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Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCT) chair shows bigotry.
Yesterday Bill Taylor, the chair of the JSCT, showed his bigotry on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's 4QR Radio talk back station.
Taylor was supposed to be discussing the MAI and could not let the opportunity go past to call Pauline Hanson, who exposed the MAI in January this year, an uniformed dill.
The move backfired with caller after caller giving Hanson the credos for exposing the MAI and calling on Taylor to stop playing around with international treaties.
Taylor, speaking from Canberra, suddenly found himself in a very uncomfortable position with his answers to questions becoming little more than an obvious deflection.
What surprised me was how little the chair of the JSCT new about the subject.
New fruitloop party shows its head.
John Maxwell-Jones (seen here right) who used
to be associated with Pauline
Hanson's One Nation and who had been selected as the candidate for
the state seat of Greenslopes showed his whacky side earlier this week.
Jones resigned from the One Nation party shortly after the Toowoomba meeting and, joined by Don "Groper" Farquhar (left) has set up the "Free Beer Party".
Jones, who was a popular entertainer at a number of One Nation social events faced severe financial problems and was unable to continue with his campaign as a bona-fide One Nation candidate.
His decision to set up the Free Beer Party is all about promoting his band and nothing to do with politics.
Yesterday Jones told me that "If it is good enough for the pollies in Canberra to live on the lurks and perks then I say it is every working Australian deserves a free beer at the end of the day."
Last word to Pauline Hanson's political adviser David Oldfield who said, "No one could take seriously an organisation called the Free Beer Party. It's a publicity stunt aimed at increasing Mr Jones' profile as an entertainer.
"He is no longer a candidate for One Nation and hasn't been for some weeks. Given these circumstances we are pleased that he is no longer associated with us."
Farquhar is described by Jones as "Groper" the spokesman on women's issues... says it all.
Rob Borbidge avoids Wik case.
At a time when Queensland's State Premier Rob Borbidge should be putting up his hand being counted he has taken a back seat and refused to get involved in the Savage Togara Pty Ltd debate on Wik.
A few days ago we outlined the background to this case which could see native title claims on about 1,000 Queensland leasehold properties being dismissed. The Queensland government has formerly responded to the court case between Savage and the Ghungalu people by stating that "it will neither support nor oppose (the mining company's) application".
Yesterday Cattleman Union president Keith Adams said, "I think their stated attitude towards it (native title) is they will do anything that will assist in the extinguishment of native title."
He went on to say that their refusal to become involved in this case was "strange".
Last night Opposition leader, Peter Beattie, accused Borbidge of "breathtaking hypocrisy" saying, "Borbidge has made this a crucial issue and even National party supporters would have expected Borbidge to take a stand on this issue.
"From this day on he has no credibility when it comes to Wik and no credibility when it comes to native title."
A different perspective was given by Henry Reynolds professor of history and politics at James Cook University who said that the resulting compensation claims if native title is overturned on leasehold land might have "freaked out" the government.
Quite simply put the whole thing is a mess and to pay compensation on half-baked land claims is the core of the problem and the reason why native title should be scrapped altogether.
Police Slay 6 Jakarta Protesters
Here is an extract from the Washington Post:
JAKARTA, Indonesia, May 12—Police opened fire on thousands of
anti-government demonstrators at a Jakarta university today, killing six
and wounding more than a dozen others in the bloodiest outbreak of violence
yet in Indonesia's growing political crisis.
Witnesses said police fired down from an overpass for several minutes on
protesters at the prestigious Trisakti University, inflicting the first student
deaths in nearly three months of demonstrations at campuses across the country
calling for an end to the authoritarian government of President Suharto.
Weeping students gathered outside the morgue at Jakarta's Sumber Waras hospital,
where officials said four corpses with gunshot wounds had been taken, the
Reuters news service reported. Police and military officials later confirmed
that six people had died in the melee and that at least 16 had been wounded.
Jakarta Police Chief Hamani Nata said that police at the scene -- as at previous
protest rallies -- had been issued only plastic bullets, but a news photographer
at a hospital treating casualties said he saw a metal bullet that had been
extracted from the head of one victim. An emergency room official at the
same hospital said the victims there "had been shot in the head and back."
An assistant rector at the university, a private Christian institution, said
other students and some journalists had been injured less seriously by gunfire,
police truncheons and errant stones hurled by protesters.
When the people speak, the corporations squeak.
Having learned from the South African divestment movement that local actions can help stop egregious human rights abuses and bring democracy to countries around the world, citizens across the United States are increasingly mobilising in support of state and local sanctions against countries such as Burma, Nigeria and Indonesia, all of which are ruled by brutal dictatorships.
These sanctions typically leverage the power of government agencies as consumer, using "selective purchasing" laws to bar the government from doing business with companies that do business in the targeted country. Massachusetts and more than a dozen cities have adopted such laws.
The idea is to encourage corporations to stop doing business in dictatorial countries, on the theory that income from their investments help prop up autocratic regimes. The South African example -- where state and local sanctions, along with university and private divestment campaigns and national sanctions unquestionably helped speed the end of apartheid -- lends strong credence to the theory.
Facing a rising tide of state and local sanctions, Big Business has banded together into an outfit called USA Engage. The group:
In March, the state of Maryland was on the verge of enacting a selective purchasing law that targeted Nigeria. Nigeria is ruled by a military government that feeds of oil money (provided by companies like Shell and Mobil) and drug money. The government annulled a democratic election held in 1993, has jailed the victor in that election, allegedly killed his wife, executed Ken Saro-Wiwa, a leader of the Ogoni people, murdered and tortured thousands of citizens and jailed the nation's trade union leadership. All in all, Nigeria is an excellent candidate for sanctions.
But not in the eyes of Big Business. It launched a furious campaign to defeat the selective purchasing proposal, arguing that sanctions are ineffective, unfairly disadvantage U.S. companies and undermine federal authority to make foreign policy. At the last minute, the Clinton administration intervened, saying Maryland's proposed law would violate U.S. trade treaty obligations. This tipped the balance against the bill. Big Business's lobbyists were smiling when they left Maryland.
Now, the same band of companies is seeking to roll back Massachusetts's selective purchasing law which targets Burma, another military dictatorship which has killed thousands, jailed the nation's rightfully elected leader and thrives on oil money (especially from Unocal) and drug money.
Late last month, the National Foreign Trade Council, another business coalition, with 550 U.S. manufacturing company members, filed suit against Massachusetts, claiming the state's selective purchasing law infringes on the federal government's foreign policy making power.
The lawsuit faces significant hurdles. It is not clear that the Trade Council has legal standing to bring the suit, nor that local and state sanctions interfere with federal powers in any constitutionally significant way.
But while the suits winds its way through the federal courts, it sends a powerful, chilling message to state and local officials considering responding to citizen campaigns to adopt sanctions. The message: States and localities that seek to enact selective purchasing proposals will face unremitting pressure from politically powerful multinational corporations. They should expect massive corporate lobbying campaigns, threats of lawsuits, pressure from a federal government which is choosing to ally itself with business interests on sanctions and the threat of suit at the World Trade Organisation and other trade bodies (indeed, the European Union and Japan have both threatened to call for the formation of penalty-wielding WTO dispute settlement panels to rule against Massachusetts's Burma law).
The purpose of this corporate campaign of intimidation is clear: While multinationals may or may not prefer to do business with dictators, they certainly do not want citizens interfering with their commercial operations in authoritarian countries -- even if those operations help prop up dictatorships.
At root, the suit over Massachusetts's Burma law is a clash between corporate internationalism and citizen internationalism.
The outcome of the clash will have huge consequences. As citizen internationalists like to point out, if the corporate internationalists' argument had prevailed in the case of South Africa, Nelson Mandela might still be in jail.
Making the
news" -
A REPLY TO MR. COSTELLO
Earlier this week Treasurer Costello accused Hanson supporters (and anyone else who resists his government’s globalisation agenda) of being ‘afraid of change’. Mr. Costello apparently thinks he is talking to fools.
His statement involves two well known logical fallacies. First, the argument from intimidation, which seeks to ‘discredit’ an opposing viewpoint by suggesting without proof that the holder must suffer from some sort of irrational mental state. Fear is a popular state to allege: fear of black people, homosexuals, foreigners, Jews, gender equality, or in this case, change. For each of these states, pathetically childish names have been invented like ‘populist’, ‘redneck’, ‘homophobe’, ‘xenophobe’, ‘racist’, ‘troglodyte’, ‘neanderthal’, ‘intellectual dinosaur’ and so on. They appear to have been circulated world-wide for standardised use by globalists in intimidating opponents. That Mr. Costello should resort to such tactics suggests he should look for another job. None of this name-calling says one single thing about the worth of the opposing opinion.
Secondly, inherent in Costello’s statement is a mystical notion known as ‘intellectual modernism’. Put simply it means ‘truth is to be found in the latest ideas, whatever they may be.” ‘New is true’. Its adherents believe ‘truth is what we’re all thinking now’. ‘The right thing to do is what we’re all doing now’, in this case the global dance. It’s the kind of thinking appropriate to lemmings and the inmates of Jonestown Guyana. After all, the newest truest idea once was that the world was flat.
When people can no longer think for themselves, when they are no longer capable of evaluating and countering ideas on the basis of reason and logic, they find solace in intellectual modernism. Ideas are ‘true’ because they’re ‘modern’, ‘progressive’, ‘future oriented’. Why are other opinions wrong? Because the holders are ‘trogoldytes’, ‘neanderthals’, ‘intellectual dinosaurs’, or 'afraid of change'. Intellectual modernism is the human intellect evolving back into the ape’s.
If this is the best the Treasurer can do, no wonder Australia is committed to flat earth jungle economics.
Graham Strachan.
Subject: The Budget.
I listened to Peter Costello last night on the 7.30 Report - this is the story part. I had gone to bed early and my telle went on the blink. So rather than get up and fiddle with it I just listened to the sound (no picture) that way you can concentrate more on the message. Didn’t he sound like Paul Keating I am sure his script was written by the same Treasury Official. Peter and Paul that’s what they are the same message just a different political party (and a different face on the TV). So what are Peter and Paul telling us? Well it’s basically the same message- you know things are being fixed Peter and Paul have at last found the right lever to pull and now it’s going to be all plain sailing for Australia.
Now for the more serious part- I didn’t hear any reference to increased resources to our Armed Services maybe I am wrong and there is an increase in spending on Defence somewhere in the pipeline. We need more young people trained and with the access to the equipment so they can defend themselves and their country.
Peter and Paul seem to be going down the same track don’t they!
Sincerely - Tony Price
Letter to the Minister for Communications
Senator 14th May,1998
The Hon. Richard Alston,
Minister for Communications,
Parliament House,
CANBERRA A.C.T. 2600
Dear Minister,
Our Principals never cease to be amazed by what they hear or see on the media, particularly the ABC.
The latest gem is the seriously proposed scheme to ensure that every new house (and home unit), whether within or outside the "sandstone curtain", is equipped with a telephone at the building stage (a condition of local government building approval perhaps).
What was said was something to the effect that, given that they are imported because they are not manufactured in Australia "economically", the telephone instruments only cost about "ten bob" each and so could be provided freely by Telstra and the other Telephone Companies.
Such installations being then virtually universal, the occupants would only receive accounts for services provided if and when they use them (but they may well find themselves on the unsolicited mail list for "genuine" offers).
If indeed your government is exploring this type of extension to the potential (taxable?) income of the telephone companies, our Principals would appreciate some early indication of it.
Sincerely,
J o n M. A x t e n s
Letter to America - from West Australian farmer.
23rd April 1998
Dear John,
Please accept my sincerest apologies for not replying much earlier to your last letter. I have no excuses, just reasons.
You see, my wife and I normally live in the country 250 miles away from Perth. But with two of our daughters at university, we rented out our property (to earn a subsistence income,) and moved up to Perth as "house sitters" so that we were available to help while the girls adjusted to undergraduate life.
Also to try and improve our own circumstances because, as you may've heard, the farmer/small holder is an endangered species Down Under. Drought, a Casino economy and punitive taxation make it very difficult to predict where next week's groceries will come from...
Anyhow, you probably know how house-sitting works? We move from place to place, feeding pets, watering gardens, standing guard over others' homes while they're away on vacation or business.
Under such circumstances it's all too easy to write a letter, think that it has been mailed, then find it mixed up with other papers several months later. As happened to yours. Much of what I had to say, then, is ancient history now.
God knows Pauline Hanson will need all the help she can get over the next five or six months, the most likely time for a general election. The mainstream media will do all they can to demonise her and distort One Nation's policy. Mostly, they'll try to ignore/gag her in the hope that electors will forget she ever existed. And with good reason.
Australia's political parties and parliament itself are, as we say, "on the nose." That is, they stink. There's an increasing sense that We The People are being taken for suckers, that we are no longer citizens but subjects, that our so called elected representatives get their instructions from international bankers and transnational corporations.
There is a surprisingly widespread mood of suspicion and resentment starting to make itself felt Down Under. We've had doctors, nurses, Public servants, taking to the streets and demonstrating. Now the country is racked by a war on the waterfront as John Howard's government tries to break the power of the longshoreman's union and replace "collective bargaining" with so called "individual workplace agreements", in which fearful workers bid each other downwards to accept the lowest wage...
Australia used to be a sleepy, easy-going sort of place, predominantly Anglo Saxon and monocultural. No longer. There is now an increasing number of strident minorities clamouring for their "rights". Most notably the Aborigines who, although less than 2% of the population (and this includes folk with less than 1/64th part aboriginality!) have set up their own publicly funded alternative government.
Their own flag. Their own welfare agency, health and legal services. Their quasi-parliament with "nationhood" high on the agenda.
Almost 80% of Australia's landmass is under Native Title Claim, and increasingly this is being extended to territorial limits offshore.
7000 or so Claims have been lodged to the infinite pleasure of the Aboriginal Legal Service's lawyers, and thus far about two have been resolved!
In my part of the country - The Great Southern - more than 700 farms are under claim, making them worthless. No bank will loan against a mortgage that may not be enforceable. The anger is rising. In (name removed), (a regional township of over 2000 inhabitants,) our dusky brethren are increasingly arrogant and cheeky, knowing they are the government's darlings. Elderly white women are shoved off the pavements, clan brawls explode in the local supermarket, drunks, daylight theft and brazen denials are commonplace. And this is just one small country town. I'm told it's much worse in New South Wales and Queensland.
Friends of ours established business people, Rotarians and staunch churchgoers are "losing it." In a moment of surprising honesty, one of them said that the problem could now only be solved with buckshot and the Oz equivalent of a posse.
And meanwhile John Howard has the gall to claim that he governs "for all of us" and that Pauline's One Nation Party would be divisive!
Again, sincere apologies for the delay. It's just the way our life is organised at present...
Best Wishes,
The Australian dollar crashed to a 12 year low yesterday reaching just 62.62 cents
Another perfect day in paradise.
Have a good one.
Recent stories exclusive to (how to) subscribe/rs of the Australian National News of the Day:
Unethical trifecta
expose Courier Mail's intellectual prostitutes - 9th May 1998
MIGA - son of MAI
exposed - 8th May
Just me and Pauline - 5th May
One Nation breakfast
- 4th May
Just who are the
Mont Pelerin
Society - 3rd May
The Internet and
the DEATH of the MAI - 30th April
Launch of Pauline
Hanson's re-election campaign - 29th April
Second One Nation
protest surprises Bob McMullan - 28th April
Sultan
of Brunei buys up big tracks of Australia - then negotiates Indonesian
"settlements" 25th April
Maritime
Union of Australia win in the Federal Court 22nd April
Just
who is behind the dock war? 19th April
One
Nation Birthday Party on Pauline Hanson's farm 10th-12th April
One
Nation state and federal candidates meet in Toowoomba 4th -5th April
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