Bob Carr

Growth lobbyists outnumbered environment and democracy proponents three to two on Last Monday's Q and A on ABC 1, with Jane Fitzgerald (Property Council of Australia), Jonathan Daley (Grattan Institute) and Dr Jay Song (Immigration professional who arrived here two years ago) and Tony Jones (Compere) vs Tim Flannery (Population scientist and author of the famous Future Eaters) and Bob Carr, (journalist, environmentalist, and former Premier of New South Wales). The show started with a brilliant question from audience member, Matthew Bryan. He read it off his mobile phone, with a steely emotional intensity that only someone blinded by dollar values could have ignored, and all the growthists did, of course. Nonetheless since the ABC almost never invites representatives of the non-growth side, we could call this an improvement. Read on for a commentary on some of the highlights and lowlights of this historic confrontation between truth and lies and ignorance.

Watch an old reporter turned politician do a few rounds in the ring with skilled Russian interviewer, Oksana Boyko of RT. Oksana gives him his head initially and he struts predictably, but things get interesting later, particularly on the issue of Australia's role and responsibility for the mess in the Middle East and Syria. (Bob Carr was a recent foreign affairs minister for Australia.) For me, it was fascinating listening to Carr's 'justifications'. Could a grown-up really believe this stuff? Who knows when Western leaders may really be called to account for their removal of order and warmongering in the Middle East. I wonder if this troubles them, if they lie awake at night going over their stories.

See also: Mark Latham, who opposed "Your Rights at Work" campaign and supported Howard in 2007, says Albanese shouldn't be Labor leader of 9 Oct 2013; Labor Leadership Contenders' Views on East West Link - Albo opposes it! of 6 Oct 2013.

Update, 28 Nov 2013: No mention was made of Syria by Albanese, Shorten or the audience in the leadership debate of 24 September. (Whilst this could have been because of time constraints, it seems a surprising omission.)
On 20 April, 2013, Anthony Albanese, a candidate for the national leadership of the Labor Party by membership ballot,₁ expressed ₂ his support for Syria₃. This is contrary to how much of the senior leadership of the Labor Party has acted. ₄ For two and a half years they supported the United States as Syria has tried to defend itself against invasion by proxy terrorists armed, paid for and supplied by the United States. This war has, so far, since March 2011, cost 100,000 lives.

War criminals and serial liars, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, and their Australian accomplices, Prime Minster Kevin Rudd and Foreign Minister Bob Carr

This coming Saturday 7 September, most Australians will be forced to make the unpalatable choice between, on the one hand, the Opposition Liberal Party and the ruling Labor Party. The Liberal Party is resolved to destroy 7,000 public service jobs, remove the right of trade unions to enter workplaces and give the Green light to destructive and horrifically expensive projects such as the East-West Link and the Phillip Island industrialisation project. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, as well as promoting rampant population growth and section 457 visas has, on the international stage, facilitated military aggression against Libya in 2011 and has done his utmost to repeat the exercise with Syria. Fortunately for Syria and the rest of the world, President Obama's war plans against Syria have been defeated by international and domestic opposition as described in the included article of 30 Aug 2013 by Paul Craig Roberts. It is vital, if peace and democracy are to survive that Kevin Rudd, Bob Carr and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott be held to account for their support for the U.S. Government's criminal actions.

Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr, informant for the US embassy since the 1970's

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who colluded in the invasion of Libya by calling for a "no-fly" zone

Breaking news : (30 August, 11:30AM GMT+10) UK Parliament votes against war

(Originally posted: Mon, 26 Aug 2013, 01:20:28 +1000) See also: Syria 'Chemical Weapons' Crisis: Live Updates on RT, Appendix 1: Links to factual reporting on Syria, Appendix 2: Mainstream media war propaganda.

Unlike Syria, Australia has participated in several unjust wars since the end of the Second World War.₁ As a result of two of those wars, 1,300,000 Iraqis, fled to Syria. The illegal wars, in which Australia participated include: The Korean War,₂ the Vietnam War, the Gulf War of 1991, the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In its "demographics" section The Wikipedia Syria article, states:

According to the World Refugee Survey 2008, published by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Syria hosted a population of refugees and asylum seekers number approximately 1,852,300. The vast majority of this population was from Iraq (1,300,000), but sizeable populations from the former Palestine (543,400) and Somalia (5,200) also lived in the country.[106]

In an interview on the 4 Corners program, The Battle For Syria, on 4 October 2012, Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr said to Kerry O'Brien, "... perhaps an assassination ... is what is required ... ."

Carr's support for the assassination of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is consistent with allegations that for 40 years he was an agent of the United States Government within the Australian Labor Party. His relationship with the CIA is the subject of Bob Carr: Washington's man in Australia in the Melbourne Age of 8 April 2013 and the article, by Murray Hunter, Is Bob Carr a spy? of 11 April 2013 in the Independent Australian, which cites evidence from the Age article and which we republish below. The US, which Carr uncritically supports, has used assassins, and worse, against the people of Korea, Vietnam, Chile, Argentina, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now Syria. A number of its own Presidents including JFK and a number of popular American political leaders have also fallen to the bullets of assassins.

See also: Assange slams Carr as a 'well-known liar' in the Sydney Morning Herald of 31 May 2013.

We wonder if Bob Carr, Australia's Foreign Minister, has any idea of the utter distress he has given to wildlife carers all over Australia in his endorsement of the kangaroo-meat industry for export? It has reduced to despair mature activists who normally soldier on impressively (where the rest of us dare not even look) despite constant exposure to brutality, cruelty and a useless legal system in their daily rounds. Carr's position is even odder in view of his patron status with Voiceless, the vegan fund for animals.

Those who want to know the truth about the recent Houla massacre, blamed by the corporate newsmedia on the Syrian government, should consider these chilling words said in 2005 by Ziad Abdel Nour, a corporate-financier and founder of "Blackhawk Partners" as well as chairman of the Neo-Conservative run "United States Committee for a Free Lebanon" :

Australia's new Foreign Minister Senator Bob Carr continues his predecessor's enthusiastic volunteering of Australia in the Coalition of the Willing, this time against Syria. Between 1991 and now, the Coalition caused the deaths of possibly 1,500,000

Chapter 5: Factional plotting

As 2003 drew to a close and following Carr’s ‘generational change’ reforms in his Cabinet, in December some twenty-four NSW Labor MPs comprising the Right’ rival splinter factions - the Terrigals and Trogs met for dinner. They “quietly left the Macquarie Street precinct to dine together across town” at the Southern Italian restaurant, 'al Ponte', at Harbourside, Darling Harbour.

They voiced their anger about Carr’s cabinet reshuffle, his overhaul of the ministries, the blood letting of departmental heads by Carr’s new team (Della Bosca, Knowles, Costa, Egan) and over Carr’s new policies such as his new tax on poker machines , which had attracted outrage from the influential club industry. Both Terrigal chiefs Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi had been denied a ministry. The sense of injustice over Carr’s cronyism and desire for populism fueled a desire for factional vengeance brewed for two years after Carr's March 2003 election win.

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Chapter 4: Carr’s ‘regeneration’ sowed factional vengeance

For a populist politician, NSW Premier Bob Carr felt a personal necessity to be popular with the people and to ensure this be reflected in the media. Poor performance and public embarrassments by government departments and by his ministers reflected badly on Carr’s leadership credibility in the media and therefore with the ordinary citizen.

Carr’s personal penchant for journalism and media relations evolved into a hypersensitivity about his public image as Premier and his indirect monitoring of Sydney radio broadcaster Alan Jones is well documented. Carr’s autocratic message became clear throughout his Cabinet and right through the NSW public service - that those causing him public and media embarrassment would suffer the consequences. Carr’s autocratic management of the public service had become capricious.

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Chapter 1: The Rise of NSW Labor Right.

...and with those prophetic words on 3rd December 2009, the next day New South Wales’ second puppet premier Nathan Rees bowed from the public limelight.

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Former Senator Nick Minchin on ABC breakfast Today - Fri 9 April 2010: "Mr Rudd just saying ‘Oh well 36 million it’s just going to happen and we just have to work out how to deal with it, that’s ridiculous because the rate of immigration is entirely a function of federal government policy and is a direct lever over which it has all the authority it needs." For a change this ABC panel wasn't stacked by the Growth Lobby.

Both the NSW and Australian Government have upgraded Cumberland Plain Woodland from Endangered to Critically Endangered. You would assume any development that proposed to clear over 200 ha of critically endangered bushland would be struggling to get approval. We can assume nothing these days in Australia. Here is another focus where Australians need to unite to help each other get back democracy and protect fauna and flora from the growth lobby. The community has fought to save this area for nearly 20 years.See also related articles.

Carr: "I need only summarise the indictments of such high-end population growth." ..."It also spikes the cost of land and cruels housing affordability."

First it was Kelvin Thomson MP and now Bob Carr former Premier of NSW speaking out strongly about the increase of population being forced on us by Federal and State. Will this strike a chord and open Pandora's box for the government? Will the silent majority finally speak out?

In the ABC 7.30 Report of October 13th, which dealt with the absolutely critical matter of Australia's rapid population growth, Channel 2 viewers were served up with the usual homogenised glop of current journalism. Opinions were sought rather than facts and impacts researched and reported. Vested interests were glossed over in the promotion of questionable 'authorities'. Noticeably absent was the one Australian politician who has shown leadership and coherence on this subject - Kelvin Thomson. We can only suspect that the program was yet another countering of his views without allowing him a right of reply.

"Australia's population steeply rising"

This is a review of ABC televisions 7.30 report segment 13 October 2009 on Australia's population dynamics.

Kristina Keneally, NSW Planning Minister, sells out public land and the environment to Delfin Lend Lease. Now many gentle wild creatures will die the most abject deaths and 1000s of trees will give up their carbon to the atmosphere. How much more nature to be destroyed for narrow corporate interests in a dead-in-the-water economy for the grasping few? See also "Council bastardry..."

Bob Carr has proved himself capable of making very astute observations about the choices that we face as a nation, particularly in regard to population, ecology and ethics, but his policies as Premier of NSW far more often ran directly counter to those words.

Those who recently demanded the privatisation of NSW's electricity assets against the wishes of the NSW public would have us forget how much of NSW's publicly owned wealth has already been privatised and for no apparent benefit for its rightful owners.

See also: "Media contempt for facts in NSW electricity privatisation debate" of 19 Sep 08.

Analysis of the reporting of electricity privatisation initiatives in New South Wales brings disturbing confirmation that the major Australian newsmedia does not accurately report essential facts on issues of vital concern to us. Indeed, it often acts as a conduit for propaganda against our best interest.

Contents: O'Farrell pilloried, Parliamentary debate ignored, Earlier misreporting: Iemma exhorted to ignore Labor conference, public will, What can be done about this?.

Also published on webdiary.

See also: ABC gives free kick to Iemma, NSW electricity privatisation of 21 Jul 08.

Those who have read "The Latham Diaries" will have found startling confirmation of the fact the State Labor Premiers are cynical enough to deliberately damage the electoral prospects of their Federal counterparts in order to better ensure their own survival at the state level.Adapted from an article cross-posted to Online Opinion. Also, see article on webdiary "Peter Beattie bent on destruction of Rudd's chances" by Margo Kingston.