Comments

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

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?

On johnquiggin.com I have yet again found that my comments have been selectively subject to moderation, and their publication delayed long enough to prevent them from being linked to in the "recent comments" section at the top right hand side of the web page. So when Professor John Quiggin eventually approves their publication, very few visitors to his site are likely to get to read my posts. (See below, for apology by James Sinnamon for what could have been taken as an implication that Professor John Quiggin intentionally delays the posting of comments by some visitors to his site. - Ed)

Here are previous two posts which were subject to moderation. The first still hasn't been published by now at 7:27PM even though it was posted at 12:14 pm, over 7 hours ago:

How millions of lives were needlessly lost in the First and Second World Wars

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

The truce of Christmas 1914 and the subsequent mutinies on both sides of no-man’s land after that is ample evidence that most soldiers on the ground did not want to fight and that the war was needlessly prolonged to serve the callous needs of the ruling elites in the countries conducting that war.

Whilst I consider much of the fighting of the Allied forces against Nazi Germany to have been necessary in the Second World War, that war should have ended no later than 1943 and was also prolonged needlessly resulting in the deaths of many millions more.

Evidence of this is to be found in “Trading with the Enemy” by Charles Higham. (Before I recently learned of Charles Higham’s book) I wrote of this in the article “Need 60 million have died to rid the world of Hitler?” adapted from a comment in response to a review of Max Hastings’ “All Hell Let Loose” in the UK Independent.

How Public Banking could end all our financial and monetary crises

Ikonoclast, I think you will find the interview of Ellen Brown from the US Public Banking Interest by James Corbett of last November most interesting. It contains a lot of interesting research into the early history of Banking in Australia in the late 19th Century and early 20th century by Ellen Brown. It can be found here on Global Research TV and is also embedded in the web-site I contribute to linked to above.

Professor Quiggin, It seems to me that the easiest solution to the monetary and finance crises we face is the re-establishment of proper Public Banking as advocated by the US Public Banking Institute. Can you see any flaws in their argument? (End of second contribution)

At Candobetter, we never censor any submitted posts, except for those which are plainly illegal or defamatory. Unlike the administrators of some other sites, we agree with the late President JFK and the ancient Athenian legislator Solon who both said that avoiding controversy should be considered a crime.

We are confident that all the claims made on this site can be defended with logic and evidence as past experience has shown.

Update: 8:30PM The brief comment linking back to this comment seems not to have been moderated!? However, the first comment shown above is still 'awaiting moderation'. - Ed (This has all been explained in the comment below, mentioned above in the first paragraph, - Ed)

Are we entering the dumbed down cheap century?

I am waiting for quality innovative products to appear on Australian shelves from the Asian century.
I would prefer quality innovative products to appear on Australian shelves from local Australian manufacturers.

'Made in Australia' has so much more a feel good ring to it than 'fully imported' - except if you vote Labor.
And where is Gillard today? In Singapore enticing Singaporian foreign investment, Singaporian immigrants, and Singaporian imports, while offering Australia's military will train Singaporian troops.

Gillard has Rudd disease: treason.

John Marlowe

'Islamophobia', now that is a calculated rhetoric - poor bugger me?, or is the above imposing the buggering?
A more suitable term for 'Australian legitimate concern for imposed orthodox religion' is 'hey, equal rights mate', or 'what have you got against Aussie women?'

Show me an Islamic society that respects women having equal rights to men.
Why should a person with bumps and lumps in some personal areas have more rights to another with bumps and lumps in other areas?
The logic is the same crap as following a green god over a red god, then going to war over god damn colour. Travel Australia outside the nasty cities and learn about the Land and its soul!

I have faith in knowing that the religious will continue to fight wars in the name of their god. How can god be great when followers kill in its name?
Most atheists I have met are fence sitters, who couldn't give a crap about the masses fighting ridiculously over different gods.
Who cares?

May patriarchal and related backward societies and faiths become extinct and free the rest of us from bigotry.
Easter is time to take a break with family. It should be renamed as such.

Religions that prescribe ritual, life rules and righteousness is dogmatic extremism, just like the so-called far-right/far-left, indeed 'far-religious'!
Hard religion is hard right/hard left. Same bloody difference.

Australian society is traditionally moderate, tolerant and easy going lot for all faiths. Traditionally it is also a classless society...until the banks took over.

Religion means rules, and typically prescribing social hierarchy - supporting supremacism of the 'faithfull' over the 'unfaithful'/'faithless'.

Most of these types are yet to learn Australian values of respect, tolerance and fair go.
Australia is not Taliban territory. No burkas, no nijabs, just respect your sisters.

John Marlowe
Pragmatic Spiritualist (whatever)

Thanks for posting this article. The section of that article, "Other Costs", which I have reproduced below, I trust with Tony Recsei's approval, shows how costs of high-rise living are so much greater, economically and socially and environmentally, than its proponents have led many of us to believe.

Still, Tony Recsei's article shares a weakness with the report of which it is rightly critical in that it seems to accept that population growth must continue, when it has been imposed undemocratically by the parasitic growth lobby which profits from population growth at the expense of the whole Australian community. The standard of living of each member of the Australian community can only decline on average as more and more people are crowded together into this country where there is little potential for the real wealth-producing economy -- as opposed to the economy in which paper or electronic bits are pushed -- to grow.[1] Native Australian residents, without their own secure housing, pay even more for population growth, usually in the form of rent and mortgages. Housing prices have been driven up to line the pockets of the immigration pushers to levels that would have been considered extortionate one generation ago and daylight robbery two generations ago.

Tony Recsei's proposed solution, that is, the release of more land for housing, has its own environmental, economic and social cost: More and more vegetation would have to be cleared, as he implicitly acknowledges, and people would be forced to drive ever longer distances along ever more crowded roads[2] in order to reach work, shops, education and other amenities.

If population growth does not end we will find ourselves caught between a rock an a hard place

Other Costs

This section is reproduced from Tony Recsei's article

The report alleges that electricity consumption is greater in houses than it is in apartments. This is incorrect. Studies show that consumption per capita is greater in apartments. It appears that the data the report relies on does not take into account the consumption of electricity common to the whole apartment block such as lifts and lighting common areas such as foyers and car spaces.

The report also does not take into account costs to existing residents arising from forcing high-density into communities originally designed for low-density. These include:

• The impact on a single-residential property that has high-rise built next to it. This can involve theft of amenity: new in-fill residents look over gardens of existing residents while the latter have to look onto unsightly structures, and suffer lack of privacy and overshadowing.
• Congestion. Existing residents have to suffer from increasingly congested streets and shortage of street parking.
• Shortage of recreational facilities. As more vacant land is built upon in a community originally designed for low-density, it becomes difficult to secure new open areas to service the needs of the additional population at a reasonable standard.
• Reduction in housing choice, particularly for families. Most infill development consists of apartments which are not suitable for bringing up young children. Indeed the majority of those currently living in apartments do not do so by choice. A survey indicates multi-story apartments are not even acceptable to most people wishing to downsize, if they have other choices such as smaller single residential houses or villas.
• Reduction in biodiversity. When gardens and open space are replaced with unit blocks this has a severe effect on urban plant and animal life.
• Heritage items valued by the community such as traditional period architect designed housing are often lost.
• Atmospheric pollution. There is a local effect on residents of atmospheric pollution in high-density areas. This is due to higher traffic densities and to less volume of air being available for the dilution and dispersion of pollutants.

If these considerations had been quantified into the report’s calculations, they would have changed its overall findings.

End of section reproduced from Tony Recsei's article.

Foootnote(s)

[1] This has been made even made worse by the undemocratic imposition of economic neo-liberalism in 1983 by the then Federal 'Labor' Treasurer Paul Keating. Economic neo-liberal dogma largely prevents sovereign communities (aka 'government') -- as opposed to private corporations -- at the local state and federal levels, from owning wealth-producing assets and providing services to community members.

[2] In part, the additional commuting distances are the consequence of abysmal 'free market' town planning.. Roadways are more and more often becoming privately owned tollways.

To reply to an ignorant extremist, refusing to listen "not worthy of further response in my view", who only spews his Trotsky bigotry, distracts with conspiracy red herrings, how to respond?

Mmm, burn the incubators!

John Marlowe
Freedom of Association with the Great Unwashed

John,

I note that my point about the 1991 incubator babies lie as well as the 2003 lie of Iraqi WMDs appears to have gone right over your head. Either you are profoundly ignorant about events of recent years or you believe that for the first time in decades the US and the mass media is telling the truth about a conflict that the US government intends to enter.

Just so you will at least be able to learn the truth about the incubator babies lie used to justify the 1991 war against Iraq in which 130,00 Iraqis were killed and after which an estimated 1,000,000 Iraqis civilians starved during the next 10 years in which sanctions were imposed, I include an embedded broadcast by Canadian Malthusian and truth activist Barrie Zwicker. (Barrie Zwicker narrated "The End of Suburbia"):

The rest of your post again repeats the lies of the mass newsmedia and claims the lying BBC, Guardian and Al-Jazeera (which commenced as the Arab language version of the BBC) to be more credible sources than the embedded YouTube/Global Research TV/Press TV broadcast and is not worthy of a further response in my view.

However, it concerns me that in response to what I consider my previous calm and polite post backed up by evidence and logic, I am likened to a "Nazi holocaust denier". If you truly believe that then you must also believe that you have shown very poor judgement about who you choose to associate with on the WWW.

John Marlow wrote:

Consider what Turkey is currently taking on as a consequence of Syria mass murder

???!!!

This appears to echo the lies from the mass media about Syria. I trust that that was not your intention, John

I have read extensively about the claims of mass murder by the Syrian Government and found them to be no less bare-faced lies so than the lies used to justify the bombing of and invasion of Libya last year, the lie of WMDs used as a pretext to invade Iraq, the lie of 9/11 used as a pretext to invade Afghanistan in 2001, the lie of incubator babies used to justify the war against Iraq in 1991 and the subsequent economic sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children prior to the invasion of 2003. Anybody, who had taken the minimal amount of effort necessary to become familiar with the facts of the conflict in Syria (e.g. on Global Research and even here on candobetter), would know that it is the result of an armed insurgency by terrorist thug hirelings of the criminal NATO alliance powers, including Turkey, and not cold-blooded killings of defenceless protesters as has been deceitfully claimed by the mainstream newsmedia and at least one phony socialist newspaper.

Further evidence that CNN and Al-Jazeera have lied about the Syrian conflict can be seen in the YouTube broadcast, embedded below:

Broadcast is embedded from YouTube. It has also been embedded on Global Research TV and Press TV

You talk about "wilful overpopulation".

You ain't seen nothing!

Read the exponential immigrant invite and hormone pumped website of Sarah Hanson-Young:
"http://www.openaustralia.org/

No-one, but no-one can advocate human breeding more than this chick!
She is the main reason why The Greens mean anything but 'Green'. She should run her campaigns from a maternity ward.
Her extremist political agenda is all about people, more people, breeding faster, childcare, human rights, rights for young people wanting to breed, open door immigration, maximising human footprint on the planet and human fucking.

John Marlowe