Comments
smallpox
Wildlife being pushed "down the creek" to exterminate by housing
Residential development on the urban fringe is pushing native animals down the creek corridors towards the city.
Wildlife carers, conservationists and rescuers are facing an uphill battle for the survival of native animals against Melbourne's aggressive rate of population growth.
Such is the nature of our present "planning" schemes, any "vacant" that not owned or protected by State or national park status is grabbed for housing.
Deaths and injuries to animals such as wombats are simply considered incidentals, or collateral damage, and an unavoidable consequence of progress and economic growth!
Clearing removes habitats leading to the direct loss of millions of native animals and plants every year and creates an extinction debt - something that we in Australia are already renown for!
According to Bush Heritage Australia, nearly half our mammal species, including some wombats, wallabies and bandicoots, are either extinct or threatened with extinction as a result of land clearing, habitat destruction and other threats. Wildlife Victoria records show the rescue organisation treated 51 wombats in the northern metropolitan region during the past 12 months, with numbers steadily increasing over the past 10 years.
Mark Winfield from the Department of Environment and Primary Industries agreed that development was pushing wombats upstream, but said revegetation along the Yarra River and Darebin Creek had also made those environments more appealing.
An economy that only thrives on housing, and importing people, is inevitably hostile to wildlife, the environment, and biodiversity.
An economy reliant on importing people, and housing, is inherently anthropocentric and environmentally destructive.
Herald Sun: Housing development on Melbourne's fringe pushes wildlife down the creek
Wildlife "down the creek" is ironically a reminder that extinction is an incremental process, and forever!
Most people apathetic on population growth
Why would this group be exporting drugs out of Australia?
Why would this group be exporting drugs out of Australia? Apparently Schapelle is innocent because no-one would export dope to Bali. You can't have it both ways.
Defence team acted as if they believed Schapelle was guilty
The AFP offered to conduct DNA tests and fingerprinting of the bag but Schapelle's legal team declined the offer when told the results would be made available to the prosecution as well. Sounds a bit sus to me.
We have lost Australia
Coorie people believe disease was deliberately introduced
Tony Abbott wants to access more forests!
Worried about Trans-Pacific Partnership ... Online seminar
TPP community forum in Sydney1 Bedford St, Newtown NSW 2042 06:30 PM http://tppaustralia.org/th_event/tpp-community-forum-sydney/
11 March, 8pm - Free trade deals – Online Seminar Online Seminar 08:00 PM - http://tppaustralia.org/th_event/free-trade-deals-online-seminar/
More information here: http://tppaustralia.org/
Great article.
Ballina koalas under threat from bulldozers
Kennett the Thatcher clone?
Things that need to be taught at schools
How many genuine asylum seekers - by definition?
Regrettably and tragically, asylum seeker from Iran, Reza Barati, was killed in a riot on Manus Island detention centre. As translated by a family friend, Reza was seeking asylum because ''All he wanted was to have a better life - he was an intelligent young man with productive years ahead of him and he would have been good for the Australian economy.''
By definition, asylum seekers do not have a home, and can't live in their own country because they are not safe. They should not be here for "a better life" or to contribute to the economy! Family friend said ''Reza was not a political refugee – he was a social refugee.'' Just how does "social refugee" fit into the category of being officially a refugee? Reza was the eldest of his siblings, who had trained as an architect, had particular responsibilities to his family. No doubt once he achieved a "better life" and job in Australia, he would unite with his family in Australia!
At the weekend, Immigration Minister Scott Morrison released a statement saying that new information suggests the fatal head injury sustained by Mr Berati, along with much of the violence that night, occurred inside the detention centre's perimeter.
It appears the attack that led to Mr Barati's death, and injuries to more than 60 asylum seekers, was an orchestrated response to a rolling protest that involved asylum seekers chanting ''F--k PNG'' and baring their buttocks. A Papua New Guinean police spokesman has told Fairfax Media that 23-year-old Reza Barati was killed by multiple blows to the head, probably from a piece of timber.
Iranians gain relatively painless entry to Indonesia, with the Middle Eastern country on the list of those whose nationals are able to acquire a visa on arrival. That has meant that Iranians ultimately seeking to arrive in Australia by boat are able to conduct the stretch of the journey as far as Indonesia without legal difficulty. After leaving Iran, many head to Dubai, make their way to Bali or Java before making the final journey south. Many of the Iranians arrivals are middle-class residents of big cities such as Tehran who have been able to summon up the tens of thousands of dollars to pay a people smuggler for a chance at entry to Australia.
The death is tragic, and Berati's murderer needs to be brought to justice. However, the justification that he was "fleeing from persecution", terror, torture, and was unable to live in Iran have been exaggerated. How many other asylum seekers are really "social asylum seekers" trying to get a "better life"- something that we all in Australia are all trying to do - in the face of massive legal immigration!
There has to be a better system than detention centres and imprisonment. Australia has the second largest acceptance of per capita in the world of humanitarian refugees.
We should remove our signature from the UN Refugee Convention, and decide off-shore the refugee we will accept into Australia, and the rest can then be considered illegal entrants. This would remove the impetus of detention centres, and exaggerated claims, public outcries, people smugglers, the lure of believing that Australia has got a '"better life" on offer, and the frustration and the political foot-ball asylum seekers have become.
Hear, Hear!
Yes, good suggestions Jenny. We definitely need something - and soon too - before even more damage gets done. This problem was also raised by Klaas Woldring last year and he had a proposal along these lines also (Change the Electoral System and End Adversarial Politics). Steve Irons also has a suggestion on changes to electoral boundaries (and a bit more also) so as to address our environmental problems, in particular the very serious problem of water, a critical resource in world's driest continent (see Steve's proposal at bloggerme.com.au).
Given this clear need for change, the only question in my mind is how do we make it happen? Anyone got ideas?
The public haven't benefited from privatisation
How is it even constitutional to sell of public assets, the jobs and economic benefits and jobs that belong to Victorians? Jeff Kennett is arrogant and full of bluff. He betrayed his electorate, and destroyed jobs and communities, and consumers are now over-paying for electricity power. The private companies are reaping profits too, from our rampant population growth, with up to 2000 new consumers each week.
The former Victorian premier and former Labor leader fronted the Channel 7 breakfast show to discuss the news that Qantas is cutting 5000 full-time jobs in an attempt to recover a massive $2 billion hole in its finances. "I support what Mr Joyce is doing. It’s not easy, it's certainly very tough and at least he’s trying to get the airline back on it’s feet. This isn’t a popularity poll. It's not good enough for two journalists or broadcasters, who I suspect have never employed a person in their life, to actually be sitting there questioning an individual who, in my opinion is dealing ...” he trailed off.
What's the point of keeping a foreign owned aircraft company "on its feet" if the benefits are not for Australians, when it's meant to be our airline!
Kennett is also behind the privatisation of the Port of Melbourne, and the government should ''put it out to tender very quickly''. He said his government would probably have sold it to further its infrastructure agenda if it had won the 1999 election. It's easy to sell off other peoples' property, and gain the accolades from the elite and business communities. Now they want easier access to 457 visa workers, while unemployment is increasing in our State.
Good synopsis here
I can't find much which paints the Ukranian Fatherland party as far right.
But here is a good link...
A new (order) Ukraine? Assessing the relevance of Ukraine’s far right in an EU perspective
... at http://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/cas-mudde/new-order-ukraine-assessing-relevance-of-ukraine%E2%80%99s-far-right-in-eu-pers
My position is that the far right succeed due to the absense of political alternatives and being the only ones willing to fill a particular political vacuum.
Ukrainian rulers in league with imperialism, but not neo-Nazi
Your view that the Ukrainian government is not neo-Nazi, but rather extremely right-wing and pro-imperialist, concurs with that of Thierry Meyssan of Voltaire Net. I had only just now added the link to his article and plan to publish it in full. On most contentious issues in recent years. Thierry Meyssan has usually been amongst the first to have got it right.
Whilst Thierry Meyssan has got it right, other alternative sources which are usually right and which I have cited have also got it wrong on this occasion.
If you read the paragraphs following the sub-heading "The broader historical context" you will see that I have not "writ[ten] off russophobic sentiment as just some irrational intolerance.'"
This seems biased
The basis of the article is just wrong, or very heavily biased.
This is the current leader.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleksandr_Turchynov
This is his party.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-Ukrainian_Union_%22Fatherland%22
They are not leaders of 'neo-nazis'. The fact that neo-nazis were in the street fighting against the previous government means nothing. Leftists groups were fighting for the same thing. When it comes to political struggles, its the extremists who will take to the streets. You basically have Ukranians who want to align with Europe and the EU (god knows why), and others who want to align with Russia (it is about 1/5th ethnic Russians). Russia is now upset because they might lose power over Ukraine.
Also, there is a long history between those two countries. I wouldn't blithely write off russophobic sentiment as just some irrational intolerance.
Now I can understand why Russian news sources might want to demonise the current government, but well, they have an agenda, don't they?
Professor "of Heat Island effect" on ABC
Spot on
We are continually at loggerheads with governments.
Independant inspectors
The ideals we developed are being discarded
There is a petition here:
Petitioning Victoria's Coalition Government
... at http://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/victoria-s-coalition-government-stop-summary-offences-and-sentencing-amendment-bill-2013&npsp;.
Spread this far and wide.
The Indigenous fight is OUR fight too
Thanks Greg. Personally I think this is already true - and perhaps has been for a while. The cause of Indigenous/Aboriginal people is OUR cause. What happened to them IS now happening to the rest of us. Their fight IS our fight.
In fact, Australians should be very grateful to our Indigenous cousins, they have fought for basic protections such as legal aid and have raised issues of fairness, equity, justice and looking after other consistently over the decades (as we have not been here that long).
The way Indigenous people have been treated is exactly the way we ALL will be treated in this system. Those with power will impoverish us, take away our freedoms, destroy our culture (already mostly destroyed with privatisation of everything one obvious symptom). To see them and there circumstances as separate from us, I believe is a big mistake.
Thus it is not US and THEM in my eyes. The powerful see as us the same. Voices to be silenced or ignored, resources to be extracted from under our feet, leaving us a ruined people so as a small elite can enjoy privilege and wealth. These historical, human forces - Western thinking and behaviour - bought here with European settlement are still operating - although now with more powerful and total effect.
Land was taken from Indigenous people for farming, then mining. Now, the same thing is happening across Australia with Coal Seam Gas.
How The Queensland Government Fracked the State"
It is even worse in America:
It is these forces that are stirring unrest across the globe, and we are not insulated from them here.
Danger! Napthine Summary offences and sentencing amendment bill
Native Australians are treated as aboriginal Australians were
Dennis K observes:
"One could legally work towards eradicating an ethnic group from the face of the planet through legal population policy."
Dennis, isn't this already the tragic condition faced by Australia's indigenous population? How on earth might accelerated immigration help the oft called for need for some useful form of reconciliation between the original and the successively dominant populations of our 'nation'? How can a rapidly hurtling object ('us', collectively) possibly be reconciled with? In fact, on this current trajectory, we'll soon all be lining up alongside the first nations' people also seeking reconciliation with a rapidly emerging new body politic dominated by ownership and customs that are entirely alien and careless toward our current, but rapidly flagging standards. That would be a bitterly ironic form of reconciliation between the current dominant and indigenous strands of culture.
I find the concomitant cheering by quite a few community sectors for both higher immigration and reconciliation to be utterly confounding, where it isn't just plain machiavellian.
More broadly, the dissolution of social identity is a key instrument in wreaking this holocaust of asset alienation and depletion upon us all. Others include the escalation of mental and spiritual trauma via compressing people into behavioural corridors of undue complexity and severe financial and time stress.
Instead of "building for growth" what about services?
Cages, crates, cruelty, BANNED! in ACT factory farms - Lyn White
http://www.makeitpossible.com/ (Great video here !)
Lyn White of Animals Australia communicates the following about the very effective campaign, "Make it possible":
"So often we talk about laws failing animals which is why it is so nice to be able to email you today to let you know that some of the most abused animals in our country finally have the law on their side.
The ACT has become the first Australian jurisdiction to prohibit by law some of the worst horrors inflicted on animals in factory farms. I'm sure you'll remember that last year we applauded Tasmania for taking the first steps to address the cruelty of factory farming, setting the scene for the nation's capital to go even further for hens and pigs.
You and I already know it ... No hen should live her whole life in a cage, where she can't even stretch her wings. No pig should be confined to a metal and concrete crate so small that she cannot turn around. No hen should have part of her sensitive beak cut off to fit her into a stressful and overcrowded factory farm.
Well we now have laws in the ACT that say "this is wrong". In fact, a company in the ACT can be fined up to $35,000 for locking a pig in a crate or a hen in a cage.
This landmark legislation is a welcome reminder that with consistent and strategic campaigning we can change laws to improve the lives of animals. It took the ACT Greens six bills and seven attempts to make history this week. For every hen and pig who will now not go on to live a life of abject misery in a factory farm in the ACT — we say thank you for staying the course.
But sadly, we cannot leave it all up our legislators. And with 12 million intelligent, inquisitive egg laying hens still confined to cruel battery cages in other states — we're about to take our campaign to set them free to new heights!
The same day that ACT politicians were banning the battery cage, our creative team was in the studio shooting an exciting new TV campaign. We've enlisted the enthusiastic support of some of Australia's most loved comics and one gorgeous rescued battery hen in a series of unique television commercials which will be backed by eye-catching billboards.
The launch is only weeks away and I can't wait to share with you this next exciting step in our Make it Possible campaign.
In such a short period of time we have seen our vision for a world without factory farming grow from the hopes of a caring few to a national movement championed by hundreds of thousands of Australians. This is such an exciting time to be working on behalf of animals. We can all take heart in and be empowered by 'wins' like we saw this week in the ACT and use them to drive us ever onward on behalf animals everywhere.
For the animals,
Lyn White
Campaign Director
P.S. We don't need to wait for governments (or for the launch of new TV campaigns) to free animals from factory farms. The choices we make at the checkout can start creating a world without factory farming right now. If you haven't already, click here to take the pledge to Make It Possible today."
Proposed Article
Hence why the far right flourishes in Europe
These abject idiots don't realise that they are the ones responsible for the rise of far right extremism. If you want to honestly discuss immigration in totality, you have generally no choice but to go to the far right. They still believe that people will get over it, or, as the Labor party in the UK believed, that if society becomes multicultural enough, it will be a non issue. This is clearly turning out to be not true.
The problem is, that it doesn't work this way, and by not allowing any dissent or criticism of these policies in the mainstream, the only option is the far right, who don't have the same reluctance to talk of these issues. You push people away, rather than make people forget the issue.
This is their biggest mistake. Centrist parties worried about racist groups could simply open up the issue to mainstream discussion, and in one fell swoop, render all these groups powerless.
Thats how GFC's happened
Margaret on Investment seminars - very valuable comment
Voice of doubt was silenced
Speculation is a Parasitic blight on Society
All his party had to do was beat one other party
Spain's lost youth: This could happen here.
In Spain, nearly half of those under 30 - almost 2 million people - cannot find a job. Suicide rates are up and the young fear they have no future in their own country.
The Age: The Lost generation of Spain's unemployed youth
Spain is in population overshoot, over their economic needs. Rather than the feared "ageing population", they are facing an overwhelming number of disenchanted and lost young people.
The irony is that Spain went from receiving far more immigrants in search of "a better life" - 600,000 in 2006 alone - than there were emigrant Spaniards leaving Spain for the same reason. Migrating to a "better life" is a retro dream, one that almost doesn't exist now. The desire to live in Europe, the USA or Australia is being loved to death, and destroyed by population growth!
Spain's young professionals are fleeing the country and Oxfam has predicted that 18 million Spaniards - a staggering 40 per cent of the population - are at risk of social marginalisation within the next decade.
For more than a decade, about a quarter of Spain's economic output revolved around tourism and construction, two industries highly susceptible to downturns in the international economy. There is a stark similarity with Australia's economy - based on property development, service industries and tourism. They are non-productive in tangible outputs, and industries that are first to fail with an economic downturn.
There are plenty of young people - people with a university education - who have simply given up hope. While the cliché of our "ageing population" threat is being used to justify "growth" and more immigration, the real problem now is the number, and cost, of supporting a swelling number of young people with little future!
Immigrants from Africa are adding to their woes. Guardia Civil sources have said that approximately 100 sub-Saharan immigrants have managed to jump the fence complex separating the Spanish exclave of Melilla from Moroccan territory. They said about 500 people had attempted to force their way across the border in the early hours of Monday morning. Some 150 illegal immigrants forced their way across the fence at Melilla, which is protected by razor-wire, earlier in the week.
Spain has called on Europe to help them to stem the rate of immigration into Spain.
MP Andrew Wilkie aims to end the live export trade
So much self deception goes on there
Make Napthine answer for Royal Park, Hanging Rock on 29 November
All this would have been quickly rectified if the Australian constitution included Direct Democracy as it is practised in Switzerland.
As Victorian Premier Dennis Napthine still has to face voters at the state elections scheduled for 29 November this year, he and his parliamentary supporters can be held to account for this atrocious initiative. Be sure to ask each candidate seeking your vote:
- Does he/she support the East-West Link and the further destruction of Royal Park;
- If, against the known views of the Victorian public, Napthine proceeds to sign the contract, how he/she intends to try to repeal that contract; and
- How does he/she propose to act to protect our iconic Hanging Rock at Mount Macedon from the plans of the Napthine Government and property developers to build housing estates?
Institutionalised suffering
Investment seminar on negative gearing for property
Urban development a threat to our coasts: VNPA
FARMAGEDDON - land and animals are suffering
Here's the URL for the following site and film: http://www.raw.info/
Over three years, CEO of Compassion in World Farming, Philip Lymbery, travelled the world bearing witness to the hidden cost of cheap meat and the devastating impact of factory farming – on people, animals and our planet. The result - Farmageddon - "is a wake-up call, exposing factory farming as one of the most pressing issues of our time; responsible for unparalleled food waste, damage to our health and the countryside, and the biggest cause of animal cruelty on the planet".
"Our food system is screwed. We are suffering; our lands are suffering; animals are suffering. We need to turn things around; we need to stop factory farming. Unless we do something now, we face Farmageddon – a future of rubbish food, trashed lands, surging disease and growing world hunger".
According to the UN, the world must produce 70% more food to feed our planet by 2050, with a population of over 9 billion! Yet nothing is being said to address the overpopulation causing the unrealistic rise in food demands, and the inevitable famine it will cause. One "solution" is factory-farming, of confining and compacting the lives and lifespan of livestock to produce more - with less space and resources! The pollution, the cruelty, the diseases and the over-use of anti-biotics is being ignored, and also the constraints of biological, botanical and ecological systems.
East West Link effect could be even worse
What's growing is youth unemployment queues
Like the cliché of the "ageing population", the "global financial crisis" is being used to blame the shortage of jobs. It's really the fact that our artificially driven population growth is faster than jobs creation, and the global economy is causing industries to leak out of our country.
The auto industries are going, and so are Qantas jobs.
In northern areas of Victoria, in the regional towns, there is 17 per cent youth unemployment; in some of the north and west areas of metropolitan Melbourne, we've got unemployment levels amongst our young people of 16 and 17 per cent.
Our politicians are speaking about "growth", but what's really growing is the national rate of youth unemployment which in 2008 was 8.8 per cent; now we're topping 12 per cent. And that's going to continue unless we have a national strategy to take away. Contrary to the "ageing population" being an economic burden on the welfare system, it's really the swelling number of young people in economic overshoot, bereft of opportunities and training.
Our economy is hollow, and based on population growth rather than real economic growth. It's like a leaking bucket - it's being filled in one end by a flow of new-comers, immigrants supposedly to fill in skills shortages, but leaking out the bottom with people overflowing into welfare queues, and skills, in redundancy.
Victorian coastal development threatens migratory birds
Arresting speech by Anne Louise Lambert
It's like religion, not a policy, a belief
It is prevalent in Europe. Multiculturalism is an 'after the fact' idea and governments do have policies for promoting it.
http://www.unesco.org/most/p97.htm
'Policy of multiculturalism in Europe has failed' - expert (7/5/2013), Voice of Russia
It didn't get enacted with a popular vote, or consensus, but rather was put into motion, and then when sold as an inevitability, the state coerced people to go along.
It is like war IMHO. Governments go to war for various geo-political reasons, but the soldiers and people don't understand these, so they have to invent 'simple' reasons for the rubes to go along. Those who do are 'patriots' and 'tolerant', those who are skeptical are 'traitors' or 'bigots'.
Objects to Russia defending itself against Chechen terrorists?
I note that ikonoclast's latest post (@#5) addresses almost none of the content of my latest post (@#3)
Ikonoklast, if you would prefer that I continue in this discussion with you, you should address my arguments and supporting evidence. Why not start with what I wrote in #44 on page 1. Either show me why I am wrong or else acknowledge that what I have posted is correct.
Ikonoklast wrote:
Are you saying, Russian oppression doesn't happen in Chechnya?
You realise that the Boston marathon bombers were Chechen terrorists and that the FBI failed to act on warnings given to them by Russian intelligence that Chechen terrorists preparing to bomb the Boston Marathon? Anyway, feel most welcome to explain how you know that justice lies with the cause of such terrorists and not with the Russians and their regional allies in the Caucasus.
Ikonoklast wrote:
Russia is ruled by Chekists and oligarchs.
As I explained above President Vladimir Putin was democratically elected. He was elected with a far higher margin than war criminal Presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush.
Ikonoklast wrote:
On the other hand, meeting violence with violence (on a mass scale) is guaranteed to escalate the situation and result in ever more deaths. The young male hot-heads who remain to fight [in Syria will win] nothing but ruins.
Presumably, you would also have objected to the violence with which the young Australian 'hot-heads' on the Kokoda Track and at Milne Bay met the violence of the Japanese invaders in 1942? If you took the time to look at the facts about Syria, you would know that Syrian soldiers are no less defending their country against invasion by a cruel and viscious enemy than were Australians in New Guinea in 1942.
United States provoking unrest in Venezuala
Russia and China no less criminal than the United States?
Iconoclast @#43 wrote:
You are absolutely right (@#37) about the deadly criminality of the US.
Thank you.
Iconoclast continued:
However, you neglect to mention the deadly criminality of the current Russian and Chinese regimes.
Could you provide examples of the criminality of the Russian and Chinese Governments?
Were you aware that the Russian Government, including President Vladimir Putin, was democratically elected? Were you aware that Russia has a free press that is far more truthful than the war propagandists and corruption denialists in the Fairfax media, the ABC, the SBS, the Murdoch Press?
For some time now, it has been understood by people, who are put themselves to the trouble of discovering the truth, that if you want to know, let alone understand, what is going on in Venezuela, Syria, the Ukraine, Bahrain, etc., that you are wasting your time watching CBS, the BBC, etc. To find out what is happening there, go to sites such as "Russia Today" (rt.com) and the Iranian PressTV (presstv.ir) etc.
If you can find examples of dishonest reporting on any of those web-sites, please feel welcome to provide examples here or on my web-site.
Iconoclast wrote:
These days I tend to regard anyone wielding a weapon as a bad person ...
Can't you see that it had not been for some "bad persons" "wielding weapons" Syria would have been leveled by the United States and its allies last year with a death toll approaching that suffered by Iraq and its people would now be living under Sharia law?
No multicultural policy on Continent
The only benefit from
Manifest destiny is a religious ideal
Heritage Victoria is an oxymoron
Complicity by Carr & Rudd in US wars should be no surprise
Those who had watched Christopher Boyce being interviewed by Mark Davis in The Falcon Lands on SBS's Lateline last Tuesday should not be surprised that Bob Car and Kevin Rudd were complicit in the 2011 invasion of Libya and in the ongoing terrorist war against Syria in which 130,000 have died.
A brief summary of The Falcon Lands and discussion can be found in the article on SBS Dateline: Christopher Boyce blows whistle on CIA corruption of Australian democracy, Labor Party & trade union movement (18 Feb 2014). The link to the Iview page on which it can still be watched is on that page.
Also (as comments are now closed on the last Monday Message Board of 3 February, can I say here) those who would like to help Anne-Lousie Lambert, who played Miranda in the 1975 Australian Classic film Picnic at Hanging Rock, save the set of that film from destruction by property developers, please attend the protest tommorrow beginning at 11 AM. There will be music all day. Details can be found on the story aty the top of my home page at candobetter.net.
Comment on Iraq: Help Syrian people prevent equivalent bloodbath
The Syrian people (and Venezuelans and most Ukranians) obviously understand the deadly criminality of the United States government and its allies, including Australia, in Iraq (as also attested by former US Attorney general Ramsey Clarke in speech embedded on my site). This has resulted in many hundreds of thousands deaths since 1990 (with one estimate putting the toll as high as 3.3 million).
The Syrian people have heroically resisted attempts by the United States and its allies to impose similar regime change on them.
Since March 2011, when hordes of foreign 'Islamic' terrorists, supplied by the United States and the Arab dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, launched their war against the Syrian people in March 2011, 130,000 Syrians have died. Australia, particularly former 'Labor' leaders Bob Carr and Kevin Rudd, has been complicit in these crimes against humanity with expanded sanctions imposed upon Syria and its ambassador expelled from Australia in 2012 on the provably untrue pretext that the Syrian Government massacred its own supporters in Houla in 2012.
For more information, visit my site and sites linked to from there, including GlobalResearch. My site also includes two articles by Australian Professor Tim Anderson republished from Global Research.
Beware Scam on gmail threatens account temination in one week
Capitalism and Progress as a conspiracy
Heritage Victoria brand name for overdevelopment? Protest!
You know there are conspiracy
You know there are conspiracy theories about Alex Jones!
A conspiracy is any secret plan. So that includes Watergate, the Iran-Contra Affair, two siblings discussing how they will screw over a third and two lovers over how they will dump their spouses. The existence of one doesn't validate the other.
Note that the large 'global' conspiracies are the ones with the least, the weakest evidence. They also seem to contradict the small scale nefarious activity.
There are secret plans, but the argument that the world works according to one secret plan, well thats the one I doubt. It's human nature to ascribe events to a plan. Since day zero peope have been looking for the force who decided when it rains, when there is a drought. We are wired to look for a someone. Usually people don't consider it may be a something.
Thats were I think people come unstuck. They are looking at something like Capitalism and how it has evolved, and just believe that it must be a directed plan. Of course, if someone is a Marxist, this makes sense, because Marxism teaches that everything IS planned and political.
It's the global conspiracies I'm skeptical of, the Bilderbergers, International Jewry, Illuminati, Freemasons, David Icke's Lizard people, Climate Change, Climate Change Skepticism. I've wasted many hours of my life having heard them all. I think these people wanted it to be true. Thats how hoaxes spread, people want them to be true. (The Gulf of Tonkin and WMD's in Iraq are good examples of this). Human logical infallibility.
Do you not wonder how it is that the bigger the conspiracy is, the more adept the people are at keeping it secret? That something like a few republicans spying is found out, but a global conspiracy or country wide false flag is kept perfectly secret?
Prices rise to absorb increases in income
A picnic at Hanging Rock with Anne Louise Lambert (Miranda)
Immigration, multiculturalism and externalities
Immigration has become an economic addiction
Proven conspiracies
History is absolutely full of proven conspiracies. On our front page we have strong indications of one about CIA and Australian government: http://candobetter.net/?q=node/3692.
Conspiracy is just planning in secret, which is fundamental to big business and to governments and to criminals. And to hospitals trying to get out of admitting fault.
Excerpt from Fantastic site on conspiracies
There are quite a few scintillating sites on the internet that look at conspiracies vs 'conspiracy theory'. However Jonathan Elinoff on InfoWars has come up with this competitive list of proven conspiracies that most people would be embarrassed to dismiss.
1.
The Dreyfus Affair: In the late 1800s in France, Jewish artillery officer Alfred Dreyfus was wrongfully convicted of treason based on false government documents, and sentenced to life in prison. The French government did attempt to cover this up, but Dreyfus was eventually pardoned after the affair was made public (an act that is credited to writer Émile Zola).
2.
The Mafia: This secret crime society was virtually unknown until the 1960s, when member Joe Valachi first revealed the society’s secrets to law enforcement officials. What was known was that organized crime existed, but not that the extent of their control included working with the CIA, politicians and the biggest businesses in the world.
3.
MK-ULTRA: In the 1950s to the 1970s, the CIA ran a mind-control project aimed at finding a “truth serum” to use on communist spies. Test subjects were given LSD and other drugs, often without consent, and some were tortured. At least one man, civilian biochemist Frank Olson, who was working for the government, died as a result of the experiments. The project was finally exposed after investigations by the Rockefeller Commission.
A short video about MK-ULTRA from a documentary called Secrets of the CIA:
4.
Operation Mockingbird: Also in the 1950s to ’70s, the CIA paid a number of well-known domestic and foreign journalists (from big-name media outlets like Time, The Washington Post, The New York Times, CBS and others) to publish CIA propaganda. The CIA also reportedly funded at least one movie, the animated “Animal Farm,” by George Orwell. The Church Committee finally exposed the activities in 1975.
5.
Manhattan Project: The Manhattan Project was the codename for a project conducted during World War II to develop the first atomic bomb. The project was led by the United States, and included participation from the United Kingdom and Canada. Formally designated as the Manhattan Engineer District (MED), it refers specifically to the period of the project from 1942–1946 under the control of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, under the administration of General Leslie R. Groves. The scientific research was directed by American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. The project’s roots lay in scientists’ fears since the 1930s that Nazi Germany was also investigating nuclear weapons of its own. Born out of a small research program in 1939, the Manhattan Project eventually employed more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US$2 billion ($22 billion in current value). It resulted in the creation of multiple production and research sites that operated in secret. With the total involved, this makes it one of the largest conspiracies in history. Entire towns were built for short periods of time, employing people, all under secrecy and top national secrecy at that. The government never admitted to it, the media never reported on it, and people had no idea for over 25 years. Project research took place at over thirty sites across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The three primary research and production sites of the project were the plutonium-production facility at what is now the Hanford Site, the uranium-enrichment facilities at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the weapons research and design laboratory now known as Los Alamos National Laboratory. The MED maintained control over U.S. weapons production until the formation of the Atomic Energy Commission in January 1947.
6.
Asbestos: Between 1930 and 1960, manufacturers did all they could to prevent the link between asbestos and respiratory diseases, including cancer, becoming known, so they could avoid prosecution. American workers had in fact sued the Johns Manville company as far back as 1932, but it was not until 1962 that epidemiologists finally established beyond any doubt what company bosses had known for a long time – asbestos causes cancer.
7.
Watergate: Republican officials spied on the Democratic National Headquarters from the Watergate Hotel in 1972. While conspiracy theories suggested underhanded dealings were taking place, it wasn’t until 1974 that White House tape recordings linked President Nixon to the break-in and forced him to resign.
8.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study: The United States Public Health Service carried out this clinical study on 400 poor, African-American men with syphilis from 1932 to 1972. During the study the men were given false and sometimes dangerous treatments, and adequate treatment was intentionally withheld so the agency could learn more about the disease. While the study was initially supposed to last just six months, it continued for 40 years. Close to 200 of the men died from syphilis or related complications by the end of the study.
9.
Operation Northwoods: In the early 1960s, American military leaders drafted plans to create public support for a war against Cuba, to oust Fidel Castro from power. The plans included committing acts of terrorism in U.S. cities, killing innocent people and U.S. soldiers, blowing up a U.S. ship, assassinating Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees, and hijacking planes. The plans were all approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but were reportedly rejected by the civilian leadership, then kept secret for nearly 40 years.
Author James Bamford, “A Pretext For War”, discusses the declassified “Operation Northwoods” documents revealing that in 1962 the CIA was planning to stage phony terrorist attacks on the US and blame it on Cuba to start a war:
10.
1990 Testimony of Nayirah: A 15-year-old girl named “Nayirah” testified before the U.S. Congress that she had seen Iraqi soldiers pulling Kuwaiti babies from incubators, causing them to die. The testimony helped gain major public support for the 1991 Gulf War, but — despite protests that the dispute of this story was itself a conspiracy theory — it was later discovered that the testimony was false. The public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, which was in the employ of Citizens for a Free Kuwait, had arranged the testimony. It turned out that she had taken acting lessons on request of the CIA and was actually the niece of a major politician in Kuwait. Nayirah was later disclosed to be Nayirah al-Sabah, daughter of Saud bin Nasir Al-Sabah, Kuwaiti ambassador to the USA. The Congressional Human Rights Caucus, of which Congressman Tom Lantos was co-chairman, had been responsible for hosting Nurse Nayirah, and thereby popularizing her allegations. When the girl’s account was later challenged by independent human rights monitors, Lantos replied, “The notion that any of the witnesses brought to the caucus through the Kuwaiti Embassy would not be credible did not cross my mind… I have no basis for assuming that her story is not true, but the point goes beyond that. If one hypothesizes that the woman’s story is fictitious from A to Z, that in no way diminishes the avalanche of human rights violations.” Nevertheless, the senior Republican on the Human Rights Caucus, John Edward Porter, responded to the revelations “by saying that if he had known the girl was the ambassador’s daughter, he would not have allowed her to testify.”
11.
Counter Intelligence Programs Against Activists in the 60s: COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. The FBI used covert operations from its inception, however formal COINTELPRO operations took place between 1956 and 1971. The FBI’s stated motivation at the time was “protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order.” According to FBI records, 85% of COINTELPRO resources were expended on infiltrating, disrupting, marginalizing, and/or subverting groups suspected of being subversive, such as communist and socialist organizations; the women’s rights movement; militant black nationalist groups, and the non-violent civil rights movement, including individuals such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and others associated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Congress of Racial Equality, the American Indian Movement, and other civil rights groups; a broad range of organizations labeled “New Left”, including Students for a Democratic Society, the National Lawyers Guild, the Weathermen, almost all groups protesting the Vietnam War, and even individual student demonstrators with no group affiliation; and nationalist groups such as those “seeking independence for Puerto Rico.” The other 15% of COINTELPRO resources were expended to marginalize and subvert “white hate groups,” including the Ku Klux Klan and National States’ Rights Party. The directives governing COINTELPRO were issued by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who ordered FBI agents to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” the activities of these movements and their leaders.
This is a documentary on COINTELPRO:
12.
The Iran-Contra Affair: In 1985 and ’86, the White House authorized government officials to secretly trade weapons with the Israeli government in exchange for the release of U.S. hostages in Iran. The plot was uncovered by Congress in 1987.
13.
The BCCI Scandal: The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was a major international bank founded in 1972 by Agha Hasan Abedi, a Pakistani financier. The Bank was registered in Luxembourg. Within a decade BCCI touched its peak, it operated in 78 countries, had over 400 branches, and had assets in excess of US$ 20 billion making it the 7th largest private bank in the world by assets. In the late 1980?s BCCI became the target of a two year undercover operation conducted by the US Customs Service. This operation concluded with a fake wedding that was attended by BCCI officers and drug dealers from around the world who had established a personal friendship and working relationship with undercover Special Agent Robert Mazur. After a six month trial in Tampa, key bank officers were convicted and received lengthy prison sentences. Bank officers began cooperating with law enforcement authorities and that cooperation caused BCCI’s many crimes to be revealed. BCCI came under the scrutiny of regulatory bodies and intelligence agencies in the 1980s due to its perceived avoidance of falling under one regulatory banking authority, a fact that was later, after extensive investigations, proven to be false. BCCI became the focus of a massive regulatory battle in 1991 and was described as a “$20-billion-plus heist”. Investigators in the U.S. and the UK revealed that BCCI had been “set up deliberately to avoid centralized regulatory review, and operated extensively in bank secrecy jurisdictions. Its affairs were extraordinarily complex. Its officers were sophisticated international bankers whose apparent objective was to keep their affairs secret, to commit fraud on a massive scale, and to avoid detection.”
This is a report from July 23, 1991 on the BCCI:
This is a report from July 8, 1991 on Connections between BCCI and the CIA:
This is a report from August 6, 1991 on how the BCCI funded Pakistan’s Nuclear Programs:
This is a report from March 4, 1991 on the BCCI:
14.
CIA Drug Running in LA: Pulitzer Prize Award winning journalist Gary Webb exposed this alongside LAPD Narcotics Officer turned whislteblower and author Michael Ruppert, CIA Contract Pilot Terry Reed, and many others. In August 1996 the San Jose Mercury News published Webb’s “Dark Alliance”, a 20,000 word, three-part investigative series which alleged that Nicaraguan drug traffickers had sold and distributed crack cocaine in Los Angeles during the 1980s, and that drug profits were used to fund the CIA-supported Nicaraguan Contras. Webb never asserted that the CIA directly aided drug dealers to raise money for the Contras, but he did document that the CIA was aware of the cocaine transactions and the large shipments of cocaine into the U.S. by the Contra personnel. “Dark Alliance” received national attention. At the height of the interest, the web version of it on San Jose Mercury News website received 1.3 million hits a day. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, the series became “the most talked-about piece of journalism in 1996 and arguably the most famous—some would say infamous—set of articles of the decade.”
April 6, 1987 Report on CIA Drug Running:
January 20, 1987 Report on CIA Drug Smuggling
November 19, 1993 Report on CIA Drug Running:
15.
Gulf of Tonkin Never Happened: The Gulf of Tonkin Incident is the name given to two separate incidents involving the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. On August 2, 1964 two American destroyers engaged three North Vietnamese torpedo boats, resulting in the sinking of one of the torpedo boats. This was also the single most important reason for the escalation of the Vietnam War. After Kennedy was assassinated, the Gulf of Tonkin gave the country the sweeping support for aggressive military action against the North Vietnamese. The outcome of the incident was the passage by Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to assist any Southeast Asian country whose government was considered to be jeopardized by “communist aggression”. In 2005, an internal National Security Agency historical study was declassified; it concluded that USS Maddox had engaged the North Vietnamese on August 2, but that there may not have been any North Vietnamese vessels present during the engagement of August 4. The report stated “It is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night…” In truth, Hanoi’s navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on August 2. In 1965, President Johnson commented privately: “For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there.” In 1981, Captain Herrick and journalist Robert Scheer re-examined Herrick’s ship’s log and determined that the first torpedo report from August 4, which Herrick had maintained had occurred—the “apparent ambush”—was in fact unfounded. In 1995, retired Vietnamese Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap, meeting with former Secretary of Defense McNamara, categorically denied that Vietnamese gunboats had attacked American destroyers on August 4, while admitting to the attack on August 2. In the Fall of 1999, retired senior CIA engineering executive S. Eugene Poteat wrote that he was asked in early August 1964 to determine if the radar operator’s report showed a real torpedo boat attack or an imagined one. In October, 2005 the New York Times reported that Robert J. Hanyok, a historian for the U.S. National Security Agency, had concluded that the NSA deliberately distorted the intelligence reports that it had passed on to policy-makers regarding the August 4, 1964 incident. He concluded that the motive was not political but was probably to cover up honest intelligence errors.
November 9th, 1995 New Clip on Gulf of Tonkin:
16.
The Business Plot: In 1933, group of wealthy businessmen that allegedly included the heads of Chase Bank, GM, Goodyear, Standard Oil, the DuPont family and Senator Prescott Bush tried to recruit Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler to lead a military coup against President FDR and install a fascist dictatorship in the United States. And yes, we’re talking about the same Prescott Bush who fathered one US President and grandfathered another one. Smedley Butler was both a patriot and a vocal FDR supporter. Apparently none of these criminal masterminds noticed that their prospective point man had actively stumped for FDR in 1932. Smedley spilled the beans to a congressional committee in 1934. Everyone he accused of being a conspirator vehemently denied it, and none of them were brought up on criminal charges. Still, the House McCormack-Dickstein Committee did at least acknowledge the existence of the conspiracy, which ended up never getting past the initial planning stages. Though many of the people who had allegedly backed the Business Plot also maintained financial ties with Nazi Germany up through America’s entry into World War II. In 1934, the Business Plot was publicly revealed by retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler testifying to the McCormack-Dickstein Congressional Committee. In his testimony, Butler claimed that a group of men had approached him as part of a plot to overthrow Roosevelt in a military coup. One of the alleged plotters, Gerald MacGuire, vehemently denied any such plot. In their final report, the Congressional committee supported Butler’s allegations of the existence of the plot, but no prosecutions or further investigations followed, and the matter was mostly forgotten.
On July 17, 1932, thousands of World War I veterans converged on Washington, D.C., set up tent camps, and demanded immediate payment of bonuses due them according to the Adjusted Service Certificate Law of 1924. This “Bonus Army” was led by Walter W. Waters, a former Army sergeant. The Army was encouraged by an appearance from retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, who had considerable influence over the veterans, being one of the most popular military figures of the time. A few days after Butler’s arrival, President Herbert Hoover ordered the marchers removed, and their camps were destroyed by US Army cavalry troops under the command of General Douglas MacArthur. Butler, although a self-described Republican, responded by supporting Roosevelt in that year’s election. In a 1995 History Today article Clayton Cramer argued that the devastation of the Great Depression had caused many Americans to question the foundations of liberal democracy. “Many traditionalists, here and in Europe, toyed with the ideas of Fascism and National Socialism; many liberals dallied with Socialism and Communism.” Cramer argues that this explains why some American business leaders viewed fascism as a viable system to both preserve their interests and end the economic woes of the Depression.
BBC – Whitehouse Coup (Part 1)
17.
July 20, 1944 Conspiracy to Assassinate Hitler: Among another 20 some odd attempts, this one was one of the largest conspiracies involving hundreds of loyalists in the highest echelons of Hitler’s inner circle. Near the end of WWII, things were rapidly going south for Germany and the time seemed ripe for guilt-ridden Nazi officers to assassinate Hitler and overthrow his government. Colonel Henning von Tresckow recruited Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg to join the conspiracy in 1944. The plot to take out Hitler and then all of his loyal officers was called Operation Valkyrie. The plan was to use the Continuity of Government Proceedings during an assassination on Hitler’s life to take over full control of the government in Germany. The assassination would be blamed on the Nazi SS and therefore allow Stauffenberg to take full control of all aspects of the government. It almost worked. In July 1944, Stauffenberg was promoted so that he could now start attending military strategy meetings with Hitler himself. On more than one occasion Stauffenberg planned to kill Hitler at such a meeting with a briefcase bomb, but he always held off because he also wanted to take out Hitler’s two right-hand men, Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler. On July 20, he went for it anyway and exploded a bomb inside Hitler’s conference room with a remote detonator. Hitler survived only minor injuries.
18.
Operation Ajax: For years, Britain had a spiffy trade deal with Iran regarding their prodigious oil fields. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was basically a giant money machine for the Anglo half, while the Iranian half got shafted. That all changed in 1951 when Iran nationalized the AIOC and the Iranian parliament elected Mohammed Mossadegh as Prime Minister. Mossadegh was relatively secular, something that pissed of Iranian clerics, but he was also very nationalistic. He was a democratically elected, pro American figure but the West saw his nationalizing of the oil fields a communist move(something Mossadegh thought was the right of the people to profit and pay for services in the country with). Those oil fields were under the control of British Petroleum, but unfortunately Mossadegh overruled this long standing business control. The United States sent Kermit Roosevelt, FDR’s nephew and CIA coordinator in to figure out the mess. The best he could come up with was to confront Mossadegh and have him overthrown and this was accomplished by bringing in what the agency refers to as “jackals.” The United States backed the return of the Shah of Iran, one of the most brutal dictators the country had ever seen and intentionally overthrew years before with the democratic leader, Mossadegh. Until 1979, that is, when a pissed off Iranian populace finally revolted and replaced the monarchy with an anti-West Islamic Republic. The result was a violently anti-American revolution lead by the Ayatollah Khomeini which overthrew the Shah and took hostage US Embassy workers, many of whom were involved in the plot with Kermit Roosevelt that installed the Shah. The planning for the Coup took place largely in that embassy, but Americans were told this was due to the rise of radical Islam and rise of democracy hating Muslims, which of course was far from the truth.
Part 1 of a video done on Operation Ajax history:
Part 2 of the video:
19.
Operation Snow White: Some time during the 1970s, the Church of Scientology decided that they’d had enough. Apparently, the Church of Scientology managed to perform the largest infiltration of the United States government in history. Ever. 5,000 of Scientology’s crack commandos wiretapped and burglarized various agencies. They stole hundreds of documents, mainly from the IRS. No critic was spared, and in the end, 136 organizations, agencies and foreign embassies were infiltrated.
20.
Operation Gladio: Gladio is a code name denoting the clandestine NATO “stay-behind” operation in Italy after World War II, intended to continue anti-communist resistance in the event of a Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe. Although Gladio specifically refers to the Italian branch of the NATO stay-behind organizations, “Operation Gladio” is used as an informal name for all stay-behind organizations, sometimes called “Super NATO”. The role of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in sponsoring Gladio and the extent of its activities during the Cold War era, and its relationship to right-wing terrorist attacks perpetrated in Italy during the Years of Lead and other similar clandestine operations is the subject of ongoing debate and investigation. Italy, Switzerland and Belgium have had parliamentary inquiries into the matter. What can we prove about that role? Thousands of documents, depositions and testimony as well as recorded conversations and admission by the highest levels of government in Italy. That’s about as credible as it gets, regardless of the CIA’s adamant denial it ever happened. What took place? The shooting of innocent civilians, terrorism and assassinations all blamed on leftist communists were actually apart of well coordinated, “black operations.” Black operations are typically involving activities that are highly clandestine and, often, outside of standard military protocol.
“The right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.” Black ops missions often fit into the deniable category, a situation in which there is no claim of responsibility for the action, and/or a false flag operation is used to give the appearance that another actor was responsible, or – most often – black operations involve extensive arrangements so as to be able to hide the fact that the black operation ever occurred. Black military operations, or paramilitary operations, can be used by various secret services to achieve or attempt to achieve an unusually sensitive goal. The methods used in black operations are also used in unconventional warfare. Depending on the precise situation in a given case, and the level of authoritarianism of the national government or other responsible party, some tasks will be conducted as black operations, while there are usually other activities that can be admitted openly. Black operations may include such things as assassination, sabotage, extortion, spying on allied countries or one’s own citizens, kidnapping, supporting resistance movements, torture, use of fraud to obtain funds, use of child soldiers, human experimentation, trafficking in contraband items, etc. Since 9/11, many black operations and long time unethical standings have been approved for legality in the war on terror. In other words, since September 11th, 2001, it is no a longer conspiracy for any of this to occur, a simple decision by a top level military or CIA official is enough, without oversight or even one thread of admission by the Government or Private conspirators. Much of the Black operations today are performed by private contract companies like Blackwater (now Xe).
This is a documentary banned in teh United States that was allowed to air on BBC. It was an investigation into Operation Gladio:
21.
The CIA Assassinates A Lot Of People (Church Committee): The Church Committee is the common term referring to the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church in 1975. A precursor to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the committee investigated intelligence gathering for illegality by the CIA and FBI after certain activities had been revealed by the Watergate affair. The Committee uncovered, among many other things, that the CIA had violated its charter to perform only gathering of intelligence. For example, the assassinations of Allende in Chile and Mossadegh in Iran. Assassinations against Central and South American leaders and revolutionaries, as well as Africa, Middle East and East Asia. The list was tremendous. They even declassified a “Heart Attack Gun” the Agency had made for the use of killing someone without it being detected. Cancer, car accidents, skiing accidents, suicide, boating accidents, heart attacks, and just plain being shot were common assassination methods. The hearings, although recorded in full in congressional record, the mainstream media and official policies, is still largely not taught in American schools on recent history. The American public still has no idea this was ever actually confirmed or even took place. It is common for people to still refer to any of these assassinations as a joke or made up conspiracy.
click here
22.
The New World Order: This popular conspiracy theory claims that a small group of international elites controls and manipulates governments, industry and media organisations worldwide. The primary tool they use to dominate nations is the system of central banking. They are said to have funded and in some cases caused most of the major wars of the last 200 years, primarily through carrying out false flag attacks to manipulate populations into supporting them, and have a grip on the world economy, deliberately causing inflation and depressions at will. The people behind the New World Order are thought to be international bankers, in particular the owners of the private banks in the Federal Reserve System, Bank of England and other central banks, and members of the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg Group. Now, although this conspiracy theory was ridiculed for years, it turns out that the Bilderberg does meet and requests no media coverage. They receive no media coverage. The world’s elite meet every year and it goes largely unreported, for what?
[efoods]Discussions at the meetings include the economy, world affairs, war and in general, world policy. After the financial collapse, the Bilderberg played a key role in proposing that the world prepare for a new world order and have a standard world currency. This was propsed shortly after by almost all attendees of the Bilderberg meeting. During the 20th century, many statesmen, such as Woodrow Wilson and Winston Churchill, used the term “new world order” to refer to a new period of history evidencing a dramatic change in world political thought and the balance of power after World War I and World War II. They all saw these periods as opportunities to implement idealistic or liberal proposals for global governance only in the sense of new collective efforts to identify, understand, or address worldwide problems that go beyond the capacity of individual nation-states to solve. These proposals led to the creation of international organizations, such as the United Nations and N.A.T.O., and international regimes, such as the Bretton Woods system and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which were calculated both to maintain a balance of power as well as regularize cooperation between nations, in order to achieve a peaceful phase of capitalism. In the aftermath of the two World Wars, progressives welcomed these new international organizations and regimes but argued they suffered from a democratic deficit and therefore were inadequate to not only prevent another global war but also foster global justice. American banker David Rockefeller joined the Council on Foreign Relations as its youngest-ever director in 1949 and subsequently became chairman of the board from 1970 to 1985; today he serves as honorary chairman. In 2002, Rockefeller authored his autobiography Memoirs wherein, on page 405, he wrote:
“For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents … to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
Thus, activists around the globe formed a world federalist movement bent on creating a “real” new world order. A number of Fabian socialist intellectuals, such as British writer H. G. Wells in the 1940s, appropriated and redefined the term “new world order” as a synonym for the establishment of a full-fledged social democratic world government. In the 1960s, a great deal of right-wing conspiracist attention, by groups like the John Birch Society and the Liberty Lobby, focused on the United Nations as the vehicle for creating the “One World Government”, and contributed to a conservative movement for United States withdrawal from the U.N.. American writer Mary M. Davison, in her 1966 booklet The Profound Revolution, traced the alleged New World Order conspiracy to the creation of the U.S. Federal Reserve System in 1913 by international bankers, who she claimed later formed the Council on Foreign Relations in 1921 as the shadow government. At the time the booklet was published, “international bankers” would have been interpreted by many readers as a reference to a postulated “international Jewish banking conspiracy” masterminded by the Rothschilds and Rockefellers. American televangelist Pat Robertson with his 1991 best-selling book The New World Order became the most prominent Christian popularizer of conspiracy theories about recent American history as a theater in which Wall Street, the Federal Reserve System, Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderberg Group, and Trilateral Commission control the flow of events from behind the scenes, nudging us constantly and covertly in the direction of world government for the Antichrist.
After the turn of the century, specifically during the financial crisis of 2007–2009, many politicians and pundits, such as Gordon Brown, Henry Kissinger, and Barack Obama, used the term “new world order” in their advocacy for a Keynesian reform of the global financial system and their calls for a “New Bretton Woods”, which takes into account emerging markets such as China and India. These declarations had the unintended consequence of providing fresh fodder for New World Order conspiracism, and culminated in former Clinton administration adviser Dick Morris and conservative talk show host Sean Hannity arguing on one of his Fox News Channel programs that “conspiracy theorists were right”. In 2009, American film directors Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel released New World Order, a critically-acclaimed documentary film which explores the world of conspiracy theorists, such as American radio host Alex Jones, who are committed to exposing and vigorously opposing what they perceive to be an emerging New World Order.
May 24, 1992 Report on New World Order:
23. Kennedy Assassination – the 2nd Investigation by Congress Few People Know About, United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA): The HSCA was established in 1976 to investigate the John F. Kennedy assassination and the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination. The Committee investigated until 1978, and in 1979 issued its final report, concluding that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated by a conspiracy involving the mob, and potentially the CIA. The House Select Committee on Assassinations undertook reinvestigations of the murders of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1979, a single Report and twelve volumes of appendices on each assassination were published by the Congress. In the JFK case, the HSCA found that there was a “probable conspiracy,” though it was unable to determine the nature of that conspiracy or its other participants (besides Oswald). This finding was based in part on acoustics evidence from a tape purported to record the shots, but was also based on other evidence including an investigation of Ruby’s mafia connections and potential CIA and/or FBI connections to Oswald. To this day, many conspiracy deniers are unaware that the Congressional investigation into JFK’s assassination concluded beyond any shadow of a doubt that it was a conspiracy. What made them come to this conclusion? Aside from reading the report, many witnesses (some of whom were CIA agents and station chiefs in Dallas that morning) were killed the night before testifying. For example, George de Mohrenschildt was a petroleum geologist who befriended Lee Harvey Oswald during the months preceding the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. He also worked for the CIA. He also blew his brains out the night before he was to testify to the committee. The committee also uncovered, among many things, that Oswald left the marines where he learned how to speak fluent Russian (at the height of the cold war). He was given money by the State Department to travel to Russia where he stopped off in Japan at a top secret US Military facility. The Warren Commission even mentioned this part. What most people do not know is that he probably was working in the Cold War infiltrating the Russians as either a “dangle,” “double agent,” or “defector” of some kind. What is interesting is that upon his return he got more money from the State Department to buy a house and work with an ex FBI Chief and CIA officials in training anti-Castro Cubans for an invasion. In Louisiana, where he was working, the CIA was involved in Operation Mongoose, Where Oswald worked under CIA Agent David Ferrie, who killed himself before testifying in a trial on the Assassination as well. Operation Mongoose worked closely with Southern Mafia figures largely because the casinos in Cuba, which were shut down after Fidel obtained control over the country, were epicenters for control on the island. The CIA even hired the mafia to assassinate Fidel on many occasions, 3 attempts which failed are common knowledge. What is funny is that figures who worked very close with Oswald either ended up dead (over 100 of them connected to the assassination died within a few years of unusual circumstances) or they ended up in other conspiracies.
For instance, E Howard Hunt (CIA Agent) confessed to being involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy on his deathbed. E Howard Hunt was one of the Watergate Burglars. Barry Seal, who worked with Oswald and Ferrie ended up being one of the largest cocaine smugglers in the United States during Iran Contra, as a key player for the agency and informant for the DEA. There is so much more to get into, but there just isn’t enough time. Oswald’s tax returns are still classified top secret to this day. Why? Perhaps he was still getting $$ from the United States, which places him on the payroll. That money trail leads to figures, many of whom were murdered, that would have blown the story wide open. For 14 years, most didn’t know this. The HSCA investigaitons by congress went against the findings of the Warren Commission and both reports are from the same source, Congressional Committees. Which is true? Why do we only teach one to our children in school?
December 30, 1978 Report on HSCA Findings:
24.
1919 World Series Conspiracy: The 1919 World Series (often referred to as the Black Sox Scandal) resulted in the most famous scandal in baseball history. Eight players from the Chicago White Sox (nicknamed the Black Sox) were accused of throwing the series against the Cincinnati Reds. Details of the scandal remain controversial, and the extent to which each player was involved varied. It was, however, front-page news across the country when the story was uncovered late in the 1920 season, and despite being acquitted of criminal charges (throwing baseball games was technically not a crime), the eight players were banned from organized baseball (i.e. the leagues subject to the National Agreement) for life. There are hundreds of other conspiracies involving throwing games, sporting matches and large scale entertainment events. It is common knowledge for many, this list would have to go into the thousands if we included all of them.
25.
Karen Silkwood: Karen was an American labor union activist and chemical technician at the Kerr-McGee plant near Crescent, Oklahoma, United States. Silkwood’s job was making plutonium pellets for nuclear reactor fuel rods. After being hired at Kerr-McGee, Silkwood joined the Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Union local and took part in a strike at the plant. After the strike ended, she was elected to the union’s bargaining committee and assigned to investigate health and safety issues. She discovered what she believed to be numerous violations of health regulations, including exposure of workers to contamination, faulty respiratory equipment and improper storage of samples. She also believed the lack of sufficient shower facilities could increase the risk of employee contamination. In the summer of 1974, Silkwood testified to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) about these issues, alleging that safety standards had slipped because of a production speedup which resulted in employees being given tasks for which they were poorly trained. She also alleged that Kerr-McGee employees handled the fuel rods improperly and that the company falsified inspection records. On November 5, 1974, Silkwood performed a routine self-check and found almost 400 times the legal limit for plutonium contamination. She was decontaminated at the plant and sent home with a testing kit to collect urine and feces for further analysis. Oddly, though there was plutonium on the exterior surfaces (the ones she touched) of the gloves she had been using, the gloves did not have any holes.
This suggests the contamination did not come from inside the glove box, but from some other source, in other words, someone was trying to poison her. The next morning, as she headed to a union negotiation meeting, she again tested positive for plutonium. This was surprising because she had only performed paperwork duties that morning. She was given a more intense decontamination. The following day, November 7, 1974, as she entered the plant, she was found to be dangerously contaminated — even expelling contaminated air from her lungs. A health physics team accompanied her back to her home and found plutonium traces on several surfaces — especially in the bathroom and the refrigerator. The house was later stripped and decontaminated. Silkwood, her partner and housemate were sent to Los Alamos National Laboratory for in-depth testing to determine the extent of the contamination in their bodies. Later that evening, Silkwood’s body was found in her car, which had run off the road and struck a culvert. The car contained no documents. She was pronounced dead at the scene from a “classic, one-car sleeping-driver accident”.
26.
CIA Drug Smuggling in Arkansas: August 23, 1987, in a rural community just south of Little Rock, police officers murdered two teenage boys because they witnessed a police-protected drug drop. The drop was part of a drug smuggling operation based at a small airport in Mena, Arkansas. The Mena operation was set up in the early 1980?s by the notorious drug smuggler, Barry Seal. Facing prison after a drug conviction in Florida, Seal flew to Washington, D.C., where he put together a deal that allowed him to avoid prison by becoming an informant for the government. As a government informant against drug smugglers, Seal testified he worked for the CIA and the DEA. In one federal court case, he testified that his income from March 1984 to August 1985, was between $700,000 and $800,000. This period was AFTER making his deal with the government. Seal testified that nearly $600,000 of this came from smuggling drugs while working for — and with the permission of the DEA. In addition to his duties as an informant, Seal was used by CIA operatives to help finance the Nicaraguan Contras. The CIA connection to the Mena operation was undeniable when a cargo plane given to Seal by the CIA was shot down over Nicaragua with a load of weapons. In spite of the evidence, every investigator who has tried to expose the crimes of Mena has been professionally destroyed, and those involved in drug smuggling operations have received continued protection from state and federal authorities.
February 20, 1986 report on Mena Drug Smuggling:
April 7, 1988 Report on CIA Drug Running:
March 25, 2995 News Clip on Mena Drug Smuggling:
27.
Bohemian Grove: For years, many conspiracy theorists were saying that the rich and powerful met every year in the woods and worshiped a giant stone owl in an occult fashion. It turns out, ABC, CBS, NBC, and many other credible news agencies investigated this and found out, its true. It is said to be just all fun and games, like brotherhood style fraternity stuff. These news clips can be viewed by clicking here.
Bohemian Grove Secrecy Upheld, Nixon Speech 7-30-1971, NBC
Bohemian Grove Weinberger and Reagan Retreat Mentioned 7-21-1983, NBC
Bohemian Grove Detailed Report 7-23-1982, NBC
Bohemian Grove Detailed Report 7-23-1981, ABC
Bohemian Grove Mention at Smith Testimony 1-15-1981, ABC
Nixon Tape Discusses Homosexuals at Bohemian Grove
Alex Jones asks David Gergen about Bohemian Grove Rituals
For more clips on the Bohemian Grove including comprehensive investigations by the mainstream media, clik here…
28.
Operation Paperclip: Operation Paperclip was the code name for the 1945 Office of Strategic Services, Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency recruitment of German scientists from Nazi Germany to the U.S. after VE Day. President Truman authorized Operation Paperclip in August 1945; however he expressly ordered that anyone found “to have been a member of the Nazi party and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Nazi militarism” would be excluded. These included Wernher von Braun, Arthur Rudolph and Hubertus Strughold, who were all officially on record as Nazis and listed as a “menace to the security of the Allied Forces.” All were cleared to work in the U.S. after having their backgrounds “bleached” by the military; false employment histories were provided, and their previous Nazi affiliations were expunged from the record. The paperclips that secured newly-minted background details to their personnel files gave the operation its name.
29.
The Round Table: British businessman Cecil Rhodes advocated the British Empire reannexing the United States of America and reforming itself into an “Imperial Federation” to bring about a hyperpower and lasting world peace. In his first will, of 1877, written at the age of 23, he expressed his wish to fund a secret society (known as the Society of the Elect) that would advance this goal: “To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of colonization by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labor and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible, and promote the best interests of humanity.”
In his later wills, a more mature Rhodes abandoned the idea and instead concentrated on what became the Rhodes Scholarship, which had British statesman Alfred Milner as one of its trustees. Established in 1902, the original goal of the trust fund was to foster peace among the great powers by creating a sense of fraternity and a shared world view among future British, American, and German leaders by having enabled them to study for free at the University of Oxford. Milner and British official Lionel George Curtis were the architects of the Round Table movement, a network of organizations promoting closer union between Britain and its self-governing colonies. To this end, Curtis founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs in June 1919 and, with his 1938 book The Commonwealth of God, began advocating for the creation of an imperial federation that eventually reannexes the U.S., which would be presented to Protestant churches as being the work of the Christian God to elicit their support. The Commonwealth of Nations was created in 1949 but it would only be a free association of independent states rather than the powerful imperial federation imagined by Rhodes, Milner and Curtis. The Council on Foreign Relations began in 1917 with a group of New York academics who were asked by President Woodrow Wilson to offer options for the foreign policy of the United States in the interwar period.
Originally envisioned as a British-American group of scholars and diplomats, some of whom belonging to the Round Table movement, it was a subsequent group of 108 New York financiers, manufacturers and international lawyers organized in June 1918 by Nobel Peace Prize recipient and U.S. secretary of state, Elihu Root, that became the Council on Foreign Relations on 29 July 1921. The first of the council’s projects was a quarterly journal launched in September 1922, called Foreign Affairs. Some believe that the Council on Foreign Relations is a front organization for the Round Table as a tool of the “Anglo-American Establishment”, which they believe has been plotting from 1900 on to rule the world. The research findings of historian Carroll Quigley, author of the 1966 book Tragedy and Hope, are taken by both conspiracy theorists of the American Old Right (Cleon Skousen) and New Left (Carl Oglesby) to substantiate this view, even though he argued that the Establishment is not involved in a plot to implement a one-world government but rather British and American benevolent imperialism driven by the mutual interests of economic elites in the United Kingdom and the United States. Quigley also argued that, although the Round Table still exists today, its position in influencing the policies of world leaders has been much reduced from its heyday during World War I and slowly waned after the end of World War II and the Suez Crisis. Today it is largely a ginger group, designed to consider and gradually influence the policies of the Commonwealth of Nations, but faces strong opposition. Furthermore, in American society after 1965, the problem, according to Quigley, was that no elite was in charge and acting responsibly.
American banker David Rockefeller joined the Council on Foreign Relations as its youngest-ever director in 1949 and subsequently became chairman of the board from 1970 to 1985; today he serves as honorary chairman. In 2002, Rockefeller authored his autobiography Memoirs wherein, on page 405, he wrote: “For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents … to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.” Barkun argues that this statement is partly facetious (the claim of “conspiracy” or “treason”) and partly serious – the desire to encourage trilateral cooperation among the U.S., Europe, and Japan, for example – an ideal that used to be a hallmark of the internationalist wing of the Republican Party when there was an internationalist wing. However, the statement is taken at face value and widely cited by conspiracy theorists as proof that the Council on Foreign Relations (itself alleged to be a front for an “international banking cabal”, as well as, it is claimed, the sponsor of many “globalist” think tanks such as the Trilateral Commission) uses its role as the brain trust of American presidents, senators and representatives to manipulate them into supporting a New World Order.
Conspiracy theorists fear that the international bankers of financial capitalism are planning to eventually subvert the independence of the U.S. by subordinating national sovereignty to a strengthened Bank for International Settlements with the intent to “create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole”. In a 13 November 2007 interview with Canadian journalist Benjamin Fulford, Rockefeller countered: “I don’t think that I really feel that we need a world government. We need governments of the world that work together and collaborate. But, I can’t imagine that there would be any likelihood or even that it would be desirable to have a single government elected by the people of the world … There have been people, ever since I’ve had any kind of position in the world, who have accused me of being ruler of the world. I have to say that I think for the large part, I would have to decide to describe them as crackpots. It makes no sense whatsoever, and isn’t true, and won’t be true, and to raise it as a serious issue seems to me to be irresponsible.” Some American social critics, such as Laurence H. Shoup, argue that the Council on Foreign Relations is an “imperial brain trust”, which has, for decades, played a central behind-the-scenes role in shaping U.S. foreign policy choices for the post-WWII international order and the Cold War, by determining what options show up on the agenda and what options do not even make it to the table; while others, such as G. William Domhoff, argue that it is in fact a mere policy discussion forum, which provides the business input to U.S. foreign policy planning. The latter argue that it has nearly 3,000 members, far too many for secret plans to be kept within the group; all the council does is sponsor discussion groups, debates and speakers; and as far as being secretive, it issues annual reports and allows access to its historical archives.
30.
The Illuminati: The Order of the Illuminati was an Enlightenment-age secret society founded on May 1st, 1776, in Ingolstadt (Upper Bavaria), by Adam Weishaupt, who was the first lay professor of canon law at the University of Ingolstadt. The movement consisted of freethinkers, secularists, liberals, republicans and pro-feminists, recruited in the Masonic Lodges of Germany, who sought to promote perfectionism through mystery schools. As a result, in 1785, the order was infiltrated, broken and suppressed by the government agents of Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria, in his campaign to neutralize the threat of secret societies ever becoming hotbeds of conspiracies to overthrow the monarchy and state religion. In the late 18th century, reactionary conspiracy theorists, such as Scottish physicist John Robison and French Jesuit priest Augustin Barruel, began speculating that the Illuminati survived their suppression and became the masterminds behind the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. The Illuminati were accused of being enlightened absolutists who were attempting to secretly orchestrate a world revolution in order to globalize the most radical ideals of the Enlightenment: anti-clericalism, anti-monarchism, and anti-patriarchalism. During the 19th century, fear of an Illuminati conspiracy was a real concern of European ruling classes, and their oppressive reactions to this unfounded fear provoked in 1848 the very revolutions they sought to prevent. Although many say that the Illuminati was disbanded and destroyed so long ago, it is well known that the Rothschild dynasty following the family’s involvement in the secret order in Bavaria received much attention for its major takeover of Europe’s central banks. The Rothschild dynasty owns roughly half of the world’s wealth and evidence suggests it has funded both sides of major wars, including the United States Civil War.
31.
The Trilateral Commission: The Trilateral Commission is a private organization, established to foster closer cooperation among the United States, Europe and Japan. It was founded in July 1973 at the initiative of David Rockefeller, who was Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations at that time. The Trilateral Commission is widely seen as a counterpart to the Council on Foreign Relations. In July 1972, Rockefeller called his first meeting, which was held at Rockefeller’s Pocantico compound in New York’s Hudson Valley. It was attended by about 250 individuals who were carefully selected and screened by Rockefeller and represented the very elite of finance and industry. Its first executive committee meeting was held in Tokyo in October 1973. The Trilateral Commission was officially initiated, holding biannual meetings. A Trilateral Commission Task Force Report, presented at the 1975 meeting in Kyoto, Japan, called An Outline for Remaking World Trade and Finance, said: “Close Trilateral cooperation in keeping the peace, in managing the world economy, and in fostering economic development and in alleviating world poverty, will improve the chances of a smooth and peaceful evolution of the global system.” Another Commission document read: “The overriding goal is to make the world safe for interdependence by protecting the benefits which it provides for each country against external and internal threats which will constantly emerge from those willing to pay a price for more national autonomy. This may sometimes require slowing the pace at which interdependence proceeds, and checking some aspects of it. More frequently however, it will call for checking the intrusion of national government into the international exchange of both economic and non-economic goods.”
March 29, 1981 News Clip on Trilateral Commission:
May 2, 1995 News Clip on Trilateral Commission:
32.
Big Brother or the Shadow Government: It is also called the “Deep State” by Peter Dale Scott, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. A shadow government is a “government-in-waiting” that remains in waiting with the intention of taking control of a government in response to some event. It turned out this was true on 9/11, when it was told to us by our mainstream media. For years, this was ridiculed as a silly, crazy conspiracy theory and, like the others listed here, turned out to be 100% true. It is also called the Continuity of Government. The Continuity of Government (COG) is the principle of establishing defined procedures that allow a government to continue its essential operations in case of nuclear war or other catastrophic event. Since the end of the cold war, the policies and procedures for the COG have been altered according to realistic threats of that time. These include but are not limited to a possible coup or overthrow by right wing terrorist groups, a terrorist attack in general, an assassination, and so on. Believe it or not the COG has been in effect since 2001. After 9/11, it went into action. Now here is the kicker, many of the figures in Iran Contra, the Watergate Scandal, the alleged conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy, and many others listed here are indeed members of the COG. This is its own conspiracy as well.
March 1, 2002 News Clip on Secret Government:
The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World is a book written by Air Force Col. L fletcher Prouty, published in 1973. From 1955 to 1963 Prouty was the “Focal Point Officer” for contacts between the CIA and the Pentagon on matters relating to military support for “black operations” but he was not assigned to the CIA and was not bound by any oath of secrecy. (From the first page of the 1974 Printing) It was one of the first tell-all books about the inner workings of the CIA and was an important influence on the Oliver Stone movie JFK. But the main thrust of the book is how the CIA started as a think tank to analyze intelligence gathered from military sources but has grown to the monster it has become. The CIA had no authority to run their own agents or to carry out covert operations but they quickly did both and much more. This book tells about things they actually did and a lot about how the operate. In Prouty’s own words, from the 1997 edition of The Secret Team: This is the fundamental game of the Secret Team. They have this power because they control secrecy and secret intelligence and because they have the ability to take advantage of the most modern communications system in the world, of global transportation systems, of quantities of weapons of all kinds, and when needed, the full support of a world-wide U.S. military supporting base structure. They can use the finest intelligence system in the world, and most importantly, they have been able to operate under the canopy of an assumed, ever-present enemy called “Communism.” It will be interesting to see what “enemy” develops in the years ahead. It appears that “UFO’s and Aliens” are being primed to fulfill that role for the future. To top all of this, there is the fact that the CIA, itself, has assumed the right to generate and direct secret operations. “ He is not the first to allege that UFOs and Aliens are going to be used as a threat against the world to globalize the planet under One government.
March 1, 2002 report on Secret Government:
The Report From Iron Mountain is a book, published in 1967 (during the Johnson Administration) by Dial Press, that states that it is the report of a government panel. According to the report, a 15-member panel, called the Special Study Group, was set up in 1963 to examine what problems would occur if the U.S. entered a state of lasting peace. They met at an underground nuclear bunker called Iron Mountain (as well as other, worldwide locations) and worked over the next two years. Iron Mountain is where the government has stored the flight 93 evidence from 9/11. A member of the panel, one “John Doe”, a professor at a college in the Midwest, decided to release the report to the public. The heavily footnoted report concluded that peace was not in the interest of a stable society, that even if lasting peace “could be achieved, it would almost certainly not be in the best interests of society to achieve it.” War was a part of the economy. Therefore, it was necessary to conceive a state of war for a stable economy. The government, the group theorized, would not exist without war, and nation states existed in order to wage war. War also served a vital function of diverting collective aggression. They recommended that bodies be created to emulate the economic functions of war. They also recommended “blood games” and that the government create alternative foes that would scare the people with reports of alien life-forms and out of control pollution. Another proposal was the reinstitution of slavery. U.S. News and World Report claimed in its November 20, 1967 issue to have confirmation of the reality of the report from an unnamed government official, who added that when President Johnson read the report, he ‘hit the roof’ and ordered it to be suppressed for all time. Additionally, sources were said to have revealed that orders were sent to U.S. embassies, instructing them to emphasize that the book had no relation to U.S. Government policy. Project Blue Beam is also a common conspiracy theory that alleges that a faked alien landing would be used as a means of scaring the public into whatever global system is suggested. Some researchers suggest the Report from Iron Mountain might be fabricated, others swear it is real.
Bill Moyers, the American journalist and public commentator, has served as White House Press Secretary in the United States President Lyndon B. Johnson Administration from 1965 to 1967. He worked as a news commentator on television for ten years. Moyers has had an extensive involvement with public television, producing documentaries and news journal programs. He has won numerous awards and honorary degrees. He has become well known as a trenchant critic of the U.S. media. Since 1990, Moyers has been President of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy. He is considered by many to be a very credible outlet for the truth. He released a documetnary titled, The Secret Government, which exposed the inner workings of a secret government much more vast that most people would ever imagine. Though originally broadcast in 1987, it is even more relevant today. Interviews with respected top military, intelligence, and government insiders reveal both the history and secret objectives of powerful groups in the hidden shadows of our government.
Here is that documentary:
For another powerful, highly revealing documentary on the manipulations of the secret government produced by BBC, click here (view free at link provided). The intrepid BBC team clearly shows how the War on Terror is largely a fabrication. For those interested in very detailed information on the composition of the shadow or secret government from a less well-known source, take a look at the summary available here.
33.
The Federal Reserve Bank: The fundamental promise of a central bank like the Federal Reserve is economic stability. The theory is that manipulating the value of the currency allows financial booms to go higher, and crashes to be more mild. If growth becomes speculative and unsustainable, the central bank can make the price of money go up and force some deleveraging of risky investments – again, promising to make the crashes more mild. The period leading up to the American revolution was characterized by increasingly authoritarian legislation from England. Acts passed in 1764 had a particularly harsh effect on the previously robust colonial economy. The Sugar Act was in effect a tax cut on easily smuggled molasses, and a new tax on commodities that England more directly controlled trade over. The navy would be used in increased capacity to enforce trade laws and collect duties. Perhaps even more significant than the militarization and expansion of taxes was the Currency Act passed later in the year 1764.
“The colonies suffered a constant shortage of currency with which to conduct trade. There were no gold or silver mines and currency could only be obtained through trade as regulated by Great Britain. Many of the colonies felt no alternative to printing their own paper money in the form of Bills of Credit.” The result was a true free market of currency – each bank competed, exchange rates fluctuated wildly, and merchants were hesitant to accept these notes as payment. Of course, they didn’t have 24-hour digital Forex markets, but I’ll hold off opinions on the viability of unregulated currency for another time. England’s response was to seize control of the colonial money supply – forbidding banks, cities, and colony governments from printing their own. This law, passed so soon after the Sugar Act, started to really bring revolutionary tension inside the colonies to a higher level. American bankers had learned early on that debasing a currency through inflation is a helpful way to pay off perpetual trade deficits – but Britain proved that the buyer of the currency would only take the deal for so long… Following the (first) American Revolution, the “First Bank of the United States” was chartered to pay off collective war debts, and effectively distribute the cost of the revolution proportionately throughout all of the states. Although the bank had vocal and harsh skeptics, it only controlled about 20% of the nation’s money supply.
Compared to today’s central bank, it was nothing. Thomas Jefferson argued vocally against the institution of the bank, mostly citing constitutional concerns and the limitations of government found in the 10th amendment. There was one additional quote that hints at the deeper structural flaw of a central bank in a supposedly free capitalist economy. “the existing banks will, without a doubt, enter into arrangements for lending their agency, and the more favorable, as there will be a competition among them for it; whereas the bill delivers us up bound to the national bank, who are free to refuse all arrangement, but on their own terms, and the public not free, on such refusal, to employ any other bank” –Thomas Jefferson. Basically, the existing banks will fight over gaining favor with the central bank – rather than improving their performance relative to a free market. The profit margins associated with collusion would obviously outweigh the potential profits gained from legitimate business. The Second Bank of the United States was passed five years after the first bank’s charter expired. An early enemy of central banking, President James Madison, was looking for a way to stabilize the currency in 1816. This bank was also quite temporary – it would only stay in operation until 1833 when President Andrew Jackson would end federal deposits at the institution.
The charter expired in 1836 and the private corporation was bankrupt and liquidated by 1841. While the South had been the major opponent of central banking systems, the end of the Civil War allowed for (and also made necessary) the system of national banks that would dominate the next fifty years. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) says that this post-war period of a unified national currency and system of national banks “worked well.” [3] Taxes on state banks were imposed to encourage people to use the national banks – but liquidity problems persisted as the money supply did not match the economic cycles. Overall, the American economy continued to grow faster than Europe, but the period did not bring economic stability by any stretch of the imagination. Several panics and runs on the bank – and it became a fact of life under this system of competing nationalized banks. In 1873, 1893, 1901, and 1907 significant panics caused a series of bank failures.
The new system wasn’t stable at all, in fact, many suspected it was wraught with fraud and manipulation. The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis is not shy about attributing the causes of the Panic of 1907 to financial manipulation from the existing banking establishment. “If Knickerbocker Trust would falter, then Congress and the public would lose faith in all trust companies and banks would stand to gain, the bankers reasoned.” In timing with natural economic cycles, major banks including J.P. Morgan and Chase launched an all-out assault on Heinze’s Knickerbocker Trust. Financial institutions on the inside started silently selling off assets in the competitor, and headlines about a few bad loans started making top spots in the newspapers. The run on Knickerbocker turned into a general panic – and the Federal Government would come to the rescue of its privately owned “National Banks.” During the Panic of 1907, “Depositors ‘run’ on the Knickerbocker Bank. J.P. Morgan and James Stillman of First National City Bank (Citibank) act as a “central bank,” providing liquidity … [to stop the bank run] President Theodore Roosevelt provides Morgan with $25 million in government funds … to control the panic. Morgan, acting as a one-man central bank, decides which firms will fail and which firms will survive.” How did JP Morgan get so powerful that the government would provide them with funding to increase their power? They had key influence with positions inside the Administrations.
They had senators, congressmen, lobbyists, media moguls all working for them. In 1886, a group of millionaires purchased Jekyll Island and converted it into a winter retreat and hunting ground, the USA’s most exclusive club. By 1900, the club’s roster represented 1/6th of the world’s wealth. Names like Astor, Vanderbilt, Morgan, Pulitzer and Gould filled the club’s register. Non- members, regardless of stature, were not allowed. Dignitaries like Winston Churchill and President McKinley were refused admission. In 1908, the year after a national money panic purportedly created by J. P. Morgan, Congress established, in 1908, a National Monetary Authority. In 1910 another, more secretive, group was formed consisting of the chiefs of major corporations and banks in this country. The group left secretly by rail from Hoboken, New Jersey, and traveled anonymously to the hunting lodge on Jekyll Island. In fact, the Clubhouse/hotel on the island has two conference rooms named for the “Federal Reserve.” The meeting was so secret that none referred to the other by his last name. Why the need for secrecy?
Frank Vanderlip wrote later in the Saturday Evening Post, “…it would have been fatal to Senator Aldrich’s plan to have it known that he was calling on anybody from Wall Street to help him in preparing his bill…I do not feel it is any exaggeration to speak of our secret expedition to Jekyll Island as the occasion of the actual conception of what eventually became the Federal Reserve System.” At Jekyll Island, the true draftsman for the Federal Reserve was Paul Warburg. The plan was simple. The new central bank could not be called a central bank because America did not want one, so it had to be given a deceptive name. Ostensibly, the bank was to be controlled by Congress, but a majority of its members were to be selected by the private banks that would own its stock. To keep the public from thinking that the Federal Reserve would be controlled from New York, a system of twelve regional banks was designed. Given the concentration of money and credit in New York, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York controlled the system, making the regional concept initially nothing but a ruse.
The board and chairman were to be selected by the President, but in the words of Colonel Edward House, the board would serve such a term as to “put them out of the power of the President.” The power over the creation of money was to be taken from the people and placed in the hands of private bankers who could expand or contract credit as they felt best suited their needs. Why the opposition to a central bank? Americans at the time knew of the destruction to the economy the European central banks had caused to their respective countries and to countries who became their debtors. They saw the large- scale government deficit spending and debt creation that occurred in Europe. But European financial moguls didn’t rest until the New World was within their orbit. In 1902, Paul Warburg, a friend and associate of the Rothschilds and an expert on European central banking, came to this country as a partner in Kuhn, Loeb and Company.
He married the daughter of Solomon Loeb, one of the founders of the firm. The head of Kuhn, Loeb was Jacob Schiff, whose gift of $20 million in gold to the struggling Russian communists in 1917 no doubt saved their revolution. The Fed controls the banking system in the USA, not the Congress nor the people indirectly (as the Constitution dictates). The U.S. central bank strategy is a product of European banking interests. Government interventionists got their wish in 1913 with the Federal Reserve (and income tax amendment). Just in time, too, because the nation needed a new source of unlimited cash to finance both sides of WW1 and eventually our own entry to the war. After the war, with both sides owing us debt through the federal reserve backed banks, the center of finance moved from London to New York. But did the Federal Reserve reign in the money trusts and interlocking directorates? Not by a long shot. If anything, the Federal Reserve granted new powers to the National Banks by permitting overseas branches and new types of banking services. The greatest gift to the bankers, was a virtually unlimited supply of loans when they experience liquidity problems.
From the early 1920s to 1929, the monetary supply expanded at a rapid pace and the nation experienced wild economic growth. Curiously, however, the number of banks started to decline for the first time in American history. Toward the end of the period, speculation and loose money had propelled asset and equity prices to unreal levels. The stock market crashed, and as the banks struggled with liquidity problems, the Federal Reserve actually cut the money supply. Without a doubt, this is the greatest financial panic and economic collapse in American history – and it never could have happened on this scale without the Fed’s intervention. The number of banks crashed and a few of the old robber barons’ banks managed to swoop in and grab up thousands of competitors for pennies on the dollar.
This article was posted: Wednesday, January 6, 2010 at 11:16 pm
Over-growth and diversity is being exploited and detrimental
No conspiracy
Unfortunately, when young people realise the problems the world has, they fall into the 'its a conspiracy' trap1, where they imagine the world is run by some organised elite who plan world events for more power and money. No doubt there are bona fide psychopaths in power though, in all institutions.
This awareness usually means descending into becoming 'political', which really means falling to a narrow neoMarxist spectrum where economics is everything and the solution is adopting the right system and the right words. The world will be OK, they beleive, if we adopt the right system. If there are still problems, it evidence we need to push our system more. Everything then gets interepreted in the lens of a 'conspiracy'. The problem is, once you go into the conspiracy realm, there is no going out. Everything is evidence of a conspiracy. Lack of evidence just proves the conspiracy is hiding. WMD's in Iraq are proof they had them. Lack of WMD's are proof they are hiding them.
If Socialism fails, it's because we weren't socialist enough. If free markets aren't working, they weren't free enough. If 'growth' doesn't provide prosperity, we didn't grow enough. This isn't conspiracy, it's just the way people work. Activists like Klein just promote another tyranny to replace the current.
It's great that Lorde is speaking up and speaking out. That kind of moral courage is the most valuable courage and bravery that can exist. We laud physical bravery, but moral bravery is rarer and far more world changing. I just hope she continues here education by open though and being open minded and thinking, rather than just reading.
Footnote[s]
1. ⇑ Presumably, you also accept the findings of the Warren Commission that a lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald murdered President Kennedy on 22 Novemeber 1963 and that there was no conspiracy. - Ed
Prosperity from immigration, multiculturalism, decentalisation
Those threatened invasion of cultures are insecure about their own
Multiculturalism includes the historical Australian identity. If anyone is threatened by the invasion of cultures, it is only because of insecurity about your own. Although to some it is a shame that this could not develop in isolation, to others, the 'multi' part is just as, if not more, interesting and exciting. It has given us great food, entertainment, opened our eyes to the world, built our infrastructure, such as the Snowy Mountains Scheme, improved our overall wealth, which can only be created through labour, nothing else can produce wealth, and I see it as the way forward to strengthen, enrich and grow this nation so that it is able to stand tall in the international arena and defend itself adequately on the economic and security front.
The failure is not multiculturalism, but government. Government has not taken the opportunity afforded it by people wanting to migrate here to open up new centres of growth and development particularly in the rich northern latitudes of this great continent. The consequent overpopulation of its major cities from migration as a result and the negative consequences of this lays not at the feet of the migration policy itself but at the governments failure at decentralization.
Decentralization, growth and development can be successful only with mass migration. If they are worried about loss of cultural identity. Simple, allow in more people from Britain, USA, New Zealand. The queues from those countries alone is endless.
Lorde's purported speech a hoax
Out of the mouths of babes?...not quite
That is an incredibly sophisticated and succinct speech, especially for a 17 year old. It is not quite an "out of the mouths of babes" situation as that phrase usually refers to the guilelessness and uncluttered perspicacity of children which also points out what Lorde has – that the emperor has no clothes. Lorde's speech on the other hand is very informed and enormously brave.
Australia needs to revitalise patriotism
Multicultural Foundation supports death of Australian heritage
Australia is rather apathetic
What about Harold Holt?
Snowden, the Falcon and Hawke - Australia's political secrets
What Christopher Boyce had to say about the removal of Whitlam and CIA infiltration of the Australian Union Movement at the time of Bob Hawke was surprising to hear, but not surprising. A remarkably well-chosen subject by Mark Davis, who filmed and interviewed Boyce. After Boyce there was an interview with Snowden, by Hubert Seipel (Snowden Speaks at http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/about/id/601800/n/Snowden-Speaks), which was a fantastic continuation. Christopher Boyce said, several times, that he was astounded at how Australians did not seem to want to stand up for themselves. We have recently had many comments about why 'Babyboomers' have let our country be overpopulated and peoples' rights be so diminished. My argument has been that our system disorganises citizens, geographically and through wedge politics. I would also like to draw peoples' attention, again, to the mysteriously important role of the Multicultural Foundation of Australia, which has connections that seem to utterly surpass its apparent significance. This foundation was begun by Bob Hawke whom Christopher Boyce clearly believed to be one of the principle political figures who worked for the CIA to corrupt the Australian trade union. (Hawke declined the opportunity to refute Boyce's allegation in an interview.) Since then, nearly every past and present opposition leader and prime minister of Australia has become a member. The site tag for the MFA is here (http://188.95.51.122/?q=taxonomy/term/1180 or https://188.95.51.122/?q=taxonomy/term/1180).
Malthusian trap disguised by "food security" today
great "great artesian bore" scandal
Government involvement in international drug trade
Now we see the Australian Federal Police harassing the Channel 7 studios in Sydney. They are scared shitless Corby has said something which would incriminate them and bring the whole charade crashing out into the open light of day, to prevent this was the reason they put her away in the first place. The government was behind the drug shipment from Brisbane to Sydney gone wrong thanks to the stupidity of the organizers or baggage handlers on their drug shipment payroll.
But why all the fuss over one lousy shipment?
Because it threatens to bring out into the open the whole scheme of drug smuggling by the Western English speaking governments1 which help prop up their Black Budget economy for the World Control Matrix.
, a giant too big for any one person to get their head around and which they are now puting their finishing touches to. They will stop at nothing. Michel's suffering is zero to them. They are the literal evil mon(b)ster of the deep, far more evil and savage than any movie could portray.
They have done the same to Martin Bryant, and many others individually and nationally to get their way and will stop at nothing to impose their NWO on the world but they have met a stumbling block in and DOES NOT include Russia and China and Iran and North Korea and did not include pre destruction Palestine, Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and countless other nations who did not toe the line.
But they will be beaten and destroyed by the Russia China coalition and their allies and thank God for that.
Footnote[s]
1. ⇑ See also: Who benefits from the Afghan Opium Trade?, Afghanistan: Heroin-ravaged State, Heroin is "Good for Your Health": Occupation Forces support Afghan Narcotics Trade, Money Laundering and The Drug Trade: The Role of the Banks , Unprecedented Increase in World Opium Production on Global Research, The Afghan economy is reconverting to opium and Global opium and heroin production explodes on VoltaireNet, 'Unprecedented increase in opium production'.
Refugee Action Coalition?
I find the refugee advocates kind of amusing. Most refugees pass through a number of countries before reaching Europe or Australia. Mexicans going to the USA are the exception, but they are not refugees anyway, just opportunists.
Now, what's interesting is that no refugee advocate even considers any number of these countries as being viable 'final' destinations. They act as if the only places in the world worth worrying about, or going to, are, well, those in Europe, USA, UK, Canada, Australia...
I didn’t quote everything, for the sake of brevity.
Outbreak at Manus Island
Tensions at the Manus Island detention centre erupted into a violent breakout last night, after asylum seekers were told their only option for resettlement was to live in Papua New Guinea. By definition, refugees are not able to live in their own country, and must find a safe place to live. Surely Papua New Guinea fits this criteria?
Thirty-five asylum seekers escaped from the centre through a fence, safety-glass panels were smashed, bunk beds were "broken apart" and the pieces used as weapons and thrown.
Refugee Action Coalition spokesman Ian Rintoul says he was told by asylum seekers inside the centre that the trouble started after they were told their prospects of resettlement in another country were bleak.
The country does not have a visa category for refugees and there has been little public information about how, and where, they might be resettled.
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said: "In Manus they would have freedom of movement around Manus. They would have work rights and all of those normal things you would expect. In terms of access to other programs and things of that nature, that is for the Papua New Guinean government".
At the meeting with Immigration department officials around 2pm Manus Island time, the asylum seekers were told that they would not be leaving PNG – that if they wanted to go somewhere else other than PNG, they would have to arrange this with other countries themselves.
Millions of people around the world have no choice but to flee their homeland to escape war, genocide, torture and persecution. In an effort to plug the human migration tide, four months after Abbott led the conservative Liberal-National coalition to power, he promising to “stop the boats”, he is claiming victory in “Operation Sovereign Borders”.
Amnesty International described the situation on Manus Island (PNG) as “tantamount to torture”, with detainees (including pregnant women and young children) being denied sufficient water, medical help, privacy, and living in cramped conditions and unbearable heat. Conditions on Nauru are similarly inhumane. These offshore detention centres will cost $2.867 billion for 2013/14. They believe that these detention camps should be closed. Asylum seekers should be able to live in the Australian community, with the right to work, while their claims are being assessed.
However, a "right" to work and housing does not guarantee the jobs and public housing exists here in Australia, due to our record-breaking rates of net overseas migration.
Mums and Dads bid for their children at auctions
Conclusions based on rational deduction but wrong assumption
Your conclusions are based, I think, on rational deduction but wrong assumption of what is normal. From anthropological and zoological data, one finds that, in a stable normally constructed society (organically grown with minor immigration component) the generations will cooperate on food production, housing and child-rearing. The competitiveness between generations that you take for normal are caused by disorganisation and scarcity. Most societies do not expect everyone to marry and raise children either. Most contain a goodly number of bachelors that cooperate with the breeding adults. This feature is present in the social organisation of other species, as the work I cite in Demography Territory and Law, The Rules of Animal and Human Population, Countershock Press, Australia, 2013. (Kindle) Also available as paperback here: Paperback edition, chapters 3 and 4.
You also do not seem to have picked up on the fact that elderly people become more dependent if taken out of their known environment. This competition for housing should also be understood as a sign that we are overpopulated. And as a sign that the cohort of age-of-childbearing immigrants has obviously exceeded the proportion that would have arisen with natural replacement. So, it sounds as if overpopulation is producing the kind of aggression that has been predicted by those who said Australia is growing too big. Aggression is usually enracinated by a sense of entitlement. All these things seem to be present in your attitude here, Dennis. I hope you will forgive me for this observation.
What was feared has come to pass.
Monster fishing ship in Pacific, east of Australia
According to Greenpeace, The world's largest fishing vessel, the factory freezer ship Lafayette, has turned up in the Pacific Ocean east of Australia.
SMH: Monster fishing in Pacific, east of Australia
This monstrosity is 5 times the size of the Margiris, that was banned from Australian waters in 2012. As fish numbers deplete, due to human population growth causing dwindling fish numbers, the machinery to chase and capture them is getting bigger and bigger!
Greenpeace campaigner Nathaniel Pelle said: ''The waters where it is now face a crisis of overcapacity. A vast number of vessels are making their way into the Pacific chasing reduced fish numbers.''
They will be near Australia's waters, devouring fish from over the imaginary border. How are fish to know which "side" is safe?
A converted tanker capable of processing 1500 tonnes of fish a day, further causing the crash of marine biodiversity. A 2012 investigation by the US Centre for Public Integrity found giant fishing vessels were responsible for a 90 per cent decline in the South Pacific jack mackerel fishery. Not to be thwarted by evidence, this factory freezer vessel will continue with business as usual, and is hoping prevailing currents will make jack mackeral fish swim in their direction.
By setting high quotas, it ensures they will not be exceeded, and humanity's rapacious appetite for fish continues.
Not Savvy, just different
Reply to Dennis K's "It may not have been asked for ..."
Dennis's comments in italic bold mine in regular font.
"It may not have been asked for, but it was the outcome."
My response to this first statement is to want to distinguish between what was up to 'the babyboomers' and 'what was not'. As I just developed from a comment by Anonymous, ("Who is the leader of the Babyboomers?") they are [nothing but a pack of cards! as Alice said] a statistical cohort of people extending across two decades, separated by time, household, education, structural divides which included a changing rural/city divide, increasingly geographical infills via immigration, and, especially lately, professional wedge politics: Lib/Lab/'Green'/vs the rest, ably promoted by a duopoly mass media of Murdoch-Fairfax and Government-ABC.
My second response is to treat this as an existentional question. Existentional in the sense that argues that political engagement is how we define ourselves, recognise eachother and become socially alive. Without political engagement, humans remain isolated and confused, unwell, depressed, impotent... I think you may be right to accuse the babyboomer statistical cohort of containing a significant number of existentionally disengaged members. The cultural cringe that Edna Everedge lampooned portrayed a set of somehow still immature elderly people reduced to communing with garden gnomes, their only identity material assets and mementos of sparse initiation ceremonies, like weddings and RSL membership.
Such a bizarre change from the times preceding, of convicts and rumcorps, scientists and explorers, gold-seekers and bushrangers, Federation politicians and poets, pre-WW2 artists and writers.
A number of the Post WW2 lot seem curiously conformist to superficial but rigid standards, with the sexes separate, the men obediently employed, the women detached.
Engagement is very difficult when you are structurally disorganised.
Think about it. You and I probably came from very different places, backgrounds and experiences, by reason of sex, age, location and social class. Even though we may both be babyboomers, there could be 25 years difference in our ages; we may belong to different generations. I may have been too young for Vietnam and you might have been conscripted or even volunteered. You may be religious; I am not. This may be the first time we have met and talked about this.
"I can ask for a lot of things, but the things I ultimately agitate for, determine the outcome. This is what you are missing. When you put an idea into motion, the outcome isn't the outcome that your ideology says should happen, but the outcome that nature says will happen."
I guess you need to state the natural rule you think applies here.
My perception is that there was a failure (due to political-economic and structural problems that disorganised many Australians) to engage, to agitate for anything much amongst the wider, disorganised public. However you feel that people did agitate. During the 1960s and 1970s it is true that some Australians were very engaged in agitating for particular political outcomes. Some of these were the multiculturalists, the Communists and the B.A. Santamariarists, the latter who both arose in relationship to the Australian unionist and protectionist movement of Federation - which was a much more engaged period, I think. Mark Lopez, author of The origins of multiculturalism in Australian politics 1945-1975 finds that multiculturalism was pushed by a very few people through skilful lobbying. In his paper, The Politics of the origins of multiculturalism: Lobbying and the power of influence," (2000)[Referenced in [1], he writes,
"[...]The ideology of multiculturalism was developed between 1966 and 1975 by a small number of academics, social workers and activists initially located on the fringe of the political arena of migrant settlement and welfare, a political arena that itself was not large, despite the fact that these issues affected the lives of so many. " [Al Grassby was not initially inclined to multiculturalism but one of his speechwriters was a multiculturalism activist and Grassby profited from having clear concept and direction from this.] [...] "The decisive shift towards multiculturalism in public policy occurred during the first Whitlam Labor Government (December 1972 to May 1974), even though there was no preconceived or planned introduction of multiculturalism and it was not part of the Labor Party platform. Multiculturalism became accepted as a basis of ethnic affairs policy during this period largely as a result of the successes of the multiculturalists as lobbyists. The appeal of the merits of multiculturalism was never sufficient in itself to ensure its acceptance as public policy: it was necessary for the multiculturalists to vigorously and strenuously promote it, often in the face of indifference or sometimes stiff opposition from those who supported other approaches." [...]"Fraser adopted it as a model and, using his authority as the Opposition Spokesman, he introduced it into the Coalition platform for the May 1974 federal election; the first inclusion of multiculturalislm in the immigration policy of a major party. This development also established a degree of bipartisanship sufficient to protect this new ideology from the rigours of adversarial parliamentary politics." [...]"By the end of 1975, the influence of multiculturalism was evident in five federal departments: Labour and Immigration, Social Security, Education, the Media, and the Attorney-General's Department. Despite their efforts from 1973, the multiculturalists' breakthrough in influencing the union movement was delayed until May 1976, when they established a Migrant Workers' Centre in the Victorian Trades Hall. "
"Take immigration for example, how many boomers in the 60's and 70's wanted immigration restrictions? How many wanted immigration laws loosened? If I remember correctly, a few at Vic First prided themselves on loosening standards. Now they are complaining about the outcome. How else do you end a 'white Australia', without mass immigration? What did this person expect to happen?"
If you interpret the expression of a high rate of desire for better assimilation as a sign of not wanting immigrants from non-English speaking countries, then it seems that most Victorians, at any rate, objected to non-British immigrants.[1] (A lot objected to British immigrants as well - those of Irish stock, for instance.)
There is little documentation on whether most people objected to the idea of a much bigger Australia, but I know that ever since the first million there have been people wanting to keep Australia small.[2] Since Australia was founded due to Britain's overpopulation and Malthus's theories were popularised in our early history, there were a lot of Malthusians in Australia. Charles Darwin's visit in the 1850s reinforced this, although it also reinforced the presence of the Catholic Church, as the pope weighed in. The main political tension was that of wage earners and small business wanted protection and big business wanted open markets and a big local population, although Britain preferred a smaller population in a commodity economy to provide her factories with raw materials. In Federation agreements towards the constitution, workers succeeded in stopping slave imports (blackbirding) and also in stopping slave-wage-earner imports through the exercise of the White Australia Policy which attempted to screen immigration out from large dense populations associated with low-wage labour. [3]
Environmentalists in the 1970s were particularly against big populations, especially after the first oil shock, which caused concern about scarcity. Leone Sandercock recorded in her books[4] citizens' anger at inflated land-prices in Victoria under the Hamer government, and at the rapacious development and destruction of green spaces. This overdevelopment was related to the rapid population growth of the 1960s and 1970s - composed of high natural increase plus high immigration, even though immigrants were initially housed in special facilities, in part to avoid anger at housing unaffordability.
As to whether people should have interpreted 'ending the White Australia policy' as meaning mass immigration, I seem to recollect there was quite a lot of fear about this at the time, but it was managed by propaganda. People who expressed antipathy to asian immigration were ridiculed - for instance Bruce Ruxton. Ruxton, as I recall, was a working class passionate returned soldier advocate, lacking in sophisticated airs. The Vietnam War and conscription protests also helped to make him an easier target. What he stood for were largely the values that the government of his day had promoted, but fashions had changed and he was tarred as an anachronism.
It was, however, still okay to disapprove of overpopulation. And people, especially environmentalists, talked with concern about overpopulation all over the world; in France, in the US, and in Australia. US presidents endorsed this concern, as did Whitlam.
I think that the people who supported multiculturalists by militating for the end of racially discriminatory immigration were mostly middle class people or intellectuals who trusted the government; they did not think that they would lose control of policy. So they accepted or were persuaded to accept non-racially discriminatory immigration, but they did not think that they were going to have to accept a massive increase in numbers.
It seems highly likely that other Australians who did not identify with the middle classes or intellectuals (as Katharine Betts intimates in her book, Immigration Ideology) were not so trusting of government. But their ideas were unfashionable and criminology tells us that the middle classes and fashionable intellectuals can rarely imagine how poor people fear 'the authorities'. Because middle classes and fashionable intellectuals rarely go to prison, they assume that the system is fair and impartial. Another, obvious reason that non-professionals and unskilled and semi-skilled labour were against high immigration was that they knew their jobs were easily filled by new immigrants, even if those immigrants had poor English. This was not a problem for the doctors or lawyers, for instance. The doctors had a very protective union and the law is a very local specialty. (Now even the doctors have been disorganised.)
(Did the quality of the Australian education system also decline? Because it seems that many people never acquired enough knowledge of their own country to even realise what reasonable population numbers were. At Sustainable Living Festivals a few years running, some environmentalists ran surveys to see what people understood about population. What they found was that, at those festivals at any rate, most people had no idea of the size of Australia's or the world's population. They were so innumerate and geographically ignorant that, even if you gave them a choice, they would get it wrong by millions, in some cases billions (even for Australia!). These were, for example, people in suits with jobs who strolled through Federation square in their lunch hours.)
The immigration numbers did not increase immediately
In fact the numbers did not increase much until John Howard, according to my observation of them; they stayed around 80,000 p.a. averaged over the years. Net Overseas Migration (with the exception of Bob Hawke's Tiananmen square year) until Howard. But 80,000 p.a. net was far too many, and, by the 1980s environmentalists groups had formed, notably Australians for an Ecologically Sustainable Population (AESP) - now called Sustainable Population Australia (SPA). AESP seemed to be fairly confident of eventually succeeding in lobbying government through sheer power of reason. They based this on the belief that Australia was a democracy and that citizens opinions counted, especially if they were supported by scientific authority.
Something happened in the meantime.
Why did AESP form, though? It seemed to be largely a response to the retreat by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) from its constitutional requirement to support efforts to keep Australia's population small. This disquieting retreat by the ACF was dramatised when it attempted to pull out of an agreement to fund a book about how the looming environmental problems of continuing population growth in Australia. Ultimately it must have given in because the book was published as R. Birrell, D. Hill and J. Nevill, Eds., Populate and Perish published by the Australian Conservation Foundation and Fontana, 1984. Nonetheless, future events would show that that old environmental flagship, the Australian Conservation Foundation, had been captured by the growth lobby.
Around this time a political party that was against a big population for environmental and social reasons, formed. This was Australians Against Further Immigration (AAFI). Initially they were welcomed as allies of the environmental movement against overpopulation. But then some of them came out against multiculturalism and specifically against Chinese immigration. They were then hounded down by the press and government spokespeople and stigmatised as racist.
Organisations who defined themselves as purely ecological were careful to distinguish themselves from AAFI in public situations.
This was my own first experience of 'wedge politics', where it does not matter if you have some things in common with another group; if that group has unfashionable ideas as well your group will be punished by the press and other social police for associating with it. This weakened the environmental movement against population growth because a lot of its members would also have been concerned about the social effects of multiculturalism and those people could not express their concerns in the environmental organisations.
It is very unhealthy to create a situation where people in the same country cannot discuss important issues, but are instead expected to be rude to anyone who seems to have a different opinion. It is natural for people to be curious and want to know all about important social issues, to explore every angle - but this is strongly discouraged in Australia these days. The way that immigration is treated is as a religion, if you define a religion as a creed where some things cannot be discussed because it is against the rules and you have to have faith. This is not much different from the political differences between sunnis and shiites when neither side can safely evaluate the other's point of view. This kind of wedge politics makes us ripe for manipulation; it is a great way to limit citizens' knowledge and stop them from organising.
I was never bothered by different races/ethnicities; I was raised with neighbours of various origins and played with bush aboriginal children. It was numbers that bothered me - until - I stumbled over in the Multicultural Foundation of Australia big business connections linked to the nuclear industry, to property development (engineering) and more. Most astounding was the membership of the Foundation - almost entirely composed of past and present prime ministers and opposition leaders. It was founded by bob Hawke in (from memory) 1985. Its has hugely financial national and international network although almost no funds, as far as I can work out. I have been writing about this now for a few years and my articles get thousands of reads, but no-one know how to tackle this or where to take it because of how high it goes. It's something that all Australians need to see for what it is, but of course none of the mass media would ever look at it; they know where their bread and butter lies. See Multicultural foundation tag
"Others at this meeting warned for lack of social cohesion and were booed! Booed! Yet I bet these same people will complain about lack of social cohesion and infighting..."
I don't understand what you mean here. Do you mean that those same people will complain elsewhere about lack of social cohesion etc? I was at that meeting too, but I thought that Kelvin Thomson's view was (a) the multicultural horse has left the stable so closing the door is no longer effective and so it is a non-issue, and (b) the concern of Victoria First is numbers, not ethnicity. Thomson had already announced this and for me the logical thing was, if people wanted to have an organisation about what kinds of immigrants Australia takes, then they would be welcome to form one and to invite people to join it.
It seems to me that there are two concepts here: One is How many immigrants and the other is What kind of immigrants? It seems to me that the first one has precedence.
"Or smaller homes. How many people back 30 years ago said we need to share our wealth, that we have too much? How many people even TODAY say we should share our wealth and space. I heard this 20 years ago any ANYONE who objected was pilloried as a 'racist'. Any one who said "no room" was a bigot."
The business about sharing the wealth comes from the same place that the innumerate estimates of Australia's population come from. People are very poorly educated. They can be born and bred here and not even realise that they live at the edge of an enormous desert. They think cities begin and end with the buildings; it doesn't occur to them that huge moving machines called 'farms' and mines cover half the countryside in order to support them. They read often enough in the Australian and the Age or hear on TV or the ABC that we are a big, empty, wealthy country and they believe it. That's the power of authority; the authority imbued in the press. People believe what the media tells them more than they trust their own eyes.
Yes, you are right. People were taught to fear the consequences of expressing unfashionable opinions about multiculturalism. In fact they were terrified. It does seem that probably a majority of people do dislike multiculturalism and a high immigration flow particularly if it is from very varied origins, however they have been taught not to express this.
How were they taught? Well, the treatment meted out to AAFI was pretty awful, but what happened to Pauline Hanson was frankly terrifying. As she gained in popularity, the major parties treated her as a serious threat and they don't treat serious threats with kid-gloves. Wedge politics came out in force and people simply did not dare to attend her meetings for fear of being outed. Those who did attend her meetings (arguably very brave people with the courage of their convictions) were physically attacked by thugs from the Socialist Alliance etc. The photographs of people attending the meetings were also published in the press, which meant their neighbours and employers would recognise them.
Middle class people and intellectuals do not get involved in that kind of thing and, besides, they were sympathetic to multiculturalism; they held, as Katharine Betts argued in her Immigration Ideology, 'cosmopolitan values'. There was a great divide between them and the majority of Australians, it seems.
Despite this a lot of people continued to attend those meetings. Finally, John Howard made noises as if he was quite sympathetic to the reasons that people supported Hanson. This probably caused a lot of Hanson supporters to direct their preferences to him over the ALP. Then, in the wake of the Port Arthur Massacre, he banned guns. This endeared him to the middle classes and fashionable intellectuals who had formerly hated him because he seemed not of their class and because he had been sent into the political wilderness years before for expressing anti-Asian immigration ideas. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think that he managed to bott quite a large portion of Hanson's support base for a while.
I can't remember if he massively upped immigration before or after Hanson was imprisoned, but it must have been very convenient to have her locked away, along with one of her political associates. They were both exonerated after several months in prison but, their political opportunities had come and gone whilst they were locked up.
Perhaps more important, what did people seeing what happened to Pauline Hanson learn? They learned that, not only could you be embarassed and even beaten up if you tried to fight high immigration because of your social values, but that the Australian Government would have no qualms about throwing you into prison for it.
But, infinitely worse, infinitely shocking, so bizarre and unthinkable that people may wonder if they imagined this, our current Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, raised the money to prosecute Pauline Hanson which permitted her to be prosecuted and sent to prison.[6]
"And speaking of "racism", the term which any anti-growth advocate is deathly afraid of, was it not demanded that racism not be tolerated? That xenophobia has no place in Australia? Wasn't one of the BIG "achievements" of the boomer generation 'breaking down barriers'? So now the property lobby can use it and scare the population away from our cause. Nice."
I was not aware that this was a 'baby-boomer' achievement. I thought it was a cultural change engineered by successive governments. I always thought that racism in Australia was grossly exaggerated, and used as a label to gloss over other more acceptable objections - like wanting to protect your job, or wanting to stop more housing developments. Certainly calling people racist has been used often to try to shut people up who objected to overdevelopment. These days they even intimidate people into saying, "We're not against 'development', just 'poorly designed developments' etc. as if it were somehow unreasonable to be against having everything covered by infrastructure.
I think that the property lobby was in on this from the beginning. They have funded a ton of pro-big population and multiculturalism literature from academics for years now. There has been no-one to fund the counter-arguments. The property development and business lobby have done this in Australia and in Britain for centuries. The Liberal Party was founded by immigrationist forces around the time of Federation.[5]
No-one knew about this except the people who benefited directly from it. Even Neville Hicks in This Sin and Scandal, Australia's Population Debate 1891-1911, Australian National University Press, Canberra, ACT, 1978 (a history of the anti-birthcontrol movement in Australia) misinterpreted the valuable data he accumulated, which showed me that property speculation united the powerful to prevent contraception and to promote mass immigration in order to save their investments in property and to prop up the banks. Maybe also he misinterpreted it because of the times he wrote in. His interpretation was to take seriously the rhetoric of the businessmen and politicians who tried to suppress abortion and contraception. This led him to believe that they were motivated entirely by religious convictions and prurient obsessions. Somehow he overlooked the fact that they were all on boards of organisations that faced bankruptcy if the land they had invested in did not regain value in the 1890s depression.
What has happened recently is that the internet has permitted a huge globalisation of the property market at the same time as we have lost almost all protection via the National Foreign Investment Board. In a country like Australia where there is no decoupling of work permits from immigration and where permanent immigration means real-time permanent, rather than just a year as it does in most of Western Europe, this means disastrous loss of control.
"Both partners having to work. Feminists were rallying against the "patriarchy" and insisting women should have the same opportunities as men. Now, like men, they can enjoy having to work to keep the family going. I grew up being told that suggesting that women perhaps would be better of at home instead of working was sexist and bigoted."
What happened was that the market charged whatever it could get and it went after both salaries. In other words the market profited from a social change that was clamoured for as a benefit. Of course, it wasn't really the "market" it was a government of land-speculators making rules whereby they helped to inflate the price of property. But you are talking to a land-tenure sociologist here and I know that women all once had land, just as female bears do. We lost it in many cultures, but not all, along the way, and overpopulation was part of the reason. In a socio-economic system where most citizens don't own much property, being able to earn a wage is a means to some freedom, and why would women not want to be free? However real freedom is owning land and assets and having a home to stay home in, IMHO. I personally would like fifty per cent of seats in parliament to be for women (not for 'women's issues' but for women's bums on seats) and I personally want our inheritance system to be reformed so that male and female children cannot be disinherited by their parents in favour of the spouse; so that male and female children all have the possibility of inheriting assets, preferably land; so that there would be no need to compensate a widower or widow for their partner's decease because the widow or widower would have their independent fortune. (This is the Napoleonic or Roman system that is in almost all European countries and similar systems prevail in many places. The Anglophone systems are very disempowering.)
I don't think people saw this coming, any more than they saw most things coming, because of their ignorance of how big business and government work together, because of their naive faith in an entirely false belief that they lived in a democracy and were empowered, and because they emotionally followed fashions as they humanly sought identity and political engagement. It was easy to mislead a bunch of disorganised, poorly educated, disaggregated, statistical cohorts who suffered from cultural cringe and an absence of historical knowledge.
"Bill Clinton in the 90's, said that white people would be a minority by 2040 in the USA and that this was good, and the crowd went wild, not with anger! I remember, and it still happens now, many people saying how great the world would be when "we" are not the majority, or mixed out, or whatever. That "we", these idiots didn't realise, that were being displaced were their children and grandchildren. Now they are complaining about their children and grandchildren not having a place after fighting people trying to secure it!"
I think our system will dispossess anyone, white or brown. I believe that what is happening to Australia is the same thing that happened to Africa and India, the Solomans and Easter Island - disorganisation, dispossession, loss of self-government through colonisation by superior numbers and or forces. I don't believe that changing colours will make all that much difference, but you probably don't either. What really changes is one's social organisation; one's real empowerment through clan and territorial connections. See Demography Territory and Law, The Rules of Animal and Human Population, Countershock Press, Australia, 2013. (Kindle) Also available as paperback here: Paperback edition. My book is all about this.
The fact that I think the British-inherited system we live under is totally wrong means that I am not a person who believes that a solution for us lies in British immigration (as Pauline Hanson did, I believe). I think we need to allow our population to decrease, but I have already written a lot about that.
"I'm not leveling this at you personally, as I will give you the benefit of the doubt."
I was personally always shocked by the injustice and judgementalness and the sheer disregard for democracy meted out to people who tried to stand up for their rights as they perceived them. I was disgusted and dismayed at the impact of wedge politics which seemed to use these differences of opinion to corral people into very narrow associations and to demonise people who, at time of Federation, would all have talked civilly together. I saw what was happening as the destruction of democracy. I made a decision that the message I wanted to get out was ecological; it was the disappearance of green spaces and freedom to move, of biodiverse surroundings. To get that message out I could not afford to get involved in defending specific peoples' rights, however I did get to expose what was happening, as I am doing now. I also received a lot of poor treatment myself by people who mistakenly thought that I was fighting for discriminatory immigration policies.
"In ALL those examples, there were plenty of warnings. In all those examples, honest appraisal would have hinted at this outcome. But this wasn't allowed, because it didn't fit with the ideology. Because any opinion that didn't fit the morality was just wrong. It COULDN'T be right. There is this thinking that something which sound offensive must be wrong. Not just morally wrong, but scientifically wrong and logically wrong."
Yes, you are right; it did not fit with the ideology that the middle classes and fashionable intellectuals casually absorbed or that was taught to them from kindergarten through primary school and secondary school. As to why people did not imagine what could happen further down the track in terms of huge populations, skyrocketing prices and loss of human rights - it seems to me that most people responded to herding. They were afraid of what would happen to them if they resisted going in the direction they were being pushed and they accepted with more or less relief any rationale that the dogs herding them gave for forcing them into ever-narrowing choices, rationales that suggested that Australia was a big rich land, that we would all get cleverer, that sacrifices must be made for 'progress' and that 'progress' was an evolutionary pathway of a chronologically forward nature which always led to more and better stuff and to freedom and power in the end.
"Now, so it doesn't appear that I'm just attacking boomers, I'll use a Gen X example, because I acknowledge its not a unique generation thing, its just most VISIBLE in that generation."
I can't comment on where it is most prevalent. I was counselling a 30 year old mentally ill man recently who lived in utter precarity. He had a one room flat in public housing that he was too afraid to sleep in because someone had died in it before he moved in and their imprint was still on the carpet and the level of violence in those flats was terrifying. He said, "I'm tormented by my racist thoughts of resentment towards all the refugees that have public housing and contribute to the difficulties and violence." This was the first time I had thought about the impact that refugees (including accepted asylum seekers) might have on public housing demand. Until then I had thought that the number of refugees is so tiny that they pale into insignificance next to economic immigrants. However if there is an accumulated concentration of several thousand refugees over a few years in a limited quantity of public housing, it is obvious that there will be an impact. It's a fact that a lot of poor refugees do finish up in the public housing system and that it is full of violence. This guy did not feel that he could speak up because to him his resentments seemed to have a racist basis. So he could not formulate a statement that he had a right to decent housing as a citizen and if that right was being negatively affected by numbers of immigrants, then he had a right to demand a reduction in immigration. His solution was to couch-surf and sleep on benches, as he slid towards suicide. You will not be surprised to hear that he felt entirely worthless.
"Gen X still want tolerance, no hate, for a diverse society of all races to live peacefully. As a result, we've had to limit free speech and begin policing people who's thoughts might upset this. NSA have a massive surveillance program in place. I'm sure Australia has the same. The UK do too, they used it to arrest people who threaten 'tolerance'. They use it AGGRESSIVELY, but none of these people who object to a growing police state protested this."
As I have written, if they saw it coming, they were afraid, or, if they fought it, they were made to suffer. It helps that generations now have lived in cities and have no idea of how all the other creatures depend on their local ecology remaining intact. And that we do ultimately as well, and that you cannot self-govern via the global market.
Now, in the future when my daughter finds out that she's living in a 1984 style world (maybe), she's going to blame Gen X/Y, RIGHTFULLY. We'll say (not me, we), "Oh, we fought AGAINST that. WE didn't ASK for surveillance, for video cameras everywhere". But its NOT true. We lauded those who used surveillance to dob in 'racists' on public transport. We demanded that hate speech not be tolerance. We said, time and time again, there are LIMITS to free speech. To make this happen, you need surveillance. We overlooked when police arrested someone for something they said in private.
I guess you bring me back to reality here. I do not believe that I ever did this. However I have seen groups revel in righteous indignation and the pursuit of people they thought were political outlaws. Once people did this to the tribe down the track when they had a bone to pick. Now our 'tribes' are temporary alliances, like brands, formed through identification with marketed values etc; and our loyalties and controls are easily manipulated; there are very few real sources of orientation. In an industry where I work, I have seen over 20 years, a degrading of trust and work conditions, a kind of dog-eat-dog ethos, a psychopathic pursuit of power and the reduction of normal people into cowards and tell-tales. This seems to me to be the result of bureaucracy and the abolition of the seniority system, which at least gave a lot of organic social structure to industry before, tempered the naked ambition and brought stability and safety. The majority of people, as far as I can see, don't want this, but they don't know how to get out of it. I think the way out is to talk about it, as we are doing here.
NOTES
[1] "[...] opinion polls on immigration found widespread disapproval of the source countries that contributed the most to ethnic and cultural diversity. An Age Poll of July 1971 produced close to a majority for severely restricting Italian and Greek migrants, with only three to four per cent believing that the government should recruit them." Mark Lopez, "The Politics of the origins of multiculturalism: Lobbying and the power of influence, Paper at 10th Biennial Conference of the Australian Population Association, Year 2000.
[2] "A history of politics and population in Australia: Thomas Malthus in Australian thought"
[3] "Overpopulation, immigration, multiculturalism and the White Australia policy"
[4]Leone Sandercock, The Land Racket (1979) and Property, Politics and Urban Planning (1990).
[5] Chapter 6 of Sheila Newman, The Growth Lobby and its Absence, RMIT Thesis, 2000.
[6] "Yes it is true. In 1998, Tony Abbott, John Wheeldon (former ALP Senator) and William "Peter" Coleman (a former NSW Liberal Opposition Leader and father-in-law to Peter Costello) established a trust fund (aka slush fund) titled "Australians for Honest Politics" with the express purpose of raising funds to fight against Pauline Hanson and One Nation, who were at the time drawing traditional Coalition voters away from the Coalition.
The slush fund raised around $100,000.
Tony Abbott has always refused to reveal who was behind the funding of this slush fund, although in 2003, ABC's Lateline revealed that Western Australian businessman Harold Clough was believed to be one of those who contributed funds.
You can view a copy of Abbott's trust fund here.
It should be noted that this was a particularly grubby chapter of Tony Abbott's political life, and has been partially covered here.
If you are interested, there is an excellent timeline of events relating to Tony Abbott and his slush fund covered here." Source: "Tony Abbott FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)"
Where's this going?
Denniss, are you saying that Gen Y is more politically savvy than the Baby Boomers? Are you also saying that the Baby Boomers should have taken some sort of action or protested at a time when things seemed to be going OK yet now that things are obviously going down the gurgler, it's understandable for disillusioned Gen Y to sit on on its collective hands and blame its parents?
Baby Boomers not to blame for Fukuyama's claptrap
Dennis K wrote:
Your generation actually said that history had ended because the end had been reached!
Such a generalisation about the whole of the Baby Boomer generation cannot be true. As you should know, it was an individual right-wing 'free market' ideologue Francis Fukuyama who made this pronouncement after what was labeled 'socialism' was overthrown in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
As history was supposedly 'ending' in 1991, with the dissolution of the former Soviet Union by the corrupt drunkard President Boris Yeltsin (1931-2007) the United States was starting a succession of wars against Iraq which have, so far, cost many hundreds of thousands of lives (3,300,000 according to one estimate). Other bloody wars which have begun since history supposedly ended in 1991 include:
- The break-up the former republic of Yugoslavia;
- the 9/11 false flag terrorist attack and the invasion of Afghanistan for which 9/11 was the pretext;
- The invasion of Libya in 2011;
- The terrorist proxy war against Syria which has so-far cost 130,000 lives;
- Meddling in the Ukraine by the United States in order to replace a democratically elected government with a puppet of the United States;
Leader of the baby boomers
Unfounded assumptions
No body decided bad policies
I don't think democracy works well
African elephants could be lost in our lifetime
An estimated 100 elephants will be killed across Africa today. Poached, in all likelihood, in front of their families. Their tusks ripped off to meet the global greed for ivory.
A group of volunteers has been flying over Kenya's Tsavo National Park counting elephants, and have found in preliminary results that numbers are down from 12,500 three years ago, to about 11,000.
It does appear to be the smallest recorded population since 2002.
Poaching remains a huge problem and it is believed as many as 30,000 African elephants are killed every year for their ivory tusks. Fines for possession of ivory used to be about $130, but now it is more than $250,000. (Why shouldn't anyone found guilty of murdering an elephant, or being an accessory to the fact, be put in jail? - Ed)
By some estimates more than 80 elephants die every day across Africa simply for their tusks, but that is not the only challenge the animals face. It's not just the ivory trade that's threatening the elephants' existence but human encroachments on their land. There's been development of infrastructure such as houses, roads, market places and so on," said Dr Charles Musyoki, head of species research at the Kenya Wildlife Service.
Elephants have been credited with stampeding over houses and eating entire harvests leaving the subsistence farmers in their wake homeless and hungry as a result.
There are three things that are responsible for the African elephant’s move towards complete extinction:
- an ever increasing human population,
- the harmful effects of climate change, and
- criminal poaching ventures.
Sub-Saharan Africa will record the world’s largest population growth from 1.1 billion to 2.4 billion people between 2013 and 2050. By the year 2050 the current population in Africa will have more than doubled by 1.3 billion people making Sub-Saharan Africa the largest growing region in the world.
Delegates from around 50 countries will descend on London for the world’s largest ever conference on the illegal wildlife trade with the aim of changing the trend of elephant's demise. The event, hosted by the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, and attended by the Prince of Wales, will hear that as many as 50,000 elephants are being poached each year to satisfy the booming ivory market, driven largely by China. The country's insatiable and destructive appetite for economic growth comes at a great cost to the world's natural resources, and an intelligent iconic animals. The world "poaching" has connotations of chicken-stealing, and is inadequate to describe the horrendous and cruel loss of animal lives, and the criminality of the human race!
Unless they also solve the human overpopulation crisis, and the elephants' dwindling habitats, they will plug up one threat, and ignore the other!
Independent- UK: If we fail the African forest Elephant will blink out within our lifetimes
Has been caused by the subversion of democracy, not baby boomers
Dennisk wrote:
...how many boomers in the 60's and 70's wanted immigration restrictions? How many wanted immigration laws loosened?
...
Or smaller homes. How many people back 30 years ago said we need to share our wealth, that we have too much? How many people even TODAY say we should share our wealth and space. ...
...
In ALL those examples, there were plenty of warnings. In all those examples, honest appraisal would have hinted at this outcome. But this wasn't allowed, because it didn't fit with the ideology.
What you write of is not the consequence of informed consent by the baby boomers. It is the consequence of Australian democracy (like the democracies of so many other countries around the world) having been subverted by the 1975 coup against the Labor Government of Gough Whitlam as described in the book the CIA – a Forgotten History 1 by William Blum. Chapter 40, entitled Chapter 40: Australia - 1973-1975: Another free election bites the dust in 1975, shows how the Labor government of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, Lionel Murphy and Rex Connor, which put the interests of ordinary Australians ahead of foreign and domestic corporations, was overthrown in the coup of 1975.2
What is not as well appreciated is that after the 1975 coup, instead of remaining an effective opposition, the Labor Party has been, since its defeat at the 1980 Federal elections (if not sooner), whiteanted by corporate glove puppets within, including Paul Keating, Anna Bligh and Peter Beattie and the well-known CIA operatives Bob Hawke and Bob Carr.
In subsequent years, when the Labor Party regained office at the national level and in various states, it implemented even more extreme free market policies than the supposedly more right-wing coalition of the Liberal and National Parties. Naomi Klein should have included a chapter in her book The Shock Doctrine (2007) about the mis-rule of Australia by Hawke and Keating. Sadly, she did not.
Footnotes
1. ⇑ This book has since been re-published with the title
Killing Hope – U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II
2. ⇑ The subversion of Australian democracy was also observed by Christopher Boyce who, in 1974, began work in a communications center in California through which CIA cables were routed. There, he learnt that the CIA acted to remove the Labor Government in 1975 and, prior to that, the democratically elected Chilean government of President Salvadore Allende. Allende died in the military coup of 1973. This convinced Boyce that he should oppose his own government by spying for the then Soviet Union. This is described in the book The Falcon and the Snowman and the movie of the same name.
Continent-wide search for Babyboomer leader begins...
Anonymous, your 'Who is the leader of the babyboomers?' is wonderful.
There is no leader of the babyboomers because all they are is a statistical construction befitting a book by Lewis Carrol or Bernard Salt, who has written several books turning statistical constructions into fictitious social classes. He has been so successful that people now believe that such classes exist. The ABC interviews him about them, government attempts to legislate around them, and people go witch-hunting them.
But a leader for the babyboomers will appear, just as we have ethnic leaders and environmental leaders; someone to push their own agenda in the guise of representing the Baby Boomer Class cannot fail to take advantage of this opportunity.
David Tatnall- Royal Park photo Exhibition opening Tuesday 11th