Comments
Fuel loads in drought...
Fire bunker.
Land plan also faulty
An article about this product would be useful
Emergency Bushfire Escape Bunker - ReadyMade
Malcolm Ware
I am so relieved to read that Malcom Ware (the Whittlesea vet) is O.K.
He was over here in Whangaparaoa, N.Z. for Etchell sailing a few years ago and stayed with us. His real concern for the drought & what it could mean in the future then, for everyone, was really worrying him.
He really cares for the animals. Can you let him know we are thinking of him and everyone there as I havnt been able to contact him directly.
Lesley
Dug-outs and bunkers
Fire Bunkers.
Permaculture acknowledged in Back from the Brink

Back from the Brink
Urban councils can start relief programs for bushfire victims

Wonder if a "storm cellar"
Fires could be reduced by Andrew's method
PERPETUAL GROWTH CANCER
The damage is real and substantial
Insulation and Stimulus
The insulation package is absolutely stimulating jobs. We own a roof insulation company and calls/bookings have skyrocketed we had over 600 visitors to our site just on the Tuesday alone and have been receiving 40-50 calls a day every day with dozens of bookings despite the fact that it hasn't been passed yet. We believe that people who had planned to buy are simply bringing their purchase forward and those that don't mind waiting a few months for the rebate to be paid back are just getting in early.
As a result we are recruiting contractors and employees all over the country and expect to put on between 10-20 in Sydney alone in the next few weeks and we are only a small group. More details on contractor opportunities can be found here free-insulation.com.au
Deforestation doesn't cause floods, but does make impact worse
The following has been cross-posted to the "Fire and Flood" forum on John Quiggin's blog site.
Thanks for your interest and your response James of FNQ. I have cross-posted it as a comment to the article. I trust that that is OK with you. Feel welcome to post further comments there or here. You can do so anonymously, subject to moderation, or using an account.
What I wrote was based on my gut feeling which was confirmed by Hugh Spencer who also lives in Far North Queensland. Hugh describes himself as a 'hands-on conservation biologist'. I am sure he will be most interested in your comments and will respond before long.
I didn't actually say that deforestation caused the floods, rather I said that it made their impacts more severe than they otherwise would have been.
Whether the clearing of land happened recently or over 100 years ago it looks to me, on the evidence, like environmental damage, if, as a consequence, floods cause as much damage as they do.
What got me thinking was the brown colour of the flood water and remembering David Montgomery's excellent "Dirt - the erosion of Civilisations" which pointed out that any agricultural system which allows soil to be washed away faster than it can be created (in the order of one or two inches ever century - I don't have the exact figure on me) is unsustainable.
All past civlisations which allowed their soil to be washed away at a rate faster than what could be replaced has collapsed.
The presence of so much dirt in flood waters (and for that matter, in the Barron river, constantly as Hugh had advised me) is a sign that the natural systems which hold soil in place have been damaged and that Australia is headed in the same direction.
An oversimplification of causes of floods in North Queensland
This article drew the following response on John Quiggin's blog:
"I think you may be over simplifying the flooding in North and Far North Queensland. Ingham, the town that appears most often on the news is on a low flood plain surrounded by mountains and near the Herbert River delta. This river has its source on the western side of the Great Dividing Range near Ravenshoe, and this source location is significant because the area around the headwaters, has had heavy rain since early November from Cyclones, and the Monsoon that comes along this time of year.
"The Monsoon Trough has also contributed to the falls along the coast, as Monsoon troughs and rain depressions do, and all this water combined with king tides results in what is happening in Ingham.
"Deforestation on the floodplain for sugarcane farms happened a long time ago and as far back as I can remember, Ingham had floods. The great majority of the Herbert river is in untouched forest so contrary to your suggestion that deforestation caused the flooding is not the only cause.
"As far as the rainfall is concerned, I live in the hills behind Cairns, and we have had less rain this year than last year and the Barron, our nearest river is not in flood, and has not been this wet.
"I hope this helps you understand the Queensland tropics a bit.
Visitor congratulates us for this site
The following comment, not necessarily related to this article, was posted to me by a site visitor, yesterday:
I have just discovered this webpage and I want to congratulate you on it. I'm so sick of our neo-conservative media feeding us their right wing bunk which is supposed to be taken as 'normal'. At last a balanced and intelligent website where people are not gagged where we can have truly open minded discussion without fear of censorship of certain topics that may be feared by some as being too contraversial. Discussion is vital and should never be quashed.
Does opposition to fluoridation require opposition to recycling?
The following is from a (so far) brief exchange on a mailing list in response to my posting of this notice to that mailing list.
On Sun, 8 Feb 2009, Terri wrote:
> Hi there,
> forgive me if I'm being really dim... Is this rally against recycling
> water? Or is it against fluoridation and for recycling? Aren't they two
> very different issues (I may be showing my ignorance there). ...
I guess you are in a sense right. Fluoridation is enforced medication which is likely to be detrimental to at least a significant minority of our society, whilst recycling is a supposed solution to our water crisis.
Nevertheless, people who are concerned about one issue tend to be concerned about the other and vice-versa. The decisions by the Queensland government to impose these measures on Queenslanders without proper consultation and a proper debate is symptomatic of the fact that democracy in the sense of 'government of the people by the people for the people' is not practised in Queensland. (For an interesting insight on this, read Tony Ryan's article of 2007 "If this is not democracy - then what is?".)
Personally, I see all these questions related to water supply as linked and I am opposed to all 'solutions' to our water crisis which have environmentally harmful consequences. This includes: water recycling, the Traveston and Wyaralong dams, mining of underground water aquifers at rates which exceed their rate of replenishment, desalination, transportation of water over long distances.
Clearly, if we find ourselves in the hole that the Queensland Government has dug us into by deliberately encouraging the population to grow well beyond the natural carrying capacity of the region in past years (see, for example "More chickens of population growth come home to roost in Queensland" of 14 May 08), then we are going to have choose the least worst from amongst a number of unpalatable options in order to get ourselves back out again.
However, above all else, we simply must stop making the problem worse and must desist with the further encouragement of population growth.
In my view, the least worst of all possible options is a combination of measures to reduce personal, as well as industrial water use and the installation of rainwater tanks.
The latter will incur environmental costs as their manufacture, particularly on the large scale which will be necessary, requires the consumption of non-renewable resources and further emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants, but it is probably a better use of our natural non-renewable resources than gadgets design to break down in years at most.
> ... I come from somewhere that recycles water and it's way better
> quality than Melbourne town water! ...
Could you tell me where?
As far as I know the only places in the world where recycling is used, in any way similar to the way it was proposed for Toowoomba was Windhoek in Namibia and the English Shire of Essex and there, only for emergencies.
Those planning to impose water recycling on Toowoomba in 2006 confided in each other that Toowoomba was to become a "living laboratory" according to a document released under FOI legislation. (See "Courier Mail manipulates reporting of water recycling to demand early election" of 5 Jan 09.)
> ... To someone like me who is used to the idea it seems completely
> unsustainable not to recycle water. The planet recycles water all the time.
> Every drop you drink is likely to have passed through all sorts of humans
> and other animals already). ...
We need natural systems to do the job properly and cost-effectively. Technologically complex systems will incur significant financial and environmental costs. And if they fail, then the health of all of us is put at risk. (See above article and articles linked to from there.)
To be sure, with so much poison and so many exotic manufactured chemicals pumped into our environment all the time, even natural recycling systems may not be able to cope very well, but they remain our best chance.
> ... If we don't reduce our usage, and recycle, surely we'll need more dams?
As I said, we need to live within the natural carrying capacity of the region (and, that is, in the longer term without dependence upon fossil fuels and other non-renewable resources).
> Can't I be against fluoridation but for recycling?
Obviously, of course you can be. If you like you can also be in favour of dams, desalination plants, mining of aquifers, etc.
Changes made to article with thanks to G.R.L. Cowan
OK ... see if you like this
Amalgamations to the benefit of Maleny residents?
Economic contraction


The PM has allowed the budget to go into deficit in order to finance the stimulus package. This is based on the presumption that the budget can have a surplus when the recession is over. That is a fallacious presumption. Economic growth is now part of history. Economic contraction is the new reality. Australia has used up a large proportion of its natural capital in an exuberant chase after a high material standard of living. That era is drawing to a close as irreplaceable natural capital becomes scarce. Tangible ecological forces are gaining control over the intangible economic ones. The symptoms of the malaise include the impact of climate change together with water, fertile soil and fuel shortages. The devastation of the Murray-Darling basin is only one of the irreversible environmental disasters. There are many others that the people of Australia are becoming increasingly aware of. The current heat wave coupled with dangerous bushfires in the south together with flooding in the north accentuates just how vulnerable our way of life has become.


The PM should have been very careful to choose the components of the package in such a manner to help Australians cope with the inevitable powering down. Stimulating consumption is not the way to go.
Brisbane dwellers urged to grow own food
Brumby
Construction Activity in Victoria
Media monopoly cause of all evil
Target 155 per day
Anna Bligh , population and water
nuclear power will come here!
Saved a possum, ...
Andrew Bolt has logic!
Ziggy Switkowski on population!
I was surprised to see an article by Ziggy Switkowski in Thursday's Australian newspaper questioning population growth
www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24976804-7583,00.html
Maybe an awareness of this issue is finally beginning to permeate the mainstream?
Property Council of Australia - back-taxes and enquiry
Parks Duty of care to fauna - water
Preferencing Labor over Liberal a crime against the environment?
In all states, except in Queensland, for state elections, the compulsory preferential voting system requires nearly all voters to ultimately make a choice between the two major Parties, that is, except those rare constituencies where minor parties or independents get enough votes to be able to seriously challenge the major party candidates.
So, not giving one's preference to Labor over Liberal, automatically entails giving one's preference to Liberal over Labor.
If one can show conclusively that from a standpoint of democracy and the environment that the Liberal/National parties are preferable to the Labor party then it would be correct to be critical of the Greens.
However given the equivocation on environmental questions by the Victorian opposition, Ted Ballieau's ludicrous support for even higher population growth, the appalling records of both the previous Victorian Kennett Government and the previous Federal Howard Government, there may not be much reason to hope for anything of enduring benefit will be achieved if the Liberal were to be elected in Victoria on Green's preferences.
What is important is that, regardless of how the Greens eventually decide to allocate their preferences they, together with and the rest of us, must be not restrain ourselves from telling the truth about the shortcomings of both the major parties, in particular the current wanton vandalism of the Brumby Government at Brown's Mountain.
That way they can hope to increase their own vote and we can even hope to see a few more Greens MP's elected at the next Victorian state election.
But even if that is not achieved a high vote for partes other than the major parties will still strengthen the hand of the environmental movement.
Not true that Bob Brown has rejected immigration reduction
The lure of income and economic growth is just too powerful!
Our Brumby government is guilty of eco-vandalism and breaking pre-election promises that would have East Gippsland's ancient forests included in National Parks. They can't see the value of the forests for the $$$ signs from cheap woodchips for Japan.
We have no system of quality control and integrity checking in our constitution? The Greens should not give their preferences to Labor. Even Senator Bob Brown is being evasive on the population debate. He has rejected suggestions Australia should curb migration for environmental reasons! The lure of income and economic growth is just too powerful for a herd-species like humans to act logically and with common sense! A larger herd give a false sense of security - obviously!
www.watoday.com.au/national/population-debate-booms-20090129-7t5f.html
2 week reprieve for Brown Mountain
Brigid needs remedial teaching in logic
World trial needed of financial miscreants
Overloading Oz does not call for no immigration
Good luck Bob & Devilbend Reclassification meeting
ADI development a mockery of Nepean's 'Rural City' aspiration
This comment was found on the Penrith Press of 19 December 2008:
I hope that the Press uses its journalistic resources to expose the apparently unsavoury proceedings that are associated with the recent decision on the development of the ADI site. At a recent meeting, Council voted 14/15 to enter into a Planning Agreement with developer Delfin Lend Lease to build 3500 houses and clear approx 300 ha of Cumberland Plain Woodland from the ADI Site. This council is clearly intent on the continued development of the Nepean Valley until there is no green space left. It makes a mockery of the long-held council aspiration of the ‘Rural City’. Should you require information on this act of enviironmental bastardry, I refer you to candobetter.org/node/960 for background information.
reply to GRL Cowan
Claim that the existing Minnippi is not being developed
Map to Brown Mountain protest
It should be allowed. It's
Some energy related information
Western Australia has been acting like a third world nation
Ditto for Canada
How much chlorine needed to make recycled water safe?
Something to ponder:
Put together hospital waste water being recycled (drugs/microbes) along with all the other recycled water contaminants of waste water and sewerage, the location of treatment facilities and a bird flu pandemic...what would happen?
Yes, it all ends up in the dams anyway...why not put it directly into the water supply and shorten the cycle....such is life.
Research shows that chlorinated water treatments are thought to be sufficient to inactivate the avian virus in water supplies. However, chlorinated as the water is in the U.S, the water supply has been known to carry residual drugs from human consumption and waste.
This cycling of water loaded with drug levels such as tamiflu might just up the quotient for a superbug problem once discharged into dams. But then again, it doesn't have to be avian flu which triggers an epidemic.
How much chlorine to ratio of waste water will keep the water safe? Certainly the research on chlorinated water combatting avian flu wasn't quite the SEQ scenario of pumping recycled water directly into the dams in high quantities.
Looking at statistics in avian influenza outbreaks and I think of the latest case in
Beijing, recyled water and drought ...some parallels to our scenario....drinking water in Beijing is well-chlorinated...apparently.
At 24°C in the tropics the virulence of influenza viruses in water exists for 2 days.At 7°C the virulence of influenza viruses in water extends to 14 days. Ducks, rice (fields, paddies = flooded by water; farmers at work drink the water from rice paddies) and people – not chickens – have emerged as the most significant factors in the spread of avian influenza in Asian countries. It is water-borne.
Dams/water birds/bird-droppings etc...join the dots for our own water supply.
With the Brisbane flu outbreak that is now globally circulating, low dams, recyled water stages coming online in our rivers, if not dams, and even a contamination incident coverup involving hospital waste water ..that was 2008.
August 2009 is the commencement of recycled water.
So chlorine...is supposed to kill avian influenza...however goodness knows what the ratio to contaminated water will ensure effectiveness in combatting infectious microbes and of what microbes it will be effective against and under what conditions.
If microbes are in the water supply...irrigation...food....anything that comes into contact with the water poses problems.
There are no guarantees. Chlorine has negative health effects (there is no doubt on that); water treatment is expensive (dental costs are too); chlorine kills microbes (not all, not always); waste water becomes drinking water eventually (treat or regulate); tank water (vs dengue fever), water-borne epidemic (vs how long does it take to activate chlorinated water in our supply and will that be soon enough vs all you have to do is boil the water) ...what do we define as an acceptable level of water quality and *quantity*...what is acceptable risk...no guarantees suffice in such scenarios.
Guaranteeing *no risk* is an invitation to litigation. Considering the dusty? taste of the water as chlorinated liquid poured from our taps this December (smelt bad, tasted bad, improved eventually) the whole of Brisbane would be entitled to compensation ...where sediments from heavy rain stirring up dry dams may indeed be the culprits or not.
Is a guarantee of any value at all? Who in fact pays the compensation?
Catch 22.
Chalk squeaking on blackboard
"In conventional reactors moderators (or coolants) slow the neutron firing down ..."
Coolants don't necessarily do that. A single substance might perform both functions, or there might be a moderator that cannot cool (e.g. carbon) and a coolant that cannot moderate (e.g. liquid lead). The parenthesis could be removed; mentioning coolants here serves no purpose I can see.
What is slowed down is the neutrons themselves, in the same way bowling pins slow down a bowling ball. A lead nucleus corresponds to a bowling pin so heavy that a bowling ball bounces back from it almost as fast as it was thrown, i.e., is almost unslowed.
" ... so that the neutrons hit each other more easily and accelerate the natural rate of fission."
Neutrons hit each *other*? Well, I suppose that must be possible.
Slowed neutrons travel a shorter distance through nuclear fuel before hitting, and reacting with, fuel nuclei than do fast ones.
"The Fast Breeder reactor (FBR)
Without the moderator the reactor becomes a ‘fast breeder’ with a bias towards the U238 being converted ..."
That part's good. Well, good-ish. Without the moderator, the reactor is a fast reactor, not necessarily a breeder. The bias towards converting 238-U, over fissioning 235-U, is real. Interestingly, it applies even for reactors with moderator. If the moderator gets hotter, neutron that have bounced off its nuclei come to have higher average speed, and this makes them less likely to cause fission, more likely to convert 238-U. This causes increasing temperature to act as a natural brake on fission.
--- G.R.L. Cowan (How fire can be domesticated)
www.eagle.ca/~gcowan
Spot on Ted. On behalf of
Engelman rejects accusations that Sanger was racist
We need leaders to face the population issue.
No more big infrastructure - Conserve, relocalise
Bush "did what he had to do"?!
The following is a response to a comment made on John Quiggin's blog site in a discussion "It's over"
Sean Morris (@ #8) wrote, wrote:
"(President W) did what he had to do, OBL is in a cave, Saddam is in hell and we have another set of problems."
Osama bin Laden (OBL) and 'Al Qaeda' were, and remain to this day, an asset of the CIA, a demonic phantom enemy conjured up as a pretext for the US elites to wage endless war against anyone they deem to be standing in the way of their goals. This question has been discussed, amongst other places on the Online Opinion Forum "War: not in my name".
I suggest that people make themselves familiar with the case of the 9/11 Truth movement. Then they will find compelling evidence that it is not "Al Qaeda" which is guilty of the crime of September 11, rather is Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Meyers and many other senior members of the Bush administration.
I decided, back in September, 7 years later than I should have, to seriously study this question and have become convinced that the official US Government explanation of 9/11 is a lie.
Since then I have been engaged in a forum discussion on 9/11 Truth which, at 455 posts is the longest discussion thus far on OLO. If the US Government's expalanation of 9/11 had any merit, I believe I would have found that out by now.
I also urge people to look at these resources:
911oz.com, 911truth.org, 911bloggers.org www.patriotsquestion911.com ae911truth.orgpilotsfor911truth.org stj911.com
9/11 widow Ellen Mariani's open letter to President George W Bush at www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRBOUildaJE
The speech "I call it Treason" by retired US Air Force Colonel Dr Robert Bowman at
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4976139611627220171
Canadian journalist Barrie Zwicker's excellent 70 minute documentary "The Great Conspiracy".
Chomsky's 'bait and switch' ploy
In defence of Noam Chomsky
Appalling!
Update on mining in Peru
Readers should be aware of differences in permanency provisions
Acting Vic Premier: Population growth increases GHG emissions
The Victorian government has blamed population growth for an increase in greenhouse pollution. Individuals can do their "bit" to reduce pollution, and domestic water usage, but governments need to stop being contradictory in their policies and practices!
Acting Victorian Premier Rob Hulls said population growth was to blame for the spike in emissions! Why don't they do something to address this problem? Our government is has no population plan, and people are being added, as consumers, to enhance the demand for goods and services despite compromising our environment or any attempts to address climate change. Our metropolitan boundaries and being continually swelled, increasing our dependency on petrol and food miles, and native vegetation is being cleared at a rate of 4000 ha a year! We are world-standard wildlife eradicators!
Until we consistency and holistic efforts from our governments, at all levels, to stop the environmental destruction and atmospheric pollution, there is little individuals can do. Victoria's policies are dominated by commercial forces, and our State will continue to become a scorched, polluted and damaged unless we see some real leadership.
Subject was "Limited to what individuals can do to limit climate change" - JS
Environmental NGOs still merit most blame
Re: Peoples' class action to stop fuoridation in Queensland
Non-fluoridated Kempsey has better dental heath than Sydney
Growth is the key to more taxes and charges!
Barry Cohen on immigration and population growth
Cultural and demographic self-determination
Europeans's right and obligation to defend their culture
JS wrote: "It should still be possible for Europeans to find a way to stop their becoming demographically overwhelmed if they stand up for their rights assertively."
Good point. I also believe that the historic European and European-descended populations of the West have not only a right, but an obligation, to collectively stand up their own interests. Throughout history, being dispossessed and displaced as a people has been universally regarded as a bad thing. I do not see why the historic majority populations of Western countries are obliged to meekly sit back and allow themselves to become marginalised and minoritised as a result of mass immigration. Merely wanting to determine one's own cultural and demographic destiny has nothing to do with "racism" or a hatred of other peoples. No more than putting the interests of your own family first constitutes hatred toward somebody else's family.
Part of the reason why European-descended peoples are reluctant to assert their own group interests is because of the charge of "racism". This charge has prevented us from properly debating the immigration issue.
As American writer Lawrence Auster notes:
The very manner in which the issue is framed—as a matter of equal rights and the blessings of diversity on one side, versus “racism” on the other—tends to cut off all rational discourse on the subject. One can only wonder what would happen if the proponents of open immigration allowed the issue to be discussed, not as a moralistic dichotomy, but in terms of its real consequences. Instead of saying: “We believe in the equal and unlimited right of all people to immigrate to the U.S. and enrich our land with their diversity,” what if they said: “We believe in an immigration policy which must result in a staggering increase in our population, a revolution in our culture and way of life, and the gradual submergence of our current population by Hispanic and Caribbean and Asian peoples.” Such frankness would open up an honest debate between those who favor a radical change in America’s ethnic and cultural identity and those who think this nation should preserve its way of life and its predominant, European-American character. That is the actual choice—as distinct from the theoretical choice between “equality” and “racism”—that our nation faces. But the tyranny of silence has prevented the American people from freely making that choice.
What is "natural" is not necessarily moral or sustainable.
Ethic and big business
coal to liquids
Relevant article from I.H.T.
Automatic submission to authority
Fluoride
US dentist's fluoride concerns
Thank you for this post ... Informing other people about this flouride process. This is bad for other people who are not aware of this news.:(
FLUORIDATION FRAUD - IS INEFFECTIVE & CAUSES HARM
Abuse of anti-fluoridation campaigners unwarranted
I apologise to those who might feel offended because I approved the above post with the included put down "GET A LIFE".
In future, I will consider not approving such posts, or at least removing from them such abuse.
If David had given this matter any thought, he would be expressing gratitude to others such as Merilyn, who selflessly put there own time and money towards rectifying the appalling actions that those in office, supposedly there to represent our best interests, inflict on the public almost every day of the year.
He should ponder what sort of world we would live in if people like Merilyn, instead, chose to spend more of their time going to the beach, drinking at the pub, watching television, going bushwalking, playing golf, etc., etc as I am sure she would love to be able to do.
It's interesting that the above post uses precisely the kind of anti-scientific approach that it claims that Merilyn is guilty of using. He implicitly claims his own experience of having drunk fluoridated water confirms its claimed benefits and refutes any claims of harm.
However, the far stronger evidence of serious harm caused to the health of Merilyn's sister is dismissed out of hand.
Indeed, if we consistently applied the method employed in the post, aren't we also entitled to conclude that fluoridation makes a person more intolerant?
Also, if is so sure of the benefits of fluoride, when can't he simply take fluoride tablets himself and not force others to take that medication?
I suggest David just take the time to understand the case against fluoridation at www.qawf.org, or, if he is unable to do this, at least support the democratic right of Queenslanders to vote in this issue as they were able to recently at the time of the US Presidential elections. During those elections 47 districts in the US voted to end fluoridation whilst only 13 voted for fluoridation.

Online Petition to reduce dog suffering and hence barking
This Petition may be signed now at
http://gopetition.com/online/24313.html
Here's the wording:
This petition draws to the attention of all governments:
The huge and growing number of dogs kept in the suburban environment;
That most dogs are kept in the suburbs under conditions of close confinement;
That the suburbs comprise a totally unnatural environment for an animal congenitally programmed to free-range;
That innumerable confined backyard dogs are left unattended by their owners because of work commitments, especially during the daytime;
That many of these dogs bark intermittently or continuously because of their boredom, frustration, confinement and deprivation of animal and human contact;
That such extended isolation to a dog, a social animal by nature, can be torture;
That the dog commonly vents its frustration, anguish and torment by whining, howling and loud continuous barking; and
That such barking is increasingly noxious to nearby humans, is often damaging to their health, and is usually in contravention of barking control laws now so commonly left almost entirely unenforced by reckless animal control authorities having regulatory powers but refusing to use them.
Your Petitioners therefore ask all governments to:
Create the Dog Control Act offence "Leaving a Dog Unattended"; and
Compel enforcement by authorised persons with the words:
"It is the obligation of any person on whom a function is imposed or a power is conferred under this Act to perform the function or to exercise the power..."
Disputes evidence of harm of water fluoridation
Bruce Bell is quoted as saying "There is no way any sane person who examined the mountain of scientific evidence could ever support these toxins going into our water. "
Well Merilyn and Bruce, I had nearly six years of childhood in Brisbane in the 1950s and had tooth fillings at a very young age. I lived in Canberra for 37 years from 1963 to 2000 and drank fluoridated water for the whole of this time. Melbourne and Sydney have fluoride also.
Merilyn attributes her health problems in Townsville to fluoride in the water there. (Actually, it was Merilyn's sister. - JS) Not a very scientific conclusion - association is not causation.
If her supposition held water (!) then one might expect there to be many, many similar cases over the many decades of fluoridation of our great cities (Sydney and Melbourne between them have about 8 million people.)
What evidence is there for this?
Until you can adduce some hard evidence for this, I will continue to regard the anti-fluoridation lobby as NUT CASES. So typical of the usually ignorant populism that has so benighted the state of Queensland in the past. Pitiable and contemptible. GET A LIFE.
What to do about pets
Recycled water should be pumped into dams when levels highest
Dog (and cat) overpopulation
Our need to be surrounded by people who are compatible
Whilst I strongly agree with your first petition:
"We, the undersigned, acting compassionately in the interests of human and animal welfare, request the world-wide formation of Dog-free Communities ..."
... I wouldn't be able to bring myself to support the second:
"We, the undersigned acting compassionately in the interests of human and animal welfare, require all regulatory and control authorities to recognise the suffering and cruelty being inflicted on dogs, and as a consequence through barking and bloody attacks, on mankind everywhere.
"We petition to legislate for the removal of dogs from societies everywhere except in special cases where this animal's behaviour is socially beneficial."
In a sense I would agree, but it would be hard to legally define 'socially beneficial'. What is important is that people not be subjected to the noise of barking dogs and that dogs not be subject to the cruelty that would cause theme to bark excessively.
The critical problem in most parts of the country that we don't have space to spread out.
We should be able to live with people who are compatible with ourselves, but because living space and housing stock is so limited, many of us are made to live, for example, with people who like having loud drunken parties going to three in the morning breathing down our necks.
People who are not troubled by the sound of incessantly barking dogs (provided that we can be confident that they are not barking because of cruelty) should live together away from the rest of us who are (or, perhaps, vice versa).
Dog plague
Marketing the product
Australia has opted for the "dumb" route to economic growth
One more insertion
Fab graphics
Bob Carr's words spot on, but they are belied by his record
Very good article and, of course, not before time.
(Following Sheila Newman's complaint that my long comment completely crowded out Tim's excellent article, I have turned it into a blog article "Bob Carr's words belied by his record as Premier of NSW". - JS 1 Jan 09)
oil @ $200
As a trader for an investment firm I can say this.
Greed made the price go up as with food prices in 07-08.
Some other traders & hedge fund managers feel this way. We need to get speculators out of this area. I can buy lots of oil options and never take title to it. Hell, I know guys who were getting $1 in hard assets and getting $5 in credit, that buys lots of oil options.
As a trader I should not have the right to buy oil or a food based contract unless i am willing to take delivery of it at some point.
Yeah, our society is warped.
Are we apologists for the Japanese now?
Kevin Rudd, before becoming our Prime Minister, condemned the Howard government's "hollow words and inaction" in failing to stop Japan's criminal whaling. In 2007 the Federal Labor party announced a "fresh approach to end whaling, taking an international and domestic leadership role to protect these beautiful animals". Now they are our government, we need to see these promises fulfilled and some integrity shown by our Prime Minister.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society reports that our government immigration officials have actually been hostile towards their presence in Australia! The crew aren't allowed to wear bullet-proof vests. Are we apologists for the Japanese now, and have to cringe to them? Our trade relations with Japan are totally unrelated dimensions to our relationship with them. Subservience does not benefit healthy relations with another nation!
Being immune from crime in the Antarctic should not depend on the economic power of the crew's origin. Japan doesn't need the whale meat - they have strategic interests in the area, and their national pride is at stake.
The whaling fleet's presence in Australian Antarctic Territory is violent and illegal on both domestic and international levels. There is no "science" about these brutal killings. Kevin Rudd should fulfil his pre-election promises and stop the violation of the Whale Sanctuary and take sovereign authority in the AAT.
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