Gee, I Had Hoped It Was Only the US and UK Universities

[Annie]

no such luck:

http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,16284364^25717,00.html

Chianti crusaders

17aug05

What better place to condemn Western immorality than an Italian palace? Damn the war and pass the chianti, old chap.

THE invitation to escape Melbourne and spend a few days at a palazzo near Florence worked its magic.

Aha! The fog lifted. The mind cleared. Suddenly I began to understand the haughty group-think of our university Left.

The invitation wasn't for me, of course.

I only get asked to visit places someone's first wrecked -- Cambodia, Rwanda and other wake-ups. Or joints facing the wreckers, such as Taiwan.

But Florence! In an 18th-century palace! And bills paid for by grants or tax write-offs! What could be more refined or flattering?

So, no, this invitation was not for me, but for Australia's academics to come and discuss, after a cocktail reception on an elegant terrace in northern Italy, how uncouth Australia is in defending itself in this "war on terror".

And, please, only the like-minded need attend.

It's Monash University's National Centre for Australia Studies that will next month hold a two-day conference at its wing of Prato's Palazzo Vaj. The topic: Democracy at the Crossroads?

Actually, that question mark is redundant, because the organisers -- who have form -- invited a cacophony of like-minded speakers who don't just agree our democracy is at the crossroads in our war against Islamist terrorism, but that it's shot off the road and over the cliff.

The real enemy, some even add, is us.

Just ask them. Ask Australian "journalist" John Pilger, who so rejects what Australia has done that he says our troops in Iraq are "legitimate targets" of terrorists and "we have no choice now but to support the (Iraqi) resistance".

Pilger is clear where the true evil squats: "Consumers and 'globalisation' is a vicious war against the poorest, a form of terrorism," he wrote in June.

In fact, so much does this blow-wave radical hate globalisation and poverty that he's willing to be flown to an Italian palace to say so.

Or ask the keynote speaker, British Trotskyist Tariq Ali, who has decreed that the people who actually need shooting are the Iraqis working with the American "imperialists" to bring democracy to Iraq.

And, indeed, terrorists have since killed many such Iraqis, including female MP Lamia Abed Khadouri, shot dead in her home.

Joining these two apologists for terrorists will be other critics of this war, including Stephen Kenny, the former lawyer of accused al-Qaida trainee David Hicks and Lex Lasry, QC, who says a fair trial of David Hicks at Guantanamo Bay is almost impossible.

Also listed to speak, but now ill, is former British minister "Mo" Mowlam, who has said we must stop fighting al-Qaida and start negotiating.

Oh, and there's writer Tony Bunyan, who claims "the 'war on terrorism' has turned into an ongoing 'war on freedom and democracy' . . . where accountability, scrutiny and human rights protections are luxuries to be curtailed or discarded".

So the organisers seem to think, too, devoting their final session to discussing how "the democratic state has been compromised by the developments auspiced by the 'war on terror' ".

Note all the scare quotes around words such as "democracy" and "war on terror". It's a tic of the radical chic. By now you'll have figured the conference isn't actually scheduled to discuss the threat from terrorists themselves -- only the threat from our politicians.

It's as if suicide bombers are just scare-figures dreamed up by power-crazed Right-wing leaders. Such fantasies come easily when you hold your conference in a palace in Italy, rather than, say, a madrassa in Pakistan.

So why Italy, you may interrupt to ask.

The official reason is that if you held an academic conference anywhere less nice -- like Melbourne -- your overseas talent wouldn't bother turning up to enlighten you.

But seeing Pilger, Ali and Mowlam all visited Australia over the past year, might not the real reason be a common human weakness for subsidised travel to lovely places?

But more troubling than the venue is that universities can so cheerfully promote a Leftist agenda, no matter how surreal. How was this managed?

Give credit to associate professors Jenny Hocking and Colleen Lewis, who earlier collaborated on It's Time Again: Whitlam and Modern Labor, their fawning book on Labor's hero.

Three years ago they were also co-convenors of a conference to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the election of Whitlam's government.

You won't be surprised to learn the speakers were again almost exclusively from the Left, including Whitlam himself, and his former speechwriter and colleagues. Labor women such as Carmen Lawrence and Julia Gillard also spoke, as did admiring academics.

And no one, naturally, attacked Whitlam for actually having left behind busted budgets, political scandals, soaring unemployment and the contempt of voters.

Heavens, no. For Hocking, the Whitlam period "defined modern Australia".

Then again, Hocking could also write a hagiography of former High Court judge Lionel Murphy, suspected of trying to pervert the course of justice. She now has a grant to write on another Leftist hero, communist author Frank Hardy.

Of course, none of us is free from political bias. It's just a shame to see universities again promote the Left agenda so exclusively and with such tempting prizes for the right-thinking.

It's an odd replay of failings of doomed aristocrats of past times. Here is our cultural elite, up in the palace, sipping champagne and talking idly of war, while the peasants who must pay them try to work out how best to stay alive.

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