Just found an article by Angus reacting to the above article. [Ed. Writer has forgotten to include URL] He really undermines any arguments or good faith he might claim to by his ad hominem attack on Stuart Hurlbert, who has apparently criticized his ideology.
Angus has absolutely nothing to say in defense of Angus's 'theory'. Instead he goes on a personal attack, insinuating that Hurlbert is racist, elitist, a target of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and a supporter of democratic immigration policy in Arizona.
Next, Angus attacks Madeline Weld for being an associate of Stuart Hurlbert, and, amazingly, an ersatz feminist because she wants to give women in the 'third world' the chance to use contraceptives. What would Angus know about feminism? Women want control over births! He would deny that? Sounds like an MCP ponce to me.
Finally, Angus gets upset because Weld distributed an article by another socialist that criticised Angus's book (which I see candobetter has also published here: A real Ecosocialist review of that cornucopian book, Too Many People). He calls this "participating in an international campaign to use a disagreement among socialists to discredit our book." Phew! Looks like they are right those who criticise the so-called socialist movement for censoring and intimidating free speech. Alan Thornett's only crime is solid argument that shows up Angus's ideology for the tosh it is. Where does Angus get off, trying to deny people the right to publish or the right to benefit from the publication and dissemination of wider views? Someone has to open the eyes of youth to the utter bogusness of elites in the so-called 'socialist' movements where so many young people are attracted to the ideals the movement pretends to espouse but actively undermines with cant like Angus's. (Wonder who subsidised their book? Most of these pro-growth books are cashed up by growth-lobbyists.)
Angus, you sound p-a-t-h-e-t-i-c.
Comments
Keilor folk need our solidarity
http://brimbank-leader.whereilive.com.au/news/story/dont-destroy-our-keilor-village/
Keilor folk have asked for help so I have posted a comment on this article in the Brimbank Leader. Do help them by taking a minute to add a few words of support for retaining their village atmosphere.
We have a fight on our hands with the possible destruction of our beautiful village.Please feel free to have your say on this article supporting our cause .
http://brimbank-leader.whereilive.com.au/news/story/dont-destroy-our-keilor-village/
Comments now closed on this form. Please add any comments in respose to comments on this page or any new comments on the new page here. - 5 Feb 12
Population problems and imperialism
Hi Madeline,
Thanks for this article. I would like to ask you a question and also make an observation. My question is:
To what do you attribute the population problems in Rwanda, Haiti, Australia, Canada etc, if not imperialism?
My observation is:
People who call themselves socialists have begun to uses the term 'populationist' with a meaning opposite to the one that I know of. I believe the word is derived from the French. Here is a definition I wrote a few years ago when I thought that I coined the English version:
"Populationism : refers to a philosophy, attitude or policy encouraging population growth by any or all demographic means - natural increase and/or immigration and, arguably, low infant mortality and increasing longevity. "Populationist" refers to a person who holds this philosophy etc. These words don't exist in English but I find them very useful additions."
Here is another useful word:
"Immigrationism : is fairly self-explanatory, I think, and refers to a philosophy, attitude or policy encouraging high immigration. "Immigrationism" and "populationism" are two useful terms I borrowed from the French immigrationnisme and populationnisme. I have dropped the typical French double 'n' when I have spelled them in English. An "immigrationist" is a person with a philosophy, attitude, etc. of immigrationism."
Food security in Africa
The Australian government has generously made a commitment to promoting food security in Africa, including $142 million in aid for the current crises in East and West Africa. (October 11 2011)
According to the press release, Africa holds 60 per cent of the world’s uncultivated farmable land however one in three people still go hungry there every day.
Under-investment in agricultural research and innovation, along with a decline in agricultural productivity, are key factors affecting Africa’s ability to bring about food security.
Australia has unique agricultural and scientific expertise and world class teaching and research institutions that are well-suited to African agriculture and food security.
This expertise includes dry-land and tropical farming, climate change adaptation, commercialisation of agricultural research and water and soil management.
Press office - Australia strengthens food security in Africa
Australia’s total funding in response to the drought and famine in the Horn of Africa now stands at $128 million - including $98 million in humanitarian assistance and $30 million for the region’s long-term food security.
However, nothing has been recommended for funding family planning, or reproductive health for women.
Africa is a Malthusian nightmare, and there are limits to how Nature can be expected to be as generous as our government, and deny its limits to feed more hungry people.
More than 13 million people in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia are in urgent need of food and humanitarian aid because of consecutive droughts, following two poor rain seasons.
The United Nations has launched a $2.48 billion international emergency appeal in response to the crisis.
The warnings from the environment are obvious, and need to be heeded. The elephant in the room is that food production over the last decades has increased arithmetically, but population growth has increased geometrically, outstripping food supplies.
The Australia government's International Food Security Centre should a study how to stablilze global populations, ensure our own food security, and promote a steady-state economic model.
Unfortunately, the harsh reality is that Nature has her own unemotional way of enforcing equilibrium on the planet. If there are too many people at any moment, there will be a tragic shift to more appropriate numbers.
Throwing money at corrupt regimes won't help, and there is a limit to how agricultural science can cajole and extort natural ecological systems to produce more food!
By 2031 our projections indicate that 95% of possible population outcomes for Australia will put the population between 27 and 33 million. Twenty years later in 2051, it spans 29 to 43 million. The proportion of the population aged 65 years and above will lie between 21% and 28%.
Our present economic growth model is contradictory and hypocritical as it forces us to ignore all Nature's warnings on the limits to growth in deference to a bigger GDP, and a bigger Australian population.
We need to end being an "immigration nation" and become a vibrant, mature and stable nation guided by common-sense and strategically balanced policies, not based on sacrificing long term survival, amenities and food security for the short-term cash grabs of population growth.
Australia's population growth, security and food security should also be holistically addressed, along with a consuming economic model that demands perpetual growth!
Has the roaming Rudd got Big Australia agencies overseas?
Has the roaming Rudd got Big Australia agencies overseas?
Kuala Lumpur perhaps?
What about Jakarta and Ashore Reef? Perhaps the Australian Navy could do some revenue neutral charters, rather than just sending out the welcoming party?
'Adequate housing is a human right and is part of having a quality of life. However, each day 105, 000 Australians are without safe, secure and affordable housing.
Tonight half of Australia's homeless will stay with friends or family.
About 2 in every 7 will find a bed in a boarding house.
A lucky 1 in every 7 will find a bed in the homeless service system.
1 in every 7 will sleep rough on the streets of our cities and towns.'
This probably doesn't include Australian Aborigines in the outback. Unacceptable in Australia in 2011!
In Australia we have a Foreign Labor Government.
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia
Home grants to KL cits continued
Kelly O'Dwyer and Micheal O'Brien respectively.
First Home Grants to KL cits
Hi Jill,
Who is your local MP and who is the State Member she referred the matter to?
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
First home grants to buyers in KL
I sent the following letter to my local Federal MP. She has referred it to the State MP from whom I have not yet heard.
"It has come to my notice that the first home buyers' grant of $13,000 is being advertised in Kuala Lumpur to potential buyers of property in Australia. This grant whilst probably misconceived in its attempt to make housing more affordable in a climate of high population growth and high demand for housing, was actually intended for Australian first home buyers. I object to my taxes being used in this damaging way and would like to be reassured that either it is not true or there is some justification for this. I totally oppose government engineered high population growth through high immigration and abhor the consequent rise in property prices which lead to immense pressure on local people who are in the market for a house. I would like to add that I am well aware that the small numbers of asylum seekers who arrive on our shores have nothing to do with this issue. It is seemingly deliberately confused in the minds of the public, courtesy of the media and some politicians past and present. I would be grateful if you could let me know the true situation regarding the availability of the first home buyers' grant for non Australian residents."
Population cap needed for Tweed Heads
The possibility of a population cap for the Tweed has been raised by Councillor Katie Milne. However mayor Barry Longland says he doesn't believe a survey would be helpful and doesn't support the idea of a specific population cap. He said the council already controlled population growth indirectly. Then why this destructive new "development" site? Noosa Shire: Noosa Shire has long recognized the significance of the magical Noosa River to its citizens.
Noosa has been really innovative and forward thinking and worked out how many people can be sustained by its resources. They looked at water, infrastructure and giving nature enough space. Noosa has steadfastly resisted the temptation to allow its population to grow beyond its capacity to take water without tapping the Noosa River. It has installed a population cap. The evaluation of population size should also include not just natural resources that support human populations, but about giving indigenous animals such as local wildlife a "fair go" - a chance to survive.
All species try to advance their own interests, and take territories away from other herds or species, but with chainsaws, developer greed and an economy based on growth, there is little koalas can to to retaliate, or adapt. Thus, we must do it for them.
See also: Sunshine Coast population to hit half a million by 2030? of 22 Sep 2008 about Noosa Shire Mayor Bob Abbot's population cap.
Katter's big Australia, foreign labour and bush bashing mandate
RE The Australian Party not recommended comment above
Yes, Katter's big Australia mandate for more foreign labour sux, as does unresticted bush bashing and cattle bashing.
I should have read the red print.
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia
Australians accused of racism - social control
With Australia Day has come a barrage of "racist" accusations against Australians. Various news websites all report that people who fly Australian flags on their cars have been found to be more racist than those who don't.
Of 513 people at last year's Australia Day fireworks in Perth, it was found that one in five had attached the flags to their car, and 88per cent surveyed thought it was a patriotic step. But at least the flag-flyers aren't overtly racist. Those ''speak english'', ''love it or leave it'' and ''f--- off, we're full'' bumper stickers.
This is not about ugly racist hate, eugenetics, segregation, vilification, separations, physical attacks, apartheid, or genocide against specific racial groups. It's about attitudes, a fear that excess patriotism will divide a nation and compromise our government's multicultural and population growth agendas.
It's to manipulate the public into silence about immigration, population debate and any criticisms about how successfully integrated we are.
Surgeon Charlie Teo condemned Australia as racist and said "when I left Australia, I knew that it was racist towards Asians, and when I went to America there was virtually no racism towards Asians". Yet, he admitted that Chinese are very racist, and that his mother used to be quite racist against "you whities", and the Japanese are quite racist against Chinese, Chinese against Japanese. That's a lot of racism!
Given the huge number of nationalities that make up this country, which nationality does he actually accuse of being 'racist'? The Chinese? Vietnamese? Africans? Afghans? Irish? Americans? English? Spanish? It's usually targeted toward "white" people and build up guilt for our "white Australia" colonial past.
Former governor-general Peter Hollingworth has branded Australia Day an excuse for a booze-up, adding we are all racist deep down.
Australia Day is now about controlling and mellowing down patriotism so that those who remember Australia as the wealthy "Lucky Country" will focus on welcoming new arrivals and celebrate the all the various ethnic groups who arrive here to share our hospitality.
It's a a ploy by the media and politicians, with the help of celebrities, to create a collective guilt, and stop debate on our immigration policies, to stifle any questioning of the success of our multiculturalism and of our high immigration numbers - one of the biggest of the developed nations.
Australia Day has become a not so much a time to recognise and appreciate our forefathers, our fledgling culture, our indigenous peoples, our cultural and natural heritage, our history, our flora and fauna, but toned down to focus on the benefits of immigration, "diversity", and the prosperity population growth is supposed to bring us!
The Australia Party not recommended
Even Bob Katter's "The Australian Party" supports high immigration.
"Australia needs to increase its population to achieve acceptable levels of economic, scientific, strategic and personal development. Government must develop immigration and birth rate policies consistent with these principles. In addition, the population growth needs to be distributed widely throughout Australia and especially into northern Australia".
It's a red-neck group:
"Australians must have the freedom to pursue outdoor recreational activities of their choice including hunting, shooting, fishing, boating, camping, 4-wheel driving, horse riding, rock climbing, and bushwalking without unnecessary limitations and restrictions".
They also support the cruel and indefensible live animal exports for its economic value.
The more traditionally one is Australian, the more one's shunned
More more traditionally one is Australian, the more one is shunned
Australian Prime Minister Gillard's Australia Day speech yesterday at the nation's capital spoke of modern Australia’s greatest story of inclusion and belonging, but she was referring to new comers to Australia, to immigration..."this your home for you and your descendents forever". No mention or recognition was made to Australia's traditional people...inclusion? and belonging?
No mention was made of traditional Australians of colonial ancestry. No mention is made of struggling and forgotten rural and regional Australia. No mention is made of the many Australian families struggling due to recent corporate retrenchments and offshoring - such as by Qantas, Toyota ACL, Suncorp, BlueScope, Heinz, Westpac, Pacific Brands, etc. The Labor Party support base is increasing looking to the immigration base. Perhaps this is why Bob Katter has decided to offer an alternative party in The Australian Party.
Much of Labor's investment and expenditure focus is celebrating the immigrant ahead of all other peoples of this nation. Whitlam-Fraser's multiculturalism remains all about accepting and tolerating and embracing foreign cultures. No clarity or interest is provided to Australian traditional culture(s) and what Australian core values may entail. So the silent majority remain silent for fear of being branded racist and it is the most successful censorship campaign over public opinion and free speech since the Whitlam years. Most government employees are now immigrants or the offspring of immigrants. Rudd still wants his 'Big Australia'.
[Read Prime Minister Gillard's official Australia Day Speech of 2012].
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia
Made in Australia not welcome here
Now that Australia Day has passed, there have been some targeted condemnation of Australia as a very "racist" country. However, it's all social engineering to keep democratic debate off the agenda. Of course, there are some red-necks who are racist in the original meaning of the term, but the newest definition is about shutting down debate of our high, mostly Asian, immigration rate and foreign asset acquisition.
All species of animals protect their herds or communities from outsiders. It's about protecting limited resources, territories and their gene pool. Australia is an extraordinarily tolerant nation.
Due to globalization, Australia as we knew it hardly exists.
While cultural diversity is stimulating, and some foreign imports and exports are beneficial and healthy, Australia is being sold off to reap the benefits of being part of the "Asian Century". Economic growth is the main aim of governments now, even at the detriment of the Australian public, our own industries and our identity.
Australia is being eaten away for foreign imports, and our own manufacturing is going offshore. China lacks human rights, or trade unions. Thus, they have billions of willing cheap and available workers to undercut local produce such as foods.
"Made in Australia" is not an ideal being encouraged by our Federal government. They prefer to defer to China's powers and cooperate with APEC.
Indigenous peoples, the traditional owners of our land, have not been consulted about selling off our land to foreigners, about mining, wildlife managment and exploitation, about our influx if immigrants, or our population growth. They have been given lip-service treatment. No wonder they were angry on Australia Day!
Native species are not optional extras
This seemingly trivial change to the Code of Practice for Timber Production 2007 hides wide and damaging implications. The loggers won't do surbeys for every forests before logging - they want production, efficiency and income, and are not interested in wildlife or our forests' integrity.
It was agreed that the endangered animals are in danger of disappearing, by definition, hence their FFGA Action Statements. No one has the right to override these scientific findings for logging profits.
Already logging has threatened Victoria's last remaining Leadbeaters Possums at Toolangi, those that miraculously avoided Black Saturday's inferno. Fires and salvage logging has added problems to habitat as logs provide homes for many native birds and animals.
It's assumed that wildlife will simply breed and recover. We have policies to protect native vegetation and offsets, but nothing about protecting native species. Destroying habitats is a sure bullet to their destruction, and extinction is forever!
Our existing reserves are insufficient and even bushland birds, once common, are in serious decline. There needs to be a holistic and organised approach to protecting species. We cannot decide and force wildlife to exist where it's convenient economically.
If there's extinctions from logging in Victoria in the coming years, is this how our government, and Premier, wants to be remembered in history?
What "balance" do native animals have compared to the power of logging industries? Species have no economic or political power. The scales are very heavily already against their survival. They do not need any more impediments or burdens to their long term survival.
The "landscape" view is how we know that species are under threat and need protection, and watering it down is species genocide. It's simply nonsense.
Our forests and native birds and animals are an important part of our heritage, and they all play a part in maintaining ecological functions. They are not optional extras!
Deforestation will see Tweed River Device come back to haunt it
Tuesday's landslide in the Papua New Guinean mountain town of Mendi, which has reported as many as 60 people dead or missing, is likely due to deforestation and mining.
Similarly, the Tweed Shire's ongoing deforestation such as that currently threatening Kings Forest will see Tweeds fancy new 'River Device' brand come back to haunt it.
How many people have been evacuated from Tweed Shire homes this time around? Check today's news report.
Council approval of deforestation and encouraged land use development has massively increased surface runoff and is culpable negligence, just like the Brisbane City Council's approval of riverside developments on flood prone river flats and the Queensland Government's encouraged deforestation of the Brisbane River valley out along the Warrego Highway to Ipswich and Toowoomba.
Bring on class actions and drive the Tweed Shire Council bankrupt! 'Together Forward'...and out to sea!
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia
Turning a blind eye to cruelty
Fortunately, these smarter people do not include you. Repeating worn out and discredited arguments will do little to convince people. There are more ethical methods of controlling populations, like the application of contraceptives, that have been successful in similar circumstances. The problem is that this would cost money, thereas the deliberately created man made fur industry makes money, which is a 'no brainier' to a few New Zealenders. What we forget is that is population was deliberately introduced, and is a result of agricultural planning by our great grandparents. It is wrong to blame the cruel practice of possum hunting on necessity, when it is the result of strategy.
Tweed Heads - support for koalas over developments
A study carried out by ecological consultancy Biolink estimated there were 140 koalas left in the Tweed region last year.
The president of Team Koala, a carers group in Tweed Heads, Jenny Hayes, says the future of the district's koala colonies will be in jeopardy unless plans to ban dogs from the residential area are adopted. A report prepared by professional planners about the Kings Forest development is endorsed by the local council.
"Professional planners" are more interested in human concerns and profits from developments than koalas. How are they going to "plan" so that koalas and urban development housing can exist side by side? Not likely! How are people going to exist without cars, housing without denuding the area of trees, without dogs and cats and without the noise, pollution and stress?
They had 3,000 submissions, mostly about supporting koalas. Tourists and residents don't want to come to see housing, and generic urban sprawl. They come to see Australia's wildnerness, natural setting, beaches, and wildlife.
In the Kings Forest submission, prepared by the director of planning, there was a recommendation that all dogs be banned at Kings Forest to protect koala populations. The Tweed Coast Koala Habitat Study 2011 was undertaken which showed the dangers of dogs to koala populations in the area. It ignores cruel sadistic attacks, traffic, and loss of habitat trees.
Once timber supplies were exhausted the Tweed Valley became a centre for sugar cane and banana growing. Population was minimal until the 1880s, with growth during the late 1800s. Significant development did not occur until the post-war years, with the population of the Shire increasing from about 19,000 in 1947 to 22,000 in 1961, then to 25,000 in 1971.
The population of Tweed Heads is "forcast" (or will be boosted) to be over 91,000 this year, and to increase to 128,000 by 2031.
Retirement is a considerable source of Tweed Heads' notable population growth while tourism is the primary source of income. This source of income will be compromised by it's transformation to urban sprawl and loss of it's identity as a place for our iconic marsupials - koalas.
Planning has descended into opportunities for developers
"Planning" has become synonymous with opportunities for developers, and pumping up population numbers. Matthew Guy justifies regional growth and more land releases as an effort to provide "affordable housing" to Victorians. There will never be a closure to "affordable housing" while our population keeps expanding and growing. Like putting out spot fires, one may be out, and then the fires escalate.
Planning should be about ensuring a future for Victoria, and a balance between natural assets, providing infrastructure and a consolidation what we already have. Instead, public funds are being spent on perpetual growth, while Victoria is swimming in debt!
Planning has descended into a Ponzi scheme to provide opportunities for developers and housing investors- for our "development"-driven growth-based economy in Victoria.
Like bacteria in the petri dish, enjoying consuming their finite resources, when they are full and come to the limits of growth, they wallow in their mass decline.
Is Matthew Guy corrupt?
Is Matthew Guy corrupt?
Money laundering of Australian tax grants to Malaysians? What the?
Is Matthew Guy authorising such Australian grants to go offshore and displace Australians from housing opportunities?
If Matthew Guy was a people smuggler he would get a measly 4 years incarceration. In Henry VIII's time he would be hung drawn and quartered. I'd watch!
What do Whittlesea residents think?
Has the Guy bastard had the decency to ask them to approve Malaysian invasion of their quiet coastal community?
What if corporate Australian real estate agents landed in Malaysia's popular east coast tourist haven of Kuala Terengganu and proclaimed property discounts only to Australians?
I would understand local Malaysians 'concerns' so to speak; fortune if one survived.
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia
Evils of globalization of the housing/education market
Not only this, but it is being suggested that the Australian government will be offering HECS style loans for international students to study here. With the rising dollar, their numbers are decreasing. With few real industries in Australia except mining, our government is desperate for foreign currency and to use our educational infrastructure for profits.
Globalisation is the modern evil. Globalization can satisfy our hunger for cheap imported goods but it also means thousands of jobs get shipped abroad for the cheaper labour costs. It also means our housing market is entrenched, and prices kept at healthy levels to maximise profits.
Supporters of globalisation argue that by becoming part of the world economy, developing countries and those living in abject poverty get a chance to grasp economic opportunities. "free trade" simply enables multinationals to dominate markets and push out local enterprise, and add to local housing/job woes.
Globalization is the metastizing cancer of the worst aspects of global capitalism, perhaps the most insidious, most ruthless and most evil system of wealth creation (exploitation) the world has ever known. Some developing countries can benefit, but powerful nations are able to suck out and monopolize local markets, and human rights - such as that of housing - decline.
King's forrest development - Koala's nightmare
It is inconceivable to think that this development has been approved and is going ahead despite the environmental impacts. The ramifications of this are wide spread and a review needs to be done to ensure that the fragile eco systems are preserved, better still stop the development!
Growth lobby wants koalas to go extinct.
Thanks Menkit for another of your fantastic articles - straight to heart of the matter and signalling another serious battle.
Last Thursday, on 3RPP, I interviewed a Victorian lawyer who recently did a masters in environmental law and confirmed her impression that our laws are almost completely useless, due to the problem of standing (being entitled to bring about an action) in the states, particularly Victoria, the expense of the courts, the tendency for governments to change the laws, and the failure to monitor species numbers properly - among so many problems. Even if you get a win, no-one will enforce it. Look at Environment East Gippsland and VicForests.
My guest also raised the fact that every year now for decades Australians try to make the koala recognised as a threatened species, and every year the matter gets sidelined, yet every year the koala gets closer to extinction.
The reason? Developer lobbies want the koala to become extinct so that they can develop its remaining habitat. And why are koalas going extinct? Because of Australian developers, who are bulldozing their last vestiges of habitat - and lobbying for high immigration and foreign purchasers.
Until the growth lobby and developers in particular make a stand for the koala theirs should be identified as the most shameful occupation in Australia.
The development and growth lobby is the koala's worst enemy.
Blame developers for koala extinction. Make that your primary message. Associate the damage with the industry that profits from it and display pictures of the developers and the politicians that protect them at your protests.
Kings Forest Illegal Clearing
The illegal clearing in the Cudgen Nature Reserve adjacent to the Kings Forest development site needs to be heavily penalised and an environmental compliance officer located at the development site at the cost of the developer to ensure such a "mistake" cannot happen again.
human pathogenic destruction
Australia does not have high fertility levels. The problem is our hign immigration intake, exacerbating our species extinctions and destroying bushland, and living standards in Australia. Instead of increased productivity these days, the buzzword we are supposed to use now, increasing population will mean a gridlock of congestion, depletions and ruin. Australia has inherited a rich biodiveristy, and slow evolving ecosystems and species. The deliberate destruction of koala habitats is akin to "genocide", species destruction. Such misathropic growth can have not justification.
Biologists estimate 20,000 to 40,000 species go extinct every year, many times higher than the "background extinction rate" built into the evolutionary process. The cause? Human environmental impact, the product of consumption times population.
Dr. Warren Hern's "Humans as a Cancer on the Earth" hypothesis is based on the observation that cancerous growth has much in common with the characteristics of human population growth. These include: “1) rapid, uncontrolled growth, 2) invasion and destruction of adjacent tissues and environments, 3) metastasis, or spread by colonization, 4) dedifferentiation, or loss of distinctiveness in individual components” and “furthermore, the malignant process in an individual or an ecosystem often involves the production of toxic metabolites.
No population of a large vertebrate animal in the history of the planet has grown that much, that fast, or with such devastating consequences to its fellow earthlings.
Our iconic koalas are under threat from a runaway human invasion! In fact, all native species have been impacted by the growth of human populations, and as koalas are competing with the same locations, they are losing out badly. Premier Anna Bligh is happy to create, manipulate and profit from a human population explosion at the expense of wildlife habitat and to willingly make human invasions a greater threat to Queensland than those of the unwitting cane toad.
http://candobetter.net/node/1570
Kings Forest debacle
It looks like the planning completed for this development is totally corrupt. No surprise in the Tweed. It would be hard to briefly describe the number of concerns.
Koalas, water, town planning, modern sustainable practices....possible removal of trees/flora before approval -currently under investigation.
Check it out.
Japan's low birthrate is a positive
This is an old article, but a good one. I think Japan is on the right course. They are hugely overpopulated. The population will age, and this is a serious problem. But increasing the population, or even maintaining it at the current level, would cause far greater problems. It seems to me that the rest of the world should be seeking to emulate Japan. Instead Japan is held up as a terrible lesson for what happens if you dare to stop growing.
All I see in the media is "we don't want to cut back on immigration, or we'll wind up like Japan", "we may be growing slowly, but at least we're not Japan", "our growth rate is very fast, but at least we're not Japan". The couple of times I've talked to people about population growth the response I've gotten is "we can't stop growing - look at Japan". This is sadly why I hold no hope Australia, or America, will ever be able to voluntarily accept population stability or decline.
skilled migration at the global level is environmentally good because it encourages education in the developing world and that decreases global population growth,
Ha, yet when Japan stops growing, thereby decreasing global growth, according to McLeod this is a disaster. If any developing nation actually stopped growing then the first thing McLeod would do is tell them to start breeding again.
But this terrible natural disaster strikes Japan and all McLeod could talk about was Japan's low birthrate and unwillingness to open their borders to tens of million of migrants. Its almost like he's saying that the tsunami was no coincidence. It was actually a punishment visited upon them by the Great God of Growth for daring to forsake Him.
Andrew Mcleod of the Committee for Melbourne is leaving Australia. Going to London to work for Rio Tinto.
They are welcome to him.
The palmoil industry says: Orangutans are pests!
?The orangutang’s mother has been killed on one palmoil plantations
Dear friends of the rainforest,
the BBC reports that orangutans are treated as "pest" and exterminated on Indonesian and Malaysian palm oil plantations. In the last year alone, up to 1,800 orangutans were killed in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo).
They wander hungry through the plantations as though in a daze, looking for food and thus eat the palm seedlings. Palm oil plantation workers are paid to kill orangutans either before a forest is cleared or, if they see any in a plantation. Either way, it is totally illegal to harass, harm or kill any orangutans.
Please write to the Malaysian Palm Oil Council and protest with your signature against the slaughter of orangutans:
Please write to the Malaysian Palm Oil Council and protest with your signature against the slaughter of orangutans:
If you wish to support the rainforest defenders on Borneo directly, please make your donation here:
https://www.rainforest-rescue.org/donate/90
Many thanks and best regards,
David Vollrath
Rainforest Rescue (Rettet den Regenwald e.V.)
[email protected]
www.rainforest-rescue.org
http://www.facebook.com/rainforest2rescue
Knighthood, beatification
A respected commentator has foreshadowed that the next Salt anointing could be a knighthood or beatification
Good news! Andrew Mcleod leaving Australia
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/the-visions-splendid-but-now-times-up-20120120-1qae7.html#ixzz1k3gxjzVQ
Andrew Mcleod of the Committee for Melbourne is leaving Australia. Going to London to work for Rio Tinto. Guess he's going to kick some indigenous ass for them instead of for the Committee for Melbourne. Unless he's taking his committee with him. Wouldn't that be good news, if the pseudo charities and pompous builders went to work in a copper mine at pacific islander rates and stopped bothering the rest of us.
Sterilisation is more ethical than abortion
Sterilisation is more ethical than abortion.
The above personal attack by 'Focis' is trolling.
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia
Bernard Salt the new Page 3 Murdoch girl
The egregious Salt is now Mr Murdoch's new page three girl. Going by the video in the candobetter article I'm commenting on, that doesn't say much about the Murdoch rags. I mean it looks as if Salt is now going to play the role of Emily Post. How can the public swallow this much offense? Who the hell still reads the Murdoch news?
A bunch of old wrinklies, I guess, who don't have the internet and whose brains have fossilised.
"Demographer Salt joins paper", The Australian, 21 January 2012
BERNARD Salt, Australia's leading commentator on demographic and social trends, joins the paper as social editor.
In this new role he will analyse and report on the implications of the extensive economic and social change reshaping the nation.
A partner at KPMG with more than 20 years' experience in demographic analysis, Salt has been a columnist with The Australian since 2002 and has become well-known across the country through his public speaking engagements and his regular commentary on television and radio...." etc etc
The rest is here: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/demographer-bernard-salt-joins-the-australian/story-e6frg996-1226249814326
Justice and Fair Play
What's the big deal about justice and fair play? Everybody defines these to mean "support my group". Why don't you get more specific? You seem to be one of the brightest in the eco-movement - if you can't figure out how to clearly say what you are proposing, probably nobody can. If you can't, we just sail off the edge of the world.
Tim Murray
I'm really astonished to find someone able to make humor out of the Sierra Club, as a former XCom member. It had no humor inside itself, just very serious attitudes. I'm so happy your mom didn't abort you.
This is very frightening. In
This is very frightening. In the guise of saving money to help the environment, this is the first step to centralised control - by WHOM???? The programmers of course. Who are the real programmers though? Does the android also give press interviews? Can it be sacked should the Sierra Club be seen to degenerate environmental issues? It will be interesting to see if people continue to support them with a robot in place. This is just the beginning of them taking over our planet ... a veritable nightmare!
Populated Self-Delusion
I think the very idea of population stability or decline is unthinkable to most Americans. America's self-image, like that of Australia, is that of a young, empty land rich with promise just waiting to be filled. This is a delusion because the reality is that America is a solidly middle-aged, considerably overpopulated nation who has already used up many of its best resources (and Australia is rapidly headed in the same direction).
The Sierra Club and other movements abandoned any policy of population stabilization because the very idea of American population stabilization is deeply disturbing to most Americans. Those within the movement who were willing to tell Americans what they wanted to hear (that population stabilization isn't necessary) were able to garner the most influence and gain control.
Eco-propaganda invites contra-terms
Agree NIMBY.
Here's some contra-terms...
smart sterilization
planet parasite
darkside ecologist
eco-bulldozing
eco-arson
bushphobia
forest home invasion
kit kat orphans
monsanto scientist
strategic incompetence
stihl forestry
wutbürger
...I am sure there are many others out there underutilised against the growthist propaganda.
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia
Cities are never FULL
A robot that spits out "green" buzzwords and oxymorons such as "smart growth" is what we have already in even the best of our environmentally "friendly" organisations and politicians. "Sustainable growth" itself is an oxymoron. The well-being of nations and their people is almost invariably judged by the rate of economic growth rather than living standards, food security and even basics like housing.
In an announcement from Minister for Population Tony Burke and Brad Hazzard NSW Minister for Planning and Infrastructure, the Australian and NSW governments have signed off on a program which paves the way for 30 years of "sustainable growth" in western Sydney. They are trying to work out how environmental values can be best protected while allowing "sustainable development"!
At the same time, they are offering a strategic assessment that reduces red tape by considering federal and state environmental planning issues in a single assessment process and give greater upfront clarity to developers, landholders, planners, industry, government and the community. Surely this is a contradiction, wrapped up in oxymoron buzzwords?
It's the same old destructive urban spawl and environmental bulldozing and pollution under clean, "green" meaningless expressions.
http://www.environment.gov.au/minister/burke/2011/mr20111222.html
At the same time, the housing "shortages" are set to worsen. Australia has a strong population growth that will continue to outstrip housing supply and the shortfall could reach 500,000 by 2029.
http://www.news.com.au/money/property/housing-shortage-set-to-get-worse/...
Instead of cities ever being FULL, it's simply called a "shortage", and growth will continue but it is simply labeled "sustainable". It's assumed that "planning" will provide for ongoing high immigration levels.
The business lobby won’t acknowledge any of the problems of growth; they are focused on the total size of the economy, a crude measure. They don’t look at GDP growth per head.
Climate change, rising fuel costs, water shortages, etc etc. Experts are warning Australia's food producers have a new crisis to consider: Food Insecurity. It's just another political issue, an induced "shortage" rather than an essential!
Human sterilisation is world's best practice!
I challenge anyone to conceive (pun intended) a better overpopulation solution than human sterilsation on ethical, effectiveness, cost, rapid results and minimal if any suffering grounds.
Human sterilisation is simply world's best practice!
The only downside beyond denying selfish perpetuation of family lineage, is broody frustration.
What alternative curbs the human pathogenic trend!
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia
Do we have to crash? No but we have to add and subtract!
Tony, in rely to your January 9th, 2012 post: Do we have to crash?
2 billion global population came from David Pimentel and he meant everyone lived on a farm, using animals to plow, heated with wood burning stoves, lit with candle lamps, worked 10 hour days with hand tools, and no one lived in cities.
If you want to live like middle class people in developed countries, after fossil fuels are gone, the number is much less than 100 million. Based on in place hydroelectric generation the number is 30-40 million. Just for the record, do the numbers. You will find you could not power that kind of life with windmills on an isolated island. Solar thermal or voltaic, bio mass, title, and geo thermal all produce less net energy than wind mills.
As to how we can get to a population of 30-40 million before we run out of cheap oil and coal and gas, (and suffer civilization collapse and die-off) there are two ways --- genocide, or -- a very low number (~500,000) of births each year.
This attains a global population of 40 million in 80 years. At which point the 500,000 births allows 2 children per woman.
The 500,000 birth plan would be implemented by grassroots social consensus, or law that gives out that number of permits each year in a lottery. Yes the implementation is tough. But at least the numbers add up.
Jack Alpert [email protected] More at: www.skil.org
Titanic parallels
There are parallels of course with population growth and big profits. The Titanic was not nearly full when the disaster happened. She was only carrying about half of her full passenger capacity of 2,435 people due to a combination of the low season and ongoing transport disruption caused by a coal miners' strike in the UK. The death toll has been put at between 1,490 and 1,635 people. Less than a third of those aboard Titanic survived the disaster. Some survivors died shortly afterwards. Exact numbers are unclear due to changes in the passenger list, and some people used aliases along with their real names - for some reason. The death toll was designed to be even higher!
The over-confidence in technology, in man-made vessels, and the drive for progress and profits, is of course what is happening today with big corporations determining government policies. The lure of wealth and economic growth through more money being transacted, and more people as consumers, is over-riding common sense and natural global declines.
Our "life boats" of clean air, fresh water, food producing land, balanced and functioning ecosystems, clean and vitalizing oceans, vegetation, natural diversity are being consumed and engulfed by overpopulation. The decline and extintion of species should be a warning to the world that our planet is dying.
An economy based on perpetual economic growth, via population growth, is fatalistic and clearly can't continue. It's about trading long term survival for short term economic benefits, at our peril.
The lessons of the Titanic and the Costa Concordia have still to be learned. Cities are being "planned" to maximize profits and populations rather than being naturally balanced and evolved in a human-friendly manner.
Addressing climate change without population is futile
Putting a "price on carbon" is a political solution to climate change. How can anthropogenic climate change be addressed without addressing population growth, the cause of emissions? Populations have grown rapidly and exponentially since cheap energy and technological advancements during the industrial revolution.
The carbon age of growth must end. If "green" groups and climate change activist are supported by big businesses and donations, their hands are tied.
Putting a "price on carbon" while we have population growth as an inherent component of our economy means any efforts to reduce carbon emissions with "green" technology are inhibited by not only trying to replace existing sources of energy, but trying outstrip the needs of a growing population.
Jullia Gillard and her government can now sit back and say they have done their bit about climate change, using market forces, and continue with business as usual.
If it fails to reduce our emissions, and it will, they can blame market forces, not lack of realistic support for alternative energy sources. The costs will simply be passed onto the public, who are already facing steep power increases due to population growth.
Our emissions will keep increasing while we keep adding consumers. Trying to address climate change without addressing their source is futile - a non-effective political measure. Paying more for energy and using less will make individuals "feel good" about doing their bit for future generations.
The Greens and church leaders who emphasize "social justice" and "peace" at the expense of a real environmental and climate change agenda are propagating double standards and will undermine their integrity and credibility.
Obvious analogy
Mark Brimble, the surviving husband of Dianne Brimble who died aboard a cruise ship in 2002 is now an advocate for people on cruise ships and some sort of watch dog or spokesperson on safety on these ships. He made the point on the main TV news last night that the Costa Concordia was carrying too many passengers which magnified the difficulty of rescuing passengers from this disaster. I couldn't help thinking that "Overloading Australia" (to borrow *Mark O'Connor's term), carries similar risks but far more people are involved and as far as I know, continent Australia has no life boats. Australia is an infertile land with unreliable rainfall where we hope to survive with an ever greater population in an energy constrained future. Meantime as far as the government is concerned it's *"stacks on the mill, more on still". Those in power now should be held responsible for the inevitable disaster, but they may be suffering like the rest of us if they stick around.
*Overloading Australia" by Mark O'Connor-see his website http://www.australianpoet.com/overloading.html
* sporting term and children's game
What I take from marine disasters
The marine disasters which carry the most relevant lessons for immigration reductionists are the ferry disasters which have taken place over the last century. At first blush, media accounts have always attributed the disasters as having been the result of their being far "too many" passengers for what the ships were designed to carry. But during the inquest, it has been typically revealed that this most obvious reason was not the critical one. The decisive factor was that the weight of cargo---human or otherwise----shifted from the centre of gravity, inducing a rocking motion known as "slosh dynamics". The lack of secure bulkheads (borders) to prevent this shift allowed overloaded vessels to capsize.
Ferries, by definition, have a deck that is unimpeded by barriers. Thus, even one inch of seawater on the car deck of the Heritage of Free Enterprise (or the doomed ferry off Estonia in the Baltic) was enough to destabilize and sink the vessel. In the first famous ferry disaster off Chicago in the late 19th century, all it took was the ambition of passengers on the top deck to view a regatta from one side of the ship, and it capsized. In the case of the Titanic, the bulkheads were to be compared with an ice cube tray. They did not extend high enough to prevent the water iof the first three compartments from spilling over to the next , so the sheer weight at the front of the vessel made the ship's fate a done deal. Pumps could not keep up.
When naval ships go into action, or are hit by a torpedo, the captain's first order is to "seal" the hatches, in order to prevent the migration of water from one compartment to the next. But what about the people who are trapped in a flooding compartment? Don't we have a moral obligation to them? My uncle, who served on a destroyer in the Royal Canadian Navy during the war told me the protocol. "You secure the hatches, listen to their screams, and for the sake of the ship, you do nothing--and you thank God you weren't in their section of the ship."
That, my friends, is Lifeboat Ethics in a nutshell.
Ships of state can be run by incompetent or reckless captains, like our Captain Stephen Harper, hell bent to pursue growth full steam ahead. But we can remain afloat for a while longer if we secure our hatches and reinforce our bulkheads. Migration is NOT, as Green Party leader Elizabeth May contends, a "trivial" issue. Even the 3% of the global population that is on the move can be and has been very destabilizing to the nations that receive them---like that inch of water on the car deck. When the perfect storm of population growth, resource depletion and climate change hits us, that 3% will balloon to 6% or 16%. The global ship is vastly overloaded, but we must try to ensure that the weight does not shift to that part of the ship which multiply its impact.
If you are ethically troubled by the fact that you have a place in the national lifeboat while billions of shipwrecked swimmers do not, Garrett Hardin had the tonic for your guilty conscience. By all means, trade places with one of the swimmers. Zero net migration is acceptable protocol. Or would capsizing Australia (or Canada or America) with compassion and open hatches serve the cause of social justice for all?
Tim
Bathurst Rally kind to kangas this year!
I'm really pleased to post this link to an article that shows that Bathurst car rally has altered its bad attitude towards kangaroos that caused it to cull 140 poor creatures last year, when we wrote the above article. Congratulations Bathurst Regional Council for changing your mind and showing decency to wildlife.
'Bathurst Regional Council came under fire in 2009 for culling 140 kangaroos in the interest of track safety ahead of that year’s Bathurst 1000, although it was later cleared of any wrongdoing.
Now the council has a policy of zero cullings and has turned to other methods of controlling the large kangaroo population on the mountain during race meetings.
That’s good news for the dozens of roos that have been seen on the Mount just weeks out from the Bath-urst 12 Hour from February 24 to 26.
Acting general manager Bob Roach yesterday said council would put in place a number of procedures to ensure the safety of drivers during the 12 Hour, including additional fencing and deploying extra staff to appropriate areas of the track to control the movement of kangaroos away from the circuit.
“These staff stay in place for the duration of the race,” Mr Roach said.
“That’s how we control them now.”'
More at:
http://www.westernadvocate.com.au/news/local/news/general/reprieve-for-roos/2421873.aspx
The US in Irak
Mr Wooldridge,
Very well put. I feel quite as Tim does.
Craig Dilworth
Growthists are 'buildophiles'
It's time to seriously defend home.
It's time to label growth lobbyists, developers as 'buildophiles'. The term has a nasty ring to it and the more it is used it will catch on unwelcomingly to the target.
I have just concocted it and I plan to use it and it is free to use, unlike those selfish American pseudodemics who try to patent every friggin term they concoct.
Go forth, use it liberally....
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia
Straightening out BANANAS?
The naked growth lobbyists are extremely powerful and self-centred in their interests. This is about "fighting back" democratic opinion tides, and public opinion by vested interest groups. The constraints of growth are evident to the public, and there are no "counter arguments" to endorse population growth. Nothing can "sway" against the tide. It's the public who are the victims of all this malignant growth.
What's needed is some common-sense, and realistic evaluations of where our society is heading. The property Council and developers are not responsible for fixing mortgage stress, homelessness, debt, crowding, infrastructure shortages, the exploitation of our suburbs and lack of full time employment.
What measured, valued responses to "big Australia" are there? Countering the "negativism" will be hard to find against the "extreme" views that would cap our population to justify ongoing population growth. Governments are elected to represent the people of Australia, not just a few elite. What are the benefits of limitless growth? What ammunition will they have to justify the costs and impacts of population growth? It's all about profits, property development, increasing costs, taxes, lower living standards and debt. Property developers and banks have far too much power, and they will have a hard time manipulating the public to change current opinion.
There are limits to growth that are being denied. How can it be otherwise, no matter how hard the growth lobby "fight back"!!
Future generations won't have the "benefits" of growth that these growth advocates have. If there is a sway of public opinion against all the "developments" and "planning", it's a genuine concern. It can't simply and conveniently be turned for the sake of a few.
Funding for infrastructure comes from the public purse, and already families and struggling to survive. Society must evolve towards a sustainable, and liveable, future. We can't continue to pave our land with concrete at our present rate and destroy the integrity of our landscape, ecological systems and biodiversity.
This is about trying to quash public opinion and disguise the obvious - that our population growth is unsustainable and already Australia is overloaded with people.
Land development has no rational economic purpose
CSI wrote: "They genuinely believe rapid population growth has made the average Australian much wealthier."
Why presume that developers are unaware of the harm that their industry causes to the welfare of other Australian?
Surely any developer who thinks about it for more than five minutes would have to understand that the necessary population growth can only make the living standards of existing Australians worse on average, particularly when undertaken in the chaotic fashion that it now is.
What are the residents of these new developments going to make or grow that they can sell to other parts of the country or overseas?
Because if they don't the wealth necessary for them to live can only come from the wealth currently shared amongst existing Australian residents.
With Australia's manufacturing sector in decline since Whitlam began abolishing protectionism in 1975, there will almost certainly be at most a small fraction of the manufacturing jobs necessry to kep the new residents employed. Housing construction will cover a great deal of arable land so it is hard to imagine many of the new residents being employed to grow additional food.
Ultimately most residents in the new developments, if they are to be employed at all, can only be employed in non-wealth-producing service sector roles - finance, banking, real estate, retail, etc.
Developer's Mindset
First off do these developers really worry that the tide of public opinion is shifting against them? That their industry is under threat? Most of the public is either apathetic or supports them. They have government at every level in their pocket, to the point where its a rare, headline making event when a development is actually rejected. I think they know this, but publically admitting this looks like arrogance. Its always good to pretend to be the underdog, even when you're not.
But lets look at the developers mindset. They genuinely believe rapid population growth has made the average Australian much wealthier. Its certainly made them wealthier. Their pet economists tell them its made everyone else wealthier. Whats good for them must be good for every Australian.
They fully believe this rapid population growth must be continued until at least the end of this century. Why? Because this is supposed to be the century when the "undeveloped world" catches up with the "developed world". Which means massive economic growth dwarfing even that of the 20th century.
Rapid population growth would allow Australia to fully partake in this boom, or so they believe. But of course there is a very real possibility that before too long economic growth as we have known it is going to end, due principally to energy shortages. In this scenario a growing population makes the average Australian poorer. But they can't even conceive of this happening.
Poverty and overpopulation go hand in hand
These authors seem to think that we humans can transcend ecological and environmental limits with impunity. Protection and conservation of our planet's natural resources, ecological functions, integrity, biodiversity and all it's generous services in supporting human populations must over-ride the concerns of its dependents. While we have overpopulation, food shortages, lack of fresh water, growth beyond economic benefits, territorial conflicts, land degradation and species extinctions, "social justice" and "human rights" can't be assured. Once humanity becomes a teaming mass and a plague of numbers, we descend into mayhem and confusion and anarchy. Each person has less rights, and less political power.
Human rights will only decline and be compromised by human overpopulation. It will mean increasing wars, conflict, clashes of ideologies, increased predatory grabs for land and natural resources, and individual human lives will have less importance.
Nations and communities and the economies that support them are a sub-set of ecological functions and environmental integrity. Poverty and overpopulation go hand in hand. The smallest nations are generally the most affluent, and have the highest standards of living. They are able to plan for their future instead of descending into perpetual debt and be forced to cope with continual "shortages" and the impediments of perpetual growth. This is due to good resource management, investment in knowledge and innovation, and strong traditions and patriotism.
Banks face a home loan suit
Australia's banks could be facing a massive new class action over allegations that their mortgage lending practices have put thousands of families in severe financial stress or at risk of losing their homes.
http://www.theage.com.au/business/banks-face-home-loan-suit-20120114-1q0...
Housing is a basic human need, and access to it is a basic human right. Up to 300,000 mortgage holders would be eligible to participate in the class action, which is expected to focus on first home buyers and lower-income households who accepted loans since the onset of the global financial crisis.
They are now under severe financial hardship due to because they have been lent too much money. They are under mortgage stress.
Not only should the banks be facing allegations of corruption and abuse of profiting from a housing rort, but the whole pro-growth pushing capitalists. This includes the land speculators, developers, State government agencies that profit from growth, and the economists who promote their theories of perpetual growth and prosperity. Housing has been extorted as a prime economic commodity instead of primarily a provision for families and communities.
Australia's status of the "Lucky Country" and high rate of home ownership and affordable housing has been exploited and sold overseas to the fullest extent. We now have the highest cost housing in the world, yet the growth pushers are still planning 30 more years of insidious growth. In one generation we have descended from the "Lucky Country" to one of great debt due to cannibalistic policies. Now housing is over and above the ability of average workers to pay for.
Australia's labour shortage a myth
One regularly sees claims put out by the growth lobby that Australia suffers a terrible shortage of workers, and that only high immigration is keeping the country afloat. This has long been a lie, and now Crispin Hull, former editor of The Canberra Times, has nailed it. In reality Australia suffers increasingly high unemployment.
Why is the claim of labour shortage made? Perhaps because it suits the vested interests of employers generally. They know that if they can persuade the government to provide them with a surplus of workers, the market price of labour will fall, and they can keep wages down. Also, many employers need skilled workers but don't want to pay the world market price for skilled labour (or the cost of apprenticeships).
Imported workers often come pre-trained, and because they are getting into a richer or safer or less over-crowded country (Australia) these workers are prepared initially to work for less. Also, since they can't access the dole for two years, they have little choice but to take what employers offer.
Throw in those businesses that profit in other ways from population growth (e.g. developers, property speculators, and major retailers who benefit simply by having more customers) and you have a powerful array of vested interests to fund various fronts and "foundations" that regularly spruik the need to increase our labour force.
However they do not offer to cover the infrastructure costs of these extra people -- at least $250,000 per person. Those costs they pass on to the public, along with the cost of paying the social security of the marginally less skilled or attractive Australian worker whom they sack or fail to employ because they can get a recent immigrant to work marginally harder or for a little less money.
Little wonder Hull comments, "More fuss should be made over the way big industry promotes immigration and high population for short-term gains."
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/opinion/editorial/general/workers-go-begging-as-unemployment-numbers-dont-add-up/2419841.aspx?storypage=0
Not laughing - angry at growth lobby antics
I'm not laughing. I am very very angry at these men who have set themselves up to pervert our democracy and steal from us our quality of life.
Curse Hilmer, Hawke and Keating
A thousand curses on Fred Hilmer and all his children and their children's children for doing this to our country. Ditto for Keating and Hawke. I weep.
Migrant workers dumb down the workplace
Migrants are more employable than Australian-born job seekers, because they have lower expectations - income, workplace conditions, treatment - these are typically lower standards overseas from whence they came than in Australia.
Migrants are more desperate to get work because they have less choice than locals - less access to a network of support and perhaps no access to unemployment benefits (below the breadline as they are). So migrants get the jobs because they are cheaper workers and accept more crap in the workplace.
As a consequence, employers know they can save on labour costs and have less effort to retain migrants instead of locals. The workplace becomes dominated by cheaper foreign labour that expects less. The workplace is thus dumbed down. The quality is also dumbed down. But then corporate and government employers are focused on the short term, so in the short term they benefit. In the long term the country is dumbed down.
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia
'Fair competition' advocate uses citizenship to sell 'education'
I note that University of NSW Vice Chancellor Fred Hilmer, who is peddling this scheme, is the same Fred Hilmer who was commissioned by the Hawke/Keating Labour Government to chair the National Competition Policy Review Committee, which led to the introduction of National Competition Policy in 1995. At the time the report (http://www.ncc.gov.au/images/uploads/Hilmer-001.pdf - pdf 42M) was released it was greeted by our newsmwedia with sycophantic adulation and was subject to almost no informed critical scrutiny. It become the retrospective justification for Paul Keating having foisted his extreme "free market" dogma on the Australian public without any elctoral mandate in 1983 and was to become the dogma with which all Australian Governments thereafter were expected to comply --- or have hell to pay. Essentially, government was to privatise as many wealth-producing and and service providing entities as possible wealth-producing and service proving entities as possible and, as far as possible, not regulate the "free market".
That, in order to give the Australian tertiary education industry a competitive advantage over foreign universities, Hilmer is prepared to offer prospective foreign students a still easier path to citizenship as well as paid employment denied to many Australian residents, reveals what a sham Hilmer's professed belief in fair competition always was.
Immigration juggernaut is frightening
The people behind the immigration jugganaut seem to be psychopaths or so wrapped up in their own short term ambitions that they are prepared to destroy our country.
"UNIVERSITIES will be allowed to entice foreign students with quick visa approvals and the right to two years of work after graduation as part of a reform package to stem further losses of overseas student income.
Immigration Minister Chris Bowen and Tertiary Education Minister Chris Evans said yesterday they would act on a remarkably frank report on Australia's education export industry by former NSW politician Michael Knight.
By mid-next year, foreign students keen on an Australian university degree will have access to a new, fast-track visa system.
Students from supposedly high-risk countries such as China will no longer have to show $75,000-plus in a bank account to prove they can cover fees and living costs. Instead, as with students from developed countries such as the US, they will be able to simply declare they can support themselves.
Onerous financial requirements have been bitterly criticised as an overreaction to past failings when migration was the motor of education, especially in private colleges."
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/visa-rule-reforms-give-unversitieis-a-lifeline/story-fn59niix-1226144082762
The reason for unleashing this likely flood of people who will never go home and who will take places from Australian students and keep housing prices high is supposed to be to save our universities. Our universities survived for nearly 200 years without this kind of prostitution of our tax-funded services.
Torture
Looking at and listening to the clip was torture and I don't know how this creep can sleep soundly at night. His plan is to pay a team to issue pro- growth propaganda throughout the media in order to brain wash the Australian people and with the aim of changing a 20/80 ratio against growth into a 45/55 one or better to allay politicians’ fears about doing just what the people do not presently want. Salt acknowledges that individuals would not be able to do it and that it requires a paid army, yet he derisively talks of articulate anti development retirees "with too much time on their hands" interested in a "power kick" and who would easily swing to any cause. It would be a real coup for the growth lobby harness the energy and talents of these mature aged people that BS sees as looking for a cause. They may even be able to get a good stream of Bull Shit going for less than the suggested $2-3 million per year! Instead he says to give up on them and work on the young people.
I noted only one brief reference as to how growth and development benefit the recalcitrant 80% of people who are against it. It was reference to superannuation a sort of never- never distant hope to be financially catered for in retirement. He did say the young would appreciate the employment opportunities of a growing population but does a larger pool of labour increase employment opportunities?
The time for words seems to be over. Who can spend their lives arguing against the rubbish that paid prostitutes put our in favour of demolishing the cities we know and building higher denser ones, covering our countryside with endless suburbs, killing our wildlife and burying our farmland in tar and cement ? It's a time and energy issue, not an issue of who has the brain power to counter their predictable propaganda.
See no truth, hear no truth, speak no truth.....
We have an overpopulation problem and in the face of that problem deniers and ‘business as usual’ enthusiasts often say cavalierly, “Have the courage to do nothing.” That ideas of this kind are ever associated with word courage is the height of dishonesty and duplicity. Such expressions are also the most profound examples of self-serving thought and individual cowardice I can imagine. That such a point of view is broadcast by the mainstream media is a sign to us of its wrongheadedness.
Let us not fail for another year to examine and report on extant research of human population dynamics/human overpopulation. The refusal of many too many experts to assume their responsibilities to science and perform their duties to humanity could be one of the most colossal mistakes in human history. Such woefully inadequate behavior by deniers, as is evident in the collusion of many too many experts, will soon enough be replaced with objective observations and truthful expressions from those in possession of clear vision, intellectual honesty and moral courage.
Why not acknowledge science regarding human overpopulation and, by so doing, take a path toward sustainability? If we keep repeating the mistakes made in the past by denying science, nothing new and different can happen. Without an open acknowledgement of the root cause(s) of what is ailing the human family, how are we to move forward to raise awareness of the global predicament? Once awareness is raised among a critical mass of people, it becomes possible to organize for the purpose of formulating policies and actionable programs. Denial has kept us and continues to keep us from gaining momentum needed to address and overcome the human-driven challenges that currently threaten human well being and environmental health.
Most Australian jobs going to immigrants
George Megalogenis, Migrants claim bulk of the jobs, The Australian, 11 January 2012
"MIGRANTS are officially more employable than Australian-born jobseekers, claiming 81,000 new jobs over the past year while 38,000 locals lost their own jobs.
The British, Malaysians and Filipinos are the main immigrant groups that enjoy lower unemployment rates, while New Zealanders and Indians have higher labour force participation rates than the Australian-born.
A detailed analysis of the Bureau of Statistics jobs data shows that while immigrants account for less than 30 per cent of the labour force, they have claimed more than half the jobs created since the start of 2010.
Rather than struggling to fit in, as opposition citizenship spokeswoman Teresa Gambaro suggests, newly arrived immigrants are going straight to work and helping keep the economy growing. The figures for November, which are not seasonally adjusted, place the unemployment rate for Australian-born at 5 per cent and the overseas-born at 4.8 per cent."
My comment: I bet they are being paid less than Australians. This is a race to the bottom. And the Murdoch press has a big responsibility for high immigration and the destruction of our industrial protection laws by encouraging Mr Howard.
Population crash inevitable?
I don't know about the likelihood or not of a population crash. But look at the graph of population numbers in the past couple of centuries. This is exactly the pattern what you would see in any animal which just gained access to a new food resource. Ignore all the clutter of economics, philosophies, politics and just look at that graph.
For all our intelligence we are behaving just like any other animal. And when any animal grows like this, there is always some kind of crash afterwards. Some people point out that the growth rate is declining, but in other animals near the peak of growth you see the same sort of decline, but its never enough to prevent the collapse.
Trolls and Spruikers
Wow, this is a real eye opener, though I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised.
I always knew the real estate industry was corrupt but this is taking things to a whole new level.
Any chance of getting this out to the masses via Today Tonight or A Current Affair etc?
I know those shows appeal to the lowest common denominator sometimes but they reach a wide audience.
People need to be made aware of how much lies and propaganda they're being fed by the industry.
Kudos to candobetter.net and AustralianPropertyForum.com for bringing this to public attention! Nice work!
D Mitchell.
This film is dynamite - BSE, childhood leukemia, ionizing rad
I should add to my hasty remark in the first comment that the main subject of investigation is the harmfulness of ionizing radiation to living cells.
The detail and the names make the film's contribution enormously important to what is happening in Japan today.
Busby also shows how criminally negligent committees reviewing material on Mad Cow Disease and childhood leukeimia have been. He names names, some of them on the editorial board of the Royal Society, some of them still in high positions in institutes of epidemiology, and those institutes in receipt of public and charitable funding.
GetUp has destroyed archives, still wanting your money
Personally I have never been impressed by GetUp.
It was too well-funded from the start to be a grassroots organisation and I know it ignored suggestion after suggestion to include population numbers, going years back. All their campaigns are just stuff that the mainstream media already allows to run because they know it is useless or it serves their purpose. As far as I can see it is a way of siphoning money away from the community by giving them false hope. GetUp also takes names and contact details from contributors and so it has a record of who thinks what. It seems to me that its major function is as a polling device, to feed back information about public concerns, demographics and activists to the corporates and the political majors. I would not give them my real details.
I was incensed when I tried to follow the link for your campaign for Direct Democracy todayand found all the archives of suggestions destroyed, but still the organisation which is obviously quite rich, is asking for my money.
GetUp has destroyed the record of your campaign suggestion and of all the other campaign suggestions. What an insult to the people who proposed them!
If you go to this link for your suggestion for Swiss style democracy, you are told that the account has been closed:
http://suggest.getup.org.au/forums/60819-getup-campaign-suggestions/suggestions/2150467-changing-the-australian-constitution-to-enable-sw
"Campaign suggestions
As of December 2011, GetUp's suggest tool will no longer be operating. Thanks to everyone who has been a part of such colourful discussions!
Stay tuned in 2012 for new ways to get involved with progressive issues and bigger, better tools for taking campaigning into your own hands.
Want to be the first to hear about GetUp's new innovations? Drop us a line on [email protected]. Include your name and your whereabouts - we'll keep you in the loop!"
Yeh, sure. And I bet they will include a bunch of corporates and pollies in that loop as well, with the information about public opinion that you and I provide.
Most people want to breed for their own benefit
Yes, an incremental population reduction would be better, but there is no sign of that.
Most people want to breed for their own benefit - especially developing nations - India, China, Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh.
It is a species trait to procreate and humans are the most efficient and have most capacity, a high base (7 billion) and are culturally encouraged to breed.
Australia even had an official $5000/baby bonus up until a few months ago, and with it one of the highest breeding rates - especially from immigrants.
Top 10 Extreme Breeding Nations
Nations doing catch up breeding - Note: Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as well as African nations Niger, Zambia and Uganda are absolutely going for it at over 3% annual growth! Don't send these countries encouragement aid! Send them conditional aid - family planning support!
But also the United States is having the greatest pathogenic impact - high population compounded by high per capita consumption.
As for taking local control, the strong/rich helping the weak/poor - our historic record to date is not good. A litmus test will be how the 'Occupy Movement' fairs...
The big problem is convincing people and governments that human overpopulation is a problem - economists are winning the propaganda war with their theory that population growth is good for economic demand.
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia
I'm not convinced about population crash...
No, I do not believe that we HAVE TO crash. I'm saying that with the current socio-economic establishment - the system and its "leaders" - we WILL crash, but I do not believe that is the only possible future, and I think a slow population reduction to 2-3 billion is still a possibility. How to get there as a practical 'exercise' starts by throwing out current regimes and socio-political ideas, taking local control, and having the strong/rich help the weak/poor for a change. Whatever the agenda may be once that becomes achievable would be basically up to the localities, but it is not hard to imagine 10 or 12 basic principles that would be applicable just about everywhere. BTW, I think the current situation is serious enough to be openly contemplating a 'revolution' of this nature and would be happy to discuss any of this here or elsewhere. Basically, if enough people want it, they can have it.
Busby on peer review - amusing, awful but true
Great film! Very interesting - and not only on the subject of nuclear power. On the subject of academic competition and the failure of peer review due to a variety of institutionalised problems that we all suspected. Thanks, Tony.
Whaling is a cultural sport
Whaling is a sport. It is not scientific. It is not a primary industry because there is stuff all market for whale meat and the only way it is sold is because the Japanese Government subsidises the cost. Whaling is a cultural sport only and a backward cultural one at that. It is all about game.
The Japanese are traditionally a patriarchal society. Japanese males violating Australian waters for foreign whales for sport is consistent with Japanese male cultural history of violating foreign women they euphemistically called 'comfort women'.
Such Japanese culture is backward and foreign and has no place in Australian waters and the Australia Whale Sanctuaries that Australia is custodian for.
Check map of: Australia Whale Sanctuaries
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia
Pathogenic rights?
Yeah, it's like as a pathogen we're pleading pathogenic rights!
It's up there with psychopathic rights, pedophile rights and sadomasochism rights.
Save the pathogen!
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia
Japan's whaling is illegal
The Environmental Protect Biodiversity Conservation Act 1990, among other things, prohibits actions that, both directly and indirectly, are likely to have a significant impact on the environment. The Act also establishes the Australian Whale Sanctuary, which includes waters of the 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone adjacent to the Australian Antarctic Territory.
The Australian Whale Sanctuary corresponds to Australia's Exclusive Economic Zone.
On Saturday, Sea Shepherd helped three members of the environment group Forest Rescue board the Shonan Maru 2 near the Western Australian coast. The boarding took place in an area of waters where Australia’s Contiguous Zone (CZ) and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) overlap. Australia can only police the customs, fiscal, immigration and quarantine laws that apply in Australian territory and Territorial Sea (which reaches to 12 nautical miles from the coast). In the EEZ Australia can regulate fishing (and whaling), other resource activities (such as mining), and can take action to control pollution. But it cannot extend Australian law generally or exercise jurisdiction over foreign ships for any reason it pleases.
The EPBC Act also establishes the Australian Whale Sanctuary, which includes waters of the 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone adjacent to the AAT, and Regulations under the Act specify approach distances and appropriate behaviour for aircraft and vessels in the vicinity of cetaceans.
Japan's whaling is under the smoke-screen of being "scientific research" which they and we know is not valid. It's phoney as whales can better be studied without being lethal.
Japan’s whaling activities are contrary to its international obligations, in particular, the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling. Despite Australia repeatedly calling on Japan to cease its illegal whaling activities, Japan has refused to do so. That is why the Australian Government has taken this case in the International Court of Justice.
The Gillard government has slammed the actions of three anti-whaling protesters as "unacceptable" and warned that others who carry out similar protests will be "charged and convicted". However, the government should be preventing crimes in our near oceans, and illegal whaling, not condemning the actions of law-enforcers trying to do what they should be doing!
Nothing ethical about overpopulation
There's nothing nice or politically correct about any way to address human overpopulation. People are cautious about suggestion voluntary birth control. China's one child per family is something forced onto them, and controlled through abortions.
The general trend is to accommodate it, and expect our land to produce more food, and technology to provide better services. Few leaders or thinkers have the courage to offer real ways to stop humans continuing in their pathway to ecological overshoot.
Nature will eventually limit our numbers, but that won't be nice either. The proposeal to sterilize people via drinking water is of course abhorent, but Tigerquoll has a point. The consequences are also abhorent.
We need a reality check. Australian government still has an appetite for population growth, despite our rising costs of living, obvious economic constraints with the cost of housing the highest in the world, our environmental/species destruction and the cost of our lifestyles adding to our ecological footprints. They imagine that all our growth can continue, and prosperity will follow. On the contrary, Australia is being downgraded as a generic, global, international non-specific resource. So many people are born overseas, and our culture, our common sense of being, our history, our unique identity, and heritage - social and natural - are being eradicated.
Natural vessels keep being filled but eventually they must be declared FULL. However, when it comes to human numbers, any natural resource, and our planet, is thought of as being infinite.
Yes we have to crash because we have become a pathogen
Yes we have to population 'crash' because at 7,000,000,000 we have become Earth's Pathogen.
If it were another pathogenic species, we would be spraying it!
Read more: 'Human sterilisation via global drinking Water
:@
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia
Actually I'm quite serious
Actually I'm quite serious and I too encourage debate.
When one compares the implications of current out-of-control exponential global human overpopulation with involuntary/indiscriminate sterilisation, the latter is far more ethical a solution.
The only downside is clucky-frustration - couples not able to procreate.
Study history and compare past alternatives of mass reduction in human population - none is ethical since each involves horrendous suffering.
Why is sterilising humans involuntarily via their drinking water unacceptable?
It is decidedly NON-violent - that is the point!
When human population reaches 35 billion would your opinion change?
When human population reaches 350 billion would your opinion change?
When human population reaches 3500 billion would your opinion change?
Are we compromised here by ethnocentric relativism?
Step back from this proposed solution to the seriousness of the problem. Then try to suggest an alternative.
The problem is truly worse left unchecked than my proposed solution.
I invite ethical alternatives, but I have not found one yet!
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia
Do we have to crash?
Right. But do we have to crash to get from the current 7 billion to the sustainable 2 billion or whatever population size you think would be sustainable? (You do not seem to think 2 billion is a good idea, or is it just the notion that we can take our sweet time in getting there that bothers you?) No, we do not have to crash to get there. We can have a soft landing by something like 2040 - 2100, if we really want it. BUT NOT WITH THE CURRENT POLITICAL/ECONOMIC ESTABLISHMENT! WHEN IS THE 99% GOING TO TELL THE 1% THAT IT'S TIME TO GET LOST?
Environment Minister Tony Burke has "no plans" on anti-whaling
The Gillard government is grappling with a diplomatic crisis over three Australian anti-whaling activists being held on board a Japanese whaling fleet ship and facing possible criminal charges in Japan. Of course, boarding a ship is illegal, but these activists are trying to draw attention to their illegal and criminal commercial whaling, and complete disregard for international environmental sanctions against the poaching of whales in a whale sanctuary.
The protesters climbed aboard the security ship Shonan Maru No. 2 in darkness on Saturday night off the south coast of Western Australia. They are not just "environmental activists" but concerned that protected whales are being harpooned illegally, and their lives are in danger - so that Japan can assess their ages from their inner ears?
The Environment Minister, Tony Burke, has repeatedly rejected calls to send the Ocean Protector south this summer, saying the government had ''no plans'' to do so. He is blatantly abrogating his duty to our nation, and lazily shrugging off our anti-whaling status.
Our government ministers are paid, with tax-payers' funds, to have policies that represent the interests of the people of Australia, and implement them. With the whalers also calling for a patrol ship from Australia, it's obvious that our policies on whaling are ambiguous, despite years of diplomatic pressure on Japan to end their "research". Our government's inaction is actually aiding and abetting Southern Ocean commercial whaling operations,
We are in a strategic position to uphold international environmental laws and policies. As the Minister for the Environment of a democratically elected government, Tony Burke is not in a position so simply dismiss the use of the Ocean Protector as a means of ending the peace-threatening conflicts.
It's time Tony Burke ended his holidays, got back on duty and made some "plans" according to his role as an accountable Minister of a democratically-elected Federal government.
Another great conspiracy theory analysis site!
Oh gosh, another great conspiracy theory site!
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread83236/pg1
Fantastic Conspiracy Theory analysis site found
The owner of this site has evolved an excellent conspiracy rating system and some very good analysis:
http://conspiraciesthatweretrue.blogspot.com/
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Conspiracy Theory Rating Scale
This is just an idea of mine that's been bouncing around in my head for awhile: I've never seen any sort of objective rating system whereby a current conspiracy theory could be rated as to it's validity or possible truth. The hardest part in doing this would be setting up the criterion to apply for the rating. The actual ranking would go something like this:
5 = An event that has essentially been proven true, but initially was considered conspiracy theory (See the post "List of Proven Conspiracies" on the second page of this blog - I'd consider most of those a "5")
4 = An event that has a large body of circumstantial evidence to suggest that there is a strong liklihood that it is true, and that an "official version" of the story is probably not entirely true.
3 = An event that could go either way, something that has a lot of troubling unanswered questions, a lot of "loose ends" that haven't been adequately explained, but the "official version" could be just as valid - just a lot of unanswered questions. An event that in all liklihood needs "filling in the blanks". Many theories fall into this category - there just hasn't been enough research to tie everything together or adequately explain everything.
2 = An event that can, through use of such techniques as Occam's Razor, investigative reporting, a specialist's knowledge of science and/or engineering & physics, usually be successfully de-bunked. Usually scenarios in this category involved plots that seem a little too complicated or logically unlikely, and are sometimes based on assumptions that are false to begin with.
1 = An event or belief in something that can be very easily dismissed, even by those who have no more knowledge than the average person, using commonly held knowledge and common sense.
Using this scale, most of the conspiracies listed in the "List of Proven Conspiracies" would in my opinion be rated a "5".
An example of a "4" would be the conspiracy theory that the JFK assassination involved more than a single bullet, and possibly more than one shooter from different locations, and that it was the product of an elaborate conspiracy rather than a lone deranged nut firing a single shot from one location.
The conspiracy theory that states that the moon landings were staged and faked might get a 3 - some things have been debunked, but not others. The mysterious "disappearance" of the original videos of the landing is troubling too - they didn't disappear until lately when computerized digital video enhancement techniques became available. Coincidence? Maybe, maybe not. Buzz Aldrin leaving a question and answer meeting in tears when asked to describe what it felt like to walk on the moon.... What was up with that anyway?
Example of a 2 would be something like the standard tinfoil hat thing, because we are supposedly the target of mind control - things like that.....
1's?? The Flat Earth Society, etc.
Will continue working on this to develop it..... Later.........
Posted by the Curmudgeon at 2:14 AM 0 comments
More here
Conspiracies, a part of daily life?
Hi Lorna,
I hope you will actually argue your case against Chussudovsky and the others instead of reiterating the mainstream slur and leaving it at that. You must have some evidence. As you would be aware, history is chockerblock with conspiracies (where there is power there are always conspiracies from the Little Princes in the Tower to faction formation and leadership coups in political parties to advertising messages and mainstream media designation of what is 'news') so to say something is just a conspiracy theory and therefore should not be considered isn't enough. You have to argue with it. I hope you will try.
Much of Stalin's political manoevering against other members of the communist party involved conspiracy. Military conspiracies are arguably necessary for military manoevers to go ahead, such as the one where Rosevelt authorised getting the Japanese to make the first move at Pearl Harbour which US army high-ups knew of 3 or 4 days in advance. But the media presented the Pearl Harbour attack as a big surprise, which most people retain as the truth to this day.
Here's another you can work out logically: the privatisation of public assets and services, like telecommunications and banks has been justified with obviously false arguments about the economic and social benefits to wider society. There must have been powerful motivators to get governments to privatise, but these real reasons are never provided to the public. Yet privatisation continues against every objection and political parties and the press collude to ensure that it never becomes a factor at election time, despite some impressive ostensible attempts to stop it and other unworthy activities: John-Paul Langbroek and why the Liberal National Party won't survive unless Labor Governments reform
Some other big ones: the Enron scandal; Weapons of mass destruction and the government persecution of a CIA agent who tried to alert it to the evidence (dramatised in the film Fair Game); Health Insurance in the United States as exposed by Michael Moore in Sicko, where senators were receiving money to vote down reform - it might be legal, but it sure was covert; Watergate; the Benign Demographic Transition ideology as an excuse for colonisation and corporatisation.
How could the global banking industry and sharemarketeers continue to dominate in favour of the interests of a few without continuing conspiracy with lawmakers - politicians and lawyers - to legalise what they are doing?
The concept of 'willful blindness' which seems to be often a necessary component of conspiracies is explored in a great book by Margaret Heffernan, who gives some amazing examples of conspiracy where 'wilful blindness' helped it along. She writes about collusion by beneficiaries of X-Ray technology suppressing for several decades until the mid 1980s scientific evidence that use of X-rays on pregnant women was causing many childhood cancers. Heffernan also gives the example of a whole town suppressing evidence of the link between asbestos mining and mesothelioma despite a huge local death rate. Part of this 'wilful blindness' was the reluctance of the public to see themselves as victims or to believe that the town and industry authorities would treat them with such contempt. Turning away from the recognition of your own powerlessness is also a reason for wilful blindness. Why acknowledge persistent powerlessness? - it is too painful. This blindness in the asbestos town was considerably helped by the kind of denial that accompanies unavoidable danger as well. So then it could be exploited by those who benefited from continuing to mine asbestos or from continuing to pretend - continuing to conspire - that asbestos did not cause cancer etc.
And how about the conspiracy by industry beneficiaries to downplay the dangers of fracking for gas? France has totally outlawed fracking, yet some countries - mine and yours - continue to defend it.
And it seems to me that in Australia, half the laws are the results of conspiracies by vested interest with politicians to defraud the rest of us. Laws reducing our land-rights are particularly rife at the moment. Here there is also a conspiracy to confuse the public about what the immigration numbers are, to increase immigration and to open Australian land-purchase to anyone in the world simply in order to increase the demand for housing and thus the profits to be got from developers. This is really systemic fraud and conspiracy. We have some interesting related scandals which you could read about here:
Australian Labor Governments or Commercial Corporations?
And some really unusual long-running associations that inexplicably draw international money and patronage:
My own feeling is that the success of the ideology that "it's usually a stuff-up rather than a conspiracy" and that people who question mainstream opinion are 'conspiracy theorists' in a derogatory sense may come from that sense of powerlessness many citizens may feel as they recognise the hollowness of their so-called democratic rights. And 'conspiracies' are made to seem so difficult to prove. As a sociologist, however, I found a very useful political theory about how vested interest can organise much better than those larger masses it exploits.
The theory comes from James Q Wilson, ed., The Politics of Regulation, Harper, New York, 1980. Wilson puts forward a framework derived from four types of politics classified according to whether the benefits and costs of policies are concentrated or diffuse: client (cb,dc), interest group (cb,cc), majoritarian (db,dc), and entrepreneurial (db,cc). Narrowly focused benefits mean that those benefiting from something are consciously aware of this and are able to recognise each other and organise to keep those benefits flowing. [Those in receipt of narrowly focused benefits may organises to keep those benefits flowing overtly or covertly. Where costs are diffuse and fall upon a disparate population at many different points in many different ways, they are difficult to identify and there are no obvious political rallying points for the public to organise a protest around. The organising by the focused beneficiaries is often conspiratorial because they do not want to make the connection between their 'upstream' activities and the 'downstream' impacts obvious because that would engender protest. From this theory comes a methadology of looking for activities that will reveal the focused and diffuse costs and benefits of unpopular processes or activites and then to look at media, laws and other activities, to see who is promoting those processes and activities. It's like throwing an ultraviolet light on a murder scene - all the evidence lights up.
Also, my own experience of NGOs shows them to be a hot-bed of conspiracy; they are like small towns with office bearers and other influentials fighting to maintain their hegemony and their footing in what has become their society and identity in a world where so much is disconnected. And NGOs are involved in terrifically important work, which usually goes unrecognised, so the internal struggles can be titanic, with life and death principles at stake.
So, in conclusion, conspiracies are everywhere, IMHO, but it is easier to call them covert or unrecognised or unofficial social adaptations, since it is very hard to establish motive unless there is a clear money trail.
I look forward to some debate!
Where is the evidence of Chavez's or Morales' "neoliberalsm"?
It's hard to know how to respond, when Lorna has yet to substantiate some of her claims either here or in any resource linked to from here
If, as Lorna claims, explicitly or implicitly, Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez, Naomi Klein and others are "neoliberal phony leftists", then what political leader or intellectual of any consequence is not?
A trap I fell into in the past was acceptance of the "far left" schema which presumes that anyone who attains any political stature whatsoever in a capitalist world could only have done so by compromising his/her principles.
An obvious exception to this is former President John F Kennedy, who selflessly stood up to the military-industrial complex to prevent wars including, on at least three occasions, the horror of nuclear war. In spite of this, the "far left" have used this schema to imply that Kennedy could not have been any better than any of the other Democrat or Republican leaders, corrupted by money from vested interests. This has been used in turn by them to help the Warren Commission's cover up of the conspiracy to murder him.
The evidence I have seen, including their demonisation by the corporate newsmedia, suggests to me that those labeled by Lorna as "neoliberal phony leftists" are, to the contrary, leaders who are acting for their people against vested interests and will stand by that assumption until I see evidence to the contrary. This is not to say that all of these people are without flaws, but it still seems to me that they are people with good intentions. If more leaders were like them we would have a much better world.
your heroes with clay feet
Evo Morales is a cut above the rest of the Latin American neoliberal phony leftists but his plan to build a major superhighway through the
northern part of Bolivia, right through the Beni rainforest area, is no better than what Exxon and agribusiness and multinational corporations are
planning as they conspire with Brazil, Ecuador, Chile, Peru and Venezuela to despoil indigenous areas in the rainforest and Andes. Naomi Klein has lent her
leftist credentials, for whatever they are worth, to that fraud named Bill McKibben, who has no ideas or plans whatsoever to counteract global warming, is funded by the Rockefellers, reaches out to corporations telling them how they can make more profits by "going green" and eschews political organizing completely. Global Research director Michel Chossudovsky is the most notorious and least trustworthy of all the snake oil salesmen alive, promoting conspiracy theories and
other spurious scientific and political twaddle. But you did get it right by putting Noam Chomsky on the Dark Side. Now add all these others to that category.
Australia being auctioned off as an Asian nation
Australia's doomsday auction is the selling off of Australian brands, infrastructure, housing, manufacturing and farmland to overseas buyers. It in acknowledgement that Australia has little future as a nation and is to be absorbed into the Asian economy.
Australia has already made plain its hope to see a greater US engagement in the ''Asian century'' as the Obama administration withdraws from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The decline of American influence and the rise of the Asian century seem to have become true. Asia however still strives to have the lifestyle and paraphernalia of the United States, probably a retro concept anyway with their rising debt and poverty.
The shift in the world's economic and strategic weight to Asia has prompted the Australian government to commission a White Paper on 'Australia in the Asian Century'. Australia's Trade Minister, Craig Emerson, says the White Paper will drive debate and public policy over the next 10 to 15 years and provide a basis for high-skill, high-wage jobs and "greater prosperity for all". Just how much input will the public have in these debates? Little, no doubt. He actually means greater prosperity for big corporations and trading partners, not the public.
Asian economies last year purchased almost two-thirds of our exports, worth $175 billion. In fact, all the growth in our exports over the past five years has been due to growth in demand from Asia, led by China. Similarly, foreign direct investment coming to Australia from Asia has doubled over the past five years
http://www.smh.com.au/business/chasing-the-fast-boat-to-asia-20111219-1p2dc.html
Development activity in Australia involving foreign companies has reached levels not seen in more than two decades. Foreign investors have spent a record $12 billion buying up Australian farmland and agricultural businesses over the past year, but have put off investing a further $14 billion until the outcome of a Senate inquiry in March 2012, a new report by Ferrier Hodgson says.
The nation's sugar industry has recently been targeted by the Chinese and offshore investors have also sunk massive sums into Australia's meat processing and wheat sectors.
Some of the country's best farms are also being snapped up by overseas investors who mask their identity with complex corporate structures. We are being swallowed by foreign interests, and the evils of globalization are wreaking havoc on Australia, due to our permeable borders and low-level sovereignty.
The global auctioning off of Australia's natural and man-made assets are threatening the future of Australia as a nation. It's a fire-sell off in recognition that as the driest continent, declining food production and rising population, we cannot survive climate change, global economic predators, and provide adequate security, so we must be sold off as an Asian nation.
Species disappearing on our planet
"Human population growth has caused significant habitat degradation across the globe, typically in support of agriculture and urban development," lead researcher Chrystal Mantyka-Pringle from University of Queensland said in a statement.
Governments need to select which animals can be saved, as species losses are inevitable. The combination of habitat loss and climate change is "catastrophic". Human population growth is causing climate change, and habitat losses. Population growth alone is impacting on species. Current management is inadequate against the massive tide of human growth.
"More proactive management strategies such as moving species, engineering habitat, and even abandoning our efforts to save certain species in one area in favour of other areas may be more effective."
The most important determinant of habitat loss and fragmentation effects, averaged across species and geographic regions, was current maximum temperature, with mean precipitation change over the last 100 years of secondary importance. Habitat loss and fragmentation effects were greatest in areas with high maximum temperatures. Conversely, they were lowest in areas where average rainfall has increased over time.
A recent study suggests that, despite 250 years of taxonomic effort, a mere 14% of the world’s species are recognised by scientists. Worryingly, anthropogenic effects, including habitat loss, climate change, and invasive species, threaten to exterminate thousands of species before they are even described.
ESA listing (Endangered Species Act) decisions often become political because listings have the power to stop development projects that impact listed species.
The polar bear has emerged as a powerful image in the debate about climate change, with environmentalists arguing that the fate of the largest land predator on earth is a dramatic indication of what is at stake. However, silently species are disappearing and being threatened in our back yards.
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/australian-scientists-create-world-...
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
Dear Friends,
Recall the words of a poet.
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
~T.S. Eliot
A new year has begun. We likely share the view that the movers and shakers in the human community cannot keep adamantly advocating and relentlessly doing the things we are doing now without precipitating some sort of unimaginable global ecological wreckage, probably sooner rather than later. A finite and frangible planet with the size, composition and ecology of Earth cannot much longer withstand the unsustainable pressures produced by the gigantic scale and anticipated growth of human overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities worldwide.
Perhaps we will help one another in 2012 see the world in a new way and effectively give voice to an unforeseen and unexpected vision of ourselves in all our wondrous human creatureliness and of the world we are blessed to inhabit. If we can see anew the unchanging landscape before our eyes, communicate what is visible to us (something I continue to fail abjectly at doing), and act accordingly, then we have a chance to move in the direction of sustainable lifestyles and right-sized corporate enterprises, and to rescue biodiversity from the wicked jaws of extinction.
We are on a night sea voyage with only the light from the stars and the best available science to guide us. This missive began with words from Eliot. It seems somehow fitting to close with his words,
And do not think of the fruit of action.
Fare Forward.
O voyagers, O seamen,
You who came to port, and you whose bodies
Will suffer the trial and judgement of the sea,
Or whatever event, this is your real destination.”
So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.
Always,
Steve
Candobetter discourages violent illegal activity and censorship
The above comment about sterilising humans demands response and debate. Candobetter.net does not like censorship and advocates real debate instead.
Any act of sterilising humans involuntarily via their drinking water is unacceptable. Tigerquoll offers this idea as logically beneficial according to a paradigm where human overpopulation is otherwise unavoidable. That paradigm lacks detail. The suggestion of affecting water resources on a grand scale has a certain irony since that is just the way that wholesale fluoridation has been promoted - as a necessary good. Who would imagine that anyone would go so far as to pollute or alter in a drastic way a community's drinking water? Yet that is what state after state in Australia has done with fluoridation and what is being done again in the name of desalination (which alters peoples' control over pricing and access because it places supply of a natural resource in the hands of a few human beings who happen to have control of an expensive technology.) It is also being done through excessive fertilisation of agricultural land, through excessive run-off, and through other industrial processes that accompany high population density and high intensity of human activity. Those processes should not be allowed either, no more than involuntary mass sterilisation. Overpopulation should never be encouraged in the first place. Individuals and organisations that profit from it should have their profits taxed into oblivion
Human-sterilisation via global drinking water
On January 2nd, 2012 Tigerquoll says:
Now at 7 billion and exponentially breeding, humans have become Earth's Pathogen.
It is our sheer numbers that are the root cause driving ecological harm across the planet - deforestation, salination, pollution, climate change, wildlife extinctions, sprawl - all compounded by decadent consumerism since the Industrial Revolution. We have become a rat race.
To curb human overpopulation we need human-sterilsation in global drinking water. Add it to the fluoridation globally. It's a simple cost effective solution to curb humanity's pathogenic impost on the planet. Wait three generations and until there's about half a billion of us humans left. Then adjust the sterilisation treatment to maintain the half billion threshold with each nation a quota. That was our global number pre-'Industrial Civilisation' circa 1700, before our exponential ecological carnage. Half a billion humans globally may be thought of as our 'healthy equilibrium capacity'.
The planet and its inhabitants will breathe anew! Melbourne would be like leafy quiet Suggan Buggan - paradise!
While it's not politically correct, it sure beats China's cruel one child policy. What are the alternatives to Earth's Pathogen? 17,000,000,000 by 2050 and 35,000,000,000 by 2300 as predicted by the United Nations? How else can current exponential human population growth be reversed and reduced substantially and quickly? GM water sterilisation sure beats famine, plagues, genocides, nuclear holocaust, etc. - and no-one gets hurt, just 'clucky-frustrated'. I'd award the inventor the Nobel Peace Prize and the planet will thank them.
:)
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia
Population growth and the increasing demand for meat
{Reposted by Editor on Jan 6 2012 due to original having been lost to site damage.)
On January 2nd, 2012 Vivienne Ortega says:
Sixty billion farm animals are already used to produce food annually, the majority in industrial-scale factory farms. Citizens in developed countries eat four times more meat than those in developing countries, a far greater difference than that which exists for grain consumption. In the United States alone approximately 10 billion animals are slaughtered every year.
Due to the increase in human population and the high demand for meat products at a cheap price, there is now a system of 'extensive' farming. But instead of producing ‘goods‘, animals are reared in the quickest and cheapest possible way before being slaughtered. The fate of millions of future factory farmed animals is a bleak one indeed.
Rising incomes, populations and demand for meat has resulted in the global poultry population quadrupling since the 1960s to about 18 billion birds in factory farms today. The pathogenic H5N1 form of avian flu does not usually develop in wild birds or backyard poultry because their populations are too spread out and diverse. Thus we have bird flu, swine flu and mad-cow disease. These horrific places are tinder-boxes for disease, with monocultures of animals crammed together reliant on antibiotics.
A report from United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) international panel of sustainable resource management says: "Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to population growth increasing consumption of animal products".
Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has also urged people to observe one meat-free day a week to curb carbon emissions. Why not 7 days a week? We wouldn't need a carbon tax if we all avoided livestock products.
A veg*n/vegetarian diet is not only kinder on the planet and animals, but more people can be fed.
When will the cruelty end?
The way farmed pigs, chickens and dairy cattle are treated is totally unacceptable. The only way I can see an end to this is when humans get themselves back in proportion, numerically with the rest of the animal kingdom. This is not the direction we are going in, rather we continue to increase our numbers. It will get worse for other species before it gets better, unfortunately. Whilst animal welfare activists will win some battles along the way I just see the screws tightening more and more on animals who provide humans with food. It's great that Father Christmas visited the pigs that night and the music lends a real poignancy to the film.
Originally posted on Jan 2, 2012 but lost due to site damage. Reposted by Editor on Jan 6th.
Happy Victoria?
On January 3rd, 2012 Mary (not verified) says:
Public transport fees, childcare, education, electricity and water costs are all increasing. Houses are unaffordable, and renters and mortgage holders are saddled with big burdens. The growth paradigm is unsustainable in the long term. Population growth is increasingly destroying economies of scale, and the carbon tax will add a further blow-out for families. Growth is unsustainable, and economists refuse to acknowledge the finiteness of our planet and natural resources. Developers and big businesses continue to profit, but the costs are passed, undemocratically, onto those who can least afford it.
Victoria is sinking in debt, and thus our leaders speed up growth in an effort to pay for it! It's a downward cycle of costs, congestion, and an unrealistic economic formula towards environmental and economic doom.
Reposted Jan 6th 2012 because original lost in site damage. - Ed.
Human economy self-destructive feeding on growth
On January 2nd, 2012 nimby (not verified) says:
Modern humans have been on our planet for about 200,000 years. Our indigenous peoples lived here for about 40,000 years, in harmony with the environment. In a 220 years since European colonization, the landscape of Australia has changed and declined considerably. Our cities are sprawling and causing a cancerous spread of concrete and heavy scarring along the east and west coasts, fertile lands being transformed into sterile wastelands of housing, roads, and a atrophy of dead land and waste.
Obviously "sustainable growth" is an oxymoron, and it is also obvious that we cannot continue for 40,000 years, and certainly never 200,000, with a self-destructive economy that feeds on perpetual population growth. Nature and human infrastructure will implode eventually under your own weight, and the toxic waste we are producing.
We must have a DNA that will end our time on this planet.
Ed. This comment, originally posted on January 2, was lost through site destruction but reposted by the editor on 6 January 2012.
Leave Melbourne now
Proles leave Melbourne now.
Southern Shanghai is only going to get larger, higher and take on more of a persona of its namesake.
Notice the Ministry of Truth has already demonised our cultural aspirations for the quarter acre block
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia
Ed. This comment reposted by Candobetter.ed on 6 Jan after original destroyed in site damage on 1 January 2012.
Argentina moves to protect national assets in farmland
ARGENTINA has imposed new limits on foreign ownership of farm land.
The move will give the government greater control over agriculture.
Non-Argentines will be banned from owning more than 1000 hectares.
And no more than 15 per cent of Argentina's farm land can be sold to foreigners.
There will also be a limit of 30 percent of foreign-owned land that can be held by people of the same nationality.
A national land registry will also be etablished to enable the government to determine who actually owns land.
The move has come amid growing concern in Australia over foreign buy-ups of farmland, and the lack of monitoring of land ownership.
The current Australian control of approval of sales over $231 million has come under heavy fire from farm groups in 2011.
Argentina president Cristina Fernandez is believed to want to have greater control over farms, which deliver a large chunk of tax revenue for the Government.
See Argentina limits foreign farm ownership of 24 Dec 11 at
http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2011/12/24/423391_latest-news.html
Victorian Government - big on growth but short on common-sense
According to a recent report, every Victorian now has a share of about $10,000 in the State Government's ballooning $56 billion debt. Auditor-General Des Pearson has warned the state's ability to service that debt is on the wane.
Victoria sinking in an ocean of debt
This puts pressure on the Baillieu Government's ability to fund core services such as schools, hospitals, roads, bushfire prevention and public transport.
Government borrowings will total a whopping $46.9 billion by 2015, or $8108 for every man, woman and child in Victoria within four years.
An economy based on perpetual growth is causes more problem than it solves. It means a continual cycle of debt and growth to service the debt.
According to Kim Wells MP, Shadow Treasurer, Victoria should have been in a good financial position over the Budget estimates period to benefit from expected world economic growth post the crisis.
However, on this point, the Brumby Government has failed Victorians.
The reasons –
1. Labor’s financial mismanagement, characterised by waste and incompetent
project management;
2. Steeply increasing state debt; and
3. A failure to properly plan for Victoria’s high population growth.
However, if population growth outstrips available funding, housing, public services and infrastructure, who really benefits?
He also said that the Victorian economy has been increasingly reliant on the housing sector and population increases to drive growth. Obviously, this can't continue indefinitely. Kim Wells has the benefit of hindsight, but kept silent during the Brumby era.
Access Economics in its September Quarter 2009 report described population growth as “underpinning” the State’s economic growth.
Our economy is thus on very weak footing as it can't be maintained for the long term. Future State governments have further to fall financially, with more people to support without little manufacturing and sustainable economic foundations.
Hundreds of thousands of Victorians are waiting too long for care in the state's hospitals, and waiting times in emergency departments are dangerously high. We are being choked by queues, congestion, housing, nurse, and teacher shortages, and even potential food shortages. Our government continues to advertise "skills shortages" in Victoria and immigration to meet demands.
Live in Victoria - visas and immigration
Rather than "shortages", what we have is a surplus of people!
Our government still prefers roads and freeways over public transport upgrades. There is a myth that freeways relieve traffic congestion. In fact, they may provide some short-term relief, but within a short time the extra road capacity generates more traffic than there was before. In the long term freeways just allow congestion to grow further rather than reduce it.
Public Transport Users Association
It promotes more car usage, and urban sprawl. Also, those who hold the purse-strings and back-room political power prefer roads and freeways to service the mega-stores, big businesses and supply chains. They pull the strings for perpetual growth. Public transport is begrudgingly supported as it's basically only for the public.
We have a big shortage of common-sense in the Victorian government.
We need an investment of who and what we have in Victoria, not an obsession with expensive and destructive growth.
We are drowning in debt with a noose of "shortages" around our necks.
Some odd statements re minority populations in Vietnam here
"The health ministry reported that the imbalance of the sexes at birth has been at an alarming level where the sex ratio (the number of males per 100 females) at birth had increased from 110 in 2006 to 111.9 in 2011."
This statement sounds alarmist to me. My suspicion is that it comes from the growth lobby because the statistical variation is over such a short period and is unlikely to be reliable.
"The rate of new-borns with congenital deformities also was on the increase. Situation of early marriage and in-breeding in some ethnic and minority groups were problems causing race degradation."
This statement seems scientifically unlikely to me, unless it is indicative that the population base of minorities has dropped to catastrophic levels, affecting traditional healthy tribal endogamy/exogamy balances. Then you would have to ask yourself why those populations have dropped or why their health has been noticably affected. More likely to be associated with land-loss, nutritional deficiencies or local industrial effluent. I'd like to know more.
Abortion for Chinese Students
China doesn't do sex education. D'uh.???????? Isn't China the only country with an effective one-child mostly population stabilisation program?
International student education racket is not education -- never has been -- it's backdoor PR on the cheap. tHE REST OF USl pay to provide the roads, houses, hospitals, public transport, dams, pipes, power stations, poles and wires. Chattering class lefties employed in the unis on huge salaries, with huge holidays get richer and richer on this decades old, palpable spin. Melbourne Uni -
[Candobetter Ed. Person's name deleted because needs three source verification] cannot name ONE international who has returned home. Contrast the Colombo Plan 40 years ago.
Come on progressives, dont fall for the bullshit !!!!
See no truth, hear no truth, speak no truth.......
Everywhere we look there are virtual mountains of evidence to be found of the clever manipulation of human intellect by 'the brightest and best', usually for the purpose of securing selfish interests. Self-proclaimed masters of the universe, their many highly educated sycophants and absurdly enriched minions are established experts at ignoring 'reality' when it serves their pragmatic desires. The step that makes it possible for human beings with feet of clay to subordinate personal interests so as to see what is before their eyes, is not an easy one. All of us get use to seeing the world in certain ways, according to what is logically contrived, politically correct, economically expedient, socially agreeable, religiously tolerable, culturally prescribed and ubiquitously shared through the mass media. Most of the time popular ways of viewing the world are sufficiently reality-oriented. But occasionally advances in science disturb even the most widely held and consensually validated understandings with regard to the way the world we inhabit works as well as about the placement of the human species within the natural order of living things. Perhaps we are witnesses to such a scientific advance, or maybe not. Whatever the case, whatever the 'reality' of human population dynamics, let us make sure that the CanDoBetter community is not simply and plainly just one more academic bastion of intellectual cowardice. When the subject is human population dynamics, it seems to me that there are currently enough "ivory towers", professional societies and international organizations whose members favor intellectual dishonesty, hysterical blindness, willful deafness and elective mutism.
Abortion clinics and health care for international students
There are recent reports of public hospitals locking out international students.
Politicians, bureaucrats and university administrators are ducking for cover. They come here and find themselves denied services taken for granted by domestic students, like transport concessions. International students, having been required to take out private health insurance, often find themselves no better off than uninsured locals. They can be denied public obstetrics services – something Australians enjoy automatically. Health industry workers tell stories of international students – sometimes innocently, sometimes not – adding pressure to a stretched public hospital system.
See Duck and weave by John Ross in The Australian of 2 Dec 11.
Sources also claim some students are subverting insurance rules by cancelling policies once they’re here and pocketing the unused portions of the premiums, but privacy laws protect them from being exposed.
Reports also reveal that medical specialists are losing thousands in unpaid fees because overseas student health insurance offers little gap fee coverage.
Health figures say that after GPs’ bills, maternity and termination services are the most commonly claimed insurance “items”. One in three abortions at the Women's and Children's Hospital is performed on international students, University of Adelaide research has found, predominantly carried out on Chinese students.
Opposition families and communities spokesman Stephen Wade says he has been told the figure could be as high as three out of four abortions being provided to international students.
International students are not cash cows, and we owe them support in return for the money, experiences and cultural diversity that they bring here. However, the reality is that they are here for their economic benefits, and as such, they should not burden our already stretched health-care system. They should have sufficient income and savings to ensure that they can continue their studies, allowing for health, accident and other issues, or else be sent home immediately.
Students come from countries who don’t extensively elaborate on sex education. Asian parents are known to be unwilling to speak about sexual health with their children. They start being sexually active in Australia, without traditional support and limitations.
Policy
!. End visa free entry for Kiwis. Kiwi net intake to be subracted from permanent quota.
2.
[...] [Verb commented out because it advocated a violent and illegal action. Candobetter does not publish illegal matter. Candobetter ed.] undocumented illegal maritime arrivals.
3. End onshore visa granting to international students -- ie they must return home and then apply.
4. An infrastructure fee of $100,000 for all permanent immigrants. A equal bond for "temporary" tourists and students and 457 visas. They never go home anyway. Otherwise all immigrant live in tents around the airport and they form workgangs to plan, fund, and build their own infrastructure. It has taken us 50 - 100 years to build and pay for the infrastructure that immigrants lust after.
5. An end to the Victorian Red Cross under Robert Tickner giving FREE HOUSES and FREE NEW CARS to refugees, while old Australian taxpayers are on 30-year waits for Housing Commission flats. Funded by the [... ...]
[adjectives commented out due to unverifiable quality and associated defamation risk- candobetter. ed] Andrew Metcalf. Letting boat arrivals live in the community is the name of this latest self-flagellating madness.
5. An answer as to why AESP-SPA has been a policy free zone for so many years.
End of growth near
When will the growth phase end? When will our cities ever be declared full?
Our political and business leaders will never declare our cities to be full. They are drunk on perpetual, rapid population growth. They can't conceive of it ending. But the end is in sight, with the end of cheap energy.
I remember talking to someone about population growth. I said that the growth will end by the end of this century. They expressed disbelief "but the population just grows, that's what it does". Actually population stability is the historical norm, growth is abnormal. But we've known rapid growth for several generations now, so all of us have come to believe that rapid growth is normal and will never end. Then I said something like "but what about the end of cheap oil?" and they looked at me in honest confusion "but what has oil got to do with population growth?" And the answer to that is everything.
Foreign Labor Government now building Koreaville in Hobart
It's not just Whittlesea being sold to foreigners.
Forget Australia's affordable housing crisis. Now the Foreign Labor Party is building 'ParanVille' in East Hobart...
Read the following article into today's Hobart Mercury: 'ParanVille nod builds bonus'
'WORK on a $900 million Korean suburb on Hobart's Eastern Shore will start within a year after winning final planning approval yesterday.
Billed as an "integrated lifestyle, education, and residential development", ParanVille will be one of the biggest residential subdivisions developed in the state and promises to give the struggling building industry a massive boost. It is expected to attract residents from Korea, China and Japan who are keen to escape harsh northern winters and the threat of nuclear accidents, its backers said yesterday.
The 158-hectare rural site between Howrah and Rokeby approved by the Tasmanian Planning Commission will become home to more than 2000 new residents and several hundred language students and will generate up to 1000 jobs during the 10-year construction period.
It will feature a language school and residence hall for students. The site was chosen because of Tasmania's international image as a clean, green, safe and politically stable place to live and for its proximity to Hobart's airport.
Foreign Labor Premier Lara Giddings yesterday hailed it as a vote of confidence in Tasmania's new planning system.
"It should give business outside the state, and of course outside investors, some confidence to know that our planning does work and that indeed Tasmania is open for business," she said.
"This project will create jobs in the construction industry at a time when the housing industry is struggling."
Developer Paul Kim's son, Pius, said his father expected strong demand for properties at ParanVille.
"In Seoul right now it's minus 14 degrees. Climate-wise in summer it's really hot and in winter it's really cold in Korea. Tasmania has a much better climate.
"Also, there are other factors such as nuclear risks, typhoons and natural disasters.
"Koreans and Chinese visitors who come to Australia love Australia, but they especially love Tasmania."
Mr Kim said his father was delighted the local community had welcomed the project and it had now passed the final planning hurdle.
"He has been working for this project for nine years now and he is happy to see it to fruition. Almost all the construction work will be done by Tasmanians. Some parts of the planning will be done by Korean workers as well and some Korean construction techniques will be brought over by them.
"When he first came to Tasmania in 2003 there were only 30 Korean people living in Tasmania. Now officially there are about 1080 people living here and there will be more."
The Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry welcomed news of the development's final approval.
Chamber chief Robert Wallace said the decision sent a clear message to investors that Tasmania was open for business and the project investment would provide a major boost to the state economy.
"This will be a project of state significance, one that will provide a much needed boost to employment," he said.
The manager of Rokeby's Hardware Pro store Ken Mathers said he was looking forward to welcoming the new residents to the area.
"It will have to be a huge spin-off," he said. "It will be ongoing because then you'll have hundreds of well-off retired Korean people living there.
"It will be a boost for every business on the Eastern Shore for us in the short term with the construction, but in the long term it will give us access to hundreds more people."
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia