Comments

Sheila Newman

Tue, 2015-02-03 21:45

It's not like the ALP actually needs the money. It's one of the richest parties in the world already, due to land speculation and banking investments. I expect that the Liberal Party is the same. There is no way the people can win with political parties that are really corporations working with corporate governments.

Leopoldo (not verified)

Tue, 2015-02-03 21:34

The Ever Bright Group: Housing projects

'Exclusive' Stonnington development.

The Australian Electoral Commission yesterday released financial disclosure data
for the 2013-14 financial year, revealing that the single largest donor to
the ALP was an unknown China-based person named Zichun Wang. Crikey can reveal that
Zichun Wang appears to be the deputy general manager of Chinese property
development firm Ever Bright
Group, responsible for several large developments in Melbourne’s eastern
suburbs.

Wang gave
$850,000 to the national ALP Secretariat in two parcels that year, the
largest donation to either party.

An article
about the “mystery Chinese donor” in Fairfax provoked much speculation as to the
identity of the generous figure, with Business
Spectator discovering links between Wang and
Australian real estate investment.

But Crikey can reveal the
man behind the money appears to be Melbourne-based Ever Bright Group’s deputy
general manager.


Ever Bright Group is responsible for building a range of large property
developments primarily across Melbourne and Shijiazhuang, the largest city in
Hebei province. Property developers have been banned from donating to
political parties in New South Wales since 2009, but there are no Victorian
or federal rules against it.

anon (not verified)

Tue, 2015-02-03 21:17

What hope do ordinary Australians have when their own government encourages this kind of unfair 'competition' for wages and for housing?

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Anonymous (not verified)

Tue, 2015-02-03 07:56

AUSTRALIA FIRST PARTY-: Whatever will benefit Australia - that we are for; whatever will harm Australia - that we are against. William Lane PRESS RELEASE Recipients Of The Prime Native Australian Australia Day Award 2015 Announced THE ORDER OF THE TOAD [Candobetter.net editor advises those interested to go to the site and seek the details of the award there.] AUSTRALIA FIRST PARTY Identity - Freedom - Independence P O Box 223 Croydon 3136. National Contact Line 02 8587 0014 www.australiafirstparty.net email: ausfirst [AT] hotmail.com AUSTRALIA FIRST PARTY - RECLAIMING AUSTRALIA FOR AUSTRALIANS The Protocol for The Order Of The Toad SALUTATION In addressing a recipient of this Native Australian Award, “Toad” replaces the common usage of Mr/Mrs, or any other norm of address, such as those relating to profession, status, position or office. The salutation “Toad” should be used in both verbal and written communication as an acknowledgement of the personage of the recipient. Toad Award salutation surpasses accreditation attributes of any other Australian award. In personal conversation, when addressing a recipient as “Toad“, the inclusion of a Christian or first name in the appellation is not required. “Toad” is consummate. In a personal greeting, particularly when in company, the addressing of an award holder with the salutation “Toad”, should be as a loud voiced shout, as a full acknowledgement and recognition of the character of the recipient. In written communication, it is not considered appropriate to use the letters OT [Order of the Toad], following the name of a person issued the award, This is a norm for certain bourgeois awards, but for Toads, such is considered likely to decrease community regard for same, and is therefore unsuitable. “Toad” at the start of the appellation address fully completes the protocol requirement. The appellation “Toad” continues in usage not only whilst the recipient remains on our Native Soil, but also elsewhere. after either voluntary departure, or deportation under an Australia First Citizens’ Community Order. It is a lifelong accolade.

James Sinnamon

Tue, 2015-02-03 00:41

DennisK wrote

... but I don't consider that this makes the Communist system itself desirable.

Can't you see that your own personal preferences are somewhat beside the point?

We were discussing statements such as the following:

"There are no successful cases, ..."

"... ALL Communist countries end up like prisons."

"... making a country Communist would lead to tyrants and despots taking power."

"... each time [communism] is applied, turns ugly."

I have shown, notwithstanding the clearly biased sites that you have linked to, that in the case of Cuba, the above statements are untrue. They were also not true in the case of Yugoslavia (which was destroyed as a result of war by NATO countries in 1999) and are untrue about Vietnam.

Dennis K

Mon, 2015-02-02 20:50

http://www.city-journal.org/2014/24_2_havana.html Cuba underwent many of the same tropes, albeit, not as starkly as Russia or China. They include, not being able to freely leave, repressive actions against political dissidents, poverty. Not being able to leave freely is always revealing. http://therealcuba.com Credit where it is due, Cubans and Eastern Europeans were able to make it work, to a degree, but I don't consider that this makes the Communist system itself desirable. I think we need to disassociate the historical elements and historical needs from the theoretical elements. There are times when war has needed to be waged, when revolution has been required, but this does not make such things good per se. If war was fought for freedom, it doesn't make war itself desirable. Communism was a reaction which may have had had justification, and we can point to necessity, but again, this does not automatically place the solution which was implemented as automatically desirable. I'll have to read more on Napoleon, but European classical socialism is a different beast to Communism. The "Socialism" that exists in say, Scandinavia today, isn't 'Communism lite', but a different economic model altogether. It does not apply Marxist economic theory. Napoleon didn't apply it I think, as he preceded the invention of the system. Capitalists repeatedly state that taxation and government spending and welfare is "Socialism" which is just "Communism", but this is wrong, Dead wrong. In fact, these Capitalist "anti-communists" are quite ridiculous, as they are actually encouraging people to become Communists, by muddying the distinction between the two and suggesting that its either Capitalism or Communism. So some choose Communism, thinking it is like the Scandinavian Socialism that these detractors call "Communism". To be honest, I'm not exactly what I'm arguing. Usually when I argue with Communists, they point out the 'benefits' of a centrally planned economy, why Marx's economic theories are right, why national and cultural barriers should be de-constructed and why the family should be de-constructed. I'm not sure whether these positions are being advocated or not? If you go to a Marxist conference (I have) and attend Socialist Alternative meetings, this is what they do. This is from marxists.org https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm What will this new social order have to be like? Above all, it will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole – that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society It involves. (i) Limitation of private property through progressive taxation, heavy inheritance taxes, abolition of inheritance through collateral lines (brothers, nephews, etc.) forced loans, etc. Abolition of private property. For those who have nothing anyway, such a system might seem desirable. (v) An equal obligation on all members of society to work until such time as private property has been completely abolished. Formation of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. We have this issue Society will take all forces of production and means of commerce, as well as the exchange and distribution of products, out of the hands of private capitalists and will manage them in accordance with a plan based on the availability of resources and the needs of the whole society. In this way, most important of all, the evil consequences which are now associated with the conduct of big industry will be abolished. which results in failure, because WHO is going to organise this? Which institution or bureaucracy can possibly have the omniscience, objectivity and restraint to do this? Do intellectuals really have what it takes, to manage every detail of an economy? We also have this, the wilful elimination of nationalities and ethnicities by policy. The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and thereby to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property.[3] As I said, unless one is specifically advocating this Marxist economic and political system, then one is not advocating Communism. If it is social responsibility, acting in the collective interest, placing people before profits, again, this isn't specifically Communism.

Sheila Newman

Mon, 2015-02-02 13:07

Maybe another indication of how strong Cuba has been, despite its poverty (especially since the fall of the Soviet Union, which had provided cheap oil) is the fact that the United States has resiled from its Cuba isolation policy after years of trying to destroy Cuba that way. It now looks as if it hopes to seduce Cubans into capitalism via baubles instead, in the same way it has done with China. I note that Castro's brother, who is now in charge, has also begun to allow land-sales. If I were head of Cuba, I would introduce a version of the Napoleonic Code at this point, in order to keep housing a citizen's right. Some one is bound to make the remark that Cuban building structures are turning to dust and thus providing inferior shelter. There is a possible political conflict in preserving the remarkable pre-communist architecture, which I hope that Cuba would ultimately take care of as its patrimoine - as France does. Another reason for the United States' new softly softly approach is, of course, the rising strength of the BRICs bloc, in conjunction with Russia. I think one would find that most or all BRICs countries have active communistic factions or have civil rights movements or even civil laws that conflict with market capitalism. The situations in these BRICs countries, with the exception of Russia were all or mostly the results of colonial interference. Note that the Tsars were part of a two caste system, like Britains, where the 'noble' caste was presumably an earlier colonising people. I don't know if it goes back to the Vikings or not. Would be interesting to investigate.

admin

Mon, 2015-02-02 12:20

DennisK wrote:

Communism each time it is applied, turns ugly.

"Each time", Dennis?

How about Cuba?

The government of Cuba is formed by the Cuban Communist Party. The Cuban Communist Party is largely made up of what was formerly, the 26th of July Movement which came to power on 1 January 1959 in a country which was barely 150km south of the United States.

Almost immediately, the Cuban Communist Party government implemented reforms that was to transform Cuba from a capitalist society into a socialist society.

Contrary to your assertion, Cuba did not immediately become a ghastly police state which imprisoned or killed any Cuban who opposed the government. Not long after the triumph of the revolution, the United States sponsored an invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles on 16 April 1961. That invasion was known as the "Bay of Pigs" invasion. Had Cuba been the tyranny that you implicitly claim that it must have been, then surely the Cuban population would have embraced the invaders and risen up against Castro or, at most, remained neutral. Instead they rallied to the support of their government and drove the invaders back into the sea.

Cuba may not be 'paradise on earth' – as if paradise could be possible in a world in which many countries have suffered the terrible consequences of military aggression by the United States and its allies in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Ukraine, Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt, Korea, ... – and it's government many not be perfect, but surely, given the adversity it has faced, the Communist government of Cuba deserves credit?

Given the success of Cuba, why not acknowledge that the extreme adversity faced by others who have tried to accomplish the same in the previous century, rather than any fundamental flaw in their plans, may have been one of the factors which caused the outcome?

Sheila Newman

Mon, 2015-02-02 11:36

Here are some of my thoughts in this interesting argument. I would still call attention to the fact that communism is a reaction to capitalism. All revolutions require change of ownership of land. Russian communism developed from the Tsars, who all used massive forced labor. It freed a huge amount of slaves and tried to integrate them into an economy. That was a change from the usual way of freeing European serfs, which generally meant freeing them from the land they had been bonded to and leaving them to fend for themselves with no capital, food or shelter - just as happened when indigenous people like the Australian aborigines were chased off their land. An exceptional revolution with communistic/socialistic structure which has survived well is the Napoleonic system, starting in France and growing over several generations out of the initial revolution of 1789. In this evolution the church land and responsibilities were resumed by the State, along with the employment of the clergy. Peasants and low clergy from the north of France legally managed to get the King to admit representation for the lower classes but the king then tried to reverse this by violence, unleashing his foreign army on Paris. The people then fought the aristocrats, who fled the country into the arms of royalist countries all around who would continue to this day to fight against French-style democracy. The state-owned old church land plus some aristocrats' land was then auctioned to pay off state debts incurred during many trade wars with other Europeans. There was a constant struggle between educated business people, peasants, poor people in towns and the few serfs that had remained on the land for the rights and ability to acquire these lands. This led to many changes in law and many changes to parliament, many of them violent. Eventually Napoleon recodified the underlying Roman law prevailing south of the Rhine in the Napoleonic Civil Code. This code built on a pyramid of local representation and delegation to a central authority. Localities retained a lot of power and still do. This system passed to every country in Europe, with some variations. Royals who were now aligned with corporations in colonisation and industrialisation continually attempted to destabilise through war and propaganda what Napoleon had achieved. The same suspects continue to try to destabilise this long-lasting system, with Sarkozy damaging a key factor in inheritance law and signs of anglophone style meddling at EU level. Dirigism is the socialistic economy that we traditionally identify with France and this is something that propaganda bullhorns like the British Economist and US spokespeople constantly try to wreck. More recently than the French and the Russian Revolutions we see other communistic or socialistic (often dirigistic) reactions to capitalist colonialism, such as Vietnam, Cuba, Cambodia, Libya, Syria, maybe North Korea and Iraq (need to look these up myself). It is not as if the dirigiste or socialist or communist experiment has been conducted in a clean petri-dish. Where communism was a reaction to capitalism, capitalism has not just given up and taken its ball and bat home, it has launched endless wars to retrieve its influence on those countries. And we see this today. This is an interesting discussion which I would like to continue now were it not for a more pressing publication I must attend to. I hope that Dennis and James will continue to discuss these matters respectfully. I would appreciate some detail on North Korea and Iraq, as well and other countries from James, since I know he has profound knowledge in these areas. My own position still trends to relocalisation and dirigism.

Sheila Newman

Mon, 2015-02-02 11:08

This has been going on for more than 20 years with the ACF. They have become a shelter for professionals seeking funding. They trade dishonestly on old credentials, like the Sierra Club. Most NGOs are like that. At least what you read is what you get with a loose association of people under a banner, like candobetter.net. As for Prof Lowe - sad if true, but can't say I'm surprised, given his mainstream status. However he is a patron for SPA and SPA doesn't resile from criticising the major source of overpopulation in Australia, which is immigration. Curious spinelessness, like so many things in the politics of populations or in all politics.

Dennis K

Sun, 2015-02-01 22:03

The only thing that matters in this world, is what actually happens. Communism each time it is applied, turns ugly. Where has it resulted in a workers paradise? Socialists and Marxists talk blue in the face about theory, about what ifs, about how it "should have worked". They have reasons why for it didn't work here, and didn't work there. Should have, could have, try again are not adequate arguments to put forward to reconsider a system which led to millions of deaths. Does it work? Show me! Can you show me evidence that its worked, that it can produce a wealthier more prosperous society? Is there a case study reliable enough? The fact that its failed each time makes alarm bells ring. If Communism was brutal because it was a response to adverse conditions, then that actually says more than you realise. If Communists had GOOD reason to do what they did, that says more than you realise. You then have to ask, why is it these conditions and only these conditions where people began to apply Communism? Why do people react this way? How can we avoid creating conditions which then result in force and labour camps becoming 'necessary'? If Communism is a response to a problem, then how can we resolve this problem before it needs such a drastic response? I make the EXACT argument with the far right in Europe. They are a response to a drastic problem, but my interest is, how can we address this problem, to avoid the need for a drastic response? How can we address modern day Capitalism, so as to avoid a response where people are then killed and jailed for opposing a 'revolutionary' system? I'd rather do that. http://classroom.synonym.com/labor-camps-soviet-russia-1920s-8903.html The development of labor camps followed quickly after the Russian Revolution in 1917. As early as November 1917, the new Bolshevik regime identified “enemies” of the revolution and subjected them to forced labor as punishment. In June 1918, Leon Trotsky suggested sending members of the urban bourgeoisie to remote camps, and less than two months later the first camps were established. The Soviets converted World War I prisoner of war camps to house a new category of inmate. Here is Trotsky on how Socialism works http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/museum/his1g.htm "It is said that compulsory labor is unproductive. This means that the whole socialist economy is doomed to be scrapped, because there is no other way of attaining socialism except through the command allocation of the entire labor force by the economic center, the allocation of that force in accord with the needs of a nationwide economic plan." So Lenin's government advanced to the next stage: sending the Cheka and the Red Army to seize grain directly from the peasant. This was ideologically justified by dubbing peasants who resisted grain as wealthy "kulaks," though rich and poor alike found themselves staring down the muzzles of the Cheka's guns. Once again, the resort to ever greater brutality did not bring the desired results. Minimal food was collected, and the peasants went into open revolt. Lenin, who in every other matter seemed to be the master of the temporary compromise, could not control his hatred of the resisting peasants. He ordered kulaks to be deprived of not only surplus grain, but even seed grain, while in his speeches he exhorted: "Merciless war against the kulaks! Death to them." Dont' forget, we TODAY have hindsight. Russian peasants in 1917, indeed few people at all, could have know what we know NOW. Lenin may have tried to do good (so did Hitler and Stalin according to themselves), but we know NOW how it turned out. We know how Marxist Socialism applied elsewhere turned out.

James Sinnamon

Sun, 2015-02-01 16:09

DennisK wrote:

Even Lenin started labour camps.

I note that you have not cited sources to verify this claim about 'labour camps'. In any case, I already explained above why I thought it was necessary for Lenin to resort to harsh measures, just possibly including 'labour camps', to defend his government in the middle of a savage civil war. In that post I cited another post to another forum made nearly three years ago:

As others pointed out, Lenin was faced with a savage civil war and an invasion by the troops from over ten foreign nations, including Australia.

So is it fair to damn Lenin for having resorted to harsh measures to keep his government in power, especially given what his opponents, many professing to be for democracy, both outside the Soviet Union and within, have 'achieved' since his death?

No-one has bothered to attempt to refute that argument, there or here.

I will address the remainder of DennisK's fallacies, omissions, inconsistencies and baseless assertions on another occasion.

Dennis K

Sun, 2015-02-01 13:13

The people who led the first successful Communist Revolution in 1917 were not the same as those who committed the crimes which occurred under Stalin's rule. True. Had they lived and still been in control of the Soviet Union, there is every reason to expect that those crimes would not have occurred. They certainly don't deserve to be held culpable for Stalin's crimes. Even Lenin started labour camps. The repression began before Stalin. Stalin just amplified it. But what about China? Cambodia? North Korea? Why is there a pattern in which countries which try Communism end up becoming prisons? I think the argument that these crimes wouldn't have occurred is not based on historical precedent. We can see that the application of Communism has, multiple times, resulted in despotism, and millions dead. There are no successful cases, ones that we would want to move to. One can argue that each case was due to specific circumstances, which had nothing to do with Communism, and it just is happenstance that ALL Communist countries end up like prisons. Or we can see that there is a trend, try to understand it and see if there is a simpler explanation. I argue that if one is to advocate a system which has, in the past led to repression, political killings, starvation, then you would have to be absolutely sure, that those failures are NOT related to the system, and are just coincidences. When you implement ideas, you don't usually just get the result you SAY will happen. When theory meets practice, it is often a turbulent collision and theory begins to lose out. People who subscribe to an ideology, can't accept that it doesn't produce the results they say it does. They then blame, not themselves, but those who they claim are anti-revolutionary, or who don't produce the result they say it should. Free Market Libertarians go into the SAME mode each time deregulation, self-regulation and letting the financial sector 'be free' fails. It's not the idea, its the fault of person X and Y. It's not the system, its the person fault. Its Mr X, Politician Y. It was Greenspan. Their THEORY says people are rational all the time, and people are rational, individual economic agents who can make correct market decisions. Socialism couldn't, cant, survive implementation. It made assumptions about human nature which weren't true. It had economic theories that were just wrong. How can a system based on false assumptions work in practice? We can see corollaries today, with our 'growth driven' system. It in theory, says that growth is good, limitless and endless. But in practice, this is simply not possible. So who's to blame when it fails? Why, those who point it out! The 'xenophobes' who don't want industrial strength immigration, the environmentalists, the scientists warning about Climate Change. These people MUST be sabotaging our system! Those who want to maintain decent living standards, well, they must be WRONG! How dare they argue for things which might 'slow growth'! So I'm arguing that making a country Communist would lead to tyrants and despots taking power. The system would immediately conflict with human nature, and it would either 1) fail when people were free to think and question, which is what killed Communism in Eastern Europe, or 2) 'succeed' because the necessary action was put into place to deal with opponents, to make the centrally planned economy produce, and make the Communist state structure survive economic failures. Communism would either fail, or result in harsher and harsher measures. The party structure would see that highly motivated power hungry people are the ones who gain power.

James Sinnamon

Sun, 2015-02-01 02:52

I wrote:

If you had read a little more history, you would know that a large number of people who labeled themselves "communists" in the early 20th century, including the Central Committee of the Russian Bolshevik Party, which led the revolution in 1917, did not consider Stalin, who was to commit nearly all of the crimes wrongly attributed to 'communism', a 'communist'.

... then DennisK wrote:

Politically speaking, this statement doesn't say anything. It applies to ALL political and religious ideologies. In all of them, there are some who claim to be the "one true faith" and denounce the others as not the true faith.

Our readers deserve better than this apparent attempt to trivialise such a gravely serious historical issue.

On 4 August 1914, the members of one "political and religious ideology", including its adherents who were running the Australian government at the time (see "Hell-Bent – Australia's leap into the Great War" (2014) by Douglas Newton), decided to start a bloody war that was to last over 4 years and cost the lives of 10 million combatants and 8 million civilians. Members of another "political and religious ideology," who had twice before – in 1911 and 1912 – prevented war, also tried to prevent that war breaking out, but, sadly, failed.

'Adherents' to the latter "political and religious ideology" included Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky in Russia and Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in Germany. The latter two were murdered in January 1919 after they had participated a in failed revolt against those adherents to the other "political and religious ideology" which had led Germany into the First World War. They were killed by German FreiKorps mercenaries, many of whom were to form the core of Hitler's Nazi Party, which was to start another even more bloody and terrible war barely 20 years later.

Of the 21 members and 10 candidate members of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party of Russia in 1917, only Stalin, Trotsky, and two others were still left alive or not imprisoned by 1939. The then exiled Trotsky was to be murdered on Stalin's orders in August 1940.

The people who led the first successful Communist Revolution in 1917 were not the same as those who committed the crimes which occurred under Stalin's rule. Had they lived and still been in control of the Soviet Union, there is every reason to expect that those crimes would not have occurred. They certainly don't deserve to be held culpable for Stalin's crimes.

ECOENGINE (not verified)

Sat, 2015-01-31 11:57

Animal welfare group Voiceless says consumers should stay away from milk because increasing numbers of dairy cows are suffering. Bobby Calves are male calves that can't be raised to produce milk. Cows must give birth often to ensure a consistent milk supply, just like all other mammals. To acquire the milk, the calves must be removed from the mothers after a few short days. If they give birth to a male it is likely to be sent to slaughter after a few days of life, or put down on the farm. Others end up in crates to be slaughtered for veal. The bobby calf issue is a sensitive one, for the right reasons, and that unfortunately the dairy industry doesn't see any other options. They are the by-product of the seemingly benign dairy industry. Bobbie calves can be used for pharmaceutical products, leather and pet food, when not grown for veal. Bobby calves are not worth a great value, dollar-wise, therefore it becomes uneconomic if they have to travel vast distances, and in an animal health and welfare sense they can't be on the road for too long, either. Australia's dairy cow population of about 1.8 million has remained stable for the past 30 years, but annual milk production has doubled to 9.3 billion litres in that time, figures from the Department of Agriculture show. It means that cows are bred to produce more milk, and that there is a consumer drive towards alternatives. It also means that the modern dairy cow commonly suffers from mastitis, lameness, metabolic disorders, mutilation procedures and the inevitability of repeatedly losing her calf. On top of the issue of overworked cows, it raises welfare concerns such as tail docking, dehorning, and disbudding, as well as the treatment of bobby calves. SMH:Dairy cows suffer from doubling milk production in 30 years Hundreds of thousands of new born calves are slaughtered each year, as a by-product of our milk consumption. Dairy is not an essential food for humans. Humans have no nutritional requirement for animal milk, in contrary to the advice of most nutritionists who encourage people to consume three servings of dairy a day. In multiple, peer-reviewed animal studies, researchers discovered they could actually turn the growth of cancer cells on and off by raising and lowering doses of casein, the main protein found in cow's milk. Ironically, the countries with the highest rates of osteoporosis are Australia, the US and the UK "where we have the highest intake of dairy"!

Dennis K

Sat, 2015-01-31 09:46

This is maybe a non-sequiteur, but personally I think that communism is the response to capitalism. I think the point is quite important. Communism was the implementation of Victorian Era economic theory, in response to the conditions of Capitalism at the time. The Tsars were also a major factor. Fascism was also a response to Communism. Modern Liberalism is a response to Fascism. The new politics emerging is a response to Modern Liberalism, and so it goes. I don't think that Communism is an accurate reflection of historical communities. I note that Free Market Libertarians make the exact same argument, that somehow their system is more 'natural' and was the primeval state of human economics. Communism (according to those who seek to implement it today), consists of children being raised by the state, the loss of any private property, the destruction of religious, national, ethnic and familial identities. Communism seems to aim to make human beings even more a tool of an economic system than Capitalism does. The devil is in the details. Sure, it's for 'equality', 'brotherhood', and so forth, but any ideology implemented with lofty moral goals, always ends up going sour. Both Communism and modern day Capitalism see human beings, societies, countries as being objects based around an economy. Just as Communism called for social change, assimilation and removal of human identity and barriers for 'economic' reasons, so to does Capitalism, which calls for things like nations to destroy their identity for the sake of 'growth'. Instead of Goldman Sachs calling for European nations to implement population policies to eradicate the existing demographic status, you'll have beaurocrats and intellectuals deciding what should happen. I get why people want to move away from a system which views human identity as an obstacle to arbitrary economic ideals which in practice only benefit a few, but in practice, Communism ends up being the same. My take on the problem of Capitalism, is it's a power problem. A few people are calling the shots, and the state and economy is turning into an autocracy. The EU takes power away from nations to decide their fate, and puts it in the hands of unelected technocrats. Here in Australia, we put more and more decision making into 'experts' and 'leaders'. The media pushes the message that we must let people like Matthew Guy make the decisions, because we can't. This actually goes against the idea of the market economy, because they are going against what the market, ie, the people actually want. The trend seems to be "we need to control things, because its getting to 'complex' for us to allow you". That division, that there is a 'ruling' class which 'knows' what to do and should be entrusted with decisions is the problem. The solution is to reaffirm, and retake ownership over of communities, state and nation. Where the people can say, set immigration policy, instead of a few people doing it because they are 'business leaders' or somehow more authorised. The solution is kind of waiting, but it needs people to have the will to come alive. I see it more as a power problem (ie, billionaires and entrenched political classes have power). We need to shift power away from those who have it, but I'm sceptical of the need to then completely replace or socio-economic system with one thought up by people who have never actually don't productive work.

DennisK (not verified)

Fri, 2015-01-30 15:54

I dont mean to be rude Think of gravity. Obvious that things fall to the Earth, right? Through history till Newton, no one really thought about what it was. Newtons theory that something MAKES the apple fall, is so simple, even children go "yeah, so what?". But it took a genius to make people think about the obvious. We would struggle to comprehend how people thought about it before newton, how they could not ask the question, but the fact is, no one really did . My article is very obvious and basic, to those who know. Gravity is very basic, to those that know. To those who dont, its a revelation. The problem is, so many people think that something or something is so basic, so trivial, they never think it worthwhile to just say it. But just saying it can be very powerful.

DennisK (not verified)

Fri, 2015-01-30 15:34

At the core, are issues a 10 year old could understand. Problem is, the 10 year old is more likely to "get it" because thay havent taken on board all the crap we are given by those who have a vested interest in something other than plain truth. How to fix it all? I'm not sure, but there IS a political change occuring. Mainstream everything is no longer what it once was. Media, politics, etc , people are shifting to alternatives. So things are changing, but it is innerving for the impatient. People dont view mainstream media as THE source of all information. Politics has always been criticised, but it is a joke now, and people are calling it out. Greece has voted in a far left, non mainstream party. 10 years ago, people would have thought this a pipe dream. I think patience is important. Don't think nothing is happening, because its not happening right now. Persistence pays off and the best thing one can do, is to just continually plug away spreading ideas. Commenting on news sites, blogs, speaking to people, spreading memes and just slowly weaving your narrative into the public discussion. People tend to like flashy demonstrations, but they dont change much. Much political change happens due to tireless, disciplined people. The Comminists in Russia gained power by many means, but one of the more interesting strategies was just always turning up to meetings' whether it be a community organisation they have infiltrated or what not, and staying past the end. They were just there all the time. Seems silly, trivial and pointless,, but it worked! Don't discount plugging away spreading ideas, I have seen it work before.

ECOENGINE (not verified)

Fri, 2015-01-30 14:49

The Australian Conservation Foundation Council votes to implicitly support 'Big Australia’. The Independent Australian:The Australian Conservation Foundation Council votes to implicitly support 'Big Australia’ ACF members were invited to the AGM held on 21st November 2014 at 6pm with the promise of meeting the new president, Mr Geoffrey Cousins, a prominent business man on the board of Telstra, and successful environmental activist who played hardball in successful campaigns against the Gunns paper pulp mill in Tasmania and the James Price Point gas project in the Kimberley. However, the connection between Australia's third world rate of population growth and environmental stress/degradation hasn't linked in their logic. The ACF Council then met the next day. The council consists of 35 members elected by state and territory members for a fixed term of three years. Mr Mark O'Connor, an ACT delegate, (who co-authored with William Lines the book Overloading Australia: How Governments and Media Dither and Deny on Population ) urged the ACF to speak out against the environmental costs of Australia’s rapid population growth and to call for a referendum on population. He moved a motion that Australia reduce immigration levels to 70,000 per year, rather than the 240,000 and 1.8 % growth we have now. Many delegates spoke against the motion. Cousins was against the motion. It was defeated 21 to 7 with abstentions. The names of those voting were recorded. The desire to be PC is overwhelmingly stronger than logic, or any desire for real "conservation"! Previous president, Professor Ian Lowe was none too subtly opposed the motion. He said that a slogan like “ 'Reduce Immigration' would probably be interpreted, without the sort of qualification that I have just written, as supporting a view that migrants pose problems while people born here don’t! Overwhelmingly, it's migration that contributes to our population growth! It's not "migrants" verses Australian-born that should be voted on, but population growth! They diverted and hijacked the argument totally! In the book Australian Public Policy: progressive ideas in the neo-liberal ascendancy , Lowe has a chapter (p.239) in which he writes that the reason for the defeat was that the motion (to reduce immigration) would be perceived as discriminatory. Discriminatory against who? We should open our borders? The "C" in ACF should be changed to a "B A" for advocates of "Big Australia" and big corporate profits! The Australians of future generations who will be forced to take on the challenges of an over-populated country, with depleting resources and lost natural heritage? The ACF are trying to outmaneuver pot-holes created by their own lack of logic, and inconsistency. No doubt the ACF’s illogical and contradictory policy to ignore their own recommendations on reducing immigration rates is about ensuring government funding! No doubt they don’t want to ruffle any feathers, and still keep their jobs! With the Australian economy riding on high population growth, it’s obviously contrary to any environmental conservation aims, and can’t be sustained economically, or ecologically! Any “environmental” or planning organisation without a robust population policy is impotent, and internally flawed by contradictions and vested interests.

Anonymous (not verified)

Fri, 2015-01-30 03:59

As always, Joan's comments are insightful and pertinent. There is one comment where I think she goes astray, that I would take issue with, and that is her reference to cylinders of compressed gas. Joan is perfectly correct to write that LPG cylinders explode in fires - and not just major bushfires. Typical small LPG cylinders have minimal excess pressure relief, primarily intended for overfilled cylinders on normal hot days. For a standard house delivery cylinder (100 litre, I think) I suspect the radiant heat from a major bushfire could overwhelm the excess pressure relief valve, given that these are a wall of radiant heat. The standard formula for radiant heat gives a reduction in intensity of 1/(distance from source)squared. This is not useful in bushfire, where the source is effectively a flat wall, not a point source, and so the radiant heat diminishes only slowly until the wall of fire starts to take on a smaller aperture: that is some considerable distance from the firefront. Think in terms of 100 to 1000 metres on open ground. There is also the slightly odd claim that cigarettes and mobiles are banned in hospitals beause oxygen is used: cigarettes are banned for health reasons, and mobiles are, or were banned because the medical equipment is sometimes sensitive to EM fields (this is improving), and hospitals are required to be precautionary where the equipment involved could be part of life support. Mobiles can also interfere with some scanning equipment. It is worth noting that *NO* single gas in a cylinder is explosive in so far as the gas as gas is concerned - a single gas, on its own, cannot burn (chemical explosion is a very fast form of burning, remembering that burning is exothermic combination of fuel and oxidant). Remember the old "burning triangle": fuel, air (oxygen), and heat. Remove any one, and the fire stops, or can't start. This is not to say that a cylinder of compressed gas, when heated, cannot be raised past the bursting pressure of the cylinder, which is precisely the above issue with LPG. However, cylinders are built to withstand the maximum pressure possible in a properly filled unit, under worst case temperature, for reasonably likely conditions. Unsuprisingly, being at a bushfire front does not fall within that qualification. A fire bunker would fall within that limit, given that its purpose is to allow people to survive. That is to say, people would die of heat stress long before an air (scuba) cylinder would approach its pressure limit. And I would like to reiterate her last point - unless you want your house to burn, start to prepare now, regardless of what time of year now is.

Matthew Mitchell

Thu, 2015-01-29 19:18

Nice one Dennis, I agree pretty much with everything you say here - and I don't mean to be rude, but much of it should be obvious to anyone with sense. But not our policy makers it seems, self interest trumps common sense nearly every time. Anyway, it seems it is almost too late. We need Citizens Initiated Referenda, and then - use that to get a new constitution. But how? And every more important how before everything turns to sh--e? (i.e more sh--e than thing are already for many people - not sure what to do about the massive mortgages nearly everyone under 40 has).

Anonymous (not verified)

Thu, 2015-01-29 15:05

AUSTRALIA FIRST PARTY-: Whatever will benefit Australia - that we are for; whatever will harm Australia - that we are against. William Lane :- PRESS RELEASE Nominations for the Australian Peoples Movement Award The Mao Tse-tung Order of the Third Hand are invited from Individuals of The Commonwealth CRITERIA. This Award is for Scabs who aid and abet the scourge of Chinese Imperialism in Australia, manifested in their conniving for unwanted exploitive “developments”; the selling and purchase of resources and assets of Our Commonwealth, and the accompanying demographic swarm and cultural recolonisation of our Native Land. It exemplifies a Traitor Class motivated solely by monetary gain, and devoid of any respect or loyalty to the Australian People, our identity, heritage, sovereignty and independence. Award nominations are for the quarter ending 31st March , 2015. The Order of the Third Hand Award is of ongoing character and our Australian Peoples Movement on the Day Of Reckoning will bestow further to recipients. Please forward the name and address of the person to be nominated, with supporting references, to the address below. Include your own name and address. AUSTRALIA FIRST PARTY Identity - Freedom - IndependenceP O Box 223 Croydon 3136. National Contact Line 02 8587 0014 www.australiafirstparty.net email: [email protected] Australia First Party - Reclaiming Australia for Australians “By over-all planning, we mean planning which takes into consideration the interests of the 600 million people of our country. In drawing up plans, handling affairs or thinking over problems, we must proceed from the fact that China has a population of 600 million people, and we must never forget this fact”. Mao Tse-tung. 27/2/1957.

Anonymous (not verified)

Tue, 2015-01-27 18:35

Marine activists Sea Shepherd have struck it rich, winning an $11.8 million gift that will help it build a new faster ship for its Southern Ocean whaling battles. The fast, purpose built patrol ship will be used for a future campaign in the Antarctic against the Japanese whaling fleet, Sea Shepherd spokesperson said. The gift came in an annual disbursement by the Dutch Postcode Lottery, which awards around 50 per cent of its proceeds to charities. Dutch ship builder Damen has drawn up a blueprint for the new vessel, which is to be built in Vietnam and take around 17 months to complete. The chief executive of Sea Shepherd Global, Alex Cornelissen, said the organisation had been looking for years for a vessel that could become the Southern Ocean patrol flagship. But budget restrictions had until now made that impossible. While its long range ship, Bob Barker, has had no trouble keeping up with the pirate fisher, Thunder, over the past five weeks in the Southern Ocean, the whaling fleet has been able to out-run the activists. Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Senator Colbeck said in a recent statement, that the Australian Government did not support, and was in no way associated with, the activities of Sea Shepherd. Obviously, our government has wasted $$millions of taxpayers' funds in shallow and ineffective "diplomatic" campaigns, all fruitless and empty rhetoric! http://www.theage.com.au/environment/sea-shepherd-to-build-faster-ship-f...

Sheila Newman

Tue, 2015-01-27 16:53

This is maybe a non-sequiteur, but personally I think that communism is the response to capitalism. Historically Engels and Marx were responding to the rise of industrial capitalism. Both big system political ideologies about organising land ownership, labour and commutation. Both were and are resisted by 'relocalisation' or 'anarchism'. One hardly dares utter the word 'anarchism' because it was given the same bad reputation as 'terrorism' by prevailing powers. There was also historically an idea of local communities as 'communism', which the French Revolution to some extent brought about and which Napoleon codified quite successfully in a delegating hierarchy. I know you have a new article to post, Dennis, but what would you suggest we do in the face of global savage capitalism? Given you do perceive we have some big problems.

ECOENGINE (not verified)

Tue, 2015-01-27 14:29

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection has reviewed skilled migration and in December, it quietly released its recommendations to relax entry requirements for short-term foreign workers. Its proposals include extending the six-month short term mobility visa to 12 months. Australian government wants to let foreigners work for a year with no visa As if there wasn't enough stress on the unemployed already, and enough visa categories, our Department of "Border Protection" is opening the gate to foreign workers even wider! Overseas workers would not have to apply for a 457 working visa, which imposes stricter entry requirements including English language tests. Employers are also required to demonstrate they have looked for local workers before giving jobs to employees from overseas, under a 457 visa. Now there's no English or skill level needed and employers do NOT have to employ available locals either! In a denial and insult to the public, especially the unemployed, and the government is justifying this open-slather jobs for foreigner as being "good" for us! It will secure business growth and ensure MORE jobs for Australians in the future?? The government's argument is that removing such regulations help ease the compliance burden on employers, which (so the argument goes) ultimately leads to a more productive workplace and more job opportunities. It could do harm by jeopardizing Australia's working conditions and wages, and it's probably intentional-to destroy all the work done by the Trade Union movement over the years through global competition. This was probably also the intention of the so-called "Labor" government. And the undermining scheme is evident already: Federal Labor fears the government's workplace review is so broad it could create a class of US-style working poor. Penalty rates, the minimum wage and unfair dismissal laws are among the issues being reviewed by the Productivity Commission, which has called for fresh ideas on Australia's industrial relations system. Review could lead to working poor: Labor Mr Abbott agrees that businesses need more "balance" in hiring their workforce, which a euphemism for being able to hire anyone they want without visa/residency restrictions, and at what rates they want!

Dennis K

Mon, 2015-01-26 18:54

Presumably, given that communism has killed "between 85 and 100 million", according to that Wikipedia article, surely you must think it would have been preferable for Hitler have won the Second World War and to have succeeded in ridding the world of communism? That is not the argument I have been making. Such matters are subjective anyway and it is presumptuous to think there is a universal answer to that question. Sometimes its a choice between two devils. Everyone agrees that Nazism is evil, but it seems there is still 'love' for Marxist Communism. This is presumably because there are many academics and intellectuals, who actually get paid to talk and write about this, as if it still were some viable political option. I argue this isn't due to the merits of the systems, but merely who took power over who, and who won a war over who. If you had read a little more history, you would know that a large number of people who labeled themselves "communists" in the early 20th century, including the Central Committee of the Russian Bolshevik Party, which led the revolution in 1917, did not consider Stalin, who was to commit nearly all of the crimes wrongly attributed to 'communism', a 'communist'. Politically speaking, this statement doesn't say anything. It applies to ALL political and religious ideologies. In all of them, there are some who claim to be the "one true faith" and denounce the others as not the true faith. All that is being said here, is that some who claim to be communists think the other variants are. The exact same argument can be made about Islam, Christianity, National Socialism, Fascism, Libertarianism, Environmentalism, etc, etc etc. You just choose one group of self proclaimed Communists who claim the rivals aren't, and treat this as empirical truth. I could say that the Catholics say they are the one true faith, so ergo, Eastern Orthodox Christians aren't really Christian. I could say that Sunni's claim the Shiites are wrong, therefore Shia Islam isn't true Islam. Can you see where this leads? Much of the death toll of up to 100 million, allegedly caused by communism, supposedly occurred in China, where the article claims that "at least 45 million" died 1 in the Chinese "Great Leap Forward" of 1958-1961 and "between 750,000 and 1.5 million people" were alleged to have died in the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976. How Mao Zedong killed 45 million people in four years. http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2010/s3020355.htm Here is some of the absurdities http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/the-great-sparrow-campa... Policy failure of the "Great Leap Forward" http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/great_leap_forward.htm Famine by government policy. Marxist government at work. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%9333 The famines, the loss of food, the decline in living standards were the result of Marxist economic theory. In an attempt to have intellectuals and beaurocrats control the ENTIRE economy, the system failed and was not able to meet the needs of the people. "Intellectuals" as it turns out, cannot command an economy. Marx's theory of labour was bunk and ignoring markets completely was a disaster. These were Marx's theories, more or less put into practice. The states which put it into practice, use repression and death to prevent criticism. Eventually, when Eastern Europeans just had enough freedom to question and discuss it, Communism fell apart. The question is, does brutally enforcing a system which is leading to death count as murder or not? I argue it does. I argue that if you are doing something that is resulting in death, famine, dispossession and so forth, you are responsible. No amount of "idealism" and "do goodery" exonerates you from the RESULTS. There is the main point of difference between me and those who think Communism needs a look in. Im a consequentialists. It is only the consequences, the actual physical results which in the end matter, not 'ideals', 'intentions'. Impersonal, non-idealistic, perhaps even somewhat cold systems which nevertheless still produce food, give people a dignified life, are better than those which result in impovershment, even if they are done with 'noble' intentions. Much of the terrible destruction and bloodshed that occurred through the remainder of the 20th century and the early 21st century: .... ... may have been avoided. Nietzsche predicted massive wars due to ideology, due to the cultural/spiritual shift and the rise of ideology based politics. I think this analysis is close. It perhaps was inevitable that major ideologies would fight. Political ideology is somewhat new. Politically speaking, there weren't all encompassing grand ideologies prior to the French revolution. Not saying there were none, but they are less prominent. In the 19th and 20th century, ideology became more paramount, a proxy for religion. Personally I think Marxism is a flawed philosophy (see Robert Heilbroner's "The Worldly Philosophers" of 1953), but in spite of that I think the Russian Revolution of 1917 presented humanity with its best opportunity to date to establish a workable and humane global society. I disagree. And there is the problem. Once someone subscribes to an 'ideology' to fix problems, it then becomes an immediate problem when not everyone wants it. You then have 'one true' ideology which saves the world, and when the future of humanity is at stake, then there is no limit to what oppression is justified to implement the system. After all, your opponents are not just rivals, they are threatening the very future of a free and prosperous humanity! This is the danger of 'ideological' thinking. Once you start, it inevitably pushes towards totalitarianism and suffering. Once you start, it inevitably pushes one to thinking that force is necessary, that it must be universal. I can't put it better than Peter Mlakar, who lived through Communism. Eastern Europeans know what it is about. I tell you this: the worst government is always the most moral one. But when fanatics are on top, there is no limit to oppression. Morality, which is based on ideal, is unmitigated evil. - Peter Mlakar

Greg W (not verified)

Mon, 2015-01-26 15:22

The Big Bad Debt, as calculated for the Qld. Govt's political agenda by independent auditor Peter Costello (ROTFLMAO), includes GOC operational debt. This is a standard business item on most any business balance sheet, public or private, and deserves no panic or rush toward it's elimination. Again the 4th Estate has been found with its hand deep in its own pants.

Vivienne Ortega

Mon, 2015-01-26 14:52

Communityrun Petetition: Save, Protect and Rezone Tootrarook Swamp on the Mornington Peninsula The Tootgarook Swamp is the largest example left of an Shallow freshwater marsh in the Port Philip bay region, at 381 hectares it is worthy of international Ramsar protection. Much of the Tootgarook swamp is inappropriately zoned as residential, and industrial with only half of it inside the green wedge. The 381 hectare swamp is found on the lower section of the Mornington Peninsula, called the Nepean Peninsula in Victoria, Australia. Currently approximately 77 hectares is marked for future development proposals totalling almost a quarter of the entire swamp. After another almost 3 hectares was lost to a housing subdivision infill recently. Read more on the AWPC website. The northern section is under immediate threat from housing development.

quark

Mon, 2015-01-26 14:19

Four Australians of the year have been named, one of whom is a conservationist. She is "Senior Australian of the Year" a 61 year old children's author, Jackie French. Her passion is wombats and she has written a book entitled "Diary of a wombat". There are many other conservationists out there "at the coal face" and we know who they are. Naming them now would be fraught with peril because of those who would be accidentally left out. Maybe we need a "Hall of Honour" somewhere in cyberspace for these warriors working under such adverse conditions and many seemingly losing battles where human activities are continually expanding

Anonymous (not verified)

Mon, 2015-01-26 11:55

It's assumed by human self-importance that what only matters, for most, is human lives and property. The rest of what's contained, such as flora and fauna, is Terra Nullius, or non-owned and not valuable. They are only considered to be incidentals, to be dispersed or destroyed, with little consequence. They can simply "recover" and Nature will look after it! Why would Aborigines use fire to "farm"? Surely it's time to do more than acknowledge our Traditional Owners in more ways than a bland and meaningless ritual at public meetings? Why not consult the Elders about how they managed the land, and actually remember that they maintained our land for 40 million years, without the mass extinctions and destruction that happened since European Settlement. Australia Day has become a day to worship Multiculturalism, and new citizenships, rather than honouring the original custodians of the land, and our mega diverse heritage. Burning is simply an easy no-brainer than actually fostering natural systems, and actually conserving forest densities and canopies so that Natural systems will ensure any natural fires will not spread!

Jennifer (not verified)

Mon, 2015-01-26 10:45

Thanks Bob for an excellent article. You make many extremely valid points, and I totally agree with you. I too have seen first hand the devastating effects of 'controlled' fires which were simply too hot, and inappropriate for the areas they were set in. I am glad that more and more people are questioning the validity of controlled burning. Nature does do its job very well, if we leave it alone!

James Sinnamon

Mon, 2015-01-26 02:16

DennisK,

You have not responded to even one of the arguments I put in my previous post. Until you do so, I don't see why I should feel obligated to take you seriously.

Presumably, given that communism has killed "between 85 and 100 million", according to that Wikipedia article, surely you must think it would have been preferable for Hitler have won the Second World War and to have succeeded in ridding the world of communism?

Much of the death toll of up to 100 million, allegedly caused by communism, supposedly occurred in China, where the article claims that "at least 45 million" died 1 in the Chinese "Great Leap Forward" of 1958-1961 and "between 750,000 and 1.5 million people" were alleged to have died in the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976.

Whilst I was aware of these claims, I have not been able to find out whether or not they were true. Nonetheless, these claims can only be properly evaluated within their proper historical context. The Wikipedia article fails to do this.

The Chinese Communist Party Came to power in 1949 after years of bloody war against both the invading Japanese and the brutal regime of Chiang Kai Shek. Chiang Kai Shek and his armies fled to Taiwan in 1949 and brutally crushed an uprising of native Taiwanese.

Almost immediately after the civil war ended, the Chinese were faced with a war of aggression by the United States and its allies against neighbouring 'North' Korea. In that war 3 million out of a total of 23 million Koreans died. Most of those who died were from North Korea or were their supporters in the South. Whilst the article claims "Mass killings have also occurred in ... North Korea," no mention is made of the war against Korea or the brutal repression of Koreans, from 1945 until 1950, by the South Korean regime of former Japanese collaborators.

Also Stalin failed to give the aid that China desperately needed both to rebuild its economy and to defend itself. This was formalised by Nikita Khruschev when he announced the Sino-Soviet split in 1956. From that year until Gough Whitlam and US President Nixon visited Beijing, China was extremely isolated and vulnerable.

Most probably, extreme measures were adopted by the Chinese government to deal with these circumstances. Whether or not it resorted to deliberate starvation and mass murder as you claim, I am not yet able to say.

The section on the Russian Red Terror states:

During the Russian Civil War, both sides (my emphasis) unleashed terror campaigns (the Red and White Terrors). The Red Terror culminated in the summary execution of tens of thousands of "enemies of the people" by the political police, the Cheka. Many victims were 'bourgeois hostages' rounded up and held in readiness for summary execution in reprisal for any alleged counter-revolutionary provocation. Many were put to death during and after the suppression of revolts, such as the Kronstadt rebellion and the Tambov Rebellion. Professor Donald Rayfield claims that "the repression that followed the rebellions in Kronstadt and Tambov alone resulted in tens of thousands of executions." A large number of Orthodox clergymen were also killed.

...

Note that the numbers claimed to have been killed here are quite small in comparison to the other vast slaughters that occurred in the same era.

Given that those whom the Bolsheviks were defending Russia against had just gotten Russia and the rest of Europe embroiled in the First World War that had needlessly caused the death of ten million combatants and eight million civilians, (and were to do the same, on an even more terrible scale, barely 20 years later) it would have been folly for the Bolsheviks not to have resorted to whatever measures they judged necessary to keep those forces from resuming power in Russia.

Footnote[s]

1 ↑ The link at http://web.mac.com/dikotter/Dikotter/Famine_2.html to the source for this this claim by the Wikipedia article is broken, by the way. - Ed, (26/1/15)

Dennis K

Sun, 2015-01-25 20:33

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4230/so_how_many_did_communism_kill

There are Many resources available, which try and estimate the death toll. The thing is, people lost count.

When I attended Socialist Alternative meetings I heard this same argument. That it wasn't Communism, it was 'something else', and therefore each and every place where Communism was tried that turned into a basket case couldn't be used to judge the ideology. You see, its only Communism if it matches exactly what the perfect system is supposed to be, as they define it, of course.

No sane adult can hear that and take this line as anything other than a punchline of a bad joke.

If the Russians laughed at Marxism in the beginning, the tragedy could have been avoided.

I suppose one could then argue that the problems of Capitalism are NOT due to Capitalism, as no true Capitalism country which implements Capitalist ideals perfectly exists. It is technically true. This is what Libertarians argue, that the failures of laissez fair capitalism and self-regulation are not failtures of the ideology, because they ideology was not applied PERFECTLY. Any deviation from total implementation allows them to wash their hands. We see the same with Islam.

Likewise, Fascism and National Socialism could absolve themselves of any wrongdoing, using the same argument.

I've met many real Socialists (they call themselves Socialists, but in private refer to themselves as Communists. "Socialism" is just a ruse for the public). They are (in private) just as statist, and just as willing to subdue and do 'what is necessary' to implement the theoretical vision. They sucker Palestinians into rallies "supporting their cause", when in reality their goal is not Palestinian statehood, but to deconstruct Palestine nationality. This is Leninism, entryism.

http://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/lh/article/viewFile/24904/23098

I recommend you read "The Gulag Archipelago" to see how this system really was. I've worked and met people who escaped (not emigrated, literally jailbreaked) these countries. A former neighbour had to evade a machine gun placement to cross the border. You see, Communist countries have to use violence to keep people IN. The border between Communist Eastern European nations and the West was guarded with machine guns, not to keep people out, but keep them in. The Berlin was was built to keep people IN.

Why would they build it otherwise? Why does a country which isn't that bad, need machineguns and walls to keep people IN? They were prison countries.

It's worked NOWHERE. Marxism is silly, not flawed, silly and evil.

The Communists had their reasons. Anyone against Communism was against the Peace and Brotherhood of Man, and obviously insane. Communism literally treated objections as a mental illness. I posed an article a few days ago, highlighting how this thinking is taking root here.

Communism, as defined by the "Socialist" advocates of today, involves the deconstruction of nations and of the family. "Socialists" today plan for a future where children are raised apart from their family, communally by the state so they won't even know who their family are. Everyone belongs to the state, works for the state. As the state argues that is is the democracy of the proletariat, it claims to have the right to dictate human affairs, at every detail, for everyones own good, of course.

In no way is Communism desirable, even if it COULD work. It is a system for ants, for sheeple, for a humanity degraded to mere cogs. It outdoes Capitalism ten fold in degrading people down to 'human capital'.

Good riddance to it. It wasn't just Stalin. Trotsky and Lenin were brutal and their ideas, which they forced were deadly. Mao Zedong killed people on a scale that is a multiple of Hitler. Pol Pot killed a large percentage of his country. Deaths directly attributed to a political ideology, applied by force and protected from questioning. Some of the causes of mass death seem downright absurd, darkly comical even.

The response to this post is here. - Ed

ECOENGINE (not verified)

Sun, 2015-01-25 13:34

Japan is determined not to give in to terrorism. Abe, speaking to public broadcaster NHK, said chances were high that a recording and an image of what appeared to be the decapitated body of Japanese captive Harman Yukawa. He demanded that Mr. Kenji Goto not be harmed and be immediately released. The government of Japan will, in its entirety, do its utmost in order to have him released.

Yukawa, 42, was seized by militants in August, after going to Syria in what he described as a plan to launch a security company. Goto, 47, a veteran war correspondent, went into Syria in late October seeking to secure Yukawa's release, according to friends and business associates.

The militant IS group gave Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe a 72-hour deadline — which expired Friday — to pay a $200 million ransom for the two hostages. The jihadist group has murdered five Western hostages since August last year but this is the first time it has threatened Japanese captives.
Japan, a constitutionally pacifist country has steered clear of the armed entanglements of the US, Britain and other Western nations in the Middle East.

Sharia law covers public behavior, private behavior and private beliefs. Of all legal systems in the world today, Islam's Sharia law is the most intrusive and strict, especially against women. Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Muhammad, has no legal code other than the Sharia, which is enforced without mercy.
It isn't that long ago that the US was supplying arms to ISIS and other rebel groups in Syria, and pouring scorn on Assad's description of insurgents in Syria as "terrorists".

The moral compass that lets us live relatively happy and peaceful lives in our own countries should be the same compass that we use in our diplomacy and activities around the world. What's needed is a rise of nationalism, and sovereignty. Globalisation and foreign invasions, greed for power and resources, and international trade, brings together conflicting values, religions, cultures, histories, legal systems, military strategies, and the metastasis of malignancy.

anonymous (not verified)

Sun, 2015-01-25 12:41

The person who posted this comment has previously had a comment banned from candobetter. Were also banning this post. We are doing so because that person has used his influence to disrupt candobetter and other forums. If readers have any questions, please contact the editor. (26/1/15)

admin

Sun, 2015-01-25 02:49

DennisK wrote: "[Communism] killed even more people [than fascism]".

Could you show us what the figures are and where you got them from?

If you had read a little more history, you would know that a large number of people who labeled themselves "communists" in the early 20th century, including the Central Committee of the Russian Bolshevik Party, which led the revolution in 1917, did not consider Stalin, who was to commit nearly all of the crimes wrongly attributed to 'communism', a 'communist'.

By 1939, only Stalin, Trotsky and one other person, who was a member of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party was still alive and not imprisoned. Trotsky, then in exile, was to be murdered by one of Stalin's agents in 1940.

During the great purges of the late 1930s, 70% of the senior officer corps of the Red Army, including Mikhail Tukhachevsky, the commander in chief of the Red Army, were murdered after secret trials. Stalin murdered them because he feared they might have a residual loyalty to their old commander-in-chief, Leon Trotsky.

The decapitation of the Red Army prior to the Second World War is the principle reason the Red Army suffered such a terrible death toll during that conflict. Those losses were of the order of at least 10 million in addition to many millions of Soviet civilians who perished. Had it not been for Stalin, the war would have been over much more quickly at a cost of vastly fewer lives lost and much less material destruction in both the east and the west.

The myth that Stalinist tyranny is 'communism' has been used to justify the misrule and of those responsible for nearly all of the appalling bloodshed in the 20th and 21st centuries.

The following is a post which seems to have demolished a claim by forum contributors that communism was tyranny and a threat to humanity. Nobody responded to that post and the discussion is now closed.

Feel welcome to resume that discusion in this forum.

Another myth is that Stalinist tyranny, mislabeled 'communism', killed more than fascism, including German Nazism.

For all the terrible crimes of Stalin, his crimes were only a fraction as monstrous as those committed by Hitler against Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece, Russia, the Jews and Romanis and far less than what Hitler had planned should he have won the war.

The Russian Revolution isolated: Humanity loses its best chance to stop Nazism and the Second World War

This is republished from a post of 28/4/2012 to the forum discussion site JohnQuiggin.com.

Alan wrote:

Those Trostkyists tend to promote a good Lenin, evil Stalin theory of history that ignores Lenin's own conduct as head of the Soviet government.

At least acknowledge that as as Lenin lay in bed mortally ill in 1923, he instructed Trotsky to remove Stalin from the post of Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This is substantiated in many works including "Lenin's Last Struggle" of 1968 by Moshe Lewin and "The Prophet Armed" of 1954 by Isaac Deutscher, the first of his three volume trilogy on the life of Leon Trotsky. Had Trotsky acted on Lenin's instructions instead of largely sitting on his hands until 1927 (also documented by Deutscher) history would have turned out very differently.

Much of the terrible destruction and bloodshed that occurred through the remainder of the 20th century and the early 21st century:

Purges of both left and right wing opponents of Stalin, the bloody defeat of Chinese Communism in 1927, Nazi triumph in Germany in 1933, the triumph of Franco in Spain, the Second World War in which possibly as many as 70 million may have died, The Korean War in which 3 million North Koreans died, The Vietnam War in which as many as 5 million may have died, the murder of half a million communists by Suharto in 1965, the invasion of East Timor, the invasion of Yugoslavia, the invasions of Iraq in 1991 which may have killed as many as 2 million, the invasion on Libya in 2011, ...

... may have been avoided.

As others pointed out, Lenin was faced with a savage civil war and an invasion by the troops over ten foreign nations, including Australia.

So is it fair to damn Lenin for having resorted to harsh measures to keep his government in power, especially given what his opponents, many professing to be for democracy, both outside the Soviet Union and within, have 'achieved' since his death?

Personally I think Marxism is a flawed philosophy (see Robert Heilbroner's "The Worldly Philosophers" of 1953), but in spite of that I think the Russian Revolution of 1917 presented humanity with its best opportunity to date to establish a workable and humane global society.

Sadly, that opportunity was lost.

admin

Sun, 2015-01-25 00:20

Ask Netanyahu about Mordechai Vanunu and his silenced story of Israel's Weapons of Mass Destruction

From the Syrian Free Press

US Attorney General Eric Holder should order the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he shows up to address Congress next month, American politician Jim Condit Jr. says.

Hours after US President Barack Obama threatened to veto any Iran sanctions bill during his State of the Union address on Tuesday, US House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner invited Netanyahu to Congress to speak about the so-called threat from Iran.

Condit Jr., who ran against Boehner in Cincinnati, Ohio, said that the invitation is “another slap in the face to the American people whether the American people realize it or not."

This was clearly done because Obama said last night that he would veto any sanctions Iran," he added.

The invitation to Netanyahu to address Congress, extended without having consultations with the White House and the State Department, is a sharp rebuke to Obama, who asked the new Republican-dominated Congress to stay out of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.

"Netanyahu is being treated as if he is the president of the United States. We need him to come and straighten up the country by addressing Congress," Condit Jr. wondered.

...

Dennis K

Sat, 2015-01-24 21:26

Christopher Hitchens Predicted Islamic State in 2005 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9jx4xE2pgY

Editorial comment: In the video,linked to above and embedded below, Christoper Hitchens criticises the United States for not invading Iraq after Iraq's land forces were defeated in Kuwait in the Gulf War of 1991!? The pretext for that war was that Iraq invaded Kuwait after having been assured by US ambassador April Glaspie that the United States would not object to Iraq taking military action against neighbouring Kuwait in reprisal for Kuwait's provocative 'slant-drilling' for oil beneath their common border.

Saddam Hussein, who had believed that he had the support of the United States for his rule over Iraq and for his war against Iran which had only concluded in 1988, clearly had been set up by April Glaspie to provide the United States a pretext to wage war against Iraq and impose sanctions, lasting nearly two decades. This caused the deaths of many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Also, I have no knowledge of Iran ever having supported terrorism since the Shah was overthrown in 1979 as claimed by Hitchens. They have provided moral and material support to those resisting aggression by Israel including to the Hezbollah group in Lebanon and the Syrian government, but I fail to see how that is 'supporting terrorism'.

I think stopping meddling in the Middle East may slow, slightly, the flow of refugees and emigrants, but it won't change much. It won't be a game changer.

The fact that Western countries will be preferable to Islamic countries will remain, even if we kept way out. Even if they kept all their resources. Even if we helped them.

The fact that Islam will continue to act as a political and cultural philosophy over and above religion will remain. The fact that Islam spread by force, pressure and submission will remain, and continue to remain. The western intervention seems more useful as an excuse for bad behaviour.

I don't think the situation would be different if there was no western involvement in middle eastern wars. There is no precedent to suggest it would be so.

Imagine a country like Saudi Arabia, with its massive natural wealth, and it still remain unfit for dignified human civilisation, with oppressive laws, stonings, beheadings and death sentences for blasphemy. Iraq, even before the first Gulf war, was a tyranny, it had to be so.

Europe is going to find out the hard way that 'tolerance' and 'sophistication' in the 20th century sense will count for nothing.

admin

Sat, 2015-01-24 15:04

republished from #Donbass twitter page

Prime Minister and head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DNR/DPR) Alexander Zakharchenko stated Kiev had taken the DNR forces' "kindness for weakness" and warned Kiev that he had no fear of their forces because the army "cannot fight, and cannot defend themselves" at a press conference in Donetsk, Thursday.

quark

Sat, 2015-01-24 11:59

This story conveys the terrible grief one must feel when one's home city and family are destroyed. The photographer's need to record and show the world is so understandable.

Anonymous (not verified)

Sat, 2015-01-24 08:39

Candobetter.net Editor: Introduction to this comment.
Dear Anonymous,

We think that if the Australian Government announced that it was going to cease its misadventures in the Middle East, overnight such demonstrations and also threats of terrorism would begin to diminish. Overnight the stream of refugees and economic immigrants would cease. It is our governments which are generating these streams. When we talk about the violence in some of these diasporas we are looking at a mirror of the violence we generate in their own countries.

Thank you for making this comment. We don't censor comments but, since this comment touches on our foreign policy, Middle Eastern political position, and free press position, we will comment on this comment. Perhaps we will make an article out of this response as well. We are a bit flat to the boards at the moment, so this may be the only response. Sorry if it is a bit patchy, but it is important.

Much of what you report gives cause for anxiety, particularly the numerical demographics. However we believe there are more obvious but rarely spoken answers to these problems than come to mind in your comment.

Our first position must be to criticise the Australian government for its foreign policy which has been causing, in conjunction with NATO, increasing dispossession, conflict and the rise of militant sectarian identification in countries where most of our Middle Eastern immigrants come from.

We should also be aware that people who acted on behalf of the West in their countries, often of necessity betraying their own people, thence become likely refugees and immigrants, with a prior connection to the Western governments and corporations which may carry obligations to them. Since the West is increasingly supporting extremely religious rebels to act as leaders in 'revolutions', what kind of refugees and immigrants might we expect in future? The West was happy to accept and even to give new identities to high profile Nazis after the war because they thought they would be good agents against communism. We trust our governments at our peril. We must look beyond their express sentiments to their actual activities. Power corrupts so we cannot afford to take it on face value. Our 'free press' reports these face values because it has vested interests in maintaining their fictions.

We need to understand the history of those countries, which was were tribal and functional with relatively well drawn local territories before the end of the 19th century, when Britain, America, France and other European forces began to raid their mineral wealth on an industrial scale and dispossess and disturb their populations, by bribing or replacing their tribal leaders.

We should be criticising our government because it is supporting devastating military and economic interference in the countries where Muslim refugees and economic immigrants are coming from. The populations, having adapted with difficulty somewhat after the oil-shock of the early 1970s, through OPEC, have, through the assassination and bribing of their leaders again, been impoverished, fragmented, divided, conquered and brutalised. It is no wonder that many are becoming, with reason, completely adverse to the West. It is our government and its friends in NATO and the US which is the cause of any terrorist diaspora, flowing both ways.

As long as we continue to push into Islamic territory we will get this reaction. It seems likely that if we withdraw, local support for extreme religion will die down. At the moment it is probably one of few organising forces within the chaos. Local Mullahs are the only form of civil government which can organise practically in many cases and people rely on local militia, like Hezbollah, for survival.

In Iran, which was once dominated by extreme religious law, things have calmed as the state has grown stronger. However, the West is menacing Iran. What do you think will happen if Iran is drawn into war or invaded by 'rebels' supported by the West? As the state breaks down, religious leaders rise up, like religious defaults to now absent not particularly religious tribes and clans.

The more the West interferes, the worse things get for women in the Middle East. One could point to Saudi Arabia as an exception - because it is a 'friend' of the West and, with Qatar, the most extremely perverted with regard to civil rights. But being a friend of the West has had the same disorganising effect: As well as brutalising their women and their poor, the Saudis are devastated by early deaths from diabetes. There has been a loss of variations in tribes and local traditions which more kindly regulated relations between the sexes and traditional diets which did not contain fast foods and regulated consumption of sugar.

There is a need to acquire geographical knowledge to distinguish the difference between Islamic countries in the Middle East. If we don't do this we unfairly damn the moderates - Tunisia, Algeria, Iran, ... and risk losing the one remaining secular Islamic country - Syria. Libya was also a secular country, now brought down to chaos and sectarian wars by US, Australian, NATO interference of the worst, illegal, assassinating kind. In once relatively peaceful Egypt, Yemen, similar sectarianism developed with Western support. Western (including Saudi) interests continue to ravage Bahrain.

-There is a need to look at the pressure we are placing on the Middle East with our illegal interventions. At the moment we are supporting the US bombing Syria and arming anti-Syrian Government forces, in direct opposition to the will of the people. The history of international trouble in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan is the same.

The evocation of Western Free Speech must seem ironic to those still trapped in the wars and central economic dictates that Australia is supporting in the Middle East. Our 'free' press only represents the pro-war, pro-interference, pro-pillaging of the East by the West. It never represents the other side, although sometimes it misrepresents it as if nations and tribes there were entirely motivated by religious mania. Apart from some saccharine pretense at supporting multiculturalism as a way of preventing interpersonal conflict in the receiving countries, our press promotes the idea that the Middle East is populated by religious nutcases, justifying turning the region into a kind of internationally patrolled asylum. It also subtly promotes foreigners to join 'rebel' militias to carry out terrorist acts and war in Muslim countries as if this were something just and romantic. By preserving ignorance about the histories of these countries, it perpetuates the failure to teach geography and history to our school children. Our press promotes sectarianism as a solution to conflict in the Middle East, there where people existed together without much reference to religious differences.

We think that if the Australian Government announced that it was going to cease its misadventures in the Middle East, overnight such demonstrations and also threats of terrorism would begin to diminish. Overnight the stream of refugees and economic immigrants would cease. It is our governments which are generating these streams. When we talk about the violence in some of these diasporas we are looking at a mirror of the violence we generate in their own countries.

And we should also take into account the numerous discrepancies in the recent terrorist attack in Australia, which was strongly suspect of being a false flag and in the Charlie Hebdo attack, which contains hugely suspect elements suggestive of false flag. Both these acts of terrorism occurred in a context where the leaders of countries they happened in or their citizens, needed a reason to continue war in the East Europe and Middle East. In France President Hollande was going to drop sanctions against Russia and in Australia there may be a growing trend against supporting wars.

Unfortunately the motives not to cease warmongering lie in our economic growth paradigm and politics. We are participating in illegal wars because we have used up our supply of petroleum and we know that fracking and coal will only satisfy the growth machine for a very short time. The machine demands war. To be peaceful we have to let go of the growth paradigm, work less, produce less, share jobs, allow our populations to reduce and develop a truly conserver economy.

If our Press, which has long been a hostage of big money, were to become free, it would help us to reorganise by representing a realistically diverse, localised opinion here.

Original Comment of "Hundreds gather at a pro-Islam rally in Sydney.

Among the 800-strong crowd in the Sydney Muslim enclave of Lakemba, placards were held up with the slogan: "Je Suis Muslim" or "I am Muslim", evoking the same sentiment that became a touchstone for many in the wake of attacks in Paris. Their insecurities about their prophet and religion are rising to boiling point.

Western ideal of "freedom of speech" is a threat, for people who would rather live in silence and heavy control, despite choosing to live here!

Some say that "Freedom is the smokescreen with which Western politicians and media conceal the underlying issues. In reality free speech is one of the many political tools that are used to maintain dominance over the Muslims." Is it paranoia of exposure, a threat, in face of the contradiction of this ancient value system, way of life, in stark contrast to 21 century freedoms?

Hamzah Qureshi, a spokesman for the controversial group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which helped organise the event, questioned the prime minister's comments about "evil things done in the name of Islam" and the suggestion the event could incite violence.

Hundreds gather at Pro Islam rally in Lamemba

Islam is not simply a religion, nor is it a cult. In its fullest form, it is a complete, total, 100% system of life.

As well as the religious component, also has legal, political, economic, social, and military components. The religious component is a beard, or the flag, for all of the other components. It's a Trojan Horse, to hide their agendas. It's easy to hide behind a benign face, a "religion", when it's much more complex and malign.

When politically correct, tolerant, and culturally diverse societies agree to Muslim demands for their religious privileges, some of the other components tend to creep in as well.

As long as the Muslim population remains around or under 2% in any given country, they will be for the most part be regarded as a peace-loving minority, and not as a threat to other citizens. This is the case in:

United States -- Muslim 0..6%
Australia -- Muslim 1.5%
Canada -- Muslim 1.9%
China -- Muslim 1.8%
Italy -- Muslim 1.5%
Norway -- Muslim 1.8%

At 2% to 5%, they begin to proselytize from other ethnic minorities and disaffected groups, often with major recruiting from the jails and among street gangs. This is happening in:

Denmark -- Muslim 2%
Germany -- Muslim 3.7%
United Kingdom -- Muslim 2.7%
Spain -- Muslim 4%
Thailand -- Muslim 4.6%

From 5% on, they exercise an inordinate influence in proportion to their percentage of the population. For example, they will push for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food preparation jobs for Muslims.

They will increase pressure on supermarket chains to feature halal on their shelves -- along with threats for failure to comply. This is occurring in:

France -- Muslim 8%
Philippines -- Muslims 5%
Sweden -- Muslim 5%

Switzerland -- Muslim 4.3%
The Netherlands -- Muslim 5.5%
Trinidad & Tobago -- Muslim 5.8%

At this point, they will work to get the ruling government to allow them to rule themselves (within their ghettos) under Sharia, the Islamic Law.
The ultimate goal of Islamists is to establish Sharia law over the entire world.

After reaching 20%, nations can expect hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations, sporadic killings, and the burnings of Christian churches and Jewish synagogues, such as in:

Ethiopia -- Muslim 32.8%

At 40%, nations experience widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks, and ongoing militia warfare, such as in:

Bosnia -- Muslim 40%
Chad -- Muslim 53.1%
Lebanon -- Muslim 59.7%

100% will usher in the peace of 'Dar-es-Salaam' -- the Islamic House of Peace.. Here there's supposed to be peace, because everybody is a Muslim, the Madrasses are the only schools, and the Koran is the only word, such as in:

Afghanistan -- Muslim 100%
Saudi Arabia -- Muslim 100%
Somalia -- Muslim 100%
Yemen -- Muslim 100%

Unfortunately, peace is never achieved, as in these 100% states the most radical Muslims intimidate and spew hatred, and satisfy their blood lust by killing less radical Muslims, for a variety of reasons. With well under 100% Muslim populations, such as France, the minority Muslim populations live in ghettos, within which they are 100% Muslim, and within which they live by Sharia Law.

Muslims will exceed 50% of the world's population by the end of this century. High fertility levels, and immigration, serve this purpose.

Adapted from Dr. Peter Hammond's book: Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat

The Sydney rally ended "peacefully" according to the police, despite 14 people removed for breaking the peace!

Dennis K

Fri, 2015-01-23 19:59

http://real-economics.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/palast-on-greek-elections.... Greg Palast seems to see the looming problem with Syriza, namely the ineffectiveness of their reforms. Jonathon Larson's comments below ring very true. Europeans do believe that being part of the EU, or some superstate is a sign of 'maturity' of 'having made it'. I heard this attitude all over touring Europe, and it is pretty much almost a religious belief. One of the more puzzling phenomenon is the enthusiasm for the EU I have witnessed in my highly educated European friends. Once I carefully explained the damage certain to be caused by the Maastricht monetary agreements to some friends from Finland who looked at me as if I clearly didn't get it. For them, joining the Euro was a chance to prove to the world that formerly poor, isolated, colonized Finland had arrived in the big time. I am certain that the same sort of thinking was repeated in many of the other small entrants to the EU from Estonia to Portugal. This was a point of national pride. Unfortunately, the neoliberalism of Maastricht was designed to take advantage of the small and weak who were joining a yacht club they could clearly not afford to join. The fact that income inequality is a global phenomenon pretty much proves how effective these economic policies are in redistributing wealth upward. Of course, the poster child for all the bad things that can happen to the little fish who joined the EU is Greece. Now they are about to elect a government that promises to abandon the EU-mandated austerity measures that are crippling their country. But notice, they still want to stay in the club. Veblen was right—the desire for status emulation is such a powerful motivation, it is even more powerful at times than the survival instincts. Example xxxx is Greece's Syriza Party. Palast mocks this silliness so much better than I could (see below).

Anonymous (not verified)

Fri, 2015-01-23 11:20

The economic conditions in Greece cannot be remedied by any party unless it is able to effectively withdraw Greece from the EU. Greece is broke and despite austerity measures, continues to slide further into debt. The Coalition parties in Australia claim that we are on the same road, but this is completely untrue. A sovereign nation that issues its own currency can NEVER go broke. Greece does not issue its own currency. Australia does. Bill Mitchell's MMT blog deals with this idea in detail. Greece should default on it's debt, leave the EU and return to using the drachma.

Matt (not verified)

Thu, 2015-01-22 15:36

1. Contrary to myth, a vast number of Australian plant species are sensitive to frequent burning. I estimate this to be at a minimum one third of the Victorian flora. How and why did these species evolve and persists in the context of the ubiquitous fire-stick myth? 2. The non-random anecdote that comprises almost all observations of Aboriginal people's traditional practices in the SE Australia bush were made in those landscapes that we have cleared and occupied - i.e. Australia Felix or the fertile lowlands. These are very different environments to what remains of the native vegetation and as such, SE Aust anecdote relating to Aboriginal land use and burning practices is largely irrelevant to the prescribed burning debate.

admin

Thu, 2015-01-22 02:59

The following was posted to a discussion on JohnQuiggin.com:

On January 21st, 2015 at 20:18 J-D asked:

How are Ukrainian collaborators with the Nazis worshipped by today’s Ukrainian government?

There is a vast amount of documentary evidence, including photographs and videos, which shows that those who came to power as a result of the CIA-instigates coup of 21 February 2014, openly endorsed the legacy of wartime Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazi German invaders.

One article, republished on my web-site, candobetter.net, and first published on Global Research, is Moment of Truth: "Fascism As It Is" in Ukraine (30 Jun 2014).

Another, also previously published on Global Research, is New York Times discovers Kiev's Neo-Nazis at war in Eastern Ukraine.

Articles about Ukranian Nazis, from the Russian news service RT, include Russia slams Ukraine's UN envoy for publicly justifying Nazi collaborators (4 Mar 2014) and Ukrainian neo-Nazism threatens to spread across Europe – Russian diplomat.

ECOENGINE (not verified)

Wed, 2015-01-21 17:00

The Labor government of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating set out to cut wages and restore profits as part of a neo-liberal restructuring program. By the time Labor left office in 1996 the government had virtually abolished tariffs and had ceded its control over interest rates to an “independent” Reserve Bank and to free markets. Ironically, Labor did more than the Liberal governments of either John Howard or Malcolm Fraser to increase inequality, decimate union strength and erode Labor’s own support-base in the working class. It was the Labor government who opened the doors to high immigration, under Hawke and Rudd! Hardly a "free" economy but forced-fed by increasing consumerism and capitalism! In real­ity, both par­ties sup­ported a neo-lib­eral agenda–the Lib­er­als merely went fur­ther in fol­low­ing that “logic” to its inevitable path. Mr Rudd argued that "neo-liberalism and the free-market fundamentalism it has produced has been revealed as little more than personal greed dressed up as an economic philosophy". It's about free-range economy, at whatever cost! The Keating government privatised the Commonwealth Bank and Qantas, and also retirement incomes with the introduction of compulsory superannuation in 1992. They deregulated the exchange rate and banking sector, and introduced enterprise bargaining. The union movement was hobbled and membership dropped away dramatically. Under neoliberal policy prescriptions, governments should leave the market unregulated and let the strong eat the weak. But the exponents of neoliberalism always expected that capital — most importantly big capital — would be the biggest winner under such a setting! The benefits are meant to "trickle down" to the public- but instead it gets wasted on the way down!

Geoffrey Taylor

Wed, 2015-01-21 01:47

As former United States Attorney General, Ramsey Clark has revealed in the video story, republished from RT on candobetter, the illegal wars of 1990-1991 and 2003 against Iraq, in which Australia participated, and the genocidal sanctions against Iraq, from 1990 until 2003, cost many hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. One estimate put the death toll as high as 3.3 million including 750,000 children.

As Federal Treasurer from March 1983 until June 1991 and Prime Minister from December 1991 until March 1996, Keating was clearly complicit in this crime against the people of Iraq.

Curiously, 'Iraq' does not feature in the index of "Confessions of a Bleeding Heart", Paul Watson's 2002 Paul Keating hagiography, which found its way onto my bookshelf by no design on my part.

James Sinnamon

Tue, 2015-01-20 11:43

The following was posted to the Monday Message Board of johnquiggin.com.

The action by Polish students is particularly brave, given that:

1. The Polish Government is supporting the Kiev regime in its war against Russian speakers in the East with military 'advisors'.

2. There are large numbers of Ukrainian emigres within Poland, many of whom support the neo-Nazi anti-Semitic regime in Kiev.

Poland, in terms of the proportion of the pre-war population who died in the Second World War, suffered even more than the Soviet Union. That the Polish Government is supporting a government, which worships Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazi invaders, is one of the bizarre paradoxes of geopolitics in 2014. Another is that those Ukrainian collaborators, worshipped by the Ukrainian government of today, assisted the Nazi occupiers in their "ethnic cleansing" of Poles within Ukraine.

ECOENGINE (not verified)

Mon, 2015-01-19 16:24

The Commsec survey ranks economies on the extent to which their current performance exceeds their decade-long averages on eight indicators, including economic growth, retail spending, equipment investment, construction work done and population growth. http://www.smh.com.au/business/nsw-economy-shares-crown-with-nt-in-comms... This is a banking business using their own performance indicators to give an assessment of Australia's States, in economic term. So, State "performance" is based on aspects of each that suits their own coffers, lending trends and profits. Economic growth is dubious, as it can be stimulated by disaster such as floods, bushfires and drought. It's a raw measure of how much money is circulating and changing hands. Housing and population growth are measured as economic pluses, and there's no measurement of quality of life, of housing stress, homelessness, crime rates, unemployment and non-tangibles that usually are more pertinent for the residents. NSW sharing the top honour with the Northern Territory, pushing Western Australia from second into third place as its mining construction boom fades. "NSW is on top because population has been growing in recent years and now home construction is responding to the shortage of accommodation," said CommSec chief economist Craig James. What "shortage" of accommodation? Housing is a guaranteed basic of life, and population growth is a sure guarantee of demand! Victoria has the strongest population growth of any state but is ranked sixth on economic growth and seventh on equipment investment. Victoria's surging population is propping up housing growth. So, without population growth propping up the housing Ponzi pyramid, Victoria would fall into an abyss of recession! Our city must keep seeing more generic high density concrete apartments and endless suburban sprawl to keep the housing growth continuing as long as possible. Population growth is being used to camouflage a flawed and weak economy. Infrastructure demands keep dominating our budgets, and there's no ultimate aim for our governments, and they keep swinging from one party to the next. We may as well pay people to dig up holes and fill them again. At least this dead end activity would not inflate the infrastructure deficit, add to house prices, clog up our roads and add to unemployment!

ECOENGINE (not verified)

Mon, 2015-01-19 06:41

In late December, British energy giant BG Group sent the first ever shipment of liquefied natural gas from Australia's east coast, using gas from the state's booming coal seam gas industry. It will mean a dramatic increase how much households pay for gas used for hot water, cooking, or heating.

Not only was it the first time that CSG has been converted into LNG, the exportable form of gas. More importantly for consumers, it was the first time gas has been exported from the east coast of Australia

Globalization of Australia's natural resource should bring greater revenues, income and prosperity, but this will not happen. The public will share the high international prices set by international mining companies!

Origin Energy and Santos this year also hope to start pumping cargo loads full of the stuff, to be sold to buyers across China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and other Asian nations.

We are effectively allowing multinational gas exporters to displace our manufacturing sector. The gas industry employs fewer than 25,000 people across Australia. That’s less than one third of 1 per cent of the Australian workforce. Coal mining companies are typically multinational; for example, Glencore-Xstrata (the two companies merged in May 2013) is listed on the London and Hong Kong Stock markets. Further, many of the companies have regional subsidiaries.

From 2015 gas reserves on the east coast would be opened to export with no regulation in place to ensure reliable and affordable gas remains available for domestic industry. A handful of multinational oil and gas companies will control the vast majority of gas reserves with ” unrestricted rights” to export it, and that industry and households would be ” forced to pay higher costs". With no limitations on exports of Australian gas, local manufacturers cannot secure long term contracts for gas, and what gas is available is increasing in price by up to 200 per cent.

A report by the Grattan Institute's Tony Wood last year estimated the average Melbourne household gas bill would jump $300 a year because of the changes over the next few years, while the average Sydney bill would rise by more than $100. How are jobs and households meant to absorb these cost burdens at a time of increasing economic hardships, budget constraints, unemployment and now unaffordable power? Surely cooking, manufacturing and heating are part of our pay of life as a developed nation?

Local gas prices set to soar as exports to Asia get under way

There's a conspiracy theory that Australia is to be dismantled, piece by piece, as a global mining resource and deconstructed as a nation. It will just be a warehouse of housing and consumers as a captive business resource.

nimby

Sat, 2015-01-17 12:45

Federal Health Minister Sussan Ley has three tough problems. She needs to cut growth in healthcare expenditure. Health care is basic to our well-being, and not something that should be politicized and subject to economic rationalization. How can health care funding be cut while we have population growth? It means that each person will have less and less spent on them. If we have 1.6% population growth each year, mainly due to net overseas migration, then surely health care spending should increase by the same rate - and everything else. Our Ponzi style of economic growth is becoming less generous, and more expensive to maintain. The "surpluses" generated are becoming increasingly inadequate to service the weight of our population's needs, yet the "growth" is not about to end! The ill-fated Titanic didn't sink because it was overloaded by passengers, but because there were inadequate safety features for even their lower numbers. Our planet is already under stress trying accommodate the explosion of population since the 19th century - and can't assure the safety of the existing inhabitants. Clearly, population growth isn't paying for itself, and not producing the promised "prosperity"! We need to backtrack to 2006 Costello Productivity Report, that only showed weak support for ongoing immigration - and limited benefits. It's been ignored by successive governments. The sheer numbers of people needing public health care is overloading the system and causing dis-economies of scale. The population "Rocket" is carrying too many people to be efficient, and provide for human welfare. Population growth now is inter generational theft - of banking on the Nature's benefits and consuming them now, instead of leaving a deposit in Nature's "bank" for future generations.

Ecoengine (not verified)

Sat, 2015-01-17 12:00

Surely it takes two people to commit "adultery" - of whatever definition? Islamic law (Sharia) requires that adulterers be put to death, since it was the example set by Muhammad. In practice, the women are executed far more often, since they are presumed to bear the burden of sexual responsibility (in Islam's male-dominated society) and are, perhaps, more likely to confess their discretion. Reporting a rape means a confession of adultery under Sharia law if four male witnesses cannot be found to confirm the victim's claim. Women are more likely to be victims because they have less rights, and status, under Sharia law. Pregnancy is often interpreted as proof of adultery, and rape is often taken as adultery. A man may marry up to four wives, over and above the several concubines with whom he may have sexual relations. A woman, on the other hand, has no such options. What is deemed perfectly legitimate for men is criminalized for women, leaving them vulnerable to sexual offences more often and far more easily. If the US stopped selling arms and meddling in the Middle East, for power and resources, then there would not be the violent and surmounting clashes of cultures and ideals. They have produced a Monster, of injustice, resentment and an attractive movement for would-be criminals and anti-social behaviours. While Sharia law may have existed in small pockets of backward countries in the past, it's now escalated and spread- like interfering with a malignant cancer and causing a metastasis of human evil!

Sheila Newman

Fri, 2015-01-16 19:26

I fear that it is cynically committed with the intention of ridding the island of any wildlife except for tourists and then building from the alienated result, some heavy footprint tourist resort. I think it is an attempt to clear the way for 'development'. It must be resisted at all costs. There is a new book about to be published, by Jennifer Parkhurst, called First Nation Peoples of Fraser Island and their Dingos, which should make a good case to a lot of people if we all promote it.

Sheila Newman

Fri, 2015-01-16 16:55

This is confronting. It is history that is not just history. Now at the Queen Victoria Women’s Centre,Ground Floor, 210 Lonsdale Street Melbourne 3000, until the 25th February, 9-5.30: FIRST WORLD WAR WOMEN working for peace in Melbourne 1914 - 1919.

This series of panels illustrates and documents in the women’s own words a peace movement that confronts us even today.

If you think Australians supported the First World War, the idea of civil liberties is new, non-Aboriginal Australians were, in the main, racist and conformist, come and see FIRST WORLD WAR WOMEN working for peace in Melbourne 1914 - 1919.

Or read it on http://www.womensweb.com.au on the 1914-1919 pages.

Please let me know if you would like to borrow this exhibition for a month or so.

Regards, Geraldine Geraldine RobertsonTel: 03 9486 1808 Mobile: 0412 8653 10

wmnsweb[AT]iprimus.com.au Women's Web - Women's Stories, Women's Actions http://www.womensweb.com.au Women Working Together suffrage and onwards http://www.womenworkingtogether.com.au Prejudice and Reason http://www.prejudiceandreason.com.au

quark

Fri, 2015-01-16 15:21

I wondered if the "lunging" (as described in the press) by a dingo (now destroyed) at tourists was just the normal play behaviour that we see in domestic dogs. It would seem that this is the case. Have a look at the following video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGbh3VjP7J8
The treatment of these animals on Fraser Island seems reprehensibly unfair and cruel with no effort to understand.

ECOENGINE (not verified)

Fri, 2015-01-16 13:06

In recent weeks, European security services received indications of an ominous possibility: that ISIS may have started directing European extremists in Syria and Iraq to launch terrorist attacks back in their home countries, the Belgian counter-terrorism official said. Two suspects were killed and one injured on 15 January after an anti-terror raid by Belgian police who acted to prevent "imminent, large-scale attacks," two officials from the Belgian state prosecutor office said. Police stormed the suspects' hideout only to be met by bullets fired from small and assault weapons. But unlike the Paris terrorists, who attacked the office of a satirical newspaper and a kosher grocery store, the suspects in Belgium were reportedly aiming at hard targets: police installations. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2912037/Anti-terror-raid-Belgian... Belgium, which has long been home to a large Muslim population, is believed to have the highest proportion of citizens who have left to fight in the Middle East - even more than Britain and France. Muslims are about 6% of the population and are comprised mostly of Turkish and Moroccan immigrants, as well as a growing number of converts to Islam. They began arriving in Belgium in the 1960s as guest workers. Although the guest-worker program was cancelled in 1974, many immigrants stayed and, using family-reunification laws, brought over their families. There's nothing more permanent than a temporary worker! Human overpopulation, globalisation, high fertility levels due to religious preferences, and the loosening of sovereignty and borders means that cultures, religions, politics, laws and ideals are clashing more and more, lethally, and increasingly threatening the host countries where migrants have settled. The hand that showed hospitality and put out the Welcome Mat is now being bitten, and the hosts even killed! Security agencies in several European countries were intensely investigating several groups of returnees from Syria and Iraq, the official said, including the group that authorities confronted in Belgium.

James Sinnamon

Fri, 2015-01-16 00:29

On 15 January 2015 James G. Neuger and Eleni Chrepra of Bloomberg News reported: 1

"As it comes closer to gaining power in Greece, the anti-establishment SYRIZA party that once advocated a pullout from NATO and expulsion of the U.S. Navy from a base in Crete is moving toward the foreign-policy mainstream.

"Syriza is sacrificing its more revolutionary ambitions to the overriding goal of getting better terms for Greece’s economic aid package. With the party holding a slim lead in the polls for the Jan. 25 election, even Syriza's commitment to rolling back European sanctions on Russia is in question."

The European Union (EU) sanctions were imposed on Russia on 3 March 2014 for the alleged "violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity by acts of aggression by the Russian armed forces." This claimed pretext for the sanctions has been entirely fabricated. In spite of the ability of the United States and other Western powers to detect movements of Russian armed forces with spy satellites, absolutely no verifiable evidence has been produced.

The alleged "Russian aggression" was, in fact, Russian speakers in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine ousting the local political leaders imposed on them by the Nazi-controlled Kiev regime that came to power in the CIA-instigated coup of 21 February.

Footnote[s]

1 ↑ The article is "Syriza Massages Foreign Policy Goals as It Smells Power". It has been republished on ekathimerini.com, and the Chigago Tribune .

Bandicoot

Thu, 2015-01-15 17:18

Despite heavy lobbying and scientific evidence to the contrary, our new Victorian government has caved into the shooting and gun lobby by announcing a duck shooting season this year!
Waterbird breeding levels are the lowest on record. 'Game bird' numbers are nearly half the long-term average. Birds coming from the north where there's drought won't find peace and quiet, but will be threatened by potentially 20,000 licensed shooters, some as young as 12!
Wetlands are at drought-like lows and experts predict a hotter and drier summer than usual.
There'll be no reprieve or safety for native waterbirds.
Today, it is accepted by professionals and scientists alike that mistreating animals is not an isolated behaviour but part of a constellation of antisocial behaviours. Despite record crime rates on the streets and in domestic settings, our government is failing to end the violence towards gentle native waterbirds, and instead will celebrate it. How can human to human violence be counteracted if it's encouraged towards so-called "protected" native birds?

YouTube: Lay down you guns, by Daniel Gregory

ProtectOurOceans (not verified)

Thu, 2015-01-15 12:01

Government accused in failing to act against illegal Southern Ocean toothfish trade. Instead of assisting Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and New Zealand, our ocean patrolling vessel, Ocean Shield, is on absence without leave in dock!

The Ship was promised to be in action for two 40 day patrols in the Southern Oceans, but they are AWOL!

New Zealand Defence Force on Tuesday said it had surprised a third unlicensed fishing boat, far south-east of Tasmania, hauling up the high-priced fish known as "white gold", or the flesh of the giant Patagonian and Antarctic Toothfish.

Sea Shepherd's boat, the Bob Barker, has been chasing the illegal vessel, Thunder, from Antarctic waters to Africa, while the Australian vessel is out of service, in dock at Christmas Island.

In contrast to Australia's efforts, NZ Foreign Minister Murray McCully said so far three ships had been intercepted by the offshore patrol ship, HMNZS Wellington. Sea Shepherd skipper Peter Hammarstedt called on New Zealand to arrest the ships.

Government accused in failing to act against illegal Southern Ocean toothfish trade (13/1/2014)

In 2007, most illegal toothfish vessels expanded their use of gillnet fishing methods, which are outlawed under CCAMLR regulations. Gillnets pose many threats. They are more effective than longlines, the level of incidental bycatch from gillnets is greater and lost or abandoned gillnets have the potential to continue to incur marine life mortality through ‘ghost fishing’. Controlling interests are linked to a handful of Spanish-based fishing outfits, the most notorious of which is Vidal Armadores.

ECOENGINE (not verified)

Wed, 2015-01-14 14:43

Any extra money gleaned from the privatisation of Queensland’s assets above the expected $37 billion in proceeds will be split between paying down more debt and building new projects, Premier Campbell Newman has pledged.

They aim to reduce debt by $25 billion and save $150,000 a day on Labor’s interest payments and we will be able to spend at least $8.6 billion on infrastructure that creates jobs in Queensland.

So, the Government must sell State owned assets to pay debt, and build new assets. What happens when the State's jewels are all sold off? Surely running a business or household this recklessly would lead to ruin? When assets are privatized, it inevitably leads to increasing costs for the public, and it means less jobs for locals.

Premier Campbell Newman and his Liberal National Party stress that under their “strong economic management”, 1100 new jobs are being created every month and Queensland is on track to become the fastest growing state economy in Australia". Gross Domestic Income (GDI per-capita in Queensland) has decreased by 1% between June 2013 and June 2014. This is the second largest decline in the entire country. Queensland currently has the equal highest unemployment rate in the country (6.9%), matched only by Tasmania, even though this is only a few decimal points higher than the Australian average (6.3%).

Senior infrastructure planners believe the region of SouthEast Queensland will require 480,000 houses above the already projected 750,000 to built by 2040 to accommodate the influx. That means sacrificing State forests, pineapple farms, canefields and sensitive coastal zones for more housing!

Previously off-limits areas of southeast Queensland may need developing due to population explosion ‐ includes a 1:52 video featuring Bernard Salt.

Surely the government should hire some economic and planning experts to reassess their economic model, and a benefits/cost analysis done. What they have now is surely not sustainable. It may not be expedient to "grow" the economy without a blueprint, and a strategic plan for what they ultimately aim for. It's a dog chase tail exercise, of continually trying to create more jobs, raising money for infrastructure to pay for growth, and having to sell of more assets. When will we be "there", and arrived?

It makes no sense to "grow" when there's debt. If populations were stabilized, there might be a chance of enhancing what exists rather than keep spending and spending on infrastructure to fix congestion etc.

Vivienne Ortega

Wed, 2015-01-14 09:24

Former Immigration Minister "stopped the boats" and increased "border protection" but as Social Services Minister, his new department contacted housing advocacy groups and other community services providers before Christmas to inform them their funding had been cut and contracts with the Commonwealth would be discontinued. While the public were making ready for the Festive Season, and distracted from political meanderings, the Federal Government sneakingly and callously cut funding to housing programs in an effort to make more budget savings before Christmas. Several leading peak housing bodies shocked by the timing of the announcement! Instead of good cheer, and magnanimity, the Abbott government slashed funding to the most vulnerable and powerless people- the homeless and those on low incomes. Community Housing Federation Australia's executive director Carol Croce said the organisation was told yesterday its funding contract had been rescinded and would be ceased in June 2015, a year earlier than planned. It's a stab in the back for not-for-profit organisations working on already over-stretched budgets, and the homeless will be cut free from our economy. The government has previously warned it could satisfy just $800 million of the $3.9 billion in grants requested by the sector. Australia's housing affordability crisis continues, and any price rises are celebrated as a sign of our economy's advancement. The victims are to be ignored and discarded from this real estate Ponzi pyramid scheme, without any compensation or recognition. The Government is also cutting $241 million disability groups and financial counselling services. It seems that the Abbott government's neo-liberal agenda, of favouring the economy's advancement over the welfare of the incumbents, is in full force! Third world conditions, and a polarization of wealth, can be "good" for minimal social services spending, and "economic growth" at the detriment of the masses! Petition:Demand the government reinstates funding to housing and homelessness programs

admin

Wed, 2015-01-14 01:44

The following, without the embedded YouTube video, was posted to a forum discussion on the Queensland elections on JohnQuiggin.com

The choice facing Queenslanders on 31 January is grim. The least worst of the likely outcomes would be for the removal of the Newman government, and the election to government of the same Labor Party which, without any electoral mandate, flogged off a massive amount of Queensland's publicly owned assets after winning office in 2009.

It seems likely that a sizable number of small party and independent candidates will also be voted into Parliament. We can hope that a sizable portion of this group are not in the pockets of the corporations.

The choice on offer to Greek voters, when they vote 6 days earlier on Sunday 25 January is much clearer. On the one hand they have a government which is resolved to continue to inflict the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) dictates of savage austerity on them. On the other, there is the opposition SYRIZA Party led by the 40 year old Alexis Tsipras. Tsipras is resolved to tell the IMF and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to butt out of Greek affairs. Below is a link to a 2:46 length video of a rally of the Greek SYRIZA Party and part of a speech by Alexis Tsipras:

Hope is on the way

The most recent opinion polls indicate that not only is SYRIZA may win an outright majority.

SaveOurMigrator... (not verified)

Tue, 2015-01-13 21:45

A new "Great Wall of China" is being built in the feeding grounds of migratory birds from Australia that will eventually see an urban sprawl along 1800 kilometres of the Yellow Sea, placing additional pressure on tidal flats now visited by shorebirds on their annual migrations between Australasia and Arctic Russia. This final blow is added to a range of constraints of pollution and weed invasion, to the damming of rivers and construction of off-shore wind farms. Some two-thirds of the tidal flat ecosystems have been destroyed, with a further two per cent disappearing annually. Some of the bird species at risk are the threatened curley, bar-tailed godwit and the great knot. Some of the birds weigh only "as much as couple of box of matches" and can double their weight in a couple of weeks at the vital feeding stops before continuing their journey. The future is "grim", say researchers. Humans are killing the oceans, causing hypoxic dead zones and jellyfish blooms. They are all symptoms of an ecosystem in a decline that had to be halted immediately. The Age: Australia's migratory shorebirds at risk from Asia's urban sprawl Since 2001, according to the study, more than 40,000 hectares of coastal wetlands have been destroyed for ports, industrial parks and similar facilities Separately, Chinese and American researchers who recently studied coastal development linked a dramatic decline in global biodiversity and ecosystems to wetland shrinkage in eastern China. Their findings, appearing in the November issue of Science magazine, warned that wetland losses are putting the country's ecological security and sustainable development goals at risk.

Dennis K

Tue, 2015-01-13 21:25

http://www.theautomaticearth.com/the-value-of-wealth/ We need to do a lot more thinking, and take a far more critical look at ourselves, than we do at present. We’re not even playing it safe, we’re only playing it easy. And that’s just not enough. The marches in Paris and numerous other cities today were attended by people who mean well, but who should ask themselves if they want to be part of what was predictably turned into a propaganda event by ‘world leaders’. One thing is for sure; the murdered Charlie Hebdo staff would not have approved of it. The leaders hark back to usual suspect slogans like we defend ‘Liberty’, ‘Freedom of Expression’ and ‘Our Values’. But we can’t turn our backs on the fact that ‘our values’ these days include torture and other fine ‘tactics’ that make people in other parts of the world turn their backs on us. We might want – need – to march to express our feelings about torture executed in our name, as much as to express our horror at cartoonists we never heard of being the target of automatic weapons. There are major armed conflicts going on in 6 different Arab countries, and ‘we’ play a part in all of them. We get up in the morning and prepare to march against violence in our own streets, but we should perhaps – also – protest the violence committed in our name on other people’s streets just as much. We may feel innocent as we’re marching, but that’s simply because we refuse to look at ourselves in the mirror. And we must be able to do better than that. Both to be the best we can be (which is still a valid goal), and to prevent future attacks.

Sheila Newman

Tue, 2015-01-13 11:35

The media are the public messaging system (to borrow an expression from Greg Wood) and they need to allow everyone to use the talking stick. At the moment the mass media in the West are part of a corporate political system that, in order to pursue a Hobbesian agenda (to borrow an expression from Francis Boyle (see his book on Libya) blacks out all information about the Western role in starting illegal wars and trumpets a steady stream of propaganda to justify these by blackening the other side.

Arthur (not verified)

Tue, 2015-01-13 11:27

BBC supports my exposure of Charlie Hebdo false-flag

THIS BBC LINK SENT BY KEVIN BARETT HAS ALSO BEEN PULLED DOWN.
"Greetings,

Did somebody slip truth serum in the BBC water cooler?

For the first time in history, a leading Western mainstream news outfit is reporting accurately on evidence exposing a huge false flag operation. Read and watch this before it gets taken down!

Doubts raised over authenticity of Charlie Hebdo footage
A video clip broadcast by news agencies across the world in relation to the recent events in Paris is now under scrutiny.

http://bbc-news.co.uk/doubts-raised-over-authenticity-of-charlie-hebdo-footage/ 1

I'm honored that they chose to include me in this historic event. My articles exposing and ridiculing the incredibly lame and obvious Charlie Hebdo false flag have gotten hundreds of thousands of reads, and been attacked by right-wing media and the ADL. Check them out, in chronological order:

Paris "Charlie Hebdo" attack": another Zionist false flag?
http://truthjihad.blogspot.com/2015/01/paris-charlie-hebdo-attack-another.html

Charlie Hebdo False Flag Story Goes Viral http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/01/08/charlie-hebdo-viral/

Planted ID card exposes Paris false flag
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/01/10/392426/Planted-ID-card-exposes-Paris-false-flag

Intelligence gaps cited in Paris attacks (satire) http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/01/10/intel-gaps/

Now BBC is stealing my stuff.

Should I sue them? Congratulate them? Or what?

And if this somehow snowballs and the Gladio B network behind this event - as well as 9/11, Bali, Madrid, 7/7, Mumbai, Boston and so much more - gets taken down, and the mainstream media start doing their job…making my alternative journalism redundant…I'm ready to accept a chair in False Flag Studies at the University of Wisconsin, home of "fearless sifting and winnowing." https://kb.wisc.edu/ls/page.php?id=21911
>Best

Kevin Barrett
Website: a href="http://www.TruthJihad.com
Editor, Veterans Today: http://www.veteranstoday.com/author/barrett/
Press TV: http://www.presstv.ir/Contributors/247897.html
Radio Journalist, NoLiesRadio.org:
http://TruthJihadRadio.blogspot.com
PS Please support my writing and radio shows by joining or donating at http://TruthJihad.com , in case that False Flag Studies position doesn't open up right away."

Footnote[s]

1 ↑ When I tried to look at this link on my Firefox web browser, I got this message:

"The connection was reset
The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading."

 - Ed

Anonymous (not verified)

Tue, 2015-01-13 11:16

The problem is not confined to the West, and Europe. The cultural and political divide of Islam are also felt deeply in Africa. As media coverage focused on the Paris terror attacks last week, more than 2000 Nigerians were reported to have been killed by Islamist militants. Girls become suicide bombers. Northeastern Nigeria is drowning in blood and few seem to care. Reports came through of an estimated 2,000 casualties after an attack by Boko Haram militants on the town of Baga in the north-eastern state of Borno. It may be the 21st century, but African lives are still deemed less newsworthy – and, by implication, less valuable – than western lives? Or probably we in Australia compare ourselves more with France, a western developed and secular country. Last week, Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, expressed his condolences for the victims of France but stayed silent on the Boko Haram attacks on Baga. District head Baba Abba Hassan said most victims are children, women and elderly people who could not run fast enough when insurgents drove into Baga, firing rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles on town residents. The motivation is unclear, but it appears aimed at intimidating Nigerians into not voting in the coming presidential election. The country is roughly split between Muslims and Christians. Ironically, Boko Haram's anti-democracy attacks could swing the election in favor of incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian. Overpopulation is a huge problem for the peoples of Africa. Countries like Ethiopia and Nigeria are about to triple in population within the next fifty years. If Africa remains on this course catastrophic consequences such as mass starvation and global war will occur. Up to the early 1980s, Nigeria’s economy enjoyed the presence of both agricultural produce and the production of other consumers’ goods, however for almost three decades after; petroleum has been the country’s main source of revenue. The post-independent Nigeria (1960) is one faced with a lot of leadership induced poverty,corruption, religious charlatanism, war and restiveness, unstable political system, dictatorial governance, lack of adequate basic amenities. The globalization of terror has been blamed on the West, and the US for their power and resource grabs, but it doesn't explain Islamic terror on other parts of the world. It's like a disease, an auto-immune system response that attacks our communities internally in the deadly quest for power and domination of anti-democratic ideologies.

Waioona (not verified)

Tue, 2015-01-13 09:52

I concur with the point you make about what we don't know or are not told that is frightening Dennis. I was only talking to my sisters and brother-in-law on the same topic at Xmas. Whether it be the topic of immigration, overpopulation, climate change or the genocide that took place in this country in the 19th and 20th centuries. Whether it be the mainstream media, the government or the corporate elites, vital information is continually withheld from the public and the public cannot make the right decisions without this information. One only has to look back at the past State election to the lies and deceit of the Coalition re East West Link. Our past is littered with such episodes - Tampa, East Timor, the intervention (apartheid) the desal plant and the north south pipeline, &c. The piece by RT in this blog reminds us of the number of little wars that have been started by colonialists and superpowers in a bid upset the status quo. And all too often the motivating factor is black gold and/or power. Whether it be Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria or Queensland it's happening right under our noses and like the French we march, but we say NOTHING!! This is not to say that we don't have the right to say nothing. We do, but all too often we make the wrong decisions. Sometimes based on the above, however mostly it's a matter of not thinking clearly and seeing the mangy dog for what it is. We, of course, should be making these decisions at the ballot box. Nevertheless, corporate elites, governments and the mainstream media are experts at circumventing the ballot box leaving the electorate high and dry. This where the public is left to protest a la East West Link, etc. Public protest is where our feelings are poured forth, sometimes restrained, sometimes not. The Great Australian Race Riots hosted by Peter FitzSimmons on SBS has been an eye opener for me. Not often has the course of Australian history been changed without a riot (according to the program). I'm not saying that I agree with all of these riotous changes, some have been atrocious, but there other times when rioting maybe the only way. First, however, we must make the public aware of the real story behind the news and not just that of power and energy hungry governments driven by the corporate elites and mainstream media. We need more choices at the ballot box, the electorate needs to be more aware of what they are voting for and we need more humility and compassion shown by our elected representatives, not neoliberalism.

Dennis K

Mon, 2015-01-12 21:02

The freedom to say anything you like "so long as it does not offend" is the same freedom that people in Nazi Germany, The Soviet Union and North Korea today have. The right to speak without offending those who get to decide, in their opinion, what is offensive and what isn't. By this definition, even slaves are free as they can say what they like "As long as it doesn't offend" the slaveholder. This article correctly observes we don't have a free press. The press decide what is said, and what is not said. As usual, it's what you DON'T hear and read from the media which is usually most important and most interesting. Real censorship happens with silence. Real censorship is not reported. The contentious issues are never brought up, at all. Such as Australias sustained high immigration rates. The media is able to write article after article on issues affected by this, without mentioning it, at all. So one should always ask themselves, "What is NOT being said? What is in the darkened periphery where the media is shining the light?". It is there where real discussion begins, and where 'mainstream' public discourse ends. The greatest irony is the cavalcade of marches in Europe. Here we have hundreds and thousands of people marching that they won't be silenced, marching for free speech, and what is the message? They don't even have one. They have nothing to say! Some of the defenders of free speech... https://storify.com/public/templates/slideshow/index.html?src=//storify....

ECOENGINE (not verified)

Mon, 2015-01-12 13:54

There is "free speech" and a license to offend and insult! Satire should be clever, and have a message that reaches the audience without offending the majority. It should be sensitive to the majority, and actually have some humour, not just insult beliefs and the people it depicts. There should not be anything that's off-limits because some sectors of the community feel they must kill in the name of their beliefs. There's a difference between brutal insults, and clever satire that portrays some truth or exaggerates some point.

DennisK (not verified)

Mon, 2015-01-12 09:38

That was my thought after seeing the video, but it was a hit. I don't think it means it was blanks. If you have the stomach for it, you can see other execution videos where there are "clean" shots and match this video. It's not always watermelons. While not a ballistics experts myself, there seems to be enough information to suggest that the lack of blood, or violent ejection, could be due to use of smaller calibre weapons. Full metal jacket ammunution can pass quite cleanly. There are other videos which show similar deaths. This doesnt prove, or disprove a false flag, and I won't make any claim that it is or isn't, yet. But I personally will wait for more evidence before I model my view of the events and their meaning on it being a flase flag. I dont think this event is that improbable.

Dennis K

Sun, 2015-01-11 12:20

"Free Speech" as exercised by many, seems to be little more than being rude. The point of free speech isn't to just be obscene, it's to disseminate ideas freely, without fear of retribution of repression. The reason free speech is important isn't the right to just vent, or swear, it is that a free prosperous society requires the ability to challenge the status quo, the question societies assumptions, to challenge belief systems. Free speech stops tyrants by calling them out on their rubbish. Consider... 1: Everyone in Europe and the UK agrees that "hate speech" is not "free speech" and that offending people is hate. Oddly, when the media was targetted, the media suddenly defends offensive speech. We have our own laws which would have hauled them into court. I wonder how many of the people at vigils support our own restrictive laws? Note that people have been accepting of retribution against offensive speech for some time. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1023969/Brigitte-Bardot-fin... http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/edwest/9595417/is_britain_the_worlds_f... This gives an interesting examples of a FOURTEEN year old girl being taken by police, because of seating preferences during lunch. More here. http://www.legal-project.org/issues/european-hate-speech-laws Note, I'm not defending what these people were saying, only pointing out that we have accepted that it is OK to use force (arrest) against people we find offensive. Muslims take seriously depictions of Mohammed. It IS offensive, very offensive to them to depict Mohammed like this. I personally don't care about it, but they do, and who am I to say what they should, or should not be offended by? It seems we are saying to Muslims "We can use force against people who offend OUR ideals, but not those who offend yours". "We find it OK to lash out against people who challenge our beliefs and morals, but you must just accept it." Europeans don't have free speech, they have merely gone from enforcing one religion to another, and today is no different. Western nations still burn books. But what I see, isn't people defending Islam, but people defending themselves and their belief systems. How can Europe, which has had such liberal immigration policies, reconcile this event, in context of what is happening worldwide, with their own worldview? How can they maintain their belief that the future of Europe is a pluralistic society, when events like this occur? How can they maintain their argument that their vision is correct against the 'reactionaries', when events like this seem to give ammunition to the reactionaries? I don't see this ending well, and holding pens, "Solidarity" and such completely misses the point. Europeans will continue to repress any serious discussion of the effects of immigration, and these problems will continue until there is a flashpoint and it becomes violent. Thats what they seem to be begging for.

Sheila Newman

Sun, 2015-01-11 12:16

I think they are designed to justify continued invasion and waging of war in the Middle East. Upsetting the local population may be a secondary effect. Mr Cole has a bit of a reputation for upholding the US destruction of Libya.

Matt Mitchell (not verified)

Sun, 2015-01-11 11:10

Juan Cole gives a related perspective on this: http://www.juancole.com/2015/01/sharpening-contradictions-satirists.html He claims the attacks are an attempt to create divisions in society - i.e turning non-muslim French against mostly non-violent and in-offensive muslim-French, for ulterior motives: "This tactic is similar to the one used by Stalinists in the early 20th century. Decades ago I read an account by the philosopher Karl Popper of how he flirted with Marxism for about 6 months in 1919 when he was auditing classes at the University of Vienna. He left the group in disgust when he discovered that they were attempting to use false flag operations to provoke militant confrontations. In one of them police killed 8 socialist youth at Hörlgasse on 15 June 1919. For the unscrupulous among Bolsheviks–who would later be Stalinists– the fact that most students and workers don’t want to overthrow the business class is inconvenient, and so it seemed desirable to some of them to “sharpen the contradictions” between labor and capital. ""Sharpening the contradictions” is the strategy of sociopaths and totalitarians, aimed at unmooring people from their ordinary insouciance and preying on them, mobilizing their energies and wealth for the perverted purposes of a self-styled great leader. The only effective response to this manipulative strategy (as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani tried to tell the Iraqi Shiites a decade ago) is to resist the impulse to blame an entire group for the actions of a few and to refuse to carry out identity-politics reprisals. " Even more interesting is that this whole attempt may well backfire, with marches organised to resist this idea: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/march_with_paris_loc/?bxNXFhb&v=51065 With banners "Not Afraid".

Arthur (not verified)

Sun, 2015-01-11 11:10

"When Edward Snowden leaked classified NSA documents that implicated the United States and its allies in many scandals, the concept of "freedom of expression" was completely rejected by these governments. Many journalists in the U.S., and even some in Canada, sided with their governments and were not sympathetic to his plight. The freedom of expression that everyone nowadays rushes to defend is not as simple to understand or to practice. The same thing can be said about religion. Why do we have to choose between one or the other, or accept a self-serving version of both?" From Rabble.ca January 9, 2015. The false debate between freedom of expression and religious extremism by Monia Mazigh.

Save our Dingoes (not verified)

Sun, 2015-01-11 08:09

Fraser Island is being treated as a theme park, with the dingoes part of the "props", or "actors", to create a commercial, entertaining holiday fantasy on a World Heritage territory! When one of the "props" becomes dysfunctional, or doesn't "act" according to the script of happy dingoes in the distance, and it actually wants to interact with a child, then it's disposed of as "faulty"! It's a bit like the movie, The Truman Show! It takes just a small observation to break the illusion of a created reality, a false natural world, artificially created for the enjoyment of watchers. Any "errors" are quickly cleaned away, and fixed, so that nothing interferes with the illusion of perfection and its entertainment ideals. Nature isn't quite so clean-cut, and dingoes don't know the script! There's always been dependence of Dingoes with humans, with the indigenous peoples that lived on Fraser Island before hand, and the fishermen that went there. They are not completely "wild" like other native animals of antiquity. The poor Dingo that lunged at and nipped the girl was probably excited and wanted to "play" - not attack. That's not on the agenda at the Fraser Island "Theme park"!

Sheila Newman

Sat, 2015-01-10 22:31

Reproducing your comment here because we have opened a new page for comments which unfortunately renders previous comments unanswerable (drupal software problem if you are interested and maybe can figure out a solution). My response to your question of 'why assume the shot was a hit?' is because the French news reported that he was shot point-blank and killed whilst lying on the ground and trying to shield himself, and that is what it looks like. Did you hear differently? I agree that one must take such things with big grains of salt and my own analysis does not depend on details, which can be subject to many interpretations, but it still seems wierd. Sheila N Denis's comment reproduced below: Why assume it shot was a hit? I'm skeptical of everything the media reads too. I don't know enough about the details as to what happened. You can see some kind of ground debris or impact. When I saw the video Thursday, my initial though was simply that the shot missed. Also the fact that they spoke French doesn't mean much. It isn't unusual. Paris has lots and lots and lots of non-Europeans who speak French well. Here is a four year old firing an AK-47. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dCPhyBdCkU Even then, recoil is minimal, especially if it is a smaller calibre AK-47, which can also explain the lack of blood and ". I won't rule out that it is a false flag, anything is possible, but I don't consider this strong enough to call it one yet. ISIS have called for war on the West. There have been many previous examples of aggression. Certainly, there would be a desire to overplay events (as the "terror arrests" last year in Sydney demonstrated), and use events to further agendas, but I think that the state only has to wait for these events to occur, then capitalise on them. With so many ISIS fighters returning to Europe, they won't have to wait long.

ECOENGINE (not verified)

Sat, 2015-01-10 13:45

The volume of tourists and the misunderstanding of Dingoes, and their natural attraction to humans, is a deadly mix! Of course, the tourists are the dominant species, and naturally the dingoes will be the victims! The tourist resort should be sectioned off, and fenced, and only guided tours should venture into the main part of Fraser Island. Even in Africa, if a tourist is killed in a wildlife sanctuary, there is not an attack on the animals! They are attacked and killed by poachers, and numbers dwindle through loss of habitat, but if people go into a natural area, and get "attacked" by wildlife, it should be the tourist and safety policies that are updated, not the death of the natural animal resident. The child was not even hurt! Pure dingoes are an endangered species, and unless their status is considered of value, and their existence protected, their future is bleak! Every species deserves a chance to survive, and not maligned in preference to tourist dollars.

Dennis K

Sat, 2015-01-10 13:27

I'm skeptical of everything the media reads too. I don't know enough about the details as to what happened. You can see some kind of ground debris or impact. When I saw the video Thursday, my initial though was simply that the shot missed. Also the fact that they spoke French doesn't mean much. It isn't unusual. Paris has lots and lots and lots of non-Europeans who speak French well. Here is a four year old firing an AK-47. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dCPhyBdCkU Even then, recoil is minimal, especially if it is a smaller calibre AK-47, which can also explain the lack of blood and ". I won't rule out that it is a false flag, anything is possible, but I don't consider this strong enough to call it one yet. ISIS have called for war on the West. There have been many previous examples of aggression. Certainly, there would be a desire to overplay events (as the "terror arrests" last year in Sydney demonstrated), and use events to further agendas, but I think that the state only has to wait for these events to occur, then capitalise on them. With so many ISIS fighters returning to Europe, they won't have to wait long.

admin

Sat, 2015-01-10 12:39

Can you provide examples of people imprisoned in Russia for their political beliefs or where anybody has been prevented from stating their beliefs, either in a printed or electronic form? I am not aware of any. You are aware that much of what is published on RT is contrary to the views of the Russian government (as well as to those of domestic quislings and the imperialist West)? Readers are allowed to post comments critical of articles published on RT. RT's talk show hosts, including Oksana Boyko and Peter Lavelle, give much space to people who are critical of them and the Russian government on their programs. The mass media in Russia is free and as free as it ever has been in the West. You do realise the Vladimir Putin was democratically elected and has had a consistently high popular approval rating – in the order of 67.8% in June 2014? That is much higher than the approval Obama ever achieved. (See here for other poll figures, at times as high as 81%.)

Sheila Newman

Sat, 2015-01-10 12:18

This is also a reply to Denis K.
Denis, in my humble opinion, Putin's committment to freedom of the press could not be less than in the West, where our freedom is illusory. I've been writing an article about the Charlie Hebdo massacre, vis a vis 'freedom of the press'. Not finished yet. Otherwise I would be responding on oil price manipulation as well.

Also, evidence piling up that Charlie Hebdo was a false flag attack, including the suicide of the policeman in Limoges, who would have had knowledge of the information the police received right up to the attack. Footage of the killing of the policeman outside the newspaper's offices was suppressed by France2 news, due purportedly to its 'graphic nature' but the footage shows nothing graphic at all. This is very very suspicious. I have copied and pasted the videos and text below from http://www.conspiracyclub.co/2015/01/07/paris-fake-terrorism/. It is like the false blood failed to spurt. Any other explanations welcome here.

Paris Shooting Appears Fake (False-flag)

By -
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Guy runs up to cop on ground and shoots him in the head, point blank.

Don’t worry, no blood..

Notice, the camera pans past the police officer on the ground, still no blood..

Now, this is what happens when you shoot a watermelon from 10 ft away..

You can see, a point blank shot with an AK-47 would make an awful mess..this alone is enough to call the event a false flag..there are also other problems, like they reportedly spoke perfect French with no accents, and entered the wrong building, before being told where the right building was, all while the police never responded..

DennisK (not verified)

Fri, 2015-01-09 11:28

I have issues with everyone! I do have issues with regards to freedom of the press and political freedom in Russia. I'm not saying that Putin is unique here, or that he is as the West makes out, an "evil man", but if Russia is going to be a bigger player, which they will be, I would prefer a Russia with a strong commitment to freedom of opinion.

Reserve Our Gas (not verified)

Fri, 2015-01-09 10:36

NSW faces "shortages" of gas next year, during winter. AGL has used the drastic forecast to argue for government restrictions on coal seam gas development to be lifted, saying higher gas prices and "dire economic and social consequences" are looming.

In a submission to a NSW parliamentary inquiry on gas costs and supply, it said the export of natural gas from Queensland, starting this year, would triple demand in east coast gas markets and lead to higher prices.

NSW faces 21 days in winter without guaranteed gas AGL warns

This is not a "shortage" of gas, but multi-national mining companies deliberately exporting our ample and lucrative gas supplies for their own profits - and forcing the government to ease restrictions on coal seam gas mining!

Thanks to globalisation, and neo-liberalism, governments had failed to insulate the manufacturing industry and consumers from the "crisis" created by Queensland's gas export industry.

Until very recently, gas extracted in Australia stayed in Australia. Because our nation has abundant natural gas reserves, it meant our gas prices have stayed low by global standards. Multinational gas companies have been given licenses to extract Australian gas from major new gas fields and to export it, primarily to Asia. Exports of Australian gas will start ramping up from July 2015.

If gas companies have the option of selling Australian gas for $15+ per gigajoule, that’s the price they will charge everyone - including Australians. There is currently nothing to stop them.

SIGN THE PETITION - reserve our gas

10 Jan 2015: comments on this page have been closed. Please post further comments here.

DennisK (not verified)

Fri, 2015-01-09 09:37

Your argument that many Muslims are technically not immigrants is correct. They have a piece of paper issued by a bureaucracy which makes them French, you see. That is how our 20th century model works. Those ink splotches mean everything. The geographic location your mother was at when you are born means everything, right? Its almost magical thinking, that a human being can be fundamentally different to what they would otherwise be, based on the latitude and longitude they were born, and the issuer of their passports. It makes the difference between someone you are supposed to kill and die for, and someone you should keep in a detention centre if they try to come here.

That seems strange to me. And is becoming a less and less tenable model. Hence the prediction of change. The old concept of the nation state is slowly dying. The future will adapt to this. In the meantime, everyone is desperate to keep the old concept alive. Things are happening which were not supposed to happen.

All the hand wringing, the apologising and expaling (explaining? - ed) of Islam, the "community leaders" on TV, the call for calm, fear of backlash, these appear to me to be ideologically motivated. It is not Muslims they are trying to protect. It is their own belief system. Its not about "free speech", they don't care for free speech, its about legitimising their power. I don't quite buy that so many people are so, so concerned about Muslims. I think its a more personal reason, are more personal motivation.

I suspect this change of power is also partly behind the increasing antagonism between "the West" and Putin. Russia is best placed to deal with the new politics, though I have issues with Putin.

What issues? Almost every word I have so far read in the mainstream media about Vladimir Putin, Russia, Ukraine, and Crimea is a lie. - ed

nimby

Fri, 2015-01-09 08:51

The Islamic Council of Victoria spokesman Kuranda Seyit said the council was "very disturbed" by the shooting. "We don't know what their motivation was but if they [the gunmen] were offended by what this person [the magazine editor] was doing, it just doesn't justify shooting him." He said Muslims are offended when the prophet is depicted in a derogatory way because the prophet is regarded as a perfect human being. Why would perfection need such draconian and lethal defence? They are also offended by any confrontation about their deity, Allah! The same French magazine has depicted cartoons about Christianity, and mocked many politicians, but we learn to laugh at ourselves too. Even Jesus had a sense of humour! It's part of their culture, and freedom of speech. The criminals in Paris shouted "god is great"! If their god is so "great", why would he be so offended by a cartoon, and need violence, killing and crime to defend him? The punishment for blasphemy, and apostasy, in Islam is death! There is no toleration, or humour. Christians have their God, and faith, berated, questioned, ridiculed and mocked continually, but there's no obligation for retribution or call to violence. If God is "great" and lives in Eternity, he is the ultimate judge, sustainer and creator of all life and has the authority of Greatness. He doesn't need mere humans to defend His holy name! Galations 6:7 says: Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.

Anonymous (not verified)

Fri, 2015-01-09 08:17

Killing "over-abundant" and "plague" levels of kangaroos could actually increase their numbers, by destroying their natural social structures. It means that killing the alpha males and those in charge of the mobs could give more opportunities for breeding, by younger males. Thus, population control goes out of the window! Even by government sources, there are no "explosions" of kangaroo numbers. In fact their numbers are generally in decline. But, by killing selected species, local mobs could actually increase, rather than allowing natural order, and Nature, to control numbers according to the seasons. If Queensland is in a drought, they are unlikely to over-breed anyway! Over-population of humans, and trying to extract more out of the fragile land on fringe areas, subject to floods and droughts, is more likely the problem. Kangaroos are then stigmatized as the cause, and as vile and hated "pests" to scape-goat!

Sheila Newman

Fri, 2015-01-09 01:00

One thing's for sure, human population has exploded in Queensland and is causing water shortages, loss of topsoil, heat islands, and environmental damage everywhere. It is also making it impossible for farmers to get finance because they cannot compete with the returns on land-speculation which all this engineered population growth keeps driving upward. Kangaroos are shot in Queensland for their meat. This wrecks the social organisation of roos that normally keeps populations comfortably within their range carrying capacity.

The more kangaroo populations are interfered with, the more out of control, but short-lived, and small in stature, they will become.

The Queensland government hasn't got a clue and is immoral and cruel on this and many other issues.

Sheila Newman

Fri, 2015-01-09 00:54

Just some clarification here. Many of the muslims in France are not immigrants, except from French territory, because they were born French or born to French nationals in French overseas territories which then won independence, notably Algeria. Everyone born in Algeria was French over a period of time. There was one year when nearly one million people came from Algeria to France. Most were 'pieds noirs' - European French who had lived and worked in Algeria for generations, however some were of Algerian muslim ancestry. After that initial year Algerians had the choice of identifying as French or as Algerian. If they identified as French their children were automatically French and had a right to live in France. Only if those children renounced French nationality did they lose it. (There were a number of flip-flops with these rules, but that was the general idea). Hence, you have a whole lot of FRENCH people of Algerian ORIGIN in France - question of internal population movement, not overseas migration. It is true that the French don't count migrants as Australia does. What does count is citizenship. That is the only permanent kind of migration. All the rest is what we would describe as temporary. The family reunion laws of the European Union make it difficult to refuse entry to members of family of overseas migrants who have working and residence visas, even though they may never achieve permanency. (Australia is less legally obligated to allow family reunion; here it is a matter of policy). There are also laws in all EU countries (although I suspect that Britain is different) that permit refusal of family reunion if there is not enough living space provided, in case of danger to order, and in case of the family member not being able to support the prospective arrivals. This works to a certain degree. French-born Algerians who came to France, and European-French-born Algerians were often very poor when they arrived in France and it was very difficult for them to find an economic footing there. They were (white and brown) an often despised social class because of their poverty, their number and their associations with the war and colonialism.

Dennis K

Thu, 2015-01-08 21:05

It's been my position for over a decade now that the "far right" will become a major political force in the future. The acceleration of this is surprising, but not unbelievable. A decade ago, people were laughing at the "far right". No one is laughing now. As commenter "Anonymous" said, these attitudes are becoming more and more mainstream. But what is happening, is that more and more people are being lumped as "far right" instead, broadening the definition to absurdity. How did this happen? Many people equate this view as a "wish", but my view on what I think will happen is not based on what I want, or not want to happen, but on detached observation. There is no one more responsible for the rise of the far right, than those against them. The reasoning is simple, and therefore never discussed. The far right is never discussed in terms which understand the issue. Because the far right deal with a reality which Political Correctness says can't exist. The issue is NOT racism, but rather, conflicting world-views, or more accurately, ideological or moral models. I mentioned in the comment "SYRIZA and the future of Greece" that Golden Dawn may get the boost they need to win power, should Syriza fail to solve the problems that the Greek people believe are problems. This is everything. Failing to solve the problems that the people believe are real problems. The current leaders solve problems they think are problems. Ideologues solve problem they think are important. In the meantime, everyone who deals with the real world, who faces the realities which media pundits, leaders and intellectuals theorise about, form their own opinions, based on what they experience. Everyone in the real world has their own desires, concerns, wishes, for a reason. A very good reason. Its THEIR wishes and desires. Twenty thousand Germans marched against the Islamification of the West (note they specify the "West" and not just Germany, this is very important to understand what is happening). Merkel and the media blithely dismissed PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West) as nothing, just uninformed rabble. It is ridiculous, silly for anyone to think that tens of thousands of people would march, and there is "nothing to see here". Why did they march? They don't want to live is an Islamified society. So while the elite is telling Germans and Europeans what they should, and should not want, they are more and more ignoring it, and expressing their desire. Let me just say though, that comments that immigrant numbers aren't that high don't mean much. It doesn't actually matter whether the figures show French becoming a minority within 50 years, or remaining a majority for some time yet. Focusing on numbers, saying "hey, its just x%" misses the point. It's too late now to pretend that things can remain as they are. 15% is significant enough to radically change politics. Even if the borders were closed TODAY, the political landscape would still shift, just perhaps at a slower pace. The dog has bolted. Identity politics is the politics of the 21st century in Europe and the Western world. I'm just waiting for everyone else to catch up and realise this. They eventually will.

Anonymous (not verified)

Thu, 2015-01-08 18:39

A TULLAMARINE woman says she is baffled that Hume residents are forking out higher household rate percentages than those in more prestigious suburbs. Lucia Natale said the value of her home had dropped by more than $50,000 since the last valuation, but her rates had fallen by just $70. Hume’s rate in the dollar figure is higher than Stonnington, which included white collar suburbs such as Toorak, Windsor and Prahran, and the Macedon Ranges, which has many million dollar homes in towns such as Mt Macedon. Hume Council defends household rate increase -due to "growth" Hume’s needs as a *growth municipality* were greater than those “of a more settled nature” and that new works and facilities had to be met together with maintaining existing assets. So, residents must pay the costs of population growth, even though it's not in their interests, or decided democratically. Stonnington is not a "growth" council, unlike Hume. It's population growth that always stretches budgets and blows out their spending. Dis-economies of scale mean increasing costs and inefficiencies. Services must be expanded continually to cope with more properties and more services but councils have no political power to change legislation forced onto us.

Anonymous (not verified)

Thu, 2015-01-08 16:57

Three hooded gunmen stormed the office of the FreNch magazine and remain on the loose, and killed ten journalists and two police officers. It was publication day, so most of the magazine’s journalists, cartoonists and editor were there. Charlie Hebdo has a long history of provocative cartooning. Its offices were firebombed in 2011 after the magazine featured a caricature of the prophet Mohammed on its cover. In a free and liberally-inclined country like France it routinely took the mickey out of politicians and creeds whatever their source. While politicians, celebrities, policies, other religious figures can be satirised, it's lethal when it comes to any criticism of Islam or its prophet Mohammed. The magazine was again under protection over the planned cover of this week’s edition. It was to mock a new Michel Houellebecq novel, Submission, a futuristic work about France under Islamic rule in the year 2022 and is due to hit bookshops across France next week. Mere anticipation of the novel has been stirring up simmering angst in Europe over Muslim immigration. Anti-immigration parties are winning seats in national parliaments and in the European Parliament. In the United Kingdom, IKIP is making serious inroads in to British politics, advocating a reduction of immigration in order to increase the number of available jobs for non-immigrants. Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden have been simmering with anger over the huge influx of mostly Muslim immigrants and debate has raged about how best to deal with the newcomers. They are under threat of being overwhelmed and Islamized! Islam confuses civil and religious law. Islam is a theocracy, a system of law, and politics. It encompasses almost every aspect of their lives. It doesn’t recognize the French principle of secular government. If these people have French nationality, they can be arrested, but not expelled. One does not have to be on the "far right" to be fearful! Anti-Islamist attitudes are beginning to move away from the far-Right extreme and more into the mainstream of popular discontent. France has the largest Muslim population in Europe, where the tensions are greatest. Today, France's immigrant population amounts to 15 percent of the total population, with lower figures for the Muslim community: hardly a tidal wave. French law forbids distinguishing citizens or residents according to their faith. As a consequence, there is no official statistical data on number of Muslims in France. Not only are French Muslims more likely to be unemployed than the rest of the population, they also encounter more problems finding long-term and full-time jobs.

nimby

Thu, 2015-01-08 09:42

Our 12-year-high unemployment rate of 6.3 per cent has destroyed any economic credibility the Abbott Government claims to have. However, in disbelief, the Abbott government has made it EASIER for foreign workers to access jobs in Australia. A new temporary-entry permit proposed by the Department of Immigration to allow overseas workers to stay in Australia for a year without a 457 visa that requires basic English language skills, and for employers to look for local employees first. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection, contrary to their name, has quietly released its recommendations to relax entry requirements for short-term foreign workers. Its proposals include extending the six-month short term mobility visa to 12 months. Of course, instead of helping the unemployed, this relaxation of our border control will worsen unemployment levels in Australia, particularly for young people. CFMEU national secretary Mr O'Connor said one in five workers on 457 visas already was being paid below-standard wages. This plan will be a further downward push and wages and working conditions. It's pure neoliberalism and an abandonment of any obligation of our government to make policies for the benefit of the electorate, the people of Australia, rather than the contrary! Typically in Orwellian double-talk, it's supposed to be "good" for Australia to have global competition, and "good" for the economy. Despite record NOM, based on skilled migration, we still need more skills transferred to Australia - at a time of record unemployment?

Kate (not verified)

Thu, 2015-01-08 00:03

In 1997 my council rates were $469.50. My rate notice for 2015 is $1878. If they quadruple again in the next 18 years my bill for the year 2033 will be $7,512. My income will need to increase 8 fold from 1997 for the rates to remain as affordable. My income will not be 8 times what it was in 1997 nor will it be 4 times what it is now.

DennisK (not verified)

Wed, 2015-01-07 10:22

Hi James, I didn't write an endorsement for either party, and I'm not a cheerleader of the neo-liberal technocracy. The politics and situation in Greece is something I'm familiar with, and to some extent, having family there, personally interested in. I can tell you, having spent some time there, that Greece is pretty much in a depression, though no one would dare use that word, lest they reveal the true nature of the situation. But I don't agree that somehow the political players today, are the heirs of the 1930s. It is in error, I believe, to assume that the radical left element are as those 70 years ago. While many would like to think they are the bearers of the torch of Marxism, Fascism, Socialism, Nazism, what have you, what exists today is radically different. We are talking two generations removed here, with very, very outdated ideals. These ideals were old even then. They simply cannot deal with the 21st century. Compare what the left and right tell you (personally) today, and try to reconcile it with the ideas their grandparents had. You'll see they are different. Reading Marx, and hearing someone from a Socialist party tell you what Marxism is, you'll leave puzzled at how different it is. Same with Neo Nazis. The Nazis of the 30s would have probably sent half of todays swastica toting neo nazis to prison, Saying that Syriza would have fought foreign invasion is very speculative. Besides, who is invading Greece today? What are the threats? Implementation is everything. If you can't create a workable implementation, then your politics isnt worth much, no matter how nice your ideals sound. I have my doubts about Syrizas implementation, and I think that failed implementation would result in further problems. Iceland told the bankers to get stuffed, and they left it at that which is why it worked.

James Sinnamon

Tue, 2015-01-06 22:53

DennisK,

If you had read the article, About the Greek Civil Warlinked to in two places above, and also previously posted to the ABC Radio National Web site on 11 July 2011, you would know that it was the 'radical left' of Greek politics, and not the right, who has fought against tyranny and foreign invasion, including that by Nazi Germany from 1941 until 1944.

In 2014, those, who in previous generations would have fought as partisans against the Nazis, are members of SYRIZA. The only hope that Greeks have to stop their country's economy being ruined by the criminal dictates of the IMF is for the election of a SYRIZA government in the forthcoming parliamentary elections.

How any supporter of Candobetter would want to see the Golden Dawn and not SYRIZA win in the forthcoming Greek elections is a mystery to me.

DennisK (not verified)

Tue, 2015-01-06 13:03

While I welcome the end of the neo-liberal regime, I'm very skeptical about their replacements. So much so, that I would think it better NOT to elect Syriza, and that the current neo-liberals would be better. The election of Syriza will pose two problems. Firstly, they are radical left, which is a risk for the Greek nation of people. They may result in worse conditions and disenfranchisement of political alternatives. Secondly, their failure will result in the second biggest party, Golden Dawn getting support, and potentially taking power afterwards, and I don't think they are ready either. That, or Greeks will resort to the centrist parties. Greece needs a new political alternative, which can both deal with the economic and immigrant crisis. The problem need a deeper solution

Waioona (not verified)

Tue, 2015-01-06 09:38

If you live in Perth you must expect hot weather, apart from Darwin it's Australia's hottest capital city. The average January maximum is 31.1 degrees C and the minimum 18.1 degrees C and as Anonymous rightly says, it's even hotter in the outer eastern suburbs. Furthermore, 2012 was Perth's hottest January to date with a mean maximum of 33.5 degrees C which is similar to the trend that I've been mapping. While not many outright records are being broken, temperatures are consistently warmer all year round with 2014 being 1.8 degrees C for maximums and 1.5 degrees C for minimums warmer than the norm. If this trend continues we'll reach the 2 degrees C milestone before the decade is out! The science is there to handle climate change and overpopulation, but Abbott and his cohorts including the opposition and the mainstream media are being controlled by the fossil fuel lobby. Until Ole King Koal is overthrown, the incumbent ideology will prevail. This can only be done by using our vote at the ballot box ie throw out the old and bring in the new ah la Cathy McGowan and Suzanne Sheed in previously safe Coalition seats federal and state. It will be hard yakka with many setbacks along the way, but the rewards will be there particularly as the public become more and more disenfranchised under our current political parties.

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