8 August 2014 Thought for the Week:
Two Australian Hockeyroos have grabbed worldwide attention after the Queen ‘photobombed’ a selfie at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. The Queen attended the Glasgow Hockey Stadium after the Hockeyroos had recorded a first-up 4-0 win over Malaysia. A number of the Hockeyroos whipped out their phones in an attempt to get a selfie as the Queen walked past in the background and Jayde Taylor and Brooke Peris struck it lucky when the Queen appeared to stop and smile in the background as they snapped the photo…

The Queen ‘photobombs’ Hockeyroos players at Commonwealth Games

"Brooke [Peris] and I planned it so that when she came out the door she would be behind us. And then she came out and smiled at the camera. We were in the right spot at the right time," Taylor said. "We were warming down on the second pitch after our game and the Queen came out to meet Donny (team captain Madonna Blyth). "The security guard led us all round and we got to meet her. She asked us a bit about the pitch, how we were going and told us to enjoy our time here. She was lovely - really, really lovely." https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-25/queen-elizabeth-ii-photobombs-a-selfie/5622910

AT LAST! VICTORIAN FARMER’S FEDERATION STANDING UP FOR RIGHTS

“VFF defends right to farm”: Tuesday 29 July, 2014. Thousands of Victorian farmers are at risk of being forced to apply for planning permits to keep producing food and fibre. In what the VFF sees as an act of bureaucratic madness the Shire of Campaspe has demanded local beef producer John Watson apply for a Planning Permit to continue operating his farm. Mr Watson’s family has been farming on the outskirts of Echuca for 90 years and been running about 1500-2000 weaners on their 310 acre property for the past eight years. Yet Campaspe Shire officers are demanding the Watson family obtain a Planning Permit to run the weaners on their property, arguing the family is engaged in “Intensive Animal husbandry”. The state’s planning laws (Victorian Planning Provisions) define Intensive Animal Husbandry as: “Land used to keep or breed farm animals, including birds, by importing most food from outside the enclosures”.

Victorian Farmers Federation president Peter Tuohey said the Campaspe Shire was treading on dangerous ground, by demanding the Watsons obtain a permit, when the real issue was the council’s failure to deal with urban encroachment. “It looks to me like the Shire is trying to exploit a loophole in the planning laws to curb the Watsons’ Right to Farm and push them out,” Mr Tuohey said. “The Watsons have a pre-existing right. They were there long before the Shire allowed Echuca households to build within 100 metres of the farm.”

“If Campaspe can exploit this loophole, then what’s it mean for other farmers who import the majority of their livestock’s feed? The Shire of Campaspe’s interpretation of ‘Intensive Animal husbandry’ would capture a huge number of dairy farms and others, who import most of their feed. The real danger is that we end up seeing this planning law used to stifle the growth of Victorian agriculture.”

Mr Watson said the shire shouldn’t be allowed to get away with demanding he get a planning permit. “If they’re (the Shire) allowed to get away with this we’ll see anyone who imports most of their stock’s tucker forced to apply for a planning permit. It’s only because we’re on the outskirts of town that they’re trying to do this.”

The VFF is examining the Victorian Planning Provision definition of Intensive Animal Husbandry and will be seeking clarification from the Victorian Government on whether the definition needs to be tightened or amended. The irony is the Shire of Campaspe’s own Municipal Strategic Statement says: ‘Agricultural production, based on intensive irrigated areas and large tracts of dry land farming, combine to form the largest industry in the Shire’,” Mr Tuohey said. “Yet here’s the Shire’s officers trying to stifle agriculture’s growth.

The VFF is calling on the Shire of Campaspe to see reason and find a solution that recognises the Watsons’ and all farmers’ rights.”
(Peter Tuohey, VFF President 0428 952 425)

TIME FOR MAGNA CARTA 2.0

by Chris Knight
Next year will be the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, the document sealed by King John on 15 June, 1215. The document gave rights sought from King John by English barons and freemen. There on the plains of Runnymede, the King was forced to recognise traditional rights. The 15 June, 1215 document was a set of baronial stipulations, known as the “Articles of the Barons”. However a revised version was issued on 19 June 1215 which constituted the Magna Carta. The main change was the substitution of the term ‘any freeman” for “any baron”, and in later centuries this would come to embrace all English people. It was not the intention of the barons to protect the liberty of all, only themselves, as there were few freemen at the time.

In September 1215 Pope Innocent II annulled the Magna Carta and civil war erupted, lasting until October 1216 when King John died. The new young king, Henry III, reissued the Magna Carta in 1217, but this version lacked some provisions of the earliest version, such as the enforcement council. The final version was the 1225 issue, which fixed the document. Copies were made and sent throughout the counties.

The English jurist Edward Coke, in the early part of the 17th century, gave an interpretation of the Magna Carta which was particularly influential among American colonists. The king was not beyond the common law. The American colonists incorporated the Magna Carta and the 1689 English Bill of Rights into their statutes, giving them the rights of free and natural subjects. It was this spirit of freedom which led to the colonists rebelling against the British government imposing a stamp tax on Americans which was seen as “taxation without representation”. In particular, they objected to trials of those who disobeyed being tried in admiralty courts and not by a jury of peers. The Stamp Tax was thus seen as against the spirit of the Magna Carta and thus, not a law at all. The bill was rescinded but the mood was set for revolution. The rest is history.

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that “all Men are created equal”, but the writers were referring to British men and never thought in their wildest nightmares that America would become the multiracial rainbow state where whites will soon be in the minority. Nevertheless, while America exists, the Magna Carta will be admired for serving as the inspiration for the Constitution and for common law principles such as the presumption of innocence and the burden of proof. And who can do better in affirming freedom than : “No man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, nor will we proceed with force against him, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice”. That is still law in the common law world.

Indeed, in his paper “The Spirit of Magna Carta Continues to Resonate in Modern Law,” a paper by Lord Irvine of Lairg delivered at the inaugural Magna Carta Lecture, presented in the Great Hall of Parliament House, Canberra, 14 October 2002. It is stated: “Jurisdictions with Imperial Acts (the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria) all chose to enact chapter 29” of Magna Carta. But the Northern Territory, South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia received the Magna Carta by Imperial law reception statutes, and these jurisdictions “find themselves in the surprising position of having almost all the provisions of Magna Carta theoretically still in force”. This, of course is very interesting and some of the legal implications of this will be explored by Ian Wilson LL.B. in a future article in this series.

In a light hearted article David Thomas (“Your Majesty, Please Grant Us a New Magna Carta”, The Telegraph 23 March 2014) points out that today our freedoms, such as freedom of speech are being eroded as never before – well, maybe as it was before the Magna Carta. What is needed is another movement to fight for our basic freedoms again, and to enshrine them in a new Magna Carta 2.0. Today we don’t need Aboriginal recognition: we need recognition of basic freedoms for all Australians such as freedom of speech in the Constitution. This will be a most difficult task because the entire political class is as tyrannical as old King John was.

THERE IS BALANCE IN GENUINE SOCIAL CREDIT

by Betty Luks
What a delight it was to read M. Oliver Heydorn’s “The Economics of Social Credit and Catholic Social Teaching” - and here are my thoughts on what I have learned. First it has helped me to understand the Catholic Church’s position in relation to Politics and Economics – the other two aspects of a society, a community, or a nation.

The heads of the Catholic Church did not always hold the view that is held today. Hewlett Edwards in “The Cultivation of History” set the historical constitutional scene for me when he explained that for a thousand years arguments continued by legalists and canonists as to whom should have domination - the Church or the State.

He wrote: “The controversy was the thread along which the rival disputants groped towards ideas and institutions which could satisfy both spiritual and temporal requirements…”

Conjunction of Authority & Power Made Apparent Third Member of Political Triad
“The most significant and fruitful facet of this historical perspective is that, despite the following of many false trails, the trinitarian idea was not to be always or completely denied, as is to be seen in the unfolding of the English constitution.

The formative period was in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when English law was administered by the ablest and best men of the Kingdom; it was then that the emerging principles of Common Law were being shaped, Canon Law performing the function of a bridge connecting legal process with ethical and theological discussion.

During that period, the argument between the Papacy and the Empire was mainly dualistic (it was certainly not trinitarian) and yet in England at that time the conjunction of Authority and Power made apparent the third member of the Political Triad - the Common Law with all that followed it. Directional inspiration plus executive action only exist by virtue of their issue, or content. The Three are One. In use they can and must be distinguished, but they can never be separated.

King John failed in this. He did not distinguish but tried to combine Authority, Power and Law in his own person; and, in this violation of well-understood but largely unformulated principles, he brought the constitutional issue to a head.

The Barons at Runnymede may not have realised fully the part they played: but they played it. They stood as an embodiment of the people of England, all England; the outcome and incarnation of the inter-locking activities of Church, King, and People; and their purpose was to bring the King to recognise his limitations in this threefold structure by the implementation of the rights of the other parties. Magna Carta was the sign and confirmation of this.
Read fully here https://alor.org/Race,%20Culture%20and%20Nation/The%20Cultivation%20of%20History.htm

M. Oliver Heydorn explained for us: “The Church does not possess the required authoritative competence (by her own admission) to render a binding judgement on the more technical aspects of an economic or political system. Her social teaching is more or less confined to the level of broad principles…” and it is those broad principles that Social Crediters will find of great interest.

“As far as the social doctrine of the Catholic Church is concerned, the core of her infallible and unchanging teaching in this particular sphere can be reduced to four basic principles” of human associations:
1. The primacy of the human person – “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.” (Mark 2:27)
2. The Common Good – “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” (Matthew 22:39)
3. Subsidiarity – “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God, the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:21)
4. Solidarity – “[A]s long as you did to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:40)

Heydorn then noted: “The practical purpose of pointing out the extraordinary and comprehensive affinity which exists between the economics of Social Credit and the Church’s social teachings is to help Catholics to recognize the kairos and to respond accordingly…”

Geoffrey Dobbs (an Anglican) wrote in “The Social Crediter” 11 April 1953:
The conception of Social Credit which Douglas left with us was a balanced conception. As his first book “Economic Democracy”, showed, it was so from the first in his own mind, but it seems to have taken a weary time before this inherent balance was grasped by others, as it has, by now, been grasped by those who have followed Douglas closely… only in Douglas, and in the complete body of Douglas’s teaching, have we that precious, incomparable quality of integrated sanity which is characteristic also of the Christian faith.

It is this balance and sanity which is the main object of the most damaging attacks upon social credit. Probably the most successful weapon which has been used against us is the suggestion, invariably conveyed by the sort of language chosen when social credit is referred to by its opponents, that we are ‘cranks’, i.e., unbalanced people holding an unbalanced view; and the existence of a number of groups of people detached from Douglas, publicizing an unbalanced fragment of his teaching as if it were the whole, or indeed the essential, under the name of social credit, and even claiming each to be his ‘true’ followers, lends the power of verisimilitude to this weapon.

One of the last things which Douglas left us was what we know as The Chart, a diagram setting out certain relationships in the real world. At its focus is the word ‘Policy’ which more than any other single word, summarises what he had to teach us. This is implicit in everything he said and wrote on Social Credit, and especially in his first book, “Economic Democracy” but in June, 1937, it became explicit in his address to Social Crediters in London, in which he defined Social Credit as “the policy of a philosophy” and further defined his use of the word “philosophy” as meaning a “conception of reality”.

The Chart, first published in February1951, specifically to counteract the tendency to disproportion in the Social Credit Movement, is an immensely massive and condensed statement. It is not permissible to alter it, but it will often be necessary to abstract from it and to consider special cases in its application to current situations. For the special purposes of this article, the consideration of balance in the conception of Social Credit at the present time, I want to draw attention to the balanced, triple structure of the centre of The Chart”, the three words surrounding the central word Policy.

They are as follows:

Now Social Credit has also been defined as “applied Christianity”, and it has been made clear that if the Policy is correctly called Social Credit, the Philosophy is the conception of reality which we find in the New Testament. The word ‘Administration' is of wider application than the word ‘Politics’, but it is convenient here to consider this aspect of it, in relation to ‘Economics’. These basic relationships of Social Credit may therefore be considered in the following form:

In contrast to the Policy which at present dominates the World, viz:

A tripod is the first structure which will stand, and it is not possible to ignore, or to mix and change the nature of any one, or more of these three components of policy without either overthrowing, or changing the nature of the policy. At the present time, a great many people are quite improperly applying the name Social Credit to a policy which has this sort of structure:

There is a law, called Gresham’s Law, which applies to money and credit; it applies also to policies. When they are mixed the bad drives out the good. This is very obviously happening with Compromised Social Credit; the Old Politics have completely neutralized the New Economics.

The Economic Disproportion
Two clearly defined stages can be distinguished in the development of the Social Credit Movement under the direction of Douglas. In the first from 1918 to 1934, the emphasis was on economics; in the second, from the Buxton speech “The Nature of Democracy” (June, 1934) to Realistic Constitutionalism (May, 1947) on politics. Running through everything that he wrote or said on Social Credit was a gradually increasing strand of ‘philosophy’; better, perhaps, referred to as religion, for it was specifically Christian, and never expressed in theoretical form without being ‘bound back’ to practice in economics and politics, so that the three threads were always intertwined. With this important qualification, however, it is true to say that, during the last few years of Douglas’s life, this ‘philosophic’ element, as represented for instance, by “The Realistic Position of the Church of England”, came more into prominence, so that at the end the structure of ‘Social Credit’ - philosophy, economics, politics, - had acquired that massive equilibrium and symmetry which was a part of his character. No more than Shakespeare does he need -
The labour of an age in piled stones,
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid
Under a star-pointing pyramid.

Social Credit is his ‘star-ypointing pyramid’. It is tri-podal; it stands firmly upon the earth; and it points to Heaven. Si monumentum requiiis, circumspice!...

Christian philosophy is at variance to present politics
The great heresy of the age is the ‘economic’ heresy, the Marxist-materialist heresy, the idea that history is determined solely or primarily by ‘economic’ forces, that man lives by bread alone. To describe Social Credit as merely another name for ‘The New Economics’, to describe Douglas as an ‘economist’ or a ‘monetary reformer’ is to describe him as a crank, as a man who had got something out of proportion. Both ‘economics’ and ‘finance’ are techniques. Techniques, of course, have their importance, but to form a World Movement, and to argue and advocate and oppose techniques, without reference to the policies they are used to promote, is insane. But if policies are to be upheld or opposed, that is politics, and the assessment of policies is only possible on a basis of philosophy; so that all the components of Social Credit are immediately brought in unless sanity and a sense of proportion are abandoned... Social Credit is antidotal to the social disease of the age…”

AN OPEN LETTER FOR THE PEOPLE OF GAZA in 'The Lancet'

'The Lancet' is the Prestigious 200 year-old UK Medical Journal - “We are doctors and scientists, who spend our lives developing means to care and protect health and lives. We are also informed people; we teach the ethics of our professions, together with the knowledge and practice of it. We all have worked in and known the situation of Gaza for years. On the basis of our ethics and practice, we are denouncing what we witness in the aggression of Gaza by Israel.

We ask our colleagues, old and young professionals, to denounce this Israeli aggression. We challenge the perversity of a propaganda that justifies the creation of an emergency to masquerade a massacre, a so-called “defensive aggression”. In reality it is a ruthless assault of unlimited duration, extent, and intensity. We wish to report the facts as we see them and their implications on the lives of the people.

We are appalled by the military onslaught on civilians in Gaza under the guise of punishing terrorists. This is the third large scale military assault on Gaza since 2008. Each time the death toll is borne mainly by innocent people in Gaza, especially women and children under the unacceptable pretext of Israel eradicating political parties and resistance to the occupation and siege they impose.

This action also terrifies those who are not directly hit, and wounds the soul, mind, and resilience of the young generation. Our condemnation and disgust are further compounded by the denial and prohibition for Gaza to receive external help and supplies to alleviate the dire circumstances.

The blockade on Gaza has tightened further since last year and this has worsened the toll on Gaza's population. In Gaza, people suffer from hunger, thirst, pollution, shortage of medicines, electricity, and any means to get an income, not only by being bombed and shelled. Power crisis, gasoline shortage, water and food scarcity, sewage outflow and ever decreasing resources are disasters caused directly and indirectly by the siege.1

People in Gaza are resisting this aggression because they want a better and normal life and, even while crying in sorrow, pain, and terror, they reject a temporary truce that does not provide a real chance for a better future. A voice under the attacks in Gaza is that of Um Al Ramlawi who speaks for all in Gaza: “They are killing us all anyway—either a slow death by the siege, or a fast one by military attacks. We have nothing left to lose—we must fight for our rights, or die trying.”2

Gaza has been blockaded by sea and land since 2006. Any individual of Gaza, including fishermen venturing beyond 3 nautical miles of the coast of Gaza, face being shot by the Israeli Navy. No one from Gaza can leave from the only two checkpoints, Erez or Rafah, without special permission from the Israelis and the Egyptians, which is hard to come by for many, if not impossible. People in Gaza are unable to go abroad to study, work, visit families, or do business. Wounded and sick people cannot leave easily to get specialised treatment outside Gaza. Entries of food and medicines into Gaza have been restricted and many essential items for survival are prohibited.3 Before the present assault, medical stock items in Gaza were already at an all time low because of the blockade.3 They have run out now. Likewise, Gaza is unable to export its produce. Agriculture has been severely impaired by the imposition of a buffer zone, and agricultural products cannot be exported due to the blockade. 80% of Gaza's population is dependent on food rations from the UN.

Much of Gaza's buildings and infrastructure had been destroyed during Operation Cast Lead, 2008—09, and building materials have been blockaded so that schools, homes, and institutions cannot be properly rebuilt. Factories destroyed by bombardment have rarely been rebuilt adding unemployment to destitution.

Despite the difficult conditions, the people of Gaza and their political leaders have recently moved to resolve their conflicts “without arms and harm” through the process of reconciliation between factions, their leadership renouncing titles and positions, so that a unity government can be formed abolishing the divisive factional politics operating since 2007. This reconciliation, although accepted by many in the international community, was rejected by Israel. The present Israeli attacks stop this chance of political unity between Gaza and the West Bank and single out a part of the Palestinian society by destroying the lives of people of Gaza. Under the pretext of eliminating terrorism, Israel is trying to destroy the growing Palestinian unity. Among other lies, it is stated that civilians in Gaza are hostages of Hamas whereas the truth is that the Gaza Strip is sealed by the Israelis and Egyptians. Gaza has been bombed continuously for the past 14 days followed now by invasion on land by tanks and thousands of Israeli troops. More than 60 000 civilians from Northern Gaza were ordered to leave their homes. These internally displaced people have nowhere to go since Central and Southern Gaza are also subjected to heavy artillery bombardment. The whole of Gaza is under attack. The only shelters in Gaza are the schools of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), uncertain shelters already targeted during Cast Lead, killing many.

According to Gaza Ministry of Health and UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA),1 as of July 21, 149 of the 558 killed in Gaza and 1100 of the 3504 wounded are children. Those buried under the rubble are not counted yet. As we write, the BBC reports of the bombing of another hospital, hitting the intensive care unit and operating theatres, with deaths of patients and staff. There are now fears for the main hospital Al Shifa. Moreover, most people are psychologically traumatised in Gaza. Anyone older than 6 years has already lived through their third military assault by Israel.

The massacre in Gaza spares no one, and includes the disabled and sick in hospitals, children playing on the beach or on the roof top, with a large majority of non-combatants. Hospitals, clinics, ambulances, mosques, schools, and press buildings have all been attacked, with thousands of private homes bombed, clearly directing fire to target whole families killing them within their homes, depriving families of their homes by chasing them out a few minutes before destruction. An entire area was destroyed on July 20, leaving thousands of displaced people homeless, beside wounding hundreds and killing at least 70—this is way beyond the purpose of finding tunnels. None of these are military objectives. These attacks aim to terrorise, wound the soul and the body of the people, and make their life impossible in the future, as well as also demolishing their homes and prohibiting the means to rebuild. Weaponry known to cause long-term damages on health of the whole population are used; particularly non fragmentation weaponry and hard-head bombs.4, 5 We witnessed targeted weaponry used indiscriminately and on children and we constantly see that so-called intelligent weapons fail to be precise, unless they are deliberately used to destroy innocent lives.

We denounce the myth propagated by Israel that the aggression is done caring about saving civilian lives and children's wellbeing. Israel's behaviour has insulted our humanity, intelligence, and dignity as well as our professional ethics and efforts. Even those of us who want to go and help are unable to reach Gaza due to the blockade.

This “defensive aggression” of unlimited duration, extent, and intensity must be stopped. Additionally, should the use of gas be further confirmed, this is unequivocally a war crime for which, before anything else, high sanctions will have to be taken immediately on Israel with cessation of any trade and collaborative agreements with Europe.

As we write, other massacres and threats to the medical personnel in emergency services and denial of entry for international humanitarian convoys are reported.6 We as scientists and doctors cannot keep silent while this crime against humanity continues. We urge readers not to be silent too. Gaza trapped under siege, is being killed by one of the world's largest and most sophisticated modern military machines. The land is poisoned by weapon debris, with consequences for future generations. If those of us capable of speaking up fail to do so and take a stand against this war crime, we are also complicit in the destruction of the lives and homes of 1.8 million people in Gaza.

We register with dismay that only 5% of our Israeli academic colleagues signed an appeal to their government to stop the military operation against Gaza. We are tempted to conclude that with the exception of this 5%, the rest of the Israeli academics ar e complicit in the massacre and destruction of Gaza. We also see the complicity of our countries in Europe and North America in this massacre and the impotence once again of the international institutions and organisations to stop this massacre.
The Lancet, Early Online Publication, 23 July 2014 Source: doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(14)61044-8 Cite or Link Using DOI

TRULY, SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER

from Paul Eisen Blogspot
I'm indebted to Francis Clark-Lowes for this. It's called "Silence of a Nation” and features Chris Hedges. You may know about Chris, but I didn't. It seems he's a journalist and commentator, the son of a clergyman and himself, among other things, a student of divinity. Impunity is the word that comes to mind. Eight hundred dead Palestinians. Eight hundred. That’s infinitely more than twice the total dead of flight MH17 over Ukraine. And if you refer only to the “innocent” dead – ie, no Hamas fighters, young sympathisers or corrupt Hamas officials, with whom the Israelis will, in due course, have to talk – then the women and children and elderly who have been slaughtered in Gaza are still well over the total number of MH17 victims.

And there’s something very odd, isn’t there, about our reactions to these two outrageous death tolls. In Gaza, we plead for a ceasefire but let them bury their dead in the sweltering slums of Gaza and cannot even open a humanitarian route for the wounded. For the passengers on MH17, we demand – immediately – proper burial and care for the relatives of the dead. We curse those who left bodies lying in the fields of eastern Ukraine – as many bodies have been lying, for a shorter time, perhaps, but under an equally oven-like sky, in Gaza.

Because – and this has been creeping up on me for years – we don’t care so much about the Palestinians, do we? We care neither about Israeli culpability, which is far greater because of the larger number of civilians the Israeli army have killed. Nor, for that matter, Hamas’s capability. Of course, God forbid that the figures should have been the other way round. If 800 Israelis had died and only 35 Palestinians, I think I know our reaction.

We would call it – rightly – a slaughter, an atrocity, a crime for which the killers must be made accountable. Yes, Hamas should be made accountable, too. But why is it that the only criminals we are searching for today are the men who fired one – perhaps two – missiles at an airliner over Ukraine? If Israel’s dead equalled those of the Palestinians – and let me repeat, thank heavens this is not the case – I suspect that the Americans would be offering all military support to an Israel endangered by “Iranian-backed terrorists”. We would be demanding that Hamas hand over the monsters who fired rockets at Israel and who are, by the way, trying to hit aircraft at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport. But we are not doing this. Because those who have died are mostly Palestinians.

More questions. What’s the limit for Palestinian deaths before we have a ceasefire? Eight hundred? Or 8,000? Could we have a scorecard? The exchange rate for dead? Or would we just wait until our gorge rises at the blood and say enough – even for Israel’s war, enough is enough. It’s not as if we have not been through all this before.

From the massacre of Arab villagers by Israel’s new army in 1948, as it is set down by Israeli historians, to the Sabra and Shatila massacre, when Lebanese Christian allies of Israel murdered up to 1,700 people in 1982 while Israeli troops watched; from the Qana massacre of Lebanese Arabs at the UN base – yes, the UN again – in 1996, to another, smaller terrible killing at Qana (again) 10 years later. And so to the mass killing of civilians in the 2008-9 Gaza war. And after Sabra and Shatila, there were inquiries, and after Qana there was an inquiry and after Gaza in 2008-9, there was an inquiry and don’t we remember the weight of it, somewhat lightened of course when Judge Goldstone did his best to disown it, when – according to my Israeli friends – he came under intense personal pressure.
Source http://pauleisen.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/truly-speaking-truth-to-power.html

Comment: The Neocons are not all in America. Readers would do well to reread “It’s Official – John Howard a “Neo-Con” https://alor.org/Volume40/Vol40No21.htm

Let’s Imagine: In a simplistic attempt to justify Israel's Old Testament style slaughter of the Palestinians in Gaza, Israeli apologists always seem to ask the question ''how would the United States respond if a militant group fired thousands of missiles at its population centres from Canada or Mexico?'' These yammering Zionists seemed to think they score heavily in the arena of public opinion with this childish argument.

So let me try my own hypothetical question. How would Americans react if, with the blessings of the great powers, a huge number of heavily armed aliens from Eastern Europe arrived on our shores and claimed our country as their own by insisting that their god had bequeathed it to them via their mythical patriarch somewhere back in the Bronze Age? And after defeating an inept American military, they succeeded in driving most of the American people into either Canada or Mexico or west of the Mississippi. And then not being satisfied with the lands east of the Mississippi, two decades later, they initiate another war that results in their successful conquest of all the territory west of the Mississippi to the Pacific. And while promising the Americans west of the Mississippi an eventual state of their own, they nevertheless begin a program of massive colonization of these territories and also erect an apartheid barrier around all of their settlements.

Furthermore, imagine a small enclave in the southwest near the Mexican border where millions of Americans took refuge on some worthless land. Originally the aliens hoped to colonize it, but reluctantly they turn it over to the Americans to run for themselves as a sort of city state/refugee camp/ open air prison with no powers generally associated with a sovereign state and also reserving the right to move in at any time to protect their interests. Further imagine that after the election of an America government deemed hostile to alien interests they proclaim a crippling blockade which reduces the population to abject poverty and near starvation. Not satisfied with the blockade, the aliens then unleash the full force of their modern military on the helpless inhabitants whose only way of striking back is with crude rockets made from sewer pipe that carry a low yield explosive made from sugar and fertilizer. And finally imagine an alien dominated media that continues to label the Americans as terrorists.
From joe - - ReportersNotebook-owner@yahoogroups.com, 29 July 2014

LETTER TO THE PRESS

25 July 2014: “Apprehension about proposals to change the Constitution to enable within it 'recognition' of 'indigenous Australians' is not groundless but justified ('"No need to fear" Recognise plan', 25/7). Any campaign that has the potential to be nationally divisive can, in the middle and long term, do great damage to the inhabitants of this continent. Think of the current tragedy of Ukraine (and its recent cruel result): in that nation there is a people unhappily divided between those who wish for political alliance with Russia and those preferring to join the EU. National unity, with its resultant social stability and personal security, is a priceless possession and should not be jeopardised.
Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic.