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National Observer, Australia, No. 81 (Dec. 2009 - Feb. 2010)National Observer, Australia No. 81 (Dec. 2009 - Feb. 2010)

 

In This Issue

by Philip Ayres

National Observer
Australia's independent current affairs online journal
No. 81 (Dec. 2009 - Feb. 2010).

This issue of National Observer marks the journal's transition to an entirely electronic form. All future issues will be published on-line, readily accessible to a far wider potential readership. We welcome articles that offer sharply-focussed analysis of issues to do with Australia's national security, the changing and dynamic nature of the nation's defence requirements, and policy affecting the cohesiveness of our social fabric. Thus economics, politics, education, sociology, history and science all come within the range of our concerns. The present issue exemplifies this combination of diverse disciplines as they affect the national interest, and the interests of Australia's friends and allies.

Anthony Glees's important essay describes the real dangers involved in Arab and Islamic funding (and hence, to a varying degree, control) of Western university courses in Islamic studies. We have published on this subject before, and will continue to do so, as it involves the erosion of objectivity and disinterestedness within academia, as well as the exacerbation of the threat posed to us by radical Islamism as a political doctrine with violent consequences.

William Kininmonth's article on the myths around so-called "global warming" shows how science can be bent and misused in the interests of one particular, and particularly favoured, point of view. The author is a meteorologist of impeccable qualifications and experience. He points out the crucial flaws in the currently fashionable arguments in support of the theory of anthropogenic global warming, and sets the entire question in the context of continuous climate change across the distant and recent past.

We also publish a report by Brett Williams on the ways in which the police of New York City responded to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center's Twin Towers on 11 September 2001.

We also publish a piece by our own regular reviewer, Robert J. Stove, on the threat posed by "digital barbarism" to intellectual property rights and to civilised discourse.

Philip Ayres is editor of National Observer.

National Observer, Australia, No. 81 (Dec. 2009 - Feb. 2010)