THE GRIFFITH IMBROGLIO CONTINUES

Two articles below:

Labor Party appointee defends Muslim-loving academic incompetent

Her nomination to the governorship was part of an entrenched determination by the Queensland Labor party to appoint women to high office. I don't know much about her political background but old Commos did on occasions name their daughters "Leneen" or "Lenine" -- after V.I. Lenin

The guy she is defending has some reputation for getting to the top through sycophancy rather than through any other talent. He has certainly shown no talent lately.

Note that Queensland District Court judge Clive Wall has said the Saudi connection is turning the university into a "madrassa"

Griffith University Chancellor Leneen Forde strongly defended the university's Vice-Chancellor Ian O'Connor yesterday after he admitted material he used to counter an attack on Griffith's Islamic Research Unit was lifted from the internet. The former Queensland governor said she had complete confidence in Mr O'Connor, who has vigorously backed a decision to accept a $100,000 donation from the Saudi Arabian Government to support the centre.

However an article defending the donation, written under Mr O'Connor's name, included two sentences lifted from Wikipedia without attribution. He said in a statement that the article was "based on material provided by senior staff" and "in pulling it together a small number of sentences were not directly attributed". "This was not intentional."

Ms Forde said he had acknowledged the action was inappropriate and in a statement to university staff said the article was "drafted in haste" in response to a "highly slanted version of events" published by The Australian newspaper. As a result it was not checked "as thoroughly" as desired.

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Jihad body linked to begging university

THE Muslim cleric at the centre of Griffith University's Saudi embassy donation affair - Mohamad Abdalla - is regarded as the Brisbane leader of an Islamic group whose overseas members have been linked to al-Qaeda and the 2005 London bombings. Dr Abdalla, who has refused to be drawn on the Tablighi Jamaat group, has been identified as its Brisbane head by Muslim community figures, including prominent Islamic leader Fadi Rahman. "He's the head of Tablighi in Brisbane," said Mr Rahman, who attended the 2020 Summit as a delegate with Dr Abdalla. "I know Mohamad Abdalla very well," he said.

While Griffith University denied Dr Abdalla was a Tablighi leader, it praised the group - which has been investigated and cleared by ASIO - as a "peaceful movement" that provided spiritual support to disadvantaged community members. The university also said some Tablighi members attended Dr Abdalla's Brisbane mosque.

"Based on advice we have received from a number of Queensland Muslim organisations, the group Tablighi Jamaat is not a sect, is not secretive, is not political, is not violent," the university said in a statement issued last night. "It is in fact a peaceful movement with the social justice aim of helping Muslims become better Muslims. "Dr Mohamad Abdalla is not ... the leader of Tablighi Jamaat in Brisbane. "Dr Abdalla, as a leading imam in the Brisbane community, is associated with a number of groups openly involved with Brisbane's mosques. "This group is among more than 20 ethnic groups openly associated with Dr Abdalla's own mosque."

The Australian revealed last week that Dr Abdalla, director of Griffith's Islamic Research Unit, helped the university apply for a $1.37 million grant from the Saudi embassy - of which the institution received only $100,000 - and offered the Saudi ambassador a chance to keep elements of the donation a secret. The university said Dr Abdalla had in the past week received strong support from Queensland Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson, Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Susan Booth and "leaders from both the Jewish and Christian communities of Brisbane".

The Tablighi's non-violent teachings about the importance of the afterlife had left some young followers susceptible to recruitment by terrorist outfits as suicide-bombers, said former Howard government adviser Ameer Ali. "They are not violent, they don't preach violence. But their mind is set - they've prepared the minds of the youngsters who can be trapped by the jihadis and terrorists," he said. "So when the jihadis say are you prepared to go to heaven ... it carries with their thinking because they are not interested in this world, they believe (their) future is in the next world."

Dr Abdalla refused to answer questions about his connection with the Tablighi when interviewed by The Australian, except to say membership of the group was not controversial. Muslim leaders have urged Griffith University to return the Saudi grant.

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Victoria's Keystone Kops traumatize innocent man -- with not even an apology

Look at the cowardly creeps below



He was probably lucky the media were present. He should sue the pants off the Victoria police

A quiet afternoon at home turned into "something from the movies" for Brad Triptree yesterday afternoon when he looked out of his Frankston house. The 22-year-old nurse was sitting at his computer when he heard a police megaphone outside his house. Mr Triptree told the Herald Sun it didn't cross his mind at first that the police were talking to him. "I heard 'Come out of your house' just like they do in the movies, but I didn't know who they were talking to," he said.

"I was nervous as hell when I realised they meant me -- my legs went all shaky. "My name's not Dave -- they were saying something like that, so I knew they had got the wrong person." Police officers apparently mistook Mr Triptree for a suspect involved in the shooting of a Frankston mother of two yesterday morning. Officers pointed guns at Mr Triptree's head and pushed him to the ground outside his apartment complex in front of the media before they let him go.

Mr Triptree, who only moved into his Burns St home three days ago said he hadn't been able to relax since his terrifying ordeal. "I just did what they told me to do," he said. "They were carrying very big guns. "I've never seen guns like that before -- it's the first time I've ever seen a gun. "I'm still shaking now."

Mr Triptree said he was puzzled about why he was a target for police. "They said they had a phone trace from this address but I don't even have a phone connected," he said. "They were just saying that." After police let Mr Triptree go, he said they acted like nothing had happened. "They didn't even say they had made a mistake. "I'm angry, my phone's been going non-stop and I haven't heard a thing from the police. "I haven't got an apology. They let me go back into my house and that was it. "It was as if they were doing me a favour."

Mr Triptree said he could not believe how different he was from the police description of the wanted man he heard on the evening news. "They're looking for a grey-haired guy in his 60s -- I don't look anything like that," he said. "I don't know what they were thinking." After his ordeal, Mr Triptree said he went to his grandparents' home nearby, where he would be staying for the next few days. Mr Triptree said both his mother in Queensland and his elderly grandmother in Frankston had found it hard to believe he had been involved in the drama. Mr Triptree said he did not know any of his neighbours on Burns St, and was considering moving out for a while after yesterday's drama. "I'm definitely not staying here," he said.

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A Leftist to be missed

By Mark Steyn

The Australian columnist Pamela Bone died of cancer this weekend. She was a feminist, an atheist and most of the other -ists you might expect from a western woman of her general disposition (she was a recipient, among many other awards, of something called the "UN media peace prize").

But in her final years she came to see that the Islamization of the west represented a profound challenge to everything she believed in. It began fairly tentatively. She seems almost to be thinking aloud in this piece for the Melbourne Age on the British subjects born and bred who self-detonated on the London Tube:

In Melbourne the day after September 11, Muslim students at a state high school danced on the desks with glee. What are these young people being taught by their decent and law-abiding parents? Literature being sold at a store attached to a Brunswick mosque tells Muslims they should "hate and take as enemies" Jews, Christians, atheists and secularists, and that they should "learn to hate in order to properly love Allah". How many Muslims complain when they see this kind of hate literature? Did the large Sydney audience complain when Sheikh Feiz Muhammad charged recently that because of the way they dressed, women had only themselves to blame if they were raped? No, they applauded him.

The column ends as follows:

Perhaps it is time to say, it's been wonderful, but a few things need to be made clear. Perhaps it is time to say, you are welcome, but this is the way it is here.

"This is the way it is": That kind of talk is anathema to the multiculti elites in Oz, Canada, America, Britain and Europe. But Ms Bone saw no good in tolerant multiculturalists colluding with the avowedly unicultural and intolerant. She was especially tough on the two-tier sisterhood:

LET it be recorded that in the last decade of the 20th century the brave and great movement of Western feminism ended, not with a bang but with a whimper... I don't hold much hope on this International Women's Day of seeing big protests in Australian cities against female genital mutilation; or against honour killings, stonings, child marriages, forced seclusion or any of the other persecutions to which women are still subjected. The fire of Western feminism has quietly died away, first as a victim of its success, lately as a victim of cultural relativism, of anti-Americanism and reluctance to be seen to be condemning the enemies of the enemy.

She summed up the strange alliance between western progressives and a theocratic tyranny that stones women and executes homosexuals in this piece:

Why, in short, have Left and Right changed places?

I didn't agree with Pamela Bone on most things, even at the end. But she understood in a way that too few of the left do that her culture and her civilization need defending and that the relativist mush of the age (not to mention The Age) is insufficient to the task. I shall miss her, and I wish there were more like her.

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Firms slugged with illegal Greenie fees

And the "fix" will cost them even more! No talk of refunds

THOUSANDS of Queensland businesses have been slugged fees that the State Government has secretly known for years may be illegal. The Courier-Mail can reveal a raft of fees levied by the Environmental Protection Agency since 1998 are likely to be outside the scope of the State's authority. However, despite receiving high-level legal advice more than five years ago, the Government failed to act and continued to raise millions of dollars a year from businesses.

The annual environmental fees are spread across an array of waste-emitting industries, including paint manufacturing, beverage production, seafood processing, oil refining and farming. Fees start from as low as several hundred dollars and rise to tens of thousands a year for some major industries. Many of the EPA's prices are based on a business's volume of production, but state governments are prohibited from levying such excises as they fall within the realm of the Commonwealth.

Sustainability and Climate Change Minister Andrew McNamara yesterday admitted the Government had been aware the fees may be unconstitutional but was now moving to resolve the issue before the end of the year. "These fees have been around for a long time, this is the Environmental Protection Regulation from 1998," Mr McNamara said. "But all I can do as minister is sort it out."

Mr McNamara said he was unaware of any business raising an issue with the legality of the fees but legal advice had been received in 2006 warning there could be a problem. However, it is understood the department also received legal advice in early 2003 with the same warning. This was prompted by a veiled reference in an Auditor General's report in December 2002 that raised concerns about "certain issues pertaining to licence fees".

Fixing the fees will cost some businesses dearly with the Government planning to shift from a current flat charge and volume-based method to a risk-based method. The Bligh Government has recently announced a similar risk-based assessment scheme for issuing late-night liquor licences.

The Government wants to recoup enough from the changes to plug the difference between the $9 million a year the EPA raises from the environmental fees and the $32 million it spends on patrolling businesses for waste and emissions. "While it is likely there will be fee increases for bigger polluting industries, the proposed fees are less than in other states," Mr McNamara said.

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