Grounding of ship is warning of Port Phillip Bay disaster to come May 9, 2008

Today’s shipping accident involving a relatively small New Zealand cargo vessel is just one more warning for those who live around the bay. It’s hull slid onto the Great Sands and wasn’t deep enough to reach the rocky outcrops the sand hides. This was during mild weather and without the RIP tides being involved. It was relatively easy to drag off. There are an estimated three accidents of this type annually (since 1974).

The real danger is when the tankers with a hull depth of another 3 to 4 metres run onto the sands. It will happen because the mouth of the southern channel has no room for safety. A large ship entering the channel from the RIP is at a an angle, and so a 50 metres wide vessel can be as much as 130 metres wide and the estimated 200 metre wide entrance offers no real safety margins when there is a 14 knot tide running through the RIP and perhaps a storm adding to the chaos.

A fractured hull on a tanker means an Exxon Valdez for Port Phillip Bay. The billion dollar profit alleged from the deepening of the southern channel and the RIP will look puny compared to the $20 billion clean-up ( estimated cost of Exxon Valdez disaster). That was in the ocean were oil could escape. Now, imagine a disaster of that magnitude in the bay. Peter Garret please take notice.

POM’S dishonest bureaucrats are again loose on the channel dredging turbidity April 30, 2008

The Port of Melbourne are blatantly manipulating the turbidity results on their testing of the effect of the Port Phillip Bay dredging. A small glitch occurred while the dredge was undertaking the most delicate task of all at the RIP (or the Heads). That small glitch meant that the turbidity testing was missing for 25 hours. Fortunately for the POM no data was recorded at all during this period. It will be certain to bring down the figures so that the POM won’t have to report any untoward dredging.

This is the usual shit from POM. The last I was involved in was the challenge they made to my documentary’s (The Last Good Summer) figures on the economy.

The documentary could only be shown at the former Premier’s electoral office at a party meeting if POM supplied a senior economist to state how wrong the documentary’s figures were. Unfortunately for POM their figures were blasted out of the water a few days later and, on the strength of that, a new panel of “Yes” people was hastily drawn together for a reinforcement of the government’s proposal.

GM food has not been tested on people or animals but authorities have given it a clean bill of health April 24, 2008

GM food has not been tested on people or animals, except for GM peas. The GM peas showed such an adverse reaction in animals there will be no GM peas grown. The peas were tested by Australia’s CSIRO.

This lack of testing was also admitted by Rob Knowles head of food testing for Australia and New Zealand. He was a very nervous man when he was questioned by the presenter and audience of SBS’s Insight program. However when the right questions were asked he gave an honest answer: No GM food has been tested on people or animals, here or in America or Canada (European countries don’t want GM foods fullstop), although there has been many studies attempting to build a model to predict how such tests might go.

How did we reach this horrendously careless situation? Well, one of the largest GM companies is Monsanto, owned by formerly by Kerry Packer and possibly now by James. Several corrupt family members have been placing spin on everything for decades and have owned the media through which they conducted the spin. Monsanto is creating GM seeds and the pesticides and herbicides by which they are protected. It is also one of four comapnies that will own all the agricultural seed worldwide.

There is also an incredible fault in our media. Despite it being admitted that GM food has not been tested on animals and humans it went unreported in our electronic and print medias. FOOD STANDARDS AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND DID PRETEND THAT THEY HAD TESTED MICE, RATS AND POULTRY WITH GM GRAIN BUT IT WAS NOT FOR TOXICITY, IT WAS WHETHER THE YOUNG PUT ON A REQUIRED AMOUNT OF WEIGHT OVER DAYS.

Food STANDARDS

Rudd’s sweeties hid away when it came to climate change – Canberra has now buried climate change as an issue April 22, 2008

The Rudd smartie weekend revealed how deluded are the politicians, academics and hangers-on when it comes to climate change. Please realise that we have twenty years of the good life left. Well, give a few years less, and we had the mob in Canberra for the weekend patting themselves and their fellow attendees on the back

Al Gore says today in The Age that he imagined that the message on climate change would get through when people realised that the northern polar ice cap will not be there in 5 years. However it hasn’t. We are facing annihilation and the Canberra sweeties hid their eyes when it came to climate change. Understand that our kids have to be trained to survive civil unrest (no food and water) and extreme weather conditions.

Australia is going to be one of the hardest hit countries. This year it seems we will be buying in grain to keep our cereal and bread industries going.

Kevin Rudd’s open government policy was undertaken by the Whitlam government and I edited the journal and wrote for it April 20, 2008

Kevin Rudd’s open government suggestion from the smarties’ conference is way in the shade compared with the open government magazine Shelter that I and journalist David Halpin produced for the Whitlam government in 1973. Shelter magazine had articles criticising the Department of Housing and the government on housing and environment policies. The lead article in the first edition was by Professor Henderson’s team on the poverty commission and outlined just how badly housing was going.

Following the example of Shelter the Aboriginal Affairs department also launched theirs but the bureaucrats carefully manipulated that. However it took six months for the department of Housing to kill Shelter’s openess. The problem with open government is that bureaucrats are secretive by nature, and response.

It was very simple to have Shelter agreed to. David and I discovered that the new minister and the old department head weren’t speaking to each other. Pushing the boundaries a little David told his minister that the department head wanted an open government journal and I told the department head that the minister wanted an open government policy. What a beautiful little operation and it revealed the total hypocrisy of the bureaucrats.

It was an amazing succes. The journal had a circulation of ten thousand.I still have copies of the letters requesting it for libraries, builders, architects and all the building industry media and unions. It was an unheard of circulation for a minor department’s publication..

Kevin Rudd’s smarties’ conference is an abject failure – they haven’t considered the planet has only 20 years of resonable environmental conditions April 20, 2008

Kevin Rudd’s smarties’ conference is an abject failure because they’re not taking into account that the planet and life is about to radically alter course.

Maybe Bob Brown has the best chance of revealing what is in store for us, although he’s possibly more optimistic than those out-there scientists that have been prophesysing correctly for the last few decades.

But if you really want to live with the knowledge that the planet has twenty years before it descends into chaos the one good idea for the future is not being proposed. It is the teaching of our youth to survive extreme weather conditions. This would necessitate studying the cultures – and experiencing the conditions – of those who can thrive in what are patently devastating physical environments. The Innuit of Greenland have an opportunistic culture that is firmly based on skills. Green Cross, an environmental group who are desperately attempting to discover the real solutions to an apochryphal future are examining a proposal to send students to Greenland (appropriately chosen) so that they can learn the skills of leadership, undertaken in extremes of physical and mental anxiety

Kevin Rudd needs to pay attention to a planet that is a super organism and will save itself. April 17, 2008

Kevin Rudd is far behind on climate change and has no respect for the environment, but he loves kids. The need to talk to them, educate them and look after them shines in all his meeting with children. It’s good to watch. He also likes old people and just about anyone who comes across his path. It’s a pity he’s not doing enough to ultimately help them survive on this planet. Respected scientists are now saying by the end of the century that 60% of humanity will have disappeared from the planet because of lack of food, water and a continuing devastation  by horrendous storms. Remember those who think the planet is a super organism and will always survive. I used to laugh at them. This dust beneath my feet isn’t doing much thinking, I thought. Kevin, pay attention to those allegedly radical scientists. That way things will begin to happen. Not that I agree with them on nuclear power. But if the super organism is intelligent it may help us to help ourselves.

A nuclear facility providing nuclear fuel is a dud March 14, 2008

The Guardian is such a great newspaper. It always covers – unknowingly – the results on many of my speculations. This time they report on a nuclear plant, built for over a $1 billion, to provide atomic fuel for foreign power stations has produced almost nothing since it was opened six years ago.

And where did they get this information? From the government. The Sellafield plan which was opposed by green groups as uneconomic – was predicted to produce 120 tons of the stuff annually. It barely managed 2.6 tons. Notice how green groups’ predictions are mostly proved right.

My prediction was a little different. It was that the plant would lay waste to the surrounding countryside and, finally, cost billions to clean up. That announcement is still to come. It’snot quantum physics to establish such logic, America’s Washington State is in such shock over its nuclear waste it will be getting rid of future stock to Australia.

Mr Glyde the government’s agricultural adviser who says sack farmers is himself a no-brainer. March 5, 2008

Hey, we’ve got a live one in Phillip Glyde, head of the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics. The brilliant mind is saying that drought effected farmers shouldn’t be given aid, but should be sorted out by their experience. If they can’t survive economically they should be shafted.

Oh really, and has he looked at himself? Has Canberra’s chief adviser on agriculture been a success?

It would appear not, look at the figures he quotes. These farmers at the bottom 25% of earners have earned zero dollars for the last 20 years. Glyde says, “Fuck’em they’re hopeless.” He’s not hopeless? It’s been his job to advise governments on how to make farming profitable. So let’s look more closely at his advice. If a labourer makes no profit for twenty years, should he/she give it up? A farmer afterall is a highly skilled and knowledgeable agriculturalist who does much labouring. But the skill and knowledge can be thrown out the window if there is no water. For many there is no water. In one drought effected area – the Central Goldfields – water is going to a Chinese protein factory. Well, it was however the money has stopped flowing so the building is built but the workers aren’t getting paid. Many of those people are farmers working as labourers, so I ask, dear Mr Glyde, what should they do, stop labouring?

But we’re onto Mr Glyde, he would be one of those no-brains who has supported GM seeds etc and has simple visions of great corporations taking over the farming of Australia, using GM crops – perhaps soybean for bio fuels – and like Paraguay and Argentina where companies like Montsanto sell the GM seeds, and the pesticides and herbicides at the strength that GM crops can take, and devastates the rest of the country (see Paraguay’s experience in The Guardian online). Not only are the crops of small farmers ruined because of the spray drift of the chemicals but governments work against them to ensure they are financially ruined and have to sell to the big corporations who are using GM.

Now the big question arises. As many GM crops cross the genes of bacteria, vegetable and animal there are unknowns entering our bodies; our bodies have never processed such glug before and, strangely, develop allergies. America, a great lover of GM food, has had a huge increase in serious allergies. And Mr Glyde, thanks to the brainless like yourself, there has been no research into such developments. Gee, I’m so old I remember when governments told us that there was no no danger from radiation.

Premier F***k Features Brumby needs a lesson in reality March 4, 2008

“Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends.” A Lewis Mumford quote I read on a blog today and it is in total contrast to Fuck Features Brumby’s pathetic plans to build Melbourne as a mediocre city of the future. Let’s go further out, he says. Let’s add another million people by 2028. Problem is the city will have at its centre a dead bay, engineered courtesy of Cunt Features, and thousands of acres of sprawling housing without any sense of community. Check the suicide rates on the present housing estates, their lack of libraries, entertainment centres, children’s bookshops, and wonder just where this Melbourne Club backed numbers man checked in his soul. Progress, he rants. Progress towards what? he should be asked. He has no vision for urban community centres, beyond that they should be built.

Doesn’t the poor bugger realise that the planet cannot cope with more: rain is becoming a rarity, and sprawling cities are not making for great lifestyles. Smaller communities are better and they encourage social interaction and creativity. I’m living in a town of 300 odd but we have a famers’ market that caters for 4,500 every third Sunday of the month. There are thirty committees in town and they’re often quite comic but when the library was closed, in existence since the gold rush, a third of the town turned up to protest. As a crime reporter I’ve observed the total disintegration of families and kids that live in the high rise abortions that previous visionary (not) governments foisted on us with great fanfare. There needs to be organic growth. And by the way, the answer to affordable housing (one of the reasons he’s opening up agricultural land to subdividers)is taxing those that are driving up our cost of living. These include mining, oil and power companies, and massive agricultural corporations. They are making the money not those on pitiful wages. And yet everything they produce is reflected in in the inflationary figures. And does Brumby have a plan to slow down production and replace such consumer substances with progress in social education and how it can be encouraged? Because spin is Brumby’s reality he only imagines he has

Let’s leave the last word to Lewis Mumford, from his mammoth book, The City in History: “Will the city disappear or will it turn into a vast urban hive? – which would be another mode of disappearance.”

Our political motor mouths haven’t woken yet to the chaos about to descend. They discovered the environment six months ago.