Comments

Thanks, Joan for sharing your knowledge with us.

Aime's article suggested that good protection against bushfires could be achieved at a cost that would be affordable to most people. Yours suggests that the solutions proposed in Aime's article and associated comments could become death traps.

Could I put to you that the bushfire bunker designs she suggested may still be considerably better than no protection at all?

Whether or not this proves to be the case, it seems that the cost, in economic and ecological terms, of giving everyone in bushfire-prone areas near absolute protection against the threat of bushfires may be more than we can afford if we take into account the cost of building bushfire shelters and the clearing of vegetation from around the bushfire shelters.

If we multiply the necessary cleared land per shelter by the number of shelters necessary to house the growing numbers of people living in bushfire-prone areas, whether by choice or necessity, then much more of Australia will necessarily become drier increasing even further the likelihood of bushfires in what little bush is likley to remain.

It is somewhat analogous to the way the waste heat necessarily created by the operation of air-conditioning units in cities like Tokyo actually increases the overall temperature as well as adding to the level of greenhouse gases, even as they afford some respite from the heat inside dwellings.

Instead of going to all this enormous expense and trouble, either as individuals or as a community, we, perhaps, instead, need to consider other alternatives, some of which have already been suggested by others including Tigerquoll in his article "Bushfire bunkers strategy an 'after-the-fact' dead end". These include:

• Measures to make the bush less dry. These can be adapted from proposals by Peter Andrews and the Natural Sequence Farming movement to fix up our rural land (although this would require us to rethink many of our assumptions about the inappropriateness of weeds and non-native plant species);
• make the settlement patterns in bushfire-prone areas more compact;
• discouragement of settlement in bushfire-porne areas in the first place;
• effective bushfire-fighting strategies including early detection and aerial suppression of fire rather than the tired old truck-centric response methodology; and
• the establishment of a nationwide professional bushfire fighting service in place of reliance on volunteers;

Originally sent to me on 1 June 2009. Apologies for the delay in posting this. - JS

My name is Diederik Haneveld and have a project underway. Check out Faint
Voice shipping container bunker discussions.
regards,

Diederik

Check out this astonishingly nasty editorial from Rupert Murdoch's Australian:

Bob Brown should think again before he decides to sue

JUST this once, Bob Brown should stop making a martyr of himself. On Monday, the Greens senator told the world he would lose his Senate seat if Forestry Tasmania bankrupted him over $240,000 he owes in legal fees. And - what a surprise - environmental activists immediately rallied to his cause. Pensioners promised to bake cakes and Dick Smith said he would see what he could do to help. Perhaps Senator Brown was surprised by promises of assistance, or perhaps it was what he expected, given the years he has spent cultivating his image as a fearless fighter for forests.

Not satisfied with having a personally ruinous bill imposed upon Bob Brown, The Australian would presumably have Bob Brown accept bankruptcy alone without accepting help from others and being thrown out of the Senate for having courageously stood up for forests which the Tasmanian Government is willing to have destroyed. The editorial continues:

But whatever his expectations, in ensuring the debate is all about him, Senator Brown avoids explaining what this matter actually involves -the way activists attempt to use the courts to impose their opinions on everybody else. Senator Brown took Forestry Tasmania to court to stop logging in Tasmania's Wielangata Forest, which supposedly threatens the habitats of two endangered birds and one beetle. The case took four years to complete, ending last year when a panel of High Court judges denied Senator Brown permission to appeal to the full court. The decision meant he was stuck with Forestry Tasmania's costs.

Tough. Every government agency and private business that has faced environmentalists whose MO is to use the courts when parliament will not give them what they want is familiar with this sort of strategy. It is a lot easier to go to court when your business is not at stake and when somebody else will ultimately pick up the bill. If it wasn't so serious, this whole affair would be frivolous.

You're right. It's insane.

As I feared, my previous post citing JKF and the ancient Athenian lawmaker Solon have been deleted by Professor John Quiggin. Here are his words:

"Deleted. I think everyone is aware of 9/11 conspiracy theories, and I see no benefit in having them discussed here. I specifically requested no metacommentary on my decision, and you’ve chosen to ignore that. You’re banned for 24 hours."

Update: (1 June 09): Shortly after the 24 hour ban expired, I posted the following to the discussion "The end of the Taliban?" :

If questioning what Prime Minister Kevin Rudd insists is the reason why Australia has no choice but to continue its involvement in the Afghan war, now overflowing into Pakistan, is deemed inappropriate for a forum discussing that conflict, can I at least commend Duckpond's excellent article, also about that conflict.

However, people need to be warned before they click on that link: The last time I looked, at least one of the comments appeared to contain references to subject matter deemed inappropriate for this discussion.

---

The setbacks to the Tamil Tigers as well as the Pakistani Taliban, however we view those movements, illustrate that it is folly to assume that popular resistance can always overpower the military might of powerful imperial nations like the US or their local proxies. Even where it succeeded as appeared to be the case in Vietnam, it was at a terrible cost in lives and material.

So, it seems to me that Ho Chi Minh and others, who tried to emulate his strategy, may not have been as smart as they have been held to be, particularly given that Ho Chi Minh failed to seize opportunities to decisively end the conflict in 1945 and 1954, claiming, retropectively that a people's war would bring victory at a cheaper cost.

I guess at least we can all sleep soundly at night in the knowledge that our rulers would never contemplate using the awesome firepower that they have used against the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan against their own people.

The post included below was deleted from the discussion "The end of the Taliban?" by Professor John Quiggin. Professor Quiggin justified his action thus:

"Daggett, you've had your say on this, and you are hijacking the thread against my previous request. I'm deleting your most recent comment and will deleting anything further on this topic. Any metacommentary, attempting to dispute my decision or similar, will result in a more extensive ban. I don’t have time to waste on this kind of thing."

I intend to respond to this.

Post which was deleted from John Quiggin's blog

Jill,

Many of your points are valid. I well remember being appalled and disgusted by the behaviour of the Taliban rulers, particulary for their barbarous destruction of the Buddhas of Bamyan.

In 2001/2002, I welcomed the US invasion of Afgjhanistan and the overthrow of the Taliban on those grounds and because I fully accepted the fiction that 'Al Qaeda' which had been given sanctuary by the Taliban, had perpetrated the 9/11 atrocity. Even when I protested against the invasion of Iraq, I never questioned the US government account of 9/11. Like Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 911 I was critical of the US for not pouring more resources into Afghanistan to finish off Al Queda instead of launching the invasion of Iraq, which clearly had no relationship with Al Qaeda.

I became subsequently dismayed to learn that, instead of the former Taliban rulers of Afghanistan being totally repudiated by Afghans, they were able to undergo a resurgence. Whether or not the insurgents could be viewed as the same as the former Taliban rulers, the fact that many Afghanis found them preferable to the United States and the government they had intalled, is surely an appalling indictment of the US occupation, so it seems to me that we have not been given the complete story about Afghanistan. It seems that for a more complete account, we need to look on web-sites such as Winter Patriot and Global Research.

I can't know what would result from a US withdrawal from Afghanistan, but it could not possibly be worse than what woud result form their continued occupation.

More recently, I have made the effort to study the evidence of 9/11 and have realised, over seven years too late, that I was wrong to have accepted the official account of 9/11. I strongly suggest that you do the same. Please, at least, look at the video I gave you the link to. It is less than 10 minutes in length. I am happy to discuss with you any questions you have about that or any other 9/11 Truth material.

Donald Oats, I accepted the story of the respective impacts of the two planes and the fire causing total collapse of the twin towers at near free-fall unquestioningly for over 6 years. However, it has since become obvious that explanation does not take account of all the observations and eyewitness testimony. I urge you also to look at that video I gave you the link to, and then ask yourself if you are still quite so confident of what you have written.

Both the towers were designed to withstand a head on impact from a Boeing 707, a plane comparable to the 767's which struch the Twin Towers. Analysis has shown that there was easily enough structural strength left after the impacts for the full weight of the parts of the towers above to be supported. Most of the fuel, which did did not ignite in the air surrounding the towers, burnt out within minutes and could not have possibly caused the temperature of the steel to be raised anywhere near the temperature that was necessary to cause total structural failure.