To The Australian Andrew Bragg, a supporter of Aboriginal constitutional recognition, states that it must "strengthen national unity" ("Let's get this job done on indigenous recognition", 7/1), but nowhere in his discussion is there any indication of how that could possibly be. There is ample evidence on the public record that this project is seen by key players as a means to eventually establishing two nations on this continent, something that can only be done by massive injustice to the majority of Australians, those who make no claim to Aboriginality. Bragg favours the establishment of "local and regional bodies for the various indigenous communities around Australia", this to be followed by voluntary affiliation "to create a national body." No one else, he adds, "should tell these people how to set up their bodies." However, the Australian people as a whole are no doubt expected to foot the bill for costs. Finally, Bragg is setting up a straw man when he claims that constitutional recognition would not create a third chamber of parliament. It might not, but it would certainly give undue power and influence to a mere tiny majority of Australians, many of whose claims to indigenous status are questionable anyway.
Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic
To The Age A key player in the exposure of the fraud of the fake Hitler diaries ("Editor who took the rap for fake Hitler diaries", 7/1) was David Irving. It is a pity that this is not mentioned in the New York Times obituary you have republished. Its unworthy omission of reference to his dramatic intervention at a German press conference is no doubt a result of the current disgraceful taboo on this distinguished historian's writings. Which reminds us that it is high time that the Australian Government terminated any restrictions on Irving's entry into Australia. Those restrictions, some of which were enacted precisely to keep him out, were never justified. The fact that a UK High Court decision later found some errors in some of his works does not change that reality.
Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic
Global warming is a truly amazing thing, it leads to the elimination of a meat diet, and everything else about the West including … us. Get ready now, along with the African exodus, for 400 million Chinese climate refugees:
I just knew it; if I looked long enough I knew that I would find the claim that white racism led to the London Bridge knife jihad! How could it not, since it is also well known that white racism led to the extinction of the dinosaurs (reverse causation and time travel of course):
You are not paranoid if they really do want to kill you, and the liberal Left are quite open about it:
Yes, the old bag lady of globalism is still there working to bury what remains of traditional Germany.
“German Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed the Bundestag recently to warn the German parliament about the dangers of free speech. “We have freedom of expression in our country,” Merkel argued. “For all those who claim that they can no longer express their opinion, I say to them: If you express a pronounced opinion, you must live with the fact that you will be contradicted. Expressing an opinion does not come at zero cost.” In 2018, Germany enacted a strict ban on certain speech that elites of the day consider “hateful.” Under the new law, sites can be fined up to 50 million euros, around $55 million, for not promptly removing so-called “hate speech” from their platform. “But freedom of expression has its limits,” Merkel warned. “Those limits begin where hatred is spread. They begin where the dignity of other people is violated. This house will and must oppose extreme speech. Otherwise, our society will no longer be the free society that it was.” Merkel’s speech was considered unusually emotional for the German chancellor and also confusing to everyone who knows that you either have free speech in a country or you have politicians with the power to ban whatever speech they don't like. Merkel’s concerns over free speech have everything to do with silencing critics of Merkel’s open-door immigration policies.”
New Zealand is small, but is run by a socialist, so we do our best to keep up with the rest of the West in the politically correct steeple chase. Like this:
One part of the global warming agenda, to destroy the West, is to make universal income redistribution … no, not to poor deplorables like you and me, but to the non-West:
https://www.technocracy.news/global-warming-swindle-a-scheme-to-redistribute-wealth/
Have a guess who is propping up China’s surveillance state? It is those lovers of freedom, globalist Big Techy:
https://www.technocracy.news/western-tech-giants-propping-up-chinas-surveillance-state/
“A bombshell follow-up report to a major document leak which confirmed and detailed China’s vast Uyghur Muslim Xinjiang prison network and system for monitoring communications and whereabouts has named names. Names that is, of US tech giants that are actually aiding and abetting China’s multibillion-dollar surveillance industry being used to impose a total electronic police state on the communist country. And it’s not just Google and IBM, but a growing list of recognizable names. “U.S. companies, including Seagate Technology PLC, Western Digital Corp. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., have nurtured, courted and profited from China’s surveillance industry,” the scathing report begins. “Several have been involved since the industry’s infancy.” These American companies gained greater scrutiny after the US Treasury recently targeted up to eight Chinese surveillance companies, blocking their ability to export US technology through which they could help the Chinese state in committing human rights and individual privacy violations. This included a federal ban on US agencies purchasing video surveillance equipment manufactured by Dahua, Hikvision, and Hytera Communications.
Here is some more fantastic news about the coming environmental apocalypse from Professor doomsday himself, who has been wrong about doomsday since the 1960s.
https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/technology/a-lot-of-suffering-grim-3000yo-warning-about-to-come-true/news-story/84274e09f8cc1ae708bfb0b43947d297?type=curated&position=6&overallPos=6&utm_source=AdelaideNow&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial
“It’s happened before, now some claim it’s happening again. In 1200BC, the world’s most advanced civilisations — Egypt, Assyria, Cannan — were burnt to the ground all at once. It was the era of the Biblical Exodus and the poet Homer’s Trojan War. A convergence of catastrophes made these nations weak. And it’s happening again. “We’re f**ked,” says eminent biologist, Paul Ehrlich, whose 1968 book The Population Bomb triggered international debate. Speaking to news.com.au, Professor Ehrlich was pulling no punches. “We’ve talked for a long time about the coming collapse. Now we’re in it. Every sign says so.” He has joined with Flinders University ecologist Professor Corey Bradshaw to present their global systems change modelling to Australia’s politicians. And the predictions are not pretty. “We can limit the damage, but we can’t avoid it,” Professor Bradshaw says.
It was so predictable that probably no bookie would have take money for it, but the Democrats are charging ahead with impeachment against Trump, even compounding impeachment articles in the hope of getting something to stick. The Republicans responded by denying any wrong doing from Trump.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/house-intel-panel-releases-trump-impeachment-report
There was a time when Australian foresters kept Australian forests safe and productive. They maintained access tracks bridges and fire breaks, undertook prescribed burning, cleared flammable litter from the forest floor, cut suckers, manned fire lookouts and maintained their own fire-fighting crews in decentralised districts. University-trained professional foresters were supported by tough experienced rangers who learned their job in the bush. Almost every advance in bushfire management in Australia, from the science of fire behaviour to aerial burning was thanks to our foresters. Into the 1980’s they were regarded as international leaders. To pay for good forest management, sections of the forest were logged, allowing ground space and sunlight for the swift re-growth of new trees. And those fading die-hards still beating alarm drums about man-made global warming should be reassured - the use of hardwood and softwood timber in power poles, telephone poles, bridges, wharves, posts, sleepers, haysheds and houses provided long term sequestration of the dreaded carbon. Moreover, growing trees extract CO2 more quickly than mature trees. Win, win, win.
Then we entered the Green Era. Foresters and timber-getters were demonised by urban greens, their tame bureaucrats and academics, and their ABC mates. State forests were converted to National Parks and Wilderness Areas and John Howard created the hated Kyoto Protocol Forests on private land. Timber imports rose. Every locked-up, un-managed, un-burnt forest inevitably breeds disastrous wild-fires. The combination of heavy fuel load, poor access for fire fighters, drought, hot winds, arsonists and dry lightning has only one assured outcome – a bushfire tragedy for the forest and the neighbours. (Why are no greens chaining themselves to trees now?) This must change. No enquiries are needed. Anyone without green blinkers can see the evidence daily. So, cut the locks, open the tracks and remove the trash. Then call tenders from local people to use recreation, tourism, timber getting or hunting feral animals to fund proper care and maintenance of our forests. A well-managed forest can pay for its own management and also keep the community safe and happy.
The Power of the Torch
“There can be few if any races who for so long were able to practice the delights of incendiarism.”
Geoffrey Blainey “Triumph of the Nomads – A History of Ancient Australia.” Macmillan 1975.
The Fire-lighter was the most powerful tool that early humans brought to Australia. Fires lit by aboriginal men and women created the landscape of Australia. They used fire to create and fertilise fresh new grass for the grazing animals that they hunted, to trap and roast grass dwelling reptiles and rodents, to fight enemies, to send smoke signals, to fell dead trees for camp fires, to ward off frosts and biting insects, and for religious and cultural ceremonies. Their fires created and maintained grasslands and open forests and extinguished all flora and fauna unable to cope with frequent burn-offs. Early white explorers and settlers recorded the smoke and the blackened tree trunks. They admired the extensive grasslands, either treeless or with well-spaced trees, and no tangled undergrowth of dead grass, brambles, branches and weeds. Making fire without tinder boxes or matches is laborious. So, most aboriginals tried to keep their fires alive at all times. When on the move (a common situation), selected members of the tribe were charged with carrying a fire stick and keeping it alight. In really cold weather several members may have each carried a fire stick for warmth. When the stick was in danger of going out, the carrier would usually light a tussock of dry grass or leaves and use that flame to rejuvenate the fire stick (or light a new one). As they moved on, they left a line of small fires spreading behind them. They have been observed trying to control the movement of fires but never tried to extinguish them.
Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) was a Swedish scientist who first claimed that the burning of hydro-carbons like coal, oil, gas, peat and wood may cause global warming. In 1895 he calculated (incorrectly) that a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration would lead to a 4-5o C rise in global temperature. However, Arrhenius suggested that this increase could be beneficial, making the various climates on Earth “more equable" and stimulating plant growth and food production. Then a showman/politician, Al Gore, gave life to the theory that extra carbon dioxide due to human activities will cause dangerous global warming. But temperatures refused to obey the alarmist computer model forecasts. So they switched to the universal bogey-man - climate-change, where every bit of bad weather was blamed on western industry. But this did not scare enough people so it morphed into climate emergency, which allows coal, oil, gas, cars and cattle to be blamed for everything bad - floods and droughts, snowstorms and heatwaves, bushfires, coral bleaching, species extinction and pollution anywhere. But the carbon dioxide scare is proving false - it’s time for some climate sense.
Human activity can never control atmospheric CO2 or global temperature. Much bigger forces are at work – solar system cycles, earth orbital changes, volcanic activity (especially on the sea floor), El Nino episodes, declining magnetic field and magnetic pole reversals, variable cosmic rays and cloud cover, and absorption/expulsion of CO2 by the mighty oceans. Geological records show that today’s CO2 levels are very low - so low that plants grow slower and need more water. Moreover, the ice core records from Antarctica and Greenland show clearly that atmospheric temperature always rises before CO2 levels rise. So rising CO2 is the effect of rising temperature not the cause. Warming oceans are like warming beer – they both expel bubbles of CO2 into the atmosphere. When oceans cool, they take it back. The dense plant and animal populations in equatorial regions shows that humans need not fear global warming – in fact the Russian President has welcomed the possibility of warming for his cold land. We live in a natural warm interlude but we are past the warming peak. There will still be fluctuations and extreme weather events but the next big move will be global cooling – the 11th freeze-up in about a million years. All it needs are oceans heated by submarine volcanoes, and skies made cold by volcanic ash that blocks incoming solar energy.
To The Australian Damien Freeman asserts that "it is unfair to conclude that indigenous people make demands that are endless and can never be satisfied" ("Wyatt on right track for recognition of indigenous people in constitution", 4-5/1). However, during past decades ample evidence has accrued from the published statements of indigenous leaders and their non-indigenous supporters to refute Freeman's wishy-washy idealism. Kow-towing to the Uluru Statement is seen by many key players as just the first step towards enabling indigenous people to reclaim most if not all of this continent for themselves. Freeman's phrase "a constitutional anchor" sounds reassuring, but, in fact, if enacted, it would become a constitutional fetter on Australians seeking to maintain the traditional political order of our nation. Furthermore, constitutional amendment is not needed at all "to ensure indigenous voices are heard." They are being loudly heard everywhere, with the assistance of financially powerful supporters. Finally, neither former chief justice Murray Gleeson nor anyone else has been able to show that constitutional amendment would not fatally strike at the principle of equity (fair treatment) for all Australians.
Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic
To The Age Perhaps Waleed Aly is too pessimistic in his doom-saying prognosis of a coming "public hell" due to "system breakdown" ("A new decade of public hell", 4/1), but he may be right to focus on a growing "disillusionment with democracy itself." Australian society, like that of other nations based in Western European culture, appears more and more clearly to be oligarchic in structure despite its self-promotion as "liberal democracy"; and to many people that oligarchy appears to be too well entrenched to be able to be successfully challenged. That, apart from the seductions of technological inventiveness, may be why people are turning inward and withdrawing from participation in the forums of "public space." Aly, in exhibiting a distaste for renewed movements of nationalism (why?), asserts that "globalisation isn't about to be undone." It depends what you mean by globalisation. A renewed sacred movement of reform within Christianity might work wonders; but one means reform and not a superficial revival based on flawed church authority or a simplistic insistence that "the Bible is the Word of God."
Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic
To The Age David Wilson suggests (30/12) that "the monarchy is no longer relevant to contemporary Australia", but in fact its importance for our future well-being grows stronger by the day. We live in challenging and even threatening times and our response to these will be wiser and firmer if it is based on adherence to royalty and its divine basis. Republics are sometimes needed for a while if monarchies go bad, but such is not the case for us. The House of Windsor, whatever the personal failings of some of its members, possesses a noble record of public service and dignified contribution to government and public affairs. Let 2020 be a year when Australia returns to its traditional roots, those on which our great nation was built.
Nigel Jackson, Belgrave
To The Australian Noel Pearson has compared the "65,000 years of presence" of Aboriginal peoples on this continent with the "250 years of British dominion" ("Ministers present but voice muffled", 28-29/12), evidently believing that this contrast of numbers justifies the campaign for Aboriginal constitutional recognition. He should ask himself which of those passages of time has contributed more to the flourishing Australian nation in which we live today. The answer is that quality of culture easily trumps longevity of tenure. In any case, we cannot return to yesterday and should not try to. The present Australian nation has now lasted long enough to justify its constitutional hold on this land. Pearson purports to "rehearse the main grounds for objection to positive recognition", but ignores many of the most important, such as the need for internal stability, national security and equity for all Australians. Perhaps Paige Taylor could now give us an article of similar length reporting in depth on the whole range of arguments against constitutional recognition and the key persons advocating them.
Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic
To The Australian You are right ("Seeking comfort in the mystique of Christmas", 24/12) that "the season's theological underpinnings run far deeper than sentiment." Even deeper than theology is the metaphysical reality about which theologians discourse. However, your statement that "at its heart, Christmas is mysterious and bittersweet" is surely only half right. It is mysterious because it symbolises the penetration into our everyday world of a higher understanding, something that can come when one has been "born again" (as Jesus explained to Nicodemus). That revelation is fundamentally joyous. The celebration of Easter, of course, is a different matter. There is where the bitterness and sorrow of human life is acknowledged, but also its ultimate overcoming by that which in our deepest depths is eternal.
Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic
To The Australian Unlike the Australian Republic Movement, I'm glad that our armed services personnel and politicians are required to swear loyalty to the Queen rather than to the Australian people or Australia ("Diggers 'serve us, not the Queen'", 23/12). Her Majesty is a person, not an amorphous abstraction or a geographical location. What's more, she has been trained from childhood to assume royal responsibility and has acquitted herself as monarch magnificently. Even more importantly, she has accepted her role as a trust given by God to whom she dedicated her life in humility and wisdom. So our loyalty to her is also a commitment to align our lives with the guidance of divinity, not with current political correctness or ideological fashion. Moreover, she is not a "foreign monarch" but Queen of Australia in her own right - one of us by legislation and in reality.
Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic
Fire Fiasco