tiny bits. If this tendency will continue, Facebook is expected to decline in a few years.

Waze is one of these specialized social media companies. The company's home page tells the whole story in a few worrying words. "Waze is the world's fastest-growing community-based traffic and navigation app. Join other drivers in your area who share real-time traffic and road info, saving everyone time and gas money on their daily commute." This is nice, but it continues: "See other friends also driving to your destination, when you connect to Facebook. Coordinate everyone's arrival times when you pick up or meet up with friends. Now you're effortlessly in sync when you drive together."

In other words, Waze is a social-network real-time tracking device. It allows following an entire network of people moving on the road. Moreover, it allows proper movement of camouflaged military units in a variety of environments. The amazing thing is that people willingly cooperate with this violation of their privacy, to the extent that the company was sold for over a billion dollar[s].

Selling Waze
Looking from outside, most Israeli companies mentioned in this article seem to be unrelated. Yet, it is not a secret that most key people in them are former Unit 8200 soldiers. Most of them openly boast about this. This SIGINT unit is the largest in the IDF, and specializes in surveillance. It has formal relations with CAZAB. This is not random.

(CAZAB A highly classified forum in which selected counterintelligence personnel from Canada, Australia, the United States, New Zealand, and Great Britain met periodically to exchange counterintelligence information relating to the KGB and GRU. Created in 1964 by James Angleton, then the Central Intelligence Agency’s chief of counterintelligence, the CAZAB conference met periodically in different secure locations sponsored by the participating sponsoring agency. Membership of this exclusive group was governed by strict rules that excluded a candidate with a single blackball. CAZAB’s existence was revealed publicly for the first time by Peter Wright in 1986 in SpyCatcher, and when more was revealed by Stella Rimington in her memoir Open Secret, its name was changed.)

Engineers who had developed applications for 8200, often adapt them to the civilian environment. Over the years, this has created what is known as the Israeli Hi-Tech market described in this article. Waze enters this category.

Selling Waze to either Google or Facebook was easy. As smartphones and tablets are getting more popular both companies are increasing efforts to court customers on the move. Waze's 40 million users would help Google add social features to its mapping tool and gain market-share over its main rival, Apple Inc. On the other hand, if Facebook wants to survive as the leading social network, it must purchase every specialized network gaining prominence in the market. Both companies offered Waze over a billion dollar. Yet, money was a secondary issue.

Waze has two locations. The main headquarters are in Ra'anana, near the abovementioned Amdocs; 70 workers develop the application and run the company from there. Another 10 workers are in Palo Alto, California, supervising the American operation. The main issue in the negotiations was the location of the company after the purchase. Waze's directors wanted it to stay in Israel. Facebook didn't agree; Google complied and won the bid.

Dear Waze CEO Noam Bardin, would you be kind enough to explain why do you need all the awesome data that you are collecting to remain accessible from Israel? I will understand if you decline to answer me (Bloomberg also commented that it was impossible to get answers from you). Don't worry, the answer is rather obvious. Source: Ken Freeland of Shamir-readers.

HOW MUCH LONGER CAN THE EMAIL LAST?

I thought Andrew Bolt’s, recent article on Emails was timely (11 June 2013).
“How much longer before email drowns in its own sludge? Of the 130 fresh messages I woke up to this morning, 88 could be deleted without reading, being spam, familiar cranks and those tiresome group-sent “jokes” and alarums.

On reading the rest, just 22 were emails that justified the sending. But just a handful were worth the reading.
In another couple of hours I’ll need to go through the same sorting again. And then two or three times more before day’s end. How many other people are wasting their lives sorting emailed rubbish?”  

NSA PRISM SURVEILLANCE DOWNPLAYED BY UK GOVERNMENT

I do hope people who use facebook and other social media can remember everything they have ever put up on their site; it is as sure as night follows day that at some stage in the future it may be used against them! Big, Big Brother has been ever so busy!

William Hague denies GCHQ tried to bypass privacy laws, as classified papers show Britain had access to Prism since 2010

The British and American governments have attempted to turn the debate over secret surveillance after the Guardian's revelations of a covert US program which appeared to garner and analyse emails and other personal information held by some of the world's leading internet companies.

After two days in which both administrations appeared flat-footed and embarrassed by the disclosures, US officials sought to downplay the importance of the Prism system, set up by the National Security Agency (NSA), while the British foreign secretary, William Hague, flatly denied GCHQ might have tried to bypass UK laws governing the collection and retention of personal data.

Hague, the cabinet minister responsible for GCHQ, is expected to make a statement on the issue to the House of Commons on Monday, but experts noted the foreign secretary still had many questions to answer, and raised further concerns about the rigorousness of a regulatory and oversight regime that critics have long argued is totally inadequate. One senior Whitehall source involved in this security process, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he had never heard of Prism until the Guardian revealed its existence last week.

In an interview on Sunday, Hague refused to be drawn on the details of classified documents obtained by the newspaper, which stated that GCHQ had last year generated 197 intelligence reports from Prism, the program set up in 2007 to help the US monitor traffic of potential suspects abroad. The papers also showed GCHQ, the UK's eavesdropping and security agency, had access to Prism since at least May 2010.

Since the revelations on Friday, neither GCHQ nor any government minister has denied the agency had access to material gathered by the program, which appears to have given the NSA ways of retrieving information from companies such as Google, Skype, Yahoo, Microsoft and Apple.

Hague also refused to say whether he had authorised GCHQ's access to Prism, or how many Britons had been spied upon, while insisting it was "nonsense" for people to think analysts at the agency in Cheltenham "are sitting around working out how to circumvent a law with another agency in another country".

But ministers have also not attempted to explain why GCHQ would need to access information from Prism, rather than going through the normal legal protocol when seeking information from an internet company based in another country. This involves making a formal request to the US department of justice, which would make the approach to the firm on the UK's behalf. The company then has to decide whether to provide information.

In the UK, GCHQ is bound by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to seek approval for intercepting material from telecoms and UK-based internet companies.
Nick Pickles, director of Big Brother Watch, the privacy and civil liberties campaign group, said:
"Every year, hundreds of requests for information on British users of American services are refused for a variety of reasons, including because they ask for more than the law allows. I hope the foreign secretary is able to reassure people that this arrangement with the NSA has not been used when information was denied under the normal process.
"UK law requires that any directed surveillance is focused on a specific individual or premises. There is a clear concern that the collection of the relevant information was not collected as part of a directed operation, and if that has happened the legality of obtaining the information is far from clear.

GCHQ, the UK’s eavesdropping and security agency and the NSA's counterpart 

SHADY COMPANIES WITH TIES TO ISRAEL WIRETAP THE U.S. FOR THE NSA

The NSA's new super-secret 1-million-square-foot data centre in Utah. Photo: Name Withheld

Army General Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, is having a busy year — hopping around the country, cutting ribbons at secret bases and bringing to life the agency’s greatly expanded eavesdropping network. In January he dedicated the new $358 million CAPT Joseph J. Rochefort Building at NSA Hawaii, and in March he unveiled the 604,000-square-foot John Whitelaw Building at NSA Georgia.

Designed to house about 4,000 earphone-clad intercept operators, analysts and other specialists, many of them employed by private contractors, it will have a 2,800-square-foot fitness centre open 24/7, 47 conference rooms and VTCs, and “22 caves,” according to an NSA brochure from the event. No television news cameras were allowed within two miles of the ceremony.

Overseas, Menwith Hill, the NSA’s giant satellite listening post in Yorkshire, England that sports 33 giant dome-covered eavesdropping dishes, is also undergoing a multi-million-dollar expansion, with $68 million alone being spent on a generator plant to provide power for new supercomputers. And the number of people employed on the base, many of them employees of Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, is due to increase from 1,800 to 2,500 in 2015, according to a study done in Britain.

Closer to home, in May, Fort Meade will close its 27-hole golf course to make room for a massive $2 billion, 1.8-million-square-foot expansion of the NSA’s headquarters, including a cybercommand complex and a new supercomputer center expected to cost nearly $1 billion.

ANDREW BOLT ASKS: Why bring in refugees who make Australians less safe?

10th June 2013. “To say something risks making law-abiding African refugees the target of racists. To say nothing risks making law-abiding Australians the target of violence.
But we are importing a problem, however some may wish to hide that ugly fact. If we can’t find ways to make African refugees fit in better, we must ask if it is fair on Australians in poorer suburbs to bear the costs to their safety.

From Melbourne and Dandenong in just the past two months (and note, these are allegations only):

May 23: SIX thieves armed with bottles threatened a 30-year-old man and woman, 32, in a car park in McCrae Street, Dandenong, about 8.30pm on 16 May. They were walking to their vehicle when four men and two women, described as African, approached and demanded their money and belongings, saying “give me your money or I’ll stab you”.
May 7: POLICE are looking for three young men who attacked and robbed a man in Sunshine… Brimbank’s Inspector Chris Gilbert said the men hit the victim in the head before stealing two mobile phones. Police said the men were believed to be under 18 and were of African appearance.
May 7: POLICE are searching for a man who attempted to snatch a handbag from a woman in Sunshine… He was described as being aged about 20 and of African appearance. May 7: [Two men] were ruthlessly bashed by the gang of youths, who repeatedly kicked and stomped on their heads even after they had handed over all of their possessions. The pair were attacked in the Fitzroy Gardens… They are of African appearance and are described as tall and skinny.
May 5: A GANG of girls who punched a woman [in St Kilda West] and tried to steal her phone and handbag is being hunted by police… They are described as African, in their late teens to early 20s, with braided hair.
April 26: ... a 25-year-old Dandenong man was attacked after he withdrew cash from an ATM about 12.50am… His attackers, described as two men of African appearance, took his wallet and fled.

From last August a rare admission - of the kind made dangerous under our racial discrimination laws:
POLICE have blamed a lack of support services for high levels of crime among Somali and Sudanese youth… Victoria Police statistics showed that Sudanese or Somali-born residents were five times more likely to commit a crime than the wider community and a high number of offenders were aged under 21.

A previous police commissioner, Christine Nixon, deceived Victorians about this, falsely claiming:
Sudanese refugees are actually under-represented in the crime statistics… (W)hat we’re actually seeing is that they’re not, in a sense, represented more than the proportion of them in the population.”  

ALEX JONES AND THE SECRETIVE BILDERBERGER GROUP

The headline read: “US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in bizarre rant on BBC show” after a BBC interview of American Alex Jones.
After reading the revelations about governments spying on their own people, one can hardly credit this BBC interviewer’s description of Alex Jones as ‘US conspiracy theorist’!

Jones was revealing further details about that semi-secret group The Bilderbergers. Obviously Jones was intent on getting his message out no matter how impolite and aggressive he appeared to the ever-so polite English!

LOOKING BACK: EARLIER OT REPORTS ON ‘THE BILDERBERGERS’

Vol.12 No32 - 3 September 1976.
“International Crooks”, James Madison in "American Opinion", May 1976. Many who had heard about the semi secret Bilderberger group thought that this was merely a group of high-minded men like Prince Bernhard, working nobly to produce a better world. The principals of the Bilderbergers have of course, worked to create a "One World" in which the Communists would participate…
After the Second World War Prince Bernhard moved into the world of international finance in a big way and did not take long to amass a fortune. By 1966 he was able to invest $12 million in Standard Oil (now Exxon) stock. Exxon is part of the Rockefeller Empire and Prince Bernhard has been associated with the Rockefellers over a long period….

Vol.18 No46: 26 November 1982.
“Debt Revelations”: Mr. Jeremy Lee filed this report… The New Zealand Times (Oct. 24th) came out with a syndicated article written by Lord Lever of Manchester - the same Harold Lever who was a Cabinet Minister and financial adviser to both Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan in the Fabian dominated Labor regimes, which preceded the current British Government. Lord Lever was quite realistic about the debt crisis and the imminence of collapse:
"...All the great banks of the world were drawn into this operation, and they have built a structure of debt that must surely be the largest and most remarkable financial house of cards ever created. It is still not clear how the governments, the central bankers and the great private bankers themselves could ever have believed that this structure could endure. But the problem can no longer be ignored; reality is breaking through."
Lord Lever then went on to imply he was offering the only possible solution... The sheer brilliance of his plan is astounding. One can only wonder why the Fabian Society, the Club of Rome, the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission, the Council of Foreign Relations, Parliamentarians For World Order, and the Commissioners who produced the Brandt Report have never thought of it before…"

Vol.18 No49 17 December 1982.
“In War Or Under The Threat of War”: During the Depression of the thirties, produced by the same financial groups responsible for the current Depression, there emerged in Britain a movement known as Political and Economic Planning (P.E.P.). This movement brought into the open the nexus between International Finance, Big Business and Marxism.
P.E.P. was a forerunner to movements, which have developed since the end of the Second World War - The Bilderbergers, the Club of Rome and The Trilateralists…
Talk of "reforming" the international banking system, and the increasing promotion of the New International Economic Order, are all part of the Big Idea. Australians should carefully note that not only Prime Minister Fraser and associates like Mr. Andrew Peacock are keen supporters of the Big Idea, but that it is also endorsed by both Mr. Bill Hayden and Mr. Bob Hawke…”  

THE HIGH PRIESTS OF GLOBALIZATION

“Bilderberg Conference Convenes” by Stephen Lendman, Global Research, June 07, 2013. On June 5, the London Evening Standard headlined “No minutes, no press conferences – just the world’s power brokers chewing the fat on the issues of the day. It’s the Bilderberg conference – and it’s coming to a suburb near you.”

On June 6, it convened. It continues through June 9. It’s a rite of spring. A previous article said British political economist Will Hutton calls attendees the “high priests of globalization.” Powerful movers and shakers have their own agenda. They’re up to no good. They meet annually face-to-face. They conspire, collude and collaborate against populist interests. Their’s alone matter….

In her book “Web of Debt,” Ellen Brown quoted economist/geopolitical analyst Hans Schicht saying: “What has been good for Rockefeller, has been a curse for the United States. Its citizens, government and country indebted to the hilt, enslaved to his banks. The country’s industrial force lost to overseas in consequence of strong dollar policies (pursued for bankers not the country.”…

Bilderberg rogues plan a world unfit to live in. They may end up destroying it in the process. It’s hard imagining a more malevolent force. US members reflect the worst of what it stands for…”

Further reading here….

LETTERS TO THE PRESS

The Editor of The Age, 7th June 2013
Philip Dorling has made clear ('Double Trouble', 7/6) that the cases of Bradley Manning and Julian Assange raise the difficult question of where the line is to be drawn between espionage involving treachery and lawful investigative journalism.
Another aspect of these cases concerns the question of political representation: if citizens become convinced that their nation is in the hands of an unrepresentative and self-interested elite, and if that elite is felt to be pursuing a war policy that is immoral and not in the interests of the people as a whole, are those citizens really engaging in treachery if they seek to publicise what is happening behind the veil of official secrecy?
On both counts, Julian Assange deserves to be given the best possible support by the Australian Government and his own people until the implications of the matter are finally and fairly resolved.

- - Nigel Jackson, Belgrave Victoria

The Editor, On Target 7th June 2012
Dear Sir,
I cannot find any reference in the Minchin, Leeser, Reith No case to the fact if the YES vote wins that will allow them to do away with the States.
It looks like because the opposition are not going to oppose it, they have mustered the “people trusted trio” to do the job the Liberal Party has been instructed not to do. No Party ever declines more power or voluntarily disgorges power.
The fact that both Parties are owned by the same people becomes more and more obvious. There is not going to be an opposition after the election, because of the “two Party preferred” counting system. The same outcome as we have in Qld.
The electoral Commission will not tell us how the mathematics of the “two party preferred” system works.
Under this voting scheme all votes end up going to one of the two “accredited parties”, no matter who you vote for.
If the predicted “wipe out” of the Labour Party occurs at this next election, all votes will go to the Liberal party.
This will establish through the ballot box a “One Party State”, exactly as Lenin predicted and exactly as his students here designed.

- - John Brett, Highfields Queensland  

BASIC FUND AND SEPTEMBER REFERENDUM/ELECTIONS

The basic fund stands at $57,051.44 . Special thanks are due to all contributors and I welcome more from supporters who are leaving their financial contribution to the last minute to push the fund over the line for this year. The basic fund allows us to plan ahead and support our small staff.

There is no doubt 2013 will be a year of the greatest challenge Australia has had to face since the days of World War 2. Regrettably the great majority of people only move under the pressure of events and it is to be hoped the basic instincts of the Australian voter will come to the fore on September 14th and deliver a resounding NO to any Referendum questions. But there will have to be advice and guidance to ensure that movement is in the right direction. This is what the League alone offers. The May issue of the New Times Survey was a step in this direction and wholly dedicated to fostering a NO vote with a special contribution by Dr David Mitchell.

The Bill to enable the Referendum passed in Parliament on the 5th June and this quote from ALGA President, Mayor Felicity-ann Lewis says it all... "Although we are disappointed that two Opposition MPs voted against the Bill, the legislation received overwhelming support by members across the political divide, with 134 MPs voting in favour of the Bill".

The recent amendments to the Electoral Act with nomination costs set to rise is another method to favour the major political parties and an example how money is used to restrict your democratic rights. Under the proposed amendments, the fee for candidates wanting to run for the Senate would double from $1000 to $2000. The deposit for those seeking a seat in the House of Representatives would also double with the nomination deposit jumping to $1000.

This collusion by politicians has an easy answer ... PLACE THE SITTING MEMBER LAST WHEN YOU VOTE!
Because you will not know the outcome of the Referendum it might be a good time to start voting the sitting Member last on September 14th. This is not the time to leave it to the other bloke; we owe it to our families and the memory of those who have shouldered the burden in the past so that we can fight on; we must not fail now in this vital hour for there will be ‘a New Times’! The answer to our prayers could well be the echo of our resolve. Thank you for your time,

- - - Louis Cook, National Director.