SAINT PATRICK - A MAN AFTER MY OWN HEART

by Betty Luks
This season of Lent is one of those special occasions when Christians take time out from a busy life for contemplation and reflection. Writer Thomas Cahill in introducing me to Saint Patrick, the apostle to the Irish people ("How the Irish Saved Civilisation," Hodder and Stoughton, 1995) gave me much to contemplate and reflect upon.
Kidnapped by Irish cattle raiders from Roman Britain when just 16 years old, he spent 6 years as a shepherd-slave boy with two constant companions, hunger and nakedness. The gnawing in his belly and the chill on his exposed skin were his acutely painful presences that could not be shaken off. In this dreadful situation, he found there was no one to turn but the God of his Christian parents.
Enduring those six years of harsh isolation, he grew from a careless boy to something he would surely never otherwise have become - a holy man, indeed a visionary for whom there was no longer any rigid separation between this world and the next. We might say, he came to see that Reality 'is all one piece' and the 'sifting process' which he had been put through was all part of the learning process.
("And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith fails not. And when you are converted, strengthen your brethren." Luke 22.31)

Having escaped his enslavement, he fled to the continent, where he and his companions found much devastation caused by the marauding Germans. It was a few more years before he reached home once more. But called back to Ireland, he Patricius, the escaped slave, returned as Saint Patrick the apostle to the Irish nation.

What did C.H. Douglas have to say about "the sifting process"? (On Target vol.42 no13)
"And," he said, "we have just experienced something of that kind, and, while having taken very little part in it, I have watched with the greatest attention the sifting process going on. It has been, to a great extent a sifting of character. If this sounds like rudeness it is really far from it - but it has been a sifting of character far more than of brilliance or superficial ability. I discount brilliance and superficial ability for very much the same reasons that, even a salesman discounts "flashy" brilliance.
There is a process by which to use the jargon of modern psychology, things become driven down into the subconscious, and it is by a steady process of that kind that the composite parts and tendencies of individuals become character, which is something very important. Dr. Tudor Jones has very properly defined character as 'the policy of the individual.'" Taken from The New Era 10 March, 1939.

Back to Saint Patrick:
Cahill notes that for all his qualities and virtues, Saint Patrick would not necessarily have won converts - at least, not among a people as stubborn as the Irish. So how did Patrick do it? It is said he reached down deep into their psyche and making the connection between the Gospel story and Irish life he transmuted their pagan virtues of loyalty, courage, and generosity into the Christian equivalents of faith, hope and charity.
Patrick didn't seek to bend the Irish to his will, as the present dark lords of this temporal world are attempting to do to us, Cahill writes that "he opened their minds and their spirits to a world where all beings and events come from the hand of a good God, who loves human beings and wishes them success. And though that success is of an ultimate kind - and therefore does not preclude suffering - all nature, indeed the whole of the created universe, conspires to mankind's good, teaching and succouring and saving."
Now that, to me, is a social credit view of God's creation. Yes indeed, Saint Patrick is a man after my own heart.

WORK UNTIL YOU DROP

by Brain Simpson
According to New Scientist ("Get Up and Go," 18 February, 2006) scientists are perfecting a new range of drugs that will enable people to go for days without sleep - or give a good night's rest in merely 2 hours. Already one drug, the stimulant Modafinil, allows one to be "wired awake" without the problems caused by amphetamines. Or so they say. Watch out for its future effects. The end result of this work will be the elimination of human sleep. That time will not be devoted to increased leisure. It will merely extend the work day.
Under enterprise bargaining, people preferring normal sleep will be at a distinct disadvantage in obtaining work, by contrast to drug takers willing to work until they drop.

The scientists developing technology seldom get the criticism which they richly deserve for their monstrous assaults on life. The myth of value-free research and the free enterprise of research protects them: we are only seeking the truth. But it is a myth: most scientific research is industry-directed and geared towards seeking profits, not "the truth".

These scientists have no care about the social consequences of their evil creations. The real proof of this allegation is that the vast majority of the world's scientists busily work away for the military. They have no conscience or ethics and can never say no to a field of research which promises money from the military industrial complex. They are the true evil magicians of our times, creatures of arrogance and deceit. Unlike though, the evil magicians of a past age, their form of black technological magic is destroying human life as we know it at its most basic level.
It is time for scientists to be made accountable for their actions.

LIVING HIGH WHILE AFRICA SINKS

ALBERT EINSTEIN: THE INCORRIGIBLE PLAGIARIST

PRO-ISRAEL LOBBY IN U.S. UNDER PUBLIC SCRUTINY - AT LAST!

Two of America's top scholars have published a searing attack on the role and power of Washington's pro-Israel lobby in a British journal, warning that its "decisive" role in fomenting the Iraq war is now being repeated with the threat of action against Iran. And they say that the Lobby is so strong that they doubt their article would be accepted in any U.S.-based publication.
Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, author of "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics," and Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kennedy School, and author of "Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy," are leading figures in American academic life.
They claim that the Israel lobby has distorted American policy and operates against American interests, that it has organised the funnelling of more than $140 billion dollars to Israel and "has a stranglehold" on the U.S. Congress, and its ability to raise large campaign funds gives its vast influence over Republican and Democratic administrations, while its role in Washington think tanks on the Middle East dominates the policy debate.

Blackmail tactics
And they say that the Lobby works ruthlessly to suppress questioning of its role, to blacken its critics and to crush serious debate about the wisdom of supporting Israel in U.S. public life. "Silencing skeptics by organizing blacklists and boycotts - or by suggesting that critics are anti-Semites - violates the principle of open debate on which democracy depends," Walt and Mearsheimer write. "The inability of Congress to conduct a genuine debate on these important issues paralyses the entire process of democratic deliberation. Israel's backers should be free to make their case and to challenge those who disagree with them, but efforts to stifle debate by intimidation must be roundly condemned," they add, in the 12,800-word article published in the latest issue of The London Review of Books.

The article focuses strongly on the role of the "neo-conservatives" within the Bush administration in driving the decision to launch the war on Iraq. "The main driving force behind the war was a small band of neo-conservatives, many with ties to the Likud," Mearsheimer and Walt argue." Given the neo-conservatives' devotion to Israel, their obsession with Iraq, and their influence in the Bush administration, it isn't surprising that many Americans suspected that the war was designed to further Israeli interests."

Leading neo-conmen named
"The neo-conservatives had been determined to topple Saddam even before Bush became president. They caused a stir early in 1998 by publishing two open letters to Clinton, calling for Saddam's removal from power. The signatories, many of whom had close ties to pro-Israel groups like JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) or WINEP (Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy), and who included Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Bernard Lewis, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, had little trouble persuading the Clinton administration to adopt the general goal of ousting Saddam. But they were unable to sell a war to achieve that objective. They were no more able to generate enthusiasm for invading Iraq in the early months of the Bush administration. They needed help to achieve their aim. That help arrived with 9/11. Specifically, the events of that day led Bush and Cheney to reverse course and become strong proponents of a preventive war," Walt and Mearsheimer write.
The article, which is already stirring furious debate in U.S. academic and intellectual circles, also explores the historical role of the Lobby.

'Interests of another state'
"For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of U.S. Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel," the article says.
"The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread 'democracy' throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized not only U.S. security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. "Why has the U.S. been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state?"

Professors Walt and Mearsheimer add.
"The thrust of U.S. policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the 'Israel Lobby'. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. interests and those of the other country - in this case, Israel - are essentially identical," they add.
They argue that far from being a strategic asset to the United States, Israel "is becoming a strategic burden" and "does not behave like a loyal ally." They also suggest that Israel is also now "a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states. "Saying that Israel and the U.S. are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the U.S. has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around," they add.

Question Israel's democratic values
"Support for Israel is not the only source of anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one, and it makes winning the war on terror more difficult. There is no question that many al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel's presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians. Unconditional support for Israel makes it easier for extremists to rally popular support and to attract recruits."
They question the argument that Israel deserves support as the only democracy in the Middle East, claiming that "some aspects of Israeli democracy are at odds with core American values. Unlike the U.S., where people are supposed to enjoy equal rights irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. Given this, it is not surprising that its 1.3 million Arabs are treated as second-class citizens."
The most powerful force in the Lobby is AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, which Walt and Mearsheimer call "a de facto agent for a foreign government," and which they say has now forged an important alliance with evangelical Christian groups. The bulk of the article is a detailed analysis of the way they claim the Lobby managed to change the Bush administration's policy from "halting Israel's expansionist policies in the Occupied Territories and advocating the creation of a Palestinian state" and divert it to the war on Iraq instead.

They write "Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical." "Thanks to the lobby, the United States has become the de facto enabler of Israeli expansion in the Occupied Territories, making it complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians," and conclude that "Israel itself would probably be better off if the Lobby were less powerful and U.S. policy more even-handed." Source: UPI Monday, 20 March 2006.

UNDER EVERY MABO THERE IS A MASON

by Ian Wilson LL.B.
The former Chief Justice of the High Court, Sir Anthony Mason, who along with six other judges decided the Mabo case which overturned Australia's property laws, has come out from the silence of judicial retirement, to respond to the attack on this judgement by Michael Conner in his book "The Invention of Terra Nullius".
In 1994, in the UN Year of Indigenous People, the Mason-led Court decided that the British Crown on establishing sovereignty did not acquire a universal right to land which excluded native title as Australia was not terra nullius, or unowned by none (sovereign). Conner has won the intellectual battle on the terra nullius issue. Mason has responded saying that the decision was based on "common law". What this means is "court decisions".
If one looks at the judgement, then we again find that the concept of terra nullius was central to the arguments about "tenure" and "ownership". Even if there was Aboriginal title pre-1788 it was extinguished by the establishment of British sovereignty: otherwise there would not be full sovereignty. The High Court tried many slippery arguments to get over these basic points, but their judgement is unconvincing. It was an ideological decision.

Justice Deane lamented about supposed injustices as if he was a member of the Aboriginal lobby. Mason (The Weekend Australian 25-26/2/06, p.7) says, revealingly that the judgement showed that the view Aborigines were nomads "without any relationship with the land" was "wrong". But the judgement concerned the Meriam people who were not even racially Aboriginal at all. The judges then jumped to conclusions, based on the flawed work of Henry Reynolds (as shown by Keith Windschuttle and Michael Connor) about mainland Aborigines.

The Mabo judgement then was not based on sound legal argument but upon politically correct ideology. In reading this judgement I felt that the judges already had their conclusion and merely worked backwards, looking for convincing legitimising reasons. Was it merely a coincidence that this judgement came down in the UN Year of Indigenous People? In any case, Justice Deane, of Mabo fame, later became Governor General of Australia - and one of our most bleeding heart, politically correct preachers.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

To the Editor of The Australian, April 2006:
A disturbing trend in nations of Western European culture is the growing governmental inhibition on free speech, coupled with popular negligence of the long-term dangers involved. In Australia justice does not seem to have been done by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) to Professor Andrew Fraser ('No apology for linking Africans to crime', 4/4/06).
Objection by the HREOC chairman John von Doussa to terms used by Fraser in his contentious letter such as 'national suicide' appears to be a peculiar and subjective judgment that flies in the face of traditional standards of public discourse in our media. Von Doussa seems to quite unreasonably imagine that a qualified academic, in writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper, should couch his message in the same manner he would use for an academic journal.
Copious and apparently convincing evidence supplied to the HREOC by Fraser, establishing much worldwide scientific support for his expressed views, appears simply to have been ignored. In this context it is regrettable that your report ('Academic won't be muzzled', 5/4/06) uses prejudicial language to disparage Fraser in its reference to 'prominent neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists'.
A second example of serious inhibition of free speech is the treatment of lecturer Frank Ellis by Leeds University ('Lecturer ousted for racial slur', HES 5/4), whose statements are in line with those of Fraser.
Government based upon truth does not need to proscribe the public expression of controversial views on religion, science, race, politics and sex - and certainly not when they are published by learned academics. Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

LEUNIG: DRAW YOUR WAY OUT OF THIS ONE

SOME MORE LIGHT RELIEF