(We) can do better

The US-Empire's present preeminent position of brutal global thug is a self-evident truth based on hard facts regarding the magnitudes of death and destruction; counted in millions of lives, millions of refugees, and nation-wide obliterations of civil infrastructure, not to mention annihilations of national and civil institutions. US crimes do not diminish the importance of injustices perpetrated by non-aligned regimes, but there is an obvious asymmetry of magnitudes that simply cannot be denied. (Article originally published here:
http://activistteacher.blogspot.ca/2014/09/obamas-isis-project-is-nothing-but.html

The US military-finance-corporate empire (US-Empire) is characterized by (LINK):

• global military projection using over 1000 military bases
• control over the global finance instruments (and the money supply)
• corporate exploitation of labour and resources on the scale of entire continents
• dominant influence on World organizations such as the United Nations
• a demonstrated willingness to annihilate entire populations and societies -- directly or by proxy -- in order to ensure complete compliance

The nations entirely destroyed recently by the US-Empire include: Haiti, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and so on. These actions are outright crimes of mass aggression viciously targeting entire peoples, using combinations of military devastation, political overthrows, and brutal economic blockades.

No other regime in today's world is responsible for such premeditated and repeated acts of mass murder against entire modern societies. The US with its military allies, most notably Israel, is presently by far the greatest threat to peace and the greatest purveyor of terror on the planet.

This is not debatable by reasonable people. The US-Empire's present preeminent position of brutal global thug is a self-evident truth based on hard facts regarding the magnitudes of death and destruction; counted in millions of lives, millions of refugees, and nation-wide obliterations of civil infrastructure, not to mention annihilations of national and civil institutions. US crimes do not diminish the importance of injustices perpetrated by non-aligned regimes, but there is an obvious asymmetry of magnitudes that simply cannot be denied.

It is also apparent that the US-Empire's projects of nation destruction are strategic and premeditated. Having built an instrument for annihilating nations, it appears difficult for the US-Empire to not use it, irrespective of any moral or legal considerations. US "diplomacy" has become strictly an exercise in promoting its wars for geopolitical design.

It is in this realistic context of a ferocious, rogue and barely-constrained superpower that we must understand Obama's emanations about ISIS as nothing but a pretext to "remove Assad". And "removing Assad" can only mean destroying the Syrian nation and its people because the Syrian army and the Syrian people stand together and overwhelmingly support Assad against the foreign invaders.

The legitimate political dissidence in Syria was used as a front and a pretext to inject massive numbers of externally-funded foreign rebels into a proxy war for the US-Empire and its regional partners-in-crime. This is established by every credible researcher. (And, of course actively masked by the US-Empire's propaganda.)

And now an element (ISIS) of the injected foreign rebels is used as a pretext for all-out war US-style. For Syria, this means complete annihilation of the national defence forces, and total destruction of civilian infrastructure to bring the population to its knees and lay siege to any resistance. Straight-up crimes against humanity as the modus operandi for "regime change", a la USA, followed by US corporation predation, territorial control, etc.

Dr. Denis G. Rancourt is a former tenured and Full Professor of physics at the University of
Ottawa, Canada. He is known for his applications of physics education research (TVO Interview).
He has published over 100 articles in leading scientific journals, and has written several social commentary essays. He is the author of the book Hierarchy and Free Expression in the Fight Against Racism.
While he was at the University of Ottawa, he supported student activism
and opposed the influence of the Israel lobby on that institution,
which fired him for a false pretext in 2009: LINK. 

The internet provides the general public, almost anywhere, with access to contraceptive information which your local GP and well-trod academic paths have failed to provide. Here is a male contraceptive that provides months of temporary sterilisation to men. It only requires bathing the testes in hot water (46C or 116F) for 45 minutes a day for three weeks for six months infertility. Bathing in water of water at 43.3C or 110? produces at least four months of infertility. Longterm practice can apparently permanently reduce fertility. Voegeli's method was recommended and used in India in the 1940s by a Swiss doctor who ran her own hospital in India and advocated for the poor. Why have educated people lost this information? My reading leads me to surmise that this was (a) because it was recommended by a female doctor; (b) because you could not make money out of it (c) because it undercut commercial methods [1] (d) due to overvaluation of possible long-term effects in certain cases. All these concerns fail to take into consideration the dire situation of people in countries of high birth rates who do not have access to 'modern' and costly contraception. Note: This article has been retitled from "Simple Male Contraceptive - hot water" to "Revolutionary male contraceptive" because some readers thought it was a joke and, although the concept and practice is simple, this kind of simplicity is revolutionary today.

Of the reasons I have surmised for the failure of this method to be popularised, it seems to me that its very cost-free nature may be why the method has not been promoted widely. In our commercialised global culture, money-making opportunities receive the widest promotion of all ideas. This also explains why population growth is widely promoted but population restraint is not. The first makes money for focused beneficiaries; the second simply removes diffuse costs. Dr Voegeli's method apparently gained local popularity in India during a famine, but who knows what subsequently disorganised the societies and their cultural knowledge in the areas where Dr Voegeli practised?

Below I have copied and pasted a letter to the Lancet written by the woman who introduced this practice to India in the 1940s. [2] This Swiss woman doctor's battle to have the method taken seriously is alluded to in this article, http://www.newmalecontraception.org/heat-methods/:

"In 1949, Voegeli began a 20-year campaign to publicize the heat method so that, if the results of further studies were favorable, the method could be widely used (Corea, 1985; Robinson, Rock, & Menkin, 1968). Voegeli’s impassioned pleas for the method make fascinating reading and show how in some ways, the plight of the poor has changed very little in the intervening 50 years. Her attempts to publicize this free contraceptive were generally unsuccessful, although in 1954 the Japanese government requested the information and conducted several successful experiments (Corea, 1985 ch. 9)."

The same article also warns that "It is now clear that fertility may not return completely after long-term use of heat methods. After keeping meticulous records during more than 12 years of use of the special underwear method, one long-term user has found that his sperm count after quitting is only a fraction of what it was before. Keep in mind, if trying heat methods, that they may gradually impact fertility over time. Except for short-term use, heat methods should not be used as a reversible method– they should only be used by men who are okay with potentially being less fertile, or not fertile, in the future." The same article also provides theory on why heat methods work based on the location of the testes outside the body.

M. Voegeli, M.D.
"Marlefried"
Goldiwil-ob-Thun
Switzerland

January 4, 1956

The Editor
"The Lancet"
7 Adam Street
Adelphi Terrace
London W.C.2
England

Sir:

I am sending you the enclosed article in the hope that you may find it of value for publication in "The Lancet".

For your information I may say that I hold the Master's degree from Columbia University of New York City, and my Doctor's in medicine from the University of Berlin and the University of Paris. In India I practiced in my own private hospital, specializing in surgery. In 1950 I retired and am now living in my native Switzerland.

Yours very sincerely,

M. Voegeli, M.D.

CONTRACEPTION THROUGH TEMPORARY MALE STERILIZATION

by Dr. Martha Voegeli

In view of the fact that the problem of over-population, instead of being solved, looms ever more largely in the minds of thoughtful, conscientious people, it might be of interest to those trying to solve the problem to know how I met it during my thirty years of life and practice in India.

Working in an environment where the need for a practically useful contraceptive was of the utmost urgency, a type was aimed at which would meet five basic requirements, namely, effectiveness, reliability, safety, cheapness and simplicity. Such was the method finally evolved in my own laboratory. I called it the method for temporary male sterilization. The name indicates that it is for men. It requires the application of heat which reduces male fertility to the extent of producing in its stead sterility for a period long enough to be of value practically, without however sterilizing a man permanently.

The treatment consists in a sitting bath of 45 minutes, at a temperature of 116 F, daily, for a period of 3 weeks. This treatment results in sterility which lasts for at least 6 months. After that time, normal fertility returns. Where sterility of longer duration is desired, the treatment must be repeated every 6 months.

This formula was arrived at after ten years of experimentation, with the free and intelligent cooperation of nine male patients. While results differed at a temperature lower than 116 F, at 116 F they were uniform in all cases and remained stable. Race, nationality, age, climate made no difference. Among the volunteers were two English, two Americans, two Scots, two Indians, and one Austrian of Semitic origin. They lived in climates where average temperatures ranged from 60 - 100 F; ages varied from 25 - 45 years.

In all cases it was found that at a temperature as low as 107 F, motility in the specimens observed was visibly reduced. Timely treatment with a stimulant solution would promptly restore it to normal. This suggests that sterility resulting from exposure to heat is due to impaired motility of the spermatozoa rather than to their destruction. At 116 F, movement of any kind ceased altogether and could not be restored. Here it was impossible to determine whether this was due to simple paralysis or to complete destruction of the spermatozoa. Were they doped or were they dead? That was the question. In neither case could it be ascertained whether the matrix they produced them had not also been affected. It must be borne in mind that in every case under observation normal fertility returned when the term of temporary sterility had expired. This would indicate that the matrix, if affected at all, had not been affected to an appreciable degree. The heat applied may have led to a reduced output of spermatozoa or to impairment of their motility, or both. Certain it seems, that the temperature necessary to the suspension of fertility does not affect the matrix permanently. Conclusive answers to this and other questions will probably be forthcoming shortly through further research.

In the meantime, the method evolved in my laboratory was found to be effective, reliable, safe, cheap and simple. Its effectiveness and reliability were established beyond doubt. Daily baths of 45 minutes' duration at 116 F, over a period of 3 weeks, resulted invariably in sterility lasting for a minimum of 6 months. Successive applications of this formula yielded the same result. This was established by a test period of ten years.

In the field of practice, control was possible to a very limited extent. Only a fraction of those treated would report regularly and for any extended time. To establish reliable statistics was therefore next to impossible. Nevertheless, the results were obvious. In families who could not feed even the children they already had, babies ceased to be born, or their arrival was spaced. Moreover, gratitude, expressed by gifts of flowers and fruit, by a happy smile or a gracious bow, or where it was very deeply felt, by bodily prostration before the doctor, left no doubt of the practical help which the method had given. It often happened too, that parents would pay a courtesy call, all smiles, just to exhibit the new baby decided upon after hard times were over.

The safety of the method was likewise evident. Whether its systematic use for a period longer than twenty years would have had any undesirable side effects is not known, but within that period no such effects, local or general, physical or psychic, could be observed. To ascertain this was easy in laboratory cases all of which had been followed up and checked periodically for that span of time. In these it was found that temperatures below 116 F would produce sterility for a time of varying length. At 107 F, for instance, the ensuing sterility would last for two to five months; at 110 F, four to seven months, and at 116 F for a minimum of six months and a maximum of eight months. But where the sperm count is abnormally high, sterility lasts for only four months. This was pointed out by a research scientist in a university where the method is currently being put to the test. In such a case, the bath temperature would have to be raised, or the number of baths increased, or both, in order to insure sterility for six months. This could indeed be done without risk of any kind. In the laboratory as well as in practice, temperatures of 125 F were comfortably supported. In no instance were there undesirable after effects; heightened temperature merely lengthened the period of sterility. In no case did it produce permanent sterility because no degree of heat within the range of physical tolerance is high enough to sterilize a man permanently. For this purpose, other more drastic methods, operative or chemical, would have to be resorted to.

As to the effect of the method on physical health, in not a single instance where it had been used systematically and for years did it affect the body adversely. Except for the period of treatment, marital relation was normal. From the psychological point of view, far from being detrimental, the method proved to be beneficial to both husband and wife. It did away with a number of psychic disorders arising from inhibitions and forced restraint which manifested themselves in perverse habits and moral aberrations of various kinds. Again and again, couples would express in their humble way their relief from the mental strain due to the fear of the coming of another baby they could not feed. Now they could mean more to each other and to their family than ever before. Children subsequently born to such parents were normal in every respect.

The cheapness of the method was guaranteed by the fact that the only cost to the individual was that of a bucket of hot water. To a government adopting it the chief expense would obviously be that attached to the dissemination of information. This could be accomplished through existing clinics, centers of public health education and other channels suited to the purpose.

The simplicity of the method is obvious. There is hardly a method now in use as simple as the method for temporary male sterilization. Apart from the mentally deficient, the most backward individual can grasp and apply it. Its technique is suited admirably to people in countries like India, where the poorest avail themselves of every opportunity for bathing, where time is as yet no factor, and "squatting" a favorite mode of relaxation. In actual practice, containers used in the household or in everyday work were adequate for the bath. Naturally, thermometers were not generally available. To give men an idea of the correct temperature, they were offered a sample "feel" by dipping the hand into water heated to the required degree. Where a timepiece was lacking the men had more than one way of knowing when the forty-five minutes were up. One was the position of the sun, another their own uncanny sense of time, not easily comprehended by the foreigner.

For western man, or those living in the more highly industrialized places, the sitting bath might prove to be too cumbersome and time-robbing to be practical. For them an electrically heated gadget, such as a cushion, pad, chair, or suspensory would perhaps be more acceptable. Here a fresh series of experiments would be needed* to determine the factors of temperature, and the number of baths. It is possible, even probable that by use of such gadgets the duration of the treatment could be considerably shortened. Where the procedure is now being tested the sitting bath is used.

I wish to point out that between the years 1930 and 1950, the method was used in practice on a constantly expanding scale in places where famine had broken out. At that time there was no other method in sight that was cheap, simple and effective. The poor took to it readily and with gratitude. Advice, instruction and treatment were given without charge. No propaganda was needed. Fear of being censured or penalized by those representing special interests - priest, employer, family, headman and party boss - would deter some from seeking help. When they were assured that they could come under cover of night and that no name and address would be asked, many would seek the help offered. Those who did so were, among non-Christians, about equally proportioned between Mohammedans and Hindus. Among Christians, Catholics were in the majority. Opposition, sometimes violent, came only from among the well-fed, motivated as a rule by prejudice - religious, cultural, economic, political. A good deal of encouragement and understanding was given to the movement by the intellectual members of the community.

In closing may I say that from the practical results which were obtained, there can be no doubt as to the value of the method. From a more theoretical point of view, some questions are justified. For example, it might be said that the method rests at present largely on empirical grounds; that the purely scientific basis I was able to provide was not substantial enough to justify its application on a large scale in practice. But confronted as I was on the one hand with the appalling misery caused by overpopulation, and on the other hand aware of the utter harmlessness of the sitting bath as a means of implementing the treatment, I had no compunction about putting it to use without further temporization. Here I must emphasize that those who volunteered for experiments were motivated by truly humanitarian considerations. They were all willing to help to the point of sacrifice. Their distress at the sight of the misery around them was as great as my own.

Again, from the moral point of view, it might be asked if dissemination of the knowledge of the method could not lead to its misuse. To this question the answer is yes. But what plan or invention for man's good has not been misused? Such misuse would hardly result in increased licentiousness, for men so constituted will follow their inclination with or without knowledge of the method. Conversely, wide-spread information about it would certainly reduce the number of unfortunate children born out of wedlock. Faced with the case of a man who by reputation was a libertine, I decided, after much thought, that he too should be given the information. My reasons were, first, it might protect an unsuspecting, gullible or even morally defective woman; second, prevent the coming of a child unjustly doomed to suffer the liability of offspring of his type. Considerations such as these convince me that misuse of the method, in itself to be deplored, is an inconsequential factor, as against the benefits which will accrue to family and to society where it is used with conscience and with discrimination.

M. Voegeli, M. D., M. A., B. D.
Chalet "Marlefried".
Goldiwil-ob-Thun.
Switzerland.
March 31, 1956.

* This would also apply to other substitutes for the sitting bath such as sunbaked rocks, sand, or the direct exposure to the tropical sun itself in places where hot water is not easily available. Factors like these may have caused some of the sporadic cases of temporary sterility reported after the second world war.

NOTES

[1] For instance, a 2007 study (Transient Scrotal Hyperthermia and Levonorgestrel Enhance Testosterone-Induced Spermatogenesis Suppression in Men through Increased Germ Cell Apoptosis) reports that soaking the scrotum in 43C water for 30 minutes for only six days 'was found to accelerate oligo-spermia (reduced sperm count) when combined with TU (testosterone undecanoate) injections every 6 weeks but not to the extent of TU combined with oral levonorgestrel and never to contraceptive levels of less than 1 million sperm/mL. Now, why would you lower the temperature and lower the number of days employed and add powerful and potentially dangerous hormonal injections to a time-proven simple workable method that does not require any prescription?

[2] Originally from http://www.puzzlepiece.org/bcontrol/voegeli1956.txt

The full text of the interview has been published by the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA).

The interview inside between a BBC journalist, Jeremy Bowen BBC, and President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, is wonderfully calm, logical and informative despite the interviewer's many tendentious questions. Assad's analytical answers invite the viewer and journalist to logically evaluate reports which Australians are used to having presented emotively by anti-Assad forces. Assad's English syntax is sometimes unusual and the journalist at times fails to follow his statements and arguments. For instance, towards the end of the interview, Assad is asked if it is true that his government denied aid convoys access to areas held by the enemy. Assad's answer is that if they could stop aid convoys they would presumably be able to stop arms convoys. Since the areas are being bombed by 'rebels' continually, obviously they are unable to stop those arms. If his government were to stop any convoy, military interests would suggest it would be one bearing arms, not one bearing aid. Conversely, if the enemy fighters are able to import arms, then they should be able to import food. If so-called humanitarian organisations report that food is not arriving, but acknowledge that arms are, then the enemy is responsible for lack of food in a situation of well-armed violence.

Bashar al-Assad's performance seems so superior to that of Australian leaders that I could not help taking the comparison further.

Judging the Syrian leader by Australian leadership standards

During the Syrian conflicts President Bashar al-Assad has made himself available to journalists in a manner far freer than any Australian, US, British, French or German political leader. It is hard to imagine Australia's Prime Minster or its opposition leader being able to survive such a detailed interview about their conduct and policy rationale in Australia, say on democratic and humanitarian grounds. They simply are not morally, intellectually or educationally up to scratch and they expect journalists to stick to a narrow and predictable field.

The reader might exclaim that Australia is not currently in a condition of civil war and question the relevance of such comparisons. On the other hand, we are constantly told by the popular press that we are in danger of terrorist attacks. The much anticipated prospect of such attacks has been used to make fundamental changes to requirements of evidence, proof, right to know of what one is accused - requirements famed as having brought our legal system forward from medieval times. (See, for instance, "Action on inept anti-terror laws must get priority") So, if we are not at war, we are still treated as if we are in some kind of quasi-war state of emergency.

Why Syria is at war with terrorists and Australia only legislates against terrorism

Unlike the Syrian government, Australian politicians - government and opposition - toe the United States and NATO line, which many consider to be dictated by global financial institutions. (See, for instance, Sharon Beder, "Neoliberalism and the global financial crisis" (pdf)). This line is most unpopular amongst the general public who retain less and less of the available wealth or political power in this country, as suggested by high unemployment, housing unaffordability, foreign ownership deregulation, industrial conditions deregulation, privatisation and population growth engineering. Australia's farmers and its middle classes have lost almost all effective right to object to having their homes, livelihoods and environments torn up - by gas and coal-seam frackers and by state roads authorities and corporations to make way for state engineered population growth.[1]

So, what (apart from laws against secondary boycotts) keeps Australians from holding general strikes and standing up to their false leaders? Two things mainly:
1. Political disorganisation following on from social and geographical disorganisation carried out by successive governments and corporations, supported by a mainstream press and state press which have feudal-like tenure [2]
2. the well-known fact that people can now be arrested and detained without explanation in this country, a situation brought about by skilful use of the threat of terrorism to make us agree to the loss of our basic rights at law.[3]

In Syria, however, terrorism has been turned from isolated threats into brutal armies backed by the US-NATO alliance of which Australia and Saudi Arabia are both sort of client-states, and supported by aligned media propaganda. (See for instance, "Syria whom to support whom to trust?"

Here is a probable reason why Syria is at war on its own territory but Australia is not. Syria has or had until recently, a well-functioning dirigist economy and strong national identification by its people. Syrian law, based on French civil code and some local and sharia law supported this situation. The global financial forces do not like national solidarity. They don't like people's banks, free education and free hospital and medical care. If they cannot corrupt a state (as they appear to have done with Australia) they arm dissonant forces within it and send in mercenaries to back them up.

We have seen this in Libya, Iraq, Bahrain, Ukraine and Syria.

So, why isn't Australia torn by civil war? Because, despite the rising alarm of its people (whose current only option is to try to elect independents), Australia is doing the bidding of globalising finance, supporting illegal wars and turning its own polity into a feudal regime with a commodity economy overseen by foreign oligarchs and monarchs of a distinctly fascist outlook. Even our Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, has reinstituted knights and dames and recently even knighted British Prince Phillip in a move which, whilst decoratively redundant, could not go ignored and was probably not meant to.

Remember, Australia has no code of civil rights, subscribes to a bill of very vague 'human' rights,[4] and is sacrificing ordinary people's homes and farms to higher financial turnover uses - freeways for highrise rentals and quick and dirty coal mines and gas fracks.[5] The corporates and dynasties are taking over. Now we have a leader who takes knighthood seriously. The reaction is that he is ridiculous. But the reality is that he has formally, legally resurrected a major feudal institution, to bestow knighthoods on public figureheads of power. How far is Australia from a feudal state? What rights and obligations do knights have to the Australian PM and what obligations, if any, do Australians have towards them?

NOTES

[1] See, for instance, http://candobetter.net/taxonomy/term/3930
[2] See, for instance, ABC Bias; Murdoch media.
[3] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-20/new-powers-for-police-under-proposed-anti-terror-laws-amendments/5758178. Some would argue that our governments and the press that influences them got us into this mess by supporting illegal wars which have given rise to real acts of terrorism. http://candobetter.net/node/4257.
[4]Human rights.
[5] How corporate terrorism is dispossessing Oz farmers

Australian Federal MP Hon. Kelvin Thomson speaks in Parliament opposing the practice of "canned hunting" in Africa and specifies ways in which Australia can make this unattractive for Australian would-be "canned hunting" tourists.

Speech against canned hunting given to House of Representatives by Kelvin Thomson

Monday, 9 February 2015, Page 148 Proof of Hansard, Federal House of Representatives.

Mr KELVIN THOMSON (Wills) (17:45): Canned hunting is the practice of intensely breeding and domesticating lions within confined areas in South Africa, in particular, in order to create easy targets for tourist hunters, and I support the member for La Trobe in condemning this practice. It is barbaric killing for macabre trophies. Hunters from all over the world, but notably from the United States, Germany, Spain, France and the UK, go to South Africa and send home lion body parts, such as the head and skin preserved by taxidermists, to show off their supposed prowess. The animals involved are habituated to human contact, often hand reared and bottle-fed, so are no longer naturally fearful of people. Such animals will indeed approach people expecting to get fed but instead receive a bullet or even an arrow from a hunting bow. This makes it easy for clients to be guaranteed a trophy, and thus the industry is lucrative and popular.

There is a spurious argument made that somehow hunting brings conservation funding into a country through hunting permits. Yet this has been shown to be patently false. The steepest declines in lion populations have been in countries with the highest hunting intensity, and it has been shown that the funds reaching the local community are minuscule. Born Free USA, along with the Humane Society International, the Humane Society of the United States and the International Fund for Animal Welfare, commissioned economists at large to investigate the facts. That study, published in June 2013, shows that the trophy-hunting industry makes a minimal contribution to national incomes.

It is an absolute scandal that the continental lion population has fallen from an estimate of over 75,000 as recently
as 1980 to around 32,000 in 2012, with a further concern that the numbers could now be as low as 25,000 distributed over only 22 per cent of their historical range. This demonstrates that African lions require increased international protection from all threats including over utilisation for commercial or trophy hunting. Between 1999 and 2008 offtake for recreational purposes was unsustainable by any standard in at least 16 of the 20 range states trading in wild source lion parts.

An Australia Institute report has shown that the economic impact of an Australian restriction on the import of African lion trophies would be minimal because trophy hunting plays a negligible role in African economies, lion hunting is a minor part of the trophy-hunting industry and trophy hunting makes a minimal contribution to rural development. The Australian Institute identifies the trophy-hunting industry as a small part of the African tourism industry. By contrast, the overall tourism industry generates over $13 billion in countries with lions and trophy hunting represents only around two per cent of tourism revenues.

The member for Calare asked in the debate: what can we in Australia do? In response, I support the member for La Trobe's proposal that all animals listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, the CITES appendices I, II and III to which Australia is a signatory, are banned from being imported into Australia. I also concur with him that we should change the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to not only stop imports of canned hunted African lion body parts but also stop all species listed under the CITES Appendix 1, Appendix II and Appendix III from being imported unless specifically approved by the Minister for the Environment.

As the member for La Trobe outlines on his website, video footage of this practice depicts many distressing scenes including one of a lion lying on the ground where, at close range, a not-so-skilled or brave hunter takes several shots to kill the lion. The lion does not try to escape as it does not regard the hunter as a threat, due to past positive contact with humans. This cruel and barbaric activity needs to be stopped and a change in the law, preventing the importation of animal trophies resulting from canned hunts, will help achieve this while also assisting in protecting the future of international wildlife.

The idea of killing animals for sport is frankly barbaric and medieval but, if people really want to do it, then at least we should have a level playing field. The lions have teeth and claws; so give the hunter an appropriately sized knife and fire up the lions a bit before the contest by not feeding them for a couple of days. That would be fairer.

by Ellen Brown – Previously published (10 Feb 2015) on The Web of Debt Blog, Global Research. See also: A Public Bank Option for Scotland (7 Sep 2014).

Then what does explain it? The BND turns a tidy profit year after year because it has substantially lower costs and risks then private commercial banks. It has no exorbitantly-paid executives; pays no bonuses, fees, or commissions; has no private shareholders; and has low borrowing costs. It does not need to advertise for depositors (it has a captive deposit base in the state itself) or for borrowers (it is a wholesome wholesale bank that partners with local banks that have located borrowers). The BND also has no losses from derivative trades gone wrong. It engages in old-fashioned conservative banking and does not speculate in derivatives.

Lest there be any doubt about the greater profitability of the public banking model, however, this conclusion was confirmed in January 2015 in a report by the Savings Banks Foundation for International Cooperation (SBFIC) (the Sparkassenstiftung für internationale Kooperation), a non-profit organization founded by the the Sparkassen Finance Group (Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe) in Germany. The SBFIC was formed in 1992 to make the experience of the German Sparkassen – municipally-owned savings banks – accessible in other countries.

The Sparkassen were instituted in the late 18th century as nonprofit organizations to aid the poor. The intent was to help people with low incomes save small sums of money, and to support business start-ups. Today, about half the total assets of the German banking system are in the public sector. (Another substantial chunk is in cooperative savings banks.) Local public banks are key tools of German industrial policy, specializing in loans to the Mittelstand, the small-to-medium size businesses that are at the core of that country's export engine. The savings banks operate a network of over 15,600 branches and offices and employ over 250,000 people, and they have a strong record of investing wisely in local businesses.

In January 2015, the SPFIC published a report drawn from Bundesbank data, showing that the Sparkassen not only have a return on capital that is several times greater than for the German private banking sector, but that they pay substantially more to local and federal governments in taxes. That makes them triply profitable: as revenue-generating assets for their government owners, as lucrative sources of taxes, and as a stable funding mechanism for small and medium-sized businesses (a funding mechanism sorely lacking in the US today). Three charts from the SBFIC report are reproduced in English below. (Sparkassen results are in orange. Private commercial banks are in light blue.)

Swiss Publicly-Owned Banks and the Swiss National Bank: Marching to a Different Drummer

The Swiss have a network of cantonal (provincially-owned) banks that are so similar to the Sparkassen banks that they were invited to join the SBFIC. The Swiss public banks, too, have been shown to be more profitable than their private counterparts. The Swiss public banking system helps explain the strength of the Swiss economy, the soundness of its banks, and their attractiveness as a safe haven for foreign investors.

The unique structure of the Swiss banking system also helps explain the surprise move by the SNB on January 15, 2015, when it lifted the cap on the Swiss franc as against the euro, anticipating the European Central Bank's move to embark on a massive program of quantitative easing the following week. Switzerland is not a member of the EU or the Eurozone, and the Swiss National Bank (SNB) is not like other central banks. It is 55% owned by the country's 26 cantons or provinces. The remaining investors are private. Each canton has its own publicly-owned cantonal bank, which provides credit to local small and medium-sized businesses.

In 2011, the SNB pegged the Swiss franc to the euro at 1 to 1.20; but the value of the euro steadily dropped after that, and the SNB could maintain the peg only by printing Swiss francs, diluting their value to keep up with the euro. The fear was that once the ECB started its new money printing program, the Swiss franc would have to be diluted into hyperinflation to keep up.

The SNB's unanticipated action imposed heavy losses on speculators who were long the euro (betting it would rise), and the move evoked criticism from the European central banking community for not tipping them off beforehand. But the loyalty of the Swiss National Bank is to its cantons, cantonal banks, and individual investors, not to the big private international banks that drive central bank policies in other countries. The cantons had been complaining that they were no longer receiving the hefty 6% dividend they had been able to count on for the previous century. The SNB promised to restore the dividend in 2015, and lifting the cap was evidently felt necessary to do it.

Publicly-owned Banks and the Trans-Pacific Partnership

The SBFIC is working particularly hard these days to make information and technical help available to other countries interested in pursuing their beneficial public model, because that model has come under attack. Private international competitors are pushing for regulations that would limit the advantages of publicly-owned banks, through Basel III, the European Banking Union, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).

In the US, the current threat is from the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) and its European counterpart the TTIP. President Obama, the Chamber of Commerce, and other corporate groups are

pushing hard for fast track authority to pass these secret trade agreements while effectively bypassing oversight from Congress.

The agreements are being sold as promoting trade and increasing jobs, but the effect of international trade agreements on jobs was evident with NAFTA, which hurt US employment more through the competition of cheap imports than helped it with increased exports. Moreover, only five of the TPP's twenty-nine chapters are about trade. The remaining chapters are basically about getting government off the backs of the big international corporations and protecting their profits from competition. Corporations would be authorized to sue governments that passed laws protecting their people from corporate damage, on the ground that the laws impair corporate profits. The trade agreements put corporations before governments and the people they represent.

Particularly targeted are government-owned industries, which can undercut big corporate prices; and that includes publicly-owned banks. Public banks are true non-profits that recycle earnings back into the community rather than siphoning them into offshore tax havens. Not only are the costs of public banks quite low, but they are safer for depositors; they allow public infrastructure costs to be cut in half (since the government-owned bank can keep the interest that composes 50% of infrastructure costs); and they provide a non-criminal alternative to an international banking cartel caught in a laundry list of frauds.

Despite these notable benefits, under the TPP and TTIP, publicly-owned banks might wind up getting sued for unfair competition because they have advantages not available to private banks, including the backing of their local governments. They have the backing of the government because they are the government. The government would be getting sued for operating efficiently in the best interests of its constituents.

To truly eliminate unfair competition, the giant monopolistic multinational corporations should be broken up, since they have an obvious unfair trade advantage over small farmers and small businesses. But that outcome is liable to be long in coming. In the meantime, fast track for the secretive trade agreements needs to be vigorously opposed. To find out how you can help, go to www.StopFastTrack.com or www.FlushtheTPP.org.

Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. Her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 200+ blog articles are at EllenBrown.com.

Pax Christi Victoria Inc. International Christian Peace Movement invites you to the first Agape of 2015. Sunday February 15 at Kildara, rear 39 Stanhope Street, East Malvern. Shared meal 1 p.m Meeting 2 p.m-4.00 p.m. Speaker will be Noor Huda Ismail, from Central Java, Indonesia, the founder and director of a grass root NGO called Yayasan Prasasti Perdamaian (Institute for International Peace Building in Indonesia). He describes himself " a terrorist's whisperer". His
connection to jihadism world went back to his childhood where he studied for 6 six years with Bali bombers in a pesantren (an Islamic boarding school) in Central Java. One of the founders of the school is Abu Bakar Ba'asyir who is now incarcerated in Nusakambangan (Indonesia's Alcatraz prison) for his involvement in Aceh Military training Camp in 2010.
He will speak on : "The Emergence of Groups of Violence in Indonesia in the Name of Islam and the Effort of Civil Society in Indonesia to Peacefully Fight this Toxic Ideology.”

Please come and bring a friend.
Sunday February 15
at Kildara, rear 39 Stanhope Street, East Malvern.
Shared meal 1 p.m
Meeting 2 p.m-4.00 p.m
Bring food to share. All Welcome!

Biography of speaker

"Noor Huda Ismail describes himself " a terrorist's whisperer". His connection to jihadism world went back to his childhood where he studied for 6 six years with Bali bombers in a pesantren (an Islamic boarding school) in Central Java. One of the founders of the school is Abu Bakar Ba'asyir who is now incarcerated in Nusakambangan (Indonesia's Alcatraz prison) for his involvement in Aceh Military training Camp in 2010.

Noor Huda worked as a special correspondent for The Washington Post South East Asia Bureau from 2002-2005. He was assigned to cover the story of the Bali Bombings and its aftermath in 2002. He was so shocked when he found out that one of the perpetrators was his roommate during his Islamic boarding school years. This event became a turning point in his life.

The question why some of his friends turned to violence preoccupied him and changed the direction of his life. In 2005 he won the British's Council Scholarship to pursue a master degree in International Security at St Andrews University (a Jesuit-run University) in Scotland. While in Europe he travelled to different countries and visited many terrorist hotspots and met with former members of the terrorist groups (IRA in Northern Ireland, Brigatte Rosse in Italy, ETA in Basque/Spain and Baader Meinhoff in Germany). In 2008 shortly after returning from Europe to Indonesia Huda established Yayasan Prasasti Perdamaian (Institute for International Peace Building in Indonesia) in order to understand why some of his friends got involved in terrorism world. It is through this Institute that he pioneered a controversial approach to help former convicted terrorists to integrate back to society where they can lead a normal and peaceful life.

This is done through his restaurant chain called " Dapoer Bistik Solo" (Solo Beefsteak Kitchen) where he employs some of the former criminals and ex-detainees to raise their self-esteem and dignity. The establishment of his peace institute was inspired by an NGO in Ireland that helps integrate former terrorists back into society.

In 2014 Huda won the Australian Award Scholarship to pursue his PhD in Politics and International Relations at Monash University.” Huda’s writings have been published in The Conversation, The Australian, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Strait Times, The Jakarta Post and others. He is the author of the book, My Friend the Terrorist?, a book about his personal friend and former roommate turned terrorist. Now he is completing the second documentary film on Disenchanted Foreign Fighters. He is also making another documentary film on terrorism in Indonesia called Paradise and Prison.

Huda is a husband and a father of a young son. His wife is also from Central Java.

#CED8F6;line-height:120%;">Australian treasurer, Joe Hockey, stated in April 2014 that the age of entitlement had come to a close. [1] He was of course referring to entitlements that the faux-elite Liberal Party believe that people receive which they don't deserve. Medical health, education, financial assistance during unemployment and so forth. He wasn't referring to Negative Gearing or cash payouts for "Women of Calibre" to stay at home with their child.

Authors Note: The title was changed from "The End of the Age of Entitlement". Editor: Originally published on 2015-01-28 19:13:10 +1000, it has been republished today to bring it up to top of front page again, with the new title.

The Paid Parental Leave goes to people who deserve it, you see, that is, the people who don't need it. The Liberal Party retain a Calvinist mindset, where wealth is an indicator that one has been gifted and blessed by God. The poor, well, they must deserve to be poor. To say that the Liberal Party want to take Australia back to the 50's, implying the period of the 1950's, is overly generous. We're looking at some "50's", but something more like the 1550's

Poor Joe, to touch fleetingly on what modern Western society needs to do, but rather than grabbing on and pulling himself into the 21st century, he turns back to a past no one wants to revisit.

The Age of Entitlement IS over, but for a completely different reason. The latter half of the 20th century, and in particular the last two or three decades, have been built on the unsustainable foundation of neo-liberal economics and hair brained social theory. Built on ideas which promise so much but cost even more. It is fair to say that our society and our economy is slowly regressing back to a quasi-theocratic, stagnant and un-free state, but with neo-liberalism and Political Correctness replacing Christianity as the ruling religion, and technocratic economists and Politically Correct intellectuals filling the role of priests. These priests, who we don't call priests, but who act as if they were, exist only to manipulate the masses into accepting that their rulers are fair, right and eternal. Just as it has always been.

Our economy is built on debt, or more specifically, funny money, printed to bail out lenders who put people into debts they can't pay back. We have more or less been living a life of high consumption with ostensibly low cost. We have been led to believe there was no cost. That the cheap imported goods from China as opposed to locally made goods was a free kick. (It is hard to believe today that Australia used to produce electronic goods like radios and TV's. Anyone remember Amalgamated Wireless Australia?). We were told, again and again that despite the loss of manufacturing jobs, all was OK because we'd do "service jobs", and we'd all be able to buy seven hundred thousand dollar brick veneer homes preparing coffees for each other and acting as middle men. We convinced ourselves that rampant waste of resources tearing down houses and building them up again to sell them immediately afterwards for profit, or just to speculate on capital gains, was efficient use of resources, and good for everyone. Voices of the establishment allayed fears that the the dumping of tons of e-waste in developing nations is good for all involved. Mass immigration we were told, was a 'win-win' scenario, a bet on a horse race where all punters come out winners.

This set up It is nothing more than a sham system that those in power have to maintain to keep the support of those that keep them in power. Because it is the 'new normal', we no longer question the logic and maths behind it. Those days are past, and we are in a new era with a new mathematics. We believe the balance sheet remains reconciled. We have convinced ourselves that we can prepare for retirement by using government funds to subsidise a loss-making investment property, which appreciates in value more than the productive capacity of the nation is increasing, and that no one loses out. We treat the planet as infinite, resources as infinite. Stuck in a system where consumption and resource use must always increase, we invent reasons for why we shouldn't worry about this logical problem.

We shelter ourselves with 'nice' theories'. We distort the markets to make it appear that wealth is being generated and leave debt for future generations. Markets are rigged and deliberately distorted. Despite the fact that this practice conflicts with fundamental laws, we adopt the theories which suit us.

Theory and practice sometimes clash. And when that happens, theory loses. Every single time.
- Linus Torvalds.

This is the 'entitlement' which is ending, and has to come to an end. The 'entitlement' to burden future generations with debt to increase current consumption and inflate asset prices. The 'entitlement' to live a lifestyle we haven't created for ourselves. The 'entitlement' to pretend that T-shirts really do only cost two dollars and that is it perfectly OK to go through a new phone every year, phones which produce toxic e-waste and use the rare metal Indium.

Throughout the world, slowly, theory is colliding with practice. The tremors are felt in the form of financial crisis, deteriorating quality of life, deteriorating national integrity, loss of sovereignty, loss of stability and increasing pessimism. All the while we are told that this is temporary. Just a little more debt, just another bailout, just a little more migration, just a bit more 'stimulus', just a bit more 'growth'. Each time this fails, we are told that it wasn't enough 'stimulus', not enough new debt created, not enough 'growth'. Time to double down and open those borders further, allow more foreign exploitation and encourage even greater personal debt levels.

We either rebalance the books and bring our society back into equilibrium in a controlled fashion, or do it in a chaotic and uncontrolled manner by colliding violently with reality.

Austerity versus paradigm shift

Austerity measures, such as those tried in the 'PIGS' nations, and the budget cutbacks proposed by Joe Hockey aren't a solution for a rather simple reason. They exist to enforce the status quo by placing the blame elsewhere, anywhere but the system. "Austerity" measures are implemented by technocrats who maintain faith in neo-liberalism.

Austerity kills productive ability without addressing any of the issues which led to austerity being necessary in the first place. Joe's budget does nothing at all to get Australia manufacturing again, to encourage new business, or to redirect money to productive activity and away from speculative waste. It does little to address the problems which led to the budget crisis in the first places. The upper middle class welfare remains. Despite there being a current rise in the creation of new jobs, unemployment is still rising with our population growth rate negating this rare positive development.

Ending the age of entitlement in a post growth world.

The challenge is in moving society away from its addiction to consumption and growth, away from largesse and waste. Few, if any political parties exist which have feasible plans, so we may have to wait until the situation further degrades before parties appear promising action.

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
- Lord Woodhouselee

The debt from overconsumption may be paid, in part, by loss of freedom and quality of life. This is a price already being paid, as decision making regarding planning is moved away from local communities to accommodate growth, to accommodate debt, and new laws are brought in to curtail freedom of speech and increase surveillance, which largely seemingly have root in the results of Australia's population-engineering policies.

In a broad sense, the following reforms need to happen. These are not minor reforms, but fundamental shifts in the way we view society, conduct business and run our nations.

- Economic transparency and honesty: Tighter regulation of the financial sector, in particular regulation against market distorting financial instruments, fraud, corruption, monopolies and collusion. Reforms to the way in which money is issued into the economy are also required. The specifics are beyond the scope of this article, and may be looked at in future but significant, fundamental changes are required in the way we run central backs and in fractional reserve banking. Money needs to be reinstated as a representation of real wealth, with real backing and not a tool to manipulate economies. Government must be kept separate from business and money and political systems must be reformed to be more resistant to being bought by money. A more direct democracy, perhaps even involving citizens drafted to serve in government may be preferable. Government should have a separate regulatory body to ensure that vested interests are kept separate from politicians, and those politicians who betray democratic principles can be ejected.

- Decentralisation and localisation: Large cities are examples of dis-economies of scale. Costs involved with transportation and infrastructure increase per capita, and problems become more expensive to solve.

In order to reduce energy consumption, people must be encouraged and allowed to move to more low energy lifestyles. More efficient cars are a help, but environmental gains are offset by increased commute times and increased travel times, caused by urban sprawl and limited affordability which pushes people away from places of business and leisure. Smaller scale, self contained communities can reduce travel distance and make public transport more feasible, reducing the requirement for people to travel. Detached dwellings have lower energy requirements for lighting, heating and cooling than units and apartment towers. Back yards allow a degree of self sufficiency in growing basic foods, with a far lower carbon footprint for transport, as compared to vegetables shipped from China, stored in a Sydney warehouse then trucked to Melbourne. It is the overall trend here which is important, that the more 'rural' model which allows people space to practice self sufficiency through growing food, placing solar panels and water tanks can reduce consumption and cost. High speed rail and fibre optic internet makes distance less relevant.

It is important to note that increasing density to avoid urban sprawl trades one set of problems (increasing distance and loss of land to urbanisation) for another (increasing energy usage, loss of independence and increasing crime rates)

- Rediscovery of workmanship and quality:

The influx of cheap products has changed attitudes towards consumer goods. Where in the past, items like computers and TV's were expensive acquisitions to be maintained and repaired, cheap goods foster a 'throw away' mentality. It is cheaper to dispose of a DVD player and buy a new one than repair a minor fault. This waste results in an environmental cost, but our economy values this economic destruction less than a small proportion of our time. This is a false economy, as the costs are considered externalities and left off the price tag. By leaving out the environmental cost of production, consumption and disposal from the price tag, we have adjusted ourselves to this 'new economy'. An economy of cheap shoddy products which are to be obsoleted quickly, where quality, durability or workmanship means little. We must factor in the true cost in the price tag, which will result in rising prices.

- Rediscovery of the Nation:

People need to take back ownership of their nation, their communities, their government, their economies, environment and systems. Placing ownership and control of societies infrastructure and apparatus in the hands of those who don't have personal interests in it is problematic. Do international bankers care about local communities, about identity, culture, a countries future? No, there are merely tools for a system, commodities and resources. It is the people within the nation and the community who have a shared vested interest in maintaining it, and when their shared interests conflict with the will of those who run it at distance, clashes occur. In Europe this is manifesting itself in the clash between the EU super bureaucracy and the new populist parties. The people want control of their country back, but the cosmopolitan globalists see this is a barrier to their continued domination. As a result, many of the populist parties are subject to smears from the establishment.

The founding of the USA provides a good example of "enlightened nationalism", where a nation "By the people, of the people and for the people" was established for OUR (The American peoples) prosperity. A nation for a people, not a proposition, theocracy, monarchy or dictator. The USA has moved away from this, to a propositional nation, based on an economy, on ideals, and as a result is losing its freedom, power and spirit.

De-Globalisation: Another fundamental error in neo-liberal economics, is the assumption that nations are interchangeable, and that differing manufacturing costs, wages and costs of living are merely the result of economic systems. This is a major misjudgement. This assumption supposes that the market rate regarding wages and costs is purely a factor of systems in place, and words which define those systems. If nations adopted the same systems, the same regulations, the same words, then in theory, the economies would equalise.

This is a significant error in judgement which is discussed... nowhere at all.

This model leaves out one very important factor, demographics. That is, the disparity in wages between, for example Australia or Germany and the Philippines or Bangladesh is NOT just a matter of whether one has certain central banking policies, certain attitudes towards Capitalism, but it is indicative of the nations ability to create a desirable lifestyle. The current globalist assumption, is that the disparity in wages between the workers from different nations has no fundamental basis, so why not the cheaper one? In reality, there is a basis, and it has real world ramifications.

Conclusion

Australia, as does much of the Western world, in order to survive and prosper into the future need broad political and economic reforms. Reforms which go further than adjusting interest rates, changing term limits or changing how the voting preferences system works. Reforms of game changing significant. Our political system is simply not up to this, so only by popular political revolution can this come about. Europe is seeing the rise of populist parties which step outside of “centrist” policies, and despite fierce opposition from the establishment, they continue to grow. Likewise in Australia, we need to further divorce ourselves from the current systems and push real changes.

It isn't so much that we need to adopt new ideas, but that we should jettison old ideas which don't work, but which some people stick to as those who stick doggedly to ideas tend to do. Those ideas are the economic falsehoods which have entered our collective consciousness, various modern political 'ideologies' which make moral demands of us but offer no tangible benefits in return and the idea that in a modern world, the individual must further and further cede control to large bureaucracies and technocrats, who in reality are generally no more entitled or capable than anyone else. We have to drop the 'inevitable future' that we are told we must prepare for, and create our own, as no future is inevitable, except those pushed by force on complicit subjects.

Lastly, we have to accept our limitations, assess what it is we are really entitled to as opposed to what we think we deserve.

NOTES

'

[1] Joe Hockey's speech to the Institute of economic affairs in London on April 17, 2012.

For those of you who are confused about what is happening vis a vis Ukraine in European negotiations with Russia and the US talking up weapons-supply with Kiev , Peter Lavelle's Crosstalk, "Saving Ukraine" on RT today came up with some useful analysis from guests Mary Dejevsky (Independent and Guardian, columnist, UK), Alexander Mercouris, (writer and analyst on legal affairs, London), and James Jatras, (former advisor to the US Senate Republican leadership). The issue was, "Will peace be given one last chance? The French president and German chancellor head to Moscow for talks to end Ukraine’s civil war. At the same time the US Secretary of State arrives in Kiev to arrange training and arms transfers. Which approach will prevail?"

The above embedded video is located on youtube. The original site is at http://rt.com/shows/crosstalk/229723-ukraine-moscow-us-war/

Emerging from this discussion was that the US's recent hawkish talk of supplying weapons to Kiev (the West Ukraine government that is bombing its people in East Ukraine) is going too far for Europe. Europe does not want a war on its territory. The US is showing incredible insensitivity to this rational unwillingness of Europeans to expand the Ukraine civil war. The US seems to expect European governments to do anything it wants. The Europeans are afraid of the US but they are more afraid of war in Europe. Angela Merkel (German Chancellor) and Francois Hollande (French President) have taken a crucial step of going to Russia to meet with President Putin independently of the United States. Whilst the European Union is under the thrall of US influenced financial institutions it is difficult for the members of the EU to act independently of the US. Only the threat of war could make them risk US disapproval. Someone had to stand up to the United States, however. Another reason that these two European leaders may have decided to act independently is that the people in their countries disapprove of the US role in drumming up war in the Ukraine. Furthermore, Greece's recent left-wing party, Syriza's win of government might precipitate a domino effect in the European Union with other left-wing parties achieving government and defaulting on their debts, making new alliances and abandoning the Euro.

Some facets of the discussion in the video above were:

The Kiev Donesk or Ukraine vs East Ukraine conflict is a civil war, but it is being presented by US media as if it were a conflict between Russia and the United States. John Kerry and Putin have already agreed on ways to resolve it but the Kiev Government and Donetsk won't carry these out. This is a really big war, with hundreds of thousands now dead because of it and one million refugees currently living in Russia. Russia's position was to stand back and encourage Ukraine to resolve the issue through federalisation, but the situation is now much deteriorated and it is unlikely that East Ukraine could accept that. It is not reasonable to propose a temporary buffer zone round East Ukraine when this could be broken at any time by renewed warfare - which happened when Kiev renewed hostilities after a ceasefire was negotiated in early December last year. If Kiev is incapable of regaining East Ukraine, would it become defacto Russian territory by default? If that happened there would be a danger of the US media misrepresenting this as a 'coup' by Russia.

You can comment below or you can comment at the site of the show here: http://rt.com/shows/crosstalk/229723-ukraine-moscow-us-war/

by Federal Labor MP Kelvin Thomson – previously published (5 Feb 2015) on kelvinthomson.blogspot.com.au

It is troubling to hear reported today more allegations of fraud and rorting within Australia's migrant worker program, with the Immigration Department conducting a series of raids on a multinational firm working on major Australian mining and infrastructure projects. The raids targeted the offices of Murphy Pipe & Civil (MPC), with documents and other material seized. The firm has allegedly assisted dozens of Irish workers to fraudulently obtain 457 temporary skilled and other visas.

These allegations make even more worrying the Liberal Government's decision to relax requirements around 457 'temporary' work visas to make it much easier for Australian businesses to import foreign workers, as well as seeking to introduce a "short-term mobility visa", which would allow employers to hire specialised workers for up to 12 months.

In an economy where unemployment is a big problem, a situation that will get worse before it gets better as mining investment unwinds and the local car industry closes, it makes no sense to be relaxing foreign workers visas.

The Prime Minister talks about "growth and jobs", but the real intention of this government is to use the migration program to drive down wages and conditions, using the global labour market to smash trade unions.

ACTU President Ged Kearney and Secretary Dave Oliver are absolutely right to focus on the rorting of 457 visas – they constitute an existential threat to the trade union movement.

Planning Backlash reports that there have been some discussions with the Assistant Treasurer about the continued flouting of the FIRB regulations that contain exploitive overseas investment in the local property market. These breaches are resulting in driving prices for housing up to the exclusion of locals, adding to a rapid demolition of housing stock for new 'MacMasions', adding unoccupied houses to our neighbourhoods and resulting in buying tours from overseas which exclude local buyers. Here is how you can help:

Planning Backlash seek your help to identify specific examples of breaches of the regulations so we can give evidence in calling for enforcement of the regulations. Please contact Mary Drost by clicking on her name and using the contact form.

These regulations are in essence

1. Non residents can buy new houses for the purposes of residency associated with work or study whilst in Australia, as soon as this work or study finishes the property must be sold.

2. The houses must be occupied by the buyer or person for whon it was purchased

3. Non residents are forbidden from buying existing houses.

We want to know if you have evidence of houses bought through 3rd parties to facilitate demolition.

We want to know of houses that have been bought and have no permanent resident.

We want to know of evidence of buying trips out of SE Asia that exclude locals.

We want to know where overseas buyers have multiple properties in their own, or multiple family names.

Can you help?

Our intent is to see the law enforced and penalties imposed where it is not and so get fairness and equity back into the market.

In 2010 I visited Queensland on several occasions to give speeches about rapid population growth, in Brisbane, on the Sunshine Coast, and at the Woodford Folk Festival. I encountered great unhappiness at the impact rapid population growth was having in Brisbane and South-East Queensland, and was not surprised when the Queensland Labor Government was defeated in 2012, although the scale of the defeat was remarkable. (Article republished from Kelvin Thomson's site: http://kelvinthomson.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/queensland-government-knocks-over.html

In many respects the Queensland Government had fallen victim to the same problems that had beset the Victorian Labor Government which was defeated in 2010. But like the Victorian Labor Party the Queensland Labor Party has now pulled off an astonishing turnaround, apparently regaining office in a single term and toppling an elected Premier in the process. Ted Baillieu was replaced by his own party and did not get to contest the election; Campbell Newman lost his seat.

Political commentators are astonished at this growing political volatility. Kevin Rudd was elected as Prime Minister and replaced by Julia Gillard before the 2010 election. She in turn was replaced by Kevin Rudd before the 2013 election. It is now widely speculated that Tony Abbott, too, will not get to seek re-election as Prime Minister. So what is going on?

No doubt factors like broken election promises, the 24/7 media cycle, the Global Financial Crisis, and voters choosing State and Federal Governments of different complexions, are having an impact. But one feature of the past decade is regularly overlooked. In 2004 Australia had a net migration program of 100,000. Then in the space of three years it ratcheted up to well over 200,000, where it has stayed. This doubling has given Australia rapid population growth for the past decade – we now have an extra million people every three years. Prime Minister Howard, who introduced this rapid increase, lost his seat at the 2007 election.

I have become convinced that rapid population growth and political instability go hand in hand. I think of this as the Witches' Hats theory of government. Think about those Advanced Driving Courses that require drivers to drive in slalom fashion through a set of plastic or rubber orange cones, commonly called witches hats. The driver's mission is to avoid the hats. If they hit a certain number, they fail the test.

I think the re-election task of a government has some similarities. It you think of each hat as an area of public policy, such as education, health, housing, transport, aged care etc, if a government mucks up an area of public policy it is akin to hitting one of the witches' hats. If a government hits a number of hats, ie fails a number of public policy tasks, it is likely to be voted out, just as the driver who hits the hats won't get their Advanced Driving Qualification.

Now it seems pretty obvious that if you're a driver, you are much more likely to avoid the hats if you are travelling at 50 kph, whereas if you're driving at 100 kph, you're pretty likely to hit some hats. And if you're a government you're much more likely to solve peoples' problems if you have a population that is growing slowly, rather than one that is growing rapidly.

The Queensland and Victorian Liberal Governments were elected on the back of public discontent with issues such as planning, public transport, cost of living, housing unaffordability and job insecurity. But as these things had been caused by rapid population growth, and the growth continued, they did not solve those problems, and paid a massive electoral price for it. For example Governments get punished for trying to sell off public assets. They do it to raise money to build new infrastructure, or pay down debts incurred as a result of past infrastructure building. But they would not need so much money, or so much infrastructure, if the population wasn't growing so fast. The Queensland academic Jane O'Sullivan says that population growth of 2 per cent doubles the infrastructure task compared with that in a stable population.

It is not only in Australia that rapid population growth drives political instability. It happens right around the world. Governments in the Scandinavian countries with slow population growth are able to solve people's problems and enjoy considerable political life expectancy. Countries which have high birth rates, like Egypt, Nigeria and the Philippines, have chaos. In the Pacific Islands Samoa has had a relatively stable population, and stable government, for decades, whereas Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands have had neither.

It is not fashionable to focus on our past decade of rapid population growth as a cause of Australia's political instability and volatility. Some are happier focussing on the alleged personal qualities of our leaders – they heap praise or derision on Anna Bligh, or Tony Abbott, or Campbell Newman, when the fact is that a different leader with the same policies would have led to the same result. Others want to interpret election results through a highly ideological prism, and come unstuck as a consequence of believing too much of their own propaganda.

It is probably too late for Tony Abbott. But perhaps his successor, or successors, and other political leaders around Australia, might want to ask themselves "do I want to be yet another casualty of our equivalent of the Colosseum, or do I want a respectable time in office, as Prime Ministers and Premiers had as recently as the 80s and 90s?" And if so, isn't the way to improve my political life expectancy to slow the population car down and focus on solving people's real life problems?

As if the development and construction of 590 Orrong Road isn't enough, residents at 'ground zero' are now facing compulsory acquisition of their homes. They need your help today. You will also be dismayed to learn that Victory Square is at risk of being yet another sports oval in an area so devoid of passive recreation space. When is enough enough?
Read all about it and take action. Originally published at https://orronggroup.wordpress.com/ as an article posted by Hootville, "Urgent: Council’s plan for parkland next to 590 Orrong Rd".

As if the development and construction of 590 Orrong Road isn't enough, residents at 'ground zero' are now facing compulsory acquisition of their homes.

They need your help today.

You will also be dismayed to learn that Victory Square is at risk of being yet another sports oval in an area so devoid of passive recreation space. When is enough enough?

Read all about it and take action: As if the development and construction of 590 Orrong Road isn't enough, residents at 'ground zero' are now facing compulsory acquisition of their homes.

They need your help today.

You will also be dismayed to learn that Victory Square is at risk of being yet another sports oval in an area so devoid of passive recreation space. When is enough enough?

Read all about it and take action:

Victory Square under threat, playground demolished, (yet) more cricket facilities planned. 

The words below come to us from members of a new group: No Confidence in Stonnington, many of whom live near “ground zero”. Not only have these residents been lumbered with the gross over development that is 590 Orrong Rd, they are facing compulsory acquisition of their homes – using money from the developer.

That money – which is obligatory by law – is supposed to compensate locals  for the massive impact of the development. Instead it seems that the money will be spent in ways that hurts locals more and benefit one very specific group in the community. If that’s not enough, the group has drawn our attention to a hideous new possible masterplan for the Victory Square space. It seems that people – dog walkers, parents, kids, older people, joggers, those that just enjoy a (tiny) open space – will be ignored in favour of powerful sports clubs. If what you read below upsets you, learn more and take action at their website.  

Stonnington Council proposes to place a Public Acquisition Overlay over three homes adjacent to Toorak Oval and Victory Square (Amendment C 197) (homes at 10 and 14 Aubrey St and 1aFulton Street). They have already spent over $1.4M quietly acquiring 1 Fulton Street in 2014. They are in a position to spend millions of ratepayers’ funds on potentially acquiring homes because of the developer contributions they will receive, by law, from the Lend Lease development at 590 Orrong Road.

The anticipated open space needs generated by this development should have been provided at that land. The local community should not be required to provide land for the public open space needs generated by that development and had understood the development contributions from that development would go to improving existing open space, not acquiring more land.

Another master plan for Toorak Oval and Victory Square

The existing master plan does not contemplate the expansion of the park area. However, the Council proposes to spend money on yet another master plan for Toorak Oval and Victory Square and preliminary plans indicate that they wish to spend ratepayers’ funds to acquire the three homes and turn them into cricket nets and re-allocated car parking spaces. Victory Square will be turned into a mini football/cricket oval and will see the removal of the much used playground. It is likely that it will not longer be accessible for the many dog owners, parents, children and seniors, who use the park all day, every day.

Object by Monday 2nd February If you agree that this is certainly not the best allocation of ratepayers’ funds, nor the best outcome for the wider community, not just the influential sporting groups, please object. More details and an objection form here.

Economists are predicting that Australia will be the world's biggest exporter of LNG by 2018, overtaking Qatar's production. Instead of being able to enjoy prosperity and the economic benefits, consumers and manufacturing industries will be held hostage to the multi-national mining giants' demands.

Gas producers in the eastern states were once devoted to supplying domestic buyers, but now they are now chasing export dollars. Until very recently, gas extracted in Australia stayed in Australia. Because our nation has abundant natural gas reserves, it meant our gas prices have stayed low by global standards. 

The loss of insulated prices will mean we are forced to compete with buyers across Asia who prepared to pay top prices.

Today, new technology has made it possible for Australian gas to be liquefied economically and exported, via ships, overseas. Multinational gas companies have been given licenses to extract Australian gas from major new gas fields and to export it, primarily to Asia. Exports of Australian gas will start ramping up from July 2015.

Unlike most gas exporting countries, our Federal and state governments (except for Western Australia) appear incapable, and unwilling, to reserve any gas for domestic use. They are failing to protect our manufacturing industry, jobs, and consumers from Queensland's gas exporters, and we will be held at ransom by mining companies' mega-power.

Unbridled globalization gives them more power than governments! There might be some benefits of globalisation of our natural resources, but not when we have foreign mining corporations strangling our right to what should be protected for our own use - and expecting us to pay their extortion rackets!

Reserve Our Gas will campaign for lawmakers to move urgently to prevent this by ensuring a percentage of Australian gas is reserved for domestic use at a fair price.

The new gas export industry is linking Australia to the high global price for gas, with projections showing local gas prices rising dramatically in the coming years as a result. While Australian gas has traditionally cost around $3-4 per gigajoule domestically, it can sell for up to $18 per gigajoule on Asian markets.

While there is no national gas reservation policy, Western Australia mandates the reservation of 15 per cent of the state's gas.

“Australia is the only nation on earth allowing exporters to extract our gas without restriction and sell it back to us at the global price,” AWU National Secretary and Reserve Our Gas spokesman Scott McDine said.

Australians have a right to know their rapidly rising gas bills are actually completely preventable. We just need to do what every other gas-exporting nation does and bring in laws to look after the local population. Australians should pay the Australian price for gas - not the global price - because it’s our gas.

The Grattan Institute report Gas At The Crossroads: Australia’s Hard Choice says that “governments should not put constraints on the market – for example, by introducing a gas reservation policy that allocates a fixed amount of gas to domestic consumers for a fixed (and lower) price”.

They say that “Both industry and governments need to work with communities to resolve the impasse over coal seam gas in New South Wales and Victoria...: Electricity and gas prices in Australia have already increased 61% and 36% respectively in the past five years and further price jumps will put pressure on the country’s manufacturing industries. So, multinational greed should force Australians on the East coast to allow more coal seam gas mining!

There are significant concerns associated with hydraulic fracturing including the potential to contaminate water sources and cause earthquakes. A report by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia said: "In addition to concerns over contamination of aquifers from the chemicals added to fracking fluid, issues have also been raised about contamination of water supplies from fugitive gas after fracking, and seismic activity and tremors associated with the drilling and fracking process".

Fracking has been used during coal seam gas operations in both Queensland and New South Wales.

Sign the Petition to Reserve Our Gas

A definition of National Sovereignty:
National sovereignty is the exclusive right of a government, or of its people (as in a democracy), or an individual (as in a monarchy) to exercise supreme authority over itself. In the current international system, the nation-state is the highest level of government. This article explores several different examples of how respect for national sovereignty occurs by various means in other countries that do not occur in Australia.

For example:

• Policies like Malaysianisation, Indonesianisation and Qatarisation are used in developing countries to promote the education of citizens through work experience and skills transfer from expatriate workers in foreign corporations operating in the relevant country. Generally such expats have no right to apply for citizenship in the relevant country. Such policies are clearly in the national interest, and a significant proportion of expatriates return to their home countries when their work assignments are completed; promoting the creation of job opportunities for the citizens of these developing countries.
• Another aspect of national sovereignty in such developing countries is state-owned oil and mining companies. For example Petronas in Malaysia and Pertamina in Indonesia logically retain ownership of national resources projects. Foreign oil companies must enter into Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs). They never own these state assets. The contracts allow profit sharing by the foreign corporations and the assets generally revert to state ownership after a predetermined period. This is clearly in the national interest and also provides a source of private sector finance in the national interest.
• If you wish to study in Germany you have to pass an examination in advanced German. Because German is not the global language, this effectively acts as a disincentive for many foreign students to study in Germany. Even if they did, this would not necessarily qualify such students to apply for EU citizenship. This effectively prioritises the education of German citizens in German educational institutions, rather than educating a migrant workforce to compete with German students for jobs. This is arguably in the national interest.

Australian skilled workers may get more interest from overseas employers (where such employment rights exist) than can be mustered in their own country.

There are no state mining or oil and gas corporations in Australia, and this facilitates foreign ownership of Australian assets.

PSCs are analogous to the Duke of Westminster's retained ownership of much of Central London in perpetuity. Nobody ever owns his assets; they only lease them.

Does all this demonstrate Australia's self destructive lack of respect for national sovereignty? Do most countries tend to defend their citizen workers and national interest rather than operate such strategies as skilled migration programs and reckless free market capitalism against the public interest? For the last decade or more unemployment has been rising at an annual rate roughly 60% higher than population growth.

Although some workers on 457 visas leave Australia as their contracts expire and no further opportunities become available before the specified deadlines, a large proportion remain here because Government policy facilitates the option to apply for permanent residence, working rights and ultimately citizenship. Such opportunities are often not available on a reciprocal basis to Australians seeking work in countries like the US, the UK and most developing countries.

Is Australia wrong to dispossess existing Australians of their right to employment opportunities in this way? Is Australia wrong to dispossess Australians of their right to ownership of national resources in this way?

The national policy of many developing countries worldwide is to grant only temporary working visas to expatriates, regardless of their length of stay. The reason is simple: The need for the skills is temporary, not permanent, and policies like "Malaysianisation" are commonplace, reflecting logical support for skills transfer in the national interest. State oil and mining companies operate under similar principles of national sovereignty.

The national interest is the people; not dispossession of the people. Despite bad track records of human rights abuse of individuals who lack adequate legal protection, developing countries generally understand this principle. Does Australia?

This article forms the basis of a brochure, attached for download and printing, prepared by Roland Johnson for the Victorian and Tasmanian Branch of Sustainable Population Australia.

‘The modern plague of over population is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is …universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and the education of the billions of people who are its victims’. [1]
Photo: Martin Luther King, 1966 (revered symbol of human rights)

But powerful forces have opposed population control and the world’s population has more than doubled since 1966 to seven billion, with three billion desperately poor. Migration to rich countries is not a solution. Watch Roy Beck’s YouTube video , ‘World Poverty, Immigration and Gumballs’, to see why.

In the screenshot below, one gumball equals one million people; the tall jars represent the three billion poor. The wine glass holds five years’ migrant intake at one million a year (the current intake of the United States). Even if Australia took one million people a year (nearly four times our current intake) the numbers of the poor would continue to grow at around the rate of 80 million each year. [2] Besides, Australia’s immigrants are more middle class than poor.

Poor people desperately need help where they are, including with family planning. We must stabilise our numbers, both nationally and globally. Currently the world is finding it difficult to feed all of the seven billion already here. [4] It won’t get easier if the global population grows to 9.75 billion or more by 2050. [5]

AUSTRALIA

From 2007-13 Australia’s net migration averaged over 230,000 p.a. which, added to an average annual natural increase of 157,000 p.a, meant growth of 387,000 p.a. and an annual growth rate of 1.8 per cent. [6] This is among the highest in the world. [7] It is destroying Australia’s ability to help the world’s poor and this growth will take us from 24 to 64 million in 2100. [8] It must stop some time.

WHY NOT NOW?

A sustainable Australian population

Australia’s total fertility rate (TFR) is around 1.9 per woman, [9] technically below replacement— 2.1. But the population is still youthful. So we would keep growing due to natural increase until 2046, leveling off at 26 million. A policy to stabilise our population closer to 26 million rather than 64 million is needed.

The growth lobby of big business, developers and media moguls is forcing Australia’s growth to be among the fastest in the world. Our total increase of 387,000 a year is more than the population of Canberra (381,488 in 2013). [11] This growth is against the wishes of 70 per cent of voters. [12] Our 1.8 per cent p.a. exceeds Canada’s high 1.2 per cent & NZ’s 0.8 per cent. [13]

The Immigration Department is overloaded

Immigration Department files reveal “…enforcement capacity has collapsed…nine in ten skilled migrant visas may be fraudulent …[investigation into] a Somali people - smuggling cell linked to a terror suspect … ceased due to a lack of resources’. [14]

Two thirds of new arrivals are on some kind of working visas, which are issued by licensed agents subject to rorting and bribes. Many visa holders, through a well understood system of visa churning, eventually gain permanent residency. [15]

Immigration policy can be changed. Around 80,000 people leave Australia permanently each year. This means that we could have a refugee intake of 20,000 p.a., plus other special cases, and achieve nil, or at least very low, net migration.

Economic Costs

Dr Jane O’Sullivan’s submission to the Productivity Commission, re ‘Public Infrastructure Report’ shows that each new person added to the Australian population costs taxpayers over $100,000 in infrastructure. [16]

“[P]opulation growth and ageing will affect labour supply, economic output, infrastructure requirements and government budgets… Total private and public investment requirements over this 50 year period [to 2060] are estimated to be more than 5 times the cumulative investment made over the last half century…”

[17] Building the equivalent of a new Canberra every year is not cheap.

The Federal Government is dominated by the growth lobby and State governments compete for the prestige of a higher population. They promote immigration and advertise for immigrants. They rezone prime agricultural land for housing. Local governments then increase rates, which forces the famers off the land. Local councils also convert pleasant suburban streets to high-rise ghettos to collect more rates. The costs of the extra services are paid for by existing tax- and rate-payers.

Choking Cities

‘Population growth is great for business but governments can’t keep up. Roads are clogged and public transport is groaning. The health and education systems can’t cope with demand’. [18]

Employment

With many new workers and the loss of our manufacturing capacity, we are already unable to employ many of our young.

‘Between 2011 and 2014 the number of jobs increased by 400,000 but new migrants took 380,000. Some 240,000 more young Australians entered working age compared with those who retired, but they had to compete for only 20,000 extra jobs’. [20]

Agriculture

Australia looks big on the map but it’s an old, dry, infertile continent. Sprawling cities are taking some of our best land—land high on the two factors of good soil and reliable rainfall. (These are the areas shaded dark green on the map.) Much of Australia is marginal agricultural land (shaded yellow), and the greater part is unsuitable for any agriculture (shaded red).

Australia might be able to feed a domestic population of 60 million for a while, but this would leave us without food for export to pay for imports. A sustainable population must stay below 30 million; over that we start to sink to third-world standards.

Climate Change

Climate change will badly affect Australia’s agriculture with reduced irrigation in the Murray-Darling Basin and marginal land becoming arid. The so-called inexhaustible Great Artesian Basin is now declining. The idea of Australia as the food bowl of Asia is a myth!

Minerals

Iron ore reserves were once thought to be almost inexhaustible. But all of the high grade, easily accessed mineral deposits in Australia have been mined out and energy consumption in mining has increased by 450 per cent in the last 40 years. [21] We are one of the world’s largest exporters of LNG, but this leaves little for the local market. [22] In order to find more, pressure for fracking access to coal-seam gas builds up. This risks polluting underground water and increasing food insecurity.

THE GROWTH LOBBY

While all Australians pay the cost of population growth, big business profits from it. Their self interest in growth is understandable. But it is unconscionable that politicians, most journalists and many academics support them. (See ‘How the Growth Lobby Threatens Australia’s Future’, James Sinnamon.) [23]

The growth lobby finds ways to silence its critics. In the USA the prestigious Sierra Club was given $100 million on the understanding that it would not continue to oppose the one million p.a. migrating to America. [24]

The slur of racism by the growth lobby has stifled the population debate.

BUT

Martin Luther King understood the cost of growth. Was he a racist?

‘I don't think slowing the rate of growth is blaming immigration or ethnic communities’
(Voula Messimeri, Chairwoman of the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia). [25]

Immigrants also suffer the effects of population growth. Poor migrants suffer the most.

The lobby promotes the fear of an ageing population

But the Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that ‘Even large difference in the level of net immigration will have a relatively small impact on the age distribution’. [26]

Natural increase is still strong so our population would not decline without net migration. Immigration makes us bigger, not younger. Besides the aged contribute to society in many ways—ways worth billions of dollars. [27]

What about humanitarianism?

Australia’s policies serve the growth lobby, not the greater good. There is no virtue in luring away the best and brightest from poor nations. Australia poaches doctors and nurses from developing nations to service the huge rise in our population. We take about 1000 doctors and 2800 nurses a year. How many more come on temporary or 457 visas?

Most of Australia’s migrants come for economic reasons; this is no way to help the world’s poor. We should accept refuges and provide desperate women of the third world—who procreate even when their children are starving—with the means of family planning.

THE ENVIRONMENT

‘Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it’s time we control the population to allow the survival of the environment’. [28]

Sir David Attenbourough (celebrated conservationist)

The World Wildlife Fund reported in 2014 that the world wildlife population had been halved between 1970 and 2010. The human population doubled in the same peroiod contributing directly to 82 per cent of the loss of wild life. [29]

We are already destroying the environment by overstocking our poor soils, habitat destruction and deforestation all of which causes soil loss and salination. We are doing this in 2015 to support nearly 24 million people. What would we do to support 64 million?

GLOBAL WARMING

Global warming is our greatest immediate threat and as Figure 3 shows, Greenhouse gases increase with the world’s population.

And Australia’s per capita emissions are the highest in the OECD. [31]

Our responsibility to other people, those now living and those yet to be born, and our responsibility to other species, all mean that Australia must curb its runaway population growth. The world must slow down and stabilise too.

Prepared by Roland Johnson for Sustainable Population Australia Vic/Tas.
www.population.org.au

This material is available in pdf form for downloading and printing here: Population Flyer cropped.pdf

References

[1] tp://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Overpopulationaccessed 18 January 2015
[2] Roy Beck, World Poverty, Immigration and Gumballs The Population Reference Bureau’s annual World population data sheet shows a world population of 7.238 billion in mid 2014 and 1.137 billion in mid 2013, an estimated increase of 101 million people, 98 million of this increase in less developed countries. See www.prb.org
[3] Roy Beck, op. cit.
[4] Paddy Manning, ‘“Global” risks on food security mean us too’, The Age, 3 December 2011, p. 16
[5] The United Nations’ projections for 2050 include 9.746 billion (medium), 16.218 (medium high) and 24.834 billion (high).tp://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange/longrangeExecSum.pdfaccessed 18 January 2015
[6] Data on growth calculated from the ABS, Demographic Statistics, Catalogue no. 3101.0 various issues. The average NOM for 2007 to 2013 was 237,000 pa and the average annual growth rate was 1.81 per cent
[7] See World Bank http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.GROW accessed 18 January 2015
[8] Projection series 20, published online with, Australian Bureau of Statistics (2013), Population Projections, Australia, 2012 (Base) to 2101, Catalogue no. 3222.0.
[9] The average total fertility rate from 2008-09 to 2013-14 was 1.9085. Calculated from ABS, Demographic Statistics, Catalogue no. 3101.0, June 2014, p. 39.
[10] See ibid.
[11] ABS, Demographic Statistics, July 2014, Catalogue no. 3101.0, p. 26
[12] Katharine Betts (2010), ‘A bigger Australia: opinions for and against’, People and Place 18(2), pp. 25-38
[13] World Bank data bank
[14] Nick McKenzie and Richard Baker, ‘Terror touches down’, The Age, 7 August 2014, pp. 1, 4.
[15] See Dr. R Birrell, Sydney Morning Herald online , 7 August 2014.

[16] Jane O’Sullivan (2014), ‘Submission to the Productivity Commission Inquiry into Infrastructure provision and funding in Australia’, p. 3 http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/135517/subdr156-infrastructure.pdf
[17] Productivity Commission (2013). An Ageing Australia: Preparing for the Future — Overview. Melbourne, Productivity Commission, p. 2
[18] Alan Kohler, ‘Healthcare and infrastructure spend tearing budget apart’, The Australian, 6 May 2014, p. 30
[19] Source: Department of Infrastructure and Transport, Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport, Road vehicle-kilometres travelled: estimated from state and territory fuel sales, Report 124, Canberra, Department of Infrastructure and Transport, 2011, pp. 372-3
[20] Bob Birrell and Ernest Healy (2014), Immigration and Unemployment in 2014,/em>. Monash University, Melbourne, Centre for Population and Urban Research
[21] Simon Michaux (2014) ‘The coming radical change in mining practice’ in Jenny Goldie and Katharine Betts (Eds) Sustainable Futures: Linking population, resources and the environment, CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood, Victoria, pp. 75-76
[22] See ‘Reform needed to minimise LNG export impact on manufacturers: report’, ,em>Gas Today, 24 July 2014 http://gastoday.com.au/news/reform_needed_to_minimise_lng_export_impact_on_manufacturers_report/088251/ accessed 25 November 2014
James Sinnamon, "How the growth lobby threatens Australia's future."

Kenneth R. Weiss, ‘The man behind the land’, Los Angeles Times 27 October 2004
Quoted in Mark O'Connor and William Lines (2008), Overloading Australia: How governments and media dither and deny on population, Envirobooks, Sydney, p. 145
ABS (2000), Projections of the Populations of Australia, States and Territories: 1999-2101, Catalogue no. 3222.0, p. 2
For more on the benefits (and costs) of demographic ageing see Katharine Betts (2014), The ageing of the Australian population: triumph or disaster?, Centre for Population and Urban Research, Monash University
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Attenborough accessed 25 November 14
Living Planet Report 2014 accessed 25 November 2014
Population data are from United Nations Department of economic and social affairs http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Excel-Data/population.htm ; Carbon emissions data are from Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre (CDIAC)
The Garnaut Climate Change Review, Chapter 7, ‘Australia’s emissions in a global context’ 2008, updated in 2011 http://www.garnautreview.org.au/chp7.htm

Two weeks ago fire 40 km north east of Perth burnt for 10 days and blazed through some 7,000 hectares of land, burning homes - far too many to count, or for that matter, to contemplate. It impacted on countless species and would have burnt millions of individuals, all of whom, like us, are categorised biologically under the heading Kingdom of Animalia. But that's not how the newspapers reported it...

“The fire destroyed two derelict houses and three sheds”...

This statement pretty well sums up the sort of media reporting that a fire, regardless of size or location, generally generates.

Human life, infrastructure, and on a good day, human “property” such as livestock and pets… but wild life rarely, if ever, cracks a mention!

Yet when a fire, which basically burnt for 10 days, blazed through some 7,000 hectares of land 40 km north east of Perth two weeks ago, it DID burn more than human infrastructure – it burnt homes - far too many to count, or for that matter, to contemplate. It impacted on countless species and would have burnt millions of individuals, all of whom, like us, are categorised biologically under the heading Kingdom of Animalia.

Why the silence? Why not an uproar, collective grieving, and hostility towards its maker?

It’s a question I’ve asked myself over, and over, and over again. About this fire, and the many others before, be they, by design, “prescribed”, “illegal arson” or “accidental.”

But then there is that prevailing assumption, isn’t there, especially when we talk about bushfires.

No one else lives there.

With a mind set like this you can do what you like with the land – the rape, pillage and plunder story that took off in style when our forebears first came to this country and has continued ever since.

Or maybe it’s our superiority complex – the lesser being story that enables humans to categorise wild life as pests, vermin, resources, or as simply irrelevant or expendable in our version of the grand scheme of things.

And then there is the whole burning thing – you know the one – the Aboriginal burning; the need to protect human life, property and infrastructure; reduce fire risk that derives itself from climate change; and of course burning regimes that are for good, or even necessary, for nature conservation and biodiversity.

Little wonder that with this sort of propaganda few, if any, question fire events - unless of course they are personally affected by them.

After all, no-one wants to die, or see their loved ones die – nor do they want to see their homes destroyed, or their livelihoods taken from them.

Same goes for other species, actually, but really, who cares about that?

It is my contention that until such time as the status of wild life elevates way up to where it should be the majority of the population will continue to regard fire, and the repercussions thereof, in this limited, anthropocentric way.
It IS alarming that 1839 bushfires in the last 6 weeks have been reported in WA. What IS more alarming is that these figures, apparently, are not unusual.

Clearly we have a problem… one that is not confined to WA.

507 of these fires have been deemed suspicious or found to be deliberately lit, according to a Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) spokesman.
Ouch!

And one is left to wonder how many more fires are deemed “accidental” - like the most recent one (of course there have been others) that razed through Bullsbook after sparks from an angle grinder left residents unable to see, breathe, and desperately trying to drive out, through fire.

If it was bad for them, imagine if you will, the impact on penned domestic animals, and wildlife, who were also unable to see, breathe, and were equally desperate to escape the fire.

Whilst it is true that some highly mobile wildlife can flee the initial onslaught of fire, especially if there are no fences in the way, the speed, movement, rapidly increasing and radiant heat, height, and extent of the fire would have decreased opportunities for many species, and severely limited the individual’s chance of survival.

Add to those factors the use of back burning, deliberate burning of unburnt pockets, the use of aerial fire suppressants and later, burning gels...

Still, miracles can happen….
Of the carnage, Mallubillai Wildlife Rehabilitator Lyn Manuel said,

“We have two little joeys being treated for bad burns.. but there are no words to describe what we see. The smell of death is everywhere…”

Two weeks after the event an eerie silence is broken only by a wind that knows no barriers. Tree skeletons abound, the soil is scorched, naked and warm to the touch. There are some, not many, tracks to be seen, but even then there are those that tell an all too familiar sad story.

There is no shortage of white ash piles – the intensity of the fire enough to burn bones.
It’s ugly, and I’m angry.
The fire did NOT just destroy two derelict houses and three sheds!

I’m sorry, but the fact that the local resident who started this particular fire is apparently remorseful doesn’t cut it, as far as I’m concerned.

Tell that to the wild life.

Asking people to be more safety conscious when they are operating hot tools or things that generate sparks in the open area, especially when working around dry vegetation is clearly not working now, and never will.
It is my guess though that those in authority know that.

So rather than engage in preventative measures, and place blame, and personal responsibility where it belongs, we are pushed into a model of action and behaviour that has, yet again, significant repercussions for wild life.
The bare earth policy (desertification) - the favoured, politically savvy, mitigation strategy.

No need to for anyone to change their behaviours… well…OK…just don’t use those angle grinders in the open on total fire ban days.

And the war against nature takes on a new dimension - litter becomes fuel, in fact all vegetation becomes fuel, and trees become fire risks that will fall on us, our houses, our sheds, our power poles…and, and ,and.

We can no longer live among the gum trees.

And if that is not bad enough the public clamour for crown land to be decimated in the same way.

They forget.

Someone else lives there.

Fires destroy ecosystems. Fire destroys homes. Fires take lives - millions of them.

The true cost of fire, measured in terms of loss of life, pain and suffering, habitat destruction, environmental degradation, pollution, health impacts…is the real story that needs telling.

Next time you hear that no lives were lost, you too need to do what it takes to set the record straight.
Wild life matters!

This very widely and deeply researched article talks about the role of Australian native animals in protecting forests from fire and reviews the evidence for prescribed burns, criticising Bill Gammage's research on a number of grounds and noting misconceptions about Aboriginal fire management. "Research by the CSIRO published since 1994 has shown that there is a group of around 1000 species of moths called oecophorids whose caterpillars occur at densities of up to 400 per square metre and eat dead leaf litter. These insects are killed by fire and take some years to come back - leaving the bush accumulating leaf litter. With frequent fires they can be lost. Termites consume vast amounts of dead timber Australia wide and in long unburned forests they are particularly dense with huge mounds in southern Australia too but their role in fuel reduction remains unstudied! Cockroaches and a wide range of beetle species and their larvae do the same. Recent research has identified Lyrebirds and Mallee Fowl as playing key roles in fuel reduction, composting litter and twigs in vast amounts reducing fuel loads by tonnes by per year per bird. All these insects, birds and animals that reduce fuel loads are diminished or lost to fire. Fungi are known to be major consumers of dead timber - but their role in fuel reduction is yet to be researched and the role of wallabies, wombats and especially potoroos in distributing fungi, though it is obviously significant, remains unstudied.

Bill Gammage’s popular book ‘The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia’ contains many fundamental flaws and represents ‘blind advocacy’ for repeated burning’ because ‘Aboriginal people did it’.

Like Keith Windshuttle’s ‘Fabrication of Aboriginal History’, Bill Gammage only pursued references - and interpretation of references - that supported his ‘hypothesis’. For Gammage that hypothesis is that all Aboriginal people farmed all of Australia using fire. This proposition was first published by Rhys Jones in an article in Australian Natural History in 1969 ‘Firestick Farming’ - and the references Jones used have as little merit as Gammage’s.

Jones used a painting of Lesueur from 1802 to show landscape burning by Tasmanian Aboriginal people when the painting is clearly of smoke signals. He quoted Peron observing the Derwent River ‘ablaze’ while Peron stated that ‘Tasmanians’ lit the fire to see them off. Bill Gammage now travels the country advocating frequent burning. He is not in any way qualified to do so and often does not look at the bush in these places before he advocates burning. He quotes no Aboriginal people or stories and ignores scientific evidence that cast doubt on his theories.

Mooney et. al. examined over 200 sediment cores of 70,000 years or more of age to determine fire frequency. They found that fire frequency increased 50 fold with the arrival of Europeans. https://palaeoworks-dev.anu.edu.au/?publication=mooney-s-d-et-al-2011-late-quaternary-fire-regimes-of-australasia .

Part of that increase was the use of fire as a weapon by Aboriginal people over more than a century - the firestick verses the musket as Joel Wright, a Gunditjmara Linguist stated in a recent talk. See /node/4240. He (Joel) could find no evidence of landscape burning in the Victorian western district but outlined the use of fire for smoke signals (see TROVE digitised newspapers for many references) and as an effective weapon. Gammage does not deal with these issues yet unlike Rhys Jones and Tim Flannery he had access to all of this information electronically and is a historian - inexcusable in my opinion. He also too often plays on locals’ fear and opinion of fires when he speaks, referring to those who do not want to burn as people or ‘greens’ from the city - see a part transcript of a recent talk by Gammage below.

Australia cannot in any way be seen as an ‘Estate’ nor Aboriginal people as ‘workers’ on an Estate - as if it was destined to be owned by ‘England’. It is a very complex continent geologically which is reflected in its complex plant, bird and animal communities. This in turn is reflected in over 500 tribes and thousands of clans that each manage ‘country’ differently. All are minimalist and complex in their management which is reflected in their more than 500 languages. To apply generalised models of fire management to such a complex landscape is disastrous. To apply American models for fire management is surely wrong and even harder to understand - especially given the radically different landscapes and flora https://www.georgewright.org/243kilgore.pdf. We seem to have adopted our version of ‘Wildland Fire Use’, using fires to achieve ‘other’ management objectives, prolonging bushfires for weeks, especially in National Parks, on the assumption they will make the landscape less likely to burn or burn ‘cooler’.

Eucalypts and other groups of Australian plants have been subjected to volcanic fires for more than 60 million years. We are in a ‘quiet time volcanically’ for the east coast, though volcanoes were active ‘recently’ in Queensland and Victoria 12,000 and 6500 years ago respectively. Humans are able to heal cuts and broken bones but we do not ‘thrive on’ or ‘need’ either. It is likely that vegetation, especially forests, has adapted to recovering from fire but, contrary to popular belief, does not ‘thrive’ on being burned or need it. Even the woodiest seed pods open without fire and many species regenerate from rootstock disturbed by digging mammals like wombats. Burning bush for grazing ‘green pick’ was common in the British Isles in the eighteenth century, though in Australia it often germinated a seemingly ‘inexhaustible’ seed and rootstock of trees and shrubs. Unless burned annually or replaced with introduced pasture species a cessation of burning led to the growth of dense scrub which takes 20 years or more to form a closing canopy and open understorey. This development of dense shrub is what is too often happening in burned bushland today, especially in National Parks and reserves. Just the fact that they can be burned is too often accepted in ‘blind faith’ as ‘reducing fuel’ and making the bush more open and flammable when the opposite is too often the fact. In addition to scrubby regrowth trees and shrubs are almost invariably killed by fire adding to fuel loads, as are the animals and fungi that normally reduce fuels.

The original forests had closed canopies and an open understorey

Judge Stretton stated in the 1939 Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission that the original forests had closed canopies and an open understorey which was easily traversed. In regard to fire he said they were relatively safe and it was repeated burning for grazing that opened the canopy, saw the vegetation thicken and made them unsafe. Even heathlands and grasslands are very different with a full compliment of mammals and birds when old - turning them over and maintaining open areas for orchids etc. and reducing their flammability.

There desperately needs to be multi-disciplinary research that incorporates local history. No single scientific discipline or even science alone confers the qualifications required to undertake the comprehensive research needed to inform fire management. For each area there needs to be a collation of all the geological, indigenous and historic data on fire - what was burned when by whom and why as far as possible. Indigenous people need to be resourced to investigate their own tribal and clan history of the use of fire, as Joel Wright did, and not have it ‘done for them’ by botanists and others. This in addition to identifying the fauna that reduces fuels and the impact of burning on increasing wind speed, drying the bush and streams that flow from it as bush regrows etc. for each area proposed to be burned.

Given the massive increase in burning and the threat it poses to wildlife and local economies etc. pausing the lighting of fires and diverting part of that budget to rapidly detecting and extinguishing any that start would appear the wisest thing to do while reviewing their impact.

An example of a very bad and counterproductive burn is the Melaleuca swamp burn in Cape Liptrap Coastal Park in Victoria in 2014 which saw Napalm (Flash 21), a chemical combination not registered for occupational health and safety for its use in Australia, used when torch lighting failed. The impact was dramatic and the fuel load appeared to increase dramatically when it killed all the melaleucas and burned into the peat. The carbon monoxide from this modified napalm killed dozens of burrow dwelling mammals that may well have survived a fire. This is in a remnant damp ferny vegetation strip coastal park that has never had a wildfire and not been burned since 1939 when the messmate forest stopped the grass fire - no wind and wet bark. Despite its common ‘visual’ classification messmate is not closely related to stringybarks and hybridises with ash type species. This and other proposed fires for this bush with 50 or more lyrebirds isolated against the coast by farmland are as a result of ‘desktop research’ by unqualified or barely qualified people. There has been no formal botanical survey work though more than a dozen threatened species of plants are known. Individuals cannot be condemned for doing their ‘job’ - but what they are charged with doing and how it is done has to be evaluated. Fire will clearly make this southeast facing coastline more flammable and diminish or wipe out its abundant ‘fuel reducing’ fauna. (See https://www.eclecticparrot.com.au )

Kakadu has all but lost its fauna ...

Kakadu National Park, subjected to decades of management burning, has all but lost its fauna from too frequent fire, https://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2014/s4120215.htm which is likely the cause of the loss of the hollow dependent Gouldian Finch from vast areas of its frequently burned former range.

Northern Australia was the last ‘frontier’ and fire almost invariably used against ‘explorers’ by Aboriginal tribes and clans is too easily interpreted as ‘ecological burning’ by botanists. The northern grazing industry has long been dependent on burning for green pick in a landscape that can barely be farmed.

These species losses are occurring in many parks and reserves across Australia where they have been subjected to so called ‘Ecological Burning’ and they too are losing mammals and especially hollow dependent species. This approach to burning, to increase the biodiversity of plants, may actually be in breach of the amended International Biodiversity Agreement of 1994 which states that tetrapods, animals with backbones, are a reliable indicator of biodiversity - not plants. This change to a Treaty signed in 1982 originally was as if in response to burning in Australian National Parks.

Burning or logging a forest, grassland or heathland may increases plant diversity - but it diminishes structural diversity and fauna and may well make the bush more flammable.

The original forests of Gippsland were not flammable, settlers of Fish Creek were not able to burn the forest to clear land until the railway line was cut through, bringing in a ‘draft’. This is a common story Australia wide in formerly wet forested areas.

Research by the CSIRO published since 1994 ( https://www.eclecticparrot.com.au/references/11-Common%201994%20Introduction%20vol%201.pdf ) has shown that there is a group of around 1000 species of moths called oecophorids whose caterpillars occur at densities of up to 400 per square metre and eat dead leaf litter. These insects are killed by fire and take some years to come back - leaving the bush accumulating leaf litter. https://www.eclecticparrot.com.au/references/13-Problems%20with%20control%20Burning%20NPA%20Bulletin.pdf With frequent fires they can be lost.

Termites consume vast amounts of dead timber Australia wide and in long unburned forests they are particularly dense with huge mounds in southern Australia too but their role in fuel reduction remains unstudied! Cockroaches and a wide range of beetle species and their larvae do the same. Recent research has identified Lyrebirds https://www.eclecticparrot.com.au/references/14-Nugent%20et%20al.%202014%20Wildlife%20Research-%20lyrebirds%20and%20fire.pdf and Mallee Fowl (Leonard unpub.) as playing key roles in fuel reduction, composting litter and twigs in vast amounts reducing fuel loads by tonnes by per year per bird. All these insects, birds and animals that reduce fuel loads are diminished or lost to fire.

Fungi are known to be major consumers of dead timber - but their role in fuel reduction is yet to be researched and the role of wallabies, wombats and especially potoroos in distributing fungi, though it is obviously significant, remains unstudied.

Almost all parrot species, possums, owls and many species of bats are at real risk of extinction from the loss of hollows which has occurred and is occurring right across the landscape - by burning as a ‘forest industry’ and for ‘ecological purposes’.

It’s time to stop lighting fires ...

It’s time to stop lighting fires and to use fixed rotating thermal imaging cameras to detect them and the world’s best and biggest firefighting aircraft, when needed, to rapidly extinguish them while we determine the effects and all the costs of this increased ‘fuel reduction’ and ‘ecological’ burning. We also need to evaluate objectively whether or not burning all bush is a major costly ecological mistake - and academically stop playing ‘my PHD is bigger than yours’.

Farms are repeatedly damaged by escaped ‘prescribed burns; and ‘prolonged’ fires, losing stock and fences, damaging rural community mental and bronchial health and breaking up families when burns go on for weeks.

Domestic and agricultural water supplies are compromised, fisheries and aquatic life are lost as dead vegetation washes into streams with rain following fires, robbing them of oxygen.

We have neglected even more deadly grassfires (per head of effected population).

We have neglected arson, often a mental health issue and an increasing problem we seem to be in collective denial about. Yet arson was was the cause of 50% of the 2009 Black Saturday fires https://www.wilderness.org.au/articles/summary-and-implications-report-victorian-2009-february-fires, most of the Hobart fires of 1967 and was the entire cause of the deadly Dandenongs fires of 1962 and 1968 which killed more than 30 people. Surveillance by fixed rotating thermal imaging cameras will greatly help in catching ‘fire lighters’.

There is virtually no research into lightning in Australia while in Canada ‘hot’ and ‘cold lightning’ has been identified. ‘Cold lightning’ is 95% of all strikes and negatively charged. While it will blow a tree apart and is very dangerous it passes through so quickly it rarely starts fire - but it can likely ‘cook sap’ in a tree and make it appear as if it has been burned in the past. ‘Hot Lightning’ is positively charged lightning that makes up as little as 5% of all strikes and though it starts fires it is almost always followed by rain.

The Australian history of bushfires includes a vast numbers of grass fires - like many of the most deadly on Ash Wednesday and as part the ‘Hobart Bushfires’ of 1967. Introduced species of pasture grasses die off in the summer, especially along roadsides and the increasingly in fire breaks which can act as fuses, ( https://www.myenvironment.net.au/index.php/me/Work/Fire/Fire-Resources/Fire-Break-submission-Chris-Taylor ) representing a high tonnage of highly flammable fuels in the fire season. These flammable grasses in semi rural areas, open to swirling winds unlike closed vegetation, their fires are particularly deadly and are often called bushfires. A good example of this issue is being addressed by the Kirkstall CFA with its replacement of pasture grasses with native species on road reserves. (https://www.eclecticparrot.com.au/references/02-Kirkstall%20euro%20grass%20conversion.pdf) This reduces fuel loads by 50-90% and native grasses are most often ‘green’ in the fire season.

The reintroduction of dead leaf and timber eating insects, the restoration of populations of Lyrebirds, leaf eating Koalas that even have an oecophorid that eats their droppings, where they have been lost should be key to future bushfire management. This approach to fire management is beyond the ‘skill sets’ and qualifications of judges, lawyers, foresters and botanists we have charged with fire management. Current fuel reduction burning becomes a ‘self fulfilling prophecy’ even when it leads to more fires as appears to have happened, especially in Western Australia. To stop burning where it makes bush more flammable may challenge a practice since colonial times, but will cost far less and provide significant economic returns from improved water production, fisheries, tourism and public health.

There is strong support by CSIRO and other scientists for research before we burn what is left of our older bush area in Cape Liptrap Coastal Park which is one of the increasingly rare examples of older bush remaining with its fuel reducing fauna - see letters https://www.eclecticparrot.com.au

In anything to do with fire management there has to be a ‘No Fault Claims Bonus’. Science is rarely ‘wrong’ but biological sciences should be continually evolving on this most recently occupied continent. We are faced with the corrosion of the Indigenous cultural records from loss of scar, ceremonial, birthing and marked trees along with the potential extinction of many species of birds and animals, also of indigenous stories, from unnecessary or ill-informed burning. Both science and the management it informs must be able to change in response to new information. We need the experience of thousands of foresters and botanists to integrate with the breadth of research in other biological sciences which need a significant portion of fire research funding. There is significant rural employment potential Australia wide to control the animals that spread flammable weeds, protect the forests and bushland from fire and realise natural bushland’s potential economic value for water, fisheries production, tourism and carbon sequestration.

Naturalist Bob McDonald January 2015

Bill Gammage Promoting Fire in East Gippsland

Bill Gammage applied his ideas on burning in response to questions from the audience at a meeting he addressed at Bairnsdale on the 5th of November 2014;

Bill Hodge - 3rd Generation Mountain Cattleman

Would you be in favour of giving a certain area of bush for mountain cattlemen to manage as they see fit for say 5 or 6 years?

Gammage: Yes I’ve already suggested to Graeme Stoney (Mountain Cattleman) and others that after that fire which is inevitably going to come, there is already in place a plan that basically divides an area into three - leaves one area alone - doesn’t do anything; puts only fire in another area and then puts fire and grazing and the way cattlemen burn in the third and see what happens in those three different areas.

LR: Why didn’t you interview any Aboriginal people?

Gammage: If I had Aboriginal friends, I did talk to them. Places like around Narrandera and Alice Springs and the Coorong, North east Tasmania. I did speak to Aboriginal people. But if I didn’t know Aboriginal people I felt it was far too rude to roll up from Canberra, especially of all places (crowd snickers) and say well here I am, you got 20 minutes, give me some basic information and I’ll be out of here. It’s just too rude. These are really important matters - not only the land management, but totems and so on and um yeah… you really need to be really trusted before you can even brave such a question and since my book is about the whole of Australia, it would have been more than a lifetime’s work to have done that.

Danny O’Brien, Member for Eastern Victoria: We in the Government have increased the burning targets; we’ve exceeded them once and dismally failed them last year. Is the solution in your opinion more burning of more area or better burning or different burning?

Gammage: All of the above, (applause) and after you’ve done that more of the above (applause).

I have commended the Government for increasing the hectares. I think we should accept that politicians have a very different problem and there are a great many electors opposing any sort of burning and they are translating that into practice. So when they expand their areas of controlled burning they are really softening up public opinion in favour of ALL burning and that is extremely valuable because, let’s face it country people and like-minded people are a minority in a democracy and we’re never going to get anywhere unless you can change the votes of people in the city -and so doing softening up in this way. I congratulate them but I do think that it shouldn’t be seen as a failure if you don’t reach your target. What you do is say, ‘well we’re experimenting with weather and conditions and times of the year and that therefore makes any fixed target problematic and uncertain.’ Local people will give you a bit of leeway to burn locally, to seize the day; and those local people might be DEPI on the ground, CFA, farmers, loggers, whoever it may be. And what we want you to do when you burn is record the results basically and build up information about that area, which can then be translated into more efficient practice

---------------

It’s time to stop lighting fires
Bob McDonald, Naturalist* Pub: Jan 14
15.01.15 4:30 am

Originally published in Tasmanian Times
12 comments

This exhibition is part of a movement asking for no foreign intervention in Syria. Australia backs foreign intervention in Syria, which means we subsidise the provision of weapons for the overthrow of a democratically elected government which most Syrians want to keep. Here is an extract from the article inside: “We have a well in our house, and since there’s no water—because the ‘rebels’ broke the pipes—my father was giving water to neighbours. He was in his house when a sniper entered the garden and shot him, killed him. Those ‘rebels’ don’t represent the Syrian people. Syrian soldiers aren’t fighting against normal people, they’re fighting against people equipped with the most advanced weapons and trained just to come to Syria. They destroy our homes, churches, mosques. But what makes me happy, our people, because they love Syria so much, decided not to leave. Even my dad, he knew he lived in a very dangerous area, but he decided not to leave, and he paid for it with his life.” This article by Eva Bartlett is republished from her blog at https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2015/01/22/aleppo-photographer-brings-syrian-reality-to-the-united-nations/ (Broken link fixed. - Ed, 1:53pm 24/1/14)

Hagop Vanesian’s exhibition, “My Homeland,” ran at the United Nations Headquarters from January 8-16.

by Eva Bartlett

Twenty-six distinct photos, in black and white. Scenes of a ravaged city and the human beings within struggling to exist, let alone to find hope for the future. Gravestones of rubble. Homes looted, trashed. Civilians defending their country. Children aged beyond their years by the horrors they’ve lived.

Hagop Vanesian, a 44 year old Syrian-Armenian photographer from Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo (Halab), was meticulous in his choice of photographs for the exhibition, “My Homeland,” which opened at the United Nations Headquarters on January 8 and runs until January 16.

“I chose the photographs showing the destruction, and children. I have many photographs of children, maybe 25-30 percent are of children, these little angels suffering. They are innocent, they don’t understand about politics, they suffer a lot.”

Vanesian, a silversmith by trade, started taking photos twelve years ago, and very early on started documenting his city, building by building.

“Before the war, I was doing documentary photography all over Aleppo. Everyday, I took my camera and photographed people, how they were living,” Vanesian said. “When the war started, I decided to document it. It was very hard at first. For the first couple of days, I couldn’t take a single photograph. This was my birth place, where I grew up. I have memories there, but even my memories were destroyed, especially in Old Aleppo.”

Iman Tahan, from Aleppo, spoke of her feelings after seeing the photos. “These photos, I wish they weren’t real, I wish nothing like this had happened to my country. I remember every street in these photos. I feel so sad, a lot of memories there.”

One of the memories she spoke of was the murder of her father, in his home, by terrorists.

“We have a well in our house, and since there’s no water—because the ‘rebels’ broke the pipes—my father was giving water to neighbours. He was in his house when a sniper entered the garden and shot him, killed him. Those ‘rebels’ don’t represent the Syrian people. Syrian soldiers aren’t fighting against normal people, they’re fighting against people equipped with the most advanced weapons and trained just to come to Syria. They destroy our homes, churches, mosques. But what makes me happy, our people, because they love Syria so much, decided not to leave. Even my dad, he knew he lived in a very dangerous area, but he decided not to leave, and he paid for it with his life.”

Syrian photographer, Hagop Vanesian, explaining the human stories behind the photos.

Narrating to those around him, Vanesian explained the significance of and story behind each photo. Of one photo, a smiling woman holding a photo of a young man, he said: “When she saw me photographing, she started to cry. She said, ‘please, don’t photograph this, let us remember Aleppo as it was.’ Then she asked me to photograph she and her son. From her purse she took a photograph of her son, with a big, proud smile. Her son was martyred. Brave woman, Syrian woman.”

For Vanesian, the stories behind the photos need to be told. “Some photographers have come and taken photos, stayed one week, two weeks… They photographed the camps, photographed the war from the other side. Maybe they got more powerful photographs than me. But what I got, I got the stories of the people. Because I lived there, I suffered like them. As they were living, I was living. Without water, without electricity.”

Until about eight months ago, Vanesian was living the life of an average Syrian in Aleppo, except that he was also documenting it.

“One day, I was walking in the Old City, drinking sahlab (made of milk, with cinnamon),” he said. “After I finished, I threw my cup on the ground… there was no trash can. I saw a child, maybe four years old, pick up the cup and start licking the remainders of the sahlab. I couldn’t bring myself to photograph him. When I saw this child licking my cup, I thought, ‘where is the humanity?’ I can’t forget him.”

Pointing at his photographs, he noted two “residential graveyard” photos: one, a group of children and women sitting amongst the gravestones, and the second, a young girl standing near a tombstone.

“Residential areas in Aleppo, and children’s playgrounds, have turned into graveyards. The tombstones of these graves are made from stones from collapsed buildings. I asked the girl in the second photo, ‘What are you doing?’ It was a snowy day. She said she wanted to know where they were going to put the body of her aunt, she wanted to see the place.”

Regarding the photo of a sombre-faced boy, dressed in a suit jacket for ‘Eid holiday, he commented: “That boy, his father is kidnapped, his mother killed. He’s living with his aunt, near the front line of the fighting. Did you see his eyes? I didn’t find any children smiling. They’ve lost their smiles.”

Syrian children, psychologically-scarred, rendered older than their years by the difficulties they’ve facced. Photo by Hagop Vanesian

Other photographs show the expected bullet-ridden walls and bullet-shredded metal doors, including one photo with two children, likewise sombre-faced, standing next to a warped metal door.

“If you look closely at the children’s eyes, you see the anger. They’re not smiling, they’re like adults. They grew up, they saw what adults see. They’re around 10 and 13 years old. Before, children in Syria were smiling, but these last few years, you don’t see that. They will need psychological treatment in the future. The psychological damage is worse than the physical damage.”

One particularly poignant photograph—a man with one leg missing, on crutches, gun slung over shoulder—shows the determination of the man, reflects the determination of Syria, to fight back and survive.

“He’s defending his neighbourhood in Aleppo, but actually he was displaced from Nubool, the village where he lost his leg during fighting. He is still fighting, even with one leg. He will fight to the end,” said Vanesian.

Two photos of homes looted and destroyed, one Christian, one Muslim, speak of Syria’s multi-religious fabric, that most Syrians I’ve spoken with maintain was never sectarian.

“I intentionally put these photos side-by-side. It’s not only Muslim houses that are looted, Christian homes are too. They don’t differentiate, doesn’t matter whose house, they’re going to loot it.”

Unsurprisingly, the anti-Syrian group, the so-called “National Syrian Coalition” issued a letter accusing the exhibition as being propaganda, and calling for the display to be shut down.

Syrians attending the exhibition felt otherwise.

Rana Nasrallah, a Syrian from the predominantly Druze city of Sweida, now living in New Jersey, was among Syrian expats attending the exhibition.

“Each picture talks, speaks of the different problems in Syria. These photos show the truth exactly as it is in Syria. I was in Syria a month and a half ago, I saw with my eyes. I had a good life there. I feel broken for what has happened to my country.”

Fadi, from Midan, what he describes as a mixed Armenian-Muslim area of Aleppo near the front line of the fighting, agreed that the exhibition was representative of the reality.

“One hundred percent, the photos tell the truth. I’m Muslim. We never had any sectarian problems. We lived together, doesn’t matter what you believe, who you pray to. Now…”

Al-Akhbar and al-Mayadeen correspondent Nizar Abboud attended, reporting on the exhibition but also pointing out the need for such an exhibition. “The world is hearing one point of view on Syria, and this is not by coincidence. I think this is premeditated. Also, there is self-censorship in the media, including my colleagues who work at the United Nations. They like to play the tunes those who pay them would like to hear. “

Earlier, in a private interview, the Syrian Ambassador to the UN, Dr. Bashar al-Ja’afari—who organized and attended the exhibition—told me: “For four years I have been trying very hard to do something inside the UN. Every time we attempted to do something, we were confronted by a huge amount of bureaucracy and excuses.” He, too, said the intent of the exhibition was not political. “It’s about Syria and the Syrian people. It’s about what happened in Aleppo, through undeniable photos. Any honest, objective Syrian who loves his homeland should have a great interest in showing what is going on in Syria. All Syrians should push for organizing more exhibitions, not only at the United Nations but all over the world.”

One of the accusations thrown at Vanesian is that he had photographed only from areas where the Syrian army was present.

“I photograph the front lines, so I need protection, like most photojournalists in areas of war. Transportation is no longer safe in Syria. Some of my friends and relatives have been kidnapped and we haven’t heard about them for over a year.”

That said, Vanesian took risks with many of his photos, including one shot from the side of the terrorists, unbeknownst to their snipers.

“Most front line lanes are covered with fabric, to block the view of snipers and prevent them from shooting the other side. When I took this photo, my back was to the snipers, but I was hiding behind a stone. The other side of the fabric is the safe area, but I came to this side to take the photo. If I had moved my head, I would have gotten shot. If you put your finger up, they’ll shoot right away.”

While the photographs and the issue of Syria under war from the NATO-Gulf-Turkish-Zionist alliance are inherently political, Vanesian maintains that his objective is solely humanitarian.

“I’m not doing this for political reasons, I just take the photos to let people see what is happening. With my photographs, I just want one thing: for people to remember there are people suffering in Syria. Just let them think, for a moment, about the suffering. I can’t bring back Aleppo as it was. I lost it, as I lost friends, relatives… I can’t bring my city back. The market in Aleppo was the longest enclosed market (in the world). It is burned completely. The destruction of Aleppo is a shame for humanity. The heritage has been destroyed; it belongs to all the world.

All those people in my photos, I didn’t just click the shutter, didn’t just take their photographs, I got their stories. I didn’t make money from their photos. I wanted to show these photos for humanitarian reasons, nothing else.”

Hagop Vanesian’s website is: http://www.hagopvanesian.com

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian freelance journalist and activist who has lived in and written from the Gaza Strip, Syria, and Lebanon. Her blog is https://ingaza.wordpress.com/

The New Zealand Defence Force early in Janurary surprised a third unlicensed fishing boat, far south-east of Tasmania, illegally poaching toothfish - the ocean's "white gold".   The New Zealand government so far has intercepted three ships with their offshore patrol ship, HMNZS Wellington, in cooperation with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.  
(image: head of Patagonian Toothfish)
This summer is Sea Shepherd’s 11th Southern Ocean Defence Campaign and the first to target toothfish fishing operators in the waters of Antarctica. Patagonian toothfish, a species of cod icefish, can grow up to 10 kilograms in weight and are a highly prized eating fish.

Three ships using illegal gillnets to catch prized toothfish were operating in a protected fishery research area about 2500 kilometres from Hobart, according to details released by Interpol.

(image: gillnets)

The illegal fishing boats, believed to be carrying a catch worth $8 million on the black market in South-East Asia, are all flying flags of convenience to avoid prosecution. Fishing in the Southern Ocean is regulated by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR).

Thanks to the New Zealand Navy operating in waters south of Australia, they were able to disclose the presence of three criminal ships using illegal gillnets to catch prized toothfish, operating in a protected fishery research area about 2500 kilometres from Hobart.   

In contrast,  the ship tasked with Southern Ocean patrols for Australia, Ocean Shield, was at found to be at anchor off Christmas Island.   Our government promised that the vessel would be employed on two 40-day patrols of the Southern Ocean. We have criminals in our marine "backyard", but the Australian ocean patrol vessel, Ocean Shield, is on AWOL!

The duty of patrolling the Southern Ocean has been silently abrogated to our neighbouring New Zealand, and a not-for-profit organisation.

Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton, said the government remained committed to the protection of Australia's sovereign territories and interests in the Southern Ocean, but their priorities were elsewhere!

This broken promise by an Australian government in neglecting the security of our oceans is alarming, disappointing but not surprising. 

Our Australian government has for years ignored Japan's thinly disguised "research whaling", and by procrastination and hollow protests, have allowed the killing to go on relentlessly, without redress. Similar to years of failure of our Australian governments to monitor and halt illegal whaling, this government is failing to control the illegal poaching of prized toothfish! 

If poacher are fishing from a boat that is not signed up to the CCAMLR agreement then the illegal fishing boat is simply fishing on the high seas and prosecution is almost impossible. The only way to prosecute a boat for illegal fishing is to prove that its owner is from a country signed up to CCAMLR.

Gillnets pose many threats, and they are more effective and deadly than longlines. The level of incidental bycatch is greater, and lost or abandoned gillnets have the potential to continue killing marine life through ‘ghost fishing’.

At least the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society will continue to hunt down the illegal vessels.

(image: Sea Shepherd vessel Sam Simon berthed in Wellington)

Successful poachers are making mockery of Australian law, and our so-called national security.  It appears that Minister for Customs and Border Protection, Peter Dutton, has gone to sleep at the wheel, or has abrogated his duties to a successful, vigilant and a service at no cost to the taxpayers from a not-for-profit organisation?

Previously published (22/1/2015) on JohnQuiggin.com.

Ernst and Young, leading consultants to the Queensland government have released a report claiming that electricity costs would be lower under privatisation. Although the report was commissioned by private infrastructure lobby group Infrastructure Partners Australia, it's just a rehash of the same line EY have been pushing for years in similar reports commissioned by pro-privatisation governments. The central claim is that electricity prices have risen more in Queensland and NSW, under corporatisation than in Victoria and SA, under privatisation. What they don't tell you is that this merely offsets increases imposed in the leadup to privatisation, with the result that retail prices are much the same in all four states, and far higher than when the process of market reform (supposedly to reduce prices through competition) began in the 1990s.

Professor John Quiggin, of the University of Queensland criticised the Ernst and Young report on privatisation of the electricity industry.

The Ernst and Young report ignores the biggest factor leading to higher electricity prices throughout Australia: the failed process of market reform, corporatisation and privatisation of which the LNP government’s asset sales is a part, rofessor Quiggin said.

Although the problems have differed from state to state, there is no evidence that states which undertook full scale privatisation in the 1990s have performed any better. South Australia has some of the highest electricity prices in the world, and Victorian prices are comparable to those in NSW and Queensland.

Candobetter.net's Editor's comment. There is a very good resource on privatisation here: http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/government/privatisation/risk.html

Original Source: http://johnquiggin.com/2015/01/22/ernst-and-young-oversell-privatisation/

Originally published on PaulCraigRoberts.org. Article has also been republished (20 Jan 2015) on Global Research.

Today (January 19) is Martin Luther King Day, a national holiday. King was an American civil rights leader who was assassinated 47 years ago on April 4, 1968, at the age of 39. James Earl Ray was blamed for the murder. Initially, Ray admitted the murder, apparently under advice from his attorney in order to avoid the death penalty, but Ray soon withdrew his confession and unsuccessfully sought a jury trail. Documents of the official investigation remain secret until the year 2027.

As Wikipedia reports,_{#fn1" id="fn1txt"> 1} "The King family does not believe Ray had anything to do with the murder of Martin Luther King. . . . The King family and others believe that the assassination was carried out by a conspiracy involving the U.S. government, and that James Earl Ray was a scapegoat. This conclusion was affirmed by a jury in a 1999 civil trial against Loyd Jowers and unnamed co-conspirators."

The US Department of Justice concluded that Jowers' evidence, which swayed the jury in the civil trail, was not credible. On the other hand, there is no satisfactory explanation why documents pertaining to the investigation of Ray were put under lock and key for 59 years.

There are many problems with the official story of King's assassination, just as there are with the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy. No amount of suspicion or information will change the official stories. Facts don't count enough to change official stories.

Many Americans will continue to believe that having failed to tar King as a communist and womanizer, the establishment decided to remove an inconvenient rising leader by assassination. Many black Americans will continue to believe that a national holiday was the government's way of covering up its crime and blaming racism for King's murder.

Certainly, the government should not have fomented suspicion by settling such a high profile murder with a plea bargain. Ray was an escapee from a state penitentiary and was apprehended at London's Heathrow Airport on his way to disappear in Africa. It seems farfetched that he would imperil his escape by taking a racist-motivated shot at King.

We should keep in mind the many loose ends of the Martin Luther King assassination as we are being bombarded by media with what Finian Cunningham correctly terms "high-octane emotional politics that stupefies the public from asking some very necessary hard questions" about the Charlie Hebdo murders, or for that matter the Boston Marathon Bombing case and all other outrages that prove to be so convenient for governments.

Those gullible citizens who believe that "our government would never kill its own people" have much understanding to gain from knowledge of Operation Gladio and Northwoods Project, about which much information is available on the Internet and in parliamentary investigations and officially released secret documents.

The Northwoods Project was presented to President John F. Kennedy by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. It called for shooting down people on the streets of Washington and Miami, shooting down US airliners ("real or simulated"), and attacking refugee boats from Cuba in order to create an atrocity case against Castro that would secure public support for a full-fledged invasion to bring regime change to Cuba. President Kennedy refused the plot and removed the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, an action that some researchers conclude led to his assassination.

Operation Gladio was revealed by the prime minister of Italy in 1990. It was a secret operation coordinated by NATO and operated by European military secret services in cooperation with the CIA and British intelligence.

Parliamentary investigations in Italy, Switzerland, and Belgium and testimony by secret service operatives have established that Gladio, originally established as a "stay-behind" secret army to resist Soviet invasion, was used to commit bombing attacks on Europeans, especially women and children, in order to blame communists and keep them from gaining political power in Europe during the Cold War era.

In answer to questioning by judges about the 1980 bombing of the central train station in Bologna resulting in the deaths of 85 people, Vincenzo Vinciguerra said: "There exists in Italy a secret force parallel to the armed forces, composed of civilians and military men . . . a super-organization with a network of communications, arms and explosives [which] took up the task, on NATO's behalf, or preventing a slip to the left in the political balance of the country. This they did, with the assistance of the official secret services and the political and military forces."

Vinciguerra told the UK newspaper The Guardian that "every single outrage that followed from 1969 fitted into a single, organized matrix . . . mobilized into the battle as part of an anti-communist strategy originating not with organizations deviant from the institutions of power, but from within the state itself, and specifically from within the ambit of the state's relations within the Atlantic Alliance."

There is no doubt about Gladio's existence. The BBC did a 2.5 hour documentary on the secret terrorist NATO organization in 1992. There are a number of books, articles and reports in addition to the parliamentary investigations and testimonies from participants.

There are reasons to believe that, although exposed, Gladio is still in operation and is behind terrorist attacks, such as Charlie Hebdo, in Europe today. Of course, today Washington has such control over Europe that no parliamentary investigations comparable to those that exposed Operation Gladio are possible.

With the documented and officially admitted existence of many official government conspiracies against their own peoples resulting in numerous deaths, only witting or unwitting agents of government conspiracies respond to valid questions about alleged terrorist events by trying to shout down truth-seekers.

The function of shutting down suspicion of official stories has been well performed by the "mainstream" print and TV media in the Western world. This presstitute function has been joined by many tabloid internet sites, such as Salon, and other such sites that originate in money or desire for profit.

Money flows to those who serve the establishment. The way to riches is to cover for the powerful private interest groups that comprise the One Percent and control the government.

Many websites unwittingly contribute to the power of the One Percent to control explanations and to discredit truth-seekers. This is the main function of comment sections on Internet sites where paid trolls operate._{#fn2" id="fnztxt"> 2}

Studies have concluded that the largest percentage of a population is too insecure to take a position different from peers. Most Americans simply do not know enough to have confidence in making independent decisions. They go with the flow and rely on their peers to tell them what is safe to think.

Trolls are hired for the purpose of making disparaging and ad hominem attacks on those who diverge from accepted opinion. For example, I am constantly attacked in personal terms in comment sections by people hiding behind first names and aliases._#fn2"> 2 Others employ left-wing and progressive hatred of Ronald Reagan to discredit me on the grounds that anyone so wicked and evil as to serve in the Reagan administration cannot be trusted. Many of my denigrators worship the ground that Hillary Clinton walks on.

Today in the so-called "western democracies," it is permissible to be politically incorrect against Muslims and to invoke denigration and hatred against them. However, it is not permissible to criticize the government of Israel for indiscriminate and murderous attacks on Palestinian citizens. The position of the Israel Lobby and its obedient and well-intimidated presstitutes is that any criticism whatsoever of Israel is anti-semitism and an indication that the critic desires a new holocaust. In other words, the Israel Lobby defines any critic of any Israeli government policy as an incipient mass murderer.

This effort to silence all critics of Israeli policies applies also to Israelis and Jews themselves. Israelis and Jews who legitimately criticize Israeli policies in hopes of steering the Zionist State away from self-destruction are branded "self-hating Jews" by the Israel Lobby. The Lobby has demonstrated its power to destroy academic freedom and to reach into private Catholic universities and public state universities and both block and withdraw tenure appointments of candidates, both Jews and non-Jews, who have incurred the Lobby's disapproval.

I see Martin Luther King as an American hero. Whatever his personal failings, if any, he stood for justice and for the safety of every race and gender under law. King actually believed in the American dream and wanted to achieve it for everyone. I am confident that had I confronted King with criticism, he would have considered my case and responded honestly regardless of any power he might have held over me.

I cannot expect the same consideration from any western government or from the trolls that operate in comment sections provided by Internet sites in hopes of boosting their readership.

Gullible and credulous people are incapable of defending their liberty. Unfortunately these traits are the principal traits of western peoples. Western liberty is collapsing in front of our eyes, and this makes absurd the desire by Vladimir Putin's Russian opponents to integrate with the collapsing western states.

Footnotes

#fn1">1#fn1txt"> ↑ Whilst this is consistesent with my own knowledge of the murder of Martin Luther King, I was unable to find these exact words on the Wikipedia page.

#fn2">2#fnztxt"> ↑ I consider Paul Craig Roberts' attitude to discussion on the Internet to be mistaken. Whilst obsessed individuals, trolls and various sociopaths can make it more difficult to conduct a useful on-line discussion, it is my experience that, where a forum discussion is effectively moderated, it is possible to use forum discussions to create a worthwhile result. On number of occasions I have been able, with the use of logic and evidence, been able to show that what has been taken to be "accepted wisdom" is wrong.

"The WTO can no longer ignore what is happening behind its magnificent structure of complex trade rules. The persistence of opposite exchange-rate misalignments, of countries with overvalued currencies and others with undervalued ones, for long periods is eroding the multilateral trading system. The WTO cannot remain silent to such reality. The core principles of its construction – transparency, predictability and confidence – are under question. The strengthening of trade rules, with the negotiation of instruments to neutralise the effects of exchange rates, is fundamental to the existence of the WTO. Otherwise, the WTO might become a diplomatic-juridical fiction – void of economic reality." Ref: Effects of exchange-rate misalignments on tariffs

I recently received a partisan political joke. Although it was funny, the punch line was about one side of politics being innumerate idiots (and, by implication, the other not). This inspired me to argue that it is the collective innumeracy of all politicians that we need to address; not assignment of blame to one side of politics as if that will solve a problem that all the major political parties collaborate to cause. One example: No shortage of foreign cars in Australia..............

This site lists some of Paul Keating's achievements whilst in office:
http://static.moadoph.gov.au/ophgovau/media/images/apmc/docs/24-Keating-Web.pdf

Here are three of them:

• Architect of the deregulation of the Australian economy
• The Government floated the Australian currency and allowed foreign banks to operate in Australia from 1983
• Achieved a general lowering of tariff levels

Paul Keating floated the AUD and sought to reduce protectionism in favour of free trade. Despite his many laudable qualities was this a failure of strategic economic management?

Shouldn't extreme population growth have delivered improving, rather than deteriorating, economies of scale for manufacturing?

This link explains what is actually a very simple concept. There is logic in floating tariffs to compensate for floating exchange rates: Effects of exchange-rate misalignments on tariffs

In 2013 General Motors, in its trade negotiations with China, sought to link the exchange rate to the tariff structure used for motor vehicle trade between China and the US for obvious reasons. Perhaps Australia had been a learning experience for GM, rendering them Forex Punch Drunk?

Think about it. When the AUD was worth USD 0.60 the car import tariff was 5%. When the AUD was at parity with the USD the effective tariff would have had to rise to 75% for the Australian car industry to maintain the same level of competitiveness against cheaper imports. Exporting would still have been hard, but the size of the domestic market for Australian cars might have been maintained while the Australian dollar remained strong. The automobile industry was not causing the exchange rate misalignments. They were beyond its control.

From 1998 to 2003 the average AUDUSD exchange rate was around 0.6. Let's consider a car costing USD10,000 imported over that period. (10,000 x 1.05 Duty)/0.6 = AUD17,500.

Over the period since 2003 the average AUDUSD exchange rate has been around 0.85. From late 2010 to early 2013 the exchange rate was above parity (ie > 1.0). This is when Ford and GM started talking about closing down Australian operations.

Let's consider the same imported car when the exchange rate is 1:1. (10,000 x 1.05 Duty)/1.0 = AUD10,500. To bring it up to AUD17,500 the import duty would have needed to be raised to 75%. (10,000 x 1.75 Duty)/1.0 = AUD17,500.
Wouldn't this have been a reasonable strategy? How could any fair and reasonable assessment conclude that because the car industry could not immediately reduce its factory gate prices by 43% (ie 1 - 10,000/17,500) in response to radical exchange rate fluctuations, it should not be protected by a tariff whose benchmark had been established at an exchange rate of 0.6 with a rate of 5%? Surely a floating Australian dollar must be combined with floating tariffs?

The collective intelligence of the entire parliament of Labor and Liberal politicians was unable to identify or address such problems associated with Paul Keating's deregulation. Therefore, as the AUD rose from 2003 onwards for reasons directly linked to the actions of innumerate (??) politicians, Australia's manufacturing industry has been dealt a severe blow. No jobs for our children in manufacturing?

What drove the Australian dollar higher? Clearly a contributor to this was a booming mining sector (selling rocks for US dollars and bringing the money home in Australian dollars) combined with extreme population growth driving demand for goods & services and inflows of capital as people arrived; particularly while the rest of the world floundered under the burden of the GFC. Australia's Government chose a surge in mass migration to drive demand and interest rates higher as the rest of the world lowered interest rates.

So we have Government; and by that I mean Government supported by all the major political parties, that is orchestrating the following:

• An unregulated exchange rate for the Australian Dollar
• General lowering of tariff levels
• No link between tariffs and the unregulated exchange rate
• "Liberal" FIRB decisions on foreign ownership of Australian assets that differ radically from those of other countries, and trading partners, in the region
• Manipulating demand using the mass migration tool to create an inherent conflict of interest between driving GDP growth with population growth, managing interest rates, managing global competitiveness and managing house prices.

To hell with the future. Let's drive a cheap BMW after selling a house or two to reap the "Chinese Bonus"??

Was this inevitable? Ask any innumerate politician for an answer and they may not even understand the question. Isn't patriotism, wherever feasible, about retaining the means of production? Or as Karl Marx said; "The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people."

This article was originally published on Fightback!news on 31 December 2014. See also: Feeling of 'solid Western support' behind Kiev's renewed assault on Donbass on RT. For more news on the fight by the people of of Donbass against the Kiev regime, read other Fightback! articles on Ukraine or visit the #Donbass Twitter page. Article also includes 2 embedded videos: Ukraine: Helping rebuild homes (7/1/15) (2:57) and Donbass under fire: Separatists (27/12/14) (58:12)

After the U.S.-backed fascist coup in Kiev, Ukraine in February 2014, the people of Donbass rebelled for independence from Ukraine. A popular anti-fascist resistance quickly emerged. The breakaway state of Novorossiya, or New Russia, was formed and Kiev sent in troops and tanks to crush the people's resistance. Civil war gripped the country. Now, almost a year later, while the resistance soldiers on, a humanitarian disaster perpetuated by the Kiev government's war of aggression has struck the citizens of Donbass. International Students Aid to Donbass, based in Wroclaw, Poland, is one of many aid groups springing up across the world in solidarity with the ongoing resistance and the victimized people of Eastern Ukraine.

Sanela Bajrasambasic, ICRC (Red Cross) delegate appeals for aid to help Donbass residents rebuild homes bombed by Kiev regime (see embedded video)

Fight Back! interviewed one of the founders of International Students Aid to Donbass (ISAD), who wished to remain anonymous.

Fight Back!: Can you explain about the student organization generally?

ISAD student: Sure. The idea for creating a solidarity with Donbass group which could coordinate humanitarian assistance emerged in October when a handful of international students in Wroclaw some of whom had been activists back in their home countries, wanted to find a way to aid the people of Donbass, who are truly in a miserable situation. We felt like we could no longer sit back and watch as innocent people in Novorossiya starved and died of sickness. Some of us were especially passionate about the situation in Ukraine and we racked our brains until we decided that sending such necessities as food, medicine and clothing could be the best way we could help and draw in other students. The idea of a humanitarian aid organization seemed like a perfect way to express our solidarity with the war-struck people of Novorossiya with the limited resources and capacity we had. So, we sat down, discussed our ideas, and International Students Aid to Donbass was born in early November. We contacted Russian NGOs that handle humanitarian assistance and set up a collection point in cooperation with them. However, we're still our own independent group; we see working with them as one of the greatest opportunities available.

Fight Back!: Are you able to tell a bit about the make-up of International Students Aid to Donbass? Obviously, the name indicates that the membership is multinational.

ISAD student: Being a group primarily composed of international students, our group truly is diverse. We have people from the U.S., Poland, and various European countries. Our group can communicate in more than half a dozen languages. ISAD is also diverse in more ways than just our national make-up. We all come from a broad range of backgrounds and political persuasions. Our group includes communists, Eurasianists and students who simply hate war and the pain it brings anywhere, and want to help alleviate the pain of the men, women and children who are enduring it. Some of us are passionate supporters of Novorossiya and the resistance, while others simply sympathize with the ordinary people who are suffering. As a humanitarian organization, we have no strict political line. The thing that fundamentally unites all of us is the fact that we are saving people's lives by delivering desperately needed goods to the people that need them most. This simple yet important mission has grown our numbers in the short time that we've been active and continues to motivate our work.

Fight Back!: Are there any security issues, seeing as you're operating in a country which, on a state level, supports the fascist government in Kiev? How does the political situation in Poland affect the work of the organization?

ISAD student: Absolutely. Security is a serious problem that we have to carefully deal with. Our members have faced verbal and physical threats and hostilities from Ukrainian nationalists in Poland. A significant number of Ukrainians now have easy access to visas, even free ones, to come work and study here. Some Ukrainian nationalists come here on visas because they don't actually want to fight in the war, and find plenty of space here, without consequences or obligations, to howl about how patriotic they are and threaten those who disagree. Because of security issues stemming from such people and the fact that the Polish state supports the Kiev junta, we keep even our social media private and, unfortunately, can't publicly list our aid point. Speaking of the general political situation in Poland, politicians here love to fan the flames of Russophobia in order to distract people from the real issues they face domestically. Additionally, Poland acts as the war hawk within NATO, so tensions here are always virulently anti-Russia, anti-Donbass, and the propaganda in the media is ridiculously overbearing. Between state-sanctioned Russophobia and aggressive Ukrainian "activists," we have to consciously, always and everywhere, pay paramount attention to security.

Fight Back!: What exactly does your day-to-day work look like?

ISAD student: Our work is simple. We pool together our money, time and energy and go on weekly shopping trips for food, medicine and clothing which we can ship monthly to Donbass. The important thing to remember is that we are students. We're operating on student budgets with student schedules, but we do the best we can with our resources. We all sacrifice our own money and time, but we all feel gratified by the humanitarian work we're doing. We also try to spread awareness of the situation in Ukraine, but the political situation renders that secondary to practical work.

Fight Back!: Do you have any future plans for expanding your work?

ISAD student: In the next few months, our main plan is to find new people to work with. As far as I know, we are one of the only, if not then the only such organization of its kind actively working in Poland, and especially Wroclaw. Before we started, we looked around for other such groups, but found none. In addition to continuing our work with our existing contacts, we're going to contact other humanitarian organizations, particularly those that specifically deliver assistance to children in Donbass. Of course, our capacity is limited, but finding more students and people in Poland, and indeed the world, who are interested in participating will only increase our determination and ability to carry out our mission to save Donbass people.

Fight Back!: Is there anything you'd like to say to supporters and sympathizers in the West, particularly progressives in the U.S.?

ISAD student: I think the most important thing is that this model of organization is universally applicable. Any number of people anywhere can get together and open an aid point. A little work goes a long way. Even if you only have one or two people and can only get a few food items, some over-the-counter medicine and used clothing, such things mean the world to people in Donbass whose only lifeline is international humanitarian assistance. Especially in the West and in the U.S., where the propaganda is so strong and labels the ordinary people of Donbass "pro-Russian terrorists," humanitarian aid work is important to exposing the lies, and most people can find it agreeable despite their political convictions. At the end of the day, we're saving people from a war being senselessly waged against them by some of the most powerful countries of the world in an imperialist geopolitical bid to weaken Russia and snatch Ukraine for the Western camp. The people stuck between the fighting need our help. Support from progressives benefits both the people of Donbass and the struggle against war and propaganda in the heart of the West itself. We encourage anyone interested to get involved and, of course, we're happy to help with logistics and share our experience.

International Students Aid to Donbass can be contacted at polskidonbasu [ AT ] gmail.com

Appendix 1: Red Cross appeals for help to rebuild homes in Donbass (2:57)

Appendix 2: Donbass under fire: Separatists(58:12)

As the Ukrainian army launches a new attack on the Donetsk Peoples' Republic, claiming to have retaken Donetsk Airport from 'separatist' forces, the justification for such an attack has once again become a subject for discussion. While the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says the new offensive is aimed at 're-uniting' Ukraine, and Western media believe this both to be a reasonable objective and the real one, the actual situation is entirely different...

Much of the perversion of truth on the true nature of the Ukrainian government and the nature of the 'Eastern rebellion' can be put down to the success of the 'False Flag' attack on MH17 - carried out by the Ukrainian air force with as yet unverified assistance from Western intelligence agencies. This tragic state of affairs is thanks to the skill of the propaganda campaign conducted primarily by the US and its close allies, but facilitated by the Western media apparatus. It is tragic because the simplest of investigations of the crash site and wreckage of the plane would have readily demonstrated who was responsible; not only was clear physical evidence of the damage visible, and reported and photographed by some early observers, but forensic analysis would have found traces of the bullets that so clearly perforated the cockpit.

Given this background, the appearance of an article in the Fairfax press by veteran correspondent Paul McGeough describing his visits to the crash site with partner Kate Geraghty should have been cause for optimism; that this renowned 'investigative journalist' seemed uninterested in identifying the criminals responsible for killing so many people and instead focused on collecting sunflower seeds in 'Cockpit village' was cause for exasperation!
I sent the letter below to McGeough, in addition to Jonathan Green who interviewed him on the ABC. It also went to ABC Consumer Affairs, and the editors of the Australian National Review, and the editors of English Pravda.

Dear Paul,

While I admire your desire to give the relatives of victims of the MH17 atrocity something to fill the void left by the loss of their loved ones, I was astonished that your intense focus allowed you to both reveal and overlook crucial evidence that would provide something far more substantial to those relatives.

For those of us who paid no attention to the wild claims made in Western media following the downing of MH17, and made their own judgements based on evidence available, there was little evidence more convincing that photographs of the cockpit of the aircraft showing severe damage from artillery of some kind. For the benefit of the other recipients of this email I copy below your description in the Fairfax press of your visit to ‘Cockpit village’ – the very place where that vital fragment was observed and photographed:

“We headed out of the city before dawn. On a highway strewn with the smouldering wreckage of vehicles destroyed in the previous night's fighting, some with bodies still lying in or near them, we threaded our way through rebel checkpoints, back to what we had dubbed "the cockpit village".

This was Rassypnoe, a hamlet in which locals watched in awe as MH17's nose cone smashed into a field of shoulder-high sunflowers, just metres from buildings on the village's western flank.

When we visited the village in the last week of July, Eugene Lukovkin, a 30-year-old separatist gunman, gave us a graphic account of the crash – "bodies falling like bullets"; the nose section making a muffled sound, "like it landed in a swamp".

Recalling that he had been disposing of his grandmother's trash, Lukovkin told me: "The plane headed towards me. I could see the smoke as it fell to pieces – it had been missiled. One section was coming at me and the rest of it seemed to keep going. I dumped the rubbish cart and started running; others were running too – we think maybe some of the falling people are alive.

"There were lots of bodies – dead." Pointing to the left side of the cockpit, he says: "This is where one of the pilots was – I knew he was in charge because he had stars on his shoulder."

When we returned at dawn on our last day, none of the locals were to be seen. We drove to the field in which the buckled cockpit lay and quietly went to work – chopping enough sunflower heads to fill a big suitcase that we had bought at the market for this purpose. No one came to ask what we were doing.

Thirty minutes later we were back on the road, driving north to the Ukrainian government-controlled city of Kharkiv, from where we caught a commercial flight to the capital Kiev.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/my-christmas-offering-sunflower-seeds-for-mh17-families-from-the-fields-of-ukraine-20141226-12dily.html

You also described this experience in a radio interview on the ABC with Jonathan Green:

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/sunflower-seeds-for-mh17/5992360

While there is little doubt outside the sphere of influence of the Western corporate media that a Ukrainian fighter jet shot down MH17 using both an air to air missile and 30mm cannon fire, the necessary evidence to establish this fact has clearly not been sought by the Dutch investigators, or their findings are being suppressed. Of particular interest here is the report from the ‘separatist gunman’ that he had seen the pilots body in the cockpit wreckage.

In the accepted scenario of the crash, endorsed by the blank black box recording, the pilots were the prime and initial target of the aerial attack; not only are there multiple penetrations of this part of the aircraft, and relatively few elsewhere, but the cockpit came down separated from the main fuselage by some distance.

Examining the high quality photograph of the left side of the cockpit, one can see evenly spaced holes as from strafing, but from bullets fired at the other side of the cockpit – the holes are quite obviously made by objects emerging from inside as the outer layer of the double skin is peeled outward, while the holes in the inner skin are perfectly round and the size of the 30 mm bullets. In the version of your article above there is also a photograph taken by Kate Geraghty of ‘a pilot’s seat’. A forensic analysis on both the seat and the pilot’s body would surely show evidence of perforations by the tungsten shells used by the SU25 and presumed responsible for the damage.

World peace depends on truthful and careful reporting now

Some people may believe that discussion of exactly how MH17 came down is becoming academic, as we lurch from one dangerous crisis to the next. But unlike discussion of the causes of the First World War – so apparently topical at the moment – this is anything but academic. Already the framing of Russia as not just involved but even as responsible for the atrocity has ‘facilitated’ NATO’s expansion eastwards, and enabled the Kiev coup leaders to pursue their corrupt agenda with European approval and assistance. And given that it is now clear ‘cui bono’ as a result of this attack, we must confront the stark possibility that MH17 was an act of state terrorism in which our own governments may have been complicit.

There are already very many commentators, experts and authorities who have come to this conclusion, not simply based on the evidence that MH17 was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter jet – which is considerable – but because of the complete lack of evidence offered by Western agencies and governments for their contention that ‘Russian backed separatists’ shot it down with a BUK surface to air missile. Only days after the attack, Russian authorities appealed to the US to release satellite pictures from a new satellite they apparently had directly over Ukraine at the time of the crash. This information has been repeatedly requested by Moscow but with no response. It is not possible to conclude other than that such information would be incriminating both to Kiev and the US – if it showed a BUK missile launch by the Separatists as it surely would then we would have seen such information immediately.

Russia Today has just released a second documentary on the attack – ‘Reflections on MH17’, ( http://rtd.rt.com/films/reflections-on-mh17film/) which focuses on the extraordinary failure of Dutch and Ukrainian authorities to properly investigate the causes of the accident, while observing that conclusions on what weapon was responsible could be easily made with some simple laboratory analyses. It could not be said that such an investigation would ‘bring closure’ to the relatives of MH17 victims, but exposing the real culprits would do a lot more for the victims and potential victims of NATO’s aggressive policies in Europe. These criminals who would happily sacrifice a few hundred truly innocent civilians as part of their strategic game cannot be allowed to escape justice, and the wrath of their own citizens.

I must just acknowledge the welcome new perspective brought to the Australian media by the Australian National Review – to whom I am also copying this letter. To my knowledge this is the only mention in our print press of the ‘real story’ of MH17, – but I await its serious discussion from our national broadcaster.

Inside you may view the execution of a so far nameless woman in a town in Idlib province, Syria, which was taken over by 'rebels' about one year ago. She pleads to see her children before she is executed, but to no avail. She is told to kneel, while a bunch of unpleasant looking and frighteningly stupid and arrogant-sounding men discuss matters loudly - for minutes on end - before she is suddenly dispatched. Obviously this is not an isolated act, but we ask women to make themselves aware of this act of political brutality against all of us and to unite against US/NATO foreign intervention in Syria, which is making it much harder for the Bashar al-Assad Government (which does not execute women for adultery) to combat these evil forces. The overwhelming message from Syrian people is please stop foreign intervention in Syria. Please let the Syrian army fight these 'rebels'. See Friends of Syria and Australians for Mussahala (Reconciliation) in Syria, and Socrates and Syria.

"The sign on the wall reads ‘Jabhat al Nusra’ in red letters. One doubts that there is much distinction between Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS. Certainly not in terms of brutality or mindless devotion to some blinding fundamentalist belief. That the ‘imam’ who presides over the execution gives a sermon to an assembly of men with guns and smart phones, rather than a crowd of residents and citizens who are meant to learn from the punishment gives it a ridiculous and farcical atmosphere, except the poor woman really dies." David Macilwain.

Below is an edition of the Syrian government's news with the President's statement about terrorism and Charlie Hebdo. President al-Assad says that he understands terrorism very well because the Syrian Government has been fighting it now for four years and it is responsible for thousands of deaths in Syria.

The Australian government is supporting the activities of such terrorists, which it identifies as 'moderate rebels', in order to topple the government for its NATO friends, who want to get control of the general area and its petroleum resources. Bashar al-Assad is frequently described as the leader of a 'brutal regime', but he was overwhelmingly elected last year in free elections to which Syrians travelled from all over the world to participate in, and received votes from Syrians in other countries when they were able to vote - which was not the case in Australia.

Lada Ray reports that Russia will stop transporting gas to Europe via Ukraine and redirect it through Turkey. She also describes Ukraine activities leading up to renewed war on East Ukraine, with the US, France and Poland having agreed to supply advanced arms to Ukraine. In addition, two ships, one from Australia and one from Canada docked in the Odessa port in the past week to two. Each was full of winter uniforms for the Ukraine army. The following article is from Lada Ray's English language blog at https://futuristrendcast.wordpress.com/2015/01/15/confirmed-russia-to-stop-transit-of-gas-to-europe-through-ukraine/

This is a bombshell that was dropped by Russia earlier today.

It has been officially confirmed! The head of Gazprom Alexei Miller announced that Russia would discontinue the Ukrainian route for Russian gas transit to the EU. I expected this announcement ever since I broke the news of the Turkey/Russia deal on 12/2/14, but I did expect it in a year or two: read here and here. Looks like the time is getting compressed and the pressure for change is intensifying.

I understand at this time the flow of gas through Ukraine has been restricted to 2/5th of the usual volume. However, it appears it will soon be stopped completely.

Russia to switch fully to the Turkish Stream to move the quantities necessary to satisfy all of European demand. Ukraine up till now was responsible for about 50% of the Russian gas transit to the EU, with Nord Stream, Belarus and Turkey accounting for the rest.

Ukraine, as always during the heating season, has been stealing Russian gas. This is in addition to massive debt Ukraine has with Russia. Russia is by far Ukraine’s largest creditor; gas debt alone constitutes nearly $5.5 bln. Total Ukraine’s debt to Russia, including corporate is well over $30 bln, according to Vladimir Putin.

This is a much bolder move than anyone expected. EU is in shock. According to Gazrpom’s head Alexei Miller, EU didn’t want South Stream Russia tried to build as partners together with the EU. Therefore, Russia will now deliver gas to Turkey, and then to the border between Turkey and Greece. From thereon, it will be EU’s responsibility to build pipelines through its territory.

Gazrpom is to become a big player in Turkey, and Turkey in return will enjoy massive gas price discounts and large profits from the resale of gas to the EU and other buyers.

Read related articles from 12/2/14: German Vice Chancellor: No Ukraine in NATO; Russia, Let’s Make Up! and from 12/5/14: Declaration of Cold War: What Chain of Events is US Provoking With New Hostile Move? In these I discuss in detail the Putin/Erdogan agreement on building the alternative pipeline to Turkey!

I see several interesting things at play here:

1. My predictions:

First of all, let’s recall that I said from the beginning of 2014 and many times throughout 2014 that when Russia feels even slightly inconvenienced by the West, off to the East they go. My prediction came true spectacularly within only two or three months, when in May 2014 Russia signed a number of mega-deals with China on gas supply, the Power of Siberia gas pipeline construction, high-speed railroad construction, and much more. Then, Putin also signed massive gas supply deal with Turkey to bypass the unfriendly EU, plus, a massive nuclear energy deal. Turkey is, of course, also a part of the East (Middle East).

Second prediction I made was that Europe would start experiencing gas shortages due to Russia’s re-orientation to the East. I said it would happen a few years from now. It appears my predictions’ time table is accelerating!

See the PREDICTIONS page on top navigation bar, as well as my 2014 articles under RUSSIA category for much more on that. Some of the articles are: What Brought Down Russian Satellite? Angela Merkel’s Biggest Fear? Plus Ukraine Election Prediction; Ukraine Part 7: Russia’s Geopolitics, USA’s Bluff and EU’s Big Mistake; Interview with predictions: The Road to Moscow Goes Through Kiev.

2. It seems Miller and Gazprom are very confident that EU has no alternative to the Russian gas at this time. For the longest time EU and Ukraine had been able to blackmail Russia every year, taking advantage of the fact that the EU was Russia’s largest customer and Ukraine – the largest transit artery.

Russia was customarily accused of various transgressions, the blame was yearly shifted to Russia for any gas flow disruptions due to Ukraine’s stealing of Russian gas; the expense for Ukraine’s theft was also placed on Russia’s shoulders alone, while EU denied any responsibility, always siding with Ukraine. It appears Russia/Gazprom feel that enough is enough and that it’s time to cut the Gordian Knot. The fact that Russia now has strategic agreements with Turkey and China helps Russia’s leverage.

3. This is where the economy and geopolitics mix. Russia warned a long time ago that should EU’s behavior not change, there would eventually be more return sanctions. It appears Russia wasn’t kidding!

Recent events, in which Ukraine and certain EU countries acted strangely, to say the least, apparently were the last drop, reinforcing Russia’s intentions. The events I am referring to were: Ukraine PM Yatsenyuk giving multiple interviews and speeches in Germany accusing Russia of attacking the Nazi Germany and Ukraine, while Merkel stood by him, failing to react to the outright lie. The recent Volnovakha, Donbass tragedy in which 10 people died and scores were wounded when a bus with Donetsk pensioners was hit by a bomb or a mine on the Ukraine side. This incident was immediately blamed on the Donbass self-defence. Ukraine tried to get EU to recognize LNR and DNR as terrorist organizations, while designating Russia as the state aiding terrorism, followed by a new round of sanctions. While the resolution failed, another resolution to adopt a new round of anti-Russian sanctions may pass (I don’t have the latest on that). Meanwhile, per reports, US, France and Poland, among others, have agreed to supply advanced arms to Ukraine. In addition, two ships, one from Australia and one from Canada docked in the Odessa port in the past week to two. Each was full of winter uniforms for the Ukraine army. Poroshenko went to Paris to participate in the Unity March together with Merkel and Hollande, as I wrote here, to express solidarity with the victims of the French terrorist acts, while hundreds and thousands were dying at home unnoticed by anyone. Poroshenko’s trip strangely coincided with Yatsenyuk trying to promote Russia as aggressor in Germany and the Volnovakha bus tragedy. Right after returning from France Poroshenko announced three new waves of mobilization to recruit over 200,000 soldiers – we now know that when they re-start the war with Donbass, they’ll be able to kill more efficiently thanks to all those Australian and Canadian uniforms keeping them nice and warm. In the meantime, the bombings of Donbass have intensified by 10-20 times. For the past week or so the number of dead and wounded from Ukraine’s shelling is greater than for the past 3-4 months combined – exact numbers are not known yet, but the preliminary number is 52 dead during the past few days. As a result of Poroshenko’s visit to Paris and the killing of 10 civilians in Volnovakha, the Astana, Kazakhstan peace conference planned for today, January 15, was cancelled. To wrap up the vicious cycle of events, the man who was instrumental in organizing the Astana peace conference was The French president, Hollande. Please refer back to my article: Urgent! Secret Link Between French False Flag Attacks and Ukraine, in which I also said that Hollande was wavering from the party line, trying to play peacemaker, and terror acts in France were meant to remind him to toe the line. Finally, S&P and other Western agencies are set to lower Russia’s rating to junk status: China/Russia to Launch Own Credit Rating Agency to Rival the Big Three.

4. US has been trying to squeeze Russia out of the EU gas market in order to sell to the EU its own, more expensive, shale gas. The shale industry in the US is in difficult circumstances and many fields have been conserved because of low prices and insufficient international demand for the US shale gas. The banks that financed fracking companies are afraid of not getting their money back; many are on the verge of bankruptcy. Obtaining the lucrative EU market is the best thing for the US. Of course the expensive US shale gas will undermine the EU economy, making EU products less competitive, which will help the US economy and keep EU on a short leash for the US purposes. However, building LNG terminals is expensive, they take a lot of valuable space near ports, and it takes time. Such infrastructure isn’t available for the time being. It appears that despite tough talk, EU is ‘stuck’ with cheaper and readily available Russian gas.

5. World Grand-Master Putin at work! Russia’s leverage has increased exponentially from signing strategic mega-deals with China last May and Turkey last December. It appears Putin has decided this was the right time to play one of Russia’s aces; or if you will, to play Russia’s Turkish Gambit!

6. Last fall, when Russia, Ukraine and EU negotiated, EU promised to vouch for Ukraine’s payment for the ongoing supply of Russian gas. In reality, Ukraine never re-paid $3.1 bln in past arrears due before New Year’s. EU also didn’t vouch for Ukraine’s payments past New Year’s. Therefore, any gas Ukraine receives now is unpaid for, which in itself triggers gas supply stoppage.

7. The Ukraine pipeline infrastructure is Soviet built and was never really maintained by Ukraine. It’s either time to fix it, or to abandon it. Perhaps this is the right time to abandon what cannot be fixed – and I am speaking broadly. Ukraine and EU’s behavior have gone far beyond any permissible or even conceivable. The way Ukraine and EU behave towards Russia can be expressed by the following Russian sayings: ‘to spit into a well from which you drink’ and ‘to saw off the branch you are sitting on.’ It appears that with those who don’t understand good will, reason or logic the only way is the way of an ultimatum.