(We) can do better

The Guardian has joined The New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País in signing a letter from the five papers which collaborated wi

Every Friday at Sydney Town Hall, this group continues to stand up for Julian Assange. Stirring speeches about Australia's whistleblowers and Australia's involvement in war-crimes, Albanese's failure towards Assange, our crocodile tears for the prisoners of other regimes, but not for Julian Assange.

As the embedded YouTube video below shows, yesterday, in the House of Representatives, during question time , Dr Monique Ryan, the independent member for the north-eastern Melbourne metropolition seat of Kooyong, pointed out to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that only political intervention will free Julian Assange.

There are two critical facts which, to me, don't seem to have been taken into account by many of those, both here and overseas, who are fighting for Julian Assange's freedom. Had these facts been understood and then acted upon, I believe that Julian Assange would be free today or, at worst, our prospects of freeing him in the near future would be much greater than what is now the case.

Next week, both the House and the Senate are sitting. We must demand that, this time, its gag on discussion about Julian Assange be lifted.

Dr. Kathy McInnes addresses Port Phillip Conservation Council in Victoria, Australia.

From The Orangutan Project: On Wednesday 9 November members of the Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) in East Kalimantan rescued a tiny baby orangutan from East Kutai district in East Kalimantan. They handed the infant over to the Bornean Orangutan Rescue Alliance (BORA) so she could receive urgent medical care in the BORA Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre.

After John Howard followed up on the Kennett-led destruction of state awards, with his Corporations and Work Choices legislation,[1] the floodgates were opened for mass import of cheap labour.  Before that, it simply did not pay to import cheap labour to Australia, because it was too hard for employers to escape the enforcement of industry awards at State, and, to a lesser extent, Federal level.  It was for this reason that Australia had, 'til then, escaped the widespread scourg

Summary From https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r6941.  We have only changed the layout here, to make the contents easier to read.

The Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022 summary states it:

Amends the:

Labor and Liberal MPs voted to quash a Motion by Clifford Hayes to clean up political donations in Victoria, proving their dependency on the flimsy and corrupt status quo. The Motion was defeated in the Legislative Council in May.

Sustainable Australia MP Clifford Hayes commented,

“Once again, the major parties have shown their true colours and proven they are totally dependent on Victoria’s flimsy and corrupt political donation regime.”

The following is an excerpt from the Guardian, 14/03/2022, pertaining to Premier Daniel Andrews. Andrews also suggested the “great Australian dream” of owning a home was less important to younger generations, especially given the increasing cost of property – the median price of a home in Melbourne is now $1.1m.

It is extremely frustrating and disappointing that the Government has used its numbers on the Committee to suppress this crucial inquiry into Victoria’s planning system and conveniently palm off embarrassing hearings until after the state election. It is obvious that this Government doesn’t want any verbal evidence, which would be heard by the press, presented to the inquiry in an election year because the evidence given will be a dire indictment on their leadership.

• Landmark new report calls for Australia to ‘stand on our own two feet’ and ‘chart our own course’ in foreign policy
• The preparation for war is all too evident but we must instead work urgently for peace
• IPAN National Conference and Inquiry Report Launch, 22-24th November, 2022 in Canberra

Wildlife advocacy initiative Defend the Wild has called on the Andrews Government to halt the killing of Victoria’s threatened dingoes after harrowing footage of dingoes being trapped and shot obtained by the group was revealed on the ABC’s 7.30 Report la

This article points to the utter failure of Australia's parliamentary system to deal with Julian Assange's predicament and the associated public concern.

How much is a Koala worth? $600. We wish we were making this up but this is what you can pay per Koala to offset impacting their habitat. Where does the money go? Not to the animal rescuers who are picking up the pieces.

Australia's best environmental journalist Michael Dahlstrom (Yahoo) has today written something that pretty much shocked us. Property developers can pay money and absolve themselves of guilt. That money doesn't go to saving those animals. It's an "offset"

Australia's high density buildings are not designed to mitigate the spread of a virus as they have poor air circulation, insufficient balconies, and are usually designed for people who are away all day and only home to sleep.   Our cities do not have enough open space areas for residents in high density apartments to escape to, yet we are still inundated with business and media statements extolling the benefits of population growth that can be accommodated in ever higher densitie

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and Russian warplanes shelled positions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, on November 6 in Idlib province.  Some of the terrorists killed were: Abdul Minam Muhati, Radwan Hussain Muhayer, Abu Dawoud al-Filistini, Mohammad Ali al-Kadour, Abu Hussein al-Raddad, Abu Hajat al-Chad, Amro abu Layth al-Askandarani, and Mohammed Suliaman al-Ali.

Aussie Cossack gave a stirring and original speech in defense of Assange at the Sydney Town Hall Friday night vigil for Assange on 4 November 2022.

What can we learn by contrasting Kim Dotcom's experience fighting extradition to the US with Julian Assange's? Watch this fascinating documentary and think about it.

The rest of the big five need to match Moscow’s commitment to avoiding nuclear war, the Foreign Ministry insists. Moscow is “strictly and consistently” guided by the principle that a nuclear war can never be won and should never be fought, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday, calling on other atomic powers to “demonstrate in practice” their own commitment to this.

Newly elected president of World Council of Non-Human Species addresses Humanity about the biodiversity crisis. Geoffrey the Giraffe also calls attention to plummeting number of giraffes. (Slava Abramovitch Unsplash)

If this is true, I wonder if Liz Truss was voted in, and out, just in order to do this for the British elite with oil and gas investments. Few people understand that what is happening to Europe is what happened to North Korea and Cuba when they lost access to cheap fossil fuel from the USSR.

The US is establishing Australia as a proxy in a war against China; Prime Minister Albanese must stand up to the US and say NO to nuclear-capable B-52 bombers stationed on our territory; Australia must stay out of any US plans for a war against China. As revealed by the ABC in an investigative report on 31 October 2022, the United States has been secretly planning to station six, B-52 long range bombers in the NT, each capable of carrying conventional or nuclear payloads.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs has described the US as “the most violent country in the world” and then was made to be quiet at the Athens Democracy Forum. "Sach’s argues that what matters is a country’s unique governance culture: classifying countries in political systems (“liberal democracy or not”) is oversimplifying.