Churchill said if anyone wanted a good argument against democracy, spend 5 minutes talking to the average voter.
It is a great ideal, but representative democracy I don't think can work. It is a system where people can vote themselves the treasury, where those who influence others gain power.
Science is now showing that people make decisions based on biology, their inbuilt prejudices, and HOW the problem is framed. Rationality has far less to do with it that we thought. Experiments have been able to see the brain making a decision and predict what it is, before the person making the decision has even started thinking about it. What appears to be a rational choice, was actually made before you thought about it.
Likewise, there is ample evidence to show that how a person makes a 'rational' decision has a lot to do with how the question is framed, or their psychology.
That is, I don't believe that democracy could ever provide decisions made due to informed consent. Democracy I don't believe, actually provide ANY consent. The democratic decisions is perhaps in a minority due to free will.
Comments
African elephants could be lost in our lifetime
An estimated 100 elephants will be killed across Africa today. Poached, in all likelihood, in front of their families. Their tusks ripped off to meet the global greed for ivory.
A group of volunteers has been flying over Kenya's Tsavo National Park counting elephants, and have found in preliminary results that numbers are down from 12,500 three years ago, to about 11,000.
It does appear to be the smallest recorded population since 2002.
Poaching remains a huge problem and it is believed as many as 30,000 African elephants are killed every year for their ivory tusks. Fines for possession of ivory used to be about $130, but now it is more than $250,000. (Why shouldn't anyone found guilty of murdering an elephant, or being an accessory to the fact, be put in jail? - Ed)
By some estimates more than 80 elephants die every day across Africa simply for their tusks, but that is not the only challenge the animals face. It's not just the ivory trade that's threatening the elephants' existence but human encroachments on their land. There's been development of infrastructure such as houses, roads, market places and so on," said Dr Charles Musyoki, head of species research at the Kenya Wildlife Service.
Elephants have been credited with stampeding over houses and eating entire harvests leaving the subsistence farmers in their wake homeless and hungry as a result.
There are three things that are responsible for the African elephant’s move towards complete extinction:
- an ever increasing human population,
- the harmful effects of climate change, and
- criminal poaching ventures.
Sub-Saharan Africa will record the world’s largest population growth from 1.1 billion to 2.4 billion people between 2013 and 2050. By the year 2050 the current population in Africa will have more than doubled by 1.3 billion people making Sub-Saharan Africa the largest growing region in the world.
Delegates from around 50 countries will descend on London for the world’s largest ever conference on the illegal wildlife trade with the aim of changing the trend of elephant's demise. The event, hosted by the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, and attended by the Prince of Wales, will hear that as many as 50,000 elephants are being poached each year to satisfy the booming ivory market, driven largely by China. The country's insatiable and destructive appetite for economic growth comes at a great cost to the world's natural resources, and an intelligent iconic animals. The world "poaching" has connotations of chicken-stealing, and is inadequate to describe the horrendous and cruel loss of animal lives, and the criminality of the human race!
Unless they also solve the human overpopulation crisis, and the elephants' dwindling habitats, they will plug up one threat, and ignore the other!
Independent- UK: If we fail the African forest Elephant will blink out within our lifetimes
Has been caused by the subversion of democracy, not baby boomers
Dennisk wrote:
...how many boomers in the 60's and 70's wanted immigration restrictions? How many wanted immigration laws loosened?
...
Or smaller homes. How many people back 30 years ago said we need to share our wealth, that we have too much? How many people even TODAY say we should share our wealth and space. ...
...
In ALL those examples, there were plenty of warnings. In all those examples, honest appraisal would have hinted at this outcome. But this wasn't allowed, because it didn't fit with the ideology.
What you write of is not the consequence of informed consent by the baby boomers. It is the consequence of Australian democracy (like the democracies of so many other countries around the world) having been subverted by the 1975 coup against the Labor Government of Gough Whitlam as described in the book the CIA – a Forgotten History 1 by William Blum. Chapter 40, entitled Chapter 40: Australia - 1973-1975: Another free election bites the dust in 1975, shows how the Labor government of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, Lionel Murphy and Rex Connor, which put the interests of ordinary Australians ahead of foreign and domestic corporations, was overthrown in the coup of 1975.2
What is not as well appreciated is that after the 1975 coup, instead of remaining an effective opposition, the Labor Party has been, since its defeat at the 1980 Federal elections (if not sooner), whiteanted by corporate glove puppets within, including Paul Keating, Anna Bligh and Peter Beattie and the well-known CIA operatives Bob Hawke and Bob Carr.
In subsequent years, when the Labor Party regained office at the national level and in various states, it implemented even more extreme free market policies than the supposedly more right-wing coalition of the Liberal and National Parties. Naomi Klein should have included a chapter in her book The Shock Doctrine (2007) about the mis-rule of Australia by Hawke and Keating. Sadly, she did not.
Footnotes
1. ⇑ This book has since been re-published with the title
Killing Hope – U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II
2. ⇑ The subversion of Australian democracy was also observed by Christopher Boyce who, in 1974, began work in a communications center in California through which CIA cables were routed. There, he learnt that the CIA acted to remove the Labor Government in 1975 and, prior to that, the democratically elected Chilean government of President Salvadore Allende. Allende died in the military coup of 1973. This convinced Boyce that he should oppose his own government by spying for the then Soviet Union. This is described in the book The Falcon and the Snowman and the movie of the same name.
Continent-wide search for Babyboomer leader begins...
Anonymous, your 'Who is the leader of the babyboomers?' is wonderful.
There is no leader of the babyboomers because all they are is a statistical construction befitting a book by Lewis Carrol or Bernard Salt, who has written several books turning statistical constructions into fictitious social classes. He has been so successful that people now believe that such classes exist. The ABC interviews him about them, government attempts to legislate around them, and people go witch-hunting them.
But a leader for the babyboomers will appear, just as we have ethnic leaders and environmental leaders; someone to push their own agenda in the guise of representing the Baby Boomer Class cannot fail to take advantage of this opportunity.
Who is the leader of the Baby Boomers?
The leader of the Baby Boomers needs to report in here if not to apologise immediately, at least to discuss the grievances and report back to a full meeting of Baby Boomers for consideration.
An apology is not a publicity stunt - it is important!
Quark you say:
" At best you could use your call for an apology as a publicity stunt to alert the sleep- walking public as to what is happening, but you would be hunting down the wrong group."
An apology is NOT a publicity stunt. It requires significant humility on the part of Boomers. It would mean a lot to Gen Y's and Gen Z's (not to mention Gen X's). I know people very well who are very bitter about the past selfish behaviours of Boomers, and how those behaviours have affected them - significantly.
An apology is essential to these people to repair their relationships and allow them to focus on the real task of rebuilding society.
An apology would also be significant in many other ways - it would indicate a rejection of the selfish, consumerism of the past and may facilitate deep reflection, not just in Boomers, but in the generations following who may have picked up selfish ways of thinking and behaving and who have not questioned that because that is now how almost everyone behaves! An open rethinking by Boomers could lead to a complete re-assessment of our value system across all Australian society.
This one act in itself could be the most meaningful act that Boomers ever do in their lives! And it would majorly offset any harmful feelings they have created.
Of course, there are Boomers who have worked hard to fix problems, but they are in a minority - I know I have been involved with them (as one of the few "youngsters" - and I am not that young) and they are the same tiny core of people who have been working tirelessly for years! Often 40 years or more. Others may have done bits and pieces here and there, but not put themselves out too much.
Sheila is not wrong in saying Boomers were manipulated, and that they are not all well off - no one is denying that. But the darker truth is that manipulation succeeds by appealing to the base desires of people and/or their indolence. Of course manipulation serves the elite, but it achieves its aims by promising to benefit the selfish desires of the masses. Thus many Boomers may not have wanted our utilities to be privatised, and possibility felt this quite strongly - but because of indolence they did not take action! And the privatisations and other things went ahead. Others perhaps said nothing as they felt that they could make money or for other selfish reasons. Who knows. Many may not have spoken out against high immigration given that it leads to more customers, promotions, higher wealth for those already here, etc. Awareness of this may have been enough for many to not speak out strongly about possible drawbacks.
In any case, an apology would put all these issues to bed - especially if it is followed up with serious intent to correct the situation - whether created on purpose or not!
Things are getting very desperate. The other generations need the Boomers help and support! And they need to know the Boomers are behind them and condemn what has been created (even though created in part by them).
SO PLEASE PUT YOUR HUBRIS AND PRIDE ASIDE AND ADMIT THAT MAYBE THINGS COULD HAVE BEEN DONE BETTER - AND DEFINITELY NEED TO CHANGE NOW.
BOOMERS - PLEASE TAKE RESPONSIBILITY AND HELP YOUR KIDS AND GRANDKIDS.
I think a larger moral change is coming
I think boomers may be able to stop a high rise here, or road there, but no meaningful change. The ideas which can actually effect any change, and KEEP it are just forming. And I will say again, this isn't unique to boomers. There are many younger ones who are the same, its just that I can find some Gen Y who are morally quite different, but I can't with boomers.
I do appreciate what you do, there is no doubt about it, and I'm grateful for all that contribute. Nothing against anyone here. I'm just saying that self introspection is needed. Australia is not the only country which had a property boom, or mass immigration or decline in living standards. I chat with many Americans, and see similar problems there, Chinese investment pushing up prices, casualisation ,loss of open space, push for growth. Australia's problems are more focused on real estate, because we have a weird real estate fetish culture in Australia which is not new. Auctions are rare in other countries, but ALWAYS been common here. Auctions generally exacerbate prices.
My point is that our problems are kind of generic "western problems", not specifically just caused by a few developers or Matthew Guy. These are symptoms of an underlying problem, and that problem resides in us.
It may not have been asked for, but it was the outcome.
I can ask for a lot of things, but the things I ultimately agitate for, determine the outcome. This is what you are missing. When you put an idea into motion, the outcome isn't the outcome that your ideology says should happen, but the outcome that nature says will happen.
Take immigration for example, how many boomers in the 60's and 70's wanted immigration restrictions? How many wanted immigration laws loosened? If I remember correctly, a few at Vic First prided themselves on loosening standards. Now they are complaining about the outcome. How else do you end a 'white Australia', without mass immigration? What did this person expect to happen?
Others at this meeting warned for lack of social cohesion and were booed! Booed! Yet I bet these same people will complain about lack of social cohesion and infighting...
Or smaller homes. How many people back 30 years ago said we need to share our wealth, that we have too much? How many people even TODAY say we should share our wealth and space. I heard this 20 years ago any ANYONE who objected was pilloried as a 'racist'. Any one who said "no room" was a bigot.
And speaking of "racism", the term which any anti-growth advocate is deathly afraid of, was it not demanded that racism not be tolerated? That xenophobia has no place in Australia? Wasn't one of the BIG "achievements" of the boomer generation 'breaking down barriers'? So now the property lobby can use it and scare the population away from our cause. Nice.
Both partners having to work. Feminists were rallying against the "patriarchy" and insisting women should have the same opportunities as men. Now, like men, they can enjoy having to work to keep the family going. I grew up being told that suggesting that women perhaps would be better of at home instead of working was sexist and bigoted.
Bill Clinton in the 90's, said that white people would be a minority by 2040 in the USA and that this was good, and the crowd went wild, not with anger! I remember, and it still happens now, many people saying how great the world would be when "we" are not the majority, or mixed out, or whatever. That "we", these idiots didn't realise, that were being displaced were their children and grandchildren. Now they are complaining about their children and grandchildren not having a place after fighting people trying to secure it!
I'm not leveling this at you personally, as I will give you the benefit of the doubt.
In ALL those examples, there were plenty of warnings. In all those examples, honest appraisal would have hinted at this outcome. But this wasn't allowed, because it didn't fit with the ideology. Because any opinion that didn't fit the morality was just wrong. It COULDN'T be right. There is this thinking that something which sound offensive must be wrong. Not just morally wrong, but scientifically wrong and logically wrong.
Now, so it doesn't appear that I'm just attacking boomers, I'll use a Gen X example, because I acknowledge its not a unique generation thing, its just most VISIBLE in that generation.
Gen X still want tolerance, no hate, for a diverse society of all races to live peacefully. As a result, we've had to limit free speech and begin policing people who's thoughts might upset this. NSA have a massive surveillance program in place. I'm sure Australia has the same. The UK do too, they used it to arrest people who threaten 'tolerance'. They use it AGGRESSIVELY, but none of these people who object to a growing police state protested this.
Now, in the future when my daughter finds out that she's living in a 1984 style world (maybe), she's going to blame Gen X/Y, RIGHTFULLY. We'll say (not me, we), "Oh, we fought AGAINST that. WE didn't ASK for surveillance, for video cameras everywhere". But its NOT true. We lauded those who used surveillance to dob in 'racists' on public transport. We demanded that hate speech not be tolerance. We said, time and time again, there are LIMITS to free speech. To make this happen, you need surveillance. We overlooked when police arrested someone for something they said in private.
Let's unite instead
I implore everyone to read Sheila Newman's comment headed "Why talk about Baby Boomers as if they are all rich and housed?". (quark, you can link to Sheila's comment as follows: <a href="#comment-116760">"Why talk about Baby Boomers as if they are all rich and housed?"</a> - Ed) It is an expose of the little understood situation which continues NOW to erode living standards and quality of life in Australia for the majority and to destroy our environment. It is ongoing! We, (that's all of us) have even more responsibility now than did previous generations as the decline is now VERY RAPID. Twenty years ago it was not as noticeable. The requests for an apology as for the indigenous stolen generation or to the mothers in the general population who had their babies taken from them (this is what is sounding like) are not going to remedy the situation and amount to wallowing and inaction. Furthermore, the abominable practices referred to specifically had stopped at the time of the apologies. In this case it continues. At best you could use your call for an apology as a publicity stunt to alert the sleep- walking public as to what is happening, but you would be hunting down the wrong group. The big business elites would think all their Christmases had come at once. It’s scarier to confront them than to complain about a whole generation who are diverse in terms of culture, education and means. I suggest we do NOT go along with this split across generations, so often encouraged by the media and try together to regain our rights. There are heaps of local groups largely populated with members of the BB generation trying to save natural areas. A couple individuals I know have spent the last 30 years trying to save our forests. A group has been trying to save Royal Park for a decade or more and have the fight of their life on their hands right now 1 as a road is about to be built right through it. It’s the same process of endless growth that erodes our natural areas that makes housing unaffordable.
Rather than wasting their time and the precious time of the rest of us, in extracting an apology, please join in and help and most importantly, educate yourselves on what is happening. This is difficult because the corporate media do not want you to understand what is happening and their news is confusing to everyone who relies on it. Gen Z and the generation after may not be grateful to you for your perseverance as the next generation takes things for granted if things are good. That’s to be expected. If they are not grateful and as children just enjoy their lives then you/we will have succeeded.
Footnote[s]
1. ⇑ Quark, you can link to another article on candobetter, for example, Sheila's article "The last summer for Royal Park?", as follows:
<a href="/?q=node/3685">"Why talk about Baby Boomers as if they are all rich and housed?"</a>
To link to that article from another site (as I encourage all contributors and visitors to do) you would use:
<a href="http://candobetter.net/?q=node/3685">"Why talk about Baby Boomers as if they are all rich and housed?"</a>
... or, possibly:
<a href="https://candobetter.net/?q=node/3685">"Why talk about Baby Boomers as if they are all rich and housed?"</a>
- Ed
Also consider how to avoid Generational conflict
The other thing to keep in mind - which Sheila hints at - is that the younger generations are going to be (and many already are) very angry about their situation. Certainly the manipulators would like to direct this anger away from them to the Boomers as a group - and there is no doubt growing anger about our situation in Gen X (and Gen Y particularly).
An apology by Boomers and serious visible attempts to support them and to correct things is perhaps a very effective strategy to defuse that anger and redirect energies in more positive ways. Of course, I am not suggesting that an insincere apology be given just for these purposes, I am just pointing out what effect it might have.
Thanks Sheila
Thanks for that enlightening exposition. There is no doubt manipulation has been taking place (as you explain). My concern is that this type of manipulation has always been going on, and always will go on. Thus as a community we need to be much more watchful of the stories that are told, and much more awake to and wary of manipulations. Acknowledging that we have been manipulated, and the consequences of this seems important to me (rather than denial).
I am not suggesting that Boomers are any better or worse people that Gen X's or Gen Y's, and I am aware that many are not well off, and some groups worse than others - the Vietnam vets for one, who have been treated terribly. And I am not suggesting that a generational war or blame game would be useful here, I am just suggesting that a little self reflection, and facing some honest truths, might be useful. One of these truths seems to be that the Boomer generation went along with a system of lies and distortions that was to their detriment, and also that of subsequent generations.
That all said, we do need to fix these problems urgently. And in this regard the attitudes of all generations needs to change - as you suggest our communities are not as strong as perhaps others in the world, and thus we need to take much more interest in what is happening, and be much more active in resisting.
I hope you have a better day tomorrow!
Matt
Baby boomers asked for high-rise prisons, gridlocked commutes?
Dennisk wrote:
The situation today is partly what people asked for.
So, other features of our society (as Sheila has noted), which Dennisk, presumably, thinks baby boomers asked for, include:
- long daily commutes to and from work for the order of one or two hours in either direction;
- both partners having to work for ever longer hours in order to pay rent, mortgage and meet other living expenses;
- the credentials creep: ever longer-hours spent on the weekends and evenings to obtain the skills and qualifications necessary to gain promotion or even just to retain our existing job, where training had previously often been provided in the employer's time at the employer's expense;
- more and more buildings and common land, including bushland on which people could meet and engage in recreation being privatised; and
- free-standing homes with grass and dirt, in which we could grow food and flowers and on which children could play, are disappearing and being replaced by ugly sterile high-rise apartment blocks, the air-conditioning of which consumes vast quantities of electricity.
Why talk about babyboomers as if all are rich and housed?
Hi DennisK,
I agree with you about your assessment of people who want to sell to people overseas rather than to Australians in need of housing. However I don't see why you think they are responsible for the fact that this has become possible or a norm for the rich. And I don't know why you seem to think that such people typify babyboomers.
You write, "The situation today is partly what people asked for."
You then give an example of a middle-aged person who sought the opportunity to speculate on his property. (By the way there are plenty of young people who think this way too.) You say, "he got what he asked for. We FOUND people to buy them at increasing prices, foreign investors, and we FOUND a way for his daughter to buy a home in the coming years, a tiny unit miles from work and subdivision. A solution was found to keep his model of the world viable."
Who is "we"? Do you really think this was some kind of democratic movement?
I would put it to you that a very well-organised growth lobby devised this kind of economic benefit for itself, sold it to the media and to political parties (largely by showing them how they could enrich themselves through it). The political parties then, in government and opposition, colluded to make laws that would assist this speculative vision, to the great disbenefit of the majority of the population. The media which is invested in global property transactions and the television lifestyle programs etc then marketed this idea down the chain, turning the family home from shelter and social capital into a commodity. It was all snake oil except for those at the top, who controlled the initial investments. The bozos down the line, if they sold their homes for a lot of money, then had to pay tax to the state governments (which are very dependent on this) and then find somewhere else to live. They only way they can make any kind of profit, if they are lucky, is to downsize. If they are old they often find themselves isolated and traumatised by the move, poorer in social capital (well-known neighbours and services) and no better off financially.
Who benefits? The banks and the developers (which are more and more the same thing.)
There are many babyboomers who don't own houses and who struggle with high rents and to find employment or to survive on pensions. Women are well-represented within this number. Most women are quite poor and rely on the Commons to supplement their unreliable incomes. I don't like to reveal my personal circumstances on line but I assure you that I do not fall into the investment property circle.
Plenty of babyboomers share their houses and intend to pass them on. Inheritance laws in Australia, however, do permit parents to disinherit their children, and for spouses to inherit the family home instead of children. This kind of law is common in anglophone countries, but is uncommon in other countries, where most systems ensure that children inherit first, so property gets passed down to children. In the absence of children it goes back to the parents of the deceased. In this way land and other assets are kept within families, clans and localities, focusing power locally. In the absence of direct inheritors land goes back to the state. In such systems, the government also provides public housing and does most of the development, housing is perceived as a cost and population growth is relatedly perceived as a cost - making it very hard for growth lobbiests to establish. The Anglophone inheritance and land-tenure system, on the other hand, promotes the idea that land is a commodity to be improved and resold to the highest bidder. Such systems tend to accrue wealth and power in private hands in a process that would take me too long to explain here. Accompanying this value is the idea that we must all work in order to be worthwhile and that people who own lots of property and other assets somehow deserve to be in positions of power over those who must work for them and pay them rent. We have very poorly developed citizenship here, poor solidarity. The economic system tears families and clans apart, leaving citizens almost no social structure or capital to organise against bad laws. Most of the work I do and candobetter.net aims for is the reform of this system.
You write, "The situation today is partly what people asked for. But I don't think its due to an evil. It's due to our morality. Although I do find Boomer morality baffling, and at times ugly and evil."
The growth lobby is a highly organised transnationally basedcommercial phenomenon . I think it is pretty evil in its total dedication to affecting Australian politics in order to enrich its members. It may have within its ranks a few real-estate employees who haven't worked out what they are doing to the country, but I haven't met any. I have met a few apologetic ones, but they are dependent on the system for their incomes. Since I started exposing what they do, the Property Council of Australia has become a little more discreet, but only in 2010, this is what its plans were. http://candobetter.net/?q=node/2830 They are shocking. Believe me, it has succeeded in those plans. Have a look at what a property council panel that included Bernard Salt had to say. http://candobetter.net/?q=node/2644 Also shocking, remarkable in its disrespect for truth and citizens' welfare. Yet the ABC frequently promotes such people as 'experts'. For instance, recently Waleed Aly invited a number of people to participate in a panel to discuss population growth in Australia inBig Ideas for Australia: Growing Pains. However he privileged the growthists by putting them on stage, each with their microphone, but he put the President of SPA Victoria and Tasmania in the front row of the audience, and only offered her a roving microphone, which was snatched away from her lips when she started to make any point. I never got a chance to use it. Bernard Salt, in the mean time, was promoted as if he were some kind of disinterested and distinguished expert. The growth lobby originated the kind of talk which has given rise to the divide and conquer between generations. The growth lobby constructed this straw babyboomer man and it is successfully marketing it to a mystified and angry people.
The laws that made it possible to sell to foreigners in our country were changed by stealth, beginning with Fraser. Menzies privatised the housing industry. Whitlam tried to bring back substantial public housing and to bring down the cost by having the states undertake the land development for housing (which is what happens in France and many other countries in Europe). This was almost certainly a major source of Whitlam's unpopularity. Fraser started opening up the Foreign Investment laws and every pm after that opened them further. Now they are so wide open that Australia hardly functions as a national polity.
It would not be so bad if we had kept our immigration and working permits separate, as they do on the continent, which means that people come in for a year, buy a house but then discover they cannot work, so they sell it back into the total housing stock. The tax system erodes speculative profit so serial house buying and selling does not pay there.
Keating eroded foreign investment too but did made a slight gesture to protect built property, but even this protection was blown away under Howard or Rudd - can't remember which - both were pretty terrible. Currently land-clearing is encouraged by Foreign Investment policies that encourage new developments and housing over purchase of established housing.
Land and housing go to the best currency, which creates a two tiered system of rich foreigners and poor natives (people born here).
The average person has no idea of what is happening. They know they are being done over, but they don't understand how. This perception can be explained by the political theory of focused benefits and diffuse costs. The benefits to big asset holders (industries like property development, finance, building materials) of high immigration and wide-open foreign investment policy are focused. That means that the people in those industries know where the money comes from and how to maintain the flow. That is why the Property Council of Australia, the Real Estate institute, APop, the HIA and every state government are constantly finding ways to bring in more immigrants. For those who pay in tolls, taxes, high housing and commercial rents, high property prices, high student costs, high food, water, power costs, crowded roads, the way the system works is not very clear at all. It is easy to put them off with a false scent - such as to blame the baby boomers. Most people find it very hard to believe that their governments would not defend them from this kind of dispossession; it is like suggesting to them that their parents are evil. Environmentalists, wildlife defenders and people trying to protect their property rights and social capital in local areas are most aware of the link between population growth and property development because they are on the sharp end of the costs. How does someone who 'informs' themself by watching the ABC or reading the Australian, the Age, Herald Sun, or watching Seinfed, work out what is happening? All they hear is that growth is inevitable, that it's all really 'progress' therefore must be good for us, and that the baby boomers are being 'selfish'! In fact they hear all these lies from the cynical smiling lips of the property development and growth lobbyists first!
I would like to know how the average baby boomer would know what was happening in a country ruled by the Murdoch and Fairfax Press (both beneficiaries and drivers of the global housing market). Check out Australian and State parliamentarians. So many are mixed up in property development. Look at the structure of our political parties, e.g. the ALP - it is practically a land speculation entity - see http://candobetter.net/?q=node/1781. I admit that I don't have the same info on the Libs or the Greens, but do you seriously think they are any different? Mr Rudd and Mr Swann, years ago in Queensland were important in putting the structures and investments in place that turned the ALP into a land-speculation phenomenon.
I guess you could call me a babyboomer, but I have been fighting this for years now, writing expose after expose. And most of the other people I know who are fighting for property rights and against growth are also babyboomers and most of them are women, actually. See: http://candobetter.net/?q=node/2384 We all wonder where the hell the young people are to take over the fight. We assume that they are just as confused as the majority of the older folk.
Sorry this is so long. Very hard day and meant to go to bed and not write anything.
Hope I have defused some of this intergenerational hostility. More appropriate that it be inter class hostility.
Video: Mercedes Corby's statement on bogus payment stories
Re-posted from YouTube, linked to from CorbyTruth (aka outinglies) Twitter page.
As Mecedes points out, Queensland Premier Campbell Newman gave $567,000 taxpayers money for the production of the recently broadcast tele-movie about Schapelle Corby which is not truthful and based on the testimony of a convicted criminal.
Not apology, recognition of failure is needed.
Rudd apologised because there was a change in morality. The boomers made an error of judgement, thats different. The boomers aren't unique though, its just their influence is the most visible and most pronounced due to circumstances they inherited.
The situation today is partly what people asked for. But I don't think its due to an evil. It's due to our morality. Although I do find Boomer morality baffling, and at times ugly and evil.
I spoke to someone, Gen X, some years ago when the boom was taking off. He mentioned his investment property, and how rising prices were fantastic and they will just keep going up and up. Obviously a RE toady. I asked him how, if prices were going to just keep skyrocketing, how people will afford it in the future. He said wages would go up, and I pointed out that wages weren't going up the same rate, and if they did, prices would too, so whats the gain? So I asked again, if your property skyrockets, who's going to afford it? I said, how will your child afford it? He didn't have answers to the question. Didn't think about it. Just said that there will be people to buy it and she'll get a home.
So what we have is:
- A desire to sell ever inflated property, but NO idea who will pay; and
- No plan for how his child would be a home owner in this vision, apart from some vague notion that we might possibly be earning millions by then...
So he got what he asked for. We FOUND people to buy them at increasing prices, foreign investors, and we FOUND a way for his daughter to buy a home in the coming years, a tiny unit miles from work and subdivision. A solution was found to keep his model of the world viable.
Another example. Some retirees I spoke to (actually in relation to the sale of a property), said their generations philosophy (they are older than boomers) was to NEVER let go of property once you have it. I asked them, if retirees hold property, sometimes two or more, where the work is and schools were, where do you expect young people to go? I got a vague response, the kind you get when someones never considered it, about maybe buying further out is an option. I said, well if THEY never let go, what about their children? They said theirs would eventually free up and I said something like 'when?'. Then I got that look a cow gets when its been shown a card trick...
So here again, they are getting exactly what they asked for. They said the solution is when their homes are freed up. Now they are crying that the government is looking to free them up! How many times do people say "when the Boomers retire and move out, it will free property". I didn't see anyone say to this "what if they don't move out in time?".
Even with immigration, didn't people ask for this? The future of the world that I was told was necessary and an inevitability, was a future which could only made possible through mass immigration... Now they are complaining about it?
Generation analysts have also commented on this, that the Baby boomer generation have a kind of magical thinking, that what will happen is what SHOULD happen according to their morality. I would like them to accept there was a problem with their model. Won't happen though, we need a generational change.
... but not simply that
Yes, I should emphasise here, that this is not so much a matter of laying blame (as said - I think Gen Y might just forgive the boomers and focus on fixing the problems) - but rather of accepting blame! Many of the boomers, and perhaps many Gen X's and some Gen Y's, are lost in a sea of selfishness - and the first step out would seem to me to be - as you suggest - recognition of this. It is fundamentally selfishness that leads to inaction and lack of concern regarding the plight of others, allowing one to "turn a blind eye".
Occupy was a wake up call in regard to this, but luckily for many the police soon cleared this blot from their sight, and thus allowing their consciences to soundly sleep once again.
Matt
not apology, just admission of error
I don't see it the same as with Rudds apology. Rudd apologised because we changed our morality, not because of error of judgement.
The Boomers made an error of judgement, I'll post why later today. People who support negative gearing really believe they are doing us a favour. People who buy houses, tear them down and subdivide really believe they are offering opportunities and making housing affordable. I explained how it actually drives up prices to a real estate agent and he honestly didn't get it. His brain literally stalled. My mother used to keep pushing me to buy investment properties and rent them, she believed this was doing good for people. I doubt they will apologise for doing the right thing.
The Growth lobby aren't malevolent, they really believe they are doing the right thing. If their scheme fails, they'll just change their tune and pretend it was that way all along.
What crime was committed?
Could somene please let us know what crime was committed by a whole generation against another that requres a collective apology? Are we talking genocide, murder, theft, aggavated cruelty? Please enlighten me.
An apology is needed
... but not simply that.
An apology needs to be encompass sincere, accurate recognition of the problem that then leads to effective appropriate action. Otherwise it's just a platitude to cover over yet more of the same - as was KRudd's apology.
It will be hard to get any boomers to enact such sincere apology. They've either done well from these conditions and are neither inclined to risk a jot of it nor able to see through the denial that underpins their existence, or they've been excluded from and alienated by the plunder.
'Open borders' idiocy from Larry King and Edward James Olmos
See also: Swiss Democracy wins referendum to apply quotas to immigration numbers of 12 Feb 2014.
Russia Today (RT) has, in contrast to the lying Western corporate and government media, reported far more truthfully about the fight by the people of the world against the bloody attempts by the United States and it allies to impose their and corrupt rule over much of the globe, for example in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Venezuela and Syria.
On occasions RT has also reported well on the environmental threats to our planet. Contrary to "left wing" "political correctness", the threats from population growth and high immigration are also reported. An example is the article Labour's surrender monkeys dare not criticize Britain's conscript economy of 16 August 2013. This article was re-published on candobetter. This shows how high immigration into the United Kingdom, which is a condition of its membership of the European Union has, in recent years, destroyed the employment and eduction prospects of many young natives of Britain.
Unfortunately, amongst people, who rightly oppose imperialist war, can often also be found immigrant-rights campaigners who have no regard for the state of our environment or for the social cohesion of societies into which large numbers of immigrants wish to move.
One such person is Larry King. In Can America fix its broken immigration system?, he gives a platform to the extremist "open border" advocate United States actor Edward James Olmos. Olmos, and King argue for removal of any immigration controls into the United States on the grounds that:
- the hardship faced by existing illegal immigrants in the United States should be reduced;
- the ancestors of most of today's native American population previously immigrated from Europe;
- greedy United states corporations have exploited Latin America; and
- any person should have the right to cross any border anywhere he/she chooses.
Curiously, even Olmos acknowledged that his own parents once opposed illegal immigration from Latin America into the United States, as do many United States citizens of his ethnicity.
Evidently it has escaped their attention that, due to past high immigration and union-busting, the standards of living for most of United States' working class is already approaching that of the Third World
Right at the end of this interview (after roughly 15 minutes), Olmos and King take this position to its logical and ludicrous extreme: If we are to allow free movement from Latin America into the United States, then why not also from other countries with even larger populations, such as China? They both acknowledged that this would add vastly more to the population of the United States, but claimed that this was morally necessary and inevitable.
Perhaps a simple apology is what is needed?
Let me put forward this outrageous idea:
If the history of Australia since white settlement was to be summed up in one sentence, perhaps it could be this: "a failure to accept responsibility".
According to many Australians (for a long time anyway) white settlers were not really responsible for what happened to Aboriginal people here - whites were just ignorant, manipulated victims themselves (apparently). The lie of this was fought by Indigenous communities for decades - culminating in finally receiving a formal apology nearly 6 years ago to the day. Finally (after too long) it was acknowledged that aborigines were not responsible for their own slaughter and stolen generations. That perhaps many everyday white people had gone along with (or even contributed to) the slaughter, poisonings, etc, and yes, many of them did benefit from this in various ways.
Now we have a similar case with Baby Boomers. If Gen Y are impoverished debt slaves, it is (apparently) not the Baby Boomer's fault, they are not responsible (despite the fact they inherited a reasonable system from their parents). Well whose fault is it then? Certainly not the 22 year olds who now face paying one millions dollars for a basic family home in Mt Waverly (check the sales prices - this is no overstatement) on a part-time salary with union laws that make striking in many cases illegal (eg: once an EBA is signed)
Really Boomers, you need to face the facts that evil needs to be resisted. And the failure to resist it is just that - a failure!
Take the evil of negative gearing (welfare for the rich) which boomers did go along with and not universally decry - perhaps it was because most of them benefited directly or indirectly (through either investments or just plain house price rises). This is just one example. Can you see the pattern!
Imagine if the Germans after WWII claimed: "it is not our fault, we were manipulated, we are not in anyway responsible for Hitler and his atrocities". Obvious rubbish - many German citizens at the time did play a role. The honourable thing to do is to admit it - and then apologise. Not pretend that they had no responsibility at all.
How about a little less hubris from our boomers, and a little more humility and contrition? Then perhaps how about some action to help try and fix this mess? How about some people on the streets? How about some boomers outside Trade Minister Rob's office at 12.00 tomorrow. How about hitting the streets for things like March Against Monsanto (mostly young people there I noticed). Or is that all too hard? We will see when March in March comes around how many boomers are out there.
It's not blame, its responsibility
If my daughter grew up into a world where there is little freedom, surveillance and tracking everywhere, I would understand her generation blaming mine. I would show the work I've done trying to fight it, and maybe she'll think "well, Dad tried", but I wouldn't expect, not for a minute, for them to treat me different and not judge my generation as a group. Judging people as a group is often useful practice. So yes, I am actually aware that the apathy of my generation may cause resentment towards me, and I'm doing all I can to stop it. It may not be enough due to the apathy of my peers.
Secondly, I don't actually expect retirees to not ask for anything less than top dollar, of course. I was pointing out that this is a fact which results in situations where we have to re-evaluate needs and wants when it comes to space. I do reserve the right to feel irritated though. Just because what they do is legal, and "part of the system", doesn't mean people have to accept it as moral. I don't care if the law says its legal and free market capitalism says its good, these are values which don't serve our needs now. Things like that must be evaluated in context of the time and place. They didn't anticipate this change. More accurately, they thought this social crisis wouldn't need a solution that involved them, despite the fact they may have been contributing. Or they failed to realise there was a crisis.
Thats the nature of things. Surely the masses of retirees, living in family homes on their own in my suburb, where the school is closed down because people who want to start families can't afford to move here, would have realised something is odd? Something amiss? Or did they just accept the young people can't get decent homes, shrug their shoulders and move on and think that all will be right anyway. The younguns will just live in with their children until their children are 30 in bedsits and be happy to travel an hour towards work and not bother to cast an eye in their direction? Did they think that they could destroy backyards by selling them for profit, so they can continue to live a lifestyle that working people can't get, create more debt, and not have people say 'enough is enough'?
A bit of self introspection and a bit more "hey, do you think this will end up meaning...." would have gone a LONG way during the 15 years or so this crisis has been building. Sadly, its human nature to do that, to believe those who tell you want you want to hear, to accept the impossible model of the world where you become rich defing logic, where you can take from others and they'll just accept it. Which just highlights the need for people to be very careful what they believe,how they model the world.
If you stand in peoples way. They will knock you down. Values are re-evaluated. Suddenly, the 'right' to stay in your own home doesn't have the value it did before. I note that the UK is considering a similar scheme.
It's all well and good to argue for lower immigration, but I need a solution soon, and I don't see the anti-immigration movement gaining ground fast enough to be useful. I think the far right are the only ones with a cohesive argument, but most people oppose them, even those who want to cut immigration! At least this is a potential plan which has analogues in other countries and could be put into practice soon.
Lastly, intergenerational warfare isn't new, didn't the 60's generation go to war against their parents too?
Population target in Australia should be LESS than 23,000,000
Whatever the actual number of humans that the poor worn out continent of Australia can support, it should be heading back down as soon as possible. It can't do that straight away because the population is quite young (despite all this ageing obsession) and has many women in their child bearing years. They are not on the whole having big families. (most not as small as Tim's although some do it that way.)
The more Australia adds to its population now (60% of Australia's population growth is immigration) the harder it will be to go back to a sustainable population that lives within the carrying capacity of the continent. One of the main indicators of over population is the continuing damage to the environement as shown in State of the Environment reports.
We are headed inexorably in the wrong direction with a bunch of clowns in charge.
Free Trade should not mean open borders
There's an absurd assumption that if we have free trade between nations, we must have free movement of people between the countries too. We have free trade with Japan, but Australians can't live freely in Japan, and they are not coming here in their hoards like the Chinese. They are actually patriotic and unified.
Why should free trade mean open borders? It's considered by libertarians that open borders and immigration restrictions are a terrible injustice against people from Third World countries. Gallup polls have found that 700 million people would like to permanently move to another country, many of them from developing nations with failed political systems.
Freedom of movement is considered a defining feature of what it means to be European. The UK has been at the forefront of these efforts, trying to limit immigration and restricting access to welfare. However, by imposing restrictions on the freedom of movement, the EU would be returning to the economic and cultural nationalism it was meant to overcome. What's wrong with nationalism?
Its as if free trade of goods must also include the flow of people, the destruction of sovereignties and free access to welfare and jobs. It's a homogenisation of nations into one conglomerate, and this means a loss of national identity, culture, standards of living and identity. There has to be some costs in nationhood and identity, and that is restriction of full free movement and residency.
Third world immigration brings third world overpopulation and third world living conditions. It also brings in third world "diversity" of crime. Recently, law-enforcement authorities carried out raids on cockfighting rings across New York City in "Operation Angry Bird." As the New York Daily News reported: "As many as 3,000 roosters were rescued, nine arrested and 70 people rounded up in a ring that stretched through Brooklyn and Queens into Ulster County."
Now, we had a sham "marriage" of a girl as young as 12, and racial tensions following a gang rape of a 14 year old Pacific Island girl in Sydney, by men of "African appearance".
There is a certain level of assumed "racism" and "xenophobia" included in patriotism, and sovereignty. The concepts are blurred in the extremes, but like other living species, we must all be responsible for protecting our environments, our territories, and our social, economic and cultural assets. People are not cars, computers or machinery. These should pass borders, but not people!
Commendable inaction
Congratulations on achieving so much by doing so little.
You are an inspiration to a world that must embrace the art of having far fewer of us, each getting much less done so that we can all have so much more.
Best regards to the non-family.
Hope to see you this side of oblivion.
It's all relative
I'd happily accept a large drop in my property value if all such values dropped respectively. Would save a shitload in Council rates and insurance costs.
Baby Boomers aren't to blame
The high price of land and housing is not the fault of Baby Boomers. Why should they shove off and exit their properties so younger people can access them? The unaffordable prices are not driven by the ageing population, but by high rates of population growth driving scarcity, and thus peaking prices.
The "ageing population" demographic trend is being exaggerated by politicians and growth-ists, to divert focus on the main problems caused by population overload. Young people are being dispossessed from land ownership, and the rights of citizenship are being diluted by the porous borders we have.
Why are Chinese nationals allowed to access and invest in our housing market? It's to maximise profits for investors, and the public remain silent and politically-correct.
An intergenerational war is the ideal conflict, and one that will keep the public diverted from the real cause - heavy immigration rates!
Futile resentment
A the risk of furthering a generation battle by categorizing people according to age , it must be remembered that Baby Boomers are people who 30 years ago were in their 20s and 30s. It would be interesting to know with hindsight what they were supposed to do. Should they not have purchased houses when they had the opportunity? Should they have spoken out more as their own working conditions gradually worsened? At what point should they/could they have taken action? What would this action have been?
I am sensing in Dennis’ post an underlying resentment which is directed towards a whole lot of people he doesn’t know. Taking that attitude is not constructive and in fact could be quite paralyzing. As you, Dennis intimate that Baby Boomers’ actions or inactions are responsible for your situation now, then if you are Gen X or Gen Y then you must be responsible for Gen Z and beyond. What are you doing for them now to ensure that their future is bearable or not worse than your present ? Australia’s standard of living is in decline, that is clear as is our quality of life. This is happening right now. Every day it is a little worse. You will experience heavier traffic, longer commute times , inadequate services and infrastructure, loss of open space, a deteriorating natural environment ,the eroding or working conditions etc. You are here watching this and living through it just like the rest to of us. Do you really think that the Australian people can save their country if they expend energy resenting one group who happened to be young at a different time to you? Much as the corporate media tries to fragment us across culture, age , sex , we are still the people who live here.
(By the way you are quite unrealistic if you expect anyone selling a house to sell it to a stranger for any less than the optimum price. We all choose to whom we give charity. Why should a person selling their most valuable asset and who presumably wants to leave something to their children, give a large amount of charity to a stranger , one who is possibly buying a house as a 5th investment property! Sorry, it’s preposterous. )
International purchasers/immigration drives unaffordable housing
I disagree that 'babyboomers' should be held responsible. No-one was consulted as successive governments, beginning with Fraser, removed restrictions on overseas purchase of housing in Australia. No-one was consulted as successive governments, but notably the Howard, Rudd and Gillard governments increased immigration to massive proportions.
The majority of 'baby-boomers' would be the last to endorse this high immigration and foreign investment. Almost no-one but 'high flyers' does.
It would be crazy to then reward the private and government maggots who have forced on the rest of us overpopulation and high housing prices and a real-estate land-speculation economy where everything costs too much. To force babyboomers out of their houses to reward those who caused these problems would only encourage more of the same high immigration and removal of local protection for housing and land stock.
What would both punish the people who have invested in their gross manipulation of population and democracy in Australia would be the stabilisation of the population. Immediately land-prices would decline because pressure and demand would decline, therefore inflation would drop. Those who have benefited from the inflation would lose their financial power over government and other institutions like banks. That would give small business and ordinary people much lower costs of living and bigger margins for survival and profit.
Finally, to move babyboomers out of their homes is to subject elderly people to one of the biggest stressors there is. We are constantly warned of the rise in dementia among elderly people. Well, the first thing to go is orientation in space/place. People can continue on for ages, even with quite seriously failing memories, if they are not moved away from the homes and streets they memorised when they were younger.
Move those people out and they may immediately become candidates for expensive nursing homes which will soak up any inheritance for their children.
Those who call for pushing elderly people around, using Bernard Salt's et al's aguments blaming those people for the impact of land speculation, seem to be serving the cause of our oppressors by succumbing to a misplaced desire for revenge. We should treat elderly people well and respectfully, as we should treat everyone. Unfortunately, successive Australian governments, with the help of corporate press and private land-speculating industries, have set a very poor example in elderly bashing.
I agree, Boomers (the 60's generation) must be held responsible
Good response, Matt. You beat me to it. There is a lot of resentment against Boomers, A lot.
It is unfair that people are being coerced to move out of their lifelong home. Where I live, the suburb was created tailored for families. Decent family homes, nice blocks, open spaces. Now it is just retirees who collect pensions, despite massive property capital gains, and when they ocassionaly sell, accept not a cent less than 'astronomical' They generally rather let the home go empty for another year, than make less of a profit. I would have to work twice as hard as they ever did (they are working class, not ex-doctors), to just secure a dogbox in a crappy new unit, while they hold on to their 3-4 bedroom home, most of it unused. I will have a smaller family than them, but my two kids will have to grow up crammed in a small house, sharing a room.
So yes, their space IS going to waste. There is a premium on land now. There is a premium on location. They let this happen. They cheered it. They were happy to have working people have to move away from where the work and schools are to raise a family. Now they are moaning that people are after their homes. Now the government is having to move resources where they are more needed and questioning why people have such a VALUABLE resource when they don't actually need it.
Well, DUH!
I spent ages debating with boomers, that rising property prices MUST be paid for some way. It could not possibly be pure gain. If you're asset becomes more and more valuable, you have to EXPECT people to come after it. If your space becomes more and more needed to keep the country going, you have to EXPECT people to come after it.
A friend of mine went to an open for inspection, for a small unit he may be lucky to afford, and the queue of people literally went down the street.
Land is very expensive, it is in high demand. When it is in such high demand, do you think that the state will hold the same attitutes towards retirees holding this land as they did when it was much cheaper?
How to create secure employment for Australians
Anarchist Media Institute
Although it goes against the grain, I've decided to give Murdoch's Minion Tony Abbott some unsolicited advice about how to save his political bacon. Leaving job creation to market forces creates the political instability that will see Turnbull, like Gillard before him, catapulted into Abbott's shoes within the next 12 months.
Faced with first term political oblivion, Abbott could embark on a job creation journey that could see millions of potentially unemployed and unemployable Australians find regular, secure, worthwhile employment. All the Prime Minister, The Right Honourable Mr. Tony Abbott has to do is to convince his parliamentary colleagues to pass legislation that sets aside 1% of Australian worker's superannuation contributions into a fund to provide seeding capital to establish co-operatives and collectives.
Co-operatives and collectives have the capacity to create an alternative economic system that is not dependent on government support and that can work towards breaking the monopoly that is exercised by privately owned corporations whose major responsibility is to their majority shareholders, not the country as a whole. In an era when government owned or supported companies are being phased out and replaced with privately owned companies who have Buckley's chance of satisfying real community and national needs, the Abbott led government could, if it removed its ideological blinkers and supported the establishment of co-operatives and collectives, solve the many problems that have been thrown up by structural adjustment over night.
Dr. Joseph TOSCANO / Spokesperson / Anarchist Media Institute
Level 1/21 Smith Street, Fitzroy VIC 3065
Tel: 0439 395 489
It's actually worse than that
"In the end, in the Australian Press, the lack of compassion, the utter fervour of cruelty in insults, failure to publish evidence, and publishing prejudicial and incorrect information at the time of Shapelle's trials and appeals, takes your breath away. It is like reading the ravings of Nazis."
Its more like a privatised flogging in the public square. And don't far too many of the yokels just love it to bits.
The more arcane horror inherent within this ritualised violence is the implicit message it sends to all and sundry to keep your head down and your feet in line lest you be the one next put into the stocks. The lustful media jocks and their conniving employers provide no access within their patterned attacks upon the maligned for appeal to truth and reason. What happened to journalism? Did it get a funeral?
Most baby boomers are not in Charge - reply
(sorry Sally for some reason I cannot reply to your comment below, so I will do it here).
I accept that most are not in charge. But some were, even if a small minority of privileged people, and I still hold that they will have to live with the consequences of our impending civil collapse. Even these elite will not be insulated as they expect.
And perhaps there is an argument that the less elite baby-boomers (on the whole) could have been much more active in their resistance of many of the negative changes that have taken place - in the interests of their children and grand children. But there is no doubt that have been manipulated, it is just that since the 70's the problems and manipulation have been blindingly obvious, so excuses don't wash so well. To their credit there was some action around protecting the environmen, particularly in the 70's, etc, but in the last decade or two - during which the boomers were perhaps holding most positions of power and authority, a lot has been stripped away, and since it was on their watch, the boomers are ripe for blame - justifiably or not.
Matt
Gratuitous Australian press cruelty to Schapelle shocking
It is astonishing how cruel the media are to this woman, who, as you say, has been convicted due to failure by the government of Australia to provide necessary evidence for her defense.
Given the general tolerance of cannabis use and trade in much of Australian society, it is also very strange that the media carry on this way, as if she had been accused [and convicted] of torture or murder or treason.
Comparable treatments by the Australian Press all seem to apply to women. Lindy Chamberlain and Prime Minister Julia Gillard come to mind (even though the PM was not accused of any crime.)
When you consider the rate of experimentation and usage of cannabis in Australia it is truly bizarre that Australians are not more tuned into the injustice here. Maybe, however, what we are seeing, is a sort of nasty smarty-pants attitude among journos et al, who would expect to get away with cannabis use and so hold anyone caught in contempt. However it actually seems likely that Schapelle Corby never even tried marijuana, let alone smuggled it - so this makes that contempt even harder to understand.
In the end, in the Australian Press, the lack of compassion, the utter fervour of cruelty in insults, failure to publish evidence, and publishing prejudicial and incorrect information at the time of Schapelle's trials and appeals, takes your breath away. It is like reading the ravings of Nazis.
Most "Baby Boomers" are not in charge
Most Baby Boomers do not set the agenda of our economy. They are pawns like most other people. If any are complacent just because they live in and own a half million or million dollar house, they are kidding themselves. It is still just a house as it always was. This was called "the Australian dream" and it was what most people wanted. Even if they didn't want it, at least it was a choice open to many if not most. This was democratic and very important. To watch another generation slaving to attain anything like it is to see the evidence of serious failure. It is interesting that in my experience environmental groups and rallies at Parliament House Melbourne trying to save our natural heritage are over-represented by older people. I think there is a general understanding amongst these Baby Boomer activists that the younger generation (Gen Y) is time and energy strapped. This makes it even more difficult for younger people to galvanise and unite against what amounts to theft of their future well-being.
Koalas will be deemed as disposable compared to housing
One year ago, Sir David Attenborough said that only way to save the planet from famine and species extinction is to limit human population growth. "We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It's not just climate change; it's sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde.
Humanity's rapacious appetite for growth, and consuming numbers, is pushing wildlife and natural vegetation off the planet.
Australia's extinction rate is the highest in modern times. However, we have an economy based on housing, land subdivisions, and an increasing consumer base through high immigration levels.
Population Matters: Sir David Attenborough – 'I've never seen a problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder and ultimately impossible with more. On a finite planet nothing physical can grow indefinitely."
Matthew Guy, our "planning", minister has locked in Victoria's economy to be based on population growth. Jobs are disappearing, and the growth is at odds with economic performance - and this stretching of the urban growth boundary, again, can't be justified.
The loss of koalas in the Peninsula would be another nail in their coffin, and no doubt Matthew Guy will proudly say these species are as disposable and not important as the economic benefits of high immigration and housing profits.
Brisbane Times: no motive, but Schapelle guilty regardless
Brisbane Times columnist Sam de Brito, like every other Australian mainstream journalist reporting on the latest developments in the case of which I have become aware, is repeating the lies and slander used to convict the innocent Schapelle Corby in 2005:
- Schapelle labeled "the 36-year-old ganja queen";
- "... it's only the Corbys and rusted-on nut-jobs that have proclaimed her innocence."
Sam de Brito's labeling of a woman, regarding whom there is no evidence, or even claim, of having used marijuana or any illicit drug before her trip to Bali in 2005, a "ganja queen" seems slanderous.
This otherwise misleading article contains a small hint of truth:
She was convicted of an idiotic crime that had us all shaking our heads asking "aren't you supposed to take drugs out of the third world?". (emphasis added)
Evidently de Brito was not motivated by the clear lack of motive for Schapelle's alleged crime to further question her conviction by the corrupt Indonesian legal system in July 2005 and the complicity of corrupt Australian governments and a corrupt newsmedia.
Had he done so, how could he have failed to notice the mountain of evidence which proves Schapelle's innocence?
Moron or Liar?
How then do you rate this reply (in series with a slew of others waxing adamantly that Schapelle is guilty, amongst a slew of other more intrinsic character attacks).
'Discussion' at:
http://theconversation.com/did-she-do-it-the-ethics-of-the-schapelle-corby-telemovie-22485
Editorial comment: Discussion on that site, with a few exceptions, including the comment included below, seems lame and a waste of time.
Ken Alderton commented:
"What I did was to look at the source you use as the basis for your argument, “Roy”’s presentation and asked these questions: who is this person, what are his credentials for making this proposition, is there evidence for the propositions, is this evidence credible. “Roy” could be anybody. He cannot be identified. His credentials are that he is a family friend, no training in the law, no experience with Indonesia. What is his evidence? He claims there are four key procedural flaws: no fingerprints taken, no forensic identification, no dealer network identified, no corroboration of “secondary evidence”. The need to prove a distribution network is irrelevant because she was convicted of importation not trafficking. The prosecution asserted in public that the cannabis was Australian. The AFP told Corby’s lawyers they had no jurisdiction to test. Corby’s lawyer said in public that the defence had a sample they could have tested. Mick Keelty said in public that the defence told the AFP not to test the cannabis. Every other source I can find says that Corby requested the Denpasar CCTV footage to show her surprised reaction when the bag was opened not to disprove the testimony of the prosecution witnesses. Roy provides no detail. The evidence about the lack of fingerprinting is credible on the surface. The verdict confirmed it had not been done. I can find no independent account of when Corby asked for fingerprinting. I can also find no indication whether under Indonesian law it would have made a difference. What I have found is that two High Court judges would have said that it would have made no difference under Australian law. They held that possession was sufficient to prove importation. I have provided no sources to keep this to a manageable length. I’ll provide them if you want them. "
To add your say go to http://theconversation.com/did-she-do-it-the-ethics-of-the-schapelle-corby-telemovie-22485
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Zoo has lost its vision of caring for animals, not killing them!
Marius the giraffe was considered to be of little value due to his "common genes" and thus not suitable for breeding! Surely these zoo keepers can look beyond the animals in their charge as being more than a handful of genes?
The zoo ignored a petition signed by thousands and offers from other zoos and a private individuals to save the animal. They were intent on his destruction, in a cold and clinical fashion.
Visitors, including children, were invited to watch while the giraffe was then skinned and fed to the lions. This is far from a dignified end for one of the world's most fascinating and unique animals!
The European Association of Zoos and Aquaria to put down Marius by because there already were a lot of giraffes with similar genes in the organisation's breeding program. The giraffe didn't have to "breed"! What about their intrinsic value and an individual animal that deserved to live?
Copenhagen Zoo has lost their vision if they think that zoos exist for artificial breeding purposes and for human entertainment. Instead of "conserving global biodiversity and achieving the highest standards of care and breeding for animals", they have become a commercial organisation with the callous and anthropocentric view that genes can be unethically manipulated for convenience, even at the expense of killing healthy animals!
It's a Nazi-like program to exterminate the "undesirable", the common genes no matter how healthy, and propagate the genes they unwarrantably think are more "worthy"!
Human blind spot- population numbers
Nothing can grow forever, and there's a blind spot in human mentality that assumes that when it comes to our own numbers, growth can be perpetual and increases in population can go on indefinitely. We all recognise that farmers can over-stock their land, and there can be "too many" animals on finite landscapes, but when it comes to our own species, growth can be indefinite without impacting on ecology, housing, costs of living, social cohesion and food supplies.
Once there are borders, boundaries, limits to human expansion, populations will be forced to reconsider their numbers and their fertility levels. International migration is giving an appearance of escape, of plenty, of new lands to give migrants a "better life style".
Germany: 1.4 ( 8.2% are foreigners).
Holland: 1.8 (4.4% are foreigners).
Belgium: 1.8 ( 9.8% are foreigners).
Spain: 1.4 (12.4% are foreigners).
Italy: 1.4 ( 7.1% are foreigners).
The fertility rate of half the world is below replacement level, but immigration from overpopulated developing nations is undermining national ethnic cultures and demographies.
What has peaked is the rate of population growth. It took just 12.5 years for the world’s population to grow from four to five billion, 11.8 years for it to grow from five to six, but it has taken almost 13 years to grow to seven billion. Japan’s fertility rate has been below replacement level since the mid-1970s. But unlike Europe, Japan has almost no immigration. However, their economy is healthy and living standards can only improve.
There seems to be a population blind-spot in human thinking, and vortex of illogic that must be overcome by legislation, and policies. Generational growth must be stemmed as people wake up and realise that living standards are declining, and "food security" issues are a symptom of ecological overshoot - globally!
No one will escape Australia's future
Good point Sally, we are all in this together. And whatever mistakes previous generations of Australians have made - though either bad actions, or inaction - are now coming home to roost. Those retiring now, who had the benefit of massive economic growth, great careers (due to that growth) free education, generous super (not the measly pensions their parents had to survive on) will now face the same uncertainties that their children and grand-children face. Having allowed many jobs to go OS in exchange for cheap goodies, and having burdened their kids with education debts and high house prices, and expensive privatised utilities, they are now hoping to skip the scene with their cashed up funds, highly valued house and live comfortably leaving everyone else to clean up the mess (not all of course - but some - perhaps even many?).
I am very sorry for these people, because I fear greatly that their expectations will not be met. I seriously suspect that as the economy crashes here (and probably globally) that their "investments" will evaporate (as they did in the GFC) and they will have to experience the full horror of the system they have left behind rather than be insulated as they are no doubt expecting.
I know quite a few people at or near retirement age who are finding the current corporate environment (callous, "flexible", demanding) that is now endemic - and which they helped bring into existence - too unpleasant to cope with, so they are either retiring or expecting to retire soon - happy to leave their younger colleagues to deal with the mess, lack of care, and pressure to work for as little as possible, whilst producing as much as possible and still going further into debt.
Given all this I really feel that there may well be bad feelings towards baby-boomers, but perhaps, just perhaps, the younger generations will have more heart than the older ones, and will forgive them, look after them, even with all the massive problems and poverty they have been left with, and hopefully, eventually fix the system creating instead of a system of selfishness and greed (and there is no denying that that is what we have) one of compassion, care and community.
Matt
Real democracy
Very interesting! Thanks for reporting this Sheila.
Matt
We can't give up on a Population Plan
"It assumes that you can choose to leave a resource unused, space unfilled. It assumes that you have some control over the population, which you don't...This means the idea of a 'population target' must be dispensed with completely."
That is exactly what population activists---such as myself---would dispute. That is why we are in this business, to lobby for a Population Plan for our respective nations which would defend our unused resources and our "empty" spaces. Our aim is to first stabilize then reduce our population levels. An uphill struggle no doubt, but one we must engage in nevertheless.
The question is, how do we achieve sustainability? We cannot ignore the P in IPAT. We must resist population growth, not yield to it with a defeatist attitude ("for every child you don't have the government will bring in two people").To do this, we must treat migration, fertility rates and refugee intakes as variables which can be adjusted up or down depending on our priorities and preferences. Migration quotas and refugee intakes are relatively simple to set. They simply require a stroke of the parliamentary pen. Fertility rates, on the other hand, are more resistant to government suasion, but they still can be nudged up or down by financial incentives or disincentives. To concede to your point however, in the Canadian context, our priority must be to slash immigration intakes since our TFR is relatively low at 1.7, and migrants are having more babies than native-born residents. The demographic shift you refer to.
Bottom line, we must get our population down as rapidly as is humanely and politically possible. We must have a population goal.
Our primary target, however, should be the mentality of Ponzi economics, which asserts that a)economic growth is desirable, necessary and physically possible going forward and that b)population growth is necessary to promote economic growth. Until we defeat this central assumption, our arguments about birth rates and immigration levels will continue to be swept aside.
Thank you, but credit mostly belongs to Roy.
Marayana,
Thank you so much for your kind appraisal of my article. However, most of the thanks, rightly belongs to Roy, whose talk at an earlier meeting, my article largely paraphrases.
Anyone who examines the evidence for no more than 5 minutes, can see that Schapelle Corby could not have possibly committed the crime of which she was unjustly convicted. Any journalist who persists in describing Schapelle as a "convicted drug smuggler," in the face of the clear and overwhelming evidence to the contrary, as many are doing right to this very minute, must be either stupid or dishonest.
Unfortunately, since I wrote the article, I have not been able to further contribute as much as I would have liked to have. This is because, on 18 May 2010, eight months after I wrote the article, as noted at the very start of this article, I was incapacitated as a result of being run over by a car on my way to work on my bicycle. Since then, I have somewhat recovered, but I still have:
- diffuse axonal brain damage;
- less balance and coordination;
- less mental stamina, hence less physical stamina; and
- faulty memory of my past, both since my injury and before.
Thankfully, my friends tell me my intellect is still good, so, in spite of my above deficiencies, I expect to still be able to contribute to the fight for justice, including for Schapelle Corby.
I see this proposed future playing out
You're right. When people simultaneously expound how uncontrolled immigration was bad for the Aboriginals, and that it was their land for their nation, while at the same time arguing for open borders and that we have no right to say this is 'our', I laugh a little inside. That is, until I realise that that person is probably driven not so much by a desire to foster reconciliation, but simply to deconstruct and attack the Australian identity. At that point, the reason for the double standard appears painfully clear and logical.
The idea that a country could just be an arbitrary collection of people, who simply paid tax to the same tax office is an old 20th century idea. Unworkable then, clearly failing now. Its' the 21st century, and its sad to see people holding this idea. It's depressing to see countries still pushing this outdated view causing much antagonism and cultural destruction.
Not all boomers are bad
I've spoken to at least a few Baby Boomers genuinely concerned about house prices and the availability of housing to my generation. While many aren't, and I've met some whose comments filled me with utter revulsion, at least SOME are. I remember speaking to one older lady while waiting for pizza who was concerned about the future our my generation and our inability to get a home. She wished it wasn't like that and while a home-owner herself, wanted to see other people prosper too.
I was actually quite shocked to see so many people quite a bit older than me at Victoria First.
At least some Boomers will support me and speak up for us.
I don't have the same expectation from some other classes of investors in real estate at the moment.
Firstly, I agree that people need to control reproduction.
Firstly, I agree that people need to control reproduction. I've heard quite a few women say they choose not to add to a populated planet, or bring in children when there are other more needy ones who need resources.
The issue is, for every child you don't have, the government will bring in two people. There are plenty of places in the world where women are still willing to have larger families, where there isn't as much desire for open spaces. Less children born? Increase intake to ensure we meet population targets!
Eventually the demographics will shift, and those who choose to have children will replace those who don't and a new standard will be set. They'll be given incentives if need be to have children. If there is a population target, you can either choose to contribute to it, or have someone else do it. Given that scenario, I would much rather do it myself than outsource my breeding. At least I know my children will have a conscious awareness of these issues and a stake in the future of this country.
I'm not saying you must have children. I'm saying that this may be a self defeating strategy, because it assumes that there is no competition for a niche, which there is. It assumes that you can choose to leave a resource unused, space unfilled. It assumes that you have some control over the population, which you don't.
You must FIRST ensure that your nation has collectively, control over population growth and demographics through peoples individual reproductive choices. This means the idea of a 'population target' must be dispensed with completely.
Att: Digital artists - how not to lose digital pens
Common design faults in digital drawing pens & pads needs simple fix.
I have been using digital drawing hardware for years now. With some exceptions, most pens and pads are black and the pens, particularly, are in constant danger of being lost in dark spaces. They usually come with pen rests, often inkwell shaped, which you lay the pen on or stand it in. The pen rests are also black and easily lost. The pads are also black and fairly hard to pick among various tools and electronic ware. But the worst thing is dealing with three separate pieces. When I travel, I tape my pen to its pad. And I immobilise the pen in a desk recess, using bluetack at home. However I use more than one computer.
Here is a proposed solution. Put grooves and holes in both electronic pens and pads so that they can be connected with fishing line. It is ridiculous to have to make these modifications oneself to these otherwise wonderful electronic tools.
well done
Your article left me lost for words. the words, the evidence, the comments, your thoughts and ideas of the different ways she could have proven her innocent is impeccable.
I do not know how to tell you how much I adored your piece of writing, what you said was beyond amazing. well done!!!!!
may God bless your soul
Not that complicated, unless we allow it to seem so
I agree that this dilemma exists but the superficiality and self-imposition of its construction has to be exposed.
In reality the problem is not based essentially upon our denigration of another race/culture/religion, but instead upon a lack of recognition and connection by the average citizen to our own culture and values. By comparison for example the French, by and large, don't have this same coyness about the matter. Neither to any of the major Asian societies. It is only the innately dis-possessed Anglo settler communities that seem to have abandoned themselves to this fear and dreadful avoidance of being 'exclusive'.
A sensible approach would be to recognise some effective 'rate of change' measures by which to assess the resilient bounds for impact upon critical qualities within both the landscape and the social base. This then bears the political focus away from a supposed negative 'fear of the intruder' and toward a positive awareness and care for extant qualities that are commonly identified and deemed to be valuable.
Native Australians are treated as aboriginal Australians were
Dennis K observes:
"One could legally work towards eradicating an ethnic group from the face of the planet through legal population policy."
Dennis, isn't this already the tragic condition faced by Australia's indigenous population? How on earth might accelerated immigration help the oft called for need for some useful form of reconciliation between the original and the successively dominant populations of our 'nation'? How can a rapidly hurtling object ('us', collectively) possibly be reconciled with? In fact, on this current trajectory, we'll soon all be lining up alongside the first nations' people also seeking reconciliation with a rapidly emerging new body politic dominated by ownership and customs that are entirely alien and careless toward our current, but rapidly flagging standards. That would be a bitterly ironic form of reconciliation between the current dominant and indigenous strands of culture.
I find the concomitant cheering by quite a few community sectors for both higher immigration and reconciliation to be utterly confounding, where it isn't just plain machiavellian.
More broadly, the dissolution of social identity is a key instrument in wreaking this holocaust of asset alienation and depletion upon us all. Others include the escalation of mental and spiritual trauma via compressing people into behavioural corridors of undue complexity and severe financial and time stress.
So Pauline Hanson was right - we are being swamped
... by Chinese, Poms, Indians, and our politicians are selling us out.
Reckon she's owed a big apology.
MASSIVE Chinese run on Aussi housing imminent
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2014/2/10/economy/why-australias-economic-debate-doesnt-rate
Dannielle Harnett, Mon, 2014-02-10 21:27
yes Steve there is also big changes afoot in China right now with the recent generational change in the communist party. Trillions of dollars are currently being unlocked into foreign markets such as Australia and Canada.
The special visa program of wealth immigration into Canada has been so over subscribed by mainlanders bending the rules and applying through Hong Kong that the application centre has been closed for 12 months under a Tsunami of applications. Canada's housing market has now been so distorted by foreign investment in their residential housing market that locals are now spending 70% of their income on housing. Rich mainlanders now own entire suburbs, many houses sit empty while Canadian workers are forced to live hours from their workplaces and massive salary commitments to basic accommodation has effectively left them as the working poor.
With Hong Kong bringing in legislation to deter foreign purchases and Canada closing their special visa application process at the same time as the communist party is liberating trillions of dollars of private wealth - the Australian property market is in the eye of the storm for a flow of cash into our housing of a size that has never been seen before.
Our government both incumbent and otherwise are so parochial that they don't seem to grasp the size of this issue.
What has been sold can NEVER be unsold!
Re: Schapelle Corby is innocent - part 4
I believe it was simple but stupid trick to suck good money from Australia! Schapelle is a good Christian and this also helped her to survive the hell.
Need for an Independent Office of Animal Welfare in Victoria
Back in 2011 saleyards across the State were under fire by animal welfare groups, who are targeting the treatment of livestock and the condition of saleyard facilities.
Animals Angels, and international animal rights group, submitted a damning report to the State Government that included photos, video footage and a detailed veterinarian report after visiting western Victorian saleyards.
The report included sheep being unloaded from a trailer and ute without the use of a ramp, causing sheep to land on their heads and necks. There are also issues about post-sale feeding and water.
The Australian Livestock and Property Agents Association (ALPA) issued a warning for all members to review their animal welfare standards as a matter of urgency. ALPA Victoria/Tasmania State management committee member Rob Bolton said one of the main issues was livestock being received at saleyards that should never have been loaded for sale in the first place. The animals should be fit for human consumption and therefore also fit to be loaded.
So much for "urgency", as little has changed.
There is a clear conflict of interests within the DEPI. The State department responsible for supporting livestock industries, and economic benefits for farmers and from agriculture, is also responsible for animal welfare! There needs to be a truly independent Office of Animal Welfare, distinct from politics and lobby groups.
Vic saleyards under scrutiny Dec 2011, Animal Angels
Convicted under a corrupt system
Schapelle Corby did not come from a conservative middle class family, but that doesn't make her guilty. She was condemned under a corrupt legal system in a third world country.
Now, she is officially a "convicted drug smuggler" and that means her guilt is affirmed!
There are no recorded weights of luggage before or after boarding the plane. There is no CCTV films of Corby's bag inspection, or her reaction. It's only the security guard's words against hers.
She admitted the bag belonged to her, but it was out of her hands during the transfers and the flight. The drugs were not checked for finger prints, or for the DNA to determine their origin.
The legal system in Indonesia relies on bribes, and corruption. The evidence was insufficient and inconclusive. Drugs are freely available in Bali.
It's as if the government needed a victim, an Australian, to set a precedent on drug smuggling, and Corby fit the profile.
Aid to Indonesia should end. They have a growing economy, and their poor living standards is due to overpopulation not lack of GDP.
More on giant jellyfish takeover
Have a look at this article on giant jellyfish : Why Jellyfish are taking over the world - Lisa-ann Gershwin’s “Stung! On jellyfish blooms and the future of the ocean”
Wed, 2013-10-09 13:37 — Alice Friedemann
"Move aside Steven King, jellyfish are worse than any of your demons, worse than any Grade-B monster that’s graced the silver screen. Unlike The Blob, which can be stopped by freezing, you can’t kill them. Not with chemical repellents or biocides or nets or electric shocks or introducing species that eat jellyfish like the striped sea slug. If you shoot, stab, slash, or chop off part of a jellyfish, it can regenerate lost body parts within two days. Not even the past 5 major extinction events which killed up to 90% of all life on earth, killed off the jellyfish."
Well done Tim Diamond Lawrence!
Well done SPP and Tim Lawrence.
The public are reliant on the 'education' they get from the ABC and the commercial media. Those media hardly mentioned the Sustainable Population Party and they suppress useful discussion of the problems of population growth whilst pushing the idea that growth is irresistible and must be accommodated. Australian voters are treated by the press rather like Saudi women, taught that they cannot think for themselves and can change nothing and must be subservient to those deemed to have authority.
Our mainstream media and government are ideologically corrupt to the bone.
The candidate, by the way, was a software engineer. I tried to publicise him by doing a film, but to win an election you need thousands of people to publicise you, and to spend years door-knocking and currying favour.
If the film I had done of Tim Diamond Lawrence had been aired on the news on every channel, and there had been newspaper articles day after day mentioning how he does his hair and what he said about football, he would have had a chance.
That's no reason to give up; every reason to keep trying, harder and harder. Ecologically sustainable population advocates have to take themselves and the battle seriously; the growth lobby does.
Huge jellyfish washes up in Australia
"In my 20-plus years of working with jellyfish, it is the largest jellyfish I have seen. It really is gob-smackingly huge" said CSIRO scientist Lisa-ann Gershwin. She said the newfound specimen should also belong to the Cyanea genus, which is called a lion's mane jellyfish or a "snottie" thanks to its extremely slimy disposition and can grow to 3 meters across. Gershwin said is unprecedented for the area—much bigger, denser, and longer than previous years.
Dr Gershwin has been working on jellyfish for 20 years and says it is probably the biggest the state's ever seen, and could rival interstate finds.
"There's something going on that's causing a whole lot of species to bloom in staggering numbers and we don’t know why yet," she said. "It's so thick with jellyfish that it’s like swimming in bubble tea."
Recent media reports have created a perception that the world's oceans are experiencing increases in jellyfish due to human activities such as global warming and overharvesting of fish. As the world's oceans absorb excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and become more acidic, coral growth is inhibited while jellyfish populations expand.
The public are deluded by football team style of voting?
So far, SPP has 577 votes, an increase of +0.7%. The mainstream parties gained overwhelming support, and Terri Butler (ALP) is on track to maintain the Griffith seat. It seems the electorate are dug in at the heels and can't see beyond the main parties!
It's not that population isn't a major issue, but the effects are subtle and incremental, so it's become a background to our lives, and the costs of living and squeeze on our cities.
Few people think deeply about cause and effect, or associate events to causes. A software engineer would be well suited to being a candidate for SPP, with analysis and understanding of logic, inputs, mechanisms and outputs. He wouldn't be distracted by social engineering and political machinery based on economics and meta-data.
It also questions how seriously do voters really question the parties, and candidates. They seem to be locked into tradition and voting for the biggest "winners" rather than spend time thinking about the issues. It's on the level of football - teams, colours, personalities, loyalties and "winners"!
Griffith By-election is today
Given that there is one party that intends to do all it can to rectify the situation described above and it is first on the ticket, it will be intersting to see how the Sustainable Population Party goes today.
See article, Griffith By-Election 8 Feb 2014: Timothy Diamond Lawrence - Sustainable Population Party Candidate of 1 Feb 2014. - Ed.
Lifeboats on Spaceship Earth are full
According to Italy's deputy interior minister, Filippo Bubico, the number of asylum seekers landing in Italy rose 10-fold in January, "in an incessant and massive influx of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East".
The Italian government rescued 1100 asylum seekers off Lampedusa coast. Calmer seas could see more people trying to take the journey. There are about 3000 people trying to take the journey every month.
Immigration charities estimate between 17,000 and 20,000 asylum seekers have died at sea trying to reach Europe over the past 20 years.
"Europe can neither save nor welcome the whole world," said Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament (the EU's directly elected legislative wing) to a meeting of EU leaders in October following the Lampedusa disaster last year in which 360 people were killed on an overcrowded vessel.
The Italian government this week described the numbers as "an incessant and massive influx of migrants." War in Syria, and overpopulation in the Horn of Africa take a heavy toll.
One long-term proposal is to explore avenues for legal migration, including for "protected entries" that would-be migrants could use to access asylum safely to the EU without resorting to potentially fatal journeys. At least this would bring some control over the situation, but the Spaceship Earth's emergency life boats are already full!
Dingo Day Rally
There's been confusion about the location of the Dingo Day rally. It is actually on the STEPS of PARLIAMENT HOUSE, Melbourne, not opposite!
Action at Zoo Twilight Concerts Deferred due to heat
Action at Zoo Twilight Concerts Deferred - Tomorrow Friday 7 February 2014 and Saturday 8 February 2014 Events Cancelled Due to Heat.
Thanks again to volunteers who have attended the Zoo to hand out flyers and put up posters. We have had to cancel this Friday 7 February as the weather forecast is for 36 degrees and Saturday 8 February as the forecast is for 40 degrees.
We will keep going so mark in your diaries 4:30 pm to 7 pm the following Friday and Saturday nights weather permitting. The Zoo Twilight Concerts continue every Friday and Saturday until 8 March 2014.
II Drilling on Ross Straw Field in Royal Park - Watch for Word on Snap Protest.
We are advised that drilling will take place on the Ross Straw Field after compliant Melbourne City Councillors gave the OK go ahead at last Tuesday's Council Committee meeting. The drilling team will not have the big rig but a smaller truck as they will be taking samples from the Coode Island silt of the Moonee Ponds flood plain. Even so stay alert as there may be a snap protest at the drill site.
See Sue Jackson's Blog Site on "Melbourne's Endangered Species at the Zoo"
http://suejacksonnews.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/melbournes-endangered-species-potential.html
Population is THE key issue
According to the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH):
Bill Glasson heckled at Griffith by-election forum far as political gimmicks go, it was hard to look past Stable Population Party candidate Timothy Lawrence, who offered free condoms to all in attendance.
The comedic approach highlighted the serious platform on which the party is based – controlling Australia's population so it does not exceed 26 million by reducing immigration and phasing out government birth payments to families at two children.
“Under tripartisan policies, Australia's population is currently growing by over 1000 people a day,” he said.
“That's a new Gold Coast every 18 months.”
Clearly, population is really THE issue! It's assumed that population growth is an indication of consumer confidence in the economy - whereas it's largely a political choice.
The Liberal National Party candidate, who left before the questions from the floor due to another commitment, faced an at times hostile audience in the the Labor/Green heartland of Griffith. The tide may be turning against the government?
KIlling dogs?
What a stupid, unprofessional statement. "OK to kill dogs with a hammer." Time to get out Mr Walsh. Anyway I agree dogs are not "livestock." So, why are they under your control? You've already stuffed up the codes. Back to the farm for you. Why not, Sir, concentrate on the abuse and cruelty that exists around the sale yards on Victoria? Silly me. Too hard "conflict of interest" also. I can assure you, Mr Walsh, that you or your Inspectors will not find cruelty in your office. It's all outside
Issues raised by complementary post with advertising included
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Immigration policy must be Politically Correct
Almost everyone who wants immigration reduced, seems to also object greatly to immigration reduction based on race/culture/religion.
For this reason, I can't see mainstream population control parties being very successful, or at least, keeping any victory. More likely, a far right organisation will take the ball and run with it. People who want immigration control in Britain, often vote BNP, even though they don't like the BNP's nationalism.
It's not that I want it to be that way, but that logically, having some criteria for assessing immigration as valid and good, and some as invalid and not to be touched, is less logically congruous than simply saying that any criteria a nation needs to assess immigration is A-OK.
This is the simplicity of not having to be Politically Correct, you don't have to justify why some criteria are OK to enforce and others evil.
Editorial comment: The embedded 57 minute video below by Betsy McGee is better than I had imagined possible. Watch it as soon as you can find a spare 57 minutes. If you delay watching this video, you will almost certainly regret having done so, once you have seen it. The video tackles head-on the critical issues that none of the Internet's politically correct 'progressive' spokespersons will raise, including:
- the immigration rort;
- false flag terrorism, particularly the Boston Bombing of 2013
This video can also be viewed on BrassCheck TV
A concern I have with this video is that, on at least two occasions, it implicitly condemns those who want to stabilise human population by claiming that a number of powerful global vested interests have plans to depopulate the globe of most its human population. However, even with this apparent flaw, the remaining content of this video is still essential viewing.
Carlos Arredondo - Boston Hero or NWO FRAUD?
Victimising the aged to pursue economic growth
A family home is not a source of income, but a place to live. The only way it can create any revenue is to downsize, and move out into an area outside family, friends and support groups, and be alienated. The difference in price will give some short-term cash, but it's predatory to expect older people to capitalise on the home that they would have worked and saved hard to buy.
Some of the "profit" will also go on stamp duties.
After 20 odd years of economic growth, why is our economy failing to perform its basic duty of care to provide for the most vulnerable - the older, sick and disabled - and educate the young?
Ponzi economics means that as the economy gets bigger, it's more expensive to maintain, and the disparity between wealthy and poor becomes more acute. The size of the GDP gets bigger, but a bigger and bigger proportion must be churned back into it to keep the whole system operating. It's said that $1 million is needed in superannuation funding to live a comfortable retirement. How are the working public supposed to save this amount, even with employer contributions?
Ponzi economics also requires on-going population growth to create housing investments, for pensions and super funds. This false scheme will eventually collapse under the weight of ever bigger and successive ageing populations - like a beached whale with insufficient skeletal bones to support its frame!
Australian Democrats Population Policy
As the former National Policy Coordinator for the Australian Democrats, driving the development of this policy was difficult. The previous National Policy Coordinator pretty much squashed the policy from the start. It was revived by a group of hard working policy researchers and was driven under my direction towards becoming official party policy.
It is not a perfect policy by any means. If there were perfect policies, there would be no disagreement, argument or controversy.
Personally I would have liked the policy to actually contain concrete measures rather than fluffy general aspirations. The reality is that as a small political party with next to no funding or paid staff, it is next to impossible to come up with specifics as they would need costings, modelling and impact statements.
I have since left the Australian Democrats. The pro-growth faction of the party threatened to suspend my membership. It caused me great emotional stress that the party that I loved and served to over a decade could treat me so poorly for defending Sandra Kanck the right of any member to also support other issue based organisations. In the end I had to leave to sort myself out.
Politics is a brutal business, even when it comes to the behind the scenes work.
QLD government bizarrely out of touch, out of mercy
Cloncurry is on the brink of being evacuated because it is running out of water and beasts are dying in droves, yet the dryland sharks in Queensland government are still trying to get migrants to settle in regional Queensland - for property developers!
Family home as assessable asset for Age Pension
Regarding Paul Howe's suggestion that the $ value of the family home should be assessed when looking at eligibility for the age pension, this looks to be a way of forcing people out of their homes in old age possibly to live nowhere near where they are used to living and nowhere near the facilities they need. The $ value of a house is almost meaningless as house prices have risen rapidly with population growth. In Melbourne for instance house prices have risen at over 10% per annum in recent years . Advocates of making the family home assessable for the age pension talk of houses worth $1 million as though the owner occupant is rich. A house bought for $40,000 30 years ago on a salary of $20,000 p.a. is still the same house. It may have been well maintained and improved, but it still sits on the same block of land. The dollar of today is not the same as the dollar of 30 years ago largely because of rising house prices. Following the logic that a couple who live in a 1 million dollar house and need the age pension are in fact rich is as logical as converting the Australian dollar into Indonesian rupiah (In Indonesia daily transactions at the supermarket may amount to a million) and saying "oh, your house is worth 10 million of these, so you're rich!” The houses were bought in a different era with a different salary. It is totally unfair to deny people the age pension because government engineered population growth has pumped up the $ value of their ordinary homes.
If it is fair then then it has to be admitted that our standard of living has fallen badlly and we are on the wrong track.
Post scipt: the houses targeted by both Howes and Salt are the ones over which Barry Humphries had us rollng the aisles because they were so familiar and which artist, Howard Arkley depicts in a way that made us look again at the ordinariness of Australian suburbia.
Cloncurry, rural banking, Katter, Joyce, et al
Cloncurry is the Hon Bob Katter MP's stamping ground. Check below for some press releases he has made on these matters.
It is sickening to realise that Australian suburbs and farmland are being marketed for sale to people all over the world rather than being protected for Australians. http://www.news.com.au/national/queensland/house-hunters-gallop-into-chinese-new-year/story-fnii5v6w-1226818350666
Ours is indeed a very harsh land to farm, especially when forced to compete with the absurd rates of profit in the speculative real estate and mining sector, which mean that banks view most other activities with disdain.
It is not surprising that farmers commit suicide in the face of the manifest lack of support from their political representatives. We are abandoning the people closest to the land and responsible for Australians' capacity for basic survival (over and above making money on the market). Of course the suicide rate is also up in the cities, where lack or representation, role or a future also erodes citizens' capacity to survive.
Some press releases from Katter below. Katter and Barnaby Joyce are pushing for a bank to serve the rural sector better than the corporates ever will. Note that Katter and Joyce are Catholics and a big population enthusiasts like their counterparts (who also has a cattle station) Mr Hockey and Mr Abbott. The Santamariarist nuances tickle the imagination. I would love to publish more articles on rural and related matters.
"Pressure on Government to deliver $7 billion rescue aid for farmers in crisis"
"KAP Leader and Federal Member for Kennedy Bob Katter has welcomed Federal Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce’s position on pushing cabinet for $7 billion in relief aid to farmers.
Ultimately however, the proof will be in the pudding with the pressure on Minister Joyce to deliver outcomes for Australian agriculture.
Mr Joyce’s announcement follows a crisis meeting of farmers in southwest Queensland last weekend.
Mr Katter said he was pleased to hear that Minister Joyce supported calls for an Australian Reconstruction and Development Board (ARDB) to be formed within the Federal Reserve Bank to buy bad rural loans from the private sector.
“I strongly urge the Federal Government to adopt this proposal as the crisis will dramatically worsen if the banks and the Government do not come to the party,” Mr Katter said.
Mr Katter reiterates that without this assistance and the ARDB, Australian cattle will continue to die at a rate of five to 10 thousand head daily.
Rural debt has become a major crisis with the average farm debt rising from $700 000 two years ago to now being over $2 million per farm, and without immediate action Mr Katter warns, the debt will only grow larger.
“It is vital for everyone to grasp the ARDB model and understand that the initial approach will cost taxpayers money but ultimately makes money for the taxpayers; the concept is to reconstruct loans in the industry that can be rescued.
"The $7 billion request by Minister Joyce is a culmination of two years work for all those that have been associated with the National Rural Debt Crisis Council, under the great leadership of Rowell Walton and the Cattle Crisis Council with Barry Hughes at the forefront," Mr Katter praised.
Mr Katter, unmistakable for his unshakable resolve in pushing for a sustainable Australian agriculture industry, said "whether we agree with Minister Joyce’s approach or not, it is imperative for each of us to stand as a force behind Australian farmers and Australian industry".
For more information about the bill to establish the ARDB click here."
Here is what Katter has to say about the Libs policy on rural industry assistance.
"Abbott to wipe out Aussie farmers"
"KAP Federal Lead and Member for Kennedy Bob Katter has forecast a great tragedy after the Federal Government’s checkmate move denied SPC Ardmona’s request for industry assistance.
“The decision by the Federal Government to do nothing about SPC Ardmona is the same decision to do nothing about Holden,” Mr Katter said, who has previously moved a motion in Parliament for Government to protect Australian food producers.
Mr Katter said, “It is about time that the farmers and workers of Australia realised that they have a commonality of interest, which is not served by a Liberal Party that caters to the slithering sharks and snakes of big cities.
"It is completely hypocritical that the government was able to give $16 million to Cadbury’s Hobart factory, while denying $25 million to SPC Ardmona.
“Let every Australian understand – SPC Ardmona is not just our country’s last fruit processor; it is also the Goulbourn Valley’s biggest private employer, injecting some $63 million into the local economy through almost 900 direct full-time staff and supporting a further 2700 jobs,” Mr Katter said
“It is not only the factory workers that will go down, so will the farmers that grow the fruit and vegetables and if we lose the packaged market in Australia, farmers will watch their produce rot on the ground,” Mr Katter said.
Mr Katter condemns the Government for facilitating the unfair playing field that is the “free market”, demanding direct and immediate action to protect Australian industry.
Mr Katter estimates that as a result of the Government’s failure to assist SPC Ardmona more than half of all foods will be imported. SPC Ardmona, Simplot, McCain’s and Golden Circle, accounts for 83 per cent of all packaged foods on supermarket shelves.
Mr Katter is calling on all Australians to support Australian producers in buying Australian farmed and processed canned products."
Chinese property developers grabbing "bargain" housing
Another threat on our democracy and sovereignty is not "just" immigration numbers. Foreigners, namely Chinese real estate investors, are swooping down on our properties in a bargain basement sale!
In anticipation of sales growth, real estate agencies are launching websites exclusively at the Asian property market. The Year if the Horse could be lucky for the wealthy Chinese - at our expense.
Sales and marketing director of one, ACproperty.com.au, said affordable property prices, a stable political situation, education opportunities and a clean environment made Australian properties attractive to Chinese buyers. Must wonder if the Chinese ever wonder why we have so many properties not selling? A glut in apartments, and unaffordable housing!
Some are pure investors, some have children studying here, and others plan to immigrate.
Real Estate agents said the Chinese like our clean air and lifestyles - the former disappearing due to congestion and crowding in our cities.
Melbourne's west is proving a hit with Chinese investors with Werribee and Truganina emerging as unlikely hot spots. These new hot spots come just months after Foreign Investment Review Board figures revealed Chinese investors had spent a hefty $4.187 billion on Australian real estate across the 2011-12 financial year. Our sovereignty is being diluted for "economic growth" at all costs.
The Chinese city of Shanghai hosted a seminar on buying Australian property almost once a week.
We elect our governments in the naïve belief that they will do their best for the electorate, the citizens of Australia. Now, patriotism is being attacked and we are being invaded by stealth!
Immigration is out of control. At least in the condemned "White Australia" policy era, there was tight control over immigration, despite its flaws and racism. Now, the flood gates are open wide, and Australia is being globalized at a rapid rate. How can Australian home-buyers compete with millions of cashed-up Chinese migrants - and predatory investors?
This is another aspect of immigration that the Stable Population Party needs to address.
House hunters gallop into Chinese New Year
Cloncurry ready to evacute
CLONCURRY has been forced to plan for an evacuation of its entire population of 3000 because it is running out of drinking water. The drought in Queensland is now so severe that some towns are moving to severe water restrictions as their supplies dwindle. More than two-thirds of Queensland is now officially drought declared. A lot of farmers are quite desperate, and they've had quite a few suicides recently. A grazier who had to shoot a hundred cattle then he shot himself.
Cloncurry mayor Andrew Daniels said the shire did have a disaster management plan in place in line with current government regulations that had provisions for a complete evacuation of the town as a last resort in instances of extreme water shortages.
Already restricted to using water only for the bare essentials of bathing and cooking, locals may soon have to resort to the "third world" option - as the local mayor, Andrew Daniels, calls it - of boiling bore water to drink.
The "Food bowl of Asia" is hardly based on reality. There are limits to any growth - but stealth fully being ignored by cornucopia government attitudes.
Make sense.
Actually this makes sense. It's kind of what we have all been arguing for, right? A country has to be based on something, or else the existance of the country makes no sense. It used to be that Western nations were based on a common nationhood, culture/ethnicity/race, that that was their reason for existing. But since we've determined in this age that this is wrong, you have to find some other basis for a nation. So the UK isn't a nation for 'a people', but a nation based on people who share an idea. This is what we say about Australia all the time, right? That being Australian is just a matter of what ideas you hold and accepting the Australian proposition?
So if the common idea is the basis for the country, then to maintain the country, you have to control ideas and speech. It's just more difficult, because our old ideas of nationhood just meant keeping people out, whereas now, because people can change ideas and they aren't inherited, they have to be policed more.
Eh? Most newspapers market population growth continuously
Gee, PostGrowthEra,
I would have said that the newspapers talk of almost nothing else. They just ignore that most people do not want it. They promote it constantly, dishonestly as universally desirable, and dishonestly, as inevitable. Population Growth is one of Murdoch and Fairfax media's principle marketing subjects.
Most newspapers and community groups ignore population growth
It's not only the ABC that's being intellectually dishonest about increasing greenhouse emissions and its direct relationship to population growth. How can anthropogenic climate change be addressed on a platform of growing numbers of people? An economy, and pensions/superannuation funds, based on property inherently demands a growing population.
Newspapers and many "environmental" and planning NGOs also claim to be addressing the environment, traffic congestion, housing standards and permits, but do not acknowledge the obvious cause - rampant population growth.
"Climate change" is the convenient scape-goat for environmental problems, and scarcities of water and food. When converging with increasing demands because of global and local population growth, it comes down to skirting around the obvious and addressing the symptoms - and ignoring the cause!
Michael S's article
I forgot to mention in my earlier comment that I though Michael's article was excellent, and he's done a great job bringing a new point of view and a 'realisation' to us.
20 million people in Africa's Sahel need urgent aid
The United Nations appealed on Monday for more than $US2 billion ($2.28 billion) to feed and care for a record 20 million people across Africa's Sahel belt.
Sahel forms a transitional zone between the arid Sahara (desert) to the north and the belt of humid savannas to the south. The Sahel stretches from the Atlantic Ocean eastward through northern Senegal, southern Mauritania, the great bend of the Niger River in Mali, Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta), southern Niger, northeastern Nigeria, south-central Chad, and into The Sudan.
Aid workers said they feared donor fatigue and a weak global recovery may prevent them from reaching the target. The pleas for aid are surmounting to massive $$ and numbers of aid workers, quantities that should be national budgets, not one-off "aid".
Read more: UN appeals for Sahel aid as conflict, climate change take their toll at http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/un-appeals-for-sahel-ai...
A prolonged drought has devastated the already dry Sahel region of West Africa. Crops have failed, and the lean season – when food from the last harvest has run out – has arrived early.
In order to respond to the urgent needs of farmers, agro-pastoralists and pastoralists affected by repeated crises in the Sahel, FAO seeks USD 115 million in 2014. The November 2013 floods were preceded by inundations in August and December 2012 that resulted in local economic losses estimated at close to $20 million, and again in August 2013.
The area is also home to an estimated 37,000 people who have fled fighting in northern Nigeria, a massive refugee influx that has placed further pressure on the meagre resources of communities. This accumulation of factors often forces people to take drastic and ultimately self-defeating steps to survive.
As the global population grows from 7 billion to almost 9 billion by 2040, and the number of middle-class consumers increases by 3 billion over the next 20 years, the demand for resources will rise exponentially. By 2030, the world will need at least 50 per cent more food, 45 per cent more energy and 30 per cent more water — all at a time when environmental boundaries are throwing up new limits to supply.
Violence in northern Nigeria, northern Mali and the Central African Republic combined with high fertility rates have fueled food shortages and high food prices across the savannah region. In Niger alone, the fertility rate is 7.6 children per mother.
16 million risk hunger in Sahel despite good harvest at http://www.trust.org/item/20131210154923-896sm
The convergence of overpopulation with increasing scarcities of natural resources and the devastation of climate change results in more conflicts, and the cry for "aid" and charity is becoming an increasing demand on developed countries.
Aid must become irrevocably linked to the implementation of family planning, and reduced fertility rates.
That should be no problem
Hello Sheila,
That should be no problem.
Ridicule is part of hostility
Gathering momentum from Deniss K's comment, I have observed an undermining or attack on Australians for about 2 decades, perhaps longer. I don't know where it started, but probably in a mainstream newspaper, talkback radio, or from one of the popular recognised intellectual "gurus" but I started to hear people questioning the identity of an Australian and saying that maybe there was no such thing. There has also been an attack on the 1/4 acre block for this long and on the way Australians live. People started comparing our way of life unfavourably to that in Europe. I have heard it repeatedly amongst the chattering classes which I inhabited. The commentator Bernard Salt has made it his business to ridicule Australians. I heard him at a meeting to do with accommodating population growth in one of the inner eastern suburbs of Melbourne one hot irritating morning. In his speech to those concerned citizens giving up their morning for this, he made an attack on widows "rattling around in their brick veneers" implying that they should move into smaller accommodation to make room for others. One of the said widows came home from that session convinced that she should move house.
About 15 years ago during conversation when dining with Vietnamese friends, one of them told me she was studying "multiculturalism" at one of the TAFES or universities. I asked if the pros and cons were debated. She replied that there are in fact no arguments against multiculturalism as Australia has no culture , and the only culture in the country is through immigration. I assume that this was taught at the institution she attended.
If you are told often enough that you are people without "culture" and living a ridiculous lifestyle that should really be like that of some other country, then you are ripe for being changed, to be socially engineered. I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that this ridicule that becomes self ridicule is preparatory to this process. If you are in fact not “a people” then you can be simply over ridden.
We would like an article Dennis K
Great post, Dennis.
Glad Michael S's complex article has stimulated such a response. You have summed up the crime eloquently - " Rather than being loyal to the people who have given me power, I'm using that power to supplant them."
We could convert this comment to an article, with difficulty, but how about sending us an article on this subject or some other aspect? Just send it as a comment but with the Subject "Proposed Article"
Sheila Newman
An alternative take on the criminal aspect of population targets
It is much better to approach this as an issue of criminality and hostility against people than simply "poor" policy. I take issue with people who say this is 'near-sighted' or 'poorly thought out' because it gives the growth lobby the benefit of the doubt, as if they do not have moral responsibility over the outcome of what they do and what they promote. This might be true if they were genuinely ignorant of what they are doing. They DO know though. The language in this article is more emotive than the general article against growth and a fairly compelling case can be put to justify use of such language.
This article is recognising the need for responsibility and accountability, but makes I case which I don't consider to be very compelling. Particularly since the climate denial lobby tried a similar argument and failed (presumably because it was difficult for people to believe that wealthy conservatives are 'concerned' about poor Africans. They don't really use this angle much any more). The argument that the crime is against OTHERS by reducing our capacity to provide foreign aid seems a stretch. While the logic is somewhat sound, you are arguing that a nation has an obligation to provide a certain level of foreign aid, and supporting competing economic activities causes harm. True, but then people who decide to buy a larger car instead of donating, or who buy an entertainment system instead of donating could also fall under that category.
You also run the risk of inadvertently arguing for INCREASED migration, i.e., to expand the program to poorer people and just open the borders more. This could be put forward as a solution by the growth lobby of providing more 'aid', as it is a solution which helps more people abroad AND satisfies the lobby, a 'compromise', so to speak. Obviously, this is not what we want so we must be careful with what we say.
The issue I think here is more direct and more controversial. That is, having a system whereby a nation is subject to arbitrary population policy is a crime against that nation of people. Period. Policy which may influence birth rates through incentives or disincentives is different, as population in those cases is still determined by peoples individual reproductive choices. Encouraging someone to lose weight is different to axing off an arm to acheive a weight target.
If, for example, you took control of Nepal and convinced them to have a population policy, and that the primary political endeavour would be to expand "Nepal" economically and structurally, then you would have essentially changed the nation to one which exists for its own sake because it is a nation of people, to one which is working for defined objectives (Growth, etc.). The people are now a means to an ends, rather than the ends in themselves. Now having established that, you can implement any legal population policy you like, even if it is one which results in rapid growth and the original population becoming a minority or even being assimilated into the population you constructed and defined. You have also severly undermined the moral authority of the people to oppose you.
This is a direct act of hostility against the nation. If my goal is to engineer, modify the nation, or even completely change it demographically, I have targeted them, their way of life and identity for destruction. Even if not done with maliciousness, I'm still responsible, especially if I've been made aware of what is happening. One could legally work towards eradicating an ethnic group from the face of the planet through legal population policy.
High immigration may be bad policy, but if I'm doing it against the will of the people, knowing that it is my personal vision which is going to shape the future of the country, and not the peoples natural progression and natural outcome through their own personal choices, them I'm engaging in implicit hostility. I am over-riding the future of an identifiable group with my own vision, which rather than enhancing their future prospects, is diminishing them. Rather than a more secure future, I'm placing it in jeopardy. Rather than being loyal to the people who have given me power, I'm using that power to supplant them. Rather than upholding the culture and identity of the people, I'm engineering it. I'm doing it for my own purposes, for my own interpretation of the countries objectives. Even if voted in, I'm taking a moral authority that is not mine to take.
Unfortunately, in the West, we avoid this avenue of thinking and prohibit ourselves from viewing ourselves in this manner. There is a reluctance to follow this train of thought, as if we are scared of where it may lead, but I think it is utterly crucial.
Sea Shepherd vessel rammed - and our government sits
Japan on Monday said it was asking the Netherlands to take 'practical measures" against a Dutch-registered vessel that collided with a Japanese whaling ship in the Southern Ocean.
The Sea Shepherd environmental group said the Japanese had attempted to damage the fleet's propellers with steel cables, had thrown projectiles including grappling hooks at a second Sea Shepherd ship, the Steve Irwin, and fired water cannon on the Bob Barker's crew as they tried to cut the cables from a small boat.
Read more: Japan asks Netherlands to act against anti-whalers - Latest - New Straits Times at http://www.nst.com.my/latest/japan-asks-netherlands-to-act-against-anti-whalers-1.476175
In Australia, the Federal government's lame "anti-whaling" policy is to do nothing! Their inaction on whaling has been likened to bushfire fighters coming across arsonists armed with flame-throwers - and being told to do nothing.
Bob Brown, former Greens leader and chairman of activist group Sea Shepherd Australia, says a clash between the Sea Shepherd vessel, the Bob Barker, and Japanese whalers on Sunday amounts to brigandry.
'Either these governments support whaling or they oppose it. If they oppose it they should get down to the International Whale Sanctuary and stop it' he said.
Nobody believes the "scientific research" claim, yet each side continues the theatre of believing it, and the brutal lethal hunt continues, with high-powered harpoons. It's like hunting in a national park, in which the native species are protected by law.
Then Environment Minister Greg Hunt, instead of doing the job of upholding the legality of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, says that "whalers and activists must respect the law..." The laws are there to be enforced, not just be "respected" while allowing the eco-criminals to continue!
Mr Hunt said while the alleged incident occurred in New Zealand waters he had ordered an investigation and briefing on the matter. For years the Australian government's promises and posturing on Japan's illegal whaling has come to nothing but empty words and futile platitudes.
Support Animalia's new Triage & Treatment Room
I have personally used Michele Thomas's kindness and skills in a home visit to help injured wildlife and have followed her career now for fifteen years or more. I also know Craig Thomson who works with Michele and have no doubt of his dedication to preserving habitat as well as caring for wildlife. For this reason I am publicising the modest request for funding for their wildlife shelter below. You can make a Donation at any WESTPAC BANK BSB 033138 Account 434072 or support Animalia through Ritchies Community Benefit cards organisation number 81621 - Sheila Newman
Animalia wildlife shelter is currently undertaking the fit out of a new Triage & Treatment room. This room will be utilised on a daily basis for the wildlife in our care, the majority of animals that come into care will start out in this room and as such we have quite specific needs to fulfil to enable it to be what we require of a treatment room. We have purchased so far over $5695 of product and our resident shop fitter John has been hard at work turning it into what we desperately need. The room is near completion and spring has arrived meaning we have animals pouring through our wildlife shelter in need of our help. We are hoping your venue may be able to help us out financially to finish this project off. We have just received a quote from the electricians which is quite an unexpected amount $2000 which we do not have. This has stalled the project, mean while the animals continue to flow through the doors.
We estimate we will need $4000 to finish this project and are wondering if you would be able to
make a financial contribution to assist us towards our goal.
This comprises of the purchase of water tanks and the cost of the electricity being hooked up, being
so close is heartbreaking when the animals desperately need the facilities now.
About Animalia
Animalia Wildlife Shelter is located in Frankston, Victoria and is run by Michelle & John
Thomas. Animalia is a registered not for profit community organisation overseen by a
committee of management of dedicated people. The wildlife shelter is a temporary home of
many animals that have come into care for various reasons. These may include cat or dog
attack, vehicle collision or young animals that have found themselves orphaned due to any
of the aforementioned reasons.
Animalia Shelter takes in Grey Headed Flying Foxes, Microbats, Wombats, Wallabies, Koalas, Possums, Ducklings and all species of birds including Seabirds and Penguins. Animalia undertake rescues of all species of Australian native wildlife with many members who are volunteer rescuers
California in grip of 'worst drought in 500 years'
California is being loved to death!
We should take a warning from California's drought, the worst in 500 years. 17 rural communities providing water to 40,000 people are in danger of running out of water within 60 to 120 days.
This latest development has underscored the urgency of a drought that has already produced parched fields, starving livestock and pockets of smog.
SMH:California in grip of worst drought in 500 years
The State water authority did not have enough water to supplement the dwindling supplies of local agencies that provide water to an additional 25 million people.
Farmers and businesses use 80 percent of the water, a rate that's driven by human demands.
Researchers have documented multiple droughts in California that lasted 10 or 20 years in a row during the past 1,000 years, yet the population of California in 2013 has recklessly continued to swell to an estimated to be 38,041,430, which is the largest population in the United States.
Demographers and economists said the state’s slowly improving economy is attracting more foreigners to California.
Similarly, our country's population growth is hovering near 1.8%. This is despite Australia being the driest continent, vulnerable to extreme weather events and a high rate of extinctions. With the addition of climate change, we have a deadly convergence of less rain, more heat, the heat-island effect of our concrete cities, and swelling populations!
Our governments celebrate growth as being an indication of consumer confidence in our economy. However, any nation comprises of more complex values, and profound dimensions, than what monetary values can include.
More of the same from fake Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
More of the same - it's only the FSA-aligned Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) who says 'civilians' are killed by the bombing of sectarian terrorists, many of whom themselves say they are civilians in Syria on 'humanitarian' missions – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-26008512
BBC misreporting, 1 Feb 2014 :
Syria barrel bombs 'kill dozens of civilians' in Aleppo
Syrian government forces have killed dozens of civilians in air raids in the northern city of Aleppo, activists say.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) says about 90 people - most of them civilians - died when helicopters dropped barrel bombs on Saturday.
...
Attacks using barrel bombs and Scud missiles by President Assad's forces are believed to have killed hundreds of people in Aleppo since the conflict began almost three years ago.
The use of the barrel bombs - essentially barrels packed with explosives - has been condemned by rights groups as indiscriminate.
Among those killed on Saturday were 33 civilians, including women and children, who died in a bombardment of the al-Bab area of Aleppo, while at least 13 civilians were killed in eastern areas of the city, SOHR said.
...
Russia has blocked statements at the UN Security Council condemning the Syrian government's use of air strikes against civilians in Aleppo.
...
Suffering in Australia results from high population growth
High population growth diminishes housing affordability and exacerbates homelessness. People in housing stress even if not actually homeless live in accommodation that heats up easily and often lacks air conditioning . The loss of vegetation and gardens due to process of densification of cities in Australia to accommodate population growth means that during heat waves when temperatures can be over 40° C in Melbourne for consecutive days the heat is retained more than when the local environment was more vegetated (urban heat island effect). The heat puts a lot of vulnerable people at risk and during the heat wave in the 3rd week of January there were several unexpected deaths amongst these people, clients of one of the inner suburban services.
Calls for better responses to heatwave health challenges
With predictions that Victorians should expect more extreme weather conditions, there's increasing pressure for a more co-ordinated approach to dealing with heatwaves.
Fabulous new Save Royal Park page: superb photos
Save Royal Park
Whether you are from Victoria or another state, please have a look at what Melbourne stands to lose very soon to the cause of perpetual growth of population and traffic.
Offensive to unemployed Australians
How offensive and absurd that Australians are incapable of being trained as hairdressers or cooks? In Victoria there have been $billions cut from the TAFE budget, and university fees are prohibitively high.
Hairdressing and cooking are not highly sophisticated skills, so how could our young be overlooked? The skill shortages is a myth and is really generic "growth" scheme towards "big Australia", and a way of luring foreigners here to propel more housing for developers.
Former PM John Howard recently confessed that his tough stance on asylum seekers, and "border protection", was really about supporting economic immigration, and hiding the fact that most people who come to Australia are arriving by plane.
It's quite evident that our government is intent on creating a bigger GDP through population growth, at the cost of services, living standards, jobs, health care, education and training and human welfare. We can only descend further down the economic ladder towards a third world level.
Destruction dictated by extreme population growth
Once the key economic foundations for short term growth and greed are put in place the rest is difficult to control.
The root cause of this problem is extreme population growth. This policy "is a policy by stealth, a policy without consensus" and it is a driver of all other policies.
If you are interested in addressing the root cause I suggest reading this petition and deciding whether you wish to forward it to as many of your contacts as possible:
http://www.communityrun.org/petitions/australia-requires-a-public-inquir...
Green Day’s transformation of ‘Scream’ image was fair use
The MPG is planning a launch presentation to outline its new standard, and is calling on labels, rights administrators, artists and managers, broadcasters and industry trade groups to get behind the initiative.
TMZ reports that in papers filed last month the rapper is asking for a judge to rule that Demetri and Donna Evans-Brown should be forced to stop using the phrase, as well as pay him damages and his legal costs.
I drove into Cumbria picked up 15 k underneath the noses of a few haters not everyone was … just a few …Fear no area or no human .Amen . &— Wiley (@WileyUpdates)?July 20, 2013?
Editorial comment: It's not clear to me how this post relates to the article. Perhaps another reader or the original poster could explain? - Ed
Pirate bay founder charged over hacking
And in another name spat, US sexual assault awareness charity Take Back The Night has issued a complaint via lawyers over the new Justin Timberlake ??very sexual?? single, which bears the same name and the charity believes the single could have a detrimental effect on the charity’s online presence with Executive Director Katherine Koestner explaining: “Everyone at Take Back The Night is really shocked, because normally, we get asked when people want to use the name. Normally entities as large as Justin Timberlake do very kind and thoughtful things to support our cause. We have some big concerns. For example, all of a sudden on Wikipedia, "‘Take Back The Night’ has a different definition. That’s not been helpful". The legal grounds for any complaint remain unclear to this blogger and for his part, Timberlake has now issued his own statement, saying he hopes this dispute can be turned into a positive, by winning the charity more attention saying ??It is my hope that this coincidence will bring more awareness to this cause”.
Editorial comment: It's not clear to me how this post relates to the article. Perhaps another reader or the original poster could explain? - Ed
Vimeo open to liability claims from record labels
Lawyers for the two members of Pussy Riot jailed for their involvement in a protest performance in a Russian cathedral are set to take the case to Russia’s Supreme Court. Originally three members of the Russian punk outfit were jailed last August for taking part in the performance of a protest song in a Moscow church. One of the jailed women, Yekaterina Samustsev, was given a suspended sentence on appeal and freed, but Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova remained incarcerated after the appeal hearing in Gulags. More recently both were denied parole. Lawyers hope to argue in the Russian Supreme Court that the ruling that members of Pussy Riot were guilty of 'hooliganism motivated by religious hatred' was in fact illegal, and the convictions should be reversed.
Editorial comment: The following excerpt from a Global Research article of August 2012, may help put this comment about "Pussy Riot" in context. - Ed
US is attempting to undermine and overrun the Russian political order
The US State Department has been recently exposed interfering heavily in Russian politics. From funding so-called "independent" election monitor GOLOS, who sought to write off recent elections as "stolen," to street protests led by US-funded opposition members who have been caught literally filing into the US embassy in Moscow, the US is clearly attempting to undermine and overrun the current political order in Russia. The recent "Pussy Riot" publicity stunt has also been arranged by US-funded opposition as well as fully leveraged by these organizations, their foreign sponsors, and the Western media.
Latest edition of English Language Syria YouTube News
The Syrian government continues to defy attempts by the governments of the United States, Australia and their allies to replace it with a more government that is willing to impose the dictates of the International Monetary Fund on the Syrian people.
Save Australia's Endangered Dugongs and Sea Turtles
Many people don't realize it, but The Native Title Act of 1993 section 211 still allows the hunting of endangered and vulnerable species within our country.
Dugongs, turtles and fifty other Australian animals are hunted and inhumanely slaughtered in large numbers, under the guise of traditional hunting practices.
This outdated act does not reflect the endangered status of these animals and we demand they be protected. No one is starving in Australia, one of the most affluent countries on the planet - and there is no need to hunt these animals for food.
The killing has to stop. Dugongs and turtles are endangered, and we are witnessing a rapid and unwarranted decline. We can no longer stand by and watch, witness to the impending extinction of this precious marine life.
We therefore call for an urgent change to the Native Title Act 1993, so that any endangered or vulnerable animal or marine life is excluded from hunting by any means, for any reason.
Petition to Environment Minister Greg Hunt
by Colin Riddell
Take Action: save Australia's Endangered Dugongs and Sea Turtles
Citizenship a privilege, not a right, in the UK?
UK Home Secretary Theresa May introduced an amendment to an immigration bill which would allow a British passport to be removed from any naturalised person whose conduct is deemed 'seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the UK'.
This is part of a Conservative-led coalition government's attempts
to toughen up the immigration system, with a general election due in 15 months' time and the anti-immigration UKIP party applying pressure.
'Citizenship is a privilege, not a right. These proposals will strengthen the home secretary's powers to ensure that very dangerous individuals can be excluded if it is in the public interest to do so' said immigration Minister Mark Harper. Just this week, the UK Tory govt. shelved a report on EU immigration, especially related to current hot air surrounding Romania and Bulgaria.
Someone said: "They can't bring themselves to publish the report before the European elections because they would have to admit that freedom of movement is a good thing. ..."
At least the whole libertarian concept of open borders and citizenship is being questioned, and the "right" to citizenship is being questioned.
See also: [UK] Labour's surrender monkeys dare not criticize Britain's conscript economy, republished on 28 Dec 2013 from article of same name of 16 Aug 2014 by Tony Gosling on Russia Today. - Ed
Meeting Victoria First TOMORROW 1:45p (Saturday 1/2/14) Fitzroy
Dear Victoria First Inc members and friends,
Reminder: Here is a reminder and more detail concerning our first general meeting at 1:45 pm for a 2 pm start until 4 pm on Saturday 1 February 2014. The venue is the “Community Room” at Edinburgh Gardens in Fitzroy.
Guest Speaker: The guest speaker is Dr Ernest Healy of the Centre for Population and Urban Research of Monash University. He will speak on "Melbourne – Heading for 'CARmageddon?” - increased car ownership and dependence with our population boom.
Venue: The venue is the Community Room in the Edinburgh Gardens in Fitzroy. The Melways Map reference is 2 C 1c. A narrow asphalt road leads off Brunswick St at the Tram shelter at Stop No 20 next to the Fitzroy Bowling and Sports Club. Follow the road a short distance to the Community Room which is located under the huge Fitzroy Football Ground Stand and next to the tennis courts We will sign-post the route on the day.
Transport: Tram along St Georges Road and Brunswick St. Get off at Tram Stop 20. Unfortunately there is no parking outside the "Community Room" but there are 2 disabled spaces. Along one side of Alfred Crescent on the east side of the Edinburgh Gardens there is unlimited parking. There is 2 hour parking, some along Alfred Crescent but some along Brunswick Street and in side streets.
Contact: Please contact Julianne Bell Secretary for any enquiries about the meeting or if lost on the day in the Edinburgh Gardens on Mobile: 0408022408.
We look forward to seeing you at our first public meeting of Victoria First Inc.
Regards
Kelvin Thomson
President
Victoria First Inc.
No body decided bad policies