The way The Australian writes him up, Tim Flannery, who once wrote so articulately in defense of our land and its ecology and our place in it, now seems reduced to a quasi-apologist for extreme mining technologies. The Australian writes in such an unbalanced way. See also "Fracking Democracy..."
The article reads as if Tim Flannery, (famously author of The Future Eaters), alarmed at the roughshod being run over Australian farmers' rights and the environment, is trying to get higher standards in the mining industry.
He is reported to have said that, "similar arguments applied to mining generally, and called on government and industry to do more to regulate and rein in poor performers."
The Australian cites him as saying that mining is utterly necessary for modern life.
It fails to balance its argument by giving the case for allowing population to downsize and relocalise and for people to be more self-sufficient in a slower economy to allow the planet time to heal. No attention is given to how we all work harder for less and how many of us don't see the point in producing all this short-lived 'stuff' that finishes up in land-fills. Yet it is only in order to continue producing all this stuff that extreme technologies like gas-fracking can be artificially politically justified. In the end the only reason to go on producing more and more stuff is to keep a few undeserving greedy people at the top in the positions to which they have become accustomed.
Completely different perspective operates outside our system, but we don't know of it
Here is the comment I sent to the Australian regarding their article:
"France recently passed a law in parliament to make fracking illegal. The law rescinds rights previously granted and put any schale-mining for gas on hold pending new and safer technologies. Source: JT, Edition du Mercredi 13 Avril 2011, http://jt.france2.fr/20h/ Since then a further report was released and covered on the news for France 2, Monday 3 October 2011, which said that the French Government remained unconvinced by the latest techniques proposed by fracking concerns. All permits have been cancelled. High on the list of reasons against fracking in France was the risk of contamination of water supply and its impact on agriculture and human health.
This parliamentary decision is yet more evidence for those aware of different legal systems, that the Napoleonic system in France and Europe is far more democratic - in protecting peoples' rights and communal (and national) assets and vital resources - than the anglophone systems in their various forms in Britain and her current and ex-colonies."
Let's see if they publish that.
Murdochian only spoken here
Generally, it seems that, if you want to have your opinion published in the mainstream press you may only express it in so far as it fits their paradigm. So Tim Flannery, who once wrote so articulately in defense of our land and its ecology and our place in it, now appears to be reduced to being portrayed as a quasi-apologist for extreme mining technologies. It is hard to believe that he is really behind gas-fracking. One gets the impression that he is now interfacing, on behalf of numerous committees, with a monolithic industrial mining front that speaks uniquely in Murdochian.
It is as if our press and government have rendered us incapable of imagining any other way. France's parliamentary decision to ban gas-fracking is yet more evidence that the Napoleonic system in France and Europe is far more democratic - in protecting peoples' rights and communal (and national) assets and vital resources - than the anglophone systems in their various forms in Britain and her current and ex-colonies.
Australia's mass media and government keep her citizens in the dark and feed them B.S.
Australia's lack of information and news from Western Continental Europe keeps us in the dark about other ways other possibilities, and notably enduring forms of democracy that retain local powers. We only get an Anglophone perspective on matters of importance. America, Canada, Australia are among the least democratic countries in the world, with vast and growing differences between the haves and the have-nots, in legal systems which cannibalise and destroy their own community, citizens and resources. The reason that these countries are not yet obviously reduced to the poverty of Haiti is that their citizens started out with more resources per capita. As commonwealth is transferred more and more into private hands in those systems, people who have to date been able to survive, will not survive. The growing numbers of homeless and hopelessly endebted are indicators of the social unsustainability of the current economic and legal systems in Australia, America and Canada. In France and the rest of Europe, it is virtually impossible for citizens to be left without shelter unless they voluntarily opt out - as some homeless do - albeit with every attempt made to shelter them each winter.
That this same system was able to appraise and legislate against a threat to its peoples' way of life in response to their protests is an indication that their system is more democratic and more flexible than ours.
First published 2011-10-10 10:02:39 +1000. Republished on 21-October 2011 at 11:37: There is a new protest movement for democratic occupation of cities all over the world, demonstrating against the financial system and its insults to most of us. We support the principles the movement espouses and urge others to do so. Days later we have unanswered questions about this movement in Melbourne, which we are hoping to elucidate. Please join in with comments.
This statement was posted on October 9, 2011 at 11:38 pm and was in moderation at time of this article:
"http://candobetter.net writers cover these concerns and candobetter.net supports your platform in solidarity. We will be there on Saturday. We criticise the growth lobby http://candobetter.net/GrowthLobby and show how it subverts Australia’s remaining democracy. We consider the amount of money that goes on land and rent costs ruins small business, causes homelessness, enslaves most of us and creates a tiny layer of profiteers that runs this country. That’s not an economic success.The assault on wages in this country is shameful. See this cartoon: http://candobetter.net/node/2601
We are gathering a political movement of radical community candidates for the next federal election. Please keep watching our pages too.
I personally would support the adoption of the roman law and civil code in Australia. The British, US, Oz and NZ system is a democratic sham."
signed Sheila Newman
Vigilance needed against forces that will try to take over and destroy this movement in Australia
Please put principles before personalities. To this effect, please watch out for efforts to intimidate people who try to talk about the problems we have with overpopulation and the growth lobby in this country.
Often occupying positions in the Socialist Alliance - but not real socialists - the people subverting movements for democracy are identifiable because they try to stop you from expressing your opposition to undemocratic development and population growth in Australia. They have long been interfering in the Green Movement, the Climate Change movement, have taken over NGOs and have succeeded to date in fragmenting protest, to the advantage of the ruling cliques here. Sometimes they pretend to be anarchists and that anarchism supports violence. They are not anarchists. As Joe Toscano says at Anarchist Weekly, which is a very solid democratic forum, beware of anyone who talks up violence, they are almost certainly working for the authorities.
We urge our readers to be positive forces in this movement.
Original Occupy Wall Street statement
OCCUPY WALL ST FIRST DECLARATION
On Thursday night, Occupy Wall Street participants voted on and approved the first official “Declaration of the Occupation of New York City.” It it reprinted in its entirety below.
As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.
As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.
They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*
To the people of the world,
We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.
Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.
To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.
Join us and make your voices heard!
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There is a move by a GoldCoast mayor to ban rodeos. Animal rights defenders want you to support this move. One way you might consider doing this is to vote on line for banning rodeos from Gold Coast City Council land and cutting funding for such events. You can vote here.
by Matthew Killoran, Gold Coast News com au, October 18th, 2011
"A CONTROVERSIAL plan by Mayor Ron Clarke would see rodeos banned from Gold Coast City Council land and funding for events involving rodeos or "animal cruelty" cut.
The annual Rotary Bulls on the Beach charity event and the Australia Day rodeo at Evandale are likely to be affected and the move could see the city lose the National Finals Rodeo, which attracts thousands of spectators and has been estimated to bring $10 million to the city each year."
The article goes on to say that the same Mayor managed to ban circuses using exotic animals from operating on council-owned land in 2009, and that the idea of banning rodeos was a response to a letter from the Animal Welfare League, complaining of animal cruelty in rodeos.
Click on the picture above to respond to the poll in the Age for 17th-18th October which asks your opinion on the question, "Can climate change be solved without population control?"
Randy possums? breeding like rabbits? $160,000 of rate payers money for intrusive experimental possum birth control?" Maryland Wilson of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council also praises the Yarra City Council for enlightened aspects of its wildlife and possum program, but she suggest that their imaginative program could be order of magnitude more imaginative and lead a scaling up to connect with other councils. The Australian Wildlife Protection Council is the oldest organisation that specifically protects Australian wildlife and promotes wildlife corridors at local, state and national level. Maryland Wilson is a physically diminutive woman who punches far above her weight for wildlife. She works seven days a week entirely voluntarily, and has campaigns on behalf of Australian wildlife that reach to the United States and the European Union. Part of her great strength is the support she gives to wildlife carers round Australia. She never loses sight of the animals or the activists.
Yarra Council's Urban Wildlife Management is good but could be even better...
Maryland Wilson, President of The Australian Wildlife Protection Council acknowledges that Yarra City Council has a great Wildlife Policy entitled “The Yarra Urban Wildlife Management Plan 2009." She says, "We thank you, but ..."
1. Yarra Council needs to introduce Australia’s fodder trees-
These trees provide good possum food:
Among the Eucalyptus-
Peppermint gums
River Red Gums
Spotted Gums
Manna Gums
Stringybark
Forest Red Gums
Mountain Ash
Lemon-scented Gums
Red Flowering Gums-
These are all suitable hardy and good for possums with tannin/oil in their leaves
Amongst the Melaleucas-
Swamp Paper Bark
Willow Myrtle
Lilypilli
Gravillea
Amongst the Acacias
Silver Wattle
Black Wattle
Blackwood Wattle
Flinders Range Wattle
These trees provide not only leaves, but flowers for diverse insects, seeds for birds and are good for possums
The above provide such a diversity of native trees that are attractive and provide native fauna with food, shelter and they also provide shade for Visitors to the Park.
It would be ideal to introduce these as semi-mature trees rather than seedlings
2. Continuous Urban Canopies-
What is more important, is to generate interconnecting canopies that link up to Nature Strips beyond Curtin Square (the Park) providing moisture at ground level that keep grass green-
All we are saying is give possums a chance
This would give possums a chance to move outside the Park to link up to Nature Strips- allowing them to move out and create far less dense populations within Curtain Square-
Trees can create canopies and wildlife corridors, giving possum’s safe exit from the Park.
3. Interpretive Signs need to be Introduced
Interpretive signs need to be erected in Curtain Square which encourages the public to value native wildlife- Signs need to educate that:
• Possums are Protected Wildlife
• Teach children to value them and engage with them
• In Council’s interests, will change attitudes and reduce complaints
Council should stop, halt, and cease exaggerated claims that possums are killing the trees.
Possums have lived with the trees for almost a Century – it is nonsense to scapegoat them
AWPC will disagree absolutely with culling and fertility control of native species as both are inhumane intrusions and doomed to fail. Any diminished populations will be overtaken by fertile territorial possums from surrounding areas.
Fertility Control is an experimental trial whose long term health effects on possums is unknown.
Thank you for this opportunity to help find humane and exciting ways to protect the possums, all our native birds and insects and all of Nature those remains-
Please keep in mind that Australia has the highest rate of extinctions in the world.
This plan to plant native trees will help reduce Pollution and Climate Change, provide food and shelter for our native birds and animals, and create peace in Curtain Square.
Notes
[1] This article is based on suggestions by Maryland Wilson, President of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council, addressed to Councillor Sam Gaylard of Yarra City Council on September 5, 2011.
Most objections to Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's Carbon Tax are founded on the apparent belief that it is possible for human society to continue its wasteful consumption of non-renewable natural resources and destruction of our natural environment without posing any risk to the life support system which exists in this tiny corner of a Universe, mostly barren of life.
However, compared to what can be done and what must be done if human civilisation is to hope to further endure for a period which even remotely approaches the 32,000 years since our ancestors left evidence of intelligence probably equaling our own in the in the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave of the Ardèche department of southern France, the proposed Carbon Tax is a joke in extremely poor taste..
At best, the Carbon Tax is token gesture by Government and its corporate masters to be acting to protect our future. At worst, it is another paper economy scam that will allow wealth to be gouged from the rest of us by unproductive members of society whilst weighing us down with yet more more red tape.
This article was adapted from a comment I made in response to A long time coming … an article by Professor John Quiggin written on 13 October. It has yet to draw a response there. If any visitors to candobetter.net decide that this article is more worthy of a response than visitors to johnquiggin.com have so far indicated, comments, whether critical or supportive, are most welcome.
I have sympathy with very few of those who are so stridently denouncing Julia Gillard's Carbon Tax.
True, the way she went about introducing it is questionable from the standpoint of democratic principles, but those who are against the Carbon Tax seem to want us to believe that Earth is not facing an environmental crisis which could well threaten threaten the life support system that sustains human life.
Without getting into the scientific argument, when the conditions which support life are so rare in the Universe and those which support the sort of complex life forms which exist on Earth are rarer still, it defies common sense to think we can materially change our planet as much as we have done in the last three centuries and continue to do so at an an even faster rate without putting at risk the very conditions which sustain life.
We have substantially altered the concentration of the Earth's atmosphere by having dug up and burnt much humankind's nonrenewable endowment of fossil fuels that took at least tens of millions of years of sunlight and terrestrial biological and geological to produce.
How anyone can know for a fact that these changes to Earth's protective atmospheric blanket won't cause runaway global warming is beyond me. Given that our very future and the future of our children and descendants is at stake, it is surely most imprudent to assume that we can continue to quarry and export coal iron and other non-renewable natural resources at the accelerating rate that the likes of Qld Premier Anna Bligh and our leading 'free market' economic ideologues would have us do.
My own problem with the Carbon Tax is that it is, at best, a small fraction of what needs to be done to make human civilization truly sustainable.
If the Carbon Tax were to be adopted, even if comprehensively at the international level, does anyone seriously imagine that it will somehow induce the market to reduce, to any worthwhile extent, activities that are now consuming non-renewable resources?
Just go to the rubbish tip and ask for how many more decades they believe we can continue to extract the resources necessary to manufacture all the artifacts -- thrown out hi-fis, computers, TVs, fridges, cars, furniture, toys, etc. --- and packaging that has ended up there?
How is this going to stop manufacturers continuing to manufacture and sell, at an enormous cost to our natural capital, so many artifacts that are designed to fail after only a few years and which become inoperable when parts and batteries are lost because they refuse to make these compatible with similar artifacts?
Does anyone imagine that we could go on the way we are for more than a hundred more years?
David Montgomery's "Dirt - the Erosion of Civilisations" of 2007 shows how past civilisations -- Mesopotamia, ancient Greek civilisations, Rome, the Chaco Anasazi of North America. etc., which did not dig up dug up coal, oil and metals still only lasted hundreds of years, so could not be considered sustainable.
If they had dug up and wasted coal, oil and metals and deforested at the same rate as 21st century human civilisation does they could not have even lasted that long.
Any Government which does not attempt to make human civilisation at least as sustainable as those past failed rural civilisations once were is not serious about sustainabilty.
Gillard's Carbon Tax is only a token pretence of an attempt to achieve sustainability and nothing more.
Any serious sustainability policy would comprise at least:
Reuse of food and drink containers rather than the phony recycling schemes that our council rates are wasted to pay for.
Inducements, possibly including laws, to force manufacturers to cease planned obsolescence and the deliberate manufacture of artifacts with incompatible parts, particularly cables and batteries. If cars and motorcycled built at the start of the 20th century can still be run today, why, with the improvements in science and technology can't cars be built to last centuries? Why can't cars and motorcycles be handed down to our children and grandchildren instead of being consigned to the tip or scrap metal?
Real town planning so that it is not necessary for so many to spend as much of their days and waste so much petroleum traveling to and from work, educational institutions and amenities.
Proper planned public transport so that we don't have to own our own car to commute. End the Taxi license plate speculation scam so that taxis can be affordable to ordinary people and taxi drivers can earn a livable income in a 40 hour week and not a 72 hour week.
Outlawing the destruction of native forests to manufacture paper.
Preservation of bio-diversity. Stop destroying forests and other natural habitats, which other species need for their survival.
End the population growth/mass immigration Ponzi scheme. It is a lie that Australia's prosperity needs more people. Any honest measure of people's wellbeing would show that our prosperity, on average, as well as our sustainability, decrease as we add more people. Only a small minority, including property speculators and landlords, gain through population growth and they gain at everyone else's expense.
Victoria's Mornington Peninsula Shire wants to build the largest building project they have ever undertaken on foreshore public reserve land at Rosebud. The proposed complex would be 50 times larger than a recently condemned pool and needs parking for 200 vehicles. Why change something as perfect as Rosebud? Is the council mad?
No crocodiles at Rosebud
Marine crocodiles and box jellyfish made it too dangerous to swim on Cairns foreshore in Northern Australia, so the construction of a public 4 hectare built lagoon made some sense. Why, however, would you try to build something like this on the Rosebud foreshore? Rosebud foreshore is like a giant, safe lagoon already.
In fact, the coastline around Port Philip Bay, Australia, is so scenic, safe, and accessible that most normal people in the world would look at it and think that it was perfect - but not some of the people in the local council.
Dr Alan Nelsen, Secretary, of Mornington Peninsula Ratepayers’ and Residents’ Association, Inc.[2] expresses local concern and amazement at this strangely inappropriate project.
Concern for Victoria’s Bays and Coastal Foreshores
"All Victorians should be pleased with the rejection by the government’s Department of Sustainability and Environment’s refusal to sell Port Phillip Bay foreshore public land for an illegally built private pool in Mt Eliza. The Mornington Peninsula Shire Council applauded the decision. [1]
However, what is of greater concern to all Victorians is that the executive of the very same council and a local councillor are lobbying the government to construct its own aquatic/leisure complex, “the largest building project undertaken by the Mornington Peninsula (shire)” on the same bay foreshore which is public reserve land at Rosebud. The proposed complex is 50 times larger than the condemned pool and requires a car park for 200 vehicles.
Hypocrisy or incompetence? The shire also refuses to recognise that its low-lying site is likely to become one of the worst affected by inundation from sea level rise on the bay foreshore. Perhaps users will be able to swim out to the complex.
A further embarrassment is that the proposal to use public open space is inconsistent with the recent comment by the government’s Minister for Planning who said he would be making new parks for Melbourne.
The bay foreshore belongs to all Victorians and must not be allowed to be squandered by a shire executive and local councillor to build a monument to themselves, dubbed by many as “Palace de Versailles by the sea”."
Notes
[1] The Sunday Age, October 9, 2011.
[2] Dr Alan Nelsen, Secretary, of Mornington Peninsula Ratepayers’ and Residents’ Association, Inc.
PO Box 4087, Rosebud Vic
Email: alanne[AT]ihug.com.au
Aussies take action! Lock the gate!" Australians to gather in Brisbane to defend water and land from coal and coal-seam gas fracking, which has already been totally banned in France. (See comments.) On Sunday October 16, 11a.m. Queens Park Cnr George & Elizabeth Sts. Brisbane City. lockthegateqld[AT]gmail.com Facebook: Defend Our Water Qld Tel. 0404 677 781 www.lockthegate.org.au
More information on Fracking
For more information about gas-fracking, see "Fracking democracy - Gaslands- the movie, the industry and national responses." France completely banned all fracking a few months ago and last week it revoked licences given to some companies which tried to demonstrate a new, safer method. The French Government said that there is no safe method of fracking. It is environmentally destructive, socially destructive and dangerous to water catchments.
Contacts and details for Sunday 16 October protests in Brisbane.
Aussies take action! Lock the gate! Defend our water from coal and coal seam gas!
Coal Seam Gas and Coal represent the biggest threat to our precious underground water reserves in our history. On Sunday October 16, join with communities across the country to demand a moratorium until the full social and environmental impacts are known. Gather 11a.m. Queens Park, Cnr George & Elizabeth Sts., Brisbane City. E-mail lockthegateqld[AT]gmail.com
Facebook: Defend Our Water Qld,
Tel. 0404 677 781 www.lockthegate.org.au
Living near the abattoir in Kilcoy, hearing the terrified cows begging for their lives all day and night was the norm. Dad's job as the meat inspector meant he was elbows deep in the end result of the killing room floors. He became increasingly ill... I wanted to escape the terror so I gathered my books on animals and created a "library" under our old wooden house, where I would sit on my plastic seat with my best friend "Candy" at my feet. Candy was a gorgeous caramel labrador ...Also, see below article details of protest against bullriding at Kawana Stadium, 15 October.
Candy and Sticky Fingers
Im in love. I've always been in love regardless of the chaos of being a child growing up in a home infiltrated with intimidation and violence by my father. Living near the abattoir in Kilcoy, hearing the terrified cows begging for their lives all day and night was the norm. Dad's job as the meat inspector meant he was elbows deep in the end result of the killing room floors. He became increasingly ill, having to spend time in and out of hospital as his body weakened with diseases from raw, bloodied bodies. Memories of skipping along next to my father as a toddler, wanting to be by his side at home, were quickly fading. He became angry. Angry at my beautiful mum, whose only role in her mind, was to do whatever she could to keep us all happy and carefree. We had to move away from the place that was starting to make our whole family sick. Anyone who has grown up with a parent or parents who are volatile know how insanely scary life is and terror pervades every aspect of that child's little spirit.
I begged my parents to attend a private catholic school in the new area we moved to in Brisbane because my new friend was attending. Although Dad had stopped working at the slaughterhouse and now was working fixing boilers in ships, his anger and volatility only increased. My 10yr old self was living a bi-polar life...one day happy and carefree when Dad was calm and fun, the next day, scared and fearful of being beaten when he was drinking and fierce. My mother also started drinking to cope with his behaviour. With her drinking came even scarier episodes in and out of our house. My younger brother, adopted and so very precious to me that the day my parents brought him home at the age of 8 months old, I put him in my dolls pram and pushed him around the garden and introduced him to my animal friends, was ADHD and too much for either of my parents to manage so he was regularly beaten and locked in his room, whilst my mother cried in her room. My older sister, who I looked up to so much for her confidence and swagger, was now rebelling against dad's beatings she had regularly received and moved to another state as soon as she was of legal age. I also wanted to escape the terror so I gathered my books on animals and created a "library" under our old wooden house. I made it all nice with old curtains and bits of boxes for shelves and would sit on my plastic seat with my best friend "Candy" at my feet. Candy was a gorgeous caramel labrador that was mum's dog but in my heart and mind, she was on this planet to be with me only. Dad never allowed her in the main part of the house, only on the enclosed back verandah. Candy and I spent many hours in our little library reading Enidd Blyton stories that took us away to a peaceful, fun place. Candy was the only customer to my library and that was just fine by me.
High school was not for me. Particularly a strict one with nuns and priests making us confess our sins and singing at funerals of those we never knew. I discovered music in a big way. Mum had always played Glen Campbell and a variety of cheesy albums to take her away to another place. The radio was playing music that really spoke to me...The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, The Cramps. Music whose riffs were mad and whose rebellious lyrics gave me confidence that I was not alone in feeling at odds with the world. I was obsessed with the Stones' "Sticky Fingers" LP that I bought with my pocket money and took it to school to show classmates. The album cover, a zip on a pair of jeans undone coupled with the album title didn't mean anything to my clueless self. The nuns weren't so naive funnily enough and swiftly told me not to bring the devil's work to school ever again. That also put paid to the next LP I soon discovered "Symphony for the Devil"!.
My love for Candy deepened with every moment I spent with her. In all the chaos and dysfunction of my home life, she was always happy to see me and spend time being cuddled and kissed by me. We often visited the chickens together in their garden pen, placing ping pong balls in their nests as dad told me this made them clucky and they would lay more. I had found a picture in a book of a dog that looked just like Candy so I cut it out and bought a second hand frame to put it in. I put it above my bed so I felt that each night she was with me in my dreams. The day that will never leave me is the one I played on the swings in our yard with my girl friend and we started talking about how we couldn't live if our dogs ever died. That evening as I lay in bed I felt a presence at the bedroom door. It was Candy. She'd never come down the hallway to our bedrooms as she wasn't allowed. My memory immediately after she visited is a little hazy but the next vivid recollection I have is laying in my pajamas on the back verandah wrapping myself around her, clinging so hard to her but she wouldn't warm up. She was so cold and I was confused. Mum came and ushered me back to bed. My life would never be the same. I had lost my best friend in the world. Clutching the old frame with a picture of my Candy in it, I cried unlike I had ever cried before. My first heartbreak was not because of a boy, but because of a big fluffy puppy dog. She had shown me that life would get tougher than I could have ever thought possible.
**********
Please help give animals a voice this Saturday 15 October, to protest the disgustingly barbaric bullriding event at Kawana Stadium 3pm onwards. Media will be covering our protest so bring placards, loud voices, friends and family.
The address is
Nicklin Way
Kawana, Queensland, 4575
"Apathy The Deadliest Weapon of Mass Destruction"
For the Animals,
In its transition from rich biodiversity to the barren, cold land of blizzards we see today, Antarctica provides a dramatic case study of how subtle changes in continental positioning can affect living communities, and how rapidly catastrophic changes can come about. Frozen in Time reconstructs Antarctica’s evolving animal and plant communities as accurately as the fossil record permits.
Antarctica: from paradise to polar ice
No other continent on Earth has undergone such radical environmental changes as Antarctica.
According to a new book, Frozen in Time: Prehistoric life in Antarctica, by Dr Jeffrey Stilwell from the School of Geosciences at Monash University and John Long from the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles County, Antarctica has gone from paradise to polar ice in just a few million years, a geological blink of an eye when we consider the real age of Earth.
In its transition from rich biodiversity to the barren, cold land of blizzards we see today, Antarctica provides a dramatic case study of how subtle changes in continental positioning can affect living communities, and how rapidly catastrophic changes can come about.
Frozen in Time presents a comprehensive overview of the fossil record of Antarctica framed within its changing environmental settings, providing a window into a past time and environment on the continent.
It reconstructs Antarctica’s evolving animal and plant communities as accurately as the fossil record permits.
From the story of how fossils were first discovered in Antarctica to modern day expeditions through remote sites, Frozen in Time presents a clear guide to the palaeontology of Antarctica. The publication provides an overview of the discovery and exploration of the continent to contemporary issues of heritage and preservation including the major impacts of climate change.
Chapter highlights include the age of fish and ferns, giant amphibians and hairy reptiles, volcanic lakes and early dinosaurs, when giant reptiles swam in southern seas, killer birds, giant penguins and early mammals.
Jeffrey Stilwell is a Senior Lecturer and Leader of the Applied Palaeontology and Basin Studies Group in the School of Geosciences at Monash University. Dr Stilwell is also an Honorary Research Associate at the Australian Museum, specialising in ancient greenhouse Earth environments and equator-to-south-polar ecosystems.
Dr Stilwell is the author of five monographs and more than 60 peer-reviewed research papers, including many on the fossil record of Antarctica. He has participated on five major expeditions to the Antarctic Peninsula and Transantarctic Mountains/McMurdo Sound.
John Long is an Australian palaeontologist and the Vice President of Research and Collections at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. He has authored some 26 books, including The Rise of Fishes and Feathered Dinosaurs. His research has focused on the early evolution of fishes, especially from Australia and Antarctica.
Your ABC will be giving yet more air-space to commercial growth lobbyists who will be spruiking at the Wheeler Center tonight. Publicity for the event actually claims that high density living is "great for the environment." In fact, the Australian Conservation Foundation's Consumption Atlas shows that greenhouse gas emissions of those living in high-density areas are greater than for those living in low-density areas. An analysis of the data shows that the average carbon dioxide equivalent emission of the high-density core areas of Australian cities is 27.9 tons per person whereas that for the low-density outer areas is 17.5 tons per person. (Free Event TONIGHT 12 OCT 2011.) Wheeler Center - another festival for malignant Growth to be amplified by Your ABC.
The Wheeler Center will be hosting a predictable event called, "Seven Billion, it's getting crowded in here," on Wednesday 12th 6.15pm at 176 Little Lonsdale Street, near Russell St.
Money talks over democracy
Publicity for the event kicks off with a completely erroneous statement that "High density living is great for the environment."
We can expect that ignorant assertion to dictate the level of discussion. The advocates of growth seem willing to say anything and repeat it ad nauseum in the appearance of justifying their totalitarian push for developers to maximise their financial returns. Sadly, Your ABC seems happy to promote the malignant growth virus.
"High density living is great for the environment, right? But what does it do to our heads and hearts? The Australian psyche was moulded by the myth of the ‘wide brown land’, so what might life packed like sardines look and feel like? With the world’s seven billionth person is about to be born, can we learn from the Asian megacity experience? And will we still be sharing a cup of sugar with our neighbours? As the population debate gets mental, we’re going in search of the soul in urban sprawl. Hosted by Natasha Mitchell and featuring Kim Dovey, Helen Killmier, Bernard Salt and Sein-Way Tan. Presented in partnership with ABC Radio National."[More about the speakers in note [1]
What does the 'environment' mean to the person who wrote that ridiculous statement? Obviously not fans of biodiversity. Do they actually like landscapes destroyed by coal mining, gas fracking and sand-mining?
But there is a mountain of evidence to show that, not only is high density living unpleasant and reduces options for self-sufficiency, it uses much more energy than ordinary low density blocks:
"On the Green advocacy website Planetizen.com there is an interesting new piece entitled "Resisting Dickensian Gloom." This article cites several new Australian studies that refute the whole notion that we can build our way out of Global Warming. Australia, which bought into the high density dream early on and now has vast swaths of the stuff, apparently now has cause for a little bit of buyer's remorse. Here is a part of what this article has to say:
Greenhouse gas emissions: Advocates of high-density policies (often termed "Smart Growth" but also under other descriptions and euphemisms such as "urban consolidation," "compact development," "growth management," and "urban renewal") maintain these policies save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
A comprehensive study of per capita emissions in Australia based on household consumption of all products and services appears in the Australian Conservation Foundation's Consumption Atlas. Unexpectedly, this analysis shows that greenhouse gas emissions of those living in high-density areas are greater than for those living in low-density areas. An analysis of the data shows that the average carbon dioxide equivalent emission of the high-density core areas of Australian cities is 27.9 tons per person whereas that for the low-density outer areas is 17.5 tons per person. As mentioned in the Demographia Survey introduction, food and goods purchase account for most of the emissions and this amounts to more for wealthier inner-city dwellers.
Surprisingly, transport emissions amount to very little (only 10.5%), household electricity and heating fuel being about twice as much at 20.0%. It should also be noted that the emissions from household dwelling construction and renovations at 11.8% are greater than emissions for transport. It is clear that transport, so heavily emphasized by Smart Growth advocates, is responsible for only a small fraction of household emissions.
The article goes on to cite a few more studies, all of which come to the conclusion that packing people into urban core development might not be as "green" a thing as advocates such as noted ecologist Arnold Schwarzenegger have claimed. Which means that low density communities such as Sierra Madre might very well be the greenest possible solution after all. And that Sacramento, along with SCAG and 40% of our current City Council here (they're the ones that talk a lot), should really go find some other way to save the world.
[1] The speakers:
Kim Dovey - Kim Dovey is an Australian architectural critic and Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Melbourne, Australia, teaching urban design theory. Dovey, K (2005) Fluid City: Transforming Melbourne's Urban Waterfront, London: Routledge
Helen Killmier - Helen is a community psychologist. Her areas of responsibility include disability services, community aged care, recreation, respite, partnership development, community capacity building, social policy and strategic planning. Prior to this position Helen spent 12 years in Local Government in management positions working directly with communities. Her research interests are in sense of community, the built environment, place attachment, community development, community governance, health and community wellbeing.
Sein-Way Tan - serves on the Advisory Board of Global Urban Development, Climate Prosperity Alliance and Data Cities. Sein-way’s consultancy is advising the Chinese government on its sustainable cities policy, and the UN Habitat’s World Urban Campaign. His research focuses on rapid global urbanisation and is conducted in collaboration with more than 400 global leaders in politics, business and environment.
Growth is choking our city, our public transport, our parking lots, and streets and causing more and more "shortages", and rising costs - particularly in hospitals. Does it take a death of someone waiting to get some funding? More democracy in the system would solve a lot of the problems. When workers are too scared to complain vigorously, the patients aren't heard either. Does anyone have a choice in this system? Who is responsible?
Never enough money for hospitals with this rate of population growth
A May 2010 proposal for the Austin Hospital in Melbourne described the emergency department as treating about 16,500 more patients a year than it was built to manage, blowing out waiting times for care. The nearby Ivanhoe district had been declared an "activity centre" for more population growth. This means 17,000 NEW residents are planned for this small catchment area of the hospital in the next decades. The Austin Emergency Department (Casualty) now sees over 20,000 more patients/year than it was built for, or 40% more than a safe capacity.
Add all the other "activity centres" and the demands on this and all Melbourne's other hospitals will be compounded and escalate. Obviously this will further detract from medical care in rural areas. We are in a bottleneck gridlock of growth, and funding simply can't keep up. The two industries our State government largely rely upon- housing construction and foreign students - are both on shaky grounds, and both inherently require ongoing population growth. Most of this growth is fed by high immigration but its impact on hospitals is erroneously blamed on a small rise in the number of elderly patients, who are progressively being sidelined out of the main hospital system.
Does it take a death of someone waiting to get some funding?
There are already plenty of deaths, and other adverse events, but that doesn't stop it. And the deaths don't just occur to people on waiting lists. They happen to people who have already made it into hospital beds. Deaths in hospitals are 'managed' on paper until it becomes more or less impossible to attribute them to anything except isolated circumstances, or some scapegoated individual, sacrificed to the institution's survival. Inquiries almost never affect management; only hands-on staff, although management dictate how the hands-on work and often, to satisfy their own projects, interfere with common-sense priorities. It is very hard to sue a hospital. Their every step is managed by their insurers who have created a paper virtual system like wall-paper over what really happens. Hospital accreditation seems to be largely a protection racket, adding to costs and boosting the legalistic virtual system.
Unbalanced management layers crush basic services
Hospital management is top-heavy. Highly paid CEOs take their orders from a State Government keen to have a lovely virtual hospital for political reasons. Human resources teams interpret events according to the letter of very unfair workplace laws, to save money and to preserve power away from hands-on practitioners. There is a wad of middle managers dominated by narrow efficiency and treatment ideologies whose jobs and mortgages depend on them enforcing unworkable rules. Some are completely cynical, some are ignorant, some are so narrowly focused that they cannot see the wood for the trees. Others are fighting to make money to feed and house their own families and take no prisoners.
Unworkable rules suffocate resistance on the ground
The unworkable rules function to suppress on-the-ground criticism of conditions for patients and staff. The way this works is that, whenever a nurse or doctor stands up to management, some inevitable failure to document a detail will be raised as if it is a major issue of safety and professional competence. If the nurse or doctor tries to defend him/her self, the matter will be formalised into a first written warning. This is only two steps away from the sack. A professional can lose their ability to practice just by irritating management enough to have them find cronies to express unjustified alarm about that person's practice. Or they can be in the wrong place at the wrong time, when someone more powerful or popular or enmeshed needs a scapegoat. The workers are judged by boards which accept hearsay. Victorian law does not recognise defamation in Victorian workplaces, so management can say anything about a worker without proving it. They only way defamation can be pursued is after a person loses their jobs if the can show that it led to unfair dismissal, and we know how little power is left in that option.
How it works
Medication errors are a good example of vulnerability in practitioners. Medication mistakes are inevitable in practice. People under pressure make mistakes frequently. This is however not taken into account, although everyone knows that the pressures are becoming intolerable. Mistakes may be frequent, and every member of staff will make them, but management can still arbitrarily designate one of two identical incidents as an unusual and serious mistake and the other as inconsequential. They can ignore mistakes, as they often do, or they can decide to punish them. But if they choose to punish someone, the person accused has no access to the comparative statistics and information about other mistakes made that week, month, year by others, which would place their own mistake in perspective. In the 'merit system' different staff get different treatment according to how much management can rely on them to toe the line.
Toeing the line means that you don't protest against too many admissions, poor treatment of patients, lousy decisions.
Documenting death to death
Deaths are managed by insurers and lawyers. If you have something to say about a death, you had better have had the clairvoyance to document your concern in writing at the time, otherwise it 'did not happen'. "If it's not documented, it did not happen" is a common phrase. Everyone can know, but no-one dares to say. In fact most of what doctors and nurses do is done using speech or action; they cannot document everything in writing, but if they don't they cannot admit to it.
Australian nurses and doctors now spend enormous amounts of time documenting that they have done certain things required by law. It does not actually matter in a court of law whether or not they actually did these things; only that they wrote that they did. Very hard to prove a person didn't do something days or months later when they wrote down that they did. The system is full of cumbersome checkboxes indicating that you observed a patient, monitored them, and checked equipment and medications. For the last decade there have been several computers on every ward and nurses and doctors spend most of their time entering in notes about what they are supposed to have done. How much time does that leave to actually do what they are checking off? Not much.
The Faulty-Towers world of virtual hospitals
This is the age of construction, under duress, of virtual hospitals with virtual wards and virtual patients by real nurses and doctors who are, incidentally, trying to care for real patients. To survive psychologically it is necessary for nurses and doctors to cultivate cynicism. This way of working is exhausting because nurses and doctors spend most of their time and energy 'documenting' their virtual practice, and then squeezing in the real work in wards where there are continual admissions on top of the people already there who need care. No wonder people die. No wonder it is hard to staff hospitals.
Bosses who can't say no to politicians
And the doctors in charge of various departments seem to be chosen for having a style where they never say, "No." They never say, "Enough." They never say, "We have x beds and they are full, so we cannot take any more patients." So the wards and the country are in overshoot. And the nurses and doctors in the ranks have to wear this.
Keeping workers disorganised
One way that management wallpapers over the huge cracks in the system and to avoid revolts is to import workers from overseas. These nurses and doctors depend utterly on their jobs. They don't have access to free health care or unemployment benefits, so they are simply not going to blow the whistle. This is why having immigrant workers whose right to stay in the country depends on their retaining their job undermines nursing and medical care in Australian hospitals and working conditions. It also disorganises solidarity. Long-term staff cannot plan together to feedback sensibly to management in a workplace dominated by insecure new workers who won't back them up.
Accident Compensation Edifice without substance or compassion
Workers who suffer undue stress because of unfair accusations will often seek protection under the Accident Compensation System, only to find that their claims fail because disciplinary action was involved at some stage of the claim and the Accident Compensation laws have clauses that make it almost impossible to claim for treatment or illness if a disciplinary action was involved. Hospitals are quick to find coincidental reasons to formally discipline any worker who brings in a union. The Accident Compensation laws also allow huge lee-way for management decisions, which effectively means that if management give some reason, any reason for their action, however unreasonable, it will be deemed okay in Accident Compensation. It also doesn't have to be substantial; it can be a mere opinion.
It is also very hard for a worker to maintain any kind of resistance to unreasonable demands when they are defending their reputation and their ability to earn a living in an unfair system that does not really allow for reasonable human error. A system which talks about human rights for patients, but does not apply these to their staff, makes human rights impossible to uphold.
Bullying laws
Bullying laws also don't work because they are administered not to work. Unions describe individual cases with excellent documentation, but management and the law administrators simply avoid compliance with bullying law.
Your comments welcome. Your point of view and experience sought. The need for anonymity is understood.
Mary Drost of Planning Backlash writes: "I saw the movie this afternoon in Elsternwick. A full house and rave comments. It is brilliant and will inspire you to never give up. Really everyone should see it, and that includes Councillors and MPs. It shows what people power can do!"
About 'The Triangle Wars'
A celebrity photographer. An eccentric politician. A high-powered property developer. An epic battle to decide the fate of a St Kilda parking lot.
In May 2007 the Port Phillip City Council unveiled plans for a large-scale commercial development on the St Kilda foreshore - a $400 million mega mall that would comprise 180 shops, a hotel, a supermarket, eight cinemas, a gallery and five bars. Local residents were outraged, and with developers preparing to push the project through council, the community galvanised to stop it going ahead.
A compelling story of democracy in action, truth proves stranger than fiction as accusations of betrayal, deceit and corruption abound. Filmed over three years, The Triangle Wars captures the fascinating battle between an outraged community, an intractable local government apparatus and a powerful development consortium, as heads roll and careers are destroyed.
Directed by local residents Rosie Jones and produced by Lizzette Atkins and Peter George for Circe Films.
Where to see it
'The Triangle Wars' in cinemas - starts Thursday for a short time only this Thursday 6th October at six cinemas in Victoria, and in Hobart and Narooma, NSW. It is important for Australian democracy and the war against the growth lobby and over population to attend the first few screenings.
It's really important to get people there straight away - if we don't, our season will be cut very short. If word of mouth in Melbourne is favorable, the film will travel to cinemas around Australia, and possibly the world, so please spread the world.
Jill Quirk of Sustainable Population Australia writes, "I agree with Mary Drost about this film. It is a wonderful souvenir of the events and the characters."
If you would like to screen THE TRIANGLE WARS in your community, please get in touch to see how easy it can be.
Film hire is available to community groups for a discounted rate. Phone (07) 3262 2009 or email [email protected] for details. Screen THE TRIANGLE WARS in your community to raise debate on your local development issues or as a fundraiser event. Get inspired!
Participants were shocked recently to hear Ms Prue Digby, Deputy Secretary, Planning and Local Government, Department of Planning and Community Development include in her paper on "housing a growing population" a section on "eliminating the NIMBY culture" at the Informa Australia "Population Australia - 2050 Summit." Article by Julianne Bell. By Julianne Bell
On Monday and Tuesday 26 and 27 September 2011 I I - representing Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc., I attended the second annual Conference organised by Informa Australia Pty Ltd entitled, “Population Australia - 2050 Summit”. This was a national conference and included public servants from Government (State, Federal and Local); eminent academics; and representatives of the business world and the housing industry plus a smattering of representatives of community groups. (Several of us were able to attend only because a benefactor provided us with the admission tickets or Conference fees.)
Ms Prue Digby, Deputy Secretary, Planning and Local Government, Department of Planning and Community Development included in her paper on "housing a growing population" a section on "eliminating the NIMBY culture". Participants were shocked as we considered that this was confrontational and indicated a contemptuous view of the community by a member of a Government Department. We were additionally shocked when she presented a solution stating that 30% of future population growth could be accommodated in "infill" housing in established suburbs. (Dr Bob Birrell of Monash University labels this "opportunistic infill" by developers.)
I - Julianne Bell - asked a question at the end of Ms Digby’s speech as follows: “Your Minister. Matthew Guy, advised us after the election that future density of development would be directed to the inner city, for example in developments such as E-Gate and Fisherman’s Bend and not in the suburbs. Yet after the election we are seeing high rise or high density (housing) proposals in Bayside, Banyule and Boroondara City Councils. Can you clarify what are your policy directions (concerning infill housing)?
Ms Digby refused to answer the question and said “You had better ask him yourself” and with that she left the podium. Unfortunately, we cannot give you a tape of her statement as Ms Digby insisted that Informa and Sustainable Population Australia Inc., who chaired Day One of the Conference, delete their recordings.
Mark O'Connor (Professional Poet and Author of "Overloading Australia") spoke at the Conference on "Environmental and social implications of a 'Big Australia' . He commented to me on Prue Digby's statement about "infill" in suburbs. He said: " Densification cheats residents out of quality of life" and that "it indicates the constant decline of our living standards".
We are seeking clarification from the Minister for Planning about increased density in established suburbs using infill and on promoting high rise along transports routes (tram, bus and rail) and around stations as this is contrary to his stated policies after the election. The questions are topical ones in Banyule, Boroondara and Bayside to name a few suburbs.
Why doesn't the government cut land costs? High costs of land, and the resources it carries - energy and water - are responsible for our failing economy. The greatest costs to small and medium-sized businesses are the rents they pay for their shops, warehouses, and factories. The greatest costs to workers are the rents they pay for personal accommodation. Small and medium-sized businesses pay both for their business premises and for their personal accommodation. Manufacturing in Australia is losing out to high rents and housing costs. Wages must go up to satisfy the malignant effect of land-speculation, which government continues to encourage against our common welfare. But, why don't they just cut the land-costs? Stop pushing up property prices by reducing immigration and you won't have to put wages up. Business will become competitive on the world market again, because most of its profits won't go on rent of premises. Let's get rid of the property developers. Let's outlaw land speculation. [Title changed from "Cut land-costs, not wages. Down with property developers, Up with workers!" on 9 Oct 2011.]
We hear that over 90% of small businesses quickly go broke. Some of you may assume that this is because they are all incompetent. That would mean that you have a low opinion of your fellow Australian and that you haven't considered the costs that operate in our society and are causing our factories to close.
The greatest costs to small and medium-sized businesses are the rents they pay for their shops, warehouses, and factories.
Do we ever hear the Liberal Party or the Labor Party say anything about this?
No.
But land costs and rent costs erode profit margins and drive everyone except the major corporations out of business.
The major corporations (which include newspapers, banks and developers) invest in land and are responsible for high rents and mortgages. They constantly lobby against ordinary Australians for more immigrants to keep those costs high. They are in the business of putting the rest of us out of business.
Why is the government ignoring that land cost factors completely dwarf all the other factors causing Australian manufacturing and most other small business to founder?
The public service is bringing in contractors in order to keep wages down. Once they did not have the right to do this. Once they had to negotiate fairly.
We are losing our rights to decent wages and conditions at the same time that big business is forcing up rents and housing costs.
The mass media is full of nonsense about how the economy cannot afford for wage rises. The mass media has nothing to say about the huge iceberg our economy is running up against in rising land prices. It only talks about how a tiny minority of people who have invested in second properties are able to sell their houses for more money. It says nothing about how business fails and people become homeless due to these rising costs.
Now I hear of how state governments are talking about bringing in contractors to undercut cleaners' wages. Cleaners are arguably among the most poorly paid workers in Australian industry. They work very hard and have little status.
The same thing is happening to drivers, with local governments considering colluding to introduce strike-breakers in order to stop industrial action to negotiate small wage rises in another ill-paid industry.
Why is it always those who can least afford it who must bear the brunt of our ill-run economy, whilst the CEOs and head-kickers get huge wages for simply being mean and greedy?
Please send this cartoon to Julia and Wayne and your local politicians and ask them, "Why don't you just cut the land costs?"
Few political groups and individuals who wear the label 'Marxist' (including this one) in 2011 are not working to serve the same ruling elites they claim to oppose or are not duped by those who are, but this was not always so.
Through much of 19th and 20th century history, a good many who labeled themselves 'Marxist', 'socialist', 'communist' or 'Trotskyist' were truly engaged in a struggle for a more equitable and democratic world.
Had they succeeded, the vast majority of humankind would today be in control its own destiny and not manipulated to serve the, short-sighted interests of the small selfish global elite.
If humankind were in control of its own destiny, as it could have been, there is no way that it would have allowed its population to grow to levels so much higher than the carrying capacity of this planet.
However, the elites of Europe and America and elsewhere prevented their people from emulating the example of the 1917 Russian Revolution in their own countries, notably in Germany in 1919, 1920 and 1923 and Great Britain in 1926 (as shown in the last episode of "Days of Hope" of 1975).
The isolation of the Russian Revolution led to its corruption by Stalin and in turn to the corruption of the whole international Communist movement.
Would those, who have so miserably failed to act to prevent NATO's destruction of Libya and mass murder of Libyans, have us truly believe that they give a damn about people from other countries?
If they appear to care for a tiny fraction of people from those countries, that is, those seeking to immigrate to First World countries, it is only because high immigration suits the interests of the very elites they claim to be against.
Footnotes
1.[back] As of Saturday 8 October 2011, there is no mention of Libya on the main page, ...
2.[back] One mention ostensibly opposed to the war dated 26 September, six months after the war began?! No other mention in its whole 'anti-war' section. No mention of silence of other 'Trotskyist' groups about Libya, nor of support for bombing of Libya by UK Workers' Liberty group with an Australian affiliate. If they truly oppose NATO's bombing of Libya, why cover up the shameful behaviour of other supposedly 'socialist' groups?
3.[back] One mention dated 18 March 2011 on the main page.
A friend of mine in the Kansai area reminds me that this video clip from the BBC News on 14 March 2011 is worth seeing again. I believe the BBC never invited Chris to come back and speak on the news after this. Wonder why not. He was basically right, after all.
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This Is What Passes as "Decontamination" in Fukushima (for That Matter, in Japan) - Well, interesting videos. This is Japan, folks! Scraping off the topsoil with cotton gloves and some of the people are not even wearing masks, so are they breathing in some of that dust? And what about the foliage? Isn't there quite a lot of radioactive material possibly attached to leaves and so on??
My Kansai friend also pointed out that the radiation pollution emanating from the Fukushima No.1 nuclear disaster site has people here quite worried. There have been appearing on the Internet here some pictures of odd occurrences which people think might be due to the radiation pollution. They are all saying, "We do not state definitively that this is due to radiation, but we think it *might* be." Judge for yourself. Sorry about all the Japanese - please do not worry about the writing, just look at the videos and pictures...
Last year's rice bags on sale - What the blogger is trying to say here is 'couldn't some unscrupulous people put radiation polluted rice in one of these bags and sell it as last year's rice? Please be careful what you're buying when you go to the supermarket....'
NISA Presents TEPCO's Severe Accident Operation Manual - A bit late? Even so, since TEPCO did not allow for the occurrence of a "station blackout" (SBO - total loss of external power) in the manual, so as far as 3/11 is concerned it is useless. I suppose it's just as well we know that fact...
Sorry, this is in Japanese - Report from a housewife in Miyagi Prefecture who was pregnant with a child with anencephaly, whose daughter had severe stomach problems, and whose dog suddenly died of an enlarged heart. - The two-year-old daughter had severe stomach cramps and was diagnosed as "invagination of the intestine" at a hospital. The daughter also had diarrhea and nose-bleeds. After the abortion of the baby, the woman also had severe menstruation problems (severe menstrual pain, a lengthening of the menstrual cycle from 28 to 33 days and possible endometriosis). All of this is just coincidence, or what? I don't there's any way this can be directly linked to the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, but what do you think? Frankly, it makes me feel both sad and sick just to read this. It's not my intention to spoil your day, but it looks like this kind of thing may just be the tip of the unclear iceberg...
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News: An enraged Fukushima citizen talks about everything - A very long interview in Japanese (1 hr 52 min) and I am sorry I cannot help you understand it all, but there is a brief English overview of the contents on the page. This is also extremely sickening, but we need to be aware of what is going on - to be aware of what nuclear power is doing to people. So all you doctors and others who claim radiation doesn't hurt people, get your overalls on and go help out at the nuclear disaster site! I hear they're short of workers now. For the life of me, I can't imagine why. They pay quite well, I hear. You won't see me there, though.
Here's an example:
English PDF file - Radiation and Reason - Fukushima and After - by Professor Wade Allison, Oxford University and Professor Akira Tokuhiro, University of Idaho. They recommend on slide 17 that the radiation standards for external exposure be relaxed about 1000 times to 100 mSv for a max single dose, 100 mSv in any one month (1200 mSv per year) and a max lifetime dose of 5 Sv. Slide 7 onwards plays down internal exposure from food. Fine. Let people choose what they want to eat or not on the basis of publicly announced data! But professors, don't let me catch you or whoever buys your food snooping around the supermarkets looking for the lowest deal in radioactive contamination. Oh, and please do not forget to support Fukushima farmers by eating their produce! And if you're so sure that external exposure is safe up to 100 mSv/month, why not take a month's stint of work at the Fukushima No.1 Nuclear Power Station doing the kind of work you can see people doing in the video two items below??
VIDEO - #Fukushima I Nuke Plant: Video of Inside Reactor 1 - Don't know why I didn't see this a few days ago. What a mess!! This is like some kind of weird futuristic film! The future is here... Of course, they're talking in Japanese, but from time to time you can hear a voice shout out "(number) milli!" and then the person with the camera says, "Ryokai!" (OK), or sometimes just "Hai!" (Yes). The first man is reading out the radioactivity level... Just before the end someone says "189" (no "milli"), but the blog says it's 189 millisieverts.
Video of Inside Reactor 2, Maybe the Last Video of Quince Who Was Lost in the Building - Yes, this is the one you've been waiting for. Quince, the robot, finally gets itself lost inside reactor unit 2. The final few seconds are funny. No sound, so as you get your tour of the inside of the crippled reactor building listen to your favourite compilation of punk songs for background. My recommendations are: God Save The Queen, Going Underground, Is Vic There?, and finally Hanging Around. (14 mins)
The nuclear crisis hasn't gone away here, but there is lees reporting on the TV and in the newspaper and that iis causing people to 'forget' what is still going on in Fukushima. However, a Japanese friend of mine sent me this link...
Although the page is in Japanese, you can see that this little Geiger counter is selling for 9800 yen - a little over USD100 these days. My friend told me that 300 of these were sold out in two minutes!! I think there are still quite a few people 'out there' who do not think the nuclear crisis is over yet...
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Germany's "Heute Show" Making Fun of TEPCO, Japanese Government - This is a bit old (April) and some who are caught in the middle of the nuclear disaster may not find it funny at all (but rather sad or exasperating), but it is worth watching just to see how the Germans feel about what is happening here. [Many more informative items about different aspects of the nuclear disaster on the EX-SKF site.]
A friend pointed out to me today that the Japanese language TEPCO Press Release mentions the presence of Tritium and "all-beta" in the seawater near the water intakes (the figures being in this Japanese PDF table) at a level of 470 becquerels/litre for Tritium and 380 becquerels/litre for "all-beta". However the detection of Tritium is not mentioned in the equivalent (as far as I can see) English press release and the PDF table has not been translated. Maybe they'll get round to it in a few days. Maybe never. We'll see...
If you have time today, please watch this (1 hr) lecture by Jan Lundberg...
Natural Gas: a Bridge to Nowhere? - Not, of course, specifically about nuclear power, but about energy, and so nuclear power is hanging around in the shadowy background there somewhere.
If you don't have an hour to watch/listen to the lecture, you can get some idea of what Jan said by looking at this page...
Setagaya adjoins Ota ward where radiation levels exceeding the ward’s own safety standard of 0.25 microsieverts per hour were detected at 13 schools, the Ota ward board of education said today.
During 50-plus years of nuclear weapons production and government-sponsored nuclear energy research and production that generated contaminated soil and groundwater covering two million acres in 35 states, the U.S. government did not have environmental structures, technologies or infrastructure to deal with the legacy.
Taiwan, China to sign nuclear safety pact - Despite having nuclear power stations of its own, Taiwan is getting worried about nuclear power stations on the south coast of China...
The nuclear disaster appears to be entering a new phase. In the last few days, although reporting on the disaster and other nuclear issues has not disappeared, it is being slowly shunted aside by 1. Japan's possible participation in the negotiations for establishing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which will destroy Japanese farming and the rural economy (another kick in the face for northeast Japan), 2. raising the consumption tax from the current 5% to 10%. Ostensibly to raise money for the disaster reconstruction, business circles naturally find it more palatable for this extremely regressive tax mode to be used than any other that might hurt their bottom lines, or even divert money away from military expenditure and so on, and 3. raising the age of pension provision to 68 for those now around 50 (with no mention of any change in the 65 retirement age!). Strangely, I do not see anyone out in the streets protesting. All of this, and the way the government has behaved over the nuclear contamination issue ought to have people protesting as they are at Wall Street or in Greece, but not in Japan. Just read this...
China to lead in new nuclear reactors? - One more reason not to be in Japan, perhaps! (Along with the nuclear power plant increase in South Korea, to say nothing of what might be going on in North Korea!)
Second Dutch nuclear rail shipment heads to France - Good to see that some people are protesting about nuclear waste. It's a really crucial nuclear issue. Although many Japanese know about it and condemn the nuclear industry's irresponsible (big understatement) attitude over nuclear waste, you hear very little about anyone actually protesting about it.
Green light for nuclear expansion in Britain: minister - Clearly, the British have decided to ignore any safety issues that exist as well as to turn a blind eye to the nuclear waste problem. Perhaps they think they will be able to solve that with the reprocessing plant at Sellafield, but that simply creates more pollution problems of its own (please read Chris Busby's Wolves of Water for more details on that).
What happened to local children after Chernobyl is driving some Fukushima parents closer to nervous breakdowns; many families with young children have already fled the prefecture.
Oh, dear. This is so sad... Children need to be evacuated, and then examined where they have evacuated to. This seems to be designed more to un-reassure anxious parents...
Radioactive fallout in rain 10 times more than originally reported - Well, the June 11 numbers seem to be out by a factor of 24 to 25 and the July 19 figures by about a factor of 19. It looks a lot more like conscious tampering with the figures than a genuine mistake. I agree with Mr Mochizuki that the general rule is not to announce anything bad until people have already been unwittingly experiencing it for a month or two. That seems to have been the method employed since very soon after 3/11.
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Protests thwart India's nuclear plans - Oh. The 'nuclear industry' seems to have been quite severely affected in several countries, but not so much in Japan, where people seem to be going back to sleep now that seven months have passed since the earthquake + tsunami + nuclear disaster, but that may be illusory. Whether it will prove possible to start up some of the currently halted reactors or not will show if the Japanese public have really gone back to sleep...
Chairman of the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) Hiromasa Yonekura visits Hokkaido - On p.8 of yesterday's (October 7) Akahata Newspaper, I noticed an article about Mr Yonekura's visit to Hokkaido the previous day. Although not directly related to the Fukushima No.1 nuclear disaster (though the Keidanren is very pro-nuke), the contents of the article are extremely symbolic of the thinking of Japan's business elite, and therefore shed light on the nature of the thinking behind the pro-nuke stance. The visit was an unusual one in that it consisted of a meeting between Keidanren officials and officials of the central committee of the Japan Agriculture (JA), the central organization of Hokkaido's agriculture, including the chairman, Mr Toshiaki Tobita. I suppose Mr Yonekura's goal was to get the Hokkaido agricultural organization to back the negotiations to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which Japan's industrial business circles want to join as soon as possible. (The article has a photo of Mr Yonekura speaking in front of a Hokkaido JA poster which says, "We oppose the negotiations for participation in the TPP.")
Mr Yonekura's remarks were along the following lines: Japan's participation in TPP is crucial for the realization of economic growth. Although the principle of TPP is abolition of trade tariffs, rice and wheat should be exempted and in order to negotiate conditions on items we really do not want to give way on we must participate at an early stage. According to an article in the Nikkei Shinbun's web edition (in Japanese), Mr Yonekura also stated, "We must also earn foreign currency in order to purchase energy and food through economic collaboration with other countries." Mr Yonekura also visited agricultural areas and is quoted as saying, "I was really inspired! I would really like to see (Hokkaido) lead Japan's agriculture." Hokkaido is well known for it's large-scale and diversified agriculture.
In reply to Mr Yonekura's remarks, Chairman Tobita said, "Hokkaido's agriculture has been nurtured through protection by high tariff rates. I am very worried about what will happen if the tariffs are removed." Following the meeting, Mr Tobita also states, "We have not changed our minds about joining the rest of the country in having the whole agricultural sector oppose TPP participation." So I guess Mr Yonekura did not quite manage to achieve the aim he set out to in making the trip up to Hokkaido
And I think the reason for that is basically that Mr Yonekura, the Keidanren he represents, and therefore more or less the complete industrial business circle in Japan are living in a totally self-delusionary fantasyland.
1) The "realization of economic growth"? Dream on.
2) Importing energy and food from overseas? Yes, I hope it will continue, but at the same time I think it might be prudent to take measures inside the country just in case this does not go on forever, as Mr Yonekura and his crew seem to believe (although one of the pro-nuke arguments is that nuclear power is good insurance against future fossil energy shortages - another delusion).
3) All industrialized countries have problems supporting primary industries (agriculture, mining and so on) since industry is so much more productive. However, as suggested in 2), since it is dangerous to rely heavily on other countries for imports of basic necessities (food and energy), most countries have a system of subsidies and so on to support their domestic agricultural (etc.) production. TPP participation will devastate Japan's rural economy just at the time when world energy shortages are about to have an effect on the production and transportation of food (how many years in the future? 5? 10?). Even Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries estimates that Japan's food self-sufficiency will decline to 13% from the current 39% if Japan joins the TPP. This is tantamount to the sacrifice and destruction of Japan's rural economy for the sake of, maybe - if they are lucky - a short-lived flush of industrial activity.
4) Hokkaido's agriculture is no model for the rest of the country. Clearly, Mr Yonekura hasn't discovered topography or population density yet. It's true that Hokkaido produces quite a good exportable surplus (Hokkaido produces twice as much food as it's residents consume). But Hokkaido's large fields require large machines, and the winters are bitterly cold. When fossil fuels become much more expensive, or unavailable, how is this agriculture going to survive? Are people from the south going to want to volunteer to go to Hokkaido to start up small family farms after fossil energy use becomes impossible? Not many, I think.
Time for Mr Yonekura and his friends to wake up and realize that the future is not going to be simply a very long extension of the party we've been enjoying for the last 50 years or so. There are hard times coming and TPP participation isn't going to prevent them, in fact it will probably make things significantly worse for ordinary Japanese people. There are LOTS of things the Japanese government and people should be doing now (as I mention in 2)) to help to mitigate the effects of coming food and energy shortages. (Improving the livelihoods of Japanese farmers in order to get more young people involved in agriculture - of course this will raise food prices and is totally contradictory to the general direction of TPP - would be a good place to start.) participation Either way, since economic growth is effectively dead, nuclear power isn't needed either. No sane society needs it.
Citing the doses of radiation received in medical procedures, such as CT and PET scans, Allison said Japan's standard — which bans the sale of food containing more than 500 becquerels per kilogram of radiation and requires the evacuation of areas receiving 20 millisieverts a year — is far too conservative.
PET scans, which emit gamma rays to map internal organs, usually the brain, give patients a dose of 15 millisieverts of radiation in a couple of hours, which is the equivalent of eating 2,000 kg of meat tainted with 500 becquerels per kilogram of cesium, he said.
But with CT and PET scans the radioactive material isn't actually inside the body! The radioactive material in the machine is emitting gamma rays which pass thought the body for the time when the scan is being carried out. The "expert" assumes that is safe, but where's the proof of that? The problem with internal exposure, when the radioactive material is actually inside the body, is that localised areas of organ tissue are being bombarded with alpha/beta/gamma (depending on the radionuclide that has entered the body) over a long period of time. That is a quite different story from an CT or PET scan or an X-ray, and the "expert" really ought to know that. Ahem! So he is either NOT an expert or he is very brazenly lying! Which do you prefer??
The group has apparently determined it is difficult at present to maintain the 1 millisievert limit and envisions setting a more realistic interim limit without specifying a numerical target, while keeping the 1 millisievert limit as a long-term goal, according to the sources.
So the panel is sitting around saying that since the 1 millisievert limit cannot be maintained, it should be changed to an unspecified number while hoping that the level will come down to 1 millisievert in the long term. To me this sounds like a very bad excuse to NOT evacuate people from quite badly contaminated areas of, for example, Fukushima City and Koriyama City (and some other towns and cities in between). I would like to suggest that the panel hold its meetings in public in one of these cities. That might be a little more like a fair process. The panel might find that the opinions of the local people will force them to change their minds and do their work a little faster... Nothing like actually being in a nuclear contaminated area when you are asked to make decisions that will affect the people there!
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Report of long-range plutonium find tardy - Although the article is fairly good and addresses some of the concerns mentioned above (like internal exposure), it does attempt to perpetuate the stupid myth that because Plutonium is a "heavy" element, it should not "fly" very far. Come on, folks, you don't need a PhD in chemistry to know that atoms are very, very light, and so if some material (whatever element it may be composed of) is vaporized in an explosion, for example, it may move quite a long way, depending on wind speed and so on. The second thing is that it is NOT, NOT, NOT "not worth worrying about" small amounts of Plutonium and Strontium-90 hanging around in the environment!! There should be a big, fat zero amount of these artificial radionuclides in the environment for anyone to pronounce the area "safe". The fact that they are present even in the teeniest-weeniest-tiniest amounts is sufficient reason to not bother with nuclear power. Are the people who are making these statements all indestructible bionic men, or something???
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Creditors win early round against Tepco - See how the big-name politicians are behaving? Quite happy to see that the banks and other major debtors get their money back and for ordinary people to be disadvantaged when it comes to compensation for the damage, losses and problems caused by the nuclear disaster. Democratic Party of Japan? What's "democratic" about it?
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Nuclear reactor shut down in Japan, cause unknown - I think we're down to ten reactors actually operating in Japan now. Powers that be want to get some of the stopped reactors up and running again, but it is going to be a fight with public opinion.
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Disaster-zone population would've fallen 46% anyway: study - Hmmm... depopulation due to aging, but I think also part of the story is that farmers in Japan cannot make a living producing food. People are therefore drifting away from rural areas (the areas in Japan that would be self-sufficient in food if left to their own devices are almost all in the northeast and Hokkaido) and towards industrialized areas, where it is more or less possible to make a liveable wage - if you're lucky to get "decent" work, and that is becoming much harder in recent years...
#Radiation in Japan: Those Who Fled Fukushima in Panic Made a "Rational Decision", Says Government - This is brilliant! Despite the fact that the government was downplaying the nuclear disaster and the subsequent radiation right from the start, those who evacuated from Fukushima Prefecture in the first month will now be compensated for their correct guess that the government was lying because they were "rational," and those that waited more than a month because they had some faith in what the government was telling them will be refused compensation. You can just imagine the top politicians chuckling amongst themselves as they picture the poor public trying to make head or tail of what it's all about. Ha, ha. The whole thing makes me feel utterly disgusted!
Geothermal trove lies mostly untapped despite energy crisis - The usual story here - nothing to be too surprised about; only METI, as usual, blocking local relatively non-polluting locally-produced energy forms for the sake of building more nuclear power stations. Shame, shame.
Dr Chris Busby sings Bob Dylan... I Pity the Poor Newspaper Man...
Nice one. Not usual guitar tuning. DADGAD (usually EADGBE) and then play in A... I'm sure you'll figure out what the song is about if you listen to it.
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An Anti-nuke Green Party to be Established in Japan Soon??
The Japanese media this morning seems to be filled with the news that a well-known anthropologist, Shin'ichi Nakazawa (Professor at Meiji University in Tokyo), is about to set up a Green Party which will have a nuclear phase-out as one of its main policies. This would appear to be a 'good idea,' given that 80-90% of the Japanese population (according to opinion polls and so on) would appear to favour the idea of a nuclear phase-out. There have been attempts to set up green parties in Japan before (since about the 1980s), but they have all failed due to the inability to create a strong enough centripetal force for all like-minded greenies to get on board - i.e. the main problem being that the personalities involved prefer to be big fish in little ponds and somehow have an aversion to compromising on the details of ideology and direction for the sake of the overall goal. What chance does this latest attempt stand?
A newsletter is to be published, beginning perhaps in November, and a website set up to promote networking around the country. The idea, apparently, is NOT to participate directly in elections for the time being, but to endorse candidates who espouse appropriately green policies. This is probably partly because of the high election deposits in Japan - 3 million yen for candidates in small constituencies and 6 million yen for proportional representation candidates, the deposit being forfeited if the candidate does not receive 10% of the vote. Small (new) parties generally find it hard to field candidates for national elections. (Deposits for local elections are lower, down to 300,000 yen for city or ward council elections and not necessary for town or village council elections.) It will be interesting to see what the newsletter and website will look like when they appear next month... (Internet articles in Japanese and and article on the front page of the Tokyo Newspaper this morning.)
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A little glimpse of the REAL Japan?
I wasn't going to post another video on today's update, but my friend in Kyushu sent me the link for this one because it shows very 'nicely' what people in Fukushima are facing in terms of attitude from their government...
Here's the script of the clip from about 10 seconds in...
Ms. Akira Matsu of the Komeito (Clean Government Party)
"At a symposium on problems at primary schools, a woman lawyer living in Aizu Wakamatsu City, about 100 km for the nuclear disaster site, gave a very serious presentation. This woman has four children, three in primary school and one in kindergarten, and she is also seven months pregnant. The children and the mother have all been tested and have been found to have internal caesium. She was told that there is no immediate cause for concern, but she is very worried, especially about internal exposure, so she told her children not to drink the milk that is given out at the school. When they did this, a teacher said, 'Those who are not going to drink the milk. come out to the front of the class!' There were several of these children. They were told to pour their milk into a bucket one by one and asked to give the reason why they would not drink the milk. The teacher apparently said, 'If you don't drink the milk, you are not Fukushima Prefecture citizens; you have no right to live in Fukushima!' This is like when people were called "hikokumin" (non-citizens) during pre-war times, and the mother was really concerned about whether this was really OK or not and whether she could explain to her children that they could continue to live in Fukushima in the future... Stop laughing and listen, Chief Cabinet Secretary! This is a very important topic and I want you to listen very carefully. Please don't laugh when something as important as this is being said. This is not a joke!"
[See Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura laughing and he and Mr. Edano. now Minister for Energy, Trade and Industry, sitting there looking like a pair of primary school students being scolded by their teacher...]
"What I want to say is that this is how people in Fukushima are really feeling..."
That's up to 1:53. You can stop there - if you watch the rest of the clip, you will see that, despite the rebuke, the government politicians lined up opposite the speaker are not being very respectful.
If someone wants to hack this site because we are telling the truth about what is going on in Japan and indirectly casting a bad light on some of the top politicians, all I can say is that there can be nothing more condemning than seeing how these politicians behave in their parliament when a fellow parliamentary member is talking about the suffering of people in Fukushima. Personally, i am just completely flabbergasted at the fact that top national politicians, the Chief Cabinet Secretary, can you believe? can behave in this way. It only goes to prove, in my opinion, everything that people in Fukushima (and elsewhere) have been saying about the cold and uncaring attitudes of politicians and officials towards those affected by the disasters...
Resources used up this year - Yes, it's clear "we" are not living anything even close to a sustainable lifestyle - some people in not-so-developed countries are, maybe, but?most of them are trying to "develop" and emulate the lifestyles of the "rich" just as while "we" in the industrialized countries are finding out what is wrong with this way of life. Please see next link...
Earth Overshoot Day - Right, so it seems "we" are in "overshoot". But "we" have known this for about 30 years already and no one seems to give a fig, especially (naturally) the people who make a lot of money pursuing overshoot. Written in 1980, Overshoot - The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change by William R. Catton Jr. was a very strong warning that has been studiously ignored by about 99.999999999% of humanity (well, not everyone reads English, after all....)
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Wave power excites as next energy source - Wow! I'm so excited! Sure, might be worthwhile in some locations (near the sea, ha, ha), but I just wish that when thinking about future energy issues and writing articles about them people wouldn't just assume that we will "need to use" the same amounts of energy "we" are using now. The whole point about the mess we are in now is that we (who then?) have collectively decided that's it's reasonable to make use of every available resource and technology to generate electricity and make "stuff" so that, for example, the Karen people (a people who prefer to live by the production of rice in swidden fields in mountain forests) in their mountain villages in northern Thailand can watch Everton vs. Liverpool playing live in the Premier League (that's the top UK pro football league, round ball, just in case there's any confusion) on a Saturday evening. I also watched it live in Japan - great game it was - and Liverpool won 2-0, no doubt pleasing my friend down there in Kyushu. BUT if I have to put up with nuclear power plants or any other kind of energy source that is going to cause problems and keep "us" in overshoot (see above) then I'll be quite happy to get the guitar out and sit around the fire singing folk songs for entertainment. I'm not all that fussy about what I am doing in the time when I don't have the concentration to do anything more "productive," BUT I AM pretty fussy about not having to have nuclear power to do it.
From today onwards I intend to start a new update on the first of each month. I will continue to update each day as long as there is material to warrant doing so and I am physically able to.
Small hydropower plants keep it local - All renewable energy forms are going to have their problems. They need to be sited in appropriate locations in order to reap the full benefits and they must be operated by people who know what they're doing. The real proof of renewables will come after fossil fuels become very expensive and unavailable in a couple of decades' time from now (or less?). Then what? Please look at the photo and tell me how you are going to repair that turbine if it breaks down in a world where fossil energy is no longer available. Most people will not be able to. That's why I keep saying that a society/economy that runs on renewable energy forms will be transitional to what comes after that. Which is what? What do you want it to be? How are you going to ensure that you get there?
In reply to this, my friend in Kyushu said:
You know, at some time I'd love to turn my mind back to pre 3/11 days and start the important questions you brought up in the blog yesterday... However the 3/11 joker in the pack really means that not a lot can be done if we are having to live under the threat of atomic fallout, etc... We are screwing up our future when we could/should be sorting it out. This needs a good hard examination of the worst, which those in power are simply not able to focus on. Imagine if my future had been a plot in Iitate mura for example. I am 80 odd km's from Sendai. Am I prepared to put the work and capital in (is this tantamount to attaching a ball and chain when I should be ready to go at the drop of a hat)?
I'm not sure if that is comprehensible to people who do not understand the situation in Japan, but my friend is thinking of buying a forested mountain in response to future food and energy shocks that are likely to happen in Japan in the (not-so-distant?) future. However, if we are all now having to live with the threat of the 'local' nuclear power station blowing up, what chances do people have of making realistic decisions for the long-term future???
Tepco's management may be forced to step down and pensions will be cut, according to the Nikkei newspaper. Beyond compensation payments, the utility may have a funding shortage of ¥8.3 trillion over 10 years if it cannot raise power rates and restart idled nuclear reactors.
Given TEPCO's past safety record, surely it would be best to disband the company and put its assets under new management. In that way the generation and distribution of electricity could be separated, breaking the choking monopoly of the power company on the electrical power business, and power station safety put on a new footing. Simply allowing the same company to continue to make the same mistakes while carrying out the same horrific mis-management practices after a disaster like this is simply not acceptable.
The detected amounts of plutonium were small and posed no danger to health, the officials said.
Cough! ANY amount of Plutonium is far too much, and dangerous. Of course, in Iitate Village it may not be immediately harmful to anyone's health since there are very few people left there now!! The "too heavy to fly" quote is from the Three Plutonium Brothers.
Should environmental organisations concerned about overpopulation enjoin Australians to have no more than two children each, for the good of the planet? Or, since our average fertility rate is below 2 children per person, should we instead congratulate Australians and ask them to keep it that way?
Where the average measure matters most
I have reservations about promoting small families in Australia. It is the average within a society that matters rather than individual cases. It could be off -putting for environmentalists who might already have 3 children but who may have a sister with none.
I think asking people to undertake this would be somewhat arbitrary, unnecessary, simplified and rigid. Given our fertility rate is less than 2 why would we make a point that the fertility rate needs this?
We could just as well campaign for large celibate communities which would also have the effect of reducing fertility.
The way our society is now structured with high housing/land prices, people can’t afford large families. I think we should make our vision for the country an attractive one that shows up the nastiness of the regime. Why should we be using this “stick” when governments and big business are using it for us with all the negative effects of ever-rising population – increased regulation, increased cost of land, overcrowding, loss of contact with nature, high power costs, declining wage-gains and workers' conditions etc. etc.)
Why don’t environmentalists concerned with population growth commend the fertility rate as OK? - but let’s keep it that way!
There’s a slogan:
Fertility rate is OK. Let’s keep it that way! That’s positive and affirming - not rigid. It’s a carrot- rather than a stick! We can associate it with the good things about our life in Australia. We can present it to immigrants as a way of preserving and caring for the society they have chosen to adopt.
Growth lobby highjacked ideal society and made life hard for all
In reality our freedoms are being taken from us. That is unattractive I can’t see that asking people to take pledges on their future will make ecological sustainability and keeping natural environments safe attractive. The post 1970s period could have been fabulous for us without the push for more and more productivity, profits and population growth. The problem articulated in the 70s and the early 80s was, "How will we deal with our leisure in the future of the 3 and 4 day week?” It never happened- but it could have. If this brief glimpse of what was possible had played out with maybe lower productivity, lower impact, lower population growth, less work, greater leisure time, less development we would possibly have had an almost ideal society. This is what we need to latch onto, rather than pledges that would surely cause some cognitive dissonance and that people will not really want to make. This is a sacrifice. Who knows what one’s personal future holds? We should emphasize freedom not sacrifice.
Environmentalists need to find more agreement and cooperate in presenting an inspiring vision of what Australia’s our future could look like without the growth lobby dominating.
Our fertility rate is OK. Let's keep it that way!
Our immigration rate is too rapid. Let's cap it.
Shallow policy-making based on economic health at the detriment of the majority of the people of Australia is about pandering to the the "needs" of big businesses and those who benefit from growth.
The impacts are not only on people, but on animals.
Non-humans are usually ignored in the economic-growth paradigm that dominates policy making today. “Sustainability” is often referred to as being about ensuring comfortable human survival, and not other species.
The Ponzi-economic growth-based rational not only displaced existing people as the pyramid becomes larger at wealthier at the top, but displaces non-humans.
Land clearing and agriculture
Agriculture, land-clearing, logging, urban sprawl, roads, introduced and feral animals all result in wildlife habitat destruction. Increased noise, pollution, traffic, and crime also means that animals come under threat from contacts with humans. Our mammal extinction rate is the highest in the world, and Australia's rich natural heritage of biodiversity is under threat from more extinctions.
Habitat loss is their greatest threat as more land is being made available for human "carrying capacity". As several large-scale scientific studies have confirmed, severe environmental degradation is taking place due to animal farming. Animal farming for meat, leather, and milk is depleting our natural resources at an alarming rate.
Green-house gas emissions from animal farms are a major contributor to global warming. Enormous amounts of water and plant food is required to produce meat. It is estimated that about 100,000 litres of water, 100 kilogram of hay, and 4 kilogram of grain is required to produce just one kilogram of meat.
The quality of life for animals suffers, with factory-farming that becomes more inhumane in order to feed so many people.
Greater human-animal contact.
As our urban boundaries continue to expand, livestock, wildlife and pets also come into more contact with people. This means they are more and more under threat from thrill-killings, theft and interference.
Kangaroos are reportedly being tortured on a weekly basis due to increasing population growth in the Peel region, with one animal being found torn in two after being tied to two separate cars.
There is a constant push by governments for ever increasing population growth to drive economies, despite the fact that animal habitats are being decimated and many areas of the world, including Australia, are struggling to provide enough water for the existing population.
Associate Professor Eleonora Gullone from the School of Psychiatry and Psychology said the number of inhumane acts committed against kangaroos and domesticated animals over the past two years in Whittlesea ( a high growth area of Victoria) was concerning. There is evidence that kangaroos are disliked by farmers and rural property owners, she said.
High population growth and social disunity go hand in hand with tensions, crime, displacement and homelessness, and these factors all make animals ideal and silent victims social dis-ease. Kangaroos are our national iconic animals, and landholders have been pandered to too much by our DSE and permits to get rid of them are far too easily handed out.
Increasing demand for livestock products.
Population growth means increasing demand for livestock products such as dairy, eggs and meats. Livestock are under pressure to produce more, but to save costs and space, they are being confined in factory farms. This means mutilations to stop their "aggression", antibiotics in their foods, increased risks of zoo noses(disease originating from animals), methane gas emissions, pollution to waterways and soils, and declining animal welfare standards.
In the mid-twentieth century, exponential population growth was noticed early and taken seriously enough to spur a dramatic acceleration of global food production from the 1940s onwards. Traditional farming practices and traditional crop varieties were displaced as farming became intensive: the birth of industrial agriculture or factory farming occurred on a massive scale. Not only animals, but we too will feel like factory-farmed chickens squashed into metropolitan areas where housing is becoming more dense.
Companion animals and human densities.
Pets are good for children as it teaches them social skills and to have empathy with animals. However, being forced into high density living denies children the ability to thrive, and to have the full benefits of space and room to raise animals for companionship. It's a formula for mental illness and less active children, more prone to obesity and diabetes. Many elderly people rely on companion animals too. Due to more people renting and moving into animal-hostile lifestyles, more draconian "management" of homeless animals is being considered. Pets become the waste products of society when they can't be accommodated. They are doomed to the rubbish-bin of “death row”. Our cities are becoming more removed from the natural world.
Overfishing:
Mulloway (Argyrosomus japonicus) occur in estuarine and coastal waters surrounding Australia, Africa, India, Pakistan, China, Korea and Japan. In Australia they are a highly targeted iconic fish species due to their large size, attractive silver coloration and good eating. Reported commercial catches of mulloway in New South Wales show a steady and substantial decline from 380 tonnes in 1973/74 to 60 tonnes in 2005/06.
NSW DPI Narrandera Fisheries Centre research scientist, Dr Lee Baumgartner, said a film crew visited the Riverina region last year to film the documentary and raise awareness about issues facing the iconic Murray cod.
Overfishing has drastically reduced the numbers of Southern Bluefin Tuna. The world's oceans have been experiencing enormous blooms of jellyfish, apparently caused by overfishing, declining water quality, and rising sea temperatures. Now, scientists are trying to determine if these outbreaks could
represent a "new normal" in which jellyfish increasingly supplant fish. By removing a curb on jellyfish population growth, overfishing "opens up ecological space for jellyfish," says Anthony Richardson.
A seeming increase in shark attacks worldwide may well have a human cause, with low-cost air travel, but also overpopulation, overfishing and even climate change among the hidden suspects, say experts. The experts behind the Australian Shark Attack File argue that the enormous increase in the size of the Australian population over the last century has contributed to the increase in numbers of overall shark attacks (including non-fatal attacks). The shark is under relentless attack from humans themselves.
A third of open-water shark species, including the great white and the hammerhead, are facing extinction, driven in part by demand in Asia for shark-fin soup, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Loss of biodiversity
The monocultural practices of modern agricultural methods have been the driving force behind this loss of genetic diversity. Monoculture is the practice of broad scale cropping using the one variety of plant.
Globally, more than 5,000 wildlife species are threatened with extinction. Some 25% are mammals, and 11% birds. Of the reptile, amphibian and fish species described as threatened, 20% are reptiles, 25% are amphibians and 34% are fish.
Biodiversity loss is one of the world's most pressing crises and there is growing global concern about the status of the biological resources on which so much of human life depends.
It has been estimated that the current species extinction rate is between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than it would naturally be. - IUCN
Our duty of care to the animal kingdom is being compromised by excessive population growth.
Few of us realise that the main cause of the current environmental crisis is human nature.
All we're doing is what all other creatures have ever done to survive, expanding into whatever territory is available and using up whatever resources are available, just like a bacterial culture growing in a Petri dish till all the nutrients are used up.
Our growth means the world in which rampant consumption in rich countries, and over population in developing countries, is rapidly outstripping the global resources.
Ultimately, the loss of biodiversity will result in a dead, cruel and sterile planet in which local or regional ecosystems have collapsed.
Despite the near daily news coverage of many poor countries suffering conflict and disaster, critical, underlying issues are almost never mentioned by journalists reporting endless symptoms and predicaments. The issues covered in this article add insight into the key development challenges facing the countries concerned and, by implication, the policies of countries like the US, UK, Australia and Canada, where billions are being spent in aid and military interventions to try and stabilise failing states.
To News editors: Raising news awareness on driving forces behind failing states
By Brian McGavin, writer and analyst. August 2011.
Below I give some interesting and generally unreported facts that provide important background on many of the failing states regularly in the news. For example, Somalia, Haiti, Iraq, Palestinian Territory and Afghanistan. It also includes Pakistan and Iran.
Despite the near daily news coverage of these countries, critical, underlying issues are almost never mentioned by journalists reporting endless symptoms and predicaments. These issues add a great deal of insight into the key development challenges facing the countries concerned and by implication the policies of countries like the US, UK and Canada, where billions are being spent in aid and military interventions to try and stabilise failing states.
The aim is to give journalists more balance and context to reports. A simple one or two-sentence addition of data gives a far better understanding of the significance of demographics to a country’s geo-political profile, its aid dependency and social and economic future.
(See table below*)
Through 2011 we have seen almost daily coverage of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ and armed conflict. While some underlying factors of high youth unemployment, rising food prices, water shortages and fears of growing Islamic fundamentalism are mentioned, the media has decidedly not focused on the troubling demographic realities the Middle East and other crisis-ridden countries face. Good news coverage is not just about immediate events, but fundamental causal symptoms. Here are some examples.
1) Egypt. Hardly any mention has been made of the large and rapidly growing population of Egypt, its extremely small arable land area of just 3 per cent, food imports of 40 per cent and the total dependence now on food imports and aid to sustain the population.
Egypt’s population almost quadrupled in just 60 years, from 21 million in 1950 to 81 million in 2010 and at its current 1.8 per cent annual increase in population, the population could hit 150 million before 2050, unless the birth rate declines. (UNPD data). Consider the potential for endless and costly food aid and the rapidly growing numbers of unemployed and disaffected young people attracted to violence and extremism.
2) Afghanistan. On December 23, 2009, UK Channel 4 TV news ran a 20-minute lead on selling children and kidnapping people in Afghanistan. The father selling two of his children was portrayed as a ‘victim’ of poverty in being unable to feed or care for his family. The size of his family was not mentioned – but he had a lot of children.
The reporter asked what would happen to the child and was told it was an opportunity for a better education, but no more was asked about the child’s fate. Various ‘experts’ including Joe Klein of the New York Times and the CEO of Oxfam UK were asked for their view. Corruption, poverty and criminality were discussed, but what was not mentioned was the country’s demographic trajectory that would add a great deal of context to the discussion.
The UK Guardian newspaper on 14/9/10 ran a four-page spread on progress in Afghanistan towards meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The prognosis was gloomy, but in all this verbiage, there was just one minor mention of a 'rising population in Afghanistan' as one of several environmental factors that may see the country not being able to produce enough food to feed its people. In fact, several interesting factors were mentioned in the article, but does any of this important information get covered in the almost daily news reports of more coalition troops being flown home in coffins?
Among the largely unreported gems was that remaining forests were being chopped down for firewood; water shortages and contamination was growing, with thousands of hungry people fleeing the countryside to cities - particularly Kabul, which at 5m people is now the fastest growing capital city in the world. It is also one of the only capital cities without a proper sewage system. Yet Coalition forces have spent years and billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money in the country without these issues being reported in mainstream media.
3) Haiti, like many of the poorest countries in the world, has one of the lowest per person consumption footprints in the world. In Spring 2010 a world-wide media bonanza descended on the earthquake-stricken island, bringing daily live reports of a human disaster: Almost 98 percent of the forests cut down; raw sewage flushing into the ocean; large-scale illiteracy; lack of fresh water, and not enough food for an island on permanent food aid.
But the media reports never mentioned this was happening on an island that possesses the carrying capacity for perhaps 500,000 people, but the culture of Haiti and the Catholic Church ‘encouraged’ it to grow to over 10 million and counting. Haiti has already wrecked much of its ecological assets and relies on exporting people to USA, Canada, the neighbouring Dominican Republic and even the Bahamas as a safety valve for its extreme population pressures.
US Census Bureau records give the legal Haitian population in the United States exceeding 850,000. In Canada the Haitian diaspora is estimated to be around 1 million. There are also estimated to be over 800,000 illegal Haitians living in the neighbouring Dominican Republic, which accounts for about 10% of its national population. (Wikipedia).
While an increase of rape cases has been mentioned in some news reports since the disaster, a reproductive health survey, conducted by UNFPA Haiti in October 2010, found that the fertility rate in urban areas has tripled from four per cent to 12 per cent. But this was never mentioned in on-going media coverage of the disaster or in NGO aid appeals.
4) In Gaza, around 1.5 million people are crammed onto an arid strip of land 40km (25 miles) long and 6 to 12km wide. Many people live in poverty, with unemployment at 45 percent in late 2010, one of the highest in the world according to the UN. The population has grown by 40 per cent in the past 10 years and is rising by about 5% every year. It is expected to double by 2030 – with family sizes of eight or more not unusual.
5) In Libya, repeated stories of ‘refugees’ - alternatively described as ‘migrant workers’ trying to leave the country were shown on TV, many of them sub-Saharan Africans. What was not reported is that an estimated one in six of Libya’s population is made up of illegal sub-Saharan immigrants trying to reach Europe. Italy eventually paid the Libyan Government to help stop them moving on to Italy. With the chaos, where are these illegal residents heading now, aided by International Refugee Agencies and how did the Libyan Government suddenly acquire so many sub-Saharan mercenaries to brutally attack its own people?[1]
6) Pakistan. The media spent weeks looking at the late 2010 disaster in Pakistan, where one-fifth of the country was flooded by the Indus River. But you don’t hear any information that Pakistan is housing 174 million people on a flood plain and at its current birth-rate the population is set to more than double over the next forty years. That ‘core’ challenge never crosses the lips of CNN, NPR, NBC or the BBC.
7) In Yemen, a nation of 22 million and rising rapidly, grain production has fallen by two thirds over the last 20 years and 19 of Yemen’s 21 aquifers are severely stressed. Yemen now imports 89 per cent of the food it needs according to a recent EU report. World Bank projections say the area around the capital, San’a’ - home to 2 million people and one of the world’s fastest growing cities, may be pumped dry in a few years.
In October, we will have seven billion people in the world. I am sure you will agree that these core issues on huge challenges we are facing need to be brought fully to the public's attention. I hope you will cascade this information round your teams and let me know. I can add much more.
Sincerely,
Brian McGavin,
(UK-based writer, geo-political and environmental analyst)
*The UNPD 2010 population data gives population in 1950, 2010 and projected in 2050 and current average number of births per woman (total fertility rate TFR). The table also shows the potential self-sufficiency or bio-reserve deficit exposure for these countries, taken from the Ecological Footprint Atlas 2010 (appendix F, Table 1) - based on most recent 2007 data.
• Bio-capacity reserves or deficits are in global hectares (gha) per person. Plus (+) is current reserve bio-capacity. Minus (-) is a biocapacity deficit. (Rounded to nearest decimal and percentage).
• Climate change impacts will likely increase pressure on many countries’ bio-capacity.
• The 2010 UNPD population data shows ‘medium variant’ estimates of population growth This assumes an often quoted presumption that total fertility rates will fall to the lower levels of many developed countries and the population will reach 9.3 billion by 2050 and then hold steady. (2.1 children is replacement fertility). So far, this shows little sign of happening in most African countries and many areas of the Middle East.
• If the global Total Fertility Rate continues at its current path, population projections will be far higher and the impact on people and the planet in just 39 years will be immense. (See the constant fertility projection in the table). A UN news release issued on March 11, 2009 warned that if fertility rates don’t fall, the medium variant projection of around 9.3 billion people by 2050 would instead rise to 11.1 billion people by 2050. In addition, many developed countries are now offering ‘baby bonuses’ to increase their populations.
• Projections for 2100* are shown for Nigeria, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, to demonstrate the frightening demographic position in the lifetime of many of our children if current birth rates persist. (Rounded to nearest million).
• Because Pakistan has not conducted a census since 1998, the country’s population size is conjectural. The government estimates the 2010 figure at about 175 million people, while the United Nations believes the number is around 185 million.
The Washington-based Population Reference Bureau (PRB) latest 2011 data shows more pessimistic projections on fertility decline in many developing countries, so they use the High Variant projection. Note PRB’s 2050 projections for Nigeria, at 433m as against UNPD 390m and Pakistan at 314m as against UNPD 275m.
[1] Ed. The remark about Libya is based on a perspective contested in some quarters, e.g. global research and ”candobetter.net – libya”, due to the lack of objective evidence for Gaddafi attacking his own people, their apparent willingness to defend him, and the conspicuous motives of the US, the UK and France to preserve first-world hegemony in the oil-producing region against China and coalitions of the third world with Gaddafi, the brilliant originator of OPEC in the 1970s.
The Supreme Court 19th September extended the injunction to stop logging in Sylvia Creek forest near Toolangi after VicForests agreed to the moratorium.
The Department of Sustainability and Environment predictably dismissed concerns of conservationists by saying that there was no sign of live possums in the Sylvia Creek coupe at Toolangi, and that it did not meet the legal criteria of prime possum habitat.
Both statements reek of dispassionate recklessness. These possums are tiny, nocturnal, in small numbers, and they live in holes in trees that are up to 50 meters tall.
No confidence in VicForests
The public can have no confidence in the surveys done by VicForests as they were not supported by those carried out by expert ecologists and biologists. Government departments are incapable of assessing the effect of logging on endangered species as their interests are primarily economic.
Trashing the environment for short-term woodchip profits transforms areas rich in biodiversity into clear-felled wastelands that take decades to recover.
Over half of the Leadbeater's possums' habitat was destroyed by Black Saturday, and the BAER (Burnt Area Emergency Response) team recommended that this area not be logged, yet it continued. Habitats of listed threatened species were logged.
We are having our ecological and environmental assets stripped from the integrity of Victoria and from the people who need our life-supporting biological services. All species keep our ecological systems working, and they all have a role to play.
VicForests are losing money and taxpayers are subsidizing these losses. It's to keep fat-cat jobs in Parliament. Most of these trees goes to woodchips, not fine furniture.
The Tasmanian government seems to be accepting it's time to get clear-felling out of native forests. Their agreement is designed to see an end to large scale native forest logging and create more than 400,000 hectares of new informal reserves.
Now the Victorian government must do the same and place the intrinsic value of native forests and biodiversity, especially our threatened Leadbeater's Possum and other species, over the economic benefits of office paper.
It's a case of being in denial, of conflicting interests, and of not finding the facts, or evidence of threatened species, that they don't want to find.
The court extended an injunction blocking logging until next February, when it will revisit the matter.
David Walsh of VicForests arrogantly said that VicForests has chosen not to challenge the interim injunction at this stage of the game to allow this matter to be fully resolved at a trial as quickly as possible.
"Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and Bob Brown are in a position to change the political, social and cultural landscape in Australia once and for all. They find themselves in the unique position of having the community support they need to stop the parliamentary puppet masters dictating parliamentary policy. They find themselves in the position to uproot the few stunted perennials that blight political, social and cultural debate in this community and let a thousand flowers bloom by passing parliamentary legislation that forces media monopolies to limit their media holdings to 10% of the privately owned media outlets in a community. They are also in a position to pass parliamentary legislation that alters the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s guidelines so that a variety of opinions, not just the major political parties’ opinions, are brought to the fore in Australia in the publicly funded media sphere." Joe Toscano Anarchist Age Weekly, Number 940, 18th July – 24th July 2011 So, what's stopping them from doing the right thing by Australia?"Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and Bob Brown are in a position to change the political, social and cultural landscape in Australia once and for all. They find themselves in the unique position of having the community support they need to stop the parliamentary puppet masters dictating parliamentary policy. They find themselves in the position to uproot the few stunted perennials that blight political, social and cultural debate in this community and let a thousand flowers bloom by passing parliamentary legislation that forces media monopolies to limit their media holdings to 10% of the privately owned media outlets in a community. They are also in a position to pass parliamentary legislation that alters the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s guidelines so that a variety of opinions, not just the major political parties’ opinions, are brought to the fore in Australia in the publicly funded media sphere." Joe Toscano Anarchist Age Weekly, Number 940, 18th July – 24th July 2011 So, what's stopping them from doing the right thing by Australia?
Ed. Sheila Newman: This article is based on my transcription from Joe Toscano's seminal podcast about the Australian media and government, to which I have added headings. I have removed some 'you knows' and small repetitions and elisions for clarity. Any mistakes in transcription are my own. You can listen to the original by podcast anytime. It is actually an hour long. The transcribed part is just the media inquiry part.
Power, Wealth, Parliament and the Mass Media - Joe Toscano:
"It's about power and wealth. What's the point in having all the power in the world if you don't have the wealth to make the decisions you've made a reality? And that's what we have in a parliamentary democracy. We go through the ritual every four years to elect representatives to make decisions fo us. Unfortunately what the representatives can and cannot do is determined by the parliamentary puppetmasters. That's all sections of society that owns the means of production, distribution, communication and exchange.
Now it's quite interesting how the Gillard government, facing oblivion at the next election by media sharks who are tearing pieces off its lifeless carcass, can continue wallowing in its own blood until what little credibility it enjoys is completely gone. Or it can bite back.
And those regular listeners in the Anarchist World this week will know that for some time I have been pushing the idea of holding a Royal Commission into the role the Murdoch Empire plays in this country. A royal commission into how the Murdoch media empire actually subverts the will of the people by subverting parliament.
Proposed Inquiry: What Gillard wants and what the Greens want
And I have noticed that now that Ms Gillard's little tête a tête with the Murdoch senior editors has kind of come asunder that she is once again looking at the possibility of holding a media inquiry - a general, nice, little, media inquiry that looks at privacy issues. Yes, you may as well pack it up, put it back in the drawer and forget about it.
Now I notice that, obviously the Greens, who have been one of the major victims of the Murdoch monopoly in this country - I mean, before every election we have huge headlines about the drug addicts running the Greens - how they'are going to subvert the country. You know, it just goes on day in day out. They [the Greens] would like something a little bit wider. They would like a media inquiry into the ownership.
Are newspapers growing too irrelevant to pose much of a threat?
Now people say to me, "Why worry about newspapers, Joe, they're irrelevant."
I'm afraid they're not. Newspapers are not irrelevant in this country. And when you've got some major capital cities with only one
newspaper, and that's a Murdoch newspaper, and you've got other capital cities where you've got two newspapers, it's not irrelevant.
Because, although there may be a decreasing number of people actually reading newspapers, there are more people reading the same papers on the Net. And, more importantly, what newspapers do is they actually set the political agenda for the day. Because, if you think television and radio set the political agenda, they don't.
Television and radio are very, very, very understaffed pieces of technology and they take their running every day from what's printed in the newspapers that morning. And if you want to know what's going to be on you local radio stations that morning or television station that day and that evening, just pick up a newspaper and you will see that, as far as political commentary is concerned, and social and cultural commentary is concerned, that 95% of commentary that occurs on television and radio is directly purloined from the major issues raised by newspapers, and the same major issues are then aised in parliament at the state and federal level. So newspapers still play, although there may be fewer people actually buying the oadsheets and the tabloids, it still plays a significant role in setting the social and political agenda in this country.
So, faced with that dilemma, when one player owns 70% of the newspapers, you can actually see the significant impact it actually has on peoples' thinking and the way issues are approached. And the thing about the Murdoch empire is, as far as I'm concerned, is it's a cancer on civil society. Because it is so huge, all-encompassing, all-powerful. And anybody who thinks holding an inquiry into privacy issues in the media, or even holding a parliamentary inquiry, into media ownership in this country is going to break the back of this monster, they should think again.
We need a royal commission
What we need, and what the Liberal and the Labor Party and the cross-benchers and the Greens should be discussing and negotiating on, is holding a royal commission into the impact that the Murdoch empire has on debate, has on discussion, has on political decisions in this country. Now, you'll see over the next few weeks, the media crying about the fact[2] that there's some Clayton's media inquiry's been set up into privacy issues in the media.
Well, the reality is they're the first ones who jump up and down about holding inquiries into this and into that. I mean, it's about time
the fourth estate [3] was dissected and we had the opportunity to ensure that a thousand voices are able to be heard in this country. Not the same, stunted, old, pathetic arguments, which we hear day in and day out, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Arguments, you know, which support capitalism as the be-all and end-all of economic activity. Activities which media outlets, which actually promote division within this country, which act as a cheer squad for that small section of society that owns the means of production, distribution, exchange and communication, which continues to act as the parliamentary puppetmasters in this country.
I mean, facing political oblivion if the government continues to square dance with the parliamentary puppetmasters, it is time that they turned off the music, isn't it? Isn't it time that they turned off the music and launched a direct legislative assault on the corporate world?
Corporate world really unpopular with Australians
If there is one group that's more unpopular than the Gillard government, it's the corporate world. Australians are beginning to realise the abysmal state of public health, public education, is due to the domination of the economy by a shrinking number of powerful corporations.
Any government, any political movement that is willing to wrest power back from the parliamentary puppetmasters, especially one that currently has a snowflake's chance in hell of being reelected, if it continues on its current political projectory, will earn the respect of an electorate that is becoming increasingly tired of seeing its institutions and its children's future sacrificed on Mammon's altar. And that's what it's about. That's the bottom line that we all forget! That's what the fourth estate is about! It's about creating profits built on other peoples' suffering. It's about creating ever-increasing profits, irrespective of the human, social and environmental costs.
And when you have the fourth estate singing the praises of the corporate world because they are owned by the very same people that dominate economic and political activity in this country, you begin to realise why there is such a lack of debate in this country about any issue, except the very superficial issues that have no bearing on the power of that small section of society that owns the means of production, distribution, exchange and communication is able to exercise.
Obviously we have 'stop presses' and 'exposees' on things which are of little importance to most people, but when it comes to actually looking at the foundations of the society, when it comes to actually questioning the assumptions this society is based on, when it comes to the idea of tackling the major problems that we face as individuals, and as communities within this country, well then, there is no debate, there is no discussion, and those people who put their heads above the parapet and attempt to raise issues that go beyond issues that are currently broached, find themselves being shunned, or worse still, being lampooned, or, worse still, being branded as 'un-Australian', 'terrorists'.
Let's create the momentum to break down the media plutocracy
So, media inquries ... forget about an inquiry!
Let's have a royal commission. Let's watch them squirm. Let's see what happens. Let's create the momentum to break down the media monopolies that exist in this country, whether they'are Murdoch or Fairfax or any other media monopoly that exists in this country. Let's break them down. Let's have legislation passed through parliament that ensures that no one group of people, or an individual, can own more than 10% of the media outlets in one city. And then, maybe we will see those thousand flowers bloom in that stony garden that needs to be fertilised by a range of ideas.
Now, let's move on to the ABC. Because, we've concentrated on the media today, and the reason I've concentrated on the media is very simple, because the thing about living in a technologically savvy society is everybody is exposed to the same set of opinions minute by minute by minute by minute by minute. And we're told in this country that we have the private corporations running the media, well the government gelded the ABC.
The ABC has become a commercial clone
And people say to me, "Well, Joe, what are you complaining about? I mean, forget about it. The ABC gives us an alternative viewpoint."
The ABC is there to do these things but people have forgotten what happened to the ABC during the Howard era, what happened to the ABC during the Hawke/Keating era. They've forgotten that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has basically become a commercial clone.
Obviously there are a number of programs which continue to exist - not for very long - which provide alanced analysis. But as far as the majority of the information, debate, analysis programs which occur in the government-gelded ABC you find that most of them you can actually find in the commercial setting.
Now, I know this is old news, but you may find it a bit interesting, because I want to draw an analogy here. I remember in 1999 when I had a weekly spot on ABC local radio that examined the week's news from a radical perspective, it didn't take long for the presenter to be asked to get a conservative voice on the half-hour segment. Within two months of one of the most conservative politicians in this country, the former Senator Julia McGorren had been appointed to cross swords with your's truly. The segment, and the presenter, who conducted an overnight show on-air for the ABC for over a decade was also taken off-air. This is during the Howard era. She was never offered an on-air position again and continues to work in the dungeons of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation because she wasn't on a short-term contract.
Lucky her!
Australia's Arts Community
It's no surprise that the Arts community now finds itself in the very same position. The Hoard Government succeeded in destroying the independence of the ABC by ensuring senior managers were appointed that reflected its world view. And the Howard Government openly stacked the ABC Board with some of the most conservative and reactionary figures in Australia, including Mr Windshuttle.
These changes transformed the ABC from a source that provided independent information analysis to an entertainment-focused organisation that needs to focus on ratings. It's all about entertainment. If we want entertainment, there are a million areas we can look for entertainment.
Why did Rudd and Gillard leave Howard's appointees in place?
The Gillard and Rudd Government found themselves in a difficult position because they left all of Howard's appointments in their jobs when elected. They left them all. And that's the tragedy of the 2007 Rudd victory, that all the senior bureaucrats, whether it's the department of immigration and refugees as we are seeing now, whether it was the taxation department, whether it was Human Services, whether it was the ABC. Everyone of those political appointments which were made during the decade that Howard was in powe were left in positions of authority. Left in positions of authority!
So, instead of cleaning out the ABC's Augean stable, they left everything in place. It's one thing having your hands on the levers of
government, it's another thing being forced to use the coordinates of a bureaucracy appointed y Howard and his cronies to steer the ship.
And that's the dilemma! Although the government may have a different agenda, as fa as the senior political appointments that were made by the Howard Regime, they continue to set the coordinates that determine government policy. It's no accident the Gillard Government is faced with a neverending litany of disasters, despite overseeing the 'best economy in the western capitalist world'. I mean, leaving your political enemies in positions of power when you own a position to exercise power is a recipe for disaster. And this is what we've seen in the ABC - although the government changed, senior political appointments, both on the board and the managerial area, didn't change. They continued to push the conservative reactionary agenda. And what we are seeing is even the arts programs are now coming under the axe. We are seeing the ABC lose what little independence it has.
Hardly any local content produced by the ABC
No wonder the ABC has been transformed into a commercial clone that has put people on short-term contracts, turned the ABC into an entertainment-focused organisation that actually relies on outside contracts to provide content - even local content. There is hardly any local content being produced at the ABC. It is produced by privately-owned outside companies that are given contracts to provide content.
And the few ABC in-house programs that have managed to survive over the past two decades are now on the chopping block, because the ABC has been transformed into a paper tiger, into an entertainment-focused organisation that Removes from its programming line-up any program that doesn't meet its board and managers' one-dimensional conservative social and political agenda. And that's the key.
So if you have a private corporate media which acts as a cheer-squad for its owners, promoting corporatisation, deregulation,
globalisation, the corporate sector, and you have a government-gelded ABC, where do people obtain independent analysis and information?
Not everybody has the time to spend hours and hours and hours surfing the net. People like their information in little packages. And what we find is the same, seedy, reactionaries continue to dominate the political agenda in this country - to dominate the social agenda in this country, to dominate the cultural agenda in this country - while the rest of us are expected, you know, to gratefully accept the crumbs that are occasionally pushed our way to stop people from protesting about what's actually happening, not only within the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but within a corporate-controlled media network which sets the political, social and cultural agenda in this country."
NOTES
[1] Joe Toscano speaks for the Anarchist society and each week, on his show at 3CR he demystifies anarchist principles with this useful definition: "Anarchist society is a voluntary non-hierarchical society which is ased on political and social structures which are based on direct democratic principles. The people involved in decision strong>make that decision and then elect or appoint delegates to coordinate decisions at local, regional and national levels of society. Wealth is held in common and used for the common good."
[2]See, for instance, what passes for intellectual commentary in the Australian Financial Review (owned by Fairfax)in the editorial for the weekend of 17-18 December 2011. The editorial suggests that the basis of the inquiry is exclusively political with the Greens and the Government trying to neutralise criticism. "Any attempt to rein in freedom of the press should be vigorously resisted. Politicians have many avenues to redress perceived bias, not least through Parliament, the wider media and websites. Instead the government would have been far wiser to invest its limited political energy and capital in an inquiry into the much more pressing national economic issue of lagging productivity." Yes, well, if we tried to have an inquiry into how Australia's production is kept uncompetitive on the world market due to the cost of land, as boosted by the Murdoch and Fairfax owned property dot coms and their media-generated mass immigration fueled-demand, those papers would use every weapon they had to suppress, distort and punish debate. They suppress, distort and punish all other debates except the most destructive and puerile. That is why we need to break the media monopoly, so that we can actually have a free media rather than a corporatised commercial media which promotes its own investments against the common interest.
For a good example of suppressing, distorting and punishing debate, see ABC's Media Watch Episode 31, 12 September 2011. Media Watch generally goes after rabbits when it could take down elephants (metaphorically speaking) but this episode was very relevant to central problems of media interference, for corporate commercial reasons, in public debate:
Over in the commercial media, times are tough. Especially in newspapers.
Here's an excerpt from an email sent out by a News Ltd executive in Western Australia.
"Last Sunday we published an article in our real estate section that failed Journalism 101 ... As the Managing Director of The Sunday Times I unreservedly apologise for the article.
— Jason Scott, Managing Director, The Sunday Times, 24th August, 2011"
Goodness! The managing director, no less - it's usually the editor who worries about editorial content. Managing directors of newspapers worry about money. And usually, that means advertisers.
And to whom was this grovel addressed to?
"To our valued real estate clients
— Jason Scott, Managing Director, The Sunday Times, 24th August, 2011"
That's right. Real estate agents. Who, thanks to those endless house for sale ads, account for a sizeable chunk of the Sunday Times's revenue ...
Not to mention what they contribute to realestate.com.au, by far the leading property website in Australia, which is 60% owned by News Ltd.
So what was this abysmal journalism that Mr Scott was apologising for? It was a double-page spread in the Sunday Times's
"Weekend Property
— Sunday Times Weekend, Property, 21-27 August, 2011"
"Home Alone
It can cost more than $20,000 to sell your home through a real estate agent. We speak to two vendors who decided to go it alone.
— Sunday Times Weekend, Property, 21-27 August, 2011"
No! Without an agent? And look at them ... They're positively beaming ...
"Being able to talk directly with the buyers ensured queries could be answered quickly and efficiently
— Sunday Times Weekend, Property, 21-27 August, 2011"
"We saved about $17,000 and put in about 19 hours work in five weeks.
— Sunday Times Weekend, Property, 21-27 August, 2011"
Well, you can imagine how the Sunday Times's 'valued real estate clients' reacted to that piece.
Actually, you don't have to imagine it, because we can show you.
It was kicked off by investment property specialist Mark Hay, with an email addressed to pretty much every real estate agent west of the Nullarbor. It was, as they say, heavy with irony ...
"Fellow Colleagues,
For those of you who use the Murdoch-backed Sunday Times you will have no doubt noted the huge push they gave us as agents in their wonderful article on page four and five this weekend!
— Mark Hay, Investment property specialist, 23rd August, 2011"
Mr Hay didn't mess about.
"Can I encourage you to boycott the paper in light of this, or better still this is a perfect reason why we as agents should build our own web site to challenge realestate.com.au and the others who keep putting the squeeze on us. Anyone interested?
— Mark Hay, Investment property specialist, 23rd August, 2011"
Lots of people were ...
"I am interested in a change from this
David Whiteman
Ray White
— David Whiteman, Ray White, 24th August, 2011"
"It is heartening to see ... the discussion around creating a new industry owned and controlled website.
Geoff Baldwin
RE/MAX W.A.
— Geoff Baldwin, RE/MAX WA, 25th August, 2011"
"The Davey Group would be behind a move to advertise through REIWA.com only.
Andrew Davey
— Andrew Davey, Davey Group, 24th August, 2011"
Mark Hay was over the moon ...
"Wow, the response has been overwhelming! ... By far the huge majority confirm we should crank up REIWA ...
— Mark Hay, Investment property specialist, 24th August, 2011"
REIWA is the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia, which has long had its own property ad website ...
"Feature Properties for sale
— reiwa.com.au"
And has recently teamed up with the Sunday Times's rival, The West Australian, to produce
"WestRealEstate.com.au
— WestRealEstate.com.au"
The West is spruiking its new website for all its worth ...
"WestReal Estate
This exciting new site is offering vendors a free listing when their agent is a current REIWA subscriber ...
— The West Australian, 25th August, 2011"
No wonder the Managing Director of the Sunday Times was freaking out at the thought of all those 'valued real estate clients' jumping ship. Hence his crawling email ...
"I give you my personal guarantee that The Sunday Times will work hard to restore our relationship to the mutual good health and prosperity that we have achieved together over many years.
— Jason Scott, Managing Director, 24th August, 2011"
The problem was, wrote Jason Scott, that the Home Alone piece was unbalanced, because it ...
"... did not contain any response from agents or real estate industry groups and nor did it look at vendors who had tried to sell their houses privately who had then appointed an agent and got the right result.
— Jason Scott, Managing Director, 24th August, 2011"
Well, that's true. And it was a bit of a puff job for one particular do-it-yourself consultancy.
But some of the offended agents weren't going to be fobbed off with a private apology.
Glenn Buckley of Think Pink Realty - yes, that's its name - wrote back to Mr Scott, in a nice pink font ...
"Your apology is noted. However, what is clearly required here is a full rebuttle (sic) in this weeks issue of your newspaper...
Three happy clients, and no fewer than seven deeply sincere real estate agents. And why was that published, we asked the acting editor ... well, naturally,
"To balance the one-sided feature that appeared on August 21.
— Bill Rule, Deputy Editor, Sunday Times, 2nd September, 2011"
Balance. The essence of sound journalism. No mention of that other principle of newspaper management: safeguarding editorial from advertiser pressure.
[3]The term, "the fourth estate refers to the media and mass media. It comes from the French Revolution, where the first estate was the nobles, the second estate was the clergy and the third estate was the common people.
Researcher, Ms Charlton-Robb has named the new dolphin Tursiops australis with the common name, the Burrunan dolphin. This was an Australian aboriginal name given to dolphins in the Boonwurrung, Woiwurrung and Taungurung languages. It meant ‘large sea fish of the porpoise kind’. Since the late 1800s only been three new dolphin species have been formally described and recognised, so this is an important and enchanting discovery.
Congratulations on your discovery, Ms Charlton-Robb!
They’re one of the most intelligent marine mammals, well known for their inquisitive and playful nature and now, following an amazing discovery by a Monash University researcher, Victoria’s dolphins have been formally recognised as a new species.
Kate Charlton-Robb, a PhD researcher in the School of Biological Sciences unearthed the remarkable findings, which have been published in the latest PLoS ONE Journal, showing that coastal dolphins in southern Australia greatly differed from any other dolphin worldwide.
The dolphins were originally thought to be one of the two recognised bottlenose dolphin species, however by using multiple lines of scientific evidence these dolphins were found to be unique. The discovery was made by comparing skulls, external characteristics and a number of DNA regions from the current day population as well as specimens dating back to the early 1900s.
Ms Charlton-Robb has formally named the new dolphin Tursiops australis with the common name, the Burrunan dolphin, being an Australian aboriginal name given to dolphins in the Boonwurrung, Woiwurrung and Taungurung languages, meaning ‘large sea fish of the porpoise kind’.
“This is an incredibly fascinating discovery as there have only been three new dolphin species formally described and recognised since the late 1800s.
“What makes this even more exciting is this dolphin species has been living right under our noses, with only two known resident populations living in Port Phillip Bay and the Gippsland Lakes in Victoria,” said Ms Charlton-Robb.
This research relied in large part on the analysis of dolphin skulls collected and maintained by museums over the last century including the extraordinary holdings at Museum Victoria.
“Ms Charlton-Robb’s discovery is an exciting example of a recent trend in biodiversity research across Victoria and Australia. Through the careful application of emerging technologies to museum specimens, researchers are revealing that our biological heritage is far more diverse than we realise.” said Dr Rowe, Museum Victoria’s Senior Curator of Mammals.
Ms Charlton-Robb said it is important this study continues in order to conserve and protect the Burrunan dolphin for future generations. More research is required to determine if there are other resident populations of this species in Australia.
“We know these unique dolphins are restricted to a very small region of the world, in addition the resident populations are very small with only approximately 100 dolphins in Port Phillip Bay and 50 in the Gippsland Lakes.
“This study highlights the importance of taking a more holistic approach of using multiple analyses, rather than looking in isolation of one scientific methodology. Even though we have progressed a long way in science, this study shows there are still new and exciting discoveries to be made,” said Ms Charlton-Robb.
We are privileged to have a new dolphin species in our waters and people are encouraged to enjoy the marine wildlife, but to make sure they keep their distance. Marine mammals are a protected species.
For further information or to arrange an interview with Kate Charlton-Robb, contact Ali Webb, Monash Media & Communications +61 3 9903 4841 / 0439 013 951 / [email protected]
--
Source: Media and Communications
Media Release, Thursday 15 September, 2011
Office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Global Engagement) | Monash University
Caulfield campus | Building H, Level 9, 900 Dandenong Road, Caulfield East, VIC 3145
Victorian government plans to drop 1080 poison bait from an aircraft into forests could result in the extinction of the already critically endangered Spot-tailed quoll. The purpose of this antiquated and vandalistic method is to poison wild dogs.
Article by Hans Brunner, Wildlife ecologist and biologist
Why is the Victorian Government using old, dangerous methods?
The Victorian government plans to drop 1080 poison bait from an aircraft into forests which could result in the extinction of the already critically endangered Spot-tail quoll. The purpose of this hazardous, antiquated and vandalistic method is to poison wild dogs. This is like re-introducing the use of DDT. It is now a double disaster: all Ted Baillieu has to do now is to aerial bait to kill wild dogs in order to protect the cattle he allowed to go back into the mountains.! An estimated success rate for aerial poisoning of wild dogs is one tonne of poison bait per one dog! Spot-tailed quolls and other Dasyurids are meat eaters as well as some species of possums, reptiles, bandicoots, bush rats and birds. It was estimated that 90% of baits were either not eaten or taken by other animals. Raptor and scavenger birds may collect poison bait and take them to feed their young. McIlroy (CSIRO) reported that in one campaign birds took over 40% of the bait. These other animals would all be at serious risk of being poisoned. Further more, most of this bait would be wasted because of the dogs not being able to find them and this is where non-target animals will rather find and eat them. Baits have therefore to be placed only in places which dogs frequently use, along forest tracks.
More effective method known
There is a well researched and efficient method for the poisoning of wild dogs and foxes. It is a target specific bait station system which is successfully used throughout Victoria. Bait stations are placed along forest tracks where activities of dogs are observed.
A bait station consists of a mound of soil about 20 cm high and one meter in diameter. An un poisoned bait (free feed) is buried in the center of the mound about 10cm deep with some SFE lure placed on top. When the bait has been dug up and eaten, a check is made, with some experience, to assess whether a dog or fox took the bait. If satisfied that a target species took the bait it can be replaced with a poison bait. If it appears that a quoll or an other non-target animal may have taken the free feed bait, continue free feeding that station to keep the quoll and others away from a poison station (about 2 km away) or eliminate that station.
This is the only responsible way to poison dogs and foxes. Even better, it will be of great benefit to not only the quolls by removing the competition by dogs and foxes of their natural prey species, but also for the survival of Kangaroos, wallabies, bandicoots, possums, echidnas etc.
Biologist's experience of alternatives
I have researched and tested this system in 700 square km of forest between Gembrook and Neerim and found it most effective and efficient. I have also introduced it in NSW National Parks where it was recognized as “The dog baiting stations proposed by Hans are the best practical suggestion to date. With the implementation of the bait stations, properly maintained and serviced at the appropriate times, there would appear to be NO reason to allow the continued use of aerial baiting” and, “Poisoning using the buried bait technique is still proving extremely target specific, with dogs and foxes being the only species killed”.
Do it the right way and wildlife return
Barbara Triggs, an eminent naturalist stated after poisoning wild dogs and foxes and using the bait station system on her property in Croajingolong Nat. Park:
“At no time has there been any evidence that a bait has been taken by a non-target animal. In the past year the numbers of native animals seen on the property have increased startlingly. The Red-necked Wallabies, who’s group was here in low numbers, have increased markedly from five individuals to now at least fourteen. The most surprising increase has been in the population of Long-nosed Bandicoots. The Dusky Antechinus, Swamp Rats, Water Rats, Sugar Gliders and several species of ground-nesting birds and also species of owls are much more in evidence than ever before."
With all this evidence, this non specific and irresponsible aerial baiting must be immediately stopped.
It is surprising to pick up a book about wealth statistics and find that it segues so readily into another about psychopathology in young girls. The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone takes a revealing look at how wealth is distributed within different developed countries and Reviving Ophelia illustrates the decline of women's rights in the face of aggressive pornography and its effect on girls. Children and the general public were not widely exposed to explicit pornography and sexual sadism in the ‘traditional’ mass media of the industrial age, although these notions were commonly implicit in images and concepts used for marketing all kinds of things. Between that time and now, in 2011, the depiction of women almost exclusively as victims and objects of violence and pornography, explicitly and for that sole reason, has become a global business which operates 24/7. The implicit violence and sexualisation of women in ordinary marketing has also continued. At the same time, the official message is that western women don’t need Feminism anymore because equality has prevailed.
Some people are more equal than others, especially if they are not women
In the Australian Financial Review, September 13, 2011, Deidre Macken writes, “After a week when economic statistics made a lie of our feelings of being worse off, it seems like an opportunistic time to check how good we are at reading ourselves. Obviously we are not good judges at assessing our economic well-being. Repeat after me – we are a lucky people, living in a country that’s never been luckier.”[1]
Without going into the adequacy of the indicators she used but does not reference, was Deidre talking about averaged statistics or was she talking about the way they are distributed throughout the nation?
I chose a quote from a female financial journalist to introduce the feminist implications of the theories of two books. One was published nearly two decades ago and the other was published last year. The earlier one is by Mary Pipher, with the title of Reviving Ophelia: Saving the selves of adolescent girls. It was published by Riverhead Books, New York, 1994. The second book is by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. It’s title is The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, and it was published by Penguin in 2010.
Both books are about the impacts of inequality as you and I experience it, rather than the global economics of inequality between different countries by which the first and the third world are often defined. I found these books interesting particularly in the light of the recent inquiry into human rights in Australia, which ignored Australian citizens’ rights by concentrating on international rights. Citizens’ rights require active democracy and laws to facilitate this, whereas global human rights are relative abstractions, requiring recognition by national governments in hard-to-enforce treaties.
The Spirit Level: Why Equality is better for everyone
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, Penguin 2010 beg the question of defining countries as rich or poor according to their average wealth. The book points out that, although Australia or the United States might have relatively large GDPs for their total populations, large sections of those societies are politically, materially, socially and physically disempowered and disadvantaged by their relative poverty. The authors imply that these differences drive seriously negative outcomes in almost any area you care to think of. The more unequal you are with the people geographically close to you – in your neighbourhood, your state, your nation - the more anxious and dysfunctional you are likely to be. Inequality is actually an indicator of relative unhappiness and that unhappiness is linked to many social and physical ills, including violence and obesity.
Further on we will relate the lesser condition of women as a subclass within these unequal nations.
Wilkinson and Pickett suggest that, rather than comparing “rich countries with poor countries” we should compare rich countries and then look inside them to see how well they are actually looking after their people.
Within countries like Japan and some of the Scandinavian countries … the richest 20 per cent of people are less than four times as rich as the poorest 20 per cent of people. At the bottom of the [scale] are countries in which these differences are at least twice as big, including two in which the richest 20 per cent get about nine times as much as the poorest. Among the most unequal are Singapore, USA, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. (p.16-17)
The book makes no attempt to explain why Portugal should stand out in such a contrast to its continental European neighbours, which almost invariably outperform English speaking countries on equality and social conditions. I would suggest however that one reason lies in Portugal's inheritance laws, which reflect a tendency to disinherit children in favour of spouses, similar to English-style laws. In the other European countries roman-style civil codes provide for children before spouses equally, therefore men and woman come to adulthood with similar wealth.
Wilkinson and Pickett find that the countries with the worst social inequality have the worst social outcomes overall in health, violence, obesity, illiteracy, mental illness, addiction, and rates of teenage pregnancy.
The official message is that developed western countries have done their duty by their own populations in fulfilling their material needs, leaving a remaining task of bringing the poor of other countries up to the same material standard. It seems churlish of people in those first world populations to reproach the rich in their countries for ostentatious and dishonest living, while the poor in the third world suffer malnutrition and disease. The official message is really that the poor of the developed world need to put the needs of the poor of the undeveloped world ahead of theirs, rather than to exert their own rights locally. The normalization of competitiveness over cooperation and social trust is a strategy to justify the growing vast internal inequalities in the first world.
Importantly for Feminism, within these unequal nations there is a further sub-class, and that is the women of those nations.
Female obesity linked to inequality
Most women would be interested to know that the authors, Wilkinson and Pickett, are able to find a clear association between inequality, obesity and the female sex.
The World Health Organisation has found, from a study begun in the 1980s, that in the 26 countries it surveyed, rates of obesity have increased more among poor women than rich women. The countries with the worst inequalities – Australia, the United States, Portugal and the UK, also have the worst rates of obesity. The countries with the lowest rates of inequality have the lowest rates of obesity.(p.98)
Observing a relationship between anxiety and material and social inequality, the authors note that chronic stress stimulates the hormone, cortisol, of which high levels are associated with deposits of fat around the middle.(p.95) People with this kind of fat are at higher risk of other illnesses – notably diabetes. Diabetes is itself associated with depression.
The authors also refer to the concept of the ‘thrifty phenotype’ where birth weights are lower in women who have experienced stress during pregnancy. Are low-birth weight babies likely to squirrel away extra calories because the stress they encountered in utero led them to prepare for a harsh society, where they would expect to struggle for food? Instead, although they do grow up in a harsh society, it is a non-traditional variety where food remains plentiful but love and approval are at a premium. (p.98)
The book also notes that food may stimulate the brain in the same way as addictive drugs do in people who use food addictively. That is, that food may be used as a pain-killer. (p.96)
It is probably obvious that food marketing may also have a role in obesity, but what is that role? The authors find associations between eating for comfort and homely foods which remind people of childhood, but they note that fast food outlets aim to reassure and to provide the lower classes with a feeling of social mobility. They reassure through their reliability and clean surroundings, but they also provide an affordable opportunity to dine out, which was once the province of the rich. Of course when you dine out on fast food, you are taking in huge amounts of calories in the form of fats and sugars, to a degree not found in haute cuisine restaurants.(p.96)
The book also refers to a study which related obesity to people’s subjective sense of ranking low in the social pecking order. That is, how you feel you compare is more important than your absolute living standard.(p.101)
To recapitulate, this book is about how, once the basics are present, absolute living standard is outweighed by social ranking as measured by relative living standard.
Women as a sub-class within unequal first world nations
Importantly for Feminism, within these unequal nations there is a further sub-class, and that is the women of those nations.
In Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia: Saving the selves of adolescent girls, (Riverhead Books, New York, 1994) the subject is also about inequality and anxiety within high GDP, purportedly progressive societies. Despite the rhetoric, she argues, girls receive a consistent message that they don’t deserve equal treatment and must go to outlandish lengths for mere acceptance. For this reason the whole basis of their identities become at risk as they identify as women rather than as children. They learn that their psychological identities depend on the approval of men. This explains the very high rates of anorexia and risky lifestyles among young women seeking some control over their social and personal environments.
Harking back to Shakespeare’s Ophelia in Hamlet as a young woman who lost the approval of the important males in her life and then suicided, this book observes the increasing difficulty since the 1980s that adolescent girls and the women they become have in preserving a sense of self and self-worth as they transition between childhood and maturity. It finds that they are victims of an increasingly sexualized and pornographic society that defines them almost exclusively as sexual objects, despite the official rhetoric of women’s rights. The girls feel the need to justify themselves against these media popularized and reinforced social standards and, in doing so, to suppress their real feelings and ambitions.
The author observes that, whilst her 1960s generation grew into a western society where the Women’s Liberation movement had overturned official institutional barriers to women’s rights to career, property and political candidacy, the mainstream media preserved, then enhanced over the next decades, a picture of women as inherently less-deserving of these rights than men. Unglamorous, older women (the majority) rarely receive attention in the mass media, and beautiful women often seem only to deserve violent attention, as victims of elaborate predator screenplays. Women are increasingly bombarded by this kind of view at younger and younger ages.
This book, Reviving Ophelia, was published in 1994, at a time when the pervasiveness of the internet was in its relative infancy. Children and the general public were not widely exposed to explicit pornography and sexual sadism in the ‘traditional’ mass media of the industrial age, although these notions were commonly implicit in images and concepts used for marketing all kinds of things. Between that time and now, in 2011, the depiction of women almost exclusively as victims and objects of violence and pornography, explicitly and for that sole reason, has become a global business which operates 24/7. The implicit violence and sexualisation of women in ordinary marketing has also continued. At the same time, the official message is that western women don’t need Feminism anymore because equality has prevailed.
How does a girl, as her sexual personality awakens deal with the saturation marketing of femaleness as moronic and deserving of punishment and death? Mary Pipher argues that girl’s personalities die and that they often die with their personalities.
”Ironically, bright and sensitive girls are most at risk for problems. They are likely to understand the implications of the media around them and be alarmed. They have the mental equipment to pick up our cultural ambivalence about women, and yet they don’t have the cognitive, emotional and social skills to handle this information. They are paralyzed by complicated and contradictory data that they cannot interpret. They struggle to resolve the unresolvable and to make sense of the absurd. It’s this attempt to make sense of the whole of adolescent experience that overwhelms bright girls.
Less perceptive girls may miss the meaning of sexist ads, music and shows entirely. They tend to deny and oversimplify problems. They don’t attempt to integrate aspects of their experience or to ‘connect the dots’ between cultural events and their own lives. Rather than process their experience, they seal in confusion.
Often bright girls look more vulnerable than their peers who have picked up less or who have chosen to deal with all the complexity by blocking it out. Later, bright girls may be more interesting, adaptive and authentic, but in early adolescence they just look shelled.
Girls have four general ways in which they can react to the cultural pressures to abandon the self. They can conform, withdraw, be depressed, or get angry. Whether girls feel depression or anger is a matter of attribution – those who blame themselves feel depressed, while those who blame others feel angry. Generally they blame their parents. Of course, most girls react with some combination of the four general ways.” (p. 43.)
Girls deal with painful thoughts, discrepant information and cognitive confusion in ways that are true or false to the self. The temptation is to shut down, to oversimplify, to avoid the hard work of examining and integrating experiences. Girls who operate from a false self often reduce the world to a more manageable place by distorting reality. Some girls join cults in which others do all their thinking for them. Some girls become anorexic and reduce all the complexity in life to just one issue – weight.” (p.61)
Mary Pipher observes that the loss of confidence in themselves that girls experience as they mature sexually occurs just at the time when more confidence is required to tackle increasingly complex work in the later years of school. Because of this socially-induced lack of confidence, even some highly intelligent girls will give up at the first sign of difficulty, where less bright male students will persist.
The book contains many succinct case histories and concludes with useful ways to approach these problems.
Male treatment of this subject - Turning Angel
How do men deal with these realities that affect their daughters, mothers and intimates so badly? In conclusion, I will mention a book by a man exploring these themes. spirit-level.jpg by novelist, Greg Iles, (Hodder and Stoughton, 2006) is a highly readable thriller that dramatises the stresses of the normalization of sexism and pornography on young girls [and men] in their last years of high school and the particular vulnerability of highly intelligent young women from dysfunctional homes. Iles looks at the temptation for upwardly mobile professional men to exploit such young women. It is also well worth a read and testifies to the continuing usefulness of the novel as a medium for social comment as well as entertainment.
NOTES
[1] Deidre Macken, “I’m starting with the man in the mirror,” Australian Financial Review, September 13, 2011.
Will Maier and Dr. Zoltanthe ask, "Why is everyone celebrating the 9/11 tenth anniversary?" in their mutant mall Freefall song.
Will Maier and Dr. Zoltanthe ask, "Why is everyone celebrating the 9/11 tenth anniversary?" in their mutant mall Freefall song.
For a catchy song about Building no 7 and other oddities associated with the 9-11 disaster in New York and the end of the Republic, click on the picture:
Why had there been no proper investigation of the 9/11 disasters?
Questions posed by the authors of the Freefall song:
1.) If Flight 93 “crashed” in Shanksville, where’s the plane? There is only a small hole in the ground and a little bit of smoke. Same with the Pentagon — small hole, no wreckage.
2.) Why did Building 7 collapse if it was not hit by a plane?
3.) How can two 110-story buildings collapse at freefall speed?
Credits
Will Maier - Vocals
Dr. Zoltan - Acoustic & Electric Guitar, Keyboard, Bass, Drumkit From Hell
"Sunshine Coast Council needs to stop approving developments, " says Vegan Warrior, Jaylene Musgrave. The juggernaut that is bulldozers clearing land and councils hell bent on more housing estates, more shopping centres and turning anything that has trees and wildlife on it into a concrete block needs to be halted. Native animals are now seen dead on roads rather than in their natural homes. The Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital in Queensland near the Sunshine Coast sees over 7000 native animals each year, the majority because they are fleeing machinery that is destroying their homes.
Land-clearing Victims
The juggernaut that is bulldozers clearing land and councils hell bent on more housing estates, more shopping centres and turning anything that has trees and wildlife on it into a concrete block needs to be halted. Native animals are now seen dead on roads rather than in their natural homes.
"If we don’t stand up and start making some noise and demanding land be kept for wildlife, we will only have ourselves to blame," says Jaylene Musgrave, who founded Australia's Vegan Warriors in 2008. Jaylene was recently nominated for the Pride of Australia Medal 2010, which recognises people who give themselves without fear or favour and people deserving of our thanks and recognition.[1] You can download a video about Jaylene's work here.
The Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital in Queensland near the Sunshine Coast sees over 7000 native animals each year, the majority because they are fleeing machinery that is destroying their homes. Ms Musgrave says that Vegan Warriors’ barrister, Peter Lavac, has approached Sunshine Coast City Council to stop the over development of the region.
"Council needs to stop approving developments," she says.
Lend Lease: Land-clearing profiteers
On 4 September, Vegan Warrior spokeswoman, Jaylene Musgrave, stated that, "Following several emails exchanged between Vegan Warriors and Lend Lease requesting the developers start putting their money where their mouths are and financially support the rescue, care and rehabilitation of the thousands of native animals injured and displaced by their bulldozers, it seems it is much easier to talk up their environmental kudos than actually do anything substantial."
International alarm at Australia's overdevelopment and wildlife depletion
She complained that that mass land clearing happening on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Australia, has attracted the attention of the international press, including the BBC, which commissioned a photographer to fly out to Queensland.
Lend-Lease should underwrite the damage it does to Australia's wild spaces and creatures
She described Lend Lease as having a website that "boasts that they 'replenish the planet' and work 'holistically' with the environment. She found these "huge statements" confusing, and her group contacted the developer corporation to ask for an explanation.
"We were told by the Project Manager of the Hyatt Coolum Development, which has left roos and birds without their homes and hit and killed by cars, that we should contact Main Roads to organise signs warning motorists of wildlife."
Jaylene says that this isn't her group's responsibility. She thought that the developers should have already arranged for such signs. She wondered why they did not attend to this as soon as possible.
According to Vegan Warriors a serious financial commitment to the wildlife cause would be a good way for Lend Lease to show that it really cares. Since the Sunshine Coast Koala Wildlife Rescue Service operates 7 days a week without any funding and rescues thousands of animals a year because of the impacts of development, Lend Lease might begin with some good works there. For instance, the rescue service desperately requires a new truck and it would be of great benefit for Lend Lease to donate one.
"Lend Lease, who make millions upon millions through bulldozing the homes of our wildlife need to make financial commitments that equate this, not just donations for local nurseries. The Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital takes in over 8,600 native animals a year, and these are the lucky ones who make it."
Vegan Warriors have extended an open invitation to Lend Lease to ride shotgun with the twin brothers who run the koala rescue service to witness first hand the devastation being caused by over development.
For comments, contact Jaylene Musgrave at veganwarriors[AT]live.com.au www.veganwarriors.com.au
PH: 0448 310 640
NOTES
[1] "Supreme Master Ching Hai's organisation is the distributor of the award. This is an organisation with bhuddist-like values and a female leader. You can read more on Wikipedia about Ching Hai. Although the organisation has been criticised for a corporate approach to business and the leader for self-publicising, others might see this as putting the enemy of the environment's own methods to good use. Financial inscrutability has also been implied, but the sums involved seem quite small and the criticisms lacking detail compared to what one usually expects of reports on corporate financial misbehaviour, such as with Enron, or Australian political party shell companies. Candobetter.net would be interested to have comments and more information for and against this organisation. It is hard to sustain criticism for an organisation which appears to offer substantial support and publicity to people all over the world who are kind to animals and try to save the environment, especially when our economies are entirely dominated by organisations hell-bent on destroying our surroundings and life support base for profit. The fact that the organisation has a female leader is also an unusual and positive attribute in a world where most religions have male dominated corporate bases.
According to Supreme Master Ching Hai, "The Quan Yin Method requires two and a half hours of meditation per day and adherence to five precepts borrowed from the Five Precepts of Buddhism:
Refrain from taking the life of sentient beings.
Refrain from speaking what is not true.
Refrain from taking what is not offered.
Refrain from sexual misconduct.
Refrain from the use of intoxicants."
Readers may also wonder if candobetter.net has a religious or vegan bias. No. Candobetter.net is a website for reform in democracy, environment, population, land use planning and energy policy. Our writers come from various walks of life, but they all have a commitment to these principles. Human forces working for the environment are rare and you can find initiatives for such reforms in unusual places, some of which do have religious and vegan bases. Conversely, human forces working against the environment are vast, obscenely wealthy and multitudinous and include religious, political and corporate organisations which benefit from property development and consume everything, including their own children's future.
Media Release... Exactly as I or anyone would have thought. A hungry dog is more likely to approach people and try and get food, and then they have to be "managed" to prevent attacks. It's all a self-fulfilling prophesy to keep their numbers down for tourism. The fine was more about upsetting the status quo and about having their little scheme exposed for what it is. People living on islands don't usually survive without importing food. Why should these animals have to? "Sustainable" numbers for dingoes is one thing, but "sustainable" human numbers - and their overshoot - gets ignored.
Save Fraser Island Dingoes Inc.
13 Sept. 2011
Dingo Strategy has no bite...
Recent reports obtained through freedom of information suggest that the government has been misleading the public regarding the cause of aggression by the Fraser Island Dingo.
These reports, dating back to 1994 and Commissioned by the Government, clearly demonstrate that feeding is not the main cause of aggressive behaviour. In fact the reports state that loss of fear when combined with hunger, is the actual cause of problem behaviour (Price 1994) and the incidence of stalking is most likely attributed to lack of foods available.
This study confirms what scientists and researchers have been saying for years, lack of food is a major factor in causing unnatural and inappropriate behaviour. A hungry animal can become volatile and unpredictable. Constant trapping, ear-tagging, hazing and destroying of animals disrupts the pack structure which, in turn, leads to anti-social behaviour, but this is not recognised in the Dept. Of Environment and Resource Management's Dingo Strategy.
DERM was aware that limiting food sources, such as closing the dumps, would have consequences. The dump closure...is blamed for starvation (Price 1994), but did not consider it of importance.
The study also discusses the fact that nipping and biting is usually provoked by visitors and that a juvenile dingo's natural curiosity and play-behaviour can be misinterpreted as aggression. Price states, nuisance behaviour is usually associated with a juvenile animals playful character". But again DERM has ignored its own findings and the majority of animals destroyed today are juveniles.
Jennifer Parkhurst, Wildlife Photographer, was fined a sum of $40,000 including a 3 year suspended sentence for feeding starving animals and allegedly causing them to become dangerous. At the time this was considered excessive, as the maximum fine for feeding a dingo is $4000; now it seems ridiculous.
DERM's management strategy is apparently based on the observations of rangers and students during the course of their field work. Jennifer Parkhurst spent 7 years of observations but her findings were dismissed.
In light of this study questions need to be asked:
Why did DERM spend so much time and effort pursuing Ms. Parkhurst in an attempt to denounce her research when her findings were similar to those of their own department?
Why did DERM subsequently use a photograph from Ms. Parkhurst's study on its website if her findings were discredited?
Why does DERM continue to deny that its management was not responsible for starvation of the dingoes when clearly this document shows that the strategy had a huge impact on the dingoes behaviour?
Why is the public only fined for feeding, but allowed to torment and tease the dingoes?
Why is the signage on the Island only warning tourists not to feed dingoes, but no signage warning tourists not to abuse the animals?
Why are members of the public not held accountable for their actions, such as not supervising children?
Why are juvenile dingoes still being targeted for destruction when exhibiting natural behaviours?
Save Fraser Island Dingoes Inc. will be taking these questions, and many more, to the government...
The way The Australian writes him up, Tim Flannery, who once wrote so articulately in defense of our land and its ecology and our place in it, now seems reduced to a quasi-apologist for extreme mining technologies. The Australian writes in such an unbalanced way. See also "Fracking Democracy..."
Candobetter.net exclusive!
First published 2011-10-10 10:02:39 +1000. Republished on 21-October 2011 at 11:37: There is a new protest movement for democratic occupation of cities all over the world, demonstrating against the financial system and its insults to most of us. We support the principles the movement espouses and urge others to do so. Days later we have unanswered questions about this movement in Melbourne, which we are hoping to elucidate. Please join in with comments.
There is a move by a GoldCoast mayor to ban rodeos. Animal rights defenders want you to support this move. One way you might consider doing this is to vote on line for banning rodeos from Gold Coast City Council land and cutting funding for such events. You can 
vote here.
Randy possums? breeding like rabbits? $160,000 of rate payers money for intrusive experimental possum birth control?" Maryland Wilson of the 
Most objections to Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's Carbon Tax are founded on the apparent belief that it is possible for human society to continue its wasteful consumption of non-renewable natural resources and destruction of our natural environment without posing any risk to the life support system which exists in this tiny corner of a Universe, mostly barren of life.
Victoria's Mornington Peninsula Shire wants to build the largest building project they have ever undertaken on foreshore public reserve land at Rosebud. The proposed complex would be 50 times larger than a recently condemned pool and needs parking for 200 vehicles. Why change something as perfect as Rosebud? Is the council mad?
Aussies take action! Lock the gate!" Australians to gather in Brisbane to defend water and land from coal and coal-seam gas fracking, which has already been 
Living near the abattoir in Kilcoy, hearing the terrified cows begging for their lives all day and night was the norm. Dad's job as the meat inspector meant he was elbows deep in the end result of the killing room floors. He became increasingly ill... I wanted to escape the terror so I gathered my books on animals and created a "library" under our old wooden house, where I would sit on my plastic seat with my best friend "Candy" at my feet. Candy was a gorgeous caramel labrador ...Also, see below article details of protest against bullriding at Kawana Stadium, 15 October.
Please help give animals a voice this Saturday 15 October, to protest the disgustingly barbaric bullriding event at Kawana Stadium 3pm onwards. Media will be covering our protest so bring placards, loud voices, friends and family.
In its transition from rich biodiversity to the barren, cold land of blizzards we see today, Antarctica provides a dramatic case study of how subtle changes in continental positioning can affect living communities, and how rapidly catastrophic changes can come about. Frozen in Time reconstructs Antarctica’s evolving animal and plant communities as accurately as the fossil record permits.
Your ABC will be giving yet more air-space to commercial growth lobbyists who will be spruiking at the Wheeler Center tonight. Publicity for the event actually claims that high density living is "great for the environment." In fact, the Australian Conservation Foundation's Consumption Atlas shows that greenhouse gas emissions of those living in high-density areas are greater than for those living in low-density areas. An analysis of the data shows that the average carbon dioxide equivalent emission of the high-density core areas of Australian cities is 27.9 tons per person whereas that for the low-density outer areas is 17.5 tons per person. (Free Event TONIGHT 12 OCT 2011.)
Growth is choking our city, our public transport, our parking lots, and streets and causing more and more "shortages", and rising costs - particularly in hospitals. Does it take a death of someone waiting to get some funding? More democracy in the system would solve a lot of the problems. When workers are too scared to complain vigorously, the patients aren't heard either. Does anyone have a choice in this system? Who is responsible?
Watch the trailer here
Participants were shocked recently to hear Ms Prue Digby, Deputy Secretary, Planning and Local Government, Department of Planning and Community Development include in her paper on "housing a growing population" a section on "eliminating the NIMBY culture" at the Informa Australia "Population Australia - 2050 Summit." Article by Julianne Bell.
Why doesn't the government cut land costs? High costs of land, and the resources it carries - energy and water - are responsible for our failing economy. The greatest costs to small and medium-sized businesses are the rents they pay for their shops, warehouses, and factories. The greatest costs to workers are the rents they pay for personal accommodation. Small and medium-sized businesses pay both for their business premises and for their personal accommodation. Manufacturing in Australia is losing out to high rents and housing costs. Wages must go up to satisfy the malignant effect of land-speculation, which government continues to encourage against our common welfare. But, why don't they just cut the land-costs? Stop pushing up property prices by reducing immigration and you won't have to put wages up. Business will become competitive on the world market again, because most of its profits won't go on rent of premises. Let's get rid of the property developers. Let's outlaw land speculation. [Title changed from "Cut land-costs, not wages. Down with property developers, Up with workers!" on 9 Oct 2011.] 
Continuing the updates on the Fukushima No.1 Nuclear Power Station in Japan from...
Should environmental organisations concerned about overpopulation enjoin Australians to have no more than two children each, for the good of the planet? Or, since our average fertility rate is below 2 children per person, should we instead congratulate Australians and ask them to keep it that way?
Despite the near daily news coverage of many poor countries suffering conflict and disaster, critical, underlying issues are almost never mentioned by journalists reporting endless symptoms and predicaments. The issues covered in this article add insight into the key development challenges facing the countries concerned and, by implication, the policies of countries like the US, UK, Australia and Canada, where billions are being spent in aid and military interventions to try and stabilise failing states.
"Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and Bob Brown are in a position to change the political, social and cultural landscape in Australia once and for all. They find themselves in the unique position of having the community support they need to stop the parliamentary puppet masters dictating parliamentary policy. They find themselves in the position to uproot the few stunted perennials that blight political, social and cultural debate in this community and let a thousand flowers bloom by passing parliamentary legislation that forces media monopolies to limit their media holdings to 10% of the privately owned media outlets in a community. They are also in a position to pass parliamentary legislation that alters the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s guidelines so that a variety of opinions, not just the major political parties’ opinions, are brought to the fore in Australia in the publicly funded media sphere." Joe Toscano 
Researcher, Ms Charlton-Robb has named the new dolphin Tursiops australis with the common name, the Burrunan dolphin. This was an Australian aboriginal name given to dolphins in the Boonwurrung, Woiwurrung and Taungurung languages. It meant ‘large sea fish of the porpoise kind’. Since the late 1800s only been three new dolphin species have been formally described and recognised, so this is an important and enchanting discovery.
Victorian government plans to drop 1080 poison bait from an aircraft into forests could result in the extinction of the already critically endangered Spot-tailed quoll. The purpose of this antiquated and vandalistic method is to poison wild dogs.
It is surprising to pick up a book about wealth statistics and find that it segues so readily into another about psychopathology in young girls. The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone takes a revealing look at how wealth is distributed within different developed countries and Reviving Ophelia illustrates the decline of women's rights in the face of aggressive pornography and its effect on girls. Children and the general public were not widely exposed to explicit pornography and sexual sadism in the ‘traditional’ mass media of the industrial age, although these notions were commonly implicit in images and concepts used for marketing all kinds of things. Between that time and now, in 2011, the depiction of women almost exclusively as victims and objects of violence and pornography, explicitly and for that sole reason, has become a global business which operates 24/7. The implicit violence and sexualisation of women in ordinary marketing has also continued. At the same time, the official message is that western women don’t need Feminism anymore because equality has prevailed.
Will Maier and Dr. Zoltanthe ask, "Why is everyone celebrating the 9/11 tenth anniversary?" in their mutant mall Freefall song.
"Sunshine Coast Council needs to stop approving developments, " says Vegan Warrior, Jaylene Musgrave. The juggernaut that is bulldozers clearing land and councils hell bent on more housing estates, more shopping centres and turning anything that has trees and wildlife on it into a concrete block needs to be halted. Native animals are now seen dead on roads rather than in their natural homes. The Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital in Queensland near the Sunshine Coast sees over 7000 native animals each year, the majority because they are fleeing machinery that is destroying their homes.
Media Release... Exactly as I or anyone would have thought. A hungry dog is more likely to approach people and try and get food, and then they have to be "managed" to prevent attacks. It's all a self-fulfilling prophesy to keep their numbers down for tourism. The fine was more about upsetting the status quo and about having their little scheme exposed for what it is. People living on islands don't usually survive without importing food. Why should these animals have to? "Sustainable" numbers for dingoes is one thing, but "sustainable" human numbers - and their overshoot - gets ignored.
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