Few political groups and individuals who wear the label 'Marxist' (including this one) in 2011 are not working to serve the same ruling elites they claim to oppose or are not duped by those who are, but this was not always so.
Through much of 19th and 20th century history, a good many who labeled themselves 'Marxist', 'socialist', 'communist' or 'Trotskyist' were truly engaged in a struggle for a more equitable and democratic world.
Had they succeeded, the vast majority of humankind would today be in control its own destiny and not manipulated to serve the, short-sighted interests of the small selfish global elite.
If humankind were in control of its own destiny, as it could have been, there is no way that it would have allowed its population to grow to levels so much higher than the carrying capacity of this planet.
However, the elites of Europe and America and elsewhere prevented their people from emulating the example of the 1917 Russian Revolution in their own countries, notably in Germany in 1919, 1920 and 1923 and Great Britain in 1926 (as shown in the last episode of "Days of Hope" of 1975).
The isolation of the Russian Revolution led to its corruption by Stalin and in turn to the corruption of the whole international Communist movement.
In 2011, it's evident that this corruption has spread even to socialist groups which originated from the fight against that original corruption of the Communist movement. Not one of these groups in the US the UK or Australia even attempted to organise opposition to NATO's criminal war against Libya, See for yourself. Try to find any mention of Libya on any of these web sites: GreenLeft#fn1_7378" id="fn1_7378_text">[1], Direct Action#fn2_7378" id="fn2_7378_text">[2], the Socialist Alliance. #fn3_7378" id="fn3_7378_text">[3]In the UK, one group, Workers' Liberty has actually supported NATO's war against Libya(!!?).
Would those, who have so miserably failed to act to prevent NATO's destruction of Libya and mass murder of Libyans, have us truly believe that they give a damn about people from other countries?
If they appear to care for a tiny fraction of people from those countries, that is, those seeking to immigrate to First World countries, it is only because high immigration suits the interests of the very elites they claim to be against.
Footnotes
#fn1_7378" id="fn1_7378">1.[#fn1_7378_text">back] As of Saturday 8 October 2011, there is no mention of Libya on the main page, ...
#fn2_7378" id="fn2_7378">2.[#fn2_7378_text">back] One mention ostensibly opposed to the war dated 26 September, six months after the war began?! No other mention in its whole 'anti-war' section. No mention of silence of other 'Trotskyist' groups about Libya, nor of support for bombing of Libya by UK Workers' Liberty group with an Australian affiliate. If they truly oppose NATO's bombing of Libya, why cover up the shameful behaviour of other supposedly 'socialist' groups?
A friend of mine in the Kansai area reminds me that this video clip from the BBC News on 14 March 2011 is worth seeing again. I believe the BBC never invited Chris to come back and speak on the news after this. Wonder why not. He was basically right, after all.
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This Is What Passes as "Decontamination" in Fukushima (for That Matter, in Japan) - Well, interesting videos. This is Japan, folks! Scraping off the topsoil with cotton gloves and some of the people are not even wearing masks, so are they breathing in some of that dust? And what about the foliage? Isn't there quite a lot of radioactive material possibly attached to leaves and so on??
My Kansai friend also pointed out that the radiation pollution emanating from the Fukushima No.1 nuclear disaster site has people here quite worried. There have been appearing on the Internet here some pictures of odd occurrences which people think might be due to the radiation pollution. They are all saying, "We do not state definitively that this is due to radiation, but we think it *might* be." Judge for yourself. Sorry about all the Japanese - please do not worry about the writing, just look at the videos and pictures...
Last year's rice bags on sale - What the blogger is trying to say here is 'couldn't some unscrupulous people put radiation polluted rice in one of these bags and sell it as last year's rice? Please be careful what you're buying when you go to the supermarket....'
NISA Presents TEPCO's Severe Accident Operation Manual - A bit late? Even so, since TEPCO did not allow for the occurrence of a "station blackout" (SBO - total loss of external power) in the manual, so as far as 3/11 is concerned it is useless. I suppose it's just as well we know that fact...
Sorry, this is in Japanese - Report from a housewife in Miyagi Prefecture who was pregnant with a child with anencephaly, whose daughter had severe stomach problems, and whose dog suddenly died of an enlarged heart. - The two-year-old daughter had severe stomach cramps and was diagnosed as "invagination of the intestine" at a hospital. The daughter also had diarrhea and nose-bleeds. After the abortion of the baby, the woman also had severe menstruation problems (severe menstrual pain, a lengthening of the menstrual cycle from 28 to 33 days and possible endometriosis). All of this is just coincidence, or what? I don't there's any way this can be directly linked to the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, but what do you think? Frankly, it makes me feel both sad and sick just to read this. It's not my intention to spoil your day, but it looks like this kind of thing may just be the tip of the unclear iceberg...
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News: An enraged Fukushima citizen talks about everything - A very long interview in Japanese (1 hr 52 min) and I am sorry I cannot help you understand it all, but there is a brief English overview of the contents on the page. This is also extremely sickening, but we need to be aware of what is going on - to be aware of what nuclear power is doing to people. So all you doctors and others who claim radiation doesn't hurt people, get your overalls on and go help out at the nuclear disaster site! I hear they're short of workers now. For the life of me, I can't imagine why. They pay quite well, I hear. You won't see me there, though.
Here's an example:
English PDF file - Radiation and Reason - Fukushima and After - by Professor Wade Allison, Oxford University and Professor Akira Tokuhiro, University of Idaho. They recommend on slide 17 that the radiation standards for external exposure be relaxed about 1000 times to 100 mSv for a max single dose, 100 mSv in any one month (1200 mSv per year) and a max lifetime dose of 5 Sv. Slide 7 onwards plays down internal exposure from food. Fine. Let people choose what they want to eat or not on the basis of publicly announced data! But professors, don't let me catch you or whoever buys your food snooping around the supermarkets looking for the lowest deal in radioactive contamination. Oh, and please do not forget to support Fukushima farmers by eating their produce! And if you're so sure that external exposure is safe up to 100 mSv/month, why not take a month's stint of work at the Fukushima No.1 Nuclear Power Station doing the kind of work you can see people doing in the video two items below??
VIDEO - #Fukushima I Nuke Plant: Video of Inside Reactor 1 - Don't know why I didn't see this a few days ago. What a mess!! This is like some kind of weird futuristic film! The future is here... Of course, they're talking in Japanese, but from time to time you can hear a voice shout out "(number) milli!" and then the person with the camera says, "Ryokai!" (OK), or sometimes just "Hai!" (Yes). The first man is reading out the radioactivity level... Just before the end someone says "189" (no "milli"), but the blog says it's 189 millisieverts.
Video of Inside Reactor 2, Maybe the Last Video of Quince Who Was Lost in the Building - Yes, this is the one you've been waiting for. Quince, the robot, finally gets itself lost inside reactor unit 2. The final few seconds are funny. No sound, so as you get your tour of the inside of the crippled reactor building listen to your favourite compilation of punk songs for background. My recommendations are: God Save The Queen, Going Underground, Is Vic There?, and finally Hanging Around. (14 mins)
The nuclear crisis hasn't gone away here, but there is lees reporting on the TV and in the newspaper and that iis causing people to 'forget' what is still going on in Fukushima. However, a Japanese friend of mine sent me this link...
Although the page is in Japanese, you can see that this little Geiger counter is selling for 9800 yen - a little over USD100 these days. My friend told me that 300 of these were sold out in two minutes!! I think there are still quite a few people 'out there' who do not think the nuclear crisis is over yet...
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Germany's "Heute Show" Making Fun of TEPCO, Japanese Government - This is a bit old (April) and some who are caught in the middle of the nuclear disaster may not find it funny at all (but rather sad or exasperating), but it is worth watching just to see how the Germans feel about what is happening here. [Many more informative items about different aspects of the nuclear disaster on the EX-SKF site.]
A friend pointed out to me today that the Japanese language TEPCO Press Release mentions the presence of Tritium and "all-beta" in the seawater near the water intakes (the figures being in this Japanese PDF table) at a level of 470 becquerels/litre for Tritium and 380 becquerels/litre for "all-beta". However the detection of Tritium is not mentioned in the equivalent (as far as I can see) English press release and the PDF table has not been translated. Maybe they'll get round to it in a few days. Maybe never. We'll see...
If you have time today, please watch this (1 hr) lecture by Jan Lundberg...
Natural Gas: a Bridge to Nowhere? - Not, of course, specifically about nuclear power, but about energy, and so nuclear power is hanging around in the shadowy background there somewhere.
If you don't have an hour to watch/listen to the lecture, you can get some idea of what Jan said by looking at this page...
Setagaya adjoins Ota ward where radiation levels exceeding the ward’s own safety standard of 0.25 microsieverts per hour were detected at 13 schools, the Ota ward board of education said today.
During 50-plus years of nuclear weapons production and government-sponsored nuclear energy research and production that generated contaminated soil and groundwater covering two million acres in 35 states, the U.S. government did not have environmental structures, technologies or infrastructure to deal with the legacy.
Taiwan, China to sign nuclear safety pact - Despite having nuclear power stations of its own, Taiwan is getting worried about nuclear power stations on the south coast of China...
The nuclear disaster appears to be entering a new phase. In the last few days, although reporting on the disaster and other nuclear issues has not disappeared, it is being slowly shunted aside by 1. Japan's possible participation in the negotiations for establishing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which will destroy Japanese farming and the rural economy (another kick in the face for northeast Japan), 2. raising the consumption tax from the current 5% to 10%. Ostensibly to raise money for the disaster reconstruction, business circles naturally find it more palatable for this extremely regressive tax mode to be used than any other that might hurt their bottom lines, or even divert money away from military expenditure and so on, and 3. raising the age of pension provision to 68 for those now around 50 (with no mention of any change in the 65 retirement age!). Strangely, I do not see anyone out in the streets protesting. All of this, and the way the government has behaved over the nuclear contamination issue ought to have people protesting as they are at Wall Street or in Greece, but not in Japan. Just read this...
China to lead in new nuclear reactors? - One more reason not to be in Japan, perhaps! (Along with the nuclear power plant increase in South Korea, to say nothing of what might be going on in North Korea!)
Second Dutch nuclear rail shipment heads to France - Good to see that some people are protesting about nuclear waste. It's a really crucial nuclear issue. Although many Japanese know about it and condemn the nuclear industry's irresponsible (big understatement) attitude over nuclear waste, you hear very little about anyone actually protesting about it.
Green light for nuclear expansion in Britain: minister - Clearly, the British have decided to ignore any safety issues that exist as well as to turn a blind eye to the nuclear waste problem. Perhaps they think they will be able to solve that with the reprocessing plant at Sellafield, but that simply creates more pollution problems of its own (please read Chris Busby's Wolves of Water for more details on that).
What happened to local children after Chernobyl is driving some Fukushima parents closer to nervous breakdowns; many families with young children have already fled the prefecture.
Oh, dear. This is so sad... Children need to be evacuated, and then examined where they have evacuated to. This seems to be designed more to un-reassure anxious parents...
Radioactive fallout in rain 10 times more than originally reported - Well, the June 11 numbers seem to be out by a factor of 24 to 25 and the July 19 figures by about a factor of 19. It looks a lot more like conscious tampering with the figures than a genuine mistake. I agree with Mr Mochizuki that the general rule is not to announce anything bad until people have already been unwittingly experiencing it for a month or two. That seems to have been the method employed since very soon after 3/11.
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Protests thwart India's nuclear plans - Oh. The 'nuclear industry' seems to have been quite severely affected in several countries, but not so much in Japan, where people seem to be going back to sleep now that seven months have passed since the earthquake + tsunami + nuclear disaster, but that may be illusory. Whether it will prove possible to start up some of the currently halted reactors or not will show if the Japanese public have really gone back to sleep...
Chairman of the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) Hiromasa Yonekura visits Hokkaido - On p.8 of yesterday's (October 7) Akahata Newspaper, I noticed an article about Mr Yonekura's visit to Hokkaido the previous day. Although not directly related to the Fukushima No.1 nuclear disaster (though the Keidanren is very pro-nuke), the contents of the article are extremely symbolic of the thinking of Japan's business elite, and therefore shed light on the nature of the thinking behind the pro-nuke stance. The visit was an unusual one in that it consisted of a meeting between Keidanren officials and officials of the central committee of the Japan Agriculture (JA), the central organization of Hokkaido's agriculture, including the chairman, Mr Toshiaki Tobita. I suppose Mr Yonekura's goal was to get the Hokkaido agricultural organization to back the negotiations to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which Japan's industrial business circles want to join as soon as possible. (The article has a photo of Mr Yonekura speaking in front of a Hokkaido JA poster which says, "We oppose the negotiations for participation in the TPP.")
Mr Yonekura's remarks were along the following lines: Japan's participation in TPP is crucial for the realization of economic growth. Although the principle of TPP is abolition of trade tariffs, rice and wheat should be exempted and in order to negotiate conditions on items we really do not want to give way on we must participate at an early stage. According to an article in the Nikkei Shinbun's web edition (in Japanese), Mr Yonekura also stated, "We must also earn foreign currency in order to purchase energy and food through economic collaboration with other countries." Mr Yonekura also visited agricultural areas and is quoted as saying, "I was really inspired! I would really like to see (Hokkaido) lead Japan's agriculture." Hokkaido is well known for it's large-scale and diversified agriculture.
In reply to Mr Yonekura's remarks, Chairman Tobita said, "Hokkaido's agriculture has been nurtured through protection by high tariff rates. I am very worried about what will happen if the tariffs are removed." Following the meeting, Mr Tobita also states, "We have not changed our minds about joining the rest of the country in having the whole agricultural sector oppose TPP participation." So I guess Mr Yonekura did not quite manage to achieve the aim he set out to in making the trip up to Hokkaido
And I think the reason for that is basically that Mr Yonekura, the Keidanren he represents, and therefore more or less the complete industrial business circle in Japan are living in a totally self-delusionary fantasyland.
1) The "realization of economic growth"? Dream on.
2) Importing energy and food from overseas? Yes, I hope it will continue, but at the same time I think it might be prudent to take measures inside the country just in case this does not go on forever, as Mr Yonekura and his crew seem to believe (although one of the pro-nuke arguments is that nuclear power is good insurance against future fossil energy shortages - another delusion).
3) All industrialized countries have problems supporting primary industries (agriculture, mining and so on) since industry is so much more productive. However, as suggested in 2), since it is dangerous to rely heavily on other countries for imports of basic necessities (food and energy), most countries have a system of subsidies and so on to support their domestic agricultural (etc.) production. TPP participation will devastate Japan's rural economy just at the time when world energy shortages are about to have an effect on the production and transportation of food (how many years in the future? 5? 10?). Even Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries estimates that Japan's food self-sufficiency will decline to 13% from the current 39% if Japan joins the TPP. This is tantamount to the sacrifice and destruction of Japan's rural economy for the sake of, maybe - if they are lucky - a short-lived flush of industrial activity.
4) Hokkaido's agriculture is no model for the rest of the country. Clearly, Mr Yonekura hasn't discovered topography or population density yet. It's true that Hokkaido produces quite a good exportable surplus (Hokkaido produces twice as much food as it's residents consume). But Hokkaido's large fields require large machines, and the winters are bitterly cold. When fossil fuels become much more expensive, or unavailable, how is this agriculture going to survive? Are people from the south going to want to volunteer to go to Hokkaido to start up small family farms after fossil energy use becomes impossible? Not many, I think.
Time for Mr Yonekura and his friends to wake up and realize that the future is not going to be simply a very long extension of the party we've been enjoying for the last 50 years or so. There are hard times coming and TPP participation isn't going to prevent them, in fact it will probably make things significantly worse for ordinary Japanese people. There are LOTS of things the Japanese government and people should be doing now (as I mention in 2)) to help to mitigate the effects of coming food and energy shortages. (Improving the livelihoods of Japanese farmers in order to get more young people involved in agriculture - of course this will raise food prices and is totally contradictory to the general direction of TPP - would be a good place to start.) participation Either way, since economic growth is effectively dead, nuclear power isn't needed either. No sane society needs it.
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#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: TEPCO Has Started to Expel Hydrogen Gas from the Pipe Leading to Reactor 1 CV
Citing the doses of radiation received in medical procedures, such as CT and PET scans, Allison said Japan's standard — which bans the sale of food containing more than 500 becquerels per kilogram of radiation and requires the evacuation of areas receiving 20 millisieverts a year — is far too conservative.
PET scans, which emit gamma rays to map internal organs, usually the brain, give patients a dose of 15 millisieverts of radiation in a couple of hours, which is the equivalent of eating 2,000 kg of meat tainted with 500 becquerels per kilogram of cesium, he said.
But with CT and PET scans the radioactive material isn't actually inside the body! The radioactive material in the machine is emitting gamma rays which pass thought the body for the time when the scan is being carried out. The "expert" assumes that is safe, but where's the proof of that? The problem with internal exposure, when the radioactive material is actually inside the body, is that localised areas of organ tissue are being bombarded with alpha/beta/gamma (depending on the radionuclide that has entered the body) over a long period of time. That is a quite different story from an CT or PET scan or an X-ray, and the "expert" really ought to know that. Ahem! So he is either NOT an expert or he is very brazenly lying! Which do you prefer??
The group has apparently determined it is difficult at present to maintain the 1 millisievert limit and envisions setting a more realistic interim limit without specifying a numerical target, while keeping the 1 millisievert limit as a long-term goal, according to the sources.
So the panel is sitting around saying that since the 1 millisievert limit cannot be maintained, it should be changed to an unspecified number while hoping that the level will come down to 1 millisievert in the long term. To me this sounds like a very bad excuse to NOT evacuate people from quite badly contaminated areas of, for example, Fukushima City and Koriyama City (and some other towns and cities in between). I would like to suggest that the panel hold its meetings in public in one of these cities. That might be a little more like a fair process. The panel might find that the opinions of the local people will force them to change their minds and do their work a little faster... Nothing like actually being in a nuclear contaminated area when you are asked to make decisions that will affect the people there!
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Report of long-range plutonium find tardy - Although the article is fairly good and addresses some of the concerns mentioned above (like internal exposure), it does attempt to perpetuate the stupid myth that because Plutonium is a "heavy" element, it should not "fly" very far. Come on, folks, you don't need a PhD in chemistry to know that atoms are very, very light, and so if some material (whatever element it may be composed of) is vaporized in an explosion, for example, it may move quite a long way, depending on wind speed and so on. The second thing is that it is NOT, NOT, NOT "not worth worrying about" small amounts of Plutonium and Strontium-90 hanging around in the environment!! There should be a big, fat zero amount of these artificial radionuclides in the environment for anyone to pronounce the area "safe". The fact that they are present even in the teeniest-weeniest-tiniest amounts is sufficient reason to not bother with nuclear power. Are the people who are making these statements all indestructible bionic men, or something???
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Creditors win early round against Tepco - See how the big-name politicians are behaving? Quite happy to see that the banks and other major debtors get their money back and for ordinary people to be disadvantaged when it comes to compensation for the damage, losses and problems caused by the nuclear disaster. Democratic Party of Japan? What's "democratic" about it?
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Nuclear reactor shut down in Japan, cause unknown - I think we're down to ten reactors actually operating in Japan now. Powers that be want to get some of the stopped reactors up and running again, but it is going to be a fight with public opinion.
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Disaster-zone population would've fallen 46% anyway: study - Hmmm... depopulation due to aging, but I think also part of the story is that farmers in Japan cannot make a living producing food. People are therefore drifting away from rural areas (the areas in Japan that would be self-sufficient in food if left to their own devices are almost all in the northeast and Hokkaido) and towards industrialized areas, where it is more or less possible to make a liveable wage - if you're lucky to get "decent" work, and that is becoming much harder in recent years...
#Radiation in Japan: Those Who Fled Fukushima in Panic Made a "Rational Decision", Says Government - This is brilliant! Despite the fact that the government was downplaying the nuclear disaster and the subsequent radiation right from the start, those who evacuated from Fukushima Prefecture in the first month will now be compensated for their correct guess that the government was lying because they were "rational," and those that waited more than a month because they had some faith in what the government was telling them will be refused compensation. You can just imagine the top politicians chuckling amongst themselves as they picture the poor public trying to make head or tail of what it's all about. Ha, ha. The whole thing makes me feel utterly disgusted!
Geothermal trove lies mostly untapped despite energy crisis - The usual story here - nothing to be too surprised about; only METI, as usual, blocking local relatively non-polluting locally-produced energy forms for the sake of building more nuclear power stations. Shame, shame.
Dr Chris Busby sings Bob Dylan... I Pity the Poor Newspaper Man...
Nice one. Not usual guitar tuning. DADGAD (usually EADGBE) and then play in A... I'm sure you'll figure out what the song is about if you listen to it.
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An Anti-nuke Green Party to be Established in Japan Soon??
The Japanese media this morning seems to be filled with the news that a well-known anthropologist, Shin'ichi Nakazawa (Professor at Meiji University in Tokyo), is about to set up a Green Party which will have a nuclear phase-out as one of its main policies. This would appear to be a 'good idea,' given that 80-90% of the Japanese population (according to opinion polls and so on) would appear to favour the idea of a nuclear phase-out. There have been attempts to set up green parties in Japan before (since about the 1980s), but they have all failed due to the inability to create a strong enough centripetal force for all like-minded greenies to get on board - i.e. the main problem being that the personalities involved prefer to be big fish in little ponds and somehow have an aversion to compromising on the details of ideology and direction for the sake of the overall goal. What chance does this latest attempt stand?
A newsletter is to be published, beginning perhaps in November, and a website set up to promote networking around the country. The idea, apparently, is NOT to participate directly in elections for the time being, but to endorse candidates who espouse appropriately green policies. This is probably partly because of the high election deposits in Japan - 3 million yen for candidates in small constituencies and 6 million yen for proportional representation candidates, the deposit being forfeited if the candidate does not receive 10% of the vote. Small (new) parties generally find it hard to field candidates for national elections. (Deposits for local elections are lower, down to 300,000 yen for city or ward council elections and not necessary for town or village council elections.) It will be interesting to see what the newsletter and website will look like when they appear next month... (Internet articles in Japanese and and article on the front page of the Tokyo Newspaper this morning.)
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A little glimpse of the REAL Japan?
I wasn't going to post another video on today's update, but my friend in Kyushu sent me the link for this one because it shows very 'nicely' what people in Fukushima are facing in terms of attitude from their government...
Here's the script of the clip from about 10 seconds in...
Ms. Akira Matsu of the Komeito (Clean Government Party)
"At a symposium on problems at primary schools, a woman lawyer living in Aizu Wakamatsu City, about 100 km for the nuclear disaster site, gave a very serious presentation. This woman has four children, three in primary school and one in kindergarten, and she is also seven months pregnant. The children and the mother have all been tested and have been found to have internal caesium. She was told that there is no immediate cause for concern, but she is very worried, especially about internal exposure, so she told her children not to drink the milk that is given out at the school. When they did this, a teacher said, 'Those who are not going to drink the milk. come out to the front of the class!' There were several of these children. They were told to pour their milk into a bucket one by one and asked to give the reason why they would not drink the milk. The teacher apparently said, 'If you don't drink the milk, you are not Fukushima Prefecture citizens; you have no right to live in Fukushima!' This is like when people were called "hikokumin" (non-citizens) during pre-war times, and the mother was really concerned about whether this was really OK or not and whether she could explain to her children that they could continue to live in Fukushima in the future... Stop laughing and listen, Chief Cabinet Secretary! This is a very important topic and I want you to listen very carefully. Please don't laugh when something as important as this is being said. This is not a joke!"
[See Chief Cabinet Secretary Fujimura laughing and he and Mr. Edano. now Minister for Energy, Trade and Industry, sitting there looking like a pair of primary school students being scolded by their teacher...]
"What I want to say is that this is how people in Fukushima are really feeling..."
That's up to 1:53. You can stop there - if you watch the rest of the clip, you will see that, despite the rebuke, the government politicians lined up opposite the speaker are not being very respectful.
If someone wants to hack this site because we are telling the truth about what is going on in Japan and indirectly casting a bad light on some of the top politicians, all I can say is that there can be nothing more condemning than seeing how these politicians behave in their parliament when a fellow parliamentary member is talking about the suffering of people in Fukushima. Personally, i am just completely flabbergasted at the fact that top national politicians, the Chief Cabinet Secretary, can you believe? can behave in this way. It only goes to prove, in my opinion, everything that people in Fukushima (and elsewhere) have been saying about the cold and uncaring attitudes of politicians and officials towards those affected by the disasters...
#Fukushima I Nuke Plant: March 15 6AM Explosion Was "Somewhere in the Plant", Not Near Reactor 4
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Resources used up this year - Yes, it's clear "we" are not living anything even close to a sustainable lifestyle - some people in not-so-developed countries are, maybe, but?most of them are trying to "develop" and emulate the lifestyles of the "rich" just as while "we" in the industrialized countries are finding out what is wrong with this way of life. Please see next link...
Earth Overshoot Day - Right, so it seems "we" are in "overshoot". But "we" have known this for about 30 years already and no one seems to give a fig, especially (naturally) the people who make a lot of money pursuing overshoot. Written in 1980, Overshoot - The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change by William R. Catton Jr. was a very strong warning that has been studiously ignored by about 99.999999999% of humanity (well, not everyone reads English, after all....)
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Wave power excites as next energy source - Wow! I'm so excited! Sure, might be worthwhile in some locations (near the sea, ha, ha), but I just wish that when thinking about future energy issues and writing articles about them people wouldn't just assume that we will "need to use" the same amounts of energy "we" are using now. The whole point about the mess we are in now is that we (who then?) have collectively decided that's it's reasonable to make use of every available resource and technology to generate electricity and make "stuff" so that, for example, the Karen people (a people who prefer to live by the production of rice in swidden fields in mountain forests) in their mountain villages in northern Thailand can watch Everton vs. Liverpool playing live in the Premier League (that's the top UK pro football league, round ball, just in case there's any confusion) on a Saturday evening. I also watched it live in Japan - great game it was - and Liverpool won 2-0, no doubt pleasing my friend down there in Kyushu. BUT if I have to put up with nuclear power plants or any other kind of energy source that is going to cause problems and keep "us" in overshoot (see above) then I'll be quite happy to get the guitar out and sit around the fire singing folk songs for entertainment. I'm not all that fussy about what I am doing in the time when I don't have the concentration to do anything more "productive," BUT I AM pretty fussy about not having to have nuclear power to do it.
From today onwards I intend to start a new update on the first of each month. I will continue to update each day as long as there is material to warrant doing so and I am physically able to.
Small hydropower plants keep it local - All renewable energy forms are going to have their problems. They need to be sited in appropriate locations in order to reap the full benefits and they must be operated by people who know what they're doing. The real proof of renewables will come after fossil fuels become very expensive and unavailable in a couple of decades' time from now (or less?). Then what? Please look at the photo and tell me how you are going to repair that turbine if it breaks down in a world where fossil energy is no longer available. Most people will not be able to. That's why I keep saying that a society/economy that runs on renewable energy forms will be transitional to what comes after that. Which is what? What do you want it to be? How are you going to ensure that you get there?
In reply to this, my friend in Kyushu said:
You know, at some time I'd love to turn my mind back to pre 3/11 days and start the important questions you brought up in the blog yesterday... However the 3/11 joker in the pack really means that not a lot can be done if we are having to live under the threat of atomic fallout, etc... We are screwing up our future when we could/should be sorting it out. This needs a good hard examination of the worst, which those in power are simply not able to focus on. Imagine if my future had been a plot in Iitate mura for example. I am 80 odd km's from Sendai. Am I prepared to put the work and capital in (is this tantamount to attaching a ball and chain when I should be ready to go at the drop of a hat)?
I'm not sure if that is comprehensible to people who do not understand the situation in Japan, but my friend is thinking of buying a forested mountain in response to future food and energy shocks that are likely to happen in Japan in the (not-so-distant?) future. However, if we are all now having to live with the threat of the 'local' nuclear power station blowing up, what chances do people have of making realistic decisions for the long-term future???
Tepco's management may be forced to step down and pensions will be cut, according to the Nikkei newspaper. Beyond compensation payments, the utility may have a funding shortage of ¥8.3 trillion over 10 years if it cannot raise power rates and restart idled nuclear reactors.
Given TEPCO's past safety record, surely it would be best to disband the company and put its assets under new management. In that way the generation and distribution of electricity could be separated, breaking the choking monopoly of the power company on the electrical power business, and power station safety put on a new footing. Simply allowing the same company to continue to make the same mistakes while carrying out the same horrific mis-management practices after a disaster like this is simply not acceptable.
The detected amounts of plutonium were small and posed no danger to health, the officials said.
Cough! ANY amount of Plutonium is far too much, and dangerous. Of course, in Iitate Village it may not be immediately harmful to anyone's health since there are very few people left there now!! The "too heavy to fly" quote is from the Three Plutonium Brothers.
Should environmental organisations concerned about overpopulation enjoin Australians to have no more than two children each, for the good of the planet? Or, since our average fertility rate is below 2 children per person, should we instead congratulate Australians and ask them to keep it that way?
Where the average measure matters most
I have reservations about promoting small families in Australia. It is the average within a society that matters rather than individual cases. It could be off -putting for environmentalists who might already have 3 children but who may have a sister with none.
I think asking people to undertake this would be somewhat arbitrary, unnecessary, simplified and rigid. Given our fertility rate is less than 2 why would we make a point that the fertility rate needs this?
We could just as well campaign for large celibate communities which would also have the effect of reducing fertility.
The way our society is now structured with high housing/land prices, people can’t afford large families. I think we should make our vision for the country an attractive one that shows up the nastiness of the regime. Why should we be using this “stick” when governments and big business are using it for us with all the negative effects of ever-rising population – increased regulation, increased cost of land, overcrowding, loss of contact with nature, high power costs, declining wage-gains and workers' conditions etc. etc.)
Why don’t environmentalists concerned with population growth commend the fertility rate as OK? - but let’s keep it that way!
There’s a slogan:
Fertility rate is OK. Let’s keep it that way! That’s positive and affirming - not rigid. It’s a carrot- rather than a stick! We can associate it with the good things about our life in Australia. We can present it to immigrants as a way of preserving and caring for the society they have chosen to adopt.
Growth lobby highjacked ideal society and made life hard for all
In reality our freedoms are being taken from us. That is unattractive I can’t see that asking people to take pledges on their future will make ecological sustainability and keeping natural environments safe attractive. The post 1970s period could have been fabulous for us without the push for more and more productivity, profits and population growth. The problem articulated in the 70s and the early 80s was, "How will we deal with our leisure in the future of the 3 and 4 day week?” It never happened- but it could have. If this brief glimpse of what was possible had played out with maybe lower productivity, lower impact, lower population growth, less work, greater leisure time, less development we would possibly have had an almost ideal society. This is what we need to latch onto, rather than pledges that would surely cause some cognitive dissonance and that people will not really want to make. This is a sacrifice. Who knows what one’s personal future holds? We should emphasize freedom not sacrifice.
Environmentalists need to find more agreement and cooperate in presenting an inspiring vision of what Australia’s our future could look like without the growth lobby dominating.
Our fertility rate is OK. Let's keep it that way!
Our immigration rate is too rapid. Let's cap it.
Shallow policy-making based on economic health at the detriment of the majority of the people of Australia is about pandering to the the "needs" of big businesses and those who benefit from growth.
The impacts are not only on people, but on animals.
Non-humans are usually ignored in the economic-growth paradigm that dominates policy making today. “Sustainability” is often referred to as being about ensuring comfortable human survival, and not other species.
The Ponzi-economic growth-based rational not only displaced existing people as the pyramid becomes larger at wealthier at the top, but displaces non-humans.
Land clearing and agriculture
Agriculture, land-clearing, logging, urban sprawl, roads, introduced and feral animals all result in wildlife habitat destruction. Increased noise, pollution, traffic, and crime also means that animals come under threat from contacts with humans. Our mammal extinction rate is the highest in the world, and Australia's rich natural heritage of biodiversity is under threat from more extinctions.
Habitat loss is their greatest threat as more land is being made available for human "carrying capacity". As several large-scale scientific studies have confirmed, severe environmental degradation is taking place due to animal farming. Animal farming for meat, leather, and milk is depleting our natural resources at an alarming rate.
Green-house gas emissions from animal farms are a major contributor to global warming. Enormous amounts of water and plant food is required to produce meat. It is estimated that about 100,000 litres of water, 100 kilogram of hay, and 4 kilogram of grain is required to produce just one kilogram of meat.
The quality of life for animals suffers, with factory-farming that becomes more inhumane in order to feed so many people.
Greater human-animal contact.
As our urban boundaries continue to expand, livestock, wildlife and pets also come into more contact with people. This means they are more and more under threat from thrill-killings, theft and interference.
Kangaroos are reportedly being tortured on a weekly basis due to increasing population growth in the Peel region, with one animal being found torn in two after being tied to two separate cars.
There is a constant push by governments for ever increasing population growth to drive economies, despite the fact that animal habitats are being decimated and many areas of the world, including Australia, are struggling to provide enough water for the existing population.
Associate Professor Eleonora Gullone from the School of Psychiatry and Psychology said the number of inhumane acts committed against kangaroos and domesticated animals over the past two years in Whittlesea ( a high growth area of Victoria) was concerning. There is evidence that kangaroos are disliked by farmers and rural property owners, she said.
High population growth and social disunity go hand in hand with tensions, crime, displacement and homelessness, and these factors all make animals ideal and silent victims social dis-ease. Kangaroos are our national iconic animals, and landholders have been pandered to too much by our DSE and permits to get rid of them are far too easily handed out.
Increasing demand for livestock products.
Population growth means increasing demand for livestock products such as dairy, eggs and meats. Livestock are under pressure to produce more, but to save costs and space, they are being confined in factory farms. This means mutilations to stop their "aggression", antibiotics in their foods, increased risks of zoo noses(disease originating from animals), methane gas emissions, pollution to waterways and soils, and declining animal welfare standards.
In the mid-twentieth century, exponential population growth was noticed early and taken seriously enough to spur a dramatic acceleration of global food production from the 1940s onwards. Traditional farming practices and traditional crop varieties were displaced as farming became intensive: the birth of industrial agriculture or factory farming occurred on a massive scale. Not only animals, but we too will feel like factory-farmed chickens squashed into metropolitan areas where housing is becoming more dense.
Companion animals and human densities.
Pets are good for children as it teaches them social skills and to have empathy with animals. However, being forced into high density living denies children the ability to thrive, and to have the full benefits of space and room to raise animals for companionship. It's a formula for mental illness and less active children, more prone to obesity and diabetes. Many elderly people rely on companion animals too. Due to more people renting and moving into animal-hostile lifestyles, more draconian "management" of homeless animals is being considered. Pets become the waste products of society when they can't be accommodated. They are doomed to the rubbish-bin of “death row”. Our cities are becoming more removed from the natural world.
Overfishing:
Mulloway (Argyrosomus japonicus) occur in estuarine and coastal waters surrounding Australia, Africa, India, Pakistan, China, Korea and Japan. In Australia they are a highly targeted iconic fish species due to their large size, attractive silver coloration and good eating. Reported commercial catches of mulloway in New South Wales show a steady and substantial decline from 380 tonnes in 1973/74 to 60 tonnes in 2005/06.
NSW DPI Narrandera Fisheries Centre research scientist, Dr Lee Baumgartner, said a film crew visited the Riverina region last year to film the documentary and raise awareness about issues facing the iconic Murray cod.
Overfishing has drastically reduced the numbers of Southern Bluefin Tuna. The world's oceans have been experiencing enormous blooms of jellyfish, apparently caused by overfishing, declining water quality, and rising sea temperatures. Now, scientists are trying to determine if these outbreaks could
represent a "new normal" in which jellyfish increasingly supplant fish. By removing a curb on jellyfish population growth, overfishing "opens up ecological space for jellyfish," says Anthony Richardson.
A seeming increase in shark attacks worldwide may well have a human cause, with low-cost air travel, but also overpopulation, overfishing and even climate change among the hidden suspects, say experts. The experts behind the Australian Shark Attack File argue that the enormous increase in the size of the Australian population over the last century has contributed to the increase in numbers of overall shark attacks (including non-fatal attacks). The shark is under relentless attack from humans themselves.
A third of open-water shark species, including the great white and the hammerhead, are facing extinction, driven in part by demand in Asia for shark-fin soup, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Loss of biodiversity
The monocultural practices of modern agricultural methods have been the driving force behind this loss of genetic diversity. Monoculture is the practice of broad scale cropping using the one variety of plant.
Globally, more than 5,000 wildlife species are threatened with extinction. Some 25% are mammals, and 11% birds. Of the reptile, amphibian and fish species described as threatened, 20% are reptiles, 25% are amphibians and 34% are fish.
Biodiversity loss is one of the world's most pressing crises and there is growing global concern about the status of the biological resources on which so much of human life depends.
It has been estimated that the current species extinction rate is between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than it would naturally be. - IUCN
Our duty of care to the animal kingdom is being compromised by excessive population growth.
Few of us realise that the main cause of the current environmental crisis is human nature.
All we're doing is what all other creatures have ever done to survive, expanding into whatever territory is available and using up whatever resources are available, just like a bacterial culture growing in a Petri dish till all the nutrients are used up.
Our growth means the world in which rampant consumption in rich countries, and over population in developing countries, is rapidly outstripping the global resources.
Ultimately, the loss of biodiversity will result in a dead, cruel and sterile planet in which local or regional ecosystems have collapsed.
Despite the near daily news coverage of many poor countries suffering conflict and disaster, critical, underlying issues are almost never mentioned by journalists reporting endless symptoms and predicaments. The issues covered in this article add insight into the key development challenges facing the countries concerned and, by implication, the policies of countries like the US, UK, Australia and Canada, where billions are being spent in aid and military interventions to try and stabilise failing states.
To News editors: Raising news awareness on driving forces behind failing states
By Brian McGavin, writer and analyst. August 2011.
Below I give some interesting and generally unreported facts that provide important background on many of the failing states regularly in the news. For example, Somalia, Haiti, Iraq, Palestinian Territory and Afghanistan. It also includes Pakistan and Iran.
Despite the near daily news coverage of these countries, critical, underlying issues are almost never mentioned by journalists reporting endless symptoms and predicaments. These issues add a great deal of insight into the key development challenges facing the countries concerned and by implication the policies of countries like the US, UK and Canada, where billions are being spent in aid and military interventions to try and stabilise failing states.
The aim is to give journalists more balance and context to reports. A simple one or two-sentence addition of data gives a far better understanding of the significance of demographics to a country’s geo-political profile, its aid dependency and social and economic future.
(See table below*)
Through 2011 we have seen almost daily coverage of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ and armed conflict. While some underlying factors of high youth unemployment, rising food prices, water shortages and fears of growing Islamic fundamentalism are mentioned, the media has decidedly not focused on the troubling demographic realities the Middle East and other crisis-ridden countries face. Good news coverage is not just about immediate events, but fundamental causal symptoms. Here are some examples.
1) Egypt. Hardly any mention has been made of the large and rapidly growing population of Egypt, its extremely small arable land area of just 3 per cent, food imports of 40 per cent and the total dependence now on food imports and aid to sustain the population.
Egypt’s population almost quadrupled in just 60 years, from 21 million in 1950 to 81 million in 2010 and at its current 1.8 per cent annual increase in population, the population could hit 150 million before 2050, unless the birth rate declines. (UNPD data). Consider the potential for endless and costly food aid and the rapidly growing numbers of unemployed and disaffected young people attracted to violence and extremism.
2) Afghanistan. On December 23, 2009, UK Channel 4 TV news ran a 20-minute lead on selling children and kidnapping people in Afghanistan. The father selling two of his children was portrayed as a ‘victim’ of poverty in being unable to feed or care for his family. The size of his family was not mentioned – but he had a lot of children.
The reporter asked what would happen to the child and was told it was an opportunity for a better education, but no more was asked about the child’s fate. Various ‘experts’ including Joe Klein of the New York Times and the CEO of Oxfam UK were asked for their view. Corruption, poverty and criminality were discussed, but what was not mentioned was the country’s demographic trajectory that would add a great deal of context to the discussion.
The UK Guardian newspaper on 14/9/10 ran a four-page spread on progress in Afghanistan towards meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The prognosis was gloomy, but in all this verbiage, there was just one minor mention of a 'rising population in Afghanistan' as one of several environmental factors that may see the country not being able to produce enough food to feed its people. In fact, several interesting factors were mentioned in the article, but does any of this important information get covered in the almost daily news reports of more coalition troops being flown home in coffins?
Among the largely unreported gems was that remaining forests were being chopped down for firewood; water shortages and contamination was growing, with thousands of hungry people fleeing the countryside to cities - particularly Kabul, which at 5m people is now the fastest growing capital city in the world. It is also one of the only capital cities without a proper sewage system. Yet Coalition forces have spent years and billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money in the country without these issues being reported in mainstream media.
3) Haiti, like many of the poorest countries in the world, has one of the lowest per person consumption footprints in the world. In Spring 2010 a world-wide media bonanza descended on the earthquake-stricken island, bringing daily live reports of a human disaster: Almost 98 percent of the forests cut down; raw sewage flushing into the ocean; large-scale illiteracy; lack of fresh water, and not enough food for an island on permanent food aid.
But the media reports never mentioned this was happening on an island that possesses the carrying capacity for perhaps 500,000 people, but the culture of Haiti and the Catholic Church ‘encouraged’ it to grow to over 10 million and counting. Haiti has already wrecked much of its ecological assets and relies on exporting people to USA, Canada, the neighbouring Dominican Republic and even the Bahamas as a safety valve for its extreme population pressures.
US Census Bureau records give the legal Haitian population in the United States exceeding 850,000. In Canada the Haitian diaspora is estimated to be around 1 million. There are also estimated to be over 800,000 illegal Haitians living in the neighbouring Dominican Republic, which accounts for about 10% of its national population. (Wikipedia).
While an increase of rape cases has been mentioned in some news reports since the disaster, a reproductive health survey, conducted by UNFPA Haiti in October 2010, found that the fertility rate in urban areas has tripled from four per cent to 12 per cent. But this was never mentioned in on-going media coverage of the disaster or in NGO aid appeals.
4) In Gaza, around 1.5 million people are crammed onto an arid strip of land 40km (25 miles) long and 6 to 12km wide. Many people live in poverty, with unemployment at 45 percent in late 2010, one of the highest in the world according to the UN. The population has grown by 40 per cent in the past 10 years and is rising by about 5% every year. It is expected to double by 2030 – with family sizes of eight or more not unusual.
5) In Libya, repeated stories of ‘refugees’ - alternatively described as ‘migrant workers’ trying to leave the country were shown on TV, many of them sub-Saharan Africans. What was not reported is that an estimated one in six of Libya’s population is made up of illegal sub-Saharan immigrants trying to reach Europe. Italy eventually paid the Libyan Government to help stop them moving on to Italy. With the chaos, where are these illegal residents heading now, aided by International Refugee Agencies and how did the Libyan Government suddenly acquire so many sub-Saharan mercenaries to brutally attack its own people?[1]
6) Pakistan. The media spent weeks looking at the late 2010 disaster in Pakistan, where one-fifth of the country was flooded by the Indus River. But you don’t hear any information that Pakistan is housing 174 million people on a flood plain and at its current birth-rate the population is set to more than double over the next forty years. That ‘core’ challenge never crosses the lips of CNN, NPR, NBC or the BBC.
7) In Yemen, a nation of 22 million and rising rapidly, grain production has fallen by two thirds over the last 20 years and 19 of Yemen’s 21 aquifers are severely stressed. Yemen now imports 89 per cent of the food it needs according to a recent EU report. World Bank projections say the area around the capital, San’a’ - home to 2 million people and one of the world’s fastest growing cities, may be pumped dry in a few years.
In October, we will have seven billion people in the world. I am sure you will agree that these core issues on huge challenges we are facing need to be brought fully to the public's attention. I hope you will cascade this information round your teams and let me know. I can add much more.
Sincerely,
Brian McGavin,
(UK-based writer, geo-political and environmental analyst)
*The UNPD 2010 population data gives population in 1950, 2010 and projected in 2050 and current average number of births per woman (total fertility rate TFR). The table also shows the potential self-sufficiency or bio-reserve deficit exposure for these countries, taken from the Ecological Footprint Atlas 2010 (appendix F, Table 1) - based on most recent 2007 data.
• Bio-capacity reserves or deficits are in global hectares (gha) per person. Plus (+) is current reserve bio-capacity. Minus (-) is a biocapacity deficit. (Rounded to nearest decimal and percentage).
• Climate change impacts will likely increase pressure on many countries’ bio-capacity.
• The 2010 UNPD population data shows ‘medium variant’ estimates of population growth This assumes an often quoted presumption that total fertility rates will fall to the lower levels of many developed countries and the population will reach 9.3 billion by 2050 and then hold steady. (2.1 children is replacement fertility). So far, this shows little sign of happening in most African countries and many areas of the Middle East.
• If the global Total Fertility Rate continues at its current path, population projections will be far higher and the impact on people and the planet in just 39 years will be immense. (See the constant fertility projection in the table). A UN news release issued on March 11, 2009 warned that if fertility rates don’t fall, the medium variant projection of around 9.3 billion people by 2050 would instead rise to 11.1 billion people by 2050. In addition, many developed countries are now offering ‘baby bonuses’ to increase their populations.
• Projections for 2100* are shown for Nigeria, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and Pakistan, to demonstrate the frightening demographic position in the lifetime of many of our children if current birth rates persist. (Rounded to nearest million).
• Because Pakistan has not conducted a census since 1998, the country’s population size is conjectural. The government estimates the 2010 figure at about 175 million people, while the United Nations believes the number is around 185 million.
The Washington-based Population Reference Bureau (PRB) latest 2011 data shows more pessimistic projections on fertility decline in many developing countries, so they use the High Variant projection. Note PRB’s 2050 projections for Nigeria, at 433m as against UNPD 390m and Pakistan at 314m as against UNPD 275m.
[1] Ed. The remark about Libya is based on a perspective contested in some quarters, e.g. global research and ”candobetter.net – libya”, due to the lack of objective evidence for Gaddafi attacking his own people, their apparent willingness to defend him, and the conspicuous motives of the US, the UK and France to preserve first-world hegemony in the oil-producing region against China and coalitions of the third world with Gaddafi, the brilliant originator of OPEC in the 1970s.
The Supreme Court 19th September extended the injunction to stop logging in Sylvia Creek forest near Toolangi after VicForests agreed to the moratorium.
The Department of Sustainability and Environment predictably dismissed concerns of conservationists by saying that there was no sign of live possums in the Sylvia Creek coupe at Toolangi, and that it did not meet the legal criteria of prime possum habitat.
Both statements reek of dispassionate recklessness. These possums are tiny, nocturnal, in small numbers, and they live in holes in trees that are up to 50 meters tall.
No confidence in VicForests
The public can have no confidence in the surveys done by VicForests as they were not supported by those carried out by expert ecologists and biologists. Government departments are incapable of assessing the effect of logging on endangered species as their interests are primarily economic.
Trashing the environment for short-term woodchip profits transforms areas rich in biodiversity into clear-felled wastelands that take decades to recover.
Over half of the Leadbeater's possums' habitat was destroyed by Black Saturday, and the BAER (Burnt Area Emergency Response) team recommended that this area not be logged, yet it continued. Habitats of listed threatened species were logged.
We are having our ecological and environmental assets stripped from the integrity of Victoria and from the people who need our life-supporting biological services. All species keep our ecological systems working, and they all have a role to play.
VicForests are losing money and taxpayers are subsidizing these losses. It's to keep fat-cat jobs in Parliament. Most of these trees goes to woodchips, not fine furniture.
The Tasmanian government seems to be accepting it's time to get clear-felling out of native forests. Their agreement is designed to see an end to large scale native forest logging and create more than 400,000 hectares of new informal reserves.
Now the Victorian government must do the same and place the intrinsic value of native forests and biodiversity, especially our threatened Leadbeater's Possum and other species, over the economic benefits of office paper.
It's a case of being in denial, of conflicting interests, and of not finding the facts, or evidence of threatened species, that they don't want to find.
The court extended an injunction blocking logging until next February, when it will revisit the matter.
David Walsh of VicForests arrogantly said that VicForests has chosen not to challenge the interim injunction at this stage of the game to allow this matter to be fully resolved at a trial as quickly as possible.
"Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and Bob Brown are in a position to change the political, social and cultural landscape in Australia once and for all. They find themselves in the unique position of having the community support they need to stop the parliamentary puppet masters dictating parliamentary policy. They find themselves in the position to uproot the few stunted perennials that blight political, social and cultural debate in this community and let a thousand flowers bloom by passing parliamentary legislation that forces media monopolies to limit their media holdings to 10% of the privately owned media outlets in a community. They are also in a position to pass parliamentary legislation that alters the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s guidelines so that a variety of opinions, not just the major political parties’ opinions, are brought to the fore in Australia in the publicly funded media sphere." Joe Toscano Anarchist Age Weekly, Number 940, 18th July – 24th July 2011 So, what's stopping them from doing the right thing by Australia?"Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and Bob Brown are in a position to change the political, social and cultural landscape in Australia once and for all. They find themselves in the unique position of having the community support they need to stop the parliamentary puppet masters dictating parliamentary policy. They find themselves in the position to uproot the few stunted perennials that blight political, social and cultural debate in this community and let a thousand flowers bloom by passing parliamentary legislation that forces media monopolies to limit their media holdings to 10% of the privately owned media outlets in a community. They are also in a position to pass parliamentary legislation that alters the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s guidelines so that a variety of opinions, not just the major political parties’ opinions, are brought to the fore in Australia in the publicly funded media sphere." Joe Toscano Anarchist Age Weekly, Number 940, 18th July – 24th July 2011 So, what's stopping them from doing the right thing by Australia?
Ed. Sheila Newman: This article is based on my transcription from Joe Toscano's seminal podcast about the Australian media and government, to which I have added headings. I have removed some 'you knows' and small repetitions and elisions for clarity. Any mistakes in transcription are my own. You can listen to the original by podcast anytime. It is actually an hour long. The transcribed part is just the media inquiry part.
Power, Wealth, Parliament and the Mass Media - Joe Toscano:
"It's about power and wealth. What's the point in having all the power in the world if you don't have the wealth to make the decisions you've made a reality? And that's what we have in a parliamentary democracy. We go through the ritual every four years to elect representatives to make decisions fo us. Unfortunately what the representatives can and cannot do is determined by the parliamentary puppetmasters. That's all sections of society that owns the means of production, distribution, communication and exchange.
Now it's quite interesting how the Gillard government, facing oblivion at the next election by media sharks who are tearing pieces off its lifeless carcass, can continue wallowing in its own blood until what little credibility it enjoys is completely gone. Or it can bite back.
And those regular listeners in the Anarchist World this week will know that for some time I have been pushing the idea of holding a Royal Commission into the role the Murdoch Empire plays in this country. A royal commission into how the Murdoch media empire actually subverts the will of the people by subverting parliament.
Proposed Inquiry: What Gillard wants and what the Greens want
And I have noticed that now that Ms Gillard's little tête a tête with the Murdoch senior editors has kind of come asunder that she is once again looking at the possibility of holding a media inquiry - a general, nice, little, media inquiry that looks at privacy issues. Yes, you may as well pack it up, put it back in the drawer and forget about it.
Now I notice that, obviously the Greens, who have been one of the major victims of the Murdoch monopoly in this country - I mean, before every election we have huge headlines about the drug addicts running the Greens - how they'are going to subvert the country. You know, it just goes on day in day out. They [the Greens] would like something a little bit wider. They would like a media inquiry into the ownership.
Are newspapers growing too irrelevant to pose much of a threat?
Now people say to me, "Why worry about newspapers, Joe, they're irrelevant."
I'm afraid they're not. Newspapers are not irrelevant in this country. And when you've got some major capital cities with only one
newspaper, and that's a Murdoch newspaper, and you've got other capital cities where you've got two newspapers, it's not irrelevant.
Because, although there may be a decreasing number of people actually reading newspapers, there are more people reading the same papers on the Net. And, more importantly, what newspapers do is they actually set the political agenda for the day. Because, if you think television and radio set the political agenda, they don't.
Television and radio are very, very, very understaffed pieces of technology and they take their running every day from what's printed in the newspapers that morning. And if you want to know what's going to be on you local radio stations that morning or television station that day and that evening, just pick up a newspaper and you will see that, as far as political commentary is concerned, and social and cultural commentary is concerned, that 95% of commentary that occurs on television and radio is directly purloined from the major issues raised by newspapers, and the same major issues are then aised in parliament at the state and federal level. So newspapers still play, although there may be fewer people actually buying the oadsheets and the tabloids, it still plays a significant role in setting the social and political agenda in this country.
So, faced with that dilemma, when one player owns 70% of the newspapers, you can actually see the significant impact it actually has on peoples' thinking and the way issues are approached. And the thing about the Murdoch empire is, as far as I'm concerned, is it's a cancer on civil society. Because it is so huge, all-encompassing, all-powerful. And anybody who thinks holding an inquiry into privacy issues in the media, or even holding a parliamentary inquiry, into media ownership in this country is going to break the back of this monster, they should think again.
We need a royal commission
What we need, and what the Liberal and the Labor Party and the cross-benchers and the Greens should be discussing and negotiating on, is holding a royal commission into the impact that the Murdoch empire has on debate, has on discussion, has on political decisions in this country. Now, you'll see over the next few weeks, the media crying about the fact[2] that there's some Clayton's media inquiry's been set up into privacy issues in the media.
Well, the reality is they're the first ones who jump up and down about holding inquiries into this and into that. I mean, it's about time
the fourth estate [3] was dissected and we had the opportunity to ensure that a thousand voices are able to be heard in this country. Not the same, stunted, old, pathetic arguments, which we hear day in and day out, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Arguments, you know, which support capitalism as the be-all and end-all of economic activity. Activities which media outlets, which actually promote division within this country, which act as a cheer squad for that small section of society that owns the means of production, distribution, exchange and communication, which continues to act as the parliamentary puppetmasters in this country.
I mean, facing political oblivion if the government continues to square dance with the parliamentary puppetmasters, it is time that they turned off the music, isn't it? Isn't it time that they turned off the music and launched a direct legislative assault on the corporate world?
Corporate world really unpopular with Australians
If there is one group that's more unpopular than the Gillard government, it's the corporate world. Australians are beginning to realise the abysmal state of public health, public education, is due to the domination of the economy by a shrinking number of powerful corporations.
Any government, any political movement that is willing to wrest power back from the parliamentary puppetmasters, especially one that currently has a snowflake's chance in hell of being reelected, if it continues on its current political projectory, will earn the respect of an electorate that is becoming increasingly tired of seeing its institutions and its children's future sacrificed on Mammon's altar. And that's what it's about. That's the bottom line that we all forget! That's what the fourth estate is about! It's about creating profits built on other peoples' suffering. It's about creating ever-increasing profits, irrespective of the human, social and environmental costs.
And when you have the fourth estate singing the praises of the corporate world because they are owned by the very same people that dominate economic and political activity in this country, you begin to realise why there is such a lack of debate in this country about any issue, except the very superficial issues that have no bearing on the power of that small section of society that owns the means of production, distribution, exchange and communication is able to exercise.
Obviously we have 'stop presses' and 'exposees' on things which are of little importance to most people, but when it comes to actually looking at the foundations of the society, when it comes to actually questioning the assumptions this society is based on, when it comes to the idea of tackling the major problems that we face as individuals, and as communities within this country, well then, there is no debate, there is no discussion, and those people who put their heads above the parapet and attempt to raise issues that go beyond issues that are currently broached, find themselves being shunned, or worse still, being lampooned, or, worse still, being branded as 'un-Australian', 'terrorists'.
Let's create the momentum to break down the media plutocracy
So, media inquries ... forget about an inquiry!
Let's have a royal commission. Let's watch them squirm. Let's see what happens. Let's create the momentum to break down the media monopolies that exist in this country, whether they'are Murdoch or Fairfax or any other media monopoly that exists in this country. Let's break them down. Let's have legislation passed through parliament that ensures that no one group of people, or an individual, can own more than 10% of the media outlets in one city. And then, maybe we will see those thousand flowers bloom in that stony garden that needs to be fertilised by a range of ideas.
Now, let's move on to the ABC. Because, we've concentrated on the media today, and the reason I've concentrated on the media is very simple, because the thing about living in a technologically savvy society is everybody is exposed to the same set of opinions minute by minute by minute by minute by minute. And we're told in this country that we have the private corporations running the media, well the government gelded the ABC.
The ABC has become a commercial clone
And people say to me, "Well, Joe, what are you complaining about? I mean, forget about it. The ABC gives us an alternative viewpoint."
The ABC is there to do these things but people have forgotten what happened to the ABC during the Howard era, what happened to the ABC during the Hawke/Keating era. They've forgotten that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has basically become a commercial clone.
Obviously there are a number of programs which continue to exist - not for very long - which provide alanced analysis. But as far as the majority of the information, debate, analysis programs which occur in the government-gelded ABC you find that most of them you can actually find in the commercial setting.
Now, I know this is old news, but you may find it a bit interesting, because I want to draw an analogy here. I remember in 1999 when I had a weekly spot on ABC local radio that examined the week's news from a radical perspective, it didn't take long for the presenter to be asked to get a conservative voice on the half-hour segment. Within two months of one of the most conservative politicians in this country, the former Senator Julia McGorren had been appointed to cross swords with your's truly. The segment, and the presenter, who conducted an overnight show on-air for the ABC for over a decade was also taken off-air. This is during the Howard era. She was never offered an on-air position again and continues to work in the dungeons of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation because she wasn't on a short-term contract.
Lucky her!
Australia's Arts Community
It's no surprise that the Arts community now finds itself in the very same position. The Hoard Government succeeded in destroying the independence of the ABC by ensuring senior managers were appointed that reflected its world view. And the Howard Government openly stacked the ABC Board with some of the most conservative and reactionary figures in Australia, including Mr Windshuttle.
These changes transformed the ABC from a source that provided independent information analysis to an entertainment-focused organisation that needs to focus on ratings. It's all about entertainment. If we want entertainment, there are a million areas we can look for entertainment.
Why did Rudd and Gillard leave Howard's appointees in place?
The Gillard and Rudd Government found themselves in a difficult position because they left all of Howard's appointments in their jobs when elected. They left them all. And that's the tragedy of the 2007 Rudd victory, that all the senior bureaucrats, whether it's the department of immigration and refugees as we are seeing now, whether it was the taxation department, whether it was Human Services, whether it was the ABC. Everyone of those political appointments which were made during the decade that Howard was in powe were left in positions of authority. Left in positions of authority!
So, instead of cleaning out the ABC's Augean stable, they left everything in place. It's one thing having your hands on the levers of
government, it's another thing being forced to use the coordinates of a bureaucracy appointed y Howard and his cronies to steer the ship.
And that's the dilemma! Although the government may have a different agenda, as fa as the senior political appointments that were made by the Howard Regime, they continue to set the coordinates that determine government policy. It's no accident the Gillard Government is faced with a neverending litany of disasters, despite overseeing the 'best economy in the western capitalist world'. I mean, leaving your political enemies in positions of power when you own a position to exercise power is a recipe for disaster. And this is what we've seen in the ABC - although the government changed, senior political appointments, both on the board and the managerial area, didn't change. They continued to push the conservative reactionary agenda. And what we are seeing is even the arts programs are now coming under the axe. We are seeing the ABC lose what little independence it has.
Hardly any local content produced by the ABC
No wonder the ABC has been transformed into a commercial clone that has put people on short-term contracts, turned the ABC into an entertainment-focused organisation that actually relies on outside contracts to provide content - even local content. There is hardly any local content being produced at the ABC. It is produced by privately-owned outside companies that are given contracts to provide content.
And the few ABC in-house programs that have managed to survive over the past two decades are now on the chopping block, because the ABC has been transformed into a paper tiger, into an entertainment-focused organisation that Removes from its programming line-up any program that doesn't meet its board and managers' one-dimensional conservative social and political agenda. And that's the key.
So if you have a private corporate media which acts as a cheer-squad for its owners, promoting corporatisation, deregulation,
globalisation, the corporate sector, and you have a government-gelded ABC, where do people obtain independent analysis and information?
Not everybody has the time to spend hours and hours and hours surfing the net. People like their information in little packages. And what we find is the same, seedy, reactionaries continue to dominate the political agenda in this country - to dominate the social agenda in this country, to dominate the cultural agenda in this country - while the rest of us are expected, you know, to gratefully accept the crumbs that are occasionally pushed our way to stop people from protesting about what's actually happening, not only within the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but within a corporate-controlled media network which sets the political, social and cultural agenda in this country."
NOTES
[1] Joe Toscano speaks for the Anarchist society and each week, on his show at 3CR he demystifies anarchist principles with this useful definition: "Anarchist society is a voluntary non-hierarchical society which is ased on political and social structures which are based on direct democratic principles. The people involved in decision strong>make that decision and then elect or appoint delegates to coordinate decisions at local, regional and national levels of society. Wealth is held in common and used for the common good."
[2]See, for instance, what passes for intellectual commentary in the Australian Financial Review (owned by Fairfax)in the editorial for the weekend of 17-18 December 2011. The editorial suggests that the basis of the inquiry is exclusively political with the Greens and the Government trying to neutralise criticism. "Any attempt to rein in freedom of the press should be vigorously resisted. Politicians have many avenues to redress perceived bias, not least through Parliament, the wider media and websites. Instead the government would have been far wiser to invest its limited political energy and capital in an inquiry into the much more pressing national economic issue of lagging productivity." Yes, well, if we tried to have an inquiry into how Australia's production is kept uncompetitive on the world market due to the cost of land, as boosted by the Murdoch and Fairfax owned property dot coms and their media-generated mass immigration fueled-demand, those papers would use every weapon they had to suppress, distort and punish debate. They suppress, distort and punish all other debates except the most destructive and puerile. That is why we need to break the media monopoly, so that we can actually have a free media rather than a corporatised commercial media which promotes its own investments against the common interest.
For a good example of suppressing, distorting and punishing debate, see ABC's Media Watch Episode 31, 12 September 2011. Media Watch generally goes after rabbits when it could take down elephants (metaphorically speaking) but this episode was very relevant to central problems of media interference, for corporate commercial reasons, in public debate:
Over in the commercial media, times are tough. Especially in newspapers.
Here's an excerpt from an email sent out by a News Ltd executive in Western Australia.
"Last Sunday we published an article in our real estate section that failed Journalism 101 ... As the Managing Director of The Sunday Times I unreservedly apologise for the article.
— Jason Scott, Managing Director, The Sunday Times, 24th August, 2011"
Goodness! The managing director, no less - it's usually the editor who worries about editorial content. Managing directors of newspapers worry about money. And usually, that means advertisers.
And to whom was this grovel addressed to?
"To our valued real estate clients
— Jason Scott, Managing Director, The Sunday Times, 24th August, 2011"
That's right. Real estate agents. Who, thanks to those endless house for sale ads, account for a sizeable chunk of the Sunday Times's revenue ...
Not to mention what they contribute to realestate.com.au, by far the leading property website in Australia, which is 60% owned by News Ltd.
So what was this abysmal journalism that Mr Scott was apologising for? It was a double-page spread in the Sunday Times's
"Weekend Property
— Sunday Times Weekend, Property, 21-27 August, 2011"
"Home Alone
It can cost more than $20,000 to sell your home through a real estate agent. We speak to two vendors who decided to go it alone.
— Sunday Times Weekend, Property, 21-27 August, 2011"
No! Without an agent? And look at them ... They're positively beaming ...
"Being able to talk directly with the buyers ensured queries could be answered quickly and efficiently
— Sunday Times Weekend, Property, 21-27 August, 2011"
"We saved about $17,000 and put in about 19 hours work in five weeks.
— Sunday Times Weekend, Property, 21-27 August, 2011"
Well, you can imagine how the Sunday Times's 'valued real estate clients' reacted to that piece.
Actually, you don't have to imagine it, because we can show you.
It was kicked off by investment property specialist Mark Hay, with an email addressed to pretty much every real estate agent west of the Nullarbor. It was, as they say, heavy with irony ...
"Fellow Colleagues,
For those of you who use the Murdoch-backed Sunday Times you will have no doubt noted the huge push they gave us as agents in their wonderful article on page four and five this weekend!
— Mark Hay, Investment property specialist, 23rd August, 2011"
Mr Hay didn't mess about.
"Can I encourage you to boycott the paper in light of this, or better still this is a perfect reason why we as agents should build our own web site to challenge realestate.com.au and the others who keep putting the squeeze on us. Anyone interested?
— Mark Hay, Investment property specialist, 23rd August, 2011"
Lots of people were ...
"I am interested in a change from this
David Whiteman
Ray White
— David Whiteman, Ray White, 24th August, 2011"
"It is heartening to see ... the discussion around creating a new industry owned and controlled website.
Geoff Baldwin
RE/MAX W.A.
— Geoff Baldwin, RE/MAX WA, 25th August, 2011"
"The Davey Group would be behind a move to advertise through REIWA.com only.
Andrew Davey
— Andrew Davey, Davey Group, 24th August, 2011"
Mark Hay was over the moon ...
"Wow, the response has been overwhelming! ... By far the huge majority confirm we should crank up REIWA ...
— Mark Hay, Investment property specialist, 24th August, 2011"
REIWA is the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia, which has long had its own property ad website ...
"Feature Properties for sale
— reiwa.com.au"
And has recently teamed up with the Sunday Times's rival, The West Australian, to produce
"WestRealEstate.com.au
— WestRealEstate.com.au"
The West is spruiking its new website for all its worth ...
"WestReal Estate
This exciting new site is offering vendors a free listing when their agent is a current REIWA subscriber ...
— The West Australian, 25th August, 2011"
No wonder the Managing Director of the Sunday Times was freaking out at the thought of all those 'valued real estate clients' jumping ship. Hence his crawling email ...
"I give you my personal guarantee that The Sunday Times will work hard to restore our relationship to the mutual good health and prosperity that we have achieved together over many years.
— Jason Scott, Managing Director, 24th August, 2011"
The problem was, wrote Jason Scott, that the Home Alone piece was unbalanced, because it ...
"... did not contain any response from agents or real estate industry groups and nor did it look at vendors who had tried to sell their houses privately who had then appointed an agent and got the right result.
— Jason Scott, Managing Director, 24th August, 2011"
Well, that's true. And it was a bit of a puff job for one particular do-it-yourself consultancy.
But some of the offended agents weren't going to be fobbed off with a private apology.
Glenn Buckley of Think Pink Realty - yes, that's its name - wrote back to Mr Scott, in a nice pink font ...
"Your apology is noted. However, what is clearly required here is a full rebuttle (sic) in this weeks issue of your newspaper...
Three happy clients, and no fewer than seven deeply sincere real estate agents. And why was that published, we asked the acting editor ... well, naturally,
"To balance the one-sided feature that appeared on August 21.
— Bill Rule, Deputy Editor, Sunday Times, 2nd September, 2011"
Balance. The essence of sound journalism. No mention of that other principle of newspaper management: safeguarding editorial from advertiser pressure.
[3]The term, "the fourth estate refers to the media and mass media. It comes from the French Revolution, where the first estate was the nobles, the second estate was the clergy and the third estate was the common people.
Researcher, Ms Charlton-Robb has named the new dolphin Tursiops australis with the common name, the Burrunan dolphin. This was an Australian aboriginal name given to dolphins in the Boonwurrung, Woiwurrung and Taungurung languages. It meant ‘large sea fish of the porpoise kind’. Since the late 1800s only been three new dolphin species have been formally described and recognised, so this is an important and enchanting discovery.
Congratulations on your discovery, Ms Charlton-Robb!
They’re one of the most intelligent marine mammals, well known for their inquisitive and playful nature and now, following an amazing discovery by a Monash University researcher, Victoria’s dolphins have been formally recognised as a new species.
Kate Charlton-Robb, a PhD researcher in the School of Biological Sciences unearthed the remarkable findings, which have been published in the latest PLoS ONE Journal, showing that coastal dolphins in southern Australia greatly differed from any other dolphin worldwide.
The dolphins were originally thought to be one of the two recognised bottlenose dolphin species, however by using multiple lines of scientific evidence these dolphins were found to be unique. The discovery was made by comparing skulls, external characteristics and a number of DNA regions from the current day population as well as specimens dating back to the early 1900s.
Ms Charlton-Robb has formally named the new dolphin Tursiops australis with the common name, the Burrunan dolphin, being an Australian aboriginal name given to dolphins in the Boonwurrung, Woiwurrung and Taungurung languages, meaning ‘large sea fish of the porpoise kind’.
“This is an incredibly fascinating discovery as there have only been three new dolphin species formally described and recognised since the late 1800s.
“What makes this even more exciting is this dolphin species has been living right under our noses, with only two known resident populations living in Port Phillip Bay and the Gippsland Lakes in Victoria,” said Ms Charlton-Robb.
This research relied in large part on the analysis of dolphin skulls collected and maintained by museums over the last century including the extraordinary holdings at Museum Victoria.
“Ms Charlton-Robb’s discovery is an exciting example of a recent trend in biodiversity research across Victoria and Australia. Through the careful application of emerging technologies to museum specimens, researchers are revealing that our biological heritage is far more diverse than we realise.” said Dr Rowe, Museum Victoria’s Senior Curator of Mammals.
Ms Charlton-Robb said it is important this study continues in order to conserve and protect the Burrunan dolphin for future generations. More research is required to determine if there are other resident populations of this species in Australia.
“We know these unique dolphins are restricted to a very small region of the world, in addition the resident populations are very small with only approximately 100 dolphins in Port Phillip Bay and 50 in the Gippsland Lakes.
“This study highlights the importance of taking a more holistic approach of using multiple analyses, rather than looking in isolation of one scientific methodology. Even though we have progressed a long way in science, this study shows there are still new and exciting discoveries to be made,” said Ms Charlton-Robb.
We are privileged to have a new dolphin species in our waters and people are encouraged to enjoy the marine wildlife, but to make sure they keep their distance. Marine mammals are a protected species.
For further information or to arrange an interview with Kate Charlton-Robb, contact Ali Webb, Monash Media & Communications +61 3 9903 4841 / 0439 013 951 / [email protected]
--
Source: Media and Communications
Media Release, Thursday 15 September, 2011
Office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Global Engagement) | Monash University
Caulfield campus | Building H, Level 9, 900 Dandenong Road, Caulfield East, VIC 3145
Victorian government plans to drop 1080 poison bait from an aircraft into forests could result in the extinction of the already critically endangered Spot-tailed quoll. The purpose of this antiquated and vandalistic method is to poison wild dogs.
Article by Hans Brunner, Wildlife ecologist and biologist
Why is the Victorian Government using old, dangerous methods?
The Victorian government plans to drop 1080 poison bait from an aircraft into forests which could result in the extinction of the already critically endangered Spot-tail quoll. The purpose of this hazardous, antiquated and vandalistic method is to poison wild dogs. This is like re-introducing the use of DDT. It is now a double disaster: all Ted Baillieu has to do now is to aerial bait to kill wild dogs in order to protect the cattle he allowed to go back into the mountains.! An estimated success rate for aerial poisoning of wild dogs is one tonne of poison bait per one dog! Spot-tailed quolls and other Dasyurids are meat eaters as well as some species of possums, reptiles, bandicoots, bush rats and birds. It was estimated that 90% of baits were either not eaten or taken by other animals. Raptor and scavenger birds may collect poison bait and take them to feed their young. McIlroy (CSIRO) reported that in one campaign birds took over 40% of the bait. These other animals would all be at serious risk of being poisoned. Further more, most of this bait would be wasted because of the dogs not being able to find them and this is where non-target animals will rather find and eat them. Baits have therefore to be placed only in places which dogs frequently use, along forest tracks.
More effective method known
There is a well researched and efficient method for the poisoning of wild dogs and foxes. It is a target specific bait station system which is successfully used throughout Victoria. Bait stations are placed along forest tracks where activities of dogs are observed.
A bait station consists of a mound of soil about 20 cm high and one meter in diameter. An un poisoned bait (free feed) is buried in the center of the mound about 10cm deep with some SFE lure placed on top. When the bait has been dug up and eaten, a check is made, with some experience, to assess whether a dog or fox took the bait. If satisfied that a target species took the bait it can be replaced with a poison bait. If it appears that a quoll or an other non-target animal may have taken the free feed bait, continue free feeding that station to keep the quoll and others away from a poison station (about 2 km away) or eliminate that station.
This is the only responsible way to poison dogs and foxes. Even better, it will be of great benefit to not only the quolls by removing the competition by dogs and foxes of their natural prey species, but also for the survival of Kangaroos, wallabies, bandicoots, possums, echidnas etc.
Biologist's experience of alternatives
I have researched and tested this system in 700 square km of forest between Gembrook and Neerim and found it most effective and efficient. I have also introduced it in NSW National Parks where it was recognized as “The dog baiting stations proposed by Hans are the best practical suggestion to date. With the implementation of the bait stations, properly maintained and serviced at the appropriate times, there would appear to be NO reason to allow the continued use of aerial baiting” and, “Poisoning using the buried bait technique is still proving extremely target specific, with dogs and foxes being the only species killed”.
Do it the right way and wildlife return
Barbara Triggs, an eminent naturalist stated after poisoning wild dogs and foxes and using the bait station system on her property in Croajingolong Nat. Park:
“At no time has there been any evidence that a bait has been taken by a non-target animal. In the past year the numbers of native animals seen on the property have increased startlingly. The Red-necked Wallabies, who’s group was here in low numbers, have increased markedly from five individuals to now at least fourteen. The most surprising increase has been in the population of Long-nosed Bandicoots. The Dusky Antechinus, Swamp Rats, Water Rats, Sugar Gliders and several species of ground-nesting birds and also species of owls are much more in evidence than ever before."
With all this evidence, this non specific and irresponsible aerial baiting must be immediately stopped.
It is surprising to pick up a book about wealth statistics and find that it segues so readily into another about psychopathology in young girls. The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone takes a revealing look at how wealth is distributed within different developed countries and Reviving Ophelia illustrates the decline of women's rights in the face of aggressive pornography and its effect on girls. Children and the general public were not widely exposed to explicit pornography and sexual sadism in the ‘traditional’ mass media of the industrial age, although these notions were commonly implicit in images and concepts used for marketing all kinds of things. Between that time and now, in 2011, the depiction of women almost exclusively as victims and objects of violence and pornography, explicitly and for that sole reason, has become a global business which operates 24/7. The implicit violence and sexualisation of women in ordinary marketing has also continued. At the same time, the official message is that western women don’t need Feminism anymore because equality has prevailed.
Some people are more equal than others, especially if they are not women
In the Australian Financial Review, September 13, 2011, Deidre Macken writes, “After a week when economic statistics made a lie of our feelings of being worse off, it seems like an opportunistic time to check how good we are at reading ourselves. Obviously we are not good judges at assessing our economic well-being. Repeat after me – we are a lucky people, living in a country that’s never been luckier.”[1]
Without going into the adequacy of the indicators she used but does not reference, was Deidre talking about averaged statistics or was she talking about the way they are distributed throughout the nation?
I chose a quote from a female financial journalist to introduce the feminist implications of the theories of two books. One was published nearly two decades ago and the other was published last year. The earlier one is by Mary Pipher, with the title of Reviving Ophelia: Saving the selves of adolescent girls. It was published by Riverhead Books, New York, 1994. The second book is by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. It’s title is The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, and it was published by Penguin in 2010.
Both books are about the impacts of inequality as you and I experience it, rather than the global economics of inequality between different countries by which the first and the third world are often defined. I found these books interesting particularly in the light of the recent inquiry into human rights in Australia, which ignored Australian citizens’ rights by concentrating on international rights. Citizens’ rights require active democracy and laws to facilitate this, whereas global human rights are relative abstractions, requiring recognition by national governments in hard-to-enforce treaties.
The Spirit Level: Why Equality is better for everyone
Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, Penguin 2010 beg the question of defining countries as rich or poor according to their average wealth. The book points out that, although Australia or the United States might have relatively large GDPs for their total populations, large sections of those societies are politically, materially, socially and physically disempowered and disadvantaged by their relative poverty. The authors imply that these differences drive seriously negative outcomes in almost any area you care to think of. The more unequal you are with the people geographically close to you – in your neighbourhood, your state, your nation - the more anxious and dysfunctional you are likely to be. Inequality is actually an indicator of relative unhappiness and that unhappiness is linked to many social and physical ills, including violence and obesity.
Further on we will relate the lesser condition of women as a subclass within these unequal nations.
Wilkinson and Pickett suggest that, rather than comparing “rich countries with poor countries” we should compare rich countries and then look inside them to see how well they are actually looking after their people.
Within countries like Japan and some of the Scandinavian countries … the richest 20 per cent of people are less than four times as rich as the poorest 20 per cent of people. At the bottom of the [scale] are countries in which these differences are at least twice as big, including two in which the richest 20 per cent get about nine times as much as the poorest. Among the most unequal are Singapore, USA, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. (p.16-17)
The book makes no attempt to explain why Portugal should stand out in such a contrast to its continental European neighbours, which almost invariably outperform English speaking countries on equality and social conditions. I would suggest however that one reason lies in Portugal's inheritance laws, which reflect a tendency to disinherit children in favour of spouses, similar to English-style laws. In the other European countries roman-style civil codes provide for children before spouses equally, therefore men and woman come to adulthood with similar wealth.
Wilkinson and Pickett find that the countries with the worst social inequality have the worst social outcomes overall in health, violence, obesity, illiteracy, mental illness, addiction, and rates of teenage pregnancy.
The official message is that developed western countries have done their duty by their own populations in fulfilling their material needs, leaving a remaining task of bringing the poor of other countries up to the same material standard. It seems churlish of people in those first world populations to reproach the rich in their countries for ostentatious and dishonest living, while the poor in the third world suffer malnutrition and disease. The official message is really that the poor of the developed world need to put the needs of the poor of the undeveloped world ahead of theirs, rather than to exert their own rights locally. The normalization of competitiveness over cooperation and social trust is a strategy to justify the growing vast internal inequalities in the first world.
Importantly for Feminism, within these unequal nations there is a further sub-class, and that is the women of those nations.
Female obesity linked to inequality
Most women would be interested to know that the authors, Wilkinson and Pickett, are able to find a clear association between inequality, obesity and the female sex.
The World Health Organisation has found, from a study begun in the 1980s, that in the 26 countries it surveyed, rates of obesity have increased more among poor women than rich women. The countries with the worst inequalities – Australia, the United States, Portugal and the UK, also have the worst rates of obesity. The countries with the lowest rates of inequality have the lowest rates of obesity.(p.98)
Observing a relationship between anxiety and material and social inequality, the authors note that chronic stress stimulates the hormone, cortisol, of which high levels are associated with deposits of fat around the middle.(p.95) People with this kind of fat are at higher risk of other illnesses – notably diabetes. Diabetes is itself associated with depression.
The authors also refer to the concept of the ‘thrifty phenotype’ where birth weights are lower in women who have experienced stress during pregnancy. Are low-birth weight babies likely to squirrel away extra calories because the stress they encountered in utero led them to prepare for a harsh society, where they would expect to struggle for food? Instead, although they do grow up in a harsh society, it is a non-traditional variety where food remains plentiful but love and approval are at a premium. (p.98)
The book also notes that food may stimulate the brain in the same way as addictive drugs do in people who use food addictively. That is, that food may be used as a pain-killer. (p.96)
It is probably obvious that food marketing may also have a role in obesity, but what is that role? The authors find associations between eating for comfort and homely foods which remind people of childhood, but they note that fast food outlets aim to reassure and to provide the lower classes with a feeling of social mobility. They reassure through their reliability and clean surroundings, but they also provide an affordable opportunity to dine out, which was once the province of the rich. Of course when you dine out on fast food, you are taking in huge amounts of calories in the form of fats and sugars, to a degree not found in haute cuisine restaurants.(p.96)
The book also refers to a study which related obesity to people’s subjective sense of ranking low in the social pecking order. That is, how you feel you compare is more important than your absolute living standard.(p.101)
To recapitulate, this book is about how, once the basics are present, absolute living standard is outweighed by social ranking as measured by relative living standard.
Women as a sub-class within unequal first world nations
Importantly for Feminism, within these unequal nations there is a further sub-class, and that is the women of those nations.
In Mary Pipher’s Reviving Ophelia: Saving the selves of adolescent girls, (Riverhead Books, New York, 1994) the subject is also about inequality and anxiety within high GDP, purportedly progressive societies. Despite the rhetoric, she argues, girls receive a consistent message that they don’t deserve equal treatment and must go to outlandish lengths for mere acceptance. For this reason the whole basis of their identities become at risk as they identify as women rather than as children. They learn that their psychological identities depend on the approval of men. This explains the very high rates of anorexia and risky lifestyles among young women seeking some control over their social and personal environments.
Harking back to Shakespeare’s Ophelia in Hamlet as a young woman who lost the approval of the important males in her life and then suicided, this book observes the increasing difficulty since the 1980s that adolescent girls and the women they become have in preserving a sense of self and self-worth as they transition between childhood and maturity. It finds that they are victims of an increasingly sexualized and pornographic society that defines them almost exclusively as sexual objects, despite the official rhetoric of women’s rights. The girls feel the need to justify themselves against these media popularized and reinforced social standards and, in doing so, to suppress their real feelings and ambitions.
The author observes that, whilst her 1960s generation grew into a western society where the Women’s Liberation movement had overturned official institutional barriers to women’s rights to career, property and political candidacy, the mainstream media preserved, then enhanced over the next decades, a picture of women as inherently less-deserving of these rights than men. Unglamorous, older women (the majority) rarely receive attention in the mass media, and beautiful women often seem only to deserve violent attention, as victims of elaborate predator screenplays. Women are increasingly bombarded by this kind of view at younger and younger ages.
This book, Reviving Ophelia, was published in 1994, at a time when the pervasiveness of the internet was in its relative infancy. Children and the general public were not widely exposed to explicit pornography and sexual sadism in the ‘traditional’ mass media of the industrial age, although these notions were commonly implicit in images and concepts used for marketing all kinds of things. Between that time and now, in 2011, the depiction of women almost exclusively as victims and objects of violence and pornography, explicitly and for that sole reason, has become a global business which operates 24/7. The implicit violence and sexualisation of women in ordinary marketing has also continued. At the same time, the official message is that western women don’t need Feminism anymore because equality has prevailed.
How does a girl, as her sexual personality awakens deal with the saturation marketing of femaleness as moronic and deserving of punishment and death? Mary Pipher argues that girl’s personalities die and that they often die with their personalities.
”Ironically, bright and sensitive girls are most at risk for problems. They are likely to understand the implications of the media around them and be alarmed. They have the mental equipment to pick up our cultural ambivalence about women, and yet they don’t have the cognitive, emotional and social skills to handle this information. They are paralyzed by complicated and contradictory data that they cannot interpret. They struggle to resolve the unresolvable and to make sense of the absurd. It’s this attempt to make sense of the whole of adolescent experience that overwhelms bright girls.
Less perceptive girls may miss the meaning of sexist ads, music and shows entirely. They tend to deny and oversimplify problems. They don’t attempt to integrate aspects of their experience or to ‘connect the dots’ between cultural events and their own lives. Rather than process their experience, they seal in confusion.
Often bright girls look more vulnerable than their peers who have picked up less or who have chosen to deal with all the complexity by blocking it out. Later, bright girls may be more interesting, adaptive and authentic, but in early adolescence they just look shelled.
Girls have four general ways in which they can react to the cultural pressures to abandon the self. They can conform, withdraw, be depressed, or get angry. Whether girls feel depression or anger is a matter of attribution – those who blame themselves feel depressed, while those who blame others feel angry. Generally they blame their parents. Of course, most girls react with some combination of the four general ways.” (p. 43.)
Girls deal with painful thoughts, discrepant information and cognitive confusion in ways that are true or false to the self. The temptation is to shut down, to oversimplify, to avoid the hard work of examining and integrating experiences. Girls who operate from a false self often reduce the world to a more manageable place by distorting reality. Some girls join cults in which others do all their thinking for them. Some girls become anorexic and reduce all the complexity in life to just one issue – weight.” (p.61)
Mary Pipher observes that the loss of confidence in themselves that girls experience as they mature sexually occurs just at the time when more confidence is required to tackle increasingly complex work in the later years of school. Because of this socially-induced lack of confidence, even some highly intelligent girls will give up at the first sign of difficulty, where less bright male students will persist.
The book contains many succinct case histories and concludes with useful ways to approach these problems.
Male treatment of this subject - Turning Angel
How do men deal with these realities that affect their daughters, mothers and intimates so badly? In conclusion, I will mention a book by a man exploring these themes. spirit-level.jpg by novelist, Greg Iles, (Hodder and Stoughton, 2006) is a highly readable thriller that dramatises the stresses of the normalization of sexism and pornography on young girls [and men] in their last years of high school and the particular vulnerability of highly intelligent young women from dysfunctional homes. Iles looks at the temptation for upwardly mobile professional men to exploit such young women. It is also well worth a read and testifies to the continuing usefulness of the novel as a medium for social comment as well as entertainment.
NOTES
[1] Deidre Macken, “I’m starting with the man in the mirror,” Australian Financial Review, September 13, 2011.
Will Maier and Dr. Zoltanthe ask, "Why is everyone celebrating the 9/11 tenth anniversary?" in their mutant mall Freefall song.
Will Maier and Dr. Zoltanthe ask, "Why is everyone celebrating the 9/11 tenth anniversary?" in their mutant mall Freefall song.
For a catchy song about Building no 7 and other oddities associated with the 9-11 disaster in New York and the end of the Republic, click on the picture:
Why had there been no proper investigation of the 9/11 disasters?
Questions posed by the authors of the Freefall song:
1.) If Flight 93 “crashed” in Shanksville, where’s the plane? There is only a small hole in the ground and a little bit of smoke. Same with the Pentagon — small hole, no wreckage.
2.) Why did Building 7 collapse if it was not hit by a plane?
3.) How can two 110-story buildings collapse at freefall speed?
Credits
Will Maier - Vocals
Dr. Zoltan - Acoustic & Electric Guitar, Keyboard, Bass, Drumkit From Hell
"Sunshine Coast Council needs to stop approving developments, " says Vegan Warrior, Jaylene Musgrave. The juggernaut that is bulldozers clearing land and councils hell bent on more housing estates, more shopping centres and turning anything that has trees and wildlife on it into a concrete block needs to be halted. Native animals are now seen dead on roads rather than in their natural homes. The Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital in Queensland near the Sunshine Coast sees over 7000 native animals each year, the majority because they are fleeing machinery that is destroying their homes.
Land-clearing Victims
The juggernaut that is bulldozers clearing land and councils hell bent on more housing estates, more shopping centres and turning anything that has trees and wildlife on it into a concrete block needs to be halted. Native animals are now seen dead on roads rather than in their natural homes.
"If we don’t stand up and start making some noise and demanding land be kept for wildlife, we will only have ourselves to blame," says Jaylene Musgrave, who founded Australia's Vegan Warriors in 2008. Jaylene was recently nominated for the Pride of Australia Medal 2010, which recognises people who give themselves without fear or favour and people deserving of our thanks and recognition.[1] You can download a video about Jaylene's work here.
The Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital in Queensland near the Sunshine Coast sees over 7000 native animals each year, the majority because they are fleeing machinery that is destroying their homes. Ms Musgrave says that Vegan Warriors’ barrister, Peter Lavac, has approached Sunshine Coast City Council to stop the over development of the region.
"Council needs to stop approving developments," she says.
Lend Lease: Land-clearing profiteers
On 4 September, Vegan Warrior spokeswoman, Jaylene Musgrave, stated that, "Following several emails exchanged between Vegan Warriors and Lend Lease requesting the developers start putting their money where their mouths are and financially support the rescue, care and rehabilitation of the thousands of native animals injured and displaced by their bulldozers, it seems it is much easier to talk up their environmental kudos than actually do anything substantial."
International alarm at Australia's overdevelopment and wildlife depletion
She complained that that mass land clearing happening on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Australia, has attracted the attention of the international press, including the BBC, which commissioned a photographer to fly out to Queensland.
Lend-Lease should underwrite the damage it does to Australia's wild spaces and creatures
She described Lend Lease as having a website that "boasts that they 'replenish the planet' and work 'holistically' with the environment. She found these "huge statements" confusing, and her group contacted the developer corporation to ask for an explanation.
"We were told by the Project Manager of the Hyatt Coolum Development, which has left roos and birds without their homes and hit and killed by cars, that we should contact Main Roads to organise signs warning motorists of wildlife."
Jaylene says that this isn't her group's responsibility. She thought that the developers should have already arranged for such signs. She wondered why they did not attend to this as soon as possible.
According to Vegan Warriors a serious financial commitment to the wildlife cause would be a good way for Lend Lease to show that it really cares. Since the Sunshine Coast Koala Wildlife Rescue Service operates 7 days a week without any funding and rescues thousands of animals a year because of the impacts of development, Lend Lease might begin with some good works there. For instance, the rescue service desperately requires a new truck and it would be of great benefit for Lend Lease to donate one.
"Lend Lease, who make millions upon millions through bulldozing the homes of our wildlife need to make financial commitments that equate this, not just donations for local nurseries. The Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital takes in over 8,600 native animals a year, and these are the lucky ones who make it."
Vegan Warriors have extended an open invitation to Lend Lease to ride shotgun with the twin brothers who run the koala rescue service to witness first hand the devastation being caused by over development.
For comments, contact Jaylene Musgrave at veganwarriors[AT]live.com.au www.veganwarriors.com.au
PH: 0448 310 640
NOTES
[1] "Supreme Master Ching Hai's organisation is the distributor of the award. This is an organisation with bhuddist-like values and a female leader. You can read more on Wikipedia about Ching Hai. Although the organisation has been criticised for a corporate approach to business and the leader for self-publicising, others might see this as putting the enemy of the environment's own methods to good use. Financial inscrutability has also been implied, but the sums involved seem quite small and the criticisms lacking detail compared to what one usually expects of reports on corporate financial misbehaviour, such as with Enron, or Australian political party shell companies. Candobetter.net would be interested to have comments and more information for and against this organisation. It is hard to sustain criticism for an organisation which appears to offer substantial support and publicity to people all over the world who are kind to animals and try to save the environment, especially when our economies are entirely dominated by organisations hell-bent on destroying our surroundings and life support base for profit. The fact that the organisation has a female leader is also an unusual and positive attribute in a world where most religions have male dominated corporate bases.
According to Supreme Master Ching Hai, "The Quan Yin Method requires two and a half hours of meditation per day and adherence to five precepts borrowed from the Five Precepts of Buddhism:
Refrain from taking the life of sentient beings.
Refrain from speaking what is not true.
Refrain from taking what is not offered.
Refrain from sexual misconduct.
Refrain from the use of intoxicants."
Readers may also wonder if candobetter.net has a religious or vegan bias. No. Candobetter.net is a website for reform in democracy, environment, population, land use planning and energy policy. Our writers come from various walks of life, but they all have a commitment to these principles. Human forces working for the environment are rare and you can find initiatives for such reforms in unusual places, some of which do have religious and vegan bases. Conversely, human forces working against the environment are vast, obscenely wealthy and multitudinous and include religious, political and corporate organisations which benefit from property development and consume everything, including their own children's future.
Media Release... Exactly as I or anyone would have thought. A hungry dog is more likely to approach people and try and get food, and then they have to be "managed" to prevent attacks. It's all a self-fulfilling prophesy to keep their numbers down for tourism. The fine was more about upsetting the status quo and about having their little scheme exposed for what it is. People living on islands don't usually survive without importing food. Why should these animals have to? "Sustainable" numbers for dingoes is one thing, but "sustainable" human numbers - and their overshoot - gets ignored.
Save Fraser Island Dingoes Inc.
13 Sept. 2011
Dingo Strategy has no bite...
Recent reports obtained through freedom of information suggest that the government has been misleading the public regarding the cause of aggression by the Fraser Island Dingo.
These reports, dating back to 1994 and Commissioned by the Government, clearly demonstrate that feeding is not the main cause of aggressive behaviour. In fact the reports state that loss of fear when combined with hunger, is the actual cause of problem behaviour (Price 1994) and the incidence of stalking is most likely attributed to lack of foods available.
This study confirms what scientists and researchers have been saying for years, lack of food is a major factor in causing unnatural and inappropriate behaviour. A hungry animal can become volatile and unpredictable. Constant trapping, ear-tagging, hazing and destroying of animals disrupts the pack structure which, in turn, leads to anti-social behaviour, but this is not recognised in the Dept. Of Environment and Resource Management's Dingo Strategy.
DERM was aware that limiting food sources, such as closing the dumps, would have consequences. The dump closure...is blamed for starvation (Price 1994), but did not consider it of importance.
The study also discusses the fact that nipping and biting is usually provoked by visitors and that a juvenile dingo's natural curiosity and play-behaviour can be misinterpreted as aggression. Price states, nuisance behaviour is usually associated with a juvenile animals playful character". But again DERM has ignored its own findings and the majority of animals destroyed today are juveniles.
Jennifer Parkhurst, Wildlife Photographer, was fined a sum of $40,000 including a 3 year suspended sentence for feeding starving animals and allegedly causing them to become dangerous. At the time this was considered excessive, as the maximum fine for feeding a dingo is $4000; now it seems ridiculous.
DERM's management strategy is apparently based on the observations of rangers and students during the course of their field work. Jennifer Parkhurst spent 7 years of observations but her findings were dismissed.
In light of this study questions need to be asked:
Why did DERM spend so much time and effort pursuing Ms. Parkhurst in an attempt to denounce her research when her findings were similar to those of their own department?
Why did DERM subsequently use a photograph from Ms. Parkhurst's study on its website if her findings were discredited?
Why does DERM continue to deny that its management was not responsible for starvation of the dingoes when clearly this document shows that the strategy had a huge impact on the dingoes behaviour?
Why is the public only fined for feeding, but allowed to torment and tease the dingoes?
Why is the signage on the Island only warning tourists not to feed dingoes, but no signage warning tourists not to abuse the animals?
Why are members of the public not held accountable for their actions, such as not supervising children?
Why are juvenile dingoes still being targeted for destruction when exhibiting natural behaviours?
Save Fraser Island Dingoes Inc. will be taking these questions, and many more, to the government...
Are humans individuals with personalities or are we simply portions of a greater whole, with little claim to individuality? Some thoughts on cellular arrangement and the end-game thermodynamics of progress ideology. The tension between a glimpsed view of living wholeness and the steady extrusion of deadness that is crushing around and upon us. I wonder how many other people see this?
Life support systems
The appearance of being discrete individuals fully captures most people's perception and belief. In reality however, our form is a fleetingly arranged and fluid part within a basically cellular, holistic global life-form. The shape and content of this overall form shifts and changes over time as and when factors vary within it and around it. Matter and energy flow through and around it like tides and rivers. Life continues as it must in accord with the prevailing conditions. We come and go within this cadence, and are always entirely and imminently recyclable within its constantly alloying form, as individuals, as clans, as a species. Doubtlessly though we do have the very considerable power to engineer the early disposal of ourselves and much of the living infrastructure around us. We could perhaps trigger the reductive disappearance of entire biological classes and perhaps even phylum. What extent of planetary upheaval would be required to take life back to a bacterial drawing board? Would a combination of extreme climate change and thermo-nuclear resource wars tip such regressive imbalance?
Dualism and civilisation
Our sense of separation from the dynamically creative whole is due in very large part to our mono-theistic training, inculcated widely and intensely over relatively recent times, to assist our tolerance of and compliant function within the development of large, hierarchically deep socio-economic systems. This social format is most commonly referred to as 'civilisation', a somewhat benign euphemism considering its essential function of metastasis upon surrounding societies, their resource bases, and within life itself as a whole unit.
Progressive Self-Destruction
Characteristically this form identifies with an existential purpose of 'progress' along a notional linear direction. This view is very militantly at philosophical odds with the comparatively 'aimless' existence of 'uncivilised' society and its accord with, and deference to, repetitive natural cycles. This linear path heads to a destination that is not clearly defined, and is certainly not objectively measured, anywhere within the 'civilised' project. The destination is given various names such as heaven or utopia. It is also embodied in various allegorical forms such 'the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow', which is almost self-deprecating in its inherent impossibility. Materially the pathway equates to a relentless and ever expanding extraction and depletion of natural planetary resources. Properly recognising this core function within the linear pathway of progress, the destination's objective definition can really only be eventual expiration of 'progress' and collapse of the socio-economic project, amidst crushing resource depletion.
Fossil-fuel-powered religion and secular delusion
Modern times, and the intoxicating experiences afforded by abundant fossil energy, have seen the traditional theistic mechanism translated into some variously powerful secular forms. Humanism and capitalism are two of these. Capitalism and its omni-present, omniscient, omnipotent Market-god now reign supreme within the modern global zeitgeist. In its superiority it is quite ecumenical toward the lesser theistic forms. Intense delusions of personal freedom are a central seduction toward common self-imprisonment within and supplication to the Market order. Capitalists can readily include humanism or any of the traditional religions to add flavor to their state of imagined separation from all other living things. The sense of separation is the vital function that is uniformly maintained. It is what enables us to perceive the accrual of individual benefits from the progressive destruction of our own living form.
The Expanding Dead Zone
Accordant with all of this, I am struck in particular by the way we surround ourselves with dead things. We turn life into death and then form the detritus into myriad shapes and mechanisms that we use to facilitate and adorn our lives within our delusion of separation. This constructed dead zone then further obstructs our view of life, it better reflects our illusion about ourselves, and thus it better enables us to wreak even further and more rapid decimation upon our global life-form in a deranged perception and pursuit of our expanding 'needs'.
Zombie Economy
We animate our dead things with a rich fossil energy stream, distilled from many trillions of days of ancient sunshine and now drawn down to nearly half its extent in just over one hundred years. This animated array performs a zombie caricature of real life and real life systems. It instills us with a loin-stirring sense of an invincible power to prevail over any challenge or circumstance. But these machines and constructions are just dead things. They're doomed to stillness and utterly fatal deficit once their immense hunger for the expensively manufactured energy stream overwhelms its limited supply reserves. Our marvelous dead things then become our graves and our tombstones.
Zombie Dreaming
I acknowledge that I'm surrounded with dead things of my own choice and accumulation. I'm complicit in the fabrication that deludes others and which anchors my own delusion. Accumulated doubts and insights have rent many small tears in my inherited cultural fabric. I can peer through this perforated curtain and grasp part glimpses of the total living form that pulses beyond its stifled confines. I can sense the wholeness of this vast organism and can begin to wonder at its profound function. I can feel deep joy and strength flow from this immense beauty however I simultaneously feel viscerally injured by the senselessly violent and rapacious destruction being wrought upon it.
My perception flickers between this glimpsed view of living wholeness and the steady extrusion of deadness that is crushing around and upon me. The shifting, variously composite view between the two states poses a variously decorated, essentially lonely and potentially crazed schizophrenia. I wonder how many other people see this?
Like Australia, Latvia is (mis)ruled by a government which sends its armed forces to fight illegal wars such as those being fought in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.
However, the people of Latvia have never given their Government a mandate to wage these wars on its behalf. The following is a statement from Latvian anti-globalists published on Global Research on 7 September.
Riga, 7th September 2011
To all peoples of the world, NATO nations and NATO occupied countries
1.Following the 10 year anniversary of the 9/11 event and the evidencethat this was pre-arranged as an excuse for further illegal global invasions in the Middle East (Iraq, Libya, Syria etc.) to succeed earlier invasions in the Balkans and Afghanistan.
2.Whereas the government of Latvia and the Parliament members have not been elected constitutionally because the Constitution of Latvia (Satversme) requires that all citizens have the right to become Parliamentarians. It therefore follows that for the last 20 years the country has been governed illegally by a minority chosen out of the 1% who are Party members. The word “Party” does not occur in the Latvian Constitution.
3.In view of the worsening military and political situation in the Middle East, and because these developments may lead to a 3rd world war.
4.Because the government and the Parliament do not take into consideration the will of the Latvian people and since also for years these authorities have been exceeding their mandate in sending Latvian soldiers to wars without the express sanction of the Latvian people.
For these reasons set out above and for others, we, the Latvian Antiglobalists:
1)Have published (www.antiglobalisti.lv Latvian language only, currently has no English translation)) the names and Party affiliations of those parliamentarians who have voted to send the Latvian troops in support of NATO colonization operations,
2) Invite the people to write to those on this list, who are responsible for the deployment of Latvian troops in these NATO colonization operations, and state that they will hold them personally legally responsible in the future for any deaths or injuries sustained by the troops or combatant or non-combatant individuals in the areas of conflict in which they are operating and for all economic or political consequences,
3) Affirm that any Latvian soldier involved in any NATO-led or sanctioned action does so without the authority of the Latvian People.
See video of the Latvian Antiglobalists action at the US embassy Spring 2011 which is embedded above, also at youtu.be/FenvRdgSzis.
Three hippos hanging their heads sadly, looking down into a shallow pool of foul brown water, seemingly reluctant to bathe or drink... A lone tiger walking restlessly, desperate for shade ... Two scrawny lions pacing inside their enclosure, suffering from a lack of food. These are just some of the more than 1,000 war-torn animal victims still trying to survive in Libya's Tripoli Zoo after NATO's war against Libyan supporters of Moammar Gadhafi.
You may have seen some of the disturbing media
images already...
Three hippos hanging their heads sadly, looking down into a shallow pool of
foul brown water, seemingly reluctant to bathe or drink...
A lone tiger walking restlessly, desperate for shade ...
Two scrawny lions pacing inside their enclosure, suffering from a lack of
food.
Zoo animals are often the first to be neglected when cities are hit by human-made or natural disasters. Just ten members of the 200-person zoo staff return periodically...struggling to keep up with so many animals to water and feed: hyenas, bears, monkeys, deer, emus and more. But it's the big cats, the tiger and lion meat-eaters, that are especially difficult to provide for in this heat.
The zoo has received an emergency grant from IFAW to buy food to last a few days, but your gift will help us send medicine and more money to provide ongoing support for the animals caught in the middle of the war in Libya.
How can you know that your gift can help rescue animals in the middle of a warzone?
Because with your help, IFAW has done it before.
In 2003, IFAW rushed a team of experts and supplies to the Baghdad Zoo to ensure the well-being and survival of over 400 animals during the Iraq War. And during the political unrest in the Middle East last spring, IFAW stepped in to help feed animal residents of the Tunis Zoo in Tunisia.
Author Margaret Warner has produced a new fun book and guide for teachers and children to learn about an animal that should be celebrated and honoured as endemic to Australia, and one of the world's most recognizable national symbols.
Targeted for ages 7 - 12 years, with all pages photocopy masters suitable for school use.
"Kangaroo Footprints - Fun activities and fascinating facts about Australia's remarkable kangaroos"
Author: Margaret Warner 2011
Designer/Illustrator Gail C Breese
Front cover photo Brett Clifton
Targeted for ages 7 - 12 years, with all pages photocopy masters suitable for school use.
Author Margaret Warner has produced a new fun book and guide for teachers and children to learn about an animal that should be celebrated and honoured as endemic to Australia, and one of the world's most recognizable national symbols.
The kangaroos' ancient story starts in early history of Australia. It's written in a way children can easily understand.
A brief historical basis
Over 200 million years ago, the continents moved apart to form Australia, India, Antarctica, South America, Africa and the island of Madagascar. The story of our kangaroos starts with Ngamaroo, ancient ancestors of our modern kangaroos. Their story then moves on to the Giant Kangaroo, about one million and a half years ago.
The kangaroo's history is also contained in Aboriginal tales and mythology, "How the Kangaroo Got Her Pouch", a story of the Wiradjuri people.
Children can relate to the importance of kangaroos due to our Coat of Arms, with red kangaroo and emu holding up the six state crests. They are an important part of our unique national and natural heritage.
The remarkable story of our continent and unique flora and fauna starts as Gondwanaland, when the Earth was in its infancy.
Most macropods have hind legs larger than their forelimbs, large hind feet, and long muscular tails which they use for balance. The word macropod actually means 'big foot'.
Kangaroos consists of two family groups.
Kangaroos, wallabies, pademelons and tree kangaroos make up one family,
while rat-kangaroos, bettongs and potoroos make up the other.
There are 45 species of kangaroos and wallabies.
The what is a kangaroo section identifies kangaroos on a social dimension. They have strong family bonds and they communicate with their young and each other with coughs and croaks.
Some of the more common species are described, with their birth, sizes, and life cycles, and threats. Each is accompanied by easily understood follow-up creative, cross-curriculum, language stimulating and thinking activities on pages that can be reproduced.
Numeracy skills are included, with magic squares, along with crafts, design challenges, riddles, research questions and reference to the Kangaroo Trail map at href="http://www.rootourism.com.au"> Roo Tourism where they can see all the species of macropods from the big Red Kangaroo to the small Musky Rat-kangaroo.
"Kangaroo footprints" - the title of the book - is interesting as it shows how these animals have adapted to give them the best chance of survival across Australia. Each part of the foot has its own function in helping it search for food, defend itself, give support and balance, and tread softly on the landscape.
There's a bit of nostalgia too, with "Skippy the Bush Kangaroo" who became an ambassador for Australia and our wildlife.
There are some kangaroo heroics, with Lulu the hero and Neil McCallum who saved a young kangaroos from the surf and Raymond Cole who saved a young kangaroo in Queensland's floods.
There's a section about Wildlife carers and the wonderful work they do for injured animals.
There is a further reading list and a certificate at the end for KIDS WITH KANGAROOS AWARD!
Answers are at the back.
kangaroo propaganda
Unfortunately,current propaganda and "management" of kangaroos is justified on the grounds that it is said that European settlement has been to the advantage of larger-bodied kangaroos. They have increased access to water and grazing land and are less preyed on by dingoes. Their numbers have increased, which can cause "detrimental environmental, economic and social impacts". Much larger and heavy-footed bulldozing by humans and livestock is conveniently ignored by those making these extreme claims.
These same animals have at least 16 million years of living in Australia's environment harmoniously, unlike those who align kangaroos with feral pest-species. Australia has changed irrevocably since 1788 when Europeans settled here with livestock and other deliberately introduced animals. The book is clear that there are many threats to kangaroos' survival, and gives a balance to what they might hear from the media.
Recommendations
A book about kangaroos for Australian children is one that is timely and should clear away some of the populist myths and political-historical propaganda that label our kangaroos as "pests" and little more than vermin to be "managed". It is a book full of information and fun activities that celebrate Australia's unique kangaroos.
The book is $20 with free postage in Australia and is available for order via the Kangaroo Book page on the website www.kangaroofootprints .com.au
The 1951 Refugee Convention is a Post-WWII international agreement that sought to deal with the humanitarian consequence of a global war.
It has become a means for the 'have-nots' to economically migrate from the Third World to the perceived First World 'haves'. But the definition is relative.
Worse, the problem is not solved, just shifted geographically. Emigration is a consequence of a failure to contain and resolve internal humanitarian problems. It is easier to remove a nation's people than to solve a national social problem, but the human burden is simply relocated.
The UN has proven to be an abject failure, repeated in every incident of national unrest. Too little, too late, default reliance upon charities like the Red Cross and Medicines Sans Frontiers. Recall Bosnia, Rwanda, Iraq, Sri Lanka, and now Syria. No one would leave their country of birth if they had a choice for a safe and prosperous life. Yet is does precious little to curb the international arms trade. Where did Gadafi and Syria obtain their military hardware? - from the Chinese Government.
'CHINA appears to have offered to supply massive amounts of weapons to the crumbling Gaddafi regime during Libya's civil war, violating UN sanctions and casting serious doubts on its public switch to support the rebels after it saw they were winning.
The revelations including the proposed sale of rocket launchers and anti-tank missiles may prove problematic for China as it tries to protect and extend its investments in the Libyan oil sector following the country's leadership change'. [Source: Sanction-buster China caught out offering to sell Muammar Gaddafi arms].
The peoples of the First World have been made to feel guilt-ridden by their wealth, and so obligated to open their home country to the world's people, unconditionally.
Britain has. German has, France has. What is the consequence? Who is measuring the economic, social and environmental results? Who is the watchdog of such 1951 policy? Sixty years later, is anyone questioning its merits or evaluating it?
The Refugee Convention does not set limits. It talks in humanitarian terms of persecuted individuals, not what happens when hundreds of thousands of such individuals seek asylum in First World countries. It arrogantly fails to set a quota, so by consequence imposes no limits on intake.
What is stopping the entire population of the horn of Africa, fleeing famine and persecution, from applying for asylum in Australia - all 100 million of them?
Australia has signed the Refugee Convention so OneWorldists like Sarah Hanson Young of the Australian Greens will make us all feel guilt ridden if we don't open our homes to the world's hoards! In their ideal vision...'local forgo local rights', 'my backyard is the world's commune', irrespective of how hard I may have worked for it. Private property becomes the world's property.
We are told that the new world order is a global village with no borders!
Then we give the the baby bonus and all Australia's infrastructure is overrun. Human population sprawls over remnant islands of habitat of threatened species of wildlife.
Such ecological compromise has afflicted the Australian Greens since the OneWorldists infiltrated and sidelined its foundation environmentalists.
The Refugee Convention ignores the rights of the people in the recipient countries to have a say.
It ignores the UN responsibility of containment of social unrest, instead allowing it to spill over to become a global problem.
It ignores the carrying capacity of recipient countries and any performance assessment of social receptiveness by recipient nations, of refugee social/economic adjustment, of maintenance of social cohesion, of cultural assimilation.
Like most Departments of Immigration, the Refugee Convention is an idealistic protocol that conveniently ends at Customs, without pragmatic long term settlement solutions and imposed undemocratically on society's that are expected to adapt to foreigners , not respectfully the other way around.
The Refugee Convention is big brother and right out of George Orwell's 1984.
By making wealthy nations guilt ridden, risks repeating the reaction of the Treaty of Versailles.
Tolerance in our time. Any wonder extreme right groups are re-emerging. Such open door immigration is fueling their membership of disaffected, unemployed locals.
The Refugee Convention is simplistic utopian Left Wing extremism. Like all extremism, it is fanatical and incites political polarisation and eventually a pendulous swing to the extreme opposite.
Conservatives wake!
Most people these days won't know of the famous last words of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in September 1938, but some learning of history would help us not repeat its failings.
Chamberlain said unto to the people of Britain outside 10 Downing Street:
"My good friends this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honor. I believe it is peace in our time."
A year later Britain and Germany started World War II.
Tigerquoll
Suggan Buggan
Snowy River Region
Victoria 3885
Australia
How many other "solutions", detention centres, unaccompanied children, unidentified entrants and money must be spent on failed policies to address the asylum seeker issue? The government is trying to please too many lobby groups - those who want the economic benefits of population growth, and those prefer to act with compassion and humanity.
The High Court made permanent injunctions preventing the removal of asylum seekers to Malaysia.
More "boat people" will come
Immigration minister Chris Bowen conceded that there would be more "boat people" after the High Court was convinced to block the "Malaysian Solution".
We have had many failed "solutions" to control asylum seekers arriving randomly on our shores? The size of the "welcome mat" to take risky voyages and increase people smuggling has become larger.
Julia Gillard needs to show some leadership on our behalf. The reason for all the detention centres, unaccompanied minors, armed guards and the processing of claims is because we are enslaved to a relic of a different era with our agreement to the 1951 Refugee Convention.
We are a sovereign nation, not a colony subservient of the UN, and we should be free to make our own policies, and decide who and how many people come here. Malaysia is not a signatory.
The flow of "boat people" is a political smoke-screen to hide the real source of our population boom - economic immigration.
John Howard's asylum-seeker smoke-screen
Prime Minister John Howard claimed to have "stopped the boats", but there was no mention of any plans to increase overall immigration numbers, or whether the meatworkers and fruit pickers, skilled temporary workers, were given preference over those with professional qualifications, like trained doctors or accountants.
Back in 1988 Howard said he didn't want to see the rate of Asian immigration increase any further.
Heart of the "Australian story" ?
Howard also said: To an extent greater than almost any other country, we are a nation of relatively recent immigrants. Immigration has been at the heart of the Australian story because, without it, the country we now know could not have come into existence. What was the "heart of the Australian story" should not become an epic, or tomes to fill a library! Our early childhood experiences and memories don't have to be lived and recreated throughout our lives as we reach maturity. What was beneficial in our infancy is not necessary to continue, and can be detrimental. It's like trying to relive childhood, and retain the benefits of it instead of moving on to maturity.
Growth is only one stage of a community's or nation's lifecycle. Malignant growth continues.
All evidence shows that Australia as the “Lucky Country” has already gone into history. No politician is considering reviving or reliving this part of the “Australian story”.
So while Australians felt secure that our borders were tightly protected from "boat people", polls showed that they were relaxed and comfortable about immigration despite the substantial increase in the intake from under 100,000 to over 200,000 a year during Howard's era. The impacts weren't immediately noticeable, and the use of asylum seekers as a smoke screen to disperse the economic immigration debate worked successfully.
By contrast, the return of significant discontent intensified with the Rudd Government’s further expansion of immigrant numbers to over 300,000 a year, relative reduction in the skilled proportion of the intake and, perhaps most significantly, loss of control over unauthorised boat arrivals. Kevin Rudd's popularity severely plummeted when he unapologetically supported a "big Australia"!
John Howard never wanted to talk about his booming immigration program. Kevin Rudd didn't want to either. Why not? Because it just doesn't fit. Immigration adds to the demands for labour as well as supplying it, and these families need food, clothing, shelter and all the other necessities. They also add to the need for social and economic infrastructure: roads, schools, health care and all the rest – requiring public funding.
Easy to obtain PR in Australia
It's actually very easy to obtain PR in Australia. The immigration
figures speak for them selves. We have the highest population growth in the developed world, and of course this is a magnet for those seeking a new country.
We already have our own displaced in Australia, with growing homelessness and poverty
The "immigration" debate is largely about asylum seekers, while the real source of our population growth is economic immigration - students, skilled workers, and family reunions.
Small numbers of humanitarian refugees
Australia could easily disband on the UN's outdated refugee convention, and manage the surge of asylum seekers ourselves. We could slash or disband our discriminatory economic immigration policy and increase our humanitarian intake – off-shore.
Our of our net migration of 185,000, only 14,500 are humanitarian - selected off and on-shore - yet they consume the "immigration" focus.
The government is trying to please too many lobby groups - those who want the economic benefits of population growth, and those prefer to act with compassion and humanity.
Our government only wants the ready-education and well-off to provide willing casual workers, and people to buy into property - not the displaced, unskilled, needy and poor.
With so many contradictory policies coming from our mainstream political parties, it indicates they are in a quandary about retaining "popularity" with voters, being seen to address overarching national and global issues, retaining their power, and at the same time appeasing their powerful corporate supporters and their growth-agendas.
The fact that our State and Federal government decided to create a Melbourne @ 5 million , and the "big Australia" policies, contrary to consultation and democratic principles is due to our governments' direction mainly coming from big businesses, global and national corporations, and very large and powerful lobby groups.
Voters and grass-roots interests are increasingly being ignored in favour of the elite, and those with economic and political power.
Plans are now about defining the details of how are communities are to accept the growth that's taken to be already decided, not whether it is in our interests.
Sham "consultations" are on how, not "yes" or "no" do we want them, or whether they in our best interests.
Family-hostile high rise apartments are not appropriate in Australia, and at a time we are often preached to about being sustainable. It's given lip-service in reality!
Melbourne's "activity centres" of high developments mean energy-guzzling lifestyles with little options for alternative living and self-sufficiency. EnergyAustralia NSW and the Australian Conservation Foundation (download main findings report) have both come to the same conclusion that high-rise living, as more people are being forced to "choose" due to population growth, means much higher per capita greenhouse gas emissions that villas, townhouses or separate dwellings. The NSW Energy Australia study revealed that high-rise apartments use 30 per cent more power than a typical detached house. Much of this is in the common areas such as foyers and car parks where lights are often inefficient and are left on night and day. They are ineligible roof-top solar photovoltaic (PV) systems and water-tank harvesting, or the ability to enjoy the benefits of eaves, the shade of trees or the self-sufficiency of home gardens.
Capitalism is a great ideology and can achieve many wonderful things and open doors, but unchecked, it can undermine democracy and the will of a nation's citizens. Former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, by over-riding the concerns of the Australian people regarding population growth, saw his popularity plummet after he gave his unapologetic support to a “big Australia”. It was also his lack of action on climate change and the power of mining giants that undermined him too.
The groundswell against atrocities committed to Australian cattle sent to Indonesia was overlooked in favour of the power of the livestock industries and their well-financed lobby groups. Politicians are funded by big corporations and they will never “bite the hand that feeds them”.
Despite the overwhelming majority of Australians who don't want population growth, it is foisted upon us by compliant politicians pandering to the greed of big business, the banking sector and developers.
As a society we are succumbing to Stockholm syndrome - where victims start to comply with their prisoners - as we allow capitalist excesses to wreck our land, our cities, and clear bushland and wipe out the habitat of flora and fauna. All for greed and profits – even risking endangered species in the process,
Profits now come before people, profits before environmental sustainability, profits before community. It's money before life itself. The self-destructive human gene is being allowed a free reign to support “economic growth” at all costs, and allow us to collectively ignore the converging signs on our planet that should indicate our time of growth is OVER. Nothing living can keep growing without it becoming detrimental and destructive - to internal vital organs and infrastructures, and on a macro planetary level.
With so many contradictory policies coming from our mainstream political parties, it indicates they are in a quandary about retaining voter "popularity", being seen to address overarching national and global issues, retaining their power, and at the same time appeasing their powerful corporate supporters. Such contradictory forces are hard to reconcile.
This article makes it clear that energy consumption and its fall-out, pollution, have enormously increased over two or three generations, to a point where actions commonly recommended to minimise them, are laughably inadequate. It also highlights a tendency for one generation to be encouraged to blame another generation for overconsumption, rather than to blame the market system, which benefits from the social conflict.
In the line at the store, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.
The woman apologized to him and explained, "We didn't have the green thing back in my day."
He responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment."
He was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.
Back then, we returned milk bottles, soft drink and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so the same bottles were used over and over. So they really were recycled.
But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.
We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.
But we didn't have the green thing in our day.
Back then, we washed the baby's nappies because we didn't have the disposable kind. We dried clothes on a line,not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their siblings, not always brand-new.
But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.
Back then, we had one TV or radio in the house, not several. And the TV screen was the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not as big as the size of a blanket!
In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us.
When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used screwed up old newspaper to cushion it, not styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.
Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn fuel just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.
But we didn't have the green thing back then.
We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water.
We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.
But we didn't have the green thing back then.
Back then, people took the train or a bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of their mums being a 24-hour taxi service.
We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint !
But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?
Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart ass young person.
Article by Junko Edahiro
First published in the Japan for Sustainability Newsletter, #105, May 31, 2011, Copyright (c) 2011, Japan for Sustainability[1]
On March 11, 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake hit, causing devastation to the Tohoku District, and compounded by the massive tsunami and subsequent earthquakes. The death toll exceeded 15,000 and nearly 10,000 people are still missing. From April 29 through to May 10, I stayed in the city of Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, one of the worst affected areas, to help out at a local office of JEN, an international nongovernmental organization (NGO) engaged in disaster relief (originally established as "Japan Emergency NGOs").
Ishinomaki is the second largest city in Miyagi Prefecture, with a population of about 160,000. Almost 3,000 lives were lost in the disaster here, and a large number of houses were swept away by the tsunami. Two months after the earthquake, more than 8,000 residents, accounting for nearly 5 percent of its population, were still living in over 100 shelters scattered across the city.
On my trip to Ishinomaki, I took a two-hour ride from Tokyo to Sendai on the Shinkansen bullet train and then a 90-minute ride on an expressway bus. The rail line, named the Senseki Line, runs from Sendai to Ishinomaki along the coast and was badly damaged by the disaster. I heard that it might take several years to be completely restored. When I entered the city, I was surprised at the sights I saw, totally out of the ordinary. Along both sides of the roads were piles of various abandoned household goods that had been washed up by the tsunami.
Furniture, household appliances, tatami mats, bedding, and more. The tsunami had reached several kilometers inland. I saw some houses still standing, but their first floors appeared no longer habitable.
I took a taxi from Ishinomaki Station to JEN's local office. I didn't ask any personal questions on the way, but the elderly taxi driver started to tell his sad story bit by bit: "I'm staying in a shelter at an elementary school; I had never imagined that my home would be hit by a tsunami. During the first ten days after the earthquake, the shelter was so crowded that I couldn't even find a space to lie down to sleep. I can't live in my destroyed home, and I don't have enough money to rebuild it. To move into a temporary housing unit, I have to win a highly competitive lottery. Even if I did win, that house would only be a temporary residence, after all. I have no place to go. Many neighbors around me were killed by the disaster. Everybody told me that I was lucky to have escaped death, but I'm not so sure. Survivors like me have to keep on living with all sorts of worries. If I had died, I might have felt pain, but it would have been just for a moment. I wonder sometimes which would have been better."
After a visit to JEN's office, I went by car to a seaside area and was stunned by the scene before me. Heaps of rubble stretched as far as I could see. Destroyed and covered by mud were parts of houses such as pillars and boards, along with furniture and various typical household items. Cars were scattered all around; some just the body frames, others upside down. I saw signs saying "Already Searched" on car windows, wheelchairs left overturned, and stuffed toy animals peeking out of the mud.
I also visited some shelters. In the gymnasium of one elementary school, each evacuee had a space measuring roughly a few square meters as temporary accommodations, and they were using cardboard cartons as partitions for each household. Meals were bread, cup noodles, and boxed meals distributed by the city or delivered as food assistance from all over Japan, or warm meals served by personnel from the Japanese Self Defense Forces. In some shelters, evacuees took turns preparing meals.
However, inadequate nutrition, caused especially by lack of vegetables, is a general concern for evacuees.
Other people not in shelters were staying temporarily with relatives or friends. Although about 10,000 temporary houses are needed in Ishinomaki alone, the number of houses under construction or even being planned was barely 1,800 (as of the end of April), since it is still difficult to secure available building sites in the area. The administration of procedures required to construct any temporary houses are divided up among government offices as follows: the central government, for procuring materials; the municipal governments, for procuring sites; and the prefectural government, for arranging construction. With these offices smoothly coordinating the work, I hope that everyone who needs a house will be able to move into a temporary one as soon as possible.
The experience of personally seeing damaged sites and hearing what had happened provoked a lot of thoughts, one of which was about humanity's "coexistence with nature." Being a land of frequent earthquakes, Japan has experienced many huge tsunamis in the past. Typhoons also hit it as many as 10 times a year sometimes. As it is located in the monsoon climate zone and nearly 70 percent of the land is covered with steep mountain forests, the country often experiences natural disasters such as floods and landslides caused by heavy rains.
Ishinomaki had a solid embankment built along the shore. The city and its residents believed that it would provide sufficient protection against a tsunami, but this time the tsunami was much higher than the embankment and it devastated the area, leaving behind massive damage. I keenly felt the weakness of humans and human-made things in the face of natural threats like earthquakes and tsunamis.
We often use the expression "coexistence with nature." It's often found in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports of companies, and it definitely becomes a topic when discussing town-building activities.
After seeing the situation in Ishinomaki, however, I began to think the expression is used merely superficially and is too optimistic. I think we refer to coexistence with nature when we establish a natural environment around us as something we can appreciate, which would never attack us, as if it were a miniature garden.
Most Japanese towns, including Ishinomaki, were planned and built based on the idea of combating threats from nature with technology. In this case it was to establish a solid embankment that could withstand a tsunami, but at Ishinomaki the embankment was destroyed because the tsunami was much bigger than people using modern technology had predicted. What do we need to do now? Is a more fortified and higher embankment the solution?
The city of Kamaishi in Iwate was also badly damaged as the tsunami surged and overflowed its embankment. It had built a huge one after learning lessons from the earthquake and tsunami in Chile in 1960, but it was still useless.
The city of Miyako in Iwate also suffered considerable damage from the tsunami, but in contrast the people from the city's Aneyoshi region were all found safe. This region was once destroyed almost completely when it was hit by the Meiji Sanriku Tsunami in 1896 and the Showa Sanriku Tsunami in 1933. The number of survivors from these tsunamis was said to be two and four, respectively. There is a stone tsunami marker erected on a mountain path about 500 meters away from the shore, on which warnings are inscribed to be passed on to descendants to remember the importance of having houses on a hill. People from the region have kept in their mind the warning on the marker: "The tsunami reached here." "Do not build houses below this point." "Be cautious even after years have passed." Every house in the region is built on sites above the marker, so no damage to people and houses was reported here.
Open floodplains used to be found in many monsoon regions in Asia.
Although heavy typhoon rains cause flooding and overflowing rivers, they also contribute to bringing nutrients from upstream, which in turn help boost crop harvests. I learned that people in the old days didn't try to stop flooding. They left spaces open for flooding on the floodplain in case of any overflow and avoided living there. People were adjusting their own activities to natural rhythms.
As the population has continued to grow and people thinking that they can build houses anywhere they want as long as they pay for them, they began building houses on flood plains and ended up suffering from greater damage caused by typhoons and flooding. For people living by a river with a high risk of flooding, it is now normal to expect engineered high embankments to contain the enormous threats from nature.
"All life, including human beings, is sacred and kept alive by everything in the universe." This is an eastern idea. The concept means that we live in a web woven of all that exists, both animate and inanimate.
The ancient Chinese philosophies of Laozi and Zhuangzi include the basic concepts of "naturalness" and "non-action," suggesting that instead of trying to manipulate or resist nature, fitting ourselves into the natural world is the most appropriate attitude.
A woman who was evacuated to a local temple and now takes care of dozens of evacuees including elderly people at the shelter said, "I love the sea. The tsunami hit and swept my house away, but it can't be helped.
Television broadcasts reported about people who felt betrayed by the sea or blame it on this disaster, but I have never felt like that. I live close to the sea because I love it, so I don't blame it. I'll live by the sea again, although I'm thinking about living somewhere uphill next time." She reminded me of the concepts of non-action and naturalness.
"Naturalness" here is a mode of being in accordance with the ways of nature. To gain such naturalness, Laozi and Zhuangzi preached that non-action is important. In their idea, the opposite of non-action is "artificiality," attempts by people to put something natural under their control. Examples of artificiality here are trying to block tsunamis or flooding with engineering technologies.
Should humanity regard nature as an object that needs to be suppressed and controlled, or just let it go and go along with its natural oscillations? The earthquake and tsunami disaster has given us an opportunity to reconsider the relationship between humanity and nature and how we should perceive it.
People in the disaster areas, including those in Ishinomaki, have started discussing and working on reconstruction plans. Some towns might choose to build higher and stronger seawalls, while others might decide to pass on the tough lessons from the tsunami disaster this time to future generations by telling them that we should not live too close to the water's edge because it is the realm of nature. There is no single and ultimately correct answer. Yet I strongly hope that future city planning is developed with longer time perspectives to enhance resilience, not just short-term efficiencies, and that planning and reconstruction in the affected areas are carried out using the hard lessons learned from this disaster.
Japan for Sustainability (JFS) is a non-profit communication platform to disseminate environmental information from Japan to the world, with the aim of helping both move onto a sustainable path. See what's new : on our web site E-mail: info[AT]japanfs.org
In the 1980s I made a survey of Trading Post advertisements selling dangerous dog breeds before Trading Post became cautious about such advertisements. While there were 101 advertisements for primarily pet, show, racing or working dogs, there were 158 ads selling larger guard and hunting dogs - the sort that can scare or menace the young and the old - even if foxies may be quicker on the nip. Some cross-breeds sounded doubly or triply dangerous, for example, "Sire Staffordshire Bull x heeler, bred for pig dogs" and the possibly ultimate combination, "American pit bull terrier cross bull terrier cross boxer bull mastiff”. Most of the advertising owners and breeders lived in Melbourne’s rural fringes and north-east and north-west outer suburbs, where life and people are perhaps correctly seen to be tougher.
Some of the fiercest dogs advertised in Trading Post are probably kept safely as guard dogs sitting in vans or within fenced properties. But quite often the ads in newspapers as well as in Trading Post, emphasised the eagerness of the dogs to 'have a go' at pigs and goats, and what great hunters of pigs and goats they will be, that one wondered what may happen to anything else alive when they go hunting. Or do they all go hunting? An Agriculture Departmental report on pit bull terriers in 1987 raised the public question of bull terriers used in pit bull fights, to explain why such ferocity is prized. And abandonment of unwanted pets who are feral and dangerous is already a problem in some hill and semi-rural areas.
Writer Val Yule, Daughter, grandchild, and Tangles, who was killed by a pit bull terrier.
The Royal Children's Hospital alone treated more than eighty children in one year (1987) for serious bites from dogs. Numberless other bites would have been treated elsewhere, and most attacks are not even reported.
Dog-lovers often insist on Victim-Onus - saying that dogs attack because children or adults provoke or show fear. This is not fair to all the children, adults or small dogs who may be attacked simply because others have provoked the irritable dogs in the past, or those who cannot reasonably be expected not to show fear of a menacing animal.
Terror is inflicted on many children and older people by vicious owners who laugh when their dogs frighten people.
The pitbull terrier that killed our harmless little dog in a park was on a lead, but the foul-mouthed owner could not restrain it. Two earlier attacks requiring costly veterinary attention and bills were by unleashed dogs. All these dogs are still free until they savage people. Pitbull terriers have burst off muzzles as they rush to kill, too strong for their owners.
• Dogs bred to attack should be labelled and treated as dangerous dogs whether or not they have attacked anyone before. If people who say their attack-dog is perfectly safe and gentle wanted a perfectly safe and gentle dog they should not choose an attack-dog. These are harder to train to be safe. They can choose dogs bred to be lapdogs, retrievers, water=dogs . . Guard dogs are bred to guard, not to attack. Many types of dogs should not be kept confined in urban areas at all.
• There should be some places specifically labelled as places where dogs can run free for exercise, since it is cruel for dogs not to have plenty of exercise.
• Free therapy for people with psychological needs to have dogs that terrorise others.
• Owners of attack-dogs and their cross-breeds pay double licence fees to discourage irresponsible people. Irresponsible abandonment of unwanted pets who become feral is already a danger in some hill and semi-rural areas.
• Licences refused, until owners demonstrated that such a dog will not lunge at weaker creatures, and will respond immediately to the command ‘Let Go’. Pitbull terriers can’t let go even when their owners swear at them and hit them.
• Licenses required for owners, once any dog of theirs has a vicious record.
• Better ‘dog-owner’ training, including DIY videos available in libraries and secondary schools, so that bad owners will not turn dogs of any breed vicious.
• RSPCA or local papers as places for reporting all unprovoked dog attacks in public places. This would show how much sorrow and fear is caused by savage, badly trained animals, while usually the owners cannot be traced to pay medical costs. Add in figures for psychological trauma and fear from being snarled at, knocked over and nipped. Long-term fear, and even disablement and disfigurement can be greater than many other types of psychological trauma cases that are awarded damages of thousands of dollars.
• Even the nicest people may like owning a threatening animal that makes visitors cower while they laugh, “It’s quite all right. His teeth don’t meet.” Watch people encouraging puppies to snap. Ideally, our whole society could change, to enjoy peaceful pursuits, civilised entertainment, safe homes not needing guarding, and ideals of masculinity that called for courage not cruelty - so that nobody would want to have rottweilers, pitbulls or terrifying cross-breeds.
Citizens in Australia’s major cities are becoming increasingly unhappy about what they perceive as the escalating deterioration in their quality of life - traffic congestion, overloaded public transport, unaffordable housing for young people, increases in the costs of basic services and overcrowding. There is little doubt that recent election results and unfavourable opinion polls are partly an expression of this dissatisfaction. (Article first published on On-Line Opinion, where you may also currently make comments.)
Citizens in Australia’s major cities are becoming increasingly unhappy about what they perceive as the escalating deterioration in their quality of life - traffic congestion, overloaded public transport, unaffordable housing for young people, increases in the costs of basic services and overcrowding. There is little doubt that recent election results and unfavourable opinion polls are partly an expression of this dissatisfaction.
‘Save Our Suburbs’ believe that these adverse trends are the result of high-density policies that have been imposed onto communities by state governments. Due to the misleading misinformation that has accompanied these policies, the public may not fully realise the connection between these policies on the one hand and deteriorating standard of living on the other. It is only when one sweeps the propaganda veil aside that one realises how shallow, trivial and sometimes downright deceptive the spin has been.
We should start out by making it clear that we have no issue with anyone that prefers living in a high-density area or with the free market construction of buildings to fulfill this preference. The issue we have is with the enforced imposition of high density housing upon the bulk of Australians that don’t want it.
The premise behind this government totalitarianism is that high-density living is better for the environment. They say that people will use their cars less and that greenhouse gas emissions will be greatly reduced. While these two propositions sound very much like commonsense the unfortunate fact is that the data does not bear them out. An idealised Melbourne study currently being quoted assumes that people, no matter where they live, will drive to the central business district daily. This is a completely unrealistic assumption. Only 9.9 per cent of employment in Melbourne is in the CBD. The majority of destinations for most people in the suburbs lie close to where they live and they do not in fact make daily trips to the CBD.
To get a better understanding we should look at the Australian Conservation Association’s Consumption Atlas, which shows greenhouse pollution per person in each postal code. The underlying research shows that the actual travel energy used by dwellers in inner Sydney suburbs is more than those in the outer suburbs, even when air travel is excluded.
When domestic energy is added to travel energy, the energy total for people in the inner suburbs is 22 per cent more than those living in the outer suburbs. This is because of energy needed in high-rise buildings for communal lifts, scores of individual clothes driers and ever-present security lighting in foyers and garage spaces.
While we do concede that private transport generates somewhat higher greenhouse gas emissions than public transport, the difference is not nearly as much as people think. Greenhouse gas emissions per passenger kilometre on Sydney City Rail are 105 gm. The figure for the average car is 155 gm. It is much less for modern hybrid vehicles, being a mere 70 gm.
Furthermore, a study of Melbourne areas shows that the people squeezed into newly converted dense areas did not use public transport to any greater extent and there was little or no change in their percentage of car use compared to living in the previous low-density.
In fact, traffic congestion increases whenever high-density policies are imposed wherever you are in the world. Any slight increase that may occur in the proportion of people using public transport is overwhelmed by the greater number of people squeezed into that area. The resulting congestion causes higher fuel consumption and dangerous exhaust emissions. The authorities fail to admit that many people still require their cars for getting to the many workplaces, sporting facilities, and relatives and friends homes not easily reached by public transport and for transporting items that are impractical or illegal aboard public transport such as weekend recreation equipment and the family pet.
High density advocates claim that high-density saves money. This is palpable nonsense. We are all acutely aware that high-density policies have resulted in a dramatic rise in the price of housing, due to the government enforced infill policy causing land scarcity, thereby locking out an entire generation of young people from the housing market. We are also conscious of substantial rises in the cost of services such as electricity, water and sewerage due to the incredibly inefficient modifications required to increase capacity in areas originally designed for lower densities.
A tragic and often overlooked failure of high-density policies is the adverse effect on human health, especially mental health. There is a considerable body of peer-reviewed research proving the link between density and ill health. An article published on 23 June 2011 by eleven authors in the prestigious scientific journal, Nature, states that the incidence of schizophrenia in city dwellers is double that of people living in less crowded conditions. This article has received worldwide media attention. In view of the serious mental health situation existing in our society, those forcing high-density onto communities that do not want it, should hang their heads in shame.
We reiterate that we have no issue with those of us that preferliving in a high-density area or with the free market construction of buildings to fulfill that limited demand. What we object to, is having draconian high density policies based on demonstrably faulty premises forced upon the 83 per cent of people that Australian research shows prefer to live in a free-standing home.
This is especially so when the result is maddening traffic congestion, more greenhouse gases, a creaking and overloaded infrastructure, the young and disadvantaged unable to afford their own home and poorer health outcomes.
Dr Tony Recsei has a background in chemistry and is an environmental consultant. Since retiring he has taken an interest in community affairs and is president of the Save Our Suburbs community group which opposes over-development forced onto communities by the New South Wales State Government. You can find the Youtube site here; and the blog here.
Cynthia McKinney is an unusual black US former congresswoman who has risked her life to report on the situation in Libya from Libya on what she calls the "Truth Tour". The article below contains her most recent report, which contains parts of alternative journalists' articles and criticises mainstream journalism. The video where she speaks, included here, is an addition. It is quite rivetting stuff.
From Cynthia McKinney: "Still in the Truth Tour"
Thanks to all who have come out and participated in the Truth Tour. I have almost come to its end. Last night in Detroit, several of the women were moved to tears as I explained the situation in Libya right now as I know it to be. Every venue has had every seat occupied or was filled to capacity with standing room only.
Detroit's young singer and band, Sister Ziyah and Black Rain were phenomenal and their music set the tone for the event: first song, Kickstart the Revolution; second song, Good Morning, America; third song, Today, I'm a Better Me.
This Truth Tour has been unique because the true peace people in this country have revealed themselves by their willingness to step forward and be counted against this war in the very midst of the worst deceit and demonization ever. NATO war crimes are being excused, discounted, or covered up by those who posed as supporters of justice and peace. It is never OK to bomb people. And it is never OK to ask the peace-loving people of this country to sacrifice Social Security and Medicare and education and housing--and I could go on and on--so that war profiteers can fatten their ill-gotten coffers.
I agree with Stephen Lendman and others who have written that the war propaganda against Libya reached heights higher than that for the war against the Iraqi people. The deceit continues to this day from the most respected "news" outlets. Now, we know them as what they really are, too.
Here are a few items that I had to wake up early to get to you before I board the plane for my next destination: it seems that the "Mighty Wurlitzer" could use a tune up because it has even ratcheted up a notch in its noise factor with this war. Watch the BBC descent from journalism to the absolute lowest depths with this:
For more information on the current deceptions and machinations regarding the US/NATO war against the people of Libya, listen to this conversation between Dedon Kamathi (who was a part of the DIGNITY Delegation of alternative journalists who traveled with me to wartime Libya) and Don Debar (who traveled with me to Libya in 2009 as a part of the DIGNITY Delegation to learn more about The Green Book:
Here's what Glen Ford wrote that moved me to tears:
"The Libyan Soldier: The True Heroes of NATO’s War," Wed, 08/24/2011 - 13:02 — Glen Ford
"NATO has proven it has the capacity to kill thousands of Libyan soldiers from the skies, but it cannot “convey honor and legitimacy” to the rebels under its killer wings. “They are little more than extras for imperial theater, a mob that traveled under the protective umbrella of American full spectrum dominance of the air.” The incinerated bodies of her soldiers have secured Libya’s place in history.
“The Libyan armed forces maintained their unit integrity and personal honor, with a heroism reminiscent of the loyalist soldiers of the Spanish Republic, in the late 1930s.”
The story is not over – not by a long shot – but the saga of the Libyan resistance to the superpower might of the United States and its degenerate European neocolonial allies will surely occupy a very special place in history. For five months, beginning March 19, the armed forces of a small country of six million people dared to defy the most advanced weapons systems on the planet, on terrain with virtually no cover, against an enemy capable of killing whatever could be seen from the sky or electronically sensed. Night and day, the eyes of the Euro-American war machine looked down from space on the Libyan soldiers’ positions, with the aim of incinerating them. And yet, the Libyan armed forces maintained their unit integrity and personal honor, with a heroism reminiscent of the loyalist soldiers of the Spanish Republic under siege by German, Italian and homegrown fascists, in the late 1930s.
The Germans and Italians and Generalissimo Franco won that war, just as the Americans, British, French and Italians may ultimately overcome the Libyan army. But they cannot convey honor or national legitimacy to their flunkies from Benghazi, who have won nothing but a badge of servitude to foreign overseers. The so-called rebels won not a single battle, except as walk-ons to a Euro-American military production. They are little more than extras for imperial theater, a mob that traveled to battle under the protective umbrella of American full spectrum dominance of the air. They advanced along roads already littered with the charcoal-blackened bodies of far better men, who died challenging Empire.
“The so-called rebels won not a single battle, except as walk-ons to a Euro-American military production.”
One thing is sure: the Americans and Europeans have never respected their servants. The so-called rebels of Libya will be no different. Washington, Paris and London know perfectly well that is was their 18,000 aircraft sorties, their cruise missiles, their attack helicopters, their surveillance satellites and drones, their command and control systems, their weapons, and their money, that managed to kill or wound possibly half the Libyan army. Not the rabble from Benghazi.
The rebels should not take too seriously being fawned over by the ridiculous hordes of corporate media tourists that have come to Tripoli to record the five-month war's finale. They are highly paid cheerleaders. And, although it may appear that they are cheering for the rebels, don't be fooled – at the end of the day, the western corporate media only cheer for their own kind. They are celebrating what they believe is a victory over the Libyan demon they have helped to construct in their countrymen's minds. Next year, rebel, that demon might be you.
Or next year, it might be many Libyans, including those who were no friends of Col. Moammar Gaddafi. The Americans treat their native minions like children in need of supervision – and there is a certain logic to this, since whoever would entrust his nation's sovereignty and resources to the Americans is, surely, either exceedingly stupid, or hopelessly corrupt. But Libya's honor and her place in history has already been secured by a small African army that held out nearly half a year against the NATO barbarians.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].
Never Forgive, Never Forget
And here is what Stephen Lendman wrote:
"Never Forgive, Never Forget," by Stephen Lendman
After covering Libya's rape since last winter in dozens of articles, no forgiving or forgetting is possible for one of history's great crimes. Nor is ignoring those responsible, condemning them forthrightly, and explaining why all wars are waged.
NATO outdid Orwell on this one, killing truth by calling war the responsibility to protect - by terrorizing, attacking, and slaughtering civilians like psychopathic assassins.
As a result, honest historians will redefine barbarism to explain NATO's savagery. It includes ongoing crimes of war and against humanity for the most malevolent reasons.
When is war not war? It's when committing cold-blooded murder is called the right thing. When major media scoundrels cheerlead it, and when most people believe it because they're too indifferent, uncaring or lazy to learn the truth.
NATO's rape of Libya is too ugly for proper words to describe. Only honest images can do it, and lots of them.
Instead, the Big Lie substitutes for honest journalism, especially on television where real (not fake) visuals can show mangled bodies, mass destruction, and other evidence of NATO crimes.
Where civilian deaths can be shown graphically in living color. Where responsibility can be placed where it belongs. Where right and wrong can best be explained. Where repetition can arouse public outrage. Where proper analysis in advance perhaps can prevent all wars.
None are liberating, lawful, or virtuous. All are shamelessly exploitive. Libya's one of the worst - unscrupulously benefitting powerful interests criminally, ruthlessly, and diabolically.
It doesn't get any worse than that. Ask Lybians. They'll explain.
The New York Times is America's lead propaganda instrument, its reports getting enough global coverage to make a difference.
From the start, it cheerled war with Libya. It played the same role in Afghanistan, Iraq, and all previous US wars, deceiving its readers by dishonest journalism, commentaries, and editorials.
August 26 was no different. Two articles among others stand out. David Kirkpatrick wrote one headlined, "As Qaddafi Forces Retreat, a Newly Freed Imam Encourages Forgiveness," saying:
Pro-NATO Sheik Abdul Ghani Aboughreis helped incite last winter's uprising "with a fiery Friday sermon at the Mourad Agha mosque. His words sent thousands of demonstrators pouring into the streets. (His) mosque and neighborhood became a center of revolt and resistance...."
After six months of shamelessly supporting death and destruction against his own people, he now encourages "forgiv(ing) each other, to make sure to leave it to the law and not take revenge on each other."
As in all his Libya war articles, Kirkpatrick left unexplained months of crimes of war and against humanity, committed by NATO and paramilitary killers.
Instead, he highlighted alleged evidence of ongoing Gaddafi loyalist crimes.
In times of war, both sides commit them, but whatever government forces did pale compared to NATO's savagery and its hired assassins. Kirkpatrick and other Times writers failed to notice.
Anthony Shadid and Kareem Hahim were no better headlining, "Grim Evidence of Fighting's Toll Becomes Clearer in Libya," saying:
"As the fighting died down in Tripoli on Friday, the scope and savagery of the violence during the nearly weeklong battle for control of the capital began to come into sharper focus."
Evidence he cites is a shameful Amnesty International report (based on freed Al Qaeda and other paramilitary prisoners), saying:
AI "uncovered evidence that forces loyal to (Gaddafi) have killed numerous detainees held at two military camps in Tripoli on 23 and 24 August."
Perhaps so if other insurgents freed them, attacked Gaddafi forces in the process, and they fought back.
Instead, AI said:
"Loyalist forces in Libya must immediately stop such killings of captives, and both sides must commit to ensuring no harm comes to prisoners in their custody."
Like UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, AI tries to have it both ways, ruining everything it gets right by reports like this - equating horrendous NATO crimes with lesser ones committed by Gaddafi forces, perhaps many less than imagined. The fog of war makes it hard to know precisely.
Instead, Shadid and Hahim's article was shamelessly one sided. While citing clear evidence of rebel-committed atrocities, their article claimed:
- Tripoli violence is now subsiding when, in fact, it rages;
- rebels say Gaddafi loyalists killed their own, an absurdity on its face;
- it's hard "to ascertain the fate of....dead men" in hospitals, as well as chaos committed inside; AP and Reuters reported it resulted from rebel-committed terror;
- Gaddafi's "cloak of secrecy (and) mercurial rule" are being revealed, leaving unexplained why Washington and its NATO partners wage all wars;
- slogans are being displayed, saying "Libya is free" and "Misurata is steadfast," though still Gaddafi controlled, it's believed, what Shadid and Hahim ignored, as well as not debunking claims of Libya's freedom; and
- documents in Gaddafi's compound "seemed to show that (his) adopted daughter Hana, who was supposedly killed at age 4 in (1986), was alive (and) working as a doctor." The key words "seemed to show" both Times writers implied were proof, adding that Tripoli Central Hospital workers claimed "a spacious and well-appointed office" there was hers.
Throughout the conflict, Times articles, op-eds and editorials backed it. Their unstated message is war is good, the more the better when America wages them.
Sadly, that's the state of managed Western news and opinion. It's a shocking indictment of its support for wealth and power, no matter how lawless and harmful to billions exploited ruthlessly, shameless, and repeatedly.
Final Comments
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) reports continued fighting in Tripoli, inflicting many casualties. Moreover, many injured can't be treated because of ongoing violence, inadequate staff, and enough supplies and capacity at local hospitals.
In addition, "numerous arrests" were made, "including foreign nationals." Their welfare is very much at risk, especially those singled out for revenge.
Fierce fighting also continues around Misrata and elsewhere. The end of conflict is nowhere in sight. Brega "look(s) like a ghost town."
In different areas, people are endangered by unexploded ordinance, as well as shortages of food, clean water, drugs, other medical supplies, and spotty or no electricity.
Washington-led NATO turned Libya into a hellish inferno - step one before occupying and exploiting its resources and people. Months ago its wealth was stolen. Ahead will be its future if Libyans don't struggle and win their freedom.
On August 26 on Russia Today (RT.com), journalist Pepe Escobar said Abdelhakim Belhadj, a former Al-Qaeda insurgent/now CIA asset commands rebel forces in Tripoli. He explained that he was trained in Afghanistan by a "very hardcore Islamist Libyan group." Earlier he was captured in Malaysia, detained and tortured in Bangkok, then transferred back to Libya and imprisoned. In 2009, he made a deal for freedom, in return for serving Western interests, Escobar says: "I can say almost for sure with 95% certainty that this is the guy" heading insurgents in Tripoli. It shows how Washington both demonizes and uses Al Qaeda advantageously, including bin Laden. He was a longtime CIA asset until his death in December 2001 - not from Obama's staged raid. Notably, Al Qaeda was a 1980s CIA creation during the Soviet-Afghan war. Moreover, Washington both supports international terrorism covertly and battles it by imperial wars and persecuting Muslims for their faith. It's part of the fog to scare people enough to believe waging wars remove threats that, in fact, don't exist. So they have to be invented to enlist public support, unaware of the harm caused abroad and at home.
Only war profiteers benefit, not taxpayers they steal from or victims they attack. At the same time, corrosive militarism, financial wars, and other destructive policies destroyed America's soul. Its future as a free country is next.
So focused on bread and circus distractions, most people don't notice. How else can Washington get away with murder!
Finally, the fate of independent journalists trapped in Tripoli's Corinthia Hotel remains unclear. They're still in harm's way because a chartered ship for their safe passage out either hasn't arrived or it's too unsafe to reach it.
In conclusion, Law Professor Francis Boyle's morning email said the following:
"After Six Months of fighting by the most powerful military alliance in the history of the world, Ghadafy has now become the Greatest African Warrior since Hannibal against the Romans - predecessors to the Americans."
"Generations from now, people will sing songs, write poems, and compose odes to Ghadafy all over Africa, the Arab World, the Muslim World, and the Third World long after Obama is dead and disparaged and discredited."
Sic transit Gloria mundi (Thus passes the glory of the world)!"
Keep Libya's freedom flame alive no matter how imperial monsters try to destroy it! We're all Libyans now! Their struggle is ours!
It's high time we matched their courageous spirit against the world's most pernicious/destructive force. Bowed perhaps, they're not broken! Isn't that enough to raise our consciousness to support them!
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
But rather than replying to a comment to that article by way of a response comment, this article takes its place. The recent austerity measures imposed on the people of Ireland and likewise by selected European countries are treasonable. Insolvent developers and bankers have wrongfully been absolved from their reckless gambling. Governments bailing out these gamblers with public moneys have immorally burdened the public with private debts of the reckless. This is gross malfeasance and blatant betrayal of national wealth and so is treason. I fail to understand why civil rebellion has not broken out and call for the guillotine.
Back in October 2010, The Irish Times published the following article of a reader's response to her government's announcement of the possible €50 billion bill for the bank bailout. Eviction of Thomas Considine, Tullycrine, Ireland, July 1888
'I am a citizen of this country and I am angry'
by Barbara Scully in The Irish Times, 2nd October 2010.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2010/1002/1224280160745.html
'It didn't look like a Black Thursday. September 30th in Dublin was a lovely mild day, blue skies with a smattering of white clouds. No breeze and just the slightest hint of autumn in the air. A day to be glad you were alive. A day when the earth was trying her best to distract us with her beauty and her benign nature.
On Twitter others noticed the beauty of this day, too. Mark Little (@marklittlenews) posted a beautiful photo of the early-morning city. There was a softness to the day that belied what the news was about to bring us. As Morning Ireland came on air, Twitter began “discussing” the current state of affairs.
There was a building sense of seriousness. The jokey tone of a couple of weeks ago was gone. The main feeling was one of disbelief. I continued to scroll, reading each comment. In 140 characters there is nowhere to hide. No room for flowery language. Twitter tells it like it is.
I phoned my husband, who was already out chasing up work, and told him not to turn on the news. Tune your radio to Nova and listen to rock music all day, I commanded. As a self-employed sole trader he has more than enough on his plate wondering about paying next month’s mortgage. He didn’t need to know about another harsh budget in December. Not today anyway.
As I hung up the phone, I began to get angry. I am a housewife and part-time writer. I have no degree in economics or politics. I don’t understand bond markets. But I am not stupid. I run a home, write, support my husband’s business and raise our children. I am a citizen of this country and my opinion counts. And I am angry.
I am angry that the Government which presided over the Celtic Tiger (some would have us believe they actually created it) and allowed the property market to run amok over a number of years is still in office.
I am angry that we are two years into this banking crisis and, despite all the rhetoric, things just continue to get worse.
I am angry because I feel we have been misled by our Government on Anglo Irish Bank.
I am angry because there are still fat-cat bankers, the very ones who contributed hugely to this mess, who are still fat cats. There has been no accountability.
I am angry because our Taoiseach, at such a critical time, saw fit to go on the piss a few weeks ago. I am angry that he then thought it acceptable to address the nation on the economy after very little sleep, with seemingly little preparation and clearly hungover.
I am angry that there seems to be no credible opposition to this lame Government.
I am angry that the politicians continually put their own egos and quest for power before what’s best for our country.
I am angry that we are being told there will be major cuts in the next Budget. I can tell you that this family, like many others, has nothing left to give. The past two years have eroded any savings we had for our children’s education. We have cut all that can be cut in our own budget, and every week it is a struggle to pay the bills.
I am angry that I have to watch my husband run himself ragged as he tries to earn enough each month to keep our boat afloat.
But most of all I am angry because I know I am not alone. I am one of thousands of women all over Ireland in the same situation.
I love this country. I think Irish people are articulate, creative, compassionate and brave. I do not understand how we have so few politicians who reflect these attributes.
I call on every TD in Dáil Éireann, from all parties and none, to set aside their political differences and come up with a cross-party strategy to deal with the financial mess. I am clinging to the hope that we have the brains, creativity and energy to begin the process of fixing our banks and our economy.
In extraordinary times, extraordinary measures are called for. I challenge our politicians to take such extraordinary steps as are now necessary.
History will not forgive them if they don’t. And neither will I.'
In a brilliant new paper released this morning, Labor MP Kelvin Thomson has proposed his "Witches' Hats" theory of government -- a theory that places central importance on rates of population growth.
Democratic politicians, says Kelvin, are often bluffed by lobbyists who convince them that what is good for business is good for their or their governments' political longevity -- and that since population growth is good for business (or at least for big business, since it provides more customers) it must good for the Parties they belong to.
The reverse is the case, he says. It's not just in unstable states that rapid population growth is bad for political stability. Even in securely democratic countries, population growth destabilises leaders and governments.
One striking example is the amazingly rapid fall of Kevin Rudd, the (once) extremely popular Australian prime minister who pushed Australia's annual population growth in 2009 to 2.1%, nearly six times the average for industrialised countries, told the electorate "I support a big Australia" and had a meteoric fall in the opinion polls -- and from office. But Kelvin Thomson argues in his The Witches’ Hats Theory of Government: How increasing population is making the task of government harder that this connection is far more widespread than politicians and political analysts have yet recognised.
Why? Because staying in power, and keeping the electorate happy is a little like an advanced driving course, one in which a government is required to thread a kind of slalom course between a series of witches' hats -- meaning the orange inverted cones that mark out the course. These hats, which the government, like the driver, needs to avoid knocking over, include such things as keeping electricity and water costs down, reducing hospital queues, keeping housing affordable, preserving the environment, providing full employment, restricting inflation, etc.
And the faster a country’s population is rising, the harder it is to do this, says Kelvin Thomson. It’s like trying to negotiate the course at double speed.
"Countries with stable populations, like the Scandinavian nations, tend to have stable governments. I’m suggesting that the life-expectancy of a democratic party or a particular Prime Minister may be crucially affected by how fast the population is growing. Governments that preside over rapid population growth tend to have short honeymoon periods, and soon find themselves on the nose with the electorate.
"I recently headed a parliamentary delegation to the Solomon Islands and Samoa. At the time of independence, the Solomon Islands had a population of 170,000 – now its population is three times that, over 500,000. It has seen frequent changes of Prime Minister, and the other countries in the region have troops stationed there to keep the peace. Its Parliament has not met this year, and our Delegation was told that this was because the Prime Minister was afraid of a Parliamentary vote of no-confidence.
"Samoa by contrast has had a relatively stable population of around 170,000 to 180,000 for decades. It has had the same Prime Minister for nearly 20 years, and the same governing Party for nearly 30 years."
"So when politicians are puzzled by their ratings and ask “Why don’t they like me?”, the answer might well be that they are driving the car too fast and knocking over those witches’ hats. They should slow the car down and focus on solving people’s real-life problems."
We are republishing this message because we agree that nothing can go ahead as long as the public messaging system is held hostage by a corporate media monopoly. Avaaz organisation says that, "Prime Minister Gillard may finally be about to order an inquiry into Rupert Murdoch's stranglehold on our media, but insiders say she is wobbling under direct pressure from Murdoch's lobbyists. Let’s flood her cabinet members with calls today and give them the public mandate they need to take a strong stand and hold the PM steady in her decision." See also "Concentrated media ownership: a crisis for democracy" Remember, the Murdoch press wants our population to increase and is against protection of the environment and of workers' rights.
Candobetter.net does not know how true this view of Gillard is, but we certainly agree with the sentiment. It is true that Murdoch media sure does not act like a friend to Julia, so, if she knows what is good for her, she will increase Australia's media diversity and downsize the Murdoch press. But she may also rely on 'friends' of the Murdoch media - which means nearly every 'successful' mediocre politician around. They will stand in her way by protecting the Murdoch press. The extremely weak response to the recent Murdoch scandal by Australian politicians and parliament is indicative of how bad the situation is. Is there no politician left who does not kowtow to Rupert?
Avaaz suggests that you "Take a moment and call these numbers now -- the talking points below will help guide you in what to say:
Kate Ellis: (02) 6277 7630
Tanya Plibersek: (02) 6277 7200
Anthony Albanese: (02) 6277 7680"
And, how about signing this petition which has been going now for several weeks, as well? (Image: Rupert Murdoch, courtesy Rex Interstock) Sign this online petition advocating a comprehensive Inquiry into the Australian media industry. #AusPolhttp://fb.me/18xDXIEuv1 day ago
Talking points
I believe that there should be a robust inquiry into Australia’s media because current regulation doesn’t protect media diversity and News Limited controls 70% of what Australians read in the news every day.
I encourage you to firmly remind the Prime Minister that she has an overwhelming public mandate to call for this inquiry -- thousands of Australians have called on her to bring this inquiry.
I believe we need a “fit and proper person” or public interest test to determine if media acquisitions are in the interest of our society.
Australia needs a balanced privacy law that protects people from invasive and ruthless journalism without stifling free speech or public interest reporting.
The concentration of media power in just a few hands undermines the heart of a democratic society -- the ability of people to access a variety of viewpoints and form their own opinions.
Remember to be polite: we’ll be far more convincing if we are reasonable and courteous. After the call share your experience with others across the country in the live chat on the right.
Fidel Castro, Muammar Gaddafi and Hugo Chavez are three men of different eras who have lived a similar desire to defend the rights of the nations they represent and to network with other struggling regions over international trade and political representation. The nations and regions they have championed all have suffered greatly at the hands of the United States. These leaders have confronted political realities that simply are not acknowledged in the mainstream western press. Chavez recently spoke again about Libya and of the danger of the predatory US taking advantage of his current illness, for which he is being treated in Cuba.
These leaders survived the oil shocks and forged 3rd World Alliances
Castro came to power in 1959 and only recently stepped down in favour of his brother.
Gaddafi came to power in 1969 and led the formation of OPEC, which supported the rights of 'developing' Arab countries, most of them colonies, and their independence from oppressive and exploitative western powers. [Read about the history and future of OPEC here.]
Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela has been at the forefront of attempts to form associations with other 'developing' countries, particularly oil and mineral producers, since he won government in December 1998. He personally visited many of the leaders of oil producing nations around the world, and hosted the first summit of heads of state of OPEC in 25 years, and the second ever held.[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Venezuelan_oil_industry#cite_note-Wilpert-1] The impact of this is that South American, African, Chinese and other powers might take precedence over the usual dominant countries - the UK, the US and their European allies. These previously dominant countries need to negotiate in good spirit and to downsize their demands for oil in line with depletion protocols - not bomb the daylights out of any country that stands up to them - which is what is happening in Libya.
"Libya: Chavez denounces the European and US massacre"
Hugo Chavez is furious about the bombing by NATO forces and rebel forces which daily kill innocent people in Libya: "We pray to God for the peole of Libya. Innocent people must be spared; peace must reign over the world! Since the beginning of the war which began last March, the Venezuelan President has called for a cease-fire to stop the butchery.
Because, for Chavez, the US and European military attacks are causing a veritable massacre among Libya's population. Chavez has nil approval for support by a part of Europe and by the United States for the rebel forces opposed to Colonel Gaddafi. In one of his famously passionate speeches, Chavez described how appalled he felt: "These false-democracy proselytisers are bombing Tripoly and destroying schools, hospitals, houses and factories." Over last weekend, conflicts caused 1300 dead and 5000 wounded. For Chavez, the USA and its allies are creating a true precedent by attacking an "independent country in order to steal its natural resources."
For this reason, Chavez is asking his supporters to remain vigilant in the face of a possible attempt to destabilise Venezuela [itself] at a time when its President [Chavez is undergoing treatment for cancer] seems diminished by illness. "Obama and the Americans spread violence everywhere they go. The destroy and cause death in the name of peace. But the only thing that really interests them is to get hold of oil."
"Remember that Venezuela has the biggest oil reserve in the world, with 296 billion barrels." [Editorial: This last statement fails to articulate the fact that most of these reserves are in the form of tar sands - which are very energy-intensive to mine and environmentally costly. "Based on data from BP at the end of 2009 the highest proved oil reserves including non-conventional oil deposits are in Saudi Arabia (18 per cent of global reserves), Canada (12 %, mostly oil sands), Venezuela (12 %, mostly tar sands), Iran (9 %), Iraq (8 %), Kuwait (7 %), UAE (7 %) and Russia (5 %). Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves#cite_note-TI2011-1]]
Where does Australia fit in?
Postscript: What does this all have to do with Australia? Well, in the early 1970s Whitlam, with Rex Connor, attempted to make Australia nationally self-sufficient in energy - including gas and oil. This was a step towards Australian independence and we might just have become another independent oil and gas producer. As many Australians may still remember, however, Primeminister Whitlam was removed from office by an agent of the Queen of England. Shortly after Primeminister Fraser began policies to sell off assets in exchange for equity, in order to develop Australia's mineral and fuel resources. Thus our country, which at the time of Whitlam had the lowest foreign ownership, became a largely foreign-owned country with only token democracy. Was this fate preferable to the one that Libya now faces or is the shock-doctrine treatment we are currently being dosed with by our Treasury just a foretaste of much worse to come, with local oil depletion well in train and overpopulation causing dispossession, displacement through migrant-worker schemes in the context of detoothed labour laws, and Saudi-like desalination projects where elites engineer water costs that will ultimately rise beyond the reach of ordinary people, along with food. On the history of oil policies pre-Oil Shock and after, and the details of the Khemlani loan and Whitlam's removal, and cabinet papers on Rex Connor's project see Chapter 7 of The Growth Lobby in Australia and its Absence in France
Hugo Chavez est outré par les bombardements de l’OTAN et des forces rebelles qui tuent chaque jour des innocents en Libye : « nous prions Dieu pour le peuple de Libye. Epargnons les innocents, il faut la paix dans le monde ! » Depuis le début du conflit qui a démarré en Mars dernier, le chef de l’état du Venezuela s’empresse de demander un cessez-le-feu pour arrêter la boucherie.
Car pour Chavez, les frappes militaires américaines et européennes provoquent un véritable massacre parmi la population. Chavez n’approuve pas du tout le soutien d’une partie de l’Europe et des Etats-Unis aux forces rebelles opposées au colonel Kadhafi. Dans une diatribe dont il a le secret, Chavez exprime son désarroi : » ces faux démocrates sont en train de bombarder Tripoli et détruisent des écoles, des hôpitaux, des maisons et des usines." Lors du dernier week-end, les affrontements ont fait 1300 morts et plus de 5000 blessés. Pour Chavez, les Etats-Unis et ses alliés créent un véritable précédent en s’attaquant à « un pays indépendant afin de lui piquer ses ressources naturelles. »
Pour cette raison, Chavez demande à ses supporters de rester vigileant face à une possible tentative de déstabilisation du Venezuela, au moment même où le chef de l’état semble diminuer par la maladie. « Obama et les américains étendent la violence partout où ils passent. Ils détruisent et provoquent la mort au nom de la paix. Mais ce qui les intéresse, c’est de prendre le pétrole. »
Rappelons que le Venezuela a la plus grande réserve de pétrole au monde, avec 296 milliards de barils.
I have learned that, far from being a bloody despot or a fool, Muammar Gaddafi was, and is, a courageous and visionary leader of the Libyan people. I learned this, of all places, from a broadcast embedded in the pages of an article in Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspaper. Elsewhere, the Australian has been feeding the public the lies used by NATO to justify its criminal war against the people of Libya. Viewing this video has caused me to realise what a tragic loss for all humankind it would be if Muammar Gaddafi were to perish at the hands of NATO and its TNC puppets.
Anybody with an inquiring and critical mind, access to the Internet, and sufficient time would long ago have seen through the deceit in the mainstream media's coverage of the Libyan conflict.
If Muammar Gaddafi's Government had been anywhere near as dictatorial and unpopular as has been claimed, there is no way that the Government could have lasted more than a few weeks against the massive material and financial support that the Transitional National Council (TNC) has received from NATO countries and the aerial surveillance and huge aerial and naval bombardment of Libya by NATO. Instead, the Libyan Government of Muammar Gaddafi survived for over seven months.
After these months of relentless war against the Libyan people, TNC had succeeded in conquering much Tripoli on the night of 22 August.
The survival of the Libyan Government for seven months against such overwhelming military might and in the face of such terrible hardship and tragedy is surely evidence of the strong support of the great majority Libyan people for their Government.
Libyans, loyal to Gaddafi are continuing to resist NATO and the TNC and it is still not clear if the rebels and NATO will emerge triumphant.
Despite this, it was still possible - even for people sympathetic to Libya - to view Gaddafi as an erratic leader, whose poor judgement in past years had provided NATO with pretexts to invade Libya. The T-Shirt Gaddaffy Duck character, based upon an amalgamation of the Warner Brothers Daffy Duck cartoon character and Muammar Gaddaffy seemed to me to be not too far off the mark.
I believed this kind of cartoon representation of Gaddafi until about 24 hours ago, when I watched a YouTube broadcast A look at the Gaddafi era, embedded, of all places on a page of Rupert Murdoch's Australian newspaper which has, elsewhere, done so much to deceive public opinion about Muammar Gaddafi and Libya. The article was "More than six months of conflict in Libya," of 22 August. (It is also embedded below). As already noted elsewhere, the article does contain a useful chronology of the conflict.
Whilst it is difficult for me to date that YouTube broadcast, its content suggests that it may have been produced 2 years ago.
I was expecting the broadcast to depict Gaddafi essentially as he had been depicted elsewhere in the Murdoch newsmedia, as a brutal dictator with the blood of many thousands of Libyans and others on his hands, or, at best, deserving only ridicule.
To my astonishment, the broadcast has caused me now to view Muammar Gaddafi to be highly admirable and a true giant amongst today's world leaders.
I can't say if that was the intention of the producer, Deborah Lutterbeck, but the material contained in that broadcast, in addition to what I already knew of Gaddafi, has made me realise that he was, at the outset, a courageous and visionary leader of the Libyan people and remains that to this very day. His rule has greatly helped the people Libya and, indeed, all of humanity.
Whilst Western propagandists have been able,at times, to depict Gaddafi, at his age, as unstable and erratic, they could not have hoped to have done so to the much younger and handsome officer who deposed the former King Idris in a bloodless coup in 1969. That same young Gaddafi used his country's oil wealth for the benefit of poor Libyans and stood up for international justice on the world stage for decades.
In the whole 4 minute video, I could find only two things that could conceivably have been held against Gaddafi by anyone striving for a more just and peaceful world:
Accusations by the US that he had ordered the bombing of a German night club frequented by US Marines in 1986
Al-Megrahi, an employee of the Libyan Government, had been found guilty by a Scottish court for the bombing of the Pan AM flight 103 in the skies above Lockerbie in Scotland in 1988 which had caused the deaths of 270 passengers
It has been shown that the latter was the result of a mistrial and the fabrication of evidence. For more information, please read The Framing of al-Megrahi by Gareth Peirce and readers' comments in the London Review of Books of 24 September 2009.
Transcript of YouTube broadcast, A Look at the Gaddafi Era
"Muammar Qaddafy first entered the world stage in September 1969 when he led junior army officers in toppling King Idris in a bloodless military coup. One of his first tasks was building up the armed forces, but he also spent billions improving living standards, making him popular with the poor.
Inspired by Arab nationalist sentiment, he abandoned ties with Western powers and pursued aims of uniting Arab countries, instigating the Arab Federation with Syria and Egypt in 1971 which soon broke down in argument and recrimination.
Gaddafi's relations with the West became increasingly strained, leading to accusations in 1986 that he sent agents to blow up a Berlin night club frequented by American marines. The US responded with air raids hitting one of Gaddafi's homes and killing his adopted daughter.
He poured money into projects like the great man-made river, a scheme to pipe water from desert wells to coastal communities, a project which Qaddafy described as the 8th wonder of the world, estimated to have cost about 20 billion dollars.
When Pan Am flight 103 blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland in February 1988, killing 270 people, Western intelligence agencies were quick to point the finger of blame at the Qaddafy regime. Former South African president, Nelson Mandela played a key role in persuading Qaddafy to surrender two Libyan Nationals suspected of involvement in the bombing. A specially convened Scottish court found (Abdel Basset Al-Magri) guilty of mass murder, sentencing him to 27 years in prison. He was later freed ahead of fulfilling the term on health grounds.
Gaddafi's quirky style was legendary, once pitching a tent in Cairo's presidential compound on a visit. He also ignored traditions of his conservative society, surrounding himself with women bodyguards toting assault rifles.
He frequently criticised Arab leaders with attacking Saudi Arabia in 2003 for hosting thousands of US troops since the 1991 Gulf War.
Later, in 2003, he caught the world by surprise, announcing plans to abandon Libya's weapons of mass destruction program. The announcement drew swift praise from London and Washington and an end to international isolation with the US and the UK ending a broad trade embargo and resuming full diplomatic relations.
In June 2009 Qaddafy arrived in Rome for a 4 day visit, his first visit to Libya's former colonial ruler, where he was welcomed by Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
In 2009 in his first visit to the US since taking power 40 years ago, Qaddafy accused major powers on the UN security council of betraying the principles of the UN Charter. Qaddafy never held an official state position and was known simply as "Brother leader and guide of the revolution."
Postscript: The YouTube broadcast now also includes content transcription of the content. The date of the post, which included transcribed text, is 22 Aug 2011 which actually precedes the date of this article. I think I recall either transcribing it myself or else asking another candobetter contributor to transcribe it for me. I don't recall copying the text from YouTube, yet the respective dates of the publication of the transcriptions suggest that that is what happenedl To have manually typed text that had already been typed elsewhere on the World Wide Web would have to be a pointless waste of effort. All the same, it is good that the above text is also on the same page as the broadcast. That considerably adds to YouTube's value. Whilst I rarely listen to a YouTube broadcast more than once, I often revisit pages of text pages I have read as it takes considerably less time and effort to find and make use of the useful text than to again watch and listen to the whole broadcast to get to the parts of the broadcast of most interest. Let's hope that more YouTube broadcasts include transcriptions. 15 December 2011
Continuing the updates on the Fukushima No.1 Nuclear Power Station in Japan from...
Should environmental organisations concerned about overpopulation enjoin Australians to have no more than two children each, for the good of the planet? Or, since our average fertility rate is below 2 children per person, should we instead congratulate Australians and ask them to keep it that way?
Despite the near daily news coverage of many poor countries suffering conflict and disaster, critical, underlying issues are almost never mentioned by journalists reporting endless symptoms and predicaments. The issues covered in this article add insight into the key development challenges facing the countries concerned and, by implication, the policies of countries like the US, UK, Australia and Canada, where billions are being spent in aid and military interventions to try and stabilise failing states.
"Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and Bob Brown are in a position to change the political, social and cultural landscape in Australia once and for all. They find themselves in the unique position of having the community support they need to stop the parliamentary puppet masters dictating parliamentary policy. They find themselves in the position to uproot the few stunted perennials that blight political, social and cultural debate in this community and let a thousand flowers bloom by passing parliamentary legislation that forces media monopolies to limit their media holdings to 10% of the privately owned media outlets in a community. They are also in a position to pass parliamentary legislation that alters the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s guidelines so that a variety of opinions, not just the major political parties’ opinions, are brought to the fore in Australia in the publicly funded media sphere." Joe Toscano 
Researcher, Ms Charlton-Robb has named the new dolphin Tursiops australis with the common name, the Burrunan dolphin. This was an Australian aboriginal name given to dolphins in the Boonwurrung, Woiwurrung and Taungurung languages. It meant ‘large sea fish of the porpoise kind’. Since the late 1800s only been three new dolphin species have been formally described and recognised, so this is an important and enchanting discovery.
Victorian government plans to drop 1080 poison bait from an aircraft into forests could result in the extinction of the already critically endangered Spot-tailed quoll. The purpose of this antiquated and vandalistic method is to poison wild dogs.
It is surprising to pick up a book about wealth statistics and find that it segues so readily into another about psychopathology in young girls. The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone takes a revealing look at how wealth is distributed within different developed countries and Reviving Ophelia illustrates the decline of women's rights in the face of aggressive pornography and its effect on girls. Children and the general public were not widely exposed to explicit pornography and sexual sadism in the ‘traditional’ mass media of the industrial age, although these notions were commonly implicit in images and concepts used for marketing all kinds of things. Between that time and now, in 2011, the depiction of women almost exclusively as victims and objects of violence and pornography, explicitly and for that sole reason, has become a global business which operates 24/7. The implicit violence and sexualisation of women in ordinary marketing has also continued. At the same time, the official message is that western women don’t need Feminism anymore because equality has prevailed.
Will Maier and Dr. Zoltanthe ask, "Why is everyone celebrating the 9/11 tenth anniversary?" in their mutant mall Freefall song.
"Sunshine Coast Council needs to stop approving developments, " says Vegan Warrior, Jaylene Musgrave. The juggernaut that is bulldozers clearing land and councils hell bent on more housing estates, more shopping centres and turning anything that has trees and wildlife on it into a concrete block needs to be halted. Native animals are now seen dead on roads rather than in their natural homes. The Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital in Queensland near the Sunshine Coast sees over 7000 native animals each year, the majority because they are fleeing machinery that is destroying their homes.
Media Release... Exactly as I or anyone would have thought. A hungry dog is more likely to approach people and try and get food, and then they have to be "managed" to prevent attacks. It's all a self-fulfilling prophesy to keep their numbers down for tourism. The fine was more about upsetting the status quo and about having their little scheme exposed for what it is. People living on islands don't usually survive without importing food. Why should these animals have to? "Sustainable" numbers for dingoes is one thing, but "sustainable" human numbers - and their overshoot - gets ignored.
Are humans individuals with personalities or are we simply portions of a greater whole, with little claim to individuality? Some thoughts on cellular arrangement and the end-game thermodynamics of progress ideology. The tension between a glimpsed view of living wholeness and the steady extrusion of deadness that is crushing around and upon us. I wonder how many other people see this?
Three hippos hanging their heads sadly, looking down into a shallow pool of foul brown water, seemingly reluctant to bathe or drink... A lone tiger walking restlessly, desperate for shade ... Two scrawny lions pacing inside their enclosure, suffering from a lack of food. These are just some of the more than 1,000 war-torn animal victims still trying to survive in Libya's Tripoli Zoo after NATO's war against Libyan supporters of Moammar Gadhafi.
How many other "solutions", detention centres, unaccompanied children, unidentified entrants and money must be spent on failed policies to address the asylum seeker issue? The government is trying to please too many lobby groups - those who want the economic benefits of population growth, and those prefer to act with compassion and humanity.
This article makes it clear that energy consumption and its fall-out, pollution, have enormously increased over two or three generations, to a point where actions commonly recommended to minimise them, are laughably inadequate. It also highlights a tendency for one generation to be encouraged to blame another generation for overconsumption, rather than to blame the market system, which benefits from the social conflict.
Illustration by High Moon, 
In the 1980s I made a survey of Trading Post advertisements selling dangerous dog breeds before Trading Post became cautious about such advertisements. While there were 101 advertisements for primarily pet, show, racing or working dogs, there were 158 ads selling larger guard and hunting dogs - the sort that can scare or menace the young and the old - even if foxies may be quicker on the nip. Some cross-breeds sounded doubly or triply dangerous, for example, "Sire Staffordshire Bull x heeler, bred for pig dogs" and the possibly ultimate combination, "American pit bull terrier cross bull terrier cross boxer bull mastiff”. Most of the advertising owners and breeders lived in Melbourne’s rural fringes and north-east and north-west outer suburbs, where life and people are perhaps correctly seen to be tougher.
Writer Val Yule, Daughter, grandchild, and Tangles, who was killed by a pit bull terrier.
Citizens in Australia’s major cities are becoming increasingly unhappy about what they perceive as the escalating deterioration in their quality of life - traffic congestion, overloaded public transport, unaffordable housing for young people, increases in the costs of basic services and overcrowding. There is little doubt that recent election results and unfavourable opinion polls are partly an expression of this dissatisfaction. (Article first published on On-Line Opinion, where you may also currently make comments.)
Cynthia McKinney is an unusual black US former congresswoman who has risked her life to report on the situation in Libya from Libya on what she calls the "Truth Tour". The article below contains her most recent report, which contains parts of alternative journalists' articles and criticises mainstream journalism. The video where she speaks, included here, is an addition. It is quite rivetting stuff.
Eviction of Thomas Considine, Tullycrine, Ireland, July 1888
In a brilliant new paper released this morning, Labor MP Kelvin Thomson has proposed his "Witches' Hats" theory of government -- a theory that places central importance on rates of population growth.
http://fb.me/18xDXIEuv
Fidel Castro, Muammar Gaddafi and Hugo Chavez are three men of different eras who have lived a similar desire to defend the rights of the nations they represent and to network with other struggling regions over international trade and political representation. The nations and regions they have championed all have suffered greatly at the hands of the United States. These leaders have confronted political realities that simply are not acknowledged in the mainstream western press. Chavez recently spoke again about Libya and of the danger of the predatory US taking advantage of his current illness, for which he is being treated in Cuba.
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