(We) can do better

Planning Activist, Christine Pruneau, of the Macedon Ranges Residents’ Association Inc, said, of the reasons for the public meeting in Melbourne yesterday, that the meeting was about the imminent New State Residential Zones and State Government removal of Council planning powers.

Ms Pruneau stated that the meeting was of interest to, "All Victorians who are concerned about what’s happening with planning in Victoria."

Although the meeting was to focus in particular on the impending new residential zones that "remove residents’ rights to object to or even know about planning applications," and removal of Councils’ planning powers by the Victorian government, Ms Pruneau said,

“This is as much about civil rights as it is about planning. It cuts to the question of whether the principles of consultation, transparency and accountability will survive in Victoria’s democracy."

"In Victoria, planning is being taken over by (handed to) development interests. Even the Department of Planning and Community Development is a member of the Property Council of Australia," she explained.

She added that, "The Department says this doesn't mean it has a conflict of interest," but, "MRRA says it does."

Just because you live in regional Victoria, does not mean that your rights and your environment are safe:

"Not only do these new residential zones wipe out residents' rights, but they’ve been written for Melbourne, and as usual, rural areas like Macedon Ranges and Bendigo will be forced to take them. It’s the same old story, same ghastly deficiencies, same ghastly outcomes. The difference is, this time residents won't be allowed to know or have a say when that ghastly (suburban) development happens," Pruneau stated.

Candobetter says that this is an Australia-wide stalking of our rights.

Ms Pruneau told of changes which had already happened in New South Wales.

"The NSW government has just changed its planning Act to remove, by law, residents’ rights in planning matters. This meeting is an opportunity to say we don’t want that to happen in Victoria."

Summing up, she said,

"There comes a point where if people don't stand up against injustice, they are condemned not only to live with it, but more and more of it."

She invited Victorians to take a stand.

For more information on the meeting and public transport, go to MRRA’s website (www.mrra.asn.au) or Planning Backlash (www.marvellousmelbourne.org), or call Christine Pruneau on 03 5427 1481.

NB Macedon Ranges Residents’ Association Inc [MRRA] is an affiliate member of Planning Backlash and of Sustainable Population Australia, Victorian Branch.

See also: Melbourne protests mass pop growth.

For his political courage in speaking out against undemocratic, but mainstream media and government endorsed, growth, actor, Geoffrey Rush deserves particular historic recognition from Australians. He launched a new website: Marvellous Melbourne at https://marvellousmelbourne.org. Candobetter.net editor 12 January 2017: Unfortunately, eight years later it is no longer maintained, so we have removed the link. Candobetter.net remains one of its memorials. However the problem those optimistic protesters set out to solve has grown every year into a behemoth that threatens many of our institutions and certainly our way of life, all over Australia.

On Sunday July 6, 2008, Planning Backlash held an impressive public meeting in Mooney Valley.
Speakers included Blue Wedges activist, Jenny Warfe, and Actor Geoffrey Rush.
The meeting focused on the imminent threat of two key changes to government powers:

- New residential zones that remove residents’ rights to object to or even know about planning applications, and
- Removal of Councils’ planning powers by the Victorian government.

Jill Quirk, of Sustainable Population Australia, Victorian Branch, described the meeting as "Amazing".

Jenny Warfe evoked the ultimate pointlessness and crudeness of dredging operations in OUR Port Phillip Bay.
Geoffrey Rush launched a new website for Planning Backlash, called Marvellous Melbourne at marvellousmelbourne.org.
He spoke movingly of how utterly Melbourne will be transformed over the coming years. He also intelligently and courageously questioned the necessity for the population growth currently being imposed on Victorians, and raised the question of the optimum size for Melbourne.

For his courage, Geoffrey Rush deserves particular historic recognition from Australians. Although it is common for people at candobetter.org to challenge the grotesque premises and impacts of endless growth, a professional actor depends upon the mainstream media to a great degree. He therefore takes enormous risks in speaking out against politics which profit the mainstream media and which it heavily endorses. Indeed, it is largely because the mainstream media endorses undemocratic growth and the governments which provide it, that we have had this growth and its frightening and demoralising effects imposed upon us.

The Marvellous Melbourne site, marvellousmelbourne.org, asks:

"Is development the same as progress ? What makes the difference ? Is growth sustainable ? Is there any such thing as 'big enough'? What do we want to sustain ?"
And,
"Are elected governments just dictatorships between elections ?"
It states that,
"Planning is off the rails in Melbourne", and asks, "What is happening in the country and on the coast ?"
It concludes, "This site is for you. It is an attempt to celebrate the best of Melbourne - and to encourage you to explore what was, what is, and what could be."

Details to hand are sketchy, but other speakers were a Leongatha area resident who told of how the imposition by the Victorian government of a desalination plant has forced hitherto non-political residents to come out in organised protest to protect their environment and way of life. A woman from Kilmore, where high density living is being imposed, described how antithetical this was to the community's wishes, since Kilmore is a town which people deliberately chose to live in for a relaxed lifestyle and open space. A Stonnington councillor spoke about the massive and unwelcome changes which are looming for that area.

I believe that that other indefatigable campaigner against bad treatment of native wildlife, horrible planning decisions, and undemocratic population growth, actor Rod Quantok, was also there, but I have no actual report.

SPA(Vic) President, Jill Quirk, said, after the meeting, "The over all feeling I got from the afternoon and all the speakers was expressed pain and anxiety over losses continually suffered because of "development" and the consequent erosion of our environment as well as the loss of democracy entailed in the pace and magnitude of what is happening now in Victoria."

Let's hope that Marvellous Melbourne will extend to represent the rest of Victoria, and that similar sites will rise to represent every state in the country, since almost every settlement on this continent is at the mercy of corporatised growth and related forms of exploitation, which our corporatised governments have completely failed to protect us from. Candobetter will try to promote all such democratic initiatives.

We will try to include details of other speakers and speeches as they come in. Please post comments on this article, supplying details of speakers and speeches, if you are able.

One of the biggest dilemmas for environmental realists is striking the right balance between the potential infringement of human rights required to power down to a more sustainable society on one hand, and the inevitable threat to human rights if we don't take action now. Let's call this the human rights dilemma. One solution is simply to deny the relevance of the coming environmental collapse by idealising a variant form of cornucopia, believing everything would be okay if we just wrested power from the corporate-military elite and brought about a new world order founded on the principles of liberty, fraternity and egalitarianism, extending the ideals of the French revolution to all 6.5 billion citizens alive today and making room for the 9 billion plus expected to grace our humble planet by 2050. Wouldn't it be wonderful if billions more could enjoy the North American way of life with sprawling verdant suburbs, neat bungalows with double garages and private swimming pools populated by shiny happy citizens. Sadly such a reality is just a fantasy promoted by soap operas, incessant but often subtle advertising and peer pressure, but it's the ideal to which billions of our fellow world citizens aspire. The endless, but usually fruitless, pursuit of consumertopia is, as amply documented in Oliver James' excellent book Affluenza, the cause of much distress. Many teenagers in affluent countries acquire a deep sense of inferiority because they lack the kind of consumer gadgets as their peers have or because they fail to emulate the cooldom and aesthetic perfection of media role models. Worse still the exponential rise in aggregate consumption by our species is ultimately suicidal, not just for indviduals but the vast majority of our fellow human beings. When nature begins to take its course, with its periodic natural distasters affecting ever greater numbers of people, you can bet the poorest and most vulnerable will always be the first to go.

The trendy left has long believed we can metaphorically have our cake and eat it. We can somehow let newcomers to our land join our consumer frenzy and cut carbon emissions. We can miraculously guarantee everyone affordable transport, cheap food, free healthcare and an extensive welfare state and reduce collective consumption. We can incredibly subsidise single parents and unwanted babies and simultaneously guarantee every child love, good education and a bright future. Such idealists live, pardon my French, in cloud cuckoo land. We can obviously only welcome newcomers to our land if our environment and economy can sustain their presence. Likewise we can only provide transport, food, healthcare and social benefits if we can sustainably maintain the material means required. We can only subsidise unwanted children by spending billions on social workers, childcare professionals and state benefits, diverting resources from other needy categories, e.g. a child in council care can cost a UK council as much as £90,000 a year and in all likelihood will continue to be a burden on public finances later in life. A prevailing culture of hedonism and entitlements has created a situation in the UK where over 2 million adults live on incapacity benefit not because they suffer from a severe sensory or physical impairment, but because of essentially psychological problems brought on by social marginalisation and self-destroying indulgence in drugs and booze, whether legal or illegal.

As a result the country has recently attracted over a million newcomers from Eastern Europe to do jobs in the catering, building, transport and agricultural sectors that home-grown Britons used to do. The Polish plumber phenomenon has affected not just the bustling overcrowded metropolis of London, but has spread far and wide to areas with high indigenous unemployment. Some businesses like Subway and Starbucks have actively recruited new migrants and then sent them to their outlets the length and breadth of the land. In just 4 years we have learned to expect to be served by recent economic migrants and hardly blink an eyelid when outside we see another home-bred homeless islander selling the Big Issue or another alcoholic beggar pestering us for loose change. So why does the Big Issue seller not take up plumbing and why does the beggar not get a job in Starbucks, Caffè Nero or Costa Coffee? The sad truth is that too much hard work is required to learn the tricks of the trade required by competent plumbers and most native Brits on benefits would not be much better off on the minimum wage. Worse still most customers would rather be served by polite, attractive and smiling Eastern European staff in their early twenties than emotionally insecure and often incompetent members of Britain's underclass of non-productive long-term benefit claimants. The corporate-state behemoth has effectively dumbed down the former working class, while importing a steady flow of smarter and keener migrant workers from countries where young people are still motivated to learn the hard skills any viable society needs. To cap it all, I've even witnessed migrant care workers looking after mentally ill indigenous citizens. Such is the shortage of competent maths teachers willing to endure the stress of British secondary schools that increasingly education authorities resort to importing human resources from countries where an interest in the abstract science of numbers is still cool. Meanwhile indigenous teachers are deserting the profession in their droves, intimidated not only by children unruly behaviour but by a culture of fear, litigation, lack of respect and celebrity worship. The government talks tough on combatting the perceived threats of terrorism, street crime and illegal immigration, softening public opposition to draconian surveillance state legislation, but has actually created a hypercompetitive labour market with a large reservoir of disgruntled and alienated workers, desperately seeking a piece of the action. The net result is a brain drain in countries of net emigration and growing dependence on the tentacles of corporate grandeur and an enslaving welfare state. Yet for every newcomer to the wealthy world boosting their per capita consumption, there remain billions in the poor world unable to scrape together the funds for a one-way ticket to the citadels of consumerdom, but increasingly reliant on trickle-down subsidies sent home by distant relatives.

#OpiumOfThePeople" id="OpiumOfThePeople">Opium of the People

It's hard to get closer to the heart of the corporate elite manipulating and conditioning the governing classes of the world's highest consumption economies than Rupert Murdoch. His media empire has in large part been responsible for winning popular support for neo-liberal or neo-conservative governments in the UK, Australia, the US and elsewhere. In the UK the switch from Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party to Tony's Blair's New Labour Party represented no shift in Rupert Murdoch's long term agenda. Both were tools that facilitated the implementation of globalist policies and transferred power away from local centres of power to unaccountable transnational corps and spurious supranational entities. Yet Murdoch has always known how to tailor his incessent propaganda to the target audience. In London, UK, you can pick up the Sun often bundled with free chocolate bars, bingo tickets or fuel discount vouchers, then enter Starbucks only to pick up a copy of the Times with your coffee. On the way home, you have to dodge distributors of the freebie LondonPaper, also owned by News International, and replete with celebrity gossip and other news deemed to be of a greater interest to trendy twenty-somethings who work in the city's thriving new media and advertising companies. This joins other freebies like the Metro, City A.M. and London Lite all aggressively handed out gratis by low-paid and usually migrant workers. Such papers end up littering the rapid transport system. The London Times still sets a semi-serious tone, requiring a reading age over ten, and a keen interest in world affairs. Its regular columnists include former Marxists and unlimited growth enthusiasts, Brendan O'Neill and Mick Hume, forever attacking green fascists as naive apologists for eugenics and simply writing their perceived enemies off as against progress. To this print media empire, we should of course, add Sky TV and Fox News.

It comes as little surprise alongside semi-intellectual apologists for our high-consumption lifestyle, the Murdoch press hires the services of populist automobile evangelist and TV celebrity of Top Gear fame, Jeremy Clarkson, responsbile for driving a landrover up a Scottish mountain, another 4x4 all the way to the North Pole and hiring a personal double-decker bus to take advantage of apparently empty bus-only lanes, which he thinks should be available to cars. At the Borders book store Top Gear now boasts its own section, replete with glossy picture books of shiny motors for aspriring Formula 1 champs to drool over.

It takes quite a huge leap of the imagination to conclude that the liberal media is largely responsible for environmental scare stories, but alas a growing number of left-leaning pundits such as William Engdahl and Greg Palast have gone down this route. A cult has arisen around climate change denial movies. Anthropogenic climate change is, of course, only a small piece in a much larger puzzle and, I dare say, often serves to dodge the key issue of the long-term sustainability of our growth-addicted model of development. We need merely raise the spectre of pseudo-environmentalist aristocrats such as Al Gore, Ted Turner or Prince Philip to whip up a mass frenzy of indignation against a secret plot to forcibly reduce the world's population and thus deny billions of the world's poor of the same luxuries we take for granted in the prosperous world.

It's hard to deny that environmental concerns tend to appeal much more to the better-educated professional classes than the wider working and welfare-dependent classes, including most recent economic migrants. Billions are invested annually in the never-ending promotion of consumption, entertainment and pure unadulterated mind control. The other day I asked a lady why she was reaching so eagerly for her copy of the Sun. Apparently unaware of who owned and controlled the newspaper, her reason for buying it was simple, to find out what's on the telly and read more celebrity gossip. No doubt she wrote me off as pompous twat with no affinity for the working class. Out in the provinces away from cosmopolitan metropolises, the UK has become a maize of Tesco Towns, with the masses meeting only for their weekly shopping sprees or to engage in entertainment events organised by large corporate operations. When not at work or at school, most are glued to gigantic plasma screens watching action-packed movies, surfing the commercialised Internet, engaging in violence-themed videogames or seeking new partners in dumbed-down chatrooms.

#GreenTokenism" id="GreenTokenism">Green Tokenism

The real debates on the future of our species and sustainability of our civilisation we should be holding have been significantly dumbed down on two fronts. First, the masses from Aberdeen to Zagreb or Sydney to Shanghai are lured by the never-ending promotion of the North American way of life, quite obviously unattainable for most. In this context eco-friendliness is just another desirable commodity. Second, the chattering classes are presented with simplified moral arguments about our duty to tackle a whole host of evils, ranging from climatic catastrophes, racism, despotic regimes, famine, energy security, homophobia, women's rights, child abuse, terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism. Whatever the purported problem, the solutions on offer assume the moral and cultural superiority of the enlightened global elite. Take the UK's Independent Newspaper, renowned for its championing of environmental causes. It's also one of the most unashamed proponents of immigration to an already overcrowded island. Yet for the simple minds of many sandal-wearing leftists, there is no conflict. Welcoming newcomers to our shores and buying energy-saving lightbulbs or cycling to work to reduce our environmental footprint are both part of our duty to help build a better world. Sadly in the grand scheme of things such efforts are futile. I can cycle to work or choose to tolerate overcrowded trains to reduce my carbon footprint, but the brainwashed masses, especially those who have just moved to a high consumption region, want to indulge as long they can afford it.

Some former Marxists and a handful of those who still adhere to this religion are acutely aware of the environmental paradox. Mike Davis, a Los Angeles-based activist, formerly associated with the International Socialists and author of Planet of Slums. Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster and City of Quart, has finally realised that decades of unsustainable development and reliance on a globalised network of multinationals and governmental organisations, has all but destroyed the last vestiges of worker solidarity. In a recent article published in www.informationclearinghouse.info, he concludes:

In light of such studies, the current ruthless competition between energy and food markets, amplified by international speculation in commodities and agricultural land, is only a modest portent of the chaos that could soon grow exponentially from the convergence of resource depletion, intractable inequality, and climate change. The real danger is that human solidarity itself, like a West Antarctic ice shelf, will suddenly fracture and shatter into a thousand shards. (full article)

Nonetheless to alleviate the human consequences of catastrophes caused by climate change in the poor world, Mike Davis still asks us to welcome more immigrants aboard our lifeboat. It's like inviting passengers from the lower decks of the Titanic, about to drown in a purportedly unsinkable ship, to board a luxury yacht just a few hundred metres away. Some would brave the icy waters, but while the yacht may accommodate a handful of desperate Titanic passengers, it too would sink if they all reached temporary safety. One way or another our failure to act now by powering down both consumption and reproduction will see an escalation of internecine warfare and famine, while the new corporate aristocracy run for the hills, building themselves havens of tranquillity with the resources they plundered in times of plenty.

This article was originally published with the title "Breeding Hatred"

See also: Devastating demolition of the case for mass immigration by Sir Andrew Green in the Daily Mail of 31 Mar 08, The Collusion of the Left in the Neo-Liberal Agenda of Sep 06, Open Britain by 'open border' extremist Phillipe Legrain and introduction and comments on his own web site. A local copy of a posted comment is to be found here.

Neil's site: (www.outsider-insight.org.uk)

Greed cannot be defined in conventional terms exclusively as a quest for more money or material possessions. It is simply a desire to have more and more. More than one needs. More than one can use. We know that billionaires don't need and can't use four yachts and a fleet of twenty antique cars but most North Americans have affluenza too. And our greed is manifested not just in our insatiable material appetites, but in our need for more activity. More hobbies, more “courses”, more “lessons”, more structured leisure events, and volunteering. All this in tandem with a double income work schedule.

Something must give. So what is deemed expendable? Small talk with friends. (Sorry, gotta go). Real talk with family. Time with pets. (North American dogs average a 20 minute nightly walk). Reading time. (remember novels?). Writing letters.(Emails mutilate the language ) Our sleep. (Canadians slept 9 ½ hours a night a century ago). Our health. (Indigenous people averaged 2 hours of work daily—the industrial revolution turned us into mindless robots.) In our contemporary society it is a sin to be seen not to be busy. I recall the words of Thoreau:

“If a man should walk in the woods for love of them of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer, but if spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.”

Above all we must be “goal-oriented”. We must have “plans”and “objectives”. The impression must be left that my life is not something to be experienced but rather like a career in the Cub Scouts where I get various performance badges to mark my “progress”. Just like the people who plaster their cars with the decals of National Parks to prove they had a good time. Well, I am an not a Japanese tourist and I feel more like just experiencing the moment rather than ruining it by recording it. I don't think life is like a carport that you have to fill up with junk —activities—so much to the point that there is no room for your car, that is, for what is essential.

In the 1950s people found time for people. Because they were satisfied with less. Satisfied and happy for the most part. When people had problems, my recollection was, hey, come over for a cup of tea, dear, and let's talk about it. Grandparents and their concerns were an integral part of the family. Mom was always home waiting for me to arrive from school with a cup of cocoa and a peanut butter sandwich, wanting to know how my day went. She could do that, because it took only one income to deliver what we wanted. A 950 square foot house, with three small bedrooms, one small bathroom, one icebox and one car for seven people. And no foreign vacations. A typical middle class lifestyle. Rich in time and quality of life.

But times have changed. 950sq feet is now a telephone booth for today's Canadians. Bathrooms are that size it seems. Some kids today have their own ensuites. I had to share my bathwater with two brothers, third in line, and one bath a week sufficed for hygiene. Many people in my boyhood were of the belief, like my parents, that Canada's wealth was not fairly shared, and that it was outrageous that there were poor among us who did not even have shelter or medical care. This situation is even worse today. But with one difference.

While folks like my parents, the socialists of the 1950s, believed that government services should assist the needy, they did not think, as apparently many people now do, that government should substitute for the care and assistance that friends, neighbours and relatives used to provide in the 1950s. The role of government in their view was to supplement what was already being done. Nothing is so debilitating as the notion that one has no individual responsibility, or community responsibility, to help people because we can just sit back and leave government to carry the ball. Or that we must await “funding” from government to proceed. In the post-carbon era we will have to return to the old Canadian pioneer ethic, get off our butts and help people ourselves. Barn-raising was not done by government employees. But by neighbours and friends who found time to help neighbours and friends. For nothing. No “funding” was available.

The people who survived the London blitz didn't need psychologists—maybe if they had had them, they would have surrendered to Hitler.

Presently, when an individual in obvious need of help or assistance is encountered the reflexive response is to offer the recommendation that he seek the help of some government agency or counseling service. That cup of tea that was offered in the 1950s is never proffered. There is a comfortable and convenient belief about that “these people” will be taken care of “if only” they will seek help. The fact is that if we spent 50% of our GDP on psychologists and counselors it would not take the place that stay-at-home moms, live-in-grandmas, and kindly neighbours did 5 decades ago. And given the choice between the fashionable trauma counselor of this century and my grandmother's apron, I'll take my grandmother any day of the week. The people who survived the London blitz didn't need psychologists—maybe if they had had them, they would have surrendered to Hitler. As it was, they just spent the time to help each other.

But the 50s will never return, you say. Just wait until the oil economy is done. You're going to get a crash course in Amish living and I am going back to the future… You'll have lots of time to slow down then and get re-connected with the people around you. But hey, you can do that now. You have time for me. Your day is 24 hours long just like mine. The point is, you will not make time for me because you have put too much on your plate and I am not a priority.

Now, I most probably should not be a priority. You have your family after all. But realize that is not external forces that are making you run so quickly on a treadmill. It is the force of your own greed to have it all. The bigger more expensive house, the higher paying more stressful job, the two cars, your yoga classes, the two kids, their music lessons, their soccer practices, your Mexican vacations that have to be financed by working over-time. etc. I didn't twist your arm to make those choices.

You “gotta go” because you are as “Type A” and wired into the system as is any Vancouverite, who at least doesn't have the hypocritical trappings of Island culture.

Have another expresso.

But one day, please read Leo Tolstoy's “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”

Tim Murray
June 13/06

See also: Living standards and our material prosperity of 6 Sep 2007 on Online Opinion and discussion.

An Analysis You Don't Get From the PC CBC

I once wrote that the CBC was an infallible guide as to what was not happening at home or abroad. It was like a weathervane that if it pointed in one direction, it offered me the assurance that the wind was blowing in exactly the opposite direction. Yet so many people for so many generations have been spoon fed information from Mother Corp that they have come to accept it as gospel when it is not. Pull the plug and maybe, just maybe, these people might learn to shop around , compare sources, match them with reality and feed themselves. Then bingo, a generation of smart, self-sufficient information consumers might emerge in this country.

The CBC treatment of the South African riots presented a case history of prefabricated politically correct journalism. The CBC reporter on assignment need not have bothered going to South Africa—he could have simply huddled with his former journalism professor in Ottawa at Carleton and written up a good storyline about xenophobic rioters who take out their misery upon poor foreigners who have a right to displace their jobs. The xenophobia template has served the CBC well for stories about riots in France, Germany, Cronulla and elsewhere—there is really no need for complexity or idiosyncratic national difference. The theme is the same. The rioters are an ignorant, reactionary, racist, evil bunch who are being manipulated by sinister forces. The foreign element must be accommodated without restriction.

Watching the CBC cover such events is like eating at MacDonalds. It is fast food journalism. It is news in a hurry all right, but it doesn't go down well. And it is the same old crap. Not very nutritious for the mind. Surely we are better off without the CBC. We are better off on a diet. Better just to shut our eyes rather than look at the world through their lens. Ordinary Canadians have an instinct for truth and balance that public broadcasting apparently doesn't have, as evidenced by this commentary I received from James Schipper of London, Ontario. It is about the tyranny in Zimbabwe that led to the riots in South Africa that the CBC allegedly was "covering". The CBC, however, did not take his holistic view of the problem which would have made the South African situation comprehensible. Schipper's common sense is the kind that our journalism schools filter out and the CBC doesn't hire. Schipper on emigration as a safety valve for dictators:

Zimbabwe illustrates how emigration allows countries to export problems and how emigration can delay political reforms. It should be obvious that Zimbabwe has massive problems. This has led millions of Zimbabweans to go abroad to SA, where they are competing against domestic unskilled labor, which is already superabundant and therefore plagued by high unemployment and low wages. The results have been the recent "xenophobic" attacks on foreigners. Zimbabwe simply exported its self-inflicted economic problems to SA.

Of course, this would not have been possible without the indulgence of the SA government, which has done very little to stem the massive inflow of Zimbabweans into its territory. Countries can't export their problems through emigration unless the country that is importing them allows it to happen.

What would have happened if no Zimbabweans had been permitted to settle abroad? Most likely, the economic situation in Zimbabwe would have become so desperate that there would have been a massive popular uprising and the overthrow of Mugabe's regime. In the short term, the situation might have been even worse, but the long- term prospects of Zimbabwe would have been better.

Emigration is a safety valve that helps tyrants to stay in power. When people know that they can't go abroad to escape the problems of their country, they have a very strong incentive to try to solve or mitigate those problems, while governments, knowing that the safety valve of emigration does not exist anymore, have stronger incentives to improve their performance.

As a postscript to Schipper's commentary I am moved to pose the question that many have asked before. Why then should special allowances be made to "refugees", or in the parlance of those outside Canada, "asylum seekers". I am puzzled why men like Dr. William Rees who have made a career talking about the need not to exceed our "carrying capacity" should, at the drop of a hat, be willing to accept literally tens of millions of refugees into my country because they are a different category of humanity than "immigrant". Excuse me, does the environment know this? Do refugees have no footprint Dr. Rees? James Schipper has just made the case, a case that a great many of us have long silently supported, that bulking up our countries with political refugees in the long term does neither us nor the country of emigration any good on many different levels. #comment-473317">Senator Bartlett take note.

Tim Murray
Quadra Island, BC
July 5, 2008

See also: CBC condemns South African rioters of 25 May 08, Will the great immigration debate take place of 21 May 08

This was originally #comment-213744">posted to a discussion concerning the article Garnaut draft report released by John Quiggin. I posted it in response to another #comment-213713">post:

This whole we are only 1% of the problem, however ill defined is missing another point… and that point is …

We are far more than 1% of internationally traded coal.

If we so choose, we have leverage.

But do we choose the thirty pieces of silver or do we choose salvation… a habitable planet?

#comment-213713">SP, you have raised an extremely important question which has been, surprisingly, dodged by many avowed environmentalists. I wasn't even able to get clear statement from former Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett on this question. (See #comment-473317">discussion in response to Larvateus Prodeo article Will “the great immigration debate” take place? of 21 May 08.)

Any serious plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions must include a winding back of the rate of extraction and export of coal. We should certainly not be contemplating increases in the rate of exports and building infrastructure in order to facilitate that increase.

On 12 February 2007 last year when Greens Senator Bob Brown advocated that we plan to wind back our coal exports, he was savagely denounced by the Courier Mail and I assume the rest of the Murdoch newsmedia. The front page headline shrieked some like "This man wants to destroy 50,000 jobs!" beneath a photo of Bob Brown. Inside the story Kill coal off, says Bob was only slightly less hysterical. The effect of this, of course, was to preclude any calm discussion of this issue amongst the wider community. This is only one of almost countless illustrations of why the Murdoch Press is part of the problem and not part of the solution. They helped get us into the mess we are now in by denying the evidence of global warming for decades, the reckless encouragement of population growth both in Australia and abroad (at least, indirectly, by its support of President George W Bush who as cut funding to family planning aid to the Third World) and they certainly won't be helping to get us out of the mess.

If we are sincere about cutting GHG emissions both here and in the rest of the World we have to plan to reduce our exports of coal. Carbon dioxide sequestration is clearly useless for all practical purposes, as the technology, and a systems to police it, even if they work, cannot possibly take effect for decades after which it will be too late, so this should not be held as an excuse not to reduce our exports. We should certainly not be contemplating increases in the rate of exports and building infrastructure in order to facilitate that increase (a barrow which the Murdoch media never loses an opportunity to push these days). Some links, which may be of interest include: www.risingtide.org.au, candobetter.org/about#coalcandobetter.org/NoMoreCoalExports.

Appendix: More on the stance of the Murdoch newsmedia on the Garnaut Report

Garnaut wisdom behind the detail, the Weekend Australian editorial of 5 Jul 08. Supports Garnaut recommendations but argues that trading scheme should start in 2010 and not 2012. Remains "optimistic that given the chance, the free market will find the technological solutions required to combat climate change". Nevertheless, it believes that Australia should not act alone. Nothing said about Australia's escalating rate of the extraction and export of coal and other minerals and no reference made to the relentless campaign by The Australian to have more infrastructure built to facilitate their export. No reference is made to its support for population growth through record high immigration which is the principle driver of Australia's increases in GHG emissions. See Workers welcome editorial of 16 May 08.

Time to get climate change right Courier Mail editorial of 5 Jul 08. Also supports Garnaut Report in principle, like The Australian's editorial, but argues that the commencement date be delayed to 2012. Correctly acknowledges, in part, the problems of carbon dioxide geo-sequestration, but uses this to advocates that nuclear power be used instead. The adoption of nuclear power in Australia is a barrow that the Murdoch Press that the Murdoch media has decided to push very hard recently. Also, there is an implicit acknowledgement that Australia's coal industry is adding to the problem:

The flip side of these warnings is the possibility that a high carbon price and a steep reduction trajectory could cause dramatic dislocation in regions dependent on trade-exposed, emission-intensive industries such as coal mining and aluminium production.

Clearly nuclear power can only possibly solve the problem for coal mining by replacing coal as a source of energy, but it remains to be seen if the Courier Mail will back away from its earlier strident support of Australia's coal mining industry.

We must act now on climate change: Ross Garnaut in The Australian of 5 Jul 08, and Climate fight will cost us all In the Courier Mail of 5 Jul 08

JOIN BLUE WEDGES AND PLANNING BACKLASH AT TWO BIG EVENTS THIS WEEKEND!

1. Saturday 5th July

Over 60 community and environmental groups including Your Water Your Say, Australian Conservation Foundation, Greenpeace, Public Transport Users Association, Friends of the Earth, Tradewatch, Blue Wedges and may others have signed up to be part of this huge Red Alert event. We are all saying: Brumby and Rudd let’s get serious!

The Rally kicks off at 1 PM tomorrow, Saturday 5th July at the City Square (Not Fed Square) cnr. Swanson and Collins St. City.

Keynote Speaker Senator Bob Brown.

Please come to the rally. Bring your family & friends and bring along your own banner and signs to highlight the Climate Emergency message.

Wear Red, Carry Red, See Red! Help join the dots on Climate Change!

The rally will then march to Alexandra Gardens to form a human sign reading: CLIMATE EMERGENCY

A plane and blimp will take photos, so be part of history and join the huge number of people who want to tell Mr. Brumby to wake up to climate change and all its causes.

Blue Wedges says Mr. Brumby should be told that planning for even bigger ships with even more stuff for us to purchase is NOT the right way to go. Are bigger ships likely to come all the way down here when oil is $200 per barrel, or when it runs out completely? Trucking firms, airlines and motorists are already being affected by oil prices, so it is only a matter of time before shipowners start cutting back on their miles travelled. The economic analysis for the channel deepening project relies on us increasing our consumption by an alarming rate. We need to be moving 4 times the amount of trade through the Port of Melbourne by 2035…..can you do it????

That means bringing more and more container loads of stuff from the factories of China, which burn our coal, transported from us to them in oil guzzling ships. Meanwhile, our local manufacturers and exporters are feeling the squeeze. Our largest Victorian exporters, primary producers are struggling because of Climate Change…… We are stoking the fire!

And what does Mr. Brumby do? Build another coal fired power station!

If you have joined the dots and want to show your support, see you at the City Square at 1 PM tomorrow Saturday 5th July

More details at www.climaterally.blogspot.com

And -If you would like to carry a Blue Wedges placard at the rally contact Dee on 59812909 or [email protected] Then put it up on your fence!

2. PLANNING BACKLASH PUBLIC MEETING SUNDAY 6TH JULY

Image: Marvellousmelbourne website

Mr. Brumby, and his mate Planning Minister Madden, the state “developers”, are making people as mad as hell!

Join over 120 resident groups from city and country who have had enough of Mr. Brumby’s vision for Melbourne……which translates to more of everything. More high-rise, more shops, more high density housing, more trucks, more traffic congestion, more ships…… you name it he wants it!

But – the residents of town and country don’t want what Mr. Brumby wants. They say “We are as mad as hell and we are not going to take this any more. No more stripping away of our appeal rights. No to stripping away Councils’ planning powers.”

Speakers include: Geoffrey Rush, Rod Quantock (MC), David Davis (Liberal MP and Chair of Public Land Inquiry) and Greg Barber (Greens, MP)

Please join us at 2.30PM CLOCKTOWER TOWN HALL 750 MT ALEXANDER ROAD MOONEE VALLEY (Mel 28 J6). Show the Brumby government you care, but not for what they are doing!

For more details see: www.marvellousmelbourne.org

And, again of you would like a Blue Wedges banner to take along contact Dee on above contact details.

Title was The edge of the abyss and green denial.

Earlier this year Lindsey Grant, former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State of Environment warned that we face a tumultuous century, as competition grows for diminishing resources. The human race will not get through it without fundamental changes of our population size, our living arrangements, our consumption patterns, and our expectations – and probably not without mounting hunger and violence. He calls for a new mindset to deal with it.

“The name of the abyss is energy. People tend to worry about one crisis at a time,” he says. “We do so at our peril. Right now, the crisis of the moment is climate warming, but the decline of fossil energy will affect more people more seriously than climate change for most of this century. Both will generate a coming crisis in food production.

“The forces now coming together – the astonishing growth of fossil fuel use in the 20th Century, – the growth of human population, quadrupling in the same period, – climate warming and rising sea levels generated by that growth, the imminent decline of those fossil fuels, the growing shortage of fresh water to meet human needs - and as a consequence, the prospect that agriculture will be unable to produce enough food to feed us, are the most important immediate challenges to humankind. They threaten the fabric of modern societies. The threat – still largely unrecognised – transcends all the other problems that transfix our policy makers: terrorism, economic recession or the transitory issues of international politics.”

A month earlier Professor Betsy Hartmann, director of the Population and Development Program and associate professor at Hampshire College USA made a claim typical of growth and development orientated non-governmental organisations.

“The United Nations projects that world population will eventually stabilise, falling to 8.3 billion in 2175,” she says. “In developing countries, attention should focus on reducing poor people's vulnerability to environmental changes related to global warming, such as sea-level rise in Bangladesh or increased rainfall variation in Africa. A focus on population diverts us from the need to take action on these critical concerns.”

Well intended as such ideas are, we are unlikely to still have the resources and habitable living space to survive in any such numbers on the planet by 2175. People like Hartmann have obviously not heard of the growing number of countries, in the 2005 UN Population Division survey, now more concerned about the over-inflated and distorted case of supporting growing numbers of older people than too many people, encouraging immigration and higher birth rates with more tax incentives. Or the crazy population explosion in Africa and Haiti – desperately poor, wrecking what's left of the environment and exporting surplus people to USA, Canada and Europe.

… in the USA, where massive Mexican immigration to a more prosperous consumer life-style has seen average birth rates increase in the Mexican immigrant community over birth rates in Mexico.

Nor, it seems, has she looked at the population explosion in countries like Saudi Arabia, where wealth and urbanisation has seen no reduction in birth rates. And in the USA, where massive Mexican immigration to a more prosperous consumer life-style has seen average birth rates increase in the Mexican immigrant community over birth rates in Mexico.

All they think about is trying to reduce everyone's consumption, to accommodate more people into an ever more stressed quality of life competing for diminishing resources – in the vain hope that populations will stabilise at a level that is already beyond the Earth's capacity to sustain.

It is so depressing that these well-meaning people just don't see the connection between higher population and all the problems they want to solve, even when the evidence is presented to them. It is a mind block. All they think about is trying to reduce everyone's consumption, to accommodate more people into an ever more stressed quality of life competing for diminishing resources – in the vain hope that populations will stabilise at a level that is already beyond the Earth's capacity to sustain. Growing populations just wipe out any gain from reducing consumption.

They selectively ignore hard evidence in the belief that the magic bullet of technology will somehow make all the problems conveniently go away, so everyone can have their cake and eat it. Trouble is, the cake is crumbling fast and their dream that all the world's growing numbers can be accommodated, using their other magic bullet of conscience-absolving ‘sustainable’ growth, is a delusion.

For many decades there has been a wilful blindness to recognise that overpopulation is at the root of so many of the critical problems we face today. Both the UK and US governments have completely ignored a Royal Commission and a Presidential Commission respectively, both of which warned that existing population levels were already high enough.

Many environmental organisations like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are in denial or are too timid to confront reality lest they offend fundamentalist visions to go forth and multiply. They run scared of confronting the continuing high birth rates in many third world countries in case they are accused of racism. Instead, they call for our support to polish the furniture and re-arrange the deckchairs while planet earth's rapidly shrinking resources are consumed by relentless human population increase.

Living in denial suits the leaders in many poor nations. Limiting family size challenges engrained cultural habits and religious dogma. Better to hope that humanitarian aid prevents further hardship.

Our planet, marvellous in its diversity of plant and animal life, naturally evolved over 1,000 million years, is being converted in a geological instant to a factory farm geared to feeding a single species, Homo-sapiens.

William Stanton, geologist

Geologist, author and population activist, William Stanton wrote: “Our planet, marvellous in its diversity of plant and animal life, naturally evolved over 1,000 million years, is being converted in a geological instant to a factory farm geared to feeding a single species, Homo-sapiens.”

The idea that the human goal should seek a high quality life rather than a high quantity and low quality one, to sustain the doctrine of short-term corporate greed, seems lost on our political leaders. Do we really want the maximum number of people with the minimum standard of living - or a smaller number at a comfortable standard of living?

#DemographicTransition" id="DemographicTransition">Misplaced confidence in the ‘demographic transition’ to population stability?

Population activists need to do more than parrot the UN prediction that population is conveniently set to stabilise at around 9.2 billion by 2050. Whatever realities we face trying to support a much larger global population in the lifetime of many people alive today, we also need to project the hard number-crunching consequences of continuing on our current track, which predicts a much larger population to absorb.

It's a grand recipe for complacency to be told that as nations achieve a prosperous western-style standard of living their population growth automatically falls to near zero.

William Stanton

Stanton observes: “It's a grand recipe for complacency to be told that as nations achieve a prosperous western-style standard of living their population growth automatically falls to near zero. On this basis there is no population problem, only a need for masses of western aid. Unfortunately, this comforting theory has been found wanting time and again.” The United States is one of the most affluent nations in the world, but on its current demographic growth rate may well see its population expand from over 300 million now to 750 million by 2075.”

From 1950 to 2000 the mean population exponential growth rate was 1.77% - a doubling time of 40 years. Over 800 million go hungry every year and 2 billion suffer from malnutrition. Today, 1.8% is the average population growth rate for 4 billion people in the less developed world, excluding China. If this rate continues the population will rise from 6.7 billion to an impossible 21 billion by 2070. (Optimum Population Trust).

#ProcreativeRight" id="ProcreativeRight">Rethinking the procreative right

For most people the right to procreate is central to their belief. The world's religions, in particular, provided ample endorsement for the “go forth and multiply” message at a time when the world's population was a fraction of the resource-gobbling numbers it has now reached.

In April 2007 the Vatican Church concluded in a two-day Conference on Global-Warming-Paganism and Population Reduction that there is no evidence of man-induced climate change and that urgent priority for humanity is the development of the third world.

The 1994 Cairo conference on Population and Development concluded that “Reproductive rights embrace certain human rights that are already recognised in national laws …. These rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing, and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. “The promotion of the responsible exercise of these rights for all people should be the fundamental basis for government and community supported policies and programs in the area of reproductive health, including family planning.”

The word “responsible” is not defined. However, Carter Dillard, writing in Yale Human Rights and Development Legal Journal 2007, argues that defining some limits on procreation is not inconsistent with human rights.

“What is perceived as a justified legal and moral interest to procreate freely without regard to others, including the rights of prospective children and society as a whole, has consequences for others, and such acts are subject to law, if only in its role as a guide. If each person is endowed with rights that compete with and limit others' rights, the creation of new persons in a finite space eventually results in either limiting the rights of some in favour of the rights of others, or a general limiting of each person's overall rights, as the spheres of rights begin to overlap.”

… a global agreement to address the risk of ecological meltdown and consequently the collapse of the human species, should include the option of coercive measures to reduce population to a sustainable level.

In Reproductive Liberty and Overpopulation*, Carol Yates, Professor of Philosophy at Ithaca College in the United States argues that sustainability will require population reduction as well as changes in consumption. Reproductive liberty should not be considered a fundamental human right, she argues and a global agreement to address the risk of ecological meltdown and consequently the collapse of the human species, should include the option of coercive measures to reduce population to a sustainable level.

John Feeney, an environmental writer in Boulder, Colorado, says “A purposeful drop on the part of industrialised countries to consumption levels comparable to those of the poorest areas in the world is not only wholly unrealistic but, at today's population size, would not end our environmental woes. Our sheer numbers prevent it. We have no alternative but to return our attention to population. Already in overshoot, we must aim for population stabilisation followed by a decline in human numbers worldwide.

“We have to provide easy access to family planning options while educating parents and children through the media in the benefits of smaller families. And we should end the web of government incentives for larger families, to make population stabilisation more not less likely.” The money saved could be targeted at supporting older people.

Yet using the tax system as an incentive for reducing, not increasing birth rates is still regarded as a ‘no go area,’ an invasion of human rights, where the historic mindset of national power is boosted by growing numbers. Even now, with commodity prices soaring, ‘think tanks’ supposedly at the cutting edge of ideas, see a growing birth rate as a sign of economic well-being.

But what right is more important than trying to preserve an equitable quality of life for people instead of descending into more repressive and dangerous times, driven by the relentless pressures of ever increasing numbers? Many governments, the UK more than most, think nothing of introducing highly prescriptive and invasive regulations to control demand and behaviour – speed cameras, tax penalties and more. Why should we fear tax incentives to help save the planet and stem the decent into growing stress and chaos for our children?

The civilised choice seems obvious, yet the “growth is good” mindset of our political and business leaders, underpinned by (no longer) cheap energy, rules all.

In Estonia large baby bonuses have been offered to raise the birth rate, and have been quite widely taken up. Portugal has introduced tax incentives tied to pensions to encourage mothers to have more children and in Singapore (one of the most densely populated countries in the world) where birth rates have fallen significantly, the government has appointed a 'population czar' to encourage population growth.

In a 'scare campaign' about ageing, the Australian Government has been offering inducements of AU$5,000 for every new child born, in a country where government reports reveal constantly worsening environmental conditions. Yet the Government is encouraging more immigration each year than the natural birth rate, cheered on by the growth lobbyists. In 2005/6 the population grew by 265,800 (a natural increase of 131,200 plus net immigration of 134,600).

James Sinnamon (candobetter.org/james) Australian writer and environmental analyst describes this as “concentrated benefit" – where a minority in our community, i.e. land speculators, property developers, financiers and others collectively known as the "growth lobby", gain from population growth. "Diffuse injury" is what the rest of us pay in congestion, higher council rates, higher electricity charges, higher housing and environmental costs, hospital and education pressures for population growth. “For decades, the wider community was not fully aware of the costs they were paying because they were spread out so diffusely,” he says.” That is why the growth lobby was able to get away with it for so long.”

The UK's present population is around 60.5 million. It is more vulnerable to food imports than any other country in Europe and is increasingly dependent on energy imports. Family size and immigration levels will result in the UK population rising to 65 million over the next 10 years, 70 million in 2028, 77 million by 2051 and over 85 million by 2081 - at least 70% of this increase due to immigration. (OPT, Migration Watch UK)

All of us, politicians, business and public opinion, need to wake up fast or our children will inherit a grim future. Will they thank us for not acting in the face of such challenges?

(2,227 words)

Knowing that I have a little connection with the Karen people, today James sent me a link to an article about David Everett, who is about to publish a book of his years fighting with the Karen National Liberation Army in Burma.

Very interestingly, the article says,

The spectacle of Burma's military rulers withholding aid from their stricken people after Cyclone Nargis devastated the Irrawaddy Delta region has strengthened his sense of righteousness... The Karen were among those worst affected by the cyclone. Everett says it was one of the reasons the military was in no hurry to provide relief. "What aid's going in is going straight to the military," he says. "They're reselling it to the people. A lot of the things journos haven't picked up on is the Irrawaddy Delta: (there are) five million Karen there. They're the majority of the population in the delta."

Yes, I had also heard this from a Karen friend a few weeks after the cyclone hit Burma in early May this year, and although we've all heard about the obstructiveness of the Burmese (sorry, 'Myanmar') government in being apparently extremely reluctant to allow aid workers into the country, it was never made explicitly clear in the mainstream media why this was.

If you do not know very much about the history of Burma since WWII, it still may not be very clear to you. In a nutshell, the military rulers of that country have not really been prepared to share power with anyone despite that fact that this is a country of great ethnic diversity, and that autonomy for each of the ethnic regions was supposed to have been guaranteed under the Union of Burma, set up following the defeat of Japan at the end of the war. Things went off the rails at 10:37 a.m. on 19th June 1947, when General Aung San was assassinated in Rangoon. Ring some bells? The result has been decades of war and suffering as the Burmese military have fought against almost all of the ethnic groups for total domination of the country.

If you have time, I very much recommend you read:

• Bertil Lintner, Burma in Revolt
• Claudio O. Delang, Suffering in Silence: The Human Rights Nightmare of the Karen People of Burma

Even if you reckon yourself to be pretty tough and thick-skinned, don't read this second book in any place where you don't want people to see you cry.

There are also some photos (Adobe Flash Player required) on the Internet taken by the husband, himself a Karen, of a friend of mine. This is also not very nice, so don't look if you do not want to see something that may be offensive to you.

Humanity really can do better than this, can't we?

Word is that Melbourne is getting its 1 million more ten years early and that the Vic Government is in a panic because it has no idea how many permanent new guests have taken up its foolhardy invitations to come and stay. Who the hell is responsible?

Melbourne 2008: Living in a destruction zone

Once Melbourne number plates bore the motto, "The Garden State."
Then we got Kennett's formula, "Victoria on the Move." It sounded like some kind of unnecessary laxative, prescribed by a mad surgeon. Kennett tried to beat population up and, unfortunately for us, stopped the Victorian diaspora to Queensland. I guess he prepared the way for what Bracks did to Melbourne. Him and the editors and senior writers of the Fairfax and Murdoch press, who nagged shamelessly for population growth.

Since the Bracks Population Summit (2002) the Victorian government have ranted continuously and illogically about how we 'have' to have 1 million more Victorians. For local councils, population Projections exist in two forms:

Council data only go to 2011
ABS "Victoria in the Future" (VIF) series go to 2031.
But ...
The ABS has just discontinued VIF figures in circumstances which could mean that Victoria's actual growth has overshot both target and projections and has shot into the stratosphere. The word is that we are getting our 1 million more ten years early and that the Victorian government is in a panic because it has no idea how many permanent new guests have taken up its foolhardy invitations to come and live here.

This is almost certainly the reason for the hasty attempts to introduce draconian new "no-go", "slow-go" and "go-go" residential areas (now described as "areas of 'limited change', 'incremental change' and 'substantial change'.

“What I tell you three times is true.”
(Lewis Carrol, The Hunting of the Snark)

One of my most difficult tasks in writing about these matters is to overcome the propaganda which says that we must have economic growth and that for economic growth we must have population growth.

The Federal and State governments and the news-media repeat this all the time, despite much contrary evidence, and most people believe it because they have no other source of information.

On the one hand the State Government actively seeks to attract more and more immigrants to Melbourne.

On the other, it pretends that population growth is some irresistible force over which it has no control and for which we must all make way no matter what the demands.

Verify this by going to the Victorian Government’s immigration pages at http://www.liveinvictoria.vic.gov.au
Here's a sample of www.liveinvictoria.vic.gov.au:

and there is a special page to assist private immigration agents.

Yes, your government is really working overtime to overpopulate this country.

Alice in Victoria

Asking the public to accept massive intensification of infrastructure, huge cost increases, and loss of rights and space, and nature, on the grounds of a responsibility to reduce greenhouse emissions whilst bearing government imposed, unnecessary population growth is an Alice in Wonderland task.

Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." (Alice in Wonderland.)

But the Government is asking of the public to believe impossible things through the Melbourne 2030 program. Even the so-called independent auditors of Melbourne 2030 keep up the ridiculous charade:

Whilst recognising that almost everyone except developers hates Melbourne 2030, the ‘auditors’ of it write in their ‘independent report’:

“At the same time, local communities must be prepared to take a broad metropolitan view that recognises the necessity of urban consolidation,” they write, giving the reason as:

“(…)the urgent housing need resulting from unprecedented population increase and the need to reduce travel and greenhouse emissions to meet our responsibilities towards climate change.”

But even the Auditing Committee shows some unease, although not enough to save Melbourne or to question all the growth. They wrote:

“The recently released report of the Ministerial Working Group Making Local Policy Stronger (June 2007) and the subsequent State Government Five Point Priority Action Plan recognised community concerns in relation to existing residential zones. It proposed a way forward by enabling the identification of ‘no-go’, ‘slow-go’ and ‘go-go’ residential areas (now described as areas of ‘limited change’, ‘incremental change’ and ‘substantial change’) (...)”

“We would caution strongly, however, that the implementation of the five point action plan will not ease community tension unless local communities play a significant role in the application of new zones.”

Is conning the public going to make up for oil depletion and water scarcity?

Analyse the problem:

• Growing the population and expanding infrastructure will increase the number of car trips and the distance travelled.
• Modern high-rises are power-hungry.
• Building upwards increases the electrical power requirements for air conditioning, heating, drying clothing, moving things and people up and down in lifts and pumping water upwards.
• It is harder to cool and heat high-rises and it is harder to cool large, dense cities.
• Reducing vegetation reduces rainfall and cooling.
• Reducing access to land deprives people of access to vital resources when governments fail (as they invariably do.)
• Our Victorian government has already failed us by overshooting our water supply. It has attempted to supplement that supply by costly, power-hungry technologies, notably desalination. It has undertaken in ignorance an impossible promise to deliver these with alternative technologies.

Analyse the propaganda

We are running out of water, fuel, and affordable food; native flora and fauna are threatened, and democracy has been sacrificed to growth.

Driving these problems is Melbourne 2030 in its role as a vehicle for imposing massive population growth.

But what is driving Melbourne 2030?

Population growth via immigration is not, as we are led to believe, a kind response to the starving millions of the world.

And it is not to create a better world for the rest of us.

• Apart from a small number of refugees, the immigration program is actually all profit-driven by big business in Australia. The profit goes to a corporate and investor caste well out of the reach of the middle and the working classes.

• The number one profiteers in population growth in Australia are international property developers, which include Finance, construction, real-estate, engineering.

The 2002 Bracks Population Summit …

…was largely auspiced by Property Developers, in APop (The Australian Population Institute) and mortgage financiers. As well as Australia’s mainstream Press – Fairfax and Murdoch - which own www.realestate.com and www.domain.com.au, Mr Richard Pratt and Mr Steve Vizard, both involved in criminal activities for financial gain, were very prominent in this event.

Perhaps the two biggest peak bodies currently coordinating government lobbying on population growth to advantage the industries they represent are:
• The Property Council of Australia
• The Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering Sciences (working with the Scanlon Foundation and the Australian Multicultural Foundation.

Here are the main aims of the Property Council of Australia, from their own document, "Powerhouse 2010 Update" downloadable as a powerpoint file here

Don't you love it! Melbourne - and the rest of Australia - under permanent construction.
Ah, the excitement of choking traffic in the mornings; the challenge of breathing in that dust.
The joy of watching your favourite piece of nature paved over.
The engagement of foregoing sleep to write useless submissions to your local member and state government.

Gee, our taxes at work! 33% of my wages. And then, on top of that, there are those rising council rates, that burgeoning homelessness, those skyrocketing rents, those outrageous property prices, that choking traffic...

And, here is their latest 'branch' member - the Victorian Government.

The Problem: Organising against population growth, dispossession and life-threatening hardship as oil and water deplete.

The mainstream media and government are corporatised and represent the interests of the corporate world. We cannot rely on them for information, guidance or to organise. We need to communicate outside of them: Internet, word of mouth, books, films, meetings and markets.

Organising requires comunication between neighbours and kin and power at a local level.

Default human social structure is along kinship lines of family and clan.

• Local Communities with a history together and especially with intact or strong kinship structures have the best chance of organising to survive well.

• Current land-use planning and population programs structurally split- up communities and prevent them from organising.

We need to challenge local laws that stop us having livestock and water for growing food.

• We need to re-design our communities so that we can grow food and keep domestic animals.

• It is vital to get back and conserve full use of suburban land and water. So look out for ways to do this.

The government is public-private corporatising rural land and giving more and cheaper water to their agribusiness program. Agribusiness does not care about you and me; agribusiness quotidienly watches people starve. That is why we have to fight government attempts to retain our water for other uses. We need it.

Laws should be primarily for benefit of local communities, then integrated into region and continent

Inheritance and Land-tenure systems need reform along Roman-law lines, like Western Continental Europe.

Roman-style laws
• Preserve land within families
• Share land equally between men and women
• Minimise land fragmentation and speculation

Basically this means that our inheritance system and land-use allocation and planning system need reform towards:

• male and female equal inheritance,

• prohibition against disinheritance of children (legitmate or illegitimate), and

• leasing to substitute for land-sales

Remember:

Cheap goods are the baubles to seduce and distract today’s indigenous populations.
Today’s indigenous populations are us.
We who were born here.
Let us not be distracted by beads and baubles.

• Land with water and a stable population and society are what counts.
• Land speculation is a mug’s and a con-man’s game.
• High profits in any field are not sustainable in the long term.
• No society that encourages one class to profit at the expense of all the other citizens is sustainable.

#TheProblem" id="TheProblem">The problem

Are GM (genetically modified, some prefer "GE", genetically engineered) crops and food safe? Reading the mainstream press is probably going to confuse you more than anything else. The reason for this is it's extremely hard to tell who's telling "the truth". However, use of the Internet (and a few books that you can purchase through the Internet) can help you to see through the half-truths and distortions frequently used by proponents of GM crops and food. People who oppose the introduction of GM crops and food can, of course, resort to the same kind of tactics, so it's really up to the individual to look at the evidence and come to his or her own conclusion. The information is freely available on the Internet, all I do is give a few guidelines below to help you find it.

As I write (late June 2008), Australia is slowly trying to make up its collective mind about whether to allow the introduction of GM crops. Victoria and New South Wales, for example, have ended their moratorium on the planting of GM crops, and WA is maintaining its moratorium, though a debate on whether to extend it or not is now raging in that state. A friend of mine sent me an article from the Farm Weekly and I would like to use this article as an example of pro-GM writing. I would like to show how the writer uses half-truths and distortions to make his points, and how more detailed knowledge about much of the material in the article, allowing the reader to see 'where the writer is coming from,' is quite easily available on the Internet. Since information is democracy's oxygen, it would be a good idea perhaps if Australians take a deep breath before they finally decide on whether they really want GM crops and food or not.

The writer, Peter Lee, uses quotations from Shakespeare to back up some of the arguments he makes in the article. That's fine. I know almost nothing about Shakespeare, but I think this shows that Peter is a well-educated person of the English-speaking world. He especially gives the Shakespearean quote "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." just before he launches into his main argument about "whether WA farmers should be allowed to grow GM canola." Let's have a look at Peter's argument.

#ScientificProof" id="ScientificProof">Why the lack of scientific proof?

Just after the Shakespeare quote, Peter says, "There is no scientific proof that GM foods are dangerous, yet an entire industry has been built up world-wide to frighten (well-fed!) people into believing that such foods are unnatural and unsafe."

Yes, there is no scientific proof concerning whether GM foods are safe or not because the entire biotechnology industry has quite adamantly refused to do any conclusive testing on GM foods.

Yes, there is no scientific proof concerning whether GM foods are safe or not because the entire biotechnology industry has quite adamantly refused to do any conclusive testing on GM foods. Several preliminary and rigorous experiments by independent researchers on the feeding of GM foods to rats (e.g. by Arpad Pusztai and Irina Ermakova) have shown that there may be severe health impacts from the consumption of GM foods, but the biotechnology industry, whilst rebutting these experimental results has not followed up on them. The researchers who have carried out these experiments have complained of being forced to desist, through a cutting off of their funding, sudden firing, or retirement (in the case of Arpad Pusztai). The relevant books, see below, which are easily available from Internet bookstores, documentaries, such as the YouTube broadcasts here and here and The Genetic Conspiracy, and websites, e.g. ISIS (www.i-sis.org.uk), whose director is Dr Mae Wan Ho, note several such examples. What is frightening people is what appears to be a refusal to carry out rigorous testing on the human health effects of GM foods.

A small sample of useful books:

• Jeffrey M. Smith, Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods
• Jeffrey M. Smith, Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You're Eating
• Mae-Wan Ho, Genetic Engineering Dream or Nightmare?: The Brave New World of Science and Business

#OrganicVsConventional" id="OrganicVsConventional">The organic vs. conventional and the non-GM vs. GM analogy

Peter goes on to set up an analogy on possible similarities in the contrasts between organic and conventionally-grown food on the one hand and between non-GM food (essentially the same thing as conventionally-grown food) and GM food on the other. However, we need to look at what Peter says in a little detail to see whether his analogy is actually valid or not.

Peter says, "It is interesting to compare the attitude of these [anti-GM] believers with those who have a similar belief about organic foods and have convinced themselves that non-organic food is either unsafe or unpalatable, even though science is unable to support their beliefs."

Anyone as apparently ill-informed on agriculture as this really should not be writing a column as an "agripolitical analyst" in a farm-related newspaper. I can only suggest that Peter go to Wikipedia and enter the keywords "(Sir) Albert Howard". He will find information on Sir Albert Howard's 1940 book, An Agricultural Testament, and Lady Eve Balfour's The Living Soil. These contain information on comparative studies on the effects of eating organic food and conventionally-grown (using chemical fertilizers and pesticides) food on people. This is over half a century ago, when food, water, soil and air were nowhere near as polluted with chemicals as they are now. These books are available at no cost as electronic editions on the Internet_#main-fn1">1. I recommend anyone who is interested in food issues read them.

I was told … that GM canola will not help Japanese children's atopy (skin allergy) problems. Only when food is cooked with non-GM canola is the atopy relieved. Because the scientific tests have not been carried out, we have no way of knowing why this is, …

Closer to home, I recently visited Caralyn Lagrange, who does wonderful organic gardening near Perth, WA. Caralyn came to organic farming through breast cancer as a viable way to get good chemical-free nutrition. Her book "Gardening and Eating for Living" is a little treasure, and you can find out more about it on her website. You see, most people seem to be able to eat conventionally grown food with no apparent problems, but some people are more sensitive to the chemicals used to produce the food. I've heard of people in Japan whose lips become numb as soon as they put chemically-grown vegetables in their mouths and thus cannot survive without very conscientiously grown organic food.

#JapaneseConsumers" id="JapaneseConsumers">With respect to the non-GM/GM canola problem, I was told by a friend who was a member of the Japanese consumer group representatives mission to WA, mentioned #VisitOfJapanese">below, that GM canola will not help Japanese children's atopy (skin allergy) problems. Only when food is cooked with non-GM canola is the atopy relieved. Because the scientific tests have not been carried out, we have no way of knowing why this is, but we may conjecture, for example, that it is the different, possibly novel, protein content in the GM canola that is the culprit. Perhaps we'll know if anyone is ever allowed to do the tests. Of course, organic canola would be even better than the conventionally-grown non-GM canola, but it is not available in the amounts necessary. If WA canola farmers want to try their hand at producing organic canola for the Japanese market, I'm sure they will be welcomed with open arms.

#Coexistence" id="Coexistence">Coexistence

Peter continues, "But organic supporters have not tried to ban the production of non-organic food, merely wishing to ensure that they have access to sufficient quantities of the food of their choice."

Yes, that's because organic farming and conventional farming has managed to coexist, for example by taking precautions (overwhelmingly on the side of the organic farmer) against the chemicals polluting organic farming lands. The seeds used in both types of farming might be the same, and there is usually no big problem with pollution from wind-blown or insect-carried pollen.

Now let's take a look at the GM/non-GM issue. The point is that the novel genes from the GM plant will pollute the non-GM varieties. When the farmer next door plants a GM crop (canola, soybeans, maize, and so on) next to your field where you have planted a non-GM variety of the same crop, your produce will almost certainly be polluted with the GM variety genes. There are two major problems with this. Firstly, depending on who you are planning to sell the produce to, the level of GM pollution in your produce may become unacceptable to the buyer. If you are trying to export non-GM canola to a Japanese consumer group, NO level of GM contamination is acceptable. 0%. At this point you have lost your market. If you are an organic farmer, there is no way, once the GM contamination is discovered, that you can sell your produce as organic. In other words, the coexistence of GM and non-GM varieties is extremely problematical. With respect to canola, this fact has already been amply demonstrated in Canada, which has been extensively contaminated with GM canola genes such that it is effectively impossible to grow non-GM canola in Canada now.

Secondly, that's just how the GM variety seed producing companies want it. In the USA and Canada, non-GM farmers have been ruined by court cases, or the threat of them, from GM seed companies simply because of the contaminated plants that have 'fortuitously' grown on their land. A well-known case is that of Percy Schmeiser, information on whom you can find with a simple web search. The actions of the companies threaten to have the effect of driving out all non-GM growers. Coexistence just doesn't seem to be possible.

In WA, the recommended buffer zone between GM and non-GM canola crops is five meters, which is supposed to be on the non-GM farmer's side of the fence, by the way. You can find references to this on the website of the the Network of Concerned Farmers. Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) recommends 600 m. Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, where concern over the commercial planting of GM crops is higher, the recommended distance is 1200 m, but it is not certain whether this distance will completely prevent contamination (cross-pollination by wind-borne pollen and so on) or not. If you type in the search words "five-metre buffer zone canola" in Google, you will see that one entry says"GM canola pollen has been found up to 26 kilometres from its source." Try putting that buffer zone on the inside of your fence. Five meters is laughable. It also comes with a caveat that the non-GM farmer "is to accept" a 0.9% contamination of his/her crop. You can find this in the pdf file of the Australian Grains Research and Development Corporation report "Delivering Market Choice with GM Canola". Just type the title into Google to find the file. That's not coexistence, that's downright surrender. Surrender to what? What are the GM seed companies trying to achieve? It looks to me like they are trying to achieve nothing less than the total control of all the world's food crop seeds. They appear to be acting in a manner that would give them control of the world's food supply and an everlasting source of income from the sale of the seeds, which must be bought anew each year. This comes courtesy of the legalistic sleight of hand that allows patents on life. If that doesn't send a chill up your spine, nothing ever will.

#PayingMore" id="PayingMore">Paying more for your food

Peter goes on to say, "More importantly, they are willing to pay extra for it [organic food], with various organizations dedicated to the production of organic food designing codes of practice to describe how this task should be performed."

Yes, people pay more for organic food because under the present economic arrangements organic food is more expensive to produce. Generally speaking, food produced on farms which run a chemical and mechanical system of farming are more efficient in terms of labour. Very few people are producing a lot of food, so relatively the labour costs are low. In organic farming, although cash inputs (chemicals, fuel and so on) are fewer, it is labour-intensive. Given the amounts of money required to live a decent life these days, i.e. wage levels, organic farmers have to charge relatively more for their produce in order to make a living. This accounts for a large proportion of the price differential between organic and conventionally produced food. There are more factors, as you can see here. (This website takes a little while to load, but you will also see here that prices of organic food include not only the cost of the food production itself, but also a range of other factors that are not captured in the price of conventionally-grown food).

However, consumers of organic food are willing to pay more because they feel that cheap food might actually turn out to be more expensive in terms of health effects. Paying a little more for food that is more likely to keep you in good health may eventually be saving you steep hospital bills.

… if the price of oil continues to rise … this may eventually result in people paying the same or less for organic produce.

Now, what will happen if the price of oil continues to rise? Chemicals are mostly produced from oil, natural gas, or coal (fossil energy resources), so the economic advantage of the cheap part of the chemical-mechanical farm that makes it so efficient (relatively cheap fuels, fertilizers and other chemicals) will be eroded. This may eventually result in people paying the same or less for organic produce.

Peter continues, "They have a regime of production, inspection and accreditation in force that allows supporters of this type of food to shop with confidence and to obtain the type of product they desire."

All very well and good and protects consumers' right to choose what they eat.

Peter then says, "It seems an eminently practical and workable system that should provide a methodology that would allow the anti-GM supporters to to obtain their needs from growers who wish to supply such produce."

Not as planned, it won't, as we have already seen above.

#ProofOrLiability" id="ProofOrLiability">Proof or liability

Peter then says, "Growers of non-GM crops should be required to prove that their product is as claimed, just as organic producers also carry the onus of proof, a system that works for them because their consumers pay extra."

Peter is implying that consumers of organic food are paying higher prices for their food because of the inspection and accreditation systems necessary to prove that the food is really organic. However, as seen above, that's neither the main reason why organic food is more expensive, nor is it necessarily true that organic food will always be more expensive than conventionally produced food, or GM food for that matter. OK, so perhaps there should be some mechanism for proving that non-GM food is just what it says it is. Who should pay for the testing is something that can be argued over, since there is no system in place now. And maybe the non-GM farmer will end up having to pay for this and will pass the cost on to the consumer, who will have to pay a little more for the food.

Let's look a little closer at the difference between this and the contrast between organic and conventionally grown food. Suppose an organic farmer is growing a crop next door to a conventional farmer. The organic farmer will surely take precautions to see that his/her produce is not affected by the neighbouring farmer, but it might happen. The organic farmer might be extremely annoyed about this, depending on the seriousness of the pollution, and may lose income, but it is extremely rare that any irreversible permanent damage would be done. The organic farmer might try to sue the chemical farmer for damage, but I cannot find on the Internet any examples of this ever having occurred. Can you? Anyway, now we're not talking so much about proving that organic produce is organic as whose liability it is if pollution occurs and the farmer loses income because of that.

Peter seems to be confident that GM and non-GM crops can coexist, just as organic and conventional farming manage to coexist today. The Canadian experience shows that in the case of canola this is very doubtful. So, rather than this being a problem of who pays for testing to prove that a harvested crop is what it is said to be, since pollution is almost certain to occur (according to the GRDC, the non-GM farmer is supposed to accept 0.5% pollution of seed and 0.9% pollution of a non-GM crop anyway), who takes responsibility for the loss of income that results? Thus far, as in the example of Percy Schmeiser and many others in Canada and the USA, far from the company that manufactured the GM seed taking any responsibility for GM pollution, these companies are likely to threaten to sue the non-GM farmer for infringement of patent rights. Slowly, this is now beginning to turn around (Percy Schmeiser did eventually win a court case against Monsanto), but let's look at the nature of GM pollution when compared with the chemical pollution of an organic crop. (All farmers are, of course, concerned about cross-fertilization of crop varieties, but have learned to control it. See, for example, the Seed Savers' Network).

Once the transgenes (the new genes the biotechnology company has inserted into the DNA of the plant to give it the novel trait) enter the genome (the totality of DNA in the cell nucleus of the plant) of the non-GM plant, how can you get them out again? You cannot, and that means your seed is contaminated with the transgenes; permanent irreversible damage. So if you are a non-GM farmer who has been saving your own seeds for replanting, like Percy Schmeiser was, you might lose decades of work. You cannot plant those polluted seeds because you would be infringing a patent right if you did. The GM seed manufacturing companies do not seem to be seriously interested in preventing this problem, as we have seen with the five-metre canola buffer zone above. There's little doubt that after a number of years under a system like this only GM crops will be planted. That appears to be what the seed companies want.

Peter goes on to say, "This is where the proposal could fail, because those who believe that GM is unsafe won't pay extra for non-GM food, preferring legislation to prohibit the production of the GM variety, which allows them to get their non-GM fix on the cheap."

Quite wrong; they will pay. They are already paying because the price of oil is rising. And anyway, why should they have to pay just because the biotechnology industry wants to sell its seeds? After what you have read above, is it any surprise that some people feel they need legislation to protect their farming, their food, and their way of life?

#VisitOfJapanese" id="VisitOfJapanese">Visit of the Japanese consumer group reps

Here, the argument shifts a little to mention the visit by a group of Japanese consumer group representatives. Peter says, "The Conservation Council has again sponsored a visit from an anti-GM group from Japan, a so-called consumer group that admits it only accounts for 4000t of WA canola per year and represents only a handful of Japan's 125 million people."

The Conservation Council of Western Australia did not 'sponsor' the visit of the group. They 'hosted' it. Perhaps Peter missed the substantial articles mentioning the group's visit and participation in the forum at Williams (June 13) on pages 4, 5, and 6 in the June 19 edition of Farm Weekly. The consumers' group representatives came of their own accord_#main-fn2">2 to ask the government and farmers of WA to extend the moratorium so that they could continue to buy non-GM canola from WA, perhaps soon to be the only place where they can obtain it in sufficient quantities.

These co-ops and organic food suppliers (representing 2.9 million Japanese consumers) do what they do to help consumers obtain the safe and nutritious food they want to eat instead of having to put up with being force-fed the chemically-produced and GM food that they do not want to eat.

Why does Peter say "a so-called consumer group"? I cannot imagine what is meant by this. They are consumer group representatives whose organizations represent 2.9 million members. These co-ops and organic food suppliers do what they do to help consumers obtain the safe and nutritious food they want to eat instead of having to put up with being force-fed the chemically-produced and GM food that they do not want to eat. The organizations represented were: The NO! GMO Campaign (closely associated with the Consumers' Union of Japan), the Green Co-op, the Kirari Cooperative Union Association, The Association to Preserve the Earth (Daichi wo Mamoru Kai), and the well-known Seikatsu Club. Unfortunately, most of the websites are in Japanese, but you will be able to see that these organizations, as well as working to provide safe and nutritious food to their members, are also social movements which work for grassroots democracy, assistance for handicapped and other socially disadvantaged people, and carry out other socially beneficial activities. Certainly not fanatics, and certainly not fanatical organizations posing as consumer groups.

Then Peter says, "They also acknowledged that most of the canola consumed in Japan was GM canola from Canada, yet they still claimed that 70pc of Japanese oppose the use of GM food!"

GM seed companies and governments are effectively cooperating to force-feed you GM food without your knowledge.

Sounds like a contradiction doesn't it? Public opinion polls show that around 60% to 75% of Japanese people do not want to eat GM foods. But the reason that they are buying and using canola oil produced from Canadian GM canola is that they don't have a choice. The Japanese food labelling system is very similar to the Australian one. There's nothing on labels to show that a food product is produced from GM crops. If you want to buy non-GM, then you have to look for the labels that say "non-GM", "GM free" and so on. So a very large number of people are eating GM foods without knowing or being aware that they are doing so. The feeling is that the governments of Australia and Japan have introduced these labelling systems because they know what would happen to purchasing behaviour if foods were labelled accurately. Looks like someone doesn't want you to enjoy your right of consumer choice. GM seed companies and governments are effectively cooperating to force-feed you GM food without your knowledge. By the time we find out what the human health problems are with these foods, it will be far, far too late to anything about it. Who will benefit from that?

#MuchAdoAbout Nothing" id="MuchAdoAbout Nothing">A fanatical much ado about nothing?

Peter goes on to say, "The really astounding thing about the current debate is that so many seemingly rational people actually take the anti-GM fanatics seriously."

Apart from the implication that the above-mentioned consumer group representatives are "fanatics", given the potential for information democracy provided by the Internet, the really astounding thing is that pro-GM analysts like this can get articles printed in the newspaper and actually expect that some poor fools will believe them!

Finally, Peter says, "If Shakespeare was given the last word, he would probably observe that the dispute is 'much ado about nothing'."

It is quite clearly not "much ado about nothing" - it's a lot of fuss about controlling the world's food supply (and all that that implies). Perhaps more appropriately we should say, "There's no smoke without fire." If people are protesting about something, then it is just as well that we take pains to see if they have reasonable grounds for doing so. If Peter wants to refute their arguments, under our current social system, where freedom of speech is respected, he is at liberty to do so. However, if he uses terms like 'fanatics' and implicates that these people only hold their views through some form of irrational 'belief', or because their 'thinking made it so,' I would like to suggest that his readers take a long hard look at the evidence for and against before they swallow his arguments whole.

Footnotes

#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">↑ I couldn't locate an online version of The Living Soil although Wikipedia implies that one is to be found on www.soilandhealth.org. To order printed version, visit the Soil Association.

#main-fn2" id="main-fn2">2. #main-fn2-txt">↑ See, also, comments posted by two of the visitors #comment-986">The media's responsibility and duty to report the truth about GM and #comment-991">Only 4000 tonnes canola per year, but ZERO contamination and a comment by another Japanese consumer #comment-994">Monsanto makes coexistence between GM and non-GM impossible.

This article was originally posted to Sinking LifeBoat.

We still value your opinion.

We're working to create our vision for Sierra Club Canada five years from now.

If you haven't had a chance to complete this opinion survey, we'd like to remind you that you still can!

It will take a little of your time, but will make a great difference to our planning!

We would appreciate your reply by Friday, July 4. Please use this link to fill out your survey.

Sierra Club of Canada

Dear Sierra Club,

This is just a friendly reminder that you have until Friday, July 4th to reply to MY “survey”. This was the set of questions I sent to you to pre-empt the pre-fabricated set of twenty-one questions that you sent to me, not a single one of which mentioned over-population or over-immigration as an issue or factor to be considered in the environmental degradation of Canada. Kind of like my fitness instructor stressing cardio, strength training and flexibility without mentioning my chain smoking habit.

Please reply to my questions by my arbitrary deadline or I will continue to follow your lead and make policy decisions without your input.

Remember our slogan. “Tell us what we want to hear or take us off your list!” (but we'll never take you off of ours. And Oh, of course, send us your money to save our poster endangered animal of the month ….”

In case you have forgotten, these were the questions in my survey:

And if you think we should just keep tightening our belts to accommodate more and immigrants, cut back our per capita consumption more and more just to increase total consumption through immigration more and more, tell us, how many immigrants is too many for you? Another 10? 20? 30? 40? 50 million? How many Canadians would there be in an ecologically sound Canada as defined by Sierra Club Canada? Do you have any evidence that wildlife “sanctuaries” and reserves enjoy permanent safety from human population growth? As for Sustainable Energy options, is there a technological fix for the species lost from human population growth? Is there a technological fix for marine life eradicated from over harvesting and pollution? Is there a technological fix for soils exhausted by 10,000 years of intensive farming? Why does the Sierra Club think that climate change warrants more concern than the loss of biodiversity services? Why does the Sierra Club not seem to understand that population that is the underlying agency of both? No climate change without climate changers. Growing cities shrinking wilderness.

One should also ask: Why haven't you taken action on your leader Stephen Hazell's comments on TVO's May 5, 2008 “The Agenda” when he said we should decide what an optimum population for Canada is? What do you believe an optimum population for Canada is? Are you afraid of covering this uncharted territory because you don't know of a politically correct way to answer that question? Is Mr. Hazell afraid to follow through on his own advice?

source:
www.tvo.org/podcasts/theagenda/audio/TAWSP_Dbt_20080505_0_0_40k.mp3
ecologicalcrash.blogspot.com/2008/05/review-of-tvos-agenda-may-5-2008.html

This is my survey. I will not be confined by your prefabricated questions. The questions I need answering involve your complicity in the overpopulation of Canada, and your focus on inconsequential feel-good concepts of consumption, conservation and recycling. Remember it is our total consumption which is relevant, not our per capita consumption.

Tim Murray,
Quadra Island, BC
Home of the sanctimonious
Sierra Quadra Club
Motto “Take HIM off the island”

Dear Ben West, Chairperson of The Green Party of Vancouver,

A friend, Tim Murray, has alerted me to a quote you have made in a letter you wrote to the Mayor of Vancouver, Sam Sullivan:

"Densification is of course environmentally positive in so far as it prevents the devastation of agricultural lands or wilderness areas but this initiative if not part of an overarching smart growth land use plan would not accomplish this goal."

I have some questions for you.

How is it "environmentally positive" to concentrate people into highrise apartment complexes where it takes massive energy inputs to treat their drinking water and sewage, run their elevators, maintain their multi-story parking garages, power their artificial indoor fitness club environments, and bring them food and resources from distances that grow in proportion to their population size, giving them no hope of growing their own food to survive the new end-of-cheap-energy era?

How is it "environmentally positive" to concentrate people into highrise apartment complexes where it takes massive energy inputs to treat their drinking water and sewage, run their elevators, maintain their multi-story parking garages, power their artificial indoor fitness club environments, and bring them food and resources from distances that grow in proportion to their population size, giving them no hope of growing their own food to survive the new end-of-cheap-energy era?

Isn't it more environmentally friendly for people to live in the country where their water needs no chlorine or UV treatment and their sewage requires no chemical treatments and their septic tank uses less energy per person in its lifecycle than urban waste treatment facilities? Just because people own no land doesn't mean they don't require resources from land in order to survive. Wouldn't it make more sense for people to live on the same land where their food comes from, work this land with their own muscle instead of with machines, and find wood for heating and building materials from their own land instead of importing it from far-away industrial clearcuts? Of course, for this ultra low footprint lifestyle (rural, not urban) to work really well, there would have to be few enough people that each person could have enough quality and quantity of land that they could be self-sufficient without breaking their back.

In the upcoming era of depleted fossil fuels whereby the only oil, coal, wood, and natural gas remaining will take more energy to extract than what you get out of it, we simply will not have a use for so many urban bureaucrats living densely in highrise apartments. The earth's carrying capacity will be drastically reduced due to lack of energy resources. Finding a new unprecedentedly abundant source of energy with zero impact on the environment is not only impossible, but it is also undesirable as it would enable humans to further grow their population, which would displace even more other species, destroy biodiversity services, and therefore lower quality of life on earth for humans.

Would you agree that it is not just the average consumer's consumption level that is relevant, but also the number of consumers?

Whether population growth occurs in the city, in the suburbs, or in the country, is there such a thing as "Smart Growth" when it still involves population growth, which guarantees that environmental damage will increase no matter what conservation measures are imposed? (HINT: Each person must consume finite resources and produce waste just in order to survive. If the number of people keeps growing, it is only a matter of time before the total environmental damage increases even if the theoretical minimum for average per capita consumption is achieved.)

Are you one of those people who uses cliches like "You can't stop progress" or "Growth is inevitable" as a cop-out excuse for letting our environment get worse, while lying at the same time by telling people that our environment can get better alongside continued population growth so long as this growth is "managed/contained/smart/densification/steered/deflected"?

How long will Canada's protected areas be protected if our 1% annual population growth trend continues (doubling our numbers every 70 years); how many National and Provincial Parks will relax legislation to allow agriculture, roads, power corridor easements, mining, native hunting, increased camp sites and recreational development, etc to meet this growing demand? How many Parks will incidentally fall victim to air and groundwater pollution as well as poaching and alien species infestations caused by Canada's population growth?

Would it not be prudent for the Green Party of Canada to advocate lower immigration to Canada so that Canada can set a good example in an overpopulated world by reducing its population to a sustainable level to avoid mass species extinctions and human deaths due to the downside of Peak Food caused by fossil fuel depletion?

Thanks and I look forward to your reply,

Brishen Hoff
President of Biodiversity First biodiversityfirst.googlepages.com

The following was posted in response to an article Working the land - or not of 24 Jun 08 by Jenny Hume on Web Diary.

This article raises the vexing question of how we are to live sustainably off the land in the longer term. If incomes to be earned from sustainable farming practices are low in comparison to those to be earned by working in the city or in mines, then we need to consider whether those economic activities are sustainable.

The government needs to control the activities of any sector where they threaten the viability of other sectors, particularly vital sectors like food production. To risk severe social disruption for short-term profit might make sense to corporations, but it is the duty of governments to mitigate corporate excesses and to direct and balance activities so that the community is buffered and major conflicts are avoided.

Clearly in the case of mining, and in that light, the current activities are not sustainable, as I argued earlier. Is it any wonder that farmers, who are ultimately attempting to turn the comparative trickle of energy obtained from the sun into wealth, cannot offer wages competitive with those on offer from industries which are, in large part, simply plundering energy accumulated over at least tens of millions of years by biological and geological processes? If other city-based economic activities were also placed under the microscope, we would invariably find that they are also ultimately based upon the unsustainable destruction of the our finite capital.

So, agriculture has been placed at an extremely unfair disadvantage compared with other economic activities. To expect it to compete with those other activities under these circumstances would guarantee the destruction of our soil and our future impoverishment. As David R. Montgomery's Dirt - the Erosion of Civilisations (2007) shows, this is far from being just a theoretical question.

If we are to establish an economy which is to be sustainable in the longer term, we are going to have to face the fact that many of us may find unpalatable, that is, whether we live on the land or in cities, we are going to have to learn to live by consuming far fewer material resources than we do now. Even if we eliminate many absurdly wasteful practices of our throw-away society, and even if we remove the enormous inequalities in income distribution, we may still find ourselves without the same access to all the convenient gadgets and comforts to which we are now accustomed. We are going to have to get used the idea that we won't all be able to travel by air to the other side of the world every year or across the continent every two months or so, or be able to buy every gizmo we desire almost at will only to throw them away a mere 12 months later.

Of course one first and necessary step will be to remove the often crippling burden placed upon on farms by the finance sector, which, in turn, drives farmers to ruin their land. As I mentioned earlier, one means towards achieving this would be to re-establish a Peoples' (i.e. Commonwealth) Bank.

On top of that, the rest of us should consider paying more for food in order to allow farmers to be able to both earn a decent income and to properly look after the land. It would also help if were to change the grossly inefficient industrialised food processing and distribution system (the US version of which is described lucidly in the US by Christopher Cook's Diet for A Dead Planet – See YouTube broadcast). Breaking the Coles Woolworths duopoly would help. Similar to the re-establishment of a Peoples' Bank, why not establish a publicly owned supermarket company that only has to meet its operating expenses and not pay inflated returns to its shareholders, company directors and CEO's? Local cooperative producers' markets could complement the aforementioned Peoples' Supermarket to allow as much food as possible to be consumed locally.

Local food distribution and consumption would reduce transport, storage and packaging costs, which can only continue to climb from now on due to the growing scarcity of petroleum, and to make easier the recycling of all nutrients. The alternative of continuing to mine nutrients from the soil and dump most of them in landfill up to hundreds of kilometres away cannot be sustainable. The fertilisers currently used to partially replace lost nutrients are either finite resources or are manufactured unsustainably using finite and limited fossil fuels. Moreover, their use, in conjunction with the use of pesticides, tends make soil sterile and lifeless as Jenny Hume is, no doubt, aware.

Some links which may be of interest include: Working the land - or not of 24 Jun 08 by Jenny Hume on Web Diary, Who owns your sewage? of 3 Jul 08 by Valerie Yule on Online Opinion, Last gasp for single desk marketing of Australian wheat of 17 Jun 08, Peak oil prices cause South Australian Farmers to call for 'fair market forces' of 10 Jun 08, Orwellian Waterworks: big-agribusiness and Victorian Gov of 27 May 08, Insight program's take on Labor Shortage of 17 Jun 08, A 10,000 year misunderstanding of 1 May 08 by Canadian soil microbiologist Peter Salonius, I will govern for all Victorians (caveat: but only if you are powerful and connected) of 26 Jun 08.

Victorian State Member of Parliament, Neale Burgess, has alerted the public to the fact that Minister Gavin Jennings has introduced, through Peter Batchelor, a BILL in Parliament to ensure the lowest possible Classification of Devilbend as a Natural Features Reserve.

This will ensure priority for recreational fishing, horseriding, and other recreational activities inimical to wildlife, in an area which has protected indigenous fauna to date.

Devilbend is precious keystone wildlife habitat essential to Frankston and Peninsula Wildlife Corridors. (See www.awpc.org.au for the corridor plans). The Wildlife corridors are needed to save Peninsula wildlife from extinction via development. Toll-way developers and other friends of Mr Brumby’s can make the idea of turning Devilbend into a glorified sportsground sound environmentally and community-friendly, completely failing to mention that they will thereby destroy a lynchpin in a proposed wildlife corridor for Melbourne’s Southern region.

Extinction of native fauna throughout the Peninsula will permit greedy developers and cold-hearted, exploitative politicians to simply fill the Peninsula with housing and industrial developments like the 400 ha one planned for Port of Hastings. This is an outrage! Soon Victoria will have no more wildlife than Singapore - which has one single mudskipper species listed.

It is so essential that Devilbend be RE-Classified as a NATURE CONSERVATION RESERVE to save rapidly disappearing, remaining native animals on the Mornington Peninsula.

Brendan Sydes, of the Environment Defenders Office, (EDO), has suggested that if we act before tomorrow, there is a way to turn this around by making an Amendment to the present BILL in Parliament.

The Amendment needs to make Devilbend a Nature Conservation Reserve, instead of a 'natural features reserve'.

So if anyone has an MP sympathetic to wildlife, please write seeking the Amendment in the Lower House BEFORE the vote which is tomorrow. Thursday.

The Land and Biodiversity is a waste of time. Minister Jennings hypocritically fails to protect wildlife by ensuring their decimation on the one hand in the BILL and then on the other with his pathetic Green Paper for Biodiversity in a time of Climate Change, which only serves to waste Wildlife defenders’ time and energy and drive them to despair.

#WhatYouCanDo" id="WhatYouCanDo">What you Can Do

AWPC was alerted by Neale Burgess, local MP and Brendan Sydes Chief Solicitor EDO, to the suggestion of such an ammendment.

Yesterday AWPC called Neale Burgess office requesting that Burgess MOVE the AMENDMENT through Barry in his office.

AWPC has also been in touch with GREEN MP Sue Pennicuik ( office in Brighton), and sent a lot of material to Cameron Pidgeon.

AWPC will call Edward O'Donahue, Upper House MP in Pakenham, who lives on the Mornington Peninsula

Labor Upper house man for the region is johan.scheffer[at]parliament.vic.gov.au
Please let him know how you feel he should vote.

It is essential to move on this today to prevent the Bill from passing without an amendment in the Lower House and proceeding to the Upper House.

"Michael Crichton spoke of environmentalists requiring a belief in an unspoiled 'Eden' that existed before we corrupted it and will again exist once we have had our comeuppance. My thought is that the belief that Aboriginals were noble eco-savages falls into this same category. The Platonic need to believe in perfection." Tim Murray

Whilst I am a great fan of Tim Murray's, I feel the topic and the opinions expressed need further investigation.

Tim Murray's article, The Record of Indigenous North Americans raises the issue of whether non-capitalistic or less complex cultures were as unethical or worse than modern industrial societies. Since the initiator of the debate, Tim Murray, hails from Anglo-Canada and talks about North American Indians, I will proceed as if we are mainly talking here about Anglo-capitalism. I don't want to be accused of cultural-cringing because of my own precision of 'Anglo' capitalism, so I will precise here that the system of capitalism and industrial society originated in England and colonised itself most typically in the English-speaking settler societies like the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and, I think, South Africa. Other capitalisms have different relationships with fossil fuels, democracy, and land-inheritance systems. They incorporate other organisational, economic, social and political blends, although industrialisation is heavily affected everywhere by Anglo-capitalism.

I think that the imbalance of romanticism almost entirely favours fossil-fuel based Anglo-capitalism. I agree with Michael Creighton about environmentalism as a religion in that, clearly, some environmentalism is religious. Corporations, spin-doctors, the mainstream media and advertising (the latter three being parts of the same thing) rely on this uncritical faith by the public in symbols and banners. Religious environmentalism ritualises and promotes 'environmental values' in the same way religions push various other ethical values, without the rituals having much if any practical application to Energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) and preserving biodiversity, any more than a politician's or Corporate CEO's swallowing wine-soaked bread from a priest (taking of the Eucharist) necessarily affects their real-life conduct of business.

The same religious approach is often present in defenses of the superiority of industrial society and of what passes for democracy in Anglo-capitalist societies. I would also say that people believe naively in the value of their governments in the way that children believe that their parents are essentially good and loving even when they are cruel, dishonest, niggardly and abusive. To seriously challenge the idea that your country's leader ultimately has your country's welfare at heart, upon which your welfare utterly depends, is in practice as unlikely as a pre-schooler losing faith in his mother or a priest losing faith in the God the Father. Although it does happen, populations have to be pushed to the limit and to have little left to lose before they seriously challenge outrageous governments. The tendency is for the worshipper to seek in themselves the explanation for bad behaviour in a leader, a parent, or a deity. The first person the doubter approaches is the parent or the priest, who reinforce the dogma of course. In Australia the tendency is to write to one's member of parliament or to the editor of a mainstream newspaper - with predictable results. The last person we tend to rely on for verification is ourself.

Anglo-capitalism is a system born of dispossession and one which has industrialised cruelty to humans and animals on a massive, constantly worsening scale. (See Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origin of Capitalism, a longer view, Verso, London and New York, 2002 and Christopher D. Cook, Diet for a dead planet

There is abundant evidence of steady-state hunter gatherer and herding cultures lasting many hundred and even thousands of years. They had to get along with the other species in their environment because they depended upon them for survival; they could not afford to to damage or scare them all away. Those cultures which did break their environments also broke, died back, and often did not survive. The societies which survived for long periods got it right.

A recent book which tests theory on the durability of such cultures is Fikret Berkes & Carl Folke (Eds.), Linking Social and Ecological Systems, Management Practices and Social Mechanisms for Building Resilience, Cambridge Univ Press, 2000.

Only if we equate material abundance - an accident of fossil-fuels permitting complex technology, starting in England and producing ghastly inequities and sufferings there which then were globalised and continue to burgeon - with some kind of evolutionary progress of the species (which I find an absurdity) - could we pretend that the amount of waste and destruction in our culture was justified. That is, however, a widely held belief, marketed as an excuse for grossly interfering with peoples' rights in non-industrialised countries.

My view is by no means some kind of cultural cringe about what was imposed on my ancestors; it is a political view I have formed through the experience of testing Anglo-capitalist associated democracy and trying to make the system live up to the values that Tim believes it embodies. The capitalist Western Culture simply doesn't actually follow through on the democratic and kindness values that it markets itself under. The only reason a shrinking proportion of those under its sway still believe that it does is because they have not tested those values and because they happen to remain a part of the shrinking circle of beneficiaries. There are many countries out there which are actively revolting at the cost they bear for provisioning Western capitalist culture Inc.

This comment is also not some kind of defense of communism or socialism, which, as far as I can see, had their roots in an opposition to capitalism and classically attempt to operate on the same dehumanising scale. It looks as if Western capitalism is now going the same way as Soviet communism, but now Russian capitalism is on the rise - and for one reason only - fossil fuel possessions. As Western fossil-fuel sources deplete, Russian and ex-Soviet sources are still comparatively well stocked.

I think there is a conflict in the anti-population movement between those who have not sufficiently explored the fossil-fuel connection between wealth, technology and mass propaganda and those who look at thermodynamic underpinnings of culture and social systems.

With regard to Michael Creighton (a favourite author of mine) and his comments about the Eden myth and popular romanticism of less complex cultures, my own opinion is that Creighton romanticises his own complex culture. I think he has bought the commercial myth that all our ancestors laboured in misery and cruelty until the industrial revolution brought them out of their torment. That's the myth of Industrial Eden. I look forward to Creighton writing a new science-based novel on the role of fossil-fuel reserves on capitalism and the relationship or non-relationship of capitalism with democracy.

By the way, Creighton's ideas for strengthening and depoliticising the funding of scientific research are very interesting. Take a look here.

I would be interested to see Tim Murray look into his Icelandic origins to find out more about the traditions of kindness, responsibility, altruism and friendships with animals there. As I have probably made clear, I think that capitalism simply stole kindly ethics from herding and other cultures and now wears those ethics like a false badge.

In recent years, newspapers of the Murdoch-owned News Limited media empire haven't been in the least shy in counselling, indeed demanding of Governments to disregard the will of the public to implement policies it deemed to be in the public's best interest. One obvious example which springs to mind is the Australian's strident endorsement of the current attempts by the Iemma Government to privatise NSW's electricity assets, even though it's opposed by 85% of the public and even though when privatisation was last specifically put the the NSW public in the 1999 elections by the Liberal Opposition they were roundly trounced. Other past examples include the Murdoch press's campaigns for:

• The privatisation of Telstra;
• the (aborted) privatisation of the Snowy Mountains Electricity Corporation
• The forced amalgamations of local governments by the Queensland Beattie state government in 2007
• Calling on the Queensland Government to use dictatorial powers to over-ride local councils opposed to over-development who were elected in in the March 2008 elections.
• Rebuking of Anna Bligh for using powers to prevent the destruction of the historic Regent Theatre by developers

The editorial Protection in name of popularity of 26 Feb 08 in the Murdoch-owned Courier Mail concerning Bligh's decision to save the Regent Theatre, complained:

But is it possible that this whole exercise is less about protecting fond memories and more about good old-fashioned, politically motivated playing to the crowd?

However on other occasions, when it suits the Courier Mail editorial writers, “playing to the crowd” is precisely what they demand of our political leaders. Take for example the editorial Rising costs an expensive issue for PM of 23 June.

The editorial seems to be part of a growing pattern in the Murdoch Press which appears to be directed towards undermining the popularity of the Rudd Labor Government in the face of the growing global economic and resource shortage crises. Even though the current Federal Government cannot possibly be held responsible for these and even though the Federal Opposition is not proposing policies to deal with these which are likely to cope any better with these crises than those being implemented by the Federal Government, the Murdoch press appears to be attempting to engender the idea in the Australian public's consciousness that it is appropriate for them to automatically punish whatever Government in office when things turn sour. So stories and opinion pieces such as this editorial, which seek to imply that the Rudd Government's honeymoon with the Australian public is over are becoming more common.

The editorial begins by noting that more people now consider Labor (53%) to be better economic mangers than the Liberal opposition(37%).

However, astonishingly, it proceeds to argue that Labor, having finally convinced the public after many long years, that it is more economically responsible than the Coalition should immediately abandon economically responsible policies in one critical area:

But on other indicators Labor is found wanting. Almost 70 per cent, for example, feel Mr Rudd "should have done more" in his first Budget to alleviate cost of living pressures. And if increasing mortgage repayments, rents and groceries are biting hard into household budgets, the soaring cost of petrol must surely hurt the most.

Startlingly for Labor, three out of four Queenslanders are dissatisfied with the way Mr Rudd has handled petrol prices. More worrying for the Prime Minister will be the finding that two out of three Queenslanders support Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson's plan to reduce petrol prices by cutting fuel excise. …

As the editorial noted, Labor had dismissed the proposal as economically irresponsible. The editorial made no attempt to prove otherwise, but, nevertheless, proceeded to argue that Labor should adopt Nelson's proposals all the same.

Why?

Whilst it conceded that “Most Queenslanders don't blame Labor for rising fuel costs.“ it nevertheless maintained that Labor needed to be seen to be doing something, no matter how futile or counterproductive in the longer term. Here are its words:

… all Australians nonetheless expect their newly-elected government to do something tangible about inflation that sees real prices coming down, especially in - if nothing else - petrol.

Australians might also wonder what happened to the human sensitivity that Labor demonstrated last year in opposition. When Mr Rudd talked passionately during the campaign about the cost of petrol, housing and food, voters listened intently, with many switching their support to Labor on this message alone. But in the past six months the Prime Minister appears to have blunted his finely-attuned antennae. And, semantics aside as to what Mr Rudd actually promised on food and fuel, Australians now expect the Prime Minister to act decisively on bread-and-butter issues.

So the Courier Mail is apparently demanding of Rudd that he “act decisively” even though such ‘decisive’ action could well deny the Government millions in necessary revenue whilst having almost no significant effect in comparison to the price rises caused by the increasing scarcity of petroleum.

The editorial concludes:

… while a deteriorating economy is in itself unlikely to prise Labor from office after a single term, Mr Rudd should know he will be punished if voters believe that he failed to act on the cost of living when he at least had the chance.

The audacity in this is breathtaking. The editorial writer knows full well that it is within the power of his/her own newspaper to make the Queensland public understand why such band-aid measures as proposed by Brendan Nelson would be harmful to its interests. If the Courier Mail was truly serving the public interest, it would do its utmost to ensure that a Government that acted economically responsibly would not be punished by the public for having done so.

#LetterToEditor" id="LetterToEditor">Appendix: Letter to Editor concerning Coalition's proposal to lower fuel excise

25 May 08

Title: Coalition never governs again ?!?

MP Hockey proclaims: "Petrol will always be cheaper under the Coalition than it will be under the Labor Party."

Obviously, Hockey never expects the Coalition to lead Government again, with oil prices predicted to rise, and competition for existing oil supplies to increase substantially.

The Opposition would have to eliminate completely the 38-cent fuel excise tax once petrol hits AU$2.00/L for petrol to approximate its current price. Dropping GST entirely on petrol would save three times the five-cent fuel excise tax reduction. But the Opposition couldn't advocate that, as the Opposition gave us the GST in the first place!

What is Hockey smoking??? I hope he shares it with the rest of us "average Australians"!

Judy Bamberger,
O'Connor ACT

+61-2-6247-6220 (work and fax)
bamberg[AT]eaglet.rain.com

The original article by Alistair McConnachie was published on the web-site sovereignty.org.uk in September 2006.

There were fears of a new wave of clandestine migrants from eastern Europe last night after Poland announced it is opening its doors to workers from outside the EU.

In an attempt to ease labour shortages, people from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus will no longer need work permits to enter the country.

With thousands of its citizens flocking to the UK, Poland finds itself short of skilled workers.(Unaccredited, "Poland in new migrant alert",The Scottish Daily Mail, 2 Sep 06, p.55)

Irony of ironies! Poland is short of skilled workers because they're all flocking to Britain because, allegedly, we're short of skilled workers!

Such is the absurdity of neo-liberalism – the term which has come to refer to minimum government intervention in the economy, or government intervention intended to ensure complete freedom of movement of capital and labour.

This article demonstrates that neo-liberalism is upheld by those on the Left as well as those on the Right.

On the question of free movement of labour, the free-marketeers and capitalists on the Right meet the anti-capitalists and anarchists on the Left in complete agreement.

The reason the free-marketeers uphold a central pillar of neo-liberalism – free movement of people - is their desire to make a lot of money.

The free-marketeers cannot speak out against free movement of labour because that would require them to re-assess their commitment to free movement of capital.

It's unfortunate that some anti-EU groups simplistically advocate "free trade" without thinking it through properly and realising that the full implications may often be the antithesis of their professed belief in national sovereignty, both political and economic. After all, even if we left the EU, cheap labour would still come here, unless there were restrictions set on this particular aspect of "free trade."

The reason the anti-capitalists uphold a central pillar of neo-liberalism – free movement of people - is their desire to promote "equality".

In this regard, the Left emphasise "international workers' solidarity". This can often be a very good idea.

Constructive solidarity and politically perverse ‘solidarity’

For example, I realise that if my job is shipped to Mexico, the Mexican worker will probably have a pretty crummy job working for low-wages in poor conditions.

I can accept that the system is screwing us both.

We all benefit when living standards and working conditions rise in other countries. It means there is less chance of an employer in this country bailing out and going abroad to exploit cheap labour and poor working conditions, and there will be less of a migration push from these countries.

I can understand that if I can help the Mexican build a better economic system for his own country, then maybe in time there will be less incentive for the system to ship my next job out there, or to force his family over here.

In this sense, solidarity with workers internationally is an appropriate and fine thing, to be encouraged. Sovereignty carries a slogan on its back page, with every issue, which advocates "Solidarity with Farmers Internationally."

However, the idea of "solidarity" becomes a very bad thing if it is misused as a rhetorical device to neuter my opposition to having my living space invaded, or my work and wages undermined, or my environment destroyed, or when I'm expected to condone unlawful behaviour in its name.

For example, when we're expected to show "solidarity" with the massive influx of immigrants, especially the illegal ones – which the Left like to call "irregular" – and bogus asylum seekers, and to put from our minds the political, social, economic and ecological consequences of this immigration invasion – for the greater notion of "solidarity".

In that sense, "solidarity" is simply a slogan being used to undermine my rights and to prevent me articulating them and to stop me standing up for myself, and my group's interests. It is in this politically perverted sense that the Left today almost always use the term.

The driving ideology of ‘equality’

Why do the Left insist on doing this?

Why do they seek to geld opposition to neo-liberalism from the working class by misusing the idea of "international solidarity" when it is not appropriate to the circumstances, nor the interests, of the people to whom they are speaking?

The reason is because the Left's over-arching ideology of "equality" demands that they put "equality for all" before the interests of any specific element of the working class.

Therefore, if working class people in England are being displaced from apprenticeships, or jobs, by already qualified Eastern Europeans, or Somali refugees, then the Leftist will not stand up for the English indigenous working class because his doctrine of "equality" mandates that he cannot and must not "discriminate" between people in any way.

Therefore, he will argue that the Somali has a right to this job too and that the Englishman needs to see himself, not as part of a national citizenry, but rather as part of an amorphous "international working class" in which he is "equal" with this Somali and shares "solidarity" with this Somali "working class person". Viewed this way, the Englishman can only lose.

To promote "equality", the Englishman is expected to deny his interests, forfeit his rights and cede his space in the name of "solidarity" with someone he's never met, who is likely not a citizen, and is probably a law-breaker!

As a consequence of its ideological obsession with "equality", the Left cannot and will not oppose free movement of labour and so it must try deliberately to pervert and misuse the idea of solidarity in order to neuter any working class opposition to the open-borders of neo-liberalism.

The Left's obsession with "solidarity" can sometimes have its amusing manifestations.

I had a conversation with a Lefty in Buchanan Street this month. He was standing beside a stall and wanted me to sign a petition showing "solidarity" with some Cubans who, for reasons he was not able to explain clearly, had been thrown in jail in Miami!

Faintly amused, I smiled and said I didn't think that was of much relevance to people in Glasgow. Oh, but on the contrary, apparently, it was his group's aim to build "an international movement for working class solidarity".

I laughed out loud. "How are you going to do that," I asked, "when right here in Glasgow, we have the Scottish Socialist Party, who are now split right down the middle, and screaming hatred at each other. If they can't keep it together in Glasgow, how are you going to keep it together worldwide?" He didn't have much to say to that!

The Marxist bogus "greens"

The Leftist and Marxist "Greens" will point out that it is capitalism which drives immigration pressures.

Like all Marxists they will trace whatever it is they claim to be concerned about, to the economic system. They will try to claim that ecological crises are a product of social causes which themselves are products of the capitalist system and its injustices.

Of course, the economic system is often a factor, and one can recognize that without having to be a Marxist!

However, these people are Bogus Greens because the bottom line for them is not ecological sustainability, but like all other Leftists, the bottom line is their fundamentalist religion of "equality" which drives them on destructive routes.

Even if we work sincerely to correct the economic problems of which they complain, even if we work to ensure people want to stay where they are rather than migrate, even if the economics is changed for the better, they would still support ecologically damaging open borders and unlimited immigration – in the name of equality!

In this regard, compare the difference between genuine ecologically-aware advocacy, as found in Sovereignty (sovereignty.org.uk) with that of the Marxist Bogus "Greens":

Sovereignty challenges neo-liberalism. We campaign for economic justice for all. To those ends, we advocate building Self Reliance Worldwide (see for example, The Principles and Purposes of Foreign Aid, and Appendix to our Asylum Policy, we support the Cancellation of Third World Debt and we advocate thoroughly throughout this website, the economics of Localism not Globalism.

At the same time we advocate restricting immigration and asylum levels severely, and enforcing the immigration laws. We campaign for ecological sustainability and emphasise its central relevance to the issue of migration.

Marxist Bogus "Greens" on the other hand, put freedom of movement above economic justice and ecological sustainability because they are fixated on their religion of "equality" in every field of human life.

This ideology demands that there must be no laws which "discriminate" in any way towards any particular person for any reason whatsoever. Thus, immigration laws are inherently anti-equality and "racist" and must be torn down and there must be open-borders.

Moreover, they try to justify this in economic terms because they believe that freedom of movement is a necessary tool to achieve their economic goals in the first place.

They believe that only when we can all move about unimpeded will the world economy stabilise at a level which is the same for all. Only then, as a result of this economic equality will the social problems caused by inequality be sorted and ecological sustainability achieved.

Of course, in reality this free movement of people will be politically, socially, economically and ecologically damaging and unjust to many areas and peoples of the planet – but that is of little concern to them.

The Marxist Bogus "Greens" will destroy the planet in their efforts to achieve "equality".

sovereignty.org.uk

See also: How mass migration has devastated the social fabric of Britain.

"Nevertheless, just as I don't think the world's problems can be solved without addressing the population question, I also don't think they can be solved if we don't address the more traditional questions of wealth and political power."&emdash;James Sinnamon, in defending Naomi Klein against criticism

I agree with James on this issue. Yes, I am angered with the liberal/left's collusion with the neo-liberal agenda of open immigration, of its misuse of the hackneyed phrase "solidarity" to justify support for importing cheap migrant labour to crush the living standards of local workers and despoil our national environment and multiply the ecological footprint of the migrants themselves. But I am also frustrated by the blindness of the red neck wing of the American anti immigration movement that takes no responsibility for the factors which PUSH migrants out of their third world countries.

These countries have been ravished by decades of iniquitous trade agreements that have extorted resources from them at bargain basement prices, causing them to forfeit self-sufficiency, destroy natural capital, and strip social services to pay off debt charges that the IMF dictates must be paid. We need to look no further than Mexico to see what a trade agreement can do to destroy a rural economy. Where do these people go? Where do poor farmers and the ancillary small business workers destroyed by the US corporate invasion go? Where did the farmers of Britain go after the enclosure movement? We tend only to look at the "Pull" factor of better paying jobs in the factories of the Industrial Revolution, or the factories in America. But we conveniently forget that there is a whip behind these workers, who, if you interviewed them, never wanted to leave their families back home.

Stopping immigration successfully cannot simply be about keeping people "out". It has also got to be about giving people reasons to stay where they are. To me, that means scrapping these larcenous trade agreements, delivering restitution to developing nations for the ruin caused to their environments, and massive foreign aid tied to family planning. Closing our borders but not our backs, our eyes or our hearts to the world. Not for their sake. For our ours.

Because history shows that walls are at best a temporary remedy. We can't play King Kanute indefinitely to an unrelenting tide of desperate tens of millions. Currently, three percent of humanity is on the move, and we seem to have difficulty marshalling the resolution to deal with that traffic. Should that proportion rocket to even ten percent, it is doubtful that any border control will remain any more impregnable than the Maginot Line or the Great Wall of China was to the armies that by-passed them. Wake up, let's get realistic here.

Push, Pull. Two factors. Deal with both, or you are not dealing with the problem of immigration.

Tim Murray,
Quadra Island,BC

See also: Closing our borders can't mean turning our backs of 25 Oct 07

Almost invariably reporting of Australia's acute housing unaffordability crisis does not inform the public of its causes, nor help it to arrive at a solution. The ABC's report No relief in sight for Brisbane's renters of 20 June 08 is no exception.

See also: Rent gouging threatens Brisbane inner city retail community of 8 Mar 08

Yet another article, this time on the ABC's online news service, No relief in sight for Brisbane's renters of 20 June 08 provides yet further confirmation that the polices promoting rapid population growth by all levels of government in Brisbane - local, state and federal - are recklessly harmful to many of Brisbane's existing inhabitants.

However, this obvious link is ignored by the article, and, in spite of its promising headline, the article, instead, turns out to be nothing more than another serving of propaganda in the service of the very people who caused the problem in the first place, namely the growth lobby consisting of property developers, land speculators, lenders, construction companies and others who profit from population growth at the expense of the rest of the community.

#SpeculatorsLobby" id="SpeculatorsLobby">Property speculators lobby for higher immigration

Record and escalating property values and the consequent high rents is precisely the intended effect hoped for by the property interests who have been lobbying for population growth behind the backs of the Australian public for decades. Indeed, this hope was openly expressed by an economist working, as I recall for the Real Estate Institute of Australia in 2004 on Radio National's Australia Talks Back program on 19 May 2004 (it is now called just Australia Talks). The topic of the day was the supposed ‘problem’ of a short-lived slump in housing prices, which caused land speculators momentarily not to be able to reap the normally high profits to which they had become accustomed . Several times, the REIQ economist stated that when immigration picks up, the woes of property investors would end.

At the time, I strongly doubted claims that high immigration was, in any way, in the interests of the current residents of this country. In the past I had naïvely accepted the view that the immigration program was undertaken for altruistic reasons, even if I believed them to misguided. Whilst I was becoming more skeptical about this over time, the open acknowledgement of sectional self-interest behind our immigration program was still a surprise to me. I did phone in and speak on Australia Talks Back to make the point that housing prices, even at the supposedly depressed levels, were still impossibly high on a remotely normal income, but I had not sorted out my thoughts on that other question sufficiently as to be able to speak to it coherently. Two days letter at mid-day on Friday 21 May, I sent a letter, in the hope that it would be read out during Friday's "Week In review" program. However that was a week in which an "Australia Talks Books" was scheduled on Friday instead, so it was not read out. The letter was:

Dear Sandy McCutcheon et al,

Firstly thank you for giving me a say on your show on Wednesday.

However, I forgot to comment on what one of your invited guests said, which I thought to be extraordinary and revealing.

He expressed his hope that further immigration will help the property market to 'recover', that is, presumably, that the crowding of further new arrivals into Sydney and Melbourne, will drive the already hyper-inflated housing prices even higher.

This confirmed my suspicion that the motivations of many advocates of immigration were not as altruistic as they had once led me to believe.

Those on the lower rungs of our society were not informed or consulted about the consequences of such an increase in our population, and so now they can no longer afford what was affordable to them a generation ago.

As a matter of urgency, the process of decentralising our economy needs to be commenced, so that everyone can once again find somewhere affordable to live and to work, and before we increase our population levels even further, there needs to be a full and open discussion.

Yours Sincerely

,

James Sinnamon

Housing hyper-inflation the direct consequence of the property lobby's successful lobbying efforts

Subsequently, land speculators and property developers got their wish. John Howard, the man who told the Australian public during the Tampa crisis of 2001, "We will decide who comes to this country, and the circumstances under which they come," secretly ramped up Australia's immigration ever higher and, as a consequence, Australia has some of the least affordable housing in the world. Many, who could previously have hoped to take out a mortgage for a house if they made sacrifices, have been completely priced out of the market as a result, and have no choice but to rent.

Renters at the mercy of ruthless landlords and real estate agents

As the numbers of those seeking rental accommodation have greatly exceeded available rental stock, many tenants are now at the mercy of unconscionable landlords and real estate agents. In 2006, I witnessed the life of a neighbour destroyed during a six month period, as real estate agents and prospective buyers marched into her rented half-house almost at will. On one occasion, whilst the tenant was out, damp washing left hanging, which was considered an obstruction, was dumped on the ground. Eventually the house was sold and the new owners raised the rent beyond what the existing tenant could afford, so she had to move out.

More recently, another rental house occupied by a friend was put on the market. When my friend insisted upon being given adequate written notice by the estate agent before his floor of a two story house was inspected, the estate agent attempted to bully him over the phone. He, nevertheless, stood up to him, asserting his legal rights as a tenant. Fortunately, the landlord was more ethical than most and apologised profusely when he heard of this. The house was eventually taken off the market, and he was allowed to stay. Most tenants, of course, are not so lucky. The Courier Mail newspaper reported (will endeavour to obtain reference) in about two months ago that some Brisbane landlords are evicting their tenants without cause in order to replace them with other tenants able to pay higher rents.

Many who no longer can afford their own unit, let alone a free-standing home, now have no alternative but to share a roof with often incompatible strangers. Those who can't even afford that are resorting to living in cars or in tents in open spaces around the city. One prominent collection of tent dwellings is now to be found beneath the Story Bridge.

Small businesses are also paying the price. As reported in the story Rent gouging threatens Brisbane inner city retail community of 8 Mar 08 sudden exorbitant rent increases imposed by landlords, with the active encouragement of a local real estate agent, destroyed the economic viability of a number business in a formerly cohesive retail community the inner-city suburb of Paddington.

How housing unaffordability scandal is spun to suit the purposes of land speculators

Now, almost invariably, whenever housing unaffordability is raised in the printed media, radio and television, the ‘experts’ whose views are sought are invariably the exact same people who brought about this this human tragedy in the first place. They now would have the public believe that they are all working with single-minded determination to bring housing affordability back to the Australian masses once again. This line is accepted unquestioningly be almost all the newsmedia and the supposedly independent ABC is no exception.

In this story, the ‘experts’ consulted included:

• an unnamed spokesperson from economic forecaster BIS Shrapnel,
• Steve Greenwood, executive director of the Property Council of Australia,
• Dan Molloy, the managing director of the Real Estate Institute of Queensland,
• the pro-developer pro-population-growth Lord Mayor of Brisbane Campbell Newman,

In spite of the fact that the ‘solution’ proffered by these people is hotly controversial in South East Queensland, including on the Sunshine Coast and in Redland City, where anti-development councils have been elected, no critical views were reported in the article. The closest thing to a critical view was from Councillor David Hinchliffe, who, as former Labor majority leader on the Brisbane City Council, notoriously surrendered to Campbell Newman on nearly every key policy question, with disastrous results for Labor, during the March 2008 Brisbane City Council elections.

Economic forecaster BIS Shrapnel tipped that house prices in south-east Queensland were likely to rise by 22 per cent over the next three years. The obvious fact that this was almost certainly the result of the Federal Immigration minister Chris Evans having announced that the annual immigration intake was to be increased to 300,000 on 14 May was, of course, not mentioned.

Another contributing factor was Lord Mayor Campbell Newman's sudden hike in council rates directly counter to a clear commitment he made prior to the election of 15 March.

Naturally the whole discussion was couched in terms of what or would not entice investors to invest in rental property.

Campbell Newman and Steve Greenwood differed over the effect that his rate increases would have, with Newman absurdly insisting that his rate increases would have no significant impact upon rents.

Steve Greenwood naturally supported the federal rent-assistance scheme which does nothing but fuel housing inflation at the expense of taxpayers.

Greenwood claimed, as the Property Council invariably states in these sorts of stories, that the solution to housing affordability lies with the release of more land for housing development. In his words:

"But we need other things done, and those other things are increasing land supply.

"At the moment we have a regional plan that is being reviewed."

Mr Greenwood says land will need to be unlocked across the south-east to boost supply sufficiently and take pressure off the housing market.

In one sense Steve Greenwood could be right, to a point.

It is hard to imagine how the supply of more land would not make it cheaper, even if we take into account the extravagant developer's margins and the way that developers, themselves, notoriously withhold the release to homebuyers of land sold wholesale to them by governments in order to maximise their own profits.

If all other things remained equal, we could still expect the affordability of housing to marginally improve. Of course, this ignores the fact that the housing on offer is likely to be distantly removed from any worthwhile amenities, public transport or employment opportunities.

But, of course, all things are not going to remain the same as the greater demand caused by increasing immigration will almost certainly more than wipe out any marginal improvements.

Furthermore, most existing residents strongly object to the loss of open spaces, bushland and agricultural land that will be entailed in the release of new land for housing. As well as degrading the quality of life for existing residents the fragile ecology of the region could be destroyed and, with that any prospect of local food self-sufficiency, vitally necessary when the effects of ever higher fuel costs are inevitably to be felt.

It is for such reasons that the Redland City Council and the Sunshine Coast Regional Council are opposing the Queensland Government's release of more land. In response, Steve Greenwood complained:

"Just outside of Brisbane we've got a number of claims coming from some of the local government areas that actually want to cap their population growth.

"That is very alarming, because basically what they're saying is they're going to … attempt to further limit supply, and for most of us who have even a basic understanding of economics, you limit supply and your costs go up.

Of course, the abovementioned efforts made by the Federal and State governments on behalf of the Property Council of Australia and the REIQ to increase demand are not to be even considered.

In recent months the Queensland branch of Electrical Trades Union (ETU) has rightly conducted publicity campaigns against policies of the Queensland Labor Government's which have been harmful to its members' interests. These include the corporatisation and privatisation of its power generation assets and the consequent neglect of vital infrastructure. The ETU has also conducted an industrial campaign for wage justice for its members and has been critical of the Federal Rudd Labor Government's delays in the repeal of the Howard Government's anti-worker “Work Choices” legislation.

In the Brisbane Times article Electricity, rail workers to picket Labor conference, ETU spokesman Peter Simpson complained of “over 12 months of frustrated negotiations” in which “the excesses of Work Choices" were used against state government employees.”

At a protest outside the Queensland Labor Party's conference on the Gold Coast on Saturday 21 June  the Brisbane Times, in its story QLD Labor stung by protests, poll, reported:

(ETU assistant secretary Peter Simpson) said the unions had received a slap in the face after supporting Labor through the November federal election.

“How have we been repaid? We have been screwed over and it is a dead-set disgrace,” Mr Simpson said.

However, whilst Simpson is correct to point this out, it would have been clearly suicidal for the Union movement not to have backed Rudd against the viciously anti-democratic, anti-trade-union John Howard government. Whatever can be critically said of the record of the Rudd Labor Government, it was absolutely necessary for the ETU to have campaigned with the rest of the trade union movement to remove the Liberal Party from office.

Peter Simpson continued:

“This may be the last ALP conference that we attend, because I don't think we'll be affiliated with them for much longer.”

Whilst their treatment at he hands of Labor governments is indefensible and the ETU's outrage is entirely justified, their threat to disaffiliate from the Labor Party begs the question of exactly how the ETU can expect better treatment at the hands of any alternative government. Clearly, it would be ludicrous for ETU to hold out hope for better treatment at the hands of a Coalition government whether at the Queensland state or Federal level.

This conflict calls into question the whole purpose of the Labor Party.

The Labor Party was originally formed in the 1890's to be the political representative of the trade union movement. Its purpose was to form Government in order to enact legislation in favour of workers upon whose vote it would have depended upon to obtain a majority in Parliament.

The conduct of the Bligh Government, including in its dispute with the ETU, is only the latest of almost countless illustrations of how far the Labor Party has drifted from this original propose. Far from representing workers or, indeed, any other ordinary members of the community, the Bligh Government, instead, serves a small minority of corporations, land speculators and developers and acts, above all else, to transfer the wealth of the rest of the community, including electrical workers, into their pockets.

What unions such as the ETU need to consider is how to attempt to rectify this unsatisfactory situation.

One way or another, unions such as the ETU should assert their right to have representatives, who are prepared to act in the interests of its members, elected to Parliament. If the ETU sees no prospect of this being achieved by using its voice within the Labor Party, then it should seek to initiate the formation of such a party outside the Labor.

However to simply disaffiliate, but do nothing else, is likely to do little to dissuade the Bligh Government from pursuing its current course.

As much as Labor politicians enjoy the fruits of office, many act as if they consider losing office a lesser evil to actually representing the Labor Party's constituency and standing up to corporate interests. They seem to act as if confident that other at least equally lucrative careers will be offered to them by a grateful corporate sector should they lose government. So even the threat of damaging Labor's electoral prospects may do little to change the mind of Rudd and Bligh and, in fact, could backfire on the ETU if it were to result in the election of Coalition governments in the mould of the former Howard Government.

The ETU and other unions, such as the Rail, Tram and Bus Union (RTBU), who are disaffected by the Bligh Government's policies should use what voices they have at the Labor Conference to loudly demand that the Bligh begin to act to serve its electoral constituency. If they did, it is hard to conceive how their voices would not resonate with the rank and file of the Labor Party and other trade unions, if not with other conference delegates. Whether or not they are able to persuade a majority of the conference, it could only help make more likely the re-establishment of an effective political voice for the trade union movement, whether it is to come from within or without the current Labor Party.