Editor: We have commented out the comment previously here, entitled, "I wish ethnics were endangered," because it conveyed a double entendre identifying debris at sea with asylum seekers. The main problems were that it also implied that asylum seekers are people of undesirable ethnic origin and that it showed a lack of compassion for people lost at sea and a prejudicial attitude implying that all asylum-seekers have bogus claims.
In a way it as quite clever, since shipwrecks, whether accidental or intended, do cause debris to gather in the ocean. So does disposal of rubbish overboard from any boat, not to mention what washes down our drains, without going into the massive injections of rubbish into the sea by tsunamis, notably the recent Japanese one. The comment went on to conflate debris in the water with overpopulation on land.
Correctly, it implied that more people mean loss of habitat and pollution of habitat, thereby reducing biodiversity in Australia. The comment also suggested that politicians who want asylum seekers to be received in onshore Australia are manipulative and self-serving and that the Australian Navy complies with their wishes. (The comment did not take into account the need to comply with international law which says that anyone claiming asylum is a lawful entrant until proved otherwise.)
It also implied that asylum seekers were given special treatment at the expense of Australian taxpayers but that caring for the impact of humans on the sea was neglected. It suggested that asylum seekers got Club Med lurks and perks. It did not say explicitly what it meant by that - whether it was referring to the expenses involved in looking after asylum seekers whilst their claims were heard or whether it meant the expenses involved in sea-rescue and subsequent emergency accommodation.
It expressed a desire for 'ethnics' to be 'endangered'. This was another multiple entendre since 'endangered' can mean both rare and vulnerable as in species with declining numbers, but it also evokes a wish for 'ethnics' to meet with violence or for the numbers of asylum seekers to drop.
The comment also has a go at Prime Minister Julia Gillard by linking her foreign birth with an inferred preference for foreigners over Australian born people. It then talks about a game played by Australians of 'spotting the Aussie' when going through Richmond, presumably because in this Victorian suburb some streets sometimes appear dominated by Vietnamese immigrants. The implication is that the bulk of Australian-born are European-looking whilst in Richmond the balance is changing to a less 'Australian' one. The comment then switches the Aussie descriptor to indigenous growling frogs vs imported canetoads and talks about eradication. It also goes from shipwreck debris to 'asylum filth', a term which seems greviously insulting to all asylum seekers. A partial defense might be that a recent 4Corners documentary exposed a greedy criminal trade working under the cover of transporting asylum seekers in some cases.
Note that the regular legal immigration stream to Australia absolutely dwarfs the small number of asylum seekers coming to Australia each year, so, numbers-wise, the comment also lacks validity. It might have had some exiguous validity if it had talked about reasons to fear that numbers of asylum seekers could significantly increase, but it does not do that.
In sum, there are enough violent and threatening references and insulting and hateful metaphors to make this comment, which we have commented out, unpublishable. Not only is it unpublishable, but we have felt constrained to explicate it and apologise for its publication, which seems to have gone through without sufficient vigilance.
Contributors and editors, please take note.
Comments
Steadfast and factual
Tim says "..we must brave ad hominem attacks.." Yes- if we cannot do this , we have lost. Most of us can feel OK if we lose an argument and may even be happy to learn something, but an attack on our moral fibre is harder to take. Anything less than standing up for ourselves and insisting that the Earth moves around the Sun, that any excess of immigration over emigration will result in population growth and any population growth requires among other things, housing and infrastructure solutions which we may not like...not to mention putting the future for the incumbent population at risk through declining environments and resources is just conversational. We must insist on this even at the most polite dinner party- steadfastly and factually.
Leftist Labor's dogma corroding Australia's Nation State
Pre-Chifley, Australia not without its shortcomings, was a foundational social phase of a cohesive nation state.
Australian pioneers and the harsh wide landscape shaped our nation from the bush into the cities. They forged their own wealth and built our nation.
It was an era of Australian values - not all perfect, some down right primitive, but compared with most other societies - bloody decent.
So everyone then wanted to come to the 'lucky country' that we had built.
But too much of anything destroys harmony, and so it was the Labor Party's Chifley's leftist massive post-War immigration dogma that started our undoing from the late 1940s. Then from the 1970s, Labor under Whitlam's leftist dogma pronounced an open border policy and imposed politically-correct naivety upon Australians by personally accelerating his incompatible Asian multiculturalism to compound the dismantling of our nation state. Then from 2007 the Labor Party under Rudd's 'Big Australia' leftist dogma ramped up even more incompatible Arab and African immigration. "If your different from us, you're welcome". Labor's Melting Pot Theory.
None of these Labor leftist social dogmas were decided by the Australian people - Labor immigration invasion has each time been an unwanted imposition on the local populous.
Now the population dominant is the new waves of immigrants, through their sheer arrival numbers year on year. Immigrants from all corners of the globe, beholden to grotesquely incompatible value systems, are here and trying to reshape Australian society, from the cities outward. Traditional Australia is being marginalised into a minority. And so we have seen the National Party representing the bush desintegrate. We have seen traditional Labor chase popularity and in doing so become an increasingly Foreign Labor Party.
It is like the British pushing aside the Aborigines up until the 1970s - now the new immigrants are doing it all over again to those that were here first.
The latest incarnate of leftist dogma under 'Flood-Gate' Hanson-Young, is seeing Australia succumbing not as a melting pot but as a welfare refugee camp for the Third World seeking the good life. What will Australian values become - commune-based Sharia Law? We are edging towards a No Australia Policy.
John Marlowe
The White Australia policy
Australia's White-Australian Policy (1901 Immigration Restriction Act) existed in the latter part of the 20th century for 70 years. It favoured immigrants from certain countries over others. Migrants were mainly from the UK, or Europe. It lasted for 70 years and took 25 years to dismantle.
It has condemned now as part of our shameful past. While we are "proudly" multicultural - however dubiously it actually works - few of us know the real benefits.
The White Australia policy failed through being draconian and pro-actively discriminatory. White miners' resentment towards industrious Chinese diggers culminated in violence in Victoria, and some areas in New South Wales. It was the turn of hard-working indentured labourers from the South Sea Islands of the Pacific (known as 'Kanakas') in northern Queensland. Factory workers in the south became vehemently opposed to all forms of immigration which might threaten their jobs. Some influential Queenslanders felt that the colony would be excluded from the forthcoming Federation if the 'Kanaka' trade did not cease. Leading NSW and Victorian politicians warned there would be no place for 'Asiatics' or 'coloureds' in the Australia of the future.
For whatever the downfalls of the White Australia policy, it did give us 70 years of a foundation to form a cohesive society, an infant nation with common culture and ideals. It combined people will the same language and similar traditions, some shared Motherland history, and shared values. Australia was to be a nation founded on democratic participation; it therefore needed to attract residents capable of exercising political freedoms and, more generally, assimilating to the cultural mores of a British dominion.
Post war immigration gave us diversity and economic growth.
It was not so much the White Australia Policy that decided immigration policies, but more the wholesale discrimination against the Aborigine people that is more shameful.
Cultural diversity is stimulating and broadening. However, once "diversity" becomes mainstream rather than the minority, it's overwhelming and the result of mass immigration - something that is continually increasing. We lose our identity as a nation.
Now the support of Multiculturalism is about promoting high immigration. It's based on "white guilt" that forces mainstream Australians to feel some "guilt" about our past and thus we must continually make amends - even to our detriment with an overloaded and fragmented Australia. It ignores the volume of immigration - now largely from India and China. Any "anti-immigration" or questioning of "big Australia" labels us as "racist"!
Editor: The title of the comment was originally, "Some benefits of the White Australia policy." We changed it in order to avoid providing anti-democratic pro-high immigration ideologues an instant opportunity to seize upon such a heading to label the website and contributors as 'racist' and polarise discussion. We would rather this piece were read on its merits rather than for any shock value the original title may have had. For more on the subject of the White Australia Policy see also, on candobetter.net, Sheila Newman's "Overpopulation, immigration, multiculturalism and the White Australia policy."
Rupert's desperation has resorted to burning the News books
T'is expected from the News Dictator.
Rupert's desperation realising his power is waning is to burn the News books.
"If I can't control them no-one will!"
It seems Rupert's final 'vituperative billingsgate'.
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria
Australia
A common justification for high immigration
A common justification for "big Australia" and ongoing immigration in face of falling jobs and financial stress is our pension scheme and superannuation payouts by employers. We need big growth and returns for investors, and that means economic growth by amassing more people and moving more money around our society.
We are on a treadmill of high immigration and trapped in the status quo.
It's partly due to the previous generations who gave themselves pensions on the back of future taxes. They weren't self-funded. It is this generation who has to pay their pensions as well as fund our own superannuation. Once we have most people fully funding their own retirement, then we won't need ever more workers to support the aged.
We either see a decline in living standards either from unemployment, housing horrors and economic stress, or from overpopulation.
What's left for the small investor in the global financial mess?
I am ashamed to say I have only just realised, having watched this video. the powerful forces determining interest rates and who mainly benefits from low interest rates.
Most of us now - in Australia at least - have money in superannuation which means we are investing in shares, indirect property or in interest bearing deposits. But I truly doubt it will make any of our futures materially or financially secure in the way we would hope.
Part of the service delivery of my superannuation fund is periodic advice from a "financial planner" or "financial adviser". At a six monthly meeting with him recently he greeted me with the question "Do you know what is happening with the markets?" My answer of course was, "No - if I knew where they were going I would be wealthy!"
I have come to the realization that both he and I are just victims in the financial game. He is on a salary for his skills and advice but in some ways he is less informed than I am.
I told him of my fears for a huge crash in the share market a few years before the 2008 G.F.C. My fears were based on what I knew about fossil fuel depletion and the need for continuing cheap energy to fuel the world economy.
I have no training in finance, economics or accountancy. In other words, I am an amateur with respect to money. I work in very broad terms and make financial decisions according to the little knowledge I have. It is one thing to fear something, like a global financial meltdown, but it is another to have the courage to act upon that with a bold financial move. I did not during the years between 2008 and now make any bold moves to sell shares.
This is a very personal account and probably of little general interest, but I ask the question in case anyone else has an idea.
My question is: What is left for the small investor?
Another question is: How can superannuation funds justify their fees levied on the WHOLE amount invested- not just the income when they can no longer make any money for their clients?
It seems to me the financial planners cannot plan anymore because the familiar cycles and patterns have disappeared. The environment is one of falling interest rates and falling share prices. In addition, inflation nibbles inexorably at our stored wealth, further diminishing real returns.
If the superannuation firms cannot make money for their clients, can they continue in business?
Rubbish on Christmas island blocking turtles
Christmas Island is so full of flotsam and jetsam, hatchling turtles can’t get through the garbage to get to the sea. A year-round nesting ground for green and hawkbeak turtles. This Australian island sits in the Indian Ocean near Indonesia. It's swelling population can't cope with humanity's flotsam and jetsam.
Petition: Clean Up Christmas Island at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/901/118/674/clean-up-christmas-island/
Paul Nicholas of Queensland was holidaying on Christmas Island, visiting his daughter and family and they went for a picnic on the beach.
The kids started playing with all the plastic trash and were amazed to find turtles struggling to emerge from their nest to the waters edge.
Boats of asylum seekers were joining an ever-expanding graveyard in the ocean off Christmas Island are not being properly scuttled or stripped of rubbish and engines, potentially harming the area's pristine waters.
The article on Planet Ark has been removed - for now
http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2012/07/11/507371_opinion-columnists.html
Editorial comment: Can you tell us what the article was? I recall reading several articles on that site about the sell-off of Australian rural land and water resources to foreign interests,. - Ed
Economic growth is a big Ponzi Scheme
Bureau of Statistics figures show, two-thirds of the growth in the adult population has been among people who are neither employed nor unemployed, just sitting on the sidelines. In Victoria, roughly half the population growth has been among workforce dropouts. In Queensland and Tasmania, it has been more than 100 per cent.
The Age - workforce-gives-up-and-drops-out 13 July
Australia's employers cut 27,000 jobs last month, sending the jobless rate higher and increasing the chances of another cut in official interest rates.
The Age - economy sheds 27,000 jobs 12 July
Our economic system based on perpetual growth is wearing thin and cracking at the seams. Jobs being lost, manufacturing going, house prices pushed to high, declining real wages, privatization of public jobs, and at the same time "skilled" immigration threatening jobs. There are limits to growth, and this should be obvious.
Nearly every part of the economy outside mining is struggling, and there is fear among some small businesses and economists that if China stops gobbling up Australia's coal and iron ore, the remainder of the economy would be too weak to pick up the slack. (The Australian, Dependence on mining may lead to recession, says Andy Xie, 9 July). Service industries don't provide the same substance, permanence and innovation of manufacturing and national ownership of public services. Service industries slumped in April, and consumer confidence has fallen to levels last seen in 2001. The service industries are witnessing a deterioration in demand.
Why are we continually bringing in more migrants, no matter how skilled they are, for jobs that will put the squeeze on Australians even more? The skilled migrant category will increase next year and there is unlimited employer sponsored temporary workers allowed - many of them will apply for PR. This government is trying to increase the size of the economy simply by increasing our population - more consumers. Our living standards are declining and jobs are going. There's enough skills already in Australia. Our own population should be invested in first as our main resource. There are limits to growth - in every system whether it's the size of the economy or the size of our population.
We already have more population than required by our economy. The aging population cant' be negated by more people. The wealthiest nations on our planet all have aging populations. It is sign of wealth and success. Japan is the smart country. We need to invest skills in our population - our major national resource.
The economy is a sub-set of our existence, and people are more than economic units. Adding more people while we are under job and financial-mortgage stress just exacerbates the whole system.
Economic growth is a big Ponzi scheme and can't continue the way it has been. Germany's population is declining, but their wealth is increasing. We should be investing in knowledge, skills, high skilled production, careful use of natural resources and become a clever - not overloaded- country. We need a different economic model for an era of decline and "peaks". We are at economic "peak" and should live within our means.
If our Economy is shedding jobs, it means the system that supports our existence and well being is sending signal that it can't continue to growth, and when economic growth becomes uneconomic, it's time to end the growth paradigm and transfer to a steady-state model.
Centre for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy - CASSE
NIST WTC7 collapse "computer model" differs from film record
I asked of the "peer reviewed paper" cited above by Brian Sanderson:
Where can independent observers get to look at the "computerized model" referred to in that paper that supposedly demonstrates the Official theory of the WTC7 "collapse"?
In fact if you look 13 minutes into the 2 hour presentation by Daniel Noel that I referred to in the same post, you will see that Daniel Noel has shown that the computer simulation is markedly different from the film evidence of the WTC7 collapse.
Ellen Brown: Banksters robbing central banks and governments
The following report, embedded from YouTube is from Web of Debt. The interview with Ellen Brown commences 12' 45" into the Interview.
Northwoods mischaracterized for years
Subject was: @James Sinnamon
The information I cited comes from Bamford's 1983 book "The Puzzle Palace." I can't cite the pages --- it's been years since I read the book --- but there's probably an index if you're too lazy to read through it. So far as I know, it was Bamford who first uncovered Northwoods. The Northwoods plan has been mischaracterized for years by folks like Alex Jones as proof of a Reichstag-fire mentality at DoD. Lemnitzer emphatically rejected Northwoods, according to Bamford. But as Goebbels said, a lie repeated often enough becomes true in the minds of the "masses." Apparently, the lie has replaced the truth in your mind, sir. ... Speaking of mischaracterization, I wrote "some sort of inside job," not "a sort of inside job" --- these are not synonymous. Again, I agree with you it was an inside job, but I don't pretend to know by whom exactly. We can theorize all we want, but that information (whodunnit) is not publicly available.
Didn't stop Wilderness Society boss buying a timber mill
Hey Bandicoot,
Morals didn't stop Wilderness Society boss, Alec Marr, buying a timber mill in Triabunna this time last year.
It's treehugger turned woodchipper, just like the Greens have turned their back on forests in favour of policy focus on asylum seekers, more overseas aid and gay marriage!
17th July 2012:
"TASMANIA'S forest industry, still reeling from the sale of a strategic woodchip mill to two environmentalists, has been shocked to learn who will run it - the green hard man Alec Marr.
The Wotif founder, Graeme Wood, and the Kathmandu creator, Jan Cameron, have hired Mr Marr, a former Wilderness Society boss, to manage the Triabunna mill that chipped millions of old-growth trees he tried to save.
As their general manager, Mr Marr will negotiate on behalf of the pair who, with their surprise $10 million buy, dealt themselves into historic peace talks on native forest logging.
Once chief defendant in a civil prosecution launched by the seller of Triabunna, Gunns, and forced out of the Wilderness Society, Mr Marr's selection amazed industry observers.
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''Alec Marr is going to be a woodchipper?'' the Timber Communities Australia state manager, Barry Chipman, said. ''It is probably a fitting way to end a bizarre week.''
The Liberal senator Eric Abetz said it was ''Green cronyism and triumphalism at its ugliest''.
Mr Marr declined to comment but Mr Wood said Mr Marr's personal views of the timber industry would not matter.
''His job is to implement the forest statement of principles and to work with all industry players to re-open the mill.''
Green and industry groups have been in talks for more than a year to craft the statement of principles and end 25 years of conflict. Their latest deal agreed to protect up to 430,000 hectares of Tasmania's public native forest but still operate some sawlog and veneer mills. Woodchips are claimed as crucial secondary income for the surviving timber operations, and the Forest Industries Association of Tasmania wants Triabunna to keep chipping until at least 2027.
The association's chief executive, Terry Edwards, warned that if the mill was not kept open, the industry would not be able to back the deal.
With Japanese export markets increasingly rejecting native forest chips, Gunns shut Triabunna in April. When it re-opens under new ownership, contentious timber is increasingly unlikely to enter its gates. Mr Wood said his original view was that the chip mill should operate for three to five years before the site was turned into a tourist development.
''Having spoken to government people, that may have to go out,'' he said. Now Mr Marr, a blunt and at times abrasive negotiator, will be leading further talks.
Mr Wood tried to reassure residents about a future beyond woodchipping. ''We believe Triabunna will be good for tourism and wine,'' he said.'
Source: 'Tree saviour named as Tasmanian mill boss', 16 July 2011, Fairfax
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria
Australia
Where is free-fall speed "collapse" of WTC7 explained?
Brian Sanderson,
Where in that 'peer-reviewed' paper is it explained how all those structural failures in WTC7, that it claims were caused only the impact of "flaming debris" from the twin towers and the consequent fires, and not by demolition explosives, occurred so quickly that collapse was observed at free-fall speed? (See here for two hour presentation on WTC7 by Daniel Noel.)
Where can independent observers get to look at the "computerized model" referred to in that paper that supposedly demonstrates the Official theory of the WTC7 "collapse"?
Sell-out by Planet Ark!
Planet Ark, famous for encouraging us to recycle greetings cards to save trees, is set to endorse clearfell logging of native forest. So when does an "environmental group" ends being an advocate for the environment to become part of the industry it has objected to?
It's when they sell-out of their principles to gain $$$.
The Australian Forestry Standard is an alternative logging certification system pushed by logging operations who do not have more community-based Forestry Stewardship Certification. They need to have an "environment" group to give it a tick!
Planet Ark is in financial straits, so they have accepted the challenge and have compromised their integrity. It's like signing an agreement with the devil! They have lost their focus, and the means (money) has become the end rather than the means.
Planet Ark's position is also at odds with Liberal leader Tony Abbott, who said recently most people were "revolted" by clearfell native forest logging. As the columnist says, it's like the abolitionist animals rights group PETA investing in its own livestock farm and calling it the Australian Farmers Lobby for the benefit of farmers.
How can Environment Minister Tony Burke allow Planet Ark to have the status of a charity group, considering it is taking money from vested interests?
Odd voyage for planet ark - The Weekly Times
Mission Statement of Planet Ark:
Planet Ark Environmental Foundation aims to work with people and business to teach them the simple ways in which they can reduce their impact on the planet, at home, at work and in the community.
One of their aims is to: To work alongside and with businesses in order to bring about positive environmental change. However, "work alongside and with businesses" shouldn't mean becoming part of the problem rather than the solution!!!
Green pharisees, or hypocrites, is becoming more of a problem. Population growth is usually ignored by environmental and climate change groups. Money, the root of all evil, is a potent power. Population blindness is an ailment that is causing activists to ignore the elephant in the room of most environmental degradation - and more people means more demand for natural resources such as timber and it's by products.
physics
Dear James Sinnamon,
Philip Mitchell Graham makes an argument for mechanical failure based upon heating [and consequent buckling]. This addresses the article by Margulis because it provides the beginnings of a credible alternative to the conspiracy "theory".
Readers can find the physics in peer-reviewed, published manuscripts that can be accessed from this website. The mechanism that first came to my mind is dealt with (thoroughly) at this website.
Best regards,
Brian Sanderson
The page linked to above is Debunking 911 conspiracy Theories - exploding the myths.- Ed
JFK prevented Operation Northwoods false flag terrorism
Anonymous wrote:
According to James Bamford, who originally revealed the existence of Operation Northwoods, ...
Could you provide the citation? Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-secret National Security Agency: From the Cold War through the Dawn of a New Century of 2001 by James Bamford is cited on Page 98 of JFK and the Unspeakable: Why he died and why it matters of 2008 by James W. Douglass.
Anonymous continued:
... this plan was cooked up by a junior staff member, almost as a hypothetical, and presented along with other ideas from other staffers, and was rejected by the Joint Chiefs, along with other ideas. At no time did the Pentagon seriously consider Northwoods, per Bamford. ...
Pages 96-98 of JFK and the Unspeakable show otherwise. General Lemnitzer's proposal for staged acts of terrorism against the US and against Cuban exiles, which were to be blamed on the Cuban Government and used as a pretext for an invasion of Cuba, was adopted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and repeatedly put to Kennedy by Lemnitzer. Fortunately, JFK over-ruled the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Anonymous continued:
The military are forever creating new plans for contingencies that may never occur. ...
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident? The Oklahoma City Bombing? What about the wars in Indo-China or the wars the US has inflicted on North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia in the recent two decades?
Anonymous continued:
... While I agree with you that 911 was some sort of inside job, ...
A 'sort of inside job'? The evidence that 911 was an inside job and not just a 'sort of inside job' is conclusive.
Anonymous continued:
... it is misleading to use Northwoods as proof that the Pentagon was involved at an operational level.
No-one has used Operation Northwoods as proof of Pentagon involvement. Proof of complicity of leading power-brokers within the Bush administration and the US military and intelligence agencies, that would stand up in criminal prosecutions, lies elsewhere.
Operation Northwoods merely shows that the kind of event that occured on 11 September 2001 had already been planned by leading figures in the US military decades earlier.
Earlier report: China seeks land for aquaculture
Linked to from the report Nimby has linked to above is an earlier report, also in Weekly Times Now, China seeks land for aquaculture of 4 July 2012:
EXCLUSIVE: A CHINESE company wants control of 100,000 hectares of Australian land for aquaculture.
And the produce would be sent directly back to China.
Federal Parliament sources say a Chinese company intends to use an Australian resources company to develop the land, near Broome in Western Australia.
...
The 100,000ha would dwarf the aim of fellow Chinese company Shanghai Zhongfu to obtain 30,000 hactares with attached water rights on the Ord River in northern WA and the western Northern Territory.
For now, at least, this particular 30,0000 hactares of land is not going to be sold outright:
The land would be on a long-term lease.
Nevertheless, serious concerns remain:
Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan said he believed the intention was to send the seafood "straight to the Chinese market".
"I further understand this is long-term strategic planning, because of the huge areas of environmental destruction in the Chinese landscape and contamination of a lot of their fisheries," Senator Heffernan said. "They've lost 10 per cent of their agricultural land in the last 10 years. They've destroyed their own capacity, they're using ours."
Of concern is Dick Smith's apparent support for Chinese citizens buying Australian citizenship through buying Australian farmland as described above by nimby:
Adventurer and businessman Dick Smith said Australia should "follow the astute Chinese Government", which "requires residency for owning productive land and important companies".
"If they became residents, I'd totally support it," Mr Smith said.
In contrast, the Country Women's Association took a strong stand on "protecting our land and water":
CWA spokeswoman Elaine Armstrong said she was "disturbed" about land being controlled by foreign entities, "whether it's China or whoever".
West Australian Mines, Petroleum and Fisheries Minister Norman Moore could not be contacted and the West Australian Agriculture Department did not respond.
Chinese buying citizenship with farmland
Exclusive to The Weekly Times: CHINESE nationals are buying Australian farms and agribusinesses to get Australian visas. And the Federal Government seems unconcerned. Not only is our agricultural land up for grabs to the highest overseas bidder, investors are looking to move to Australia. So big buyers can not only buy a slice of Australia's sovereignty, they can also "buy" citizenship.
See Chinese seek land for visas of 11 July 2012 by Leslie White at http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/article/2012/07/11/507571_latest-news.html
There are eight types of "Business Migration Visas" and includes sections in Chinese and its Cantonese dialect. The Commercial Property Profiles website also offers "Assistance available for discreet international funds transfer". The Weekly Times understands the payments for Australian land or businesses could be held until the buyer's visa applications were decided. They can then own the land and Australian citizenship.
Residency is being used as a lure for buying land and assets. According to Minister for Immigration, Chris Bowen, this is quite acceptable. What about community expectations?
Commercial Property Profiles is a promotional group working with the vendor and licensed authorities to put forward rural business and property sales to the International Market. It's another property development organisation. According to the website: "Any person or persons wishing to migrate to Australia under a Business or Skilled Independent Migration Visa under the Migration Act of 1958 must clearly state their business intentions in Australia together with a business plan and or a “Contract Of Sale to purchase a viable business”.
See Commercial Property Profiles at http://www.cppro.com.au
The fact that no foreigner can buy agricultural land in China doesn't seem to be an issue here. Also, it is very hard for foreigners to get a foothold in China or some kind of stable life with everything secured. In China it seems that even you have worked there for 7 years, own property, have invested in a company and have a family with a local citizen it is still very hard almost impossible to get permanent residence let alone citizenship. Why should we give them citizenship and permanent residence status to Australia if we are mostly not given it there? There are no reciprocal arrangements but but one way - to Australia! China refuses to give permanent residence to the vast majority of expats, no matter how long they have lived and worked in the country.
The financial rewards of ignoring local ecological damage
Quark
And it is much more comfortable in Canada to object to pipelines and the Alberta oil sands than to rail against the building of houses on prime farmland. To do so might bring about the question of runaway population growth, and when that becomes the topic, inevitably the role that immigration plays in that growth would come up. And we can't have THAT, can we? So what is the Green response? Sprawl, not immigration-driven population growth is the culprit. And what is the cure for sprawl? "Planning". Planning is the great elixir for all the ills that growth causes.
As Green icon William Rees, once the head of the faculty of planning at UBC, said, there is no reason that 'greenfield' acreage can be protected while population growth proceeds. No reason, that is, except political reality. The reality is that the kind of planning decisions that would protect farmland are made by local governments, and local governments are controlled by developers. In his study "Funding City Politics", Professor Robert McDermid found that even the smallest donations affect the voting behaviour of local politicians, and that incumbents are heavily supported by developers. On the local level, more than any other level of politics, MONEY TALKS. Ask Norm Smith, who ran for Mayor in Chilliwack, BC on an anti-growth platform against a real estate agent. He was outspent ten to one.
One way to get Greens thinking about mining, frakking, drilling and old growth forests is to steer their focus with donations. Walton International, for example, makes money by buying up farmland on the perimeter of cities like Calgary and waiting for a developer-friendly government to rezone it for housing development. Despite the fact that the killling zone for most of the 500 endangered species in Canada is found at the vanguard of sprawling cities, Nature Conservancy says nothing because Walton International donates money for their high-profile purchases of land elsewhere. Shell Canada is also one of their patrons.
Here is another thing to chew on. If oil from Alberta can't be shipped by pipeline, what is the alternative? Rail. Who has a big stake in Canadian National Railway? Warren Buffet. Who donates to anti-pipeline green groups?
Another dot to connect. West Virginia is the biggest coal producing state in the union. It supplies coal to 24 states, and coal supplies a huge chunk of energy to the United States. The long time Governor and now senior Senator for West Virginia is Jay Rockefeller, contributes to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) has sent millions of dollars to Canadian green groups to fight the oil sands project. Does the RBF underwrite any efforts to shut down West Virginia's coal industry? Do they send money to any Canadian green groups who would make a noise about the 21 million metric tons of coal that is shipped out of Roberts Bank (south of Vancouver) to China?
Try this. The David Suzuki Foundation has been given 10 million dollars from US corporate foundations to fight BC salmon farms. Meanwhile, nothing is said about salmon ranching in Alaska.
Many other questions like these can be raised about the motives of corporate "philanthropy". One recalls that the East India Tea Company supported Wilberforce's efforts to abolish slavery. Coincidentally, there main commercial rivals were the tea plantations in the West Indies worked by slave labour. Was that support motivated by moral angst about the treatment of slave labourers? It was not as if they treated their own workforce like kings.
If one looks at the corporate funding of Canada's environmental groups, particularly those in Western Canada, one has the uncomfortable feeling that that these groups are being played for pawns. Or as Stalin would call them, "useful idiots". It is not only comfortable for them to ignore ecological destruction in their own cities, it is financially rewarding.
Earlier this year, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada said, "No one tells the Sierra Club what to do." Yeah right. And no one tells city councillors how to vote either.
You don't need a smoking gun. The optics speak for themselves. The David Suzuki Foundation and the Sierra Club of BC have accepted money from big banks like RBC and the TD Bank, institutions that are all about promoting growth. How coincidental it is that neither of these green crusaders will challenge growth. Instead, they speak of "smart growth". That is just the kind of trained dog that Big Money likes. One that can be put off the scent.
Safer not to talk about houses
In Australia, the best farmland is progressively rendered unusable for agriculture and wildlife habitat is destroyed as housing for additional population swallows it up. It is much more comfortable to object to an activity like felling old growth forests or fracking or mining in wildlife habitat than to rail against the building of houses which are after all , to accommodate ever more people.
Operation Northwoods
According to James Bamford, who originally revealed the existence of Operation Northwoods, this plan was cooked up by a junior staff member, almost as a hypothetical, and presented along with other ideas from other staffers, and was rejected by the Joint Chiefs, along with other ideas. At no time did the Pentagon seriously consider Northwoods, per Bamford. The military are forever creating new plans for contingencies that may never occur. While I agree with you that 911 was some sort of inside job, it is misleading to use Northwoods as proof that the Pentagon was involved at an operational level.
The looming health crisis wireless technology
From Global Research of 8 July 2012
Looming Health Crisis: Wireless Technology and the Toxification of America
As a multitude of hazardous wireless technologies are deployed in homes, schools and workplaces, government officials and industry representatives continue to insist on their safety despite growing evidence to the contrary. A major health crisis looms that is only hastened through the extensive deployment of “smart grid” technology. ...
Unsubstantiated "established wisdom" about maligned person
Anonymous wrote:
And Geoffrey I have my doubts about Castro, Lenin and Trotsky ...
By all means, provide substantiation here or else links to material which substantiates your doubts, but I think you will find, should you attempt to do so, you will be unable to.
Another, who attempted on another forum to restate conventional smears against Lenin, when challenged to substantiate his/her smears, failed to do so. That post has also been published here on candobetter.
It's all too easy for ill-informed people to restate unproven supposed established wisdom about a demonised historical figure such as Lenin, but when such a person is faced on the Internet by another, with knowledge of the person he/she is attempting to malign, he/she will quickly lose his voice (or if he/she has humility and honesty will admit his/her mistake).
Growth Monster ugly impacts on democracy and landscape
Lend Lease has won at VCAT and the Toorak station is going to have 11 towers towering over the heritage station. The hundreds of people who are the Orrong Group and have fought an incredible campaign are justly devastated. When will all this destruction stop?
Even worse: Boroondara Council have lost in the Supreme Court and the ruling by VCAT allowing the Developer to build against the rules of a 173 Agreement has been upheld. Council have even had to pay the developers' court costs!
This ruling has implications across Victoria. It means that a legal agreement, known as a 173 Agreement is not worth the paper it is written on.
This is a bad day for Melbourne.
Correction: Greens not Democrats
Oops I meant Greens party in my previous post, not the late, lamented Democrats party. And Geoffrey I have my doubts about Castro, Lenin and Trotsky but of course whatever crimes they may have committed are nothing compared with Stalins excesses.
World's leading environmentalist a 'Red'
Whilst I share your concerns about the Greens, and a good many who bear labels such as "Red", "Trotskyist," "communist", "anarchist" or"socialist" these days, we should not forget the world's leading environmentalist, the now retired President Fidel Castro (or rather Fidel Castro Ruz), who successfully transformed Cuba from dependence upon Soviet oil imports in the 1990's, as shown in the film The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, proudly wears the label 'Red'.
Throughout much of the early 20th century, many of the very best of humanity, including the unfairly maligned Lenin would have proudly labeled themselves "Red". Unfortunately Stalin's rise to power and his vast crimes against peasants and political opponents, most of all within the Soviet Communist Party, have blackened the name of 'communism'.
Sadly even those who claim the heritage of Leon Trotsky, who also fought against Stalin, have obviously been corrupted. This is shown by the way they have for decades left the Shock Doctrine globalists free to ravage the world to suit their interests. Prior to that, in the 1960's, they covered up for the Warren Commission. The Warren Commission whitewashed the conspiracy to murder President Kennedy and made possible the subsequent murders of JFK's brother, Robert, and Martin Luther King, about which most "Reds" have also been strangely silent about in the latter part of the 20th Century.
Geoff, I prefer the term 'asset', rather than 'resource'
Thanks Geoff,
The Blue Mountains probably would have a Mt Rushmore lookalike and Sydney sprawl by now had it not been for your efforts in the 1990s to help nominate them for World Heritage.
So thanks for that.
PM Gillard has lost her way and her Welsh and Lalor roots.
Your recommendation to follow principles is sound and wise.
Steady wins the race, not fits and starts. So true. And social outcomes are what matter; economic outcomes are just the means.
And if one side of politics ignores society, the next side just reverses things and so it goes.
As a nation, the nation should own its assets, natural and public infrastructure. The first peoples should be getting a large royalty to reimburse them the choice they have since 1788 not had.
I prefer the term 'asset', rather than 'resource'. Resources presume existence for human use. Assets, including natural ones like Australia's World Heritage Areas have inherent value, need care, maintenance, and can appreciate in value but risk depreciating if not cared for, like the Great Barrier Reef. If Coal Seam Gas is revenue under prime arable land and in residential homes, once the land left worthless and the social fabric is destroyed, is not the Coal Seam Gas really a loss making activity? Over the life of such regenerating assets that are prime arable land and residential homes, taking away that value is Planetary Write Down.
Sustainability has to start with population control otherwise, you have to work on each of us using less. The first can be addressd by government policy; the second will require intergeneration cultural unlearning of 20th C consumption habits and relearning bygone principles and lifestyles of frugality, localness, self-sufficiency and community. Growth also means excess. Stagnation means balance. The language of economists needs to be challenged.
Social equality is an ideal, but diluting quality of life through sharing is idealistic. Private property is inherent human territorialism - threaten it and you have civil war. Sustainability has to start with population control. That way you achieve sustainability, maintain quality of life, and because there is enough to go around, greater hope of real social equality.
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria
Australia
Asylum seekers not that poor
Of course the Democrats and their fellow travellers, being the good neo-marxists that they are, jump to the defense of the asylum seekers. They picture them as the desperate poor being victimised by greedy Labor and Liberal party plutocrats. The reality is the people smugglers who bring in these "refugees" don't work for free. I've read they charge quite a considerable sum - $20,000 is a figure I've seen - which even an average Australian would have trouble paying. These asylum seekers are mostly fairly wealthy people who have used their money to give them an unfair advantage over poorer asylum seekers. If the Democrats were consistent in their beliefs they would be supporting measures to stop them entering Australia illegally.
9/11, not that hard
You quickly deduced there was a good chance that the towers would fall, based on your training in physics, mathematics, and fluid mechanics? Congratulations! To this date no technically credible theory has been proposed that would tie the major features of the twin towers' destruction to earlier terror attacks with hijacked airplanes. You may have taken your baby steps to a Nobel Prize.
Getting serious, before you post any more 9/11 nonsense, kindly credibly refute the elementary conspiracy class of www.911babystep.com.
Love,
Dr. Sanderson, Dr Margulis, 9/11
Dr. Sanderson, thank you for your interest in the subject. I hope you will continue to widen and deepen your knowledge of the Ground Zero Incident.
Your intuition that the towers would fall was contrary to the intuitions of most structural engineers. NOVA says they were surprised when the towers came down. They had been designed to withstand a hit from a four-engine 707 flying at 600 mph, and the chief design engineer John Skilling had claimed that they would survive the ensuing fire as well.
I disagree with your claim that Dr. Margulis's comments were outside of her expertise. Dr. Margulis's background included study of chemistry and physics, and her career gave her much cause to ponder energetics. She was qualified to observe that the towers' rapid, symmetrical, and total "collapses" were mystifying and that the official reports about them did not explain the mysteries.
There's no need to publish a paper saying "those planes didn't bring down the twin towers". The fact that they stood for over an hour after impact shows that the planes didn't bring down the towers. Dr. Thomas Eagar of MIT characterized the impact as "like a bullet hitting a tree". One mainstream news article I read at the time of the NIST report's release characterized the report's thesis as something like "The planes didn't bring the towers down, nor the fires. It was the stripped-off fireproofing that caused the collapses." (Unfortunately NIST's examination of the fireproofing issue was not very rigourous.)
Your suggested paper topic reveals a "dueling theories" assumption that is not necessary to revealing the truth, and it's unreasonable to expect a single paper to "prove [a] pet theory" and defeat a 10,000-page report that does not prove its own theories. Far more illuminating would be a paper limited to "Even if planes did bring the towers down, they shouldn't have fallen in the manner they did."
As to Mr. Graham's "plausible argument", which of his claims do you find "plausible"?
1. Dr. Margulis, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a recipient of the National Medal of Science, does not understand the scientific method.
2. Dr. Margulis's points are random.
3. If covert operatives had demolished the towers, somebody would have talked.
4. The fires had ample oxygen and were comparable to a chimney fire (the towers didn't have floors, the elevator shafts had no doors, and the black smoke pouring out of the buildings was not indicative of oxygen-starvation).
How I came to reject the Official 9/11 Conspiracy Theory
Subject was: Gaping holes in Official 9/11 Conspiracy Theory presented here
Brian Sanderson,
Firstly, I completely accepted the Official explanation, after I learned of 9/11 and for the ensuing seven years.
I got home after midnight on 11 November, after having been confined to desk and chair finishing a university assignment out of earshot from anyone else. The impacts of Flight 11 into the North Tower, Flight 175 into the South Tower and Flight 77 into the Pentagon would have already occurred before I got home at roughly 12.30AM on 11 September from my recollection. The Pentagon would have been struck at 11.39PM on 10 September AEST, roughly 50 minutes before I got home and switched on the TV. I sat through the early hours of the morning of 11 September 2001, AEST watching the subsequent news coverage of 9/11.
Like most people, I was enraged at the fanatical Islamist extremists whom I held responsible for the atrocity and was looking forward to see the United States and Autralian military give those killers what they had coming for them.
Even during the months in which I protested against the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (which I almost supported on account of believing that Hussein, too, was responsible for 9/11) I supported the "good war" by the US against the 9/11 terrorists in Afghanistan as did many other protesters.
Only 7 years later, long after I should have, did I take a closer look at the Official 9/11 story. I then came to the conclusion that I now hold that 9/11 was a fraud, a False Flag terrorist attack. It was False Flag terrorism in the mould of the projected Operation Northwoods of the early 1960's in which the top US military planned to stage plane hijackings, murders, military attacks against Guanatanmo Bay and make them appear to have been carried out by or on behalf of the Cuban Communist Government. Fortunately, President Kennedy who was sadly to be later murdered on 22 November 1963, told the US military top brass to scrap Operation Northwoods.
I think if you, too, look more closely at the events of 9/11 and also come to understand how flawed is the case you have put above, you,too, will realise that the Official account of 9/11 is a lie.
Brian Sanderson wrote:
... Margulis is making judgements that are totally outside her field of expertise.
To the contrary, the Official explanation of the 9/11 is so obviously ridiculous, that even a 12 year old child should be able to see through it. See for yourself the video version of the 9/11 Commission Report.
Brian Sanderson continued:
Philip Mitchell Graham makes the more plausible argument on that topic.
Phillip Mitchell Graham's 'contribution' does not address any of Lyn Margulis's article. His attack on what he claims is Lyn Margulis's poor grammar and writing style is laughable given his own spelling mistakes.
Brian Sanderson continued:
I recall watching TV and seeing those planes hitting the Towers. At the time, I noted where the planes had struck and quickly deduced that there was a good chance that the towers would fall.
On what basis? Please explain. Where else has a steel framed building ever collapsed so completely and so suddenly, let alone three on the same day?
Brian Sanderson wrote:
... As for the third tower, I have can't speak to that.
Nor did the 9/11 Commission. The report made no mention whatsoever of the Collapse of WTC7, which wasn't even struck by an airplane. Doesn't that strike you as the least bit suspicious?
Labor's 200,000 immigration per year adds 5.6Mt of CO2 p.a.
The average Australian on a per capita basis would emit about 28 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually, based on the accredited Garnaut Review.
Green Labor's current national immigration policy of 190,000 per year, plus allowing for Hanson-Young's encouraged 7000 boat illegals p.a. at the current rate (2883 arrivals for 2012 to May) , plus allowing for visa overstays, so say Australia's net immigration is 200,000 per year.
This translates to Green Labor's immigration policy adds 5.6 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2 emissions per year (200,000 x 28 tonnes each).
"In the twelve months to June 2009, Australia’s emissions were an estimated 544 Mt CO2-e (million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent)."
http://www.landlearnnsw.org.au/sustainability/climate-change/what-is-it/greenhouse-gas-aust-nsw
So roughly, Green Labor's immigration policy systemically adds 1% of CO2 emissions per year. (5.6Mt/544mt).
Thus despite Green Labor's DECCEE site hyping: "The Australian Government is strongly committed to reducing Australia's carbon pollution... The plan to move to a Clean Energy Future will cut pollution by at least 5% compared with 2000 levels by 2020"
But its immigration policy adds 1% per year by 2020, that is a total of 20% by 2020.
So Green Labor's hype of 5% reduction is counteracted by 20% more from immigration. So by 2020, Australia will have an extra 15% CO2 emissions! And that doesn't factor in all the breeding over the next 20 years.
CONCLUSION: The Carbon Tax and CO2 Reduction efforts and costs are wasteful crap while immigration remains as it is.
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria
Australia
Laughable propaganda from SMH and Economist 'Intelligence' Unit
Look, this so-called 'livability index' report comes from the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), which is oxymoronic in itself and part of a group associated with the anglo-centric Economist magazine. People in Hong Kong rent cages stacked one on top of the other in rooms in concrete high rises. There are protests about the abrogation of public land and the ever increasing intensity of development. The EIU put overcrowded concrete Vancouver and Melbourne equal at the head of its list in 2002. Clearly this list is a list about concrete spaces and developers' anti-human values and the Economists silly promotion of economic growth and globalisation. The award is just a manufactured consensus thing promoted by big business for big business and against relocalisation, human scale and natural surroundings.
That the Sydney Morning Herald publishes this nonsense is just another indication of the corruption of real reporting by corporate agendas. In other words this is all just corporate propaganda which little girls and little boys should be taught to dissect in primary school and once were. Wonder what has happened there?
About the Economist group:
"From its beginnings in 1843, when The Economist newspaper was founded by a Scottish hat manufacturer to further the cause of free trade" ... http://www.economistgroup.com/what_we_do/our_history.html
"Many of the issues facing the world have an international if not global dimension. The Economist brand family is ideally positioned to be the commentator, interpreter and forecaster of the phenomenon of globalisation as it gathers in pace and impact." [In other words, a propaganda outfit that actually has some deluded ordinary subscribers.]http://www.economistgroup.com/what_we_do/our_brands/the_economist_brand_family/index.html
Sydney ranked as the fifth most liveable city in the world
Senator The Hon. Bob Carr, former NSW Premier and now Foreign Minister of Australia, is an outspoken advocate of the need to end population growth. Populate and Perish was quite relevant for our post War era, but now is populate and perish due to the looming threats to our planet!
More people are being warehoused in cities globally, and pollution, congestion and family-hostile living is increasingly a problem. Economists and politicians worship growth, but they ignore the costs.
Hong Kong was judged the most liveable city, followed by Amsterdam, Osaka and Paris, after additional criteria including urban sprawl, connection and proximity to other cities, and pollution were taken into account.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/sydney-ranked-as-the-fifth-most...
Despite Carr's proclamation that Sydney was "full", it has continued to "grow" it's economy. Economic growth has become a euphemism for population growth. The public might question the value of high immigration, but who could deny the benefits of alluring economic growth?
Hong Kong was boosted from number 10 to the top spot on the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) global "liveability" rankings. The cost of housing in Hong Kong is reported to be getting sheer ridiculous, the city is overpopulated with people from the mainland, pollution is just getting worse, and there's not much of an art scene. Expats aren't generally happy, getting kids into a decent school is just a nightmare.
Hidden amid the multi-million dollar high-rise apartments and chic shopping malls of Hong Kong's urban centers are scores of tiny, unseen tenements -- some no bigger than coffins -- that many people call home. The 15-square-foot enclosure is just one incarnation of the city's distinctive low-income housing alternatives.
It's assumed that urban planners will simply create plans that will preserve space, amenities, costs of living, living standards and a balance with natural resources and heritage - all while the population keeps growing.
Bigger is not necessarily better, and if Sydney is descending backwards behind a tall, dense, polluted city like Hong Kong, then perhaps Bob Carr should be listened to. There are limits to growth, and excessive growth is a pathology on living organisms, and also on cities.
Syria's Ba'ath Party will do like Saddam's did
Syria's ruling minority Ba'ath Party under President Bashar al-Assad will do just like Saddam Hussein's ruling minority Ba'ath Party.
It is an ethnic religious civil war between the al-Assed's minority 12% Shia (Alawite, Twelvers, and Ismailis) and mainly the 74% Sunni muslims.
I can't see the UN, USA, Arab States intervening until the protesting 74% have either given up, fled or are killed.
Since there are a few million souls, cynically I expect the media reports of massacres to be continuing for many years.
Readers will tire of the same news, so it will likely fade from the front pages.
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria
Australia
Editorial comment: At the elections held earlier this year, the overwhelming majority of Syrians, who defied terrorist death threats to cast a vote, voted for Assad, giving him an outright majority of 51% of all Syrians casting votes for him. Could you please cite the sources upon which you base your claim that only 12% of Syrians support Assad?
Arabs, not Australians, "victims of false consciousness"?
The following is a response to comments about the conflict in Syria on Professor John Quiggin's Weekend Reflections:
Katz @ 28 wrote:
Perhaps, Arabs are victims of false consciousness, ...
A good many Arabs may be the victims of 'false consciousness' but no less so than people in Western industrialised countries who largely accept the lies they are fed by newspapers such as the Melbourne Age which commenced its deceitful reporting of the Houla massacre of the 25 May with the report More than 90 massacred: Syrian activists. This and the Age's subsequent reporting of the Houla massacre and the Syrian conflict were shown to be lies by this report in the Franfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung of Syrien- Eine Auslöschung (Syria - an Extinction, English translation here) of 13 June 2012. This report shows that the massacre was not carried out by the Syrian Army or Police as was alleged by the Western newsmedia, but by the NATO backed Syrian insurgents.
Katz @ 30 wrote:
In Syria the regime will stay as long as they can stomach killing large numbers of people. ...
No government can defend itself against a terrorist insurgency sponsored by outside dictatorships and prospective colonisers, without killing people. In fact, if you examine the evidence, you will see that the Assad Government, its police and Army have behaved with extraordinary humanity given the circumstances they faced. Until a few months ago, they avoided bombing residential areas. However, they had to change this policy because of the supply of sophisticated anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to the terrorists.
The people who are fomenting the terrorist insurgency are no different than those who invaded Libya last year causing 30,000 deaths and the plunder of Libya's oil wealth by Western oil corporations, and, before that, the criminal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan in which many hundreds of thousands of people died. The lies being peddled by the Western newsmedia and phony human rights organisations such a Amnesty International and Avaaz are no less lies than were the lies used to justify the invasions of Iraq in 1991 and 2003, namely the Incubator Babies lie and Iraqi WMD's
Mutual friend
Hi Tony,
Recently came across news about a mutual friend. might be interesting to hear your reaction/perspective... Sorry for the cryptic nature...
Chris Sato
Correct spelling of Geoff Mosley's name
We apologise for the serial mispelling of Geoff Mosley's name in the above article, which then apparently led comment writers to misspell it as well. We have fixed the spelling so that the 'e' comes after the 'l'.
Lynn Margulis didn't really put a scientific case
First, let me say that Lynn Margulis has done excellent work on the evolution of eukaryotic cells. I truly admire her for that. In matters relating to the destruction of the towers, Margulis is making judgements that are totally outside her field of expertise. Philip Mitchell Graham makes the more plausible argument on that topic.
I recall watching TV and seeing those planes hitting the Towers. At the time, I noted where the planes had struck and quickly deduced that there was a good chance that the towers would fall. My training is in physics, mathematics, and fluid mechanics (I've also published in biological journals). As for the third tower, I have can't speak to that.
If someone has a serious scientific argument that the planes didn't bring down the twin towers, then they should publish it in a credible scientific journal (or engineering journal). Good science requires an honest attempt to prove your pet theory to be wrong...
As for fluoridation of drinking water, I'm no expert. But anyone can go to PubMed and do a search for "fluoridation of drinking water". This search turned up 818 peer-reviewed scientific publications --- they may be worth considering before jumping to too many conclusions... I see that it might cause insulin resistance in rats (that's not good, for rats). Unfortunately, we can't go blaming the prevalence of obesity and type-2 diabetics on fluoride --- given that there are so many other things about the modern diet that have been shown to also cause these problems.
Editorial comment: James Sinnamon assures me that he is happy to respond in full to this comment, but is tied up for a few hours. In the mean-time, site visitors could look at the site of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (http://ae911truth.org) which is curently endorsed by over 1,600 qualified Architects and Engineers. I don't know of one who has endorsed to official 9/11 Commission report.
Russia should demand regime change in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, ...
The following is a response to an article Kofi Annan attacks Russia and west's 'destructive competition' over Syria of 6 July in the ostensibly left/liberal UK Guardian news magazine:
I am stunned by the attacks on Putin. Russia hasn't interfered in American foreign policy in the Middle East for 30 years. America on the other hand has instigated a war in Iraq, an overthrow of a government in Afganistan, a war in Afganistan, the overthrow of a government in Libya, involvement in Sudan etc. Yet Putin says enough of the West's regime change policy and he is the bad guy. I think Russia and China should push for regime change in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia where people are still stoned to death and hands are cut off. But of course those are America's allies so they don't need democracy although Americans fought for Kuwait and Bush promised us democratic reforms there.
A good rebuttal of the deceit contained in the Guardian article is to be found in Kofi Annan: International Community Has Failed Syria of 7 July 2012 in landdestroyer.blogspot.com.
See also: Saudi Arabia's Princess Sara claims asylum in the UK of 8 July in The Telegraph, Saudi Princess seeking political asylum in Britain of 8 July.
I also heard Geoff Mosley's wonderful speech
Thank you , Clarke.
Please be assured that the full text of Dr Geoff Mosley's speech and the mp3 sound recording will be made available soon on candobetter. Others, who attended that meeting, are most welcome to continue the discussion, which began at that meeting, on the page where the article is to be published and elsewhere on candobetter (including here).
I also attended the Annual General Meeting of the Victorian branch of Sustainable Population Australia (SPA).
I also learned a great deal of the history of the Australian conservation movement from the middle of the 20th century from Geoff Mosley's speech.
I have considered myself a conservationist at least since my early teen years when I holidayed in 1974 with my family at Binna Burra at the northern border of the Lamington National Park in South East Queensland. In 1977 I joined the Campaign Against Nuclear Power (CANP) in Queensland and the Campaign Against Nuclear Energy (CANE) in South Australia the following year.
In spite of decades of environmental and other political activism on my part, there is a great deal about the proud history of the Australian Conservation Movement of which I was not aware. In part, my lack of knowledge was due to the setbacks suffered by Australian democracy at the end of the 20th century which began in 1975 with the downfall of the Whitlam Labor Government (which Geoff Mosley covered) and continued with the (mis)rule of Fraser, Hawke, Keating, Howard and Rudd. The corruption at the top of Australia has clearly spread downwards through many supposedly left political parties and grass-roots organisations including much of the conservation movement during these years. I had formed the impression that it had been always thus. Fortunately, Geoff Mosley put me right on this, yesterday.
My congratulations to Victorian SPA President Jill Quirk and the Victorian SPA Committee for having organised the meeting. Although attendance was good, had the newsmedia given this meeting, with the quality of the featured speaker, the publicity it deserved attendence would have been far higher.
Let's hope that the forthcoming visit from American Peak Oil specialist Richard Heinberg scheduled for September is given the public it deserves so that more Victorians, who care about our future, can attend.
Geoff Mosley's wonderful speech at SPA AGM 2012
This was a fantastic talk by Dr Geoff Mosely. I hope that someone will put up a transcription or an mp3 of it. He gave a history of his lifetime (he is around 80 years old), wartime self-sufficiency, then his role in and hindsight on the [lack of progress] of the conservation movement after it looked as if it was going to be very successful in the 1970s.
His conclusions need to be published widely.
Apart from that, he was so tall and straight and sharp at 80, that he was a living advertisement for a life spent in activism and conservation.
HANG OUT WITH THE PRIME MINISTER
Our Say
“Why are we heading towards "big Australia" when you rejected it when you first become Prime Minister? We are facing global depletions, climate change, species declines, and many "peaks" in natural resources. When will our population be stablized at a sustainable level? ”
Log on and vote for this question.
Re Ethno Racism Joe Hildebrand - Updated
Dumb, Drunk and Racist is a show about a group of Indian tourists being led about by a non White Australian (Hildebrand) on a ghoulish slumming tour of White Australia.
This is exactly the sort of thing which used to go on in the 19th Century, tourists would pay their two bits to get a guided tour of the Lower East Side of Manhattan from such luminaries as Chuck Connors or perhaps the more daring souls might have hired a "Lobbygow" to guide them around Chinatown where they'd be shown a real "Opium Den", and have described to them the murderous doings of the Tongs, White Slavers, and Pekingese Hatchet Men.
I guess it's OK to make fun of dumb or mentally ill White people in order to amuse the ghoulish or overly credible people who might have been looking forward to this program, as long as you can paint these White sad cases as "Racist" it's apparently open season.
I actually did find the second episode amusing, the staged standoff between Zionist auxiliaries The Australian Protectionist Party and Muslim "community leaders" at Villawood was a hoot, I'd say it was neck and neck for who had the most hysterical, Medieval screed against the other.
Seriously though, Mr Hildebrand isn't one to talk, he's the hero who when his entourage were confronted by two belligerent Indigenous women on the banks of the Todd river led a helter- skelter run back to the team's hotel. Sprinting past the two female receptionists on duty he apparently squealed "Call the Police" and left the two diminutive females to be quite seriously beaten and robbed by his two assailants. One worker required hospital treatment. He and his Indian charges did not stand and hold the door shut or hold their ground until help arrived.
Here's the link:
"Todd River women attack camera crew," CCTV footage going around of Hildebrand tearing past the desk and the receptionists being attacked. He also described the attempted assault in detail.
7 tv news should have reported Rheya Linden better
It is strange to see how blatantly the newsmedia suppresses any real diversity of comment. Rheya Linden is highly informed on urban possums and has academic credentials on cultural attitudes to animals.
Possum hysteria in the media
This morning on ABC local radio in Melbourne the presenter, Jon Faine devoted about 15 minutes to the subject of a "possum plague" in Melbourne. Fortunately some people pointed out that in fact it was human plague and that humans were taking over the possums' territory. The subject of the program was precipitated by a decision of one of the Melbourne Councils to spend $65,000 on contraceptive measures because there are allegedly 60 possums living in Curtin Square in an inner Melbourne suburb. Mr. Faine asked a guest on the program from Wildlife Victoria why brush tail possums were protected since they are not endangered. The wildlife Victoria officer gently explained that a native Australian animal did not have to be endangered to be protected by law under the Wildlife Act and managed to convey that the hardy possums who have adapted and managed to survive in an urban environment are an important animal species within the Australian environment.
The story about the Curtin Square possums reappeared tonight when it was featured on 7 TV news where one could see about 2 possums inoffensively licking something that had been offered to them and then wandering away. Animal activist, Rheya Linden was interviewed but only a few seconds of what she said went to air. She was responding to threats that it would be made illegal to feed possums. She said she would never abandon the possums. The rest of what she sad was muted although her face was shown for few more seconds.
population will fall
First, no one knows whether human population will still be rising or will be falling by 2050. Time will tell.
What we can be sure of is that if the world presently had a smaller population then we would all be a lot better off. The proper theory relating poverty to population is well explained by Paul Colinvaux. Read his books: "Why Big Fierce Animals are Rare" and "Fates of Nations, A Biological Theory for History"
Population growth is the great spoiler for human progress.
If population is declining by 2050, then it will be for one of 2 reasons:
(1) People will have seen sense and chosen quality of life over sheer numbers of poverty-stricken primates.
(2) A crowded population will have become so constrained by poverty that they simply can't increase their numbers.
Economists are over-rated primates.
boomers have been betrayed!
I recall a time when the catch-cry was populate or perish. That was what the parents of the boomers did --- they populated. The boomers were the first generation to realize that if population increased beyond a point then quality of life would decline into a pit of poverty. The boomers opted to reduce their reproductive rate, choosing quality of life over mere numbers.
Unfortunately, the plutocrats who profit from other peoples misery have been relentless, using immigration to drive population skywards, completely destroying the advantages obtained from the wise behaviour of boomers. The great betrayal of so-called democracies has been the acquiescence of politicians to a relatively small group of self-serving plutocrats who have hijacked the population issue.
SportsBet on Asylum Seekers
SportsBet, TAB or Packer’s BetFair online could cash in on asylum seekers.
They could set up odds for each new boat, and with the boon of two a week it could be lucrative, with odds on 'Days since Previous Boat', 'Persons on Board', 'Route Taken', 'Capsizing', 'Distance from Indonesia coast before mobile phone water taxis booking made'.
There's money to be made in the Timor Sea
More reliable than David Jones dead cat share bounces.
More than East Timor is making out of its offshore oil reserves.
Tigerquoll
SPA VIC & TAS AGM this Saturday, 2pm, Balwyn Library
SPA Victoria and Tasmania AGM
2PM Balwyn Library Meeting Room
336 Whitehorse Rd., Balwyn
Saturday July 7th 2012
Guest Speaker: Dr Geoff Mosley, "Reflections on 50 years of involvement with conservation, the lessons learned and the way ahead."
All welcome!
Most driving ecological destruction have 20th C values
Mary,
Street protestors are not statistically mainstream, despite your perception of security in numbers; so I fear you and our readers are in the minority, despite being smarter.
When you are confident that you are part of the mainstream, I will agree with you.
But most reading CanDoBetter are not the BabyBoomer mainstream.
Most driving ecological destruction have 20th Century values.
Most leading the major political parties, industry, commerce driving ecological destruction are in their 50s and older.
Look at voting patterns and disagree with me, please.
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria
Australia
On the contrary, baby-boomers care for the planet
Tigerquoll, you haven't been to many environmental demonstrations? They are full of "baby boomers" and the older generations.
They are most concerned about our planet and can see, through more long distance lens of time and wisdom, what is happening to our forests, our species, our coasts, our oceans and rivers. It those with power and addictive influence that are hell-bent on "sustainable" growth and "sustainable" industries like logging, fishing and mining. The young are naive and are more accepting of the status quo.
Australian members of parliament are mainly intertwined and tainted with the business and growth lobbyists. Economic growth is the euphemism for population growth, and who doesn't want economic growth? It promises prosperity!
The innocent wisdom of a child
I think of myself as child of Easter Island. I watch in admiration at a bird singing in a tree.
I watch in horror as the tree is felled by the grown ups and the bird flies away.
I tug on my father's arm and ask why are the grown ups killing the trees dad?
He responds: "You'll understand when you grow up."
"The most interesting information comes from children, for they tell all they know and then stop."
~ Mark Twain
Many of the younger generation cannot understand what the old generation is doing to the planet.
Without being ageist, there is a noticeable positive correlation between the young wanting to respect the planet, and the 'Baby Boomer' generation which largely remains hell bent on destroying it. Examples are everywhere. Start with Australia's members of Parliament. The Baby Boomers who find themselves alligned with those who respect the planet are noticeably in the minority amongst their peers and vice versa.
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria
Australia
If you surveyed ordinary
If you surveyed ordinary people and said "listen, we've got this great policy with really important features:
(a) traffic will be gridlocked;
(b) Melbourne will be balkanised like Sydney because crossing town will be almost an impossibility;
(c) you will add an hour in daily travel to work time, see the kids and wife less;
(d) rents will keep rising and your disposable income for enjoying life shrink further to feed the property owning class or your mortgage;
(e) the city will fill up with people with whom you share virtually nothing in common (in fact one nationality have been our enemy for about 50 years) increasing the alienation that cities generally struggle with;
(f) a new slave class of illegal immigrants will form the backbone of a new criminal underworld, employers breaking the law using them - avoiding paying them proper benefits and generally preferring them over locals for whom such benefits are a right, landlords breaking the law housing them 3 to a room etc
(g) queues for everything from child care to private schools, univesities will massively lengthen;
(h) your heritage of a well heeled infrastructure carefully planned and paid for by dilligent people over generations will substantially erode;
what do you think they would say ?
Poor Me Cards measure diversity
You could also measure a persons overall "diversity level" by how many cards they have at hand. The could get a set number of, appropriately applied for, cards every month. Any not used, and thus left at the end of the month would be accumulated as diversity points. Presumably you could use them as a means of exchange as well. Possibly even being traded for the collectible hydro-carbon cards that the businesses will be playing with.
It would be like a real life pokeman/Magic-the-Gathering, with relatively rare cards (Eskimo decendent) being tradable for multiples of the less rare (opressed woman).
I think you are on to something.
Daunting creature
The many heads of the hydra are indeed very daunting but the most terrible aspect to the creature is the coordination of its "tentacles" and the unity of its purpose.
India is "racist"
I didn't watch the "Racist,Drunk and Dumb" show, but it sounds like a cultural attack on Australians - or reverse racism and warped stereotyping - something that if done to another culture by Australians would cause "racist" outrage! Australia is an easy victim, target, for vilification.
The growth lobby is a powerful, pro-globalizing monster at odds with the crippling carbon tax, and instead of Australia the "racist" and "xenophobic" nation we are accused of being, we are being vilified and targeted - even while we are the host country of high immigration.
With voices of Australians silenced by PC (political correctness) and "white guilt" from Anglo Australians, this attack on Australians leaves us with little integrity to hold onto. It's about de-culturalizing Australia even further for a smoothing out of further "multiculturalism" - a euphemism for more immigration and having more layers of "cultures" imposed onto us.
It's a manipulating of guilt in the public to force more immigration - and silence- onto the community. We are being swamped by contradictions. Why bother with the carbon tax and yet keep growing our population? Anthropogenic climate change can't be solved while our economy is fixated on economic growth and high consumption levels. There's so much money to be made from importing people, the easy route to a higher GDP at the cost of per capita wealth.
Of course Indians will think we are dumb if Australia is advertising "skills shortages" and the need for more immigration while at the same time our universities and TAFE are said to be of such as high international standard that it's worth paying $$$ to study and live here! It's another contradiction.
Racism, prejudice and xenophobia are rampant in India. It’s a strange mixture of prejudice, ignorance and centuries-old discriminatory practices. When communities keep to themselves and there were dining taboos based on caste means you can't eat with people not of your caste or marry into their communities. These closed communities are naturally full of prejudices towards the other, the outsider. Every state considers itself superior. Most Indians look for pale-skinned brides for their sons. Bridal ads ask for ‘fair skinned’ girls. So skin colour is important and you can’t be beautiful if you are not fair. Racism in India is systematic and independent of the presence of foreigners of any hue. This climate permits and promotes this lawlessness and disdain for dark skin - and the light skin of Bollywood stars is evidence of this. Most Indian pop icons have light-damn-near-white skin.
Contradictory nature of carbon tax
Ironically, we have the carbon tax, yet at the same time our double-standard governments are still in the growth, high immigration and settlement stage of Australia. Big has to be of the past, and Small and Sustainable should be the new motto. People living apartments and high rises are captive to power with little alternatives. Per capita greenhouse emissions as said to be up to 30% higher than people in detached family houses with trees for evaporative cooling, natural sunlight to dry clothes, and not forced to be in hot summer suns that demand air conditioners. All living at home is inside, requiring electronic entertainment. "Big Victoria" and "Big Australia" are contradictory if were are supposed to be abating anthropogenic climate change.
The real cost of power, and water, is the rising cost of rolling out and maintaining the growing infrastructure for our urban sprawl and increasingly dense Melbourne suburbs. The carbon tax will just increase the pain of growth.
People who imagine the carbon tax will have any impression on our total emissions are naive. It's just another tax burden on our lives to roll out more infrastructure for more growth.
Baillieu gov scheming to toll existing roads
BAILLIEU GOVERNMENT SHOULD RULE OUT TOLLING EXISTING ROADS
It would be outrageous for the Baillieu Government to introduce tolls on existing free roads such as the Eastern Freeway, the West Gate Bridge, or the freeway off ramps to Hoddle Street, to pay for the East West Tunnel.
Concern that the State Government intends to toll existing free roads has arisen following the Government's refusal to release 27 documents that "relate to the potential introduction of new tolling regimes on new or existing roads in Melbourne" on the grounds that they were internal working documents or commercial in confidence.
This secrecy will only fuel public concern that the Government is indeed considering tolls on existing roads to help fund the East West Tunnel. The Kennett Government did this on the Tullamarine Freeway when it built City Link. It was completely improper and meant that motorists were worse off, rather than better off, as a result of the new road. We do not want to see a repeat of that.
What the Baillieu Government should do is now rule out any tolls on roads which have already been constructed with taxpayer funds.
Source: Kelvin Thomson, MP
Federal Member for Wills
Media release
Ethno-racist Hildebrand ABC program incites hate of Australians
I just followed the link to the Hildebrand program and was extremely shocked. Hildebrand seems to be inciting racial hatred and stereotyping against Australians. See video of Dumb Drunk and Racist. Surely this is illegal. It is very dangerous. We have a huge Indian diaspora here and this program is grossly exaggerating, generalising and dramatising remarks from a tiny minority of people. It is also taking as racist natural resentments about outsourcing Australian phone servicing to call lines in India and trying to pretend that Indians are constantly at risk of violence here. It will stimulate civil disturbance and violence here. It is unfair on Australians of all origins, including Indian.
John Marlowe did a good thing in drawing our attention to this. It is really bad. Please complain. This is seriously dangerous and ugly television.
Canvas Bags
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Harvey Norman giant logging Koala Habitats
Call to Boycott Harvey Norman because of logging Koala Habitats
We have been appealing to Harvey Norman for a while now to stop logging in old growth forests. We have since been alerted that they are now logging in koala habitats. It is shocking and sickening that a "proud Australian company" is destroying the homes of a plethora of native animals, all for their bottomline.
We are appealing to the public to boycott Harvey Norman until and when they have shown proof that they are not supporting the destruction of habitats that should by their very nature be 100% protected.
Concern over logging in koala habitat by Tony Eastley on ABC Radio's AM of 3 July at www.abc.net.au/am/content/2012/s3537490.htm
For the Animals
Jaylene Musgrave
Vegan Warriors
0448310640
Media Manager, Sunshine Coast Koala Wildlife Rescue Service
www.veganwarriors.com.au.
www.sckoalarescue.com.au
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China's predatory scouring of Australia for food security
A CHINESE company wants control of 100,000 hectares of Australian land for aquaculture. Federal Parliament sources say a Chinese company intends to use an Australian resources company to develop the land, near Broome in Western Australia.
Senator Heffernan says that huge areas of environmental destruction in the Chinese landscape and contamination of a lot of their fisheries means that they are scouring the planet looking to secure their food supplies. Heffernan says "they've lost 10 per cent of their agricultural land in the last 10 years. They've destroyed their own capacity, they're using ours." Overpopulation is catastrophic, but nations with buying power can be global predators, preying on any weaknesses in national power - like Australia's globalization efforts and weak sovereignty.
China seeks land for aquaculture - The Weekly Times
The 2008 global food crisis was a time when surging food prices swept the world, giving rise to riots, trade bans, and panicked hoarding. It would be naive to imagine that food security will increase in the coming years. A remote landlord is contrary to our interests. In China, only residents are allowed to buy agricultural land - quite sensibly. It's not an easy task, feeding 22 per cent of the world's population with just 7 per cent of the world's arable land. China's revolution in agriculture has the backing of $1 trillion for agricultural investment over the next five years.
The basic economic task of feeding the world's hungry has once again become daunting with rapidly rising populations. A severe decline in stocks has nearly paralyzed the fishing industry in east China. Millions of sharks are killed each year to supply a growing demand for shark fin soup – one of the most expensive foods available. In China, the rapid rise of a middle-class population with disposable income means more people can afford the expensive soup. Allowing China access to our land for aquaculture would be treason.
Where are the voices of reason in our government except a few like Senator Bill Heffernan and Dick Smith? Our politicians have their snouts in the trough, and have given themselves a pay rise. They are
not under scrutiny to show performance results.
Australia is not China, and it's time the public become "xenophobic" against these predatory buy-ups of Australian assets.
Australian "refugees" going to New York
Our cities are already saturated by population growth. With more than 41,000 people waiting for public housing, the longest waiting time of an applicant allocated public housing last financial year was 226 months - 18 years and 10 months - in Melbourne's southern suburbs. There are more than 3,500 public housing properties in the Gippsland region, but that's not enough to meet the needs of a growing number of people seeking affordable accommodation.
While it can still take more than 20 years to get into social housing in Byron Shire, the wait for one, two or three-bedroom housing in Lismore, Casino or Kyogle could be two to five years. Mr Tinley, shadow Minister for Housing in WA, said as they struggled with the state's housing affordability crisis, figures tabled in parliament revealed more than 50,000 Western Australians were on the waiting list as at April 30.
Recently, community leaders fear asylum seekers will face homelessness in Canberra due to an acute shortage of affordable housing and an inadequate period of supported accommodation. The major problem that no-one wants to take responsibility for is housing, neither [the federal nor ACT governments] are addressing that in a meaningful way.
Asylum seekers leaving immigration detention on Bridging visas will not be provided with public housing. It is expected that many will find their own accommodation in the private rental market. Just how they are meant to afford it? However, some may have family, friends or other community support mechanisms available to them. If you have a spare room and live near public transport, you can provide accommodation for refugees.
There are already "refugees" in Australia. ''If governments don't start to take housing affordability seriously, we'll continue to see increasing numbers of people locked out of home ownership or burdened with a mortgage they can't afford,'' Sarah Toohey, of Australians for Affordable Housing.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/more-than-faces-in-the-crowd-20120622-20t...
The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, says she can understand the cost of living pressures on families earning $150,000 a year, but what about those earning a fraction of that?
Perhaps they should do what thousands have done and move somewhere cheaper - such as New York. NYC & Company, the city's tourism body, released data last month estimating that a staggering 1500 Australians are arriving in New York each day. New York is seeing a wave of Australian ''knowledge worker'' migrants, taking advantage of the E3 work visas introduced in 2005. We have economic refugees fleeing Sydney!
Not surprising that Indian migrants think we are "dumb". Why would they be flocking here for tertiary education while at the same time Australia has "skills shortages"? It's a contradiction! Why would we be inviting foreigners to live here in the first place - and actually encourage population growth??
Canned: why local tomatoes cop a pasting
From the Sydney Morning Herald of 27 May, 2012 by Melissa Fyfe and Royce Millar:
...
Thirty years ago, 400 [tomato] growers supplied seven canneries. Only nine are growing this season and there's just one processor. Five farmers quit last year, four this year. "We're just hoping to hang on," says Weeks, 65.
For years, Italian imports have laid siege to the Australian canned tomato industry. Now, as we witness a sharp rise in imported food, it appears the Europeans have won: only two of every 10 cans sold are locally made, the rest mostly Italian. SPC Ardmona's 400-gram can of whole peeled tomatoes, some of which may be grown by Bruce Weeks, retails at $1.67. Coles and Woolworths often sell their Italian-sourced own brands for half that, at 80¢. The most expensive branded Italian cans are priced at $1.39. Australians may say they like to buy local, but their wallets speak louder.
It's little wonder when the price of Italian tomatoes seemingly defies logic. The Italian can must complete a 17,888-kilometre, six-week voyage skirting several continents to arrive on an Australian supermarket shelf. Sitting next to it, the Ardmona can, tinned in Shepparton, has reached a Melbourne supermarket distribution centre after two hours in a truck. Yet it can be double the price of its Mediterranean cousin. Why?
The answer is as much a story about the competitive edge and romance of growing tomatoes in Italy as it is of the relentless forces of globalisation eroding Australia's food exports and now its ability to maintain a viable domestic food processing sector. What happened to the Australian canned tomato industry has happened, or is happening, to Australian canned fruit, frozen potatoes, seafood and processed vegetable industries.
...
Economies of scale trim costs, but Italy's tomato industry has two key competitive advantages: cheap, sometimes illegal, migrant labour and European Union subsidies. For 20 years, Italy has relied on field workers from Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and India. The Rome office of Doctors Without Borders has documented the plight of the migrants in several reports, the last in 2008. They describe a workforce vulnerable to violence and intimidation, living in extreme poverty in disused buildings with no toilets or access to healthcare. ...
...
(The Australian industry is not entirely innocent: migrants, mostly Asian or Indian, are used at harvest, and while the farmers pay a contractor about $22 an hour for each worker, they admit they have no idea how much each worker is paid.)
...
Even Italy is not immune to cheap Chinese competition. In 2004, it implemented labelling regulations to identify Italian tomato products. Already, China's largest market for its tomato paste is Italy.
Back in Rochester, Bruce Weeks is hoping Australian consumers will help. "If Australians want people employed in Australia, they've got to buy Australian made," he says. "Every day here people are being put off. Every day there's jobs being lost. It just can't keep happening … Eventually there will be nothing produced in Australia."
tiny percentage of refugees consumes the immigration debate
Julianne Bell says : "You are seriously ill informed about how refugees arrrve here - as one commentator says most arrive by plane. They hand in refugee claims at the airport. The "boat people" are a tiny percentage of refugees accepted by Australia". They make up about 2% of our immigration numbers.
However, the "tiny percentage" have consumed our immigration debate 100%, and those who arrive by boats have been those who risk their lives to come here. Since 2008, over 200 asylum seekers on their way to Australia have died in 10 known shipwrecks. Up to 50 asylum seekers died off Christmas Island’s rocky coast in December last year. In 2001, 353 people died in the notorious Siev X tragedy. The option of arriving by boat in treacherous conditions should be removed.
Our high skilled immigration, temporary workers and family reunion levels, is very relevant as our already high levels of immigration compromise our ability to address the needs of genuine refugees. Already our cities are saturated and under stress from population growth, and placing refugees in public housing - in many cases there are decades long waiting lists - would mean pushing citizens further down the list.
Australia needs to comply and accommodate refugees processed offshore only in a safe and orderly fashion. We are a sovereign nation, and as such should be able to increase our humanitarian intake without the tragic boat voyages - and slash our economic immigration numbers!
The 60-year-old convention was designed for an era we no longer live in; an era where the causes and trajectories of global migration were quite different to today. There are four countries that border Afghanistan that are United Nations member states and signatories to the UN Refugee Convention, and four more such countries that are only one country away.
Only three countries in Asia – Cambodia, Timor-Leste and the Philippines – are signatories to the UN Refugee Convention, not Malaysia or Indonesia. Dealing with non-member nations should be done directly, diplomatically.
Leaves us all speechless
but not "laughless" . It's good to hear that all is well now in the town of Bedrock and let it be an example for all of us.
RIO+20 just tourism marketing
RIO+20 was always just tourism marketing, like the aims and budgets of Australia's National Parks and Wildlife Services, which now are politically mandated to focus on 'visitation' in place of 'conservation'.
See the wildlife, even if they are murals.
Would you like merchandise with that?
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria
Australia
Illegals are anonymous who are not legal
Illegals are anonymous who are not legal.
No visa, overstayed visa.
Must be a trick question.
John Marlowe
"Greens" now actually Reds
The more I read about Hanson-Young the more I think the "Green" party has now been thoroughly hijacked by the extreme left wing. People who believe in infinite growth in population and industry as fervently as any hardcore capitalist. In my opinion the "Greens" are now the very antithesis of a true environmental party.
"sustainable development" is an oxymoron
“Sustainable development” is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
In arguing for sustainable development ecologists offer the usual observations on dwindling resources, wasteful consumption, and expanding populations. What "sustainable" alternatives do they, or can they, propose? Conservation, recycling, renewable energy? Sustainability and development are contradictions.
To grow means "to increase naturally in size by the addition of material through assimilation or accretion." To develop means "to expand or realize the potentialities of; ... to a fuller, greater, or better state." When something grows it gets bigger. When something develops it gets different, more complex. "Sustainable growth" or "development" is an oxymoron!
In the minds of many people, growth has become synonymous with increase in wealth. However, population growth doesn't increase wealth for the majority, but simply dilutes what wealth we have between more people.
Sustainable Growth: An Impossibility Theorem, written by Herman Daly and Kenneth Townsend, is one of the book’s many classics. Politically it is very difficult to admit that growth, with its almost religious connotations of ultimate goodness, must be limited. Even “green growth” is not sustainable. There is a limit to the population of trees the earth can support, just as there is a limit to the populations of humans. No growth in the natural world can be perpetual.
In 1992 Rio de Janeiro also hosted the “Earth Summit,” where sustainable development was first identified as a top priority on the agenda of the United Nations and the international community. 20 years later, our environment is getting worse, not better. Over the same 20-year period, this environmental degradation has coincided with a period of sustained progress across a range of measures of human development. Population, consumption, and resource in-efficiency – are driving the degradation of the Earth - the "hand that feeds us"!
Science points to the tipping points we are fast approaching.
Refugee Convention (RC) exploration needed.
Below is a copy of a comment which I submitted to an ABC radio program.
What was announced to be a wide ranging discussion on the current problem, turned out to be a brief interview with 2 long standing refugee advocates.
What I would like to see is a sensible national discussion on this subject; this is not likely to happen, because there is no forum for this to take place in. (Certainly this will not happen on Murdoch's ABC)
I would like to see alternatives explored; say an Australian DIY systeem, taylored to our situation. Also an exploration of costs and opportunity costs.
My ABC submission below:
I heard this AM that you are covering the refugee/asylum isue on tomorrows Saturday extra program. I offer these comments. (Some relevant links at bottom.)
I listen to much ABC discussion with various politicians on asylum seekers ( current problems).
Mentioned a few times was the Refugee Convention (RC), but no one ever seems to ask about or explain the real significance of this.
(Or to quote Greg Sheridan, is it that:.. 'any conservative politician who addresses such a question will instantly be denounced as a racist'..., also affects the ABC?).
I have a belief that an alternative (perhaps a local alternative) to this would dramatically change the situation.
My take is that the actual current situation is far larger than the current boat crisis. The total scenario, now and future, needs to be urgently looked at.
The starting point should be the RC; it should not be a politician's passing reference/ catch all pious justification.
In a nutshell:
1. Millions and Millions, possibly billions, of poor people in the world are living wretched, unhealthy, horrible lives, some persecuted, some not; some oppressed, some not; but all looking for a better life.
2. Nowhere to go for improvement, except a few "rich" western nations who subscribe to the RC.
3. Home country ( eg Pakistan, Afghanistan) too poor, unwilling or ineffective to assist.
4. Answer, get to a "rich" country, (best with relatives there); some risk; have a good story, true or not, and you will almost certainly win big time.
Limited Cost to self or family .
5. Bring over rest of family (low cost and problem free); the more the better to form a community. (Currently this program costs Australia at least $40 billion/annum, for the current flow.)
Questions for you:
1. Above summary - Correct or not?
If so , how many refugees should Australia take? More, less?
2. What does this cost? (never ever mentioned). It is not insensitive to ask. Does Mr Average Australian, have a right to know? What is the total, inclusive cost?
(My advice $Billions/annum not $millions)
Ask Bowen, ask Hanson Young, etc how much. If they don't know, then why not?
3. Will the new PM's expert inquiry, be looking at these issues? If not, then why not? If not, then what will they be looking at? (Tons of whitewash?)
I have a feeling that you will not ask any questions like these ( I suspect some unwritten ABC PC rule).
But if you choose to, here are some useful links:
1. Parliament report 2001: The Problem with the 1951 Refugee Convention
http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliam...
Extract: The essence of criticism of the 1951 UN refugee Convention is that it is anachronistic. The treaty was developed in and for a different era. While Western countries' asylum systems might have coped well enough until the end of the Cold War, they were not designed with today's mass refugee outflows and migratory movements in mind. This section summarises the resulting problems with the operation of the Convention that have been identified by researchers and commentators over the last 10 years.(23) Statistics, unless otherwise indicated, are from the UNHCR or the USCR.
(comment - must be in a too hard basket somewhere)
----------------------------
2. UN convention misunderstood, and it's not working- THE refugee policy sets up perverse incentives.
by: Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor From: The Australian
July 10, 2010 12:00AM
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/un-convention-misunderstood...
Extract: At the heart of the problem is the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. It is not only not working any more, it is setting up positively perverse incentives and having all manner of unintended and destructive consequences.
It is in desperate need of reform, but any conservative politician who addresses such a question will instantly be denounced as a racist, and almost all progressive politicians lack the stomach to confront the leftward end of their own constituencies on it. Julia Gillard's pretty bizarre balancing act, where she has accepted the absolute need to stop the boats getting to Australia illegally, but has proposed an almost certainly fanciful regional centre in East Timor, is an illustration of the dilemma progressive politicians face in office.
PS I think Greg S was wrapped over the knuckles by Rupert for this. He has gone very silent on the subject since.
Be bold
Cheers
refugee and boat policy
The only problem I have with turning back refugee boats is that it costs money to do so as you need to hire patrol boats and detention cells and hire return transport. Whatever money, and political attention, it takes to do that stuff is better spent on contraception for the environment, and thus these immigration issues are harming the Austalian environment by distracting and diverting political attention and funds away from paid, top quality contraceptive services even in very remote areas.
It is better to build a contraception clinic on that remote shoreline than to build a boat to patrol it.
http://www.change.org/members/218464
Humans.. (too stupid) and Greedy to Change anything
Anonymous said on Feb 5th 2012
...In the book of Revelations, the Four Horsemen must be in their stables already, saddling up and getting ready for the Apocalypse.
The Four Horsemen are the GFC, Global Warming, Peak Oil and Overpopulation - and are already with us!
Humans are innately greedy and money hungry and our world is overpopulated.
... I would like to add that humans are stupid and short sighted ... it makes it hard to continue to believe in God..
We are surely not made in His image! (If one is a believer..) The Almighty surely is not a masticator - and defecator into his own environment!
Only dirty little humans would defecate in their own nest (planet) ... by over-procreation and consumption... who invented the concept of morals, anyway.. no human could sustain anything that might be termed decent.
How long did it take for the dinosaur to die out... we must be l o-o-o-nnnng overdue!
Might seem an odd reply..but One Child/No Child Policy for 25yrs
.. Not facetious at all ~ and I'm deadly serious. People are undermining them selves !
China still has the one child policy - for the most part: very brave and very wise.
If there were a True International Crisis Convention (T.I.C.C. tock.. TIME IS RUNNING OUT!) The world leaders - as per their 'client's instructions' (US!!! The Voters & Tax Payers) ... would agree to encourage and reward a Generation of Abstainers from Procreation (G.A.P. Years).
They would be rewarded for NOT having children (instead of the useless and inane baby bonus!!) For an ecological
choice to help save the planet from over load.
Babies = poo = unrecyclable disposable wash clothes and nappies.. TONNS of food and clothing which most usually is dumped after the baby outgrows it.
You get the picture... babies grow, wanting MORE food, jobs - houses - and all manner of polluting agents such as cars...
Planet Earth has 7 Billion Over Grown Babies
25 years ~ at least ~ with an (yes, aging) population to thin out the weeds... wouldn't hurt (the planet) - a bit!
Yes, I'm a misanthrope - (I wonder why?)
Can you define "illegals"?
Can you define "illegals" for me please, John?
Hanson-Young's extremism forced Bob Brown to quit?
Senator Hanson-Young has stated last month that as the New Greens "We don't support polyamorists' marriage", end of quote, had, and I quote him, "outraged many Greens".
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/perhaps-bob-brown-and-sarah-hanson-young-dont-really-like-their-facebook-friends/story-fn72xczz-1226385344143
Bob Brown has suddenly resigned from the Greens at a time when Sarah Hanson-Young has become very toey for power.
Last November, Bob Carr, before his annointment had called on Commonwealth Ombudsman Allan Asher to resign after it emerged the watchdog wrote questions for Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young to ask him in a parliamentary committee.
“His behaviour is indefensible,” Mr Carr said of Mr Asher, who while admitting he did not take a "wise route" has stood by his conduct.
“It's plain unethical for an Ombudsman to write questions for politicians grilling him at a Senate budget estimates committee,” Mr Carr wrote in his blog.
Senator Hanson-Young obliged, producing evidence from Mr Asher that his immigration investigations were hindered a by lack of funds.
In a statement today, Mr Asher defended his conduct but said in hindsight it was not the best course of action.
Hanson (Flood Gate) Young (5th June) steering the New Greens, post Bob:
"We Greens will keep insisting that Australia honours its international obligations to offer protection under the Refugee Convention. We will ensure Australia remains the land of the fair go, which assesses people’s claims for protection here on the mainland, and not offshore. We’ll continue standing up against those who would demonise asylum seekers and refugees, because they deserve our help, not hardened hearts."
New Greens Platform: Illegals settling in a town or household next to you - they deserve your help!
John Marlowe
..Controlled Refugee intake prevents more sinister outcomes!?!
The originator of the article above has noted:
The UNHCR said last year that 43.7 million people were displaced by conflict, poverty, famine and persecution — the highest number in 15 years. Our planet is not a series of endless frontiers, but a fragile spaceship with limited resources, already overloaded by humanity. ... ***There are no new colonies so settle in, no new frontiers to invade and conquer. ***
As much as I agree with this statement, also: "We need to withdraw from the outdated 1951 UN Refugee Convention. The UN should not dictate how we manage our diplomatic affairs. We are a sovereign nation. This is a relic from a different era when peoples were displaced by World War 2 and the holocaust. "
I feel that a silent and sinsister agenda is afoot ~ that is ~ with a Planet Population of 7 Billion ~ we may be lucky that we can control the intake at all !
One has to ask the question: why does a government allow such 'counter intuitive' agreement to accept refugees?
We all know that Australia has limited 'workable' land for housing, food, water and civilised cohabitation, generally - so why are they so eager to share our scant and shrinking resources?
My guess is that we do not have any choice - we either allow ourselves to be subjected to a 'controlled intake' over a period of time - or these 'floaty boaties' will just arrive without permission.
Because if we don't allow some.. and we take away all hope -they will take the position of.. with nothing to lose - they have nothing to lose !
We can't afford to have them here, and perhaps withdrawing from "the outdated 1951 UN Refugee Convention" would let it be known that we are being subjected to these boat people - they are not welcome, really - however we will accept a minimum requirement of them.. but that they must then compete with other's who have earned their right to be here, have paid taxes and are competing for space, jobs etc.
I for one resent the lessening of options as things increase in price but not in quality, service or citizen's rights!
Withdrawal from UN Refugee Convention?
Quite frankly, I don't know why I should bother replying to this ill informed, biased claptrap but am prepared to make a few points:
1. You say "There are probably millions, if not billions of impoverished, persecuted peoples who see Australia as a "rich" country and an ideal soft target for resettlement." This is offensive, untrue and denigrates refugees and comes over as propaganda against refugees. People fleeing from persecution don't deliberately calculate which country is a "soft target."
2. You are seriously ill informed about how refugees arrrve here - as one commentator says most arrive by plane. They hand in refugee claims at the airport. The "boat people" are a tiny percentage of refugees accepted by Australia. They have been demonised by politicians including John Howard for political purposes. Note that 90% of refugee claimants processed by Australia whether onshore or off shore obtain refugee status.
3. Australia could find ourselves an international pariah if we withdrew from the UN Convention on Refugees. It would put us in a category with some of the worst military dictatorships in the world.
4. You want to throw away the rule book ie the UN Convention on Refugees so that we can send refugees to 2 nations that are not signatories to the Convention.
5. If we abandoned the criteria for refugees set out in the Convention - a well founded fear of persecution on grounds of race, religion, ethnicity etc. then we have no basis for judging/processing refugees.
6. It is a remarkable irony that we are sending the flower of young Australians to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban but are not welcoming Afghani refugee claimants fleeing from the Taliban. The Hazara ethnic minority are a well known target of the Taliban.
7. You might not think highly of Federal public servants but having worked in Immigration for 17 years about 4 spent processing onshore refugee claims including Sri Lankan and Afghani I can tell you that interviewers are very skilled and can soon determine if the claimant is genuine. We had excellent interpreters who could pick dialects and knew exactly where the claimants came from. We were supplied with information about what fighting was going on in their homeland. Immigration assessors know their jobs. Any security questions are referred to ASIO.
8. Here are the suggestions made by the Greens and are similar to those presented to the Government by Get Up! and the Edmund Rice Centre.
... Australian Greens have proposed four immediate actions that could be taken by the Prime Minister today (this was during the debate) to prevent more drownings at sea:
(i) Increase Australia’s humanitarian intake from 13,750 to 20,000, including additional places to be immediately allocated to targeted resettlement of 1,000 people from Indonesia and 4,000 people from Malaysia;
(ii) Immediately increase funding to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees by $10 million to boost the capacity of Refugee Status Determination assessments in Malaysia and Indonesia;
(iii) Enter urgent discussions between Australia and Indonesia to address the critical need for cooperation and effectiveness of intelligence sharing and resourcing between Australia and Indonesia in order to save lives at sea; and
(iv) Codify Australia's Safety of Life at Sea Convention 1974 obligations across all relevant government agencies and increase Australia's rescue capacity in Australia's northern waters.
I fully support these suggestions.
The whole question of whether we should reduce Australia's extraordinarily high skilled migration intake and work out what is a sustainable population for Australia is another separate question.
Signed Julianne Bell
The UN is not the problem.
The UN is not the problem. Refugees are not the problem. Imperialistic military follies have played a major part in driving people from their homelands. Australia, either through negligence or direct intervention is often implicated in creating immigration/emigration problems that impact on ordinary people like ourselves. The corporate/capitalist model is driving immigration and emigration.
A humanitarian intake of 70,000 pa would still see us stabilise our population. It's the extra 330,000 (roughly) economic immigrants who push us into unsustainable territory. I don't mind helping people in need but I don't owe corporations or people with materialistic/lifestyle aspirations anything.
I read some opinions here that I consider extreme here but I urge people to not let the "law of the jungle" ideology promoted by growthists to deprive us of our humanity. Australia has been (primarily) populated by people who have been on the wrong end of capitalism driven militarism and imperialism. Now is not the time to help put the boot into the oppressed. Know who your real enemies are and put the boot where it belongs. We've been comfortable and gutless for too long while the real culprits spin, weave and use violence when necessary with impunity. You may not be xenophobic or racist but you are going after the wrong people.
Is Hanson-Young related to Pauline Hanson?
Maybe she was traumatized in her youth by the fear of being identified with Pauline Hanson and has reacted by becoming an extremist.
CDB Ed: Oz sale and immigration politics
The Australia First comment and statement above ["Oz Is Not For Sale"] is powerful and seems to express what many Australians feel. The part of the comment that maintains that Australia is a European-derived civilisation would also find widespread agreement. We should point out, however, that a large section of readers and writers at Candobetter have grave doubts about the course of European civilisation, its reliance on fossil fuel, its so-called representative democracy, and its own history of imperialism. The crushing of nomadic hunter gatherer peoples by Europeans is not a proud part of Australian history. Arguably it ended 40-60,000 years of (self-evidently durable) nomadic arcadia.[1]
If we put this tragedy aside, writers like Bob Birrell in Federation, the secret story, Duffy & Snellrove, 2001, have argued well that Australians used to know who they were and where they wanted to go, and maybe still do, if only their politicians and media represented them faithfully:
The story of Federation has been muddied by the influence of the republican movement. As a result, many people today think that Federation was only a half-hearted, and half-successful, attempt to break our links with Britain. Bob Birrell's book explodes this myth. He shows that Federation was the result of an enormous popular movement based on intensely nationalistic feelings about what it meant to be an Australian. The story he tells is of the highly successful formation of a new, politically and culturally distinct nation. His book is a deliberate and important attempt to destroy the myth of Australian dependency on Britain, which has dominated historical writing here since the 1980s.
On the question of foreign ownership of land: If Australia only allowed selling of land to Australian citizens and limited leasing, foreign buyers would not be such a threat.
On the question of who migrates: If Australian corporate and political elites would stop demanding and enabling ridiculously high immigration - from any or all parts of the globe - the problem of ethnic definition - as in "Australia is a European-derived civilisation" or "We are a multicultural society" would not exist and neither would the risk of civil unrest through competition for scarce resources between separately identified groups.
[1] After the collapse of the Roman power in the west, Arcadia became part of the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire, until 1460. Arcadia remained a beautiful, secluded area, and its inhabitants became proverbial as herdsmen leading simple pastoral unsophisticated yet happy lives, to the point that Arcadia may refer to some imaginary idyllic paradise, immortalized by Virgil's Eclogues, and later by Jacopo Sannazaro in his pastoral masterpiece, Arcadia (1504); see also Arcadia (utopia). Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcadia#Ancient_history
Hanson Young reduced to tears
One-Worldist Hanson Young "has been reduced to tears during an upper house debate on contentious legislation that legalises the offshore processing of asylum seekers."
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young cried as she told the story of a 15-year-old Afghan orphan called Hussein (one of 500 people locked up on Christmas Island, waiting to find out if he was going to be sent back to Malaysia).
"When people arrive on your doorstep you have an obligation to help them." said Hanson-Young. "Now he is living with a family in Australia, learning English at school and will make 'a fine Australian'".
Hanson Young is the most dangerous seditious politician of our time, subverting Australia's sovereign independence, overtly inciting mass invasion, giving illegals aid and comfort, and
encouraging Australian fellow citizens to rebel against Australia's immigration laws and imposing overcrowding and multi-racial burdens upon our urban society.
John Marlowe
Oz Is Not For Sale
AUSTRALIA FIRST PARTY
The Chairman 25th June 2012
Shanghai Zhongfu Group Limited Company
618 Hankou Road Huangpu, OPEN LETTER
Shanghai, China
Dear Sir, RE: LAND ACQUISITIONS
I write on behalf of members and concerned citizens as known to us from our local democracy activities, in relation to reports of your company’s intention of seeking to purchase land in the State of Western Australia and the Northern Territory of Australia.
It has also been reported that Mr R Hawke, a member of the political caste in Australia has been acting to facilitate this purchase.
Your attention is drawn to understanding that the National Estate of Australia, whilst comprising public holdings under the Crown, and private ownership, is also based on a higher level of moral ownership vested in the People of the Australian Nation. This moral ownership of our Native Land is non-negotiable and is the guarantee of our People.
The concern is that the any proposed purchase of properties of our Native Soil by foreign corporations is imperialistic, undermines our integrity and independence, and is not in the interests of, nor ever been sanctioned by the Australian People. We consider this a very serious matter.
Your corporation may have been misled by other elements of our political caste that foreigners’ purchasing properties of our Native Soil is welcome, however be under no illusions as this position emanates from Quislings whom our Australian Peoples Movement will ensure accountability from for such actions.
It may also be that your corporation has been influenced by the current large scale transfer of your fellow country men into Australia, a virtual recolonisation process that has never been sanctioned by the Australian People as it undermines and degrades our European derived civilisation. This is a matter that can only now be addressed by either their voluntary departure, or directed repatriation back to your own country.
I therefore caution your corporation against ignoring this situation in continuing with the intent to purchase Australian land, and bring to your notice that our Australian Peoples Movement, will enforce without redress, the nationalisation of foreign controlled and inhabited Australian land, as a necessity for our National Self Respect and independence.
I urge your corporation to add to the process of mutual respect between the Australian and Chinese People by refraining from the imperialistic activity as reported of seeking to acquire Australian land.
To this end I request a public announcement from your corporation rescinding any such intent, which will effectively close this very important matter.
Your immediate attention will be appreciated.
Yours faithfully,
Thomas Mullins
State Convenor
Melbourne Branch P. O. Box 223, Croydon, 3136
www.australiafirst.net [email protected]
National Contact Line - 02 8587 0014
Withdraw from the UN Refugee Convention
The UN Refugee Convention was drafted with the plight of WW2 refugees in mind. It is in dire need of a thorough revision.
Is the 'fear of persecution of ....' not too vague and should be replaced with 'proof of persecution of ...? After all many refugees today do not flee organized dictatorships a la Hitler and Stalin, but weak so-called democratic governments where thugs and terrorists are the real rulers and they are the ones people flee from.
If the UN cannot come up with a totally new concept of who is a refugee then countries, Australia included, should simply start withdrawing and doing their own thing.
It must be realized that ultimately most of today's displaced persons and refugees are created because of a shortage of natural resources and an overabundance of people. The world, and each little corner of the world - again Australia included - is overpopulated. That factor should form an input into a new definition of who is a refugee.
Many so-called refugees are prepared to tell any tale in order to obtain the covetted permanent resettlement visa. All refugee protection visas, in all countries, should not entail permanent resettlement from the outside. They should be provisional and grant the person sanctuary until it is safe to go home (whilst the UN should work towards making it a safe home place). Sanctuary means being able to live and work within the community and have certain rights and of course responsibilities, but do not have all the rights that come with a permanent visa. Repatriation to the homeland should be foremost on the agenda.
If that is not possible within a given number of years and if the refugee can tick all the right boxes, then permanency should be on the agenda.
Much talk is on increasing the refugee intake. If permanent visas are being issued then this will only increase demand for visas by much more than supply. If on the other hand, provisional refugee protection visas are issued, these can certainly be increased in numbers as they would not be a covetted visa for someone who seeks immigration the easy way through the back door.
Charity begins at home!
Red Cross in Australia do more than provide support in times of emergencies such as floods and droughts. As recently highlighted on Channel 7 News, Red Cross provides 800,000 breakfasts every year for kids who would otherwise go to school hungry. ABOUT a third of South Australian schools are providing breakfast for hungry students - sometimes because parents are too busy or poor. Red Cross general manager of services in SA Helen Farinola said the number of schools that were offering a breakfast program was quite significant.
On any given night in Australia around 105,000 people are homeless. Of these people more than 15% are sleeping rough, around 45% are staying with friends or relatives, 21% are living in boarding or rooming houses and 19% are accommodated temporarily by homeless person's services.
According to St Vincent's, there are almost 27,000 people homeless in Queensland the second highest homeless population in the country. Former Prime Minister slept out one night to help raise funds for the homeless, to support St Vincents de Paul. He has a special interest in homelessness, ironically! Four years ago the then prime minister Kevin Rudd kicked off a bid to halve the homelessness rate by 2020.
Australia used to be the Lucky country, with full employment and cheap housing. Thanks to poor quality leadership from hypocrites like Kevin Rudd, Australia has gone downhill. How many people were displaced from housing when he, without a mandate from the people of Australia, increased our immigration level to impossible numbers of 230,000 per year? Since then it has decreased, but is increasing again. Our cities just couldn't cope with the massive influx of migrants. We are still struggling to find affordable housing, but with foreign competition, the the Lucky Country has been eroded by those pushing for big growth.
Free market policies, high immigration, foreign investments have all had their toll on wealth, housing and employment. These policians are more interested in national GDP than per capita wealth or well-being, and Australia is being sold out! Rudd and his "big Australia" agenda has trampled on any affordable housing in Australia.
Petition: Lower speed limits to save wildlife
Speed Kills Wildlife. Please sign this Petition to Lower Speed limits on our Roads.
You can view this petition at: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/705/978/355/lower-speed-limits-to-save-wildlife/
Border Protection Lip Service
Labor, Liberals, Nationals, Greens, Katter's Australia Party, the three Independents Labor stooges Oakshott, Wilkie and Windsor - the whole lotta them are paying lip service to Australia's border protection - the media-unsexy 99% arriving by plane and media-sexy 1% by boat.
The red herring of Australia’s massive coastline being to hard to monitor needs to be exposed and the LibLab stalemate.
* The SAME usual suspects (Iraqis, Iranians, Afghanis, Sri Lankans)
* Use the SAME people smugglers
* Arrive in Indonesia by the SAME air route
* Use the SAME types of derelict timber fishing boats
* Choose the SAME embarkation ports
* Choose the SAME types of local fishers to steer the boat
* Choose the SAME route to Christmas Island or Ashore Reef (must flip a coin after reading Australian news about the outcome of the previous trip)
* Arrange the SAME rendezvous short of Austraoian waters to revove the crew
* Point the boat to the SAME destinations..... umm (A) Christmas Island or (B) Ashmore Reef
So its cash paid, job done. Next!
If the resources of Australia’s Parliament, Border Control, Customs, Airforce, Federal Police, ASIO et al can’t address the problem.
How Come?
ANSWER: They simply don’t want to.
It’s was all crocodile tears this week from the Lower House, knowing full well the Greens guaranteed to reject any offshore processing in the Upper House to which they hold the balance of power. The whole epidose was a wasteful melodrama.
But then The Greens say Australia has a large land mass like China, and we are a tolerant society, so we could happily accommodate 20 billion.
But if we build highrise with bunks, desal and balcony kitchen gardens, probably 40 billion.
Davis Cup would have to convert to PlayStation.
Environmental protection can be murals.
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria
Australia
end of multiculturalism?
Nations divided by culture, ideals, traditions, values and alliances are inherently weak. Fragmented foundations don't hold up strong buildings, and the same could be said for nations. Multiculturalism is instituted from the top down as an elitist ruling class tool used to play one or more racial or ethnic groups against another. Deliberate fragmentation of these nations and the resultant loss of national identity and purpose into politically disharmonious units, serves as a stepping stone to world government. As conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, in many of the states of Africa and in Northern Ireland demonstrate, maintaining even a semblance of peace between different groups can sometimes be extremely difficult. Multiculturalism is a view, or policy, that immigrants, and others, should preserve their cultures with the different cultures interacting peacefully within one nation. Today, this is the official policy of Canada, Australia and the UK.
UK Communities Secretary Eric Pickles heralded the end of state-sponsored multiculturalism. Migrants will be required to speak English, the number of official documents translated into other languages will be reduced and councils will be allowed to hold prayers at the start of meetings. Some European leaders have even pronounced the “end of multiculturalism.” Some governments have challenged the Schengen agreement, by bringing back border checks in response to the influx of refugees from North Africa and the Middle East.
Netherlands are abandoning multiculturalism
The Netherlands, where six per cent of the population is now Muslim, is scrapping multiculturalism: The Dutch government says it will abandon the long-standing model of multiculturalism that has encouraged Muslim immigrants to create a parallel society within the Netherlands.
Holland kills the multiculturalism that is killing it of 27 June 12 by Andrew Bolt (with 112 comments, so far - Ed)
A new integration bill, which Dutch Interior Minister Piet Hein Donner presented to parliament on June 16, reads:
"The government shares the social dissatisfaction over the multicultural society model and plans to shift priority to the values of the Dutch people. In the new integration system, the values of the Dutch society play a central role. With this change, the government steps away from the model of a multicultural society."
The letter continues: "A more obligatory integration is justified because the government also demands that from its own citizens. It is necessary because otherwise the society gradually grows apart and eventually no one feels at home anymore in the Netherlands ..."
The new integration policy will place more demands on immigrants. For example, immigrants will be required to learn the Dutch language, and the government will take a tougher approach to immigrants who ignore Dutch values or disobey Dutch law. The government will also stop offering special subsidies for Muslim immigrants because, according to Donner, "it is not the government's job to integrate immigrants."
It's time for a vote for the Australian public on multiculturalism. People should "fit in" and become Australian first of all, and then secondary perpetuating their religion and culture of choice. Globalization has diluted our cultural heritage, and assumes that we don't have a distinct culture of our own. We have our own traditional and modern music, art, dance, architecture, history, pioneers, poetry and literature. It's been overwhelmed for too long by imported values.
Holland has done that whole liberal thing, and realised - maybe too late - that creating a nation of tribes will kill the nation itself. The future of Australia , the UK and Canada may well be read here.
Stories in past months about the plans to place prayer rooms for Muslims inside Australia’s football venues provide yet another sign of the changes that are happening in our country. It has been reported that prayer rooms are to be compulsory at all AFL grounds. There's more "diversity" of crimes too. There are now separate facilities in some educational institutions for Muslims, there are swimming pools that have closed at certain times for Muslim women, there are foods with the Muslim “Halal tax” appearing in our supermarkets.
There is also pressure to introduce Sharia law. While most muslims who come here are moderate and accepting, their religion is underlyingly contrary to Australia's open values and Christian-based culture.
How much clearer do you have to be ?
How much clearer do you have to be about the real habitable size of Canada or of Australia ? Thinking of these countries as vacant and vast awaiting human occupants belongs to the same mind set that soothes itself thinking humanity will relocate one day to another planet. Both countries would be better off with the habitable areas surrounded by sea rather than land from the point of view of arguing for population sanity.
UN Business as Usual will bring on Civil War
UN Business as Usual will bring on Civil War
Always has.
John Marlowe
Russia, Syrian people 'obstruct' regime change 'peace' plan
The 'peace plan' described in the Age's report Syria peace plan hits a Russian roadblock presumes that President Assad must step aside. The article again fails to provide any evidence that Assad does not enjoy the support of the Syrian people. The fact that the terrorist mass killers, backed by NATO, Israel and Arab dictatorships have made such little headway in the last year appears to indicate otherwise.
As is the case with Australia, the Age presumes to know better than the Syrians themselves what is good for them.
The Protectionist Party -
The CATA (Consumer and Taxpayers Association) will be holding nationwide protests on the 1st of July, which incidentally falls on the day of the implementation of the carbon dioxide tax and the mineral resource rent tax.
The Nationwide rally theme is “We want an election now”. They are tired of our government's treason, lies and dishonesty. For Parliamentarians to be legitimate representatives of the Australian people the national interest has to be put first which means turning our back on the disastrous neo-liberal globalist policies. Successive Labor and Liberal governments have signed a raft of unmandated United Nations treaties and conventions ceding sovereignty to a foreign dictatorial body.
The UN Lima Declaration has brought destruction to Australia’s manufacturing industries, opened our borders to [unsustainably high immigration]*
, transferred technology and wealth to the Third World. They want this treason reversed and our sovereignty back again.
"Never before have we witnessed such an inept and impotent government drifting from one disaster to another. Bad decisions, poor policy and run away spending have created an environment of uncertainty and insecurity. We need to put our Politicians on notice that we will not tolerate their anti-Australian behaviour anymore. "
They are demanding:
* Rescind the Carbon Dioxide Tax and the Mineral Resource Rent Tax
* Abolish government-funded multiculturalism
* Stop [certain categories of]
immigration
* Rescind the disastrous FTAs (free trade agreements)
* Abolish 457 visas (visas supported by Liberal and Labor parties)
* Withdraw from the UN Protocol on Refugees, Lima Declaration, Kyoto Protocol and Agenda 21
SYDNEY RALLY DETAILS:
Location: Hyde Park, Sydney
Time: 12 noon to 3.00pm
1st of July, 12 noon, Sydney
If you want to be involved please contact Nick Folkes on ph. 0417 679 972 or via [email protected]
http://www.protectionist.net/2012/06/27/we-want-an-election-now-rally/#comment-113185
* Ed. A more politically sensitive term in square brackets was substituted for the original term which generalised about the origins of immigrants or specified certain ethnic groups.
Syrian Girl: Footage proves Turkish jet violated Syrian airspace
See also:
NATO War Council To Target Syria
- by Rick Rozoff - 2012-06-26
The U.S. and NATO have been itching for a pretext to attack Syria, and Turkey, the only NATO member to border the country, has always been the pretext which would be employed to justify military action against the Arab nation.
SYRIA: Cold War II, Edging Closer to a "Hot War"?
Turkish Jet Flying 100 Meters above the Water 1 Mile from Syrian Coast
- by Washington's Blog - 2012-06-26
See also: Michael Moore pushes NATO propaganda against Syria of 28 June.
Skilled migration misses the target
The 2012–13 immigration program: record numbers, city-bound: by Bob Birrell and Genevieve Heard
The Australian Government is running a record-high migration program, which it intends to increase in 2012–13. The justification is that the program is delivering migrants with scarce skills needed in the resources industries. However, none of the skilled permanent entry or temporary visa categories targets such migrants.
Employers can sponsor migrants regardless of the industry, occupation or location of their workplace.
The result is that just over half of the migrants currently being visaed are locating in Sydney and Melbourne, rather than in the resource industry states. Domestic Australian workers can expect increased competition for jobs from migrants at a time when there is little growth in employment in either Sydney or Melbourne.
The increase in skilled migration, business-sponsored and employer-sponsored migrants plus the humanitarian program of a likely 14,000 means that these categories add to 204,000, which is the highest annual permanent entry level since World War Two.
This record-high intake will occur at the same time as the Labor Government is permitting employers to sponsor an unlimited number of temporary entry 457 visa holders. New Zealanders have unlimited access to Australia. According to Statistics New Zealand, the net permanent and long-term movement from New Zealand to Australia has increased from 30,526 in the year to April 2010 to 53,462 in the year to
April 2012.
This justification would make sense if the extra migrants were employed in the mining industry, or in the related construction and other industries involved in the current phase of the minerals boom. However, just over half of the migrants currently being visaed are locating in Sydney and Melbourne, rather than in the resource industry states.
There is irrefutable evidence that recently arrived migrants to the various states (other than in Queensland) gravitate to the respective capital cities. Most migrants to Australia originate in Asia and they like to settle where family, community and ethnic institutions are located—which is predominantly in Sydney and Melbourne.
In the case of the 457 visa, there were 48,080 grants to primary applicants in 2010–11. Of these, 17,240 (36 per cent) were granted for employment in NSW and 11,510 (24 per cent) in Victoria (or 60 per cent across the two States). Any employer, regardless of the industry or location of the employer’s workplace, can sponsor under these programs. There is no labour market testing (to ensure no Australian workers are available) for either of these two visa categories.
The conclusion is: The Government’s migration program is out-of-date. It is now part of the problem. The new circumstances require a smaller and better targeted intake, which delivers scarce skills to the industries and locations which really need them. The rest of the program should be culled until the current employment crisis is over.
The 2012–13 immigration program: record numbers, city-bound
Strange trap to fall into