Hey, that’s the sort of paranoid conspiratorial title readers have come to expect, and love, from me. But, the title is only a paraphrase of “Aussie Unis Boost Chinese Military,” The Weekend Australian, June 10-11, 2017, p.1.     The story here is universities are supplying the Chinese military with technological leadership and knowledge which China needs for advanced military and industry superiority. The claims have been made by public intellectual Clive Hamilton. Here is how just some of this works, courtesy of your tax payer’s dollars, according to The Australian:

“For instance, last year the ARC awarded a $400,000 grant to Adelaide University for a research partnership with the Beijing Institute of Aeronautical Materials, which is part of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China. Government-owned AVIC is the major supplier of military aircraft to the People’s Liberation Army Air Force.As Mr Hamilton and Mr Joske say, “when the PLA unveiled its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, it was loaded with Shenyang J-15 fighter jets built by AVIC”.The Adelaide University project is intended to help develop materials and devices that, the ARC’s proposal says, “are comfortable, quiet and energy-efficient” for use in aircraft, motor vehicles and ships. The authors point out: “It will also enhance the PLA Air Force’s capacity to improve the performance of its most sophisticated warplanes.”

     So sung the Eagles in their 1976 song “The Last Resort.” While some segments of the high tech elites are looking to abandon Earth for space: http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/stephen-hawking-warns-that-humans-must-leave-earth-in-100-years/news-story/4b979ea1ab2d0fe6f3eb68f45b0d25c0, there have come warnings that this may not be possible any time soon.     Space cadets will face the onslaught of cosmic rays once in space, outside of the protective magnetic shield of the Earth. With this will come, not super powers, as depicted in the Fantastic Four comics, but cancer: http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-06-12-astronauts-extremely-likely-to-die-from-cancer-if-they-travel-to-mars-warns-new-science-study.html. Cosmic rays will severely damage the DNA of cells, and affected cancer cells may alter near-by cells, or “bystander” cells, causing mega-mutations. Merely having thicker shields and space suits may not solve the problem, given the length of time to be spent in space, let alone staying there, forever.      We are all going to stay on this planet and see how it all pans out. No doubt, everything will come out in the wash, one way of another.

     I was not surprised to read that “ “Despite there being many illegal migrants and failed asylum seekers from North Africa and the Middle East, last year the Berlin government has overwhelmingly deported only migrants from the Balkan states”: http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/06/12/80-per-cent-migrants-deported-berlin-balkans/. For, after all, the future of Germany is to become part of the Islamic caliphate, aided and abetted by Merkel.

     I was not surprised to read that Merkel was in Mexico, saying that walls are bad, bad, bad, because, presumably, borders should not exist: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/angela-merkel-criticises-donald-trump-mexico-city-walls-us-border-infrastructure-german-chancellor-a7786116.html. She did not condemn Israel’s wall, which is working fine: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/background-and-overview-of-israel-s-security-fence. After all, the future of the United States is to be, the Disunited States of Greater Mexico.

to THE AUSTRALIAN      Civil Liberties Australia argues that Australia is not a Christian country, but Kevin Donnelly disagrees (‘We are a Christian nation’, 15/6). Each party describes Australia in the way it wishes to see it;  but the truth is that we look a bit like the ‘muddle’ that E. M. Forster saw India as being a century ago and later described in ‘A Passage to India’.

     What kind of nation should we aim to be? My answer is that we should seek to be a people who are collectively aware of the numinous and the mysterious. That is where we should primarily locate the sacred, not in theology or past works of art or acts of charity (as Donnelly does).      He wants to resuscitate a mode of Christianity that appears to be in slow terminal decline. Liberty Australia thinks to dance on its grave. Neither approach will lead to a fruitful tomorrow. Only a fresh visioning of the ‘worlds beyond’ will be sufficient.NJ, Belgrave, Vic