What the poll below reflects is the public's absolute confusion about what constitutes immigration and how many immigrants there are. Much of the public believes (a) that most immigrants are refugees and (b) that the government is 'cracking down' on refugees in the form of asylum seekers. People are absolutely unaware of the HUGE volume of legal planned migration, 200,000, plus all the short termers, the students, the family reunion. Then there are the people who are aware of 457 visas and who are really upset by this policy of bringing in cheap labour, but not everyone is directly affected by this.
If the Lowy Institute chose useful indicators, like objections to rising prices for fuel, power, food, water, housing and objections to expensive, intrusive infrastructure like tollways - which are all indicators of population growth - they would conclude that almost 100% of people (perhaps with the exception of Mr Lowy himself and a few billionaire developers and bankers) do not want more population growth and would not want more immigration if they realised that immigration formed 60% of population growth in Australia. The Lowy Institute promotes itself as a think tank, but I think it is just a brainwashing organisation promoting population growth and nuclear power for the commercial ends of its benefactor.
2014 Lowy Institute Poll:
http://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/lowy-institute-poll-2014
From summary:
Population and immigration
"Most Australians (76%) believe the best target population for Australia in the next 40 years is 30 million people or more. More than a third choose a population target of 40 million or more people, while only 4% say Australia’s population should be smaller than it is now. Asked about current migration levels, just less than half the population say it is ‘about right’, while 37% say that the number of migrants coming to Australia each year is too high. For those 37%, concern about migration is squarely focused on jobs."
Comments
Frankston Public Forum on the Green Wedge
The Frankston Council organized a Public Forum “ CONCERNED ABOUT OUR NATURAL RESOURCES?”
One of three topics was “The Green Wedge”. In attendance were the Liberal and Labor candidates. It is my concern that when developers approach the Council or State to allow subdivision for urban development in the Green Wedge that they don’t tell them immediately that this is not even being considered. It should be treated like when someone goes to a police station and akes whether they will give him permission to go and kill a person; with an instant and definite NO.
Instead, councils involve lengthy considerations and ask the public for comments. This unnecessary process puts a burden on grassroot people to write submissions, collect signatures and attend expensive VCAT’S just to make councils or state gov. to properly protect the Green Wedges in a responsible way.
The recommendation to allow hospitals, churches, mosques, tourist accommodations etc. etc. to be placed into the Green Wedges is symbolic with allowing hotels and shooters into national parks. It is a shameful watering down of the protection of vital green space. When do we learn to share this planet in BALANCE with all the other animals and plants?
More on Must Melbourne keep growing forum
Sustainable Population Australia & Victoria First Media Release of 12 June 2014 - “Must Melbourne Keep Growing?”
Most current discussion of Melbourne’s population growth gives the impression that its certain destiny is to be a city of nearly 8 million by mid-century. The population levels after that milestone are barely mentioned. It is certain, however, that if the population is allowed to reach just on 8 million then it could grow to twice that size by the end of the century.
But some community groups don't believe population growth is inevitable or unavoidable and want to give ordinary Melbourne residents the chance to have their say on the subject. Sustainable Population Australia and Victoria First will be hosting a panel discussion with audience contributions about Melbourne's population future.
A panel discussion - “Must Melbourne Keep Growing?” - will be held on Saturday June 14 2014 at 2 pm at the Chandelier Room, Hawthorn Arts Centre, 360 Burwood Rd, Hawthorn. The Panel members will be: The Hon. Kelvin Thomson Federal MP and President of Victoria First; Clifford Hayes, Former Mayor, Bayside City Council, and planning activist, Sheila Newman, Author and Editor candobetter.net; and William Bourke, President, Sustainable Population Party. The event will be MC'd by Jill Quirk, President, Victorian and Tasmanian Branch, Sustainable Population Australia.
Jill Quirk comments: “The State Government’s projection of Melbourne’s population at 7.7 million by 2051, revised upwards from last year’s estimate of 6.5 million, means that Victorians now live in a climate of uncertainty as to what our city will be like to live in over coming decades. Apart from unwelcome higher density housing, high rise and infrastructure development to accommodate greater population and increasing volumes of traffic, many people are extremely worried about the future sustainability of what will be a huge city growing well beyond 2050, possibly to 20 million by the end of the century."
Julianne Bell, VF Secretary, advises: "SPA and VF have chosen the municipality of Boroondara for the location of this meeting. Residents here are currently under siege from developers and are attempting to defend their heritage shopping centres and surrounding suburban areas from the cancer of high rise development. Attempts to accommodate Melbourne's increasing population over "shop tops" and in shopping precincts are being vigorously resisted by concerned residents and community groups. Boroondara Council now has before it Amendment C 108 to the Boroondara Planning Scheme concerning 31 "Neigbourhood Shopping Centres" and "Commercial Corridors".
Each new population projection for Melbourne is bigger and more outrageous than the one before it. The latest says we'll get to 7.7 million by 2051! But it doesn't have to be that way. Melburnians have been invited to attend the panel discussion to have their say.
Contact:
Kelvin Thomson MP Victoria First 93505777, Jill Quirk SPA 0409742927 or Julianne Bell Victoria First 0408022408
Clearing at Leard Forest stopped for winter
Whitehaven Coal yesterday announced it would halt its clearing of Leard State Forest until September following an injunction in the NSW Land and Environment Court by the Maules Creek Community Council.
Whitehaven maintains its clearing licence was granted by the NSW Department of Planning and the Environment in approved to changes to its Environment Management Plan, which permits clearing until the end of June.
The Maules Creek Community Council is arguing that Whitehaven is in breach of its development consent by winter/spring clearing of the forest. A breach of development consent contravenes the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979.
EDO argued the winter forest clearing, which is typically prohibited in the region, would include 624ha of rare forest such as the Box-Gum Woodland, which provides habitat for threatened species including koalas, the Swift parrot, bats and the Regent honeyeater.
Whitehaven said it had been undertaking authorised clearance activities at Maules Creek in accordance with the "biodiversity management plan" approved by the NSW DPE. It said it plans to defend the litigation in September.
Lessons of history, 1966: President De Gaulle said No to US-NATO
March 10, 1966: After 31 assassination attempts against his life, Charles De Gaulle ordered France’s withdrawal from NATO’s military integrated command. This decision was formally reversed almost half a century later under Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency. De Gaulle adopted a foreign policy independent of the Anglo-American axis.
His March 10 1966, not only pertained France’s decision to withdraw from NATO’s integrated military command, but also to remove NATO’s headquarters from French territory, thereby leading the establishment of the Alliance’s headquarters in Brussels.
In today’s World, the leaders of the EU and the Western military alliance, above all the elites of France, Germany, Italy are scared, terrorized of a potential US backlash, a reaction like the "reaction" that produced 31 assassinations attempts against the French leader.
This reaction would no doubt be forthcoming if they decided to defend the national interest of their countries, e.g by opposing the the destabilization of Ukraine and the financial looting of the EU by Wall Street and the city of London.
But this is the historical moment, in which these countries are gambling their future existence as sovereign states, and US political intimidation can be fought back. But these European leaders are corrupt and coopted by Washington.
De Gaulle gave an example and because he challenged openly the forces that tried to kill him — and, above all, kill France as and independent and sovereign country – he won. He was able to send the occupation forces of NATO packing. He won a second Resistance after that against Nazism.
Saudi Ukraine weapons factory & US-French-Saudi attack on Iraq
The Al-Qaeda linked Islamic Emirate of Iraq and the Levant (IEIL, whose Arabic acronym is pronounced "Daesh"), launched on 6 June 2014 a large-scale attack on Iraq. After taking control of Fallujah, it has now seized the district of Nineveh (including the capital Mosul) and is pursuing its offensive in the provinces of Kirkuk and Saladin. More than 150 000 civilians have fled ahead of the jihadists’ advance.
On 10 June, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called on parliament to declare a state of emergency.
The Islamic Emirate in Iraq and the Levant is led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on behalf of Prince Abdul Rahman al-Faisal, the brother of the current Saudi Foreign Minister and of the Saudi ambassador in Washington. He is funded and supervised jointly by U.S., French and Saudi officers. Over the past month, he has received new weapons from Ukraine, where Saudi Arabia has acquired a weapons factory, and via Turkey, which has created a special rail line alongside a military airport to supply the IEIL.
Read more here: http://www.voltairenet.org/article184211.html
Kangaroo "cull" to begin as challenge fails
ACT Animal Lib and other activists were doomed to failure, and now the shooters will being their bloody business of slaughtering Canberra's nature reserves' kangaroos.
The Civil and Administrative Appeals Tribunal is now satisfied the government had a “solid scientific basis” for authorising the cull, and while the survival of eastern grey kangaroos as a species was not threatened, "over-grazing and degradation of the environment might lead to a significant impact on endangered communities in the reserves".
Canberra Times: Canberra's kangaroo cull to begin after challenge fails
These hypocritical "green" Pharisees go to extreme lengths to protect the grassland environments from, ironically, native animals, despite the expert witnesses and emotional pleas!
When you want governments to rein in climate change and take action to protect great swathes of forests, native habitats, and even the Great Barrier Reef, they ignore the public and go ahead and submit to the economic benefits of mining and logging companies. There's no qualms about clearing land for property developers, but they focus on grasslands that are naturally managed by kangaroos. and kangaroos are treated as vermin! Without wildlife corridors, of course the kangaroos will eat grass!
Regional Friends of Wildlife condemn the cull. "This cruel annual slaughter of kangaroo families is unethical and immoral. There is no evidence whatsoever of any benefit that has accrued over the past four years despite government claims of protecting endangered species and other unnamed plants and animals by killing kangaroos,” says RFOW spokesperson Philip Machin.
In terms of yet another cull in 2014 Mjadwesch says:
"There is not a single threatened species known to be impacted by kangaroos in the ACT, in fact it was demonstrated that several threatened species in the ACT benefited from kangaroo grazing".
Dr Dror Ben Ami of THINKK at University of Technology Sydney wrote to Minister Rattenbury in 2013: "Eastern Grey Kangaroos are keystone species for the grasslands. They are responsible for habitat structuring, nutrient cycling, and other grassland species rely on their presence… Records (since the 1990s) indicate stable densities of 2 to 4 kangaroos per hectare (in the ACT)" .
Like the Pharisees Jesus condemned for hypocrisy, (Matthew 23:24) these extreme pseudo "environmentalists" are filtering out the "gnats", the trivial issues, while the "camels", the big blanket environmentally destructive projects, get swallowed - and are approved with impunity!
Melbourne's chronically clogged arteries and living boxes
Some of Melbourne’s most chronically clogged intersections have been left to gradually get worse for several years, in breach of state guidelines that traffic lights must be reviewed every five years to keep pace with congestion.
Authorities ‘‘have no strategy or co-ordinated plan to use ICT traffic management systems’’ to complement broader plans to keep Melbourne’s traffic moving.
The result is an increasingly saturated road network, with deteriorating traffic flow that results in motorists and tram and bus passengers alike spending more time stuck in traffic.
Read more: Melbourne traffic left to get worse as transport authorities fail to fix traffic lights at http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/melbourne-traffic-left-to-get-worse-as...
With Melbourne's people and good-moving systems saturated, and often at a standstill, it's madness to allow our city to hit 10 million people! Cities are meant to grow organically, in tune with jobs, environmental sustainability, living standards and affordability. Our overloaded city is being bloated by corporate greed, ridiculously high rates of immigration and property developers trying to maximise each cubic meter of space for housing!
In another report, Melbourne is becoming a city of “super-dense” towers, packed with tiny apartments that would be banned in Hong Kong, New York and London.
Sydney, London and Adelaide all have rules that ban new one-bedroom apartments smaller than 50 square metres. But in Melbourne, 40 per cent of the city's newest apartments are smaller than this.
Read more: Melbourne's tiny flats would be illegal in other cities at http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/melbournes-tiny-flats-would-be-illegal...
If were are going to cave into runaway population growth, then it's inevitable our living standards will decline miserably into third world standards. If Melbourne's population is allowed to hit 10 million by 2050, as it's "projected", it means more people will be crammed into ever smaller holes - or living spaces. Unless the Federal government turns off the immigration tap, running at full throttle, and our State government ends it's dependence on housing revenues, then Australian cities can only decline into a dystopia of poverty, crime, a knot of congestion, and implode through excessive costs of living.
Power sale to fund Sydney harbour crossing
Sydney will get a second harbour rail crossing, and billions will be pumped into roads, schools and hospitals under the NSW government's controversial plan to sell electricity networks.
To fund population growth, forty nine per cent of the state's poles and wires will be sold on 99-year leases under a policy approved by Liberal and Nationals.
At least $6 billion of the sale proceeds would be spent in regional NSW, including roads funding and $2 billion would go to schools and hospitals.
Read more: Power sale to fund Sydney harbour crossing at http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/2014/06/10/13/36/power-sale-could-lead-to-job-cuts-labor
A prominent energy economist says consumers lose and prices rise under electricity privatisation, despite the NSW government citing another report as evidence to the contrary.
An Ernst and Young report examined the long-term trend in prices charged by the network businesses, which are passed on to residents and businesses as part of their electricity bill. Unions believe privatisation will lead to higher power bills, and more jobs will be lost.
The ACT government should end their pretence
Dr Don Fletcher is a paid mouthpiece for the ACT government that clearly wants to get rid of the kangaroo "problem". As such, he will of course do the job he's paid to do, and scientifically defend the kangaroo killing. It seems that our ACT government has become extreme environmentalists with all their concerns about protecting native grasslands! Never mind that the areas around Canberra were wrecked and over grazed by sheep for many years, and that urban sprawl means native grasses are dug up and destroyed - along with the legless lizards and golden sunmoths etc!
It's a bit like the scientific whaling argument! Commercial science can be manipulated to be anything one likes, for economic or cultural purposes! Since the ICJ has ruled out Japan's scientific whaling as being fraudulent, they have now ditched this façade and will openly do commercial whaling!
The only "experts" called into the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal case should be independent witnesses, without salaries paid by the ACT and those with vested interests in killing the kangaroos. The ACT government should come clean and admit the real reasons for wanting the 1600 kangaroos dead! Instead of environmental concerns based on flimsy evidence of native grasses being threatened by native animals, the real problem is no doubt quite mundane and pragmatic - they just want the roads free of them!
Hard to get documentation if the public are silenced
It's hard to get documentation if there is a PC wall preventing the distribution of information, and the public are gagged. Last September, Sweden became the only European Union country to offer permanent residence to Syrians fleeing their devastated homeland. Now, strained by its own generosity, it is losing patience with what is calls a lack of solidarity from its European EU brethren. Immigration has spiked this year, and the country's migration experts expect 59,000 people to seek asylum there, with 23,000 of them seen coming from Syria.
The influx of asylum seekers strains authorities tasked with providing education, child care and other support. One major challenge is securing housing for asylum seekers as Sweden faces a housing shortage.
Among 44 industrialised nations, Sweden ranked fourth in the number of asylum seekers and second relative to its population, according to U.N. figures.
The population of Sweden saw the biggest annual increase in 70 years last year thanks largely to the arrival of new immigrants.
The recent rise in anti-Semitic activity in Sweden originates largely from the Arab and Muslim communities. Here, many immigrants have backgrounds that are directly linked to the Israeli-Arab conflict and hail from countries where classic anti-Semitism is commonly accepted.
45 days of water left for Sao Paulo World Cup
The World Cup starts in the middle of June but officials in S?o Paulo, Brazil -- where the games are to be held -- say the city is already facing a critical water shortage. Residents in poor communities report that their water is shut off every night and that they sometimes have no water for days.
Similarly, while Sao Paulo’s population explosion and demented urbanization ran amok, investment in mass transportation actually decreased.
The city is not only the capital of the most populous state in Brazil, but is also the most populous city in all of Brazil and the largest city proper in the entire southern hemisphere.
Sao Paulo received less than half of its average rainfall during January, February and March—a time when the city usually receives almost 80 percent of its average annual precipitation.
The worst drought in more than 80 years is hitting the country's largest city just as it prepares for the tens of thousands of foreigners expected at the tournament opener.
Sao Paulo's water shortage, compounded by population overshoot, is the result of insufficient rain this year, with levels at Sao Paulo's main reservoir supplying freshwater to 9 million people dipping lower than ever before.
Forests are very important for healthy fresh water supplies. Unfortunately, the Cantareira system alone has lost 70% of its original forest cover, aggravating the sedimentation of rivers and dams, and decreasing their ability to supply water. The degradation of native vegetation also worsens the effects of erosion and drought.
Research carried out by the German-based Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research has found significantly more people throughout the world will struggle to find the water needed for the basics of life as the planet warms.
Prior to the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s there had been ample freshwater availability, but the consequent population boom, urbanisation, and economic growth, has driven per capita availability to dangerous lows.
US meddling in Ukraine in 2004 - Age article & Sue McHale's blog
Found this interesting record here: http://suzymchale.com/journal/2004-11.html#d25
Editorial comment: Thank you, "Concerned global resident", for posting this, but it's not clear to me what you found in the part of the page linked to by your URL. It's certainly not the article below. - Ed
"US democracy warriors drive protests
By Ian Traynor
November 27, 2004
Washington has exported a new battle-hardened style of revolution to Kiev.
With their websites and stickers, their pranks and slogans aimed at banishing widespread fear of a corrupt regime, the democracy guerillas of the Ukrainian Pora youth movement have already notched up a famous victory – whatever the outcome of the dangerous stand-off in Kiev.
Ukraine, traditionally passive in its politics, has been mobilised by the young democracy activists. It will never be the same again.
But while the gains of the orange-bedecked “chestnut revolution” are Ukraine’s, the campaign is a United States creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in Western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.
Funded and organised by the US Government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters, diplomats, the two big US parties and US non-government organisations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000 to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the polls.
Richard Miles, the US ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. Last year, as US ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze.
Ten months after the success in Belgrade, the US ambassador in Minsk, Michael Kozak, a veteran of similar operations in central America, notably in Nicaragua, organised a near identical campaign to try to defeat Belarus hard man Alexander Lukashenko. That one failed.
Experience gained in Serbia, Georgia and Belarus has been invaluable in plotting to beat Leonid Kuchma’s regime in Kiev.
The operation – engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience – is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people’s elections.
Irony and street comedy mocking the regime have been hugely successful in puncturing public fear and enraging the powerful. In the centre of Belgrade is a dingy office staffed by computer-literate youngsters who call themselves the Centre for Non-Violent Resistance.
If you want to know how to beat a regime that controls the mass media, the judges, the courts, the security apparatus and the voting stations, the young Belgrade activists are for hire.
They emerged from the anti-Milosevic student movement, Otpor, meaning resistance.
The catchy, single-word branding is important. In Georgia last year, the parallel student movement was Khmara. In Belarus, it was Zubr. In Ukraine, it is Pora, meaning high time.
Stickers, spray paint and websites are the young activists’ weapons. Irony and street comedy mocking the regime have been hugely successful in puncturing public fear and enraging the powerful.
The Democratic Party’s National Democratic Institute, the Republican Party’s International Republican Institute, the US State Department and USAid are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Institute.
If the events in Kiev vindicate the US in its strategies for helping other people win elections and take power from anti-democratic regimes, it is certain to try to repeat the exercise.
The places to watch are Moldova and the authoritarian countries of central Asia."
Comment from blog owner in 2004:
Surprise, surprise! This is all a cynical ploy by the USA to spread its influence and power through the former Soviet Union countries. (The CIA was doing this sort of thing in the 1960s, in South America, and look what happened to countries like Chile.) The U.S. wants to turn these countries into free-market economies so U.S. corporations have new markets in which to expand. Don’t believe the bullsh*t they espouse about “democracy” and “freedom.”
Sweden immigration assertions need more documentation
Whilst I agree that it seems that Sweden is muzzling democratic speech, I would criticise the comment from Anonymous "No democracy if the public are gagged" on its failure to provide evidence for a number of assertions, which, without evidence must be taken as beliefs. Examples are, "Left-wing fascists bribed by muslim organisations", "Jews increasingly under attack by muslim organisations fleeing Sweden". Without strong evidence it looks needlessly inflammatory, without wanting to disregard the evident emotions and probable sincerity of Anonymous.
It is easy however to criticise the failure to accord the right of Swedish citizens to decide on how many immigrants they are willing to absorb. That is clearly not being allowed. If the government has to repress reaction so severely it looks like there is a serious problem attached to high or obvious rates of muslim migration. I also wonder if we are talking classical worker immigration here or are we talking asylum seekers or refugees or family reunion? Also, what are the terms of permanent immigration in Sweden. Does permanent mean 3 months to a year as it does in many other European contexts (quite different from Australian definition?)
No democracy if the public are gagged
The Swedish Government is so desperate for newly arrived Muslim immigrants to be motivated enough to look for work, they will continue to pay them the same benefits they are getting for not working, in addition to the income they will get if they find a job.
Sweden is corrupt and clearly their government is supporting Islam, and the terror against women by gagging anyone who speaks out! Is prosecuting rapists prohibited in Sweden as “hate talk”? Julian Assange’s “rape” in Sweden was no more than a scam to catch a fugitive from the USA for whistle-blowing. Their gagging of open debate and discussion on non-Western immigration is about turning their country into a third-world nation - with lower living standards and wages. Without freedom of speech, there can be no democracy.
It won’t be long until freedom of speech will be a thing of the past in Germany as well. The country is in the hands of left-wing fascists who are clearly being bribed by muslim organizations.
The police can no longer patrol the neighbourhoods. Jews are increasingly under attack by the muslims, so they are fleeing Sweden. Once the welfare system is broken due to costly and dysfunctional immigration, there will be a great multitude of willing and cheap workers, and the economic benefits of third world employers.
Not all Middle East is under Islam laws
Michael Hess should have been more clear when he said he had lived in the Middle East for 11 years, but probably would have been reluctant to do so. Not all countries in the Middle East are dominated by Islam, or theocracy: These countries are Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi, Yemen, Mauritania, Qatar, Indonesia, Maldives and Nigeria (regional).
Sharia law is an Islamic legal system which provides an Islamic alternative to secular models of governance. Women in societies governed by sharia typically have few fewer rights than women in the West.
Although Islam is often associated with the Arab world and the Middle East, fewer than 15% of Muslims are Arab. At present, about one-fourth of the world’s population is Muslim. The Africa continent has the highest Muslim population as compared to the other regions of the world.
Syria is a country where Sharia law plays a minor role, and is mostly limited to families. However, after 11 years in the Middle East, Michael Hess would not have any trouble seeing and hearing first hand the misogyny relating directly to Islam.
Michael Hess apparently unaware that Islamic societies differ
Anonymous wrote:
Hess, who has lived in the Middle East for eleven years, argued that the comment is a fact that it's deeply ingrained in Islamic culture to rape and mistreat those women who do not abide by the teachings of Islam.
I would be interested which countries Hess lived in. Anyone, who is properly informed about the conflicts in the Middle East, not from the lying mainstream and phony alternate media, but from the pages of dissident websites such as Global Research, Voltaire Net, Paul Craig Roberts, CanDoBetter, etc., would know that not all Islamic societies are alike. Some, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar are ruled by reactionary dictators and contain some of the worst dregs of humanity.
Other Islamic countries, such as Syria, have been beacons of civilisation and human compassion for decades. As an example, every Syrian citizen is entitled to free education right up to the tertiary level. All Syrians enjoy free medical care and many other free government services. There is no way that crimes against women, such as rape would not be punished in Syria.
Sadly, the New World Order has decided that Syria is an obstacle to its plans to enslave the the people of the Middle East. As a consequence, since March 2011, Syria has had to fight a proxy invasion, by many of the very dregs of the Islamic world to which Michael Hess has objected. Those terrorist proxies have been armed and supplied by the United States and its allies including France and Saudi Arabia. This proxy invasion has so far cost the lives of 160,00 Syrians.
Sweden is, itself, complicit in this war against Syria. See, for example, the Global Research article Sweden's Involvement in Syria: Democracy Promotion Ending in Terror and Expulsion (14/5/2014).
Seemingly paradoxically, whilst the Swedish elites are complicit in these crimes against the Islamic people of Syria, they are also pursuing policies that avowed "bleeding heart" liberals depict as kind and compassionate — to grant citizenship to hundreds of thousands of people from distant countries, including Syria. As Vivienne Ortega's article above shows, this mass immigration and related social experimentation is destroying the living standards and social cohesion of ordinary Swedes.
Well done Syrian Girl
Really good and educational debating here from Syrian Girl. Note that her new blog is at http://syriangirlpartisan.blogspot.com.au/
Bad news about youtube's robo-cops making wrong judgements on her posts, with no appeal.
URGENT- Protect Ballina koala colony
Ballina Council recently commissioned a Koala Habitat Study which has found that the proposed Pacific Highway Upgrade route would bisect the Koala colony and has been identified as a 'key threatening process', if it was to go ahead.
The route of the Pacific Highway upgrade needs to be reassessed in the light of the recent Ballina Koala Habitat study. We must urge the decision makers to have the Blackwall Range protected by ensuring that the highway upgrade avoids this known biodiversity hotspot.
Please sign this petition to make an alternative route through the Pacific Highway.
The planners of these schemes, for the convenience of traffic, seem to think that barging through and destroying habitat and killing threatened koalas is OK for their convenience. Just put a line on a map and forget the existing wildlife and environmental values!
Save Ballina's Koalas
The "skills shortages" rant is a scam
Most people would accept the possible need to import any workers in remote areas of Australia where locals can't be found. Even so, there should be ads promoting these national positions, and every effort made to import employees from state-wide, with incentives.
However, the use of 457 visa workers in the cities, in areas where locals can't find work, is a deliberate attack on their wages, future and working conditions. Undermining their careers and job prospects is not patriotic, and total disloyalty to Australians - especially when their education has left them with thousands of dollars in debt!
There's no skill shortages of accountants or IT professionals either, but they are being imported at our detriment.
A study last year by Bob Birrell, Monash, showed that the number of school leavers almost equals the number of temporary visa holders with permits to work in Australia. Now, the unemployed in Australia are being forced to "work for the dole" and will have to go without NewStart allowance for 6 months. Crime and desperation will continue to rise!
What's needed is a process to weed out corruption and greed in the Immigration Department and in governments who are blatantly disloyal, anti-Australian, and willing to force Australian workers on their knees in preference to foreigners!
The slow down of our economy, and the full throttle speed of immigration under the "skills shortage" rant is being exposed as a rort. It's all about forcing "big Australia" on us, even though there's not justification for it. The main aim of importing skills is to bring in buyers for the housing industry!
Swedish Politician Fined for ‘Hate Speech’ Against Islam
Sweden Democrat Party politician Michael Hess of Karlskrona was sentenced May 8, 2014 to a fine for hate speech after having connected the religion of Islam with rape. The judgement was made on the basis that it doesn't matter if what he says is true or factual or not. Facts aren't allowed to get in the way of opinions in Sweden
Hess wrote next to an article in Aftonbladet, which was about women who were raped in Tahrir Square in Cairo.
Hess, who has lived in the Middle East for eleven years, argued that the comment is a fact that it's deeply ingrained in Islamic culture to rape and mistreat those women who do not abide by the teachings of Islam. He wanted to initiate a debate and persuade journalists to examine the phenomenon more deeply. Studies show that that men with ancestry from Muslim countries are very much overrepresented in Swedish rape statistics.
Hess was fined 32,000 krona ($4,900 US) for “hate speech”. On a personal level, this would be the same as criminal complaining about being "persecuted" or "defamed" for revealing or commenting on their crimes?
See Swedish Politician Fined for ‘Hate Speech’ Against Islam at http://chersonandmolschky.com/2014/05/11/swedish-politician-fined-hate-s....
Petition for Leard Forest
Leard Forest is the home to countless native animals hibernating for winter, but could soon become a monster new coal mine.
Politicians have decided to cozy up to Big Coal and all but ignore the devastating impact this coal mine would have on locals, native animals, and our global climate.
AND: email The NSW Environment Minister, Rob Stokes, and ask to stop this madness right now on [email protected] OR you can phone him on (02) 9228 5253
Petition Labor government Victoria to end duck shooting
Why have Labor politicians failed to speak out over the Box Flat slaughter of over 2,000 native waterbirds, including the illegal shooting of over 200 threatened Freckled Ducks?
Why haven't Labor politicians spoken out in Parliament, or in the media, against the illegal shooting of the 102 threatened Freckled Ducks rescuers recovered this season, and why Labor politicians have not spoken out against the incompetence of Agriculture Minister Peter Walsh and his Game Victoria Director, Simon Toop?
Apart from recovering over 100 illegally shot threatened Freckled Ducks from Lake Lonsdale and Lake Bullrush at the start of the duck shooting season, this year has been the quietest on record, with very few duck shooters active on the wetlands. Just what are the economic benefit of all this killing?
Call for the Victorian Labor Party to introduce a policy to ban the recreational shooting of native waterbirds before the November 2014 election
The 2014 Victorian recreational duck shooting season opened on 15 March and runs for three months.
Recreational duck shooting is legalised animal abuse. Apart from the inherent cruelty, many wetlands with rare, threatened and protected species are opened to shooting.
End recreational duck shooting in Victoria
Media Release: Sustainable Population Australia & Victoria First
Media Release of 2 June 2014 - “Must Melbourne Keep Growing?”
While many people don't think that Melbourne's rapid population growth is a good thing, most think there's nothing that can be done about it, and simply shrug their shoulders and get on with life.
But some community groups don't believe population growth is inevitable or unavoidable, and they want to give ordinary Melbourne residents the chance to have their say on the subject. Sustainable Population Australia and Victoria First will be hosting a panel discussion with audience contributions about Melbourne's population future.
This Panel discussion - “Must Melbourne Keep Growing?” - will be held on Saturday June 14 2014 at 2 pm at the Chandelier Room,
Hawthorn Arts Centre,
360 Burwood Rd,
Hawthorn.
The Panel members will be: The Hon. Kelvin Thomson Federal MP and President of Victoria First ;
Clifford Hayes , Former Mayor, Bayside Council,
and planning activist, Sheila Newman ,
Author and Editor candobetter.net;
and William Bourke, President, Sustainable Population Party.
The event will be MC'd by Jill Quirk, President, Victorian and Tasmanian Branch, Sustainable Population Australia.
Jill Quirk comments: “The State Government’s projection of Melbourne’s population at 7.7 million by 2051, revised upwards from last year’s estimate of 6.5 million, means that Victorians now live in a climate of uncertainty as to what our city will be like to live in over coming decades. Apart from unwelcome higher density housing, high rise and infrastructure development to accommodate greater population and increasing volumes of traffic, many people are extremely worried about the future sustainability of what will be a huge city growing well beyond 2050, possibly to 20 million by the end of the century."
Julianne Bell, VF Secretary, advises: "SPA and VF have chosen the municipality of Boroondara for the location of this meeting. Residents here are currently under siege from developers and are attempting to defend their heritage shopping centres and surrounding suburban areas from the cancer of high rise development. Attempts to accommodate Melbourne's increasing population over "shop tops" and in shopping precincts are being vigorously resisted by concerned residents and community groups. Boroondara Council now has before it Amendment C 108 to the Boroondara Planning Scheme concerning 31 "Neigbourhood Shopping Centres" and "Commercial Corridors" and reports are that we can expect a vigorous debate on this topic!"
Each new population projection for Melbourne is bigger and more outrageous than the one before it. The latest says we'll get to 7.7 million by 2051! But it doesn't have to be that way. Come along and have your say.
(Bipartisan support for big growth, and "big Australia", means that our growth is being treated as inevitable, and unavoidable, when it's government policy. Since John Howard's era as Prime Minister, immigration rates have been increasing, despite budget cuts, unemployment, congestion, unaffordable housing, debt, and the distraction of asylum seekers. Not everybody is fooled, and must be a way to move our economy from the dominance of the property lobby,and the aggressive and silencing tactics of the pro-growth lobby.)
Contact:
Kelvin Thomson MP Victoria First 93505777, Jill Quirk SPA 0409742927 or Julianne Bell Victoria First 0408022408
Australia's greenhouse gas cut targets deepen
Australia's greenhouse gas cut targets quietly tripled on Saturday night, from a 5 per cent cut by 2020 to a cut of more than 18 per cent. This new ambitious target has been set due to the failure of the Federal government to repeal the carbon tax. The potential for a higher Australia target comes as the US prepares to unveil a much more aggressive climate policy of its own on Monday.
Obama says the rules to limit the emissions from thousand of power plants are essential to curb the heat-trapping greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. Critics contend the rules will kill jobs, drive up electricity prices and shutter plants across the country. The administration says the rules will play a major role in achieving the pledge Obama made in Copenhagen during his first year in office to cut America's carbon emissions by about 17 per cent by 2020.
In response, Australia's goal is based on a tally that is 38 million tonnes below the 2012-13 emissions level, shrinking each year by 12 million tonnes. In practise, since 2012-13 emissions were much less than expected, the resulting trajectory is also for a lower target by the end of the decade.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/australias-emissions-cu...
The Abbott government is not nearly as enthusiastic, ending funding for a range of clean energy programs and wanting to axe the carbon tax. There will be some awkward discussions when Abbott meets with Obama next week. "Tony Abbott is about to abandon the very policy the rest of the world is now reaching for - a price on pollution," leader Christine Milne said.
According to the government's own assessment, Australia’s Abatement Task and 2013 Emissions Projections. "Despite the moderated emissions growth outlook from previous projections,underlying factors such as population and economic growth underpin a steady increase in emissions. This growth is bolstered by the continued strong demand for Australian energy exports, in particular. the expected significant expansion of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry and coal exports".
"The projected increase in transport emissions is attributable to strong activity growth in all transport subsectors".
While the targets of greenhouse gas emissions have increased, there's not consolidated efforts planned to actually implement them.
So, while the public find energy increasingly expensive, and per capita emissions may decrease, in absolute terms, it's already recognised that any effort to reduce them are futile, with our high population projections and gas and coal mining industries.
Imports import
Little is said about unhealthy structural changes wrought by current population bloat policies.
It seems obvious that the vast majority of our city based populations have nothing to do with exporting.
It seems obvious that the vast majority of our city based populations have nothing to do with exporting.
They do however, have a great deal to do with importing.
There is nothing clever about buying an ipad as a consumer. There is something very clever about designing, marketing and most of all - manufacturing - ipads.
Australia is geared to do the former - not the latter.
The annual spend of billions to subsidise import orientated industries is obscene.
For each extra 100,000 imported to Australia - what percentage - how many thousands will spend their working lives in Australia exporting goods or services? For each extra 100,000 - would we be able to count such exporters on a single hand?
The debt and foreign ownership brought on by the nation's need to turn over infrastructure - renew and rebuild infrastructure cannot be reversed.
This is a diversion from Australian based expenditures that could have once been termed investments.
We cannot term foreign corporations taking ownership of railway routes, the associated land rights and on selling opportunities - in order to provide much needed and long overdue infrastructure - we cannot term these spends as investments. Why? Because they exist to support a cost center only - our bloating city based populations.
At every stage of an Australian residents life, his/her role in importing is structured in.
The decade by decade bloat of our population has been matched by a decade by decade bloat in infrastructure spends that on the whole, create no opportunities other than for importers.
These lobbyist importers are the greatest, most successful "rent seekers" in Australia's economic history.
They have turned a whole nation towards supporting them.
In the process, they have made most of what was built in their interests, namely our bloating cities - totally unviable, internationally uncompetitive and unsustainable propositions.
In summary, imports import - costing Australians export industries, debt, and foreign ownership and control of most of our major civic assets.
Australia's housing bubble
Australia already has some of the most expensive housing in the world, propped up largely by high immigration. Now, there's a slow-down in buying due to unaffordable prices, so foreign investors are now invited into Australia, to invade the market, to keep the property bubble inflated! What other reason, except high prices and a flow of foreign money?
Australian household debt has hit a record 177 per cent of disposable income, with residential property prices equating to 4.3 times annual incomes and 28 times annual rent.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/is-it-a-bubble-16-key-housing-market-ques...
We've become slaves to the banks, and money lenders, through long and heavy mortgages. It's the ideal and non-violent way of draining salaries and earnings from the pockets of families and individuals into the already over-flowing banks.
The skew in the immigration intake towards skilled migrants is accentuating the impact on the housing market. Skilled migrants are typically cashed up when they arrive and quickly add to housing demand. The so-called "skills shortages" is more about luring more people into the housing bubble than any real skills shortages - not with our rising unemployment rates, the trashing of TAFE courses and apprenticeships, and the massive increases predicted by university fees!
With little diversity in our economy, and the mining boom going off the boil, housing has become a real, no-brainer, government money-spinner. Just import people, and they buy into housing! It's easy to recognise a Ponzi scheme!
The costs of population growth are solved by importing more people and thus we end up with an addiction to growth! And, if housing continues to fail, the next step is invite more foreign investors, and keep building apartments and towers to confine the "fillers" who'll need somewhere to live. (ignore the homeless)
Hypocrite Joe Hockey protesting Student Loans in 1987
Recommend watching the video footage linked to below. Apologies if you have already seen it.
This comment has been adapted and turned into the article 1987: Student activist Joe Hockey protests the imposition of student fees that, as Federal Treasurer in 2014, he is INCREASING. 1/6/2014 - Ed
discrimination against Australian unemployed
New Immigration Department statistics reveal just one in three of the work visas granted last year was subject to "labour market testing" to prove no Australian could do the job.
How did they actually prove that "no Australian could do the job"? Yet again, Australians are being discriminated against in our own workforce, in preference to foreigners.
The figures also show half of Australia's migrant workers are recruited onshore, with one in every 20 backpackers last year are receiving a 457 visa to stay working here for four more years.
Under the Abbott government's changes to Newstart many poor unemployed people under 25 will have the choice of starving, begging, crime, or prostitution while they wait six months to be eligible for benefits. At the same time, there are plans to deregulate Universities to charge the fees they want, of up to $120,000 per degree. The odds are increasingly stacked against domestic students gaining skills, and competing with some third world nations that give their young people more access to tertiary education than in Australia.
Monash University demographer Bob Birrell, of the Centre for Population and Urban Research, said the 457 program was increasingly a "back door" for foreign workers desperate to get into Australia's labour market, rather than as a program allowing employers to meet skills vacancies.
The success of Europe's anti-immigration parties must end the rorts happening in our own country and the blatant discriminatory policies against our work force.
GST on real estate sales
The States are crying poor, but real estate is a state domain.
The GST needn't, but has become a "state tax".
How much is stamp duty on real estate sales? Couple of percent?
How much does stamp duty bring in ?
If a GST was charged TO THE SELLER in all residential sales,
then the States could easily double or triple their take. How can we put a figure on it?
99% of house and land sales the owners make big, capital gains tax free profits,
so they can hardly whinge about 10% taken off the cream.
I dont know why real estate keeps booming and booming.
I'm sure it has nothing to do with population and immigration.
Because to say so would be racist!
David Z H.
"Gentle" wildlife habitat destruction
Whitehaven is spending $767 million developing Maules Creek mine in Leard State Forest and is progressively demolishing around 1660 hectares of native woodland to extract coal by early 2015.
Whitehaven's plans include using machinery to shake inhabited trees to "encourage" creatures to leave before "gently" bulldozing and leaving them overnight to allow remaining animals to escape. Species include critically endangered regent honeyeater bird, which the NSW government says faces an "extremely high risk of extinction in NSW in the immediate future" as well as the endangered swift parrot and vulnerable greater long-eared bat.
The EBPC Act, and other policies and laws that protect wildlife, are easily negotiated away to be immune from the power of mining corporations, and easily moveable "Environment" Departments. In the face of economic benefits, and votes, moving the goal-posts of environmental protection and conservation is as easy as manipulating language, and using the correct vocabulary!
Threatened species mine plan delusional
Jonathan Moylan, 26, who was responsible for sending out the fake release which purported to be from ANZ that claimed the bank had withdrawn a$1.2 billion loan to help develop the Maules Creek project, has pleaded guilty! This lesser offence pales into insignificance compared the the broad-acre destruction of significant environmental forest assets. More than 160 activists have been arrested in 2014. Big corporations, and their mega environmental crimes, are protected by our government who can't see the value of forests because of $$$$
Earlier this morning, a 24-year-old woman was reported to be suspended from a platform that attached by cable to some of the threatened trees, preventing bulldozers for Whitehaven Coal from clearing part of the forest for an open-cut coal pit.
A Whitehaven Coal spokesman reiterated: ‘‘Whitehaven offers great value for investors, but we accept that investors will buy and sell shares as they see fit.’’
In a nation famous for extinctions, the destruction of species continues with impunity, and our land is incrementally being emptied of wildlife.
Kelvin Thomson vs Robert Doyle debate scheduled October 13
The debate of the year will be Monday 13th October 2014, in Deakin Edge, Federation Square from 5.30 to 7pm.
We have Mary Drost to thank for this event.
In the mean time, come to the SPA and Victoria First event on June 14th to network and gather information as well as providing your views so that they can be filmed and made a record.
80 Ukrainian soldiers surrender to Lugansk self-defense forces
Vid3e embedded below can aslo be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqxj1OXH4rc
It seems that a number of these soldiers may have been trying to get out of the Kiev-government militia in order to return home to East Ukraine but had been prevented from doing so by the military. The film here shows soldiers in tanks surrendering and being helped out by what appear to be civilians - possibly their families.
Ukrainian soldiers = Kiev government military
Self-defense forces = people in Eastern States attempting to resist Kiev gov military forces. They are anti-government, not necessarily pro-Russia. Note that less than half of the voting population in Ukraine voted in the last election, where people holding anti-Kiev views dared not run.
Western media are not covering this situation accurately. The civil war is backed by NATO, is not spontaneous, and is animated by real fascists in a country with a history of strong support for Nazis in WW2, notably in West Ukraine. Russians fought the Nazis and this forms an historical basis for antipathy between West and East which has been fanned by NATO.
The Impossibility of Growth
I don't like to preach to the converted, but I found this article quite interesting.
http://www.monbiot.com/2014/05/27/the-impossibility-of-growth/
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 28th May 2014
Let us imagine that in 3030BC the total possessions of the people of Egypt filled one cubic metre. Let us propose that these possessions grew by 4.5% a year. How big would that stash have been by the Battle of Actium in 30BC? This is the calculation performed by the investment banker Jeremy Grantham(1).
Go on, take a guess. Ten times the size of the pyramids? All the sand in the Sahara? The Atlantic ocean? The volume of the planet? A little more? It’s 2.5 billion billion solar systems(2). It does not take you long, pondering this outcome, to reach the paradoxical position that salvation lies in collapse.
To succeed is to destroy ourselves. To fail is to destroy ourselves. That is the bind we have created. Ignore if you must climate change, biodiversity collapse, the depletion of water, soil, minerals, oil; even if all these issues were miraculously to vanish, the mathematics of compound growth make continuity impossible.
Ayatollahs’ Insistence on Large Families in Iran
The Iranian policies that have been well regarded by the world community. One rare example, though, was the birth control policy that Iran implemented in the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq War. Until about two years ago, Iranian men who wanted them were provided with free vasectomies as a means of family planning. The policy was actually lauded by family planning advocates, and it helped to keep Iran’s birthrate under two percent and prevented many families from being overburdened by large families in a nation with a legacy of sanctions and a reputation for severe economic mismanagement and corruption.
Today, not only has the policy been revoked, but the leaders of Iran have actually returned to encouraging citizens to have babies at the highest rate possible. Throughout the country, education programs and government facilities have changed to accommodate the renewed conservative outlook on family planning. “We don’t accept less than five,” Ayatollah Mohammad Hosseini Ghazvini said on Velayat TV, encouraging the audience to have “five, eight, 12, and 14” babies, and to reverse the population control trend of the previous three decades. (Iran news update)
Hard to believe US would go out in suicidal blaze
Gee, hadn't thought of them just going all out in a suicidal blaze of remaining fuel. Why would they do that?
Options, I think, are to do with
1. spending remaining fuel on
(a) fighting wars to get whatever of everyone else's the US can lay its hands on
(b) in a final vengeful battle (hadn't even considered that)
(c) relocalising, slowing growth and consolidating remaining resources at home, planning to allow population and production to decline (which would reduce drawdown on fuels and reduce costs of housing and other basics due to declining numbers causing inflation to decline
(c) is the final option in the end after war fuel is spent totally, but can be more or less impoverished
2. having enough fuel remaining to be able to choose (a) or (b) or (c) especially in the light of Russia and its allies having more of the stuff than the US.
I think that the US has poor intelligence. Lots of information perhaps, which it seems unable to analyse capably. The mess it has made out of Ukraine and the ridiculous lies it has spun for public consumption seem to indicate that the capitalist-interest tail wagging the country has kind of taken over from the brains.
Oh, actually, reediting this because I have reconsidered; it is possible that the US could provoke WW3, of course, accidentally. Are you thinking of nuclear weapons? Well, yes, maybe they are stupid enough. They do have enough of those. If anyone uses nuclear bombs then all bets are off.
Avoiding these traps is critical
- avoiding the traps of tweedledum and tweedledee membership, socialist alliance detours, and ANF management facilitation.
Thats mostly why political activity goes nowhere. The standard way of expressing disinterest in a party, is to vote for the other half of the duopoly. LibLab have an arrangement where they compete and alternate, but ensure they remain the only political options. Despite the heated arguments between the two, they are in an alliance to ensure Australia politics remains within their ideological sphere (of which there is a LOT more overlap that most Labor/Liberal supporters would want to admit). They both unite to maintain hegemony when their duopoly is threatened.
The Socialists are also aproblem. They are young people who have free time (due to being at Uni/unemployed/low level public sector positions) who are able to be 'first on the scene' and hijack issues. Because of the time they can commit, they can become the 'face' of any issue they choose for their agenda. Palestine is a classic example. Thier ability to organise rallies for Palestine mean that it is they, not the Palestinians who then control public demonstrations and activists, and can therefore use the cause to further their own.
"Occupy" is another example. The people most hit by financial greed and corporate rule are too busy working as debt slaves.
I disagree with Mark Jones
As I see it, the U.S. is nowhere near as weak - relative to its opponents - as is argued by Mark Jones.
We have more weapons than all of the others combined I suspect. And we have intelligence that is at least as good as anyone else's.
We are, I would agree, an empire in a very steep and irreversible decline. But to think that means that we won't lay waste to any and all enemies in WWIII would IMO be a very big mistake.
Poor Melbourne Rail
Poor old Melbourne just cant do Rail.
Developing Webb Dock for containers but with the freight rail line sold off (thanks Jeff).
Sydney has toilets on all stations. But with 30-min services and no toilets, is it "Worlds Most Livable" for the old and the young to soil our pants with no toilets on Melbourne suburban stations?
Melbourne can't electrify the 40 kms between Werribee and Geelong. Sydney has electric trains to Kiama, 120 kms to the south; to Lithgow 100kms to the west; to Newcastle 200kms to the north; and even 250 kms to Telarah deep in the Hunter Valley to the north-west. The entire 1000 km electric network available to pensioners all-day for only $2.50.
Freight Rail is joke.
Dandenong Line - the busiest - has 9 NINE freight trains a week.
While Corio Geelong has eight railtracks wide, Hastings and Crib Point (selected for development) has a single track. Broad gauge in all cases.
In NSW, rough average of 25 freight trains roar thru Wollongong EVERY DAY. Coal. Steel. Copper. Zinc. Wheat. Starch. Ethanol. Crushed rock for road and rail ballast, cement. diesel and petrol tankers. containers to and fro Port Kembla wharf.
Melbourne spent billions tarting up Spencer St station. Diesels fill the trendy space with pollution, and only 1.5 platforms are standard gauge!
And how quaint, to spend billions building 90km of new rail in the Regional Rail Link using 19th century broad gauge! Isolating rural exporters and the rest of Australia from the Port of Melbourne.
Cars and trucks will go on eating Melbourne. And politicians of all parties will go on lying.
Private interests and 457 policies and inquiry
Hi,
Candobetter.net writers are in general well aware of the forces you describe. Myself I have engaged in independent study to elicit these published as thesis in 2002, called The Growth lobby in Australia and its absence in France. Subsequent work included a 100 page submission to the Productivity Commission on First home ownership, which outlined different housing finance systems in different countries and their history, and described the evolution of these private interests, particularly as the were able to magnify the globalisation of our assets inc real estate with the rise of the internet, from the late 1990s. I have continued to develop this objective inquiry in my current two books: Demography Territory Law: The Rules of animal and human populations and Demography Territory Law 2: Land-Tenure and the Origins of Capitalism in Britain, (due out in next week or so) both published by Countershock Press.
Could you be more specific regarding 'slogans and lobbyist spin'?
Are you referring to a particular article here? If it's about the face on the ad for overseas migrants, please be more specific. Do not be afraid to logically destroy anything we have attempted here. I think we are strong enough to deal with it and admit if we are wrong. We cannot always be right.
However we have articles documenting population policies and trajectories now from 2006, written on many different levels. Candobetter.net is a rare source of continuity in reporting these matters.
On the question of popularising our message, don't forget that the forces that have deconstructed society to better serve their narrow financial interests employ the mass media to popularise their spin. On candobetter.net we don't use 'spin' but we do use pictures and slogans and tags to attract people to critical analysis of what is happening. And we also promote local concerns that won't otherwise get any support. Not all our writers are sophisticated, but we tend to share particular views and values, which coincide with wanting a democratic voice.
I would also say that the deconstruction of Australian society is now to a point where we have already effectively lost sovereignty and independence to oligarchs. Perhaps we can get it back if we organise. Organising a nearly deconstructed society is the biggest problem of all. The mass media is the major organising force but it uses this position to disorganise by inventing majority viewpoints. This nursing petition is a light in the darkness because public servants taking steps to protect themselves indicates that we have reached a critical position. Usually nurses don't venture into wider politics and worry about getting into trouble if they complain about health policies, and rely upon their ineffectual union to do that - which it doesn't, except narrowly. It seems now that a lot of nurses are prepared to stand together at least on this petition. It is now up to others to help those nurses to engage more effectively in alternative Australian politics - avoiding the traps of tweedledum and tweedledee membership, socialist alliance detours, and ANF management facilitation.
Lies and whoppers coming from our government
Living in Australia (according to the recruitment website)
“Australia is officially named the world’s number one nation brand”, according to the Anholt Nation Brands Index (NBI)
Link: http://www.nationbrandindex.com/nbi_q2-australia-press-release.phtml
Australia has topped the charts in tourism, investment and immigration, as well as the most popular nationality. Among the key findings of the Anholt Nation Brands Index are:
Other countries surveyed found Australians the:
•Friendliest
•Most honest and
•Hospitable nationality
•Employers prefer to hire Australians
•Australia is the world’s favourite place to invest and live
• Kevin Rud’s (!)government is seen as trustworthy
Yes, thanks to Kevin Rudd's "big Australia" policy, doors are open wide to foreigners to work here, and despite the "skills shortages" being a blatant lie, the people in Australia are so "friendly", "hospitable" and politically-correct that anyone who's experienced and trained in nursing, and many other professions, can apply to enjoy our lifestyle! This is despite an ABS survey showing that unemployment of migrants is higher than that of Australian-born.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics analysed the employment success of people who were born in a country where English is not the main language. Of those who can speak English proficiently, 47 per cent are in full-time jobs. Of those who can’t, the proportion drops to just 19 per cent.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/small-business/managing/blogs/work-in-progress/...
Unemployment among skilled migrants and their families is 30% higher than for the population as a whole, but those who do have a job are more likely to be in a professional role. At the last census, 7.3 per cent of skilled migrants were unemployed compared with 5.2 per cent of the population as a whole. Just 32 per cent of secondary applicants, family renunions, of working age were employed full-time compared with 68 per cent of so-called ”primary applicants”.
In the past, there was little questioning of our immigration rates, which traditionally in the 1980s and 1990s were lower than now. There were jobs, cheap housing, and Australia was relatively wealthy and blessed with good education and universities were free! Now, it's robbing jobs from Australians, and disadvantaging the existing population. As in Europe, the anti-immigration political parties can only gain swelling support once the public become willing to speak out for their sovereign rights!
Federal Government - The actual 457 Policy and the "inquiry"
Unless you understand the basics of our National policy then it is not possible to understand exactly what is going on.
The key to understanding is this:
The Public Interest is now subjugated to business and private Interests. The
Immigration Department (DIBP) is divesting its responsibility to private sponsors (ie private businesses) with direct
financial interests in the outcomes. (Think fox and hen house).
In effect a major Public policy area has been handed over to private interests – an unprecedented transfer of
power and private wealth making potential. This Public policy divestment has serious negative inter-generational consequences .
Australia's population is projected to increase by about 50% over the next 40 years, (most
of this growth is now based on 457 visa schemes). This implies:
1. A transfer of about 50% of our total National wealth to Foreign Nationals.
2. Great potential for loss of sovereignty and independence.
For these reasons alone, we should be very cautious about the way we proceed.
Serious independent objective inquiry is essential; not slogans and lobbyist spin; it is vital.
If left the problems will become intractable; solutions more difficult.
Nursing recruitment ad
I clicked on the picture in question and read the small print on this ad which says "Welcome to Nursing Careers Australia. A global recruitment firm that specialises in helping overseas nurses work and live in Australia. We will show you how to experience financial freedom , unlimited career opportunities and an exciting life in one of the most beautiful places on Earth" The face on the ad IS the face of this recruitment process. The website goes on to say that Australia has an aging population and nurses are badly needed etc. That's OK if Australian nurses are being employed in Australia but it certainly is not if they are missing out on jobs they trained and qualified for.
Picture of Indian nurses in Australia
This is a real agency ad pitched at Indian nurses. This is a typical situation which needs to be confronted, IMHO. Ads were googled ads for nurses wanting to work in Australia and that was the first one that came up, apart from another which showed about 12 nurses in saris graduating from an Australian course. The point is that people touting for nurses go overseas to towns in densely populated countries where there are English speakers and they sign up a quantity at a time. Is one supposed to pretend that nurses come from everywhere except India? How does one choose a generic kind of nurse-photo that doesn't look as if it comes from anywhere in particular? That's not what the immigration agents and hospital scouts are doing; they are targeting specific populations. Nurses in Australia, of Australian, Indian, or any other foreign origin will recognise this situation. I have been advised by the editor to put a caption under the photo and explain that it comes from a real ad. By the way, do you consider such an advertisement by the original agency that uses it to be racist? More comments on this are welcome.
We don't have skills shortage, just a shortage of leadership
Instead of the skills shortages our politicians say to justify open-doors to free immigration to our country, we are in skills overload! If graduate nurses and the experienced can't get jobs because of immigrants, then they are being bizarrely discriminated against in their own country. The number of 457 workers coming into our workforce is higher than the rate of jobs growth. The only reason that our government would allow this is to push down wages and living conditions.
Up to 3,000 graduate nurses haven’t managed to get jobs in hospitals and unions are blaming a rise in the number of foreign nurses being brought into the country on 457 working visas. There have been reports that China has demanded to be allowed to import workers into Australia for projects funded by Chinese investors as part of the FTA being negotiated between Canberra and Beijing. FTA should be about trading goods and services, not about the one way direction of allowing foreigners have access to jobs created by country. Where are the reciprocal jobs created in China that Australians can apply for?
Migration Council Australia chief executive Carla Wilshire said Chinese workers could already access 457 visas for Australian projects, allowing them to work here if a job could not be filled locally. There was a danger in changing this system, she said.
Read more: Free trade agreement push to import Chinese workers criticised at http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/free-trade-agreeme...
How are we in "short supply" of skills if nurses, and other trades and professions, can't find employment? The "skills shortage" on the contrary is great scam, and if there are any genuine skills shortages, it reflect on our privatisation program and the inadequacy of our technical and academic training schemes.
The image of an Asian nurse should be removed immediately
Whilst the story is perfectly acceptable the image is not. Many people have dedicated an enormous amount of hard work to dealing with the population growth management issue in a humane and politically correct way - as a sustainability issue.
It only takes one hint, regardless of how unintentional that might be, of racist or anti-immigration overtones to degenerate the whole population debate into the kind of xenophobic, racist argument that it must not be.
Please remove this politically incorrect image, and this comment.
Thanks
Obesity is a disease-causing condition
If you are overweight, the probabilities of developing heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure increase significantly. Here are the top 10 obesity-related diseases. There now appears to be a strong link between obesity and pain. Studies show that obese people are much more likely to feel light to intense pain in many parts of the body. Pain is a symptom that is seen in many different diseases and can vary in severity.
A number of associations between obesity and chronic pain have been displayed in previous studies, and therefore it can be expected that the presentation of obese patients with chronic pain will rise in accordance with the prevalence of obesity.
Population size and communities can be pictured as organic systems, interacting and depending on each other. The pain of population obesity is clogging of arteries of roads and freeways, and public transport. Victoria is already showing signs of human overshoot. Hospitals are overcrowded, nurses of facing many threats from patients, fatal mistakes are made, ambulances are not able to cope with the emergencies. There are budget cuts, and housing is unaffordable. Homelessness, crime, unemployment, over-pressure on public services and overload of charities and not for profit organisations. Why exacerbate the problems when they are already overwhelming our leaders and administrators?
Housing growth is seen as "economic growth", and has become an end in itself. We have politicians sitting in comfort, in their seats of privilege and power, checking the economic figures, and seeing "growth". Population growth does increase the GDP, and housing does bring in $millions in revenue, but they fail to see the pressure Victorians are under.
Addiction is the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma. We have leaders enslaved to the economic growth model, in abstraction to the real world.
One way to make our leaders listen?
Here is one approach to democracy. I agree with this person in regard to his statements about corporations and banks, but I don't agree that this is predominately due to one race - as far as I can tell greed and lust for power is equally distributed amongst all races!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDLAUmqp8f4&feature=youtube_gdata_player
If a lot of people started to do this every time they saw a politician then the pollies might start to think about what they want people shouting about them in public. Maybe Abbott and co. think they can hold their heads high? If so, then this shouldn't bother them. If it does bother them, then perhaps they should re-think their actions as that would suggest that their actions are not in accord with their consciences?
Russian or Ukrainian trans for vid please
Interesting record. Sure doesn't look very busy. Is there a time on the video which would indicate the time of day?
I'll put a message out here to try to get someone to tell us about the conversation on the vid.
Video - doesn't look busy
Here is a fairly large facility, with a number of voting booths inside, hardly anyone there though. When the camera goes outside (after being detained for a while) , you can see a vast complex with no-one around:
https://vk.com/?w=wall-40199630_1344527
Matt
My prediction of China
There is a saying which says that China is both overestimated and underestimated. My prediction is that China *may* reach roughly the US level, then peak, and from there, at best, stagnate. If China overtakes the US, it will only be because the USA is on the way down. (ie, China will become the power by default, due to the USA giving it up, rather than through Chinese effort). I remember in the late 80's the same things being said about Japan and China. We just assumed that they would take over everything and continue their rise. Then Japan declined and stayed there.
I'm highly skeptical of China's success. It is a large kleptocracy, reliant of foriegn markets, offshoring of jobs from those markets, manipulation and speculation. Even now, many of the managers of industrial production in China are from the nations the jobs moved from. There are many ethnic groups, and such 'diverse' societies are reliant on success to keep together. Chinese have admitted that part of the push for growth, growth, growth is to maintain social stability. If that growth stalls, the unity ends.
As I mentioned in a previous comment, Westerners just assume that a rising power will take over the world, but this comes from our own internal prejudice, that that is what people who have the power to do so, do.
China will remain dominant in the region, but it is an inwards looking country. Any chinese involvement outside of China will solely be for China to acquire hard resources, and not for 'empire' or 'hegemony'. This will create a situation where a falling Europe and USA are expecting Asia to lead the way, only to be dissapointed as China remains insular and inward looking. More likely we'll enter a political vaccuum with smaller regional powers exercising muscle due to a lack of a controlling superpower.
Don't mention the word "Peace" !
Isn't it ridicuous that the ABC can't talk about population and indeed seem to obscure the facts under a cloak of refugee distraction? Someone told me that the taboo on talking about population (as a concern, not as a growth spruiker) is similar to a taboo that crept in during the 1960s or 70s concerning the Peace Movemement..He told me you could not talk about peace or you would be considerd a communist!
Unrealistic
You talk of developing the center of Australia.
At the moment, we have a couple of hundred thousand people moving to Australia. Where do they go? Mostly to the few cities. Even in Melbourne, competition for space is fierce. Infrastructure cannot keep up. I barely have internet, despite being in an establshed suburb.
Land release is limited to keep prices high. Instead of developing regional towns, our government is pushing subdivision, which puts house prices further up. Real Estate is seen as nothing more than a cash cow, with land being used for speculation and quick sell-offs, instead of national development.
Lets say Tony Abbott tomorrow decided to develop central Australia. What would happen? The same crap as in the cities. Poor infrastructure, crowding (despite the space), more speculation. Those selling the land wouldn't give a rat's ass about developing Australia or its viability, only making a quick buck and getting out. The houses would probably fall apart (as ones in Melbournes west already are). Maybe you could bring in migrants to fill the space. Look how that's worked in Europe.... Or anywhere where there has been mass immigration to bolster numbers....
That's the point of sites like this, I believe. If you want grand visions, you need leadership which can make it happen. Because implementation is just as critical as the idea, and at the moment, we neither have the political or business leadership, nor the support or inclination to make any the implementation successful.
I'm not criticising against the basic idea of solar power (it's reasonable enough), but that as it is now, I can't see our business and political leaders pulling it off. We can't just rely on ideas, we must have the means and will, and ability to implement them.
Our planet's limits can't be ignored
Due to El Nino/La Nina climate factors, drought is a constant possibility in PNG. As a result there have been projects to address changing weather conditions by planting drought-resistant crops and adapting current farming methods to cope with times when less water may be available. Lack of water in Long Island is now being exacerbated by a virus that's killing the island's major food supplies: coconut, banana and pawpaw trees as well as root crops.
1997-1998 the Papua New Guinea government was unable to come to terms with the severity and extent of the drought.
National Agriculture Research Institute (NARI)principal scientist and expert on climate change Dr John Bailey warned that the nation must prepare itself now to meet the threat which could result in the loss of lives. Dr Bailey said that since 1960 droughts in PNG had become more frequent and severe in nature. The latest in 1997 affected millions of people throughout the country with deaths recorded.
The sustainable capacity of PNG ecosystems to continue to support the country’s rural population has come under threat as the country’s rapidly growing population, which has averaged an annual growth rate of 3.5 % over the last 10 years. In rural areas only about 9 per cent of the households have access to piped water.
The cornucopia myth of endless supplies of natural resources, and no limits to growth or Nature's benevolence - when it comes to humans - is a dangerous myth. It assumes that humans can master and re-define the planet's environment, with technology and infrastructure, and treat any open wilderness is a new frontier to conquer, manipulate and the possibilities for growth and prosperity are endless! Stark reality is quite different form ideology.
Perverted Debate = Open Debate
The simple-minded reply from Michael S. invokes the old crotchet of Socratic simple-mindedness in that "the opposite of truth is [merely] error".
Not so, since error is merely corrected by correct information! The opposite of truth is not error but deceit & fraud - and the supposed 'open debate' over population includes deceit & fraud hidden in the presumptions and parameters of such debate. For example, the inviolability of national sovereignty, the belief in the superiority of Anglo-American (read 'Australian') culture are issues that obscure past situations e.g. the dispossession of Aborigines (still ongoing, as exemplified in imprisonment & low life expectancy) and the Anglo-American belief in egalitarian democracy as the fundamental solution to mankind's problems (despite the fact that it operates only under imposed artificial political units).
This latter issue is vital, since PNG bureaucrats in the late 1960s, seeing the disasters that hit newly-independent African countries, were horrified. While Whites tend to regard Black Africa as backward, people in PNG regard Africans as educated since half of PNG didn't know the outside world existed until 1931! Hence the PNG bureaucrats REQUESTED THAT PNG BE MADE ONE OR TWO STATES OF AUSTRALIA. Australia refused, forcing independence on the country in the mid-1970s, since after all, 5,000,000 PNG people could significantly alter the egalitarian democratic political outcomes of Australians generally.
In other words, what you are calling 'open debate' is merely a limited & misdirected debate subject to hidden mostly conventional prejudices which predetermine the ultimate outcome(s).
Developing Renewable Energy in Central Australia
National sovereignty is indeed conditional for every nation in the world! The British merely took Australia from its inhabitants by force, and such a situation may easily be repeated. National sovereignty is being violated by sea-level rise from global warming, classically the flooding of the Sunderbans primarily in Bangladesh, leading people there to consider issues of 'Lebensraum' - i.e. that's why Bangladesh will have the inclination to join in a carve up of Australia once the USA collapses in internal ethnic & class conflict after WW3! Their capacity to do so depends on whether Malaysia, Indonesia etc. - perhaps even PNG - wish to join in! You seem to think the people of those countries are just silly coolies who can be bought off with a few trinkets from the First World! So the "assumptions" I make are quite reasonable in our energy-starved world!
Political ideology is certainly more developed today but political activity always a part of tribal interaction every since mankind broke up into tribes & territories. A population ceiling for Australia is ridiculous when other countries still filled with hungry masses and no hope of reaching a decent standard of living - which as you know leads to a drop in population increase (e.g. Italy).
What proof can you offer that dry Moslem countries would not want massive solar technology covering much of their desert regions? None, since the fat oil-rich sheikhs have not yet considered the problem. There is nothing in the Quran or the Hadiths against solar panels or solar thermal technology!
I am mystified by what your "pragmatic approach" might be - presumably an appeal to parochialism and an all-Australian "tie me kangaroo down sport" sentimentality since the filthy rich are not to be taxed as much as the poor (i.e. you assert that the recent Hockey Budget is fair). And so you yet expect the poor to fight for Australia! Why? You seem to think laissez-faire capitalism will work if combined with population control - despite the fact it means destitution for the poor Australian majority. Hence the answer lies in developing energy & thus food resources in central Australia (with PNG water). Only in this way can we keep up the standard of living here and help Indonesia etc. to raise the standard of living there by substituting for their staple food so that they can use their freed cropland for trees, factories etc. that can raise their standard of living to effective population-control levels.
Resource envy not considered
PNG would be more than happy for Australia to use their water ("grabbing" is your invention), because that nation produces a vast excess of water in the Fly & Kikori Rivers for example. Were they offered say 10 or 20% of the crops produced in Australia by PNG water this would prevent starvation in that country and prepare for a stabilization of population which occurs when the standard of living rises - and this recompense for water usage will be the very reason that PNG's standard of living will rise.
Anonymous does not realize that southern PNG is the wettest place in the world e.g. Mt. Bosavi rains 330 days a year, with 600" a year on the south-east slopes.
You admit we "have scarcities of potable water" and "excessive heat" yet flatly repudiate the solution here i.e. bringing water from PNG. Much water storage here will be replenishment of underground resources, while the ultimate sheer volume of water piped from PNG will have a dividend in the form of increased rainfall. The production of grass & forest from the water will also improve soil fertility & water-holding capacity from increased humus!
Your claim to "address [the world's problems] with intelligence" fails to show a coherent understanding of the situation. Merely moralizing at the poor with a "global family planning program" hasn't worked before & won't work now; e.g. 'freeing' East Timor from Indonesia only gave the Catholic Church a free hand in a new nation had formerly had to import food from the rest of Indonesia.
You forget that moralizing about Australia's dry & global-warming overheated centre as something that should be left alone while billions outside Australia starve will only aggravate the situation further. Population control in Indonesia is for them to decide, we can only assist, but ignoring Australia's vast centre as an energy source & irrigated cropland is ultimately not something HUNGRY others are going to tolerate in the face of your family planning moralizing.
France's Sarkozy calls end of Schengen
Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has called for the end of Europe's visa-free Schengen area and the creation of a Franco-German economic bloc at the heart of the eurozone. European Union migration policy has failed and Schengen I needs to be replaced, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy says.
Schengen encourages the free movement of people and goods. The Schengen area comprises 26 European countries that have abolished passport or any other type of border control in-between their common borders.
For more, see France's Sarkozy calls end of Schengen (22/5/2014) on Sky News at http://www.skynews.com.au/news/world/europe/2014/05/22/france-s-sarkozy-...
Schengen cooperation enhances this freedom by enabling citizens to cross internal borders without being subjected to border checks. The border-free Schengen Area guarantees free movement to more than 400 million EU citizens, as well as to many non-EU nationals, businessmen, tourists or other persons legally present on the EU territory.
Sarkozy said that without a quick fix in coming years France's social system could break up. "Europe is not meant to organise social and migratory dumping, almost systematically at the expense of France," he warned. EU’s Economic and Financial Affairs Council approved the adoption of a resolution to eliminate the visa requirements for Perú and Colombia.
He says that "Europe migration policy has failed and the need to replace Schengen I has become obvious, he added, as the current system allows immigrants who enter it to “choose the (European) country with the most generous welfare system”.
Pragmatism, not ideology is what we need
The idea of a "right of invasion" is interesting. Are you suggesting that national sovreignty is subject to conditions? That a nation has the 'right', if it is in its best interest to do so? You could justify every invasion this manner. Germans needed living space they could better utilise than the Russians......
But what strikes me odd, is the idea that Bangladesh, or the Phillipines would invade Australia. They neither have the inclination, nor capacity to do so. What would make one thing they would? This view comes from a world model based on assumptions, than observation.
The idea of not having a ceiling on population, or not stopping mass growth through importing of people seems to work, on paper, and only on paper.
In fact, if you just look at numbers, the Liberals recent budget is fair. After all if someone is poor, why don't they just do 5 years of law school? Even with the new HECS arrangements, the additional income from being a lawyer will cover the cost! If they don't do it, it must be their choice and failing. I've done the numbers, it works. What could I be missing. Hmm....
Of course, in reality this is subject to ability and job availablity. Its easy for a technocrat to first assume everything works according to a model, and show how the process works and is profitable. But things don't works according to models, never do, and it is critical, utterly critical to account for this.
This is perhaps the difference between growth optimists of the past century and hard headed realists. Growth optimists make assumptions, and based on these assumptions, the numbers make sense. But the assumptions are wrong, or subject to conditions, or ignores exceptions and good governance MUST take these into account. I'm not sure what you're thinking, but your view of the world is based on a model which defies what actually happens. This has been a common mistake in all of the failed, barbourous ideologies of the 19th and 20th century..
Political ideology is a relatively recent phenomenon, existing after the French Revolution. This system of politics is that ideas, ideology, or what ones internal model is, is what should direct policy and governance. So if in your model of the world, things work neatly according to assumptions, and every country is the same, and you can put solar panels in the Middle East without worrying about the religious and political problems, then you'll work according to that model.
The probem is, it doesn't accord with reality.
The future, which is actually a return to the past, before "poltical ideology" took off, will be based on a more pragmatic approach. Our solutions and proposals are no longer based on ideals, which ignore that we cant explain (but do observe), ignore that which is not "PC" or just inconvienient and assume a model based on how we like the world to be, but based on how things are, discovered through observation and hard headed realism. Subtle differences will be recognised as critically important, as they often are.
This is what we need more than anything. Materially, we are well off. But what we don't have, and what there is MOST a need for, is a better approach to politics. Politics based on hard headed realism, taking into account inconvienent and non-PC/heretical facts, taking into account limitations and based on acceptance of how things are, the truth, rather than how we think things should be. The population ceiling isn't based on ideology, it is based on observation. It is those who push for growth, going against the natural inclination, who are bending Australia to ideology.
How we treat animals reflects on our society
What a disgrace and a dark reflection of the misery and pain humans can inflict on another sentient species - for profits and gain! The limits of our humanity are reflected on what we eat on our plates, and the "safety" of all the products we use, and consume, in cosmetics and medicine. That our "health" must depend on the misery of deprivation of using other animals as lab rats is deplorable and horrendous.
The lack of empathy with animals marks us out as a cruel species. While carnivorous animals hunt,and consume their prey, they don't trap, enslave and imprison them, but despatch them quickly, usually, and consume them. It's part of Nature, but keeping beagles or any animals in cages, to endure "experiments", is unthinkable and callous. No wonder there are wars, executions, torture, murders, violence, evil, crime, destruction and pain in the world. People don't seem to know their boundaries and think that anything and everything that co-exists, even our "best friends", are resources to plunder, imprison and kill at their whim.
Human over population is not evitable
What right of conquest do other neighbouring nations have over Australia? None at all. Australia is still a sovereignty, besides recent efforts to privatise public assets and globalise our industries, land, housing, population and natural resources. While there were great patterns of human migration in the past, these are not sustainable or desirable for the long term. Our futures hang in the balance, on a dying planet. We have over-population, scarcities of potable water, food, arable land, species extinctions, ecological destruction, and "peaks" of just about everything - including energy sources.
PNG's water resources are their sovereign right to manage, and preserve, for vital biodiversity, climatic and ecological functions. We can't just grab what's not ours, and the cost of piping water would be inefficient and can't be justified.
Even with water, Australia has ancient poor soils, and excessive heat. Evaporation would prohibit mass water storage. We can't just manipulate landscapes and wreck what's there, for anthropocentric greed.
It's foolish to imagine that Australia's population explosion is inevitable, and will happen either by "projecting" our growth through mass immigration, or by foreign invasion!
What is needed urgently is a global family planning program, to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and encourage sustainable population sizes world-wide. If there are problems in our world, the solution to them is to address them with intelligence, and policies, not simply admit defeat and accept a laissez faire attitude that we can't stop aggressive human fertility and destructive over population.
"Contest of ideas" harmful?
This is at odds with the recent plea made by Mark Scott (ABC CEO). He wants open debate. The problem is that he and the rest of the ABC don't practice what they preach. Your opinion is welcome, as are all opinions. That is what open debate is all about. It's how we see the wood from the trees. It's how rational conclusions are developed. It's analytical by definition.
My entire blog is dedicated to the fact that the ABC's treatment of the most important public policy issue facing Australia today is to bury it rather than openly debate it.
I won't elaborate on what might be incoherent about your comment as that is secondary to the flaws in your "suppression of information is good for us" theme.
National population ceiling debate harmful
No ceiling can yet be made upon Australia's population. Rather, we have to develop energy sources here in order to create an economy powered either by renewables or with new technology. Attempts to prevent refugees fleeing here create hostility from other nations so are extremely counterproductive long term.
Australia occupies a vast sunny area of land - so if Australia does not develop this resource other countries will e.g. Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines & Bangladesh whose RIGHT OF INVASION & CONQUEST of this country will derive not only from the increasing immiseration of Aborigines & certain recent immigrant groups to here (however hypocritical of Indonesia given its present treatment of West Papuans) but primarily from the West's draining of other countries' energy sources and attacks on & repeated interference in Moslem countries.
The point is that New Guinea has a vast river output - greater than the Congo River - and that much of this water could be used to irrigate vast regions of Australia to produce both food & fuel. Massive solar electricity production here would enable this water to be piped from PNG to reverse and mollify climate change effects here e.g. the catastrophic drop in rainfall in South West WA by irrigating the wheatbelt. Clearly, for Australia to achieve this alone will require a massive workforce, greater than today's.
The answer is not: 'we Australians forbid this & want to put a ceiling on this country's population' but 'how and who is going to bring much-needed water to Australia's parched inland to grow food & massive afforestation to soak up excess CO2', especially as future fracking will soon destroy much of our underground water supply. The further point is that solar technology here will also be applied in many Moslem countries which share our desert climate, IN THEORY ultimately converting them into energy powerhouses as well.
Lacking energy, the USA & Europe will soon be looking enviously upon such deserts (e.g. Sahara, Arabia), so if we sit around and moralize about a ceiling Australian population, the West's solar-energy land seizures in Moslem countries & Africa will only provoke WW3. Post-WW3, you can bet that Australia's fate will be guaranteed NOT to be decided by its comparatively small (and decidedly ageing) present population!
The go-go capitalist types will only wreck the environment further while the population-ceiling moralizers will only stymie Australia's economy & environment while angering our poor neighbors. For this reason a ‘focus-group type’ debate on a population ceiling is the wrong question and the petition should be repudiated!
Liberal MP George Christensen tells budget complainers
Unhappy about cuts to health, education or pensions in the Abbott government's budget? You should get some perspective and visit Asia before you complain, according to a government backbencher. “Aussies should do a tour of Asia & live like locals to put these 1st world complaints re budget in perspective,” he wrote.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/liberal-mp-george-...
Most of us are aware of the poverty and overpopulation in many countries, now, and that's actually what we want to avoid! From being one of the wealthiest countries in the world, for decades after the war, we are now under the pressure from "the Asian Century" to accept lower living standards, lower pay, high rates of poverty, unemployment, homelessness and masses of people!
It's formula that's welcomed by big corporations and the wealthy elite. We become a human resource, that's compliable, silent, impoverished and denied of democratic rights and ownership of land.
Welfare safety-nets are being removed, and people are being disconnected and cut free from the economy. Pensioners, the unemployed, the uneducated, the homeless and the dispossessed are a fund of wealth for the elite - to exploit and use cheaply with little investment needed.
The attack on universities, and the globalisation of our land, housing, industries, infrastructure etc is making us slaves to the Ponzi growth being forced into Australians. Eventually we will feel grateful for any crumbs future governments have the grace and charity to give us - and be grateful! Welcome to the "Asian Century" were we import of the worst of Asia. Their wealthy can buy citizenship to Australia, but there's few opportunities likewise being offered to Australians.
Melbourne's growth out of control!
Melbourne's population is expected to grow to 7.7 million by 2051 – 1.2 million more than the state government said it would just seven months ago.
The city's population tipped to grow to 6.5 million, up from 4.25 million. The mistake threw out figures on jobs, homes and transport needs into the future.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/plan-melbourne-blueprint-reveals-huge-...
The pressing need for services, housing, infrastructure is breaking budgets, and putting everything in Melbourne under the pressure cooker. Homelessness, crime, and costs of living are spiralling out of control. With the budget cutbacks to the States, there will be less revenue for schools and health care.
Immigration is shaping up to be an election issue in New Zealand. The OECD has found New Zealand has the most over-priced housing in the Western world. This confirms what Kiwis already know: property speculators and mortgage restrictions are locking them out of the dream of home ownership.
New Zealand’s main opposition Labour party indicated it may curb immigration to ease pressure on housing and health as it prepares for elections in September. New Zealand’s net permanent immigration reached 31,914 in the year through March, the highest level in 11 years, government data showed April 23. Labour leader David Cunliffe told TV3’s the Nation on May 17. He noted that his party aimed for an annual intake of 5000-15,000 immigrants when in office.
When is the pressure from overloaded services, housing prices and environmental pressure going to force Australian Labor to do the same as their counterparts in New Zealand?
Coal Seam Gas - averting a 'civil' war' in the Northern Rivers
So there is some common-sense in government after all:
NSW rescinds CSG mining licence
"We are suspending operations of the well at Bentley because of failures to comply with certain conditions," Anthony Roberts told 7News this morning.
[...]
The minister's overnight suspension of the company's drilling has effectually stopped what was shaping up to be a 'civil war' among thousands of community members and more than 800 police officers, including the riot squad at the drilling site known as the Bentley blockade."
But the licence is only suspended - so the fight might still go on.
No other economic model being suggested
Despite the tough budget, Australia will welcome over 190.000 new "skilled" migrants, plus family reunions, in the next 12 months, at a time when many skilled unemployed have no jobs! There's no cut in net migration numbers, or temporary visa holders with rights to work in Australia.
What's completely at odds is the crisis of joblessness for young people.
From January, all unemployed aged under 30 will be forced to wait for six months before receiving Newstart Allowance. Young people will be punished brutally, and denied a financial safety-net.
If there's such a high rate of unemployment we don't have any skills shortages, but a shortage of jobs, and training and educational facilities!
Surely if a growing family is finding that the costs of maintaining additional family members, and paying the bills, is causing debt and pressure on living standards, it's time for some family planning! Endless growth can't be maintained, especially on a scenario of budget cuts and rising unemployment. Growth means thinning out and spreading the benefits more thinly.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Characteristics of Recent Migrants survey 2013 found much higher unemployment rates – 8.5 per cent – among recent migrants than in the Australian-born population. A significant number of skilled migrants are unable to find work.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten's attack on the Budget was inspiring, but neither the government or Opposition have considered another economic model, other than perpetual "growth", to avoid further debt or unemployment. It's "business as usual" of propping up the Ponzi pyramid of ever growing economic-growth, and the inherent costs of maintaining it, towards "big Australia".
Is opting out still an option?
Back in the 70s and 80s people used to opt out of society becoming hippies in places like Nimbin. This was a real alternative in Australia if you could acquire or rent some land, achieve some self sufficiency in food and not participate in the consumer society. I wonder if this is till possible. I have a terrble feeling that somehow you would still get caught in the net of capitalism when you open the envelope and read the letter telling you that your land, planted with this winter's food was required for fracking for coal seam gas. There goes your peace and quiet, there goes your self sufficiency!
Australia's power elite don't intend to rescue us from poverty
Hi Nimby,
Thank you for your continuing comments on candobetter.net.
What is really scary is that the governments at all levels are probably well aware that they are juggernauting us into 'third world' overpopulation and impoverishment. They are doing it as an economic strategy to benefit a small number of people who derive income from investment in assets and resources. They are well aware that mass immigration-fed population growth is swamping our hospitals and primary care systems. They understand that the compensation that GPs now receive per patient is insufficient for them to do a proper job.
They do not care that our health services are increasingly dysfunctional. They are obviously making them more and more dysfunctional, whilst throwing money at their own 'class' to build unwanted infrastructure and to prop up banks.
Because 'good people' believe that their governments could not be so cynical, the politically empowered can get away with empty rhetoric about 'fixing' the problems.
The fact that politicians and those employed by them in the public sector continue to market and support this situation as if it were 'economic growth for the good of all' in the face of manifest contradictions is merely part of a filibustering dialogue of the deaf.
The politically empowered manage in this way to engage the energies of people who, whilst aware that there are big problems, just cannot believe that the people in power are as cynical as they are, in utterly wasteful dialogues with mass media and politicians, plus attempts to go through official processes, like the courts.
Then there is a whole layer of young people who derive their incomes from facilitating these corrupt processes - in legal professions, as reporters, as supports for politicians, as doctors and nurses. They do not dare to engage politically for fear of losing their jobs even at the level of writing on blogs or to newspapers. These people cannot afford to dismantle the system that gives them bread and butter.
Then so many other young people are living hand to mouth in substandard accommodation and putting up with severely stressful situations in boring and scammy jobs, bullied from morning to night, supplementing poor wages with the black economy or jumping through ridiculous hoops to get the dole. One can see that we are reaching a point where figures for unemployment will decline as more people resign themselves to surviving through buying and selling illegal drugs, pimping and prostituting, and other forms of crime - in the black economy. This is yet another sign that we are currently going through a very serious social transformation into a deeply divided society like those of the Philippines and South America under the domination of US-NATO imperialism. I know that sounds very dramatic, but it has already happened to so many countries; you would have to be naive to think it was not happening here. However, given our education system, it is more or less inevitable that most people will not understand these processes which have been historically documented for ages. That too is a product of the reduction of a deep education process into a shallow 'skills acquisition' one. Without education in the humanities - philosophy, political science, literature and history - most people have little hope of understanding their predicament. It was the recovery of the classical humanities and sciences that assisted people to rise above religious fundamentalism in the Renaissance. (Although, at the same time, there was a rise in colonialism and the slave trade.)
I admit that we do still have large quantities of people who do desperately try to help their compatriots through charitable and state intervention. How long can this last when every grass-roots organisation is weakened through the exhaustion of activists who must counter debt, high rents, and survive through long working longer hours, with no hope of pensions or respite? Without sufficient 'leisure' people cannot usefully engage politically or educate themselves beyond mere [transient] commercial 'vocation'.
Don't think that I have given up, but I know that this battle is much harder than it appears to people when they first start out.
It is certainly important for us to maintain sound knowledge bases on the internet as part of our combat against rising global feudalism and the transformation of citizens into 'customers' and indentured servants.
As Joseph Tainter concludes, in The Collapse of Complex Societies, it seems that eventually people break away from repressive and corrupt governments simply by going around them, building their own informal [black and/or cooperative] economies.
It is ironic that we all try to defend our rights as citizens of nations when those nations themselves were bitterly resisted by more localised powers. See Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communites, Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. But citizens of nations, if they have a code, as do the European nations (the code began in France and was a product of the revolution, even though it was Napoleon who had it written down) have rights and institutions to defend those rights.
Globalisation is a terrifying force. Bitcoin may be a part of the solution. I am trying to understand it. Here is an interview on the subject with Roger Ver, Bitcoin entrepreneur.
Once again, thank you for continuing to contribute.
Budget blow to Victoria - East West link should be scrapped
Victoria has been whacked with a $20 billion funding shortfall for its schools and hospitals in the federal budget, which Premier Denis Napthine has described as a “severe blow”.
The Federal Budget papers indicate there will be an $80 billion reduction in spending for hospitals and schools over the next decade. With cuts to State governments, the funding for hospitals and schools is in doubt.
The total cost to Victoria would be $20 billion over the next decade, and Premier Napthine was angry it came after his government increased funding to hospitals and schools.
If Victoria received the GST it paid the state would be $1.5 billion better off every year and could use the extra money to fill the funding gaps the Abbott government created. Already Victoria's hospitals and schools have suffered from overloading and population pressure, and now they will be worse off - exacerbated by a slash in Federal funding. The rampant rates of population growth our governments boast about, and self-congratulate themselves on, has not brought the promised prosperity, and has increased welfare spending on Newstart due to high rates of unemployment and poverty. Patient demand for public hospital services is increasing, as would be expected given that the population of Melbourne continues to increase by 1,000 each week, and the established population is ageing.
There is no apparent growth in employment opportunities anywhere. Swelling populations together will cuts to hospital funding is a recipe for disaster. Third world rates of population growth ultimately mean third world problems!
With such pressures on costs of living, and service standards, it's madness to continue with the East West link. The public want access to good public transport, education, training, health care, ambulances and health care. The East West link is about caving into the road lobby, not a need.
Official observers declined invite to East Ukraine referendums
It was reported on RT that official observers had been invited to monitor the referendums in East Ukraine, but that the invitation had been refused. I cannot find the reference easily, unfortunately. Closest I can get is a very biased representation by Kyiv Post which reports:
"There will be no international observers present at any of the more than 1,400 polling stations in Luhansk Oblast or 1,500 in Donetsk Oblast, according to the separatists’ head election official Roman Liahin, a 33-year-old former Party of Regions advisor."and then admits:
"But he encouraged “anyone who wants to observe the referendum can do so.”Anyone able to provide more detail, please post here.
UKIP
UKIP is a party that’s dismissed as racist, xenophobic and a bit loony by London sophisticates suddenly is steering the national debate with its calls for Britain to close down borders and leave the European Union.
The party’s message has resonated particularly well in struggling small towns and decaying industrial centers, where any benefits of a recovering economy are scarcely felt. Mainstream politicians are seen as out of touch with constituents furious over a massive influx of foreign workers into the UK. Overall, the data showed there had been an increase of 292,000 foreign workers in the last year, 168,000 of them from the EU, UKIP said.
The party has traditionally done well in European elections, which are held every five years to select the 751 members of the European Parliament.
UKIP, which advocates controlled immigration and a British exit from the European Union, has come under mounting pressure from other parties and local media which have criticised outspoken comments by some of its candidates.
The UK's Coalition government has promised to reduce net annual immigration to below 100,000 by 2015. Opinion polls show that a majority of the UK population believes that immigration is too high. The latest figures showed that, in the year to September 2013, the net immigration figure is back above 200,000. Experts predict that the figure may well climb back up to 2010 levels making Mr Cameron 'a failure' on immigration.
The criticism of racism has done little to dampen enthusiasm for the party, and indeed may be feeding it by confirming for many alienated Brits that the elites are out of touch.
Immigration to remain the same
Despite all the budget cut-backs, and slashing of public welfare, services and pensions, "skilled" immigration will continue for the next 12 months as normal! Despite the crisis of youth unemployment, and job losses, we must have skilled migrants to meet our needs now, and for the future!
University degrees will cost up to three times as much under a deregulated fee system, leaving graduates with $120,000-plus debts, according to the architect of the HECS student loan scheme. The Federal government announced that after 2016, universities could set their own fees, and interest rates on loans would increase. Fees could go up to the level that international students pay. How is our country really investing in our young people, tomorrow's workers and leaders? Why remove the "red tape" that prevented employers of bringing in as many 457 visa holders as they like?
With policies hostile to young people, against them studying, getting training, jobs, homes or a future, it's all too easy to cop out and claim "skills shortages" and employ foreigners!
Not only pensioners are being unfairly burdened, but never has a generation of Australians been more short-changed or betrayed by a government!
Despite the horror budget, and the dilution of the benefits our ailing economy will bring, population growth will continue as usual.
The Age of Entitlement is over, apparently, but so is the Age of logic and rationality - and giving people are "fair go"!
Vermont's use of GPI instead of GDP shows growth stopped in 1978
“One cannot complete this discussion without some mention of the real shortcomings associated with the use of GDP as the key indicator of economic progress. GDP measures everything and nothing that matters. It counts as positive the costs of automobile accidents, divorce, treating type II diabetes and any other negative welfare event that requires expenditure to correct. It does not recognize enormous disparities in wealth and income and it absolutely loves inefficient economic activities—the more money that needs to be spent to deliver the same outcome the better. Despite these obvious deficiencies both governments and the market place enormous value on this perverse metric.
In the last two years, the U.S. State of Vermont has decided to stop using GDP as an economic measure and replaced it with a new standard known as the Genuine Progress Indicator or simply GPI. The Governor then ordered the State’s economic data to be revised back to 1950 using GPI instead of GDP. The result is absolutely shocking—the State of Vermont announced it stopped growing in 1978. The State of Maryland has passed similar legislation and 7 other States are considering doing the same. Using the same approach and applying the GPI to 17 of the G20 countries, a group of ecological economists reached the same conclusion last year—all of these large economies stopped growing decades ago”.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/de-carbonizing-for-growth/5436190
Let people have a choice
Most 30 year olds are healthy and energetic. Some 69 year olds are also. Some 69 year olds feel energetic some of the time. With a “work till 70” regime the imperative to attend work punctually and daily may be too much for many 69 year olds who can otherwise manage many activities including voluntary work but on their own terms. It is obvious that debilitating health issues arise as people get older but people generally pace themselves and their level of energy is their own private business. With a full time job, any health issue will become much more stressful requiring medial certificates etc. as well as the anxiety about losing the job.
A humane approach is to give people the choice. People vary and some are more fortunate with their health than others. My grandfather worked till he was 77 when an illness caught up with him and took him off. He did not have to work but enjoyed it. It was his choice.
But what I have written is really academic as employers will not in general choose older workers especially when there are probably approaching a million people unemployed in Australia but not all of them in the statistics. The older people generally will not be working, but neither will they have the pension. They will be on some precarious and inadequate payment like “New Start and will not be able to plan what should have been the early part of their retirement. Since productivity is the name of the game , they will as a consequence be less productive in the area of volunteering as this often carries a financial cost and they won’t be able to afford it. Furthermore they might even have to go off and attend futile job interviews to keep up appearances.
I think it is time that people were valued for more than their market price and productivity in the workforce. Older people are not all wise but they do have a long term perspective and should be seen as a resource,. They can give first had accounts about the past beyond our own lifetimes. This is of value to all of us.
Wildlife seminar this Sunday, Kindness House Fitzroy Melbourne
YOUR INVITATION SEMINAR
Combining Forces to save Kangaroos in Victoria
Sunday May 18th @ 1pm
Kindness House 2nd Floor, 288 Brunswick St, Fitzroy
Individually, we are one drop.
Together, we are an ocean.
Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.
Did you ever wonder why some of us can be so
concerned with animals suffering? Because government is
not. Why not? Animals don’t vote.
What The Seminar Is About
This is not a seminar where a cast of thousands will talk at you, it will be an open forum where we want you to feel free to express your thoughts, feelings, ideas, problem solving abilities, any research
you have done and just about anything else you can contribute.
The Aim
To establish an umbrella group working together toward a common goal.
The animal laws, are complex and so to give you a rudimentary understanding of these laws our
guest speaker will be:
Anastasia Smietanka, National Co-ordinator Barristers Animal Welfare Panel (BAWP)
Kangaroos killed under an Authority To Control Wildlife (ATCW) permit, for pet food.
* No source of true numbers killed.
* No monitoring.
* No reporting of how many in-pouch, at-foot, females or males are killed.
* No public consultation.
Aerial Baiting of Wild Dogs.
*1080 poison the most cruel, painful and distressing death.
* The staggering amount of collateral damage to wildlife from1080 poison .
R.S.V.P. by 14 May 2014 to Cienwen Hickey [email protected]
If you have questions please call (03) 51548581
When challenging Governments remember what Mahatma Gandhi said:
First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they get angry
THEN YOU WIN !
AWPC website: more info
The Gulf states planning a post-oil economy - not Australia!
The world now consumes 85 million barrels of oil per day, or 40,000 gallons per second, and demand is growing exponentially.
Oil production in 33 out of 48 out countries has now peaked, including Kuwait, Russia and Mexico.
A report by Citigroup says Gulf kingdom consumes a lot of its own major export and may have no oil exports in 18 years. Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, could become an oil importer by 2030. It also consumes 25% of its production. Energy consumption per capita exceeds that of most industrial nations.
Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and violence in eastern Ukraine have rattled oil markets, keeping benchmark Brent futures near $108 a barrel after hitting $112.39 on March 3, the highest this year.
Saudi is faced with such a severe natural gas shortage that half of its electricity production now comes from oil. The critical question that dominated the minds of more than 450 Arab scientists who met for the first conference of Arab expatriate scientists was how citizens in the Gulf region could maintain sustainable development when their natural wealth of oil and gas runs out.
Saudi has recently undertaken a remarkably ambitious and expensive plan – to become a world leader in technology and innovation by kicking its oil habit, shifting away from decades of single-commodity dependency and moving towards a knowledge-based economy by 2025.
Graduate and PhD students at Kaust’s New Ventures programme are given both encouragement and financing to find solutions to pressing problems such as water treatment and renewable energy.
Shaikha Mouzah Bint Nasser Al Missned, wife of the Emir of Qatar, on Thursday urged Arab scientists in Doha to put trust in her vision and help her develop Qatar into a knowledge-based society.
Meanwhile, here is Australia, we are almost completely dependent on imported oil - yet our governments are still in the growth and road stages of future-ignorance. Australia is the ninth largest energy producer in the world but would run out of petrol in just three weeks if imports were interrupted. A new report claims Australia's fuel supply is a national security issue and urges the government to save the oil refining industry. Our governments are building road, tunnels, bridges and supply chains based on petrol and oil, and "growth" in the economy based on a cornucopia dream of endless energy supplies.
Australia's Fuel Security, commissioned by the NRMA last year, found that Australia imports 91 per cent of its fuel, up from around 60 per cent in 2000. Twenty-eight per cent of the refining industry is set to close by the end of this year, according to retired Air Vice Marshal John Blackburn. The former deputy head of the RAAF also accused previous reviews of energy security of being purely economic.
'This is a national security, a national survival issue in the longer term,' he said. No-one's looked at the vulnerability of our supply chains. We are locked into growth, of populations expanding, and being more reliant on petrol and fuels, without a plan B!
Fuel Security: Australia
If you can be settled, illegal immigration becomes a game
It's a matter of treaters borders as a law, or as a game.
If people can cross illegally, and be settled, or otherwise 'make it', then the border is not a law, it is a risk, part of a game. In the USA they are considering amnesty for illegal immigrants. The USA border is therefore no longer is anything legal, it is merely a place where people play hide and seek. You may win, you may lose and get to try again, but its no longer law, its just a game, a competition.
Likewise in Europe, national borders are merely a game to play a competition.
Migrants are left to warn other potential migrants - don't come!
There has been a surge in the number of migrants reaching Italy's southern coast in the last few months. Yet the issue of clandestine immigration has been relatively absent from the campaign debate ahead of the European elections.
New leader of National League party, Matteo Salvini, has called for suspension of the Italian Navy operation that rescues migrants in the Mediterranean. It's rather obvious one would have thought, but Mr Salvini says the rescue operation encourages migrants to come to Italy. The return to the party's anti-immigration roots could prove a skilful move, reaching some voters who see migrant arrivals as a threat.
Now the tables have turned, and even some of the migrants are warning others not to come to Italy! The life-rafts are full, and the benefits are few.
The empty-handed migrants returning to their countries, and the blocking of the boats, would be a more effective way of getting the message across!
Some of the migrants in Italy, speaking their own languages, took part in a video published online that got Italy talking this week.
"This country is in a serious crisis, and it affects migrants too," says Roshan from Sri Lanka, with a stern face. "To be an illegal migrant in Italy is to face hunger and desperation," adds a migrant from Pakistan.
The video was produced as part of the European election campaign of a candidate for the right-wing, anti-immigration Northern League (Lega Nord).
BBC news: Migrants tell migrants - "Don't come to Italy"
Of course, with any debate about immigration being quashed by political correctness and the vilifying of any "anti-immigration" debate, the message won't get overseas, and the arrivals will come thinking there will be opportunities, jobs and housing!
Only arrivals with valid visas should be entering any country. Overpopulation brings poverty, crises, and conflicts. The historic migration of the past meant that the poor, the dis empowered, and those afflicted by war, discrimination, oppression, were able to start a "new life" of better opportunities and freedom in a new country. The planet is full, and it's now a romantic fantasy, something from history books.
There are no new lands to conquer, and develop, on pure ideals of democracy and opportunity any more!
Ukrainian 'gov' shooting unarmed protesters, firing buildings
Latest Russian reports allow viewers to document what is happening:
http://www.rt.com/bulletin-board/157876-rtnews-may-10msk/
This is the side that the US/NATO/Australia is supporting.
Note 'special troops' launched to deal with citizens' protests.
Citizens were marching at a day of commemoration of 2nd World War when they heard that their self-defense people were under attack. The crowd rushed from the parade to their aid and Kiev militia shot to kill - unarmed citizens.
The US foreign affairs woman mis-represented what was happening as Kiev putting down violence initiated by the townspeople of Mariupol, but it was tanks against little old people and unarmed citizens and someone had set fire to the building where the self-defence forces had occupied. Even an unarmed camera man for a news crew was shot in the stomach by Kiev snipers it seems.
Nazism: History is repeating itself in Ukraine - VIDEO
Video, embedded below, was previously pubished by Tony Cartalucci on the Land Destroyer Report (http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com). It commences with the quote from Spanish philospoher, George Santayana
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"
See other articles published or republished on candobetter about Ukraine: Close your eyes if you still dare: US support of violent neo-Nazis in Ukraine - Video documentary (5/5/2014), Australian press actively covering up Kiev-Odessa war-crime? (5/5/2014), About Ukraine (5/5/2014), Video: Brave Ukranian residents chase NATO-backed tanks out of Kramatorsk (4/5/2014), Video: Odessa Massacre - See full reporting instead of ABC/SBS censored versions (5/5/2014), Poland's ruling elites side with United States and neo-nazis against Ukraine and Russia (27/4/2014), Why are we war-mongering in Ukraine and nearby? (19/4/2014), President Yanukovich: Illegitimate rulers of Ukraine to face trial for coup against elected government (15/4/2014), Syrian Girl raises standard of reporting on Ukraine, introduces Ukrainian Girl (26/3/2014), Who is in charge in Ukraine today? (25/3/2014), The Syrian Girl: "Regime change" in Ukraine and Venezuela (4/3/2014), Pro-United-States coup in Ukraine (25/2/2014).
See also: Global Research, Voltaire Net, Land Destroyer, Voice of Russia, PressTV, Paul Craig Roberts, ...
Response to ethical issues re environment, pop, state
I have read your article, "Environment, population and the state – ethical considerations - by Jill Quirk" and noted down some thoughts more or less at random as I went along. If they are of any use in the future please use them. I don't feel any need to have them acknowledged.
This is in no way a criticism of your speech – I just wanted to send my thoughts as I read it for what they are worth.
"So ethics is to do with acting in right and wrong ways – which is usually a decision to be made with respect to others, how we treat them and how we affect them. I will say that at the its most minimal it is about not doing harm or causing suffering and at its most elevated, it is about doing good for others and improving a situation for them or righting a wrong if it is within our powers."I like to think of it as being useful to others.
"The furthest habitable continent, a largely arid and infertile place now called Australia was at this time, home to up to 3 million people (The Australian Aborigines) and had been for between 40-60 thousand years."I do not believe in mass murder for purposes of self enrichment, but that's what was done. I have a book that says "it's best forgotten". I don’t agree.
"Australia’s rapid population growth is very much influenced by government policies, especially immigration. 60% of Australia’s population growth is from this source."The reasons are because: 1. An increasing population keeps wages down due to competition for jobs. Business owners can therefore manufacture goods more cheaply in bulk and make greater profits. To accomplish this, a continuously created excess of potential workers is required. 2. Employees who try to claim a more equitable share of the profits can be more easily dismissed if there is maximum competition for jobs due to unnatural population growth. Unions can be rendered powerless more easily. 3. Business owners make more profits from selling their wares because an increasing population means there are more people to buy them. Notice that it is always big business people who are in the media claiming that population increase is needed for economic growth. Well the only thing that grows is their wealth. Their only true aim is personal enrichment.
"In Australia, it seems that the citizens’ sphere of influence is small."It is by now non-existent in all Western societies. They whole system has become fraudulent. Media items about politics, economics, war, population and related topics are propaganda. People vote for those who are presented to them by the media. I do not. Here is one article I received today - there are many others online of varying qualities:
"wild life".Most humans fail to understand that they are part of nature. Many think their food comes from a supermarket! The world's religions have failed to convince some political leaders that "Thou shalt not kill".
"No sane, sensitive person would want to leave a poorer environment for their descendants than that which they inherited and have enjoyed, surely?"How true! But many voters are not so sensitive and simply don't care. In my opinion, a new philosophy of living is needed. I like the pictures - beautiful. As Alice said "what's the use of a book without pictures?"
"Why wasn’t the State of the Environment Report 2008 trumpeted in headlines? I bet most people in this room have not heard of it."One of the most effective propaganda techniques used by the media is OMISSION! People can't act against something they don't know about - unless they are psychic - and not many of us have that ability! Internet has become the vehicle of information transmission - but one needs to be wary as the quality varies. Modern propaganda techniques were developed by Edward Bernays, double nephew of Sigmund Freud. There are many online articles about him and his techniques. At one time he persuaded the women of America to start smoking cigarettes, and at a later time persuaded them to stop smoking! He spent his 104 years on the planet teaching big businesspeople, bankers and politicians how to fool us for their own enrichment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEVFOzMLLlI http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/481391-propaganda
"Consider also that each additional person in Australia requires $200,000 to $300,000 of infrastructure and services."The money is borrowed from bankers who create it from nothing. We then pay the interest and principal through taxation. The bankers sit back and collect this as pure profit. There are many descriptions of the fraudulent system online - of varying qualities of course. The idea that taxes pay for everything is propaganda. I realise that I have written a simplification of the facts, but if the above statement is fundamentally untrue, how come we have a massive and increasing national debt? How come other countries that are bigger than ours have unbelievably astronomical debts? I will add that mortgage and credit card money are also created by bankers from nothing while we work to pay the interest and principal - but even bank managers may be in blissful ignorance of this! The intelligent enquiry of an Australian woman into these issues is mentioned at the end of this article: http://www.michaeljournal.org/plenty24.htm Other articles: http://www.positivemoney.org/2013/06/banks-dont-lend-money-guest-post-by-michael-reiss/ http://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/banks-dont-lend-their-reserves-even-if.html http://www.michaeljournal.org/moneytrick.htm http://www.michaeljournal.org/plenty40.htm http://www.thrivemovement.com/tips-how-follow-money
"Chairman Mao decided to grow the population"Perhaps that's because by then he'd slaughtered so many of his own countrymen. Thanks for the great speech and beautiful pictures. In my opinion we need a new philosophy of living.
1080
And now the new imbecilic Liberal govt here in Tasmania are going to bring back 1080, so more of our precious wildlife can be destroyed by parasitic farmers and forestry vandals, and yet we continue to pay these vermin through our taxes to wreak their havoc..WHY?
This is truly terrible
If we really related to the place we live in and valued its life forms and other characteristecs we would all be in either a complete panic or in utter despair over the state of the environment. But life goes on usual where most of live which is in big cities. People in the future on learning about how the place was in 1800, 1900, 1950 and 2000 will be at a loss as to how we could have all let the environment be destroyed in the face of so many warnings.
The state of Australia: our environment in peril By Ian Lowe
For the past two decades, successive federal governments have received a series of independent, five-yearly State of the Environment reports . Lowe was appointed to chair the first national assessment, which delivered its findings in May 1996. And what was concluded then – a lifetime ago for an 18-year-old reading this today – is even truer now.
Some of those persistent problems include:
-worsening traffic snarls in poorly connected, sprawling cities;
-population pressures along our much-loved coastline;
-degradation of productive rural land;
-major declines in native wildlife;
-the growing global challenge of rising greenhouse gas emissions; and
-major gaps in our knowledge and monitoring across many areas.
As any management expert will tell you, you can’t properly manage what you don’t measure.
While most advanced nations have recognised the need to protect productive land, we continue to lose it to urban expansion, a direct consequence of the high rate of population growth, compounded by urban development policies encouraging further sprawl. In Australia, we're being lead by environmental vandals, with no perception of limits and constraints on population, or "growth". While these State of the Environment Reports are churned out, they are shelved and ignored by governments!
Says Lowe, there has been no observable slowing in the rate of loss of our biodiversity, largely because the main causes have not been addressed: loss of habitat and introduced species. Australia continues to empty our landscape of wildlife, and species are being driven to extinction - all by human impacts!
In Kakadu National Park alone, the numbers of such animals, including bandicoots, northern quolls and tree rats, has crashed 90 per cent in the past two decades, said Chris Johnson of the University of Tasmania.
“It’s a catastrophe,” said Professor Johnson, who is also a member of the Australian Centre for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (ACEAS). “We have seen similar extinction patterns driven by predators like foxes in southern Australia.”
SMH: Catastrophic decline in numbers of small naive animals
We continue to have a rate of population growth higher than that of much poorer countries. Consumption per person is still increasing. And we continue to use outdated technologies like coal-fired electricity and large, inefficient cars.. - even though our own oil supplies are dwindling. Nothing seems to end the fetish for "growth" and housing in a myopic struggle to match the big cities of Asia.
The government also continues to promote ridiculously high rates of population growth, distracting attention from its policy by demonising the relatively small number of people who seek asylum here. While the trickle of "boat people" contains the "immigration" policies, the masses are arriving by aeroplanes each day - silently and without media focus!
The report continues: Australia is still blessed with many beautiful, unique places, plants and animals, including natural wonders from the Kimberley to Kakadu, and the Great Barrier Reef to Tasmania’s wilderness. Yet as a nation, we’re still not acting to conserve the natural fortune we’ve inherited for generations well beyond the next decade. We are being lead by environmental Neanderthals, without any connection to our precious land and natural resources.
Our governments are under weighty pressure from business and housing
lobby groups, that have become major supporters of political parties.
There's no long term plans for a sustainable food supply, renewable energy sources, the protection of native animals and habitats from extinction, or the environment from impacts of industries or mining.
Even the "Great" Barrier Reef, a World Heritage area, is under threat from coal mining dredge! Any concerns from environmental groups is brushed under the carpet, and we are forced to endure a "business as usual" model of growth, decline, and spin from our politicians.
Australia is being gouged of it's natural wealth, and living standards, and the environment is given lip service, and treated like a disposable commodity. Future generations will curse this one, for recklessness -and having to deal with over 40 million people by 2050 - mainly driven by net overseas migration!
In his book, The Future Eaters , Dr Tim Flannery of the Australian Museum in Sydney argues that given the vagaries of climate, a safe bet is a long-term population of six million to 12 million, a range that many ecologists and biologists espouse. With Australia's fragile ecosystems, mega-diversity, poor soils, limited water supplies and arable land, the senseless "growth" we are meant to endure needs to end before future generations are forced to inherit a sterile wasteland, and wall to wall urban spread along our once precious coasts.
The State of Australia: Our environment in peril Prof Ian Lowe
Ian Lowe is emeritus professor of science, technology and society at Griffith University and President of the Australian Conservation Foundation. He directed Australia Commission for the Future in 1988 and chaired the advisory council that produced the first independent national report on the state of the environment in 1996.
Governments are close to incapable of reducing living costs
The Liberals in particular, offer little to no policies to reduce growth and inefficient. Almost all initiatives to make living more affordable have involved handouts, which only mask the problem, not treat it.
Society should be seeking to make more efficient use of resources. To travel further using less fuel and time, to produce goods using fewer resources and costs. We are caught in a trap where everything we do, makes our day to day living process more inefficient. Desalination plants mean more energy and infrastruture to deliver each litre of water. Urban densification and growth mean more energy and time spent travelling, as distance increases and average speed descreases (decreasing both due to increased car density and lowering of speed limits). Housing costs have gone up, especially for land, meaning more expense. You can see this pattern from the big (government) to the small (computing). Software uses more and more resources to do the same thing. Modern TV's have a 'standby' mode that increase power consumption while it is off. Road transport becomes more and more expensive as traffic and the network grows.
This is part of a stagnant society. All through history, travel times have decreased, and now they are increasing. Travel time by plane has remained stagnant.
We are told that the modern age is becoming more expensive, but I think government incompetence is the biggest contributor. We simply have no leaders who have a vision for this country beyond putting cushions down as we fall further and further. Any easing comes at a cost, due to the cost of handouts to the taxpayers, and costs in delivering and managing them.
All this means that as costs go up, and production is fixed, standard of living HAS to decline. Yet no major party even suggests they have intention to reverse this.
Petrol prices set to rise!
Not only gas prices, but fuel prices are set to rise. Treasurer Joe Hockey is reportedly considering raising the excise by up to three cents a litre, or even reinstating indexing of the charge, as part of Tuesday night's federal budget.
Petrol prices since 2001 have jumped over what once was called “the psychological $1-a-litre barrier” and are north of $1.60 in some areas, but the excise remains at 39.14 cents-a-litre. John Howard froze the excise rate in 2001 so he could allow petrol to be included in the goods and services tax and not wear the pain of a double hike for motorists at the bowser.
The Abbott Government has mooted austerity measures in the coming budget, led by a controversial and promise-breaking "deficit levy", a thinly disguised new tax. It is believed a three cent a litre rise in petrol excise would deliver more than a $1 billion to the budget bottom line but would likely be met with outrage from motoring groups.
Australians do pay less for their fuel than many Western nations. However, other Western countries aren't generally as widely spread out as Australia, and our urban areas are continuing to grow, outstripping public transport. It condemns families to further cruel hikes in living costs, and transport. The "growth" fetish of our governments means imposing an increasing consumption of energy and fuels, while costs increase - along with scarcities.
Ukraine's prosecutor says Odessa police complicit in massacre
Ukraine's prosecutor general says Odessa police were complicit in last Friday's massacre, that saw dozens of anti-government activists burned, shot or beaten to death. http://rt.com/bulletin-board/157284-rtnews-may-07msk/
Telling it like it is
"specuvesting as a lifestyle"
That is an excellent term and general summation to describe the particular type and function, not to mention those contemptuous spivs who promote and sell the whole delusional package. Although the relationship is a bit like the narcotics market wherein the lifestyle users often also become the sellers one way or another.
I'm going to start using the term on people who rightly deserve to be framed with it.
Sorry to diverge from the actual thread topic.
Carry on like I"m not here :-)
(and get the book...)
More from Walsh's apology on EEG pages
Have a look at the front page of Environment East Gippsland here: http://www.eastgippsland.net.au/. There is more there. If not enough, suggest that you contact Jill Redwood via those pages. Thanks for your interest. :-)
Retraction and apology to EEG from Peter Walsh
Thank-you for your article.
I tried to read the wording of Walsh's apology on his blog, but it has been removed. is there any chance that you have the full statement and could you make it available here?
- EEG supporter
Thank you Palloy
Thank you very much Palloy for this contribution. Please continue to give us your opinion or to contribute articles. Obviously we need as much material on this as we can.
Jon Faine's interview that was nothing more than total bias by F
Regardless of whether Steve Bracken is correct or not is not the point. What has come out of this interview is an arrogant, disrespectful, strongly biased point of view from Fain. One he should be ashamed to lay claim. Everyone is entitled to an opinion and has the right to be heard with courtesy and respect. This did not happen in this interview and the ABC should stand down this person. Faine apparently does not understand the right of free speech and a right to be heard or rather is so arrogant that other people's opinion is not important. We have a major problem with a media that is not interested in informing the public or to raise matters of public interest.
If Faine worked for me and put on such a performance he would face dismissal. It is bad for his employer as the public will question the integrity and credibility of the show. I believe Kevin Bracken is owed and apology by Fain and also the ABC for allowing it to happen.
Fursov: Battleground Ukraine
While gas is an important factor in the equation, you will never understand this crisis if you only look at it in isolation, because it is part of a much bigger picture - the geo-strategic struggle to control everything everywhere, played out on a multi-decade timescale. And to understand how Ukraine fits into this, you need to know who the main players in Ukraine are - they do not appear in any videos or give interviews at all, prefering to work behind the scenes. The CIA is just one of these.
This is explained in a lecture given by Andrei Fursov. It is long and a bit rambling, but worth reading in full. Here is an excerpt focussing on the main players:
https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Document:Battleground_Ukraine
Battleground Ukraine
by Andrei Fursov (lecture transcript)
Director of Russian Studies, Moscow University. Member of the International Academy of Sciences
2014/04/14
Excerpt:
The Ukrainian oligarchs
Firstly - the Ukrainian business clans.
In 2012 analysts such as Matveev warned that there would be a very brutal conflict in 2013 between the business clans, between the oligarchs. And that's what happened.
What do we mean by clans in Ukraine? First we need to understand the division of power at the end of 2013. There are four basic clans.
Firstly the Donetsk clan - Rinat Akhmetov, whose fortune is estimated at $16 billion. His main interests are mining and steel production. This clan includes Boris Kolesnikov, the Kluevs, Yury Ivanyuschenko.
The second clan is the Yanukovych family. They control principally the customs officials, farming and infrastructure. By comparison this clan is a bit poorer, but they have held very powerful administrative positions. Yanukovych's "achievement" is that during his presidency the welfare state of Ukraine was finished off. Or rather, what was left of it. Destruction of the welfare state began during the time of Kuchma. Yuschenko and Tymoshenko significantly reduced the welfare state. And Yanukovych finished it off.
It's very interesting to examine the growth of the billionaire class. In 2010 the number of billionaires in Ukraine was 8. By only 2011 there were 21.
The Yanukovych regime greatly favored the growth of the billionaire class. Yanukovych's main sponsors were Rinat Akhmetov and Dmitry Firtash. The division of labor was: Ahkmetov controlled the government and Firtash the presidential administration.
The next massive bloc is Firtash, which is RosUkrEnergo, energy production and chemicals. They are the main partner of Rothschild in Ukraine. One of Firtash's main advisers is Robert Shetler-Jones. I'll talk about him later. An entrepreneur from the Rothschild group. Moreover, he's from MI6.
By the way, in all British corporations, in order to occupy a senior position, it is mandatory to be vetted by MI6. Otherwise you don't get it.
The next corporate group is Privat. This is the most interesting one. It's the group of Ihor Kolomoisky. Kolomoisky's worth is 3 billion dollars. His partner is Gennady Bogolubov. Kolomoisky is a very interesting figure. Not only because he called our president a schizophrenic. He is the engine behind what is currently happening in Ukraine.
Born in 1963. Jewish. He very actively supports the Hasidic group Chabad, which is not a sect, it's a movement. He's the main sponsor of the Dnepropetrovsk Jewish community. An old friend of Berezovsky. He owns about 200 companies, controls 40% of Ukrnafta, the media. A big fan of soccer. He owns: FC Dnipro, of Dnepropetrovsk, Arsenal Kyiv, and Hapoel of Tel-Aviv. He's the vice president of the Football Federation of Ukraine. Its president, Surkis, is a millionaire too, albeit not as big as Kolomoisky. He owns Dynamo Kyiv. Information frequently appears in the media about Kolomoisky's connections with international organized crime. He really wanted to buy up the assets of Sevastopol. Indeed he was on the verge of buying. He is the sponsor of Yuschenko, Tymoshenko and Klitschko, and of, paradoxical though it is, the ultra-nationalist Tyaghnibok.
It might seem strange that Kolomoisky the Jew would support Tyaghnibok the ultra-nationalist. But the main goal of Tyaghnibok is to get Ukrainians and Russians fighting each other. His ultra-nationalism is not anti-semitic.
Then there's another group in Ukraine, which no-one wants to talk about. Victor Pinchuk's group. He's the son-in-law of Kuchma. Pinchuk's people are Tigipko and Yatsenuk. According to experts such as Matveev, whom I mentioned and strongly recommend you look up, because of his enormous expertise, Pinchuk is very closely linked with the United States and with British intelligence, MI6.
Finally, one more part of the Ukrainian economy, which experts prefer not to write about. Arms trade, military technology and narcotics. Experts name dozens of names here. The main ones are: Vadim Rabinovitch, citizen of Israel, Ukraine and Hungary, Sergei Maximov and the Derkatch family. The elder Derkatch is Leonid Derkatch. He was the head of the Ukrainian security service, SBU. Now he holds all the cards, as he's dealing in weapons. Rabinovitch is a very interesting figure. He supports the gay-lesbian party Raduga and the Kiev feminist group Femen. Often quarrels with other Jewish oligarchs.
In general what characterizes the situation in Ukraine is that there isn't a single political center, This propagates into Ukraine's Jewish community too. They don't have a unified center either. There are constant squabbles, to impose their point of view. There are angry clashes between the secular part and those who support the Hasids and Chabadists. For example, there was a very angry conflict over the construction of the memorial at Babi Yar. Kolomoisky insisted there be a synagogue and an iconic building. Vitaly Nakhmanovitch said no, the place should be absolutely secular. There are very severe clashes.
For example, In 2011 Kolomoisky established the European Jewish Parliament, which sits in the European Parliament. It has a leaning toward Hadism and Chabad. The secular group is, for example, Vyacheslav Kantor. They haven't accepted all of this. There is an on-going angry clash. There are humorous situations. For example, Kolomoisky supports Chabad. Chabad supported Yanukovych during the election. Kolomoisky has openly come out against Yanukovych. This whole tangle of clashes has flared up. In 2013 it got very nasty. Moreover, the greed and stupidity of Yanukovych's mafioso clan revealed itself when they imposed their fees not only on the medium-sized businesses, they even went into the small businesses. Basically, they had to pay 60% to this family.
So you can understand those who went to the Maidan. They had had enough of that clan.
A different matter is who exploited the situation. Marx and Engels wrote in 1848 about revolutions: We now know what role stupidity plays in revolutions, and how scumbags will exploit it. So that was the Ukrainian oligarchs.
Rockefellers Rothchilds and Intelligence agencies
The next players on the Ukrainian field are: the Rockefellers and the Rothchilds. The Rothchilds entered Ukraine immediately after Ukraine became free from the Soviet Union. The Rothschild group entered in 1991-95. Likewise MI6 entered with a free hand.
Basically all western intelligence agencies had a free hand in Ukraine. That's why some experts call Ukraine the sandpit of the intelligence agencies. The CIA has a whole floor dedicated to Ukraine. We got this information now. But those who worked under cover in Ukraine in the late '90s were already reporting that SBU is a subsidiary of the FBI and the CIA, who were actively working there. Likewise the BND (German intelligence) were very actively working with their Banderite underground. And MI6 was working more unnoticed.
I'm not even going to mention the Israeli agents. I'll come to that later. Basically they all had a completely free hand. Firtash soon became the main partner of the Rothchilds. His partner from the Rothchilds was Robert Shetler-Jones. He is considered by experts to be the instigator of the gas wars between Ukraine and Russia. He was the one getting Ukraine and Russia to fight over gas. Notice the Rothschild group is at work in the East of Ukraine. That's the area they want to get their hands on, in particular the Dnepropetrovsk region, where the bank "Rothschild Europe" and their "Royal Dutch Shell" are operating.
The interests of the Rothschilds strongly clash with the interests of Russia. Remember that when we talk about the interests of the USA and of Britain, there are different interest groups in these countries. Not for nothing the great French geopolitical analyst Alexandre Del Valle talks about not the foreign policy of the US, but the foreign politicians of the US. There are different clans. The clans behind Obama want one thing, and the clans behind the neo-cons want something completely different. So they really have different foreign policies. The Rothchilds busily exploit crises and chaos which can be manipulated by the world players in order to buy up assets in Ukraine, likewise in Central Asia, and where possible in Russia. It's about gaining control of resource economies. That's a very important aspect.
The Rockefellers have more modest interests. For example, Chevron Corporation, which is in the Rockefeller empire. The Ivano-Frankivsk region was basically handed to them by Yanukovych. It's hard to even say whether Ivano-Frankivsk belongs to Ukraine or belongs to Chevron Corporation. The Rockefellers are more interested in Western Ukraine than Eastern.
Israeli interests in Ukraine
The next player in Ukraine is Israel, which is represented in Ukraine by Mossad and practically all of the Israeli intelligence services. Including the Komemiyut management, that's an administration within Mossad, whose business is the physical removal of Mossad's opponents. Komemiyut is Hebrew for "sovereignty". This Komemiyut administration, for example, they were the ones who killed the Iranian nuclear scientists. They are very effective, like Mossad generally. Aman is military intelligence service of the Prime Minister. Shabak is the internal security service. Shin Bet, Nativ - they are all present in Ukraine. Israel's current ambassador in Ukraine is Reuven Din El - formerly a Mossad resident in the CIS countries, he was thrown out of Moscow, and then received in Ukraine as ambassador.
Vlad Lerner of Nativ is the First Secretary of the Israeli embassy. In this respect you have to give them their dues, the Israeli intelligence services, for how they work in Ukraine. Also important to be clearly aware of - Mossad operates in close contact with CIA and MI6. It's a unified snake of intelligence agencies, which gets the job done.
All of the western intelligence agencies, including Israel's, are very active in the higher education establishments in Ukraine. This year I gave a lecture at the Seliger youth forum. Guys from Kiev told me that in almost all large institutes of higher education in Ukraine, especially in Kiev, there is a NATO room, a NATO department. If you want to make a career, you have to attend several of their programs. That's what's going on. The Anglo-american intelligence services are not falling behind Mossad.
What is Israeli intelligence doing? Under the guise of looking for students who are Jewish or have Jewish roots, they try to pick out all the talented students with good prospects, and send them to study in the West. Of all the universities in the West, where I have taught, Columbia, Yale, New York, the most powerful where I taught, was the Central European University of Soros, where only Jews are educated, moreover very well-prepared and carefully selected ones. On the course I lectured on there were three guys from Russia. Not from Moscow, but from Arkhangelsk, Ivanovo and Petersburg. These guys were really chosen ones, genuinely powerful.
Junta besieging Kramatorsk and other Eastern towns
In this same town, junta-troops have closed down important factories and shops have been closed, leaving the Kramatorsk citizens without jobs, without money from banks, without food sources.
People on the ground say that there are a lot of ambulances outside local administration building. People hoped the armed vehicles won't shoot at civilians, but gunfire has been heard.
It sounds like the NATO-backed Kiev junta intends to beseige Eastern town protestors - that is, to starve them out.
What happened in Odessa on Friday was totally beyond military conventions. It gives us a real view of what Nazi government means - and who our 'leaders' back, in defiance of their electorates' values.
Russia and Putin have nothing to do with these actions.
Energy - the new Gold rush
Ukraine's geographic position and proximity to Russia explain its importance as a natural gas and petroleum liquids transit country. Approximately 3.0 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of natural gas flowed through Ukraine in 2013 to Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Turkey. Russia annexed Crimea in March and the west began imposing sanctions on Moscow. Europe was suddenly forced to face up to the extent of its dependence on Russian energy exports. Vladimir Putin, Russian president, warned that Russia might halt gas supplies to Ukraine unless action was taken over Kiev’s unpaid bills. More than 25 per cent of Europe's natural gas is supplied by Russia: By 2020, that figure will be nudging 40 per cent. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was not about combating "terrorism" but for oil profits — for a key pipeline in Afghanistan, and for the lion’s share of the world’s second-biggest oil supply in Iraq. With about 50 years of oil reserves left and maybe 85 years of gas, the struggle for control of the world's energy resources will increasingly dictate events. President Putin is determined to get his way in Ukraine. But less attention has been paid to the role of the United States in interfering in Ukrainian politics and civil society. Ukraine's large transit network, and its available underground gas storage capacities, make the country a potentially crucial player in European energy transit. US oil and gas majors like Chevron and Exxon are increasingly encroaching on Russian-owned Gazprom's regional monopoly, undermining Russia's energy hegemony over Europe. Ukraine has Europe’s third-largest shale gas reserves at 42 trillion cubic feet,according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. While for years U.S. oil companies have been pressing for shale gas development in countries such as Britain, Poland, France and Bulgaria only to be rebuffed by significant opposition from citizens and local legislators concerned about the environmental impacts of shale gas extraction – including earthquakes and groundwater contamination caused by hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” – there has been considerably less opposition in Ukraine , a country that has been embroiled in numerous gas disputes with the Russian Federation in recent years. Beneath the Ukraine crisis: Shale gas It is clear that all of these oil and gas companies – backed by their governments, including those of the Russian Federation and the United States – are deeply embroiled in the Ukrainian crisis, with much invested and much at stake.
Politicians should share the pain of budget cuts!
The public are being told that the "age of entitlements" is over, and that Australians have been living beyond their means for too long! Welfare is under threat, and pensioners will have to work until they are 70 for those born after 1965.
Australia, once a prosperous nation, despite all the economic growth, is sliding down the ladder of prosperity. Unemployment, homelessness and poverty are increasing in the once "Lucky" country.
The pain of budget cuts we be part of a drive to cut $70 billion a year from spending. Due to massive population growth over the last few decades, without productivity to justify it, our economy has stagnated, become overly expensive to maintain, and is producing less benefits.
We are bogged down by greed, and an economic model that's outdated its usefulness! However, there's no sacrifice coming from our well-heeled politicians!
Politicians such as Treasurer Joe Hockey will pocket more than $200,000 a year from the moment they leave politics, under their generous parliamentary superannuation scheme. Lifetime gold passes entitle ex-politicians to 10 return business class flights for them and their spouse each year.
Politicians must be willing to share the budget pain, and be forced to work longer. The public shouldn't have to cope with austerity measures, and the dismantling of our welfare system, while the nation’s MPs remain untouched.
Behind the glamorous façade,
Behind the glamorous façade, there's a dark reality of the Gold Coast high population growth.
In 2007-08, the Gold Coast Police District had the highest number of reports for drug offences, unlawful entry, thefts, handling of stolen goods, weapons offences and traffic offences. And it had the second highest number of reports for homicides, fraud, prostitution, assaults, and other offences against a person.
The Gold Coast has the dubious distinction of being the most unaffordable place in Australia for buying houses, and second most unaffordable (closely following Sydney) for buying units.
Homelessness increasingly continues to be of concern on the Coast. Many people ‘sleep rough’ on the coastal strip between Southport and Broadbeach.1
While 52 per cent of those surveyed were in favour and 32 per cent against the cruise ship terminal, the Newspoll report presented to councillors at a meeting today shows critical differences within suburbs across the city.
It's easy to manipulate the answers of opinion polls by deliberately asking the questions that divert away from direct questioning to give options, and the results required.
1 The Reality of Life on the Gold Coast, Gold Coast primary care partnership council, 2009
Confusion of "immigration" created under the Howard Government