Comments

A lot of what Sheila writes I emphatically agree with.

However, much of what Sheila writes is also beside the point.

I have also had to put up with unwanted noise, including dog barking as well as all those others described on many occasions in my own life so I know, from my own direct experience, how it can completely destroy one's concentration.

I can put a number of my own fail grades at University down to the fact that the noise of barking dogs as well as car horns prevented me from being able to study.

As Menkit pointed out, many, although not all, dog owners are irresponsible and have little concern at the misery that their own animals inflict on the lives of others. Sometimes they even go out of their way to make circumstances worse.

If we lived in less dysfunctional communities, we could find ways to curb dogs from barking as excessively as they often do in our increasingly crowded urban slums,

However, we don't and means to respect the rights of people bothered by excessive barking, including myself, need to be found, until such time as we do.

I believe it is possible, for owners with the will to do so, to curb excessive barking and they must be encouraged to do so with inducements, if possible, as I have argued before, or else made to do so.

I am not exactly sure why it is that Paul Scott expects that Tweed Shire residents who have strenuously objected to the Nightcap development will accede to his edict that they "live with" the decision of the Tweed Shire Council to ignore their wishes, but I sincerely hope that the Tweed Shire residents tell Paul Scott where to put his advice.

I wonder what Paul's understanding of the concept of 'democracy' is?

My understanding of democracy, to once again borrow US President Abraham Lincoln's immortal words, is 'government of the people, by the people, for the people'.

What has happened in Tweed Shire is clearly different.

Clearly, the Tweed Shire Councilors, the majority of which have been voted into office on the basis of being supposedly pro-environment and anti-developer, have been somehow got at behind the backs of those who voted them into office and been persuaded to disregard their wishes.

Paul Scott wrote:

It was not the developer who mentioned the work done to rehabilitate the land as assumed by James Sinnamon but by me who just happens to live and work in the immediate area.

This is completely beside the point. In fact, if it was not the developer that supposedly rehabilitated the land, then they would have even less moral right to build the housing estate. As I wrote earlier, many others in the region have also worked hard to rehabilitate the land, but have not presumed that this gives them the right to profit enormously at the expense of fellow residents by plonking a huge residential development in their midst.

So, Paul Scott, do you, or don't you have a direct financial stake in the development proceeding?

Paul Scott wrote:

"Did you know, that we employ up to 20 people for about 40 weeks each year right here in the valley."

But I thought that they were going to build 130 three storey units, 250 houses, a 100-bed backpacker and 100-bed motel and 50 shops?

It seems like far more dwellings than are necessary to house those 20 people to me, even assuming that their work is socially useful, sustainable and will endure.

Paul Scott wrote:

"Surely if the people choose to live at the Nightcap Village they would become rate payers of the Tweed Shire and therefore contribute to the road costs. Also a sustantial part of the purchase price, known as road contribution, of these blocks goes to the council to cover the road costs."

In fact, it is well understood that population growth costs the local community and does not pay for itself. That is why council rates, water charges electricity charges, etc, are going up in South East Queensland as a consequence of the state Government's recklessly irresponsible policy of encouragement of population growth.

Property speculators openly gloat at how they will profit from improvements to land value made possible by the construction of infrastructure at the expense of taxpayers and local ratepayers, not to mention the Federal and State Government's policies to deliberately drive up population at the behest of the Growth Lobby.

Notwithstanding the supposed road contribution, it is unlikely that the situation with Nightcap will be fundamentally different.

Even if it can be shown that the costs can be fully recovered, it should still be the democratic right of local communities to preserve their way of life should they so choose.

Let's face it, sentimental reasons set aside, any dog other than a dingo is a feral animal and as such causes death to native animals at every opportunity. Barking dogs are definitely an irritation, perhaps more so to some people than others, and strike terror in the heart of our wildlife. At the rate we are going with overpopulation, by the year 3000 every person will have only 1 sq. meter of space. Now if every one of them has a barking dog imagine how unbearable that would be? It just is not practical to keep domesticated animals. They should be wild as nature intended - and not introduced as are dogs, cats and the rest. Anyone who cares about native animals should not keep them strictly speaking. Having said that there are responsible people who train their dogs properly, don't let them loose and give them time, proper food and exercise - but I fear they are not the norm. "It’s embarrassing for Australia that we eat our own wildlife ....I’m here to tell you it’s just not right. Simply do not buy, use or eat kangaroo products” ~ Steve Irwin Sign the most important petition ever created to help kangaroos.

If we are to hope to arrive at solutions that are acceptable to people of good will in both camps, then there needs to be some understanding of the needs of those in the other camp on the part of those in each of the respective camps.

What may make it difficult for many dog owners to train their dogs or desex them may be the lack of money and high price for the services.

The high price of many services is probably largely due to the excessive red tape needed by anyone who wants to set up a 'for profit' business. If people who are able to provide such services as dog walking or dog training were able to work directly for local councils and if the Federal Government were to waive the idiotic requirements of Professor Frederick Hilmer's Competition Policy imposed by the Keating 'Labor' Government in 1993, it would be possible for local governments to provide such services far cheaper than would be possible on a 'for profit' basis.

Whether the costs of providing such services should always be fully, or even partially recovered from those receiving the services should be a matter for rate payers as a whole to decide. The advantage of providing services for free and not requiring cost recovery is that the red tape and administrative costs could be reduced still further. Does anyone here remember how simple life was when doctor's properly bulk-billed?

If this helps create more harmonious and pleasant neighbourhoods, then perhaps the cost subsidy on the part of non-dog owners would be well worth the price.

Conversely those who do not take advantage of such services and thereby allow their dogs to bark excessively would get very little sympathy from the rest of the community when they are consequently fined.

We should not overlook that dogs communicate with their distant colleagues by barking. It's not always distress. They have conversations. I am not personally bothered by barking dogs unless they sound distressed, in which case I would go and knock on the door and ask what was going on and call the council if I thought something was wrong.

I do worry that dogs and their owners can be victimised by people who use the law to bully not to help.

That said, I agree with James that our population pressure makes life miserable for everyone - and was totally unnecessary. When I was a child dogs took themselves for walks and it was no big deal. Some do still in my street today, but they are the exception; most lack traffic sense.

We have neighbours on all sides who seem to like to know there are noisy dogs to discourage burglars.

And, give me a loud-mouth but happy dog any day over traffic noise and construction racket.

Sheila Newman, population sociologist
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Some other discussion on the demise of the Tamil Tigers (aka Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam or LTTE) can be found at The end of the LTTE on John Quiggin's blog and Learning from the LTTE from the Indian Express of 20 May 09, which is linked to from the former. The following from within that article seems to confirm my own understanding of the conflict:

"The rise and fall of the Tigers, in fact, is a lesson for insurgent groups across the world. From a gang of 40 boys in 1975, the group rose to achieve a military prowess unknown for any insurgent group in the world. The discipline and determination of its cadre to lay down their lives for the Eelam cause was unprecedented. After 25 years of single-minded devotion and readiness to kill and die for the Tamil homeland, Tiger leader Prabhakaran seemed invincible. But the Tigers failed to understand that war alone is never enough. And at the height of their military success when they forced Colombo to enter into a peace process, Prabhakaran and his group didn’t understand the necessity of the transition from terror tactics to pure politics. History had given the Tigers a rare chance even in a post-9/11 world to sit at a negotiating table and ensure that the Tamil minority gets genuine political and constitutional rights in Sri Lanka. But like several other insurgencies, the Tigers too were blinded by their military success and a false sense of invincibility. Today, the Tamil minority, in whose name the Tigers killed and died, are at the mercy of a ruling alliance in Colombo which is dominated by a Sinhala-Buddhist supremacist discourse. In the process of the Tigers’ humiliating defeat, they took away any semblance of credibility from the moderate political forces from the Sinhalese majority too. The military success of Rajapakasha regime has effectively eclipsed Ranil Wickramasinghe and other political parties who had supported a historic truce with Tigers in 2002.

"Like the Tigers, the Kashmir insurgency also had several opportunities to understand the world’s changing political realities, halt violence and take a moral high ground on a negotiating table. But each time, the opportunity provided by a military success was lost with a complete underestimation of the power of the state."

It would interesting to contemplate whether the ransacking of Sri Lanka by disaster capitalists which followed the Boxing Day 2004 Tsunami as described in "The Shock Doctrine" could have been resisted if the peace negotiations had been allowed to continue.

My understanding of the situation is that the Tamils were 19th and 20th C immigrant labour imported by British colonials to work colonial tea plantations. Some Tamil business immigrants also came. The local Sri Lankans resented the occupation by the British and the British stealing of their land for tea plantations. They certainly didn't appreciate the Tamil immigrants, many of whom were eventually repatriated in their thousands. The situation bears similarities to the problems caused by Colonial engineered mass immigration, with citizenship rights in question. I would like to know more about land-rights and citizenship there. My recent reference source is this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_Country_Tamils#Disenfranchisement

British imperialism sure has a lot to answer for, especially where mass immigration is concerned: Israel-Palestine; Sri-Lanka; Fiji; Australia; Canada; Africa; India.... Stuffing up land-rights and imposing new laws. And still it goes on, in the form of the economic shock doctrine and the Growth Lobby - right here. And it will get worse and worse.

Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page

Excellent article, Sheila.
Fits right in with Alex Jones' video at here or on YouTube where he talks about how the Treaty of Rome set up the EU in 1957 as a vehicle for world domination through banks and the elite.

"It’s embarrassing for Australia that we eat our own wildlife ....I’m here to tell you it’s just not right. Simply do not buy, use or eat kangaroo products”
   ~ Steve Irwin
Sign the most important petition ever created to help kangaroos (linked to from www.stopkangarookilling.org).

I feel ambivalent on the issue of Australian military spending. On the one hand many wars in which Australia has participated have been clearly immoral. These include: the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the invasion of Iraq and the invasion of Afghanistan. The latter two have been justified largely by the Big Lie of 9/11 of which I have written elsewhere on this site.

Nevertheless, there has been at least occasion in our history when a large expenditure on our armed forces was clearly essential, that being during the Second World War. Given the massive size of Australia's potential enemies in the region, it is hard to know for sure what amount of spending on our armed forces would be necessary to hope to dissuade or, if necessary, defeat, any military aggressor as it did in 1942.

Of course, our first line of defence should be a Foreign Policy which seeks to establish justice and harmony in the world. This is clearly not what the purpose of our Afghan military adventure is or what our Iraqi military adventure was.

Nevertheless, even if (for a change) Australia behaved like a model world citizen, I don't see that as being an absolute safeguard against military aggression from China, Indonesia or India.

Today some, including Bernard Salt spuriously justify the ever greater encroachments upon Australia's sovereignty by China, in particular, as necessary price to pay in order to prevent outright occupation.

However, if we don't have an adequate defence force as our forefathers did in 1942, that choice will be taken away from us altogether.

However, the difficult question posed in 2009 is to what extent that military expenditure will be abused to threaten world peace rather than safeguard our own borders.

For a contrary view, see Australian Military Buildup And The Rise Of Asian NATO of 6 may 09 on Global Research.

Thanks for your comment. No need to apologise for your 'ramblings'. It is great to hear from someone else who also feels the anger that we feel about the wanton ecological vandalism committed against Mornignton Peninsula.

That said, I will address a few points in this post.

I dispute that wrecking the environment can be good economics. It can only be considered good economics if we accept as valid the badly deficient ways that many economists measure prosperity and fail to measure the loss of natural capital including biodiversity which is necessary for a healthy environment and, ultimately, an economy.

You wrote:

"... until Environmental Groups somehow Unite, all individual groups who have their causes to fight - which are all very valid, unfortunately will achieve nothing against Governments."

Unfortunately many supposed environment groups have been co-opted into the system.

Nevertheless, it is necessary that genuine environmental groups, and the rest of us who share their goals, begin to pull in the same direction.

That's why it is in our best interests to get behind those fighting against the destruction of Old Growth Frest in Gippsland and why they and the rest of us should give what support we can, for example, to those fighting the ecologically criminally World Rally car race on the far north coast. of NSW.

Steve, You write, "Salt’s article in The Australian newspaper constructively promotes the immigration and population debate in the mass media, which is where the debate should be if the broader community is to be better informed. The broader community holds most influence to effect government immigration policy." Well, I don't think that 'debate' is possible in the mainstream press because they don't play fair; they manipulate perception; they prevent 'debate' because it is not to their advantage to allow growth to be questioned - especially not in the current financially desperate circumstances. Since Salt has been repeating the same thing for years and the mainstream press have been printing the same things for years, to humour him and them [i.e. to take them seriously] is simply adding to the problem. How can you have a debate when it is scripted by a media which is addicted to the inflation produced by population growth and the spokespersons are in the business of selling population growth? It is the mainstream media which has constructed the monumental ignorance of the public on the subject of population policy and immigration. Only the alternative media has some chance of deconstructing that pernicious influence. To encourage any trust in their management of the subject of population numbers is, according to my experience, akin to expecting a fox to put the welfare of hens ahead of his own appetite. I guess I also think that it is counterproductive to cite the overexposed Salt without showing where his investment interests lie. Most people are not aware of them and they need to be told. That is, in my view, the main story. Population growth in Australia is driven by the commodification of resources and the bringing about scarcity. People need to hear that again and again because they have been misled that it is all about something quite different. The Growth Lobby (inc Bernard Salt) took up Tim Flannery's 1994 and then SPA's cry of "Let's have a population policy" (which I used to call for as well) and used it to their advantage, constructing a big population policy. They have run conferences and summits ad nauseum on the pretext of having a 'population policy' and 'having a population policy debate', but all that ever happens is that they put journalists, hired guns and politicians on stage, who tell us we are desperately in need of a big population. I thought your criticism of government immigration stats was good. I like the idea of an immigration tide. Australia and France both had unusually good and continuous population statistics dating back to 1788 and 1789, but the Howard Government changed the collection and definition processes, thus interrupting a 200 plus years series. The government has also been running dodgy partial series, but we could still fall back on the total in and total out in overseas migration. It has become far more difficult now and one assumes this was done on purpose to keep us all totally confused. Sheila Newman, population sociologist home page

Steve, Bernard Salt reads better with a lot of salt and preferably wrapped around some nice fish and chips. Did you not have a faint unease in reading Bernard Salt's bland assertions about what is 'our' share etc.? I see that you also have formed the impression that the States have no control over immigration to Australia. This is a widespread misconception. In fact the reality is dead opposite. Most or all of the States have their own immigration departments and they are constantly touting for high immigration numbers over the internet. They do this because they have become infiltrated by property development interests to the degree that no-one in Parliament even dares to criticise these trends. Bernard Salt and KPMG have been making money out of predicting and driving population growth trends for business to speculate on. I became aware of them in about 1993, through advertisements in the press for a report they sold then for around $300 or $400 to businesses. Mr Murdoch's press owns a huge property dot com and, frankly, I cannot tell Murdoch Press interests from KPMG and Bernard Salt interests, seen from a sociological perspective. Finding out where exactly the Murdoch Empire has invested its money is a task beyond my ability but I would be surprised if our daily news were not daily producing attitudes to bolster those and the many similar investment vehicles which unfortunately dominate the Australian landscape - physical and political. This is a good argument for legally requiring full disclosure of all financial interests including corporate investments on a daily basis in all media organs. If you actually analyse what Bernard Salt says you would possibly feel, as I do, that there is little objective reason to publish him for his originality, intellectual rigor or philosophical leadership. What you will find if you google Bernard Salt is that he is always spruiking for population growth and housing, using whatever reasons come to hand. Sometimes the rationale is as crude as suggesting that growth will only stop when the reasons to grow run out - i.e. the Queensland coast is completely ruined. The industry he represents along with other growth lobby spruikers has no concern for democracy and, in my opinion, represents the greatest threat (along with the mainstream press) to democracy and security in this country. Mr Salt is not alone and the industry is extremely well organised and funded via a political monopoly on the use of taxpayer funds. The industry has successfully pressured states for new laws which severely erode Australians' ability to self govern. The industry has a population policy and influences Australia's population policy to the degree that I would say that there is no difference. Australia does have a population policy, but the electorate was never able to vote on it and the subject is rigorously suppressed from the electoral agenda. (See Brisbane ABC suppresses alternative candidates in state elections despite listener dismay with major parties and "Courier Mail, ABC back Department of Main Roads land grab" of 29 Mar 09, "Why the Brisbane Mayoral elections should not have been 'boring'" of 23 Mar 08, "Courier Mail provides 'boring', yet unbalanced, coverage of Brisbane City Council elections" of 17 Mar 09.) Our political elite are engineering Australia to grow according to the dictates of the property development industry and to ignore the wishes of the electorate. In the 2020 Summit Mr Rudd basically rammed that policy through officially. In Victoria and most states there are appalling objectives for unsustainable population growth. I really wonder when it is going to get so bad that they will need to bring out the tanks to stifle the protests. However they manage pretty well by keeping the public confused with the unstinting cooperation of the commercial and ABC media (which runs a lot of Murdoch Journos these days and others, like Geraldine Doogue, who are members of Growth Lobby organisations, like Australia Unlimited of the Globalisation Foundation.) Could I suggest that, when you quote card-carrying growth-lobbyists, like Mr Salt, you do so with ... um... a grain of salt :-) On candobetter's "On the dark side", we have a page devoted to his propaganda Check out The Growth Lobby as well, since Bernard Salt is only one of many organs and ideology promoters in Australia. We often forget to classify these growth lobbyists under all the headings, but another heading is "a href="http://candobetter.org/PropagandaWatch">Propaganda Watch, which contains some gems. Sheila Newman Sheila Newman, population sociologist home page

Reasonable questions. Where to start? I'm a land-use planning and population sociologist, so I tend to notice these things. I have been writing a book on a subject which leads me to study traditional land tenures, changes during colonisation, and revolutions in Britain and on the continent. I'm not inclined to preview my entire book here, of course, so you will have to be satisfied or dissatisfied with a few info-grabs and refs. Citizenship was originally membership of a community and was defined by land-rights. In a subsistence community, any child born without land would die. There were rules to limit the production or survival of children beyond the capacity of land to provide. Until a few decades into the 20th Century in Australia no-one who did not own land could vote. And British and British colonial women's ability to inherit or own land was compromised between the 11th C and the 1920s - coinciding with their not being able to vote. The Roman Empire started off with about 2% of people citizens and finished up (for a variety of reasons) with about 9% citizens. Citizenship was defined by right to own land, and, not always, right to vote as well. (Women couldn't vote, for instance, but they could own land). Most people in the empire were tenants, serfs or slaves, and could not bequeath their land to their children, only their [lowly] status. You might say that the French revolution was an enlarging of the Roman model rights to all people born to a polity. (More further down.) Note that medieval systems of land-ownership were different from private ownership, but most people were still excluded from dominion over land. God actually owned all the land and the king was his real-estate agent, and he let lords dominate parcels of land and the people on it into perpetuity, and bequeath this, in return for services in time of war. The serfs were the people who provided the means for this system, but they were chattels with some basic rights, like horses. The 1381 Peasants' Revolt, with Wat Tyler and 60,000 landless peasants, in England was a demand for land. Anyone without land was obliged by law to work for anyone with land. People demanded land as their right and as the basis on which to refuse to work for the incumbent landed. (This was after a lot of land became available following the black plague but nobles got the king to make sure that lots of people remained dispossessed and obliged to work for them.) Unfortunately Tyler and his supporters were massacred. The Puritan revolution associated with Cromwell was fought on two levels. The bourgeois who had benefited from Henry VIII's repossession then selling off of the monasteries (which the bourgeoisie had purchased with bullion circulating from South America) wanted more power in parliament. They ultimately beheaded Charles 1 in 1649. However, the Modern Army, led by Cromwell, relied in large part on common soldiers who thought they were fighting for land-rights and voting rights. Famously they were done out of these, even though Cromwell had led them in a massacre against the Irish among others, whose land was divided up for speculators. (Another good reason to revolt). Among the English soldiers were Diggers and Levellers. Both these groups wanted land-rights and voting rights. The Diggers wanted a return to common land and cooperative living. They quoted from the Wat Tyler revolt 261 years prior. The Levellers tended to be land-owners already but landowners who did not have parliamentary representation. None of these people got what they wanted, but Cromwell used them up. Here is a quote from a typical document of the time: Leveller Colonel Rainborough wrote to Cromwell's son-in-law, General Ireton, "For really I think that the poorest he that is in England that a life to live, as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sur, I thinkt's clear, that every man that is to live under a government out first by his own consent to put himself under that government… I should doubt whether he was an Englishman or no, that should doubt of these things." General Ireton replied as follows: "… no person hath a right to an interest or share in the disposing of the affairs of the kingdom … that hath not a permanent fixed interest in this kingdom'. When pressed, he added this: "All the main thing that I speak for, is because I would have an eye to property. I hope we do not come to contend for victory – but let every man consider with himself that he do not go that way to take away all property. For here is the case of the most fundamental part of the constitution of the kingdom, which if you take away, you take all by that." "If you admit any man that hath a breath and being, a majority of the Commons might be elected who had no local and permanent interest. … Why may not those men vote against all property?… Show me what you will stop at; wherein you will fence any man in a property by this rule.", E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, Pelican, England, 1968. With regard to the French Revolution: Once again, only people with land were citizens with political rights. There were still a lot of serfs in France and those who had bought out their lords, were still saddled with taxes and charges and duties, yet no representation. They fought for these reasons. (Note that the right to inherit and bequeath is fundamental to property rights.) Here is a translation from a document about the situation of the French on the Eve of the Revolution, which I translated from F.A Aulard, La révolution francaise et le régime féodal, Paris, 1919: “They paid tithes [taxes] to the lord. They were not allowed to marry except between serfs of the same lord. They could not have inheritors beyond those in the same community. They could not get rid of their contract of serfdom except to serfs from the same lord In the custom of Nivernais, they could not inherit from each other if during more than one year they had not had the same dwelling. In Burgundy custom, they could no longer inherit from each other, even if they had constantly occupied the same premises, if it could be proved that they no longer lived ‘by a common fire, bread and salt’. Some were ‘under pursuit’. That is to say that they could be pursued by the lord for payment of tithes they owed him, wherever they went to live Serfs could cease to be serfs by unswearing themselves, which [also] meant renouncing the [land], furniture, [tools, buildings which they had inherited from their parents] within the lord’s landholding.” The 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man, which was the original document of the first days of the Revolution, precised property as a fundamental right in the 2nd and the 17th article. Article 2: The aim of every political association is the defense of man's natural and imprescriptible rights. These are liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression. (Article 2 - Le but de toute association politique est la conservation des droits naturels et imprescriptibles de l’homme. Ces droits sont la liberté, la propriété, la sûreté et la résistance à l’oppression.) Article 17: Property, in as much as it is an inviolate and sacred right, no-one may be deprived of it, unless there is a public necessity, legally constituted, which necessitates it, on condition that there first be paid a fair indemnity. (Article 17 - La propriété étant un droit inviolable et sacré, nul ne peut en être privé, si ce n’est lorsque la nécessité publique, légalement constatée, l’exige évidemment, et sous la condition d’une juste et préalable indemnité.) The French Revolution enlarged citizenship/the right to own and inherit property to all those born in France instead of to just a few families. Women and men could inherit equally. The Napoleonic Code codified this (although it disallowed management of their land by women if there was a man around. Repealed only in the late 20th C.) With regard to the Fijians. As Pacific Islanders they practised Pacific Islander land-tenure - i.e. they did not buy or sell land, although they could lease it. Unlike their treatment of many islanders, the British rulers showed some pity and allowed the Fijians to keep their land-tenure system, as they also allowed the Cook Islanders and a few others. This meant that the Indians and other immigrants who had been imported by the colonisers to provide larger quantities of cheap labour, were unable to buy and sell land. (Many sources, but here is one: "Tenure", in The Pacific Islands: Environment and Society, ed. M. Rapaport, "Tenure": Exerpts from Chapter 17, www.cba.hawaii.edu/pbcp/pdf%20Pac%20studies/tenure.pdf) This meant that Fiji did not get sold off and alienated from the control of the Fijians. For this reason Fijians have land and self-government. It is unfortunate for the Indian Fijians that they do not have land-rights, but, if they did, the island-land would soon be bought and sold internationally and there would be a lot of dispossessed Fijians, just like the Aborigines of Australia and so many other islands in the Pacific. Here is a revealing document about the mentality that imported mass labour to the Islands of the Pacific for colonial purposes and the impact this had. "Depopulation is a distressing reality in most of the islands despite the fact that labour for tropical agriculture is so urgently required; and Asiatics have had to be imported in large numbers. The future development of the islands will demand much labour, but here are the facts about declining populations. In 1870 it was estimated that Polynesia contained 690,000 native people. In 1930 there were about 200,000, but 145,000 Asiatics and 37,000 whites had come in. Melanesia was computed to have three million natives, but recently numbered scarcely one million. Micronesia declined from 273,000 to less than 90,000. In fifty years two-thirds of the native population have disappeared." Gordon L.Wood, The Pacific Basin, OUP, 1930 The struggles in Fiji always boil down to land rights and the Murdoch press keeps getting thrown out of Fiji. My guess (but not my knowledge) is that the Murdoch press infuriates the Fijians because it is always going on about 'democracy' but it is also a big advocate of land-privatisation and just happens to do a lot of business in international land sales. I don't agree with the Murdoch Press's notion of democracy. If I were a Fijian, I would hold onto my land-rights above all else. That is what is at stake if the Fijians 'embrace' "our" version of 'democracy'. You can also read about the struggle to retain communal land-rights in Papua New Guinea, against the constant propaganda from World Bank economists to privatise land and sell it off in Jim Fingleton (Ed.), "Privatising Land in the Pacific, A defence of customary tenures,” June 2005, https://www.tai.org.au/file.php?file=DP80.pdf. I cannot say that I have studied every revolution but I would be most surprised if there were one that did not boil down to struggles between landless and land-monopolists. Communist revolutions are typically about land-rights, with the notion of returning to common-land, but on a huge scale. I guess you could say that the US revolution was about no taxation without representation, but if we were to investigate this, would we also find that representation was only available to those who had land? (I'm not sure here, although I am sure that US citizens have few remaining real rights through citizenship. They have to buy power - health care, land, housing, education etc. Australia is of course going that way too. Land-rights have been commuted to more abstract and less secure rights, such as right to work, right to unemployment benefits - which we now see disappearing - in Anglophone post industrial democracies. And our right to vote has been very watered down, hasn't it, since the media broker the election candidature. In France and Continental Europe (and Britain since 2008) citizens have the right to shelter which the state is obliged to provide. So do immigrants as long as they are legally present in a country. Sheila Newman, population sociologist home page

Bernard Salt's duplicity is breathtaking. For years we have endured this man's facile pretence of disinterestedly inviting us to join with him in welcoming and celebrating the phenomenum of population growth in Australia. He did so as if there were complete unanimity in our society that populatin growth was beneficial rather than being fiercely controvesial. Now, he would apparently have us beleive he has suddenly realised that population growth is not an inherently good thing after all, rather a necessity to avoid an invasion that he inists would be invitable should the Australian nation ever again assert its own right to determine its own population levels. His recipe to avoid invasion, in effect, amounts to effectively turning Australia into a Chinese colony, given the already large Chinese government investments in this country including in an Alminium refinery to be built to the north of Bowen in Queensland to be cntrolled by them and its current bids to buy out mining companies. To imply that this is equivalent to Australia's relationship with the US during the Second World War is a lie. Before the Second World War, unlike today, Australia had self-reliance with a large manufacturing sector capable of being quickly converted to serve the needs of a war economy as indeed happened after war broke out in 1939. And during the war, contrary to a view propagated by most commentators, Australia's relationship with the US was one of partnership and not of subservience. This has been well documented in Andrew Ross's monumental "Armed and Ready - the Industrial Development and defence of Australia" referred to in "The myth of the Howard Government's defence competence " of 21 Nov 07 (also published on Online Opinion). If Australia's ruling elites of 2009 are so willing to prostrate our country in this way in 2009, should it be any wonder to us that so many of Europe's elites proved themselves so willing to do business with the German occupiers in the Second World War?

I am always keen to explore recommendations based on sound analysis as Sheila has offered.

So how does a country effect the giving back of land to its indigenous?
The idea would seem to offer a genuine reason for refugees not to flee, assuming all their other threats are removed. Take the Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka currently forced to retreat down to a beach refuge; not dissimilar to the plight of a third of a million Allied troops at Dunquerke in May 1940 early in WWII, cut off by a German armored advance.

While indigenous citizens will demand indigenous rights to land, birth citizens will demand birth rights, legal immigrants will demand immigration status rights. An attractive and popular country like Australia will, indeed long has, become crowded and busy with all these versions of land rights claims. If truejustice says that indigenous have higher moral jurisdiction, how does a country compensate the rest morally? For the indigenous saying to the rest: 'bugger off home' would be the most simplistic option. But human culture rejects such simplicity and one must bare in mind that human culture (especally the religious tainted) has been the spark of nearly all wars.

The hurdle for colonists morally honouring land sovereignty rights to indigenous people lies in the token framework of international justice that is the United Nations. Rwanda, Somalia, Bosnia and almost every war-affected (impoverished) country since WWII (when the UN was formed) has experienced gross moral and legal neglect at the hands of the UN. The UN has a reputation as a toothless, politically correct and grossly underfunded watchdog of international justice.

If only the UN had a similar sense of urgency that Thatcher committed to in 'national' defence the Falklands; irrespective I might add, of glaring immoral justification by the British Tory Government to preserve a distant outpost of an Victorian empire for nothing but political ego and voter distraction.

For indigenous to reclaim just sovereign rights, the UN as a colonist power base is an anathema - the wolves minding the chickens, so the UN must be wound up. A new international organisation of justice should replace the UN with indigenous only members - perhaps the 'IN' (Indigenous Nations) with the English included as indigenous inhabitants of just...England!