"Official Western institutions have never recognised Assange as a prisoner of conscience,why do you think that is?" Oksana asks Greg Barnes. After almost a decade in confinement, Julian Assange is still fighting against extradition requests to the United States, at cost to his physical and mental health, while also compromising WikiLeaks’ ability to continue its operations.
“Merely adding more people isn’t a sustainable economic strategy. We can’t pretend that high immigration comes without a cost and growth should not impose an unfair burden on those who are already here.
In this video, BBC journalist Orla Guerin interviews Azerbaijan President Aliyev, assuming that Azerbaijan press and politics are heavily censored, and presses him on that. He denies the accusation, then asks her why Julian Assange has been held inhumanely for years, if the British and western press are so free.
Scott Morrison appeared on ABC Lateline denouncing the government’s plan to tag and release migrants to the bush as a policy brain fart:
GetUp is seeking donations to fund its unscientific campaign to magically transform one of the world's most rapidly expanding and extreme carbon based economies by adopting Renewable Energy Targets and other forms of financial incentives to encourage use of alternative energy while fully supporting the extreme population growth that is the driving force behind the rapid expansion of Australia's carbon emissions.
 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. |
It is said that Marie Antoinette, wife of King Louis XVI, when confronted with the fact that people had no bread, said, "Let them eat cake, then." This story is supposed to illustrate how out of touch Marie-Antoinette was - so much so that she could not see the absurdity of her pronouncement - which was that she was rich but the people were starving. Australia has a whole slew of Marie-Antoinettesque politicians who peddle fundamentalist global economic policies, apparently with no idea at all of how angry people are becoming about being treated like children with no rights to self-government at all.
In her marvellously lucid book, Wilful Blindness, Margaret Heffernan, writes about the institutionalisation of denial in the service of profit, the acquisition of wealth, and the defence of personally com
October 31st, 2011, was a "teachable" moment, one of those moments that come so infrequently that they must therefore be seized and exploited to the fullest extent to increase public awareness. That was the day that, according to demographers, we reached an awful milestone, the day that our species became 7 billion in number.
The Canadian federal election cries out for an alternative to BAU growthism. It cries out for a party which would present a coherent and distinctive alternative to the system of economic growth. Canadians need a place on the ballot where they can mark an "X" beside "no more growth". In fact they need an opportunity for vote for "de-growth".
( Environmental impact= Population level times Affluence or per capita consumption x Technology)
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