(We) can do better

Two Australian MPs - Barnaby Joyce and Andrew Wilkie - are at last trying to do something to get our government to help Julian Assange, who is currently at the mercy of the British establishment, which threatens to hand him over to a secret trial in the United States. See, "Barnaby Joyce says Government should protect Julian Assange from extradition to the US".

The US has illegally occupied the north of Syria for some time, using Kurds to fight ISIS. Donald Trump's withdrawal of US troops has permitted Turkey to invade the area. Understandably terrified, the Kurds have approached the Syrian Government for help. The Syrian Government has responded and Kurds have welcomed the Syrian Arab Army into the area for the first time in years. This should reveal to the world that the Syrian Government is trusted by its people - for most Kurds in Syria are Syrian.[1] Did most Kurds in Syria ever really want independence from Syria, or were we looking at a situation were the United States and NATO encouraged the ambitions of a few Kurds, without asking the rest? Russia has asked all foreign troops to leave Syria and has volunteered to leave itself, if the Syrian Government which invited its help, asks it to leave.

The Council motion is for Seaford Foreshore Activation - does that mean activation for development? Is it seen as an 'idle' asset - not useful or valuable as it is? It would seem so. As the proposal being put to Council is as follows

The otherwise informative and insightful News With Rick Sanchez bulletin of 11 October trivialised attempts by the the U.S government to enforce its immigration laws. This is in contrast with the treatment of illegal immigration by Mike Papontonio, presenter of RT's America's Lawyer in Corporations defend DACA: Don’t deport our cheap labor! (10/10/19) its most recent weekly episode. (Both programs are embedded within this article.)

14 Oct 2019, Appendix added: Lee Camp of Redacted Tonight applauds the silencing of a differing point of view. (Includes embedded Video).

Great to see that the French are not backing down. Enjoy Ruptly footage of four and a half hours of Gilets jaunes marching in the street. A few translations: On est là! On est là! (We are here! We are here!) The writing on the cross that the man is carrying says, "Hope", with the O as a peace sign. The man with the loud speaker addressing the crowd at the crossroads repeats, "We are citizens above all!" The message on the banner carried by four men reads, "Grève Générale" - General Strike. (Australians lost the right to a general strike years ago - although that should not stop us.) To wit, one of the signs early in the march reads, "La force de l'injustice vient de l'obéissance." "The strength of injustice comes from obedience." Another sign, with Macron's face, "Qu'ils viennent me chercher!" "Come and get me!" Australians should be marching like this against the overpopulation that is now being forced at the pace of a full invasion by our so-called leaders. But we have been infilled, dispersed and thus disorganised. Time to unite as Australians, as citizens.

The discussion in this video opens up new topics on the confusing situation with US 'withdrawal' and Turkey incursion in Northern Syria. Particularly interesting is Marwa Osman's framing of why Turkey would want to move Syrian refugees into Northern Syria. She thinks that Erdogan (Turkey's President) has a problem with all the Syrian refugees living in his country because his people resent the presence of this large number of non-Turkish people. If Erdogan can move these refugees into an area he is trying to clear of Kurds in northern Syria, then he can put the Syrian refugees there. Many of those refugees now have Turkish papers. This would have the further benefit for Erdogan's purposes in that, once Erdogan will have moved so many people there, he will more or less control the area with their presence, since he will be organising their settlement and deployment. Video discussion with Ammar Qaqqaf, Marwa Osman, Mike Raddie and Peter Lavelle.

Republished from: Mikdad: Turkish aggression is an invasion of Syrian territories… Syrian Army ready to confront all challenges,"10 October، 2019

Damascus, SANA-Deputy Foreign and Expatriates Minister, Fayssal Mikdad, described the hostile war launched by the Turkish regime on Syrian territories as “invasion,” saying that attacking a sovereign, independent country is considered as an outrageous act against the UN charter and international law which flagrantly contradicts Security Council relevant resolutions. “The Syrian Arab Army, which confronts the terrorist organizations, will confront the foreign invading forces which are present illegitimately on the Syrian territories and it is ready to face all challenges to which Syria is exposed,” Mikdad said in a press statement at the HQ of Foreign Ministry.

Republished from: Turkish regime goes too far in its aggression on Hasaka, Raqqa and penetrates into Ras al-Ayn (10/10/2019) |SANA 10 October، 2019

Hasaka, SANA-The Turkish regime on Thursday went too far in its aggression on Syrian territories in Hasaka, Raqqa and occupied Tal Halaf, penetrated into Allouk and Katsho villages in the surroundings of Ras al-Ayn and the Industrial region in the city. Meanwhile, the Turkish aggression targeted a number of villages and towns in the countryside of the two cities, concentrating on infrastructure, and vital utilities like water, electricity, dams, oil facilities and residential neighborhoods, and leaving a number of civilians martyred in addition to a huge destruction in properties and infrastructure.

US corporate media is either pro-Republican or pro-Democrat and they are nearly always in violent disagreement, except on the subject of war. Both sides love war. Here is a rabid example, dated 19 September 2019, from Sean Hannity, of Fox news. (The video is only embedded here for the record. Most visitors probably won't choose to put themselves through all of Hannity's war-mongering tirade.) Surprisingly, the only mainstream US journalist who seems to be against war is also on Fox - Tucker Carlson.

Tree expert Dr. Greg Moore will speak at the Port Phillip Conservation Council Inc. Annual General Meeting on Monday 21st October 2019, 7pm at Longbeach Place,* 15 Chelsea Road, Chelsea (Vic, Australia). Dr. Moore is an engaging and in demand speaker. A botanist and 'plant mechanic' at the University of Melbourne, Greg’s research interests are in horticultural science, revegetation and ecology, specializing in arboriculture. His passion for trees is centred around understanding how trees cope with their environment and promoting the benefits trees provide in urban spaces.

This short documentary shows the problems that birds face in the US, but they face the same problems in Australia. The current push by powerful property developers, niched in our government, will remove more habitat for the birds where most of us live. Birds Australia's report, The State of Australia's Birds 2015, showed shorebirds in steep decline, and that our familiar friends, magpies, kookaburras, and willy-wagtails, are now struggling.

“This is where we have got to with government-engineered breakneck population growth that also puts property developers and associated professions in charge of planning. 110 golf-courses, which occupy green, treed spaces, in all kinds of areas in Melbourne and its suburbs and another 374 in Victorian regions, now carry hugely increased potential resale value if speculators can get them rezoned for more intensive use. Predictably, golf-course owners and probably management committees are now complaining that they aren’t making enough money. Some of their complaints will be well-founded, because state-imposed population pressure has caused demand for land, water and power, hence their costs, to rise rapidly. If nothing is done, either to reduce population growth, or exempt golf-courses from paying these charges, they will skyrocket.” (Sheila Newman, Population, environment and land-tenure systems sociologist.)

After a 2017 discussion paper that not many of us heard about, the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning, has again discreetly invited people to provide feedback to draft guidelines for their Golf Course Redevelopment Standing Advisory Committee, which is composed of property development industry professionals

'It's not about the source, it's about the numbers, stupid'

Professor Carr was the longest serving Premiere of NSW from 1995 to 2005. He also served as Federal minister for Foreign Affairs from 2012 - 2013.

Bob Carr has been a long time advocate for a sustainable population. In 2000, as Premier of NSW, he stated that Sydney was full, bringing the issue of population into the headlines at a time when domestic population policy was rarely discussed.

While serving as foreign minister, Carr also advocated for a global population policy, including foreign aid for family planning and empowerment of women. During this time, he was approached by SPA to be Patron, a post to which he accepted.

"The greatest threat to our environment is not carbon dioxide but unsustainable immigration. As the son of a farmer, I was taught from a young age about carrying capacity and never to overstock your paddocks. Yet immigration is doing just that, causing major city congestion and overdevelopment on our city fringes. Meanwhile, regional communities are struggling as opportunities, from the lack of infrastructure, go begging. While I agree with the government's wind-back of permanent visa places to 160,000 annually, the almost two million temporary visa holders living in Australia should also be reduced." "All war is a failure of diplomacy. The current military intervention in the Middle East has lasted almost as long as World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War combined. It has gone on for too long and needs to end. Bin Laden is dead, Saddam is dead and there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. ISIS will only be defeated when the world calls out the Milo Minderbinder who is funding them."

Since 2005 the Reclaim the Radical Spirit of the Eureka Rebellion Celebrations Committee has awarded six Eureka Australia Medals (EAM) at Bakery Hill, Ballarat (the site where the Eureka Oath was taken) on Eureka Day, 3rd December.

The EAM is awarded to people living in Australia who have lived lives that reflect the sentiments expressed in the Eureka Oath which was sworn by miners and their supporters at Bakery Hill, Ballarat on the 29th November 1854 –

“We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties”.

This is the second in a series of interviews with Nerrida Pohl about lack of proper regulation of the construction and development industry in Australia. Nerrida talks about the 30 story appartment building in Victoria, where she bought two appartments 'off the plan'. The building is a shared commercial/private one, that is meant to share one plan, but Nerrida has discovered with some amazement that there are actually two different plans. Although the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) ruled, in a dispute between the developer and Stonington Council, that residents would share the building's loading bay with commercial occupants, this right was sold off by a member of the building management for $1.00 per annum peppercorn rent. This has meant that moving vans park at the front entrance, causing traffic problems in a very busy area. The front doors are propped open so that furniture etc can be brought into the building, creating a security risk. Furthermore, the ''Residents Meeting Room' specified in the plan, has been occupied by a real-estate agency. This means that residents have no formal or designated place to meet, communicate, and organise for their own benefit. It is especially hard because many appartment owners dwell overseas and cannot easily be contacted by other owners who, when they ask, are only given overseas mailing addresses, which might be PO boxes or legal firms in distant cities.

Australia's construction industry is corrupt, but protected by government. This has left building consumers in a terrible situation. A current scandal is that they are being forced to pay billions for builders' mistakes in a situation where no building over 3 stories is insured. This video is of an interview with Nerrida Pohl about the dangers of inflammable cladding on skyscrapers, using her own building as an example. The location affords views of similar problems on surrounding skyscrapers in South Yarra. It also illustrates the irony of having one's view built out, even when one lives in a skyscraper, as massive population growth an deregulation accelerate infilling and raise heights. Nerrida was a speaker at the Victorian Building Action Group AGM this year.

Waleed Aly ("A Rhetorical State of Emergency," Sydney Morning Herald, 12 September 2019,) has dressed up banality as insight and has been very long-winded about it. His focus is climate change and he laments the fact that we have so "engineered a lack of [political] consensus" that Australia is never likely to successfully address it.

(Photos by Fiona Bell.) I have strongly supported the RUANELA (Residents United Against North East Link Option A) campaign against the North East Link. I am opposed to the removal of thousands of mature trees and the massive loss of open space particularly in the Koonung Creek Reserve. 12.7 hectares of parkland will be permanently lost.

Melbourne lacks open green spaces. Unfinancial golf-courses should be returned to nature, to provide scarce habitat to our native animals and contact with nature for humans. These golf-courses often got by on the pretext that they would preserve open land, as a trade-off for more development. Melbourne is not just overdeveloped, it is overpopulated. Furthermore, our building industry is so incompetent that all its activities should be halted. Below you can read the nonsense being proposed by your government, as an excuse to give more land and free kicks to developers. It's a criminal economy that takes nature and destroys it just for more dollars for Australia's rich and greedy class. Submissions opened on 2 September 2019. Submissions can be made until 5.00pm on 30 September 2019. See example of a submission from Sheila Newman here: "Save 110 golf-courses for birds, not high-rises - Sociologist".

"People end up with nothing because they really don't believe we have a system as bad as we do." Consumers are unprotected in Australia's building disaster. "You may have a house that's being demolished, but you still have a block of land. If you've got any superannuation or anything in the bank, at least hang on to that." Anne Paten of Victorian Building Action Group (VBAG) talks about how the system that's supposed to help building consumers actually bleeds the victims of the industry even more. People qualify for insurance, but never get the money. They go to VCAT and are sent away with nothing. The results are bankruptcy, divorces, and suicides. Substantial reports and inquiries are removed from the internet. Australians need to realise that the government won't help them; they have to join together and help each other.

Each spring I feel a tinge of grief when magnolia buds appear.
For I never see the glorious display I yearn for every year.
I might see a hint of pink withstanding every storm
But the elaborate blooms I see next door on my tree are still- born.

I know who is responsible, a possum small and shy,
I feed him in the vain hope that he will my tree pass by,
Although my ploy has never worked I keep it up from habit
And I never In my wildest dreams would take my knife and stab it!

The Russian military says that the United States' missile strike on Idlib, August 31, has jeopardized further implementation of the ceasefire in the Idlib de-escalation zone, as well as disrupting it in a number of areas.

The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (POCTA) Regulations 2008 sunset on 15 December 2019. New regulations need to be made before this date.

Lord Mayor Clover Moore has nothing to congratulate herself on with regard to homelessness in Sydney. The City of Sydney’s most recent street count has revealed that homelessness has risen and crisis shelters are at capacity. Although the City has been collecting levies from developers to create affordable housing since 2004, it has only created 835 new affordable housing dwellings in that time. Whilst the *official* number of homeless in Sydney reached 592 in August 2019 (with so many more couch-surfing and living on credit), Australia has continued to import approximately one million immigrants every two years, pushing up the price of housing and causing pressure on Sydney's very scarce land, to the extent that NSW State Premier, Gladys Berejiklian asked the Federal Government to halve the immigration numbers - to no avail. Lendlease private developments is forcing new suburbs into koala territory despite years of organised protests from nearby residents. It is clear that property development is disorganising human communities, extinguishing wildlife, and over-riding every democratic measure in our society. It is ironic that the City of Sydney, in a country run by property developers for their own enrichment through population growth, should give the biggest private landowner in Australia (the Catholic Church) $100,000 to pay various humble workers to telephone between services looking for empty beds each night for the homeless. The same Catholic Church is a notable property developer, owner of the oldest bank in the world, and a chronic promoter of mass immigration.

VBAG is the only organization representing building consumers in Australia. VBAG estimates conservatively that for 2019 more than one million Australians will lose more than $400b on shonky building, as well as suffering decades long distress from disputes, leading to deaths, suicides, shattered families, and ruined lives. Come along and inform yourselves and participate.

Australia shows contempt for an international rules-based order, agreeing to join the US and UK with a naval, air and ADF personel presence in the Persian Gulf without any national debate or UN resolution.

It was 1959 and I was in grade 5. I can remember hearing this population statistic; Australia's population had reached 10 million. I was one of 10 million. It was the first time I had ever been aware of the population of Australia. When my mother was born in 1918 it was 5 million It took another 45 years for the population to double from 10 million to 20 million.

The high cost of accommodating population growth: "It is really undesirable that turning Seaford and Frankston into 'Transport hubs' is denying residents, and especially children, proper use of the amenities they have previously enjoyed."