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Previous "Miscellaneous comments" page from 27 April
"Miscellaneous comments" page from 25 March
Comments
nimby
Tue, 2011-05-24 17:47
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Review into Melbourne's growth boundary
For Animals Aus... (not verified)
Wed, 2011-05-25 13:10
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Australian Wool Factory sheep ill-treated - George Negus program
Bandicoot
Wed, 2011-05-25 19:01
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Animals are being deprived
Anonymous (not verified)
Sat, 2011-05-28 14:00
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Non-white British population reaches 9.1 million
James Sinnamon
Sat, 2011-05-28 12:48
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Why has 'free market' not long ago solved global warming?
The following comment was posted to ABC Radio National's National Interest web pages on Friday 27 May 2011. The post was in response to a discussion. Too fast, too furious: why industry opposes a carbon tax of the previous Friday 20 May.
Wasn't the "free market", that is, serving the greed of a small minority rather than the wishes of the sovereign majority, supposed to hold all the answers to society's problems when it was imposed upon Australia and much of the rest of the world back in the 1980's?
How is it that, three decades later, it still hasn't worked out how to protect the world from global warming and other environmental threats?
Why is it that 'government', held to be so fundamentally flawed by the "free market" ideologues whose prescriptions have been so unquestioningly accepted by our political leaders, must spend so much of its time and energy trying to find a way to persuade the "free market" not to destroy our environment?
If the "free market" was all that Howard, Keating, Hawke, Fraser et al had held it out to be, it would have surely found a way to save the world from global warming a long time ago.
But it has not and no amount of tinkering with incentives from Government is any more likely to prevent the "free market" from causing calamity now than it has to civilisations in the past - the Mayans, Angkor Wat, the Greeks, the Romans, the Mesopotamians, the Anasazi of the Chaco Canyon and numerous earlier civilisations. This has been documented in books such as Jared Diamond's "Collapse" and David Montgomery's "Dirt: The Erosion of Civilization".
The only difference we face this time, is that if the sovereign peoples of the world don't take back from the "free market" the right to decide their futures, the catastrophe won't be confined just to some regions of the earth. It will affect the whole world and be unimaginably more terrible.
If, as one example, we don't act now to stop the greed of the "free market", from digging up Australia's vast deposits of coal for export to be burnt in China and India, then we will have shown that we have learnt nothing from history.
Bandicoot
Tue, 2011-05-31 08:21
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Shocking slaughter revealed in Indonesia! Australia guilty
Mary (not verified)
Tue, 2011-05-31 11:00
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Getup Campaign to stop live exports
Millicent (not verified)
Tue, 2011-05-31 17:31
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Jakarta calls for calm in cattle row
nimby
Tue, 2011-05-31 13:56
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Take Action to ban live exports
Mary (not verified)
Fri, 2011-06-03 11:05
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Housing developments in Canberra threat
Protect Public Land (not verified)
Fri, 2011-06-03 14:24
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Celebrate saving St Mary's Paddock and Children's Farm VIC
nimby (not verified)
Sun, 2011-06-05 14:20
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Damage bill of Queensland higher than expected
The latest costs from last summer's Queensland floods and Cyclone Yasi have climbed to $6.8 billion, $1 billion higher than the State Government's February estimate.
As well as loss of lives and livelihoods, there has also been enormous damage to infrastructure and significant costs incurred in managing the response and recovery process. Queensland will end up being liable for around $1.8 billion in damage costs when the loans provided are redeemed. It illustrates just how fragile our economy is to natural disasters and human error. Julia Gillard's "big Australia" will mean that far from ensure a bigger tax base and more prosperity, there will be more potential risks and damage especially in a nation prone to droughts and flooding rain.
The second line of "Advance Australia Fair":
... needs to be revised!
admin
Mon, 2011-06-06 08:10
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Direct democracy demonstrations in Greece
Read Global Research (http://globalresearch.ca) article by Marta Soler and Carlos Robles.
During the day, one can see several hundred working class demonstrators against the cutbacks at the postal service near Syntagma Square (the parliament), with the fear that the government will privatize it and sell it to a German company which will lay off large numbers of postal workers (perhaps over 50%). At 6 o’clock in Syntagma Square, a crowd starts to gather under a banner which says "no to apathy – direct democracy (amesi demokratia)." It is the ninth day of such gatherings and discussions. There is an open mike for speeches and proposals. By 8, some 50,000 people have gathered (I am with some friends near the speaker on the edge of the people seated, the crowd surges around, and up the high steps to the road that separates the Parliament and may extend over in front of it. The woman who moderates (one of several moderators) calls for a continuation of a discussion proposed the previous night (that meeting ended at 4 AM), and takes hands for 20 speakers (eventually there is a vote which approves hearing from all of them before continuing).
Most of the crowd is young, the people in their twenties. The European Union, to which the Greek government is obsequious, even though headed by a Socialist (George Papandreou, who is reputed - a rarity among leading Socialists - an honest man), has demanded that the Greek parliament vote on June 15 on a maximum salary for every young worker before she reaches the age of 25: five hundred – 500 - euros a month. This is a poverty, near starvation wage for a young Athenian (barely enough to pay rent – perhaps if 4 people share an apartment - let alone eat).
The Greek parliament has been a weak institution, limited by fascism and a military coup and tyranny (1967-74). It is a series of small desks (one has to hunch in to sit in them, as I discovered when I took my students to see it three years ago). There is no space for an audience. Parliament in Greece is confined, and behind closed doors. A generally discussed proposal in the crowd is to block the parliamentarians from entering the parliament, prevent a vote, get them to drop the proposal. ...
dave1 (not verified)
Mon, 2011-06-06 14:38
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Negative gearing unhealthy, says ANZ CEO Phil Chronican
nimby
Tue, 2011-06-07 08:12
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Negative gearing exacerbates the problem of housing
dave1 (not verified)
Wed, 2011-06-08 13:45
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Negative gearing and rental properties
Anonymous (not verified)
Thu, 2011-06-09 23:14
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More housing tax rorts
nimby
Tue, 2011-06-07 21:29
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Graphic footage of cattle
Jack (not verified)
Thu, 2011-06-09 13:54
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Jon Faine seems insensitive to cruelty to animals
Fearless (not verified)
Wed, 2011-06-08 00:38
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Scary immigration trends in USA by catholic latinos
Geoffrey Taylor
Thu, 2011-06-09 15:21
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Don't miss "The Kennedys" this Sunday night 8.30PM on ABC TV 1
Don't miss The Kennedys this Sunday Night on ABC TV 1 at 8.30PM
I think the series is great, although it would be hard for any producer not to make a good series given the subject matter. I don't know yet how it will treat, on Sunday 12 June, the subject of his murder, the truth about which has been made a taboo topic by both the establishment newsmedia and much of the supposed alternative media. Even if the show fails to grasp that nettle, it will has still been well worth watching so far simply for showing how John F. Kennedy got to become President of the United States, what he achieved as President with the help of his brother Bobby and why he took the choices he did.
Jackie to her daughter: "Your daddy just saved the world!"
Last week JFK's wife Jacqueline Kennedy told her daughter, "Your daddy just saved the world!" after JFK had found a way to defuse the Cuban missile Crisis in 1962 as many of his generals (and some of their opposite numbers in the Eastern bloc) were doing their utmost to inflame it.
JFK was a courageous and selfless hero in every real sense: in wartime as commander of PT109 and in office when he successfully stood up to the military-industrial complex the former President Eisenhower warned against in January 1961. His example puts to shame most other world political leaders before and since.
Bandicoot
Thu, 2011-06-09 19:07
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Indigenous not to be recognised by Ballieu government
quark
Sat, 2011-06-11 22:20
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Lose lose
nimby (not verified)
Sun, 2011-06-12 15:28
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Australia a blank canvas - a carte blanche
nimby
Fri, 2011-06-10 15:03
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Guerilla gardeners against developers - Groundswell
Anonymous (not verified)
Sun, 2011-06-12 16:48
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Public will be hit hard by rising costs of electiricy
Bandicoot
Mon, 2011-06-13 17:55
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Outback arsenic poisoning
nimby
Thu, 2011-06-16 12:41
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live export suspension - challenge to self-sufficiency
nimby
Fri, 2011-06-17 15:52
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Opportunity to report on Victoria's reform