The Standing Committee on Communications and the Arts is holding a public hearing at Southport, Queensland on Tuesday, 19 November 2019 for its inquiry into the deployment, adoption and application of 5G in Australia. This will be the first public hearing for the inquiry, and will begin a series of public hearings and site visits to gather evidence about the challenges and benefits of 5G in Australia. Information about the inquiry, including the public hearing program, may be found on the Committee’s webpage. See inside for details. There is also a facebook page of the Australian activist group: "We say no to 5G in Australia, which has a lot of information.
Public hearing details
Date: Tuesday, 19 November 2019
Time: 11.30am – 1.30pm
Location: Room F4, Southport Community Centre
There is also an Australian activist group which has been holding meetings in many different Australian locations. They have submitted to the Inquiry. Here is their facebook address. https://www.facebook.com/wesaynoto5ginaustralia/
COUNCIL MEETING 19 NOVEMBER 2019: Many people enjoy Ricketts Tea House as a relatively modest place to have tea and cakes along a long piece of otherwise aesthetically deserted beach on this Pacific Island that we call Australia. Now Brighton Council is pushing a monstrous 'redevelopment' which will see liquor served seven nights a week until 11.30pm. One can predict the noise, violence, and rubbish, with frightened, disturbed birds. If this goes ahead, Melbourne will lose such a pleasant quiet area for the financial profit of a few. This will also be a prong used to usher in more 'development' in an area which has conserved vegetation and housing well back from the beach. It's another sign of the developer take-over of democracy in this state and in this country. You can go to the council meeting and try to push back against this overdevelopment push.
Council meeting – to agree Ricketts Point Teahouse redevelopment and extension of liquor hours to 11.30pm 7 nights a week
When: This Tuesday night, 19 Nov, 7pm
Where: Council Chambers, Boxshall Street Brighton
Details: Agenda Item 10.1 pp 29-65 . See this link:
Note: Council is recommending full agreement to extension of Ricketts Point Café liquor hours to 11.30pm 7 nights a week and to redevelopment. The plans appear to be for further enclosure of some of the open deck area. No environmental impact will be considered.
They have discounted objections made by environmental groups.
Please Register at the link below, before 11am on 19 Nov, to speak in opposition or express disappointment:
Details to complete online:
Ordinary Council meeting
Item 10.1
Strictly 4 minutes only allowed to speak
Similar plans for North Point Cafe
Note also: Agenda Item 10.2 North Point Café (pp 75 -83)
Redevelopment plans and extended opening hours also being recommended, although more limited hours eg 10pm - on the basis that it’s a residential area.
Michael McLaren speaks with Clifford Hayes, Member of the Legislative Assembly – Sustainable Australia Party’s Southern Metropolitan region Victoria, about his private members bill which proposes significant changes to the Planning and Environment Act 1987 which will give local councils more control of local planning policy and maximum building heights in their municipal districts. Remember Clifford's important bill will be put to Parliament this Wednesday morning (13 November 2019) about 10 or so. Consider coming to show your support by sitting in the gallery for the vote.
This book aims to talk truth to power, using intersectionalist feminist concepts, within the strange paradigm of the corporate newsmedia [1] and US-NATO foreign policy. Power is identified as whiteness. White women are enjoined to stand with women of colour against male whiteness, which they are charged with propping up for their own benefit.
Whiteness is defined as non-brown and non-blackness. But brown-ness can include whites who are not the ‘right kind of pale’.
“Whiteness is more than skin colour. It is, as race scholar Paul Kivel describes, ‘a constantly shifting boundary separating those who are entitled to have certain privileges from those whose exploitation and vulnerability to violence [are] justified by their not being white.’” [2]
Hamad accuses white women in Australia today of endorsing non-white slavery and colonialism now and through the ages because they benefited and benefit from it. She writes as if the accused white women are conscious that their attitudes condone such slavery. I would say, however, that the class that endorses these things that are decided by their ‘betters’ does so because its members believe the government and corporate media spin that justifies war, colonialism and exploitation of peoples far away. The women (and men) in the classes the system still works for, or who believe it still works for them, are obedient and unquestioning of authorities anointed by these. Such people erupt in defence of media-anointed authorities they believe to be pillars of virtue. They will also hotly defend the ideas and values they receive from these classes.
Of course, various forms of psychopathic entitlement underlie the public rationales of our leaders for colonialism and wars. These include xenophobic assumptions or just contempt for anyone standing against what empire builders and weapons lobbies want. You would think that anyone could see through these, but they don’t. Obedient Australians respond viscerally to their masters, on whom they depend, like good dogs conditioned by rewards and punishments. Hence they easily fall for the suspicious perpetual recurrence of ‘mad and brutal dictators’ in the Middle East, whom the west must get rid of through regime change. As Dr Jeremy Salt, Middle-East scholar says to cartoonist Bruce Petty (who visited Syria in 2011) in the video below (which I made), "There always has to be a madman in the Middle East" [so that the west can have an excuse to invade.]
The greater basis for their credulity is apparently the idea that the Middle East has not ‘developed’ sufficiently to achieve lawful societies, in part because it is religiously divided and lacks the separation of church and state. No relevant history is provided by the newsmedia as to how these things came about in formerly very stable societies.
Additionally, the newsmedia seems to report on overseas 'interventions' in the most confusing manner possible, as it also does with Australian politics. This leaves the Australian classes that rely for information on the newsmedia with the idea that domestic and foreign politics are incredibly complicated and hard to follow. Bored and helpless, they see no choice but to place their faith in the imagined greater intellects of the journalists and politicians involved in producing this atrocious spin.
I find it difficult, however, to agree with the assumption in Hamad’s argument that all white women (and men) in Australia accept the doctrine of the newsmedia. There seem to be plenty of men and women in Australia who question war, invasion, mass population movements, Julian Assange's imprisonment for exposing war-criminals, and think that sovereignty should be respected, but they don't find any clear echo in the newsmedia, except sometimes in masses of negative comments on line, especially on articles promoting population growth. Those commenters cannot, however, get in touch with each other to organise. Constant demographic, employment, and land-use changes have also interrupted traditional family and neighbourhood networks, and big business has taken over the universities, as the newsmedia has taken over the public talking stick. So, if you believe that the newsmedia represents the opinions of most Australians, as Hamad seems to, I think you would be wrong.
There is still an anti-war movement, but it is very disorganised, almost certainly because the mainstream media ceased to report its point of view leading up to and after the invasion of Iraq. [3] The anti-war movement exists in the alternative media, both Australian and overseas. (See IPAN(and here) for instance.) Unfortunately, spontaneous voluntary movements using independent and big tech media resources still do not have nearly the same publicity reach of the newsmedia nor the power to authoritatively self-anoint. The Facebook tech-machine geographically limits Australians to Australia when using its promotion system (ads) for criticism of corporate newsmedia talking points and government policies (especially those of the US). They thus continue to be drowned out by the internationally syndicated newsmedia. The greater public, whose smart screens and phones are still commercially tuned to the corporate newsmedia are thus not aware of these other views. They are only aware of them if they use independent search engines, since smart phones and screens have licence restrictions on what they can show. Whilst it is easy to simply put a URL in a browser, most people don’t know this and children are not even taught it. They might use search engines to look for alternative reports, but they are not aware that the license restrictions of the commercial software associated with their ‘smart’ electronic hardware, keep their information sources nearly as narrow as the pre-internet era.
But Hamad is a professional newsmedia journalist. Not only is she a newsmedia journalist, but she refers to what passes for Australian cultural belief and 'leftist' values in the newsmedia as if these were actual reflections of most of Australian society, rather than a sort of echo-chamber for the classes that read and write in them. Does she really believe in the cultural matrix that she refers to, or is she merely using its own language to question it?
SYRIA
Of particular interest to me was Hamad's experience in questioning Australia's support for US-NATO military intervention in Syria. If you weren't already aware of the shocking wrongness of our policy towards Syria, then you might wonder what Hamad is talking about here.
Hamad, who comes from a Lebanese and Syrian background (Greater Syria), and who still has relatives in Syria, describes how she was rebuffed when she tried to express her disapproval of a US intervention in Syria to her feminist white colleagues.
"[Syria] is such a fraught issue that genuine discussion is impossible while smears and misplaced outrage are the norm. On this occasion in early 2018, I felt compelled to say something as it was the day after US president Donald Trump launched strikes on Damascus following an alleged chemical attack on a rebel-held town. Anna [her Anglo-Australian friend] expressed support for the strikes in a post, which I found jarring, and I told her - calmly - that I was confused given that the United States' act signalled a possible escalation of the conflict and further suffering. I was rebuffed as an aggressor who was hurting her and had to be publicly humiliated for it: the damsel requires her retribution. Merely by letting Anna know that although I understood she cared for Syrian civilians, her stance was disappointing to me, I inadvertently unleashed a demonstration of strategic White Womanhood that brushed aside the actual issue - the air strikes - and turned it into a supposed attack by me on her 'just for being white'. The result was a torrent of abuse hurled at me on a Facebook thread." (Pp105.)
Hamad’s analysis of this exchange is that, rather than deal with the political issue of bombing Syria and the atrocious consequences of war, [Anglo-Australian] Anna seemed to interpret the questioning of Hamad’s views on foreign policy as an attack on Anna for being 'white'.
Hamad sees this as a way of avoiding the issue. She thinks that the motive for avoiding the issue is to preserve the status quo from which White Womanhood benefits.
I think this analysis would work better if we substituted the word 'consequence' for motive, because it is hard for me to believe that most Australians who defend US-NATO policy towards Syria do this with a conscious understanding of the issues. Unless they are actually heads of government/ selling weapons, of course.
Where would they acquire such an understanding? Only by venturing beyond the Anglosphere and Eurosphere mainstream, but they have been repeatedly and explicitly conditioned to avoid alternative perspectives like RT and Presstv Iran, and the many independent blogs, in various languages, as ‘fake news’ by that very mainstream. It’s effective wedge politics; middle class Australians hardly dare look over at the other side of the fence on any issues. And, as mentioned, their smart screens have licensing issues.
It is true, however, that by blindly defending official policies, the obedient classes defend that tiny power-elite that pursues those policies consciously and pollutes our public messaging system with false reasons for war.
But, you see, I have encountered just the same kind of reaction when I have criticised military intervention in Syria. My friend’s father expostulated that we were ‘extremists’ and accused his son of falling for ‘fake news’. Mainstream journalists regard you with horror and abhorrence. On-line such views are treated as highly eccentric and laughed at, except when sympathisers find them. Most people you meet have no idea whatsoever about what you are referring to.
Politicians claim not to know anything about foreign affairs or they ignore you. I would have liked it if Hamad had gone to the role of Australia's then foreign policy minister, a [white] woman - Julie Bishop - in officially supporting US policy in Syria. Along with others, I wrote to Bishop about this, but received absolutely no response. And I wrote an article about the absurdity of it all: "Can Trump dodge his deep state destiny by acting absurdly?" Now it is quite possible that Julie Bishop had no idea of the consequences of what she was supporting, but she had direct responsibility, and a duty to inform herself. The reason I would like Hamad to address the role of a successful white female politician on Syria is because such people are elected and propped up via the false rhetoric of the newsmedia. That is how the normalisation of aggression against Syria takes place.
I know also that Syrians who hold the same attitude as me often don’t dare express it in public, and sometimes among Syrian acquaintances. Why is this? One reason is that refugees from Syria are more likely to receive encouragement from the Australian government if they say that the Syrian Government is a brutal dictatorship, even if they don’t really think so, since that is the official opinion of the Australian Government. And I have been told that quite a few Syrians in Australia actually do sympathise with the so-called Rebel armies in Syria, and so you might think twice about denouncing them or even disagreeing with them. New Zealand, our close neighbour, has settled some members of what many believe is a fake Syrian rescue group, with ISIS sympathies,the White Helmets. [4] Whilst I agree with Hamad that bombing Syria was a terrible idea, note that I am not saying that Hamad holds the same views on Syria as me. She does not actually disclose her views in her book.
It also sounds as if ‘Anglo-Australian’ Anna was out of her depth and was responding to a loss of ‘face’ on Facebook. That Anna then accused Hamad of being racist towards her is for me a symptom of Australia’s contamination with US race-baggage, not surprisingly, because of massive syndication of Australian newsmedia with US newsmedia, which virtually blots out Australia itself.
Whilst it is true that Australia was founded on the dispossession and genocide of non-white hunter gatherers, with some enslaved, others religiously indoctrinated, its initial principle labour source was convicts from the Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English lower classes. Most of these people would, however, meet Hamad’s definition of non-white, because land-tenure and inheritance law disqualified them from white power. They came from a country of severe class division. People there stole in order not to starve. As an example, the numbers of Irish transported soared with the Irish potato famine, due to crimes committed from hunger. [5]
Numerous convicts were charged with sedition and similar crimes and sent here as punishment for agitating for democratic government. [6] Many Irish were transported for insurrection due to their participation in revolts against the English. Convicts had no rights and could die in brutal conditions. [7]
Transportation of revolutionaries and protesters to the ends of the earth was an extreme form of demographic and political atomisation in Britain. Australia was Britain’s gulag and she sent a lot of people there who might otherwise have made a greater difference to British politics. Many recent Australians and mainstream journalists seem to have no knowledge of this or of the biophysical limitations of this continent. [8]
We do Australia a disservice if we fail to remember that people in this country initiated the Eight Hour Day, and stopped the beginnings of a slave-trade in Pacific Islanders and outlawed that of other ‘non-white’ peoples.
Australian workers at the turn of the 19th century, having ended transportation of forced ‘white’ labour, noting the kidnapping of Pacific Islanders, also rejected ‘non-white’ slavery through the White Australia policy, which was a trade-off for allowing manufacturers to import foreign goods. [9] Worker reasons for this would have been economic, since unpaid work presents unfair competition to free people. Unsurprisingly, just as today, we have little record of what ordinary people had to say on the matter, however. The rhetoric that we retain from the time is, of course, only from elites. Even among the elites, there was a fair amount of abolitionism, especially regarding the cessation of convict labour. The lack of contemporary documentation has made it easy to promote a view of the White Australia policy as a kind of Nazi doctrine, but it is dishonest to omit the anti-slavery and industrial relations aspects.
Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch of 1970, galvanised the Australian and international feminist movements, completely redefining how women saw themselves. Yet today Greer is hardly mentioned in the revisiting of feminism. Between 1972 and 1975 the Whitlam Government promoted multiculturalism, birth control, and feminism in the general population. These values were widely adopted in the generation now called ‘baby boomers’. Bizarrely and unfairly, recent anti-racist and mainstream feminist promotions fail to recognise, let alone build, on these well-established Australian values.
It might achieve more if articulate people like Hamad would look, beyond the mainstream representation of Australia, for similarities, rather than differences with their fellow citizens. She writes of the battle for land-rights (p.216). We need her help, because the colonisation is ongoing here. The fight for land-rights is being lost in Australia to the ultra-rich. Other Australians are fighting many different battles to resist our leaders’ addiction to war and growthism, and to preserve this beautiful country and its beleaguered ecology against land-speculation, overdevelopment and overpopulation. But they are being drowned out by the massive volume of the mainstream corporate media, which assails us all with growthist propaganda day and night, and also accuses us of racism, with the effect of shutting up criticism of absurdly high rates of immigration. As well, by appearing to champion or demonise refugees and asylum-seekers, it takes the public debate away from the regime-change wars that generate these.
Hamad argues within what I see as an anthropocentric, black-white, pseudo-‘progressive’ paradigm, without biophysical reference points. Although, at the end, she questions the idea of chronological progress, she still seems to accept the paradigm that we are all ‘going forward’, although no “progress is ever assured”. The points of reference in her universe are largely human-notional, generalised and global, whereas I look at how humans interact with their biophysical environments within specific land-tenure and inheritance systems. Along the same lines as Walter Youngquist’s paradigm in Geodestinies, I see material wealth, war, and colonisation, as a reflection of geology and geography.
I have a land-tenure and inheritance system explanation for the British class system and its production of great quantities of landless labour, which fed into a fossil-fueled coal and iron industrial revolution that permitted Britain’s industrial-scale exploitation of other countries. (See Sheila Newman, Demography Territory Law 2: Land-tenure and the origins of capitalism in Britain, Countershock Press, 2014.)
In Europe one tribe enslaved another. The Romans enslaved the British. Six hundred years later, the Normans reduced much of the British population to serfdom. They imposed almost universal male primogeniture in England, which meant that English women relied on men due to their inability to inherit land, and the bulk of children were effectively disinherited.
The British practised colonisation, mass migration, and genocide of Catholic whites in Ireland, and despoiled that land, with Henry VIII and Elizabeth I egging on the removal of nearly every tree for wood. Cromwell awarded Irish land to his English soldiers.
Many times the Irish Catholics tried to free themselves from the English, finally rising in revolt in 1798, causing civil war.
The civil war was dogged by savage sectarian differences which added their own violence to the government’s ghastly atrocities. Many Irish Ulster Protestants sided with the British. [10]
Irish Revolutionary leader, Wolfe Tone, described a landscape “on fire every night” (from burning houses), echoing with ‘shrieks of torture’, where neither sex nor age were spared, and men, women, and children, were herded naked before the points of bayonets to ‘starve in bogs and fastnesses’. He said that dragoons slaughtered those who attempted to give themselves up as they put down their weapons, and, finally, he talked about the spies who had brought the Irish Revolution down.
“And no citizen, no matter how innocent and inoffensive, could deem himself secure from informers.” [11]
I think that Hamad’s lack of recognition of inter-white racism/classism prevents her from realising that Australia is being recolonised, with ‘diversity’ as the excuse and induced racial schisms as the mechanism to alienate the ‘diverse’ from the incumbent population, the better to over-rule democracy. Australians, despite multicultural policy from Whitlam's time, are stigmatised as white and racist. There is a token nod to Aborigines, whose defining culture can in no way benefit from mass immigration or the 'developed' economy.[12] Hamad is not alone in this complacency because the mass-media constantly massages high immigration and renormalises terra nullius. Hamad has some recognition of this ‘irony’, however.
“I’d be lying if I said I knew how to reconcile all of this. I’m well aware that whatever our own experiences of colonisation and racism-induced intergenerational trauma, non-Indigenous people of colour in Australia are also the beneficiaries of indigenous dispossession. We too live on and appropriate stolen land.” (p.195)
Much of the foreign intervention in Syria has been in order to force it to accept globalisation, privatisation, and leaders sympathetic to these. The same thing is being forced on Australia, but without the need for overt violence so far because, unlike Syria, Australian leaders have not resisted this. And the newsmedia has given no voice to those who are trying to resist it, so they appear invisible.
Frizzy hair
On a more personal note, I sympathise with Hamad’s experience dealing with frizzy hair during her teenage years (p.180). I had the same problem. I had a different method, which did the same job. I didn’t brush my hair dry for hours, I wound it round my head tightly and fixed it painfully with bobby pins and other clamps, waiting hours for it to dry. I gave up swimming for years, although prior to becoming aware of my appearance, I had swum daily. This was a great sacrifice. Although I was also trying to meet the prevailing standards, which seemed to me to be straight hair, unlike Hamad, I did not identify straight hair with being ‘white’. I was ‘white’ if you like, although descended from Irish, Scottish, and Welsh stock, just not in the ‘in’-crowd as regards hair – or many other things.
A theme in Hamad’s book is that White Women get cross if you challenge their cultural ideas. They shut you out. Hamad has shown that some of these cultural ideas are probably immoral, and she wonders why she is shut out for exposing them. The thing is that all cultures want to control their ideas from the inside and they reject outside challenges. That’s poesis. Basically, to be one of them, you have to embrace their ideology.
Then, within that culture, there are sub-cultures, and cliques. In Australia’s hard new society where seniority and local labour have been dropped and ‘meritocracy’ prevails in an increasingly precarious employment market, women tend to form groups led by the woman closest to power – often a male boss. One of the ways for the dominant women to keep order and stay at the top is to punish anyone who looks like getting close to power by pretending to have been victimised. Another way is to harp on differences, of which ‘race’, ethnicity, religion, hair-type, weight, dress, and opinion, etc are all signs that can be used to define their possessor as a member of the out-group.
This kind of behaviour is also called ‘bullying’. And it is getting worse, unfortunately. Maybe it is a reflection of the way our leaders behave and the economic rationalist anti-society they have forced on us. There is competition out there for food and power. And we are apes.
NOTES
[1] Newsmedia is my name for the dominant ‘mainstream’ public/corporate media.
[2] Ruby Hamad in her Author’s note, p.xiii.
[3] “After the enormous demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the anti-war movement disappeared almost as suddenly as it began, with some even openly declaring it dead. Critics noted the long-term absence of significant protests against those wars, a lack of political will in Congress to deal with them, and ultimately, apathy on matters of war and peace when compared to issues like health care, gun control, or recently even climate change.” Source: Harpootlian, Allegra, US Wars and military action: The New Anti-War Movement, https://www.thenation.com/article/tom-dispatch-new-anti-war-movement-iraq-iran/.
“Criticism of the news media’s performance in the months before the 2003 Iraq War has been profuse. Scholars, commentators, and journalists themselves have argued that the media aided the Bush administration in its march to war by failing to air a wide-ranging debate that offered analysis and commentary from diverse perspectives. As a result, critics say, the public was denied the opportunity to weigh the claims of those arguing both for and against military action in Iraq. We report the results of a systematic analysis of every ABC, CBS, and NBC Iraq-related evening news story—1,434 in all—in the 8 months before the invasion (August 1, 2002, through March 19, 2003). We find that news coverage conformed in some ways to the conventional wisdom: Bush administration officials were the most frequently quoted sources, the voices of anti-war
groups and opposition Democrats were barely audible, and the overall thrust of coverage favored a pro-war perspective. But while domestic dissent on the war was minimal, opposition from abroad—in particular, from Iraq and officials from countries such as France, who argued for a diplomatic solution to the standoff—was commonly reported on the networks. Our findings suggest that media researchers should further examine the inclusion of non-U.S. views on high-profile foreign policy debates, and they also raise important questions about how the news filters the communications of political actors and refracts—rather than merely reflects—the contours of debate.” Source: Hayes, Danny and Guardino, Matt, Whose Views Made the News? Media Coverage and the March to War in Iraq, Political Communication, Vol. 27, No. 1, Dec 2009, p59. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10584600903502615
“As the [Iraq] war dragged on, and as reporting got better and better, the real problem with news from Iraq would turn out to be how little of it most Americans ever saw or heard. Across the board, as documented by Pew and others, the percentage of the news hole devoted to the war declined steeply.” Source: Murphy, Cullen, The Press at War, From Vietnam to Iraq, Atlantic Monthly, March 20, 2018.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/iraq-war-anniversary/555989/
[4] Independent journalists who have criticised this US and UK-funded and Hollywood-iconified group have been vilified by the mainstream, but the evidence is out there. See, for instance, Rick Sterling, “The ‘White Helmets’ Controversy,” Consortium News,
July 22, 2018”https://consortiumnews.com/2018/07/22/the-white-helmets-controversy/
[5] Lohan, Rena, Archivist, ‘Sources in the National Archives for research into the
transportation of Irish convicts to Australia (1791–1853)’ National Archives, Journal of the Irish Society for Archives, Spring 1996 https://www.nationalarchives.ie/topics/transportation/Ireland_Australia_transportation.pdf
[6] Convict Records, British Convict transportation register made available by the State Library of Queensland, Various crimes were assigned to revolutionaries, including sedition and insurrection which included many Irish who participated in rebellions. I08 are listed in the Convict Records simply as ‘Irish Rebels’: https://convictrecords.com.au/crimes/sedition https://convictrecords.com.au/crimes/irish-rebel
[7] “During the first 80 years of white settlement, from 1788 to 1868, 165,000 convicts were transported from England to Australia. Convict discipline was invariably harsh and often quite arbitrary. One of the main forms of punishment was a thrashing with the cat o’ nine tails, a multi-tailed whip that often also contained lead weights. Fifty lashes was a standard punishment, which was enough to strip the skin from someone’s back, but this could be increased to more than 100. Just as dreadful as the cat o' nine tails was a long stint on a chain gang, where convicts were employed to build roads in the colony. The work was backbreaking, and was made difficult and painful as convicts were shackled together around their ankles with irons or chains weighing 4.5kg or more. During the day, the prisoners were supervised by a military guard assisted by brutal convict overseers , convicts who were given the task of disciplining their fellows. At night, they were locked up in small wooden huts behind stockades. Worse than the cat or chain gangs was transportation to harsher and more remote penal settlements in Norfolk Island, Port Macquarie and Moreton Bay.” Source: State Library New South Wales, https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/stories/convict-experience
[8] Recently an Australian Review journalist, Laura Tingle, suggested that convicts seemed almost more inclined to die of starvation than to try to feed themselves by farming. She obviously knew nothing of the difficulties experienced by the early settlers, even with the help of convicts, in producing food in this country, well-documented by Watkin Tench, (e.g. Ed Tim Flannery), Watkin Tench, 1788, 2012. Tingle, in Laura Tingle, "Great Expectations" in Quarterly Essay, Issue 46, June 2012, opines that Australian government began by administering a dependent population in a patronising way. Australians became passive recipients of government benefits - to the extent, Tingle believes, that convicts seemed almost more inclined to die of starvation than to try to feed themselves by farming. Moreover, after the gold rush, Australian men got the vote and could run for parliament whether or not they had property and the quality of politicians declined compared to that when only people with property could vote. In these circumstances, politicians with poor manners came to dominate parliament and Australians therefore lost respect for their politicians. See Sheila Newman, “Tingle shoots blanks despite Great Expectations - review of Quarterly Essay,” 8 July 2012, http://candobetter.net/node/3003
[9] An ammendment to the Masters and Servants Act August 1847 forbade the transportation of ‘Natives of any Savage or uncivilized tribe inhabiting any Island or Country in the Pacific Ocean’. Masters and Servants Act 1847 (NSW) No 9a. No.IX., 16 August 1847. Six weeks later a Legislative Council motion disapproved the prospect of introducing Pacific Island workers into the colony, because it “May, if not checked, degenerate into a traffic in slaves.” https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2019/july/1561989600/alex-mckinnon/blackbirds-australia-s-hidden-slave-trade-history.
[10] Wilkes, Sue. Regency Spies: Secret Histories of Britain's Rebels & Revolutionaries . Pen and Sword. Kindle Edition. Location 1014.
[11] Theobald Wolfe Tone, The Writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone 1763-98, Volume 3: France, the Rhine, Lough Swilly and death of Tone, Janurary 1797 to November 1798, Eds. T.W. Moody, R.B. McDowell and C.J. Woods, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2007, p516.
[12] I have mixed with Australian Aborigines from most parts of Australia and can tell you that those I got to know well have expressed strong resentment of mass immigration (black or white), for obvious reasons. Yet, again, the newsmedia conflates mass immigration with multiculturalism and creates the impression that Australian Aborigines have nothing to say against being made an ever smaller part of Australia's demography and land-tenure. This is particularly evident with the Australian ABC. It was demonstrated in the Q&A ABC program of 9 July 2018 on Immigration which included the Indigenous lawyer, Teela Reid. Unusually, The Guardian actually noticed this: ‘Reed, a Wiradjuri and Wailwan woman, appeared to find the whole discussion baffling. “Don’t get me started, the whole bloody country has immigrated or invaded,” she said. “It’s crazy to sit and watch the conversation unfold.” ’ How confusing to be forced to use the rhetoric of multiculturalism as a counter to discrimination against Aborigines, while aware that all these Anglo and multicultural groups are uninvited invaders, not necessarily colonising, but moving relentlessly, and as if by right, onto once-Aboriginal lands and resources.
The recent announcement by the Victorian State government to ban native forest logging on public land in Eastern Victoria has been strongly welcomed by local environment groups including the Otway Ranges Environment Network(OREN) and Geelong Environment Council(GEC). Although the local communities of Eastern Victorian will need to go through a transition, claims of economic doom and gloom are unfounded. The logging phase out process to be completed by 2030 for Eastern Victoria is very similar to the process used to phase out native forest logging the Otway Ranges that successfully transitioned the local community and economy between 2002 and 2008.
“When the Otways logging ban was announced in 2002, wild claims were made that the Otways region would be economically devastated if native forest logging came to an end, that there would be mass unemployment” said Simon Birrell spokesperson for Otway Ranges Environment Network. “Claims were made that in Colac, where a number of hardwood sawmills were located, the town would die and that the Midway woodchip mill would close down. Instead nature based tourism has significantly expanded in the Otway region and this can easily be the case for Eastern Victoria.”
“For example, the Otway town of Forrest was founded on logging and had a sawmill mill that was phased out. It is now a hub for those who go mountain bike riding through the forests. Shops that were derelict when the local sawmill was operating have now been renovated and opened as a café. There are accommodation businesses. In another example, Otways logs once went to the Birregurra sawmill. Now many people who live in Birri work as part of the tourism service industries along the Great Ocean Road.”
“For the Otways there was six year transition between 2002 and 2008, for east of the State it will be a ten year transition to 2030. Claims the towns such as Orbost will die are rubbish. Orbost can easily be developed has a major gateway hub for nature based tourism to see the wonders of the tall forests and magnificent scenery the region of far East Gippsland has to offer. What needs to happen is investment in making the place more accessible for visitors and a marketing campaign to promote the wonders of the area so more visitors go.”
“It is concerning that Federal Government ministers were so quick to condemn the Eastern Victorian logging phase out. The Federal coalition government should note that the Victorian Liberal Party supported the Otway logging ban in 2005 and voted to support passage of legislation to ban logging and create the Great Otway National Park. Rather than irresponsibly talk up the negative, it is hoped both the State and Federal Liberal and National Parties will work in a bi-partisan way with the State Government to ensure a just and fair transition for the communities impacted by this decisions and jointly explore nature conservation tourism employment opportunities.”
“Finally, both OREN and GEC have recently been lobbying the State and Federal Governments to cancel the Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) that covers the Otways, given logging has already ended. We suspect that the requirement to renew the RFAs, by March next year, has prompted the State Government to announce this latest logging ban decision given there are also four RFAs that cover the East of the State and, if renewed, they would have guaranteed logging to the year 2040. This would have been irresponsible. All the RFAs need to be cancelled as they now all come into conflict with this new State Government policy to phase out native forest logging across Victoria by 2030.”
Anti-war lyricist and singer, Roger Waters, who is identified world-wide with Pink Floyd, discusses Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s latest extradition hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court and why it makes him ashamed to be English. The British magistrate is acting like an American puppet, taking advice from the US barrister. He explains why he believes the UK and US are attempting to kill Julian, why the extradition case shouldn’t even be happening and is a mockery of British justice. He talks about the protest that Australian journalist, John Pilger, and he, led recently, before a crowd of a thousand people. No British mainstream media reported it. That is how they control the kind of information people need to know. He compared British head-in-the-sand behaviour with the mass protests in Chile against the neoliberal US-backed President Sebastián Piñera and how the military crackdown is reminiscent of the Pinochet era.
"People have a right to a say in the character of their street, and their neighbourhood. The principle of subsidiarity, of devolving power to the lowest practical level, is important. It is indeed good for people’s mental health if they have a say, and bad for their mental health if they feel powerless. My Bill does two key things – it requires VCAT to follow properly made Council decisions, and it gives Councils, rather than Ministers, the last word on height controls. Hayes says, "At present VCAT is out of control. Its proper role is to ensure that Councils don’t act in an arbitrary or capricious fashion [...]. But VCAT behaves as a Planning Authority in its own right, telling Councils that although the Council wants a height limit of, say, 4 storeys, they think that 6 storeys would be better! Councils should be able to put in place mandatory height controls at a height acceptable to the community. The high rise buildings being approved by Planning Ministers are not in the best interests of residents, overshadowing them and turning Melbourne into a soulless concrete jungle. Communities should have a say in relation to height limits." (MP Clifford Hayes in speech to Protectors of Public Lands Vic. reproduced here.) (Photos by Jill Quirk)
“Protecting Open Space in 21st Century Melbourne” - Speech to Protectors of Public Lands Saturday 26 October 2019 by Clifford Hayes
Thank you for the invitation to speak with you this afternoon and thank you also for the opportunity to represent you in the Victorian Parliament. I am aware that it is a great honour.
I want to congratulate the Protectors of Public Lands on what you do. Protecting the public domain is very selfless, unselfish work. It is also often thankless and difficult work. They’re not making any more land, but we are making many more people, and the resulting clash over the uses to which land should be put are becoming more acute with every passing year.
And of course the increasing price of land in our suburbs has made open space immensely valuable in dollar terms, leading to landowners including Commonwealth and State Governments looking to sell it off and make a real estate killing. Yet the population growth that drives the escalating land price also makes open space more valuable than ever AS open space – keeping our city and suburbs cool, giving us public places to walk, meet or rest, helping our mental health.
Just a fortnight ago the journalist Noel Towell reported in The Age that the State Labor Government is poised to massively ramp up its sales of publicly owned Crown land around Victoria, with more than 2600 hectares set to go under the hammer.
About 150 sites in Melbourne and country Victoria are listed as on the market for future land sales in a sell off that dwarfs the 533 hectares sold in the past 10 years.
Last week I asked a Question without Notice in the Legislative Council about this Report as follows – “Given the dramatic ongoing decline in open space per capita in Melbourne as a result of population growth of well over 100,000 per annum and the alarming decline in Melbourne’s vegetation cover, will the government investigate offering these parcels to local Councils for a nominal amount subject to an enforceable condition that they are turned into, maintained and retained as public open space?”
I am well aware that people in this room have spent a lot of time trying to stop the State Government selling off public land, often involving Government agencies offering the land to Councils at inflated prices that amount to duress, and a scam, where the public is being expected to pay for land that we already own. The Minister’s reply was polite, but not very encouraging. That is why your work is so important, keeping Governments and their Departments and agencies honest.
I see the clash over using land for public open space, or for other uses – which are often in themselves good and socially beneficial, such as facilities for women’s sport – played out time and time again in my Electorate. I have the good fortune to represent a significant area of beautiful Port Phillip Bay beachfront, and that is an area of great conflict. We have proposals to add a large restaurant to the Brighton Life Saving Club as part of its redevelopment. We have a proposal from a café lessee to take over and develop an area where public toilets are located at North Point. We have proposals to extend the opening hours for a café/restaurant at Ricketts Point.
Each of these proposals can sound reasonable, and many of us like to eat or drink by the beach or foreshore, but their sum total is to kill off the connection with nature that is the very thing that makes the beach attractive in the first place – to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
Unfortunately – and I think your late Secretary and driving force, Julianne Bell, grasped this with great clarity – there is hardly a blade of grass or grain of sand that isn’t being eyed off by someone who wants to make a dollar out of it or appropriate it for their own benefit. It’s not just in my part of the world – I know of the battle, for example, in historic Footscray Park, where the well connected Melbourne Victory soccer club is seeking to establish a large stadium in parkland close to the Maribrynong River. And of the Warrnambool Racing Club’s appropriation of the beaches between Warrnambool and Port Fairy to train racehorses, to the detriment of other beach users, particularly the endangered Hooded Plover.
Often when land is appropriated and vegetation bulldozed elaborate promises are made about offsets elsewhere. In my experience these undertakings are seldom honoured. For example 10 years ago when a previous State Labor Government expanded Melbourne’s Urban Growth Boundary to allow for massive development in Melbourne’s west it said developers would have to pay a habitat protection levy which would enable the purchase of areas of grassland which would offset the development. 10 years later it has emerged that at the present rate of progress it will take the Victorian Government 100 years to purchase the amount of grassland it promised to protect at the time!
And just last week it introduced a Bill to amend the levy. For starters I am disappointed to read that the Habitat Compensation fee system is being renamed the Environment Mitigation Levy. It is the loss of habitat that is the core issue here, and we should never lose sight of it. I am also troubled to learn that property developers are talking about how well the Government has consulted with them over this Bill, when I don’t think it has been consulting with environment groups at all!
In my first speech to Parliament in February I set out my vision for Melbourne – to make it a great place to live, not merely a great place in population size to rival such places as Shanghai, New York, London, or Sao Paolo. Such greatness would be mere obesity, with all the disadvantages of such.
Not a city or a state where people are crammed into dogbox apartments, living on crowded and congested streets in an environmentally unfriendly concrete heat island, but a spacious city with open skies, open and tree-filled streets, with gardens.
Unfortunately this is not the direction in which Melbourne is headed. Since Australia’s migration programme was turbocharged and effectively trebled some 15 years ago, Melbourne has been growing at a rate of over 100,000 people each year, and is now growing at around 130,000 people each year. This has had numerous adverse impacts on our quality of life – traffic congestion, housing unaffordability, loss of vegetation, wildlife and open space. One of the consequences of Melbourne’s rapid population growth has been an attack on local democracy. Residents have lost their right to a say in the character of their street, their neighbourhood and their community.
Consistent with my election commitments I moved a Private Members Motion in May, aimed at restoring local democracy in planning issues and curbing the power of the Victorian Civil & Administrative Tribunal (VCAT). The Motion called on the Government to give more power to local councils to defend their communities from inappropriate developments.
In particular it called on the Government to amend the Planning & Environment Act so that VCAT was required to give effect to local planning policies, rather than just taking planning schemes into account. It also called on the Minister for Planning to implement mandatory height controls, rather than discretionary height controls, where Councils sought them.
I was delighted that this motion was passed in the Legislative Council with the support of the Liberal opposition and my crossbench colleagues. It is very unusual for a Motion to pass in either House without the Government’s support.
I believe there is a real mood for change in the community to fix a planning scheme which is biased against local residents and skewed in favour of property developers. I am now preparing amendments to the Planning & Environment Act which would give legal effect to the sentiments in my Private Member’s Motion. I believe these amendments would help restore the balance and give local residents a genuine say in planning decisions. I am encouraging residents and community groups to support my campaign for greater local democracy in the Planning & Environment Act.
People have a right to a say in the character of their street, and their neighbourhood. The principle of subsidiarity, of devolving power to the lowest practical level, is important. It is indeed good for people’s mental health if they have a say, and bad for their mental health if they feel powerless.
• The Bill does two key things – it requires VCAT to follow properly made Council decisions, and it gives Councils, rather than Ministers, the last word on height controls.
• At present VCAT is out of control. Its proper role is to ensure that Councils don’t act in an arbitrary or capricious fashion, for example by allowing one person to build four units on their property, and refusing to allow a next door neighbour with the same size property to do the same. But VCAT behaves as a Planning Authority in its own right, telling Councils that although the Council wants a height limit of, say, 4 storeys, they think that 6 storeys would be better!
Councils should be able to put in place mandatory height controls at a height acceptable to the community. The high rise buildings being approved by Planning Ministers are not in the best interests of residents, overshadowing them and turning Melbourne into a soulless concrete jungle. Communities should have a say in relation to height limits.
That said, I am absolutely aware that giving Councils more power is not a silver bullet, and that Councils can and do make poor decisions.
• It is not true that people who oppose high rise are NIMBYs, or that they favour urban sprawl. They don’t want the high rise forced in ANYONE’s backyard. What the State Government needs to examine is the premise that Melbourne has to keep increasing by 130,000 people each year. That’s the issue that people are never given a say about.
• Melbourne’s rapid population growth, combined with enforced urban consolidation, has resulted in a paving over of open space and a loss of vegetation and wildlife, when in times of climate change we need our vegetation, front yards and back yards. Urban consolidation has turned suburbs into heat islands. Population growth has driven traffic congestion and road rage. It has driven housing unaffordability and homelessness, and population growth has driven the construction of high rise buildings which are full of defects and even unsafe.
• Property developers have done well out of this government sponsored building boom of the past 15 years, but ordinary residents have not. Their quality of life has declined, and it will continue to decline unless legislation like this puts power back in the hands of ordinary people.
A study in December 2017 found that high-rise living had adverse impacts on mental health. It found that sharing semi-public spaces with strangers can make residents more suspicious and fearful of crime. Many feel an absence of community, despite living alongside tens or even hundreds of other people.
There is a fear of isolation. During ongoing research into social isolation among older people in the English city of Leeds, residents of high-rise buildings reported feeling lonely and isolated – some were afraid to even open their front doors.
Many advocates of high density living claim that it is better for the environment and climate change than suburban sprawl. Studies have shown this to be not the case. One 3 year US study in 2017 found that living in a high-rise tower in Chicago was much less environmentally sustainable than moving to a house in the suburbs. Apartment dwellers consume more energy, spend more of their time travelling, and use their cars more.
In terms of embodied energy in construction high-rise fared even worse. The project found that high-rise buildings required 49% more embodied energy to construct per square metre, and a stunning 72% more on a per person basis.
As has been noted before, the most energy efficient building is the one that already exists. Unfortunately State Governments have paid way too little attention to this and have made it far too easy to demolish existing houses, even those of heritage significance.
The idea that high density apartments, which require more lighting and air conditioning, are more sustainable than detached houses, which can have solar panels, rainwater tanks, and front yards and back yards with trees, shade and open space, is contradicted by the evidence.
So what needs to change? In my view, it’s not complicated. Two words - local democracy. Give the local residents the power in relation to planning. The Planning and Environment Act 1987 was supposed to establish a framework for planning the use, development and protection of land in Victoria in the present and long-term interests of all Victorians. It is my contention that it has been changed by successive governments so that it does not achieve those objectives.
The bill I will present seeks to do this in two ways. First by directing planning authorities and VCAT to consider and give effect to local planning policies which have been approved by the Government. Secondly by allowing Municipal Councils to set real height limits, including mandatory controls, which cannot be undermined by either State Government or VCAT.
Under my bill the Minister for Planning will be required to accept Council proposals for mandatory height limits, rather than arbitrarily raise the limits or make them discretionary and therefore worthless, as he does at present.
The bill will also make VCAT consider Strategic Planning Policies developed by Councils. What’s more, it will instruct VCAT to give effect to such local planning policies as expressed in the Local Planning Policy Framework.
I encourage your members to contact your local Members of Parliament by phone, email, letter, or in person, to encourage them to vote for the Bill. And on Sunday 10 November, in the week before my Bill gets debated in the Legislative Council, there will be a Rally at the Elsternwick Plaza, next to Elsternwick Station, at 2pm. I encourage you to attend, and bring others!
My bill is a modest proposal that is intended to start the process of giving back planning controls to local communities through their elected councils.
I hope it will not only be a shot in the arm for local democracy and genuine community say, I hope it will act as a brake on rampant habitat destruction. The key driver of habitat destruction is population growth. Sadly environment groups seem to lack the courage to stand up and say this. One honourable exception I came across recently was Jeff Davis, Assistant Director of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Habitat at a June 2019 meeting of the Southern Resident Killer Whale Task Force, who said “Population Growth is the Top Challenge for Conserving Habitat”.
He was followed by a Task Force Member G.I. James, who works with the Lummi Nation’s Natural Resources Division, who was prepared to tell a few home truths about the threat to the orcas –
“We’re worried about the population that’s going to be here in the next 25 years and we can’t even address the problems that are being created by the people who are here right now. We think we can have it all. We can have the roads, we can have our cars, we can have our businesses and we can still have those natural resources that depend on the very same things all that destroys”.
Indeed. I thank the Protectors of Public Lands for everything you have done, and are doing, to protect the quality of life in Melbourne from overdevelopment. It is often hard, unrewarding work, but it is very important in maintaining our quality of life, and not allowing it to quietly slip away.
I hope you can join my fight for a better, not bigger, Australia, and I and my office are always ready to assist you in any way we can.
Clifford Hayes, MLC,
Sustainable Australia Party
Southern Metropolitan Region.
Direct: (03) 9530 8399 | 0458 750 700
Business Address: 206 Bay Street, Brighton
Campaspe Shire has introduced a great new horse welfare change to its Echuca and District Livestock Exchange. It will no longer accept horses that do not have clear origins and destinations. Let us hope that other shires will follow this example. As you may read in Horses need an identity urgently, Victorian laws are extremely irresponsible towards horses, and many horses suffer greatly in this state.
Echuca & District Livestock Exchange
Important notice
Echuca & District Livestock Exchange will no longer accept horses that are "on delivery"/ "depot horses"/ "in transit" / "on consignment".
- Effective 2 September 2019.
Echuca & District Livestock Exchange ("the facility") is a Council owned facility that is open to agents and private operators to utilise the Livestock Exchange under a formal User Agreement prepared in line wiht Council's accreditation under the National Saleyards Quality Assurance Program.
Council is committed to animal welfare, compliance, occupational health and safety - personal injury, biosecurity and the monitoring of livestock that move in and out of the facility.
Horses that are "on delivery"/"depot horses"/"in transit"/"on consignment" pose a serious biosecurity threat and disease outbreak risk to the facility and other livestock. There is no traceability or record of the horses' previous or outgoing locations, nor their previous or new owner's details. Council also has no control over the condition that the hores are in when delivered at the facility.
Therefore, as of 2 September 2019, Campaspe Shire Council will no longer accept these horses at the Echuca & District Livestock Exchange facility.
Council seeks your assistance to pass this advice on to all relevant parties involved in the supply chain of horses that may have dealings with hornses on delivery at the Echuca & District Livestock Exchange and advise alternative delivery arrangements will need to be made. This may include, but is not limited to, your staff, buyers, abattoirs, horse transport companies and vendors.
Please note that the Andrew Wilson & Co horse sales will continue as per usual and the staff will be strictly monitoring the condition of the horses included in the sales upon delivery to the facility.
Should you have any questions regarding this matter, please contact the Echuca & District Livestock Exchange Manager on 03 5482 2851, or alternativesly, Council's Commercial Operations Manager on 03 5481 2200.
Campaspe Shire Council
Cnr Hare & Heygart Streets
Echuca VIC 3564
PO Box 35 Echuca VIC 3565.
Documents tabled as the Committee proceedings were concluding countenanced a substantial reduction in the area of the Freeway Golf Course which is located near the Yarra River in North Balwyn. The president of the two clubs located at the course attacked the Committee process that left them unable to respond to the material.
That the Freeway Golf Course should be reduced in size sits nicely with the Victorian government's plan to substantially increase the lanes capacity of the Eastern Freeway, and to build a quite massive "spaghetti junction" to cater for the proposed North East Link. It is a threat always posed by major roads projects, which are inherently space inefficient relative to public transport. The Victorian government is not proposing any enhancement of public transport capacity in the corridor to be served by its proposed North East Link. If the North East Link were to be built it would, like all freeway projects that have preceded it, provide no more than temporary relief from current traffic congestion, and eat into a lot more green open space than the golf course in North Balwyn. The public transport services that do exist in the corridor can be truthfully described as no better than miserably inadequate.
The attached photograph is of the Eastern Freeway taken from the Yarra Bend Road bridge in Fairfield, about 10 days ago in the morning peak travel time. This is a delightful part of the world of extensive parkland except for the fact that it has a freeway bisecting it. If the Andrews government gets its way it will deteriorate markedly. The median strip, shown on the left of the photograph, was assigned to a rail service to Doncaster. The Andrews government now threatens to take it over for additional traffic lanes to cater for the North East Link. The photograph also shows four lanes of bumper to bumper traffic. A single train service can cater for about the same number of commuters as a freeway lane carries in an hour. You will also see that the left hand lane was unoccupied at this point. This is the T2 lane which is provided for vehicles with two or more occupants. Most vehicles driven in Melbourne have just one occupant, the driver.
In the last few days two quite significant things have happened. Melbourne City Council signed off on its new 10 year transport strategy, which proposes to remove on-street car parking in central Melbourne and to provide additional space for pedestrians, and active transport generally, as well as to facilitate public transport. The Grattan Institute has called for the introduction of a congestion tax for central Melbourne. These two initiatives demonstrate that central Melbourne is now full (of cars) and the situation is quite intolerable in social, environmental and economic terms.
The Andrews government is out of time. It is living in the 1960's, when the car was king. Things are different now, and the fight to defeat the North East Link, and for sustainable transport, is a necessary one for the present and the future.
"Interdit d'interdire - Les Kurdes et la Syrie : et maintenant ?" provides here a stimulating and intellectually nuanced debate about the situation in Syria. Two of the participants are journalists from the Figaro and Le Monde, which tend to be seen respectively as right-wing and left-wing, but this does not prevent commonality on Syria, and criticism of mainstream reporting and policy. Note, this is a French language video.
Frédéric Taddeï hosts a discussion among:
- Renaud Girard, journalist with Le Figaro, with background in war correspondence in the Middle East, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaud_Girard, who tends to argue against Manichaeism.
- Myriam Benraad, political scientist specialising in Arab politics.
- Régis Le Sommier, journalist with Le Monde and author of Assad, éditions De La Martinière, 2018, based on actual interviews with Bashar al-Assad.
- Taline Ter Minassian, historian specialising in history of international relations of the Soviet Union and Southern Caucasia.
United Sates' Senator for the State of Hawai'i, Tulsi Gabbbard, who is an outspoken opponent of the United States' meddling in Syria and elsewhere, has announced that she will be a candidate in the 2020 Presidential election. Tusli Gabbard clearly stands head and shoulders above any other candidate in terms of her appeal, her stated resolve to confront the criminal United States military-industrial complex which poses a grave threat all of humanity in 2019, and her prospect of defeating the candidates who are in its pockets. Her candidacy represents as great a hope for humanity as was JFK's candidacy in 1960.
In the 6:37 minute embedded embedded Twitter video, Tulsi explains the reasons for which she is standing.
Today I’m officially announcing that I will not be seeking reelection to Congress in 2020. Throughout my life, I’ve always made my decisions based on where I felt I could do the most good. In light of the challenges we face, I believe I can … pic.twitter.com/F0StYoA66n
Please consider attending the PEN Sydney annual Day of the Imprisoned Writer event 15/11/19. This year, Quentin Dempster will interview Jennifer Robinson, counsel to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/challenge-what-you-know-whats-really-happening-to-julian-assange-tickets-75281120859" "What’s really happening to Julian Assange? What has Australia done to protect his welfare? And why aren’t we hearing more about the most intriguing and complex threats to liberal democracy of our time?" Here is a link to the November edition of the Sydney PEN magazine on the Day of the Imprisoned Writer. https://pen.org.au
About this Event
What’s really happening to Julian Assange? What has Australia done to protect his welfare? And why aren’t we hearing more about the most intriguing and complex threats to liberal democracy of our time?
Walkley Award-winning journalist, author and broadcaster Quentin Dempster will interview Jennifer Robinson, counsel to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. Quentin will ask the hard-hitting questions to get to the heart of the tough issues around WikiLeaks and Assange, free speech and press freedom – and Assange’s almost decade long legal struggle on Day of the Imprisoned Writer.
Be there 6pm for a 6:30pm start. Free parking after 6pm at Broadway Shopping Centre and $13 night parking available opposite the venue after 6pm.
This event is hosted by PEN Sydney with support from Copyright Agency's Cultural Fund. All proceeds go to PEN Sydney to continue to defend freedom of expression: campaigning on behalf of writers who have been silenced by persecution or imprisonment.
This event is supported by MEAA, and UTS Schools of Journalism and Law.
Find out more at www.pen.org.au
Jennifer Robinson
Jen is an Australian barrister at Doughty Street Chambers in London. She has a broad practice in human rights, media law, public law and international law, representing states, individuals, media organisations, journalists and activists in cases before international, regional and domestic courts. She has a particular focus on free speech and civil liberties. Jen is the longest-serving member of Assange’s legal team.
Over the past nine years, she has been involved in all aspects of the various legal struggles faced by Assange and WikiLeaks, including advising on and negotiating the publication of Cablegate, acting for Assange in the Swedish extradition proceedings, acting for WikiLeaks in the proceedings against Chelsea Manning, advising on the financial blockade, engagement with UN human rights mechanisms and in relation to Ecuador’s request to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights Advisory Opinion proceedings on the right to asylum.
Her other recent cases include acting for the BBC World Service in UN engagement over the persecution of BBC journalists by Iran, acting for a Romanian journalist working for the Overseas Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) being sued by an Azerbaijan MP, acting for Vanuatu in the Chagos Islands case before the International Court of Justice, successfully challenging a sweeping anti-protest injunction obtained by a major multinational corporation and having the UK government’s fracking policy declared unlawful on the grounds the government failed to consider scientific developments in climate change. She has advised a wide range of media organisations, including the New York Times, Bloomberg, WikiLeaks and the International Consortium for Investigative Journalists.
She is passionate about using the law as a tool for social justice and to build power in movements for positive change. To that end, Jen created a global human rights program – the Bertha Justice Initiative – which has invested millions in strategic litigation and education for the next generation of movement lawyers. She has also long represented the West Papuan movement for self-determination and its leader in exile, Benny Wenda.
She is a founding board member of the Grata Fund, Australia’s first independent, crowd-sourced public interest litigation fund and sits on the boards of the Bureau for Investigative Journalism, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights and the Bonavero Institute for Human Rights at Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes scholar.
Quentin Dempster
Quentin Dempster is a Walkley Award-winning journalist, author and broadcaster with decades of experience. He is a veteran of the ABC newsroom and has worked with a number of print titles including the Sydney Morning Herald. He was awarded an Order of Australia in 1992 for services to journalism and is the former Chairman of the Walkley Foundation.
In this episode, Afshin Rattansi of Going Underground speaks to legendary journalist and filmmaker John Pilger about Julian Assange’s latest extradition hearing on Monday, which Pilger attended. Pilger discusses how Assange appeared at the trial, the bias of the judge against the journalist, the lack of mainstream media coverage of his persecution, his health and conditions in Belmarsh Prison, CIA spying on the WikiLeaks founder, and more. Next, Afshin Rattansi speaks to Chris Williamson MP about Assange’s extradition hearing, Williamson's motion in the House of Commons to condemn Assange's treatment, why his persecution is of international importance, the silence of mainstream media on Julian Assange, the lack of vocal outrage from Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour front bench over Assange’s treatment, and more!
Defying even the expressed wishes of their own customers, Coles and other supermarket chains continue to pay dairy farmers so little that they can then sell that milk for $1 per litre!
With Queensland experiencing a deficit in milk production, One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson has threatened to abstain from lending her support to non-critical legislation until the price of milk is regulated. Between the drought, rising input costs and low farmgate milk prices, Queensland dairy farmers are culling herds or getting out of the game altogether, with the number of dairies in the state collapsing from 1,500 at the time of deregulation, to 385 today.
Only re-regulating the industry will rescue Australia’s collapsing milk production. Milk production doubled in the two decades from 1980-2000, but since deregulation took effect in 2000 it has fallen consistently. Fourth-generation dairy farmer from Rush Creek in Queensland, Joe Bradley, told Channel 9’s Today program on 25 September that if milk production drops to 8 billion litres as expected this year, it would make a 30 per cent drop since peak production (2002), and Australia would be set to become a net importer of dairy products.
Token efforts by retailers, such as the ten-cent increase to $1-per-litre milk announced under duress in February by duopoly Coles and Woolworths, do not work. The retailers passed on 1.4 cents of that increase to producers, with some processors passing on additional portions, but this miniscule amount made little overall difference to the industry. Supermarkets increased their home brand milk by a further ten cents again in July, due to “whole-of-market cost pressures”, but this rise was not passed onto producers. Nor will government handouts change the trajectory the industry is on.
Senator Hanson’s withdrawal of support for non-urgent parliamentary votes until action is taken, could have a major impact on the government’s agenda, given her position as a cross bencher. She plans to table legislation to regulate the dairy industry in the current parliamentary sitting. Senator Hanson proposed action to save the industry in September 2018, receiving support only from the cross-bench. The same proposal tabled on 15 October as an Urgency Motion, however, received the support of Labor and the Greens, but was opposed by the Liberal-National coalition and the Centre Alliance, resulting in a 30-30 vote.
With input costs increasing—including water and electricity costs, chemicals, and given the drought, especially feed costs—farmers need at least an extra 40 cents per litre to survive. Only the weight of federal legislation can force both retailers and middle men in the industry to pay a price that will ensure the continuation and growth of a critical component of our food security. Currently it is left to market forces, but with a highly perishable product, dairy farmers have no bargaining power—they can’t hold out for higher prices. And despite consumers being willing to pay more to sustain our milk production, no market mechanism will carry that through from retailer to producer. Legislating a minimum farmgate price, based on parity pricing—the price which covers farm inputs plus a margin of profit—will ensure farmers can remain dairying and sustain a vital national industry rather than joining the dole queues.
Break the free market myth
“I don’t get it. What is Coles’ agenda? … and what is the government’s agenda?” demanded Greenmount dairy farmer Scott Priebbenow, speaking with Alan Jones on Sky News on 8 October. With so many farmers leaving the industry or hanging on by a thread, and a government assistance fund not due to be disbursed until July next year, the government’s inaction is inexcusable, he insisted.
The agenda is to advance a handful of corporate players at the expense of the masses. The commitment of both major parties to an economic policy consensus consisting of privatisation, stripping of regulation, market liberalisation and austerity, has destroyed Australia’s productive industries and family farms but boosted big banks and big business. The policies were devised by a global coalition of some 150 thinktanks planted worldwide by the secretive Mont Pelerin Society founded in 1947. Championed by Margaret Thatcher, the approach was unveiled at the 1978 British Conservative Party National Conference by Linda Whetstone, the daughter of leading MPS figure Antony Fisher, who as a devotee of Austrian School economist and MPS founder Friedrich von Hayek co-founded the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the world’s leading MPS thinktank. Gunning for austerity and the stripping of countless pieces of legislation, Whetstone declared: “Don’t let’s go out of our way to help small business, agriculture, the unions, coloured people, women … we cannot help those who cannot help themselves at the moment”.
In Australia the takedown of the productive sector started in earnest under the Hawke and Keating governments. It was directed by four Australian MPS thinktanks: the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), which von Hayek personally had a role in launching and running; the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA); the Tasman Institute; and the H.R. Nicholls Society, whose boards overlap the big four banks and big business. Described by the Sydney Morning Herald in 2003 as “the most successful, if unheralded, political puppet-master of the past century”, von Hayek himself observed that the most decisive influence over policy “was wielded by intellectuals”, not politicians.
Former Treasurer Joe Hockey exemplified the real agenda of the “free market” and “competition policy”—to provide an advantage to corporate interests, especially monopolies and cartels. “[W]ealth and prosperity are created by the private sector” and governments must not get in the way, Hockey told the Centre for Independent Studies in November 2013. On the other hand, the masses will have to lower their living standards, and the “political challenge will be to convince the electorate of the need for fiscal pain”, he said in his infamous August 2012 “End of Entitlement” speech to the IEA in London.
Abundant markets
The tragedy is, there is a massive market for all of Australia’s dairy production and more, just waiting for us to develop our capability to service it. If the free market functioned as advertised, we would already have taken advantage of the mammoth demand from China and other Asian nations for our milk products. Since a 2008 milk contamination crisis, demand from China for Australian infant formula, for instance, has grown dramatically. While there is strict Chinese regulation to comply with (excluding e-commerce sales on a smaller scale), a number of Australian companies are already profiting handsomely from expanded exports of powdered milk into the country. With a modicum of government facilitation, Australia’s dairy production could take off exponentially. It must begin with re-regulation, however, because if we don’t stop corporations ripping off our farmers soon there won’t be an industry in existence.
If I could tell my father what has happened in the years
Since he departed suddenly, extinguishing his fears
If I could tell my sister, so earnest and concerned
Now lying in her grave near those both ignorant and learned
If I could tell my mother, who confidently expected
That the wealth of generations would not be snatched by those elected...
Would I tell them truthfully that bad guys came and plundered?
They wrecked our streets, our landscape, as with bulldozers they thundered
They ripped through trees, they crashed through walls
Erased our past, it didn't last.
A cry of grief and all lay waste to metronomes, the wrecking balls -
What would I tell them now as I regard the transformation
What happened right in front of me was like a dislocation
"The Shock doctrine" or "Future Shock" was dispensed in spades
To the victims it was judiciously spun and cleverly explained
But lives now taken up with merely trying to stay afloat,
Swallowed it, repeated it, with not an ounce of doubt
A strange and constant war goes on, yes even in the sand belt
Where we walk our dogs, hear the birds, admire the trees that they inhabit
Opportunistically it strikes near my house, yours or others,
No care at all, no sympathy, for the poor folk who it bothers
What would I say to those passed away and don't know it fell apart?
Would I break it gently to let them know? At least it would be a start.
What would they think if I told them how our wildlife struggles gamely
Would they accept that timber trucks remove our forests daily?
Clear fell the dell where creatures charming,
Big eyes, that shine, endearing and alarming
Lose their homes and are left to die if they didn't die at first
No leaves to eat, no place to sleep, they will succumb to thirst
Relentless, it accelerates, leaves us, breathless and in shock,
What new surprise will meet our eyes next time we're taking stock?
Determined it continues and advances without care,
We live in hope that by some vain chance, our own home it will spare.
But inexorably, the monster has a job to do.
It's going there, it's coming here, and it will get you too.
The 100 years from 1870 is described as the innovation century in which there more more inventions, starting coincidentally with the light bulb, than in the rest of mankind's history. For the most part their roll-out into society was slow enough to dampen the impact of the invention. Electricity, for instance, wasn't connected fully in Australia until 1989. But for me, one event stood out, and that occurred on the 4th of October 1957, just before my birthday.
It was an event of enormous significance yet it is now almost completely forgotten. It changed the world – mostly for the better - in many ways, including preventing or lessening the chance of a nuclear war. It greatly enhanced the standing of science in government. It even made the moon landing possible.
At that time Australia was blessed with a prospective visit by a famous Rock star called Little Richard, (top song Good Golly Miss Molly,) but on that day he cancelled the tour and went into retirement in a monastery after he claimed to see a message from God in the sky.
In fact most Australians saw the same thing. The next night our family went out into the back yard of our house and, looking up into the sky, we saw a little aluminium sphere drift across the heavens. It was the world’s first satellite, launched into space by the Russians, and called Sputnik.
I can't remember anyone saying anything, but right then we realized that the cold war was not restricted to the northern hemisphere. Suddenly the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD for short, was very close to home. The expression one flash and you’re ash had become reality.
For the United States this was a slap in the face - being beaten in science technology by a rival whose political philosophy they had scorned. Sputnik plunged Americans into a crisis of self-confidence, which included the idea that the country had grown lax with prosperity and had used science for frivolous purposes. This was so promoted by the media that people stopped buying luxury cars and Ford Edesel, an oversized vulgar yank-tank that aimed at the luxury market, went broke. One eminent scientist took advantage of the hysteria to proclaim: "Teach Science or Teach Russian."
It would have to be the slogan of the century, because by golly Ms Molly, it worked. Congress responded with the National Defence Education Act, which increased funding for education at all levels, including low-interest student loans to college students, with the focus on scientific and technical education. They enacted reforms in science and engineering so that their nation could regain technological advantages they had lost to the Soviets.
What was most fascinating, however, was that there were no dissenting voices. This was a universal movement: politicians saw they were on a winner and no one was crying caution. Science rules OK?
In the US, schools now placed new emphasis on the process of inquiry, independent thinking, and the challenging of long-held assumptions. Laboratory science was stressed, urging a hands-on learning approach. The emphasis moved from teaching facts to fundamental principles. Children could no longer be educated traditionally and Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which had been successfully kept out of many US classrooms until late 1957, found a place in high school biology textbooks.
In Australia reactions to Sputnik were more pragmatic. The university system had been undergoing reform since 1956 and funding was increased by 300% in just two years to 1960. This was used to promote higher education and research across a broad range of disciplines, not solely to enable government-determined scientific goals. We did however become the third nation to launch a locally manufactured satellite in November 1967.
This was not a science renaissance but rather a re-imagining of science, which people saw as something that had been misdirected and mismanaged. The Science of the ICBM for nuclear weapons had become the pathfinder for space travel and carried the public along with it. Everyone wanted to be a rocket scientist, interest in astronomy boomed and, less than four years later, John Kennedy set out to land man on the moon.
But then something went wrong: science was sidelined, markets and money dominated government policy. So much so, that in 1990, Barry Jones AO, the science minister in the Hawke/Keating Labor government, announced that the crowning scientific achievement of his government was the return of Haley's comet. Yes, he was being sarcastic.
The Abbott government didn't even bother to have a science minister and cut funding for the CSIRO, the Climate Change Authority and many NGO's. Funding to the ABC, TAFE, and Universities, has also been cut, with the later becoming highly dependent on full-fee paying overseas students. The Climate Commission and the National Water Commission were abolished and, in terms of expenditure on research, Australia was ranked 18th out of 20 OECD countries in 2013, and this dropped a further 10% by 2015. Among those scientists made redundant was CSIRO’s Dr. San Thang, who was part of a team listed as a Noble prize contender for his work in chemistry. The technology this team invented has been adopted by 60 companies and royalties generated from the technology are forecast to reach $32.2 million by 2021.
This change in policy was more than just austerity-related cost-cutting, as there was also increased spending on fossil fuel projects, such as carbon sequestration.
It was targeted assassination of a rival philosophy and included drastic changes to our society and the way it functioned.
Manufacturing was almost obliterated, consumerism was revered, and population was purposefully increased through high immigration and a baby bonus.
Land clearing increased, along with animal extinctions and greenhouse emissions.
Unemployment tripled, housing became unaffordable, along with more homelessness and congestion, while mortgage debt exploded - all of which was hailed as economic progress.
Along the way Australia's corruption ranking[1] dropped from 7th place in 2012 to 13th place in 2015 and we became dependent on imports for things we used to manufacture and paid for them mainly with exports of coal and iron ore.
Why?
Economists like to think of themselves as scientists, but really they are not seekers of fundamental truths, but more like lawyers, ready to argue a case regardless of its merits. Thus, all our banks have economists who will argue for among other things, deregulation. The Mineral council has economists who will argue that coal is more valuable to the economy than agriculture, while the property council will have economists telling us that housing price growth is good despite the misery it creates.
We even had economists for the farming lobby telling us that tackling obesity by cutting back on sugar would be bad for the economy and, alarmingly, there are economists in the media who repeat without question whatever line is being proposed, whilst others in universities teach the same nonsense to the next generation.
Just like defense lawyers these economists will defend their clients’ interests without shame or remorse, because in carefully selected economic terms, they can be shown to be correct - or at least beneficial - in growing the GDP. The fact that these organizations can afford to pay their economists very well also helps. Conscience is soothed by a religious-like commitment to growth economics, which is able to replace human or environmental empathy with the certainty of market supremacy. They hide the reality of their philosophy by use of econogabble, a language full of terminology only understood by other economists and then vague enough to have alternative meanings.
Of course, not all economists swallow the idea of market supremacy and there are some very clever human beings like the Australia Institute’s chief economist, Richard Denniss, whose views are called unconventional. But unconventional economists don't get employed by banks or governments - after all who wants someone telling you what you are doing is absurd, immoral, dangerous or even uneconomic? Growth economics has, not surprisingly, resulted in increasing levels of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in the atmosphere, the growth of plastic in the oceans, and is instrumental, if not the direct cause, of every problem that plagues our society.
Now you may think I am biased, and of course you are right, but I am not alone. Even economists don't like economists. The great economist John Kenneth Galbraith once said:
"The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable."
Speaking of former US Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, another economist quipped:
"He was the greatest, the Maestro. Only if you look at his record, he was wrong about almost everything he ever predicted."
And that is part of the problem: Being wrong is not a sin if you are an economist. If a scientist had somehow missed something as bad as the GFC he would be forever shunned and his failure relentless analysed, so that it could not happen again.
Gordon Brown, the then UK’s prime minister, made a speech in June 2007 that was surely one of the greatest political and economic misjudgments among postwar politicians. He described his era as one that history will record as a new golden age for the City of London, praising the city’s creativity and ingenuity, just weeks before it collapsed into the GFC.
The UK tax payer was left with a one-sided exposure of £1.3 trillion in loans, investments, cash injections, and guarantees to the banking system, of which over £100bn may be lost forever. But all was not lost for Gordon Brown. Just 15 months later he was honored in the US as ‘Statesman of the Year’ by US former secretary of state Henry Kissinger.
After the GFC there was a great deal of criticism leveled at economists because for all their brilliant models and complex analyses, most economists completely failed to predict the disastrous outcome of the housing bubble. There were arguments as to whether the problem was an imperfect discipline or the result of human failures where biases on the part of many economists that made them blind to the truth. While there are always disagreements in the hard sciences, they're often less significant than some of the fundamentally different schools of thought within macroeconomics. You can have two equally respected economists perform two very well-thought out and rigorous analyses, but come to two different conclusions. That shouldn't be possible in a hard science. Facts plus analysis should lead to a conclusion that can be proven through observation.
The American Economic Association has proposed enhanced ethical standards for academic economists because, currently, they are not always required to explicitly state all sources of income and funding. This could cause bias to creep into their work, a process that was shown to have happened to financial advisers by the Australian Banking Royal Commission (4 December 2017 – 4 February 2019).
It could be argued that economic policy is more likely to contain bias due to outside influences than that of scientists, as there is often a lot of money at stake in either business or politics, depending on what the wisest economists in the land claim to be truth.
Logically then we should at least know who funds think tanks and Media columnists should disclose who they work for. We could go much further. Surely “ethical economics” is about using resources in a sustainable way.
Reducing carbon dioxide emissions, for instance, is certainly kinder to future generations than accepting the dictates of supply and demand.
Should we be importing products made by slave labor just because they are cheap? (Yes we do!)
Should we have traded with dictatorial regimes like Sadam Hussein's Iraq just because he bought our wheat?
Why do we support the arms trade, tobacco, alcohol, and gambling?
Well we do because, while third world countries get taken over by military coups, we were taken over by an economic coup d'état: a legal, constitutional seizure of power by a consortium of business groups who managed to pervert economics for their own benefit.
The way they achieved this can be understood by examining the words of David Suzuki, the world famous naturalist. He was three times voted the most trusted person in Canada. He summed up the economic strategy neatly, when he said:
“The economy — and the need to keep it strong and growing — has somehow become the most important aspect of modern life. Nothing else is allowed to rank higher. The economy is suffering; the economy is improving; the economy is stable or unstable — you’d think it was a patient on life support in an intensive-care unit from the way we anxiously await the next pronouncement on its health. But what we call the economy is nothing more than people producing, consuming and exchanging things and services.”
― David Suzuki, From Naked Ape to Superspecies: Humanity and the Global Eco-Crisis
It is apparent that this artificial obsession with a growth economy is a smoke screen that hides all other considerations, including human and environmental survival. I would argue that the wheels didn't fall off, they were stolen while we languished in complacency.
Apex marine predators choose whom they hang with, researchers reveal. White sharks form communities, researchers have revealed. Although normally solitary predators, white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) gather in large numbers at certain times of year in order to feast on baby seals.
These groupings, scientists had assumed, were essentially random – the result of individual sharks all happening to turn up in the same area, attracted by abundant food.
Now, however, a group of researchers including behavioural ecologist Stephan Leu from Macquarie University in New South Wales, Australia, have used photo-identification and network analysis to show that many of the apex predators hang out in groups which persist for years.
To make the findings, Leu and colleagues including Charlie Huveneers and others from Flinders University and the Fox Shark Research Foundation, both in South Australia, as well as French government research organisation CNRS, spent four and half years taking multiple photographs of almost 300 white sharks gathered around a seal nursery in the Neptune Islands in the Great Australian Bight.
Through the images they were able to identify individual sharks and, to their surprise, found that many were seen in proximity to specific others far more often than chance would determine.
“Rather than just being around randomly, the sharks formed four distinct communities, which showed that some sharks were more likely to use the site simultaneously than expected by chance,” says Dr Leu.
“The numbers varied across time, and we suggest that sex-dependent patterns of visitation at the Neptune Islands drive the observed community structure.
Our findings show that white sharks don’t gather just by chance, but more research is needed to find out why."
The paper – published in the journal Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology – is the latest research to change perceptions about the behaviour of apex fish.
In August 2019 another group of scientists, led by Macquarie University’s Robert Perryman, established that manta rays (Mobula alfredi) also have structured and persistent social relationships that can be described as communities.
This is a call for volunteers to help with organising committees for 50th Anniversary of Vietnam Moratorium Campaign towards the celebration of 50 years on from the Vietnam Moratorium Campaign or offers of memorabilia from that campaign for display.
Please pass this on to your members or friends who might be interested.
To make it national, committees are needed in each state/territory to mirror that historical and successful national political campaign
Contact: [email protected]
This is an IPAN supported activity The Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN)
Remember Vietnam and Keep Australia out of U.S. wars
Rapid population growth has impacted heavily on private and public open space in Melbourne, especially over the last decade. Clifford will discuss some individual case studies and his Private Members' Bill to reintroduce local democracy into Victoria's planning law. Hear him at the Protectors of Public Lands AGM Saturday October 26th, 2019, 2.30pm. Flemington Community Centre, 25 Mt. Alexander Road, Flemington. All welcome!
Protectors of Public Lands, Victoria Inc.
Annual General Meeting
Flemington Community Centre,
25 Mt. Alexander Road, Flemington 3031.
Saturday October 26th, 2019 at 2.30pm
With Guest Speaker, the Hon. Clifford Hayes MP
"Protecting Open Space in 21st Century Melbourne."
Rapid population growth has impacted heavily on private and public open space in Melbourne, especially over the last decade. Clifford will discuss some individual case studies and his Private Members' Bill to reintroduce local democracy into Victoria's planning law.
Please join us for afternoon tea after the meeting!
Tulsi Gabbard is the only anti-war candidate for the upcoming US presidential elections. For this reason, she has been slandered by most mass media and largely ignored by her own party. Yet, she is an impressive candidate in a distinctly lackluster field, and the only one with real experience in war. She is the first female combat veteran to run for president. She is also the first Samoan American, and a Hindu. She is a member of the Democratic Party and represents Hawaii in Congress. She has just responded to a veiled attack by Hillary Clinton on Twitter, in a tweet as sensational as any that Trump has come up with.
"Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a …
It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly."
Hillary Clinton was clearly attempting to put the discredited 'Russian interference' slur on Congresswoman Gabbard when she said in an interview:[1]
“I’m not making any predictions but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who’s currently in the Democratic primary, and they’re grooming her to be the third-party candidate,”
The former secretary of state told David Plouffe in his “Campaign HQ” podcast without providing evidence.
“She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.”
Tulsi Gabbard has inspired a great deal of interest among the general public, but that is not how the Democrats want to run the election. They even dropped Gabbard from their public election debates - which would be enough for some to make her a sure thing.
Clifford Hayes, MP., of Sustainable Australia Party, asked Mr Jennings MP (Leader of the Government) to investigate selling public spaces to local governments at a nominal amount, given that population growth is driving ongoing decline in open space per capita in Melbourne. Mr Jennings' 'nothing to see here' response smacks disingenuously of avoiding the obvious context of the government's massive population growth-engineering and overdevelopment, which is driving an accelerated reduction in space and all kinds of ammenities, as well as democracy.
Question without notice - Public Land Use (Wednesday 17 October 2019)
Mr HAYES (Southern Metropolitan) (12:11): My question without notice is to the minister representing the minister for finance. I refer to the report in the Age on 9 October by Noel Towell that the government intends to sell off more than 2600 hectares of publicly owned land from over 150 sites in Melbourne and country Victoria. Given the dramatic ongoing decline in open space per capita in Melbourne as a result of population growth of well over 100 000 per annum and the alarming decline in Melbourne’s vegetation cover, will the government investigate offering these parcels to local councils for a nominal amount subject to an enforceable condition that they are turned into, maintained and retained as public open space?
Mr JENNINGS (South Eastern Metropolitan—Leader of the Government, Special Minister of State, Minister for Priority Precincts, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs) (12:12): For the benefit of the house I will just indicate that the Assistant Treasurer is the minister who is responsible, and I will take the question. There is not a minister for finance in the current government, although the function that Mr Hayes has referred to has been the domain of the minister for finance in previous administrations. So with that clarification, in terms of the issues for which Mr Hayes seeks a response, I am certain that the Assistant Treasurer will provide you with a written response.
But as an immediate response, can I indicate to you that there is absolutely nothing that is unusual about the identification of parcels of land across Victoria that may be sometimes considered by the government of the day in relation to what its appropriate public value may be and what alternative use it may be put to. There is absolutely nothing that is unusual with that circumstance. In fact every government does it. They continue to do it on the basis of being aware of the public land estate—there are millions of hectares of public land estate across the Victorian landscape now and there will be into the future—and of identifying small parcels of land that may be able to be put to a multitude of purposes. Some of them may be appropriate in the circumstances that Mr Hayes refers to. Some of them may be appropriate for some form of housing development, some of them may be appropriate for some degree of civic development and some of them may be appropriate for commercial development. It is incumbent upon the state to use its resources wisely in balancing the public interest. It does so on a continual basis and will continue to do so to assess the appropriate way in which we can maximise the value of public land to benefit the Victorian community.
So Mr Hayes may appreciate that. He is certainly a very clear and consistent advocate for appropriate public land values, environmental values and sustainability, and the government should respect that. I believe we do respect that. I look forward to the answer that the Assistant Treasurer will give you to provide you with overall confidence in that. I am not certain whether he will agree to the specific elements of either the terms of transfer or the ultimate use of any parcel of land prematurely, because that should be considered within the appropriate balance of what greater public benefit should be derived and maintained for the people of Victoria, but the Assistant Treasurer may augment my response to you.
Mr HAYES: I have no supplementary question, but I thank the minister and look forward to a written answer.
Two Australian MPs - Barnaby Joyce and Andrew Wilkie - are at last trying to do something to get our government to help Julian Assange, who is currently at the mercy of the British establishment, which threatens to hand him over to a secret trial in the United States. See, "Barnaby Joyce says Government should protect Julian Assange from extradition to the US".
Meanwhile Assange has been detained in prison beyond the term of his imprisonment for skipping bail (in fear of his life) whilst awaiting a hearing of the case to extradite him to the United States.
The United States wants Assange because he exposed its war-crimes. It is likely that any US tribunal that gets its hands on Assange will try him in secret, with no witnesses. The US has accused him of crimes that should only apply to US citizens. If the United States is given permission to extradite Assange by the UK, that will mean that the UK will have more or less crowned the US as a world emperor, by granting it jurisdiction over the whole world.
The US has illegally occupied the north of Syria for some time, using Kurds to fight ISIS. Donald Trump's withdrawal of US troops has permitted Turkey to invade the area. Understandably terrified, the Kurds have approached the Syrian Government for help. The Syrian Government has responded and Kurds have welcomed the Syrian Arab Army into the area for the first time in years. This should reveal to the world that the Syrian Government is trusted by its people - for most Kurds in Syria are Syrian.[1] Did most Kurds in Syria ever really want independence from Syria, or were we looking at a situation were the United States and NATO encouraged the ambitions of a few Kurds, without asking the rest? Russia has asked all foreign troops to leave Syria and has volunteered to leave itself, if the Syrian Government which invited its help, asks it to leave.
What reduced the terrorist menace in Syria was the Syrian Army, Hezbollah, Iran and probably most important, Russia. If these forces had been bit players and it had been mainly the SDF, YPG and YPJ that defeated the international terrorist coalition (as the corporate western press would like us to believe), then you would think that taking care of a Turkish invasion should pose no problem for the Kurds.
In the meantime, Kurds have to fight to defend their homes and it is feared that ISIS prisoners will break out of the several prisons in the area which Kurds have been guarding. The video above shows Kurdish guards chasing ISIS family members in a prison with 70,000 inmates, as they try to escape. On RT news of 13 October 2019, it was actually reported that 800 ISIS fighters had escaped. Below is a description of what is happening in the video:
"Syrian Kurdish officials have said its security agencies contained an apparent escape attempt at a sprawling camp in northeastern #Syria, home to thousands of family members of #ISIS militants.
Mustafa Bali, spokesperson for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said on Friday dozens of camp residents attacked the exit gate of #AlHol camp, which is home to more than 70,000 women and children.
Video from a closed-circuit camera at the camp, operated by the SDF, showed security members chasing women covered in black dress, as they attempted to flee down a main road inside the facility."
NOTES
Most Kurds have Syrian citizenship, but some do not. Syrian citizenship is modeled on French law, generally requiring a demonstration of cultural affinity - such as speaking the language. Children born in Syria must demonstrate Syrian paternity; it is not enough to have a Syrian mother. After 1945 there was a diaspora of Kurds from Turkey to Syria. The Syrian government in power during the transitional period between the fall of the UAR and the coming into power of the Baath government, was worried by this inflow from Turkey, which has long had designs on Syrian territory. In 1962 this government held a Syrian census of Kurds in the North requiring proof of residence in Syria from 1945. According to my source on this,[2] there were many illiterate Kurds in the area, without much engagement with the government, so they might not have understood the requirements, if they knew they were being made. 120 stateless Kurds resulted.
[2] [1]"The Stateless Syrians," Tilburg University, Switzerland, May2013. https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/52a983124.pdf Note that this work was funded by Open Society Foundations, which is a multi-million dollar political engineering program that funds mass migration.
The Council motion is for Seaford Foreshore Activation - does that mean activation for development? Is it seen as an 'idle' asset - not useful or valuable as it is? It would seem so. As the proposal being put to Council is as follows
"On 10 September 2019 Councillor Bolam gave notice of his intention to move the
following motion:
Council officer’s advocate and negotiate with DELWP for expanded use of the
Seaford Foreshore.
Pending DELWP support in principle Council refers $40K to the 2020/21 capital
works budget for planning and design, which is to be sympathetic of the coastal
location and colours.
Notes a report outlining the detailed budget will be presented to Council for
inclusion in the draft Capital works program once planning and design has been
completed."
Why is this being done? The budget for this - just for the proposal - is $40,000. Why are Councillors initiating these sorts of projects when many people in Frankston are experiencing financial hardship? There is little doubt by economic commentators that we are entering a recession. Why are we spending money on this rather than looking to address the far more serious problems of homelessness, children going to school without breakfast and lunch?
Asking DELWP to remove protections from the Foreshore opens up major risks for the foreshore and is something that should be discussed with the community first - and only proceeded with if it has overwhelming support and even then only if other safeguards and protections are in place instead.
What is driving this and where does it come from? Certainly not the community, as requests by the Seaford Community committee to be involved in discussions were met with the following response:
"The motion calls for officers - subject to approval at Budget 2020/2021 - to develop something more tangible/visceral. Once a clearer picture is established, I would then expect greater community input."
This is a very concerning move by Councillors - I personally would be interested to know in what sense this proposal is representing the wishes of the community, and where on earth it came from. Is this just one Councillor's agenda? Is there a group of developers acting behind the scenes? Why has this suddenly emerged - above all the other pressing concerns of Council - as an item worthy of spending ratepayers precious money on?
The specific things that 'in-principle' approval would sought for from DELWP include:
""Seating, tables, sand friendly tiles/ paving or platform, lighting (including LED), a grand
rotunda, public art piece, BBQ and drinking fountain, large sun dial, bike racks,
connective pathways, view of the beach, outdoor shower and feet washing. "
The otherwise informative and insightful News With Rick Sanchezbulletin of 11 October trivialised attempts by the the U.S government to enforce its immigration laws. This is in contrast with the treatment of illegal immigration by Mike Papontonio, presenter of RT's America's Lawyer in Corporations defend DACA: Don’t deport our cheap labor! (10/10/19) its most recent weekly episode. (Both programs are embedded within this article.)
Near the end of RT America's News with Rick Sanchez, the usually insightful and informative presenter, Rick Sanchez, together with Lee Camp, the presenter of Redacted Tonight spoke mockingly of how the U.S. Secretary for Homeland Security Kevin MacAleenan was confronted by a group of pro-refugee protestors at Georgetown:
Lee Camp: I talk about how the Secretary for Homeland Security Kevin MacAleenan, went to speak at Georgetown and protestors stood up - protesters unhappy with the way we are treating immigrants at the border - migrants, refugees, and they shouted him down and he tried many times to speak -probably lasted about seven minutes and eventually just left. And for, that's my Super Bowl. I was sitting there with my phone there in the one hand.
Rick Sanchez: Yes!
Lee Camp: I was having a blast.
Rick Sanchez: It seemed to me when I was watching that Video that he probably could have challenged them a little bit and said "Let's talk about this." He exited real early. I think he's a bit of a wuss. I don't know.
Lee Camp: (laughs)
Rick Sanchez: Because we all know that a guy who just came to the United States not long ago and is making minimum wage. (raises his hand, shakes and points to Lee Camp) He's the problem!
Lee Camp: Yes!
Rick Sanchez: He's why America's in its downfall!
…
The full 28 minute episode is embedded below.
In contrast, on 10 October, one day prior to this, Mike Papantonio, presenter of America's Lawyer, presented in the episode, Corporations defend DACA: Don’t deport our cheap labor! a sober and informed discussion of how many large U.S. corporations use cheaper labour from the migrants that U.S. Secretary for Homeland Security Kevin MacAleenan was trying to stop from illegally entering the United States to undercut the wage and working conditions ofthe United States' current workforce. That video is also embedded below.
#leeCampApplaudsCensorship" id="leeCampApplaudsCensorship">Appendix: Lee Camp applauds the silencing of a differing point of view
RT's Redacted Tonight, hosted by Lee Camp, has, for years effectively spoken up against the crimes and lies of the ruling elites of the United States and its allies, with parody, humour as well as sound and insightful reporting. One exception to this is Redacted Tonight's ill-considered and strident advocacy for immigrant rights. In the latest episode of 12 October 2019, Lee Camp has taken this much further and has clearly violated one basic principle of investigative journalism. He has unashamedly applauded the censorship of view opposed to mass immigration and the enforcement of the United States' immigration laws. As he explains in the video, he considers this view to be so odious that 'refugee rights' advocates are entitled to silence them at public meetings such as Secretary for Homeland Security Kevin MacAleenan was, as shown in the video footage of the meeting at Georgetown University. As far as I am aware, MacAleenan's 'repugnant' views are supported by the overwhelming majority of United Staes' citizens.
The episode starts off with the host Lee Camp celebrating the way that Secretary for Homeland Security Kevin MacAleenan was shouted down by crown of refugee and immigrant advocates at a public meeting at Georgetown University. Camp describes Kevin MacAleenan as "a piece of shit" and a "sack of garbage".
Later on, he says, "I think it's very important that we as citizens of this fine nation give him a chance to tell us about all the wonderful things he does you know maybe he'll tell us how he he can fit a child in a small Tupperware container and maybe maybe he'll let us know how to best teach he'll let us know how to best teach Border Patrol agents to be so very racist …"
However MacAleen was not given a chance to explain the U.S. government's immigration laws, border control policies and why the government felt them to be necessary. Each time he tried to speak, he was shouted down by the crowd.
Eventually, Kevin MacAleenan gave up and left without being able to put his case to the meeting - an outcome which Lee Camp applauded.
Great to see that the French are not backing down. Enjoy Ruptly footage of four and a half hours of Gilets jaunes marching in the street. A few translations: On est là! On est là! (We are here! We are here!) The writing on the cross that the man is carrying says, "Hope", with the O as a peace sign. The man with the loud speaker addressing the crowd at the crossroads repeats, "We are citizens above all!" The message on the banner carried by four men reads, "Grève Générale" - General Strike. (Australians lost the right to a general strike years ago - although that should not stop us.) To wit, one of the signs early in the march reads, "La force de l'injustice vient de l'obéissance." "The strength of injustice comes from obedience." Another sign, with Macron's face, "Qu'ils viennent me chercher!" "Come and get me!" Australians should be marching like this against the overpopulation that is now being forced at the pace of a full invasion by our so-called leaders. But we have been infilled, dispersed and thus disorganised. Time to unite as Australians, as citizens.
The discussion in this video opens up new topics on the confusing situation with US 'withdrawal' and Turkey incursion in Northern Syria. Particularly interesting is Marwa Osman's framing of why Turkey would want to move Syrian refugees into Northern Syria. She thinks that Erdogan (Turkey's President) has a problem with all the Syrian refugees living in his country because his people resent the presence of this large number of non-Turkish people. If Erdogan can move these refugees into an area he is trying to clear of Kurds in northern Syria, then he can put the Syrian refugees there. Many of those refugees now have Turkish papers. This would have the further benefit for Erdogan's purposes in that, once Erdogan will have moved so many people there, he will more or less control the area with their presence, since he will be organising their settlement and deployment. Video discussion with Ammar Qaqqaf, Marwa Osman, Mike Raddie and Peter Lavelle.
Stateless Kurds
Most Kurds have Syrian citizenship, but some do not. Syrian citizenship is modeled on French law, generally requiring a demonstration of cultural affinity - such as speaking the language. Children born in Syria must demonstrate Syrian paternity; it is not enough to have a Syrian mother. After 1945 there was a diaspora of Kurds from Turkey to Syria. The Syrian government in power during the transitional period between the fall of the UAR and the coming into power of the Baath government, was worried by this inflow from Turkey, which has long had designs on Syrian territory. In 1962 this government held a Syrian census of Kurds in the North requiring proof of residence in Syria from 1945. According to my source on this,[1] there were many illiterate Kurds in the area, without much engagement with the government, so they might not have understood the requirements, if they knew they were being made. 120 stateless Kurds resulted.
During the war in Syria that began in 2011, the United States and other NATO countries cultivated politically ambitious Kurds for their own purposes. Now they have dumped them and many Kurds are fleeing towards the parts of Syria held by the Syrian Government.
Many terrorists remain in the area, including ISIS. It is feared that Turkey will use such fighters to achieve its own ends. Erdogan, who is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, is thought to want to establish a caliphate along the lines of the old Ottoman Empire.[2] Part of such a caliphate would involve redrawing the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement borders to bring Northern Syria into Turkey.
Any incursion by Turkey into Syria risks being used by the United States and NATO to their own ends, which are destabilisation and power over oil reserves in the region.
NOTES
[1]"The Stateless Syrians," Tilburg University, Switzerland, May2013. https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/52a983124.pdf Note that this work was funded by Open Society Foundations, which is a multi-million dollar political engineering program that funds mass migration.
[2] https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/10/23/turkeys-religious-nationalists-want-ottoman-borders-iraq-erdogan/
Damascus, SANA-Deputy Foreign and Expatriates Minister, Fayssal Mikdad, described the hostile war launched by the Turkish regime on Syrian territories as “invasion,” saying that attacking a sovereign, independent country is considered as an outrageous act against the UN charter and international law which flagrantly contradicts Security Council relevant resolutions. “The Syrian Arab Army, which confronts the terrorist organizations, will confront the foreign invading forces which are present illegitimately on the Syrian territories and it is ready to face all challenges to which Syria is exposed,” Mikdad said in a press statement at the HQ of Foreign Ministry.
He added that the history will hold Head of the Turkish regime, Erdogan, responsible for being a war criminal who has perpetrated all crimes against the Syrian people.
“A liar and a reality forger has no right to claim that he defends the Syrians or accuse the others of crimes he has perpetrated against the Syrian people," Mikdad said.
Mikdad affirmed that the Syrian army has confronted the Turkish aggression on Syria since the beginning of the terrorist war on the country in a lot of sites and it fought the terrorists who were supported and armed by the Turkish regime.
He held the Turkish regime responsible for displacing the Syrians from their lands as it has perpetrated crimes against them through its terrorists and mercenaries, but, the Syrian state has been and still is committed to all its citizens and their return, without preconditions, to villages and towns in Syrian al-Jazeera.
On whether there are any contacts in order to pave the way for the entry of the Syrian army to Syrian al-Jazeera regions or not, Mikdad stressed that the Syrian government has made discussions with all its citizens and expressed, as from the beginning, readiness to make necessary reconciliations, but, the armed powers in that region rejected all attempts and insisted to pave the way, directly or indirectly, for the Turkish occupiers to invade north of Syria.
“The Turkish aggression on the Syrian territories makes Turkey in a position that doesn’t differ from Daesh terrorist organization and many other terrorist groups,” Mikdad said.
He affirmed that the Turkish aggression on Syrian territories will have political repercussions and impacts on the political process in Syria, saying that the international community and the UN should halt this aggression, deter it and make pressures on the Turkish regime to withdraw its army in order to run the political process and the work of the constitutional committee, unless, it will face a lot of obstacles while Turkey threatens to occupy Syrian territories.
Mikdad concluded by affirming that Syria, with its heroic army, will defend each Syrian citizen wherever he was in the framework of its legitimate right according to international law and UN conventions.
Hasaka, SANA-The Turkish regime on Thursday went too far in its aggression on Syrian territories in Hasaka, Raqqa and occupied Tal Halaf, penetrated into Allouk and Katsho villages in the surroundings of Ras al-Ayn and the Industrial region in the city. Meanwhile, the Turkish aggression targeted a number of villages and towns in the countryside of the two cities, concentrating on infrastructure, and vital utilities like water, electricity, dams, oil facilities and residential neighborhoods, and leaving a number of civilians martyred in addition to a huge destruction in properties and infrastructure.
Earlier, SANA’s reporter in Hasaka said that the Turkish regime’s forces continued their aggression with artillery and warplanes on Ras al-Ayn and al-Qamishli cities in Hasaka countryside, and Ein Issa area in Raqqa northern countryside.
Later, the reporter said that a child was martyred in an attack by Turkish regime forces with rocket shells on Qadour Beik neighborhood in Qamishli.
He added that a number of civilians were injured in a Turkish aggression on the western neighborhood of Qamishli through artillery.
Meanwhile, Allouk water station in Ras al-Ayn city went out of service due to a second Turkish aggression on the electrical cables of the station.
Earlier, the reporter said the Turkish regime’s forces have been targeting with warplanes and artillery the city of Ras al-Ayn, claiming the lives of 5 civilians and injuring 9 others, in addition to carrying out artillery strikes and airstrikes on the villages of Naddas, Alouk, Hamid, and Tal Arqam in the city’s countryside, in addition to targeting Saeeda petroleum station on the borders with Turkey, which led to it burning down completely.
The Turkish regime’s forces targeted with rockets the town of Ein Issa in Raqqa’s northern countryside, causing material damage.
SANA’s reporter also said that 3 civilians were injured and dozens were injured as a result of the Turksih regime forces targeting cars on the road between Raqqa and Tal Abyad.
On another note, the reporter said that 100 US soldiers withdrew from Syrian territory in two batches, heading to Iraq along with dozens of vehicles, while ten US officers and a number of foreign experts left the illegal US base of Rumailan and headed to Iraq.
Meanwhile Qasad (SDF) militias continued their oppressive practices against locals, storming dozens of houses in Tal Tamer village in Hasaka countryside, detaining youths to forcefully recruit and send them to conflict zones, and the families of the detainees gathered in front of Gwairan Prison demanding the release of their sons.
On Wednesday, 8 civilians were martyred and 20 others were wounded in a Turkish aggression on Qamishli, Dibasyah and al-Mishrafah in Ras al-Ayn in Hasaka countryside which also targeted service facilities and infrastructure , such as dams and electricity and water plants.
Originally published as "Turkish regime goes too far in its aggression on Hasaka, Raqqa and penetrates into Ras al-Ayn," at https://sana.sy/en/?p=175350, English Bulletin on 10 October 2019.
US corporate media is either pro-Republican or pro-Democrat and they are nearly always in violent disagreement, except on the subject of war. Both sides love war. Here is a rabid example, dated 19 September 2019, from Sean Hannity, of Fox news. (The video is only embedded here for the record. Most visitors probably won't choose to put themselves through all of Hannity's war-mongering tirade.) Surprisingly, the only mainstream US journalist who seems to be against war is also on Fox - Tucker Carlson.
In contrast to Hannity, Tucker Carlson, another Fox News presenter, is outspoken in his opposition to any new United States' war as well as to its current, ongoing wars. Unfortunately, Tucker Carlson still accepts, by omission and commission, some, if not all, of the narrative, used to justify those wars. One example is his unjust claim that socialism, and not the savage and illegal U.S. sanctions, is the cause of all the hardships faced by Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. In spite of these and other shortcomings, Tucker Carlson's weekday new service, which lasts about 45 minutes, in contrast to Sean Hannity's, is well worth a look.
The rest of humanity can breathe a sigh of relief, given that Trump has not yet fully taken up Sean Hannity's advice. In large part this is probably due to the fact that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and their allies in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, seem to have have shown themselves capable of standing up to the United States' bullying. Examples include when the IRGC on 19 June shot down the US drone which had violated Iran's air space and the more recent devastating military defeats inflicted on Suadi Arabian invaders by Yemen's Armed forces.
The Standing Committee on Communications and the Arts is holding a public hearing at Southport, Queensland on Tuesday, 19 November 2019 for its inquiry into the deployment, adoption and application of 5G in Australia. This will be the first public hearing for the inquiry, and will begin a series of public hearings and site visits to gather evidence about the challenges and benefits of 5G in Australia. Information about the inquiry, including the public hearing program, may be found on the Committee’s webpage. See inside for details. There is also a facebook page of the Australian activist group: "We say no to 5G in Australia, which has a lot of information.
COUNCIL MEETING 19 NOVEMBER 2019: Many people enjoy Ricketts Tea House as a relatively modest place to have tea and cakes along a long piece of otherwise aesthetically deserted beach on this Pacific Island that we call Australia. Now Brighton Council is pushing a monstrous 'redevelopment' which will see liquor served seven nights a week until 11.30pm. One can predict the noise, violence, and rubbish, with frightened, disturbed birds. If this goes ahead, Melbourne will lose such a pleasant quiet area for the financial profit of a few. This will also be a prong used to usher in more 'development' in an area which has conserved vegetation and housing well back from the beach. It's another sign of the developer take-over of democracy in this state and in this country. You can go to the council meeting and try to push back against this overdevelopment push. 
Michael McLaren speaks with Clifford Hayes, Member of the Legislative Assembly – Sustainable Australia Party’s Southern Metropolitan region Victoria, about his private members bill which proposes significant changes to the Planning and Environment Act 1987 which will give local councils more control of local planning policy and maximum building heights in their municipal districts. Remember Clifford's important bill will be put to Parliament this Wednesday morning (13 November 2019) about 10 or so. Consider coming to show your support by sitting in the gallery for the vote. 
This book aims to talk truth to power, using intersectionalist feminist concepts, within the strange paradigm of the corporate newsmedia [1] and US-NATO foreign policy. Power is identified as whiteness. White women are enjoined to stand with women of colour against male whiteness, which they are charged with propping up for their own benefit.
The recent announcement by the Victorian State government to ban native forest logging on public land in Eastern Victoria has been strongly welcomed by local environment groups including the Otway Ranges Environment Network(OREN) and Geelong Environment Council(GEC). Although the local communities of Eastern Victorian will need to go through a transition, claims of economic doom and gloom are unfounded. The logging phase out process to be completed by 2030 for Eastern Victoria is very similar to the process used to phase out native forest logging the Otway Ranges that successfully transitioned the local community and economy between 2002 and 2008.
"People have a right to a say in the character of their street, and their neighbourhood. The principle of subsidiarity, of devolving power to the lowest practical level, is important. It is indeed good for people’s mental health if they have a say, and bad for their mental health if they feel powerless. My Bill does two key things – it requires VCAT to follow properly made Council decisions, and it gives Councils, rather than Ministers, the last word on height controls. Hayes says, "At present VCAT is out of control. Its proper role is to ensure that Councils don’t act in an arbitrary or capricious fashion [...]. But VCAT behaves as a Planning Authority in its own right, telling Councils that although the Council wants a height limit of, say, 4 storeys, they think that 6 storeys would be better! Councils should be able to put in place mandatory height controls at a height acceptable to the community. The high rise buildings being approved by Planning Ministers are not in the best interests of residents, overshadowing them and turning Melbourne into a soulless concrete jungle. Communities should have a say in relation to height limits." (MP Clifford Hayes in speech to Protectors of Public Lands Vic. reproduced here.) (Photos by Jill Quirk)
Campaspe Shire has introduced a great new horse welfare change to its Echuca and District Livestock Exchange. It will no longer accept horses that do not have clear origins and destinations. Let us hope that other shires will follow this example. As you may read in 
An article in yesterday's Herald Sun newspaper pointed to a sleight of hand by the North East Link Project in its recent appearance before the North East Link Inquiry and Advisory Committee. (See 
Please consider attending the PEN Sydney annual Day of the Imprisoned Writer event 15/11/19. This year, Quentin Dempster will interview Jennifer Robinson, counsel to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. 
If I could tell my father what has happened in the years
The 100 years from 1870 is described as the innovation century in which there more more inventions, starting coincidentally with the light bulb, than in the rest of mankind's history. For the most part their roll-out into society was slow enough to dampen the impact of the invention. Electricity, for instance, wasn't connected fully in Australia until 1989. But for me, one event stood out, and that occurred on the 4th of October 1957, just before my birthday.
Apex marine predators choose whom they hang with, researchers reveal. White sharks form communities, researchers have revealed. Although normally solitary predators, white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) gather in large numbers at certain times of year in order to feast on baby seals.
This is a call for volunteers to help with organising committees for 50th Anniversary of Vietnam Moratorium Campaign towards the celebration of 50 years on from the Vietnam Moratorium Campaign or offers of memorabilia from that campaign for display.
Rapid population growth has impacted heavily on private and public open space in Melbourne, especially over the last decade. Clifford will discuss some individual case studies and his Private Members' Bill to reintroduce local democracy into Victoria's planning law. Hear him at the Protectors of Public Lands AGM Saturday October 26th, 2019, 2.30pm. Flemington Community Centre, 25 Mt. Alexander Road, Flemington. All welcome!
Clifford Hayes, MP., of Sustainable Australia Party, asked Mr Jennings MP (Leader of the Government) to investigate selling public spaces to local governments at a nominal amount, given that population growth is driving ongoing decline in open space per capita in Melbourne. Mr Jennings' 'nothing to see here' response smacks disingenuously of avoiding the obvious context of the government's massive population growth-engineering and overdevelopment, which is driving an accelerated reduction in space and all kinds of ammenities, as well as democracy.
Two Australian MPs - Barnaby Joyce and Andrew Wilkie - are at last trying to do something to get our government to help Julian Assange, who is currently at the mercy of the British establishment, which threatens to hand him over to a secret trial in the United States. See, 
The US has illegally occupied the north of Syria for some time, using Kurds to fight ISIS. Donald Trump's withdrawal of US troops has permitted Turkey to invade the area. Understandably terrified, the Kurds have approached the Syrian Government for help. The Syrian Government has responded and Kurds have welcomed the Syrian Arab Army into the area for the first time in years. This should reveal to the world that the Syrian Government is trusted by its people - for most Kurds in Syria are Syrian.[1] Did most Kurds in Syria ever really want independence from Syria, or were we looking at a situation were the United States and NATO encouraged the ambitions of a few Kurds, without asking the rest? Russia has asked all foreign troops to leave Syria and has volunteered to leave itself, if the Syrian Government which invited its help, asks it to leave. 
The Council motion is for Seaford Foreshore Activation - does that mean activation for development? Is it seen as an 'idle' asset - not useful or valuable as it is? It would seem so. As the proposal being put to Council is as follows
The discussion in this video opens up new topics on the confusing situation with US 'withdrawal' and Turkey incursion in Northern Syria. Particularly interesting is Marwa Osman's framing of why Turkey would want to move Syrian refugees into Northern Syria. She thinks that Erdogan (Turkey's President) has a problem with all the Syrian refugees living in his country because his people resent the presence of this large number of non-Turkish people. If Erdogan can move these refugees into an area he is trying to clear of Kurds in northern Syria, then he can put the Syrian refugees there. Many of those refugees now have Turkish papers. This would have the further benefit for Erdogan's purposes in that, once Erdogan will have moved so many people there, he will more or less control the area with their presence, since he will be organising their settlement and deployment. Video discussion with Ammar Qaqqaf, Marwa Osman, Mike Raddie and Peter Lavelle.
Hasaka, SANA-The Turkish regime on Thursday went too far in its aggression on Syrian territories in Hasaka, Raqqa and occupied Tal Halaf, penetrated into Allouk and Katsho villages in the surroundings of Ras al-Ayn and the Industrial region in the city. Meanwhile, the Turkish aggression targeted a number of villages and towns in the countryside of the two cities, concentrating on infrastructure, and vital utilities like water, electricity, dams, oil facilities and residential neighborhoods, and leaving a number of civilians martyred in addition to a huge destruction in properties and infrastructure.
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