(We) can do better

"[US National Security Advisor] John Bolton is a kind of bureaucratic tape-worm. Try as you might, you can't expel him. He seems to live forever in the bowels of the federal agency, periodically reemerging to cause pain and suffering - but critically, somehow, never suffering himself. His life really is Washington in a nutshell: Blunder into obvious catastrophes again and again, refuse to admit blame, and then demand more of the same. That's the John Bolton life-cycle. In between administration jobs, there are always cushy think-tank posts, paid speaking gigs, cable news contracts. War may be a disaster for America, but for John Bolton and his fellow neocons, it is always good business." (Tucker Carlson in Tucker Carlson Tonight 22 June 2019.) Read more in the partial transcript inside or watch the video. This session was remarkable in its forthright criticism of war, its assessment of Iraq, and its rundown, with several interviewees on the Washington war-culture and war-media. Some readers may find Carlson's praise of Trump's stated rationale for leaving Iran overly fulsome, but world peace is at stake. For those of you who loath this show because of its frequent support for Right to Life views and religion, keep in mind that that is probably the price Carlson has to pay in order to speak out against the war machine.

TUCKER CARLSON: "Neocons still wield enormous power in Washington. They don't care what the cost of war with Iran is. They certainly don't care what the effect on Trump's political fortunes might be. They despise Donald Trump. Now, one of their key allies is the National Security Advisor of the United States. John Bolton's an old friend of Bill Crystal's. Together they helped plan the Iraq war. When Bolton made it to the Whitehouse, the neocons cheered. Left-wing New York Times columnist, Brett Stevens, took a break from attacking Donald Trump, to celebrate his hiring. [...]

Hilary Clinton's toppling of Libya was not a disaster, says John Bolton. Keep in mind there are literally slave markets operating in the streets of Tripoli right now. No problem, Bolton's fine with that. He's fine with the outcome in Iraq too. That wasn't a disaster either. According to John Bolton, that was a raging success. We killed hundreds of thousands of people, lost thousands of our own troops, spent more than a trillion dollars - all to eliminate a WMD threat that, despite John Bolton's assurances, never existed in the first place.

Bolton is glad we did all that. Really happy about it. That's demented. Normal people don't talk like that. There's nothing normal about John Bolton. Check out this piece of tape we've recently uncovered in which Bolton promises we're going to overthrow the government of Iran. Keep in mind that this was filmed long before the Iranians shot down a single drone. [Film excerpt shows Bolton in front of a huge audience predicting a celebration in Iran of a successful regime change by America before 2019.]

In other words, last night has been in the works for years. John Bolton is a kind of bureaucratic tape-worm. Try as you might, you can't expell him. He seems to live forever in the bowels of the federal agency, periodically reemerging to cause pain and suffering - but critically, somehow, never suffering himself. His life really is Washington in a nutshell: Blunder into obvious catastrophes again and again, refuse to admit blame, and then demand more of the same. That's the John Bolton life-cycle. In between administration jobs, there are always cushy think-tank posts, paid speaking gigs, cable news contracts. War may be a disaster for America, but for John Bolton and his fellow neocons, it is always good business."

Carlson then interviews Glen Greenwald of The Intercept.

TUCKER CARLSON: "Glenn Greenwald co-founded The Intercept. He joins us tonight. So, Glen, the reaction to the President not going to war tonight has been really striking. Very little celebration about it. In certain quarters, outright attacks [gives example of CNN's national security analyst and of a congresswoman, Lis Cheney] What about Washington makes war the first resort for both parties, every time?

GREENWALD: "It's exciting, so it drives media ratings. It makes people buy newspapers. Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations (1776) wrote about how, when a country becomes an empire, the people in the capital never get any risk from wars. So, Liz Cheney and Bill Crystal, David From and the people who cheer war, are never put at risk, but they get excitement and purpose from it. They get kind of a feeling of power. Ben Shapiro on Twitter today said, "Let's show Iran that we can match them!" That's something that people say when they go through life feeling inadequate and without any kind of purpose or strength. So it gives people strength. And there's also this much deeper issue that after the Iraq war, almost nobody other than Judy Miller, the single scapegoat, - There was no accountability, no accountability for the people who lied the country into the war. So you get somebody like Geoffrey Godberg you look at someone like Jeffrey Goldberg who for The New Yorker was writing award-winning articles claiming that Sadam Hussein was in an alliance with al-qaeda making people believe that Iraq did 9/11.
Is he out of journalism because of that? No he's been promoted! He's the editor in chief of the Atlantic. You turn on MSNBC, there's Bill Kristol! You open up the New York Times, there's Brett Stephen, Marc Thiessen in the Washington Post. They're all embedded in Washington culture, the think tanks especially. And they only become important and enlivened when the US is at war. They get all kinds of psychological economic and political benefits from it at everybody else's expense. If you claim that there was a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and al-qaeda, 9/11 and Saddam, it's clearly untrue. How in the world could you stay in journalism? I mean do you know? How could Jeff Goldberg go on to run one of the most famous magazines in English? The thing is, Tucker, the more you promote war - even if you get it wrong - the more you're going to prosper.

That is the sickness, the pathology of the DC media and political class. Jeffrey Goldberg's articles won a national magazine award for creating a grotesque conspiracy that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Not only should he not be in journalism, he should be out of decent society. And yet, when it came time to compete for whether he was going to stay at the New Yorker or go to the Atlantic the owner of the Atlantic gave him and his children rare exotic horses to lure him away from the New Yorker and he now runs one of the most important magazines in the world. You see that all throughout the media; the same people who not just lied about Iraq, but who cheered all kinds of wars in Muslim countries get prosper from it. They get promoted. They continually get treated as the voices of authority, and that's why this continuously goes on. It is so mind-bogglingly corrupt it's hard to believe. It happens in our city in our business."

The Sydney Morning Herald of June 4th this year reported that Kristina Keneally, labor's Shadow Minister for Home Affairs, would advocate the economic importance of immigration - a sign the Opposition is willing to make the case for a bigger Australia as it considers its post-election policy platform. It would be a policy that was against the wishes of a majority of Australians and would be destructive economically, environmentally and socially.

The SMH of June 14th stated that the official ABS figure for unemployment had increased to 5.7% . Australia's unemployment rate is now among the worst in the developed world, according to the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development of the 36 rich nations which comprise the group, Australia is now ranked 20th in terms of unemployment. Two years ago, Australia was 14th and in 2013 it was among the top 10 which does suggest we are going downhill very rapidly, especially when you consider unemployment was around 2% from the 50's right up till the oil price shock in the 70's . What makes it worse is the official unemployment figure is a very conservative estimate with others like Roy Morgan research putting it at 10.3% and also stating ;

“The latest Roy Morgan employment estimates show that 11,926,000 Australians were employed in May, down 166,000 on a year ago in May 2018. The fall in employment has led to a rise in unemployment over the last year, up by 53,000 to 1,369,000 (10.3% of the workforce) in May. In addition to the high level of unemployment there are 1,223,000 Australians (9.2% of the workforce) now under-employed for a total of nearly 2.6 million Australians either unemployed or under-employed equal to 19.5% of the workforce.”

Australia's unemployment rate is now well above other comparable nations including the United States (3.6 per cent), Britain (3.7 per cent), New Zealand (4.2 per cent), Germany (3.2 per cent) and Japan's 2.4%. It is also not uniform across the nation or demographics, with unemployment among youth in rural areas reaching over 20%, and it does not consider that around 2 million Australians are working multiple jobs or high levels of unpaid overtime. A study by the Australia Institute found that Australian employees will work a total of about 3.2 billion hours in unpaid overtime this year, that's an average of six hours’ unpaid work a week in 2018 - up from 5.1 hours in 2017 and 4.6 hours in 2016. Those worst affected include the disabled, indigenous people, and migrants, especially those on temporary work visas. Many temporary migrant workers in Australia are chronically underpaid by their employers as revealed by the 2017 report, Wage Theft in Australia. One was paid for 38 hours work when he clocked in for 70 hours over a 2 year period. He was afraid to complain because of a threat to cancel his visa and, as he said;

“But the worst part is that he (former employer) was from my own community. When our own people exploit us, then you wonder who to trust in a new country.”

During the run up to the 2019 election, the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, continually referred to the issue of employment using the tag, "Jobs and Growth," and claiming that over the last five years the government delivered more than a million jobs. However almost half of the new jobs created between 2013 and 2018 were part-time, and the share of part-time work in total employment grew notably. Greater reliance on part-time jobs transforms a given number of hours of work into a larger number of jobs — but at the cost of reduced income, insecurity of employment, and underemployment. Even so a million jobs does sound significant until you take into account that our population grew by 1.7 million in that time and according to Commonwealth Bank senior economist, Gareth Aird, a million jobs is really only about enough to keep the unemployment rate flat.

A cynic might argue that high unemployment maintained by high immigration rates is the stock and trade of the coalition government, who use it as a tool to control wage growth and provide the likes of Adani with desperate job seekers. It is however harder to rationalise why the labor party would acquiesce to such a scheme, given its potential impact on employment, although market economics still dominates their policies. The Labor Party would argue that high population growth increases GDP - but our GDP growth has been lacklustre and, more importantly, the per capita GDP growth – which is a more useful indicator indicator – is only 0.3% compared to the UK's 1.2%, US 1.6%, Japan 1.9% and Germany's 1.7%. The last two nations in the unemployment list I quoted managed this with declining populations and declining greenhouse gas emissions, Germany 31% reduction since 1990, and Japan 8.2% in the last 4 years, while Australia's emissions continue to increase.

Pontius Pilate, of course, was the judge who condemned Jesus Christ to death, according to the bible. The crime Jesus was punished for was that of leading a religion critical of the values of the Roman state. Modern authorities try to defend their right to have criminal secrets in order to justify pursecuting Assange, who has led a world-wide movement for transparent and just government. If UK or Swedish judges deliver Assange to authorities who then deliver him to the United States, they may claim that they are only doing their duty under the law, just like Judge Pontius Pilate. I am not religious, but I think this is a valuable parable for our time.

I first became aware of Julian Assange through Wikileak's publication of the "Collateral Murder" material. [Collateral murder comes from the expression 'collateral damage', a euphemism coined by the US war machine to describe civilian deaths and material damage in war.] I was filled with admiration and relief that someone was exposing the continuing illegal role of the US Army in Iraq and its vicious conduct. I could not understand why the United States had not been universally condemned for the lies it used to illegally invade Iraq and then why a range of US-NATO allies failed to condemn its continuing brutal occupation of that country. I next became aware of the US-NATO horror caused in Libya and then in Syria. As my awareness grew, so did the effrontery of the United States. Soon it was accusing Russia of aggression, as the US itself surrounded Russia with US bases. See the map.[1]

Criminal state

Now, in the ultimate criminal state absurdity, Britain, a major partner to US in weapons sales and war crimes in the Middle East, is aiding and abetting the United States to punish the one man who was able and courageous enough to expose the United States for its war crimes within war crimes. Obscenely, but revealingly, a small-time London magistrate, Judge Deborah Taylor, showed the clay that British "justice" is based on, as she 'diagnosed' [SIC] Assange a "narcissist" [an upstart] and thereby sentenced him to 58 weeks in high security prison, presumably for crimes of personality and class. She completely ignored what ordinary people can see and what she must have seen; that he was correctly in fear of his life from the criminal government of the United States and its vassal, the British government. She had to know that extradition was in the wings, but she pretended that it was not.

It is hard to find out anything about this woman, but, contrary to her supposed impartiality, she seems to me to be either the servant or the dupe of the British upper class. That ruling class considers that it has the right to engage in murder and mayhem all over the world by supplying weapons for cash, but woe-betide any commoner who might expose its crimes for public judgement. Should the US elites succeed in their plans to exact their cruel revenge on Julian Assange, I think that Judge Deborah Taylor may go down in history as the woman who helped send modern civilisation down its final corridor to total enslavement and war.

Julian Assange unlike Jesus won't rise again, so we must protect him

For Julian Assange, unlike Jesus - another 'upstart' - probably won't arise again. You may or may not believe in Jesus, but the crucifixion story is a valid parable nonetheless and it is all about justice and democracy: After Judas identified him, Jesus was convicted by a magistrate, Pontius Pilate, of the crime of trying to lead the jews against the Romans in a revolutionary religion, which preached love instead of war, slavery and pillage.[2] Later the Romans adopted Christianity and when the Roman empire fell, the Holy Roman Empire continued. In the 16th Century Henry VIII took over as head of religion in England and called it the Church of England. The Church of England still claims to believe that Jesus Christ died to save the rest of us from oppression. The queen is supposed to believe that. British magistrates are supposed to act within that paradigm, but we can see that they do not.

In Jesus' case, at the site of crucifixion, the attending crowd was asked who they would prefer to save: Jesus or another revolutionary, Barrabas. The crowd chose Barrabas.[2] We, however, do not have another revolutionary of Assange's extraordinary global profile, but neither is anyone asking us if we want to save Julian Assange.

It is up to us to save ourselves and Julian Assange and the right to shine a light on the crimes that the power elite carry out all the time.

We live in a world, sadly, where electronic technology has reached a point at which people with money can do almost anything. They can launch wars for profit, carry out torture, influence the courts and the media, and then they can secretly try and imprison anyone who attempts to expose what they have done. That's why they are persecuting Julian Assange. They are out to prove that they can silence any protest.

These rich power-elites are networked and they back each other up. Julian Assange, as part of the alternative media, exposed this network - and he did not take sides. Even the cowardly mainstream media that pretends he is not a journalist republished the information he provided. If Julian is extradited to the United States, judged guilty in a secret court (for it will be secret) publishing in the western world will suffer the same fate as publishing in Muslim countries. Remember Charlie Hebdo and "We are all Charlie."

We are all Julian Assange now. Jesus of Nazareth was a local phenomena that went viral. Julian is a global phenomena in a global world - but he may be our last because, after him, what individual will ever achieve such a political profile, if the power-elite get their wish for utter media control and total secrecy?

US-NATO Military Industrial Media Congressional Complex

Humans who live in modern techno civilisations are only apparently better than their ancestors; they are essentially the same, in different clothes, with different technologies. Without those materials and technologies, we are our ancestors. And so are our masters. They can be just as vicious as Attila, just as grasping as the Roman Emperors, and just as cowardly as modern generals who order drone executions without trial on people far away. America's 'Exceptionalism' seems to be no different from Hitler's belief in the 'master race' doctrine. The United States openly uses its Exceptionalist doctrine to justify the invasion, occupation and genocide involved in its multiple regime change projects, which seem to have two aims: to get control of fossil fuel resources and to make money out of weapons in continuous rolling wars. Weapons sales seem to be the most profitable industry in the world. That is what Julian Assange is up against.

Julian Assange's plight shows how little worth Australian citizenship has and how worthless our US subservient politicians

Of course, none of this persecution of one inspired giant of a man could have been achieved if the client vassal state to America, Australia, had not remained collusively silent. Successive Australian governments have pretended that they have provided Assange with 'appropriate' consular support. That is why I say that Assange's plight shows how little worth Australian citizens have in the eyes of the Australian Government. As Assange himself once said something like that it is right for Australians to look at what happens in Washington, because that is where the real government of Australia is. As an Australian, I am ashamed of my government and I cannot understand why my countrymen remain so cowed and confused about what this all means.

NOTES

[1]
The US has 800 to 1000 military bases world wide. Russia has only eight, and these are located close to its own borders. France has nine. The United Kingdom has the most next to the US.
These bases are themselves occupations by the United States of sovereign powers: Here is a list of military bases by country. Australia also has a US base. Citizens in Australia and most or all countries that the US occupies with armed forces have protested again and again, yet their governments have acquiesced to the US, not to the democratic demands of their citizens.

[2] According to biblical history, Pontius Pilate served as the prefect of Judaea from 26 to 36 A.D. He convicted Jesus of treason and declared that Jesus thought himself King of the Jews, and had Jesus crucified. In the Gospel according to Mark, Pilate’s main question to Jesus was whether he considered himself to be the King of the Jews, and thus a political threat (Mark 15:2). In the Gospel according to Luke, Temple authorities had decided that Jesus was guilty of blasphemy, but brought him to Pilate to accuse him further of sedition against Rome. The Gospel of Luke says that Pilate handed Jesus over to the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas for judgment on the grounds that Jesus was a Galilean and thus under Antipas' jurisdiction. Jesus was publicly flogged and then executed by crucifixion as a traitor to Rome. All Gospels say that it had been a tradition of the Romans to release a Jewish prisoner at the time of the Passover. Pilate offered the crowd at the execution site the choice of releasing either Jesus or another revolutionary named Barabbas. The crowd stated that it wished to save Barabbas. Accordingly, Pilate condemned Jesus to crucifixion.

The most honest man in Britain today is Julian Assange, while the most dishonest are those who are engaged in his ongoing persecution.

(This article by John Wight was first published at https://www.rt.com/op-ed/461768-assange-extradition-justice-british/ on 13 June 2019.)

Koala populations would once have stretched across the Australian continent, but have now shrunk to the point where we could lose them forever, according to new research that has tracked the impact of diminishing forest cover.

A team of researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH) pieced together the records of koala populations and their food trees up to 130,000 years ago — and projected their changing habitats into the future. Using a combination of climate, soil, and tree data, as well as records of koala fossils, the researchers developed sophisticated modelling to trace the impact of changing distributions of the eucalypt trees on which koalas depend for food.

Their work reveals that prior to humans arriving in Australia, koala populations were found in the southern tip of Western Australia, and on the Nullarbor Plain that stretches from Western Australia to into South Australia.

The pattern of koala populations suggests that forests of eucalyptus trees extended across the continent in the past few hundred thousand years. But there has been a rapid loss of forests over the past 7,000 years.

As the forests retracted eastwards, koala populations disappeared, and they are currently only found on the south-eastern and eastern coasts.

“We found that climate change caused koala population extinctions in south-western Australia and in the Nullarbor Plain. We also showed that future climate patterns will likely increase the extinction risk of koalas in their remaining eastern ranges,” said lead researcher and CABAH Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr Farzin Shabani from Flinders University.

The study, published in the journal Ecography, used mathematical models to predict the past and future distributions of 60 species of trees, mainly Eucalyptus, that are eaten by koalas. The team included researchers from Flinders University and The Australian National University, as well as colleagues from Switzerland and Iran.

The researchers applied the same models to predict the distribution of eucalypt forests up to 2070 as the climate continues to warm. In the face of other threats such as deforestation and disease, koalas are likely to experience future declines.

CABAH Chief Investigator Professor Corey Bradshaw from Flinders University said there is hope for the most quintessential of Australian fauna — if action is taken to protect existing habitats and replace those already destroyed.

“Climate change has already reduced global biodiversity and will continue to do so, driving sometimes rapid shifts in the distributions and abundance of many species, and possibly causing many to go extinct in the near future. On that front, Australia and its unique species — the koala — is not exceptional,” Professor Bradshaw said.

"The smear campaign by author @kevinroose who claims my videos among others radicalised a man, are defamatory lies, and I have the receipts. The NYT said my videos radicalised a man to hate muslims and immigrants. It listed three of my anti-war videos among them, seemingly unaware that I am a muslim immigrant. I spoke with the man they claim I radicalised, and he said i had nothing to do with it and he barely watched my videos. So whose really behind this censorship campaign?"

Some of you may have heard a segment in 'Blueprint for Living' program last Saturday which dealt with water (identified as a finite resource) and in which population growth was mentioned but then went on to discuss several technical solutions and the economics of selling rural/agricultural water to cities where it could command a higher price. The issue of increased demand being within government control through limiting immigration was not discussed. As we have come to expect from the ABC, population growth was a given, an immutable fact. Accordingly I have made a complaint to the ABC as follows:

Complaint

The segment complained about concerns [over] water supply. < a href="https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/blueprintforliving/water-for-thirsty-cities/11176282">Jonathan Green interviewed Erin O'Donnell and Chris Chesterfield. While a growing population was identified along with water being a finite resource the program then dealt exclusively with technological 'solutions' to increasing demand and probably a worsening situation due to climate change).

Population growth is a policy direction for all our political parties. It is a deliberate political decision in which over 60% of population growth is due to very high immigration. Australia has one of the driest climates and one which is very likely to become drier. Water, a finite resource, is likely to become more limited even while government, opposition and The Greens pursue a policy which gives Australia one of the highest rates of population growth among OECD countries. But your program nowhere suggested that one of the directions that Australia could pursue in managing future water demand is to cut its immigration program and limit those policies which encourage Australians to have children. This is not to 'blame' migrants in any way for Australia's water problems; it is to blame the policy of high population growth pursued by our political parties. Prior to the last few years of the Howard Government Australia's immigration program was a great deal smaller. Returning to this smaller intake would help relieve not just a serious water shortage but a number of other infrastructure deficiencies as well.

I recently complained about a 'Breakfast' program dealing with water in which the interviewee mentioned population growth several times but in which Fran never took up the issue or discussed it.

Many of my colleagues join me in a view that the ABC has a persistent and pervasive bias against dealing with the issue of population growth as population growth relates to so many everyday issues. It is not sufficient to run an occasional program on population; population growth pervades so much of Australia's current life and future that it should also pervade the ABC programs which deal with a wide variety of important issues."

You can listen to the ABC program and write your own complaint. See the last line in my complaint and see why the latter is important.

Australian employer groups frequently claim that a strong ‘skilled’ migration program is required to overcome perceived labour shortages – a view that is shared by Australia’s state and federal governments. However, the available data does not support their assertions.

Article first published at by Unconventional Economist in Australian Economy at 12:12 am on June 10, 2019

First, while Australia’s is said to run a ‘skilled’ migration program, the Productivity Commission’s (PC) 2016 Migrant Intake into Australia report explicitly stated that around half of the skilled steam includes the family members of skilled migrants (secondary applicants), with around 70% of Australia’s total permanent migrant intake not actually considered ‘skilled’:

…within the skill stream, about half of the visas granted were for ‘secondary applicants’ — partners (who may or may not be skilled) and dependent children… Therefore, while the skill stream has increased relative to the family stream, family immigrants from the skill and family stream still make up about 70 per cent of the Migration Programme (figure 2.8)…

Primary applicants tend to have a better fiscal outcome than secondary applicants — the current system does not consider the age or skills of secondary applicants as part of the criteria for granting permanent skill visas…

Second, the Department of Jobs & Small Business produces an annual time-series tracking skills shortages across occupations, which shows that skills shortages across managerial and professional occupations were running well below the historical average and close to recessionary levels:

This matters because out of the 111,099 permanent visas handed out under the skilled stream in 2017-18, three-quarters were for professionals and managers, where skills shortages are largely non-existent, as shown above.

To add further insult to injury, the top five occupations granted visas under the skilled stream in 2017-18 were as follows:

• Accountants (3505)
• Software Engineer (3112)
• Registered Nurses (1561)
• Developer Programmer (1487)
• Cook (1257)

According to the Department of Jobs and Small Business’ list, not one of these professions was considered to be in shortage over the four years to 2017, whereas Software Engineer has never been deemed to be in shortage over the entire 31-year history of this series.

The situation is little better for Australia’s Temporary Skill Shortage (TSS) visa system. According to the Department of Home Affairs, there were 34,450 primary visas granted in 2017-18, of which 25,620 (74%) were for professionals and managers; again where skills shortages are largely non-existent.

The failure of Australia’s so-called skilled migration program to alleviate genuine skills shortages is hardly surprising given almost any occupation is eligible, as the below list attests:

• 216 occupations are eligible for the Employer Nomination Scheme visa (subclass 186)
• 673 occupations are eligible for the Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme (subclass 187)
• 212 occupations are eligible for the Skilled Independent Visa (subclass 189), the Temporary Graduate Visa (subclass 485), and the Skilled Regional (Provisional) Visa (subclass 489)
• 427 occupations are eligible for the Skilled Nominated Visa (subclass 190)
• 504 occupations are eligible for the Skilled Regional (Provisional) Visa (subclass 489)
• 508 occupations are eligible for the Temporary Skill Shortage (TSS) visa (subclass 482).

The above lists do not require that these occupations are actually experiencing skills shortages, which means that these visas can be used by employers to access cheap foreign labour for an ulterior motive, including to avoid providing training and lowering wage costs.

Accordingly, the 2016 Senate Committee report, entitled A National Disgrace: The Exploitation of Temporary Work Visa Holders, found temporary skilled visas were “not sufficiently responsive either to higher levels of unemployment, or to labour market changes in specific skilled occupations”.

Adding to the mess, the salary floor for TSS visas has been frozen at the pathetically low level of $53,900 since 2013-14, which is $32,700 below the average full-time Australian salary of $86,600 (which comprises both skilled and unskilled workers).

Given the above, it is not surprising that actual pay levels of ‘skilled’ migrants in Australia are abysmally low.

According to the ABS’ most recent Personal Income of Migrants survey, the median employee income of migrants under the skilled stream was just $55,443 in 2013-14.

Several surveys have similarly shown that most recently arrived skilled migrants are working in areas well below their reported skill level.

For example, analysis by the Australian Population Research Institute (APRI), based on 2016 Census data, revealed that most recently arrived skilled migrants (i.e. arrived between 2011 and 2016) cannot find professional jobs. That is, only 24% of skilled migrants from Non-English-Speaking-Countries (who comprised 84% of the total skilled migrant intake) were employed as professionals as of 2016, compared with 50% of skilled migrants from Main English-Speaking-Countries and 58% of the same aged Australian-born graduates.

APRI’s results were supported by a 2017 survey from the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, which found that 53% of skilled migrants in Western Australia said they are working in lower skilled jobs than before they migrated to Australia.

With this detailed background in mind, it is interesting to read that the Morrison Government has announced reforms to Australia’s permanent residency points system in a bid to ensure it is better targeted towards skilled migrants. From SBS News:

In April this year, the immigration department announced some changes to the point system. These changes will come in effect from 16 November 2019.

According to the new rule, applicants who do not have a spouse or de facto partner will get 10 points.

“Points are awarded for attributes that are linked with the applicant’s ability to make the greatest economic contribution, as the key purpose of the skilled migration program is to maximize the economic benefits of migration to Australia,” the legislation reads…

“The idea is to bring more skilled migrants and discourage unskilled partners who come with married skilled migrants.

“Married invitees with kids fill more places with non-skilled migrants and leave lesser places for skilled migrants,” says [[Immigration Expert Rohan] Mohan.

The reforms are in response to the PC’s findings (above) that half of the skilled stream is taken up by family members of skilled migrants, many of whom are unskilled.

While the changes announced are good in theory, members of the Indian community are already working out ways to game the system and skirt the rules:

[Immigration Expert Rohan] Mohan says many of his clients are waiting for November.

“People have put their marriage on hold to claim these extra points. Earlier people would get married before applying to claim five extra points on behalf of their partners. Now we can see the opposite trend”…

Dilip Kumar, an Australian visa-hopeful says these extra points will help him in a big way.

‘My IELTS score is not very high, so I am counting on the extra points,’ says Dilip who is an auto mechanic in Karnataka and preparing his application for an Australian visa.

Education and Migration agents are also advising clients on Facebook on how to fill in forms to avoid scrutiny by the Department of Home Affairs:

This kind of visa system gaming is common among applicants from India’s Sub-continent, as explained by Melbourne Indian community leader Jasvinder Sidhu, who also acknowledged “widespread… corruption from top to bottom”, with “thousands and thousands of people… being sponsored and they’re all fake”:

JASVINDER SIDHU: These people just get away. Even if they’re caught, media or otherwise through police and thing, they just go on bail and I think the system is very, very easy on these sort of things.

NICK MCKENZIE: It’s easy to rort?

JASVINDER SIDHU: Yes, very easy to rort. You have 10 ways to rort and then if the Government has one rule, you have actually 10 responses how to basically bypass those rules.

NICK MCKENZIE: The Australian Border Force has spent the last 12 months investigating criminal syndicates involved in visa rorting, but insiders say the problem is massive. One of the Immigration Department’s top officials until 2013 has now broken his silence. He says visa rorting was and is endemic and has largely been ignored by politicians focusing on the boat people issue.

Joseph Petyanszki managed investigations for the department for eight years. He wouldn’t be interviewed on camera, but has given 7.30 a statement about what he calls, “The shocking and largely unknown fraud within our working and student visa programs”. He describes a world of “shonky immigration agents” where, “fraudsters …. enter the community with ease”. He points to immigration law “loopholes”, “major integrity problems” and a department which has struggled to cope with such an, “attack on the integrity of our systems”. Petyanszki blames a, “lack of funding and politics”. He says, “It’s been easy to deflect the public’s attention to boat arrivals,” but this fear-mongering has totally ignored, “where the vast bulk of real fraud is most significantly undermining our immigration programs”…

JASVINDER SIDHU: Yes, there’s corruption from top to bottom. Thousands and thousands of people are being sponsored and they’re all fake. The whole system cannot work that smoothly if there’s no corruption in the system.

NICK MCKENZIE: Someone on the inside has to know?

JASVINDER SIDHU: Oh, yes, definitely. Even if you do a bit of overspeeding, you are caught, but this is a huge corruption – huge level of corruption and it is so widespread.

Clearly, Australia’s skilled migration program is a giant fraud that is failing miserably to meet its original intent, lowering wages, crush-loading Sydney and Melbourne, and wrecking overall liveability.

It needs root-and-branch reform, not token changes like those announced above by the Morrison Government.

Blockchain-based social media platform will reward and return control to social media users

WASHINGTON, June 3, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Social media is fundamentally broken and is in need of a complete overhaul.

Block.one today announced Voice, a blockchain-based social media application designed with users of the platform in mind. Voice is a more transparent social media platform for the world, where the value of good content gets circulated right back into sustaining the community, not corporate bottom lines.

"The truth is, current social media platforms are designed to use their users," said Brendan Blumer, CEO of Block.one, who opened the company's June 1 event at the DC Armory in Washington, D.C. with the announcement of Voice. "Just look at the business model. Our content. Our data. Our attention. These are all incredibly valuable things. But right now, it's the platform, not the user, that reaps the reward. By design, they run by auctioning our information to advertisers, pocketing the profit, and flooding our feeds with hidden agendas dictated by the highest bidder. Voice changes that."

Voice will cultivate creation, sharing, discovery and promotion of content on social media platforms by real users, not bots and fake accounts. Through a truly self-sustaining economy of ideas, users will directly benefit from their ideas and engagement on the platform.

Block.one will launch the Voice platform on the EOS Public Blockchain.

Being built on the EOS Public Blockchain, which runs on the EOSIO protocol, means that interactions on Voice will be public, allows for transparency to be a core part of the experience. Everyone -- the user, to contributor, the platform -- plays by the same rules. No hidden algorithms, no invisible interests.

Block.one is uniquely positioned to lead this social media revolution. Its first product, EOSIO, was a global initiative to build a more scalable, secure and flexible blockchain framework that would enable people to reimagine, rebuild and restore trust in the systems enterprises and users rely on today. As a result, the multitude of networks built on the EOSIO software are consistently the most used public blockchain platforms in the world, accounting for upwards of 70% of all blockchain activity.

Block.one also announced substantial upgrades coming to the EOSIO protocol, Version 2. With its first iteration released a year ago, EOSIO 2 will introduce EOS-VM, an update to the software that allows the processing of smart contracts 12 times faster than EOSIO 1.0. EOS-VM is a WebAssembly Engine designed specifically for blockchain smart contracts.

With its Version 2 release, EOSIO is also now the first blockchain protocol to adopt WebAuthn authentication standards to bring greater security and usability to applications built on the EOSIO platform. These enhancements are in line with Block.one's commitment to driving mass adoption of blockchain through applications developed for use in business and everyday life.

Security, privacy and ease-of-use will always be critical in Block.one's projects. In line with these values, Block.one is implementing support for hardware security keys, such as the YubiKey from Yubico, built into EOSIO Version 2. Block.one and Yubico are working towards a common set of goals which encourage innovation and provide security and privacy at scale. Industry collaborations drive awareness for mainstream users to the benefits of a fundamentally secure infrastructure on a blockchain-based platform. This "earn as you learn" online course will educate users on the benefits and functionality of EOSIO.

The event drew approximately 300 attendees who included industry influencers, developers, investors, media and members of the community. Guests were also able to see demos of Voice and receive the first EOSIO Yubikeys at the event.

A video of the event can be found on the June 1 event page: block.one/june1

About Block.one
Block.one is the global leader in high-performance blockchain software. In 2018, it published the EOSIO software, a free, open-source protocol designed to be adapted and utilized by the developer community and companies to create a secure and transparent back-end system. EOSIO is regarded as the fastest, most scalable, most active blockchain software in the world. It addresses the limitations of first-generation blockchain platforms while retaining the core benefits of the technology: security, accountability and immutability. Block.one also aims to foster a robust blockchain ecosystem through developing and supporting projects built on EOSIO via its venture capital unit, EOS VC. For further information, please visit block.one, voice.com and eos.io

An https://science.sciencemag.org/content/364/6443/881international study has revealed extensive removal of legal protection for conservation reserves, at a time when the preservation of these areas is more important than ever to biodiversity. The study, published today in Science, involving a global consortium of researchers led by Conservation International, documents how governments from 73 countries, including Australia, have removed more than 500,000 km2 from protected areas and downgraded protection for an additional 1.65 million km2 to allow greater human impacts.

The research examined losses occurring over a 125 year period. Alarmingly, more than three quarters of these losses occurred since 2000.

Dr Carly Cook, an ARC DECRA Fellow at Monash University’s School of Biological Sciences, led the assessment of changes to Australian protected areas.

She identified more than 1,500 changes, resulting in the removal of 13,000 km2 from conservation areas and undermining protection for an additional 400,000 km2.

“The losses we see in Australia reflect a shift towards the commercialisation and exploitation of conservation areas for human uses,” Dr Cook said.

“We’ve seen governments across the country open up protected areas to commercial developments, such as hotels and marinas, and introduce a string of changes to permit forestry, livestock grazing, hunting and fishing.”

“People think protected areas offer permanent protection for biodiversity, but this isn’t the case.

“The future for protected areas is increasingly uncertain at a time when natural systems face greater threats than ever.”

With an estimated 1 million species now at risk of extinction, what is the future for protected areas? The study shows that no conservation areas are immune to losses, with protection removed from important biodiversity hotspots, such as the Amazon Basin, and iconic areas, such as Yosemite National Park in the US.

Removing protected areas, or allowing activities that are not compatible with biodiversity conservation, will negatively impact the species these areas were designed to protect. Losing protection increases habitat loss and means natural areas become smaller and more fragmented.

The authors are calling for greater transparency to fully understand the scale of the problem and the impacts on biodiversity.

“A single change in legislation can have an alarming impacts,” said Dr Cook.

“For example, a legislative amendment to allow commercial development in NSW impacted 600 national parks and nature reserves.”

The study authors call for international conventions to establish systems to monitor and report on the loss of conservation areas that match current systems for tracking their establishment.

In the absence of systematic monitoring and reporting, studies such as this are critical for increasing awareness of the ways in which protected areas are being undermined.

A copy of the paper can be found here. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/364/6443/881

May 28, 2019 U.S. Government Seeks NGO Help For Removing Iran From Syria. The U.S.Department of State is offering a grant of $75,000,000 to non-government-organizations to help it to further meddle in Syria. The grant SFOP0005916 - Supporting Local Governance and Civil Society in Syria will go to "Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education".

The task description is quite interesting as the NGOs which will eventually get the grant will have to commit to counter one of Syria's military allies:

The purpose of this notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) is to advance the following U.S. Government policy objectives in Syria:

Ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS and counter violent extremism, including other extremist groups in Syria;
Achieve a political solution to the Syrian conflict under the auspices of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2254; and,
End the presence of Iranian forces and proxies in Syria.

The Department of State's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, Office of Assistance Coordination (NEA/AC) aims to advance these policy objectives by supporting the following assistance objectives:

Strengthen responsive and credible governance and civil society entities to capably serve and represent communities liberated from ISIS.
Advance a political solution to the Syrian conflict under the auspices of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2254; and,
Counter extremism and disinformation perpetuated by Iranian forces, designated terrorist organizations, and other malign actors through support for local governance actors and civil society organizations.

The operational field for the grant is not only the Syrian northeast which U.S. troops currently occupy, but also the al-Qaeda infested Idleb governorate as well as all government controlled areas.
The related Funding Opportunity Description (available through the above link) does not explain what an NGO could do to advance the highlighted U.S. government goals.
Work on the three year project is supposed to start on January 1 2020. It must be applied for by August 2 2019.

Wikileaks statement: Wikileaks has grave concerns about the state of health of our publisher, Julian Assange, who has been moved to the health ward of Belmarsh prison. Mr Assange's health had already significantly deteriorated after seven years inside the Ecuadorian embassy, under conditions that were incompatible with basic human rights. The United Nations twice found him to have been arbitrarily detained and called on the United Kingdom to honor its committments under international law and free him. The UK's refusal to abide by UN rulings, and its subsequent treatment of Mr. Assange since his arrest, presents serious questions about the UK's standing as a human rights-abiding nation.

In his last year in the embassy, as the US finalized its extraditions plans, Julian Assange was, at the bequest of US authorities, totally isolated and gagged - a situation designed to make his life as hard as possible.

During the seven weeks in Belmarsh his health has continued to deteriorate and he has dramatically lost weight. The decision of prison authorities to move him to the health ward speaks for itself.

We strongly condemn the refusal by the Swedish court to postpone a hearing on 3rd June on the basis of Mr Assange's health condition. Defense lawyer for Assange, Per Samuelson said that Julian Assange's health state last Friday was such "that it was not possible to conduct a normal conversation with him."

Tomorrow, May 30, there is a formal hearing in Westminster Court on the Extradition request by the Trump administration. The initial U.S. warrant has been expanded to include a life sentence or potential death penalty under the Espionage Act, announced las week in the superceding indictment which disclosed 17 additional charges, bringing the potential sentence to 175 years in prison. The indictments have beenwidely condemned by free press organizations as the most serious attack against publishing activities in modern times - the Trump administration in essence criminalizes the very act of journalism. The indictment utilises the archaic Espionage Act of 1917 to indict a publisher for the first time in history - in an unprecedented escalation of the Trump administration's war on the free press.

Kristinn Hrafnsson, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief:

"Julian's case is of major historic significance. It will be remembered as the worst attack on press freedom in our lifetime. The People need to voice their condemnation; it is their politicians, their courts, their police and their prisons that are being abused in order to leave this black stain on history. Please act now to avert this shame."

Source of this press release from WikiLeaks is https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1133847992656715776

In this video Jimmie Dore analyses an article by Elizabeth Goitein,[1] "The U.S. says Julian Assange ‘is no journalist.’ Here’s why that shouldn’t matter,"(May 25, 2019) which appeared in the Washington Post, showing how prosecution of Assange would go against the First Amendment and threaten, not just journalists, but anyone who speaks, reports, writes or publishes. Inside there is another video interview with US lawyer Alan Dershowitz by Afshin Rattansi, on the same issue.

Alan Dershowitz: Julian Assange’s indictment threatens all mainstream outlets! (E752)

"On this episode of Going Underground, we speak to Alan Dershowitz (Harvard Law professor and former legal adviser to Julian Assange) about the latest indictment against the WikiLeaks founder, the danger it poses to mainstream outlets such as CNN, the New York Times and Washington Post, the silence of most Democrats and Republicans on Assange’s persecution, Donald Trump’s state visit, and more. Next, we speak to Mauritius’ Permanent UN Representative Jagdish Koonjul after the UN General Assembly voted to urge the UK to leave the Chagos Islands. He discusses the UK’s history of occupation of the islands, what he calls ‘unfinished decolonization,’ and why the UK should end its administration of the Chagos Islands."

Notes

[1] Elizabeth (Liza) Goitein
Co-Director, Liberty & National Security Program

Elizabeth (Liza) Goitein co-directs the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program. Ms. Goitein is the author of the Brennan Center’s report The New Era of Secret Law and co-author of the reports Overseas Surveillance in an Interconnected World, What Went Wrong with the FISA Court, and Reducing Overclassification Through Accountability. She is also the author of the chapter “Overclassification: Its Causes and Consequences” in the book An Enduring Tension: Balancing National Security and Our Access to Information, and co-author of the chapter “Lessons From the History of National Security Surveillance” in the 2017 Cambridge Handbook of Surveillance Law. Her writing has been featured in major newspapers including The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and LA Times, and she has appeared on national television and radio shows including the The Rachel Maddow Show, All In with Chris Hayes, the PBS NewsHour, and National Public Radio’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered. She has testified before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees.

Before coming to the Brennan Center, Ms. Goitein served as counsel to Senator Feingold, Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and as a trial attorney in the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division of the Department of Justice. Ms. Goitein graduated from the Yale Law School and clerked for the Honorable Michael Daly Hawkins on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

*Ms. Goitein is admitted to the Bar in the State of Massachusetts. Her practice in Washington, DC is limited to practice before U.S. courts as provided in DCCA Rule 49(c)(3).

In March 2019 two law firms filed cases at the ICC against Syria’s President Bashar Al Assad and unnamed members of the Syrian government. Toby Cadman of Guernica Chambers and Rodney Dixon of Temple Garden Chambers were the protagonists in this latest attempt to criminalise the Syrian President and government.

These law firms are basing their case upon the testimony of 28 “refugees” from Syria who claim they were “forced” to flee to Jordan during the war that has been waged against Syria by a collective of interventionist mafia states that form the U.S coalition, determined to achieve regime change in Syria.

Syria is not a signatory to the ICC in the Hague but precedent was set by the ICC when a preliminary investigation was opened into military leaders of Myanmar for alleged crimes against humanity involving deportation of Rohingya people. Refugees fled to Bangladesh which is party to the Rome statute that established the ICC, as is Jordan where more than 1 million Syrian refugees now reside. Guernica Chambers and Rodney Dixon are clearly hoping that the Rohingya precedent will open up the legal avenue for their case.

Both legal firms are claiming the intended deportation of Syrian civillians by the Syrian government as part of their cases.

However, even some members of the legal profession, have already remarked upon possible holes in the case being presented by both legal entities. Kevin John Heller is Associate Professor of Public International Law at Amsterdam University. According to Heller, there is a vital element of the Syrian situation that distinguishes it from the Myanmar situation. Heller argues that in Myanmar, it is evident that the government “intended to drive the Rohingya into Bangladesh” while in Syria it is not evident that the Syrian government intended (in the legal sense) that their civilians end up in other countries. Heller points out that without sufficient evidence,  the Syrian government may only be accused of “forcible transfer” but not “deportation”. “Forcible transfer” falls outside the ICC’s jurisdiction because it takes place uniquely on Syrian territory.

Read more at 21st Century Wire https://21stcenturywire.com/2019/05/28/latest-attempt-to-prosecute-president-assad-at-the-icc-is-further-criminalisation-of-international-justice/

There is an accepted truism that when it comes to politics what appears to be a conspiracy is usually just the result of poor government decisions. It is a logical conclusion given that conspiracies require clever conspirators and politicians are generally not seen as being clever. This of course is not correct, its a belief acquired because politicians are continually criticized by the media and even more so by their colleagues.

Like or loath him John Howard was a smart politician – he did after all survive 10 years as PM and won an election after involving us in an illegal war in Iraq. Having said that, how many bad decisions can be made on one issue before we have to conclude that no government could be that incompetent without intent?

And how many bad decisions are allowed to continue because there has been a conspiracy of silence enforced by the need for party unity and the lack of whistle blower protection? Malcolm Turnbull managed to delay an inquiry into the banking sector, perhaps the only time he ever had the support of his entire party colleagues.

The fact that the then government was hounded by the opposition to hold the inquiry is seen as a vindication that a multi party democracy is self regulating and cannot provide the cross party cooperation needed to sustain a conspiracy.

Bipartisan adherence to Milton Friedman doctrine

However there have been instances when such cooperation feeds mutual self interest such as political donations or adherence to a mutually shared doctrine like market economics, something that occurred when Keating embraced the market ideas of Milton Friedman.

This meant there was no political party able to challenge the dangers of free trade or the reliance on an economy dependent on growth. Markets are about money, not morality.

Australian manufacturing past history

In 1970 475,000 cars were made in Australia, the 10th highest rate in the world producing an export industry which saw cars shipped to Asia, NZ and the US. Australia was one of only 13 countries with the capabilities to design and develop mass market cars from scratch.

Much the same applied for rolling stock, buses, tractors and shipbuilding, which contributed $1.7 billion directly in value added to Australia’s Gross Domestic Product. At its peak, the ship construction industry employed approximately 14,600 people across a variety of occupations such as shipwrights, engineers, and naval architects, and supplied a defense industry as well as the local shipping industry, that is now almost all foreign owned.

Shipbuilding, like any manufacturing industry is a driver of innovation and we became the worlds best at producing fast ferries one of which (Incat) held the coveted Blue Riband award for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic ocean and was later acquired by the US navy, where they were built in the US under license.

We were also the 3rd nation to launch our own satellite from our own country because we had at that time a space industry.

Australian manufacturing now

Australia has now become a resource mine for the rest of the world, which leaves it unable to wean itself away from a resource based economy, and highly vulnerable to price swings in just a few commodities. This switch from a diverse economy was achieved through a number of economic decisions, which had the cumulative effect of limiting export opportunities and exponentially increasing our demand for imports.

In 2018 our total imports came to $A314.0b or about $A12,560 per person. But these were made up largely of goods we once manufactured in Australia: Machinery, cars, white goods, furniture, bedding, lighting and electrical components necessary to supply the 221,877 houses we build every year.

Australia now imports over 1million cars at a cost of US $29.4 b as well as $4.4b in spare parts which could have been made locally, all of which has to be paid for by exports, which are are predominately resources with coal, ores, precious metals and gas making up the majority, while Food (grains, meat & primary products) make up only another 13.9%. We are now one of the world's biggest exporters of non renewable resources with Newcastle as the worlds biggest coal port.

How dumbing down our manufacturing sector affects action on climate change

So if we want to take action on climate change we must buy the solar panels that were once made here, as well as the wind turbines and much of the electrics. We will have to pay for these with our resource exports by increasing mining or land clearing and then pay again for the machinery to dig out the minerals. And for every increase in population we will need to pay for that extra $12,560 he or she takes in imports. With a population growth of 395,100 last year this is obviously impossible. We have been conned by economists who used GDP as a indicator of success while aware that it remained insensitive to poverty, unemployment, mortgage debt and balance of payments.

Marine Le Pen has called on French President Emmanuel Macron to dissolve the National Assembly after her party took over the bloc led by the French president in European elections.

Results as at 10.45am Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST)

“The President has no other choice but to dissolve the National Assembly and allow for a more democratic voting system in order to better represent this country’s majority political opinion,” Le Pen said, adding that it's now about her party versus Macron’s.

“The fading of the traditional parties and the polarization between the National Rally party and the [Emmanuel Macron’s] Renaissance party confirms that the political scene is now split between nationalists and globalists and that’s what dominates our political life.”

Le Pen's National Rally party may obtain around 24 percent of votes, according to different exit polls, narrowly beating Macron's party, which is expected to score some 22 percent. So far there were no comments from the president himself but Elysee officials were reported calling the results "disappointing" but not punishing, and not a reason for the government to abandon its agenda. [Source https://www.rt.com/news/460325-lepen-macron-dissolve-assembly/]

It looks like the scare tactics of the latest globalist party in France, Macron's Republique en Marche, have reached their use-by date, as the French among other Europeans, realise that Macron is a hollow man or, as the Italian president once said, "a laboratory creation". This is despite the enormous support from the mainstream media received by Anglophile Macron, who has banned RT from press conferences, pursued journalists for exposing shameful French military secrets, and embraces the false-ideology of 'fake news'. The dogged resistance of the Yellow Vests in France has probably paid off, and it will be interesting to see what new forms and definition this popular French movement will take between now and the next French Presidential elections - which are not until 2022.

Interesting also is the third force in France's trending European Parliamentary elections - Europe Green Ecology (Europe Écologie Les Verts ( EELV ou EÉLV). This is a French ecological political party. Some of its policies coincide more or less with those of Rassemblement National in its desire to protect local production and avoid long-distance imports, and to promote permaculture in urban areas.

It also wants to restrict the profits of middlemen. It is anti-GMOs, wants to limit the use of pesticides, and to increase the place of organic agriculture. Its last policies might encounter resistance from agriculturalists among Rassemblement Nationale supporters and even Yellow Vests: Regarding livestock, it rejects industrialised agriculture and wants to limit the amount of meat raised in Europe in order to minimise nitrates impacting on soils. Its desire to reduce meat-consumption is also based on an old dietary model that associates the consumption of red meat with high cholesterol, but does not examine the role of combining meat and animal fats with starches and sugars, which seems to be the real culprit in obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

A group of birds that are not usually found in Australia attracted hundreds of birders to a relatively remote town on the north coast of NSW, resulting in a significant boost to the Australian economy.

A group of birds that are not usually found in Australia attracted hundreds of birders to a relatively remote town on the north coast of NSW, resulting in a significant boost to the Australian economy.

The new report by UNSW scientists – recently published in the Journal of Ecotourism –estimates that the birders who came to see the Aleutian Terns brought in more than $200,000 in revenue to the NSW economy over about four months.

Aleutian Terns breed in Alaska (USA) and east Siberia (Russia), and usually spend our summer in the North Pacific and parts of Indonesia. To experts’ surprise, they turned up at Old Bar, and on 11 December 2017, Aleutian Terns were photographed using a sandbar that many birders are familiar with for its impressive congregations of shorebirds.

“After word got out to the birding community on 11 December 2017, the who’s who of Australian birders travelled to see these birds until about the end of March 2018,” says study lead author and UNSW Science PhD student Corey Callaghan.

“It was a unique case because there wasn’t just one individual vagrant bird, there were more than a dozen.”

The study by the UNSW Sydney-led team is the first to quantify the economic impact of a vagrant bird – a species observed outside its normal geographic range – in Australia. It estimates the birders’ activity brought between $199,000 - $363,000 to the Australian economy.

The study comes after a similar study published last year, also led by Corey Callaghan, estimated that a single Black-backed Oriole in rural Pennsylvania resulted in more than $US220,000 revenue for that local economy.

“I think together, these studies are demonstrating the exceptional pull of vagrant birds to birders, while also showing the real economic potential of these events. They are contributing to local economies around the world all the time,” Mr Callaghan says.

One of the other authors of the study – Professor Richard Kingsford, Director of the UNSW Centre for Ecosystem Science – says the untapped potential of these visitors also has implications for much-needed increased conservation funding.

“We found that birders were generally conservation aware and would be willing to donate up to $30,000 to view rare birds. Often vagrants are in National Parks and protected areas, providing a potential fundraising opportunity,” he says.

Vagrant bird chasing is just one aspect of the bird watching hobby.

“The total economic benefits of birders, generally, is much higher,” Mr Callaghan says.

“Many birders don’t travel or ‘competitively’ seek out birds; they appreciate them in their local park or bush.”

For example, according to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, up to $US40 billion dollars per year are spent on watching birds in the US.

“Ultimately, all birds depend on their habitats and so the benefits to the economy from birdwatching need to be factored in as real contributions, stacked up against development threats that destroy their habitats, such as land clearing,” Professor Kingsford says.

“The contribution of biodiversity to the economy is quite clear and needs to be factored in more in the future – at the moment, this is rarely done."

Overdevelopment and overpopulation in Australia wreck a lot of things, but some of you might not have thought about how they wreck art. The other day a very 'successful' Australian landscape artist, who sells his paintings for several thousand each, observed that thirty years ago he used to sell his paintings for an average of $3000 each and he still does. "Problem is," he observed, "My house, which cost $60,000 then, is now worth close to a million. Paintings have not gone up.

In midst of an interesting and wide-ranging discussion on the Joe Rogan Experience, Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard said that if elected president she would drop all charges against NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

“What would you do about Julian Assange? What would you do about Edward Snowden?” Rogan asked in the latter part of the episode.

“As far as dropping the charges?” Gabbard asked.

“If you’re president of the world right now, what do you do?”

“Yeah, dropping the charges,” Gabbard replied.

Rogan noted that Sweden’s preliminary investigation of rape allegations has just been re-opened, saying the US government can’t stop that, and Gabbard said as president she’d drop the US charges leveled against Assange by the Trump administration.

(Article by Caitlin Johnson, republished with thanks from https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/05/14/gabbard-says-shed-drop-all-charges-against-assange-and-snowden/.)

“Yeah,” Gabbard said when asked to clarify if she was also saying that she’d give Edward Snowden a presidential pardon, adding, “And I think we’ve got to address why he did things the way that he did them. And you hear the same thing from Chelsea Manning, how there is not an actual channel for whistleblowers like them to bring forward information that exposes egregious abuses of our constitutional rights and liberties. Period. There was not a channel for that to happen in a real way, and that’s why they ended up taking the path that they did, and suffering the consequences.”

This came at the end of a lengthy discussion about WikiLeaks and the dangerous legal precedent that the Trump administration is setting for press freedoms by prosecuting Assange, as well as the revelations about NSA surveillance and what can be done to roll back those unchecked surveillance powers.

“What happened with [Assange’s] arrest and all the stuff that just went down I think poses a great threat to our freedom of the press and to our freedom of speech,” Gabbard said. “We look at what happened under the previous administration, under Obama. You know, they were trying to find ways to go after Assange and WikiLeaks, but ultimately they chose not to seek to extradite him or charge him, because they recognized what a slippery slope that begins when you have a government in a position to levy criminal charges and consequences against someone who’s publishing information or saying things that the government doesn’t want you to say, and sharing information the government doesn’t want you to share. And so the fact that the Trump administration has chosen to ignore that fact, to ignore how important it is that we uphold our freedoms, freedom of the press and freedom of speech, and go after him, it has a very chilling effect on both journalists and publishers. And you can look to those in traditional media and also those in new media, and also every one of us as Americans. It was a kind of a warning call, saying Look what happened to this guy. It could happen to you. It could happen to any one of us.”

Gabbard discussed Mike Pompeo’s arbitrary designation of WikiLeaks as a hostile non-state intelligence service, the fact that James Clapper lied to Congress about NSA surveillance as Director of National Intelligence yet suffered no consequences and remains a respected TV pundit, and the opaque and unaccountable nature of FISA warrants.

Some other noteworthy parts of Gabbard’s JRE appearance for people who don’t have time to watch the whole thing, with hyperlinks to the times in the video:

• Rogan gets Gabbard talking in depth about what Bashar al-Assad was actually like when she met him and what he said to her, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone bother to do before.
• The two discuss Eisenhower’s famous speech warning of the dangers of the military-industrial complex, and actually pause their dialogue to watch a good portion of it. Gabbard points out that in the original draft of the speech, Eisenhower had intended to call it the “congressional-military-industrial complex”.
• Good discussion on internet censorship and the dangers of allowing monopolistic Silicon Valley corporations to control public speech, then later discussing the possibility of breaking up these corporations or treating them as public utilities.
• Rogan asks Gabbard what she thinks happens to US presidents that causes them to fail to enact their campaign promises and capitulate to the will of the warmongering establishment, and what as president she’ll do to avoid the same fate. All presidential candidates should have to answer this question.
• Rogan asks Gabbard how she’ll stand against the billionaires for the American people without getting assassinated. All presidential candidates should have to answer this question as well.

I honestly think the entire American political system would be better off if the phoney debate stage format were completely abandoned and presidential candidates just talked one-on-one with Joe Rogan for two and a half hours instead. Cut through all the vapid posturing and the fake questions about nonsense nobody cares about and get them to go deep with a normal human being who smokes pot and curses and does sports commentary for cage fighting. Rogan asked Gabbard a bunch of questions that real people are interested in, in a format where she was encouraged to relax out of her standard politician’s posture and discuss significant ideas sincerely and spontaneously. It was a good discussion with an interesting political figure and I’m glad it’s already racked up hundreds of thousands of views.

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“Face up to the fact that the Liberal, Labor and Green Parties are not going to move on this issue on anything other than the point of an electoral gun, and conduct ourselves accordingly.” We have to deal with the magic pudding myth which says the world's poor can achieve western standards of living that people living in western countries will be able to more or less maintain their standards of living, that we can maintain our current rate of population growth, and we can protect the environment. It is a lie. You've heard Al Gore talking about climate change and inconvenient truth? Well, this is a convenient lie. It enables environmental groups to duck the population issue, but it is a monstrous and deceitful lie. Researchers who've looked at this say there could be a European standard of living for everyone, with sustainable use of our natural resources, provided the earth's population was no more than two billion. Kelvin also suggests that we ask political candidates if they would support Australia sponsoring a population treaty at the United Nations that committed each country to stabilising its own population. (Speech made at SPA Brisbane Seminar 27 April 2019).

Text for speech: The Political Impasse - Where To From Here?

Speech to Sustainable Population Australia National Conference Saturday 27 April 2019.

My first response to the question “Where to from here” is that we need to seize the high moral ground. Now in the political party which I was a member of for over 40 years, there is a saying “In the race of life, always back the horse called self-interest. It doesn’t always win, but it always gives you a bloody good run for your money”.

And because population stability would serve so many Australians, particularly younger ones, better than rapid population growth, it is indeed very tempting for us to pitch our arguments in that direction. But the population debate is not fundamentally a debate about putting a few more dollars in people’s pockets. It is a debate about values. It is a debate about what kind of world we are going to live in, and what kind of world we are going to pass on to our children.

I don’t know about you, but I am sick to death of commentators and social media smart alecs trying to paint anyone who raises the issue of population as racist or selfish. The opposite is the truth, and we should unashamedly claim the high moral ground.

In August it will be ten years since I first advanced in the Federal Parliament two propositions - that the world had a population problem, and that Australia has a population problem.

As that tenth anniversary approaches I have reflected on what has been achieved since then, and the short answer is, not much. There are few signs of a shift towards population stability and sustainability either globally or here in Australia, and the debate about population continues to be dominated by the greed of the political right, and the vanity of the political left.

But to get a clearer perspective on the population issue, I prefer to go back not 10 years to 2009, but 50 years to 1969. In the summer of 69 Bryan Adams was playing his guitar till his fingers bled. And I was a teenager getting interested in the environment and politics. My father and I got involved in the campaign to save the Little Desert and the Lower Glenelg River in Victoria from being cleared for agriculture.

That successful campaign saw the establishment of the Victorian Land Conservation Council. It was a time that seemed to me to mark the establishment of the modern conservation movement, not just in Victoria, but in many other parts of the world.

I had a very rosy view of the future. I thought Australia’s pioneers had made a lot of environmental mistakes, but we were learning from those mistakes, and in future we were going to properly protect our unique and beautiful birds, plants and animals.

I had a pretty rosy view about everything else, too. I thought that not only were we lifting our environmental game, but that EVERYTHING would get better.

Yes we were involved in a stupid war in Vietnam, but I thought that that the Second World War and the Holocaust committed on the Jewish people was so wicked and so evil that we had learned from that. That there was an appetite for peace. That war and conflict would become a thing of the past, and things would continue to get better and better.

So what has actually happened in the last 50 years? The world’s population has more than doubled - 3.6 billion back then, 7.7 billion now. Australia’s population has also more than doubled - from 12 and a quarter million then to 25 million now.

The effect of this on the world’s wildlife has been nothing short of catastrophic. The latest WWF Living Planet Report says that since 1970, 60% of the population of all mammals, birds, reptiles and fish has been lost. 60% in less than 50 years!

This is terrible, it is a disgrace, and it makes an absolute mockery of the idea that we’re decoupling growth from environmental damage- that we can continue to grow, and our wildlife won’t disappear. Let me repeat - in the last 50 years our numbers went up by over 50%, and the world’s wildlife went down by 60%.

Co-incidence? Hardly. As has been noted by The Overpopulation Project, the total weight of vertebrate land animals 10,000 years ago was - Humans 1%, Wild Animals 99%. Today it is the Wild Animals that are the 1%. Humans are 32%, and our livestock are 67%.

So in my view there are two aspects to claiming the high moral ground. The first is to focus on this environmental havoc and destruction. Part of this should include being involved in the climate change debate. For example, the 2018 Victorian Greenhouse Gas Emissions Report shows total net greenhouse gas emissions went up by 7% between 1990 and 2016. Transport emissions went up by 39%, due to an increase in the number of passenger vehicles by over 70,000 each and every year.

The report explicitly noted that “population growth is an important driver of emissions trends in a number of sectors and sub sectors”.

So Victoria’s rapid population growth of over 100,000 each year fatally undermines all the good work being done by Government Departments and agencies, Councils, business, community groups, families and individuals to reduce our greenhouse emissions. It is indeed pretty hard to reduce your carbon footprint when you keep adding more feet.

We need to cultivate a knowledge and love of the natural world. We should be demanding that environmental education be taught in schools, and that our children are given contact with nature. People will value and protect what they know and love, and the level of ecological ignorance and illiteracy in the year 2019 is frightening.

Dr Harry Recher says we need to act as if other species mattered as much as our own, and accept that we have a moral responsibility to share resources with other species, rather than sacrificing other species for pointless human aggrandisement. The ultimate goal of human societies is not ever more economic activity or the heaping up of endless wealth, but creating communities that allow their members to live good lives.

Dr Recher calls out the failure of the modern environmental movement to address overpopulation. He says that for the most part Australia’s environmental groups fail to discuss population matters, leaving Australia’s population policy to be made by greedy businessmen and politicians lacking in environmental concern. He says we need more discussion of population matters, not less.

I also agree with Dr Freya Mathews, who says that taking biodiversity preservation as the central goal of conservation sets the bar too low. Preventing species from becoming extinct is too modest.

Conservationists want to preserve abundant, wild nature. When we get to the point where our children will only see a platypus or a bandicoot in a zoo or a cartoon, or we’re down to our last few hundred lions and tigers, being restricted to isolated disconnected refuges, more and more of which are gated, high security compounds, then we’ve pretty much lost the plot.

To its great credit, Zoos Victoria has an Extinction Denied Program that includes captive breeding Orange Bellied Parrots. However some of the Parrots can’t get enough feed in the wild to get the strength to fly across Bass Strait to Tasmania, which is Orange-bellied Parrot custom and practice. So Qantas has been flying them across in planes. It feels like life imitating art, where Air New Zealand commercials star a white duck flying by plane across the Tasman.

Now I give full marks to Zoos Victoria and Qantas for their efforts and commitment, but when the birds need a plane to get across Bass Strait, this is not nature in all its beauty and awe-inspiring diversity, these are pathetic splintered remnants of a world we’ve laid waste to.

Dr Mathews says we have to concede that wild animals are, like sovereign peoples, entitled to their territories and ecological estates. The biosphere was shaped by wildlife as much as it was shaped for us and by us, and belongs to them as much as it belongs to us. We have no right to dispossess wild things of their ranges or degrade their environment to the point where it can no longer sustain them.

So we need to seize the high moral ground by focusing on the state of the environment. The 15000 scientists from 184 countries who issued the World Scientists Warning to Humanity in 2017 said we are jeopardising our future “by not perceiving continued rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and even societal threats”. They said “By failing to adequately limit population growth, ....humanity is not taking the urgent steps needed to safeguard our imperilled biosphere”.

One immediate aspect of this, which I encourage you to contact your election candidates and representatives about during this election campaign and indeed beyond, is vegetation cover or tree canopy cover. We need our trees and plants and grasses. It’s not just an environmental question, it’s a public health one. The good news is that drones and satellite imagery and the like enable vegetation cover to be monitored with a degree of precision we’ve never had before. The bad news is that our vegetation canopy cover is declining. So I urge you to contact your political representatives and candidates and ask them to commit to maintaining, and where possible increasing, the vegetation canopy cover in your electorate, on both public and private land. People simply have to stop bulldozing and chopping trees and shrubs down. It has to stop.

The second aspect of seizing the high moral ground is to put population in a global context. Much of our discussion focuses on Australia, as it should, but it seems to me that (a) unless there is action in other countries, no matter what we do in Australia the world is still going to go to hell in a handbasket, and (b) much of our credibility and moral authority comes from taking the global view.

We need to build alliances with like minded people in other countries, and particularly build alliances across religious and ethnic divides.

An important aspect of focussing on the issue of rapid global population growth is that there is a magic pudding myth which is implicit in much of the political debate, including from politicians and activists from the left, who really ought to know better. It goes like this -
The world’s poor can achieve Western standards of living
People living in western countries will be able to more or less maintain their standards of living
We can maintain our current rate of population growth
We can protect our environment.

It’s a lie. You’ve heard Al Gore talking about climate change as an inconvenient truth; well this is a convenient lie. It enables environmental groups to duck the population issue. But it is a monstrous and deceitful lie. In 2010 a group of researchers who studied this question in depth estimated that there could be a European standard of living for everyone, with sustainable use of our natural resources, provided the earth’s population was no more than 2 billion.

In 2013 Theodore Lianos estimated that we could maintain ecological equilibrium, and all have a per capita annual income of $11,000, with a global population of 2.5 billion or less. If the population is larger than 2.5 billion, which of course it is, ecological and social equilibrium requires lower standards of living.

Like the environmental question, there are ways of raising the global population issue in the current Federal Election and beyond. There has been some great work done by Rob Harding promoting the idea of a United Nations Global Population Stabilisation Treaty. This seems to me to have a lot of potential. Indeed it should be much easier to reach agreement around the idea of each country stabilising it’s own population, than to get agreement around emissions reductions targets in the Climate Change talks, where of course serious questions of global equity and historical legacies arise.

I encourage you to contact your candidates and elected representatives, during the election campaign or beyond, and ask them - “Would you support Australia sponsoring a Population Treaty at the United Nations that committed each country to stabilising its own population?”

We also need to talk about fertility. If you think talking about migration is tough, try talking about fertility in a culture that views pregnancy and childbirth as an unmitigated blessing. But right around the world it has to happen, and indeed some countries or communities have had success with “Two is Enough” type campaigns.

After taking the high moral ground through a focus on the environment and global population growth, we need to acknowledge that neither the Liberal Party, the Labor Party or the Greens is going to do anything serious about this issue except at the point of an electoral gun. This is a very hard thing for me to say. I have spent a lifetime in the Labor Party - I think I attended over a thousand Branch Meetings! - and in many ways I still love the Labor Party.

But these parties, until further notice, are all about suppressing and killing off this issue by any means or devices they can come up with. We need a non-racist party that takes a firm line on population and migration. That is why I have joined the Sustainable Australia Party. It has no time for racists or racism. It believes in the non-discriminatory migration policy. It is a party of the centre. Unlike populist parties of the right like One Nation, it believes in strong action on climate change and to protect the environment. It believes in strong gun laws. It believes in action to tackle indigenous disadvantage.

But it doesn’t accept the trebling of Australia’s migration program which started about 15 years ago. We want to return the program from the 200,000 per annum it is now to 70,000, which is where it used to be - in the Whitlam years and the Keating years it was actually lower than that.

So in conclusion - the question I was asked to answer was “where to from here?” First, seize the high moral ground with a focus on the environment and global population issues. Second, push elected representatives with challenging but not unreasonable asks like maintenance of our remaining vegetation cover, and support for a global population treaty. And third, face up to the fact that the Liberal, Labor and Greens Parties are not going to move on this issue at anything other than the point of an electoral gun, and conduct ourselves accordingly.

And as for the question this Forum asks - “what future do we want for Australia?” - the future I want is one in which my children, and their generation, have the same job security and opportunity we had, and can afford a post secondary education and a house with a garden and the chance to see owls and platypus in the wild the way we could. Oh, and the Orange-bellied Parrots can fly across Bass Strait without a boarding pass.

The following letter is to be sent to every independent candidate standing in the Federal Parliamentary election. A similar letter is to be sent to the candidates standing for the smaller parties. It is my hope that raising the profile of Julian Assange now may result in the election, on 18 May, of a Federal Parliament with at least a few members who are prepared to act to try to protect Julian Assange from those in the United States whose criminal conduct he helped expose to the world.

Dear Sir/Madam,

Firstly, thank you for standing as a candidate in the forthcoming election of 18 May.

Still from "Collateral Murder" video, leaked by Chelsea Manning (pictured opposite, below) to Julian Assange (opposite, top). The shorter version is embedded within this article.

I write to ask if you will use the election campaign to speak up for Julian Assange, an unjustly imprisoned Australian journalist, who faces extradition from Britain to the United States. Through the Wikileaks news service, established in 2006, Julian revealed to the world war-crimes that United States' rulers wanted to remain concealed. One of the most infamous of those incidents was the 12 July 2007 "Collateral murder" in Iraq by the US crew of an Apache helicopter.

On that day, at least 18 unarmed people, including two journalists employed by Reuters, were killed, and two children injured, by three consecutive attacks from a US Apache helicopter in Baghdad, Iraq. After the incident the Apache crew were heard laughing at the "12 to 15" bodies on the ground and at the sight of a Humvee running over one of the injured.

A subsequent inquiry by the US Army found that the actions of the Apache crew were justified, purportedly because all those killed were armed insurgents. The US Army refused to tell Reuters how two of their staff were killed on that day. Reuters attempted to obtain the video through Freedom of Information requests, but were unsuccessful.

This criminal coverup of murder was thwarted, however, when Private Chelsea Manning, who had viewed the 39 minute video of the incident, gave a copy to Wikileaks. The full version of that Video can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is9sxRfU-ik . A shorter 18 minute version can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0 and is also embedded below. For revealing this and other evidence of US war crimes to Wikileaks, Chelsea Manning was sentenced in 2013 to 35 years in prison.

Collateral Murder - Wikileaks - Iraq

As a consequence of "Collateral Murder" and other revelations, Wikileaks has drawn the ferocious enmity from those vested interests who wanted to keep that that knowledge from us. For example, on 10 August 2016, Hillary Clinton strategist Bob Beckel said, "The way to deal with this is pretty simple. We've got special ops forces. I mean a dead man can't leak stuff. ... The guy ought to be - and I 'm not for the death penalty, so, if I 'm not for the death penalty, there's only one way to deal with it - illegally shoot the son of a bitch." (see 1:14 minute video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rImgsRg-a-8.

All of Wikileaks' material has been republished in the mainstream news all over the world, again and again. No journalist other than Julian Assange has been pursued or punished for doing this. In 2010, an investigation by the Australian Federal Police found that Julian Assange has committed no crime. He did the world a courageous service and Australia should protect him. Unfortunately the ALP, the Libs, and the Greens, do not seem to have the courage to stand up to America or the UK on this matter. As mentioned above, the only party, of which I am so far aware, is standing in this election and is campaigning for Julian Assange, is the Socialist Equity Party.

Will you also stand up for Julian Assange?

It is my hope that, by raising the issue of Julian Assange to independents and small party candidates now, I might help make it possible to have a parliament elected on 18 May that will act to get Julian Assange back to Australia safely.

Yours sincerely,

James Sinnamon
/JamesSinnamon

Appendix: Candidates who support Julian Assange

Use the 'special relationship' to stop Assange extradition: Greens Senator Richard Di Natale

Australian Greens Leader and Foreign Affairs spokesperson Dr Richard Di Natale has called upon the Australian Government to swiftly intervene to ensure that Julian Assange is not extradited to the United States.

An alarmist headline? Not really. This judgement follows from an analysis of Labor’s proposed temporary visa for parents of existing migrants, entitled, a ‘Fairer Long stay parent visa for Australia’s migrant and multicultural communities’. The proposal was announced on 22 April, 2019.

Labor’s proposal is for an uncapped, low cost, temporary parent visa open to all migrant families who are citizens or are permanent residents. It will cost $2,500 for five years regardless of sponsors’ income or capacity to provide for their parents. All four parents in each household can be sponsored. The children eligible to sponsor their parents include all those who are permanent residents or citizens of Australia.

The visa will be renewable thus enabling parents to stay in Australia for ten years without having to leave. This means it is a de facto permanent entry visa since, as sponsors will know, it is highly unlikely that parents who have lived here for a decade will be required to return home.

Labor’s ‘temporary’ parent visa is an unprecedented offer. No other western country provides any similar parent visa. The trend across Western Europe is to tighten already stringent rules on parents’ access to obtain permanent residence status. The US, though it allows adult migrant children to sponsor their parents, has many hurdles, including that the sponsor must be a citizen and must meet financial capacity guidelines. Even Canada, the most overtly welcoming migration country in the west, has an annual cap of 17,000 on parent visas and, as with the US, sponsors must prove that they can meet stringent financial capacity criteria.

As we will see, Labor’s parent proposal dismantles all the careful rules successive Australian governments have, over thirty years, put in place to control parent migration. The door is now wide open for parent sponsorship. This is an especially attractive prospect of Australia’s more recently arrived Asian and Middle-Eastern communities. And here it should be noted that Australia’s Asian- born population (at just over 10 per cent) is higher than any other western country.

Australia is an enticing destination to migrants from Asia because of the large gulf between the political, social and cultural conditions here and in most Asia countries. Given that many immigrants would welcome in-house help with child care and that most Asians recognise obligations to care for their parents, the potential for Australia’s Asian and Middle-Eastern population to take up Labor’s offer is huge.

At present most permanent entry parent visas are from China, mainly because there is a balance of family rule in place. This requires that half or more of siblings are resident in Australia. Many readers will be aware that there is a waiting list of Chinese applicants for Australia’s existing permanent entry parent visa of near 100,000. They will likely take up Labor’s proposed temporary parent visa. However, many more Chinese will also become eligible. (These are people who don’t meet the present financial criteria for sponsorship, which are outlined below.)

The really big change in eligibility will come from Australia’s Indian subcontinent and Middle Eastern communities. They constitute a larger group of potential sponsors than the Chinese. Most do not currently meet the balance-of-family test or the financial requirements of the existing permanent entry parent visa.

Labor’s proposal will make then eligible to bring their parents to Australia. They will have at least as powerful a motive to avail themselves of this opportunity as the Chinese.

Labor’s proposal could easily generate at least 200,000 parent applications, mainly from Chinese, Indian subcontinent and Middle Eastern country residents of Australia, over a three-year period.
The number depends, of course, on how the visa is implemented. This is explored below. The information we have at this point on Labor’s proposal is that it will be open-ended.

Background

To grasp the significance of Labor’s proposal it needs to be seen in the context of Australia’s present rules governing the issuance of permanent entry parent visas. There are two subclasses for parent visas in operation. One is a contributory parent visa where the parents have to pay some $43,600 as an upfront contribution to the likely public costs of their stay. In 2017-18 6,015 of these visas were issued. By June 2018 there was a backlog of applicants of 44,886. The other entry point is a non- contributory parent visa with much lower up-front fees. In 2017-18 1,356 of these visas were issued. For this non-contributory visa there was a backlog of 50,642 and a wait time of over thirty years.

In effect, together the current permanent-entry parent visas are capped at less than 8,000 a year.

Moreover, both permanent-entry parent visa subclasses are only available to pension-aged parents who can meet the balance of family test. This is why most of the parents visaed are from China – since most Chinese residents are from one, or at the most, two sibling families.

However, there is another parent visa option, soon to be available for those wishing to sponsor their parents. This is a temporary parent visa which the Coalition legislated in November 2018. Residents can apply from 17 April 2019 to establish their eligibility as sponsors of their parents.

There is an annual cap of 15,000 parents and accompanying dependent for this new visa. It is for five years, and will cost $10,000. There is a limit of one set of parents for each sponsoring household. To qualify as a sponsor, the Australian resident family’s annual taxable income must exceed $83,000. [Candobetter net Editor: Reference in full paper, see end of this article.]

The visa can be renewed, once, for another stay of up to five years, but the parents need to leave Australia before applying for this renewal.

There was no official statement of the likely number of applications at the time. However internal departmental sources indicate that the 15,000 annual quota is likely to be filled.

Labor’s proposal

Labor’s temporary parent visa proposal was announced in response to the Coalition’s temporary- parent-visa legislation. In response to lobbying from migrant communities, the Coalition promised prior to the 2016 election that it would establish a new temporary visa for parents. As is evident, it took some time for the proposal to be legislated.

When the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, announced Labor’s proposed visa on 22 April 2019, he declared that the Coalition’s temporary parent visa option was ‘heartless, callous and cruel’. It was claimed that the Coalition’s visa was far stricter than originally promised, thus justifying Labor’s much more generous alternative.

As indicated, Labor’s initiative potentially opens the flood gates for parent migration. It appears to be a reckless and irresponsible policy bid put forward to garner migrant votes.
Did the Labor leaders consider the possible implications? It is doubtful that they did.

This article was based on the summary and background sections of the full paper by Dr Bob Birrell published by The Australian Population Research Institute (TAPRI) in May 2019. Read more at https://tapri.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/final-draft-parent-visa-May-2019.pdf.

Please write to Julian. He is 23.5 hrs day (sometimes all day) in a prison cell, without even access to the prison library. He reads the letters he gets, although there is a delay in delivery, probably due to their going through some censorship or security process. The international public need to greatly ramp up their voice against what is happening here.

Below are the 'Sentencing Remarks' of Judge Deborah Taylor. She gives no consideration to the fact that Assange exposed war crimes, nor to the fact that he is pursued by a US Government responsible for those war crimes. At the end she says his sentence is subject to any further legal claims - and we know that means the US Government. In this she seems to me like a Mafioso lawyer delivering someone to the mob, or to the Gestapo. The Australian Government stands silently looking on, an abject colonial body.
WRITE TO:
Mr Julian Assange
DOB: 3/07/1971
HMP Belmarsh
Western Way
London SE28 0EB
UK

Sentencing Remarks of HHJ Deborah Taylor

R v Julian Assange (Bail Act offence)
Sentencing Remarks of HHJ Deborah Taylor
Southwark Crown Court
1 May 2019

Julian Assange, on 11 April 2019 you were convicted at Westminster Magistrates Court of an offence
under s.6(1) of the Bail Act 1976, and committed to this court for sentence.

On 24 February 2011 the Westminster Magistrates Court ordered your extradition to Sweden to face
allegations of sexual offending, including an allegation of rape. You were granted bail on conditions
throughout your appeals against this order, which culminated on 14 June 2012 in the rejection of
your application to re-open the Supreme Court dismissal of your appeal. On 19 June 2012 you
entered the Ecuadorean Embassy. On 28th June 2012 a notice requiring your surrender to Belgravia
Police Station on 29 June 2012 was served on you in the Ecuadorian embassy. You did not surrender
and a warrant for your arrest was issued by Westminster Magistrates Court on 29 June 2012.
On 16 August 2012, Ecuador granted you diplomatic asylum status. You remained in the Embassy
until 11 April 2019 when that status was revoked. Police entered at the invitation of the Government
of Ecuador, and arrested you. You were brought before Westminster Magistrates Court. Bail Act
proceedings were initiated and you were convicted of the s.6(1) offence. You have not appealed that
conviction. The background to this offence is now put forward as mitigation, rather than as any
reasonable excuse for your failure to surrender.

I have considered, and had regard to the Sentencing Council Guidelines for failing to surrender to
bail, the seriousness of the failure to surrender, the level of culpability and the harm caused. This
was in terms of culpability a deliberate attempt to evade or delay justice. In terms of harm, there
are several features of this case which put this in the A1 category, but in addition, are exceptional in
seriousness, and therefore in my judgment put this offence outside the Guideline range for even the
highest category offences. The Magistrates Court has committed the matter to this court having
considered that its powers of sentence were insufficient.

Firstly, by entering the Embassy, you deliberately put yourself out of reach, whilst remaining in the
UK. You remained there for nearly 7 years, exploiting your privileged position to flout the law and
advertise internationally your disdain for the law of this country. Your actions undoubtedly affected
the progress of the Swedish proceedings. Even though you did co-operate initially, it was not for you
to decide the nature or extent of your co-operation with the investigations. They could not be
effectively progressed, and were discontinued, not least because you remained in the Embassy.
Secondly, your continued residence in the Embassy has necessitated a concentration of resources,
and expenditure of £16 million of taxpayers’ money in ensuring that when you did leave, you were
brought to justice. It is essential to the rule of law that nobody is above or beyond the reach of the
law. Orders of the Court are to be obeyed

Thirdly, you have not surrendered willingly. Had the Government of Ecuador not permitted entry to
the Embassy, you would not have voluntarily come before the court.

I have taken into account all that has been said on your behalf in mitigation, including the
background history of this case which has been set out in some detail. These are matters which
have previously been argued before the Chief Magistrate in relation to the instigation of s.6
proceedings and dismissed in her Ruling of 13 February 2018 on your application to withdraw the
warrant, and again before the District Judge in the contested hearing on 11 April 2019 in which you
did not give evidence, and they were rejected as affording any defence. They include the history of
the Swedish investigation and proceedings, with the discontinuance of the proceedings in 2017, and
your expressed fear of being extradited to Sweden but then rendered to the USA. As far as the UN
Working Group on Arbitrary Detention opinion is concerned, this is not binding on this court, and, as
is apparent from the ruling of the Chief Magistrate, with some personal knowledge of the matters
relied upon, it was underpinned by misconceptions of fact and law.

It is no longer argued that these factors amount to good reason for your failure to surrender. In my
judgment they afford limited mitigation in relation to this offence. The argument that as a result
this is a category C case is wholly unrealistic given the circumstances.

Whilst you may have had fears as to what may happen to you, nonetheless you had a choice, and
the course of action you chose was to commit this offence in the manner and with the features I
have already outlined. In addition, I reject the suggestion that your voluntary residence in the
Embassy should reduce any sentence. You were not living under prison conditions, and you could
have left at any time to face due process with the rights and protections which the legal system in
this country provides.

Similarly I reject also the suggestion that forfeiture of money by you or others who provided security
for your attendance when you failed to attend court should reduce the sentence of the court. The
money was security attached to an obligation to ensure your attendance, not a down payment to
offset or reduce any sentence you may receive for not complying.

I have taken into account the medical evidence of Dr Korzinski and Dr Ladbrooke as to the mental
and physical effects of being in the Embassy for a prolonged period.

It is difficult to envisage a more serious example of this offence. The maximum sentence for this
offence is 12 months. You do not have the benefit of a plea of guilty. You have made a written
apology today, the first recognition that you regret you actions.

In my judgment, the seriousness of your offence, having taken into account the mitigation merits a
sentence near the maximum.

The sentence is imprisonment for 50 weeks.

Any time spent on remand in respect of this offence from the time of your arrest on 11 April 2019
will count against your sentence.

In respect of this offence you would fall to be released after serving half of the sentence, subject to
being returned to custody if you commit any further offences during the remainder of your licence
period. That of course is subject to the conditions and outcome of any other proceedings against
you.

HHJ Deborah Taylor

This article is about the United States efforts to kidnap Julian Assange fom Britain where he has been illegally arrested. It was previously published as Pray and Weep (7/7/19) by Karen Kwiatkowski | LewRockwell.com.

There is great evil being perpetrated by Washington D.C. here and around the world.

A persistent terrible hate for life, liberty and humanity arrived on little cat feet and has taken over our country. This did not begin with Trump, but sadly it also is not going to end with him either.

Trump promised to drain the swamp, implying change, transparency and accountability.

Instead he brought in neoconservative king-makers and warmongers, and allowed their influence to grow disproportionately, while his co-dependents in the other party facilitate the agenda of death.

The criminal pursuit and indictment of Wikileak founder, Julian Assange is the proof in the pudding. The 40 page criminal complaint contains a lot of detail but not much crime. In fact, the “crimes” are more like descriptions of how journalism is done in the information age, if it is true that the job of journalism is to tell the stories, name the names, and state the facts that governments don’t want told, named or stated.

In a normal world, none of this is worth much energy or attention. There is very little legally here to work with, and success so far on the part of the US Government has been solely via a reliable judge in the Eastern District Court of Virginia, and other people’s money and other people’s governments, beholden or paid by the US.

But in the world that exists today, we see these overblown aggressive tactics and we can feel the excitement, the goosebumps and the hot necks of the FBI and CIA suits as they make their bones.

Chelsea Manning is back in prison, ordered back into solitary. She is not the person she was after years of torture, isolation and chemical interrogation. Ironically, her cognitive function as a result of her previous treatment is likely to render any future interrogation useless in court, legally and practically. She received the Jose Padilla treatment, albeit refined by some years of USG practice. Her resultant mental malleability may have produced the ideal Soviet Amerikan Woman.

The US appears to be a nation of laws, and yet, we absolutely are not. One of many lessons and perspectives we gain from the study of Julian Assange is just that. US political influence and debt-funded largesse resulted in Assange’s ejection from the Ecuadorian Embassy into the UK prison for terrorists in Belmarsh. US domestic corruption and misreading of the Constitution produced his indictment.

Furthermore, US government employees, from the DoD, FBI and the CIA have been interviewing Assange in Belmarsh Prison, prior to any extradition decision.

Interviewing is the wrong word. I’d like to say doctoring him, because it would be more accurate, except that word implies some care for a positive outcome. Chemical Gina has her hands in this one, and we are being told that Assange is being “treated” with 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, known as BZ. What BZ does, from the New Yorker:

“Exposed soldiers exhibited bizarre symptoms: rapid mumbling, or picking obsessively at bedclothes and other objects, real or imaginary. “…The drug’s effect lasted for days. At its peak, volunteers were totally cut off in their own minds, jolting from one fragmented existence to the next. They saw visions: Lilliputian baseball players competing on a tabletop diamond; animals or people or objects that materialized and vanished. ….

Soldiers on BZ could remember only fragments of the experience afterward. As the drug wore off, and the subjects had trouble discerning what was real, many experienced anxiety, aggression, even terror. Ketchum [Dr. James Ketchum, DoD Edgewood Arsenal, MD] built padded cells to prevent injuries, but at times the subjects couldn’t be contained. One escaped, running from imagined murderers. Another, on a drug similar to BZ, saw “bugs, worms, one snake, a monkey and numerous rats,” and thought his skin was covered in blood. “Subject broke a wooden chair and smashed a hole in the wall after tearing down a 4-by-7-ft panel of padding,” his chart noted. Ketchum and three assistants piled on top of the soldier to subdue him. “He was clearly terrified and convinced we were intending to kill him,” his chart said.

One night, Ketchum rushed into a padded room to reassure a young African-American volunteer wrestling with the ebbing effects of BZ. The soldier, agitated, found the air-conditioner gravely threatening. After calming him down, Ketchum sat beside him. Attempting to see if he could hold a conversation, Ketchum asked, “Why do they have taxes, income taxes, things like that?”

The soldier thought for a minute. “You see, that would be difficult for me to answer, because I don’t like rice,” he said.”

BZ is an interesting drug, certainly not the only one used by the US government, but one of them.

Why give it to Assange? What do they want from him? Is it truth they seek, or more information, or is this whole farce something more like obsessive retaliatory rage at feeling powerless, as the world laughed at US State department memorandums and became angry at the idiocy and hate demonstrated by US soldiers 15 years ago. Or maybe something more sinister – that they need Julian Assange psychologically and physically drawn and quartered because he revealed state corruption and weakness? Is it because to the state this is the war, the real war it always fights, a war with the rest of the population for its very survival? Or is Ray McGovern on to the real reason the deep state wants to destroy him?

It is difficult to know if the state is more sociopathic or more psychopathic. What US government employees and/or contractors are currently doing to Julian Assange, and those who may have used Wikileaks as a journalistic avenue, may indicate it is the latter. Torture, isolation, brutality, and the use of psychotropic drugs during interrogations and hiding this from the defendant’s own lawyers by denying them access — this is Lubyanka in the 1950s, not London and DC in 2019.

Allow me to get to the point. The latest word I have received from England is as follows:

“[Julian Assange] is presently under close observation in prison hospital because he has suffered ‘severe transient psychotic episodes.’ My source(s) indicate these episodes occurred after two sessions of coercive interrogation at the hands of UK and US officials. The source(s) stated the HUMINT interrogators used psychotropic drugs in the course of the sessions.”

There are no words. Nothing can be said. 2 plus 2 does equal 5. The FBI is our own special Cheka. The CIA Director’s hands are wet and her organization does not serve American values. Rather than choosing to stay secretive for national security, the modern CIA must stay secretive in order to survive, because it has become functionally illegal. Our president, who puts America first, is putting American values last, even as he tweets his concern for freedom of speech.

The agenda is to destroy Assange as a human being, and they may well succeed. In doing this evil deed, in all of our names, America herself – whether we put her first, last, or somewhere in the middle – will have dug her own grave.

See also: Video: At Sydney rally Assange’s father demands Australian government secure son’s release (7/5/19) and other articles about the campaign to free Julian Assange on the World Socialist Web Site.

John Bolton wants US oil
corporations, instead of
PDVSA, which is owned
by the Venezuelan people,
to be able to extract,
export & sell Venezuela's
natural wealth (see
embedded video).

The most recent of many attempts by the United States to overthrow the government of Venezuela has also failed, but not without a terrrible cost. According to a 27 page report by economists Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs (pdf here) the sanctions imposed on Venezuela since 2017 and theft of billions of dollars of Venezuela's gold and bank deposits have cost the lives of 40,000 Venezuelans, yet, in spite of all these hardships, ordinary Venezuelans, including members of the armed forces, rallied to defeat the attempted coup of 30 April.

The United States government leaders have made little effort to conceal their motives for having caused this much death and suffering. Watch below, National Security adviser John Bolton (pictured above), explain to Fox News on 29 January 2019 how United States' oil corporations will soon be able to able to take over the extraction and export of Venezuelan petroleum once their actions against Venezuela achieves their goal of having their appointed 'President' Juan Guaido take over from from the elected President Nicolas Maduro.

US coup in Venezuela motivated by oil and corporate interests - Neocon John Bolton spills the beans

"We're looking at the oil assets. That's the single most important income stream to the government of Venezuela. We're looking at what to do to that. We're in conversation with major American companies now. I think we're trying to get to the same end result here."

"It'll make a big difference to the United States, economically, if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela. It'd be good for the people of Venezuela. It'd be good for the people of the United States. We both have a lot at stake here making this come out the right way."

The above confirms the worst fears of the motives of the neo-con swamp that still controls the White House's foreign policy: All their platitudes about 'freedom' and 'democracy' for Venezuela are nothing more than a cynical smokescreen to cover their plans to take from Venezuela its natural wealth and hand it across to their corporate mates.

Until these thieving, lying criminals are thrown out of office and, together with their military industrial complex mates, are made to face justice, there cannot be peace.

An impressive video that misses almost no aspect of what the growth lobby is doing to this country, and backs up its criticism with some interesting new policies, some of them drastic - but the situation is drastic. Matt Bryan for Hughes

I'm developing an unreasonable sense of proprietorship over Australia's island state,Tasmania. One could call it a "Tasmania mania", I suppose. How did this seemingly irrational neurosis arise? Am I alone?

About 15 years ago I realised that Victoria, where I live, was doomed to never-ending development, due to government insistence that we have incessant population growth, heavily supplemented from overseas immigration. You would wonder how an ordinary citizen could actually notice that the population was growing. Surely the changes would be happening in places where the people have not yet settled and would be out of sight and out of mind? To an extent, this was true for a while, and you had to go to the outskirts of Melbourne to see the sea of new rooftops on the side of highways trying to hide behind high walls. Those living in the "growth corridors" would complain of the massive changes in their local areas. They would moan in agony at the farmland and treasured bush land they could see being sacrificed for yet more suburbs. They tried to make us hear about what was happening and we listened but 15 years ago our established suburbs remained intact and our lives were relatively undisturbed so we were complacent.

In more recent years, a heavy foot has trodden on the accelerator of population growth and development. There seemed to be a spark of recognition from governments that Melbourne needed to be contained in some manner. The established suburbs were told they had to take their share of the population growth load. In came the bulldozers and, at a faster and faster rate, we all noticed empty blocks in our streets, and we struggled the very next day, post demolition, to remember what had been there the day before. Some of the demolitions got publicity. The gracious Victorian or Edwardian large houses or mansions, giving way to the wrecking ball after unsuccessful but valiant struggles by locals to preserve heritage and amenity, were and continue to be soon just large cavities. All vegetation is invariably removed, except for perhaps a token tree if not in the way of the giant yet to be constructed. Noise and the disruption of continual roadworks and infrastructure upgrades are now part our lives in Melbourne's suburbs. We live with short term uncertainty but long term resignation that our home environment will continue to be heavily degraded.

I think of not only the residents who are being inconvenienced and disadvantaged, but of the suburban wildlife - especially birds who will all but disappear. Once a large garden is excavated and transformed into a basement car park, that land is no longer a home for underground insects or flowering plants or trees. Habitat, in other words, is wiped out in an instant. "Birds can go somewhere else," they say. Well they can do this if there is somewhere else to go, but that means nevertheless that they are gone from the area. You will no longer get to hear them or see them. That is a huge loss that impoverishes your soul and those of your children, possibly before you can even put it into words.

I used to derive some comfort from the actual possibility that I can always move to Tasmania. I have visited Tasmania since my childhood as my grandparents and many cousins, uncles and aunts lived there. My family had a whole summer life-style there every year and so it was in a sense a second home. As a child I appreciated its quietness and beauty. Its sense of history, Hobart having been settled earlier than Melbourne, was reflected in many of its buildings. Tasmania, in reality, is not my home though. I have never lived there and I don't own any property there. But over the last 20 years it has been in the back of my mind as a possibility, an escape-hatch, as Melbourne's population surges towards 10 million (the same population of the whole of Australia when I was in primary school.)

For these reasons I feel a sense of alarm when I hear Tasmania mentioned in the news or on television or radio programs. I feel anxious, on the alert. What are they going to do? What are they going to change? I used to delight in the fact that whenever I returned to Tasmania, even in my adult years, it was always more or less the same; low key.

Yesterday I found my Tasmanian grandfather's 100+ year old scrap book. It provides an insight into life on that island at the time, through my grandfather's youthful passion for long-distance running. There are photos, newspaper clippings, and athletes programs about the many races and carnivals of the Hobart Harrier Club. The brown pages of the album are also filled out with images of relaxed beach goers and reunions of the old competitors 40 years later.

One album does not describe a whole lifestyle, but I could not help forming the impression that life was full and that those young men a century ago had made a life for themselves which was both physically and socially rewarding. This was in a small city in a state where the entire population of was only about 180,000"

My mother grew up in Hobart of the 1920s and 1930s. At that time her parents, as did many people in Hobart, owned a beach shack on the other side of the Derwent River to the city. She told me that she and her friends would catch a ferry to O'Possum Bay to stay on weekends. On arrival they would drop their bags at the house and proceed to the beach. If they saw anyone else on their chosen beach, they would move away around a point to another beach.

In the 1950s and 60s people in Hobart still had their beach shacks. My older cousins enjoyed sports such as surfing, water skiing, and sailing. I'm sure they worked hard at their weekday jobs or at school, but what I saw, was an easy accessibility to pastimes that would to most now seem like a luxury.

One of my cousins told me a few years ago that he would never move to Melbourne, as the 'lifestyle' wouldn't suit him. I found this amusing, as it seemed to me that no-one would actually choose the lifestyle on offer in Melbourne!

I wonder if the 'lifestyle' will suit him if the population of Hobart grows as the current premier intends it to.

Having spent the in Tasmania more than half a century ago, and hearing tales of the life there yet another 50 years before that, I feel I know the place a bit. I also know Melbourne very well and have watched it change from a rather quiet city, where you could get out easily into the country on the weekend just for an afternoon and where, if you could drive to a place, you could be pretty sure of being able to park your car there. You could be spontaneous about going places. All that has gone. Now, as often as not, I will hatch a plan involving travel in or around Melbourne, and then abandon the idea because of the uncertainties of traffic and parking.

I would like to keep alive the escape-hatch dream of simply moving to Hobart when Melbourne reaches complete bursting point. My anxiety levels rise when I hear of Hobart's fast growing population or when anyone puts it on the map for any reason. I heard this morning that MONA (Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart) was to be expanded further, and I felt sad. I like MONA but to me it is not Hobart, and why does it have to be bigger? Part of its attraction is the setting and, if it expands, more of the setting will be lost.

I would prefer not hear any news coming from Hobart. I want it to be quiet and unobtrusive and to just wait for me in case I need it.

"Algorithms seem to me, at this point, the closest thing we have to demons." (Douglas Rushkoff) Douglas Rushkoff is a highly stimulating speaker with a comprehensive but original view of the problem of internet tyranny. He approaches it as a problem of monopolies and corporations in the context of economic growthism, which he argues is unsustainable and ultimately destroys companies because it costs them too much. He recommends long-term business models, which aim to support their participants. He notes that family businesses tend to do better and last longer because they have this model, rather than the growth model. In his lecture he is able to travel across several disciplines, back and forth, and to tie economics to society and soil degradation. He makes concrete and inventive recommendations. This is less about internet censorship than about the destruction of local markets and the sidelining of entire populations. Rushkoff is the author of multiple books, but in this video, he talks about a 2016 publication called, Throwing rocks at the google bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity.