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01 September 2010 By Dr Gideon Polya
Australia
is the world's worst per capita greenhouse gas
polluter and has been involved in all post-1950 US
Asian wars (excess deaths 23 million). Yet major
Elephant in the Room issues such as war, climate
change and human rights abuse were off the agenda in
the recent spin-driven Australian federal election
campaign that returned a hung parliament for the first
time in 70 years.
On Saturday
21 August Australians went to the polls to elect a new
federal Government. The incumbent pro-war, pro-coal,
pro-gas, pro-Zionist Labor Government (the Labs) is
headed by post-Coup PM Julia Gillard who was installed
by an overnight pro-Zionist led Coup against former
Labor PM Kevin Rudd on 24 June 2010. Rudd was
subjected to an overnight political assassination
because his popularity had fallen from a record high
to an election-losing low. Labor is opposed by the
pro-war, pro-coal, pro-gas, pro-Zionist Liberal
Party-National Party Coalition (the Libs), these
pro-war, pro-coal, pro-gas, pro-Zionist
neoconservatives being collectively called the
Lib-Labs. The Lib-Labs were principally opposed by the
antiiwar, pro-environment, pro-human rights minor
party, the Greens.
Australia
has a compulsory and preferential voting system.
Everyone must vote or be fined. Further, in voting
for both the House of Representatives (150 seats, each
electorate representing roughly equal-sized
populations) or the Senate ( 12 seats for each
Australian state and 1 senator each for the Northern
Territory and the Australian Capital Territory ),
voters must list the candidates in order of
preference. The preferences are taken into account if
a candidate fails to win an absolute majority.
The final
election result may not be known for a week or so
because of postal votes and recounts. However the
current situation for the House of Representatives
appears to be both Labor and Coalition with 72 or 73
seats each, 1 Greens seat (the first ever) and
possibly 4 Independents. Labor got about 38% of the
primary vote, the Coalition 44%, the Greens 12% and 6%
voted informally (i.e. they spoiled their ballot or
voted incorrectly by not indicating preferences). Over
80% of Greens voters gave their second preference to
Labor so that the “2 party preferred vote” ended up
being roughly 50% for both Labor and the Coalition.
Neither the Labor or the Coalition now command a
majority and Australia now has a hung Parliament for
the first time since 1940 and will have to be governed
by a coalition. The Greens were the great winners of
these elections, gaining a House of Representatives
seat for the first time and gaining the balance of
power in the Senate with a total of 9 Senate
positions.
The 2 major
parties ran lacklustre, spin-driven campaigns that
aimed to minimize controversy and reflected their very
similar policy positions. While both parties supported
a Stimulus Package to deal with the Global Financial
Crisis (GFC), Labor strove to take credit for
Australia 's relatively healthy post-GFC position
(thanks are actually due to China 's massive purchase
of Australian raw materials) and the Coalition argued
(correctly) that the Labor Stimulus Package was
extravagant and poorly focussed. The WorkChoices
industrial laws of the previous Coalition Government
had cost it government in 2007. Labor ran a dishonest
scare campaign against the Coalition, asserting that
Coalition leader Tony Abbott was not to be trusted and
would bring back WorkChoices notwithstanding his
vehement denials and his endless assertions that WorkChoices
was “dead, buried and cremated”.
Labor and
Coalition have similar bottom-of the–barrel polices on
refugees but were differentiated by Labor wanting them
kept in camps in East Timor (although the East
Timorese have not agreed to do this) and the Coalition
preferring Nauru (the Naurans being happy to be
jailers of refugees again). The Greens campaigned
mainly on effective climate change action, decent
treatment of refugees and same-sex marriage (Labor and
the Coalition being opposed to all 3). .
An
extraordinary feature of the election campaign in
Murdochcracy and Lobbyocracy Australia was the
virtual absence of any discussion about the most
serious issues facing Australia . The major reasons
for reasons for this are (a) Murdoch News Empire
ownership of about 70% of city daily newspapers; (b) a
spineless and irresponsible Australian Broadcasting
Corporation (the ABC, Australia's equivalent of the UK
BBC) which adopts a “balanced “ position between
extreme right wing Labor and extreme right wing
Liberal-National Party Coalition; and (c) Mainstream
media and bipartisan, Lib-Lab refusal to properly
discuss these key Elephant in the Room issues.
Listed
below are 20 major matters that were effectively not
part of the national discussion in the Australian
federal elections because of the ignorance and
dishonesty of the Australian Mainstream media and
right wing politicians.
1. "Don't
mention the war" in Iraq .
UN weapons
inspectors declared both pre-invasion and
post-invasion that there were no Iraqi Weapons of Mass
Destruction. Former head of UK' s MI5 Baroness Eliza
Manningham-Buller has told the Chilcot Inquiry that
pre-invasion Iraq posed no threat to the UK and that
the Iraq War had increased the terrorism threat to
Britain (see:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-10740001 ) .
Indeed UK Deputy PM Nick Clegg has slammed the Iraq
War as "illegal" and various people have demanded war
crimes trials for Blair and Bush (most notably Nobel
Laureate Harold Pinter and outstanding expatriate
Australian writer John Pilger). The former president
of the Australian Liberal Party John Valder has
described former Liberal-National Party Coalition PM
John Howard as a war criminal over the Iraq invasion.
The previous Hawke and Keating Labor Governments were
involved in deadly Sanctions against Iraq and the
Rudd-Gillard Labor Government involved Australia in
the Iraq War for nearly 2 years (4.4 million violent
and non-violent excess deaths, 1990-2010; 2.0 million
under-5 infant deaths, 1990-2001; post-invasion
violent deaths 1.4 million, post-invasion non-violent
avoidable deaths from deprivation 1.1 million,
post-invasion under-5 infant deaths 0.8 million; and
refugees generated total 5-6 million - an Iraqi
Holocaust and an Iraqi Genocide as defined by Article
2 of the UN Genocide Convention; see “Iraqi Holocaust,
Iraqi Genocide”:
https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/
).
2. "Don't
mention the war" in Afghanistan .
The US
Alliance invasion of Afghanistan was ostensibly over
the 9-11 atrocity (although no Afghans were involved
according to the US “official version of 9-11” and the
pre-invasion Afghan Government had offered to hand
formerly US-backed Osama bin Laden to a Third
Country). PM Julia Gillard's first act as PM was to
endorse continued Australian involvement in the Afghan
War (post-invasion violent and non-violent excess
deaths, 4.5 million; post-invasion violent deaths
about 1.0 million; post-invasion under-5 infant deaths
2.4 million; post-invasion non-violent excess deaths
from deprivation refugees 3-4 million plus a further
2.5 million Pashtun refugees generated by the US
Alliance in NW Pakistan - an Afghan Holocaust and
Afghan Genocide according to Article 2 of the UN
Genocide Convention; see “Afghan Holocaust, Afghan
Genocide”:
https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/
) .
3. The US
did 9-11 (very likely with Israeli involvement).
Eminent
intelligence experts have made it clear that the US
must have been involved in the 9-11 atrocity. Indeed
former Italian President and intelligence intimate
Professor Francesco Cossiga asserts that both Israel
and the US were involved and eminent UK Middle East
journalist Alan Hart believes that the US did 9-11
and very likely with Israeli involvement. Intelligence
intimates former German Minister Andreas von
Bülow and General Leonid Ivashov (former head of the
Russian defence forces) ascribe the 9-11 atrocity to
the US as does Major General Albert N. Stubblebine
(former Commanding General of the United
States Army Intelligence and Security Command, INSCOM).
“Loaded gun” evidence for US involvement has been
provided by Professor Niels Harrit and colleagues from
the Chemistry Department, 9-Nobel-Laureate University
of Copenhagen, who founded unexploded nanothermite
high explosive in all samples of the World Trade
Center dust they examined by state of the art chemical
physics techniques (see:
http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article19999 ).
Yet the opinions of these eminent intelligence
experts and scientyists is completely censored out in
pro-Zionist and pro-US Australia . The closest this
came to being discussed in the Australian elections
was through leaks that Rudd and Gillard had skipped
National SecurityCommittee meetings, Gillard sending
along her bodyguard to take notes. The real issue of
deadly dereliction of duty (and possible traitorous
dereliction of duty) by Australian politicians and
public servants was not discussed in the election
campaign.
4.
Violation of Australians and Australian sovereignty by
Israeli state terrorists and Australian Israeli state
terrorists.
While
Australian sovereignty and border security were key
“dog whistling” anti-Arab anti-Semitism and xenophobia
election issues in relation to several thousand
desperate refugees reaching Australian waters by boat
each year, a key issue utterly ignored by pro-Zionist
media and politicians was the failure of the Rudd and
Gillard Labor Governments to act against those
Australians, dual citizen Israeli Australians and
other Israelis involved in Israeli terrorism against
Australia, most notably the routine forging of
Australian passports for terrorist purposes (e.g. the
Dubai assassination) and the violent and murderous
piracy against 5 Australians in international waters
(5 Australian victims, 3 of them women, 1 woman
tasered, 1 man shot and all violently kidnapped,
robbed and falsely imprisoned in a foreign country by
Israeli terrorists, including 3 Australian Israeli
terrorists). Essential inaction by the Rudd-Gillard
Government involved expulsion of an Israeli diplomat
over the forged passports affair and using the word
“deplorable” over the Israeli attack on the Gaza Aid
Flotilla in international waters.
5. 50
racist Zionist threats to Australia .
Further to
item #4, a detailed dossier has been sent to the
Australian Federal Police and to key MPs and media
detailing 50 ways in which Australian, Australian
Israeli and Israeli racist Zionists threaten
Australians and Australian sovereignty (see:
https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/2010-summary-racist-zionism
and
https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/racist-zionism-and-israeli
) . The silence has been deafening. Cowardly,
irresponsible, dishonest and intrinsically traitorous
Australian MPs, journalists and public servants ignore
crimes and threats against Australia in deference to
domestic racist Zionists (RZs), to the nuclear
terrorist rogue state of Apartheid Israel and to
racist Zionist-dominated America .
6. Ongoing
Aboriginal Genocide.
It is
estimated from medical epidemiological data that 9,000
Indigenous Australians die avoidably each year linked
to Third World living conditions and a 2- to 3-fold
under-funding of Aboriginal Health. Yet this ongoing
Aboriginal Genocide was ignored in the farcical,
look-the-other-way Australia federal election campaign
(see Aboriginal Genocide:
https://sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/
).
7. Deaths
of Australians from fossil fuel burning.
From simple
proportional estimation using Ontario, Canada data,
circa 5,000 Australians die every year from the
effects of pollutants from coal burning and over
1,000 Australians die each year from the effects of
petrol and diesel burning pollutants (see:
https://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/how-many-people-die-from-carbon-burning-and-climate-change-each-year
).
8.
US-linked Australian drug deaths.
About 350
Australians die each year linked to Lib-Lab Australian
and US Alliance restoration of the Taliban-destroyed
Afghan opium industry from 6% of world market share in
2001 to over 90% today. About 3,000 Australians have
died from opiate drug-related causes since 2001 due to
Australian Lib-Lab Afghan war policies (see UNODC
World Drug Report; see:
http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article19234 ).
9. War
crimes and passive mass infanticide.
Further to
points #1 and #2, under-5 infant deaths total 2.0
million (Iraq, 1990-2010) and 2.4 million
(Afghanistan, 2001-2010), 90% avoidable and due to
gross US Alliance violation of the Geneva Convention
through war criminal imposition of horrendous
deprivation, variously through bombing, sanctions,
occupation and war.
10.
.Lib-Lab betrayal of Australian children due to gross
under-funding of Government schools.
Educated
and informed parents in Australia know that they must
spend several hundred thousand dollars to buy into a
“good” neighbourhood with a good Government school or
spend about $100,000 per child sending their children
to a good private school. The majority of Australian
children going to grossly under-funded Government
schools are disproportionately excluded from
university, good universities and good courses.
Consult the "My School" site (see:
http://www.myschool.edu.au/ ) and you will quickly
discover that more than twice as many children from a
top Melbourne private school get to university (61%)
as compared to children from a particular impoverished
Melbourne Government school (30%) - and this ignores
consideration of which course at which university
(e.g. medicine or law at the University of Melbourne).
11. Sexual
abuse of Australian children.
It is
reported that 34% of Australian women and 16% of
Australian men have been sexually abused as children
(see p235, the “Little Children Are Sacred” Report:
http://www.inquirysaac.nt.gov.au/pdf/bipacsa_final_report.pdf
). While the expert “Little Children Are Sacred
Report” stated (p57) that “it is not possible to
accurately estimate the extent of child sexual abuse
in the Northern Territory 's Aboriginal communities”,
the Indigenous Community was specifically and
extensively singled out in this respect in the
Mainstream media and Parliament. The massive sexual
abuse of Australia children was of course ignored in
the election campaign.
12. Debt
and intergenerational justice.
The
organization GetUp successfully intervened in the
Courts to ensure that many new voters could be
enrolled before the election. However missing from the
election campaign were the issues of debt being
imposed upon young Australians. Thus many relatively
young voters facing or bearing HECS debts were unaware
that they are being charged 10 times too much for
their undergraduate tuition which is being currently
provided in some instances by casual academic teachers
for about 10% of the cost of such teaching provided by
full-time academic staff. While the Opposition Libs
drew attention to the huge Labor Stimulus Package
debt, this criticism was muted by the reality that
the Libs would have done much the same (albeit with
less and better focussed expenditure). There was no
mention of the Young Australians who will have to
service Labor's huge Stimulus Package debt.
13.
Reparations debt from the War on Terror.
As
estimated above in items #1 and #2, about 8 million
people have died avoidably due to the US Alliance War
on Terror. At a A$10 million valuation of a human
life (US EPA) and assuming that “all men are created
equal”, the US Alliance War on Terror Debt is now 8
million dead x A$10 million per person = A$80
trillion.
14. US
Alliance creation of refugees.
A major
issue in the election campaign was what to do with the
several thousand desperate refugees who enter
Australian waters by boat each year. For civilized
people like the Greens the answer is simply to treat
them humanely and process their refugee applications
properly and quickly. For the human rights-abusing
Lib-Labs the issue became the basis of a “dog
whistling”, xenophobic campaign. While there are
50,000 illegal immigrants in Australia who have come
here by plane, the boat-borne asylum seekers are not
illegal and have suffered great privations. However
the Lib-Labs have evidently done little about the
50,000 illegals while falsely describing the boat
refugees as illegal arrivals. In a bipartisan exercise
in utter hypocrisy the Lib-Labs express great sympathy
for the asylum seekers and apply great vitriol to the
so-called “people smugglers” who try to find safe
haven for the asylum seekers that the Lib-Labs
persecute and imprison The pre-Coup Labor PM Kevin
Rudd described the so-called “people smugglers” as
“scum of the earth” who “should rot in hell”. However
this raises the question of how one should describe
the Israelis, Australians and US Alliance warmongers
who have created 22 million Muslim refugees in the
first place (the breakdown being 2 million Somalis, 7
million Palestinians, 5-6 million Iraqis, 3-4 million
Afghans and 2.5 million NW Pakistani Pashtuns).
15. Passive
murder of refugees.
While the
Libs have a policy of transferring asylum seekers
from Australian territory (excess mortality rate 0.0%)
to Nauru (excess mortality rate circa 0.0%), Labor
proposes to transfer refugees to East Timor (excess
mortality 0.92%, 2003 data, one of the worst in the
world) i.e. Labor policy involves transferring
refugees from the best to the worst excess mortality
environment in the World. This horrible reality was
lost even on the Libs during the election campaign.
16. Human
rights violation of Aborigines and refugees.
The
Lib-Labs grossly violated Australian law by removing
Northern Territory Indigenous Australians
(Aboriginals, Aborigjnes) from the protection of the
1975 Racial Discrimination Act. Labor went further
under Rudd and Gillard by suspending the human
rights of Afghan refugees fleeing the Afghan Genocide
and Tamil refugees fleeing the Tamil Genocide in Sri
Lanka . These measures raised the ire of Amnesty and
UN Human Rights officials but were not Lib-Lab
election issues.
17.
Under-employment and under-utilisation.
While Labor
falsely scaremongered about a return to the draconian
Lib WorkChoices regime and the Libs countered by
repeatedly declaring that these draconian industrial
laws were “dead, buried and cremated”, what went
unnoticed was that the under-employment (or under-utilisation
rate) had soared under Labor from about 10% in 2008 to
over 15% in 2010. For casual workers under Labor
hiring is basically a matter of take it or leave it.
18. Climate
change inaction by Lib-Labs.
The
pro-coal, do-nothing Libs made political capital over
the pro-coal, do-nothing Labor backflip over climate
change action that Rudd had described as the “greatest
moral challenge of our time” – several months before
the election PM Rudd declared that having done nothing
for nearly 3 years they would do nothing for a
further 2 years if re-elected. PM Gillars subsequently
re-iterated this irresponsible position. However Lib
criticism was necessarily muted because the pro-coal
Libs won't do anything either. Both the Libs and Labs
have a derisory policy of “5% off 2000 greenhouse gas
(GHG) pollution by 2020”. Australia 's Domestic plus
Exported GHG pollution in 2009-2010 was over 4.3%
higher than that under the Libs in 2006-2007.
19. ETS
fraud and exclusion of agriculture from greenhouse gas
(GHG) pollution reduction.
The former
Lib leader Malcolm Turnbull and former Labor PM Kevin
Rudd came to an agreement over a Carbon Trading
Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) in 2009. Unfortunately
the Rudd-Turnbull ETS was appalling in 3 respects: (a)
the ETS approach has been slammed by top scientists
and economists as empirically ineffective, dangerously
counterproductive and inherently fraudulent (see:
https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/sciennce-economics-experts-carbon-tax-needed-not-carbon-trading
); (b) the Australian ETS was falsely named the
Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme because it will
actually increase Australia's Domestic plus Exported
GHG pollution (see:
https://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/post-copenhagen-australia
) ; and (c) World Bank analysts have estimated
that annual GHG pollution is 50% bigger than hitherto
thought and that livestock is responsible for over
51% of the bigger figure (see:
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6294 ). However the
Rudd-Turnbull compromise proposed to permanently
exclude agriculture from any GHG reductions –
permanently leaving over 51% of the problem
unaddressed forever.
20. 300
parts per million CO2 and Climate Genocide.
Top climate
scientists (including the UK Royal Society Coral
Working Group) advocate an urgent return of
atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration from
the present dangerous and damaging 392 ppm to 300
parts per million for a safe planet for all peoples
and all species (see:
https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/300-org---return-atmosphere-co2-to-300-ppm
). Top scientists have advised that "delay is not
an option" (255 members of the prestigious US National
Academy of Science, 2010) and "inaction is
inexcusable" (Synthesis Report of the 2,500-delegate
March 2009 Copenhagen Scientific Climate Change
Conference). The Lib-Labs don't merely have a policy
of inaction and a continuing increase in GHG
pollution, they ignore the demand of top climate
scientists that we need to have negative CO2
emissions. They also ignored in the election campaign
the dire predictions of both Dr James Lovelock FRS
(Gaia hypothesis) and Professor Kevin Anderson (
Director, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research,
University of Manchester, UK) who recently estimated
that fewer than 1 billion people will survive this
century due to unaddressed, man-made global warming –
noting that the world population is expected to reach
9.5 billion by 2050, these estimates translate to a
climate genocide involving deaths of 10 billion people
this century, this including 6 billion under-5 year
old infants, 3 billion Muslims in a terminal Muslim
Holocaust, 2 billion Indians, 1.3 billion non-Arab
Africans, 0.5 billion Bengalis, 0.3 billion Pakistanis
and 0.3 billion Bangladeshis (see Climate Genocide:
https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ ).
Conclusion.
The
appalling catalogue above of major Elephant in the
Room issues that were ignored by the Lib-Labs and the
Mainstream media in the recent Australian election
campaign reveals the extent of spin and dishonesty in
right wing Australian politics. Even the
ignorance-plus-greed-characterized Australian
electorate finally realized that they were being
grossly deceived by the Lib-Labs in the 2010 Federal
election campaign, denying both the Libs and the Labs
a majority in the house of Representatives. The great
hope from these latest Australian elections was a
substantial increase in support for the anti-war,
pro-environment, pro-human rights Greens. Hopefully
this is the beginning of the end for the pro-war,
pro-coal, human rights-abusing, environment-abusing,
anti-science Lib-Labs and the end for anti-science,
spin-based politics in Australia .
If
look-the-other-way, war criminal, climate criminal,
politically correct racist (PC racist), pro-US,
pro-Zionist Apartheid Australia doesn't clean up its
act then the World will insist that it does, just as
the world successfully acted against Apartheid South
Africa and is slowly advancing sanctions and boycotts
against Apartheid Israel..
Already 22
million people (about 9.5 million of them under-5 year
old infants) die avoidably every year due to
deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease – and
man-made global warming is already clearly worsening
this global avoidable mortality holocaust. However 10
billion avoidable deaths due to global warming this
century will yield an average annual avoidable death
rate this century of 100 million per year. Australia
is disproportionately culpable. “Annual per capita
greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution” in units of “tonnes CO
2 -equivalent per person per year” (2005-2008 data) is
0.9 (Bangladesh), 0.9 (Pakistan), 2.2 (India), less
than 3 (many African and Island countries), 3.2 (the
Developing World), 5.5 (China), 6.7 (the World), 11
(Europe), 16 (the Developed World), 27 (the US) and 30
(Australia; or 54 if Australia's huge Exported CO 2
pollution is included).
Unfortunately, just like Apartheid South Africa and
Apartheid Israel , Apartheid Australia is locked into
immoral, racist and deadly policies. Australia has
been described as a mountain of coal and iron ore in a
sea of natural gas and the unspoken promise in the
2010 Australian Federal elections was Business As
Usual (BAU) with Domestic and Exported GHG pollution
until the world forces Australia to stop. If
dog-in-the–manager Apartheid Australia fails to
rapidly reduce its world leading per capita GHG
pollution then it will inevitably face Sanctions,
Boycotts, Green Tariffs and criminal prosecutions
before the International Criminal Court. All decent
Australains are morally obliged to support the Greens.
Dr Gideon Polya
currently
teaches science students at a major Australian
university. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade
scientific career, most recently a huge
pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of
Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor &
Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has recently
published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality
since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007:
http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also
his contribution “Australian complicity in Iraq mass
mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited
by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007):
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm
). He has just published a revised and updated
2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the
Black Hole of British History” (see:
http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-,
globalization- and climate-driven global food price
increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than
the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed
6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2
Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr
Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen
and others:
http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/ |