La Trobe University Versus Dr Roz Ward, Racist Australian Flag
And Academic Free Speech Threatened In Australian Universities

By Dr Gideon Polya

 06 June, 2016
Countercurrents.org

Academic freedom of speech is a cornerstone of university life but is under threat in neoliberal-dominated Australia  not just from right-wing governments and corporate Mainstream media but also from within universities. The most recent example is the suspension (now lifted after public outcry) of La Trobe University  academic Dr Roz Ward for correctly calling the Australian flag racist for containing the British Union Jack (war is the ultimate in racism and as UK or US lackeys Australians have invaded 85 countries as compared to the British 193 and the Americans 70). Most Australian universities back the universities-linked web magazine The Conversation which disgracefully censors academic opinion  including anti-racist Jewish opinion critical of Apartheid Israel and the US War on Muslims.

Before detailing recent attacks on academic free speech in Australian universities,  it is useful to spell out why academic free speech is critical for  academic functions. Writing  about 15 years ago in a detailed critique of academic self-censorship and censorship in Australian universities, I observed that “The core academic ethos involves commitment to truth, reason and free speech and these elements are operationally intimately intertwined in the concept of academic freedom. Academic freedom is critical for scholarly interaction, application of the scientific method and dissemination of findings to academic scholars, professionals and the lay public. In a wider social context academic freedom enables informed, critical positive and negative feedback within organizations and society as a whole. Academic freedom is presently under attack in Australia and paradoxically this constraint is coming from within our universities. This situation must be urgently reversed” [1, 2].

I made the following  positive suggestions to improve academic free speech about 15 years ago (my present perceptions in 2016 are appended below in brackets):

i. Disclosure of managerial fraternal interests (Australian institutions are still largely managed by variously intersecting “boy's clubs” dominated by  Prosperous Anglo-Celtic Men, or Pacmen) .

ii. Disclosure of  interests and associations of university managers, middle managers and  Council members (see i).

iii. Public audit and ranking of university ethical standards (especially  re academic free speech).

iv. Our institutions and their managers should be regarded as suspect (Australia is a profoundly and astonishingly corrupt society at the government, institutional and corporate levels, and suspicion should always be the  default position).

v. There is a need for a national university ombudsman (in addition to the National Tertiary Education Union oversight).

vi. There is a need for vigorous public advocacy for academics (in its absence, corporate Mainstream media-determined  supine public opinion has permitted massive downsizing and casualization of academics).

vii. We need a special “free speech” status for academics (already provided for lying- and spin-enriched MPs speaking in Parliament but not for academics as professionals dedicated to truth, reason and informing the public).   

viii. Finally, we should publicly insist that universities that constrain free speech are not fit for our children (academic free speech is the cornerstone of  academia and vital for society) [1, 2].   

Academics are stringently committed to truth whereas politicians  and corporations lie.  Thus Polya's 3 Laws of Economics mirror the 3 Laws of Therrnodynamics and are (1) Price minus COP (Cost of Production) equals profit; (2) Deception about COP strives to a maximum; and (3) No work, price or profit on a dead planet. These fundamental laws help  expose the failure of neoliberal capitalism in relation to wealth inequality, the futility of lying, massive tax evasion by multinational corporations, and  horrendous avoidable deaths from poverty and pollution culminating in general ecocide, speciescide, climate genocide, omnicide and terracide. Lying occurs via lies of commission and lies of omission, but lying by omission is far, far worse than lying by commission because at least the latter, while repugnant, at least admits the possibility  of debate. One of the biggest lies of omission in Australia today  relates to free university education that is available  in some 20 countries but is not even mentioned in look-the-other-way, neoliberal Australia. University  education can and should be free as a societal investment,  and a while every nation needs a large complement of scholarly, scientific and technological experts for a variety of health, economic, security and national prestige reasons, it is manifestly unjust to make impoverished circa 20 year olds pay for it [3].

 Of course free speech is vital in general for rational risk management that is crucial for societal safety and successively involves (a) accurate data, (b) scientific analysis, this involving the critical testing of potentially falsifiable hypotheses, and (c) informed systemic change to minimize risk. Unfortunately,  this rational risk management protocol is typically perverted at the individual,  family or local level,   and at the level of the family of nations by (a) lying, self-deception, spin, obfuscation, intimidation and censorship, (b) anti-science spin, this involving the selective use of asserted facts to support a partisan position, and (c) blame and shame that is counterproductive because  it blocks reportage crucial for rational risk management and in the worst cases leads to war.

Academic free speech is vital for societal risk management  because academic scholarly specialists are smart, skilled and informed.  However academics have become increasingly sidelined in an anti-science Australia dominated by neoliberalism that seeks to maximize the freedom of a small but dominant minority of smart and advantaged people (most notably  the One Percenters) to exploit natural and human resources for private profit. In contrast, social humanism (social democracy, democratic socialism) seeks to maximize  happiness, dignity and opportunity for everyone in society  by evolving intra-national and international social contracts [4, 5].

At the everyday level of the economy, the currently dominant  and obscenely wealthy neoliberal One Percenters  subvert rational risk management by purchasing public perception of truth at the expense of sidelining the expert and informed opinions of expert academics.  Thus Australia, like the other Western democracies, has become a Kleptocracy, Plutocracy, Murdochracy,  Lobbyocracy, Corporatocracy and Dollarocracy in which Big Money  purchases people, politicians, parties, policies, public perception of reality, political power and hence more profit – a positive feedback loop  which has resulted in the top One Percenters now owning half the  wealth of the world. As expertly examined by Professor Thomas Piketty in his seminal book “Capital in the Twenty-first Century”, this enormous wealth disparity is bad for the economy (the poor cannot afford to buy the goods and services they produce) and for democracy (money buys votes as exampled by former Australian and now US citizen and media mogul Rupert Murdoch,  who  owns Australian daily newspapers reaching 70% of the newspaper readership) [6, 7, 8].  Informed and expert academic opinion in the interests of society as a whole is shouted down by obfuscation, lies and slies (spin-base untruths) from the endlessly mendacious Mainstream media presstitutes beholden to the neoliberal One Percenters.

Thus, for example,  Professor Piketty advocates public international wealth exposure and an annual  wealth tax of up to 10% (noting  that France already has an annual  wealth tax of up to 1.5%, and Islam mandates a zakkat or annual wealth tax of 2.5% ) . However an annual wealth tax proposition would be howled down by the Australian One Percenters' Mainstream journalist, politician and academic presstitutes who ignore the harsh realities that in Australia (a) the very poor, whose only asset is bare existence   cash in hand, are subject to a 10%  annual wealth tax (via a 10% Goods and Services Tax), and (b) the modestly prosperous  working class and middle class suffer a whopping wealth tax of up to $437 per week due to asset-based exclusion  from the aged pension (and indeed a lot more due to asset-based exclusion from other government benefits such as subsidies for the cost of  retirement home care and accommodation) [9].

At an existential level, mendacious, academic-sidelining,   pro-One Percenter  neoliberalism can be seen as deadly now and in the future. Thus poverty kills and one can readily estimate the associated carnage as avoidable deaths (avoidable mortality, excess deaths, excess mortality, untimely deaths, premature deaths, deaths that did not have to happen). Gross  global  inequity is presently  associated annually with an estimated 17 million avoidable deaths  in the Developing World (minus China) from deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease [10].The Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust is largely ignored by the One Percenter-owned Mainstream media. An annual global wealth tax of about 4% would yield US$16 trillion annually and enable raising all countries to annual per capita incomes equivalent to the US$6,000 per person per year of China and Cuba, countries for which annual avoidable mortality is zero (0). This is a feasible option for stopping the Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust [11].

The WHO informs that 7 million people die from air pollution each year, this including 10,000 Australians killed by carbon fuel burning pollutants and 75,000 people world-wide killed by pollutants from the export of  Australian coal [12]. 85,000 Australians die preventably each year from causes such as smoking, alcohol, obesity etc, the breakdown being  (1) 26,000 annual Australian deaths from adverse hospital events, (2) 17,000 obesity-related Australian deaths,  (3) 15,500 smoking-related Australian deaths, (4) 10,000 carbon burning pollution-derived Australian deaths, (5) 4,000 avoidable Indigenous Australian deaths, (6). 5,600 Australians die alcohol-related deaths, (7) 2,100 Australian suicides, (8) 1,400 Australian road deaths, (9) 630 Australian opiate drug-related deaths with 570 linked  to US restoration of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry, and (10) 300 Australian homicides (80 being of women killed domestically) [13]. These horrendous specifics   are nevertheless largely ignored in Murdochracy  Australia where in this 2016  election year the neoliberal Liberal Party-National Party Coalition wants about $50 billion in tax cuts for the wealthy but the Labor Opposition prefers to give the $50 billion to hospitals. Australia has massive subsidies for the rich [14] coupled with relatively savage imposts on the poor and the modestly prosperous.

Australian and Western corporate Mainstream media and politicians have sidelined  expert climate scientists  and biologists over the worsening climate emergency due to man-made climate change through greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The former Australian Federal Labor Government's expert Climate Commission of top academic scientists  was set up to inform the public about climate change but was closed down by the subsequent reactionary Coalition Government – nevertheless, it reconstituted itself as a privately-funded Climate Council to properly inform the public. However, informed by the Murdoch media, most Australians don't regard climate change as the most important problem and the present   Coalition Government is  effectively climate change denalist  through resolute climate change inaction. Indeed, despite massive coral bleaching this year on the Great Barrier Reef due to ocean warming,  the Coalition Federal Government and the Labor Queensland State Government have approved the world's biggest coal mine that will deliver  coal exports to  ships  traversing the dying, iconic reef, a World Heritage-listed natural wonder that neoliberal Australia is deliberately destroying, no matter the pleadings of coral scientists.

It gets worse.  A catastrophic plus 2C temperature rise is now unavoidable and Canadian earth scientists  have estimated that the result of burning the world's total fossil fuel reserves would be global mean warming of up to 10C  [15, 16].  In 2016 we are seeing record atmospheric  CO2 pollution of over 400 parts per million (ppm) that is  increasing at a record rate of about 3 ppm per year, worst ever  coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef, worst ever seasonal melting of  Arctic ocean sea ice and the Greenland ice sheet, devastating wild fires in Canada linked to global warming, and record temperatures of 50C or more in  some South Asian cities [17]. Australia ranks third worst in the world in terms of income-weighted annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution [18] but its Coalition  Government has approved the world's biggest coal mine and the Labor Opposition wants a coal to gas transition whereas gas leakage means that gas burning can be dirtier GHG-wise than  coal burning [19]. Leading  scientists  have predicted that only 0.5 billion people will survive this century if man-made climate change is not requisitely  addressed [20]. However apart from the pro-environment and science-informed Australian Greens, the major parties of Australia, the Coalition and Labor (known  collectively as the Lib-Labs) ignore the dire warnings from academic scientists  and are committed to massive GHG pollution Domestically and via coal,  gas and methanogenic livestock exports [21, 22].

Massive Mainstream media and politician constraints  on effective academic free speech is having a deadly impact on the world and even on rich Australia. In the face of a worsening climate emergency, Murdochracy and Lobbyocracy Australia simply cannot afford explicit constraints on academic free speech in addition to the massive constraints on effective academic free speech in public debates.

The latest Australian academic free speech scandal involves Melbourne's La Trobe University that is a good university with an excellent reputation for bringing tertiary education to underprivileged students from the working class northern suburbs of Melbourne and to other students who have not attended top private schools that are feeders for the very top Victorian  universities, namely Monash University and the University of Melbourne. La Trobe University has been  noted for particular areas of scholarly excellence, for example Philosophy  and Biochemistry (now housed in the $100 million La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science, LIMS).  However that reputation has been severely damaged by the present La Trobe University administration suspending academic Dr Roz Ward for describing the Union Jack-containing Australian flag as “racist” in a personal comment on Facebook.  

 

Dr Rox Ward (who co-founded, developed and currently directs the LGBTI children-protective Safe Schools Coalition Victoria, SSCV) had joked with a friend on Facebook: “Now we just need to get rid of the racist Australian flag on top of state parliament and get a red one up there and my work is done”. The La Trobe University administration reacted by suspending Dr Ward, saying to Dr Ward that her comment  had “Undermined public confidence in the Safe Schools program by undermining public confidence in you as a researcher and as a person associated with the Safe Schools program” [23].  By this shocking decision the present La Trobe University administration has severely damaged La Trobe University's excellent reputation, the reputation of its past, present and future staff and students (I am an alumnus and taught there for about 40 years) , and indeed the reputation of all Australian universities and Australia. Academic freedom is the cornerstone of academic life.

Dr Roz Ward's comment was made on a personal Facebook account and was quite correct. There is nothing  more racist  than invading, devastating   and ethnically cleansing other countries. The present Australian flag is certainly a racist flag and testament to centuries of genocidal British colonialism and over 2 centuries of genocidal White Australian invasion of other countries  as UK or US lackeys. Racist White Australians have invaded 85 countries as compared to the British 193 countries, France 82, the US 70 (50 after WW2), Germany 39, Japan 30, Russia 25, Canada 25,  Apartheid Israel 12 and China 2 [24].  Whereas Dr Roz Ward has correctly drawn attention to the racist, blood-drenched   Australian flag (her suggestion of a replacement red flag is quite appropriate) , one notes that the 2 volume “Cambridge History of Australia” ignores 30 genocidal atrocities with which Australia  has been associated  [25].

Cowardly, craven US lackey racist White Australia under the serial war criminal and climate criminal Coalition is currently involved in its Third Syrian War and Eighth Iraq War in a century, is second only to the US in backing genocidally racist, democracy-by-genocide   Apartheid Israel,  and via Pine Gap is targeting war criminal, civilian-killing US drone strikes in Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan… who's next under mass murderess and presumptive next US president, Hillary Clinton? Serial invader America has simply to call “Jump!” and Australia replies “How high?” As the world's third worst GHG  polluter on an income-weighted annual per capita basis, racist White  Australia is ecocidally and genocidally invading the atmosphere and ocean of all countries with the prospect of 10 billion deaths this century  in an horrendous Climate Genocide from unaddressed, man-made climate change [20].

 

After public outcry the La Trobe University administration reversed its decision but failed to apologize, with the Vice Chancellor (VC) saying that lengthy legal proceedings would not be in the best interests of the university. The disgraceful suspension of Dr Roz Ward was not in the best interests of the university. The present La Trobe University administration has severely damaged La Trobe University's excellent reputation with its  shocking suspension of Dr Roz Ward  that attacked academic free speech,  the cornerstone  of academic life. One hopes that it was not just threat of legal action but indignant  public support for academic free speech that forced the La Trobe University administration to lift the suspension of  Dr Roz Ward for telling the Awful Truth about Australian history. The damage is done but a comprehensive apology from the VC of La Trobe University would go some way to ameliorating the immense harm done to the reputation of La Trobe University, noting that from both a student and academic perspective, “La Trobe University” is not  the derelict La Trobe University administration but the  past, present and future staff and students of this fine institution.

The present La Trobe University administration was not alone in attacking academic free speech in Australia. Thus the Zionist-subverted  University of Sydney recently disgraced itself by “investigating” Professor Jake Lynch over a public lecture incident connected with his support for  Boycotts Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel. Professor Jake Lynch in his own words describing further Zionist  actions against him: “Both Israel's destruction of civilian lives and infrastructure, and the indiscriminate peashooter rockets of Hamas, are war crimes. There has to be a better way, and it can be glimpsed in the twin tracks of diplomacy and nonviolent resistance. These principles are the heart of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement — and it is for defending BDS that I ended up in Federal Court, facing allegations of racism and anti-Semitism. For the past year I have been defending my right not to take part in fellowship schemes that link the University of Sydney, where I direct the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, and two institutions from Israel. Last week, Judge Alan Robertson was asked by lawyers from both sides to dismiss the case against me” [26].

Notre Dame University Australia  recently followed the lead of Notre Dame US (that forced out world-famous anti-racist Jewish scholar Dr Norman Finkelstein at the behest of racist Zionists) in attacking Dr Sandra Nasr, lecturer in Middle East politics at Notre Dame University, Western Australia, who published an article on the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)  website uncontroversially linking Old Testament Biblical imperatives of violent occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine in the first millennium BC  to Zionist colonialism  and gross human rights abuse in Palestine today. Dr Nasr  was immediately attacked and falsely defamed by Zionists and the Fairfax media conglomerate -owned  WA Today as “racist” and “anti-Semitic”,  and the article was removed from the LSE website. To its shame, rather than defend Dr Nasr, Notre Dame said it “apologizes” for her article which it is  now “addressing” [27].

Australia has been involved in some 30 genocidal atrocities of which the most appalling 21st century  atrocities are the Palestinian Genocide, the Iraqi Genocide, the Afghan Genocide, the Muslim Genocide  and the worsening Climate Genocide [25]. However a disreputable function of the University of Melbourne as a key  Establishment university is to keep these atrocities hidden in a continuing process of holocaust ignoring and genocide ignoring. My attempts to tell the truth have resulted in my not just being repeatedly censored and defamed by the ABC (the Australian equivalent of the UK BBC) but also finally blocked from commenting on its articles by the University of Melbourne-backed web magazine The Conversation. The University  of Melbourne administrators have has been notoriously involved in the censorship of other academic scholars,  actions that make the University of Melbourne unfit for our children [28].

Most Australian universities are linked to the egregiously censoring  academia-linked web magazine The Conversation and my complaints  to the VCs and other administrators of numerous censorship-complicit institutions were almost completely  ignored (arrogant bad manners as well as academic free speech-betraying bad policy) [29]. Codes of conduct severely limit academic free speech in Australian universities which are concerned that academic exercise of free speech might damage a corporate university's “brand”. Thus 2 decades ago Professor John Scott, a former and excellent  vice-chancellor of La Trobe University - a university that has a splendid record of bringing tertiary education to less privileged, non-private school young  Australians - commented: “The prime roles of a university are threefold: to teach, to conduct research and to provide service, including constructive criticism, to the community . The teaching role has been severely threatened . Fundamental research is now difficult to conduct . Critical comments by university staff have been censored . It is time that governments recognised that universities are not just an expensive luxury, but a highly important part of our national activity” [30]. Unfortunately a new corporate-style university administration has emerged led by people who can often be seen as grossly over-paid and  parasitic refugees from scholarship.

Things got even worse  for Australian universities in 2012 with the passage of the Australia-United States  Defence Trade Cooperation Treaty-related Defence Trade Controls  Bill that make it an offence punishable by 10 years in prison for an academic without a permit to inform non-Australians  (in conversation, tutorials, lectures, conference papers, scientific papers etc) about numerous  technologies and thousands of chemicals and organisms  listed in a presently 353-page Defence and Strategic Goods List [31]. To give credit where it is due, Universities Australia (formerly the Australian Vice Chancellors'  Committee, AVCC) protested to the Federal Government over this appalling attack on academic free speech in Australia.

The rabidly pro-Zionist Coalition Federal Government has declared that it would cut off any Federal funding of academics who support Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against nuclear terrorist, racist Zionist (RZ)-run, genocidally racist, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel [32]. The pro-Zionist Murdoch newspaper The Australian reported: “A Coalition  government would block all federal funds to individuals and institutions who speak out in favour of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel. In a move that has shocked the academic community but won praise from Jewish leaders, foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop has hardened up the Coalition's policy, saying not only would funds be cut for BDS-related activities, but for any research, educational, or other purpose” [32]. Since many anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish intellectuals are highly critical of nuclear terrorist, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel [33-38] and many  support BDS [33], this means that the extreme right-wing, pro-Zionist Coalition Australian Federal Government  is threatening to cut off research funds for pro-BDS anti-racist academics, including anti-racist Jewish  academics (shades of Nazi Germany). Academic free speech aside, Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-perverted and subverted, neoliberal Lib-Lab (Coalition and Labor )-dominated Australia forgets that Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions were successful in bringing down UK-, US- , Australia- and Apartheid Israel-backed,  Nazi-style  Apartheid in South Africa. Cessation of research funding for an academic ultimately means getting sacked in the contemporary, money-driven Australian university environment.

Australian academics are not only subject to dire threats against free speech but are also constrained in what they can read. Thus Australia's top university, the University of Melbourne, had to protest a government ban on certain books that the US lackey, pro-Zionist Government had put on a  banned list, with the ban to be enforced by arrest of scholars, fines of up to $27,000 and lengthy imprisonment of up to 2 years [39]. Supported by US-inspired “terror hysteria”, the extreme right wing Australian Coalition Government with the support of the right wing Labor Opposition has war criminally re-invaded Iraq and passed draconian anti-terrorism legislation that makes Australia a secret police state  with  detention without charge or trial and Australian Intelligence  officers (e.g. of the Australian Security and Intelligence Organization, ASIO) having criminal and civil immunity from prosecution, and reportage on any special intelligence operations criminalized with maximum punishments ranging from 5 years' to 10 years' imprisonment [40, 41].   An academic doctor, nurse or  teacher who reported personal witness of human rights abuses in Australia's  off-shore refugee concentration camps on Nauru and on Manus Island,  Papua New Guinea,  would face 2 years imprisonment [42].

Summary and conclusions.

Free speech is vital for an informed electorate and democracy. Academic free speech is vital for scholarly research, ethical teaching  and for informing the public. However  due to Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-promoted terror hysteria, free speech is under increasing constraint in an increasing fascist Australia  in which it is now punishable by up to life imprisonment to read,  say or do certain things the government doesn't like. Increasingly corporatized universities are restricting academic free speech by “codes of conduct” and punishing academics for expressing controversial views. Academic free speech is vital for societal risk management  because academic scholarly specialists are smart, skilled and informed.  Academic free speech is particularly crucial in Murdochracy Australia in which Mainstream media are hugely dominated by the US Murdoch media empire. Decent people everywhere must defend our universities,  academic free speech and free speech in general. Decent Australians must (a) inform everyone they can, (b) demand free university education and ,  (c) utterly reject the anti-intellectual, anti-academic, anti-student, anti-science, mendacious, war criminal, climate criminal and human rights-abusing Coalition Federal Government,  vote 1 Green and put the Coalition last.

References.

[1]. Gideon Polya “Current academic censorship and self-censorship in Australian universities”, Public University Journal, volume 1, Conference Supplement, “Transforming the Australia University”, Melbourne, 9-10 December 2001: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/57092/20080218-1150/www.publicuni.org/jrnl/volume/1/jpu_1_s_polya.pdf   ] .

[2]. Gideon Polya, “Current academic censorship and self-censorship in Australian universities”, Free University Education: https://sites.google.com/site/freeuniversityeducation/academic-censorship .

[3]. “Free university education”: https://sites.google.com/site/freeuniversityeducation/home .

[4]. Brian Ellis, “Social Humanism. A New Metaphysics”,  Routledge , UK , 2012.  

[5]. Gideon Polya, “Book Review: “Social Humanism. A New Metaphysics” By Brian Ellis -  Last Chance To Save Planet?”,  Countercurrents, 19 August, 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya190812.htm .

[6]. Thomas Piketty, “Capital in the Twenty-first Century”, Harvard, 2014.

[7]. Gideon Polya, “Key Book Review: “Capital In The Twenty-First Century” By Thomas Piketty”,  Countercurrents, 01 July, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya010714.htm .

[8]. “Boycott Murdoch Media”: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottmurdochmedia/ .

 [9]. “1% ON 1%: one percent annual wealth tax on One Percenters” website ( https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/1-on-1 .

[10]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, that includes  an avoidable mortality-related history of every country from Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal  on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/  .

[11]. Gideon Polya, “4 % Annual Global Wealth Tax To Stop The 17 Million Deaths Annually”,  Countercurrents, 27 June, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya270614.htm .

[12]. “Stop air pollution deaths”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/stop-air-pollution-deaths .

[13]. Gideon Polya, “Coalition Climate Crimes & 200 Reasons Why Australia Must Dump Pro-coal, Pro-war Coalition PM Malcolm Turnbull”, Countercurrents, 1 November, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya011115.htm .

[14]. Gideon Polya, “Australian Coalition Government Sacrifices Key Industries While Committing  Hundreds Of Billions Of Dollars To Carbon Pollution & War”,  Countercurrents, 10 February, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya100214.htm   .

[15]. "Too late to avoid global warming catastrophe": https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/too-late-to-avoid-global-warming .

[16]. Katarzyna B. Tokarska, Nathan P. Gillett, Andrew J. Weaver, and Vivek K. Arora, “The climate response to five trillion tonnes of carbon”, Nature Climate Change, 23 May 2016:  http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3036.html .

[17]. Andy Rowell, “Scientists Warn Of 10C Warming As We “Dial Up Earth's Thermostat”, Oil Change International, 23 May, 2016: http://priceofoil.org/2016/05/23/scientists-warn-of-10c-warming-as-we-dial-up-earths-thermostat/ .  

[18]. Gideon Polya, “Exposing And Thence Punishing Worst Polluter Nations Via Weighted Annual Per Capita Greenhouse Gas Pollution Scores”, Countercurrents, 19 March, 2016: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya190316.htm .

[19]. “Gas is not clean energy”: https://sites.google.com/site/gasisnotcleanenergy/ .

 

[20]. “Climate genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ .

 

[21]. “2011 climate change course”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/2011-climate-change-course .

 

[22]. Gideon Polya, “Australia 's Huge Coal, Gas & Iron Ore Exports Threaten Planet”, Countercurrents, 15 May 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya150512.htm .

 

[23]. Chris Graham, “” Latrobe suspends safe schools co-founder and academic Rzoz Ward for criticizing  “racist” Australian flag”, 1 June 2016:  https://newmatilda.com/2016/06/01/latrobe-suspends-safe-schools-co-founder-and-academic-roz-ward-for-criticising-racist-australian-flag/ .

 

[24].  Gideon Polya, “As UK Lackeys Or US Lackeys Australians Have Invaded 85 Countries (British 193, French 80, US 70)”, Countercurrents, 9 February, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya090215.htm .

[25]. Gideon Polya, “Review: “The Cambridge History Of Australia” Ignores  Australian Involvement In 30 Genocides”, Countercurrents, 14 October, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya141013.htm .

[26]. Jake Lynch, “Jake Lynch: my year of fighting anti-Semitism charges”, Crikey, 16 July 2014: https://www.crikey.com.au/2014/07/16/jake-lynch-my-year-of-fighting-anti-semitism-charges/  .

[27].  Gideon Polya, “Academic Free Speech Under Zionist Attack At Notre Dame Australia And LSE, UK”, Countercurrents, 16 December, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya161215.htm .

[28]. Gideon Polya, “Censorship And Holocaust Ignoring Make The University Of Melbourne Unfit For Students”,  Countercurrents, 5 November, 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya051112.htm .

[29]. “Censorship by The Conversation”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by .

[30].  Gideon Polya, “Crisis in our universities”, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Radio National,  Ockham's Razor, 19 August 2001: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/crisis-in-our-universities/3490214#transcript  and “Free university education”: https://sites.google.com/site/freeuniversityeducation/home ).

[31]. “Impact of the Defence Trade Controls Bill on academic freedom”, NTEU: 10 October 2012: http://www.nteu.org.au/article/Impact-of-the-Defence-Trade-Controls-Bill-on-academic-freedom-13461  .

[32]. Ean Higgins, “Libs to cut funding for anti-Israel activists”, The Australian, 25 May 2013: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/libs-to-cut-funding-for-anti-israel-activists/story-fn59niix-1226650231080 .

[33]. “Boycott Apartheid  Israel”: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/.

[34]. “Gaza Concentration Camp”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/gaza-concentration  .

[35]. “Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/ .

[36]. “Non-Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/nonjewsagainstracistzionism/ .

[37]. “Nuclear weapons ban , end poverty & reverse climate change”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/nuclear-weapons-ban

[38]. “Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/ .

[39]. Helen Brown, “Melbourne Uni to challenge terrorism laws”, ABC TV Lateline, 2 October 2006: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2006/s1753912.htm .

[40]. Gideon Polya, “Terror Hysteria -  Draconian New Australian Anti-Terrorism Laws Target Journalists,  Muslims And Human Rights”,  Countercurrents, 8 October, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya0810114.htm .

[41]. Bill Rowlings, “I could go to jail for this next month”, Civil Liberties Australia, 26 August 2014: http://www.cla.asn.au/News/i-could-go-to-jail-for-this-next-month/ .

 

[42]. Sarah Sedghi, “” Border Force Act could see  detention centre workers jailed for whistleblowing”, ABC News, 1 July 2015: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-30/detention-centre-workers-face-imprisonment-for-whistleblowing/6584392 .

 

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/australian-complicity-in-iraq-mass-mortality/3369002#transcript

) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/  ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine  ;  Gideon Polya: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/home  ; Gideon Polya Writing: https://sites.google.com/site/gideonpolyawriting/ ; Gideon Polya, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideon_Polya ) . When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya's huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .