event

You are invited to this informative seminar hosted by Proudly Frankston, which is supported by various community groups who are active in planning and environmental issues – most notably the recent campaign to ‘Stop the Great Wall of Frankston’.

28 September at 6pm via zoom. A Q&A will follow the three speakers, who are: Richard Tanter, Kathryn Kelly, and Alison Broinowsky.  See details about speakers and venue etc below.

Canberra Conversations SUNDAY 19 March 2023 AT 3:30 PM – 5:30 PM Smith's Alternative, 76 Alinga Street, Canberra, ACT, Australia, Australian Capital Territory. 3 speakers plus forum.

Are we really living in a Democracy?

JOIN THE CONVERSATION
Come to our first ever Canberra Conversation to discuss with 3 expert speakers whether we do indeed live in a democracy and if not what we can do about it.

Meet at Vic State Library for 11am rally and march 3 July 2022, Julian Assange's birthday. Australia's award winning journalist, outstanding publisher, creator of WikiLeaks, and possibly the most famous, heroic, and persecuted person in the world, turns 51 years old. This is his 4th birthday spent locked away in Belmarsh prison, London. His previous 7 birthdays were spent locked away in the Ecuadorian Embassy.

Suelette Drefus, Julian Burnside, Kristinn Hrajnsson, and Lizzie O'Shea were the main people in this event. I have transcribed some of Suelette Drefus, Technology Researcher and Author's excellent summary of Julian Assange's contributions to the public internet and free software. She also displayed courage in criticising powerful people on stage. At around 1h 44m into the video she has the courage to criticise corporate media journalist, Peter Grest, for his repetition of opinions used to slur Julian's credentials as a journalist and publisher. Interesting to wonder why Grest was released without explanation after an international outcry from the same western block that is either persecuting Assange or leaving him to rot.

The film of the event is now on twitter broadcasts. The introduction to the main speakers starts around 17.40 minutes:https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1YqKDnymbLwJV?fbclid=IwAR2MhE7PGdDm6ZN0lbSn25y5AdS9QQftWBsJZ_uOpZUDua_3WZPRb5bi74c

Excerpts from Suelette Drefus's comments on Whistleblowers round the world.

[Suelette Drefus has known Julian Assange since about 1994. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suelette_Dreyfus: She is a technology researcher, journalist, and writer. Her fields of research include information systems, digital security and privacy, the impact of technology on whistleblowing, health informatics[6] and e-Education. Her work examines digital whistleblowing as a form of freedom of expression and the right of dissent from corruption. She is a researcher and lecturer in the Department of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne, as well as the Principal Researcher on an international research project on the impact of digital technologies on whistleblowing.]

LIZZIE O'SHEA ATO whistleblower, Richard Boyle, may get 161 years in prison for ...

SUELETTE DREFUS: Whistleblowers. The good news is they are at least being properly recognised as whistleblowers. The bad news is we have a long way to travel yet. The ATO Boyle case... this is not some obscure thing in another country outside Australia. This is a whistleblower who blew the whistle on the ATO about not following its own policies and procedures about garnishing money out of peoples' bank accounts. [...] It's really important to follow policies and procedures because otherwise you end up with an authoritarian state, which is not what we all signed up for.

But it's not only the Boyle case. It's internationally. Its the Jeffrey Sterling case of a former CIA officer who was a whistleblower. This case is very interesting ... in the United States because we think it's the first case where a whistleblower has been convicted on the basis of metadata. [...] we have the little electronic bread crumb trail. [...]

We've seen another disturbing trend. In Europe we've seen the Anna Garrido [Ramos] case in Spain. She worked in the Madrid town hall. She revealed corruption at a local level, and ten years on, the truth came out. It went all the way up to national politics and caused the fall of the government and president in Spain.

We've seen the case of Andreo Franzoso, revealing fraud in a state-owned company in Italy. And Antoine Deltour, the Luxleaks case, revealing sweet deals by his government behind the scenes - tax lurks for large multinational companies. We've seen the Gupta case in South Africa - cosy ties between a wealthy family and the president's office. And we've also seen the John Doe case and the Panama Papers.

One of the most disturbing trends that we've seen, however, more recently, in Australia, is that government is not only going after whistleblowers; it's now going after the journalists, as we've heard recently. It's going after the lawyers, in the case of Bernard Cleary. And, I might say, earlier this year, I was due to speak at the largest cybersecurity conference in Australia, and merely, for floating the idea as a thought-bubble in a conversation about my talk - of maybe it would be interesting to have a teleconference at the conference with Edward Snowden - I was actually censored from speaking at the conference. I was disinvited from the conference, in part because I was told, I might say things that weren't representative enough of Australian values. I like that - 'Australian values'. It's important that our cybersecurity centre should be the organisation whose mission statement is to set Australian values, but the idea that, because I had spoken out on issues regarding whistleblowing and the impact of digital technologies on it, somehow I was too 'dangerous' to speak. It's quite extraordinary. So now, it's not just the lawyers, it's not just the journalists, it's not just the whistleblowers, it's also the academics.

But I did want to say one bit of hope. There is a little bit of shining light in here. And this is again a contribution that I think Wikileaks has made to the landscape. There has been a significant expansion in the number of laws around the world. [Continues to talk about the laws. Julian Burnside interjects to say that the Australian law doesn't work.]
[...]

Assange before he became an asylum-seeker

SUELETTE DREFUS: I've known Julian for a very long time. I got to know him around 1994. [...] We got to know each other in part because he was co-running the first free public access internet site here in Australia. And it was a haven for artists and writers and activists and creatives, programmers - people who wanted to contribute things to the community. And even then he was an [?] publisher. He would allow people to publish things on the site which were controversial and difficult, including articles backed up by evidence, scientology, and a set of other things. And he was pretty bright. He dealt with lawyers' letters and threats, and other assaults on it, but he was willing to stand up for it. And I knew him all during this period because he was very involved in the Free Software movement. Those of you who don't know much about the technology side of things, you obviously know Julian has not just got technical skills, but you may not know that for more than a decade, he contributed an enormous amount - thousands and thousands of hours to developing free software. And, in fact, for some of you who might use an Apple computer, there is probably free software in there by Julian Assange. So, he wrote software that helped to develop one of the operating systems - a variety of Unix. Julian did all of this labour for free and he wrote software that helped make the news function of the early internet function in a more optimized way, which was easier for more people to get news. He designed and wrote - and I was part of the project - then developed the first opensource software that was deniable cryptography file system. This was envisaged to be used by human rights groups around the world. It allowed you to store, for example, on a hard drive, multiple layers of encrypted files, so that, if a human rights workers taking witness statements, are in Guatamala - that genocide against the original peoples [?Cambodia], in Sri Lanka - took witness statements in rural areas and put them on these hard drives they could add a layer of something else on the top, with a different password and, if they were seized and tortured, they could give the password to that layer with very little information on it, and the other layer would never be discoverable. He wrote free software available - gave it away - to everyone, which allowed people to test the cybersecurity robustness of their computer systems connected to the internet. Much of this is not known about Julian. And, it's an incredible act of altruism to contribute in a free software community, but that, in itself, was many years of work.
[...]

Contribution of Wikileaks to National Security Reporting

LIZZIE O'SHEA: [...] What was the particular contribution of Wikileaks to this field of National Security reporting? It's obviously Wikileak's mode of publishing [...]access to source material [...] talk about that from the perspective of a journalist.

SUELETTE DREFUS: [...] So, a lot of the media has focused on all sorts of criticisms of Julian that are [?] pedantic, small mind things, but has missed the big picture, and that's unfortunate. Because, if you look at the ways in which he, as the editor of Wikileaks, has formed how we receive news and information, they are quite extraordinary. So the anonymous digital drop-offs are a Wikileaks invention. We look around today and we see the New York Times, Bloomberg media, Gizmodo, for those of you who use it, NBC, [?] Norwegian, CBC, which is the ABC of Canada, as well as the ABC here, using anonymous digital drop-offs for whistleblowers to provide information to journalists in the public interest. That came about because of Julian Assange. We see the popularised use of data set journalism. That is, taking large sets of data, analysing it, and looking for patterns, trying to understand what's really happening, and then tell people the story. That is largely because of Julian Assange. We see the kind of invented verification journalism, that is, not that you just do the analysis with the data set, but you publish it with the story. You do that to prove to your readers the story you're telling is truthful. And that's extra important in an era of fake news. That is largely true and popularised because of Julian ASsange. We see collaborative global partnerships in journalism accross countries and publications on a scale that was never seen before, across different countries and organisations, from 90+ different organisations, not in the same company, not in the same media family, because of Julian Assange. And we see a popularisation of cybersecurity training of journalists - much more widespread. I've been very active in some of it. That has largely happened because of Julian Assange. So, these are all really important innovations for journalism, but it actually goes beyond that. We are sitting in a state library. Libraries are valuable archives of information. Julian Assange and Wikileaks has created perhaps the most important archive on line library of information, of data, around international - US international - public policy-making and decision-making - particularly of war-decisions; war-policy, that, for the modern era, exists today. And is not behind closed walls in a private collection. It's not even inaccessible, in books on a shelf; it's available to everyone free today. And that is because of Julian Assange's vision. So, I think those are all things that are really important to recognise, that in their totality are extraordinary. Any one of them would have been a kind of life-time achievement for someone who is a publisher, a journalist, who cares about access to public information, but all of them together provide a life's work over a decade and a half that is just exceptional.

NOTES

‘Stop the Drop’: Ban Aerial Baiting with 1080 Poison, Treasury Gardens Melbourne (Lawn 4), November 24, 5 -8 pm. Since 2014, Victorian governments have been routinely dropping tonnes of cruel 1080 poison over vast areas of the Victorian natural environment from helicopters. Supposedly to protect farm stock from ‘wild dogs’, it is of virtually no benefit to farmers and nothing to do with ‘wild dogs’. The ‘wild dogs’ being killed are really Dingoes, the native Australian apex predator, a threatened species in Victoria and essential to the stability and health of Victorian ecosystems.

In October 2019, 26 prominent scientists, including some of the most respected, senior environmental scientists in Australia, wrote a joint, open letter to the Victorian Minister for the Environment, calling for the discontinuation of aerial baiting with 1080 poison.

Aerial baiting up for renewal - now is the time to step in to stop it

In December 2019 the Victorian government’s permission from the federal government to aerial bait with 1080 poison will expire. The Andrews Labor government must not seek renewed federal permission to continue this cruel and unnecessary assault upon Dingoes and Victorian ecosystems. This persecution has involved the deliberate mis-characterisation of Dingoes as ‘wild dogs’ by government bureaucrats, farm lobby extremists and the poison industry, thereby avoiding public scrutiny and potentially misleading government ministers.

SPEAKERS: Evan Quartermain Humane Society International, John Marsh Potoroo Palace New South Wales, Rohana Hayes Wolves Theatre
MUSICIANS: The Wild Orchids Chris Scheri Flautist and Robyn Youlten Guitarist
ART FOR EARTH: Candle Art installation by JORGE PUJOL “SAVE OUR DINGOES”
Sponsors: Bushland Dingo Haven Inc., Ron Holden; Anonymous; Jihrrahlinga Conservation Centre; Sime Validzic; Ernest & Robyn Healy, Marilyn Nuske

Contacts for this Event :Dr Ernest Healey [email protected]
Lawyer Marilyn Nuske - [email protected]

Kristinn Hrafnsson - Editor in Chief of WikiLeaks
Suelette Dreyfus - technology researcher, journalist, and writer
Julian Burnside QC - part of Assange's legal team
Lizzie O'Shea - lawyer, writer, broadcaster

Recent raids on broadcasters, journalists and whistleblowers in Australia for precisely the kind of journalism that has cost Julian Assange a decade of his life, has prompted debate about the role of a free press in democracies such as Australia and of investigative journalists doing national security reporting. (Reservations required but event is free.)

What is happening to Journalism & Julian Assange?

ORDER TICKETS HERE
Wed 4 December, 6.30 pm
Victorian State Library - Village Roadshow Theatrette on La Trobe St

Victorian State Library, Village Roadshow Theatrette - enter at La Trobe St

Dec. 4th, 2019
Begin: 18:30
End: 20:30

The National Trust of Australia (Victoria) and the Royal Historical Society of Victoria invite you to attend the launch of the National Trust’s Advocacy Toolkit. This free online resource, supported by the Victoria Law Foundation, will [try to] provide communities across Victoria with the tools they need to protect their natural and cultural heritage. Wednesday 16 May, 12.45pm at Royal Historical Society of Victoria, 239 A'Becket Street, Melbourne.

Date and Time: Wednesday 16 May, 12.45pm for 1pm–2pm

Location: Royal Historical Society of Victoria, 239 A’Beckett Street, Melbourne.

At this special launch during Law Week 2018 and the Australian Heritage Festival, hosted in partnership with the Royal Historical Society of Victoria, experts and community advocates will discuss recent heritage campaigns, sharing insights arising from both wins and losses, and their top tips for successful advocacy.

Confirmed speakers:

Professor Michael Buxton, RMIT University
Fiona Austin, President, Beaumaris Modern
Moderator: Felicity Watson, Advocacy Manager, National Trust of Australia (Victoria)

Refreshments provided.

This event is presented by National Trust of Australia (Victoria) in partnership with the Royal Historical Society of Victoria. The Advocacy Toolkit is generously supported by the Victoria Law Foundation.

Bookings Essential.

Book online: https://www.trybooking.com/book/event?eid=346911

Or contact the National Trust of Australia (Victoria) Bookings Team: 9656 9889; [email protected].

Please feel free to distribute this invitation to anyone who may be interested in attending.

There will be a Presentation/Workshop tailor-made to Ratepayers Victoria on 4 March 2017, 1pm-4pm, Knox Council Offices. See inside for details.

Working with the Local Government Inspectorate
Revised Rate Capping Guidance 2017-18
Presentation/Workshop tailor-made to Ratepayers Victoria

Where: Knox Council Offices
511 Burwood Hwy,
Wantirna South VIC 3152

When: 4 March 2017
1PM-4PM Starting at 1PM Sharp.

Rates have been capped at 2.0% for 2017-2018 and Essential Services Commission has held workshops with councils about process and what is required for any cap variation. The workshop will provide an understanding of the expectations the Commission has of councils when they apply for a higher cap. Of particular interest is the requirement for legitimate consultation.

Complaints to the Inspectorate are many times rejected causing much frustration to ratepayers and residents. The IBAC presentation will be customized to this issue and you will have a better view of how to use the inspectorate to insure results.

These presentations will make it easier to monitor the performance of councils and help take corrective actions and get results when necessary.

DO NOT MISS THIS OPPORTUNITY!
Reserve your place for this conference at:ratepayersvictoria@outlook.com

Seating is limited so make sure to RSVP B4 25.2.16
Ratepayers Victoria, inc. (A004092M)

There are great things happening in local government and Ratepayers Victoria. ---

To keep up to date with our projects and with what is going on with local government, like our Ratepayers Victoria FaceBook page. https://www.facebook.com/ratepayersvictoria/
We are a volunteer organization and only exist from donations and memberships. Please support our efforts on your behalf and become a financial member. http://www.ratepayersvictoria.com.au/?page_id=52

Redland City Council

Media release, 9 February 2009

Redland City will host the Queensland launch this month of Overloading Australia by Mark O'Connor and William Lines, a controversial new book that looks at "how governments and media dither and deny on population".

Co-author Mark O'Connor will launch the title at a free event at the Redland Performing Arts Centre Auditorium on February 20 at 4.30pm.

Originally from Thylazine.

The book, a follow up to Mark's earlier title The Tired Brown Land, aims to show how Australia "might and must become smaller, greener and happier".

The book's launch in southern states earlier this month sparked a war of words with former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, and continues to fuel debate on the heated topic of population growth in Australia.

At the Sydney launch, former New South Wales Premier Bob Carr said "the debate on population is long overdue", and Overloading Australia has also been endorsed by Dr Robert Birrell, Director of Monash University Population Centre, as "the most informed and accessible analysis of the implications of Australia's high rate of population growth".

In response to criticism aimed at the book, Mark highlights the fact Australia's population growth reached 1.6 per cent per annum in 2008, "a rate more typical of Third World countries".

Redlands Mayor, Melva Hobson, is looking forward to hearing Mark speak on this highly topical subject.

"Here in the Redlands, population growth is something we grapple with on an almost daily basis. We know we need to manage growth, and we are determined to do so in a way that is sustainable and protects the things we love about our city," Cr Hobson said.

"I'm very interested to hear Mark speak, and hear his approach to the population challenge, particularly as it relates to the Redlands."

Redland City Councillor Debra Henry has been instrumental in securing Mark's commitment to bring his books to south-east Queensland.

"To omit population from the sustainability equation is a formula for failure," Cr Henry said.

"With the review of the SEQ Regional Plan under way, it's imperative to recognise the difference between avoidable and unavoidable growth and the influencing factors. Mark's well-researched book, in an easy-to-read format, is a valuable tool for those serious about securing a sustainable future."

Mark is a committed environmentalist, poet and author of more than 20 books (on subjects ranging from poetry about the Great Barrier Reef and the Blue Mountains, to literary criticism and population and the environment).

He will be available to sign copies of the Overloading Australia during the launch and copies will be available for sale.

Overloading Australia launch
RPAC Auditorium
February 20
4.30pm (refreshments served from 4pm)
Free (bookings not required)

Download flyer (PDF, 445K)

#OtherAppearances" id="OtherAppearances">Mark will also be appearing at other locations:

Caloundra
Where: Caloundra Events Centre, Minchinton Street, Caloundra
When: Saturday 21st February at 1:00 - 1:30pm (followed by a SEQ Regional Plan Workshop until 4:00pm)

University of Queensland
Where: Goddard Building (8). Room #139
When: Monday 23rd February, 1:30 - 3:00pm

Brisbane City Council Library
Where: Brisbane Square, 266 George Street, Brisbane
Monday 23rd February, 4:00 - 5:30pm

See also: "Growthist responses to Overloading Australia" of 27 Jan 09, "Overloading Australia - new book about Australia's overpopulation problem" of 23 Jul 08, "Andrew Bolt: Why add 1.5 million when Victorian infrastructure can't cope with current population?" of 31 Jan 09, "How the growth lobby threatens Australia's future" of 24 Jan 09 (also published on Online Opinion with forum discssion).

The Biosphere and the Lithosphere

Humans live in and from the biosphere. But in the first decade of the
21st Century, 85 percent of the primary energy consumed by the 6.7
billion humans comes from the lithosphere.

About 40 percent of this energy is oil. Another 40 percent comes from
natural gas and coal, and 6 percent more is from uranium.

This represents close to 10 billion tons of oil equivalent, extracted
every year from below ground.

The Technosphere

The technosphere, that recent human creation, transforms the
biosphere, with the extraction, transformation, and transport of
useful materials from the Earth crust at a rate of about 33 billion
tons per year. In addition, about 36 billion tons of the accompanying
ores and some 30 billion tons of earth crust cover are extracted. In
total, the 11 billion tons of equivalent oil of primary energy are
needed every year to extract, transform and transport about 100
billion tons of materials, including the energy materials themselves.
Without that energy, these movements will not be possible. With
decreasing energy supplies, the extraction of materials and the
related services will decrease accordingly.

Nature of this sphere

Being a sphere, the Planet is limited in size. It is obvious,but in
this world needs to be continuously emphasized, that the resources
contained in it are also limited. Geologists in general and the ASPO
community in particular, know very well that the extraction of
resources from the lithosphere is subject to a given pattern that
limits and shapes the extraction rates. It has, more or less, the
form of a bell shaped curve, shown in its logo. It is the Hubbert
curve. Even admitting that the shape of the curve may drift apart in
some cases, from the theoretical one, due to social causes, the
principle is out of question.

Resource peaks and energy flows

And some of us feel that we are reaching the oil peak in our ascent,
and other neighbouring peaks as well, even the present financial
storms and other geopolitical clouds may disguise that cordillera, as
exclusively a monetary problem.

Then, it is a question of flows, diminishing flows, rather than the
end of oil or gas. It is a physical and geological issue, rather than
an economic one. Pouring more paper money into the markets will not
help to realize where we are. Those present frentic movements very
much resemble the classic film scenes of thieves throwing and
dispersing the bank notes of the loot in the middle of a crowd, to
create a momentary convulsion and thus, trying to escape from the
police, while keeping a couple of rolls in the pockets.

Limits of human economics

As M. King Hubbert said: `There's no monetary mechanism in existence
that can find oil that God didn't put there and the price isn't going
to increase that amount of oil'. The same can be applied for all
other materials that humans demand today in increasing amounts.

And there is a clear evidence that global economic growth and global
energy consumption run parallel and are very directly related,
despite some anomalies in specific countries, which claim
improvements in efficiency, in the GPD/Unit of product or service
ratio, while diverting and outsourcing the burden to third countries
o regions. Technology improvements and higher financial investments
help to delay the peak or plateau of the bell curve or reshape it,
but can neither fight the reality of gradual depletion.

There are also clear indicators that greenhouse and other gas
emissions are also directly related to the fossil fuels, extracted
from the lithosphere and burnt to provide goods and ser-vices to
society.

However, classical economists still work, think and behave as if they
lived on a flat Earth with limitless resources to be made available
by Man's ingenuity and market forces.

Very serious issues are at stake caused by the growing gap between
the available fuel supply, which is subject to natural depletion and
the ever growing demand implied by classical economic theory.

Future survival

In the same way as a seed takes time to emerge from the ground and
form a plant, we will soon have to face the paradox and the dilemma
of returning to the biosphere and its resources for survival, and
rely more and more on renewable energy resources above ground.

The Sun projects onto the Earth some 8,500 times more primary energy
than we consume, but it is, again, rather than a question of volumes,
a matter of flows and feasible energy capture rates of this as
beautiful as dispersed energy.

We urgently need to determine the extent to which we can maintain the
present socio-political and technological environment with more of
the renewable energy resources from the biosphere and less from the
lithosphere, by using the human ingenuity and technology; or by
reshaping our way of living; or perhaps and better, a wise
combination of both.

Seventh ASPO International conference in Barcelona, 20-21 October 2008

We will be analyzing and discussing all these important questions in
detail in the 7th. ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas) International Conference at the World Trade Center in Barcelona, Spain, on October 20th and 21st.

See the Official program (pdf file) "From Below Ground to Above Ground"

Join us by registering here

For questions and contacts, please address to spain[at]telefonica.net>

For more information http://www.aspo-spain.org/aspo7

Welcome to Barcelona.

Article by Pedro from Madrid, subtitled by Sheila Newman for candobetter.org