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[The Canberra
Column] [Economic
Rationalism]
Day
by day reports on the Constitutional Conventional reports by Peter
Mackay
The "Man who lies" tells more porky pies
Discredited author John Pasquarelli continues to get a free ride in the News Limited media on his book "The Pauline Hanson story by the man who knows". Today we have a large article prominently placed in the Courier Mail and headed "The Man Who Knows tells all" by Jeff Summerfield. Jeff was the journalist whose story on the launch of the Helen Dodd's autorised biography on Pauline was knocked back by this paper just weeks ago..
Of course, it was only a couple of days ago that Pasquarelli was totally discredited on The Midday Show a popular Channel 9 programme. Who can ever forget those immortal words by Kerry-Anne Kennerley who said to Pasquarelli, "John you are a liar..." when they were talking about his book on Pauline Hanson.
Summerfield's article reads as follows:
"Sometimes fact is stronger than fiction," John Pasquarelli said yesterday, describing his new book about his eight months working for controversial federal MP Pauline Hanson.
Although the Member for Oxley has dismissed the book as an "opportunistic litany of lies", Mr Pasquarelli said The Pauline Hanson Story by the Man Who Knows was accurate because it was written from his diaries.
"I have kept copious diaries since I was young," he said.
"When I first went to her, I said, 'I want you to develop a habit of keeping a diary like me'. She never did."
Mr Pasquarelli said former Labor heavyweight Graham Richardson this week described the book as an interesting insight and a "must read".
"It's the story of what I think is one of the most interesting times of my life - and my life has been very interesting," Mr Pasquarelli said.
"It has varied and I think I've been lucky."
Mr Pasquarelli said he was still angry at Ms Hanson for sacking him and "if Pauline hadn't sacked me I wouldn't be writing this."
"I'm angry because of the way I was sacked," he said.
"I'm angry because I saw a wonderful opportunity squandered.
"I told her when she kicked me out of the office that she doesn't understand the word gratitude.
"It was her lack of gratitude and the fact that all her talking about openness and being frank, and all the time she was working behind my back with (One Nation national director David) Ettridge and (media adviser David) Oldfield."
Mr Pasquarelli said readers would be surprised about what went on behind the scenes.
"Her biography (released late last year) is a sanitised, sugary piece that has no value," he said.
"I kept daily records of what went on so people can make up their own minds about the truth."
Mr Pasquarelli claims in the book that Coalition MPs had made overtures to join Ms Hanson's One Nation party.
But he said yesterday Ms Hanson's current downward slide in the polls was the reason why any politician thinking of joining One Nation had "sobered up".
Mr Pasquarelli said he had no plans to get involved in politics again, although he has been approached to comment during the next election.
"By and large, I just have contempt for all politicians and Pauline Hanson is just becoming another one of them," he said.
Mr Pasquarelli said that if the book did well, he planned to release another one - a fictitious story based on fact titled The Straight Six about the Flemington racecourse.
He would go back to renovating houses if he failed as an author.
"I have been told that I am unemployable in the political arena," he said.
Mr Pasquarelli said his book was not sour grapes because it had acknowledged Ms Hanson's strengths as well as her weaknesses.
"She is still a phenomenon and the reaction to her was phenomenal and will be so until the next election," he said.
I can tell our many readers that the book
is chock full of porky-pies and distortions. Those Pasquarelli does not like,
like Barbara Hazelton (seen here on the right with Pauline Hanson) are portrayed
as dishonest and working to disrupt his role.
The authorised biography of Pauline Hanson, "Pauline, the Hanson Phenomenon" by Helen Dodd which he calls "a sugary, sanitised piece", has far more credibility than his 30 plus chapter of jumbled up stories and half-truths/lies.... just ask the Midday host she'll tell you!
It was interesting how the journalist who covered the launch of Dodd's book found that his story on this anti-Hanson book by Pasquarelli was "found to be newsworthy and relevant". For the record Pasquarelli's comment on Dodd's book is the first time that it has been referred to by the Courier Mail in any manner or form. However, you will notice that the title and the name of the author have never been put in black and white by News Limited.
The power of Murdoch's censorship.
Finally the most treacherous thing that Pasquarelli did is to publish a photograph of the five federal police who lived with her and protected her after death threats last year. The two page full colour photograph identifying them as Federal Police in the caption breaks every convention in the book.
Pasquarelli would have known that the Federal Police do not want to be identified as this jeopardises their careers and their roles as agents of protection. He would know this because he would have heard photographers being told on dozens of occasions to make sure that their faces did not appear in print.
When Pauline
came and
visited me last year with the two David's I was instructed quietly but
firmly that the Feds did not want to be photographed.
You will never see a photograph of one of
the Feds who protected Pauline in the massive on-line archives we carry on the
Hanson phenomenon - this despite the fact that they were always there.
It's all about trust a word that Pasquarelli does not understand.
The photograph on the right of myself with Vanessa, Heidi and Barbara was taken by one of the Feds... the closest they ever got to being on this archive... and the Feds might be good at protecting people but they ain't all that crash hot at taking photographs!
For the record I found the book to be total drivel... Pasquarelli reminds me of a five year old "tattle-telling" on another kid in a public park (with all the lies and distortions of what happened going with it).
Aboriginal misery is shame of Australia, says Farrakhan
Extremist Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan ended his two-day Australian tour with an attack on the Federal Government as "hypocrites" for warning him about racial laws while Aborigines lived in conditions that were "the shame of Australia".
Speaking at his last engagement at Lakemba Mosque yesterday afternoon, Mr Farrakhan, the 64-year-old leader of the Nation of Islam, told hundreds of Muslims he had seen "misery" earlier in the day at Redfern. "In Redfern today I saw misery," Mr Farrakhan said. "I came from a great country, America. But the shame of America is the native Americans who live on reservations ... and the Aborigines are the shame of Australia."
Of course Farrakhan's one-eyed view of Australia did not take in some of the squalid "white" suburbs where the residents cannot tap into the "special" social services reserved exclusively for those with a tiny proportion of Aboriginal blood.
On being briefed about Australian racial vilification laws by Federal officials in Seoul last week before being granted a limited visa, Mr Farrakhan said: "How nice of you. You told me this was a multicultural, multiracial society and no violent words can be spoken to castigate any group. But, he claimed the Aborigines are castigated not just by words but by the actions of a Government.
"You hypocrites," he said.
Earlier, Mr Farrakhan, accompanied by a 15-man bodyguard, led his entourage and Imam Tag Al-Hilali, Mufti of Australia, on a midday walk through The Block at Redfern. He greeted residents in Louis Street and bestowed his blessing on them at their doorsteps. He visited the home of an Aboriginal artist, known by residents as Jimbo Simons.
A small group of Aborigines, many calling him "brother", clapping and offering him words of encouragement, gathered to hear Mr Farrakhan's message at the Tony Mundine gym.
Mr Farrakhan, upset at being dubbed the "Minister of Hate" by his critics, accused the Government of allowing drugs and alcohol to "crush" Aborigines so they could not reclaim their country.
"Here I see the mentality of a Government that would allow the owners of this land, the Aboriginal people of the Earth, to be in this condition when everything you have you took from them," he said.
"The shame of it is that instead of helping Aborigines to realise their full potential as human beings, alcohol and drugs are sent in among a people that are already down, to crush them from ever being able to rise to take their proper place."
Of course "white" Australia is to blame for this, and the violence of Aboriginal men against their women, and the criminal acts, and the beatings that groups of Aborigines dish out to innocent white people.
How could it be any other way?
Mr Uthman Danish, an Aboriginal Muslim, was part of a group at Lakemba mosque on Saturday who invited Mr Farrakhan to Redfern.
"His visit will heighten awareness of Aboriginal issues in this country," Mr Danish said.
The Islamic minister's wife, Khadijah, trailed her husband. She was accompanied
by Tynnetta Muhammad, wife of the founder of the Nation of Islam. Mrs Muhammad
said the group would not be visiting Alice Springs as planned. It left for
New Zealand yesterday afternoon.
Australian troops not allowed into
Kuwait.
Our Special Air Service troops were given an unqualified demonstration of
how little value they were to the United States inspired build up against
Iraq.
When they arrived by plane in the Middle East yesterday they were told that
they could not land in Kuwait - where they were to be stationed - having
to land and stay in Oman. Here they will stay until the Kuwaitis (or US
bureaucrats), whose involvement President Bill Clinton has trumpeted as part
of a global show of support, are required as "cannon fodder" on Iraqi ground
while the US forces fly overhead....
OECD Steps Up Efforts On Investment Accord
By Carl Gewirtz International Herald Tribune PARIS -
Senior government officials meeting here Tuesday agreed to ''intensify their
efforts'' to reach agreement on a controversial treaty covering foreign
investments in time for signing in April at the ministerial meeting of the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Participants at the
two-day meeting about the multilateral agreement on investment said that
an accord was within reach and that everyone around the table wanted such
an agreement.
This included the 29 governments who belong to the OECD - the so-called
''rich man's club'' of the most advanced nations - as well as five
participants from the developing world, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Slovakia
and Hong Kong. But the U.S. delegation, led by the undersecretary of state,
Stuart Eizenstat, expressed reservations that the work could be finished
in time for the ministerial meeting in late April.
When completed, the treaty will be open for signature to all nations and
is expected to serve as a beacon, attracting investments to those who sign
and deflecting investments from countries that reject its provisions.
The treaty aims to establish rules protecting direct foreign investments,
which already total about $8 trillion and are growing by about $350 billion
a year, assuring foreign investors that they will be treated on an equal
footing with local investors.
To critics who have asserted that the agreement would give multinationals
too much power in the ability to override local laws, particularly on
environmental issues, the negotiators said that they had heard and understood
these concerns and that the final text would make clear that rather than
threatening environmental or labor standards, the treaty would become a vehicle
for better policies.
The negotiators said that the final text would make clear that domestic
legislation that applied to all investors would not be subject to dispute
under the treaty. On the politically charged issue of Europe's insistence
that cultural trade be excluded, officials said there was never any intention
of going back on the agreement that had been reached on this issue in a 1993
world trade agreement excluding the cultural area.
As for Europe's insistence that any agreement would have to include language
that inhibited unilateral declarations of laws to be applied internationally,
European officials said these negotiations were never intended to resolve
the dispute over the extraterritorial reach of U.S. laws regarding investments
in Iran and Libya or the use of expropriated property in Cuba. But ''a solution
to these issues seems necessary to ensure a successful outcome of the
negotiations,'' the communiqué issued at the end of the meeting said.
Suharto Fires Governor of Central Bank
Extract
from the Washington Post:
JAKARTA, Indonesia, Feb. 17—President Suharto
today fired the independent-minded governor of Indonesia's central bank,
exposing deep fissures within the country's ruling circle over economic policy
and raising new questions about the future of a $43 billion International
Monetary Fund bailout plan.
Analysts said the dismissal sent a signal that Suharto
intends to press ahead and peg the battered local currency to the U.S. dollar
over objections of the United States and the IMF. The IMF has threatened
to withhold any aid if Suharto goes through with the plan to link the
currencies.
Today we hear that the civil unrest in Indonesia is worsening. Australians
are now being warned not to travel to that country as the bite of the IMF
on decimating the old Asian tigers starts to take hold.
Subject: re : John Patterson
Dear Sir,
It seems that we have a new low-life on the scene that
would seek to terrorise innocent people with racial taunts. I have also received
the "John Patterson (Microchannel)" treatment starting last from last week.
You have been warned, wear protection, this guy is an intellectual
giant.
"SCUMBAGS"!!!!! in the subject line was the attack
from John Patterson (Microchannel)
I counter attacked with a one and a half page article
pointing out the mess that had been created in Australia over the last 22
years since the acceptance of the Lima Agreement and went on to warn of the
dangers of the MAI. All very calm and very rational.
"CONSPIRACY THEORIST RACIST SCUMBAGS"!!!!! retorted
John Patterson (Microchannel)
I told you he was an intellectual giant. One of those
ones I wrote about in an earlier letter who has to stay up all night referring
to his elementary reader to write his material.
Of course I made a rather large mistake in even bothering
to reply. If you refer to my letter of yesterday you can see that I broke
one of my own rules.
I tried to rationalise with an idiot.
Allan W. Doak
Much easier way of tackling this idiot Alan,
Microchannel have a web
page they note their Sydney contact details as follows: Sydney
- Telephone: +61 2 9906-3666 Fax: +61 2 9906-3665 Postal address: Level 1,
South Tower 407 Pacific Highway Artarmon, NSW, 2064
and Melbourne: Telephone: +61 3 9804 5344 Fax: +61 3 9804 5323 Postal
address: Level 5, 441 St Kilda Road Melbourne VIC 3004 Australia
I suggest that readers who live in these cities make a phone call to the
man in charge of these branches to complain and email me their response so
we can keep on record exactly what this company is about.
Subject: Five
questions to Australian Opposition Leader
Following on John Hermann's correspondence with Opposition
Leader Beazley, I have sent the letter shown below.
The questions raised might profitably be asked again
and again in every OECD country until satisfactorily answered.
Mr Beazley's (corporate-sponsored) party, together with
independents and members of the Australian Democrats and Australian Greens
and Greens WA, makes a (very slim) majority in the Senate.
Dion Giles Fremantle, Western Australia
Dear Mr Beazley
Mr John Hermann showed me your reply to his letter,
in which you outline your approach to the proposed Multilateral Agreement
on Investments (MAI), and I am encouraged by your prompt and comprehensive
response. I have five specific questions I would like to ask you, to clarify
the way the Opposition proposes to handle this agreement.
1. Would the Opposition oppose in both Houses of Parliament
any agreement which exposed our country to litigation by corporations over
measures to protect public health, the environment or the rights or workers?
[1]
2. Would the Opposition oppose in both Houses any agreement
which prevented an elected Australian Government from regulating international
investment in favour of investment which creates employment and against
investment to buy out existing Australian companies and "downsize" them?
3. Would the Opposition demand that any agreement on
investment commit the country for no more than six months (which is the period
of time for withdrawal from NAFTA) or otherwise vote against it in both Houses?
4. Would the Opposition insist (and vote to back up
its insistence) that "exceptions" to MAI secured by the Australian Government
be guaranteed immune from reversal through "rollback" or "grandfathering"
conditions? [2]
5. If an agreement made without the consent of both
Houses of Parliament turned out to cause serious damage to our economy in
the form of rising international debt, de-industrialisation and loss of secure
employment, would a Labour Government move to repudiate it?
Yours sincerely
Interesting that negotiations on the MAI were initiated under the Keating
government at a time when Beazley was Finance Minister. Beazley is recently
on the record of saying that "MAI is good for Australia".
Editor
Subject: One Nation Sutherland Shire Launch
Hi
You may want to note in tomorrow's news that there was
a branch launch in the Sutherland area tonight..
The turnout was 60 inside, zero outside.. The speakers
were Reg Lowder (Branch President) and David Ettridge..
Most of the meeting was devoted to the speeches, but
after those we held the nominations for branch positions (there were just
enough to go around, so no elections were necessary)
PS: You are speaking to the Vice President and Acting
Branch Secretary of the Sutherland Branch.. If you would like to contact
Reg Lowder, his son has an email account:
redwol@fl.net.au, and his phone number
(in case anyone enquires about the new branch) is (02) 9520 7399
Regards Peter Cook
Telstra is expected to make a Au$3 billion profit this financial year.
Nice news for the shareholders, but a lot of sacked employees who were victims
of "restucturing" must be less than pleased.
One wonders how long it will be before the rest of Telstra is sold off to
join the rest of the public assets now belonging to foreign investors.
Another perfect day in paradise. The summer heat seems to be breaking...
at last.
Have a good one.
See GLOBE International for
other world news.
Making
the news" -
an indepth exposé of media and political collusion at the highest
possible levels in Australia.
You say:
Dion Giles
53 Wood street
Fremantle
WA 6160
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