Source: On Line Opinion,  19 August 2016
Louis O'Neill, who is studying writing at Macquarie University defended his right to freedom of speech: 

“Frequently I find myself holding what one might consider a politically incorrect opinion, such as having scorn for Islam, disagreeing with myths peddled by the third wave feminist movement or finding no legitimacy in the claims of the black lives matter movement.
 
As a result my adversaries are more than ready to deviate from the laws of discourse, veering off into ad hominem, red herring or appeal to emotion fallacies. The legitimacy of my political viewpoint is often times devalued, as I occupy the “privileged” end of the spectrum, being a heterosexual white male, and so I'm told that I mustn't speak on issues which aren't specifically related to my own demographic.
 
Sometimes the sanctimony of my ideological combatants is so abundant that they feel they need not even engage further in conversation once I've pushed their buttons enough.
 
Well to them I say, if your idea cannot withstand the corrosive qualities of informed conversation, then your idea is not one worth having. We must herald logic as the great sieve through which we may push idiocy and illogicality, and allow the juices of truth to percolate from it…”
 
Read further here … http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=18460

Of course the Liberal Party’s ‘Beliefs’ are changing from their 1949 ‘Beliefs’, but they still insist (according to their website) on their belief in:
 
We Believe:

“In those most basic freedoms of parliamentary democracy - the freedom of thought, worship, speech and association.”
Found here,  https://www.liberal.org.au/our-beliefs

The Coalition’s second most senior figure in the Senate insists the government won’t be supporting a move by one of its backbenchers to change race hate speech laws.
Liberal senator Cory Bernardi has thrown down the gauntlet to his colleagues, vowing to use the first week of the new parliament to introduce a private bill that seeks to remove the words ‘offend’ and ‘insult’ from section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.
The government’s position was very clear, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann told ABC radio on Thursday 18 August 2016: ‘We will not initiate or support any changes … it’s a debate we had two years ago.’
 
In a communication to one of our politicians, Wallace Klinck of Canada had this to say:
 

The news that Australian gas is cheaper in Japan than it is for Australian consumers comes as no surprise to older readers of On Target.

The June 17, 1977 edition of OT reported:

MORE SUBSIDIES FOR SOVIET CONSUMERS

"Murray Goulburn Co-operative Co. Ltd. of Victoria, manufacturer and marketer of dairy produce for more than 6000 Victorian and southern NSW dairy farmers, announced last week a huge sale of butter and full cream milk powder, worth almost $50 million, to the Soviet Union and Venezuela". The Australian, 27/5/77

Most of us are aware that Senator Cory Bernardi has an on-line petition, "Free Speech Petition" at http://www.corybernardi.com/18c_petition.

The petition seeks for parliament to remove the most troubling words from section 18 C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, the words being "offend" and "insult". This would still leave the words "humiliate" and "intimidate" in the section, which would operate as before.

Is this a step forward, or this this managed dissent?
The answer is: both. It is a step forward, as eliminating these words would knock down almost all of the problematic cases from the Bolt case to the University student ones. It is thus worth supporting for that reason.

However, there is weighty opinion that has been made repeatedly in The Australian by legal commentators, that the entire section needs to go. A good book arguing for more comprehensive reforms, especially to defences, is No Offence Intended: Why Section 18 C is Wrong (2016).

I think the presently "offended" ethnics will only now claim that they are "humiliated." There is only a thin line between being offended and being humiliated, and today, all those offended will say that they are also humiliated, and naturally intimidated, because the bar is very low in the politically correct landscape.

The Rand Corporation has released a report about the nature of a possible war between China and the United States, saying that such a war would be “intense, destructive, and protracted,” as China is fast closing the technological gap. Indeed, with globalisation many crucial spare parts and goods the US would need are now “made in China.”

My guess is that the US under Hillary Clinton, who will continue the globalisation programme, will lose. They will run out of steam, assuming nukes are not fired. That is, if they even work.

The chattering class in Australia have had to consider the “unthinkable,” having a glazed-eye cargo cult mentality towards China. If China owns Australia’s basic infrastructure, perhaps in a war China may decide to shut down Australia. Really? It took some time for our Asianised experts to get an infinitesimal of common sense reality.

The more difficult question though is what happens in an all-out China war, if Australia does not join with China against the US: how will Chinese people in Australia be dealt with? Will they be placed in camps, as many Germans and Japanese were in WWII?

The ruling elites are worried about anti-immigration sentiment, as has come to be symbolically, and now parliamentary represented in the form of one, Pauline Hanson. Thus, The Weekend Australian, August 6-7, 2016, p. 4, trots out the same tired old line that it has been pushing since that red Australian mast head was put on their newspaper, “Immigration ‘A Key to Our Prosperity.’” Scott Morrison is quoted, obviously enough, also pushing this line.

And then there is the human interest support story that always goes with this sort of propaganda. Here we will have a migrant who is either: (1) a super-achiever, and/or (2) would be afraid/feel “alien” if he/she went home.

In this story we are treated to a combination of both; the finance broker who “would feel alien if I went home.” Now that’s interesting, and says much about how migration itself changes cultures. And why, given the immigration ideology shouldn’t even migrants continue to migrate in a never ending chain of migrations? And with this “musical chairs” of migration, what meaning at all does “home” have anymore?

The headlines back in June 2016, loudly proclaimed:
“New DNA Technology Confirms Aboriginal People as First Australians.” (ABC News, June 7, 2016)

With all the talk about recognition and “first people,” perhaps many were surprised to learn that the “New DNA Technology” reference is to a research paper allegedly refuting an earlier paper of 2001, that had argued that the oldest known Australian human remains, near Lake Mungo, New South Wales (“Mungo Man”), were alleged to not be Aboriginal at all, but from an extinct human linage. This would mean that the Aborigines, in pre-history “displaced” this race of people. This could have been by interbreeding, but more likely involved warfare. Things were tough and different from today.

This would directly challenge the “first person” ideology, but we did not hear much about it.
(continue reading)

Topher takes an irreverent look back at the unpopular people of history and finds that sometimes it's the 'crackpots' who are right... meaning that there's a real benefit to ensuring everyone has a right to free speech, even if they're a crackpot!

Conservative philosopher Roger Scruton delivers the keynote address at the Institute of Public Affairs' 2014 Foundations of Western Civilisation Symposium.

The zealots will never desist.  Only their opinions matter and their oppressive decrees are not only to be accepted but enforced as absolute.  They have usurped the authority of God. 

How different from the 1960’s when I listened to the most outrageous and diverse tirades and expositions, often delightfully challenging and humorously insulting, in London at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park.  How wonderful it was to be able to listen to and evaluate these messages for myself.  Some of the speakers knew themselves that many or all of the ideas they were uttering were nonsensical and they were just honing their literary and elocutionary skills. 

Last month I placed a blog entry about 'The Responsible Vote'. It is a process of individual engagement with their representatives by regularly communicating about current issues.

...we must write to the successful representative telling them how we voted and why. We must also keep in regular contact with the representative and inform them of our views in regard to matters of concern. The electors responsibility does not end on polling day.

It is not at all surprising to see the breakup of that monolith called the EU.
Run by unelected bearucrats, answerable to only themselves (soviet style), people have finally had enough.

Similar to Australia, the ferment against the elites is taking shape, as people everywhere begin to take back their countries.

from Andrew Bolt's Blog
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/abc_bias_exposed_and_turnbull_fell_for_it/

VIEWERS of the ABC were recently shown an emotional, one-sided Four Corners program on juvenile detention in the Northern Territory. It was frightening, but deliberately misleading. It relied on old footage and I believe the program was an abuse of the ABC’s charter and an abuse of taxpayers’ money…

With my distrust of computers and all things IT and AI, I of course did not go on-line to fill out my census form. Why, it was invasive enough without Skynet looking over my shoulder. I predicted, the inevitable, that hackers would sneak into the site and drain away all vital information, described by one defense/IT expert as a “honey pot.”

What I have seen on the net, if that can be trusted, is that the hack occurred from “overseas.” I am not sure why a hack would bring a site down, for wouldn’t true professionals go in and out without a trace, not stomp around cybernetically like a proverbial elephant in a china shop?

Following on from the publication of Clinton Cash, we have another media “debate” about how dangerous Donald Trump will be. Thus, Kim Beazley, the former Defence Minister said (The Australian, August 10, 2016, p. 1), that Trump would as president cause unnecessary confrontations with China, and thus threaten Australia’s security.

Regardless of what one thinks about Trumps’ promises to restore economic nationalism to America, which is unquestionably a threat to the globalist elite, Trump is much less of a hawk than Clinton. He has indicated that he wants fair trade deals with China, and is friendly to Russia. The media, of course, uses Trump’s fair view of Russia against him as well.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-12/trump-deliberately-throwing-election-clinton

“There is an adage in politics: Don’t get in the way of a train wreck,” said Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, a top campaign aide to presidential candidates Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004. And, as Reuters reports, Clinton’s advisers say they see little benefit in her going toe-to-toe with Trump over every personal accusation, generating sound bites that would dominate cable news broadcasts. Rather, they are happy for him to be embroiled in controversy while Clinton focuses on policy.

Some salient points raised by Jennifer Oriel the other day.

21st-century Left waging new war on free speech by Jennifer Oriel

James Reed has described globalism as a “failed experiment,” and I could not concur more. I intend to devote a number of articles to this topic in due course. But to get the ball rolling, I draw the reader’s attention to an article which lets the cat out of the bag, and throws away the bag.

Alex Tabarrok, “The Case for Getting Rid of Borders – Completely,” The Atlantic, Ontober10, 2015, is an article well worth reading just to see how the globalist mind ticks over.

When I say cartoonist Bill Leak’s cartoon about an Aboriginal police officer approaching an Aboriginal father about his delinquent son’s behaviour, and the father giving a delinquent response, I knew that many would find the cartoon offensive.

Although I am a free speech advocate, I do not believe that such comments are particularly helpful, merely getting a chuckle out of a terrible situation where there is genuine human misery. Such comments do not help, although peole should be free to make them. But, then, I am a Christian.

We know that the high court of Australia, has ruled that the definition of “marriage” in the Constitution is such that it embraces same-sex unions. This was done through using a “living” method of constitutional interpretation, saying that words should not be defined as the Founders used them, but as, well, modern progressives use them. This is a handy dandy way of making the Constitution mean anything that progressives want.

Perhaps you hope that the same sex marriage agenda may be defeated in the plebiscite, and will then go away? Think again!