BIKIES TODAY, SOCIAL CREDITERS TOMORROW?

by James Reed
South Australia has tough 'anti-bikie laws and in the wake of the Sydney Airport bikie killing, New South Wales and other states are falling over themselves to introduce such laws. It all sounds so easy, so much like Port Arthur with all the pieces magically falling into place. Civil Liberty groups have warned that the proposed laws could be used against other groups. Not likely.
As with the race unification laws, which were rolled in the 1990 's, the aim is to take out the extremists first and then work one 's way down the list. The public will get increasingly used to having freedoms restricted so that they will get to the point of not missing what they never had.

Brisbane barrister Mark Legrand saw the anti-bikie laws as 'obnoxious '. 'It is obnoxious in a democratic society governed by the rule of law to declare a person guilty because of his or her associations and without a trial on a specific charge of wrong doing. (The Australian, 1/4/09, p.8) I can 't argue with that.

Le Grand says that if the government was serious about stopping crime they would introduce laws cutting the money trail and confiscating assets from the crimes. However, in my opinion, governments have never done this, especially with the Mafia, which has been in this country since the 1930s. The Taxation Department, if serious, could investigate income/asset matching in many Griffith estates, but does not do so.

Behind the anti-bikie laws lies yet another assault on our freedom. A few years down the track, these laws will be used against any group that the Establishment doesn 't like. And it won 't be the socialists and environmentalists.

OUR 'NOBLE MEDICAL PROFESSION AND THE DRUGMAKERS

by James Reed
From memory, every year or so we see an article like this: 'Drug Companies Censured Over Lavish Doctors Seminars (The Weekend Australian, 18-29/3/09, p.3). The statistics cited hurt my eyes a bit and numbed my brain but the gist of the story is that drug companies have hosted 'educational events for doctors at lavish five star hotels, with the costs for this often being up to $300,000.The cost per attending doctor was up to $4154.

One may at first shake, think 'shame on the drug companies for doing this. But the doctors fall over themselves to jet off to seaside locations to be wined and dined in posh hotels. They may not have dancing girls on tap today, but the doctors have a good time and they get fully beefed up about the latest drugs to try out on you and me. If that is not a good reason for taking charge of one 's own health, nothing is.

A good book for young mothers-to-be to check out is: 'The Final Pollution by Robert Anderson $30.00 plus postage. It is dealing with the question of 'vaccination or not?

DEATH OF DEMOCRACY: BIRTH OF POST-WHITE CARGO CULT

by James Reed
How happy the bleeding heart liberals were to see their man B. Hussein Obama take office. But things did not go smoothly during the Oath of Office. Chief Justice Roberts - and Obama himself - botched the Oath. The media blamed Roberts for the stuff-up, but they are only partially right. Look at the tape on You Tube. Obama is like a nervous groom at a wedding. Obama started to respond even before the Chief Justtice had completed the first phrase. Obama said: 'I, Barack Hussein Obama ', twice. The Chief Justice, quite unprofessionally or deliberately, then went off the rails.

Obama followed him in incompetency. If he knew the speech, all thirty five words of it, he should have turned from Roberts and said it. Instead he spoke over Roberts. Both men looked like idiots. It was a symbolic act, heralding in the decline and fall of the American Political and Legal systems. In any case, the Establishment was worried about a Constitutional challenge because of this botch-up and had the Oath repeated in the White House as an 'abundance of caution '.

Obama also said 'Forty-four American presidents have now taken the presidential Oath ', however Americans number presidents by terms of office served consecutively, so in fact only forty three presidents have taken the Oath. Writers in the Australian media were falling over themselves seeing Obama as a gifted writer not seen since Lincoln. It certainly shows how low the bundle of talent is.

Obama 's inaugural speech was full of pop music 'wisdom ', 'The time has come to set aside childish things '. What does that mean? When has the US-military industrial complex been 'childish '? Obama 's speeches have often been derived from pop-song sentiments and catch phrases, about all that a dumbed down American who sees Oprah as an intellectual, can appreciate.

Let us take one issue race. That should be a strong ground for Barack as he devotes one whole book to the wonder of his white mom coupling (then divorcing) his African father. Obama says that 'people of colour in the US are '90% of the way to equality '.

Let 's cite a left-wing source to rebut this: Juan Santos, 'Obama, King and Kennedy: Empire and the End of Racism (at http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/939/1/) Santos cites piles of statistics to rebut Obama from a left-minority position: of all US blacks live in poverty, black unemployment at 11.1%; on a given day, 1 in 9 young black males are in prison etc. etc. etc.
What will Obama do for these people? Nothing Obama is really a Wall Street Man.

Back to the closing prayer of Obama 's inauguration. This was by Joseph Lowery. The prayer contained such gems as asking that 'black will not be asked to get in back and 'when white will embrace what is right '. An anti-white racist prayer at a presidential inauguration. Guess the future. You don 't have to.

The League has for sale an excellent book by Webster Griffin Tarpley, 'Obama: The Postmodern Coup, ($59.95 plus postage) which says: 'Barack Obama is a deeply troubled personality, the megalomaniac front man for a postmodern coup by the intelligence agencies using fake polls, mobs of swarming adolescents, super-rich contributors and orchestrated media hysteria to short-circuit normal politics and seize power.

Tarpley 's book in my opinion is better and more hard hitting than two other more 'popular critiques of Obama: Jerome Corse, 'The Obama Nation (Threshold, 2008) and David Freddoso, 'The Case Against Barack Obama (Regnery, 2008)

THE TRAGEDY OF ENVIRONMENTALISM

by Brian Simpson
Since the end of World War II, environmentalism has been dominated by Left-wing ideology. Green parties essentially have a 'red agenda with trendy social justice and human rights issues dominating concerns over preserving nature. Although some 'deep ecologists claim that all species are equal ( 'biocentric egalitarianism '), when push comes to shove, the environmentalist inevitably sides with political correctness and supports (or at least remains silent) about the threat posed by Third World population growth and mass migration.

The late Professor Garrett Hardin was one of the few ecological philosophers or environmentalists from 'the right '. He opposed foreign aid to the Third World and opposed migration to the United States and the West. He was to a degree a critic of multiculturalism.

The key to his thought lies in the idea of the tragedy of the commons and Hardin set out his general argument in a paper entitled 'The Tragedy of the Commons (Science, vol. 162, 1968, pp. 1243 1248). This paper has given the Left much heartache. Hardin argued that in a hypothetical 'commons ', selfish individuals aim to maximise utility/their use. The individual benefits from increased use of the commons, but also degrades the commons by some degree. The individual gets the advantages but everyone shares the disadvantages. Thus the individuals all increase use of the 'commons until it is degraded and disaster faces all. 'Commons include the atmosphere, oceans, river, fish stocks and so on.

The argument seems to be one directed against either non-ownership of the commons or the freedom of individuals that potentially conflicts with the philosophy of us social credit. But in an insightful book, 'Ethics for a Finite World (Fulcrum Publishing, 2005) US philosopher Herschel Elliott, generalises and systematises Hardin 's argument. It is not explicitly an argument against free enterprise as such.

Nor is the argument necessarily about actual commons open to trivial historical refutation by examples of managed commons. The argument is a thought experiment, which shows, in Elliott 's opinion, the incoherence of cosmopolitan ethics. In Elliott 's view it is not self-interest which produces ecological collapse but merely the exploitation of a finite ecosystem by increasing demands, mainly through population growth. An increased growth in the use of resources in a finite ecosystem leads to depletion and ultimately collapse.

These considerations show, Elliot argues, that moral systems can be criticised and refuted by empirical considerations. In particular the idea of the tragedy of the commons offers a powerful argument against immigration:
'If nations and peoples are allowed to work out their own moral, economic and cultural experiments, human rights and moral obligations need to be limited. That is, people of overcrowded nations have no moral right to immigrate to other countries; nations that live by environmental principle have no moral obligation to give their natural wealth to those that have squandered their resources and trashed their environments.No nation has the obligation to share its material resources or the products of its land equally and justly with the citizens of other nations (p.117)

'Any nation that does not limit immigration loses its ability to make its own cultural/moral experiment. Its failure to curtail immigration would prevent it from choosing to use its lands and natural resources to support a minimal population at a high standard of living and a maximum quality of life. In effect, uncontrolled immigration allows nations whose experiments have failed to overload the world lifeboat to cause it to founder. (pp. 117 118)

Elliott has done a service in advancing what is in effect an environmentalist critique of environmentalism, hoisting greenies by their own petard.

DR. FREDRICK TOBEN FOUND 'GUILTY '

The Age reports (16/4/09): 'Holocaust revisionist Fredrick Toben has been found guilty of criminal contempt after defying orders to stop publishing racist material on his Adelaide Institute website. In a judgment in the Federal Court on Thursday, Justice Bruce Lander said Dr Toben's conduct had been wilful and he had steadfastly refused to comply with the law.

"The courts have held, but his conduct shows he does not accept that the freedom of speech citizens of this country enjoy does not include the freedom to publish material calculated to offend, insult or humiliate or intimidate people because of their race, colour or national or ethnic origin," Justice Lander said. "It is conduct that amounts to criminal contempt."

Dr Toben had pleaded not guilty to 28 counts of contempt arising from allegations from former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Jeremy Jones. Mr Jones first lodged a complaint with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission in 1996 and later applied to the Federal Court to uphold its ruling, which it did in 2002. But in hearings last year, counsel for Mr Jones, Robin Margo SC, told the court Dr Toben had defied its orders for six years.

Mr Margo said the Adelaide Institute website was still publishing, (in July 2008), "virulent anti-semitic material", including that there were no death gas chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp and that the holocaust was "the world's filthiest blood libel". He urged the court to fine Dr Toben, or impose a period of imprisonment if he could not pay. After handing down his judgment, Justice Lander adjourned the case to take submissions on penalty.

The federal court ruling came after Dr Toben fled Britain in November last year when a German authorities' bid to have him extradited to face charges of Holocaust denial failed. The 64-year-old had been arrested a month earlier at Heathrow Airport on a European warrant but a British court later ruled it invalid because it did not provide enough detail.

German authorities vowed to continue their attempts to have Dr Toben arrested in other countries. 'Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany and offenders can face up to five years in jail.

A MEMBER OF A SUPERIOR NATION NO MORE?

by Betty Luks
Dr. Fredrick Toben 's case is a very good example for Australians to take the time to seriously consider. Entwined in Dr. Toben 's battle is the right to regain the freedom to discuss matters of public interest without the state prohibiting discussion.
The truth is, English common law was based on the right of the individual to personal freedom, to personal sovereignty. As Clifford Douglas expressed it: 'Freedom is the right to choose or refuse one thing at a time.

And this includes his right to try to determine for himself - truth and fact from lies and propaganda on what really happened in the Nazi camps under the Hitler regime during World War II. Common laws prohibiting libel and defamation ensured the individual 's rights to safeguard his good name and honour. But to claim that all discussion about historical events are outside of public discussion is 'beyond the pale '. There must be freedom to openly discuss such matters.

While the former premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr, does not mention the verboten subject of 'the Holocaust he does caution Australians to consider the consequences if the Human Rights Commission recommends 'religious vilification legislation.
What Australians have lost sight of or do not understand - is the fact that English common law is based on a far different philosophical concept than present 'human rights legislation.

Traditional concept of Freedom:
In January 1942 The New Times republished 'The English Tradition of Freedom by novelist and playwright Miss Dorothy L. Sayers wrote of this traditional concept of freedom:
To a general proposition: 'We take these things to be self-evident; that all men are born free and equal,' she answered:
"English Law does not appear to be interested in any such philosophical speculations. Its characteristic utterance is that of the Great Charter: "To no man (i.e., to no individual Tom, Dick or Harry, never mind the rights of man in general) will we (the particular government in power at the time) deny, sell or delay justice' (which from the context, means clearly, not 'egalite' as such, but an equitable decision in the courts as between man and man).

"The English Law is concerned with the rights of the individual man as against the State and as against his neighbour. Its aims are no more lofty than that; but it is quite determined that the rights and liberties of the individual shall not be obscured by, or subjected to, any doctrinaire notions about State machinery.

"The common Englishman understands this perfectly. If you notice, you will never hear him coming into the courts clamouring for 'justice'; what he wants is 'my rights,' and he will claim them against all comers, including, and indeed, most of all, against the government.

And, let us be clear about this, he claims them, not as an Englishman, the member of a superior race, but as an English subject, the member of a superior nation. He will, except at moments when his natural balance is disturbed by spy scares, or by an excessively high rate of unemployment, claim them just as fiercely for the naturalised stranger in his midst. If a person is an English citizen he 'did ought to have' his English rights as an individual."

She argues that this conception is the practical expedient established when the many peoples from which the Englishman is descended, "the Angles and Saxons, Danes, various kinds of British Celt and probably some people with traces of Roman descent..." were thrown together within the limits of an island.

It wasn't until these had worried out a workable policy of leaving each other alone that the 'characteristic Englishry' was produced:
"To understand the point at which the English patience broke we have only, I think, to remind ourselves what is the phrase most often heard in the English home. And that is: 'Leave it alone!' 'Tommy, leave the cat alone.' 'Leave your little sister alone, can't you.' 'Oh, leave the boy alone; he'll grow out of it.' 'Leave the young people alone to fight their own battles.'
And then: 'Curse these government departments, why can't they leave us alone?' And so, with rising irritation, as the Englishman looks at the world: 'Here, you, leave those wretched Jews alone.' 'Leave the Poles alone, I tell you.'
And finally, in quite unmistakable tones: 'Now then, you blue-pencil, you bloody well leave ME alone, or I'll knock your bleeding block off." (And this is the right that Dr. Toben is fighting for for himself and for his fellow Australians).

Compare this with the notion of "liberty" insinuated by the fraternity of "planners" which was well expressed by the Rev. Sidney M. Berry in the "Sunday Times" of October 1941(?):
"The task of all the future years must be first of all by a true education to instil the idea of a disciplined and controlled freedom into the minds of the citizen of the new world, for if we fail there no programmes will be of any use, and no statement of aims will get beyond the paper on which it is written.
But side by side with that task must go another - the working out of what freedom means in terms of a society disciplined by planning so as to secure the fullest life not for a few, but for all men." (emphasis added...ed)

TRUTH IS GREAT AND WILL PREVAIL IF LEFT TO ITSELF

Religion laws don't have a prayer in a country with robust common sense - says Bob Carr:
Source: https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/religion-laws-dont-have-a-prayer-in-a-country-with-robust-common-sense-20090417-aa4w.html?skin=text-only

'This week we have heard about an increasing international trend to prosecute religious issues in the courts. In Britain cases are being brought under laws such as the Religious Hatred Act, which makes it a crime to "stir up" "religious hatred". British police have even warned that insulting Scientology would be treated as a crime. Such legislation may soon be heading to a statute book near you.

The Australian Human Rights Commission is finalising a report almost certain to recommend legislation on religion - on freedom of religion or religious vilification - that would mean similar prosecutions being launched under national law. Why do we need this?
The last time Australians were asked whether they wanted freedom of religion embodied in the constitution was in 1988. Showing a robust common sense, they voted a resounding "no". It lost in every state and territory, with up to 74 per cent against. Citizens knew in their bones that Australia was one of the freest countries in the world and that we wouldn't make ourselves freer by inventing new offences.

So why are we even having this debate? The commission says on its website - it's because of "an increased presence of Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews and other religious communities". This is an extraordinary statement; it undermines the need for any change in the law. If Australia were a nightmare realm of vilification and persecution, a dystopia of religious angst, I doubt that Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus and Jews would settle here in growing numbers. The growth of these communities is proof positive Australia enjoys freedom of religion.

Another reason nominated by the commission for its inquiry is "the shift away from mainstream Christianity, and the rise of Pentacostalism". To which I say, "So what?" Or, as the former US president Thomas Jefferson said when petitioned by a group of Methodists to stem the rising number of Baptists in newly minted America, "What business is it of government?" Why should this matter be even brought under the purview of a government-funded inquiry?

If you suspect someone's on a mission to agitate non-existent problems to find a bigger role for himself, contemplate another reason the commission gives for having this inquiry. It says it wants to assess the effect of Commonwealth and state laws on the "war on terror".
Leave aside the fact that the Howard government opted not to use the expression and the Rudd Government never has, anti-terrorism laws are neutral on religion. Planning to blow up a building or hijack a plane is guarded against, but the law is silent on the religion of those who might attempt it.
But Tom Calma, one of the commissioners, writes that the terrorism attacks of 9/11 have brought religion squarely back into public debate and it's important people not be "vilified or alienated because of these beliefs".

In fact, the Australian responses to September 11 and Bali were restrained, given the scale of the losses and the provocative hatred behind the attacks. Straight after September 11, I visited an Islamic school in western Sydney to make a plea for tolerance. Kerry Chikarovski, the then Opposition leader, rang me urging protection for Islamic women wearing the hijab. Peter Beattie attended a Brisbane mosque. John Howard met Islamic clerics. The same spirit prevailed after Bali.

Calma might ask himself whether a temporarily strained climate would have been improved by a raft of prosecutions for vilification. Victoria has a religious vilification statute and in 2004 two evangelical pastors were prosecuted for remarks they made in a seminar about Islam.
I don't respect the views of these pastors. The seminar was a fringe event for a fringe sect. Best to ignore it. Instead, the costly and drawn-out legal rigmarole gave Pastor Danny Nalliah the chance to spout in the courts about "Sharia by stealth". It cost more than $1 million in legal fees.
In 2004 I distributed reports of this outlandish case round the NSW cabinet table, saying to colleagues, "One day we'll hear an argument for this state having religious vilification well, that legislation implies prosecution. And that could go anywhere."

Anticipating this objection, the Human Rights Commission hints it would only recommend civil penalties. This is bogus. Say that under new laws an Islamic group opted to bring proceedings against a prominent evangelical Christian for comments about Islam. And suppose a court imposed a fine. What would happen if that person said he wouldn't pay the fine? Put him in jail?
The result would be a wave of sympathy for the martyr and hostility against his persecutors - melodrama that did not exist while Nalliah's opinions were simply treated with benign neglect. Retaliation would likely follow: militant Christians turning up at mosques with tape recorders to catch an imam "inciting hatred" against their faith, and an action by them in a tribunal or court.

Australia's treaty obligations oblige us to sign up for this brave new world of religious lawsuits, the commission is arguing. On these pages this week, Jonathan Turley noted that Saudi Arabia was a leading supporter of a new international ban on religious defamation.
Well, if a failure to have domestic religious vilification laws means Australians being lectured on religious freedom by Saudi Arabia, I guess we'll have to bear it with equanimity.

Meanwhile, I stick with Jefferson, who said, "it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are 20 gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." After all, "Truth is great and will prevail if left to itself".

LETTER TO THE PRESS:

To the Editor of The Australian, 19th April 2009

In writing (Letters, 16/4) that 'Holocaust deniers or revisionists do not seek historical truth', Zvi Civins must be relying on public ignorance of what these people have written and the relative public unavailability of their publications.
Any fair-minded person who seriously studies the theses of Germar Rudolf, Robert Faurisson, Jurgen Graf, Carlo Mattogno and others will at once grasp that they are genuine intellectuals convinced that the received understanding of the Holocaust is wrong in major respects.
In this light, Civins' statement that it 'is not a matter of opinion' whether the Holocaust occurred must itself be read as a statement of opinion despite his implicit claim of omniscience and infallibility on the topic. After all, the very term 'the Holocaust' is itself ambiguous.
Once this is grasped, then Paul Berryman's objections to blanket censorship of the revisionists (Letters, 15/4) can be seen to hold their validity. Moreover, Civins is wrong to claim that 'there are laws to prevent' Holocaust revisionism, if he has Australia in mind.
Dr Frederick Toben has not been pursued under any such legislation. The case against him rests mainly on a an alleged plea that Holocaust revisionism is offensive under current 'racial hatred' legislation - as indicated by Federal Court judge Bruce Lander ('The Nation', 17/4).
This, in fact, is a most tenuous argument. In any case, the principle of intellectual freedom (which Dr Toben is defending) is far more important than the public nursing of alleged feelings of offence which may only be cover for a minority group's self-interested political agenda.

- - Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic

GAITA ON GENOCIDE

by Brian Simpson
Professor Raimond Gaita ( 'Sorry but its no time for minds to slam shut, The Australian Literary Review, 7 May 2008, pp.12-13, 16) continues his long time theme that the 'stolen generation involved 'genocide '.

Gaita, along with the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity report Bringing Them Home, disputes the idea that 'genocide involves mass murder. The UN Convention also accepts that attempts to destroy in whole or in part a racial or ethnic group is also genocide.

This is an argument with some plausibility but follow through the consequences. The report Children on the APY Lands by Judge Ted Mullighan documents terrible sexual abuse of Aboriginal children by Aboriginals , about 14% of all children. This has occurred because of community breakdown, neglect and political policies of separatism.

This should be genocide by Gaita 's criteria I think, plausibly. And who is responsible? The intellectual class. So the guilt of genocide must fall on our chattering class.
Further, the chattering class generally accepted the Aboriginal policies of the time of the 'stolen generation '. So they must also be responsible for that as well. It is amazing what a dob of logic can do.