The article claims that there are thousands of trees dead or dying in many locations in Mornington Peninsula because of overgrazing by possums. One must remember that these areas were once small fishing villages, with holiday houses and camping. The rate or urban sprawl has increased, with more people living there permanently. Traffic and disturbances have continued to increase. It means loss of trees, and habitats for native animals.
The loss of habitat would mean that predators would be fewer, and more dispersed. It's easy to look at the lack of leaves on bare branches and dead or dying trees, but the big picture must be considered. It seems that while many of our Australian native species have fragile existences and cannot cope with changes and loss of habitats, and climate change, etc, some have the audacity to survive urbanization - then they are called a "pests".
Comments
Kindness to cockatoos and longevity in other species
Yes. Imagine a 70 year old human in a cage like that for his or her whole life. What an outcry there would be. However it is even worse for a bird because they are potentially the freest of terrestrial creatures because they can fly.
Good on your friends for cutting the hole in the fence. Maybe they should go the whole hog and let the cockatoo escape.
Longevity in animals is something that should strike a common cord but there are a lot of humans, it seems, who simply consider other creatures as things or decorations. You wonder why someone would have a sulphur crested cockatoo if they did not want to interact with it.
It is amazing that some animals totally out do our relatively long lives.
Wikipedia has a fascinating page on the matter here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_long-living_organisms
Evidence of possum damage
For convincing evidence of possum induced tree decline, you only have to see it: possums can be readily observed in affected trees eating leaves and causing the defoliation directly, and they leave characteristic tear marks and bite marks on the remaining leaves.
In addition, possum droppings are abundant on the ground, and are obvious on decks, on rooves, in gutters and on hard surfaces. Incidentally, hygienic rubber gloved protection must be used when cleaning these often wet and difficult to access places as Brushtail Possum carries the parasitic diseases leptospirosis, giardia, cryptosporidiosis and Q fever, all transmittable to humans. Despite the problems associated with possums I still like them.
The tree branch in the article photo could not be saved because its angle was too low (it was near horizontal) so that possums could walk over the guard and continue to access the branch and eat its leaves. I watched the branch slowly die and was not able to prevent its defoliation.
I have had to remove possum killed trees (for safety reasons) and so have many other residents in the local area. It can cost $1500 to remove a large dead tree, so a possum guard is a sensible investment that saves money and saves trees. I have been involved in the installation of many possum guards on the Mornington Peninsula over 20 years and they definitely save trees.
Fusarium palm wilt is a problem of palm trees, and, whether or not it is spread by possums, it is not related to possum induced tree decline in native vegetation.
Jeff Yugovic
Captive suphur crested cockatoo
On the subject of native animals and birds as pets, friends of mine live next door to a caged sulphur crested cockatoo. It has been in a rather dark and gloomy, but reasonably large enclosure for over 30 years. It seems he gets very little attention from his owners, so it is a lonely life. The enclosure is right on the boundary fence, so my friends cut a window in the fence so that now the lonely bird can see what goes on in their garden and they can give it some company. The dream is one day to build an annex into my friends' garden. But the bird has to wait until the humans have time to do this. Maybe it will be a present for "Cockie's" 40th birthday, ..........or his 50th or 60th, maybe.
Attorney-General steps in for justice for slaughtered alpacas
Attorney-General and Minister for Justice
The Honourable Jarrod Bleijie
Attorney-General Orders Second Appeal
Attorney-General and Minister for Justice Jarrod Bleijie today directed the Director of Public Prosecutions to appeal the sentence of the second teenager involved in animal cruelty against two alpacas at Caboolture State High School.
Earlier this week, the Attorney-General announced he would appeal the sentence received by Wayne Charles Hartwig for abhorrent acts of animal cruelty that resulted in the death of two alpacas.
A second offender, who is a juvenile, was also sentenced for the crime in the Caboolture Magistrates Court last week.
The juvenile was convicted of two counts of cruelty to animals by night, one count of trespass and other unrelated charges.
The juvenile was dealt with under the Youth Justice Act 1992 and received a sentence of 12 months’ probation and 80 hours community service. He was also ordered to pay restitution.
The Attorney-General is of the view that the sentence is manifestly inadequate, does not set an adequate deterrent and is not in line with community expectations.
[ENDS] 3 May 2013
Media contact: Katherine Hornbuckle 0402 862 351
Battle for backyards as NIMBYs create housing crisis
Committee for Sydney CEO Dr Tim Williams, in his report Homes for All, revealed two thirds of 35-year-olds cannot afford a home but a fifth of the population owns half the homes. He is blaming NIMBYISM for creating a "magic circle" for a few privileged home owners, forcing Sydney into a housing crisis.
Battle for backyards as NIMBYs create housing crisis at http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/battle-for-backyards-as-nimbys-cre...
It's easy to blame those protecting their backyards against the forces that would have them disappear for more property developments in the face of Sydney's rampant population growth. He's simply deflecting focus from the real problem, unsustainable, politically-driven, population growth.
Developmer lobby Urban Taskforce CEO Chris Johnson called for more high-density housing, community groups warned apartments would ruin suburbs and councillors rejected 10 per cent of projects proposed last year. Suburbs overrun by high density housing and towers is NOT the solution to Sydney's housing crisis, but a stable population - something obvious but not surprisingly missing from the debate.
The average cost of a Sydney house has gone up in real terms by 49.2 per cent and units have risen by 22.1 per cent since 2001. Dr Williams called for an end to nimbyism, dubbing it a "threat to our children's futures". There are limits to how much families and people on fixed incomes can afford to pay for mortgages. Mortages are able to drain the wealth and incomes of workers into their own profit pool.
McKell Institute executive director Peter Bentley said the high cost of housing in Sydney was forcing workers to spend up to 16 hours a week travelling to and from their jobs. They have become slaves to the elite and the money lenders!
The Committee of Sydney, in their recent media release, have asked for planning to be "streamlined". This sounds ominously an effort to avoid democratic input, and stifle the NIMBYs.
MEDIA RELEASE: Committee for Sydney hails Planning White Paper Reforms - could be a breakthrough for Sydney of 16 April 2013 at http://www.sydney.org.au/think-sydney-blog&post=media-release-committee-...
Research by the Committee for Sydney shows the failure to manage population growth as effectively as Melbourne has cost Sydney $43 billion in lost GDP growth. If what is touted as the route to prosperity - population growth - is actually costing a loss in GDP, then surely this "economic growth" model is outdated?
Possum proof?
The photo of the tree with the possum band on the branch which has recovered its foliage is fairly compelling , but doesn't totally convince me that possums damaged the other branch. I wonder why I am so hard to convince. I would want to see other proof that possums had consumed a large amount of the tree's foliage. That would show up in possum scats if it were so. Has anyone watched their browsing behaviour? i.e caught them in the act. I am skeptical because of my experience with a council which was hell bent on evicting possums from a park.When the reason for installing over 100 metal guards on palm trees- that possums spread fusarium palm wilt, was found not to be true and that neither did the trees in question have this disease, after all, another reason was 'found'. This was that the possums were eating the palm fronds. It seemed that the decision had been made to put the bands on the trees whether they were needed or not.
Importance to save forests
If we truly understand the importance of the forest, then we would know that a forestless world could spell doom for man. And so, we would make every effort to guard against the destruction of our forest resources.
Healthy Foods Center | A better way to be healthy
Editorial comment: Thank you for the supportive comment. In general, we don't allow links to sites which contain a lot of advertising. The site linked to above includes a number of advertisements. The site's principle contents are 'authentic Indian recipes' for what appear to be very succulent dishes, although we cannot vouch for the claims that these dishes are healthy and nutritious.
Muslim immigrants opposed to Sydney neglect & population growth
MUSLIM leaders have slammed the federal and state government because politicians had failed to provide jobs, core infrastructure, funding for community organisations and sport as well as neglecting resources needed for policing.
Western Sydney has become a ghetto as a result of mass immigration, with complete disregard for the lack of infrastructure, debt, crime, congestion, amenities and resources.
... by Simon Black from The Daily Telegraph of 1 May 2013
Lebanese Muslim Association president Samier Dandan said that unemployment is very high and more and more land is being opened up to cater for population growth. Our governments assume that immigrants want, will vote for, and approve of our rampant population growth. However, they are being invited to live here under the illusion that we have jobs, skills shortages, a high standard of living and education.
"This state government has totally ignored the area."
A 2012 report by Urban Taskforce Australia said there was a jobs deficit of 200,000 in western Sydney as of 2011. Under current growth forecasts this deficit is predicted to grow to 319,000 by 2031. Youth unemployment in the region is running at 17.9 per cent.
The Urban Taskforce are part of the powerful growth lobby, and support high growth at whatever costs. Their own forecasts predict the growth in unemployment and deficit. The Urban Taskforce, instead of promoting rampant population growth, should be a force in fixing the mess.
$12 billion budget deficit - our Ponzi economic-growth economy
The federal budget will lay down a path to surplus despite the hit to revenues from the high Australian dollar and the end of the mining investment boom, Treasurer Wayne Swan says. Prime Minister Julia Gillard warned on Monday that revenue for 2012/13 was expected to be $12 billion less.
It's believed the government decided to introduce the special tax, which effectively takes the 1.5 per cent Medicare levy to 2.0 per cent, following an expenditure review committee meeting on Tuesday. The current Government rakes in substantially less tax as a proportion of the economy than its predecessors. The "prosperity" promised from record levels of population growth aren't providing fruition.
Too many people are getting too many benefits they don’t need because successive governments have tried to buy their votes. The health and welfare systems have been used as political tools, not safety nets.
Read more:
... by Alan Kohler, 7 hours ago (i.e approx 5.55PM, 1 May 2013) at http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/5/1/politics/handout-blowout-thats-costing-budget
"Too many people" is due to 23 million people expanding the demand for resources.
The government struggles to contain a ballooning budget deficit as the strong revenue flows during the first phase of the resources boom are over.
The Australian economy grew around or just below average pace last year. NDIS, changes to carbon pricing, dental funding, offshore processing of asylum seekers and educational reforms are all very expensive items.
Australia’s population reached 11.5 million in 1966 and so it has taken less than 47 years to double to 23 million. Our country continues to grow at the fastest rate in the developed world.
Why don't our government, and economists, question the monetary and financial implications of funding this rapid growth rate? This growth demands vital infrastructure projects, education, welfare and health care, and we have a projected $12 billion budget "hole". Our economic and jobs growth slow-down since 2010 has been matched with increasing immigration levels.
We live in a finite world, so we can't grow forever. Our huge population is going to become an economic and ecological liability one way or another, and its doubtful it will be needed in the future centuries with the growth of technology, and the slow-down of the resources boom.
Our Ponzi economic growth model is unravelling at the seams, evidenced by debts, budget short-falls, cutbacks, increasing costs of living and lowering living standards.
Please add further comments here - Ed, 1 May 2013.
Vulnerability and exposure, not a possum 'plague'
I take it that Mornington Peninsula Botanist Jeff Yugovic is not suggesting that we need more foxes, cats and dogs on Mornington Peninsula? That would be as good as admitting defeat and surrendering any ways to manage our environment. It would open the door to complete mayhem and destruction, and would only denude the area of any wildlife habitat.
The "plague" of native possums is because habitats such as trees and canopy have been destroyed by clearing, infrastructure and urban sprawl. The Peninsula Link has increased the number of native animals being slaughtered on the road. It's not evidence for a "plague", but their vulnerability and exposure.
It seems to me to be like blaming the victims instead of pointing the finger at the real source of disaster - excessive human behaviours and greed for growth.
David Attenborough - humans in "plague" proportions
Forget the "plague" of possums or any other native animal in Australia! Conservationist (and infamous patron of the Optimum Population Trust) David Attenborough recently said that humans, as a species, are a “plague” on the environment. He therefore proposed limits to human populations, “or nature will do it for us.”
On the official website of the Prince of Wales, prince Charles commended the Ehrlich’s latest population study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society on January 8 of this year, calling among other things for globally provided “back-up abortions” to avert overpopulation catastrophe. The prince writes:
“We do, in fact, have all the tools, assets and knowledge to avoid the collapse of which this report warns, but only if we act decisively now.”
Attenborough says that "maybe it is time that instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, we should control the population to ensure the survival of the environment," in a letter to John Guillebaud, Professor of Family Planning and Reproductive Health at University College London.
"Based on the Optimum Population Trust's findings, it is proposed that family planning methods should be a primary tool in the optimum strategy for reducing carbon emissions," the report said.
While much of the projected growth in human population is likely to come from the developing world, it is the lifestyle enjoyed by many in the West that has the most impact on the planet.
Human population blindness stops seeing the plague we ourselves are, and instead projecting the problems onto wildlife, overconsumption or even capitalism.
Swiss batten down the hatches on migrants
Swiss batten down the hatches on migrants by David Charter in The Times, April 27, 2013.
"EUROPEANS hoping to escape the economic downturn were told yesterday the continent's most prosperous country was pulling up the drawbridge to stop a surge of jobless migrants.
To fury in Brussels, Switzerland announced quotas for new residents that will apply to immigrants from the eight eastern European countries that joined the European Union nine years ago. These include Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic."
The Times and other English and US mass media constantly put Europe down for the way its economy has suffered after international banks invested in the US housing bubble, yet, when Europe sensibly puts the lid on population growth and expansion, they disapprove.
In the first Oil Shock, European countries all cut down on immigration because they preferred to secure the jobs of their citizens and not to invest in new infrastructure and housing for immigrants. It make sense.
What about human population numbers?
This so obvious it hardly needs saying, but the real pest species is the human who now seems not to have any predators at all except the occasional crocodile or shark. Humans are inexorably spreading all over places that our native fauna called home. Humans do not just damage trees and compromise their survival, they annihilate them altogether to make way for development. They leave areas effectively sterile with respect to plant and animal life." Dogs and cats can not be considered separately from humans. Wherever you have humans you have cats and dogs. We love them but we do not act responsibility enough with them as a society.The human dog and cat package is deadly for wild life. I would need real evidence that possums have destroyed trees before I set the carnivores onto them! We are becoming irrational with respect to possums.In recent years in an urban park, possums were blamed for transmitting fusarium palm wilt and excluded from the palm trees where they slept during the day and had done for about 50 years. Expert advice obtained was that possums do not spread this disease and that the palms in question were not suffering from it anyway. The possums were then evicted, on another pretext - that they were eating the palm fronds. The palms look exactly the same to me as they did 6 years ago when possum exclusion bands were installed. If the possums were eating palm fronds it could not have been enough to worry the tree! Real science and stabilisation of the human population are desperately needed for the sake of the remainder of our wild life.
Australia is a wild life tragedy
Seems that where there is wild life and too many humans there will be tragic results. Australia has wild life and a rapidly expanding population. Suburbs expand into kangaroo habitat and the kangaroos come off a very poor second best. Even if they are not shot, they are annihilated after the enormous stress trying to survive as they are progressively surrounded by traffic laden roads. It is a fast deteriorating situation for our native fauna.
Native Animals shouldn't have to justify their existence
The problems of human overpopulation means mass species extinctions, pollution and environmental degradation, more competition for fewer resources.
Most humans consider our species the pinnacle of evolution, our big brains rendering us capable of solving any problem. Yet this very anthropocentric attitude means we are destroying the very ecosystems that sustain our lives, not to mention the lives of every other species.
With a majority of the planet's societies in the phase of dramatic population growth rates, with births outstripping deaths, some claim that we may be approaching the ecological limits of our species' numbers.
Edward Wilson estimates 27,000 species are currently lost per year. By 2022, 22% of all species will be extinct if no action is taken.
The animals that survive the extinction must somehow be adorable, iconic, useable, domesticated for pets, or have commercial/monetary value. Human expansion, justified under our economic growth through property developments, fool the public as they assume this will bring them prosperity and wealth for our nation. The destruction of the displaced wallabies is considered the inevitable cost of growth and progress. These wallabies at Mission Beach don't fit into the categories as worthy of being "saved" from extinction or death, and they therefore must be culled as agricultural pests or a threat to the children! Once you mention the safely to children, nobody would argue that a displaced wallaby would have more rights to safety than the children!
The Greens, for all their "green" credentials, have little time for native animals, especially macropods. Without a population plan and policy for Australia except for growth and more growth, our native animals will continually be confronted by their haters and detractors, and moved to the extremes of their habitats. No native animals should have to justify their existence. However, this is what animal activists are forced to do, despite millions of years of these wallabies living harmoniousness in Australia.
Love you guys
I am Minty. I am a cook from Las Vegas. This is my first time browsing this site. People in this site are generous and enthusiastic.
Expense of keeping electricity customers
My electricity billing company recently sent me a pamphlet outlining my rights not to answer the door or take phone calls from other companies who would steal my business from them. This exercise to all customers would have a significant cost.
Hell's Gate indeed:Pipe dreams of daming the Burdekin
[This comment originally posted on ROEOZ list. Identifyers removed. Hope that is okay.]
Wayne Swann recently gave $2.5 million to further a study into
the Pentland Project, Bob Katter's pet idea.
The project is to dam the upper Burdekin at Hell's Gate,
pipe the water to the Pentland area
and use it for irrigating 120,000 ha of sugarcane,
a new sugar mill producing sugar, molasses and bagasse,
turning the molasses into "green" ethanol fuel,
burning the bagasse to produce "green" electricity,
much needed by the mining industry in the Galilee Basin.
What they didn't say was:
It is dry tropical savannah country with occasional flooding,
so when you remove the trees and grasses, and plough the land,
it blows away on the wind and is washed away during floods,
it needs massive amounts of water and fertiliser,
which also washes and leaches away,
and nice juicy sugarcane will attract plagues of pests,
from locusts to mice and feral pigs.
And 120,000 ha of sugarcane will only produce enough bagasse
to run the mill and put 40 MW into the grid, 21 weeks of the year.
So the 800 MW power station they are talking about
isn't going to be powered by bagasse.
Guess what it IS going to be powered by ...
yes, that's right, 97% COAL and 3% bagasse.
And where are the cane farmers going to come from?
Where are they going to live?
Where are they going to shop?
What roads are they going to drive on ?
Hopefully this is just a sop to Katter to get his preferences,
and when it is studied, they'll then know that it doesn't stack up,
but that won't be till after the election.
Australian Op Ed growth propaganda defies belief
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/editorials/the-more-people-the-m...
In this article the claim is made that, "Australia is unambiguously a far more prosperous, secure and vibrant nation than it was 50 years ago, when 11 million people called Australia home?"
Ridiculous! Surely Australia was wealthy and had zero unemployment back in the 1960s and 1970s and better quality of life.
Just more Murdoch growthist propaganda. Evidence for an argument to restrict press ownership inversely in relation to wealth.
SBS online poll majority against a Big Australia
Have a lookat SBS site. Overwhelmingly AGAINST Big Australia
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/yoursay/1759060/Do-you-support-a-bigger-Australia
Media no more truthful in 2013 than they were about Iraq in 1990
This comment is a response to a discussion in response to John Quiggin's article Bolt and Krauthammer Day of 23 April 2013 This comment has also been published on Syria News (http://www.syrianews.cc).
Megan @ #21, TerjeP @ #20,
No doubt, you also remember the lie that in 1990 Iraqi soldiers brutally threw Kuwaiti new-born babies out of artificial incubators onto the hospital floor where they perished?
Those, who do not, may find find of interest this Youtube broadcast by Barrie Zwicker, which features that infamous broadcast in which the 15 year old "nurse Nayirah" presented her fabricated claims to a Washington press conference to help the first Bush administration overcome public oposition to their war plans.
The same mass media which peddled that lie has since peddled more in order to justify "The Illegal war on Libya" (2012, Clarity Press - edited by former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney) and, since then, the proxy terrorist war against Syria in which 70,000 have so far died.
Fortunately, the Syrian people and their government have proven more capable than Iraq and Libya of defending themselves against the world's bullies and their terrorist proxies. But no-one's endurance can last forever against the hordes of terrorist killers now flocking into the hostile countries bordering Syria. The Syrian people need the help of people of conscience throughout the rest of the world. Without that help, the same terrible fate endured by the Iraqis since 1990 awaits them.
Australia hits 23 million - and silence from our government
Australia hits 23 million
Australia's population officially reaches 23 million.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, however, says the government wasn't interested in setting "arbitrary targets". Without targets, and no population policy except just accelerating growth, we will overshoot our ecological, economic and social optimum limits.
"We are interested in where the population is and the type of groups within our population," he told reporters on Tuesday.
The Australian: Aust Population set to crack 23 million
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/aust-population-set-t...
It's not an occassion to crack open the Champaign and celebrate! There's nothing pretty about over-population - something common all over the world.
Maybe the government should be worried about numbers. They are trivializing the matter by being concerned only about he "groups" of people and where they are! Australia is the driest continent with large ranges of arid and semi arid desert. The "Asian Century" is an strange ideal while urban sprawl is whittling away our food bowls.
Asia's human "carrying capacity" is higher than Australia's, yet ironically we are meant to be their "food bowl". Many countries are already over their sustainable population levels, yet Australia is heading the same way?
The skills-shortages justification is shallow too, considering the huge cut-backs to tertiary education.
A bigger economy is not necessarily a better quality one. The "big" economies of China, India and Indonesia etc have many people who would prefer to live in Australia. Increasingly, Australia is being run by megalomaniacs with their own grandiose agendas, distracted by big profits and corporations with power to sway government decisions.
The Stable Population Party of Australia, and other minority political parties, are becoming more attractive as the mainstream Liberals, Coalition and Labor have passed their use-by-dates and appropriateness.
The power to determine our future, and that of our descendants, lies in the next Federal Elections. There are a number of political parties with population agendas that should be supported.
23 MILLION MILESTONE NOTHING TO CELEBRATE
Sustainable Population Australia - Media Release 22nd April
The arrival of Australia’s 23 millionth person tomorrow is no cause for celebration, according to Sustainable Population Australia (SPA).
National President of SPA, Ms Jenny Goldie, noted that in 1994 the Australian Academy of Science had said: ‘In our view, the quality of all aspects of our children's lives will be maximized if the population of Australia by the mid-21st Century is kept to the low, stable end of the achievable range, i.e. to approximately 23 million.’[i]
Ms Goldie says: “But we are not stabilising our numbers. We continue to grow at Third World rates, at 1.7% pa.”
In 2009, then Secretary of Treasury Ken Henry expressed concern about the addition of another 13 million people by mid-century. He said a ‘population expansion of this order has a host of implications for the Australian economy and society; and it raises a number of profound issues for economic policy’.
“Yet if 1.7% continues, there will be even more than Secretary Henry cited. There will be 43 million by mid-century and 100 million by 2100,” says Ms Goldie.
Ken Henry’s comments prompted the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) to commission a study[ii] on the impact of different levels of Net Overseas Migration (NOM) on Australia’s physical natural and built environments out to 2050.
The 2010 DIAC-commissioned study found, amongst many findings
· Higher levels of NOM impose greater adverse impacts on the quality of our natural and built environments (note: NOM to September 30, 2012 was 228,000 pa)
· Decreased urban water supply is a significant environmental constraint exacerbated by higher NOM
· Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are expected to grow to several times current levels by 2050 unless rapid mitigation activities are implemented, and will be significantly higher with higher NOM
· Urban expansion will cause the loss of horticultural production from peri-urban areas which will reduce access to high quality fresh food, especially vegetables, with Sydney being particularly vulnerable.
[i] Joint Statement of the Population 2040 Working Party, April 1994. http://www.science.org.au/events/sats/sats1994/Population2040-section8.pdf
[ii] http://www.immi.gov.au/media/publications/research/_pdf/physical-implica...
Football is the most important news item
The author should realise that even though he is in essence writing about our very survival on this dry ancient continent, in fact what is of paramount and immediate importance in Australia is what is happening in the Australian Football League. I know football is not as absorbing to people "like us" as is the contemplation of environmental collapse ahead of the speeding population train.But if the author really concentrated and tried to appreciate the nuances of the teams and the game itself, he would realise his folly and change his priorities. 23 million people now gives us more blokes to choose from for all those "footy" teams. And its going to get better as we proceed to our next million or so!
WA still Australia's economic powerhouse!
How economist quantify the "best" of Australia's states is different from how the public and residents value livability.
Western Australia is still the nation's economic powerhouse, according to CommSec's quarterly State of the States report.
The gap between the best- and worst-performing states in the country appears to be widening, but only when economic terms are considered.
WA leads the way on retail trade, population growth and equipment investment, but ranks second strongest in economic growth. There is only a dubious correlation between population growth and economic growth.
Until there's an optimum population size, in consideration of environmental and economic constraints, excessive population is detrimental. Victoria's economy is pear-shaped because population growth continues to outstrip infrastructure, and costs of living are increasing beyond the average hip-pocket's ability to pay.
There are "worrying" signs South Australia and Tasmania could fall further behind the rest of the country. In both the 2010 and 2011 My City Survey, Adelaide remains the most liveable Australian city as voted by its residents. Adelaide was voted the most liveable city in Australia for the third year in a row this year because it is an affordable place to buy housing, has a good standard of living and is clean.
Australia is a whole nation, and the competition between separate States is superficial and meaningless as the benefits are shared country-wide. Australia should be integrated as a whole, with more power to local governments. State governments are an artificial political construct, a relic of colonial administration.
The flip-side of WA being the nation's economic powerhouse is that the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) revealed Western Australia was the only State in the country where suicides rose and the State has the highest homelessness rate in the nation.
Melbourne has been ranked first on The Economist's Global Cities Liveability Index for the second year in a row. However, housing is unaffordable and utility costs are soaring because of population growth.
WA still nation's economic powerhouse: Herald Sun
Retraction and Apology to Dr Jeff Yugovic
Dr Jeff Yugovic felt that the title supplied by Candobetter Admin to an article written by Hans Brunner (biologist) about an article published elsewhere by Dr Yugovic misrepresented Dr Yugovic's intentions in the latter article which was about introduced predators and local populations of indigenous animals (“Ecosystems need predators” in Indigenous). Dr Yugovic pointed out that, where Mr Brunner had argued scientifically, an anonymous comment and the title (and possibly the 'teaser' of the article - not written by Mr Brunner) implied or made assertions which Dr Yugovic felt were not actually supported by his article. Apparently Dr Yugovic and or a community group attempted to get this point of view across to candobetter.net editors but their comment was not published. Eventually I was contacted about this matter by phone. I am really sorry that those concerned had to go to such trouble. When I looked for it I could not find the comment they had tried to submit and I think this was almost certainly because of the enormous volumes of SPAM candobetter has been dealing with since its upgrade to Drupal 6.5, which seem to mean that, no matter how much we try to read everything carefully, we still finish up deleting bona fide comments.
Below is Dr Yugovic's letter.
Letter to Admin, We Can Do Better
14 April 2013
Please remove your Admin post titled ‘Australian botanist wants more foxes, cats and dogs’ and the comment post ‘Easy to blame the victims’ – they are offensive and misrepresent me.
Please post an apology or retraction regarding these libellous posts.
These posts have deliberately misinterpreted my article without asking me to provide comment.
In the event that you do not remove the posts and replace them with a retraction or apology, I will have no option but to refer this matter to my legal team.
Yours faithfully
Jeff Yugovic
I would like to invite Dr Yugovic to submit comment for publication again if he wishes. I would be happy for him to contribute beyond this, perhaps elaborating his argument about introduced predators and indigenous prey and his evidence and findings regarding the interaction between vegetation and species in the disrupted ecology on the Peninsula within the context of human population growth and infrastructure expansion.
I hope to republish Hans Brunner's article with another less offensive title and introduction, by and by, especially after I have reread Dr Yugovic's article. I am also keen to publish any further response from Dr Yugovic on this and anything else to do with the predicament of fauna and flora on our human-overpopulated Mornington Peninsula.
Candobetter.net DOES uphold a principle of people being able to defend their views and to write on any level without regard for popularity or any particular demographic. Where writers hold views antithetical to those we espouse under the rubric of 'A website for reform in democracy, environment, population, land use planning and energy policy' that does not mean we will not publish them. We may prefer to publish them (in full) as comments if they are advocating growth in human population and economic through-put, but we won't censor them [except where they break laws such as those against incitement to violence].
If writers have difficulty getting through to us lately (due to the problem of SPAM, which we will overcome eventually) please ring us at the contact number supplied under 'Contact' at the top left hand of this page and we will give you an email address.
Truth through Controversy is a major motto for candobetter.net but we do not aim to misrepresent.
Apologies again to Dr Yugovic.
No comment on population growth
I left a comment on this page, mentioning that population growth must be addressed to prevent overdevelopments and the spill-out that will ultimately destroy Melbourne. They didn't publish it! Maybe this Orrong group are a group of NIMBYs - happy to protect their own back yards, and send the developments somewhere else - but not prepared to look at the whole problem State-wide.
Editor's comment:
Firstly, my apologies that dealing with spam comments has prevented from aprroving this post until now (11:38am on Sunday 21 April 2013)
Thank you, firstly for making the comment above and secondly for advising us that your comment was not published. This is one feature of much of the supposed 'alternative' Internet that corrupts the World Wide Web (www) and prevents the Internet/www from becoming as effective a safeguard of democracy and peace that it might otherwise be: that posted comments are not only censored, but censored in a manner that is not even transparent. Other site visitors, particularly those who agree with your views are not even made aware that others might share their views. The time has long since past when a site should have been set up to blow the whistle long and hard on such sites. (Just possibly, the non-publication of your comment may have been due to oversight or because of the actions of one person who may be censoring at his/her own behest. In time we will know one way or the other.) In the meantime, we could use your post as a start of a more methodical response to censorship on candobetter.
By the way, except for spam and a very few posts which contain material, which is illegal, we have never censored any comment from candobetter. Unlike many other supposed 'alternate' web-sites, our views, many of which are contrary to supposed conventional wisdom, are based on evidence and logic and can be shown to be such through debate with detractors (and were someone ever to show that any view was not, we would soon change our view.)
Lebanon can no longer cope with refugees from Syria
Lebanese Caretaker Interior Minister Marwan Charbel warned Saturday that his country could no longer absorb the influx of Syrian refugees.
He asked that the burden [of assisting them] be distributed among states on the basis of collective responsibility because "Lebanon has exceeded its ability to absorb them."
18,000 people registered with their agency over the past week, with the total number of registered refugees rising to 428,000.
Western imperialism has created a human tsunami of suffering in Syria. The suffering in Lebanon, where most of the Syrian refugees have fled, seems particularly acute. In one month, and with the current funding, more than 400,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon will no longer receive food assistance. Lebanon expects there to be more than 1.2 million Syrian refugees by the end of the year.
The UN refugee coordinator noted that the thousands of refugees have also burdened the already deteriorating economic situation in the country by putting "pressure on the labour market and [causing a] rise in inflation" rates.
The refugees find shelter in private homes — sometimes the landlord chooses not to collect rent. Families sleep in old schools, and in at least this one case, in a former jail. Lebanon has seen its population swell by about 10 per cent since the Syrian crisis began more than two years ago.
The rich Muslim nations do nothing in all this. It is always the west that has to come through with aid. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates had each pledged $300 million for the humanitarian needs of refugees and it was hoped these would arrive soon.
Editorial comment: Whilst you are right to point out that "Western imperialism has created a human tsunami of suffering in Syria," I find your concluding remarks:
The rich Muslim nations do nothing in all this. It is always the west that has to come through with aid. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates had each pledged $300 million for the humanitarian needs of refugees ...
... to be somewhat wide of the mark.
In fact a number of 'rich Muslim nations', namely the dictatorships of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain have been doing a lot: paying the wages of, and supplying weapons to, the terrorist killers who are murdering unarmed Syrian civilians and killing Syrian soldiers. The 'west' and Israel is doing much the same. Whilst waging war against the Syrian people the west and the reactionary Arab governments make a pretense of supplying humanitarian aid, but only for public relations and as a means to manipulate some of the refugees who have fled Syria to escape the terror caused by the same governments.
Twisted, callous arguments used to support live exports
According to Elders managing director, Malcolm Jackman, the ban on live exports and the subsequent regulations have damaged Australia's trading relationship with Indonesia, as well as other markets including Japan.
Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences is predicting live exports will drop 22 percent to 450,000 this year, after Indonesia cut its intake.
According the industry lobby group, restrictions on Australian live exports would force countries to import animals from developing nations, where animal welfare levels are much lower than Australian standards. This means that unconscionable activities, like whaling, environmental destruction and slavery and other assaults on animal and human rights, should continue so the conditions can be "improved", whereas stopping it would allow others to take the place of the perpetrators.
Trade relationships, and profits, are deemed of higher status than the ethics of animal welfare. It assumes that animals are merely commodities to be traded like inanimate cargo, and can be brutalized with no remorse.
It's a twisted, negative and callous argument with no substance or absolutes about the basis of how living creatures deserve to be treated, and basic standards of protection from atrocities and human exploitation.
The Coalition, if elected, would continue with the live export trade. The activists have vowed not to give up!
Robbing one sector to pay for another is Ponzi economics
More evidence of Ponzi economic is our cut-backs to university funding of $2.3 billion to pay for State education.
It's not really funding, but cutting one educational sector to pay for another. It's really money-shuffling, taking from one already starved sector to pay for what should be available to another.
Ms Gillard always praised her chance to have a university education, had cut her teeth in student politics when she became president of what was then the Australian Union of Students as a Melbourne University student in 1983.
National Union of Students tweeted "@JuliaGillard as a former student activist and representative how can you justify slashing one part of education for another?" How many of our politicians enjoyed free, if not cheap tertiary education, just to put the screws on opportunities for this generation of prospective students?
The Federal government cut would result in losses of about $100 million in research funding, an estimated further $15m in infrastructure funding and $50.4m in teaching support at the university over the next four years.
The education industry would then be forced to rely more on international students, and increase the already unwieldy fees.
Our economy has become over-sized, unfathomable, unsustainable and cumbersome. It has created its own momentum - to gather more "economic growth" and this means losing control of what our economy is all about!
If the future of our young people is jeopardized by not being ready and educated for the 21st century, then the economy has developed a "mind of its own" and has lost the purpose of what it was supposed to do in the first place - provide for the people, the citizens, who are part of it. That means trading goods and services for high standards of living, working and high standards of education.
If our economy fails when debts become oversized, it becomes self-feeding and counterproductive.
The Ponzi pyramid serves the sharks, the elite, the high-rollers at the top, but further down the victims are being deprived of economic and social benefits.
This "funding" is simply moving around funds from existing budgets, and spitting out people - those nearer to the pyramid's bottom get more and more deprived and impoverished.
Comment posted at the Orrong Group's page
"There was a great community turn-out to the Supreme Court hearing, with "standing room" only for the first morning. More than 85 people were present to hear Stonnington Council challenge VCAT's ruling. Even the 'jury box' had to be made available to accommodate the crowd.
Justice Karin Emerton presided over the hearing. Stuart Morris QC acted for Stonnington Council and Chris Canavan QC for Lend Lease and Larkfield. Both held the same positions at last year’s VCAT appeal.
Stuart Morris led the Council's case stating that more than three quarters of the 450 submissions to VCAT from residents were "simply ignored”.
Mr Morris suggested that VCAT had diverged from “established practice" and its decision could be in breach of the Planning Act and in "breach of its own charter". He stated that this case was important as it went towards "the administration of planning law in Victoria".
Council argued a second important “error of law”: VCAT’s interpretation of Stonnington Council‘s “‘Large Site Policy” and whether account had been given to the need for developments to reflect the surrounding neighbourhood character.
If the Court rules that the case be referred back to VCAT, Council called for it to be heard before a newly constituted VCAT panel.
The Judge reserved her decision. We will notify you as soon as we hear, which will probably be in the next 2 to 6 weeks.
Our impression of the Supreme Court hearing is far more positive than previous planning hearings. We share the Mayor's hopes for a positive outcome and "one that respects the opinions of our residents and one that will protect the rights of residents everywhere". He said "the residents have a right to speak up and be heard". There is more from the Mayor on the Council web site.
We believe that this will be a test case and perhaps a 'watershed' case for planning law in Victoria. Listening to all the arguments and issues raised over the last two days we have a picture of a planning scheme that could be described as a minefield for the community to navigate. It should not be like this and hopefully this case will give a strong message to Government."
The Orrong Group:Fight the Towers
Government must eventually be held to account to its people
Geoffrey,
Whilst it is clear that the US has used elections to interfere with countries to its south, and has done much worse, surely decent government cannot endure if the government is not, at some point, held to account by those on whose behalf the governing?
Crime and population growth
The crime wave in Australia must have similar explanations, due to high population growth. Our cities are riddled with crime, especially in the areas of high growth and congestions. Wyndham in outer Melbourne and Western Sydney are famous for fly-by shootings, random attacks, stabbings and many other crimes.
It's a dystopia, and the laws haven't been upgraded to face the surge in urban dis-ease.
According to the Australia Institute of Criminology, reported crimes for Australia have risen by almost two-thirds, from 845,923 in 1980-81 to 1.41 million in 1988-89. (1991) Research conducted in Australia
and overseas suggests that, "although worrying, these rising crime figures
may be due to a short-term trend in population growth, together with some familiar changes in society".
More recently, the 2011 census data has confirmed that Western Australia is the fastest growing state in Australia, increasing by 14.3% between 2006 and 2011. This is significantly above the national growth rate of 8.3%. Roads are heavily congested, cost of living has increased, crime has increased, and interestingly, homelessness has increased.
Social and cultural dimensions of quality of life which are widely perceived as having declined in recent years, at least partly as a result of population growth, include rising crime rates and other sociopathic behaviour, quality of human relationships, quality of outdoor recreational opportunities, quality of community services including health, education and transport, ethnic tensions, loss of small freedoms (like burning garden leaves) and conflicts over resource use, particularly in peri-urban areas. ( POPULATION-IMMIGRATION POLICY IN AUSTRALIA, Doug Cocks, CSIRO Division of Wildlife and Ecology, Canberra, Australia Dec 1998)
The government is only interested in short term outcomes which will come with long terms costs. What are our goals as a nation to invite the squalor, urban blight, poverty, crime, environmental degradation, resource depletion etc that accompanies over population?
Our government is making immigration decisions guided not be common sense, but by a market economy. What's the point of an increasing GDP but with infrastructure in a mess, homelessness increasing, a shortage of affordable housing, crime rates increasing, and food security diminishing? It's madness!
Studies show that there appears to be a loose relationship between population growth and the overall volume of crime. However, some types of crime lag behind the population just as other types soar ahead of it. Although there is obviously more to crime than population growth, it seems safe to say that rapid acceleration of population tends to facilitate, and perhaps even promote, some types of crime. (The Case of Two Growing California Cities, Beaumont and Banning: Ronald G. Corwin, Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology, Ohio State University)
One billion people, one-sixth of the world's population, or one-third of urban population, now live in shanty towns, which are seen as "breeding grounds" for social problems such as crime, drug addiction, alcoholism, poverty and unemployment. (Whitehouse, David (2005-05-19). "Half of humanity set to go urban". BBC News. Retrieved 2011-11-30). With the world's population continuing to surge towards 9 billion, the systems that try to contain the dark side of humanity will be under more stress.
Muduro won in the face of massive improper US interference
Only 1,000km away to the North-West in the middle of the Caribbean Sea, there can be no doubt that the socialist Cuban government of Raul Castro enjoys the overwhelming support of the Cuban people. Had it not, the Cuban counter-revolutionaries, who tried to overthrow it during the US supported Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, would surely have succeeded. If the Cuban Government was the unpopular tyranny the US government claimed it to be, surely the Cuban people would have found some way to cast off that government in the 53 years since the revolution.
In my view the Cuban government was right not to hold any election in all that time for two reasons:
1. Given the huge resources that the US, its allies and global corporations could have poured into the pockets of Cuban counter-revolutionary candidates, a fair election would not have been possible. Where they only just failed to get the outcome they wanted recently in Venezuela, they would have more likely succeeded in Cuba.
2. The United States military, together with Cuban counter-revolutionary guerrillas could well have used the necessary disruption entailed in elections to militarilly overthrow the Cuban government.
The consequences for Cuba could have been as terrible as they were in Guatemala and El Salvador where many tens of thousands were murdered by US funded death squads in the 1980s.
I think Maduro would be well advised to cancel future elections until such time as the United States and its allies agree to cease interfering in Venezuelan elections as they have just recently and end threats of military aggression against Cuba and Venezuela.
Crime rates and high population growth correlation
This letter was sent to The West Australian (newspaper) recently but not published.
Dear Editor
Like many residents of Perth I am concerned at the many reports of violence in our paper these days. Recently I discovered the “2.5% rule” from a 2006 United Nations report. It stated that amost all the nations experiencing high levels of violence were countries with population growth above 2.5%.
Perhaps our Government and Police Commissioner should consider relieving the pressure on our overcrowded courts and jails by reducing WA’s high, 3.4%, population growth rate.
Patricia Weaver,
Nedlands
US interference in Venezuela
The top US diplomat John Kerry said Washington was not yet ready to validate Maduro's narrow victory in Sunday's disputed Venezuelan elections in which he defeated opposition candidate Henrique Capriles by a margin of 1.7 per cent.
Venezuela is a sovereign nation, and the US has no authority to question their election results. It's a national concern. They want a re-count!
Elections were triggered in the South American oil-rich nation after its fiery leader Hugo Chavez succumbed to cancer in March, having already anointed Maduro as his political heir. Obviously the US has great interests in this small country, for their oil supplies. Any disruption of their stability, eyes off their internal cohesion, is welcomed by the United States, hungry for oil.
Voting has been computerized since 1999, so a recount would achieve nothing.
EU countries - an abyss of poverty and unemployment
Italians, Spaniards and Greeks are forsaking their homelands and heading to Germany and Switzerland as economies throughout the Mediterranean contract. The great big Capitalistic Ponzi scheme is becoming unravelled.
SMH: Jobs security lure Mediterraneans away
The massive unemployment in Europe is proof that economies can't keep growing to absorb population growth, austerity measures, debt and countries without borders. There are limits to any growth, and debts continue to accumulate and jobs end up being slashed.
People with professions are moving away from massive unemployment and deprivation to Germany and Switzerland.
Reports in Switzerland suggest that the country’s government is currently considering placing a temporary limit on the number of EU immigrants allowed to enter the country each year. Between February 2012 and January 2013, more than 90,000 EU citizens became residents of Switzerland – a more than 10% increase on the same period the previous year. The 2004 quota meant that only 2,000 residency permits a year are awarded to citizens from eight countries. Four parties which make up Switzerland’s coalition government are keen to introduce the quotas, meaning fewer EU citizens may find the country so welcoming to them in the near future.
Levels of racism are rising in Germany. But they're not rising equally everywhere. East German states have seen the largest uptick - and the German government's policy of allowing those states to combat it is failing.
"The only reason foreigners come here is to take advantage of our welfare system," postulated one of the statements in a recent survey. Unwelcome immigration is easily dismissed as "racism" rather than other social economic issues.
The German government has taken its first steps towards making the country more welcoming to skilled immigrants. Germany has already started to witness an increase in immigration, mainly due to the country’s economic strength making it a popular destination among migrants from other, recession-hit, EU nations.
Eastern European migrants are more likely to have jobs than native Britons, a research study revealed recently.
Eastern Europeans more likely to have jobs than native Britons
Researchers found that in the UK, workers from the countries that joined the EU in 2004 and later were 7 per cent more likely to be in work than British-born people.
It's easy to blame economies for not growing enough to absorb human numbers than the reality of population overload.
So the developed EU countries are falling into the abyss of poverty and unemployment, the same conditions those from third-world countries and the bankrupt EU countries are trying to escape. Global overpopulation and over-debt means that a greater number of economic migrants are trying to escape the Ponzi scheme collapse, but there are fewer countries to escape to.
Why give these growthist myths any credence at all?
"lower fertility rates mean older, less innovative and productive workforces. "
What is your evidence that as people grow older they become less productive and less innovative?
I may have become even less acquisitive with age but I think that, even though my work involves considerable physical input, I'm actually more productive and innovative as I have more experience in being pushed to innovation and have acquired mental techniques for, and experience of being innovative. I'm also less "hormonal" as I age and subsequently more focused which in turn makes me more productive. I can't work as hard physically as I did 20 years ago but working smarter more than makes up for it.
I don't argue with the general premise that the obsession with growth economics is essentially "Ponzinomics" but the assertion that being older makes you less innovative and productive (socially or economically) buys into the ageist rubbish being pedaled by Ponzinomists.
I'm pushing 50 but can't see retirement anywhere in my future and hope to pay for my own retirement and then have either the freedom or the guts to stop being a burden sometime down the track when it suits me.
The envisioning of what a steady state economy might look like or the questions of how to manage a shrinking economy and ageing population should not be confused with, or sucked in by the systematic "elder abuse" being pushed by conservatives and neoliberals (almost invariably the same people denying me the right to choose my own time of death).
We already know that you can't "immigration" your way past the challenges posed by ageing populations , why give these growthist myths any credence at all?
4 Corners 'reveals' that Iraqi WMDs was a lie
Ten years after the event and two years after the Australian release of the movie Fair Game, based upon the book by Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson, who together blew the whistle on the Iraqi WMD fraud back in 2003, ABC's Four Corners has 'revealed' to its audiences that they were lied to by their governments in order to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands.
However, Four Corners' seeming resolve to inform the Australian public about lies used to promote one unjust war has not extended to the two year old Syrian conflict, where tens of thousands have died at the hands terrorist killers, judging by its earlier report, The Battle for Syria of 8 October last year. The terrorists of the so-called "Free Syrian Army" (FSA) have been armed, supplied and paid for by the same criminals who waged the 10 year old war against Iraq made possible by the WMD lie.
Judging by the fact that this report also repeated the fraudulent Official account of the 9/11 terrorist attack, Four Corners' resolve also does not extend to Afghanistan, the invasion of which was justified by that lie.
Did Julia Gillard once knock back a pass from Mr Murdoch?
I just watched Q & A and could not believe more repetition of the same questionable opinions about mistakes Gillard has purportedly made. They were actually pushing Abbott!
Paola Totaro in the Guardian Weekly writes of amazement at how the ALP is constantly trying to destabilise Julia Gillard when the Australian dollar is high and we have had 21 years of growth. Whilst, like many on candobetter.net, I don't like growth, I will take Julia Gillard any day in place of Kevin Rudd. I find what Simon Crean is doing disgusting. It is like Murdoch will highlight anyone prepared to say something horrible about Gillard.
What did she ever do to Mr Murdoch - did he make a pass at her that she rejected or something? Sure looks like it.
Below is Totaro's article:
http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/20338607/1764018166/name/Preview%20of%20%80%A0%A2%E2%92%A0%92%BCAustralians%20don%26%2339%3Bt%20kn
Deliberate skills shortages in Australia.
The State Government is under pressure from parents and teachers to help deliver a $4 billion shot in the arm for Victorian schools. Mr Gonski recommends more funding for universities, not taking from them.
It's hard to swallow the "skills shortages" that our economy is supposed to be crippled by if the Gillard Government is taking $2.8 billion from universities toward a $14.5 billion boost to school funding over six years. Already universities are forced to depend on international students to stretch their budgets, and this will exacerbate their needs.
Our tertiary education system is how we are to be ready for the many challenges in the next decades and it's backward thinking to deprive it of funds. Our record levels of immigration are based on our "skills shortages", yet any skills shortages will increase unless TAFEs and universities are supported. Our universities should primarily be for our domestic students, not excessively relying on foreign sourced dollars! The globalization of jobs, education, housing, industries, living standards and farm land is detrimental to Australia, and eroding the "Lucky Country" we used to have.
The reality of "skills shortages" in Australia is politically motivated and caused through privatization of utilities, and depriving our educational institutions of sufficient funding.
Victoria going from Bad to Worse!
If the conflict of agriculture and primary industries with wildlife wasn't already entrenched enough, it's about to get worse!
Thanks to Premier Napthine's "shakeup" of Victorian public services, the departments of Sustainability and Environment and Primary Industries was "married" or merged with DPI!
The interests of farmers, loggers, hunters, fishers and primary producers will inevitably clash with the intrinsic values of protecting our biodiversity.
Wildlife, our coasts, ecological communities, native forests and the diversity of our environments already have serious conflicts of interests with government land-usage policies.
The liberal permits to "control" (ie kill) native animals such as kangaroos, and many other native birds and animals, by landholders as pests will be even more freely distributed.
Land for wildlife will be compromised for economic growth in the primary industry sector and for urban sprawl. The logging industry will have free reign to our native forests. DSE's responsibilities for flora and fauna and habitat protection will collide head on and we'll see the numbers of our already endangered species in further decline.
National parks will be promoted for "developments", and more human impacts and cattle grazing.
Napthine said "this is about improving services, getting better value for money so that we can get better outcomes for people". Monetary values and lure of cash flows will see Victoria's long-term preservation under threat by property developers and other primary industries such as fishing, hunting, logging and farming.
Better outcomes for people and better value for money would be better served by streamlining the State government into non-existence. With the doubling up of services and policies with our Federal government, and too many expensive politicians, Australia would be better off altogether with only two tiers of government and a more holistic, overall vision for our nation and our mega-diverse landscapes.
To save money, the State government is abandoning plans to save threatened species.
Herald Sun: No plan to save threatened animal species
The latest list of threatened animals, released by the Department of Sustainability and Environment, found one animal had become extinct in the wild in the past five years and more than 50 had advanced into more serious categories of threat. Greens MP Greg Barber said that "More than a third of the plants, animals, communities and processes that were listed a quarter of a century ago still do not have action statements." Flora and fauna obviously are dispensible by our developement-driven State government and they would prefer to denude our forests for timber and have wall-to-wall housing!
Concerns jobs figures mask public health issues:ABC
Australia's latest unemployment figures might look good on a global scale, but there are also concerns they are masking serious public health issues.
The unemployment rate jumped to 5.6 per cent today due to the estimated loss of more than 36,000 jobs in March.
The latest Bureau of Statistics figures show nearly 500,000 people want full-time work but cannot find it.
In March 2013 an estimated 1.37 million Australians (10.8% of the workforce) were unemployed. This is down 0.1% from last month. The Australian workforce was 12,644,000, (a record high) comprising 7,671,000 full-time workers (up 174,000); 3,604,000 part-time workers (down 50,000) and 1,369,000 looking for work (up 9,000) according to the Roy Morgan monthly employment estimates.
10.8% unemployed is disguised by people taking up casual and part time work, artificially being added to the "employed" numbers.
Underemployment, like unemployment, raises several housing policy concerns about the capacity of households to meet ongoing housing costs during a period of reduced or inadequate income. Small changes to incomes for some households pose a significant threat to housing security and stability.
In Australia, underemployment is well above the OECD average (OECD Employment Outlook, 2010).
The mental health of job seekers is deteriorating as people are giving up and not being included in the economy. "What Beyond Blue is noticing is that mental health issues are continuing to escalate," she said.
"Last year stress claims topped $10 billion and we know job insecurity, over-work and under-work are contributing factors to the cost, both personally and to the economy."
Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor argued that there were 107,510 temporary workers on primary 457 visas in Australia during February 2013, a rise of 21.5 per cent on the corresponding month last year. Mr O'Connor also noted that both nominal and real wages for those with 457 immigration visa holders have been tumbling by as much as 12 per cent in the IT-related jobs sector.
Record rates of both temporary and permanent immigration at a time of our economy's slow-down is hurting Australian families, and the 457 visa rort is only the tip of the iceberg.
Despite Julia Gillard's slashing of the 457 visa, she recently announced that immigration would continue to be "sizeable", and we would have a "big Australia" of over 40 million by 2050. The lure of "economic growth" through force-feeding more and more people into our country ignores the fact that our economy is not growing despite our high levels of immigration, and the boom years are over.
The "skills shortages" rant is looking thin! It's hard to even find casual jobs. Entry-level jobs demand at least two years' experience and a tertiary degree.
Concerns jobs figures mask public health issues
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Possum killed in Lutwyche, Queensland
A possum was attacked by a domestic dog in the northern Brisbane suburb of Lutwyche earlier this evening at roughly 7.30PM Queensland Time (8.30PM elsewhere on the Eastern Australian seaboard). It sadly died an hour later in spite of efforts by Lea-ann to contact the Brisbane Area Network Association animal rescuers listed above and the care she gave to the injured possum.
The phone number for BARN, 0405 056 066, was inactive when Lee-ann tried to ring.
It seems unlikely that BARN would have been able to save the possum even if Lea-ann had been able to reach them. Still, let's hope that the mobile service works better next time a possum's life is threatened with injury.
Another way to better assure that injured possums receive more timely treatment in future would be for more contact phone numbers to be listed here. If you know of any other numbers through which people able to help injured wildlife can be reached, please leave a comment here or 'phone me on 0412 319669.
Postscript: (11:25PM) The following was posted to Twitter, just now:
Phone numbers of more people able to treat injured Australian possums & other wildlife needed http://candobetter.net/?q=node/2820#comment-33873 A possum died tonight.
Easter Oysters
I suppose the oysters from Tasmania contaminated by a leaking sewerage outlet and which gave gastroenteritis to about 200 people at Easter were part of "celebratory" Good Friday meals.
Trial jury: Conspiracy to kill Martin Luther King
The Conspiracy to kill Martin Luther King: Not a theory but a fact from Global Research, 4 April 2013.
Should the United States government be allowed to assassinate its own citizens? That question was in the air briefly not long ago. April 4 is an excellent day to revive it: On April 4, 1968, the government was part of a successful conspiracy to assassinate the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
That's not just some wing-nut conspiracy theory. It's not a theory at all. It is a fact, according to our legal system.
...
The above was posted to johnquiggin.com. On 20 October 2011, a comment, which concerned this topic, was deleted from that site.
Other posts, the contents of which been labeled 'Conspiracy Theory', have also been censored.
3 North Korean Doctors Are Killed in Nigeria (11 Feb)
POTISKUM, Nigeria (AP) — Assailants in northeastern Nigeria have killed three North Korean doctors, beheading one of them, officials said Sunday. ...
The story, linked to above, is in the New York Times of 11 Feb 2011. The murdered doctors are from North Korea, which has been particularly demonised recently in the Australian newsmedia, lately, Foreign Minister Bob Carr, who has also condemned the Syrian Government and imposed sanctions, has done the same to North Korea, allegedly in reponse to its recent nuclear tests.
As with Syria, a truly objective judgment is only possible if the broader historical context, which also comprises the New York Times story, is taken into account
Scary joining of Islam and Catholicism with globalisation?
12:30-12:38 on RN ABC Radio Australia (listen live here, linked to from RN 'Special Broadcasts' page, roughly 1/3 way down on right of page)- Talk between Islamic and Catholic 'sociologists' of how science is an ideology that is receding as religion comes back, of how roman catholicism was uncomfortable with development of nation states post Napoleon ....
Sound horribly as if the Catholics and the Muslims are working to establish a new common power basis. Religion has always been a political powerbase to get hold of capital. Just look at the wealth in the Vatican . What is the situation in Islamic institutions? One assumes that the leaders of Islam and Catholicism are basically into money and power, whatever the ideology they hand down to their 'flocks'. With globalisation of capital and loss of civil rights as nation states are eroded, we should fear capital and religion getting back together to run and ruin the world.
Government would surely participate in any truly free market
The comment below was intended to be a response to a debate on Ellen Brown's Web of Debt web site. However, I was not able to log on toWeb of Debt, due to technical problems.
A contradiction in the ideology of the so-called 'free marketeers', which should have been obvious when it was imposed on Australia in 1983 by the then Federal Treasurer Paul Keating (and subsequently codified in the (misnamed) National Competition Policy, authored by Fred Hilmer), is that both Government and private entrepreneurs should be free to operate in a truly free market.
If a government of any sovereign community is prevented from owning operating or building, as examples:
an insurance company, a railway, a road, a bridge, telecommunictions infrastructure, a funeral service, housing, a real estate service, or a bank
... and competing[1] with private entrepreurs (except where there are natural monopolies), then the market is not free.
Footnote[s]
[1] 'Competition' is not meant in the race-to-the-bottom sense that was implied by Paul Keating, rather, it is meant in the sense that those who produce a better value product will prosper more, whilst those who do not will not be driven to bankruptcy and ruin as long as they produce a product of worth.
Obesity is contradictory to the outcome principles
Population over-growth, or obesity, is actually contradictory to the main aims, or "outcome principles" of the Strategy. Obesity in humans means bodies become bloated and distorted, and they lose their distinctive body shapes, and functions.
Obesity impacts on good circulation and inhibits movements, adding to cardio vascular disease. Obesity is an important determinant of cardiovascular disease (CVD). A connected city depends on a high level of movement, but obesity hits at the heart of good public transport and blocks efforts of extending it into the growth areas.
Social and economic participation is inhibited by excessive population growth. Community planner Eben Fodor studied 100 of the fastest metropolitan areas in the US and found that the myth of growth bringing prosperity is wrong. Growth drives higher taxes, pollution, and the fragmentation of communities. It also increased crime rates as people feel they are not noticed, disconnected, and can get away with it. It leads to higher unemployment and social dis-ease.
Having "strong communities" as well as forced-fed population growth are contradictions. Strength is a result of cohesion, not fragmentation and internal stresses.
As for "environmental resilience", it's population growth that's causing species extinctions, pollution, the fragmentation of land, over-consumption of natural resources and threatening urban sprawl.
Despite the community consultation, our Victorian Planning Department must inevitably become more autocratic to streamline higher density developments - to crush democracy.
Foreign fighters in Syria- backed by NATO
A former US soldier has been arrested and charged with terror offences after he allegedly travelled to Syria. Eric Harroun, a 30-year-old army veteran from Phoenix, Arizona, is alleged to have joined a squad of guerrilla fighters from the Al-Nusra Front. Harroun has been charged with "conspiring to use a destructive device outside of the United States", an offence that carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.
British security services said that scores of UK citizens are fighting in Syria. A recent Home Office’s annual report titled ‘The United Kingdom’s strategy for Countering Terrorism’ highlights the growing threat that might come to the UK from Syria.
The fighters have come from range of ethnic backgrounds include young Asians, converts to Islam and men from north African backgrounds.
Hundreds of international fighters have flocked to Syria to join the war against Bashar al-Assad's government. Some are fresh-faced idealists driven by a romantic notion of revolution or a hatred for the Assads. Others are jihadi veterans of Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan.
US Army's own West Point Combating Terrorism Center report "Al-Qa'ida's Foreign Fighters in Iraq," was extensively cited by historian and geopolitical analyst Dr. Webster Tarpley in March of 2011, exposing that NATO-backed "pro-democracy" rebels in Libya were in fact Al Qaeda's Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), listed by the US State Department, United Nations, and the UK Home Office as an international terrorist organization.
According to a Reuters news report Dr. Jacques Beres of Doctors without Borders served at a hospital in Aleppo for a two week period claims the majority of his patients were foreign fighters (see article: Jihadists join Aleppo fight, eye Islamic state, surgeon says http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/08/syria-crisis-jihad-idUSL6E8K80... ).
Here is what he said exactly: "Well, they’re (Syrian rebels) recruited by networks of NATO intelligence. This is after all a CIA covert operation, they form a secret army."
The reports were that foreign fighters were a significant and growing part of this insurrection, so they’ve been recruited from Morocco to Pakistan and from Somalia to Chechnya.
At least 25 are reported dead after a chemical weapons attack targeting Syrian soldiers was carried out by NATO-backed terrorists in the northern city of Aleppo. Any chemical weapons imported into the country would implicate NATO either directly or through gross negligence, as the weapons would have passed through NATO-member Turkey, past US CIA agents admittedly operating along the border and along side Western-backed terrorists inside Syria.
Of course reporters aren't able and free to give the "news" objectively as it is! Like all media operations, they have their set agendas and vested interests in selling newspapers/media outlets, not broadcasting independent and objective "news" based on facts and empirical evidence.
Don’t miss 60 Minutes on Channel 9 this Sunday
The 60 Minutes Crew accompanies ANIMAL LIBERATION (NSW) Rescue Team in exposing the titan of animal abuse.
This Sunday at 7:30, 60 Minutes will feature an Animal Liberation exposé of the cruel broiler chicken industry, airing never seen before footage. The Australian broiler industry is shrouded with secrecy, and has received little media attention before now.
An avian veterinarian is interviewed while treating rescued broiler chickens showing major health issues directly caused by intensive husbandry practices common across the three major companies in Australia.
Tune in this weekend to watch this important story and help promote this vital program by sharing on Facebook and/or Twitter.
Help us continue our vital broiler campaign. We are the DIRECT ACTION Group that opens the door to institutionalized hidden animal abuse.
Fish now a luxury, not a sacrificial Easter feast
Unfortunately Easter and Christmas have become commercial and cultural activities, primarily to promote consumption of goods and the sale of items in supermarkets. It's crass, commercial and a cannibalization of the real significance of these religious events. At least other religions aren't put in the grinder and the mixer and manipulated by the common public!
That's the price of Christianity being, in the past, the mainstream religion of our fore-fathers!
Eating a fish meal on Good Friday, in the past, was symbolic of a sacrificial meal as fish was considered inferior and more humble than meat. It was symbolic of fasting, a Jewish spiritual exercise that early Christians adopted. In those days, meat was an expensive luxury. On the other hand, anyone could grow vegetables or catch a fish.
Due to exponential human overpopulation, and resultant overfishing, fish prices have risen enormously and are now a luxury! We are straining our Oceans' ability to breed the fish we eat, to sequester carbon, and to replenish the air. Now even some of the "trash fish" of that era are too rare to fish commercially or recreationally.
According to the new study, "Catching the Limit: Population and the Decline of Fisheries", population growth will especially strain the availability of fish in developing nations, where more than 700 million people already cannot obtain sufficient calories and nutrients to lead healthy and active lives. The global fish catch peaked in 1989 at 89 million metric tons and has hovered at around 85 million tons since then. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that nearly 70 percent of the world's conventional fish species-such as cod, hake and haddock-are already fished up to or beyond sustainable limits. http://www.jayhanson.us/page5.htm
"By 2100, the terms 'climate conflict', 'water wars' and 'resource conflict' will become highly likely in parts of the world," said Stephen Emmott, who heads Microsoft's Computational Science Laboratory at Oxford.
The production of a single cup of coffee requires 100 litres of water, while a chocolate bar draws upon 27,000 litres. Even a simple computer search for www.CNBC.com consumes the same energy as boiling a kettle.
Human overpopulation, largely ignored by most Christian churches and actively encouraged by the Catholic church, will even make common food - including chocolate Easter eggs - a "luxury" in the future.
Australians are not global citizens
The discrimination against Australians must end. Australians have not chosen to be global citizens, but are part of Australia as a sovereign nation. Like our resources, our land, our home, our shores, none are international property. The same must be for jobs. How dare our government sign such a discriminatory international agreement that prohibits employers from searching for willing local people before giving jobs to 457 visa holders?
Rather than "xenophobic" or "racist" that Australians are being accused to being, this social engineering of Western or "white" guilt is to make us more accepting of high immigration - at whatever costs. When politicians or the media accuse the public of being "xenophobic" they really mean that the government's highest priority towards the rights and welfare of Australian citizens as their primary obligation is being undermined.
Global citizenship means foreign workers have the superior rights to locals.
Such trade agreements are discriminatory, and are to soften national borders of the more wealthy countries to distribute more wealth and opportunities to third-world countries.
Australia needs to drop its international trade obligations
They are doing us nothing but harm ...
Employers will not be forced to check if locals are available to fill jobs before they import foreigners, under the federal crackdown on temporary skilled visas.
The office of Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor has confirmed that Australia has international trade obligations that forbid mandatory testing of the local labour market by employers seeking to bring in people on 457 visas.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/no-check-on-locals-in-work-visas-rort/story-e6frf7jo-1226607919269
Iraq:10 years on - what was the bloody point?
Simon Crean said John Howard mistaken to join US war in Iraq
Former Labor leader Simon Crean says it was a mistake to join the war in Iraq, because it diverted Australia's attentions away from Afghanistan. John Howard willingly went to war because the US asked him to.
"My view is the decision was wrong," Mr Crean told ABC News 24. "The weapons of mass destruction weren’t found and I think the people who justified that on that basis ought to explain."
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/simon-crean-said-john-howard-mistaken-to-join-us-war-in-iraq/story-fncynkc6-1226608928181
Mr Smith said around 1000 of the 1550-strong force would be out of the country by December this year.
While pockets of the country are certainly far more secure than they have been, there is real concern about the Taliban quickly filling the security vacuum left once troops withdraw. It is estimated that 162,000 Iraqis have died since the 2003 invasion.
The Bush administration made the argument that in the post-9/11 climate there should be a belated reckoning with Saddam Hussein.
Thirty-nine Australians have been killed in action and more than 245 wounded, many seriously, during the war 11-year-war. Canada refuse to go to Iraq, but not Australia or Britain. Almost 4,500 U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq and 30,000 wounded. More than 100,000 Iraqis were killed.
“It was absolutely an error,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper said. “It’s obviously clear the evaluation of weapons of mass destruction proved not to be correct.”
Since there was no direct connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam, George Bush probably would not have taken the risk of invading Iraq.
According to the UN's latest estimates, at least 3.6 million people are internally displaced in Syria. The 70,000 refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia still living in Syria are facing the same hardship and dangers as their Syrian hosts.
Of the 1.5 million Iraqi refugees who have fled the country, only about 80,000, or 5 percent, have been resettled in the U.S. In the years following 2003, Iraq’s refugee problem has grown into what many observers regard as an unprecedented crisis. Engineers, artists, lawyers, academics, doctors, and other professionals were among the first to escape the war. It dismantled many of Iraq’s cultural and educational institutions and social fabric. Few refugees plan to return.
In an overpopulated planet of many crises, and more threats and conflicts over scarcities to occur in the future, never has there been a time in history when steady-state planet-wide stability was needed.
There are no new frontiers to conquer, no new lands to colonize, no places where the displaced are welcomed, and wars and the displacement of humanity must be avoided at all costs.
Sea Turtles under threat from coal mining at Abbot Point
Mining giant Adani plans to build a new monster coal port, Terminal Zero, just metres from a beach where sea turtles have come to lay their eggs for decades.
Hundreds of extra coal ships would travel through a narrow passage, greatly increasing the risk of collisions and spillages. Then once the coal is burnt, it’ll drive global warming faster than ever before. It’s another monster coal plan with monstrous consequences.
The Port of Abbot Point is one of Australia’s most significant emerging bulk ports and is undergoing a major transformation into a port precinct of global importance. It is an existing operating coal port located just north of Bowen in north Queensland.
The National Environmental Significance Management Plan needs to maximise the ongoing protection and long term conservation of EPBC listed threatened fauna
Several management plans will manage potential impacts on the values of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area and species including dugongs, turtles and migratory birds. Greenpeace's Georgina Woods says there is some information about possible environmental impacts that has been withheld.
She says there is sea grass providing for green turtles and dugongs and other marine life such as dolphins in the area that would be affected.
Since obtaining a 99-year lease of the X50 Abbot Point Coal Terminal, Adani identified the need to increase terminal capacity.
Profits and economic growth should not be at the expense of habitat destruction and ongoing threats to species while we are on the cusp of an era of mass extinctions.
Greenpeace - Take Action Now
Australia's population boom to reach 40 million
JULIA Gillard is steering the nation's population on a course to more than 40 million by 2050, despite warning just three years ago against "hurtling towards a big Australia". Demographer Bob Birrell warned that, in the flattening labour market, such a rapid rate of population growth posed a threat to Australian jobseekers.
Despite an Intergenerational survey in 2010 that revealed that about two thirds of the population do not want 35 million people in Australia, it will be at least 40 million by 2050! Julia Gillard has broken her first promise as PM, to not "hurtle towards 'big Australia'".
While population growth no doubt does increase the crude size of the economy, the GDP, it's at a great cost to the environment, our jobs market, the environment, climate change and our life styles.
Despite Gillard cutting down on the 457 visa "rort", the number of temporary 457 visas being issued was feeding into the surge in net overseas migration. It proves that there's nothing more permanent than a "temporary" migrant!
Foreign students graduating in Australia will be free to work for 4 years in Australia, and no doubt once they have a job they will stay here!
Besides MP Kelvin Rudd, all the politicians are intent on increasing the size of our economy at whatever costs. At an election time, when one would assume the government would be in listening mode, they are isolating themselves and distancing themselves further from the voters.
Australia's economic growth has dwindled and plateaued, but our government, bereft of ideas, are resorting to the only way they can think of to stimulate the economy - the no-brainer one of making our borders even more permeable and opening the flood gates to more immigration!
Great
It would take far more than the space allotted here to comprehensively describe the philosophical and ethical debates that have contributed to the foundation of animal law. Suffice to say that although in the law animals are regarded as the property of human animals, yet in being accorded some protection against mistreatment and cruelty, it could be said that animal law has an ethical, or moral, cornerstone that other property law does not have.
Agricultural census covert government surveillance of US farms
USDA agricultural census program is a covert surveillance operation to compile government database of food and farm assets
Wednesday, 27 March,2013
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com
(NaturalNews) The USDA "census of agriculture" is a government-run farm surveillance program designed to register and inventory detailed private data on farm assets, operations and personnel. A census form is mailed to each farmer in the United States, accompanied by threats of compliance and a warning that farmers who do not comply will be visited in person by government agents.
These agricultural census forms -- see a link to a scanned copy below -- demands farmers reveal the following information, all of which is compiled into a vast government database:
- # of acres of land owned
- Physical location of the land
- # of acres of croplands harvested
- # of acres of pasture land
- # of acres leased for cash
- # of acres irrigated
- How much money you've received from state or federal agricultural programs
- The exact number of acres grown and harvested for each crop: corn, oats, peanuts, cotton, rice, soybeans, wheat and many more
- # of acres of hay or forage crops
- # of acres used for Christmas trees or maple syrup
- Detailed inventory of your greenhouses, vegetable seeds, mushrooms and "propagative materials"
- ...
Should we put our money under the mattress now?
Does Ellen Brown have any advice about what ordinary people might do to prevent loss of their savings if governments and banks start making moves on accounts outside Europe, similar to what has happened in Cyprus? Should we all just convert everything to gold and bury it somewhere?
Editorial comment: You could consider posting part of the above question to Ellen Brown's twitter page, as I have already done. if you can compose a message no larger than twitter's limit of 140 characters per messsage. Your post would look something like:
@ellenhbrown http://candobetter.net/?q=node/3213#comment-32385 Does Ellen Brown have any advice about what ordinary people might do ...
Need we care about threatened crash of global paper economy?
The following was posted to Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt. This is further to the two tweets:
twitter.com/malthusista/status/316797626425176064
twitter.com/malthusista/status/316794317182226432
It seems to me that people, who otherwise know better and work to expose the lies of the rulling elites, including Paul Craig Roberts and Alex Jones (in the YouTube broadcast embedded below) have failed to see through private banking and similar frauds. Were more governments simply to establish public banks (as you have pointed out that the U.S. state of Montana has done), then all the crises of the paper economy -- the "all ordinaries index", exchange rates of the Australian Dollar, US Dollar, the Euro, the UK Pound, etc., news of which puts us to sleep each night at the end of the evening news -- would be history.
Alex Jones and Paul Craig Roberts discuss global economic crisis
BIO-ENERGY: THE NEXT HORROR FOR OUR FORESTS
ACTION ALERT
BIO-ENERGY: THE NEXT HORROR FOR OUR FORESTS
It’s the next wave of destruction for our native forests. The forestry and energy industries are now poised to unleash their plans to feed our forests into furnaces to produce electricity, convert them into bio-fuels, and into pellets for export. This will mean more destruction of forests and their wildlife, and release massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.
Industry calls this ‘renewable energy’. It wants the government to help pay for it in the form of ‘renewable energy certificates’ and other subsidies at the community’s expense.
This is despite the fact that many eminent scientists and researchers consider this form of bio-energy to be neither clean nor renewable.* And despite the fact that this form of energy will actually outcompete genuine renewable energy like solar and wind power.** It’s imperative governments don’t support this industry.
Join us to show the energy industry and energy retailers, the forestry industry and governments that we will not stand by while our forests are destroyed for energy production. Let them know that our precious forests must be protected for wildlife, climate, water and the air we breathe, not trashed for electricity or fuel.
Join our Action on April 15 -
we'll have a giant toaster ‘incinerating’ threatened wildlife!
When: 15, 2013 at 9am
Where: Outside the ‘Residues to Revenues’ conference
Bayview Eden, 6 Queens Road Melbourne , VIC 3004
What to bring: Just show up, we will have all the materials you need.
Phone Lorraine on 0414958714 for further information
http://www.noforestfurnaces.wordpress.com
Facebook causes
Protect native forests for climate change
Energy needs are obviously becoming in short supply, needed to fuel our economic growth.
You can't be friends of Saudi Arabia AND friends of democracy
I see that this article posted by Geoffrey comes from a press release from the Syrian Foreign Ministry in Damascus. For those unfamiliar with a non-Western alliance interpretation of events in the Middle East, it might be helpful to clarify that last comment,
"The source stressed that "such biased, non-objective and unbalanced resolutions" consolidate the double standards policy practiced by some countries that claim to defend human rights while at the same time they ignore the outrageous record of human rights in the countries sponsoring this resolution."
The comment undoubtedly refers to the United States, Britain and France as countries claiming to defend human rights whilst at the same time ignoring the outrageous record of human rights of Saudi Arabia, which forms part of that alliance.
It is indeed amazing that the US, Britain and France can stand, as it were, shoulder to shoulder with Saudi Arabia and speak of human rights. http://www.hrw.org/world-report-2012/world-report-2012-saudi-arabia
Many people also feel that the United States, with its huge numbers of people in prison, of people below the poverty line and without secure shelter, of violent crime, prostitution and addiction, is also an abuser of human rights at home, as well as based on its record of illegal invasion of foreign countries.
Syrian rebel coalition crumbling: President resigns
From antiwar.com. Comment: Let's hope that Jason Ditz is right. However, even if the terrorists within Syria are crumbling under the blows of the Syrian Army, there is a vast reservoir of people to be used against Syria in the Middle East and Central Asia and amongst the regular and clandestine armed forces of the West. The only way to permanently end the war is for people in the countries whose governments are supporting the terrorists, to hold their governments to account. - GT
Syria’s National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces (CORF) has repeatedly claimed to be on the brink of unifying the rebel movement in a way that would facilitate more international aid. This weekend though, it looks like the CORF is on the brink of collapse.
The group’s president, Moaz al-Khatib has announced his resignation today, citing the lack of international support as a principle reason. Khatib had only held the position for a few months, and was controversial in being one of the few rebel figures who gave lip-service to a negotiated settlement, something which riled others in the CORF.
Khatib's departure leaves Ghassan Hitto, who was named "prime minister in exile" last week, as the closest thing the group has to a leader. Yet his position is enormously weak, and that weakness stretches beyond him being just a few months removed from being a middle manager for a small company in Dallas.
Gen. Salim Idris, the head of CORF’s military branch, has announced that he will not recognize Hitto as prime minister, and says the Free Syrian Army (FSA) won’t endorse Hitto unless he gets more support.
Though Hitto got a solid majority of the votes cast last week, he had the bare minimum of votes needed, with 15 of the 63 active members refusing to vote for anyone at all. There is concern that the lack of unity on Hitto would make him a weak leader, and this is doubly so without the FSA’s imprimatur.
Online forum: How to stop the Syrian 'civil' war?
The following is a response to questions put to me in a debate on the Iraq War of 2003 on johnquiggin.com. This post was deleted on 25 March 2013. Another copy of this post is to be found on candobetter here.
Thank you both for your interest. My apologies, on my part, for my slow response. I was intending to write a sizeable article to publish on my web-site (candobetter -dot- net -slash- syria) in response to your questions. Please consider the response below to be only interim:
Whilst it could seem hyperbolic to liken the crimes, committed the New World Order against Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, Libya, and now Syria, with those of the Third Reich, given that the death toll of 3.3 million, so far killed since 1990 in Iraq alone, is barely an order of magnitude less than that caused by Nazi Germany and its allies in the Second World War, this likening is not unreasonable.
Given that the rulers of the New World Order have, in their hands, vastly more terrible and sophisticated weapons of war than those possessed by Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire, it is not hard to envision the death toll greatly surpassing the terrible toll of 60 million deaths in the Second World War should they triumph against Syria.
So, the whole civilised[1] world has a vital stake in the Syrian Army defeating the so-called "Free Syrian Army" and its New World Order controllers in the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Israel, the Arab monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Israel, etc.
Given the effective abolition of the rights guaranteed in the US constitution by President Barack Obama, it will only be a matter of time before democratic rights, free speech, parliamentary democracy are abolished in Western Nations, should the Syrian people be defeated.
J-D wrote:
I am confused by your questions and wonder whether you could clarify.
J-D, I was simply pointing out that the history of which Professor Quiggin has written has been repeated in Libya and now threatens to be repeated in Syria and Iran. Surely, on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, we need to consider whether that illegal invasion was a once-only occurrence or whether it was only one in a pattern of events which is now being repeated. If the latter, in the case of Syria, is true, then we should surely be interested in applying the terrible lessons of the Iraq war so as to prevent their repetition in Syria.
Ken_L wrote:
@malthusista, I would also appreciate clarification of exactly how you believe 'we' could stop the Syrian civil war? A little elaboration of who 'we' are would also be helpful.
Ken_L, The civil war in Syria could be ended simply if the U.S., Israel, etc., accepted the principle that any people have a right to national self-determination. It is obvious that President Bashar al-Assad and his government enjoy the support of the overwhelming majority of Syrians. Those, who have waged the terrorist war against the Syrian government, comprise, at most, a small minority of Syrians. The vast majority of the FSA is comprised of sectarian Islamist extremists from countries like Libya, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, mercenaries, the U.S. SAS, the U.K. SAS, the French Special Forces, the C.I.A., Mossad, etc.
Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel should cease giving these killers sanctuary and passage into and out of Syria.
An unprovoked attack on the armed forces of Syria or on the armed forces of any sovereign country is a crime and, even more so, the murder of unarmed civilians. Supplying weapons to those killers by the U.S. and its allies is complicity in that crime and should cease. Were that to happen, the war in Syria would be finished in days.
Early last year, the Syrian government received overwhelming support (and, I might add, far more than U.S. politicians typically get in national elections with barely 50% of the population in participating in most) from its people in a referendum proposing constitutional reform. Part of the reform was to remove from the Syrian constitution, any privilege give to the Ba'ath Socialist Party. President Assad and every member of the Syrian Parliament must now stand for re-election. Any one of them will be voted out were they not to enjoy popular support.
Were there ever to be free elections in Syria, which cannot possibly be held in the middle of the war now raging, there can be little doubt that President Assad would win overwhelmingly and that the FSA would get a miniscule vote.
The war and killing in Syria only continue because the rulers of the U.S. and their allies wish it to continue.
Footnote[s]
[1] I don't mean 'civilised' in the sense of the European colonialists claims of bringing 'civilisation' to the 'backward' people of the Third World in previous centuries.
Less concern about war against Syria now than Iraq war of 2003?
This was posted to a discussion about the Iraq war of 20003 on John Quiggan's web site.
So, can anyone explain to me how NATO's Syrian "regime-change" in Libya in 2011 and its ongoing "regime-change" proxy war against Syria, which some estimate has cost 70,000 lives, differ from its illegal wars against Iraq in 2003 and 1991?
Can anyone explain why we should be less concerned about a war, which is raging now in 2013 and which we stand some chance of stopping, than a war, which we failed to stop, ten years ago?
So-called Syrian rebel groups using slaves to fight
The end of the article cited under the heading, '2000 Tunisians are fighting in Syria' carried the really awful punchline which destroys the credibility (if any is left) for the so-called rebels fighting the Syrian government. They are mercenaries and slaves. This guy fled Syria where he was being forced to fight as a slave.
"The Tunisian terrorist said that he and his Tunisian colleagues are being treated as slaves by the armed terrorist groups in which ranks they are fighting, which made him flee Syria and return to Tunisia."
This is what the governments of the U.S., Britain, Saudi Arabia and France have aligned themselves to support.
There should be no foreign national soldiers in Syria.
2000 Tunisians are fighting in Syria
TUNIS, (SANA) - The Tunisian e-newspaper 'Al-Jarida' revealed that around 2000 Tunisians are fighting among the armed terrorist groups in Syria.
Abo Qusai, a Tunisian who fought in Syria, told the newspaper that the Tunisian fighters are of various ages and include students, workers and jobless people.
Abo Qusai revealed that there is a direct line through which those terrorists go to Syria which is that of Libya/Benghazi.
He referred to a terrorist group called 'al-Darneh Battalions' which arrived in Syria from Libya two weeks before he fled Syria.
The Tunisian terrorist said that he and his Tunisian colleagues are being treated as slaves by the armed terrorist groups in which ranks they are fighting, which made him flee Syria and return to Tunisia.
H. Said
Something you should know about the euro crisis
The euro crisis is not something what is caused by some countries or people.
It's an general issue about how money is working.
How money works:
at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYi0deWPibU
at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2Y1FIZ-cPY
at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty1HvJGhiJo
Alternatives:
Maybe youtube heard or readed already about Bitcoins?
http://www.weusecoins.com
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page
Bitcoins are limited and every day more people know about them, the value is raising since months and will raise much more.
All problems in the world where caused because of the money system.
Sorry for spamming but this is important.
If you like it anyway you could also think about donating some Bitcoins.
Bitcoin Address: 1PHvSMNeh7XzqauYUyHyUEWGz63ich1XkB
Population growth is a "no brainer" way of economic growth
Just add people and stir economic formula! Leaders with little ideas and innovation of ways to stimulate the economy, and starved of any thoughts for the future, will just resort to population growth! The same is happening in Tasmania. It creates new customers for businesses, and it means tenants and buyers for the real estate industry. There's no long term thought for the future, and the fact that there's already high youth unemployment in Adelaide.
| Region of Adelaide | Unemployment | |
| total | youth | |
| North: | 8.1% | 44.6% |
| West: | 4.6% | 13.9% |
| East: | 4.2% | 18.6% |
| South: | 5.1% | 29.3% |
The "skills shortages" claim is a convenient rort to justify more immigration and get fillers for the housing market. This is not an economy in overdrive, but one sector that's being manipulated for convenience without thought for the costs of growth. Water security, climate change, the end of Australia's oil production, debt accumulation, social division and lowering living standards will plague Adelaide as it is in Melbourne and Sydney.
Outbursts against foreign workers & pop growth in Adelaide
Some fantastic letters to the editor below, which should not be lost to the public knowledge:
Forget visas, kids need jobs
THOUSANDS of workers from overseas are being allowed to come into our country under the 457 special visa program.
Yet just as many desperate young people in Australia are missing out because companies - big and small - prefer to hire skilled labour from wherever they can get it instead of providing apprenticeships and traineeships.
And they don't care about paying for the airfares and accommodation.
My son completed courses at TAFE SA in welding and fabrication three years ago. Since then he has applied for work at many companies here and interstate and almost always the answer is the same: we want experienced workers.
The few places that advertise for apprentice welders are usually overwhelmed with applications.
My son has even done cold-calling and door-knocked businesses - but to no avail.
He has all but given up on pursuing his dream job and is, instead, working as a tyre fitter. My advice to the Gillard Government: Stop the work visas and provide incentives for local companies to take on kids who just want to work; who want a future.
E. LAWRENCE, Upper Sturt
Look after our own
WHILE many oppose the Federal Government's plan to scale back the use of special work visas for migrant workers, I support the move.
I can't understand why we would be bringing in hundreds of workers when there are many in Australia unable to get jobs, particularly in the high-demand industries such as mining and construction.
The answer is that companies aren't willing to pay the going rate to employees. So, instead, they pay much less to foreigners to help boost their profits.
Whatever happened to looking after your own first? There are people out there who can't get work because employers can't be bothered spending the money on training.
ANNE GRAHAM, Gawler
Population boost plan must be cut
FOR the thousands of concerned residents battling urban sprawl and suburban high-rise, one piece of information from Heather Kennett's article ("The never-ending storeys", Sunday Mail, 17/3/13) holds the key: "The plan proposes boosting Adelaide's population by 560,000."
The entire 30-year Plan for Greater Adelaide hinges on those few words. Read the sentence and let it sink in.
If the proposal to boost our population is abandoned, the plan falls over. No population increase, no need for the plan's 258,000 additional dwellings, meaning no urban sprawl or suburban high-rise.
The Property Council's biggest fear is that the public will tweak to this. Believe me, the last thing they want is a genuine debate about population growth and what it means for society and the environment.
Those two factors always take a back seat behind big industry's holy grail of economic growth.
The justification for abandoning the population target is right under our noses. We read about it every day.
We wear T-shirts that say we love it. A few short years ago we nearly lost it. It is the staple of life in this state. It is the River Murray.
The Murray cannot sustain any increased demand for water, even with the desal plant on line.
Add climate change into the mix, causing more frequent and severe droughts, and it's a no-brainer that we should not be pursuing population growth.
And let's be absolutely clear that population growth of 560,000 will not occur naturally; it requires government-initiated programs to attract large numbers of migrants.
That is by no means an anti-migrant statement. It's simply a fact that SA cannot sustain deliberately accelerated population growth.
So jump up and down and make your voice heard. Cabinet approved the population target and Cabinet must be made to rescind it.
It is the only thing that can save our river, our city-fringe agricultural land, our low-rise suburbs and backyards and our quality of life.
C. FAULKNER, Cheltenham
City under attack
LIKE many Adelaideans, I am watching with increasing alarm, anger and frustration as our supposedly most livable city is hijacked by developers with the full support of both major parties, which are completely out of touch with the people who vote them in.
There is now clear proof that the Mt Barker rezoning debacle was bulldozed through via a murky, flawed process, where the five lengthy DAP consultations were just a smokescreen to con residents into believing that the State Government cared about their concerns.
Has anyone asked the people of Adelaide whether they want another half a million people living in multi-storey flats with the associated crowds and traffic congestion?
Why are so many people fleeing here from Sydney and Melbourne?
Our beautiful heritage city is under attack; is it any wonder people are questioning developer donations to the major political parties?
I wonder also how many politicians live in the areas earmarked for high-rise living.
ALEX HODGES, Birdwood
Original source was: http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/opinion/letters-protecting-australian-jobs/story-e6freabc-1226604152321
NATO-backed "rebels"
The cleric had been a prominent supporter of President Bashar Assad since the uprising against the Syrian leader began two years ago. The slain cleric Bouti was imam of the ancient Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. The Free Syrian Army rebels denied responsibility and said that targeting houses of worship was not part of their strategy. At least 42 people have died and 84 more were wounded in the attack.
Sunni Cleric Afshin Rattansi expressed hope that in the context of the bombing, “the whole idea of a NATO-backed instability creation in Syria, and three million displaced people in Syria, people within the State Department in Washington will realize that funding must stop for these insurgent groups.”
At least 25 are reported dead after a chemical weapons attack targeting Syrian soldiers was carried out by NATO-backed terrorists in the northern city of Aleppo. European Command leader Admiral James Stavridis has confirmed that the US and other NATO member nations are engaged in joint planning for the possibility of military intervention in Syria’s Civil War.
A couple of US senators have written to President Obama to express their strong belief that it is in their "national security interest to take more active steps in Syria, together with friends and allies in the Middle East and Europe, to stop the killing in Syria and force Bashar al-Assad to give up power," the senators wrote, adding that 70,000 people have been killed in the troubled nation, with 1 million displaced.
Any chemical weapons imported into the country would implicate NATO either directly or through gross negligence, as the weapons would have passed through NATO-member Turkey, past US CIA agents admittedly operating along the border and along side Western-backed terrorists inside Syria.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-us-nato-backed-al-qaeda-terrorists-us...
The Syrian government's SANA news agency reported that terrorists fired a rocket containing chemical substances in the Khan al-Assal area of rural Aleppo and confirmed that at least 25 people, most of them civilians, were killed.
Has been secretly reported that NATO has done this attack, not the so called "rebels".
Test, just a test
Wow that was odd. I just wrote an very long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn't appear. Grrrr... well I'm not writing all that over again. Regardless, just wanted to say superb blog!|
A clever detective knows to consider all possible suspects.
This is one reponse to the New York Times article Chemicals Would Be ‘Game Changer’ in Syria, Obama Says of 20 Mar 2013.
Something is rotten in the state of the U.S.A. A clever detective knows to consider all possible suspects. So why do US officials and media pundits have no interest in pondering if FSA rebels or other anti-Assad groups might have employed chemical weapons?
In the fall of 2011, US Representative Mike Rogers urged the White House to secure deadly stocks of sarin and mustard gas that were vulnerable to being looted in Libya.
On October 19, 2011, Hillary Clinton said, “I am pleased to announce that we are going to put even more money into helping Libya secure and destroy dangerous stockpiles of weapons.… And the Administration, working with Congress, is going to provide $40 million to support this effort….We will also work with Libya to destroy chemical weapons stocks.”
Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch, who went to Libya to search for the above unsecured munitions, said "The problem is that the locals usually find out first and by the time we arrive and we can get some guards there, a lot of the most dangerous weapons have already been taken away.”
Thus, any dimestore detective should conclude that CWs are on the black market and available to folk other than Assad. That our people aren’t even going to consider the possibility—well, it’s very telling. It’s Iraq Redux. Whether Assad has done it or not, U.S. leadership really WANTS him to have done it, because they WANT a reason to attack.
See also, on Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA):
Syria Requests UN to Form Mission to Investigate Terrorists' Use of Chemical Weapons in Khan al-Asal of 21 Mar 2013.
Gatilov: Russia Hopes UN Will Soon Answer Syria's Request to Investigate Use of Chemical Weapon of 21 Mar 2013.
Syrian Students, Community Abroad Denounce Terrorists' Use of Chemical Weapon in Khan Al-Asal of 21 Mar 2013.
Iran Condemns Chemical Attack Against Khan Al-Asal of 21 Mar 2013.
President al-Assad to Families of Martyred Pupils: Battle in Syria is Battle of Will and Steadfastness of 21 Mar 2013.
NATO proxy terrorists have killed 35 Syrians in chemical attack
The same mass murderers, who illegally imposed sanctions and launched two wars against Iraq in 1991 and 2003 causing a horrific death toll possibly as high as 3.2 million, are now, through terrorist proxies, waging a war against the people of Syria and its government. Amongst the latest victims of this war are 35 Syrians killed in a chemical weapons attack.
From Global Research, 19 March 2013
After a 10 year war/occupation in Iraq, the death of over a million people including thousands of US soldiers, all based on patently false claims of the nation possessing "weapons of mass destruction," (WMDs), it is outrageous hypocrisy to see the West arming, funding, and politically backing terrorists in Syria who in fact both possess, and are now using such weapons against the Syrian people.
At least 25 are reported dead after a chemical weapons attack targeting Syrian soldiers was carried out by NATO-backed terrorists in the northern city of Aleppo.
Aleppo is located near the Syrian-Turkish border. Had Libya's looted stockpiles of chemical weapons been shipped to Syria, they would have passed through Turkey along with weapons sent from Libya by the US and thousands of Libyan terrorists who are admittedly operating inside Syria, and would most likely be used to target cities like Aleppo.
Worse yet, any chemical weapons imported into the country would implicate NATO either directly or through gross negligence, as the weapons would have passed through NATO-member Turkey, past US CIA agents admittedly operating along the border and along side Western-backed terrorists inside Syria.
...
This was also posted to a discussion on Iraq on johnquiggin.com.
See also: West delaying UN probe into Syria chemical attack: Russia of 21 March 2013 on PressTV
Russia has accused Western powers of attempting to delay a United Nations probe into the recent use of chemical weapons by foreign-backed militants in the Syrian city of Aleppo.
During a Wednesday session at the UN Security Council, Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin voiced Moscow's support for the Syrian government's call for an independent inquiry into the chemical attack by foreign-backed militants in Aleppo.
Population set to reach 23 million in just four weeks
THE Australian population is set to reach 23 million in just four weeks, due primarily to an immigrant arriving every two minutes and 20 seconds.
The 23 millionth person is more likely to be a migrant than a new baby, experts estimate. Our politically engineered population growth rate has reached new dizzy limits, on the wave of political correctness and fear of an "ageing population". Ponzi demographics is the new economy, creating fear of the costs of aged care and pensions.
Our governments are participating in a growth-fest, to increase the size of our economy to match those of our neighboring Asian countries. It's a chance to be more competitive, to lower our living standards to those more equal to that of the rest of the globe. Living standards will decline, and so will wages and conditions.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/australian-population-jumps-by...
People see open land and equate it with having the capacity to build more houses and provide for more people (customers) for big businesses.
Whatever we benefit from new arrivals into Australia can't be maintained forever. Migrants become citizens, adding to our general cultural diversity. That inherently means we must keep adding migrants as the former influx integrate and become blended into Australia's cultural mix. The multicultural push is about supporting this ideal, and mass immigration.
While most people intuitively believe animals can overbreed and overstetch their habitats, when it comes to our own species, the Cornucopia myth is real and dominating.
There are no limits when it comes to people! Nature will simply keep providing all we need, abundantly. What Nature can't provide, technology will have all the "answers".
It's counter-intuitive and defies logic that Australia has unlimited "carrying capacity". What transcends culture, the economy, human ideals etc is our environment's capacity to keep providing for ever expanding human needs, when the constraints for growth keep getting more obvious! We should take warning from the countries with high immigration, such as the USA, Canada and UK, and see how their economies are stalling, and living standards for the majority are declining.
Elephant mega-slaughter in Chad
86 elephants -- 33 of them pregnant females -- have been gunned down by poachers in the Central African country of Chad.
The ivory tusks have been hacked out and stolen. The ivory will be sold on the black market, and then eventually carved into products nobody needs.
Entire elephant families - even the pregnant mothers brutally killed...to make ivory trinkets?
The price of ivory has passed $2,000 a kilogramme on Asia's black market, according to non-government groups [EPA]
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said in a written statement on Tuesday that about 50 Arabic-speaking poachers on horseback carried out the mass killing of the elephants last week. Bas Huijbregts, head of WWF's campaign against illegal wildlife trade in the region, said the Chadian army was sent to stop the poachers.
Activists say it is the worst killing spree since early 2012 when poachers killed as many as many as 650 elephants in a matter of weeks in Cameroon's Bouba Ndjida National Park.
"Ivory consuming nations – notably China – have to make a concerted effort to reduce the demand for ivory in their own backyards. Otherwise, the battle to save elephants will be lost," said Jason Bell of IFAW.
China's economic growth has some very dark and inhumane aspects, and comes at great cost to the world's declining species, including mega-fauna.
Letter to Ingam Enterprises
It was dismaying in the extreme to see the treatment of turkeys in Ingham's Sydney's processing plant on Lateline last night. I have no reason to expect that the cruel and aberrant behaviour shown by workers is not widespread. Why does it take the work of Animals Australia to reveal this conduct? Why does the company not supervise properly to ensure this does not happen and that standards are maintained?
The statement from Ingham in reply to this is that training of staff would be reviewed. I don't see that it is possible to retrain a person who is so damaged, himself as to deliberately and gratuitously inflict pain with such brutality on a helpless and doomed creature. People with no level of awareness of or care about the feelings of a fellow creature are unsuitable to for work in a bird processing capacity.This work actually requires special qualities and skills to ensure the welfare of the birds. It seems to me Ingham have hired the worst possible staff for this job. What is the reason for this? Is it desperation to find someone to do the work?
I could not bring myself ever to eat turkey again after seeing the footage of this cruelty. I am not a vegetarian , but may be forced to become one if I see too much more of the abominable and unnecessary practices involved in processing meat for human consumption .
Sincerely,
Miscellaneous comments now operational again
We only just realised that people could not post because they were full up.
Sorry! Try again.
66% French against family allowances
66 per cent of French have said that they are in favour of ceasing child benefits, at least for anyone with an income above a certain level. Benefits amount to 15 billion euros per annum for the nation and start with the second child only.
In 1973 the French birth rate dropped and the immigration rate was cut in response to the oil shock.
We can expect this to happen again, as the US borrows but forces austerity measures on everyone else.
Source: France2 Infos, 2000hs http://www.france2.fr/jt/20h/17-03-2013
"Nightmare superbug" CRE
A widely feared superbug has contaminated hand-washing sinks in Dandenong Hospital's intensive care unit, causing 10 patients to fall ill with the ''nightmare bacteria'' that have killed many people worldwide.
The Age: Nightmare superbug alarm
The 440-bed hospital in Melbourne's south-east has been struggling to contain the multi-drug-resistant bacteria since 2009.
The hospital is preparing to replace some sinks, suspected of spreading disease through splash-backs off the drain.
Two weeks ago the director of the US Centres for Disease Control, Tom Frieden, labelled CRE ''nightmare bacteria'' because of their resistance to nearly all antibiotics and their high mortality rate. Some types are estimated to kill up to half of the people they infect.
While there have been reports of CRE (Carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae) in about 200 US hospitals, the superbug is thought to be an emerging issue in Australian hospitals.
“These are nightmare bacteria that present a triple threat,” said Thomas Frieden, director at CDC, in a USA Today report. “They’re resistant to nearly all antibiotics. They have high mortality rates, killing half of people with serious infections. And they can spread their resistance to other bacteria.”
CDC and other officials warn that if the CRE isn't contained soon, even common infections — urinary tract, pneumonia, diarrhea, could become lethal. That's because, the biggest threat from CRE, is that it can share its antibiotic resistance genes with other bacteria, which are more common, such as E. coli. The CRE emergence, and similar resurgent and new diseases internationally, constitutes the potential for "ecological holocaust".
New 'Nightmare Superbug'
Overuse and improper use of antibiotics over the years, both in the medical community and the livestock industry, has led to an increase in the number of bacteria that are drug-resistant. Doctors are getting better at proper use of antibiotics, the CDC reports, but they could do more. The livestock industry could be doing a lot more.
Germany's Ministry of Agriculture and Consumer Protection recently announced its intent to force farmers to reduce the amount of antibiotics given to livestock, a practice most scientists agree increases the likelihood of bacteria mutating into antibiotic-resistant forms.
An article in the Medical Journal of Australia says that a ''plague'' of multi-drug-resistant bacteria that would make many illnesses untreatable.
Yet more evidence of the cruel sadism of the Syrian 'rebels'
I just witnessed yet another gruesome video of an atrocity committed by members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) against a supporter of a the Syrian Government, only one of seven beheaded that I was able to bring myself to look at in the video entited FSA Raise AlQaeda Flag After Beheading 7 Civilians on http://www.liveleak.com/c/syriangirl. Just as the UK government Chilcot Inquiry last year found the UK (and Australian) government war against Iraq in 2003 to have been illegal, how can the supply of weapons and money to these sadistic killers by France, the UK, the US, etc. not be criminal? Given Bob Carr's expulsion of the Syrian ambassador on the pretext of the absurd and proven lie that the Syrian Government killed its own supporters in the Houla massacre of last year, how can Australia not be also held morally culpable for such crimes?
The sterilization of our land for property developers
All the environment protection laws and "protected" status for wildlife again proves to be nothing in front of the power of property developers, supported by record high immigration rates. The EPBC Act can easily be overcome, and all these policies are rubbery and flexible. These profiteers won't be happy until each tree, each bush, and each native animal is eradicated, biodiversity functions are at a full-stop, and the land sterilized for concrete, glass and timber house frames.
Crime rates in our cities are escalating, and being perpetrated by younger and younger teenagers and kids. The dis-ease of urban living and suburbia is penetrating onto hapless native animals.
While human populations explode globally at exponential levels, wildlife are diminishing - being pushed to the extremes of their habitats and annihilated. Australia has below replacement levels of fertility, as a developed nation, but we are forced to cope with third-world rates of population growth - due to an eco-hostile and unsustainable economic growth model.
QLD Lib-Nats: Langbroek replaced by Newman to privatise assets?
Read the above article and note that the Liberal Nationals replaced John-Paul Langbroek with an imported politician who was not even a member of the Party - Brisbane's ex-Lord Mayor, Campbell Newman when they went to the hustings in 2012. Campbell Newman then brought in a devastating spate of privatisations. There was not, of course, any referendum.
Lazarus Project - rising from extinction
In what may be considered an early Easter miracle, an extinct species of native frog has begun its rise from the dead.
Australian scientists have grown embryos containing the revived DNA of the extinct gastric-brooding frog, the crucial first step in their attempt to bring a species back to life.
The dead genetic material of the extinct amphibian into the donor eggs of another species of living frog, a process similar to the technique used to create the cloned sheep Dolly. The eggs continued to grow into three-day-old embryos, known as blastulas.
Extinct frog hops back into the gene pool
The Southern Gastric Brooding Frog (Rheobatrachus silus) was a bizarre frog that swallowed its eggs, brooded its young in its stomach and gave birth through its mouth. The frog species became extinct in 1983. The Southern Gastric Brooding Frog was an interesting frog in its own right. The females actually cared for its babies. Over the last five years, the Lazarus Project research team has performed repeated experiments using a laboratory technique known as somatic cell nuclear transfer. Fresh donor eggs were harvested from the distantly related Great Barred Frog, Mixophyes fasciolatus.
While the embryos had yet to develop into tadpoles, genetic tests revealed the dividing cells contained the DNA of the extinct frog.
The Lazarus Project team has been able to recover cell nuclei from tissues collected in the 1970s and kept for 40 years in a conventional deep freezer. The "de-extinction" project aims to bring the frog back to life.
UNSW's Professor Archer spoke publicly for the first time today about the Lazarus Project and also about his ongoing interest in cloning the extinct Australian thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, at the TEDx DeExtinction event in Washington DC, hosted by Revive and Restore and the National Geographic Society.
Researchers from around the world are gathered there to discuss progress and plans to 'de-extinct' other extinct animals and plants. Possible candidate species include the woolly mammoth, dodo, Cuban red macaw and New Zealand's giant moa.
Scientists have managed to extract DNA from Thylacine carcasses. Unfortunately the DNA is in little fragments and trying to reassemble the DNA in its original order is proving difficult without an intact model. At present the researchers are hoping that the use of the DNA model of the Thylacine’s closest relative – the Tasmanian Devil – will lead to better progress.
While many scientists have argued it would be impossible to bring a species back from the dead like in the film Jurassic Park , the Lazarus project's breakthrough suggested the revival of extinct species was no longer the realm of science fiction.
The team has also demonstrated that the cloning technique, known as somatic nuclear cell transfer, could be used to conserve the genomes of other critically endangered species, particularly frogs, whose populations have plummeted around the world.
Frogs are disappearing world-wide, even without habitat disturbances. Although some of the factors responsible for the sudden fall in frog numbers are not clear, a number of human activities are harmful to frogs. Some of these activities include habitat loss, predation by introduced animals, insecticide and herbicide use, increased salinity and changes in the water management of streams, ponds and wetlands.
Loss and destruction of habitat by the explosion of human numbers means that any resurrected extinct species would have limited habitat and a limited gene pool. The planet's resources are dwindling and pushing out non-human species.
Response to tirade for war and against candobetter
The following is my response to a comment which excused wars conducted by the U.S and its allies in the 20th and 21st centuries on johnquiggin.com
Mel (@ # 39) wrote:
Malthusista,
You have written numerous posts praising the brutal murderer, torturer and serial rapist, Muammar Gaddafi.
The articles about the illegal invasion of Libya in 2011, by the US, France the UK, Libya's former coloniser, Italy and other NATO allies are to be found here. There are 18 articles in all and the first is Hugo Chávez proposes mediation mission to Kadhafi of 4 March 2011. Feel most welcome to post comments beneath any one of these articles to show us where we are wrong. In particular, please feel welcome to produce evidence that you have of Muammar al-Gaddafi (1942-2011) being a "brutal murderer, torturer and serial rapist". Other factual reporting about the criminal invasion of Libya and NATO's current proxy terrorist war against Syria is to be found on Global Research, VoltaireNet and LandDestroyer, the Corbett Report and elsewhere.
Mel continued:
I also note with considerable merriment and mirth that your Can Do Better website runs pro-Lyndon LaRouche and anti-fluoride propaganda.
The articles which address the concerns of the Citizens Electoral Council include: About the Citizens Electoral Council of 18 Oct 2010 and
Call for the re-establishment of a true national bank of 17 Jan 2013. I think most who read those articles will find them to be balanced appraisals of the Citizens Electoral Council. Again, feel most welcome to post comments to those pages to shw us where we are wrong.
There are also a number of articles against the fluoridation of drinking water, many of which do not originte from the CEC. Please also feel welcome to produce any scientific evidence you have that water fluoridation is not harmful.
Mel continued:
I'm unable to take you seriously ...
Unless you can bring yourself to subsantiate your claims, the feeling may be mutual.
Those opposed to war and terrorism may also find of interest this popular article about a recent meeting of Syrian Australians for Peace in Syria in the Melbourne Unitarian Church. It includes broadcasts by three Syrian Australian speakers who have suffered personal tragedy in the war agzinst their homeland, which has been shamefully excused by Australia's 'Labor' Foreign Minister Bob Carr.
Discussion closed on johnquiggin.com
10:58AM. Discussion on his sandpit page was closed by Professor Quiggin before I could post the above comment. So I posted the comment below, including a link back to this comment on his subsequent Weekend Reflections page.
Professor Quiggin has closed the discussion on sandpit, before I had a chance to respond to Mel’s tirade against me and my web-site, candobetter. I think this is unfortunate, both for me and other site visitors. Those wishing to read my response to Mel, including links to other resources including a very popular article, which includes video broadcasts of a recent public meeting of Syrian Australians for Peace in Syria at the Melbourne Unitarian Church can read it here.
Robert de Castella: Junk food driving childhood obesity epidemic
De Castella calls for obesity intervention
by Philip Thomson in the Sydney Morning Herald of 17 Mar 2013
Morbidly obese kindergarten children and year 6 pupils weighing 100 kilograms are evidence of a health crisis needing a multimillion-dollar intervention to fix, former world champion marathon runner Robert de Castella says.
Mr de Castella runs the not-for-profit SmartStart for Kids program, which has been delivered to 52,000 overweight children in the past 13 years. He has also written to the ACT government proposing a program for children at extreme risk that he says is ''absolutely critical''.
The proportion of overweight and obese kindergarten children in NSW increased from 17.7 per cent in 2004 to 18.7 per cent in 2010, according to a Sydney University study.
See also: Iraqi Children: Deprived Rights, Stolen Future by Bie Kentane, 13 March 2013 on Global Research.
Song does justice to leader of Venezuela sadly lost to the world
Thank you, David Rovics. In a fair music market this song would easily shoot to the top of the music charts. For more information about this selfless and kind leader, read Vivienne Ortega's Hugo Chávez: a true, passionate Latin American leader of 12 March.
Nice one there
Nice Post.
Broadcast of Syrians marching in support of President Assad
Youtube broadcast at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu0FHs7w-lo
The text and dialogue is all Arab language. Nonetheless, the scenes shown are more confirmation that the claim that President Bashar al-Assad is a hated tyrant, repeated [1] by Australian foreign minister Bob Carr, is a fabrication of the Australian and Western newsmedia.
This video shows that actions against Syria ,in which the Autralian Government is complicit
Footnote[s]
[1] Bob Carr's words include on 8 2012:
This additional funding is a step forward in helping the thousands of Syrian civilians caught up in the struggle against the Assad regime.
Paul Craig Roberts' obituary for Hugo Chavez
The obituary below was posted to PaulCraigRoberts.org on 5 March. Thank you, Sheila, Vivienne for having helped me to understand what a moral and intellectual colossus Hugo Chávez was.
Only a notable few of the other world leaders of today are larger than midgets by comparison. - GT
On March 5, 2013, Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela and world leader against imperialism, died. Washington imperialists and their media and think tank whores expressed gleeful sighs of relief as did the brainwashed US population. An "enemy of America" was gone.
Chávez was not an enemy of America. He was an enemy of Washington's hegemony over other countries, an enemy of Washington's alliance with elite ruling cliques who steal from the people they grind down and deny sustenance. He was an enemy of Washington's injustice, of Washington's foreign policy based on lies and military aggression, bombs and invasions.
Washington is not America. Washington is Satan's home town.
Chávez was a friend of truth and justice, and this made him unpopular throughout the Western World where every political leader regards truth and justice as dire threats.
Chávez was a world leader. Unlike US politicians, Chávez was respected throughout the non-western world. He was awarded honorary doctorates from China, Russia, Brazil, and other countries, but not from Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, and Oxford.
Chávez was a miracle. He was a miracle, because he did not sell out to the United States and the Venezuelan elites. Had he sold out, Chávez would have become very rich from oil revenues, like the Saudi Royal Family, and he would have been honored by the United States in the way that Washington honors all its puppets: with visits to the White House. He could have become a dictator for life as long as he served Washington.
Each of Washington's puppets, from Asia to Europe and the Middle East, anxiously awaits the invitation that demonstrates Washington's appreciation of his or her servitude to the global imperialist power that still occupies Japan and Germany 68 years after World War II and South Korea 60 years after the end of the Korean War and has placed troops and military bases in a large number of other "sovereign" countries.
It would have been politically easy for Chávez to sell out. All he had to do was to continue populist rhetoric, promote his allies in the army, throw more benefits to the underclass than its members had ever previously experienced, and divide the rest of the oil revenues with the corrupt Venezuelan elites.
But Chávez was a real person, like Rafael Correa, the three-term elected president of Ecuador, who stood up to the United States and granted political asylum to the persecuted Julian Assange, and Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia since the Spanish conquest. The majority of Venezuelans understood that Chávez was a real person. They elected him to four terms as president and would have continued electing him as long as he lived. What Washington hates most is a real person who cannot be bought.
The more the corrupt western politicians and media whores demonized Chávez, the more Venezuelans loved him. They understood completely that anyone damned by Washington was God's gift to the world.
It is costly to stand up to Washington. All who are bold enough to do so are demonized. They risk assassination and being overthrown in a CIA-organized coup, as Chávez was in 2002. When CIA-instructed Venezuelan elites sprung their coup and kidnapped Chávez, the coup was overthrown by the Venezuelan people who took to the streets and by elements of the military before Chávez could be murdered by the CIA-controlled Venezuelan elites, who escaped with their own venal lives only because, unlike them, Chávez was humanitarian. The Venezuelan people rose in instantaneous and massive public defense of Chávez and put the lie to the Bush White House claim that Chávez was a dictator.
Showing its sordid corruption, the New York Times took the side of the undemocratic coup by a handful of elitists against the democratically elected Chávez, and declared that Chávez's removal by a small group of rich elites and CIA operatives meant that "Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator."
The lies and demonization continue with Chávez's death. He will never be forgiven for standing up for justice. Neither will Correa and Morales, both of whom are no doubt on assassination lists.
CounterPunch, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, and other commentators have collected examples of the venom-spewing obituaries that the western presstitutes have written for Chávez, essentially celebrations that death has silenced the bravest voice on earth:
Obituaries for Hugo Chávez
2013
In Death as in Life, Chávez Target of Media Scorn
Perhaps the most absurd of all was Associated Press business reporter Pamela Sampson's judgment that Chávez wasted Venezuela's oil wealth on "social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs," a poor use of money that could have been used to build sky scrappers such as "the world's tallest building in Dubai and branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi."
AP: Chávez Wasted His Money on Healthcare When He Could Have Built Gigantic Skyscrapers
Among the tens of millions of Washington's victims in the world--the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Mali, with Iran, Russia, China, and South America waiting in the wings for sanctions, destabilization, conquest or reconquest, Chávez's September 20, 2006 speech at the UN General Assembly during the George W. Bush regime will stand forever as the greatest speech of the early 21st century.
Chávez beards the lion, or rather Satan, in his own den:
"Yesterday, the devil himself stood right here, at this podium, speaking as if he owned the world. You can still smell the sulfur."
"We should call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday's statement made by the president of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world. An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: ‘the Devil's Recipe.'"
The UN General Assembly had never heard such words, not even in the days when the militarily powerful Soviet Union was present. Faces broke out in smiles of approval, but no one dared to clap. Too much US money for the home country was at stake. [A reader pointed out that although Chávez's speech was not interrupted with clapping, he received a healthy round of applause at the end.]
The US and UK delegations fled the scene, like vampires confronted with garlic and the Cross or werewolves confronted with silver bullets.
Chávez spoke about the false democracy of elites that is imposed by force and on others by "weapons and bombs." Chávez asked, "What type of democracy do you impose with Marines and bombs?"
Wherever George W. Bush looks, Chávez said, "he sees extremists. And you, my brother--he looks at your color, and he says, oh, there's an extremist. Evo Morales, the worthy president of Bolivia, looks like an extremist to him. The imperialists see extremists everywhere. It is not that we are extremists. It is that the world is waking up. It is waking up all over and people are standing up."
In two short sentences totaling 20 words, Chávez defined for all times early 21st century Washington: "The imperium is afraid of truth, is afraid of independent voices. It calls us extremists, but they are the extremists."
Throughout South America and the non-western world, Chávez's death is being blamed on Washington. South Americans are aware of the US congressional hearings in the 1970s when the Church Committee brought to light the various CIA schemes to poison Fidel Castro.
The official document presented to President John F. Kennedy by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, known as the Northwoods Project, is known to the world and is available online. The Northwoods project consisted of a false flag attack on American citizens in order to blame Cuba and create public and world acceptance for US-imposed regime change in Cuba. President Kennedy rejected the proposal as inconsistent with morality and accountable government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
The belief has already hardened in South America that Washington with its hideous technologies of death infected Chávez with cancer in order to remove him as an obstacle to Washington's hegemony over South America.
This belief will never die: Chávez, the greatest South American since Simon Bolivar, was murdered by Washington. True or false, the belief is set in stone. As Washington and globalism destroy more countries, the lives of elites become more precarious.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood that security for the rich required economic security for the underclasses. Roosevelt established in the US a weak form of social democracy that European politicians had already understood was necessary for social cohesion and political and economic stability.
The Clinton, Bush, and Obama regimes set about undermining the stability that Roosevelt provided, as Thatcher, Major, Blair, and the current prime minister of the UK undermined the social agreement between classes in the UK. Politicians in Canada, Australia (emphaisis added), and New Zealand also made the mistake of handing power over to private elites at the expense of social and economic stability.
Gerald Celente predicts that the elites will not survive the hatred and anger that they are bringing upon themselves. I suspect that he is correct. The American middle class is being destroyed. The working class has become a proletariat, and the social welfare system is being destroyed in order to reduce the budget deficit caused by the loss of tax revenues to jobs offshoring and the expense of wars, overseas military bases, and financial bailouts. The American people are being compelled to suffer in order that elites can continue with their agendas.
The US elites know what is coming. That is why they created a Nazi-style Ministry of the Interior known as Homeland Security, armed with enough ammunition to kill every American five times and with tanks to neutralize the Second Amendment rights of Americans:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34259.htm
1.6 Billion Rounds Of Ammo For Homeland Security? It's Time For A National Conversation
Pistols and rifles are useless against tanks, as the Branch Davidians found out in Waco, Texas. The protection of a small handful of elites from the Americans they are oppressing is also the reason the police are being militarized, brought under Washington's control and armed with drones that can assassinate the real leaders of the American people who will be, not in the legislative, executive, or judicial chambers, but in the streets:
Internment camps in the US appear to be real and not a conspiracy theory:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfkZ1yri26s
http://info.publicintelligence.net/USArmy-InternmentResettlement.pdf
The threat that the US government poses to its own citizens was recognized on March 7, 2013, by two US Senators, Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rand Paul (R-KY), who introduced a bill to prevent the US government from murdering its own citizens: "The Federal Government may not use a drone to kill a citizen of the United States who is located in the United States" unless the person "poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to another individual. Nothing in this section shall be construed to suggest that the Constitution would otherwise allow the killing of a citizen of the United States in the United States without due process of law."
Cruz, Paul Introduce Bill to Prohibit Drone Killings of U.S. Citizens
The "indispensable people" with their presidents Bush and Obama have begun the 21st century with death and violence. That is their only legacy.
The death and violence that Washington has unleashed will come back to Washington and to the corrupt political elites everywhere. As Gerald Celente says, the first great war of the 21st century has begun.
A giant compared to Australia's rulers
It would be impossible to diminish Hugo Chavez's proud legacy as the mainstream media (MSM) has attempted to do if his record were ever to be compared with the records of those who have ruled Australia since the late 1970's - Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, Jeff Kennett, John Howard, Nick Greiner, Bob Carr (as Premier of NSW and now Foreign Minister of Australia), Morris Iemma, Wayne Goss, Peter Beattie, Anna Bligh, Campbell Newman, etc.
Between them these people have acted to serve foreign colonisers, beginning with Malcolm Fraser's dismantling of the Australian Government controls of Australia's mineral wealth established by Rex Connor (1907-1977), Minister for Energy and Resources in the Whitlam Labour Government from 1972 to 1975.
Since the overthrow of the Whitlam Government in the CIA-engineered coup of 1975, many of the wealth-producing assets owned by the Australian people, common land and government services have been privatised and effectively handed across to foreign corporations. The list inclues: The Commonwealth Bank, the state banks, state government insurance corporations, Telstra retirement income (aka 'superannuation'), electricity generation, railways, ports, public land and public buildings.
United States murder conspiracy against Chavez?
There are conspiracy theories circulating that the United States deliberately caused the death of Chavez. The American government performed unethical medical experiments on Guatemalan prisoners in the 1940s. Despite President Obama’s condemnation of those experiments – and apology to the Guatemalan president - there are people who are still suspicious.
The American government has tried to assassinate and poison leaders of foreign countries — most notoriously Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Chavez was a friend and admirer of Castro.
Cancer is actually not one specific disease but the name for a broad group of related diseases, which have different causes. There are countless carcinogens in our environment, from natural fungus to asbestos to sunlight.
Venezuela will set up a formal inquiry into suspicions that the late President Hugo Chavez's cancer was the result of poisoning by his enemies abroad. The 58-year-old president was diagnosed with cancer in his pelvic region in June 2011 and underwent four surgeries before dying of what sources said was metastasis in the lungs.
Unremitting cancer, intractable respiratory infections, massive heart attack, one after the other … It is well known that during the Cold War, the CIA worked diligently to develop substances that could kill without leaving a trace. “Fidel always told me: ‘Chávez take care. These people have developed technology. You are very careless. Take care what you eat, what they give you to eat … a little needle and they inject you with I don’t know what.”
"There was no one in the entire universe that those who own and run 'United States, Inc.' wanted to see dead more than Hugo Chávez. He was worse than Allende. Worse than Fidel Castro. Worse than any world leader not in the American camp because he spoke out in the most forceful terms about US imperialism and its cruelty..."
(said William Blum is author of Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2; Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower; West-Bloc Dissident, A Cold War Memoir and Freeing the World to Death, Essays on the American Empire - and numerous analytical essays.
President Hugo Chávez Frias: Cause of His Death
by Les Blough in Venezuela. Axis of Logic
Tuesday, Mar 12, 2013
Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez told the BBC the United States and Israel were to blame for Mr Chavez's death. He said he hoped the special commission would provide evidence.
Mr Maduro said that one day a scientific commission would prove that Mr Chavez's cancer had been "injected by imperialist forces".
On Monday, the US expelled two Venezuelan diplomats following the expulsion of their officials from Caracas. The new leader of Venezuela, Mr Maduro, likened the death of Chavez to that of the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Some investments are not in our interests!
The federal government's new powers over coal and coal seam gas could delay dozens of projects and ultimately cost the industry billions of dollars, companies say. Environment Minister Tony Burke released new guidelines recently.
Miners feel the heat of coal seam gas rules
Conservation groups said the additional safeguards on water contamination would be useful in sifting out the riskier, more marginal mining and fracking projects.
Mining corporations are getting edgy and objecting to all the rules. ''Rather than drowning Australian industries in regulation, we should be focusing on reducing costly project delays, which are harming Australia's reputation as an investment destination,'' deputy chief executive of Australian Mining Association Greg Sullivan said.
Australia doesn't want to be an "investment destination" if it's not in our interests. Delays are costing investors $10 million a month. Fracking is hydraulic fracturing and involves pumping pressurised water, sand and chemicals underground to open fissures and improve the flow of oil or gas.
Fracking has come under considerable pressure from those who fear contamination of underground water reservoirs. Critics of the methods say that fracturing formations could lead to mixing of freshwater with saline aquifers, pollution of water by fracking liquids, or pollution of water reserves by gas.
A preliminary study by the University of Texas revealed many allegations of groundwater contamination appeared to be related to "above-ground spills or other mishandling of waste water produced from shale gas drilling, rather than from hydraulic fracturing itself".
New South Wales Government revealed (Feb 2013) that it would implement safeguards banning the extraction of coal seam gas near suburbs, country towns and some rural industries, such as horse breeders and wine producers, potentially ruling-out hundreds of proposed gas wells and some $4 billion worth of gas. AGL, which had plans to drill in 66 gas wells near and under housing estates in Western Sydney, looks to be a big loser from the new safeguards.
The uncontrolled nature of the drilling , the damage and the widespread nature of the various drilling programs affecting huge swathes of the US are affected is alarming.
Risking our health, our soil, our water supply and our landscape for a short-term supply, and a pretty profit, is utterly unacceptable.
GASLAND- When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarked on a cross-country odyssey uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and contamination. A recently drilled nearby Pennsylvania town reports that residents are able to light their drinking water on fire. This is just one of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called GASLAND. Part verite travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, part showdown."
Some "investments" are not in our interest, especially when they wreck the land, the air and the water we need for our livelihoods!
Privatization - selling off the family jewels
Privatization is the selling off of the "family assets" without permission of the family. It's an admission of poor financial management, and excessive debt. It's a way of paying off the running costs of the State at the expense of long term captital. It's also a perverse way of further globalizing Australia, and having the powers off-shore away from immediate accountability. It also avoids trade unions, and the deprivation of skills training will justify further "skills" shortage and mass immigration. Thus, we become part of the "Asian Century", ready for Asian investment.
"Australian" animals tortured in Egyptian abbatoirs