Comments
Why would the people of Queensland pay more taxes?
Peak Oil
Having finished my uni'
SBS interview of Stable Pop Party Oz
religions aren't irrelevant for large sections of society
These fruit-cakes are at it again!
Stable Pop Party Aust registered
Usually however the
No more nations to plunder
Kangaroo population control
cruelty to animals
Jacko's kangaroo plague myth to justify slaughtering wildlife
Re: Jacko's hysterical 'hysterical nonsense' comment above of 28th May 2010:
In response:
1. Jacko claims: "this article is hysterical nonsense."
My response:
Crap. Where's the hysteria? The above article describes factual events. It offers an opinion and it compares the treatment of wildlife in 2009 and 2010 to the treatment of Aboriginals by colonists up until 1928. Actually the article should have included the Appin Massacre of 14 Aboriginals on 17 April 1816 "as a result of the orders issued by Governor Macquarie in 1816." It should have included the many Aboriginal deaths in custody including the bashing of Mulrunji Doomadge on Palm Island on 19th November 2004 and that of Ian Ward while being transported in a privately run prison van in searing heat on January 27, 2008.
2. Jacko claims: "It is a defamation of the aboriginal people, putting them on the same level as native animals"
My response:
Jacko has either naively misinterpreted my comparison or more likely deliberately selectively read the article and twisted it to cause offence. Jacko's criticism is a desperate fallacious attempt intended to change the subject through digression and false emphasis.
My argument is that the contempt for Aborigines in Australia's colonist and recent history as vermin is comparable to the treatment of Australia's wildlife as vermin. Both are utterly despicable. This argument does not compare Aborigines to wildlife. It compares the similarity of backward attitudes of colonists to neo-colonists.
3. Jacko claims: "My objection to the controlled (RSPCA) killings is that the meat was wasted... the numbers got out of hand. Controlled slaughter and use of the valuable meat is the solution. Anyone who knows Australia knows that kangaroo species are far from extinction, reaching- artificial - plague proportions in many areas."
My response:
The justifications for the slaughter of about 4500 kangaroos at Belconnen and Majura has been discredited. It was purely to clear the way for real estate development (now underway) and as a convenience for Army training by Duntroon cadets.
The "wasting meat" argument is separate from the justification argument. Killing wildlife is wrong. Commercial trade in wildlife parts including meat is wrong. Two wrongs don't make a right.
Using the spoils of immoral wildlife mass slaughter may well have been an incentive for the slaughter on its own. If the meat was not used, would the slaughter have been supported or proceeded. With the kangaroo industry denied the spoils and profit, what would the ACT Government have done? Would the cost of disposing of 4500 odd kangaroo carcasses have been prohibitive?
The 'wasting meat' argument could be applied to the many cats and dog euthanased by the RSPCA every month.
Can Jacko honestly proclaim no personal involvement or commercial gain in this slaughter that would have framed his opinion?
4. Jacko claims: "Anyone who knows Australia knows that kangaroo species are far from extinction, reaching- artificial - plague proportions in many areas."
My response:
The kangaroo plague myth is a tired, unproven pious fraud. Where are the facts?
Tiger Quoll
Snowy River 3885
Australia
I have not the slightest
ISOFIX
Never forget the victims and the church complicity
Bernard Salt as a trend "forecaster"
On behalf of James
Here's the problem
Our capacity to accommodate genuine refugees is impeded
Bravo Raymond F. Smith on his article:The maths of refugeeism
Catholic Church may be flawed.. but lets not have a Witch Hunt..
Yes, This is True! -Where's the example for us to follow?
I agree - Hysterical nonsense!
Get Well Soon James & Happy Birthday
Baseless assertions re kangaroo plagues
Hysterical nonsense
Meaningless accusations
Gladly I let my porch light burn while F1/V8s extravagantly burn
My email to Nedlands Council
HELP ME SAVE THE ANIMALS OF AUSTRALIA!
WA Black Cockatoos threatened once again
This will be an impressive
Depopulate or perish, urges actor Jeremy Irons
There is potential for good if implemented properly
Who is too far to the "right"?
Pollution.
Excellent article, Tim. I
Nielsen's existing mine is
Electric cars are really coal-cars
Oz Icons afternoon roaring success - Report
Can we not have such
Schapelle needs to come home to Australia where she belongs
It's still pollution, which started in the Industrial Revolution
It's all pollution. 'Climate change', 'global warming', whatever the label, it is still just pollution - the problem that was apparent in 1975.
Where do the climate change deniers think smoke, fumes, exhaust goes?
Just because the next day has a blue sky morning doesn't mean the pollution has vanished. It has just been spread around the globe in the atmosphere.
It has been blowing around since the linen mills, then the coal fired power stations.
And since the Industrial Revolution, human population has grown with 'progress'.
Electric car technology is available and denying family benefits after two children per family would start to make a difference. The problem lies in greedy selfish people, greedy selfish corporations and a political lack of will. Look at the families complaining about expensive child care as if it were a right after people decided to have multiple children, or the power stations complaining about a emissions tax as if they had a right to pollute.
The politicians certainly do need to be strong will to stand up to greed.
Tiger Quoll
Snowy River 3885
Australia
Build up not out.
Darwinism and Spencer
The mathematics of refugeeism.
Population and Climate Warming.
Malthus and his 'borrowed' interpretations deserve scrutiny
The Pope cannot change the Church stance on contraception
Religion belongs to 20thC - another month another dodgy priest
Why do parents in the 21st Century blindly trust their children to be taught by religious institutions? Children would be safer in a maximum security gaol of convicted prisoners.
How much more evidence of pedophelia and abuse does it take?
Take this current month's display of religious leader immorality exposed, with the following three examples:
"The Catholic Church is accused of bungling sex abuse inquiries, with at least two priests continuing to work despite church investigations into the cases.
A Sydney priest, Finian Egan, was found to have groped two girls over many years in the 1980s, yet he was praised at a public Mass in Carlingford last year for 50 years of service.
A Melbourne priest, Patrick Maye, twice celebrated the annual Mass for Victoria's Irish community, despite being banned from acting as a priest after church investigators found that he had committed serious sexual abuse in 1973 by forcing himself on a 31-year-old woman when she was in a ''vulnerable'' state.
The church also found he groped two sisters in their family home in the 1980s. Father Maye denied the allegations. Victims of both priests went through the church's Towards Healing process, which is supposed to give closure and compensation to victims.
The church inquiry into Father Egan took more than two years, despite victims being told it would take no more than six months. The inquiry and Father Egan's appeal were delayed while he took overseas holidays.
During the appeal, he officiated at a wedding.
Kellie Roche, who was groped by Father Egan while a teenager, said: ''I wonder what the married couple would have felt if they knew.''
Another victim, who does not want her name used, was repeatedly groped by Father Egan when he gave her guitar lessons. She says the church discouraged her from going to police.
Father Egan worked at St Gerard in Carlingford in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His service was honoured last August - after the findings had been made - when he was lead celebrant at a Sunday Mass. A supper was also held in his honour and he was mentioned in the honour roll in the archdiocese's newsletter.
In a statement to the Herald, the Bishop of Broken Bay, David Walker, would only say ''it would not be appropriate to make any response that could jeopardise the balance of trust that is placed in the church's process of healing''.
In 2005 the church forced Father Maye to retire early with his ''canonical faculties'' removed, so he could not act in public as a priest - the most serious church penalty apart from defrocking.
Despite that, Father Maye has for the past two years acted as a priest at the St Patrick's Day Mass, defying the Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart, who has repeatedly written letters warning him against working as a priest and saying ''any publicity will reflect adversely upon yourself [and] upon the church''.
Archbishop Hart also acknowledged the pain his victims would experience on learning of the priest's actions, but has been unwilling to publicise Father Maye's name to ensure he can't act as a priest.
In February, Father Maye was the ''surprise guest'' at a party for the Sydney bishop David Cremin. The Sydney function was also attended by the Irish ambassador.
In 2004 and 2005, Father Maye continued his work at St Augustine's Primary School in Yarraville, while police and the church investigated abuse claims. The girl he groped in the 1980s said the church should not have allowed this. ''I was feeling sick about the thought of him possibly abusing kids there,'' she said.
The police inquiry did not proceed to court. Father Maye denied the allegations through his lawyers.
One victim said: ''Dealing with the church itself was a hell of a lot more traumatic than dealing with the abuse.''
"There is a wall between me and sex"...Kellie Roche, who says she has put up a facade all her life. The struggle to obtain recognition of their abuse has devastated these women, write Rafael Epstein and Nick McKenzie.
Before the nightmare began, Kellie Roche was a happy 11-year-old. "I remember always being loud but so naive. I was very protected."
But Roche's life was traumatically transformed in 1981 when she was abused by a man she had revered. He was a priest, Father Finian Egan, and the impact never left her.
"I have put up with a facade all my life … there is a wall between me and sex," she says.
Abuse by the Irish-born priest began when she was at St Gerard's in Carlingford in the 1980s. For the girl from a strict Catholic family, the guitar-playing priest was the centre of her world. At youth group meetings, she says, he would "arrange me on his lap and put my arm around his neck so my breasts were in his face''. Then he would put his hand between her legs and, she says, ''I would feel his erection''.
Since 1996 the Catholic community has been dealing with the fallout from abuse through a process called ''Towards Healing''. The Melbourne archdiocese uses a similar system called the ''Melbourne Response''. An independent assessor examines claims of clerical abuse, which helps guide church-paid compensation. Victims who submit to the process sign away any rights to sue.
For Father Egan's other known victim, ''Kathy,'' the process has been devastating. "I believe in God, I just don't believe in the Catholic Church," she says.
In 2008, both women were told their complaints would be resolved within six months. But delays and an appeal meant it took more than two years until their complaints against Father Egan were completed. The compensation claims dragged on into this month.
For Kathy the delays were ''like a sledgehammer … in the chest'' and sent her into a spiral of depression. She'd already suffered many abusive relationships. ''I don't feel worthy because with every guy there is just no trust. You just don't want to live."
She contemplated going to the police but was told that if she did the church process would stop and jeopardise chances of compensation.
In the 1980s, Melbourne woman ''Lucy'' was groped in her family home by a trusted Catholic priest, Father Paddy Maye, a colleague of her father. One night he clutched her thigh while he sat between Lucy and her father. He also groped her sister.
Her experience shows not only that the Towards Healing process is tough on the victim but that the church has little power or determination to enforce its punishments.
What Lucy did not know was that a woman complained that in the 1970s Father Maye had forced himself on her and, she says, had intercourse without consent. As a result of that complaint, Father Maye was forced to retire at the end of 2005 and the Archbishop, Denis Hart, removed Father Maye's right to act in public as a priest. It is the most serious punishment short of defrocking. But Father Maye repeatedly ignored this sanction.
In 2005 the church and the police were looking into Father Maye, yet he continued as parish priest at St Augustine's Primary School, in Melbourne's west.
''I was feeling sick about the thought of him possibly abusing kids there,'' says Lucy. She believes the church should have kept him away from the school as any ''teacher would be" if they were under police investigation. Father Maye was one of the priests at the annual Mass for Melbourne's Irish community for the past two years.
In April, the Archbishop again wrote to the renegade priest, pointing out his conduct had brought great shame on himself and the church and caused significant harm to his victims.
The problem for the church is that few know Father Maye is an illegitimate priest. In February Father Maye was the surprise guest at an 80th birthday in Sydney for senior Sydney Bishop David Cremin. A notable attendee was the Irish ambassador.
Finian Egan was the senior celebrant at a service last year to honour his 50 years of service. The event was advertised in a handful of parishes and held only a few hundred metres from the office of the Bishop of Broken Bay, David Walker, the bishop charged with supervising Father Egan.
As a young girl Kathy received guitar lessons from Father Egan. She says he would slide his hand between her legs and fondle her - and "he always had a hard-on''.
Kathy started harming herself about that time, slamming the shower door on her hand to ensure she could not play guitar. Still, the abuse continued.
For a girl who saw this priest as "God on earth'' the result has been a process of continual self-harm and she has had ''countless'' abusive relationships.
After going through the Towards Healing process, Kathy says she fell into deep depression and did not get out of bed for weeks.
Finally in the middle of last year, Father Egan's appeal was rejected, but the mistreatment from the church continued. In July Kellie and ''Kathy'' received apologies but each received the letter addressed to the other woman. The error cemented their despair.
The church magazine Broken Bay News contains Bishop Walker's monthly editorial. In last November's issue, next to a photo of smiling priests, Father Egan is listed for his 50 years of service.
In the editorial, Bishop Walker writes: ''Those who are called to be followers of Jesus are not always … the most outstanding in the eyes of the world.''
"More accusations against the Church of Scientology have emerged, with new allegations they were involved in covering up the repeated sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl.
A woman told the ABC's Lateline program last night she had been repeatedly molested as a young girl by her stepfather, and that she had been coached by a senior member of the organisation to lie to investigators.
''Between the age of about [seven or eight] to 11 he was molesting me,'' Carmen Rainer told the program.
At 11, she told a friend who was the daughter of the chief executive of Barnardo's, Louise Voigt. Ms Voigt informed Ms Rainer's mother who decided to seek help from the organisation.
But a senior Scientologist from the Sydney branch, Jan Eastgate, allegedly told the mother and daughter to lie to the police and community services about the allegations. ''Just say no, she kept repeating that … don't say yes because otherwise you will be taken away from your parents and you'll never see your family again …,'' Ms Rainer said.
The Scientologists also told Ms Rainer the abuse was her fault. ''They told me it was my fault because I'd been bad in a past life … I believed them, as a child I believed them. I was 11 that's what I knew, I grew up believing what they believed,'' she said.
Ms Eastgate denied the claims, saying the organisation insisted Ms Rainer's stepfather go to the police in 1999. Ms Rainer made a statement 18 months later, and her stepfather pleaded guilty to indecent assault and was given a good behaviour bond, Lateline reported.
Ms Rainer recently made a statement to Balmain police about Ms Eastgate's interference with the police inquiries at the time, which they are now investigating. She was accompanied by the independent senator, Nick Xenophon.
Lateline said the Church of Scientology wrote in a statement the allegations were untrue."
So why are so many parents in the 21st Century blinded by family tradition and trust in religious institutions? Children are so vulnerable. Once abuses at a young age by a trusted adult, children are never the same.
We read of repeated instances every month!
Wake up!
Wake Up - Labor recognises immigrant rights over locals!
Wake Up! The Australian Labor Party recognises immigrant rights over locals. Recall colonialism did this to Aborigines. Neocolonialism is extending the philosophy to accommodate what Labor conceives as a new wave of workers to boost economic data, so locals can move aside.
Federal Labor's propaganda labels it 'securing our future', 'building a 21st century economy', 'delivering fairness', 'securing an inclusive future for all Australians', 'strengthening Australia in a changing world'.
Victorian Labor propaganda labels it 'A Fairer Victoria'...'helping those clichéd 'working families', 'growing the western suburbs'... by evangelistic 'urban renewal' and a shit load of houses.
As for Melbourne's eastern suburbs, Labor plans "to make sure Melbourne remains one of the most liveable cities in the world."
Get with it Liberal Camberwell. Camberwell's heritage pedestrian scale rail station needs to be bulldozed to make the precinct look like Southbank on a Hong Kong vision. This is where you get the 9-storey building, 3-storey building and a public plaza and 118 units.
Accommodating immigrant demand in then name of progress.
How dare locals criticise, else be dismissed as racist.
Camberwell's historic and cultural character of the area may be offensive to immigrants. By having such a strong local heritage may not newcomers feel welcome.
Opposing progress just stifles growth and the economy.
Camberwell' - Brumby's new centre for high rise for progressive new Australians and their multicultural richness!
Invite the change! Share the diversity!
You may have more congestion, less room, more shops whose signs are in foreign languages, but greater 'urban renewal' and greater choice of restaurant cuisine.
Enjoy!
Not misathropic
Ecomalthusians
Repellant spray offers children protection
Melbourne's liveability to be sacrificed for population growth
BP's interests or America's interests?
Fake ALP 'Environment group' pretends to save forest
Hoping J.M will report on this talk.
Oil leak threatens wetlands wildlife
Correct Bermagui Map Requested
Two years since the shameful Belconnen slaughter in Canberra
Debunking the roo shooter myths
Vivienne, the aim of the article is to debunk some of the standard roo shooter myths, in this case the false claims that 'kangaroo meat is 'green', better for the environment and could replace farmed livestock outright.
* The ethics of killing wildlife still has not been justified by roo shooters.
* The ethics of the means of killing kangaroos and their joeys still has not been justified by roo shooters.
* The ethics of encouraging a wildlife export trade in kangaroo meat by Anna Bligh to Russia says a lot about Anna Bligh.
* The inherent risk of using kangaroo meat for human consumption still has not been justified by roo shooters.
* The lack of effective government controls associated with kangaroo killing continues to be ignored by state and federal governments.
Red Meat Consumption
The debate over whether we should reduce our consumption of meat is warranted, both from an ethical standpoint and an environmental one. If farmers were paid a decent kilogram price for traditional livestock that factored in the cost of land management and rehabilitation on downgraded farmland, the consumption would reduce as it would become unaffordable to most.
The first step is to make livestock read meat (beef, lamb) a gourmet food - high quality and high price - say $40/kg like fillet steak. Market forces would then reduce the demand. Livestock farmers would need to transition to other more sustainable industries (with government subsidy). The primary industry outcome would see a fraction of the current land being used for red meat production. It would be organic, grass feed/ free range, humane and profitable - but government restricted like the abalone industry.
The other strategy is to develop sustainable alternatives that offer natural nutritional equivalents - heam iron, protein, selenium (antioxidant) , zinc, omega-3 fatty acids, Vitamin D and B-group vitamins (riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, vitamin B6 and in particular vitamin B12).
"But Vitamin B12 cannot be found in plant foods, therefore inadequate intakes of B12 are a problem for strict vegetarians. Lacking vitamin B12 can adversely affect neurological function including memory and concentration." [Meat and Livestock Australia website]
Tiger Quoll
Snowy River 3885
Australia
Needs robust economic case against population growth
This is positive feedback on yes "a grave national problem" which is encouraging to have come from a new political party in Australia. Australia needs a paradigm shift away from irrelevant dominance of a post-war Lib Lab two party system. It has become self-serving.
Bourke would do well to research the economic theories on growth and the relationships to population growth, so that he can enunciate in economic terms the problems. For instance, what does Bourke mean by "population growth is a false economy?"
Is strong economic growth a desirable end on its own? Is not the ultimate goal of government a higher per capita standard of living; that is a per capita outcome, not an aggregate outcome; that is a broader long term social outcome, rather than a short-term, economic metric? The originator of GDP post-Great Depression never intended GDP to be a stand-alone indicator of a country's fortune or success.
Another perspective: where is there current evidence of bigger being better? Where is there current evidence that a denser population is better? How does one compare the success, prosperity, wealth, sustainability, happiness or any other measure between say the Sydney CBD and Bathurst?
Why do we have to become big so that we can compete on scale internationally? This is a commoditisation strategy where the only advantage is volume to achieve low unit costs of production. It is ludicrous that we have to become as big as China and the US to compete on a level playing field, yet this is the presumption of free trade. NAFTA has proven that free market free trade just breeds monopolies allowing the big players to win like the US, while the small ones lose - like Mexico and Canada.
Ought Australia not differentiate based on quality and niche market focus on high value add products and services that we have an existing competitive advantage in?
Immigration is not a panacea to derive more tax revenue to fund our increasing number of retirees. Australia's retiree issue is separate and unrelated, yet one conveniently used to justify increasing immigration. The government should take full control and ownership of a compulsory contribution guaranteed superannuation scheme to ensures that by retirement age each Australian has an indexed pension annuity equivalent to the average real wage (as a minimum). Today that would equate to about $52,000 p.a., and more if one contributed more throughout their working life. (i.e. separate issue, unrelated to immigration).
This issue deserves to be on both national and state agendas, and recognised a the prime driver of social stresses - cost of living, congestion, public infrastructure, social problems, etc.
I am interested in where this new party is going and shall check their site.
What is important, is to separate the issue of the few thousand or so asylum seekers, which is an humanitarian problem and an international one for Australia to engage more proactively in. It is distractive nit picking on less than 1% of the immigration problem. Focus on the other 99%!
Population growth in Australia is primarily driven by economic immigration facilitate by the 457 Visa Programme - the full name being 'Temporary Business (Long Stay) - Standard Business Sponsorship (Subclass 457)'.
A key issue is that certain industries in Australia are seeking skilled workers, yet Gillard's supposed 'Education Revolution' is not matching and timing vocational training to those needs. The bandaid stop gap is for the Australian Givernement to import the skills. But this bandaid job fill has costly triple bottom line implications which the government treats as out of scope of its Immigration responsibility. Governments seemed to have conveniently forgotten the concept of triple bottom line accountability.
Government immigration responsibility continues long after passing through the international arrival gate. The terms of immigration/residency/citizenship, government support, adjustment, training, resettlement, assimilation, acculturation naturally varies on a migrant case by case basis. Immigration needs to start being recognised at this granular level for it to be rich and workable. The full cost of settlement and impact on local society is the real aggregate cost of immigration to Australia.
rats leaving a sinking ship
Laboral sprawl fettish also threatens Sydney basin farmland
The same thing is happening in western Sydney...
by Debra Jopson and Kelly Lane, Sydney Morning Herald, 16th May 2010
'The body representing 10 western Sydney councils has accused the federal government of ignoring its plans to stop the nation's biggest city from gobbling up its farmland, risking a disastrous loss of crucial fresh food sources.
''The failure to take seriously the need for long-term agricultural land in the Sydney basin will have disastrous consequences for our food supply,'' Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils (WSROC) president Alison McLaren said.
''The federal government needs to realise that agriculture is not just the domain of rural areas.''
State government research estimates the Sydney agricultural industry is worth between $800 million and a $1 billion annually, with 10 per cent of total NSW produce coming from 1 per cent of the state's agricultural land. Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows more than 8500 people are employed in the Sydney industry.
Cr McLaren said WSROC's attempts to get a response from the federal government about its Urban Adapt program - aimed at ensuring the continuity of fresh produce to Sydneysiders - had failed.
About 30 groups and institutions, including state departments, are working on the plan despite the lack of federal involvement.
She called on federal Agriculture Minister Tony Burke to immediately pledge to work with WSROC and other bodies ''to secure the food supply grown in western Sydney''.
The Sydney region grows about 15 per cent of the state's vegetables, according to NSW Primary Industries research. It produces at least 80 per cent of ''perishable'' vegetables - defined as those that are fresh, have not been processed and have a short shelf life - for NSW. These include Asian vegetables, capsicums and chillis, celery, parsley, basil, coriander, mushrooms and silverbeet.
It is also the state's most important area for producing chickens, ducks, turkeys and eggs.
But an internal NSW government analysis has predicted that two Sydney areas earmarked as growth centres to house 1 million more residents by 2036 will cause that production to plummet.
Planned development in the south and north-west growth areas will lead to a possible 29 per cent drop in vegetables grown and a 35 per cent drop in poultry meat produced.
''Over 50 per cent of NSW's vegetables are grown in the Murray-Murrumbidgee region, where water availability is becoming a significant issue,'' says the document, produced by the state department governing agriculture.
''According to Professor [Ross] Garnaut, the rivers in the Murray-Darling basin could deteriorate to a trickle by 2050 as a result of climate change. Sydney has good agricultural land and may also have better rainfall than inland as climate change occurs. The capacity for Sydney to continue to provide vegetables should be increased - not reduced.''
Urban Adapt would weigh up how much farmland should be kept on the city fringe and whether there should be new farming zones along motorways, WSROC executive director Jeremy Goff said.
It would consider how to source food when climate change made the Murray-Darling and Murrumbidgee food bowls less viable. And rising fuel prices would increase the cost of freighting food.
Possible new intensive farming greenhouse technology to allow growing food close to the city and a blossoming movement in community gardens were also on the agenda, Mr Goff said.
The aim was to ensure that fresh, equitably priced food will still be available to Sydney people and those in the west in particular.
Most of the city's vegetable farms were set to disappear over the next 20 years as housing development marched across the south and north-west, he said.
David Brunckhorst, director of the Institute for Rural Futures director at the University of New England, said plans must be made to extract the maximum benefit from what little good soil and rainfall areas we have: ''In this country we have very few and they are very precious.''
The Murray-Darling basin had gone down the drain while much of our topsoil had blown away, he said. Farming on city fringes and in rich soil around the Great Divide must be nurtured, and homes could be built in rocky areas.
Mr Burke acknowledged the importance of food being grown locally but would not answer questions about Sydney's farm land being rezoned. Nor would he say whether the federal government should intervene to protect Sydney's agricultural land.
''The food eaten by people in Sydney already comes from all over the nation,'' Mr Burke said.
NSW Primary Industries Minister Steve Whan said there were ''plenty of good reasons to ensure food should continue to be grown here in the Sydney basin''.
''The region has the advantage of a mild coastal climate, with a range of suitable soils and access to reliable water supplies, transport, labour and markets,'' he said.
And of course the likes of the developer lobby which calls itself 'The Urban Taskforce', cries foul over 'high council levies and reams of bureaucratic red tape" in Sydney, which it argues is limiting its frenetic sprawl. It says because of this Melbourne is set to outgrow Sydney. [Red tape, levies drawing Sydney back]
So which city wants to outgrow Shanghai first - Sydney or Melbourne?
Hopefully, new suburbs will be using Class A water
Bernard Salt marginalises those who dispute assassination myths
I thank Sheila for having raised this critical issue.
The four most charismatic, effective and incorruptible leaders of the 1960's -- President John F Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Robert F Kennedy -- were all murdered. Those who refuse to believe that these four murders could have been just a coincidence are baited by the establishment as "conspiracy theorists".
An example is an article by Bernard Salt "Jackson's death becomes celebrity thriller" of 2 July 2009. (It was published in the Australian on 2 July here, but the story is no longer available.)
However, I did copy some of it to an online forum:
THERE are still questions to be answered about the untimely death of pop singer Michael Jackson and I suspect these questions will continue to be asked long after he has been laid to rest.
The reason is that all the ingredients are gelling for a grand conspiracy theory.
To bake a delicious conspiracy theory, here's what you need: Take a celebrity with global fan appeal but make sure your candidate is aged between 33 and 50 (any younger and they haven't amassed the fan base necessary to incite hysteria after death; any older there's a diminution of the feeling of being robbed by their death). There's no "injustice" in an 80-year-old dropping dead.
The article then goes off to raise other conspiracy theories such as those surrounding the death of Princess Diana, the disappearance of Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt and Elvis faking his own death. It is as if Salt means to imply that all conspiracy theorists unquestioningly accept each and every one of these theories.
This is a technique similar to that employed by Time magazine in its article "Conspiracy Theories" around the same time in July 2009. (See article "Time Magazine: 9/11 Truth lumped in with "The Reptilian Elite" and "Holocaust Revisionism" for further discussion.)
Bernard Salt continues:
But if you really want to create the perfect conspiracy theory, then have a celebrity power figure, say a 46-year-old US president, assassinated in public. And then have the whole thing captured on a single movie camera operated by a middle-aged man with an exotic name such as, oh I don't know, say Abraham Zapruder.
Naturally, Salt takes a swipe of that most taboo of all conspiracy theories, that of 9/11:
Other conspiracy theories question the motives behind global events: the bigger the event the greater the market for an elaborate theory.
Did you know that 9/11 was orchestrated by the CIA so a pretext could be established for George W.Bush to invade Iraq via Afghanistan? And this is because Bush wanted to please his father, who regretted not taking Saddam Hussein out after Desert Storm
Salt's supposed humour appears to be an intellectually cowardly way of avoiding discussing the evidence.
One of many pieces of evidence that proves that Oswald could not have killed Kennedy or, at least could not have killed Kennedy acting alone is to be found on the very film by Abraham Zapruder that Salt alludes to. That evidence is that the fatal shot pushed Kennedy's head backwards and not forwards --- a physical impossibility if the shot had come from behind Kennedy from the Texas Book repository from which Oswald was alleged to have fired the fatal shot.
It seems that those who like to bait JFK assassination theorists avoid mentioning the other assassinations, particularly that of Martin Luther King.
In part this is because a jury trial found that there was a conspiracy to murder Martin Luther King, as Sheila has shown so it is not nearly as easy to dismiss them.
Also, it is because it can be implied (falsely) that President Kennedy was corrupt and tainted by power merely because he held high office and therefore either he somehow got what he deserved anyway or at least his death was no great loss. One who argues the latter is the supposed dissident American intellectual Noam Chomsky.
The same cannot be so easily said of Martin Luther King.
Kangaroo meat is not viable
Re: James Earl Ray's involvement
What was James Earl Ray's involvement?
I have decided to join Australia First
Useless resumé writing courses intended to harass the unemployed
Real bludgers are in the property sector
Australia's growing underclass
Orange-bellied Parrot habitat lost
When is immoral practice justified?
Progress photo
Alternatives to medicine using animals
- Epidemiological Studies
- Clinical studies and trials
- Autopsies and Post-Mortem Studies
- Post-Marketing Surveillance using computer technology
- Non-Invasive Imaging Techniques
- Tissue and Cell Culture
- Mathematical and Computer Models
- Chromatography and Spectroscopy
Refuse to pay levies, rates and taxes