democracy

In the Australian Federal elections to be held on 18 May, the choice of candidates should include candidates who are resolved, should they win, to do their utmost to rectify the serious threats to the very survival of Australia and the rest of humanity. The most critical of these threats is the threat of nuclear war. Regardless of who is held to be most at fault - Russia, China or the United States - any parliamentarian, worthy of holding office, would use his/her influence to try to remove this threat. Neither the Liberal/National government nor the Labor 'opposition' are doing so, nor, as far as we can tell, are the Greens, One Nation nor any other sitting member of Parliament.

On Friday 5 April 2019, as revealed by John Pilger on Twitter from a high level source within the Ecuadorian Government, Julian Assange would shortly be expelled from the London Ecuadorian Embassy. Once evicted, he stands to be arrested by the UK police, extradited to the United States where he faces a secret trial based on a secret indictment. He may face many years behind bars - even the death penalty can't be excluded - all for just publishing, through Wikleaks, facts about world events that the public would be entitled to know in a fair and just world.

It is still possible to make the Australian government act to prevent the illegal extradition of Julian Assange to the U.S. and, instead, bring him home to Australia. Should they fail to act, they must be held to account at the forthcoming federal elections.

See also: Be Ready To Act: WikiLeaks Source Says They’re Coming For Assange (5/4/19) by Caitlin Johnstone, The Gestapo Is Coming for Julian Assange (4/4/19) by Paul Craig Roberts.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has released visitor arrivals and departures data for the month of January, which posted record annual permanent and long-term arrivals.

In the year to January 2019, there were 835,310 permanent and long-term arrivals into Australia – up 6% from January 2018 and an all-time high. This was partly offset by 546,310 permanent and long-term departures from Australia:

Ex Labor leader, Mark Latham, recently joined Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party and will be running for the NSW legislative council at the next state election. Here is his 8-Point Plan to "save Sydney “suffocating” from overpopulation and overdevelopment."

Latham's 8-Point Plan

1. Our immigration program must be framed in the interest of the people who live here now. This is especially true of policies impacting on an over-crowded, increasingly dysfunctional city like Sydney.

2. Permanent immigration numbers should be slashed, bringing them closer to their 20th Century average of 70,000 per annum (down from 190,000 currently). Temporary visas must also be cut back.

3. NSW should not take any more special refugee intakes, given the mismanagement of Syrian refugee settlement by the Baird Government.

Australia’s annual permanent migrant intake has fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade after a Federal Government crackdown on dodgy claims. Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said the government had restored integrity to the migration program to make sure the “best possible” migrants were brought into the country through tougher vetting. William Burke from the Sustainable Australia Party spoke to Tim McMillan about the new figures.

(Article by Sally Pepper.) On New Year's Day, January 1st 2018, as I surfaced around 10.00 a.m, I heard on the news that power prices and tolls on roads around Melbourne will both increase and, that this year many Victorians will experience additional economic hardship. My immediate defensive thought was, "Well I don't use tollroads and I guess I can be more frugal with my use of gas and electricity."

Chief of Staff to former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Peta Credlin, is the latest to question Australia’s mass immigration program, which flooded NSW (read Sydney) and VIC (read Melbourne) with a record 185,500 net overseas migrants (combined) in the year to June, further crush-loading our two biggest cities. This article was first published on Macrobusiness at https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2017/12/peta-credlin-give-us-national-debate-vote-australias-population/ on December 15 2017.

Public Seminar with two speakers: Jack Roach, immediate past president of Boroondara Residents Action Group and Adrian Whitehead. Adrian Whitehead will speak on "Population Perspectives, from global to local." Public Welcome. Free Parking near venue. Financial members may nominate for any committee positions. See details inside re how to nominate.

In November 2016 I co-wrote an article for New Matilda exploring why it is important for those on the left to discuss population sustainability. Although the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, it was suggested that the debate is invalid unless it is inclusive of migrants or indigenous Australians. Which got me thinking …

“The big issues we feel are job security, housing affordability, planning in our suburbs and our environment. And all of those major indicators are going backwards with this onslaught of rapid population growth. So, it’s changing our daily lives. It’s gone beyond some big number into the future. It’s actually hitting us in the face when we drive out of our driveway in the morning and we try and get to work. Or when we try to look up a job when we try to get our next opportunity. Or when we look at our green space in our suburb that’s disappearing. Or looking at our urban heritage… that’s just being bulldozed for this highrise development”. (William Bourke, Sustainable Australia Party, speaking on 3AW to Neil Mitchell)

The Minister for Planning has publicly insisted [1] that Victoria has to fit 10 million people in Victoria with four more million in Melbourne and that that is the reason for the planning dictatorship he is trying to force on Victorians. If we did not 'have' to fit in millions more, no new plan would be 'needed'. Population numbers as a topic dominate the mainstream press,[2] but three residents' action groups in Planning Backlash - possibly trading on their marginal electorate status - reportedly held the rest to ransom for their presence at the Planning Backlash rally on the steps of parliament 8 June 2017. Their ransom was censorship of their fellow groups in a promise that no rally speakers would mention the role that population growth has in driving Plan Melbourne 2017-2050 and all the destruction it promises. Even though the Victorian Government has openly published several written policies for massive population growth, [3] the Yarra Residents' Coalition, Brunswick and Moreland groups of Planning Backlash have been identified as censoring debate about this on the very steps of Victoria's parliament.

Trump has just done something good. WhiteHouse.gov has announced, via President Trump, that the TPP deal will no longer have the United States as a participant. The TPP was one of Obama’s deeply unpopular 'achievements', in terms of trade deals, and Trump has quickly lived up to his promise to remove the United States from the deal. Will anti-Trump demonstrators who shout about 'democracy' concede that this is what most of us wanted and the thing that the power-elite pre-Trump were determined to withold from us? The MSM (mainstream media) will probably hardly report this or it will report it as disastrous, using econogabble and corporate talking heads for hire to confuse everyone.

Video of conference inside: Speeches verbally translated in English, live. Leaders of several European nationalist parties gathered for the ‘Freedom for Europe’ congress, in Koblenz, on Saturday, January 21. The meeting was the first official appearance of Frauke Petry, chair of the AfD (Alternative for Germany), alongside Front National leader Marine Le Pen. Both were joined by Geert Wilders, founder and leader of the Dutch PVV (Party for Freedom), and Liga Nord leader Matteo Salvini. Dubbed a “European counter-summit”, this first-of-its-kind gathering was organised by the Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) group from the European Parliament.

"It's not often you hear about something like that happening. The man who called Donald Trump a 'would-be dictator' got bearish after the President Elect's victory in November and lost nearly a billion dollars. Reportedly, he thought a Trump win was going to cause massive sell. Wrong! The market rallied and the hedge fund legend and Clinton supporter lost out. The Dow Jones has climbed nearly 10% since November 9th." Analysts are saying that Trump's new policies could boost the economy and corporate earnings in particular for this market rally. "So it looks like Soros's millions of dollars sunk into a Superpac, back in the Clinton campaign, didn't work out." A super PAC is a modern breed of political-action committee that is allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money from corporations, unions, individuals and associations to influence the outcome of state and federal elections. (Quotation from presenter in Boom Bust, [752] Why is the America middle class disappearing?) - see video inside for the report, plus an analysis of how and why the middle classes are disappearing from the United States.

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.

Did you know that Great Britain is going down the drain because the citizens want to remain British? Did you know that the British are inherently racist, jingoistic, bigots, and obnoxious because they don't want to become Pakistanis, Syrians, Africans or some multicultural combination? Did you know that the British people voted to leave the European Union not because they oppose their loss of sovereignty to a foreign and unelected power in Brussels, but because of their hatred and contempt of foreigners, especially the dark-skinned ones that the EU forces them to accept in unlimited numbers?

This article was previously published 28/11/2016 on PaulCraigRoberts.org. It was initially republished only in part here on 28/11/2016, but, now, with the author's kind permission, has been re-published in full.

Jeff Dorset has begun a campaign addressed to the Prime Minister to reduce Australia`s economic, non refugee immigration intake to economically.environmentally and socially responsible level of 50,000 net pa and significantly reduce 457 Visa and other foreign worker import program. Please consider signing it.

Referring to the HILDA Report, the author suggests that, if immigration were reduced, a precipitate decline in house-prices could probably be adequately buffered by local buyers who currently cannot afford to enter the grossly inflated housing market.

In the article the writer questions the whole idea of governments making top-down decisions about the size of a country's population.

A question that often comes up when discussion population related matter is, "What should the population be?" or "What level of immigration/growth do you think is suitable?". I don't have an answer to that question, and I don't intend to provide one.

People who have complained to me of poor coverage by the Australian media of the underlying reasons for Britain's exit from the EU will enjoy these shows. They report on various aspects, including the possibility of preventing the privatisation of British hospitals and mining, the ability to try to end Britain's live transport of domestic animals for thousands of kms, the ability to stop fracking, the desirability of a decrease in house prices, the reasons why people outside the big cities voted against the EU, and mass immigration in an economy where unemployment is already high and numbers are an issue.

For the past ten years Australians have been subjected to an exceptionally high level of population growth and now they are losing patience. (Article first published on June 13, 2016 at the Australian Population Research Institute. Republished here for the second time owing to recent data loss from site.)

The graph shows the steep increase in numbers since 2006 (data from here). If this continues the population will grow from 24 million today to around 41 million in 2061 (see the 2013 ABS projection series 29 and 41).

The OpenAustralia Foundation, the charity that runs a more accessible Hansard, has made an announcement about the progress of its Planning Alerts service. This is a free and community commons service. It gives citizens some ability to keep up with what the developers and mum and dad subdividers are up to. This, in turn, will give ordinary citizens and residents more insight into the impact of population growth, more information to make political decisions, and more control over its rapid creep.

Thursday 28 April 2016 is the 20th anniversary of the Port Arthur massacre. On 28 April 1996, 35 people were killed and 23 others were injured by a single gunman. Later that day, Martin Bryant, a 26 year old man was arrested at the Seascape cottage, some distance away from the site of the massacre, and charged with the murders. He was never tried before a jury for the crime. Martin Bryant initially pleaded not guilty. Allegedly, six weeks after he was arrested and interrogated intensively, isolated from friends and family, he confessed to the crime. As shown in the article Was Martin Bryant the Port Arthur killer? (3/4/2010), this 'confession' flew in the face of overwhelming forensic evidence and eyewitness testimony which pointed to his innocence.

As the 20th anniversary of the massacre approaches, the same 'news' media, that fed us the 'incubator babies' story of 1990, Iraqi WMDs, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Warren Commission cover-up of the JFK assassination, claims that the Syrian government had been using chemical weapons against its own people, etc., etc., is trying desperately prevent the broader Australian public from critically examining the Port Arthur Massacre.

More misreporting of the Port Arthur massacre: Port Arthur changed how we respond to crises | SMH, Port Arthur survivors remember – and say gun laws must never change (28/4/16) | The Guardian, ...

See also: 15 Facts About The Port Arthur Massacre You NEED To Know (16/2/08) | Prison Planet.

Previously published on the Syrian Free Press. Story includes embedded video (10:00 min). See also: Syria's Press conference the United Nations doesn't want you to see (20/6/14) | canDoBetter, Syria Elections 2016: US-NATO's Failed Attempt to Deny the Will of the Syrian People (14/4/16) by Vanessa Beeley | Global Research, Polling Stations Closed in All of Syria's Provinces – Elections Committee (14/4/16) | Sputnik News.

The voting takes place in areas under the government’s control. More than 7,000 polling stations have been set up. More than 3,500 candidates are competing for 250 seats. President Bashar al-Assad speaks of high voter turnout and says the candidates cover all sectors of the syrian society. Speaking after voting in Damascus, Assad noted that terrorism has been able to destroy much of Syria’s infrastructure, but not its social structure and the national identity. Parliamentary elections are held in Syria every four years. The last vote was held in May 20-12, four months after constitutional reforms were approved by President Assad.