Academic Andrew Fraser will defy the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission by not apologising to the Sudanese community for his study linking African refugees to high crime rates.
In a landmark ruling that raises fresh questions about the limits to which academics can engage in public debate, HREOC chairman John von Doussa has found Professor Fraser's comments were unlawful because they amounted to a "sweeping generalisation" that was not backed by research. [High black crime rates are shown by ALL research!] Professor Fraser was suspended last year from teaching at Sydney's Macquarie University over his comments about Sudanese refugees in Australia. Sudanese Darfurian Union secretary Safi Hareer complained to the human rights commission that Professor Fraser breached the Racial Discrimination Act in a letter published in the Parramatta Sun newspaper. The letter said experience showed an expanding black population was a "sure-fire recipe" for increased crime and violence.
In a letter received by Professor Fraser yesterday, Mr von Doussa rejected his submission that his comments were made for "genuine academic purposes in the public interest". Mr von Doussa said while the legislation allowed for fair comment on matters of public interest and for genuine academic discussion, the comments were not made with "sufficient constraints and proportionality". Comments for academic purposes were expected to reflect standards such as balanced arguments and be well-researched, but Professor Fraser had made "sweeping generalisations" not supported by research. Mr von Doussa asked Professor Fraser to respond to Mr Hareer's demand that he publish a public apology to members of the Sudanese community acknowledging that he had engaged in unlawful conduct.
But Professor Fraser said he would not apologise to anyone. "Even those who disagree with me should be appalled at this attack on the freedom of academic debate," he said. "This gives the lie to all those politicians who've claimed that racial hatred legislation would not curb freedom of expression in Australia."....
More here. Chris Brand has an update on the similar denial of free speech to British academic Frank Ellis.
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FROM THE HEXAGON (Look at a map of France)
French government surrenders to the mob: "Students and public sector workers stage mass protests against French labour reform today, aiming to seize on a retreat by President Chirac who has been forced to relegate to the sidelines Dominique de Villepin, his Prime Minister.... M Chirac ordered the reduction of the trial period for workers younger than 26 to one year instead of two and the insertion of an obligation on employers to give an explanation if they dismissed a young employee. M de Villepin's law had sought to free employers from the constraints that are widely blamed for keeping France's youth unemployment rate at a crushing 23 per cent."
The French want to be babied: "whereas 71% of Americans, 66% of the British and 65% of Germans agreed that the free market was the best system available, the number in France was just 36%. The French seem to be uniquely hostile to the capitalist system that has made them the world's fifth richest country and generated so many first-rate French companies. This hostility appears to go deeper than resistance to painful reform, which is common to Italy and Germany too; or than a desire for a strong welfare state, which Scandinavian countries share; or even than a fondness for protectionism, which America periodically betrays."
A Frog who gets it: "The president of the world-renowned Sorbonne University has branded French students protesting about the country's new employment law "ignorant and stupid". Reacting to protests over the law, which makes it easier for employers to fire, and therefore presumably more willing to hire, young workers, Jean-Robert Pitte said the youngsters had no dreams but believed everything was due to them as a right without having to work for it. "I'm very angry about the demagogy, the ignorance and the stupidity of the young and of the French," said Dr Pitte, 56, a geography professor who has taught at Oxford and Cambridge and holds the Legion d'honneur.
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ELSEWHERE
No-taste Hillary: "Laura Bush has shaken the decorous world of America's unofficial First Ladies' club by taunting Hillary Clinton about poor housekeeping and bad taste while in the White House. Presidential wives traditionally refrain from the political pugilism of their White House partners. But with most of Washington convinced that Sen Clinton will try to emulate her husband Bill by running for the presidency in 2008, the mood has changed. These days even home furnishings are fair game. According to Laura Bush, an Intimate Portrait of the First Lady, published today, the trouble began when Mrs Clinton took the new First Lady on a tour of the White House after the 2000 election. Mrs Bush, famed for her impeccable presentation, disclosed that she was appalled by the state of the carpets and furniture in the West Wing. Many were described as frayed. Furnishings in the East Wing, the official quarters of the First Lady, looked dated, the book says. Mrs Bush was also taken aback by the garish, clashing colours of much of the decor, which included red, blue and gold".
Stuff happens, but why? : "Concentrated power is not only dangerous, it's difficult to manage. Powerful top-down organizations are at best clumsy and wasteful, at worst they are simply disastrous. Our government proves that on a daily basis. The individual players make little difference; the size and power of the system is the Achilles heel that will, sooner or later, fail. The bigger government gets, the more power it wields, the worse the results will be."
Shhh ... Don't mention the gulag: "Lost in last weekend's hubbub over the three year anniversary of the Iraq war was an anniversary from the Western hemisphere. March 18 marked the third year since the Cuban Black Spring of 2003. Tired of internal dissent, Fidel Castro dispatched his secret police that spring day to arrest 75 journalists, librarians, labor unionists and human rights activists on charges of 'anti-state' activities. According to journalist Marc Masferrer of Uncommon Sense, fifteen of the 75 have been released for health reasons. The rest remain in Castro's gulag."
EU bribes Greenlanders: "Greenland, the only place to have left the EU, will be brought back under the influence of Brussels as part of a global scramble for the mineral riches of the Arctic. Brussels will give the semiautonomous part of Denmark, which is home to 57,000 people, 43 million euro a year in return for control over policies including scientific research. Greenland has been of little geopolitical interest, 90 per cent of it being covered in ice. However, geologists believe that it has as much oil as the North Sea basin. Prospecting licences have tripled in the past three years".
For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here). I also post several times a week on "Tongue-Tied". There is an archive of my "Tongue-Tied" posts here or here
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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)
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