This story (here, here and here) is particularly poignant because of its personal nature and its human scale. I have walked around the area now ruined when it was intact. I know the dam, I know the trees , the birds and the frogs. I imagine the little fantails described have now died and their chicks are buried in the debris. If this were a unique event it might be bearable but it is happening in different places in different ways every day all over Australia. A few years ago I was on a week's holiday in SE Queensland. While I was there within 5 days the small pond , treed island and a pair of nesting water birds which the house looked out on was bull dozed for a development. There is no reprieve or holiday from this destruction.
The terrible loss highlighted in this article is of course the loss of our rights, of our democracy. All those who stood up to the Abigroup and the police on Thursday are heroes. The man who climbed the tree and stayed for 2 hours deserve a medal. (Editor's emphasis)
Comments
Property market sold to foreign investors
According to a Melbourne estate agent, foreign investors from China have bought properties in Melbourne and they are stockpiling them and keeping them empty until prices increase, then plan to sell them. What sort of government would allow foreign investors into our property market and deliberately increase the prices, against the interest of the citizens of Australia? (Editor's emphasis) Not only housing property, but farms and land are going to the highest bidder to - overseas!
Negative gearing and stamp duty contributes to higher prices too, but the elephant in the room is our socially engineered population growth on finite suitable land.
Both major parties spruik the misanthropic idea of limitless population growth, and the public are forced to endure the multiple costs.
There is no love for Australia and as soon as globalisation ends, and it will with peak oil taking hold, the better for the planet, and Australia. We can be a sovereignty again.
Brumby government vandalism
Our government cares nothing for environmental values, conservation or sustainability. Their intention to build the freeway by trashing of a significant remnant flora and fauna area is typical of their disregard for the law and decency. Their heavy handed tactics of the use of 100 mounted police against gentle activists, many of them older people, is a disgrace. The silence of the media means they are also compliant with the destruction. The freeway is about making the Peninsula area more accessible for property developers and they can continue with their Melbourne@5 million agenda! Our Brumby government is guilty of undemocratic actions and lawless vandalism.
The ride
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMUiwTubYu0
I miss Bill very much. If you think I should be silenced well good luck.
I don't even matter - look to your local bankster or politician for salvation. (Editorial comment: 'Slavation' changed to 'salvation', although the former seems more accurate.) If you are still that stupid.
Revolution is our only hope. *replay - via r2d2*
All of you footy fan idiots who think the MSN is looking out for you - wake up. I expect this to be censored.
I used to have some form of hope of finding like minded souls who would fight for change, is this the place?
Decline of African Elephants since the mid-1970's
African Elephant Conservation Act 1989 states that:
(1) Elephant populations in Africa have declined at an alarming rate since the mid-1970's.
website design | web design
Red book comes from Australian Treasury?
So, this so-called 'Red Book' comes from Treasury - from a bunch of economists and bankers with no more idea of what matters than Scrooge McDuck.
These types have replaced the priesthood with their medieval stranglehold on government policy.
We need to separate the State from the Economic Church.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
Pessimistic message
Sorry if I upset you. I have hope that industrial civilsation will fall apart fast enough to save some semblance of the biosphere I guess.
I point to the continued deforestaion, cites decision on tuna, ongoing whaling, exploding populations world wide, increasing use of coal, yadda yadda yadda.
Where is the optimism I should be feeling going to come from?
I used to try and be a messenger of hope, spreading the word, thats how you end up being shunned by all of the people(99.999%) who are more interested in getting an ipad than discussing world issues.
This is one of many blogs I follow - check his academic record before you brush him off lightly:
http://guymcpherson.com/2010/09/balloon-seeks-pin/
By taking the extreme argument to it's limits I hope to scare the crap out of people and at least get them to think about things other than their blind consumption of the status quo.
My dystopian views were coalesced when I read "The Road", the film was hard to watch also.
I see I have had the best possible result too: http://candobetter.org/node/2203#comment-5500
Someone is actually discussing the point I was making.
Rising population projections are largely "unavoidable"
Warning: get ready to pay for carbon.
The ''red book'', which landed on Wayne Swan's desk the morning after the election, also warns the $43 billion national broadband network carries ''significant financial risks'', that the strong economy could fuel inflation and the rapidly rising population projections both parties disavowed during the election campaign were largely unavoidable.
During the campaign both parties emphasised the need for a ''sustainable'' population, but Treasury says strong population growth will continue for at least the next 15 years.
'Net immigration figures well in excess of that low number are probably inescapable,'' Treasury says, adding that strong population growth ''is not necessarily unsustainable … it need not adversely affect the environment, the liveability of cities, infrastructure and service delivery'', so long as governments planned well.
Do they really care if it is "sustainable" or not? Our planet is shrinking, and yet we are growing! We each inevitably get a smaller piece of the shrinking "pie" with more population.
So we can have our cake and miraculously eat it too!
Read the article: Warning: get ready to pay for carbon in the Sydney Morning Herald of 25 Sep 10 by Lenore Taylor and Jacob Saulwick.
Could we hear more about this 'red book' please
Could we hear more detail. What is the title? Where is it available? Is it available on line? If this is true the public need to be widely apprised.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
If you look at how much
If you look at how much money they're costing us each year (adt security systems pics) taken from my surveillance camera, although they were never caught and charged (kind of a waste of money getting that security system installed, but I’ll save that for another day…). Now I’m not saying that all Mexicans are burglars and thieves… hell, if I was in their situation stuck in a racist country like ours, I would be doing the same thing.
Population growth "inevitable" - Treasury
New members of Treasury are given a Red Book, and it declares that our population growth is "inevitable"! It is inherently part of our Federal governments agenda, not open to democratic processes.
Over 2000 new people are arriving in Victoria each week, and most of them choose to live in Melbourne. (The Age). This population explosion is disturbing and has nothing to do with democratic process or sustainability. World scientists are warning us of future crises and "peaks" that could impact on our planet, and our future. While other nations are suffering from overpopulation, our leaders in Australia think we can keep adding more people to create a bigger economy, a "big Australia"! Julia Gillard dismissed it, and didn't want Australia hurtling down the road to 36 million plus by 2050! However, she is under tremendous pressure from those with power over government decisions, and who hold the strings! (eg banks, big businesses, land developers. growth lobby). So much money can be made from constant growth, it is grab what we can and ignore the looming threats - while the going is good!
Trains do do it better
I reckon Tim Fischer was Right.
So let's make the eco-vandals defend their actions
As I said above, this has to be made an issue at the Victorian State elections that are to be held in November. If community grass roots mass movements can't use the elections to hold to account political representatives who are supposedly working in our best interest and who are supposedly accountable to us, then how can we legally hope to end this wanton destruction of our little remaining bushland?
Not one of the politicians would stand any chance of defending their destructive actions, if faced with articulate defenders of the bush in a public forum. These should be part of most elections in Australia. In effect any candidate can force other candidates to attend public forums during an election campaign because to refuse to debate reflects badly on a candidate. Unless opponents of this vandalism stand as candidates, this opportunity will be lost.
Odd how you wouldn't
Odd how you wouldn't consider drowning your grand-daughter, who contributes to human overpopulation and is a carrier of that nasty compassion disease.
This Sunday on Background Briefing: Trains do it better
All political parties agree that trains do it better, but who will make it happen? Meanwhile, thousands of trucks are about to churn up the roads trying to get a huge wheat harvest to city ports, and two million tourists choke Byron Bay with cars. The rest of the world - even France - is joining its regional areas with high speed trains, and it works. Reporter Ian Townsend.
To be broadcast: on Background Briefing Sunday 3 October, following the 9:00AM news. To be repeated: Tuesday 6 October following the 7:00PM ABC news.
Brumby government vandalism a disgrace!
Our Brumby government cares nothing for democracy, consultation, heritage values, community values, our wildlife, our environment, green wedges or the opinions of the public. They are all smoke and mirrors and only care about property developers and making access easier so we can have a bigger Melbourne - Melbourne@5 million! This is what the Peninsula Link is about, access to the Peninsula for more of Melbourne's toxic urban sprawl! Population growth is Victoria's main industry now, and the most destructive one ever.
Is It My Pessimism That's Extreme? Or Our Predicament?
"If these iniquitous and extreme measures had not been adopted and more democratic and fair means had been used, the economic problems faced by these societies could have been far more easily addressed." James Sinnamon
Easily addressed as they were in Nicarauga, when "the people" were "empowered" to have babies like rabbits under Daniel "Casanova" Ortega and his Sandinistas, making that country the fastest growing population in all of Latin and Central America?
The "extreme economic deprivation" that we will soon face will not be the result of any "neo-liberal agenda", but by resource shortages, which will not be cured by any left-wing Keynesian prime pumping or public works spending. This response implies that an emergency is not already upon us, that is something that needs to be manufactured by some sinsiter right-wing cabal. It implies that we have loads of time to "stabilize" the population and reduce it gradually over the course of what, nine or then more decades? God, even the US Department of Defence is not that naive. Peak Oil is NOW. In just two years perhaps, the shit will hit the fan, and suddenly, a massive paradigm shift will occur. Left wing delusions will fall tumbling down. Governments, dependent upon the revenues of the oil economy, will become more and more enfeebled. It will become apparent that the more people there are, the lower their per capita slice of non-renewable resources will be. Quantitative easing and New Dealism would will not conjure those resources up. We will need to shrink the economy ASAP, and this must involve demographic shrinkage as well. The problem is, each day that we fail to do this makes the range of effective solutions narrow to more and more draconian measures. Emergency measures. Measures which even democrats in government have resorted to (eg. Lincoln's suspension of habeous corpus, Churchill's coalition government's undemocratic detentions, Trudeau's imposition of the War Measures Act in 1970 which received 90% of public support).
Overpopulation is an emergency, and emergencies are the enemy of democracy, not the people who advocate emergency measures to cope with overpopulation. That was the point that Asimov made, the one Steve Kurtz attempted to remind us of, the one that my critics have not acknowledged. Notice that even veteran population campaigner Jack Alpert has moved off his advocacy of the OCPF policy universally applied by "mutual coercion mutually agreed upon". It is too late for that now, tougher medicine is called for. And Peter Goodchild agrees but goes further. Birth control is no longer enough. They are catching up to the late Jacques Costeau, who declared in November of 1991 that for the human race to survive, 350,000 people have to die everyday. The economic "Shock" that Chile received under Disaster Capitalism was not unlike the shock that the Soviet Union received after 70 years of "Disaster Socialism". Had the Soviet bloc not been ruled by people who think "the people" could have a free lunch, "the economic problems faced by these societies could have been far more easily addressed." Oh yes I know. Whenever you remind leftists of the disasterous socialist experiment, you are told that well, "that wasn't socialism". No, that was "state capitalism". But they will not allow free-marketeers the same privilege of disowning corporate or debt-capitalism, or the crony capitalism which the Philippines exemplied under Marcos. The world is still waiting for the kind of socialism and democracy that Trotskyists talk about. We have been waiting for 90 years. The fact that it hasn't materialized yet should tell us something about the nature of their 'optimism'. Waiting for their utopia, or the utopia where the human species can democratically reject a two hundred thousand years or more of genetic and cultural programming to breed ourselves silly, is like waiting for Godot. We will be extinct before that guy arrives. And believe me, I would only be delighted to be proven wrong.
If we are to survive, we need radical austerity measures. Fossil fuels must be conserved, gas rationed, and the social welfare state stripped to essentials---including corporate welfare. Every surplus penny that we can afford must be shifted to renewables, and if we succeed, it will still only supply 20% of our current energy needs. Do you think "the people" are ready for these sacrifices? In Canada "the people" won't even support a carbon tax, and the introduction of a comprehensive sales tax has almost sparked a revolution in British Columbia. What will they do when the price of food skyrockets with skyrocketing oil prices? We know what the Green Left are doing. They are arguing for more social spending in a bidding war with Centre-right. In Canada, the Naomi Kleins have an endless shopping list of social services for us to spend our dollars on. Smaller class room sizes, more daycare spaces, more money for the arts, more multicultural grants to ethnic lobbies, more birth incentives, reimembursement for women who want intro-vitro fertilization, for which the 'progressive' province of Quebec will pay $7,000 a pop), ....the list goes on.
These people don't get it. When affordable oil runs out, we will be lucky to have the social safety net of Chad---no matter who is in power. The problem is, we are in a lifeboat engineered to safely transport 15 people but we are carrying 50. And when people like me suggest that we won't survive the coming storm with this overload, we are told that our weather forecast is too pessimistic. We are also told that 26 passengers, if they are democratically empowered, will vote to jettison 35 people, including 11 of themselves. Or alternatively, that our voyage to safety will be long enough that we will not have to jettison anyone, that is, if the weather cooperates as an optimist should assume. We can wait until 45 passengers die of old age, which under Obamacare, can be extended. And BTW, under just and progressive management, there will be enough rations to go around for all. This is the Trot 'solution'. Don't believe me? Just read the stuff that Naomi's brother Seth pumps out at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives in Vancouver. Great ideas there---customized for the 1960s.
Unfounded hope is not a sustainable form of optimism. And realism is not pessimism.
Tim Murray
Why is a monstrous person monstrous?
James Sinnamon speaks of Pol Pot's actions--or the actions of his regime---
as "monstrous".Why do we call someone a monster? Is it that his actions were
monstrous, or that his intentions were monstrous, or that the consequences
of his actions were monstrous?
Social justice advocates, human rights campaigners and clerics only
focus on the first two considerations. I focus on the last. By that
token, was Pol Pot more monstrous than Bob Geldoff or any of the Popes,
or indeed, of Mother Theresa?. Pol Pot killed 2 million people, but Bob
Geldoff through his efforts has put 6 millon people at death's door. And
we don't have to talk about how much damage the Catholic Church has
caused. I don't particularly care if Bob Geldoff, the Pope or the late Mother
Theresa are or were "good" people. I care about the net effect of their actions.
I am not qualified to measure the "good" in people, but I can attempt to
measure the consequences of their policies. By some accounts, Eichmann
was a "good" man, good, that is, to his family and to his neighbours. He may even
have "good" intentions in his determination to a competent job of
murdering Jews. Who knows, he may have sincerely believed that Jewish
people were the source of all evil. All I know is that he did a huge
amount of unnecessary damage to so many millions of people for no good
effect.
Which constitutes the greater crime, a genocide of 6 billion
people which would nonetheless leave a billion to carry on to perpetuate
our race or the extinction of our race, including all of its billions,
from the refusal to implement RPD because the only method of doing so was
found to be 'inhumane', or in violation of democratic, or Christian,
or Buddhist or socialist etc. principles? James does not address
this, nor doe he acknowledge my main thrust, that the means for RPD
have not yet been agreed upon, and that in choosing them, we must find
the LEAST IHUMANE of EFFECTIVE options. How many times must I repeat that?
I don't think that Pol Pot was interested in minimizing his inhumane actions. I am.
And I am not agreeable to any undemocratic or gratuitously harmful action unless
it can be demonstrated that the same necessary result cannot be achieved through democratic
or impeccably humane actions. But so far the jury is out. And we are rapidly running out of time.
Meanwhile, first things first. Is RPD necessary?
James has read my article, but not taken it in
James has read my article, but not taken it in. In fact, he has made the classic mistake that the article attempted to correct. He has not first agreed that RPD is necessary. Instead he has in effect said "RPD is necessary if..." That "if' converts "necessary" into "desirable". It would be desirable to effect RPD if it was done democratically. Other people supply other qualifiers like "if it is faithful to the principles of the Bible (or the Koran or the teachings of the Delai Lama or the party line of the Socialist Weekly etc etc). In effect, James is telling me what JFK and many other people were telling me during the Cuban missile crisis. That "democracy" was more important than life itself, that it was acceptable to risk the extinction of our species for the sake of an ideology ("Better Dead than Red"). And Kruschev countered him with the same brinkmanship, only his conception of democracy was different. That struck me as nonsense as a 12 year old and it sounds like nonsense to me now.
James also seems to be saying that RPD is not necessary now. First we need to put democratic levers in place across the world. When would that be, 2110? Read through this blog, read Heinberg, Kunstler, Ruppert and a dozen like them. Read the last report on the state of the world's oceans. Do we really have that kind of time? I call that unwarranted optimism.
James is still at base camp, and from there is he attempts to leap frog over the first three stages to stage four, whether the argument about means to achieve RPD should take place. He claims that my argument may be misinterpreted by some as saying that I would condone genocide if necessary. There is no room for misinterpretation. Read the article. If RPD is necessary, then it is necessary. I would think that any means necessary to accomplish that is preferable to extinction, but that is not a recommendation for genocide. The question then, is which means are effective, and among those options, which of them is the least inhumane. To come to that stage, one must pass through several mental decompression chambers. James is still in the one called "Social justice and democracy ". He needs to transist to the one called "There is no democracy on a dead planet". And when he follows the steps I prescribed, and reaches Stage Four of the process, he should ask himself another question. If dictatorship got us into this mess, does it necessarily follow that democracy--as he would define it---will get us out? And when? So far, only one nation has implemented a One Child Per Family Law, and by doing so, has prevented the arrival of 400 million more consumers. But it was not done democratically, and it involved the violation of some human rights, except the most important one. Our right to survive.
As civilized beings were are mentally parked in what I would term "The Ethics of Abundance". But if we are to survive Peak Oil, we need to adopt "The Ethics of Scarcity". Lifeboat ethics. Triage Ethics. As Hardin implied, we need a moral revolution. We can pretend that there is enough to go around if we democratically implement a 'just' distribution of the rations, or we can acknowledge that there isn't. If there isn't, then we must make the kind of hard decisions that socialists, democrats and clerics will not make. My belief is that the philosophical groundwork must first be prepared before we can take the pragmatic approach. We must rid our own movement of the last vestiges of deontological reasoning and embrace a bold consequentialist perspective. James I believe, is not ready for that crossroads, as I wasn't for so many decades. I hope events will not our run our ethical adaptation to them.
BTW, I agree with the fourth comment. People lacking substance need to be identified. Who then is "Search for Truth", and why should anyone respond to him? I am from the old school. Unsigned letters go straight into the waist paper basket unread.
When the wind blows
Couldn't agree more that the best (nuclear) post-apocalypse films are done by the British. I would add the film "When the Wind Blows" from 1986 to the top of the list though. It is one of the saddest films I have ever seen.
Extreme pessimism can lead to "Shock Doctrine" style 'solution'
The introduction to this article seems not to have acknowledged my principle point. The point is that either human communities can overcome, in a fashion which respects the rights of all their current members, the catastrophe that threatens all of them or they can't. Any 'solution' which demands the rapid decline in the current global human population implies that the former is not possible and that some brutal imposition of the 'solution' by a dictatorial government is unavoidable.
This would be a variant of "The Shock Doctrine" as described in Naomi Klein's book of the same name, where, in many countries since 1973, beginning with Chile, ruling elites convinced the majority that total economic ruin could only be avoided if only they would accept economic 'medicine' prescribed by economic neo-Liberals of the Milton Friedman school of economics. This propaganda and dictatorial rule resulted in extreme economic deprivation which, contrary to the claims of the neo-Liberals, did nothing for the health of those country's economies. It only served to disempower ordinary people and to transfer the wealth of ordinary people to the elite minority.
If these iniquitous and extreme measures had not been adopted and more democratic and fair means had been used, the economic problems faced by these societies could have been far more easily addressed.
I think that promoting views that humankind's situation is hopeless and can only be solved by rapid population decline, rather than stabilising our population in the shorter term and achieving population decline in the longer term by humanitarian means, only serves to make it more likely that "Shock Doctrine" like solutions imposed by the very people who are now doing their utmost to undemocratically cause human population growth.
The Plan
The meaning of the ominous government sign pictured in this article about the Peninsular link project being part of "the plan" was more fully explicated yesterday when 100 police overpowered the protesters at the site which was then razed. There is no answer to the sheer physical force of 100 fully equipped police, some on horses and with whom no discourse was possible. It seems to me that an integral part of "the plan" is to crush any dissidents to despair and ultimately to disengagement. I was not at Westerfield yesterday but my comments here are based on a detailed first hand account of the day.
Ecological Overshoot Day
The world has gone into ecological overdraft. As of August 21, we’ve exceeded our natural ‘budget’ for the year. In other words, we’ve consumed 12 months worth of natural resources in under nine months. So how do we turn this around?
It wasn’t always like this. Our planet used to be able to comfortably cope with the demands we all made on it. But for the last 30 years or so, the rate at which people have been using up the Earth’s ‘ecological services’ has been exceeding the rate that nature can provide them.
Ecological Overshoot Day
Last year, Earth Overshoot Day was observed on September 25, 2009. This year, overshoot day is estimated to come more than a month earlier in the year. Ironically, it was on the day of our Federal Election!
In 1960, the ecological footprint of humankind required only 0.7 planet Earths. In 1980, it required only 1.0 planet Earth. In 2000, it required 1.2 Earths and continues to rise. If global warming and acidification of the world’s oceans place the biospheric life support system in disequilibrium, the planet’s carrying capacity will be dramatically reduced. This situation would not be good for either posterity or us.
It is interesting that all of the major players -- scientists, economists, human rights workers and religious leaders, among others -- have no clear opinion on the ideal size of the human family. We are amazingly united in a pact of silence.
Overpopulation, combined with overconsumption, is the elephant in the room, says Paul Ehrlich, 42 years after he wrote his controversial book, "The Population Bomb". We don't talk about overpopulation because of real fears from the past—of racism, eugenics, colonialism, forced sterilization, forced family planning, plus the fears from some of contraception, abortion, and sex. We don't really talk about overconsumption because of ignorance about the economics of overpopulation and the true ecological limits of Earth.
The wall of silence is evident in politics, the media and the human herding instinct obscures the size of our "human family".
Vast farming land
That is quite interesting if white house can have their own garden at washington itself? are you kidding me?
Well if that's the plan then they can really do it. Do We think that Obama spends more time in his farm. Well I guess not. Instead they can order organic food and have these organic delivered to white house and is addressed by the president.
regards
Editorial comment: This comment is, in part, an advertisement for a product which may possibly be of interest to some site visitors.
Hello. Nice article about Spanish Anarchist collectives. Thanks
Hello. Nice article. Thanks for posting.
Editorial comment: Thank you for the kind compliment. However, to many, it may possibly seem unlikely that someone, whose home website's "About Us" page states that site's main contributor had a stint with the "JPMorganChase Bank in India" would see the Spanish Anarchist collectives of the late 1930's as a positive historical development.
Agrees that candobetter should not spread unwarranted pessimism
Subject was: Response to Editor’s Comment
Response to ED. Comment (September 27th, 2010)
I very much doubt there is any useful purpose at all in the pessimistic doom merchants pedalling the woe is me, we'll all be ruined, wolf crying worst case scenarios. It would be entirely different if these extremist views had at least some credibility and were backed by science, credible research or similar. THE COLD HARD FACT is that these doom pedalling soothsayers imply holding a monopoly on functional crystal balls but have nothing to offer beyond pessimistic SPECULATION.
All too often such meaningless comments appear (on this site and elsewhere) being confrontational and controversial they grab people’s attention, MOMENTARILY, but people switch off when they realise there is no substance in the drivel they are reading. To my mind this kind of representation does far more damage to the task of educating and getting more people involved in a sustainable future (which I see as our only hope). To my mind the few loose cannons merely tarnish the reputations (in the eyes of the masses) of other credible campaigners by association (guilt by association being one of mankind’s more fallible failings) for this reason these
people lacking substance need to be identified and culled if they can’t be pulled into line.Editorial comment: Whilst we greatly appreciate your well articulated rejection of groundless pessimism, we can't allow language that may be hurtful to people who, although we may think they may be mistaken, have given us no compelling reason to question their motives. So the above sentence has been altered, accordingly.
In recent months I have been criticised on this site, had comments censored and been vilified for my efforts to encourage people to clean up their act.Editorial comment: On a few occasions we have not approved posts, which, in our view, unlike this post, do not add to the discussion. If the commentator can send me a copy of anything, which has been censored, we can have another look at it. Also, we strongly discourage the vilification of any contributor by any other contributor. Please show me where you believe have been vilified so that I can pursue this further.
Such is life.
Rapid Population Decline
I found a new saying recently - from a blog of the same name: Nature Bats Last.
I have stopped trying to tell friends and family about all this stuff. I'll just try and enjoy myself before someone decides I look tasty enough to eat.
I feelsorry for the critters though. It was a nice planet.
Editorial comment: This web-site has been set up in the hope that it can help make the difference that will prevent environmental calamity and, consequently, human calamity. Whilst it does not seem possible to know for certain whether humanity can be saved on the one hand or is doomed to be wiped out on the other, we don't know what useful purpose is served by spreading the most pessimistic message possible.
Australian private housing market a denial of human rights
Thanks, Vivienne O.
If, as you have pointed out, the Australian Human Rights Commission states:
Adequate housing is essential for human survival with dignity. Without a right to housing many other basic rights will be compromised including the right to family life and privacy, the right to freedom of movement, the right to assembly and association, the right to health and the right to development.
... then the private property market, as it is practised in Australia today, completely contravenes that principle and our local, state and Federal Governments are also acting in contravention of that principle by proactively supporting that private property market.
Voters have every right to expect of their Governments to, instead, do all they can in their legislative power to limit and eventually remove the scourge of land speculation from our economy. As land speculation is completely economically unproductive and serves only to transfer wealth from one section of society to another, at a huge cost to the economy in the resources that land speculation (and the necessary artificial population growth) consumes, our economy could only gain.
Money 'invested' in gaining control of the land that we all need for decent quality of life, could then, instead, be invested in truly productive and socially useful enterprises. Perhaps the monetary return on these investments would not be as great as is possible with land speculation, but, at least it would be a return based on the creation of real wealth rather than increasing the extraction of wealth from the most disenfranchised in our community into the pockets of land speculators and their hangers-on.
Cruelty to possums, kangaroos & quokkas
I classify the possum tossing exercise as a form of child abuse not to mention the obvious abuse of possums. I say that because it is a killing spree culminating in total lack of respect for the bodies of the possums. This is a disgusting example for children to follow and is inculcating sadism and devaluation of life. Of course Australia too has dysfunctional school children - the ones who recently tortured and killed a defenceless kangaroo whilst on a school weekend excursion. At least this was behind their teachers' backs, not condoned by them and disciplinary measures will be taken.
With regard to the creature who hurt the quokka, I hope he goes to gaol for a long time as a way of protecting other animals and the rest of us.
"Baby on board"- is indeed not an endangered species. In fact it's a potential menace.
Cruelty against quokka on Rottnest Island ...
Here is another cruelty case against a native animal..by some Morons on Rottnest Island ... As long as this government keeps handing out baby bonuses, to the imbeciles in our society this problem will go on ... and I cant believe the cancer of Baby on Board car signs has reached Australia ... I don't give a shit if you have a baby on board.. ... It's not like you are an endangered species ... It makes my blood boil ...
Police are investigating an attack on a quokka on Rottnest Island yesterday.
Acting Sgt Matt Oakley said police had been alerted by a member of the public to a quokka found badly injured in bushes about 12:20am. He said the quokka had a bloodied head and appeared to have been kicked or hit by a human.
Police interviewed a 20-year-old man who was found nearby with what appeared to be blood on his shoe.
Acting Sgt Oakley said police would wait on forensic analysis of the blood before deciding whether to charge the man.
The quokka was being looked after by rangers and a veterinarian was headed to the island to treat the animal.
"It's just a terrible thing to happen to a quokka, which is just a defenceless little animal," he said.
The man and two of his friends, aged 19 and 20, were evicted from the island about 4am.
Police are also investigating the vandalism of a police vehicle, which was found daubed with graffiti and smeared with human excrement.
Housing is a human right
According to the Australian Human Rights Commission a person who is homeless may be facing violations of the right to an adequate standard of living, the right to education, the right to liberty and security of the person, the right to privacy, the right to social security, the right to freedom from discrimination, the right to vote and many more.
Every person has the right to an adequate standard of living, which includes the right to adequate housing (ICESCR, article 11).
The right to housing is more than simply a right to shelter. It is a right to have somewhere to live that is adequate. "Adequate" includes availability of services, materials, facilities and infrastructure, affordability and accessibility.
The Commission considers that any response to homelessness in Australia must adopt a human rights-based approach if it is to be effective.
Forcing families to face homelessness due to unaffordable prices, or forcing them to suffer mortgage stress, and forcing them to live in far-flung isolated and sterile outer urban sprawl areas is such a violation of their rights. Public housing demands have increased. In August, more than 41,000 Victorians desperate for a home as public housing waiting lists simply grow larger.
The state's public housing waiting list grew by 3.1 per cent in the three months to June to 41,017, up by more than 1200 people.
Read more: 41,000 waiting for public housing in Victoria
More than 1,000 vulnerable families joined John Brumby’s public housing waiting list in the March 2010 quarter, taking it to almost 40,000 families. More families are "falling between the cracks" as the cracks get wider! Clearly the Brumby government cares little for families.
Humanitarian and non-government services are forced to cope with increasing demands for their services. The surge in the number of international students has also added to rental demands, and decreased standards.
Our third-world rate of population growth displaces citizens in preference for foreign investors and new settlers. Throwing public money is simply a band-aid "fix" and actually allows our government, by default, to force people into "social housing" and higher density living, and implement their Melbourne@5 million agenda of "sustainable growth".
Secure affordable housing must be made a human right
If the right to secure affordable housing was a human right, then Brumby would not be able to get away with measures which, which we can only assume, to the extent that they were intended to address this terrible problem and not make it worse, were a token and inadequate. If the right to secure affordable housing was a human right then Brumby would not be able to treat the housing poor and homeless so poorly.
Fake environmentalist only one of several props for ruling elite
It seems to that, in recent decades, phoney dissident intellectuals have become as much a prop as the corporate newsmedia for the dictatorial imposition of the will of the ruling elites upon the rest of us. Phoney environmentalists are only one of a number of kinds of fashionable intellectuals who pose as an opposition to the misrule by the elites. As I see it, phoney dissidents serve the ruling elites, they would have us believe they were opposed to, in a number of ways:
- Upholding Big Lies used to justify decisions of the ruling elites. The two biggest, which, to many, may seem unrelated, are:
- That population growth is necessary for our prosperity or even to prevent economic collapse;
- That the United States was attacked on 11 September 2001 by Islamist extremists based in Afghanistan even though not one person with a proven link to 9/11 has been captured after almost 9 years of military occupation of Afghanistan by the United States.
- Making theoretical understanding of the state of the world more difficult for ordinary people with their supposed critiques of society which are nonsensical, confusing and long-winded.
- Gaining control of the important grass roots movements opposed to the goals of the ruling elites and using that control to ensure that they are not effective. Two examples which come to mind are the supposed campaign against the Queensland Government's $16 Billion fire sale and the supposed anti-war movement which refuses to challenge the principle justification for Australia's participation in the war in Afghanistan.
Brumby's "help" for homeless
Mr Brumby has promised $42 million to help the homeless in Victoria. His government's decisions created the problem in the first place by boosting our population growth to third world rates. This in turn has "improved" housing prices by increasing demand, and now public money must be spent on trying to help the homelessness.
How can families afford housing? The cost of even "affordable" housing is out of reach to many families, and families are increasingly being made homeless. They are the silent victims of growth and poor policies. Brumby's legacy is one of lack of transparency, democracy, rising costs and decreased liveability in Victoria.
All the "shortages" of land, housing, infrastructure, water, transport, and higher energy costs, are due to population growth for the benefit of property investors, developers and political sponsors.
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Optional preferential voting
I favour optional preferential voting over the standard preferential voting system, where voters have to number every square. However I wouldn't devote a great deal of resources towards lobbying for it. Those resources would probably be better spent campaigning for votes in the existing preferential system used by most Australian voters. Whilst I think that optional preferential voting is a fairer system, in practice it can lead to results that are less reflective of peoples' wills than full preferential voting. This is because many voters are uninformed or even misinformed about the preferential system. When candidates recommend to voters in their "How to vote" cards that they don't allocate preferences beyond the first preference as the Greens have often done in Queensland state elections where the optional preferential voting system is used, they are effectively recommending that they vote "first past the post". If that candidate does not win, then the votes for that candidate, with no second or subsequent preferences can't be used to decide amongst the remaining candidates as happens with full preferential voting.
Whilst people should not be made to give preferences, for example to a Nazi Party candidate, usually voters will have a preference amongst candidates not given their first preferences. The election outcome, where more preferences are allocated by voters, can be more truly representative of the voters' wishes than where voters have allocated less preferences as, for example those who would followed many of the Greens' "How to vote" cards in Queensland state elections would have. Whilst it could be considered more commendable for the Greens not to have directed their voters' second and subsequent preferences, to not have advised them on their "How to vote" cards that they could have if they had wished to was a disservice.
How to vote
More than ever, voters are in the invidious position of deciding who to put last on their ballot papers in order to choose the lesser of 2 evils to assume government . This time in the Victorian election I know the temptation for many, particularly those who are tuned into the environment and planning issues which are monopolizing people's energy and lives is to avoid this uncomfortable dilemma by voting informally. Would optional preferential voting give a result which better reflected the people's wishes than compulsory full preferential voting ? Is it worth lobbying for?
Students may be "irate" being denied residency to Australia
Irate students may not go home, lawyer David Bitel warns
in the Australian's story Irate students may not go home, lawyer David Bitel warns of 24 September:
TENS of thousands of foreign students may try to stay in Australia illegally now that stricter rules have dashed their hopes of permanent residency.
"In two to three years' time, what the government will find is there will be tens of thousands of illegals out there," said Sydney immigration lawyer David Bitel.
"People are not just going to go (home). They had an expectation (of permanent residence). They're furious. They came here, they paid thousands of dollars."
Foreign students are the defacto "boat people". The majority who come here confess that residency in Australia is part of their intention of studying here. Refugees arriving by boat are a smoke screen to confuse the immigration issue. Most people arrive by plane, including refugees, economic migrants and students. With climate change and overpopulation and poverty embracing the planet, we can't afford complacency. We need to protect our borders so that communities learn to live within their "carrying capacity". This is more likely to happen if immigration is not an option!
In the post war years, Australian universities would sponsor students from developing countries so that they could help economic development from where they came. This was the Colombo Plan. Now Australia is so impoverished that we can't afford to educate our own youth so that we need to lure students here, with the "carrot" of residency, so their fees support our universities and colleges? Students should not be able to morph into residents. We should fund our educational facilities adequately, and they should not be defacto immigration back-doors to Australia!
The 1951 UNHCR refugee convention, created to deal with the displacement of people in World War II, should be revised or abandoned. It has become a way of entering our country in search of economic opportunities and to escape population pressures in their own countries. This is what we don't want here, but Julia Gillard is now under pressure from Treasury to abandon her dismissal of a "big Australia"! The department has told the Prime Minister rapid population growth is both "inevitable" and a key part of Australia's adjustment to the resources boom.
(See, also,ALP urged to embrace growth of 25 September by David Uren in The Australian.)
Despite the fact that surveys say that at least 80% of Australians don't want more people, we have no say! Even our elected leaders are being overwhelmed by the pro-growth powers invested into government.
Asimov on "Population stability not possible without democracy"
There is an apt quote from Isaac Asimov on this from a PBS interview he had with Bill Moyers:
...democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people onto the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies." Isaac Asimov (Freedman, 2005)
see: members.optusnet.com.au/exponentialist/Asimov.htm
If disincentives are combined with rewards; and women's empowerment, education, and provision of birth control devices are combined, fewer will suffer in the future. If humanity focusses on 'rights' (which are invented by us- get $US 1 million from James Randi Fdn if you can disprove that!) and doesn't use Hardin's definition of democracy: "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon", then more will suffer in the future.
Family planning first; poverty donations after
My Irish maternal grandparents were afflicted with unstoppable fertility disease, prevalent there in the early 20th Century. They slept apart, to try to limit the number of offspring - it was partially successful. Of their nine children two died from tuberculosis (nature's culling) leaving seven. They managed to educate their third child (my mother) to university level. She worked for many years to educate the others, only marrying her longstanding boyfriend at 36yrs.
The rhythm method (unknown to her mother) allied to delayed marriage, allowed her and her siblings to have small families (2-3 children) and create secure foundations for their offspring. They would have preferred to have the choice to marry younger and use contraception to time their children, but other people's religious scruples blocked this option.
All Western countries have enjoyed some variant in this transition over the last 100 years, but religious zealotry has blinded many otherwise good people to the unfairness of abandoning the poor in places like Pakistan to the agony of unstoppable fertility disease.
Now: I will only give donations to a charity which automatically disseminates family planning support (full choice of methods) prominently as well as food and medicines aid. No ifs, no buts.
Population stability not possible without democracy
Tim writes that he would favour dictatorial means if that proved to be the only means by which human population stability could be achieved. I think Tim has overlooked the fact that, in the first place, it is the undemocratic (even if formally democratic) rule in favour of the greedy global elites which has made our societies so dysfunctional that human overpopulation is inevitable.
Removing even the pretence of democracy can only make the achievement of sustainability and population stability harder. If our ruling elites did not even have to pretend to be democratic, then uncontrolled human population growth (and its subsequent inevitable catastrophic reduction) can only be more, rather than less, likely. The best hope of achieving a humane, sustainable and numerically stable global society is for us to wrestle back control of our societies from the undemocratic rule of our greedy elites.
I think a call for rapid population decline, in conjunction with openly favouring dictatorial means, if necessary, to achieve it, could easily be misinterpreted as favouring the forms of population reduction achieved by such monstrous regimes as Hitler's Third Reich, Pol Pot's Cambodia and those who carried out the Rwandan genocide.
The most likely way to achieve, in the long term, human population reduction to sustainable levels is firstly to achieve, in all parts of he globe, humane, accountable and democratic societies. Only then will it be possible to humanely reduce human population. Whilst a dictatorship may reduce human population (or at least the population of types deemed undesirable by the dictators), it is unlikely to achieve long term stability. Any form of dictatorship must be strenuously opposed by population stability campaigners.
Meat rationing and smart growth are growth-enablers
Of course I heartily agree with your assessment Bandicoot. Reducing per capita consumption by half while doubling the number of consumers is a fool's errand. But I think we should be even less charitable about smart growth, consevation, recycling , or tech fixes than we are. Rather than be seen simply as "buying time" for the growth-economy, they can actually be seen as growth-enablers. They promote growth. By moving over and squeezing tighter we give corporations what they want----more consumers, and by temporarily blunting ecological impacts and making development tidy, neat and aesthetically pleasing, we allow more room for growth.
Think about it. Does recycling and garbage reduction really benefit the environment by reducing the growth of rubbish in the landfills? Or does it in fact, by doing so, permit the same pattern of consumption that we are addicted to? Planners and politicians can jam even more people into the metro area because disposing waste is not yet a critical problem Would not the wiser strategy be to stress the landfills? To waste water? To increase our footprint to the breaking point, to the point where governments will have stop importing more and more people and handing out birth incentives? Would it not be a better strategy to
to use land more inefficiently? Would it not be better to force the system to hit the wall sooner? And would not the mass adoption of more vegetarian diets free up more land to feed more people-breeders who will grow the population to the point of using up that freed-up land? In other words, is not vegetarianism one of those "efficiency paradoxes", which by making things more efficient and less costly actually provoke more consumption? Sounds counter-intuitive, doesn't it? But think of what the Russians did in 1941 to slow down the advancing German army. They burned their crops, slaughtered their livestock, and destroyed their out buildings. They increased waste.
Don't get me wrong. I conserve, recycle, burn only 11 litres of gas per week, and shop infrequently. All those good things. This might make me feel good, but should it? Am I not buying time for an economy that is killing 100 species a day and allowing humanity to add 214,000 more people each day? All these green living habits, the 'smart' land use planning, and meatless eating would make sense AFTER a steady state economy is in place. But before then it seems to me that it is just giving the system more rope.
The system will crash and then scarcity will be our fate rather than our choice. We will not need any moralizing or rationing to reduce our consumption. No more lectures from Monbiot about our greed. The only question is when, not if, and whether we should give the system a push toward the cliff and hasten its demise, or by being "responsible", prolong its life and allow it to rack up more damage.
"If we had the population we did in the 18th century, we could use any energy source we wanted to." James Lovelock
Population myths exposed
Greens and environmentalists tell people that population growth is something not in their jurisdiction, that immigration (or child benefits) policy is a federal matter... Exactly the same sort of denial is heard here in Australia. Despite immigration being responsible for about two thirds of our growth -and considering their contribution to "natural" births as well, it would be even higher - our leaders accept it an inevitable, something beyond their control, something we just have to accept! Then we hear the other population myth, that we consume too much!
People have been intimidated into being being regarded as racist or xenophobic if they raised concerns about immigration levels, or for sustainable population policy.
According to population denier Fred Pearce, overpopulation in the developing countries is not the problem. Instead the increasing overconsumption among the planets 7% richest people and countries is to be blamed. He is not alone in claiming this. George Monbiot, Europe’s leading green commentator, also agrees with this viewpoint. Pearce gives the example:
Americans gobble up more than 120 kilograms of meat a year per person, compared to just 6 kilos in India, for instance. True, eating meat is a luxury that should be rationed out, and so should the use of private cars, but with population blowout, it will only buy time!
Over time every one will want to consume more. People don't want to stay living at austere levels.
World population would not be a problem if there were unlimited land, unlimited water, unlimited resources. Unfortunately, with overpopulation, there is the problem of sharing the same sized pie with smaller and smaller portions.
The costs of economic growth go largely unnoticed. Pollution is rising, ecosystems are degraded, and many of the poor shut out from the gains of economic growth.
Some thirty years ago the concept of "smart" growth represented cutting edge thinking among community planners. By concentrating growth in already developed areas and slowing human expansion into natural areas, smart growth can help minimize additional ecological impacts as some growth continues. However, ongoing population growth will eventually fill up designated areas. Our cities are not only spreading, but becoming increasingly higher. "Smart" growth too only "buys time".
New Zealanders and possum throwing
I believe that Tigerquolls’s statement that “Kiwi prejudice is found no stronger than in the rampant hatred for Australian possums” is particularly relevant given the appalling accounts given in the media today of NZ school children throwing possums in a fund raising event. I would hope that the school principal’s defence of this disgusting event is not indicative of the general New Zealand attitude towards this introduced species.
On that note it is worth mentioning that New Zealand was responsible for the introduction of the brushtail possum. Several websites including those that peddle possum products clearly state that the possum was introduced into NZ to establish a fur industry.
Initially in the early day’s possum's where protected to allow their numbers to increase for the fur trade. There where 36 batches of possums imported and released into New Zealand mostly by the Acclimatisation Societies between 1858 until about 1921 when the New Zealand Government prohibited further releases.
That sounds like an organised group effort to me. This research was just a few clicks by the way.
Interesting that on the same site they mention:
Many anti-fur people will argue that by allowing a fur trade to exist, you are by default making sure that the possum will never be eradicated in New Zealand.
Isn’t it entirely appropriate that the 1000 or so possums killed on this fun filled day for the kids were then taken to a local fur trader to raise money for the school. Once again the fur industry wins!
But the school wins as well! And in the words of the principal:
Beyond the fund-raising that took place the real positives of this event were that children got to engage with the outdoors, learned that guns are tools and not toys and gained a greater understanding of what it means to be humane in the destruction of pests
Yee-hah!
Media targets
The media aren't shy of presenting the issues above you mentioned, Scott. They are all about the "West" showing intolerance and "racism" to immigrants and ethnic groups, but not the contrary. Open Doors and other organisations cover what is happening to the persecuted, not the mainstream media. Crimes to Australians in India have largely been ignored as to not "offend" Indians. C.A.T Crimes Against Tourists INDIA
Open Doors
Western nations are being accused of "racism" and intolerance if they object to ongoing immigration. All the racism accusations are targeted towards Western nations where the reverse is ignored.
Bill Clinton gives vegan diet a go!
Bill Clinton has announced that he is "experimenting" with a vegan diet. He wants to avoid cholesterol and break up the calcium in his body. Clinton decided to adopt the diet in the early part of May. While he does occasionally eat fish, the former president otherwise follows a strict vegan diet. He has read many books on the topic, including the China Study.
This is wonderful news for those who are concerned for animals that are increasingly being manipulated and confined and bred for speed to keep up for the demands for meat and dairy.
Utilization of NZ Brushtail Possum fibre justifies culling
Subject was: 1080 (poison) is rarely used
Firstly 1080 is rarely used in the eradication of the possums in NZ, after speaking with a few trappers they advised that cyanide, the most humane culling method is used to restrict numbers. (That research was just a few simple phone calls by the way).
I personally would much rather see numbers controlled than letting the animal continue to destroy the environment for birds and other wildlife. Culling the possum saves many species including the iconic kiwi.
The Possum in NZ cannot be reintroduced into Australia because over many years they have changed to adapt to the NZ environment. I would be interested to hear any solution you have to catching the millions that are out there and moving them back to Australia, I am guessing so would DOC NZ.
The NZ government has made a decision on this, the possum is going to be culled no matter what you say as number are increasing. So why criticise the people in the industry, they are in fact just utilising the many attributes of the Brushtail Possum fibre for products, would you rather that all those jobs were lost and the industry just culled the possum and left them on the forest bed. That makes no sense.
Your statement "Kiwi prejudice is found no stronger than in the rampant hatred for Australian possums. I think it must be a cultural inferiority complex, but Kiwis introduced them, so start acting mature and deal with the problem."
Do do you know for a fact that a NZer introduced them? Did you research this and what was your source?
This statement further displays that this article is just an opinion that has very little truth, the research is weak and your understanding of the problem is limited to your narrow minded view.
Overconsumption, not overpopulation, threatens planet says Dean
Population growth is not the fundamental environmental problem, but our greed and over-consumption, said Canon Sandy Grant, Dean of Wollongong, at General Synod this week.
This was said in an interview by Roland Ashby reported in "Over consumption, not over population, threatening planet's survival" in The Melbourne Anglican,
Canon Grant said that while he accepted the overall tenor of the motion that "population growth was unsustainable" it was not the fundamental issue, arguing that the biblical injunction to be fruitful and fill the earth should be considered as part of theological reflection on the matter! Sounds like a contradiction, and like religious pontification actually. He asks people to "turn from human selfishness and greed." Surely it is greed that is adding to our woes by stealing from future generations. Consumption increases with increasing populations and is consuming the planet. He should explain just what part of consumption we should reduce.
Dr Rachel McFadyen of Brisbane said that: "If the Australian population goes on increasing then the amount of food we can export will decrease.... good fertile land will be covered by roads and housing".
Fortunately, other church leaders showed more enlightened and realistic attitudes.
Being "fruitful and multiplying" is what the human race has been doing too successfully and for too long. Growth can't go on forever, not on a finite planet. Even Noah not just saved his own family but pairs of animals for the Ark! There must be parallels for today.
Media are not shy about inciting hatred
It appears to me that the media (including the Australian media) love a story that will potentially incite hatred particularly amongst religous groups. The recent example of Florida pastor Terry Jones is a good example of this. Here you have a guy with a congregation of only 50 people making international headlines over his anti-muslim views. President Obama was forced to intervene in an attempt to prevent a "burn the koran" day. The media just lapped it up! If people want to read it or see it on TV then its a good story, I wouldn't be relying on the Australian media to filter out what is morally irresponsible when it comes to reporting news.
Selling off Australian assets
Asians rule in Queensland property buy-ups
Asian investors have overtaken Britain in buying up Queensland properties. This includes commercial, agricultural and residential properties. Yesterday's report shows investment coming from new sources in Asia such as South Korea, China and Singapore. British companies are still continuing to buy rural agricultural land!
How is this travesty allowed to happen? Australia belongs to Australian, not the highest foreign bidder! Due to lack of leadership in Australia, we are being sold out - the land and resources under our feet. Do we have a collective inferiority complex, that we need to be globalised, or is our trade deficit so low we can't afford to say NO!
We are facing global food and water scarcity, and this could be an opportunity for Australia to increase markets. Instead, we are being sold off by our government. We're seeing increasingly dire warnings about food shortages around the world. This will be worsened by the fact that farmers in the developed world needing to produce more and better quality food. There is no way that world food production can be lifted without chemical fertilisers. Australians are being betrayed and long term considerations are being ignored.
Veneer of democracy not merely thin.
I fear Vivienne (on September 21st, 2010) the veneer has worn completely through already.
Beware satirical humour
Subject was: "Well Duh!".
To Geoff on September 22nd, 2010
Beware the satirical humour, rampant in this great nation of ours.
Only the Gullible reticent to look deeper would be lead astray.
They probably deserve to be sucked in.
Ambiguity about what is "Christian"
I think there is a confusion regarding what is "Christian" in this comment. One meaning is The Church, ie the Catholic Church and its institutional power, authority and properties such as buildings, art works, territories and organisations, and the other is "Chrisitanity" as a personal faith in God, and his revelation through Jesus Christ. The nations suffering from persecution, especially in the Middle East, China, North Korea, Indonesia, Morocco, Bangladesh etc have virtually banned religion, or religion other than their own theocracies, and the issue is not one of the institutionalised Church. These people have chosen their faith, at risk to themselves.
Religion and political power should be separate, and then the churches are free to support the faithful. The Church has been guilty of atrocities in order to justify colonialism and repression. Missionaries have been guilty too of imposing their law and order in colonial takeovers. However, there has always been the remnant faithful throughout history.
The media in Australia heavily filter the "news" and a lot of religious persecution goes unreported - not to incite "racism"?
Newsmedia accomplices in theft of our assets
The outrage that almost all our news media, including "our" ABC has ignored is that Andrew Fraser has never been given a mandate by the rightful owners of Queensland's coal freight railway lines, that is the Queensland public, to sell them. Opinion polls have shown that 70% of the Queensland public, at the very least, have consistently opposed this sale, yet Fraser and the Queensland Government are determined to proceed with the sale.
How can it considered other than theft to sell an asset against the clear wishes of its rightful owners? If the newsmedia, including "our" ABC and most of its journalists, refuse to remind the public or the politicians and business leaders they interview of this indisputable fact, then how can they be considered other than willing accomplices to this crime?
Intended to be tongue-in-cheek
Thanks, Alice.
Upon closer reading, I could see that this comment was intended to be tongue-in-cheek. This may be less clear to people from outside Australia who may not know that there is no "Alice Springs Parliament" and no plans to pipe water from Darwin to Alice Springs
Extreme marsupial mole society stops pipeline.
Protesters from an unknown aboriginal society, wearing bizarre nose-pieces and claws, and acting blind, invaded Alice Springs Parliament today and took Jack Evans, a leading white elder, hostage. Jack Evans was the speaker for the opposition. A shaken Alice Springs parliamentary secretary later revealed that a note written on Jake Evans's underpants in yellow ochre had been found in the male toilets, with a demand that the multi-million dollar pipeline project to bring water from Darwin to Alice must be stopped. The note said that any digging between Darwin and Alice Springs would bring the wrath of the marsupial mole down upon industrial society and the seas would flow into the interior of Australia and drown all those who failed to recognise and respect the Great Marsupial Mole. Police are taking the matter very seriously. It is believed that the kidnappers have gone underground
For years, locals had not taken seriously tales of a vast underground society of aboriginals, said to live for hundreds of years on a diet of the roots of desert plants and catching blind white fish that live in the Great Artesian Basin.
Now Alice Springs citizens are demanding that the local government make formal contact and appease these ancient desert denizens before it is too late.
Gouldian finch extremists lead violent trends and more
Scott,
This is a wonderful article. If only it were true that Australians were sufficiently on the ball to go to battle like this for Gouldian finches and Mitchell Hopping Mice. Then we could all breath a huge sigh of relief and go out and enjoy the rest of our lives. These little birds are so perfect that it make sense to protect them with our lives. I remember looking at a newly dead rainbow lorrikeet recently and not being able to take in that it was dead, so remarkable were its irridescent colours and the detail of its eyes and feathers. Those who don't know nature don't have any idea of how the real wealth is going, going gone. Someone famous whose name I have forgotten, said that Australia is a land of birds, which, like the kangaroo, can quickly move in search of water in our difficult climates. A land of wonderful birds. A wonderful land, too little appreciated by its recent human influx.
I loved this article.
Bravo!
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
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Response to Matilda B
Matilda B writes, "Religious faith is something that should be due to conviction,not forced. All religions have been used to justify violence, colonialism and possession. The difference is that Christianity, inherently, is by choice! It cannot be "controlled" or manipulated by oppressive regimes like those in extreme Hindu or Islam nations."
I don't see how Christianity differs from the other religions in being less subject to control or manipulation. I think the difference lies in whether state is separate from church. In states where Christianity was not separate, barbarisms also ruled - the latter Roman Empire (which substituted Christianity for earlier gods in order to beat the influence of Jesus) the Spanish inquisition, acts of christian missionaries against Easter Islanders, Salem Witch trials, etc etc.
Another thing that has changed is post WW1 where mineral wealth, industrialisation increased wealth and voting rights caused better levels of group education, wealth sharing (this is declining as I write) and empowerment, so that as human expectations rose, religious groups had to become less authoritarian and oppressive. They remain authoritarian and oppressive in places like Africa, the Philippines and South America though, where people remain under the boot and there was never much wealth and that was not shared within their huge populations.
Let's face it, religion is easy to adapt to base political ends. It commands groups and, if you manage to get at the head of such a group, you can command that group in its god's name.
I do not mean to detract from people who have their own beliefs in nature or a god, but when they band together under a banner, they leave themselves open to abuse, IMHO, so must be very vigilant about how far they follow which leaders.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
Reply to Jeff - please send pics today & tomorrow
Hi Jeff,
Good to hear from you. We would appreciate pictures of what you describe being sent to [email protected] - if you want to amplify their impact. We can also send them on to someone who will send them round further. We hope that someone will be filming tomorrow (Thursday 23 Sep 2010) when the bulldozers and police may come together.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
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Brumby government excesses and vandalism
If our Labor government wasn't so obsessed by property and land developers, and their profits, we would not have this problem of new freeways "needed" or the massive cost blowout of the desalination. These monstrosities will be monuments to our Victorian government's excesses and extravagance, at our expense.
The Thompson Dam is massive and was built to "drought proof" Melbourne in 1983. This would still be the case, but we have leaders who make poor decisions and who think that we can have limitless population growth! Who pays for this growth? We do!
Once we overshoot our natural limitations, including natural resources such as water, the costs of providing them artificially is very expensive - economically and environmentally! Water is an essential for life, not a privilege to pay such high costs.
Once peak oil sets in and the cost of petrol rises, the destruction of this Frankston bypass will have been another ill-informed decision and the restoring the habitat loss and wildlife will become improbable.
The Supreme Court found the Brumby government's VicForests guilty of illegally logging East Gippsland's Brown Mountain. Surely this is equally destructive vandalism?
Westfield vandals must be held to account at state elections
We must hold to account at the coming Victorian state elections the politicians responsible for the vandalism at Westfield. Unfortunately, it won't be as straightforward as voting out this reprehensible Labor Government and voting in the opposition Liberal and National Parties, as the policies of the latter are virtually indistinguishable from the former. This is in spite of the fact the latter will often exploit such situations to score cheap points at the expense of the former.
This means opponents of the Westfield vandalism who want to save the remnants of bushland in this region need to either consider vocally supporting candidates from some other party or standing as candidates themselves. Preferences on a two-party-preferred basis should be given to the least worst of the two major parties, that is, if it is possible to decide that either can be designated thus. In spite of the Greens' limitations and overall timidity, if no other better candidates stand, then at least give your first preference to them. At least a high vote for the Greens will most likely be interpreted as a vote against environmental destruction.
Even if such third party candidates are not successful and even if they fail to attract a high vote at the coming state elections, it is still vastly preferable that such candidates stand than not stand. Not to stand leaves unchallenged the right of Victoria's current Government to continue to misrule this state against the interests of the majority and in the interests of the selfish greedy elite which stands to gain from the vandalism at Westfield.
Where is Batman when we need him?
From another perspective it is interesting to note the Editorial tampering with the original title of CSI’s Comment (September 22nd, 2010) to alter a legitimate musing
"Whats really going on here?" and present an unsubstantiated statement (implication of fact) in its place. No evidence and evidently no clue either.
Fanciful, ignorant, alarmist comments presented as fact without the slightest hint of any first hand knowledge or research into the facts are nothing more than a total waste of time, space and effort.
Learning to differentiate between opinion and fact is a valuable skill. Acquiring such skill would often negate the need for arguments such as the ridiculous bat debate that is currently receiving attention in the Bendigo paper.
Perhaps Batman Can Help.
CSI poses the question "Whats really going on here?" A very good Question indeed!
The article at
www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au/news/local/news/general/bats-happy-to-stay-put/1938753.aspx
May shed some light, the link states in part;
“There is no recorded history of flying foxes visiting Rosalind Park, so it’s not possible to predict when they will leave……….Heavy rain in New South Wales and Queensland had destroyed their usual food sources………This influx of flying foxes into central Victoria is very rare.”
I have pondered since their arrival why these bats have chosen the City centre to roost in rather than surrounding Bushland, perhaps they enjoy the convenience of public transport, the nightlife, cafes or the shopping opportunities.
CSI naively suggests ‘… large tracts of bushland surrounding Bendigo has been cleared and they now have far fewer places to congregate’ showing little knowledge of Bendigo bushland or the fact that these critters don’t usually live in the Bendigo region.
Seems some locals luv’em, some hate’em, many don’t really care.
I know little about the creatures but suspect they probably prefer the exotic trees in the park to the local box/ironbark forests to roost in. I expect they will move on when there usual habitat returns to normality.
The debate regarding their removal is probably no more than a tempest in a teacup stirred up by people with too much time on their hands, and too little enjoyment in their lives.
Abigroup lunatics
As one of the ones standing in front of the bulldozers yesterday I would like to add that not only does Abigroup and its employees have no regard for nature, they have no regard for human life. Their actions were insanely reckless and broke every OH&S rule in the book. I hope the many videos taken yesterday (including by a guy who called himself a channel nine stringer) will be made available for viewing somewhere.
Practically lost for words
I have been dreading this for months.... or is it years? The events of today have been brought about by an evil force that knows no bounds. The sign "It's all part of the plan" is utterly sinister in the context. The lyrical painting is a poignant record of a human response to a particular piece of natural beauty. When all the incidental areas of nature that ordinary people can come across easily in their travels and enjoy are gone we will no longer know how to respond to nature.
Rise in net migration to the UK "reverse Colonialism"
London (AFP) – Net migration to the UK rose by more than 20 percent last year to 196,000 from 163,000 in 2008, official figures showed Thursday.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics showed the number of immigrants arriving in the UK in 2009 fell by four percent to 567,000, from 590,000 in 2008.
However, the number of people leaving the country last year dropped further -- by 13 percent -- to 371,000, from 427,000 in 2008.
The number of visas issued to students rose 35 percent to 362,015 in the year to June.
The Empire Strikes Back! Payback Time?
The great majority of immigrants who arrive in the West looking for a better life for themselves and their families. We now have a type of "reverse Colonialism". We have the United Nations calling on the Western countries to open their borders. Immigration into the First World will become an avalanche in the future and will wreak havoc on our economic and social welfare obligations.
"Climate change" refugees will be in a great part overpopulation/poverty refugees! "Human rights" and Christian compassion and duty will be called upon, and if current trends persist, after 2050, the native population in the West will gradually shrink and become a minority.
Brumby government is guilty!
Our Brumby government must be the most environmentally destructive and contemptuous one in recent history!
How can they justify this environmental destruction, and destroying native wildlife habitat or killing native animals, despite all the threats to their survival they are trying to overcome.
A Victorian Naturally Alliance study shows that we are in danger of losing some of our most "common" native birds, due to loss and fragmented habitats. Our reserve system just isn't enough to protect them.
How long are they going to keep pretending that everything they do is "sustainable" when it clearly isn't?
Our democratic rights are being denied and bulldozed like these heritage areas - all for more urban sprawl. Once humans overshoot their environmental limits, the costs are painful and destructive! At a time of extinctions, it is simply heavy-handed vandalism so that more developers can gain profits from continued urban sprawl in the Peninsula region.
Why can't the Vic Govt. be prosecuted for it's vandalism?
Brumby and Co. are no better than environmental vandals - their green credentials are a joke. All they care about is scarring the landscape with more freeways. If the protesters similarly vandalized the demolition equipment in order to stop it vandalizing of our bush they would almost certainly be prosecuted. So, why can't the Government be prosecuted for it's vandalism?
Many religious followers are persecuted
"Muslims too are at risk in great numbers just because they are Muslim, in sectarian rows in Muslim countries, from Hindu nationalists in India and in separatist or nationalist disputes in places like Chechnya, Kashmir, southern Thailand and the Philippines". Exactly, there are some extremist and draconian religions that do not allow opinions or freedom of choice or expression.
Religious faith is something that should be due to conviction,not forced. All religions have been used to justify violence, colonialism and possession. The difference is that Christianity, inherently, is by choice! It cannot be "controlled" or manipulated by oppressive regimes like those in extreme Hindu or Islam nations.
Many people are repressed in these countries, and thus Christianity is seen as the threat to their power. Nobody can deny the great risk to humanitarian aid workers today, due to extremism. Many happen to be from Christian aid organisations.
Those killed for their faith include nationals in their own country, not just "missionaries" and humanitarian workers. The real numbers killed for their beliefs are probably greatly underestimated due to lack of reporting.
Christians are also guilty of persecuting other faiths
Once again I am reluctant to believe the arguments that have been put forward by christian advocates. The claim that 176,000 Christians around the world were martyred – killed for their faith – in a one-year period from the middle of 2008 to the middle of 2009 was made by Bob Unruh, a christian activist who has been repeatedly attacked over his subjective style of journalism. A christian pastor by the name of Rowland Croucher is also responsible for the over simplistic claim that children are forfeited when a muslim parent leaves the faith.
The story about the christian teacher being killed in Nigeria last year is contained in a Sydney Morning Herald article. This piece then goes on to say:
Nor are Christians the only ones at risk. Muslims too are at risk in great numbers just because they are Muslim, in sectarian rows in Muslim countries, from Hindu nationalists in India and in separatist or nationalist disputes in places like Chechnya, Kashmir, southern Thailand and the Philippines.
and concludes:
My argument amounts to this: religion is practised by people. It is therefore as ambiguous, messy, prone to both moral heights and depths, as people themselves are. It has been used for good and for harm. My own view is that the scales are weighted firmly on the side of good by making people morally aware of the “other”, but I know many disagree. I think Richard Neibuhr put it particularly well: “Religion makes good people better and bad people worse.”
amen to that.
After two centuries of (christian) colonial rule I can understand why some people in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh would wince at the mention of christian missionaries working in their country.
Loss of bushland drives flying foxes into city
Subject was: "Whats really going on here?"
If the flying foxes really are massively destroying the trees as is claimed, then that might be a good enough reason to move some of them. However the real reason is probably that they bats are raucous and make a bit of a mess. And why have the bat numbers increased so much? Is it because large tracts of bushland surrounding Bendigo has been cleared and they now have far fewer places to congregate?
Action against terrorist suspects could have not been sooner
Seriously?!? You expected the Australian police to detain people more than 24 hours without evidence? I bet you've written a dopey article about Guantanemo Bay here somewhere but can't see the irony in it.
And citing Wikipedia as a source?
Editorial comment: A serious crime of terrorism had been committed against the Rainbow Warrior and those yacht crew were obvious suspects. If the Australian and New Zealand Governments had wanted to bring the terrorists to justice, they could have acted in less than 24 hours with little difficulty. The NZ Government's failure to act in a timely fashion to seek extradition some years later, when a diligent Interpol officer in Switzerland detained one of the suspects, confirms that the NZ government had no will to pursue justice.
More shallow reassurances from David O'Byrne
Re the Management of Brushtail possums in Tasmania for their meat and skins.
"I do appreciate the concerns you have regarding our unique and valuable wildlife. I would, however, like to reassure you that every effort is made to ensure populations are managed sustainably, and any mechanisms used are designed to minimise any suffering with non-lethal methods being the preferred option".
They don't need "management" but should be left alone. How can their inevitable suffering be minimised? They will fight for their live and suffer horribly.
"It must be recognised that some species of wildlife, including Brushtail possums, have increased greatly in numbers as a result of farming and forestry activities and these animals now occur in large numbers in many parts of rural Tasmania. The rural environment has so favoured possum populations, and their numbers are now so high, that they can cause significant damage to crops and pastures".
This is government-speak for displacement of wildlife due to rampant growth in crops and logging in Tasmania. How could this "favour" the possums? They can't live in crops, and they can't live in chopped down forests! It sounds like the "plague" of kangaroos, due to "improved" pasture.
"The Wildlife Trade Management Plan for the Brushtail possum has been developed to comply with a range of strict requirements. These importantly include mechanisms to ensure the plan is undertaken in a manner that is both sustainable and humane. Animal welfare issues are dealt with in the plan with live-trapping harvest being covered by a Code of Practice Approved under the Animal Welfare Act 1993".
What killing can be "humane"! They will be captured, and absolutely terrified and stressed!
"I hope this provides additional context around why the Trade Management Plan has been developed and assures you that is has been developed in a way that ensures the humane treatment of Brushtail possums in Tasmania".
Actually, it doesn't give me any reassurances, or justify any trade using our wildlife! Where is the voice of Tasmanian Greens on this matter?
Scale of persecution in the world
It may be unclear at this stage about the truth of the killings of aid workers in Pakistan. The death reports maybe are being kept quiet from the media as to not give "satisfaction" to the Taliban in opposition to humanitarian aid from the West, and to not bring panic to others in a time of emergency.
Taliban or Taliban-styled terrorists have looted and set fire to shops and houses in an attempt to regain control of towns in the Swat Valley. Extremists have not only carried out attacks on federal and provincial government ministers in the Swat Valley over the past decade, but have targetted foreign aid workers and Christians as part of their attempts to destabilise the Pakistan Government, despite the scale of human tragedy. Crops, farmlands and harvests are completely wiped out, along with entire townships together with schools, hospitals, bridges, roads and infrastructure of any sort. Communities have been destroyed and left millions homeless.
Not long before the floods, an angry mob of Muslims killed six Christians and a child, and wounded dozens after burning 40 houses and a church over the alleged desecration of the Koran in a remote Pakistani town, officials said.
An estimated 176,000 Christians around the world were martyred – killed for their faith – in a one-year period from the middle of 2008 to the middle of 2009. That's 482 deaths per day, one every three minutes.
Last month, Taliban terrorists have declared they shot and killed a team of missionary aid workers, including six Americans. Ten members of a medical team, including six Americans, were shot and killed by the Islamic terrorists as they were returning from providing eye treatment and other health care in remote villages of northern Afghanistan. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told The Associated Press in Pakistan that they killed the foreigners because they were "spying for the Americans" and "preaching Christianity."
According to Islamic law, any Muslim who leaves Islam loses custody of their children. The children are to be placed in the custody of a Muslim relative. Islam is the only world religion which demands that people who leave it should be killed. These extremism is not about peace or godliness!
Not only Christians, but fresh arrests and harassment of Baha'is in recent days have been accompanied by increasingly extreme proclamations in the state-run media against this gentle and unifying religion. Baha'is find themselves once more accused of co-operating with Israel to undermine Iran. Hundreds have faced torture and execution; thousands have been imprisoned; and arrests remain common and arbitrary.
Last year a Christian teacher in Nigeria, was beaten, stoned and clubbed to death by Muslim students because she touched a student’s bag that contained a Koran while supervising an exam, thereby “desecrating” it. Some students tried to protect her from extremists. She is one of 200 million Christians at risk of persecution around the world, mostly in Communist and Muslim countries.
Usually religious persecution is tied up with other interests or grievances, such as fear of loss of political control as with the Communist Party in China. Also, national or tribal agendas, economic interests, competition for resources, and increasingly Muslims’ sense of humiliation at their perceived powerlessness for which local Christians or other minorities often bear the brunt, as in Pakistan and much of the Middle East.
When you are the minority in any culture, it appears you will always be persecuted. In Melbourne suburbs like Broadmeadows, non-muslims are becoming the minority.
War and persecution is, and always has been, a struggle for power, resources, wealth and territory. Religion is just a dividing line, that separates along cultural lines and entrenches a sense of difference and rivalry between people. Religion is often used to justify violence and absolve the perpetrators from condemnation. It is said that nobody dies from overpopulation, but once resources become scarce and populations overshoot their boundaries, persecution and conflicts can be expected.
Insight had a debate on "Banning the Burqa". Women in the West, in democracies, have fought hard for equality, and for the vote. Having women wearing the burqa is a backward step, and inappropriate for Australia. People from overseas coming to live in Australia should understand our religious tolerance, and our culture. However, our acceptance and welcome should not be abused. We are the host country, and anyone coming to live here should respect our traditions, our heritage and our values.
President Sarkozy said in Parliament We cannot accept that in our country some women will be imprisoned behind a fence cut off from all social life, deprived of identity. This is not a principle that the French republic has about women's dignity.
Religious persecution in Australia? The ideologies of human rights, multiculturalism, religious tolerance and equality are fine in theory, but human nature has so many conflicting dimensions and self-serving agendas.
We in Australia are protected by the media from the massive scale of persecution happening in the rest of the world. While we are accused of "racism", and have our attitudes sifted through with a fine-toothed comb, our critics have the luxury of ignoring their counterparts in their countries of origin who are guilty of not "racism" but mass discrimination, violent persecution and deadly intolerance!
I think it would be a good idea .
Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization!
The same could be said for multiculturalism, pluralism and ideals of tolerance!
Farmer: How Bendigo bats can be controlled without extermination
subject was "Today Bendigo Advertiser printed this rubbish"
Time to take action on unwelcome bats
20 Sep, 2010 09:46 PM
In regard to the bats in Rosalind Park.
It is a shame to see a lovely park being destroyed.
As a farmer, some years the crows would eat the oats in the head when they reached a milky stage.
However, it was easy to get rid of them.
All I did was shoot several birds and hang the carcasses up on the fence, and the rest did not return.
Probably the same could be done with the bats.
There are plenty of other places around Bendigo where they could spend the daylight hours and find feed in the vicinity.
KXXXH SXXXXXXS,
Eaglehawk
Editorial comment: Thank you for your concern and for your suggestion. Whilst this suggestion is vastly preferable to the destruction of the colony that the Bendigo Advertiser is seeking, it still seems cruel towards the bats that would be killed as an example to others.
What sort of 'democracy' so consistently ignores will of voters?
Good point, Mary.
What would or forefathers who fought to save our democracy from German, Italian and Japanese fascism have thought of a 'democracy' which almost always ignores the will of the overwhelming majority in order to suit a greedy few?
Published, in response to comment "Victorian Planning disastrous law dooms city" of 20 September 2010.
Christian aid worker deaths a myth?
Much as I would like to believe a story published on persecution.org I couldn't help but dig a little deeper into this story regarding the alleged murder of 3 christian aid workers in Pakistan. It seems the whole story is based on the claims of one man, a certain Rizwan Paul who heads up a christian advovate group called "life for all". As yet, only christian media sites are reporting on the story and many of those have been claiming for the last couple of weeks that the story is actually untrue.
“the local government, military commanders and police officials have informed our security team that this a baseless news report. All the names of the officials mentioned are fake and similarly no organisation called Life For All has been working in Swat area.”
Farbeit from me to claim who is telling the truth, I have very little knowledge of the current situation in Pakistan except what I see on TV and read in the media. What I do know is that this story "broke" nearly a month ago and is yet to be swallowed by the amoral western media. Maybe Rizwan Paul should have broken the story to Florida Pastor Terry Jones, he has a knack of getting his stories to a much wider audience.
Our democracy is a thin veneer
We will never have a "mature" debate on population because our government uses GDP - and tangible indicators of growth - to measure their success. Government terms of office are generally for 3 years, and politicians' political careers are too short to consider any long-term implications of their policies. They are addicted to short-term-ism, so any "mature" debates are prohibitive and inconvenient.
Economists will tell you GDP is an accurate measure of what it's intended to measure - "market production and national income". There are many more dimensions to human life and communities than production and national income! The economy is a tool, the oil, to keep our system of supply and demand operating to support our way of lives. However, it has become an end in itself, to our detriment, and has lead to the destruction of habitats, wildlife extinctions, loss of native forests, pollution, over-consumption and anthropogenic climate change.
Our political leaders make policies for the term they are in government, or in opposition. However, survival on our planet, and protecting our way of lives, and protecting the ecosystems that support us, have intrinsic elements and are long term considerations, too abstract, and outside their terms of reference.
Escalating crime is a indication of social dis-ease!
We need national tragedies and/or crisis to keep a balance in our thinking, and to appreciate that our life on this planet is fragile. Unfortunately, the abstract and intrinsic worth of human lives, our environment and native species, is usually ignored by economists, corporations, and only given lip-service by our government.
Our democracy is a myth, a thin veneer, and once in office, governments allow little transparency or public debate. At election time we are basically given vague promises, ambiguous slogans and personalities to vote for. The big issues are decided for us, whether we agree or not!
Attenborough program on human pop growth tonight
Tuesday 21 Sep 8:30pm SBS ONE
How many people can live on planet earth?
Esteemed naturalist and broadcaster Sir David Attenborough takes a look at the problems we face as a continuously growing species. On a journey from Mexico to Spain, China to Rwanda, ecologists, demographers, farmers, engineers and family planning clinicians report on the enormous challenges of dealing with humans in ever increasing numbers. Full Synopsis. Join the SBS forum discussion.
Victorian Planning disasterous law dooms city
Today Justin Madden signed off clause 12 to make it law. It is now called VC71. This is the one that allows high rise along all tram and bus routes everywhere. It brings in all their housing policies of "Melbourne@5Million".
Opposition MP, Matthew Guy will be on 3AW on the morning news tomorrow and he will be moving a motion to disallow.
It will be in the papers tomorrow, so please everyone start writing letters to the editor.
It this a dictatorship? We have had no say in this - no-one has. Rob Adams's idea and now it is law, thanks to Brumby and Madden.
One source says that half the heritage controls will have to go to allow all the development which is now mandated by our oppressors.
Editorial comment: Good point, Mary.
What would our forefathers who fought to save our democracy from German, Italian and Japanese fascism have thought of a 'democracy' which almost always ignores the will of the overwhelming majority in order to suit a greedy few?
Above response also published also here.
Aid workers were humanitarian flood relief workers
Swat District Coordination Officer Atif-ur-Rehman told Compass that the Pakistan Army recovered the bodies of the three foreign flood-relief workers at about 7 a.m. on Wednesday. An official at the international humanitarian organization that employed the workers withheld their names and requested that the agency remain unnamed for security reasons. Military sources who withheld news of the deaths from electronic and print media to avoid panicking other relief workers granted permission to Compass to publish it in limited form.
“The foreign aid workers have been working in Mingora and the surrounding areas,” Rehman said. “On Aug. 23 they were returning to their base at around 5:35 p.m. when a group of Taliban attacked their vehicle. They injured around five-six people and kidnapped three foreign humanitarian workers.”
www.persecution.org/2010/08/28/pakistani-taliban-kills-three-foreign-christian-aid-workers/
This was kept quiet as to not frighten or intimidate other relief workers. Due to the emergency, it is unlikely that those killed would have been preaching! The taliban don't want the West, or Christians, to be seen in a positive light.
Missionaries?
Were these Christians missionaries? Were they trying to convert Muslims to Christianity?
Taliban kills three Christian aid workers in Pakistan
Authorities have recovered the bodies of three Christian relief workers who had been kidnapped and killed by members of the Pakistani Taliban in the flood-ravaged country, area officials said. An official at the international humanitarian organization that employed the workers withheld their names and requested that the agency remain unnamed for security reasons. Military sources who withheld news of the deaths from electronic and print media to avoid panicking other relief workers.
The foreign aid workers had been working in Mingora and the surrounding areas, and had just returned to their base when a group of Taliban attacked their vehicle. They injured five or six people and kidnapped the three foreign humanitarian workers later found dead. An army Inter-Services Public Relations source said rangers have been deployed in Swat and other potential target areas to help provide security for relief workers. “The Taliban had warned about attacks on foreigner aid workers and Christian organizations,” the ISPR source said.
Source: Compass Direct News
Aid creates aid dependency
Poverty can also be caused by government/leadership power corruption, not just overpopulation. How many people give to NGOs for a "feel good" factor, or for magnanimous Christian charity, but without realizing that their efforts are misguided and patronising? There is a place certainly for medical assistance for those suffering from illness, trauma, birth defects, eyesight loss, deformities and childbirth injuries, but giving aid for ongoing food and development relief just prolongs the pain. There has to be a place for compassion sometimes. However, corrupt leaders can then continue their corruption by relying on foreign aid instead of distributing wealth. Sometimes aid has not gone to the needy because the goods have been sold on the black markets!
Globalisation of aid and the options of asylum or immigration overseas for relief of overpopulation has caused a complacency about birth control. The planet is in a mess, and there is no other species as prolific, as successful, and as damaging to their habitats than humans! Ecologically, we are a human plague, and without restraints, our increasing numbers will overwhelm any intrinsic human worth.
Asylum seekers
Maybe this useless pathetic government prancing around in their green safety vests should pay more attention to the thousands of homeless Australians than the swarms of economic asylum seekers they are welcoming into Australia who contribute absolutely nothing apart from cheap labour. Oh most of them won't have to work anyway once they have received the hundred thousand or so dollars given to them in compensation for their terrible treatment once welcomed into Australia. You couldn't make it up. When is the taxpayer ever going to refuse to pay their taxes until the Morons who run this country work for us the people who pay their salary.
Editorial comment: Whilst the commentator has rightly raised the issue of the considerable cost to taxpayers and the procedural unfairness of favouring those prepared to bribe people smugglers over at least tens of millions of other asylum seekers in refugee camps, we don't know of evidence that those favoured asylum seekers are unwilling to work. Also, the issue of (currently) a few thouand asylum seekers trying to reach our shores is dwarfed by the hundreds of thousands of legal migrants allowed annually into Australia.
Julia Gillard's "nation building" should be RE-BUILDING
If Julia Gillard wants to improve the lives of Australians, the first thing she should do is fix the housing problem. Forget about broadband for now! First the basics. Housing a shelter is a basic human right. Due to speculation and ramped population growth, even more middle class people, and certainly families, have been excluded from home ownership and homelessness is rising. Let's get back to basic humanitarian equality and rights! Not only housing, but water and energy costs are soaring. Governments generally are failing to adequately fund violence prevention programs and social welfare services like child protection, homelessness and mental health.
Mark Arbib is now minister for social housing and homelessness and indigenous economic development. A national conference on homelessness has been told the problem will not improve until more money is provided to drug and alcohol prevention! Linking homelessness with marginal groups such as the indigenous, those with mental illness and drug dependency is a denial of reality, and muddying the cause and effect.
105,000 Australians are (officially) homeless on any given night.
In contrast to common perceptions of homelessness, women and children make up a large number of homeless in Australia. (2010). Of the 105,000 homeless, 44% are female, and 12% are children under 12 in families. Young people who are homeless are under an increasing risk of being homeless in the long term, and find it harder to gain education and support. More female young people are homeless than males.
Half of the people using homelessness services are families! They are the fastest growing group. Families homeless are not a visible group in Australia and it is not widely recognised.
There are many groups and individuals who have been made wealthy from our housing boom and "improved" prices! Those falling "between the cracks" are becoming more numerous simply because the cracks are widening due to even "affordable" housing not being affordable.
Expressing concern for the homeless females across Australia, the then Prime Minister’s wife recently urged the citizens to help them!
Talking at Brisbane's St John's Cathedral annual Loaves and Fishes luncheon on Tuesday 25th May, Therese Rein, as a guest speaker raised this issue and said that homeless women are “vulnerable and terrified of being attacked in cities”. She asked the community to “open its heart to them”. Why didn't she tackle her husband's "big Australia" policy, the cause of displacement?
Ben Chifley was a gentle giant of Australian politics who wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty to build a nation. We too easily forget our greatest, if they’re not sporting heroes, but Chifley’s contribution was long and immense.
With the war over and a shiver raised across the world, Chifley told Australia it would have to “populate or perish”. But with few candidates available from the traditional source of Britain, Australia had to tap into the waves of destitute and homeless European war refugees to get to its target of twenty million people.
With the aid of these New Australians, the energetic Chifley remodelled Australia and accelerated post-war reconstruction.
Now, Julia Gillard's efforts of "nation building" should be not to accommodate overseas homeless or those destitute by war, but the homeless and struggling in our own community. We don't need more people either! The rising violence and crime is a symptom of social dis-ease.
It is time to reconstruct our society, our nation, and re-build it to a patriotic and united entity.
So, why isn't decent affordable secure shelter a human right?
Thank you, Bandicoot.
The vast majority of Australian 'human rights' activists are silent on the obvious denials of human rights to Australian citizens.
Basic human rights denied to ordinary Australians include:
- The right to a secure affordable shelter. In recent months,even those on middle class incomes are becoming stressed with housing poverty and lack of secure shelter as greedy landlords take advantage of the undemocratic imposition of population growth to jack up rents. For poor people the situation must be absolutely desperate as an exmple, during the 2009 Queensland state elections, in which I stood as a candidate, I met a woman on welfare who had to share, not her flat, not her room, but her bed, with another woman with whom she was not even intimate!
- The right to a decent income capable of meeting all of one's modest living expenses.
No Hope..
did anyone notice on the Saturday night 7 news all the Sheeple lining up to buy the latest DVD from that Moronic drug addicted Footy player Ben Cousins.. It just show the miserable, brain decayed society we live in..what hope is there for our beautiful native wildlife..when these brainwashed Clones can pay so much attention to a drug addicted footy player...and label Kangaroos as vermin..
Omnivore vs Herbivore argument is not worth pursuing
Subject was "Omnivore vs Herbivore?" - editor
In my considered opinion this omnivore vs herbivore argument . Each to his own I say.
Live and let die.
Whats to be expected when
Whats to be expected when Australia has a government who pays $ 5000 each for these cockroaches to breed...It is absolutely ludicrous that my tax money goes to pay for another parasite to be born..
Humans are greedy, filthy parasites...
France's expelling of Gypsies
Why is there so much criticism of President Nicolas Sarkozy for the deportation of 100 Roma Gypsies from France? Australia deports illegal would-be immigrants, and keeps them for indefinite periods in detention. France is a sovereign nation with the right to select who comes to live there and who is allowed to be the beneficiaries of their generous welfare system. These Gypsies a country of their own, and they are not being expelled, so they are not refugees.
Gypsies have chosen their way of life, and should accept their fates. This immigration crackdown is nothing like the expulsion of Jews during World War 2. They are not being sent to concentration camps, or to their deaths!
There is excessive neo-liberalism and universalism, and anyone opposing any sort of immigration or population growth is labelled "racist" or "xenophobic".
Where are the boundaries that separate patriotism and nationalism from border protection? The lines are being deliberately blurred by political correctness secular humanitarian ideologies that promote excessive "rights" above national interests.
Kids bash to death a kangaroo in Otways
Three students from Torquay College have been suspended after a kangaroo was found dead during a school camp in Anglesea.
The Year eight boys are being investigated by police, after the kangaroo was beaten to death with a metal pole in the Otway National Park last week.
Kangaroo bashed with metal pole
Humanity is not evolving but declining into savagery! Where is this generation heading? We are seeing more violence and crime, not only towards peers, but to the elderly, the vulnerable, and to animals. What were these boys thinking? Kangaroos are our nation's icon, the most recognizable symbol of Australia across the world! Not only have these boys showed violence and sadism towards an innocent animal, they are showed their disloyalty towards Australia! Humanity is descending downwards into chaos and destruction.
Discipline for children is not fashionable any more. Children are supposed to learn morals by absorption, by reasoning, by example and consequences. Modern secular humanitarianism and psychology must take some of the blame for the savage morons ferals we are breeding today. They are little feral savages. The school, parents and killers need to be dealt with very harshly and learn to appreciate animals, especially our precious wildlife.
State Schools used to promote and teach the appreciation of native birds, and the environment, through the
Gould League! This program should be reintroduced into schools to encourage patriotism, love for our wildlife, and love for Australia!
Australia's and the US's political systems could be even worse
Whilst the governments of both the US and Australia behave as elected dictatorships, usually governing, according to public opinion polls, against the known wishes of their citizens, 'reforming' those 'democracies' to be more like China's political system as seemingly implicitly argued by Wei Ling Chua could make those systems worse as Geoffrey Taylor and the editor have rightly pointed out.
Why publish apology for Chinese system of government?
Whilst this article contains interesting information about the mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina and bushfire disasters by both the Australian and US Governments, and the critical editorial comments, contained within this article, are appreciated, publication of an article which seems to be intended to whitewash China's political system is, in my opinion, an error of judgement on the part of the editors of this site.
Politically correct invasion = mass-immigration / deculturation
Where in Australian/Victorian law can be found traditional Melbournians authorising immigration free-for-all such as being allowed to take over by Brumby?
If Brumby was indeed a 'Kumar' from India, I suggest the local reaction would approximate that of Fiji's Frank Bainimarama, who saw the Indian invasion of his country and did something to stop it - overthrew the government!
Hale Frank! Frank and Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka before him (1987), each recognised the demise of ethnic Fijians being overrun by Indian Fijians in Fiji.
As Brumby's economic immigrants take local jobs, houses, rentals, offer job preferences to their nationals in employment, change shop names from English to Hindi, traditional Australians are sidelined, marginalised and any complaint quickly labeled 'racist'. What chance do locals have when government sides with the invaders? This is 21st century Vikingism, even including the slavery - Indian immigrants have been found guilty in Australia of slavery!
Australia's Celtic virtues are being bulldozed by Brumby and LibLab political correctness, allowing skilled immigrants first choice over local Aussies - jobs, housing, childcare, loans, you name it.
Under Brumby, immigrants have more rights than locally born Australians!
AWPC & Mornington Peninsula & Devilbend 3RPP radio on-line 3pm
Listen at 3pm, 16 September 2010.
I will be interviewing Maryland Wilson of Australian Wildlife Protection Council about the future of Devil Bend (which presents a last opportunity to link Mornington Peninsula wildlife habitat through a corridor to habitat within and outside the Peninsula. The local council will be having a meeting on 20 September about whether to support the zoning of Devilbend as a 'natural features reserve' where humans will have priority over wildlife and the place risks becoming a dead-zone or whether to support the indigenous fauna. Predictably the Victorian state government is pushing hard - along with Parks Victoria - for a 'natural features reserve'. This despite the fact that the auditor general's report in 2009 reported showed that the Victorian state government has demonstrated incompetence and dereliction in monitoring the status of wildlife according to its own legal requirements and would need about 30 years to catch up on real numbers at the current pace.
Unless we want humans, rabbits and foxes to take over the Peninsula for good (and the rabbits and foxes won't even survive our final assault) we Victorians need to make a big fuss about making Devilbend a magnificent wildlife preserve and part of continuous corridors ultimately going right round Australia.
Sheila Newman, population sociologist
home page
Omnivore argument
Menkit I have to admit that when it comes to the technical aspects of nutrition such as denaturation of vitamins and the presence or absence of enzymes I'm a little out of my depth (especially in your company).
It is clear that the modern diet of most western individuals is composed primarily of what people want to eat rather than what they need to eat. Whilst we do not resemble carnivores in any way there are those that argue we do not resemble herbivores either. Many claim that the most similar species to humans are chimpanzees particularly in an anatomical, genetic and evolutionary sense. Whilst chimpanzees feed primarily on the "salad" of the forest, they do also kill and eat other animals (including other species of monkey) to supplement their diet.
I suppose they key word here is "supplement". As I stated before it should be much more difficult to obtain meat in a natural environment than it would be to gather nuts, fruits and other plant material that should constitute the bulk of what humans eat.
I don't believe the argument that humans should be vegetarians/vegans is winnable simply because indigenous societies did practice hunting and did supplement their diet with meat to varying degrees. I don't think anyone can claim that what they were doing was wrong. I understand they only hunted on a subsistence level but that doesn't alter the fact that they still bothered to hunt in order to eat meat.
I have read the article from the link you provided and it presents a compelling argument. There are equally compelling arguments put forward by other scientists that humans are indeed omnivores. An example is located on the Vegetarian Resource Group website here.
With the current world overpopulation problem, the question of whether we should or shouldn't eat meat is more of an environmental and ethical issue. We can't feed the billions of people on the planet today yet those with money in society behave more and more like carnivores everyday.
774 radio maintains official propaganda
Melbourne ABC 774 is just having a phone in (13:20 hrs on 16 September, 2010 - Noni Hazlehurst presenting) about whether people are satisfied with news programs. I rang in to say that I'm not because the don't report on political candidates and movements outside the two major parties and a bit of the Greens.
I was told by the person answering the phone that this was 'a little off-topic'! So I didn't get to make my comment.
Amazing, considering the absolute surprise of mainstream journalists on tv and in the print media and radio in response to the recent Federal election results, which showed that the public had gone and sourced information elsewhere in order to be able to vote in alternatives.
So interesting to see the ABC still performing contortions to suppress any real comment.
Explains why I hardly ever listen, except to get some idea of what the direction of the current official propaganda is.
Thank heavens for candobetter.
School goes bats over red tape and flying foxes
Fed-up teachers at a northern NSW school claim they are being told to stop ringing the school bell, not hold sport days and plan different class times so they do not upset an influx of 20,000 flying foxes.
Staff at Maclean High School say their school has been taken over by the noisy animals and are so upset that they plan to hold a stop-work meeting on Friday.
Much of the Lower Clarence Floodplain has been cleared and it is estimated that the majority of the Clarence Catchment has between 20 and 50% has been cleared of native vegetation. Clearing for development, views, agriculture, and bushfire management remains one of the biggest threats to biodiversity. A visit to any of the Clarence Valley catchments to recognise the extent of the damage to our native forests and wildlife habitat from industrial logging on both state and private land.
Along the entire east coast flying foxes are suffering the effects of a shortage of their natural food – nectar and pollen – the worst shortage in recent memory, according to a DECCW regional biodiversity conservation officer.
Flying foxes fly over much greater distances than many other animals, dispersing seeds and pollen as they feed. This increases the genetic diversity of these plants, which has considerable health benefits for plant communities. They play a major role in the regeneration of hardwood forests and rainforests by pollination and dispersing seeds as they feed.
The bat colony is an ideal way of students to relate to Nature and form bonds with an endangered species. Instead of seeing the bats as a negative, they could fund-raise for netting to stop them raiding orchards, help re-vegetate the floodplain, and thus learn some valuable skills and foster a community spirit.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/school-goes-bats-over-red-tape-and-fly...
Brumby should not be above the law?