Menzies House

Gutless sellouts should be remembered

Where are our spineless politicians when Australia needs to stand up, defend democracy, and rail against militant Muslims? Geert Wilbers is an elected member of Dutch Parliament, not a criminal and as such deserves the right to speak in Australia. His audience should be the deciders of his delivery, certainly not commercial enterprises driven by fear. Threats from a handful of rabid militants is not good enough.

The Dutch politician's tour has moved beyond freedom to speak in Australia, it is now a shameful surrender of law and order by our politicians and our police to a violent few who have discovered exactly how to hijack a society of 22.6 million. What will be their next assault upon majority rights? The international media will run with this story and based on Europe's experience of violent Islamists it will be a gutless image of the "fair go" land down under. Shame, shame! GC.Ed.

...What is not contested is that a dangerous Islamic fringe is active in numerous countries. Wilders will be accompanied to Australia by five Dutch police officers. He lives under permanent 24-hour security.

Fear has arrived here before him. On Wednesday, the organiser of the tour, Debbie Robinson, told me yet another venue had cancelled and there had been another act of corporate suppression directed at the tour.

'This morning the venue in Sydney cancelled. There was a meltdown. The events manager at the venue was screaming. Right now we have no Sydney venue.''

It was not her only setback. ''Yesterday PayPal froze the funds in the account that is processing ticket sales. They will not tell me why. All staff keep saying is the account is under review. It's been like an Orwellian nightmare.''

This follows a refusal by Westpac to allow her to set up a payment system and refusal by more than a dozen venues to host a Wilders event, citing security concerns.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/fear-doesnt-need-a-visa-and-its-on-tour-already-20130206-2dyki.html#ixzz2K9adJCuP

When to shoot?

Geoff Crocker Ed.

Damned if you do, perhaps dead if you don't. Put your hand up if you want to try your luck at being a cop, even for a day?

The past decade has witnessed a new breed of criminal. They are brazen, ruthless, armed and have no hesitation in killing, including police officers. Not so long ago three scumbags armed with machetes were knocking over a Sydney pub when police intercepted them. The result: One punk shot dead, one wounded and one on the run. The police officers were lucky, they went home to their families that day.

Society is again put on notice that too many police officers don’t go home after their shift. Considering the many hassles police endure while on duty it’s a wonder anybody would want the job.

If only for the time spent reading this column, place yourself in a police officer’s boots, but to understand how they fit, you need to know a few things.

In June 1997, police fired at Frenchman Roni Levi on Bondi Beach. Mr. Levi died in hospital shortly thereafter.

Although circumstances of the incident were not known at the time, that did not stop the do-gooders and bleeding hearts from launching vicious and insensitive attacks against the police involved, to the point of violating privacy and hounding their wives.

Amsterdam leads the way with troublemakers

Geert Wilders is the Dutch politician who has dared to stand against the Islamisation of Holland. He was to speak in Australia late last year but had to postpone because the Gillard government stalled his visa. A far better option for Labor's dwindling political fortunes would have been to take Wilders on board and give McTernin the boot.

Wilders' Australian visit here.

Amsterdam is to create villages where nuisance neighbours and anti-social tenants will be exiled from the city and rehoused in caravans or containers with "minimal services" under constant police supervision.

The new camps have been dubbed "scum villages" because the plan echoes a proposal from Geert Wilders, the leader of a populist right-wing party, for special units to deal with persistent troublemakers.

"Repeat offenders should be forcibly removed from their neighbourhood and sent to a village for scum," he suggested last year. "Put all the trash together."

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/amsterdam-to-expel-nuisance-neighbours-20121204-2ars4.html#ixzz2E7M2b0Pi

(Thanks reader Abe)

Not in Australia old mate!

"Only in America," you might say.

Imagine the reverse being said here. "Once you vote white you'll always be right!"

That noise you hear is judge Bromberg unfurling the court's cat-o-nine-tails, affectionately known as 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act.

When the Nanny State Starts Attacking Nannies

Bill Muehlenberg says we live in an age where we see evidence of cultural decline, the erosion of values...

OK, just a very short and sweet post here. I have written before about the nanny state and how big government feeds on itself, getting bigger and badder. Bureaucracies mushroom, egos expand, and freedoms lessen and shrink. The ever-increasing state gets more and more irrational as it thinks it must intrude into every area of life.

The trouble with soft totalitarianism is that it soon mushrooms into hard totalitarianism. Today’s bureaucracy on steroids becomes tomorrow’s Stazi or KGB. So keeping the state in check is an on-going work, one which must constantly and doggedly be engaged in. Or as has been said before, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance”.

Anatomy of a Conservative

Philip Lillingston uses the case of double jeopardy reform to argue that politics should be about conviction, not pragmitism:

“Ya see, there once was this conservative party in opposition and the government of the day introduced a Pacify the Gods Act wherein every month 50 virgins had to be sacrificed on a high alter at the town square. The people were really up in arms against this and the conservative party, having political nous, saw their opportunity. While ensuring to not appear extremist, at the next election they ran on a platform of changing the law such that only 25 virgins would be sacrificed every month.”

Even though I first read that joke over twenty years ago in an American journal, I think the sentiment is unfortunately still true today. Last September I was fortunate enough to have a post published on this site explaining how the upcoming reforms to the Double Jeopardy law in Victoria had so many ‘safeguards to protect the fundamental principle’ that their effectiveness was virtually zero. Alas that bill without modifications is now law in Victoria and about to be in WA. As much as that ship has sailed I have become interested in how some politicians can be so full of consensus in their law making, that what results is of so little consequence.

The basic tenet of double jeopardy is that once a jury has acquitted the accused in a fair trial then that’s the end to it; finality. Victorian A.G. Robert Clark displayed agreement  in a press release stating “The rule of double jeopardy is an important principle to protect innocent citizens from repeated prosecutions… and … provide[s] certainty and finality in the courts.” Fair enough. But then came the “but”. However if it was a serious crime and the accused is highly likely to be guilty, then that’s different.

But how exactly, can that be different?

The great double jeopardy reform con

New double jeopardy reforms in Victoria must be void of the loopholes seen in other states, writes Philip Lillingston.

Those who live in Victoria may have noticed in the news recently talk about bringing acquitted suspects (such as those accused of the infamous 23 year old Walsh Street police killings) back to face justice, due to upcoming legislative action to reform the law known as double jeopardy.  Victoria is one of the last two Australian states to have not changed the law that grants immunity from further prosecution for those acquitted of any crime, immaterial of any new evidence that comes forward and, incredibly, even of evidence of abuse of process such as bribery, coercion or jury tampering in the original trial. Premier Baillieu and Attorney-General Clark, abiding by an election promise, are claiming credit for this proposed reform to bring better justice for the Victorian community.

There is just one problem.

Graffiti & Broken Windows

The Hon. Dr. Peter Phelps MLC discusses the social costs of graffitti, and how the 'broken window' theory of crime was justified: 

Graffiti has been around a long time. The inscriptions found at the recovered city of Pompeii range from the rather moronic but pointed "imanis metula es" through to "Lahis felat asses duo", which, if true, is remarkable value for money. There was also "Cosmus Equitiaes magnus cinaedus et fellator est suris apertis", which shows that gay vilification as part of derogatory graffiti has occurred for many thousands of years. Finally there is the redoubtable "Sabina felas, no belle faces", which not only shows that even 2,000 years ago graffitists could not spell but they had very poor grammar. We laugh at this but it is a serious matter. Simply because it has been around a long time does not justify it.

I would like to discuss the reason why we take graffiti so seriously. I draw attention particularly to what has come to be known as the broken windows theory. First propounded in 1982 in an article in the Atlantic Monthly by George Kelling and another person, it looked at the incidence of graffiti and general disorder and whether that led to further disorder in the community. Their conclusion was that it did, and that was expanded further in 1996 when Kelling and Cole's book Fixing Broken Windows was published. 

The reason the state of the urban environment might affect crime—and, indeed, a poor urban environment of which graffiti is a part affects crime—can be due to three factors. The first factor is social norms and conformity; secondly, the presence or lack of monitoring; and, further, social signalling and signal crime. A major factor in determining individual behaviour is social norms, internalised rules about the appropriate way to act in a certain situation. Humans constantly monitor other people and their environment to determine what is the correct norm for their behaviour in a given situation. They also monitor others to make sure that the others act in acceptable ways. In other words, people do as others do and the group makes sure that the rules are followed.