Obama has done it. He has brought America down. It only took him just over four years,Lord Monckton sees China prepping for final collapse of America.

The  Dollar – and the USA – is Toast
Exclusive: Lord Monckton sees China prepping for final collapse of America

WND

Obama has done it. He has brought America down. It only took him just over four years. The Republicans could have stopped him. They didn’t.

How did the nihilistic left succeed in destroying America? Simple. They learned just a little of the capitalism they hate, and they drove your nation into outright bankruptcy.

And here is what the GOP has to say about it: just about nothing.

The once-mighty United States is now the most indebted nation on Earth. In round numbers, here are just some of the vital statistics as the patient dies:

National debt: $17 trillion, or $50,000 per man, woman and child, or $150,000 per taxpayer. Annual federal deficit: $1 trillion. Medicare/Medicaid/Obama”care”: $1 trillion a year. Social Security: another $1 trillion a year. Defense: two-thirds of a trillion. Unemployment handouts: $2 billion per working day. Debt interest: $1 billion per working day. Federal pensions, ditto.

Now for the big numbers. Your government’s Social Security liability is as big as the national debt: $17 trillion. Its prescription drug liability is $22 trillion. Then there’s the Medicare liability of $86 trillion. Total unfunded liabilities of the U.S. government are $125 trillion.

Radio 2gb's Brian Wilshire speaks with Lord Christopher Monckton about China prepping for the final collapse of America. 

Net assets for each U.S. citizen are $300,000. The net liability of the U.S. government, shared among its citizens, amounts to almost four times that: $1.1 million a head. And the government’s debt is growing at $1 million every 45 seconds. To cover its annual deficit, it is printing $1 trillion a year of currency that is not backed by any asset whatsoever.

Here is what will happen next. When the crash comes, don’t say you weren’t given fair and clear warning.

First, the dollar will cease – no, make that “is already ceasing” – to be the world’s reserve currency. China, as I have been warning you she would, has realized the dollar is finished. So she is quietly making startling progress with bilateral and multilateral deals to replace the dollar with the yuan as the world’s currency of choice.

Sterling, once the world’s reserve currency, went precisely the same way in 1967 under orders from Moscow, which then largely controlled the governing Socialist Labor party in Britain.

After the Second World War, the Socialist/Communist governments of Attlee and Wilson bankrupted Britain with health-care and welfare programs and nationalization of industries. Inflation rose to 27 percent.

Obama’s copycat policies are different in only one respect. Moscow is no longer calling the shots. International totalitarianism no longer needs direction. Its cruel, hate-filled, destructive mission now advances on autopilot.

Watch some of the straws in the wind. China and Korea have come to a little-noticed agreement that international trade between them will no longer be denominated in U.S. dollars, but in yuan, or Won.

Checking China's Economic Pulse

Behind the closed mahogany doors of the world’s finance houses, elaborate and secret preparations are being made for the upheaval and international financial collapse that will follow the deliberate printing-out and consequent implosion of the dollar.

Your GOP representatives should be, but are not, asking the administration to reveal to them the ever-tougher terms on which the Chinese continue – with ever-greater reluctance –to lend money to keep their communist ally in the White House afloat.

Do not believe China cannot afford to let her biggest creditor fail. She can, she will, and she is making careful preparations to do just that.

If you thought the crash of 2008 was bad, think again. The crash that is coming –I cannot put a date on it, but it is not far away now – will be orders of magnitude worse.

So, what should you do to protect yourself and your family? First, get rid of every dollar you have. Dollars are now all but worthless. When the crash comes, they will have no value at all.

In hard times, most financial instruments – currencies, stocks, bonds – are not worth the paper they are printed on. Get rid of them now. Buy silver coins. They will quintuple in price once the crash sets in, and they are small enough to be fungible when the dollar dies.

Buy land, some of it well-wooded, some of it arable, some of it grassland. You will need the timber to power your steam tractor. Gasoline will be a costly rarity. And make sure you can defend yourselves. Starving mobs are no respecters of persons. Do what the Mormons do: Get three months’ supply of imperishable foodstuffs and hide them in the basement.

Absurd though this advice may now seem, there is a real danger that the crash will sudden. If so – perhaps for several months, and even for years – the fabric of civilization, including the food-supply chain, will fail.

It is not my custom to write in millenarian or apocalyptic terms. But the very best that can be said for your current administration is that it simply has no idea what damage it is doing. It is printing money in the vain hope of buying itself time. Yet every fake dollar that comes off the printing-presses makes the problem worse and the solution harder.

At worst, what is now happening to your nation may be deliberate. In that event, your current “president” will go down as history’s greatest villain. In any event, he will go down as history’s greatest incompetent.

Do not believe none of this can happen. Psychiatrists study what they call “normalcy bias.” People expect that everything will carry on and that America is too big to fail. She is not. She has failed. You will pay a heavy price for her failure, unless you act now to defend yourselves against what your government, with the culpable, silent acquiescence of the GOP, is doing to destroy your nation.

Finally, pray. God bless America. It has been nice knowing you. Only when you are gone will the world realize how much it misses you, and – paradoxically – how much it owes you.

Australian Woman Gang Raped then Jailed for 8 months in The United Arab Emirates

A million Australians will fly into Dubai in the coming year,don't get off the plane before you see this.

Sunday May 12, 2013

Reporter: Ross Coulthart

Producer: Ali Russell

With Dubai emerging as a major stopover point for long haul journeys, five hundred flights a month will deliver over one million of us to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the next year.

Dubai is being promoted as a luxury high-class paradise in the desert, but the reality is brutally different, as Australian Alicia Gali discovered. Gali took a job in the UAE with one of the world’s biggest hotel chains, Starwood. What happened next makes this story a must-watch for every Australian planning on travelling through the region.

Gali was using her laptop in the hotel’s staff bar when her drink was spiked. She awoke to a nightmare beyond belief: she had been savagely raped by three of her colleagues. Alone and frightened, she took herself to hospital. What Alicia didn’t know is that under the UAE’s strict sharia laws, if the perpetrator does not confess, a rapist cannot be convicted without four adult Muslim male witnesses. She was charged with having illicit sex outside marriage, and thrown in a filthy jail cell for eight months.

Now, finally home and struggling to move on with her life, Alicia breaks her silence for the first time on television to reporter Ross Coulthart.

Planning a Holiday in the UAE ? Australian Woman GANG Raped by Hotel staff in United Arab Emirates,Le Meridien Al Aqah Beach Resort.


Why Jailing Gang Rape victims is OK in Islamic countries

USEFUL LINKS

The Australian government’s advice to travellers to the UAE

A list of banned substances in the UAE, including codeine

For more information on human rights in the UAE, go to Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International.

Sunday Night emailed Alicia's employer in the UAE, Starwood Hotels, with a detailed list of questions pertaining to her case. This was their response:

“What happened in June 2008 to Alicia Gali, a former employee of Le Méridien Al Aqah hotel, was deplorable. While the hotel worked diligently on Ms. Gali’s behalf, the authorities investigated and prosecuted Ms. Gali under the local laws. Additionally, the men involved were also prosecuted and each served prison terms before being deported. As for Ms. Gali’s lawsuit against the hotel, we disagree with the allegations.

The hotel management provided support and assistance to Ms. Gali and her family throughout that time, 

including assisting with medical support and the investigation, liaising with her representative Australian embassy and coordinating and arranging affairs with her family in Australia.

Starwood’s repeated approaches to discuss Ms. Gali's claim with her attorneys have been ignored and declined. As this matter is part of an open on-going Starwood investigation and litigation commenced by Ms. Gali against Starwood and the Commonwealth of Australia, we cannot comment further at this time.

The safety and security of our associates and guests continues to be a paramount priority.”

We also contacted the Australian government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) with a detailed list of questions regarding Alicia’s case. This was their response:

"The Department rejects Ms Gali’s account of her dealings with the Australian Consulate in Dubai, as suggested in your letter of 7 May 2013. Ms Gali was provided with extensive consular assistance by the Australian Consulate in Dubai. Our consular officers do not give legal advice, but do assist Australians in trouble to obtain local legal advice.

As this matter is subject to ongoing legal proceedings, the Department is unable to respond to the questions raised in your letter or participate in the Sunday Night program. The Department will present its position as necessary during the course of the legal proceedings."

Labor's Green Loon supporters and their Anti Immunisation DEATH WISH

Immunisation debate splits communities

Jane Hansen 
The Sunday Telegraph 
May 12, 2013 12:00AM

IT'S A tale of two country towns. Both are set in rolling green hills, both have populations of a few thousand and each has a unique position on the state's immunisation table.

Bargo, in the southern highlands, has the highest immunisation rate at 100 per cent, according to the National Health Performance Review.

Mullumbimby, on the far north coast, has a level of just 46 per cent, giving it the lowest rate in the state.

With every child in the 4000-strong community of Bargo immunised against potential killers such as measles, chickenpox and whooping cough, the worst affliction a child is likely to suffer is the common cold.

Bargo's GP, Dr Tim Rankin, said the town's immunisation compliance was so high because his staff tracked down those parents who had forgotten or postponed scheduled shots for their kids.

"The credit goes to my staff, we chase them down and keep harassing them until they come in," Dr Rankin said.

"We've had some adults with whooping cough, but no child and no measles since 1985," he said.

Carolyn McCorkell, who runs the Bargo Child Care Centre, said: "We don't get outbreaks of childhood disease - no whooping cough, not chickenpox - the kids get an occasional cold, but nothing major."

Katrina Lindley, who is raising her children Jayden, 4, and Tenille, 7, in Bargo, said she is proud the town is so vigilant in battling childhood diseases.

"It's a great thing we have such a high immunisation rate because it makes the younger kids safer, those who are too young to be immunised," Mrs Lindley, 39, said.

"It's just responsible parenting, you have to protect your children, and the effects of immunisation far outweigh the risk."

But in Mullumbimby, with a population of 3000, the unvaccinated children actually outnumber those who have been immunised and the issue divides the community.

The same whooping cough outbreak that Bargo escaped claimed the lives of four-week-old Dana McCaffery, who died in 2009, and nine-week-old Kailis Smith, who died in 2011. Both babies lived near Mullumbimby.

The town recorded an infection rate four times the state average at the beginning of the epidemic in 2008-09.

Local parents said there was a lot of fear and pressure around the issue of immunisation, and the town's homeopath said his professional association had forbidden him to speak on the issue because it was too "controversial".

Dani Ilic's daughter Remy was born in the middle of the 2009 whooping cough epidemic and the death of Dana McCaffery changed her mind on immunisation.

"We just didn't think it was worth going through that epidemic if it could be bypassed by immunisation," she said, adding she is in the minority among her friends.

Sheia Kironn is a mother of two and she not only refuses vaccinations for her children, but she has never used antibiotics on them either.

"I never use pharmaceuticals, we use Chinese herbal medicine," Ms Kironn said, adding she was not surprised her town had fewer vaccinated children than unvaccinated.

"I don't know anyone who vaccinates their kids and most people who don't vaccinate are well educated," she said.

Jacob Johnson, 27, said his parents chose not to immunise him, so he made the same decision for his two-year-old daughter Nimawai.

"I wasn't vaccinated and I've done my own research and come to the conclusion it's not necessary. A strong immune system is a priority," he said. "We do homeopathic vaccination and my friends who vaccinate, their kids are always sick."

He disagreed it was an irresponsible decision.

"I don't think it's irresponsible, I think everyone has the right to their own choice," Mr Johnson said.

Mother-of-three Sam Leader vaccinates her children and said the issue divided the town.

"There is a lot of scaremongering but I believe in science and the evidence," Ms Leader, a writer, said.

Jade Coy only partially vaccinated her children Aziah, 3, and Sascha, seven months, and refused to give them the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine out of fear.

"I went online and read blogs and my brother-in-law swears the vaccination gave his daughter autism," Ms Coy said.

The now-debunked link between autism and vaccination is much publicised by the local anti-vaccination group, the AVN, but the research done 15 years ago by Andrew Wakefield was deemed scientific fraud and withdrawn.

Not that long ago I saw the likes of Sheia Kironn and her fellow Earth Mothers  in a supermarket at Byron Bay.Under Arm,Leg and Pubic  hair a plenty, protruding from the various orifices .ie singlets and cut down shorts minus bras and underpants.
With their spawn following through the isles shoplifting at will,defying observers with stares and tilts of their malformed "alien heads" mouths resplendent with what passes for teeth,arms and legs I had never seen before,followed by a barrage of gibberish, dispersed with assorted profanities and waving arms and gesticulations to ward off / intimidate those, oh so conservative shoppers,that get in the way of the Labor Green Loon Progressives as they and their spawn rampage through society.
I would NEVER pay money, (or suggest that any one else do so) or visit Byron Bay again as long as I live, based on my last experience there it's an over rated Drug Stuffed Piss Heads Dump. Yes a few good photo ops, drive In drive out, don't pay through the arse to stay there stay any where BUT there.

The Brave New World of Byron Bay,Mullumbimby,Lismore was established and funded  by via Social Security payments,the "It's Time" Whitlam Socialist Labor Loon Government of the Seventies, funded by taxpayers as a means to enshrine Hippy Crystal Gazing Green Drug Worshipping Lunacy as a norm of Australian Society.

So many Australian children were drawn into the Australian Council of Trade Unions FUNDED Australian Labor Party's "Hippy Drug Stuffed Utopia" and suffered the obvious consequences of the ALP's and their Union financiers done deal.

Some years later I did not laugh or take pleasure when the then Australian PM and former leader of the Australian Council of Trade Unions Bob Hawk,was reduced to tears as he described to the Australian media his OWN Daughters dance with his own ideologies manifestations of "Hippydum" and her HEROIN ADDICTION.

Labor's PM Hawk did not ever apologise,or publicly CRY for, the hundreds,thousands of OTHER Australians children,his holy, pious "Progressive" Australian Labor Party,funded by the Australian Council of Trade Unions, policies that facilitated the life ending addictions or instantaneous DEATHS  from their ANYTHING goes, all beliefs actions behaviours are equal and without consequence ...........so long as you vote for PM Hawks Left... after all what's more important than that?

LOOK WHO’S TALKING | Daily Telegraph Tim Blair Blog

LOOK WHO’S TALKING | Daily Telegraph Tim Blair Blog

Labor's VOTE People charged with sexual assault of three Women at Ricky Martin performance

Sri Lankan asylum seekers charged with indecent assault

Gemma Jones
Daily Telegraph

May 10, 201311:00AM

TWO Sri Lankan asylum seekers have been charged with indecent assaults on two women and a girl at a Ricky Martin performance in Sydney last night.

The women aged 39 and 31 and a 14-year-old girl were in the crowd at Parramatta Westfield when they were allegedly attacked by the men who are on bridging visas and living in the community at Westmead.

Police swooped on the Sri Lankans, aged 47 and 20.

A police spokesman has confirmed the men were asylum seekers living in the community.

They were charged with indecent assault and common assault and granted conditional bail and will be required to report daily to Parramatta police station.

The men are due to appear in Parramatta Local Court on June 26.

It is the second time a Sri Lankan asylum seeker living in the community has allegedly committed indecent assault this year after a university student was allegedly set upon in her dorm.

Victim and witness reports confirm that while one of the accused performed the assaults the other looked on laughing at the actions of his accomplice

The 14 year old girl was not in the company of the two older women

Sydney September 15 2012 Muslim Insurgency Riots : Violent Muslim rioter Mahmoud Eid behind bars

Violent Muslim rioter Mahmoud Eid behind bars

PETER BODKIN 
The Daily Telegraph 
May 09, 2013 1:54PM

A RIOTER who was in the middle of every aggressive confrontation with police during last year's violent Muslim protests in the Sydney CBD has been sent to prison for more than four years.

And a magistrate said she would have sent father-of-one Mahmoud Eid, 26, to jail for even longer if she was allowed.

The Punchbowl plumber today faced sentencing in the Downing Centre Local Court for his role in the violent protests, which included rioting, assaulting a female officer and kicking police dog "Chuck’’.

Eid handed himself in two days after being exposed in the media as one of the protestors who turned on police during the September uprising.

He kicked Chuck, who early last year helped catch fugitive Malcolm Naden, with a "full-force’’ blow in the ribs and later pushed a female constable into a flower bed as two officers tried to arrest him.

When police sifted through footage taken during the protest, they tracked him as an "active participant" in all the violent clashes with police.

The riots began as a protest against the posting of a YouTube clip mocking Islam overseas.

Eid pleaded guilty in March to the three charges and today his lawyer Elie Rahme said his client was a man who clearly struggled to "control his emotions" and "express his feeling passively".

"He joined a mob which, it appeared, had similar people in it who were poor in expressing their emotions and poor at expressing their feelings," he said.

"Instead of speaking about their feelings, they chose to lash out with violence."

Eid previously served 15 months of a two-year jail term for a reprisal attack following the 2005 Cronulla riots and he also has prior convictions for assaulting police and affray.

Mr Rahme said the community would best be served if Eid was spared another jail term so he had a chance to "rehabilitate" and deal with his "anger-management" and "impulse-control" problems.

But Deputy Chief Magistrate Jane Culver said the 26-year-old must have known the protest could turn violent - given his history at Cronulla - yet he had spent hours following the clashes around the city.

"There is no noble cause which can justify a riot where violence is used against police," she said.

"Freedom of speech cannot be a vehicle by which violence can be perpetrated."

Ms Culver sentenced Eid to a minimum of 33 months in jail with a 16-month parole period, adding she would have given him four years for the rioting alone if she wasn't restricted to a two-year term in the local court.

Eid smiled and hugged his supporters before he was taken into custody.

Omar Halaby 19 year old Muslim Insurgent / Rioter and Disability Pensioner.

Muslim rioter and vandal Omar Halaby spared jail following September 15 2012 Sydney CBD Muslim Insurgency Riots..Life on the pension is a riot for Omar

What makes the "Mufti of Sydney's Occupied Territories and his fellow insurgents "feel like we is on cloud nine" ?

Sydney's Muslim Insurgency Riots Aftermath: Spin Doctors and apologists still performing CPR on Multiculturalism.

Sydney's Occupied Territories: Four more Women arrested following Genital Mutilation of two girls

Australia Shut the Gate before it IS too late.

Green Loon says Geert Wilders not welcome in Australia

Sydney Muslim Insurgency Riots: Ahmed Elomar refused Bail again

Sydney Riots: The radicalization of Muslim children you have when you are not radicalizing Muslim Children

Sydney CBD Muslim Insurgent Riot Govt. and apologists start the SPIN

Muslim Insurgent refused Bail over Sydney CBD Riot

Australia's Freedom FROM Information Minister calls for Video Ban

The Bolt Report, September 16 2012 Pt's 1,2 and 3

Why would the Australian Government help facilitate this.......

September 15 2012 : Sydney's "Harmony Day" who's responsible ?

The Australian in this Coffin.......

Muslim Insurgents Sydney Riot latest Video and Pictures

Sydney under attack from Muslim Insurgents

Sydney's Occupied Territories erupt with bucket loads of Taqiya and Harmony Day Spin

Sydney's Occupied Territories:Sheik Shabbir Mohammedbhai Vaziri and Helen Magennis, charged with Female Genital Mutilation

Terror Australia: Terror Suspect admitted to Hospital with Stomach ( Period ? ) Pain

From Sydney's Occupied Territories: Sheik and a Nurse charged over Female Genital Mutilation

Terror Australis:Syrian linked Muslims arrested in Australian Terroro raid

More Harmony Day's Down Under

Sydney's Occupied Territories:Swaggering Muslim Rat with a Gold Tooth,Mahmoud Mariam, gets away with Murder sniggers and laughs at sentencing in Sydney Court.

Sydney's Occupied Territories:"...accidents are being staged,baseball bats used to add damage to vehicles,assessors threatened or bashed,"

1982 Sydney PA (Harmony Day celebration ? ) Bombing investigation re opened

Daniel Pipes speaks with Alan Jones

Melbourne Australia:Sudanese and Somali Refugees Crime five times that of Australians and Greens call for increased refugee intake

If only it were ONLY 10,000 predominantly Muslims massing in Malaysia preparing to invade Australia

Now it's Tamil (Tiger ?) Colonization of Australia, why not ? everyone else is brought here by the Government.

From Sydney's Occupied Territories:10,000 Muslim Insurgents mass to worship Paedophile Pirate Slave Trader and Prophet "Tonight is the Laylat al-Qadr,''

The Labor Governments Islamic Colonization of Australia continues unabated

Labor Green Loons latest Illegal entrant filled boat arrives with 211 illegal's aboard

Convicted Islamic Terrorist,Belal Saadallah Khazaal, High Court of Australia denies appeal.

Pious Muslims riot and attack Police at another Harmony Day Cultural Enrichment Ramadan Holy Festival in Sydney;s Occupied Territories

Labor Green Loon Islamic Colonization of Australia

Labor Green Loon's Islamic Colonization of Australia :Truth worse than the Fiction

Australia's Labor Green Loon Co Party Government sets new Olympic Record for Islamic Colonization of Australia 

Pious Muslims Iftikhar Ahmed, 52, and his wife Farzana Murder Daughter because she was too westernised

Malek Fahd Islamic School, Ordered to repay $9 Million to Australian Tax Payers

Bolt Report Piers Akerman Maj Gen Jim Molan Australia up for grabs

Islamic Sociopaths Inc. London on Terror alert ahead of Olympic Games.

Mohammed Fouani: Jilted man's plan to burn his girl alive

Indian "Cultural Enrichment" and "Harmony Day" ambassador Extradited to Australia to face Rape Charges

When too much of the Religion of Peace is barely enough : Shocking acts of Godless Satan inspired savagery..........

A Mothers Love ...thanks from a Daughter, when Angels live among us and quietly go about their business, surely WE can HELP, even just a little.

Dear Mum, Love Turia

Ali Smith

60 Minutes

http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8652218

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Sunday, May 12 is Mother's Day - a time to thank our mums for their unconditional love and unwavering selflessness.

Over the years, 60 Minutes has met some very special mothers and Celestine Vaite is one of them.

She's nurtured her daughter, Turia Pitt, back to health after Turia was severely burnt while competing in the Kimberley ultra-marathon.

For this Mother's Day, Turia has written her mum a letter to say "thank you".

Dear Mum book featuring Turia Pitt's letter: www.randomhouse.com.au

Turia Pitt is an advocate for DonateLife: www.donatelife.gov.au

Contribute to Turia's Making a Difference fund at makingadifference.gofundraise.com.au

If you would like to help burn victims through the Sydney Burns Foundation, download the Concord Burns Unit Donation Form here.

http://www.sswahs.nsw.gov.au/Concord/PDF/donate_advice_burnsunit.pdf

So what happened to Turia Pitt?

Alan Jones Terry McCrann on Madame Gillard and the Australian Labor Party

Mildura Brewery goes ahead with anti ANZAC "comedian" Catherine Deveny

RSL angry as Catherine Deveny comedy show goes on

Amy Harris 
The Daily Telegraph 
May 02, 2013 12:00AM



THE owners of a Mildura bar have stuck by the scheduled appearance of controversial comedian Catherine Deveny tomorrow night despite demands of a boycott following her anti-Anzac Day outburst.

Mildura Brewery co-owners Stefano DePieri and Donatta Carozza have attracted the scorn of locals and the Mildura RSL after they refused to cancel Deveny's show.

Deveny, who was famously sacked by Fairfax Media in 2010 after making disparaging comments about Rove McManus' late wife Belinda Emmett, claims she has also been the subject of death threats in the wake of comments published on her Twitter feed.

In the tweets which sparked the outcry, Deveney wrote that "Days like #anzacday are simply a rewriting of history to stop the sucked in and ripped off burning down parliament and killing politicians."

She added: "I would like to see parades, medals and glorification for survivors of domestic violence, mental illness and sexual abuse #anzacday."

Mildura RSL branch president Alec Ouchirenko said this week: "It just makes me feel sick in the stomach for someone to run down the Anzac tradition the way she is."

Ray Hadley speaks with Stefano DePieri

Gallipoli ANZAC Hero Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick and his Donkey

ANZAC Day 2013 Australia remembers it's finest

Madame Gillard's "John"

No dragons live in PM's perilous fiscal fantasy

Miranda Devine 
The Daily Telegraph 
May 01, 2013 12:00AM

'IMAGINE a wage earner, John, employed in the same job throughout the last 20 years.

"For a period in 2003 to 2007 every year his employer gave him a sizeable bonus. He was grateful but in his bones knew it wouldn't last. The bonuses did stop and John was told his income would rise by around five per cent each year over the years to come. That's the basis for his financial plans.

"Now, very late, John has been told he won't get those promised increases for the next few years but his income will get back up after that to where he was promised it would be. What is John's rational reaction?"

This was Julia Gillard's patronising attempt to explain her government's latest budget crisis. In a speech this week the Prime Minister used "John" to explain why it's the fault of everyone but her feckless spendthrift government that there will be a $12 billion revenue shortfall in the year she promised a surplus.

"John" appears to be the human embodiment of her government, two weeks before Wayne Swan hands down his fifth Budget, complete with its fifth deficit.

In the real world, a man who found his income reduced would tighten his belt. His family would look at the household budget and figure out what luxuries to give up.

Lamb might be off the menu, for instance, as would the Foxtel subscription, and the HCF membership. The holiday overseas might become a trip to the Forster caravan park. Private schools would have to wait until Year 11.

This is the sort of thrift Australian families have practised as a prudent response to global economic uncertainty, job insecurity, and a mercurial government, with household savings tripling in two years.

But the Prime Minister scoffs at such parsimony.

In "John's world" - that arcadia of protected jobs, plenty of cash and government benefits that flow like water, when John's income is cut, he doesn't curb spending.

Eat two-minute noodles for dinner? Take his kids out of private school?Perish the thought, says the PM.

He borrows money to keep his "family and lifestyle intact" because tomorrow is always another day of free money.

You can only understand John's behaviour if, like everyone in government, the public service, academia and a good deal of the media, he has a protected job sheltered from the disciplines of the market.

In the real world, mistakes have consequences, dad loses his job, incomes fall, people can't pay their mortgages, kids are pulled out of private school and belts are tightened by necessity.

The division in Australian society exploited by Gillard and Swan is not between left and right, haves and have-nots or even insiders and outsiders.

It's between those who have protected incomes and those who are exposed to the real economy - the small business owners who create wealth, the PAYE employees who work for the wealth creators.

In John's world, an 18-year-old working as a "glassie" on Anzac Day in a Balmain pub earns $550 for 11-hours work, because his employer is obliged to pay double time and three quarters under the Fair Work Act.

The result is that youth unemployment has skyrocketed to an average of 18 per cent and students can't find casual jobs once taken for granted by their parents. Only pizza delivery and off-the-books labouring is immune from the new harsh economic realities.

In the real world, bustling suburban high streets have become ghost towns on Sundays because shop and restaurant owners can't afford to pay penalty rates.

In John's world this is a "fair go" for workers.

The ABC lives in John's world, which is why it received an extra $10 million this year and reflexively spruiks for the federal government.

Take, for example, Four Corners' belated discovery of more than 1000 asylum seeker children in detention, after five years of see-no-evil journalism.

During the Howard era it couldn't focus enough on detention centres. But apart from once in 2011, it hadn't touched the subject since 2008 when it featured the reminiscences of detention centre guards in the Howard era, starring special guest villain Philip Ruddock, who had not been immigration minister for five years.

Meanwhile, the actual Rudd government was dismantling border protection policies, with the result that a trickle of two boats per month has exploded to more than 2000 people a month - and hundreds of asylum seekers have drowned. The cost to the taxpayer is more than $2.2 billion a year.

In John's world, this is a good policy. In John's world, $6 billion thrown at schools to please militant teacher unions will fix our children's declining performance in reading and maths, when evidence around the world shows little correlation between money and educational outcomes.

In John's world, the financial woes of the federal government are the fault of John Howard and Peter Costello.

In the real world, Howard and Costello inherited a budget in deficit in 1996 and left $22 billion in surplus in 2007, plus a $60 billion future fund.

Spending has blown out by 35 per cent a year since Labor came to office. Eighty cents in every dollar of income tax goes to social welfare and the government keeps promising to spend more.

Only in John's world is this sort of profligacy sustainable.

In the real world it is the road to ruin.

Money for Nothing :The Welfare State disease.

Radio 2GB's Michael McLaren speaks with Benjamin Herscovitch, Policy Analyst at The Centre for Independent Studies, who discusses the dangerous growth of the welfare state.

Better Late Than Never : The Bolt Report 21413

Remember It's "Their ABC" and why that is so.

Many years ago whilst attempting to enter a polling booth to cast my vote in an Australian federal election I was accosted by some bearded arse clown wearing an ABC tee shirt and the obligatory faux Akubra Hat and RM Williams boots,that's what these types are known to wear to prove their "Tru Blue Aussie" cred to scruffy "Tradesman types" like me,demanding I vote for one of their approved candidates as opposed to my approved candidate.
Needless to say I told him and his fellow dissidents get out of my way and POQ, as did many others in my vicinity who were also harassed by these arse clowns much to their surprise.
Some years later I was engaged in an on air radio discussion,where I coined the phrase " It's "Their ABC" in response to an in house promo by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on its Television and Radio networks that went something like "Blah Blah Blah oppose funding cuts for .........its your ABC " "...just 8 cents a day (week) is all it costs taxpayers" blah blah so keep supporting the ABC  and oppose any government that is talking about budget cuts.

Evan at eight cents a day / week it is priced way too high, back then, as it is now,the ABC is more like the public relations arm of the Australian Labor Party / Green Loons / left Independents / The Australian Council of Trade Unions / GetUp / Arse Clown Feminists / assorted Loon ratbags and Multicultural Industry free loaders,their apologists and more recently, the voice / advocate of illegal,predominantly Muslim male "immigrants" from the middle east.

The article below by Geoffrey Luck reveals how the ABC has been reduced to a plaything of the progressives paid for by the very people they hate the most... Australians.

Boston Muslim Terrorist Bombing: "Their ABC" rallies to defend their Savages of Choice,

How the left colonised the ABC

by Geoffrey Luck
Quadrant
April 27, 2013

This week The Australian newspaper gave a page to an extract from Nick Cater's forthcoming book The Lucky Culture  – and the Rise of an Australian Ruling Class. It dealt with the radicalisation of the ABC, one of the essential steps – along with the subversion of school curricula and the authority of the universities – in the progressive movement's rise to  power.

In the extract, Nick expertly traced the process by which the young turks of Current Affairs achieved their goal, defeating a disinterested and bewildered management. But Nick wasn’t here when this happened; his analysis depended on working backwards from what he sees today. As a result he misses some crucial points – he doesn’t see how management fell into a trap of its own making; he doesn’t understand how the News Division, which was intended as the bulwark against the intrusion of subversive news techniques, was hobbled by policy and therefore contributed to the fall.

It can all be laid at the feet of Talbot Duckmanton – the urbane, pipe-smoking eminence grise who ruled the ABC with an iron hand in a kid glove from 1965 until 1982. Duckmanton had begun his career as a sporting commentator, but as I realised many years later at a reception in London, he had always wanted to be a journalist. He was almost pathetic in his admiration of peers such as the BBC's Director General Charles Curran who had been a distinguished foreign correspondent.

In 1951, a year after I joined the ABC in Brisbane, Duckmanton was appointed Assistant Manager for Queensland. Despite my lowly status as a cadet, I came to his notice, leading to his assessment of me as "prickly" which he never thought necessary to review. Promotion to Manager Tasmania followed, and then a prestigious appointment to join the BBC commentary team for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. Soon after was appointed a member of the three-man team sent around the world to study television, followed by the role of Co-ordinator of television. His career was already seen as on a fast track to senior management.

What Duckmanton brought back from that television study was a profound fear of the impact of television film on broadcast standards, especially in News. In staff lectures and policy statements, the warning was given that pictures of exciting but irrelevant events could easily distort news values. Techniques then current in BBC interview programmes, such as the "talking head" that filled the screen were to be banned. "Jump cuts" - rapid transition from one frame to another scene were also out. BBC programmes which had journalists interviewing, commenting and backgrounding had alarmed him as corrupting the purity of delivered reports. It was for the ABC to provide the facts, the public to make up its mind.

So when television began in Australia in 1956, television news on the ABC was launched as radio news in vision. The reports were read in the order dictated by news values set by the Controller of News for both radio and TV; Illustration was restricted to three minutes of film in the 15-minute bulletin, and there were graphic cards to convey headline facts and figures. These sometimes got out of order – one night as director of the 7pm bulletin, I called for a card with the Prime Minister's name to be superimposed on his photograph, only to see a pair of ram's horns sprout from Mr Menzies head!

Despite bulletin restrictions, News launched two programmes of film. The first, Newsreel, scripted on overseas newsfilm flown in daily from BCINA (the British Commonwealth Newsfilm Agency, later Visnews) ran immediately after the nightly news bulletin. (I have documented elsewhere that when Four Corners began in 1960, Michael Charlton or Bob Raymond would try to steal Newsreel film from the rack in the editing room). On Sunday evenings, News presented Weekend Magazine, a 15-minute programme produced, reported and scripted by News journalists from around Australia, and later, from overseas offices. Stuart Littlemore, who featured in The Australian's photograph of the 1973 TDT team, cut his teeth in Australian television on W.E.M. This gives the lie to those – including the later current affairs teams and academics – who have promoted the false history that News journalists had no experience in broadcasting. As long ago as 1953 in Longreach, I compiled and read a daily 7-minute bulletin of regional news. I also recorded reports for News Review, the Talks Department programme on a Minifon wire recorder and later the first portable machine, the Emitape.

When Duckmanton was appointed General Manager in 1965 to succeed Sir Charles Moses, he was already acutely aware of the growing pressures to introduce a new way of backgrounding and interpreting the news. The BBC which was very much the ABC's model for broadcasting had showed the way. He was also determined to get his hands on the levers of power in news matters. The changing of the guard gave him his chance. When the Controller of News, W.S. ("Wally") Hamilton was elevated to the position of Assistant General Manager (Administration), Duckmanton did not permit him to take responsibility for News with him (as we all hoped), but appointed himself Editor in Chief. Every Friday morning, the new Controller of News, Gil Oakley, and the Directors of Radio and TV News, Russ Handley and Jack Gulley, were summoned to Broadcast House for a review of the week's output, and a briefing on policy. "The Friday Follies", they called it, and came back to their offices to pass on the latest petty dictates of a man with determined ideas, but no understanding.

It was there that Duckmanton ring-fenced the News Division, prohibiting it from expanding into the dangerous waters of what was then termed Public Affairs. News was to be the bulwark against the forces that could destroy the ABC's credibility – programmes that introduced interpretation, comment, opinion and analysis. News bulletins were to be read, reporters’ voices were not to be heard. This misinterpretation of the social forces at work, and a complete inability to comprehend how to apply journalistic training, principles and ethics in the new age, resulted in the debacle that Cater describes. Duckmanton could not separate interpretation and background from opinion; when the crisis came he had no principle or theory of news on which to rely. These are facts that you won’t find in the official ABC histories, biased as they are in favour of the Current Affairs people who swayed the historians.

In radio, The Talks Department ran parallel to News, and their paths rarely crossed. News Commentary and Notes on the News had always been written and delivered by contract outsiders, academics and specialists. Their views had been kept quite separate from the evening News Review, a 15-minute collection of reports, mostly from around Australia, by Talks officers who had been trained as broadcasters, not journalists. These, like the news bulletins were factual and un-opinionated. They contained interviews, but the programme was pre-recorded and often stale.

The dam broke in 1967 with the launch of TDT. This came about from a management power play in head office, not from a journalistic revolt as commonly believed. Ken Watts, a former schoolteacher who had come up through education broadcasting won the powerful position of head of television programmes in the managerial shuffle that followed Duckmanton’s appointment. The Commission had become alarmed at the ABC’s poor market share and was demanding brighter, more attractive programmes.

Described by the ABC’s historian Ken Inglis as having a reputation “for being ruthless, for encouraging, drinking with and promoting clever young people, and for caring about the quality and popularity of programmes,” by 1964 Watts had already assumed control of Four Corners (which had got into serious political trouble for its bias and irresponsibility). Then in1966 he proposed a daily programme of current affairs, modelled on the BBC’s Tonight show. It went to air in 1967 as TDT -This Day Tonight.  TDT. It had a huge budget, resources denied to other divisions, especially News, and with Ken Watts, who knew nothing of news, its disciplines, responsibilities or ethics as editor-in-chief. The brief was to break the mould of news reporting; its first Executive Director, New Zealander Allan Martin was given free rein. Some News journalists such as John Crew and Ken Chown, appalled that the News Division was being hog-tied to bulletins, defected to TDT.

The resultant programme - chirpy, irreverent, critical, intrusive and rude, provided a confusing mix of serious items and interviews and undergraduate humour, but it quickly won a big audience. TDT took the mickey out of politicians and soon had both ministers and ABC management on the edge of their chairs each night. It was the beginning of the new era, when ABC staff first took it upon themselves to declare what was wrong with the country; “what needs changing” as Martin said at the time. The Vietnam War, which TDT opposed, directly in comment and indirectly through choice of interviewees, accelerated the process. By 1969 the Commission was heavily criticising Watts and his TDT baby for editorialising, and mistakes of taste and judgement.

News journalists could only look on aghast as TDT became embroiled in one crisis after another – most traceable to breaches of ethics or news principles in sensationalist pursuit of ratings. There is no doubt the News Division either could or would ever have mounted such a programme. Watts was funded to the extent of a fresh team of fifty people, hand-picked from newspapers and broadcasters in Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Front man Bill Peach had been trained in the ABC but was poached from Channel 10 where he compered a current affairs programme that pre-dated TDT but like it, modelled on the BBC’s Tonight. TDT lasted until 1978, gradually smoothing its rough edges and increasing in respectability. Its contribution to broadcasting had been to crush the power of political interference in the ABC, and  making politicians answerable to the news cycle. But the other, more sinister enduring legacy had been the propensity to blur reporting and editorialising, interpreting and commenting, analysing and opinionising.

If Four Corners and TDT showed that the ABC had been careless about allowing two parallel news organisations to flourish, the launch of radio’s AM, five months after TDT, and PM two years later, proved that management did not know what it was doing. It provoked a demarcation issue that wasted resources, set off decades of hostility within the ABC over broadcast news that took the first strike by journalists to begin a rationalisation and integration.

The ABC needed a programme like AM, to bring actuality and voices to the reporting of news. It was under the command of Selwyn (“Dan”) Speight a seasoned newspaper man – a type that critics of the News Division like Tim Bowden later condescendingly described as not broadcasters. Speight however had studied the BBC’s Today programme and was sound enough a journalist to adapt to audio practices without compromising principles. He quickly saw the value of high-quality circuits available from new undersea cables to deliver voice reports and interviews about the major world events to Australian breakfast-time audiences. At the political level, a major turf war had begun – a war which the News Division’s incompetent management was unable to fight. They had missed the bus.

Wally Hamilton, no longer working from his power base as head of News, saw his journalists being side-lined. He fought against Duckmanton’s objections to establish the principle of reporters’ voice reports in radio bulletins. The grudging concession was a limited number of News circuits from overseas offices, mainly London and New York.

In 1968 I was appointed London Editor and sent off with a strong message from Hamilton to develop voice reporting for radio and increase contributions to television’s Weekend Magazine.

When I arrived, I found that the separate Current Affairs group had a nightly circuit to Sydney at 8pm and refused to allow News to send reports on it. At 8.30pm the BBC used the Sydney circuit to transmit World RoundUp, a quarter-hour collection of correspondents’ reports specially produced for the ABC. These two bookings effectively blocked News reporting. We had only two booked circuits a week – on Sunday and Tuesday nights. My protests that it was absurd to expect news to happen to our convenience on those two days met apologies, but no success in gaining access to the Current Affairs circuits when necessary.

I solved the problem by persuading the BBC to transmit World RoundUp an hour earlier, a solution that suited them since its programme was produced live, exclusively for Australia. The change meant that Current Affairs could no longer refuse to extend the circuit time for my reporters to send their voice reports. This became vital as major news stories developed – the Northern Ireland troubles, the first terrorist hi-jacking of aircraft, the 1970 British elections, the Common Market negotiations and much more.

The so-called studio in London had been built by a contractor specialising in public address systems and could not handle live broadcasts. Current Affairs staff had to first record their items, and then play the tape down the line to Sydney. The first time Wally Hamilton visited London, I persuaded him of the impracticability of a studio that couldn’t broadcast. He found me £3000 from his budget, I found a couple of moonlighting BBC engineers, and we re-built the studio to the latest standards. I was pretty sure most of the cabling and switchgear came from a BBC warehouse somewhere, but I didn’t ask.

The change in direction was not without problems. As we pumped more and more reports down the cable to Sydney, Duckmanton rebelled. Famously, he passed the message back up the line through News executives: “There’s too much talking in the bulletins!” In Sydney, the money spent leasing a new building and installing new studios with the latest switching equipment for Current Affairs had been denied to News, which had to struggle with antiquated recording gear in an inadequate booth. It could not record telephone calls. Sydney sub-editors didn’t adapt well either. Used to handling news on paper, they were incapable of editing tape on the run as inserts for the morning bulletins. So an instruction was issued that no voice report could be put to air until it had first been transcribed! Few of our London reports got to air before the 7.45am bulletin.

I returned from London in 1971 to report economic and financial news for both radio and television, and broadcast a weekly radio programme The Week in Business (TWIB). I was the only finance or economic reporter in the ABC, and Russell Warner, who had taken over the running of Public Affairs Radio in 1972, tried to attract me to work for AM and PM. So much for News journalists not being broadcasters!

News continued to train its cadets in microphone and recorder work and send its experienced reporters to overseas posts from which they broadcast – radio and television reports, special mid-year and year-end roundups and increasingly hard-hitting Weekend Magazine essays. The News/Current Affairs divide was simmering in the background.

Then came The Dismissal, November 11, 1975, and war broke out. Warner got approval from Ken Watts (who was by then Controller of Programmes) to seize the two landlines from Canberra to “cover” the event, preventing News journalists in Canberra filing copy or voicepieces. Duckmanton, self-proclaimed editor-in-chief stood idly by while this hijacking of a breaking news story by a programme unit designated as providing depth and analysis excluded the very people trained and responsible for such coverage. The three and a half hours broadcast has gone down in ABC mythology as a triumph of modern broadcasting. However, for listeners, it was a disastrous breach of the most basic rules of broadcasting, because it failed to tell them what had happened.

I was on study leave at the time and driving back into town from a field trip. On the car radio I heard an endless list of academics, constitutional experts and psephologists pontificating about the significance of something which they never stopped to explain or recap. It was hugely unintelligible. A brief news bulletin on the half hour reported that the Whitlam Government had been dismissed, but without explanation or details. The Canberra bureau could not update, political correspondent Ken Begg got one brief report out. There was no actuality sound. The event lit the fuse for a major confrontation over the responsibilities of the two sections, and in effect, the right to report news. A four-hour stop-work of journalists ensued, the first in the history of the ABC. Viewed impartially, the Dismissal broadcast was a demonstration of the power of fiefdoms, and a colossal failure of senior management.

Earlier that same year News had launched Newsvoice, a belated attempt to show how reporters around Australia and overseas could present a broadcast programme that was not a read bulletin. It was developed by Duncan Fairweather, and Terry Brown, who had reported from New York as an ABC correspondent. With no studio in the News building, they had to run up the hill with their tapes to the main Forbes Street studios – as I had to do every Friday night with TWIB.  But management quarantined Newsvoice at the dead hour of 5pm where it languished without proper support or facilities.

The crisis point was reached in 1976 when management, under Warner’s influence, decreed that Current Affairs would broadcast the National Wage Case decision. Journalists around Australia threatened to strike. It took ten days of negotiations and heated meetings to hammer out a compromise. News Division specialist reporters won the right to break the story live on air and explain the judgement; Current Affairs then interviewed politicians, unionists and businessmen. At last a sensible definition of roles was emerging, and the power of Current Affairs was broken.

Later that year, I persuaded one of Australia’s leading behavioural scientists Dr John Hunt, to conduct a seminar for News journalists to consider their future in broadcast news. Overwhelmingly, they supported the integration of News and Current Affairs; demanded the right of News journalists to report in voice and vision, and a clear delineation of the roles. They called for the Commission to recognise the initiative and endorse the principles. But the Commissioners never saw the document. Talbot Duckmanton, ever the bureaucratic manipulator, headed it off. It was to be many years before News and Current Affairs were rationalised, all ABC recruits were trained as broadcasters, and the organisation caught up, thirty or forty years late, with the rest of the world.

But the damage had been done. There is not space here to detail all the stages of insidious penetration of the ABC’s integrity: Alan Ashbolt’s Marxist influence on the young impressionables of his Special Projects Unit; the recruitment of graduates and others without the discipline of news training; the incompetence of News executives in failing to train and fight for the right, in a changing world, to provide news interpretation without opinion. Yet the principal blame falls on senior management – Talbot Duckmanton the wily mandarin intent on manipulating the Commission and keeping his nose clean; Clem Semmler the effete intellectual who wanted the ABC to remain stuck in radio aspic, Daryl Miley, the old stager of programme shuffling, Keith Mackriell and Graham White the ultimate fence-sitters, and Ken Watts, the aggressive ambitious game-changer who created programmes that trampled balance, fairness and impartiality to death in the name of news entertainment. 

Geoffrey Luck was an ABC Journalist from 1950 until 1976. During that time he was the first ABC cadet, Queensland; Journalist in Charge, Longreach; Journalist in Charge, Mt Moresby; Sub-editor National Radio News; TV News scriptwriter & director; News Editor, Papua New Guinea; Chief of Staff National Newsroom; London Editor; Economics & Finance Correspondent