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If you want follow some conversation on this one Katie cross to The Conversation: The Trans-Pacific Partnership poses a grave threat to sustainable development (12/11/15) ... under Environment + Energy

I just paused for a few seconds listening to the "Last Post" at 11.00 a.m for Remembrance Day. i couldn't help thinking about the soldiers of WW 2, my parents' generation, who endured torture enslavement, injuries and death to defend "Australia" and now look at what the next generation and the one after have done to follow up. They have sold us out Our control over our destinies is gone along with our rights to protect our environment all with the signing of this TPP.

The greatest pressure on Council budgets is population growth. They are expected to keep providing more and more services, expand their spending, and keep blowing out their budgets.

Councils do not have the legislative powers to change laws, so State governments dump Councils with the costs of population growth, and limited powers to prevent it. So much money can be sunk into Planning Objections, to be over-ruled by VCAT and property developers, that Councils must end up reluctant to represent the rate-payers.
Dis-economies of scale end up blowing out Council costs.

Governments are reluctant to increase charges and taxes, but Councils just keep increasing rates with impunity, with no reviews.
Population growth in Australia is more a consequence of government immigration policy than what's going on in the country's bedrooms.

While our attention is diverted by "boat people" and the refugee crisis, the bulk of our population growth is arriving on our front door!
Oliver Hartwich, and a colleague from the Centre for Independent Studies, sent a survey to all 560 Australian local governments (mayors and senior executives) to ask how they responded to population growth and whether their revenues were adequate. They received 121 responses, covering a good range of metropolitan and regional councils, large and small.

More than half of respondents said they had put up their rates “to cope with population growth”. One third said explicitly that population growth “damaged their bottom line”, which is not what should happen when more potential taxpayers arrive. Indeed, economies of scale in administration might even warrant lower taxes for existing ratepayers.
VICTORIANS will be stung with an average rates rise of $67 in 2015-16. Residents of Murrindindi in the state’s northeast growth corridor will pay the highest rise of $145 on average.

According to Ian Lowe, "What seems a modest rate of population increase, well below what has been recently experienced in south-east Queensland, actually doubles the cost to the community of providing infrastructure. The population increase only adds 2% to the local council’s rate income and the state government’s tax receipts, so it is obvious why we are fighting a losing battle to keep pace with the needs of the growing population. Thurow concluded that any nation whose population increases at a rate of more than 2% will probably go backwards economically".

Why We Need to Stabilise Our Population (June 2010) by Ian Lowe | Issues Magazine

The "welcome culture" is a German word not born of custom but created to establish one in Germany. It was coined by politicians a few years ago. It was originally meant to be the siren call that would attract people from other countries to come to Germany and compensate for a big shortage of skilled workers. These days the term is used to encourage help for the hundreds of thousands of refugees coming to Germany. As the Germans share their bread and resources with the refugees, Angela Merkel made clear in her speech that she won’t accept Italy, Greece or Hungary not pulling their weight and opening their borders. According to the UN’s refugee agency, almost 1.8 million have gone to Turkey, more than 600,000 to Jordan and 1 million to Lebanon – a country whose population is just 4 million. While Turkey has been very generous in providing immediate care for the large inflow of refugees, it now faces the challenge that the overwhelming majority of refugees no longer live in camps but rather in the wider Turkish society. Several UN and other international agencies recommend that more countries open themselves to immigration. The OECD's chief economist, Ignazio Visco, said in mid-July 2000 that "immigration confers small net gains to the host country." In reality the flow is uncontrolled, uncounted, and at least seven times as large — with no end in sight. Three thousand are arriving every day — on the island of Lesbos alone — so the numbers are staggering. Almost all asylum seekers prefer to go to Western European nations such as Germany, where wages are high and public support is generous. In a borderless Europe, authorities will face challenges in keeping refugees in the country to which they are assigned. Yet while Europe struggles to find a solution to the millions asylum seekers making perilous journeys there, Saudi Arabia – less than 2,032.5 km from Syria and with resources at its disposal – has been largely unresponsive to the crisis. According to the UNHCR there are around 500,000 Syrians living in Saudi Arabia, but they are not classified as asylum seekers, and it is not known when they arrived in the affluent country. No Gulf country has signed the U.N. Convention on Refugees, an accord standardizing the level of treatment of people fleeing to new countries. Meanwhile, Germany announced that it will bring border controls back into action Sunday and will temporarily leave the Schengen system, claiming it can not longer cope with the overwhelming amount of asylum seekers crossing the border from Austria. The UN has given refugees are great sense of entitlement to access Europe, and the West, and they are obliged to accept the human avalanche. While nominally "Christian" countries struggle, with this heavy obligation, the Arab States are privileged, and are able to preserve their living standards and their wealth. "Ageing countries" exist because of declining birth rates. They are taking on their right to secure a sustainable population size, and their living standards. It doesn't meant they have a moral obligation to take on more asylum seekers!

I did not mean to imply that townhouses are the domain of migrants. My argument is that other cultures, based on my observation, are less perturbed by denser living arrangements. This is evidenced by living standards overseas, and the demographics of people in Australia who show political concern about crowding. This is also based on discussion at my very diverse workplace, where there is a clear division. Why this is so I wont speculate on. I also note fewer younger people are worried, so there is a generational aspect as well, though young people today fight for nothing unless explicitely authorised and told to anyway.

Yes Megan, this is what I think is happening. Our "standard of living", or state of civilisation is being liquidated for profit and power. Kind of like inheriting a house, then tearing it apart to make some money. But what is happening, is the system is geared so a few beneficiaries benefit from the liquidation and everyone else pays. Housing is one of the big ways it is done, but not the only. We are in the "deconstruction" phase, where we pull apart what others have built with blood, sweat and tears. Almost all of it is done by people who have no right or mandate to do so. You can also see it with respect to vital freedoms, culture, civic rights, they are all being deconstructed. Listen to the way people talk about migration. It often invokes ideas of sacrifice, dealing with unwanted change, etc. In the past, migration was considered to be only for our benefit. Now, it is used to create laws to limit freedom and lower living standards due to some obligation. So essentially, the future standard of living for the young and future generations is being quite literally taken from then, for profit today. Their space is being torn apart and divided, and the economic system is altered to cater for this. The politicians struggle to understand why they cant balance the budget, or why there is a constant state of economic crisis... It also therefore indicates it is NOT just a planning issue, as some seem to suggest. The planning issues exist because the new normal created by the elite permits it, recommends it, and considers it factually sound. We will see more and more "extreme" groups emerge, like Reclaim and the newly minted ALA, because of this. There is another factor though, many will simple leave. Australia may suffer a brain drain as people will find better opportunities elsewhere. I am considering this seriously myself.

What you will tolerate is relative to what you started with, what you are used to and what your peers have. Any step up will be welcome, I would imagine if one's main reason for re-locaing is economic. (For some refugees , re-locating for other than economic reasons could conceivably be or have been actually a step down in economic and living circumstances compared with what they had originally.) So with high economic migration to Australia it is a case of someone's gain being at the expense of the incumbent population. Those who live in Australia especially in the bigger cities see a constant decline in their lived environment. Eventually it will all seem normal and no-one will remember the way it was in the year 2000 or even in 2015. There will be a new "normal" with far more concrete , far less green, far less space, far fewer trees, hardly any native animals or birds in the urban and suburban environment. What people hate is to have their well- being, their amenity, their wealth stripped from them. The pain will go away when there is no-one left who remembers and if change is slow enough not be in -your -face every day.

The study, on the housing crisis in Sydney and Melbourne, which was conducted by founding director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University Dr Bob Birrell and former Deloitte Analytics partner David McCloskey, estimates that Sydney and Melbourne will receive around half of the 240,000 people expected to migrate to Australia every year until 2022, which will require Sydney to build another 308,000 dwellings and Melbourne another 355,000, if they are to accommodate both overseas migrants and a growing local population. The authors note that although current urban policy is aimed at housing a growing population, based largely on immigration levels. It's a deliberate policy, based on great favoritism for the housing industry, and real estate. The report notes the strain that an increasing number of older people living alone in detached houses will have on the market, especially as data shows that the share of older households living in detached dwellings does not start to decline significantly until people reach 75 years of age. It's an admission that our living standards won't be maintained, but downgraded. It's a cruel way of dividing the community against older people who are "hogging" the market and stalling "progress". The inner and middle suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne, as of 2011, has 50 to 60 per cent of the separate housing stock was occupied by older households… They are meant to shove-off and allow young people to move in, by building apartments and towers. The divisive policy will create tension and pressure on the community, but the fact that more than half of the new home occupiers will be from overseas will be ignored. It's all about a stagnant, non-productive shallow economy, addicted to construction and housing, and little diversity!

The study as outlined in a recent article in The Conversation compares the recent pattern of dwelling approvals by housing type in Sydney and Melbourne and concludes 'that there are too few separate houses being approved in both cities and too many apartments, especially in Melbourne.'

This backs-up what I have been saying at workshops for the past several months; that the current high-density apartment building boom in Sydney and Melbourne will have no meaningful impact upon slowing urban sprawl in the medium to long-term. This is because more than 90 percent of new apartment approvals in Melbourne 'are predominantly tiny 60 square metre or smaller dwellings with no access to protected outdoor space' and 'are totally unsuitable for raising a family'. Furthermore they are tiny because 'investors prefer to buy at prices below $600,000'.

This raises two important points. The first is that we need to be clear that the vast majority of Public Transport Orientated Development (TOD) in Melbourne and Sydney is aimed at property investors and secondly that it would likely cost more than 600,000 dollars to purchase a unit that is even remotely suitable for raising a family. This means that it is highly unlikely that the people who are currently forced to live in the car dependent outer suburbs could ever afford to live in the TOD that is being built today.

The author of the article calls for a sharp increase in detached dwellings to make up the shortfall but doesn't specify how this can be achieved without increasing development on the urban fringe. He also doesn't question the high rate of population growth that is greatly exacerbating the problem.

Interestingly he does say that migrants may eventually end up by-passing Australia altogether and that those who choose to stay will have to make adjustments to their lifestyle such as delaying starting a family. This feeds into another point that I often raise; that if you have a population policy based upon raising GDP and stimulating the property market, the town planning outcome is such that it becomes increasingly more difficult for new migrants to feel part of a community. This has a profoundly negative impact upon refugees and other people who come here in order to feel part of meaningful and supportive society.

Fortunately the issue of population is discussed in the comments section which is well worth a read.

The root of Sydney and Melbourne’s housing crisis: we’re building the wrong thing (2/11/15) | The Conversation

"Sustainable" is such a generic, almost meaningless word now, and a victim of over-use. The word is used to justify what's actually not sustainable, as an oxymoron. Why leave out the word "population" from the Party's name? It's too general, and too bland. The Party should not be coy in addressing population growth as the "everything" issue. Perhaps Better, not Bigger would have been a better name for the Party, considering it's agenda of addressing the social-economic dystopia of BIG! The addiction cycle of population growth won't be stopped with soft-footing, and edging around the topic. So much of our economy is addicted to housing, construction and real estate. It means keeping the growth machine rolling, to keep up the artificial demand for housing. We've been so conditioned to thinking anything about "population" and "immigration" is race-based, and thus shunned - not debated. The immigration issue is dominated by the debate on asylum seekers, and the bulk of our growth is not discussed. The media treat population growth as an inevitable truth, one that has to be planned for! There's no place for being shy, or reluctant to mention the P word for population in this political agenda!

I believe that policies and planning need to be primarily about and considerate of the people living in a given place right now, today and their children rather than about people who may come to the country from overseas tomorrow or any time in the future. Whether urban density is increased by covering more of the soil with dwellings or making buildings higher to fit in more people, densification must make it increasingly difficult to practice permaculture in our cities. As i understand it, permaculture requires soil, water and sun. The closer people in their dwellings are squeezed together the less possibility there is to grow anything. Your neighbour's 2nd storey extension on your north boundary will most likely be be the end of your plans to grow corn and green vegetables. The only possibility I can think of to mitigate something as devastating as lost sunlight, blocked by a high building is a system of mirrors but ultimately the mirrors will, themselves block out sunlight. The effects of blocked sunlight extend to the generation of electricity with solar panels installed on the roof of your house. Once you get a 3 storey block of apartments next door, the sunlight will be blocked from the panels on the roof of your single storey house. In any multi storey building it is only the top floor that actually has a roof on which to put solar panels. I conclude that population growth needs to be slowed right down with a major cut to non-refugee migration (by far the largest part of Australia's intake from overseas) in order for planning for sustainability to have any hope of making sense and achieving its goals.

Year after year, Australia has twice as many births as deaths. Latest ABS figures claim 298,400 to 155,500, a ratio of 1.92. Childless-by-choice, why then, are my taxes strewn over the breeders to increase the birth rate still more? Treasurer Morrison, don't tinker with the shonky 'Family Tax Benefit A and B". Abolish them completely. Vote bribes in exchange for middle-class tax churn. Stop the whinging by the bleeding hearts industry: women who are too lazy or too stupid to use birth control deserve to be miserable. None of the big name self righteous charities spend a cent here on family planning. Local government can (and did) fund baby health centres. States can fund schools. Federal can fund universities and TAFEs. Double the number of children and child care costs twice as much. Schools cost twice as much. Hospitals cost twice as much, Disability NDIS cost twice as much. Did our entire political class fail state school arithmetic?

This story is very touching. It gives me hope for all the critters out there and reminds me why I remain an unofficial wildlife carer. If the powers that be knew what animals I have, and have had, pass through my hands, they would blow a gasket! This way, people can always drop in with the sick and injured and know that they will be loved and cared for to the absolute best of my abilities...and no-one will come take them and kill them simply because they no longer fit in!

Even some of the exporters themselves are complaining about live export cruelty. After evidence of sledgehammers being used in Vietnam to kill cattle, live export industry bosses finally recognised in March 2015 that there was a serious problem in Vietnam. They responded with a “crisis meeting” and a “6 point plan”. The fact that 5 out of 6 points in the industry’s action plan address things the industry should already be doing reveals just how dire the situation in Vietnam was. Sending live animals to under-developed third world countries inevitably means that there's going to be little control over care and slaughter of animals. Animals Australia says it has lodged three more legal complaints relating to the video footage, concerning widespread ESCAS breaches during the recent Eid al Adha festival, involving thousands of sheep in Kuwait, Oman and the UAE. Already Saudi Arabia is under fire for their massive breaches of human rights. How can animals be protected with any "animal rights"? How can the ESCAS system be controlled, from Australia, once the animals are in the Middle East? If the rules were being properly enforced then re-offending export companies would be facing criminal charges by now. “The situation in Kuwait during the Festival of Sacrifice was particularly egregious as Animals Australia had warned the Australian government eight weeks earlier that export laws were still being breached there, with hundreds of sheep facing brutal slaughter,” said Lynn While, chief investigator for Animals Australia. Rather than focusing on addressing breaches of regulations, exporters were allowed to send three more shiploads of sheep to Kuwait and those hundreds turned to thousands of animals brutalised during the Festival of Sacrifice - of Festival of Suffering. Animals Australia’s investigators witnessed terrified sheep being dragged through the streets and stuffed in car boots in suffocating 48°C heat, in the three Middle East markets. Wellard chief executive officer Mauro Balzarini said ESCAS compliance costs importers hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost sales and similar amounts in extra staff and costs, for exporters. The system is broken, but one reason only, why export laws are being ignored and that is because there are no meaningful consequences for breaking them! There's unconditional support for the live export industry, from Barnaby Joyce and our government, because the industry has become "too important" to lose! Thank God for Animals Australia. How can anyone watch this footage and continue to support this vile trade. Is this industry and government incapable of compassion? Continual claims that ESCAS works, yet they tell that to the 10,000 sheep that were brutalised. There should be no compromises, or agreements. The live export trade must end!

"President of the Czech Republic (2003-20130 says there is no 'human right' to migration and that civic rights are more important than human rights." What's given migrants "rights" is the UN and their one world agenda. What's primarily important is the welfare and security of the host nations, not the UN agenda of spreading people over Europe. The UN should be at the fore-front in ensuring world peace and ending foreign interventions and disturbances. The UN should be a the forefront in assuring that each government provide water, food, health care, sanitation and education for their population, and maintain sustainable population sizes. Exporting people spread problems, and resentments. What's the UN done to protect Syria from intervention, and assure good government? They simply endorse the evacuation of the people into Europe, and expect the countries to comply? The human "right" to migrate has given the evacuees a massive sense of entitlement to resources and welfare at the cost of existing citizens.

Page 31 of today's Australian paper newspaper Oct 15 reports the following ....... MOGULS JOIN THE RUSH TO SELL Greg Brown SITES Rich listers Kerry Stokes and Peter Scanlon have joined the list of cashed up private investors who have put property on the block to capitalise on the sweltering prices on offer. Mr Scanlon's investment house Hume Partners has appointed CBRE Melbourne City Sales to market four commercial properties as one 7896 sq.m site. Known as the Spencer Portfolio, the West Melbourne site covers the properties at 83-113 Batman Street, 371 Spencer Street, 355 Spencer Street and 102 Jeffcott Street. The Batman Street part of the site already has approval for 522 apartments. It is expected to entice Chinese parties looking for sites in West Melbourne. CBRE's Mark Wizel said it was one of the largest sites offered in Melbourne this year, while Josh Rutman said demand was hot for sites in West Melbourne. Meanwhile in Perth, Mr Stokes' Seven Group Holdings ..................etc etc.

The assumption is that the terms "racist" or "xenophobia" are supposed to be descriptive of a reality. In a few cases, inadvertently, it is. But the terms are used because they work. They use terms like this precisely because it gives a political one up when used. It works because the accused goes into a defensive posture and the West has a very strong reaction to it. People complain about "racist" being overused, but they adjust rhetoric and moral stances and allegiences to avoid the term, which validates the power of the term, which encourages more use. Its only overused because people consistently and reliably react in a very predictable manner. Why would they drop a political weapon that works so well? The pro FTA lobby use it only because they can rely on the defensive reaction it will elicit. So in this sense it is not overused, any more than the guns of the enemy firing at you are not overused as long as you keep going into retreat. The only solution is to ignore and maintain an offensive stance.

The UN are part of the problem. Instead of peace keeping, and negotiations to protect peoples being involved in wars and conflicts, they see their one way solution as evacuating people, and spreading them out across Europe and the West.

The UN is launching "The 2030 Agenda," hailed as the "new universal agenda" for humanity. The New World Order is not a conspiracy theory, it is very real, an agenda that has been acknowledged openly for decades, yet still people wave it away as if it is a "fringe" belief.

The United Nations is now in the process of defining Sustainable Development Goals as part a new sustainable development agenda that must finish the job and leave no one behind. This agenda, to be launched at the Sustainable Development Summit in September 2015, is currently being discussed at the UN General Assembly, where Member States and civil society are making contributions to the agenda.

For example, one of the goals of the sustainable development crowd is to push the human population into giant “megacities” and to allow nature to recapture much of what has already been settled by humanity.

Towards a sustainable development agenda | United Nations

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the 70 winners of the United Nations-sponsored Many Languages, One World contest who wrote “inspired” essays in languages not their own about a new sustainable development path that will lead to an end to poverty and a life of dignity for all.

"Sustainable development" is itself an oxymoron. Not all countries can live like those in the first world as there aren't enough resources. It's an illusion. The population of Africa is said to double by mid century, so if the migrant crisis continues, there will be a homogenized mass of humanity, with poverty and overpopulation spread world-wide.

After World War 2, the global population was 2.6 billion. Now, the overflow is due to 7.3 billion and rising by 80,000 each year! The UN think their "sustainable" goals can be reached, without addressing overpopulation? The UN Refugee Convention was formulated at a different time, and it outdated.

Unless we change the way we develop our cities, particularly Melbourne, Sydney and Perth, we are going to turn one of the most liveable nations into a gridlocked, polluted urban mess, with millions of people blocked from opportunity in under-serviced and isolated sprawl as our population surges. And surge it will. A high-level report to the government, released today, indicates the extent to which the legendary "lucky country" is, well, at risk of blowing its luck. How the 'lucky country' is blowing its luck (7/10/15) | The Age The comprehensive study into how to create smarter, more modern cities is by the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA), http://www.acola.org.au/index.php/projects/securing-australia-s-future/8.... Australia’s population is set to reach 37 million by 2050, which will almost double the number of people in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. The report finds that city planning needs to take a three-pronged strategic approach, including finding ways to reduce or avoid travel, shifting to more environmentally friendly transport and improving the energy efficiency of transport. The report also says urban areas need to change from having a dense CBD with sprawling suburbs to polycentric cities with “nodes” which will bring people closer to places of work and recreation. The full report is here: Delivering Sustainable Urban Mobility (pdf - 6.3M Oct 2015) The report says that against the background of poor transport and reliance on fossil fuels, a business-as-usual approach will not work. As the Australian population continues to increase—and as that population growth is further concentrated in Australia’s major cities—so the social inequities, environmental pressures and economic consequences will intensify. Melbourne and Sydney are expected to accommodate populations of more than 7 million people each in this century. Air and noise pollution are causes of ill-health while traffic accidents cause death and disability. By 2050, the Australian population is expected to reach 37 million, which will almost double the number of people in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth. The capacity of these areas to withstand the pressures of population expansion and limited modes of mobility provision has finite limits. Nothing is said about the driver of this massive and implosive growth - our full throttle immigration rates! It's been more than 40 years since the think tank Club of Rome published Limits to Growth. Despite high educational standards, our economists and governments leaders are still addicted to "growth"! It's alluring, and it's the easy way to keep up our GDP and demand for consumables, and housing demands. Considering that Victoria has the lowest fertility levels, and the highest rates of growth, this manufactured population growth is driven by unsustainable levels of immigration - that's silently been increased numerous times since the Howard era! (60% of our population growth is due to immigration). The costs of growth are compounding, and retro-fitting our city is becoming increasingly expensive. We need to redefine what we are aiming for, with our "economic growth" model. It's more than redefining how we "develop our cities"! Actually Australia is more than ever living up to the original source of the "lucky country" saying: "a lucky country run by second-rate people who share its luck". The bucket is full. If the old concept was still true and our new record migration numbers, but we see everything now worsening.

The family were not given refugee status by the UN. They were already safe in Turkey. The idea of being a refugee is that by default, they can't live in safely in their own country. It's not to find the elusive "better life". The oil-rich Arab nations take no refugees, even though the great majority from Syria are Muslim.

The above article asks the question, "Are Australians selling out" specifically to the Chinese ? I guess we need to look at our Government which is charged with looking after the interests of Australian citizens FIRST. Many countries have laws to ensure ownership of property and land remains in the hands of their citizens, thus preventing the take over of their country by cash heavy internationals. Australia, on the other hand, has no such legislation, allegedly our M.P.'s are supposed to oversee the sale of properties to such buyers and make a decision THEMSELVES, whether the exchange is in the interests of Australians, and surprise, surprise, in the majority of cases it is alleged that it is. Now the question is, If it IS in the interest of Australians, why is there this back lash from the electorate against such sales ?

Subject was: Trade deficit widens - Ed

Australia's trade balance has stayed in the red with a worse-than-expected deficit of $3.1 billion in August, following a revised deficit in July of $2.8 billion.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics said exports were flat, while imports rose one per cent.

Read more: Trade balance deficit widens to $3.1b in August (6/10/15) | SMH - BusinessDay

The typical forecast in a Reuters survey was for a deficit of $2.25 billion, in April, which would have already been almost twice the previous month's trade shortfall.

So, despite all the population growth, any real growth has flattened. We are importing more than what we're exporting. The trade is largely going one way. Houses, or people, are not export commodities, or exportable produce!

At least there's no pandering to Left sentimentality with Putin, or Russia. Iran, Russia are backing Syria in its battle against Takfiri terrorists and Western attempts to establish their dominance over the Arab country. Russian parliament gave a formal consent to President Vladimir Putin to use the country’s military in Syria to fight terrorism at a request from the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Their campaign has dislodged ISIL and al-Qaeda associated terrorist brigades. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said Russia's airstrikes against targets in Syria are vital for stability in the Middle East. Moscow is simply doing what we in the West just had no guts to do. The West does not want to fight because the Syrian opposition is deeply fragmented. In Putin's version of Syrian history, as laid out in his United Nations speech on Monday, the Islamic State was "forged as a tool against undesirable secular regimes" and propelled by foreign military support for Syrian rebels. In other words, Western nations helped create the Islamic State by rejecting Assad. "We should finally acknowledge that no one but President Assad's armed forces and Kurdish militias are truly fighting the Islamic State and other terrorist organizations in Syria," Putin told the U.N. General Assembly.

What is happening now in Syria is in no doubts a "Game Changer", there is increased talk about 4 + 1 (Syria, Russia, Iran, Iraq and Hezb Allah), there is also some talks about ground's development. It may be indication that the tide is turning and Obama, Erdogan, Holland, Cameron and their stooges in the region are squealing!
 
Please see below, former Canadian PM statement

Signs that international tide is turning for Syria

http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/jean-chretien-says-canada-should-welcome-putins-help-in-syria/
 
Jean Chretien says Canada should welcome Putin’s help in Syria‘If Putin wants to help he should be welcomed,’ says former Liberal prime minister

                       

VANCOUVER – Canada should welcome Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offers to help fight the Islamic State in Syria, says Jean Chretien.
The former Liberal prime minister said Putin’s involvement in the Middle Eastern conflict may spark controversy but that the West would do well to accept the support.
“If Putin wants to help he should be welcomed,” said Chretien, who was in Vancouver on Thursday to lend his star power to the Liberal party’s British Columbia campaign.
“I met Putin. He’s a tough guy. He’s clear minded. But to run Russia you cannot be a pussycat. They play hockey very rough in the corners.”
 
Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been strident in his criticism of Putin, who is an ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Harper has said Putin’s moves to build up equipment and troops in Syria in an apparent bid to buttress the Assad regime will likely inflame an already volatile civil war.
Canada is part of a United States-led coalition that is bombing Islamic State military positions within Syria.
Tensions have escalated between the United States and Russia over Russian airstrikes that appear to strengthen Assad’s troops rather than hit Islamic State fighters.
The U.S. has raised concerns over how the two countries will avoid inadvertently firing on each other. Moscow has urged Washington to avoid “unintended incidents” by restarting direct military dialogue, which President Barack Obama suspended in the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
There is concern over the prospect of the U.S. and its former Cold War enemy falling into a conflict if Russian warplanes hit moderate Syrian rebels trained and equipped by the U.S., with promises of American air support in the event of an attack.
But Obama’s recent comments to the United Nations that he would be willing to work with Russia and Iran to end the conflict in Syria may force Canada to reconsider its relationship to Russia.
Harper’s last interaction with Putin was a terse handshake at the G20 summit in 2014, when the Canadian prime minister bluntly told his Russian counterpart to “get out” of Ukraine.
Last month, Chretien penned a blistering open letter criticizing Harper’s foreign policy and accusing the Tory leader of shredding Canada’s reputation as a compassionate, progressive, peace-seeking country.
In a snub to the Conservative leader, Chretien met with Putin at one of his palaces in Moscow earlier this year. Harper has avoided contact with the Russian president in the wake of both the unrest in Ukraine, as well as the annexation of Crimea.
Speaking from the campaign trail, New Democrat Leader Tom Mulcair said an NDP government would discontinue the bombing campaign in Syria and bring home the special forces operators responsible for training Kurdish fighters on the ground.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has said the party would also pull the country’s CF-18 fighter jets out of the air war, but would maintain and possibly expand the training mission.

I wonder how often the conversation in the cartoon comes up over morning tea. They must have moments of doubt. I was talking to someone today about the situation in Syria. He said that Assad had killed 250,000 people and that he was pretending to fight ISIS but wasn’t. I asked how he knew this and he said he had read it in The Age and possibly also in the Herald Sun.

Putin is being polite and restrained when he says that the West has made an enormous mistake by not cooperating with the Syrian president in facing ISIS! What he really means, but too diplomatic to say it, is that the whole cause of ISIS is the US and allies! The sectarian terror group won’t be defeated by the western states that incubated it in the first place. There are reports that British MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime. US, British and other western forces have been back in Iraq, supposedly in the cause of destroying the terror group IS. A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US and its allies weren't only supporting and arming an opposition, they were preparing the creation of some sort of "Islamic state". More than half of the 23 million Syrian population have fled their homes, of which four million are refugees outside Syria. There is a growing exodus from Iraq, with three million people displaced. The Syrian Kurdish authorities are worried about whole districts becoming deserted as their inhabitants leave for the EU. Western powers such as the US, UK and France, along with regional allies such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, grossly miscalculated in 2011, believing that President Bashar al-Assad would fall as swiftly as Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. The fact that the United States has a long and torrid history of backing terrorist groups will surprise only those who watch the news and ignore history. Depending on whether a particular Al Qaeda terrorist group in a given region furthers American interests or not, the U.S. State Department either funds or aggressively targets that terrorist group. ISIS is not merely an instrument of terror used by America to topple the Syrian government; it is also used to put pressure on Iran. Mr. Putin on Monday's at the UN talked about mounting a broad effort to support Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, as the best bulwark against the spread of the Islamic State and other radical groups. Obama insists that there's no future for President Assad in Syria. Mr. Obama also talked about a "managed transition" in Syria, in which Mr. Assad would be gradually eased out of power. Putin is right. We've seen this before – brutal dictator removed by the West, only to create a power vacuum that will inevitably be filled by Islamic extremists. Putin's approach appears far more realistic and potentially successful than any "get-rid-of-Assad" ASAP agenda.

Australia Point Piper, Australia - 27 September 2015 Political activists concerned with plans to resettle 12,000 Syrian refugees in Australia faced police while delivering a petition to the house of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in Point Piper, Sydney on September 27, 2015. Seven members of the right-wing Party For Freedom called on the PM to resettle the refugees, many of which are expected to be Muslim, in his affluent electorate of Wentworth and surrounding areas. Their petition follow suggestions that in line with the current humanitarian resettlement model, Sydney may take up to 7,000 of the 12,000 refugees, with the majority housed in Fairfield and Liverpool in Sydney's west. Party For Freedom leader Nick Folkes told Newzulu that despite asking "probably 150" people in the area, the petition only attracted one signature. http://www.newzulu.com.au/en/photos/australia/2015-09-27/12442/sydney-pm-urged-to-resettle-muslim-refugees-in.html#f=0/134541

Letter writers bemoan the buying up of real estate by cashed-up foreign interests to the exclusion of locals, and the proliferation of high-density dwellings or "monuments to mammon". What will they make of a $30billion-plus Chinese-backed plan for a hi-tech "city" of 80,000 residents in the outer west? Residents are reportedly to be sourced from "tapping into soaring demand from China for education in Australia". The "Australian Education City" is to house residents in towers of up to 50 storeys. Makes the buying up of residential properties seem like small biccies. Deborah Morrison, Malvern East Read more: Are we selling out? (27/9/15) | The Age | Letters Follow us: @theage on Twitter | theageAustralia on Facebook

I can understand where you're coming from Will. I, too, was born in Melbourne at St.George's Hospital in Kew almost 66 years ago. Today Melbourne is just another bloated, ugly city as you say overpopulated, overdeveloped and overblown. In the 1950s, 60s and 70s as Kelvin Thompson repeatedly says Melbourne was a vibrant place to be. Its people were amenable, employment aplenty, education and health services were adequate, transport public and private catered for our needs with plenty of sporting, recreational and artistic activities to keep us occupied in our leisure hours. What happened? I once did a piece on the achievements of Sir Henry Bolte, some good some not so good depending on your viewpoint. The boy from Ballarat was a ruthless but shrewd politician and Premier, a true liberal unlike today's conservatives, Bolte understood the needs of both urban and non-urban Victorians. He was able to attract foreign investment for vital infrastructure projects that were vital for Melbourne and Victoria. Henry's infrastructure achievements were many and varied, from dams to freeways, the city loop and grade separations, both the West Gate Bridge and Tullamarine Airport, universities and hospitals, established National Parks and instigated the Soil Conservation Authority and promoted the 0.05 bac and seat belt legislation for motorists. His successor Dicky Hamer picked up on these initiatives, but slowly the initiatives dried up until the early 1990s when the wheels fell off completely as we got Jeffed! The beginning of the neoliberal malaise was the beginning of the end for Melbourne. Neoliberal dogma predicated that economic rationalism must prevail and that everybody and everything must bow down to market forces. This led to schools and hospitals closing, council amalgamations, services discontinued, utilities privatised and rising unemployment. We were advised that the service industries would cater for employment opportunities, what we were not told is that these jobs wouldn't pay as much as our old jobs. Those still in jobs went from central enterprise agreements to having to bargain for individual agreements which caused a drop in morale in the work place as those bargained best got more money that those who couldn't. Jeff got Jeffed when the bastards from the bush, who were treated like second class citizens, said enough was enough. The incoming Labour government were beholden to the same neoliberal ideals as Jeff and as an answer to the decline in manufacturing they promoted population growth as the panacea. Population growth meant jobs for the construction industry while the immigrants could work in the service industries. By this time infrastructure construction had slowed to a walk and most of that built was an after thought. Some of the infrastructure that was constructed was whimsical to say the least none more so than the Desalination Plant at Wonthaggi. The plant, completed in 2012, hasn't produced a drop of water at the astronomical cost of $20 billion!! It's projects like this one that have shanghaied infrastructure development in Melbourne. Talking about putting the cart before the horse! The editorial in last Thursday's Age blamed Victorian governments past and present for not building enough roads and railways for Melbourne's chronic overpopulation problem. This is sheer hypocrisy!! Fairfax Media owner of the Age is a proponent of a Big Australia with interests in the housing industry. Until we can get some vision back into government at both state and federal level Melbourne will remain a second or third rate city.

Letter to Tony Jones re Lateline (25 Sept 2015) interview with Robert Fisk and Indyk

Dear Tony,

I am a spokesperson for AMRIS - Australians for Reconciliation in Syria. Just before Australia declared de facto war on Syria, AMRIS put out a media release, requesting that we work with the Syrian Army and government to combat ISIS, Jabhat al Nusra and all the other terrorist groups in Syria. Evidently now this means also working with Russia and Iran.

But the government, like the US, is not actually fair dinkum about fighting IS, as pointed out by Robert Fisk, and as you pointed out to Indyk last night. Not only that, the very areas that Bishop said we would be bombing, in the NE of Syria, on the grounds that the Syrian 'regime' was 'unwilling or unable' to stop IS terrorists there, is currently the scene of many battles between IS and the Syrian army, for instance in Hasakah where the SAA is working with the YPG. ( RT's Lizzie Phelan did a good report on this battle from Hasakah, shown on SBS weekly RT report on Monday night).

We appreciate very much that you interviewed Robert Fisk, who has hardly been supportive of Syria or Assad in the past - making his testimony from the front so much more valuable - , and that you for having interviewed Dr Bouthaina Shaaban.

I do however have some questions on why you would think to interview this man Indyk, chief propagandist for Israel and US neo-con policy, who told some unbelievable lies in the most believable fashion. They were not lies that he could possibly believe, given the clear policy of the Brookings on 'remaking the middle east' so recently expressed by Michael O'Hanlon here:

Deconstructing Syria - towards a regionalized strategy for a confederal country (PDF - 374K, June 2015) by Michael O'Hanlon | Brookings Institute

To understand the extent of America's deception on Syria, this article by Brandon Martinez gives an excellent overview, for instance on the 10,000 fighters trained by the CIA in Jordan over the last two years ( the 'New Syria army is just a farago..), as well as on the actual and underlying intent of the US for regime change in Syria.:

US-Israeli Imperialists Plot Downfall of Syria and Iran (11/7/15) | Global Research

Martin Indyk's 'view' that Russia and Iran are 'backing a losing horse' is just a sham; the fact is that Russia has the US snookered over Syria, and is doing what any reasonable law-abiding world citizen would do - protecting a democratically elected government from a foreign-backed insurrection. It is unfortunately now Australia that is backing a losing horse, and about time our leaders and media woke up to it.

Our media release can be viewed on the AMRIS website.

I would much appreciate a response from you by email, at least to acknowledge you have read this.

I also look forward to more interesting interviews with people who can give us the other side of the story - the Syrian side.

many thanks, David.

If as part of a jubilee, money is put into an account with the requirement you pay debt, what happens if you dont have debt and are not a creditor, aside from your money in the bank? Would this encourage people to not pay debt? Not demand payment as you will be paid anywhere? wont this make asset bubbles worse because they are the result of debt without strict repayment requirements? It would seem to me, making it easier to not pay back debt makes problems worse. Debt has to be strict. It has to be repaid. Otherwise monetary systems are abused. It is clear that much debt is due to greed and avarice. This should be allowed to ruin people to correct the economy. If someone owes more than they will ever produce, then tough. The jubilee made sort of sense in an era of slavery and ancient monetary principles, but today doesn't make sense.

If we thought that Tony Jones had learnt something from Bouthaina Shaaban last week, then listen to his interview with Indyk, and weep. Indyk says the Syrian army is failing, and we should let Russia and Iran get on with it because they are backing a losing horse. We can’t cooperate with them against ISIS because they won’t let go of Assad, and he MUST go.. So we really need, after what Petraeus said here two weeks ago, we really need to work with AL Nusra, if they can loosen their links to Al Qaeda, because they are the only effective force to fight DAMASCUS on the ground. That’s what the man said. To be fair to Jones, he played some of Shaaban’s interview first, and he also asked Indyk about what Fisk had said, on why the US didn’t bomb the IS convoys to Palmyra and Ramadi. ( and I think he does really wonder why) Indyk couldn’t really answer this giveaway question, so claimed that really the Syrian army, which Fisk was with and quoted views of , didn’t have a presence in eastern Syria... LIAR! You only have to watch RT news, or read reports on the recent airstrikes on Tadmor, helped by Russian satellite intel, and of course the Brookings knows all about this. I don’t like the fact that these two Zionists and CIA agents have been here, both talking at the Lowy, during the very time when Australia has declared war on Syria with its allies. How can we tell the ABC what they are believing is total rubbish, and dangerous rubbish?

Hi, tomorrow in Madrid in front of the Saudi embassy the FOrum contro la guerra imperialista holds a demonstration aginst the criminal war of Saud in Yemen. On october 1 and also in another day, in Rome as No War Network we will protest against the tyrants for the war and also for the death sentence to the young opposant. And in Ryad? This article is very interesting: http://www.rt.com/op-edge/260133-sheikh-al-nimr-execution-saudi/http://www.rt.com/op-edge/260133-sheikh-al-nimr-execution-saudi/ Hopefully, the end of Saud is near!! Let's work for the Arab Republic (former Saudi Arabia)

Properly created and used, I'd suggest that money can and does allow for the creation of wealth. It doesn't do it by itself, of course. There needs to be physical resources, labour and organisation as well. If I want to build a new airport, I need money to do so. I might borrow that money (from a bank that will create out of nothing) and spend it on assembling the resources, labour etc to get the airport going. If I'm successful, I'll generate enough return to cover costs, repay my loan with interest and still make a profit. I will be generating wealth and helping others to do so too. If I can't access money, my airport remains an idea. We don't have a problem with too much money in the system currently. Far from it. Too much money results in inflation. Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany were good examples. We have low levels of inflation. We also have the reserve bank keeping official interest rates low in an effort to stimulate economic activity. But that lever's broken, because as Steve Keen seems to be saying, we've reached a point where we are saturated with private debt. Relying on private demand for bank issued, interest bearing debt to stimulate the economy doesn't work any more. QE as delivered by the Obama government was ineffective because it just threw more money at the banks to lend out. The National Credit proposal, which is effectively what Positive Money and the American Monetary Institute are now promoting wouldn't rely on the manipulation of interest rates to stimulate (or dampen) demand. It'd spend more money directly into circulation when the economy needed a kick along - and less if inflation rose unacceptably. Unlike Howard's $800 battler bucks, National Credit would also be spent on things of enduring value, rather than on imported flat screen TV's. The Reserve Bank's role would be to determine how much money to spend into the system, ensuring a proper balance between unemployment and inflation. Bill Mitchell has suggested that government should become an employer of last resort and use money it creates in this way to ensure full employment. This is kind of appealing, but might ultimately divert money to 'make work'projects that don't really need to be done. So if we went back to feudal England with millions of pounds, we'd probably create inflation because the productive capacity of society at the time was constrained by a lack of technology. Almost everyone worked hard all the time, but by comparison to today they weren't productive. Today we have large numbers of people unemployed or under-employed. They are, by comparison, highly educated and can use technology in ways that make them productive. Spending on useful projects as opposed to lending for propery speculation would engage the productive capacity of these people like never before. .

The recurring instability of political leadership in Australia has raised the spectre the country may be heading down the same path as Europe, according to a political historian from the University of Western Sydney. Dr David Burchell, from the UWS School of Humanities and Communication Arts, says the continuing uncertainty surrounding the Federal Liberal Party leadership, on the back of recent election results and leadership ballots across state governments, is cause for concern. "As a consequence, Western liberal democracy is starting to look moribund and even dysfunctional, summoning visions of the 1920s and 1930s", he says.

The Migration Council sees only growth, apparently ignoring the capacity of Australia to support more people. Besides more growth, the Council sees accelerated growth as the solution to a future flatlining of the Australian economy. By 2055, the Migration Council sees the Australian population at 40 million. Even at 22 million today, we are already killing koalas at an unprecedented rate because we are squeezing them out of their shrinking habitat.

Migration Council Wants Accelerated Immigration [1] | NewsBlaze Australia

There are many lobby and business groups with self-interests on their agendas, pushing for "growth". Countries with a faster rate of population growth than Australia invariably have poorer living standards and political instability. Countries with a larger population invariably have poorer environments and quality of living for their residents.

No doubt migrants are attracted to Australia for the promise of political stability, but with toppling demands of the growth pyramid, and all the disturbances of high population growth, the shine may wear thin, and then we'll be forced to pay more taxes, and less welfare, to support the unsustainable growth!

Footnote[s]

[1] Article is undated as of 23/9/15. - Ed

Thanks for the reference, John. I had a quick look at the website and would like to spend a bit more time trying to digest it all. It's certainly interesting and there are some concepts presented there that I would agree with. I couldn't get the graphs to display properly so some of the ideas might be clearer when I work out how to do that.. The criticism of neo-classical economics is encouraging, though I'm not familiar with the work of Minsky - on which much of Keen's ideas are apparently based. The fundamental idea that debt deleveraging can cause recessions / depressions sounds logical, and not something that you'd hear from mainstream economists. I like the idea of the debt jubilee, which looks like a sensible way of reducing the levels of private debt which will certainly be constraining demand at present. Keen also deals with fractional reserve banking and notes the good work being done by Positive Money in the UK. However, he says that he's not convinced that the ability of private banks to create money is, of itself, a 'causa causans' of crises, but rather it's the way that money in this way is used. This is worth thinking about. I wonder whether it's practically possible to separate the two? Keen suggests that over-investment in real estate could be addressed by imposing limits on lending based on the rental potential of the property. Perhaps this would work, but it seems like an attempt to treat symptoms rather than curing the disease. What do you think? Also, the debt jubilee sounds like a great idea but if it just allowed banks to start pushing newly created money as interest bearing debt again, wouldn't that just be giving the current system another opportunity to start the cycle all over again? Back in the 1980's, Allan R Jones identified that the creation of money and the use to which it's put are closely related and this underpinned his National Credit idea, which preceded the work being done by Positive Money and the American Monetary Institute by twenty years. I think that in the future, he will be recognised as an economic visionary. Keen's ideas are obviously well thought out and I'm looking forward to working through his ideas a bit more. Thanks again for the reference.