November 19 2008
Ethics: Read the revelations, Comment…
Tim Ellis: HERE
Support the call for inquiries, Comment: HERE
November 21 2008
New blow to Gunns
Nick Clark Mercury
GUNNS Limited has suffered another blow to its plans for a $2.2 billion pulp mill. The company has announced it will not seek an extension to a $15 million sovereign risk agreement. The agreement relied on Gunns to have begun construction of the pulpmill by November 30. In July Premier David Bartlett figuratively drew a line in the sand saying there would be no more extensions to the agreement after one was provided in July. The development is the latest in a series of portents for the project: Environment Minister Peter Garrett said that Gunns had approval for four of the 16 modules under the Environmental Impact Management Plan. Gunns has until January 5 unless a further extension is sought. Gunns share prices plunged this week from $1.17 to 76 cents (12.35 today) cutting market capitalisation to just over $500 million. Former Premier Paul Lennon raised serious doubts about whether it would proceed. The Solicitor General has told Gunns that it has to deal with the West Tamar Council to get access to council land for a water pipeline. The West Tamar Council says it has made its decision not to grant access based on its legal advice and will not revisit the issue. … the Wood Supply Agreement. FT has said it will stick with agreement. One of the “conditions precedent” of the agreement is that construction must commence by June 2008 and that it commence operations by December 2010. Read more here
Machine culture rotten to the core
The Australian Replace NSW with Tasmania …
IS the NSW Government totally dysfunctional or is it just suffering from a series of disconnected unfortunate events? The list of events is long and often reads like a series of episodes from a television soap drama. Read more here
Roadkill carnage
Michelle Paine Mercury
NEARLY 300,000 animals are killed on Tasmanian roads every year. Among them, 4000 Tasmanian devils—about 5 per cent of a population already being ravaged by an infectious cancer. Read more here
The scandal of Hobart airport
Background
You read it first on Tasmanian Times … TAP’s Bob McMahon was on to this months ago:
What the hell is going on?
Meltdown (2)
Kim Booth
“There are serious concerns that an over-inflated price was paid for the Hobart Airport, using a significant amount of hard-working superannuants’ money, many of which are Tasmania’s public servants, and who deserve reassurance over the fate of their savings.” “The huge discrepancy between the paid price and the independent valuation raises serious concerns that retirement savings could have been put at risk, which warrants serious investigation and debate,” Mr Booth said.
Read more here …
November 20 2008
Hey Michelle: Where’s Flanagan?
Hag
THIS media release from Tourism Minister Michelle O’Byrne is bizarre …
She has just announced “that Tasmania would take advantage of the nationwide media frenzy surrounding the release of Baz Lurhmann’s epic movie, Australia, with a witty and light-hearted production and marketing campaign of our own. Ms O’Byrne said the Tasmania, the Movie campaign would create all the publicity normally seen for a new film, with press ads in entertainment pages (commencing Friday 21 November), outdoor advertising, a special movie micro-site called Tasmaniathemovie.com.au, featuring great holiday ideas for Tasmania, and a viral online campaign going live from Monday 24 November. The movie trailer will also screen in selected cinemas from 4 December.”
Bizarre because there is not a mention of Richard Flanagan - the man who could do more than any other to help Tasmania piggyback on the success of Australia. After all Flanagan helped write the script, Luhrmann spent days with Flanagan at Flanagan’s Bruny Island shack, and Luhrmann, in a recent profile, credited Flanagan with coming up with the movie’s title. Flanagan is centre news after Australian Story and the launch of his acclaimed new novel Wanting. He could have been a great ambassador.
This government is just so dumb ... or is there something more sinister. Does the black ban imposed on Flanagan during the Lennon era - when Tourism flunkies were ordered to offer no assistance in helping international inquirers to contact the writer - continue under Clever and Connected David Bartlett?
Michelle’s Press Release …
Read more here …
Call Karen!
Deeper Throat
They should get Karen Vadasz (former Lennon Head of Office - when he was DP) - and Bob Gordon (Chairman of the PMTF) to appear before the LegCo Inquiry.
Read more here …
Blockade today
Still Wild, Still Threatened
Blockade Today in Styx Valley.
Read more here …
Pulping the truth
Matthew Denholm Australian Thursday, Nov 20
The mill has been dragged into the committee’s ambit because Cooper had been promised a job as magistrate only to see the recommendation rescinded on Hornsey’s advice. Cooper believed the nobbling of his proposed appointment may have been related to his role in relation to the mill. Lennon denied playing any role in the issue, much less instructing Hornsey to sabotage Cooper’s nomination. Unknown to Lennon until questioning began at the hearing on Tuesday, Cooper had given in-camera evidence that flatly contradicted the ex-premier’s version of events leading up to the mill fast-track. Lennon stood by his statements to parliament that he learned of Gunns’ decision to withdraw from the RPDC at 1pm on March 14. Cooper told the committee this was untrue. The planning chief and experienced lawyer, known as a compulsive note-taker, said Lennon telephoned him on March 12—two days before the pull-out—to tell him Gunns was going to quit the RPDC. Lennon told the committee he had been “concerned” Gunns would pull out, and may have related this concern to Cooper on March 12. However, he insisted he did not tell him the company was going to withdraw. Both men cannot be right. If Lennon is correct, Cooper has misled the committee; if Cooper is right, Lennon has misled parliament and the public. Some opponents of the mill claim suspicions over the process have clouded subsequent approvals given by the state and federal governments. “Quite clearly it requires some kind of royal commission,” says businessman and anti-mill campaigner Geoffrey Cousins. “But further than that I think it should put any approvals of the project in doubt, both from the federal and state governments, because a large part of those approvals goes to the integrity of the company that is going to build the mill. (Federal Environment Minister Peter) Garrett ought not to give any more approvals (for the mill’s federal environmental management plan) until such time as there is some proper inquiry into this matter.” If Lennon did know of Gunns’ intention to quit the RPDC two days beforehand, what indication had he given to the company, if any, that he would respond by creating an alternative assessment process? Both he and Gunns deny any prearranged understanding. Was Gunns really willing to gamble a $2billion project on the chance that Lennon would come to the rescue? Was the need for haste a confection to hide the mill’s failings, which were known at the time by the RPDC, the government and Gunns, but not by the public or the parliament? “These questions need to be answered and answered to the satisfaction of the public, not to the convenience of the parties,” says Richard Herr, of the University of Tasmania and a long-standing independent observer of Tasmanian politics. “The toxicity of this is so severe in terms of what it has done to the state that it really deserves to be resolved. “Especially since the tangled web has entrapped so many public figures and brought into disrepute the justice system as a whole.” Calls for a royal commission—in Tasmania, a commission of inquiry—have been made by both opposition parties, the Liberals and Greens, but dismissed by Labor, now led by David Bartlett, as politicking. Herr says parliament should demand answers as to whether or not it has been misled, by referring the issue to inquiry by committee or by bringing key players, such as Lennon and Gay, before the bar of the House of Assembly to answer questions. “I’d like to see the parliament demand a complete explanation,” he says. “Parliament appears to have acted on information that was either misleading or incompetent. They are the only possibilities.” Read more here
Wednesday:
Damning evidence suggests we were all conned
Lennon knew mill plan
Timber boss predicts approval
Share price: Here
Nick Clark Mercury
GUNNS anticipates Federal Government approval for the $2.2 billion pulp mill will be provided in January next year. Executive chairman John Gay said yesterday the company was working to meet federal requirements, but he did not indicate when finance would be provided for the project. … But in a letter to the West Tamar Council last month, Gunns infrastructure manager Greg Stanford said it could be as late as December 31 next year before the Gunns board approved the purchase of land for a water pipeline. Mr Stanford’s letter revealed the land would not be bought before the end of the financial year. Read more here
Matthew Denholm Australian
Gunns reassures market
Pulp mill is alive
A fork in the road to democracy
Peter Brenner
I will not report on the event in full. I hope somebody else might do that. Suffice is for me to say that we did experience a standing ovation for Peter Hay’s analysis of the “pre-conditions for democracy and why they are not in place” ... ... But there was a major source of disturbing and confusing messages in this vital dialogue on democracy. They were delivered by keynote speaker professor John Keane. Keane has written what he and others hope will become the latest and most authoritative volume on the history and scope of democracy (The Life and Death of Democracy, to be published in April 2009).
Read more here …
Money does not grow on trees
John decided to buy trees - or a woodlot - being offered by a managed investment scheme (MIS) company, Great Southern Ltd. For $3300 (inclusive of GST) John bought a woodlot and waited for the trees to grow. Read more here
Disgusting!
SaveRalphs Bay
“As an exercise in spin, this display is certainly better than the last one”, commented one visitor. She went on to say, “I’d give Walker 10 out of 10 for the spin, and I work in marketing. But there’s no substance to it – it’s so disgusting.”
Read more here …
Don’t miss Wild Forest
Rob Blakers
Don’t miss the launch of Wild Forest by Dr Bob Brown
Download invitation invite.pdf
How Tasmania’s Lady of the Lake was silenced
Brenda Hean and the pilot Max Price just before they left for Canberra in his Tiger Moth in 1972 to save Lake Pedder and its quartzite beach
Kathy Marks The Independent. New evidence backs claims that pioneering Tasmanian eco-warrior Brenda Hean’s plane was sabotaged.
Brenda Hean was an unlikely activist. A wealthy dentist’s widow, devout Christian and social conservative from a well-bred family, the very proper 62-year-old was part of the Tasmanian establishment. Yet when the state government announced plans to drown a pristine mountain lake in the south-west of the island in the late 1960s, Mrs Hean underwent an epiphany. Read more here
November 19 2008
Unnecessary danger signals
Mercury: Wednesday Crisis times hitting home
Mercury: Thursday At one point she revealed her understanding of the economic crisis came from television, radio and newspapers. Read more here: Gidding grasp on crisis hit
Alex Wadsley
The Tasmanian economy has been handed a ‘Get out of recession free’ card while the captain is calling abandon ship. What the Treasurer and Premier need to do is to clear the decks on the forestry debate, at least for 2009. Declare some National Parks (Tarkine? Styx?), get a peace deal in the Southern Forests and abandon the Tamar pulp mill ( see Back to the drawing board ). Getting a deal with Rudd on greenhouse would also sell very well. Then we advertise: clean, green, protected and absolutely beautiful. Piggy-backing off ‘Australia’ and the Lonely Planet endorsement so that those people that will be taking a holiday in 2009 (New York bankers taking a break?) will try to get to Tassie if they can. Once they get here, we send them to the Tarkine, the West Coast, the Huon and the Tahune, Port Arthur, Hobart, Stanley, Penguin, the Gorge, the Tamar …did I mention the Bay of Fires?
Read more here …
Why BUPA is interested
Earlier
Tongue in cheek nonsense
Patricia Dasic
I think there are two points here. First, could it be that large amounts of money salted away somewhere in reserves is part of the attraction for big insurance companies like BUPA wanting to acquire our private health insurers? And, wouldn’t it be better if any such money was put to use providing health care rather than sitting idle while accruing investment income for the private funds?
Read more here …
Lennon tirade against DPP
Sue Neales Mercury
FORMER premier Paul Lennon has launched an extraordinary attack on the Director of Public Prosecutions Tim Ellis. Mr Lennon criticised Mr Ellis in his appearance before a parliamentary committee this morning. Under parliamentary privilege, Mr Lennon questioned the conduct of Mr Ellis in relation to several recent high-profile police investigations and arrests. “I believe there are a number of things (the DPP) has been involved with of late that bring into question his conduct,” Mr Lennon said. “Who’s holding the DPP to account for his actions; who is going to investigate the investigator?” The former premier blamed the DPP for being too slow to investigate serious allegations made by former government adviser and whistleblower Nigel Burch, resulting in Mr Lennon’s own name being smeared. Read more here
ABC Online
Mr Lennon has appeared before a parliamentary committee and under parliamentary privilege has accused Mr Ellis of ignorance, leaking to the media, questionable conduct and possibly committing the criminal offence of disclosing official secrets. He told the committee that Mr Ellis had a $5 bet rather than immediately launching an investigation into serious allegations surrounding the appointment of the Solicitor-General, Leigh Sealy. “Now imagine then my anger when I find out last week, given that my name has been dragged into the public about this matter, but I find out last week that in January this year that instead of having the matter investigated, the Director of Prosecutions lays a $5 bet,” Mr Lennon said. “A $5 bet that Stephen Escourt will get the Solicitor General’s job.” He says the committee should investigate Mr Ellis. “I mean who investigates the investigator here? I mean who is going to hold the DPP to account.” Mr Ellis is not commenting on Mr Lennon’s claims. Read more here
Danger … without a pulp mill
ABC Online
Premier David Bartlett and analysts say the state’s economy is not reliant on the pulp mill, but the forestry industry is not convinced, saying Tasmania needs the mill. The debate comes as former premier Paul Lennon, who has been one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the mill, now says the project appears dead. Mr Lennon said today the global financial crisis is making it hard for Gunns to borrow the money it needs to build the pulp mill, and it may never be built. “I was doing everything I could to keep Gunns in the process ... everything that I have done in this regard [is] to try and keep this project alive,” he said. “Unfortunately it appears at the moment that the project may not be alive; certainly it’s been shelved for a period of time.” Gunns has rejected Mr Lennon’s concerns, saying it will start building the mill as soon as it gets finance, but the company can not say when it will get the money. He told the Parliamentary Committee Tasmania’s economy needs the pulp mill. “The Tasmanian economy is heading into dangerous waters without a pulp mill,” he said. “I just hope that those people like yourself, if opposed to the mill, can now find the alternate employment opportunities that we’re going to so desperately need in our state.” Read more here
The Appointment
Mark
News links, ABC Online
Former Premier defends appointments
Lennon denies new pulp mill claims
Also …
Premier backs department head
Parents impose own log truck curfew
Pic: TT reader
ABC Online
A group of parents in Tasmania’s north-east is so worried about school bus safety they are imposing their own curfew stopping log trucks from entering the Tasman Highway. Read more here
November 18 2008
Fox team finds scat
ABC Online
A possible fox scat has been been found near Swansea on Tasmania’s east coast. Read more here
Fears over chemical spraying
ABC Online
Howard and Michelle Carpenter say Gunns sprayed their home and tourist accommodation near Lebrina to stop an insect infestation in neighbouring plantations. Read more here
And
Parents impose own log truck curfew
Some things never change
Dr Kevin Bonham
They say even a week can be a long time in politics. When I last wrote for TT, Paul Lennon was still Premier, Peg Putt was still leading the Greens, and the global financial turmoil of September-October was still months in the future. Some things, however, change more slowly. We still have a state Labor government that presides over an at least superficially much sounder economy than Tasmania is historically used to, but that government is still struggling to avoid a seemingly endless procession of probity and governance concerns and arguments in the popular media.
Read more here …
Supreme Being
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Karl
Sarah Island is the solution
Dr Warwick Raverty
Personally, I think Sarah Island would be the most fitting and cost effective place of isolation. A repeat of the sort of punishment meted out to petty criminals between 1822 and 1834 would be a very just punishment for any politician, or senior public servant convicted of perjury by the courts (or an ICAC). Double 3lb leg ions over ‘slops’ would prevent a convict escaping by swimming just as effectively as it did in the 1820s and supplies of semi-nutritious ‘skilly’ each day brought across from Strahan would help them lose some of the excess weight brought on by too much rich living in their past lives. Read more, Comment here
Tongue in cheek nonsense
Background: Lara’s junket
Patrica Dasic
The unnamed member of the Tasmanian Government whose ruminations on the health system and how to fix it feature in Sue Neales’ article Cure from the heart , (Mercury, 15/11) leaves a gaping hole in his idea of buying private health insurance for Tasmanians rather than providing a public system. That is, the not-so-small matter of the public money propping up private health insurance, $3.4 billion according to the last budget papers and rising inexorably each year.
Read more here …
Search for truth
Chris Masters Article from the Australian November 17, 2008
And now it is happening in my corner. In the US, TV news shows such as the one I work on are being replaced by so-called fearless commentators in mock attack on one another from opposing corners of a studio. It is useless TV foisted on us for no better reason than it is cheaper. It is not news.
Read more here …
November 17 2008
73 per cent want Bartlett to end support
Download research
EMRS_Line_in_the_Sand_Research_Report_(2).doc
Vica Bayley Wilderness Society MR
The statewide poll of 1000 Tasmanians, carried out by EMRS between the 3rd and 7th November 2008, revealed 73% of people agreed that the Bartlett government should end its involvement with the pulp mill. Support for the mill has been reduced to an embarrassingly small rump of 20%. Of note is the fact that large majorities of Labor and Liberal voters (70% and 62% respectively) agree that government support for the mill should end.
Read more here …
Lara’s junket
Background Sue Neales Mercury Comment
Yet we still have a system that is clearly short-staffed, worryingly over-stretched and substandard compared to other Australian states. And one that even Lara Giddings admits is only going to get more expensive year by year. Why, as the Government MP ruminated—displaying scandalous philosophies and traitorous thoughts for a proud Labor Party member—does the Government bother at all? A payment of $2000 a head would be enough to buy every Tasmanian more than the top level of private health care, hospital and surgery cover from any number of private health care companies such as MBF and BUPA. … The phones rang hot with listeners clearly tired of Ms Giddings’ blame-game politics, regardless of the merits or otherwise of her case. Most, too, were fed up with the Health Minister’s continued talking about her May 2007 Health Services Plan blueprint as being the panacea for Tasmania’s health and hospitals ills. Instead, 18 months later, they just want evidence of improvement. Read more here
Patricia Dasic
It seems to me Lara Giddings is about to embark on an expensive junket while patients languish for years waiting for treatment. She raises the type of behaviour epitomised by Yes, Minister to new and dizzying heights. The only trouble is nobody is laughing.
Read more here …
Have we got rights for you
Leonard Colquhoun
“Words, words, words, I’m so sick of words” sang Eliza Doolittle in a much more benign setting. No written charter, no matter how seemingly watertight in its ‘protection’ of rights or of individuals, is a permanent guarantee, particularly if the administration of those rights, through that very charter, is taken away from elected MPs and handed over to unelected judges, on the assumption that judicial appointment makes one a philosopher-king.
Read more here …
The scariest thing I have ever seen
Bob Downe Jr
Dr Raverty, if you’re looking for any more interesting behaviour then don’t forget this one: in 2004 Konsy offered to perform a stunt by drinking allegedly atrazine-tainted water in front of the media pack, then accused the Greens of setting up the stunt. The water source that he drank a glass of water from (in front of the cameras) was, I believe, later found to be contaminated: “So you’re prepared to drink the water on camera to prove the Carpenters’ water is safe?” Andrew Probyn, ABC Journalist, press conference, 28/9/04 “Yeah, I’ll drink it on camera.” Steve Kons, Former National Party member, now Tasmanian Labor Environment Minister, press conference, 28/9/04
Read more here …
Psychopathology on display
Henry Melville
When a former Attorney-General - one forced to resign as deputy Premier for shamelessly lying to the Parliament - turns on a former chairman of the RPDC panel assessing the pulp mill alleging his sole motivation was to make money and claiming that he should have been capable of standing up to the bullies in government…..then a serious psychopathology is on display. For all the rottenness in this Tasmanian barrel thank goodness that some ‘good apples’ who have maintained their decorum and their ethics and challenged this outrageous deception that has typified Tasmania’s political history.
The breathtaking vindictiveness of these attacks undermines the wholesomeness of society at all levels. It is analogous the contagious cancer, which if left unchecked, viciously transmits from one diseased animal to an unsuspecting other.
Read more here …
Back to the drawing board
Alex Wadsley
By derailing the RPDC, Gunns and the government derailed their own prospects of getting the project financed. The plantations are still growing, so rather than flogging a dead horse, Gunns and the Department of Economic Development should go back to the drawing board. The project in its current form was only likely to get financing in the euphoric period prior to the crash, when companies were able to access ‘covenant-lite’ loans. These were the corporate equivalent of the sub-prime ‘liar’ loans that caused the housing mess in America. These sorts of loans are unlikely to ever be available again in our working careers, so rather than cutting corners; Gunns needs to do the job properly. To stand a good chance of getting project finance Gunns needs to: move the mill out of the Tamar valley; go through the RPDC process with public hearings; negotiate a fixed price construction contract (or a significant joint-venture partnership); and plan to only use plantation grown pulp wood. This was actually the original proposal that Gunns announced back in June 2004 and is the only one that is likely to generate broad community and financial support.
Read more here …
Collapse of MIS
John Lawrence
Leonie Wood has written another revealing episode in The Age http://business.theage.com.au/business/court-orders-environinvest-solvency-check-20081107-5k6z.html concerning the collapse of Environinvest a MIS company which traded principally in Victoria. It’s interesting to read about the cast of characters involved in the real life drama… ...The Forests and Forest Industry Council are looking into it with the assistance of Evan Rolley. These are the guys that helped formulate the existing policy, then didn’t see the train wreck coming, yet nevertheless are being asked to help with rehabilitation. Unbelievable.
Read more here …
Planning: Don’t miss …
Principles for City Planning in the 21st Century
Lars Gemzoe, Associate Director of Gehl Architects, Copenhagen. The Second Abercrombie Lecture, presented by the Planning Institute of Australia and University of Tasmania and sponsored by the Hobart City Council … Hobart Town Hall, 6.00pm, Friday 21 November 2008 …
Read more here …
Is the planning system in crisis? (Part 4, Final, Overview)
Background:
Part 1: Here
Part 2: Here
Part 3: Here
In this four part series, Emma Riley, State President of the Planning Institute of Australia, Tasmanian Division examines whether the planning system really is at a crisis point, in light of recent criticism and whether we need to review and update the system or undertake planning reform.
Part 4: An overview
Read more here …
Cheers, jeers for Ralphs Bay plan
Meryl Naidoo Mercury
THE Hobart architect behind the controversial $300m Ralphs Bay development says the project is a unique opportunity. But many residents who viewed an updated plan of the project yesterday said they were firmly opposed to it. Read more here
Earlier
Ralphs Bay Calendar
More Tarkine road opposition
Michelle Paine Mercury
Tourism Council chief executive officer Daniel Hanna said the road was not necessary. “We don’t support the full loop road. We certainly support that part of the proposal that seals existing roads,” Mr Hanna said. “The new road won’t drive more visitors or extra expenditure. The money would be better spent in developing new visitor experiences, such as [Forestry Tasmania’s] Phantom Valley."Tarkine tourism operators said this week the drive would destroy the values visitors came for. Read more here
Christmas Times to party
CHRISTMAS DRINKS. All Tasmanian Times readers invited. Upstairs, the Republic Bar, North Hobart, 1.30pm onwards, Sunday, December 7. There may be music and at least one speech. There will be beer…
Santa on head by Steph, Montgomerys Hotel, Saturday, December 23, 2006
It’s all lies
Telstra’s Basslink response
It’s all lies: Here
Quote of the week
Thomas Jefferson 1802
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
An Open Letter to Premier Bartlett, PM Rudd
Environment Tasmania MR
As you may be aware, environment groups in Tasmania have united recently to propose a solution to the ongoing Tasmanian forest debate. We are writing to ask you to sign on to an open letter (the text of which is attached and below) of support for this important proposal. We will be publishing this open letter to Premier Bartlett and Prime Minister Rudd in a full page advertisment in the Mercury newspaper as soon as possible. We will also be using this open letter in an ongoing campaign to collect as many signatures as possible.
Read more here …
GE: Threat to fertility
Genetically-engineered food: potential threat to fertility
Study shows that genetically engineered maize affects reproductive health in mice. 11 November 2008
Vienna, Austria — A study published today by the Austrian government identified serious health threats of genetically engineered (GE) crops. In one of the very few long-term feeding studies ever conducted with GE crops, the fertility of mice fed with GE maize was found to be severely impaired, with fewer offspring being produced than by mice fed on natural crops. Considering the severity of the potential threat to human health and reproduction, Greenpeace is demanding a recall of all GE food and crops from the market, worldwide. Read more here
The return of the Osprey
Bob Holderness Rodham ABC: Ockham’s Razor
Fortunately there are folk like Bob Holderness-Roddam, who lives in Tasmania, who are willing to go to the most unlikely lengths to save these magnificent creatures. Here’s his story.
Read more here …
Kirby: Term limits, TV and Tasmanians
Justice Michael Kirby How to fix the High Court: Term limits, TV and Tasmanians
Media reportage of High Court decisions is truly abysmal. Unless there is something bizarre, entertaining, humorous or allegedly shocking in a decision, it is typically not reported. There is a need to lift the media game in Australia. The High Court could explore the engagement of a highly skilled court communicator for television and radio. The cases in the High Court are important. They concern values upon which there can sometimes be acute differences. Such questions should be reported and placed before the citizenry for their knowledge, judgment and, if so decided, legislative correction.
Read more here …
Operation Mushashi begins!
via Jon Sumby
$10 entry - 2 pm til late
Skate ramp
Front Bar Rebel Music DJs featuring;
Mylestone (Broken Panda), Johnny Hooves and MC Deziak (Melb), JPS (Melb), BTC, Ham, Dom and more.
Bands;
myblackson, Powerchild, Hairy Man, the b-circuit and more.
www.seashepherd.org - Defend, conserve, protect
Campaigner wins pesticide victory
BBC Online
A campaigner has won a legal victory in a long-running battle with the government over the use of pesticides. Read more here
Tough sledding ahead
Christopher Laird
But, getting back to the issue of economic depression and the USD. The whole point here is that the world economic engine is grinding to a halt and there is no way to stop it. The US Fed and other central banks have found out they cannot reflate the world economies this time, like they did after 2001 and 911 and the Tech bubble. This time reflation efforts are failing. Things are slowing down too fast this time, and that is combined with the imploding credit markets in every nation of the world.
Read more here …
A letter from Ohio
Tamara Sands Zanesville, Ohio, United States of America
So, I implore you to continue researching the decision your administration is charged with governing with all eyes, ears and conscious minds open when considering Gunn’s continued efforts to site this mill. The decision your administration is faced with has far reaching impacts for not only the local community, whose residents will live with that decision day in-day out both aesthetically, economically and health wise, but the global marketplace that will feel the effects long term from the contamination of the world’s oceans and its inhabitants. The world has enough pollution contaminating our seas effecting the viability of fisheries and world health without adding more to the load.
Read more here …
