poverty

Just how effective is the power of prayer? For many of us who are poor and helpless, prayer is the only WMD that we can get our hands on.

Governments are creating a great fear of an "ageing population" and population decline.  While asylum seekers are shunted off to PNG, there are over 1000 people legally imported into Australia each day - as skilled migrants or under the family reunion scheme – to alleviate our “ageing population”.

Our cities and infrastructure are buckling under the heavy weight of population growth, to alleviate our "ageing population"! We have constant "shortages", cut backs and austerity measures due to population pressures.  Young people are at risk from being lost to unemployment, and debt, as our economy lags behind population growth.
Mug shot of Charles Ponzi (March 3, 1882 – January 18, 1949). Charles Ponzi was born in Italy and became known as a swindler for his money scheme.

We applaud the initiatives of the Gillard Federal Government today in refunding Aged Care. PM unveils $3.7bn overhaul of aged care, Friday April 20, 2012. We are particularly impressed to read that: "The [Gillard] government rejected a Productivity Commission recommendation that proposed allowing the use of reverse mortgage facilities to help fund care costs." Good on the Gillard government! Reverse mortgages steal inheritances, impoverish youth and render them homeless, and amount to double charges for old age care provision (on top of taxes). We republish a relevant and well-researched article on this matter. See also "Ageism" and ABC article on reverse mortgages.Article by Sheila Newman with Jill Quirk

Save the tiger and save man's self-respect. I mean, if we can't save the tiger we aren't much good for anything are we? Cronulla Beach to Barrenjoey Lighthouse Tiger Trek starts Saturday 10th March. The Trekking Tiger is a man in a tiger mask - his identity is unimportant. His main purpose is to draw attention to this vital campaign which recognizes the tiger, a flagship species in the biodiversity crisis. The trekker will be barefoot or wearing thongs in sympathy with the poverty that accompanies human populations that encroach on tiger territory.

In light of the riots in Britain, we are publishing an article based on some correspondence from the "Trotskyist", "socialist" and "revolutionary" UK group, Workers' Liberty[1], first published in 1995 at http://www.workersliberty.org/node/4900 on 30 September, 2005. The correspondence calls into question, especially now, different attitudes on the likely consequences of high immigration and population growth in Australia and Britain among other countries mentioned. Describing himself as still a socialist internationalist at heart, James Sinnamon writes that, however, "today the ideal of unconditional internationalism is an unachievable pipe dream, and, in fact, dangerous [because] that ideal has been subverted to suit the needs of globalised capitalism."

The police brutality issue and the case of the police killing of Duggan is a legal issue and likely a police cultural problem associated with the UK riots last week. But Duggan's killing belies broader and deeper social problems across English urban societies. It is convenient kneejerk ignorant simplism by the English government and the media attributing blame to just 'criminals', unparented youth, opportunistic hooligans, and gangs.

Back on May 17th, 2010 I wrote an article on CanDoBetter entitled 'Australia's growing underclass'. The article came out of my personal exposure to months of abject unemployment forcing me, out of respect for my family, to humbly to walk into CentreLink. To my disgust, since I was not in absolute starvation-poverty CentreLink rejected my claim for temporary unemployment benefits. Only thanks to my broader family we didn't come close to losing our house. This article also contains a very interesting response from Dr Jim Saleam of the Australia First party about accusations of a Nazi past.

As the first anniversary of Haiti's devastating earthquake approaches, the questions that I asked then remain unasked and unanswered by the Canadian media today. Apparently, as Garrett Hardin famously observed, no one ever dies from over-population. And no one ever dies from Canada's criminally irresponsible foreign aid and immigration policies, which are serving as birth stimulants to those nations--- like Haiti---which are given little incentive to address the root cause of their misery.

Humanity's bottom billion is in a vicious downward cycle. It is imperative that they get control of their numbers---and it is imperative that we don't encourage them to avoid doing so.

Two weeks out from a federal election and the range and depth and vision on the two major parties - the LibLabs is woefully simplistic and shortsighted. Both are selfishly limited to an 'ends justifies the means' approach purely to get elected. Both are indulging in election-term economics, lobbying marginal seats, pork barreling the swinging voter and trying to differentiate themselves from each other. Neither are relevant to the future governance of Australia.

Australians are a tolerant mix of people, perhaps no more so than indigenous Australians who have put up with wave after wave of immigrants.

But Australia's immigration problem is not one of racism or xenophobia. It is local natural response to the sheer numbers of people arriving over a short period of time, to the point where our society, economy and environment are not coping and are where locals are copping negative social impacts.

Australia's immigration stress is the hundreds of thousands of economic migrants arriving at Sydney and Melbourne airports, NOT the few thousand asylum seekers arriving by boat.

If you want to know where the jobs, houses, hospital beds and education places have gone, look to the migrants taking them. 'Spot the Aussie' is a rarity. Economic migrants are not paying their way and sapping our limited public resources to the detriment of indigenous, ancestral and birth Australians.

Garrett Hardin famously wrote that no one ever died from overpopulation. Reading the rash of autopsies on the failure of foreign aid to cure Africa of poverty, one would gain the same impression. The lack of family planning is not even on the radar. Baffling.

In Australia, Make Poverty History is a coalition of more than 60 aid agencies, community groups and religious organisations. Make Poverty History has some lofty aims, but ignores the impact of Western diets, makes no mention of family planning or contraception schemes, or even population growth.

How can any amount of foreign aid hope to alleviate African poverty if, as (conservatively) projected by the UN, sub-Saharan Africa's population is set to grow from 788 million in 2006 to 1.8 billion by 2050?

Contents: Massive aid programs have not ended African poverty, Wars and genocide in Africa, Population growth ignored, Problems compounded by wealthier nations' land grabs, Botswana, with its stable population, a model to follow?, Can further aid programs solve poverty if population is not stabilised?.

The bizarre politics of immigration in Italy, known in Europe for its porous borders.

CANADA: Population growth and economic growth are booming in Canada, but so is poverty and homelessness.
Hmm. Sounds like what is happening in Australia.
Yet, in Quebec, which has low economic growth, child poverty and family poverty are also low. What gives? This article says the secret of reducing poverty lies in state intervention. The trickle-down economy only makes the rich richer and more callous.