Comments

Magpie (not verified)

Wed, 2016-06-29 11:16

It makes you wonder what theory he espouses as a basis for publication outside the sandbox. How does he make his decisions as to what is worthy of questioning and what is paranoid? My impression is that he really won't go beyond the mainstream media paradigm - so his contributors must accept our support of intervention in the Middle East and the US Government's explanation for all recent and current events - even though you have multiple countries fighting these US doctrines politically or militarily. I mean, does Quiggin even accept the well established history of CIA intervention in South America? Or does he suppose that South Americans and Middle Easterners are intrinsically incompetent? I don't often go to his blog these days, but does he question anything more than is cursorily questioned by the mainstream media? And, if he did, would he keep his university position?

James Sinnamon

Tue, 2016-06-28 16:02

The -270607">response to the above from Professor John Quiggin was:
Conspiracy theory discussion to the sandpits, please.
Every so often John Quiggin sets up a 'sandpit' in which discussion about topics, not deemed by him to be worthy of more prominent parts of his website, may be permitted. The most recent is dated 28 June 2016. It appears to have been set up in response to my posts and the responses of others. The prior to that is dated 9 May 2016. As well as supposed 'conspiracy theories', material which can only possibly be discussed in the 'sandpit' most likely includes all the current geopolitical conflicts – Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Yemen, Ukraine, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Palestine and Israel. Nowhere on the the front page of JohnQuiggin is there any mention of these conflicts. Presumably, if he was administering a blog, or its technological equivalent, in the 1930's discussion about the following topics (also listed above) would also be confined to the 'sandpit', if not banned outright: The Italian invasion of Ethiopia, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, the Spanish Civil War, the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, Menzies' export of Australian pig iron to Japan, the 1938 sellout of Czechoslovakia, the Hitler/Stalin pact of September 1939, Hitler's invasion of Poland, etc., etc. One minor exception is the constrained and biased discussion against allegend Brexit 'tribalism' to which the above comment was posted.

James Sinnamon

Tue, 2016-06-28 12:31

The post below is part of a -270581">discussion about Brexit on JohnQuiggin.com:

Ernestine -270538">wrote on June 27th, 2016 at 09:16:

"[Paul Craig Roberts] asserts the EU has been set up by the CIA and is controlled by the USA. ...

This is what Paul Craig Roberts said (times from start of the above video included):

(8:37) The EU is a CIA initiative. This was discovered about the year 2000 by by [Joshua Paul, a researcher at Georgetown University in Washington]. He was mucking around in the United States' national archives and found some recently released documents. There was CIA documents that established that the EU was a CIA initiative and it was done so that Washington could more easily control Europe.

(9:09) It's too difficult for Washington to control all these separate governments. This one would play off against that one. This one would have to have this special thing, this special concession and so on, like the EU gave Britain to get hooked into the EU. And so the CIA decided: "Look, if there's an EU there's only one government to deal with and it is much easier for us to control."

(9:34) So, this was discovered in the year 2000. It was reported in the British newspapers at the time. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at the Telegraph reported this. I cited it and I think I gave the URL - the reference to it" id="pcrTxt1"> 1  and a recent column" id="pcrTxt2"> 2  on my site. You can use Google. You can find it. You can find the report from
the [Georgetown University] professor who reported on the documents he found. All this is publicly available the documents are available. They're in the National Archive. So this is not a conspiracy theory. This is simply the facts reported even in the British newspapers.

Footnotes

" id="pcrFn1">1."> ↑  (19/9/2000) by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard | The Telegraph.

" id="pcrFn2">2."> ↑  (5/5/16) by Paul Craig Roberts | PaulCraigRoberts.org.

Sheila Newman

Tue, 2016-06-28 11:19

Thanks Dennis. I have definitely noticed how Google monitors my mail and sends ads trying to sell me things the minute I key in any object. And of course I go to lots of political sites of all complexions. However this 'message' went way beyond the bounds. Of course I can use other search engines, but most people do not. And they will be manipulated by this heinous kind of messaging.

Despairing Commuter (not verified)

Tue, 2016-06-28 11:13

We cannot go on with a public broadcaster who fails to inform the public that our populations numbers are out of control in Australia BECAUSE OF PLANNED INVITED ECONOMIC IMMIGRATION AND THE ABILITY TO SWAP OVER FROM TEMPORARY VISAS TO PERMANENT ONSHORE! At a vivid picture is painted of the absolute dystopia that high immigration is creating in Australia especially along the eastern seaboard. 1. Housing UNaffordability 2. traffic , infrastructure deficit , increasingly overcrowded public transport and never ending peak hour traffic, the trillions of $$$ that go into infrastructure for (BUT not mentioned) ever increasing demand.) Immigration was not mentioned but it was a very vivid worrying picture with no relief in sight. It was shocking to wake up to. Then, to cap it all of there was a terrible segment on the audiological industry, the fact that anyone can sell heralding aids. Illustrating the problems of this unregulated industry was a personal story of a proudly congenitally hearing-impaired 40 year old hairdresser with her oww business who had to let her only staff member go because of the debts she was incurring for hearing aid purchases. They should be government supplied for someone like this!!!!!!

John Bentley (not verified)

Tue, 2016-06-28 10:46

After 5 days of comment on the Brits getting out I haven't seen much in the way of congratulations. Some have agreed, some have agreed enthusiastically, but not much in the way of pats on the back, no well dones and no 'well that's a breath of fresh air'. To put it into the parlance of the late great Richie Benaud "Gutsy declaration that one by the British". Personally, I liken it following a truck up the Newell Hwy. and on the back of the truck emblazoned above the tail lights there is passing side and suicide, the Brits wisely have chosen the former. Whether the neoliberals will routed at Lords is another matter as this only the first innings in a series of Tests where, for a change, the dog has wagged its tail instead of the reverse as has been the case for much of the past 40 years! Well done!!

Dennis K

Mon, 2016-06-27 21:21

A good analysis from alt-Left blogger, Robert Linsday ** That’s the message of Brexit. Death to globalization, neoliberalism, corporate rule, horrific free trade agreements, races to the bottom, Triangulation, neoconservatism, invade the world/invite the world, trickle-down economics, austerity, financial conservatism, privatization, vouchers, wild inequality and the whole ball of dung. Death to it all!

Dennis K

Mon, 2016-06-27 21:04

Another casualty is shopping centres. Many stores are finding it difficult to stay afloat, as Westfield et al charge exorbitant, ever increasing rents. High real estate prices are really only a boon to banks and landowners, and that it is. It is a mentality from the middle ages where everyone (including royalty) were sick and diseased, and the economy revolved around rent seeking and fuedalism. The modern economy provides a higher quality of life, because it moved towards rewarding those who produce and create, instead of those who merely own. We are moving back to a situation where wealth is based only on ownership of assets and not production and innovation. This may be part of the reason why global economies are stagnating despite all efforts to try and prop it up.

Dennis K

Mon, 2016-06-27 20:55

Google selects ads partly based on private history, and I'm sure, partly based on their "preference". However, this doesn't mean the browser is compromised. The browser doesn't select the ad. For those interested, there are other search engines which respect your privacy more. One is "Duck Duck Go" For alternative browsers, there is Midori, Opera and Vivaldi. Linux users also have Konqeuror. There is also Yandex Browser, which is a Russian version of Google Chrome.

Sheila Newman

Mon, 2016-06-27 14:53

On Google and Mozilla I encountered a message designed to frighten people from exercising their right to seek political information. It happened to me when I went to the home page. We think it is placed there the way ads target users. I don't usually use Chrome because of its privacy invasion, but I did use it recently due to problems with flashplayer on Mozilla. I suspect that it is Chrome that has infected my browsing with these ads. Now, as a journalist and researcher, I can justify visiting any site that provides journalism on public events, but a lot of Australians and people from other countries are frightened by this kind of intimidation, which is a function of elite wedge politics.

Wedge politics try to frighten people from personally investigating outside a narrow political spectrum. In Australia, for instance, the ALP use wedge politics so that ALP sympathisers are reluctant to go to Liberal events or sites; Libs discourage their members from going to ALP sources; both the 'majors' and the Greens carry implicit threats to any of their members looking at any but their own policies. Ex PM Tony Abbott was so worried that Pauline Hanson might win a seat that he got her sent to prison - on charges later reversed. Other nasty guns are the Socialist Alliance and spinoffs like "AntiFa' which attend rallies about national sovereignty, or immigration or Halal or population numbers, as professionally managed intimidators.

The ad I encountered against the National Front was probably financed by big money and could have been a post Brexit initiative from the US or the EU. It made me wait for 30 seconds before going to the National Front site, with the following highly questionable and one-sided message. The message makes no mention of the Western elites' role in financing war and economic disintegration that produces refugees, against the wishes of citizens in the east and the west. The message suggests that people have no right to prioritise citizenship and border control. Brexit was, of course, a reaction to this kind of elite propaganda and top-down messaging. We must not be afraid to examine all arguments. It is our duty to defy being herded along the lines that the elite prefer. It is our duty to check out the designated enemy. It is the duty of the press to interview all sides.

"Your attention please,

You are going to visit the website of a french political party which will try to make you believe that country borders and citizenship must define your priorities when talking about humanity or compassion.

The rejection of the other, the mix between secularism and patriotism and racism, discrimination of refugee populations in France and hatred of foreigners or their traditions, are the real tools and values of the members of this party.

Redirection to the official web site in 23 seconds, please wait."

By the way, Marine Le Pen's speech about Brexit was very good. She is a gifted speaker and makes many intelligent points as usual - more than the power elites do.

Vivienne Ortega

Mon, 2016-06-27 13:04

" A business-owner must pay for two premises: the one he or she sleeps in and the one they do business at. Furthermore, they must pay their staff high enough wages for their staff to be able to afford Melbourne's high rentals and house prices. Australia has some of the highest land prices in the world and that goes a long way to explain why small and medium business enterprises so frequently fail. " Also, surely when plans and schemes become over-sized, they collapse due to dis-economies of scale! Medicine is now more technological, advance and there are more treatments and diagnostics available. That means treating patients is more complex now, with a bigger range of medicine. Along with massive population growth, our budgets are under heavy stress. Health care is being treated as an optional extra, or something that is available depending on how much money you are willing to spend on it.

ecoengine (not verified)

Mon, 2016-06-27 11:23

The Kremlin has spent years trying to create fissures within the NATO alliance and the European Union, but with little success. Now Britain’s vote to leave the EU fulfills Putin’s wish for a more divided Europe. “Without Britain, there won’t be anybody in the EU to defend sanctions against us so zealously,” Sergey Sobyanin, wrote the mayor of Moscow. London pulled its combat troops out of Afghanistan in 2014, and the British Parliament rejected possible U.S.-led military strikes against the Syrian regime in August 2013. European Union members account for about 27% of NATO military spending. After the U.K. leaves, that will drop to 20%, NATO Secretary-General Mr. Stoltenberg said. Britain, nuclear armed and wielding veto powers in the UN Security Council, has a major say in EU foreign and defence policy. The European Union, of course, is the target of legitimate criticism for its callous disregard for refugees displaced by NATO's wars, as well as the EU's brutal austerity policies.

quark

Sat, 2016-06-25 22:48

A side effect of city doctors in Australia needing to supplement their incomes from patients by putting them on health care plans health assessments etc. must be that their minds are focussing on paying the rent rather than on how they can apply themselves to their patients' medical problems. There is a not so subtle difference between the 2 ways of operating.

Feroze Mithiborwala

Fri, 2016-06-24 21:24

52% Vote for a Brexit against the 48% who wanted to stay on.

Europe is collapsing due its own crimes in Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, as the wars that they wage, the Refugees that they create across the Middle-East, West Asia and Africa, finally head to Europe in desperation from the countries ruined by the US-EU-Nato imperialists.

Even as the EU will collapse and with it the Western Bloc, the new world powers are rising from the East, the Bloc of Russia, China, India and the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation & the BRICS. The future is here in the East, in the region, and the Indian Ruling Elite had better understand that, instead of running after the US, Israel and the Western European nations.

Now Putin's vision of an Eur-Asian Union will emerge & will lead to the defeat of the Atlantic Integrationists led by the Medvedists in Moscow.

Even as the EU will grow weaker, many of the countries of from Eastern Europe will start gravitating towards Russia, such as Hungary, Rumania, Serbia, Macedonia and others, who are being treated as second-rate nations within the EU by Germany and France.

The Russian-Chinese, One Belt One Road, all the way from China, via Russia to Portugal, covering and linking the land mass of East Asia to the far reaches of Western Europe, will ensure the economic and thus the political reality of the EurAsian Union & the realisation of Putin's vision.

population overshoot (not verified)

Fri, 2016-06-24 18:12

Our national birth rate has been below replacement levels for decades. They will educate about the impacts of exponential population growth, and encourage a stable population size. This is heart-warming and reassuring, but it's hardly a policy that can be targeted, implemented, quantified or evaluated quantitatively. As for "expanding needs based family re-unions", this could just be pyramid immigration rates How long can families be re-united? It would be a chain-reaction and could actually means higher rates of mass immigration! Good, that urban sprawl must cease. This is one of the most pressing threats now to wildlife habitat, native vegetation clearing and threatening process to more species extinctions. There's no option of "green" growth! It's an oxymoron in a post growth era. Nobody can disguise plain, old, inappropriate "growth" when Australia is already groaning from frenzied population growth. It happens in a vacuum of ideas, and innovation. The idea of "living harmoniously" with wildlife and nature is aspirational, lofty, and idealistic, again one that can't be evaluated, without any any implementation plans. However, AJP is a political party NOT for humans, but for animals, and as such are unlikely to ever form government!

ecoengine (not verified)

Fri, 2016-06-24 11:59

From July 1, students aged six and above would be able to apply for student visas regardless of their country of citizenship – and their guardians can also apply for Guardian visas (subclass 580)… With our economy under pressure, and the loss of the mining boom, government are under massive pressure to keep up our GDP ratings and demand for housing. This latest visa scheme is much like using "anchor babies" to gain residency into a country - just drop a baby and the baby is a "citizen". Not only are universities starved of funding, and thus rely on international students, now primary schools are to become visa factories. “The price of properties in good school zones will continue to accelerate,” the report says. “We could also see prime inner city properties start to become acquisition targets. Many of these period homes have been ‘off limits’ to the foreign purchaser. This may no longer be the case”… “It opens up everything, not just to brand new or off-the-plan properties,” said Secret Agent founder Paul Osborne. “It’s going to change the composition a little bit of the types of properties that are required.” The housing growth Ponzi scheme will be boosted more, and inflate housing prices more if they are near "good" schools. Already our schools are overloaded.

anon (not verified)

Fri, 2016-06-24 00:10

The AJP has a lot of members who understand that Australia's overpopulation drives wildlife habitat destruction. They have a very short population policy (See below) that is much better than the Greens' pro-immigration policy. However point 3 of the policy expressed below does talk about expanding the migration program, although it does say, 'in conjunction with our the success of other policies in limiting human impact on the natural world. I don't think they were thinking too clearly here; I mean it is massive human populations that drive industrialised farming as well. I mean, why do they think they need to increase our already massive immigration program. My guess is that the person who wrote this policy is not even aware of the numbers. It's a pity. Nonetheless, I think I will vote for the AJP. "Population The AJP believes that our policies will enable Australia to reduce it’s impact on wildlife and the rest of the natural environment while maintaining a compassionate approach to both migrants and refugees while keeping the home-grown component of our population growth at or below zero. Key Objectives To keep the national birth rate at or below replacement levels. To educate on the negative impacts of exponential population growth, and the positive outcomes of a stable population. To expand needs based and family re-union immigration in conjunction with the success of our other policies in limiting human impact on the natural world. To ensure that any population increase happens within existing urban boundaries; urban sprawl must cease. To invest in research into urban planning that will improve sense of community and quality of life whilst also living harmoniously with wildlife and nature."

anon (not verified)

Thu, 2016-06-23 23:40

Thanks again for this article. More fluoride! How could anyone make that a big policy. They want dental care to be part of public health, which isn't bad, but they are into infrastructure and pushing fluoride like mad. Water fluoridation to be rolled out to remaining water supplies: Subsidised fluoride tablets/treatment for remote areas (including education materials).

anon (not verified)

Thu, 2016-06-23 23:33

Thanks for this opportunity to check all the candidates. Here's one to avoid: "A: Rise Up Australia Party believes in a big Australia. The growing ageing population will require to be funded in their retirement, and this can only be done by increasing the size of the population. However, before we increase the size of the population we need to create jobs and look after the number of people that we already have. Our stated policy is as follows: (2) To establish full employment and fair wages as central tenets of just social and economic policies; this includes genuine decentralisation that encourages private sector jobs (tourism, eco-tourism, abattoirs, timber mills etc.) in rural and regional Australia through small business incentives and supportive transport, telecommunications and tariff policies, and that reduces costs of congestion in major cities; (7) To develop prudent tariff policies to support or re-establish all sorts of manufacturing industries (that ‘value-add’ and provide high technology jobs) with a range of national system economic policies, such as those advocated by Deputy Prime Minister John McEwen; prudent tariffs could be used, for example, to provide a truly ‘level playing field’ by recognizing that Australian industries (and farms) incur costs in complying with the OHS, industrial relations and environmental laws of Australia, but that some overseas competitors do not incur such costs; (8) To develop and implement a coherent energy policy that acts in the best interests of Australia and of conserving resources and of encouraging energy efficiency; this includes Australia becoming self-sufficient in crude oil, being a net exporter of all forms of energy, having secure and cheap supplies of electricity, transport fuels and piped gas to provide competitive advantage to Australian industries and farms; specifically we reject “import parity pricing” that imposes ideologically-arbitrary and unnecessary costs on Australian consumers, industries and farms; we affirm that explorers for oil, gas and minerals must be rewarded with adequate returns (well above the long-term bond rate) on their assets and for their risks; (11) To eliminate counter-productive welfare payments in favour of encouraging savings and self-reliance and support for children, while maintaining an adequate social security system “to target assistance to those most in need, ensure greater adequacy of incomes, encourage and assist clients to enter or return to the work force or to provide for their own income security, and develop support for families, particularly those on low incomes” (Hansard, 20 Feb 1991);"

Sheila Newman

Thu, 2016-06-23 18:10

If I had time I would be looking at how investing in the US financial system, notably the subprime morass, brought financial instability to the countries in the European Union. When I did a long study, finishing in 2002, comparing Australian and French systems, Australia's foreign debt was huge in comparison with France's. The European system does not go in for housing speculation and so they had to invest outside their system to get into that sort of debt. And, of course, the influence of America has become more and more obvious in pushing for industrial deregulation and changes to inheritance and other major systemic differences which have managed to preserve less monetary divide between citizens and a greater kind of democracy in Europe than in the United States. If Britain got out of the EU it might make things better for the other countries. Britain's system is too different. One of the reasons that immigrants and refugees make a beeline for the UK is that the economy is deregulated and they get houses and jobs. In France only legal immigrants and citizens are guaranteed housing, employment or employment benefits. I'm not sure what is happening in Germany with regard to rights of citizenship and rights of unregulated immigrants, but it sure isn't working.

John Bentley (not verified)

Thu, 2016-06-23 10:42

Interesting times indeed. I'm definitely with Michael and Mark on this one, overpopulation is cruelling the world from within and any suggestion of trying address the problem is treated with utter disdain. The 2 Ms highlight that it's not only Australia that is blighted by the overpopulation bug but most European countries in particular Britain and today's Brexit vote. Given that the European Union was constructed on neoliberal values, is it my humble opinion that they should leave before the house of cards comes crashing down upon them. The harsh treatment and misery that has been meted out to Greece and other southern European countries did/does not need to occur. These countries are facing years of depression without any signs that their economies will ever recover. Such treatment will continue until something is done to force the EU's hand. A Brexit may just do that. Steve Keen, as always, puts it so much better than I could or can. Go to: Also another titbit from Steve: Cheers

quark

Tue, 2016-06-21 22:59

Thanks to the authors for quoting John Howard some years ago on his smoke and mirrors trick of coming down hard on asylum seekers to give an impression of tight border control in order to make the populace accept high levels of (non asylum seeking) immigration. He said it and everyone should know he said it.

John Bentley (not verified)

Mon, 2016-06-20 10:18

Below are a couple of suggestions for consideration as 2016 Election Policies including water, agriculture, renewable energy and health for your perusal. They my opinions and my opinions alone and others wish to demur that is understandable. (We) can do better 2016 federal Election Policies: Water: Water is Australia’s most precious resource. Current temporary water policy dictates that water is owned by the highest bidder, thus water is owned by metropolitan and regional water authorities, market speculators including banks, superannuation companies, foreign investors with farmers at the end of the chain. Water has been commodified over the years by Federal and State Governments under their neoliberal policies. Water needs to be decommodified with the only people to be entitled to own water to be Federal and State Governments and primary producers. Further to this the disastrous Murray Darling Basin Plan needs to be ripped up and renegotiated with input only from those who are entitled to own water and environmentalists who understand the geohydrology of Australia. The current plan is not conducive to either farmers or the environment (* - See Below) in fact has been an abysmal failure. Moreover, rural and regional water authorities are struggling under their current regimes with gross inefficiencies dominated by failed neoliberal policies. In particular Goulburn Murray Water with its (Dis)Connections scheme has evolved via fraud and deceit and after and judicial inquiry, the board should be sacked. Water authorities like all utilities should come under government control for the sake of providing equitable, cheap and reliable supply and function. Agriculture: Agriculture has been in decline in Australia for many years thanks to poor Federal and State Government policies including the above water policy. Money for Research and Development for agriculture has been declining for some 20 years and none of the major parties look likely to restore spending in this area any time soon. The neoliberal policies of Federal and State Governments and big business aren’t conducive to farmers or farming causing the cost of farming inputs to be far more expensive than they need be. Australia’s obsession with mining has been detrimental to the farming sector destroying both much arable land and polluting and destroying aquifers and watertables. Federal Government legislation is required and quickly to ensure that miners cannot just walk onto a farm and dig it up. I believe that miners should have to pay both farmers and governments royalties to access their land if consent is forthcoming from both in conjunction with a favourable independent environmental impact study. Cockies don’t want hand outs, they just want a level playing field and at present that is what they don’t have. Renewable Energy: Current renewable energy policy in Australia is a disgrace. Governments of all persuasions at all levels are presently beholden to fossil fuel companies. Australia has unlimited amounts of renewable energy whether it be solar, wind, wave, hotrocks or whatever. The platinum plating of the power and gas industries under neoliberal policies is unbelievable. Consumers are overcharged by some 20-30% or maybe more depending on the State, with the profits going offshore. I repeat my earlier suggestion that all utilities be purchased by State Governments so as the cost of these resources can be reduced and any profits put back into improving the service. Health: Healthcare in Australia is another area that has suffered greatly at the hands of the neoliberals as Federal and State Governments continually pare back the health budget. Whether it’s bulk billing for GPs, upgrading or constructing new hospitals, mental health, &c, governments of all persuasions work on the theory that if you get crook it’s your problem. This is the American model of healthcare that has failed and failed miserably. Furthermore, the problems are magnified in rural and regional Australia where there’s a continual shortage of medical practitioners and services of all descriptions. Australia has got a good track record in the field of modern medicine, but we need further money for R&D to maintain and improve healthcare in Australia. Another area that badly needs a total overhaul is private health insurance which requires decommodification. The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme has a fantastic track record, but it needs protection from the neoliberals before they wreck it. We need to have an informed discussion regarding Dying with Dignity before implementing legislation in this area. The above is just a superficial glance at a couple of topics not included in your manifesto. These are my points of view only and you may wish to revise, add or subtract from them as you see fit, but I believe they are relevant to this year’s election. * - The Basin Plan implemented in 2012 was a neoliberal market based solution to a physical problem. It bought back water from farmers, removed water entitlements from the land, made water available for the environment and extended water trading across the Basin. This action was taken “in the national interest, to reduce the risks to the environment, having a sustainable cap also enables markets to operate to maximise their productive potential, to increase efficiency of water use and improve productivity, to give farmers greater flexibility and to improve innovation, to drive infrastructure efficiencies and allowing many enterprises to restructure the businesses” among others. The fact was that this all took place during the Big Dry, 13 years of drought (1997-2009) when most farmers in the Basin were up to their ears in debt, were encouraged to sell their water and/or their farms to pay the bills. While much of the water from the buy backs went into a pool for environmental water or to be sold to fund the upgrading of infrastructure, some of the water was sold to speculators on the temporary water market including private and/or foreign investors, banks, superannuation companies, &c. According to the ABS temporary water cost $8 per megalitre in 2004, the cost of the same amount of water for the 2015/16 season started at $180, as it is currently, and with water scarcity a very real problem, at one point during the season temporary water exceeded $300! The break-even point for most irrigated culture is around $100-$120. While many farmers took the money and ran, others continue to battle against the odds buying water when they can afford it with no certainty in their livelihoods combined with declining commodity prices, farms have been abandoned, others bought by their neighbours, some by foreign investment and super firms or turned into mega-industrial farms by speculators ie the globalisation of the agriculture! And we all know what happened to the managed investment schemes in the Big Dry!! The much hyped environmental flows are exactly that: hype! The management of these flows has left a lot to be desired with several blackwater events, bank erosion and the worst cyanobacteria (blue green algae) event ever recorded in the mighty Murray. All of these problems are manmade, they have not occurred naturally as much as the authorities would have you believe. This is to the detriment of the environment, agriculture and tourism costing millions of dollars and deadly to native fauna!!

Matthew Mitchell

Fri, 2016-06-17 12:27

Given the claim: " If designed properly, denser environments provide more people with greater access to more variety and more amenity – more varied shopping, closer to work, easier access to the city with its entertainment and cultural provisions, and access to a greater variety of parks and recreational places,” the report states." So our priorites are shopping and canned entertainment are they? We know the recreational places created today are tiny compared the vast parks set aside when Melbourne was established - precisely because the English immigrants came from the crowded, high density living that was "London" and despised it. The creation of the TV and Media room has allowed this 'density' to take hold in Australia - but take away these, and if everyone - out of boredom - was to go outside, the parks and entertainment venues would be utterly insufficient. So the whole premise of this growth relies on most people NOT taking advantage of 'local cultural provisions' (unless this meaning is restricted to cafes). High density might be ok if surrounded by gardens with rural escapes close by, but not the way we are experiencing it - miles and miles of concrete lined with inhumane gigantic coloured boxes in place of beautiful buildings - and the traffic! Who can go anywhere? - travel away from home today is probably harder for most than it was for villagers 300 years ago. At least back then they could walk to the local shops - now you have to drive. But that detracts from the point - what if what you desperately want is contact with nature? Modern cities are so artificial, in every aspect that a complete feeling of alientation from nature is certain. We are supposed to instead take pleasure from Hollywood films that have had the same plots now for 40 years, and this is considered an appropriate replacement for the beauty of nature, with its wild-life, trees, waterways etc - all things are being progressively destroyed to make our 'sustainable cities'. The insanity of it, and the increasingly blatant lies as the contradictions become more and more evident are now getting almost too much to bear!

ecoengine (not verified)

Fri, 2016-06-17 11:13

The true cost of Perth’s urban sprawl has been highlighted in the recent report, with the focus of Perth’s future cost savings and sustainability being placed on infill development. They admit that the cost of providing water, power, communication, and education to greenfield sites is $150,000 per lot! Even property developers are admitting their limits to costs. Now, they are promoting "infill", or filling in existing suburbs with more towers and density. “Population growth is not a bad thing if it is used to generate more sustainable cities. Every city needs to see its growth plan as an opportunity to create a better city – one that has a reduced footprint and a better livability”, the report states. Obviously they are concerned about how people are reaction to the massive growth in Perth, and the potential environmental destruction to native vegetation and wildlife habitats. If designed properly, denser environments provide more people with greater access to more variety and more amenity – more varied shopping, closer to work, easier access to the city with its entertainment and cultural provisions, and access to a greater variety of parks and recreational places,” the report states. The report concludes by substantiating the real savings of increasing Perth’s infill target in a manner that we can all understand, by increasing to 60% the WA Government would make savings worth $23 billion by 2050. Enough to pay for the entire Perth Light Rail network, as originally proposed, 12 times over or the Fiona Stanley hospital 9 times. Imagine the infrastructure that could be developed if urban sprawl was reduced. Nothing in the report suggested any limits to growth, but damage control. It's expected that jobs will keep rolling out, and that "migrants create jobs"! Just where is Australia's population growth heading, and what is the target to be achieve by never-ending growth, without a plan or a cap? It's just short-term-ism, and inflating the housing Ponzi scheme while it still generates profits. These vertical slums will be condemned by future generations, as they suffer lack of water, declining living standards and excessive heat.

ecoengine (not verified)

Thu, 2016-06-09 11:18

It seems that we are being cajoled into believing we must be interested in the narrow terms of reference being dished up by the mainstream parties. They give us the crumbs, while the main policies are washed over. We are given the more immediate, hip-pocket lures, when the more global, national, and environmental policies are hidden behind policy walls and web-pages. What about the end to live exports, and how animals are being crammed into tiny cages to create cheap food sources? The Coalition offers a plan to contain spending and lower the tax burden on business to boost growth. Labor will mysteriously revive a budget surplus by the next decade, despite debts spiraling out of control. With this week's Newspoll showing that as many as 15 per cent of voters are flirting with candidates and parties other than the Coalition, Labor or the Greens, and with vote quotas for a Senate seat halved. What’s become clear over the past couple of elections is that a good 20% of the electorate (about 22% at the 2013 election) are looking for an alternative to the two main parties.

John Bentley (not verified)

Tue, 2016-06-07 10:53

I couldn't agree with you more Mark! I find neoliberalism the most pervasive of ideologies yet it is little understood by the community at large. In that context it's similar to climate change, the enormity of problem is, like an iceberg, hidden from public awareness. We, as you say, we need to change the paradigm and precipitate urgent action in both arenas if we want to live in the world we are accustomed to currently. The former rules that most people will struggle to survive in a vastly different economic climate. Extreme neoliberalism will enforce something that resembles a modern day feudalistic existence on the community while the latter will drive people from their homelands and seriously affect our ability to survive. According to my calculations to the end of 2015 we are 1.4 degrees Celsius above the long term average, for the first 5 months of 2016 that figure is 2.6 degrees!

James Sinnamon

Sun, 2016-06-05 02:26

The following was -270141">posted to the abovementioned -270141">discussion about Donald Trump on JohnQuiggin.com.

(4/6/16) by Finian Cunningham | Sputnik International

The above article confirms what I wrote previously in posts -270002">, , , , , and about Hillary Clinton. Finian Cunningham doesn't personally like Donald Trump[1] or even Bernie Sanders:

Admittedly, if Sanders or Trump were to get elected, the prospect for America becoming a law-abiding peaceful nation is not much brighter, such is the endemic criminality of US foreign policy.

Finian Cunningham continues:

However, if Hillary Clinton makes it to the White House, the outlook for the world is a whole lot worse. If she can start so many wars as a diplomat, one shudders to think of what she will be capable of as Commander-in-Grief?

Footnote[s]

[1] Most likely Finian Cunningham's objection to Donald Trump arises from Trump's outspoken opposition to immigration from Mexico and his view about Muslims. Whilst Trump's apparent prejuice against Muslims seems unjustified, the working conditions of United States' workers can only get worse if high high immigration from Mexico is not stopped. On that Trump is right where so many otherwise progresive anti-imperialsts get it wrong.

Jess.J (not verified)

Sat, 2016-06-04 02:59

How come there is such a 'Party' with the NSW Legislative Council in the first place? Doesn't sound particularly right in the 21st century, somehow. - The man Borzak is clearly very full of himself, his office bursting with 'trophies' looks like a regular nightmare (Seen on his website). Only wipe that self-satisfied smile off your face Mr.B, whether or not you've just found Christmas. And let's maybe remember that a) humans are animals too, b) that they are the biggest plague on Planet Earth, and c) "he who lives by the sword...(etc.)" as the saying goes. - Thank you for your time (away from the dining table, of course). - By the way: in the Queen's English 'fishers' are 'anglers' and 'shooters' 'hunters', NB.

Mark Allen (not verified)

Fri, 2016-06-03 15:57

I think the Bill of Rights is a brilliant initiative and a lot of thought has obviously gone into it. I agree with the vast majority of it. The only point that I take issue with is the demand that: "A bipartisan planning environment that provides certainty and protects residential areas against densification in any form." I think that this will be unworkable and not necessarily the best outcome. I am a strong advocate of increasing housing diversity in the middle suburbs (and to a much lesser degree in the inner suburbs) but not by a large amount. Herein lies the problem. How do we design a planning system that allows for a moderate increase in semi detached development and co-housing affordable housing schemes without allowing entire streets to be wiped off the face of the earth and replaced with higher density? I think that ideally some densification would be allowed on the grounds that it is undertaken by an affordable housing cooperative or a local government authority possibly in partnership with the private sector. That way there would be much greater consultation with local residents etc. The cooperatives would only focus on buying up housing stock that was deemed unfit for retrofitting and there would be strong urban design guidelines as well as much public consultation. Of course these proposals are all very radical and so they should be when you look at what we are up against but there is a fundamental issue that we all need to face here and that is that we have to move away from a neo -liberal economy to a steady state one. Otherwise slowing down population growth and the construction industry will cause an economic crash, and it is this scare campaign that will be used to persuade the public to keep this ponzi scheme on the road even if it means that the long term outcome will be much more bleak. The sad thing is that most people only think in the short term (which is obvious from our pathetic response to climate change). In short we need a revolution and it may as well start here.

Mark Allen (not verified)

Fri, 2016-06-03 13:40

The main reason why we have a high rate of migration into this country is because it is a symptom of the pursuit of a single ideology, that of neo-liberalism. Despite the fact that we are facing a climate emergency and the gap between the one percent and the ninety nine percent is widening by the day, our political masters nevertheless continue to put their foot down on the accelerator and take us further to the cliff edge. Therefore if we want to really to tackle the underlying issues and not just the symptoms, we need to change the paradigm to one that values critical thinking and is not about adhering to a single narrative at all costs. Therefore to consider voting for Australia First because they promise to slow immigration would be counterproductive, you are simply replacing one ideology with another and that will lead to all kinds of injustice. It is much like swallowing the spider to catch the fly. If we want to slow our rapid rate of population we need to get our democracy back and to vote for parties that understand this and not replace one form of extremism with another.

James Sinnamon

Thu, 2016-06-02 20:01

The following has been -270111">posted to the forum discussion mentioned -182585">above on JohnQuiggin.com :

-270110">Tim,

It's perfectly fine by me if you choose not to post further comments in response to mine. Whilst I welcome proper debate with others who show themselves willing to address my evidence and logic, I am not that bothered when people don't and less so, when they stop posting altogether. It's not as if I have nothing else to do with my time.

Tim complained:

"... I know that you're in the habit of copying comments such as the ones I've made above and posting them on your own web site, ... "

I sometimes post some of the discussion from here to my own web-site for a number of reasons, including;.

1. I consider my web-site, candobetter.net, to be a record of Australian and world history since 2006. Much of that history would otherwise have been forgotten. I consider the debate here to also be about a critical issue of world history for reasons I have stated above. That is why I have posted copies of most, but not all, of the discussion to my web-site.

2. As I have repeatedly stated, only one link per comment is permitted here on unmoderated posts. If I want to include more links or allow people to see other related material, that is only possible if I post copies to candobetter.net .

Tim continued:

"... and then making further comments, and in some cases accusations, on your own web site, against the people who have made the comments."

The only 'further comments' I could find in all of that page containing the article (27/4/14), were:

"This posted to a discussion about the United States' Presidential elections on JohnQuiggin.com, Trump and Tribalism:" (twice); and

"The following was posted to the same forum discussion mentioned above on JohnQuiggin.com :" (three times)

Tim wrote:

"So if you want me to engage in this discussion further, I want you to undertake not to copy my comments on this blog to your own web site, ..."

All the comments of yours, which I have copied, from here to my own web-site, are as follows:

"I don't think the risk of large-scale global conflict is particularly high, ..."

... all of 12 words. Tim continued:

"... to make any of your own commentary on it over there, and particularly not to make any accusations against me or to characterise me in negative or potentially defamatory ways simply because I happen to disagree with you."

As I have said before, all the 'accusations' and 'negative and potentially defamatory' characterisations are listed above. Other than that I have posted nothing to candobetter.net that I haven't also posted here.

Should you want to claim copyright on the comments you post here, then I think I am still allowed to copy a small portion of them, or to paraphrase those words. In any case, I hardly see the copying of 12 words as a breach of copyright.

James Sinnamon

Thu, 2016-06-02 19:48

The following has been -270109">posted to the forum discussion mentioned -182584">above on JohnQuiggin.com :

-270108">Tim,

I have shown that the United States and its allies have killed hundreds of thousands of people in illegal wars in recent decades. Close to zero have died as a result of Russian military action in recent years. Feel free to show me specific examples of where the Russian army has killed anyone, if you don't agree.

Claimed fears of Russia by the United States' allies in Eastern Europe are no more than a fabrication designed to justify their own vassalage to the United States and preparations for a new Operation Barbarossa. In a number of those Eastern European countries, the past record of those who collaborated with the Nazi occupiers is openly celebrated and former Nazi collaborators still parade proudly in their uniforms.

Also, feel welcome to cite from , former Assistant Secretary of the United States’ Treasury, and former editor of the Wall Street Journal, in order to show why you don't regard him as "a particularly reliable authority."

James Sinnamon

Thu, 2016-06-02 15:45

The following has been -270106">posted to the mentioned above on JohnQuiggin.com :

-270104">Tim,

I have personally been very worried about global warming since no later than 2007 as the '' page on our web-site shows. Clearly, Donald Trump's dismissal of the concerns of scientists about global warming is a serious concern. However, I think the efforts required from humanity to defeat global warming would be considerably less than the efforts necessary to clean up the consequences of war if the likes of Hillary Clinton and her backers get their way.

Tim Macknay -270104">wrote:

"I don't think the risk of large-scale global conflict is particularly high, ..."

As is clear clear to me and Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the United States' Treasury, and former editor of the Wall Street Journal, the United States and its allies intend to either turn Russia into its colony again as it was in the time of Boris Yeltsin or to .

How else do you explain the expansion of NATO to include Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland and Romania, and the building of missile bases in those countries against promises made by President Reagan to former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev not to expand NATO beyond Germany? How else do you explain the collaboration with NATO by Sweden, Finland and Georgia and their efforts to join?

Given what the United States and its allies have done to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Ukraine, the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan in recent decades, I think Russian President Vladimir Putin is clearly justified in his opposition to the expansion of NATO.

Sheila Newman

Wed, 2016-06-01 22:38

Good analysis, James. Detailed as ever. First past the post is the pits.

James Sinnamon

Wed, 2016-06-01 22:30

The following was -270099">posted to the same mentioned above on JohnQuiggin.com :

-270094">Tim,

I share most of your concerns about Donald Trump, but I can't agree that Donald Trump is just as likely to start a war as is Hillary Clinton. Given Hillary Clinton's past record, some of which I have mentioned above, it's a practical certainty that Hillary Clinton would start a war if she were to become President.

A critical point, which seems to be lost on most who write about the US Presidential elections, is that voting is not preferential. It is, most unfortunately, first past the post. That means that voters, who are opposed to both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, have to understand that a large vote for any of the other candidates, who may have policies which are significantly better than both those of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, could lead to Hillary Clinton becoming the next President of the United States.

Unless they feel certain that Donald Trump is every bit as awful as Hillary Clinton, they should vote for Donald Trump and not for their most preferred candidate.

In spite of his pronouncements against Iran, "bombing the hell out of ISIS" in Syria, and apparent support for Israel, there are reasons to hope that Donald Trump, unlike the case with Hillary Clinton, does not intend to start a war with Iran. Clearly his pronouncements against Iran are inconsistent with his support for cooperation with Russia and his praise of Russian action against the Islamic State terrorists in Syria. Iranian troops are also fighting against the Islamic State in Syria and a number have lost their lives.

Donald Trump's pronouncements can possibly be explained by the political context. The defeat of Democrats candidate Adlai Stevenson in the 1956 Presidential election convinced the then Senator John F. Kennedy (JFK) that a "peace candidate" could never win.

Consequently JFK concocted the story that the United States was under threat because then President Dwight Eisenhower and then Vice President Richard Nixon had allowed the Soviet Union to get ahead of the United States in the nuclear arms race.

That ploy succeeded in allowing JFK to just win in 1960. After he won, he refused, on three occasions, to allow the Joint Chiefs of Staff to launch a first strike nuclear attack against the Soviet Union (see "JFK and the Unspeakable - Why he died and why it matters"(2008) by James W. Douglass). At least many tens of millions of lives, and possibly humanity itself, were thus saved as a result of JFK's seemingly Machiavellian ploy in 1960.

Given what Donald Trump has said about JFK it seem seems likely that he is aware of this.

Sheila Newman

Wed, 2016-06-01 17:29

That may be so, but - thankfully - the draft Resident's Rights Bill proposes, under 'Demands': that • Population growth targets to be limited to sustainable levels based on OECD averages which is currently around 0.63%. (Australia’s rate of growth is currently around 1.7% ). Hard to better that; simple, just, appropriate and specific.

population overshoot (not verified)

Wed, 2016-06-01 15:28

“I regard the planned Educity at Werribee as a case of ‘educate your masters’. When the (mainly) Chinese students graduate, many will become immigrants and become an ethnic slice of Australia’s managerial elite. " If our universities weren't starved on money, and have to become an international resource and business operation, then we could have more Australians studying at universities. As it is, it's become grabbed by international students, as a step towards jobs and life in Australia. The number of colleges and universities in China has doubled in the last decade to 2,409. The country’s current five-year plan, which extends to 2015, focuses on many development priorities that are appealing to western college graduates. And many Chinese universities are focusing on developing technologies that increase competitiveness with the West. According to the nation’s Ministry of Education, some 377,000 international students were studying in China in 2014, while over 9 million students took the national university entrance examination, making China home to one of the largest education systems in the world. Why study here then, unless it's a long term plan to be a resident in Australia.

population overshoot (not verified)

Wed, 2016-06-01 15:22

Strange how well the commentators, especially Hon David Davies, slipped through answering any questions on population growth! The Elephant in the Room again was silent, and invisible. The problem of how to shuffle millions more people into Melbourne was discussed, but there was little being done to address the obvious - why are these people pouring into our city when it's full! Immigration is a Federal government policy, and we *can't* do anything about it- according to our Shadow Planning Minister! He would not promise that property developers would be banned from giving political donations. It makes far too much money for our State, but the way our short-term political parties operate, governments rejoice in "growth" but pass the costs onto the next governments - and they in turn depend on more people to pay for infrastructure! It's an addiction cycle that nobody really wants to break - except for the victims. Of course the residents are concerned about having their local areas trashed by over-development and money-spinners coming in and reducing their living and building standards. Where should all the millions be stacked? In outer suburbs, already in overdraft! Nobody wants more skyscrapers and certainly not in family-friendly suburbs. The point must be made that Melbourne can't cope with 8 million people if already our systems are overloaded. The solution is not likely to be found in supporting the Victorian Liberal Party, despite their thin assurances that they support residences' concerns. The Australian First party were handing out leaflets, but they were asked to leave! It was not a "political" event, but surely it is! High immigration, and housing growth, is a political policy that can only be changed politically. Australian First would end the Immigration Department and end immigration. Surely that's want's needed - without beating around PC!

peter (not verified)

Tue, 2016-05-31 11:56

Press Release
Susan Jakobi To Contest ‘Lalor’ In Federal Election For
Australia First Party
May 28
________________________________________________________

The Australia First Party has nominated Susan Jakobi for the seat of Lalor in
the Federal poll.

The party sees the issue of the China city set for Werribee as the core issue
for all Australians in the electorate. It is an issue that embraces every
aspect Australia’s mad rush to globalisation with its free trade, cheap
labour and inevitable Chinese takeover.

Susan said:

“I regard the planned Educity at Werribee as a case of ‘educate your
masters’. When the (mainly) Chinese students graduate, many will become
immigrants and become an ethnic slice of Australia’s managerial elite. The
city will be a vast parasite upon the Australian landscape. This $30bn
Chinese-backed plan for a hi-tech city of 80,000 residents will drain
resources away into the so-called global economy. I believe it will be linked
to an upgraded Avalon Airport and a new rail system that will link it to
other Chinese acquisitions. This is a type of colonisation.”

The China city is just another day in globo-land and it is being pushed upon
Victoria by the wealthy and well connected from local government to building
companies, from politicians to the multinationals and international banks.

Susan added:

“Will the Labor connected unions green ban it or black ban it? Will they
fight for jobs? Will the Education Union oppose it? We doubt all that.
Rather a union like the CFMEU will still be arguing with Australia First
Party as to whether the Eureka Flag is a symbol of the multicultural cuckoo
land or the flag of Australianism and our working people!

Susan Jakobi, 47, is a mother of three and a vineyards worker. She is an
organizer for Australia First in Victoria. Although she no longer lives in
the electorate, in view of issues involved, she says “this is of scant account.”

Susan concluded:

“In saying No China City in Werribee. I am standing up for an Australia where
the wealth and the resources, where the political power and the heritage of
the land is in the hands of the Australian People alone. That’s why I joined
Australia First.”

The party’s campaign is underway.

National Contact Line: 02 8587 0014
Susan: 0408 670 239

James Sinnamon

Mon, 2016-05-30 23:44

The following was -270070">posted to the same mentioned -182555">above on JohnQuiggin.com :

-270063">tony,

Thank you for my appreciation of my previous two posts (-270002"> and -270040">). I have since, on Sat 28 May, published another post -270053"> in response to J-D's post -270046">. That post is still awaiting moderation, because I had mistakenly linked to a second video concerning Libya as well as the video concerning Iran. That comment has also been -182563">posted to my own web site should you wish to look at it there before it is approved here.

The number of people killed in wars that Hillary Clinton helped to start since 1990 is barely an order of magnitude less than the 60 million that died in that terrible global conflagration which ended 71 years ago in 1945. According to , who served as Attorney General under President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ), as many as 1,500,000 may have died in Iraq alone as a result of war, starvation and disease since 1990. Certainly many hundreds of thousands died in Iraq. Given Clinton's record, our history from 1939 until 1945 may be about to repeat itself, only on a larger and more terrible scale, should she win the presidential election this year.

anon (not verified)

Mon, 2016-05-30 13:32

Somehow a “toddler” got into a gorilla enclosure in the US. From the footage you can see the animal gently toying with the child, a perfectly natural thing for him to do. So the gorilla is put down. I’m really sick of humans This gorilla has been deprived of its natural habitat and social group, and deprived of liberty. Then, after it is locked up, its very life is sacrificed in what was probably only a risk averse gesture, in deference to the life of the beastly species that imprisoned it in the first place. Really, really, really sick of humans.

Matthew Mitchell

Mon, 2016-05-30 09:32

I agree entirely, older Australians have a critical role - particularly now, when young people are so disengaged, feeling they have no say over the system, which just seems to keep making things harder for them everyday - so I encourage all Australians, and especially those over 50, to get on to the streets and make a collective stand - if this happened in sufficient numbers governments would be terrified, and perhaps - if it persisted - forced to act. I suspect that such a movement would then encourage younger people to also join the ranks and demand change - but please older people - the power does rest with you! You have the time, the resources, the eloquence of speech, the experience (so you cannot be dismissed as a bunch of disgrunted spoilt people - like Gen-Y's have been) - please do take the lead - in the end it will be to your - and everyone else's - benefit, because as our infrastructure gets further overstretched and our collective resources further depleted - no one will be spared the pain.

James Sinnamon

Sun, 2016-05-29 23:57

This was posted as a comment in response to the article (5/2/16) by Alex Ray | Between Deserts. It is currently awaiting moderation.

Supporters of Syria seem to have forgotten at least two elections in which Syrians demonstrated overwhelming support for the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad:

1. The most recent was the parliamentary elections of 13 April 2016 (see (14/4/16) by Vanessa Beeley | Global Research); and, before that,

2. the Presidential election of 3 June 2014. After that election the Syrian Mission to the United Nations held a press conference on 19 June 2014 at the United Nations offices in New York and testified that the elections were conducted fairly. See http://www.globalresearch.ca/syrias-press-conference-the-united-nations-doesnt-want-you-to-see , and its republication with the embedded YouTube video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnFQd4wBXnk .

If the elections were a facade, as Kerry and the msm have claimed, then why didn't anyone from those media outlets show up to that press conference? If the election was truly rigged or even if it was not possible to verify that the election had been carried out fairly, then surely those observers would have been torn to shreds under their scrutiny?

Either all the agents of the msm were astonishingly incompetent for not being there or there is another explanation: They knew that if they attempted to challenge what the Syrian Mission to the United Nations were going to say, by putting the same lying narrative about Syria that they had been publishing, then the whole world would have seen them for the liars that they are.

Sheila Newman

Sun, 2016-05-29 22:13

I just watched this video and thought about putting it on the front page, but decided to draw attention to it in this comment. The video is in the text of the article above, but maybe more people will watch it like this:

anon (not verified)

Sun, 2016-05-29 22:02

The notion that the aged or Baby Boomers or any group is gaining at another group’s expense is an expression of the perception of limited resources. Neo -liberalism preaches the "trickle down" phenomenon. If it works that way, then benefits to e.g older people by way of a reasonable standard of living after retirement should also “trickle down” Capitalism assumes unlimited resources so the notion of one generation taking from future generations is acknowledgement that resources are finite and that the end is in sight.

Matthew Mitchell

Sun, 2016-05-29 13:01

Also O'Grady says that workers in other countries should be entitled to the same conditions (good or bad) as workers in western countries. So we are expected to believe that an economic system that for two centuries or more has been based on exploitation, dispossession, lawlessness, and fiece battles against labour, is now concerned about, and serving the interests of, the poor in third-world countries? And that its supporters (O'grady included) are similarly deeply concerned about the rights of third world workers, and that O'Grady and his like are really working hard to look after the interests of poor Asians and Africans rather than their own selfish interests?

Matthew Mitchell

Sun, 2016-05-29 12:15

I notice that O'Grady uses that old line of thousands of Asians etc, being lifted out of poverty - but he does not identify his measures of poverty nor the costs. If you measure wealth by US dollars (or equivalent earned), the ability to own an iphone etc, then maybe they seem richer - but the cost? They are no-longer self-sufficient farmers etc, but rather thrown into the 'competition' for jobs with uncertain security - and also the environmental and health problems (look at China, the pollution etc - their children already have serious health problems from this). The trouble is that these populations buy into this propaganda. Gearóid is right to attack the media as selling these messages of wealth and prosperity, which really means wealth and prosperity for a few and destruction for most others, if not now then in the short-term future. A friend of mine who went to help people in Haiti noticed this effect, people there seemed only to want 'new economy' jobs - working behind computers etc - he noticed the same thing in Afganistan, people leaving their traditional occupations and farming to go and work in the cities - which is enabled there due to the distorting effects of the 'war economy' there. But back to Haiti, the problem there seems to be that being a simple farmer or similar is seen as low status, so people turn away from that (facilitated by US provided rice supplies) and do not even consider these options, prefering to do nothing, and desperately seeking more education which they presume will get them these jobs (although they are not even there for the educated). I guess this is an effect of Western TV etc presenting a glorified view of Western life - flashy cars, slick houses etc, leaving aside the problems of loneliness, suicides, homelessness, job insecurity and anxiety not to mention the unsustainability of the entire materialist system.

Mat Mitchell (not verified)

Sun, 2016-05-29 11:43

"(c) increase base-costs for business" - not just indirectly, through higher wages, but also directly as higher real-estate values lead to higher rents for businesses, which affects small businesses with low revenues particularly, this redirection of money to the FIRE sector, leaves less money for businesses to invest in equipment and labour, thus meaning less jobs and less productive capacity than would otherwise have. In fact, the high costs of rent probably prevent many otherwise viable enterprises from even getting started, and many that do struggle (e.g. how many coffees does a cafe have to sell before it has even paid rent? let alone wages etc).

James Sinnamon

Sat, 2016-05-28 23:34

The comment below has been -270053">posted as part of the discussion in response to -270053">Trump and Tribalism on johnquiggin.com .

J-D -270046">wrote:

There isn't enough context for the Gaddafi clip for me to be sure what's going on there, ...

Then perhaps you could look at the other videos linked to from : "Clinton emails reveal the Golden reason she ousted Gaddafi" (6:17min), "Hillary Clinton lying for 13 minutes straight" (12:57), "Rand Paul Destroys Hillary Clinton Over Benghazi-Gate During Capitol Hill Press" (6:13), "Update 9/05/2015: Edward Snowden Speaks Out: "The Hillary", The Donald, & ...", etc.

J-D continued:

but I can tell what's going on in the other clip: Hillary Clinton clearly thinks that James Baker (sitting next to her) is a reckless buffoon, but she doesn't feel that she can come right out and say that. Her laughter hints at the contempt for him that she cannot otherwise express. (I feel some sympathy for anybody who holds James Baker in contempt.) , ...

I have to confess that Hillary Clinton's clever dig at James Baker went right over my head. As far as I could tell, it also went right over the heads of everyone else who posted a comment to that :

"She has no soul...what would you expect. She represents everything that is wrong in this world.", "She's a disgusting warmonger", "I still can't believe she's running for president. Evil Is 100% REAL", "So that's how a real psychopath looks like.", "'The best thing that could happen to us is be attacked by somebody because it would unify us and legitimize the regime ... We're going to provoke an attack because then we will be in power for as long as anyone can imagine'. It's both amazing and chilling to finally hear some truth from Hillary.", "Hillary can not wait to invade another country. The people that vote for this psychopath will have blood on their hands. I wish people would wake up and realize what a sick individual this is.", "She's laughing like she's at a backyard barbecue.", "Baker is a complete lunatic as well. Of course Rose and the other mainstream media wimps say nothing. They never challenge these monsters.", "How repulsive, Hillary's loud laughing! War is NO joking matter. USA has killed hundreds of thousands in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and 500,000 Iraqi in a fabricated war for profit and oil. No more war.", ... etc.

I was not able to find one post from anyone else who also appreciated that Hillary Clinton thought James Baker was a reckless buffoon and did not really think that war against Libya was great idea.

J-D continued:

For myself, what I mostly base my conclusions on is not any sort of individual comparison of Clinton and Trump, but rather a broader comparison of the past political record (all of it, but mostly the recent part) of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

I have failed to notice much difference between previous Democratic Party Presidents and Republican Party Presidents, at least since the time of Jimmy Carter. Please feel welcome to provide "a broader comparison of [their] past political record."

population overshoot (not verified)

Fri, 2016-05-27 15:35

That our economy needs an injection of 200,000 (migrants) per year is more an indication of addiction, an admission we have a dead-end and vacuous economy. It's about artificially boosting our GDP by more consumers, in the absence of productivity and innovation. The "immigration" topic is cast as being synonymous to refugees, is a diversion - a smokescreen. John Howard admitted he was a "big immigration man" and used his tough stance on boat people to divert the public's attention, so that he could increase immigration while the public thought he was being tough on border control! We need a real economy, not one that's false, and unsustainable.

James Sinnamon

Fri, 2016-05-27 00:17

All nineteen oppose high immigration. It seems that those in the Liberals, the Nationals, Labor and the Greens, who so stridently support high immigration, lose the courage of their convictions when faced with clear argument backed up by evidence.

The reason that not one post favours high immigration is not that opposition to high immigration amongst Australians is unanimous, even if it is overwhelming. Rather, it is because those Australians who support high immigration know that any attempt, on their part, to put their 'case' before such a forum, would only serve, through the course of debate, to further confirm to anyone reading the posts how harmful high immigration is to our best interests.

Sheila Newman

Thu, 2016-05-26 14:10

Please consider commenting at the Age site.

Fairfax (Sydney Morning Herald)
online opinion piece

Today Fairfax published William Bourke's (Sustainable Australia Party)
opinion piece addressing the confusion between refugees and our
broader permanent immigration program.

Refugees
aren't the only immigration issue

Bourke writes:

I believe that the
public needs a clearer understanding of the difference between
refugees and the broader immigration program, and that our current
politicians have failed us in this regard.

I make the suggestion that the starting point to ending the
confusion and properly educating the public is to remove the
jurisdiction of Australia's humanitarian intake (refugees and asylum
seekers) from the Immigration Minister.

Fairfax is asking for comments below the article. Please also
consider sharing this article with your network.

William_Headshot_No._2-1.jpg



Kind regards

William Bourke
NSW Senate
Candidate
Sustainable Australia

James Sinnamon

Thu, 2016-05-26 01:43

This -270002">posted to a discussion about the United States' Presidential elections on JohnQuiggin.com, :

I think that this discussion about the United States Presidential election needs to focus more on the policies put by the different candidates. The issues raised by Donald Trump include:

1. Effective border control, to stop the influx of immigrants from south of the border further eroding the wages and conditions of United States' workers; and

2. Ending ongoing wars and the threat of even bigger wars.

Given Hillary Clinton's record towards Yugoslavia, Iraq, Iran (see video below), Libya, Syria and Haiti, I think much of Europe, including is right to fear a victory by Hillary Clinton far more than a victory by anyone else.

James Sinnamon

Thu, 2016-05-26 00:56

Professor John Quiggin, who posts to and maintains web-site, is a Social Democrat and avowed opponent of economic neoliberalism.

As with with every Australian blog of which I am aware, articles about overseas conflicts such as , Yemen, Libya, Ukraine, Afghanistan, etc, in which thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands have died are never published on JohnQuiggin.com

This is in spite of John Quiggin's labeling his web-site as "Commentary on Australian and world events from a social-democratic perspective". (my emphasis)

Nevertheless, on pages labeled "Monday Message" and "Sandpit", I and other site users have, from time to time, published comments and engaged in debate about these conflicts.

This happened until on 20 Dec 2015, when, without warning, John Quiggin deleted a comment I posted about Syria with the -266011">message:

Please, nothing more in support of Assad. I don't intend to debate this topic. Anything further will lead to a permanent ban – JQ

So, contrary to what is stated at the top of "Monday Message Boards", that visitors can "post comments on any topic", John Quiggin from that day on, forbade discussion about the Syrian conflict where possibly as many as 250,000 Syrians including 80,000 members of the Syrian armed forces have died since March 2011. This is no better than censorship. To advise site users that they can "post comments on any topic" is clearly misleading.

Fortunately, the comment I posted was previously posted -181023">above on candobetter.net, so it has not been lost.

What you can do: Could I suggest that if you share my concerns about this instance of censorship, that you post your objection to JohnQuiggin.com and elsewhere on the web. Be sure also to post copies of your comments here.

My apologies for this 5 month delay in advising other candobetter users of my above concerns.

admin

Wed, 2016-05-25 10:36

I don't think that candobetter.net disapproves of the idea of a publicly funded press; just recognises that government and its sponsors now seem to dictate and narrow reporting and election topics.

Katie (not verified)

Tue, 2016-05-24 15:37

Despite receiving well deserved criticism on this site some may wish to push for the ABC at a public "meet the candidates" evening in the electorate of Higgins this coming Thursday night, May 26th at the Malvern Town Hall corner Glenferrie Road and High Street Malvern. Friends of the ABC aim to get the ABC on the election agenda and to restore funding to it. 6-8.00pm "Banquet" room Enquiries- - tel. 98857078

population overshoot (not verified)

Sun, 2016-05-22 11:41

For most of the recent past, U.S. forces and forces armed and trained by the United States have regularly and violently intervened in the affairs of Latin American countries, establishing brutal autocracies to prevent the expansion of Communism. Barack Obama publicly stated that the days of US interference in the affairs of Latin America were coming to an end. Other leaders of countries in the region have both accused the US of meddling in their affairs recently. This continued controversy reveals the at times bitter history of the relationship between the United States and Latin America. It's about attempting to prevent left-wing governments, particularly those who attempted to nationalise their countries’ industry, from securing power in the region. Significantly, the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez frequently claimed the CIA plotted against him. A less obvious case is that of the Chilean military coup against the government of President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. Venezuela has the largest certified oil reserves on the planet and will always be a target of the most powerful interests. After Chavez was elected in 1998 and began to implement changes affecting powerful interests, changes that would redistribute wealth and nationalize control over strategic resources such as oil and gas, the U.S. backed a coup against him in 2002 that briefly removed him from power and installed a U.S. selected dictator, businessman Pedro Carmona. Support for Chavez grew and his allies came to power throughout the continent, elected for policies that prioritized social justice and people over profits. One by one, U.S. agencies targeted them, funding coups against Evo Morales in Bolivia in 2008. The clandestine operations, espionage, secret missions, covert funding, psychological warfare and regime change tactics the U.S. has employed in Latin America for decades and continues today.

Blossom (not verified)

Sat, 2016-05-21 15:11

I have friends who are dairy farmers. They are Catholic and as such, for them, humans are in a special category. They are nice people but I would say to some extent they are “pragmatic” about the rights and sensibilities of the large animals that they exploit. I worry even in the hands of these nice people, that under economic duress, the well- being of their children will come before any consideration for their animals. To have even the possibility of reasonable outcomes for farm animals , farmers need security and not to have the rug pulled out from under them with impossibly low, uneconomic milk prices.

Watcher (not verified)

Sat, 2016-05-21 11:58

It is totally unfair to open Australian dairy farming to the global market when costs of land, power and water are so much higher in Australia than nearly everywhere else. As dairy farmers struggle to survive in this cut-throat environment, it is the cows that will suffer even more than they usually do. This thought keeps me awake at night. It is truly grotesque that globalisation is going to force farmers to the wall and cows to the abbatoir. On the way they will be overmilked, causing their skeletons to break down and farmers to give up the few shreds of humaneness that have survived in the industry to date. This situation highlights the totally immoral and arbitrary nature of globalisation. Our only defense is to call for laws to protect animals and the industry. We need to take back power locally, but that means that most of our politicians have to go. We need to start again. And the media also needs to be replaced because it just accepts or possibly dictates this new hellish status quo.

Geoffrey Taylor

Fri, 2016-05-20 00:16

Amnesty International's , referred to above, has since also been cited uncritically by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) in (18/5/16).

The BBC 'report' states:

Amnesty's report documented what it described as a "chilling campaign to quash dissent" in areas of Yemen under the control of the Houthis and allied security forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh since December 2014.

Those held had frequently been tortured and denied access to a lawyer or their family, with some detentions lasting for up to 18 months, it said.

Many had been kept in secret, makeshift detention centres, including private homes, and then transferred multiple times between locations, it added.

In the vast majority of cases no reason for arrests were given.

Eighteen individuals featured in the report are still being held, including 21-year-old student Abdul Ilah Saylan, who was arrested outside a Sanaa cafe last August.

Members of his family told Amnesty how members of the security forces had tortured him in front of them when they visited him in detention in February.

"The guard began to beat him. Three other guards joined in and we watched... as the four guards beat him viciously," one relative was quoted as saying.

"They dragged him back inside when he fainted and told us to go home."

This report does briefly acknowledge that "the UN said in March that the [Saudi Arabia-led] coalition was responsible for twice as many civilian casualties as any other party to the conflict."

The last sentence appears to give a small amount of balance to an otherwise misleading story that can only cause more harm to the suffering Yemeni people. Yemen has, since March 2015, been fighting an invasion by forces from the neighbouring dictatorship of Saudi Arabia and assorted mercenaries from other parts of the globe. The invaders have been supplied with weapons including illegal cluster bombs. They have been supplied by Britain amongst others.

The BBC report concludes:

"Instead of incarcerating opponents for weeks or months on end, the Houthi armed group should release anyone who has been arbitrarily detained, implement safeguards to ensure detainees are treated humanely, and issue clear instructions that anyone under their command committing abuses will be held accountable," said Amnesty's Middle East deputy director James Lynch.

A people fighting for their survival cannot be expected to treat with tender care those within Yemen, who are siding with the invaders.

(I have not been able to find other corroborating evidence for Amnesty's claims about the Houthis anywhere else on the Internet. Should any reader find such evidence, please feel post any information, including a links to the sites in a comment.)

anon (not verified)

Thu, 2016-05-19 11:18

ALP MP David Feeney is in the news for holding a negatively geared investment property which was "undeclared". A report in The Age today makes much of the negative gearing, but the problem to me is not this, it is that he, as a politician is potentially in the position of holding the lever of population growth i.e immigration which feeds property investments. Excess demand over supply drives up prices. It would seem to me that whether or not you "negatively gear " your investment property, if you know the prices will rise as it it is under your control or of those you know well, and it is not illegal to do so and you can get bank finance and can service the loan, in the current climate you are almost compelled to invest in property. if I know that a house and land will double in $ value in 5 years and this is practically guaranteed, even if I got no tax concessions wouldn't I be mad not to invest?

Geoffrey Taylor

Thu, 2016-05-19 11:06

In (12/5/16) | The Huffington Post, Ranya Alkadamani, "an Australian of Syrian origin," writes:

Where does ISIS sit? 1.3 percent of deaths. ...

The "well-respected" "Syrian Network of Human Rights" aka the "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" has long since been shown up to be operated by one man "Rami Abdul Rahman out of his house in England's countryside"." id="txtCommentSubj1"> 1

Ranya Alkadamani continues:

... Where does ISIS sit? 1.3 percent of deaths.

So, the atrocities that ISIS has committed on a monstrous scale, filmed and boasted about across the Internet for more than 12 months now, represent only a small fraction of the deaths in Syria in that time? If ISIS is such a monster that the United States and its allies feel compelled to bomb them, then how much more monstrous must be the 'regime' of President Bashar al-Assad?

She continues:

More than 11,000 barrel bombs made of scrap metal and high explosives have been rolled out of regime helicopters onto hospitals, homes and schools since the UN banned them. These aerial attacks are the biggest killer of civilians. They drive extremism. According to NGOs working on documentation, casualties from aerial strikes, ground shelling and explosions count for over 50 percent of total documented deaths in 2014, a substantial part of which are caused by barrel bombs.

Assad wants you to think he is fighting terrorists. But he let ISIS metastasize so we would think he is the safer option. I hate to call it, but most of the international community has been played.

Syria not an Ally of Russia?

Ranya Alkadamani claims, "Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov stated bluntly, 'is not an ally of Russia'"

This is contrary to everything else I had previously understood about the relationship between Syria and Russia. Many times before, President Vladimir Putin and other Russian government spokespeople have repeatedly stated that they fear the consequences for Russia from extremists within Russia's own Islamic communities should the terrorists succeed in Syria.

My search of the Internet only found one source of this alleged quote from Sergei Lavrov, that is, (12/5/16) an opinion piece by Fawaz Gerges of The Guardian. The Guardian is infamous for its biased and misleading portrayal of the Syrian conflict. This article has since been reprinted by and .

Ranya Alkadamani ends with an appeal:

Before you go back to the rest of your day and the boring election campaign, do something that matters. .

The link is to the so-called "Syria Campaign", the front page of which, also repeats the lying mainstream narrative that "The regime of Bashar al-Assad ... has killed more than 300,000 and driven 12 million from their homes."

If you truly want to help the people of Syria avoid the same fate that the peoples of Iraq and Libya endured at the hands of the governments of Australia, the United States and their allies since 1990, then ask of each candidate seeking your vote in the 'boring' forthcoming , if he/she will act to end diplomatic sanctions against Syria and restore diplomatic relations, should he/she win office on 2 July.

Footnote[s]

" id="fnCommentSubj1">1. ">⇑ See (12/4/16) by Tony Cartalucci | Global Research.

ecoengine (not verified)

Tue, 2016-05-17 18:26

The land now has a value of about $15m and the Baptist organisation wants to sell it off for a dense apartment block. How can the church "sell" the land if it is not theirs? Of course the land should be returned to the Crown, for the benefit of the community. Churches should not be in the industry of property development, and contrary to local residents. Fortunately North Melbourne has retained much of its character by avoiding towers and big developments. Understandably, like any institution, churches need to be funded, and many properties were inherited by congregations, through governments or bequests. They were no doubt cheap in the past, and the prices have escalated. Many are sitting on gold mines, of over-inflated property/land prices. No doubt it's tempting to sell off the the highest bidder, and achieve the best monetary reward possible- as a business decision. BUT, the reality is that we live in a capitalistic world, and churches need income, to support their ministries and services - and serve church-building in expanding cities. However, they should take the conservative and better route of considering holistic values, good custodianship. and the welfare of future generations. Apartment building is a quick money-spinner, but just who will locals view the church if they are sold out?

admin

Mon, 2016-05-16 19:00

Thank you -182538">Geoffrey Taylor and -182539">admin, Given the serious risk of an all-out invasion of Syria by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United States and their allies, which could well break out into a gloabl war, we need to very carefully scrutinise any pronouncement from a group with such a dubious past as has Amnesty International. At face value, the Amnesty Press release looks good. Finally, it seems, Amnesty is telling the truth about the terrorist invaders of Syria, without attempting to unjustly demonise the Syrian government . But, a closer look reveals that the Amnesty is still restating the Western mainstream media (msm) narrative about the Syrian government. We are told that the Syrian government is worse than the terrorists that Amnesty has so rightly denounces in this press release. This is little differnet to the Western narrative about ISIS (aka 'ISIL', the 'Islamic State'). The msm has, for over a year giving huge coverage to their crimes as an ostensible justification for military intervention against ISIS. Then quickly at the end of most reports about ISI, we are reminded the Syrian government is even more brutal than ISIS. In this way Western public opinion is being primed to accept that, once the invasion to ostensibly destroy ISIS commences, of course the invaders would be wrong not to also remove the "brutal Syrian regime". Could I suggest that the original article be replaced with Geoffrey Taylor's comment? Possibly the original article could be included as an appendix.

Sheila Newman

Mon, 2016-05-16 13:09

Hillary Clinton: 'If I'm President, We Will Attack Iran . . . to Totally Obliterate Them.'
Article by Stephen Lendman.
Originally published on May 15, 2016 by Global Research at these statements by Hilary Clinton have extreme relevance to the US election campaign.

On July 3, 2015, presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton addressed a hand-picked audience at a Dartmouth College campaign event. She lied calling Iran an 'existential threat to Israel . . I hope we are able to get a deal next week that puts a lid on (its) nuclear weapons program.'
[...]
The United States stands with Israel now and forever. We have shared interests. . .shared ideals . . .common values. I have a bedrock commitment to Israel's security.

She backs 'massive retaliation' if Iran attacks Israel, saying at the time:

'I want the Iranians to know that if I'm president, we will attack Iran. In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.'

She endorses using cluster bombs, toxic agents and nuclear weapons in US war theaters. She calls them deterrents that 'keep the peace'. She was one of only six Democrat senators opposed to blocking deployment of untested missile defense systems - first-strike weapons entirely for offense.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

admin

Mon, 2016-05-16 12:46

Thank you -182538">Geoff. Good to hear from you. You are right. I made a terrible mistake. I scanned the media release fairly thoroughly, I thought, but I missed out this sentence: "The fact that the scale of war crimes by government forces is far greater is no excuse for tolerating serious violations by the opposition." It seems to have been a sneaky insertion by Amnesty International. I initially published the press release because Amnesty was finally conceding brutality from some of those myriad 'rebel' psychopathic groups. Since the mainstream press and a great deal of the public are conditioned to believe anything coming from an NGO with an evocative name, without question (a big problem in our society) I decided that those who have been brainwashed to believe there is some kind of militant but honourable opposition to the Syrian Government might take note of this report. I completely failed to see the bullshit about the Syrian Government having done worse crimes than everyone else. How Amnesty International could deny the reality, that the Government shelters the bulk of the remaining population and that it is to government held areas that everyone flees - not to rebel-held areas, is beyond me, except to say that others have explained it as being due to Amnesty's western backers. Amnesty toes the Western line. At least in this piece they allowed a warning about 'Two of the armed groups attacking YPG forces in Sheikh Maqsoud - Ahrar al Sham and Army of Islam - have sent their own representatives to the UN-brokered negotiations over the Syria conflict in Geneva. The other armed groups have approved other delegates to represent them at the talks.' But I was in error to have published the piece in full and I have now removed that terrible propaganda quote from Malena Mughrabi, interim Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International, which is unsupported by fact or logic. The purpose of such an insidious pronouncement is to lend support to the dismantling of remaining order in Syria.

population overshoot (not verified)

Sun, 2016-05-15 16:00

The Annual kangaroo "cull" in ACT is now a new cultural institution, and means up to 2000 animals need to be killed each year. It's justified by needing to protect the "environment" and not cause too much competition for other native species - ostensibly. It's "good" for conservation, and the protection of grasslands - apparently! Why not have a macabre "festival" of killing, (like the disgraceful Yulin dog-eating one in China) and make it a commercial enterprise? There could be public viewing platforms, competition for killers, BBQs of meat, and a scoreboard, drinks and souvenirs (make in China?) of dead baby joeys and fake blood? Where's the loyalty, compassion, justice for our native symbolic animals, and real environmentalist/ecologists/zoologists to support the validity of kangaroos, their contribution to the environment, to contradict the malignancy associated with them?

population overshoot (not verified)

Sun, 2016-05-15 15:51

Now there is a trend to blame the "ageing population" for everything that's wrong with society. There aren't enough houses for all, so they are blamed for living in houses that are "too big" and hogging them for too long - instead of downsizing or dying off! They are blamed for causing budgetary hardships, of costing too much in health care and pensions. Their numbers are expanding, and becoming a too high proportion of the general population, and thus need to be "diluted" with young (mainly) migrants. An "ageing population" is a threat to our economy, and means young people must pay more to support these bludgers, for overly long lives. It's a myth, a distraction from the real problem of rapid population growth.

anon (not verified)

Sun, 2016-05-15 11:04

I am an ‘ageing’ activist and so are many of my friends. In fact I have a life-expectancy of about 30 years at least. I attend many meetings of well-intentioned and often well-performing community groups. The general aims of most of my affiliations are to preserve the environment from those who would exploit it for personal gain at the expense of the majority. If we win against the vast forces pitted against us; if we win anything at all, it is to the mutual advantage of ourselves and those who come after us. So, quite often I feel discouraged when someone from the front of one of these meetings complains that things are not going well, exemplifying this with a remark about how old everyone in the room is. The person making the remark is invariably old himself, and nearly aways male! At a recent meeting a male octogenarian complained about how old everyone was. I, in my fifties, looked at the young man beside me and wondered how encouraging he found this. I felt undervalued. I recently heard someone despairingly complain that the women who care about the environment are all “post-menopausal” and the men are "50-70” I have been to a number of environmental rallies many on Parliament House steps in Melbourne and observed many people in my own age bracket forming a reasonable majority in the ranks. Is that so surprising, really? I would hope and expect my cohorts to be active in trying to preserve the environment from destruction. That’s our job now, especially if we have retired and are thus not obliged to be salaried “On Duty” somewhere every day. Some older people, seeing their companions in environmental battle to be middle aged or older, seem to panic that when they are gone, there won’t be anyone to carry on. So, they conclude, they might as well give up now. By uttering these sentiments , especially to a group of people who HAVE TURNED UP, they dismiss those present and sap the group’s inspiration. The middle aged or older who engage are, in fact, taking action. They occupy the political space, they create a hub for others to gravitate to. For various reasons they may not attract crowds of younger people but, younger people become middle-aged people. A typical young adult now has the following all-absorbing concerns which cannot be ignored 1. Career development 2. Paying off HEX debt 3. Saving for the deposit on a house, paying off a mortgage, or bringing in the rent 4. Finding a mate 5. Raising children. These are all immediate concerns which relate to their individual long-term survival in this society. They are critical concerns. Some of them were the concerns for young people 30-40 years ago but the HEX debt was not and the others are, I believe, more difficult now for most than they were then. If these young people are lucky, their more senior years will give them some more time. Who knows, however, they may be working until they are 70 plus, as some expect them to do. Perhaps governments have abandoned the 1970s goal of the leisure society precisely because they realise that if people have free time, they will take a stronger hand in their own political affairs. Whatever happens, in the future, it is unrealistic to expect a huge representation of young people in community groups and it is not a matter of despair that older people are in there with their sleeves metaphorically rolled up. Older people have to keep leading in this respect whether they are being followed by people of their children’s generation or not. The time to worry is when all the activists of their own generation bow out and it is not possible to see where the younger generation have popped up - if at all.

Frankie (not verified)

Sat, 2016-05-14 12:44

13 May 2016 — As usual the ACT government has ignored all our pleas to spare the kangaroos this annual massacre. The horror begins on Monday 16 May. Please keep passing on the petition. We need to keep bombarding them with emails. They need to know we are never going to go away.

John Bentley (not verified)

Sat, 2016-05-14 09:47

Good call Dragonfly. I, too, have given The Conversation the flick. After having my comments on Martin Bryant edited while commenting on a piece by Rebecca Peters and Anthony Cunneen "Australian guns laws are saving lives - but are we now going backwards?". While my comments were forthright, they weren't personal nor malicious. I merely stated that Martin Bryant was innocent and the bare facts surrounding his arrest and imprisonment. I added that black market was/is thriving and that if anybody wanted a gun, access via that market was easy as... While I was disappointed, I, like yourself, came to the realisation that they didn't want the REAL facts to surface.

population overshoot (not verified)

Sat, 2016-05-14 04:50

Another problem is that the majority, if not all, of these corridors have to cross several roads and many will have serious bottle necks! Do they poor displaced marsupial have to learn to negotiate traffic lights, buttons, foxes, cats, housing expansion and all the other miscellaneous entrapments of suburbia? Our long and slow evolving native animals are being asked to negotiate the impossible, as part of being squeezed out of their natural habitats because of human expansion! Where's our moral obligation towards our native species, especially as DELWP want to improve biodiversity and restore declining levels in Victoria.

population overshoot (not verified)

Fri, 2016-05-13 13:55

Lazy economics and profiteering relies on a flow of migrants to artificially inflate housing prices! It's a sure winner, with no innovation and few new skills required. It illustrates what passes as an "economy" now, just inflating and exploiting real estate prices, from raw population growth. It's a case of the profits going into private pockets, while the costs are borne by the public - in lowering living standards and infrastructure blowouts! Those at the apex of the housing Ponzi scheme reap the profits and benefits, while the lower classes eek out their daily living in traffic gridlocks, mortgage stress, over-heated rents, or homelessness. Ramping up net overseas migration helps the poor real estate industry. They’ve done it so tough for so long! We need to ensure that surplus housing stock is absorbed so that prices re-enter an uptrend so developers and their ilk keep making easy money? Victoria's economy has become so narrow, myopic and thin, that housing and real estate are holding the threats of our "economy" together, temporarily, with stamp duty revenues and profits from housing growth. There's no "planning" now but laissez-faire approach or carte blanc for developers to use our city as an economic resource.

population overshoot (not verified)

Fri, 2016-05-13 13:42

Just how much one has to spend on tertiary education now determines their eligibility to this so-called "enlightened" and elite group! About $2 billion in cuts to higher education remain on the books in the 2016 budget. The government will maintain a 20 per cent funding cut in which students will bear on top of a reduction in per-student government grants. Students will also be hit by a highly anticipated reduction in the income threshold at which they start repaying their Higher Education Loans Payment debt. A growing number of students do postgraduate coursework programs, which mostly charge full fees. The charges can certainly mount up to more than $100,000. Students can take out a government FEE-HELP loan whose limit this year is $124,238. But that still leaves students with $146,093 to find. Unless they have very wealthy parents they'll have to take out additional loans or try to win bursaries. Those making these massive cut-back decisions to load young people with debt are probably beneficiaries of what used to be free, or low-cost, education. One would have thought that the education-export industry would be able to subsidize local students? But no! New figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that the resurgent industry grew by more than $2 billion in 2015, on the back of four successive record quarters. They included an all-time record three months between July and September, when revenue exceeded $5bn for the first time. Being "enlightened" enough to belong to the intellectual elite costs $$$, and no wonder it promotes open-borders and a world not constrained by conventional thinking! Surely funding tertiary education is an investment in our future, not a cost? But no, the business model, and profits, determine academic values now!

admin

Fri, 2016-05-13 01:52

The comment below has been moved from , because I consider that it disrupts the discussion on that page - Ed (13/5/16)

Just what sort of time warp is Candobetter living in.?
War kills humans. War is good.
Selling uranium to India increases the chance of a nuclear war between India and China. That might (at best) kill 500-mil from each side, a total of 1-billion.
Ummmm -- that will give Planet Earth a spell for lets see -- 12 years.??????
Ohhhhhh.
We need something more than nuclear war to stablise, then reduce, the human plague.
Natural disasters? Cyclone Yasi - biggest for decades - killed one person. (That dope was burning a kero heater in a sealed room and died of carbon monoxide poisoning. We're better off without him).
Only viruses can do it.
HIV is pathetic - down to lower than 8-million kills a year. While global growth is still 80-million. While village idiot Bill Gates spends millions trying to "cure" tropical diseases like malaria and cholera.

Candobetter Ed:

Publication of this comment was delayed while we wondered what to do about it. We don't want to be seen to condone recommendations of violence, but Zero isn't saying that he plans to unleash viruses or wars. We also don't want to be seen to censor anything not actually illegal. I know the author and his ironic sense of humour plus his deep despair about overpopulation, so I am going to publish it. But the reader is asked to be aware that candobetter does not advocate violence and does not rejoice in mayhem or natural disaster.

On the other hand, the lack of empathy displayed in the comment about the 'dope' burning the kero heater who perished during cyclone Yasi, could cause the relatives of that person distress - and for no good reason. Zero's comment would have been just as effective if he had written that 'one person died, not from the cyclone, but through misadventure.' We would have had no problem with that statement.

And the comments about HIV would be read by many people as callous and even psychopathically devoid of empathy. They might also be interpreted as racist by people who perceive HIV as a disease primarily affecting third world countries with non-European populations (overlooking Russia and the USA). Others might see such comments as styled for shock-value, therefore ironically effective in dramatising nature's apparent lack of defense against human overpopulation.

Zero's message that selling uranium to India increases the chances of war between India and China is a perceptive warning, even though it is couched in sarcasm. In addition, he dramatises the fact that Earth's human population growth would catch up with a billion deficit in only ten years.

So, here is your comment, Zero, finally published with these editorial comments. Now I'm going on to your next one. Thanks for reading candobetter.

James Sinnamon

Fri, 2016-05-13 01:15

Following the recent 71st anniversary of VE day, , which is otherwise informative, insightful and an indispensable alternative to the lying mainstream media, posted to YouTube an (embedded below) from an RT

In this interview, Professor Geoffrey Roberts claimed that the Soviet Union could have, on its own, defeated Nazi Germany, without the help of its Western Allies.

Whilst Professor Roberts is right to remind people of the heroism and terrible sacrifice of the Soviet people, I can't share his certainty that the Soviet Union, alone, could have defeated Nazi Germny. In all probability, it seems to me that, without Great Britain defying Hitler after the fall of France in 1940, and without the ongoing fighting of Britain in the Balkans, [1] North Africa and the Atlantic Ocean, the subsequent entry of United States into the war and the aerial bombardment of Germany's industry, the Soviet Union would have almost certainly lost that war.

The reason I think that the Soviet Union could not have won without help from the Western allies, is that it seems that there must be a limit to how much sacrifice any country can endure. I doubt for the Soviet Union that that limit could have been much more than the 27 million and without help from America and the British Commonwealth and other allies, many more Soviets would have certainly died.

In fact, that terrible 27 million death toll is much higher than it need have been and was only made necessary by Stalin's criminal misleadership of the Soviet Union.

Had Stalin heeded the warnings from Britain, America, his own spies and German army deserters, that Germany was going to invade, many of the military defeats and much of the terrible loss of life which followed after 22 June could have been avoided. Had Stalin not destroyed much of the Red Army Officer corps in the great purges of 1937, Nazi Germany could well have defeated at a cost of well under the 400,000 lives lost by the United States in that war instead of 27 million.

I posted to that YouTube page and to Twitter, the following comment:

27 million Soviets died in the Second World War thanks to Stalin's 'leadership'. How many more lost lives do you think the USSR could have sustained?

No-one has responded to that comment.

Footnote[s]

[1] This is notwithstanding after October 1944.

Dragonfly (not verified)

Thu, 2016-05-12 14:01

The Conversation is the Fox News of academic discourse in an era when academics have become the lackeys and mouthpieces of corporate sponsors. Does Murdoch have any overt links to The Conversation (syndicated in several countries) or is it just the presence of his hacks, such as Michelle Grattan, the Australian Conversation editor? I'm not sure. Hope someone will look into the matter. Why anyone would think that The Conversation is somehow enlightened and intelligent, I don't know: I guess that those who thought the Age was, will think the Conversation is. Someone is always capturing public communication channels so that we cannot hear each other, only our self-designated managers.

Peter (not verified)

Thu, 2016-05-12 09:50

AUSTRALIA FIRST PARTY-: Whatever will benefit Australia - that we are for; whatever will harm Australia - that we are against. William Lane :- PRESS RELEASE Nominations for The Mao Tse-tung Order of the Third Hand are invited from Individuals of The Commonwealth CRITERIA. This Award is for Scabs who aid and abet the pox of Chinese Imperialism in Australia, manifested in their conniving for unwanted exploitive “developments”; the selling and purchase of resources and assets of Our Commonwealth, and the accompanying demographic swarm and cultural recolonisation of our Native Land. It exemplifies a Traitor Class motivated solely by monetary gain, and devoid of any respect or loyalty to the Australian People, our identity, heritage, sovereignty and independence. Award nominations are for the quarter ending 30th June , 2016. The Order of the Third Hand Award is of ongoing character and our Australian Peoples Movement on the Day Of Reckoning will bestow further to recipients. Please forward the name and address of the person to be nominated, with supporting references, to the address below. Include your own name and address. AUSTRALIA FIRST PARTY Identity - Freedom - IndependenceP O Box 223 Croydon 3136. National Contact Line 02 8587 0014 email: Australia First Party - Reclaiming Australia for Australians “By over-all planning, we mean planning which takes into consideration the interests of the 600 million people of our country. In drawing up plans, handling affairs or thinking over problems, we must proceed from the fact that China has a population of 600 million people, and we must never forget this fact”. Mao Tse-tung. 27/2/1957.

Sheila Newman

Wed, 2016-05-11 23:29

Source: An extreme heatwave and drought in East Asia is now sparking extraordinarily large wildfires in mostly unsettled regions of Northeast China near the Russian border. The massive fires are plainly visible in the LANCE-MODIS satellite shot and include at least four contiguous fire zones. The fires each show very large burn scars with fire-fronts ranging from 10 to 40 miles across. In essence, what this satellite shot is showing are 3-4 Rhode Island size infernos. Massive Wildfires Northeast China (Enormous wildfires burning in Northeast China on May 10th. For reference, bottom edge of frame is 600 miles. Image source: LANCE MODIS.) A very large smoke plume cast off from these blazes is now visible in the MODIS satellite shot. It stretches away from the massive burn scars and on out into the Sea of Japan nearly 1,000 miles away. By comparison, the Northeastern China fires together now dwarf the recent massive blaze that burned 2,400 structures in the Canadian town of Fort McMurray over the past week. Yet another instance of extraordinarily large fires burning in a world forced to warm by human fossil fuel emissions. [...] International news media has no reports on the blazes, so little information is now available other than what can be Read more at

Sheila Newman

Wed, 2016-05-11 23:22

Whatever Happened to Moreland Mayor's "Sod Turning Ceremony" on Rogers Memorial Reserve on Tuesday 10 May? Greens Mayor Samantha Ratnam and supporters, including two Councillors Oscar Yildiz and John Kavanagh, gathered at the small swimming pool building on the west side of Rogers Memorial Reserve in Pascoe Vale yesterday at 4:30 pm. (See our previous media release and notice of the event.) The intention was to hold a "sod turning ceremony" in the park to mark the commencement of construction of a mega community/medical centre development on what has been for the last 80 years a War Memorial Reserve. Representatives of Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc and Friends of Rogers Memorial Reserve stood at the entrance to the pool building with our messages to the Mayor and Councillors on placards. See the photo. Our protest group waited and waited and still no party emerged from the swim pool centre to embark on the promised "sod turning ceremony" in the park. They were entertained inside with afternoon tea and by an elderly choir who reportedly sang Abba's "Dancing Queen" and other uplifting songs. Meantime darkness fell and it appeared that the ceremony in the park had been abandoned. Could it be that the Mayor did not want to face us? It was reported - as unlikely as it seems - that the sod turning was performed in a bucket of sand in the safety of the swim centre The departing Mayor and company finally left around 5:45 pm in the dark and were farewelled with chants of Shame Greens Shame. This is not the only fiasco the Greens Mayor of Moreland - the Greens candidate in the Federal seat of Wills - has presided over. See the article in the Herald Sun today on Page 7 re cheap grog sales. News items coming up in next bulletin: Boroondara proposed land deal with Camberwell High School over a Riversdale Park land grab for a cycle path and our meeting last Monday with an Education Department bureaucrat questioning the deal; report on "community consultations" held by Yarra Council on Rushall Reserve over proposed cycle path; population overload in Melbourne and failure of Government to reduce net overseas migration; and threat of new children's playground to Darling Gardens Clifton Hill. Regards Julianne Bell Secretary Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc.

quark

Wed, 2016-05-11 13:46

Its not all bad of course…there are opportunities- investment opportunities!!!!! I now quote from a prospectus received in the mail this week. “The current Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) expectation is for Australia’s population to increase by 8 million people, essentially growing by a third of the current population by 2036……..Melbourne is expected to grow 1.8 million in the period… For property this drives increases in density levels as well located land becomes increasingly sought after. Think of the impact this is likely to have on the main CBDs . Local area population density for FY-15 suggest suggest the Sydney CBD area resident density stood at 6,690 people per square kilometre. If you look at Greater Sydney as a whole that becomes 398 persons/skm providing an appreciation to why quality CBD locations are an increasingly rare commodity. Over the past decade the CBD population rate has been 3%p.a.- more than double the national average. Should this outperformance continue , density levels may go beyond 10,000 persons/skm. The only likely hindrance is the availability of development sites…..” Isn’t that all terribly exciting? And further good news is a graph of population growth rate- 5 year forecasts in various countries and Australia, surprise surprise, is the top performer! leaving the USA, UK, China, Germany and poor Japan way behind, the last in negative territory! Invest now in your own destruction!

Brian McGavin

Wed, 2016-05-11 12:16

Subject was: Drought, overpopulation, and Syria I agree with much you say about Syria, though Iran is also complicit in intervention and the monster that is ISIS was spawned in US managed prisons in Iraq, according to information I read, where deposed Sunni militants were put together and plotted their revenge before getting out. Similar failings took place in Libya where local militants were left to grab the deposed dictator's vast arsenal of weapons as western nations quickly walked away from the new situation. I also read that the Syria conflict grew from the combination of a six-year drought and the pressure of an exploding population. People from the country faced starvation and pleaded with Assad for help, but he only responded to help his Alawite clan supporters. This lead to many people turning to support rebel groups against the regime. It is a dreadful mess on all sides, but these hate-filled, endless turf wars in failing states are more than just a result of western intervention. You can publish this as a comment if you wish. Also, I am still interested in why Australia needs to build a hugely expensive fleet of 12 new submarines - a story that was briefly mentioned in the UK a few weeks ago. Can you or others shed any light on this? Best wishes, Brian (McGavin) Editor's comment: Thank you, Brian, for your comment. With all due respect to you, much of what you have written is from the Syria narrative by the same shameless liars who gave us ', Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK, etc., etc. These lies caused many hundreds of thousands to die in illegal wars by the United States and its allies. To find out the truth about Syria, read our pages about , the (SANA), , , etc. One article that should settle once and for all the the mainstream media (msm) is lying through its teeth about Syria is the interview of President Bashar al-Assad by Charlie 60 Minutes on 9 September 2013. Only about 15 minutes of selected excerpts were shown on 60 Minutes. However, the full 56 minute interview was recorded by SANA and posted to the Internet. That video (in ), together with the full transcript is included on candobetter. It has also been on Global Research. In that interview all the msm's accusations against the Syrian government were put by Charlie Rose and to President al-Assad and he refuted each one of them easily. If there was any truth in the msm's Syria narrative including in what you have written above, Brian, I doubt if Bashar al-Assad would have come out of that interview looking anywhere near as good as he did. Please feel welcome to continue the discussion if you remain unconvinced.

Sheila Newman

Wed, 2016-05-11 11:32

Thank you Sally. Good to hear from you again. It is amazing the amount of negative publicity and pseudo-science being concocted up about kangaroos lately. And that people are worn down by it and fail to observe how their own population is growing, or to empathise at all with another creature. We are being boxed in and confused just like the kangaroos and taught to regard eachother as enemies, instead of the buggars who make so much money out of pushing us around in order to derive more profits from overdevelopment. Human instinctive respect for public authority and inability to test that authority is a major Archille's heel of civilisation. Just as young female kangaroos succumb to callow youths in the absence of mature males, Australians succumb to manufactured authority in talking heads on television.

John Bentley (not verified)

Wed, 2016-05-11 10:05

Well put Sally. I, too, am amazed at the attitude of a lot of people - destroy the native fauna and flora so as we may prevail - it has become a phobia. I live up the bush and at times we have to travel through areas where kangaroos frequent in quite large numbers. There are road signs up warning drivers of such hazards, but do some people slow down and err on the side of safety - nah!! Put the foot down, we're running late!! One of the main reasons roos feed close to the edge of the road is that in summer and into autumn or any dry spell for that matter before good rains have fallen, rain that does fall on the road runs off onto the verge and, thus, the roadside gets a bigger flush of water than the surrounding country giving better grass growth on the verge which the kangaroos love to eat. My message is to drivers travelling through areas where roos frequent and all country roads for that matter, is to be vigilant at all times and drive at a speed that suits the conditions not what is signposted.

Sally (not verified)

Tue, 2016-05-10 13:10

Under very noisy circumstances at a 21st birthday celebration recently, I engaged in a conversation about kangaroos. It started with a fellow guest attending from the country who said she avoided driving home at night because of the likelihood of hitting a kangaroo. I agreed saying that I avoid this for the same reason. She continued that there are “so many kangaroos “ and that culling may be necessary. I offered the other side , that there are so many people and that kangaroos, whose territory is encroached on for development get hemmed by busy roads and pushed out by more and more housing. She conceded that maybe it was a "bit of both" but she emphasised that there are a “Hell of a lot of them” (kangaroos) "where I live" and they are "so big!" I asked if this was a problem and she said that no, it wasn't. I asked if there was plenty for them to eat and she said there was but if they increased in number it would be a problem and that the pasture would run out. She complained that kangaroos" knock down fences". I stated the obvious , that if a fence went through what was the animal's territory, it would attempt to traverse it anyway. I started to articulate the gist of the article above- that culling kangaroos was counter to the stated aim of reducing numbers and gaining control over the population. I related the important point in the article that if the large males in a given population of kangaroos are removed that the (more numerous?) young males will mature earlier, mate with the females and that the reproduction rate will rise. This was greeted with a rather silent scepticism instead of what one might have hoped for (after the effort of conveying this over loud music and about 60 other human voices going hammer and tongs) - eagerness and relief that there was a humane “solution”. The conversation petered out with an unmoved, disapproving re-statement - "Well all I can say is that there are a lot of them and they are very big." Where did she learn to shrug off any empathy for this native animal?

James Sinnamon

Mon, 2016-05-09 23:54

In today's (9/5/16) otherwise informative episode of RT's , presenter Sophie Shevardnadze and her guest Professor Geoffrey Roberts, discuss the notorious , made between Churchill and Stalin in Moscow in October 1944:

Sophie Shevardnadze: Now, during the war, Churchill came to Moscow on several occasions to meet with Stalin tet-a-tete. In one of those meetings, the spheres of influence on Balkans were agreed with the British Prime Minister just scribbling some figures on the piece on paper during the dinner, getting Stalin's approval on what is now called a "percentages deal". So, were a lot of decisions of the Big Three fateful to whole countries, reached in such an informal and personal manner?

Professor Geoffrey Roberts: The percentage agreement was actually quite an exceptional episode. It has got a lot of attention because Churchill kind of overdramatized the episode in his memoirs after the war. Actually, the percentages agreement didn't mean very much. The only thing that really mattered in practice was the Stalin agreed not to interfere with the British in Greece, but then, Soviets already decided that Greece was part of the British sphere of influence anyway and so they weren't going to interfere. That wasn't much of a concession. ...

In fact, the Soviets did interfere in Greece. They interfered in October 1944 to help the British Army to trick the Greek ELAS partisans, who had liberated much of Greece from the Germans and Italians, into disarming. The British were able to do so with the help of the Central Committee of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) to whom most of the Kapetanios leaders of the partisans were loyal ('Kapetanios' can denote both the singular and the plural). In turn the Central Committee of the KKE blindly followed Stalin's orders.

Those Greeks who had collaborated with the Nazis, supposedly under arrest, were protected by the British from vengeful Greek crowds and re-armed in order to again fight, this time for the British, against their fellow Greeks.

Some partisans and some Kapetanios found ways to surreptitiously avoid obeying the order to disarm.

When fighting broke out again the British were so threatened by ELAS on a number of occasions that they considered getting reinforcements from Italy or from those resiting the German winter counter-offensive at the Ardennes in Belgium.

However, sadly the British and their Greek allies eventually defeated the Resistance.

Two years later, in 1946, the Greeks rose up, again, against the corrupt Government that thee British had inflicted upon them. In 1949, after three years the Greek resistance was again crushed. In both instances a key factor in the defeat of the Greek partisans was the misleadership of the KKE Central leadership, who, unlike Josip Broz Tito in neighbouring Yugoslavia, failed to stand up to Stalin's treachery.

Matthew Mitchell

Mon, 2016-05-09 19:08

I did not want to criticise Murdoch's book. But I did notice that in the book power is strongly associated with discussions of success. This to me seems very odd, and somewhat dangerous. A fight for equality I can fully understand, and see the need for historically. But power is something else, it implies power over others, it implies inequality. Because if everyone was to have power, then no-one would be more succesful (by this book's definitions) than anyone else. To quote 'The Incredibles' - "once everyone is a super-hero, then no-one is". So once everyone has equal power, the very concept of power disappears, and so does this concept of success - so what then is your definition of success? I fear that by promoting power as desirable there is a risk of encouraging more people into that group who love to have power over others, which I think encompasses the motivations of most of our leaders today (rather than motivations to do good for society). So what is success then? What is the goal we should be aiming to achieve personally? Probably for most of us not power over others, that would seem more a neo-liberal goal.

Sheila Newman

Mon, 2016-05-09 18:29

Thanks Matthew, for the feedback. (Sorry, I called you Michael by accident; just edited it out.) I feel that the french revolution was an exception to the rule of the bastards taking over being exactly the same, but it took Napoleon to seal its effects and several generations to complete the revolution. In disorganised countries like Australia you do not have the capacity for intergenerational organisation and history keeping that they had in France. However, we have to do something, as you say, and we do try to help take back the talking stick on candobetter.net. So it is not entirely hopeless until the country is entirely wrecked, which is well on the way.

Matthew Mitchell

Mon, 2016-05-09 18:13

I accept the legitimacy of all these comments - there is no doubt - for example, that the 1% do have power, they have and do manipulate us - and all these problems you mention do exist, and I am not saying that we have the collective consciousness yet to address all these problems. But I believe we can. Can the 1% really hold on their power against the wishes of the 99%? - all it takes is for the everyday people in the police forces, in the armed forces, those who deliver their groceries, those who sell them milk and coffee etc to say - no, we are not going to serve you anymore. That is it for them. End of their story. The trouble has always been that when people do remove the power from their elites (perhaps like the French revolution) a new bunch of sociopaths/psychopaths take over. That is perhaps the real challenge we face - not ending the old system - but creating the new.

Sheila Newman

Mon, 2016-05-09 16:56

Hi Matthew,
I know you worked hard on this piece but it runs so counter to much of what we support on candobetter.net that I feel constrained to make these comments.

MATTHEW wrote: The West is learning about Collective Responsibility: We are starting to realise that all the little decisions we make about what to do, or what not to do really matter. We are learning that throwing our plastic bag (or our used coffee cups, or our cigarette buts) into the street, does matter - because collectively all this rubbish is having an impact on our environment and especially our wildlife.

SHEILA: Who is this 'we'? The situation seems to be becoming worse, not better. We are losing environmental protection laws; consumption continually rises. New generations grow up with very little understanding or interest in wildlife or habitat loss. In the 1970s people were more aware and had more traction. Then NGOs were seduced into cooperating with corporations and receiving government grants. They were easily infiltrated and gutted.

MATTHEW wrote: We are learning that things we once thought of as insignificant are in fact significant and often have far reaching effects. In Australia we have learned that longer showers affect our water supplies, that our small individual actions are impacting our water storages as well as the flow down our rivers, and consequently the water available for farming and other purposes.

SHEILA: Water has been commodified to take advantage of forced population growth. Farmers have been ruined by having their water diverted to intensive irrigators and pig farmers. Steve Bracks was a major propagandist for mass immigration and 'saving our water for future generations' and he was behind the water grab in the Mallee Wimmera that Pipe Right Inc tried to fight and lost. see Consider the $3b at stake in the Wonthaggi Desalinisation Plant and consider how strong a protest this drew and how the judiciary silenced this protest by bankrupting the NGO. Water is a focus of massive corruption in this country and globally. The outsourcing of its management has brought billions to the 1% and has taken our power to control its use away. Furthermore the business model is totally unsustainable, See,

MATTHEW wrote: What an awakening! Who would he guessed that city dwellers, so removed from nature and so supplied with apparent excesses of everything from water to electricity to coffee (and a wide variety of palm oil products) would start to become aware of the plight of coffee growers (and of deforestation) in distant lands, and to change their habits based on this knowledge!

SHEILA: They only change their habits based on growthist propaganda, which subsumes all independent voices, fooling the uncritical. And it works on guilt (which seems to be the message you are faithfully relaying here, although probably without any focused benefit). I haven't noticed the growthists pushing against palm oil. It is everywhere. In soap, in washing powder, in shampoo...

MATTHEW wrote: We are coming to realise that there is such a thing as collective responsibility - that we cannot disassociate ourselves from the society we live in and its impacts locally and globally. It is becoming increasingly difficult for Westerners to say about foreign wars that they personally have nothing to with them. All a protaganist must do is ask, well do you drive a car? Then you use oil and in one way or another are contributing to problems in the middle east. Do you use a computer, mobile phone or iPad - then how can you say that you and your actions play no part in the conflicts in Africa over the scarce resources used to make these devices? Do you buy manufactured goods from China? Does your country sell them the coal used to power those factories? Then how can you say that Chinese pollution not - even if in only some tiny way - your fault? One challenged by such a statement may retort: "I have no choice but to drive a car, that is how most westerners live" or "I have no choice but to buy Chinese goods, as these goods are not produced here". But they used to be - why are they not made here now?

SHEILA: Because, against the wishes of the population, globalism broke down trade protection (A terrible policy amongst many better of Whitlam's) and put an end to a swathe of small businesses. Those that survived have since been decimated by the cost of land, rent, power, water which makes production costs too expensive, reduced profit margin and makes Australia uncompetitive with most other countries which have much lower land-costs. See

MATTHEW wrote: This raises the second thing we are learning - consequences accumulate not only over space but over time. The purchasing choices of recent decades, and the constant search to save a little here and there has had far-reaching effects. Our choices have supported companies that seek to produce things as cheaply as possible, and punished those that payed good wages and provided good conditions, Thus we as a nation have shed industries, and jobs, that it seems will never be regained. And now many of us really have no choice but to buy the cheapest, as our job market shrinks and the pressures we bought to bear on overseas countries are now brought to bear on us? And it is mostly the younger generation who struggle to find work and who are paying exorbitant prices for things that were - until fairly recently - relatively affordable eg: housing and basic utilities.

SHEILA: Once again a consequence of destroying local production and encouraging massive imports from poorer countries, paid for by credit cards marketed by the 1% who profit from all this.

MATTHEW wrote: So - slightly older Australians might say - this is not my doing, others allowed this offshoring of our industry, others allowed the highly profitable (for packaging companies) disposable plastic bottle industry to supplant the previous, much more sustainable, refundable bottle system (remember the glass bottles, which you would get 20c for if you returned - back when 20c was the cost of playing an arcade video game?) But it was our doing - collectively. Who else can be held responsible for the paths our society has taken?

SHEILA: The power elite who have allowed the public messaging stick to be captured in the form of the duopoly press who also control the political elite here. Australians have been disorganised in a big way and have been led to believe that what the mass media and the ABC pretend is public opinion really is, so they feel alone and invalidated. See (Which is why the alternative media like candobetter.net should validate them, not just repeat the brainwashing of the mass media and government which blames us all or says we wanted this. People fought all of this as much as they could. They lost to traitors like Keating and Hawke profiting from Reagan Thatcher economics post oil shock - but there was a completely different way of behaving, which was the tack taken by Europe.)

MATTHEW wrote: Who? People in other countries? Which such people had such control over us? Our tiny elite - our 1%? Do 1% of people really have so much sway over the other 99%?

SHEILA: Absolutely! Haven't you read anything about the Property Council of Australia or the Multicultural Foundation of Australia? (see Look at the political theory of focused benefits and diffuse costs in a democracy.
Haven't you noticed how mass media and government continually make up stories about why we are at war, which they market repetitively to less and less well-educated generations? Generations who have not even learned clear thinking, let alone history or geography. The anti-war movement has been completely subsumed to the pro-refugee movement, which is carried by the mainstream media because it benefits their war industries by drowning out the fact that refugees are created by wars.

MATTHEW wrote: Are we really that powerless? Or is the truth that the 99% - or least a large proportion of them - were in some way complicit? Is it true that evil men only succeed where good men stay silent? So where were the good men? Where were the 99% of good men, and women, who could have stood up and stopped any of these things - if they really wanted to? Or were the 99% happy to go along and allow, for example, the introduction of negative gearing?

SHEILA: Negative gearing as the major cause of housing unaffordability is another furphy. It's just a form of investment with logical tax deductibility. (See It is part of the fuel of massive over-reliance on property development in our economy, fueled by mass immigration and constant population movement in search of jobs, divorce, etc. There are many ways to counter the overimportance of the real-estate sector of the economy, but manipulating negative gearing so that it only applies to new constructions accelerates the property development juggernaut and habitat destruction. As well, it pits home owners against non-home owners when the two should be in solidarity about the right to shelter. There is never any real focus on the property industry that benefits disproportionately from negative gearing - it is instead held up as a growth industry that gives people 'jobs' [which they would not be so reliant on if they were not all in debt].

MATTHEW wrote: To not stand up against something so obviously unjust and unfair? Perhaps it didn't seem important, just like many of these things; the growing use of plastics, the growing dependence on cars, and the subsequent relative degradation of public transport infrastructure. So what we are now learning is that these small things do matter - and in the long run they matter a lot! So what is to be done now? It is clear that now we must change our old indolent ways - we must start to stand-up for what is right, big things of course, but also we must take responsibility for our small decisions too. Why buy a disposable coffee-cup (another piece of land-fill, if it doesn't end up in the bay)? Why buy $1 milk when you know farmers are struggling, for goodness sake we can nearly all afford to pay a fair price for milk!

SHEILA: People might start out by trying not to use throw away cups and by trying to buy less-exploitative milk, but given the increasing rates of debt and precarity, many people make cuts even to the smallest expenses. Most people do not use throwaway cups in their homes, but hospitals and corporate cafeterias and many cafes now do. Why? I would like to know. They seem to prefer it to investing in dishwashing machinery.

MATTHEW wrote: So I suggest we all do take personal responsibility for the collective actions of our society - we are part of it, and we cannot disassociate ourselves from it or its effects. We cannot say that homelessness, unemployment, unprofitable farming etc, are not our fault - because in some way these things are only the way they are because we allow them to be. Deep down we know this - the next step is to honestly acknowledge it. White Australians know that collectively they carry the responsibility to amend past mis-deeds. We know it matters for a white Australian Prime-Minister to apologise to the Indigenous people of this land. It is effectively a collective apology.

SHEILA: Apologies are cheaper than land-tenure. Australia didn't give back their land and successive PM's are trying to free-title indigenous land - to make it another brick in the yellow brick road of the 1% who benefit from real-estate speculation in a growing population. No treaty has been negotiated. Cheap, these apologies. I find them shamefully superficial.

MATTHEW wrote: Some may deny they have any responsibility for the past and for the on-going situation of Aborigines in this country - but they do. As long as we do not have a treaty with the Aborigines we are letting them down.

SHEILA: That's right, but do you think the governments and press intend to allow the idea of a treaty to reach serious debate? Of course not.

MATTHEW wrote: Who else's responsibility is it to fix past wrongs? Is it just the job of a few politicians?

SHEILA: A 'few' politicians? A mass of overpaid, commercially well-connected stooges in internationally affiliated parties with globalist agendas. They should represent us on this, but they represent the banks, the land-bankers and the press moguls. That is why there are such attempts to get new political parties going, but since they are rarely covered in the mainstream media, it is difficult to get them known - because we do not have any other state or national media besides the ABC and Murdoch/Fairfax. Furthermore it is clear that the vast bulk of our politicians do not respect or fear the public - and why should they? The state pays and controls the police, the army, and the law-makers.

MATTHEW wrote: Or some social welfare workers? Or is the responsibility of everyone of us to ensure that everyone else in our country is treated justly; treated fairly; treated humanely?

SHEILA: Bureaucracy has that effect. Once you might have gone next door and taken a child out of a dangerous situation, but these days you fear prosecution because it is 'not your job'. So you ring the police or child welfare. Our societies are segmented into roles that divide us and disempower us which are regulated from top down and people don't know each other due to population movement (moving house, migration, commuting) and we have little presence or power at local and neighborhood level.

MATTHEW wrote: Again the question arises - if it is not up to you - then who is it up to? The person next to you? Why them and not you? Thus we must start to take responsibility for our actions - including our past mistakes. We must have sufficient humility to do this, and also sufficient selflessness to not worry about how our own personal situation may be detrimentally effected by doing the right thing - that is if we want to live in the country where the right thing is done. Because if we do not, then we keep going right on ignoring all problems we are collectively creating by putting our heads in the sand, seeking the cheapest bargains where-ever we can, and allowing ourselves to be more and more driven to the level of animals by the selfish, individualistic, competitive nightmare we are currently experiencing.

SHEILA: This message is what we hear all the time from the mass media and the churches. The meek shall inherit the earth, but in the mean-time, shut up and look to your own sins. It is all 'our fault', but we have so little power and talk so little with each other. We have been diversified, not just by mass immigration, but by our jobs, our new classes, our educations, debt and overwork, that it is very hard for us to find common values. Candobetter.net tries to bring these matters to the foreground and create awareness and promote organisation to take back the talking stick; we are not into telling the masses that they are guilty of creating the problems from which the one per cent all benefit. with the mass media there is a resemblance to the organised church, which conveyed from the pulpit what it deemed the public needed to know, and urged them to consult it about any problems instead of their taking power for themselves.

MATTHEW wrote: So let all Australians - new to the country or old - take responsibility for the lack of a treaty with the decendants of the original inhabitants of this land. And let the older Australians apologise to the younger generations for the mess they have left them to deal with. Then let us hope that the Indigenous and the young can forgive and then we can all get on with fixing this mess, recreating a truly human, civilised, society in which both people and planet are cared for. The alternative is now obvious - it leads to oblivion of all that is good, leaving a bunch of increasingly selfish people fighting over the decaying scraps of a dying planet.

SHEILA: An indigenous treaty without an end to mass immigration would be laughable. So let's make that part of the treaty. That would also benefit everyone else born or resident in this country - except the 1%.

ecoengine (not verified)

Mon, 2016-05-09 09:13

Queensland Environment Minister Steven Miles announced on Saturday a panel of experts would be appointed to find ways to better protect koalas. No doubt they will conveniently skirt around the real issues causing the decline in their iconic animals - koalas. Koalas exist in trees, and with land-clearing their homes are going - and that means the animals! How can native animals evolve quickly enough to fend off bulldozers, chain saws, and property developers? They have no evolutionary tools, and unless their habitats are actually protected, they will continue to decline. Our economy has become reliant on housing, and no scheme will challenge our growth-based economy.

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