Tag: Environment

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Cane Toad Time

Toadscape

You know it’s summer in the Sunshine State
when from beneath your desk
there’s a shuffling sound
a gruffly plop and scrape
then you look down
straight into the gloating gob
of the most gruesome pest around here
worse than the pollies, rats and mice
it’s the common cane toad,
that dastardly settler-borne scoundrel.
Out, out, you damn hopping creep
before for the five iron I reach
and augment your next ungainly leap.

Jinjirrie, December 2014

For anyone who hasn’t seen the definitive cane toad movie:

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May Your Presents Not Be Plastic This Year

GingerThis solstice, celebrate trees with their gift of diversity and life, conserve dwindling resources from human predation, and aim at ending all tyrannies, capitalism, racism and bigotry and especially US imperial hegemony, the dominion of apartheid Israel over Indigenous Palestinians and Indonesia over West Papuans.

In the home zone, here’s to de-amalgamation of Noosa from the development-crazed southern Sunshine Coast vultures and protection of our UNESCO-designated biosphere in March – even if the rest of the planet goes down due to pollution and over-consumption, at least we succeeded in living in harmonious sustainability with the environment in Noosa!

Me to parent as one surveys the mountains of child-placating crap: ‘Wow, what a lot of plastic!’

Parent: ‘I never got anything at Christmas as a child so I am making sure my kids get everything!’

Me: ‘So you really spent thousands of dollars on yourself.’

Parent: ‘We can spend hours together building this rare R2D2 lego model!’

Me to child: ‘Did you get any books?’

Child: ‘No, just this instruction manuel for Power Rangers’.

This society is not built for me.

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Free Noosa – De-amalgamate!

Noosa from National ParkThe 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!

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Leave the Land Alone

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 the 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 2007

Senator Bob Brown, leader and founder of the Australian Greens from 1992 until April 2012, has departed politics suddenly, with his position to be filled by Senator Christine Milne. In a country where multi-party plurality is nigh on impossible, the Greens have benefited from growing awareness in the community of the limited nature of our most precious Australian resources – our native fauna and flora, and that on which we all depend for survival – water.

Bob’s charisma and record as an environmental campaigner led many ALP voters disillusioned with Labor’s neoliberalism and environmental compromises to jump ship. How will the Greens fare without Bob at the helm? will the flagging ALP be able to woo back voters and will the party machine have the foresight to incorporate more green promises in order to do so?

Salute, Bob – your common sense and values will be sorely missed in public life – your record as an exceptional advocate for the environment and humanity is unequalled in Australia’s history. I hope you have some happy years of bushwalking and photography and find time to record your memoirs.

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The Jewish Land Fund – An International Criminal Organisation

Endorse the Stop the JNF call and negate this criminal aspect of Israel apartheid

The JNF was created in 1901 to acquire land and property rights in Palestine and beyond for exclusive Jewish settlement. While indigenous Palestinians are barred from leasing, building on, managing or working their own land, the JNF holds the land in trust for “those of Jewish race or descendency” living anywhere in the world to “promote the interests of Jews in the prescribed region.”

To ensure such racist control over the majority of confiscated Palestinian lands, Israel adopted the JNF model of discriminatory land management as official state policy. In 1953, the Israeli Knesset legislated special status for JNF, enabling it to carry out governmental functions as a Zionist institution (“for Jews only”). The JNF continues to operate as a state-chartered organization[6] under Israeli law with direct control over some thirteen percent of the land in pre-1967 Israel.

Further, the JNF appoints six out of thirteen members of the governing board of the Israel Lands Authority (ILA), which manages the JNF’s thirteen percent, in addition to another eighty percent of all land in Israel. It is through this relationship with the JNF that Israel, while portraying itself as the only democracy in the Middle East, in fact, outsources the land-management
functions of the state to this discriminatory state-chartered organization.

Download the four JNF ebooks collated to date:

Vol 1 – Introducing the Jewish National Fund
Vol 2 – Preparing for Legal Action Focus : Canada Park
Vol 3 – Ongoing Ethnic Cleansing : Judaizing the Naqab
Vol 4 – Greenwashing Apartheid – Environmental Coverup

Related Links

Australian Zionist Organisation Funding Appropriation of West Bank Sites
NGO Monitor – Watching the Watchers Redux
Of Mitherin’ Clutterbucks and Mordor
Flooded in, with an Eye on Israel’s Persecution of the People of Gaza
The first three weeks of December saw Israel demolish over 20 structures, leaving 32 Palestinians homeless and affecting another 150 people. In addition, several places have received new stop-work or demolition orders and verbal warnings from Israeli forces.

Other Links

Terrific comprehensive, hyperlinked and accurate up to date site for journalists and serious researchers on US Defense/Defence spending.