On economic issues, things have certainly moved to the right. On some social issues however, we seem to have moved to the left, in terms of gay rights and discrimination against other races for instance.

"You can be anti-WorkChoices, pro-education and anti-Castro at the same time. Not everything fits into the old left-right divide"

Very true. You are obviously moderate left, except on some social issues. I have written an article abt some of the many problems in the old left right divide: http://leonbertrand.blogspot.com/2008/03/introducing-horseshoe-theory.html

Here's a story on some of the bias I experienced at uni: http://leonbertrand.blogspot.com/2008/02/griffith-law-school-leftist-clique.html

The following statements by the fbi and the cia are their public statements of their "PRIORITIES" AND "MISSION".
• Terrorism
• Counterintelligence
• Cyber
• Public Corruption
• Civil Rights
• Organized Crime
• White Collar Crime
• Major Thefts/Violent Crime

cia:
"The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is an independent US Government agency responsible for providing national security intelligence to senior US policymakers."

Sosbee writes:
The fbi and the cia engage in criminal offenses of the macabre type in each and every category listed below:

• Terrorism- Both the fbi and the cia are together the most serious threat to Mankind
• Counterintelligence- The two groups are experts in terrorizing, torturing and killing the Target by high tech methods (including space based weaponry & advanced bio/chem/viral new science) and by low minded street thugs in their employ as operatives.
• Cyber- Both agencies use Cyber as a tool for the planned total subjugation of human beings on earth and space permanently.
• Public Corruption-By selective prosecution, the fbi and the cia insure that friends will be protected, especially those in Congress, the Courts, and key employees in the executive and administrative departments and agencies.
• Civil Rights- The fbi's charade of investigating civil rights violations are more and more apparent as the people's rights are violated across the land every day by police, fbi, and cia outrageous trangressions.
• Organized Crime-The fbi and the cia are preeminently organized crime; their snitches, informants and assassins on the street (and a few others) know this.
• White Collar Crime- The fbi and the cia often wear white shirts in public to obscure their dark and homicidal personal characters.
• Major Thefts/Violent Crime- Both the fbi and the cia benefit from and relish violence and these government agencies often provoke violence in order to arrest or murder their Targets.

Finally, the world's population has no viable peaceful recourse against the government beasts whom I and others describe in our websites, etc

AJFA,

I checked this thread for comments for a few days after my post of the 21st and then did not come back to it for some time, so I did not see your response until long after you submitted it.

I agree that the old left-right divide isn’t up to the job. After all, it was the Republicans who freed the slaves in the US.

The extremes of both sides meet in the way you describe on your reference. Totalitarianism is not good, whether it is communist or fascist, though there are a few strange souls around who are trying to convince the world that the Nazis were left-wing because they had the world “socialist” in their name. Strangely, these same people do not regard the German Democratic Republic as having been democratic just because it has “democratic” in its name.

I don’t doubt the existence of bias at uni - or anywhere else for that matter. I just doubt that it is widespread.

Hi Chris,

I blame myself for being so slow in responding.

In terms of how widespread bias is, its definately hard to measure. There should be studies conducted like theyw ere in the United States:

"A recent article in The Economist (reprinted in The Australian on December 15) bemoaned the lack of political diversity in American universities. It contended," “Academe is simultaneously both the part of the US that is most obsessed with diversity and the least diverse part of the country".

It pointed to a survey of more than 1,000 academics that showed that Democrats outnumbered Republicans by something like seven to one in the humanities and social sciences. " http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2900

7 to 1 is quite a margin. If the numbers are similar in Australia, then bias could be assumed to be widespread. But of course, we can only speculate.