(We) can do better

This is the second in a series of interviews with Nerrida Pohl about lack of proper regulation of the construction and development industry in Australia. Nerrida talks about the 30 story appartment building in Victoria, where she bought two appartments 'off the plan'. The building is a shared commercial/private one, that is meant to share one plan, but Nerrida has discovered with some amazement that there are actually two different plans. Although the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) ruled, in a dispute between the developer and Stonington Council, that residents would share the building's loading bay with commercial occupants, this right was sold off by a member of the building management for $1.00 per annum peppercorn rent. This has meant that moving vans park at the front entrance, causing traffic problems in a very busy area. The front doors are propped open so that furniture etc can be brought into the building, creating a security risk. Furthermore, the ''Residents Meeting Room' specified in the plan, has been occupied by a real-estate agency. This means that residents have no formal or designated place to meet, communicate, and organise for their own benefit. It is especially hard because many appartment owners dwell overseas and cannot easily be contacted by other owners who, when they ask, are only given overseas mailing addresses, which might be PO boxes or legal firms in distant cities.

Australia's construction industry is corrupt, but protected by government. This has left building consumers in a terrible situation. A current scandal is that they are being forced to pay billions for builders' mistakes in a situation where no building over 3 stories is insured. This video is of an interview with Nerrida Pohl about the dangers of inflammable cladding on skyscrapers, using her own building as an example. The location affords views of similar problems on surrounding skyscrapers in South Yarra. It also illustrates the irony of having one's view built out, even when one lives in a skyscraper, as massive population growth an deregulation accelerate infilling and raise heights. Nerrida was a speaker at the Victorian Building Action Group AGM this year.

Waleed Aly ("A Rhetorical State of Emergency," Sydney Morning Herald, 12 September 2019,) has dressed up banality as insight and has been very long-winded about it. His focus is climate change and he laments the fact that we have so "engineered a lack of [political] consensus" that Australia is never likely to successfully address it.

(Photos by Fiona Bell.) I have strongly supported the RUANELA (Residents United Against North East Link Option A) campaign against the North East Link. I am opposed to the removal of thousands of mature trees and the massive loss of open space particularly in the Koonung Creek Reserve. 12.7 hectares of parkland will be permanently lost.

Melbourne lacks open green spaces. Unfinancial golf-courses should be returned to nature, to provide scarce habitat to our native animals and contact with nature for humans. These golf-courses often got by on the pretext that they would preserve open land, as a trade-off for more development. Melbourne is not just overdeveloped, it is overpopulated. Furthermore, our building industry is so incompetent that all its activities should be halted. Below you can read the nonsense being proposed by your government, as an excuse to give more land and free kicks to developers. It's a criminal economy that takes nature and destroys it just for more dollars for Australia's rich and greedy class. Submissions opened on 2 September 2019. Submissions can be made until 5.00pm on 30 September 2019. See example of a submission from Sheila Newman here: "Save 110 golf-courses for birds, not high-rises - Sociologist".

"People end up with nothing because they really don't believe we have a system as bad as we do." Consumers are unprotected in Australia's building disaster. "You may have a house that's being demolished, but you still have a block of land. If you've got any superannuation or anything in the bank, at least hang on to that." Anne Paten of Victorian Building Action Group (VBAG) talks about how the system that's supposed to help building consumers actually bleeds the victims of the industry even more. People qualify for insurance, but never get the money. They go to VCAT and are sent away with nothing. The results are bankruptcy, divorces, and suicides. Substantial reports and inquiries are removed from the internet. Australians need to realise that the government won't help them; they have to join together and help each other.

Each spring I feel a tinge of grief when magnolia buds appear.
For I never see the glorious display I yearn for every year.
I might see a hint of pink withstanding every storm
But the elaborate blooms I see next door on my tree are still- born.

I know who is responsible, a possum small and shy,
I feed him in the vain hope that he will my tree pass by,
Although my ploy has never worked I keep it up from habit
And I never In my wildest dreams would take my knife and stab it!

The Russian military says that the United States' missile strike on Idlib, August 31, has jeopardized further implementation of the ceasefire in the Idlib de-escalation zone, as well as disrupting it in a number of areas.

The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (POCTA) Regulations 2008 sunset on 15 December 2019. New regulations need to be made before this date.

Lord Mayor Clover Moore has nothing to congratulate herself on with regard to homelessness in Sydney. The City of Sydney’s most recent street count has revealed that homelessness has risen and crisis shelters are at capacity. Although the City has been collecting levies from developers to create affordable housing since 2004, it has only created 835 new affordable housing dwellings in that time. Whilst the *official* number of homeless in Sydney reached 592 in August 2019 (with so many more couch-surfing and living on credit), Australia has continued to import approximately one million immigrants every two years, pushing up the price of housing and causing pressure on Sydney's very scarce land, to the extent that NSW State Premier, Gladys Berejiklian asked the Federal Government to halve the immigration numbers - to no avail. Lendlease private developments is forcing new suburbs into koala territory despite years of organised protests from nearby residents. It is clear that property development is disorganising human communities, extinguishing wildlife, and over-riding every democratic measure in our society. It is ironic that the City of Sydney, in a country run by property developers for their own enrichment through population growth, should give the biggest private landowner in Australia (the Catholic Church) $100,000 to pay various humble workers to telephone between services looking for empty beds each night for the homeless. The same Catholic Church is a notable property developer, owner of the oldest bank in the world, and a chronic promoter of mass immigration.

VBAG is the only organization representing building consumers in Australia. VBAG estimates conservatively that for 2019 more than one million Australians will lose more than $400b on shonky building, as well as suffering decades long distress from disputes, leading to deaths, suicides, shattered families, and ruined lives. Come along and inform yourselves and participate.

Australia shows contempt for an international rules-based order, agreeing to join the US and UK with a naval, air and ADF personel presence in the Persian Gulf without any national debate or UN resolution.

It was 1959 and I was in grade 5. I can remember hearing this population statistic; Australia's population had reached 10 million. I was one of 10 million. It was the first time I had ever been aware of the population of Australia. When my mother was born in 1918 it was 5 million It took another 45 years for the population to double from 10 million to 20 million.

The high cost of accommodating population growth: "It is really undesirable that turning Seaford and Frankston into 'Transport hubs' is denying residents, and especially children, proper use of the amenities they have previously enjoyed."

It amazes me that people will give their pets dry kibble or absurdly perfumed wet tinned food day after day, years after year, and it is even more amazing and shocking that vets sell this crap. And that a lot of people buy and eat similar food for themselves and their children. How did we get so stupid? We republish Australian veterinarian Tom Lonsdale's submission to the Australian Senate Pet Food Inquiry 2018, plus links to films he has made about the shocking effects of commercial pet food on dogs' and cats' health. We have embedded a film from the United States, Pet-fooled because it is comprehensive, as well as one from Tom Lonsdale, Stop the mass poisoning of pets, which focuses on dogs' teeth and gums rotting from bad food. Dr Lonsdale promotes 'free meaty bones' - not a brand, but a food-source. He specialises in what happens to pets' mouths when they eat processed food. The same things happen to dogs and cats when they eat processed food as happen to humans, but because dogs and cats do not need carbohydrates, let alone starches, at all and tolerate them poorly, they get sick even faster than we do on junk food. If you haven't thought about this before, you will be shocked and it might inspire you to change your diet as well. The Pet-fooled film suffers from its belief in the human food pyramid that privileges cereals, but it's worth watching nonetheless.

"Your program and so many on the ABC ignore the real prospect of widespread social, economic and environmental breakdown consequent on a human population having exceeded the long term carrying capacity of Nature. The ABC in its general coverage assumes a continuation of Business as Usual. Climate change, if present trends continue leads to a world 3 – 4 degrees warmer at century’s end. (David Attenborough in his recent TV program on climate change used the figures 3 - 6 degrees.) Together with declines in soil quality, water availability, food shortages and massive biodiversity loss these things have many scientists foreshadowing an imminent reduction in the global human population and a world in chaos."

The Canberra Times mentioned the Regional Australia institute on 11 August 2019 in Regional Australia is ready to grow so let's be ambitious. You may be curious about this Regional Australia Institute, what it is, who runs it, who finances it, what are its aims, and what it has to say about the environment and water.

Tomorrow it will be exactly 10 years since Kelvin Thomson spoke to the Parliament describing increasing population as the underlying cause of the world’s problems. He listed each of them - global warming, food crisis, water shortages, housing affordability, overcrowded cities, traffic congestion, species extinctions, fisheries collapse, increasing prices, waste, terrorism and war - and described the role that population growth was playing in fuelling them.

"Not only is Geelong now effectively subsumed into the greater growth orbit of the Melbourne conurbation, but there are surprise population surges in some of the state’s remoter provincial cities and communities. I am so excited about this.” (Bernard Salt, "Victoria reimagined from basket case beginnings," The Australian 8 August 2019.)

United States immigration officials raided numerous Mississippi food processing plants Wednesday, arresting 680 workers in what marked the largest workplace sting in at least a decade. As reported by USA Today, the raids were planned months ago, and the largest took place at a Koch Foods Inc. plant in Morton, 40 miles east of Jackson. Workers who were confirmed to have legal status were allowed to leave the plant. Other linked operations were executed in Bay Springs, Carthage, Canton, Pelahatchie, and Sebastapol Mississippi.

Here is further explantion of the huge significance of the judgement handed down against the US Democrats' attempt to charge Julian Assange with espionage and somehow prosecute a non-US citizen as if they were a US citizen. That successive Australian governments have allowed the US and the UK to go after Assange in absolute refusal of Assange's human rights is damning of our political class.

Victoria’s Planning Minister, Richard Wynne recently dropped a bombshell on thousands of apartment owners whose buildings are covered in flammable cladding.New loan laws likely to be passed by Parliament have been billed as a kindly gesture to help owners of apartments covered in the flammable cladding to fund the rectification costs. This news might seem a worthy initiative, except that the most iniquitous elements in this scandalous swindle are unspecified. Principally, Wynne’s decree provides that owners who bear no blame for this combustible catastrophe are to be burdened with a debt that could run into billions of dollars. [Article first published at https://www.thefifthestate.com.au/innovation/materials/apartment-owners-dodgy-cladding/ on 13 September 2018.]

In a ruling published late Tuesday, Judge John Koeltl of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York delivered a devastating blow to the US-led conspiracy against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. In his ruling, Judge Koeltl, a Bill Clinton nominee and former assistant special prosecutor for the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, dismissed “with prejudice” a civil lawsuit filed in April 2018 by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) alleging WikiLeaks was civilly liable for conspiring with the Russian government to steal DNC emails and data and leak them to the public. Jennifer Robinson, a leading lawyer for Assange, and other WikiLeaks attorneys welcomed the ruling as “an important win for free speech.” Article by Eric London, first published on 31 July 2019 at https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/07/31/assa-j31.html. Illustrations by candobetter eds

Script by Mark Allen of Population, Permaculture and Planning and Michael Bayliss of Sustainable Population Australia.

Australia’s political economy has turned into one gigantic lie. Via AAP:

Pauline Hanson’s push to have a national vote on immigration levels has been crushed in the Senate.

Medical professionals have recently published guides to reducing insulin and other diabetes medications for patients on low carbohydrate diets because many of these patients are suddenly getting better. Their improvement and sometimes remission carries a diminishing need for insulin or oral antihyperglycaemics. If doctors and nurses fail to realise this, their patients risk overdose, with potentially rapidly fatal results - and not just with where insulin is concerned. This means that a new approach to diet for both main types[1] of diabetic - Types 1 and 2 - is making a big difference. In some cases it is effecting complete remission.

It has been great to re-live the Apollo 11 Moon Landing’s 50 th Anniversary. What a monumental achievement and tribute to human intellectual candlepower, endeavour and above all courage. I was a Year 9 student at the time; like other classes we downed tools to watch it unfold. Our teachers were just as astonished by the audacity and precision of the Landing as we were. I – and I think most of the people who I talked with or heard from at that time – had a very rosy view of the future. Yes we were involved in a stupid war in Vietnam, but I thought the Second World War and the Holocaust were so wicked and so evil that we’d learned from that, and that there was a very strong worldwide appetite for peace. I thought that war and conflict would become a thing of the past.

Kelvin Thomson will be speaking at an event organised by the Builders Collective of Australia on the 25 August 2019. 'In light of the cladding crisis, Builders Collective of Australia present a public event to discuss the causes, consequences and solutions'. https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/cladding-conversations-tickets-65666711903

A couple of days ago, when I was driving from Melbourne to Brisbane and the only radio I could get was the Jon Faine Show on 774, I heard Jon on the subject of the Dan Andrews Victorian Government's intention to subsidise recladding of unsafely clad buildings in Victoria by the sum of $AUD200m, half of which was to come from taxes on the public and the other half sought from the federal government - but not from the perpetrators themselves. Jon put to a woman he was interviewing that she might give some acknowledgement to the Dan Andrews Government that this was a positive act. I was really impressed by the woman's response, which put Victoria's continuing building fraud and the government's facilitation of it in proportion and Jon Faine in his place at the same time. With interest I scribbled down the name of the organisation she represented and looked it up when I got to Brisbane. It is the Victorian Building Action Group Inc (https://www.vbag.org.au/) and it describes itself as "the only consumer organization in Australia representing the interests of all building consumers." Anne Paten is the President of the Victorian Building Action Group Inc.

We republish an article from Global Research and an excerpt from the World Health Organisation on this politically, commercially, and thus medically, fraught topic. The World Health Organisation's ongoing research project page on Electromagnetic fields (EMF) is at https://www.who.int/peh-emf/project/EMF_Project/en/. Not mentioned in the Global Research article below is the World Health Organisation's report that "studies suggest that children exposed to EMF magnetic fields have an associated increased risk of leukaemia." The Global Research article below the WHO introduction is useful because it gives a number of strategies for minimising exposure to EMF, particularly where children are concerned. Furthermore, it gives access to opinion from different countries. We should remember that X-Rays were not banned for pregnant women until the mid-1980s, a long time after it was well-known that they were the major cause of childhood cancers. (See Margaret Heffernan, Wilful Blindness.) A much more intensive and pervasive level of electromagnetic fields involved in 5G and "smart cities" is being introduced to Australia and many countries as we write this. Smart cities carry their own dangers of total surveillance and automation that seem calculated to remove almost all possibility of democratic engagement, although that is not the subject of the reports cited below. (See Prof Justin O'Connor in "Smart Cities vs Creative Cities Symposium".)