World population Day was established by the UN in 1989 to highlight concerns as the planet’s population went past 5 billion. It is now at 7.4 billion and rising by about 80 million every year, so the problems are even more intractable (despite the rate of growth declining). Medium scenarios produced by the UN estimate the world population could be between 9 and 10 billion by 2050.
It may surprise some that Australia has one of the highest population growth rates in the developed world. We are adding about 325,000 people a year, with about 55 per cent from net overseas migration and 45 per cent from natural increase at the present time, although it has stood at a 60/40 ratio for a number of years.
Population is a notoriously difficult subject to discuss in public forums, partly due to the complexity of the subject and partly due to the political and emotional nature of the issues. These issues can go to the core of people’s philosophies and values and include notions of freedom and human rights, compassion, religion, progress, ecology, and economic imperatives.
In Australia, people often get confused between sometimes competing issues like refugees and asylum seekers, racism, border protection, defence, economic migration, colonial guilt, and sustainability. These tensions are not unique to Australia, as we can see from debates in Europe and the US in recent times.
What the European, American and indeed Australian problems show is that sovereign states should not consider themselves immune from population pressures in other parts of the world as desperate people will have little regard for borders or dangerous sea crossings.
To that extent, not-for-profits like Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) are continually lobbying governments to increase foreign aid to the developing world to help it gain control over unwanted and harmful population increase. Unwanted population growth can largely be curtailed through a mixture of education, the provision of modern contraception, safe emergency abortion, and the alleviation of poverty – although some people like to argue about which is more important.
Regardless, the empowerment of women is vital.
So purely from a selfish point of view it is in Australia’s interests to maintain a reasonable level of foreign aid, in concert with the rest of the developed world, and targeted to voluntary family planning programs that we know can be successful. Unfortunately Australia’s foreign-aid budget has been shrinking lately in a retrograde and myopic fashion.
But leaving the more obvious global problem to one side, Australia is long overdue for an open debate on the benefits and burdens of domestic population growth and where these benefits and burdens fall.
A recent survey commissioned by SPA found that most Australians did not think we needed more people; and a survey by SBS in May found that 59% of people thought that the level of immigration over the last 10 years had been too high*.
Proponents of a ‘big Australia’ are mostly business barons and their hirelings: the wealthy gain the most from population growth and can largely insulate themselves from its negative effects like sky-rocketing real-estate prices, long commutes to work and infrastructure shortfalls.
Meanwhile, the average person, but especially the young and the poor, suffers the most – from unaffordable housing, general congestion, and competition for access to education and health services.
More unseen problems tend to harm everybody: these include biodiversity loss, increased greenhouse gases and climate change, the reduction in fresh-water availability, and the steady increase in all kinds of pollution.
While unpopular among elites, especially economists, there needs to be a conversation about the direction our society is going. The privileging and mindless pursuit of GDP growth might not be the best option on a finite planet where limits to growth seem obvious to all those not blinded by dogma. Rather, the pursuit and monitoring of such things as general wellbeing and happiness might be a more rational strategy, especially if that means a more equal sharing of what wealth can be generated in an ecologically sustainable fashion.
If we adopt the latter planned approach, we might well find that a stable rather than an ever-growing population is more sensible. The alternative may well be an unplanned population correction that no one would find enjoyable.
"Isn't it great. Isn't it grand. After years of getting our "Hate Abbot" caffeine shot every morning from Age Letters. Now we can look forward to a new superior blend of "Hate Hanson" every morning. (No need to explain)," writes David (ZPG) Hughes in a letter to the Age editor, which he cc'd to candobetter.net. Mr Hughes, who once manned the website 'Crowded Planet," which aimed to supply contraceptives in response to global need, is a keen observer of mass media hypocrisy. But there is a lot more to be said about the relationship between Abbott and Hanson and the Liberal Party and One Nation.
When you consider that the Age's promotion of 'hate Hanson' militancy was preceded by 'hate Abbott' militancy, it is ironic that it was Mr Abbott who established a Liberal-backed fund that supported the false imprisonment of Hanson for political reasons. Yet that false imprisonment (she was let out, cleared of all charges of electoral fraud) probably lent new sympathy to her cause because there is nothing so inspiring to the underdog as a politician who is imprisoned because of the threat that the popularity of their views poses to the political establishment. Similarly, Derryn Hinch, another new senator, probably gained support because he also went to prison for actions related to his political views,[1] but his imprisonment was actually upheld. In my eyes, there is no contest between a person falsely imprisoned and the agent of their jailing. Tony Abbott led a despicable action. That he was then elected as leader of the Liberal Party and became a Prime Minister is far more shocking than anything that Hanson has been accused of.
Below is a rundown, using other sources, of what happened to Hanson:
Abbott's confession
'Abbott says sorry in Hanson fund row,' By Annabel Crabb, The Age, August 27, 2003:
"Workplace Relations Minister Tony Abbott last night apologised for not fully disclosing his involvement in a $100,000 "slush fund" devised in 1998 to bring down One Nation leader Pauline Hanson.
Mr Abbott strongly denied, in an ABC Four Corners interview on August 10, 1998, that he or any Liberal Party figures had been involved in funding the legal campaign by disaffected One Nation members to have the minor party declared invalid under electoral laws.
But last night's statement confirms that only two weeks after making that denial, he established a formal trust, Australians for Honest Politics, which collected $100,000 to funnel into anti-One Nation legal actions.
Mr Abbott confirmed that at the time of making the statements to Four Corners, he had already promised to underwrite the legal costs of disaffected One Nation litigant Terry Sharples.
"Strictly speaking, no money at all had been offered," Mr Abbott said last night.
"The lawyers I organised were acting without charge and the support for costs which I had promised would only become an issue in the event of a costs order being made against Sharples."
Hanson's release
In 2003, a Brisbane District Court jury found Hanson guilty of electoral fraud. The convictions were later overturned by three judges on the Queensland Court of Appeal. As a result of the convictions, Hanson spent 11 weeks in jail prior to the appeal being heard.
Pauline Hanson is enjoying her first night at her home since being released from jail by Queensland's Court of Appeal yesterday. Ms Hanson and fellow One Nation founder David Ettridge walked free after their convictions for electoral fraud were quashed. The decision has caused legal upheaval in Queensland while in Canberra, John Howard has rejected accusations by the appelate judges that he attempted to influence the case.
Compere: Maxine McKew
Reporter: Dea Clark
MAXINE MCKEW: Pauline Hanson is enjoying her first night at her home since being released from jail by Queensland's Court of Appeal yesterday.
Ms Hanson and fellow One Nation founder David Ettridge walked free after their convictions for electoral fraud were quashed.
The decision has caused legal upheaval in Queensland while in Canberra, John Howard has rejected accusations by the appelate judges that he attempted to influence the case.
Dea Clark reports.
DEA CLARK: After celebrating into the small hours, Pauline Hanson was back home on her property at Ipswich, enjoying her first day of freedom in 11 weeks.
Her priority, raising the flag and catching up on some chores around the farm.
PAULINE HANSON, ONE NATION FOUNDER: Yeah, the cobwebs, the pool needs cleaning, the mowing.
You can't leave it up to your sons, you really can't.
DEA CLARK: While it was business as usual today, last night was a time to catch up with family and friends, celebrating her freedom at an Italian restaurant on the Gold Coast.
While Pauline Hanson was out on the town, David Ettridge was boarding a plane home to Sydney, convinced yesterday's decision will spark a political resurgence for One Nation.
DAVID ETTRIDGE, ONE NATION FOUNDER: It will rise like a phoenix.
People who didn't vote for One Nation are going to say, "Well, we'll protest against what was done," and the attack on their democratic rights.
DEA CLARK: While it seemed she was enjoying being back in the media spotlight, Ms Hanson was tight-lipped about a possible return to the political stage.
PAULINE HANSON: I tell you what, I'd need rocks in my bloody head if I thought about that again.
MARK SIMKIN: In yesterday's Court of Appeal judgment, Justice Margaret McMurdo criticised several politicians, including the PM, for their public comments about the case.
She described them as: " -- An attempt to interfere with the independence of the judiciary for cynical, political motives."
JOHN HOWARD, PRIME MINISTER: My comments were not in any way calculated to influence the outcome.
I don't believe for a moment they did.
BRONWYN BISHOP, LIBERAL BACKBENCHER: Freedom of speech is our paramount right, and I will always speak out when there's a need to.
DEA CLARK: Back in Queensland, the political impact of yesterday's decision is already making waves.
In the wake of criticism over the handling of the case, the Queensland Government today announced an immediate review of the State's justice department, focusing on the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
But the Premier says compensation for wrongful imprisonment is out of the question.
PETER BEATTIE, QLD PREMIER: The Queensland Government, if it paid compensation here, would inevitably expose taxpayers to millions and millions and millions of dollars over a period of time, because appeals do succeed.
TERRY GORMAN, COUNCIL FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES: How unfair is it, whether it's Pauline Hanson or Mr and Mrs Anonymous from the suburbs, that they sit in jail for 4-6 months, they have their appeal overturned and they're supposed to grin and wear it.
DEA CLARK: But, for the moment, the political debate surrounding the former party leader is a world away.
Dea Clark, Lateline.
NOTES
[1] Hinch was imprisoned for contempt charges related to his political conviction of the need to publicly name pedophiles.
Video, transcript. This is a virtually complete rundown on the history of US aggression against Syria from 2001. “We have never done anything more loathsome or despicable than what we’re doing in Syria” -Virginia State Senator Richard Black. In this article, Virginia State Senator Richard Black and Janice Kortkamp discuss the shameful situation in Syria, where the US government is actively arming and funding Al Nusra (Al Qaeda) and “conduits” (“moderates”), blending them together, and then using this model to exterminate the Syrian population. It should be noted that the mass media machine is seemingly losing its effect, as more and more prominent and senior figures (e.g Robert Fisk) are calling a spade a spade, or a “moderate” a terrorist. It just goes to show that you can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but never all of the people all of the time." (Free Syrian Press introduction to the video and transcript interview below.)
JEFFREY STEINBERG: Senator Black it’s a pleasure to be here. And you’ve just returned from a trip to the Middle East, to Syria and Lebanon, and why don’t you just start by telling us what you saw and your assessments of the situation there?
VIRGINIA STATE SENATOR RICHARD BLACK: What we did, we spent the better part of a week; we spent our time in Lebanon initially; we met with General [michel] Aoun, who is sort of the presumptive next President of Lebanon. We met with Foreign Minister [gebran] Bassil who is the head of the Christian bloc of the parliament there. And also with the Syrian ambassador to Lebanon; which is a new thing. You know the Syrians have not had an ambassador there until just recently.
From there we flew to Damascus and were then taken out and we visited Palmyra, where the Syrian army conducted an enormously heroic fight to drive out ISIS and assisted by the Russians who did a very good job there. And then we drove from Palmyra to Homs. Homs is the largest province, it’s the size of an American state, but it’s also a very large city.
It was an incredible visit, because, like you, I have studied the Syrian war, the origins of the war for years, since 2011. I know you go back before that, but this is when I got so focused on it. And the best way to explain it, is that through intensive study and what we would call “open source intelligence,” you begin to get a very clear concept of what the war is all about, and the origins of the war. But when you go there and you actually walk the grounds and you shake hands with the soldiers and meet with the refugees and people like that, it turns black and white into Technicolor. And I’m going to tell you: Syria is one of the most incredibly wonderful nations on Earth. And the fact that America set out to topple the government and destroy it, long before there was the faintest hint of civil unrest, it’s really one of the great stains on American honor.
So when I went there, one the one thing that stands out so vividly is this incredible religious tapestry of religious harmony, between the Christians, the Alawites, the Sunnis, the Shi’ites, everyone; and there is such freedom of religion in Syria, and it’s stunning. You know, as an American, here we have the Federal courts being partially repressive to Christianity in particular, and you go over there and I went to the Syrian broadcast system SANA, did an interview. And I came out and in the press room here is the plywood cutout of the Christmas tree and the ornaments are journalists who were martyred covering the war. And you think, “My gosh, if you did this in the United States, the ACLU would be all over you! You’d be in Federal court, and they’d rip down the tree.”
And we went to the theater in Homs province, in Homs city; it’s a large, modern theater, probably seated a thousand people. And they introduced me and they were very polite and receptive. And I sat next to the governor and his wife, and they’re Muslim, and so I’m watching: Here’s this choral presentation, very beautiful, everyone in tuxedos and the orchestra and a very lovely woman, and naturally, the woman very charismatic, you’re focused on her; and then gradually your eyes start to shift gaze. And then, suddenly, I look and I realize that behind them is a theater screen with a projection of Jesus Christ, bloodied, crown of thorns, staggering under the weight of the cross. And I looked at it — and I didn’t even know what they were singing, because they were singing in Arabic, right? And I realized later that they were singing Christian religious songs. And I turned to the wife of the governor, and I said, “Is this a religious theater, a Christian theater?” She said, “No, no, no, this is just a regular theater for entertainment. We put on shows, we put on concerts, everything.” But it happened that on the Julian calendar, we were there for Palm Sunday and we left just prior to Easter.
And so, she said, many of the people here for the presentation are Muslim. She said, the choral group, many of them are Muslim also. And here, they’re participating in the praise of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ! Not that they are not serious Muslims, but it’s also indescribable without seeing it in person. I had heard about it, and from hundreds of Syrians, but to see it and just to encounter it at random, you suddenly were able to “breathe” religious freedom there!
STEINBERG: I think I told you, when I was in Damascus in March of 2010, some of the things that were completely stunning to me, were the Grand Mosque right off of this great market area. You walk in there; it’s a gigantic, beautiful mosque, and right in the middle of it is the tomb of John the Baptist.
BLACK: Yes.
STEINBERG: And we went to parts of the old city, and we visited one of the earliest, the very first of the Christian churches anywhere in the world, and it’s just really stunning. The first event that we went to, was an ecumenical conference. It was at a Sunni religious school; there were Shi’ite, Alawite, Sunni; there were Christians, there were Franciscan monks attending; people from Scandinavian churches. And that night there was a celebration in the old city, and they had these Sunni dervishes.
So it’s what you’re describing: If you’re not there and you don’t see it, it’s almost hard to concede that this is such a natural phenomenon in this country, and you see what the Saudis and the Turks and others are trying to establish, which this hard, sectarian fight within Islam , that has no bearing on the traditional culture of Syria as a country!
BLACK: Yes, and you know, I spoke with Lebanon very senior officials, and of course, discussed this with President Assad and with the top leadership of the Syrian parliament. And one of my questions, is why is there war in Syria? We know, this was not a popular uprising. This was a calculated decision by the CIA, MI6, French intelligence, working with the Muslim Brotherhood, Turks, Saudis — an organized plan to topple the government. And of course we were familiar that there competing plans for oil and gas pipelines. And I come up a divided mind on exactly what’s going on: It is true that the oil and gas pipelines are a major, major incentive for this war.
But the other thing, that both Lebanese and the Syrians were quite insistent on, is that it is Saudi Arabia’s desire to impose Wahhabism. They’re not content that the vast majority of Syrians are Sunni Muslims; now, if you listen to the press, they say, “oh, you know, we need a Sunni government.” Well, there are umpteen million Sunnis who are in the government and in high positions, and in the army and everywhere else. What they really mean is that we want Wahhabism, the type of Wahhabism that says that you impose severe, brutal Sharia law, and you begin beheading people, you force conversions and you take the wives of the Christians that you’ve murdered and you sell them at slave markets, which is happening right now in Iraq, perhaps in some parts of Syria also; but their feeling is that the true zeal behind this is this desire to impose the harshest, most extreme and violent, brutal form of Islamic rule.
STEINBERG: What you’re describing is the ISIS and the al-Nusra Front which is simply al-Qaeda, and the Saudis carry out beheadings, cutting off limbs, as their brand of Sharia law justice, exactly as ISIS and Nusra do in the areas they control.
BLACK: That’s exactly correct. And this has gone on through history. When I visited the Church of the Patriarch of Syria and the East, we went to a little adjacent, Christian school, and they had paintings of martyrs, and just as a reminder, that the history of Turkey, the Turks and the Saudis share the same history of violence towards those who do not share this most extreme view. And there was a painting that just stood out in my mind of a martyr, a woman during the Armenian genocide, a Christian, and the extremists had come in and they had amputated her feet and her hands. And she had an infant, and she cradled the infant and breast-fed the infant for the next couple days until she finally died of the torture they’d imposed on her.
So you know, they had suppressed this in Turkey under Ataturk, starting 1925. I read the Turkish Constitution; it’s admirable, it’s a very fine Constitution. But now you have President Erdogan who has said…
STEINBERG: He’s ripping it up.
BLACK: He’s tearing it to shreds, and he says “I want the powers of Adolf Hitler.”
STEINBERG: That’s right.
BLACK: Our ally. Our ally says, “I want the powers of Adolf Hitler!” Imagine that!
STEINBERG: Mm-hmm. And it was brushed off and explained away in the American media as a misquote or something like that, as if he hadn’t said it, and didn’t mean it.
BLACK: And he never retracted a word of it! But a spokesman said, “well, you know, it’s sort of out of context.” Well — gimme a break. How do you put “the powers of Adolf Hitler” out of context! You know?
STEINBERG: Right, exactly.
I wanted to ask you, because I think you made a very important point about the Saudis and what they want, the Turks and what they want, but if the United States and Western European were not in on this for their own reasons, from the very outset, I doubt that the Saudis or the Turks would have been able to create the mess. And I’m reminded that way back in 1991, right at the point that the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union were disintegrating, according to Gen. Wesley Clark, he met with Paul Wolfowitz in Dick Cheney’s office — Cheney was Secretary of Defense under Bush Sr.—and Wolfowitz went through a list of governments targeted for regime change because they had at various points, allied with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. And Syria was right near the top of that list; Syria, Iraq, Libya, others.
And so, I wanted to get your assessment, given the way the situation has played out, the tragedy of the last five years, do you think that this could have actually occurred were it not for the full, witting complicity of the United States, both under President George W. Bush and now, for the last seven years, under President Barack Obama?
BLACK: That’s an excellent question. If one of our assistants could hand me the black and white poster over there, I think this could help to explain it somewhat. [Placard reading “Syrian War Countdown” 16:10]
Let me just run you through this, because the timeline is extremely important: In 2001, Gen. Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe has told us, that the Pentagon was ordered by the Secretary of Defense to make plans to topple seven different countries, neutral, non-belligerent countries, in what was an act of aggression under the law of war, which is a war crime. And so, the Pentagon began war-planning 2001.
Now, President Bashar al-Assad did not take office until I think it was 2000; so he was brand new. He’d come in as a reformer. But reform, good or bad, didn’t matter; we were going to topple seven countries, all of them also enemies of the Saudi Arabians. The United States is pulled around by the nose by Saudi Arabia, and for our senior leaders in this country, they all have a meeting with Mr. Green. And Mr. Green persuades them to do whatever the Saudis tell them.
So, OK, you start with 2001, the Pentagon starts planning. In 2006, WikiLeaks has released a document that came from the Chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy; at the time, we didn’t not have an ambassador, so the Chargé d’affaires was the senior person. That document outlined, in detail, plans to overthrow the government of Syria. And the two things that stand out in my mind is, we have a problem because President Assad came in as a reformer, he’s doing a lot of positive things, and so it is drawing an enormous amount of foreign direct investment and we’ve got to smear the image of Syria so that it will begin cutting off this flow of funds, and will adversely impact the Syrian economy. This is the United States, your country and my country, saying “we’re going to destroy another country by smearing their reputation.
The other thing which I think was equally sinister, is in this country that has this beautiful religious harmony, we said have got to create religious division, religious frictions and hatred among religions, so that we can disassemble this country.
But there were six very specific things outlined. And keep in mind, in 2006, there were no demonstrations, there was no political opposition, there were no uprisings, people were prosperous, they were happy.
So here you go from 2005, we start planning the war; 2006, we come up with explicit plans. You go to 2011 and the CIA works to gain the release of the most deadly al-Qaeda operatives in Libyan prisons and uses those people to spark an uprising in Benghazi, the purpose of which — and I wish, you know, Congress, while they’re always talking about Benghazi, they never talk about before Benghazi. What was the reason we were there in the first place! Why did we attack our
ally, Colonel Qaddafi — now we have had problems with Qaddafi but we had resolved them …
STEINBERG: In 2003, he dismantled his WMD program and became — even John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham, in early 2009, were in Tripoli and said “this guy’s our best friend in our war against — ” it wasn’t ISIS yet, but “the war against al-Qaeda and the other jihadists.”
BLACK: Yes, yes. So, absolutely, he was our best ally. And however, his big mistake was he had a huge arsenal of modern weapons, that we needed, to overthrow Syria. The reason that we went into Libya was, to capture their weapons to feed and fuel the war against Syria. Because we knew, Syria was a powerfully united, cohesive nation of people who — you know, every country has people who are unhappy or who are dissidents; we have ‘em in this country — but we knew that we had a tough nut to crack here, because this was a very cohesive country. So we needed a huge amount of armaments. The reason we went into Libya was to capture these. And this is all laid out by Pulitzer Prize winning author Seymour Hersh in his article, “The Red Line and the Rat Line,” something that was censored; almost everything he’s done has been widely printed by major media, and they censored it. But the London Review of Books has it published, and he explains why we went in, how we captured the weapons, and how we started the rat line, flying arms in.
Because the CIA could not go before Congress and say, “Look, we intend to attack a neutral, non-belligerent country, where the people are happy, prosperous, and enjoy greater women’s rights and religious freedom than any other Arab nation; we’re going to rip it to shreds, we’re going to open up a torrent of bloodshed: Please give us an appropriation so we can purchase weapons to do it.”
STEINBERG: Right.
BLACK: That would not have gone over well. So, we went around it, and we captured the weapons in Libya, sent ‘em to Syria. Three months after the war in Libya, even before Colonel Qaddafi had fallen, we started the war in Syria. And the technique that we used, — now just watch the timeline: We go from 2001, we decided to bring ‘em down then, it was 10 years! An entire decade of planning and plotting and preparing.
STEINBERG: Exactly, exactly.
BLACK: So, you look at this timeline, and then, of course, we’ve employed massive, unrelenting propaganda against President Assad and his government. We call him a “regime,” the “Assad regime.”
STEINBERG: Right, as opposed to “an elected, sovereign government.”
BLACK: Yes. Now, of course, we always ignore the fact that he was popularly elected, in fair and open elections in 2014. Now, on the other hand, we sit at Geneva III at the peace talks, and on one side we have Saudi Arabia, where if you were to suggest the election of the King or dictator of Saudi Arabia, your head would be a spike the next day; and then, on the other hand, you have President Erdogan, the man who would be Adolf Hitler! [laughter]
STEINBERG: Right!
BLACK: It is so bizarre. And the method that we use, the specific method when we triggered this is interesting. The Arab Spring started with a single suicide, and it is very difficult to conceive that it did not spread without very active covert action. Nothing ever happens in politics, nothing just happens without a push.
So there actually began to be legitimate demonstrations in Syria as well as across the Middle East. What I found interesting, I talked to several people — I just bumped into them on my trip, and they said, “Oh, I was anti-Assad then.” Well, one of them turns out to be my interpreter; he’d been with me for the better part of a week! And one day we’re talking, and he said, “You know,” he said, “I was a demonstrator against President Assad.” And I said, “Oh, that’s interesting. Tell me about it?”
He said, “Well, we just started. It was during the Arab Spring, and we started holding demonstrations.” Much like, you and I have both probably been involved in demonstrations! But he said, “first, people started showing up with al-Qaeda flags.”
STEINBERG: Yeah. The black flags.
BLACK: “Then,” he said, “people started showing up with military weapons.” Now, there is no Second Amendment in Syria, so you don’t just grab a Kalashnikov at the corner drug store.
STEINBERG: Right. You don’t go to a gun show on Sunday afternoon.
BLACK: That’s right, you don’t do that. And he said, “The third thing, is they began to preach religious hatred!” And all along the demonstrators would say, “You guys, get out of here, get out of here! This is not what we’re about. We’re just here asking the government for some changes.” And the friction became tougher and tougher, and he said, “My uncle was the head of all the demonstrators” in this large city, and he said, in the seventh month of back and forth with the al-Qaeda people, they murdered him; they killed him.
And so I asked the same question of the several people I encountered, who had been anti-Assad. Well, they weren’t anti-Assad, they were demonstrators; they weren’t demonstrating against him.
STEINBERG: Sure. They wanted reforms.
BLACK: They wanted reforms. You know, I’ve been in demonstrations; I wasn’t demonstrating to bring down the government, I was there for reform.
And this was news to me, because I knew about this transition, but what was stunning that consistently, — two out of the three said that this transition took place over the span of a single month; the second one said it took place over the span of two months. So within one to two months, what started as demonstrations became an al-Qaeda-led violent, jihadist uprising. And of course, you still had demonstrators struggling to make it a demonstration. But that was how it developed.
STEINBERG: You know, it coincided with the period in 2010 going into 2011, when back here in Washington, there was a study ordered by President Obama, of how to relate to the anticipated insurgencies that were going to sweep across the Muslim world, particularly North Africa and the Middle East. The conclusion that was arrived at by people like Dennis Ross, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, was that the horse the United States should ride in on was the Muslim Brotherhood.
BLACK: Yeah.
STEINBERG: And these are still classified, National Security Study and Decision Directives, that are the cornerstone of the U.S. strategy, which was to basically play into the jihadist insurgencies.
BLACK: Yes, and you know, that brings us to a good point: You then come to the point of the uprising itself, how was this carried out? Just prior to the uprisings, Ambassador Ford was sent to Damascus; we had not had an ambassador there for some time. He was put in place by Hillary Clinton. Around that time, of course, you have all of these covert agencies; Western agencies, plus the Saudis and the Turks. And their mechanism was the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood had created a violent uprising under the father, Hafez Assad, and it’s often portrayed some put-down of these poor people. It was not at all that: It was a violent uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood copied, almost with precision, the approach that the Nazis took during Kristallnacht, which triggered the anti-Jewish backlash by the Nazi Party. The Nazis during Kristallnacht and they painted the Jewish star on all Jewish buildings and residences, and then on signal they surged through and they smashed and they beat, they killed 92 people. With identical procedures, the Muslim Brotherhood, first they hired people to stand on the street corners with placards that said, “Christians to Beirut, Alawites to the grave.” Which meant, we’re going to kick out 10% of our population, another 10% we’re going to murder them. In short order, it changed to “Christians to the grave, Alawites to the grave,” which meant, we’re going to kill 1 out of every 5 Syrians.
So they had these people carrying these placards, and then, at a certain point, the Muslim Brotherhood sent people out at night; they marked the residences, and the businesses, with the Nazarene symbol; and then right after mosque, with the most extremist mosques, they surged out and began beating and roughing up and murdering Christians. Within three days from the city of Hama, 70,000 Christians streamed into Damascus; why Damascus? Because they knew that President Assad would protect the Christians. He would protect anyone who was under attack by the Muslim Brotherhood.
And interestingly, then, Ambassador Ford and the French ambassador, get in a car; and the city of Hama had been ringed with security forces so that they could restore order to the town. And violating diplomatic protocol, they bypassed security, they met with the demonstrators, and they promised total American support. And by that action, they converted demonstrations into an armed revolution. And this was done intentionally.
STEINBERG: Right. I was at an event in Washington, in June of 2011, and there was still a Syrian ambassador in Washington at the time. It was Dr. Imad Mustafa. And this was really even before the major eruptions of violence that came a bit later in the year. And he presented a series of videos of sermons that were given by these Wahhabi and other radicalized clerics in these small, rural areas; and it was an absolute call to arms! And this was early on in the process. He said, “this is what we’re dealing with. This is a problem that has existed for a long time, but now, suddenly this problem has mushroomed tremendously, because there’s all of this outside support and encouragement coming from Washington and coming from all of these other places.”
This is what has been described as “regime change.” Using quote “civil society,” as a kind of a human shield, for organized, well-armed, violent elements, that make the claim that they’re part of a public outcry, upsurge; but in fact, it’s an organized, financed, and armed operation.
You mentioned the Sy Hersh article: the United Nations as part of the enforcement of the arms embargo had been monitoring all of those weapons going from Libya into Syria, into the hands of the jihadists. And there were a series of UN reports that tracked out, from Benghazi ships and planes from Qatar and from Turkey, that were overseen by American and British officials on the ground, loading the weapons up; and this is all in official United Nations reports, indicating exactly what you described: the flow of weapons through these channels into the rebels in Syria. Yet, you won’t read a word about that in the American and European media, which is completely on board with this regime change strategy.
BLACK: Well, you know, I’ll tell you what is amazing, Jeff, is that when we started the war on terror, after 9/11, it was essentially a war against al-Qaeda and similar organizations. We have gone full circle from opposing al-Qaeda, which sent 3,000 Americans to a flaming death on 9/11, complete circle to where we now supply them; we arm them; we finance them; and it’s all coming with the approval of the highest authorities in the United States government.
And you know, if you want to consider whether the people of Syria are for or against their government and their President, just consider this: Syria has a population of 23 million people. It is in the sixth year of a war in which it has been opposed by the United States, Great Britain, France, NATO, the European Union,…
STEINBERG: Right. The GCC.
BLACK: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the GCC — this massive force! I mean, basically, all of the great nations of the world, — almost all, not China and Russia, of course — but almost all of the great nations have descended on little Syria, and it’s like “The Little Train That Could,” they just keep chuggin’ and chuggin’ and chuggin’.
And I spoke with the First Lady, who is just utterly charming. She is not — unlike the First Ladies we’re accustomed to who are ostentatious, and pompous and arrogant — she is very down to earth, a very nice person; and she said, “One of the things I’ve done,” she said, unlike worrying about hamburgers and billboards and things like that, she goes out and she meets the families that have lost sons in battle, and she says, “I’ve now met with over 1,000 personally.” She said, “when I first did it, I was naturally apprehensive, and I knew that I would go to some homes and the people would be just so distraught that they’d burst out in anger at anybody who came, and was like me.” But she said, “I was so surprised. I had never encountered that. Every home I go to, they tell me, we are so deeply sad for the loss of our son, but we cannot think of anything for which we would rather have sacrificed our son than for the defense of Syria, for the unity of this nation.”
And I saw that over and over: I went to a hospital for amputees, and I discovered, — just to my personal disgrace as an American — that the sanctions we have imposed on Syria prevent them from receiving prosthetic devices, amputees. They said, not long ago, they had 600 cancer patients, and they said, “look can you make an exception to the exchange provisions,” where we’d blocked all foreign exchange, “so we can get medication for these cancer patients?” And the Treasury Department said, “No. You don’t get prosthetic devices for people who are missing legs and arms; you don’t medication for cancer patients…” There’s such utter cruelty in our government! I mean — our Federal government!
When I was a young Marine, we used to — at the end of the day we’d stand there, the drill instructor would march back and forth, and we’d scream the Marine Corps hymn, and we’d say the words, “we will fight for right and freedom and to keep our honor clean, we’re proud to claim the title of United States Marine.” If ever our honor has been disgraced, here we are cutting off access to prosthetic limbs for people! Where have we come?! What has come of this country?!
STEINBERG: Exactly. And these are really violations of the Geneva Conventions. There are rules of war, and rules for the kind of medical care that all parties deserve in wartime. And it’s violated.
I wanted to ask you before we finish up: Within the bounds of what you’re comfortable discussing, your impressions and things that came from both your discussion with President Assad and maybe some of the other officials; and similarly, when you were Lebanon, I’m wondering what General Aoun might of shared with you, in terms of his view of what has happened in the region; because is one of the countries that has been greatly affected, and badly, badly damaged by this phenomenon. The Saudis have basically vetoed a President being selected by the parliament because they don’t want anything that would stand in the way of their — as you say — their drive to spread Wahhabism everywhere.
BLACK: Yes. Well, you know, Lebanon has a unique structure, where the President is always a Christian, the Prime Minister is always Sunni, and the Speaker of the Parliament is Shi’a. It’s their way. They don’t quite achieve religious harmony quite as smoothly as Syria does. But interestingly, General Aoun spent a good part of his life fighting against Syria, because Syria occupied a portion of Lebanon; and Syria withdrew under President Assad. When he took over he began the withdrawal and completed the withdrawal of Syrian troops. General Aoun always took the position, he said, “when you’re in my country you are my enemy,” he said, “when you’re out, you are my friend.” And he has been true to that. He’s a delightful man.
And he clearly is supportive of the government of Syria, and I think is very respectful of the President of Syria. And I think he realizes something that I was quoted by ISIS as saying. You know, there were three Americans chosen as enemies as ISIS, but they quoted me, in a way that said, “this man is telling the truth, and listen,” because they said, “in the words of the enemy.” They called me the “American Crusader” — “in the words of the enemy,” and they quoted me accurately and I had said something to the effect that, if Assad falls, then the dread black and white flag of al-Qaeda will fly over Damascus; and within months, Lebanon will fall, and Jordan will fall. And with the consolidation of this very large area under the control of al-Qaeda, we will then face this tremendous extremism that will percolate over into Turkey where it already is taking hold, very rapidly. And that that will begin a drive on Europe, and I believe that this time, Europe will fall.”
And I think that from General Aoun’s perspective, from President Assad’s perspective, from the various officials that I spoke with, I think they share this belief; I think they believe that this is the objective of al-Qaeda.
And you know, the Joint Chiefs of Staff became so distraught, so very concerned about the eventual outcome of events in Syria, that they tasked the Defense Intelligence Agency in the summer of 2013 to do complete study and to render findings of fact. The Defense Intelligence Agency, which is not political like the CIA, came up with three findings: They said 1) President Assad must not leave office because if he does, Syria will fall into chaos, just as Libya has done. 2) Turkey is a major problem, because they are the supplier of ISIS, they give them arms, ammunition, everything that ISIS gets comes out of Turkey. And 3) which is the very thing that President Assad has said from the beginning, they said, there are no moderate rebels. The notion is a fantasy, they do not exist! And yet, I think yesterday, Secretary Kerry was out there saying, we’ve got to help the moderate rebels. The “moderate rebels” are al-Qaeda, who flew the jets into the Twin Towers and today these are the “moderates”!
So this is where we have come….
STEINBERG: Right, right. And “Saudi Arabia is our greatest ally in the region.”
BLACK: Yeah. Saudi Arabia, there is increasing evidence pointing to Saudi Arabia as the prime actor in the attacks on 9/11; more and more people are beginning to conclude that as evidence starts emerging.
And so here we are: We are allied with the country most complicit in the 9/11 attacks on us, and we have gone full circle and we are now supplying al-Qaeda with TOW antitank missiles and we’re preparing to give them even more advanced weapons such as antiaircraft missiles; they can be used to shoot down Boeing 747 jets at Dulles Airport, and Heathrow and LaGuardia and across the world.
Extremely reckless, nearly an insane American policy, driven by Saudi wealth that lines the pockets of top people in this country. It’s sad.
STEINBERG: I want to thank you very much. This was really an important visit that you made, a courageous visit. And I think sharing these insights and getting them out as widely as possible is one of the critical steps in getting the United States back on its traditional track which we have veered off of so dangerously that we might not make it as a nation, if we don’t make the corrections in time.
BLACK: We are on a suicidal course, and I really appreciate you, helping to get the word out. We’ve got to change course, or it’s coming here, and it’s coming fast.
Damascus, SANA – President Bashar al-Assad blamed some Western leaders for the terrorism and refugee problems facing Europe.
During a meeting on Sunday with the visiting delegation of the European Parliament headed by Vice-President of the Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs Javier Couso, the President discussed the situation in Syria, the terrorist war waged on it and the growing destructive impacts of the spread of terror to world regions.
President al-Assad said it is normal that what is happening in Syria and the Arab region would greatly affect Europe given the geographical vicinity of the two regions and the cross-cultural communication.
He held the leaders of some Western states responsible for the problems of terrorism and extremism and the refugee flows currently facing Europe for having adopted policies that are against the interests of the peoples of these states.
The President slammed those Western leaders for providing the political cover and support to the terrorist organizations in Syria.
Striking a relevant note, President al-Assad said the European parliamentarians could play a significant role to correct the wrong policies of their governments that have caused terrorism to spread and led to worsening the living conditions of the Syrian people due to the economic blockade they imposed on them, forcing many Syrians to leave their country and seek refuge in other states.
For their part, the European delegation members said their visit to Syria and the suffering of the Syrian people they have seen firsthand would make them put effort to the effect of correcting the policies of the European governments and pressuring them into lifting the sanctions.
The European parliamentarians affirmed the need to keep Syria’s sovereignty intact, stressing that the Syrians alone should decide their country’s future without any foreign interference.
On March 27th, President al-Assad received a French delegation that included parliamentarians, intellectuals, researchers and journalists and said during the meeting that such visits by parliamentary delegations and having these figures inspect firsthand the situation in the Syrian cities could be useful for them to efficiently work to correct the wrong policies adopted by some governments, including that of France, towards what is happening in Syria.
In a statement to SANA, Javier Couso said that the meeting with President al-Assad was an opportunity to discuss several issues and ask questions about the situation in Syria, and that at the end of the meeting it was affirmed that dialogue is the only way to resolve the crisis in Syria without any foreign interference in its affairs.
He also talked about the delegation’s visit to Damascus, lauding the coexistence he witnessed in the Syrian society.
For her part, delegation member and Member of the European Parliament Tatjana Zdanoka stated that President al-Assad presented during the meeting “precise formulas” about what is happening in Syria, and that the meeting was very friendly and open.
On a relevant note, the delegation met with Grand Mufti of the Republic Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, who called upon European parliamentarians to stand up to US arrogance and hegemony.
In the article the writer questions the whole idea of governments making top-down decisions about the size of a country's population.
A question that often comes up when discussion population related matter is, "What should the population be?" or "What level of immigration/growth do you think is suitable?". I don't have an answer to that question, and I don't intend to provide one.
At issue: Is population size really a matter for the state?
In "What a Population Policy means to a People" we discussed the dangers of having a population policy. A government which imposes a population policy is doing more than simply deciding how many people exist within the geographic areas that it governs, its also making a determination on the composition of the population, which becomes unavoidable when any other population target than that which would have been arrived at naturally must involve. As we are subject to population policies which seek to increase the population, this means that the immigration program must unavoidably act to the detriment of the original populations, diminishing their representation and power in order to achieve an abstract target. The issue isn't whether a government decides to increase the population, decrease it, or keep it constant, the issue is the belief that the government has a right to decide this matter in the first place. The issue is the belief that population size is a matter for the state, and like interest rates, tax rates, tariffs and the number of taxi licences issues, is a matter for a bureaucracy to decide.
Also flawed is the idea that a government can set population targets democratically, if it puts forward its policies before the electorate and allows the population to vote for one which they prefer. This assumes that there are sufficient options put before the public, that the parties are given equal treatment in the media, and that the population vote according to their own interests and reason, instead of how the establishment pushes them with scaremongering and propaganda. This isn't what we observe, so if our democracy is anything less than perfect in offering a full spectrum of choices, each of which stand a change, we can't rely on a vote. But even if we were to vote, we still have a population policy in the first place. We still legitimise the right of the state to set a policy, which can very quickly and easily turn pathological. Even a sensible population policy doesn't solve this problem, as we are still ceding to the state the right to manipulate us, to displace and diminish us, or otherwise make judgements on the suitability of us as the population of the nation.
People vote democratically with their wombs
The alternative is to allow the population size to be set by the people by the most democratic means available, the individual reproductive choices that we all make. With cheap and readily available birth control, we more or less are capable of choosing or ourselves how many children we have. The birthrate of the nation is therefore nothing more than the accumulative decision making of all people manifesting itself. If people think the population is too low, they will choose to have more children, and the population will increase. If they think the population is large enough, and we don't need growth, they'll have fewer children and the population will stabilise or even reduce. Below replacement birth rates in the Western world are an indication that the people have voted with their ova and sperm, and don't perceive the need for a 'populate or perish' mindset. [This idea of below replacement is abused a lot by our masters. I suggest removing the 'The' which makes it sound like a widely established phenomenon, and just having 'Below replacement' which doesn't suggest such statistical dominance.]
So what should be the role of the state?
So where does the state fit in? It is the role of political and economic leaders not to force a population outcome that they desire or which suits their own objectives, but adapt that that chosen by the people. The low birthrate is only an issue because our political and economic ruling class cannot handle or adapt to this new reality. We have growth forced upon us because the dominant political class refuses to adapt, refuses to implement new solutions, refuses to reform and instead asks us to adapt and even to destroy ourselves, for their own security and posterity. In short, if a stable or falling population is a problem for the political and economic ruling class, then it is the ruling class which is deficient, which has the problem, not the people.
Immigration rate should be in line with birth rate
Immigration therefore has to fit in with this. As population policy is largely implemented through the immigration floodgates, and immigration is used to override the peoples' wishes, immigration policy therefore has to be synchronised with birthrate. Therefore, a sensible immigration policy would be in-line with the birthrate, and not seek to counteract it. Ideally, it the net population intake through immigration would be a function of the total birthrate. If the birthrate rises, then the immigration rate increases and conversely, if the birthrate lowers, then the immigration rate lowers. Immigration could be set at a fixed percentage of total births, where it represents at most, a small percentage. In Australia at the moment, immigration account for more than half of all additions, which is way to high. A better figure would be about 10%, allowing some people to enter Australia if they need to, but not being significant enough to override Australias chosen birthrate.
For those concerned about future population growth, such a stance should be acceptable, because birthrates being just below replacement in Australia (1.93 births per woman as of July 2016),[1] this should act as a limiting factor for future growth. Further measures can be taken to lower the birthrate by removing government incentives.
[Candobetter.net Ed: This article foreshadows the imminent release of the new war-faction novel, Beyond all recognition by Kenneth Eade, some of whose other strong political and legal novels we have already featured.]
One of our most distinguished and highest ranking military men, Major General Smedley Butler said, “War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”
Since the protests of the Vietnam War, it has been “business as usual” under every government since the Reagan administration. Besides the war in Iraq, which was based on one of the most massive deceptions in recent history for which nobody has been held accountable, and which can be said to be a self-fulfilling prophecy (we now have ISIS in Iraq and Al Qaeda in Iraq thriving where it did not exist before) we are seeing this business rear its ugly head in the conflicts in Syria and the buildup of NATO in Eastern Europe and military advice to the Ukraine, to fight the non-existent threat and fantasy of Russian aggression.
“Perception Management” was pioneered in the 1980’s under the Reagan administration in order to avoid the public opposition to future wars that was seen during the Vietnam War.[1] The United States Department of Defense defines perception management as: “Actions to convey and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning as well as to intelligence systems and leaders at all to influence official estimates, ultimately resulting in foreign behaviors and official actions favorable to the originator's objectives. In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations, security, cover and deception, and psychological operations.”
At the onset of the Iraq war in 2003, journalists were embedded with US troops as combat cameramen. The reason for this was not to show what was happening in the war, but to present the American view of it. Perception management was used to promote the belief that weapons of mass destruction were being manufactured in Iraq to promote its military invention, even though the real purpose behind the war was regime change. [2]
Alvin and Heidi Toffler cite the following as tools for perception management in their book, War and Anti-War:1) accusations of atrocities, 2) hyperbolic inflations, 3) demonization and dehumanization, 4) polarization, 5) claim of divine sanction, and 5) Meta-propaganda.
In 2001, the Rendon Group, headed by John Rendon, was secretly granted a $16 million contract to target Iraq with propaganda. [3] Rendon, who had been hired by the CIA to help create conditions to removal Sadaam Hussein from power, is a leader in “perception management”. Two months later, in December 2001, a clandestine operation performed by the CIA and the Pentagon produced false polygraph testimony of an alleged Iraqi civil engineer, who testified that he had helped Sadaam Hussein and his men hide tons of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. [4] Of course, we now know that there were no weapons of mass destruction hidden in Iraq.
A study by Professor Phil Taylor reveals the differences between the US and global media over the coverage of the war to be: 1) Pro-war coverage in the US made US media “cheerleaders” in the eyes of a watchful, more scrutinous global media; 2) Issues about the war were debated more in countries not directly affected by the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks; 3) The non-US media could not see the link between the “war on terror” and the “axis of evil”, and 4) The US media became part of the information operations campaign, which weakened their credibility in the eyes of global media.
President Bush himself admitted in a televised interview with Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News that, “One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror.” Vice President Dick Cheney stated on Meet the Press, “If we’re successful in Iraq…we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault for many years, but most especially on 9/11.”
Prior to 2002, the CIA was the Bush Administration’s main provider of intelligence on Iraq. In order to establish the connection between Iraq and terrorists, in 2002, the Pentagon established the “Office of Special Plans” which was, in reality, in charge of war planning against Iraq, and designated by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to be the provider of intelligence on Iraq to the Bush Administration. Its head, the Undersecretary of Defense, Douglas J. Feith, appointed a small team to review the existing intelligence on terrorist networks, in order to reveal their sponsorship states, among other things. In 2002, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz wrote a memo to Feith entitled, “Iraq Connections to Al-Qaida”, which stated that they were “not making much progress pulling together intelligence on links between Iraq and Al-Qaida.” Peter W. Rodman, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security, established a “Policy counter Terror Evaluation Group” (PCTEG) which produced an analysis of the links between Al-Qaida and Iraq, with suggestions on “how to exploit the connections.” [5]
“In February 2003, when former Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the U.N., he described “a sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al-Qaeda network,” stating that “Iraq today harbors a deadly network headed by Zarqawi’s forces, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden,” and that Zarqawi had set up his operations, including bioweapons training, with the approval of the Sadaam Hussein regime. This has since been discredited as false. However, in October 2004, due to the fact that the Iraqi insurgency was catching on as a cause in jihadist circles, Zarqawi pledged his allegiance to Al-Qaeda. This was after his group had exploded a massive bomb outside a Shiite mosque in August 2003, killing one of Iraq’s top Shiite clerics and sparking warfare between the Shiite and Sunni communities. The tipping point toward a full-blown civil war was the February 2006 attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra, which is credited to Haythem Sabah al-Badri, a former member of Sadaam Hussein’s Republican Guard, who joined Al-Qaeda after the U.S. invasion. This gave birth to the AQI, Al-Qaeda in Iraq [6]
General Wesley Clark, the former NATO Allied Commander and Joint Chiefs of Staff Director of Strategy and Policy, stated in his book, Winning Modern Wars, “As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.”
In 2004, John Negroponte, who had served as ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, was appointed as ambassador to Iraq with the specific mandate of implementing the “Salvador Option”, a terrorist model of mass killings by US sponsored death squads. [7]
In 2004, Donald Rumsfeld sent Colonel James Steele to serve as a civilian advisor to Iraqi Paramilitary special police commandos known as the “Wolf Brigade”. Steele was a counter-insurgency specialist who was a member of a group of US Special Forces advisors to the Salvadorian Army and trained counter-insurgency commandos in south America, who carried out extreme abuses of human rights. [8] The Wolf Brigade was created and established by the United States and enabled the re-deployment of Sadaam Hussein’s Republican Guard. The Brigade was later accused by a UN official of torture, murder and the implementation of death squads. [9] The techniques used by these counter-insurgency squads were described as “fighting terror with terror”, which was previously done in other theaters, such as Vietnam and El Salvador. [10]
The use of death squads began in 2004 and continued until the winding down of combat operations in 2008. In addition to the death squads, regular military units were often ordered to “kill all military age males” during certain operations; “dead-checking” or killing wounded resistance fighters; to call in air strikes on civilian areas; and 360 degree rotational fire on busy streets. These extreme measures were justified to troops in Iraq by propaganda linking the people to terrorism. [11]
Colonel Steele, with the help of Col. James Hoffman, set up torture centers, dispatching Shia militias to torture Sunni soldiers to learn the details of the insurgency[12] This has been attributed as a major cause of the civil war which led to the formation of ISIS. [13]
The operation of death squads as counter-insurgency measures was also common knowledge at the time. [14]
Private contractors, such as Steele, were often subject to different rules than the military forces they served and, in some cases, served with. As of 2008, an estimated 155,286 private contractors were employed by the US on the ground in Iraq, compared to 152,275 troops. The estimated annual cost for such contractors ballooned to $5 billion per year by 2010. [15]
In August 2006, four American soldiers from a combat unit in Iraq testified in an Article 32 hearing that they had been given orders by their commanding officer, Colonel Michael C. Steele, to “kill all military age males”. [16]
The “targeted killing” program that has been developed under President Obama’s watch is being hailed as the most effective tool against fighting terrorism. [17] Unfortunately, no mention is made in the mainstream media of the innocent victims (collateral damage) caused by this assassination program, nor its lack of authority under international law. [18] According to the journalist Glen Greenwald, all military age males in strike zones of the latest drone aircraft strike programs are considered militants unless it can be proved otherwise. Some say that this has resulted in more civilian casualties than has been reported by the government.[19] [20]
Kenneth Eade is a political novelist and author of “A Patriot’s Act” and “Beyond All Recognition”, both of which are available in bookstores and Amazon.com.
NOTES
[1] Parry, Robert (December 28, 2014) “The Victory of Perception Management” Consortium News
[2] Brigadier BM Kappor (2016) The Art of Perception Management in Information Warfare Today, USI of India
[3] Bamford, James (November 18, 2004) The Man Who Sold the War, Rolling Stone
[4] Brigadier BM Kappor (2016) The Art of Perception Management in Information Warfare Today, USI of India 2016
[5] Richelson, Jeffrey (February 20, 2014) U.S. Special Plans: A History of Deception and Perception Management, Global Research
[6] Cruickshank, Peter and Paul (October 31, 2007) Al-Qaeda in Iraq: A Self-fulfilling Prophecy, Mother Jones
[7] Chossudovsky, Michel (November 17, 2013) “The Salvador Option for Syria: US-NATO Sponsored Death Squads Integrate ‘Opposition Forces’” Global Research
[8] Mass, Peter (May 1, 2004) “The Way of the Commandos” New York Times
[9] Buncombe, Andrew (February 26, 2006) “Iraq’s Death Squads: On the Brink of Civil War” The Independent. Spencer, Richard (October 25, 2010) “WikiLeaks War Logs: Who are the Wolf Brigade?” The Daily Telegraph. Leigh, David (October 24, 2010) “The War Logs: Americans handed over captives to Iraq torture squads” The Guardian.
[10] Snodgrass Godoy, Angelina (2006) Popular Injustice: Violence, Community and Law in Latin America, Stanford University Press, pp. 175-180.
[11] Davies, Nicolas J. (November 20, 2014) Why Iraqis may see ISIL as Lesser Evil Compared to U.S. Backed Death Squads, AlterNet
[12] Freeman, Colin (June 29, 2014) “Death Squads, ISIS and a new generation of fighters – Why Iraq is facing break-up”
[13] Cerny, Jakub (June 2006) “Death Squad Operations in Iraq, Defence Academy of the United Kingdom
[14] Dunigan, Molly (March 19, 2013) “A Lesson From Iraq War: how to outsource war to private contractors”, The Guardian
[15] Von Zielbauer, Paul (August 3, 2006) GI’s Say Officers Ordered Killing of Young Iraqi Men, New York Times
[16] Jaffe, Greg, “How Obama went from reluctant warrior to drone champion”, Washington Post, July 1, 2016
[17] ACLU, U.S. Releases Casualty Numbers and New Executive Order on Targeted Killing, ACLU Press Release July 1, 2016
[18] Greenwald, Glenn (May 29, 2012) Militants: Media Propaganda, Salon.com
[19] Obama’s Kill List –All males near strike zone are terrorists (May 30, 2012) RT America.
After the recent elections where I have been actively involved with campaigning and handing out how to vote cards, I have tried to gather some understanding of the Australian political psyche from talking to people and then from puzzling over the results of the various elections. Of course there probably is no such thing as an “Australian political psyche” since we are NOT in fact one but many (too many, actually with the population at over 24 million and the effects being felt very keenly especially in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth). It’s hard enough to understand just one person’s political psyche without trying to understand the nation's whole populace!
All the people I spoke to at the polling place yesterday largely remain an enigma to me. By the end of the day, it became apparent how fragmented most of the political views were. Or was it that I was not getting a real overview but just seeing a splinter of something that was important to each that prompted them to engage by doing as I was - distributing How To Vote material, or by being there to vote and entering into conversation?
My party was the “Sustainable Australia Party.” A man giving out Liberal HTVs sneeringly asked me “what’s sustainable? It’s just an abstract term.” I replied, “It’s no more abstract than Liberal." He then agreed with me.
I had as many curious conversations as I had the energy for with Greens, and Liberals, one with the actual Labor candidate which was tinged with what I read as, “God I wonder if I really should be speaking to this person, I’ve got no idea what this party is and no urge to find out.”
One conversation was with a young ex-policeman from the David Lyeonhelm (un spell-able) Party who was there as he was in favour of more participation of smaller parties. He mentioned, as something he objected to, the amazing number of traffic offences there are in Victoria that people can be booked for. The obvious examples are the large number of speed limit changes within small distances - a recipe for errors on the part of unsuspecting motorists. He thought they were way beyond reasonable. Population growth was not mentioned in this conversation but in fact fines for minor traffic infringements are a benefit to the State from population growth and a dis-benefit to the public who are caught in the state infrastructure web of fines.
A young woman outside the entrance to the school where the polling took place was gathering signatures on a petition against a “sky rail” which is to cater for increased traffic, fix up crossings and enable more capacity on the trains because of ……..population growth. Inside the gate was a Greens representative in green tee-shirt who told me she was opposed to the anti-sky rail woman’s stance because the overcrowding has prevented her from using the trains, although she wants to.
"This will fix it", she said. She had no idea of the underlying cause of all this. I think I could sum up her view like this: People are moving into the area because they like being close to public transport. They prefer to spend “$900,000 on a unit" in the area rather than on a house further out. This explains why all the old houses are being knocked down for units. It’s a trend - nothing to do with outside forces.
I could characterise the day by saying that people raised many issues that related to population growth, but did not acknowledge this as a cause. I raised it and got the occasional agreement but no great epiphanies.
The Municipal Association of Victoria has, unsurprisingly, issued a press release to undermine Rate Capping. Ratepayers Victoria has countered this with the following arguments: When the rate capping policy was developed and adopted, all official communique and documentation, were very clear upfront in stating that rates capping only apply to general rate and municipal charges. Other council service charges, fees, fines and differentiated rates, together with prevailing state levies (e.g. the fire Levy councils advocated for and changed to CIV rating system a few years back.) The Fair Go Rates policy is a real present and future threat to some councils, as it has taken away councils’ free reign of rates increases and require them to be more transparent any) are excluded.
The Minister also specifically said that in some cases, ratepayers will find their rates bills would increase more than 2.5% (the capped level) because of the changes in their properties’ capital improvement value and other increases in municipal charge-outs that are not subjected to the rates cap.
[The Fair Go Rates policy] is most accountable in supporting and sustaining a fairer rating system that would deliver more visible value for money services and maintain rates affordability in the longer term. Because of this threat, most councils have come together with their peak bodies, even during the development of the rates capping policy, to defend their turf. Their lobbying campaign is still continuing and growing strong despite the policy is now legislated and operating.
What Municipal Association Victoria didn’t come clean about in its 30 June media release is that rates capping can work if councils are committed to make it work. It is most inappropriate and lacks good governance behavior to continue influencing the public to think and eventually lead them to believe that the rates capping policy does not work.
The last two years of media stories clearly showed the anti-Fair Go Rates policy lobby resolve to campaign against and discredit the Fair Go Rates policy. These stories, together with local ratepayer-advocates’ reports, revealed the use of:
- media and community communication strategies, to create a series of related news and messages to socially engineer people into believing that rates capping has caused more harm than good to councils and their communities, e.g. like cutting out the school crossing services,
- diverting council funds to support collaborative projects with peak bodies, which duplicate state services e.g. the Alliance For Gambling Reform
- many internal cost shifting tactics, to ensure the parts of council-budgets constrained by rates capping are reduced or kept unchanged, in order to minimize rates reduction. For the next financial year, some councils have already and blatantly introduced new or increased existing charges, fees and differentiated rates that are not affected by rate capping.
Many people do not understand how their council rates, rates capping levels and fire levy are structured and calculated. It is easy to leverage this low community literacy and convince people that the State Government has mislead them, because their total rates payable for the next financial year is above the capped level of 2.5%. Now, in a time of political flux, just after the election, is strategically timely to leverage political pressure in any public communication broadcast.
Ratepayers are disappointed that some of their councils and their peak bodies are not willing to make rates capping policy work, eroding the opportunity of achieving longer term community and organizational improvement benefits for every stakeholder in Local Government.
Let’s cut to the chase, ratepayers would like councils and their peak bodies to stop winching up charges and resisting the rates capping policy. They should be more focused to commit to the Fair Go Rates policy and make it work to increase efficacy in council operations and bring more visible best value outcomes in municipal service. Change is incremental and to expect full delivery of long term benefits in the first year of the Fair Go Rates policy is most misleading and laden with manipulative intents.
Adapted from a press release from Rate Payers Victoria, 'The Truth is Out There' (30 June 2016).
It was great to see that SBS Australia actually published an interview by Luke Waters of the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad, last night. Assad criticized the double standards of the west, by which the west openly attacks the Syrian government politically, but continues to deal with it behind the scenes. He included Australia in this criticism. He called for a more humanitarian and less costly solution to the refugee crisis through stopping support to the terrorists. SBS's presentation of the interview was, however, very poor. The interview was preceded and followed by extremely biased material and one cannot help but think of the influence of Saudi funding on the presentation of Middle Eastern affairs by western media.
Particularly gratuitous seemed the opinion of a former Australian ambassador to Egypt, Bob Bowker, who, whilst acknowledging that Syria had been very stable (but not mentioning that it was the last of the stable governments in the Middle East apart from Iran) characterised Assad as a once 'progressive' president, who had then [unexplained] stopped being progressive; there had been protests and he had so brutally put them down that five years later, the country was still being torn apart because of that dissatisfaction. Bowker pretended that Assad had no reason to blame the disintegration of Syria on foreign-backed armies. This seemed quite incredible since the presence of multiple anti-government armies funded by the United States and various NATO entities, but especially Qatar and Saudi Arabia, is well known. Bowker is also an adjunct professor at the Centre for Arab & Islamic Studies, ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences.
Who funds such ahistorical bias? The almost blanket anti-Syrian Government media coverage which includes 'expert academic comment' in Australia and the West is probably largely funded by Saudi dollars.[1] One cannot forget that Saudi Arabia and Qatar fund study centers and other organisations and governments all over the world. In fact they are said to be responsible for 20 per cent of Hilary Clinton's campaign fund. Yet Saudi Arabia and Qatar receive little criticism from Australia or NATO although they are among the greatest human rights abusers and the most repressive governments in the world and Saudi Arabia is currently conducting a genocidal war in Yemen.
Journalist: Mr. President, thank you for speaking with SBS Australia.
President Assad: You’re most welcome in Syria.
Question 1: It’s now more than five years since the Syrian crisis began. It’s estimated somewhere around a quarter of a million people have been killed, many of them civilians. There’s an undeniable humanitarian disaster. How far into the crisis do you think you are, and is there an end in sight?
President Assad: Of course, there is an end in sight, and the solution is very clear. It’s simple yet impossible. It’s simple because the solution is very clear, how to make dialogue between the Syrians about the political process, but at the same time fighting the terrorism and the terrorists in Syria. Without fighting terrorists, you cannot have any real solution. It’s impossible because the countries that supported those terrorists, whether Western or regional like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, don’t want to stop sending all kinds of support to those terrorists. So, if we start with stopping this logistical support, and as Syrians go to dialogue, talk about the constitution, about the future of Syria, about the future of the political system, the solution is very near, not far from reach.
Question 2: Much of the reporting in the West at the moment suggests that the demise of the Islamic State is imminent. Do you believe that’s true, and how far away from seizing Raqqa, this very important city of Raqqa, do you believe you are?
President Assad: It’s not a race. Raqqa is as important as Aleppo, as Damascus, as any other city. The danger of those terrorist groups is not about what land do they occupy, because it’s not a traditional war. It’s about how much of their ideology can they instill in the mind of the people in the area that they sit or live in. Indoctrination, this is the most dangerous thing. So, reaching Raqqa is not that difficult militarily, let’s say. It’s a matter of time. We are going in that direction. But the question when you talk about war is about what the other side, let’s say the enemy, could do, and that’s directly related to the effort of Turkey, especially Erdogan, in supporting those groups, because that’s what’s happening since the beginning. If you talk about Syria as an isolated military field, you can reach that area within a few months or a few weeks, let’s say, but without taking into consideration the Turkish effort in supporting the terrorists, any answer would be a far cry from the reality, an un-factual answer.
Question 3: Mr. President, how concerned are you about recent fatal clashes which have been reported between your longtime ally Hezbollah and your own forces?
There is good Syrian-Russian-Iranian coordination on fighting terrorism
President Assad: Fighting between us and Hezbollah? They are not fighting. They support the Syrian Army. They don’t fight against the Syrian Army, they fight with the Syrian Army. The Syrian Army and Hezbollah, with the support of the Russian Air Forces, we are fighting all kinds of terrorist groups, whether ISIS or al-Nusra or other affiliated groups with Al Qaeda that’s affiliated automatically to al-Nusra and ISIS.
Question 4: So, there have been some recent reports of clashes between… are those reports incorrect.
President Assad: No, they are talking not about clashes; about, let’s say, differences and different opinions. That’s not true, and if you look at the meeting that happened recently between the Ministers of Defense in Iran, in Tehran; Syrian, Russian, and Iranian, this means there’s good coordination regarding fighting terrorism.
Question 5: To be clear, do you categorize all opposition groups as terrorists?
President Assad: Definitely not, no. When you talk about an opposition group that adopts the political means, they’re not terrorists. Whenever you hold machineguns or any other armaments and you terrorize people and you attack civilians and you attack public and private properties, you are a terrorist. But if you talk about opposition, when you talk about opposition it must be Syrian opposition. It cannot be a surrogate opposition that works as a proxy to other countries like Saudi Arabia or any other country. It must be a Syrian opposition that’s related to its Syrian grassroots, like in your country. It’s the same, I think.
Question 6: You said recently that the ceasefire offered Syrian people at least a glimmer of hope. How, five months on, do you think that hope is going?
President Assad: Yeah, it is. It’s still working, the ceasefire, but we don’t have to forget that terrorist groups violate this agreement, on a daily basis. But at the same time, we have the right, according to that agreement, to retaliate whenever the terrorists attack our government forces. So, actually you can say it’s still working in most of the areas, but in some areas it’s not.
Question 7: There are various accounts of how the Syrian crisis began. Some say it was children graffiting anti-government slogans and they were dealt with brutally by the government. I understand you don’t accept that narrative. How, in your view, did the crisis begin?
President Assad: It’s a mixture of many things. Some people demonstrated because they needed reform. We cannot deny this, we cannot say “no everybody was a terrorist” or “everyone was a mercenary.” But the majority of those demonstrators – I’m not talking about the genuine demonstrators – were paid by Qatar in order to demonstrate, then later they were paid by Qatar in order to revolt with armaments, and that’s how it started, actually. The story of children being attacked, this is an illusive story. It didn’t happen. Of course, you always have, let’s say, mistakes happening in the practice on the ground, like what happened in the United States recently, during the last year, but this is not a reason for people to hold machineguns and kill policemen and soldiers and so on.
Question 8: You do say that some of these people legitimately needed reform. Was that as a result of any heavy-handedness from your government at all?
President Assad: No, we had reform in Syria. It started mainly after 2000, in the year 2000. Some people think it was slow, some people think it was too fast, this is subjective, not objective, but we were moving in that regard. But the proof that it wasn’t about the reform, because we made all the requested reforms after the crisis started five years ago, and nothing has changed. So, it wasn’t about reform. We changed the constitution, we changed the laws that the opposition asked for, we changed many things, but nothing happened. So, it wasn’t about the reform; it was about money coming from Qatar, and most of the people that genuinely asked for reform at the beginning of the crisis, they don’t demonstrate now, they don’t go against the government, they cooperate with the government. They don’t believe, let’s say, in the political line of this government, and this is their right and that’s natural, but they don’t work against the government or against the state institutions. So, they distinguish themselves from the people who supported the terrorists.
Question 9: How do you respond to the fact that some of your ministers defected and cited brutality as reason?
President Assad: Actually, they defected because they’ve been asked to do so by, some of them, Saudi Arabia, some of them by France, it depends on the country they belong to. And now, they are belonging to that so-called opposition that belongs to those countries, not to the Syrians. They have no values in Syria, so we wouldn’t worry about that. It didn’t change anything. I mean it didn’t affect the fact or the reality in Syria.
Question 10: One of your main backers, Russia, has called for a return to the peace talks. Do you think that’s a good idea?
President Assad: You mean in Geneva?
Journalist: Yes.
Geneva negotiations need to have the basic principles in order to be fruitful
President Assad: Yeah, of course, we support every talk with every Syrian party, but in reality those talks haven’t been started yet, and there’s no Syrian-Syrian talks till this moment, because we only made negotiations with the facilitator, which is Mr. de Mistura. Actually, it hasn’t started. So, we support the principle, but in practice you need to have a certain methodology that didn’t exist so far. So, we need to start, but we need to have the basic principles for those negotiations to be fruitful.
Question 11: One thing that intrigues a lot of people about the Syrian crisis is why your close allies Iran and Russia stay so loyal?
By defending Syria, allies are defending their stability and interests
President Assad: Because it wasn’t about the President, it’s not about the person. This is the misinterpretation, or let’s say the misconception in the West, and maybe part of the propaganda, that Russia and Iran supported Assad, or supported the President. It’s not like this. It’s about the whole situation. The chaos in Syria is going to provoke a domino effect in our region, that’s going to affect the neighboring countries, it’s going to affect Iran, it’s going to affect Russia, it’s going to affect Europe, actually. So, when they defend Syria, they defend the stability and they defend their stability, they defend their interest. And at the same time, it’s about the principle. They defend the Syrian people and their right to protect themselves. Because if they defend the President and the Syrian people are not with him and don’t support him, I cannot withstand five years just because Russia and Iran support me. So, it’s not about the President, it’s about the whole situation, the bigger picture, let’s say.
Question 12: Do you have any dialogue either direct or indirectly with the United States?
Western countries are dealing with Syria through back channels
President Assad: At all, nothing at all. Indirect, yes, indirect, through different channels. But if you ask them they will deny it, and we’re going to deny it. But in reality, it exists; the back channels.
Question 13: What are some of those channels?
President Assad: I mean, let’s say, businessmen going and traveling around the world and meeting with the officials in the United States and in Europe, they meet in Europe, and they try to convey certain messages, but there’s nothing serious, because we don’t think the administration, the American administration, is serious about solving the problem in Syria.
Question 14: Well, quite recently, there were reports more than 50 diplomats have called for what they described as “real and effective military strikes” against you, against Syria. Does this in any way concern you, and do you think it signals a more aggressive policy from the United States towards Syria moving forward?
American administrations are famous of creating problems, but they never solve any
President Assad: No, warmongers in every American administration always exist. It’s not something new. But we wouldn’t give a fig, let’s say, about this communique, but it’s not about this communique; it’s about the policy, it’s about the actions. The difference between this administration and the previous one, Bush’s one, is that Bush sent his troops. This one is sending mercenaries, and turned a blind eye to what Saudi Arabia and Turkey and Qatar did, since the beginning of the crisis. So, it’s the same policy. It’s a militaristic policy, but in different ways. So, this communique is not different from the reality on the ground. This is asking for war, and the reality is a war.
Question 15: You referred to the previous government, the Bush government. There are some who say one of the reasons you’ve survived as long as a government has been America’s reluctance to get on the ground in another war in the Middle East. Do you not accept that, based on what you’re saying?
President Assad: Yeah, the American administrations since the 50s are very famous of creating problems but they never solve any problems, and that’s what happened in Iraq. Bush invaded Iraq, in a few weeks he could occupy Iraq, but then what’s next? It’s not about occupying. This is a great power. We’re not a great power. So, it’s not about America occupying Syria. What’s next? What do they want to achieve? They haven’t achieved anything. They failed in Libya, in Iraq, in Yemen, in Syria, everywhere. They only created chaos. So, if the United States wants to create more chaos it can, it can create chaos, but can they solve the problem? No.
Question 16: Do you have a preference who wins the upcoming US election?
President Assad: Actually no, we never bet on any American president, because usually what they say in the campaign is different from their practice after they become president, and Obama is an example, so we don’t have to wait. We have to wait and see what policy they’re going to adopt, whoever wins the elections.
Question 17: So, you can see a circumstance where Syria would work collaboratively with the United States and the West?
We are not against cooperation with the US based on mutual interest
President Assad: We don’t have a problem with the United States, they’re not our enemy, they don’t occupy our land. We have differences, and those differences go back to the 70s and maybe before that, but in many different times, let’s say, and events and circumstances, we had cooperation with the United States. So, we’re not against this cooperation. But, this cooperation means talking about and discussing and working for the mutual interest, not for their interest at the expense of our interest. So, we don’t have a problem.
Question 18: Mr. President, you’ve spent a lot of time yourself, as you’ve just said, in the United Kingdom. Can you see there being any repercussions for Britain’s decision to exit the European Union for Syria and for the Syrian crisis?
British people are revolting against their “second-tier” and “disconnected” politicians
President Assad: I don’t think I can elaborate about that, as it’s a British issue, and I’m not British neither European. But at the same time I can say that this surprising result, maybe, has many different components, whether internal as economic and external as the worry from the terrorism, security issues, refugees, and so on. But this is an indication for us, as those officials who used to give me the advice about how to deal with the crisis in Syria, and say “Assad must go” and “he’s disconnected” proven to be disconnected from reality, otherwise they wouldn’t have asked for this referendum, but I think this is a revolt of the people there against, I would call them sometimes second-tier politicians. They needed special, let’s say, statecraft officials, to deal their country. If another administration came and understands that the issue of refugees and security is related to the problem in our region, this is where you’re going to have a different policy that will affect us positively. But I don’t have now a lot of hope about this. Let’s say we have a slim hope, because we don’t know who’s going to come after Cameron in the UK.
Question 19: Can I ask; Australia is part of the international coalition to defeat the Islamic State. Obviously, that’s one of your goals, so in that instance there’s a shared goal. Do you welcome international intervention when there’s a shared goal like that.
President Assad: Actually, we welcome any effort to fight terrorism in Syria, any effort, but this effort first of all should be genuine, not window-dressing like what’s happening now in northern Syria where 60 countries couldn’t prevent ISIS from expanding. Actually, when the Russian air support started, only at that time when ISIS stopped expanding. So, it needs to be genuine. Second, it needs to be through the Syrian legitimate government, not just because they want to fight terrorism and they can go anywhere in the world. We are a legitimate government and we are a sovereign country. So, only on these two circumstances we welcome any foreign support to fight terrorism.
Question 20: A number of Australians have died fighting for either the Kurdish militia or the Islamic State. Do you have a message for these young people who feel so enraged by what’s taking place in Syria that they travel over here to fight?
President Assad: Again, the same, let’s say, answer. If there are foreigners coming without the permission of the government, they are illegal, whether they want to fight terrorists or want to fight any other one. It is the same. It’s illegal, we can call it.
Question 21: Mr. President, Australian politicians have used very strong language about your role in the crisis, as have other leaders, internationally. Australia’s Prime Minister has referred to you as a “murderous tyrant,” saying that you’re responsible for killing thousands of innocent civilians. Australia’s opposition leader has called you a “butcher.” Yet Australia’s official position is still to work with you toward a peace agreement. How do you reconcile those two very different positions?
Western nations attack Syrian government and yet deal with it under the table
President Assad: Actually, this is the double standard of the West in general. They attack us politically and they send us their officials to deal with us under the table, especially the security, including your government. They all do the same. They don’t want to upset the United States. Actually, most of the Western officials only repeat what the United States wants them to say. This is the reality. So, I think these statements, I just can say they are disconnected from our reality, because I’m fighting terrorists, our army is fighting terrorists, our government is against terrorists, the whole institutions are against terrorists. If you call fighting terrorism butchery, that’s another issue.
Question 22: Australia has agreed to take an additional twelve thousand Syrian refugees; some have already arrived. Do you have a message for these Syrians, many of whom still say they love Syria and they want to return. Do you have a message for those people, as I said, who are in Australia, and other countries around the world?
A more humanitarian and less costly European solution to refugee crisis is stopping support to terrorists
President Assad: Actually, you mentioned a very important point. Most of the refugees that left Syria, they want to come back to Syria. So, any country that helped them enter their new country, let’s say, their new homeland, is welcome as a humanitarian action, but again there is something more humanitarian and less costly: is to help them staying in their country, help them going back by helping the stability in Syria, not to give any umbrella or support to the terrorists. That’s what they want. They want the Western governments to take decisive decisions against what Saudi Arabia and other Western countries, like France and UK, are doing in order to support the terrorists in Syria just to topple the government. Otherwise, those Syrians wouldn’t have left Syria. Most of them, they didn’t leave because they are against the government or with the government; they left because it’s very difficult to live in Syria these days.
Question 23: Do you hope that these people will return and would you facilitate for them to return? President Assad: Definitely, I mean losing people as refugees is like losing human resources. How can you build a country without human resources? Most of those people are educated, well trained, they have their own businesses in Syria in different domains. You lose all this, of course, we need.
Question 24: The Commission for International Justice and Accountability says there are thousands of government documents which say has proved your government sanctioned mass torture and killings. In the face of that evidence, how do you say that no crimes have taken place, and I point also to other independent organizations, which are critical of deliberate targeting hospitals. Do you concede that some mistakes have been made as you’ve targeted some rebel-held areas?
President Assad: You are talking about two different things. One of them, the first one is the reports. The most important report that’s been financed by Qatar, just to defame the Syrian government, and they have no proof, who took the pictures, who are the victims in those pictures, and so on. Like you can forge anything if you want now on the computer. So, it is not credible at all. Second, talking about attacking hospitals or attacking civilians, the question, the very simple question is: why do we attack hospitals and civilians? I mean the whole issue, the whole problem in Syria started when those terrorists wanted to win the hearts of the Syrians. So, attacking hospitals or attacking civilians is playing into the hands of the terrorists. So, if we put the values aside now for a while, let’s talk about the interests. No government in this situation has any interest in killing civilians or attacking hospitals. Anyway, if you attack hospitals, you can use any building to be a hospital. No, these are an anecdotal claims, mendacious statements I can say; they are not credible at all. We’re still sending vaccines to those areas under the control of the terrorists. So, how can I send vaccines and attack the hospitals? This is a contradiction.
Question 25: Mr. President, as a father and as a man, has there been one anecdote, one story, one image from the crisis, which has affected you personally more than others?
President Assad: Definitely, we are humans, and I am Syrian like the other Syrians. I will be more sympathetic with any Syrian tragedy affecting any person or family, and in this region, we are very emotional people, generally. But as an official, I am not only a person, I am an official. As an official, the first question you ask when you have that feeling is what are you going to do, what are you going to do to protect other Syrians from the same suffering? That’s the most important thing. So, I mean, this feeling, this sad feeling, this painful feeling, is an incentive for me to do more. It’s not only a feeling.
Question 26: What’s your vision for Syria? How do you see things in two to three years?
President Assad: After the crisis or…? Because, the first thing we would like to see is to have Syria stable as it used to be before, because it was one of the most stable countries and secure countries around the world, not only in our region. So, this the first thing. If you have this, you can have other ambitions. Without it you cannot. I mean, if you have this, the other question: how to deal with the new generation that lived the life of killing, that saw the extremism or learned the extremism or indoctrinated by Al Qaeda-affiliated groups, and so on. This is another challenge. The third one is bringing back those human resources that left as refugees in order to rebuild Syria. Rebuilding the country as buildings or infrastructure is very easy; we are capable of doing this as Syrians. The challenge is about the new generation.
Question 27: How do you think history will reflect on your presidency?
President Assad: What I wish is to say that this is the one who saved his country from the terrorists and from the external intervention. That is what I wish about it. Anything else would be left to the judgment of the Syrian people, but this is my only wish.
Journalist: Mr. President, Thank you very much for speaking with SBS Australia.
President Assad: Thank you very much.
NOTES
Funding of universities with Saudi dollars has been abundantly flagged as unwise because of Saudi promotion of the doctrine of Wahhabism which is the basis of many Islamic terrorist groups. However, what has not been discussed in Australia is the way such funds can then influence commentary on foreign affairs and the wars that the Saudis back. The almost blanket anti-Syrian Government media coverage which includes 'expert academic comment' in the West is probably largely funded by Saudi dollars. In 2006 it was reported that "Prince Al-Waleed has recently bought 5.46% of the voting shares of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch’s diversified international media and entertainment empire that includes Fox News Channel (FNC). Fox had been reporting on the Saudi role in the promotion of Islamist terror, and it is thought that the prince may hope to dampen any potential criticism by his investment." (Implications of Saudi Funding to Western Academic Institutions)
Mervyn Bendle, "Secret Saudi funding of Australian institutions," News Weekly, February 21, 2009
"Many Australian universities, now driven entirely by financial priorities, have uncritically welcomed Saudi sources of funding, even though this creates a major national security problem, writes Mervyn F. Bendle. Massive funding is presently being provided by Saudi Arabia to promote Wahhabism, the fundamentalist, exclusivist, punitive, and sectarian form of Islam that is both the Saudi state religion, and the chief theological component of Sunni versions of Islamism, the totalitarian ideology guiding jihadism and most of the active terrorist groups in the world. Globally, this money is flowing to terrorist groups, political parties and religious and community groups, as well as to universities and schools. In Australia, there is concern that such funding could damage and even corrupt the Australian university system, especially given the existing ideological bias, political naivety, opportunism, managerialism, and the pseudo-entrepreneurial attitudes of many university academics and administrators. The question of how foreign powers and agents are able to influence, direct or even control tertiary education in Australia and other Western countries is vitally important. This is because the rise of Islamism, jihadism and the present terrorism crisis increasingly involve fourth-generation warfare (4GW)." [...] "An excellent case study of how Saudi funding can impact on Australian universities is the recent fiasco at Queensland's Griffith University. In April 2008, it was revealed that Griffith University "practically begged the Saudi Arabian embassy to bankroll its Islamic campus for $1.3 million", assuring the Saudis that arrangements could be kept secret if required. (The Australian, April 22, 2008)."
"Given the vast sums of petrodollars and the availability of useful idiots and agents of influence in strategic positions, it is unlikely that Australian universities will resist the allure of Saudi funding, nor will they resist pressure to guide their teaching and research in an Islamist direction, especially in connection with the war on terror, the history of Islam, the Middle East conflict, Islam and the West, and the role of women. Consequently, it will only be continuing public and academic vigilance and political pressure that will protect Australia's tertiary education system, moderate Muslim communities and liberal democratic traditions." Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-10-13/32626
Rising sea temperatures in the Mediterranean are encouraging alien lionfish species to invade and colonise new territories with potentially serious ecological and socioeconomic impacts.
Evidence collated from divers and fishermen reveals that in the space of a year, the venomous predators have colonised Cyprus – and these may be at the vanguard of a pan-Atlantic Ocean invasion following the widening and deepening of the Suez Canal.
The report, published in Marine Biodiversity Records, was written by Mr Demetris Kletou, of the Marine & Environmental Research Lab, in Limassol, Cyprus; and Professor Jason Hall-Spencer, of the School of Marine Science and Engineering at Plymouth University.
“Until now, few sightings of the alien lionfish Pterois miles have been reported in the Mediterranean and it was questionable whether the species could invade this region like it has in the western Atlantic,” says Mr Kletou. “But we’ve found that lionfish have recently increased in abundance, and within a year have colonised almost the entire south eastern coast of Cyprus, assisted by sea surface warming.”
Lionfish are generalist carnivores and can feed on a variety of fish and crustaceans, with large individuals preying almost exclusively on fish. They spawn every four days, year-round, producing around two million buoyant gelatinous eggs per year, which can ride the ocean currents and cover large distances for about a month before they settle.
Their success at invading new territories stems from a combination of factors such as early maturation and reproduction, and venomous spines that deter predators, and they can quickly colonise reefs and reduce biodiversity in the area.
The research team collated information on reported encounters in coastal waters from divers, spearfishers and fishermen, and conducted interviews, gathering photographic and video evidence, and recording the date of the sighting, and the location. In addition, governmental officers of the Department of Fisheries and Marine Research (DFMR) of the Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Development and Environment, in Cyprus, shared information and specimens captured in nets by local coastal fishermen.
The results show that the lionfish P. miles has colonised almost the entire south eastern coast of Cyprus, from Limassol to Protaras in just one year.
At least 23 new and confirmed sightings of 19 individuals were recorded, such as three pairs sighted from the south-eastern side of Cyprus, one off Larnaca, one at Zinovia wreck and one at Ptotaras. One of the pairs has since become a group of five, all living together at Cyclops Caves.
Professor Hall-Spencer said:
“Groups of lionfish exhibiting mating behaviour have been noted for the first time in the Mediterranean. By publishing this information, we can help stakeholders plan mitigating action, such as offering incentives for divers and fishermen to run lionfish removal programmes, which have worked well at shallow depths in the Caribbean, and restoring populations of potential predators, such as the dusky grouper. Given that the Suez Canal has recently been widened and deepened, measures will need to be put in place to help prevent further invasion.”
The research paper, A lionfish (Pterois miles) invasion has begun in the Mediterranean Sea, will be published on 28 June in Marine Biodiversity Records.
People who have complained to me of poor coverage by the Australian media of the underlying reasons for Britain's exit from the EU will enjoy these shows. They report on various aspects, including the possibility of preventing the privatisation of British hospitals and mining, the ability to try to end Britain's live transport of domestic animals for thousands of kms, the ability to stop fracking, the desirability of a decrease in house prices, the reasons why people outside the big cities voted against the EU, and mass immigration in an economy where unemployment is already high and numbers are an issue.
English language programs
"It's panic stations amongst the ruling elites." On Sputnik's Referendum Special, George Galloway, interviews journalist Selina Scott, who sums up the EU as undemocratic, noting that the British have no ability to affect decisions on fracking, live transport or anything else of note. He also interviews a very traditional Alex Graham, former president of the RMT union, who believes that trade unions have lost confidence in their ability to defend members’ rights and an exit from the EU could bring back control. Either way, both our guests agree the Brexit vote was in part a rejection by the working class of the prevailing neoliberal orthodoxy and they came to the studio to explain why.
In "Brexit Special: Are we living in a Disunited Kingdom?", Afshin Rattansi of Going Underground, does not shy from putting the positives of Britain's referendum outcome, including more affordable housing. He interviews Alex Salmond, former First Minister of the Scottish National Party about the implications of Brexit for another Scottish referendum, asks Conservative MP, David Davies if Brexit could be the end of the UK and hears from a former Labour home secretary, Yvette Cooper, who thinks a break-up of Britain could spell the end of her party, and from former coalition business secretary Sir Vince Cable, on the day his former boss resigned.
In The Big Picture, journalist Thom Hartman, usually very defensive on the goods of immigration, gets out of that groove on this occasion and gives good time to the valid negatives, also citing some erudite sources on the matter.
The Keiser Report does its own wild but substantial analysis of Brexit, coming down hard on the high house prices and the arcane self-justifications of the elites and mainstream press. "Max and Stacy are joined from New York City by Mitch Feierstein of PlanetPonzi.com to dissect the economic, monetary and financial consequences of the ‘shocking’ Brexit vote - Britain votes to leave the European Union. The Keiser Report team look closer at the market sell off and ask if it’s part of a wider market weakness set in motion months ago, then examine the role of the media, much as in the rise of Donald Trump, in simply failing to understand the ‘disposable’ voters left behind by globalization. Mitch shows a chart proving that the biggest pound sterling sell-off was actually in 2008 and the currency has never really recovered since then. Finally, they look at the opportunities presented by panic selling."
In Sophie and Co Sophie Shevardnadze interviews Ken Livingstone, former mayor of London and Labor Party veteran, who pushes a globalist agenda on immigration and economics, but she keeps at him, revealing the inconsistencies.
Interviews in French:
A young pro-Brexit Franco-German speaks up. On France2's Friday 24 June 8pm program, Marie Drucker interviews Charlotte Kude, 25 years old of GermanFrench nationality and a parliamentary employee with the EU. Supposedly the young were among the pro-EU majority, but Charlotte became a spokesperson for the "Vote Leave" side. She is very happy about the Brexit win. "The British are not rejecting Europeans, they are rejecting the obsolete system (...). They were hoping to send a message to the political project and also in the hope that the EU would wake up to the welfare of all those that still remain members.
A chasm between bureaucrats and citizens: This young woman became a eurosckeptic through her experience in the European Parlement. "I was struck by the chasm beween the lifestyle of the bureaucrats in Brussels and that of European citizens. (...) More than 10,000 [among the Brussels bureaucrats] are paid more than the British Primeminister, for example. They don't pay taxes; they can drink, eat, travel with all expenses paid. And, in my opinion, that's what's contributing to the bubble they are living in which must eventually explode." [1]
Notes
[1] Original french summary of the interview: Charlotte Kude, 25 ans, est une assistante parlementaire franco-allemande. Surtout, elle est pour la sortie du Royaume-Uni de l'UE et est ainsi devenue porte-parole du mouvement "Vote Leave". Elle se réjouit donc du succès du Brexit. "Ce ne sont pas les Européens que les Britanniques rejettent, c'est bien le système politique obsolète qu'ils rejettent.(...) C'est le projet politique auxquels ils ont souhaité envoyé un message, et dans l'espoir aussi que l'Union européenne se réveille pour le bien-être de tous ceux qui y sont encore".
Un fossé entre bureaucrates et citoyens
La jeune femme est devenue eurosceptique par son expérience au Parlement européen. "J'ai été vraiment interpellée par le fossé entre le train de vie des bureaucrates à Bruxelles et celui des citoyens européens. (...) Il y en a plus de 10 000 qui sont payés plus que le Premier ministre britannique par exemple, ils ne payent pas d'impôts, ils peuvent boire, manger, voyager tous frais payés. Et ça, à mon sens, ça entretient cette bulle qui va finir par imploser"."
On 23 June, just prior to the vote on whether Britain should leave the European Union (referred to as 'Brexit'), Paul Craig Roberts (pictured right) put the case for Brexit in a 30 minute interview with Richie Allen (pictured left).
The interview is embedded below as a YouTube video. This 30 minute interview, provides clear, compelling arguments as to why it is urgently necessary for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, not only to preserve its national sovereignty, but to prevent the war against Russia planned by the rulers of the United States. In the interview Paul Craig Roberts also confronts, and thoroughly demolishes, claims by those arguing for Britain to remain in the European Union, that those advocating Brexit are racist and xenophobic.
He puts clearly and succinctly the arguments that everybody has the right to control the numbers of people entering their community. It is not unreasonable for a community to object to large numbers of people from a different culture suddenly moving into their midst.
Paul Craig Roberts argues that while the British and other Europeans are right to object to as sudden high influx of refugees and immigrants, they should remember that these people are fleeing their own countries because of wars that the rulers of Europe and Britain have inflicted upon their countries.
This article is about the real reason why the medicare rebates don't cover the cost of doctors' services and therefore why the practice of general medicine is increasingly unsatisfactory for doctors and patients.
I was inspired to attempt this article by a letter just published in the Age because it articulated my own concerns. The only thing it lacks is that it fails to give the principle reason for the very high costs of running a medical practice.
It is particularly galling that Labor has adopted the catchcry "Save Medicare". Apparently Medicare is sacred and untouchable. This attitude prevents any possibility of the reform that it desperately needs. It is also galling that Labor is spruiking that the removal of the freeze on rebates will allow GPs to keep bulk billing and this will "save Medicare". The current rebate for a standard GP consultation lasting up to 20minutes is $37.05. Without the freeze, the rebate would be around $39 and by mid-2018 around $40. If GPs had to depend on such paltry amounts for their incomes, Medicare would have died a long time ago.
The truth is that GPs who do not see a patient every six minutes can continue to bulk bill by supplementing their incomes with various care plans, health assessments, home medicine reviews, case conferences, practice incentive payments etc. These processes allow GPs to generate a reasonable income, but there has never been proof that they improve health outcomes. The lowly consultation rebate, frozen or not, encourages GPs to manufacture incomes from these dubious methods. Some, dare I say it, "dodgy" doctors do more than their fair share of "dodgy"' care plans.
The most important 15 minutes in the health system is the consultation with GPs. It must be valued appropriately so that GPs can take a patient's history, examine them and think about a treatment plan that avoids the current blowout of follow-on costs in investigations and referrals. Medicare must be reformed. Neither Labor nor the Coalition have the honesty and courage to do this. It is more complicated than Labor's puerile and disingenuous sloganeering suggests.
Dr Philip Barraclough, Highett
Why do medical practices cost too much to run?
I'll give you a hint. It's not the insurance costs.
A couple of years ago I went for an interview at a GP clinic in an inner suburb of Melbourne, in the region of Armadale or Toorak. It was explained to me that the practice tried to limit the amount of time spent with patients and to make up costs by running various electronic, self-evaluating programs, to diagnose various mental health issues, such as depression. The hard-faced GP interviewing me was keen to tease out any tendency I might have to spend time on supportive or other psychotherapy and it didn't take him long to detect these.
"That might be alright for a GP practising in the outer suburbs," he sniffed, "But there is no way we are going to cover costs here and make a profit by spending time with patients. Our mental health nurses here have got it down to a fine art. They use self-evaluation forms as a way of interacting therapeutically with the patients and then they use the same forms for their reports. Personally I think you may be a little too one-to-oneish for this practice."
I needed the job, so tried to sound very flexible on these issues, but he wasn't fooled. He asked me whether I had any political philosophy and, before I could answer, he told me that I really should get familiar with Ayn Rand. He was the first person I have ever met, outside a novel, with the exception of some 'counter-culture' heroine addicts in the 1980s, who had ever expressed any open approval of this writer. I had heard that Rand's 'objectivist' philosophy had enjoyed a resurgence with US and other neocons, but I admit that I was shocked to find her lurking in a Melbourne GP clinic. I guess that made me naive, however, if I knew my GP was an avid fan of Ayn Rand, I would run a mile!
But, anyway, the thing that most interested me about this job interview was the acknowledgement that the cost of rental and real-estate in Australia, particularly within the inner suburbs, was so prohibitive that a doctor wishing to succeed simply could not afford to spend time with patients and, furthermore, artfully deployed gimmicks and electronic questionnaires to take the place of proper physical and mental examinations and treatment.
Because the major cost of doing business in Australia is the cost of land and rents. A business-owner must pay for two premises: the one he or she sleeps in and the one they do business at. Furthermore, they must pay their staff high enough wages for their staff to be able to afford Melbourne's high rentals and house prices. Australia has some of the highest land prices in the world and that goes a long way to explain why small and medium business enterprises so frequently fail. It also explains why Australian manufacturing is in decline and unable to compete with overseas products which do not have nearly as high costs. And high land prices drive up the cost of everything else, including power and water. Even insurance goes up because it must meet this inflation.
And it explains why medicare rebates are no longer adequate to cover patient visits and why GPs practically give you the bum's rush out of their offices almost as soon as you enter, why they won't let you tell them more than one thing that is wrong with you, and why they won't take time to discuss their diagnosis, and why their diagnosis is so often wrong!
Service quality probably increases with distance from the city as the land and rent costs diminish. Maybe some city GPs tak refuge in Ayn Rand in order to rationalise their increasing exploitation and degrading of social capital in an effort to make ends meet.
Whose fault is it?
And whose fault is this? It is the fault of the growth lobby, which has succeeded in raising immigration rates so high in Australia that there is permanently rising inflation of land-prices. Both major political parties and the Greens are responsible parts of this lobby. The first two have massive investments in land-speculation and financing. The Greens utterly refuse to say anything against the engineering of massive population growth in Australia.
A new front has opened in the student-migration scam, whereby the Turnbull Government has opened the door to international primary school students and their guardians to access Australian schools and purchase Australian property ahead of achieving permanent residency. From SBS News:
From July 1, students aged six and above would be able to apply for student visas regardless of their country of citizenship – and their guardians can also apply for Guardian visas (subclass 580)…
These visa-rule changes, which were announced during Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s visit to China in April, also mean non-residents can buy several new properties or one existing property…
Dave Platter, from the leading Chinese international-property portal Juwai.com said there has been a nearly 20 per cent jump in inquiries for properties in Australia since Mr Turnbull’s announcement…
Estate agents Vera and Geoffrey Wong have hosted an open home in Sydney’s Eastwood.
Most of their clients are either Chinese or South Korean investors, and Mr Wong says when they were choosing a property, there is no doubt their children’s education is considered most important.
He said buyers are planning purchases that cater for their children’s entire education.
“Schooling … that is – I can’t emphasise it enough – is one of the main factors,” he said.
“Our clients, I would say over 70 per cent, (are looking,) at schooling and the university afterwards.”
Unbelievable. Primary schools in “good” catchment areas are already bursting at the seams. Meanwhile, Australia’s biggest cities, which is where most migrants arrive, are already struggling to digest a decade of rampant population growth (immigration), which has clogged their roads, trains, and reduced residents’ overall amenity.
And yet the government wants to add more immigrant fuel to the fire, just so that it keeps a floor under Australia’s already ridiculously expensive house values.
Where is the additional federal investment in schools and infrastructure to keep up with the migrant influx? And where is the consideration of impacts on Australia’s existing residents – especially young families struggling to buy a home and put their children through schooling?
Is this what Australia has been reduced to: flogging land, houses and visas to wealthy Chinese? Is this what Turnbull really means by his “innovation agenda”? Surely we can do better.
Do you remember coming to previous elections and going to vote above the line, then suddenly realising that you hadn't thought to find out about every senate candidate? So, there you were, obliged to fill out every box, trying to guess from the names the least evil of the fifty or seventy candidates you had never heard of. This election there has been a profound and potentially very empowering change. We will have the opportunity to vote for six only or more senate candidates. So we will be able to vote for the people and parties we really want this time and not vote at all for the ones we don't want or do not know. The article below is republished from the Australian Electoral Commission website. It gives the names of the candidates and links to their websites where known. At the bottom there is a collection of little-known independent candidates. In most cases you can use search engines to find these candidates. We will put up the candidates for other states if and when we have time, but you can get their names and affiliations and download an excel file with their websites and contact details here: http://aec.gov.au/election/candidates.htm.
2016 Victorian Senate Ballot Paper (116 Candidates)
Candidate Name Party
[Candobetter.net Editor: The letters on the left represent the ballot positions, but if you want to be sure, go to the AEC at http://aec.gov.au/election/candidates.htm]
CARR Kim Australian Labor Party
CONROY Stephen Michael Australian Labor Party
COLLINS Jacinta Australian Labor Party
MARSHALL Gavin Australian Labor Party
YANG Chien-Hui Australian Labor Party
PERSSE Louise Australian Labor Party
KENT Steve Australian Labor Party
TARCZON Les Australian Labor Party
FIFIELD Mitch Liberal
McKENZIE Bridget The Nationals
RYAN Scott Liberal
PATERSON James Liberal
HUME Jane Liberal
OKOTEL Karina Liberal
TRELOAR Rebecca The Nationals
DI NATALE Richard The Greens
RICE Janet The Greens
COLEMAN Misha The Greens
KLEIN Elise The Greens
CRABB Anna The Greens
SEARLE James The Greens
MINIFIE Tasma The Greens
ALDEN Jennifer The Greens
CAMERON Judy The Greens
SEKHON Gurm The Greens
MAGUIRE-ROSIER Josephine The Greens
READ Rose The Greens
DOIG Meredith Australian Sex Party
MULCAHY Amy Australian Sex Party
UNG
UNGROUPED
JUHASZ Stephen Independent
ARASU Karthik Independent
HALL Dennis Independent
SPASOJEVIC Dana Independent
KARAGIANNIDIS John Independent
LUTZ Geoff Independent
MULL Allan Independent
RYAN Chris Independent
VADARLIS Eric Independent
DICKENSON Mark Francis Independent
SHMUEL Immanuel Independent
FLOYD Glenn Independent
URIE Meredith Independent
NYE Trevor William Independent
HAWKS Peter John Independent
BESLIS Christopher Independent
For the past ten years Australians have been subjected to an exceptionally high level of population growth and now they are losing patience. (Article first published on June 13, 2016 at the Australian Population Research Institute. Republished here for the second time owing to recent data loss from site.)
The graph shows the steep increase in numbers since 2006 (data from here). If this continues the population will grow from 24 million today to around 41 million in 2061 (see the 2013 ABS projection series 29 and 41).
In November 2015 a survey commissioned by Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) found that 51% of voters thought Australia did not need more people. Then in May this year a survey done for SBS TV found that 59% of people thought that the level of immigration over the last 10 years had been too high.
The SPA survey asked respondents to give reasons for their opinion. Many of those who thought we did not need more people said our cites were overcrowded (with too much traffic)—consequences of rapid growth all too apparent to urbanites. Others spoke of job competition. And many worried about the effects of growth on Australia’s fragile environment. Concern about too much cultural diversity and migrant enclaves was also high on the list.
The SBS survey focused on immigration and found that dissatisfaction with immigration was even higher than with growth in general. It asked about multiculturalism and 46% of respondents said that this had failed. It had brought social division and religious extremism to Australia (43% of those who were immigrants themselves agreed).
It was reasonable for SBS to focus on immigration because this accounts for the major part of the current population boom — around 58%.
Immigration is a product of government policy. It’s the outcome of decisions made by political elites, prompted by lobbyists for property developers, employers, and other businesses that profit from population growth. The two surveys show that the electorate is fed up with the unwanted growth that this power elite has wished upon them.
The record numbers of migrants in the 2000s were partly justified by the push to keep affordable skills coming during the investment phase of the resources boom. But since 2012 that justification has evaporated and economic growth has slowed. Despite this, Governments, both Labor and Coalition, have kept immigration high. Now the motivation is to keep the housing and development interests happy. They continue to profit from a stream of new customers, a stream which also keeps the construction industry going and creates the appearance of a busy economy. But this strategy has not increased per capita income. Quite the reverse.
It’s not just that forced population growth leads to clogged infrastructure, cultural disruption and environmental deterioration, it is also comes with financial stress.
While headline GDP growth across Australia has held-up reasonably well over the past decade, thanks to high immigration, per capita real GDP is trending down so sharply that it has fallen to levels not seen since the early-1980s recession. … #_edn5" name="_ednref5" id="_ednref5">
While real GDP has been rising since December 2011, net disposable income (NDI) per capita has been falling. See graph below. (NDI is explained here.)
Urban voters are also angry about the level of densification forced on them by undemocratic planning authorities determined to accommodate developers. Groups such as Planning Backlash,#_edn9" name="_ednref9" id="_ednref9"> BRAG (Boroondara Residents Action Group),#_edn10" name="_ednref10" id="_ednref10"> Save our Suburbs, RAGE (Residents against Greedy Enterprise) and the Carlton Residents Association all express deep frustration about over-development, loss of heritage and declining quality of life.
So far the growth lobby has been able to keep on profiting from ballooning numbers, partly because few voters fully understand what is being done to them. They know that conditions are getting worse but they don’t fully understand the key role played by population growth.
The SPA survey tested respondents’ knowledge of demographic change. The minority (16%) who had a good understanding were the most likely to say that Australia does not need more people. But 82% knew very little. Though they were unhappy about time-devouring traffic jams and ugly new high-rise apartments, they didn’t always know why these miseries were being wished upon them, or why they felt so powerless.
But their unhappiness has political effects, effects which can explain why governments have been toppling so fast. Kelvin Thomson calls this the witches hat theory of why governments fail. Mark O’Connor summarises it thus:
[S]taying in power, and keeping the electorate happy is a little like an advanced driving course, one in which a government is required to thread a kind of slalom course between a series of witches’ hats — meaning the orange inverted cones that mark out the course. These hats, which the government, like the driver, needs to avoid knocking over, include such things as keeping electricity and water costs down, reducing hospital queues, keeping housing affordable, preserving the environment, providing full employment, restricting inflation, etc.
And the faster a country’s population is rising, the harder it is to do this… It’s like trying to negotiate the course at double speed.
As Thomson himself puts it:
[W]hen politicians … look in the mirror and ask ‘Why don’t they like me?’, the answer might well be that they are driving the car too fast and knocking over those witches’ hats. They should slow the car down and focus on solving people’s real-life problems.
It is not surprising that Dick Smith, outspoken critic of mindless population growth, is now the most trusted public figure in Australia. Or that mainstream politicians are among the least trusted.
The OpenAustralia Foundation, the charity that runs a more accessible Hansard, has made an announcement about the progress of its Planning Alerts service. This is a free and community commons service. It gives citizens some ability to keep up with what the developers and mum and dad subdividers are up to. This, in turn, will give ordinary citizens and residents more insight into the impact of population growth, more information to make political decisions, and more control over its rapid creep.
PlanningAlerts makes it easy to impact what happens to your local buildings, parks, streets, and infrastructure. Over the last 7 years almost 40,000 people have signed up for alerts and thousands of you have made official comments on development applications for everyone to see.
But there are more ways to impact what gets built and knocked down. There are people at the council whose job is to understand their community and advocate for people like you who care about it. These people are your local councillors and they work for you.
If you want to help shape how your community changes then these are great people to talk to. They can make sure you’re heard at council meetings, find and request information for you, help you organise locals around the issues that matter, and much more. These are powerful ways to have a direct impact—but working with your councillors hasn’t been part of PlanningAlerts … until now.
Start a conversation
You can now easily ask your local councillors about a development application you care about in PlanningAlerts. This is a new feature that we’ve worked hard to make as simple as possible for you.
People living in over 70 council areas around Australia will now see an option to write to their local councillors in PlanningAlerts. Since we switched this feature on, dozens of people have used it and councillors from across Australia have responded.
Lots of people do currently write to local councillors about planning, but these conversations all happen in private.
In PlanningAlerts the full exchange is public. You can share and discuss what is (or isn’t) said, and hold the people you’ve elected responsible for their action. Everyone can benefit from your questions and the work councillors do to respond. People who’ve never taken the step to make contact themselves can see how easy it is and how helpful councillors can be.
A handful of brilliant volunteers have collected councillors’ contact details for 70 of the 150 councils in PlanningAlerts (thank you Pip, Daniel and Katska!). Let us know if your council is missing and we’ll prioritise making this new feature available to you. If you’d like to help collect local councillor information, please contact us—we’d love your help to make this available to everyone.
Now it’s time to put your councillors to work for you through PlanningAlerts.
Right now the UK is politically divided on whether or not to leave the European Union and the mood in many quarters is ugly. It seems that there is a very strong chance that the forthcoming Brexit referendum could swing in favour of the Leave vote, something that seemed unimaginable a few years ago. The main reason for most people wanting to leave is because they are concerned with the UK’s rapid rate of population growth. This article is by Michael Bayliss (President of Sustainable Population Australia Victoria and Tasmania Branch) and Mark Allen (Population, Permaculture and Planning)
A proportion of the blame can be placed on those who have a narrow vision of what it is to be British in the 21st century and who are often misled by those parts of the media that take a more sensationalist approach.
However, the left also need to bear some of the responsibility because they have for far too long placed the topic of population in the politically incorrect basket. With net migration last year coming in at 300,000, people have a right to be concerned, especially when there is no end point to this rate of growth in sight. What is all the more concerning is that the refusal by many on the left to engage on this important issue has allowed the right to exploit this to their advantage by peddling all kinds of fear and untruths. Sadly it appears to be working.
So what lessons are there to be learned here in Australia? There is a parallel because we too are experiencing rapid population growth with net immigration in 2015 at 168 000, so the impact here is larger on a per capita basis.
While it may appear that this would be tempered somewhat by the sheer size of the Australian landmass, this population growth is centered mainly around the Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane conurbations. Until there are jobs, infrastructure and the political will, our boundless plains will continue to be just that. Considering that these plains are mostly desert and rangeland, there is an argument that they are mostly not suitable for new urban settlement anyway, so the focus is very much on our narrow strip of green along the Eastern seaboard. To put this in perspective, the populations of Sydney and Melbourne are growing by 1600 and 1760 a week respectively and people are beginning to feel it.
Meanwhile the government (and just about everyone else) are currently doing a good job of keeping our high rate of immigration away from the public radar. Instead we keep reinforcing the association in the minds of many people of migration with refugees. As John Howard famously promoted this very misunderstanding when he said on the radio 2014:
“One of the reasons why it’s so important to maintain that policy is that the more people think our borders are being controlled, the more supportive they are in the long term of high levels of immigration...And one of the ways that you maintain public support for that is to communicate to the Australian people a capacity to control our borders and to decide who and what people and when come to this country.”
However, the wool cannot be pulled over our eyes forever as the negative consequences of population growth only keep intensifying. Eventually more and more people will join the dots and it is then that we face the threat of the fear- mongering far right taking a foothold.
Do we really have to wait until then? If we engage in sensible rational discourse now about what constitutes a sustainable rate of growth we can avoid all of this. This means that the left have to come to the table. If the issue continues to be ignored we could end up with a situation similar to what is going on in the United Kingdom and it will leave the topic in the hands of those who feed off fear and hate.
This issue is only going to get bigger as Australia's population continues to grow by a new Adelaide approximately every three years. People of compassion need to be the ones who set the tone for the conversations that will ultimately come. If the compassionate fail in this responsibility, they will create a void where people with bigoted views will take centre stage.
Australia is a multicultural country with a proud tradition of supporting refugees and this needs to be the central message on the left. We do not need to be an apologist for the rapid population growth that is being used to justify an economic ponzi scheme.
It is time to put left and right ideologies aside and focus thoughtfully on delivering the most equitable and compassionate outcomes for all people and the earth as a whole. How rapidly we grow our population and how we distribute that population should be part of that discussion.
The views in this article do not necessarily correspond with the views of Sustainable Population Australia
This bad news is from Whitehorse where some areas are famous for their bush areas and trees and now the government plans destroying a lot of it and people are angry - do add your voice in support. We are supposed to grow more trees not destroy them like vandals.
Dear Friends of the Trees in Whitehorse
The trees and vegetation along the railway corridor in Laburnum, Blackburn, Nunawading, Mitcham and Heatherdale are under dire threat due to the level crossing removals at Blackburn and Heatherdale Roads and the construction of the southern route for the shared use path from Middleborough Road to Heatherdale Road.
A total of 450 (out of 550 trees within the project works zone) will be lost in Blackburn and a further 200 of 250 trees in the Heatherdale area will be removed or are threatened with removal in the near future. Indeed many trees have already been removed.
The natural landscape of our suburbs is being destroyed arbitrarily by a consortium that views trees as mere impediments to their 'development at all costs' mentality.
The 80+% of trees slated for removal within the Blackburn level crossing removal project works area is an absolutely appalling figure.
As most Blackburn residents know the carnage has already started with the loss of many trees near Blackburn Station including beautiful 100+ year old Oak Trees and other trees of great historic value.
Even the trees that the tree society committee thought had been saved following six months of negotiations with the level crossing removal authority (LXRA) will now be removed. We had reached an agreement with the authority that 47 of the 63 Cypress Pines on council land in Morton Park could be saved however at a site meeting two days ago an authority spokesman stated that the trees will now have to be cut down. These historic trees are over 100 years old and need to be saved.
The spokesman gave dubious reasons for their removal - so much for negotiations 'in good faith'; the Blackburn and wider community has been treated cynically and very shabbily by the LXRA.
In addition it appears that all of the trees in the Blackburn Station Gardens will be removed except for the Palm Trees and two small trees near the rotunda - the Blackburn Village is being destroyed before our eyes!
Can you allow this to happen without putting up a fight?
There are a number of initiatives that you can be involved with to help mitigate this tree and vegetation vandalism by the LXRA:
1. Help establish a fighting fund to support an independent consulting arborist assessment and report on the trees as well as any legal and expert witness fees associated with an anticipated VCAT Hearing. You can do this by donating money to the Blackburn and District Environment Protection Fund targeted specifically to the 'Save the Trees' campaign. Please donate online at www.blackburnenviro.wordpress.com or send a cheque to the fund via PO Box 210, Blackburn, 3130. Your donation will be most welcome (and it's tax deductible).
2. Write and/or email to express your anger and concerns to local ALP upper house MP Shaun Leane at [email protected] or PO Box 4307, Knox City Centre, Vic., 3152.
3. Write and/or email to express your anger and concerns to the Premier of Victoria, the Hon Daniel Andrews at [email protected] or 517A Princes Highway, Noble Park, Vic., 3174.
4. Write and/or email Whitehorse council stating how devastating this loss will be and urging council to become more active in the fight to save the trees - particularly those on council land and in private ownership. You can also advocate for council to fight for suitable replacement planting programs locally and fair financial compensation to council and local residents for any tree losses on their land.
Letters to council should be mailed to Jeff Green (General Manager City Development), cc'd to the CEO (Noelene Duff) and local Ward councillors Andrew Munroe and Denise Massoud ( for Blackburn) and councillors Philip Daw and Ben Stennett (for Mitcham and Heatherdale).
The Whitehorse Council mailing address is:
Whitehorse City Council
Locked Bag 2
Nunawading Delivery Centre VIC 3131.
Email addresses for council officers and councillors follow the same format as that for Jeff Green i.e. jeff.green[AT]whitehorse.vic.gov.au
5. Contact the Blackburn and/or Heatherdale Level Crossing Authorities to voice your concerns. The Blackburn Level Crossing Removal Authority contact is Kerilyn Wyatt at [email protected] or telephone 1800 762 667.
The Heatherdale Level Crossing Authority email address is [email protected] or telephone 1800 762 667.
6. Also write a letter or email the Whitehorse Leader on this issue (feel free to use the information provided above in your correspondence). The contact journalist is Paddy Naughton at [email protected]
7. Contact 'The Age' and/or 'Herald-Sun' newspapers via the Letters to the Editor section or through their Urban Affairs/Environment journalists.
8. The tree society will probably be organising a Public Rally in Morton Park and/ or the Blackburn Station Gardens in the near future to show our support for the trees and our local natural landscape. If you want to help organise or participate in this rally please contact me by return email or phone 0413 457 184.
Please forward this information through your networks and send your emails and letters of protest asap as suggested.
We need to show the Level Crossing Removal Authorities and the ALP politicians that we have the weight of numbers on our side.
Thank you in anticipation.
Regards
David Berry
President
For the Blackburn and District Tree Preservation Society Inc. committee
Here cdb poet, Brolga-Brolga, tells a moral tale of how a number of neighbours clubbed together to speculate on their adjacent land, but when they tried to buy again, they were already priced out of the market. With homage to Barry Humpreys who wrote The Highett Waltz, sung by Dame Edna, and linked to here.
The pressure is on in our quiet locations
The people who come here are not on vacations
They’re here to stay or so they believe it
The traffic’s horrendous no laws can relieve it
Our peaceful suburbs are in constant disruption
As developers demolish and dig deep for construction
The roads are adorned with red tape and “no access”
Impeding our progress with no sign of success.
Because all the hordes buy our houses galore
One group of people saw their chance to the fore
They got together all 8 neighbours next door
And conjured a sale, a bonanza for all
With planning awry it was well worth a try
To ruin the street but escape with their prize
A premium was paid for these 8 in a row
But for the old friends and neighbours ‘twas a terrible blow
The 8 Bay Road vendors raced away with their gains
And searched the bay suburbs, taking great pains
To find houses in line with their new found riches ,
With sun-decking, en- suites and brand new kitchens
Alas and alack they found only thin pickings
The houses all small and in very poor settings
As month after month they searched the “for sales”
The prices raced right past their premium gains
Meanwhile back in Bay Road, the 8 modest houses
Lie in ruins amid the remains of their gardens
They will be replaced with a 6 storey building,
of 50 apartments, the council unyielding
To grief stricken neighbours, their lives all in tatters
And the council kept saying "what on Earth does it matter?"
So, it’s no longer just normal and quiet ‘round Highett,
It’s constant construction, you just cannot fight it
The neighbours who stayed in Bay Road are defeated
Some internal peace needs be created.
But there will be no peace with those who absconded
and left them the mess to which they are now bonded
These 8 made so little in real estate terms
It’s a hard lesson and one we should learn.
With high immigration the prices will rise
and your fat sum of 1 million will soon take a dive
"Oh only a million, you might try a flat .."
Forget house and garden say "bye- bye to that."
You may have noticed that three articles suddenly disappeared from the site a day ago, then the site disappeared. It has been restored but we have to manually input those articles again. Although most of the problems are solved and we have not lost our site, there may still be some problems in next few days. We apologise for these.
Arguably one of the most successful actions of the Australian Greens has been the reaction to their Democracy for Sale website. This site allowed the media and public to readily access information on ‘who gave what to whom’ and has, (albeit grudgingly), forced some governments to make changes to the funding regime. But more importantly it showed that political donations were not just for buying favours, they were also about changing government policies or legislation to suit the donor at the expense of the general public, including their right to protest. And when it came to getting legislation changed there was none more successful than the development industry. Paul Keating became involved in 2006 saying that New South Wales (NSW) property developers were sending a wall of money to the planning minister. Of course is wasn't only in NSW, West Australia (WA) was the home of the infamous 1980s “WA Inc.”, referring to corporate deals with government under Premier Brian Bourke. WA Greens Senator Ludlam would know this from the findings of the WA Corruption and Crime Commission report.
All of this makes it surprising that Senator Ludlum , when speaking in parliament[1] about the Transforming Perth Study (a joint study by the Property Council of Australia, the Office of Senator Scott Ludlam ) would state:
“ It has been an unexpected joy working with the Property Council and a cohort of developers that they brought in to keep our feet on the ground. My thanks go to William De Haer and to Joe Lenzo, the Executive Director of the Property Council of Australia, for their committed work in bringing this report to fruition...”
Although this plan, ‘Transforming Perth’, did include provisions for light rail, cycleways and green ways, and aimed to stop urban sprawl by utilizing existing infrastructure, it was still Urban Consolidation, a term that has become synonymous with ‘Sardine suburbs’ and is now replaced with a less confronting name –‘Smart Growth’. But when you consider that developer-related corruption in NSW recently saw 11 Liberal politicians resign or stood down in just 9 months, 8 councils sacked in 5 years , 19 corruption inquiries by ICAC that led to 14 prosecutions, then Senator Ludlum’s gushing endorsement of developers suggest he is at best naïve. He is also at odds with some of his Green colleagues, like David Shoebridge, who argued that:
“ the Greens continue to press for community need to be put ahead of developer greed at this most grass roots level of government”
During his speech Senator Ludlam went on to say:
“This new study was commissioned... to take a long, hard look at what has happened in Australian cities in the last 50 or 60 years... Perth does have a good public transport network, but it simply has not kept pace with the growth of the city...”
Well what happened in the last 50 or 60 years was that the population of Australia grew from 7.5 to 24 million. Perth now contains over 2 million with a growth rate that reached 2.5%, the fastest in the nation, adding 346,000 more people in the decade since 2001. This explains why the transport system was overwhelmed. NO major city in Australia has been able to keep up with the extra infrastructure demand created by explosive population growth. Advocating, or even accepting accelerated population growth as a norm is tantamount to endorsing the unsustainable growth economics of the major parties, whose policies create all the environmental mayhem that the Greens deplore. As an example the water flow into Perth's dams has slumped by 80% since 1970 and is predicted to decrease even more in the future. Desalination plants, re cycling and underground water supplies help but are energy intensive and cannot supply cheap water to manufacturing, let alone agriculture.
Preventing urban sprawl is of course essential because we cannot afford to lose our best agricultural land, native forests or open spaces to endless housing. But Perth's sprawl has now extended in a strip 240kms along the coast. This has occurred because people want to live near the beach, where it is cooler. Temperatures across the world are rising due to climate change but in cities they have climbed much faster due to the Urban Heat Island effect – the heat retention created by roads and buildings and loss of vegetation which is more prevalent in regions with higher density housing.
But the most alarming section of Senator Ludlam’s speech was the scale of the proposal:
”The Transforming Perth study identified more than 1,500 hectares of land along seven high-capacity transit corridors in Perth and showed that if you built medium density dwellings, .....along these corridors-of four or five storeys, you could potentially fit between 94,000 and 250,000 dwellings along these corridors...”
Using the lower figure of 94,000 dwellings that equates to about 200,000 to 300,000 people and will require employment for around 100,000 in a state with sharply declining opportunities. The term ‘Smart Growth’[2] was coined as a way of convincing sceptical residents that putting more people into their suburbs was the right way to go, that it would utilize existing infrastructure and cut transport problems. But it hasn't worked out like that because existing suburbs lack the infrastructure for such increases in population. There will not be enough schools[3] or hospitals, water, sewerage or power facilities. Furthermore their construction will be more expensive because of the higher land prices, because land prices increase in proportion to population density. Medium density housing is not, in fact more affordable because prices are a function of supply and demand. Nor is it a ‘green’ solution since it does not reduce the human footprint (currently estimated at 6.25ha./person in Australia). Instead, medium density adds to the Australian footprint since higher densities provide less opportunity to collect enough solar or water. They are unfriendly to vegetable gardens, they don’t permit outdoor clothes-drying and they are more reliant on air conditioning. New house construction also adds to Greenhouse emissions. A two bedroom house creates 80 tonnes of CO2 equivalent. Our economic dependency on housing has left us with high personal debt – totalling $1.8 trillion with one of the world’s highest debt to GDP ratios, setting Australia on a course of reduced personal wealth for the bulk of Australians and the prospect of ever rising greenhouse gas emissions.
On the plus side Senator Scott Ludlam received the Planning Champion Award for his collaborative work with the Property Council and AUDRC "Transforming Perth". It is a plan which will cater for population growth (of which more than half is government-engineered) for perhaps 10 years. After that, well perhaps we go to 10 stories? And after that…?
From Russia Insider: Believe it or not, but these guys happen to be the smartest people in American politics right now, and they have predicted the course of the elections better than anybody so far.
They think Hillary is going to tank and get completely stomped by Trump. Worth a listen. They've been right so far.
An earlier version of this article was published here on 30/4/16. Comments were posted by ecoengine and Denis K on 3/5/16 and by quark on 4/5/16.
In the Australian Federal elections to be held on 2 July 2016, voters who support each of the policies listed below, are entitled to know whether each candidate asking for his/her vote will, if elected, try to implement that policy. We intend to ask each candidate, including the sitting member, his/her intentions should he/she be successful. Each response, or lack of response, will be posted here, to candobetter.net. Please feel encouraged to express your views about these proposals as comments or, when we make that feature available, to vote on them.
Effective #governmentParticipation" id="governmentParticipation">government participation in the economy
1. #governmentOwnedEnterprises" id="governmentOwnedEnterprises">Government owned enterprises: Seek to establish government owned enterprises in all significant sectors of the economy where they don't already exist: insurance, banking, real estate, funeral services, car retail, car hire, passenger airlines, buses, rail, sea, road and air freight, mining, tourism, supermarkets and other retail outlets, etc.
2. #rebuildManufacturing" id="rebuildManufacturing">Rebuild manufacturing: Re-build a large Australian manufacturing sector through (1) the establishment of government-owned manufacturing enterprises and (2) tariffs to protect private manufacturing companies from unfair overseas competition;
3. #sovereignControlOfWealth" id="sovereignControlOfWealth">Sovereign control of Australia's wealth: Outlaw the sale of Australian land, natural resources and built resources to non-citizens. Long-term leases to foreign corporations also to be forbidden.
4. #endPrivatisation" id="endPrivatisation">End privatisation: Past privatisations include Telstra (formerly Telecom), the Commonwealth bank and state banks, public transport, insurance, electricity, water. Conduct a public audit of all privatisations since 1983 including the recent sale of the Port of Melbourne. Seek to reverse these privatisations as far as possible;
5. #endCorporatisation" id="endCorporatisation">End corporatisation of government services: Corporatisation is generally recognised as the first step towards outright privatisation. Government services be given a charter broader than just to achieve the maximum profit regardles of other outcomes. Charters should include to provide training, career structure, job security and decent wages to employees, to protect the environment, and to provide good service.
6.#withdrawFromTransPacificPartnership" id="withdrawFromTransPacificPartnership">Trans-Pacific Partnership: Withdraw Australia from the TPP agreement. The TPP was negotiated in secret behind closed doors. It has little to do with trade. In many areas the TPP forbids our government from acting to protect the interests of citizens and the environment where a corporation can claim that such measures reduce its profitabily;
7. #freeSocialnetworks" id="freeSocialnetworks">Free Internet social networks: The government seek to establish alternatives to Facebook, Google, Twitter and YouTube. These social networks are to respect the privacy of their users and be transparently administered. Rather than being funded by advertising, these services should be funded by general revenue. (Given that YouTube is now offering to remove advertising for an annual fee, it surely stands to reason that many Australia Internet users would be prepared to pay through the taxation system to be free of advertising.)
8. #openSource" id="openSource">Open-source software: Promote the use of free open-source software by (1) requiring all government and statutary authorities to use the Linux operating system, and open-source applications such as the Libre Office suite in place of the Microsoft Office Suite and (2) Establish a public fund to adequately remunerate producers of open-source intellectual property including software.
9. #smallBusinessPremises" id="smallBusinessPremises">Premises for small business: Acquire or build suitable premises for use by small businesses, retailers and food producers. The affordable rents and charges should be affordable and not a barrier to capable people being able tpo set up their own businesses;
10. #reduceMigration" id="reduceMigration">Reduce migration: Reduce Australia's net migration to zero. Net migration should reamin atr zero at least until such time as we can know that no other native Australian animal is threatened with extinction because of the loss of its habitat to accommodate newcomers. Require the Victorian government to dismantle the "Live in Victoria" web-site as immigration is a federal, and not state, responsibility. See #foreignPolicy">Foreign Policy on refugees;
11. #stopClearingNativeForests" id="stopClearingNativeForests">Stop the clearing of native forests: Whether for throw-away paper products or building products, the logging of native forests be outlawed. Only timber from plantations must be used;
12. #stopKillingNativeWildlife" id="stopKillingNativeWildlife">Stop the killing of native wildlife: Outlaw the killing of native Australian wildlife. Re-build destroyed forests and grasslands and repopulate them with the native species which previously lived in those regions or else similar species where those species are extinct;
13. #reusableBevarageContainers" id="reusableBevarageContainers">Reusable bevarage containers: require that all beverages be stored in standardised reusable bevarage containers for which refunds are to be paid. Refunds for the smallest bevarage containers should be no less than 50c. Refunds for larger bevarage containers should be more. Outlaw the use of throw-away drink cans;
14. #stopBuiltInObselescence" id="stopBuiltInObselescence">Stop builtin obselescence: Outlaw the deliberate manufacture of artefacts to break, wear down prematurely or to fail due to lack of spare parts. Outlaw the importation of such artefacts;
15. #recycleOrganicwaste" id="recycleOrganicwaste">Recycle organic waste: Organic waste to be recycled as garden compost or in larger specially built sites;
16. #eliminateWastefulPackaging" id="eliminateWastefulPackaging">Eliminate wasteful packaging: Impose a tax on the volume of any packaged goods to provide an incentive to eliminate wasteful packaging that adds to the quantity of landfill at garbage tips.
17. #localProductionAndConsumption" id="localProductionAndConsumption">Local production and consumption: Encourage the local production and consumption of all food and artifacts. Reduce the need for importation from overseas and transport over long distances;
18. #relocalisation" id="relocalisation">Relocalisation: Work premises for the public service or government statutary authorities to be relocated close to where people live. Private sector to be encouraged to do the same. Over time this will reduce the need for cars, public transport and roads and should allow most to cycle or walk to work;
Providing for #basicNeeds" id="basicNeeds">Basic Needs
Basic needs: #fullEmployment" id="fullEmployment">Full employment in secure and fulfilling occupations
19. #jobGuarantee" id="jobGuarantee">Job guarantee: Federal government guarantee a job to everyone not employed by the private sector, local or state governments.
21. #onTheJobTraining" id="onTheJobTraining">On-the-job training, career progression: re-establish on-the-job training and career progression in all government departments and statutory authorities as an alternative to training at TAFE colleges and tertiary institutions; Encourage private enterprises to do the same;
22. #reducedWorkingHours" id="reducedWorkingHours">Reduced working hours: Reduction of the working week to 35 hours. Given the repeated claims of Australia's increased economic efficiency since 1983, the economy should easily be able to manage if working hours were reduced to 35 hours per week, just for a start. Outlaw compulsory overtime. Require employers to offer workers, who don't need a full wage, to work reduced and flexible hours;
23. #closeDownSweatShops" id="closeDownSweatShops">Close down sweat-shops: Governments must proactively act to close down factories, which use low-paid workers working for long hours. Re-introduce the state award system;
24. #commonwealthEmploymentService" id="commonwealthEmploymentService">Commonwealth Employment Service: re-establish the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES), which was dismantled in 1998 by the Howard Government. The plethora of private job agencies which replaced the CES has not been nearly as effective in helping job-seekers to find full, part-time or temporary employment;
25. #endSection457visas" id="endSection457visas">End Section 457 visas: Only allow employers to employ skilled workers where it can be shown that no worker in Australia can fill the vacancy. (Were the #commonwealthEmploymentService">Commonwealth Employment Service reconstituted, it would become much easier to fill vacancies from within Australia);
26. #stopEducationFundingCuts" id="stopEducationFundingCuts">Stop education funding cuts: Reverse the funding cuts to tertiary institutions and TAFE colleges;
27. #abolishUniversityFees" id="abolishUniversityFees">Abolish university fees: Make tertiary education free as it is in Argentina, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden and Syria;
28. #provideForStudentsLivingNeeds" id="provideForStudentsLivingNeeds">Provide for students' living needs: Re-establish the Whitlam Government's Tertiary Education Assistance Scheme (TEAS) so that University students don't have to work part-time to support themselves;
29. #strongerTertiaryArtsFaculties" id="strongerTertiaryArtsFaculties">Stronger Tertiary Arts Faculties: More funding for university arts faculties. Provide more careers in the public service for Arts graduates. Encourage the private sector to do the same;
30. #housing" id="housing">Housing: Ensure that each Australian citizen has secure affordable shelter. Require of landlords to offer to renew tenancies except where renewal would cause hardship to the landlord;
31. #publicLiabilityInsurance" id="publicLiabilityInsurance">Public liability insurance: Establish public liablity insurance as it exists in New Zealand. No-one, who has organised a public event and has taken all reasonable precautions, should fear financial ruin as a result of any mishap;
#democracy" id="democracy">Democracy, Transparency and Accountability
32. #constituencyMeetings" id="constituencyMeetings">Federal electorate constituency meetings: Each member of the House of Representatives be required to attend meetings of his/her constituents during election campaigns and at regular specified intervals;
33. #fullAccounting" id="fullAccounting">Full accounting of taxation and public expenditure: All losses and gains should be accounted for in the Federal Budget. Losses should include: unutilised skill and experience by the unemployed and under-employed. The budget must give estimates of the value of worth of government services which cannot be quantified monetarily;
34. #transparencyWithThePrivateSector" id="transparencyWithThePrivateSector">Transparency with the private sector: Except where national security may be compromised, no 'commercial in-confidence' contract to be signed with any member of the private sector at the initiative of the government. Discriminate in favour of contractors who do not require 'commercial in-confidence' contracts;
35. #allSidesOfStory" id="allSidesOfStory">Public newsmedia to give all sides of the story: Where facts are disputed in any conflict, whether domestic or international, the charters of the ABC and SBS require that they give both sides of the conflict the opportunity to put their case to the viewing public. (See also #foreignPolicy">Foreign policy);
36. #directDemocracy" id="directDemocracy">Direct Democracy: In the next term of parliament, put to voters a referendum to adopt Direct Democracy as practised in Switzerland;
37. #usepublicDiscussionToPreventWar" id="usepublicDiscussionToPreventWar">Use public discussion to prevent war: Invite representatives of foreign governments with which Australia is in conflict to put their case to the Australian public on television in interviews. Where possible, representatives of Australia put Australia's case in interviews on those countries' newsmedia (for example RT and PressTV);
38. #recogniseTheElectedGovernmentOfSyria" id="recogniseTheElectedGovernmentOfSyria">Recognise the elected Government of Syria: Recognise the government of President Bashar al-Assad as the legitimate government of Syria. The Syrian government enjoys far more popular support than the Australian government or any of the Western governments opposed to it, as verified in the June 1914 Presidential election and the Parliamentary elections of April 2016;
39. #endSanctionsAgainstSyria" id="endSanctionsAgainstSyria">End Sanctions against Syria: End sanctions and invite the Syrian government to re-establish its embassy. The sanctions were imposed and the Syrian ambassador was expelled on the absurd fabricated pretext that the Syrian government had massacred its own supporters at Houla in 2013. Remunerate Syria for its trouble and expense;
40. #opposeTheTerroristWarAgainstSyria" id="opposeTheTerroristWarAgainstSyria">Oppose the terrorist war against Syria: Oppose the illegal proxy terrorist war against the people of Syria which began in March 2011. By one estimate, that war has so far cost the lives of 250,000 Syrians, including 80,000 members of the Syrian Armed forces;
41. #stopAustraliansFromGoingToWarAgainstSyria" id="stopAustraliansFromGoingToWarAgainstSyria">Stop Australians from going to war against Syria: Support Australian Federal Police actions to prevent Australians from going abroad to fight against the Syrian government. Seek collaboration with the Syrian authorities to bring any Australian citizen, known to have participated in that war against the Syrian people, to justice;
42. #compensateSyriaForCareOfIraqiRefugees" id="compensateSyriaForCareOfIraqiRefugees">Compensate the Syrian government for care of Iraqi refugees: Remunerate the Syrian government for the trouble and expense it was put to for having to care for 1,300,000 refugees who fled to Syria as a result of the illegal wars of 1991 and 2003 and sanctions against Iraq in which Australia participated;
43. #peacefulResolutionOfPalestineIsraelConflict" id="peacefulResolutionOfPalestineIsraelConflict">Support peaceful resolution of conflict: Act to bring an end to the Palestine/Israel conflict that will allow all sides to live in peace.
44. #dismantleIsraeliNuclearWeapons" id="dismantleIsraeliNuclearWeapons">Dismantle Israel's nuclear weapons stockpile: The dismantlement of Israel's illegally acquired nuclear weapons be part of the peace settlement;
45. #mordechaiVanunu" id="mordechaiVanunu">Free Mordechai Vanunu: Demand that Israel free former Australian resident Mordechai Vanunu who revealed to the world Israel's illegal possession of nuclear weapons. Offer Mordechai Vanunu asylum in Australia;
46. #endTheftOfPalestinianLand" id="endTheftOfPalestinianLand">End the theft of Palestinian land: Oppose the illegal seizure of land by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank and the Golan Heights;
47. #endDictatorialRuleOfTurkey" id="endDictatorialRuleOfTurkey">End dictatorial rule of Turkey: demand that the United Nations act to end the dictatorial and criminal conduct of the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This conduct includes: giving arms, supplies and sanctuary to terrorists fighting against the neighnouring government of Syria, the arrest of border guards who attempted to prevent supplies reaching the terrorists, allowing petroleum stolen from Syria by ISIS terrorists to be pipelined into Turkey and sold, the prosecution of jounalists critical of his government of terrorism, shooting down a Russian fighter in neighbouring Syria;
48. #opposeInvasionOfYemen" id="opposeInvasionOfYemen">Oppose the invasion of Yemen. Ask that the United Nations take action against the invasion of Yemen by the Saudi Arabian dictatorship. Condemn the supply of banned cluster bombs made in the United States and their use by Saudi Arabia;
49. #MH17" id="MH17">MH17: Demand an open public enquiry into destruction of Malay Airlines Flight MH17 in which 28 Australians were amongst the 298 killed on 17 July 2014. Request that the MH17 Black Box given to the Netherlands by East Ukranian rebels, records of communications between Kiev air traffic controllers and MH17 and the United States' government satellite surveillance recordings of flight MH17 be released be made available for that inquiry, as the Russian government has done with its satellite surveillance recordings;
50. #supportDemocracyInUkraine" id="supportDemocracyInUkraine">Support democracy in Ukraine: Support those Ukrainians in Eastern Ukraine who are defending themselves against the regime that was installed in the CIA-orchestrated coup of January 2014;
51. #crimea" id="crimea">Crimea: Recognise the secession of Crimea to Russia from Ukraine in February 2014, which was overwhelmingly supported by the inhabitants of Crimea in a referendum, as a legitimate act of self-determination and self-defence;
#humanRights" id="humanRights">Human rights: Protection of human rights, civil liberties, freedom of speech and proper legal conduct by the authorities
52. #asylumToWhistleblowers" id="asylumToWhistleblowers">Asylum to whistleblowers: Request that the United States' government publicly try Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning before a jury for their alleged crimes as requested by them. Should this request be refused, offer political asylum to Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Should the United States obstruct Australia's attempts to grant asylum, raise this issue at the United Nations. (Also see #mordechaiVanunu">Free Mordechai Vanunu);
53. #julianAssange" id="julianAssange">Julian Assange: Demand that the Swedish government guarantee that Julian Assange won't be forcibly repatriated to the United States from Sweden should he go to Sweden to face charges of rape. If the Swedish government does not comply, demand that the UK government to end the arbitrary detention of Australian whistleblower Julian Assange and allow him to return to Australia. ;
54. #endDragnetSurveillance" id="endDragnetSurveillance">End surveillance of our phone calls, Internet browsing and e-mail: End the dragnet surveillance of all of our private communications by the United States' CIA and NSA, Britain's GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 and Australia's ASIO and ASIS as revealed by Edward Snowden. As Snowden has revealed, dragnet surveillance has not prevented one act of terrorism. Only allow surveillance of individuals or groups where there is reason to fear terrorism or other illegal acts;
55. #coronialInquestIntoPortArthurMassacre" id="coronialInquestIntoPortArthurMassacre">Port Arthur Massacre: as required by law, conduct a coronial inquest into the murder of 35 Australians at Port Arthur on 28 April 1996 - the largest mass murder in Australia's history. The suppose evidence against Martin Bryant has never been tested in a court of law. All forensic evidence and eyewitness testimony proves Martin Bryant innocent of the crime. The only 'evidence' of Martin Bryant's guilt consists of a supposed confession made after he had been illegally interrogated in solitary confinement for 5 months. Prosecute all those known to have acted unlawfully against Martin Bryant;
56. #martinBryant" id="martinBryant">Martin Bryant: Allow friends and relatives of Martin Bryant to see him in person so that they can verify for themselves the claim by the prison governor that Martin Bryant doesn't want to see anybody;
How you can help
If you agree with most, or all, of these policies, please consider standing as a candidate yourself at he next election if it is not possible for you to stand in this election. If you are a candidate who supports any of the policies listed above or if you know of any such candidate, please let us know so that we can promote that candidate and lift that candidate's profile.
Please feel encouraged to also promote these policies and candidates who support these policies on Twitter, FaceBook, other discussion forums or your own web-site. If you can think of any other policies we should promote, or even if you oppose or don't altogether agree with some of these policies, please also let us know by posting a comment below.
On Friday June 3rd 2016, the Simplicity Institute screened its newly produced film 'A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity'. The film is essentially a documentary of the Institute's attempts to create a simple living community along permaculture lines. Following a public invitation to participate a group of mostly fairly young people participated in this experimental community on a rural property in Gippsland. The project involved them growing and preparing their own food, and building the necessary infrastructure which included: houses for each other; a communal living area and kitchen in a large shed; vegetable patches; composting toilet systems, etc.
Obviously such a life requires possesion or development of a range of skills and a breadth of skills that individuals in 'developed' economies typically do not possess. The specialisation of work in such 'developed' societies tends to result in people having rather specific skills, and also perhaps excludes some basic skills that are quite important within an intentionally self-sufficient community. Nevertheless, it seems they managed fairly well in relation to sharing and developing skills in carpentry, vegetable growing, etc. But the experiment seems to have revealed one fundamental, essential skill that these people sometimes lacked, and which it seems is perhaps one that is extremely difficult to develop. That skill is the skill of living together. The skill of getting on, dealing with disagreements and making decisions in a way that does not lead to some people opting out of the experiment altogether. If we are to transition to any type of more humane economy then this is perhaps the key skill we need. The ability to live as a community in integrated, caring and selfless ways may turn out to be the most damaged part of our society as a result of the collective experiment in recent centuries with free-market ideals and the search for happiness through material wealth aided by technological development. And I would suggest that of all the changes necessary in our society, this is going to be the hardest - shaking off our perceptions of ourselves and our perceived entitlements.
Let us consider the difficulties that this small group encountered, and keep in mind that this group consisted of young, fairly fit adults; mostly single and childless. There was only one pre-school age child in the group. But real societies are not like this. Real societies have people who are sick, or invalid. They have many children - and with many children running around in a community which is effectively a combination of construction zone and working farm with sharp tools, and various other hazards then additional precautions need to taken. Things are not so easy, extra work is required - including cordoning off areas, being careful where tools etc are placed, keeping an eye out for children doing dangerous things or moving in dangerous areas. Effort levels and frustration levels are likely to rise. Blame for not keeping children under control, or blame for causes of any - ultimately inevitable - accidents will also introduce new elements of conflict.
And how caring and self-sacrificing are people prepared to be? What if some people are seen as 'not contributing'? Will some in our community look at nursing mothers, invalids, etc through the lens of Malcolm Turnbull's 'lifters and leaners'? Are we to continue to assess people's worth based on their economic contribution? Are we to continue to feel that we should all benefit 'fairly' (i.e according to immediate economic contribution) from the fruits of our collective labours? Because if so, such communities are going to encounter significant, and quite possibly fatal, difficulties. In fact, parenthood and children add incredible amounts of complexity to any community. Who is going to educate them? How? Often parents are very particular, and commonly somewhat inflexible, regarding what ideas and concepts their children should be exposed to and when. There are few other issues as emotionally charged as raising and educating children.
What if some members ask themselves questions along the lines of: why should I be supporting someone else's child? How can I get my own way (on one issue or another)? Now you may think that such thoughts would not arise, or at least not be serious enough to threaten the community. But we must remember that the system of inequalities and elites that we currently have did not arise out of nowhere - it arose in and out of human communities, and quite likely hidden behind this rise were thoughts similar to the above - maybe explicitly expressed, maybe not. What is to stop history repeating itself? If not immediately, almost certainly over time in the absence of express precautions.
It seems that anyone serious about living in such an intentional community - one with all the complexities of a real community - will need to not just re-learn traditional skills of simple production but seriously re-invent themselves. Such a re-invention will no doubt require a complete revision, and some discarding, of notions and ideologies as well as patterns of behaviour and thought. I would suggest that any such re-invention should include a new perception of ourselves - a perception that moves away from notions of selfish pleasure seeking; that moves away from short-term notions of 'fairness' in relation to the sharing of economic outputs, and more towards seeing ourselves as existing not to satisfy our own sefish desires, but as existing for the purpose of serving others. Such a 'service' self-perspective leads thoughts away from our own entitlements and expections of others and towards what more we can do to help others achieve their aims, how we can understand their expectations, and how we can help achieve those.
Today I received an email from GetUp recruiting volunteers to hand out how to vote cards. They referred to success stopping destruction of the Reef (by capitalists), promoting renewable energy, etc....
Everyone who believes in population growth supports a traditional right wing agenda. This includes GetUp, the Greens and all the major political parties. Does GetUp even know what it means when it refers to right wing and left wing?
Open Letter to Paul Oosting, Level 14, 338 Pitt Street, Sydney NSW 2000.
Paul,
Your latest email rant entitled: “Our new weapon against right wingers” implies that you think you, and GetUp, are left wing?
Excerpts from Wikipedia below provide a context to the absurdity of your confusion:
The left–right [political spectrum] is a system of classifying political positions, ideologies, and parties. Left-wing politics and right-wing politics are often presented as opposed, although a particular individual or group may take a left-wing stance on one matter and a right-wing stance on another. In France, where the terms originated, the Left has been called "the party of movement" and the Right "the party of order."[1][2][3][4] The intermediate stance is called centrism and a person with such a position is a moderate.
Amongst published researchers, there is agreement that the Left includes anarchists, communists, socialists, progressives, anti-capitalists, anti-imperialists, anti-racists, democratic socialists, greens, left-libertarians, social democrats, and social liberals.[5][6][7]
Researchers have also said that the Right includes capitalists, conservatives, monarchists, nationalists, neoconservatives, neoliberals, reactionaries, imperialists, right-libertarians, social authoritarians, religious fundamentalists, and traditionalists.[8]
Progressive
Progressivism is a philosophy based on the idea of progress, which asserts that advancement in science, technology, economic development, and social organization are vital to improve the human condition. Progressivism became highly significant during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, out of the belief that Europe was demonstrating that societies could progress in civility from barbaric conditions to civilization through strengthening the basis of empirical knowledge as the foundation of society.[1] Figures of the Enlightenment believed that progress had universal application to all societies and that these ideas would spread across the world from Europe.[1] Sociologist Robert Nisbet defines five "crucial premises" of the Idea of Progress as being: value of the past; nobility of Western civilization; worth of economic/technological growth; faith in reason and scientific/scholarly knowledge obtained through reason; the intrinsic importance and worth of life on Earth.[2] The term is often used as shorthand for a more or less left-wing way of looking at the world. Beyond this, the meanings of progressivism have varied over time and from different perspectives.[3]
The contemporary common political conception of progressivism in the culture of the Western world emerged from the vast social changes brought about by industrialization in the Western world in the late 19th century, particularly out of the view that progress was being stifled by vast economic inequality between the rich and the poor; minimally regulated laissez-faire capitalism with monopolistic corporations; and intense and often violent conflict between workers and industrialists, thus claiming that measures were needed to address these problems.
The definitions above generally describe a left winger as a progressive anti-capitalist. The fundamental flaw in all of this hypothetical mumbo jumbo is the driving force behind economic development, economic inequality and environmental devastation. That driving force is population growth. Since population and economic growth (a direct consequence of capitalism) are inextricably linked; anyone who supports the former is by definition right wing. GetUp and the Greens are right wing as are all Australia’s political parties with the exception of the Lower Migration party.
Australia’s annual GDP growth has averaged 3.2% since Federation. Population growth has averaged 1.6%. Over the last 2 decades GDP growth has declined and population growth has increased to around 1.8%.
The numbers may seem irrelevant to a relatively innumerate left wing activist who jumps on scientific evidence to support a climate change argument but chooses to ignore it when confronted with the facts about population growth. But these scientific facts are essential for developing coherent political objectives and humane ideology.
Since left wing is described as anti-capitalist you are clearly not left wing. The fuel for capitalism consists of two things. These are currently hydrocarbons and population growth. Each and both are directly responsible for climate change. It is not just hydrocarbons which are causing climate change.
Had Australia’s population growth been zero since Federation only a compound rate of GDP growth of 1.6% would have been required to create the same per capital financial wealth. But because of population growth, environmental damage and infrastructure expansion has occurred.
The primary beneficiaries are big business (capitalism), government and government bureaucracy. Hence all political parties support it.
But the trend has changed. The cost of infrastructure and its expansion is no longer covered by GDP. The reason in Australia is primarily driven by population growth which costs more to support than the economy can generate.
It is over. The era of left wing and right wing is over. It is legendary and farcical in the 21st century. There is only right wing or population stabilization; because the latter is the only way to deliver the benefits the left wing cannot deliver with this element missing from its agenda. GetUp is neither progressive nor anti-capitalist. It targets only specific consequences of its own political agenda.
There are only two “developed” city states on the planet with comparable rates of population growth to Australia. These are Singapore and Qatar. Both are authoritarian regimes with far lower costs of infrastructure, and infrastructure expansion, than Australia. Their population grows due to expatriates, who have no claim on social welfare and no rights to citizenship in these city states.
The only other countries with similar rates of population growth are under developed. Most are in Africa where GDP per capita is roughly 4% that of Australia’s and the birth rate per woman is roughly 6.
Australia stands out as a country retaining a reactionary, non-progressive, mass migration policy which makes no ethical, environmental or economic sense.
Another example of GetUp’s right wing extremism is support for refugees while actively promoting a political agenda of mass migration of the relatively fortunate; who all cost the economy more than it can afford to support them. So GetUp’s delusionary and allegedly “left wing” dogma drives the displacement of Australians from jobs using a skilled migration program which is a reactionary policy dating back to Federation. This same policy displaces genuine refugees from the opportunity to enter Australia.
All political parties, including the Greens, are right wing according to universally accepted definitions of right wing. They display common agendas with their support for migration-based pro population growth extremism:
• Pro capitalist extremism
• Reactionary defence of the status quo
• Conservative defence of the status quo
• Anti progressive
• Anti Green
Please explain to me how GetUp’s support for migration based pro population growth extremism meets any of the traditional definitions of “Left Wing”.
I respectfully refer you to my blog which might provide information of value in your educational development:
/blog/310
Thanks and yours sincerely,
Michael S.
David Suzuki says Australia and Canada are ‘full’ and calls country’s immigration policy ‘crazy’. "We plunder southern countries by depriving them of future leaders, and we want to increase our population to support economic growth. It’s crazy!” This translated excerpt situates Suzuki's remarks on numbers in context and is a response to an email recently doing the rounds. Candobetter.net Canadian writer, Tim Murray, has frequently criticised Suzuki for failing to criticise Canada's mass immigration which drives urbanisation and destroys natural habitat. Perhaps, in fact, Suzuki would not speak up like this in a Canadian interview, so savage is the Canadian mass media in its support of the commercial population growth lobby. Apparently hearing about this French interview, Canadian immigration Minister Jason Kenney attempted typical damage-control of his own party's indefensible immigration ideology, by slandering the famous environmentalist Suzuki, as “toxic and irresponsible” on Twitter. He also made remarks that indicated that he expected the mass media to similarly label anyone who disapproved of mass invited economic immigration. Which explains why Canadians fear to speak out about overpopulation. This interview, currently being cycled on email, was conducted by Jean-Michel Demetz and published on 01/07/2013. (Translation by Sheila Newman)
JEAN-MICHEL DEMETZ: In your autobiography, you evoke 'a happy childhood in a racist British-Columbia'. Seven decades later, is Canada right to call itself the most harmonious multicultural society in the world?
SUZUKI: It is a remarkable experiment. The presence of Asiatics is impressive: on the campus of the University of British Columbia one might think one was in Hong Kong! My parents' generation, although born in Canada, continued to intermarry among Japanese. Today 90% of Canadians of Japanese origin marry non-Japanese. In pushing for recognition of the diversity of the multicultural mosaic over the American-style melting pot, Trudeau helped integration.
Whatever their origins, Canadians recognise their common values: respect for differences and preference for peaceful and democratic solutions. This said, the First Nations remain the worst treated. Now the fate of these populations touches me, not only because of what they have suffered, but also becasme they have conserved an authentic relationship with nature. And that link is the greatest gift that they can bestow on us.
JEAN-MICHEL DEMETZ: In Australia environmentalists oppose population growth and immigration on the grounds that natural resources will not sustain them. What do you think of this?
SUZUKI: Oh, I believe that Canada is full too! Even though it's the second largest country in the world, our useful area is small. Our immigration policy is sickening: we pillage countries of the South and deprive them of their future leaders and we want to increase our population in order to increase growth of our economy. It's nuts.
JEAN-MICHEL DEMETZ: It's still a bit selfish to want to close the door behind yourself...
SUZUKI: That doesn't mean that we have no responsibility towards those who have difficulty surviving elsewhere. But there is no more room. All the same, Canada should alway s open its doors to those who suffer from oppression or crisis. During the 1970s, when we took in 50,000 boat people from Vietnam, I was particularly proud of being a Canadian.
At the Planning Backlash and Boroondara Residents Action Group "Mad as Hell event" in Camberwell on Sunday 29th May, 2016, BRAG introduced the following draft Resident's Rights Bill. To indicate your support please email drostmary[AT]gmail.com. Among other things it calls for the setting of population growth targets within OECD averages. It thus nails a continuing problem of the moving target in previous population policy claims. Australia lacks a civil rights code, unlike Europe. Our civil rights used to be implicit in our publicly owned resources and services, like water, Telecom, and power. This draft Residents' Bill of Rights is truly impressive in its ability to identify gaps in Australian residents' rights.
Residents' Bill of Rights
We, the current residents of Melbourne, country and coastal areas of Victoria, call on the government and opposition at all levels to act to protect our homes, communities and cities from over-development.
WE REJECT:
The current trend of excessive population growth through the ever increasing levels of immigration.
The excessive influence of vested interests and lobby groups upon residential planning and government decision making.
The increasing densification of residential areas and the consequent impact on our infrastructure without commensurate infrastructure upgrades at all levels.
The continual changes to planning law and regulations that provides no certainty for the peaceful enjoyment of our neighbourhoods by the current and future residents.
The continual urban sprawl into Melbourne’s green fringe and farming land.
We DEMAND:
• Population growth targets to be limited to sustainable levels based on OECD averages which is currently around 0.63%. (Australia’s rate of growth is currently around 1.7% ).
• Infrastructure be upgraded to meet current needs and kept ahead of requirements to meet our cities population growth requirements.
• A bipartisan planning environment that provides certainty and protects residential areas against densification in any form.
• Councils to be the sole “responsible Authority” for issuing planning permits and building permits.
• VCAT’s role to be confined to resolution of legal planning disputes and ensuring that lawful planning regulations are met.
• FIRB rules and penalties designed and strictly applied to prevent destruction of existing housing stock and neighbourhood character by foreign nationals.
• Expansion and development of regional cities and associated infrastructure to support population growth and lifestyle quality.
• Developer donations be deemed illegal with mandatory disqualification, forfeiture, or dismissal from or of any current or future development.
• Protection of current open space and tree canopy with requirement to retain or replace vegetation on all new or redevelopment sites.
• Government, at all levels, legally required to assess and protect the interests of residents ahead of developers’ interests.
• All planning committees and reference groups must have at reasonable resident representation.
• Legislate to ensure permits can be refused where a poll of residents/owners living within 300m radius of the proposed development indicates objection by the majority of existing residents/owners.
• A national uniform code be developed to define minimum dwelling size, minimum open space per bedroom and maximum occupancy limits.
• Enforceable minimum Victorian building standards regulations administered by an independent authority.
• Any breach of a planning permit or building standards should result in a prosecution by the relevant authority or the State or local Government to ensure proper rectification
• Developers to meet infrastructure costs necessary for new developments including drainage, sewage, water supply, telecommunications, gas and electricity.
• Developers to be required to contribute to a general community/Council infrastructure fund, , based on number of bedrooms or estimated improved value of the property.
• Neighbourhood character, architecture and heritage requirements to be met by every new residential development.
• Establishment and enforcement of resident and visitor car parking standards, for new multi-dwelling developments, at the rate of 0.75 spaces per bedroom, for residents and 0.25 spaces for visitors.
• Character protection for heritage and traditional local shopping strips.
Published & authorized by PLANNING BACKLASH, on behalf of it’s 250
supporting residents' groups in Melbourne, country & coastal areas.
PO Box 1034 Camberwell, Vic. 3124
This article is about the success of the Planning Backlash and Boroondara Residents Action Group "Mad as Hell event" in Camberwell on Sunday 29th May, 2016. It is based on a report by Jack Roach of Boroondara Residents Action Group (BRAG). This meeting also produced a stunning draft Resident's Bill of Rights which candobetter.net encourages you to support.
The Parkview Room at the Camberwell Civic Centre was packed with people from all over Melbourne and the event started right on time. A short introduction reminded everyone that since Melbourne 2030 in 2002, there have been 16 additional plans. These plans have included a review of M2030 and a new plan – Melbourne @5 million - which was itself reviewed later. Those plans were themselves followed by Plan Melbourne which included the 'Reformed Zones'. And now we have Plan Melbourne Refresh plus a Panel review of the zones –'Managing Resident Development'.
It was pointed out that all these changes have required residents to make submissions to a committee or panel whose job it is to make recommendations to the Minister for Planning. It is clear that residents' submissions are ignored. This has just been a ticking the 'consulted with the community box' exercise. Residents are being shut out while developers gain advantage through political donations.
The Mad as Hell event Panel of David Davis, Prof. Michael Buxton and Prof. Bob Birrell made presentations reflecting everyone's concern at what the government is proposing with its intention to push medium and high density into the established suburbs. Dr Buxton suggested that Planning Minister Wynne wants to have 70% of new housing in our established suburbs, which Buxton thought was not possible. The presentations were videoed and should be available soon.
The people in the audience made it very clear that they were very concerned about what is happening right now in their neighbourhoods. They interacted with the three panel members for about an hour.
BRAG proposes a Residents' Bill of Rights
BRAG then introduced a new strategy to give residents a real voice in what happens in their local area as well as what the government is proposing for Melbourne’s future.
A draft Residents’ Bill of Rights (RBR) was proposed (a copy of which was circulated to all prior to the start of the Forum). They were asked to take the copy home, read and consider, and asked to support the Bill. We have published this draft as a separate article. Click here to see the Residents' Bill of Rights draft.
If you like it, email your support to PLANNING BACKLASH –[email protected]
The next step is to campaign to get residents’ rights and that won’t be easy. A lot of help will be needed from residents all over Melbourne.
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