<H2><b>BLOGNOW ARCHIVES PART 14 - 2005-2006</b></H2>

ZIONISTS WHO LOVE ISRAEL - AT A DISTANCE! 10.5.2006

Question: What do people like Ted Lapkin, Colin Rubenstein and Judith Rona have in common?

Answer: They live in countries like Australia because it is so much more secure than Israel!

These are people who keep on saying there is no partner for peace because Arafat, who is dead, and/or Hamas, which is alive, would like to see Israel destroyed.

There can be no partner for peace in Israel/Palestine until Israel withdraws from the occupied territories known as the West Bank and Gaza. These territories are gigantic concentration camps and the citizens living in them live there by the "grace" of the Israeli government.

Their conditions are largely as appalling as those living in the South African Bantustans during that country's apartheid years, and their human rights are being denied and desecrated on a daily basis in no lesser a measure than those who lived in South Africa in those terrible times.

Dershowitz, Pipes, and their Australian counterparts, Rubenstein and Lapkin, amongst others, will continue to sit it out in their country of residential choice, because it is so much more comfortable than risking all to a plethora of suicide bombers, who see no future for themselves or their country and are generally in a state of despair.

The letter in The Age on 5 May 2006, in response to Ted Lapkin's article in the Age of 3 May 2006, headed: "Hamas is a new name for an old desire to eliminate Israel", by Gaston Arnolda, from Hanoi, Vietnam, is headed "Misrepresenting Palestinian views", and articulates very clearly and concisely, how misleading people like Lapkin are:

"Ted Lapkin misleads your readers when he states that 'an independent poll by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research in mid-March revealed a more than 60 per cent rejection rate of the Jewish state's right to exist.'

While 60 per cent of respondents stated that Hamas should not recognise the state of Israel immediately (question 10) or in response to demands from international donors (question 12), 66 per cent stated that there should be mutual recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people and Palestine as the home of the Palestinian people once an independent Palestinian state is established and the refugee and Jerusalem disputes are resolved (question 41)

The results show that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians surveyed are willing to recognise Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. We should all be asking ourselves why Mr Lapkin and the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council want us to think otherwise."

Quite! The zionist lobby in Australia, as elesewhere, continues to try and mis-inform people as to the true intent of the Palestinian people, who, surely in the year 2006, is a group of people increasingly isolated by the world and brutalised by the Israeli government, without any forthcoming assistance or support.

(Posted in Jewish and Israel and Palestine)

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DAVID HICKS - AUSTRALIAN CITIZEN 9.5.2006

David Hicks is an Australian citizen, that much is clear. He has attempted to obtain British citizenship - his mother was born in the UK - and the UK government has done everything in its power to prevent this happening! Unsuccessfully, as it happens, so that at last Hicks is able to fight on a slightly more level playing field, because the UK government got 9 of its citizens out of Guantanamo concentration camp. Maybe they will now have to fight for the tenth man.

Mainly this is because his own government, the Australian government under John Howard and Philip Ruddock, has done its best to do nothing to obtain similar treatment for Hicks to that which the UK government did for its "Guantanamo 9".

Just remember back to the case of Mamdouh Habib, a case which is still a shocking reminder to other citizens of Australia that they can NOT rely on their government for help when they are in trouble in overseas countries.

The article below, by Mark Baker, in The Age newspaper of 3 May 2006, tells the story of the Howard government's perfidy in its handling of the David Hicks case. Hicks has been brutalised in Guantanamo concentration camp together with hundreds of others who have been denied natural justice by the government of the United States of America. This is the country that screams about democracy around the world, yet in many ways is one of the most undemocratic countries anywhere. A country which spies on its own citizens and locks citizens of other countries in a concentration camp maintained in a country with which the US government will have no dealings, and then, as reported by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Red Cross and other human rights organisations brutalises the prisoners appallingly.

What has happened in Guantanamo is just an extension of what happened in Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and no one knows what has happened in other countries where the US has sent prisoners to be "renditioned". It is all too horrible to contemplate, and it is a disgrace that a man in charge of prisoners in Guantanamo should even open his mouth to criticise the behaviour of any prisoner, let alone one such as Hicks!


Thsi cartoon by Michael Leunig in The Age of 3 May 2006 is a good example of the behaviour of the bullies and thugs running the USA at the moment.


(Posted in Australian politics and politicians)

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PERFIDY, ENDLESS PERFIDY! 5.5.2006

Definition of perfidy (Concise Oxford): breach of faith; treachery

Nuclear energy options for Australia - Costello says yes for the Coalition, Ferguson says yes for the alternative Coalition! This letter was in The Age newspaper on 29 April 2006:

"Nukespeak

Ian Hore-Lacy from the Uranium Information Centre notes that a new "public coalition" for Clean and Safe Energy has been set up in the United States. In fact, the so-called Clean and Safe Energy Coalition is funded entirely by the Nuclear Energy Institute. In other words, it's not a public coalition but a corporate front group; it's not grassroots, but astroturf. Hore-Lacy also failed to note that his Uranium Information Centre is funded by uranium mining companies.

His argument that nuclear waste is a "distinct positive" reminds us why we have a specific word for spin-doctoring by the nuclear industry - nukespeak. And it reminds us why many Australians remain deeply suspicious of an industry which is anything but clean and green. A 2005 poll of 662 Australians found that 70 per cent opposed more uranium mines. Remarkably, for every Liberal/National voter who supports new uranium mines, two are opposed. For every Labor voter who supports new mines, four are opposed.

Jim Green, Friends of the Earth, Thornbury"

Smart Card - more police state tactics - it won't be compulsory, but try and access services without one!

West Papua and Indonesia - the Australian government has temporarily allowed 42 West Papuan asylum seekers to stay in Australia, but after a fuss from the Indonesian government, the Australian government will not allow any more West Papuan asylum seekers into the country and will imprison them in the Christmas Island concentration camp.

Welfare payments will be made to certain recipients in such a way as to ensure they are not available directly if the recipients are suspected by the authorities ofusing the benefits for purposes other than those intended.

David Hicks may rot in Guantanamo Bay concentration camp because the USA says he is a terrorist, and the Australian government believes everything the US government tells it!

(Posted in Australian politics and politicians)

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REACTIONARY RIGHT ZIONIST TIRADE AGAINST ANTI-ZIONIST 25.4.2006

Antony Loewenstein DARED to write an article for the Australian newspaper on the recent academic study on the "Israel lobby" by political scientists John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

As was to be predicted, that "defender" of the indefensible, Colin Rubenstein, executive director of the Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) dived in to demolish Loewenstein and his credibility as an objective observer of the Israel/Palestine conflict.

At the end of Rubenstein's "opinion" piece, either he or the Australian has put: See Alan Dershowitz's response to the Mearsheimer-Walt thesis

Dershowitz's credibility has been soundly demolished by Norman Finkelstein's book "Beyond Chutzpah", which was a response to the Dershowitz book "Chutzpah".

No matter how many times these reactionary-right zionists have their arguments demolished by reasoned analysis of their "academic" theses, they come back for more, because, after all, they are the majority view around the world amongst the Jewish and non-Jewish communities, are they not?

Well, no, if one looks at the letters in response to Loewenstein's article. It is encouraging to note that more and more people around the globe are seeing the Israeli offensive against the Palestinians for what it is - an attempt to drive the Palestinians out of the West Bank and Gaza and permanently annex those territories which the zionist religious right fanatics label Judea and Samaria - after all, god (oh G-D) gave them these territories about 2000 or more years ago, so they are only taking back what is rightfully theirs.

And the apartheid and genocide taking place are denied emphatically by Israel and their sponsors, the United States of America. It was to be hoped that at least the European Union would have a more enlightened attitude to the newly elected Palestinian government, but democracy is in the eye of the beholder, and there is a mote in that eye most of the time.

Loewenstein stated at the beginning of his article about the Mearsheimer-Walt study: "Their article was accepted, but then rejected, by The Atlantic Monthly; it was eventually published in the London Review of Books."

Let us NOT FORGET -CENSORSHIP is alive and well and living in a country near you! As I have said in previous posts, BE AFRAID! BE VERY AFRAID!

(Posted in Jewish and Israel and Palestine)

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JOHN HOWARD AND INVASION OF COUNTRIES 19.4.2006

John Howard was heard to say on ABC radio today, 19 April 2006, that Australia was sending troops to the Solomon Islands because Australia was asked to by the Solomons government.

He then went on to say that Australia does NOT INVADE OTHER COUNTRIES!

How quickly and conveniently we forget!

Australia invaded Iraq when Iraq posed no threat to Australia, was not planning to attack Australia, and, on top of it all, Australia was selling wheat to Baghdad, and Saddam Hussein was getting fat on the money paid as kickbacks by the AWB, which the Australian government had been made aware of for many years.

So, rank hypocrisy, which has been the hallmark of this government from the start of its regime in March 1996, continues with breathtaking speed as the days pass and one denial leads into another.

"We can't recall, we didn't know, we were not advised, we didn't see the communication, we receive so many pieces of information every day that we are unable to remember them all, we don't remember!" and many other statements which have been coming out in the Cole enquiry appointed by the Australian government to investigate the "wheat for oil scandal" of the bribes received by Saddam Hussein, in a commission which the government gave limited terms of reference to suit its agenda and ensure that the people responsible for the whole debacle would not be able to be called to account.

This government is riddled with lies and deceit and there is no possiblility of a replacement while Australia doesn't have an opposition party, making it in effect a one-party state, and we know what that means, don't we??

(Posted in Australian politics and politicians)

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ISRAEL AND PALESTINE AND A NEW GROUP 11.4.2006

I have been looking at the comments in response to a news item about a group of Israelis and Palestinians getting together to try and work out how to resolve the ongoing violence on both sides of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

As a South African I have come across racism all my life, 51 years in South Africa and 28 years in Australia where racism is increasing in leaps and bounds.

However, the racism by the zionists adding to the comments section of ynetnews takes racism to a new level. The hatred spewed out, particularly by rabid religious bigots living in the USA who talk of "Judea and Samaria" - some mythical areas supposedly being part of Palestine - makes one wonder why they are living in the comfort of the USA and not in Israel where they could go and kill pallies to their hearts' content.

It also makes one wonder what sort of world we live in when the 20th century was one of genocides, and these people are keen to be perpetrators of yet another genocide adding to the growing numbers in the 21st century.

People seem to be becoming less civilised, not more civilised, as time passes, and one realises how bloodthirsty humanity is.

At least a few groups of people are getting together to try and make things better, not worse.
Read the items and see what you think of the group and the comments:

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3238373,00.html

Hope springs eternal!


(Posted in Jewish and Israel and Palestine)

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WEST PAPUA, INDONESIA AND AUSTRALIA 9.4.2006

For many years, since the Indonesian occupation of West Papua, stories of human rights abuses and probable genocide have been recorded about the Indonesian stranglehold on the province.

Freeport mine and its related interests have used the Indonesian TNI and other means to suppress the West Papuan demands for independence. Murder of dissidents, populating of West Papua with people from other parts of Indonesia to reduce the proportion of indigenous West Papuans to others has continued unabated for about 40 years.

The following article from the University of Sydney is a comprehensive document detailing research into West Papua genocide, and is mandatory reading for people wanting information as to the history of that troubled land.

http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/centres/cpacs/WestPapuaGenocideRpt.05.pdf

(Posted in International Politics)

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NUCLEAR POWER FOR AUSTRALIA? 8.4.2006

It is interesting - but not surprising - that there have been no public comments on the fact that two days ago the federal environment minister overturned a planning approval for a Victorian wind farm, and two days later the prime minister announces that nuclear power needs to be considered in the Australian context.

Next, no doubt, we will be told that we need nuclear enrichment facilities because all our neighbours have developed nuclear bombs so we will need to protect ourselves - no doubt from the Indonesians, because we have given West Papuans fleeing from the terror of the Indonesian army and police asylum in Australia and the Indonesians are very angry!!

(Posted in Australian politics and politicians)

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DEFENDING THE INDEFENSIBLE! 3.4.2006

The following article is from The Age on 2 April 2006. Howard and his homophobic government, ably aided and abetted by his loyal "opposition", the Alternative Liberal Party (ALP), remain firmly entrenched in ancient attitudes to the concept of marriage, which is that marriage is essentially between a man and a woman and is for life.

Wherein lies the problem - couples don't get married as much as they used to, marriage generally is a means of heterosexual men owning their wives as property and for the purpose of procreating, marriages in Australia fail at the rate of at least one in three, and people partner with other people because they relate to each other and enjoy living together, whether they do or don't procreate.

Howard's use of the term "homosexual" means he is out of touch with the reality of those of us who consider ourselves to be gay, lesbian, transgender.

We support the concept of same-sex marriage for one reason, and one reason only, and that is we DEMAND equality under the law for all citizens of this country. We don't want different laws or special laws - we pay the same taxes for the same services - mostly, but some are denied to us because of our sexuality.

As Shylock famously said in "The Merchant of Venice": "If you prick us, do we not bleed?"

Howard defends gay marriage law veto
April 2, 2006 - 11:30AM

"The Federal Government's opposition to the ACT's proposed laws on same sex marriages is not an anti-homosexual gesture, Prime Minister John Howard says.
The Federal Government is threatening to introduce legislation to block proposed ACT laws which register civil unions and effectively give them the same rights as married couples.
Mr Howard and Attorney-General Philip Ruddock view the ACT laws as an attempt to undermine federal legislation introduced in 2004, which defines marriage as a union between a man and women to the exclusion of all others.
Despite the Federal Government's threats, ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope is determined to push ahead with his proposed laws, saying last week that the question now was whether "there is no place in John Howard's Australia for homosexuals".
But Mr Howard denies his plans to veto the legislation are "anti-homosexual".
He says he is simply trying to uphold the special place marriage holds in Australia.
"This is not an anti-homosexual gesture. This is a gesture to support the special and traditional place of marriage as a heterosexual union for life of a man and a woman in Australian society," he told the Ten Network.
"Why we're against what the ACT is doing is that, in all but name, they are equating same-sex unions with marriage.
"I don't support that, not because I'm against homosexuals, but I think there should always be a margin for marriage as we understand it in our society ... you don't equate a gay union with a traditional marriage - that's our position.""
- AAP

(Posted in Homophobia)

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RUDDOCK SHOWS HIS HOMOPHOBIA, AND JOINS HEFFERNAN 31.3.2006

OPEN LETTER TO PHILIP RUDDOCK - 31 MARCH 2006:

Dear Philip,

Reports in today's (Thursday 30 March 2006) Age newspaper indicate that you intend to prevent the ACT government from enacting the ACT Civil Unions Bill as it currently stands.

It seems you and your government think that gay unions or marriages will undermine the institution of marriage as you know it in Australia today. While you are aware that up to one in three marriages fail, you will also be aware that many heterosexual couples do not even bother to go through the marriage ceremony and believe their partnership to be just as valid as if they had made some sort of vow before some registered person or organisation. Marriage is not for everyone, and there are many members of same-sex couples who are not interested in the idea of marriage, but civil unions and partnership recognitions would give us all equality under the law, which your government is determined to prevent at all costs.

As if to stress the hypocrisy of your government, it seems that, because of shortages of certain skills in this country, you are now going to permit gay people from overseas to come and work here and bring their same-sex partner with them.

What if they had gone through some sort of marriage in an overseas country? We know that you have tried to stop same-sex couples getting married when one is Australian and the other is from some overseas country by trying to stop birth certificate information being obtained by the Australian partner to show that he/she is not already heterosexually married.

What exactly is your problem about homosexuals? Do you actually know any? Do you actually know any same-sex couples? What are you and your government scared of? You would be aware that many members of your party in the federal parliament are against the stand you are taking and are endeavouring to change the climate of fear which seems to infect so many of you. Has it occurred to you that homosexuals are also human beings and you are discriminating against many people in the community by your actions?

Human rights violations are very common by your government and this is yet another example of your hypocrisy in all matters homosexual. You must be aware that ultimately, no matter what you perpetrate now, this will all be changed in a few years because change is inevitable as more and more countries in the world come to accept that homosexuals are part of their societies and that its members contribute in equal measure to their societies, despite all the discrimination they have to face in their daily lives.

Left-handed, right-handed, blue-eyed, brown-eyed, green-eyed, black-haired, brown-haired, fair-haired, bald-headed, black-skinned, brown-skinned, olive-skinned, white-skinned, fat, thin, tall, short, male, female, transgender, healthy, unhealthy, physically-abled, physically-disabled - the world functions with variations and combinations - but maybe you want to try Hitler's Eugenics?

Yours in equality and human rights for all,

Mannie De Saxe

PS: Dont' forget to tell Bill Heffernan that you have been contacted by some real live homosexuals - they really are people!!

(Posted in Homophobia)

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West Papuan Asylum Seekers 31.3.2006

42 asylum seekers from West Papua who have been granted temporary protection visas by the Australian government have spoken about their fears of being returned to West Papua from where they fled in an outrigger canoe, risking life and limb to get away from that tortured country.

The Indonesian government is furious that the Australian government has granted them asylum, stating via their president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, that they will be quite safe if they return.

However, the record of the TPI in that country is as brutal as it has been in other parts of Indonesia and also in East Timor, and SBY doesn't necessarily have control over the military. Freeport mines are amongst the big issues there, and the West Papuans quite rightly want their country returned after it was stolen from them some 40 years ago by Indonesia with the usual connivance of the countries with major interests in the mine and what it produces.

(Posted in International Politics)

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TORTURE US STYLE - THIS EXAMPLE IN ABU GHRAIB 28.3.2006


Free in body alone: Ali Shalal Qaissi, in Amman, Jordan, last week with the photo of himself that has become the most recognised image of abuse at Abu Ghraib

The report in The Age on 12 March 2006 was from the New York Times, story from New York Times and Reuter and picture from New York Times.

The headline in The Age read:

Unmasked: the face of prisoner 151716, the man under the hood
By HASSAN FATTAH, AMMAN

"Ali Shalal Qaissi's wounds are still raw. There is the mangled hand, an old injury that became infected by the shackles chafing his skin. There is the slight limp, made worse by days tied in uncomfortable positions.

And most of all, there are the nightmares of his nearly six-month ordeal at Abu Ghraib Prison, west of Baghdad, in 2003 and 2004.

Mr Qaissi, 43, was prisoner 151716 of cellblock 1A. The picture of him standing hooded atop a cardboard box, attached to electrical wires with his arms stretched wide in an eerily prophetic pose, became the indelible symbol of the torture at Abu Ghraib. The US military announced last week it would abandon the prison and turn it over to the Iraqi government.

"I never wanted to be famous, especially not in this way, he said, as he sat in an office in Amman. That said, he is now a prisoner advocate who clearly understands the power of the image: it appears on his business card.

Researchers with Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International say they have interviewed Mr Qaissi and, with lawyers suing military contractors in a class-action suit over the abuse, believe that he is the man in the photograph.

Under the government of Saddam Hussein, Mr Qaissi was a mukhtar, in effect a neighbourhood mayor. After the fall fo teh Government, he managed a car park belonging to a mosque in Baghdad.

He was arrested in October 2003, he said, because he loudly complained to the military, human rights organisations and the media about soldiers dumping garbage on a local soccer field.

He said it soon became evident that the goal was to coax him to divulge names of people who might be connected to attacks on US forces.

Mr Qaissi is today an activist for prisoners' rights in Iraq. Shortly after being released from Abu Ghraib in 2004, he started the Association of Victims of American Occupation Prisons with several other men immortalised in the Abu Ghraib pictures.

Mr Qaissi said he harboured no animosity towards America or Americans. "I forgive the people who did these things to us," he said. "But I want their help in preventing these sorts of atrocities from continuing.""

In an added footnote to the above story, the report stated that Tom Fox, an American who was one of four Christian activists taken hostage in Iraq last year (2005) has been found dead, the US State Department said.

Fox, 54, was one of four Western aid workers that a group calling itself Swords of Truth kidnapped in western Baghdad in November.

A recent report stated that the US army had stormed a hideout and released the remaining three, who are now safe.

The United States claims to be a democracy, but the people who were guilty at the coal face of committing the atrocities shown in the Abu Ghraib photos were the bottom level of those who were responsible. The treatment of captives was obviously something that was ordered at top level, as the stories of "Rendition" to other countries by the US for torture become more established and come out into the open.

Guantanamo Bay is a concentration camp not dissimilar to those run by the Nazis and Fascists in Italy and Spain, and those were dictatorships of the most brutal kind. We are now seeing that so-called "greatest democracy of them all", the USA, behaving in similar manner. The CIA and its associates have been guilty of this sort of brutal behaviour around the world for at least as long as the end of the second world war, and probably for a lot longer.

It should also be borne in mind that the UK and Australia are allied to the USA in its fights in Iraq and Afghanistan, and share equal responsibility for the brutalities. At least two, and possbily more, Australians, have been and are still being, at the receiving end of the US treatment of prisoners. The mere fact of handing Abu Ghraib back to the Iraqis by no means suggests that the torture and abuse of prisoners there will end. On the contrary, many who are now involved are well versed in Saddam Hussein's methods and now as well, those of the USA, so it will be a follow-on to emulate them.


(Posted in International Politics)

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THE LATEST FROM THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE ASSISTANT PRIME MINISTER 25.3.2006

The article below comes from Workers Online No.300, dated 24 March 2006. The staff-elected director is Ramona Koval, and it will be interesting to see whether she will be able to stay on the ABC as presenter of the Book programme every weekday morning at 10.05am.

"Coonan Practises Her ABC
------------------------


Canberra has fired another shot in its cultural war against the ABC by
stripping the board of its only member with hands-on experience.
Communications Minister, Helen Coonan, has announced that the
Corporation will lose its staff-elected director, after 23 years.
The decision has provoked ABC staff representatives to renew their
calls for independent governance.
"It's about time Government addressed the real problems with the
Board. It's political stacking must cease and it should introduce a
process based on merit," CPSU representative Graeme Thomson said.
"We need a system like the UK's Nolen Rules that assure the
broadcaster can work at arms-length from the government."
Since its election in 1996, the Howard Government has consistently
attacked the national broadcaster, egged on by extremists like Piers
Ackerman, Ron Brunton and Janet Albrechtsen.
The last two have been rewarded with seats on the ABC Board.
Canberra has starved the broadcaster of the resources needed to
fulfil its statutory role but the biggest assault its credibility was
the controversial appointment of Jonathan Shier, a lightweight with
Liberal credentials, as its chief executive.
Shier's reign was a disaster that embarrassed his sponsors to the
point that when he resigned they were unwilling to appoint an
ideologically-driven replacement.
Thomson said the staff-elected representative had played an important
role in decision-making.
"Over its 23 years, the position ensured that real knowledge and
understanding of program-making and journalism got a hearing at the
board table," he said.
"This decision is all about the federal government's cultural war. It
continues to stack the board with political hacks and supporters because
it wants the ABC silenced.""
--------------------------------------------------------------------
What follows from this is that John Howard, who was seen on television today, 24 March 2006, literally gloating at the power he now has over workers as from Monday 27 March 2006, will debilitate the ABC once and for all to an arm of government compliance - another link in the nanny/police state we have to have to silence all critics of this terrible government.

The Assistant Prime Minister, Kim Beazley, has put forward a plan to censor what is able to be downloaded from the internet, to stop children and young people from being involved with, or looking at, pornography, and to stop paedophiles from downloading child pornography. Kimbo really thinks he will be able to change the system, and, like his boss, John Howard, he will have to learn that nothing is forever, and he and his reactionary moral rearmament ideas will eventually be gotten rid of.

Censorship doesn't work, and the more the government and its right-wing arm, the alternative liberal party aka the ALP, try to stop us being able to see or download or read or anything else they prohibit us from, it will flow into the country underground on some sort of tidal wave.

Hopefully that tidal wave will eventually sweep them all out of office, but I fear we have a long wait yet - not in my lifetime I suppose!

(Posted in Australian politics and politicians)

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ONE DOWN, THOUSANDS TO GO! 21.3.2006


(The above meeting is long since over, but the malady lingers on!)

The Federal Government spent taxpayer dollars on a commemorative event for the man who was not high on the taxpaying schedule. A group of people staged a non-memorial ceremony outside prime minister Howard's "official" event, and seven were arrested by the state's finest!

These people are still awaiting trial, but in the mean time, everything that this person stood for is now becoming the norm for Howard's post-election dictatorial hold on the citizens of this benighted and police-state ridden country.

On 27 March 2006, the new Industrial Relations legislation comes into force, making the minister in charge of the regulations, Kevin Andrews, a holier-than-thou bible bashing hypocrite, the sole arbiter of workplace agreements. Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of the party - whichever party it is that will defend workers rights - don't even THINK of the ACTU! - a not too common event in federal parliament, where the Alternative Liberal Party (ALP) in Victoria gave control of parliament to Howard via a religious party called Family First - another misnomer, if ever there was one! Another lot of hypocrites!

Alan Paton's "Cry the beloved country" about the sorrows of apartheid South Africa, can now be applied to this barren landscape called politics in Australia, where the population who are opposed to the war in Iraq couldn't be bothered coming to the third anniversary of the illegal invasion of that country by the coalition of the killing!

(Posted in Australian politics and politicians)

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-----------AND YET MORE HYPOCRISY! 14.3.2006

This report from The Age on 8 March 2006 has hypocrisy of the highest order from a country which is now one of the most hypocritical in the world - CHINA!

The report from Beijing states: "China has hailed Oscar-winning director Ang Lee as a national hero, while gently skirting two sensitive issues - that he is from Taiwan and the movie for which he won the honour is about homosexuality.

'Ang Lee is the pride of Chinese people all over the world, and he is the glory of Chinese cinematic talent,' the English-language China Daily gushed on its front page yesterday (7 March 2006) after Lee won the best director award for Brokeback Mountain.

Despite the words of encouragement in the state-run media, China does not plan to show Brokeback Mountain in cinemas."

This is nothing less than breathtaking - praising the film's director but banning the film - and of course homosexuality is still illegal in China although a great deal of activity occurs with the authorities closing a few eyes here and there. This also in a country where HIV infections are spreading at a rapid rate and the authorities are yet to take action with education programmes, and prevention not yet high on the national agenda!

(Posted in Homophobia)

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HYPOCRISY, HYPOCRISY AND MORE HYPOCRISY! 11.3.2006

The United States of America has just issued a statement on human rights abuses by certain countries - including Australia - which it takes to task over their violations, and has listed the problem areas of these nations.

Now let's see what the US does not understand about hypocrisy! Is it Abu Ghraib? Is it Rendition? Is it Guantanamo Bay - on Cuban soil no less - the hypocrisy of treating Cuba as a pariah state!!!? Is it the continuation of the death penalty? Texas has one of the highest records of death penalty executions of any state or country in the world!? Is it the war in Iraq and the ongoing human rights abuses there? Is it the support of Israel over the Palestinians, despite the well-documented human rights abuses of the Israelis on the Palestinians? And on and on and on!!

And what about closer to home? Hypocrisy of the Howard government is nothing new and also ongoing, but one of the most recent and one of the most cynical is -you guessed it!! the federal government is to provide same-sex skilled work visas because of the shortages of various categories such as doctors, who will now be able to bring their same-sex partners with them and they will all be able to work here and receive benefits here! Amazing what one can do when one is desperate!

(Posted in Australian politics and politicians)

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ELDER ABUSE AND OTHER ABUSES 9.3.2006

*Elder abuse has been widely discussed in the media in the last few weeks because of the news that some rather nasty incidents had been occurring in some nursing homes around Australia.

*Nowhere in mainstream media or in senior citizen media are there reports of elder abuse of gay, lesbian, transgender, HIV people. Yet research by academics and others reporting on these communities document several instances of abuses taking place at institutions or in areas where carers or care-giver organisations are not monitored for homophobia and are free to do as they like.

*A different sort of abuse is John Howard proposing, with his health minister Tony Abbott, that counselling be made available to women who may be seeking abortions. The counselling proposed will be funded by the government and will apparently be religion-based organisations which will be given the licences or mandates to carry out the counselling!

*Martin Ferguson, federal member of parliament for Batman in Melbourne's northern suburbs, has become anxious about the possibility of selling "our" uranium to countries such as India, where the prime minister John Howard has run after his friend and associate George W Bush has preceded him to India to make arrangements for India to be able to proceed with nuclear developments for power generation! John Howard will shortly make announcements that Australia will agree to the sale of uranium to India for nuclear power generation only - India has refused to sign the nuclear proliferation treaty because it is pretty pointless if one looks at the main nuclear club. USA, UK, France, Russia, Israel - enough to inspire confidence in the proliferation of uranium sales around the world!

*John Howard has just celebrated 10 years as prime minister of Australia, and at celebrations marking this anniversary Howard stood below banners stating STRONG DIRECTION
MAINSTREAM VALUES
Strong direction is telling lies about children overboard, about concentration camps, about who can come to this country, about the war in Iraq, about the food for oil scandal, industrial relations, police state laws and many other issues!
Mainstream values is ensuring that gay, lesbian, transgender, HIV people are denied the same human rights as other Australians who may happen to be heterosexual. Does the German word Untermenschen come to mind?

A hopeful future for this country? Looking more and more like apartheid South Africa every day!

(Posted in Homophobia)

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Holocaust denier also an AIDS denier! 3.3.2006

I have just made another interesting discovery, courtesy of an email about HIV/AIDS which has just been sent to me (Friday 3 March 2006) by someone who is part of the denier group which argues that AIDS does not come from HIV.

This is of course the president of South Africa Thabo Mbeki's line and also that of his health minister Manto Msimang.

Now I suppose being a denier of one major issue of the 20th century - that Auschwitz didn't happen and millions of Jews were NOT murdered by the Nazis - espoused by David Irving and his friend Frederick Tobin of Adelaide, who is currently on his way to Iran to support the Iranian president's take on the issue - means that one can of course be a denier of other major issues of the 20th century.

The email about HIV and AIDS was sent by someone whose name I cannot find on any listing of the AIDS deniers, so I am not sure who he is or where he comes from, but in referring to one of the main deniers I found the name of Frederick Tobin as an AIDS denier.

Now things fall into place! If you can be blinded to one set of events, why not to others, and HIV and AIDS is a fertile breeding ground for deniers. Mbeki has been doing it for at least the last 7 years, and cites such people as Dr Peter Deusberg to support his hypotheses, so why not Frederick Tobin, who falls into the category of "There are none so blind as those who will not see!".

I have learnt a lot tonight!

(Posted in HIV and AIDS)

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DEMOCRACY FRONTLINE - BLOG 3.3.2006

There is a blog called Democracy Frontline, and I tried to open it today - Friday 3 March 2006 - because last night I was somehow linked to it and contributed to one of its discussions.

Lo and Behold! tonight I was told that access is denied!!

So this is conservatism frontline censorship!

Three cheers for democracy - frontline style!

(Posted in Australian politics and politicians)

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PHILIP RUDDOCK - GAULEITER NO. 1 IN POLICE STATE REGIME? 25.2.2006

We are entering a new phase with today's announcement by the Attorney General that he is disbanding the Office of Film And Literature Classification (OFLC) Board. In future all matters pertaining to contentious material will be dealt with by the Attorney General's department.

This is the next stage in censorship by stealth and should be opposed at every level. Unfortunately, there is no opposition to oppose, so it will have to be left to those citizens who feel we are entering a new dark phase of government.

The prime minister has lied his way through every major issue that has occurred in the last ten years, but again, as there is no opposition, he will continue as prime minister until he is older and greyer - and not wiser - because that is not a possiblility.

The treasurer's latest racist outburst has Pauline Hanson singing his praises - as of course she would - because John Howard stole her agenda and made it his!

It looks more and more like South Africa between 1948 and 1994, and it will probably take as long in this country to get rid of it as it did in South Africa, and I will be long dead when that happens!

So, we are going to have to live through more of the terror which was a daily event in our lives in that blighted country.

As censorship will now become more stringent, we can also expect more news censorship than we already have, and as for films and television programmes, they will be decimated out of recognition.

(Posted in Australian politics and politicians)

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ISLAMOPHOBIA, HOMOPHOBIA, MISOGYNY 21.2.2006

I wrote this letter on Monday 20 February 2006 and sent it off to various media around the country.

Then, a few hours later, I found this little gem, and thought it also needed some publicity to add to the previous piece. So here they all are - Australia's racist, sexist, homophobic prime minister uttering his usual hate speeches, and there, in Moscow, we have the Russian Christian and Jewish leaders behaving like the rednecks they have always been, dating back to Tsarist and Stalinist eras!

Mannie De Saxe, for Lesbian and Gay Solidarity, Melbourne,
2/12 Murphy Grove,
Preston,
Vic 3072
Phone:(03)9471 4878
email: josken_at_zipworld_com_au
John Howard's latest racist outburst attacks extremist Muslim groups in
Australia, and Keysar Trad responds by accusing Howard of Islamophobia in
Australia.
Strangely enough, both are united in their other extremist phobia - they
both hate the homosexual communities - ongoing discriminatory homophobia
at a time when assaults on gays, lesbians and transgenders are on the
increase.
So, extremists of all sorts can combine when they have a common
agenda just as in
Jersualem last year and the year before, when Muslim, Jewish and
Christian clerics
combined to protest the approaching Pride celebrations due to take
place in Israel.
Howard also criticised Muslim treatment of women - remember his take on the drug RU486 very recently? This was his Christian (?) attitude to women.
"Oh, what a tangled web we weave-------!"

Russian Chief Rabbi Echoes Muslim Leader in Protesting Gay Pride in Moscow
Created: 16.02.2006 20:01 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 20:01 MSK
MosNews
Three days after Russia’s top Islamic leader called for violent protests against this spring’s planned gay pride march in Moscow the country’s Chief Rabbi has joined him in denouncing gays.

Rabbi Berl Lazar on Thursday told Interfax that if the gay pride parade were allowed to go ahead it “would be a blow for morality”.

Lazar, who also holds U.S. citizenship, did not go as far as calling for violence, but warned the Jewish community would not stand by silently, 365gay.com website said.

On Tuesday Chief Russian Mufti Talgat Tajuddin said gays could be beaten if they go ahead with pride celebrations in the capital.

“Muslims’ protests can be even worse than these notorious rallies abroad over the scandalous cartoons,” Tajuddin, of Russia’s Central Spiritual Governance for Muslims, told Interfax.

Rabbi Lazar on Thursday said that anything promoting what he called “sexual perversions” does not have the right to exist.

“I would like to assure you, that the parade of homosexuals it is not less offensive to the feelings of believers than any caricatures in newspapers,” Lazar said, linking the pride parade with the current furor over the cartoons of the Islamic Profit Mohammed published in Denmark.

Nikolai Alekseyev, one of the organizers of the pride festival called the comparison “outrageous”.

“Any comparison between the march for human rights and against discrimination with the publication of cartoons is nothing more than an attempt to incite hatred toward sexual minorities,” Alekseev said.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the city of Moscow said a parade permit would not be granted to the LGBT rights groups.

“Moscow authorities will not allow the conduct of gay pride in any form,” Sergei Tsoi said on Thursday.

“The Mayor of Moscow said firmly that Moscow government will not allow the conduct of gay parade in any form — neither open, nor indirect, and all attempts to organize non sanctioned action will be severely suppressed.”

Alekseyev said any attempt to prevent the march would be countered with court action.

“In case of denial to conduct the match of sexual minorities we will immediately sue in court. The right to meetings, marches and demonstrations is guaranteed by the Russian
Constitution to every citizen of Russia including gays and lesbians,” he said.

If necessary the organizers will go all the way to the European Court of human rights in Strasbourg, said Alekseyev.



(Posted in Homophobia)

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POLICE STATE ENTERS NEW PHASE 17.2.2006

Australia's police state entered a new phase on Thursday 16 February 2006.

The so-called Attorney General Philip Ruddock announced that Australian Federal Police and/or ASIO would now be given legal rights to phone tap.

Let's get this straight - they can tap phones of people who are suspected of being involved in "terrorist" plotting or they can tap phones of those connected to those they suspect of being connected to ------ you get the drift!!

Make no mistake about it - we have seen it all before in South Africa! -and it is coming to a suburb in Australia near you!

And here's another thought - the Federal parliament passed legislation on Thursday 16 February 2006 - making this another historic day in Australian history for the control of the "abortion" drug to be removed from the Minister for health - currently that religious right fanatic and hypocrite Tony Abbott - and given tot the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

Now the interesting thing about the debate which took place in parliament was that the prime minister John Howard was adamantly opposed to removing the drug RU486 from the control of parliament, because he is so opposed to abortion. However, think along these lines for the interest of the homophobes in our communities, of which John Howard is a leading exponent - imagine there really WAS such a thing as a gay gene and it could be detected in women during pregnancy. Howard would then be in the interesting position of wanting women to abort the foetus which could be gay, in order to rid the world of homosexuals!!!

Interesting thought!

(Posted in Australian politics and politicians)

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JOHN HOWARD AND HIS NEXT DEGRADATION OF DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES IN AUSTRALIA 14.2.2006

John Howard is ensuring that those who oppose him are sacked from their positions so that they are prevented from giving advice in the public arena which he has no intention of heeding.

This is the beginning of dictatorship as we have known it during the past 100 years.

The latest in his long list of appalling behaviours is on the front page article on The Age newspaper of 13 February 2006 by Jo Chandler:

"A former CSIRO senior scientist and internationally recognised expert on climate change claims he was reprimandd and encouraged to resign after he spoke out on global warming.

Graham Pearman told The Age that he believed there was increasing pressure in Australia on researchers whose work or professional opinions were not in line with the Federal Government's ideology. (my emphasis)

His view accords with that of a growing number ofscientists concerned about the pursuit of 'intensely political' areas of science, such as the debate over climate change, amid fears that views contrary to government policy were unwelcome."

"Dr Pearman is one of three leading climate experts quoted on the ABC's Four Corners tonight (Monday 13 February 2006) who say they have been repeatedly gagged in the public debate on greenhouse gas cuts.

Dr Barrie Pittock, who was awarded a Public Service Medal for his climate work, has told Four Corners he was instructed to remove politically sensitive material from a government publication on climate change.

And Barney Foran, a 30-year CSIRO veteran, cited a case in August (2005) when CSIRO managers told him they had fielded a call from the Prime Minister's Department suggesting he should say nothing critical about ethanol as an alternative fuel."

Why bother with government and government departments or advisers when John Howard knows best about everything and will take advice from no one about anything?

To top today's story above, a later story from the Senate Estimates Committee reported that debate was gagged by the government using its senate majority to overrule opposition. The gag was used to stop further discussion about who knew what in the Australian Wheat Board "food for oil" scandal of bribes to Saddam Hussein during the sanctions period between the wars of the Bushes!

Just when you believe the government has reached rock bottom, the rocks give way and the government sinks even lower.

(Posted in Australian politics and politicians)

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EXPOSURE OF THE LIES 8.2.2006



This film should be seen by all those who feel that the current situation in Australia is so hopeless. Although it glamourises somewhat, its basic message is that Senator Joseph McCarthy bullied, lied and coerced all those he saw as threats to "the American way of life" and coined the expression "un-American".

Thousands of lives were ruined by McCarthy and his witch-hunts of the 1950s and it was one courageous journalist, Ed Murrow, and his employers the CBS television studios who backed him, who brought about the downfall of the McCarthy era.

It was too late for so many, but saved so many more after the ugliness of McCarthy had been removed from office after 1954 when his methods and lies and scaremongering tactics were exposed.

This is what the extract from the leaflet advertising the film has to say:

Written, directed by and starring George Clooney, shot in elegant black and white with impeccable ensemble acting and moody jazz riffs for a soundtrack, GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK provides a snapshot of the moment in history in which a major American television personality named Edward R. Murrow took on the malevolent power of a muckraking U.S. senator named Joseph McCarthy and won.

It is said that for evil to triumph, all that is necessary is for good men to do nothing. But it's the reverse that's really true. For evil to be vanquished, all that is necessary is for good men - even one good man - to do something.

In 1954, Edward R. Murrow did.

With a desire to report the facts and enlighten the public, Murrow (David Strathairn) and his dedicated staff - headed by his producer Fred Friendly (George Clooney) and Joe Wershba (Robert Downey Jr) in the CBS newsroom - defy corporate and sponsorship pressures to examine the lies and scaremongering tactics perpetrated by McCarthy during his communist 'witch-hunts'. A very public feud develops when the Senator responds by accusing the anchor of being a communist. In this climate of fear and reprisal, the CBS crew carries on and their tenacity will prove historic and monumental.

It is now 2006, and so far there is no major media journalist or organisation willing to take on the Australian federal government and expose the lies, bullying, evasion and downright persecution of the few who have done a bit of whistle-blowing. The scandal is compounded by the fact that the loyal opposition has run with it all the way.

One only has to think of the asylum seeker policies and the concentration camps, started by the opposition when it was in government in 1992, to see that there is no possiblilty of a change while the mob that controls the Alternative Liberal Party (ALP) is still in charge.

In the government itself, there are the odd signs of rebellion now and again, and they are brutally crushed by Howard and his main henchmen Philip Ruddock, Tony Abbott, Brendan Nelson, and the other weaker people like Alexander Downer, who lies like the others without blushing.

The Australian Wheat Board (AWB) scandal of Iraq food for oil kickbacks to the Saddam regime, the bribery and corruption involved - the government knew nothing - and the lies continue - children overboard and all the rest of the horrible political shenanigans. Where, one asks, is the opposition from the public? Well, there is plenty of it, but then apathy sets in when it gets to the ballot box - the hip pocket comes first and dissent ends.

Sedition and subversion are now criminal acts according to the latest legislation, censorship by and of the media is intensifying, and ten years after coming to power, there is not enough public and parliamentary and media opposition to trhow this mob on the scrapheap of history, where they truly belong.

Possibly long after their departure, some of the truth will emerge, but it will be too late for those of us who will have to endure the arrival of the police state.

(Posted in Australian politics and politicians)

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ONE SCANDAL AFTER ANOTHER! 6.2.2006

Food for oil, history teaching, ID cards, RU486 and abortion debate, flag censorship, Hamas victory in Palestine, fires around the country and not a word from the Prime Minister, racism in cricket and in the general population, dismissed by the Prime Minister as just a bunch of hooligans - and to cap it all a pathetically quiescent opposition who really are just an extension of the arm of government.

And in all of this, let us not forget the general apathy and brainwashing of the population, who go along with everything - the path of least resistance.

However, censorship! censorship! censorship! an issue which the public ignores at its cost as it remains ignorant of what is being censored out of our lives. We get to read, see, watch, whatever the government deems suitable to keep the population quiet, and as soon as anything appears seditious or subversive - or too sexually explicit or homosexually challenging - out come the scissors!

Oh, how like South Africa during the apartheid years we are becoming! It is alarming to watch the formation of a police state when one witnessed it over a period of 48 years in South Africa. With ASIO's extended powers, with the Australian Wheat Board scandal unlikely to touch the government - there IS no opposition in Australia - and the only heads to roll over the food for oil scandal will be minor ones - not Howard, Ruddock, Downer, Vaile, not BHP Billiton or the other major players - but the public service bureaucrats who were "following orders"!

(Posted in Australian politics and politicians)

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Asylum Seekers in Australia 4.2.2006



Yet another scandal of the Howard government's detention of asylum seekers. West Papuans fleeing from a regime of torture, murder, genocide, and hoping to obtain asylum in a country they believe will protect them from the Indonesian regime.

What happens? They arrive in a rickety boat, are moved to Christmas Island where "their conditions are as good as being free" - according to the information available to the media, and the Howard government duly gives personal details to the Indonesian embassy so that their families can be persecuted in West Papua, and this is justice, Howard government style!

And the sanctimonious platitudes issuing from minister Amanda Vanstone only compound the horror of the situation.

(Posted in Australian politics and politicians)

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Google enters censorship in China! 28.1.2006

Google enters the murky world of censorship in China to make more fast bucks than it already has!

28 January 2006

A report in The Age newspaper of 26 January 2006 by Jonathan Watts in the UK’s Guardian tells the sordid story of Google on the make in the world’s fastest growing industrial giant.

“Google will join Microsoft and Yahoo! in helping China, the world’s biggest censor, in blocking access to websites containing politically sensitive material.”

This in a country which has one of the worst records on human rights and where the death penalty is one of the largest in the world. Google used to have as its mission statement: to make all possible information available to everyone who has a computer or mobile phone.

Is this a case of Mephistophelian selling of their soul to the devil so that they can become even richer, and their shareholders, since they went public, reap more dividends on their investments?

The end result is that those of us who still have some semblance of belief in the possibility of human rights around the world will no longer be able to support, or use the services of, a company so in breach of any human decency that they forfeit the right to that support.

“After a year of soul-searching, Google executive have grudgingly accepted that this is the price they have to pay to base servers in China. The move will improve the speed – and attractiveness – of the service in a country where Google faces strong competition from the leading Mandarin search engine, Baidu.

But Google faces a backlash from free speech advocates, internet activists and politicians, some of whom are already asking how the company’s policy in China accords with its mission statement.”

Google will thus be required to abide by the rules of the world’s most restricted internet environment. China is thought to have 30,000 online police monitoring blogs, chat rooms and portals. The scale of censorship in China is likely to dwarf anything Google has done before.

“Sophisticated filters have been developed to block or limit access to ‘unhealthy information’, which includes human rights websites, foreign news outlets and pornography. Of the 64 internet dissidents in prison worldwide, 54 are from China.

Google has remained outside this system until now. But its search results are still filtered and delayed by the giant banks of government servers, known as the great firewall of China. Now, Google will actively assist the government to limit content. There are technical precedents. In Germany, Google follows government orders by restricting references to sites that deny the Holocaust. In France, it obeys local rules prohibiting sites that stir up racial hatred. And in the US, it assists the authorities’ crackdown on copyright infringements.

Google acknowledged the move was contrary to its corporate ethics, but said a greater good was being served.”

Greater good for whom? Google’s shareholders? China’s citizens, who are already suppressed and repressed as far as political dissent is concerned, already live in a society where capitalism is rearing its US type ugly head with the economic growth of the country, but with this increasing wealth to a limited number of its citizens, freedom of thought is now to be censored even further with the help of a compliant Google!!

(Posted in Censorship)

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More Australian government steps to police state 27.1.2006

It is difficult to know where to begin with the perfidious behaviour of this government.
These are some of the items recently perpetrated:

* Asylum seekers from West Papua and accusations that the AFP tipped off the Indonesian authorities about their families left behind;

* Preventing gay men who want to marry overseas from obtaining their legal information concerning their marital status in Australia - in other words again interfering in the affairs of other countries, and here are details from an article by Julie Szego headed
Gays hit in overseas nuptial bid: Ruddock orders block on help
- in The Age of 14 January 2006:
"The Federal Government has moved to obstruct gay couples wanting to get married in countries that recognise same-sex nuptials.

The Attorney General's Department last year told at least two of Australia's embassies in Europe to refuse help to citizens requiring proof of their single status for a same-sex marriage.

The Age learnt of the policy through the case of an Australian man whose bid to marry his gay partner in the Netherlands was blocked by the authorities.

The Australian embassy in Vienna refused Peter Kakusca, originally from Melbourne, a certificate confirming his single status once it was clear he needed it to marry Markus Muehlmann, an Austrian.

Like many countries, the Netherlands requires proof that foreign nationals wishing to marry there are not already married. Australian embassies provide this proof."

* The latest scandal concerning the AWB and the food for oil programme;

* Censorship relating to items concerning suicide in Australia, because young people may be influenced about euthanasia;

* Refusal to consider, under any circumstances, the rights of gay, lesbian, transgender people from having civil ceremonies to register their relationships legally so that they are permanently disbarred from obtaining equal rights with the rest of the population;

* RU486 and the government's refusal to allow its availability, making excuses about women who have died overseas from its use - statistical rubbish - and turning the issue into a conscience vote in parliament, so that the religious right lobby can do its dirty work!

(Posted in Australian politics and politicians)

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Gay marriage controversy 17.1.2006

Posted here 17 January 2006
4 January 2006
The following letter appeared in The Age newspaper on 4 January 2006 under the heading “Gay marriage and celestial stability”, in response to an article in the same paper the previous day by Jonathan Wilkinson who is a University of Melbourne law student anda member of the Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby. Wilkinson’s article was headed “Same love, same commitment, same sex. Why not same deal?” and was a response to the new UK legislation allowing same-sex couples to have their unions recognized with all the benefits which accompany heterosexual unions.
This letter attacked these rights as follows:
Jonathan Wilkinson claims that if same-sex marriage is legalized the sky “will not fall here” (Same love, same sex. Why not same deal?”, Opinion, 3/1). Really? What does he mean? I doubt if even the most strident of moralists believes that the sun will not rise the next day.
But fast-forward a generation or two and pay the price of a massive increase in social instability as roles and understandings of sexuality become even more confused.
The traditional family unit is one of the cornerstones of every strong, mature civilization. Erode it and the inevitable collapse may not be tomorrow, or be dramatic – but it will fall.
Mark Rabich, Mount Evelyn
I sent the reply below to The Age on 4 January 2006, and The Age chose, as ever, not to publish a letter which contradicted their world view on such ideas of human rights for all as equal partnership rights. After all, John Howard and Kim Beazley (Assistant Prime Minister) have said that marriage is between a man and a woman, and no laws shall tear that asunder!
More censorship by that so-called newspaper The Age!

Mannie De Saxe, Lesbian and Gay Solidarity, Melbourne,
2/12 Murphy Grove,
Preston,
Vic 3072

Phone: (03)9471 4878
email: josken_at_zipworld_com_au
Mark Rabich (04/01/06) asserts that "The traditional family unit is one of
the cornerstones of every strong, mature civilisation". This requires
proof because Rabich's homophobic letter suggests that eroding this unit
will lead to civilisation's inevitable collapse.
The traditional family unit is already in a state of collapse due to the
changing nature of our societies, and has nothing to do with homosexuals
demanding marriage rights, so that statistically at least one in three of
these heterosexual units disintegrates after a few years.
Perhaps Rabich supports the Iranian government's state sanctioned murders
of homosexuals, and the western world's unsanctioned murders of
homosexuals. Discrimination continues against gays, lesbians, transgenders
and people living with HIV/AIDS and it is time this was stopped.
Until such time as we are given equal rights with other citizens, we will
continue to demand them, and as marriage is a religious construct, civil
unions recognised by law and giving superannuation and other rights taken
for granted by heterosexuals will serve just as well.
Homosexuals have been around for as long as heterosexuals and are entitled
to the same human rights.
Mannie De Saxe, for Lesbian and Gay Solidarity, Melbourne
Now, let’s look at Mark Rabich’s credentials. He is a supporter of creationism, so god is on his side. What more needs to be said!


(Posted in Homophobia)

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Censorship in Australia in 2006 14.1.2006


(Posted in Censorship)

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Sydney Star Observer and its homophobia 6.1.2006

Gloria Jean's coffee shops have affiliations with christian organisations, and during 2005, concerned gay activists addressed the issue and urged the gay, lesbian, transgender and HIV/AIDS communities to boycott the group's coffee shops.
It is well known that the religious right is fighting hard to get its fundamentalist objectives on to the political agendas of the so-called christian countries around the world. The new pope is helping them considerably, and the Bush "christian" government is doing well in denying basic human rights to its glth citizens.
So it comes as something of a shock to realise that a gay paper in Sydney is now laughing at the activists who tried to make an issue of the connection between Glorai Jean's and the Hillsong ministries and christian groups who can make gays straight!
The Sydney Star Observer (SSO), in its 15 December 2005 issue, called the postings on its website hysterical, and asked "Did someone say 'storm in a coffee cup?'"
The SSO has seriously discredited itself, and has downgraded itself even further as a paper for the glth communities of Sydney. The editor, who in his younger days was an activist, should hide his head in shame, and resign from his position as editor in chief if he comes up with this sort of homophobic horror in his paper!

(Posted in Homophobia)

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Ariel Sharon 6.1.2006

Tonight, Friday 6 January 2006, the news from Israel is that Ariel Sharon is in a critical condition with his cerebral haemorrhage and stroke and it does not seem likely that he will survive another 24 hours.
The western leaders are all singing his praises and, like George W Bush and the others, are praying for his recovery.
The Palestinians are praying for his death and calling him, correctly, the butcher of Sabra and Shatilla in 1982, when the Christian militia in Lebanon were sent in to the Palestinian camps and slaughtered at least 2000 men, women and children.
The fact is that the political landscape in Israel/Palestine will be changing overnight, because Sharon's new party, without him, hasn't got a hope in the March 2006 elections, and with the possibility of Benyamin Netanyahu becoming the Israeli prime minister yet again, the settlements in the west bank and the slaughter of Palestinians will continue unabated, while the world looks on, waiting for the destruction of the Palestinians.
Genocide about to occur, and there is still debate about the "Berlin" wall not creating an apartheid state, with "bantustans" and fragmentation in the west bank?

(Posted in Jewish and Israel and Palestine)

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The year behind - 2005 24.12.2005

The year 2005 has been a disastrous year in Australian politics. Because the Alternative Liberal Party (aka ALP) gave Howard a senate parliamentary majority by a gerrymander of the Victorian election in 2004, giving the last senate seat to Family First, Howard has turned the country into a police state.
New anti-terrorism laws, new industrial relations laws, new student union laws - and we are on the slippery slope to disaster! Censorship of items about which most people are not aware, sedition laws which make even writing such items as these seditious, and people will be afraid to open their mouths or put hand to computer, in case they find they are in trouble by "association"!
And it is not as crazy as it sounds.
After the tsunami on Boxing Day 2004, we were asked by a friend of ours, to make a donation to a Tamil group collecting for some of the worst hit victims, the Tamil area of Sri Lanka. Now guess what?? The government has listed organisations in Australia which may be thought to be, or may be, connected with terrorist organisations such as the Tamil Tigers.
So you gave an innocent donation? Well, nothing is innocent any more!
And of course there is much worse to come! Just think of the pickle of being involved with trade unions who are involved in strike action and you may be doing a picket with them. You can be picked up and questioned in solitary confinement without recourse to legeal representation on the Federal Police's or the attorney general's say-so!
And this, so far is just for starters! We haven't started on what can really be done under the new anti-terrorism laws, and just think of the last "terrorist" bombing in Australia - yes, that's right! The Hilton bombing of 1978! And ASIO's role has not yet been adequately explained and several people were jailed and jailed again on the whispers of people giving false evidence.
South Africa was a police state in which I lived until it seemed wise to get out and take my family with me - in 1978!! never suspecting that it could happen here - after all, Australia is a democracy, right? Wrong - not any more!!


(Posted in Australian politics and politicians)

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