Mary Drost OAM 90th birthday and handing over Planning Backlash
Mary Drost's 90th birthday party took place on 13 October 2021, while Melbourne was still in Lockdown, but you could meet in the open air if you wore masks and were within 20km of your home. I was unable to attend because it was out of my 20km range.
The reporting on this significant event has been delayed for about two months due to our need at Candobetter to drop just about everything in order to urgently upgrade and transform WeCandobetter's platform and find it a new home. During this very slow and stressful transformation, our production of articles ground to a standstill. I had Jill Quirk's quirky portrait of Mary Drost and photos of the birthday party in the park, but nowhere to publish them. Given the Lockdown limitations, Mary Drost's birthday was still quite an event.
Hi to you all, and particularly to those of you who I do not know. As you will have heard from Mary, I have agreed to take over as Convenor from Mary Drost OAM. In 2005 Mary established Planning Backlash as an umbrella organisation and coalition of community and resident action groups. For the past 16 years it has worked to protect Melbourne’s liveability, and to give residents a say in the character of their street and their neighbourhood. Mary turned 90 this year, and is handing over the reins, to better focus on two key objectives; writing her memoirs, and living to be 100, so she can go to London and demand her letter from the Queen in person! She has done a mighty job, and we and all of Melbourne are in her debt. Big shoes to fill.
I know what you did last summer: chemical clues in the marsupial’s whiskers can reveal what they ate months – and even seasons – ago.
Was COP26 a big waste of time? Population ecologist and 
George Christensen, the Australian Federal Member for the northern Queensland coastal seat of 
The final sitting of the Australian Parliament for 2021 is from Monday until Thursday next week. In the embedded video, I explain how, if it chose to, the Federal Government could have acted long ago to force the British Government to end the illegal imprisonment and torture of Julian Assange. Australians must make the government act to free Julian Assange, or else, hold it to account should it continue to fail to do so.
Richard Medhurst attended both days of the High Court Appeal by the US to obtain extradition of Assange to America, and we have linked to his video report below, and transcribed parts of it, including the question of whether Assange might do a prison sentence in Australia, if convicted - a question that has been treated very naively by the Australian media. The narrowness of the US appeal against the UK's refusal to allow them to extradite Assange must bemuse large sections of the public. It is, however, typical of the way in which the British legal system deals with political problems. Instead of examining the absurd, abusive, and illegal context of Assange's hijacking via false accusations of rape, which Sweden tried to drop but the UK justice system secretly prevailed upon them to pursue; or the thuggish and criminal manner in which the United States obtained some of its 'evidence', via illegal and invasive spying within a diplomatic embassy; or the use by the CIA of a paid witness against Assange, which witness has now totally recanted, saying he lied to stay out of prison himself; the court has confined its examination to whether or not Assange might commit suicide if he went to a United States prison.
"I am highly concerned that residents’ rights are being eroded progressively and quietly by the State government through these Planning Reforms under the veil and distraction of a COVID emergency." (Kate Hely, Mayor of Stonnington.) The Toorak Residents' Group emailed the Malvern East Group material including the comments below, which are from the Mayor of Stonnington, Kate Hely, who, with a number of Mayors, had asked for a meeting with Minister Wynne to discuss the recent Planning Scheme Amendments. Minister Wynne chose not to meet with them. He sent one of his staff instead and the Mayors were NOT pleased. It is thought that he won't meet with the MAV either and that organisation is not pleased either. Mr. Wynne's disdain for local communities is well known.
"Legal update for Gliders... Wildlife Act re-write... Protesters halt log traffic for 5 hours ... Giant tree found – 14m around ... NSW parliament unanimous against biomass burning..." Read the details inside.
From Clifford Hayes: "Next week in Parliament I am introducing a Bill to amend the Planning and Environment Act of 1987 to give this Act some environmental legitimacy. As it stands, it would be more fitting to call it the Planning and Development Act. That's why I'm fighting for change to ensure that the environment is given a high priority in all planning decisions. It aims to enhance to Act by strengthening the objectives to protect the environment.
"It is incredibly rare that the BBC ever admits that one of their reports on Douma in Syria failed to meet the Corporation's editorial standards for accuracy by reporting false claims… Blink and you’d have missed this admission, but we didn’t, and it adds to a volley of misreporting that has dogged journalism and peace in the Middle East for decades." (Ross Ashcroft, Renegade Inc.) Ross Ashcroft skilfully reviews mainstream western media attacks on journalists who tried in 2018 to properly investigate false claims that the Syrian Government launched chemical attacks on its people. He reinterviews those journalists, as he analyses the recent BBC admission of defending lies that support the western media conspiracy to justify US-NATO attempts to overthrow Assad Government. He is joined by political scientist Dr. Piers Robinson and journalist Vanessa Beeley to discuss the crumbling narrative around the alleged Douma chemical attack.
“Merely adding more people isn’t a sustainable economic strategy. We can’t pretend that high immigration comes without a cost and growth should not impose an unfair burden on those who are already here. Excessively rapid growth puts downward pressure on wages and upward pressure on housing prices, both of which have sorely stung workers and aspiring home-owners in Sydney and other parts of NSW for a decade. When you look at the numbers, it’s no surprise communities in Sydney are feeling the pressure. In 2006, annual net overseas migration to Australia increased to roughly double its pace across the preceding 25 years.” (Dominique Perrottet as Treasurer in 2018) 
During Victoria's lockdown(s), I re-read The Plague, by Albert Camus, which was a prescribed text for me and other Higher School Certificate students (Year 12) way back in 1972. The plot concerns the Algerian town of Oran, which is struck down by bubonic plague in the 1940s. The townsfolk are sealed off and isolated from the outside world, as the plague exacts an increasingly terrible and deadly toll. The book depicts their different reactions to their situation. It has immense power in getting to the heart of what things, and what values, are important in life.
The plague in Oran, and the coronavirus pandemic in Australia, have some clear differences. While the people of Oran are cut off from the world, they are not cut off from each other. They mix at restaurants and cafes and the like. Social distancing doesn’t play any noticeable role – whether this was wise from a health perspective is not spelt out.
Many Australians think that if they are accused of a crime, they have a right to a trial by jury. They are therefore shocked when they only appear before a judge, and are encouraged to plead guilty/admit to the charges, without the option of a jury. It feels like being rail-roaded. Research indicates that judges who are regularly called upon to hear criminal prosecutions without juries become 'case-hardened' and prosecution-minded, according to 
Invitation to register for the on-line Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) Conference for November 2021.
On 8–11 November 2021, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) will host the sixth annual Stockholm Security Conference (SSC 21). The theme of this year’s conference is ‘Battlefields of the future: 
Ex-UK Parliamentarian, Michael Heaver, in this video, says the UK has seen significant wage-growth in various industries, with an interruption to mass migration. He notes that Boris Johnson is currently calling for industry to stop relying on mass migration and to invest money in local industry and wages instead. Employers and Labor are, however, again calling for higher immigration. This comes in the light of the current UK crisis in petrol delivery which has seen drivers queuing for hours, even days, to fill their cars or containers, because lorry drivers are working for better wages outside that industry. Comments on the video indicate low trust that Boris Johnson will actually honour his words, however the topics covered in the video are informative and highly relevant to Australia. Michael Heaver comments, “And, rather than siding with British workers, it seems labour, as with a lot of business, their immediate knee-jerk reaction, to every issue in the labour market, is not to look at to raise wages and invest in the UK domestic workforce. It’s simply to go for cheap foreign labour. Now, this looks to be a major theme for the Conservatives going into their conference …”
The original investigative report by Michael Issakov, on Yahoo!news: 
"Biden is like Trump without the Tweets." The British are known for their "permanent opportunism." "Boris Johnson is like a fifth wheel." US State Department falsely claimed it communicated with the French. China is attempting to make the China Sea into a kind of internal sea. Australia is losing sovereignty to America. US submarines would arrive ten years later than the French ones, so urgency cannot be the reason for breach of contract. (French Minister for Foreign Affairs). 
Australian peace, environmental and other activists and organisations are opposed to the Morrison Government decision to join the trilateral security agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States (AUKUS) and the development of nuclear submarines.
On this episode of Going Underground, Afshin Rattansi speaks to Australian journalist and filmmaker John Pilger about the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban. Pilger demonstrates a really solid grip on history here, rendering almost irrelevant most other discussions of recent events in Afghanistan. He describes the US military as a killing machine and discusses why the Afghanistan war must be viewed through the lens of Western imperialism, the scale of civilian casualties, and destruction of Afghanistan by NATO countries, how the US created today’s situation by supporting Afghan jihadist forces against the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, the social progress and progressive reform lost to history with the fall of the Soviet-backed PDPA government in Afghanistan, and much more! Pilger also discusses the anniversary of the Pinochet coup in Chile and the trial of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. 
- Monumental foreign policy decisions cannot be made without any public engagement behind closed doors.
Candobetter Editor: We have been reluctant to get into any COVID-19 treatment controversies, because we figure it is hard enough dealing with a pandemic, without the additional stress of wondering about unproven treatments. Recent framing of Ivermectin as dangerous horse-medicine, however, is unfair and misleading. Ivermectin has been long been used to treat humans as well as other animals. This treatment might be controversial, but it should not be that controversial. We would make the case that, since people will take Ivermectin, whether or not it is prescribed by a doctor, it would be better for it to be prescribed and supervised by a doctor, to avoid the risk of major overdose and serious consequences. (Details on adverse consequences can be found in Dr Hansen's video: 
Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) has welcomed the latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) that show population growth has fallen to near zero (0.1 per cent) despite an apparent baby boom. Yesterday, the ABS released figures for the year ending March 31. Australia’s population grew by 35,700 or 0.14 per cent. Annual natural increase was 131,000 and net overseas migration (NOM) was -95,300. This news came not long after NSW Health announced more than 19,000 babies were born in NSW hospitals from April to June this year, a nine per cent increase on the same period last year. 
The deaths of about 3000 United States citizens and residents, however individually tragic, pale into insignificance against the hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions of deaths, resulting from continuous wars the United States has launched, using 9-11 as a pretext. The 2021 western-media commemoration hype, solely deploring the 2001 New York events, seems obscenely disproportionate, when considering the far greater human costs in ongoing economic, ecological, and political destruction, and looting of resources, in Central Asia and the Middle East, set in motion by a purported hunt for Osama-bin-Laden. 
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