(We) can do better

Merilyn Haines, spokesperson person for Queenslanders For Safe Water questioned Queensland Premier Anna Bligh's apparent stated intention to fill to capacity the Wivenhoe Dam, which was built, not as water storage dam, but as a flood minitagation dam following the catastrophic Brisbane floods of 1974.

Merilyn Haines will be standing as an independent candidate against Anna Bligh in her seat of South Brisbane at the next state elections.

In an effort to silence residents with difficult questions, Western Australia's Cockburn Council routinely limits question time and threatens residents who defy these limits with AU$1,000 fines.

The article by Mary Jenkins was originally published recently as "Time for Change" in a Western Australian newspaper.

The Australian Companies Institute (Ausbuy) is a not-for-profit, non-political organisation that encourages Australians to support Australian owned and made products and services. The organisation also aims to create awareness about the sell-off of Australian icons and brands to overseas interests.

Canada's Green Party is the quintessential Green Party. Still my nominee for the world's most idiotic of parties. So what ever you do, don't accuse me of being ethnocentric. New Zealand Green Party, would you please send missionaries to the frozen north and teach our Greens some holistic thinking please? A simple incantation of IPAT, IPAT, IPAT might do the trick to deprogramme our Greenies from their Monbiotist trance.

On Wednesday 5 November 2008, I attended a community cabinet at Launceston, where I asked Kevin Rudd when he was going to get realistic about population and economic growth. Report by Catherine Case:

Norm Smith, who stood as an anti-growth grass-roots candidate for Mayor of Chilliwack, in elections held on 15 November, warns that Chilliwack faces a water crisis as growth and overdevelopment, encouraged by the City of Chilliwick, dangerously depletes the Sardis-Vedder Aquifer, one of the rare pristine water sources in Canada that requires no chlorination.

Internet users are face with the technological equivalent of Australia Post being required to open every one of their letters if the Federal Government's proposed mandatory Internet Filtering legisltation becomes law. It will slow down internet access speeds and is opposed by the industry and internet users alike.

See also: "Filtering out the fury: how government tried to gag web censor critics" in the SMH of 24 Oct 08, "Filtering Pilot and ACMA Blacklist - Not just 'illegal' material" on Electronic Frontiers Australia on 15 Nov 08, "Net censorship plan backlash" in the Age of 11 Nov 08, YouTube broadcast of Senator Scott Ludlum questioning Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy about the planned censorship, "Winning the war against Internet censorship" by David Jackmanson on Online Opinion of 17 Nov 08, Online Opinion Forum "What's happening about the internet censor?" of 13 Nov 08, "Australia Joins China In Censoring The Internet" on TechCrunch of 30 Dec 07, www.scottludlam.org.au

A new report by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) demonstrates why Georgia has taken a lead in adopting state-based policies to control the costs of illegal immigration. - 24 Oct 08

See also: "Costs of Illegal Immigration to Georgians", full pdf report (460K).

Victoria: Recent success challenging the Councils gag-bill must be followed up by replacing as many of the current councillors as possible who have not otherwise shown their merit. Here is Planning Backlash's list of recommended candidates and links to other lists:

This page will be updated as new election info comes in.
*Just in* Mornington Peninsula Council: Peter Holloway, Kangerong Ward

See also: "East Ward: Is Morabito The Missing Man?" of 16 Nov 08 - the Macedon Ranges Residents Association warns voters of one candidate's undeclared links with the sham residents' association, the MRRS, "Undermining local democracy: Macedon Ranges: Pork Barelling and other forms of Influence" of 17 Jul 08

Whilst the accelerating influx of legal of legal and illegal immigrants in recent years has corrupted America's democratic institutions and has undermined its environmental movement, there are, nevertheless, reasons to be hopeful that the cause of population stability in the United States may prevail, writes Leon Kolankiewicz in response to Tim Murray's "Is it game over for immigration reformers in America?". Leon is a fluent Spanish speaker.

Based on then ground-breaking modelling, the forecasts of global ecological and economic collapse by mid-century contained in the controversial 1972 book; The Limits to Growth, are still ‘on-track’."

It now seems these sacrifices were in vain, because in Queensland our present government is a dictatorship. One person, Anna Bligh, forcibly medicates us through our water supply with fluoride chemicals and we shall have water that has been sourced from sewerage whether we like it or not.

Queenslanders Against Water Fluoridation media release

What you can do: attend public meeting
Date: Saturday, 15th Nov, 2pm–5pm,at Ahimsa House, 26 Horan St, West End, Brisbane

While Ecological Footprint Analysis was a groundbreaking attempt to assess the impact of the combination of human populations with given consumption levels, intuitively I thought something was amiss. The Global Footprint Network assessment of Canada's carrying capacity seemed wildly overstated and not consistent with the observations of Canadians on the frontline of ecological damage. Well it appears our misgivings are right. There is a new kid on the block. "Societal Overextension Analysis" offers a more comprehensive picture of overshoot than EFA.

As the truth about the hazards that recycled water, undemocratically imposed by the Beattie Government in 2007 on the Queensland public, poses to our health, emerge, the community group Queenslanders Against Water Fluoridation (www.qawf.org) plan to hold a public meeting in which experts and activists describe these hazards and discuss what to do stop them.

Date: Saturday, 15th November, Time: 2pm–5pm 
Venue: Ahimsa House26 HoranStreet, West End, Brisbane

Does the election of a pro-immigration candidate to President of the United States mean that North America is doomed to have its current record rate of population growth continue indefinitely until its ecology is destroyed?

See also: "An immigration policy bought and paid for?" of 24 Feb 08.

Naomi Klein, author of the monumental work "The Shock Doctrine" explains the significance of Barack Obama's historic election victory and how, in spite of many worrying signs that he may be largely a captive of corporate America, there is still hope for significant change for the better if grass-roots activists remain focused.

Also published in Common Dreams, the "Huffington Post", etc. on 6 Nov 08

South Australia's emergency Critical Water Allocation scheme may end up subsidising, with taxpayers' funds, large environmentally destructive monocultural agribusinesses to the detriment of smaller, less 'profitable' farms, which would be more sustainable in the longer term.

See also: www.fairwateruse.com.au

We only have one planet, Earth! Our economy is dictating government decisions, Our economy needs to be based on appropriate 21st century technology using available labour including that of its ageing population, rather than indefinite expansion using immigrants none of whom are expected to remain young indefinitely.

What has happened to us that we have to get children to express our deepest values and concerns because we have been conditioned to repress them for political reasons?
(Pic:Gavin Jennings, Victorian Min Environment)

Brown Mountain Crisis: Rendezvous on the steps of Parliament in Spring Street in the City at 12 noon.
"The trees loggers are cutting down on Brown Mountain are immense. If one of them stood in your kitchen, it would burst out of the walls. All are agreed that trees in the “Valley of the Giants” forest in East Gippsland are irreplaceable and should never be touched." Julianne Bell

Around the world, scarcity-driven increases in the cost of metals are driving the vandalisation of electrical and communications infrastructure as thieves steal copper and other valuable and even not-so-valuable metals to sell to metal recyclers. Is the only solution the removal altogether of the profit motive from the metal recycling industry?

See also: transcript of ABC Radio National Background Briefing program "Metals, money and madness" (2 Nov 08).

As the nation struggles to find extra water to revive our dying Murray-Darling system, South Australian River Murray and Water Security Minister, Karlene Maywald approves a marina at Mannum requiring an allocation of 520 megalitres.

See also: www.fairwateruse.com.au, "Lakes may go dry but Adelaide's gardens still watered" in Farm Online on 31 Oct 08, "Win-win?" in the Murray Valley Standard of 31 Oct 08, "New marina approved on Adelaide's Murray river" in the West Australian of 30 Oct 08.

With limited time and energy at one's disposal, it is wise to deploy it to its best effect. And that certainly is not by wasting hours on Internet forums debating with PC cornucopians with exclusively anthropentric human rights agendas and limited numbers of neural pathways that are set in concrete. Better to target those with flexible minds who have yet to consider our message and intuitively know that something is amiss with unending growth.

If necessary we must find any arbitrary criteria we can to get those immigration numbers down. They are killing biodiversity, food self-sufficiency and accelerating climate change.

Shouldn't the Canberra Times label as advertising the regular piece by the Property Council of Australia's executive director, Catherine Carter? Isn't there some legal requirement to do so? (Article by Mark O'Connor)

Farmers from the Felton Valley in Queensland's Darling Downs occupied Queensland Premier Anna Bligh's Office in West End in order to prevent the destruction of irreplacable farmland from the ravages of an out-of-control boom in coal mining, coal seam gas extraction and coal liquefaction. The protest was typically ignored by Brisbane's Courier Mail newspaper which is far more interested in drumming up enthusiasm about the claimed prosperity that the coal industry will bring to the Darling Downs.

See also: www.friendsoffelton.blogspot.com, YouTube broadcast of (Oct 2008(?)) "Coal Mines To Replace Farms in Australia", "Darling Downs community fights farmland for mine move" in Sunday Mail of 1 Nov 08 (Friday's protest not reported), "Coal vs cropping fight widens" in Stock and Land of 15 Oct 08, "Lone stand as coalminers poised to bulldoze Acland" in the Courier Mail of 18 Oct 08, "Darling Downs farmers vow to resist coal miners" in the Courier Mail of 5 Oct 08.

Journalist Colin Rigley cites critics who question the motives behind CAPS (Californians for Population Stabilization) new ad linking immigration to higher GHG emissions. But what about the motives of people who question motives? Should motives matter? Or shouldn't just numbers matter?

Instead of acting to end the endemic abuses by corporate water users now threatening to kill our fragile Murray-Darling Basin, Ken Matthews CEO of the National Water Commission, is diverting the attention of the Commission towards the expensive, technologically complex and fossil fuel dependent 'solution' of desalination.

See also: www.fairwateruse.com.au, "Groundwater use unacceptable, says report" in SMH of 23 Oct 08

Australian National University Emeritus Professor, Patrick Troy, an authority on water infrastructure, on the 29th October was widely reported with advice that it was not possible to prevent potentially harmful organisms from entering southeast Queensland's water supply when recycled sewage is added to it in February.

See also: "Queensland Premier Anna Bligh tells water plan critics she will drink recycled sewage" in the Australian of 31 Oct 08 (including readers' comments), www.qawf.org, "Disease expert warns on recycled sewage" in the Australian of 30 Oct 08, "Bligh says academic ill-informed on water claims" in the ABC on 29 Oct 08, "WA slow to recycle sewage as drinking water" in Perth Now of 29 Oct 08, "Recycled sewage 'will have bugs', Queensland Government warned" in the Australian of 29 Oct 08, "Flush then drink in the Sunshine State" in the Australian of 30 Oct 08, "Water talkfest simply a farce" by Bill Hoffman in the Sunshine Coast Daily of 15 Oct 08