The CSIRO stumbles with the dredging of Port Phillip Bay – it’s changed its charter January 20, 2008

Let’s be quite straight about the CSIRO and the dredging of Port Phillip Bay. The CSIRO were not part of the genuine investigating panels that were first set up by the Brack’s government. They were told by government they were not to be part of the process. Nevertheless several individuals spoke up about the bad effect that dredging would have on the Bay. Those individuals no longer work for the CSIRO.

In the making of the documentary, The Last Good Summer, I was in contact with several members of the CSIRO who were warned not to speak to the media. In fact one found himself on an extended overseas tour.

There was a superficial and unresearched paper that was delivered to the third, bogus investigating panel that was pressured by Brumby to find in favour of dredging. They strangely found that there were no problems associated with the dredging. The previous panels found frightening pollution problems that were smoothed a little with the general conclusions drawn.

Why the difference? Well, the CSIRO became a promoter of products rather than a respected research organisation (see a previous post). Now the CSIRO carries no weight for it works to discover exactly what its funding corporations want found.

We must understand that the deception and political sleight of hand over this elephant in our Bay has been driven by greed and we will lose our Bay for all recreations, including swimming, fishing, boating (the water will stink, as well as spread sickness in all its inhabitants) and living beside.

Why isn’t the dredging of Port Phillip Bay to be world’s best practice? January 20, 2008

Why isn’t the toxic dredging muck from Port Phillip Bay to be disposed of according to  world’s best practice?

It’s simple. It’s dangerous and expensive.

One of the world’s best practice criteria is dumping it far out in the ocean. Aside from the fact that this is such a corrupt way to go as far as environmental degradation is concerned, taking the spoil out through the heads (RIP) is dangerous. The barges transporting the spoil are not capable of taking on the currents and tides experienced in the Rip (Yes, it was once called the Rip, right up until the Port of Mebourne began lobbying for the channel dredging), the currents occasionally running at 14 knots or more.

An alternative is removing it from the sea altogether. Unfortunately this is very expensive and there are many safety regulations governing inland dumping, not the least of which is the air based pollution. The Port of Melbourne has therefore chosen to hide such a problem under water.

They casually say they will cap the spoil underwater, but they don’t say in which year. Is that a year after the dredging has begun, or after it’s finished? That would make it a minumum of seven years. In fact the spoil would begin to dissolve throughout the bay the moment the big tides hit it. maintenance spoil dumped in the bay has spread rapidly throughout the whole area of the Bay. And what will they be capping it with, concrete? Sorry guys your whole story is bodgy, half-baked and and cynical.

Government loves money before the environment of Port Phillip Bay – it’s the very reason the planet is ridding itself of us January 18, 2008

Let’s ask ourselves whether the environment or money is more important to the Brumby government. The answer is clear. Despite the health scare for the fish in the Bay (The Age 17/1/08) there is no question of the dredging being postponed until the matter of the lesions on the seven varieties of fish are investigated. The incompetent State government signed a ridiculous contract stating that if the dredging is postponed there will be a $1.7 million a day penalty charged. Doesn’t any bureaucrat understand that if you have such a penalty mooted for a contract that there is a good chance that dredging will be postponed for very legitimate reasons? The dredging company certainly understands because they have, again and again, been pulled up for faulty procedures.

Certainly they can cause the very disruption for which they will be paid penalty rates.

There has been no estimate of the amount of carbon to be released by the dredging over the ten year period it will be required. How criminally negligent of the government and the courts not to understand that. And there is legal opinion that we – the voters – will be able to sue the individuals behind the decisions that destroy what is remainng of our environment.

By that time there will be a new size of cargo ship and tanker and they will not be able to negotiate the Heads (the RIP) no matter how much dredging is done. By that time we won’t have the right size port (unless we then spend more money developing Western Port) and nor will we have a Bay suitable for recreation without endangering our health.

The Melbourne Club and their “cargo cult” hopes are pushing for Port Phillip Bay dredging January 16, 2008

It’s amazing how our anti terror bureaucrats want to take on the pussies of protest – Blue Wedge, an amalgam of groups who want to save Port Phillip Bay in arenas like courts or political parties, or any other alleged democratic institution .

There is such a thing as real politik and to discover it you must follow the money.

The monied are out to destroy the Bay in favour of a “cargo cult” hope that if we build bigger Bays, manufactured cargo will flow in and out, and the country will be richer. The “cargo cult” cult began with the tribes on the mountain tops in New Guinea building runways on the tops of their mountains in the hope that a plane would see the landing strip and land there and unload copious amounts of goods.

But the real target for our anti-terror squads should be the Melbourne Club who have decreed that Bay dwellers should lose vast amounts on their bayside homes and destroy the heritage of future generations. The Bay will not regenerate. How do I know this? because the CSIRO, who are of that opinion, have been silenced by government and their monied patrons.

How the Japanese always beat Australians in a game of whale January 16, 2008

Australia lacks fortitude in international diplomacy as proved by their pitiful non-action over the Australian now held for ransom by a Japanese whaling company.

The Japanese have an extraordinary history of success when negotiating with Australia on anything, be it coal, uranium or beef. And of course whales. Our bureaucrats have not had tempering in the fire of private business, and cave in the moment other countries’ diplomats and negotiators show them a hard side in a game of bluff.

The nature of Japanese bureaucrats is nasty and cruel. Look how they hold out for killing thinking, singing mammals. The only difference between us and whales is that we can’t negotiate the oceans and they can’t negotiate land. Oh, and they don’t like killing each other.

Port Phillip Bay dredging is not world’s best practice, despite earlier claims it would be January 15, 2008

Dredging in Port Phillip Bay is not being performed at world’s best practice. To do that the toxic spoil should be removed from the water. Of course the government is not claiming world’s best practice now, although they said at the beginning of the panel hearings that it would be conducted in that manner. The whole dredging exercise has been overlayed with media spin from the Port of Melbourne Authority.
Now the spoil, which is hundreds of times that dumped by any maintenance dredging, will be spread throughout the Bay by the volatile currents that exist in those waters. The Bay is notorious for its weather conditions and spoils that have previously been dumped have not remained in position. Incidentally the dredging of Corio Bay wiped out all the sea grass and it hasn’t regenerated. Snapper breeding grounds have been decimated.

Evidence has been given by scientists that the Bay will be destroyed forever. And please note that the government didn’t call on the CSIRO to deliver information and data they have been collecting on the Bay for decades. Without the CSIRO, on such an environmentally threatening exercise the government cannot claim impartiality – or lack of hypocrisy and bloody-mindedness. Remember it has been pushed from the start by Brumby as treasurer, and his supporters at the Melbourne Club.

Nothing is being said of the unique dolphin species that has evolved in the Bay over thousands of years. They will undoubtedly disappear like the dolphins of the Gippsland Lakes (great government we have – it’s never respected the environment).

But saving the worst to last, the dredging of a deeper channel opens the bay up to larger ships that cannot safely negotiate the entrance to the southern channel. There will be an Exxon Valdez style disaster is the opinion of Captain Frank Hart, a former harbour master of Western Port Bay. he’s done the figures and as there is no safety margin now for regular size ships ( an average of 3 have grounded every year since 1974 – it hasn’t yet been too much of a problem because they’re of a depth of keel that can scrape over the Great Southern Sands (and rocks) but the bigger ships will gouge their way to disaster.

Having to enter the Bay at an angle, against currents that run to 14 knots and more, in order to reach the southern channel , they can be up to 140 metres wide and they entering a channel entrance of just over 200 metres wide. “It’s not if there’ll be an Exxon Valdez,” says captain Hart, “it’s when.”

Banal British bureaucrats will set companies “carbon prices” which we will pay – like we pay for the banks’ losses January 12, 2008

The future of extreme climate change has been created in the most banal way. The British government have been instructed to factor in a “carbon price” when making policy for all development in energy, transport, housing etc (Guardian Weekly) Bureaucrats and politicians have no practical experience of how business works. If business cops a levy or tax on their raw materials or products they simply add it to the price. There is therefore very little incentive for corporations to act with any real initiative at all.

There is an exception. The nuclear industry. They will simply be merged with all the other figures on all the lists of possibilities, and at some time emerge triumphant because they have no carbon much at all. Gone will be the aspect that condemns the industry (apart from danger of leaks) and that is the waste will have to contained for half a million years, and the Americans (see Washington State website) know that is impossible to do.

The oldest man made structures on the planet are pyramids, so far lasting an estimated 10,000 years, and until British researchers with shovels began excavating and investigating the objects, everyone had forgotten what they were used for. Imagine if the waste is buried, as planned, in Australia’s vast spaces, how long will people remember what lies beneath the steel and concrete doors. Hey, steel is good. It doesn’t really rust through for a hundred years or so, and concrete catches concrete cancer in about the same time. And who pays for the maintenance, for radiation can decimate the planet and its species in even less time than that?

And again who pays? We do. Like the banks pass on their losses to us, so will carbon creating companies. It’s how business is run.

An Exxon valdez catastrophe coming up for Port Phillip Bay because no one will do the math on the certainty of the event January 5, 2008

Port Phillip Bay dredging could lead to an Exxon Valdez catastrophe. All parties to the argument over the dredging (including the ineffectual Blue Wedge protesters) have kept away from even the idea of this possibility, except two men. The first is former harbour master, Captain Frank Hart, and coastal geomorphologist, Rob Jell. Captain Hart has figures to show how it’s going to happen. The big ships, deeper by three to four metres than the present regular traders, will have to approach the southern channel at an angle, which means as they manouvre against the currents a 50 metre broad vessel can be more than 140 metres wide (because it is angled) as it enters the 240 metre wide entrance. There is not enough safety margin for these huge vessels, for, as Captain Hart discovered through Freedom of Information, there have been an average of three regular ships grounded every year since 1974. This information has been hidden from the public.

The worst of it is that no one has done the maths to predict the possibility of an Exxon Valdez disaster happening. There have been three investigating panels and not one (the CSIRO has been kept out of the equation) has bothered to follow up Captain Hart’s challenge that it’s not “if an Exxon styled disaster happens but when”. Also remember that when the pilots were tested on the new equipment to be used for entering the southern channel they all grounded during the exercise. One of them grounded in front of the second environmental panel. They didn’t perform for the bodgy third panel.

If you want to see Captain Hart’s and Rob Gell’s logic ring Channel 31 and ask them to replay my documentary, The Last Good Summer. They’ve played it 8 times already (Channel Nine 1 time).

The sycophant Brumby, and his toadies the Port Of Melbourne Authority, are desperate to do the bidding of individual members of the Melbourne Club, and have undermined Captain Hart’s evidence by claiming he had been retired for 12 months and didn’t know the new technology and circumstances.

Our banks turn into bank robbers January 3, 2008

Our banks turned into bank robbers. This is how it happened. They invested in America in sub prime mortgages and lost a heap of money. They then began to react against this horrible situation by panicking and deciding to retrieve it from their customers here. The National Australia Bank had a record profit last year of  18 billion dollars, up ten percent on the previous year. They’re the first to put their interest rates up. I suppose that’s why they made so much money last year, they’re quick on the trigger.

Morally speaking if they’re going to claim money back from mortagees when they make a loss they should give some money back when they make a horrendously good profit.

What would happen if everyone reacted like them when they lost money? Well, they’d be more petulant robbers of banks. The logic would go something like this. Someone took my money so we’re going to take money from you, despite you having nothing to do with the loss.

The merciful Americans of arrogant influence and attitudes January 2, 2008

I thought David Hicks had it tough being jailed for five years without charge or a hearing. Turns out the American justice system is very flawed. Leonard Peltier, a Sioux (Native American) has been jailed for close to thirty years for aiding and abetting two native Americans who were found not guilty of murdering two FBI agents. Strange he can be found guilty of aiding and abetting two who walked free nearly thirty years ago because they didn’t do it.

Here’s what a judge of the tenth circut of the Appeal Court found:
“Much of the government’s behaviour at the Pine Ridge reservation and the prosecution of Mr Peltier is to be condemned. The government witheld evidence. It intimidated witnesses. These facts are not disputed.”

After Peltier was found guilty his lawyers used Freedom of Information to discover that the FBI had fabricated the ballistics evidence to argue that Peltier had shot the agents in cold blood. The FBI has had to admit in court and to the parole commission that it had no evidence that he was involved in the shootings. The case has become a cause celebre for the Sioux nation and several documentaries (BBC) have been made to emphasise the injustice in Peltier’s case.

The FBI has used corrupt methods to keep Peltier in jail. It refuses to allow him to use the evidence that those who were acquitted were acting in self defence for the FBI agents were firing on a compund that held women and children. The agents were so far away that no one knew who was firing at the compound. It was also revealed that the acquitted were using .22 rifles and the agents were killed with large calibre weapons. Peltier denied he aided and abetted anyone and there is no evidence that he did. The FBI ignored the witness who said another individual had driven up to the FBI agents and shot them from behind (the agents must have known the man) and drove away. Also operating on the reservation were a marauding group of vigilantes supported by the American government. Often Sioux men who were arrested on bogus chargers never reached the police stations and were noted as having disappeared.

To research similar situations you would have to look at Australia’s treatment of aborigines, Indonesia’s treatment of East Timorese (with the support of Australia and America from 1975 to 2000 – that’s when the international  community turned against our attitude there) and the systems of government and oppression and suppression in Kenya, and Zimbabwe.

These things have to be remembered when dealing with the way our native people are treated by our justice system. Our current run of racial abuse (for incest) is obvious for there is no similar attack on incest in white communities. Well, not until the children are murdered and then we pretend it’s an isolated incident. Talk to the psychologists who are dealing with these children.

Let’s understand that although David Hicks was persecuted and tortured (he confessed to aiding terrorists to get out of jail where he had been incarcerated for over five years without charge or trial; I’m sure I’d do the same) there are a huge number of cases where the justice system goes along with bogus police evidence because the defendants don’t have proper defence.