In March 2019 two law firms filed cases at the ICC against Syria’s President Bashar Al Assad and unnamed members of the Syrian government. Toby Cadman of Guernica Chambers and Rodney Dixon of Temple Garden Chambers were the protagonists in this latest attempt to criminalise the Syrian President and government.
These law firms are basing their case upon the testimony of 28 “refugees” from Syria who claim they were “forced” to flee to Jordan during the war that has been waged against Syria by a collective of interventionist mafia states that form the U.S coalition, determined to achieve regime change in Syria.
Syria is not a signatory to the ICC in the Hague but precedent was set by the ICC when a preliminary investigation was opened into military leaders of Myanmar for alleged crimes against humanity involving deportation of Rohingya people. Refugees fled to Bangladesh which is party to the Rome statute that established the ICC, as is Jordan where more than 1 million Syrian refugees now reside. Guernica Chambers and Rodney Dixon are clearly hoping that the Rohingya precedent will open up the legal avenue for their case.
Both legal firms are claiming the intended deportation of Syrian civillians by the Syrian government as part of their cases.
However, even some members of the legal profession, have already remarked upon possible holes in the case being presented by both legal entities. Kevin John Heller is Associate Professor of Public International Law at Amsterdam University. According to Heller, there is a vital element of the Syrian situation that distinguishes it from the Myanmar situation. Heller argues that in Myanmar, it is evident that the government “intended to drive the Rohingya into Bangladesh” while in Syria it is not evident that the Syrian government intended (in the legal sense) that their civilians end up in other countries. Heller points out that without sufficient evidence, the Syrian government may only be accused of “forcible transfer” but not “deportation”. “Forcible transfer” falls outside the ICC’s jurisdiction because it takes place uniquely on Syrian territory.
There is an accepted truism that when it comes to politics what appears to be a conspiracy is usually just the result of poor government decisions. It is a logical conclusion given that conspiracies require clever conspirators and politicians are generally not seen as being clever. This of course is not correct, its a belief acquired because politicians are continually criticized by the media and even more so by their colleagues.
Like or loath him John Howard was a smart politician – he did after all survive 10 years as PM and won an election after involving us in an illegal war in Iraq. Having said that, how many bad decisions can be made on one issue before we have to conclude that no government could be that incompetent without intent?
And how many bad decisions are allowed to continue because there has been a conspiracy of silence enforced by the need for party unity and the lack of whistle blower protection? Malcolm Turnbull managed to delay an inquiry into the banking sector, perhaps the only time he ever had the support of his entire party colleagues.
The fact that the then government was hounded by the opposition to hold the inquiry is seen as a vindication that a multi party democracy is self regulating and cannot provide the cross party cooperation needed to sustain a conspiracy.
Bipartisan adherence to Milton Friedman doctrine
However there have been instances when such cooperation feeds mutual self interest such as political donations or adherence to a mutually shared doctrine like market economics, something that occurred when Keating embraced the market ideas of Milton Friedman.
This meant there was no political party able to challenge the dangers of free trade or the reliance on an economy dependent on growth. Markets are about money, not morality.
Australian manufacturing past history
In 1970 475,000 cars were made in Australia, the 10th highest rate in the world producing an export industry which saw cars shipped to Asia, NZ and the US. Australia was one of only 13 countries with the capabilities to design and develop mass market cars from scratch.
Much the same applied for rolling stock, buses, tractors and shipbuilding, which contributed $1.7 billion directly in value added to Australia’s Gross Domestic Product. At its peak, the ship construction industry employed approximately 14,600 people across a variety of occupations such as shipwrights, engineers, and naval architects, and supplied a defense industry as well as the local shipping industry, that is now almost all foreign owned.
Shipbuilding, like any manufacturing industry is a driver of innovation and we became the worlds best at producing fast ferries one of which (Incat) held the coveted Blue Riband award for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic ocean and was later acquired by the US navy, where they were built in the US under license.
We were also the 3rd nation to launch our own satellite from our own country because we had at that time a space industry.
Australian manufacturing now
Australia has now become a resource mine for the rest of the world, which leaves it unable to wean itself away from a resource based economy, and highly vulnerable to price swings in just a few commodities. This switch from a diverse economy was achieved through a number of economic decisions, which had the cumulative effect of limiting export opportunities and exponentially increasing our demand for imports.
In 2018 our total imports came to $A314.0b or about $A12,560 per person. But these were made up largely of goods we once manufactured in Australia: Machinery, cars, white goods, furniture, bedding, lighting and electrical components necessary to supply the 221,877 houses we build every year.
Australia now imports over 1million cars at a cost of US $29.4 b as well as $4.4b in spare parts which could have been made locally, all of which has to be paid for by exports, which are are predominately resources with coal, ores, precious metals and gas making up the majority, while Food (grains, meat & primary products) make up only another 13.9%. We are now one of the world's biggest exporters of non renewable resources with Newcastle as the worlds biggest coal port.
How dumbing down our manufacturing sector affects action on climate change
So if we want to take action on climate change we must buy the solar panels that were once made here, as well as the wind turbines and much of the electrics. We will have to pay for these with our resource exports by increasing mining or land clearing and then pay again for the machinery to dig out the minerals. And for every increase in population we will need to pay for that extra $12,560 he or she takes in imports. With a population growth of 395,100 last year this is obviously impossible. We have been conned by economists who used GDP as a indicator of success while aware that it remained insensitive to poverty, unemployment, mortgage debt and balance of payments.
Marine Le Pen has called on French President Emmanuel Macron to dissolve the National Assembly after her party took over the bloc led by the French president in European elections.
Results as at 10.45am Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST)
“The President has no other choice but to dissolve the National Assembly and allow for a more democratic voting system in order to better represent this country’s majority political opinion,” Le Pen said, adding that it's now about her party versus Macron’s.
“The fading of the traditional parties and the polarization between the National Rally party and the [Emmanuel Macron’s] Renaissance party confirms that the political scene is now split between nationalists and globalists and that’s what dominates our political life.”
Le Pen's National Rally party may obtain around 24 percent of votes, according to different exit polls, narrowly beating Macron's party, which is expected to score some 22 percent. So far there were no comments from the president himself but Elysee officials were reported calling the results "disappointing" but not punishing, and not a reason for the government to abandon its agenda. [Source https://www.rt.com/news/460325-lepen-macron-dissolve-assembly/]
It looks like the scare tactics of the latest globalist party in France, Macron's Republique en Marche, have reached their use-by date, as the French among other Europeans, realise that Macron is a hollow man or, as the Italian president once said, "a laboratory creation". This is despite the enormous support from the mainstream media received by Anglophile Macron, who has banned RT from press conferences, pursued journalists for exposing shameful French military secrets, and embraces the false-ideology of 'fake news'. The dogged resistance of the Yellow Vests in France has probably paid off, and it will be interesting to see what new forms and definition this popular French movement will take between now and the next French Presidential elections - which are not until 2022.
Interesting also is the third force in France's trending European Parliamentary elections - Europe Green Ecology (Europe Écologie Les Verts ( EELV ou EÉLV). This is a French ecological political party. Some of its policies coincide more or less with those of Rassemblement National in its desire to protect local production and avoid long-distance imports, and to promote permaculture in urban areas.
It also wants to restrict the profits of middlemen. It is anti-GMOs, wants to limit the use of pesticides, and to increase the place of organic agriculture. Its last policies might encounter resistance from agriculturalists among Rassemblement Nationale supporters and even Yellow Vests: Regarding livestock, it rejects industrialised agriculture and wants to limit the amount of meat raised in Europe in order to minimise nitrates impacting on soils. Its desire to reduce meat-consumption is also based on an old dietary model that associates the consumption of red meat with high cholesterol, but does not examine the role of combining meat and animal fats with starches and sugars, which seems to be the real culprit in obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
A group of birds that are not usually found in Australia attracted hundreds of birders to a relatively remote town on the north coast of NSW, resulting in a significant boost to the Australian economy.
A group of birds that are not usually found in Australia attracted hundreds of birders to a relatively remote town on the north coast of NSW, resulting in a significant boost to the Australian economy.
The new report by UNSW scientists – recently published in the Journal of Ecotourism –estimates that the birders who came to see the Aleutian Terns brought in more than $200,000 in revenue to the NSW economy over about four months.
Aleutian Terns breed in Alaska (USA) and east Siberia (Russia), and usually spend our summer in the North Pacific and parts of Indonesia. To experts’ surprise, they turned up at Old Bar, and on 11 December 2017, Aleutian Terns were photographed using a sandbar that many birders are familiar with for its impressive congregations of shorebirds.
“After word got out to the birding community on 11 December 2017, the who’s who of Australian birders travelled to see these birds until about the end of March 2018,” says study lead author and UNSW Science PhD student Corey Callaghan.
“It was a unique case because there wasn’t just one individual vagrant bird, there were more than a dozen.”
The study by the UNSW Sydney-led team is the first to quantify the economic impact of a vagrant bird – a species observed outside its normal geographic range – in Australia. It estimates the birders’ activity brought between $199,000 - $363,000 to the Australian economy.
The study comes after a similar study published last year, also led by Corey Callaghan, estimated that a single Black-backed Oriole in rural Pennsylvania resulted in more than $US220,000 revenue for that local economy.
“I think together, these studies are demonstrating the exceptional pull of vagrant birds to birders, while also showing the real economic potential of these events. They are contributing to local economies around the world all the time,” Mr Callaghan says.
One of the other authors of the study – Professor Richard Kingsford, Director of the UNSW Centre for Ecosystem Science – says the untapped potential of these visitors also has implications for much-needed increased conservation funding.
“We found that birders were generally conservation aware and would be willing to donate up to $30,000 to view rare birds. Often vagrants are in National Parks and protected areas, providing a potential fundraising opportunity,” he says.
Vagrant bird chasing is just one aspect of the bird watching hobby.
“The total economic benefits of birders, generally, is much higher,” Mr Callaghan says.
“Many birders don’t travel or ‘competitively’ seek out birds; they appreciate them in their local park or bush.”
For example, according to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, up to $US40 billion dollars per year are spent on watching birds in the US.
“Ultimately, all birds depend on their habitats and so the benefits to the economy from birdwatching need to be factored in as real contributions, stacked up against development threats that destroy their habitats, such as land clearing,” Professor Kingsford says.
“The contribution of biodiversity to the economy is quite clear and needs to be factored in more in the future – at the moment, this is rarely done."
Overdevelopment and overpopulation in Australia wreck a lot of things, but some of you might not have thought about how they wreck art. The other day a very 'successful' Australian landscape artist, who sells his paintings for several thousand each, observed that thirty years ago he used to sell his paintings for an average of $3000 each and he still does. "Problem is," he observed, "My house, which cost $60,000 then, is now worth close to a million. Paintings have not gone up.
Inside are eleven responses to a questionnaire about candidates' opinions about Australia's population size. Candidates Nick Shady, Allan Doensen, Ian Dobby, Nigel Hicks want a decrease or don't want growth. One or two want to reduce immigration but have said they would prefer a bigger population. One candidate compares Australia's size to the USA and talks of diverting water to the desert for the purpose of growing the population. Some rely on the idea that better planning will facilitate a bigger population. United Australia candidates seem to have a policy of growing the population after providing infrastructure rather than before, as has been happening.
Questionnaire for candidates in 2019 federal election from Sustainable Population Australia, Victorian Branch
CANDIDATE 1
Candidate Name…Nick Shady…………………………
House of Representatives …………
Political party if applicable …Independent……………………………………………
Running in the seat of……Ballarat…………………………
Questions:
(Please place an x next to the answers that apply ) 1. Would you like to see the current rate of (non-refugee) immigration to Australia
a. increase, No
b. stay the same, No
c. decrease, Yes 2. What do you think is the ideal population for Australia?
a. Less than it is now. No
b. as it is now (between 25-26 million) Yes
c. higher than it is now. No 3. Are you concerned about the pressures of an increasing population on the Australian environment?
a. yes Would you like to make any further comments on Australia’s population ?
I would encourage the voters to think where the direction of our country is going. We don’t seem to have a population policy; we have no drought or water policy either. The infrastructure of our major cities has been left behind in the debate of increased housing and population growth, who will want to live in areas where there are no schools, shops or public transport.
The issues facing the voters of the Ballarat electorate are placing the new estates of western Melbourne on country train lines. Not only does this affect the travel times and punctuality, it harms the commuters by not having an adequate service for the cost to travel.
This then places more cars on the road as people cannot use public transport to travel. The road network on the western side of Melbourne is nearly at capacity; there are no plans for duplication of these roads which need to be done now for the upcoming demand.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………........................................................................ CANDIDATE 2
Candidate Name………Allan Doensen
House of Representatives or Senate ………Senate, VIC
Political party if applicable ………Sustainable Australia Party
Running in the seat of……………… Senate, VIC
Questions:
(Please place an x next to the answers that apply ) 1. Would you like to see the current rate of (non-refugee) immigration to Australia
a. increase
b. stay the same
c. decrease x 2. What do you think is the ideal population for Australia??
a. Less than it is now
b. as it is now (between 25-26 million) x
c. higher than it is now 3. Are you concerned about the pressures of an increasing population on the Australian environment?
a. yes x
b. no Would you like to make any further comments on Australia’s population ?
Sustainable Australia is an independent community party from the sensible centre.
Sustainable Australia has carefully developed a comprehensive policy platform. Within this platform, we have prioritised four big issues:
Secure jobs via a more diverse economy
Affordable housing for first home buyers and renters
Better planning to stop overdevelopment
A sustainable environment and population
Regarding population, we believe Australia should slow its population growth, aiming for a population target of around 26-30 million through to 2050.
You can find all of our policies here:
www.sustainableaustralia.org.au/policies
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………............................................................................... CANDIDATE 3
Candidate Name…………George Zoraya
House of Representatives …………Victoria, Chisholm……………
Political party if applicable ……United Australia Party ………
Running in the seat of………………Chisholm………………………
Questions:
(Please place an x next to the answers that apply ) 1. Would you like to see the current rate of (non-refugee) immigration to Australia
a. increase
b. stay the same
c. decrease 2. What do you think is the ideal population for Australia??
a. Less than it is now
b. as it is now (between 25-26 million)
c. higher than it is now 3. Are you concerned about the pressures of an increasing population on the Australian environment?
a. yes - X
b. no Would you like to make any further comments on Australia’s population?
Answers to questions 1 & 2, directly relate to the Party Policy,
“Our Immigration is based on Infrastructure and not cultural ethnicity”
I also personally subscribe to this view, what is the right number for Australia?
That depends, planned and managed population growth/immigration where we can grow cities, regions to provide growth that does not strain current resources, but allows for our economy to grow and protect the quality of life. This is a motherhood statement, we need planned, managed growth.
Taken from our website below,
”Revising the current Australian Government’s Refugee Policy to ensure Australia is protected and refugees are given opportunities for a better future and lifestyle”
…................................................................................................................................................................
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… CANDIDATE 4
Shireen Morris ALP candidate for Lower House seat of Deakin
Thank you for writing to me regarding Labor’s plans for immigration and the environment.
I am a strong proponent of a well-structured, evidence-based approach to migration policy. Australia is a nation built on migration and has welcomed 7.5 million migrants since World War II – through family reunion, humanitarian visas and skilled migration. My parents migrated from India and Fiji and I was born here. I believe we are all Australian - whether we are Muslim, African, Italian, Indian or British in origin.
I do not agree with the Morrison Government’s proposal to cap permanent migration at 160,000. In contrast, Labor has offered a comprehensive plan for migration based on the best available evidence and analysis.
In Government, Labor will establish the Australian Skills Authority – an independent, labour market testing body to determine genuine skills needs and restrict temporary work visas to those areas. Labor does not want businesses to look overseas and rely on temporary work visas to fill skills shortages. We want Australian employers to have a local, skilled workforce ready to go. No skills shortage should last one day longer that it takes to train an Australian to do that job.
We will overhaul the 457-style visa system so that it isn’t cheaper to pay an overseas worker than an Australian worker. In doing so we will maintain Australian skills and qualifications standards, by ensuring that assessments are approved by Trades Recognition Australia, and not conducted by immigration officials.
Labor will deliver a fairer Long Stay Parent visa so that Australian families from migrant and multicultural backgrounds can reunite with loved ones. The liberals’ unfair Temporary Sponsored visa is completely different from the commitment they took to the 2016 election – with unfair conditions and higher fees, and it cruelly forces families to choose between which parents or in-laws they reunite with by limiting the visa to one set of parents per household.
I believe that these policies will allow us to responsibly grow our population while ensuring environmental sustainability.
Kind regards,
Shireen Morris
Labor Candidate for Deakin
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
….............................................................................................................................................................. CANDIDATE 5 Christine McShane, Candiate for the Lower House seat of Flinders
The United Australia Party believes that the level of immigration should match the infrastructure in place to support it. Before a number could be decided on, we would need to partake in a comprehensive review of existing numbers, hospital waiting lists etc.
Kind regards,
Christine McShane
Candidate for FLINDERS
United Australia Party
CANDIDATE 6
Candidate Name……Leigh Firman…………………………………………
House of Representatives or Senate ………H of R
Political party if applicable …Science …………………
Running in the seat of…………Mallee………………………………………………
Questions:
(Please place an x next to the answers that apply ) 1. Would you like to see the current rate of (non-refugee) immigration to Australia
a. increase x
b. stay the same
c. decrease 2. What do you think is the ideal population for Australia?
a. Less than it is now
b. as it is now (between 25-26 million)
c. higher than it is now x
3. Are you concerned about the pressures of an increasing population on the Australian environment?
a. yes
b. no x
Would you like to make any further comments on Australia’s population ?
The Australian Mainland is almost as big as the continental United States.
If we can find ways to bring water to the arid areas and keep it there, our Population could easily be at least that of the USA.
Their population is around 325 million, ours is 25 million.
So it is a matter of finding leaders and visionaries who want to see our country progress and not the current crop of professional politicians who seem to want to help only themselves
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………................................................................................................. CANDIDATE 7 Dr. Angelina Zubac, Independent candidate for Lower House seat of Kooyong
I have a 7 point national agenda which includes infrastructure for the next 50 years, integrated systems and the building of regional corridors that use the best, sustainable and technological adept systems to connect the cities with the regions. This will solve a multitude of problems.
In regard to population numbers, I think we need to ensure our population grows at a rate that is consistent with our ability to absorb people. The exact number will change on a year by year basis.
Of course, if climate change leads to some people on the islands surrounding us to be covered by water then we need to welcome these environmental refugees because they have no where to go.
Thanks for the opportunity to comment.
Kind regards
Dr Angelina Zubac
INDEPENDENT CANDIDATE FOR KOOYONG
CANDIDATE 8
Candidate Name……Ian Dobby…………………………………………
House of Representatives or Senate … House of Representatives
Political party if applicable …Independent …………………
Running in the seat of………Chisholm………………………………………………
Questions:
(Please place an x next to the answers that apply ) 1. Would you like to see the current rate of (non-refugee) immigration to Australia
a. increase
b. stay the same
c. decrease x 2. What do you think is the ideal population for Australia?
a. Less than it is now
b. as it is now (between 25-26 million)
c. higher than it is now x 3. Are you concerned about the pressures of an increasing population on the Australian environment?
a. yes x
b. no
Would you like to make any further comments on Australia’s population ?
Australia is the best country in the world. Why wouldn’t people want to come here. When they come here, they need to leave their allegiance to their natural country and be loyal to this county and its people.
A friend of mine (Doctor) who’s father immigrated here from China was talking to his son prior to being naturalised. His son said to him that he didn’t have to be naturalised and could still live here to which his father answered No this is my country and if Australia was at war with China, I would fight for Australia. Although we don’t support wars, this is the attitude that is necessary for one to call this nation their home.
Forward planning for infrastructure is necessary to cope as the population grows in order to reduce the stress on services and society .
This has not been the case for the alst 10-15 years and the evidence is seen in the pressures faced by society.
You could help me by alerting voters to my policies and also assist me on Election Day by handing out my How to Vote cards …….. (more about how to vote and FB page ref.) omitted
CANDIDATE 9
Candidate Name Duncan Robert Dean
House of Representatives or Senate … H o R
Political party if applicable …United Australia Party
Running in the seat of La Trobe
Questions:
(Please place an x next to the answers that apply ) 1. Would you like to see the current rate of (non-refugee) immigration to Australia
a. increase
b. stay the same With increases only when sustainable and economically viable to our strong socio-economic future in the Asian region. Not currently increase sustainable.
c. decrease 2. What do you think is the ideal population for Australia??
a. Less than it is now
b. as it is now (between 25-26 million) When the currently atrociously and poorly planned, dysfuntional infrastructure (roads, rail, affordable housing ,electricity prices and more) is back under control nationally under a United Australia Party intervention in government, we will consider increasing sustainable refuge and immigrant intake.
c. higher than it is now 3. Are you concerned about the pressures of an increasing population on the Australian environment?
a. yes Yes I am; as successive governments have neglected the escalating damage to the Australian and global environments caused by poor population planning , dangerously lacking in substance and professionalism, our air is polluting, our species are becoming extinct ,global warming is growing , cost of living is increasing and socio-economic future is bleak
b. no
Would you like to make any further comments on Australia’s population ?
In 2002, Peter Costello released the Intergenerational Report when our population was 19.7 million and forecast that it would be 25 million by 2042. Eight years later Wayne Swan revised the estimate saying we would get to 25 million by 2028
With Australia’s population now exceeding 25 million in 2019, infrastructure is groaning under the strain and cities bursting at the seams. We need to make some serius decions on the nation’s forward population plan.
In recent years Australia’s population growth rate has averaged has averaged at 1.7% per year which is higher then new Zealand, Canada and the USA. It is also compared to the world average for developed countries which is 0.3%.
We face a population bubble if we do not acknowledge that immigration is a key factor in our population explosion and so must keep immigration to manageable numbers.
The United Australia Party immigration policy is based on numbers, not cultural background. Our existing infrastructure cannot cope with current numbers. Housing availability and affordability is becoming out of reach for many everyday Australians.
The UAP immigration policy dovetails with our zonal taxation policy which aims to incentivise regional settlement and reduce big city population numbers.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….............................................................................................. CANDIDATE 10
Candidate Name..Nigel Hicks
House of Representatives or Senate … H o R
Political party if applicable …Independent
Running in the seat of Nicholls
Questions:
(Please place an x next to the answers that apply ) 1. Would you like to see the current rate of (non-refugee) immigration to Australia
a. increase
b. stay the same
c. decrease decrease 2. What do you think is the ideal population for Australia??
a. Less than it is now less than it is now
b. as it is now (between 25-26 million)
c. higher than it is now 3. Are you concerned about the pressures of an increasing population on the Australian environment?
a. yes yes
b. no Would you like to make any further comments on Australia’s population ?
I would like to see a freeze on all immigration for the next 5-10 years with a serious view to minimal if any return after that point.
............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ CANDIDATE II
Candidate Name Peter Charleton
House of Representatives or Senate House of Reps
Political party if applicable Independent
Running in the seat of CASEY
Questions:
(Please place an x next to the answers that apply ) 1. Would you like to see the current rate of (non-refugee)
immigration to Australia
c. decrease 2. What do you think is the ideal population for Australia??
c. higher then it is now 3. Are you concerned about the pressures of an increasing
population on the Australian environment?
a. yes Would you like to make any further comments on Australia’s population ?
We must ensure we are doing the very best by the people/Australians who are here, we cannot add to the pressure on our struggling services, nor can we
continue to rely on an ever growing population just to keep the economy FIGURES “LOOKING” good!
In midst of an interesting and wide-ranging discussion on the Joe Rogan Experience, Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard said that if elected president she would drop all charges against NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
“What would you do about Julian Assange? What would you do about Edward Snowden?” Rogan asked in the latter part of the episode.
“As far as dropping the charges?” Gabbard asked.
“If you’re president of the world right now, what do you do?”
“Yeah, dropping the charges,” Gabbard replied.
Rogan noted that Sweden’s preliminary investigation of rape allegations has just been re-opened, saying the US government can’t stop that, and Gabbard said as president she’d drop the US charges leveled against Assange by the Trump administration.
“Yeah,” Gabbard said when asked to clarify if she was also saying that she’d give Edward Snowden a presidential pardon, adding, “And I think we’ve got to address why he did things the way that he did them. And you hear the same thing from Chelsea Manning, how there is not an actual channel for whistleblowers like them to bring forward information that exposes egregious abuses of our constitutional rights and liberties. Period. There was not a channel for that to happen in a real way, and that’s why they ended up taking the path that they did, and suffering the consequences.”
This came at the end of a lengthy discussion about WikiLeaks and the dangerous legal precedent that the Trump administration is setting for press freedoms by prosecuting Assange, as well as the revelations about NSA surveillance and what can be done to roll back those unchecked surveillance powers.
“What happened with [Assange’s] arrest and all the stuff that just went down I think poses a great threat to our freedom of the press and to our freedom of speech,” Gabbard said. “We look at what happened under the previous administration, under Obama. You know, they were trying to find ways to go after Assange and WikiLeaks, but ultimately they chose not to seek to extradite him or charge him, because they recognized what a slippery slope that begins when you have a government in a position to levy criminal charges and consequences against someone who’s publishing information or saying things that the government doesn’t want you to say, and sharing information the government doesn’t want you to share. And so the fact that the Trump administration has chosen to ignore that fact, to ignore how important it is that we uphold our freedoms, freedom of the press and freedom of speech, and go after him, it has a very chilling effect on both journalists and publishers. And you can look to those in traditional media and also those in new media, and also every one of us as Americans. It was a kind of a warning call, saying Look what happened to this guy. It could happen to you. It could happen to any one of us.”
Gabbard discussed Mike Pompeo’s arbitrary designation of WikiLeaks as a hostile non-state intelligence service, the fact that James Clapper lied to Congress about NSA surveillance as Director of National Intelligence yet suffered no consequences and remains a respected TV pundit, and the opaque and unaccountable nature of FISA warrants.
Some other noteworthy parts of Gabbard’s JRE appearance for people who don’t have time to watch the whole thing, with hyperlinks to the times in the video:
Rogan gets Gabbard talking in depth about what Bashar al-Assad was actually like when she met him and what he said to her, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone bother to do before.
The two discuss Eisenhower’s famous speech warning of the dangers of the military-industrial complex, and actually pause their dialogue to watch a good portion of it. Gabbard points out that in the original draft of the speech, Eisenhower had intended to call it the “congressional-military-industrial complex”.
Rogan asks Gabbard what she thinks happens to US presidents that causes them to fail to enact their campaign promises and capitulate to the will of the warmongering establishment, and what as president she’ll do to avoid the same fate. All presidential candidates should have to answer this question.
Rogan asks Gabbard how she’ll stand against the billionaires for the American people without getting assassinated. All presidential candidates should have to answer this question as well.
I honestly think the entire American political system would be better off if the phoney debate stage format were completely abandoned and presidential candidates just talked one-on-one with Joe Rogan for two and a half hours instead. Cut through all the vapid posturing and the fake questions about nonsense nobody cares about and get them to go deep with a normal human being who smokes pot and curses and does sports commentary for cage fighting. Rogan asked Gabbard a bunch of questions that real people are interested in, in a format where she was encouraged to relax out of her standard politician’s posture and discuss significant ideas sincerely and spontaneously. It was a good discussion with an interesting political figure and I’m glad it’s already racked up hundreds of thousands of views.
________________________
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“Face up to the fact that the Liberal, Labor and Green Parties are not going to move on this issue on anything other than the point of an electoral gun, and conduct ourselves accordingly.” We have to deal with the magic pudding myth which says the world's poor can achieve western standards of living that people living in western countries will be able to more or less maintain their standards of living, that we can maintain our current rate of population growth, and we can protect the environment. It is a lie. You've heard Al Gore talking about climate change and inconvenient truth? Well, this is a convenient lie. It enables environmental groups to duck the population issue, but it is a monstrous and deceitful lie. Researchers who've looked at this say there could be a European standard of living for everyone, with sustainable use of our natural resources, provided the earth's population was no more than two billion. Kelvin also suggests that we ask political candidates if they would support Australia sponsoring a population treaty at the United Nations that committed each country to stabilising its own population. (Speech made at SPA Brisbane Seminar 27 April 2019).
Text for speech: The Political Impasse - Where To From Here?
Speech to Sustainable Population Australia National Conference Saturday 27 April 2019.
My first response to the question “Where to from here” is that we need to seize the high moral ground. Now in the political party which I was a member of for over 40 years, there is a saying “In the race of life, always back the horse called self-interest. It doesn’t always win, but it always gives you a bloody good run for your money”.
And because population stability would serve so many Australians, particularly younger ones, better than rapid population growth, it is indeed very tempting for us to pitch our arguments in that direction. But the population debate is not fundamentally a debate about putting a few more dollars in people’s pockets. It is a debate about values. It is a debate about what kind of world we are going to live in, and what kind of world we are going to pass on to our children.
I don’t know about you, but I am sick to death of commentators and social media smart alecs trying to paint anyone who raises the issue of population as racist or selfish. The opposite is the truth, and we should unashamedly claim the high moral ground.
In August it will be ten years since I first advanced in the Federal Parliament two propositions - that the world had a population problem, and that Australia has a population problem.
As that tenth anniversary approaches I have reflected on what has been achieved since then, and the short answer is, not much. There are few signs of a shift towards population stability and sustainability either globally or here in Australia, and the debate about population continues to be dominated by the greed of the political right, and the vanity of the political left.
But to get a clearer perspective on the population issue, I prefer to go back not 10 years to 2009, but 50 years to 1969. In the summer of 69 Bryan Adams was playing his guitar till his fingers bled. And I was a teenager getting interested in the environment and politics. My father and I got involved in the campaign to save the Little Desert and the Lower Glenelg River in Victoria from being cleared for agriculture.
That successful campaign saw the establishment of the Victorian Land Conservation Council. It was a time that seemed to me to mark the establishment of the modern conservation movement, not just in Victoria, but in many other parts of the world.
I had a very rosy view of the future. I thought Australia’s pioneers had made a lot of environmental mistakes, but we were learning from those mistakes, and in future we were going to properly protect our unique and beautiful birds, plants and animals.
I had a pretty rosy view about everything else, too. I thought that not only were we lifting our environmental game, but that EVERYTHING would get better.
Yes we were involved in a stupid war in Vietnam, but I thought that that the Second World War and the Holocaust committed on the Jewish people was so wicked and so evil that we had learned from that. That there was an appetite for peace. That war and conflict would become a thing of the past, and things would continue to get better and better.
So what has actually happened in the last 50 years? The world’s population has more than doubled - 3.6 billion back then, 7.7 billion now. Australia’s population has also more than doubled - from 12 and a quarter million then to 25 million now.
The effect of this on the world’s wildlife has been nothing short of catastrophic. The latest WWF Living Planet Report says that since 1970, 60% of the population of all mammals, birds, reptiles and fish has been lost. 60% in less than 50 years!
This is terrible, it is a disgrace, and it makes an absolute mockery of the idea that we’re decoupling growth from environmental damage- that we can continue to grow, and our wildlife won’t disappear. Let me repeat - in the last 50 years our numbers went up by over 50%, and the world’s wildlife went down by 60%.
Co-incidence? Hardly. As has been noted by The Overpopulation Project, the total weight of vertebrate land animals 10,000 years ago was - Humans 1%, Wild Animals 99%. Today it is the Wild Animals that are the 1%. Humans are 32%, and our livestock are 67%.
So in my view there are two aspects to claiming the high moral ground. The first is to focus on this environmental havoc and destruction. Part of this should include being involved in the climate change debate. For example, the 2018 Victorian Greenhouse Gas Emissions Report shows total net greenhouse gas emissions went up by 7% between 1990 and 2016. Transport emissions went up by 39%, due to an increase in the number of passenger vehicles by over 70,000 each and every year.
The report explicitly noted that “population growth is an important driver of emissions trends in a number of sectors and sub sectors”.
So Victoria’s rapid population growth of over 100,000 each year fatally undermines all the good work being done by Government Departments and agencies, Councils, business, community groups, families and individuals to reduce our greenhouse emissions. It is indeed pretty hard to reduce your carbon footprint when you keep adding more feet.
We need to cultivate a knowledge and love of the natural world. We should be demanding that environmental education be taught in schools, and that our children are given contact with nature. People will value and protect what they know and love, and the level of ecological ignorance and illiteracy in the year 2019 is frightening.
Dr Harry Recher says we need to act as if other species mattered as much as our own, and accept that we have a moral responsibility to share resources with other species, rather than sacrificing other species for pointless human aggrandisement. The ultimate goal of human societies is not ever more economic activity or the heaping up of endless wealth, but creating communities that allow their members to live good lives.
Dr Recher calls out the failure of the modern environmental movement to address overpopulation. He says that for the most part Australia’s environmental groups fail to discuss population matters, leaving Australia’s population policy to be made by greedy businessmen and politicians lacking in environmental concern. He says we need more discussion of population matters, not less.
I also agree with Dr Freya Mathews, who says that taking biodiversity preservation as the central goal of conservation sets the bar too low. Preventing species from becoming extinct is too modest.
Conservationists want to preserve abundant, wild nature. When we get to the point where our children will only see a platypus or a bandicoot in a zoo or a cartoon, or we’re down to our last few hundred lions and tigers, being restricted to isolated disconnected refuges, more and more of which are gated, high security compounds, then we’ve pretty much lost the plot.
To its great credit, Zoos Victoria has an Extinction Denied Program that includes captive breeding Orange Bellied Parrots. However some of the Parrots can’t get enough feed in the wild to get the strength to fly across Bass Strait to Tasmania, which is Orange-bellied Parrot custom and practice. So Qantas has been flying them across in planes. It feels like life imitating art, where Air New Zealand commercials star a white duck flying by plane across the Tasman.
Now I give full marks to Zoos Victoria and Qantas for their efforts and commitment, but when the birds need a plane to get across Bass Strait, this is not nature in all its beauty and awe-inspiring diversity, these are pathetic splintered remnants of a world we’ve laid waste to.
Dr Mathews says we have to concede that wild animals are, like sovereign peoples, entitled to their territories and ecological estates. The biosphere was shaped by wildlife as much as it was shaped for us and by us, and belongs to them as much as it belongs to us. We have no right to dispossess wild things of their ranges or degrade their environment to the point where it can no longer sustain them.
So we need to seize the high moral ground by focusing on the state of the environment. The 15000 scientists from 184 countries who issued the World Scientists Warning to Humanity in 2017 said we are jeopardising our future “by not perceiving continued rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and even societal threats”. They said “By failing to adequately limit population growth, ....humanity is not taking the urgent steps needed to safeguard our imperilled biosphere”.
One immediate aspect of this, which I encourage you to contact your election candidates and representatives about during this election campaign and indeed beyond, is vegetation cover or tree canopy cover. We need our trees and plants and grasses. It’s not just an environmental question, it’s a public health one. The good news is that drones and satellite imagery and the like enable vegetation cover to be monitored with a degree of precision we’ve never had before. The bad news is that our vegetation canopy cover is declining. So I urge you to contact your political representatives and candidates and ask them to commit to maintaining, and where possible increasing, the vegetation canopy cover in your electorate, on both public and private land. People simply have to stop bulldozing and chopping trees and shrubs down. It has to stop.
The second aspect of seizing the high moral ground is to put population in a global context. Much of our discussion focuses on Australia, as it should, but it seems to me that (a) unless there is action in other countries, no matter what we do in Australia the world is still going to go to hell in a handbasket, and (b) much of our credibility and moral authority comes from taking the global view.
We need to build alliances with like minded people in other countries, and particularly build alliances across religious and ethnic divides.
An important aspect of focussing on the issue of rapid global population growth is that there is a magic pudding myth which is implicit in much of the political debate, including from politicians and activists from the left, who really ought to know better. It goes like this -
The world’s poor can achieve Western standards of living
People living in western countries will be able to more or less maintain their standards of living
We can maintain our current rate of population growth
We can protect our environment.
It’s a lie. You’ve heard Al Gore talking about climate change as an inconvenient truth; well this is a convenient lie. It enables environmental groups to duck the population issue. But it is a monstrous and deceitful lie. In 2010 a group of researchers who studied this question in depth estimated that there could be a European standard of living for everyone, with sustainable use of our natural resources, provided the earth’s population was no more than 2 billion.
In 2013 Theodore Lianos estimated that we could maintain ecological equilibrium, and all have a per capita annual income of $11,000, with a global population of 2.5 billion or less. If the population is larger than 2.5 billion, which of course it is, ecological and social equilibrium requires lower standards of living.
Like the environmental question, there are ways of raising the global population issue in the current Federal Election and beyond. There has been some great work done by Rob Harding promoting the idea of a United Nations Global Population Stabilisation Treaty. This seems to me to have a lot of potential. Indeed it should be much easier to reach agreement around the idea of each country stabilising it’s own population, than to get agreement around emissions reductions targets in the Climate Change talks, where of course serious questions of global equity and historical legacies arise.
I encourage you to contact your candidates and elected representatives, during the election campaign or beyond, and ask them - “Would you support Australia sponsoring a Population Treaty at the United Nations that committed each country to stabilising its own population?”
We also need to talk about fertility. If you think talking about migration is tough, try talking about fertility in a culture that views pregnancy and childbirth as an unmitigated blessing. But right around the world it has to happen, and indeed some countries or communities have had success with “Two is Enough” type campaigns.
After taking the high moral ground through a focus on the environment and global population growth, we need to acknowledge that neither the Liberal Party, the Labor Party or the Greens is going to do anything serious about this issue except at the point of an electoral gun. This is a very hard thing for me to say. I have spent a lifetime in the Labor Party - I think I attended over a thousand Branch Meetings! - and in many ways I still love the Labor Party.
But these parties, until further notice, are all about suppressing and killing off this issue by any means or devices they can come up with. We need a non-racist party that takes a firm line on population and migration. That is why I have joined the Sustainable Australia Party. It has no time for racists or racism. It believes in the non-discriminatory migration policy. It is a party of the centre. Unlike populist parties of the right like One Nation, it believes in strong action on climate change and to protect the environment. It believes in strong gun laws. It believes in action to tackle indigenous disadvantage.
But it doesn’t accept the trebling of Australia’s migration program which started about 15 years ago. We want to return the program from the 200,000 per annum it is now to 70,000, which is where it used to be - in the Whitlam years and the Keating years it was actually lower than that.
So in conclusion - the question I was asked to answer was “where to from here?” First, seize the high moral ground with a focus on the environment and global population issues. Second, push elected representatives with challenging but not unreasonable asks like maintenance of our remaining vegetation cover, and support for a global population treaty. And third, face up to the fact that the Liberal, Labor and Greens Parties are not going to move on this issue at anything other than the point of an electoral gun, and conduct ourselves accordingly.
And as for the question this Forum asks - “what future do we want for Australia?” - the future I want is one in which my children, and their generation, have the same job security and opportunity we had, and can afford a post secondary education and a house with a garden and the chance to see owls and platypus in the wild the way we could. Oh, and the Orange-bellied Parrots can fly across Bass Strait without a boarding pass.
The following letter is to be sent to every independent candidate standing in the Federal Parliamentary election. A similar letter is to be sent to the candidates standing for the smaller parties. It is my hope that raising the profile of Julian Assange now may result in the election, on 18 May, of a Federal Parliament with at least a few members who are prepared to act to try to protect Julian Assange from those in the United States whose criminal conduct he helped expose to the world.
Dear Sir/Madam,
Firstly, thank you for standing as a candidate in the forthcoming election of 18 May.
I write to ask if you will use the election campaign to speak up for Julian Assange, an unjustly imprisoned Australian journalist, who faces extradition from Britain to the United States. Through the Wikileaks news service, established in 2006, Julian revealed to the world war-crimes that United States' rulers wanted to remain concealed. One of the most infamous of those incidents was the 12 July 2007 "Collateral murder" in Iraq by the US crew of an Apache helicopter.
On that day, at least 18 unarmed people, including two journalists employed by Reuters, were killed, and two children injured, by three consecutive attacks from a US Apache helicopter in Baghdad, Iraq. After the incident the Apache crew were heard laughing at the "12 to 15" bodies on the ground and at the sight of a Humvee running over one of the injured.
A subsequent inquiry by the US Army found that the actions of the Apache crew were justified, purportedly because all those killed were armed insurgents. The US Army refused to tell Reuters how two of their staff were killed on that day. Reuters attempted to obtain the video through Freedom of Information requests, but were unsuccessful.
This criminal coverup of murder was thwarted, however, when Private Chelsea Manning, who had viewed the 39 minute video of the incident, gave a copy to Wikileaks. The full version of that Video can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is9sxRfU-ik . A shorter 18 minute version can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0 and is also embedded below. For revealing this and other evidence of US war crimes to Wikileaks, Chelsea Manning was sentenced in 2013 to 35 years in prison.
Collateral Murder - Wikileaks - Iraq
As a consequence of "Collateral Murder" and other revelations, Wikileaks has drawn the ferocious enmity from those vested interests who wanted to keep that that knowledge from us. For example, on 10 August 2016, Hillary Clinton strategist Bob Beckel said, "The way to deal with this is pretty simple. We've got special ops forces. I mean a dead man can't leak stuff. ... The guy ought to be - and I 'm not for the death penalty, so, if I 'm not for the death penalty, there's only one way to deal with it - illegally shoot the son of a bitch." (see 1:14 minute video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rImgsRg-a-8.
All of Wikileaks' material has been republished in the mainstream news all over the world, again and again. No journalist other than Julian Assange has been pursued or punished for doing this. In 2010, an investigation by the Australian Federal Police found that Julian Assange has committed no crime. He did the world a courageous service and Australia should protect him. Unfortunately the ALP, the Libs, and the Greens, do not seem to have the courage to stand up to America or the UK on this matter. As mentioned above, the only party, of which I am so far aware, is standing in this election and is campaigning for Julian Assange, is the Socialist Equity Party.
Will you also stand up for Julian Assange?
It is my hope that, by raising the issue of Julian Assange to independents and small party candidates now, I might help make it possible to have a parliament elected on 18 May that will act to get Julian Assange back to Australia safely.
Australian Greens Leader and Foreign Affairs spokesperson Dr Richard Di Natale has called upon the Australian Government to swiftly intervene to ensure that Julian Assange is not extradited to the United States.
An alarmist headline? Not really. This judgement follows from an analysis of Labor’s proposed temporary visa for parents of existing migrants, entitled, a ‘Fairer Long stay parent visa for Australia’s migrant and multicultural communities’. The proposal was announced on 22 April, 2019.
Labor’s proposal is for an uncapped, low cost, temporary parent visa open to all migrant families who are citizens or are permanent residents. It will cost $2,500 for five years regardless of sponsors’ income or capacity to provide for their parents. All four parents in each household can be sponsored. The children eligible to sponsor their parents include all those who are permanent residents or citizens of Australia.
The visa will be renewable thus enabling parents to stay in Australia for ten years without having to leave. This means it is a de facto permanent entry visa since, as sponsors will know, it is highly unlikely that parents who have lived here for a decade will be required to return home.
Labor’s ‘temporary’ parent visa is an unprecedented offer. No other western country provides any similar parent visa. The trend across Western Europe is to tighten already stringent rules on parents’ access to obtain permanent residence status. The US, though it allows adult migrant children to sponsor their parents, has many hurdles, including that the sponsor must be a citizen and must meet financial capacity guidelines. Even Canada, the most overtly welcoming migration country in the west, has an annual cap of 17,000 on parent visas and, as with the US, sponsors must prove that they can meet stringent financial capacity criteria.
As we will see, Labor’s parent proposal dismantles all the careful rules successive Australian governments have, over thirty years, put in place to control parent migration. The door is now wide open for parent sponsorship. This is an especially attractive prospect of Australia’s more recently arrived Asian and Middle-Eastern communities. And here it should be noted that Australia’s Asian- born population (at just over 10 per cent) is higher than any other western country.
Australia is an enticing destination to migrants from Asia because of the large gulf between the political, social and cultural conditions here and in most Asia countries. Given that many immigrants would welcome in-house help with child care and that most Asians recognise obligations to care for their parents, the potential for Australia’s Asian and Middle-Eastern population to take up Labor’s offer is huge.
At present most permanent entry parent visas are from China, mainly because there is a balance of family rule in place. This requires that half or more of siblings are resident in Australia. Many readers will be aware that there is a waiting list of Chinese applicants for Australia’s existing permanent entry parent visa of near 100,000. They will likely take up Labor’s proposed temporary parent visa. However, many more Chinese will also become eligible. (These are people who don’t meet the present financial criteria for sponsorship, which are outlined below.)
The really big change in eligibility will come from Australia’s Indian subcontinent and Middle Eastern communities. They constitute a larger group of potential sponsors than the Chinese. Most do not currently meet the balance-of-family test or the financial requirements of the existing permanent entry parent visa.
Labor’s proposal will make then eligible to bring their parents to Australia. They will have at least as powerful a motive to avail themselves of this opportunity as the Chinese.
Labor’s proposal could easily generate at least 200,000 parent applications, mainly from Chinese, Indian subcontinent and Middle Eastern country residents of Australia, over a three-year period.
The number depends, of course, on how the visa is implemented. This is explored below. The information we have at this point on Labor’s proposal is that it will be open-ended.
Background
To grasp the significance of Labor’s proposal it needs to be seen in the context of Australia’s present rules governing the issuance of permanent entry parent visas. There are two subclasses for parent visas in operation. One is a contributory parent visa where the parents have to pay some $43,600 as an upfront contribution to the likely public costs of their stay. In 2017-18 6,015 of these visas were issued. By June 2018 there was a backlog of applicants of 44,886. The other entry point is a non- contributory parent visa with much lower up-front fees. In 2017-18 1,356 of these visas were issued. For this non-contributory visa there was a backlog of 50,642 and a wait time of over thirty years.
In effect, together the current permanent-entry parent visas are capped at less than 8,000 a year.
Moreover, both permanent-entry parent visa subclasses are only available to pension-aged parents who can meet the balance of family test. This is why most of the parents visaed are from China – since most Chinese residents are from one, or at the most, two sibling families.
However, there is another parent visa option, soon to be available for those wishing to sponsor their parents. This is a temporary parent visa which the Coalition legislated in November 2018. Residents can apply from 17 April 2019 to establish their eligibility as sponsors of their parents.
There is an annual cap of 15,000 parents and accompanying dependent for this new visa. It is for five years, and will cost $10,000. There is a limit of one set of parents for each sponsoring household. To qualify as a sponsor, the Australian resident family’s annual taxable income must exceed $83,000. [Candobetter net Editor: Reference in full paper, see end of this article.]
The visa can be renewed, once, for another stay of up to five years, but the parents need to leave Australia before applying for this renewal.
There was no official statement of the likely number of applications at the time. However internal departmental sources indicate that the 15,000 annual quota is likely to be filled.
Labor’s proposal
Labor’s temporary parent visa proposal was announced in response to the Coalition’s temporary- parent-visa legislation. In response to lobbying from migrant communities, the Coalition promised prior to the 2016 election that it would establish a new temporary visa for parents. As is evident, it took some time for the proposal to be legislated.
When the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, announced Labor’s proposed visa on 22 April 2019, he declared that the Coalition’s temporary parent visa option was ‘heartless, callous and cruel’. It was claimed that the Coalition’s visa was far stricter than originally promised, thus justifying Labor’s much more generous alternative.
As indicated, Labor’s initiative potentially opens the flood gates for parent migration. It appears to be a reckless and irresponsible policy bid put forward to garner migrant votes.
Did the Labor leaders consider the possible implications? It is doubtful that they did.
Please write to Julian. He is 23.5 hrs day (sometimes all day) in a prison cell, without even access to the prison library. He reads the letters he gets, although there is a delay in delivery, probably due to their going through some censorship or security process. The international public need to greatly ramp up their voice against what is happening here.
Below are the 'Sentencing Remarks' of Judge Deborah Taylor. She gives no consideration to the fact that Assange exposed war crimes, nor to the fact that he is pursued by a US Government responsible for those war crimes. At the end she says his sentence is subject to any further legal claims - and we know that means the US Government. In this she seems to me like a Mafioso lawyer delivering someone to the mob, or to the Gestapo. The Australian Government stands silently looking on, an abject colonial body.
WRITE TO:
Mr Julian Assange
DOB: 3/07/1971
HMP Belmarsh
Western Way
London SE28 0EB
UK
Sentencing Remarks of HHJ Deborah Taylor
R v Julian Assange (Bail Act offence)
Sentencing Remarks of HHJ Deborah Taylor
Southwark Crown Court
1 May 2019
Julian Assange, on 11 April 2019 you were convicted at Westminster Magistrates Court of an offence
under s.6(1) of the Bail Act 1976, and committed to this court for sentence.
On 24 February 2011 the Westminster Magistrates Court ordered your extradition to Sweden to face
allegations of sexual offending, including an allegation of rape. You were granted bail on conditions
throughout your appeals against this order, which culminated on 14 June 2012 in the rejection of
your application to re-open the Supreme Court dismissal of your appeal. On 19 June 2012 you
entered the Ecuadorean Embassy. On 28th June 2012 a notice requiring your surrender to Belgravia
Police Station on 29 June 2012 was served on you in the Ecuadorian embassy. You did not surrender
and a warrant for your arrest was issued by Westminster Magistrates Court on 29 June 2012.
On 16 August 2012, Ecuador granted you diplomatic asylum status. You remained in the Embassy
until 11 April 2019 when that status was revoked. Police entered at the invitation of the Government
of Ecuador, and arrested you. You were brought before Westminster Magistrates Court. Bail Act
proceedings were initiated and you were convicted of the s.6(1) offence. You have not appealed that
conviction. The background to this offence is now put forward as mitigation, rather than as any
reasonable excuse for your failure to surrender.
I have considered, and had regard to the Sentencing Council Guidelines for failing to surrender to
bail, the seriousness of the failure to surrender, the level of culpability and the harm caused. This
was in terms of culpability a deliberate attempt to evade or delay justice. In terms of harm, there
are several features of this case which put this in the A1 category, but in addition, are exceptional in
seriousness, and therefore in my judgment put this offence outside the Guideline range for even the
highest category offences. The Magistrates Court has committed the matter to this court having
considered that its powers of sentence were insufficient.
Firstly, by entering the Embassy, you deliberately put yourself out of reach, whilst remaining in the
UK. You remained there for nearly 7 years, exploiting your privileged position to flout the law and
advertise internationally your disdain for the law of this country. Your actions undoubtedly affected
the progress of the Swedish proceedings. Even though you did co-operate initially, it was not for you
to decide the nature or extent of your co-operation with the investigations. They could not be
effectively progressed, and were discontinued, not least because you remained in the Embassy.
Secondly, your continued residence in the Embassy has necessitated a concentration of resources,
and expenditure of £16 million of taxpayers’ money in ensuring that when you did leave, you were
brought to justice. It is essential to the rule of law that nobody is above or beyond the reach of the
law. Orders of the Court are to be obeyed
Thirdly, you have not surrendered willingly. Had the Government of Ecuador not permitted entry to
the Embassy, you would not have voluntarily come before the court.
I have taken into account all that has been said on your behalf in mitigation, including the
background history of this case which has been set out in some detail. These are matters which
have previously been argued before the Chief Magistrate in relation to the instigation of s.6
proceedings and dismissed in her Ruling of 13 February 2018 on your application to withdraw the
warrant, and again before the District Judge in the contested hearing on 11 April 2019 in which you
did not give evidence, and they were rejected as affording any defence. They include the history of
the Swedish investigation and proceedings, with the discontinuance of the proceedings in 2017, and
your expressed fear of being extradited to Sweden but then rendered to the USA. As far as the UN
Working Group on Arbitrary Detention opinion is concerned, this is not binding on this court, and, as
is apparent from the ruling of the Chief Magistrate, with some personal knowledge of the matters
relied upon, it was underpinned by misconceptions of fact and law.
It is no longer argued that these factors amount to good reason for your failure to surrender. In my
judgment they afford limited mitigation in relation to this offence. The argument that as a result
this is a category C case is wholly unrealistic given the circumstances.
Whilst you may have had fears as to what may happen to you, nonetheless you had a choice, and
the course of action you chose was to commit this offence in the manner and with the features I
have already outlined. In addition, I reject the suggestion that your voluntary residence in the
Embassy should reduce any sentence. You were not living under prison conditions, and you could
have left at any time to face due process with the rights and protections which the legal system in
this country provides.
Similarly I reject also the suggestion that forfeiture of money by you or others who provided security
for your attendance when you failed to attend court should reduce the sentence of the court. The
money was security attached to an obligation to ensure your attendance, not a down payment to
offset or reduce any sentence you may receive for not complying.
I have taken into account the medical evidence of Dr Korzinski and Dr Ladbrooke as to the mental
and physical effects of being in the Embassy for a prolonged period.
It is difficult to envisage a more serious example of this offence. The maximum sentence for this
offence is 12 months. You do not have the benefit of a plea of guilty. You have made a written
apology today, the first recognition that you regret you actions.
In my judgment, the seriousness of your offence, having taken into account the mitigation merits a
sentence near the maximum.
The sentence is imprisonment for 50 weeks.
Any time spent on remand in respect of this offence from the time of your arrest on 11 April 2019
will count against your sentence.
In respect of this offence you would fall to be released after serving half of the sentence, subject to
being returned to custody if you commit any further offences during the remainder of your licence
period. That of course is subject to the conditions and outcome of any other proceedings against
you.
This article is about the United States efforts to kidnap Julian Assange fom Britain where he has been illegally arrested. It was previously published as Pray and Weep (7/7/19) by Karen Kwiatkowski | LewRockwell.com.
There is great evil being perpetrated by Washington D.C. here and around the world.
A persistent terrible hate for life, liberty and humanity arrived on little cat feet and has taken over our country. This did not begin with Trump, but sadly it also is not going to end with him either.
Trump promised to drain the swamp, implying change, transparency and accountability.
Instead he brought in neoconservative king-makers and warmongers, and allowed their influence to grow disproportionately, while his co-dependents in the other party facilitate the agenda of death.
The criminal pursuit and indictment of Wikileak founder, Julian Assange is the proof in the pudding. The 40 page criminal complaint contains a lot of detail but not much crime. In fact, the “crimes” are more like descriptions of how journalism is done in the information age, if it is true that the job of journalism is to tell the stories, name the names, and state the facts that governments don’t want told, named or stated.
In a normal world, none of this is worth much energy or attention. There is very little legally here to work with, and success so far on the part of the US Government has been solely via a reliable judge in the Eastern District Court of Virginia, and other people’s money and other people’s governments, beholden or paid by the US.
But in the world that exists today, we see these overblown aggressive tactics and we can feel the excitement, the goosebumps and the hot necks of the FBI and CIA suits as they make their bones.
Chelsea Manning is back in prison, ordered back into solitary. She is not the person she was after years of torture, isolation and chemical interrogation. Ironically, her cognitive function as a result of her previous treatment is likely to render any future interrogation useless in court, legally and practically. She received the Jose Padilla treatment, albeit refined by some years of USG practice. Her resultant mental malleability may have produced the ideal Soviet Amerikan Woman.
The US appears to be a nation of laws, and yet, we absolutely are not. One of many lessons and perspectives we gain from the study of Julian Assange is just that. US political influence and debt-funded largesse resulted in Assange’s ejection from the Ecuadorian Embassy into the UK prison for terrorists in Belmarsh. US domestic corruption and misreading of the Constitution produced his indictment.
Furthermore, US government employees, from the DoD, FBI and the CIA have been interviewing Assange in Belmarsh Prison, prior to any extradition decision.
Interviewing is the wrong word. I’d like to say doctoring him, because it would be more accurate, except that word implies some care for a positive outcome. Chemical Gina has her hands in this one, and we are being told that Assange is being “treated” with 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, known as BZ. What BZ does, from the New Yorker:
“Exposed soldiers exhibited bizarre symptoms: rapid mumbling, or picking obsessively at bedclothes and other objects, real or imaginary. “…The drug’s effect lasted for days. At its peak, volunteers were totally cut off in their own minds, jolting from one fragmented existence to the next. They saw visions: Lilliputian baseball players competing on a tabletop diamond; animals or people or objects that materialized and vanished. ….
Soldiers on BZ could remember only fragments of the experience afterward. As the drug wore off, and the subjects had trouble discerning what was real, many experienced anxiety, aggression, even terror. Ketchum [Dr. James Ketchum, DoD Edgewood Arsenal, MD] built padded cells to prevent injuries, but at times the subjects couldn’t be contained. One escaped, running from imagined murderers. Another, on a drug similar to BZ, saw “bugs, worms, one snake, a monkey and numerous rats,” and thought his skin was covered in blood. “Subject broke a wooden chair and smashed a hole in the wall after tearing down a 4-by-7-ft panel of padding,” his chart noted. Ketchum and three assistants piled on top of the soldier to subdue him. “He was clearly terrified and convinced we were intending to kill him,” his chart said.
One night, Ketchum rushed into a padded room to reassure a young African-American volunteer wrestling with the ebbing effects of BZ. The soldier, agitated, found the air-conditioner gravely threatening. After calming him down, Ketchum sat beside him. Attempting to see if he could hold a conversation, Ketchum asked, “Why do they have taxes, income taxes, things like that?”
The soldier thought for a minute. “You see, that would be difficult for me to answer, because I don’t like rice,” he said.”
BZ is an interesting drug, certainly not the only one used by the US government, but one of them.
Why give it to Assange? What do they want from him? Is it truth they seek, or more information, or is this whole farce something more like obsessive retaliatory rage at feeling powerless, as the world laughed at US State department memorandums and became angry at the idiocy and hate demonstrated by US soldiers 15 years ago. Or maybe something more sinister – that they need Julian Assange psychologically and physically drawn and quartered because he revealed state corruption and weakness? Is it because to the state this is the war, the real war it always fights, a war with the rest of the population for its very survival? Or is Ray McGovern on to the real reason the deep state wants to destroy him?
It is difficult to know if the state is more sociopathic or more psychopathic. What US government employees and/or contractors are currently doing to Julian Assange, and those who may have used Wikileaks as a journalistic avenue, may indicate it is the latter. Torture, isolation, brutality, and the use of psychotropic drugs during interrogations and hiding this from the defendant’s own lawyers by denying them access — this is Lubyanka in the 1950s, not London and DC in 2019.
Allow me to get to the point. The latest word I have received from England is as follows:
“[Julian Assange] is presently under close observation in prison hospital because he has suffered ‘severe transient psychotic episodes.’ My source(s) indicate these episodes occurred after two sessions of coercive interrogation at the hands of UK and US officials. The source(s) stated the HUMINT interrogators used psychotropic drugs in the course of the sessions.”
There are no words. Nothing can be said. 2 plus 2 does equal 5. The FBI is our own special Cheka. The CIA Director’s hands are wet and her organization does not serve American values. Rather than choosing to stay secretive for national security, the modern CIA must stay secretive in order to survive, because it has become functionally illegal. Our president, who puts America first, is putting American values last, even as he tweets his concern for freedom of speech.
The agenda is to destroy Assange as a human being, and they may well succeed. In doing this evil deed, in all of our names, America herself – whether we put her first, last, or somewhere in the middle – will have dug her own grave.
John Bolton wants US oil corporations, instead of PDVSA, which is owned by the Venezuelan people, to be able to extract, export & sell Venezuela's natural wealth (see embedded video).
The most recent of many attempts by the United States to overthrow the government of Venezuela has also failed, but not without a terrrible cost. According to a 27 page report by economists Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs (pdf here) the sanctions imposed on Venezuela since 2017 and theft of billions of dollars of Venezuela's gold and bank deposits have cost the lives of 40,000 Venezuelans, yet, in spite of all these hardships, ordinary Venezuelans, including members of the armed forces, rallied to defeat the attempted coup of 30 April.
The United States government leaders have made little effort to conceal their motives for having caused this much death and suffering. Watch below, National Security adviser John Bolton (pictured above), explain to Fox News on 29 January 2019 how United States' oil corporations will soon be able to able to take over the extraction and export of Venezuelan petroleum once their actions against Venezuela achieves their goal of having their appointed 'President' Juan Guaido take over from from the elected President Nicolas Maduro.
"We're looking at the oil assets. That's the single most important income stream to the government of Venezuela. We're looking at what to do to that. We're in conversation with major American companies now. I think we're trying to get to the same end result here."
"It'll make a big difference to the United States, economically, if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela. It'd be good for the people of Venezuela. It'd be good for the people of the United States. We both have a lot at stake here making this come out the right way."
The above confirms the worst fears of the motives of the neo-con swamp that still controls the White House's foreign policy: All their platitudes about 'freedom' and 'democracy' for Venezuela are nothing more than a cynical smokescreen to cover their plans to take from Venezuela its natural wealth and hand it across to their corporate mates.
Until these thieving, lying criminals are thrown out of office and, together with their military industrial complex mates, are made to face justice, there cannot be peace.
An impressive video that misses almost no aspect of what the growth lobby is doing to this country, and backs up its criticism with some interesting new policies, some of them drastic - but the situation is drastic. Matt Bryan for Hughes
I'm developing an unreasonable sense of proprietorship over Australia's island state,Tasmania. One could call it a "Tasmania mania", I suppose. How did this seemingly irrational neurosis arise? Am I alone?
About 15 years ago I realised that Victoria, where I live, was doomed to never-ending development, due to government insistence that we have incessant population growth, heavily supplemented from overseas immigration. You would wonder how an ordinary citizen could actually notice that the population was growing. Surely the changes would be happening in places where the people have not yet settled and would be out of sight and out of mind? To an extent, this was true for a while, and you had to go to the outskirts of Melbourne to see the sea of new rooftops on the side of highways trying to hide behind high walls. Those living in the "growth corridors" would complain of the massive changes in their local areas. They would moan in agony at the farmland and treasured bush land they could see being sacrificed for yet more suburbs. They tried to make us hear about what was happening and we listened but 15 years ago our established suburbs remained intact and our lives were relatively undisturbed so we were complacent.
In more recent years, a heavy foot has trodden on the accelerator of population growth and development. There seemed to be a spark of recognition from governments that Melbourne needed to be contained in some manner. The established suburbs were told they had to take their share of the population growth load. In came the bulldozers and, at a faster and faster rate, we all noticed empty blocks in our streets, and we struggled the very next day, post demolition, to remember what had been there the day before. Some of the demolitions got publicity. The gracious Victorian or Edwardian large houses or mansions, giving way to the wrecking ball after unsuccessful but valiant struggles by locals to preserve heritage and amenity, were and continue to be soon just large cavities. All vegetation is invariably removed, except for perhaps a token tree if not in the way of the giant yet to be constructed. Noise and the disruption of continual roadworks and infrastructure upgrades are now part our lives in Melbourne's suburbs. We live with short term uncertainty but long term resignation that our home environment will continue to be heavily degraded.
I think of not only the residents who are being inconvenienced and disadvantaged, but of the suburban wildlife - especially birds who will all but disappear. Once a large garden is excavated and transformed into a basement car park, that land is no longer a home for underground insects or flowering plants or trees. Habitat, in other words, is wiped out in an instant. "Birds can go somewhere else," they say. Well they can do this if there is somewhere else to go, but that means nevertheless that they are gone from the area. You will no longer get to hear them or see them. That is a huge loss that impoverishes your soul and those of your children, possibly before you can even put it into words.
I used to derive some comfort from the actual possibility that I can always move to Tasmania. I have visited Tasmania since my childhood as my grandparents and many cousins, uncles and aunts lived there. My family had a whole summer life-style there every year and so it was in a sense a second home. As a child I appreciated its quietness and beauty. Its sense of history, Hobart having been settled earlier than Melbourne, was reflected in many of its buildings. Tasmania, in reality, is not my home though. I have never lived there and I don't own any property there. But over the last 20 years it has been in the back of my mind as a possibility, an escape-hatch, as Melbourne's population surges towards 10 million (the same population of the whole of Australia when I was in primary school.)
For these reasons I feel a sense of alarm when I hear Tasmania mentioned in the news or on television or radio programs. I feel anxious, on the alert. What are they going to do? What are they going to change? I used to delight in the fact that whenever I returned to Tasmania, even in my adult years, it was always more or less the same; low key.
Yesterday I found my Tasmanian grandfather's 100+ year old scrap book. It provides an insight into life on that island at the time, through my grandfather's youthful passion for long-distance running. There are photos, newspaper clippings, and athletes programs about the many races and carnivals of the Hobart Harrier Club. The brown pages of the album are also filled out with images of relaxed beach goers and reunions of the old competitors 40 years later.
One album does not describe a whole lifestyle, but I could not help forming the impression that life was full and that those young men a century ago had made a life for themselves which was both physically and socially rewarding. This was in a small city in a state where the entire population of was only about 180,000"
My mother grew up in Hobart of the 1920s and 1930s. At that time her parents, as did many people in Hobart, owned a beach shack on the other side of the Derwent River to the city. She told me that she and her friends would catch a ferry to O'Possum Bay to stay on weekends. On arrival they would drop their bags at the house and proceed to the beach. If they saw anyone else on their chosen beach, they would move away around a point to another beach.
In the 1950s and 60s people in Hobart still had their beach shacks. My older cousins enjoyed sports such as surfing, water skiing, and sailing. I'm sure they worked hard at their weekday jobs or at school, but what I saw, was an easy accessibility to pastimes that would to most now seem like a luxury.
One of my cousins told me a few years ago that he would never move to Melbourne, as the 'lifestyle' wouldn't suit him. I found this amusing, as it seemed to me that no-one would actually choose the lifestyle on offer in Melbourne!
I wonder if the 'lifestyle' will suit him if the population of Hobart grows as the current premier intends it to.
Having spent the in Tasmania more than half a century ago, and hearing tales of the life there yet another 50 years before that, I feel I know the place a bit. I also know Melbourne very well and have watched it change from a rather quiet city, where you could get out easily into the country on the weekend just for an afternoon and where, if you could drive to a place, you could be pretty sure of being able to park your car there. You could be spontaneous about going places. All that has gone. Now, as often as not, I will hatch a plan involving travel in or around Melbourne, and then abandon the idea because of the uncertainties of traffic and parking.
I would like to keep alive the escape-hatch dream of simply moving to Hobart when Melbourne reaches complete bursting point. My anxiety levels rise when I hear of Hobart's fast growing population or when anyone puts it on the map for any reason. I heard this morning that MONA (Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart) was to be expanded further, and I felt sad. I like MONA but to me it is not Hobart, and why does it have to be bigger? Part of its attraction is the setting and, if it expands, more of the setting will be lost.
I would prefer not hear any news coming from Hobart. I want it to be quiet and unobtrusive and to just wait for me in case I need it.
"Algorithms seem to me, at this point, the closest thing we have to demons." (Douglas Rushkoff) Douglas Rushkoff is a highly stimulating speaker with a comprehensive but original view of the problem of internet tyranny. He approaches it as a problem of monopolies and corporations in the context of economic growthism, which he argues is unsustainable and ultimately destroys companies because it costs them too much. He recommends long-term business models, which aim to support their participants. He notes that family businesses tend to do better and last longer because they have this model, rather than the growth model. In his lecture he is able to travel across several disciplines, back and forth, and to tie economics to society and soil degradation. He makes concrete and inventive recommendations. This is less about internet censorship than about the destruction of local markets and the sidelining of entire populations. Rushkoff is the author of multiple books, but in this video, he talks about a 2016 publication called, Throwing rocks at the google bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity.
These photographs are of horses at Barmah Vic, and Singleton NSW. As we are aware, they are not native to this country. They were introduced here by pioneers/settlers to help settle this land. They were carted off to war - 300,000 - never to return. They ploughed the fields and transported goods/settlers all over this country. They are used in entertainment, such as rodeos and racing, and even left to die in paddocks. At the end for many are the knackeries, some for overseas human consumption. Horses are not even recognised as “livestock” in Acts of parliament. What a bum deal these magnificent animals have endured from mankind. Now they are being slaughtered by this government, in the name of being ‘feral’ and destroying the land. (Photographs copyright Renee Neubaur. Sincere thanks from Candobetter for permission to use them.)
In my opinion the damage they do to the land is exaggerated. Pigs and other animals do more damage. The committee that are already looking after these horses are doing a magnificent job and I say that Parks Vic should include the local committee there to manage these horses.
In Singleton (NSW) they were shot, destroyed, “culled,” killed, or whatever, from the air by helicopter. Our leading animal welfare organisation, the RSPCA agreed to all of this and called it “culling.” I call It murder.
There are other means of controlling the increasing population and for management of these horses. I think the people that have claimed “ownership and control” of this problem (Parks Victoria) have got it all wrong. They do not listen to the experienced hands-on experts that can help solve it.
Some ways to bring the population down that do not involve cruelty or culling:
- Keep herds intact so that stallions can limit who breeds, as they normally do. If you shoot them and the older mares and fragment the herd, the younger ones get to breed, increasing fertility.
- To encourage lower fertility in an intact herd, limit the brumbies' territory - probably by fencing. Ensure, however, that they have adequate territory to remain healthy.
- You can also geld all males.
All these things can be done by the self-elected custodians already there (the committee).
Barmah brumbies
Regarding the brumbies at Parks Victoria at Barmah: The RSPCA is ‘advising’ on their condition, health and welfare, but it is only volunteers that are that are hands-on, keeping the animals fed. Many horse loving Victorians are donating.
These horses are starving, as you can see in the pictures, as Parks fines anyone who feeds animals. Some have suffered and died; some are still suffering - but a voluntary brigade is now feeding them. That is how the horses' lives are being prolonged, but it is costing volunteers thousands of dollars. Neither Parks Victoria nor the RSPCA help financially. They wait until the horses get to the body score of no return then shoot them. This is a cruel kind of neglect.
Parks Vic as custodians legally responsible for proper care of these animals
Parks Victoria have placed signs at the park entrances, warning that “feeding of animals in this park will incur penalties.” In itself this indicates that Parks Victoria are the custodians and/or persons in charge of these horses. Under the laws of the Prevention of Cruelty To Animals Act, (section 9 (f) ) they are therefore obliged to:
”supply proper and sufficient feed/drink/or shelter”
or be prosecuted by one of the two enforcement agencies privileged to enforce this act of parliament. These agencies are the RSPCA or the Department of Environment and Primary Industries, both of which are, at present, silently passing the buck! I have written to both agencies asking for their help but the response has been silence.
The RSPCA have a duty of care and must obey their own policies of the “five freedoms”[1] set out in their own charter, with a mandatory obligation to investigate and follow procedure’s under POCTAA (Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act) to treat Parks Victoria as an alleged perpetrator for not following their duty of care as per the “Act”.
'Observing a forebearance' which allowed custodians to do nothing, was repealed a few years ago. Now anyone can be charged with an offence if they know that offence is being committed. No one person or government organisation is exempt from prosecution/investigation under POCTAA. Case law has now shown this in judgements/ prosecutions, such as Victorian Railways Board v. Snowball when RSPCA successfully prosecuted Railways Victoria for cruel transportation of horses. As the chief inspector/inspectorate coordinator for near two decades at RSPCAVic, I was there, in the court.
In essence the RSPCA must dissolve their MOU’s (memorandums of understanding) between other animal law enforcement agencies and abide by duty of care, for the sake of these horses - not “feral animals” but horses that were introduced by us in pioneering Australia.
Singleton army base killing fields
The brumby control situation is at present itself out of control. The latest effort, in February 2019, occurred at the Singleton army base, a place with grasslands which horses have made their home. This control effort could have been described, in my opinion, as a killing field, where many horses were slaughtered by aerial shooting. In this awful way of “culling” animal herds, foals may be left behind and any injured horses will suffer. Singleton can only be described as the horse killing fields of Australia, and a blight on our “lucky” country. It has to stop now.
The cruelty and abuse of animals must be controlled ASAP and federal and/or state governments must support an independent office of animal welfare as, at present, the only agencies privileged to enforce this strong Act of Parliament are the RSPCA, which is a charitable society, DEDJTR (now divided into DJPR and DoT)[2] and VICPOL. The RSPCA has to rely on the sympathy of the commmunity and donations to generate their standing. This is unsatisfactory.
Article by Barrie Tapp, Animal Cruelty Hotline Australia. Phone 1800751770 to report cruelty/abuse.
NOTES
[1] “Our animal welfare philosophy is grounded in the belief that the welfare of an animal includes its physical and mental state and that good animal welfare implies both fitness and a sense of wellbeing. The RSPCA considers that an animal’s welfare should be considered in terms of five freedoms:
1. Freedom from Hunger and Thirst
2. Freedom from Discomfort
3. Freedom from Pain, Injury or Disease
4. Freedom to Express Normal Behaviour
5. Freedom from Fear and Distress.
[2] The Victorian Government changed, from 1 January 2019, the Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources (DEDJTR) into two new departments – the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions (DJPR) and the Department of Transport (DoT).
While expressing sympathy for the child injured by a dingo on Fraser Island around midnight on April 18, and for the child’s parents, the National Dingo Preservation and Recovery Program (NDPRP) wishes to draw attention to the long-term mismanagement of the high conservation value dingo population on the island by the Queensland authorities. The NDPRP considers that the continued mismanagement of tourism to Fraser Island by the Queensland government and of the dingo population by the Queensland environmental authorities have been major contributing factors in such incidents.
(Posted on behalf of the National Dingo Preservation and Recovery Program Inc.)
Tourism numbers to Fraser Island have grown over the past decade to mass proportions which are not consistent with the preservation of the environmental and wildlife values which are the basis of the Island’s World Heritage Listing status. This is particularly the case at peak visitation periods like Easter.
What should be managed as a high conservation, ecotourism location of world significance is being marketed as a cash cow for mass tourism. Much of this mass tourism impacts on dingo breeding locations and the dingoes simply cannot avoid the human traffic. Instead of tourist visitation to the island being managed as a privilege, and visitor numbers restricted accordingly, Fraser Island is being managed as a Disney style theme park.
Camping on Fraser Island should be strictly limited to designated camping areas, which exclude dingoes. Poorly regulated, free range camping on a mass scale should not be permitted. An alternative management approach of this kind would respect the high environmental values of the island, protect campers and limit visitation numbers to manageable levels. Wilson's Promontory in Victoria is an example of this superior management approach.
Serious questions remain about whether tourists to Fraser Island are properly informed by the authorities about dealing with dingoes and how to avoid negative contacts with them. Current visitation numbers are so great that this cannot be done properly. Questions also remain as to whether the ranger presence is great enough in popular camping locations on the island, like the one where this incident occurred. Was the family involved in this incident approached and informed by rangers about safe behaviour? The announcement by island authorities that the ranger presence will be stepped up in the wake of this incident is too little too late.
The simplistic and environmentally irresponsible approach of killing dingoes involved in such incidents cannot continue. Evidence shows that the genetic diversity of the island’s dingo population may already have been damaged by routine killing. The problem is not with the dingoes, which are part of Fraser Island unique ecosystem. It rests with the commercial mind set of the Queensland government, which looks upon the World Heritage Listing status of Fraser Island as an opportunity for maximising the tourist dollar at all costs.
As found by the Australian Federal Police in 2010, Julian Assange has committed no crime.
Yet, Julian Assange, the courageous and visionary founding editor of Wikileaks, who is not even a citizen of the United States and has never been there, now faces the threat that he will be extradited to the United States from Britain. There he is to supposedly be tried only for the 'crime' of 'conspiring' in 2010, with Chelsea Manning to have her retrieve classified U.S. defence department information which revealed to the world evidence of U.S. war crimes. - the sort of 'crime' that many serious journalists have engaged in.
Exhibition opening Friday 19th April, 5.30-7.30pm. Art Space, Lord Street, Port Campbell.
All Welcome.
Cr. Simon Illingsworth to open exhibition
Exhibition open times -
Friday 19th April -1pm to 4.00pm
Saturday 20th April -10 am to 4 pm
Artists include Barry Bree, Della Crabbe, Laura Fazzalari, Ben Fennessy, Sue Ferrari, Jean Gleeson, Jodie Honan, John Irving, Lyndall Jones, Helen Langley, Marion Manifold, Ian McConnell, Jill Quirk, Andrea Radley, Maree Stewart and Heather Wood.
R.S.V.P. for exhibition opening appreciated Marion Manifold, Secretary, Port Campbell Community Group Inc.
M. Manifold - #10;Further Overwintering information <ahref=" https:="">
Thank you to sponsors Corangamite Shire and Coastcare Victoria, "Caring for our country"
This discussion on Crosstalk asks whether in the prosecution or persecution of Julian Assange, the western world is seeing the death of journalism. Michael Patchett-Joyce, a barrister specialising in international and European law, brings some new views to the program. John Wight counters with some persuasive political analysis, as does ex-British parliamentarian, George Galloway. The issue of the courts and the 'public good' comes up. John Wight points out that this is an issue of class; the public good is really about the good of the establishment. Galloway says that, if Julian is extradited to the United States, there will be no juries and the US will not feel itself bound to any promises it may have made to Britain in this matter. Patchett-Joyce suggests that the case has a long way to go before a decision can be made about extradition. At no time does anyone mention Julian's cat, but we think this might be a picture of it.
Steven Armstrong is a prospective Sustainable Australia Party candidate for the upcoming federal elections. He has run before and has a history of hard work on the issue of sustainability and the unsustainable problem of our rapid population growth in Australia. His political experience and skill has grown along with his experience. Although Steven has financed previous candidatures, the cost of merely registering to run in the election has suddenly leapt from $350 to $2000 under the LNP coalition. This can only be in order to reduce democratic opposition. So please consider helping Steven in his gofundme campaign! He needs $2000.
Hi, my name is Steven Armstrong.
Soon we will be having an Australian General Election.
I have been pre-selected to run in the Division of Macnamara for the Sustainable Australia Party.
Politics is an expensive thing to undertake. The LNP coalition have increased the deposit (democratic entry fee) from $350 to $2000.
They fear an alternative voice of the people and seek to silence us. Show them that they will fail. This campaign will allow me to give a choice to those of us that seek a better and sustainable Australia.
Sustainable Australia is a community movement from the common-sense political centre advocating for an economically, environmentally and socially sustainable Australia. This includes secure jobs, affordable housing, better planning and a sustainable environment for all Australians.
We are a group of committed Australians from backgrounds in business, science, the environment, health, academia, demography, politics and many other ordinary citizens; from World War 2 Diggers to migrants born on every inhabited continent on Earth.
Senator Duncan Spender of the Liberal Democrats has criticised the Australian Law Reform Commission’s Review of the Family Law System. “The Review is anti-Dad,” Senator Spender stated.
“Many Dad’s who have lost custody of their children might think that the family law system could not get any worse. Unfortunately they are wrong."
“Courts are currently required to presume that, in the absence of child abuse and family violence, it is in the best interests of the child for the child’s parents to have equal shared parental responsibility. The Commission has recommended that this presumption of ‘equal shared parental responsibility’ be replaced with a weaker presumption of ‘joint-decision making about major long‑term issues’.
“This would crush any hope that engaged dads have an equal chance of custody compared to engaged mums.
“Beyond the breastfeeding period, dads can be as good at parenting as mums.
“Contrary to available evidence, it is fashionable to think that a high proportion of dads in break-ups are violent. Unfortunately the Commission has adopted this fashionable groupthink instead of standing up for evidence-based policy and justice.
“Acting on the Commission’s recommendations will hurt dads and children.
“If re-elected I will seek to block the changes proposed by the Commission. The crossbench needs Senators who will speak truth to groupthink.
“The Commission has made a range of recommendations in the same vein. For instance, the current purpose of family law includes ensuring that children have the benefit of both of their parents having a meaningful involvement in their lives. This purpose is underpinned by a principle that children have the right to know and be cared for by both their parents. The Commission has recommended that this purpose and principle be repealed.”
After six and a half years illegal detention, the courageous and visionary Australian journalist Julian Assange, founder of the Wikileaks news service, has had his asylum inside the London Ecuadorian Embassy revoked and has been arrested by the British police to face trial for skipping bail back in 2012, a charge which he could only be jailed for a few years at most. However, there remains a serious risk that the United States could seek to have Julian Assange extradited to face, in its rigged judicial system, charges which have suspiciously remained secret until now: helping whistleblower Chelsea Manning crack a password to leak classified US documents.
See SEP (Australia) rallies demand freedom for Julian Assange (13/4/19) | WSWS for report of protest of Friday 12 April. -17/4/19: Protest Friday 4pm Victorian State Library in Melbourne and at 1pm in Martin Place, Sydney for Julian Assange: Bring yourself, friends, placards and any literature you may have to inform members of the public of why they need to act to help prevent the deportation to the United States, of Julian Assange, who is not even a United States citizen and has never been there!
On 5 February 2016 the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that Julian Assange had effectively been held in arbitrary detention inside the London Ecuadorian Embassy since October 2012 when he had first been granted political asylum there. This finding was reaffirmed in November 2016.
From October 2012 until May 2016, Julian Assange had been effectively in detention because the British government intended to allow Sweden to extradite him for ‘questioning’ - not to charge him - over rape allegations dating back to 2010. Had the Swedish government given an undertaking not to allow the US to extradite him, Julian Assange would have readily agreed to travel to Sweden, but the Swedish government refused to give such a guarantee.
The Swedish government also refused requests by Julian Assange to be interviewed inside the embassy. Only in May 2017, after the findings of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention were published, did a Swedish prosecutor finally make the effort to interview Assange inside the embassy. As a consequence, the prosecutor was forced to admit that Assange was not guilty of rape. Clearly the rape allegations were, just as Julian Assange had feared from the outset, a cynical ploy by ‘neutral’ Sweden to grab him, them hand him across to the U.S.
After Assange had been cleared of the Swedish rape allegations, British Prime Minister Cameron decided to issue the warrant to arrest him for the trivial charge of skipping bail back in 2012, after he had clearly endured far more incarceration than such a trivial offence could warrant. As the Swedish government did before him, Cameron refused to give an undertaking not to allow the U.S. to extradite him.
This arbitrary detention, now for six and a half years, is clearly illegal under international law and a denial of basic human rights to a man whom the Australian Federal Police had found in 2010 had committed no crime.
This is also a test-case of the Australian Government's respect and care for its citizens. It should have acted immediately to end Australian citizen Assange's illegal incarceration. It should have long ago demanded of the British and Swedish governments to guarantee not to allow Julian Assange to be extradited by the US to face the same fate of other courageous whistleblowers, including US Army Private Chelsea Manning and John Kiriakou, formerly of the CIA.
Had such a guarantee not have been given, the Australian Government should have dispatched to London a contingent of Australian Federal Police to escort Julian Assange back to Australia.
Even now, it is not too late to act. As Assange has already served far more detention than is warranted by the charge of skipping bail, he should be released no sooner than when he is sentenced the court. After that the Federal Police should escort him to Heathrow Airport thence back to Australia.
How you can help
Attend the protest today (Friday 12 April) at 4:00pm at the State Library to demand the Australian government act;
Talk to friends and family about Julian Assange;
Ask your federal member, whether Government or Opposition, why he/she has failed to act in all this time to uphold international law in regard to Julian Assange;
Ask each candidate seeking your vote at the federal elections on 18 May, what he/she intends to do for Julian Assange if elected. Give your highest preference to those who give the best responses.
The President of Ecuador, on flimsy pretext, has thrown Julian Assange to the wolves. Today Ruptly footage shows Assange being manhandled by several police from the embassy into a police vehicle. Julian had long hair and a long beard and was shouting, "The UK must resist," and something about "the Trump administration." From somewhere else, the Ecuadorian President delivered a prepared speech to cameras from his wheelchair, stating, among other things, that the UK Government has agreed in writing that Julian would not be sent anywhere he might be tortured or face the death penalty. Wikileaks has said, however, that Assange has been arrested for 'extradition to the United States for publishing'.
Ironically, U.K. Foreign Minister, Jeremy Hunt, has said on Twitter, “Julian Assange is no hero and no one is above the law. He has hidden from the truth for years.” In fact, it is power elites, like Jeremy Hunt, who have hidden from the truth and who have put themselves above the law.
Julian Assange and Wikileaks have drawn the curtain to reveal the business as usual world of international criminal elites. Depraved men and women, like Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump, Obama, and Hillary and Bill Clinton, to name a few in an almost endless line of powerful and very wealthy American administrators. These are people who benefit from and encourage war, who tell lies to start wars, and who protect torturers. They hold secret courts and execute their fellow citizens. They assassinate foreign rulers they don't find useful any more, and they overthrow elected governments. And they expect to control the media - and the narrative.
The US is currently attempting to overthrow the Venezuelan Government. It has bought and paid for the Columbian Government. It has been trying for many decades to overthrow Cuba. It seems to have been able to do a deal with Lenin Moreno, the current Ecuadorian President, who succeeded Rafael Correa, the previous president of Ecuador who courageously gave Julian Assange asylum. Moreno invited the police to arrest Julian Assange. This was the quintessential uncivilised act.
Jeremy Corbyn, the UK Opposition leader, has so far failed to take the opportunity to distinguish himself from Jeremy Hunt, reportedly a close associate, by standing up for decent treatment for Assange.
The corporatisation of mainstream media has meant that national and commercial media outlets have used all the stories that Assange broke, without any threats to themselves of arrest, whilst utterly failing to defend their source. What a bunch of cowards promote the narratives that cover the depraved vested interests of criminal governments of the world. If so-called professional journalists had ever stood up for him, the world would be so much more advanced. Instead, Julian's arrest threatens to take us further down into the black pit of ignorance and censorship.
We at https://candobetter.net support Assange and thank him for his heroic exposure of the criminal forces which have taken over most governments. His determination not to be taken by the 'authorities' was a reflection of his knowledge of the truly awful corruption in the merciless US and UK judicial systems
Previous research has shown a wide split between elite and non-elite opinion on topics such as cultural diversity, globalisation and immigration. Media professionals and most politicians share these elite views, but large swathes of the electorate do not. The current findings of the survey conducted late in 2018 by The Australian Population Research Institute (TAPRI) on attitudes to immigration and population growth confirm this. They show that the split between elite and non-elite opinion is mirrored in the divisions between voters who are university graduates and voters who are not. This is logical as most elites are now recruited from the graduate class. The gap is wide. Overall 50% of voters want a reduction in immigration. But this proportion rises to 60% of non-graduates while only 33% of graduates agree. (The October/November 2018 TAPRI survey Katharine Betts and Bob Birrell.)
Overall 72% of voters say Australia does not need more people, a proportion that rises to 80% of non-graduates and falls to only 59% of graduates (Figures 1 and 2).
But these findings nonetheless present a puzzle. Given elite domination of cultural and political institutions, why haven’t the non-graduate majority fallen into line on population growth and immigration?
To answer this question we need to look more deeply into the second major finding of the TAPRI survey: the central relationship between attitudes to the cultural consequences of high immigration and a desire for the rate of growth to be slowed right down. (See pp. 19-34.)
We now know that most Australian voters are unhappy with the heavy growth that immigration policies impose upon them. Survey data and numerous complaints about congestion and unaffordable housing attest to this. The TAPRI survey asks whether there is anything more to their disquiet than practical and economic problems.
In 2016 commentators were taken aback by two unexpected and, seemingly, unrelated events: the Brexit vote in the UK and the election of Donald Trump in the US. Analysts scrambled for explanations and initially settled on the idea of voters who had been ‘left behind’, people economically pinched by the evaporation of manufacturing jobs in the heat of globalisation. These ‘left behinds’ had sought relief from their common misfortune by choosing the populist side in each of these two elections.
From this perspective the two events were related after all: economic pressures could explain them both. But now there has been time for more research and opinions have become more nuanced.
A number of analysts have found that it is not always the most destitute who have swung to the populist side. On the contrary, in both countries they are often people of middling means who are not as distressed by low wages and job losses as much as they are by the high immigration of ethnically diverse people and the cultural changes that they bring with them.
The divide is not so much between the well-to-do and the poor and unemployed. Rather it is between the graduate class, immersed in a cosmopolitan world view, and non-graduates attached to the ethos of their national home. Immigrants can share this attachment. Indeed it may have been the pull of the national culture which encouraged them to migrate in the first place. Because of this some of the new populists may be immigrants themselves.
Wednesday, 10 April 2019: A study published in Molecular Psychiatry has identified changes in inflammation-related biochemical pathways in schizophrenia that interfere with proper brain nerve cell communication. Researchers have found the first direct evidence in support of increased kynurenic acid production in the brain, which is known to block a key glutamate receptor. This discovery paves the way for development of better targeted therapies with fewer side effects for people with schizophrenia.
The study is a collaboration between Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA), UNSW Sydney and Macquarie University.
The study found elevated kynurenic acid in the brains of people with schizophrenia suggesting an overproduction of kynurenic acid, especially in response to inflammation, which could be detrimental to brain function.
“We found that inflammation plays an important role in the brain pathology of schizophrenia. However, we do not know which avenue of inflammation leads to the brain pathology of schizophrenia,” said Professor Cynthia Shannon Weickert, from NeuRA and UNSW Sydney.
“This is exciting for the field of schizophrenia research, because in addition to our previous findings that point to the immune cell’s role in schizophrenia, we have now identified another cell target in the brain. This provides a better understanding of the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the deleterious effects of neuroinflammation.”
It has long-been suspected that metabolism of the amino acid tryptophan, commonly known to produce the “feel-good” neurotransmitter serotonin, is involved in schizophrenia. During inflammation, tryptophan is broken down into kynurenine, which can then can go down one of two avenues; one that forms a chemical compound called quinolinic acid and one called kynurenic acid. There is debate about which avenue leads to brain pathology in schizophrenia.
But now researchers have narrowed down the culprit to increased kynurenic acid production and they have other evidence to suggest that astrocytes are also involved. Astrocytes are the main cells that provide food and metabolic support to the brain nerve cells and in the case of schizophrenia, they are providing more kynurenic acid.
Kynurenic acid plays an important role protecting brain cells from overstimulation by blocking the brain’s N-methyl-d-aspartate receptor (NMDAR). However, NMDAR blockade can also lead to psychosis.
“We have pinpointed the source of the problem,” said Professor Gilles Guillemin, a world-renowned expert in tryptophan research from Macquarie University. “This understanding provides a new target for cell-specific treatments that reduce kynurenic acid production. What we need to find out is why people with schizophrenia have higher expression of the kynurenic acid-producing enzyme.”
This study also demonstrated that biochemical changes in blood can reflect the changes in the brain related to schizophrenia, such as volume loss of the prefrontal cortex and attention impairment. This suggests that the kynurenine pathway may be a viable target for the development of a clinical blood biomarker to help predict brain and cognitive changes in schizophrenia.
Associate Professor Thomas Weickert from NeuRA, further explained: “Researchers have been seeking a biomarker of schizophrenia for a long time. Our work suggests that blood kynurenine and tryptophan levels may be able to quickly and simply inform clinicians of the brain and cognitive status which could provide a more personalised approach to treatment with new drug therapies.”
Dr Edwin Lim from Macquarie University’s Department of Biomedical Sciences, said that while the results of this study are promising, caution needs to be exercised in treatments aimed at reducing levels of kynurenic acid in people with schizophrenia.
“Too much kynurenic acid is evidently bad for schizophrenia, but too little kynurenic acid runs the risk of exposing patients to excitotoxic-induced neurodegeneration,” said Dr Lim. “The baseline reference will need to be established in a larger population in order for biomarkers and relevant treatment regimens to be formulated.”
“This study provides important new pieces of the complex puzzle that schizophrenia presents. They will underpin new approaches to develop new medications for the treatment of schizophrenia and its symptoms,” said Professor Peter Schofield AO, NeuRA’s CEO.
Publication information: Kindler J., Lim C.K., Weickert C.S., Boerrigter D., Galletly C., Liu D., Jacobs K.R., Balzan R., Bruggemann J., O’Donnell M., Lenroot R., Guillemin G.J., Weickert T.W. Dysregulation of kynurenine metabolism is related to proinflammatory cytokines, attention and prefrontal cortex volume in schizophrenia. Molecular Psychiatry. April 2019. DOI 10.1038/s41380-019-0401-9.
A comment containing excerpts from this page has been posted beneath #comment-76762">Assange Arrest Imminent: Ecuadorian Embassy To Expel Him In “Hours To Days” (5/4/19) by Tyler Durden | The Duran (21/4/19).
The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris examine the reasons behind Ecuador's Foreign Minister stating that they have no plans of revoking Julian Assange's asylum status.
After news broke that Ecuador was planing on expelling Assange from their London Embassy, people gathered in the streets of London, and online voices blasted Ecuador's decision to deliver Assange to UK authorities, with eventual extradition to the United States.
The Ecuadorian government was compelled to quickly release a statement refuting the news of Assange's expulsion.
Comment by James Sinnamon: In this otherwise insightful and informative discussion of 8:53 minutes, I think Alex Christoforou and Alexander Mercouris are far too kind to the UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn has had six and a half years to act to force the UK government end its illegal detention of Julian Assange. Corbyn, who purportedly supports Julian Assange, could have easily led many thousands of Labour Party supporters to protest at the Ecuadorian Embassy in support of Julian Assange. Such a crowd could easily have escorted Assange to Heathrow Airport and onto a flight back to Australia. Certainly, had he spoken more loudly in support of Julian Assange in all of these years, it would have been politically impossible for Theresa May to have persisted with her government's criminal and secretive collusion with the United States against Julian Assange.
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