On April 7th, US warships delivered an illegal blow to a Syrian airbase in Homs. Their justification was the recent "chemical weapon" attack on behalf of the Syrian government in Idlib. The Kremlin condemned the strike as an act of aggression against a sovereign state, and a violation of international law. Meanwhile, at the UN, representatives of Western governments attempt to push through a resolution that is based on information taken out of thin air. It includes the removal of Assad, whether or not he was behind the attack. CBS News reporter: Russia says that the airstrike on Khan Sheikhun took place between 11.30 and 12.30 pm. Medics on the ground say that the hit happened hours before that. How so? This is one fascinating question posed to Russian foreign affairs minister, Maria Zakharovna at a press conference on 5 April 2017. See inside the article.

Included video is embedded in article at Fort Russ published & April 2017. The article is a guest contribution on PaulCraigRoberts.org.

Above video embedded in article at Fort Russ published & April 2017. The article is a guest contribution on PaulCraigRoberts.org.

On April 7th, US warships delivered an illegal blow to a Syrian airbase in Homs. Their justification was the recent "chemical weapon" attack on behalf of the Syrian government in Idlib. The Kremlin condemned the strike as an act of aggression against a sovereign state, and a violation of international law. Meanwhile, at the UN, representatives of Western governments attempt to push through a resolution that is based on information taken out of thin air. It includes the removal of Assad, whether or not he was behind the attack.

It is noteworthy, that the only real source of information on what took place, are the videos made by the White Helmets, an infamous propaganda organisation as it pertains to the Syrian civil war. In this clip, Maria Zakharova calls on Western respresenatives/ journalists to hear Russia, and what it has to say. The attack against the Syrian government, much like the Ghouta gas attack in 2013, which precipitated the Syrian civil war, is a giant facade for the military industrial warhawks in the US, to put their money where their mouth is.

The Stanley Plateau nestled in the foothills of the Victorian Alps, is fighting for the right to preserve its water resources from extraction by a company that transports the water to a plant in Albury, across the border in NSW, for bottling. The bottled water from Stanley and surrounding areas is for domestic and overseas distribution processed by a multi-national company. Stanley has commenced fund raising for the next stage of the Cue Springs Water Challenge - an appeal to the Victorian Court of Appeal. The website http://stanleywater.org.au/ invites a contribution to the fundraising appeal. Please distribute the webpage through your networks as Stanley needs all the help it can get. Stanley is a small Australian community fighting for its water and needs your help.

The Stanley Plateau is entirely dependent on rainfall for its existence. The residents of Stanley do not have access to a municipal water supply. They provide their own water for domestic and farming uses by accessing bores that draw water from groundwater aquifers, pump from creeks and streams, many of which are tributaries to rivers and dams that supply water to surrounding towns and villages, or by collecting rainwater in tanks.

Rich soils support thriving agriculture and horticulture production, and cattle and sheep farming. Stanley is known for its high-quality nut, berry, apple, and pear production, as well as cottage industries that produce high quality preserves and other products.

First class bed and breakfast accommodation supports thriving touris activity with visitors drawn to the area by farm door sales, in-season pick your own berries, and access to the beauty of Alpine flora and fauna through the four seasons. Spring and Autumn in the alpine country is spectacular. All this depends on access to high quality water. Depletion of Stanley’s water resources causes much anxiety in a community dependent upon annual rainfall for its existence.

At the moment it is chestnut harvest season. Approximately 500 tonnes of chestnutswill be harvested over the next few months. It is worth at least $A2M to local growers. Many will benefit; growers and their families; pickers, haulage companies; local businesses and other services. These benefits all derive from the rain that falls on Stanley.

There are no social, economic or environmental benefits for Stanley from the extraction and bottling of its groundwater. There are social, economic and environmental benefits to Stanley and the surrounding area by letting the water remain in the aquifer for access by the local community.

Please support us by contributing through this website: http://stanleywater.org.au/

Syria has censured a US missile attack targeting an army airbase near Homs as an “act of aggression” against the country.

“A US act of aggression (was committed) against Syrian military targets, using several missiles,” said the Syrian state TV right after the US announced the attack.

The attack drew the applause of the foreign-backed opposition, which called for continued US military action against the Arab country.

The state TV quoted a Syrian military source as saying that US missile strike on a Syrian air base had led to “losses.”

Homs Governor Talal Barazi also deplored the aerial assault, saying the attack serves the goals of Daesh and other armed terrorist groups operating in the country.

“Syrian leadership and Syrian policy will not change,” Barazi said. “This targeting was not the first and I don’t believe it will be the last.”
The attack drew the applause of the foreign-backed opposition, which called for continued US military action against Syria.

Some 60 US Tomahawk missiles were fired from the US warships deployed to the Mediterranean at the Shayrat airfield southeast of Homs. The missiles hit airstrips, hangars, control tower and ammunition areas at the base, according to US officials.

Article from Press TV Iran. Look for updates at http://presstv.ir/Detail/2017/04/07/517025/Syria-US-air-base-attack.

Lee Ann McAdoo and Owen Shroyer do a fantastic in depth analysis of the history and current stories on chemical weapon use in Syria. The best I have seen. And they take Trump to task. And finger McCain. Alex Jones, who produces Infowars, has been an ardent Trump supporter and some people feared he might get his journalists to pull their punches on Trump if Trump stepped out of line, but this is disproven here.

The French system just pulled off a remarkable 11 candidate debate. Lasting nearly four hours, it was riveting viewing. Six less-knowns challenged the five established candidates, intellectually even if their presidential chances remain far behind. Most made valid and sometimes impressive points. As now nearly all the major contenders have adapted aspects of her policies, Marine Le Pen, ex-criminal trial-lawyer, who makes mincemeat of most interviewers, hardly stood out in the crowd of copycats.

In contrast to this impressive effort by the French Press, the Australian mass media, including the ABC, continues to block most candidates from significant publicity and the electors from knowing their options, maintaining the two party system with a wink and a nod to the Greens. The United States corporate-sponsored Republican/Democrat owned US Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) refused to allow more than two presidential candidates to debate. The US first-past-the-post system makes it difficult for any third party ever to win, but the Australian system is preferential so this excuse should not be made. Incidentally, in 2008 we made the same point when we reported on James Sinnamon's run for Brisbane mayor, and compared Brisbane's lack of democratic coverage with that of the mayoral elections in Paris. [1]

You can also view the debate on France2 here: http://www.francetvinfo.fr/elections/presidentielle/direct-presidentielle-regardez-le-grand-debat-entre-les-11-candidats-sur-bfmtv-et-cnews_2129533.html#xtor=EPR-51-[presidentielle-regardez-en-direct-sur-franceinfo-fr-le-grand-debat-entre-les-11-candidats_2129533]-20170404-[bouton]

Other contrasts between the US, Australian and the French debates are their length. Clinton and Trump debated in one and a half hour trysts. The Turnbull-Shorten debate of 2016 lasted just under one hour with less than rigorous questions from the audience.

This long inclusive presidential debate was a first for France and probably for anywhere. It lasted nearly four hours.

The most well-known candidates - Marine Le Pen, Emmanuel Macron, François Fillon, Jean-Luc Mélenchon et Benoît Hamon – had already debated on TFI on the 20th of March 2017. At the time several of those candidates had said that it was a pity that the other six had not been invited to debate. At the time it seemed that the risk of an 11 person debate was about zero. The 11 person debate, with each candidate's responses individually timed, was a triumph of modern media and of BFMTV in particular, as a French audience of 6 million heard the views of Philippe Poutou (NPA), Nathalie Arthaud (LO), Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (DLF), François Asselineau (UPR), Jean Lassalle et Jacques Cheminade.

The candidates were questioned on three themes: How to create jobs; how to protect the French people; and how each candidate would put their policies into practice. It was hard for them to get away with cliches because these would be challenged by the other candidates and the challenges were less predictable than they would have been in a smaller and more traditional field.

NOTES

"Why the Brisbane Mayoral elections should not have been 'boring'"
"Courier Mail provides 'boring', yet unbalanced, coverage of Brisbane City Council elections"

It is weird that the mainstream press and the US-NATO war machine continue to put out the same stories as if they were spam-bots. You would think that real human beings could come up with something more convincing. It is known, however, that people tend to believe a message they often hear repeated, to the detriment of their own eyes and reason, so perhaps this is the intentional modus-operandi of the US-NATO-military industrial media complex. The only way to combat the oft-repeated lie is to repeatedly question it, which we are doing here. Once again the US-NATO deep state war-machine has tried to use the UN like Lucy's football for Charlie Brown, to give authority to accusations against the Syrian government which it actually has no reliable basis for. The consequences could be truly awful - but what do spambots care about World War 3?

Do spambots invent US policy in Syria? Has the White House been automated for destruction?

Without credible evidence, without witnesses, without indications, the American president, Donald Trump, and the mainstream news media again have the US trying to convict President al-Assad of 'war-crimes against his own people'. They will try to use this as a pretext for another bloody 'regime change' in the mould of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Ukraine, either to keep an enlarge their military footprint in the Middle East or to obtain concessions from peace-keeping Russia.

It is alarming that President Trump is now marching along obediently to the same evil old tune as Hillary Clinton did, since a primary difference between their platforms was that he would not pursue baseless interventions in the Middle East.

His new stance is suspicious of a sudden loss of power to the neocons who surround him, given that his new US State Secretary said, only last week, that the US would leave the Syrian people to decide who would lead them, and not seek regime change. The chemical weapons story is an old one and not a very good one. Four years ago the news was almost identical, when it was resoundingly repudiated, for example by the Swiss UN investigator, Carla del Ponte. See http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-22424188. Since then we have heard it many times, picked up then dropped, picked up then dropped again. We republish here a superb 5 April debate and argument from PressTV on this vital subject. In an exercise of logic unfamiliar in the western media, the moderator here asks for a list of for and against points regarding benefits to the Syrian Government or the 'Rebels' in engaging in the purported chemical attacks.

The Debate - Chemical attack in Syria's Idlib

In this episode of The Debate, Press TV has conducted an interview with Marwa Osman, a journalist and political commentator from Beirut, and Michael Lane, the founder of the American Institute for Foreign Policy in Washington, to discuss a recent suspected chemical attack in the Syrian province of Idlib.

"We deny completely the use of any chemical or toxic material in Khan Sheikhoun town today and the army has not used nor will use in any place or time, neither in past or in future," the Syrian army has said in a statement. The Syrian Air Force has destroyed a warehouse in Idlib province where chemical weapons were being produced and stockpiled before being shipped to Iraq, Russia’s Defense Ministry spokesman said. The strike, which was launched midday Tuesday, targeted a major rebel ammunition depot east of the town of Khan Sheikhoun, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said in a statement. The warehouse was used to both produce and store shells containing toxic gas, Konashenkov said. The shells were delivered to Iraq and repeatedly used there, he added, pointing out that both Iraq and international organizations have confirmed the use of such weapons by militants. [First published by RT at https://www.rt.com/news/383522-syria-idlib-warehouse-strike-chemical/]

I have found that I and people I know are increasingly working longer and longer hours. And this with ever increasing demands on the job, as the demands for perfection increase, and the support to achieve it decreases. Especially the large organisations in which we are working appear as despotic, in that one has no say over what happens or what might happen, but instead is faced with a stream of orders and new demands being delivered constantly, yet randomly, through the impersonal medium of email. There is no discussing with this new invisible master - often the sender is not even a person with whom you can engage in conversation, but some impersonal departmental (i.e do-not-reply) email address. Then one finds that travel to anywhere is time consuming, and extremely stressful, as conditions are crowded and arrival on time is far less than certain - whether it be by train or car. With people arriving home late, exhausted we must prepare meals, often reply to a few still-unanswered work emails. All of which leaves us little spare time - and in such a state of mental exhaustion that we could not enjoy it anyway. Necessarily our weekends are often consumed with the other chores of life, maintaining houses, shopping, and preparing food and clothing for the next hectic week. This sad condition of modern people led me to reflect as to how we got into this state, and what has changed to make modern life so difficult. I wondered how we used to cope, and I recall as a child how the weekends were quiet, the shops were closed after midday Saturday, and there was hardly any traffic. Now, the busiest traffic times are on weekends, as is the busiest trading. And a major reason, I think is the fact that now both partners work, there is no-one with time to do shopping in the day, prepare meals for 6.00 pm (we often eat much later, even if we feed the children earlier, either my wife or I may find it is 9.00 pm before we have time for dinner). So why is modern life so crazy?

Chesterton, it appears, is someone who also reflected on and addressed many of our modern problems - that fact that he did this 100 years ago seems to make little difference to the relevance of what he had to say in his book What is Wrong with the World. Not suprisingly the issue of gender roles is one he addresses at length. But what is surprising, and in a sense enlightening, is that he argues that the traditional roles of men and women were not established to trap women, but rather to free them from the madness of industrial society. According to Chesterton, the gender arrangements in early industralism insulated women from the commercial pressures of having to be competitive at work - which Chesterton argues makes one a 'monomaniac'; necessarily too-focussed on work and its demands for specialisation to become a complete person. The traditional arrangements, Chesterton argues, were to keep some part of humanity free from these inhuman demands. To allow at least one half of humanity to be whole people, to allow them to develop as complete, to become good at many useful things rather than an expert at mostly one thing. To allow them to focus on and contemplate the broader issues and tasks that are so necessary to a sane and on-going human existence. This half of humanity, to be spared from the inhumanity of industrialism was, women. He explains this division was made because the natural role of women in relation to birth and child-rearing, but they need not be child-rearers to benefit from these freedoms. I guess with the freedom also came the ability to pursue study and careers if they wished - certainly many women did - C.S Lewis's mother was a Mathematics university graduate in the 1800's and Dr Maria Montessori a science graduate not long after that, and I am sure there were many others. Clearly they could also have careers if they chose; Florence Nightingale is an example here. Maybe this education and these roles were harder to get, but when you consider that they were up against people - mostly men - whose livelihood depended on them succeeding and devoting their all in the narrow specialisations demanded for most jobs, then it is perhaps no surprise that such positions were hotly contested and no more so by those who had the most to lose or gain from them i.e men who desperately needed a way to earn a living.

So then we come to the criticism of this 'patriarchal system' we are presented with the image of the despotic man, who because he is the breadwinner (and perhaps also because he himself is fully aware of his suffering from the absence of any real freedom, having to subject himself to the demands of an employer for the working week) demands that he has more rights and privileges in the household. Now there are at least two ways to see this: one as though the system is wrong and two, as though the man is wrong. The modern argument seems to commonly be that the system is wrong - that we should grant women equal power and opportunity. But this comes with two great risks. The first is that women lose their protection from the commercial world and are now subjected to the same evil forces of competition that men are. Secondly, there is an assumption that some, perhaps many, will not succumb to the same demand of special rights and privileges as men were accused of doing: becoming equal despots with the worst of men. Such a situation is rife for conflict with each party demanding special privileges and rights (i.e rights to disregard the rights of others) as a result of their sacrifices and as due their power and authority. And this is leaving aside all the problems that arise when humanity loses its generalist and all the benefits that came with this - more on this later perhaps.

The other view is that there is nothing wrong with the general family system, but rather there is something wrong with some individual men. Good men, endowed with such authority and whatever power comes from being the breadwinner, should endure the associated suffering with tolerance and kindness and not seek to be overbearing but rather be generous and as kindly as possible under the circumstances. Development of such magnanimity requires a good raising of boys to understand their roles, responsibilities and passing on the ideal of a 'good man' as having these attributes.

Unfortunately, with women and men now desperately caught in the worldly competitive fray that sucks nearly all their energy, thought and time, it is unlikely that many men, or women, will be taught and developed in such a way. So it seems we all degenerate into dog-eat-dog competitiveness and bickering over who has what rights and privileges. The situation is complicated by the fact that despite modern developments in the workplace, the old role expectations are still in place. Even though you may say that men can help with the housework, and perhaps even be stay-at-home dads, men still feel the expectation that if it comes to the crunch, they are the ones who must provide an income, so they carry the stress and burden of having to be on top of their game, as well as doing new chores that traditionally men did not. Even if ostensibly a man is a stay-at-home-dad if anything happens to their wife's position they must return to work, and that with the added difficulty of having been out of the workplace for a period. On the women's side, they appear to still feel the traditional obligation to maintain certain standards around the household, on top of their new duties. So on both sides there persist these stresses that are likely to lead to senses of injustice and the potential break out of arguments.

On top of this are all the additional modern stressors I mentioned above. Traditionally men had to give their all to their jobs for 8 - 10 hours a day maybe 5 and a half days a week. But at least back then the work stopped after hours. And married men didn't need to also shop for food, cook their own meals, clean the house, etc (just as many married women did not need to work in commercial ventures). Now the demands of work are increasingly, all day everyday, with many people working 60 hours or more, and that is not counting time spent answering emails after hours or contemplating work problems during the night or on weekends. Add to this the enormous amounts of time many spend travelling - another modern phenomena - and a significant stress for men and women.

I am sorry but I do not have any solutions to these problems, I can merely state the situation as it appears to me. But I can summarise this situation as being a kind of dilemma whereby we need to find a way to retain in people that magnanimity that I mentioned above - that the sense of sacrifice men probably mostly felt by being locked into mindless or demanding jobs, from which there was, and perhaps for many still is, no realistic escape - that this should be seen as a sacrifice of love and an opportunity for generosity of spirit. And it seems, given the modern situation of women, that many women perhaps also could take this view of the demands that they see as placed on them. Perhaps women have traditionally done this on the whole, but if so the need now for such an attitude is as a great as ever.

If you are interested in a summary of Chesterton's writings, there is one in The Guardian

Recording of a timely and important interview with Tony Kevin, author of Return to Moscow UWA 2017. As a young Australian diplomat, Tony Kevin visited Brezhnev's Soviet Union in from 1969-1971. He returned on official business in 1985 when Chernenko was in power, then again, very briefly, in 1990. During these times he was not able to get to know the Russians due to the policy of both governments against fraternisation, thus Russia ironically became a source of growing fascination for him. He continued to inform his fascination from many sources, always at a distance. Concerned today by the threat to peace from US-NATO anti-Russian propaganda, and more fascinated by Russia than ever, he returned on his own to Russia (no longer the Soviet Union, of course) in 2016. Return to Moscow examines past and present attitudes to the people of Russia and to its leaders through empathic eyes and an understanding of the change in geopolitics from cold war to US interventionist.

On Putin: "Not since Britain's concentrated personal loathing of their great strategic enemy Napoleon in the Napoleonic wars was so much animosity brought to bear on one leader. Propaganda and demeaning language against Putin became more systemic, sustained and near universal in Western foreign policy and media communities than had ever been directed against any Soviet communist leader at the height of the Cold War. This hostile campaign evoked an effective defensive global media strategy by Russia. [...] A new kind of information Cold War took shape, with - paradoxically - Western media voices more and more speaking with one disciplined Soviet-style voice, and Russian counter voices fresher, more diverse and more agile." [Cited from Tony Kevin's book.] The interview in the video took place at Russia House in Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia. It was organised by Claire Woods of the Traveller's Bookstore. The interviewer was Associate Professor Judith Armstrong, former head of European Languages Department at Melbourne University.

An example of the afore-cited disciplined Soviet-style now dictating western newsmedia was to be found in another interview conducted by Australian ABC Victoria's Jon Faine on his Conversation Hour at around 25.25 minutes in: Jon Faine interview: http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/radio/local_melbourne/audio/201703/abi-2017-03-29.mp3. Faine seems to suggest that Russia is nothing much to worry about because:

JON FAINE: "Russia's found it can't match the west militarily. It can't match the west financially. It can't match the west in industrial design, invention and technology, but it can undo the west through the west's Archilles' heel - democracy."

TONY KEVIN: "No. Russia can match the west militarily. It has a huge nuclear deterrent. We tend to talk among ourselves as though that doesn't exist anymore. It's as if we've all said, 'if we don't talk about nuclear weapons, they won't be there.' But they are there. There are militaries on both sides of the frontier training all the time in how to use tactical weapons. This is the world we live in. And Russia has also gained the great command of this country that used to be clunky and used to be unable to keep up with the west technologically. They're now world leaders in handling information technology, as you know."

Back to the video of the Russia House talk: In response to a question from the audience, Tony Kevin concludes his interview with this statement:

"And I say it here and I say it because of Jon Faine: Syria is one of the points where World War 3 could start. The other two are Ukraine and the Balkan states, on the border of Russia, because, in all these situations, there's a lack of understanding, of comprehension of the other side's point of view. There's a self-righteousness and there's a - I think if Hillary Clinton had been elected president, we would already have war involving the west, Russia, and Syria. That's how bad it is. [...] I know Russia's got a very bad press on Syria, but my position is that Russia is there at the request of a sovereign government, which is run by a man called President Assad, which has a seat in the United Nations, and Russia is trying to help that government hold that country together. And, what are we doing in Syria? We seem to be supporting a change in cast of opposition elements, many of whom we don't really know what their politics are, some of whom are extremely unpleasant people, who do extremely unpleasant things. And, so Syria is a mess. But I'm glad that Russia is trying to help bring about some peace and order in Syria."

Yes, Return to Russia is a very important book, with its author in a position of unique authority, given the perspective of his age and his experience of different epoques in Russia and western deep state international policies. Fortunately it will be hard for the Establishment to completely bury his opinion, so lucidly expressed.

Kimberley artist Jackie Ellis is totally switched on to the environment and the impact on it of human activities and over population. Her paintings show an exquisite appreciation of the area that surrounds her, both intact and with human impact. Jackie, a member of Sustainable Population Australia, has generously donated two major works to that organisation to be auctioned as a fund raiser.

The works are –

"Ecology - Everything is Connected.". In this painting we see a foreground of flames almost obscuring Lake Argyle. Within the flames the shape of a bird in flight can be discerned, a possible message that there is still hope of nature recovering. SPAVICTAS President Michael Bayliss is holding the painting on the left and Jackie Ellis, the artist, holds it from the right side.

And

"Ecology Connected to Everything Else."This painting shows man-made Lake Argyle in the Kimberley through a red fire haze. Environmentalist Jenny Warfe holds the painting on the left with the artist on the right.

See these works on Jackie's website in the context of other amazing work on her website http://www.journeyfree.com.au/gallery.html
Paintings donated are under "News" tab on the Sustainable Population Australia site. To bid for the paintings, go to the Sustainable Population Australia website https://population.org.au or straight to the auction https://population.org.au/auction

Bids will be accepted for either or both paintings until 5.00p.m Friday May 12th with highest bidder/s notified the following week.

This article is adapted from a talk with power point given to U3A Deepene on March 15th 2017 by past president of VicTas branch of Sustainable Population Australia, now secretary, Jill Quirk, who is also now the secretary of Protectors of Public Lands Victoria. The talk explored the noticeable effects of rapid population growth and compared some past and current projections for Melbourne’s population to mid–century and beyond, considering what Melbourne on current trends might be like in 50 years. These comparisons, not usually available, make it clear how Victorian governments have increasingly snowed citizens with every successive plan for Melbourne.

Why are people interested in population now ?

When change happens slowly people are less likely to notice but as it speeds up they do. Older people will notice change more as they have a longer perspective.

Melbourne’s’ population is now growing by about 100,000 per year. Melbourne’s cars also increase by about 100,000 per year. In the year 2014-5 when Melbourne’s population grew by 91,600 or 2.1%, Hobart’s population grew by 1,700 or 0.8%. Population growth thus would not be noticed nearly as much there where growth is so much slower and from a much smaller base, so smaller numbers are added.

We all now realise that Melbourne’s population is growing very fast. In the last 20 years the subject of population growth has gone from a hidden topic to one that has constant exposure. In fact there is little on the news and radio programs that does not relate to our city as a fast growing place.

What sorts of things are mentioned in the media?

Traffic, planning issues, public transport – e.g. Railway crossing elimination, new underground and the tension this causes with those who want to protect the trees; suburban sprawl , housing affordability, pressure on schools , medical services, etc.
Less often now – but still relevant – water, wild life, environment.
In the city and suburbs changes can be seen in the very physical nature of the city. They directly affect us.

What do we observe in our daily lives?

In established inner and middle suburbs of Melbourne one sees changes, which are usually to accommodate more people per unit of land. We see demolitions of houses to make way for much denser living arrangements. Residents capitalize by clubbing together to sell a few houses in one street so that higher density accommodation can be built and a larger profit made from the land. It would not be possible for such profits to be made if the population were not rising rapidly. It is population pressure on limited land that causes this phenomenon. Such actions are actually extremely anti-social as they mean doing a dis-service to one’s neighbours and then disappearing!

For those who live further out especially in areas known as “growth corridors", they observe new roads being built, farms being sold, market gardens disappearing, trees and natural areas, wild life habitat being sacrificed.
packenham-growth-corridor2.jpg
We are all aware of increased traffic , pressure on house prices and affordability problems, pressure on services such as hospitals and schools, greater regulation, particularly parking.

Why is Melbourne’s population growing so fast?

Factors:
1. Overseas immigration has increased significantly since the 1990s.
2. The population tends to congregate in the capital cities despite Australia’s “boundless plains”. At one stage, during the mining boom, Perth was the fastest growing city in Australia and at another stage it was Sydney. Now Melbourne takes the dubious prize. Since Premier Jeff Kennett's election, Melbourne has been designated a region in need of migration, making it easier to bring relatives or skilled migrants – however defined – employees of wide variety.
3. In 2017 Melbourne is an economic centre where compared with the country town and regional centres there is more work. In regional Victoria, farms have been vastly mechanized and are increasingly corporatized. It is hard to make a living from a family farm. Costs have ballooned and there is terrific global competition. Unlike in the past, banks are reluctant to finance farms. Bank lending used to be long term – now there are so many competing uses for money – e.g. urban real estate. Agricultural land is only worthwhile on large scale when sold to often foreign interests.
4. There is a world- wide drift of population to the cities.
5. This means that migrants to Australia also gravitate to the major cities, especially Melbourne. This has driven up the price of land in those cities. It is self-perpetuating as it encourages speculation and land and property banking in a vicious circle of land value inflation. You can read Melbourne's population growth almost as Victoria’s population growth and the larger part, over half of this growth, is from overseas migration.

Is there any problem with the current rate of population growth in Australia?

Australia is a large land mass, but if you look out of the window of the plane next time you fly over it, you will see that the vastness of Australia is a desert. It is never going to be settled in the way that, for instance, France is, with small and medium sized cities as well as villages all over the country. The US is also settled quite differently from Australia, with many medium sized cities all over. In Australia we hug the coast.

The present population of Australia is distributed similarly over the continent to the way the Australian Aborigines settled. A very recent genetic study by a group associated with La Trobe University shows that about 50,000 years ago the Aboriginal people arrived and settled very quickly all over the continent in stable communities. In the late 18th century, Europeans didn’t colonize a vast uninhabited land nor even, it would appear, a land of nomads, but rather, they displaced those who already lived here.

Melbourne

What is now Melbourne was an attractive place for the Aborigines and also to the first European settlers. From first hand reports, the area consisted of wetlands teeming with wildlife, set on a shallow bay that we know as Port Phillip Bay. The local Aboriginal population availed themselves of the rich natural offerings. Estimates of the Aboriginal population vary and are probably often under-estimated. The most plausible estimate I have seen with respect to the Aboriginal population in Australia wide is by a Dr. Jim Poulter at about 3 million and 20,000 in the “Melbourne” area. You can find the reference at /node/3720.

Europeans first settled in “Melbourne” in the 1830s, starting as a tent city. It was the nation’s capital city from 1901 to 1927 and reached a population of 1 million in 1930 - that is, in under 100 years.

Melbourne is now a city of 4.5 million and projected to grow to about 8 million by mid –century.

Is there any problem about Melbourne growing to 8 million and beyond? Is it inevitable?

Melbourne is situated within the state of Victoria and relies on the local environment for recreation, food, biodiversity. There is evidence that the current and even lower populations have not been living sustainably in Victoria:

Australian State of the Environment 2016 (just released).

From the executive summary:

“In the past 5 years (2011–16), environmental policies and management practices in Australia have achieved improvements in the state and trends of parts of the Australian environment. Australia’s built environment, natural and cultural heritage, and marine and Antarctic environments are generally in good condition.
There are, however, areas where the condition of the environment is poor and/or deteriorating. These include the more populated coastal areas and some of the growth areas within urban environments, where human pressure is greatest (particularly in south-eastern Australia); and the extensive land-use zone of Australia, where grazing is considered a major threat to biodiversity.”
“Many of the contemporary pressures on the Australian environment have increased over time as the drivers of population change and economic activity have increased the demand for food, fibre, minerals, land, transport and energy, and have increased our waste generation.”

Past Victorian State of the environment reports

2008
• Inland water ways- only 1/5 of major rivers and tributaries in Victoria were in good or excellent condition
• Land – salinity, acidification and need for artificial fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation
• Biodiversity – increased number of threatened species
• Coastal areas-negative impact of climate change and urbanization

2013

• Waste generation – poor and getting worse
• Energy use – poor and getting worse
• Conservation of ecosystems – fair and improving
• Marine and coastal water quality –fair and stable
• Fresh water aquatic ecosystems – poor and stable
• Threatened species, extent and condition of native vegetation- poor and getting worse
• Trends in GGE’s – poor and getting worse
• Status and trends in levels of Air pollutants – good and stable

The picture that emerges from these reports is to me alarming and should trigger and change in direction but we are not seeing this.

What about fresh food?

From the point of view of fresh food for Melbourne’s’ population there is a collision of population growth with what sustains it.

In a recent submission to Infrastructure Victoria Vice president of SPAVicTas, Jenny Warfe wrote the following :

“Dr Rachel Carey Research Fellow in Food Policy and Sustainable Food Systems, University of Melbourne, advises that Melbourne’s surrounding Green Wedges currently provide 41% of all our food: 82% of our vegetables, 39% of dairy, 100% of eggs and poultry, 63% of red meat, and 13% of fruit. Dr. Carey has also said we need to double our food production by 2050 under the current population growth trajectory."

She also pointed out that the areas around Melbourne where food can be grown are being used for housing and that this is particularly problematic in Australia where only 6% of the area is *arable.”
*suitable for crops

How are we accommodating the rising population?

At the most basic level, people must be accommodated. This is happening by:

1. Urban expansion

Recently, the state government announced 4 new suburbs to the north of Melbourne. One of these proposed suburbs, Wollert will accommodate 40,000 people or about 6 months of population growth. Yes, we need to build the equivalent accommodation of 2 of these land consuming suburbs every year. Quoting a friend “the only way to overcome the housing /crisis is to roll out these suburbs faster than we bring in the people!”

2.Urban consolidation or densification in established suburbs.

This is a highly energy consuming process of demolitions, major earthworks, reduction of permeable surfaces, and removal of vegetation including large trees. It is extremely disruptive whilst it is happening and the result invariably reduces amenity. When you think about it you cannot increase the height of a building with no change to set backs without negatively impacting on a neighbour's sunlight.

Just a seemingly small increase in heights can reduce winter sun and increase power bills. What happens to the effectiveness of your solar panels if they are overshadowed? What happens to infrastructure in the area when population is thus increased? At the same time the increased ratio of concrete to vegetation increases the “urban heat island” effect.

At the extreme end, high rise towers, housing hundreds of extra people and cars dramatically change the traffic volumes and visual character of the area from which they can be seen.

3. Regionalisation

This is a key part of Liberal population strategy. See the “2050 Looking forward” document http://vicpopulation.com.au/wp-content/uploads/Looking-Forward-Managing-Population-Growth-For-All-Victorians.pdf:

“The obvious strategy to reduce pressure in Greater Melbourne is to develop the regions” - Tim Smith, opposition spokesman on population pushing the idea of channeling population to the regions, such as Ballarat and Geelong.

But to put numbers in perspective, Victoria’s population grew by 123,000 last year. That’s a city the size of between Ballarat and Geelong.

The Victorian Government's "Plan Melbourne refresh" places the emphasis is on making existing Melbourne suburbs accommodate around 70% of population growth. They have said they will “save the backyard” but what will it be overshadowed with?.

There are very dramatic changes over a very short time span.

When did people start to become interested in the topic of population growth in Melbourne?

If we go back more than 15 years the urban myths were that Melbourne’s population was “going backwards”. I drove past the Point Cook area around this time with a car load of bush walkers who were stunned by the scale of outer suburban development. One of them gasped, “Where are all the people coming from?!”

Former Premier, Steve Bracks even told the people of Melbourne on ABC radio one morning that Victoria had more deaths than births. In other words, that we had negative natural increase! This was not so. In fact, at the time and right through recent decades, the situation has been the opposite to the tune of about 2 births per 1 death.

In the year to June 2002 Melbourne’s population had increased by 51, 478 people to 3,524,103 or by 1.5%. So the population was actually increasing but it was not a big news topic as it is now. The ongoing Victorian figures at that time for natural increase were around 60,000 births and about 30,000 deaths. Anything over this approximately 30,000 natural increase in population was via overseas migration, or interstate migration. Interstate migration though, in recent years, has been a rather insignificant number compared with overseas migration.

More recent figures for Victoria from births, deaths and marriages are:
2010- 71,688 births and 35,764 deaths - difference = 35,924
2016- 84,404 births and 40,015 deaths -difference = 44,389

Components of population growth in Victoria.

Population growth in Victoria is made up of -
1. Natural increase (births over deaths)
2. overseas migration
3. Inter-state migration.
The population of Melbourne also grows with the movement of people from country to city.

The population of Australia increases through natural increase and net overseas migration only. Overseas migration, a matter of government policy is the largest factor. If you look at a graph, you can see it responds very rapidly to any changes of government direction. Natural increase has far more inertia. Policies like baby bonuses may have an effect in the positive direction but this can be offset in the opposite direction by e.g. lack of housing affordability and are harder to pin-point. Response is slower. In a reasonably functioning developed situation people tend to have children when they foresee an economic climate that will be favorable to them. If an economic recession is anticipated, they may delay. If they cannot find housing they may delay. (Virginia Abernethy, Atlantic Monthly)

Year to June 2016-

Victoria’s population increased by 123,100 to 6,068,000 a growth rate of 2.1% [or a doubling rate of about 33 years]. The number is well over double the increase in 2002. Why? Immigration has increased since 2002.

In 2002-3 immigration to Australia was 125,300 and made up 52% of Australia’s population growth.
In 2014-5 it was 168,200 but has been as high as 300,000 in the last decade.

Remember Melbourne 2030?

In 2002 the Labor government’s planning blueprint “Melbourne 2030, planning for sustainable growth” aimed to fit in an extra 1 million people into Melbourne by 2030.

Before this blueprint was released, I responded to an invitation to be part of a community consultation process - a felt pen and butcher’s paper exercise. The necessity for the population growth that underpinned it was not questioned or discussed but presented as inevitable. Those who wanted to register their objections were on the whole unable to, as they had to be all sitting at the same table and they had little chance to organise this. Only issues that got a minimum number of votes at any one table were recorded. The option of not to grow the population at the rate assumed was not on offer.

The population of Melbourne at the time was 3.5 million and it is now about 4.5 million.

Successive Victorian governments have treated rapid population growth as inevitable and beyond their control. They know that unacceptable changes are being made to where we live, making life progressively less pleasant and more difficult. As the ABS figures tell us that the larger part of our population increase each year is from overseas migration, the Victorian government could send signals to the Federal government that the rate of influx is having adverse effects – but they don’t. In fact they do the opposite! They advertise for people from overseas to come and work in Victoria!

In public interactions state governments treat population growth as something they have to deal with and have no power over. Meantime the Victorian people are inconvenienced as infrastructure and services fall behind population growth.

Solving the problems of too rapid population growth is costly with the costs of level-crossing projects, cost of new roads, road maintenance, upgrading of rail systems. Australia has to build the equivalent of a new Canberra each year.

Where are we headed?

We shot past the prediction that Melbourne would have an extra 1 million people by 2030. Now it is predicted to be 8 million by 2050.

In the year 2015-2016, Melbourne grew by 2.1% down from 2.2%the previous year. At 2% p.a. and an estimated population of 4.5 million it will be 9 million in 35 years, that is, in 2052. In order NOT be 9 million the growth rate needs to slow. If it remained at 2% p.a. Melbourne's population would double again to 18 million by 2087 and 32 million by 2122. That means that in the next few years people would be born in Melbourne who may see it at 32 million.

Our establishment has not conceived of any of this being too much and there is no preparation for it.“Planning” appears to be – smoke and mirrors, tinkering around the edges to create differences in approach between team A and team B to the same problem.

Can we change our future?

Our future as a city of 8 million by 2050 is not inevitable as we can change this trajectory. If overseas migration were wound back to 1990s levels, of around 70,000 p.a., our growth would slow considerably, but we would still grow.

I implied in my title that I would go beyond 2050. I have vivid images in my mind but Katie Wong Hoy of the Age 30 August 2015 provided an image from Monash Architecture studios of how Melbourne might look accommodating about 8 million stretching out from the CBD. It is based on the footprint of Manhattan. This journalist was looking at Melbourne in 180 years’ time and using a compounding percentage growth of 2.2% (growth rate of Melbourne at the time) reaching an "alarming" (her own words) 228 million in 2195!

Difficult as it is to predict the future, I predict that this cannot happen as we would reach ecological collapse long before this.

What can you do?

If you are not happy with the current direction – here are some suggestions

Join a local group. One of the difficulties that constant change causes is that we now have difficulty getting organised to present an alternative, so anything that offers itself as a way to do so is good opportunity - residents’ groups, local conservation groups, join Sustainable Population Australia, Planning Backlash. Make comments or write articles for the alternative media, to open up discussion. Candobetter.net will publish anyone who gives the subject a go and other sites present opportunity for comment or debate. The main thing is to get the alternative to endless growth out there to counter the establishment message.

Make submissions to governments, and talk to your representatives. E.g you can make a submission to the Victorian population Policy Taskforce http://vicpopulation.com.au/have-your-say/

Neighbours squabbling over the back fence. The english language NYT newspaper reports sham dogfights daily between Greek Mirage fighters and Turkish F-15s. A NATO wargame and cyber-wargame around Lesbos was cancelled due to a Greek-Turkey squabble. Turkey still claims all the Aegean islands slap-bang up against their coast. No-one remarks on the irony of 50,000 muslim economic migrants camped up on Lesbos and Samos. "Inhuman racist treatment" scream the UN & liberal left cosmopolitans. But there is silence on the million or more criminal invaders, aka undocumented aliens, camped up in Turkey, in far worse conditions. My. Refugees in Turkey don't even have access to a lawyer! The shame of it!

EU statistics

A lot of people like Europe, but I feel uncomfortable as a grey tourist. Long haul Muslim airlines. How to enjoy yourself with dreadful coffee, the country bankrupt, and everyone spending all day & night, sitting around in cafes. Kalamata.

DESPERATE for a newspaper fix I found the only shop in this city to sell foreign language papers -(including Charlie Hebdo). I bought a paper New York Times with Greece supplement. I like the NYT long format thoughtful articles. The richest city on earth can afford to have progressive liberal feelings towards refugees and the downtrodden.

Unemployment in Greece officially 28.5%, youth rate way higher. Local people want to go back to their own Drachma, but liberal cosmopolitan elites and left politicians are resisting. The next ECB, IMF bailout coming up. Basic wage to be reduced to 680 eu per mth, in reality local people here say 200 lower.

NYT reports USA unemployment rate lower at 4.7%. Unemployment claims near 44-year low.

"At the same time, a broader measure of unemployment - which includes the millions of Americans who have given up looking for work or who are working part-time but would prefer full-time jobs - dropped to 9.2% last month but is still high given how tight the labor market looks otherwise."

So similar to Australia.

The old yacht (needs TLC) I came to see is lovely and thoughtfully designed. Not sure I want to restore, and spend, spend just to be a lazy expat cruising the islands. Although thats what I'm pretending to be.

Huge mountains ring Kalamata. The highest 7200 ft. Migration. Illegal migration. Seems equally impenetrable. Europe, The Med, the Middle East so vast, complex, historic. How can a little putt-putt engine yacht tow the refugees back to Libya?. Or patrol the narrow 10km straits between Samos and Lesbos and Turkey? ? ? I am a dimwit to think an old Forrest Gump can have the slightest effect.

Illegal entrants and illegal red lead paint in Zakynthos

I'm on a ferry fetish from the tiny mainland port of Kilini.
One Ionian Island one day.
Another the next. Yo-yoing back and forward on daffodil yellow, blue, and black ferries.
Eating pistichios. Happy as larry.

Reading the Greek edition of the NYT on the aft deck.
In Athens, Eu Central Bank and the IMF want the Lignite (brown coal) power stations privatised. And company tax rates reduced. How original.
NYT Rich cosmopolitans still dummy spitting over Trump.
NYT Wailing that Greece is not looking after refugees, (when Greece can't pay nurses and doctors, and the schools are falling down).
Mendicant Greece was given Eu750 for every refugee that "passed through", by a cartel of international donors. Surely they couldn't make a profit at that. Now the fences have gone up.

With 90 mins to kill in Zakynthos (maybe Xantra in english ?) I wandered amongst the fishing boats.
Two browner blokes were using power tools on a tradional shaped wooden boat. No boots, gloves, safety glasses, or earmuffs.
They told me they were from Egypt. Probably illegals I guess. Painting the hull with red lead - a great marine paint, but banned as too poisonous in most of the first world.

Kefalonia

Kefalonia Island rip-off at E40 for one night. That island deserted. No other tourists. No open B&Bs. My private, all-too-friendly hostel now back in Kalamata costs E17 per night. I paid Stavros lump sum for 7 nights (I was away for 4 of those nights). Just to have somewhere to leave wheelie suitcase, and on blink laptop. Back on charger Acer charge light is blinking, when usually it glows continually. Base is almost sealed. Not that easy to take out and replace battery like earlier laptops.

Landlord "has friend with computer shop" of course. Has friends with young girl for jiggy-jig probably too. No thats not fair. With 60% plus youth unemployment, I was expecting girls & boys for rent on every corner. Expect we have the conservative grip of the Greek Orthodox church to thank for that.

I think making cars smaller is the way of the future. Sorry Commodore owner!

99% of cars here are small to tiny. Lots of SMART from Mercedes. Toyota has a Smart-size AVGO that seems pretty new. Kia has PICCANTOs, and earlier models than the new one in Aus. That tiny Daewoo MATIZ we used to have in Aus is branded CHEVROLET. Hyundai here has a i10, smaller than the i20 that didnt sell very well, or had too small a profit margin in Aus. FIAT utes, SKODA utes, GOLF utes. Nearly everything needs a wash at a minimum. Repairs and panel beating at worst.

Except the BUSES. Spotless, shining and new. Bus drivers are highly skilled saints - navigating narrow streets, and chaotic parking with calm aplomb. They leave exactly on time, but arrive late. nb Mussolini.

Millions of cafes everywhere, islands, villages, towns, cities. Full of young, middle and old men doing nothing. But all with SPOTLESS toilets. Five stars for that.

Tomorrow is NATIONAL FREEDOM CELEBRATION day. The armed Revolution that eventually kicked out the Muslim Ottomans, started here in Kalamata, 23 March, 1821. As they say, one person's terrorist, is another person's freedom fighter. Council workers, previously invisible, have appeared today, planting flowers in all the pots. No glarey sunshine today. There is a damp, cold wind flowing down from the giant mountains - adiabetic - like political correctness.

Neighbours squabbling over the back fence. The english language NYT newspaper reports sham dogfights daily between Greek Mirage fighters and Turkish F-15s. A NATO wargame and cyber-wargame around Lesbos was cancelled due to a Greek-Turkey squabble. Turkey still claims all the Aegean islands slap-bang up against their coast. No-one remarks on the irony of 50,000 muslim economic migrants camped up on Lesbos and Samos. "Inhuman racist treatment" scream the UN & liberal left cosmopolitans. But there is silence on the million or more criminal invaders, aka undocumented aliens, camped up in Turkey, in far worse conditions. My. Refugees in Turkey don't even have access to a lawyer! The shame of it!

If I was a posturing, testosteronish, nationalist, islamist, dictatorish prime minister I might be tempted to push new waves of the human plague across to Greece. And blackmail Europe (again) for more billions of Euros to stop it. More. Much more birth control for muslim failed states everywhere would be a fraction of the cost of Erdogan blackmail. But it seems to be such a 1970s kind of idea. Global Human Rights says that all women can have as many children as they like. All children can have a smart phone. And all brown teenagers can freely enter any country they like. Except white christians who have to pay for their colonial past sins, by needing passports, visas, and return tickets.

David Z H
Kalamata Mall, in a computer games shop,
beside H&M, Zara, Nike, Columbia, etc.

The Victorian Auditor General notes that Victoria's population grew from 5.5 million in 2011 to about 6 million in 2016, and is expected to reach 10 million by 2051. That is in 34 years! Responding to this madness, the Auditor General has recommended the introduction of "a risk-based approach to development assessment processes and guidance materials, by developing clear, simple assessment pathways that ensure applications are progressed in a transparent way in proportion to the potential risk, impact and cost, and in accordance with community expectations reviewing efficiency indicators to support the application of a risk-based approach (see Section 2.2.2); [the strengthening] of accountability requirements for decisions by applying better-practice principles for discretionary decision-making and transparent public reporting, including publishing reasons for all planning decisions, and publishing advisory committee reports within three months of the committee handing its report to the Minister for Planning (see Sections 4.2 and 4.3.1). [It has also recommended working] with councils to complete the performance measurement framework for the planning system so that it provides the relevant information and data at the state and local levels to assess the effectiveness of the planning system, measure the achievement of planning policies and support continuous improvement of the planning system through monitoring the effectiveness of reforms (see Section 5.2)." Will this help Victorians and Australians to halt the environmentally dangerous and antisocial development push from growth lobby governments? This is an excellent and informative report that will be of use to anyone wanting to understand our current predicament and the relevant bits of the law. It includes the subject of loss of agricultural land and how so defined and a summary of the objectives of the Planning and Environment Act 1987, which have an ironic flavour under the present Victorian regime. [Emphases by candobetter.net editor.]

Access the Report

Full report as HTML

Full report as PDF  (5.5 MB)

PDF of the presentation
The following are selections from the "Findings" part of the Report:

Assessments that were not comprehensive were inadequate due to a number of reasons:

- assessment against state planning policies is difficult due to the vague policy objectives and lack of measurable indicators
- gaps in statewide guidance on challenging planning issues, such as housing diversity and affordability
- no statewide guidance on what the Act's concepts of net community benefit, sustainable development and acceptable outcomes cover, and how they might be assessed in a way that is in proportion to the scale, complexity and risk of the planning proposal being considered
- limited consideration of potential adverse environmental, social and economic factors
- in-house assessment report templates that do not adequately reflect the requirements of the Act or the VPP for integrated decision-making.

Past reforms have had little impact on fixing other systemic problems impeding the effectiveness, efficiency and economy of planning schemes. As a result, many of the issues prevalent before the 1996 overhaul of the planning system have re-emerged: These include:

- vague and competing state planning policy objectives and strategies, with limited guidance for their implementation, which reduce the clarity of the planning system's direction in meeting state planning objectives
- a lack of specific guidance to address key planning challenges, such as social and affordable housing, climate change and environmentally sustainable development
- an overly complex system of planning controls in local planning schemes—councils add and amend policies and controls to try to provide clarity and certainty to their schemes in the absence of clear guidance at a state level
- DELWP's and councils' performance measurement frameworks being unable measure whether the objectives of the Act or state planning policies are being achieved
- lengthy delays in the processing of planning proposals, leading to set time frames not being met and unnecessary costs for applicants.
- These systemic weaknesses exist because of the poor uptake and implementation of review recommendations. This is due to:

-a lack of clear prioritisation, time frames, actions or resources to support the implementation of recommendations by planning departments or government
-a lack of continuity in reform processes and commitment to their implementation due to changes in government or government policy
-poor project governance and oversight, with frequent machinery-of-government changes to the planning department and its systems, and the absence of a good project management structure to oversee the implementation of recommendations.
As a result, the planning system is difficult to navigate and implement, and it places an unnecessary burden on local government, DELWP and applicants to administer and use.

The objectives of the Planning and Environment Act 1987

Planning objectives, section 4(1) to provide for the fair, orderly, economic and sustainable use, and development of land to provide for the protection of natural and man-made resources and the maintenance of ecological processes and genetic diversity to secure a pleasant, efficient and safe working, living and recreational environment for all Victorians and visitors to Victoria to conserve and enhance those buildings, areas or other places which are of scientific, aesthetic, architectural or historical interest, or otherwise of special cultural value to protect public utilities and other assets and enable the orderly provision and coordination of public utilities and other facilities for the benefit of the community to facilitate development in accordance with the objectives set out in (a), (b), (c), (d) and (e) to balance the present and future interests of all Victorians.

Planning framework or system objectives, section 4(2) to ensure sound, strategic planning and coordinated action at state, regional and municipal levels to establish a system of planning schemes based on municipal districts to be the principal way of setting out objectives, policies and controls for the use, development and protection of land to enable land use and development planning and policy to be easily integrated with environmental, social, economic, conservation and resource management policies at state, regional and municipal levels to ensure that the effects on the environment are considered and provide for explicit consideration of social and economic effects when decisions are made about the use and development of land to facilitate development which achieves the objectives of planning in Victoria and planning objectives set up in planning schemes to provide for a single authority to issue permits for land use or development and related matters, and to coordinate the issue of permits with related approvals to encourage the achievement of planning objectives through positive actions by responsible authorities and planning authorities to establish a clear procedure for amending planning schemes, with appropriate public participation in decision-making to ensure that those affected by proposals for the use, development or protection of land or changes in planning policy or requirements receive appropriate notice to provide an accessible process for just and timely review of decisions without unnecessary formality to provide for effective enforcement procedures to achieve compliance with planning schemes, permits and agreements to provide for compensation when land is set aside for public purposes and in other circumstances.

Source: VAGO, from the Planning and Environment Act 1987.

Successive Victorian governments too closely aligned with property development and investment have inflicted continuous rapid population growth on Victorians. This has had a terrible effect on democratic rights to object and protect property and the environment, built and wild. It has seemed that no power could hold the government up to any effective criticism. The Victorian Auditor General has tabled the following reports. We have included an extract from the report which shows a democratic deficit in the public review process. This report may be of use to population and environment activists and they should publicise it.

Effectiveness of the Environmental Effects Statement Process

Tabled: 22 March 2017

Land use planning and development are important for meeting the changing needs of the growing population. An environmental impact assessment is a tool used to predict the environmental, social and economic effects of a proposed development at an early stage in project planning and design.  The assessment aims to find ways to reduce negative impacts, and shape projects to suit the local environment. In Victoria, assessments of the environmental impact of proposed development projects are conducted through the Environmental Effects Statement process under the Environment Effects Act 1978. In this audit, the Victorian Auditor General examined if the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning is managing the Environment Effects Statement process effectively. It makes eight recommendations for the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning. Candobetter.net has included below the video the observations and recommendations on the hearing processes in public reviews. They will be very interesting for groups like Planning Backlash and Protectors of Public Lands, whose members have so often complained of how difficult and unfair the process of objecting to constant damaging development has become. An extract from the full report shows democratic deficit in the public review process 4.3 Public review process The Ministerial Guidelines provide a range of consultative options for the public review stage of an EES. These include: an inquiry by written submission an inquiry by submitter's conference an inquiry by formal hearing where proponents and submitters can present their cases and expert witnesses can be called. We examined seven projects with referral decisions since September 2011 that have progressed to the public review stage. We found that public consultation occurred through inquiry by formal hearing in all cases. The department has not recommended the minister use the alternative consultation options to the formal hearing. 4.3.1 Appointment of panel members Inquiry panel members are appointed by the Governor-in-Council, based on advice from Planning Panels Victoria (PPV). PPV prepares a brief outlining the names and qualifications of the proposed chair and inquiry panel members. Prospective panel members are drawn from a pool of members maintained by PPV. Appointments to EES inquiries are in accordance with Department of Premier and Cabinet Appointment and Remuneration Guidelines. Probity checks are mandatory, and panel members must complete a Declaration of Private Interests to enable any conflicts of interest to be determined before their names are submitted to the minister. 4.3.2 Inquiry terms of reference The inquiry terms of reference enable the panel to enquire into any aspects of the project they consider necessary. They also allow the panel to seek advice from experts as needed, including using the expertise of panel members themselves. The terms of reference directly refer to the areas of focus specified in the minister's EES decision. The terms of reference for inquiry panels appointed for projects over the past five years have been drafted to enable the panel to ensure that potential significant environmental effects are examined with sufficient rigour. Terms of reference for inquiries also include clauses that aim to encourage public input into the inquiry process, including: requiring the inquiry to consider public input requiring the inquiry to conduct a public hearing stating that hearings are to be conducted with minimal formality and without the need for legal representation restricting cross-examination and adversarial conduct requiring that parties without legal representation will not be disadvantaged. Our audit found that of the seven projects that have had an inquiry by formal hearing, six of the inquiries' terms of reference were based on a template provided in the department's quality management system (QMS) documents, with content individualised to suit specific projects. One project has more tailored terms of reference—the Melbourne Metro Rail Project (Metro Tunnel). The scope of the Metro Tunnel project includes five new underground stations, two of which are new city stations directly connected to Flinders Street and Melbourne Central. As identified in the 2011 Parliamentary inquiry, terms of reference for inquiries by formal hearing for high-profile projects that generate significant public interest have deviated from the QMS template. The key differences included: removal of the clause in the template that requires the panel to ensure people appearing without legal representation are not disadvantaged an additional clause for the panel to limit the time allowed for presentations an additional clause for the panel to exclude attendees who behave inappropriately. 4.3.3 Barriers to public participation There can be significant imbalances between proponents and community participants. In all projects within the audit scope, proponents had legal representation, and several proponents used the same representative. In contrast, members of the community were usually self-represented, seldom using a lawyer or other advocate. Legal representatives with expertise in planning law and EES inquiry panels have a marked advantage over members of the public when presenting their case at hearings. In the public review stage, all projects in the audit scope conducted reviews through an inquiry by formal hearing. The department did not advise the minister to consider any other inquiry options available under the Ministerial Guidelines. The intent of the hearings is a minimum of formality and no requirements for legal representation. Yet proponents in all projects had legal representation. One inquiry specifically addressed the concerns of submitters who felt disadvantaged by having no access to experts or legal representation. The inquiry panel denied a submitter's request, supported by other submitters, for an adjournment to review materials. The independence, powers and knowledge of the panel members—who are often experts and experienced in conducting planning panel hearings—is intended to ensure that proponents do not unduly or falsely influence the proceedings. Despite this, the imbalance between proponents represented by lawyers and self-representing community members creates perceptions of unfairness. 4.3.4 Advice to the minister The Ministerial Guidelines enable the department to recommend options to the minister that can reduce the formality of the EES inquiry stage. This aims to improve the ability of local communities and individuals to participate in inquiry processes and reduce perceptions of unfairness. Although the Ministerial Guidelines provide the flexibility for the inquiry process to differ in depth and formality depending on the complexity of the project, we did not find significant differentiation in the variety of projects that we examined. For those projects, the department's consistent advice has been to recommend formal hearings. Less intensive options of inquiry by written submission or inquiry by submitter conference were not presented as options to the minister. Access the Report Full report as HTML Full report as PDF  (1.5 MB) PDF of the presentation

Don't mention the role of war in climate change and economic devastation. Why we shouldn't believe that the US military establishment is sincere on its warning to Trump (and the rest of us) on climate change. I would once have swallowed this whole. A bunch of military men from prior US administration proselytise about climate change on this 4Corners program. Of course they totally ignore the role of war in carbon emissions which is probably the greatest contributor to carbon emissions. This is my reaction to the Australian 4Corners program of 20 March 2017.

They talk about a three year drought in Syria as a major cause of the 'unrest', population movement and the 'civil war' in Syria. They don't mention how Israel and Turkey annexed parts of a major river from Syria. They talk about how the consequent 'unravelling of Syrian society' opened up an opportunity for ISIS which. they say, had been born itself from the 'civil war' in Iraq.

They don't mention the US/NATO funding of the so-called rebellion/rebels in Syria, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya. They don't mention their role in war and climate change.

This story serves as a cover for current and future wars in the Middle East, for the destruction of the Middle East. It also serves as an excuse for mass immigration and creates a perceived need for more military defense.

By occasionally mentioning war as having other causes alongside climate change the film attempt to sound even-handed. But the whole thing comes from the CIA, is politically biased against the current US administration, is politically rather than scientifically founded. With regard to the science of climate change, it is just used here as a cover for war-propaganda.

The major message of this 'documentary' is that 'you need the US military to protect you from mass immigration and terrorism due to climate change provoking civil wars in the Middle East.

The film also gets in some anti-Russian propaganda, blaming Russia for blocking wheat to Egypt on one occasion, presumably to designate the Enemy for future wars.

The film tells us how Africans need more land but points out that Africa has lots of potential agricultural land, but China is grabbing that land. Doesn't mention that there is global investment in those Chinese agribusinesses nor that US and European investors are in competition for that land. Africans themselves continue to be turfed off their traditional land and disorganised, driven to seek their fortunes in megacities where child labor laws are either non-existent or not enforced, making children a source of income for families which have lost their traditional land and incomes.

Overpopulation accompanies urbanisation and 'development'. In third world countries it is not a consequence of better medical care lowering the death rate, since, by definition, these 'improvements' are lacking in such countries, which suffer from untreated Acquired Immunity Deficiency, associated turberculosis, and various delocalised viruses like ebola and parasitic infestations, such as schistosomiasis.

The film calls for greater international cooperation on climate change, but gives little power to people over their local situations, which is the first base to fight climate change or any other environmental ill. It is probably the only base, since the power-elite base that controls armies has no intention of resiling from weapons and war industry and has forced exception from climate change protocol for the military.

So, it's all rhetoric and propaganda: PR for the industrial-military-media machine. Repackaged for Australians in their most trusted investigative program.

The publication of this film by 4Corners shows how the people who select for this show are either incapable of analysing pure propaganda or unable to avoid showing it.

Who is choosing these propaganda programs for the ABC?

The Cold War has long been over, but it seems, not for all. The idea of reconciling with Russia has been met by fierce resistance on Capitol Hill. Though Trump promised to repair broken relations while on the campaign trail, the new US administration has been forced into a struggle against the nation’s establishment. Will the new president still be able to find common ground with Moscow? Or are we in for Cold War Two? RT's Sophie Shevardnadze asks a former adviser to President Ronald Reagan on Russian affairs, Russia scholar and author – Suzanne Massie. Originally published on RT 13 Mar, 2017 07:24 at https://www.rt.com/shows/sophieco/380460-cold-war-russia-us/

Follow @SophieCo_RT

Sophie Shevardnadze: Suzanne Massie, adviser to President Ronald Reagan on Russia policy, it's really great to have you on our show today, welcome.

Suzanne Massie: Thank you, I am happy to be here.

Lawyers for Animals have sent in this very interesting submission to the Victorian Inquiry into the RSPCA. (See link to inquiry here: "RSPCA Vic Inquiry about to close but you could make a late submission".) It will be helpful to some of you who want to make submissions and generally informative about the role and duties of the RSPCA. Basically it argues for a new dedicated Animal Cruelty Investigation Squad (or similar) within Victoria Police and the removal of the RSPCA's Inspectorate powers and funding, permitting it to refocus on animal care and to engage in public advocacy for animal welfare. Among the reasons given are that the RSPCA has not got the funding to attend to the thousands of complaints it receives and that it lacks financial indemnity against being sued. The submission mentions a case where the RSPCA was recently sued for over $1m in farm losses, which has caused it severe financial problems. We have republished this interesting and useful submission from Lawyers for Animals with some slight changes to layout but none to content.

The Secretary
Economy and Infrastructure Committee
Parliament House, Spring Street
EAST MELBOURNE VIC 3002
6 March 2017
Dear Secretary and Committee Members,

Inquiry into the RSPCA Victoria

Thank you for this opportunity to make a written submission to the Committee's Inquiry.

Who we are

Founded in 2005, Lawyers for Animals Inc. (“LFA”) is a (not-for-profit) animal law think tank based in Melbourne. We are committed to alleviating animal suffering through education and law. Since mid-2013, LFA has partnered with Fitzroy Legal Service to provide Australia's first Animal Law Clinic: a free legal advice service assisting clients whose interests are likely to coincide with those of the animal(s) legally concerned. During 11 years of operation, LFA has accreted knowledge and practical experience of the animal welfare system, including the role and practice of RSPCA Victoria (“RSPCA”).

The appropriateness and use of RSPCA Inspectorate powers and Government funding

LFA recognises the enormous and unenviable burden borne by RSPCA – a charity – in attempting to fulfil a government function: law enforcement. LFA submits that as a non-government, charitable body, RSPCA is fundamentally incapable of ongoing animal cruelty law enforcement, whereas Victoria Police is. There are three main reasons for this:

1. Perpetual resource deficiencies

RSPCA receives about one third of its annual Inspectorate budget from government. Their total Inspectorate budget allows employment of ten full-time inspectors on average – with
only one rostered on weekends. Based on there having been 10,740 cruelty reports received in 2014-15, this means there were an average of four cruelty reports per day for each Inspector to thoroughly investigate, prosecute or otherwise resolve, as well as to organise care of vulnerable animals. That is simply impossible. As a result, large numbers of
cruelty reports are necessarily ignored or not properly investigated or prosecuted. Little wonder that despite 10,740 cruelty reports, only 69 cruelty prosecutions were finalised by
RSPCA in 2014-15 (0.64%).

RSPCA relies on charitable donations and bequests to cover the two-thirds shortfall in what is already a totally inadequate Inspectorate budget. To attract donations/bequests and
ongoing government funding, RSPCA attempts to maintain public confidence by projecting strength and stability. Underneath, the stresses of financial deficit and being inherently
unsuited to law enforcement erodes its integrity and morale. Staff and animals suffer the consequences. Governments are not directly blamed for the failures to enforce animal
cruelty laws, so they do not feel the full force of public fury when animals suffer unnecessarily over prolonged periods – such as under Bruce Akers' [1] and Heather Healey's [2]
care. Without such public pressure, the Government is less inclined to prioritise resources appropriately.

The city of New York faced a very similar situation before the American Society for the Protection of Animals ("ASPCA") and the New York City Police Department devised a joint-
solution from which both the public and animals have benefited, see:

◦ http://www.aspca.org/about-us/press-releases/nypd-aspca-partnership-reports-record-breaking-number-animal-cruelty-arrests
◦ http://www.aspca.org/animal-protection/nypd-partnership
◦ https://www.policeone.com/police-jobs-and-careers/articles/6719145-NYPD-takes-over-after-ASPCA-closes-enforcement-unit/

In 2016, LFA contacted the Animal Legal Defense Fund USA ("ALDF") to ascertain their independent view of the New York model of animal cruelty law enforcement. The ALDF lent its positive endorsement to the model and strongly recommended its adoption in Australia and elsewhere.

2. Lack of power and public attitudinal change

Animal cruelty reporting is expanding commensurate with increased public awareness of animals' right not to suffer and society's growing intolerance of animal cruelty. Animal cruelty is regarded by offenders and (to a decreasing extent) the general public, as child abuse and domestic violence once were: private matters between a person and their 'property'. Unless responsibility for animal cruelty law enforcement is transferred to a dedicated, adequately resourced squad within Victoria Police, examples of failure to protect animals will increase.

Further, in contrast to Victoria Police, RSPCA Inspectors have extremely limited powers of entry to residences and/or arrest; no weapons or other training to equip them to deal with
situations of violence. The RSPCA also lacks the public imprimatur for strong law enforcement afforded to Victoria Police.

3. Lack of financial indemnity

No law enforcement agency – police or otherwise – can operate effectively when it is not indemnified for debts resulting from civil proceedings, occasioned by its enforcement work. On 10 September 2015, RSPCA was refused leave to appeal against a judgment ordering it pay $1.167m compensation for what His Honour Judge Bowman of the County Court had determined was a negligent destruction of cattle undertaken in May 2003 [RSPCA v Holdsworth [2015] VSCA 243]. This one case has substantially impacted on RSPCA's budget – which was already in deficit, requiring it to obtain a bank loan which must now be repaid. It is likely to have undermined RSPCA's confidence in enforcing animal cruelty laws, especially following its unsuccessful prosecution of the parties in the Ballarat Magistrates' Court in 2005. The financial risks are simply too great and (apparently) uninsurable, at least by RSPCA.

All law enforcement agencies should be indemnified by the governments to which they are responsible.

Key reform proposals

LFA outlines the following constructive alternative model of animal cruelty law enforcement for the Inquiry's consideration:

◦ creation of a dedicated Animal Cruelty Investigation Squad (or similar) within Victoria Police;
◦ creation of an Office of Animal Welfare within the Department of Justice to oversee the Animal Cruelty Investigation Squad and fulfil many functions of the former Bureau of
Animal Welfare, keeping it independent from the Department of Agriculture; and
◦ removal of RSPCA's Inspectorate powers and funding, permitting it to refocus on animal care and to engage in public advocacy for animal welfare without any perception of conflict
of interest.

Victorians don't expect human welfare charities to enforce our criminal laws, so it's high time we stopped expecting the RSPCA to enforce our animal cruelty laws.

Thank you for considering this submission. Should there be any queries concerning its content,
please contact Lawyers for Animals via email: [email protected]

Yours faithfully,

Nichola Donovan
President
Per: LAWYERS FOR ANIMALS INC.
http://lawyersforanimals.org.au/

ROSS HOUSE
247-251 FLINDERS LANE
MELBOURNE VIC 3000
LAWYERSFORANIMALS.ORG.AU

NOTES

[1] See, for example: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/starving-bulla-horses-highlight-rspca-failure-writes-
justin-smith/news-story/e28a40a866601098b8c51517367c1940

[2] See, for example: http://vetpracticemag.com.au/dogs-rescued-puppy-farm/

Disappointing to see that Trump's troops are in Syria without permission. Today, 11 March 2017, in a Chinese publication interview (conducted in English), Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad described the US incursion into Northern Syria from Raqqa as 'raids' which he did not think would succeed against ISIS because they are not coordinated with the Syrian government and army. He said that Russia's military manoeuvres against ISIS have been successful because Russia coordinated with the Syrian government and troops, and was invited. Assad said that he had been more hopeful about the Trump administration vis a vis Syria but that he has yet to have any direct (as opposed to indirect and unreliable) contact with Trump. Asked whether he had opened the door to these American troops, Assad said, "No, no, we didn’t. Any foreign troops coming to Syria without our invitation or consultation or permission, they are invaders, whether they are American, Turkish, or any other one."

Read more at http://pundita.blogspot.com.au/2017/03/video-and-complete-transcript-chinese.html

Full transcript below:
11 March 2016

SANA (Syrian Arab News Agency)

(Damascus, SANA) President Bashar al-Assad said that the solution to the crisis in Syria should be through two parallel ways: the first one is to fight the terrorists, and this is our duty as government, to defend the Syrians and use any means in order to destroy the terrorists who’ve been killing and destroying in Syria, and the second one is to make dialogue.

The president added in an interview given to Chinese PHOENIX TV that any foreign troops coming to Syria without our invitation or consultation or permission, they are invaders, whether they are American, Turkish, or any other one.

Following is the full text of the interview:

Question 1: Thank you Mr. President for having us here in Dimashq, the capital of Syria. I think this is the first interview you have had with Chinese media after the national ceasefire and after so many fresh rounds of talks, both in Astana and in Geneva, and of course after US President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

And these days, as we have seen, your troops are making steady progress in battlefields, but peace talks do not seem just as productive. So, as far as the Geneva talks are concerned, your chief negotiator, Mr. Jaafari, was trying hard to find out who should be sitting on the other side of the negotiation table. So, according to your idea, who should be sitting there?

President Assad: This is a very crucial question. If you want those negotiations to be fruitful, we have to ask “who is going to be sitting there?” I mean, there could be a lot of good people with good intentions, but the question is: who do they represent? That’s the question.

In this situation, you have different groups, you have people who are, let’s say, patriotic, but they don’t represent anyone, they represent themselves. You have others who represent the terrorists, and you have terrorists on the table, and you have others who represent the agenda of foreign countries like Saudi Arabia, like Turkey, like France, UK and maybe the United States.

So, it’s not a homogeneous meeting. If you want it to be fruitful, going back to the first point that I mentioned, it should be a real Syrian-Syrian negotiations. In spite of that, we went to that meeting because we think any kind of dialogue could be a good step toward the solution, because even those people who are terrorists or belonging to the terrorists or to other countries, they may change their mind and go back to their normality by going back to being real Syrians, detach themselves from being terrorists or agents to other groups. That’s why I say we didn’t expect Geneva to produce anything, but it’s a step, and it’s going to be a long way, and you may have other rounds, whether in Geneva or in Astana.

Question 2: But anyway, it is intra-Syrian talks, right? But the matter of fact is, it is proxy dialogue. I mean, main parties do not meet and have dialogue directly.

President Assad: Exactly.

Journalist: Are you personally satisfied with the current negotiation format or mechanism?

President Assad: We didn’t forge this mechanism; it was forged by de Mistura and the UN with the influence of the countries that wanted to use those negotiations in order to make pressure on Syria, not to reach any resolution.

As you just said, each one represents a different agenda, even the opposition delegations, it wasn’t one delegation; different delegations of the opposition. So, if I’m going to – as a government – if I’m going to negotiate with someone, who’s it going to be? Which one? Who represents who? That’s our question.

So, you are right, this time there was no negotiations in Geneva, but this is one of the reasons, that’s why it didn’t reach anything. The only thing we discussed in Geneva was the agenda, the headlines, what are we going to discuss later, that’s it.

Question 3: But as we see, lot of time, money, energy have been put into this effort, and the clashes are still going on, people are still dying, and the refugees are still increasing.

President Assad: Exactly.

Journalist: What is the possible way of having a negotiation?

President Assad: Again, you are correct. The more delay you have, the more harm and destruction and killing and blood you’ll have within Syria, that’s why we are very eager to achieve a solution, but how and in which way? You need to have two parallel ways: the first one is to fight the terrorists, and this is our duty as government, to defend the Syrians and use any means in order to destroy the terrorists who’ve been killing and destroying in Syria.

The second one is to make dialogue. This dialogue has many different aspects; you have the political one, which is related to the future of Syria; what political system do you need, what kind? It doesn’t matter which one, it depends on the Syrians, and they’re going to have a referendum about what they want. The second part is to try to bring many of those people who were affiliated to the terrorists or who committed any terrorist acts to go back to their normality and lay down their armaments and to live a normal life in return for amnesty that has been offered by the government, and we’ve been going in that direction for three years, and it worked very well. It worked very well.

So, actually, if you want to talk about the real political solution since the beginning of the crisis, of the war on Syria, till this moment, the only solution was those reconciliations between the government and the different militants in Syria, many of them joined the government now, and they are fighting with the government. Some of them laid down their [weapons].

Question 4: But talking about the Syria war, you can never exclude the foreign factors. The Saudi-backed high negotiating committee, HNC, are saying that they are counting on the Trump administration to play a positive role instead of the mistaken policies under his predecessor Barack Obama. So, from your side, what do you expect from Trump’s Middle East policy, particularly policy on Syria?

President Assad: The first part that you mentioned about their hopes, when you pin your hopes on a foreign country, doesn’t matter which foreign country, it means you’re not patriotic, and this is proved, because they should depend on the support of the Syrian people, not any other government or administration.

Now, regarding the Trump administration, during his campaign and after the campaign, the main rhetoric of the Trump administration and the president himself was about the priority of defeating ISIS. I said since the beginning that this is a promising approach to what’s happening in Syria and in Iraq, because we live in the same area and we face the same enemy. We haven’t seen anything concrete yet regarding this rhetoric, because we’ve been seeing now certain [of the fighting] is a local kind of raids.

You cannot deal with terrorism on a local basis; it should be comprehensive, it cannot be partial or temporary. It cannot be from the air, it should be in cooperation with the troops on the ground, that’s why the Russians succeeded, since they supported the Syrian Army in pushing ISIS to shrink, not to expand as it used to be before that.

So, we have hopes that this taking into consideration that talking about ISIS doesn’t mean talking about the whole terrorism; ISIS is one of the products, al-Nusra is another product, you have so many groups in Syria, they are not ISIS, but they are Al Qaeda, they have the same background of the Wahabi extremist ideology.

Question 5: So, Mr. President, you and Mr. Donald Trump actually share the same priority which is counter-terrorism, and both of you hate fake news. Do you see any room for cooperation?

President Assad: Yeah, in theory, yes, but practically, not yet, because there’s no link between Syria and the United States on the formal level. Even their raids against ISIS that I just mentioned, which are only a few raids, happened without the cooperation or the consultation with the Syrian Army or the Syrian government which is illegal as we always say. So, theoretically we share those goals, but particularly, not yet.

Question 6: Do you have personal contact with the President of the United States?

President Assad: Not at all.

Journalist: Direct or indirect?

President Assad: Indirect, you have so many channels, but you cannot bet on private channels. It should be formal, this is where you can talk about a real relation with another government.

Question 7: As we speak, top generals from Turkey, Russia, and the United States are meeting somewhere in Turkey to discuss tensions in northern Syria, where mutually- suspicious forces are allied with these countries. So, do you have a plan for a final attack on Daesh when the main players actually do need an effective coordination in order to clear Syria of all terror groups?

President Assad: Yeah, if you want to link that meeting with ISIS in particular, it won’t be objective, because at least one party, which is Turkey, has been supporting ISIS till this moment, because Erdogan, the Turkish President, is Muslim Brotherhood. He’s ideologically linked and sympathetic with ISIS and with al-Nusra, and everybody knows about this in our region, and he helped them either through armaments or logistically, through exporting oil.

For the other party, which is the United States, at least during Obama’s administration, they dealt with ISIS by overlooking their smuggling the Syrian oil to Turkey, and this is how [ISIS]can get money in order to recruit terrorists from around the world, and [the United States] didn’t try to do anything more than cosmetic against ISIS.

The only serious party in that regard is Russia, which is effectively attacking ISIS in cooperation with us. So, the question is: how can they cooperate, and I think the Russians have hope that the two parties join the Russians and the Syrians in their fight against terrorism. So, we have more hopes now regarding the American party because of the new administration, while in Turkey nothing has changed in that regard. ISIS in the north have only one route of supply, it’s through Turkey, and they’re still alive and they’re still active and they’re still resisting different kinds of waves of attacks, because of the Turkish support.

Question 8: Now, US troops are in Manbej. Is the green light from your side? Did you open the door for these American troops?

President Assad: No, no, we didn’t. Any foreign troops coming to Syria without our invitation or consultation or permission, they are invaders, whether they are American, Turkish, or any other one. And we don’t think this is going to help. What are they going to do? To fight ISIS? The Americans lost nearly every war. They lost in Iraq, they had to withdraw at the end. Even in Somalia, let alone Vietnam in the past and Afghanistan, your neighboring country. They didn’t succeed anywhere they sent troops, they only create a mess; they are very good in creating problems and destroying, but they are very bad in finding solutions.

Question 9: Talking about Russia and China, they just vetoed a new UN sanction on Syria last week. What do these Chinese vetoes mean exactly for your country?

President Assad: Let’s be very clear about their position, which is not to support the Syrian government or the Syrian president, because in the West they try to portray it as a personal problem, and as Russia and China and other countries and Iran support that person as president. It’s not the case. China is a member of the Security Council, and it’s committed to the Charter of the United Nations.

In that veto, China has defended first of all the Charter, because the United Nations was created in order to restore stability around the world. Actually, the Western countries, especially the permanent members of the Council as a tool or means in order to change regimes or governments and to implement their agenda, not to restore stability, and actually to create more instability around the world.

So the second part is that China restored stability in the world by creating some kind of political balance within the United Nations, of course in cooperation with Russia, which is very important for the whole world. Of course, Syria was the headline, the main headline, this is good for Syria, but again it’s good for the rest of the world.

Third, the same countries that wanted to use the UN Charter for their own vested interested are the same countries who interfered or tried to intervene in your country in the late 90s, and they used different headlines, human rights, and so on, and you know that, and if they had the chance, they would change every government in the world, whether big country or small country, just when this government tries to be a little bit independent. So, China protected the Chinese interests, Syrian interests, and the world interests, especially the small countries or the weak countries.

Question 10: If I’m not mistaken, you said China is going to play a role in the reconstruction of Syria. So, in which areas you think China can contribute to bring Syrian people back to their normal life after so many years of hardships?

President Assad: Actually, if you talk about what the terrorists have been doing the last six years, it’s destroying everything regarding the infrastructure. In spite of that, the Syrian government is still effective, at least by providing the minimum needs for the Syrian people. But they’ve been destroying everything in every sector with no exception.

Adding to that, the Western embargo in Syria has prevented Syria from having even the basic needs for the livelihood of any citizen in Syria. So, in which sector? In every sector. I mean, China can be in every sector with no exception, because we have damage in every sector. But if we talk about now, before this comprehensive reconstruction starts, China now is being involved directly in building many projects, mainly industrial projects, in Syria, and we have many Chinese experts now working in Syria in different projects in order to set up those projects.

But of course, when you have more stability, the most important thing is building the destroyed suburbs. This is the most important part of the reconstruction. The second one is the infrastructure; the sanitation system, the electricity, the oil fields, everything, with no exception.

The third one: the industrial projects, which could belong to the private sector or the public sector in Syria.

Question 11: Alright. And it seems no secret that there are some Chinese extremists are here, fighting alongside Daesh. I think it is a threat to both Syria and China. What concrete or effective measures do you have to control border and prevent these extremists from free movement in the region?

President Assad: When you talk about extremists or terrorists, it doesn’t matter what their nationality is, because they don’t recognize borders, and they don’t belong to a country. The only difference between nationality and nationality, is that those for example who came from your country, they know your country more than the others, so they can do more harm in your country that others, and the same for Syrians, the same for Russian terrorist, and so on. So now, the measures, every terrorist should be defeated and demolished, unless he changed his position to the normal life.

Second, because you’re talking about different nationalities --more than 80 nationalities -- you should have cooperation with the other governments, especially in the intelligence field, and that’s what’s happening for example with the Chinese intelligence regarding the Uyghur terrorists who are coming from China through Turkey. Unfortunately, the only means that we don’t have now and we don’t control is our borders with Turkey, because of the Uyghur in particular; they came from Turkey, the others coming maybe from Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, form the sea, maybe, and the majority from Turkey, but the Uyghur terrorists coming mainly from Turkey.

Why? I don’t know why, but they have the support of the Turkish government, and they were gathered and collected in one group, and they were sent to the northern part of Syria. So, the mission now is to attack them, wherever they existed. Of course, sometimes you cannot tell which one… who is who, they mix with each other, but sometimes they work as separate groups from different nationalities. And this is very crucial kind of cooperation between the Syrian and the Chinese intelligence, and we did many good steps in that regard.

Question 12: Mr. President, as you may be fully aware that the “White Helmets” took an Oscar this year for the best documentary short, but folks are saying that the truth about this “White Helmets” is not like what Netflix has presented, so what is your take on this?

President Assad: First of all, we have to congratulate al-Nusra for having the first Oscar! This is an unprecedented event for the West to give Al Qaeda an Oscar; this is unbelievable, and this is another proof that the Oscars, Nobel, all these things are politicized certificates, that’s how I can look at it.

The White Helmets story is very simple; it is a facelift of al-Nusra Front in Syria, just to change their ugly face into a more humanitarian face, that’s it. And you have many videos on the net and of course images broadcasted by the White Helmets that condemn the White Helmets as a terrorists group, where you can see the same person wearing the white helmet and celebrating over the dead bodies of Syrian soldiers.

So, that’s what the Oscar went to, to those terrorists. So, it’s a story just to try to prevent the Syrian Army during the liberation of Aleppo from making more pressure on the attacking and liberating the districts within the city that have been occupied by those terrorists, to say that the Syrian Army and the Russians are attacking the civilians and the innocents and the humanitarian people.

Question 13: Right. Now Palmyra. I took a one-day trip to Palmyra this time. Now, the city is under your control, so as its strategic position is concerned, because Homs is the heart of Syria, it’s right in the middle. Now, when you have Palmyra, what is your next target? Are you going to expand a military operation into Raqqa and Dier Ezzor?

President Assad: We are very close to Raqqa now. Yesterday, our troops reached the Euphrates River which is very close to Raqqa city, and Raqqa is the stronghold of ISIS today, so it’s going to be a priority for us, but that doesn’t mean the other cities are not priority, in time that could be in parallel, because Palmyra is on the way to Dier Ezzor city in the eastern part of Syria which is close to the Iraqi borders, and those areas that have been used by ISIS as route for logistic support between ISIS in Iraq and ISIS in

Syria. So, whether you attack the stronghold or you attack the route that ISIS uses, it has the same result.

Question 14: How many days do you think this war is going to last?

President Assad: if we presume that you don’t have foreign intervention, it will take a few months. It’s not very complicated internally. The complexity of this war is the foreign intervention. This is the problem. So, in the face of that intervention, the good thing that we gained during the war is the unity of the society. At the very beginning, the vision for many Syrians wasn’t very clear about what’s happening. Many believed the propaganda of the West about the reality, about the real story, that this is against the oppression. If it’s against the oppression, why the people in Saudi Arabia didn’t revolt, for example? So, now what we gained is this, this is our strongest foundation to end that war. We always have hope that this year is going to be the last year. But at the end, this is war and you can’t expect what is going to happen precisely.

Question 15: Mr. President, you are President of the Syrian Republic, at the same time, you are a loving husband and a father of three. How can you balance the role of being a President, a father, and a husband?

President Assad: If you cannot succeed in your small duty which is your family, you cannot succeed in your bigger duty or more comprehensive duty at the level of a country. So, there is no excuse that if you have a lot of work to abandon your duties; it’s a duty. You have to be very clear about that, you have to fulfill those duties in a very good way. Of course, sometimes those circumstances do not allow you to do whatever you have to do, your duties, fully, let’s say.

Journalist: During a day, how much time you spend on work, and how much time you spend with your family members?

President Assad: Actually, it’s not about the time, because even if you are at your home, you have to work.

Journalist: Okay.

President Assad: Let’s say, in the morning and the evening, you have the chance, but in between and after those times, you have the whole day to work.

Question 16: Have you ever thought of leaving this country for the sake of your family?

President Assad: Never, after six years, I mean the most difficult times passed; it was in 2012 and 2013, those times; we never thought about it, how can I think about it now?

So, no, no, this is not an option. Whenever you have any kind of reluctance, you will lose. You will lose not with your enemies; you lose with your supporters. Those supporters, I mean the people you work with, the fighters, the army, they will feel if you’re not determined to defend your country. We never had any feeling neither me nor any member of my family.

Question 17: And how is Kareem’s Chinese getting along?

President Assad: He learned the basics of Chinese language, I think two years ago. Unfortunately, the lady and the man who taught him had to leave, because they were members of the Chinese Embassy. They went back to China. Now, he stopped improving his Chinese language.

Question 18: Do you think it is a good choice to learn Chinese for him?

President Assad: Of course, of course, because China is a rising power.

Journalist: You didn’t force him to learn Chinese? It’s his own option, right?

President Assad: No, no, we never thought about it, actually. I didn’t think that he has to learn Chinese, and I didn’t expect him, if I thought about it, that he would say yes, because for many in the world the Chinese language is a difficult language to learn. He took the initiative and he said I want to learn Chinese, and actually till this moment, I didn’t ask him why. I want him to feel free, but when he’s getting older, I’m going to ask him how? How did it come through your mind to learn this language, this difficult language, but of course important language.

Journalist: You didn’t ask him before?

President Assad: No, not yet.

Journalist: So, you think it’s a good choice?

President Assad: Of course, of course. As I said, it’s a rising power, it’s important. I mean, most of the world has different kinds of relations with China whether in science, in politics, in economy, in business, I mean, in every field you need it now. And our relations for the future are going to be on the rise. It was good, but it’s going to be on the rise because when a country like China proves that it’s a real friend, a friend that you can rely on, it’s very natural to have better relations on the popular level, not only on the formal level.

Journalist: Thank you Mr. President, thank you for your time.

President Assad: Thank you for coming to Syria, you’re most welcome.

[END TRANSCRIPT]

Is Trump just falling in line with the evil establishment and going for more 'regime change' in Syria like Obama who preceded him? Is this another illegal invasion of Syria by the United States and NATO? Probably not, because the Syrian President would have complained, but has said nothing. Neither has Russia. Nor has Turkey. Something new is going on in Syria and it may actually be good. Could the end of this terrible war inflicted by US-NATO upon Syria finally be in sight?

Despite Trump's formal disapproval of Iran, Iranian television has once again risen above the situation in delivering a superbly objective inquiry or debate about what Trump's 400 new troops might be doing in Syria. You can watch it here http://presstv.ir/Detail/2017/03/09/513707/US-military-Marines-Syria and it will probably soon appear on Press TV's you-tube channel. This episode of Press TV's 'The Debate', canvasses the opinion of Jim W. Dean, the managing editor of Veterans Today, from Atlanta, and James Jatras, a former US diplomat, from Washington, on the deployment of hundreds of US Marines to Syria. As usual interviewer Kaveh Taghvai's questions are right on the nose.

On RT a day or two ago, probably 8 March Russian time, Catherine Shakdam (Middle East commentator) also argued that during the recent talks in Geneva, which the US attended, the US probably obtained Russia and Syria's permission to enter Syria and cooperate with the Syrian Army and Russian troops. There is no public confirmation of this and Trump has repeatedly said that he isn't going to give details of his military plans - and I don't think Russia or Syria would either.

We cannot help noticing that Putin has both Erdogan & Netanyahu in Moscow at the same time, ostensibly for individual talks with Putin... but it is interesting they're both there together, if we take into account their mutuality of interests.

In the meantime,Catherine Shakdam/s interview has been removed from the RT news record as far as I can see from searching, with a talking [male] head from UK being much more dour on Trump. Not that Shakdam is pro-Trump; she was also keen to portray him as trying to seize victory from the jaws of Syria and Russia for his own glory. For all the Soros/Clinton/Obama administration's conspiracy confabulation regarding RT, that online broadcasting channel, with its American channel based in Washington, D.C., was almost entirely anti-Trump before the US election and remains anti-Trump, with Watching the Hawks, The Big Picture and Redacted Tonight playing to the New York and Washington Left. In this it probably fails to reflect Putin's own preferences. Before the running up to the election The Big Picture was generally quite stimulating because of the wide-ranging politics of its invited panelists. As the election actually loomed, host Tom Hartman seemed to panic and dropped all his republican-sympathetic guests, delivering a kind of CNN program. Crosstalk and Going Underground seem to be the only relatively objective programs on the subject. Excellent and original female interviewers Oksana Boyko and Sophie Shevardnadze, who have their own programs, Worlds Apart and SophieCo respectively, are pretty even-handed, but Boyko has indicated a distrust for Trump's administration. Perhaps Boyko's opinion is a reflection of the new-class influence of post-graduate education in the United States. This does not stop her programs having breadth, however. Sophie Shevardnadze is an exceptional polyglot with a wide international education.

Candobetter.net has only just heard of this inquiry which closes today. However the Secretary of the inquiry has been contacted and she indicated that if individuals write in to this address: [email protected] and request to make a late inquiry, stating who they are and how much time they might require, such as a week or two, permission will probably be granted. The inquiry seems to have been poorly publicised because a lot of people have only just found out due to an animal rescue group writing to various other groups and individuals to complain that there are only about 16 submissions. But it seems that very few people were aware of this inquiry. So, please consider making a submission. Here is the website address: and inside this article I have noted some of the terms plus a link to an e-form, although emailed subs are apparently also acceptable.

Inquiry into the RSPCA Victoria

Long term Aussie Residents, including many who have constructed their own park cabins, and are exemplary for living a sustainable lifestyle on limited means, now face the full onslaught of Chinese demographic and economic imperialism acquiesced to by Liberal, Labor and Green politicians. (This article comes from a member of Australia First and Candobetter.net is publishing it because Australia First is attempting to represent these Wantirna Caravan Park residents in its program to support relocalisation and a small population in Australia.)

Chinese purchasers, apparently lacking feeling for the caravan park, or its natural outlook which enhances the local area, want to exploit the land for building and $$$$ speculating on 294 dogbox houses. On current trends they are likely to be sold to prospective Chinese immigrants in the continuation of the large stream we are already experiencing. In this way incoming immigrants will displace the caravan park residents.

Stiff luck to Aussie Residents who are to be booted out to make way!

This abysmal treatment of dispossession results from the politicians opening the floodgates for foreign “investments.”
It is even rumoured that a Liberal Party Chinese Branch for local Deakin Electorate is likely to be formed to enhance support from Chinese money.

Australia First says Stand up for Aussies - No Exceptions! And, no dispossession of Caravan Park residents.

Support the Australia First Petition directing political representatives to
[I] refrain from any redevelopment permits, and
[ii] for Legislation to compulsory acquire the Wantirna Caravan Park for Public Housing Land, under co-operative management including by existing Residents, and
[iii] close down foreign money buying out our Australia.

Download and sign the petition

Brilliant Iranian interviewer Kaveh Taghvai's questions on the subject are inspired in this debate - more of a discussion - between J. Michael Springmann, a former US diplomat, and Michael Lane, the founder of American Institute for Foreign Policy, both from Washington. The two guests and the interviewer all have an unusually deep grasp of the drivers of turmoil in the region and of the foreign players involved. We get some very interesting new perspectives and interpretations of the latest moves around Syria. For instance, Turkey's position is often hard to fathom. We know it wants to take land from the north of Syria, whilst pretending to be maintaining safe zones. We know it wants to drive the Kurds back, but the usefulness of the refugee camps for Turkey as a military buffer may not have occurred to everyone. And, why did the United States bother to try to get votes on a draft UNSC resolution to sanction Syria for alleged poison gas incidents, when it would know that Russia would veto these highly dubious allegations? And China! We hear some new ideas on the motive, in terms of bargaining chips. In this episode of The Debate, Press TV has brought out layered and thoughtful explanations and comment on the foreign-backed war on Syria, particularly a Western-proposed UNSC draft resolution against the Syrian government that was vetoed by Russia and China.

If you take your information from the mainstream media, then you could have thought that, under Obama/Clinton/John Kerry, Syria and East Ukraine were being rescued from dastardly governments by a benevolent US-NATO, which is standing up to Grizzly-bear Russia. If you read the articles on Syria and Ukraine on this site, which takes its information from a wide range of sources, you would be aware of how scary the prospect of Hillary Clinton winning the US 2017 elections really was. Already guilty of tens of thousands of deaths in Libya and Syria as Obama's foreign secretary, she seemed to be enthusiastically marching straight into WW3 with the approval of George Soros, Obama, Merkel, Hollande, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Australia, Israel .... The mainstream press was encouraging everyone to get right in there behind her. Hillary's very shallow brand of globalism, dressed up as 'progressive' attitudes to the oppressed, seemed to fool a lot of people who presumably didn't read much outside the MSN or took their information from corrupt NGOs and ersatz socialist alliances that actually work as a front for the establishment. So how is Trump doing now?

Why does the corrupt establishment hate Trump?

When it became obvious that the establishment elite and the establishment press that support the growth lobby and which supported Hillary Clinton were dead against Trump, I became interested in what Trump had to say, despite the fact that he is an obscenely wealthy property developer. If so many powerful and destructive organisations and people hated him, astonishingly he might not be all bad. [2] As a member of the alternative press, I was naturally interested in any major politician who was able to go round and over the MSN. This interest sent me straight to the videos of Trump's rallies, where I could check what the MSN alleged and what actually went down.

When the mainstream media were predicting that Hillary would win, I was thinking they obviously were not listening to Trump's speeches, they had not seen the size of his audiences or his connection with them. For some reason they totally underestimated the importance for most ordinary people of the subjects Trump commented on. When the press called him stupid, but he overcame all the major obstacles in his way, including the mainstream press, I thought, this guy is a genius. You would have to be stupid to think otherwise.

Exceptional

Actually listening to Trump's rallies showed the man to be an exceptional communicator. In fact, he is obviously exceptional in very many ways: exceptional stamina, exceptional ability to think independently and to hold his own against would-be peer pressure. Maybe, I hoped against hope, he would also be an exceptional property developer with an exceptional sense of proportion who would use what he knew about the workings of the international development and growth lobby to bring their juggernaut to a halt. Because the juggernaut, composed of organised networks of corporations and investment is so huge that it has integrated actual governments and political parties. Watching as these networks vastly increased with the establishment of the internet, I have often felt that 'resistance is hopeless', continuing to resist nonetheless. Maybe, I thought, James Sinnamon, who built candobetter.net website, is correct after all that exceptional leaders can still exist and somehow pull people together despite the corporations and the corrupting influence of the super-charged monetary economy, the deep state and the military-industrial-mass-media complex. Trump's use of twitter seemed to illustrate this possibility.

Not your typical developer-speak: Trump's economic and moral philosophy

Granted Trump was talking about bulding a trillion dollars worth of new infrastructure, which is typical developer speak, but he wasn't talking up population, which is developer speech, and he was localising this project to the United States, which he correctly identified as greatly in need of new infrastructure. The former administrations were typical growth lobby servants, creating opportunities through war and globalisation, for privateers to profit from disaster management, sending in the bulldozers to clear the bodies and the rubble, cranes to stack the concrete blocks and financiers to organise the foreign debts.

In contrast to Hillary Clinton's war drums, globalism and dog-whistles to disaster capitalists,Trump talked about reducing foreign intervention and getting along with Russia and Syria. He wanted to halt illegal immigration, in part because it was taking local jobs. This is is well-established, particularly in regard to black jobs being replaced by illegal and legal hispanic workers.[3] He has noted the associated growing poverty of black communities and the infrastructure decay in former manufacturing cities with large populations of black Americans.

He is not in favour of increasing the minimum wage. My understanding is that he believes the US could not compete with international labour prices if wages were increased there, but he seems to believe he will create a more propitious local/national situation by reducing imported slave-labour, decreasing taxes to attract investment in manufacturing, and increasing taxes on manufactures from corporations that have left the country in search of cheaper labour. In the event that Trump succeeds in this economic shoring-up program, using local labour, this would create a much better bargaining environment for local labour. It would also improve opportunities for small to medium businesses which have difficulty competing with international corporations that can cherry-pick labour, taxes, environment and other laws and country.

This is not your classical dirigiste economy, which workers traditionally fight for, with government influencing wages and living costs, but the above manner of improving work opportunity and security is a way of make wage increases possible. If immigration (legal and illegal) is also noticeably reduced and population growth falls back, inflationary pressure on fuel, water and housing would be reduced, thus cutting the cost of living and the need for higher wages. Concommitant security of work and housing tenure would be expected to increase democratic activity by freeing large quantities of people from energy and confidence-absorbing precarity. I have suggested and so have others that globalism with its open-borders policy on labour is a way of keeping people too precarious to engage politically.

Trump has been lambasted by 'liberals', MSN, Soros, et al for trying to stop the entry of terrorists via large streams of refugees from seven countries deemed by the previous administration to be a terrorist risk. Yet those previous administrations promoted and legitimated mass fear of terrorism when they engaged in very dubious wars to 'defeat terrorism' (thereby vastly increasing terrorist takfiri warriors) and implemented a swathe of new laws that have vastly reduced legal civil rights in the United States and other countries, in order to 'prevent terrorism'.

Astoundingly, super-businessman Trump wanted to get rid of the Trans Pacific Partnership, which threatened sovereign rights to control laws and conditions for environment, employment, labour movement and legal process.

Even more encouraging, after Trump was elected, he has immediately attempted to carry out his policy promises, starting with stopping America's involvement in the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Yet the MSN hardly paused to report this and the "Left" simply ignored this gob-smacking promise-keeping and democratic event. The reason seems obvious: those in control of the MSN and the 'voice' of the "Left" are globalists and they were not really against the TPP.

Trump, who had a brother who died of alcoholism, is a non-drinker, who seems to understand rather than judge addiction. His political philosophy could largely be summed up as, "Look for the similarities, not the differences," which is core Alcoholics Anonymous. Identity politics is the opposite of this as in, 'Look for the differences, not the similarities'.

From many previous comments and interviews, it was obvious that Trump was not your typical Republican or puritan. I think he is highly sexed and ribald, but he seems to value the women in his life, showing great respect for his daughters. It was tragic for those who would be adversely affected that Trump had to agree to anti-abortion demands, but that was necessary to obtain Mike Pence's support which was crucial for any chance at winning the presidency. I can remember the absolute terror of the threat of pregnancy in a country and a time when abortion and contraception were both very difficult and expensive to obtain. The reversal of Roe vs Wade is not all that it is cracked up to be, but the right-wing Christian attitude to abortion, indeed towards sex, is daunting.

Military spending increase

One of those policies that Trump announced in advance was to beef up the military, at the same time as he said he was against foreign interventions. Whilst I can understand Trump's reduction of funding and staffing of the US Environmental protection agency and other places where his enemies are numerous - and he said that he would - what is most concerning about Donald Trump is his plan - announced only a day ago - to so vastly increase military spending. He says that it is for 'public safety and national security'. Does that mean that it will not be used to 'intervene' in the Middle East and elsewhere, but more for defense? He plans to upgrade outdated military technology. It is true that the United State's military technology is quite out of date. Russia, which spends far less than the United States already spends on its military, nonetheless has superior technology and is said to be able to defend itself against any US missile attack. However Russia has not attacked any country for years, unless you count the voluntary annexation of Crimea and backing separatists in Georgia in a move that ended up with the creation of South Ossetia as a separate state. These moves were understandable defensive responses to political incursion from EU/NATO which threatened Russian access to important trade-routes for oil and gas transport. We should ask the question: Which countries, if any, threaten the United States with war? Another consideration that might underlie Trump's boosting of the national military might be to take it back from private outsourcing. Or it might not. For several presidencies - in fact, since the invasion of Iraq - the military has been outsourced as a for profit to corporations like Haliburton. (See Video & transcript: Prof Sean McFate on rising danger of mercenary armies forming corporate military states or running amuck) These corporate entitities have replaced government paid soldiers with mercenaries. There have been fears that corporations and mercenaries are more likely than national armies to support perpetual war. The corporate entities have not been answerable to the United States public or their courts and are suspected of pillaging countries and reconstructing governments to their own advantage. (See Naomi Klein on 'disaster capitalism', for example: http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/resources/disaster-capitalism-in-action/tags/iraq.) However Trump's most recent pronouncements about putting boots on the ground in the Middle East have sounded as if he has fallen into the grip of the perpetual war military. Unless he carries through with remarks about cooperating with the Syrian and Russian governments to eradicate Daesh. (See https://sputniknews.com/military/201702271051092603-us-military-strategy-troops-syria/.) Will Trump surprise us with his exceptionality again here?

TRUMP: "We've pursued this rebuilding in the hopes that we will never have to use this military. And, I will tell you that is my - I would be so happy if we never had to use this - but our country will never have had a military like the military we're about to build and rebuild." Reassuring remarks made by Trump as he gave his speech to joint session of Congress, February 28, 2017

Environment

With regard to climate change and carbon gases, war is probably the biggest contributor, but it is never officially counted. The Obama regime increased wars whilst increasing talk of C02 reduction. (See http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2009/12/fight-climate-change-not-wars.) For all its environmental agencies and rhetoric, it increased fracking and local fossil-fuel operations as well. It was open-borders oriented, which meant perpetual increase in population and demand for energy in the United States. What Trump's military policy had on the side of the environment was his stated willingness to get on with the rest of the world and refrain from war and his willingness to reduce immigration, which is the major contributor to population growth in the United States.

NOTES

[1] For an in-depth analysis of some important craven activities of the Clinton Foundation and other NGOs in Haiti after that big earthquake, read Jonathan M. Katz, The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster, Palgrave McMillan, 2013. Then you have the White Helmets, Doctors without Borders, Human Rights Watch, various "Greens", GetUp, Change.org, MoveOn.org, all marketed by the mainstream, funded by the establishment, justifying foreign interventions and often promoting open borders. It is amazing how few people look beyond nice labels. In fact, this is probably a skill acquired in later adulthood, from life experience.

[2] Murdoch Press has been a bit of an exception to this rule. Murdoch could be looking to buy up cheap some of the 'fake news' media that Trump has 'trumped' and he probably also sees Trump's enemy, Soros, as a competitor for press influence.

[3] http://newamericamedia.org/2016/06/growing-temp-industry-shuts-out-black-workers-exploits-latinos.php http://www.fairus.org/issue/immigration-and-job-displacement Here too is a general breakdown in employment trends for various 'races': https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/the-workforce-is-even-more-divided-by-race-than-you-think/281175/ And here is a history of black/white employment trends published in the 1970s which shows that there was a period when black and white employment rates were similar due to protection from one undercutting the other, but then that employers started to relocate overseas or to import foreign labour in order to undercut black and white. Edna Bonacich, "Advanced Capitalism and Black/White Race Relations in the United States: A Split Labor Market Interpretation," American Sociological Review, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Feb., 1976), pp. 34-51 http://www.jstor.org/stable/2094371

Yesterday at 6.00pm about 200 people gathered on Parliament House steps, Spring Street, Melbourne to show their support for the proposed "Great Forest National Park" and to highlight the need for areas to be included to be protected from logging in the interim.

This rally was under the auspices of The Wilderness Society and of The Victorian National Parks Association. Other smaller groups joined in e.g. Rubicon Forest Protection Group Inc. This group has put out an excellent pamphlet about the need for forest conservation.

".....the extensive logging road network cuts though previously intact ash forests and Antarctic Beech/rainforest communities alongside waterways....many coupes show poor regeneration of mountain and alpine ash while others become a monoculture of ash trees lacking a diversity of understorey shrubs and ferns.......Logging or killing by fires of 1939 regrowth mountain ash forests, results in an initial rise in streamflow due to reduced transpiration, but aged 10-15 years the growing forest starts to use more water. Importantly, this effect of lower water yields lasts many decades...." rubiconforest.org

The Wilderness Society says

"...with Melbourne's population set to explode to over 7 million in the next few decades , water security is a huge issue. These Mountain Ash forests provide most of Melbourne's drinking water...intact forests produce conditions that actually increase rainfall and purify our air and water...... "

A point of interest is that parks surrounding Sydney total 1,094,207 ha. Parks surrounding Melbourne total 168,891 ha and, with the Great Forest National Park, would total 522,104ha

The great importance of this rally and the forest issue to the people of Melbourne is that it is all on the city's doorstep.

What can we do?

Participate in online poll "Should the Fairy Possums's forest habitat be protected from logging while the Great Forest National Park is being created?" wilderness.org.au/possumpoll

Show your support for the creation of The Great Forest National Park Text #GFNP to 0428029437
"Like" the GFNP on Facebook at Facebook.com/greatforestnp

Are the meltdowns at Fukushima Daiichi over? The answer is no. Made all the more prevalent a year out from it's initial release by the recent robotic expeditions into Reactor #2 which gave us a clearer picture on just how deadly the radiation levels are, watch Chief Engineer and nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen inform viewers on what’s going on at the Japanese nuclear meltdown site, Fukushima Daiichi. As the Japanese government and utility owner Tokyo Electric Power Company push for the quick decommissioning and dismantling of this man-made disaster, the press and scientists need to ask, “Why is the Ukrainian government waiting at least 100 years to attempt to decommission Chernobyl, while the Japanese Government and TEPCO claim that Fukushima Daiichi will be decommissioned and dismantled during the next 30 years?” Article and video from http://www.fairewinds.org/.

Like so many big government + big business controversies, the answer has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with politics and money. To understand Fukushima Daiichi, you need to follow the money.Follow
The Money:
Whats Up With Fukushima Decommissioning

See also:

KGO
Radio: Host
Pat Thurston recently interviewed Arnie Gundersen, chief engineer for
Fairewinds Energy Education on KGO radio to discuss the latest
challenging news from Japan about the Fukushima Daiichi atomic power
reactor including the high levels of radiation emanating from the
reactors, all the failed robotic expeditions, where we should go from
here, as well as how ongoing radioactive releases from the Fukushima
Daiichi site may be impacting the west coast of the United
States. 

BBC
Newsday: BBC Radio interviewed nuclear
engineer Arnie Gundersen to discuss TEPCO’s attempts to send a special
robot into Fukushima Daiichi Reactor #2 in Japan to investigate the
obstacles in the way of TEPCO’s progress determining the location and
condition of the atomic fuel. Unfortunately even this specially
designed robot failed in its attempt to clear the path for additional
investigations as the nuclear radioactivity was so high, it shut down
the robots before they could complete their mission. 

Ads are now appearing on the internet, asking people to sponsor an Australian Child. They are from the Smith Family charity. https://www.thesmithfamily.com.au/sponsor-a-child They talk about how difficult it is for families to pay Australia's [world highest] rents, food and bills, then how difficult it is to finance the necessities for education. "One in seven Australian children and young people are growing up in poverty,[1] where even the bare necessities are hard to come by. In a family where there is no regular income, money goes on food, rent and bills. Finding money for a school uniform, proper shoes, textbooks or the next school excursion is often impossible."

"You can change the life of a disadvantaged Australian child

For $48 per month you can make a lasting difference to the life of one of these children.

Because it takes a big caring family to raise a child, each student is paired with two sponsors. This ensures your sponsored child receives life-changing, comprehensive support as long as they are at school, and enables them to acquire the skills they will need to create a better future.

Together, we can give some of Australia's most vulnerable children the support they urgently need."

Tales of the 'One In Ten', published on you tube in 2014, is a skilful and enthralling animated web series based on the real stories of Australian children from disadvantaged backgrounds who struggle daily with the effects of financial hardship. The menu for the series is here: https://www.thesmithfamily.com.au/stories/tales-of-the-one-in-ten

It is absolutely horrific that Australia's politicians, corporate think tanks and mainstream media, have allowed it to come to this, with marketers like Bernard Salt anointed as informed commentators, continuously painting rises in housing prices as a great thing and claiming that Australia needs more and more people. And the professional Greens and the various faux-socialists in Australia, funded by Soros, posing as 'revolutionaries', yet disdainful of civil rights, falsely treating their own countrymen as rich and undeserving, totally focused on identity politics and open borders, uninterested in the causes of war or the consequences of population stampede.

Candobetter.net has been publishing on these problems for years now. Blind Freddy could see them looming, then rushing towards us, running us down. Our leaders are guilty, guilty, guilty.

NOTES

[1] Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016. Labour Force Status and Other Characteristics of Families, June 2015 Data, Released August 2016.

What makes Steve Bannon tick and is the corporate media and Soros-funded 'activists' right to portray him as a monster? Video inside.

Alex Jones! Infowars! I hear you say. Aren't they the far-right conspiracy theorists? Isn't Alex Jones a card-carrying nutcase? Well, that's what the mainstream press say about him and his followers, all 50 m plus.[1] Mainstream media is on the way out, but Jones is on the way up and he really puts on a show. Maybe judge the pudding by its contents, which vary. But sometimes Infowars seems to really hit the nail on the head. Before you scoff, check out the following video, which is about planning threats to self-government in Austin Texas. Remind you of Australia's cities and towns? You won't hear it on the mainstream news.

Globalist regulations set to enslave american city

Quotes from the video:

"[...]Codenext wants to change existing single family housing development and implement a new 'sustainable' model that contains massive apartment buildings, some of which contain 200 square foot coffin appartments. And, by raising peoples' property taxes to unlivable standards, people are forced to sell their homes to giant developers which could knock down, say, four houses in an area and put up giant high-rises, thereby increasing the property tax base even more and crowding more and more people in to smaller and smaller areas. This also increases traffic congestion, so Codenext also makes driving lanes smaller, even adds concrete embankments, or bike-lanes. Anything to impede the natural flow of traffic.

But what's the true incentive for programs like Codenext? Beyond their claims of being the 'progressive left', the progressive left has been caught many times engaging in voter fraud. President Obama even encouraged illegal immigrants to vote on election day [...] And, with an abundance of cheap rooms and small coffin-like appartments being built in once-middle-class communities, you can turn conservative districts into leftist progressive districts."

"They have an admitted plan under Codenext to take over Austin, to take over the surrounding towns like a cancer, take over the A45 and I45 corridors and fully bring in the third world population to drive down wages, to house them in overpriced coffin appartments and to bring down the standard of living massively, then use those political groups as a checkmate on the rest of the population and kill the middle class once and for all. "

"The bureaucrats win by creating a vertical property tax base. Instead of one house paying one set of property taxes, you now have 400 little appartments all paying tax on the same piece of land. Breaking apart residential communities and adding small, rent-controlled efficiency appartments, popularly known as 'the projects' can have serious effects on a community as well. [...] "

NOTES

[1] https://www.quantcast.com/infowars.com#trafficCard
http://www.infowars.com/is-the-mainstream-media-dying/
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/infowars.com

"Alex Jones is a bona fide force in mainstream American politics. His radio show is syndicated from his Austin, Texas, studio to 160 stations nationwide, and it reaches many more listeners over the internet. According to the web analytics company Quantcast, his website InfoWars reaches about 7.5 million unique readers per month, with 6.5 million of the site’s visitors based in the United States. Those numbers aren’t far behind Quantcast’s statistics for the long-running liberal publication Salon, which counts 9.1 million global and 7 million U.S. unique monthly visitors. (That probably says as much about Salon’s declining influence as it does about InfoWars’s grasp on the American psyche, but still.)" Source: http://www.spin.com/featured/the-invisible-empire-of-alex-jones/

There will be a Presentation/Workshop tailor-made to Ratepayers Victoria on 4 March 2017, 1pm-4pm, Knox Council Offices. See inside for details.

Working with the Local Government Inspectorate
Revised Rate Capping Guidance 2017-18
Presentation/Workshop tailor-made to Ratepayers Victoria

Where: Knox Council Offices
511 Burwood Hwy,
Wantirna South VIC 3152

When: 4 March 2017
1PM-4PM Starting at 1PM Sharp.

Rates have been capped at 2.0% for 2017-2018 and Essential Services Commission has held workshops with councils about process and what is required for any cap variation. The workshop will provide an understanding of the expectations the Commission has of councils when they apply for a higher cap. Of particular interest is the requirement for legitimate consultation.

Complaints to the Inspectorate are many times rejected causing much frustration to ratepayers and residents. The IBAC presentation will be customized to this issue and you will have a better view of how to use the inspectorate to insure results.

These presentations will make it easier to monitor the performance of councils and help take corrective actions and get results when necessary.

DO NOT MISS THIS OPPORTUNITY!
Reserve your place for this conference at:ratepayersvictoria@outlook.com

Seating is limited so make sure to RSVP B4 25.2.16
Ratepayers Victoria, inc. (A004092M)

There are great things happening in local government and Ratepayers Victoria. ---

To keep up to date with our projects and with what is going on with local government, like our Ratepayers Victoria FaceBook page. https://www.facebook.com/ratepayersvictoria/
We are a volunteer organization and only exist from donations and memberships. Please support our efforts on your behalf and become a financial member. http://www.ratepayersvictoria.com.au/?page_id=52

Introduction

Amnesty International (AI) has done some good investigations and reports over the years. This has won them widespread support.  However, less well recognized, Amnesty International has also carried out faulty investigations contributing to bloody and disastrous actions. One prominent example is in Iraq, where AI “corroborated” the false story that Iraqi soldiers were stealing incubators from Kuwait, leaving babies to die on the cold floor. The deception was planned and carried out in Washington DC to influence the public and Congress.  A more recent example is from 2011 where false accusations were being made about Libya and its leader as Western and Gulf powers sought to overthrow the Gaddafi government. AI leaders joined the campaign claiming that Gaddafi was using “mercenaries” to threaten and kill peacefully protesting civilians. The propaganda was successful in muting criticism. Going far beyond a UN Security Council resolution to “protect civilians”, NATO launched sustained air attacks and toppled the Libyan government leading to chaos, violence and a flood of refugees. AI later refuted the “mercenary” accusations but the damage was done.

The Sensational New Amnesty International Report

On 7 February Amnesty International released a new report titled “Human Slaughterhouse: Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison”. It has received huge uncritical review in mainstream and liberal media.

Like the Iraq/Kuwait incubator story and the Libyan ‘mercenary’ story, the “Human Slaughterhouse” report is coming at a critical time. The consequences of the AI report are to accuse and convict the Syrian government of horrible atrocities against civilians.  AI explicitly calls for the international community to take “action”.

As will be shown below, the AI report is biased and partial. To the extent that it is resulting in a widespread kangaroo conviction of the Syrian government, the AI release can be called a “Kangaroo Report”. 

Problems with the Report

1) The Amnesty International report on Syria violates their own research standards.  As documented by Prof Tim Hayward here, the Secretary General of Amnesty International, Salil Shetty, claims that Amnesty does its research ‘in a very systematic, primary, way where we collect evidence with our own staff on the ground. And every aspect of our data collection is based on corroboration and cross-checking from all parties, even if there are, you know, many parties in any situation because of all of the issues we deal with are quite contested. So it’s very important to get different points of view and constantly cross check and verify the facts.’ As documented below, the Amnesty report fails on all counts: they rely on third parties, they did not gather different points of view and they did not cross-check.

2) The report conclusions are not based on primary sources, material evidence or their own staff; they are solely based on the claims of anonymous individuals, mostly in southern Turkey from where the war on Syria is coordinated. 

3) Amnesty gathered witnesses and testimonies from only one side of the conflict: the Western and Gulf supported opposition. For example, AI consulted with the Syrian Network for Human Rights which is known to seek NATO intervention in Syria. AI “liased” with the Commission for International Justice and Accountability. This organization is funded by the West to press criminal charges against the Syrian leadership. These are obviously not neutral, independent or nonpartisan organizations. If AI was doing what the Secretary General claims they do, they would have consulted with organizations within or outside Syria to hear different accounts of life at Saydnaya Prison.  Since the AI report has been released, the AngryArab has published the account of a Syrian dissident, Nizar Nayyouf, who was imprisoned at Saydnaya. He contradicts many statements in the Amnesty International report. This is the type of cross-checking which Amnesty International failed to do for this important study.

4) Amnesty’s accusation that executions were “extrajudicial” is exaggerated or false. By Amnesty’s own description, each prisoner appeared briefly before a judge and each execution was authorized by a high government leader. We do not know if the judge looked at documentation or other information regarding each prisoner. One could argue that the process was superficial but it’s clear there was some kind of judicial process.

5) Amnesty’s suggestion that all Saydnaya prisoners are convicted is false.  Amnesty quotes one of their witnesses who says about the court: “The judge will ask the name of the detainee and whether he committed the crime. Whether the answer is yes or no, he will be convicted.” This assertion is contradicted by a former Saydnaya prisoner who is now a refugee in Sweden. In this news report the former prisoner says the judge “asked him how many soldiers he had killed. When he said none, the judge spared him.” This is evidence that there is a judicial process of some sort and there are acquittals.

6) The Amnesty report includes satellite photographs with captions which are meaningless or erroneous. For example, as pointed out by Syrian dissident Nizar Nayyouf, the photo on page 30 showing a Martyrs Cemetery is “silly beyond silly”. The photo and caption show the cemetery doubled in size. However, this does not prove hangings of prisoners who would never be buried in a “martyrs cemetery” reserved for Syrian army soldiers. On the contrary, it confirms the fact which Amnesty International otherwise ignores:  Syrian soldiers have died in large numbers.

7) The Amnesty report falsely claims, based on data provided by one of the groups seeking NATO intervention, “The victims are overwhelmingly ordinary civilians who are thought to oppose the government.”  While it’s surely true that innocent civilians are sometimes wrongly arrested, as happens in all countries, the suggestion that Saydnaya prison is filled with 95% “ordinary civilians” is preposterous. Amnesty International can make this claim with a straight face because they have effectively “disappeared” the reality of Syria. Essential facts which are completely missing from the Amnesty report include:

1. Western powers and Gulf monarchies have put up billions of dollars annually since 2011 to fund, train, weaponize, provide salaries and propaganda in support of a violent campaign to overthrow the Syrian government;
2. tens of thousands of foreign fanatics have invaded Syria;
3. tens of thousands of Syrians have been radicalized and paid by Wahabi monarchies in the Gulf to overthrow the government;
4. over 100 THOUSAND Syrian Army and National Defense soldiers have been killed defending their country. Most of this is public information yet ignored by Amnesty International and other media in the West. They have done a massive distortion and cover-up of reality.

8) Without providing evidence, Amnesty International accuses the highest Sunni religious leader in Syria, Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, of authorizing the execution of “ordinary civilians”. The Grand Mufti is a personal victim: his son was murdered by terrorists near Aleppo. Yet he has consistently called for reconciliation. Following the assassination of his son, Grand Mufti Hassoun gave an eloquent speech expressing forgiveness for the murderers and calling for an end to the violence. What does it say about Amnesty International that they make these kind of specific personal accusations, against people who have personally suffered, yet provide zero evidence?

9) Amnesty uses sensational and emotional accusations in place of factual evidence. The title of the report is  “Human Slaughterhouse”. What goes with a “slaughterhouse”?  Why of course ….. a “meat fridge”!  The report uses the expression “meat fridge” seven separate times, presumably in an attempt to buttress the association.  Even the opening quotation is hyperbolic: “Saydnaya is the end of life - the end of humanity”.  This report is in sharp contrast with fact-based objective research and investigation; it is closer to perception management and manipulation. 

10) Amnesty International accusations that the Syrian government is carrying out a policy of “extermination” are contradicted by the fact that the vast majority of Syrians prefer to live in government controlled areas. When the “rebels” were finally driven out of East Aleppo in December 2016, 90% of civilians rushed into government controlled areas. In recent days, civilians from Latakia province who had been imprisoned by terrorists for the past 3 years have been liberated in a prisoner exchange. The following video shows the Syrian President and first lady meeting with some of the civilians and gives a sense of the joy.

11) The Amnesty report is accompanied by a 3 minute cartoon which gives the false narrative that Syrian civilians who protest peacefully are imprisoned and executed. The cartoon is titled “Saydnaya Prison: Human Slaughterhouse”. Apparently Amnesty International is in denial of the fact that there are many tens of thousands of violent extremists in Syria. They set off car bombs, launch mortars and otherwise attack civilian areas every day. While there are mistakes from time to time, and also cases of corruption and bribery, it makes no sense that Syrian security or prison authorities would be wasting time and resources with non-violent civilians when there are tens of thousands of foreign sponsored actual terrorists in the country. The AI accusation is also contradicted by the fact that there are many opposition parties in Syria. They compete for seats in the National Assembly and campaign openly for public support from both the right and left of the Baath Party.

12) The Amnesty claim that Syrian authorities brutally repress peaceful protest is also contradicted by the Syrian reconciliation process. For the past several years armed opposition militants have been encouraged to lay down their weapons and peacefully rejoin society. This is largely unreported in western media because it contradicts the false stereotype presented by Amnesty International and western media in general. A recent example is reported here.

13) The Amnesty report cites the “Caesar” photographs as supporting evidence but ignores the fact that nearly half the photographs show the opposite of what was claimed. The widely publicized “Caesar photographs” was a Qatari funded hoax designed to sabotage the 2014 Geneva negotiations as documented here .

14) The Amnesty report makes many accusations against the Syrian government but ignores the violation of Syrian sovereignty being committed by western and Gulf countries. It is a curious fact that big NGOs such as Amnesty International focus on violations of “human rights law” and “humanitarian law” but ignore the crime of aggression, also called the crime against peace.  According to the Nuremberg Tribunal, this is “the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Former Nicaraguan Foreign Minister and former President of the U.N. General Assembly, Father Miguel D’Escoto, is someone who should know. He says, “What the U.S. government is doing in Syria is tantamount to a war of aggression, which, according to the Nuremberg Tribunal, is the worst possible crime a State can commit against another State.” Amnesty International ignores this.

Background and Context

The co-author of this Amnesty International report is Nicolette Waldman (Boehland). She was uncritically interviewed on DemocracyNow on 9 February. The background and previous work of Waldman shows the inter-connections between influential Washington “think tanks” and the billionaire foundation funded Non Governmental Organizations that claim to be independent but are clearly not. Waldman previously worked for the “Center for Civilians in Conflict”. This organization is directed by leaders from George Soros’ Open Society, Human Rights Watch, Blackrock Solutions and the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). CNAS may be the most significant indication of political orientation since it is led by Michele Flournoy, who was predicted to become Secretary of Defense if Hillary Clinton had won the election. CNAS has been a leading force behind neo-conservatives plan to escalate war in Syria. While past work or associations do not always define new or future work, in this case the sensational and evidence-free accusations seem to align with neoconservative political goals.

Conclusion

Amnesty International has previously published false information or “corroboration” which justified western aggression against Iraq and Libya. This seems to be the same role they are playing now in Syria.

The Amnesty International report is a combination of accusations based on hearsay and sensationalism. Partially because of Amnesty’s undeserved reputation for independence and accuracy, the report has been picked up and broadcast widely.  Liberal and supposedly progressive media outlets have dutifully echoed the dubious accusations. In reality this report amounts to a Kangaroo court with the victim being the Syrian government and people who have borne the brunt of the foreign sponsored aggression. If this report sparks an escalation of the conflict, which Amnesty International seems to call for, it will be a big step backwards not forward ….just like in Iraq and Libya.