Melbourne University fell in ranking from 28 to 34, Australian National University from 37 to 48, Sydney University from 62 to 72, NSW University from 85 to 114 and Adelaide University has gone from the top 200 world rankings, according to The Times Higher Education World University Rankings Hardly surprising in the commercial environment that swamps the notion of knowledge and research and the vocational ideology that substitutes for higher education these days.
One should be aware, however, that the Times values are rather commercial, pro-globalisation, and overly respectful of professional peer-review, which has attracted its own criticism.[1]
Recently my father asked me to guess what the second most important export industry is in Australia. I failed to guess. He informed me that he had just learned that it was universities from the Insiders program on the ABC.
On reflection, I was not surprised. An 'export industry'; that is what our institutions of higher learning have become important for. It seems hardly worth saying that the commercialising of knowledge makes its corruption inevitable because everyone I know that has anything to do with higher education has been deploring what has been happening to higher education now for a couple of decades. Every year it gets worse.
We are selling a shonky brand called Australian education to the high bidders on the world market. The last time I was in a university the foreign students outnumbered the locals at about 98% to 2%. Although the lectures were conducted in English, it was clear from the accents and the anxious faces that English was not the first language and Australia was not the first home of most of the participants.
That was not the only thing that had changed from the days when Australian universities were principally for the higher education of Australians and we felt that we had ownership of them, as taxpayers.
Instead of the old laid-back lecture theatre style, the lectures in this commercialised 21st century course were multi-media to a ridiculous point. The lecturer did not just stand at the front and talk, he simultaneously delivered in powerpoint. As he spoke, the lecture and powerpoint were being filmed and recorded for upload to the course website. Students with passwords could download their lectures later. In fact, lectures were supposed to be uploaded a couple of days to a week in advance.
Coursework was assisted and, in many cases actually done by the lecturer/tutor.
The course was a graphic interface design course in the C# programming language (pronounced C Sharp) based on an incredibly expensive proprietary platform, which the university in question provided to the students at special student prices. There were continuous problems with versions and permissions. These problems meant that students were frequently prevented from studying, doing prac-work and completing assignments. So many were affected that the people running the course seemed to have decided to bring the students in and 'coach' them through one to one, which really meant doing their work with them and for them. Such was the rate of problems with the software that it had to be constantly and individually troubleshooted.
I was amazed to realise that an open-source platform - Java - very similar to this expensive and very poorly performing proprietary $4000 commercial software platform was available free on the internet. I also discovered that universities that taught information technology now tended to require students to use proprietary software, which they would once have built and designed themselves. Until recently, universities eschewed proprietary software as a matter of professional good judgement, wary of making their research and skill base vulnerable to restrictive commercial licencing. All proprietary software is based on free and open-source software, much of it developed in universities then bestowed to a world where it has since blossomed into a million new forms. It is only good sense to keep things that way. Anyone can use proprietary software, but only if they can afford it - which leaves out a few billion people. Whole countries now use free and/or open software for their public services and in schools. See, for instance, this list of linux using countries, which includes the US Department of Defense. The list does not include the Australian public service, schools, or universities, however. I have heard Australian children described at Linux meetings as among the worst prepared for computer engineering in the world.
Only the licensed few can analyse, develop and change proprietary software because the software is locked up by the owners. It is therefore pretty useless for anything except routine work. Why would universities lock their students into proprietary software? The only reason I can think of is that universities have become so profit- oriented that they accept information technology hardware and software packages that come with commercial incentives. That is, they receive money from proprietary software and hardware manufacturers to train students only on that brand. The upshot is that, in order to pursue info-tech careers, students are forced, once they graduate, to pay full price for these often very limited technologies. Furthermore, they are tied to working only with those brands. The brand that the university in question was working with used graphical interfaces [windows] rather than code, so the students were being taught in a special language that would give them little insight into the basic developer building blocks that are the free currency of the internet.
The above is just one example of how the profit motive has corrupted universities. It can be expanded to things like sociology and marketing, where 'research' that will make money attracts university support, making Australian universities corporate-friendly instead of democracy-friendly. See, for instance, The Australian Multicultural Foundation and the Institute for Global Movements in Scanlon Report underpins threat to Australian democracy. This is about the huge amount of resources directed into justifying and funding high immigration, despite its manifest unpopularity with the electorate.
Many Australian students can't compete financially with foreign students. It is hard to know why foreign students would pay so much to go to an Australian university when there are so many other universities in the world. One reason could be because of the immersion in English. Another reason is, of course, that the Australian state government lures high fee-paying students here with more or less covert promises of permanent migration and citizenship - a doorway to a second nationality and a 'first world' bolt-hole for wealthy internationals. We've also adopted the ridiculous North American practice of expecting people to work part-time and full-time while they do full-time and part-time courses.
Foreign students represent a large proportion of incoming migrants to Australia, both temporary and permanent. Along with other migrants, they are able to buy houses here. They are used and abused by commercial strategists to create part of the inflationary force that keeps housing unaffordable, along with universities, for Australians born here. Australian jobs are also affected, of course, because a large proportion of foreign students gain permission to work just by completing degrees here. Less well-known is that Australia imports foreign doctors and nurses who are then expected, not only to staff our hospitals, but often to study while they work in our universities. In the meantime Australian-born graduates cannot get positions in these hospitals. If you have recently worked as a nurse, you may have noticed that anyone with any status on a ward is probably also studying full or part time, even though they are working full-time. If these were substantial degree courses and/ or they were working responsibly and professionally, this would not be possible. The demands of university degrees or postgraduate degrees should be too great to allow for this and would have been so 30 years ago. There are obviously some commercial arrangements going on between hospitals, universities and recent immigrants, that most of us have no entry into and barely a clue about.
Australians had little or no democratic say in what has happened and in what is happening to their universities. In 2013, if you want to do a research degree then you had better be doing it for a commercial reason and be able to show that you will bring money to the university. That leaves precious little opportunity and almost no financial support for pure research in science, politics or the arts. Yet these things are the stuff of knowledge, civilisation and democracy.
NOTES
[1]
"The interposition of editors and reviewers between authors and readers always raises the possibility that the intermediators may serve as gatekeepers.[31] Some sociologists of science argue that peer review makes the ability to publish susceptible to control by elites and to personal jealousy.[32][33] The peer review process may suppress dissent against "mainstream" theories.[34][35][36] Reviewers tend to be especially critical of conclusions that contradict their own views,[37] and lenient towards those that accord with them. At the same time, established scientists are more likely than less established ones to be sought out as referees, particularly by high-prestige journals or publishers. As a result, ideas that harmonize with the established experts' are more likely to see print and to appear in premier journals than are iconoclastic or revolutionary ones, which accords with Thomas Kuhn's well-known observations regarding scientific revolutions.[38] Experts have also argued that invited papers are more valuable to scientific research because papers that undergo the conventional system of peer review may not necessarily feature findings that are actually important.[39]" (From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review#Allegations_of_bias_and_suppression (Yes, I've cited Wikipedia - and why not; there is really active peer review in Wikipedia, and the summary here covers the main points and references them well.)
The economy of Australia is one of the largest capitalist economies in the world, with a GDP of US$1.57 trillion. We stand apart from the rest of the OECD with both population growth and economic growth rates roughly four times the OECD country average. Admittedly some of the other members of the OECD are going through hard economic times, but many of similar size to Australia (such as Sweden) have sound economies, high GDP per capita and far slower population and GDP growth rates.
There is no evidence supporting the argument that rapid population growth is a rational strategy for Australia. Quite the opposite.
The only countries with higher population growth rates than Australia are authoritarian regimes with average GDP per capita roughly 4% of that of Australia. The exceptions to this low GDP per capita are Singapore and the UAE. But there is a big difference between these and Australia. They are city states where the cost of infrastructure expansion and social welfare is nowhere near the cost in Australia. The UAE has 88% expats and Singapore also grows due to its expat workforce.
But Australia has some other remarkable statistics in its historical closet. Since Federation compound annual population growth has rigidly adhered to an average of around 1.6+%. At the same time annual GDP growth has compounded at around 3.2+%. GDP per capita has, not surprisingly, compounded roughly in line with the rise in GDP diluted by the increase in population = 1.032/1.016 = 1.6% per capita.
Now it doesn’t take a genius to see that in 1900 these growth rates were based on a young undeveloped country and a world “without limits”, where the rise of humanity against its adversary the environment met with no logical opposition.
It also doesn’t take a genius to see that, at least hypothetically, zero population growth would only require 1.6% compound GDP growth to deliver 1.6% GDP growth per capita without the adverse social, environmental and economic consequences of population growth.
But hang on; haven’t we become more enlightened since 1900? Haven’t we learnt through the 60s and 70s that there are Limits to Growth? The Club of Rome was formed in 1968 and commissioned MIT to research and publish the now famous “Limits to Growth”.
Well yes we have become more enlightened, based on numerous ANU Polls and the Essential Report, 23 July 2013. But this never gets mentioned in public policy debate. Are the government and the media just pretending that this inconvenient truth should have no influence on public discourse or political policy development? How much longer will we have to wait?
Please also consider signing (and most importantly forwarding) the petition at the following link:
Julianne Bell of Protectors of Public Land Victoria Inc, has approached both ALP leadership contenders on the issue of the East West Link. Albanese OPPOSES the EAST WEST LINK, questions the 'business case' and points to public transport. Despite several attempts no view has been forthcoming from Shorten.
(1) Calling Members of the ALP re Voting on Leadership
PPL VIC wishes to advise that we have tried to establish the views of the ALP leadership contenders Mr. Bill Shorten and Mr. Anthony Albanese on the East West Link.. At a recent public meeting at the Wheeler Centre in the city I asked Mr. Albanese about his support or otherwise for the East West Link. He said that he opposed it on the grounds that there was no "business case" for it. He made it clear last year in March when Minister for Infrastructure and Transport that the Government would not provide funds to the State Government then led by Ted Baillieu for a "review" of the East West Link. He pointed to the substantial funding by the Federal Government of the Victorian Regional Rail Link. I have tried unsuccessfully to establish the views of Mr. Shorten. I have have no response to requests for him to contact me on the subject. I have asked a number of people conducting his campaign, including a former Rudd Government Minister, but did not get any information or a response from Mr. Shorten. ALP members have until Friday next to get in a vote on the leadership of the party.
(2) News on Drill Site Pickets in Carlton North and Fitzroy:
SP sent a message on Friday 5 October in the early afternoon saying the following: "Hi all this morning our picketers disrupted drilling on Station Street for a few hours. We now need to use the next few days (over the weekend presumably drilling has stopped) to build more support for our campaign. we want to increase our presence at campaign HQ caravan on crn Brunswick Street and Westgarth Street in Fitzroy but we need your help! If you can come down for a few hours today or over the weekend pls contact Kat ASAP on 0421742452. Thanks!"
On Friday at 6 pm Channel 7 and Channel 9 news covered the protest at the drill site in North Carlton with police hauling off protestors. The Herald Sun on Saturday 5 October yesterday featured an article on Page 4 "Protest Site Turns Ugly" with very indistinct photographs. It is worthwhile having a look at these drill sites. It is quite shocking that quiet suburban streets are invaded by these colossal machines as part of the construction process for the East West Link.
(3) Why Drill in Streets Some Distance from Alexandra Parade and The Tunnel?
I raised the question about why Linking Melbourne Authority is drilling streets in Westgarth and Emma Streets which are some distance from Alexandra Parade and the route of the Tunnel. Jill Koppel of CARA (Collingwood and Abbotsford Residents' Association) wins the prize for finding out what might be the truth of this exercise. She says: "He - a representative of Linking Melbourne Authority" - explained that they were doing the additional drill holes wider away from the route to get an idea of the lay of subterranean features such as a known paleo-channel (ancient waterway leaving a cavity in the otherwise sold rock). He denied that it was in any way to move the route sideways or to construct more off ramps eg 3 additional Holes south on Emma st Collingwood we had begun to surmise (incorrectly) that there might be an off ramp onto Smith St." This illustrates that the EW Link project is a massive monster taking over our suburbs!
Source: Julianne Bell, Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc.
Residents and businesses should be concerned about the wide impacts of the proposed East-West Link along the lower sections of Moonee Ponds Creek corridor in Flemington, Kensington, Parkville West and North Melbourne. See Video inside and check out the 'Port Connection' pdf from Linking Melbourne Authority.
The East-West Link, linking the Eastern Freeway with CityLink, will significantly and detrimentally impact on the Creek and adjoining areas - taking out houses, businesses and open space, compromising playgrounds, residential amenity, Royal Park, Travancore Park and more.
Beyond the 'tunnel' (or open cut) section of the Link that is receiving the most media attention, many people do not realise the extent of the damage on the western side of the Moonee Ponds Creek. See attachment "Port Connection" from Linking Melbourne Authority showing the huge aerial road way travelling from Racecourse Road in Flemington parallel with CityLink over the Moonee Ponds Creek to the Port. It is said to be twice the height of the CityLink.
The Napthine government has now made a priority of what was to have been Stage Two, a North-South truck tollway between the port and the Tullamarine freeway.
This makes it urgent that we act to protect the creek environments and the residents' amenities from the additional four elevated lanes, plus planned new on/off ramps along the western side and over the Creek.
The Friends of Moonee Ponds Creek, joined by the Kensington and Flemington Associations, will conduct guided walks to highlight these proposed structures and their impacts on Sunday October 6th, from 9:30am.
Date: Sunday October 6th
Time: Walk starting times from 9:30-10:30am
Duration: approx 1 hour
Meeting place: Flemington Community Centre car park, 25 Mt. Alexander Rd, Flemington. Melways 2A, C/D at top of page. Railway station: Flemington Bridge (Upfield line).
The Creek Walk will end with light refreshments provided by the Kensington Association at 18 Bent Street Kensington, opposite the Creek, where residents will demonstrate how close the towering tollway will be to their homes. For further information, contact:
John Robertson, the NSW Opposition Leader, gets as far as saying that "The central policy challenge for NSW is maintaining our quality of life in the face of a rapidly rising population" and compaining that "the Government plans to cram in another 43,000 people [in Sutherland Shire] . Yet it has no concern for how this will affect quality of life in one of the most precious and unique areas of Sydney." Also, see inside how to book for Fenner Environment Conference before Monday.
This puts Mr Roberton way ahead of two of Labor's federal leaders, Bill Shorten and Paul Howes, who are still singing the praises of population growth.
Of course John Robertson did not suggest that he would do anything concrete to stop this rapid population growth. If he had done so, Murdoch's editors would almost certainly have refused to run his piece.
He implies that we may have to be fatalistic about population growth, but will need to spend more on catering for it: He correctly remarks that "Expanding our city at the current rate - while slashing services and failing to deliver infrastructure - is a recipe for disaster." But he fails to note that governments can't simply spend ever more on infrastructure because the rising rate of population growth is driving them towards bankruptcy. Every extra person in Australia, needs at least $200,000 worth of additional infrastructure, though some studies suggest the figure is far higher. The impossibility of coping with such rapid population growth without letting services and infrastructure deteriorate is well explained on Kelvin Thomson's Wikipedia page (last paragraphs).
That's a lovely pair of pincers to have your political opponents trapped between. But there's no reason to assume Robertson could do any better if he came to power. There is no piece of magic technology called "good government" that gets you out of that trap, unless you can reduce the rate of population growth. But at least Robertson seems able to see both sides of the trap he (and his opponents) are in.
Suzanne Cory, Hugh Possingham, David Lindenmayer, Chris Dickman, Bob Birrell, Mark O’Connor, Jane O’Sullivan, Michael Lardelli, Simon Michaux, Sharyn Munro, Rhondda Dickson, Michael Jeffrey, Gary Jones, Ian Lowe, Michael Raupach, Ian Dunlop, Tony McMichael, Paul Collins, Haydn Washington, Kelvin Thomson, Julian Cribb, and Roger Short. Richard Denniss is after-dinner speaker.
Registration: $220 ($170 concession) Dinner $70
Organised by Sustainable Population Australia Inc.
AS I WRITE, the bulldozers and chainsaws are brutalising another superb stand of ancient forest not far from where I am just out of Orbost, south-eastern Victoria. (This article is an extract from one on the ABC. See inside for link.)
Chainsaws and bulldozers are operating in Orbost, eastern Victoria, and trees have stood for 600 years, sheltering and feeding generations of greater gliders and powerful owls and other species, and being logged.
The lush understorey of ferns and blanket leaf have kept delicate lichens and mosses damp and cool in the hottest summers over the millennia. Liquid eyed marsupials will be huddling terrified in their hollows as these giants crash and splinter in a sickening thud that shakes the earth and shocks the heart. After this brutality, the remaining vegetation is deliberately incinerated with a ring of intensely hot fire. Nothing escapes. It's all part of the 'sustainable forest management' lie that our governments feed us, hoping to hide the reality with a curtain of pleasing language.
Australia's forests have many native wildlife and plant species are teetering on the edge of extinction, but the assistance offered is little more than recognition and shallow sympathy, laced with lip service and PR spin. East Gippsland is a prime example of this situation. It has been described by Professor David Bellamy as "the most diverse area of temperate forest I know of on Earth".
Why, in a developed country should small regional volunteer groups, Environment East Gippsland, which run on a meagre budget, be forced to take on the behemoth monster that is the government? The government and its logging agency VicForests agreed to abide by their own laws after being forced to the steps of the Supreme Court.
As a result of EEG's legal challenge, the beautiful glossy black cockatoo finally had a draft action statement drawn up last month after waiting 18 years on the threatened species list. But Minister Walsh's staff have found a loophole — they now learn that although the plan itself is a legal obligation, it doesn't need to have concrete protection measures.
There's no obligation, or guarantee, for the survival of our native animals. Governments "may" make recovery and protection plans, but it's not mandatory. It's all a facade, and political spin.
Email for Minister for Agriculture and Food Security: [email protected]
Continuing the ABC's misreporting of the Syrian conflict, ABC Newsradio's Middle East reporter, Matt Brown described in lurid tones the inspection and destruction of Syria's chemical weapons stock pile. He described Syria's chemical weapons as the most deadly weapons known to man. Matt Brown appeared ignorant of the fact that across the border in Israel. lies a massive arsenal of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Given that and that Syria, has lost 100,000 lives since March 2011, as a result of a bloody insurgency by terrorists supported by Israel and its Western allies, and has suffered past aggression from Israel in 1956, 1967 and has witnessed repeated Israeli aggression against neighbouring Lebanon from the 1980's, Syria's possession of a means to deter its bullying expansionist neighbour from launching an outright invasion is hardly unreasonable.
Of course, Matt Brown was careful nottomentionthestrongevidenceimplicatingtheUS-backedterroristsasthemostlikelyperpetratorsofrecentchemicalattacks. This was reportedin May of the March Chemical weapons attack by United Nations special investigator Carla del Ponte. Photographic evidence by overflying Russian satellites show evidence of the recent chemical weapons having been launched from a 'rebel' controlled area, whilst evidence which implicates the Syrian government in the chemical attacks is non-existent.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem wages fresh blow at west at the UN meeting
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem has taken a fresh jab at the west and its Arab allies at the UN meeting who support "organ eaters."
Addressing world leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York, he also charged that the US, Britain and France had blocked the naming of the real perpetrators of chemical weapon attacks in Syria.
He said terrorists fighting the government in the civil war are being supplied with chemical weapons, but he did not name specific nations accused of supplying them.
US President Barack Obama told the UN last week that it was Syrian President Bashar Assad's army that was behind a chemical weapons attack in August that killed hundreds in the Damascus suburbs and brought threats of a US strike.
Syria has committed to getting rid of its stockpiles of chemical weapons and the UN Security Council voted unanimously on Friday to oblige it to do so based on a plan made by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
Al-Muallem said it is clear to all that offshoots of al-Qaeda — "the most dangerous terrorist organization in the world" — is fighting in Syria. But some countries refuse to recognize it, he said.
"The scenes of murder, manslaughter and eating human hearts were shown on TV screens, but did not touch blind consciences," al-Moallem said.
"There are innocent civilians whose heads are put on the grill just because they violate the extremist ideology and deviant views of al-Qaida. In Syria … there are murderers who dismember human bodies into pieces while still alive and send their limbs to their families, just because those citizens are defending a unified and secular Syria."
A video published online in May purported to show a member of Syria's armed opposition eating a human heart while the body of a Syrian soldier lay close by. Another video the minister referred to purportedly showed rebels grilling the head of a Syrian soldier.
The video with the heart drew condemnation from human rights groups as well as the Syrian National Council, one of the main opposition groups.
Al-Muallem said his government was committed to a political solution to his country's conflict which he called a war against "terror" and not a civil war as the international community has been calling it for months.
"Our commitment to a political solution does not mean watching our mosques and churches destroyed, as is happening in Homs and Aleppo, and is happening now in the town of Maaloula, the only place in the world whose people still speak the language of Jesus Christ."
Syrian leaders have averted a US-led invasion to the state by agreeing to a call to put its chemical weapons under international watchdog.
The move was applauded by the international community and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council unanimously issued a resolution on Syria's chemical weapons.
Anti-government terrorist admits to having used chemical weapons in Syria
UPDATE: Still no reply from Mediawatch on 11 December 2013. Inside, letter to Mediawatch. Many people who are concerned about government-engineered population growth in Australia and the commercial growth lobby's impact on democracy have noticed a clear pro-growth bias in the ABC and other mass media. The fact is that population growth is almost constantly aired as something we must have more and more of, but the many contrary arguments are not. Some of them are occasionally reported, almost always with a negative spin. It is a fact that population numbers affect every aspect of society. It is therefore vital that decisions about population numbers be made with real democratic consultation, at the level of local government upwards.
From: Michael S.
Date: 1 October 2013 11:28
Subject: Vote Compass Fraud
To: [email protected]
Mediawatch,
Please prove that there is impartiality at the ABC................
The ABC stands accused of undemocratic conduct on a grand scale over the last 5+ years.
Is the ACMA an ineffective stooge? Is the ABC the propaganda machine of the Australian pro-growth dictatorship?
What are you going to do about it?
Will you pre-emptively face the music or will you cling to the hope that you will continue the style of gross misconduct seen during both the 2010 and 2013 election campaigns? Remember the Carbon Tax? Allegedly dropping (fossil fuel based) emissions by 60 million tonnes pa by 2020 while population growth increases it by over 90 million tonnes? And the target is 5% below 2000 levels by 2020, which means a drop of 28% per capita by 2020 despite continued chaotic expansion of the carbon-based economy? This is driven by developing-world population growth rates which the ABC relentlessly conceals from public discourse by characterising the whole issue as being limited to asylum seekers and immigration; rather than sustainable population.
But hang on, is it those plantation forests that were planted between 1990 and 2010 that are actually reducing (fossil fuel based) carbon emissions? So we are just doing what we've always done and pretending that something has changed?
There are two aspects of emissions growth:
(1) What creates it
(2) What reduces it
What creates it is going gangbusters as always; but has the ABC ever, in over 5 years of endless carbon tax debate, sought to lay these cards on the table? Is it showing support-by-omission for extreme population growth?
This issue is ENORMOUS compared to anything you have ever addressed on Mediawatch.
Please provide a response. Are you prepared to address this?
Bill Shorten’s simplistic statement on immigration population and refugees in Tuesday night’s ALP leadership debate was also open ended and "cornucopian", ignoring the important issues directly affected by high population growth: environment , quality of life , employment, resources and future sustainability. Is Bill Shorten unaware of the sequelae of continuing rapid population growth or is he ignoring them?
Further to this, Shorten either deliberately or naively melded the issues of Australia’s immigration program with the issue of refugees, seen by most of Australia, it seems as “boat people” thanks to the mainstream media who make it seem so. This is what Shorten said:
“We in Labor, we're pro-immigration. We are pro the growth of our population through immigration. We are pro-refugees. It is not a bad thing to want to come here. People should know where we stand.”
It should not be necessary for a political leader or anyone in our “civilized “society to say “we are pro refugees” ! Really, who would be or declare themselves to be “anti refugees”, the opposite of what Shorten declares the ALP to be? To be anti refugees is in a similar moral category to being “anti homeless” or “anti unemployed” That is say anti people in unfortunate circumstances! Who was brought up like that? I don’t know anyone who was!
All these predicaments that people can find themselves in are the responsibility of governments to do something about. But neither of the major parties in recent years has given the impression of welcoming refugees. Maybe this is just “bad press”, because Australia actually continues quietly to re-settle about 20,000 refugees per year and I understand that most of the asylum seekers who arrive by boat are assessed to have genuine claims to asylum and have been settled in Australia. In August, however Kevin Rudd announced a plan to send all boat arrivals to Papua New Guinea, never to be settled in Australia!
Neither party knows quite what to say to the Australian people it seems but everyone is agreed that it is good if the Australian people see refugees as interchangeable with the county’s immigration program. Both parties have wished to appear to the Australian populace to be very unwelcoming of refugees or at least reluctantly accepting .
As any real numbers person would know (and I think they are few and far between), the Australian refugee intake is chicken feed compared with the actual immigration program including all other categories. The difference is about tenfold! The annual immigration program is about 200,000. ABS data released today show that the Australian population grew by nearly 400,000 in the year to March 2013.
From the Australian Bureau of Statistics:
“The preliminary estimates of net overseas migration (NOM) recorded for the year ended 31 March 2013 (238,300 people) was 10.5%, or 22,600 people, higher than the net overseas migration recorded for the year ended 31 March 2012 (215,700 people). (3101.0 - Australian Demographic Statistics, Mar 2013).
Australian governments, Labor or Liberal preside over huge numbers of invitees moving to Australia. These are people who already have a country of their own, already live in a house or apartment in that country and are by global standards not badly off. Many of these people are business migrants, or skilled workers and, of course, about 30,000 per year are New Zealanders, who can move to Australia at will due to the Trans Tasman agreement
It is disingenuous of Bill Shorten to bundle together in the same statement the issues of refugees immigration and Australia’s population now and in the future . To do this is a sort of emotional blackmail.
It is the 90% of people from overseas annually who are shaping our future as an overpopulated land mass rather than the relatively small number of refugees. A good numbers person will not stress too much over the environmental effects of an additional 20,000 refugees who need somewhere to call home (unless you are Fiona Scott now the Liberal MP for Lindsay who in a televised interview before the election attributed heavy Western Sydney road traffic to refugees!) when 200,000 + people annually who really want to increase consumption and therefore their environmental impact are coming to Australia to do just that!
When Shorten put population growth, immigration programs and refugees all in one basket what could his opponent, Mr. Albanese say? Had Albanese wanted to clarify the situation - and I don’t know that he did - he would have run the risk of sounding like someone who was trying to explain when he stopped beating his wife! He might as well have let that one go through to the keeper – and I believe he did.
Australia’s population annual growth of just under 400,000 people is absolutely unsustainable, according to Sustainable Population Australia (SPA). Our annual population growth, of which 60% is made up of economic immigrants, amounts to building another Adelaide every three years, with all its need for infrastructure, fuel, housing ... at a cost of about $200,000 per person.
Figures out today from the Bureau of Statistics reveal Australia’s population grew at 1.8 per cent, with net overseas migration of 238,300 people (60%) in the year ending March 31, 2013, and natural increase of 159,100 people (40%).
SPA National President Ms Jenny Goldie says infrastructure spending has not kept pace with such rapid growth, resulting in greater congestion, unaffordable housing and longer waiting times.
“It is now generally accepted that it costs $200,000 in extra infrastructure for every extra person. With 400,000 at $200,000 per person it means $80 billion in one year. No wonder the states are crying poor!
“Another way of looking at it is that we need to build another Adelaide every three years with all the associated infrastructure” says Ms Goldie.
“The environmental consequences of human population growth are equally concerning,” she says. “A rapidly expanding population demands access to more natural resources, be it food, fibre or oil, putting ever more pressure on soils, seas and forests.
“Biodiversity is adversely affected. Birds and mammals have been driven to extinction by human overkill, loss of habitat, invasive species, pollution and disease. Human activity is the prime cause of these processes and they intensify as human numbers grow.”
Ms Goldie says it is alarming that over 100,000 were added to Victoria’s population in one year.
“It’s all very well for the Victorian Government to talk of better planning but that kind of growth simply translates into crowded roads, trains and schools, higher house prices and rents, and loss of general amenity such as sunshine and views when more high rise buildings are built.”
Ms Goldie hopes the new federal government will realise that rapid population growth is not beneficial to the average citizen who has to wear its downside.
“The new government must lower immigration and remove all incentives for a high birth rate.”
The reason Alex Harris dedicated so many hours to on her Koala tracking website, built it and gave it to all freely to use, was because all koala conservation efforts to-date had failed. A clear reason for this failure was that every conservation group, research team and government agency insists on working independently of everyone else. They all have their own databases, own projects, own data. And it is all meaningless and ineffective. Governments and koala groups do not want to share with or promote a project they do not own or control, and which they cannot therefore manipulate. Alex Harris, who has dedicated her life to this work has sacrificed her health and finances to this vital community service, sold her car a year ago and has been homeless since March.
FRAGMENTATION OF DATA
The Threatened Species Scientific Committee - the body responsible for recommending which wildlife species are added to the threatened species list - had three opportunities to protect the koala. They considered the question in 1996, 2006 and 2012. On each occasion, despite desperate submissions from wildlife rescuers on the frontline of the decimation of a species, they denied listing. We will forever be grateful for then Environment Minister, Tony Burke, for listing it anyway, even if only in QLD, NSW and ACT.
The reason the Scientific Committee recommended against it was: the “body of data on koala populations is patchy, often sparse and not nationally comprehensive or coordinated.”
Conveniently, no single government agency was collecting data, some states hadn’t tried, others only collected death and injury statistics, or live sightings only, to be filed.
KoalaTracker was launched in February 2010 with the specific intent of gathering a range of data significant to making informed decisions - such as the actual location of koalas (rather than food trees); the actual points of impact (where koalas are hit by car, killed by dog, sick with disease) - to enable more effective risk mitigation by states, councils and communities, all on the public record for everyone to access for free.
It was the single repository of such data until the Australian Koala Foundation paid ESRI Australia and others, extraordinary amounts of money to copy it. A number of councils also copied, and a plethora of other organisations now claim to map koalas.
I argued passionately with ESRI Australia to not copy KoalaTracker (then known as KoalaDiaries) for the very reason that this exacerbates the key issue that had prevented the koala from being listed as threatened.
From my email of October 3rd 2010 to the then sales manager of ESRI Australia:
“The whole reason I have dedicated so many hours to Koala Diaries, built it and given it to all freely to use, is precisely because all koala conservation efforts to-date have failed. This is a fact. One of the clear reasons for this failure is that every conservation group, research team and government agency insists on working independently of everyone else. They all have their own databases, own projects, own data. And it is all meaningless and ineffective.
“The more of these websites you help build or support, the more you dilute the value and usefulness of Koala Diaries; the more you perpetuate the problem of fragmented effort, information, analysis. The koala is doomed with such an approach.”
The effectiveness and value to science, to government and to the community of a single repository of data is indisputable. And yet, every government; every second wildlife organisation wants its own ‘KoalaTracker’, rather than contribute to national learning; rather than share the data and participate in a hub that brings science, government, business and community together for the koala.
Atlas of Living Great Koala Count a poor imitation adding to confusion
The federal government spent $60 million building the Atlas of Living Australia. Its purpose was to gather information about plant species and fauna across the country. It added to this the Great Koala Count in Adelaide last year - a two-day public survey of koalas in a specified area - and is now extending that into other regions.
The ALA is trying to get everyone to use it, rather than existing resources - such as KoalaTracker. However, the data captured is minimal, the analysis possible is limited, and the ease of use questionable (seriously, click that link). Having obtained the data from the Adelaide count, I found it impossible to import without extensive editing and fudging of the information as there was not sufficient information to create a useful record in KoalaTracker!
It also does not (yet) collect death and injury data, among the most important information for the public record, and without which the body of evidence as to the state of koala populations is highly skewed.
Speaking at the Spatial@Gov conference in Canberra November last year, I detailed the extraordinary value in crowdsourcing such data for public policy, using KoalaTracker as the case study. I met the scientist in charge of ALA, Dr John LaSalle, (who was present in the audience) and was commended by others for my contribution to citizen science.
Academic and public Closed shop prevents recognition of cutting edge natural science
Earlier this year, there was a citizen science conference attended by Dr LaSalle and others familiar with KoalaTracker. Although KoalaTracker was not mentioned - and should have been for its value as an example of a successful citizen science project - the scientists instead referenced recent American projects. Worth reading both these articles for summations of discussions: Citizen science comes under the spotlight, and Participative Science.
Most disappointing of all was the discussion that only those citizen science projects created with the guidance of scientists is valid. They agreed that they should advertise citizen science projects on the ALA website, but they only do so of projects that utilise the software provided by ALA itself (which does not appear to work on Mac or iOS, and has proved inadequate in what it captures).
So, given the fact I - like most members - do not have a science degree, that no scientist contributed to the idea or creation of KoalaTracker, and does not use the ALA platform, KoalaTracker is made to appear irrelevant.
Which means of course, it is more successful than it should be in the eyes of scientists. More so now than ever, it is our success that makes KoalaTracker an apparent but unintended threat to scientists (afraid of losing their jobs! and project funding True. See the links above.)
Koala Tracker the largest, oldest running science project in Australia - needs recognition
Far from being an individual lay person unable to contribute to scientific research or provide any meaningful assistance to conservation efforts, you are participating in the largest and longest running citizen science project in Australia, and delivering real and measurable outcomes for research, rescue and conservation.
Through your reports of alive sightings, deaths and injuries, through your unscientific observations of koala behaviour, we have not only gathered for the public record a valuable body of location intelligence and evidence of how and where koalas are being killed, we are revealing new information about the koala.
Koala diet wider than previously thought - includes termites
I have mentioned in a previous email the reports of koalas eating termites in Toogoolawah. We have since received video of an individual male eating termites at Mt Byron (just search termite in the database to see), with photographs of koalas next to termite mounds in Ironbarks that suggest it is likely more widespread. We have reports of koalas eating a much broader diet that scientifically know, including the leaves of the camphor laurel tree - considered a pest that is poisoned by councils.
We are revealing wildlife corridors, disease clusters, genetics compromised and the ignorance of public policy.
Because that public policy is not founded on the information from a single national database, but on tiny fragments of information within a closed data loop. Worse, governments at every level are deliberately pursuing a policy of fragmentation. Koala conservation groups too.
The only means we have to make a difference for the koala is to continue participating in KoalaTracker. Continue adding data, sharing information learned, encouraging more to join, viewing the map regularly, and demanding action from government on the visual evidence delivered (that you can use for your own local advocacy).
KoalaTracker remains free for everyone to use - including scientists, government agencies and wildlife rescue groups, some of which point-blank refuse to share their data with KoalaTracker. Governments (the QLD government has stated it will be creating its own koala map) and koala groups are developing their own mapping projects; some charge for the release of data; some don’t release data to anyone. They do not want to share with or promote a project they do not own or control, and which they cannot therefore manipulate.
Do not become complacent. KoalaTracker has proved official habitat maps to have in some places, no relationship with the whereabouts of koalas. And yet the assumption that selecting pixel colours on satellite maps is sufficient for determining habitat values prevails, and it is this that forms the basis of planning and conservation decisions. Some of those decisions have been disastrous for the koala.
How can we save them if we don’t know where they live? How can we save them if we don’t know where they are being killed, or by what? These are the questions I asked myself that were fundamental to the creation of KoalaTracker three years ago. These are the questions whose answers are vital to community engagement and public policy, and meaningful action to save the koala today.
They remain the driving force for calling on citizens to join and report every sighting, death and injury for the public record - on a single national database that has over 4,000 individually entered reports to-date. A resource that remains entirely self-funded.
BACKTRACKING
In an email early this year I promised a Glider Tracker, and for Bob Irwin, a Cassowary Tracker. I could combine both with KoalaTracker and include echidnas and other wildlife, but the work involved in creating and managing such a site with so many member queries and requests for help from community groups fighting planning decisions, I have neither the resources or strength to do so. I do what I do for free, and simply cannot do any more.
KoalaTracker has consumed so much of my money and time, with no support from the government agencies, researchers and well-funded conservation groups that freely use it, it has ruined me financially.
With this hard reality in mind, and the above discussion as to the copying of and competition with KoalaTracker, I have decided against reproducing similar mapping projects for other species. Sorry Bob, Charlie, et al.
NEW T-SHIRT DESIGNS
Earlier in the year I invited members to submit ideas for new T-shirt designs and members were encouraged to vote for the ones they liked. You can view the entries submitted so-far. The two with the highest votes will shortly be added to the range available to purchase.
Entries were closed just before we were hacked, but I have decided that than rather run it as a one-off, to reopen submissions for new designs any time you feel inspired.
Just email me the design (just the picture/text for placement - per the design entries already received) and I will add it to the site for member votes. You can access the design entries page (for voting) from the link above or the list below the link icons on the Member page.
See current designs available for purchase in the KoalaTracker shop. Note prices have been reduced. The intent was to use T-shirt sales to raise funds to help support KoalaTracker, but this made the prices too high and subsequently raised nothing.
So, prices have been reduced to encourage you to instead help promote KoalaTracker. Just as valuable!
On a technical point: If you have trouble actually checking out of the shop, it is a browser issue not a shop issue. Some members using the browser Safari have reported a problem. There is no problem using Google Chrome, and I have not heard of any problems in Firefox or Internet Explorer. But, if you have in your browser security settings that block popups or javascript, or do not have the current browser plugin for Flash, you may have problems checking out. The easiest solution is to use Google Chrome as your browser!
KOALATRACKER ON FACEBOOK
I am indebted to members Kay Thornton and Charlie Lewis for their tireless behind the scenes management of KoalaTracker’s Facebook page. The three of us share administration (for anyone who has already joined the conversation and wondered at the comments which appear to be KoalaTracker ‘talking to itself’) and maintain a lively flow of information and debate.
Please like us on Facebook, friend me (KoalaTrackerAlex) or follow me on Twitter.
YOUR HELP NEEDED
.
Alex writes:
"Long-time members will know the financial and health toll KoalaTracker, associated deceptions and copying has had on me. (I have recovered my health.)
Without boring you with the detail, I sold my car a year ago and have been homeless since March. Cat and I are housesitting - free accommodation in exchange for looking after gardens and pets while homeowners holiday - until I get back on my feet financially.
Until October 16 th I am house sitting in Tinbeerwah (Noosa area - where I lived for 11 years until I could no longer pay rent - having already sold my home) and would sincerely like to remain in Noosa, but will accept what I can get to.
So, if you know of anyone who requires a house sitter (preferably for a month or more) mid-October in Noosa or anywhere in south east QLD, or has a granny flat or potential short-medium term share arrangement in Noosa, please pass my details on. I have police clearance and house sitting references/referees.
In January this year, Jonathan Moylan sent a press release on ANZ letterhead to the ASX stating that the bank will withdraw financial support from Whitehaven’s Maules Creek open cut coal mine on ethical grounds. The case has now gone to the Supreme Court and Jonathan is facing up to 10 years jail and more than $700,000 in fines under s1041E of the Corporations Act. Jonathan's supporters feel that this is the exercise of might against right and point to ASIC's failure to prosecute big offenders in corporate crime. Anglophone law and industrial policy have a long history of persecuting democratic activism and have made it much harder for local people to organise against power than under the Roman Law (Napoleonic) system in continental Europe. This needs to change.
This case against Jonathan Moylan is the first time an individual has been prosecuted under s1041E of the Corporations Act.
ASIC is currently subject to a Senate Inquiry investigating its inaction in relation to prosecuting major corporate white-collar crime.
Last week, former Gunns chairman John Gay, who was prosecuted by ASIC for insider trading, received a $50,000 fine for an offence which carries a maximum penalty of $220,000 or 5 years’ jail. While ASIC praised the result, the Shareholders Association slammed the fine as “too lenient”, saying Gay “clearly profited at the expense of shareholders”, and that “where a director has pleaded guilty to insider trading we would have thought that there would have been the potential for a jail term...”.
Moylan acted on a matter of principle for no personal gain. The impact of Moylan’s action on shareholders has been exaggerated and should be seen in context. An investor who held $10,000 in Whitehaven shares and sold at the low point on the day of Moylan's action you would have lost $881 (shares fell from $3.52 to a low of $3.21 before recovering). Had the investor not acted and held their shares, at today's share price of $2.01 the investment would be worth just $5710.41, a drop of some 43%.
Cumulative Environmental Impacts
The mines will clear the largest remnant of bushland left on the Liverpool Plains, Leard State Forest, which is part of a national biodiversity hotspot.
The mines will impact on habitat for up to 396 plant and animal species and as many as 23 threatened species.
It is estimated that the mines will lead to a 5-7m drop in the water table and up to 18,000 tonnes of dust being dropped on surrounding farms each year.
Total greenhouse gas emissions from the coal produced will, when burnt, exceed 60 Mt/yr of CO2 equivalent - a total greenhouse impact greater than that of 165 individual nations, including Sweden, Hungary and Finland.
This is the context in which the Maules Ck coal mine was the subject of a media release by Jonathan Moylan which has now led to his prosecution by ASIC.
Anthony Lecren, the New Caledonian Minister for Sustainable Development and the Chairman of the Pacific Regional Environment Program (SPREP)[1] addressed the Oceania 21 meeting in Phnom Penh last week on 20 September 2013. He spoke of how the Oceania 21 meeting initiative was launched, under the guidance of New Caledonia, last April. This initiative, which represents the first Sustainable Development Summit in the Pacific region, was endorsed by 14 Countries and Territories from the Pacific region. With Melanesian subregion, Micronesian subregion and Polynesian subregion, the program represents an area of 25 million square kilometers. It aims at giving an audible political platform to strengthen joint efforts undertaken in the fields of Sustainable Development and Green Economy.
It hopes to protect marine resources and for sustainable management of Oceania's Tuna stocks, the biggest in the world, in the interests of food security. (For more detail see: www.oceania21.nc)
The First Summit of the Oceania 21 Initiative was held in Noumea last April to bring together decison-makers, scientists and representatives of Pacific Region Civil Society.
A working methodology was established, giving to each of the 14 States and Territories of the Pacific region the lead in one of the following themes:
- renewable energy policies, water and waste management.
New Caledonia, in charge of the Governance theme, has established a Think-tank to enable an interactive dialogue among participants. The Oceania 21 Initative was endorsed last August at the Pacific Islands Development Forum in Fiji, with United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) represented by Dr Park, whose active participation Lecren acknowledged in his speech. Pacific Islands Forum Leaders also endorsed Oceania 21 at their 2013 Majuro Summit.[2]
EU Climate Change Conference November 2013
Mr Lecren said that Oceania 21 Initiative's commitment to the general good has also received official support from the European Union. The European Union will pass on the Oceania 21 meeting Initiative's key messages at the 19th Conference of the Parties on Climate Change that will take place in Warsaw, Poland, next November. He also reminded those present that France will be hosting an International conference on Climate Change in 2015. He encouraged those present to get ready to take advantage of such global platforms to advocate the joint interests of the Asia-Pacific region.
Mr Lecren thanks the Kingdom of Cambodia for its warm welcome and invited UNEP and the distinguished representatives of the 3 Asia geopolitical groups represented there to attend the Second Pacific Sustainable Development Summit to be held in New Caledonia in April 2014. He added that he thought this could be crucial to UNEA's optimal preparation for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) Summit to be held in Nairobi in June next year.
Comment from candobetter.net editor
What on earth is going to happen to Australia's participation in these Oceania conferences and programs under the rule of Tony Abbott who seems to have left Mother Nature entirely out of his cabinet?
NOTES
[1] Previously "South Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP)", the word "South" was dropped in 2004, in recognition of the Members north of the equator. The Acronym SPREP did however not change; its French equivalent name is PROE, Programme régional océanien de l’environnement.
• Recognizes the gross insufficiency of current efforts to tackle climate change, and the responsibility of all to act urgently to reduce and phase-down greenhouse gas pollution;
• Confirms the Pacific Islands Forum’s climate leadership in the form of their ambitious commitments to reduce emissions and the significant benefit in transitioning to renewable, clean and sustainable energy, and their desire to do more with the cooperation and support of international partners; and
• Calls on others – in particular Post-Forum Dialogue Partners**, but also other governments, cities, the private sector, and civil society – to commit to be Climate Leaders by listing specific commitments that contribute more than previous efforts to the urgent reduction and phase-down of greenhouse gas pollution.
The Majuro Declaration is also a dynamic document, which strongly encourages committed Climate Leaders to continue to scale-up their action by listing new and more ambitious commitments over time.
As agreed by Forum members, RMI President Loeak will travel to New York in late September to present the Majuro Declaration to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during General Assembly Leaders’ week from 23 September. He will offer the Declaration as a “Pacific gift” to the UN Secretary-General’s strong efforts to catalyze more ambitious climate action by calling together world leaders on climate change in September 2014 in an effort to mobilize political will for a universal, ambitious and legally binding climate change agreement by 2015.
The Survival website says that the The Yanomami are the largest relatively isolated tribe in South America. They live in the rainforests and mountains of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela. The Brazilian congress is currently debating a bill which, if approved, will permit large-scale mining in indigenous territories. This will be extremely harmful to the Yanomami and other remote tribes in Brazil.
If you are an Australian, this process of land-loss and induction into the market economy probably happened to your ancestors. Contrary to what we are told by missionaries, Foreign-Aid organisations and growth economists, hunter-gatherers who retain their territory and make a traditional living from it, never want to be 'developed'. They always resist but ' development' resulting in dispossession, poverty and then overpopulation, is invariably forced upon them.
Let us try to help the Yanomami and the other tribes of South America, as we should all hunter-gatherers, to retain their land and freedom.
Update, 28 Nov 2013: No mention was made of Syria by Albanese, Shorten or the audience in the leadershipdebate of 24 September. (Whilst this could have been because of time constraints, it seems a surprising omission.) On 20 April, 2013, Anthony Albanese, a candidate for the national leadership of the Labor Party by membership ballot,1 expressed 2 his support for Syria3. This is contrary to how much of the senior leadership of the Labor Party has acted. 4 For two and a half years they supported the United States as Syria has tried to defend itself against invasion by proxy terrorists armed, paid for and supplied by the United States. This war has, so far, since March 2011, cost 100,000 lives.
Although Labor is no longer in Government following its defeat at the elections of 7 September 2013, Anthony Albanese's support for Syria is a welcome change to the collusion of senior members of the previous Labor Government with the United States in its war against Libya and the proxy terrorist war Syria. Kevin Rudd, as "roving" Australia Foreign Minister in the Middle East in March 2011, colluded with the UnitedStates to help create the international environment that enabled the U.S and its NATO allies to bomb and invade Libya in 2012. Since then, both Kevin Rudd and former Foreign Minister BobCarr have colluded to help facilitatethe terrorist war against Syriaby the United States.
The above video is cause to hope that Labor may to return to its past tradition of opposing unjust wars as exemplified by the withdrawal of Australia from the Vietnam War by the newly elected Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in December 1972. Had Labor as a whole so vocally opposed the war against Syria, the level of the political discussion during the election campaign would have been raised and the outcome of the 7 September elections may well have been different.
Footnote[s]
1. ↑ Nominations for the ballot of Labor Party members for the National leadership closed on 20 September, according to an ABC report.
3. ↑ As appears to be mandatory, Anthony Albanese also expressed his support for 'multi-culturalism'. Whilst Syria can rightly be held up as an example of different cultures living in harmony alongside each other for centuries, most notably, between Christians and Muslims, the same cannot be said for Australia, where multiculturalism has been used since the 1970's as a smokescreen to enable governments to impose high immigration.
As a consequence, native Australian workers have had their working conditions reduced or have been replaced altogether. The most infamous example is Section 457 visas by which employers are able to import workers with the supposed skills they claim to need in preference to properly training their own workforce, with on-the-job training or apprenticeships. 'Temporary' backpacker workers are employed in industries such as fruit-picking where that work was once available to low-skilled native workers or university students on summer vacation.
Another effect of high immigration, welcomed by by landlords and property speculators, is to ensure a scarcity of housing stock, thus driving up the prices that can be demanded of tenants and home-buyers.
4. ↑ how this was dealt with in the Federal Labor Parliamentary Caucus, would be very interesting to know, as much of Bob Carr's most explicit and determined encouragement of U.S. military aggression against Syria followed Anthony Albanese's speech.
Perhaps Bob Carr's sudden resignation from the Senate is not such a mystery given the failure of President Obama, John Kerry, himself, Kevin Rudd and their international allies to win international diplomatic support for their war plans.
Sadly, Kevin Rudd has not resigned from Parliament and it can't be completely ruled out that he will again attempt to contest the national leadership. However, Bob Carr has vanished completely from public view. Nothing more has been posted to his web-site Thoughtlines with Bob Carr since 2 Sep 2013.
Today we heard the outcome of the Orrong Towers development case where Stonnington council went to the Supreme Court to try to have residents' and citizens' opinions heeded in planning what happens in their immediate environment. The Court completely failed to recognise this fundamental right to self-government. Having been present at the first hearing, I cannot imagine how this was justified and await the ratio dicendi.
Victorian ABC mainstream media was inadequate to the situation:
"I have just heard Jon Faine (presenter) on ABC radio speaking to Margot Carroll who has led this battle. Today the Supreme Court after a 5 minute hearing dismissed Stonnington Council's case against the proposed development. The distressing point that Margot made was that the court did not consider the number of objections to lend any weight to the case so that 10,000 objections was the same as 10. Interestingly on the same radio station the same presenter is discussing planning issues with a panel of "experts". The first question was about the ingredients of a livable city and the answer was "community involvement" in planning! I also heard one of the experts saying that growth was an "opportunity" (in livability I presume)! Someone also said that not all developers want to maximise profit at the expense of "design"." (They must be the public benefactor developers.) - Comment by Quark to candobetter.net
The contrast between the reality of the planning dictatorship we live under and the psalmodious platitudes we hear from its media mouthpieces is fundamentally confusing. Today I came home to yet another government pamphlet asking for public comment about new zoning laws. In the light of the Orrong Towers decision and comments like those quoted from Jon Faine's show, it was disturbing to realise that the smiling politician featured on the pamphlet is only a mask on the face of raw and brutal power. One knows that any comments will be ignored and that laws are being changed and reinterpreted for state policy to permit the removal from the community everything that made this country pleasant and easy to live in.
There must be many planners ashamed to be associated with this psychological and legal bulldozing of communities, but they are all too scared of losing work to stand up to the bullying of communities and individuals. Capitalism has made most people too vulnerable to speak up and the comments of those who do speak up do not have value in the eyes of the law. It's official.
As Montesquiou wrote: "There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice."
A devastating decision for Stonnington and Victoria
"Supreme Court decision further erodes objectors’ democratic planning rights.
re: Case – VCAT ruled that `the extent of resident opposition is irrelevant `.
Respondents – Stonnington Council V Lend Lease & Larkfield Pty Ltd
Project – 590 Orrong Road Armadale proposed development.
The Orrong Group is devastated at the Supreme Court decision delivered this morning. The finding supports the VCAT ruling that `the extent of resident opposition is irrelevant’ to their consideration of the merits of a development.
Based on this ruling the voices of the community will not have their collective concerns given due consideration in the planning process regarding inappropriate development in any neighbourhood, anywhere.
Stonnington Council, the responsible authority will have its planning powers diminished and residents input and support further eroded.
The disastrous Supreme Court ruling, further compounded by grossly increased VCAT fees, will result in vastly reduced objections and community views not fully reflected in VCAT deliberations. The Stonnington community and all Victorians will experience increased inappropriate development with permanent deleterious impact on neighbourhood character and community cohesion.
Members of the Victorian Government directly involved in this matter should now act to deliver more than simple platitudes regarding respect for all communities’ democratic rights and views regarding how their neighbourhood will develop.
Orrong Group is now in its fourth year and will continue to fight the towers. Orrong Group wishes to express its gratitude to City of Stonnington which decided to appeal VCAT’s decision and fight the towers."
In March 2011 'roving' Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, then in the Middle East called for the establishment of aso-called "no-fly zone" over Libya. This helped prepare the groundwork for NATO's subsequent invasion of Libya. The Australian government, whose delegate to the United Nations currently holds the office of President of the United Nations' Security Council, has supported United States as it has waged a proxy terrorist war against Syria that has already cost 100,000 deaths in two and a half years. The hostility towards Syria by the previous 'Labor' Government, which was voted out of office on 7 September, is apparently to be continued by the new Liberal/National Coalition Government according to the new Foreign Minister, Senator Julie Bishop.
The Australian mainstream media, including the ABC, SBS the Fairfax and Murdoch newsmedia, has persistently lied to the Australian public about Syria. The most recent example is the ludicrous claim that the Syrian Government, which, as even NATO acknowledged, has the support of 70% of Syrians, killed 1,400 Syrians with chemical weapons. The claim that the Syrian government used chemical weapons has since been comprehensively demolished in a number of articles on the web. One such article, by Tony Cartalucci, the creator of the Land Destroyer Report is included below.
September 17, 2013 (Tony Cartalucci) - As predicted days before the UN's Syrian chemical weapons report was made public, the West has begun spinning the findings to bolster their faltering narrative regarding alleged chemical weapon attacks on August 21, 2013 in eastern Damascus, Syria. The goal of course, is to continue demonizing the Syrian government while simultaneously sabotaging a recent Syrian-Russian deal to have Syria's chemical weapon stockpiles verified and disarmed by independent observers.
Image: 107mm rocket shells frequently used by terrorists operating within and along Syria's borders. They are similar in configuration and function to those identified by the UN at sites investigated after the alleged August 21, 2013 Damascus, Syria chemical weapons attack, only smaller.
A barrage of suspiciously worded headlines attempt to link in the mind of unobservant readers the UN's "confirmation" of chemical weapons use in Syria and Western claims that it was the Syrian government who used them. Additionally, the US, British, and French governments have quickly assembled a list of fabrications designed to spin the UN report to bolster their still-unsubstantiated accusations against the Syrian government.
The UN report did not attribute blame for the attack, as that was not part of its remit.
However, that did not stop UK Foreign Secretary William Hague who claimed:
From the wealth of technical detail in the report - including on the scale of the attack, the consistency of sample test results from separate laboratories, witness statements, and information on the munitions used and their trajectories - it is abundantly clear that the Syrian regime is the only party that could have been responsible.
And US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power who stated:
The technical details of the UN report make clear that only the regime could have carried out this large-scale chemical weapons attack.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius is also quoted as saying:
When you look at the findings carefully, the quantities of toxic gas used, the complexity of the mixes, the nature, and the trajectory of the carriers, it leaves absolutely no doubt as to the origin of the attack.
The Washington Post went one step further, and perhaps foolishly, laid out a detailed explanation of each fabrication the West is using to spin the latest UN report. In an article titled, The U.N. chemical weapons report is pretty damning for Assad, 5 points are made and explained as to why the UN report "points" to the Syrian government.
1. Chemical weapons were delivered with munitions not used by rebels: This claim includes referencing "Syria watcher" Eliot Higgins also known as "Brown Moses," a UK-based armchair observer of the Syrian crisis who has been documenting weapons used throughout the conflict on his blog.
While Higgins explains these particularly larger diameter rockets (140mm and 330mm) have not been seen (by him) in the hands of terrorists operating within and along Syria's borders, older posts of his show rockets similar in construction and operation, but smaller, most certainly in the hands of the militants.
The Washington Post contends that somehow these larger rockets require "technology" the militants have no access to. This is categorically false. A rocket is launched from a simple tube, and the only additional technology terrorists may have required for the larger rockets would have been a truck to mount them on. For an armed front fielding stolen tanks, finding trucks to mount large metal tubes upon would seem a rather elementary task - especially to carry out a staged attack that would justify foreign intervention and salvage their faltering offensive.
2. The sarin was fired from a regime-controlled area: The Washington Post contends that:
The report concludes that the shells came from the northwest of the targeted neighborhood. That area was and is controlled by Syrian regime forces and is awfully close to a Syrian military base. If the shells had been fired by Syrian rebels, they likely would have come from the rebel-held southeast.
What the Washington Post fails to mention are the "limitations" the UN team itself put on the credibility of their findings. On page 18 of the report (22 of the .pdf), the UN states [emphasis added]:
The time necessary to conduct a detailed survey of both locations as well as take samples was very limited. The sites have been well travelled by other individuals both before and during the investigation. Fragments and other possible evidence have clearly been handled/moved prior to the arrival of the investigation team.
It should also be noted that militants still controlled the area after the alleged attack and up to and including during the investigation by UN personnel. Any tampering or planting of evidence would have been carried out by "opposition" members - and surely the Syrian government would not point rockets in directions that would implicate themselves.
3. Chemical analysis suggests sarin likely came from controlled supply: The Washington Post claims:
The U.N. investigators analyzed 30 samples, which they found contained not just sarin but also "relevant chemicals, such as stabilizers." That suggests that the chemical weapons were taken from a controlled storage environment, where they could have been processed for use by troops trained in their use.
Only, any staged attack would also need to utilize stabilized chemical weapons and personnel trained in their use. From stockpiles looted in Libya, to chemical arms covertly transferred from the US, UK, or Israel, through Saudi Arabia or Qatar, there is no short supply of possible sources.
Regarding "rebels" lacking the necessary training to handle chemical weapons - US policy has seen to it that not only did they receive the necessary training, but Western defense contractors specializing in chemical warfare are reported to be on the ground with militants inside Syria. CNN reported in their 2012 article, Sources: U.S. helping underwrite Syrian rebel training on securing chemical weapons, that:
The United States and some European allies are using defense contractors to train Syrian rebels on how to secure chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria, a senior U.S. official and several senior diplomats told CNN Sunday.
The training, which is taking place in Jordan and Turkey, involves how to monitor and secure stockpiles and handle weapons sites and materials, according to the sources. Some of the contractors are on the ground in Syria working with the rebels to monitor some of the sites, according to one of the officials.
4. Cyrillic characters on the sides of the shells: The Washington Post claims:
The Russian lettering on the artillery rounds strongly suggests they were Russian-manufactured. Russia is a major supplier of arms to the Syrian government, of course, but more to the point they are not a direct or indirect supplier of arms to the rebels.
Additionally, had the attacks been staged by terrorists or their Western backers, particularly attacks whose fallout sought to elicit such a profound geopolitical shift in the West's favor, it would be assumed some time would be invested in making them appear to have originated from the Syrian government. The use of chemical weapons on a militant location by the militants themselves would constitute a "false flag" attack, which by definition would require some sort of incriminating markings or evidence to accompany the weapons used in the barrage.
5. The UN Secretary General's comments on the report: The Washington Post itself admits the tenuous nature of this final point, stating:
"This is perhaps the most circumstantial case at all, but it's difficult to ignore the apparent subtext in Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's news conference discussing the report..."
That the Washington Post, and the interests driving its editorial board, could not even produce 5 reasonably convincing arguments as to why the UN report somehow implicates the Syrian government casts doubt on claims regarding the "wealth of technical detail" pointing in President Bashar al-Assad's direction.
The UN report confirms that chemical weapons were used, a point that was not contended by either side of the conflict, before or after the UN investigation began. What the West is attempting to now do, is retrench its narrative behind the report and once again create a baseless justification for continued belligerence against Syria, both covert and as a matter of official foreign policy.
Help needed, and it won’t take but a moment of your time. Here in Macedon Ranges Shire we have a terrible council. It thinks it can operate and make decisions in isolation of and without consulting its community, while making the community pay for its decisions. Recently Macedon Ranges council took this culture a step too far. It deliberately resolved (not once, but twice) to apply for funding for a conference centre (and other large-scale development) at Hanging Rock and to not consult the community on the development or funding.
Hanging Rock does not belong to Macedon Ranges’ council officers and 5 of 9 councillors! It is an international icon; it belongs to the people of Macedon Ranges, Victoria, and Australia. Yet our council has shut everyone out. It’s making big decisions on our behalf – and on yours – without us having a say. We want our council to know this is not acceptable, and to rethink its decision.
The first favour we ask of you is PLEASE, PLEASE SIGN THE ONLINE PETITION “HANGING ROCK FOR SALE – HAVE YOUR SAY” by going to http://www.communityrun.org/petitions/hanging-rock-for-sale-have-your-say
This petition has been authored and started by local residents in the Hanging Rock area community. MRRA is supporting this initiative.
The second favour we ask is PLEASE, PLEASE SEND THIS EMAIL AROUND TO YOUR FRIENDS AND CONTACTS AND ASK THEM TO SIGN THE PETITION AS WELL.
Here’s what some people are saying:
“If you have visited the Rock at some stage in your life you know the beauty and mysteriousness of the area, if you have not visited the Rock please google it and you will see what I mean. I live near the Rock and drive past it every day to and from work and it never ceases to amaze me because I see the same view but it’s different. I implore you to sign this petition to put a stop to the suggested development around the area of the Rock; Landcare has spent 10 years building up the wildlife corridor here and as usual greedy people just want to tear the bush down and put in concrete. Once you have signed it please email this to all your friends so we can save a natural beauty so close to Melb for visitors.” Toni
“Development such as that being proposed by MRSC in an area protected by an environmental overlay is totally inappropriate. It goes against all that this Landcare group has been working towards over a 10 year period! The East paddock area was purchased to buffer the reserve at Hanging Rock - a haven for wild-life and city-weary folks. So please add your name to the petition Luke has prepared and send it [the link] to your friends.” Penny
As you can see, this awful decision affects many people and impacts many (irreplaceable) values.
Many thanks for your help.
Note that Mr Abbott's 2010 policy on population growth still amounted to wanting to have his cake and eat it, in the sense of wanting 'sustainability' but growth at the same time. He does say, however, that "Australia needs a population that our services can satisfy, our infrastructure can support, our environment can sustain, our society can embrace, and our economy can employ." Unfortunately he seems to want to leave the judgement of what this is up to the productivity commission, which seems to be entirely incompetent to assess ecological sustainability. Will Mr Abbott toe the line of his political promoter, the Murdoch Press, by keeping Australian targeted for continuing overpopulation, or will he use his big majority to carve out something more democratic? Clive Palmer, probably correctly, described Abbott as a B.A. Santamariaist" on Q & A tonight.
Australia needs a population that our services can satisfy, our infrastructure can support, our environment can sustain, our society can embrace, and our economy can employ.
Australia's population growth since World War II has helped create the prosperity we now enjoy. Successive waves of post-war migration have expanded our capacity as a nation.
Under the Howard Government, our immigration programme enjoyed support from a majority of Australians who were confident that the programme was fair, competently administered, and delivering benefits to the entire community.
Under Labor, migration-fuelled population growth has caused Australians to become increasingly concerned, and to lose confidence in our broader immigration programme.
The hopeless failure of Labor’s border protection regime has further eroded community trust.
Under Labor, net overseas migration has risen to 300,000 people per year, against a long run average of around 140,000 per year. [Candobetter.net editorial comment: Actually it was more like 80,000 per year until Howard ramped it up, but it is true that it has increased even more under Labor - see Graph above, based on Australian Year Books and ABS stats].
At this rate Australia’s population would reach 42.3 million people by 2050, significantly above the earlier Intergenerational Report II (IGR) forecast of 36 million.
As a result, the quality of life for Australians living in our major urban areas today is under great pressure.
Fuelling population growth today must not rob future generations of the quality of life and opportunities we currently enjoy. That is what sustainability is all about.
On the eve of an election, Labor politicians have suddenly started to say they no longer believe in a “big Australia” – while cynically trying to put off any decisions on these issues until after the election.
While Labor may have changed its rhetoric under its new leader, Labor’s policies on immigration or population have not changed.
The Coalition believes it is necessary to ease population growth to deliver more sustainable population levels, based on our present and future capacity, so that our infrastructure, services and environment can catch up.
Unlike Labor, the Coalition’s population and immigration policy is clear.
The Coalition will:
1. Establish ‘Guard Rails’ for Population Growth
The Coalition will set clear parameters for population growth by tasking a renamed Productivity and Sustainability Commission to advise on population growth bands that it considers are sustainable.
This recommendation will provide a Coalition Government with the expert advice necessary to establish the framework for setting migration programmes.
2. Take Real Action on Immigration
The Coalition will reduce Australia’s annual rate of population growth from more than 2 per cent under Labor, to our historical long-run average of 1.4 per cent within our first term.
This will require reducing our annual rate of net overseas migration from 298,924 in 2008/09 to no more than 170,000 per year by the end of our first term.
3. Make a Clear Commitment to Skills Migration and Regional Australia.
The Coalition will ensure that two-thirds of our permanent migration programme will be for the purposes of skilled migration.
A Coalition Government will also quarantine the level of employer nominated skills migration and 457 temporary business visas to at least the levels it inherits. In addition, the Coalition will liberalise arrangements for temporary business visas (457s) subject to clear standards, to make them more accessible to business, especially small businesses, and business in regional areas, with proven skills shortage needs. [= Yes, repeat No? – Mark’s comment]
To address the skills needs of regional areas and small business, the Coalition will encourage the settlement on either a temporary or permanent basis of new arrivals in regional and rural areas.
States such as Queensland and Western Australia will be afforded a high priority for permanent and temporary skilled visa applications.
A Coalition Government would also seek to resettle more entrants from our refugee and humanitarian programme in regional areas, where these resettlement programmes have proved to be highly successful.
4. Establish A Clear and Consultative Process to Restore Control
The Coalition will produce a White Paper on immigration that will reframe the structure and composition of Australia’s immigration programme to address the policy challenges of sustainable population growth.
A Discussion Paper will be released by the end of 2010, with a final paper to be completed by the Coalition’s first Budget in May 2011. This will help inform the composition of the 2011-12 migration programme.
Australians want their government to take control of population and immigration policies to restore confidence and ensure our immigration and population levels are sustainable and in the national interest.
The Coalition’s plan for Real Action on Sustainable Population Growth will restore confidence and re-establish consensus on the benefits of our immigration programme."
California has 157 endangered or threatened species, looming water shortages, eight of the 10 most air-polluted cities in the country and 725 metric tons of trash 1 washing up on its coast each year.
California also has 38 million people, up 10 percent in the last decade, including 10 million immigrants. They own 32 million registered vehicles and 14 million houses. By 2050, projections show 51 million people living in the state, more than twice as many as in 1980.
Thank you, Geoff from AussieBushTrek, for e-mailing this.
In the public arena, almost no one connects these plainly visible dots.
For various reasons, linking the world's rapid population growth to its deepening environmental crisis, including climate change, is politically taboo. In the United States, Europe and Japan, there has been public hand-wringing over falling birthrates and government policies to encourage child-bearing.
But those declining birthrates mask explosive growth elsewhere in the world.
In less than a lifetime, the world population has tripled, to 7.1 billion, and continues to climb by more than 1.5 million people a week.
A consensus statement issued in May by scientists at Stanford University and signed by more than 1,000 scientists warned that "Earth is reaching a tipping point."
An array of events under way - including what scientists have identified as the sixth mass extinction in the earth's 540 million-year history - suggest that human activity already exceeds earth's capacity.
Climate change is but one of many signs of environmental stress. "The big connector is how many people are on earth," said Anthony Barnosky, a UC Berkeley integrative biologist.
The world population is expected to reach 9.6 billion by mid-century. The addition will be greater than the global population of 1950.
The United States is expected to grow from 313 million people to 400 million. Economies have expanded many times faster, vastly increasing consumption of goods and services in rich and developing countries.
"The combination of climate change and 9 billion people to me is one that is just fraught with potential catastrophes," said John Harte, a UC Berkeley ecosystem scientist.
"The evidence that humans are damaging their ecological life-support system is overwhelming," said the report by the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere at Stanford. "By the time today's children reach middle age, it is extremely likely that the Earth's life-support systems, critical for human prosperity and existence, will be irretrievably damaged."
California Gov. Jerry Brown had the report translated into Chinese and delivered it to Chinese President Xi Jinping in June.
A new epoch?
So complete is human domination of earth that scientists use the term "Anthropocene" to describe a new geological epoch.
The most obvious sign is climate change. People have altered the composition of the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. But other human impacts, widely discussed by scientists, seldom reach the political arena.
Residues from 100 million tons of synthetic chemical compounds produced each year are so pervasive that they commonly appear in polar bear tissues, whale blubber and the umbilical cords of babies.
Each year, humans appropriate up to 40 percent of the earth's biomass, the product of photosynthesis, earth's basic energy conversion necessary to all life.
Humans have converted more than 40 percent of the earth's land to cities or farms. Roads and structures fragment most of the rest.
Humans appropriate more than half the world's fresh water. Ancient aquifers in the world's bread baskets, including the Ogallala in the Great Plains, are being drained.
Only 2 percent of major U.S. rivers run unimpeded. California's Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta has been entirely re-engineered. The last time the Colorado River reached the Sea of Cortez was in 1998. The Nile, Indus and Ganges rivers have been reduced to a trickle.
Humans surpass nature as a source of nitrogen emissions, altering the planet's nitrogen cycle.
Footnote[s]
1. ↑ In truth, whilst the facts and statistics in the rest of the article are of great concern, 725 tonnes of waste being washed up onto the approximately 1,200 km coastline of California in 12 months seems far from excessive. Could this be a mistake or some sort of typographical error? - Ed
To help overcome public opposition to U.S. President Barack Obama's planned conventional war against Syria, the mainstream media, as well as fabricating lies such as the claims of the use of Chemical weapons by the Syrian Government, is concealing news of how members of the Christian community of Syria are being murdered by the Western-supported jihadist 'rebels' who are fighting to overthrow the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad. Many of the Syrian Christian community can trace their family roots back to the time of Jesus, In this embedded speech, just posted to YouTube, British Parliamentarian, GeorgeGalloway shows up U.S. President Barack and other Western leaders, who claim to be Christian, for the despicable lying hypocrites that they are.
Transcript of George Galloway's Speech
You know that stinking hypocrite Obama is frequently seen in churches. Have you seen him, creeping Jesus with these hands together praying? Did you see Christianity on his sleeve? Did you know that he used to attend churches in Chicago and sing along all happy, clappy for Jesus and for God? Obama, the Syrian Christian town of Maaloula is on fire this evening! This evening, its ancient Christian churches are on fire! Its priests and its parishioners are being butchered by al-Qaeda paid by you! Churches in which the language of Jesus himself is still spoken. The last Churches in the world still speaking Aramaic, the language of Jesus, are now on fire.
The faithful Christians fleeing for their lives and being murdered by al-Qaeda paid for by you, and you are about to become their Air Force. You're a disgusting hypocrite, Obama. You're a liar when you say you're a Christian. You care nothing about Christians. You care nothing about God! You don't believe in the prophets. Peace be upon them. You just believe in the profits and how to get a bigger piece of them.
for the people that back to ... (continuity lost?) .. Westminster Abbey, or you see that disgusting hypocrite, Obama -- happy clapping in Christian churches in the United States.
Remember this: that the Christians of Syria are being murdered and massacred by al-Qaeda paid for and armed by Britain and the United States and France and the other hypocrite so-called Christian leaderships in the world.
May god preserve Maaloula. May god save as many Christians as can be saved from the inferno which has been launched against them. Its a beautiful village. I've been there. The monastery there is one of the most serene places on the earth. Actually the best place in the Arab world to be a Christian is Syria! But these hypocrites in the so-called Christian West don't give a toss about that.
As I said, their leaders care nothing about the prophets -- peace be upon them -- everything about the profits and how to get a bigger piece of them.
Almost everyone pays directly through taxes to be lied to by the ABC and SBS news services (and the British pay with their taxes, for much of the rest of the world as well as themselves, to be misinformed by the BBC news service). Some pay through direct purchaseorsubscription to be misinformed. Few who watch commercial television news services don't pay indirectly to be lied to. They pay additional costs added to the prices of their purchases to pay for advertising.
One of the almost countless examples of lies about Syria in the Melbourne Age and other Australian newsmedia is the editorial A surprise outbreak of diplomacy over Syria of 11 September 2013 (emphasis added):
At last, Russia ... might appease the United States over Dr Assad's despicable actions in gassing Syrian civilians last month. ... Russia's call [to have Syria's chemical weapons destroyed under international control ...
... would ... remove the immediate justification for US military action against the Assad regime.
... There is too much at stake for the region, and for the Syrian people in particular, to let this ruthless dictator off easily. Ultimately, Dr Assad must be brought to justice to answer for this crime.
The evidence emerging, now that the U.S. has stalled its war plans, is that the terrorist opponents of the popularly supported Syrian government, supplied by the United States' ally Saudi Arabia, launched thechemical weapons. Special UN investigator Carla del Ponte had in April found that it was more likely that Syrian rebels and not the Syrian government had used chemical weapons. Subsequent investigations by Russian chemical weapons experts confirmed Carla del Ponte's findings.
The United States, has itself repeatedly used chemical weapons and other WMDs in the numerous wars it has fought since the middle of the twentieth century. Given that Syria has also faced the threat of nuclear attack from Israel since the 1960's, it would seem prudent for Syria to have possessed one means to deter the Israeli government from launching those weapons agains Syria.
It is not Syrian President al-Assad that needs to be held to account, but the Age newspaper and its editors for lying to their readers about Syria.
The corporate criminals, their government glove-puppets and their newsmedia outlets have vast resources to pay their journalists and editors to misinform the public about world critical events like the Syrian conflict.
Much has been achieved in recent years to counter such lies thanks to the great levelling effect of the (still) free Internet journalists and researchers who have made their work freely available to Internet users.
However, if this is to continue, we cannot continue to rely upon unpaid volunteers or others, with paid employment, working late into the night or on weekends. Those who produce informative Internet content are entitled to remuneration for their valuable work.
Virtually all the independent Internet news services are struggling to make ends meet. These include the Boiling Frogs Post web-site of FBI whistleblower Sybil Edmonds. An appeal for more funds is appended below.
Other Independent news services that also need financial support include GlobalResearch and Paul CraigRoberts. (Curiously, I wan't able to find any appeal for financial support on three other immensely valuable web-sites, Voltaire Net, the Land Destroyer Report and the Corbett Report, but we should be ready to help them out should they suddenly face unexpected financial difficulty in future.) (Candobetter, which is currently also produced by volunteers giving their time for free, could also use professional staff who are able to work full time.)
Below is the appeal for funds from Boiling Frogs Post:
We are two weeks into our quarterly fundraising but only half way there. We have established a four-year track record as a news and multimedia website with integrity that is operated independent from any corporate or partisan agenda machines. We do not receive a single penny from the corporates or corporate-foundations or billionaire dynasties or divisive partisan operatives. This has been possible solely through our subscribers and contributors: That is you the people.
We provide you with our original daily podcast shows, exclusive investigative video reports, news, views, analyses and editorial toons. We can only Fundraising Thermometer continue and expand through your commitment to support us as a truly independent nonpartisan alternative- because there is no other way around it. A truly independent alternative media outlet for the people can only be made possible by the people: People-subsidized news operations. That is 'You.'
You can read our previous posts on the programs, news and information we provide at Boiling Frogs Post here. You can also read the analysis on why we need people-subsidized media outlets here.
We are doing our best despite all the obstacles and challenges thrown at us by the establishment. You must do your best as well: Determine whether a real independent alternative media has a chance among establishment-infested propaganda moguls. Please do your share: Make a statement by supporting a real alternative.
Sibel Edmonds
Donate to Boiling Frogs Post
You can make a one-time contribution to support our team and projects. Those of you who do not wish to subscribe to our multimedia projects or commit to recurring annual- monthly payments but want to support our team, all the daily news, editorials, political cartoons, and other features provided by BFP can make a one-time contribution. You can contribute by Credit Card here:
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Dr. Ian Jenkins of Arian Cymru (Money Wales) has written two excellent articles on why Wales should have its own bank and how that might be accomplished. The shorter article is reprinted below, and the longer, more technical article is linked here.
Dr. Jenkins is hosting an event in Cardiff on September 26th titled "Banking and Economic Regeneration Wales," at which Marc Armstrong, executive director of the Public Banking Institute, will be speaking, along with Ann Pettifor of the New Economics Foundation and several Welsh leaders. As Dr. Jensen states:
This is in an issue on which Wales could provide leadership on an EU-wide level, a matter in which a small nation could make a big difference.
That is also true for Ireland and Scotland, where interest in public banking is growing. I will be speaking on that subject at a series of seminars in Ireland on October 12th-15th (details here), and I spoke late last year in Scotland on the same subject (see my earlier article here).
Here is Dr. Jenkins' perceptive piece, which applies as well to Ireland and Scotland.
Public Banking for Wales: Escaping the Extractive Model
The economic history of the past 30 years has been, by and large, that of an uncontrolled expansion of the financial sector at the direct expense of the so called 'real' economy' of manufacturing and production. This expansion has been brought about by the hegemony of the free-market doctrines, based principally on fundamentally ideological beliefs in deregulation and privatisation, which have become known as 'neo-Liberal' or 'neo-Classical' economics.
As former US bank regulator William K. Black put it, 'In the world we live in, finance has become the dog instead of the tail [...] They have become a parasite'. The private banks have established themselves in this position through the control of the primary mechanism by which money is created within our system: the issuing of credit. In this paper I will aim to briefly outline how this credit function could be redirected from speculation and bubble creation, which constitute the dominant directions of credit issuance under private banking, towards more stable and sustainable areas which would serve the public interest instead of those of shareholders and bank CEOs. This is not a theoretical method, but rather one which throughout the post-WW II period saw the German Landesbanken facilitate the growth of the mittelstand sector of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs), as well as in the present day constituting the means by which the state-owned Bank of North Dakota (BND) contributes significantly to North Dakota being the only US State to run a budget surplus throughout the post-2008 crisis.
In order for a productive economy to exist there must be adequate streams of affordable credit and it is the absence of such constructive investment which, I would submit, has been a vital contributing factor to the decline of the Welsh economy, and indeed that of the UK, in the past 30 years. Before continuing with this analysis it is worth briefly examining the current banking system and the effect of its operations on the real economy, in Wales as elsewhere.
Banking Now: The Extractive Model of Credit Creation
'What is money and where does it come from?' are, remarkably, questions rarely asked in mainstream economics and even less so by members of the public; yet the answers to these two questions hold one of the keys to understanding the (mal)functioning of our economic system and for devising a new, more democratic direction. As the great American economist G.K. Galbraith observed in his fascinating study of the history of banking Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went, 'The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is the one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it' (Galbraith: 1975, p.1), stating later in the same text that, 'The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled' (Galbraith: 1975, p.18). So what is money? The instinctive answer to this question for most people is that money is the physical notes and coins produced by the government; they may even go on to say that this money is produced at the Royal Mint at Llantrisant, ironically making this physical money one of an increasingly diminishing range of Welsh exports. Yet physical money of this sort, in the form of notes and coins, only accounts for approximately 3% of money in circulation. This version of money is indeed the product of government, as under the Bank Charter Act 1844 the power to create banknotes (and coins) became the exclusive preserve of the Bank of England, a power exercised in agreement with Westminster. Since the so-called 'Nixon shock' of 1971 ended the existing Bretton Woods system of international financial exchange by unilaterally cancelling the direct convertibility of the United States dollar to gold the banknotes of the Bank of England/UK government have been essentially what is known as a 'fiat' or 'soft' currency; that is, a monetary unit which is not backed by any 'hard' commodity such as gold and, consequently, is limited in quantity only by the inflationary consequences of overproduction.
So what accounts for the other 97% of money in circulation? To answer this question it is necessary to understand the nature of credit issuance through fractional reserve banking, which is neatly encapsulated by the Statement of Martin Wolf that, 'The essence of the contemporary monetary system is the creation of money, out of nothing, by private banks' often foolish lending' (Wolf: 2010)[i]. This process is profoundly counter-intuitive to most members of the public who would assume that banks lend the deposits they receive, but this is not the case at all: the money issued through the process of creating a loan is created out of nothing, subject only to the rules for capital reserves contained in the Basel Accords. Two publications produced by the Bank of England make the current mechanism of money creation clear:
By far the largest role in creating broad money is played by the banking sector [...] When banks make loans they create additional deposits for those that have borrowed the money. (Bank of England: 2007, p.377)
The second publication, a transcript of speech in 2007 by Paul Tucker the Executive Director (Markets) for the Bank of England and a Member of the Monetary Policy Committee also states that:
Subject only but crucially to confidence in their soundness, banks extend credit by simply increasing the borrowing customer's current account [...] That is, banks extend credit by creating money.
The current system is a product of the fact that the Bank Charter Act 1844 prohibited banks from printing banknotes, but did not prohibit the issuing of money by ledger entry through the making of loans: with the advent of electronic systems in the past thirty years this facility to 'print money' by making entries into borrowers accounts with the stroke of a keypad has expanded significantly. Currently, then, there is a system in place whereby the power of money creation is largely in the hands of private corporations who are able to make sizeable profits through the levying of interest for their performance of this function. This system also leaves the private banks with the decision as to which sectors of the economy should be afforded lines of credit, and in the past thirty years this has moved increasingly away from the productive 'real economy' and towards speculation and bubble creation: with the results we now experience. Part of the deposit base of private banks is the income of local and national government and this leads to a situation wherein private corporations use public money as a deposit base for speculation and lending for speculation (See Fig.1).
The Idea of a State Bank: Re-investment of Interest from Productive Credit Provision
The best current example of a functioning state bank is that of the Bank of North Dakota (BND) in the United States. The way in which the bank functions is best described in its own words:
The deposit base of BND is unique. Its primary deposit base is the State of North Dakota. All state funds and funds of state institutions are deposited with Bank of North Dakota, as required by law. Other deposits are accepted from any source, private citizens to the U.S. government.
This framework provides the state of North Dakota with what is most needed for a local economy to thrive: affordable (and available) credit for SMEs and resources for the improvement of infrastructure. Under the state banking model the benefit derived from the interest accrued in the credit-issuing process is returned to the state and can be re-invested or spent in accordance with the public interest, instead of being paid to shareholders in dividends or given away in absurd bonuses to bankers who merely carry out a largely mechanical function, however subject to mystification and obfuscation: with myopic incompetence in many cases in the last thirty years (See Fig.2).
In the case of North Dakota this has resulted in the state being the only US state to run a budget surplus throughout the financial crisis post-2008 and this must make their model at least worth considering in a Welsh context.
The Report of the Silk Commission 2012
In Part 1 of its remit The Silk Commission was asked to consider the National Assembly for Wales's current financial powers in relation to taxation and borrowing and its report was produced in November 2012. The commission concluded that the Welsh Assembly government should be granted borrowing powers, basing this conclusion partly on 'international evidence' drawn from a single World Bank publication from 1999: making this 'evidence' neither ideologically neutral, being the product of an organisation which is the éminence grise of global neo-liberalism, nor current, with many of its conclusions being weighed and found wanting by the post-2008 financial crisis. The findings of the commission contains no consideration whatsoever of the role of banks in money creation through credit issuance, and the attendant problems of misallocation of investment, and no investigation of the success of public banking in the international context, for instance in the BRIC economies, or of the potential role of public banking in Wales. For this reason I feel that it is important that these issues be brought into the debate on the Welsh economy, as to ignore it would be to exclude a potentially democratising and sustainable banking system from the national conversation and would merely make any granting of borrowing powers to the Welsh Assembly Government nothing more than a new stream of income for the private banking system. If all that 'responsibility' means in the fiscal context is for Wales as a political unit to submit itself to the 'discipline' of the bond markets, then this is indeed a very sorry direction in which the politicians of the Welsh Assembly are taking both their current constituents, and those yet to be born.
Conclusion
There is a widely perceived need for change to the economic system today and especially for reform of the way in which banking operates, with the majority of the population feeling, rightly, that there is 'something wrong' with the way in which the economy, and particularly banking, currently functions. I believe that a public bank, properly instituted with all due diligence and care for regulation and democratic supervision, can provide one of the possible directions of sustainable change which is so needed in Wales and beyond. The model suggested by the Welsh Conservatives, as it stands, would be no substitute for a real public bank: a bank which would recoup its profits, gleaned from interest on productive loans to the real economy, for the good of the people of Wales. A true Welsh public bank would be in a position to reinvest its profits in socially beneficial areas like education, infrastructure and the health service, instead of funding bonuses and maximising shareholder dividends for a privileged few in the increasingly rarefied world of finance.
______________________________
Bibliography
Ahmad, J (1999) 'Decentralising borrowing powers' World Bank
Brown, Ellen, Web of Debt (Baton Rouge: Third Millenium Press, 2012); The Public Bank Solution (Baton Rouge: Third Millenium Press, 2013).
Commission on Devolution in Wales (Silk Commission) (2012) 'Empowerment and Responsibility: Financial Powers to Strengthen Wales' (full report at: http://commissionondevolutioninwales.independent.gov.uk/)
Tucker, P. (2008). 'Money and Credit: Banking and the macro-economy', speech given at the monetary policy and markets conference, 13 December 2007, Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin 2008, Q1, pp. 96–106. Available at: http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/speeches/2007/speech331.pdf (not there on 12 Sep 2013)
Welsh Conservatives, A Vision for Welsh Investment (January 2013) Available at: http://yourvoiceintheassembly.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Invest-Wales-FINAL.pdf
[i] Wolf, Martin, 'The Fed is right to turn on the tap', The Financial Times, 9/3/2010
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, whose pronouncements on Syria have featured on candobetter.net recently, has authored today's editorial opinion for the New York Times, calling on the US not to invade Syria. Full text reproduced here.
A Plea for Caution From Russia
What Putin Has to Say to Americans About Syria
By VLADIMIR V. PUTIN
Published: September 11, 2013 in the New York Times
MOSCOW — "RECENT events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.
Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again.
The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.
No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.
The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.
Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multireligious country. There are few champions of democracy in Syria. But there are more than enough Qaeda fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government. The United States State Department has designated Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, fighting with the opposition, as terrorist organizations. This internal conflict, fueled by foreign weapons supplied to the opposition, is one of the bloodiest in the world.
Mercenaries from Arab countries fighting there, and hundreds of militants from Western countries and even Russia, are an issue of our deep concern. Might they not return to our countries with experience acquired in Syria? After all, after fighting in Libya, extremists moved on to Mali. This threatens us all.
From the outset, Russia has advocated peaceful dialogue enabling Syrians to develop a compromise plan for their own future. We are not protecting the Syrian government, but international law. We need to use the United Nations Security Council and believe that preserving law and order in today’s complex and turbulent world is one of the few ways to keep international relations from sliding into chaos. The law is still the law, and we must follow it whether we like it or not. Under current international law, force is permitted only in self-defense or by the decision of the Security Council. Anything else is unacceptable under the United Nations Charter and would constitute an act of aggression.
No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists. Reports that militants are preparing another attack — this time against Israel — cannot be ignored.
It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”
But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes.
No matter how targeted the strikes or how sophisticated the weapons, civilian casualties are inevitable, including the elderly and children, whom the strikes are meant to protect.
The world reacts by asking: if you cannot count on international law, then you must find other ways to ensure your security. Thus a growing number of countries seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction. This is logical: if you have the bomb, no one will touch you. We are left with talk of the need to strengthen nonproliferation, when in reality this is being eroded.
We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.
A new opportunity to avoid military action has emerged in the past few days. The United States, Russia and all members of the international community must take advantage of the Syrian government’s willingness to place its chemical arsenal under international control for subsequent destruction. Judging by the statements of President Obama, the United States sees this as an alternative to military action.
I welcome the president’s interest in continuing the dialogue with Russia on Syria. We must work together to keep this hope alive, as we agreed to at the Group of 8 meeting in Lough Erne in Northern Ireland in June, and steer the discussion back toward negotiations.
If we can avoid force against Syria, this will improve the atmosphere in international affairs and strengthen mutual trust. It will be our shared success and open the door to cooperation on other critical issues.
My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal."
Vladimir V. Putin is the president of Russia.
Originally published on the New York Times site, where you can also read over 500 comments (at time of this report - 2135hrs 12/9/2013 Melbourne time)."
It should be an exciting day, so I hope you all can make it!
There has also been the suggestion of perhaps doing an informal hacking day to celebrate GNU's 30th birthday. Stay tuned to the free-software-melb mailing list if this interests you, and feel free to suggest a venue if anyone has any ideas.
We're a group who meet monthly to discuss free software and related issues. Our aims are to:
- Connect people interested in free software issues
- Share knowledge and experience, eg. understanding free software licensing
- Support and encourage free software advocacy
- Work together on solving issues local to Australia, eg. that software by the Australian Tax Office is proprietary
We're non-technical and fill a niche that complements more technical GNU/Linux user groups like the Linux Users of Victoria or the Melbourne Linux Users Group.
Join our mailing lists
Join our announcement list (archives) to hear about upcoming meetings and events. Join our discussion list (archives) to hear from and talk to other members of the free software community.
Attend our monthly discussion group
Each month (third Thursday), we meet to discuss one or more free software issues. It is a relaxed "sit around and chat" type event. No prior knowledge is expected.
VPAC Head Office Training Room
Level 1, Building 91, 110 Victoria Street
Carlton South
Mr Thomson received the strongest two-party vote of any Labor candidate in Australia in Labor's disaster 2013 election results. Inside a you-tube interview with Kelvin Thomson where he talks freely about what went wrong in recent government (among other things - seeking a 'messiah') and says that he will not recontest the front bench because he does not want to be muzzled (editorial word) from commenting on the massive issues of our times - species extinction, ecology, war, overpopulation, democracy ... Kelvin Thomson is known for his democratic consultation of his electorate and his reflection of their concerns. He is widely in touch with Australians everywhere and responsive to their issues of ecology, democracy, and population. Politicians everywhere should take note. Mr Thomson did not have to rely on pleasing Mr Murdoch, but Mr Murdoch still likes to report him because he makes too much sense and is too democratically influential to ignore.
Statement on Labor Frontbench, Labor's Future, Leadership, Policy & Wills Electorate
Thank you to the Wills Electorate
http://www.youtube.com/embed/5dqL5ErigKw?feature=player_detailpage
First I want to say a heartfelt thank you to the people of Wills, and to my campaign team, who have given me wonderful support throughout this election campaign, and indeed the months and years leading up to it. The Electoral Commission figures reported in this morning’s newspapers show that I have the strongest two-party preferred vote of any Labor candidate in Australia. These outcomes can change of course depending on final vote counting and preference distribution, but it is a great honour to have such a strong level of support, and I am determined to work hard in the next Parliament to be a vigorous and forceful advocate and representative of the people of Wills.
Labor Frontbench
As I told my campaign team on Saturday night, I will not be a candidate for the Opposition frontbench. I was a Shadow Minister for 10 years prior to 2007. I have been there and done that. It is my experience that being a Shadow Minister brings with it obligations not to speak outside your portfolio, and to have everything you do say cleared and approved by the Leader of the Opposition’s office. For me these limitations are simply too great in a world and an Australia which I believe is facing massive challenges.
The world is being damaged, perhaps irreparably by rapid population growth, climate change, unchecked rainforest and other habitat destruction, poverty, war and terrorism. Australia is not immune from these challenges. Many of our unique and beautiful birds, plants and animals, are on the brink of extinction. Our young people can’t afford to buy a home of their own, and their jobs are insecure, while pensioners and retirees battle rapidly rising electricity, gas and water bills and council rates.
I need to be able to speak out about these things, and I intend to. Anyone who thinks my decision to return to the backbench means that I am looking to lead a quiet life and slip out the back door is very mistaken. On the contrary, it is a necessary pre-condition for being active in the debate about the issues which are of greatest importance to the world and this country.
Labor’s Future
Labor’s election loss was not a function of poor economic management. We delivered low inflation, low unemployment, low interest rates, a triple A credit rating, and low public sector debt. We are the envy of other countries right around the world. It was a function of poor political management.
There are two key aspects of this- leadership and policy.
Leadership
Over the years we have seen a steady, relentless drift of power away from the electorate, away from political party members, away from Members of Parliament, away from Ministers and Shadow Ministers, towards Party Leaders.
This is fundamentally undemocratic. Ordinary voters have plenty of opportunities to catch up with me and other Members of Parliament and make their views known to us. They have no hope of accessing Prime Ministers and Premiers.
And the trend to leave everything to a Messiah leads to poor decisions which have been made by a small group of people, and not submitted to proper scrutiny. On the floor of the Victorian Parliament is written “Where no counsel is the people fail, but in the multitude of counsellors there is wisdom”.
In the last Parliament there were numerous botched policy announcements which had not been subjected to scrutiny by the Parliamentary Labor Party, certainly not scrutiny by Labor Party Branch members and the electorate, and in some cases not even by Ministers.
My advice to the next Leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party is twofold:-
1) Do less. Avoid the trap of the 24/7 media cycle, and don’t try to do everything. Don’t suffocate your Ministerial and Parliamentary colleagues by constantly dominating the airwaves. Giving them more say means giving voters more say. It also gives you more time to see that decisions are properly implemented, and helps save you from the trap of trying to do too much. We don’t need to announce something everyday; what we need to do is to get right the things we do announce.
2) Give the Parliamentary Party, and the voters, some real power, by taking proposals there first, AND leaving them for consideration at the next meeting. Many decisions are announced without consulting the Caucus at all, while others are presented as a fait accompli to a Caucus Meeting. MPs have no opportunity to consult with their constituents or interested parties about the proposal. It would be far more democratic, and lead to far fewer stuff-ups, if proposals were taken to the Parliamentary Party and left there for proper consideration.
Party Branches and Policy Committees are largely moribund, and Party Conferences and the Caucus have been acting as a rubber stamp. The leadership needs to stop taking and announcing decisions without consulting them, and thereby resuscitate and breathe life into them.
Policy
We need our policies to be in touch with the views of voters. I am all in favour of us being a middle of the road party, but some in our party interpret middle of the road as doing what big business wants. I believe being middle of the road is doing what voters want.
If we did what voters want, on issues like population growth, migration, planning, foreign ownership, live animal export, rather than what big business wants, we would do a lot better.
For more than two years, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been demonised by the Western presstitute newsmedia as a brutal dictator, a mass murderer, corrupt and, most recently, a chemical war criminal.
Unlike the serial liars Barack Obama and John Kerry, who have yet to face real questioning by the western 'journalists', Syrian President President Bashar al-Assad, for a brutal and corrupt dictator, has shown himself remarkably willing and able to face critical and probing interviews.
On 3 September 2013, he was interviewed by the French daily Le Figaro. On 6 Jun , he was interviewed by the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper. On 5 April 2013, he was interviewed by a Turkish television station. On 23 February, he was interviewed by a German television station. In all of these interviews, the claims made against his government were put to him and he was able to convincingly refute them. It is hard to conceive of how President al-Assad could have appeared so calm and credible if there were any factual basis to the allegations made against him.
On 9 September 2013, as the United States was preparing to strike Syria, President Assad was interviewed by Charlie Rose of CBS News, a station which has been presenting lying propaganda as news about the Syrian conflict. Although not a native English Speaker, President al-Assad, calmly and clearly put his case and answered the unsubstantiated claims aginst his government including the claim that his government had used poison gas against Syrian civilians.
CBS News Presenter
CBS Interview Charlie Rose
President Bashar al-Assad calmly putting his case and refuting mainstream media lies.
CBS commentator, who labeled President al-Assad's words 'propaganda'.
Following the interview, viewers were dissuaded from forming their own judgment, when President al-Assad's words were labeled 'propaganda'.
During the interview President al-Assad neither confirmed nor denied that Syria had chemical weapons. He pointed out that Israel, from which his country had faced invasion on a number of occasions, as well as Syria, was not a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty. Nevertheless, his government wished to see chemical weapons abolished and had taken initiatives to ensure that they were. This was brushed aside after the interview concluded, when one female commentator asserted that "Syria has a very large stockpiles of chemical weapons according to multiple intelligence communities around the world."
Update, 15 August 2015: The full video of length 56:28 minutes can be watched here on YouTube in place of Part 1 and Part 2 on this page. - Ed
Charlie Rose: Mr. President thank you very much for this opportunity to talk to you at a very important moment because the President of the United States will address the nation this week and, as you know an important conversation is taking place in Washington and important things are happening here in your country. Do you expect an airstrike?
President al-Assad:As long as the United States doesn't obey the international law and trample over the Charter of the United Nations we have to worry that any administration -- not only this one -- would do anything. According to the lies that we've been hearing for the last two weeks from high-ranking officials in the US administration we have to expect the worst.
Charlie Rose: Are you prepared?
President al-Assad: We've been living in difficult circumstances for the last two years and a half, and we prepare ourselves for every possibility. But that doesn't mean if you're prepared things will be better; it's going to get worse with any foolish strike or stupid war.
Charlie Rose: What do you mean worse?
President al-Assad: Worse because of the repercussions because nobody can tell you the repercussions of the first strike. We're talking about one region, bigger regions, not only about Syria. This interlinked region, this intermingled, interlocked, whatever you want to call it; if you strike somewhere, you have to expect the repercussions somewhere else in different forms in ways you don't expect.
Charlie Rose: Are you suggesting that if in fact there is a strike; there will be repercussions against the United States from your friends in other countries like Iran or Hezbollah or others?
President al-Assad: As I said, this may take different forms: direct and indirect. Direct when people want to retaliate, or governments. Indirect when you're going to have instability and the spread of terrorism all over the region that will influence the west directly.
Charlie Rose: Have you had conversations with Russia, with Iran or with Hezbollah about how to retaliate?
President al-Assad: We don't discuss this issue as a government, but we discuss the repercussions, which is more important because sometimes repercussions could be more destroying than the strike itself. Any American strike will not destroy as much as the terrorists have already destroyed in Syria; sometimes the repercussions could be many doubles the strike itself.
Charlie Rose: But some have suggested that it might tip the balance in the favor of the rebels and lead to the overthrow of your government.
Any strike will be as direct support to Al-Qaeda
President al-Assad: Exactly. Any strike will be as direct support to Al-Qaeda offshoot that's called Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. You're right about this. It's going to be direct support.
Charlie Rose: This is about chemical warfare. Let's talk about that. Do you approve of the use of chemical warfare, the use of deadly chemicals? Do you think that it is an appropriate tool of war, to use chemicals?
President al-Assad: We are against any WMD, any weapons of mass destruction, whether chemical or nuclear.
Charlie Rose: So you're against the use of chemical warfare?
20130910-065004.jpg
President al-Assad:Yes, not only me. As a state, as a government, in 2001 we proposed to the United Nations to empty or to get rid of every WMD in the Middle East, and the United States stood against that proposal. This is our conviction and policy.
Charlie Rose: But you're not a signatory to the chemical warfare agreement.
President al-Assad: Not yet.
Charlie Rose: Why not?
President al-Assad: Because Israel has WMD, and it has to sign, and Israel is occupying our land, so that's we talked about the Middle East, not Syria, not Israel; it should be comprehensive.
Charlie Rose: Do you consider chemical warfare equivalent to nuclear warfare?
President al-Assad: I don't know. We haven't tried either.
Charlie Rose: But you know, you're a head of state, and you understand the consequences of weapons that don't discriminate.
President al-Assad: Technically, they're not the same. But morally, it's the same.
Charlie Rose: Morally, they are the same.
President al-Assad: They are the same, but at the end, killing is killing. Massacring is massacring. Sometimes you may kill tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands with very primitive armaments.
Charlie Rose: Then why do you have such a stockpile of chemical weapons?
President al-Assad: We don't discuss this issue in public because we never said that we have it, and we never said that we don't have it. It's a Syrian issue; it's a military issue we never discuss in public with anyone.
Charlie Rose: This is from the New York Times this morning: Syria's leaders amassed one of the world's largest stockpiles of chemical weapons with help from the Soviet Union and Iran as well as Western European suppliers, and even a handful of American companies. According to American diplomatic cables and declassified intelligence records, you have amassed one of the largest supplies of chemical weapons in the world.
President al-Assad: To have or not to have is a possibility, but to depend on what media says is nonsense, or to depend on some of the reports of the intelligence is nonsense and that was proven when they invaded Iraq ten years ago and they said "Iraq has stockpiles of WMD" and it was proven after the invasion that this was false; it was fraud. So, we can't depend on what one magazine wrote. But at the end, I said it's something not to be discussed with anyone.
Charlie Rose: You accept that the world believes that you have a stockpile of chemical weapons?
President al-Assad: Who?
Charlie Rose: The world. The United States and other powers who also said that you have chemical weapons.
President al-Assad: It isn't about what they believe in, it's about the reality that we have, and this reality, we own it, we don't have to discuss it.
Charlie Rose: Speaking of reality, what was the reality on August 21st? What happened in your judgment?
President al-Assad: We're not in the area where the alleged chemical attack happened. I said alleged. We're not sure that anything happened.
Charlie Rose: Even at this date, you're not sure that chemical weapons -- even though you have seen the video tape, even though you've seen the bodies, even though your own officials have been there.
President al-Assad: I haven't finished. Our soldiers in another area were attacked chemically. Our soldiers - they went to the hospital as casualties because of chemical weapons, but in the area where they said the government used chemical weapons, we only had video and we only have pictures and allegations. We're not there; our forces, our police, our institutions don't exist there. How can you talk about what happened if you don't have evidence? We're not like the American administration, we're not social media administration or government. We are a government that deals with reality. When we have evidence, we'll announce it.
Charlie Rose: Well, as you know, Secretary Kerry has said there is evidence and that they saw rockets that fired from a region controlled by your forces into a region controlled by the rebels. They have evidence from satellite photographs of that. They have evidence of a message that was intercepted about chemical weapons, and soon thereafter there were other intercepted messages, so Secretary Kerry has presented what he views as conclusive evidence.
Kerry reminds about the big lie that Collin Powell said in front of the world on satellites about the WMD in Iraq
President al-Assad:No, he presented his confidence and his convictions. It's not about confidence, it's about evidence. The Russians have completely opposite evidence that the missiles were thrown from an area where the rebels control. This reminds me - what Kerry said - about the big lie that Collin Powell said in front of the world on satellites about the WMD in Iraq before going to war. He said "this is our evidence." Actually, he gave false evidence. In this case, Kerry didn't even present any evidence. He talked "we have evidence" and he didn't present anything. Not yet, nothing so far; not a single shred of evidence.
Charlie Rose: Do you have some remorse for those bodies, those people, it is said to be up to at least a thousand or perhaps 1400, who were in Eastern Ghouta, who died?
President al-Assad: We feel pain for every Syrian victim.
Charlie Rose: What about the victims of this assault from chemical warfare?
President al-Assad: Dead is dead, killing is killing, crime is crime. When you feel pain, you feel pain about their family, about the loss that you have in your country, whether one person was killed or a hundred or a thousand. It's a loss, it's a crime, it's a moral issue. We have family that we sit with, family that loved their dear ones. It's not about how they are killed, it's about that they are dead now; this is the bad thing.
Charlie Rose: But has there been any remorse or sadness on behalf of the Syrian people for what happened?
President al-Assad:I think sadness prevails in Syria now. We don't feel anything else but sadness because we have this killing every day, whether with chemical or any other kind. It's not about how. We feel with it every day.
Charlie Rose: But this was indiscriminate, and children were killed, and people who said goodbye to their children in the morning didn't see them and will never see them again, in Ghouta.
President al-Assad:That is the case every day in Syria, that's why you have to stop the killing. That's why we have to stop the killing. But what do you mean by "indiscriminate" that you are talking about?
Charlie Rose: Well, the fact that chemical warfare is indiscriminate in who it kills, innocents as well as combatants.
20130910-065057.jpg
President al-Assad: Yeah, but you're not talking about evidence, you're not talking about facts, we are talking about allegations. So, we're not sure that if there's chemical weapon used and who used it. We can't talk about virtual things, we have to talk about facts.
Charlie Rose: It is said that your government delayed the United Nations observers from getting to Ghouta and that you denied and delayed the Red Cross then the Red Crescent from getting there to make observations and to help.
President al-Assad:The opposite happened, your government delayed because we asked for a delegation in March 2013 when the first attack happened in Aleppo in the north of Syria; they delayed it till just a few days before al-Ghouta when they sent those team, and the team itself said in its report that he did everything as he wanted. There was not a single obstacle.
Charlie Rose: But they said they were delayed in getting there, that they wanted to be there earlier.
President al-Assad: No, no, no; there was a conflict, there was fighting, they were shooting. That's it. We didn't prevent them from going anywhere. We asked them to come; why to delay them? Even if you want to take the American story, they say we used chemical weapons the same day the team or the investigation team came to Syria; is it logical? It's not logical. Even if a country or army wanted to use such weapon, they should have waited a few days till the investigation finished its work. It's not logical, the whole story doesn't even hold together.
Charlie Rose: We'll come back to it. If your government did not do it, despite the evidence, who did it?
President al-Assad:We have to be there to get the evidence like what happened in Aleppo when we had evidence. And because the United States didn't send the team, we sent the evidence to the Russians.
Charlie Rose: But don't you want to know the answer, if you don't accept the evidence so far, as to who did this?
President al-Assad:The question is who threw chemicals on the same day on our soldiers. That's the same question. Technically, not the soldiers. Soldiers don't throw missiles on themselves. So, either the rebels, the terrorists, or a third party. We don't have any clue yet. We have to be there to collect the evidences then we can give answer.
Charlie Rose: Well, the argument is made that the rebels don't have their capability of using chemical weapons, they do not have the rockets and they do not have the supply of chemical weapons that you have, so therefore they could not have done it.
President al-Assad:First of all, they have rockets, and they've been throwing rockets on Damascus for months.
Charlie Rose: That carry chemical weapons?
President al-Assad: Rockets in general. They have the means - first. Second, the sarin gas that they've been talking about for the last weeks is a very primitive gas. You can have it done in the backyard of a house; it's a very primitive gas. So, it's not something complicated.
Charlie Rose: But this was not primitive. This was a terrible use of chemical weapons.
President al-Assad:Third, they used it in Aleppo in the north of Syria. Fourth, there's a video on YouTube where the terrorists clearly make trials on a rabbit and kill the rabbit and said "this is how we're going to kill the Syrian people." Fifth, there's a new video about one of those women who they consider as rebel or fighter who worked with those terrorists and she said "they didn't tell us how to use the chemical weapons" and one of those weapons exploded in one of the tunnels and killed twelve. That's what she said. Those are the evidence that we have. Anyway, the party who accused is the one who has to bring evidences. The United States accused Syria, and because you accused you have to bring evidence, this first of all. We have to find evidences when we are there.
Charlie Rose: What evidence would be sufficient for you?
President al-Assad: For example, in Aleppo we had the missile itself, and the material, and the sample from the sand, from the soil, and samples from the blood.
Charlie Rose: But the argument is made that your forces bombarded Ghouta soon thereafter with the intent of covering up evidence.
President al-Assad: How could bombardment cover the evidence? Technically, it doesn't work. How? This is stupid to be frank, this is very stupid.
Charlie Rose: But you acknowledge the bombardment?
President al-Assad: Of course, there was a fight. That happens every day; now you can have it. But, let's talk... we have indications, let me just finish this point, because how can use WMD while your troops are only 100 meters away from it? Is it logical? It doesn't happen. It cannot be used like this. Anyone who's not military knows this fact. Why do you use chemical weapons while you're advancing? Last year was much more difficult than this year, and we didn't use it.
Charlie Rose: There is this question too; if it was not you, does that mean that you don't have control of your own chemical weapons and that perhaps they have fallen into the hands of other people who might want to use them?
President al-Assad: That implies that we have chemical weapons, first. That implies that it's being used, second. So we cannot answer this question until we answer the first part and the second part. Third, let's presume that a country or army has this weapon; this kind of armaments cannot be used by infantry for example or by anyone. This kind of armament should be used by specialized units, so it cannot be in the hand of anyone.
Charlie Rose: Well, exactly, that's the point.
President al-Assad: Which is controlled centrally.
Charlie Rose: Ah, so you are saying that if in fact, your government did it, you would know about it and you would have approved it.
President al-Assad: I'm talking about a general case.
Charlie Rose: In general, you say if in fact it happened, I would have known about it and approved it. That's the nature of centralized power.
President al-Assad: Generally, in every country, yes. I'm talking about the general rules, because I cannot discuss this point with you in detail unless I'm telling you what we have and what we don't have, something I'm not going to discuss as I said at the very beginning, because this is a military issue that could not be discussed.
Charlie Rose: Do you question the New York Times article I read to you, saying you had a stockpile of chemical weapons? You're not denying that.
President al-Assad: No, we don't say yes, we don't say no, because as long as this is classified, it shouldn't be discussed.
Charlie Rose: The United States is prepared to launch a strike against your country because they believe chemical weapons are so abhorrent, that anybody who uses them crosses a red line, and that therefore, if they do that, they have to be taught a lesson so that they will not do it again.
President al-Assad: What red line? Who drew it?
Charlie Rose: The President says that it's not just him, that the world has drawn it in their revulsion against the use of chemical weapons, that the world has drawn this red line.
We have our red lines: our sovereignty, our independence
President al-Assad:Not the world, because Obama drew that line, and Obama can draw lines for himself and his country, not for other countries. We have our red lines, like our sovereignty, our independence, while if you want to talk about world red lines, the United States used depleted uranium in Iraq, Israel used white phosphorus in Gaza, and nobody said anything. What about the red lines? We don't see red lines. It's political red lines.
Charlie Rose: The President is prepared to strike, and perhaps he'll get the authorization of Congress or not. The question then is would you give up chemical weapons if it would prevent the President from authorizing a strike? Is that a deal you would accept?
President al-Assad: Again, you always imply that we have chemical weapons.
Charlie Rose: I have to, because that is the assumption of the President. That is his assumption, and he is the one that will order the strike.
President al-Assad: It's his problem if he has an assumption, but for us in Syria, we have principles. We'd do anything to prevent the region from another crazy war. It's not only Syria because it will start in Syria.
Charlie Rose: You'd do anything to prevent the region from having another crazy war?
President al-Assad: The region, yes.
Charlie Rose: You realize the consequences for you if there is a strike?
President al-Assad: It's not about me. It's about the region.
Charlie Rose: It's about your country, it's about your people.
President al-Assad: Of course, my country and me, we are part of this region, we're not separated. We cannot discuss it as Syria or as me; it should be as part, as a whole, as comprehensive. That's how we have to look at it.
Charlie Rose: Some ask why would you do it? It's a stupid thing to do if you're going to bring a strike down on your head by using chemical weapons. Others say you'd do it because A: you're desperate, or the alternative, you do it because you want other people to fear you, because these are such fearful weapons that if the world knows you have them, and specifically your opponents in Syria, the rebels, then you have gotten away with it and they will live in fear, and that therefore, the President has to do something.
President al-Assad: You cannot be desperate when the army is making advances. That should have happened -- if we take into consideration that this presumption is correct and this is reality -- you use it when you're in a desperate situation. So, our position is much better than before. So, this is not correct.
Charlie Rose: You think you're winning the war.
President al-Assad: "Winning" is a subjective word, but we are making advancement. This is the correct word, because winning for some people is when you finish completely.
Charlie Rose: Then the argument is made that if you're winning, it is because of the recent help you have got from Iran and from Hezbollah and additional supplies that have come to your side. People from outside Syria supporting you in the effort against the rebels.
President al-Assad: Iran doesn't have any soldier in Syria, so how could Iran help me?
Charlie Rose:Supplies, weaponry?
President al-Assad: That's all before the crisis. We always have this kind of cooperation.
Charlie Rose: Hezbollah, Hezbollah fighters have been here.
President al-Assad:Hezbollah fighters are on the borders with Lebanon where the terrorists attacked them. On the borders with Lebanon, this is where Hezbollah retaliated, and this is where we have cooperation, and that's good.
Charlie Rose: Hezbollah forces are in Syria today?
President al-Assad: On the border area with Lebanon where they want to protect themselves and cooperate with us, but they don't exist all over Syria. They cannot exist all over Syria anyway, for many reasons, but they exist on the borders.
Charlie Rose: What advice are you getting from the Russians?
President al-Assad: About?
Charlie Rose: About this war, about how to end this war.
President al-Assad:Every friend of Syria is looking for peaceful solution
President al-Assad: Every friend of Syria is looking for peaceful solution, and we are convinced about that. We have this advice, and without this advice we are convinced about it.
Charlie Rose: Do you have a plan to end the war?
President al-Assad: Of course.
Charlie Rose: Which is?
President al-Assad: At the very beginning, it was fully political. When you have these terrorists, the first part of the same plan which is political should start with stopping the smuggling of terrorists coming from abroad, stopping the logistic support, the money, all kinds of support coming to these terrorists. This is the first part. Second, we can have national dialogue where different Syrian parties sit and discuss the future of Syria. Third, you can have interim government or transitional government. Then you have final elections, parliamentary elections, and you're going to have presidential elections.
Charlie Rose: But the question is: would you meet with rebels today to discuss a negotiated settlement?
President al-Assad: In the initiative that we issued at the beginning of this year we said every party with no exceptions as long as they give up their armaments.
Charlie Rose: But you'll meet with the rebels and anybody who's fighting against you if they give up their weapons?
President al-Assad: We don't have a problem.
Charlie Rose: Then they will say "you are not giving up your weapons, why should we give up our weapons?"
President al-Assad: Does a government give up its weapons? Have you heard about that before?
Charlie Rose: No, but rebels don't normally give up their weapons either during the negotiations; they do that after a successful...
President al-Assad: The armament of the government is legal armament. Any other armament is not legal. So how can you compare? It's completely different.
Charlie Rose: There's an intense discussion going on about all the things we're talking about in Washington, where if there's a strike, it will emanate from the United States' decision to do this. What do you want to say, in this very important week, in America, and in Washington, to the American people, the members of Congress, to the President of the United States?
President al-Assad: I think the most important part of this now is, let's say the American people, but the polls show that the majority now don't want a war, anywhere, not only against Syria, but the Congress is going to vote about this in a few days, and I think the Congress is elected by people, it represents the people, and works for their interest. The first question that they should ask themselves: what do wars give America, since Vietnam till now? Nothing. No political gain, no economic gain, no good reputation. The United States' credibility is at an all-time low. So, this war is against the interest of the Untied States. Why? First, this war is going to support Al-Qaeda and the same people that killed Americans in the 11th of September. The second thing that we want to tell Congress, that they should ask and that what we expect them to ask this administration about the evidence that they have regarding the chemical story and allegations that they presented.
I wouldn't tell the President or any other official, because we are disappointed by their behavior recently, because we expected this administration to be different from Bush's administration. They are adopting the same doctrine with different accessories. That's it. So if we want to expect something from this administration, it is not to be weak, to be strong to say that "we don't have evidence," that "we have to obey the international law", that "we have to go back to the Security Council and the United Nations".
Charlie Rose: The question remains; what can you say to the President who believes chemical weapons were used by your government; that this will not happen again.
President al-Assad: I will tell him very simply: present what you have as evidence to the public, be transparent.
Charlie Rose: And if he does? If he presents that evidence?
President al-Assad: This is where we can discuss the evidence, but he doesn't have it. He didn't present it because he doesn't have it, Kerry doesn't have it. No one in your administration has it. If they had it, they would have presented it to you as media from the first day.
Charlie Rose: They have presented it to the Congress.
President al-Assad: Nothing. Nothing was presented.
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Charlie Rose: They've shown the Congress what they have, and the evidence they have, from satellite intercepted messages and the like.
President al-Assad: Nothing has been presented so far.
Charlie Rose: They have presented it to the Congress, sir.
President al-Assad: You are a reporter. Get this evidence and show it to the public in your country.
Charlie Rose: They're presenting it to the public representative. You don't show your evidence and what you're doing and your plans to people within your own council. They're showing it to the people's representative who have to vote on an authorization to strike, and if they don't find the evidence sufficient...
President al-Assad: First of all, we have the precedent of Collin Powell ten years ago, when he showed the evidence, it was false, and it was forged. This is first. Second, you want me to believe American evidence and don't want me to believe the indications that we have. We live here, this is our reality.
Charlie Rose: Your indications are what?
President al-Assad: That the rebels or the terrorists used the chemical weapons in northern Aleppo five months ago.
Charlie Rose: And on August 21st?
President al-Assad: No, no, no. That was before. On the 21st, again they used it against our soldiers in our area where we control it, and our soldiers went to the hospital, you can see them if you want.
Charlie Rose: But Ghouta is not controlled by your forces, it's controlled by the rebel forces. The area where that attack took place is controlled by rebel forces.
President al-Assad: What if they have stockpiles and they exploded because of the bombardment? What if they used the missile by mistake and attacked themselves by mistake?
Charlie Rose: Let me move to the question of whether a strike happens, and I touched on this before. You have had fair warning. Have you prepared by moving possible targets, are you moving targets within civilian populations, all the things that you might have done if you have time to do that and you have had clear warning that this might be coming?
President al-Assad:Syria is in a state of war since its land was occupied for more than four decades, and the nature of the frontier in Syria implies that most of the army is in inhabited areas, most of the centers are in inhabited areas. You hardly find any military base in distant areas from the cities unless it's an airport or something like this, but most of the military bases or centers within inhabited areas.
Charlie Rose: Will there be attacks against American bases in the Middle East if there's an airstrike?
President al-Assad: You should expect everything. Not necessarily through the government, the governments are not the only player in this region. You have different parties, different factions, you have different ideologies; you have everything in this region now. So, you have to expect that.
Charlie Rose: Tell me what you mean by "expect everything."
President al-Assad: Expect every action.
Charlie Rose: Including chemical warfare?
President al-Assad: That depends. If the rebels or the terrorists in this region or any other group have it, this could happen, I don't know. I'm not a fortuneteller to tell you what's going to happen.
Charlie Rose: But we'd like to know more, I think the President would like to know, the American people would like to know. If there is an attack, what might be the repercussions and who might be engaged in those repercussions?
President al-Assad: Okay, before the 11th of September, in my discussions with many officials of the United States, some of them are Congressmen, I used to say that "don't deal with terrorists as playing games." It's a different story. You're going to pay the price if you're not wise in dealing with terrorists. We said you're going to be repercussions of the mistaken way of dealing with it, of treating the terrorism, but nobody expected 11th of September. So, you cannot expect. It is difficult for anyone to tell you what is going to happen. It's an area where everything is on the brink of explosion. You have to expect everything.
Charlie Rose: Let's talk about the war today. A hundred thousand people dead. A million refugees. A country being destroyed. Do you take some responsibility for that?
President al-Assad: That depends on the decision that I took. From the first day I took the decision as President to defend my country. So, who killed? That's another question. Actually, the terrorists have been killing our people since the beginning of this crisis two years and a half ago, and the Syrian people wanted the government and the state institutions and the army and the police to defend them, and that's what happened. So we're talking about the responsibility, my responsibility according to the Syrian constitution that said we have to defend ourselves.
Charlie Rose: Mr. President, you constantly say "it's terrorists." Most people look at the rebels and they say that Al-Qaeda and other forces from outside Syria are no more than 15 or 20 percent of the forces on the ground. The other 80% are Syrians, are defectors from your government, and defectors from your military. They are people who are Syrians who believe that their country should not be run by a dictator, should not be run by one family, and that they want a different government in their country. That's 80% of the people fighting against you, not terrorists.
President al-Assad: We didn't say that 80%, for example, or the majority or the vast majority, are foreigners. We said the vast majority are Al-Qaeda or Al-Qaeda offshoot organizations in this region. When you talk about Al-Qaeda it doesn't matter if he's Syrian or American or from Europe or from Asia or Africa. Al-Qaeda has one ideology and they go back to the same leadership in Afghanistan or in Syria or in Iraq. That's the question. You have tens of thousands of foreigners, that's definitely correct. We are fighting them on the ground and we know this.
Charlie Rose: But that's 15 or 20% of this. That's a realistic look at how many.
President al-Assad: Nobody knows because when they are dead and they are killed, they don't have any ID. You look at their faces, they look foreigners, but where are they coming from? How precise this estimate is difficult to tell, but definitely the majority are Al-Qaeda. This is what concerns us, not the nationality. If you have Syrian Al-Qaeda, or Pakistani Al-Qaeda or Saudi Al-Qaeda, what's the difference? What does it matter? The most important thing is that the majority are Al-Qaeda. We never said that the majority are not Syrians, but we said that the minority is what they call "free Syrian army." That's what we said.
Charlie Rose: Do you believe this is becoming a religious war?
President al-Assad: It started partly as a sectarian war in some areas, but now it's not, because when you talk about sectarian war or religious war, you should have a very clear line between the sects and religions in Syria according to the geography and the demography in Syria, something we don't have. So, it's not religious war, but Al-Qaeda always use religions, Islam - actually, as a pretext and as a cover and as a mantle for their war and for their terrorism and for their killing and beheading and so on.
Charlie Rose:Why has this war lasted two and a half years?
President al-Assad:Because of the external interference, because there is an external agenda supported by, or let's say led by the United States, the West, the petrodollar countries, mainly Saudi Arabia, and before was Qatar, and Turkey. That's why it lasted two years and a half.
Charlie Rose: But what are they doing, those countries you cited?
The West wanted to undermine the Syrian positions
President al-Assad: They have different agendas. For the West, they wanted to undermine the Syrian positions. For the petrodollar countries like Saudi Arabia, they're thinking undermining Syria will undermine Iran on sectarian basis. For Turkey, they think that if the Muslim Brotherhood take over the rest of the region, they will be very comfortable, they will be very happy, they will make sure that their political future is guaranteed. So they have different agendas and different goals.
Charlie Rose: But at the same time, as I said, you used Hezbollah and got support from Iran, from Russia. So, what is happening here. Is this a kind of war that exists because of support from outside Syria on both sides?
President al-Assad: This is cooperation, I don't know what you mean by support. We have cooperation with countries for decades. Why talk about this cooperation now?
Charlie Rose: Then you tell me, what are you receiving from Iran?
President al-Assad: Political support. We have agreements with many countries including Iran, including Russia, including other countries that are about different things including armament. It's cooperation like any cooperation between any two countries, which is normal. It's not related to the crisis. You don't call it support, because you pay money for what you get. So, you don't call it support, it's cooperation, call it whatever you want, but the word "support" is not precise. From Russia for example, we have political support, which is different from the cooperation. We have cooperation for 60 years now, but now we have political support.
Charlie Rose: Well, the Russians said they have ongoing support for you, but beyond just political cooperation. I mean they have treaties that existed with Syria.
President al-Assad: Exactly.
Charlie Rose: And they provide all kinds of defensive weapons.
President al-Assad: You said treaties, and a Russian official said; we have not agreement... contracts, that we have to fulfill, and those contracts are like any country; you buy armaments, you buy anything you want.
Charlie Rose: But do you believe this has become a conflict of Sunni vs. Shia'a?
President al-Assad: No, not yet. This is in the mind of the Saudis, and this is in the minds of the Wahabists.
Charlie Rose: And in the minds of the Iranians?
President al-Assad: No, no, actually what they are doing is the opposite. They tried to open channels with the Saudi, with many other Islamic entities in the region in order to talk about Islamic society, not Sunni and Shi'ite societies.
Charlie Rose: Was there a moment for you, when you saw the Arab spring approaching Syria, that you said "I've seen what happened in Libya, I've seen what happened in Tunisia, I've seen what happened in Egypt, it's not gonna happen to Bashar al-al-Assad. I will fight anybody that tries to overthrow my regime with everything I have."
President al-Assad: No, for one reason; because the first question that I ask: do I have public support or not. That is the first question that I asked as President. If I don't have the public support, whether there's the so-called "Arab spring" -- it's not spring, anyway -- but whether we have this or we don't, if you don't have public support, you have to quit, you have to leave. If you have public support, in any circumstances you have to stay. That's your mission, you have to help the people, you have to serve the people.
Charlie Rose: When you say "public support" people point to Syria and say a minority sect, Alawites, control a majority Sunni population, and they say "dictatorship" and they do it because it because of the force of their own instruments of power. That's what you have, not public support, for this war against other Syrians.
President al-Assad: Now, it's been two years and a half, ok? Two years and a half and Syria is still withstanding against the United States, the West, Saudi Arabia, the richest countries in this area, including Turkey, and, taking into consideration what your question implies, that even the big part or the bigger part of the Syrian population is against me, how can I withstand till today? Am I the superhuman or Superman, which is not the case!
Charlie Rose: Or you have a powerful army.
President al-Assad: The army is made of the people; it cannot be made of robots. It's made of people.
Charlie Rose: Surely you're not suggesting that this army is not at your will and the will of your family.
President al-Assad: What do you mean by "will of the family?"
Charlie Rose: The will of your family. Your brother is in the military. The military has been... every observer of Syria believes that this is a country controlled by your family and controlled by the Alawites who are your allies. That's the control.
President al-Assad: If that situation was correct - what you're mentioning - we wouldn't have withstood for two years and a half. We would have disintegration of the army, disintegration of the whole institution in the state; we would have disintegration of Syria if that was the case. It can't be tolerated in Syria. I'm talking about the normal reaction of the people. If it's not a national army, it cannot have the support, and if it doesn't have the public support of every sect, it cannot do its job and advance recently. It cannot. The army of the family doesn't make national war.
Charlie Rose: Some will argue that you didn't have this support because in fact the rebels were winning before you got the support of Hezbollah and an enlarged support from the Iranians, that you were losing and then they came in and gave you support so that you were able to at least start winning and produce at least a stalemate.
President al-Assad: No, the context is wrong, because talking about winning and losing is like if you're talking about two armies fighting on two territories, which is not the case. Those are gangs, coming from abroad, infiltrate inhabited areas, kill the people, take their houses, and shoot at the army. The army cannot do the same, and the army doesn't exist everywhere.
Charlie Rose: But they control a large part of your country.
President al-Assad: No, they went to every part there's no army in it, and the army went to clean and get rid of them. They don't go to attack the army in an area where the army occupied that area and took it from it. It's completely different, it's not correct, or it's not precise what you're talking about. So, it's completely different. What the army is doing is cleaning those areas, and the indication that the army is strong is that it's making advancement in that area. It never went to one area and couldn't enter to it - that's an indication. How could that army do that if it's a family army or a sect army? What about the rest of the country who support the government? It's not realistic, it doesn't happen. Otherwise, the whole country will collapse.
Charlie Rose: One small point about American involvement here, the President's gotten significant criticism because he has not supported the rebels more. As you know, there was an argument within his own counsels from Secretary of State Clinton, from CIA Director David Petraeus, from the Defense Department, Leon Penetta, Secretary of Defense, and others, that they should have helped the rebels two years ago, and we would be in a very different place, so the President has not given enough support to the rebels in the view of many people, and there's criticism that when he made a recent decision to give support, it has not gotten to the rebels, because they worry about the composition.
President al-Assad:If the American administration want to support Al-Qaeda - go ahead. That's what we have to tell them, go ahead and support Al-Qaeda, but don't talk about rebels and free Syrian army. The majority of fighters now are Al-Qaeda. If you want to support them, you are supporting Al-Qaeda, you are creating havoc in the region, and if this region is not stable, the whole world cannot be stable.
Charlie Rose: With respect, sir, most people don't believe the majority of forces are Al-Qaeda. Yes, there is a number of people who are Al-Qaeda affiliates and who are here who subscribe to the principles of Al-Qaeda, but that's not the majority of the forces as you know. You know that the composition differs within the regions of Syria as to the forces that are fighting against your regime.
The American officials should learn to deal with reality
President al-Assad:The American officials should learn to deal with reality. Why did the United States fail in most of its wars? Because it always based its wars on the wrong information. So, whether they believe or not, this is not reality. I have to be very clear and very honest. I'm not asking them to believe if they don't want to believe. This is reality, I'm telling you the reality from our country. We live here, we know what is happening, and they have to listen to people here. They cannot listen only to their media or to their research centers. They don't live here; no one lives here but us. So, this is reality. If they want to believe, that's good, that will help them understand the region and be more successful in their policies.
Charlie Rose: Many people think this is not a sustainable position here; that this war cannot continue, because the cost for Syria is too high. Too many deaths - a hundred thousand and counting, too many refugees, too much destruction; the soul of a country at risk. If it was for the good of the country, would you step down?
President al-Assad: That depends on the relation of me staying in this position and the conflict. We cannot discuss it just to say you have to step down. Step down, why, and what is the expected result? This is first. Second, when you're in the middle of a storm, leaving your country just because you have to leave without any reasonable reason, it means you're quitting your country and this is treason.
Charlie Rose: You say it would be treason for you to step down right now because of your obligation to the country?
President al-Assad: Unless the public wants you to quit.
Charlie Rose: And how will you determine that?
President al-Assad: By the two years and a half withstanding. Without the public support, we cannot withstand two years and a half. Look at the other countries, look what happened in Libya, in Tunisia and in Egypt.
Charlie Rose: You worry about that, what happened to Gaddafi?
President al-Assad: No, we are worried that rebels are taking control in many countries, and look at the results now. Are you satisfied as an American? What are the results? Nothing. Very bad - nothing good.
Charlie Rose: There was a report recently that you had talked about, or someone representing you had talked about some kind of deal in which you and your family would leave the country if you were guaranteed safe passage, if you were guaranteed that there would be no criminal prosecution. You're aware of these reports?
President al-Assad: We had this guarantee from the first day of the crisis.
Charlie Rose: Because of the way you acted?
President al-Assad: No, because of the agenda that I talked about. Some of these agendas wanted me to quit, very simply, so they said "we have all the guarantees if you want to leave, and all the money and everything you want." Of course, you just ignore that.
Charlie Rose: So, you've been offered that opportunity?
President al-Assad: Yeah, but it's not about me, again, this fight is not my fight, it's not the fight of the government; it's the fight of the country, of the Syrian people. That's how we look at it. It's not about me.
Charlie Rose: It's not about you?
President al-Assad: It's about every Syrian.
Charlie Rose: How will this war end? I referred to this question earlier. What's the endgame?
President al-Assad:It's very simple; once the Western countries stop supporting those terrorists and making pressure on their puppet countries and client states like Saudi Arabia and Turkey and others, you'll have no problem in Syria. It will be solved easily, because those fighters, the Syrian part that you're talking about, lost its natural incubators in the Syrian society - they don't have incubators anymore; that's why they have incubators abroad. They need money from abroad, they need moral support and political support from abroad. They don't have any grassroots, any incubator. So, when you stop the smuggling, we don't have problems.
Charlie Rose: Yeah, but at the same time, as I've said before, you have support from abroad. There are those who say you will not be able to survive without the support of Russia and Iran. Your government would not be able to survive.
President al-Assad: No, it's not me, I don't have support. Not me; all Syria. Every agreement is between every class and every sector in Syria; government, people, trade, military, culture, everything; it's like the cooperation between your country and any other country in the world. It's the same cooperation. It's not about me; it's not support for the crisis.
Charlie Rose: I mean about your government. You say that the rebels only survive because they have support from Saudi Arabia and Turkey and the United States, and Qatar perhaps, and I'm saying you only survive because you have the support of Russia and Iran and Hezbollah.
External support can never substitute internal support
President al-Assad: No, the external support can never substitute internal support, it can never, for sure. And the example that we have to look at very well is Egypt and Tunisia; they have all the support from the West and from the Gulf and from most of the countries of the world. When they don't have support within their country, they couldn't continue more than -- how many weeks? - three weeks. So, the only reason we stand here for two years and a half is because we have internal support, public support. So, any external support, if you want to call it support, let's use this world, is... how to say... it's going to be additional, but it's not the base to depend on more than the Syrian support.
Charlie Rose: You and I talked about this before; we remember Hama and your father, Hafez al-Assad. He... ruthlessly... set out to eliminate the Muslim Brotherhood. Are you simply being your father's son here?
President al-Assad: I don't know what you mean by ruthlessly, I've never heard of soft war. Have you heard about soft war? There's no soft war. War is war. Any war is ruthless. When you fight terrorists, you fight them like any other war.
Charlie Rose: So, the lessons you have here are the lessons you learned from your father and what he did in Hama, which, it is said, influenced you greatly in terms of your understanding of what you have to do.
President al-Assad: The question: what would you do as an American if the terrorists are invading your country from different areas and started killing tens of thousands of Americans?
Charlie Rose: You refer to them as terrorists, but in fact it is a popular revolution, people believe, against you, that was part of the Arab spring that influenced some of the other countries.
President al-Assad: Revolution should be Syrian, cannot be revolution imported from abroad.
Charlie Rose: It didn't start from abroad; it started here.
President al-Assad:These people that started here, they support the government now against those rebels. That's what you don't know. What you don't know as an American you don't know as a reporter. That's why talking about what happened at the very beginning is completely different from what is happening now - it's not the same. There's very high dynamic, things are changing on daily basis. It's a completely different image. Those people who wanted revolution, they are cooperating with us.
Charlie Rose: I'm asking you again, is it in fact you're being your father's son and you believe that the only way to drive out people is to eliminate them the same way your father did?
President al-Assad: In being independent? Yes. In fighting terrorists? Yes. In defending the Syrian people and the country? Yes.
Charlie Rose: When I first interviewed you, there was talk of Bashar al-al-Assad... he's the hope, he's the reform. That's not what they're saying anymore.
President al-Assad: Who?
Charlie Rose: People who write about you, people who talk about you, people who analyze Syria and your regime.
President al-Assad: Exactly, the hope for an American is different from the hope of a Syrian. For me, I should be the hope of the Syrian, not any other one, not American, neither French, nor anyone in the world. I'm President to help the Syrian people. So, this question should start from the hope of the Syrian people, and if there is any change regarding that hope, we should ask the Syrian people, not anyone else in the world.
Charlie Rose: But now they say -- their words -- a butcher. Comparisons to the worst dictators that ever walked on the face of the Earth, comparing you to them. Using weapons that go beyond warfare. Everything they could say bad about a dictator, they're now saying about you.
President al-Assad: First of all, when you have a doctor who cut the leg to prevent the patient from the gangrene if you have to, we don't call butcher; you call him a doctor, and thank you for saving the lives. When you have terrorism, you have a war. When you have a war, you always have innocent lives that could be the victim of any war, so, we don't have to discuss what the image in the west before discussing the image in Syria. That's the question.
Charlie Rose: It's not just the West. I mean it's the East, and the Middle East, and, I mean, you know, the eyes of the world have been on Syria. We have seen atrocities on both sides, but on your side as well. They have seen brutality by a dictator that they say put you in a category with the worst.
President al-Assad: So we have to allow the terrorists to come and kill the Syrians and destroy the country much, much more. This is where you can be a good President? That's what you imply.
Charlie Rose: But you can't allow the idea that there's opposition to your government from within Syria. That is not possible for you to imagine.
President al-Assad: To have opposition? We have it, and you can go and meet with them. We have some of them within the government, we have some of them outside the government. They are opposition. We have it.
Charlie Rose: But those are the people who have been fighting against you.
President al-Assad:Opposition is different from terrorism. Opposition is a political movement. Opposition doesn't mean to take arms and kill people and destroy everything. Do you call the people in Los Angeles in the nineties - do you call them rebels or opposition? What did the British call the rebels less than two years ago in London? Did they call them opposition or rebels? Why should we call them opposition? They are rebels. They are not rebels even, they are beheading. This opposition, opposing country or government, by beheading? By barbecuing heads? By eating the hearts of your victim? Is that opposition? What do you call the people who attacked the two towers on the 11th of September? 2 Opposition? Even if they're not Americans, I know this, but some of them I think have nationality - I think one of them has American nationality. Do you call him opposition or terrorist? Why should you use a term in the United States and England and maybe other countries and use another term in Syria? This is a double standard that we don't accept.
Charlie Rose: I once asked you what you fear the most and you said the end of Syria as a secular state. Is that end already here?
President al-Assad:According to what we've been seeing recently in the area where the terrorists control, where they ban people from going to schools, ban young men from shaving their beards, and women have to be covered from head to toe, and let's say in brief they live the Taliban style in Afghanistan, completely the same style. With the time, yes we can be worried, because the secular state should reflect secular society, and this secular society, with the time, if you don't get rid of those terrorists and these extremists and the Wahabi style, of course it will influence at least the new and the coming generations. So, we don't say that we don't have it, we're still secular in Syria, but with the time, this secularism will be eroded.
Charlie Rose: Mr. President, thank you for allowing us to have this conversation about Syria and the war that is within as well as the future of the country. Thank you.
President al-Assad: Thank you for coming to Syria.
1. ↑ This incorrectly presumes that the rulers of the New World Order would be threatened by terrorism. In fact, terrorism has helped the ruling elites far more than it has threatened them. In the 19th Century, when bombs thrown by police provocateurs at Haymarket in the U.S. the police were given the excuse needed to shoot protesting strikers. In the late 20th Century, terrorist acts by supposedly 'radical', 'left-wing' groups, such as the Italian Red Brigades and the German Baade-Meinhof gang, have provided the respective governments convenient excuses to spy on opposition political groups and to enact legislation to take away citizens' democratic rights.
The only contexts in which terrorism would make any sense at all is in contexts where formal democracy has been abolished These include Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and the Latin American dictatorships of the 20th Century. Conceivably, if the current Syrian government were to be overthrown and replaced by the sectarian theocratic dictatorship that the opposition terrorists are fighting to establish, terrorism could be an appropriate form of resistance. But such a future outcome is hardly a reason for the U.S. and its allies to fear the consequences of the overthrow of the Syrian Government.
Sadly, the other additional terrorism, from anti-Western Islamist ideologues, that would result from the defeat of the Syrian government, of which President al-Assad warns, would be a win-win outcome for the NWO.
2. ↑ On 8 September 2011, Russia Today released a video report (since also embedded here on candobetter) which presented much of the evidence that senior figures within the U.S. administration of President George W. Bush, including the President himself, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz had been complicit in the death of 2,977 American residents on 11 September;2011. They did so to contrive an excuse for the United States to wage wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and, now, Syria, in which hundreds of thousands have died, by blaming the crime on 19 alleged hijackers who were allegedly sent to the U.S. by the government of Afghanistan. Whilst it has been known for years that the Official U.S. Government account of 9/11 was a lie, this exposure of the truth about 9/11 by a mainstream news outlet like Russia Today lifts the whole profile of the struggle for truth and the search for justice for the crime of 9/11. President al-Assad should be advised that his case against the U.S. Government war criminals would be made stronger still, if he were tell the world more directly the facts about 9/11.
Guest column by the distinguished commentator and radio host Stephen Lendman:
Syria has agreed to the Russian proposal to give up its chemical weapons, but the war criminal and totally isolated obama regime, the scum of the earth, says it will attack Syria regardless.
How will the world respond to the Amerikan Third Reich, the worst threat to truth, justice, peace, and humanity that the world has ever experienced? Will the world submit to rule by an outlaw state whose corrupt government represents no one but the Israel Lobby?
September 09, 2013 "Information Clearing House - Russian Foreign Sergei Lavrov wants peace. He's going all out against war on Syria. He's doing it responsibly.
Important world leaders back him. So does overwhelming global anti-war sentiment.
"We are calling on the Syrian authorities not only agree on putting chemical weapons storages under international control, but also for its further destruction and then joining the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons," he said.
"We have passed our offer to Muallem and hope to receive a fast and positive answer."
Al-Moallem pledged "full cooperation with Russia to remove any pretext for aggression." Lavrov promised Moscow's support.
He's trying to broker a diplomatic solution. In return, he wants Obama to cancel attack plans.
He cited John Kerry saying Assad "could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week."
"Turn it over, all of it without delay and allow (a) full and total accounting, but he isn't about to do it and it can't be done."
Doing it would avoid military intervention, Kerry said. Damage control followed his statement. State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki reinterpreted his comments.
He "was making a rhetorical argument about the impossibility and unlikelihood of Assad turning over chemical weapons," she said.
"His point was that this brutal dictator with a history of playing fast and loose with the facts cannot be trusted to turn over chemical weapons, otherwise he would have done so long ago. That's why the world faces this moment."
Reinterpreting Kerry's statement shows Obama's true intention. Falsely blaming Assad for using chemical weapons is cover for long planned regime change.
War is Obama's option of choice. Lavrov's best efforts may fall short. He forthrightly pursued them throughout months of conflict. He's not about to stop now.
He faces long odds. Obama didn't wage war on Syria to quit. He won't do so no matter what Lavrov, Moallem, Assad or other Syrian officials pledge. Rogues states operate that way. America's by far the worst.
Moallem's doing his best anyway. So is Lavrov. From Moscow, he said:
"We have agreed on practical steps to be taken bilaterally and in cooperation with other states for giving the political settlement a chance."
"No matter how serious the current situation may be, our Syrian partners and we are confident that possibilities remain for a political settlement."
"Russia has been staying in touch with all (Syrian) opposition groups without an exception in the recent years and we will carry on our efforts to try to convince them that there is no alternative to an international conference."
"If our contacts express that this (conference) may help, then we do not rule out the possibility of an invitation to Moscow of all who are interested in peace and a political settlement in Syria and reject the military scenario."
"What are the real interests of the US behind launching this aggression," he asked?
"Obama is not listening to Americans, Europeans, and UK Parliament. We thank American people for standing against striking Syria."
"We admire the American people who voice their protest against military intervention," added Muallem.
"What are the real interests of the United States behind launching this aggression? Why does US want to help those who are behind 9/11?
Washington "will be wrong to destroy (Syria's) army and help Al Qaeda. We're confident Russian efforts on peace talks will stop strikes."
Lavrov replied, saying:
"UN inspectors should return to Syria to investigate alleged use of chemical weapons."
"The alleged chemical attack on August 21 was orchestrated." Anti-Assad elements bear full responsibility.
"We must consolidate government and rebels to evict terrorists. We are taking active moves to prevent devastating strike. Every report on chemical arms use must be closely studied."
"Syria is open to Geneva-2 peace talks with no pre-conditions. We call on US colleagues to focus on talks, not on strikes."
"Syria strike will only enable terrorism. Russia believes no group should monopolize peace talks."
"Dialogue is necessary among all Syrians. It's the only solution. UN inspectors must go back to Syria, but some powers are obstructing."
He left no doubt which ones he means. They're headquartered in Washington. Obama's a warmaker. He deplores peace. He's going all out to prevent it. He plans war to do so.
"Russia is well-supported in the view that military action in Syria will provoke rampant terrorism," said Lavrov.
Moallem said his government is ready for Geneva II with no preconditions. "We are still ready to do that. But I do not know what may happen after an act of aggression by the United States. Probably a missile will fly over and thwart this.
America sides with terrorists, he added. It plans to be Al Qaeda's air force.
"But if such aggression against Syria aims, as we suspect, to considerably weaken the military potential of the Syrian army in the interest of al-Qaeda and various affiliated groups, then we will raise our objections," he stressed.
"Then we have the right to ask a question about the genuine interests of the United States that wishes to unleash an attack on the behalf of Jabhat al-Nusra and similar groups."
"We've come here just as the US is sounding war drums. Our feeling is that Russia plays an important role of staving off aggression."
"That is where Russia's moral ground lies, since a peacekeeper is always stronger than a warmonger."
"Mr. Assad has sent his regards and said he was grateful to Mr. Putin for his stand on Syria both before and after the G20 summit."
"Russia plays an important role in preventing aggression."
Lavrov added that Russia's "stand on Syria is unwavering and does not permit a military solution of the Syrian conflict, especially foreign intervention."
"The position of Russia is well-known. It is immune to change and varying circumstances."
"This position says there is no alternative to peaceful, diplomatic settlement of the Syrian conflict, especially not a military solution employing foreign intervention."
"On the background of the unfolding campaign calling to use force against Damascus, Russia is taking steps to prevent a pernicious situation in the Middle East."
"There cannot be any deals behind backs of the Syrian people from the Russian side in what refers to the policies Russia is following."
He added that force against Syria would cause a wave of regional terrorism. Perhaps that's precisely what Obama intends.
He needs pretexts to intervene. Peace and stability defeat his agenda. It requires violence and destabilization. He plans lots more ahead.
He faces stiff world opposition. On September 9, Reuters headlined "Analysis: Obama growing isolated on Syria as support wanes".
"White House efforts to convince the US Congress to back military action against Syria are not only failing, they seem to be stiffening the opposition."
He's making more enemies than friends. He's doing so at home and abroad. Skeptics way outnumber supporters.
Hindsight may show he shot himself in the foot. Peace activists hope so. He'll give it another go Tuesday night. He'll try enlisting support for what most people reject.
They're tired of being lied to. They want peace, stability, and jobs. They want America's resources directed toward creating them.
They want leadership representing everyone equitably. Obama's polar opposite. He supports wealth, power and privilege alone. He spurns popular interests.
He chooses war over peace. He's less able to sell what most people reject. Odds favor he'll attack Syria anyway.
Pretexts are easy to fabricate. They're longstanding US policy. Expect another major one if Ghouta's Big Lie falls flat. It's likely planned ready to be implemented if needed.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. His new book is titled "Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity." http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html - Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
A few years ago I was introduced to Dr. Al Bartlett's "Arithmetic, population and energy" lecture recorded at the University of Colorado , (Boulder) U.S.A. To me, the message was so clear, engaging and logical that no-one could fail to understand it and hopefully none would fail to see the significance.
– He was saying that what may look to be ample reserves , for example, 500 years of coal still in the ground will not last anywhere near that as the demand for that resource increases with exponential population growth.
He was talking to a lecture theatre of students and I thought, "That's good. They cannot fail to understand the significance of exponential growth combined with the use of a finite resource and the implications. I read that Prof. Bartlett has given this lecture 1,600 times since 1969 http://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_population_energy.html to average audiences of 80 people. That is 128,000 who have heard his lecture live. One of the You Tube videos of this talk has had 37,720 views. Someone in that large audience over those 4 decades must have realised from them that humanity is in real trouble over finite energy resources and an ever growing population!
Today I heard that Al Bartlett has died. There will be no more lectures to students in Universities, but we can still hear the important and clear message from Prof. Bartlett by going to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9znsuCphHUU. Believe me, you will not be bored, you should be spellbound.
The economy of Australia is one of the largest capitalist economies in the world, with a GDP of US$1.57 trillion. We stand apart from the rest of the OECD with both population growth and economic growth rates roughly four times the OECD country average. Admittedly some of the other members of the OECD are going through hard economic times, but many of similar size to Australia (such as Sweden) have sound economies, high GDP per capita and far slower population and GDP growth rates.
There is no evidence supporting the argument that rapid population growth is a rational strategy for Australia. Quite the opposite.
Julianne Bell of Protectors of Public Land Victoria Inc, has approached both ALP leadership contenders on the issue of the East West Link. Albanese OPPOSES the EAST WEST LINK, questions the 'business case' and points to public transport. Despite several attempts no view has been forthcoming from Shorten.
Residents and businesses should be concerned about the wide impacts of the proposed East-West Link along the lower sections of Moonee Ponds Creek corridor in Flemington, Kensington, Parkville West and North Melbourne. See Video inside and check out the 'Port Connection' pdf from Linking Melbourne Authority.
This puts Mr Roberton way ahead of two of Labor's federal leaders, Bill Shorten and Paul Howes, who are still singing the praises of population growth.
AS I WRITE, the bulldozers and chainsaws are brutalising another superb stand of ancient forest not far from where I am just out of Orbost, south-eastern Victoria. (This article is an extract from one on the ABC. See inside for link.)
Continuing the 
UPDATE: Still no reply from Mediawatch on 11 December 2013. Inside, letter to Mediawatch. Many people who are concerned about government-engineered population growth in Australia and the commercial growth lobby's impact on democracy have noticed a clear pro-growth bias in the ABC and other mass media. The fact is that population growth is almost constantly aired as something we must have more and more of, but the many contrary arguments are not. Some of them are occasionally reported, almost always with a negative spin. It is a fact that population numbers affect every aspect of society. It is therefore vital that decisions about population numbers be made with real democratic consultation, at the level of local government upwards.
From: Michael S.
Bill Shorten’s simplistic statement on immigration population and refugees in Tuesday night’s ALP leadership debate was also open ended and "cornucopian", ignoring the important issues directly affected by high population growth: environment , quality of life , employment, resources and future sustainability. Is Bill Shorten unaware of the sequelae of continuing rapid population growth or is he ignoring them?
Further to this, Shorten either deliberately or naively melded the issues of Australia’s immigration program with the issue of refugees, seen by most of Australia, it seems as “boat people” thanks to the mainstream media who make it seem so. This is what Shorten said: 
Australia’s population annual growth of just under 400,000 people is absolutely unsustainable, according to Sustainable Population Australia (SPA). Our annual population growth, of which 60% is made up of economic immigrants, amounts to building another Adelaide every three years, with all its need for infrastructure, fuel, housing ... at a cost of about $200,000 per person.
Figures out today from the Bureau of Statistics reveal Australia’s population grew at 1.8 per cent, with net overseas migration of 238,300 people (60%) in the year ending March 31, 2013, and natural increase of 159,100 people (40%). 
The reason Alex Harris dedicated so many hours to on her Koala tracking website, built it and gave it to all freely to use, was because all koala conservation efforts to-date had failed. A clear reason for this failure was that every conservation group, research team and government agency insists on working independently of everyone else. They all have their own databases, own projects, own data. And it is all meaningless and ineffective. Governments and koala groups do not want to share with or promote a project they do not own or control, and which they cannot therefore manipulate. Alex Harris, who has dedicated her life to this work has sacrificed her health and finances to this vital community service, sold her car a year ago and has been homeless since March.
In January this year, Jonathan Moylan sent a press release on ANZ letterhead to the ASX stating that the bank will withdraw financial support from Whitehaven’s Maules Creek open cut coal mine on ethical grounds. The case has now gone to the Supreme Court and Jonathan is facing up to 10 years jail and more than $700,000 in fines under s1041E of the Corporations Act. 
Anthony Lecren, the New Caledonian Minister for Sustainable Development and the Chairman of the Pacific Regional Environment Program (SPREP)[1] addressed the Oceania 21 meeting in Phnom Penh last week on 20 September 2013. He spoke of how the Oceania 21 meeting initiative was launched, under the guidance of New Caledonia, last April. This initiative, which represents the first Sustainable Development Summit in the Pacific region, was endorsed by 14 Countries and Territories from the Pacific region. With Melanesian subregion, Micronesian subregion and Polynesian subregion, the program represents an area of 25 million square kilometers. It aims at giving an audible political platform to strengthen joint efforts undertaken in the fields of Sustainable Development and Green Economy.
The 
Today we heard the outcome of the Orrong Towers development case where Stonnington council went to the Supreme Court to try to have residents' and citizens' opinions heeded in planning what happens in their immediate environment. The Court completely failed to recognise this fundamental right to self-government. Having been present at the first hearing, I cannot imagine how this was justified and await the ratio dicendi.
Image: 107mm rocket shells frequently used by terrorists operating within and along Syria's borders. They are similar in configuration and function to those identified by the UN at sites investigated after the alleged August 21, 2013 Damascus, Syria chemical weapons attack, only smaller.
Help needed, and it won’t take but a moment of your time. Here in Macedon Ranges Shire we have a terrible council. It thinks it can operate and make decisions in isolation of and without consulting its community, while making the community pay for its decisions. Recently Macedon Ranges council took this culture a step too far. It deliberately resolved (not once, but twice) to apply for funding for a conference centre (and other large-scale development) at Hanging Rock and to not consult the community on the development or funding.
Hanging Rock does not belong to Macedon Ranges’ council officers and 5 of 9 councillors! It is an international icon; it belongs to the people of Macedon Ranges, Victoria, and Australia. Yet our council has shut everyone out. It’s making big decisions on our behalf – and on yours – without us having a say. We want our council to know this is not acceptable, and to rethink its decision.
Note that Mr Abbott's 2010 policy on population growth still amounted to wanting to have his cake and eat it, in the sense of wanting 'sustainability' but growth at the same time. He does say, however, that "Australia needs a population that our services can satisfy, our infrastructure can support, our environment can sustain, our society can embrace, and our economy can employ." Unfortunately he seems to want to leave the judgement of what this is up to the productivity commission, which seems to be entirely incompetent to assess ecological sustainability. Will Mr Abbott toe the line of his political promoter, the Murdoch Press, by keeping Australian targeted for continuing overpopulation, or will he use his big majority to carve out something more democratic? Clive Palmer, probably correctly, described Abbott as a 
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, whose pronouncements on Syria have featured on candobetter.net recently, has authored today's editorial opinion for the New York Times, calling on the US not to invade Syria. Full text reproduced here.
A Plea for Caution From Russia
A few years ago I was introduced to Dr. Al Bartlett's "Arithmetic, population and energy" lecture recorded at the University of Colorado , (Boulder) U.S.A. To me, the message was so clear, engaging and logical that no-one could fail to understand it and hopefully none would fail to see the significance.
– He was saying that what may look to be ample reserves , for example, 500 years of coal still in the ground will not last anywhere near that as the demand for that resource increases with exponential population growth.
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