Because of the generous public support and donations for MyEnvironment a bank cheque for $30,000 was hand-delivered yesterday to the Senior Master at the Supreme Court, ensuring that the appeal in My Environment -v- VicForests will go ahead.
Listen to John Wiliamson's wonderful anthem, Rip Rip Woodchip, accompanied by images of their ongoing campaign to protect Leadbeater's Possum and the forests around Toolangi.
Can anyone tell us what all this digging is for? What are these disruptive earthworks for?
Thank you for your inquiry, which was passed on to me by Another Concerned Catholic.
It is anticipated that few competing species will survive humans through to the middle of the 21st century as we cover the earth with concrete. The only reason that humans will survive will be through their ability to step down beyond the atomic level.
If any battles need be engaged against the Praying Mantis, (although its name would suggest a peaceful and religious disposition) humans will probably deploy tiny 634 gram Chinese manufactured miniature helicopters of which the Vatican recently bought up millions at only $29.99 each.
As the attached illustration suggests, these little machines are well up to the challenge. Because they are radio operated, human operators will be able to remain out of sight and in safety at some distance away.
A filmed demonstration is available here, but without the giant praying mantis, which must be purchased separately. http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbycity/store/__18283__2_4Ghz_Micro_Coax_Helicopter_4_Channel_RTF_Mode_2_.html
Vatican promotional staff
Christians threatened by Free Syrian Army seek Government Protection of 17 July 2012 by Stoyan Zaimov
Republished from Global Research
by Stoyan Zaimov
See also "Cruise Missile Socialists": When Justifying Imperialist Intervention goes Wrong of 17 July by Mazda Majidi also on Global Research, Young Syrian patriot fights corporate media lies against her homeland of 10 May, Nun from Damascus has no trust in so-called 'revolutionaries' of 21 July 2012 on candobetter.
As the conflict in Syria continues without a resolution, and government and rebel forces are locked in fierce battles across several cities, Christians in the besieged city of Homs were evacuated with the help of a priest on Wednesday.
For months, Christians have been trapped in the crossfire with scarce access to basic necessities such as food, water and medical help, but yesterday Maximos al-Jamal, a Greek Orthodox priest, revealed that he was part of evacuation efforts that saved 63 people.
"Gunmen have told the besieged people that if you go out of these areas, we will die," al-Jamal shared with The Associated Press.
Christians in the warring Middle East nation make up around 10 per cent of the largely Muslim population, but with little government support and the difficulty foreign aid workers have had gaining access to besieged areas, they have had to rely only on themselves and their church.
"I stayed inside Hamidiyeh to protect the churches from looting. I saved 14 icons from the St George church which has been destroyed," shared one Homs resident, Jihad Akhras, who was among the rescued. After negotiations, a deal was made between rebels and troops that allowed 24 civilians to escape on Tuesday, followed by a further 39 on Wednesday.
Homs, the third largest city in Syria, has been hit particularly hard by government bombings and crossfire between Islamic rebels and government forces. The AP reported that Christians have been leaning more toward President Bashar Assad's regime despite the current dire situation, if only due to fears of further persecution they might face if more radical Islamic extremists take control of Syria.
Back in February, a Christian priest in Homs shared of how dire the situation was getting in the city.
"The armed Islamist Opposition in Syria has murdered more than 200 Christians in the city of Homs, including entire families with young children. These Islamic gangs kidnapped Christians and demanded high ransoms. In two cases, after the ransoms were paid, the men's bodies were found," Barnabas Aid, a charity organisation helping persecuted Christians around the world quoted him as saying.
"Christians are being forced to flee the city to the safety of government controlled areas. Muslim rebel fighters and their families are taking over their homes. We need your prayers and we need them urgently," he added.
Subject was: Accommodation of souls.
I have been concerned for some time about people denouncing human population growth and talking about ways to stop it. It is clear to me that there has to be an ever increasing number of people in the world to accommodate all the souls that have become disembodied when someone "passes on". In that context does it not make complete sense that there should now be 7 billion people in the world when 200 odd years ago there were only 1 billion? You will say that re-incarnation is not a tenet of the Catholic Church but I have studied many religions and in that sense have a truly catholic appreciation of the movement of souls.
Environment groups have labelled Planet Ark "Judas" over "throwing a lifeline to the most appalling logging practices" in Australia.
If so, they would not be the only "green" Pharisees! Usually they celebrate trees and recommend recycling Christmas cards to save them, but now they have agreed to sit on the review committee for the Australian Forestry Standard, which certifies the controversial operations of Forestry Tasmania and VicForests. They've made a pact with the Devil!
Environment East Gippsland coordinator Jill Redwood said PA "seemed to have turned Judas".
"Planet Ark has thrown a lifeline to the most appalling logging practices like we see in Indonesia and Malaysia," Ms Redwood said.
When you can't beat them, join them, and instead of being part of the solution, you can get financial rewards by being part of the problem. Planet Ark have sold out on environmentalism and lost their vision.
Planet Ark has agreed to sit on the review committee for the Australian Forestry Standard, which certifies the controversial operations of Forestry Tasmania and VicForests. The standard requires an environment group to sit on the committee but other environment groups refused.
See Weekly Times:
http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2012/07/18/511361_business-news.html
The above post reads, in part, like promotional literature from an imported labor hire agency.
2012 Legal wrote:
If there is someone who should complain about it, its their home countries, ...
In fact, I know I wrote on a forum, either on candobetter or elsewhere, that the intentional importation of skilled workers, including nurses and trained doctors, away from Third World countries into industrialised nations such as Australia, is a scam against the people of those countries and also against workers in the industrialised countries themselves who are denied training and career advancement as a consequence. An illustration of this is how there are more Ethiopian doctors in the US than in Ethiopia itself.
I received the following e-mail from Melissa of the recently concluded 12th International Coral Reef Symposium in Cairns, Australia:
Good afternoon,
Just a note to say thank you so much for contributing to the widespread and informative coverage of coral reef research both in the lead up to, and throughout, the past week.
Thank you, more specifically, for absorbing and sharing stories that will contribute to inspiring and informing the creation of policies to help better protect and preserve the health of the world’s remaining coral reefs for our, and the future, generation(s).
In the words of this year’s Darwin Medalist, Prof Jeremy Jackson: "The future of coral reefs isn't a marine version of tree-hugging, but a central problem for humanity."
And we thank you for communicating that message.
With best regards,
Melissa.
John Marlowe,
No, not American. And not civic; Civil. My reference to a civil code is a reference to Roman Law as revamped by Napoleon in the early 19th Century. Almost all of Europe, even the countries he did not rule, eventually took it up because it works so well. The Germanic and Nordic countries were slower to do so because they had never been under the Roman Empire so did not have that basic identification with Roman law. Britain and, I think, Portugal (which came under British influence, unfortunately) also did not take it up and these countries have similar problems of poor democracy and huge inequalities and poverty. Basically there are two major kinds of legal systems in the European world including among ex-European colonies: Roman and British and they have completely different origins and effects.
Where do Australian values fit in here? Well, once you have identified them, you need to create laws to enshrine and defend them. Examples of important laws are your rights to inherit from your parents vs your parents' rights to leave their assets to whomever. Another important right might be equality of sexes. Another one might be the right to cheap housing. Another one might be the right to an income. Another one might be the right to get out of a commercial agreement that is manifestly unfair. Think of some others. What would you like?
Basically a civil code is a code of rights for citizens that can be enforced at law. The European Civil Codes are comprehensive and constantly reviewed. They are products of the French Revolution (which lasted several generations and post-dated Napoleon's reign).
I know a lot about the antique and modern origins of this code and the differences between Roman and British law. These different law systems have huge impacts on whether or not property gets divided up and becomes concentrated in private or public hands. The British system is the bad one that causes overpopulation. The Roman system is much better. Of course most English speakers don't have any idea of the differences and assume what they have been told that the English legal system is the best is true.
Napoleon in later life considered the Civil Code to be the most significant of his achievements. The Code represented a comprehensive reformation and codification of the French civil laws. Under the ancien regime more than 400 codes of laws were in place in various parts of France, with common law predominating in the north and Roman law in the south. The Revolution overturned many of these laws. In addition, the revolutionary governments had enacted more than 14,000 pieces of legislation. Five attempts were made to codify the new laws of France during the periods of the National Convention and the Directory. Through the efforts of Napoleon the drafting the new Civil Code in an expert commission, in which Jean-Etienne-Marie Portalis took a leading role, took place in the second half of 1801. Napoleon attended in person 36 of the commission's 87 meetings. Although the draft was completed at the end of 1801, the Code was not published until 21 March 1804. The Civil Code represents a typically Napoleonic mix of liberalism and conservatism, although most of the basic revolutionary gains - equality before the law, freedom of religion and the abolition of feudalism - were consolidated within its laws. Property rights, including the rights of the purchasers of the biens nationaux were made absolute. The Code also reinforced patriarchal power by making the husband the ruler of the household. The Napoleonic Code was to be promulgated, with modifications, throughout the Empire. The Civil Code was followed by a Code of Civil Procedure in 1806, a Commercial Code in 1807, a Criminal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure in 1808 and a Penal Code in 1810. A Rural Code was debated, but never promulgated. The Code Napoleon, renamed the Civil Code, was retained in its majority after the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815. The Civil Code has served as the model for the codes of law of more than twenty nations throughout the world."
Go to the link to see the subjects covered under the code. These codes are continuously revised but continue to be based on the first French publication of 1804.
Thank you Sheila,
The topic is important enough to breakaway from this biodiversity issue, though respectfully critical as it is; but to explore and debate the root causes of the adverse impacts of human overpopulation on Australian ecology.
Australia is not unique, but is part of the same global human migration and overbreeding problem.
Immigration just facilitates the movement of people, it does not solve the people overpopulation problem. It just moves the problem from one place to another - due to push factors such as civil war and due to pull factors such as Australia's global image of wealth and fortune - which Wayne Swan constantly trumpets, especially overseas it seems.
But your term 'Civil Rights' sounds American, and I am not familar with it and to how it may play out in the Australian context. Australians should not follow Americanism, but Australianism. So define it and explain it please - it deserves an article and I will be keen to contribute.
But, I propose starting at a much deeper socio-psychological level - at 'values', then from there 'attitudes' and then 'behaviours'. What is Australian? What are Australian 'values', 'attitudes' and 'behaviours'. (Hopefully, not what we saw on Channel 10's 'The Shire' last night).
Then within that context, what rights do locals have. Who are 'locals'? What rights do foreigners have? When do 'foreigners' become 'locals' and do they automatically have a right equal to locals or do that have to comply with some social mores? Go to an Arab the nation and discover if you have to comply with the local mores. Australia should not be so politically correct and seek the apex of moral high ground. The whole thing must work in the rough and tumble of Australian society, else it is all focus group utopianism that will only fuel ethnic tensions, xenopohobia and then outright racist violence. Let's not go there!
There is nothing wrong with such a debate. It is mature.
But please let leave the prejudice aside. At no time have I vilified any race. I don't care if people are green with pink spots. What I care most about is when the incumbent people are usurped by foreigners. I suggest a good historical tale is one of the infamous Highland Clearances of Scotland of the 18th Century. Read background. When you read it, compare it to Australia in 1788 and then now. It is a real wake up to passive compacent descendents of colonists.
Now I could have Uzbekistan ancestry but I don't, but it doesn't matter. The issue is one of universal principle. If you can conceive a principle of justice workable ands respectful to both locals and foreigners, then it has to be universally applicable.
I just happen to have Scottish ancestry, but I regard myself as Australian, not a hair mongrel! I have been to Scotland but I yearn setting fooit back in Australia, my home. Anyone who commits when they are honoured with Australian citizenship should feel an Australian passion - that may take time and they can be tuti-fruity for all I care. But if they are here to usurp, then they are not welcome in Australia.
This is a vital debate for all nations, but unfortunately missing from the mainstream media, scared and too immature to touch it.
Thank you for persisting. I feel I was misinterpreted before.
John Marlowe
I think we can be anti-immigration and anti big population growth without being anti-migrant. They are invited here by our governments and end up in far-flung urban sprawl or living in expensive apartments, with a promise of jobs, skills shortages, education and a better life. They are being deceived too. Sourcing immigrants from developing nations means there are less expectations of living standards, non-union workers, easily exploitable employees and compliant to the status quo. It's not their fault that they are being sold a "lemon"! Costs of housing are the highest in the world, and cost of "luxuries" such as water, and power, and increasingly beyond normal pay packets. It's a Ponzi-economic scheme that exploits economic unit - people! We can't assume that migrants want continued population growth! There are some that have come here to live in a "lucky country" but find the same pressures on them that they left their original homelands for.
The Greens without a comprehensive and vague population policy are missing the target and thus failing to gain voter confidence. Green is not necessarily "green". They think that by recycling, re-using resources, renewable energy and planting roof gardens is the solution to the negative environmental impacts of population growth.
The loss of already endangered Growling grass frogs and bandicoots that were once common will be inevitable by continued urban sprawl. The "revision" of protection laws is just weakening them down so they are expected to live in smaller, fragmented and compromised habitats while humans can expand their economic power and numbers. It's nasty, deliberate and avoidable annihilation based on predatory greed and rapacious appetite for growth and profits - with little concern for the outcome.
Warren Hern, the Boulder abortion doctor, believes humans "have become a pathological process — a malignancy — in the planetary ecosystem" and that "if you like what the 20th century brought us in terms of war, famine, pestilence, and ecological destruction, you will love the rest of this one. It will be worse."
Hern deplores the fact that global population reached 7 billion last October and opines, "At this rate, we will reach about 13 billion by 2050 and 25 billion by the end of this century..". He suggest humans — this "malignancy," — will outstrip resources and food supplies when our species' expansion in the past two centuries and especially the past 30 years, even though it has coincided with economic growth and increased health. At what cost to the planet's co-inhabitants?
The deliberate extermination of native animals is a malignancy too!
Read more: Carroll: Warren Hern and the "malignancy" of mankind - The Denver Post at http://www.denverpost.com/carroll/ci_20192469/hern-and-malignancy-mankind#ixzz20qN957IP
John Marlowe,
I am writing this in haste as a comment, although I would rather write a thoughtful article. I agree that Australians have a right to be recognised as a nation of people with a vital interest in and love for their land (whatever their origins). We are being deprived of our rights to self government in this land by the insertion of whole new communities that have been taught by immigration agents and statements from heads of government not to respect those already here. They are taught that the incumbents 'don't want to work', are racist and that this is a big empty country. (This is pretty much what colonial British were taught about the peoples of India and Africa. The ideology of working for a master is deeply entrenched in the culture of power here.) These false truths then justify the taking over of more and more aspects of our economy. We have no code of civil rights to protect us from these manipulations.
But who is to blame? A colonial government aligned with corporate interests that is using immigration to prevent Australians from organising their own lives and economy. They behave as the British colonials did towards the peoples of India. By inserting their own people, they prevented self-government there and by rewriting land-tenure and inheritance laws they dispossessed long stable communities into beggary and overpopulation. The same thing is happening here.
Whilst I can understand your rage about what is happening to our land and our rights, it seems to me counterproductive to personalise it against the immigrants or refugees, although it is okay to be furious about the numbers. We need to send out a concerted message that the government and the press and the migration agents etc are misrepresenting the rest of us and this country.
Note, I am not saying that high immigration is not a big part of the problem. I am not saying that it is not vital to get control over the flow of asylum seekers. We take a big risk with our own insecure rights here however if we don't ensure respectful treatment and a reasonable variety of humane solutions for temporary stays, settlement, resettlement or repatriation, etc.
I am saying that the enemy is the growth lobby and the growth lobby has got us and the incoming migrants (refugees and business) into a big mess that we have to get out of together somehow. We need new Australians to be our allies. We need to educate them to what is really happening.
Rather than rail against the different beliefs and values of certain immigrant streams, why not spend our energies on demanding, writing and creating a code of civil rights which we then can defend. At the moment we have almost no legal rights in this country. When we talk about Australian values we might as well be carving butter, because they have no legal status. Let us identify them and build a code of civil rights for Australians.
With regard to mosques: The treatment should be the same as for churches. One place to start would be that religion should be separate from state. Therefore no state leader should endorse any particular religion. Religious monuments and meeting places should be funded by members of that religion.
Thanks for your reply, Sheila. I too have grave reservations about any form of censorship but in the context of this issue it is weighed against innocent people being victimised on the basis of nothing other than their ethnicity.
I want to see our population stabilised but don't advocate "sending people home" or victimising them for coming here. I don't want to see people being abused and assaulted in the street because their ethnicity profiles them as being responsible for Big Australia. The fact is that you won't even notice many of the people who are adding to our population growth because they're not "yellow" or "brown". I want to see that mythical "egalitarian" Aussie spirit extended to everyone wanting a better life regardless of their race or socio-economic status. We're all here now so let's work on undermining the political and economic forces that steamroll and exploit the many for the benefit of the few.
How about people look at the real issues? Like this piece of mindless and errant propaganda in the corporate media that gives Big Australia a free kick... If our population doesn't grow, the economy stalls of 16 July by Matthew Kidman in the Age... (?) ... would rather focus their dissatisfaction on the most powerless elements of the growth agenda.
Editorial comment: Some of the above may have been lost when I tried to turm the included URL into a clickable link. My apologies. If I have removed any content, could you please please post another comment with what was removed? - Ed
Racism plays directly into the hands of those driving the Big Australia agenda. It's easy to marginalise opposition if it can be presented as fringe dwelling racists and weirdos.
I've seen activist campaigns ruined because agent provocateurs have pushed activists toward, or presented, extreme positions that alienate the general public. The media zeros in on the ugliest and most extreme examples in any social movement. They don't have to infer untenable political positions if extremists do it for them.
I'm opposed to Big Australia for a wide variety of reasons but none of them are based on racist views. Most people I know who oppose Big Australia feel the same way. Some of the racist comments are just pathetic. If you want to cater to that agenda you will quickly shrivel on the vine and the low lifes will crawl back under their rocks waiting, like ticks, for a new host to parasitise. You need to decide whether you want to be relevant or not. At the moment it looks like you're trying to become the environmental wing of the White Pride movement. That's a one way ticket to political irrelevance and oblivion.
I come here to catch up on environmental campaigns and to follow the fight against Big Australia not to read the rantings of closet racists. I think you'll lose far more people than you can gain if you take this path. But I might be wrong, resistance to Big Australia might only ever be the preserve of a minority of committed, fringe dwelling racists.
Subject was: For those unable to see the wood from the trees. Originaly published:10:19 +1000, 14 July 2012
White Australia must not be regarded as a mere political shibboleth. It was Australia's Magna Carta. Without that policy, this country would have been lost long ere this. It would have been engulfed in an Asian tidal wave. There would have been no need for the Japanese to invade this country. We would have been swallowed up by the rolling advance of a horde of colored people, anxious to escape the privations of their own countries and prepared to impose their own standards on this country.
It is necessary only to examine the racial composition of present-day Fiji, where the Hindus have elbowed the natives out of the picture, to visualise what could have happened in this country had the White Australia policy not been fought for doggedly at the end of the l9th Century. We were then fighting for our national survival. Had we weakened, the flood gates would have opened and the natural increase of population according to Asian standards would have done the rest. It would then have been too late. This country would have become a pushover for the Asiatics.
The first Federal Platform for the Labor Party, adopted at an Interstate Conference held in Sydney on January 24, 1900, was a model of brevity. It was the platform on which the party fought its first Federal election in the following year. There were only three planks. They were (1) Electoral Reform, providing for one adult one vote. (2) Total Exclusion of colored and other undesirable races, and (3) Old Age Pensions.
The Conference also agreed that the Constitution should contain machinery for the Initiative and Referendum to alter the constitution, and that instead of double dissolutions there should be a National Referendum to settle deadlocks between the two Houses.
But it was the question of White Australia that knit the first Federal Labor Party together. In 1908 when the party decided to draft a much more elaborate platform, the first plank agreed upon was "Maintenance of White Australia." It headed the list.
So the Australian Labor Party was actually brought together with White Australia as its primary objective. Later the word-spinners put it much more elegantly as "The cultivation of an Australian sentiment, based on the maintenance of racial purity."
That was not, however, the real reason for the development of the White Australia policy. It did not have its origin in any idea of racial superiority, or color prejudice. From the start it was a simple bread-and-butter issue. Australian workers were trying to defend their own living standards. They were trying to save their jobs. They knew that unrestricted immigration of colored races would mean the introduction of a kind of industrial Gresham's Law - the bad wages would put the fair wage out of circulation. The white Australian worker would soon be reduced to coolie levels. Having got rid of convict labor, they did not want to be reduced to the rice bowl. Yet that was the threat that was actually hovering over the people of this country.
Anybody who is against the White Australia Policy is against the Australian Nation.
From I Remember, 1956. by Jack Lang -The People's Champion
Editorial comment: A strident international critic of Australia's supposed racism was Japan, a country whose international record since then includes vast imperial wars of conquest, mass slave labor, forced prostitution and mass genocidal slaughter, most notably Chinese. Within Japan, Chinese, Koreans, Ryukyuans, Buraumin, indigenous Ainu and other races have faced systematic discrimination and prejudice for centuries. In comparison, the allegedly unjust treatment of foreigners of non-European origin is trivial in comparison. The only aspect of Australian history that could be considered in any way comparable to Japan's record is the dispossession of Australian Aboriginals by European settlers. Nonetheless, in the early 21st century, imposed mass immigration threatens to dispossess all native Australians, indigenous and non-indigenous alike.
Pre-Chifley, Australia not without its shortcomings, was a foundational social phase of a cohesive nation state.
Australian pioneers and the harsh wide landscape shaped our nation from the bush into the cities. They forged their own wealth and built our nation.
It was an era of Australian values - not all perfect, some down right primitive, but compared with most other societies - bloody decent.
So everyone then wanted to come to the 'lucky country' that we had built.
But too much of anything destroys harmony, and so it was the Labor Party's Chifley's leftist massive post-War immigration dogma that started our undoing from the late 1940s. Then from the 1970s, Labor under Whitlam's leftist dogma pronounced an open border policy and imposed politically-correct naivety upon Australians by personally accelerating his incompatible Asian multiculturalism to compound the dismantling of our nation state. Then from 2007 the Labor Party under Rudd's 'Big Australia' leftist dogma ramped up even more incompatible Arab and African immigration. "If your different from us, you're welcome". Labor's Melting Pot Theory.
None of these Labor leftist social dogmas were decided by the Australian people - Labor immigration invasion has each time been an unwanted imposition on the local populous.
Now the population dominant is the new waves of immigrants, through their sheer arrival numbers year on year. Immigrants from all corners of the globe, beholden to grotesquely incompatible value systems, are here and trying to reshape Australian society, from the cities outward. Traditional Australia is being marginalised into a minority. And so we have seen the National Party representing the bush desintegrate. We have seen traditional Labor chase popularity and in doing so become an increasingly Foreign Labor Party.
It is like the British pushing aside the Aborigines up until the 1970s - now the new immigrants are doing it all over again to those that were here first.
The latest incarnate of leftist dogma under 'Flood-Gate' Hanson-Young, is seeing Australia succumbing not as a melting pot but as a welfare refugee camp for the Third World seeking the good life. What will Australian values become - commune-based Sharia Law? We are edging towards a No Australia Policy.
John Marlowe
Australia's White-Australian Policy (1901 Immigration Restriction Act) existed in the latter part of the 20th century for 70 years. It favoured immigrants from certain countries over others. Migrants were mainly from the UK, or Europe. It lasted for 70 years and took 25 years to dismantle.
It has condemned now as part of our shameful past. While we are "proudly" multicultural - however dubiously it actually works - few of us know the real benefits.
The White Australia policy failed through being draconian and pro-actively discriminatory. White miners' resentment towards industrious Chinese diggers culminated in violence in Victoria, and some areas in New South Wales. It was the turn of hard-working indentured labourers from the South Sea Islands of the Pacific (known as 'Kanakas') in northern Queensland. Factory workers in the south became vehemently opposed to all forms of immigration which might threaten their jobs. Some influential Queenslanders felt that the colony would be excluded from the forthcoming Federation if the 'Kanaka' trade did not cease. Leading NSW and Victorian politicians warned there would be no place for 'Asiatics' or 'coloureds' in the Australia of the future.
For whatever the downfalls of the White Australia policy, it did give us 70 years of a foundation to form a cohesive society, an infant nation with common culture and ideals. It combined people will the same language and similar traditions, some shared Motherland history, and shared values. Australia was to be a nation founded on democratic participation; it therefore needed to attract residents capable of exercising political freedoms and, more generally, assimilating to the cultural mores of a British dominion.
Post war immigration gave us diversity and economic growth.
It was not so much the White Australia Policy that decided immigration policies, but more the wholesale discrimination against the Aborigine people that is more shameful.
Cultural diversity is stimulating and broadening. However, once "diversity" becomes mainstream rather than the minority, it's overwhelming and the result of mass immigration - something that is continually increasing. We lose our identity as a nation.
Now the support of Multiculturalism is about promoting high immigration. It's based on "white guilt" that forces mainstream Australians to feel some "guilt" about our past and thus we must continually make amends - even to our detriment with an overloaded and fragmented Australia. It ignores the volume of immigration - now largely from India and China. Any "anti-immigration" or questioning of "big Australia" labels us as "racist"!
Editor: The title of the comment was originally, "Some benefits of the White Australia policy." We changed it in order to avoid providing anti-democratic pro-high immigration ideologues an instant opportunity to seize upon such a heading to label the website and contributors as 'racist' and polarise discussion. We would rather this piece were read on its merits rather than for any shock value the original title may have had. For more on the subject of the White Australia Policy see also, on candobetter.net, Sheila Newman's "Overpopulation, immigration, multiculturalism and the White Australia policy."
Christmas Island is so full of flotsam and jetsam, hatchling turtles can’t get through the garbage to get to the sea. A year-round nesting ground for green and hawkbeak turtles. This Australian island sits in the Indian Ocean near Indonesia. It's swelling population can't cope with humanity's flotsam and jetsam.
Petition: Clean Up Christmas Island at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/901/118/674/clean-up-christmas-island/
Paul Nicholas of Queensland was holidaying on Christmas Island, visiting his daughter and family and they went for a picnic on the beach.
The kids started playing with all the plastic trash and were amazed to find turtles struggling to emerge from their nest to the waters edge.
Boats of asylum seekers were joining an ever-expanding graveyard in the ocean off Christmas Island are not being properly scuttled or stripped of rubbish and engines, potentially harming the area's pristine waters.
http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2012/07/11/507371_opinion-columnists.html
Editorial comment: Can you tell us what the article was? I recall reading several articles on that site about the sell-off of Australian rural land and water resources to foreign interests,. - Ed
I asked of the "peer reviewed paper" cited above by Brian Sanderson:
Where can independent observers get to look at the "computerized model" referred to in that paper that supposedly demonstrates the Official theory of the WTC7 "collapse"?
In fact if you look 13 minutes into the 2 hour presentation by Daniel Noel that I referred to in the same post, you will see that Daniel Noel has shown that the computer simulation is markedly different from the film evidence of the WTC7 collapse.
The following report, embedded from YouTube is from Web of Debt. The interview with Ellen Brown commences 12' 45" into the Interview.
Subject was: @James Sinnamon
The information I cited comes from Bamford's 1983 book "The Puzzle Palace." I can't cite the pages --- it's been years since I read the book --- but there's probably an index if you're too lazy to read through it. So far as I know, it was Bamford who first uncovered Northwoods. The Northwoods plan has been mischaracterized for years by folks like Alex Jones as proof of a Reichstag-fire mentality at DoD. Lemnitzer emphatically rejected Northwoods, according to Bamford. But as Goebbels said, a lie repeated often enough becomes true in the minds of the "masses." Apparently, the lie has replaced the truth in your mind, sir. ... Speaking of mischaracterization, I wrote "some sort of inside job," not "a sort of inside job" --- these are not synonymous. Again, I agree with you it was an inside job, but I don't pretend to know by whom exactly. We can theorize all we want, but that information (whodunnit) is not publicly available.
Hey Bandicoot,
Morals didn't stop Wilderness Society boss, Alec Marr, buying a timber mill in Triabunna this time last year.
It's treehugger turned woodchipper, just like the Greens have turned their back on forests in favour of policy focus on asylum seekers, more overseas aid and gay marriage!
17th July 2012:
"TASMANIA'S forest industry, still reeling from the sale of a strategic woodchip mill to two environmentalists, has been shocked to learn who will run it - the green hard man Alec Marr.
The Wotif founder, Graeme Wood, and the Kathmandu creator, Jan Cameron, have hired Mr Marr, a former Wilderness Society boss, to manage the Triabunna mill that chipped millions of old-growth trees he tried to save.
As their general manager, Mr Marr will negotiate on behalf of the pair who, with their surprise $10 million buy, dealt themselves into historic peace talks on native forest logging.
Once chief defendant in a civil prosecution launched by the seller of Triabunna, Gunns, and forced out of the Wilderness Society, Mr Marr's selection amazed industry observers.
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''Alec Marr is going to be a woodchipper?'' the Timber Communities Australia state manager, Barry Chipman, said. ''It is probably a fitting way to end a bizarre week.''
The Liberal senator Eric Abetz said it was ''Green cronyism and triumphalism at its ugliest''.
Mr Marr declined to comment but Mr Wood said Mr Marr's personal views of the timber industry would not matter.
''His job is to implement the forest statement of principles and to work with all industry players to re-open the mill.''
Green and industry groups have been in talks for more than a year to craft the statement of principles and end 25 years of conflict. Their latest deal agreed to protect up to 430,000 hectares of Tasmania's public native forest but still operate some sawlog and veneer mills. Woodchips are claimed as crucial secondary income for the surviving timber operations, and the Forest Industries Association of Tasmania wants Triabunna to keep chipping until at least 2027.
The association's chief executive, Terry Edwards, warned that if the mill was not kept open, the industry would not be able to back the deal.
With Japanese export markets increasingly rejecting native forest chips, Gunns shut Triabunna in April. When it re-opens under new ownership, contentious timber is increasingly unlikely to enter its gates. Mr Wood said his original view was that the chip mill should operate for three to five years before the site was turned into a tourist development.
''Having spoken to government people, that may have to go out,'' he said. Now Mr Marr, a blunt and at times abrasive negotiator, will be leading further talks.
Mr Wood tried to reassure residents about a future beyond woodchipping. ''We believe Triabunna will be good for tourism and wine,'' he said.'
Source: 'Tree saviour named as Tasmanian mill boss', 16 July 2011, Fairfax
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria
Australia
Dear James Sinnamon,
Philip Mitchell Graham makes an argument for mechanical failure based upon heating [and consequent buckling]. This addresses the article by Margulis because it provides the beginnings of a credible alternative to the conspiracy "theory".
Readers can find the physics in peer-reviewed, published manuscripts that can be accessed from this website. The mechanism that first came to my mind is dealt with (thoroughly) at this website.
Best regards,
Brian Sanderson
The page linked to above is Debunking 911 conspiracy Theories - exploding the myths.- Ed
Anonymous wrote:
According to James Bamford, who originally revealed the existence of Operation Northwoods, ...
Could you provide the citation? Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-secret National Security Agency: From the Cold War through the Dawn of a New Century of 2001 by James Bamford is cited on Page 98 of JFK and the Unspeakable: Why he died and why it matters of 2008 by James W. Douglass.
Anonymous continued:
... this plan was cooked up by a junior staff member, almost as a hypothetical, and presented along with other ideas from other staffers, and was rejected by the Joint Chiefs, along with other ideas. At no time did the Pentagon seriously consider Northwoods, per Bamford. ...
Pages 96-98 of JFK and the Unspeakable show otherwise. General Lemnitzer's proposal for staged acts of terrorism against the US and against Cuban exiles, which were to be blamed on the Cuban Government and used as a pretext for an invasion of Cuba, was adopted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and repeatedly put to Kennedy by Lemnitzer. Fortunately, JFK over-ruled the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Anonymous continued:
The military are forever creating new plans for contingencies that may never occur. ...
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident? The Oklahoma City Bombing? What about the wars in Indo-China or the wars the US has inflicted on North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia in the recent two decades?
Anonymous continued:
... While I agree with you that 911 was some sort of inside job, ...
A 'sort of inside job'? The evidence that 911 was an inside job and not just a 'sort of inside job' is conclusive.
Anonymous continued:
... it is misleading to use Northwoods as proof that the Pentagon was involved at an operational level.
No-one has used Operation Northwoods as proof of Pentagon involvement. Proof of complicity of leading power-brokers within the Bush administration and the US military and intelligence agencies, that would stand up in criminal prosecutions, lies elsewhere.
Operation Northwoods merely shows that the kind of event that occured on 11 September 2001 had already been planned by leading figures in the US military decades earlier.
Linked to from the report Nimby has linked to above is an earlier report, also in Weekly Times Now, China seeks land for aquaculture of 4 July 2012:
EXCLUSIVE: A CHINESE company wants control of 100,000 hectares of Australian land for aquaculture.
And the produce would be sent directly back to China.
Federal Parliament sources say a Chinese company intends to use an Australian resources company to develop the land, near Broome in Western Australia.
...
The 100,000ha would dwarf the aim of fellow Chinese company Shanghai Zhongfu to obtain 30,000 hactares with attached water rights on the Ord River in northern WA and the western Northern Territory.
For now, at least, this particular 30,0000 hactares of land is not going to be sold outright:
The land would be on a long-term lease.
Nevertheless, serious concerns remain:
Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan said he believed the intention was to send the seafood "straight to the Chinese market".
"I further understand this is long-term strategic planning, because of the huge areas of environmental destruction in the Chinese landscape and contamination of a lot of their fisheries," Senator Heffernan said. "They've lost 10 per cent of their agricultural land in the last 10 years. They've destroyed their own capacity, they're using ours."
Of concern is Dick Smith's apparent support for Chinese citizens buying Australian citizenship through buying Australian farmland as described above by nimby:
Adventurer and businessman Dick Smith said Australia should "follow the astute Chinese Government", which "requires residency for owning productive land and important companies".
"If they became residents, I'd totally support it," Mr Smith said.
In contrast, the Country Women's Association took a strong stand on "protecting our land and water":
CWA spokeswoman Elaine Armstrong said she was "disturbed" about land being controlled by foreign entities, "whether it's China or whoever".
West Australian Mines, Petroleum and Fisheries Minister Norman Moore could not be contacted and the West Australian Agriculture Department did not respond.
Exclusive to The Weekly Times: CHINESE nationals are buying Australian farms and agribusinesses to get Australian visas. And the Federal Government seems unconcerned. Not only is our agricultural land up for grabs to the highest overseas bidder, investors are looking to move to Australia. So big buyers can not only buy a slice of Australia's sovereignty, they can also "buy" citizenship.
See Chinese seek land for visas of 11 July 2012 by Leslie White at http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2012/07/11/507571_latest-news.html
There are eight types of "Business Migration Visas" and includes sections in Chinese and its Cantonese dialect. The Commercial Property Profiles website also offers "Assistance available for discreet international funds transfer". The Weekly Times understands the payments for Australian land or businesses could be held until the buyer's visa applications were decided. They can then own the land and Australian citizenship.
Residency is being used as a lure for buying land and assets. According to Minister for Immigration, Chris Bowen, this is quite acceptable. What about community expectations?
Commercial Property Profiles is a promotional group working with the vendor and licensed authorities to put forward rural business and property sales to the International Market. It's another property development organisation. According to the website: "Any person or persons wishing to migrate to Australia under a Business or Skilled Independent Migration Visa under the Migration Act of 1958 must clearly state their business intentions in Australia together with a business plan and or a “Contract Of Sale to purchase a viable business”.
See Commercial Property Profiles at http://www.cppro.com.au
The fact that no foreigner can buy agricultural land in China doesn't seem to be an issue here. Also, it is very hard for foreigners to get a foothold in China or some kind of stable life with everything secured. In China it seems that even you have worked there for 7 years, own property, have invested in a company and have a family with a local citizen it is still very hard almost impossible to get permanent residence let alone citizenship. Why should we give them citizenship and permanent residence status to Australia if we are mostly not given it there? There are no reciprocal arrangements but but one way - to Australia! China refuses to give permanent residence to the vast majority of expats, no matter how long they have lived and worked in the country.
Quark
And it is much more comfortable in Canada to object to pipelines and the Alberta oil sands than to rail against the building of houses on prime farmland. To do so might bring about the question of runaway population growth, and when that becomes the topic, inevitably the role that immigration plays in that growth would come up. And we can't have THAT, can we? So what is the Green response? Sprawl, not immigration-driven population growth is the culprit. And what is the cure for sprawl? "Planning". Planning is the great elixir for all the ills that growth causes.
As Green icon William Rees, once the head of the faculty of planning at UBC, said, there is no reason that 'greenfield' acreage can be protected while population growth proceeds. No reason, that is, except political reality. The reality is that the kind of planning decisions that would protect farmland are made by local governments, and local governments are controlled by developers. In his study "Funding City Politics", Professor Robert McDermid found that even the smallest donations affect the voting behaviour of local politicians, and that incumbents are heavily supported by developers. On the local level, more than any other level of politics, MONEY TALKS. Ask Norm Smith, who ran for Mayor in Chilliwack, BC on an anti-growth platform against a real estate agent. He was outspent ten to one.
One way to get Greens thinking about mining, frakking, drilling and old growth forests is to steer their focus with donations. Walton International, for example, makes money by buying up farmland on the perimeter of cities like Calgary and waiting for a developer-friendly government to rezone it for housing development. Despite the fact that the killling zone for most of the 500 endangered species in Canada is found at the vanguard of sprawling cities, Nature Conservancy says nothing because Walton International donates money for their high-profile purchases of land elsewhere. Shell Canada is also one of their patrons.
Here is another thing to chew on. If oil from Alberta can't be shipped by pipeline, what is the alternative? Rail. Who has a big stake in Canadian National Railway? Warren Buffet. Who donates to anti-pipeline green groups?
Another dot to connect. West Virginia is the biggest coal producing state in the union. It supplies coal to 24 states, and coal supplies a huge chunk of energy to the United States. The long time Governor and now senior Senator for West Virginia is Jay Rockefeller, contributes to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) has sent millions of dollars to Canadian green groups to fight the oil sands project. Does the RBF underwrite any efforts to shut down West Virginia's coal industry? Do they send money to any Canadian green groups who would make a noise about the 21 million metric tons of coal that is shipped out of Roberts Bank (south of Vancouver) to China?
Try this. The David Suzuki Foundation has been given 10 million dollars from US corporate foundations to fight BC salmon farms. Meanwhile, nothing is said about salmon ranching in Alaska.
Many other questions like these can be raised about the motives of corporate "philanthropy". One recalls that the East India Tea Company supported Wilberforce's efforts to abolish slavery. Coincidentally, there main commercial rivals were the tea plantations in the West Indies worked by slave labour. Was that support motivated by moral angst about the treatment of slave labourers? It was not as if they treated their own workforce like kings.
If one looks at the corporate funding of Canada's environmental groups, particularly those in Western Canada, one has the uncomfortable feeling that that these groups are being played for pawns. Or as Stalin would call them, "useful idiots". It is not only comfortable for them to ignore ecological destruction in their own cities, it is financially rewarding.
Earlier this year, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada said, "No one tells the Sierra Club what to do." Yeah right. And no one tells city councillors how to vote either.
You don't need a smoking gun. The optics speak for themselves. The David Suzuki Foundation and the Sierra Club of BC have accepted money from big banks like RBC and the TD Bank, institutions that are all about promoting growth. How coincidental it is that neither of these green crusaders will challenge growth. Instead, they speak of "smart growth". That is just the kind of trained dog that Big Money likes. One that can be put off the scent.
From Global Research of 8 July 2012
As a multitude of hazardous wireless technologies are deployed in homes, schools and workplaces, government officials and industry representatives continue to insist on their safety despite growing evidence to the contrary. A major health crisis looms that is only hastened through the extensive deployment of “smart grid” technology. ...
Anonymous wrote:
And Geoffrey I have my doubts about Castro, Lenin and Trotsky ...
By all means, provide substantiation here or else links to material which substantiates your doubts, but I think you will find, should you attempt to do so, you will be unable to.
Another, who attempted on another forum to restate conventional smears against Lenin, when challenged to substantiate his/her smears, failed to do so. That post has also been published here on candobetter.
It's all too easy for ill-informed people to restate unproven supposed established wisdom about a demonised historical figure such as Lenin, but when such a person is faced on the Internet by another, with knowledge of the person he/she is attempting to malign, he/she will quickly lose his voice (or if he/she has humility and honesty will admit his/her mistake).
Whilst I share your concerns about the Greens, and a good many who bear labels such as "Red", "Trotskyist," "communist", "anarchist" or"socialist" these days, we should not forget the world's leading environmentalist, the now retired President Fidel Castro (or rather Fidel Castro Ruz), who successfully transformed Cuba from dependence upon Soviet oil imports in the 1990's, as shown in the film The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, proudly wears the label 'Red'.
Throughout much of the early 20th century, many of the very best of humanity, including the unfairly maligned Lenin would have proudly labeled themselves "Red". Unfortunately Stalin's rise to power and his vast crimes against peasants and political opponents, most of all within the Soviet Communist Party, have blackened the name of 'communism'.
Sadly even those who claim the heritage of Leon Trotsky, who also fought against Stalin, have obviously been corrupted. This is shown by the way they have for decades left the Shock Doctrine globalists free to ravage the world to suit their interests. Prior to that, in the 1960's, they covered up for the Warren Commission. The Warren Commission whitewashed the conspiracy to murder President Kennedy and made possible the subsequent murders of JFK's brother, Robert, and Martin Luther King, about which most "Reds" have also been strangely silent about in the latter part of the 20th Century.
You quickly deduced there was a good chance that the towers would fall, based on your training in physics, mathematics, and fluid mechanics? Congratulations! To this date no technically credible theory has been proposed that would tie the major features of the twin towers' destruction to earlier terror attacks with hijacked airplanes. You may have taken your baby steps to a Nobel Prize.
Getting serious, before you post any more 9/11 nonsense, kindly credibly refute the elementary conspiracy class of www.911babystep.com.
Love,
Dr. Sanderson, thank you for your interest in the subject. I hope you will continue to widen and deepen your knowledge of the Ground Zero Incident.
Your intuition that the towers would fall was contrary to the intuitions of most structural engineers. NOVA says they were surprised when the towers came down. They had been designed to withstand a hit from a four-engine 707 flying at 600 mph, and the chief design engineer John Skilling had claimed that they would survive the ensuing fire as well.
I disagree with your claim that Dr. Margulis's comments were outside of her expertise. Dr. Margulis's background included study of chemistry and physics, and her career gave her much cause to ponder energetics. She was qualified to observe that the towers' rapid, symmetrical, and total "collapses" were mystifying and that the official reports about them did not explain the mysteries.
There's no need to publish a paper saying "those planes didn't bring down the twin towers". The fact that they stood for over an hour after impact shows that the planes didn't bring down the towers. Dr. Thomas Eagar of MIT characterized the impact as "like a bullet hitting a tree". One mainstream news article I read at the time of the NIST report's release characterized the report's thesis as something like "The planes didn't bring the towers down, nor the fires. It was the stripped-off fireproofing that caused the collapses." (Unfortunately NIST's examination of the fireproofing issue was not very rigourous.)
Your suggested paper topic reveals a "dueling theories" assumption that is not necessary to revealing the truth, and it's unreasonable to expect a single paper to "prove [a] pet theory" and defeat a 10,000-page report that does not prove its own theories. Far more illuminating would be a paper limited to "Even if planes did bring the towers down, they shouldn't have fallen in the manner they did."
As to Mr. Graham's "plausible argument", which of his claims do you find "plausible"?
1. Dr. Margulis, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a recipient of the National Medal of Science, does not understand the scientific method.
2. Dr. Margulis's points are random.
3. If covert operatives had demolished the towers, somebody would have talked.
4. The fires had ample oxygen and were comparable to a chimney fire (the towers didn't have floors, the elevator shafts had no doors, and the black smoke pouring out of the buildings was not indicative of oxygen-starvation).
Subject was: Gaping holes in Official 9/11 Conspiracy Theory presented here
Brian Sanderson,
Firstly, I completely accepted the Official explanation, after I learned of 9/11 and for the ensuing seven years.
I got home after midnight on 11 November, after having been confined to desk and chair finishing a university assignment out of earshot from anyone else. The impacts of Flight 11 into the North Tower, Flight 175 into the South Tower and Flight 77 into the Pentagon would have already occurred before I got home at roughly 12.30AM on 11 September from my recollection. The Pentagon would have been struck at 11.39PM on 10 September AEST, roughly 50 minutes before I got home and switched on the TV. I sat through the early hours of the morning of 11 September 2001, AEST watching the subsequent news coverage of 9/11.
Like most people, I was enraged at the fanatical Islamist extremists whom I held responsible for the atrocity and was looking forward to see the United States and Autralian military give those killers what they had coming for them.
Even during the months in which I protested against the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (which I almost supported on account of believing that Hussein, too, was responsible for 9/11) I supported the "good war" by the US against the 9/11 terrorists in Afghanistan as did many other protesters.
Only 7 years later, long after I should have, did I take a closer look at the Official 9/11 story. I then came to the conclusion that I now hold that 9/11 was a fraud, a False Flag terrorist attack. It was False Flag terrorism in the mould of the projected Operation Northwoods of the early 1960's in which the top US military planned to stage plane hijackings, murders, military attacks against Guanatanmo Bay and make them appear to have been carried out by or on behalf of the Cuban Communist Government. Fortunately, President Kennedy who was sadly to be later murdered on 22 November 1963, told the US military top brass to scrap Operation Northwoods.
I think if you, too, look more closely at the events of 9/11 and also come to understand how flawed is the case you have put above, you,too, will realise that the Official account of 9/11 is a lie.
Brian Sanderson wrote:
... Margulis is making judgements that are totally outside her field of expertise.
To the contrary, the Official explanation of the 9/11 is so obviously ridiculous, that even a 12 year old child should be able to see through it. See for yourself the video version of the 9/11 Commission Report.
Brian Sanderson continued:
Philip Mitchell Graham makes the more plausible argument on that topic.
Phillip Mitchell Graham's 'contribution' does not address any of Lyn Margulis's article. His attack on what he claims is Lyn Margulis's poor grammar and writing style is laughable given his own spelling mistakes.
Brian Sanderson continued:
I recall watching TV and seeing those planes hitting the Towers. At the time, I noted where the planes had struck and quickly deduced that there was a good chance that the towers would fall.
On what basis? Please explain. Where else has a steel framed building ever collapsed so completely and so suddenly, let alone three on the same day?
Brian Sanderson wrote:
... As for the third tower, I have can't speak to that.
Nor did the 9/11 Commission. The report made no mention whatsoever of the Collapse of WTC7, which wasn't even struck by an airplane. Doesn't that strike you as the least bit suspicious?
The average Australian on a per capita basis would emit about 28 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually, based on the accredited Garnaut Review.
Green Labor's current national immigration policy of 190,000 per year, plus allowing for Hanson-Young's encouraged 7000 boat illegals p.a. at the current rate (2883 arrivals for 2012 to May) , plus allowing for visa overstays, so say Australia's net immigration is 200,000 per year.
This translates to Green Labor's immigration policy adds 5.6 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2 emissions per year (200,000 x 28 tonnes each).
"In the twelve months to June 2009, Australia’s emissions were an estimated 544 Mt CO2-e (million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent)."
http://www.landlearnnsw.org.au/sustainability/climate-change/what-is-it/greenhouse-gas-aust-nsw
So roughly, Green Labor's immigration policy systemically adds 1% of CO2 emissions per year. (5.6Mt/544mt).
Thus despite Green Labor's DECCEE site hyping: "The Australian Government is strongly committed to reducing Australia's carbon pollution... The plan to move to a Clean Energy Future will cut pollution by at least 5% compared with 2000 levels by 2020"
But its immigration policy adds 1% per year by 2020, that is a total of 20% by 2020.
So Green Labor's hype of 5% reduction is counteracted by 20% more from immigration. So by 2020, Australia will have an extra 15% CO2 emissions! And that doesn't factor in all the breeding over the next 20 years.
CONCLUSION: The Carbon Tax and CO2 Reduction efforts and costs are wasteful crap while immigration remains as it is.
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria
Australia
Look, this so-called 'livability index' report comes from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), which is oxymoronic in itself and part of a group associated with the anglo-centric Economist magazine. People in Hong Kong rent cages stacked one on top of the other in rooms in concrete high rises. There are protests about the abrogation of public land and the ever increasing intensity of development. The EIU put overcrowded concrete Vancouver and Melbourne equal at the head of its list in 2002. Clearly this list is a list about concrete spaces and developers' anti-human values and the Economists silly promotion of economic growth and globalisation. The award is just a manufactured consensus thing promoted by big business for big business and against relocalisation, human scale and natural surroundings.
That the Sydney Morning Herald publishes this nonsense is just another indication of the corruption of real reporting by corporate agendas. In other words this is all just corporate propaganda which little girls and little boys should be taught to dissect in primary school and once were. Wonder what has happened there?
About the Economist group:
"From its beginnings in 1843, when The Economist newspaper was founded by a Scottish hat manufacturer to further the cause of free trade" ... http://www.economistgroup.com/what_we_do/our_history.html
"Many of the issues facing the world have an international if not global dimension. The Economist brand family is ideally positioned to be the commentator, interpreter and forecaster of the phenomenon of globalisation as it gathers in pace and impact." [In other words, a propaganda outfit that actually has some deluded ordinary subscribers.]http://www.economistgroup.com/what_we_do/our_brands/the_economist_brand_family/index.html
Syria's ruling minority Ba'ath Party under President Bashar al-Assad will do just like Saddam Hussein's ruling minority Ba'ath Party.
It is an ethnic religious civil war between the al-Assed's minority 12% Shia (Alawite, Twelvers, and Ismailis) and mainly the 74% Sunni muslims.
I can't see the UN, USA, Arab States intervening until the protesting 74% have either given up, fled or are killed.
Since there are a few million souls, cynically I expect the media reports of massacres to be continuing for many years.
Readers will tire of the same news, so it will likely fade from the front pages.
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria
Australia
Editorial comment: At the elections held earlier this year, the overwhelming majority of Syrians, who defied terrorist death threats to cast a vote, voted for Assad, giving him an outright majority of 51% of all Syrians casting votes for him. Could you please cite the sources upon which you base your claim that only 12% of Syrians support Assad?
The following is a response to comments about the conflict in Syria on Professor John Quiggin's Weekend Reflections:
Katz @ 28 wrote:
Perhaps, Arabs are victims of false consciousness, ...
A good many Arabs may be the victims of 'false consciousness' but no less so than people in Western industrialised countries who largely accept the lies they are fed by newspapers such as the Melbourne Age which commenced its deceitful reporting of the Houla massacre of the 25 May with the report More than 90 massacred: Syrian activists. This and the Age's subsequent reporting of the Houla massacre and the Syrian conflict were shown to be lies by this report in the Franfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung of Syrien- Eine Auslöschung (Syria - an Extinction, English translation here) of 13 June 2012. This report shows that the massacre was not carried out by the Syrian Army or Police as was alleged by the Western newsmedia, but by the NATO backed Syrian insurgents.
Katz @ 30 wrote:
In Syria the regime will stay as long as they can stomach killing large numbers of people. ...
No government can defend itself against a terrorist insurgency sponsored by outside dictatorships and prospective colonisers, without killing people. In fact, if you examine the evidence, you will see that the Assad Government, its police and Army have behaved with extraordinary humanity given the circumstances they faced. Until a few months ago, they avoided bombing residential areas. However, they had to change this policy because of the supply of sophisticated anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to the terrorists.
The people who are fomenting the terrorist insurgency are no different than those who invaded Libya last year causing 30,000 deaths and the plunder of Libya's oil wealth by Western oil corporations, and, before that, the criminal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan in which many hundreds of thousands of people died. The lies being peddled by the Western newsmedia and phony human rights organisations such a Amnesty International and Avaaz are no less lies than were the lies used to justify the invasions of Iraq in 1991 and 2003, namely the Incubator Babies lie and Iraqi WMD's
First, let me say that Lynn Margulis has done excellent work on the evolution of eukaryotic cells. I truly admire her for that. In matters relating to the destruction of the towers, Margulis is making judgements that are totally outside her field of expertise. Philip Mitchell Graham makes the more plausible argument on that topic.
I recall watching TV and seeing those planes hitting the Towers. At the time, I noted where the planes had struck and quickly deduced that there was a good chance that the towers would fall. My training is in physics, mathematics, and fluid mechanics (I've also published in biological journals). As for the third tower, I have can't speak to that.
If someone has a serious scientific argument that the planes didn't bring down the twin towers, then they should publish it in a credible scientific journal (or engineering journal). Good science requires an honest attempt to prove your pet theory to be wrong...
As for fluoridation of drinking water, I'm no expert. But anyone can go to PubMed and do a search for "fluoridation of drinking water". This search turned up 818 peer-reviewed scientific publications --- they may be worth considering before jumping to too many conclusions... I see that it might cause insulin resistance in rats (that's not good, for rats). Unfortunately, we can't go blaming the prevalence of obesity and type-2 diabetics on fluoride --- given that there are so many other things about the modern diet that have been shown to also cause these problems.
Editorial comment: James Sinnamon assures me that he is happy to respond in full to this comment, but is tied up for a few hours. In the mean-time, site visitors could look at the site of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (http://ae911truth.org) which is curently endorsed by over 1,600 qualified Architects and Engineers. I don't know of one who has endorsed to official 9/11 Commission report.
The following is a response to an article Kofi Annan attacks Russia and west's 'destructive competition' over Syria of 6 July in the ostensibly left/liberal UK Guardian news magazine:
I am stunned by the attacks on Putin. Russia hasn't interfered in American foreign policy in the Middle East for 30 years. America on the other hand has instigated a war in Iraq, an overthrow of a government in Afganistan, a war in Afganistan, the overthrow of a government in Libya, involvement in Sudan etc. Yet Putin says enough of the West's regime change policy and he is the bad guy. I think Russia and China should push for regime change in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia where people are still stoned to death and hands are cut off. But of course those are America's allies so they don't need democracy although Americans fought for Kuwait and Bush promised us democratic reforms there.
A good rebuttal of the deceit contained in the Guardian article is to be found in Kofi Annan: International Community Has Failed Syria of 7 July 2012 in landdestroyer.blogspot.com.
See also: Saudi Arabia's Princess Sara claims asylum in the UK of 8 July in The Telegraph, Saudi Princess seeking political asylum in Britain of 8 July.
Thank you , Clarke.
Please be assured that the full text of Dr Geoff Mosley's speech and the mp3 sound recording will be made available soon on candobetter. Others, who attended that meeting, are most welcome to continue the discussion, which began at that meeting, on the page where the article is to be published and elsewhere on candobetter (including here).
I also attended the Annual General Meeting of the Victorian branch of Sustainable Population Australia (SPA).
I also learned a great deal of the history of the Australian conservation movement from the middle of the 20th century from Geoff Mosley's speech.
I have considered myself a conservationist at least since my early teen years when I holidayed in 1974 with my family at Binna Burra at the northern border of the Lamington National Park in South East Queensland. In 1977 I joined the Campaign Against Nuclear Power (CANP) in Queensland and the Campaign Against Nuclear Energy (CANE) in South Australia the following year.
In spite of decades of environmental and other political activism on my part, there is a great deal about the proud history of the Australian Conservation Movement of which I was not aware. In part, my lack of knowledge was due to the setbacks suffered by Australian democracy at the end of the 20th century which began in 1975 with the downfall of the Whitlam Labor Government (which Geoff Mosley covered) and continued with the (mis)rule of Fraser, Hawke, Keating, Howard and Rudd. The corruption at the top of Australia has clearly spread downwards through many supposedly left political parties and grass-roots organisations including much of the conservation movement during these years. I had formed the impression that it had been always thus. Fortunately, Geoff Mosley put me right on this, yesterday.
My congratulations to Victorian SPA President Jill Quirk and the Victorian SPA Committee for having organised the meeting. Although attendance was good, had the newsmedia given this meeting, with the quality of the featured speaker, the publicity it deserved attendence would have been far higher.
Let's hope that the forthcoming visit from American Peak Oil specialist Richard Heinberg scheduled for September is given the public it deserves so that more Victorians, who care about our future, can attend.
This morning on ABC local radio in Melbourne the presenter, Jon Faine devoted about 15 minutes to the subject of a "possum plague" in Melbourne. Fortunately some people pointed out that in fact it was human plague and that humans were taking over the possums' territory. The subject of the program was precipitated by a decision of one of the Melbourne Councils to spend $65,000 on contraceptive measures because there are allegedly 60 possums living in Curtin Square in an inner Melbourne suburb. Mr. Faine asked a guest on the program from Wildlife Victoria why brush tail possums were protected since they are not endangered. The wildlife Victoria officer gently explained that a native Australian animal did not have to be endangered to be protected by law under the Wildlife Act and managed to convey that the hardy possums who have adapted and managed to survive in an urban environment are an important animal species within the Australian environment.
The story about the Curtin Square possums reappeared tonight when it was featured on 7 TV news where one could see about 2 possums inoffensively licking something that had been offered to them and then wandering away. Animal activist, Rheya Linden was interviewed but only a few seconds of what she said went to air. She was responding to threats that it would be made illegal to feed possums. She said she would never abandon the possums. The rest of what she sad was muted although her face was shown for few more seconds.
First, no one knows whether human population will still be rising or will be falling by 2050. Time will tell.
What we can be sure of is that if the world presently had a smaller population then we would all be a lot better off. The proper theory relating poverty to population is well explained by Paul Colinvaux. Read his books: "Why Big Fierce Animals are Rare" and "Fates of Nations, A Biological Theory for History"
Population growth is the great spoiler for human progress.
If population is declining by 2050, then it will be for one of 2 reasons:
(1) People will have seen sense and chosen quality of life over sheer numbers of poverty-stricken primates.
(2) A crowded population will have become so constrained by poverty that they simply can't increase their numbers.
Economists are over-rated primates.
I recall a time when the catch-cry was populate or perish. That was what the parents of the boomers did --- they populated. The boomers were the first generation to realize that if population increased beyond a point then quality of life would decline into a pit of poverty. The boomers opted to reduce their reproductive rate, choosing quality of life over mere numbers.
Unfortunately, the plutocrats who profit from other peoples misery have been relentless, using immigration to drive population skywards, completely destroying the advantages obtained from the wise behaviour of boomers. The great betrayal of so-called democracies has been the acquiescence of politicians to a relatively small group of self-serving plutocrats who have hijacked the population issue.
I think of myself as child of Easter Island. I watch in admiration at a bird singing in a tree.
I watch in horror as the tree is felled by the grown ups and the bird flies away.
I tug on my father's arm and ask why are the grown ups killing the trees dad?
He responds: "You'll understand when you grow up."
"The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop."
~ Mark Twain
Many of the younger generation cannot understand what the old generation is doing to the planet.
Without being ageist, there is a noticeable positive correlation between the young wanting to respect the planet, and the 'Baby Boomer' generation which largely remains hell bent on destroying it. Examples are everywhere. Start with Australia's members of Parliament. The Baby Boomers who find themselves alligned with those who respect the planet are noticeably in the minority amongst their peers and vice versa.
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria
Australia
Over-population
I have been concerned for some time about over-population. The world's population has increased from four billion to seven billion in FORTY years. If we continue at that cracking pace, food and water will be as rare as rocking horse teeth. From its present groaning under the weight of numbers, we can surely see that this planet was not meant to be burdened by an ever increasing number of resource consuming humans! For goodness sake Concerned Catholic, what is your cut-off figure? 20 billion? 40 billion? At what figure would you recommend the brakes be applied? Or would you say humans should never stop multiplying? You would just keep producing people until they start killing each other over a grain of rice?
With all this carbon tax racket going on, don't you see that with population stabilisation followed by sensible population reduction, humans would not be consuming our resources at a rate that suggests our environment can no longer meet all our needs? Wasn't this planet designed to carry only sufficient numbers of humans that can live in a reasonable amount of comfort - without constantly worrying as to how they are going to pay their next energy bill?
Whether or not you accept the global warming science (and despite the forceful pro-global warming lobby many still exercise their democratic right to question it) it is common sense that if there are less humans there will be less pollution. Less cars, less energy/fuel consumption, less demand on food and water resources.
Just stop sending overseas aid in $$$$$$$$'s to corrupt regimes and multiplying bottomless pits of want. Send shiploads of condoms complete with instructions and make population reduction a condition for reduced foreign aid.
Australia should cut the kids' bonuses (political translation - plasma t.v.'s and poker machine entertainment) and cut taxpayer funded support for the irresponsibles who overload our environment with more than two children.
Thank you.