Australia

From the carbon sense coalition - couldn't have said it better:

This generation of pampered westerners is the first tribe in the history of the world that seems determined to destroy its ability to produce food.

The history of the human race has always been a battle for protein in the face of the continual challenge of natural climate change. Nothing has changed for this generation, except the wildfire spread of a destructive new religion that requires the sacrifice of food producers on a global warming altar.

Food creation needs solar energy, land, carbon dioxide and water. All four food resources are under threat.

Eons ago, long before ancient humans learned to use the magic warmth locked in coal, millions of woolly mammoths were snap frozen in the icy wastes of Siberia. They are still being dug out of the ice today.

That means, of course, it was warmer just before the mammoths were frozen than it is today. How fast the weather can cool if conditions are right! As I showed before, we are overdue for the next ice age.

I am convinced that peace needs more than a political solution - more than ideology, more than changed laws, better social security, and so on. The disgraceful behaviour of the Australian Prime Minister towards a hunger-striking farmer gives us an opportune example. Is the problem the lack of ethics - or the wrong ethics?

I am sure Mr Rudd doesn't think he did anything wrong by allowing someone to almost starve to death (it was good fortune that he didn't) just for want of a meeting with Mr Rudd to discuss his grievances. The 'big picture' undoubtedly demanded the death of one insignificant victim of government policies. Rudd is a utilitarian (or at least he acts and quacks like one). Utilitarianism, the near-universal ethic of our age, is particularly bad at the job most of us trust it for. Peter Spencer went on a hunger strike over de facto confiscation of his land without compensation. Justin Jefferson, writing in Quadrant had this to say about it:

The problem facing the Commonwealth government in Peter Spencer’s case is that on the one hand it’s embarrassing to have him dying of starvation up a pole because they denied him justice after forcibly taking billions of dollars worth of property in violation of the Constitution; and embarrassing to be caught out ignoring him, and lying to the population that it was all the States’ fault. But on the other hand, the Commonwealth has stolen too much property to be able to pay for it; and is too greedy to give it back.

It is no defence of this injustice to say that other environmental and planning laws also restrict people’s private property use-rights. That only begs the question whether they also represent unjust acquisitions.

It does not answer to assert that government acts in the national interest. That is precisely what is in issue. If it’s in the national interest for the government to take people’s property without their consent in breach of the law by threatening them with force, then presumably armed robbery and extortion might be in the national interest too.

Jefferson goes on to list various arguments that don't work: the laws are to protect native vegetation; native vegetation acts were done to protect biodiversity; ecological sustainability; and so on. But read between the text: a common feature in all the arguments that Jefferson demolishes is that they are based on bottom-line, "this is better than that, so do this" thinking. Indeed, we all imbibe this thought pattern from the moment we are born; many will ask: "But what else can there possibly be?"

I don't think the average person is yet aware that the era of freedom, the era of being able to do anything reasonable and say anything short of "fire" in a crowded theatre, is drawing to a close.

The Internet is arguably the greatest invention in the history of humanity, as it transcends the limitations of individual human minds and allows instant access to the thoughts (even the very recent thoughts, even the very sublime or the very base thoughts) of billions of other human beings. An era in which the world as a whole can start to think with the effective IQ of millions of minds reinforcing each other could be about to dawn.

But it will not, unless all freedom lovers do something about the totalitarians who now are on the verge of throwing the planet into a new dark age of secret control and knowledge restricted to the elites. From http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/329888/australian_federal_govern...

The Federal Government will introduce legislative amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act to require all ISPs to block Refused Classification (RC)-rated material hosted on overseas servers.

I have written to the federal minister Stephen Conroy under the title "You are either stupid or a tyrant":

The red Australian dust storm: I stood at the window, looking out in amazement. I had never seen anything like this before in my life. The front gate, a mere hundred metres or so away, was close to invisible. The red, choking dust had forced us all indoors, windows shut fast, the dust slowly obscuring more and more of our view. The fine, red silt nevertheless managed to find its way in under the doors and through the smallest crack, coating the floor near the entrances in red.

I just noticed something on the local TV (9am show, Ten Network) that disturbed me for two completely different reasons.

They interviewed film maker and Orangutan activist, Stephen Van Mil, who discussed "the devastating effects of Indonesian deforestation to plant palm oil plantations, a commonly found substance in our grocery items." I have seen these plantations, and it is the typical 'monoculture' so loved by big business, keeping everything nice and simple and sterile. Nice for business, deadly for native animals. Disturbance number one.

What is the common factor in all these recent issues in Australia:

1. An ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) to reduce carbon emissions and which will ruin the economy and add huge expenses to every single person in the  country;

2. Digging up prime agricultural land to provide coal for China to emit huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, and in the process ruining the standard of living of the rural people, and polluting the water supply and polluting food with heavy metals;