The genius of Senator Matt Canavan.

Right-wing Senator Matt Canavan, a major recipient of donations (bribes) from the coal industry, tweeted that because snow has fallen in winter in parts of New South Wales that do sometimes have snow falls, climate change is a lie!

The reality is, as the climate warms, record-breaking cold weather is becoming less common. And one winter storm does not negate more than a century of human-caused global warming.

I am reminded of a shop I deal with in western Queensland, as part of my work. The shop owner, who owns a property outside of town, told me that his local council area has been drought-declared for the last 12 years. In that time, they had received a total of 28mm of rain, and that mostly occurred in just 2 rain events.

One can picture Canavan visiting, walking outside during 1 of those 2 rain events, and yelling: ‘You’re not in drought. It’s raining!”

Duh!!

Australian PM Scott ‘SmugMo’ Morrison fiddles while Australia burns.

Yesterday, Australian prime minister Scott ‘SmugMo’ Morrison, gave a speech to the Business Council of Australia, signalling a major review (read lessening) of environment protection laws, committing to cut the ‘green-tape’ that he says is holding up development. He was speaking to a group –business–  that are the largest financial donors to his political party.

 

Today, all six Australian states had a Catastrophic/Code Red (the highest level), or Extreme (the next highest) fire danger warning, and there were multiple uncontained bushfires in each of the states. So far 6 people have died, scores have been injured,  and over 500 houses have been destroyed in the bushfires. Two states had declared States of Emergency.

Australia is in the midst of the worst drought ever, subject to available records of white history in  Australia. The second worst drought ever, the so-called Millennium drought, immediately preceded this current one.

All this is nothing to do with climate change, according to SmugMo, there is no evidence of a link and no action required, but that damn green-tape problem is so critically important he has it in his sights!

 

 

 

I was talking to a grazier outside the town of Miles, in Queensland. The area had previously seen intensive underground gas development, including of course the controversial practice of fracking, approved by government.

 

 

They are in drought, as on-and-off he has seen many times before, but he said never as severe and consecutively.  Dams had long ago dried up. But something had changed, he said. He told me that he himself, and everyone he knows, has had to de-stock, due to the fact that all bores have dried up! The water table has moved downwards, and the bores are now dry. There has always been droughts –periods of relatively little or no rain– in Australia; now mining actions seem to be effecting the last inland water refuge, the Great Artesian Basin. (The proposed Adani coal mine, supported by both the ALP Queensland and LNP Federal governments, has been granted a water licence by the Queensland government to use 12.5 billion litres of water annually (and previous requests by farmers for a water licence rejected)! Where is the water coming from? The licence specifies ‘river’ water, but given existing water licences, the Adani licence is beyond the capacity of rivers to supply! So what is going to happen?? Maybe it’s ‘river’ water if you pump it from the Great Artesian Basin into a river!).

But we can’t know for certain until an independent investigation is undertaken. Nothing of the like will be agreed to by those who have perhaps originally  made a colossally bad decision! They don’t want anyone to know, and they never want to be truly accountable. If there is an issue with fracking and the water table, SmugMo’s intention to even further reduce our already rubber-stamp environmental regulations  will doubtlessly lead to other problems arising.

 

And there’s the rub:

a reasonable person would want their decision based on the best independent information available at the time, and they would check later the outcome, comparing it to predicted consequences (with a view to modifying future methodology or changing future decisions, if the predicted outcome is consistently underestimating something or just plain wrong).

The political class never do this. Only two things guide their decision making: ideology, or graft, corruption and a quid pro quo. The political class is populated by hypocrites and monsters.

Let’s call it “green-tape” and get rid of it, nobody will like green-tape, it’s like a really super-sticky type of sticky-tape that rips the hair off your arm! Ouch! Just think, a green-tape brazilian could be fatal!

Or we can call it for what it is: a strategy to facilitate corruption, and a guarantee of bad decision-making –compromised and corrupt decision after decision means the political class have reached an absurd level of short-sightedness and incompetence.

To any reasonable and fair-minded person, it must be unacceptable –without real justification and an unavoidable situation– for us to pass onto future generations a polluted and degraded world (and, as is the case in most countries, a massive government financial debt). We must stop and draw breath, and confront the madness of irresponsible exploitation, consumption, and spending, that will make future generations hate us for the environment and debt they have inherited. And with pig-people thinking, SmugMo and the like says the answer is to ‘cut green-tape’!

The last Australian federal election was about six months ago. It won’t be until February next year that details of political donations are made publicly available (and if a politician or political party ‘forgets’ a donation, no worries, no sanction or punishment there). Compare that to America, or Britain.  Australia has the most lax political donation reporting requirements of any western-style democracy! And of course, no Federal anti-corruption body. (Oh my, bit of a bad smell coming from there!).

Now who do you think that benefits?? I’ll even give you a multiple choice. Does it benefit:

the politician and political party,

or the voter, the citizen?

Now that’s obvious!!

Party parliamentary democracy is as much a criminal enterprise as any criminal gang, but uniquely,  a legal criminal enterprise: it institutionalizes bribery and corruption, and because the crooks make the laws, dutifully enforced by police and the courts, it is legal. We have truth in advertising laws that specifically excludes truth in political advertising! This is what the ‘rule of law’ means: a construct to excuse the irrational and unfair, and to justify and enforce decisions of the corrupt.

The legacy of the pig-people: climate is changing, an extinction crisis looms amidst widespread habitat destruction, and our polluted environment is making us sick. And SmugMo tells his donors what they want to hear, indeed what they paid (bribed) for: we can keep doing what we’ve always done, the problem is green-tape! No, it really isn’t the problem, but bribery buys from the political class a steadfast insistence upon stupidity, and the imposition of a bizarre version of reality.

Remember Occam’s Razor 2.0: If someone is trying to attain or maintain a position of power, or trying to make money from something, reject whatever they claim unless there is independent evidence or proof.

As Home Affairs minister, Mr Potato Head, Peter Dutton, always says: ‘move along, nothing to see here!’

Easy for him to say: he’s blind!

 

In an interview on ABC Radio , SmugMo said he “took issue” with the suggestion by Greg Mullins, the former chief of NSW Fire and Rescue, and 23 other fire chiefs, that the government was not adequately prepared.

He also said “the suggestion that any way shape or form that Australia, accountable for 1.3% of the world’s emissions, that the individual actions of Australia are impacting directly on specific fire events, whether it’s here or anywhere else in the world, that doesn’t bear up to credible scientific evidence either”.

And he again said that no scientific link between climate change and natural disasters like bush-fires had been established.

 

 

Murders in Australia account for about 0.1% (or whatever) of total murders in the world each year. So we do nothing about murder in Australia? That is his argument, that because Australia is responsible for a small amount of emissions vis-a-vis the world total,  we need not do anything about our emissions. His is a spurious argument: if that isn’t the case, why do we prosecute and imprison murderers? I expect SmugMo to say: ‘Australian soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq only raped and killed 10 female civilians, the American soldiers raped and killed 500 female civilians, so that’s why we’re not doing anything about our soldiers’!

Then SmugMo says there is no link between climate change and the bush-fires. So an increasing temperature (including more frequent heatwaves), and changing/variable rainfall patterns (including more prolonged droughts) –part of the climate change models, and which can be seen in the world– does not contribute to an increase in the number or severity of bush-fires? That is counter-intuitive. He is wrong. And by taking no action on climate change, making no plans for dealing with the consequences –whether that be in relation to the environment or employment– Australia will unnecessarily face a much greater challenge. He is negligent.

Why I have no respect for SmugMo and the like, is that they deliberately misrepresent their position: they accept bribes (‘donations’)  to support a position, and they purport to be amenable to reason and evidence, but this is simply not true; they are ideologues,  and literally NO amount of evidence will change their minds.

If SmugMo said the sky was green and the grass blue, and you took him outside and showed him that the reverse was true, he would accuse you of some kind of deception, or having insufficient evidence, or some such thing! Two plus two equals five in the SmugMo world.

SmugMo, and the similarly irrational, undermine the possibility of Australia making the best decisions moving forward, decisions based on reason, common-sense, evidence, and fairness. It is a matter of record that surveys consistently show the majority of Australians think our democracy is not working as it should, and the overwhelming majority think politicians are liars and not trustworthy. And what is the response from the political class? People who have that opinion are themselves to blame! Where I disagree with some/many/most Australians is that they think party parliamentary democracy can work; I maintain graft, corruption, incompetence, irrationality, and a real unaccountability,  are inherent in the system.

The future will decide of course, and pass judgement on this dark age of ideologues, corruption,  and anti-reason. And I have no doubt that SmugMo, Tony ‘the Mad Monk’ Abbott, Peter ‘Mr Potato Head’ Dutton, and the like, will be objects of ridicule to future generations– and it should be so.

To the future I say: learn from the appalling mistakes of today, understand the prevailing dysfunction of this age, and do not allow the lunatics to ever again run the asylum!

Captain Andrew Bolt, skipper of the good ship Australian Democracy!

 

Conservative commentator Andrew Bolt, propagandist for his employer Rupert Murdoch,  claims that climate change protesters “seek the extinction of our democracy”.

Bolt of course claims, with nary any evidence,  that man-made climate change theory is an elaborate fraud, with tens of thousands of scientists in more than one hundred countries conspiring together to invent data and manufacture conclusions. It is such a ludicrous idea that it is a travesty of reason.

Bolt also continues to publicly support convicted (and imprisoned) paedophile, Cardinal Pell, and to berate former footballer and Australian of the Year, Adam Goodes, an indigenous man who had the temerity to call out racism.

Unlike the vast majority of the Australian population, Pell bought the best legal representation money could buy, something that could not be said for the scores of potential miscarriages of justice cases being investigated by various university innocence/unsafe conviction projects, and none of whom Bolt has ever taken an interest in. Bolt is not concerned about miscarriage of justice; he is angered by a challenge to his entitlement mentality, and affronted by the idea that someone ideologically similar to him –conservative, rich and white– should ever be held to account!

Pell has one final appeal left, to the (carefully selected on grounds of political conservatism) high court of Australia.  It is no coincidence that the most vocal supporters of Pell, like Bolt, Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton, Miranda Devine, and Tony Abbott, are also the most vocal climate change deniers. They are ideologues.  The basis of Pell’s appeal is the veracity of the chief prosecution witness, and that due to the vestments Pell wore, offending was not physically possible. One would hope there was at least a solid chain of evidence in Pell’s appeal, someone who witnessed Pell dressing, and saw Pell the entire time from then and until the alleged offending (because Pell might have intended to offend, and so was not wearing the usual vestments, thus making the offending possible). Should the high court overturn Pell’s conviction,  it necessarily means overturning a jury verdict, and a previous Victorian court of appeal rejection; it necessarily means the reasons must be unequivocal, unambiguously clear and wholly uncontentious. Interesting times!

Bolt continues to criticize Goodes, indeed any indigenous person who calls out racism in Australia.  There has been two official Australian government approaches to the indigenous people: first, in a perverse Darwianian interpretation, ‘do nothing and they will die out’, and later, ‘make the blacks into imitation whites’. Bolt is a heir to this ideological tradition of vacillating indifference and paternalism. At no point are the indigenous people ever permitted to say what they want, and for that to happen. Australia is the only former British colony that has never had a treaty with their indigenous population. This is no accident.

Indigenous life expectancy is more than a decade less than the white population, the suicide rate is double, imprisonment rate is 15 times that of the non-indigenous etc etc. This is no accident. The ideology of Bolt and the like produces this: it is racism writ large.

Australia Day celebrates the day Captain Cook landed in what became Australia. The indigenous people call it “invasion day”. Bolt opposes changing the date of Australia Day, calling that “useless and divisive”. And the date now is now useful and inclusive??! Really?!

But Bolt is not concerned about usefulness or inclusivity; he is angered by a challenge to his entitlement mentality, and affronted by the idea that someone like him should ever have to justify their position, or even approach any discussion non-ideologically and  in good faith!

Former Australian basketball captain,  and flag bearer at the Sydney Olympics, Andrew Gaze (and non-indigenous), when asked about the Australia Day date, said:

“My view is Australia Day should be for everyone,” he says.

“If this date is something that is causing grief to a part of our heritage and history, I’m not one who’s stuck on it needing to be locked in.”

“I think there is some merit in saying, ‘Can we do this better? Is there a better date that we can explore’?”

Why does Gaze think that?

And why does Bolt say what he does?

Which view do you think shows ‘uselessness and divisiveness’?

 

What is this thing “our” democracy that Bolt says is under threat from climate change activists??

Around the globe, in Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, hundreds of thousands of citizens have been — and some still are– demonstrating and protesting.

Since the countries vary from dictatorships, one-party states, to party parliamentary so-called democracies, what are the people protesting against? Why are they demanding change?

1. Corruption and incompetence in the political class/government.
2. That the rights and freedoms of the citizens are being attacked, that their interests and aspirations, now and moving forward, are not being considered by the political class/government.
3. Reduction, neglect,  or privatization of government services, and seemingly out of control financial imposts on the citizen.

Neo-liberalism is inherently an attack on the citizen and their interests, and without debate or general agreement, was imposed internationally by elites. The realization of the neo-liberal ideology demonstrably furthered the interests of,  and control by, the elites, and democratic governments, whose obligation should be first and foremost to the citizen, were enthusiastic implementers of  that anti-citizen agenda.

Most countries, including Australia, show a level of wealth and income inequality and concentration of power that rivals France in the pre-French revolution era. It is just that today in so-called democracies the citizen has a vote every few years for this ideology, or that ideology, but the political class seek only graft and corruption, driven by egotism, and are fundamentally unaccountable; it is just that today the bottom does not usually starve to death, but the gap between the bottom and top is so vast, that for the majority they are simply economic slaves, working to barely keep their head above water. Jobs are dangled like a donkey’s carrot, but you get nowhere; it is meant that you fight amongst yourselves, but none are the victor, and while you fight amongst yourselves, you never can see the game being played out.  Now the free are as much a slave as any slave from history. Soberingly, it is likely that the next generation will be even worse off.

‘Jobs and growth!’ Every year, the rich get richer, and everyone else has a job, promissory or real,  but jobs that just keep you poor. And you only matter, and your life only has meaning, as an economic unit.  The possibility of an authentic human life is being denied to most. The necessity for endless growth in the economic system is intrinsically a destructive paradigm –sustainability has to be argued for–  as it takes what the natural world has, leaves it polluted, and never gives back, and when all that there is has been taken, it will be a land of wandering and wailing Hungry Ghosts. ‘Jobs and growth!’

And so the rise of authoritarian populism, which is an easy answer, but the wrong answer and no answer at all. Authoritarian populism seeks to blame not solve, seeks to divide not include, rejects reason and common-sense for bigotry and prejudice, and rejects transparency  and openness for secrecy and fanaticism. The authoritarian populist today has the derogatory glare of the imperialist of the past,  who then never saw a human being, but “a savage”, or “the uncivilized”.

I understand why people voted for Trump et al. Drain the swamp, get rid of the parasitic elites and vested interests etc.

But by empowering a parasitic elitist??

Was that ever going to work??

It may well be that the likes of not-too-bright and narcissistic  Trump, or the public antics of jovial buffoon Boris Johnson (but, be warned, both are carefully manipulative) , are only the precursor to a much more sinister right-wing authoritarian populist in the western-style democracies, along the like of  xenophobic Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán (“We must abandon liberal methods and principles of organizing a society.” Which, why so, replaced by what??), or Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte  (where extra-judicial killings are an almost daily occurrence, for example. And when did ‘extra-judicial killing’ not plainly mean murder??).

This is the threat to ‘our democracy’, Mr Bolt.

Not climate change activists.

And the reason why authoritarian populism is now such a threat, is because of the incompetence in decision-making of the political class, and the gross selfishness of the vested interests.

Pig-people like Mr Bolt have created the problem. Reject reason, expert advice and evidence: keep on denying climate change, and so make no plans and take no action, making the end result all-the-worse; the hysterical, the lunatics, the idealogues, the corrupt, insist: Ignorance is knowledge! With the increasing authoritarianism, what becomes of sole importance is who you are (ie white, or christian),  where you are from (ie nationalism,  or so-called patriotism), and an anti-other (anti immigrant, anti refugee, anti foreigner); not what you did, not why you did it. The mind of the idealogue, or indeed the theist, cannot be changed by reason or evidence: in both cases it is a matter of  ‘faith’. So they are unable to question anything that is a matter of ‘faith’. Doctrine, faith, whatever you call it, it is the sound of a mind closing. Ignorance is knowledge!

 

“True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.”
― Karl R. Popper

 

Prime minister Scott ‘SmugMo’ Morrison, lauds the ‘quiet Australian’: what he is talking about is a servile, trusting, uncritically-thinking Australian, one who never protests, one that never calls him to account. And SmugMo knows best of course. The ‘quiet Australian’ is meant to believe without demur the outrageous lies, deliberate half-truths,  and cynical deception. The ‘quiet Australian’ will likely awake in a future they don’t understand,  that doesn’t reflect their ideals or aspirations, the rules to the game having changed as they steadfastly kept to their proud silence.  It will be too late then for them to find their voice, and they will have nobody to blame but themselves. This is why SmugMo lauds the ‘quiet Australian’. To the doe-eyed serfs he knows he will never be held to account for anything, and they will never challenge him, not his honesty, not his competence, or even his relevance: these quiet Australians may have an immediate family, but they have no community; there is no injustice they cannot turn a blind eye to, no concept of fairness that disturbs their willful individualism, no principle they would not abandon, no betrayal they cannot excuse if the price is right for them.

A solution to a problem can only begin to be found when you recognize that the problem exists, AND you say and do something about it (no solution is ever found by recognizing that the problem exists but remaining silent and doing nothing). Especially when a problem is identified,  but the solution must come from those in power (your elected representatives), you MUST speak up, agitate and protest, else no solution is possible — those in power can only be trusted to be concerned with maximizing their own opportunities for graft and corruption,  and to realize their ideological imperatives. The quiet Australian is ensuring that the problems, issues and concerns of the past, remain problems now, and will remain problems in the future. In reality,  the quiet Australian is failing the community,  the country, future generations, and ultimately themselves. The rise of the quiet Australian –this passive, non-protesting,  unempathetic, ‘what’s-in-it-for-me’ creature– will surely and entirely displace traditional Australian values, like that of mateship and a fair go.

What is the leading cause of death in Australia for those aged up to 44 year old? Surely illness or disease? No. Well, by accident then? No. The leading cause of death for people in Australia aged from 15 year old to  24 year old is suicide, and also from 24 year old to 44 year old. For this to be the case, something is really wrong in Australia. Would you care to speak up oh quiet Australian? If your immediate family is wracked by that tragedy, perhaps then you would speak up, demand action. But the point quiet Australian, is that there is reason for us all to act, to demand investigation and action,  that does not depend on us needing to have first experienced that personal pain. In Australia, more people suicide in any one year than the total due to domestic terrorism and civil unrest since the end of the Second World War (some 80 years!), and the suicide rate is about six times that of the murder rate. And in America, there is a 9/11 human toll of death by suicide about every 5 weeks, each and every 5 weeks. Companies make immense profit by tracking and trading personal data, and governments allocate significant resources to constantly monitor the citizen, online or in the street, yet, by suicide, so many lives are lost and futures denied  in this world where the pig-people’s priorities are greed and control.

The authoritarian populism will likely lead to overt tyranny. That is the way of it, that is the nature of things.  But, as events unfold,  the pig-people will make sure they are on the butt side of the rifle, as others do their dirty work.

You however will likely be on the wrong end of the rifle. The quiet Australian will be beside you too.

But there is hope!

 

AND PROTEST!

YOU MUST DEMONSTRATE!

SPEAK NOW OR FOREVER BE IGNORED.

DO NOT BE ONE OF THE DOE-EYED SERFS.

Two Christians, but only one ignorant and a bully.

On the one hand:

Principal Rodney Lynn from the Coffs Harbour Christian Community School wrote a fiery address in the weekly school newsletter about “doomsday waffle talk”, referencing a “little girl” and “false prophets”.

Mr Lynn appeared to question the actions of teenagers who took part in a global climate strike, writing: “You can skip school. Hold up a piece of cardboard in the streets and call out for the government to ‘do something to stop it all happening’… really???”

“You can listen to a little girl with self-declared various emotional and mental problems that she thinks give her a special insight into a pending doom of ‘climate change’.

Mr Lynn said “doomsday ideas” came from attention seekers, including “a little girl from Scandinavia”.

“Do not be afraid. Your world’s future is in the hands of God, not in the predictions of a little girl and false prophets,” he wrote before signing off.

“God’s promises have never failed yet.”

{Perhaps Lynn is related to Pastor Danny Nalliah, who believes that only God controls the climate and that Victoria’s Black Saturday bushfires, which killed more than 170 people, were God’s punishment for Victoria’s laws allowing abortion.(!)}

 

On the other hand:

“We have caused a climate emergency that gravely threatens nature and life itself, including our own,”  said Pope Francis in a written message for Sunday’s World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation.

“Our prayers and appeals are directed first at raising the awareness of political and civil leaders,” he said, adding that governments should “renew commitments decisive for directing the planet towards life, not death”.

He listed constant pollution, continued use of fossil fuels, intensive agricultural exploitation and deforestation as being among the man-made causes of global warming and said the Amazon, where fires are raging, is “gravely threatened”.

“Now is the time to abandon our dependence on fossil fuels and move, quickly and decisively, towards forms of clean energy and a sustainable and circular economy,” said Pope Francis.

Other phenomena, such as the melting of glaciers and the presence of plastic and microplastics in the oceans “testify to the urgent need for interventions that can no longer be postponed,” he said.

“Egoism and self-interest have turned creation, a place of encounter and sharing, into an arena of competition and conflict,” he said.

 

In an open letter to government, more than 150 Australian religious leaders have called on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to acknowledge the world faces a climate emergency.  “We call on you to show true moral leadership,” the letter says.

Signatories to the letter include bishops, rabbis, theologians, the grand mufti of Australia and the heads of the Uniting Church, the Federation of Australian Buddhist Councils, Muslims Australia and the National Council of Churches.

“Despite the differences in our faith, we all regard addressing the climate emergency as our shared moral challenge. We stand together for our common home, the Earth,” the letter says.

 

The Dalai Lama says: “Humanity faces an environmental crisis so critical that our survival on earth is in peril. Yet we have another even more urgent problem: most of us go on living as though nothing out of the ordinary is happening. What is wrong with us?”

 

Conservative national newspaper The Australian set the tone for anti-Thunberg sentiment with a front page that screamed: “Deciphering Greta’s gobful.”

President Trump: “When will our country stop wasting money on global warming and so many other truly STUPID things and begin to focus on lower taxes?”

Ex-footballer Sam Newman: “This annoying little brat addressed the UN on the so-called climate crisis. Who let this shit have a platform?”

Tim Blair: Thunberg is a “teen climate queen” who had delivered “a crazy, absurd and melodramatic speech”.

 

So, what do we make of Rodney Lynn and the like? He is, and he is happy to be, ignorant and a bully, as the others are.

 

 

President of the American College of Surgeons, Dr Ronald Maier, says:

” As anthropologist Margaret Mead said, ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.’

“The world needs you to embrace your role as a moral leader in society—a moral leader who inspires us to reflect our values in our words and actions and who leads by example. Whether you have a special calling for a social mission to work in rural areas or to treat poor and low-income populations, our profession requires us to fight to achieve equity for the most vulnerable among us. Being a moral leader means standing up for truth, reason, and science. It means not being afraid to stand up for your principles or hold elected leaders accountable for meeting the needs and the values of our communities. We’ve been told that we should shy away from political controversy. But your obligation from today onward is to stand up for the vulnerable and the voiceless.”

There is a stark and daming divergence between what people like Maier stand for, and the pig-people, with their vicious rants and sullen ignorance. What is wrong with us? the Dalai Lama asks. The answer is that the pig-people control the world, and ‘truth, reason, and science’ does not serve the ultimately  internecine self-interest of the pig-people.