What immoral hypocrisy we have in Australian Government when one department legitimises mass kangaroo slaughter as a 'kangaroo industry' and promotes 'kangaroo harvesting', while another department promotes the kangaroo as its 'hopping icon.'

Tourism Australia's latest marketing campaign claims to be based on the 'core truth'.
Well how can it be truthful? Tourism Australia needs to drop the kangaroo logo from its advertising while the slaughter continues or else drop its core truth campaign.

Kangaroos are indeed what is 'unique and special' about Australia. It is immoral to slaughter wildlife. It is hypocritical to promote wildlife values while also promoting its slaughter.

Tasmania's chief corporate bully, Gunns Limited, has this week witnessed the departure of its chairman, John Gay, 27th May 2010 who long abandoned triple bottom line principles. Hopefully we can move forward from a culture of the ends justifying the means. John Gay's departure was of his own making.

Japanese whaling pirates raiding Australia's southern whale sanctuary every year poach all the whales they want, spin their exposed lie of scientific research to a complicit whaling commission bureaucracy that must exist only for the club sandwiches at meetings.

And what has Rudd-the-Dudd done to protect Australia's southern ocean and indeed its sovereignty from raiding Japanese poachers arriving from some 10,000km to the north? Squat, except publicly froth and bubble yet with no action like all his other core and non-core populist empty promises.

Now Peter Bethune is paying the price of Australia's bending over for Japanese whaling pirates to plunder and kidnap foreign nationals on the high seas as they please.

The 2008 Belconnen Massacre - lest we forget

We are reminded of the brutal Belconnen massacre of 500 kangaroos yesterday two years ago on 19th May 2008, followed shortly afterwards with another 4000 or so kangaroos massacred at the Majura Army training area.

These wildlife massacres reflect a prevaling backward colonial attitude by our government towards native animals. Native animals were regarded as vermin by early colonists. This attitude prevails.

Today's 21st century official slaughter of Australian native animals is no different to the official slaughter of Australian native people by European colonists, who treated Aboriginal people as vermin.

Some claim kangaroo meat is 'green'. Some claim killing kangaroos is 'better' for Australia's environment. So what if Australian farmers of lamb, beef, pork and chicken transitioned to kangaroo?

To this author it is like employing Ivan Milat to skin platypus for tourist purses.

Personal bias aside, Australia's Federal Treasury Secretary, Ken Henry, has highlighted the flawed presumptions of Australia's roo trade being unviable.

Traditional Chinese Medicine should be made illegal in Australia. It relies on killing endangered animals and animal cruelty, as bad if not worse than scientific animal experimentation.

For example, Traditional Chinese Medicine relies on bile from the gall bladder of bears to supposedly treat fever. It involves extracting it from a live caged bear through the life of the bear. The practice is wicked.

Icelanders have rejected demands from England to repay US$5.3 billion blaming the debt on the 'gross negligence' of Iceland's former Prime Minister Geir Haarde and central bank chief David Oddsson during 2007 and 2008.

With Gordon Brown pledging legal action against the Icelandic government for refusing to honour its obligations, Iceland's pagan god Thor has lashed out at the foreigner, erupting one of Iceland's dormant volcanos on the Eyjafjallajökull glacier last Thursday [Þórsdagr Thor's Day] and sending plumes of ash southwards over the UK.

Japanese whalers and fishing corporations have made Japan the pariah of the world's oceans. The Japanese lie of scientific whaling has become a cliched euphemism. Now the science has been officially confirmed as a fraud, as if we didn't already know.

An international team of Oregon State University scientists, documentary filmmakers and environmental advocates has uncovered an apparent illegal trade in whalemeat, linking whales killed in Japan's controversial scientific whaling program to sushi restaurants in Seoul, South Korea, and Los Angeles, California.
Is this Japan's whale meat export led recovery?

Kevin Rudd ignored the killing fields of Commonwealth Sri Lanka in May 2009 while Sinhalese Rajapaksa committed genocide to ethnic Tamils.

Kevin Rudd is now troubled by the Sri Lankan asylum seekers.

Kevin Rudd continues to support United States/CIA strategic aggression in Afghanistan with Australian troops, US special forces atrocities and all.

Kevin Rudd is now troubled by the Afghan asylum seekers.

"THE relentless torture of a pet cat that was shot 27 times at point-blank range in the head and neck with an air rifle has outraged animal welfare authorities." [© Cairns Post, 2-Mar-09]

Clearly, the self-confessed wildlife serial killer finds his behaviour with slaughtering kangaroos acceptable to the extent he is educating his son in the same practices from an early age. It is likely he himself learnt this attitude and behavior from his own father. But animal abuse is not normal behaviour. It is immoral and unacceptable in civil society.

Animal abusers are five times more likely to commit violent crimes against people...than are individuals without a history of animal abuse.

The following responses to questions were made by a self confessed wildlife killer in Dalby, western Queensland between 27th and 30th March 2010. So long as Australia’s Liberal and Labor governments permit wildlife shooting, there will be wildlife serial killers out there like 'Chris' who will exploit Australia's wildlife with impunity.

One's first impression of Earth Hour is that it is a noble but token gesture to try to get the community to jointly recognise the need for global sustainability. The actual impact of turning power off for one hour on a weekend will do squat to reduce the world's greenhouse gas emissions. The physical effect is akin to turning off one light globe while China and the US burn millions of tonnes of CO2 - not even a speck in the universe.

Despite Southern Bluefin Tuna (Thunnus maccoyii) being endangered, our Australian Government continues its weak policy of appeasing the Japanese (the main poachers and customers of Bluefin Tuna) , encouraging it to be fished to extinction. Rock singing environment minister Peter Garrett has become a toothless pussy with anything worthy of conservation leadership.

Japanese continue to poach whales, dolphins, and bluefin tuna (Atlantic & Southern varieties) and in doing so have become pariahs of the world oceans. Our government may pasty to the Japanese, but that doesn't stop ethically driven citizens boycotting Japanese restaurants and sushi shops.

The Keneally Government of NSW has just announced that it will protect 107,000 hectares of Riverina redgums and set up an $80 million support package with logging to be wound down over the next five years.

But after five years the loggers would have done their redgum raping and pillaging, so seriously how much viable forest habitat would be left worth protecting?

Premier Keneally in following others advice has ignored the NSW Government's own community consultative process of the Natural Resources Commission and chosen to ignore the Commission's 16 recommendations. She's no different!

Several communities of koalas in the Mumbulla and Murrah State Forests on the NSW South Coast near Bermagui are at risk of regional extinction due to plans by Forestry NSW to commence logging their forest habitat on Monday 1st March 2010.

Originally published 27 Feb 10, Updated 1 Mar 10 with Media Release of 27 Feb 10 from the Conservation Council ACT Region.

In October 2008, NSW Forests logged what it labeled “two compartments” in Bermagui State Forest north of Bermagui. It justified this under the infamous Eden Regional Forest Agreement (RFA). This RFA is one of three established in 1999, in which the NSW Government relegated 15.1 million hectares of native forests across New South Wales for logging anytime.
Recent anti-protester legislation has seen four forest campaigners who had allegedly entered Bermagui State Forest charged under Labor's Ian MacDonald's Forestry Regulation 2009 due to go before the court on 18th June 2010.

In response to a reader's request, this is a Tiger Quoll (Dasyurus maculatus). It is Australia's largest carnivorous marsupial on the mainland and it has become endangered because of humans destroying its habitat. It is not a cat.

Much information may be obtained online simply by typing 'tiger quoll' on Google.

It's another one of these licensed to kill 'Regional Forest Agreements' (RFA's) by Forests NSW.

This time the bastard loggers are in the old growth and rainforest between Ulladulla and Batemans raping and pillaging South Brooman State Forest, a rare surviving home of Australia's endangered Spotted-Tailed Quolls and endangered Grey-Headed Flying Foxes.
And its all approved by Forests NSW under another slimy Regional Forest Agreement.

Last month, on 29th January 2010, Tasmania's infamous corporate logger, Gunns Ltd, dropped its multi-million dollar defamation suit against the remaining 13 environmental activitists protesting against its immoral pulp mill logging threat to Tasmania's old growth native forests.

But Gunn's Neanderthal arrogance persists. According to Gunns 13 spokesperson Warrick Jordan, "the world needs to know..that Gunns continues to sue Tasmanians who oppose their environmental vandalism.” [Tasmanian Times].

The Snowy River was one of the wildest rivers in Australia. But political ambitions destroyed the legend and now 99% of the Snowy is diverted by the Snowy mountains scheme. By the time it reaches the sea it has only 5% of the flow because of the Jindabyne Dam and other major dams.

The Snowy River Alliance is right. Australia's most famous wild river, the Snowy River, deserves to have its natural flows restored. The Alliance argues that if Snowy Hydro schemers releasing 28% of the Snowy's original flows, its ecology could be restored. But the current life sucking 5% dished out by the Snowy Hydro is exploitative, selfish and wrong.

If one visits our Australian CRIKEY website and scrolls down the ENVIRONMENT menu to its current subject listing: 'The case against school veggie gardens' and clicks...one is instantly redirected away from the CRIKEY website to another remote website. In this case away from CRIKEY to 'The Atlantic'

Why is CRIKEY auto-redirecting its readership?

Why is CRIKEY redirecting/outsourcing its content without explanation? Is this laziness? Is this content padding? Where is CRIKEY heading?

If Victorian Labor is to be epitomised in its wholesale profiteering of Melbourne's heritage, it is the carving up of Kew Cottages 90 acres, which for decades on the prominent Yarra River's prominent hilltop bend was home to Victoria's mentally handicapped, the socially unwanted, the 'too-difficult' vulnerable members of Melbourne's community. It was Melbourne's Bedlam and society labelled them 'mad' and banished them to 'Kew' up on the hill, behind the big wall. Now the Victorian Government is profiting from decades of neglect of many of its most vulnerable.

[This article was initially a comment to the article by Sheila Newman on this site 'Victorian Elections: A Midsummer Night's Meeting with MPs about what's going on'].

The callous and evil slaughter and rape of ethnic Tamils last May by the Sinhalese armed forces in Sri Lanka compares with the Indonesian mass murder of East Timorese in the Indonesian Invasion of 1975 and again in the 1991 Dili Massacre.

In September 1974, in central Java, Australia's Prime Minister Gough Whitlam told Indonesia's President Suharto that East Timor was “too small to be independent”. Thirty odd years later the Australian Government turned a blind eye to Rajapaska's Tamil genocide in Sri Lanka.

Seems Australia has quickly forgotten the lessons of Vietnam War. The late Martin Luther King is oft quoted from a sermon he delivered in 1967 on the Vietnam War "A time comes when silence is betrayal".

[This article follows on from the initial article after Rajapaksa's war crime assassinations of surrendering Tamils on 10 May 09: Tamil Tigers - hunted down and exterminated like vermin by Sinhalese President Rajapaksa [22-May-09]]

One would assume that an organisation entitled the 'Australia Strategic Policy Institute' would be a government body or a body at least having Australia's strategic interests at heart.

But its director, Dr Anthony Bergin, with a title one would assume would be capable of research, has written an article for Fairfax media supporting Japan's strategic interests.

If our doctor were respectful of the democratic rights to protest we have in Australia and recognised the Japanese incursion in Australia's whale sanctuary in the Southern Ocean, and respected the existence rights of whales, then perhaps his article for Fairfax would have instead read like this...

'On the trail of the gunman from Snowy River' is the bleeding heart front page story in the Sydney Morning Herald by Fair fax journalist, Yuko Narushima, today (9th January 2010) about some poacher(s) slaughtering brumbies. It is a sick sad tale and one hopes the poachers will be caught and dealt with as soon as possible.

But if Fairfax's front page story on brumbies were actually about the daily comparable slaughter of kangaroos, perhaps his article may then read along these lines...

Japan's dogged pursuit of whales well beyond its shores in our Southern Ocean is more about preserving endangered cultural pride than science.

Japan's justifications for whaling are not commercial nor scientific, despite the official rhetoric. They are culturally deep and desperately self-preserving, despite being wrong, wasteful and backward.

Traditional Chinese have deemed 2010 the Chinese Year of the Tiger. But some traditional Chinese medicine is based on superstition, and some Chinese men still think the bones of a tiger will increase their libido and so want to kill tigers to get a hard on. AdultShop should set up in Beijing and sort these misguided blokes out.

The Growth Lobby seemed to have gone to some trouble to justify encouraging more immigration to Australia by making a detailed case on Wikipedia under the search heading: "Immigration_to_Australia"

Typically the arguments are the same old tired justifications that rely on historic success and links to economic growth, but they are shallow, unsupported and rely on claims by the biased Productivity Commission.

See also: "How the Growth Lobby threatens Australia's future" of 24 Jan 09.

The 2009 Copenhagen Conference “took note” of an 'Accord'.

Well, what a hell of an expensive note taking exercise that was!

The full cost of the Copenhagen Conference should be disclosed including all return flights, accommodation, livestock killed and A4 paper printed off, etc. Given that green house gases are their specialty, the conference hosts (the UN) should also disclose the total tonnage of greenhouse gas emissions of this latest Conference of the Parties (COP15). This then must become the decadent standard never to be exceeded in future.

See also: "A climate con: Analysis of the 'Copenhagen Accord' of 21 Dec 09.

Copenhagen was a deadline without a plan.

Too many issues, too many causes, too many delegates, too much reading, too many options and yet forced to deliver a global consensus solution in just 2 weeks!

Why was a Viking speed expectation imposed on such complex and polarising issues? Participants must have spent the first week just reading the plethora of reports and getting acquainted with the issues and with one another.
Plundering of foreign lands may have taken just 2 weeks, but to reach consensus on complex global negotiation between 192 countries with differing priorities in 2 weeks?