Comments

Tigerquoll,
I looked at the anarchy website but could not see what you were referring to. Quick glance revealed what I expected - that they are 'against hooliganism'. Anarchists are generally non-violent. Australian anarchist spokesperson, Joe Toscano, is a very able politician who speaks eloquently against violent agitators, warning that they are usually agent provocateurs from government and police. Please be more specific if there is material there which is scary. If there are anarchists advocating violence, I would suggest that they are not real anarchists and that sites are false sites. Governments have falsely stigmatised the term 'anarchism' as violent.

All anarchism is really is relocalism - self government at a local level. Democracy. Direct representation. That kind of thing.
It was demonised during the 19th century because anarchists tried to stop the steamrolling of local populations' rights by industrial nationalism.

Yeah Katie, I got sus on the invasive questions.
Spare rooms reflect development capacity. Read the following article:
'Australia, it’s time to ditch the backyard',
by Tory Maguire

I felt like fabricating a profile of a psychopath to see how long before the Feds would rock up at the front door.
And where were the flybuys so the marketers could target my profile?
How long before direct marketing arrives using answers to questions Q39 through Q43?

Census data from 2006 can be purchased from the ABS
[Current ABS Link>as at today]

I can hear the Ruddites...'there's spare capacity in them thar 'burbs'.

Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia

I wholeheartedly concur with Nimby's comment above.

Australian humanitarian tolerance is being abused by the UN. Priority for humanitarianism needs to start at home - our indigenous, our rural and remote communities, our unemployed, our youth, our disadvantaged. If Australia's underclass hired a boat and sailed it to Ashmore Reef, splashed on fake tan, ditched their IDs and didn't speak, our Navy would collect them and they would receive the humanitarian care they deserve at home.

The UN is failing to deal decisively with civil unrest issues fundamentally and failing to contain the humanitarian problem with the countries concerned. The government violence against citizens in Sri Lanka, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Burma Syria is no different to what the Army of Republika Srpska did to the Bosniaks in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre with UN 'peacekeepers' standing by. Let us not forget Rwanda. Where the United Nations is systemically failing, the humanitarian problem and the overwhelming numbers of breeding humans is being encouraged to spread like an uncontrolled pandemic. People have a right to life and a right to live without violence and famine. People have a right to flee violence and famine. But the causes of violence and famine at home are being avoided by the United Nations. The United Nations is irresponsibly reactionary and painfully slow at that. Worse is that the UN is not cracking down on the global Arms Trade.

Refugees and asylum seekers perpetuate because of these threats and so good samaritan countries like Australia sign up to be on the receiving end of other people's conflict.
Just as humanitarian charities need to be held accountable for unsustainable population growth in countries that cannot cope (Sudan), the United Nations needs to be made accountable for controlling the cause of the refugee problems.

The UN status quo is to see the human pathogen spread until that globally societies are diluted by sheer numbers undermining the hard fought standards of living of advanced nations like Australia. What the leftist humanitarians ignore is what happens when the peoples of Third World nations saturate Australia society, economy and ecology? Their humanitarianism is selective and short-sighted utopianism. Australia will become like South Africa, where the the lowest common denominator is the mainstream.

Quality of life, infrastructure, public services, carrying capacity need to be critical success factors of all immigration globally. The Tottenham Race Riots [Read More] in London of 6th August 2011 (just last weekend) are symptomatic of decades of naive uncontrolled immigration policies inviting hoards in from Africa, with no thought of carrying capacity and ignoring the inevitable social, environmental and ecological costs of too many people concentrated into ghettos. There is no work, public infrastructure can't cope, the police can't cope. Moving the world's poor, persecuted and starving to wealth countries is just relocating the problems, not addressing them. It is indeed a folly. It is the single misguided global policy fueling the greatest problem facing the planet in the 21st Century - the human pathogen.

Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia

Globalisation is evangelised as the new religion of humanism; dare criticise it and invoke hardcore wrath labelling of 'racist' and be persecuted like a Salem Witch of 1692 under irrational prejudice.

Yet the demise of local values, endemic plants, endemic animals and traditional peoples are under barrage from the human pathogen. The pendulum of numbers..influence..power had now shifted from the incumbent population to the immigrant population.

Every introduced immigrant that steps off a plane, every introduced plant (weed), every introduced animal (feral) compounds the human pathogen against endemic species and peoples. Our 21st Century has the most humans ever. Climate change is not the problem.
Blessed be Whitlam's multiculturalism, Fraser's multiculturalism, Hawke's multiculturalism, Keating's cultural diversity and Rudd's Big Australia - the ubiquitous human melting pot?

Beachhead immigration in Australia has prevaded local society into becoming a preferred choice of Labor MPs.
It's no different to VicForests logging Potoroo forest habitat throughout Victoria's East Gippsland and then introducing sheep. Then there is the bizarre argument of one breed of ferals proclaiming more rights over that of another.

Read the following article:

'Deer culling attracts wild dogs'

Wednesday, 27/04/2011
[Source: http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/content/201104/s3201322.htm]

'Wild dogs are encroaching closer into urban areas of Victoria's east Gippsland.
Leo Hamilton, retired agronomist and 40-year landholder, has lost $1,000 worth of sheep to wild dogs in two months at his fine wool enterprise on the outskirts of Bairnsdale.

He says a formerly minor dog problem is escalating, as shooters try to control feral deer, and their fallen carcasses attract other pest animal predators.

"Sambar deer is not the sort of thing you throw in the back of the ute and cart off. You are talking 300-400 kilos of meat," he said.
"And you talk to the truckies and the truckies have got the same problem. If they hit one on the road, it is two and half grand to fix the truck."

Mr Hamilton says wild dogs were controlled in the past, but the behaviour of the large dogs has changed from shy killers for food, to aggressive and savage attacks that maim sheep.

"What is different about this attack is they are not predictable. In the past, the dog has come in and eaten the sheep, but these are unpredictable as they come in at any time, don't eat the sheep, they mutilate the sheep, they just play with the sheep and maul them."

Mr Hamilton says the culled feral pest deer weigh 300-400 kilogram, making them too heavy for shooters to remove.

"Their [sic] attitude is that they disaster in a couple of days...but they disappear in a couple of days because the wild dogs and foxes eat them."

He says the wild dog problem is escalating and growing as the sambar deer population spreads to the outer urban areas.

-------------

...No mention of the indigenous Potoroo in all that. The controlling ferals are debating inter-feral rights, while the indigenous are ignored, forgotten...relegated to history's underclass.

The terror of invasion.
The defeat of a people and their cultural annihilation - resigned, hopeless and death row resolve in the face of an invader’s genocidal 'business as usual'.

Currently ecological conservation efforts are being made to deal with the rabbit population on Maquairie Island in a bid to save and restore the indigenous populations and habitat.

Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia

Thanks, Agent Provocateur, Quark and Fiona,

Whilst I generally favour the reduction of working hours if that can be achieved through labour-saving technology, it should be outlawed whilst any single individual is unable to attain gainful employment in order to meet his/her life expenses. The gross social irresponsibility and heartlessness of one large retail corporation in refusing to hire sufficient staff to attend to customer needs even without self-serve technology should be obvious to anyone who tries to shop in a K-Mart store as I did last Saturday. Even to pay for goods I intended to buy, let alone to make a query of staff in a store almost empty of staff, I had to wait in a queue. No doubt if, unable to pay for the goods I wanted, I had attempted to walk out the front of the store with them, I would have very quickly received 'service' from the store's security staff.

As long as a singe person, who needs gainful employment (that is a real job with award rates of pay and conditions of work and not slave wage 'occupations' such as taxi-driving) does not have it, these stores should be boycotted.

Brumby's desal plant was part of a madman's solution for his 'Big Melbourne' brainsnap.

The company that built the desal plant at Wonthaggi for Brumby, has suffered financially ever since.
Leighton Holdings was profit greedy, ignorant of social impacts, ignorant of environmental impacts and just plain dumb to listen to Brumby and commit hundreds of millions in an extravagance that was unnecessary anyway.

The following article from a week ago shows how dumb Leighton's really was:

Leighton faces further pain

by Philip Wen, 16 July 2011, The Age...

LEIGHTON Holdings may have put its boardroom drama aside for now, but concerns of more profit downgrades have emerged before the embattled contracting company's full-year results next month.

A string of delays and cost blowouts at some of its key projects, including Brisbane's Airport Link and the Victorian desalination plant project, culminated in a $1.1 billion pre-tax write-down and a $757 million capital raising in April.

But analysts warn there remains significant risk of up to $400 million in further downgrades to come, casting doubt on the company's net profit guidance of between $600 million and $650 million for this financial year.

An analyst at Goldman Sachs, Chris Savage, said the construction of the desalination plant has continued to be delayed by wet weather, which could lower earnings on the project by ''anywhere up to $200 million'' - wiping out the wafer-thin $6 million profit the company currently expects. The project was originally forecast to make $288 million. (Brumby numbers were they?)

Craig Wong-Pan, a Deutsche Bank analyst, said industrial relations disputes at the project added even more risk of further cost blowouts. Industrial action erupted after Leighton subsidiary Thiess was caught spying on staff late last year. A more recent four-day strike is said to have cost Thiess up to $5 million a day. The project has also made headlines for a lucrative wages deal struck by the Victorian branch of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union.

Wages at the plant are as much as 40 per cent higher than equivalent projects in other states, even prompting Premier Ted Baillieu to voice ''significant concern'' over the project's rising costs.

Both analysts also warned of further downgrades at Leighton's struggling Middle Eastern joint venture Al-Habtoor

Despite Leighton having written down more than half of the value of its 45 per cent stake since 2007, Mr Wong-Pan said the venture's $525 million carrying value was still ''aggressive'' given poor cash flow and trouble in recovering payments from debtors.

Leighton had been destabilised by a takeover row over its German parent Hochtief by Spanish construction giant ACS, as well as persistent rumours suggesting long-serving former chief executive Wal King would make a shock return to Leighton's board. Mr King last month ruled out such a return.

Shares in Leighton closed at $20.86 yesterday, down more than 40 per cent since October.

(Reference: http://www.theage.com.au/business/leighton-faces-further-pain-20110715-1hhzq.html)

.......

Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia

It's hard for me to understand how the UK Parliament could have turned on Murdoch in this way. Surely it is largely composed of members almost hand-picked by Murdoch? For decades it has seemed that Murdoch has been able to pick and choose governments in countries all over the world and have whichever Government was in power implement policies to his liking. A recent example was the way Murdoch was able to get the 'Labor' Government of Tony Blair, elected in 1997, to implement precisely the dry Thatcherite "free market" policies of its Conservative predecessor.

I remember reading in 1997 a curious editorial in The Australian newspaper which proclaimed that the election of the Blair Labor Government was an endorsement by British voters of years of "free market" rule by Blair's Conservative predecessors. That would certainly have been news to British voters who voted Labor for, amongst other reasons, its promise to keep the railways in public ownership. Blair didn't keep that promise and, in general, continued with his predecessor's "free market" 'reforms'.

Blair also enlisted the UK's support in a number of wars started by the US. These included the so-called "War on Terror," for which the false-flag terrorist attack of 9/11 was used as a pretext, and the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, based on the claim known by Blair to be lie that Iraq was building weapons of mass destruction.

The Australian's editorial was presumably Murdoch's way of telling the Australian Business establishment that he had the new UK 'Labor' Government in its pocket. The record of the Blair Government since then bears out Murdoch's 1997 pronouncement.

How the the tables have turned on Murdoch, only 14 years later and only 5 years after the departure of his glove-puppet, Tony Blair from office in 2006.

Prominently displayed in the current issue of the Australian 'socialist' magazine links.org.au is a piece celebrating the 30th anniversary of the mass protests against the New Zealand tour of the South African white-only Springbok Rugby Union team. At the time our televisions were full of images of radical students confronting lines of New Zealand police as well as spectacular actions on the football stadeums themselves to embarass the Springboks and the New Zealand Rugby Union board.

The protest helped further isolate the white-supremacist South African government leading to its downfall in 1993, and replacement with today's multi-party South African government. This was definitely an advancement for humanity, but according to Chapter 10 Democracy born in chains (pp194-217) of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine of 2007 brought mixed blessings brought to black, coloured and white South Africans by the government committed to 'free market' reforms.

So what of the effects of the protests in New Zealand itself and the South Pacific?

Political theory, espoused by 'Marxist' organisations such as the Socialist Workers Party of Australia as the producers of links.org.au were then known, holds that radical protests will inevitably radicalise broader layers of society and make more likely the transition from capitalism to socialism and a more just and rational society. Yet in New Zealand, precisely the reverse happened in subsequent years. To be sure, the protests led to the downfall of the Conservative Government of Robert Muldoon, but if, anything, the replacement 'Labour' Government of David Lange was economically far to the right. The Wikipedia article on Davide Lange describes his government's record:

Upon coming to office, Lange's government uncovered a skyrocketing public debt, ostensibly the result of Muldoon's policy of government regulation of the economy, including a wage- and price-freeze and regulation of the exchange rate. Such economic conditions prompted Lange to remark: "We ended up being run very similarly to a Polish shipyard".^[3] Lange and Minister of Finance Roger Douglas engaged in a rapid programme of deregulation and public-asset sales, which brought criticism from many people in Labour's traditional support-base. The Labour Party also lost support from many elderly people by introducing a superannuation surcharge after having promised not to reduce superannuation.

Commentators coined the term Rogernomics for these policies, drawing connections with Reaganomics and with Thatcherism. After the Lange administration's first term (1984–1987), significant divisions started to form in the Labour parliamentary caucus, with Lange becoming uncomfortable with the extent of the reforms, while Douglas and Richard Prebble wanted to push on.

The Shock Doctrine could have also used a chapter on the Lange' Government. A question that could have been addressed was what was done during those years by all those who had protested so fiercely for social justice during 1981? Did they lose their voices as Lange was privatising the wealth the belonged to them or were they co-opted into working for Lange and the vested interests they served?

Another question that could have been addressed is whether other means to protest against the Springbok tour could have been found? Clearly the violent confrontations between radical protestors and police were not good publicity for Muldoon, The New Zealand Rugby board and the Apartheid regime of South Africa, but supposing the anti-Apartheid protestors had found less confrontational ways to get their message out? In all likelihood, I suspect participation in the protests would have been greater and larger numbers of New Zealanders would have gained a political education and have been less willing to tolerate the Rogernomics that was imposed upon them in subsequent years.

My curiosity for a reason for the near total silence, if not outright support for the war against Libya by virtually all of the 'Marxist' left in Australia and elsewhere led me to do online research about what these groups are doing, or not doing, these days, that is when they are not baiting opponents of immigration as 'racist', stacking meetings of other organisations such as Prosper Australia or the Tasmanian Unemployed Union's nut shop as they did in 1984.

I discovered links.org.au a "journal of socialist renewal". I hope to be able to learn, from its pages, how socialism in Australia, a country for which socialism has always, in recent decades, surely been a viable political program, ever faltered and needed 'renewing'.

Of course what is referred to as 'growth' is nothing of the sort. If the size of the cake could somehow increase, that would be a good thing.

But it can't, unless an asteroid containing vast quantities of fossil fuel and metals were to strike the earth and not do too much damage. But, of course that won't happen.

The other way we could 'grow' for a while at least would be to expand human civilization into space with space colonisation and be able to exploit the resources of the moon, the asteroids and other planets, but until either were to ever happen, the size of the cake we have to share amongst us and the other life forms on this earth remains the same.

As population increases, there are more and more people to share it amongst, so the standard of living can only become worse. That the elites are not able to prosper except by making all of humanity poorer on average and the poorest vastly poorer shows just how worthless they have become.