(We) can do better

Why is Melbourne's population projected to skyrocket, all of a sudden? What is driving this? Why are people confused between refugees and economic immigration. Why can't we communicate and organise in order to bring the government into line? Why do our governments ignore the people?

Taking back the talking stick

"The talking stick, also called a speaker's staff is an instrument of aboriginal democracy used by many tribes. It may be passed around a group or used only by leaders as a symbol of their authority and right to speak in public. In a tribal council circle, a talking stick is passed around from member to member allowing only the person holding the stick to speak. This enables all those present at a council meeting to be heard, especially those who may be shy; consensus can force the stick to move along to assure that the "long winded" don't dominate the discussion; and the person holding the stick may allow others to interject. "[1] An open mike is the same kind of thing. This talk is about how elites have got control of the talking stick and how to get it back.

Speech for Must Melbourne keep growing? by Sheila Newman June 14, 2014

The question is does Melbourne have to keep growing? My response is that it is not a natural inbuilt requirement that populations constantly increase in size. Many developed and undeveloped countries and regions are not growing like Australia. Pacific islanders had stable populations for about 60,000 years. Although most industrialised countries ballooned with industrialization and access to cheap fossil fuel, many reset their population growth downwards after the game-changing 1973 oil shock. But countries that inherited the British land-tenure and political system – the United States, Australia, Canada – did not reset; they borrowed to continue population growth and expansion. Secondly, there is no economic imperative to keep population growing, as is being done, via high immigration. Plenty of countries survive well with small stable populations.

So why is Melbourne’s population projected to skyrocket? Unfortunately, the problem is that population increase is being engineered by sociological forces that are responding to focused benefits from the very things that cause suffering to the rest of us and damage the natural world. By this I mean that, via high immigration policies, powerful people in various business groups are successfully enacting pro-growth ideologies. All that the counter-growth movement is really asking is for the growth lobby to desist and allow our population to evolve naturally and democratically. We are not the population controllers; they are.

These pro-growth forces are highly organized, very determined, and very wealthy. They own and control most of the assets and resources, including the mass media and, arguably, large parts of Australia’s parliaments. The rest of us are relatively disorganised and poor because of this political system which concentrates land, resources and power in fewer and fewer hands.

Some traditional avenues of resistance exist, although all are compromised in this system. One new one is present – the Internet. The traditional options are:

• power in public institutions and utilities;
• power of employment connections;
• power of family communication;
• power of local government;

Power in public institutions and utilities: Historically, even though our system placed much power in private hands, in the 19th and 20th centuries we built up public institutions that safeguarded citizens’ rights to affordable water and food, electricity, housing, education, reliable employment, regulated banking. Most of these public institutions that protected our rights have since been privatised and taken beyond our influence.

Power of employment connections: Unions once brought together workers with common cause to preserve financial and other easily identifiable benefits, but the supportive industrial relations and law institutions have largely been dismantled and Australian workforces are now dispersed and temporary.

Power of family communication: One of the problems of population growth and infrastructure expansion is that it means that planners constantly insert new people and groups and buildings and roads and activities among us, interfering with established human networks. Family communication is also an uphill battle with TV, Facebook, school, commuting to work, and if you are one of many isolated Australians going from one rental to the next, couch surfing or sleeping rough. Ironically, wealthy families and clans that stick together, like the Dennis Family Corporation, the Murdochs, the Packers and the Winsors, rule the world. As more Australians become unemployed and cannot afford housing, the upside is that they will default back to family, clan and locality and communicate with neighbours on issues of mutual convenience and grow food and trade at the same level. Direct power at local level, accessed by well-networked families and clans together with neighbours is probably the most effective way to counteract the growth lobby on the ground and decisions by unrepresentative distant central governments. Women seem to lead most of the coordinated actions against overdevelopment and overpopulation in Melbourne, heading democratic planning groups, public land defence groups, ecological and wildlife protection groups, contributing to alternative media, attending parliament and organising demonstrations. They are our great strength. Their political engagement is under-reported in the mainstream media as you would expect.

Power of local government: Most people believe that immigration is entirely managed by the Federal Government, but it is at the level of local government that population control actually starts. Local Government traditionally controls building permits to control population numbers by limiting subdivisions and land clearing. This mechanism gave Australians direct control over the size of their communities. State governments in Australia have been removing this very important local government power over decades, with local government amalgamations, administrative control and laws reducing local power. Local power is the most direct and potentially useful form of democracy, more likely to unite people with a stake in the same bit of the real world.

State Government: In Australia the states have the power over land-use and water sources and the ability and responsibility to signal when infrastructure is close to capacity. They have largely taken over immigration policy decisions from the Federal government by calling themselves regions in need of migration and setting up websites and industries to market housing, business investment, and citizenship to prospective economic immigrants all over the world. All the states do this, but in Victoria the website is www.liveinvictoria.vic.gov.au . Obviously this website needs to come down.

The National Government makes decisions to support wars and sets policies for humanitarian and economic immigration. The public messaging system has erroneously convinced many people that most immigrants are ‘refugees’, using the issue as a wedge tactic to prevent people speaking out on numbers. At the same time, the media fails to critically examine the fact that many of our refugees and asylum seekers come from the places where we are engaged with NATO in what are arguably illegal resource wars. The Australian public is given no say in whether we support such wars.

The pro-growth forces control the mass media – that is, the public messaging system, which seems largely to control election choices and politicians’ policies. The effect is that, although the majority of Australians do not want population growth or its impacts, their opinion is not clearly reported and they are not aware of each other. Most of the Australian media and much overseas media are owned by Packer, Fairfax and particularly the Murdoch corporations which have vested interests in massive population growth, most obviously in their property dot coms (realestate.com.au and domain.com.au) , which sell Australian land and housing all over the world in a market that is enhanced by the promise of continuous population growth. CNN, the BBC, Al Jazeera, the ABC and SBS and generally all mainstream Anglophone press share biases and syndicate reports.

The Internet: So, how do we overcome a commercially compromised and unresponsive public messaging system that repetitively purveys this propaganda, making us believe it is both irresistible and true? By going around it and creating media that is far more relevant to most people, on the principle that real news is of real interest and that people, although schooled to passively absorb anointed opinion, if they wake up, don’t want to go to sleep again.

The traditional media relies a lot on distant authorities and events, which we cannot verify or affect. The alternative media can convey news from people on the ground, almost anywhere in the world.

The traditional media creates ‘stars’ and elevates as ‘authorities’ people who continually tell us that we must have growth. It is hard to get the attention of family, neighbours, colleagues and friends to our divergent point of view because they are conditioned to give more respect to mass media stars and opinions than to direct communication and experience.

The alternative media can identify our own real heroes and authorities – like the many women in Melbourne who head up groups to fight overpopulation and its impacts us. We can use the internet to do this, as many grass-roots organisations and BRICS countries now do.

The traditional media syndicates news and feature articles. We should do the same by republishing each other’s work on our various websites, by reciprocal interviewing and by inviting each other to speak at events, thus raising our mutual profiles and amplifying our impact collectively. Whilst it is often helpful to get a ‘mainstream’ celebrity to speak at an event, try to put some of your own on the stage as well, so that they will become known in their own right. Present them as ‘experts’. This is what the Property Council of Australia and APop do.

The Candobetter.net website, where I write and edit, promotes population activists and their activities where the mainstream press ignores them, preferring paid spokespeople from big business who tout growth. Our articles get thousands and tens of thousands of reads over time. One recent article got 12,000 reads in 3 weeks. We are actually a website for reform in democracy, environment, population, land use planning and energy policy.

Publishing on Candobetter.net is a lot surer than writing letters to the Editor at the Age, or the Herald Sun, or the Australian or the Fin Review. Try it some time.

Ideally Candobetter.net would like to be one of the alternative sites that together will replace the mainstream media middleman with more direct and diverse analysis and reports from the field.

Direct and Reliable sources of information

Instead of just reacting to mainstream disinformation, population writers and activists can access direct sources of information. Hansard is a superb direct source of politics, laws and news providing great speeches, hilarious examples and insights into our parties and politicians. Scientific sources include the CSIRO Futures program which produced the Australian Resources Atlas project and the report, Future Dilemmas. The State of the Environment Report Australia 2011 is still a good guide, and is pessimistic about population impacts even though its population projections of 100,000 net migration vastly underestimate our current population trajectory. The State of the environment reports [for]Victoria are increasingly politicized, so that the conclusions of the 2010 one did not make sense in the light of its content. The most recent one, for 2014, lacks comparability with the 2010 one, which defeats an important objective of these reports. ABS projections are a very necessary source of important information and part of public education. They rely, however, on past trends and on getting good information. They do not or cannot predict or allow for changes of policy or influence of lobby groups, except in general terms of higher or lower projections. You Tube is another direct source of information, and of course there are independent blogs and videos all over the web. As well as this, instead of just hearing the NATO line, try getting the other side from RT (Russia Today) which has great interviews, documentaries, and news and war coverage. Some other well-known alternatives are Press TV, Global Research, Voltaire Net, PaulCraigRoberts.org, the
Land Destroyer Report and the Syrian Arab Newsagency (SANA). If you speak another language you can search foreign amazon sites for books with different perspectives then order them without the usual publisher restrictions via eBay.

Resource Depletion: Sustaining growth depends on fuel. For a while there it looked like people were beginning to wake up to the finitude of petroleum and the difficulty in replacing it, but recently there has been a desperate con-job called US shale oil independence. This petroleum energy renaissance can be shown to be a wild exaggeration and has been reported as such by Bloomberg in "Dream of US Oil independence slams against shale costs." http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-27/dream-of-u-s-oil-independence-slams-against-shale-costs.html, which costs shale oil production at $1.50 for every $1.00 produced.[2]

It is really important for activists to get their heads around this because, if people believe that – first gas, now coal seam gas and shale oil – will keep business as usual, they will not resist unsustainable population growth as hard as they must.

NOTES

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talking_stick

[2] "Just a few of the roadblocks: Independent producers will spend $1.50 drilling this year for every dollar they get back." And, "Shale output drops faster than production from conventional methods. It will take 2,500 new wells a year just to sustain output of 1 million barrels a day in North Dakota's Bakken shale, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency. Iraq could do the same with 60." http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-27/dream-of-u-s-oil-independence-slams-against-shale-costs.html.

Videos of KELVIN THOMSON and all panel speakers have been added to this article. Open mic part now published here too. Today, June 14, 2014, a packed hall with people standing at the back in the Hawthorn Arts Centre voted for a national plebiscite to ask the people what size population they wanted. The forum interacted with a panel of four speakers: Kelvin Thomson, MP for Wills; Sheila Newman, Evolutionary Sociologist and Candobetter.net editor and writer; Clifford Hayes, former Bayside Council Mayor and planning activist; and William Bourke, Leader of the Sustainable Population Party. There was a queue for the open microphone and the meeting closed later than expected. All motions passed with an overwhelming show of hands.

Packed meeting in Hawthorn backs vote on Victoria’s population

We will probably replace this film with another from another angle which recorded the size of the audience, the applause and the show of hand on the motions. In the meantime this gives the content of the Open Microphone session.

The Hawthorn Arts Centre was the venue for a large public meeting today asking the question “Must Melbourne keep growing?” Speakers, Hon. Kelvin Thomson MP, Ms. Sheila Newman, evolutionary sociologist, Mr. Clifford Hayes, former Bayside mayor and Planning activist and Mr. William Bourke president of “ Sustainable Population Party” all addressed the meeting with the ultimate message that Melbourne does not have to keep growing. The audience was given the floor for the open mic second hour of the program and took full advantage of this. The meeting voted unanimously for the federal government to hold a national vote on Australia’s population aiming to stabilise by 2040:

''That, on the basis of State of the Environment reports and in the interests of democracy, the meeting calls on the federal government to hold a national vote on population at or before the next federal election, with a proposal to allow Australia to stabilise its population by 2040. A working group will be formed by concerned citizens in order to draft an appropriate question."

Meeting voted for Gov to have scientific conference re long-term sustainable population

Additionally the meeting voted unanimously for the Victorian Government to convene a scientifically based conference to establish the long term sustainable population for the state, on a motion proposed by Ms Julianne Bell, of Protectors of Public Land:

"That this meeting calls on the Victorian government to convene a scientifically based Victorian conference on what constitutes a long term environmentally sustainable population for Victoria, with reference to the Victorian State of the environment reports of 2008 and 2013 indicating environmental damage from current population levels."

According to the President of Sustainable Population Australia’s Victorian and Tasmanian branch, Ms. Jill Quirk, ”The first resolution is to give the Australian people the right to determine their own quality of life and quality of the environment for the present and future. The second is asking the government to undertake its absolute responsibility and to stop the reckless, irreversible destruction caused by needless rapid population growth and over development happening now.”

Professor Brat can expect to be attacked by "journalists" across the political spectrum with every sort of accusation and scandalous report. He risks a well paid former female student coming forward to complain that while counseling her on her grades, he leaned forward and put his hand on her thigh.₃ Or worse.

This will be Professor Brat's likely fate even though his election was not about Cantor being Israel's Representative, a fact that the voters who elected Brat probably don't even know. Professor Brat himself might not know it, hence this warning. Professor Brat accused Cantor of representing, not Israel, but "large corporations seeking insider deals, crony bailouts and a constant supply of low-wage workers." This ensures that the transnational corporations and military/security complex will join the Israel Lobby in gunning for Representative Brat.

And, in addition, Brat is unlikely to be warmly welcomed by the Republican Party as he defeated one of the party's top leaders. This could start a trend, and Republicans could lose Mitch McConnell, the Minority Leader in the Senate. Also, many, if not most, House Republicans will have spent a number of years accommodating Cantor in exchange for favors that the Majority Leader can confer, and they are not happy that their investments in Cantor have been wiped out.

A likely explanation of Brat's victory is that it was a protest vote, like the recent EU elections where the major parties in the major countries lost to relatively new and heavily demonised third parties, such as Farage's Independent Party (1993) in the UK and Le Pen's National Front Party (1972) in France. The establishment is already at work explaining that these electoral victories along with Brat's are due to their racist anti-immigration stance. Little doubt that immigration played a role, especially in the UK and France, but the extraordinary gain in third party clout is due to the public's disgust with the corrupt traditional parties who have ceased to represent the public on any issue.

Just as I think Representative Brat is a marked man, so are Farage and Le Pen. (Yes, I know, Marine is a woman, but the term is "marked man.") The Establishment thought that Farage and Le Pen could be disposed of with lies and demonization. Their unexpected victory in the EU elections has brought that supposition into question. If Farage and Le Pen cannot be assassinated by the media, the prospect of physical assassination arises. The Establishment has perfect cover. As both political leaders speak out against the heavy level of immigration that is transforming the national existence of the UK and France, the intelligence services that serve the state can easily come up with a "deranged Muslim."

The main target of Farage and Le Pen is not immigrants. Their important target is the EU, which, more than immigration, is attacking national sovereignty, thus dissolving the peoples of historic European countries into a new and artificial entity called Europe.

Farage and Le Pen are also opposed to Washington's control of European countries and their foreign policy through NATO and other organizations dominated by Washington. Washington is no more willing than the Israel Lobby to take assaults on its power lying down. Attacks on the EU and on NATO are regarded as attacks on US interests. My conclusion is that the lives of Farage and Le Pen are at risk.

And so is Vladimir Putin's. Despite Washington's demonization, Putin has risen to recognition as the most capable world leader. Unlike Obama, Putin walks freely among crowds. He doesn't stand behind a bullet proof shield when he gives a speech. Russia is overrun with opposition groups well paid by Washington. Putin needs to recognize his danger before he is removed.

Like Israel, Washington has no tolerance for those who get in its way. Just ask Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Viktor Yanukovych, and Bashar al-Assad.

Yes, dear readers, I know, the list is longer. You don't need to write in to tell me.

Footnote[s]

1. ↑ From Australia, it has not been easy to cast judgement against Israel, a nation founded in 1947 by survivors of the Jewish Holocaust in which 6 million were brutally murdered. The Holocaust is possibly most brutal act ever carried out against any one one racial and cultural group in the history of humankind.

Ironically, in spite of the fact that many of the founders of Israel had relatives, partners friends, murdered by the Nazis were lucky, themselves, to have survived the Nazi death camps, they, themselves, behaved abominably towards native Palestinians — stealing their land, mass murder such as at Deir Yassin in order to cause other Palestinians to flee for their lives. In 1956 and 1967, the United Kingdom, the United States and France colluded with Israel in wars of aggression against its Arab neighbours including Egypt, Syria and Jordan.

A chilling example of the criminality of the state of Israel is documented in the article Kennedy, the Lobby and the Bomb (2/5/2013 - republished on candobetter.net) by Laurent Guyénot. On the sunny day of June 8, 1967, two days before the end of the Six Day War of 1967, in which Israel conquered the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights and the West Bank of Jordan:

"... three unmarked Mirage bombers and three torpedo boats flying an Israeli flag bombed, strafed and torpedoed for 75 minutes this NSA (National Security Agency) ship -unarmed, floating in international waters and easily recognizable - with the obvious intention of leaving no survivors, machine-gunning even the lifeboats. They only stopped at the approach of a Soviet ship, after killing 34 crew members, mostly engineers, technicians and translators. It is assumed that if they had succeeded in sinking the ship without witnesses, the Israelis would have attributed the crime to Egypt, so as to drag the United States into war on the side of Israel."

... http://www.voltairenet.org/article178401.html file:///?q=node/3432

More than any other article I have read, this article by Laurent Guyénot makes it clear why Israel is so hated and feared in the region. Only the close proximity of a Soviet warship, whose crew witnessed the crime, thereby enabling survivors to be rescued, prevented Egypt from being blamed. Had this occurred the U.S. would have had a pretext to join to also declare war on Egypt and a much larger and much more bloody conflict, conceivably even World War 3, would have ensued.

More recently, Israeli Mossad agents were observed in Kiev in February 2014 working alongside Nazi anti-semites helping to overthrow the democratically elected Ukrainian government of President Victor Yunokovych.

2. ↑ A full list is not included in this article. Presumably, Paul Craig Roberts assumes that, in the United States, this is common knowledge what the other five "powerful interest groups" are, but, writing from Australia, I don't know. - Ed

3. ↑ Whistleblower Julian Assange faces charges of rape and sexual assault in Sweden.

Residents of Slavyansk and its suburbs were awoken overnight on Thursday [12 June, 2014] by what they say were incendiary bombs that were dropped on their city by Kiev’s military. Witnesses and local media reports suggested that the bombs might be phosphorous. Thus the assault on civilians by Kiev gains in horror and violence, but barely reported by NATO-influenced news services in Australia and elsewhere. (Article and footage from RT News and you-tube)

Much of the village of Semyonovka, located in the Slavyansk suburbs, was set ablaze. Local residents told RT that the ground didn't stop burning for some time.

“We all saw what happened here yesterday. They used rocket launchers as well as incendiary bombs against us. The ground was on fire. How can the ground burn by itself. It burned for about forty minutes,” resident Roman Litvinov told RT over the phone.

“Starting from 2 a.m. everyone I’ve met has a sore throat and is coughing all the time. I think this is because of the burning. I think we’ll feel the true consequences later. There are still a lot of people here, a lot of children we haven’t managed to get out yet,” resident Tatyana told RT.

The use of incendiary bombs – designed to start fires using materials such as napalm, white phosphorus or other dangerous chemicals – is strictly prohibited by the UN.

Clicking on this image will take you to the video accompanying the English version news report

Kiev authorities have denied reports that such weapons were used against civilians. The National Guard also refuted reports that phosphorous ammunition was used, its press service stated.

Slavyansk, an industrial city in southeastern Ukraine with a population of over 100,000 people, has been a focal point of the government’s crackdown against the region. The city’s residential area has been under regular artillery fire for weeks.

“It does appear that there is at least a case to be argued that something similar, if not itself white phosphorous, was used overnight. I’ve seen the video, I’ve looked at it closely...[there are] whole signs, whole marks of white phosphorous use. For example, a very bright light burning and multiple burns coming down from the sky. It’s an airburst weapon that has been used, such as a mortar or a manned aircraft,”

Charles Shoebridge, a former army officer, Scotland Yard detective, and counter-terrorism intelligence officer who has recently returned from Ukraine, told RT.

“White phosphorous cannot be put out with the use of water” and it will “burn through one’s body to the bone,” Shoebridge added. “If there is going to be large amounts used it can also be a poison – large amounts can be set to contaminate water supply.”

According to the video, “it’s very likely that white phosphorus" was used, Shoebridge added. “It’s very difficult to fabricate the video we saw combined with the evidence on the ground.”

Moscow demanded an immediate investigation into the reported use of incendiary bombs in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday.

"We are concerned to hear reports that the Ukrainian military forces use incendiary bombs and some other indiscriminate weapons," he said. "These reports should be probed into immediately."

On Thursday, Russia introduced a draft resolution to the UN Security Council that condemns attacks on residential quarters and civilian facilities in southeastern Ukraine, said Vitaly Churkin, Russian envoy to the UN.

He also voiced concern over reports of the use of prohibited ammunition, including incendiary bombs, during the military crackdown.

The draft resolution calls for an immediate end to all violence and for a lasting ceasefire.

"The draft resolution will aim to stop the violence and support the political efforts the OSCE has been undertaking in vain so far. We urge the UN Secretary-General to support them," Churkin said, adding that its adoption would demonstrate the UNSC’s support for the crisis settlement efforts.

{Vladimir Putin] has claimed U.S. "mercenaries" were operating alongside Ukrainian forces, while infiltrating Russian special forces to seize Crimea and organize violence in Ukraine's east.

comment: Again, no citation is given. After neo-Nazis and their extreme right-wing neo-liberal allies seized power in a CIA-orchestrated putsch in Kiev, Crimeans, not wishing to live under the rule of the new Ukrainian Reich, organised to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia to which Crimea legally belonged until 1956. In 1956 it was given to Ukraine by Nikita Khruschev, the then leader of the Soviet Union. For more information, read: Latest Report: Crimea Referendum: 95 percent Vote for Union with Russia (16 March 2014), Crimea Rejects the US-NATO Sponsored Neoliberal Neo-Nazi Ukrainian Regime (16 March), Ukraine and Crimea, An Illegal Putsch and a Democratic Referendum. (5 April).

Later on Tom Malinovsksy concedes that the new Ukrainian neo-Nazi "authorities aren't perfect.". The full text of Tom Malinowski's article is reproduced further below.

Behind Putin's Cynicism and Hypocrisy

The Kremlin's ruler wants to extend to neighboring countries the tyranny he imposes on his own people.

You can usually figure what Russian President Vladimir Putin is doing and why by noting the actions and values he falsely projects onto others.

Over the past several weeks, for example, he has accused the Ukrainian government of stripping autonomy from Ukraine's eastern regions, while moving to end local elections in Russia.

He has claimed U.S. "mercenaries" were operating alongside Ukrainian forces, while infiltrating Russian special forces to seize Crimea and organize violence in Ukraine's east.

He has called the Internet a CIA creation, while trying to bring Russian social media under the control of a secret police-dominated state.

So when Mr. Putin justified intervention in Ukraine by accusing its government of human rights abuses, it was a bad sign for the Ukrainians who would soon be subject to his rule.

The new authorities in Kiev aren't perfect. But international organizations have found no evidence that they are or were suppressing the rights of the ethnic-Russian minority in Crimea or Ukraine's east. Pro-Kremlin separatists, on the other hand, have been attacking their unarmed opponents with growing abandon. Every offense Russia falsely attributed to Ukraine's Maidan is in fact being committed by its own forces and proxies.

The pattern began in Crimea. Shortly after Russia's intervention, local authorities announced that ethnic Tatars &emdash; who had returned over the years to Crimea after their mass deportation by Joseph Stalin &emdash; would have to vacate their land. Before the deportation's 70th anniversary this week, police conducted mass searches of Tatar homes.

On over a dozen occasions in the days that followed, armed men attacked or detained local and international journalists. Pro-Russian forces kidnapped and tortured Ukrainian civic activists. At least two were killed in detention, their bodies dumped in forests; more are still missing. International organizations report that around 5,000 people &emdash; including minority Christians, Jews and at least 3,000 Tatars &emdash; have fled Crimea and sought refuge elsewhere in Ukraine.

In Ukraine's east, polls show that the great majority of people &emdash; whether they supported the Maidan revolution or not &emdash; don't want to join Russia. But when the citizens of Donetsk, Slovyansk and Kharkiv have come out to oppose Moscow's intervention, pro-Russian militias have repeatedly assaulted them; more than 100 peaceful demonstrators in the east have been hospitalized after such attacks.

Abductions, torture and killings have also intensified in the east. Three bodies of supporters of the Kiev government recently washed up on a riverbank in Slovyansk, bearing signs of torture. Acting on orders from the self-appointed "mayor" of Slovyansk, pro-Russian militias have begun to drive local Roma families from their homes.

In these and other ways, Mr. Putin is extending into eastern Ukraine the repression he has imposed inside Russia in recent years, in direct opposition to what eastern Ukrainians would enjoy as part of a united Ukraine: local autonomy, freedom of expression and internationally monitored free and fair elections. This isn't just the effect of Mr. Putin's intervention; it is arguably the intent. The example of Ukraine's Maidan &emdash; of ordinary people overthrowing a corrupt, authoritarian ruler so that they could draw closer to European democracies &emdash; was a threat to the ruler of the Kremlin. For this, in Mr. Putin's mind, Ukraine had to be punished and humiliated, if not carved into pieces.

Russia's actions are a threat to a postwar international order designed to banish the old pattern of large powers swallowing small ones. But the crisis in Ukraine is also a contest of values. This isn't a contest between the West and Russia, but between people everywhere &emdash; including in Moscow &emdash; who believe that states exist to serve their citizens, and regimes that think it should be the other way around.

The sanctions that Washington and Brussels have imposed to stop Russian aggression have costs. All sanctions do, and because the potential costs are higher for Europe, paying this price isn't a mere gesture. But it is striking that in Europe, those most vulnerable to Russia's countermeasures &emdash; from Estonia to Poland to the Czech Republic &emdash; have nonetheless been among the most vocal in pressing us to act.

The effect is even more pronounced among Russian dissidents I have recently met &emdash; men and women who are labeled "traitors," "foreign agents" and "extremists" for questioning the Kremlin, but who still urge us to resist what their government is doing. The closer one is to the heart of the problem, the more one sees what's at stake.

Those of us who live further away should see things as clearly. We were right to seek practical cooperation with Russia and to encourage its integration as a respected power into global institutions. I hope that the time will come when this is possible again. But in the current crisis, we are right not to make the mistake of projecting our hopes onto the ruler of Russia in the way he projects his cynicism onto us.

In a repeat of house burnings in 2009, MiningWatch has been informed that this raid was also accompanied by Mobile Unit police violence against villagers and the rapes of at least ten women and young girls.

The Tiene clan of Wingima, which was also targeted in 2009, are the traditional local landowners. People who have now lost shelter and the contents of their houses are Tiene landowners or relatives who can only live in the village at the invitation of the Tiene.

Barrick’s Porgera Joint Venture (PJV) mine houses, feeds, and financially supports units of PNG’s infamous Mobile Units, in spite of their ­reputation for violence and their previous involvement in hundreds of house burnings in the mine’s lease area, as documented by Amnesty International.

Following the 2009 house burnings, the Porgera Lando­wners Association (PLOA) reportedly obtained an order from the National Court of Papua New Guinea restraining the State from burning down more houses. However, reportedly, following a request by Barrick (Nuigini) Limited, the National Court removed the restraining order, arguing that the police has ultimate power to execute such operations under the terms of a State of Emergency (SOE).

In April, a State of Emergency was called by the Government of PNG, leading to the deployment of additional Mobile Units to the Porgera Valley, to supplement those already supported there by the PJV mine. One reported goal of the SOE was to crack down on unauthorized scavenging of ore by residents living around the mine. Barrick Gold has not managed to stop dangerous incursions into the pit and across its massive waste flows of desperate people eking out a living. The mine and its uncontrolled waste flows have destroyed agricultural land and traditional subsistence activities.

The raid took place while the leadership of the PLOA were away from the Porgera Valley. They had reportedly travelled to Kokopo, East New Britain, for a meeting with PJV’s Community Affairs Manager and representatives of the National Government, and the Provincial Government of Enga Province, where the mine is located. The meeting was an attempt to come to agreement on terms for a new Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) for the operation of the mine. The meeting reportedly broke down on Tuesday June 3. On the 5th of June, Barrick (Nuigini) Limited won a court order restraining the PLOA and its President, Mark Tony Ekepa, from interfering in the operations of the mine (attached). The raid started the morning of June 6th.

One of the issues to be discussed in the context of a new MOA was the long-standing question of re-settlement. Porgera landowners affected by the mine’s operations have long sought to be resettled away from the mine, as life has become untenable for the local indigenous communities who find themselves surrounded by the pit and its massive waste flows. This request for resettlement was most recently made by PLOA through a complaint to Canada’s National Contact Point for the OECD Guidelines. Barrick has consistently turned down requests for resettlement of all landowners living in the mine lease area in favour of moving small groups when the mine’s needs encroach directly on their land or when the waste flows and mine operations have made the ground they live on "geotechnically unstable."

"It is simply unconscionable that Barrick is turning its back on the obvious need to resettle these communities away from the mine, but continues to house and financially support PNG Mobile Units that have a history of human rights abuses, including house burnings, in those communities," says Catherine Coumans, Asia-Pacific Program coordinator at MiningWatch Canada. "It is unacceptable that violence is being used to manage the very serious problems associated with this mine and its negative impacts on the ability of local people to live healthy lives and to sustain themselves."

www.globalresearch.ca/200-villagers-houses-burnt-down-again-near-barrick-gold-mine-in-papua-new-guinea/5386691" data-title="200 Villagers’ Houses Burnt Down Again Near Barrick Gold Mine in Papua New Guinea">

The ACT Government has obtained licences to kill 1,600 healthy kangaroos, plus an unknown number of joeys, in Canberra’s nature reserves over the next 3 months. However, for the first time, Animal Liberation ACT is standing up for the ACT’s native animals by challenging the Government’s killing program in the courts. The start of the annual kangaroo kill has been delayed after Animal Liberation ACT successfully obtained an injunction in the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal on 20 May 2014. Support is now needed to continue our Legal Challenge to Stop the ACT Government's Kangaroo Cull. The newly established Animal Defenders Office has provided pro bono legal services to get us to this point. We now need to raise funds urgently to cover the costs of a barrister for the legal battle ahead of us in the main hearing which began on Tuesday the 3rd of June 2014. The hearing ran for four days, and a decision is expected next week on whether to allow the killing of more than 1,600 kangaroos on Canberra's 'nature' reserves. Small and large donations welcome. Donate via Go Fund Me at http://www.gofundme.com/SaveRoos Legal costs are expected to $20,000. Let's make this case huge! Animal Liberation ACT would like to sincerely thank the Animal Defenders Office for their incredibly hard work and professionalism in taking this case to a new level. We would also like to thank our Kangaroo Campaign members for all their work behind the scenes in assisting the legal team with the case. Thank you in advance supporters!

Donate via Go Fund Me at http://www.gofundme.com/SaveRoos

For other candobetter.net about kangaroo culls, especially in the ACT see this tag.

"ACT government senior ecologist Dr Donald Fletcher [see more below] defended the research behind the cull, as a hearing before the full bench of ACAT entered its third day on Thursday [5 June 2014]. [...] At one point [Animal Liberation's lawyers] argued a graph, which contained data used to justify the shootings at one reserve, was "pretty useless", although Dr Fletcher stood by most of the figures in the report.

Dr Fletcher admitted he hadn't made adjustments to the population figures throughout the year, and didn't take into account fluctuations due to the time of year the kangaroo populations were counted. He said that meant the government was likely to be ''under-culling'' this year. ''One of the flaws is I haven't allowed for that spring increment,'' he said. Dr Fletcher said several times he couldn't remember how he had calculated certain figures in the population growth estimates. When questioned by lawyers, Dr Fletcher said one of the figures in the data did not demonstrate good science.

[...] On Wednesday, former CSIRO plant scientist Dr William Taylor told the hearing there were "significant deficiencies" in the data the ACT government used for the cull.

The tribunal allowed last year's cull to go ahead following a similar legal challenge brought by animal welfare groups, and a decision was made to target fewer animals.

More than 1500 kangaroos were shot dead in last year's cull, including 355 [in pouch joeys]." Source: http://www.theage.com.au/act-news/act-government-ecologist-defends-kangaroo-cull-figures-at-hearing-20140605-zrz34.html

For the first time the 'science' behind the annual Kangaroo cull has been called into question and we have to thank everyone who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to create such a strong case against the Government. Thank you also to those who attended the hearing, your presence was extremely supportive. And a huge thank you to the ADO team who without their knowledge, professionalism and what became hundreds of hours of work, we would not have had a case.

Animal Liberation ACT’s lawyers, the Animal Defenders Office, persuaded a judge to grant a stay against the kangaroo cull on the basis that the government has failed in its duty to prove the kangaroo cull had improved biodiversity over the past six years.

“They have not collected any baseline data or monitoring data on the conditions of other species on the reserves they say they are saving,” says legislative drafter Ward, who moonlights as a volunteer with the Animal Defenders Office. “If the government wants to go and kill more than 1,600 healthy wild animals, we have to be clear that the science is impeccable before we let them do that.”

Dr Fletcher’s Phd thesis oddly at odds with Canberra culls

(For full article about previous culls see "ACT Roo killings: Who profits? Behind the Earless Dragon mask")

One scientist who was closely associated with the Belconnen cull and the Majura cull, was Don Fletcher. Fletcher is the Senior Ecologist in Research and Monitoring in Parks, Conservation and Lands, Department of Territory and Municipal Services, ACT. His involvement in the Belconnen Roo cull seems to have been officially limited to capturing then releasing female survivors after inserting contraceptives in them. He was one of the writers of the public consultation document leading up to the Majura cull.

He defended these culls and has defended the assessments leading up to the Majura culls in a public consultation document. Yet his own thesis on the “Population Dynamics of Eastern Grey Kangaroos in Temperate Grasslands,” seemed to discredit claims at the basis of these culls, which were too high population density and a need to manage it down to one kangaroo per hectare. For instance, he wrote on page 237 of his study that :

“The study did not provide evidence that high densities of kangaroos reduce groundcover to the levels where erosion can accelerate. Unmanaged kangaroo populations did not necessarily result in low levels of ground cover. Groundcover had a positive but not significant relationship to kangaroo density, with the highest cover at the wettest site where kangaroo density was highest. Weather has an important influence on groundcover.[1]”

He also wrote that some of the populations he was studying were at the highest density recorded. They ranged between 4.5 and 5.1 kangaroos per hectare. The density in the studies below was expressed in square kilometers. To get density per hectare, divide by 100. [2] Fletcher wrote:

“The kangaroo density estimates reported in Chapter 7 for the three study sites (mean eastern grey kangaroo densities of 450, 480 and 510 km2) are the highest kangaroo densities reported. For comparison, the maximum density of combined red kangaroos and western grey kangaroos in the Kinchega study was less than 56 km2 (Bayliss 1987) and the density of eastern grey kangaroos at Wallaby Creek (Southwell 1987b) was 41 to 50 km2. The next highest kangaroo density outside the vicinity of my study sites appears to be that of Coulson et al. (1999a) for eastern grey kangaroos at Yan Yean Reservoir near Melbourne, which was 220 km2.”

Coulson’s study of kangaroos at 2.2 per ha was published in 1999 as Coulson G, Alviano P, Ramp P, Way S “The kangaroos of Yan Yean: history of a problem population”. [3] Graham Coulson’s Yan Yean article is frequently cited by kangaroo population students and he seems to be thought of as the originator of the “one kangaroo per kilometer” ‘rule’.

I did contact Dr Fletcher by email, and he was initially quite friendly, but when I attempted to ask him questions about his thesis responses to my emails ceased, even though I re-sent the emails.

NOTES

[1] Don Fletcher, “Population Dynamics of Eastern Grey Kangaroos in Temperate Grasslands,” was on line as a pdf, which is the form I downloaded it as. Now apparently only available from University of Canberra Library, reference: http://nla.gov.au/anbd.bib-an42269526. A book by the same title and author has also been published.
[2] There are 100 ha in one square km. So if density varied between 450 and 510 kangs per square km, then that is 4.5 p ha or 5.10 per ha. With 220 per square km 2.2 per ha.
[3] Coulson G, Alviano P, Ramp P, Way S (1999). “The kangaroos of Yan Yean: history of a problem population”, Proc R Soc Vic 111: 121–130.

Vladimir Putin did nothing wrong by reuniting Crimea with Russia, said Janusz Korwin-Mikke, a European Parliament MP and leader of the Polish political party called the Congress of the New Right. During a panel discussion on local TV he asked others not to talk ill of Putin because "he did nothing to deserve such treatment." "If, for example, 95 percent of Lvov's citizens were Poles who voted on a referendum to join Poland, no Polish leader would’ve been able to refuse them," he pointed out.

Meanwhile, referring to the tragic events which took place in February at the Independence square in Kiev, he said that "the terrorists who killed 20 police officers and 60 protesters were trained in Poland."

Late May the Eurosceptic Korwin-Mikke's political party achieved success for the first time in its history by clearing the 5 percent voting threshold during the Euro parliament elections. The New Right representatives received support of 7,15 percent of Polish voters. Mr. Korwin-Mikke declared that his main goal is to destroy the European institutions from within.

© Photo: RIA Novosti/Alexander Maksimenko

Speaking about the Russian-Ukrainian relations regarding the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, Mr. Korwin-Mikke said that Petr Poroshenko should begin negotiating with Russia. After the inauguration on June 7 Poroshenko should draw a border – whether it will encompass Donetsk or not is irrelevant as long as it is a clearly defined border – and say: "This is my country!" And afterwards he should join Moscow at the bargaining table, Mr. Korwin-Mikke said.

Appendix 1: Msm reporting about Crimea

Don't Forget Crimea (NYT, 8/6/2014 - behind paywall), Crimea is ours for ever, says Ukraine’s new president (The Times, 8/6/2014), Ukraine president vows not to give up Crimea (Guardian, 7/6/2014), Ukraine's New President Pledges to Retake Crimea (Vice News, 8/6/2014), The Invasion of Crimea Is Hurting Russia's Other Exclave (Forbes, 6/6/2014)

Ukraine President Poroshenko’s Inauguration Speech: No Compromise with Donesk and Lugansk (Global Research, 8/6/2014)

Appendix 2: Some non-msm reporting about Crimea

Crimea rules out rejoining Ukraine's territory, Crimea Leaders Rule Out Ever Rejoining Ukraine (FarsNews, 8/6/2014)

The following article by wildlife biologist Hans Brunner comments on an unrealistic environmental policy statement from Frankston Council. Yet again, an Australian local council behaves as if it believes it can have its environmental cake and eat it. Surely the councilors and staff at Frankston are not really this naive. But if this isn't naivety, what is it? Some think that most people who have responsibility for environment in government mistakenly believe it is about a marketing exercise to develop 'customer' satisfaction; they really don't have a clue about thermodynamics or by what the environment is, that it includes nature, and that our impacts are enormous. - (Candobetter.net editor)

“Reasons for the strategy”

On page 11, under, "reasons for this strategy", the Council admits that “Human demand for natural resource is 2.7 global hectares per person, whereas the planet only has 1.8 gha bio-capacity available per person.”

This says it all.

Yet, Australia's and Frankston's population is still rapidly increasing, due to government policies to boost numbers. As a result, Frankston is under siege from developers in order to accommodate another projected16,000 people. Surprisingly, the council seems not to have a problem with this and so it was not included in their strategy for “Greening our Future”. From experience I can say that the Council stand on the Green Wedge is shaky at best.

P. 22-23. The glowing description here exaggerates and misrepresents Frankston’s environmental situation. Remarkably, there is no mention of the damage done to wildlife through the enormous loss of habitat when the Peninsula link was built. Frankston’s largest wildlife corridor was destroyed.

P. 31. Frankston Council claims to be “ensuring that all native wildlife are protected from cats, dogs, foxes and rats, intrusive human intervention such as bikes, fishing and unsupervised parting.” In spite of this we are still rapidly losing wildlife species and especially the nationally endangered Southern Brown Bandicoot. Furthermore, it was the grass roots people who had to fight extremely hard to keep bikes, fishing and dog walking out of the Frankston Reservoir Reserve. This was after the council invited people to say what they would like to do in this reserve, engineering responses that resulted in asking for bike riding, dog walking fishing, canoeing, jogging, parting and many many more such activities, instead of simply being able to walk and enjoy nature without molesting it. I hope they never do this again!

P. 32. Instead of “Further opportunities to protect wildlife,” it should read, 'Urgent and Realistic Actions should be taken'. This does not seem to happen.

P. 40. Whilst stating that people pollute creeks and water ways, the Council fails to warn that if more people come to Frankston, this will exacerbate the already serious problem.

P. 42. The Council agree that water is already a scarce commodity. However they don’t forecast that an increasing population will make it even more scarce. I feel that the less water everyone uses, the more people the government invites to share what remains.

P. 54. More housing, however environmentally planned in construction, will, in most cases, still create the loss of green space and wildlife habitat. It is not the solution to 'greening our future' and these negative consequences have not been mentioned in this document.

P. 56. Advocates bike use rather than car use. Elderly people cannot ride a bike and most people with heavy shopping bags cannot easily use a bike or public transport (when it is available). They have to use their car.

P. 61. Asking to reduce consuming is OK but there is a limit. Asking to restrict consuming and then promote an increase in the number of consumers is hypocritical and defeats the purported purpose of reducing environmental impact.

P. 65. To increase business and promote capital growth is definitely not greening our future.

P. 72. Under “Targets” there is no mention of protecting and enhancing of biodiversity. It seems that, for the Council, nature has nothing to do with “Greening our Future.”

P. 74-76. 'Indicators for biodiversity' fails to recognise or admit to the drastic and ongoing loss of biodiversity. This is especially the case of the Bandicoots in Frankston, but also for many other species less conspicuous, such as moths and butterflies etc. I have never heard the Council complaining about the loss of wildlife. Maybe my hearing is bad.

P. 84. Just to adapt to climate change is not good enough. However, climate change is a worldwide issue and Frankston is only a small piece of a jig-saw puzzle and has no influence in reducing global warming except to set an example in how to slow it a little.

Sadly, these proposed efforts will really only infinitesimally slow down the process of the eventual disaster. The council should come to terms with, and the public should be made aware, of the seriousness of the issues.

P. 87 “Education”. Everyone, including school children, should be informed of the truth about our dim future. Young people have to know the reality of what we are leaving them with to inherit. Finally, while Frankston Council appears to be trying to do their best, they should not mislead the community with a false security by using the word SUSTAINABILITY and make people believe that whatever the Council recommends is good enough to save the world. Far from it!

Finally, I need to add that there should definitely be no dog walking in Nature Conservation Reserves especially such as the Pines.

In late May 2014 the Syrian Girl debated on UK's Islam TV the legitimacy of the recently concluded elections. She debated on-line from Australia, two supporters of the terrorist insurgency who were present in a London studio. Whilst the moderator deserves credit for allowing the Syrian Girl to put her view, he also showed himself to be biased in favour of the insurgency. In the limited time available to her, the Syrian Girl again showed a very good grasp of the complexity of the Syrian conflict and effectively rebutted the claims made by the other two participants.

Real insider information about the surveillance system in the United States, its history and its vulnerabilities. In this excellent interview, Binney is asked by RT's Sophie Shevardnadze of Sophie Co what he thinks will happen to Edward Snowden if he comes home to "man up" as John Kerry suggested, apparently with a straight face. Binney answers by describing what happened to him when he started asking official questions and how he managed to get the FBI to stop harassing him. Video and full transcript inside.

Bill Binney interviewed by Sophie Co about USA surveillance

It’s a year since Edward Snowden first came out with revelations that turned the world upside down. What once sounded like Orwellian conspiracy theory turned out to be true – we all are being watched over by the Big Brother in Washington. Innumerable questions arise. What now? Has something changed 12 months later? Should we forget about privacy and safety when we are online? Sophie asks NSA veteran and whistleblower, the precursor of Snowden, Bill Binney.

Follow @SophieCo_RT

Sophie Shevardnadze: I just want to go a little bit backward – before the program was exposed by Edward Snowden, ‘The Stellar Wind’ , there was something called ‘ThinThread’, which you helped create. But it was overlooked in favor of what the NSA has now. Why so, what was wrong with it?

Bill Binney: I think the main problem was that it didn’t cost enough money. In other words it didn’t support a large operation, a large set of contractors, a larger organization. So if it was cheap and efficient, why wasn’t it the thing they wanted to do? They wanted to build an empire, and build an industrial base.

The Hon Kelvin Thomson MP Federal Member for Wills Tuesday 20th May 2014 MEDIA RELEASE Melbourne's Skyrocketing Population It is astonishing that the Victorian Government's latest Plan Melbourne now says Melbourne' s population will grow from 4.3 million now to 7.7 million by 2051.

A draft of this plan only seven months ago forecast a rise from 4.3 million to 6.5 million. That 50 per cent rise would be difficult enough to cope with, but 7.7 million is over 75 per cent . In any event, the fact that the projection has altered so radically is further
evidence that estimates of Melbourne's future population are totally unreliable.

Indeed Melbourne's population growth in recent years has far outpaced previous Government estimates.

The consequences of a 7.7 million population for Melbourne will be dramatic. Traffic congestion will be horrific. Housing prices will continue to skyrocket, leaving home ownership out of reach for young people. People will not be able to afford anything other than an apartment or a unit, and gardens and backyards will increasingly
become a thing of the past.

Grey infrastructure (freeways, drainage and sewerage systems etc) will proliferate, at the expense of green infrastructure (public open space and trees and shrubs on private land) and blue infrastructure (creeks, rivers, and beaches). Melbourne will become hotter as climate change is reinforced by the urban heat island effect.

According to Plan Melbourne a 7.7 million population would require over one and a half million more dwellings, of which 960,000 would occur in "established" areas, and 610,000 will occur in "growth" areas. In other words Melbourne will continue to grow both upwards and outwards, continuing its path to becoming an obese, hardened artery parody of its former self. By 2031, in the next 17 years, we will see 470,000 more people in the northern suburbs, 430,000 more in the west, 480,000 more in the south, 200,000 more in the east, and 280,000 more in Central Melbourne.

Accomplishing this will inevitably involve trampling over the rights of residents, who have time and time again indicated that they do not want their neighbourhoods and communities to change in this way.

Victoria First was formed as a non-government organisation last year to campaign against this kind of population growth. We believe that returning Australia's migration levels to those of the 1980s and 1990s will stop this rapid population growth and help us protect and pass on the things about Melbourne that make it a great place to live.

Anyone interested in joining Victoria First can contact the Secretary, Julianne Bell,

on (M) 0408 022 408.
Contact: Kelvin Thomson MP (M) 0458 750 700

NB: in fact, since this recent Media Release, the population of Victoria has been revised again and will now be "projected" at missile speed towards 10 million by 2050!

Candobetter.net Editor: All headings have been supplied by Candobetter.net and were not present on the original source, which is a speech in Hansard. For the original source go to Hansard, Wednesday, 4 June 2014, House of Representatives, p.15

Mr KELVIN THOMSON (Wills) (10:24): In my 2014 budget reply speech I said I was going to devote more time to health policy issues and become more expert in these matters. In delivering on that, yesterday I had the opportunity to speak at some length about preventive health and today I want to make some observations about our health workforce. The Health Workforce Australia Abolition Bill seeks to repeal the Health Workforce Australia Bill 2009 and absorb Health Workforce Australia's functions and programs into the Department of Health.

Australia’s complex health workforce arrangements

In 2006 the Productivity Commission report Australia's Health Workforce concluded that a more sustainable and responsive health workforce was needed. The report also highlighted the complexity of Australia's health workforce arrangements and the involvement of numerous bodies at all levels in health workforce education and training. In 2008 COAG agreed to the creation of a national health workforce agency that works across jurisdictions to establish more effective, streamlined and integrated clinical training arrangements and to support workforce reform initiatives. The Health Workforce Australia Bill back in 2009 established a national health workforce agency, Health Workforce Australia. Since its establishment Health Workforce Australia produced Australia's first ever national long-term projections for doctors, nurses and midwives with the publication in 2012 of Health Workforce 2025—Doctors, Nurses and Midwives. This report highlighted that under current policy settings Australia will face a significant shortage of nurses and a shortage of doctors by 2025.

Imported nursing numbers equal to number unemployed Oz nurse grads

Australia has become highly dependent on migration of international health professionals, particularly in rural and remote communities, as a consequence of a lack of sufficient attention to training young Australians to take up health workforce roles. In the 2013-14 budget the previous Labor government invested more than $344 million in Health Workforce Australia to support Australia's healthcare system and its workforce, especially in rural and remote areas. Health Workforce Australia has delivered an additional 446 nurses and allied health professionals to rural and remote communities. It is very surprising to me and quite unacceptable that Australia is one of the least self-sufficient nations amongst comparable OECD countries in terms of meeting our health workforce needs through domestic training efforts. It is even more remarkable that, despite this, what we are seeing today is skilled nurses finding it difficult to find work.

The proportion of international nurses who we bring into Australia each year on 457 visas is comparable to the proportion of nurse graduates who find themselves unable to find work. Seriously, how are Australian nurses meant to transition from graduate into experienced nurses if the opportunities to work, experience and refine their skills are not available to them? It is wrong and foolish and short-sighted that Australian nurses are not given employment priority.

Instead, hospitals and managers are getting bonuses for bringing in foreign nurses and getting them to sign up with universities to do masters and PhDs in nursing at great expense to the migrants themselves and at great cost to the wider Australian society. While this is going on, many excellent local nurses with years of experience are now unable to find work.
In a submission to the 457 Visa Integrity Review

the Australian Nurses and Midwifery Federation pointed out 'the sorry state of the employment prospects for new nurse graduates, with an increasing number struggling to find work, with many rejected for work by employers that use international recruited nurses under the 457 program'.

They urged the panel to resist calls for any deregulation that will remove or dilute current protections or safeguards, particularly to labour market testing, English language requirements and current obligations regarding wages and employment conditions. I believe the nurses federation is quite right to urge the government not to water down the 457 visa program. The underemployment of nursing graduates, despite the employment of large numbers of offshore nurses, is inconsistent with the key policy objective of the temporary migrant worker programs. There is a clear policy disconnect here that needs to be addressed.

Many Australian nurses unable to find work

The nurses federation estimates that, in 2013, 60 per cent of Tasmanian nursing graduates were unable to find work; in Queensland only around 28 per cent of new nursing graduates secured positions with Queensland Health; in 2014, only 600 of 2½ thousand graduates were employed; and, in 2013, 800 graduates in Victoria, 400 in Western Australia and 280 in South Australia could not secure positions. An online questionnaire of new graduates undertaken by the nurses federation revealed further troubling anecdotal evidence of large numbers of new graduates failing to find employment in their field; many graduates receiving numerous employment rejections —and in one case over 70; most graduates fortunate enough to obtain employment being engaged on a precarious basis through agency, part-time or casual arrangements; many graduates going to great lengths to obtain work—for example, by moving interstate and separating themselves from their families; most employers who were named in the questionnaire as rejecting new graduates using 457 labour; and, finally, and I think most seriously, most new graduates are saddled with a HECS debt and many are disillusioned that they studied at all.

No jobs but big student debts

Indeed, if this government gets its way in deregulating student fees and increasing the interest on student debts, young student nurses will be at risk of being in the demoralising position of having no jobs and going deeper and deeper into debt. I agree 100 per cent with the nurses federation that the current labour market testing requirements need to be strengthened to include employer obligations such as the need to advertise locally and nationally at market rates; offering relocation, housing and utility assistance where required; reporting on specific measures taken to employ disadvantaged groups, local job seekers and recently retrenched workers; and, where possible, making sure that new graduates have a reasonable chance of filling vacancies.

Graduate nurses are our future and we all need a secure future

Graduate nurses are our future. Initiatives need to be in place to ensure that they are placed in employment upon completion of their degrees, otherwise the future of Australian nursing will be one of shortages of nurses and dependence on overseas recruiting. Given the proposed changes to the federal budget, it is a bleak outlook for thousands of nursing graduates each year who are desperate to be employed but are often losing out on job opportunities to nurses recruited by hospitals and other facilities on 457 visas. The nurses federation is right when saying in their submission that, putting aside the demoralising and devastating effect that this has on new graduates who are unable to find work after undertaking a three-year tertiary course, it also represents a loss in investment in the education of professional health workers and a loss in the contribution of these potential workers to the health-care systems—absolutely.

Grim situation calls for seriously questions re 457 visa program

In the light of these facts, one has to seriously question how well temporary migrant worker programs like the 457 visa program are serving this country. I think it would be crazy to further liberalise the program. The only reason for doing this would be to undermine the pay and conditions of local workers. Yet, this is what the government with its 457 visa review seems to want to do.

The situation is so grim that there is an online petition circulating calling for a review of the issuing of subclass 457 visas for nurses in Australia which has over 27,000 signatures. Anyone interested can find the petition on the website candobetter.net.

Online comments by supporters of this petition include: 'We must give priority to Australian nurses over 457 visa holders; our future depends on it' and 'Destroying the reasonable expectations of employment of nurses born here is cruel, unnecessary and shameful'.

457 Visa workforce growing much faster than Aust employment generally

The 457 visa program, in my view, needs tightening to ensure that Australian workers and young people are given priority over temporary visa workers. Immigration department figures released in May show that there were over 110,000 457 visa workers in Australia on 31 March this year, up by over 6,000 or 5.9 per cent compared to 12 months ago. The 457 visa workforce is growing much faster than Australian employment generally. This is completely unjustifiable in the present jobs climate. It is a recipe for increasing unemployment with all the misery and hardship that accompanies that.

It is all very well for ministers opposite to say that everyone has to earn or learn, but how are you supposed to earn even after you have learned when we have over a million people in Australia on temporary visas, which give them no work rights—a docile workforce who employers prefer because they can be sent packing from the country if they speak out about their rights at work?

The Liberal government is allowing too many employers to access 457 visas without any obligation to look for Australian workers first and young people especially are losing out. Under the coalition,

around two-thirds of all 457 visas are not subject to any employer obligation to advertise the job and test the local labour market, and nearly half of all 457 visas are still going to younger foreign workers aged 30 or less.

Prime Minister Abbott promised 'no cuts to health' but the abolition of Health Workforce Australia through this bill is another example of that promise being broken. Labor established Health Workforce Australia to provide a national, long-term, coordinated approach to health workforce planning and reform to ensure our health workforce can meet the increasing demand for health services now and into the future. Health Workforce Australia has had a proven track record in national health workforce planning, which is crucial if Australia is to have a health workforce able to meet the health needs of Australians wherever they live into the future.

Health Workforce Australia has funded 8,400 new quality clinical training places for students across 22 individual disciplines. It has supported a 115 per cent increase in simulated education hours in 2012 through the Simulated Learning Environments Program. The Health Workforce Australia report Health Workforce 2025 shows the current medical training system is inefficient and there is an uneven distribution of the medical workforce, which of course particularly affects rural and remote communities.

A key policy action from Health Workforce Australia's report was to improve the national coordination of medical training by working with trainees, employers, educators and governments through the National Medical Training Advisory Network. A Medical Observer article following the budget quoted medical experts who condemned the proposal to merge Health Workforce Australia into the health department. It said that, in the view of the President of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Liz Marles:

… the move would risk destabilising general practice training …

And in the same article the CEO of the Public Health Association Australia, Michael Moore, was said to have labelled the plan short-sighted. Mr Moore argues that the merged organisations would have neither the same independence nor influence if they were combined with the health department. Professor Simon Willcock, who sat on the board, also pointed to the good work Health Workforce Australia have done in developing databases and around workforce projections, and he lamented:

It would be a shame to see all of that work not continue.

So, if this bill is passed, this complex but important planning work will not occur on a national level, and the burden will fall to the states and territories.

I regret that this government seems determined to dismantle universal health care and consign our country to a return to a piecemeal approach to health-workforce planning. I am concerned that this will result in a boom-and-bust cycle in the supply of doctors, nurses and midwives. This scenario is unsustainable and unaffordable, and it will result in a health workforce which will not be able to meet the increasing demands for health care, now and into the future.

Today, June 4, 2014 there was a Snap rally to protest at Mining giant Whitehaven Coal is sending an army of bulldozers to flatten the ancient Leard Forest located in the North West of New South Wales. The rally took place at midday at Governor Phillip Tower, 1 Farrer Place, Sydney. Dozens of protesters at Whitehaven Coal's Maules Creek Mine have been arrested. A total of 82 protesters have been arrested and removed from Leard State Forest.

Leard Blockade: Police move in on protesters at Whitehaven Coal's Maules Creek mine

Dozens of protesters have been arrested at Whitehaven Coal's Maules Creek mine, near Boggabri in north-west New South Wales.

Police confirmed they entered the Leard State Forest this morning and occupied trucks, scrapers and road rollers to stop mine workers from clearing the land.

Click here for Videos of past Leard Forest blockade actions

A total of 82 protesters were arrested and removed from the site.

Police say the charges relate to hindering the working of mining equipment, entering and remaining on enclosed lands without reasonable excuse, and resisting arrest.

Melbourne protester Phil Evans from the Leard Forest Alliance says police moved in about 10:00am (AEDT).

"The police have come along and we've had some folks, especially some of the older folks in our crew sitting down on the ground on chairs and they've actually been arrested, including our oldest member, 92-year-old Bill Ryan, who is a World War II Kokoda veteran," he said.

"I'm actually about four metres up off the ground on top of a machine at the moment.

"I would say there's probably around 20-25 police on site and I can actually see nine vehicles along with a very large police van obviously for transporting multiple people."

The protesters say the mine employees remain on site but no work has been done today.

However a Whitehaven spokesman says the protest has not disrupted work on the mine.

The protesters say on top of the arrests there have been 10 to 12 personal infringement notices issued which carry a fine of $350 each.

Those arrested have been issued with court attendance notices for the 29th of April.

Whitehaven received final government approval for its open-cut mine project at Maules Creek in February last year.

NOTES

Photo: Protesters occupying vehicles at the Maules Creek mine, owned by Whitehaven Coal, near Boggabri in northern New South Wales.

The video here is from an earlier protest in October 2013.

Related Storieshttp://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-19/another-arrest-at-whitehavens-maules-creek-mine/5330138
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-19/whitehaven-to-push-ahead-with-maules-creek-mine-despite-legal-c/4830390

Vitaly Churkin

Unlike the case with President Barack Obama and his paid liars including State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki (embedded press conference also included), Russia's political leaders, including President Vladimir Putin and Vitaly I. Churkin, the English-speaking Russian diplomat, who is, for the month of June 2014, serving as President of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, have no difficulty answering critical questions even from hostile journalists. Vladimir Putin easily handled such questions in his media conference of 4 March and in the embedded video, Russian diplomat Vitaly Churkin, similarly dealt with questions about Ukraine.

SNOWDEN Vs GOVT: State Department's Jen Psaki Left Speechless When Grilled

Is ABC Political News analogous to the hegemony of the pigs of Animal Farm?

Here is an attempt at a satirical analogy.

Characters:

Napoleon: Will the real Napoleon please stand up? Is it the ABC CEO or the ABC Head of Editorial Policy?
Squealer 1: RN Breakfast
Squealer 2: QANDA
The dogs: ABC Audience and Consumer Affairs, AMCA (and Ombudsman?)

In the original Animal Farm the animals all dreamed of equality for all, and they set out to achieve it after the Revolution overthrew the humans. With humans removed the animals were finally free and equal.

The pigs knew they were the smartest animals. The other animals were dumb. So the pigs assumed the role of leading the animals to the Utopia of fairness, caring and equality.

Everyone should have everything, and all should be equal. The senior pigs were the products of an environment where their education was paid for by the state. They had always had everything they needed. Animal Farm was in a lucky country, after all, and with the humans now expelled true liberty was assured.

The pigs developed Commandments for all the animals to believe in. They called these the ABC Editorial Policy and the ABC Code of Practice. It was about fairness and impartiality. It was about preventing propaganda from being used as a tool to act against the public interest.

But some animals became more equal than others. The pigs enjoyed annual pay rises higher than the other animals. They also enjoyed defined benefit pensions and a life of comfort in an imaginary world that could sustain itself, based on mere belief; forever. The ABC pigs were Believers. Those who disagreed were Deniers.

Then it started becoming warmer. The pigs wanted a Carbon Tax to keep Animal Farm cool. They would take the money from the other animals and install an air conditioner in the Farmhouse. That would fix the problem.

They were making more and more money from the farm as the population of animals kept increasing. This was good. The pigs were earning more each year; even if the animals were working harder; for less.

The Commandments were slowly being changed over time. The ABC pigs did this so the animals wouldn’t notice. After all; the other animals were dumber than the pigs and it was for their own good. Two important Commandments with their amendments were as follows:

• All animals are equal, “but some animals are more equal than others”

• The ABC has a statutory duty to ensure that the gathering and presentation of news and information is impartial, “except when at its absolute Editorial discretion the ABC decides otherwise”

These revisions allowed the pigs to do exactly as they pleased and their dogs were there to keep order if any of the dumb animals questioned the changes. The dogs simply “tore their throats out” to silence them.

Student activist Joe Hockey protesting the imposition of student fees in 1987

(Article includes 2 versions of the Youtube video of different lengths.) Recommend watching the video footage linked to below. Apologies if you have already seen it. It shows our eminent treasurer leading student protests in 1987 against the imposition of an annual fee upon tertiary students that was quite small relative to the burden being proposed in the current budget.

John Dawkins 1 the then Labor Minister for education who first imposed tertiary student fees

It shows our eminent treasurer leading student protests in 1987 against the imposition of an annual fee upon tertiary students that was quite small relative to the burden being proposed in the current budget.

Joe is proud of his 'up from the bootstraps' personal success, rising to where he has from very modest socio-ecomomic beginnings. Very evidently this success was built on the foundation of a free public education system.

Now wealthy and powerful, Joe is smoking cigars and dancing in celebration as he acts purposefully and directly within his budget to destroy all remnant of the affordable tertiary system that enabled him to rise and flourish. His efforts to end the so-called 'age of entitlement' are a cruel and savage ambition in the context of this background. Words simply cannot capture the essence of such profound and enormous selfishness at work. As many people as possible should see this blatant hypocrisy to be made fully aware of the nature of the fraud that is being perpetrated.

You really would not want to be caught adrift in a lifeboat with this bloke and his running mates. They'd eat your liver while you slept, and then probably whinge that they had no fine wine to wash it down with.

Editor's comment: If the link doesn't work, look for another. It seems that this video is a moving target for being taken off you-tube, but people keep putting it back up. :-)

Here is another version, with more footage of multiple students:

Hypocrite or opportunist? Politician, at any rate.

Footnote[s]

1. ↑ I originally posted then Senator Susan Ryan's photo into this story, mistakenly believing that she had introduced HECS. The Wikipedia article about Susan Ryan explains:

When the Hawke Labor Government was elected in March 1983, Ryan was appointed Minister for Education and Youth Affairs and Minister assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women. She was Minister for Education in the second Hawke Ministry and opposed the re-introduction of fees for tertiary education despite strong support in Cabinet for the user-pays principle. She lost the education portfolio in the third Hawke Ministry and was instead given a much reduced role as Special Minister of State. Subsequently the Higher Education Contribution Scheme was introduced to partially fund higher education. Ryan resigned from the Senate on 16 December 1987.

My apologies for that mistake. - Ed

"The Victorian government appears to be bent on creating ‘rent-seeking’ opportunities for construction companies and financial institutions rather than meeting the transport needs of the community." (Kenneth Davidson) The following article is the text of a speech given by Kenneth Davidson at the Protectors of Public Lands Victoria AGM 10 May 2014 (Emphases and heading by candobetter.net editor.)

The last time I spoke to Protectors of Public Lands Victoria at the AGM in 2011 I made the subject of my talk ‘how PPPs can make you sick as well as poor’. I looked at the financing costs of building three hospitals – The Royal Children’s Hospital, the Royal Women’s Hospital and Bendigo General Hospital - and the difference between funding exactly the same hospitals, using exactly the same architects and builders but financing them with government debt rather than as a PPP would save the Victorian taxpayer $90 million a year or $3.5 billion over the 25 year life of the PPPs.

Those figures were based on official interest rates of 5.5 per cent. The cost would be even higher today when the state government could use its AAA rating to borrow at 3.6 per cent. I pointed out the $90 million in unnecessary payments compared to government borrowings would be sufficient to pay a salary increase to public hospital nurses an additional $3,000 a year – a 5 per cent increase. This is far better than chiselling their conditions and undermining hospital safety by increasing patient ratios and replacing professional nurses with nurse assistants in the name of productivity offsets.

When you multiply these sort of deals through the financing of government schools, the desalination plant, Southern Cross (Spencer Street) Station and roads and now prisons, rail links, rail corridors and Metro Rail Link (redesigned without a business case to facilitate Crown Casino and a new real estate development at Fisherman’s Bend), you are beginning to talk real money.

According to the budget papers, PPPs, listed under long-term borrowings as finance lease liabilities, now total $7.8 billion. The interest expense on these leases, listed as finance charges on finance leases, total $770 million. This is equal to an interest expense of just under 10 per cent.

In money terms this amounts to about $500 million or half a billion a year more than if the leases had been financed by the issue of state government bonds, currently yielding 3.6 per cent interest.

Neoliberal mythology

The banks and superannuation funds which profit from investing in PPPs rather than public debt promote the neoliberal mythology that governments can’t ‘afford’ debt, even though there are numerous examples of social and economic infrastructure which can yield returns well in excess of the cost of borrowing.

In their own businesses, if directors took the same approach to financial management as they demand from government, to minimise debt to the point where they were missing out on profitable investments, the directors and senior managers would be threatened with dismissal for running a ‘lazy balance sheet’ either through a takeover or shareholder revolt.

But, in Australia the politicians who facilitate the PPP industry are seen generally as wise leaders whose financial rectitude, while promoting ‘tough’ decisions, is in the public interest.

The former Member for Melbourne and Finance minister in the Rudd government, together with former Labor Prime Minister, Paul Keating, are senior financial advisors with the investment bank, Lazard.

When Tanner joined the bank shortly after the 2010 election his job description included working on how to improve the PPP tender process. Lazard has already made one submission to the Victorian government offering to manage the PPP process for both sections of the East West Link Project last year. The proposal was rejected.

The peak industry lobby for the PPP industry, Infrastructure Partnerships Australia, sponsored a conference in March 2012 at the Crown Casino on the subject “user pays, exploring the myths of free infrastructure”. As could be expected the conference wasn’t about the cheapest and most effective ways of financing infrastructure, but how to make PPPs risk free to the private investors to avoid recent losses, particularly involving toll roads.

Tanner was the Keynote speaker. He said that there have to be more innovative ways of financing PPPs to restore confidence in the PPP vehicle following the success of the City Link. He gave the example of the Peninsular Link which substituted an “availability charge” yielding an assured 11.5 per cent for tolls because there was no way the $760 million investment could be sustained on tolls given the likely traffic volumes.

His citing these two examples of successful PPPs makes it clear that the proponents of PPPs are primarily interested in a contract which guarantees a stream of earnings over two to three decades at interest rates two to three times the long-term bond rate without any risk to the proponents.

The background to these successful examples of the PPP method of financing infrastructure shows that PPPs amount to rorts.

It is a moot point whether City Link should have been built. A rail connection to the airport could have provided greater benefit to Melbourne at a fraction of the cost. In terms of passenger numbers Tullamarine Airport is the biggest in the world without a rail link to the city.

Toll charges are at least three times the level which would be needed if the road had been funded by government debt. City Link is one of the most profitable toll roads in the world. In 2012-13 City Link toll revenue totalled $499 million. The operator, Transurban, is allowed to increase toll rates by 4.5 per cent a year or the inflation rate, whichever is the greater. The toll growth compounds at a greater rate than inflation so that a Tulla 24 hour pass is 110 per cent higher now than when the tollway opened in 2000.

The project cost was $1.8 billion but $600 million was mainly capital costs associated with the PPP. For instance $171 million was allocated to Equity Infrastructure Bond distributions during the construction phase before one car had passed under a transponder. Another $350 million was allocated to items such as Consultancy and Sponsor Recovery Costs, Corporate Overheads and Marketing (during construction), and Capitalised Interest Expense.

The Design and Construction Contract was $1.2 billion. This is the main cost which would have been associated with the building of exactly the same road, using the same designers and construction contractors, if City Link had been let out to public tender and financed by public borrowings at the long-term bond rate.

The gross return of $499 million in 2012-13 on $1.2 billion is about 42 per cent. On the assumption that operating expenses, maintenance and taxes more than halved the gross return to 20 per cent, this is still five times the return from tolls needed to fund public borrowings at 4 per cent.

In 1999, Alan Stockdale, Treasurer at the time of City Link negotiations, later announced his retirement from Parliament and his intention to join Macquarie bank as the chairman of the bank’s asset and infrastructure group after the election but before he handed in his commission as Treasurer to the Victorian Governor.

The Australian Financial Review (7th October 1999) said: “As a non-executive director, he was likely to receive a remuneration package in the order of $500,000 a year. Mr Stockdale joins an inner circle of executives at Macquarie whose main role has been described in the banking fraternity as to essentially ‘meet and greet’.”

But PPPs became on the nose after a spate of infrastructure projects financed as PPPs in Queensland, NSW and in Victoria’s case, the EastLink, failed to live up to the optimistic forecasts of toll revenues and investors in the Connect East franchise (set up to build, own and operate EastLink) lost money.

In order to restore investor confidence in these vehicles, the main rationale for the higher returns on PPPs compared to the cost of financing infrastructure with government debt, namely that the ‘risk’ would be transferred from the taxpayer to the private partners, was turned on its head.

The Peninsular Link PPP was developed in the wake of the failure of the EastLink to meet its traffic projections. EastLink was the road from nowhere to nowhere.

It was clear only months after EastLink began operations that the franchise was dying under its burden of debt. Hence the urgency to connect EastLink up to additional traffic to keep its backers from pulling the plug, as had occurred with toll roads financed as PPPs in Sydney and Brisbane. The banks refused to finance the construction of the bypass unless the risk was transferred from the private partners to the government.

Instead of the PPP revenue being derived from tolls it was decided the revenue would be paid by the government via an ‘availability charge’ This meant that providing the Peninsula Link is fit for purpose - i.e. it is maintained in a condition sufficient to carry the volume of traffic for which is was designed - an ‘availability’ payment of $92 million a year will be paid over the 25 years of the franchise, irrespective of how many vehicles use the freeway. It is equivalent to a return of 11.7 per cent on the $760 million cost to build the bypass.

The reader might ask why the government did not borrow the money itself at the long-term bond rate, which was about 5 per cent at the time the road was built and saved $54 million a year or $1.4 billion over the 25 year life of the PPP. The savings would have been sufficient to finance borrowings of $800 million, sufficient to build a public hospital or finance 5,000 elective surgery operations in public hospitals.

But there’s more. The capital cost of $760 million of the four lane tollway, mainly over flat reserve land, works out at $28 million a km. The Abigroup built the Peninsular link. The Abigroup also built 41 km four-lane Geelong Bypass freeway for $19 million per km and it includes a railway station and 100 metre bridge over the Barwon River involving major earthworks. The construction cost of the Peninsula Link is 67 per cent more expensive per km than the Geelong Bypass. Why?

The reason is the Commonwealth put up most of the money for the Geelong Bypass. It refused to put up money for the Peninsular Link because it couldn’t pass a Benefit Cost test required by Infrastructure Australia. As the Commonwealth put up the money for the Geelong Bypass, it ensured it got value for money.

The Victorian government appears to be bent on creating ‘rent-seeking’ opportunities for construction companies and financial institutions rather than meeting the transport needs of the community.

The Mornington Peninsula and the Hastings area are public transport deprived and both the catchment areas include some of the poorest households in Greater Melbourne with acute, unmet public transport needs. But there is already a further study extending the road capacity to relieve congestion on Point Nepean Road completed in 2013 with no consideration of mode shift to public or active transport. Remember, the Peninsular Link was set up by a Labor government.

'Sovereign risk'

Labor has not changed its spots in opposition. In a desperate attempt to win back the Melbourne seat from the Greens it promised to oppose the EWL but it would not refinance the debt because it would create ‘sovereign risk’. Garbage! There is no difference between a government refinancing debt to take advantage of lower interest rates than a mortgagor taking advantage of lower interest rates to refinance the house mortgage.

The major parties were as one in refusing to consider refinancing the AquaSure desalination PPP contract on the grounds of ‘Sovereign risk’.

To add insult to injury, Aquasure received permission from the government to renegotiate the debt for its own interests. It has taken advantage of the lower rates to increase its own profits.

Shadow Treasurer, Tim Pallas, has since backed down in the face of the talk by adjunct professor of Law at the ANU College of Law and author of a standard text on government contracts, who pointed out anybody, including governments, can break contracts subject to damages.

The cost of damages would be miniscule compared to the cost of going ahead with an EWL PPP, especially if the Labor opposition made its intentions clear before any contract is signed so that the private partners would know the risks before entering into the contract.

In 2013 foreign investors obtained permission from the Victorian government to build or to buy 4,500 houses, amounting to some $18b worth of approvals. Numbers of houses falling into foreign hands are increasing, with the Chinese the biggest buyers and builders, followed by the Canadians, Americans and Singaporeans. There were 12,025 applications to invest in Victorian real estate according to an annual report for 2012-2013. Not one was rejected. On Wednesday 19 March 2014 the Treasurer, The Hon Joe Hockey MP, asked the Economics Committee to inquire into and report on Australia's foreign investment policy as it applies to residential real estate.

Although the date for submissions seems to have passed, the committee is still receiving them. Since most submissions have come from professional organisations with a financial interest in promoting more houses, there is a great need for members of the public who cannot afford housing to make submissions. Submissions

The Committee invited interested persons and organisations to make submissions addressing the terms of reference by Friday 9 May 2014. However it looks as if they are still accepting submissions.

Inquiry Status

Accepting Submissions

[Candobetter.net Ed: The following news is of high importance, yet there have been no reports in the mainstream news in Australia. See end of article for links to other coverage including how France, the United States, Canada, Germany, Belgium and the Gulf States have all prevented expatriot Syrians from voting!] A flood of Syrian nationals in Lebanon, extending as far as the eye can see, streamed to their embassy in Beirut last Wednesday to cast their ballots in a magnificent, jaw-dropping scene that proved extremely perplexing to the camp hostile to Syria.

Waving the Syrian flags and honking their car horns while holding banners and chanting patriotic slogans, Syrian citizens, estimated in their hundreds of thousands, flocked from all Lebanese cities and villages, clogging the roads and streets leading to the Syrian embassy in Yarzeh, east of Lebanon's capital, Beirut.

(Video added on 1 May 2014 from a different source:http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/syrian-expatriates-head-polls-presidential-vote

The remarkably high voter turnout in Lebanon grabbed headlines, with the Lebanese dailies publishing thorough analyses and opinion articles and TV channels hosting talking heads and pundits to elaborate on the event. Furthermore, the images of the huge crowds of Syrians went viral.

Wind taken out of March 14 sails

Like a thunderbolt did the scene of hundreds of thousands of Syrians marching to take part in presidential elections hit the March 14 forces, a Lebanese political alliance which professes deep-seated animosity towards Syria. Reeling from an unexpected shock and gripped by a paroxysm of fury, the March 14 forces went as far as calling for expelling the Syrians from Lebanon and incriminated having their names registered or numbered counted.

In the heat of their rage, the anti-Syria camp in Lebanon, represented by March 14, seems to have forgotten that it was it which took part, two years ago, in setting up tents for receiving the Syrians coming from across the border, with the clear intent to use them as a political bargaining chip.

Not a unique scene

However, the high voter turnout in Lebanon was not an exception. Syrians all over the world have displayed no less enthusiasm-taking into account the varying numbers of Syrian expatriates in each country -turning the Syrian embassies abroad into grand, awe-inspiring shows of patriotism.

No change in public sentiment

Anticipating a voter apathy or even a boycott of elections; wishful thinking that was soon dealt a severe blow, some countries and powers have been under the illusion that a shift might have occurred in the Syrian public sentiment, especially in those who left for neighboring countries whom they hoped to have harbored grudges -or worst still, ended up turncoats-against their own government and homeland.

The Syrian voters abroad, whose numbers have far exceeded expectations, turned out to choose their new president and, by association, to draw the future of their country. By so doing, the Syrians have by all accounts turned the table on those wagering on their diminished loyalty or waning patriotism.

The Syrians living abroad cast their ballots Wednesday, May 28, in a vote to choose a president. Three candidates are competing for the country's top post, including incumbent president Dr. Bashar al-Assad. The Syrians living inside Syria are set to vote on June 3.

NOTES

Source of report was: M. Ismael, Damascus, Syrian Arab News Agence (Sana), May 30, 2014.

Mainstream news reports so far:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/05/28/this-is-what-the-syrian-election-looks-like-in-lebanon/ Here is a quote: "“The Syrian people will say their word in these elections, and their word is the one that counts," Ali Abdel-Karim Ali, the Syrian ambassador to Lebanon, Monday said. "Not Obama’s word, Cameron’s or Hollande’s.”"

And Global Research has an article by Tony Cartelucci, talking about how mainstream media, e.g. Reuters is misrepresenting this event and also that France is preventing expatriots from voting! "The West’s Weaponization of Democracy: Elections Pushed Ahead in Ukraine, Obstructed in Syria, So Mass Murder Can Continue."

And Rick Sterling in "Why are they afraid of the Syrian elections?": "France, Germany, Belgium and the Gulf States have all prohibited voting in the Syrian election. Syrian embassies in the US and Canada have been forced to close, removing the chance for Syrians living in these countries to vote."

A definition of advertising: "The act or practice of calling public attention to one's product, service, need, etc., especially by paid announcements in newspapers and magazines, over radio or television, on billboards, etc.: to get more customers by advertising."

By using conventional broadcasting channels to advertise the Vote Compass, the ABC, in turn, provided access to the biased coverage within the Vote Compass: Proof of the ABC’s Vote Compass Bias?

That biased coverage (1) advertised (for example) the name of the Wikileaks Party but concealed the name of the Stable (now Sustainable) Population Party under the description "other"; despite the latter having more candidates and arguably having a broader impact on the 30 election issues. The Election Issues List also (2) advertised 30 election issues but omitted the Population Growth Management election issue; identified as a Top 15 election issue by the Essential Report, 23 July 2013.

Both these acts constituted advertising of one political party, or parties and political issues at the expense of another party and its political issue(s).

Over 1 million Voters who accessed the Vote Compass were subjected to this advertising. This would be between 7% and 10% of the voting public.

Extracts from ABC Editorial Policy Document

Scope:

"The ABC Editorial Policies apply to all content produced, commissioned, acquired or otherwise obtained by the ABC for broadcast or publication by the ABC on platforms and through services operated by the ABC, or by the ABC on platforms and through services operated by third parties. The ABC Editorial Policies do not apply to the activities of ABC Commercial except to the extent that ABC Commercial exercises editorial control over content for broadcast or publication by the ABC which has not been already broadcast or published by the ABC. In all its activities, ABC Commercial must operate in a manner consistent with maintaining the independence and integrity of the ABC."

Section 11.7 of the Editorial Policy states:

"Product placement and other forms of embedded or surreptitious advertising are prohibited."

Will the ABC now be called to account for prohibited political advertising throughout the 2013 Federal Election campaign?

Quite apart from this, complaints were also submitted to the ABC, over years, about the way its broadcasts limited the Carbon Tax debate to discussion of a range of financial schemes to reduce emissions, without also discussing the prime cause of emissions growth (aka population growth). A fact cited in these complaints was that in the 20 years BEFORE introduction of the Carbon Tax both fossil fuel based emissions and population had grown roughly 32%. This rate of growth was far higher than the rate of reduction that any of the proposed emissions reduction schemes could achieve in Australia.

The ABC was made aware of all these facts before the Carbon Tax legislation was passed in 2011, but still it supported misrepresentation of the Carbon Tax facts.

The Carbon Tax aspect of my complaints was analogous to complaining that the ABC had broadcast repeatedly for over 5+ years that the only way to control obesity was by exercise, when the truth is that the amount eaten also influences weight gain.

Imagine the fat people's class action lawsuit. The ABC wouldn't stand a chance.

But when it comes to one of the biggest humanitarian, social, environmental and economic challenges facing Australia today, the ABC can broadcast whatever it pleases and remain unaccountable for any lack of editorial integrity. An obvious example of this is ongoing omission or concealment of the population growth management issue from public policy debate.

Will a public apology be forthcoming that is disseminated as far and wide as the Vote Compass and the biased ABC Carbon Tax Debate were disseminated over the last 5+ years? Or will the ABC continue to get off "Scott-free" (excuse the pun)?

US intelligence source claims Ukraine part of NATO secret campaign Gladio; Former U.S. Senator and likely 2016 Presidential candidate Jesse Ventura calls for psychopathy tests for political leaders to ensure that they are not of the 4% of the population who are incapable of feeling empathy for other people. A mainstream host storms out the studio after being confronted with the evidence from Jesse Ventura that his haloed political leaders including President Barak Obama are complicit in false flag attacks. Seek truth from facts with Questioning the War on Terror author Kevin Barrett, StopImperialism.org's Eric Draitser, James Corbett of The Corbett Report, and possible 2016 presidential candidate Jesse Ventura.

"What's needed is a kind of "pit bull terrier" state, which would be prepared to start at least a local conflict, to show the weakened Russia how events could develop." (Andrei Fursov, speaking of Ukraine's purpose for the US.) The following article is a very readable lecture transcript by Andrei Fursov (Director of Russian Studies, Moscow University. Member of the International Academy of Sciences) dated 2014/04/14. Transcribed from the spoken Russian and compiled from translated English dubbed text. All headings added by Wikispooks to aid with readability and citation.

"What's needed is a kind of "pit bull terrier" state, which would be prepared to start at least a local conflict, to show the weakened Russia how events could develop." (Andrei Fursov, speaking of Ukraine's purpose for the US.)

All-in-all a must-read for westerners needing to understand what is really happening in both the Ukraine and the wider Anglo-US-NATO globalisation drive which it brings into sharp focus.

Original source of document is https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Document:Battleground_Ukraine

Oligarchical topography of Ukraine
A lecture by Andrei Fursov with translated English text

Contents

1. Introduction
2. National traitors
3. The Ukrainian oligarchs
4. Rockefellers, Rothschilds and Intelligence agencies
5. Israeli interests in Ukraine
6. The wider global context
7. The "Yellowstone Threat"
8. The origin of the current situation
9. The goals of the interested parties in the Middle East
10. The intelligence service of the Fourth Reich at work
11. Why did this happen now?
12. What the West wanted
13. The death of Oleksandr Muzychko
14. The infantile Garry Kasparov
15. Goodbye, America!
16. The required Russian domestic changes

Introduction

Firstly, let me say that sometimes it's pleasant to be wrong. Well, I got it wrong. At the beginning of February my colleague, Elena Ponomarëva, and I discussed the question, could we take Crimea? I was a pessimist and said, 10% chance that we'll take Crimea. We won't get it because the West will react aggressively, and our authorities lack the courage. She said, on the contrary 90% chance that we take Crimea, and 10% chance that it doesn't happen. She was right. I was wrong.

Without doubt, the re-unification with Crimea is a very important landmark. In a recent TV interview I said that this is genuinely the end of the disgraceful era which began in Malta on the 2-3rd Dec 1989, when Gorbachev surrendered absolutely everything to Bush, even what wasn't asked for.

After that everything possible was given up. Rays of hope began to appear later, during the Putin administration. There was the war of 08.08.08. But later we failed to support Libya. Although we did put the foot down at Syria. But this is all far away from Russian lands. But Ukraine and Crimea - this is a completely new situation. We started to re-take our territory, little by little. Started doing as the Muscovite princes did in the 14th, 15th century, what the first Romanovs did, and the Stalin system in the 1930s, all of which was: leaving the historical zone of defeat.

But leaving the historical zone of defeat means not only external matters, we are now tearing up the global status quo, which took shape in 1991-94. Meaning: disintegration of the Soviet Union, the uranium deal, the shooting at the Moscow White House, the Budapest Memorandum.

National traitors

But overcoming defeat has not only an external aspect but also a domestic aspect. Yeltsinism gave raise to a whole stratum of people, whom our president called national-traitors. That is, the fifth column - in the authorities, in business and in the media. In particular, they revealed themselves during the events in Crimea. That was a real moment of truth, moment of choice. People's true colors became apparent, in various spheres. And it was an very import experience for this reason: One could clearly observe the application of double-standards.

What do we mean by double-standards? For example: There was a time when the Brits annexed the Falkland Islands. They said: "Well, why not. There was a referendum in the Falkland Islands and the residents came out in favor of joining up with Britain, and that's sufficient."

"Crimea is a different matter altogether ..." -- although the situation is analogous.

Today we're talking about the Ukraine situation from a number of angles. It's a multi-faceted situation, like all big situations. Many different aspects have led to what happened. Concerning not only the clash between Russia and the West. There's a lot else going on too.

Firstly, it all began with a conflict within the Ukrainian oligarchic class. A great analyst is Vladimir Matveev. I very much recommend you look him up. A number of his analyses are out on the net. Moreover you don't need to be erudite to read his books. Anyone with higher education can read them. He's been very active on the subject of Mossad in Ukraine. He gets continuously threatened. Now he needs to get out of Ukraine and is having problems with that.

We are talking about the oligarchs.

Later we'll talk about the interests of the West - The Europeans and the Americans have different interests.

Next, the interests of Israel.

Then we'll run through the key events originating from the Banderite-American coup in Kiev, which continue to unfold.

The Ukrainian oligarchs

Firstly - the Ukrainian business clans.

Ihor Kolomoisky's Privat

The next corporate group is Privat. This is the most interesting one. It's the group of Ihor Kolomoisky. Kolomoisky's worth is 3 billion dollars. His partner is Gennady Bogolubov. Kolomoisky is a very interesting figure. Not only because he called our president a schizophrenic. 'He is the engine behind what is currently happening in Ukraine.

In 2012 analysts such as Matveev warned that there would be a very brutal conflict in 2013 between the business clans, between the oligarchs. And that's what happened.

What do we mean by clans in Ukraine? First we need to understand the division of power at the end of 2013. There are four basic clans.

Firstly the Donetsk clan - Rinat Akhmetov, whose fortune is estimated at $16 billion. His main interests are mining and steel production. This clan includes Boris Kolesnikov, the Kluevs, Yury Ivanyuschenko.

The second clan is the Yanukovych family. They control principally the customs officials, farming and infrastructure. By comparison this clan is a bit poorer, but they have held very powerful administrative positions. Yanukovych's "achievement" is that during his presidency the welfare state of Ukraine was finished off. Or rather, what was left of it. Destruction of the welfare state began during the time of Kuchma. Yuschenko and Tymoshenko significantly reduced the welfare state. And Yanukovych finished it off.

It's very interesting to examine the growth of the billionaire class. In 2010 the number of billionaires in Ukraine was 8. By only 2011 there were 21.

The Yanukovych regime greatly favored the growth of the billionaire class. Yanukovych's main sponsors were Rinat Akhmetov and Dmitry Firtash. The division of labor was: Ahkmetov controlled the government and Firtash the presidential administration.

The next massive bloc is Firtash, which is RosUkrEnergo, energy production and chemicals. They are the main partner of Rothschild in Ukraine. One of Firtash's main advisers is Robert Shetler-Jones. I'll talk about him later. An entrepreneur from the Rothschild group. Moreover, he's from MI6.

By the way, in all British corporations, in order to occupy a senior position, it is mandatory to be vetted by MI6. Otherwise you don't get it.

The next corporate group is Privat. This is the most interesting one. It's the group of Ihor Kolomoisky. Kolomoisky's worth is 3 billion dollars. His partner is Gennady Bogolubov. Kolomoisky is a very interesting figure. Not only because he called our president a schizophrenic. He is the engine behind what is currently happening in Ukraine.

Born in 1963. Jewish. He very actively supports the Hasidic group Chabad, which is not a sect, it's a movement. He's the main sponsor of the Dnepropetrovsk Jewish community. An old friend of Berezovsky. He owns about 200 companies, controls 40% of Ukrnafta, the media. A big fan of soccer. He owns: FC Dnipro, of Dnepropetrovsk, Arsenal Kyiv, and Hapoel of Tel-Aviv. He's the vice president of the Football Federation of Ukraine. Its president, Surkis, is a millionaire too, albeit not as big as Kolomoisky. He owns Dynamo Kyiv. Information frequently appears in the media about Kolomoisky's connections with international organized crime. He really wanted to buy up the assets of Sevastopol. Indeed he was on the verge of buying. He is the sponsor of Yuschenko, Tymoshenko and Klitschko, and of, paradoxical though it is, the ultra-nationalist Tyaghnibok.

It might seem strange that Kolomoisky the Jew would support Tyaghnibok the ultra-nationalist. But the main goal of Tyaghnibok is to get Ukrainians and Russians fighting each other. His ultra-nationalism is not anti-semitic.

Then there's another group in Ukraine, which no-one wants to talk about. Victor Pinchuk's group. He's the son-in-law of Kuchma. Pinchuk's people are Tigipko and Yatsenuk. According to experts such as Matveev, whom I mentioned and strongly recommend you look up, because of his enormous expertise, Pinchuk is very closely linked with the United States and with British intelligence, MI6.

Finally, one more part of the Ukrainian economy, which experts prefer not to write about. Arms trade, military technology and narcotics. Experts name dozens of names here. The main ones are: Vadim Rabinovitch, citizen of Israel, Ukraine and Hungary, Sergei Maximov and the Derkatch family. The elder Derkatch is Leonid Derkatch. He was the head of the Ukrainian security service, SBU. Now he holds all the cards, as he's dealing in weapons. Rabinovitch is a very interesting figure. He supports the gay-lesbian party Raduga and the Kiev feminist group Femen. Often quarrels with other Jewish oligarchs.

In general what characterizes the situation in Ukraine is that there isn't a single political center, This propagates into Ukraine's Jewish community too. They don't have a unified center either. There are constant squabbles, to impose their point of view. There are angry clashes between the secular part and those who support the Hasids and Chabadists. For example, there was a very angry conflict over the construction of the memorial at Babi Yar. Kolomoisky insisted there be a synagogue and an iconic building. Vitaly Nakhmanovitch said no, the place should be absolutely secular. There are very severe clashes.

For example, In 2011 Kolomoisky established the European Jewish Parliament, which sits in the European Parliament. It has a leaning toward Hadism and Chabad. The secular group is, for example, Vyacheslav Kantor. They haven't accepted all of this. There is an on-going angry clash. There are humorous situations. For example, Kolomoisky supports Chabad. Chabad supported Yanukovych during the election. Kolomoisky has openly come out against Yanukovych. This whole tangle of clashes has flared up. In 2013 it got very nasty. Moreover, the greed and stupidity of Yanukovych's mafioso clan revealed itself when they imposed their fees not only on the medium-sized businesses, they even went into the small businesses. Basically, they had to pay 60% to this family.

So you can understand those who went to the Maidan. They had had enough of that clan.

A different matter is who exploited the situation. Marx and Engels wrote in 1848 about revolutions: We now know what role stupidity plays in revolutions, and how scumbags will exploit it. So that was the Ukrainian oligarchs.

Rockefellers, Rothschilds and Intelligence agencies

The next players on the Ukrainian field are: the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds. The Rothschilds entered Ukraine immediately after Ukraine became free from the Soviet Union. The Rothschild group entered in 1991-95. Likewise MI6 entered with a free hand.

Basically all western intelligence agencies had a free hand in Ukraine. That's why some experts call Ukraine the sandpit of the intelligence agencies. The CIA has a whole floor dedicated to Ukraine. We got this information now. But those who worked under cover in Ukraine in the late '90s were already reporting that SBU is a subsidiary of the FBI and the CIA, who were actively working there. Likewise the BND (German intelligence) were very actively working with their Banderite underground. And MI6 was working more unnoticed.

I'm not even going to mention the Israeli agents. I'll come to that later. Basically they all had a completely free hand. Firtash soon became the main partner of the Rothschilds. His partner from the Rothschilds was Robert Shetler-Jones. He is considered by experts to be the instigator of the gas wars between Ukraine and Russia. He was the one getting Ukraine and Russia to fight over gas. Notice the Rothschild group is at work in the East of Ukraine. That's the area they want to get their hands on, in particular the Dnepropetrovsk region, where the bank "Rothschild Europe" and their "Royal Dutch Shell" are operating.

The interests of the Rothschilds strongly clash with the interests of Russia. Remember that when we talk about the interests of the USA and of Britain, there are different interest groups in these countries. Not for nothing the great French geopolitical analyst Alexandre Del Valle talks about not the foreign policy of the US, but the foreign politicians of the US. There are different clans. The clans behind Obama want one thing, and the clans behind the neo-cons want something completely different. So they really have different foreign policies. The Rothschilds busily exploit crises and chaos which can be manipulated by the world players in order to buy up assets in Ukraine, likewise in Central Asia, and where possible in Russia. It's about gaining control of resource economies. That's a very important aspect.

The Rockefellers have more modest interests. For example, Chevron Corporation, which is in the Rockefeller empire. The Ivano-Frankivsk region was basically handed to them by Yanukovych. It's hard to even say whether Ivano-Frankivsk belongs to Ukraine or belongs to Chevron Corporation. The Rockefellers are more interested in Western Ukraine than Eastern.

Israeli interests in Ukraine

The next player in Ukraine is Israel, which is represented in Ukraine by Mossad and practically all of the Israeli intelligence services. Including the Komemiyut management, that's an administration within Mossad, whose business is the physical removal of Mossad's opponents. Komemiyut is Hebrew for "sovereignty". This Komemiyut administration, for example, they were the ones who killed the Iranian nuclear scientists. They are very effective, like Mossad generally. Aman is military intelligence service of the Prime Minister. Shabak is the internal security service. Shin Bet, Nativ - they are all present in Ukraine. Israel's current ambassador in Ukraine is Reuven Din El - formerly a Mossad resident in the CIS countries, he was thrown out of Moscow, and then received in Ukraine as ambassador.

Vlad Lerner of Nativ is the First Secretary of the Israeli embassy. In this respect you have to give them their dues, the Israeli intelligence services, for how they work in Ukraine. Also important to be clearly aware of - Mossad operates in close contact with CIA and MI6. It's a unified snake of intelligence agencies, which gets the job done.

All of the western intelligence agencies, including Israel's, are very active in the higher education establishments in Ukraine. This year I gave a lecture at the Seliger youth forum. Guys from Kiev told me that in almost all large institutes of higher education in Ukraine, especially in Kiev, there is a NATO room, a NATO department. If you want to make a career, you have to attend several of their programs. That's what's going on. The Anglo-american intelligence services are not falling behind Mossad.

What is Israeli intelligence doing? Under the guise of looking for students who are Jewish or have Jewish roots, they try to pick out all the talented students with good prospects, and send them to study in the West. Of all the universities in the West, where I have taught, Columbia, Yale, New York, the most powerful where I taught, was the Central European University of Soros, where only Jews are educated, moreover very well-prepared and carefully selected ones. On the course I lectured on there were three guys from Russia. Not from Moscow, but from Arkhangelsk, Ivanovo and Petersburg. These guys were really chosen ones, genuinely powerful. Central European University is the only university where I gave lectures. I was dealing with junior colleagues more than with students. The standard pace of study at the Central European University is 400 pages per day, as it was with comrade Stalin. Many can't endure it.

I know a student who came from the Russian State University for the Humanities, for example, who studied for a month, and said that she physically can't continue, and she went home. And of course the tuition is conducted in English, although they welcome people with more languages.

The wider global context

Let's look at the situation in and around Ukraine in a wider, global context, considering the role which the West collectively, by their various games, has assigned to Ukraine.

Firstly - the battle against Russia.

secondly - the clash with China, and

thirdly - concerning the unleashing of war in the Middle East.

Let me repeat, By no means is it all groups in the West, who want to unleash war in the Middle East. But quite a few of them are interested in it. Likewise Saudi Arabia and Israel are interested, for a whole series of reasons. And these three vectors converge in Ukraine - all three plans unite into one.

That is, the global geo-economic and geo-political re-distribution of assets in the course of the global economic crisis.

The "Yellowstone Threat"

Of course, there is this Yellowstone threat - I mean the super-volcano. That could completely change the rules of play at any time. The super-volcano could solve for the Western elite the very problems which they've been trying to solve for the last 50-60 years and have been unable to. An eruption of the volcano could solve those problems. But that's another subject.

Wikispooks note: On its face this seems a bizarre diversion from the subject in hand - suggestions on Fursov's reasons for the diversion welcome on the discussion page.

The origin of the current situation

Let's look at how the situation came about that preceded the current situation, namely: It's 1991. The USSR has collapsed. After 10 years of robbery the Americans are wondering "should we go for more?" Evidently they decided not to, as it would have fallen to the Chinese. Besides, Yeltsin's team seemed to be running the country into the ground. Then suddenly in 2001 came the attacks in New York. The Americans' political vector shifted to the Middle East. They became occupied with the Middle East. i.e. they got distracted from the goals.

Then we had Iraq, Afghanistan. During this time the Russian Federation got room to breathe, rise onto its feet again. Then there was the war of 08.08.08, which showed the West they had somewhat let go of Russia.

After that the Medvedev episode, when we didn't react on Libya. Evidently, 08.08.08, Putin's coming to power, and our position on Syria, in spite of the West's pressure, changed the approach toward Russia of those who brought Obama to power.

Two points to note:

1. Obama established his military doctrine during his address to the Australian parliament on 17 Nov 2011, and
2. A new military doctrine of the US, established by Obama on 05 Jan 2012.

In the new doctrine of 05 Jan 2012 is established that the US can wage one war and some other indirect actions in other parts of the world. Previously it said two wars - meaning they're not up to that any more. More interesting statements made by Obama in the Australian parliament 17 Nov 2011: This was said in Obama's vague style. But if we call a spade a spade, it means:

Firstly: in this doctrine: political-economic encirclement of China. Control over the flow of energy into China. That's why we have seen their naval power being moved to the straits between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. This is why land-based energy supply routes are so important for China. Sea-based supply routes can be easily interrupted by the Americans.

Secondly: applying pressure on the Russian Federation, as a partner of China, and as a country beginning to rise up.

Really, Obama didn't say anything new here.

There's an organization Stratfor -(Strategic Forecasting Inc), a kind of private CIA. Their founder and chairman, George Friedman, said openly that the primary task of the United States is the destabilization of Eurasia, in order that there could never be a state or group of states able to challenge the US.

The key region for dealing with the problem of China and Russia is the Middle East, which is also important in and of itself: Oil, Iran, the Caspian, Azerbaijan in particular. Pay attention to Azerbaijan. Have no illusions. This is a faithful partner of Israel and the US. This country pumps oil to Israel and Ukraine, receives arms from USA, Ukraine and Israel, and has Israeli advisers busy working with its army. In the event of a conflict with the Armenians, who are good warriors, I don't think that the Azeribaijani Army would perform any better than they have up to now, but it's a fact that today they are more capable and better trained.

The goals of the interested parties in the Middle East

The Americans need controlled chaos and civil war in Ukraine.

The Europeans need Ukraine whole - a market where they can dump all kinds of junk. A market for cheap labor, on top of everything else. It is truly an unexploited consumer market to be opened up with 44 million people, now minus Crimea.

Obama. That is, the clans behind Obama ( By the way, my views about Obama haven't changed. General Ovchinsky and I wrote an article, when Obama had just become president, entitled "The Cardboard Box President". We haven't changed our view since then.) When I say "Obama", I mean the clan behind him. From the very beginning these clans wanted to improve relations with Iran to the detriment of relations with Israel, obviously. How is Iran useful for the United States? Imagine Iran as a partner of the US. Firstly, it's a much bigger country than Israel. It occupies a magnificent geopolitical position. Has magnificent resources. If Iran is a partner of the US, then you have an Iran-India axis against China, against Russia, while maintaining the tension. Israel has the tension of being a Jewish state with Arabs, while Iran is Shi-ite. The tension is primarily with the Sunni monarchs, with Saudi Arabia. Thus the tension will remain.

Obama has taken a whole series of steps intended to improve relations with Iran. A whole wave of publications appeared, claiming that the US was going to abandon Israel. But Obama found himself under the powerful influence of a variety of groups, including the pro-Israel lobby. Improvement of relations with Iran isn't happening so far. What's interesting is that whether relations with Iran improve or deteriorate, it forces the Americans to solve two problems.

One is to eliminate the regime of Assad. And with that eliminate the "fabulous" organization Hezbollah. We don't regard Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. It's a Lebanese Shi'ite organization, which is truly global. For example: one of the key centers of the Hezbollah is the region of Iguazu Falls. Anyone know where Iguazu Falls is? In South America. It's the border area of Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil. There is a huge number of tourists there. Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas have made themselves a little nest there. But the main thing is that the Lebanese diaspora is there. When we hear "diaspora" we think of the Jewish diaspora, the Armenian diaspora. But the Lebanese diaspora is no less sizable, it's just quieter. They don't make a lot of noise. 100 years ago the Lebanese began to establish themselves in Africa, South America. They moved into the part of Africa where diamonds are mined: Sierra Leone, Liberia, and a few in Angola. In this border area, where the Lebanese diaspora is, along with Hezbollah and other organizations, they buy cocaine and transfer it on submarines to Western Africa. Previously they used submarines sold by Ukrainians. Now those submarines are out of commission and others are used. The cocaine is transferred to Sierra Leone, where it is exchanged for diamonds. With the diamonds they purchase arms. This triangle - Hezbollah, Syria, Iran - gets in the way of the Americans. They take the view, correctly, that eliminating Syria as an Arab partner of Iran, whether relations with Iran are good or bad, Iran will be weaker, and it will be easier to get an agreement with them. The removal of the Assad regime therefore became objective No.1 for the Americans. Likewise for Saudi Arabia and Israel.

But it turned out that the template for the Arab Spring didn't work in Syria, so they had to intervene militarily. But the intervention was foiled, thanks to the position of Russia and China. The West's aggression against Syria was the first really serious military phase toward re-drawing the geopolitical map of the Middle East. Let me stress: the first serious military phase. Libya doesn't count here. That had to do with the fact that Libyan oil was very important for the Americans. The production cost of Libyan oil is $1. So that was very important. But Libya and Syria are different countries with different potential. In Syria it didn't work out for them, I repeat, primarily because of the position of Russia and China. The American offensive against the Russian Federation and China in the Syrian theater failed. That plus the presidency of Putin forced the Western elite to look for other maneuvers.

They started looking for where to attack - and Ukraine came up. Because in Ukraine an explosive situation had developed on all levels: amongst the oligarchs themselves, between the oligarchs and the population. It would have been a shame for the Americans and Europeans not to exploit that. Although, the Americans and Europeans do have completely different objectives in Ukraine.

The Americans need controlled chaos and civil war. The Europeans need Ukraine whole - a market where they can dump all kinds of junk. A market for cheap labor, on top of everything else. It is truly an unexploited consumer market to be opened up with 44 million people, now minus Crimea.

In principle, Ukraine is not currently a member of NATO. But that didn't stop Ukraine participating in all four of NATO´s military campaigns. Thus Veronika Krasheninnikova was right, when she said on TV that for us the current issue with Ukraine is where the NATO boundary will be located. Doesn't matter if Ukraine joins NATO de-jure or not. It's clear that it will become a NATO country.

Moreover, it is absolutely clear that this country is intended to be absolutely anti-Russian, nationalist, Banderite and neo-Nazi. So the dual goal of establishing this anti-Russian state is to apply pressure on the Russian Federation - constantly. The long term goal is to pull Russia into the Western camp and start a fight: We put pressure on Russia. Then Russia, in order to reach agreement with the West, to solve this problem of constant provocations, turns toward the West. Next, Russia becomes a tool for the West to pressurize China. If possible, even get China and Russia fighting with each other - that would be the ideal scenario for the West.

Like they perpetually have Russia fighting with Germany and France. It's the same pattern again and again. The current situation in Ukraine, which began in late 2013, has served this purpose. Hegel talked about "the insidiousness of history". Those 30 days, 15 Feb to 17 Mar, broke everything. And changed the world.

The era which began in the period 1989-94 in our eyes is coming to an end, or has ended. We often quote Brzezinski's words: "Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire." But that's not true. Russia can be a great power even without Ukraine. A different matter is that it will be more difficult and will take longer.

And what is Ukraine? The Eastern part of Ukraine was never part of Ukraine. The Bolsheviks did that. They needed to increase the proletariat ratio in Ukraine. That was the only reason why they moved those regions into Ukraine. But never mind that. The main thing is that Brzezinski's words are not original. He is repeating the words of the German general Paul Rohrbach, who at the beginning of the 20th century foretold:

"To eliminate the danger that Europe, and above all Germany, faces from Russia, it is necessary to completely separate Ukrainian Russia from Muscovite Russia".

Notice that for the German general - Ukraine and Muscovy are both Russia. He is talking about the need to bring about an internal Russian split. That wasn't original from Rohrbach either. He is developing the idea of the German politicians from the end of the 19th century, including Bismarck, who proposed specific means to solve this problem. In particular he emphasized the need to pit Ukraine against Russia, to get their peoples fighting. But why? As he wrote:

,p>"We must cultivate among the Ukrainians a people whose consciousness is altered to such an extent, that they begin to hate everything Russian".

Thus we are talking about a historical psy-op, an information-psychological sabotage, whose purpose is to establish russophobic Slavs - Orcs at the service of the western Saruman. They are the means to separate Ukraine from Russia and to oppose Russia as a kind of anti-Russian 'Rus', as a free, democratic Ukraine of the totalitarian empire. This was all devised under the Galician Project, on which the intelligence services of Austro-Germany and Kaiser German worked, followed by the intelligence service of the Third Reich, later - CIA and BND.

The intelligence service of the Fourth Reich at work

Although I don't have direct proof, there is no doubt that the intelligence service of the Fourth Reich has been at work here, the "Fourth International", known as "Daisy". When D-day and H-hour came, the Galician project and the Banderite underground got the starting gun - figuratively and literally.

Fast forward to the Orange Revolution of 2004, which differs from the current situation. The Orange Revolution of 2004 was organized by neo-liberals. Those behind it in Ukraine and the West thought that this would be sufficient to create the anti-Russian Ukraine. But it wasn't. So during the current events a different approach was rolled out: an alliance of neo-liberals and ultra-nationalists, in effect neo-Nazis. The neo-liberals are the face of the West. And the neo-Nazi militants and storm-troopers were the ones to break the power of Yanukovych, and terrify Eastern Ukraine. Wise people did warn Yanukovych that he shouldn't play with fire with Tyaghnibok and allow him to develop his movement. Yanukovych's plan, as experts have shown, was: We'll pump up Tyaghnibok. Then, at election time, the East, terrified by Tyaghnibok, will vote for Yanukovych. He was playing a kind of chess game. But the West wasn't playing chess at all. They knocked over the pieces and used the chess board for a completely different game.

Why did this happen now?

Firstly - Ukraine is an absolutely non-viable, artificial construction, which could only function normally within the framework of the Soviet Union. Despite being the only post-soviet state, apart from Russia and Belarus, which could have stood on its own feet, it didn't. The Ukrainian SSR was in ways very important in the Soviet Union. Who remembers where Ukraine was placed at the National Exhibition of Economic Achievements (????)? Right in the center! Now it has fallen into neglect, but they are at the center of that Exhibition. The importance of Ukraine was emphasized in every way. And Ukraine could only exist within the framework of the USSR. Outside the USSR Ukraine is not capable of developing. What has kept it afloat? The Soviet heritage, which they have been eating their way through for twenty years. One can marvel again at what a heritage it was, when the Ukrainian oligarchs have been stupidly eating through it more stupidly than the Russian oligarchs, and it lasted twenty years. But, as they said in ancient Rome, "Nihil dat fortuna mancipio" ("Fortune gives nothing forever.") and in 2013 that heritage was finally eaten up. Moreover, Yanukovych was very busy eating it up. Ukraine stood over the precipice. Russia could have saved them. But that was categorically undesirable for the US. That was the first part.

Secondly. After the 2004 Maidan, as I said, the Western puppet-master presumed that it was sorted: people like Yuschenko and Tymoshenko could solve all the problems. But it turned out they couldn't. Yanukovych came to power. He played almost all the same games. Played very inconsistently. Played with the Americans, with Russia. In the end he overplayed his hand.?

The scorecard from these twenty years is positive for the West. They have been very busy in Ukraine: with the help of various non-commercial, non-governmental organizations, they have done a quite fantastic job. Dozens of non-commercial Western organizations have been at work. As for us... do we have any non-governmental organizations busy at work in the sphere of foreign policy? "Russkiy Mir". When did they appear? Not long ago. Their effectiveness... Any other organizations? There is "Rossotrudnichestvo", who have little money. "Institute of CIS Countries" - that's an institution. "Gorchakov Fund" exists too. But all of this is recent initiatives and these organizations don't have the funds.

The Americans have been pumping massive amounts of money into the place. Besides, all these years there has been a Banderite underground operating in Ukraine, in cooperation with the American and West-German intelligence agencies. Moreover, geographically Ukraine is not a Baltic state. Incidentally, who knows when the last "Forest Brother" was killed in the Baltic states? 1960? - 1974. But, you know, there's nowhere to hide really in the Baltic states, but in Ukraine there is. And the Banderite underground has always been there. Of course, the West has always been working with them.

Obviously there were serious domestic reasons for the events of December, January, February (2014). Impoverishment of the population. Dissatisfaction with this miser-oligarch regime of Yanukovych. Now what do we see? The family of Yanukovych is gone. In their place has come the family of Tymoshenko. One family of oligarchs has been replaced by another. They've been putting oligarchs in charge of the cities of the East. Not by chance I quoted the words of Marx and Engels regarding the European revolution of 1848. "We now know what role stupidity plays in revolutions, and how scumbags will exploit it." Indeed, exploit they did.

As far as we can tell from the unfolding events, the greed of the ruling clan was exploited in general and in specific ways from the eventful situation. "D"-day and "H"-hour came on 21 Feb.

Since I am in science and not intelligence, my information is only indirect, but it is confirmed by another analysis too. Towards 18:00 on 21 Feb half of the Maidan was cleared. And it could have ended at that. But you know, between 18:00 and 20:00 ... There were about 15,000 Maidan protesters. There were being shifted by a group of about 3,000 some of whom gave me this information. Walking behind them was Berkut. They reported that all of a sudden Berkut stopped. "We were proceeding, but Berkut stopped." They had been given the order to stop. What happened between 18:00 and 20:00 ? Let us re-create the events. This is my version. I'm not forcing it upon anyone, by any means.

At that point Yanukovych decided that he had won and could start negotiations. Moreover, the Americans had told him they knew where his billion was stashed. Here Yanukovych decided to play a stupid country-boy trick. He decided to trick the Americans, not realizing that they would trick him, by not respecting the agreement. Any they wouldn't exactly forget his betrayal anyway. At this point, when the opportunity to clear out Maidan was lost, events turned in a different direction. I was saying on the 21st, 22nd, that this is a situational loss for Russia, because if the only pro-Russian force we could set up in 20 years was the one fronted by Yanukovych, then that is a poor performance by us.

What was Chernomyrdin up to? He was singing songs and playing the accordion with the Ukrainian oligarchs. Evidently that was his destiny - it turned out nicely for him. What Zubarov was doing we have no idea. But clearly he was making some nice gas deals, hanging out with the oligarchs. The western intelligence, and the non-governmental organizations, they worked with the oligarchs, the intelligentsia and the masses. And look at the result: although Kiev is not a Galician city, 90% of the Kiev intelligentsia are supporters of the Galician Project. That means the Western intelligence did a good job. Indeed, that was their job.

A different matter is that we didn't work like that. We were chatting with oligarchs instead of getting on with other things. Again, if our only pro-Russian force at a high political level was this person called Yanukovych, then that's our failure. Of course, losing one round doesn't mean you lost the match. Indeed, the actions of the Russian authorities in Crimea showed that having lost a round, you can still win the match. The match of the 17th-18th was won. But that match was only over Crimea. There is still Eastern, South-Eastern Ukraine.

What the West wanted

Now let's look at what the West wanted, what their plan was. What did the West need out of this situation? Let's think like the Westerners. That is, those who planned this. This is really the right approach.

In the summer when I was in London, I read the English papers. There was a marvelous editorial in the Financial Times. This editorial was basically slamming tutors of economics at English universities. They were saying that if you want to train an economist, don't hammer into their heads what is written by economists. Teach them to think like economists. Incidentally, likewise we need to teach people to think the way the politicians do. Our political science is reduced to a model where people only know the theories of political science. But the theories of political science are very far from reality. Indeed, they exist to hide the thinking of politicians. It's a misdirection.

Plan "Minimum": the West establishes a Slavic, neo-Nazi, Banderite Reich. Constant pressure on Russia, provocations by various means. If Russia reacts - tell everyone that "the huge totalitarian Russia is harassing the free Ukraine" The same template was used on Yugoslavia: "Those poor Albanians - victims of the evil Serbs."

Plan "Maximum": same as when the German Nazi Reich was established in the 1930s. Set up the forces, which, if necessary for the West, will take on the decisive part of the war against Russia. Some will say: "What a nightmare! How are you supposed to go to war against Russia?" There are different situations. Who in Europe could wage war against Russia? Romanians, you think, could conduct a war? Poles - not themselves. What's needed is a kind of "pit bull terrier" state, which would be prepared to start at least a local conflict, to show the weakened Russia how events could develop.

If you think that's laying it on thick, refer to the history of relations between the West and Russia. Every aggression which Russia has endured in the last 200-300 years always came from the West. There was no aggression by Russia in the West. Only two points: the liberation campaign against Napoleon, which, by the way, as Kutuzov said, should have been ended in 1813. without going beyond our own borders. "Leave France and England there to love each other perversely and engage with each other". That was one campaign. The second was in 1849, Nikolai I. In my view this was a mistake, although he was a great Czar. It was assistance to suppress the Hungarian uprising in Austro-Hungary. That was unnecessary. Let the Hungarians beat up the Austrians. Let them have their own little theater of chaos in Central Europe. It will be easier for us. Apart from those, Russia never took any action in the West. That was the 19th century.

As for sending forces into Czechoslovakia, that was done in accordance with the rules, written in the Warsaw Pact. NATO has the same rules. In the statutes of NATO, in black and white, is stated:

"If any NATO state is in danger due to internal or external changes, forces are to be deployed immediately"

Yet when we sent in forces they called it the "Brezhnev Doctrine" ... It's just that our propagandists are poor. We should have explained that it was done as prescribed in the Warsaw Convention and the NATO statutes, as in all such organizations. But I was talking about the 19th century.

As for the 20th century, the Soviet leadership missed a unique opportunity in 1968. They were slow, only reacting to events. During the May unrest in Paris 1968, the Soviet leadership, by utilizing the French Communist Party, could well have gotten NATO forces to enter Paris in response to demonstrations by the communists and the unions. If NATO forces had entered Paris, we could have been shouting for 30 years about how NATO crushed the French students. Then they wouldn't be talking about any "Prague Spring". But the Soviet leader was only reacting to events. Because they were a reactive government. As Arnold Toynbee noted: "The West's policy toward Russia is one of aggression." By the way, Toynbee wasn't a russophile. "The Russian expansion is of a defensive nature", wrote Arnold Toynbee. The end goal of the North-Atlantic elite has always been the elimination of Russia. In this respect Leonid Shebarshin, one of the most visible leaders of Soviet intelligence, was of course right, when he wrote: "What the West needs from Russia is that it not exist." That was strategic.

Tactically... In 1991 the West could have begun the dismemberment of Russia. But with China already rising, it didn't seem like a good idea. Besides, they decided to harass Russia over the course of, say, 20 years. During which time Russia managed to get on its feet again. Banderastan, if that's what Ukraine is fated to become, as designed by the puppet-masters across the ocean, is to be an oligarchic, terroristic, russophobic state. Russophobic - it's clear why. Quasi-state - because even post-Soviet Ukraine was not a fully independent state.

We are already seeing external administration of the country. Kiselëv was absolutely right, when he mentioned yesterday: "The visit of the CIA director to Kiev, plus the directive of the IMF to fire 12,000 workers in the social sector." They are making brutal cuts. IMF money always comes with requirements to cut social programs. Which in turn provokes unrest among the population. The government then has to take further action and you're into a vicious cycle. This is very well described in "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins. He explains it all very well.

An oligarchic Banderite Ukraine is unavoidable for this simple reason: Because of their corruption, inability and unwillingness, oligarchy is the ideal vehicle for external control. Clearly, this will suit both the oligarchs and the West.

Finally: if the marionette junta in Kiev can hold out, then by logic they will conduct a policy of terror against the East and South-East. A different matter is that they don't appear to have the power to do that. They are always talking about "deadlines". But they can't do anything, because they don't have real power. Besides, it's clear that the "Right Sector" is a serious threat to the Ukrainian leadership.

What else will the banderization of Ukraine mean, if it comes to pass? Well, the East and South-East are industrially developed regions. These areas are modernized. The West is agricultural. It's clear, the EU doesn't need Ukraine's modern industries like Yuzhmash and Motor-Sich: They are competitors and they have to go. They don't need Ukraine's atomic energy either. What they need is a place to store atomic waste.

The death of Oleksandr Muzychko

One theory about why Oleksandr Muzychko was eliminated, and I'm very convinced by it, you can read it on the Internet, was that Tymoshenko, in need of money, made a deal with the Europeans, that Ukraine would immediately begin disposing of nuclear waste. The thing is that Ukraine doesn't have facilities for that. Which means they are just going to bury it. They intend to bury it in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. "It's already polluted. We'll bury and hide it all there". If a person is decisive... Well, Yatsenuk and Turnychov wouldn't touch that. Tymoshenko agreed with Yarosh, and Yarosh instructed Muzychko. But Musychko, although he looks brutal, he wasn't a fool. He understood that whoever was organizing this was going to eliminate him. That's why he started acting differently than Tymoshenko expected. So there was no other way out than to eliminate him.

As far as I know, the train with nuclear waste is currently waiting at the Polish-Ukrainian border, not going anywhere. It's completely obvious - Europe needs Ukraine as a dumping ground. What surprises me about the Ukrainian leadership is this: Those who will die or become sterilized by radiation, it's not only the commoners. It will affect the elite's children too. That surprises me. Why on earth is she turning the country into a dump, a source of radio-activity, if she lives there herself? You're planning to become the president, no? You're going to live there for 4-5 years? 4-5 years is plenty then. The banderization of Ukraine will mean its de-modernization, its futurist-archaization. If this junta is completely victorious in Ukraine, which I have a lot of doubts about, then Ukraine will collapse into this futurist-archaistic zone, more extreme than that depicted in the fantasy battle novels by Alexei Kolentev.

An important lesson from the whole Ukraine crisis, which for me is a positive, concerns the Russian media. For the first time they weren't the losers in a conflict. During the 08.08.08 war quite a few of them adopt anti-Russian positions. This time only certain completely frenzied structures took an anti-Russian position, the likes of "Echo Moskvy", and even at that not everyone there. On the one hand they have hysterical menopausal women. Their boss adopted a more restrained position. A significant group was called "national-traitors" by the president, for coming out in opposition. Nevertheless, our media didn't lose the infowar over Ukraine, and acted very correctly. In Crimea everything was organized very correctly. From the point of view of international law, any attempts to discredit it simply don't have a leg to stand on. Everything was done correctly.?

Still, this crisis has highlighted a whole series of double standards. I looked through the press at the time and will highlight a few points for you.

In an editorial of the New Statesman it is claimed that "Putin violated Ukraine's sovereignty." Violated - how so? "by sending troops into Crimea". That didn't happen. Then what should we call the actions of American diplomats who organized the overthrow of the legitimate president? It is a direct lie.

Then let's take the respectable "Economist" of 8 Mar. They made the accusation that Putin "has become more autocratic". No arguments given. Unwillingness to join in the games thrust upon people by the West is interpreted as autocraticness. By the same logic 'democracy' means licking the boots of NATO.

The same deceitful pathos that we saw over Qaddafi is repeated toward Putin in the rhetoric of articles in March about the situation in Russia. such as in Time magazine of 17 Mar. Likewise in the Spectator of 8 Mar. A certain O'Sullivan writes: "Putin has broken the consensus which arose after the end of the Cold War". As if Putin considers that this particular consensus should even have existed.

This is the impudence and impunity of NATO, who bombed Yugoslavia, which, as if that wasn't enough, they covered the whole of Yugoslavia with bombs. You probably saw the films. I learned about it from Serbs long ago. Moreover, when they bombed the Serbian areas, they peppered the place with uranium. Now in Serbia there is so much cancer. The population is just dying. Additionally, they dropped spermicides everywhere, which is causing male infertility, so that the Serbs, being a pro-Russian force in Europe, will be eliminated.

Later in the same edition of "The Spectator" they reported a statement by Obama that "Russia is on the wrong side of history". Obama's logic means that the right side of history is those who nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, attacked Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, killed hundreds of thousands of people - that's the right side of history.

The infantile Garry Kasparov

But what made the biggest impression on me was an article by our own Garry Kasparov. In two respects:

'Firstly, how this guy (whom the West did accept) is presented, and his representation of history. Secondly, what he is offering to the West. The article is entitled "Cut off the oligarchs, they will bring down Putin". It was published in the very serious "Wall Street Journal", 10 Mar 2014. We can judge the author's intellect by the next statement. Kasparov writes: "For the second time in six years Putin ordered his troops to cross an internationally recognized border, and occupy foreign territory." The first time, he presumably means, was 08.08.08, and the second time - Crimea. When did Putin order the troops to enter Crimea? Where was there such a decision? We didn't send our troops into Crimea. Putin belongs to an exclusive club - along with Miloševi?, Saddam Hussein, - leaders who "invaded neighboring countries." Miloševi? didn't invade anywhere. Miloševi? was dealing with Kosovo, which was part of Yugoslavia. Saddam Hussein did invade Kuwait - that was a trap. And that wasn't at all the reason why they overthrew him. It wasn't in 1990-91 that they overthrew him.

Next, Kasparov writes: "In Yalta Stalin forced the weak Roosevelt and the powerless Churchill to accept his position on Poland, while Putin's policy on Crimea is the same as Hitler's annexation of Austria and Sudetenland". If a student were to write that in an exam, I would immediately give them a "two" and send them to re-sit. The point is not even that neither Churchill nor Roosevelt was weak. Churchill and Stalin, although this sounds cynical, they swapped Poland and Greece. They agreed that the USSR would get 90% domination in Poland and 10% in Greece, and Britain vice-versa: 90% in Greece, 10% in Poland. So the Soviet Union stopped actively supporting the Greek communists. And they got crushed by the English. On the other hand, we solved our Poland problem. For us Poland was more important than Greece. Evidently, Kasparov wasn't told about that. Kasparov continues: (Why I'm talking about Kasparov, who is very active in our opposition, is to demonstrate the intellectual level of these people.) "If Putin wins", writes Kasparov, "then the world which came out of 1945 will disintegrate". Kasparov from the mid-80s is like the hero of the American short story "Rip van Winkle", who fell asleep and later woke up to find that America is no longer part of the British empire but a free country. "Rip Van Winkle" means anyone who woke up to find themself in a different world. The thing is that the world order from 1945 collapsed in 1989 in Malta, when Gorbachev gave everything away. Journalists coined the term, although it didn't stick: the "Maltese System", to replace the Yalta system. So it makes no sense any more to talk about breaking the world order from Yalta.

Here's one thing that really deserves attention: What does Kasparov recommend the West do? He says they need to "put pressure on the oligarchs", not on Putin, but on the oligarchs. If pressure is put on them, then they will carry out a coup and overthrow Putin. This is a Russian citizen telling the US State dept what they need to do to effect regime change in Russia. Imagine if this were a US citizen sitting in Russia, for example, or, who knows, in China, talking about how to overthrow Obama, I think that person would have serious problems - very serious. Yet Kasparov is free to come and go in Russia as he pleases, and no-one is revoking is citizenship.

Goodbye, America!

No more the kind of relations that existed under the Russian authorities of the 1990s, or even during Putin's first term, or the Medvedev period, those days are gone. Because: The West won't forgive what this leadership does. And this leadership, considering the behavior of the West... Well, if they were in any doubt before: "Look, we're not Miloševi?, we're not Saddam Hussein, or Qaddafi, they wouldn't do that to us".

Well, now there can be no doubt. The West has no brakes. In trying to solve their own problems, they'll keep going until they hit the wall.

What's the importance of these February-March events? Let's get to the heart of the matter. For the first time since 1991 the West, the United States of America, they set up, albeit covertly, an aggression against the Russian world. Because Ukraine is in the territory of the Russian world. They organized an aggression far away from their own shores. Ukraine cannot possibly be in the United States' zone of interest. Mexico perhaps, maybe even Cuba. They could declare Cuba to be in their zone of interest,

But Ukraine is very far away, like Iraq is. This was an aggression for the first time since 1991. They decided that they could do this. For the first time since 1991, we gave the aggressor a pasting - big time. Despite all the shouting and bawling in the West, we didn't give up, we re-united with Crimea, and, as the president said in Red Square: "Crimea has returned to its native harbor". In spite of all the shouting and everything else. With that, the song by the group "Nautilus Pompilius" - "Goodbye, America!" - takes on a certain symbolic meaning. Indeed: "Goodbye, America!" No more the kind of relations that existed under the Russian authorities of the 1990s, or even during Putin's first term, or the Medvedev period, those days are gone. Because: The West won't forgive what this leadership does. And this leadership, considering the behavior of the West... Well, if they were in any doubt before: "Look, we're not Miloševi?, we're not Saddam Hussein, or Qaddafi, they wouldn't do that to us".

Well, now there can be no doubt. The West has no brakes. In trying to solve their own problems, they'll keep going until they hit the wall. With this marvelous re-unification with Crimea, this whole Crimean Victory, which really puts an end to a distinct era, a few problems still remain. The first problem is the incompatibility between the direction of our foreign policy toward restoring our status as a great nation and the neo-liberal economic course of the government, nominally Medvedev's. Confrontation against the West is unsustainable on a foundation of neo-liberal economics. Enduring it is only possible on the basis of a mobilization economy. At the same time, a mobilization economy is only possible within a mobilized social system. In other words, the relations with the West which are now taking shape for the period ahead require very serious domestic changes.

The required Russian domestic changes

The Russian 5th Column

Those, whom Putin called the national-traitors. Quantitatively, it's a smallish group, but it includes representatives of the authorities, business, media, intelligentsia, education. You just need to look for who was shouting the loudest that the re-unification with Crimea is the same as what Hitler did with Austria.

The first change is cosmetic: A policy of lawful suppression of the fifth column. That's the very first step which has to be taken. Next we need to strengthen a number of matters relating to economics and social structure. Because in half a year, the euphoria over the re-unification with Crimea will have passed, and in the Fall our economic problems will re-surface. Our most optimistic assessments of economic growth are 1%. As a minimum we need 5-6% Of course, the population's dissatisfaction with the economic situation will be exploited by those who organized the Bolotnaya mass protest. They will take advantage of people's dissatisfaction. Of course, there will arise an alliance of neo-liberals and ultra-nationalists. It will quickly become, "the oligarchs", and "the battle against corruption", and so on. Then, if they are successful, the next group of oligarchs will come along, who will... Revolution is something which changes the socio-economic structure. Not one of these "color revolutions" brought about any change in the socio-economic structure. The regimes were replaced with pro-Western ones. Nothing more. That needs to be well understood.

If Russia switches to a system of mobilization, the North-Atlantic elite, and their network of agents in the Russian Federation, will attempt to bring down the existing regime, and, I repeat, that will be done under the banner of "fighting corruption" and so on. This is why we need to pay attention to the February Maidan in Kiev and the heroes it revealed. Look. Tymoshenko went on the stage at the Maidan and said that the events in Kiev are a model for the peoples of all post-Soviet republics in their battle against dictators. The son of the war criminal Shukhevych, Yury Shukhevych, who served a prison sentence here, declared:

"The February Maidan is the continuation of the events of 1991, the beginning of the second anti-Soviet revolution, the first being 1991-1993, which should finally destroy the dream of resurrecting the Soviet Union".

For them, clearly, the Maidan was indeed a continuation of 1991-93. Russia's tough reaction to the Maidan - protecting Crimea - they didn't expect that.

The second problem is closely connected to the first and arises from it. The fifth column. Those, whom Putin called the national-traitors. Quantitatively, it's a smallish group, but it includes representatives of the authorities, business, media, intelligentsia, education. You just need to look for who was shouting the loudest that the re-unification with Crimea is the same as what Hitler did with Austria. Moreover, these people managed to avoid the issue that Austria was given to Hitler by Britain and France: without their approval he could never have annexed Austria. The reason they let Hitler annex Austria: Hitler didn't have currency reserves, Austria did. By giving him Austria, they gave him the currency reserves needed to re-arm. Next they let him have Czechoslovakia, because he needed their military-industrial potential, which the Reich didn't have. He needed to get across the border into the Soviet Union.

The Ukraine crisis has demonstrated the unity of the people and authorities of Russia when it comes to such an important issue as bringing together the Russian world. But this crisis makes it necessary and urgent to resolve a number of issues in this country. In my view, the following issues.

Firstly. Suppression of the fifth column by political-legal measures, cut them off from the media and sources of finance, principally from the West.

Secondly. Switch over to a mobilization economy, and switch to a mobilized social system, an element of which will be the mobilization economy.

Thirdly. Re-format the legal sphere. Eliminate the precedence of international law over national law.

Incidentally, they don't have such precedence in the UK or US. That's something they've successfully foisted upon others. Terminate participation in openly anti-Russian structures, and, moreover, financing them.

Fourthly. Strengthen the military alliance with Belarus, notwithstanding the objective and subjective complications of the process. Far from everything said by Lukashenko about the situation in Crimea impressed me. But he did say one very important thing. Belarus will never do anything detrimental to Russia. That's good. In my view he should have said more.

Fifthly. Counteract the opponent, the aggressor, not only around our own borders, but in any part of the world where we have the possibility: establish their degree of vulnerability. We need to conduct ourselves toward the West exactly as they have conducted themselves toward Russia since it came into existence in 1991.

Recently the film-maker Karen Shakhnazarov said something very true when he appeared on TV: The West never ended the Cold War against Russia. The Soviet Union disintegrated, everything continued. Brzezinski spoke very honestly in one of his interviews, this was after the Cold War had already ended. He said: "Don't fool yourself. We are not at war with communism, but with Russia, whatever it may be called." If he´d said war against "the Russian spirit", then he would have been practically repeating the words of Churchill, who said in 1940:

"We are not at war with Hitler, or even the National-Socialism. We are at war with the German spirit, the spirit of Schiler, so that it may never be revived."

The kind of spiritual castration that was imposed upon the Germans after 1945, that's what they wanted to do to Russia after 1991.

In one of his interviews Alexander Rahr, he's a kind of German fringe politician, said that many Western politicians and journalist are surprised as to why Russia doesn't repent. Meaning: Russia lost the Cold War, so they must repent. One more thing he said, for which he was criticized in the West: "For the West the victory over the Soviet Union was no less important, and possibly more important, that the victory over Hitler." Because Hitler belonged to them. Russia never did. This is why we have to counteract the opponent not only on our borders and not when he invades us. We need to make problems for the opponent wherever he is vulnerable.

Sixthly. We must roll out a powerful, massive, informational counter-attack against the North-Atlantic elite. Particularly aggressive wherever they have problems. Specifically, in the Muslim and Spanish-speaking worlds.

I am working closely with the Spanish- and Arabic-language services of Russia Today. They're doing a great job. What is meant by the Spanish-speaking audience? It's not only Latin-America and Spain. There is a huge Spanish-speaking audience in the United States itself. That has to be exploited.

Seventh and last. Re-configure the public awareness for defense. It doesn't mean protecting ourselves. Defense means understanding that we are living in war-time. Train the population, especially the younger generation, to be ready to repulse any aggression: military, informational, cultural, civilizational.

I am very pleased to see the resurrection of the military-patriotic education and the concept of "Ready for Labor and Defense" (???). I remember as a school pupil taking the junior, then senior, exams of "Ready for Labor and Defense" It involved running, which we liked, throwing grenades. It's a robust approach. The reason we won the war was we had the "Societies of Assistance to Defense and Aviation-Chemical Construction" (??????????), we had sports organizations in the 1930s. We were really getting prepared. You want peace - be prepared for war.

We are peaceful people, but our armored train is ready in the sidings. So the changes which happened in February-March was the end of the era of defeats. Leaving the era of defeats is necessary not only on the external front, but also domestically. There are still plenty of odious characters around from the time of Yeltsin. Some have gone to Ukraine. There's a journalist Kiselëv - Evgeny Kiselëv, who shares a surname with Dmitry Kiselëv. He's been in Ukraine since many years ago. He's a Berezovsky-Gussinsky person. Has been broadcasting in Ukraine for many years. Now he says he´s ashamed to be Russian. "Ashamed", for God's sake ...

Well, we shouldn't be ashamed to learn from the West how to operate in the informational domain. Their policies are of an offensive nature. If you are reacting, then you're one step behind and you're going to lose. In the Crimean Victory we won because our leadership, above all the president, he was always a step ahead of the opponent. He took a step. They reacted. He set the agenda.

Elms is the third horse to be put down after a jumps race this season. After a successful start to the season two horses have lost their life in the past week.

It is with regret that Racing Victoria confirms that Elms had to be 'humanely euthanized' after suffering a severe fracture of the right fore cannon while racing on the flat during the early stages of Race 2, the BM120 Hurdle at Casterton. This was an 'unfortunate incident' and RV would like to extend its sympathies to trainer Luke Oliver and the owners of Elms at this sad time.

None of the excuses put forward by the jumps racing industry for the continuation of this cruel 'sport' are acceptable -- and claims that horses will be shot, or go to the knackery has only given the community greater insight into how ruthless and uncaring the jumps racing fraternity are.

Why allow the "sport”"to continue at such high price?

There was another tragic death of a horse at Sportingbet Park Sandown when three horses fell in the steeplechase, including Show Dancer, who was also euthanized down, and the event also being called off.

Show Dancers' legs slipped as he prepared himself for a hurdle, and he was fatally thrown through the fence, twisting and turning in the process. The 3400m steeplechase at Sandown on Tuesday proved to be a chaotic one, and ended in another horse being euthanised! While the jockey was cleared, the horse was doomed!

This tragic race was abandoned after three horses fell. If this race was called off due to "safety" concerns, then it's time the whole industry was called off.

While the racing industry claims that steeplechase safety has "improved" by 60% in the last four seasons with regards to fatalities, the very nature of the "sport" means it is inherently dangerous.

The speed, the heights, the clogged turf, the congestion, and the take-offs are all critical factors in making a safe finish, and that means decisions must be made under great stress for horses, and riders.

The very nature of jumps racing means that it can never by "safe". It's rare that horses die in flat races, so why should deaths be tolerable, and acceptable, when it comes to jumps racing?

The main players, the horses, are treated as throw-away items, as disposables in the pursuit of profits.

This barbaric "sport" no longer exists in any other states except for Victoria and South Australia. Jumps racing finished in Queensland more than 100 years ago. It stopped in WA in 1941 and in NSW in 1997. Tasmania ended it in 2007.

This "sport" should be trashed into history, along with other archaic activities such as recreational duck hunting, the mass slaughter of wildlife, 1080 poisonings, puppy factories, factory farming, and any forced use of animals in entertainment.

At least there is a light at the end of this dark, cruel tunnel for jumps racing horses in Australia! Victoria will soon be the only state in Australia where horse jumps racing is legal, according to the former head of the South Australian Jockey Club, Steve Ploubidis.
"I think that jumps racing in South Australia, the days are numbered," Mr Ploubidis told the ABC's 7.30 program.

Take Action Now: Animals Australian

Illustration photo is used by a real agency.

Illustrations and commentary from candobetter.net. Although this article comes from a petition, (which already has 27,222 supporters) the article explaining it, by Esther Inglis of Brisbane, Australia is fantastic. I would only add to it that it is not just graduates who are suffering. This rort and scandal needs to be blown out of the water in Australia. The absolute shamelessness of careerists currently running hospitals all over the country, who dump on their colleagues and on students merits that you cut dead most people in hospital management on suspicion that they are part of this outrageous behaviour towards ordinary RNs and trainee nurses. Hospitals and managers are getting bonuses for bringing in foreign nurses and getting them to sign up with universities to do Masters and Phd's in nursing at great expense to the immigrants and enormous cost to wider Australian society. And while this is going on many excellent nurses with years of experience are now unable to find work. They cannot afford to compete with cashed up professional immigrants for post graduate university courses that have become quasi-mandatory to get some short term job in nursing. And, as imported nurses sit at their desks and do full time higher degree courses just in order to keep their positions and fulfill their contracts, the wards are filled with new rapidly trained kinds of 'care-workers', and a few overworked Division 2s, doing jobs that real RNs once did. Can this be good for anyone? Tony Abbott complains about the cost of health care, but he has nothing to say about this - naturally. I really don't think it is necessary to add that I have nothing against foreign nurses, however I will. What I am against is destroying the reasonable expectations of employment of nurses born here. It is so cruel, unnecessary and shameful. The unions are doing nothing, nor are the schools of nursing; they are just shamefully taking the money for membership and courses, like the cowards they are. So try signing this petition and send it around everywhere.

Article by Esther Inglis, first appeared on Change.org.

You can sign the petition here:

https://www.change.org/petitions/federal-government-review-457-visa-for-nurses-in-australia?recruiter=100529205&utm_campaign=mailto_link&utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition

Getting a job is competitive, getting a job as a graduate even more so. Faced with proposed changes to the federal budget, it is a bleak outlook for the thousands of nursing graduates each year, who are desperate to be employed but are often losing out on job opportunities to experienced nurses recruited by hospitals/facilities on 457 visas.

There was a shortage in nurses, but now even skilled nurses are finding it difficult to find work. Though this issue has many dimensions, graduate nurses are most at risk of losing out to foreign experienced nurses. Graduate nurses are our future, initiatives need to be in place to ensure they are placed in employment upon completion of their degrees, otherwise the future of Australian nursing will again be faced with shortages of nurses.

Click on the picture to see how Australia's 'nursing shortage' is being misrepresented to potential migrant nurses.

The federal budget will make unemployed life very difficult, especially considering that many nurse graduates are under 30 years of age and will not qualify for unemployment benefits for 6 months.

The proportion of international nurses on 457 visas hired each year is comparable to the proportion of nurse graduates who find themselves unable to find work. How are we meant to transition from graduate into experienced nurses, if the opportunities to work, experience and refine our skills is not available to us.

The federal and state governments need to work out where our health and employment system is falling short and failing graduate nurses, who previously had excellent job prospects upon graduation. Initiatives to hire graduates need to be implemented immediately, so we can get out foot in the door and have options for our futures.

We have studied and trained extremely hard to be there in your hours of greatest need… we know that you will help us now in ours. Please support our petition to have this issue reviewed and action taken by the government.

Nationally, a breakdown of unemployed graduates reveal the state of the industry:

SA: The ANMF estimates that in South Australia alone, 280 nurse and midwife graduates were unable to secure jobs after university last year.

QLD: Only 600 of 2500 nursing graduates were able to secure jobs this year.

TAS: 60 per cent of nursing graduates were unable to find work last year.

VIC: 800 nurse and midwife graduates were unable to secure employment last year.

NSW: The ANMF says the NSW public hospital sector is the largest employer of nurses on 457 visas.

(source Australian Federation of Nursing and Midwifery)

To:
Scott Morrison, Minister for Immigration and Border Protection
Senator Eric Abetz, Federal Minister for Employment
Peter Dutton, Federal Minister for Health
Luke Hartsuyker, Assistant Minister for Employment
Kate Ellis, Shadow Minister for Education
Catherine King, Shadow Minister for Health
Lawrence Springborg, State Minister for Health - Queensland
John-Paul Langbroek, State Minister for Education, Training & Employment - Queensland
Curtis Pitt, Shadow State Minister for Employment - Queensland
Jo-Ann Miller, Shadow State Minister for Health - Queensland
Richard Marles, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Border Protection
Review 457 visas for international nurses. In my home state of Queensland, only one quarter of graduate nurses last year have gained positions, this is a scary prospect for nursing students.

With the changes to the federal budget, we cannot afford to be out of work, especially as graduates with no experience. The age of entitlement is over, though many of us cannot even get a foot in the door to put food on our tables.

Whilst we value and respect the work of international nurses working in Australia on 457 visas, we need to make sure that we are not being passed over and have every opportunity to enter the workforce and build our skill base with valuable hospital experience.

The rate of graduate nurses unemployed is similar to the intake of international nurses, so we know the work is there, we just need our government to tighten the regulations on these visas and give us a fighting chance to start off our careers!
Sincerely,
[Your name]

According to exit polls, Pyotr Poroshenko is in the lead with more than 55 percent, with Fatherland Party rival Yulia Tymoshenko gathering approximately 12 percent of the vote. According to the Central Election Commission, the overall turnout [6pm local time] was exceedingly low. Officially the number of polling stations is 32,244. Even in areas controlled by the Kiev regime, the voter turn-out was low. - See more at: Ukraine presidential elections low turn out

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, May 25, 2014

According to official Ukraine governmental sources, there are 33.594 million registered votes on “mainland Ukraine” (i.e. excluding Crimea which is now under the jurisdiction of The Russian Federation).  According to official sources, 474,000 Ukrainians living overseas can cast their vote at 114 polling stations in 75 countries.

While turnout in the two federalist oblasts of Eastern Ukraine (Donesk and Luhansk) was less than 10 percent, in most of the other regions, it did not exceed 45 percent of registered voters [6pm local time], with only one oblast in Western Ukraine in excess of 45%.  (See Graph below, Financial  Times based on official CEC data).

At 8pm local time the CEC announced, according to the Kiev Post, an overall turnout of 55.33 percent. This figure, however is misleading because  it is based on an incomplete number of electoral precincts and it also excludes the Eastern Ukraine oblasts.

While the data –which is subject to political manipulation– is preliminary, the overall turnout is less than 50 percent. We will update as information become available.

The unofficial election watchdog OPORA quoted by the Kiev Post published the following figures:

International Observers

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to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/681cc326-e3f5-11e3-a73a-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz32kkQAVdKAsked while voting if his first trip as president would be to the EU or Russia, Mr Poroshenko responded “To Donbass”, the name given to Ukraine’s heavy industrial south-eastern region.

Vadim Karasiov, a political analyst, said: “The card played by Russia will be in pointing out that the presidential election did not, de facto, take place in Donbass, [so] the newly-elected president does not represent this region.”

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to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/681cc326-e3f5-11e3-a73a-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz32kkQAVdKAsked while voting if his first trip as president would be to the EU or Russia, Mr Poroshenko responded “To Donbass”, the name given to Ukraine’s heavy industrial south-eastern region.

Vadim Karasiov, a political analyst, said: “The card played by Russia will be in pointing out that the presidential election did not, de facto, take place in Donbass, [so] the newly-elected president does not represent this region.”

According to official sources, there were 3600 international observers.

Deutsche Welle  placed the number of observers at 1200.

The US observer team is led by Madeleine Albright, who –in contradiction with her role as observer mission chief– openly expressed her preference for Tymoshenko.

(Tymoshenko hugs Madeleine Albright as they meet in Kyiv. picture right). 

US senators Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Benjamin Cardin (D-Maryland) were also part of the US observer mission.

It should be understood that the Right Sector which now controls the SUB (Ukraine’s Security Service) is exerting pressure on the offices of the Central Election Commission (CEC). According to recent reports, the electronic files of the CEC were hacked  by CyberBirkut three days before the elections, which suggests that a manual recount will be required.

Ukraine’s Security Service claims that it has removed a virus at the Central Election Commission’s server, designed to delete the results of the presidential vote. According to the interior minister the cyber-attack may force a ‘manual vote count.’  The virus has been eliminated, software is replaced. So, we now have the confidence that the Central Election Commission’s server is safe,” Valentin Nalivaychenko, SBU head, is cited by UNN news agency. He is cited as saying that the virus was meant to destroy the results of presidential election on May 25. However the CEC programmers may not be able to fix the system in time for the elections, coup-installed Interior Minister Arsen Avakov announced on his website. (RT, May 24, 2014, emphasis added)

Ironically, Poroshenko has been declared the winner by the Western media prior to the actual vote count. Moreover, Obama has officially congratulated him prior to an official confirmation by the Ukraine CEC.

While Poroshenko has declared victory, based on exit polls, under prevailing conditions, there is a possibility that the official vote count could be rigged (e.g.  in favor of Tymoshenko), with a view to ensuring a runoff.

If this were to occur, it could potentially contribute to exacerbating the Ukraine crisis. Tymoshenko is supported by the Fatherland Party and the two Neo-Nazi parties. Right Sector and Svoboda. While Tymoshenko has little chances of winning in a runoff, she is the preferred candidate of the US establishment including the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

While Poroshenko is broadly supportive of  the “Washington Consensus” including IMF sponsored neoliberal reforms, Washington is anxious to bring Tymoshenko back into playing a more central political role, particularly with regard to Ukraine membership in NATO.

Articles by:
Prof Michel Chossudovsky

After 10 years of negotiations, Russia's Gazprom and China's CNPC have finally signed an historic natural gas supply deal which will make them partners in post peak-oil industry for the forseeable future. Russia's relatively huge oil and gas reserves [1] have hardly been tapped due to financial depression following post USSR break-up and generally less wasteful exploration policies prior to this. Russia's future is buoyant, compared to the United States, where gas supplies are inadequate to meet the needs of domestic customers, oil peaked in the 1970s and fracking won't deliver anything like what it promised. In cooperation with China, Russia's position alongside China at the gateway to the Arctic, to the Caspian, and the Middle East put it in an remarkable new position.

Russia, although it has known great hardship, has the benefited from this by being in touch with reality and knowing the value of good technological and scientific advice. Putin is highly intelligent and uses the media brilliantly, aiming at intellectuals who have become disgusted with the western mainstream media. He treats material in a complex and verifiable way, rather than relying on slogans and ideology. He has forged alliances all over the world with countries that the United States has alienated. Most of them have energy reserves of their own and want alternative markets.

The US has been touting itself as a future supplier of gas to Europe in what Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert have called, "A hoax energy policy in america using phoney numbers." You wonder how the United States itself, let alone Europe, the UK and various sycophants like Australia could have fallen for this. Are the US and EU leaders the actual fraudsters? Max Keiser thinks that these leaders are simply too economically and technologically uneducated to see through the bankster spin.

Bloomberg: Cost of fracking in the US greatly exceeds returns

On 25 October 2013 in "EIA should provide data on cost of North American shale gas exploitation to make balanced reports," I asked EIA spokesman, Dr Fawsi, to tell me what the cost of production in fracking was. He said the EIA had the information but would not release it. However Bloomberg obtained the relevant information and published it in February under the headline: Bloomberg"Dream of US Oil independence slams against shale costs."

"Just a few of the roadblocks: Independent producers will spend $1.50 drilling this year for every dollar they get back." And, "Shale output drops faster than production from conventional methods. It will take 2,500 new wells a year just to sustain output of 1 million barrels a day in North Dakota's Bakken shale, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency. Iraq could do the same with 60."

Financial terrorists

The video linked to at the top of this article tells us how this works: Companies get finance for shale-oil/fracking schemes that cannot break even and then abandon the schemes and the financier and shareholders. They pocket all the financial fees from creating the debt and walk away from the ecological damage and the unrecoverable debt. Max Keisor aptly describes these actors as 'financial terrorists'.

Stacey Herbert asks Max Keiser, ""Who are these people that can spend a $1.50 to earn a dollar?"

Keiser replies, "Banks, which create the debt. It's like the old joke, you lose a dollar for every unit you sell, but you make up on the volume.""

It works the same way for big development schemes, which cannot make money for their investors for the same reason that fracking cannot, that is, because the real cost of materials and fuel have largely obliterated profit margins. We are in a post-cheap petroleum world where profits can only be puffed up by spin.

Melbourne, Australia: EastWest Link and other dodgy developments

The East-West Link project which so many in Melbourne, Australia are protesting about, has been promoted with projections of fuel costs declining over the next ten years. You would not think that any competent government could believe such a scenario. Is it incompetence, ideology - or are our governments simply acting on behalf of the banksters when they force taxpayers to commit to massive structural engineering projects in the service of a ballooning population?

The Australian Government is proposing to get rid of two organisations: - the Australian Renewable Energy Agency and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation - that make money by investing in companies producing renewable energy products. They have rightly been criticised for this by Jenny Goldie, President of Sustainable Population Australia, who wrote on :

"There is no rational basis for this move, merely senseless ideology. Even if the government is so scientifically illiterate as to reject climate change, there is a need to shift to renewable energy in light of impending peaks of oil and gas." Jenny Goldie, The Age "Letters", 25 May 2014.

But, is it just ideology or it possible that the government actually believes that alternative energies represent a threat, as in competition, to their corporate friends who have invested in fossil fuels and nuclear? My understanding of flow energies and the finitude of uranium and untested nature of thorium supply and the commercial inviability of GenIV reactors leads me to believe that there is no competition with these fossil fuels, technologies and elements in terms of quantum of energy from flow energies.

Apart from not wanting to exacerbate climate change, the point of alternative/flow energies is that as fossil fuels become less and less available to people, they need alternatives to survive according to basic requirements.

Even so, those flow energies are not going to provide even the basics, if we do not allow population to decline.

Unfortunately the Australian government really seems to be taken in by economic dematerialisation spin on the one hand and by underestimates of likely draw-down on coal and other fossil fuels over the next fifty years as they are called upon to replace petroleum fuels. Our government - like the United States' - behaves as if gas is in endless supply and as if fracking will be an effortless bonanza. Perhaps this failure to carefully study the matter stems from the fact that Australians have not yet actually had to survive serious interruptions to fossil fuel supply... yet ... such as happened to European countries involved in WW1 and WW2, who take this prospect seriously. Australia's petroleum supplies have, however, more or less dried up. We are going to be relying on increasingly dirty fuels to supply power. We cannot afford to build anything like the quantity of nuclear power plants our population would require just to replace its current electricity consumption.[2]

As an Australian, I do not crow about this, but I could see it coming a long time ago. I know that the world could, in theory, survive energy decline if the power-elite would only allow populations to decline in size; if the unions and business would allow us all to start working (and therefore producing and consuming) half as much. Without constant growth in population, prices for resources and housing would not keep climbing. Quite quickly housing prices would drop. Energy resources and water would reduce more slowly, in line with population. We would not need to work so many hours, each of us, merely to pay rent or mortgages. We would have time to live and engage politically in communities which themselves would naturally relocalise, in view of adapting to declining energy reserves less supportive of daily commuting and longer journeys. [3]

NOTES

[1] "Russia Reveals Official Data on Oil and Hydrocarbon Reserves For The First Time", Oil & gas Eurasia, July 12, 2013.
[2] Sheila Newman, "France and Australia after oil," Chapter 19, Sheila Newman, Ed., The Final Energy Crisis, 2nd Ed., Pluto Press, 2008.
[3] "Countering propaganda with simple solutions: Propaganda about a ‘dematerialised economy’ makes it hard to establish the reality that material industrial productivity is not actually less reliant on burning fossil fuels than it was in the 1970s, and that drawdown on fossil fuels has in fact been multiplied by the needs of much greater populations. Similarly the obvious still needs to be pointed out that increasing productivity means burning more fuel and outputting more pollution, accelerating petroleum depletion and adding more greenhouse gases. Not only do we not need all the goods we produce for consumption at home or abroad, we do not need the income they bring, and their acquisition is a poor compensation for lives given to industry. Wonderful jobs are few and far between. No-one wants to give those up. Some people also derive much of their social life from work but they would derive similar benefits, and perhaps more status and satisfaction, from other community activities. And plenty of people reach a stage of maturity where childlike obedience to workplace regimes in the cause of producing more and more widgets in different colours, or processing more and more customers a day, with unflinching subservience, challenges every natural instinct.

Instead of those complicated international agreements about percentile reductions in emissions over the years to come, which are hardly enforceable or even measurable, remaining mostly in the control of the corporate emitters, the solution lies much closer at hand, and could ultimately be controlled at grass-roots levels by the masses themselves. Relocalisation is obviously the best way to develop the solidarity and self-sufficiency to reorganize work.

Political commentator and climate activist, Clive Hamilton, writes in Growth Fetish,

Reduction in working hours is the core demand for the transition to post-growth society. Overwork not only propels overconsumption but is the cause of severe social dysfunction, with ramifications for physical and psychological health as well as family and community life. The natural solution to this is the redistribution of work, a process that could benefit both the unemployed and the overworked. (Hamilton, Clive, Growth Fetish, Allen & Unwin, Australia, 2003 and Pluto Press UK, 2005, last chapter, especially, pp.218-220)

He remarks that “Moves to limit overwork … directly confront the obsession with growth at all costs,” and talks about the liberation of workers “from the compulsion to earn more than they need.”

Because growth is sustained by a constant ‘barrage of marketing and advertising’ Hamilton wants advertising taxed and removed from the public domain, and television broadcast hours limited so as to “allow people to cultivate their relationships, especially with children.”

It should be obvious that the slower we work, the more fuel will remain, the less greenhouse gas will be emitted. If the populations which have ballooned to unimaginable proportions since the 1950s were allowed to return (through natural attrition) to more natural sizes by 2050, and the economy permitted to slow, it would take the heat off the planet and us as well. With so much less effort we could make such a positive difference to the planet and to our personal effectiveness." Original Source: Sheila Newman, Ed., "101 Views from Hubbert's Peak,"Chapter 1, The Final Energy Crisis, Pluto Press, UK, 2008

Mark Jones wrote “Battle of the Titans” when he was dying of cancer in 2005. This project animated his last days and he believed that what he had to say was of utmost importance. Many readers will find it prophetic, except in so far as he overlooks the role of Russia as an oil supplier. He does not overlook China, however, and America’s willingness to use all its remaining fuel to retain global hegemony. Here I have extracted passages which fit quite well together and give a somewhat clairvoyant view – from 2005 – of today’s frantic posturing, propagandizing and stirring up trouble in Ukraine, by the United States and Europe as they perhaps tried to influence China to side with them through their power-play in the Ukraine, then, helplessly watched Putin sign the massive gas supply contract with China.

Mark Jones was an author and novelist with a long-time interest in the political economy of oil. He lived and worked in the Soviet Union and in post-Soviet Russia, working for a time with the New Statesman, whilst researching archives newly opened under Gorbachev’s policy of Glasnost. He founded the Conference of Socialist Economists and their journal, Capital and Class, in the mid 1970s and in the 1980s he was remanded in custody for publishing Leon Trotsky’s writings. He sustained a deep interest and sympathy for communism, and was concerned by the limits to growth and believed that the US economy had an unsustainable but unstoppable need for oil. His novel Black Lightning, about the fall of the Soviet Union, was published in 1995 by Victor Gollancz. The original article of which excerpts are published here was published in the first and second editions of The Final Energy Crisis Pluto Press, UK, 2006, 2008. (First edition edited by Andrew McKillop and Sheila Newman; second edition by Sheila Newman, sole editor.)

Excerpts from Battle of the Titans, by Mark Jones

Headings by candobetter.net editor
The middle decades of the last century might best be seen as an interregnum, during which time the declining and ascendant imperialist powers, Britain and the US, colluded and collaborated to fight rivals (Japan, Germany) and marginalize or contain rivals (Bolshevism). Once US hegemony was assured (by 1945) it was relatively straightforward to restructure the global system on a new, US-dominated basis, and to create the institutions and frameworks for global commerce and international law that secured unchallenged US hegemony. Except for two brief periods during the Korean and Vietnam wars, the USSR ceased to be a serious challenge after 1945, despite the much-vaunted menaces of the Cold War period.

[…]

Comparing British and US empires

In its heyday the British Empire was more powerful and effective than the US empire has been or is today. The British not only moved populations around in huge numbers; they also moved plant and animal species. The British did more to shift and transplant alien flora and fauna from one continent to another, thus reconstructing whole ecosystems, than any other empire, although the Romans did a lot more in that sphere than most people realize. It takes a lot of arrogance and certainty to do the kinds of things the British ever-so-freely took it upon themselves to do. They reshaped whole continents, from Australasia through Africa to Latin America. Successive waves of emigration from the homeland created a whole English-speaking world, of which the US was at first only a subset and which it finally inherited, but had not created. The British ploughed their way through every precapitalist social formation they encountered, and either wiped it out or, through colonialism, totally reconstructed it. Yet despite (or because of) these grandiose achievements the British Empire, which seemed so enduring, was a short-lived thing. There is nothing to suggest that the seeming permanence of the US imperium should be any less fleeting. There is also no reason to suppose that sheer self-interest might not drive Americans themselves into a recognition that the price of domination, alone and unchallenged, is too high, and that an accommodation must therefore eventually be made with a rival who might one day become a successor. Since the 1939–45 war, the US has in fact made a practice of co-opting present and potential rivals into junior partnership. It has done this not only to Britain, but also to Germany (1960s), Japan (1970s and 1980s) and latterly even to Russia (from 1991).

The US is now functionally locked into Chinese industrial capitalism; the two states are in a tight embrace, performing a minuet which is part dance of death and part marriage of convenience.

US and China economic enmeshment

Both states face many common problems, and each needs the other because of complementarities and useful asymmetries. However, the radical contradictions between them ensure that they are imperial rivals. And the balance of power between them appears to be changing. US economic and therefore military growth significantly declined from the later 1980s through to 2002. China has been growing faster, and has now entered a decisive phase of industrialization, where its industry is so diverse, deep, broadly based and synergistic that it appears to be crossing a threshold, and is emerging as the world’s premier industrial power, eclipsing all others, with an R&D capability equivalent to that of the US or Japan. Many estimates indicate that Chinese industrial production will outstrip that of the US during the present decade. It seems clear that Asia as a whole is now poised on the cusp of precipitous changes, and that the US is now clearly the declining regional power, giving way to rising regional hegemony for China. It is surely arguable, or even likely, that China could become the dominant power in Asia without the need for war, and with the US being unable to prevent this. Once the economic facts are in place, can the geopolitical consequences be far behind? What can prevent the binding together and fusion of Chinese, Japanese and Taiwanese industry and capital, under Chinese hegemonic control?

Thus for the first time in its history, the US now faces the distinct possibility of the partial eclipse of its global power. I cannot predict what will happen, and I doubt whether anybody can know, but it is surely plausible that the US will be obliged to accept its strategic defeat with good grace, to accept a seismic change in its status and position, because the US is simply no longer powerful enough to resist. The rise of China to at least regional Asian ascendancy seems to be already in the script, an inevitable and unalterable outcome of present trends.
[…]

Extra-human limits

There is, however, one huge caveat to this whole line of argument. It does not take account of underlying, apolitical, extra-human and planetary limits, which will most certainly afflict the world system, and which mean we are entering a still more radical and decisive epoch of historical challenge, upheaval and transformation in everything from geopolitics to everyday life. As is indicated by the very title of this book, no geopolitical analysis can ignore the colossal threats posed by the storm of self-reinforcing crises – anthropogenic climate change, mass extinction of species, and destruction of the biosphere – all of which were enabled by fossil energy supplies, whose wipeout will be rapid. These factors form a vast backdrop to all world-system or economics-based considerations of inter-imperial rivalry à la Lenin. But before attempting to integrate this domain of issues into the discussion, let us consider again this central question: What if China emerges first from the probable imminent global economic slump?

This slump, if it occurs, will hit the US and Europe especially hard. The dollar will decline, industrial output will shrink, consumption levels and living standards will drop with incomes. The US economy will be first and hardest hit, notably because it is wildly unbalanced, extremely dependent on cheap energy, and equally dependent on the dollar’s “reserve currency” hegemony, which enables its payments deficit to be ignored. Any US economic slump will inevitably bring with it a collapse in personal and public consumption levels. Obviously this collapse in US demand will hit major exporters, China above all. China will then have to find other outlets for its huge industrial output. This means exporting to other regions which may be doing little better than the US, such as Europe and Japan, India, Southeast Asia, Russia, and the Latin American countries – but perhaps firstly, countries which export oil, minerals, metals, and agrocommodities, which profit from higher prices for these items.

[…]

Naked emperor out in the cold

Once you strip out dollar hegemony and the advantages of being the global reserve currency (or “currency of last resort”), you are left with a very naked emperor. Except for weaponry, control of the skies and sea lanes, control and surveillance of world information networks, and a powerful propaganda machine, the US has few cards left. Take away dollar hegemony and you have just another regional economy with its fair share of internal problems (soil exhaustion, aquifer depletion, near-exhaustion of domestic oil and gas reserves, lack of alternative energy supplies, a polluted environment, poor infrastructures, badly designed and expensive-to-maintain urban environments). If the US has to compete on a level playing field with the rest of the world, then it may find that its urban infrastructure is just as uneconomic and unsustainable as was the Soviet Union’s loss-making effort to base itself on the industrialization of the Urals and Siberia. The US currently uses twice as much energy and raw materials per capita as the EU-15 average, and more than ten times that of China. It is desperately uncompetitive. When the dollar has to be backed up by real values, US per capita GNP may fall by half in just a few years, as in the Great Depression. Under these conditions it is hard to see how the US can hope to maintain its global reach and present hegemonic position.

Time running out

[…]
If, on the other hand, we are set on a course of global war, which was the outcome for “classic” economic depressions before 1914, and again through 1929–36, then Americans have only a very small window of opportunity (like Hitler enjoyed in 1939) before their military advantage evaporates.

Comment by editor

Mark Jones wrote the above conclusion - the last three lines - in 2005. By his calculations, the United States would have used up most of the surplus energy that gave it any military advantage.

Saturday June 14th at 2.00pm
Hawthorn Arts Centre,
360 Burwood Rd Hawthorn,
Chandelier Room (Melways 45 D10)

Public forum with Kelvin Thomson, William Burke, Sheila Newman, Clifford Hayes and numerous community groups. Sustainable Population Australia & Victoria First are hosting a panel discussion and open mike on Melbourne's population future. The event will be filmed to use as a document to show how Melbourne people feel about overpopulation. "Melbourne's population growth is treated by the media, by governments and by planners as though it is inevitable, giving the impression that the fate of Melbourne is to be a city of 7 to 8 million by mid-century. What the public seldom hears is that Melbourne's huge growth rate is not inevitable, nor that growth of the population does not magically stop at mid-century unless changes to existing trends are made. If present growth rates continued, Melbourne would be a city of about 20 million by the end of the century. The truth is that Melbourne's future could be largely in our own hands. This meeting is a chance for the people of Melbourne to question the ideology that "Melbourne must keep growing"" (Jill Quirk, President SPA Vic & Tas). "Melbourne has been growing by 200 people a day, 1,500 a week and 75,000 each year for some time now. The latest projections are that this rapid growth will escalate still further. But Melbournians are not asked whether this is what we really want for our city." (Kelvin Thomson, President, Victoria First)

Panel

Federal MP and President of Victoria First, Hon. Kelvin Thomson;
Clifford Hayes, former Bayside Mayor
Planning activist, Sheila Newman, population author and editor of candobetter.net
William Bourke, President of Sustainable Population Party.

Please come and have your say!

Contact: Jill Quirk, President, Sustainable Population Australia,VicTas branch
vic [ AT ] population.org.au ph. 0409742927 or Julianne Bell, Secretary, Victoria
First jbell5 [ AT ] bigpond.com ph. 0408022408