Queensland

September 26, 2012December 11, 2020

Free Noosa – De-amalgamate!

The Free Noosa submission for de-amalgamation is now available – it is sustainable, green, sensible and financial!

Here’s my poem inspired by our community’s principled move toward de-amalgamation.

De-Amalgamation, At Last

Since the last election,
Oh Blight of all our lives,
the developers lament
for she was their delight.
Devine Homes perched upon the Board
which pulled our grassroots out,
Has she learnt her lesson?
The people showed their clout.
Who wants concrete wall to wall
as far as eye can see,
Who wins the real benefit?
not our community.

She thought of what to sell
We knew her plot too well
She and those dirty mates
wouldn’t share our living hell.
Where she saw dollars we see sense,
the rich gobble their swill at our expense,
when all we wanted
was to present pristine
environment in perpetuity,
sustainable and green.

What use covetous sanctimony,
preaching economic productivity?
In the dark with greedy mates
they signed away our dear shire’s fate,
stole our savings and overrated
was that the plan when she amalgamated?
Is it true democracy
that promotes developers’ profligacy?
Privatising neoliberalism
seems to lack a solid vision,
hollow perish or populate
with rabbit warrens all over the state,
since when was overpopulation
any habitat’s salvation?

She slunk away and we prevailed
She wouldn’t listen to our tale,
‘We must have progress’
she sighed and bleated,
too late, Blight,
you’re gone, unseated!

September 19, 2012December 11, 2020

Noosa Moves Toward De-Amalgamation

Lake Cootharaba — Protecting our Noosa environmental assets from development is essential – both for their intrinsic ecological values and to ensure a prosperous future for Noosa’s major industry – green tourism.

As I contemplate the ongoing zionist invasion of Palestine against the popular will of Indigenous Palestinian people, this happy local event reminds me that privileged white people are winning in a predominantly white democracy where Indigenous people are marginalised.

On another level however, this first step toward Noosa’s de-amalgamation from the Sunshine Coast Regional Council represents what a community can do from the grassroots to redress undemocratic wrongs – the forced amalgamation by the Blight government and theft of our successful shire’s money to prop up two unfinancial southern shires ravaged by Councils complicit with developers’ unsustainable greed.

NOOSA’S bid to separate from the Sunshine Coast Regional Council is one step closer to success.

Local Government Minister David Crisafulli announced this morning he would progress Noosa’s application for de-amalgamation to the Boundaries Commissioner for further consideration.

Noosa is only one of five successful applicants.

Nineteen former shires applied for de-amalgamation.

Boundaries Commissioner Col Meng and the Queensland Treasury Corporation will work together over the next two and half months to consider the cases for de-amalgamation.

“This was always going to be a difficult process but if a proposal stacks up, the community will make the final decision at a referendum,” he said.

Free Noosa chairman Noel Playford says he’s delighted that Noosa has made the cut, although not surprised.

“Let’s be honest, if our submission had not made it to the next stage, then nothing would.”

Mr Playford took Noosa’s 70-page submission and a petition of residents to the Minister’s office late last month.

He says the Boundaries Commissioner and his staff will soon be heading for Noosa to speak with local people and gauge for himself just how deep is the passion for de-amalgamation.

The former Noosa mayor said it was a once-only shot at breaking away from the “giant Sunshine Coast Regional Council”.

“For those who want to protect our balance of low-key development, lifestyle and natural beauty, we will probably never get another chance.”

Mr Playford has urged local people to make a brief statement to the Boundaries Commissioner on the issue.

“We need people to tell him what they think, why they want their council back. He’s read about the passion for independence in Noosa, but now he needs to see if for himself.”

The Noosa area – a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve – represents an environment on which we humans and the animal and plant species with whom we share a habitat rely. Having respect for the land on which we all depend means having respect for Indigenous values. Noosa will be protected through de-amalgamation – and our environmental and democratic values will prevail.

Participate in the online poll – vote for de-amalgamation of Noosa.

Take action against Israel’s theft of Palestinian land and homes at Silwan.

“A Noosa businessman suggested to me the other day the SCRC is like a giant slug sucking the life out of Noosa. That may be a little over the top but you get the picture.”

Free Noosa
A Sustainable Australia
To vote or not to vote
In our Noosa garden
It’s a busted trike, not a Ferrari, Mr. Beattie

March 9, 2011December 11, 2020

Another Month, Another Haet List

Giyus megaphoney onanistic revelry:

Report hate spreading users

Fighting hate is a tedious job – it seems that for every user we report 5 new ones spring up in its place. But this only makes me more determined to stand up to hate and anti Semitism. The list of links today are all of users that spread hate, promote anti Semitism and de-legitimise Israel. Please report them to Facebook or Twitter respectively.Facebook

Login into your facebook account and click on any of these links. Click on the “Report/Block this person” or the “Report page” link on the left hand side of the screen.

* Students for Justice in Palestine – spreading anti semitic hate messages claiming Israel is engaged in ethnic cleaning
* Justice for Palestine – blames Israel of brainwashing Christian children and encourages people to sign up for the next flotilla to Gaza.
* Abdus Ayydin Rayyan Samad – justifies shooting rockets on civilians in Israel

Twitter

Login into your twitter account and click on any of these links. click on the options button located on the upper right hand side Twitter button. Choose the 3rd option which would report that user to Twitter.

* cactijakeye – bluntly calls himself anti Semitic in his profile – supports hateful conspiracy theories like 9/11 was an inside Israeli job
* xXKelly82Xx – claims Zionists are not human and other fanatic hate speech
* BoycottAhava – behind the global campaign to boycott Ahava products claiming Ahava Cosmetics are made by Israeli profiteers in Occupied Palestine.
* Ziggy stardust – with twits like “racist zionist settlers kill Palestinian children” there is no doubt Ziggy Stardust is anti Zionist and Anti Semitic
* Remroum – openly supports terrorism against Israel
* Tha Captain – Anti zionist calling Israel a murdering state
* Ali Abunimah – constantly spreads Israel Apartheid mantra
* Jinjirrie – Promotes flotilla anti zionist and anti Semitic causes
* Worldpeace2day – obsessively promotes Israel Apartheid messages
* Nouren shiraz – constantly calling Israel a racist terrorist state engaged in “ethnic cleansing”

Thank you for taking part in this effort – all of us in Giyus.org are for free speech but that does not entitle anyone to delegitimize Israel and spread hate against the Jewish people as a whole.

What, then, does one do, when faced with one’s appearance on this ridiculous haet lsit? Why, message the perpetrator, of course 🙂

Jinjirrie: . @giyusgirl – pls get yr hasbaroid witchhunt rap correct – i’m anti-zionism, anti-occupation, anti-racism & anti-bigotry – that means you #

giyusgirl: @Jinjirrie anti-Zionism = no country for Jews = Jews are not entitled to their own country = Antisemitism . Enough said. #

Jinjirrie: . @giyusgirl anti-zionism = anti-racism & anti-fascism = equal rights & true democracy instead of ethnosupremacy = justice #

This is not the first zionist haet lsit on which I’ve appeared – the JIDF have me on several of their puerile witchhunt campaigns also. For some of my historical brushes with them, see here.

Zionism is a secular political ideology which grew alongside other nationalist movements in the 19th century. Similar to some other nationalisms, zionism exhibits toxic symptoms of white supremacism in its colonialism – indigenous arabs were and are regarded largely as inconvenient sub-humans, to be expelled and exterminated whilst the entitled, privileged ‘race’ usurp their land. Racists like @giyusgirl see indigenous Palestinians in Israel and the Territories it occupies as excess humans, and that challenging this zionist ethnosupremacism and colonialism is ‘anti-semitic’. Yet *all* colonialism is chauvinistic, shored up by a sense of rightness, privilege and entitlement. The erroneous concept of ‘races’ is essential to racists who desire superior privileges for their own ‘race’. There is only one race, the human race, and all humans are entitled to equal rights, respect and dignity wherever they may be, wherever they were born.

Palestine / Israel Links

@georgehale Get this: On Thursday’s “day of rage”, Israel settlers distributed threatening flyers to several diplomats in the West Bank. #

Australia Links

The Spectre of Democracy : All you need to know that is wrong with The Australian is in this picture:
Darkness at Noon: Bradley Manning
She’s back: Hanson to run

Other Links

Celebrating International Women’s Day : A day of working women’s solidarity
UAE activists demand direct elections
Whistleblowers: Despite reforms, insiders who blow the whistle at institutions like the World Bank, face retaliation
Cote D’ivoire: “It’s sheer horror we’re living here… People are being burned alive and hacked to bits”
Haunting 9/11 video captured by NYPD helicopter shows World Trade Center’s Twin Towers collapse

January 11, 2011December 11, 2020

Big Wet

First cutoff point
Flooded creek

In our drenched little paradise, we have plenty of supplies to survive weeks of isolation if necessary and are situated well above the creek below. With luck, the power will stay on!

My father did the first comprehensive scientific Australian study based on all available historic rainfall measurements. I asked him many years ago whether anthropogenic effects were more dominant than solar cycles. He refused to give a definitive answer. Theodor Landscheidt predicted solar and climate cycles of 36 years give or take a bit. It’s now 37 years since the 1974 Brisbane deluge. In his last paper, Landscheidt also predicted a new little Ice Age, with the Gleissberg minimum occurring around 2030.

We need not wait until 2030 to see whether the forecast of the next deep Gleissberg minimum is correct. A declining trend in solar activity and global temperature should become manifest long before the deepest point in the development. The current 11-year sunspot cycle 23 with its considerably weaker activity seems to be a first indication of the new trend, especially as it was predicted on the basis of solar motion cycles two decades ago. As to temperature, only El Nino periods should interrupt the downward trend, but even El Ninos should become less frequent and strong. The outcome of this further long-range climate forecast solely based on solar activity may be considered to be a touchstone of the IPCC’s hypothesis of man-made global warming.

Of course, if humans don’t change their habits now, the resultant combined heating from solar and anthropogenic effects after 2030 might turn out to be catastrophic.

During natural crises like these, one can’t help but think of Dorothea MacKellar’s iconic settler colonial poem, which I’ve always detested.

My Country
by Dorothea McKellar
(1885–1968)

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies –
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!

The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die –
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land –
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand –
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

How much richer are the words of Oogderoo Noonuccal (Kath Walker)

Municipal Gum

Gumtree in the city street,
Hard bitumen around your feet,
Rather you should be
In the cool world of leafy forest halls
And wild bird calls
Here you seems to me
Like that poor cart-horse
Castrated, broken, a thing wronged,
Strapped and buckled, its hell prolonged,
Whose hung head and listless mien express
Its hopelessness.
Municipal gum, it is dolorous
To see you thus
Set in your black grass of bitumen—
O fellow citizen,
What have they done to us?

And my own contribution:

Leave the Land Alone

We share this land of timeless dreams,
mysteries of tree and bone,
tribal journeys of dance and song
symbols painted on stone.
Songlines of the indigenes,
they used to call it home,
broken by colonial greed
the land had never known.

We poison lakes and dam up streams,
this land that is our home,
quarry the hills and cut down trees,
don’t know how to leave it alone.
Why do we break this fragile land
and bring it to its knees?
Our eyes are blind with dollar signs,
so much that we should see.

Do you fear the force of machinery
and big money lying?
it’s hard to live guilt-free
when the country’s dying,
All that’s part of you and me
laid waste by greed and scheming,
don’t you know we’ve taken enough,
Let the land lie dreaming.

Jinjirrie

Below are some links for people who are in flood prone areas near Brisbane – please seek high ground in advance because the floods have not yet peaked and may be higher than 1974. Look after your neighbours and keep safe.

Weather Links

1974 Brisbane Floods [.pdf]
Brisbane Suburbs 1974 Flood maps
@QPSmedia: If you are outside of Australia and need urgent flood information, please contact +61 7 3055 6200 #thebigwet #qldfloods #
Queensland Floods – Floods resource site
Donate to the flood relief appeal

New images: Flooding around Ipswich Update 3.55pm
Happy birthday, mum, I love you. I’ll come help clean up as soon as I can get through
Follow the Sun to the Landscheidt Minimum
New Little Ice Age Instead of Global Warming?
SOLAR ACTIVITY: A DOMINANT FACTOR IN CLIMATE DYNAMICS
Theodor Landscheidt
Landscheidt Cycles Research

Today’s Palestine / Israel Links

Richard Falk: Israel’s Violence Against Separation Wall Protests: Along the Road of STATE TERRORISM
Why it will be said one day that anti-Zionists had a better grasp on 20th C history than Uri Avnery or Tom Friedman
Palestinians in Gaza face health crisis
What happens when Arab money gets too close to the Jewish cause?
ZOABI: There can be no coexistence with a racist consensus
Jonathan Pollak : Shameful imprisonment : Non-violent demonstration is not merely the right of every citizen, but also the duty of everyone who wishes to fight against wrong.
In Defence of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu
Fox News, Glenn Beck & The Jews

Today’s Wikileaks Links

Wikileaks Calls for Sarah Palin’s Arrest
U.S. Twitter Subpoena Is Harassment, Lawyer Says
Twitter’s Response to WikiLeaks Subpoena Should Be the Industry Standard
WikiLeaks might move to Switzerland
PROVISIONAL SKELETON ARGUMENT ON BEHALF OF MR. ASSANGE
US Embassy: Iceland Wikileaks Probe Legal
WikiLeaks: Julian Assange ‘faces execution or Guantánamo detention’

Other Links

Obama Does Something Bloodthirsty Enough to Please the Psychos
Exclusive: Loughner Friend Explains Alleged Gunman’s Grudge Against Giffords – lucid dreaming, a story with a character named Angel
Our permanent culture of political violence
Remember John Lewis’ Warning About Violent Talk?
Tunisia: the brink of revolution

December 7, 2010December 11, 2020

Wikileaks Protecting the Henhouse

Julian Assange is disallowed bail and Joh Bjelke Petersen’s ‘chooks’ exit the courthouse. It is their henhouse Assange and Wikileaks aim to protect.

Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.

His ‘Jerilderie letter‘ Op-ed in the Australian reminisces about the bad old days in Queensland, when Julian would have been a very bright young Townsville lad, aware of the corrupt police investigating police culture which the Fitzgerald Inquiry addressed in 1987, and the police investigation of the disappearance of backpacker, Tony Jones.

The first attempts of the Jones family to phone in a missing persons report on 11 November 1982 were complicated by red tape. The police investigation only commenced three days later when family members travelled some five thousand kilometres to file the report in person. As stated at the inquest, basic police inquiries were neglected: for example, police failed to get a report from the hospital on treatment Jones had received prior to his disappearance and at least one key witness mentioned by the coroner was never interviewed. The family was also left without police assistance when they conducted a door-knock inquiry in the vicinity of the phone booth in Bowen Road, Rosslea, which was the last confirmed whereabouts. Police did not release an identikit sketch of a suspect until 10 years after they received information about the suspect.

Media reports on the inquest highlighted other problems with the investigation, reporting that some of the witness statements were missing and that the former investigating officer had been uncooperative with coronial inquiries. The media also reported that it was 2001 before statements were obtained from several people who first approached police in 1982.

Other criticisms were voiced by the coroner and the coroner’s assistant. Coroner Fisher said “more attention should have been given to early investigation”, while his assistant, Sergeant Kym Farquharson-Jones, said the inquest evidence showed police investigations into the disappearance were “not sufficient by today’s standard”.

The view of Sergeant Farquharson-Jones is indicative of the systemic problems highlighted in the Fitzgerald Inquiry report. Tony Fitzgerald QC, who presided over the Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct, said the Queensland police culture of the 1980s was “debilitated by misconduct, inefficiency, incompetence, and deficient leadership”. As a result of the Fitzgerald Inquiry, the Commissioner of Police Terry Lewis, the man who presided over the Queensland police in the early years of the Jones investigation, and whose name appeared on the original police reward for information on the suspected murder of Jones, was subsequently convicted and jailed for corruption.

Drugs, sex and gambling were also an integral part of the North Queensland police scene:

In 1983 four men from the Drug Squad in Brisbane arrived in Mareeba unannounced to take Dickson’s file on drug trafficking in Far North Queensland ‘to put on the computer in Canberra’. The files never arrived there. Early in 1984 Dickson was taken off all drug investigations and told not to leave Mareeba without giving full details to the inspector. He was transferred to Townsville in June 1984 and was forbidden to visit Mareeba unless accompanied by a Commissioned Officer.6

Fast Buck$ claimed that a prominent Queensland police officer, who was ‘well-known in the Police Force as the man who controlled (and still controls) escort agencies and gambling in North Queensland — and who was often to be seen in casinos with a call-girl on his knee’ also controlled this Drug Joke. Fast Buck$ also claimed that a prominent National Party minister was ‘an ambitious front man’ for the Mafia in North Queensland, feeding drug money into the coffers of the National Party.7

Although these Fast Buck$ allegations were ignored by the mainstream media, tens of thousands of pink Fast Buck$ Report leaflets were delivered to rush hour commuters during the 1984 election in Brisbane. And Fast Buck$ was given considerable publicity on radio station 4ZZZ.

The Fitzgerald Inquiry was held from 1987-89, presided over by Tony Fitzgerald QC. Fittingly, it was triggered by the work of investigative journalists who risked their lives to winnow out the weevils infesting the Queensland Police Force.

The inquiry was established in response to a series of articles on high-level police corruption in The Courier-Mail by reporter Phil Dickie, followed by a Four Corners television report, aired on 11 May 1987, entitled “The Moonlight State” with reporter Chris Masters. With Queensland’s Premier of 18 years, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, out of the state, his deputy Bill Gunn ordered a commission of inquiry.

Did the young Assange learn from Fast Buck$ and 4ZZZ’s role models? Regardless of the sex-crime distraction and the outcome of Assange’s hearing, he honours principles which are vital for us all.

In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme Court said “only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government”. The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth.

Undaunted, Wikileaks will continue to release the US embassy cables. Julia Gillard and Robert McClelland may be worried at this point.

The Prime Minister and especially the Attorney-General are meant to carry out their duties with dignity and above the fray. Rest assured, these two mean to save their own skins. They will not.

Unlike the tawdry flock of politicians and aristocrats incensed and tarnished thus far by its revelations, Wikileaks has been unrelenting in its pursuit of the truth.

LATEST

2010-12-08: WikiLeaks events and protests [Update 3]
SO WHY IS WIKILEAKS A GOOD THING AGAIN?
Anti-WikiLeaks lies and propaganda – from TNR, Lauer, Feinstein and more
Australian PM Julia Gillard comments on Wikileaks
Lieberman: New York Times may be investigated for espionage
This is how Australia is seen; vassals used by Washington over Wikileaks
Geoffrey Robertson QC has agreed to act for WikiLeaks’ editor in chief Julian Assange.There are fears the US ‘will use a Swedish arrest warrant to have the Australian whistleblower extradited to face charges under the US Espionage Act.‘

Wikileaks defended by Anonymous hacktivists
Julian Assange Arrest & OSAMA

@wikileaks : Let down by the UK justice system’s bizarre decision to refuse bail to Julian Assange. But #cablegate releases continue as planned.#
@jrug : Magistrate; “if these allegations are true there is no way he should be granted bail. That is the dilemma.” #

Australia: Make Rights a Foreign Policy Priority
Assange: Australian of the year?
Julian Assange Arrested in London: Judge denies bail: Assange will fight extradition to Sweden
Assange wanted by US for ‘espionage offences’
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail [King, Jr.]”
Johann Hari: This case must not obscure what WikiLeaks has told us – brilliant article which looks at just some of the war crimes uncovered by the cables.
WikiLeaks Cables on Western Sahara Show Role of Ideology in State Department
Wikileaks and the New Fourth Estate
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange poised to be Labor’s David Hicks
Assange crowd gathers at wrong house
Lieberman: New York Times may be investigated for espionage
If Assange is a spy, then so am I
Wikileaks and the New Fourth Estate
Truth in Chains
Wikileaks: Australia FM says US to blame, not Assange – Kevin Rudd finally gets a partial clue.
Rudd’s WikiLeak cables could have been penned by scorned Labor caucus
Rudd hits back at scathing Wikileaks attack
Julian Assange and Wikileaks deserve protection
How Wikileaks has woken up journalism.
WikiLeaks goes underground … in a bunker deep in Sweden
Rudd shrugs off ‘control freak’ cable
WikiLeaks: What happens next?
Julian Assange Has Made Us All Safer — and Been a Great Gift to US National Security
Julian Assange is not your friend
Australia-wide protests support of Wikileaks founder after his arrest today in London

People all over Australia and the world are calling for the release of Julian Assange and his protection in the name of free speech and public interest. He has been vilified by politicians and right wing commentators worldwide, with the Canadian PM calling for his assassination!

Let the Aust gov know you support free speech and Wikileaks.
Call on Gillard to protect Assange.

The rally date coincides with International Human Rights Day. Rally organisers say the Australian government has failed to uphold the human rights of Wikileaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange.

Protest actions:

BRISBANE – 12 noon, this Friday December 10
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 295 Ann Street, City.

SYDNEY- Sydney Town Hall @ 1pm, Friday December 10.

MELBOURNE – Facebook event for the protest in Melbourne to defend Julian Assange: http://on.fb.me/gHWHyq

Melbourne Protest to defend Julian Assange at State Library, Melbourne 4.30pm, this Friday, Dec 10

Australia and Melbourne Indymedia stand in solidarity with Wikileaks

Other Links

Cheney charged in Halliburton case
Giving Up On Israel?
On the hunting of Palestinian children and re-education at the Ofer prison
Australia: Make Rights a Foreign Policy Priority
Obama Defends Tax Deal, but His Party Stays Hostile
The legacy of Vietnam’s long struggle
U.S.: Israel Settlement Freeze Demand Dropped
On the hunting of Palestinian children and re-education at the Ofer prison
Israel launches airstrikes on Gaza
Quod erat demonstrandum