(We) can do better

Debt-based capitalism is caught in a vice of an irreconciliable contradiction. The exponential nature of compound interest and the growth of money faces the geologically imposed limits of dwindling reserves of non-renewable natural resources upon which the real economy depends. No fancy fiscal footwork can side-step this fatal collision. Soon the pretence that money is real and physics is man-made will come to an abrupt end.

Qantas is proudly Australia's national airline with the highest standards of aviation and an unsurpassed reputation for air safety, quality and service. So why jeopardise this and risk everything by competing on price?

Today passengers on a Sydney-bound Qantas jet rocked by an exploding engine Thursday described how the plane felt like it had hit a "speed bump" and showered flames and sparks like fireworks. The Qantas Boeing 747-400 had to turn back to San Francisco about half an hour into Monday's flight after an engine failed, blasting a large hole in its casing. This is not the first safety incident involving Qantas. Has the 'low cost' mentality breached its airline safety across Qantas and JetStar?

Correspondence from David O'Byrne, Minister for Environment, Parks and Heritage, 31 August, 2010.
"All culling is undertaken by Government officers who are trained, accredited and experienced in wildlife management and who operate in accordance with all relevant national and Tasmanian standards. Moreover, the program is supervised by a veterinary officer who has animal welfare a priority of their work ".
Really!

Sex is a voluntary act, therefore children are discretionary.
In an already grossly overcrowded planet, the human motivation to have many children in order to support a family is a backward primitive tradition that is an unsustainable, selfish burden and impost on the planet. But it is clearly the responsibility of governments to control.

The key problem is that delinquent governments ignoring their family size excesses and their population excesses keep receiving generous hand outs from the global community such as the United Nations and the World Bank - as if to confirm - it's ok, keep breeding!

For the first time in the history of Australia, a council actually refuses to support kangaroo culling. Greens Councillor Ray Goodlass led the clarion call to the nation. This is surely a pivotal point in time, considering how decimated kangaroo populations have become as a result of the commercial kangaroo killing industry. Will the trend continue? We can only live in hope ....

The smear campaigns and race-baiting of the Green-Left McCarthyist coalition of limousine liberals, human rights advocates, clerics, Trotskyist relics and soft green environmentalists cannot defeat biophysical laws nor discredit the argument for living within our carrying capacity. Their shocking ignorance and despicable tactics must not dissaude us from continuing to make the ecological case against the open borders mentality.

The Economist magazine is the quintessential mouthpiece of PC laissez-faire economics, the apostle of hip and trendy free market capitalism. Even those who reject their blinkered world view imbibe it with the same rationale they employ when they listen to public broadcasters like the CBC, the BBC or the ABC. They believe that the Economist's comprehensive coverage of international events suffices to excuse its distortions of them. But is it better to be comprehensively misinformed than uninformed?

After a lacklustre campaign where we were forced to watch two flies crawl up a wall (one with red hair and one in Speedos) ... the electorate has signalled that it is sick of the two major parties and the stale offerings they pedal. The newly elected Independents Mr. Andrew Wilkie and Greens MP Adam Bandt ... have been handed a mandate for change, which goes far beyond merely delivering stable government. Indeed, it is "stable" government and its business as usual approach over many years which has entrenched many of the problems we now face as a nation. The independent presence can serve as the stimulant which keeps parliament from slipping again into the stifling dominant paradigm.

The following statement by Suzanne Petroni from Population and Environment DOI 10.1007/s11111-009-0085-1, goes some way to explain why doctrinaire feminism has presented a major blockade to effective measures for population stabilization and reduction in the past two decades. Note the obligatory white guilt rich-man, poor-man argument. How dare we tell poor developing nations to rein in their population when we of the wicked affluent north, are driving climate change with our high consumption?

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.

The US-based black activist organisation, Color of Change, has launched a campaign to fight Murdoch TV FoxNews, which it says, "is dividing the country with smears and lies." It is asking people all round the world to join the campaign by signing up for the campaign.

See also: stopmurdoch.blogspot.com

Wildlife activist, Lynda Staker, recently communicated to me some amazing case-work on combatting the effects of snake bite in a variety of wild and domestic animals, using injectable Vitamin C. Candobetter welcomes further comment and discussion in this controversial treatment in an important field. In fairness to this subject, we also supply other explanations for the effects observed, citing a veterinarian, and a contrary account from goat-herders.

"When Julia Gillard hurtled towards the Governor General on July 17, she knew an early election would keep the Stable Population Party of Australia name off the Senate ballot paper. But it did not stop all of our party candidates from standing." SPPA - Commit to a stable, sustainable, open and tolerant Australia.

Upon the election of an Abbott Liberal Government it is almost guaranteed that Tony Abbott will 'discover' the national finances to be in a far worse state than he now claims he believes them to be.

Consider the precedent where, because of the so-called "Beazley Black hole" Howard assumed, in 1996, a right to massively cut social spending, never knowingly given to him by Australian electors.

Today, on Geraldine Doogue's "Saturday Extra" (ABC radio national), the wrong impression was given by a British-accented commentator that the GST had been brought in in Australian in a fair and reasonable manner. This is infamously untrue and misleading on election day. Wide-eyed talk of how people oddly resent 'change' ignores the fact that change initiated by the people is resisted adamantly by the press and the politicians.

Dr Joo-Cheong Tham, a legal scholar and campaign finance expert at the University of Melbourne, has just had his new book published by UNSW Press called:

'Money and Politics: The democracy we can't afford'

The book highlights in Australian politics, the massive private donations made to the major politcial parties - Labor, Liberals, Nationals and The Greens. It highlights that some $60 million has been spent on election advertising toward the 2010 federal election, of that $40 million by Labor and Liberal parties - no wonder they get re-elected.

"The growth lobbyists will tell us that we can solve our problems by converting to “clean coal” technologies or nuclear power, building more high rise, producing desalinated water at $10 litre (who knows?), installing “smart” electricity meters, piping water from the Northern Victoria to Melbourne, importing more food on more and bigger ships etc." Federal Candidate, Jenny Warfe writes, "I'm looking forward to a different way of 'moving forward.'"

Peak soil is the concept that the soil's capacity for production is finite. 
We have the converging situations of peak energy combined with exponentially rising energy demand, and peak everything from pollution to peak soil, peak water, peak population growth combined with the implications of an aging baby-boomer generation.

Immigrated (human) overpopulation driving Gang Gang extinction

Australia's greatest social, environmental and economic problems are 'root driven' by immigrated human overpopulation. Both Gillard's & Abbott's 'sustainable population' is hollow headline spin. Both are committed to economic growth, because they know no better. Both are committed to encouraging skilled immigration because if is a cheaper bandaid measure for industries not prepared to invest in local vocational training. So what political parties have a serious policy commitment to stemming Australia's harmful excessive immigration?

Population sociologist Sheila Newman's talk, "Stable Population dynamic demystified", presented fascinating original material using social and biological research showing how most animals, including humans, can maintain steady state populations in different environments and conditions. Whilst showing how small populations can be maintained, it failed to bear out Hobbs' dismal prognostications.

Without obtaining the prior mandate of the electorate, successive Australian governments have been seeking to establish a water-market in this country. For as long as the people of Australia are required to “buy-back” the nation’s water, especially during times of crisis, they will have no water security. Bidding-wars, as currently being waged by Senators Wong and Joyce, are now an unattractive and dangerous feature of Australian water policy: profits arising will be privatised but the impacts will be borne by the Australian public. The electorate of this country must be given the opportunity to indicate whether it wishes its water to be privatised and exposed to global speculation - or protected for future generations of Australians.

For each of us, denial, at some level, is a necessary coping strategy, but collectively, it is now our death knell. Perhaps its most deceptive form, however, is not wilful ignorance or idiotic pollyannsh hope, but the belief that writing about our crisis is in itself a solution.

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.

[Previous Chapter ]

Along with Dr. Joe Toscano, environmental activist, Jenny Warfe, (campaigner against Port Phillip Channel Deepening) has decided to stand as a radical independent for the Federal senate in the forthcoming election. The group of friendly independents, has decided to give their preferences to The Greens. On the senate ballot paper Dr. Joe Toscano will be the lead candidate and Jenny will appear below him as the second of three radical independent candidates. Joining with Dr. Toscano and third candidate Andrew Sadauskas means that they will be allocated a box ‘above the line’ on the senate ballot paper. Thus voters can Vote 1 above the line for them without having to number every one of the sixty or so boxes below the line. Jenny Warfe is pro small population for Australia - see https://candobetter.org/node/2145

If Gillard is not a rehash of the hollow Rudd, who hoodwinked us into the false hope of the 2007 pork barrelling and spun that hollow 2020 Summit; Gillard's absence of maxims and deadlines for Australia's population/immigration targets only confirms voters ought to presume more of the same.

Ordinary voters need to detox from this election bender.

Only the political parties, their advertisers and their media allies stand to benefit - like clubs that own the pokies.

Of the over 5700 articles that I have seen fit to archive in the past four years, two or three dozen stand out for their insight. But of those, five in particular remain conspicuous for their novelty or their ability to change perceptions or misperceptions. They were the right articles for the right time.

ABC TV's Tony Jones' current affairs debate this evening provided firstly prominent Australian, Dick Smith, with a heart felt concern about the uncontrolled, unplanned immigration surge impacting Australia, then a rigorous but too brief a debate from nevertheless a fair cross section of what appeared to be informed observers. Useful issues were presented from many quarters.

One key observation is that Dick Smith, who dared to initiate the debate and invest much in the documentary, insightfully concluded that at least Australia is mature enough to start publicly debating the subject. What needs to be thought through next is a national plan for population into the medium term future. Well done Dick Smith for your leadership on this critical issue!

Congratulations Jill Redwood, leader of Environment East Gippsland! In a landmark decision today, the Supreme Court has found that the government has a responsibility to look for and protect endangered wildlife before logging in the contentious Brown Mountain forests of East Gippsland. “This judgment has implications for all native forests that are set to be destroyed by logging,” said EEG spokesperson Jill Redwood. “If we hadn’t sued VicForests, Brown Mountain would have been illegally logged by now. And Brown Mountain is just one area. The government is logging publicly owned forests every day without endangered species surveys.” EEG Website for more updates

According to some of Australia's most widely published journalists and many opinion polls, the Liberal and National Parties were thrown out of office largely because of voter objections to their policies, notably their anti-union "Work Choices"laws.
Despite this, less than three years since Australians repudiated the ruling Federal Liberal and National Parties' policies and laws, the same polls and commentators say that they may soon become the government again. There are issues behind the issues which the mainstream doesn't cover.

One of our CanDoBetter commenters, 'RichB', has highlighted the site Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. This is a visionary site! As more globally-aware people begin to question the 20th Century 'growth-only' tenet, alternative ideals such a 'Low Population Planet', deserve to be considered and debated. But where to start? One practical moral campaign that would immediately start curbing the out-of-control human birth explosion would be to lobby against the funding requests of charities supporting countries that have high birth rates.