Comments

A comment, linking back to this story and quoting the article and some of the comments attracted the following response on johnquiggin.com:

... I saw Bob Hawke as guilty of treason and treachery long ago for opening up Australia to the free – read unfair – market without warning or compensation to most of those who would be adversely affected.

Howard just turbocharged the process.

Nick Xenophon said this week that the Eurozone regards Australia as the “Taliban” of free markets. In other words, the “fundamentalists” of free markets.

Thanks for the link. It’s very informative.

There is no excuse for this. The land could have been leased instead of sold. We need laws to protect our land from going beyond our democratic control.

The corporations engineering displacement by foreign workers of people already here know that what they are doing is wrong and indefensible. So they go on the attack. Their attack is very weak. It is to accuse people of racism when they are obviously simply trying to defend their rights. That is all the greedy corporates and their friends in government and the opposition can think up. There are so many good arguments against importing workers when people already here cannot get jobs and housing are inflated by over-demand, that the corporate press has to bend over backwards to keep the good arguments out and only run with the pathetic one, the so-called 'racism' one. With regard to Pauline Hanson, I don't think that anyone would deny that she had guts and thereby stood out among most politicians of the era. However, on the question of immigration, when I read her biography by Pacholli, who wrote her speeches, including that famous maiden speech, he seemed to be saying that British immigrants were fine and bring them on. Well British immigrants also take Australian jobs, so fewer immigrants of any kind (zero net is a good number) would help a lot to restore democracy and slow the pace of the processes that are depleting energy and driving pollution.

Growcom report on food security to download (the italics are mine) The report found that Australia is not as food secure as suggested by simplistic examinations of the relevant data. Australia already imports 34 per cent of fruit consumed and 19 per cent of vegetables. The report found that these imports could disappear as the world population heads for 9 billion people by 2050 and countries retain their production for their own people. The world will need to double food production by 2050 just to ensure that the number of hungry does not increase from its current level of 1 billion people. This is unlikely to happen, with phosphorus fertilizers disappearing, peak oil, and declining quality and quantity of land and fresh water. The current diminishing level of food security in the world is being driven by a number of factors. These include a burgeoning world population heading for 9 billion by 2050, loss of land and water due to degradation and urbanisation, speculative trading in commodities, and the increasing appetite for meat, milk and other sources of protein in countries which have become more affluent in recent years. While more than half of Australia’s land surface is used for agricultural purposes, the area of productive land is decreasing as a result of increasing urbanisation, land use competition and degradation (e.g. salinity, nutrient depletion, erosion, weeds etc., ABARE-BRS 2010). Based on current levels of immigration of above 260,000 per year, research undertaken for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship found that by 2050, 430,000 hectares of agricultural land surrounding Melbourne and Sydney will be taken up by housing (National Institute of Labour Studies 2010; Peckham 2011). The best soils for horticulture occur predominantly in the peri-urban areas of Sydney, Melbourne, South-East Queensland, and a number of regional cities in Queensland (CDI Pinnacle, Street Ryan and Associates, and Growcom 2004; Buxton and Low Choy 2007). Horticulture cannot simply just move further west, as is sometimes suggested. Obviously cash-up property developers have more lobbying power than fruit and vegetable growers. We are eating ourselves into a "corner" through population growth and a vacuum of leadership and vision The weakening of cultural links between urban consumers and rural producers contributes to the current situation where consumers do not recognise the true value and worth of food. While the media and politicians are debating issues such as racism, gay marriage, EMA, corruption and mis-use of funds, economic growth, etc, our food security is disappearing under the radar Growcom recommend establishing an Australian Food Security Agency: This agency would co-ordinate the development and implementation of policies and programs targeted to improving Australia’s food security. This includes: Determining how many people Australia can environmentally sustainably support, and where to house them while minimising the alienation of good quality cropping land and urban encroachment. Meanwhile, Minister for Sustainable Population, Tony Burke, remains mute! In another report, (1994) scientists have noticed similarities, for instance, between the changing shape of Los Angeles as seen by space satellite, and the changes visible in petri-dish cultures inoculated with E. coli bacteria, organisms that live in animal guts. Both the bacterial and human colonies expand in intricate fractal patterns, gradually filling the spaces surrounding them. Judging from satellite pictures, human beings in Los Angeles exhibit no more ability to control their own collective growth than do the E. coli germs. Social problems - injustice, economic inequality, genocide, cultural extinction, etc. - exist and should be addressed. But they're insignificant compared to overpopulation. The overpopulation problem will eventually solve itself, as it did in the Petri dish - eventually the bacteria consume all the agar and die! A free-market economy based on perpetual growth and greed will not consider non-monetary needs such as fresh food production, environmental conservation, human survival and living standards. It pushes only for economic growth, even to our detriment.

Check out Mimi al-Laham's latest broadcast in which she tears to pieces the fabric of lies (shamefully repeated by Australian 'Labor' Foreign Minister Bob Carr on ABC LateLine on Monday night) about the Houla massacre. A still later broadcast Al CIAdA in Syria montage (which I haven't yet watched) is to be found here. Also check out the on-line debates on The Punch and Crikey. Last time I looked, those peddling the corporate lies about Syria appear to have gone silent. These show how open and uncensored discussion wherever it is allowed on the Internet as it is allowed on candobetter enable the truth to be discovered fairly quickly by those wishing to do so.

This shows why both JFK and and Solon were so passionately in favour of controversy.

This is a response to a discussion on johnquiggin.com which began with a post linking back to this article.

@FB

the issues you raise are far too complex for me to fully respond to here (although you are welcome to discuss them on the page I linked to above). JFK had to work in the midst of the military-industrial complex against which his predecessor Dwight D Eisenhower warned in his departing speech of January 1961. This and other facts, put in "JFK and the unspeakable - Why he died and why it matters" of 2008 by James Douglass, explain why
Kennedy supported the Bay of Pigs invasion whilst absolutely refusing to provide any direct military assistance with warships near the Cuban coast at the time nor aircraft after a popular uprising against Castro did not result
from the establishment of the beachhead by the Cuban exiles.

I suggest you look at the speech to the American University given by JFK on 10 June 1963 at www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG2PwhT0TDc five months before his murder and ask yourself if the man who gave such a speech would have been capable of launching two illegal invasions of Iraq resulting in the deaths of
2 million Iraqis since 1991, the invasion of Libya in 2011 in which more than 50,000 Libyans died and the current destabilisation of Syria with terrorist proxies.

The post to which the above post is a response follows, - Ed;

@Malthusista

Reading these excerpts show that it is not possible to exaggerate the good intentions and greatness of JFK. His example leaves to shame most of today’s warmongering world ‘leaders’.

Hmmm

1. Responsible for isolation of Cuba; numerous assassination plots against Castro, attempted disruption of Cuban economy through industrial and agricultural sabotage, swine flu etc ..
2. Responsible for October missile crisis through positioning of missiles in Turkey. Had the USSR not backed down, a nuclear exchange might have occurred
3. Responsible for support of Ngo Dinh Diem and then murderous coup against him in Vietnam; began escalation that led to Vietnam War

Like Obama, he was very intelligent, and on the surface, a genial fellow, but he was driven by exactly the same thing that all US imperialist leaders are driven by, and acted accordingly. Had he lived long enough, he’d not have acted much differently from LBJ.

The post, to which the post immediately above is a response, follows, - Ed;

Sorry if this seems off-topic, but today happens to be JFK’s 95th birthday. Reading Alistair Horne’s “A savage war of Peace” of 1977 about the Algerian War of independence shows that in the 1950?s Senator Kennedy was an outspoken supporter of the Algerian Independence and was able to shift US policy from supporting French colonialism to neutrality even before he was elected to the office of President. Reading these excerpts show that it is not possible to exaggerate the good intentions and greatness of JFK. His example leaves to shame most of today’s warmongering world ‘leaders’.

What you write of is symptomatic of the far broader problem of creeping credentialism. Back in the 1980's and earlier it was possible for many people to obtain good jobs and decent career paths without being required to attend University for many years in their own time and at their own expense. Some, who even left school before year 12 could still hope to do well provided they had the aptitude. A most striking example of this is former Prime Minister Paul Keating who left school at the age of 15. Ironically, because of Keating's own 'reforms' to the Australian economy, no 15 year old high school drop-out in 2012 would stand a chance of matching even a small part of Keating's own career advancement. Apprenticeships were once offered to large numbers of young workers, including to young prospective nurses. To be sure pay for trainee nurses was modest, but they were provided cheap accommodation, so whilst undergoing training, they had security and shelter and obtained a qualification for life after only three years, without any need to retrain. In many other jobs, training that enabled career advancement was provided by most employers in their time. Where clerical careers were once offered by both government and private employers to high school leavers and even to those who had only reached year 10, Today at least a university degree and often post graduate qualifications as well are needed before many employers will even grant an interview to a prospective employee. Thanks to the 'reforms' to the tertiary education system. also made by Keating, as well as by Hawke and Howard, most will also start their careers with a huge debts incurred obtaining their University education.

It was curious that nowhere in any of your posts did you raise the Nazi Holocaust against Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and the mentally ill. I would be interested to read your response to the treatment of David Hoggan, mentioned by you, in a paragraph in the Wikipedia article Holocaust denial:

The beginnings of the modern denial movement

In 1961, the American historian and a leading protégé of Barnes, David Hoggan published Der Erzwungene Krieg (The Forced War) in West Germany, which claimed that Germany had been the victim of an Anglo-Polish conspiracy in 1939. Though Der Erzwungene Krieg was primarily concerned with the origins of World War II, it also down-played or justified the effects of Nazi antisemitic measures in the pre-1939 period.[39] For an example, Hoggan justified the huge one billion Reich-mark fine imposed on the entire Jewish community in Germany after the 1938 Kristallnacht as a reasonable measure to prevent what he called "Jewish profiteering" at the expense of German insurance companies and alleged that no Jews were killed in the Kristallnacht (in fact, 91 German Jews were killed in the Kristallnacht).[39] Subsequently, Hoggan wrote one of the first books denying the Holocaust in 1969 entitled The Myth of the Six Million, which was published by the Noontide Press, a small Los Angeles publisher specializing in antisemitic literature.[40] Hoggan became one of the early stars of the Holocaust denial movement, because he had a number of university professorships.

...

This was posted as a comment in response to the story "Québec's Student Strike Turning Into a Citizens' Revolt " of 25 May at http://truth-out.org/news/item/9372-quebecs-student-strike-turning-into-a-citizens-revolt :

This fight against the globalisation of eduction in Canada sets an example to the whole world and is to be warmly applauded. What the Quebecois students face is precisely what we faced in Australia in 1986 when the 'Labor' Government of Prime Minister Bob Hawke and Treasurer Paul Keating introduced the so-called "Higher Eduction Contribution Scheme" (HECS).

As the name implies, HECS was sold as merely requiring students to make a modest 'contribution' to the cost of their own tertiary eduction. In fact 1986 is the very year I commenced my own tertiary education as an adult. I participated in protest against HECS. The protests failed in part because the Australian students' associations had previously been undermined from within by forces funded from without.

After HECS was introduced, the 'Labor' government proceeded to ramp up the amounts that students were required to 'contribute'. The even more reactionary Liberal/National Government of John Howard, which succeeded then Prime Minster Keating's Government in 1996 continued that process. Now as a consequence, Australian tertiary education has been almost completely globalised with native Australian students comprising only a small minority of students at many campuses.

See also:

On Candobetter:

Montreal students protest fees and civil liberties for more than 100 days of 2 June 2012

On Global Research:

The Quebec Student Strike Celebrates Its 100th Day
“We Didn’t Know It Was Impossible, So We Did It!”
- by Malav Kanuga - 2012-05-23

Quebec student strike: Police begin to apply draconian Bill 78
- by Keith Jones - 2012-05-24

Charest Wants to Transform Quebec Into a “Right-to-Study State”
- by Pierre Dubuc - 2012-05-25

From the mainstream newsmedia:

Quebec students challenge bill aimed at protest crackdown of 25 May in the Globe and Mail

Quebec education minister blasts pro-strike employees
?Ministry scolds employees who support Quebec students ('employees' changed to 'bureacrats' in heading just now) of 25 May in the Sun News

Quebec students return to the streets of 26 May in The Australian

Thousands rally against Quebec crackdown on protests of 25 May in The Australian

Quebec's 'truncheon law' rebounds as student strike spreads of 24 May in The Guardian

Paul Watson's arrest is guaranteed a political plot - CIA doing deals again.
It is a matter of whom he has upset most and so who has most to gain and the means to internationally plot against him.

“In our efforts to defend the lives of whales, dolphins, seals, sharks, and fish we have made some powerful enemies, most notably the government of Japan. It is no coincidence that the extradition request by Costa Rica was issued the same month (October 2011) as the Japanese whaling (ICR) lawsuit against Sea Shepherd was initiated. The extradition request was in reference to a complaint from Costa Rican fishermen who I caught poaching in Guatemalan waters. The fishermen were not injured and their boat was not damaged. The incident was fully documented for the film Sharkwater. Interpol originally denied this extradition order and deemed it as politically motivated. Therefore the question must be asked why Germany is now taking into account accusations made by illegal poachers.”
- Captain Paul Watson

Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria
Australia

The Minister for Planning has revealed that the government will legislation will be introduced this year. Code Assess means that some building permits will be issued within 10 days without neighbours being allowed to object. Rather than trying to eliminate "frustrating delays", the time allowed for permits is about neighbours and the local communities giving consideration, and democratic input, on how to preserve the integrity of their suburbs. This "code access" to planning permits is more than about putting up fences and small home extensions. For communities, Code Assess is frightening. People can come home from work to find their neighbour's house knocked down to be replaced by a high rise development. Local residents have no right to be given any notice, they cannot object to Council and they have no rights to appeal to VCAT. This new Code-Assess is a threat to the liveability of Melbourne. A fast track planning process for developers could add additional burdens to already struggling social and community infrastructure like roads, schools, public transport and health services. This means there may be limited opportunity to scrutinise and consult on the legislation prior to it being rammed through the Parliament. "It [Planning] needs to be common sense-based and the new code-assess system will mean that mums and dads, if they meet all the requirements, will be able to get a permit very quickly rather than waiting months and months for decisions to be made," Matthew Guy said. It's more than "mums and dads" getting permits for fences and small extensions, but hides dramatic loose changes! The system, called ''code assess'', will initially be used by local councils for processing low-level planning issues such as extensions and dual occupancy developments. But the system is also intended for key development areas across Melbourne - Box Hill, Broadmeadows, Dandenong, Footscray, Frankston, and Ringwood - to process development applications that could include apartment towers of more than 20 storeys. Planning reforms blocks appeals - The Age It is important to ensure that the community is fully aware of what is being proposed. PETITION Contact:Brian Tee MP Shadow Minister for Planning & Sustainable Growth Member for Eastern Metropolitan Region 128 Ayr St, Doncaster VIC 3108 Ph: (03) 9850 8600 Fax: (03) 9850 8611

The video embedded below is from Russia Today (http://rt.com/news):

I could only see the above video on my Windows 7 compute and not my Ubuntu Linux system. Perhaps someone should tell RT to better support open source software and give less preference to proprietary Micro$oft software.- Ed.

See also: Syria bombing: Pictures show horrifying aftermath of Damascus blasts which killed 55, Syria: 70 killed in huge Damascus explosions, Syria mired in blame game over Damascus bombs in the 'left-wing' Guardian.

It's a shame that apparently no-one thought to stand in any recent state election campaign explicitly opposed to the zombie economists' policy of privatisation. It seems as if Queenslanders' emphatic repudiation of privatisation at the 2012 state elections and the repudiation of privatisation in the 2011 NSW elections has at least helped to cause the Victorian Government to re-think some of its plans to sell-off the few public assets that Kennett hasn't flogged off. In March the Baillieu Government announced that it intended to flog off the Port of Melbourne, but changed its mind anticipating the drubbing that the Queensland Labor Government of Anna Bligh was about to face on 28 March as a result of its privatisation policies. Whilst the sell-off of public assets seems to have slowed down, the sale of other Australia assets to foreign interests has gathered steam, including the sale of farmland to Qatar.

The comment above has been adapted from comment I unsuccessfully attempted to post in response to article Zombies reach Australia on to johnquiggin.com. Point 7 of that site's discussion policy (which I hadn't read) states: "Comments with large numbers of links will trigger spam filters and be rejected automatically". So It was deleted. Whilst this is understandable I still think this is unfortunate. The strength of the Internet is for material, particularly material arguing opposed viewpoints to be directly linked or else linked to from a single document, thereby allowing readers to more easily consider the comparative merits of contrary arguments. Solon and JFK would have surely agreed. That is why my articles and comments often contain a number of links. (At least I have been able to post a shorter comment from that page containing a link back to here.)

The following comment from the page linked to by NIMBY, puts it very well:

One wonders what the ANZACS suffered and fought for against Japan's attempted invasion during World War 2. Now, a foreign invader, an "investor", just has to have enough cash to buy up large swathes of land, and they have access to Australia's sovereignty and future. No warfare, no diplomatic debates, no weapons, no frontlines. Japan's invaders or any other foreign nation, if they came now with enough cash, could simply buy our farmland, businesses, property and even water. Globalization is wiping out Australia's patriotism. Australia is being chopped up into pieces for for the best offer. Australians wouldn't be able to buy in the same countries. Australia is FOR SALE on the international market.

Posted by: Pepe of Heidelberg Vic 7:39pm Wednesday

Those who have run Australia since the late 1970's could be likened to the rulers of France who made peace with Nazi Germany in 1940. In return for being allowed to rule the southern-western half of France from the town of Vichy and to retain control of France's colonies, the Vichy French government allowed Nazi Germany to conduct its war against the UK and America from the north-eastern part of France unhindered. That part of France included the Atlantic shore, from which, until 1944, U-boats, which almost prevented necessary supplies from reaching England by sea, were launched. More French soldiers killed and died fighting against the Allies, including Australia, in Syria, North Africa, Madagascar and elsewhere than did fighting against Nazi Germany.

Judging from what we are now witnessing in 2102, had the Japanese landed on Australia's shores in 1942, almost certainly a sizable section of Australia's ruling elite would have chosen to make deals with Japanese not dissimilar to the deals Vichy France made with Germany.

For preventing any chance of that eventuating, we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the ANZACs and their American allies who stopped the Japanese in New Guinea, the Solomons and the Coral Sea and to the then Labor government of Labor Prime Minister John Curtin.

James,

The issue raised by Barrie above is one of social deviance. That is the focus.

Your side question above asking for proof of evidence is:

1. I quoted from a news source (follow source link included)

2. Port Arthur evidence is as per the court case - R v Martin Bryant, Cox CJ 22 November 1996

If anyone disagrees with the finding of a court case, in Australia it is a matter of lodging an appeal in the Court of Criminal Appeal, or else accept the verdict.
Otherwise, debating a court decision is all pontificating and conspiracy theorising. Free country and books are written on such.

Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria
Australia

Animal cruelty is how Tasmanian mass murderer Martin Bryant and NSW backpacker mass murderer Ivan Milat started out, respectively torturing animals as children.
Sounds like Bendigo has a budding psychopath.

Read more:
1. Animal abuse inculcates social deviance

2. Cruelty against animals is no minor misdemeanour by Kylie Lang, The Sunday Mail (Qld), April 03, 2011,
...'Excuses, excuses. It's time magistrates dismissed the feeble explanations for deliberate acts of animal cruelty and got tough on torturers.
You can't tell me that a father and son dragging a pony behind their car was an accident, as the court heard last month.

Or that Andrew Cook, 33, and his son Zachary, 17, believed that tethering the pony to the sedan and making it gallop behind the speeding vehicle was an acceptable way to transport the animal.

I don't buy the Dumb and Dumber defence, and neither should anyone else.

In recent weeks, we've had a children's pet cat drowned in a wheelie bin by an elderly neighbour who was sleep deprived and an ibis fatally stomped on by a law student because it startled him while he was eating lunch in a park.

The imbecile who took a video of himself driving down the emergency lane of a busy highway with his pet parrot clinging to the windscreen wiper is clearly no Rhodes scholar, but when he comes before the judiciary, as indeed he must, for tormenting this bird, he should be disciplined properly.

The public is sick of sadists receiving slaps on the wrist. Cruelty against animals is no minor misdemeanour.

The RSPCA knows it, the police service knows it, and the State Government knows it last month it announced a new serious animal cruelty offence, increasing the maximum jail sentence from the current two years to seven.

Premier Anna Bligh might win public admiration (read votes) by responding to justified community outrage, but tougher jail sentences won't fix the problem.
It's not because, as experience has shown, magistrates will refuse to impose the full seven years (they've never given the two years we have now).
And it's not because police, who will effectively take over from the RSPCA in apprehending these social menaces, already have their hands full or, as the RSCPA has suggested, are more concerned with collecting unpaid traffic fines than curbing animal cruelty.

The fundamental reason that more jail time won't work is that prison is no place for rehabilitation.
As with bullies on our roads, which I wrote about last week, tossing them in jail only fills their damaged brains with other ideas on how to be anti-social.

Perpetrators of animal cruelty certainly don't need any prompting to take the next step and mete out their aggression on humans. A litany of research shows that people who hurt animals exhibit the same psychopathic personality disorders as serial rapists and murderers.

Martin Bryant, who killed 35 people in the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, tortured animals as a child.

He also claimed he'd had sex with a horse, according to a former girlfriend.

Remember Jeffrey Dahmer, the American serial killer who raped, tortured and dismembered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991?

As a boy, he dissected dead animals at home and once put a dog's head on a stake.

As an adult, he put human heads in the fridge.

The RSPCA's affiliate in the US has a website specifically for children.

ASPCA Kids explains why people hurt animals this way: "These people have serious, psychological problems that will probably not go away on their own.

They often need the help of licensed professionals, such as a psychologist.

"We are not 100 per cent sure why people become like this most are probably born with their problems, but others can get their problems from brain damage, poisonous environments, or by being treated badly themselves."

Hard to think of a more poisonous environment than prison, except maybe a family circle defined by aggression, cruelty and fear.

Children who abuse animals have often seen it done by a parent (typically their father) or have been physically abused themselves. The bullied becomes the bully.
In the case of the pony, its abusers were ordered to pay vet bills of $7642.

The father, a role model of positive parenting if ever there was one, was sentenced to three months' jail wholly suspended for three years, while the son received two years' probation. No convictions were recorded. They walked free, a little poorer but not noticeably wiser. Where's the mandatory counselling? Where's the enforced stint in a psychiatric institution to teach these people how to act humanely?

This is how our government and our justice system can effect positive change and build a safer society for all by addressing the root of the problem, which is psychological.

Animal cruelty is no accident. As parents, we might bear this in mind if we see our kids pulling tails off lizards or playing backyard cricket using cane toads as cricket balls.'

Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria
Australia

The Pilliga Forest in northern New South Wales is critical surviving habitat for the now "vulnerable" Koala species.
Numbers less than 20 years ago were 10,000 in the Pilliga. Last count they were just 1000.

Why?

Coal Seam Gas and its koala habitat destruction.
Who is behind it?
SANTOS
Santos Centre
60 Flinders Street
Adelaide

Read about Koalas' Pilliga Plight: 'THREE-QUARTERS OF KOALA POPULATION WIPED OUT'

Want to stop Koala killing?
STOP SANTOS!

This is the current Board of Directors:

Peter Roland Coates
David John Wissler Knox
Kenneth Charles Borda
Kenneth Alfred Dean
Roy Alexander Franklin
Richard Michael Harding
Gregory John Walton Martin
Jane Sharman Hemstritch
Andrew Seaton
James Baulderstone
Peter Cleary
Petrina Coventry
Trevor Brown
Diana Hoff
John Anderson
Martyn Eames
Mark Macfarlane
Christian Paech
David Lim

..Sik Em!

“Koalas must be included on the national threatened species list- especially in NSW’s Gunnedah region and the Pilliga Forest where they face the additional threat of expanding coal mining and coal seam gas operations..."

Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria
Australia

Koalas have been listed as "vulnerable" in some parts of Australia but not in others. It's a welcome step for advocates, but it's not an overall status. At-risk koala populations in NSW, Queensland and the ACT would be included on the national list of threatened species. Developers will have to account for koala populations now, but they've had it too good for too long. They are often blamed for the devastation, but it's aggressive human population growth in Australia - driven by high immigration levels - that's behind their power. Victoria's koalas are not included. Koala numbers in Victoria's Grampians National Park, in the state's west, and at Mount Macedon, northwest of Melbourne, were declining. Except for some colonies in Gippsland, Victoria's koalas are vulnerable to disease due to inbreeding. They can be traced back to a few individuals after rampant hunting up to early last century. Mr Burke said in some areas of Victoria and South Australia, there were large populations of koalas that were eating themselves out of their habitats. Maybe that's not because they are over-eating and gorging themselves, but because of dwindling habitats. Many individual populations, including Phillip Island's, are are under threat from habitat loss, dog attacks, and cars. Over-browsing has become a serious environmental and animal welfare problem in six isolated habitat patches across coastal Victoria. Habitat is rapidly running out, and alternatives to translocation are urgently required. In disease-free populations which have been moved to areas where they were not native or where there is not enough habitat to support them (such as on some islands off Victoria and Kangaroo Island in South Australia), problems with overpopulation have arisen because of this unnatural situation. As a national animal, it would be logical to give an overall protection status, nation-wide. However, it's a step forward in koala protection. Australia's mammal extinction record is the worst in the modern world, and another animal added as "vulnerable" or "threatened" is indicative of Australia's environmental record.

One historical leader, whom few have not felt free to condemn without fear of reproach for nearly a century now, is Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Russian Revolution of 1917 who is blamed by established world 'public opinion' for having made possible the horrific crimes committed by his successor, Stalin.

In response to yet another effort to drag Lenin's name through the mud, I made a post (see also below), which presented evidence that Lenin had attempted to remove Stalin from his post of General Secretary of the Communist Party of Soviet Union as he lay in bed mortally ill in 1923 and compared the harsh measures, used by Lenin to keep his government in power during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1921, with the horrific violence that his international opponents as well as domestic opponents caused following Lenin's death throughout the rest of the twentieth century, and the start of the twenty-first century, including amongst other events, the Second World War in which as many as 70 million may have died.

So far, I been met with silence. The person to whom I responded to has ignored my post and instead briefly engaged in a debate over Japan's objection to Australia's White Australia Policy following the First World War on the same page. No-one else has responded to my heresy.

This is not to say that Lenin was without flaws and did not make mistakes -- In my view, signing the Brest-Litovsk Treaty[1] with Germany in 1918 was one. -- but when presented with evidence of the good that he did and tried to accomplish and a comparison of the violence that Lenin was himself responsible for while he was alive with the vastly greater scale for killing that followed his death, including by 'democratic' anti-communists as well as fascists and Stalinist 'communists', I am met with silence.

Lenin's record within the broader historical context

This is a corrected and slightly expanded version of the post referred to above.

Alan wrote:

Those Trostkyists tend to promote a good Lenin, evil Stalin theory of history that ignores Lenin’s own conduct as head of the Soviet government.

At least acknowledge that as as Lenin lay in bed mortally ill in 1923, he instructed Trotsky to remove Stalin from the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This is substantiated in many works including “Lenin’s Last Struggle” of 1968 by Moshe Lewin and “The Prophet Armed” of 1954 by Isaac Deutscher, the first of his three volume trilogy on the life of Leon Trotsky. Had Trotsky acted on Lenin’s instructions instead of largely sitting on his hands until 1927 (also documented by Deutscher) history would have turned out very differently.

Horrific world-wide death toll in the century following Lenin's death

Much of the terrible destruction and bloodshed that occurred through the remainder of the 20th century and the early 21st century:

Purges of both left and right wing opponents of Stalin, forced collectivisation, the bloody defeat of Chinese Communism in 1927, Nazi triumph in Germany in 1933, the triumph of Franco in Spain, the Second World War in which possibly as many as 70 million may have died, The Korean War in which 3 million North Koreans died, The Vietnam War in which as many as 5 million may have died, the murder of half a million communists by Suharto in 1965, the invasion of East Timor, the invasion of Yugoslavia, the invasions of Iraq in 1991 which may have killed as many as 2 million, the invasion on Libya in 2011, …

… may have been avoided.

As others pointed out, Lenin was faced with a savage civil war and an invasion by the troops over ten foreign nations, including Australia.

So is it fair to damn Lenin for having resorted to harsh measures to keep his government in power, especially given what his opponents, many professing to be for democracy, both outside the Soviet Union and within, have ‘achieved’ since his death and while he lived if we count the First World War?

Personally I think Marxism is a flawed philosophy (see Robert Heilbroner’s “The Worldly Philosophers” of 1953), but in spite of that I think the Russian Revolution of 1917 presented humanity with its best opportunity to date to establish a workable and humane global society.

Sadly, that opportunity was lost.

Footnotes

[1] Leon Trotsky initially opposed the signing of the treaty but later, wrongly in my view, concurred with Lenin's view and strongly defended Lenin's decision. See "The Prophet Armed" by Isaac Deutscher, referred to above.

This originated as a response to Classical economics and recession in many countries (wonkish)

My principle objection to neo-liberal economic dogma is that it has been used to take away from sovereign communities, at the local level, state and federal level, what should have been their democratic right: to own land and wealth-creating enterprises and to provide services to their members.

In 1983 the Federal Treasurer Paul Keating began to explicitly impose neoliberalism on this country without any electoral mandate whatsoever when he decided to remove the Government's right to set the exchange rate of the Australian dollar. In 1995 this was formally codified in the "National Competition Policy" written by Keating's hand-picked neoliberal "free market"[1] ideologue Professor Fred Hilmer, just in time for it to be used by Keating's successor Prime Minister John Howard as his own justification for the further cutting of services and further privatastion.

This policy was supported on both sides of parliament and so was never put to the public to decide either in Parliamentary elections nor in a referendum.

All the polls taken on privatisation, one of the principle components of the "National Competition Policy", show overwhelming opposition to privatisation comprising the order of more than two thirds of voters at the very least yet in this supposed democracy "of the people by the people for the people" governments continue to impose privatisation against popular will, the most infamous example being former Premier Anna Bligh's imposition of the fire sale in 2009 after an election in which she refused to answer a question I put to her even before the 2009 elections were called as to whether she had plans to continue with former Premier Peter Beattie's track record of privatisation.

As a consequence, her Government has suffered the (worst(?)) state electoral defeat in Australia's history holding on to only 7 seats. Treasurer Andrew Fraser who I stood against in 2009 also lost his seat.

Footnotes

[1] How can a neo-liberal market economy be 'free' if elected governments aren't free to participate in the economy in whatever ways their constituents wish them to?