(We) can do better

Dear Friends whoever you are,

I present myself describing the situation in another land (Italy and Switzerland) and later on trying to give news from other parts of Europe which I know a little of. In the meantime, I shall offer some opinions, and even some suggestions….

I live in Switzerland (Lausanne) but was born in Italy (Gorizia) and I possess two nationalities. (very useful).

I have founded the Assisi Nature Council, an organisation in Italy (Assisi), at the time when it was à la mode (sorry: like AGW ! ah ah!) the figure of its most beloved Saint Francis as a symbol of Christian environmental conservation.

Times have changed, demographical growth and not conservation is the main problem, as conservation can only be obtained by less people and less of everything that too many people do.

My attention to the problem of overpopulation started rather earlier on, when I collected figures and statistics and news articles and so on. I made links with many major environmental organisations in the States and Italy and here’s a limited account of some of the feedback:

• SUSP USA = they said that they only concentrated on US problem;
• Earth Island Institute (San Francisco USA)= no answer
• WWF Italy = well, we have other priorities, like consumption
• Friends of the Earth Italy = no answer
• Italia Nostra- Italy = only conservation please
• And so on.

I approached a well known TV programme in Rome, but no success.

With Academy, no support, but some hostility. A University Professor from Perugia (Italy) asked me if I was a racist — and I didn’t even mention the immigration problem!

This resumé to tell you how overpopulation is not a respectable subject.

Lately, I have joined a group, which is related to the Radical Party, a Party of libertarian leanings, which hasn’t much representation in Parliament. Better than nothing, because the group I joined, called Rientrodolce, is the only political lobby I know in Italy, whose objective is to diminish the population. By non-violent methods (dolce) of course. No China solution, then. No other political or economic force in Italy seems aware of the existence of such a problem, though exists a number of online sites that talk about it, but their material is mostly a translation from English documents. The opinion makers in the media who refer often to overpopulation are a few, very good and informed, but they are called Cassandras (actually Cassandra was telling always the truth but nobody wanted to believe her, for the obvious reasons: she was a purveyor of Bad News!)

I get along very well with my group, we discuss lots of issues related to population, like the oil and food crisis, but there’s one blind spot in their vision.

It is called immigration.

Now, I do not understand that someone can be worried about population growth and not see that, in our western countries, it is fuelled by the relentless invasion of people from less affluent countries.

These people have found the solution to their fertility by sending the surplus to us.

This way, there will be no possibility for them to limit their population, if they have the economic incentive to emigrate.

The refusal to talk about Immigration has more than one cause.

In the case of Rientrodolce group, the philosophy behind it is libertarian, plus a complex sense of guilt towards the Third World.

This sense of guilt pressures seems to be widespread in our societies, whose ethos has been influenced by excessive left-wing rhetoric. We feel obliged to repair a perceived damage that our civilisation might have done and relish the occasion to demonstrate solidarity towards the hordes of suffering humanity rejects.

Though these sentiments, if genuine, might be laudable, they are suspiciously based on a leftist ideology (our sin is to be richer than they; we have robbed their resources through capitalism, etc.) and so are the solution we propose : quasi open borders, free circulation of goods, services and humans, solidarity, hospitality, tolerance and all that utopian vocabulary, which rests on the principle that what is desirable is also possible, and that “all you need is Love ”.

For the sake of the Third World’s problems it would be certainly better to find ways to help them there, and specifically to tie up any financial help to a serious antinatalist programme, which would really decrease their fertility while at the same time bring more wealth.

But this solution doesn’t appeal to the idealists, who prefer to enslave — which is what they really do — a foreign labour force to serve the basic necessities of a relatively wealthy civilisation. This is not piety, it is exploitation.

The Italian situation has been getting steadily worse under the previous governments that have maintained a lax attitude towards the problem of immigration, while at the same time encouraging couples to have more children.

You have probably come across news of the Italian coasts being inundated by hundreds of illegal immigrants month by month, so that nobody is now sure how many are around and what the hell are they doing: drugs or prostitution, underpaid employment without insurance, small crime or a life of misery? The incredible thing is that this kind of life costs them a lot of money, that they pay to unscrupulous exploiters: because commerce of humans is a very lucrative business and it should be stopped.

But any discussion on this subject wakes up a sort of Pavlovian reaction. If you mention immigration in the wrong crowd, accusations of racism, xenophobia, or fascism are thrown immediately at you.

This is why most people who rationally, as opposed to racially, object to illegal immigration, are very careful in expressing themselves. They do not want to be part of wild testosterone-filled young hooligans who go around bashing anybody who happens to be or look a stranger, No doubt, these gangs are made up by the less intelligent members of society, youths without jobs or proper education, who would be violent even if the foreigners didn’t exist, it is a pretext to let out frustration.

Lately though, the general public is waking up to the dangers posed by immigrants who commit violent crimes. Berlusconi, so much criticised by The Economist, The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times, the Bibles of liberal culture, has won the last election because promised a stricter policy in immigration. This new policy has given rise to loud protests from radical left quarters, but the recognition of the force of a popular vote is stronger.

Anyway, regarding immigration, Italians (as Americans, I hear) have a schizophrenic approach. It is well known that the economy would not function without immigration. Here in Switzerland, where I was treated in a clinic, more than half of the medical personnel was from abroad.

Families employ baby sitters and home help from the Philippine, South America, Ukraine, … They are the same people who cry against immigration . It is not sufficient to berate the local workforce which doesn’t want to do certain jobs which are then taken up by foreigners, it is a matter worth of deep and open investigation.

Moreover, the immigration issue is also a responsibility of the Catholic Church.

Italy is the country in Europe mostly influenced by the Church. Though Italians obviously do not respect the ban on contraception, the Church’s influence is felt in the political arena and in the media. No days pass by that some declaration of a Bishop isn’t printed in the media or publicised on TV. At the moment the Church is worried about the “culle vuote” (empty cradles) phenomenon and it is urging the government to offer more incentives for the Italians to procreate.

Similarly, every newspaper of the land is in favour of such government policies, and perfectly in tune with the fear of “birth dearth” and consequent pensions crisis, that is sweeping the European Union (EU).

These fears, while totally in accord with the Christian doctrine (of grow and multiply: the Providence will… well, provide, it is its job), they are very foolish coming from a secular presumably rational body.

I shall shortly post some anti-Malthusian articles by Vatican-approved sites, that explain this point of view. Interesting.

Immigration is justified also by the Church in the name of the “accoglienza” (welcome) to the needy, which is the charitable Christian doctrine: in fact, the Church is doing its job.

But government policies shouldn’t be dominated by external pressures.

But in this matter, the government is listening not to the Church but to rather other influent lobbies, mainly the powerful industries.

Especially the manufactures of the North East and the construction industry. This last body is the most obnoxious polluter and destroyer of what is left of a beautiful country. It makes me cry, when travelling along the Adriatic coast I see kilometres of disgraceful secondary homes hastily arranged in front of a once pristine beach, and all this is done with the help of some poor Albanians and Romanians, who, when the bonanza is finished, as it will soon (see Spain and France’s housing crisis) be without work. And the Italians, the ones who didn’t want to take such a lowly jobs, will also remain without hope of even those lowly jobs.

Further information: with the Italian group Rientrodolce, we are trying to influence policies, pushing for a recognition of overpopulation together with the concomitant issues of energy depletion and food crisis. Unfortunately at the moment I am not allowed to explain the dangers of immigration, but you cannot have everything….

I would like to do something similar through this groups which I have just joined, to propagate the message of overpopulation and, where possible, the madness of unlimited immigration, in the public arena. We must not only talk to each other , but find a way to be visible and authoritative.

I do not know yet how, but we will come up with some ideas, OK?

See you soon

Marisa

One hundred years ago today (as I write this in late May), sulfur fumes permeated the air at Masjid-i-Suleiman. A good sign indeed for an experienced oil hand like Reynolds. At 4 am, the drill reached 360 metres under the desert sand, and struck oil. A gusher, 25 metres high, shot into the air. Arabian oil was born.

The site was so remote that it took five days before D'Arcy got word by telegram in England. "If this is true," he replied, "all our troubles are over." It was indeed true, and more rigs hit oil elsewhere in Persia, including another huge one in September.

How things have changed. Whatever happened to telegrams? Whatever happened to the oil?

The 20th Century will undoubtedly be remembered for the explosion of technology, steam, then oil, then nuclear and solar powered technology. I stress, powered technology. Most people confuse technology with energy, and unfortunately, they are not interchangable, something fast becoming obvious as we approach the 21st Century era of Peak Energy and limits to growth.

There is so much nonsense in the media today about the reasons why petrol (and diesel of course) is so expensive, it's mind boggling. Surfing the media's web blogs' tailing articles on petrol prices quickly exposes the man in the street's ignorance of the truth. Not that we can point the finger at 'people', the media (outside of publications like this one) is doing very little to educate or inform their readers or viewers.

So, when I prophesise that within as little as four or five years we may not be able to buy any fuel at all, at any price, people of course think I'm a complete nut case. I can understand this. The government is hardly showing signs of any such concerns, when they propose to build new freeways and tunnels to the airport!

Peak Oil is often misconstrued as 'running out' of oil. In fact, it's 'only' the point at which roughly half the oil has been extracted. This has been thoroughly documented in the USA which was by far the largest oil producer until after WWII. That nation peaked in 1971, and even though the largest oil field in all of North America (Prudhoe Bay) was put into service shortly thereafter, the US' oil production never recovered, inexorably decreasing to its current level, slightly less than 50% of peak. Peak Oil is no theory, the American experience proves this beyond any doubt.

So what of Australia? The news, I'm afraid, is grim indeed. Australia's oil production peaked in 2000. The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) has, for reasons known only unto itself, consistently mispredicted our future oil production. This is most baffling. Just who are they trying to kid? Do they pick figures out of thin air? Senator Milne and Ian Dunlop, formerly an international oil, gas and coal industry executive, now also challenge our resources peak body for misleading everyone, not just once, but at least five years running. This, in my opinion at least, borders on criminal negligence. One has to realise that very important decisions are made on the back of these predictions, like enlarging airport runways.

When a nation's oil production peaks, it must then rely on importing from somewhere else. The US imports oil from Canada, Mexico (now collapsing), and Venezuela, with some top up from the Saudis and Africa. We in Australia, you may be surprised to find out, import oil from Vietnam, PNG, the United Arab Emirate, Malaysia, Brunei, and, as a further surprise, New Zealand. We actually get more oil from NZ than we do from Saudi Arabia. http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/3657

There is a problem with importing oil from less developed nations. They want what we have, and are developing at an accelerating pace. Since Vietnam is our biggest single supplier (currently 28% of all imports), let's analyse their situation.

Vietnam's oil production, which did not start until 1986, steadily rose to a peak of just over 400,000 barrels/day in 2004. It has been in decline ever since. Its domestic oil consumption, also rose very quickly and in unison to 275,000 barrels/day (in 2006) as that country's economy grew at a mighty 7.1% annually, a doubling of GDP (and by definition, consumption) every ten years. By now, production is probably down to 300,000 barrels/day, and consumption is up to about........ 300,000 barrels/day!

Data for the above from http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/country/country_energy_data.cfm?fips=VM

So where's our oil going to come from now? And how dare they use it all up! Vietnam's nett oil export is now in virtual freefall from 175,000 barrels to 90,000 barrels/day in a matter of just five years. At the time of writing (I do not have current figures) it might be possible that like Indonesia (which has just left OPEC - remember, OPEC is for Oil Exporting Countries!) Vietnam has become a nett oil importer, just like us. Martin Ferguson worries about a deepening trade deficit of some 25 billion dollars from importing oil, but I worry about there being none at all left to buy.

There is not the room here to analyse what is happening to the other nations we import from, but I can tell you that apart from the UAE (representing just 12.5% of our imports), the picture is similar everywhere, including Saudi Arabia. Oil exporting nations are falling like dominoes, and soon there will be none to turn to. Within five years from now, unless another Bass Straight is found, Australia will be left with a mere 10% of the oil we now take for granted, and it might in fact be less.

Now we might find another Bass Straight, but you have to understand that even if another 250,000 barrels/day of Australian oil comes on line over the next five years, we would still only have about one third of what we currently take for granted.

This is not the time to build new freeways and tunnels to airports (which may even be quasi abandoned within five years as airlines all over the world go belly up), what we need is a major effort to build new rail infrastructure, and other associated public transport. I see no other option but to start rationing fuel, and fairly soon, allowing essential services like farming, medicine, fire brigade and so on to continue operating. Time is short, we must act now. We need visionary leadership.

Suggested reading:
http://anz.theoildrum.com/node/3657
http://www.futurescenarios.org/
http://www.peakoil.org.au
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/roeoz/
http://permaculturenoosa.com.au/
http://austlii.law.uts.edu.au/au/legis/cth/bill_em/lfeab2007303/memo_0.html

Mike Stasse is a Sustainable Housing and Energy Efficiency consultant and an accredited BERS energy rating technician. He lives with his wife in the Noosa hinterland at Cooran in their Award Winning eco solar house.

No-one with their eyes and ears open could miss the fact that economic and material prognostics are all pointing downwards for the world economy. Some may turn to fortune tellers and stock-market analysts, or even listen to politicians, at these times, but do any objective measures actually exist? A study in 2003 seems very pertinent today.

What do thermometers and spygmanometers actually measure when a physician uses them to test one person's health? They actually measure outward signs of microstates in the human body in thermodynamic terms of temperature and pressure. The measurements only mean something when compared to a range of averages over a wide number of bodies.

Taking a similar approach, but applying it to entire species, marine ecologists, Charles Fowler and Larry Hobbs, worked out a series of tests to assess the health and prognosis of our species and others in, "Is Humanity Sustainable?"

They wrote, "Avoiding abnormal or pathological conditions has long been standard practice in medicine. In recent decades, this has become recognized as a critically important tenet of management at all levels of biological organization. That is, management and restoration have the objective of keeping components of complex systems (e.g. individuals, species, ecosystems and the biosphere) within their normal range of natural variation in much the same way we do medically with body temperature, body mass, pulse or blood pressure for the individual human."

Objective assessment requires, of course, that humans be considered as "part of ecosystems and the biosphere, subject to the same natural laws and benefiting from the same supporting services as other species."

Does Homo sapiens fall "within the spectrum of variation observed among species"? Fowler and Hobbs tried to test whether the human species falls within the normal range for comparable species, using a range of measures that are also applicable to other species.

This scientific study proposed that the "principles and tenets of [good] management require action to avoid sustained abnormal/pathological conditions. For the sustainability of interactive systems, each system should fall within its normal range of natural variation."

"This applies to individuals (as for fevers and hypertension, in medicine), populations (e.g. outbreaks of crop pests in agriculture), species (e.g. the rarity of endangerment in conservation) and ecosystems (e.g. abnormally low productivity or diversity in 'ecosystem-based management')."

Almost every test showed that the human species was not ecologically normal. Tendencies in the human species usually varied way beyond the safe range.

The authors wrote, "For example, our population size, CO2 production, energy use, biomass consumption and geographical range size differ from those of other species by orders of magnitude."

These differences must have practical consequences, but these are not well known.

The full study may be downloaded at http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/cnvwhur9u2crk6le/fulltext.pdf

It is amazing that so many of us accept that it is our lot to work for others and to pay rent. Was it always so or did this come about through sophistry?

Whilst in part a review of aspects of Ellen Meiksins Wood's stimulating book,
The Origin of Capitalism, a longer view, Verso, London and New York, 2002, this article features a passage from that book. The passage analyses how John Locke's philosophy of the Law of Property characterises capitalism and documents changes to property law in England which created a massive landless labour force by facilitating dispossession on the pretext of efficiency.

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John Locke's work on property goes back to the end of the 17th century. To many it will seem eerily familiar because we hear constantly its echo in arguments about efficiency and enclosure. In Orwellian Waterworks: big-agribusiness and Victorian Government, the reader of this article may recognise that the same excuses are still being made for new enclosures of land. It is false to believe that these are the good old days and that our society protects us from legally sanctioned predation. For instance, it is no wonder that the people of the Riverina have scheduled a demonstration in front of Parliament in June 3 at 12.30pm. What is happening close by in country Victoria is of utmost seriousness.

In her book, Ellen Meiksins Wood sets out to find the origins of capitalism. Personally I think they go back further, but she is on the right trail and you won't find her work disappointing. Woods agrees that capitalism originated in England and recognises that things were and still are different in continental Europe, albeit she also recognises that capitalism culminates in the globalisation movement.

Half the book consists of a very thorough literature review where she disputes a number of well-known theories, both Marxist and ‘liberal’, on the grounds that they all wrongly assume that capitalism sort of emerged organically from simpler societies. This is in fact the deadening ideology preached daily by the world's syndicated Anglophone media and Anglophone governments. In jingles and visual noise more invasive than the muezzin, we constantly hear that "Capitalism is the culmination, the natural way, the only way, and we must overcome all its problems by being more productive in order to have endless growth. To go 'backwards' is to perish etc."

Yes, Wood also disputes the widespread inference that capitalism was an inevitable kind of human social progress. She disagrees with the idea that capitalism confers overwhelming benefits. Whilst many theories identify capitalism with cities, she sees capitalism as being born in rural agricultural society.

She describes capitalism as a special arrangement of capital, labour and market. She sees both the owners of capital and those who work for them as subservient to the market. In her view, the market is something that developed from the separation of power and economy.

She constructs an original and useful thesis that the commercial market in capitalism has developed a life of its own. The market now controls people rather than their controlling it and that it is a source of much unhappiness. Whilst she concedes that those who own the capital benefit from this situation for longer than those whom they oppress, no-one will escape in the end. At the bottom of it all is the elevation of profit above all other things, which means we cannot protect anything if destroying it will make someone a big enough profit.

At no time does she display an awareness of the role of fossil fuels in capitalism, but those of us who are aware of this, can supply the gaps. What she has done is create a framework.

Wood correctly identifies dispossession as fundamental to the emergence of capitalism in England. She locates the “first major wave of socially disruptive enclosure” as having occurred in the 16th C. (Some have placed it earlier but she does not mention this. Neither does she identify the mechanism which first permitted private property.)

She does, however, also correctly identify English society as different from societies on the European continent, with France typifying continental societies. She acknowledges that Dutch society was also different from other continental societies, but still dissimilar to England. She does not explain how Holland came to be different from the continental roman societies.

She does identify changes in the law as an important part of capitalism. The changeover from traditional (oral) and customary (mutual, often inherited, obligations) is known to be a fulcrum of abuse which permitted and still permits land-owners who were educated in written law to take advantage of peasants and hunter-gatherers who were and are not. She notes that written laws replaced tradition in passing, without dating the phenomenon or otherwise particularising it in relation to her theory. She stresses, however, a change in philosophy of property law, of which she does date some documents and events. These are, notably,

Document: Thomas Moore’s Utopia (1516)
Event: The Expropriation of Ireland (1610)
Document: Locke’s Theory of Property. (1690s)

John Locke

John Locke,, (1690s), cited by Ellen Meiksins Wood, pp110-115:

“Lock begins with the proposition that God ‘hath given the world to men in common’ (II.26), but he goes on to show how, nevertheless, individuals come to have property in particular things. In fact, he writes, such private, individual property is a God-given natural right. Men (and in his argument, it is always men) own their own persons, and the labour that they do with their hands and bodies is therefore their property too. So, he argues, a natural right of property is established when a man ‘mixes his labour’ with something, when, that is, by means of his labour he removes it from its natural state or changes its natural condition.

"Locke was certainly not the first thinker to propose that unoccupied land could be claimed by those who would render it fruitful, but, as he developed his labour theory of property, he introduced some enormously significant innovations. We shall consider some of their implications more closely in Chapter 7, in connection with the ideology of imperialism. For now, the central point is that Locke’s whole argument on property turns on the notion of ‘improvement’.

"The theme running throughout his discussion is that the earth is there to be made productive and profitable, and that this is why private property, which emanates from labour, trumps common possession. Locke repeatedly insists that most of the value inherent in land comes not from nature but from labour and improvement:

"‘tis labour indeed that puts the difference of value on everything’ (11.40).

"He even offers specific calculations of value contributed by labour as against nature. He suggests, for example, ‘it will be but a very modest Computation to say, that of the Products of the Earth useful to the Life of Man, 9/10 are the effects of labour,’ and then immediately corrects himself: it would be more accurate to say that 99/100 should be attributed to labour rather than to nature (II.40).

"Locke also makes it clear that the value he has in mind is not simply use value but exchange value. Money and commerce are the motivation for improvement; and an acre of land in unimproved America, which may be as naturally fertile as an acre in England, is not worth 1/1000 of the English acre, if we calculate ‘all the Profit an Indian received from it were it valued and sold here’ (II.43).

"Locke’s point, which not coincidentally drips with colonialist contempt, is that unimproved land is waste, so that any man who takes it out of common ownership and appropriates it to himself – he who removes land from the common and encloses it – in order to improve it has given something to humanity, not taken it away.

"There is, of course, something attractive about Locke’s idea that labour is the source of value and the basis of property, but soon becomes clear that there is something odd about it too. For one thing, it turns out that there is no direct correspondence between labour and property, because one man can appropriate the labour of another. He can acquire a right of property in something by ‘mixing’ with it not his own labour but the labour of someone else whom he employs. It appears that the issue for Locke has less to do with the activity of labour as such than with its profitable use. In calculating the value of the acre in America, for instance, he talks not about the Indian’s expenditure of effort, labour, but about the Indian’s failure to realize a profit. The issue, in other words, is not the labour of a human being but the productivity of property, its exchange value and its application to commercial profit.

"This emphasis on the creation of exchange value as the basis of property is a critical move in the theorization of capitalist property. Locke certainly was not the first to claim that people have a right to take possession of unoccupied and unused land, if they are able and willing to render it fruitful. His idea that property derives from labour is not so distant from that traditional notion. What makes his thesis truly distinctive is the association of ‘labour’ with the creation of exchange value, and the derivation of property from the creation of exchange value. This had implications not only for domestic property relations but also, as we shall see, for the justification of colonial expropriation. It could be used to defend the enclosure of ‘unprofitable’ land at home, as well as territory in the colonies that was not being put to commercially profitable use by indigenous populations.

"In a famous and much debated passage, Locke writes that ‘the Grass my Horse has bit; the Turs my Servant has cut; and the Ore I have digg’d in any place where I have a right to them in common with others, become my Property …’ (II.28). Much ink has been spilled on this passage and what it tells us about, for example, Locke’s views on wage labour (the labour of the servant who cuts the turfs). But what is truly striking about the passage is that Locke treats ‘the Turfs my Servant has cut’ as equivalent to ‘the Ore I have digg’d’. This means not only that I, the master, have appropriated the labour of my servant, but also that this appropriation is in principle no different from the servant’s labouring activity itself. My own digging is, for all intents and purposes, the same as my appropriating the fruits of my servant’s cutting. But Locke is not interested in simply passive appropriation. The point is rather that the landlord who puts his land to productive use, who improves it, even if it is by means of someone else’s labour, is being industrious, no less – and perhaps more – than the labouring servant.

"That’s a point worth dwelling on. One way of understanding what Locke is driving at is to consider common usage today. When the financial pages of the daily newspaper speak of ‘producers’, they do not normally mean workers. In fact, they are likely to talk about conflicts, for example, between automobile ‘producer’s and auto workers or their unions. The employers of labour, in other words, are being credited with ‘production’. We have become so accustomed to this usage that we fail to see tis implications, but it is important to keep in mind that certain very specific historical conditions were required to make it possible.

"Traditional ruling classes in pre-capitalist society, passively appropriating rents from dependent peasants, would never think for themselves as ‘producers’. The kind of appropriation that can be called ‘productive’ is distinctively capitalist. It implies that property is used actively, not for conspicuous consumption but for investment and increasing profit. Wealth is acquired not simply by using coercive force to extract more surplus labour from direct producers, in the manner of rentier aristocrats, nor by buying cheap and selling dear like pre-capitalist merchants, but by increasing labour-productivity (output per unity of work).

"By conflating labour with the production of profit, Locke becomes perhaps the first thinker to construct a systematic theory of property based on something like these capitalist principles. He is certainly not a theorist of a mature, industrial capitalism. But his view of property, with its emphasis on productivity and exchange value created in production, already sets him apart from his predecessors. His idea that value is actively created in production is already vastly different from traditional views that focus simply on the process of exchange, the ‘sphere of circulation’. Only William Petty, often called the founder of political economy, had suggested anything like a ‘labour theory of value’ in the seventeenth century, and that too in the context of agrarian capitalism – a theory he tested as a colonial agent in Ireland, where he served as Cromwell’s Surveyor General, just as Locke and his mentor, the first Earl of Shaftesbury, looked upon the American colonies as a laboratory of improvement.

"Locke in his economic works is critical of those landed aristocrats who sit back and collect rents without improving their land, and he is equally critical of merchants who simply act as middlemen, buying cheap in one market and selling at a higher price in another, or hoarding goods to raise their price, or cornering a market to increase the profits of sale. Both types of proprietor are, in his view, parasitic. Yet his attack on proprietors of this kind should not be misread as a defence of working people against the dominant classes. He certainly has good things to say about industrious artisans and tradesmen, but his idea seems to be the great improving landlord, whom he regards as the ultimate source of wealth in the community, what he calls, significantly, the ‘first producer’ – a man like Shaftesbury, capitalist landlord and investor in colonial trade, a man who is not only ‘industrious’ but whose vast property contributes greatly to the wealth of the community.

"Locke’s view of property is very well suited to the conditions of England in the early days of agrarian capitalism. It clearly reflects a condition in which highly concentrated landownership and large holdings were associated with a highly productive agriculture (again, productive in the sense not just of total output but also of output per unit of work). His language of improvement echoes the scientific literature devoted to the techniques of agriculture that flourished uniquely in England at this time – especially emanating from the Royal Society and the groups of learned men with whom Locke and Shaftesbury were closely connected. More particularly, his constant references to common land as waste and his praise for the removal of land from the common, and indeed for enclosure, had very powerful resonances in that time and place.

"We need to be reminded that the definition of property was in Locke’s day not just a philosophical issue but a very immediate practical one. As we have seen, a new, capitalist definition of property was in the process of establishing itself, challenging traditional forms not just in theory but also in practice. The idea of overlapping use rights to the same piece of land was giving way in England to exclusive ownership. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, there were constant disputes over common and customary rights. Increasingly, the principle of improvement for profitable exchange was taking precedence over other principles and other claims to property, whether those claims were based on custom or on some fundamental right of subsistence. Enhancing productivity itself became a reason for excluding other rights.

"What better argument than Locke’s could be found to support the landlord seeking to extinguish the customary rights of commoners, to exclude them from common land, and to turn common land into exclusive private property by means of enclosure? What better argument than that enclosure, exclusion, and improvement enhanced the wealth of the community and added more to the ‘common stock’ than it subtracted? And indeed, there were in the seventeenth century already examples of legal decisions in conflicts over land where judges invoked principles very much like those outlined by Locke, in order to give exclusive property precedence over common and customary rights. In the eighteenth century, when enclosure would accelerate rapidly with the active involvement of Parliament, reasons of ‘improvement’ would be cited systematically as the basis of title to property and as grounds for extinguishing traditional rights.

"This is not the only way in which Locke’s theory of property supported the interests of landlords like Shaftesbury. Against the background of his emphatic pronouncement that all men were free and equal in the state of nature, he nevertheless, like others before him, justified slavery. More particularly, as we shall see in Chapter 7, his views on improvement could easily be mobilized to justify colonial expansion and the expropriation of indigenous peoples, as his remark on the American Indian makes painfully obvious. If the unimproved lands of the Americas represented nothing but ‘waste’, it was a divinely ordained duty for Europeans to enclose and improve them, just as ‘industrious’ and ‘rational’ men had done in the original state of nature."

For any student of capitalism, Wood has produced a key book.

This article is based on highlights from a lecture by George Soros, at the London School of Economics to launch his new book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means (PublicAffairs, May 2008). Early in this lecture, Soros situated the beginning of current problems down to deregulation as practised by Thatcher and Reagan from 1980. He gave four reasons why he believed the US economy (and the world economy as it is impacted) will go into recession: 1. The decline in housing prices is still accelerating and is going to overshoot on the downside the same way as it overshot on the upside. We are not yet half way in the decline in housing prices. We will have at least 12 more months of increasing foreclosures and so on. 2. The consumers who have been relying on the double digit rise in housing prices for their ‘piggy-bank’ have withdrawn equity from their mortgages at a rate in excess of the current account deficit. This peaked at around between 8-900 billion USD in 2006. Now the outlook has changed and they are facing declining housing prices where at least 15% of regular mortgage-holders will be 'underwater' in their mortgages. Savings will therefore have to increase. The American consumer will cease to be the motor of the world economy which they were for the last 25 years. 3. The banking system is severely impacted, despite its 'quite impressive ability to raise capital'. The willingness of banks to lend to finance business is also going to impact capital and spending etc. 4. The situation now carries simultaneously the threat of inflation and recession. This is partly because the dollar has ceased to be the unquestioned accepted reserve currency, which up until recently allowed the American consumer to become the economic motor of the world and permitted the US to consume over 6% more than it produced. When asked if 'we' [the world] are heading for recession, Soros said, “Yes”. Asked about Europe, it was obvious that Soros saw the European economy as different from that of the US. He anticipated, for instance, problems for Spain, but not for Germany, because Spain has had a housing bubble but Germany has not. He expressed the opinion that these kinds of different outcomes will give rise to 'serious tensions' in the EU, because up until now the EU has been characterised by convergence rather than divergence'. Now there will be divergence. Also, the ECB (European Central Bank) has an 'asymmetric directive'. Its job is 'to prevent inflation, not to maintain growth'. As a result it is keeping interest rates steady rather than reducing them. That and, most importantly, the exchange rate, because lowering interest rates quite radically has led to a decline in the value of the dollar and that 'decline in the dollar has effectively exported the recession to Europe'. But 'the UK and the US will probably be more affected'. On the possibility that hope of continued growth might lie in the developing world "decoupling" from developed world: Might it be true to say that if the US consumer stops dragging the world along, the world will still be dragged along by China and India whose growth will mitigate the recession?. “There is a very substantial difference between the developing and the developed world which has positive and negative aspects. It may lead to avoiding a world wide recession but on the other hand it could be responsible for inflationary pressures which can make problems bigger for the developing world. There is a difference but there is no decoupling. We are Siamese twins tied together." Soros said that there is a "Need to improve the quality of regulation. It is not enough to regulate the money supply; you also have to regulate credit. This is because credit conditions do not always correspond to the money supply. Markets tend towards extremes of optimism and panic. Therefore you have to have minimum reserve requirements and optimum reserve requirements. They need to be made variable. That is the way to prevent asset bubbles from developing. Greenspan is right to say it is difficult to identify a bubble and to know when to interfere. It may be difficult but you cannot escape the duty. Keeping the economy on an even keel is an art, not a science. Regulators have to accept this additional duty … It is not enough to bail the system out when it collapses." Markets can behave faster and regulators are slower and more bureaucratic; you need both. Soros stated that he thinks that "market fundamentalism is a very convenient belief for the 'haves' because it justifies their having it. In other words, they prosper (that includes me, [he added] by the way, among the haves but I don't share this view on market fundamentalism). It's a wonderful excuse for pursuing your self-interest to the detriment of the common interest because there is a theory which says says that the common interest is best served by everyone pursuing their own interests. So its a very convenient belief and that is why it has such great currency and that's why you find that it is generally people with lots of money who are supporting and propagating this belief. There is a connection. The impact of the price of oil at $130 on US inflation... "I have given this a lot of thought because it is really quite disturbing, the price of oil. And I would say that there are four factors involved. One, the increasing difficulty and cost of finding and extracting oil. People talk about "Peak Oil, but that is a misnomer for increasingly expensive oil. So that is number one. "Secondly because of the decline of the dollar you now have a backward- sloping supply curve, that is to say, the more the price goes up the less incentive the oil-rich countries have to convert their oil reserves underground, which appreciate in value, into dollar reserves above ground, which depreciate in value so you have a backwards sloping supply curve. There are also other factors involved, namely that many of the oil reserve countries are in the hands of desperates who mismanage the economy ... Iran or Venezuela and so on... You know it's easy to be a Bolivarian revolutionary when you have oil at over $100. That's the second factor. "Thirdly the main areas of demand growth are in China and in the oil producing regions of the Gulf and Russia. And in those countries the price of oil is subsidised and therefore the rising prices don't have an effect on demand. In the US, yes. But in those countries and that's where the real growth is... the price does not influence demand. "And fourthly there is a trend following speculation and it is now having a major effect on the price of oil and you see that in the rise of far out delivery ... the real big move has not been in the cash price of oil but in the futures price several years out. And that does affect the cash price as well ... so there is now a bubble aspect also. So those four factors are responsible for the rise in oil. Again there is this sort of Greek tragedy aspect of it. Yes, if you have a serious recession in the developed world, it means that demand does go down and the the price will be affected, but first you have to have the recession for that to happen, and the rise in the price of oil actually hastens the outset of the recession and that is part of my argument why this crisis is different from the previous ones." You can download the entire lecture from the London School of Economics site at www.lse.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/publicLecturesAndEvents.htm.

The headline in the Corriere della Sera, Friday 30 May 2008, was "A million empty houses; an unusual Spanish crisis".

Cement chokes Spain's economy. The Spanish growth rate at 2.2% was one of the "most envied" in Europe, where the Eurozone median was "only 1.7%".

Due, however, to land speculation, Spain has overshot demand. According to a study by the University of Barcelona, housing prices in major cities of Spain have collapsed to 20% less than in 2006. Spain is for the first time in the grip of the unusual problem of having more houses than it needs.

Source:Maria Luisa Cohen in Europe.

Two days ago we wrote about the collapse of the French housing market. Everyone knows about the US housing market collapse. How soon before the Australian one hits bottom?

The fact is that construction is very heavily dependent on oil and banks are very dependent on construction.

With peak oil prices this cannot go on.

History of Spanish Housing 'Market'.

(Source: Sheila Newman, "Land and housing prices, land-use planning and housing systems in Australia and elsewhere (pdf file); the impact of globalisation, the internet, trends in natural increase, households and immigration: Submission to the Productivity Inquiry on First Home Ownership", page 36.)

Even during the civil war Franco was concerned about social housing. In 1957 the position of Minister for housing was created and publicly funded housing went from 100,000 dwellings in 1957 to 397,000 in 1973. By 1970 64% of the Spanish were homeowners. The 1973 oil shock saw massive cutbacks in public and private sector construction but rationalisation of the industry and renovation of older stock has given Spain the highest rate of homeownership in Europe.

About 70% of the Spanish are homeowners. There are few real-estate agencies in Spain because notaries and solicitors handle most sales.

Debt and price hikes up to 85% in 8 years had not yet resulted in a slowing market activity in 2003. Demographic changes, structurally low real-estate taxes and the large proportion of homeowners had all contributed to the high prices. Similarly to Thatcher's Britain, public housing was sold off to individual purchasers, many of whom then resold, causing a speculative boom which coincided with the wider global housing bubble.

See also: French housing market collapses of 29 May 08, Sydney's housing crisis - a different view of 27 May 08, No right to housing in the USA - Americans start to revolt of 26 May 08, Homeless may now sue state in France & Europe: Test Case of 26 May 08, European Union condemns Spain over 'disastrous' over-building of 21 June 07, In Spain, Water Is a New Battleground in the New York Times of 3 Jun 08

Dr Birrell is quoted as saying that radical changes to Australia's skilled migrant intake amounted to a new population policy for Australia. The Government lifted the skilled migrant intake in the Budget to 190,300, supposedly to deal with our national skills crisis. It is also considering accepting unskilled guest workers in a radical policy shift. Under the new quota, Australia's population would hit 32 million by 2050 -- five million more than previously estimated, Dr Birrell said. Migration will account for 80 per cent of population growth in that period. Dr Birrell goes on to say what must be clear to all of Australia's elected representatives - that this kind of unsustainable population growth will exacerbate congestion and liveability issues in and around our major cities.

(Original much larger photo by Ray Drew)

These healthy kangaroos, relaxed, uncrowded, in lush surroundings are all dead - order of ACT Australian government.

Housing estates due to go up around the area. (Does anyone know which developers?) The human species here is simply blind, absurd, and ridiculous to pretend that kangaroos are overpopulating when they are trapped and surrounded by expanding human populations, brought in to fill housing estates. Developers and government should be put on trial for causing enormous and needless suffering. They make Australians ashamed.

[Photograph by Marcus Fillinger, marcus[at]emulsion[dot]com[au].]

Some animals saved, after being ear-tagged, for fertility experiments and sterilisation.This animal is ‘darted’ with anaesthetic, then collared, and blindfolded to minimise stimulation, prior to contraceptive implant or sterilisation. Wildlife experts say it was all unnecessary.

Read on:

Much of the detail in the next nine paragraphs below comes from www.kangaroolives.com
In May 2007 the media exposed a covert plan by the Department of Defence and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Government to shoot to kill up to 3,200 Kangaroos at two Defence sites in the ACT.

The reasons given at the time: to ‘save’ the kangaroos from starving and to prevent them from competing with certain endangered grassland species reported to be on these sites: the golden sun moth, a legless lizard, and the earless dragon.

Around 500 of these kangaroos are trapped by a 2.5 metre high fence on a 116 hectare parcel of land at the former Belconnen Naval Transmission Station (BNTS). Of these, the plan was for 400 to be killed and have the remaining kangaroos forcefully sterilised. Somewhat extreme and barbaric measures to protect a moth, and unlikely to be the real reason why the ACT Government is so keen to clear this site, as the area around it is earmarked for housing development.

Following an immediate public outcry and subsequent consultations between Defence and a range of interest groups, Defence agreed to consult more widely. Members of Wildcare, a local volunteer wildlife rescue organisation with over 15 years of hands-on experience rescuing and rehabilitating kangaroos, submitted a proposal to Defence recommending a whole-of-ecosystem approach to the kangaroo issue. This preliminary proposal also detailed a workable strategy for the translocation of kangaroos.

Finally in September 2007, after consultations with Wildcare and a panel of experts, Defence announced that it would implement a kangaroo management plan in the ACT designed to promote sound ecological management and a responsible approach to animal welfare. The plan was to use a mix of translocation, fertility control and – “only where necessary" – euthanasia to bring the kangaroo population into balance with the ecosystem at the BNTS site. The contract to the successful to implement this strategy was awarded in early 2008.

Suddenly on 29 February, the ACT Government announced that it would block any application for a permit to allow the ‘export’ of kangaroos from the BNTS site. Not coincidentally, the ACT’s official kangaroo ‘culling season’ (killing season) recommenced the very next day.

Defence went back on their word, and the slaughter of these kangaroos on the site began on 19 May 2008. It was to continue over the next few days, with a target of over 400 animals.

These kangaroos were healthy and there was currently ample grass on the site following good rains over summer, and higher than average rain predicted over the coming months. There was no need for this slaughter to proceed.

Viable alternatives were available, including translocation, but Defence has ruled this out as being too expensive. A number of suitable properties in NSW were proposed. The ACT Government chose instead to order the killing of the kangaroos. Kangaroos are Australia’s most important native species.

Photos of the cull can be viewed at www.kangaroolives.comand a video news report can be viewed here.

Although many animals have been killed, there is still a petition to sign. There are many signatures but more may help, even after the fact.

According to the writer at www.canberraroos.com/p8.html, there was a promise "that there would be an official count of kangaroo numbers at the BNTS site before any animal was harmed," but that this did not happen.

Some unofficial observers think that the full ‘quota’ may not have been met and wonder if the total number or roos in the Belconnen area had been exaggerated, since there don’t seem to be many left. IF the numbers were exaggerated then this would COMPLETELY undermine the rationale for killing them. It would show severely inaccurate counting, destroy the argument of overcrowding based on estimated numbers, and bolster the argument that these animals could not be overcrowded since they were in beautiful condition and appeared relaxed and comfortable.

www.canberraroos.com write: “Forget the attempts by Jon Stanhope, Maxine Cooper and their heavily funded experts to convince you this is the only humane option. Forget the words they use like ‘culling’ and ‘euthanasia’, these are only an attempt to trick the public into thinking that this whole operation is ‘humane’. These kangaroos will be herded into a pen and slaughtered, then tossed into a pit and buried.”

Background information and more about the kangaroos

“Australia: a culture of violence toward its native animals.” (written by Ray Drew and published with photographs.) “The government has claimed that moving the animals is too expensive. It has also claimed (reasons vary from month to month) they overcrowd the site, that they are endangering vulnerable species, or they are starving and they must be killed for ‘humane’ reasons! The protesters say all these accusations are false, and the real reason is that the animals must be got rid of to make way for urban development. It is a fact that the local government intends to build housing on the grasslands outside the base fence, and probably inside as well when they take possession of the base within 18 months. No mention has been made of danger to rare species in the grasslands that extend outside the base fence. Do vulnerable species cease to exist a metre from the boundary wire? Astoundingly, the government allows cattle to graze there. The truth is that the ACT government has a policy of never translocating kangaroos ― killing is its traditional solution to animals that get in the way of development or sheep or cattle farmers. Within Australia, kangaroo lives are almost valueless, other than as a source of meat or hide. Comparatively few Australians admire their beauty and sensitivity - those that do love them do so with great passion. Otherwise, the gentle animals appear to arouse an unreasoning hatred among sectors of the population. Whenever the government announces a ‘cull’ (kill) thousands do NOT flock to protest the slaughter. In contrast, visitors to the country adore them and cannot understand the mass slaughter, which amounts to 3.6 million or more a year. That amounts to 10,000 killed every night.”

If you are disgusted by the way these animals are being treated, please contact those below to make your feelings known. Australia is not a real democracy, but we might get it back if we all react strongly enough and keep exposing this kind of behaviour.

See also: Australian Political Hypocrites Order "Final Solution" on Kangaroos on 20 May 08 by Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Kangaroo cull: necessary evil and the greater good of 27 May 08 by Adam Henry on Online Opinion with comments.

The Hon Kevin Rudd
Tel: 6277 7700
Fax: 6273 4100
Queensland numbers (His office is at Morningside):
Tel: 07 3899 4031
Fax: 07 3899 5755

The Hon Joel Fitzgibbon
Tel: 02 6277 7800
Fax: 6273 4118

The Hon Peter Garrett
Tel: 02 6277 7640
Fax: 02 6273 6101

The Hon Julia Gillard – as Minister for Education – what message are we giving our children about values and ethics?
Tel: 02 6277 7320
Fax: 02 6273 4115

The Hon Dr Michael Kelly AM - Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Support
Tel: 02 6277 4840
Fax: 02 6277 8556

Jon Stanhope Chief Minister ACT
Tel: 02 6205 0104
Fax: 02 6205 0433

RSPCA ACT
Cruelty complaints: 1(300)477722
Injured wildlife 02 6287 8113
Fax: 02 6288 3184

Sources: The material above was based on information exchanged between activists, but most was adapted or taken directly from:
Brett Clifton’s petition preamble at www.canberraroos.com
and Ray Drew’s work at www.kangaroolives.com
The photographs were by Ray Drew. The video was from www.canberraroos.com.

This doesn't mean the same thing in France as it would in the US or Australia. France has no major dependency on the housing market. It is not an economy geared to growth in population and rapid turnover. Land speculation is severely taxed and so are inheritances outside direct family. In Paris there are unclaimed buildings because those who would inherit them do not want to pay accumulated taxes. This is a far better system than the one that the Anglophone countries share versions of.

Nonetheless, the news is that sales are down by 27.9% this year and that lots of new investors are unable to find renters. Prices are predicted to decline another 4% this year and then another 6% next year.

The first time there was a housing bubble in France was between about 1989 and 1999. Something like 12,000 realtors went out of business when it crashed.

Graph: "Index of price of dwelling in ratio to disposable Income, using 1965 francs."

Source: L'Observateur de l'Immobilier, No. 43, paris, 1999. The original data source is "Marché immobilier des notaires" (Notaries' property market) and INSEE Annuaire statistique de la France, ed. 2001

This graph was photocopied in black and white so the colour distinctions have disappeared. The top line, indicating higher prices, is always for Paris. The second line is for other French urban centres, and the lowest line, "Province" is for Other Areas, including non-urban.

The graph shows the ratio of disposable income to domestic property prices per square meter from 1979 to the year 2000. Affordability was highest in 1981. Between 1987 and 1996, however, France, mainly Paris, was affected by the same period of global property speculation that affected Australia.

In 2001 I wrote the following in Chapter 8 of my thesis (The Growth Lobby and its Absence) under the heading, "Dwelling Prices and Affordability in France":

"This was the first time France had undergone such a phenomenon [as a housing bubble]. In contrast to Australia, however, the prices returned to the level preceding the speculation bubble. We can observe here that dwelling prices in France, according to this measure of affordability, have risen and fallen quite steeply, but there appears to have been an overall stability, since 1965, when they stopped rising in real terms."

I am not surprised to see that, even though a second bubble followed quickly on the first, prices have come right down again.

Because professional property development speculators do not have much control over the French market, it is actually possible for ordinary citizens to simply hold off buying until prices fall. In contrast, in the US, Canada, Australia, England, where property moguls and their upstream and downstream dependents lobby successfully for high immigration, it doesn't matter if locals stop buying, because the governments will bring in more people. This is totally inimical for civil order and our governments should be covered in shame and thrown out for promoting this horror. Unfortunately, as we often mention on candobetter.org the media control information in the anglophone countries and they also control the global real-estate market to a large extent and they control perception of government and, I fear, government perception. So it is really hard for the public (a) to realise what is happening (b) to organise against it.

In France, although it is possible for foreigners to purchase property, they only obtain work permits if they are Europeans, except in very rare circumstances. So there is not much point in zillions of people jumping in planes and coming over to buy cheap houses and live in France. They would not survive.

Of EU countries, the United Kingdom has terribly costly housing and the English do tend to come and buy cheaper land and housing in France and other EU countries, driving the prices up there. So do some other countries with higher housing prices, such as the Dutch. However these migrants cannot have nearly the same impact as they have, for instance, in Australia. Foreign property buyers find that they also cannot leave their properties to anyone except their children unless they are prepared to be very heavily taxed, so spouses cannot gold-dig so successfully. And, after your first house, you have to wait years to purchase another if you want to avoid the speculative taxes.

Sheila Newman

"Jeunes agriculteurs" (Young Farmers) are demanding tax free petrol for agriculture and for the government to control distribution of petroleum in France.

Other Jeunes agriculteurs blockaded the petroleum depot in Frontignan, France, where about 100 farmers engaged with 50 riot police (la Compagnie républicaine de sécurité, CRS). One member of the CRS and one young farmer were injured. The blockaders had barricaded the road leading to the depot with burning tyres, palates and plastic rubbish. The farmers came from all over the Languedoc-Roussillon region and were responding to calls from the Regional Centre of Young Farmers (Centre regional des jeunes agriculteurs - CRJA)

"Fishermen, farmers, it's the same battle", said Xavier Fabre, Vice-President of the Launguedoc-Roussillon region of the CRJA. "We also use gasoline. One year ago we were paying 40 to 50 centimes a litre and today we pay one euro the litre. [That's about $2.00 Australian or US] It is costing us 50 euros a day to run a tractor.

(Fishermen protesting oil prices continue to be active in France. On Wednesday they were giving out pamphlets in Sète, France, to educate people about their problems. And fishermen from Grau-du-Roi in Gard caused traffic jams for 11 km on the A9 freeway near Monpellier.)

In Toulouse a large group of Young Farmers successfully blocked deliveries to and from the local petroleum depot. They have said that they will continue their blockade until tomorrow and that if the government fails to accede to their demands, they will go further in their actions.

The rise in petroleum prices, for farmers, also entails the costs of fertiliser, which is made mostly from petroleum gas.
In France, to fertilise 100,000 ha the costs have risen by 15,000 euros (approx 30,000AUD/USD).

In Britanny on the road to Bordeaux, there was an operation escargot - (operation snail), i.e. a slow drive to make the point about hardship and petroleum prices, with truckies joining farmers in a convoy of slowly driving vehicles, blowing their horns.

In Bulgaria there were similar protests. In Taiwan queues formed on the roads to gas stations after the government announced that the prices were going up. Thousands of drivers queued up all night to fill their tanks.

Without the cheap fertiliser that comes from plentiful petroleum, most of the enormous gains in production made in the last 50 years, which have permitted human economies to support enormous populations, will disappear. We can see signs of this whole economic structure fraying in the food riots in poor countries, the profiteering over state-subsidised 'biofuel' production in the US (fatal for soils, which are everyone's greatest wealth), the organised protests in France, and, most arcanely, the ridiculous and pathetic arguments over minor tax relief at the bowser in Australia. Question to all: Does Australia have even stupider politicians than the USA?

Sheila Newman

Sources: France2 Infos, 20hs, 28-5-08 and Romandie News, "Dépôt pétrolier de Frontignan: les CRS délogent agriculteurs et pêcheurs"

It looks like a corporate-agribusiness group called the "Foodbowl Group" have tapped a short-circuit in local, regional and state democracy in an attempt to take over land and water in the Murray Darling Basin. (See #FoodbowlGroup">end this article for who the Foodbowl Group are).

Plans are for a $600 million pipeline to be paid for by Melbourne Water users who've been told to expect their bills to double over the next five years. They'll also pay nearly a third of the billion dollars allocated to carry 75 billion litres of water a year from the Goulburn Murray River system over the Great Dividing Range to Melbourne.

What is going on?

The Foodbowl group describes its aims as "To support the transition of small farming enterprises to world-competitive, sustainable agribusiness enterprises with a variety of models that maintain and enhance community cohesion." (More 'aims' lower down in article).

But were they invited? Were they asked?

Apparently not.

The impacted community, seems to be appalled and powerless. In the cities, in the rest of Australia, we all need to be paying attention to this. The Murray Darling Basin is Australia's only major inland food production area, and our richest. Despite horrendous farming practices, beginning with returned soldiers' plots, it still produces. Taking over this area with faceless big-business is not the answer to our environmental problems because big agribusiness answers to no-one and beats the life out of land and water before moving on. It is solely profit motivated, seeking to compete on the world market in a zero-sum game that takes no prisoners. The people who work in corporations may have good motives, but they are part of a machine which prioritises profit over anything else in a world where competition has taken over commonsense and sensitivity.

With fuel, food and water prices, cost of land and housing going up, Australians cannot rely on government to protect them. We have to avoid being split up and disempowered by so-called planning initiatives and top-down redesign of the way we live and produce food. When the chips are down it is only by ensuring that we have local production that we can negotiate for food and water, work and housing.

In the end, no government should tell people that they may not farm simply because they do not compete on the world market. Only two generations ago it was quite reasonable to aim for self-sufficiency, and not too much more was required to make a small income. These days, unless we ruin the land to make a dollar, we are priced off the land by taxes and regulations.

The world market is antithetical to sustainable agriculture - notably permaculture. Permaculture is the only sustainable way for Australian agriculture to survive. I don't pretend that you can have mixed farming everywhere; desert and rangeland comprise 75% of Australia. You cannot grow crops on rangeland; you can only run livestock, or live by hunting and gathering. The Victorian Government, like the other state governments and the Federal Government, have unreasonable commercial expectations, display little empathy for citizens, contempt for democracy, and a kind of worship for big business and development, called fascism elsewhere.

Barry Jones in his Sleepers Wake said it would come to this: governments overwhelmed by technology, taking advice from big business.

At the end of this article the investors in the Foodbowl group are listed. Here are the Foodbowl Group's objectives, as mentioned on their website

#Objectives" id="Objectives">[Foodbowl Unlimited] Regional Development Objectives

"While funding for Stage 1 of the Irrigation Modernization Project has been provided under the State Water Plan, the Foodbowl Group believes a range of regional development initiatives must be taken in parallel with the project.

Strategies need to be developed on a whole of region basis to:

• Ensure local government and planning authorities are working together to co-ordinate land-use and planning policies to encourage development of the most suitable land for appropriate agriculture;
• Develop a continuing and informed dialogue with the agribusiness community regarding likely demand for crops and foodstuffs in the context of changing world demographics and climate change;
• To work with state and federal governments to attract large water-use industry to the region;
• To work with educational institutions to develop expertise in irrigation and water-use research and support appropriate skills development to meet the region’s emerging needs;
• To promote and encourage appropriate non-water infrastructure to support the region’s development as an increasingly important centre for food and processed food exporting;
• To support the transition of small farming enterprises to world-competitive, sustainable agribusiness enterprises with a variety of models that maintain and enhance community cohesion."

#FoodbowlGroup" id="FoodbowlGroup">Who are the Foodbowl Group?

The Victorian Government is sponsoring this project in company with:

- Telstra
- Tyco Water Pty Ltd, Tyco Water Pty Ltd
37 Silica St, Carole Park 4300, Queensland, Australia.
Main business activities: Steel water pipes & fittings, steel pilings for wharfs & offshore structures.
Do they have anything to do with Mr Pratt and his Visy pvc piping projects in which the Victorian and Federal government became so involved? We don't know. Do you?

- GHD is an international engineering company: www.ghd.com.au/aptrixpublishing.nsf/Content/Directors_about
www.ghd.com.au/aptrixpublishing.nsf/Content/Offices_about

- Rubicon Systems Australia is a telecommunications, information technology and water technology company. Their Chairman, Stan Wallis, has long associations with multinational corporation management, and was formerly Chair of Amcor, AMP and Coles Myer, and author of the Wallis Report (Federal Government commissioned 1997). He is the President of the Business Council of Australia, which has been a major driver for the undemocratic push for a huge population in Australia. It is this push for population growth which has made recent droughts so much more severe and caused such great hardship. The Victorian Government, beginning with Jeff Kennett, spear-headed population growthism, at the behest of the Housing Industry and its upstream and downstream beneficiaries - mining, big-engineering, big-finance, newspaper-realty, and chipboard manufacture, among others.

See also, Who's who in AMCOR"

- The Hugh Williamson Foundation.
Under 'Governance', the Foundation lists Members of its 'Council' in 2007 as:

Richard Bluck AM, RFD, Executive Director, Leadership Victoria
John Allen, Principal, John Allen & Associates
Rhonda Barro (WCLP '99), Executive Director, Barro Group
Stella Clark, Stella Clark (WCLP '97), CEO, Bio 21 Aust. Ltd.
Geoff Cosgriff (WCLP '90), Executive Director, LogicaCMG P/L
Graham Evans AO, Consultant & former senior executive, BHP Billiton
Suzanne Jessup (WCLP '00). General Manager, Mahlab Recruitment
Charles Macek, Chairman, Sustainable Investment Research Institute
Andrea Polmear, Managing Director, Launching Pad
Garry Ringwood, Exec. Director, Executive Interim Management
Jane Tongs (WCLP '93), Chairman, Australian Alpine Enterprises
Jill Hollingworth (WCLP '97), Director, Tango Public Relations

What you can do: visit plugthepipe.com and join their mailing list.

#CWA" id="CWA">Country Womens Association (CWA) Reject the North South Pipeline

2 June 2008

The CWA passed unanimously a motion at their annual conference over the weekend requesting that the Brumby government to stop the pipeline. Over 1000 women present.

Wording was as follows:

"that the CWA urge the Victorian Government not to proceed with the North-South pipeline which transfers water to Melbourne."

Contact: Doreen Napier, Agriculture and Environment Convenor, CWA - Phone 03 58522597

Free Victor!
Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

freevictor.com

Despite popular opinion, local councils don’t simply exist to enforce petty, confusing bylaws and issue parking fines. They perform several valuable functions - provision of many local services, town planning, management of local parks and facilities.

It made us wonder why so many good citizens have such a low opinion of them. Well, being good citizens ourselves, we set out on a crusade to find out. Then, yesterday, we stumbled upon Victor…

Victor is the loyal and loving pet of Ian Cook. Until recently, Victor lived with Mr Cook at their home in Frankston. Then the Frankston council took Victor away. But why?

See movie of Victor in his temporary home.

Well… you see… Victor is a goat. Apparently, as of recently, being a goat is against the law in Frankston. Or is that keeping a goat? We can’t be sure, but perhaps Deborah Morris of Leader News can better inform us. Click here to read her article, and be sure to return to this site to add your comments. Edit - also click here to see Deborah Morris’ follow-up story.

We’re interested in your thoughts on this story. Is it fair, or is it an example of petty local government bureaucracy? We clearly think it’s the latter, but would like you to share your thoughts. Should we start a petition on this site - a grass roots movement, if you will?

Jarrod

What you can do: visit freevictor.com and sign the petition.

(Illustration a fragment from Wreck of the Hope by Caspar Friedrich)
This article is based on a Report from France2 News 25-5-08, translated to give Anglophones a different perspective on the anglophone land and housing system.

"In the United States the housing loan situation is producing more and more homelessness, but now an increasing number of bank victims are trashing their houses to make them uninhabitable before they leave them."

(Ask yourself, how long before the Australian situation gets this bad and are we going to put up with the government letting the banks do it to us?)

With amazement in his voice, the French newsreader announces the gruesome details of homelessness in the United States: "During the US election campaign the number of evictions continues to rise, even to double, as the credit crisis affects more and more people. In the American way, unfeelingly, the bailiffs arrive, put the furniture on the footpath, and the only thing left for the evicted families is their eyes to weep with."

A woman interviewee says, "When I telephoned the credit society, they said, "Well, if you can no longer pay, just leave the keys for us and go outside."

But finally people are beginning to revolt against these insane impositions by their mere fellows in a financial system which is no longer serving the community!

Although so many more people are returning their keys, they are first "meticulously vandalising" the houses they are forced to leave. "Systematic destruction of walls, toilets, electrical wiring, decorations - they destroy everything, with rage in their hearts to avenge themselves."

A bailiff describes his experience: "We have found toilets destroyed by sledge-hammers. People have disemboweled pipes to make them leak; they have cut the wires to the air-conditioners and pulled wiring out of the light fittings."

And it's working: these vandalised properties become unsaleable, even at half-price. Of course this means that cancelling mortgages is costing the banks a lot of money. So now they have begun to pay people bonds if they leave their houses in good condition.

Commentary from newsreader: "Yet the simple solution of renegotiating credit simply doesn't seem to occur to anyone!"

Report based on "Etats-Unis : la crise des subprimes poussent les Américains à quitter leur maison et parfois à la saccager" 20h15m32s, from France2 News 25-5-08, 20h15m32s

Test case in France finds new EU laws permit homeless citizens to sue state for failure to provide housing. (Report on France2 Television News, 22-5-08)

The administrative tribunal of Paris has found in favour of a family in sub-standard housing, whose application to the regional authorities (la prefecture) for better housing had been rejected.

Minister for Housing, Christine Boutin, commented that this legal decision demonstrated that the relevant new laws of 5 March 2007 were working.

"This is evidence that the law works, despite criticism that the right to sue for housing would turn out to be too complicated," she said on France2 television.

Calling the matter urgent, in an interim administrative tribunal the judge in chambers put aside an unfavourable decision made on 3 March by the Paris Mediation Commission, which had refused to consider a request for accommodation which had been made by a single woman who was raising two children alone.

This means that Namizata Fofana will be able to put her case again before the Mediation Commission.

If the Commission agrees that she has a case, the regional authorities (le prefet) will find her housing "within the next six months", Christine Boutin explained. And, if the applicant does not have accommodation by 1 December 2008, she will be able to sue the French state.

In all countries of the EU citizens are entitled to housing as a right, although this is a very new idea for Britain.
It is sad to realise how far from the provision of this most basic of rights have drifted Australia, Canada and the USA.

[English language acccount of case reported in France on 20/05/2008 - translation by Sheila Newman]

Hans Brunner, internationally respected Victorian wildlife ecologist and forensic hair identification expert, author of Hair ID, says that information provided in the Victorian Government's Land and Biodiversity at a Time of Climate Change Green Paper highlights the rapid decline in the quality of our environment. The blame is mainly put on global warming and, thankfully, also on the government’s persistent push for economic and human population growth.

This “growth" will exacerbate the present decline not only in the environment but also in the future welfare of the people.

It is the government’s first duty to make sure that we can survive. This will obviously not happen if it does not change its policies. Those who make peaceful changes impossible, make violent changes inevitable!

Unfortunately, no politicians have the guts to treat the population and growth issue with the seriousness it deserves. This seems to be due to political cowardice and blind obsession.

Sadly, the green paper offers mainly band-aid solutions.

Whatever the conscientious little man achieves is more than undone by the present policies of the government. Hence, we keep on losing thousands of species of plants and animals resulting in local and national extinctions.

The admits that “This level of growth ( of human population) will necessitate the release of significant areas of new land for urban development and the building of more than 600,000 new households, as well as increasing the demand for the food, fibre and other services our ecosystems provide.” And, “ as the population increases and economic growth continues, the demand for land and housing as well as for energy, transport and water infrastructure also grows. This inevitably places pressure on native vegetation.”

Because of the way our activities are endangering so much life on earth, we need to have a serious and honest look at ourselves and realise that, objectively speaking, we are in fact the greatest pest species on earth. In this light, it should not be difficult to see that all our environmental and social problems are directly and proportionally linked to the obsessionally driven population and economic growth rate.

Democratic views ignored

Community recommendations to submissions like this are mostly ignored, in violation of the democratic process.

Page 8 shows the bioregions of Victoria but does not show urban bioregions of urban cities and towns.

Pages 13 and 14 do not show when country towns ran out of water and when water restriction were implemented.

Page 17: Why is there no text for fig, 7, “Summary of threatened animals in Victoria, 2007?”

Page 40: 6.6, Building ecological connections is continuously ignored in outer urban areas where existing wildlife corridors are wantonly destroyed.

Page 46: The desperate water issue has not been sufficiently linked with population growth!
The blame has been manly put on global warming and an uncertain future. Why then gamble with increasing the human population?

Page 52: “ While some adopt modern approaches and consider principles of sustainability and biodiversity, others are outdated and do not consider recent knowledge and threats.” An example is the proposed Frankston Bypass where road easements were reserved in 1960, a totally outdated decision.

There is also a constant “nibbling” at the Green Wedges, resulting in environmental groups suffering burnouts through constantly fighting VCAT’S etc.

Page 89: Consultation paper submission raised concerns about the continuing population growth, increased resource use, urbanisation, pollution and the sea change/tree change phenomenon, which means I am not alone in highlighting the absurd and obsessed push for population and economic growth. The 2030 plan expects over one million more people in the Melbourne growth areas and another 50’000 on the Mornington Peninsula. On top of that we have an artificially created baby boom by giving $ 5’000.00 for every new borne baby, and added to this we allow 170,000 more migrants to come here each year.

My major concern is that the GREEN PAPER will give people false hope. We have to realise that it is us, and rapidly more of us, that are destroying this earth by pollution and over use of resources such as fuel and water as well as destroying the environment. And , importantly, we must not blame global warming and climate change for the rapid decline in biodiversity etc., since it is also all of us who have caused it and keep on increasing it.

Finally, we must still go on and do what we can to protect the species we still have but also strongly and openly protest against the “ poles apart “ policies of the government.

Hans Brunner, Wildlife Ecologist, Frankston, Melbourne
(Hans Brunner is an animal hair specialist who is famous for his forensic work in showing that hairs in the Azaria Chamberlain case were dog hairs (Dingos are dogs!), thereby overturning Lindy Chamberlain's conviction, and who made the world news in 2002 through his identification of hair from a previously undocumented primate in Indonesia, which locals thought could be the "Orang Pendek".
This article was based on his submission to the Victorian Government re the Green Paper.

(Published by Sheila N on behalf of Ilan Goldman.) From The Age (Victoria): http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/05/24/1211183189540.html This is an article about the East-West tunnel proposed by Eddington and mentions that there is debate within the ALP about its merits. The interesting parts for us are quoted below. quote: "Heat, not light, at the end of the tunnel" ... The state ALP president and member for Maribyrnong, Bill Shorten, said critics of the plan wanted to tackle congestion by "praying and hoping" population growth went down. ... Funny how population growth is presented as inevitable and unstoppable, when it is the same political party that is in power in the state and nationally that is potentially in control of all the levers of population policy.

This was posted to an online discussion concerning the dramatic increase in the rate of immigration to this country at larvatusprodeo.net.

Here are some articles which show how the increase in population of recent years has demonstrably degraded the quality of life of most Australians (and also residents of some overseas countries) in recent years:

Redland City to pay with increased water charges for population growth, Shared accommodation a necessity and no longer a choice for many in Brisbane, How to end the Queensland economy's addiction to population growth?, Working man's vegetable plot under attack again, Exhibition documents erosion of childhood by overdevelopment and overpopulation, Channel 7 markets unlivable Melbourne to a helpless audience, Courier-Mail beats up on public for complaining about cost of 'progress', Rent gouging threatens Brisbane inner city retail community, How illegal immigration into the US harms poor US Hispanic citizens and More chickens of population growth come home to roost in Queensland.

In regard to the supposed economic benefits of immigration, a House of Lords Committee recently demolished the economic case for immigration (see House of lords tells UK government to limit immigration and the original article in the UK's Telegraph newspaper). The British Optimum Population Trust, whilst welcoming the stance by the House of Lords committee, pointed out that the report understated the environmental damage caused by immigration-driven population growth (See House of Lords’ immigration report ‘forgets environment’).

In Australia in January 2006 the Productivity Commission found very little economic benefit from immigration. In fact, it actually showed that that GDP would rise slightly whilst average hours worked would rise proportionally even more. So, in most peoples' understanding, even defined in extremely narrow economic terms, we would be worse off rather than marginally better off as a result of immigration. And then, let's not forget that GDP is an utterly stupid way to measure our prosperity in the first place. As anyone, more economically literate than the Productivity Commission should know, and as John Coulter, National President of Sustainable Population Australiareminded us in a media release (pdf) of 19 January 2006:

“Both GNP and GDP count many costs as benefits adding them to the index rather than subtracting them. The report draws attention to the increased population adding to congestion and pollution but fails to recognise that the costs of ameliorating these adverse effects will appear in the national accounts as additions to, rather than subtractions from, GNP and GDP.”

Incidentally, this Productivity Commission Report is the straw that the Australian seized upon in order to dismiss objections to increased immigration in its editorial More workers are a positive force of 19 May.

Does anyone here still seriously maintain that having millions more people here to help us dig up and export more of our non-renewable mineral resources in order to help China further pollute its own environment and melt the polar ice caps, will help make this country a better place to live, even in the short term?

In 1942 with a population of only 7 million, Australia was one of the most technologically advanced nations on earth as Andrew Ross showed in Armed and Ready - The Industrial Development and Defence of Australia 1900-1945, 1995, Turton and Armstrong (see The myth of the Howard Government's defence competence). Increasing our population has directly correlated with this country losing its technological edge over other countries So, let's, for once and for all bury the lie that population growth is necessary for economic prosperity.

Because we have surpassed what is this country's optimum population size, increasing population actually results in dis-economies of scale rather than the economies of scale that pro-growth economists promised us. As the population density becomes greater it actually costs more per person to build all the necessary roads, footpaths, traffic lights, noise barriers, electricity substations, power lines, water pipes, hospitals, schools, etc., etc. That is one reason why our water rates, council rates and electricity charges are rising. Has anyone contemplated that this may be one reason why it is so difficult for governments to fund road building these days without resort to tolls?

What population growth does―and what common sense and intuition should have long ago warned us, in spite of the claptrap peddled by economists in the pay of land speculators and property developers―is decrease the amount of natural resources available to each of us. Consequently, the demands that each of us make on this largely arid and infertile land are increased. That is the principle driver of soil salinity, land erosion, and the threatened loss of the Murray Darling river system. To add to the these demands upon our continent by adding more human inhabitants, before the existing problems are solved, is environmental recklessness.

Wednesday 21 May, News from France.

In France at the moment there are national strikes over government proposals to make people work for 41 years instead of 40 years in order to obtain full pensions. In 2015 there will be around 14m workers to 18m retirees, according to demographic trends.

For some time France has been preparing for this eventuality, whilst noting that there will be more employment for young people, currently suffering relatively high unemployment.

On the France2 television 8pm news two economists were interviewed for responses to the question of how to fund retirement.

Michel Godet, an economics lecturer at the National Conservatory of Arts and Trades, (CNAM) said, "People will have to work longer so that they can save for longer."

Liem Hoang-ngoc – University Paris 1 economist said, "Just by asking people to save for longer does not mean that they can save for longer, since employers are forcibly retiring people at younger and younger ages." He said that there were many other ways of tackling the situation. He proposed a stock options tax and a tax on corporate profits.

Michel Godet responded by saying, "Taxes on big business profits are anti-competitive… we live in an open market … taxing big business will make it go overseas."

Liem Hoang-ngoc didn't get a chance to respond.

My thought was that, if corporations went off-shore, France could then refuse to import goods from corporations that refused to pay tax. Another good reason for national economies - to have control over predacious big business.

Liem Hoang-ngoc's papers are on-line (in French) at http://matisse.univ-paris1.fr/ One is called, "Long live taxes!"

(Note that the French youth to age 'discrepancy' is quite a deal more severe than in Australia, but that, as with all thing, it will pass in its own time, like the proverbial goat through a boa-constrictor. It is the result of a baby-boom in the 1950s and 1960s. In 2050, the French population will begin to slim down to relatively equal age cohorts. )

Labor Senator-elect Doug Cameron is the only Federal politician, so far, to have summoned up the courage to raise a critical voice against the Government's recently announced plans to raise the annual immigration level to 300,000. For this, he has earned the wrath of The Australian newspaper.

An editorial Closing the shop of 21 May 08 did not even attempt to dispute Cameron's warning that immigration will depress the wages of Australian workers, rather, it welcomed the prospect:

Mr Cameron's worries about migration most likely stem from fears that accepting unskilled workers from the Pacific islands and elsewhere will put downward pressure on wages for union members.

His comments reflect the fact that unskilled migration may be used to offset the inflationary impact of scrapping the Howard government's Work Choices legislation.

Those who have followed The Australian's pushing of the immigration barrow in recent days will know that, in the moral Universe inhabited by News Limited, the only right and proper end, towards which any responsible Labor government can work, is not towards controlling housing hyper-inflation, rising water and electricity charges, council rates and—all driven by population growth—but rather towards controlling 'wages inflation'. Because the Rudd government has been so enormously generous to unionists in having scrapped aspects of Howard's "Work Choices" legislation, they are now beholden to unquestioningly accept whatever other means the Rudd government decides to use in its place to erode their standard of living, including the raising of immigration levels.

The editorial raises the familiar spectres of xenophobia and the White Australia policy in order to place itself indisputably on the high moral ground:

… the immigration debate has already pricked the raw nerves of xenophobia and self interest that lie just below the surface of many within the labour movement. …

It is a rerun of the views that underpinned the ALP's support for the discredited White Australia policy, which grew out of a deal between labour and capital to protect Australian jobs from Chinese immigration.

Of course The Australian's editorial writers, who clamoured to have this country join the war to seize Iraq's oil assets, is, in contrast to ‘self interested’ Australian workers, fearful of their living standards being destroyed by the further crowding of this country, are acting only out of pure altruism and love for for their fellow human beings.

Mr Cameron's comments are held to be “proof that the extreme Left and extreme Right arms of politics join hands around the back.”

It is not known whether Doug Cameron, himself, would accept The Australian's labelling of him as ‘extreme Left’. In any case, this ignores the fact that most of the Australian far left are in agreement with The Australian's support for high immigration. For decades, anyone on the on the Australian far left who would have dared question immigration in the way that Doug Cameron is now doing would have found themselves very quickly ostracised. Members of the wider community opposed to population growth also encounter irrational opposition. #harrassment" id="harrassment">For instance, the Victorian branch of Sustainable Population Australia encountered a demonstration outside Prosper Australia and members were publicly defamed and threatened with violence by members of the Socialist Alliance and others in 2004 until they ceased to associate there.

It is to be hoped that Doug Cameron will stand up to the Murdoch newsmedia and resist the pressure to become corralled with all of his fellow Labor Parliamentarians into supporting Chris Evans' high immigration program.

See also Doug Cameron: guest workers threaten Australian wages and conditions of 20 May 08, Is it reactionary to oppose Immigration? of 16 Dec 07 (also on Web Diary)

PROGRAMMERS’ GUILD USA, a brave and smart union Computer programmers are among the most exploited skilled labour on the planet, with corporations lobbying national governments to overlook workers' rights. Take a look at the film linked at the end of this article. It gives a taste of what Australians are in for with mass immigration in policies described in the Weekend Australian of 17-18 May p.19 as “OPEN DOOR”. Open slather would be an even better term. But, finally, in the most repressive first world economy, US computer programmers are fighting back against immigration-led, government sanctioned, corporate lobbied, local unemployment and wage depression. In this remarkable u-tube movie the American Programmers’ Guild has exposed a law firm that lectures companies in how to avoid hiring Americans. It tells how to avoid disclosing the wages an employer offers to foreign labour, and how to conform to the letter of the law in advertising locally for labour, whilst making almost certain that no-one American will get the job. The Programmers’ Guild is inviting people to join them – free, and to apply for jobs in the US system, whilst letting them know the details so that they can investigate, report and sue the offending corporations: “U.S. Workers: How becoming a member can save your job”

“In order to influence Congress we need to show that there are a large number of American degreed and experienced tech workers who are suffering actual harm due to employment based visas and offshoring. Similarly, reporters need to be able to quickly locate American tech workers in their area in order to balance articles that stem from corporate press releases and funded "studies."” The Programmers Guild has already filed 300 discrimination complaints against H-1b employers. But in order to seek large damage claims, they need a group of plaintiffs that have suffered actual harm. If you select "Will be party to class action" in your profile, the Programmers Guild will notify you of job ads to apply for. If the Guild files a class action suit against that employer, you will be a harmed plaintiff eligible to share in the damages award.

Click here to see the film. Democracy has been replaced by the globalised client state, which is no state at all. But the internet offers these kinds of possibilities for organizing. We need a similar organization in Australia. Unions in Australia are on the run and anyone who speaks up in them, like Doug Cameron, risks being targeted by the mainstream press. No wonder Australians hardly dare speak up for eachother if that is the treatment they are going to receive.

Good news! WTO negotiations may collapse as nations push for self-sufficiency.

In a syndicated piece in The Australian Financial Review, “CAP on trade fuels food fears", London-based writer, Geoff Kitney, expresses British horror at the prospect of France leading the EU and European agriculture from July 1 this year. I guess he thinks that the national syndicators of mad cow disease could do a much better job.

He describes the French as “seizing on the global scare about dwindling food supplies” to call on the EU to use its ‘common agricultural policy’ (CAP) to motivate European farmers to raise production and make Europe self-sufficient in food.

I don’t know about you, but ‘global scare’ strikes me as a bit of a frivolous way to describe widespread starvation and food riots, whilst ensuring national self-sufficiency sounds to me like the right way to go.

Kitney sounds as if the prospect of declining oil reserves hasn't sunk in, or perhaps he just doesn’t understand the oil-food connection.

According to Kitney, naughty Germany has backed up the French position, saying food supplies are key, even if that means higher prices. And, not content to ensure adequate food supplies:

“Germany went further, suggesting that as food supplies became more scarce, it was important that the EU demanded higher environmental and health standards from countries such as India, china and the US if they wanted to sell in the European market.”

Shock! Horror! That could mean an end to cheap imports, mobile capital and slave labour. How will the rich survive if they can’t exploit poor and dirty conditions off-shore? How will they get to own all the seeds in the world if the EU rejects GM and the patenting of genes? Heavens, the next thing they will be banning child labour – and then the birth rate will fall in the third world. What’s an economic rationalist to do if nations begin thinking rationally for their citizens?

“Little wonder”, [writes Kitney], “that there is such a sense of urgency to get an agreement now before the rising tide of protectionist fear overwhelms the WTO negotiations.”

He goes on to say that the WTO cannot just at the moment “boost food production and lower food prices” but describes how it will be working on stopping all this democratic nonsense about self-sufficiency.

Whilst the [unfortunately well-fed] WTO negotiators will be “working overtime at its headquarters on the foreshores of Lake Geneva” the UN Human Rights Council will be holding a special session just down the road to look at the global food crisis “from a human rights perspective.”

What a novel approach!

Kitney relates that Olivier De schutter, the new UN rapporteur on the 'right to food' has expressed concern that protectionism in the 'rich' countries is making the products of the poor countries uncompetitive.

Unfortunately, it seems that the UN never really looks at the hard problem of land-stealing in the third world, which has meant that perfectly viable economies became basket cases in the 19th C and, just as they were getting some control over the situation, the economic hit-men of globalism went in under the shock-doctrine and turned them into slave-dictatorships, coordinating the international privatisation of public land and utilities and rewriting constitutions. (See Review of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine)

We certainly cannot trust the WTO to look after democracy and the environment. The UN, whilst made up of many excellent local and regional organisations, seems to act on a global level as a monolith dancing to the tune of the WTO, the World Bank, and the USA. Whilst national systems may not be perfect, they are a step towards relocalisation. In an oil poor world we need to get control back over our immediate surroundings and governments.

French State subsidizes French fishing fleet oil in harsh context of oil prices of $134US on 21-5-08

Industrialised fishing is not only no longer sustainable due to falling fish-stocks but now falling energy supply has priced it out of the free market.

This is a real loaves and fishes crisis. Where is a miracle when you need it?

The French and most Europeans realize that they must prepare their industries to sustain a self-sufficient Europe.
After days of strikes with roads to petrol stations barricaded so that bowsers could not be replenished, the minister in charge of the French fishing industry received permission from the EU to accede to some of their demands. 40 m euros will go to assist the industry to deal with higher petroleum prices. 22 m of that will go to cod fishermen who have been temporarily unable to work due to having exceeded their quotas.

The French Primeminister, Francois Fillon, said yesterday that marine fishing is the only profession in France where the cost of petrol is deducted from the crew’s wages. It is now costing more to fish than fishermen earn. Marine fishing is also the most dangerous profession in France, with the greatest numbers of accidents and fatalities. He stated that these factors meant that the industry is not comparable to the trucking industry, when asked if similar subsidies would be accorded to road transport.

French fishermen complain that the price of imported fish is too low to compete with. The French fishing catch has fallen by 60% whilst the French consume 40% more fish. One in nine fish consumed comes from aquaculture.

The French fishing fleet has been rationalized by law and through attrition from 43,000 to 17,000 over the past few years as the fish-stock falls and the EU tries to come to grips with ecological limits. There have been battles for fishing territory between French fishermen and other European fishermen, notably the Spanish, who, in 1994 boarded a French fishing boat, “La Gabrielle”, and surrounded it with 300 Spanish tuna-fishing vessels for seven days whilst negotiations proceeded at an international level to free the French boat.

The French fishing fleet is made up mostly of trawlers. Since the 1970s, line fishing was replaced by huge metal nets. Trawlers drag these heavy nets back and forth across the sea all day long. According to the Regional economic observatory in Britanny, petroleum made up 20% of costs for a trawler 16-20 meters long in 2006, compared with 10% for a lobster pot-boat of 12-20 meters and around 6% for a line-boat of 12-24 meters. ( Source :Laetitia Clavreul, « La crise du gazole révèle les failles de la pêche française, », Le Monde, Paris, )
The possibility, so cherished by growthism-economists, of increasing productivity to solve all resource problems, comes head on up against the reality of declining fish stocks and declining oil production in this case. Aquaculture is not a simple solution because it also relies heavily on fossil fuel to feed its fish, is highly polluting and disturbing to ecosystems, and cannot compete with the variety supplied by nature. There is currently research into using organic waste, including human waste, to feed aquacultures, but doing this safely on an industrial scale is problematic like so many processes which work on a small scale.

Being half-Icelandic in background I'd like to believe in intrinsic Norse wisdom but …

1. The reason my great grandfather's trade (carpenter) was so revered was because Icelanders deforested their country (like the English).
2. Icelanders are worse than Kiwis for being travellers. They are dumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in their constant trips to hot climes.
3. They still think its their cultural right to hunt endangered whales.
4. I think they are building or have built with big corporate dough a smelter with terrible implications for the atmosphere.

They are a wealthy people, but they pay a big price for that. As Scandinavians, they simply out-work most of the human race. A CBC documentary compared the Newfoundland economy with that of Iceland and really couldn't come up with anything much more than the fact that Celts are lazy drunks and Icelanders are hard working drunks. Work hard, Play Hard. Their hygiene and housekeeping standards reflect that too.

Both Newfoundland and Iceland are big islands dependant on fishery except now the Newfies have oil money to help. But the difference is that the Icelanders know that if they don't work hard, they starve, with no one to bail them out.

Newfies have been able to rely on constant welfare inputs from Ottawa and took on an Aboriginal work ethic. Whole joke books have been published exploiting that character trait. Except it is PC to tell Newfie jokes (the jokes are published in Newfoundland) but First Nations jokes are off-side. With the Alberta oil economy to lure them out, this welfare culture, five decades old, is disappearing.

Now Newfoundland and Iceland are both beginning to resemble each other more, especially in their disregard of the environment.

Other interesting parallels, both cultures, Celtic and Norse, place a huge value on literary accomplishments, writers and poets are highly esteemed and political debate is a pastime. Both societies boast a tradition of feisty women, but Icelandic women are actually more independent because they broke free of the church. They go on strike once a year and shut the whole country down to prove their importance to the economy.

Because it has always been a socialized welfare state with free health, education, employment and child care benefits and total female employment participation, taxes are sky high and inflation as well. This latter fact is something you should reflect upon. Because double-digit inflation discourages savings so much—in fact it makes it nonsensical to put aside anything—people are encouraged to be hyper-consumers.

They run out and buy things and blow everything they have on cars, clothes and trips. Live for today has always been the motto. So being seen in fancy clothes in a smart car and in a well-furnished apartment becomes a cultural requirement. I would be looked upon as a hillbilly. Also the pressure to work long hours at two jobs—not an Icelandic phenomena exclusively obviously—just to get the money to pay the huge rent and grocery bills ($5 for a lettuce) creates the stress that makes young people and everyone turn to alcoholism big time.

Promiscuous sex is also a cultural trademark with all its emotional and physical costs. It is like when socialist Gunnar Myrdal was criticizing the Swedish welfare state. Whatever model of society we design, whatever set of problems we solve, a new set arises with the better model. There are always trade-offs. But somehow the grass is always greener in other countries.

BTW, my mother's cousin, Helgi Seljun was a Communist deputy (Peoples Party) deputy in the Icelandic parliament. There were 7 parties at the time and I think 5 of them were left of centre. Today there would be a very interesting coalition I'm sure. The president I believe is still a woman whom I saw in Vancouver about a decade ago I think.

One positive statement I would like to make about the land of my mother—and obviously don't circulate this—is that they have always pursued true National Socialist_#main-fn1">1 objectives. They know they are keepers of a precious culture that is 1200 years old and have no right to let that be absorbed or diluted by the influx of other cultures.

As matter of fact, whenever a foreign word invades the language, a special government commission replaces that word with a Norse neologism. Anyone who becomes an Icelandic citizen through marriage must change his or her name to old Norse names. Thus the language spoken today would have been entirely intelligible to Eric the Red a millenia ago, and he could have read the Icelandic Bible that sits in my living room.

Icelandic libraries are full of Norse sagas, poems, ghost stories and debates. The food they eat is second to none. Fish and lamb and all the deserts my grandmother made for me, and coffee made like no one else did. Only you hold the sugar cubes in your tongue when you drink it. Point being, there is nothing “deficient” in Icelandic culture that needs “enrichment” from the immigration of other cultures that would threaten it and also rob the people of their irreplaceable low-density living.

Tim Murray, 27 Dec 2007
Quadra Island, British Columbia, Canada

See also The Australian's April fool's joke

Footnotes

#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1.#main-fn1-txt">↑ This means ‘national socialist’ in the earlier sense, which pre-dated the appropriation of that term in the 1920's by Hitler's National Socialist (Nazi) Party.

The Weekly Times promoted the so-called ‘commercial culling’ of kangaroos in Victoria, where it is currently banned, in an opinion piece by John Kelly, Executive Officer of the Kangaroo Industries Association of Australia. (“It’s time to say hoor-roo,” May 14, 2008, p.17.)

John Kelly correctly writes that in Victoria there are no reliable estimates of the size of the kangaroo population.

“Virtually nothing goes into ensuring the animal is protected or managed in any way. The state has no clear idea how many kangaroos it supports, where they live, what’s happening to their populations in response to seasonal conditions or, most disturbingly, how healthy they are."

He is right. Unfortunately the Victorian Government either doesn’t care, or it may actually want to get rid of wildlife because preserving it means restraints on development and human population growth.

But, with a kind of shoot first and ask questions later logic, Kelly argues that, “Establishing a commercial harvest and the data collection mechanisms required to implement it instantly changes all this.” He means that the Kangaroo industry should be given a license to kill kangaroos in exchange for doing the government’s job of collecting statistics.

We do need good data collection mechanisms because the data available on the structure of kangaroo populations and the size and health of individuals gives reason for anxiety. To authorize commercial kills in return for data, however, is to put the cart before the horse and then shoot the horse as a good business deal and good for horses.

Kelly cites the RACV as having recently reported an increase in animal collisions in 2005 of 43 per cent over the previous two years.

Kelly then proceeds to create an impression that
(a) kangaroos are the cause of increasing road collisions; and that
(b) they therefore must be more numerous.

Shamelessly he concludes that “It is also reasonable to expect a well managed kangaroo harvest to reduce this [imagined kangaroo proliferation].”

Let us look at the first claim, that animal collisions are increasing. Kelly implies that collisions (with all kinds of animals) are increasing because the number of animals is increasing. According to the AWPC, however, this does not make sense:

“Likely reasons for more animal collisions are more toll-ways, roads and suburban expansion. More cars and human activities are coming into conflict with animals who were previously in safe habitats in Victoria."

“Humans are the only species in Australia that is rapidly increasing and our numbers and expansion coincide with a decrease in other species.”

Indeed, uprooted dying trees and devastated grasslands are a familiar sight in Australia, a country where extinctions are proceeding at a greater pace than almost any other country on earth (refs: 1301.0 - Year Book Australia, 1990 and 1301.0 - Year Book Australia, 2008

The overall trend is a decrease in other species and a higher death rate. Commercial kangaroo killing will only accelerate the death rate.

If a farmer built a housing estate in his front paddock and chased all his stock out onto the road, would he count the pile of corpses and conclude that there were more cows in his front paddock as a result? This is what the Kangaroo Industries Association of Victoria seems to be doing.

Maryland Wilson, President of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council (AWPC) agrees that more accurate counting, assessment, protection and better treatment is necessary, but cannot agree that there is any evidence that the numbers could warrant kangaroo killing commercialisation. The AWPC came to the opposite conclusion through scientifically based and accurate counting of kangaroos and other wildlife in local areas, starting with the Mornington Peninsula. The AWPC warns that the population structures and the trends in numbers long-term point to high extinction risks unless we protect the animals from road and suburb encroachment by providing connecting corridors and protecting and extending habitats.

But Kelly writes, “Put it altogether and a commercial kangaroo harvest would be worth well over $15 million a year to Victoria. It turns a shameful waste into a valuable resource and delivers better kangaroo damage mitigation to embattled farmers and better animal welfare outcomes than current practices.” In a final flourish, he adds, “It is [also] likely to improve public safety on roads, helps to protect plant bio-diversity from overgrazing, and creates jobs in the bush. Why not do it?"

But Maryland Wilson of the AWPC, said that Mr Kelly’s conclusions are simply astounding.

“Mr Kelly is completely out of date, even citing the industry’s own authorities. Gordon Grigg, the author of the industry ‘bible’, 'Commercial Harvesting of Kangaroos in Australia', upon whose research the industry developed, recently repudiated his original conclusions. He stated that, 'The damage done on grazing lands by kangaroos has been overestimated by up to 500%.' His conclusion was that, 'This would mean that kangaroos are a much smaller component of the total grazing pressure than is generally accepted'. And he concluded that, 'The hope of getting a significant improvement in wool production by pest-control of kangaroos is probably doomed to failure'".
(Grigg citation by Juliet Gellatley, UK zoologist, in, "Slaughter of the innocents", Viva Life, UK, Spring, 2002.)

In 2007 the Queensland Government forcibly acquired the water assets of South East Queensland local governments. Because local governments are not recognised under Australia's constitution they are totally subject to the whim of their respective state governments. That is why the Queensland government was also able to forcibly amalgamate many local governments in 2007 against their objections and the objections of their the constituents_#main-fn1">1. Having lost control of their water assets, the residents in these areas have now found that they now face hikes in their water bills.

As Redland City Mayor Melva Hobbs explained in a media release of 14 May_#main-fn2">2 Redland Shire will now have to buy bulk water from the Queensland Government at prices significantly higher than what it now costs council to produce it. Redland Council plans to meet with the state Government in order to have the bulk water pricing regime reviewed. Bob Abbot the Mayor of the Sunshine Coast, another affected council has noted that his constituents will be effectively paying more rates so that water can be taken out of their regions to meet the water needs of other regions, principally Brisbane, which do not have enough water to cater for their own needs_#main-fn3">3.

The principle reason for the price rises is the cost of construction of a water grid to cater for the increased population largely caused by the Queensland Government. Today's newspapers are full of stories about further blowouts_#main-fn4">4 of the grid. These blowouts are due to factors, such as rising costs of petroleum and other materials, the economic crisis and the higher cost of credit, all of which should have been anticipated. It would seem that Queensland Premier Anna Bligh's past self-congratulation at the Queensland government's claimed progress in the construction of its water grid was premature_#main-fn5">5.

Whilst the Queensland state government and the Federal Government continue to recklessly encourage the population growth that is driving up water costs, Redland City, for its part is prudently attempting to slow it down.

The new Redland City Council was elected on 15 March on a platform of opposition to the breakneck pace of development of the previous Seccombe administration. It has moved quickly to reverse those pro-developer pro-growth policies. The Bayside Bulletin of 28 April 2008 reports_#main-fn6">6 that the new Mayor Melva Hobson plans to withdraw the council's draft planning strategy agreed to by the Seccombe administration which was to cater for an additional 55,000 new residents over the next 20 years, with a population of 188,000 in 2026.

Neverthless, as positive a development as this is, a few local Councils, on their own cannot hope to indefinitely stem the tide of population growth. If this is to happen, the Australian community will have to force the Federal Labor Government to re-think it's plans to increase our anual immigration intake to 300,000

See also: Water prices to surge of 19 June 08 in the Bayside Bulletin, The Australian's April fool's joke of 20 May, More chickens of population growth come home to roost in Queensland of 13 May 08, The Australian laments outcome of Queensland local government elections of 29 Mar 08, Water prices to soar of 15 May 2008

Footnotes

#main-fn1" id="main-fn1">1. #main-fn1-txt">↑ See also No Forced Amalgamations

#main-fn2" id="main-fn2">2. #main-fn2-txt">↑ See media release of 14 May downloadable as pdf file linked to from the Media Room of May 2008

#main-fn3" id="main-fn3">3. #main-fn3-txt">↑ See also More chickens of population growth come home to roost in Queensland of 13 May 08

#main-fn4" id="main-fn4">4. #main-fn4-txt">↑ See Water projects' $2.4b blowout in the Courier Mail, Water bills on the rise to pay for Queensland's $9bn grid in The Australian,

#main-fn5" id="main-fn5">5. #main-fn5-txt">↑ I can't cite the sources, but I have somewhere newspaper clippings of Anna Bligh congratulating herself and her Government on the progress of the construction of water grids in recent months. She anticipated being able to sell the Queensland Government's expertise in this field to other governments, presumably governments who had also created problems of overpopulation in the first place to be ‘solved’ with water grids.

#main-fn6" id="main-fn6">6. #main-fn6-txt">↑ State steps back on figures in the Bayside Bulletin of 28 Apr 08