Listen To Your Elders

grandad — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

comments on

grandad — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Carbon emissions trading system

grandad — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I have just read the Heralds report on the Garnott system, and I think that it seems to miss the point of who should pay for these drastic but essential steps to try to save the future of the environment for future generations

Cost of carbon emmissions

grandad — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

About

grandad — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 19:08:03 +0000

born 1930 interested in applying my life experience to view the present day politics, growth of the world religions and what appears to be a willingness to substitute dollars for quality of life. ranting gernerally

introduction

grandad — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 04:30:17 +0000

I presently feel that the world is going dangerously towards the far right wing approaching fascism similar to Europe in the 30's and 40's and the use of fears caused by fanatical religious fundamentalists are being used by the pseudo democratic governments to take away basic rights and liberties. I believe that the only way to obtain a true free democracy is to have absolutely secular public education, as wide a range of views as possible with the full right to express these views and to criticize the various so called experts that speak so authoritively about matters that often haven't a black and white solution and to have an independant legal system free of political control. Secular education tends to limit the teaching of fanatical hatred and terrorist activities, the right to hold different views and to criticise tends to keep development of new ideas and progress towards a state of human dignity and freedom and an independant judiciary protects the people against excesses of over self righteous governments.

political history 1930 to 1945

grandad — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 09:53:27 +0000

I can remember the period of the Hitler regime in Germany being of that age and from Europe. Hitler was a monster that conned the people of Germany into first thinking that they were a master race and that they had to protect their superiority from contamination from minority groups such as Jews and Gypsies. This enabled him to introduce a policy which would persecute this unpopular group. To improve the ability to arrest and torture these people he introduced a policy whereby the secret police and gestapo could arrest and hold people without charge and if anyone questioned the arrest they also could be arrested and tortured. The next step was to ensure that education was of a rote nature which taught and didn't allow question. All books that encouraged thought were burnt and history was adjusted to suit the nazi line. Trade unions were suppressed and workers were made to work for the good of the country, as determined by Hitler. Wars were taken up with countries that had no chance of defending themselves against the by now mighty army of Germany. News was censored and justice was perverted. However, Hitler did bring about an economic boom for the while that things were going well. Patriotism was replace by saluting of flags and jingoistic nationalism. If you were to ask the average Australian today if he would welcome a Hitler regeme here in Australia he would laugh at you and think that you were mad. However, I would suggest that they think again because if one looks closely at the things that Hitler did, the Howard government has followed pretty closely in the same path. As in Germany, the industrialists thought that Hitler was the bees neez but it was the ordinary workers that paid the price for the Hitler excesses. I'm afraid that we here may have to suffer the same humiliation.

citizenship tests

grandad — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 05:00:44 +0000

This must be a sick joke, to talk about understanding the Australian values of Mateship, Justice, Equality, Right to Work etc. when it is obvious that this Howard government doesn't understand the meaning of any of these values. The latest industrial relations legislation ensures that mateship is second to financial gain, justice depends on whether you are the boss or a worker, and the right to work depends on signing away all the benefits and rights obtained by my, and earlier, generations. I can't understand how it is that we Australians, that are supposed to be so sceptical of politicians, will accept all the jingoistic nationalism put out by this government and don't question how it actually is destroying all the features that we are rightly proud of, i.e. our laid back easy going friendly acceptance of others. I would remind you that a mastery of the English language and an ability to give the favoured answers to loaded questions does not guarantee good citizens. Many of our citizens originate from other countries and even after many years here are still not proficient in the English language; however, a great many of them have contributed to our country's success and many have fought for this country, good citizenship depends on performance - not talk or an ability to pass exams!

Denial of the Presumption of Innocence

grandad — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 06:12:08 +0000

Why is it that we now have a prime minister and an attorney general that have abandoned the right to a fair trial before being found guilty of a legal infringement. I was stunned when I heard these two senior politicians state that we couldn't do anything for David Hicks because he is technically not guilty of any crime and therefore cannot be tried and found guilty here in Australia, his own country. We know, because of the US High Court decision that the holding of Hicks is illegal, that he cannot be tried in the US and found guilty of any legal infringement. We also know that he hasn't committed any international legal crime so he cannot be tried in an international court. However, he can be tried in a Kangaroo court set up by that champion of freedom and civil rights, George Bush. Bush like Ruddock, has already stated that, even if Hicks is not found guilty against all odds, he will still not be released, so the whole exercise is a travesty of justice. I feel ashamed that we have allowed this to happen to fellow citizen! Not only have we allowed it to happen, we even have people and talk-back announcers condemning Hick and this is before he has even been charged. What a way to defend our freedom, I'm sure that it isn't what the Anzacs fought for!

industrial relations

grandad — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 09:38:34 +0000

How is it that Kevin Andrews thinks it so necessary to look after the interests of the Village Theatre complex which has millions of dollars when it is not necessary to reward a loyal employee of 20 years. An ordinary man devotes 20 years of his life to a company and then that company is under no obligation to see that he has a fair deal and a chance to continue his life in some degree of comfort as a reward for his service. This is from a politician that at the end of his political career, soon we hope, will want a pension of several thousands of dollars a year for the rest of his miserable life. I still can't understand how ordinary working people can vote into power these people that have never done a day of labour in their life and are prepared to screw down anyone that does have to work for a living. This man claims to be a believer in the teachings of Jesus but hasn't any understanding of the meaning of charity or compassion, the man, like most of his coleagues, is a monster.

why do we finance private education from the public purse?

grandad — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 10:13:42 +0000

It seems to me that it is both immoral and dangerous to keep financing private education from the public purse because it is from these sources of learning that we get the extremist views of the terrorists and racists. I object to my taxes being used to spread the mumbo-jumbo of the religions which is basically a way to ensure that the religions maintain their control of the masses. I pay my taxes to try to spread the knowledge of the sciences and the arts and not belief in man made gods. I can understand how gods were first introduced into the system to answer the questions that were beyond the knowledge of the early days. However, it seems rather stupid these days to believe that the earth is only 6 thousand years old, and all the other stories of the various religious books of wisdom. Unfortunately, it would appear that the gods which were first introduced to answer questions beyond the knowledge of the day are now used to override the teachings of the prophets so that the leaders of the religions can now say, for example, that it is wrong to kill, unless it is a jew or a muslim or a christian etc. The prophets never put provisos on the teachings, it was, "thou shalt not kill" period. I think that it would be better if people were to acknowledge the teachings of the Buddha which included the non acceptance of information blindly. Even his own teachings were open to question, blind acceptance is a denial of the power of the human intelligence which is the only thing which seperates us from the other animals. Secular education is the only way forward to national security and cohesion between the peoples of the country and the world.

australia day

grandad — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 05:01:17 +0000

It appears to me that at the coming australia day celebrations we should spare a thought for that other australian citizen that we have seemingly abandoned and left to rot in a US concentration camp. We could also have cause to mourn the passing of our independence to become a "whipping boy" for the US administration , without even having the status of statehood or even colony, we just do as we are told even if it is illegal as in the case of Guantanamo Bay prison camp and the invasion of Iraq. Australia day has become a time when the well heeled can show off their wealth, but I'm thinking that we have less to be proud of as a nation, having abandoned our principles and belief in fair play and a fair go for every citizen.

Where is the law?

grandad — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 10:50:26 +0000

This news is frightening in that it seems to indicate that Howard and Bush have no interest in maintaining the law and just want to charge these people in Guantanamo Bay with something and have a life sentence brought down as an end to these cases. There is not even a pretence of there being any presumption of innocence until found guilty nor any relationship to any recognised law covering the particular circumstances. Infact every impedement seems to have been put in the way of the defence to ensure that it can't obtain a fair trial. I'm sure that future generations of both Americans and Australians will feel nothing but shame for the way in which our two governments have dealt with these matters.

Hicks needs a fair process

grandad — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 02:39:16 +0000

How can Howard talk about Hicks having a fair process when he still is letting it be known that he considers Hicks guilty even now before he has been officially charged. For Hicks to have a fair trial it is first necessary for any such trial to be held in a proper court where the laws and rules of law are respected and apply to all persons. This court that Howard is prepared to accept is a court set up specifically to find Hicks, and the others being held, guilty of something and then being sentenced to life imprisonment. It has nothing to do with justice as recognised in any of the civilized countries. Hicks may well have trained in terrorism etc but if the civilized world is to protect it's standards of justice and libery, it is essential to ensure that Hicks is, firstly charged with a proper crime, and then to ensure that he is given a fair trial in a properly constituted court of law. I feel that there is more at stake here than Hicks innocence or guilt, at stake is the whole credibility of the legal systems of the USA and Australia. To date the outlook is pretty sad for the future of our justice systems.

Keep our country for ourselves

grandad — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 10:04:01 +0000

Whether Peter Garrett changed his mind is not the issue, the issue is why do our Australian politicians want to cede parts of our nation to foreign countries? We should adopt the US constitution requirement that bans any state or the federal government ceding any part of the US to another country. We should learn from history and understand that there would not be too many Cubans that think that it was a good idea to let the US have soveriegn power over so much of their country. It is obvious that the US isn't using their control to advance the welfare or dignity of the Cuban population today. Wake up Australians, keep our country for ourselves!

Training future foes!

grandad — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 10:44:48 +0000

When will politicians realise that they train forces of other countries at their peril. Back in the 30's the British navy trained and help build the Japanese navy. The CIA trained and built up the forces of al Qaeda and the Taliban. I wonder if the training of the Iraq armed forces will have the same successful outcome as did these other examples of stupidity? Why would a country spend all that time and money and young lives to defeat the armed forces of another country only to then build up the forces of the defeated country? Only a politician could see the reasoning behind such a farce. If they really had the interests of the Iraqis at heart they firstly wouldn't have attacked them and now they have done the dirty deed they should spend their money trying to reestablish the infrastructure of Iraq. The Iraqis are probably fed up with the fighting and killing and would rather have an honest and just system of law and law enforcement which doesn't mean having armed troops running around shooting and kicking in doors etc. It's about time that the world admitted that Iraq is in civil war and the only people that can settle that is the Iraqis themselves and it will most likely follow the pattern of other civil wars and involve a lot of blood letting and suffering before the leaders come to their senses. The presence of foreign troops would be like a red rag to a bull and they will always be to blame for the trouble and will accomplish nothing.

incentive payments for teachers or no funding?

grandad — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 10:42:28 +0000

I have 3 children, 7 grandchildren and 3 ( nearly 4 greatgrandchildren ). The children and grandchildren have all gone to public schools and obtained different levels of attainment ranging from top professionals to simple passes in HSC. I presume that they all had the same level of teachers and so the different level of attainment wasn't due so much to the teacher's skills as it was to the students desire for success and the drive and encouragement obtained from the parents. If I look at the students in any one class that my offspring attended, though they all had the same teacher at any one time they didn't all obtain the same academic levels. So in any one class, if I look back, there are students that ended up ranging from doctors, teachers, engineers, etc down to in some less fortunate cases, criminals. Which level obtained do we reward the teacher for? It seems to me that it would be more appropriate to grade the parents of students, this is where the motivation springs from. Nowdays parents seem to want the teachers to train the children in self discipline, morality, social responsibility etc, and also to have their little Johnny or Mary end up as top scholars. It is not a viable proposition, our teachers should be able to teach their students to think for themselves and learn the subjects set. The other things are for the parents to teach outside the school gates. If we had more parents that instead of buying boats and other luxuries (supposedly for the children but really to satisfy their own egos) that would sit down for only a half hour or so a night with their children and try to teach manners etc as well as to help with their home work, then we may have a better education system. As for the threat to cut off finances if the state school teachers don't comply with this arrogant education minister's edict, she should realise that the money she is talking about is our money and we have paid it in not for her to obtain political advantage but to finance a decent education system. If she has a logical argument it should more likely follow the line of testing all future parents for their suitability and perhaps mark them out of 100 and adjust their income accordingly!

Hicks inevitable sentence and time served in Australia

grandad — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 09:48:53 +0000

I note that under questioning, Mr Rudd was asked if he would squash any conviction if Hicks was returned to Australia to serve out his sentence, his response was interesting in that it gave Mr Howard a chance to comment on the credibility of the Atorney General. Mr Rudd responded "he would take advice from the attorney-general's department. "That's the proper thing to do and that is precisely how I would act," ". A good answer but it has one shortcoming as observed by Mr Howard. Mr Howard noted that "the response was not good enough.", and I must agree with him. If Rudd is faced with an Attorney General as ignorant of the Australian law and the application of the presumption of innocence and correct gathering of evidence, as Mr Howard has, then Mr Rudd's cause is lost. This farce has gone on long enough, Hicks is doomed to get a Life Sentence, even if the US has to eventually charge him with jay walking, so why can't the Australian people start to enact the much vaunted " Australian Mateship " and act to protect a fellow citizen from a great injustice and have him returned to face a fair trial here where the rule of law applys, we hope.

what use is an Australian Passport?

grandad — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 11:22:49 +0000

Government lawyer, Solicitor-General David Bennett, QC, told the court a general obligation for the Federal Government to protect citizens abroad "is simply something that the law has never recognised". This seems a strange claim to make since we Australians have been paying big bucks to obtain Australian Passports for our security when travelling abroad, why if our Government has no obligation to afford us protection from wrongfull incarceration or other infringements of our safety It appears to me, that we should not only have stayed with a foreign head of state but have also returned to being part of the British Empire. At least with a British Passport, one has some protection when travelling as is proved by the fact that there are no British detainees in Guantanamo Bay

Hicksville by Ackerman

grandad — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 13:28:18 +0000

Irecently read a bit of rubbish by Ackerman stating that David Hicks is guilty of all sorts of heinous crimes, however, at that time Hicks hadn't been even charged with any crime so how he could be judged guilty and of what is beyond me. Piers also likened the trial of Hicks to the trials of Nazi war criminals after the 2nd world war, this if of course even more stupid a claim. I am old enough to have been part of the Second World War and if Piers wants to see the difference between the Hicks trial and the war trials he should look at records of Belsen and other concentration camps, there is no need there to torture witnesses to talk up and the evidence of the crime is plain to see. Piers should also note that it wasn't the victims of the concentration camps that were on trial but the prison guards and camp commanders. A similar trial should be arranged for the Guantanamo Bay staff, I'm sure that they weren't tucking Hicks in every night for the past 5 years. Undoubtedly, Hicks was silly as a young man but there is no hard evidence that he actually got to even fire a shot in anger and definitely no evidence that he killed anyone during his stay in the war zone. None of these things are really the nub of the matter, the whole point is that Hicks hasn't been represented as an Australian citizen by the Howard government, even though Howard, Ruddock and Downer have all appeared in public and said that Hicks can't be brought home to face trial because he has committed no crime!! If these government people say Hicks has done no crime, how did Piers come up with his guilty verdict? I want to see us return to a sovereign country where we maintain our codes of justice and fair play even in the face of a strong ally. A good friend isn't as Howard seems to think, a party the always gives an answer that they think the other party wants to hear. A really good friend is one that gives an honest opinion regardless as to it's popularity.

In war is the enemy a criminal or just an enemy?

grandad — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 09:23:31 +0000

I read that Hicks is to be charged with opposing the US army in Afghanistan, is it now a crime in war to fight for a cause which opposes US government's aggressive intentions? What about all the Germans, Italians, Vietnamese, Koreans, etc that have fought against the US army, could the US now rope them in and confine them in a concentration camp, like Guantanamo Bay and try them for daring to oppose the US army? It is obvious that the US under the direction of Bush is only interested in finding Hicks guilty of something, just to make it appear that the US is superior to all and needs to pay no heed to international law or justice. Unfortunately, we have a gutless government which is only interested in dancing to Bush's tune and not to defend the rights of our citizens. I fail to see how Hicks can possibly maintain any sense of reality or hope for a future when he faces such an apparently all mighty and soul destroying persecution by governments which should be protecting all the worlds citizens from injustice rather than concentrating so much evil force against one individual!

God, life after death and everlasting life to eternity

grandad — Sun, 13 May 2007 11:45:32 +0000

These subjects interest me in that they seem to me to be all so far fetched as to be beyond belief.

Firstly, if one accepts that the latest astrological observations are factual and that the theory of evolution is the only theory, which stands up to any sort of scrutiny, then it is impossible to believe in divine creation and the interference in life of a divine entity.

I can understand why so many people like to believe that they will have a life after death, especially when they often have such a rough trot in this life. However; life for all creatures is a matter of reacting to the various stimuli that we are faced with from day to day, these experiences make us what we are and are really the very essence of life. We are faced with such things as love, hate, ambition, satisfaction, happiness and sadness and all these things are part of living, and they are what make those that believe wish to live after death in the hope that the second time around they will get only the good things that they missed out on the first time around. One can’t imagine there being procreation in the after life so what the hell are all these second rounders going to do, to live again they will have to go through all the experiences of their first innings without the consolation of eventually dying. Doesn’t sound such an attractive outlook to me and I’m old enough to be approaching the time for this ultimate event.

Finally, the matter of eternal life, this is a horrific thought, eternity is forever, such a state is impossible to imagine. If one has eternal life then it means that one can’t die so we don’t need to breath, eat, sleep, exercise, and copulate. Taking it to its extreme we wouldn’t need a body so we would really be extinct which is dead!

Some talk of inheriting the earth but the life of the earth is finite as we know so, what happens when the earth is destroyed and taking it further, what happens when the solar system is destroyed, as we are informed it will be.

Some talk of going to heaven but where is that? We have looked some 2 billion light years into space and found only more rocks and space, so heaven must be further away than 2 billion light years. If this is the case and people saw their favourite prophet rising into heaven, it means that the prophet would have been rising at well below the speed of light so he wouldn’t probably be outside the influence of our solar system yet. As to getting to the ultimate heaven and back, the earth wouldn’t be around by the time of the return.

To me it is so stupid to worry so much about an after life when there is so much that we can do to make the life for future inhabitants of the earth so much better and all we do is waste the time we have available to us trying to amass fortunes and possessions which when we die will be squandered away by after generations.

Why can’t we try to forget all the evils of the religions and concentrate on trying to give a good life to as many peoples of the world as possible? I’m sure that if the prophets could see the outcomes of the preachings, they would regret having ever preached. They mainly preached love and co-existence yet the heads of the various religions can justify murder, suppression, torture etc., all in the name of some man made god, we have progressed but have failed to overcome our basic fears and instincts.

Just rambling

grandad — Tue, 29 May 2007 11:58:57 +0000

I have observed that there are two ways of living life, one is positive and the other is negative.

Positive people are resilient and bounce back whereas the negative people never win.

To be positive one has to have a few essential characteristics, one is to have hope, the other is to not expect too much from life and be pleased when things go well.

Negative people seem to have no hope, and even if things go well they tend to think that it is no more than they deserve and don’t appreciate their good fortune.

I’m aware that it is easy to say be hopeful but it seems that some are and some aren’t, for example, in situations of great stress such as concentration camps or sickness and the like, even though there may be many that are in similar conditions, some will be hopeful and look forward relief and others will give up almost immediately and go into depression. If relief comes, the positive ones will be grateful and the negative ones will think that it is as it should be.

I wonder if it is the case that positive people enjoy life more whereas negative people believe that they are entitled to things regardless of effort. Negative people also seem to be often picked on and bullied.

I also wonder if these characteristics are genetic or acquired through environmental events?

pseudo terrorism threat

grandad — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 12:13:57 +0000

I am surprised and rather disgusted by the lack of courage shown by my fellow Australians. As a young man in Europe in the 2nd world war I saw places like London, Coventry, Berlin, Dresden, Starlingrad, etc bombed for nights, even months on end and the populations of these places not only didn't surrender under this duress but actually developed a stubborn defiance towards their aggressors, they certainly didn't feel continuous fear for their lives although they were aware that they could be killed any day or night. Now, here I observe that the Howard government has managed to instill a fear of a terrorist threat such that they have been able to confiscate a great number of rights, freedoms and dignities from us on the pretext that they will provide us with greater protection from this terrible terrorist threat. What a load of bollocks. There is a far greater threat to our lives from road rage, home invasion, accidents in the home,etc, in fact, death from a terrorist act is so remote as to be of little consequence. I am not saying that the possibility of a terrorist attack doesn't exist, but I'm sure that blundering around raiding homes in the middle of the night and arresting all and sundry will in no way improve my safety. I would feel safer if the government were to encourage the population to be vigilant and be aware that these terrorist organisations exist and are a danger to our way of life. During the war years it wasn't necessary to give up our freedoms, however, people were encouraged to report any activities or strangers in the area which they noticed. The police would then discreetly investigate these reports and take appropriate action. I'm not sure, but I never noticed the police jumping in and frightening off any suspect or otherwise intimidating the innocent. However, I do know that they apprehended a number of bailed out enemy pilots and the like as a result of these observations by the public. Unfortunately, the fear campaign has now been adopted by the State Labor governments and even more of our liberties are being eroded. The problem with all this generation of fear to take away our liberty is that it will become a part of the law of the land and we will have to have a revolution to get even some of our rights back. I wish that my fellow Australians would start to realize that to give up their freedom and rights is to surrender, these are the very things that make our country worth fighting for and to give them up is to submit to terrorism be it home grown or foreign in origin. What matters what or who runs this country if we have no rights and freedoms, we are then of no real importance, just fodder for working or fighting.

Howard's new brand of fairness and nationalism

grandad — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 11:52:27 +0000

I would refer to the latest Howard statement setting out his plans for our future if we are stupid enough to re-elect his government at the next election. He opens the statement expressing a desire to "press on with aspiration and fairness", a most honourable aim but I fear that he isn't aware of how fairness works. To obtain fairness there must be a level playing field and the new Industrial laws do every thing possible to destroy a level playing field and create one sided competition. Howard claims to be a new system in the work force; however, I'm old enough to remember that when I first started work we had much the same situation and I believe that this was the catalyst that lead to the formation of the strong Trade Unions. Because the workers had been on the receiving end for so long, when the unions were formed they became very confrontational which in turn lead to the industrial problems of the 60's and 70's. If Howard wasn't so dogmatic in his desire to put the workers in their place, he would be wise enough to realize that a combined management/workforce is the only real way to go and obtain the fairness he expresses the desire to obtain. In the second paragraph, Howard talks of "the rising tide of prosperity lifting all boats" and balancing the climatic problems. I presume that the reference to "lifting all boats "is intended to indicate that all the boats would lift equally i.e. we would all share in the national wealth fairly, if not equally. Again you couldn't argue with this ambition; however, in the last ten years of the Howard government, the gap between the rich and the poor has widened and the state education system has been almost decimated. Money has been invested in the private religious schools, but this does nothing to encourage advancement of our democracy. Religious education is the last thing we want to unite our nation, secular education which teaches facts not fiction and faith, is the only way forward in a multinational/religion population. As to climate control, well for the first nine years of the Howard government it denied that global warming even existed and now that it has been forced to accept that global warming is a fact, it is only prepared to tackle the problem if it doesn't jeopardize the economy. Howard hasn't yet realized that the global warming is happening as a consequence of our prosperity and economic success, which, would indicate to any fool, that the only way to minimise, and turn back the trend of warming, is to reduce the race for more money, or to change the way in which that race is managed. The problem of changing the manufacturing methods to suit changes in conditions, is not a new one and has been done before, e.g. when the industrial revolution came in and we got the automobile and steam train, the black smiths as a trade suffered a set back. However, eventually, the black smiths all became mechanics and from too many smiths it became not enough mechanics. I'm sure that the change to clean power generation will be accomplished and some will have to change their profession but in the long run, we will end up with a shortage of skilled staff in the new processes. Howard then turns his attention to our national security and here he has been a disaster. The invasion of Iraq did more to give credibility to the terrorist movements than they would have believed possible, in fact they must have blessed the stupidity of the Bush, Blair, Howard alliance. Now we are involved in an illegal war with no obvious way out without admitting to the error of our first having invaded. Furthermore, because we have done so much damage in Iraq and caused so many casualties, we are obliged now to do what we can to put that country back on a level footing. Not an easy job when the country is divided by such strong sectarian beliefs. As for internal security, again the Howard government hasn't moved beyond the Hitler level of thinking. Masses of jack booted well armed stormtroopers and police just do not stop terror activities. Hitler gave the SS and the Gestapo unlimited powers, they could wipe out whole villages if they thought that they were involved in anti German activities. But the people that were involved in the terror (then known as patriots), were not intimidated and were still able to successfully carry out their anti German activities. By making us all fearful and afraid of our own shadows, the security of the nation is diminished. What we need is a vibrant population which is alert and watchful. I can remember that in the 2nd world war, the population didn't quiver in fear but got out and worked towards victory. Perhaps Howard should try to encourage people rather than frighten them. Unfortunately, the past ten years of lies and suppression of our civil liberties, has made me very sceptical of anything that Howard says. His behaviour as Prime Minister isn't what I'd call an uplifting period, there is more money around and whenever the government talks of its success it means that it has a budget surplus. It forgets to mention that the schools, universities, hospitals are all just about busted and the aboriginal affairs are a disgrace and shows that Howard hasn't improved his opinion of aborigines since his opposition to Marbo! Furthermore, he talks of security but our transport infrastructure is just about on its last legs. If we want to move our new tanks from Victoria to the Northern Territory, they would have to go by boat, the roads and rail facilities just couldn't bear the loads Actually, I reckon that the Howard years have been a time of regression and rundown and eventually all that budget surplus will have to be spent, plus more, to re-establish all the run down services that have occurred during this disasterous period.

Costello rates ecomomy before morality, good for us?

grandad — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 11:31:02 +0000

It would appear that Mr Costello is once again prepared to put the profits of industry before the interests of the good reputation of the nation; I refer to the introduction of Trade Practices Amendment (Small Business Protection) Bill 2007. With the application of this bill, if one objects to a company using slave labour,or any other immoral practices, to make a profit, and as a consequence of that objection the company loses money, it is possible for that company to sue you for all you've got and still not give up the use of the practice used to make the profit.. A truly Christian attitude towards economics and morality. Thank goodness that we have a good Christian government, it is to be hoped that they are re-elected so that they can press ahead with their corruption of all that was so proudly proclaimed as Australian in the interest of sound economic management!

Sydney APEC-ed comment

grandad — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 10:24:09 +0000

It was interesting to read Elizabeth Farrelly's article on Sydney has been APEC-ed. It was encouraging to hear that someone else had noted with alarm the copycat gestapo strutting around Sydney intimidating the citizens and taking over our city. It is worth noting that the gestapo in occupied Europe had unrestrained power to take what ever action they considered necessary to stop the terrorist ( freedom fighter in those days ), they even wiped out whole villages to obtain their ends all to no avail. They would wipe out a village and next week another train would be blown up or convoy attacked, terror tactics will not stop terrorist. However, such tactics seem to intimidate law abiding citizens as witnessed by the cowering of the Australian public since the world politicians have used 9/11 to induce unreasonable fear into their people. Howard and Ruddock are the main offenders but I fear that a change of government won't bring about a restoration of our freedoms and liberties.

the ignored cause of global warming and pollution

grandad — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 10:19:12 +0000

I recently read two articles on the availability of housing and town planning to meet future needs. These articles were very interesting and the comments from readers were also very informative; however, there was no attempt to address the real reason for the existing and ever expanding problem. The articles were a Greens blog and a blog in The Age which were mainly based on the provision of housing into the future. When reading these articles I began to wonder if any one had thought about why we were in such dire straights regarding over crowding of our cities and pollution every where and global warming. To me the answer is quite straight forward, we have assumed a " better than you attitude " towards all other creatures and life forms on this planet whereas we are really just another animal that has to live within the confines and parameters set by our natural environment. We are prepared to accept that other animal forms can over breed and destroy their environment but we seem to think that we can keep on breeding without any regard to our effect on the environment for, not only ourselves but for all other life forms. We are prepared to cull other creatures that we consider are over breeding but we don't apply the same logic to our own over breeding I notice that the Greens talk of halving the carbon output of each person but if one thinks about this it is only a temporary solution. If one of the many godheads we have created, could perform a miracle and halve the output of every individual tomorrow, the pollution would be back to todays figure in 50 years because of the doubling of the population and there will also then be the need for added space to accommodate the extra population. Nature will solve this problem in its own way, we will eventually have a cull to satisfy the ambitions of our political and religious leaders but, with the destructive powers of todays weaponry, this could well be an act of overkill which would wipe out all human and possibly all other life forms. Accordingly, I think it would be better to devise a more acceptable means of population control. If we could negate the powers of the various religions we should be able to accept that death isn't a punishment and is really a part of life which enables life to update and refresh itself. Once we accept this fact, we can then look at controlling life and accepting that some people wish to die, others don't wish to breed, other life forms are born monsters and should not be kept alive to satisfy the selfish desires of some frustrated woman rather than being allowed to die as would be the way of nature. There are many ways in which the population could be humanely regulated. Furthermore, not all women want to devote their lives to children and raising families so they should be discouraged from just having babies at a late time of life to be able to say they are a "full woman". Being a mother is actually a full time and very worthwhile station in life. Rather than having part time mothers that farm out their offspring we should encourage those women that really lust for motherhood, and would devote their whole waking hours to their children, to have children. As we know, in the present social system, those people that have lots of children are usually hard pressed to give those children the necessities of life. The system should be changed to ensure that good and willing parents are supported and are in a position to raise the future generation to the best available standards. And at the end of the parenting period, there should be a national pension scheme for these people to enable them to retire and enjoy all the life pleasures enjoyed by the career population. I'm sure that if we could rid ourselves of all these gods and religions, we could devise a system whereby we could stabilize the world population at a level that would enable us to make full use of all the beauties of this world without destroying it and also live in peace. The latter would I think, require men to give up their sense of being the top dog, and there would have to be an acceptance of the fact that sex and sexuality are not the criteria by which you can make reasonable, logical and long-term decisions. I wonder if we will ever generally develop a brain that appreciates that what is in our best interests isn't always in the best interest of the future generations and others?

Comments on Interview with Hofstadter which relates to the development of AI

grandad — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:54:38 +0000

My grandson advised me that he thought that this this interview with Hofstadte was interesting and that I should read it, which I did and then comment back to him as set out below. I was quite flattered and surprised to have my grandson recommend that I should put my comments out as a blog, my comments are really my own thoughts derived from a long experience of life but not a really good education. compared with what is available today. Here is my email with my thoughts on the interview - Well I read the artical and some of it was in line with my thinking, without the advantage of the cogitations of these great minds, but a lot of it I thought was rather pointless! I explain as set out hereunder. 1/ I could find nowhere in the interview where the symbol AI is defined? Possibly this is from a lack of my knowledge of modern things. 2/ I have always thought that I'd live on only from my reactions to other people during my life time. I suppose one could also put my genetic make-up in this category but the effect of my genes is lessened with each generation. As expressed before, I have never been able to accept the claim to everlasting life having the one form throughout. 3/ What is the point of being able to reproduce the brain operation of an individual as a piece of soft wear? The circuitry of the brain is changing continuously with the experiences of the associated body, so what is the use of the electronic imaging obtained if it isn't associated with the same body. Do they propose to take out the soft tissue of the brain and replace it with a chip? I get the impression that these people are conning pseudo intellectuals into thinking a lot about this as though it were deep and important science whereas it is just ravings of misguided scientists that have been sucked in by reading too much science fiction in their youth. At no point do they explain how they will experience everlasting life from having this chip, imaging their brain function, stuck away in someones drawer after they themselves have died? There is absolutely no good reason in imaging brain functions as a means of obtaining everlasting life since the brain in a bottle isn't my idea of life. 4/ All these deliberations seem to have missed the point that the environment around us is always changing and the effects of the changes of the environment on our bodies has been the basis for the evolution of our brains. If there is no body housing this brain, then how will it react to external changes. If this electronic brain is housed in a robotic body that will experience environmental changes the new requirements of the robotic body will be not the same as our soft tissue bodies? 5/ We are well aware that the universe is continuously changing and that the life of the solar system is finite so it would appear far more intelligent for these great thinkers to think about how they can understand the working of the brain we have and how mental illnesses can be cured and brain defects corrected, rather than getting their knickers in a knot over saving their wishy-washy deep thoughts onto hard drive? The comments of the readers of the interview really prove to me that these people are really up themselves ( excuse the expression ), although a couple of the comments did seem to wish to say they thought that the whole thing was rubbish. I suppose they were frightened of appearing less than brilliant if they dared to question such a great thinker! The great interlectual who made the comment that the interviewee was one of the 100 greatest mind of our time was talking absolute rubbish! What had the interviewee accomplished of such great significance, his best seller was no Shakespeare or even an Enid Blyton! I feel sure that I must have missed something here because it seems implausible that some one of obvious ability can spend so much time in deep thought about something of so little consequence, surely this Hofstadter has made his reputation doing something of relevance to life? As for the other authers mentioned such as Ray Kurzweil, they seem to be also wasting time on useless experimentation which has no practical application. I agree with you that the interview was interesting but I don't think that we ended up with the same appreciation of the genius of the persons involved in the interview! These were the ravings to which my grandson said publish my thoughts with suggestions of things that I had not seemingly taken into account in my rantings, his reply is set out hereunder-

AI = Artificial Intelligence. AI is "achieved" when it passes the Turing
test - that is where it can have a conversation with a person without the
person knowing that it is a machine.

As for 3/ I believe that's what the guy being interviewed is saying -
transferal of mind to computer is the destruction of mankind itself.

These are postulations and thoughts, predictions for what the future might
hold. You can never predict the social ramifications, can you imagine what
the church would say if all of a sudden you could throw away your body when
you got old and live eternally on the internet?

As for 4/ Maybe the whole POINT of transfering conciousness to a robot or
computer entity is to see what it's like? If you've experienced life in your
soft tissue body for the last 80 years, maybe you'd like to know what it's
like to be a robot. There would be certain advantages which our soft bodies
can not provide (diving, going into outerspace, extreme heat/cold, seeing in
different spectrums (how pretty would that be!) etc)

I don't think you give sci-fi writers enough cred. These people shape our
world. I do not kid you. Submarines were written about before they were
developed. Space ships, space stations, aliens, AI, computers - all from
sci-fi. Sure, a lot of it doesn't come to pass, but a lot of scientists are
sci-fi readers, "Imagination is more powerful than knowledge" (albert
einstein).

And anyway, here you are, with a pace maker, telling me whats the point of
transferring your conciousness to a computer - what happens when they
replace your arm with a bionic one, then the other, then both your legs. At
what point is it different to having your conciousness transferred to a
computer? At what point do you say: "No, if I got that replaced by a
mechanical bit then I would no longer be human" ? So long as you could
experience the world around you, maybe even MORE richly than when you were a
lump of meat, you'd say you were human because of your thoughts.

I don't think thinking about tech is a waste of time and unproductive,
shaping future ideas is a hell of a lot easier than changing ingrained ones,
that's why religions teach children.

An interesting read anyway.

Here's a good philosophical question for you - Say they invented
teleportation where all of your molecules are recreated at the other end,
exact image, thoughts and all, and then your original body is destroyed.
Then one day there is a malfunction, and the original body isn't destroyed.
Is it murder to then kill that living breathing entity? To them they're
alive, they're not connected to this other person, albeit an exact copy.

To my Grandsons memo I commented as follows- I'm pleased that you found my comments interesting, I was afraid that you would dismiss them as the rantings of a doddering old fool! On reading your comments I found out the meaning of AI, thanks. It also gave me second thoughts about the gains from having my intelligence transferred to a robbot. Imagine the wonder of being able to set out on a couple of light years trip and actually get there without having aged, although I may have rusted up a bit! I realized that the actual interviewee was not really accepting the concept of having his brain functions transferred to a chip and getting everlasting life, I was just surprised that there were so many people that were involved in what seems to be an exercise that offers no actual resolution. With regard to your ethical problem, if teleporting takes place and the two bodies end up co existing, then they are from that point onward two identities. I think this way because I have always thought that this idea of cloning to provide spare parts is absolutely ridiculous. If you cloned me and then let my clone live until I wanted the spare part; then the clone would develop as I had and, since I've always been a selfish bugger, by the time I wanted my spare parts my clone would have developed to the extent that he would laugh as he watched me die! Well the same would apply to the two bodies, as soon as they exist separately, then they would experience different things which would develop their minds/brains differently so they would immediately start to form separate identities and be different people. Sounds like manufactured identical twins! I would pose you a question, what if the teleporting malfunctioned and both of the bodies ended up only partially complete, would the body that didn't initiate the teleporting be able to sue the other body for damages? If we ever decide that we are to continue our human knowledge as this planet dies, then the only solution is to pack all the human experiences into a hard shell body such as a robot and launch it off to some other space site which can support it. If it is a real hard body, it won't need oxygen but oil and rust inhibitors. However, to extend the human experience, the robot would have to carry the history of how the intelligence it has was developed, but what other planet would want to have our intelligence and experiences forced upon it? I really think that all our dreams are just that, and in the best interest of evolution, we will have to end when our planet ends. I don't like the idea of posting my thoughts as a blog because I think that they only seem to invite spam mail and any one else that reads them will not have your bias towards my ramblings. The last comment on this matter is as set out from my Grandson, and I now seem to be at an end to my immediate thoughts on this subject; however, it is certainly something that I have found a challenge to my consideration between the values of the past ages and modern thinking.

Someone here at work pointed out exactly what you did - the teleportation
thing is irrelevant, the point is that a clone was created. So it's not
teleportation per se, but cloning that could create scenarios like this. 

A sci-fi book I read had a "global consiousness" which was basically
someones brain uploaded to a computer. But the computer was shared by many.
That individuals conciousness stayed around whilst their children were
alive, and maybe their grand children, but eventually they grew detached and
just faded away into the "global conciousness". It was an interesting idea
anyway.

As for putting these on your blog - I really think you should. It doesn't
"invite" spam, they aren't people that read it and go "hey I'll spam that
up", it's a robot (heh!) that searches the entire web, finds sites that have
a "Post Comment" and then posts up a spam comment. The idea is that 1 out of
a million people will click the link or approve the post. So they spam out
10 million of those, and get a couple of clicks through. It's horrible and a
scourge on the internet, but don't worry, they reckon 50% of the traffic on
the internet is spam.

Carbon emmissions trading scheme

grandad — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:24:11 +0000

I have just read the Sydney Herald Garnott report and was struck by the seeming lack of understanding of how the scheme should be paid for and also the unforgiving nature of the problem and the consequences of not doing enough to limit its finality if we fail to meet the demands of a solution. if such a solution is still possible! We are always talking of the need to implement the user pays principle but it never seems to apply when it is the really rich and greedy that will be asked to pay. If we go back to primary school arithmetic we can easily work out how it is that the cost of any trading scheme will impact most on the less able to pay and this will have the least effect on the pollution problem. We all need a basic amount to survive which can be set at say, $300 per week, this will meet the food and yearly bills for a family of 4 say. I am not an expert so I don't have the exact figures, but let us assume that this is the case. Now this figure applies to any family to provide the basic living requirements and therefore any surplus is used to raise that living standard to incorporate more luxury items. Garnott talks of giving tax relief and social services to help the less able to afford more costs but this will not reduce the pollution and carbon use. A few dollars to the less well off will maybe help them to survive but it will not impress the rich by one iota so they will grumble but, simply go on using the resources with gay abandon! To really make people cut back it is necessary to make the onus on all more or less equal which means making the more well off feel the pain of the increased charges. I believe that to make the community equally share the burden of saving the planet, it is necessary to make the ones that do the most polluting pay the most for the clean-up. Going back to my original statement, it takes $300/week to survive so any one living on this basic standard will have a minimal effect in pollution. As we have the more affluent spending, they will be doing more polluting and when we get to the people with a real surplus of money spending their surplus on yachts, sporty cars, speed boats, international holidays etc, they are really doing a lot of polluting. Accordingly, it is only fair that the richer the people the more they pay towards the carbon emmissions trading scheme. When I was young after the end of the second world war in the UK we had taxation which was graded to make the ones that took most out of the country pay most back through taxation, top rate was 19s6d in the pound. Now we have got to the stage where the top income earners pay the least percentage of their income in tax and moan most if they have to pay more. At the same time they are often wasting the money on such things as transporting polo horses around the world for a game here and there. It seems to me that we are now faced with a global problem which could well see the end of all life on this planet and we can't now afford these greedy and selfish idiots that think that the destruction of the environment will only effect the poor and they will be able to buy their way out of the situation. If we fail to control the pollution, it will kill us all! I suggest that we again reconstitute a taxation system which makes the rich pay their way and feel the pain of survival. This is an almost impossible solution to this problem because these CEO's and the like are not really interested in anything but their own careless lifestyle so if Australia were to impose a more equitable tax system they would simply move off shore and continue to hasten the their own destruction together with the destruction of the rest of us! If we are really going to save the world we have to have international agreement to limit the greed of these executives and thee like so that if they give themselves $10000/week they pay a greater proportion of it back into the cost of keeping a viable environment. In the long term it is in their best interests to feel the pain like the rest of us! As I've said in previous posts, probably unread, the existence of the planet isn't really influenced one way or the other should life survive or fail, so it is up to us to do what we can to ensure that life goes on if we really want this to be the case!

Greenhouse effect and transformity relationship?

grandad — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 11:49:35 +0000

I recently came across a reference to transformity, a word that was new to me and which I couldn't locate in the Oxford Dictionary, as is my usual wont, I referred to my Grandson for an explanation. He referred me to an article by Sean Seefried. I have read the article by Sean and found it most interesting and easy to follow, I'm not able to comment on the actual figures used but the concept isn't surprising. However, I did find the article a little hard to relate to the immediate problem of global warming. If one acknowledges the transformity to obtain solar cells or wind turbines, it would indicate to me that we have to gamble that the extra dirty power must be used to produce the clean power as soon as possible no matter what. As the article points out, solar radiation is, to all intents and purposes, an infinite constant energy input to the earth. We can't use it up and we can't increase its input, nor can we stop it. The solid, dense energy sources laid down by the suns input over millions of years, has been discovered and used in a big way since the industrial revolution, and, unfortunately, use of these fossil fuels to produce power also releases the gases removed from the atmosphere when they were laid down. The release of these gases seems to be our main problem, I'm no expert but it appears to me that we are again producing the atmosphere required by the dinosaurs some millions of years ago, not too good for modern homosapians! If we are to reverse the production of the greenhouse gases in time to save life as we know it, I would suggest that we need to modify our use of power produced using dirty fuels. This could be done by making sure that the power was used to produce the clean power generators rather that the rubbish that we present produce. I wonder how much power is presently wasted in producing weapons to further pollute the atmosphere, how much power is used to produce all the junk mail that is put into letter boxes every day, etc, etc. I would also think that we would have to get over this mad drive to have growth. No one seems to know why we need the growth other than to make profits for some few so called entrepreneurs, as a consequence we keep on populating and needing more energy etc but for no purpose. As a result of this feverish population expansion, we like any other animal species will eventually reach pest proportions and, like for the other animals, we will die out. It is time that we started to use our brain power to work out just what is the future aims of humanity. This could well mean controlling the population to a sustainable quantity and then also deciding on how we can make life for all the members of the population exciting, enjoyable and satisfying. Surely it must be possible to rid ourselves of doctrines inherited from thousands of years ago and start to accept responsibility for our own future. If we don't we are doomed, I think personally that we are too late already!

Science/Religion Defined

grandad — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:00:27 +0000

I recently read an article by Chris Keene regarding the actions of Prof. Michael Reiss and in most of the comments was struck by the continuous reference to religion and science. Evidently, the Prof is also a priest with a religion, I presume a Christian religion and these references and Prof's belonging to a religion seem to have bemused the readers into thinking that science and religion are comparable in some way and both should be taught in our education facilities. All the commentators seem to overlooked the fact that, whereas, there is only science which is an explanation of all happenings in the universe, there are many religions all of which are an effort to explain how we got here and where we are going after we die by making one or several gods responsible for our existence. As there is only Science it is possible to prove or disprove any theories of the existance of the earth and all that is there upon it. However, since there are so many religions, it isn't possible to prove anything before one proves which religion is right. As all religions are based on absolute unquestioning faith, none of them will ever accept that it is wrong so it isn't possible to prove anything one way or the other. Consequently, it is wrong to teach any religion in an educational establishment, if anything, it should be more the responsibility of education establishments to ensure that its students are taught to question all things and not rely on just an acceptance of the teachers or their parents etc.

euthanasia

grandad — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 11:03:03 +0000

Adele Horine, Saturday Morning Herald wrote an article on this subject which seemed to me to be more about the problems created for the relatives than the wishes of the afflicted person. All the problems that Adele made comment about are accepted but, I am now about my 80's, one year off infact and my wife is of similar age, and we don't want to become a mass of heaving flesh that has no realization of any of the surrounding beauties of life. I can't see how they can ever effect a cure of alzheimers desease since it is a destruction of the brain cells that are ones memory. It may be possible to reverse the deterioration of the brain but it is hard to imagine a situation where you can reimplant the memories experienced in the past. Consequently, if I forgot my wife and children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, the recovery of my brain could only mean that I could again learn who these people are. However, they couldn't reimplant the memories of the experiences that I have had with these people so, they would never regain the closeness they have at this time. If I have made such a bad job of raising my family that they are unable to amicably sort out my estate then they deserve all the problems that they inherit. I like to consider that we have made a relatively good job of raising our off spring and that they will be more interested in continuing to live as a cohesive family rather than fighting over the pittance that we will leave. I would like to have access to the drugs that would allow me to terminate my life with dignaty and not have my wife of some 60 years left with the responsibility of having to see me turn into a useless burden, and I certainly don't want to see my wife submitted to the indignaty of becoming a drooling lump of flesh. What happens to the estate isn't really relavent to this problem, it is the dignity of the persons that feel that they are turning into the living dead. Iam the total of my memories and experiences and without these I am dead! I cannot accept that I have a right to life but I do think that I have a right to decide when I am ready to die. The course of nature will determine if I am allowed to survive and it has nothing to do with any right I may think that I have to be allowed to live, I can work hard and fail and, alternatively, I can loaf around and make no effort to get on and end up a millionaire, we have no rights only a hand to play to the best of our ability with the luck we inherit. I have no more right to life than a child born with aids in Africa but I have had better luck so have enjoyed a far better and happier life. I find it most annoying to have people tell me that I have to live because it will enhance their prospects of getting to heaven and inheriting eternal life, but they don't want to pay taxes and donate their time to really helping people that should be able to live but through circumstances beyond their control have little chance of living a happy life. It would be different if I were to propose that the rules should be changed to make it mandatory that people be euthanazed when they have dementia, then they would have something to worry about and it would be me imposing my system on them instead of vice versa. What we want is freedom of choice with controls to ensure that the idea isn't corrupted to make it more easy for " rotten " families to get their filthy hands on estates sooner than would normally be the case

the greatest injustice of the 20th century

grandad — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:36:41 +0000

I read today that a Spanish judge will accept a case that the Israelis have broken international law and committed war crimes in their attacks on Gaza I read this with some interest because I was around when the UN confiscated the Palestinian lands and the peoples property, infact reduced them to being non citizens of any place and gave these lands to a mass of cruel and savage European Jews that had some how survived the Nazi prison camps. These Jews had not only survived but had very successfully learned most of the Gestapo practices. To make matters worse for the Palestinians, the UN allowed the Israelis to be armed in a manner which Adolf Hitler would have envied whilst imposing an arms embargo on the Palestinians. Then when a Palestinian got annoyed when he or she saw the Israeli occupiers using their propery such as houses and fields etc and threw a stone at the Israelis, the Israelis successfully convinced the world that the Palestinian actions amounted to terrorism and they were justified in, not only killing the stone thrower, but, following good old Nazi practice, they had a right to shoot or destroy the home of every one around that person. It appears to me that Adolf Hitler would be proud of the Israeli State but amazed that it was Jewish. He shouldn't be too surprise because as he had the mad idea that the blond, blue eyed German was the super race, and the Jews have the same mad idea that they are the special people of god. A god that they invented and which, funnily enough, has been adopted by their Muslim opposition. Unfortunately, this god devised by the ancient Jews, is a jealous, cruel and evil god as recognised by a group of Jews some 2000 years ago. I was around when the extent of the Germans cruelty was revealed in 1945 and I was sickened to think that, so called civilized people could sink to such depravity. I hoped that I would never see such disgusting behaviour again, so imagine my horror when I now see the Israelis doing exactly as the Germans had done to them. It would appear that,for the Jews, the only crime that the Nazis committed was to mistreat the Jews, if the Nazis had stuck with just the Gypsys, Slavs and homosexuals, then the Nazis wouldn't have been such bad fellows Over the years the Israelis have suffered some inconvenience from home made rockets being fired into the land they have occupied but this hardly justifies their killing 1500 Palistinians, 800 of whom were innocent children and others would have been, in a majority of cases, innocent women and men. This is a typical Gestapo reaction which the Jews have obviously learned well. What I can't understand is how the rest of the world can stand by whilst a virtually unarmed group of people are attacked by the most sofisticated armed force in the Middle East, surely, the battle is a bit one sided? At the end of the last war I felt sorry for the Jews and Gypsys and Slavs and other groups that had suffered at the hands of the Nazi madness, I realized that they were basically just like all other human beings but they had been brain washed into following a religion devised some 4000 years ago and which is now just a lot of rubbish, as are all the other religions. However, I now believe that the religions are actually evil and a threat to the continuation of civilization. When one reads back through history, it becomes obvious that these acts of injustice don't get forgotten quickly and in, maybe 400 or 500 years the Palistinians will be on top and they will then exact " their pound of flesh" from the then citizens of Israel who will actually by that time, feel that they are being unfairly targeted, note the Northern Ireland conflict and the Serbian conflicts based on the actions of the Ottoman Empire a few hundred years back. I would like to see the Spanish Judge investigate not only the actions of the Israelis but also the actions of the United Nations back in 1948 when it somehow came to the conclusion that it could legitimately dispossess the Palestinians of the lands that they had worked and peacefully lived on for thousands of years. If there was a case for compensating the European Jews that had suffered so much under the Hitler regeme, then they should have been given a part of Germany, such as the Rhine Valley or Prussia. I think that they may well have considered this but they didn't want a Jewish country in " their own back yard". Unless the United Nations addresses the initial injustice done back in 1948, or at least explains how it made the decision and on what basis, then I can't see how there can be a long term solution to the existing state of affairs. It is my opinion that the reunification of Palestine, including Israel, must form the basis for any solution to this problem and the Government of such a reconstituted State must abide by the UN charters and have a secular govermnent to reunite the nation. After all it shouldn't be that hard, the Jews and the Palestinians are ethnically the same people!

the great unjustice of the 20th century, part 2

grandad — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:03:47 +0000

the comment I received in relation to my original post, indicates that I am condemning the people of Israel for the behaviour of their government. This was not my intent. At birth all humans are innocent of any bias and have no religious inclination. fortunately, religious belief is not hereditary but has to be taught. It is also fortunate that, although the majority of people belong to a religion they are not fanatical in their beliefs, this means that the majority of people don't want to hurt others and certainly don't want to kill them. If you took an Israeli baby away from its parents at birth and placed it in the care of a Palestinian famil, it would grow up as a Palestinian and neither a rabbi or a iman would be able to detect that a swap had been made The Rabbi would probably willingly persecute the swapped infant whilst the Iman would welcome it with open arms. I have found that most of the people that i have met in my travels are, as individuals willing to accept you as they perceive you and your religion has very little to do with their judgement. It is only when there are many of a group which contains a rabble rouser that they will do things as part of the group. In most cases when the group has broken up the ordinary people often feel great guilt for what they have done in a moment of haste. Further more, it is necessary to train men and, now days, women to kill, it, to most, isn't a natural instinct. Proof of this is that so many servicemen after wars or conflicts are over, need councelling and suffer mental illnesses. I would suggest that it would be easier for an ex-serviceman that has lost a limb to be rehabilitated than it would be for, say, the poor buggers that recently shot the children in Afghanistan, killing is soul destroying. I think that the majority of people like to believe in a god just so that they can look forward to finally having justice. It's like the people that were destoyed fanancially by Allan Bond looking forward to eventually being in a position where they can look down from their place in heaven and for eternity watch Allan stoking the fires of hell, but in our hearts we all know that he will die enjoying the riches that he has amassed by conning the people. The point of this rant is that it is the fanatics in positions of power that make life so miserable for so many, and we should all think about things and make up our own minds as to what is right and should always ask ourselves the question, " Would I like to be treated thus? " We should avoid this crap about being the super race or gods chosen etc, as I pointed out earlier, these religious leader and therefore the gods they represent, couldn't even pickto whom you were born so if they judge wrongly they may be persecuting the super race and they wouldn't know it. I often despair of humans ever realizing that it is science that will save us and improve our lives, not gods, fairies, gnomes, trolls, etc, etc. It is hard to understand how so many can accept a belief in these fairy tales when there isn't a skerrick of evidence that gods etc exist nor that they ever have existed.

the religious war in palestine

grandad — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 10:03:36 +0000

Simon, You miss the point, in the case of Israel/Palestine it is a religious conflict, there is no other explanation for the situation. It may have started off as a conflict between one group taking over the lands of another group but it has been taken over by the two religions, Jews and Muslims, and this is despite the probability that the majority of ordinary people yearn for a peaceful settlement of the problem. As I said before, it can be likened to the situation in Northern Ireland but in that case the people were of different ethinic origins, i.e. Celts and Picts, but it the case of palestine, both groups are of the same ethnic origins so it is almost like a civil war. I still reckon the solution is to have a common country of Palestine with one government, which the constitution would demand be secular, and get the protaganists to live together with one common constitution and law.To keep on having retaliation for seeming afronts is a no where situation. A Palestinian kills an Israeli and the Israelis then kill a dpzen Palestinians, who were probably not anti Jewish till they were targeted in the revenge attacks, but then they want revenge and so it goes on. Why has the Ulster problem taken 400 years to solve and it still lingers to this day? G

grandad — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 09:33:44 +0000

Simon, Before 1948 Palestine could probably be counted amongst the few most integrated communities in the world. There were Muslims, Jews and Christians living there, probably not in complete harmony but well enough to not be murdering each other. When the European Jews invaded there, and I mean invaded there, they then imposed a religious government which is an immediate way of segregating the communities into the various religious factions. I stress invaded because at the time Palestine was a British Protectorate and many British soldiers were killed by the Jews in their struggle subjugate the Palestinians. You may be aware that to this day there are Christians living in Palestine and they do so without any conflict with the Muslims. The problem was that, Israel established a sectarian government, and even the Jews have to abide by the strict interpretations of the Jewish fundamentalists, i.e. can’t switch on lights on the sabbathday, can’t light bbq’s on the sabbath, can’t drive their cars on the sabbathday, etc, I believe that they are not quite so strict these days, but they make it awkard for those Jews that don’t observe these requirements. I also think that this is why the original state of Israel broke up 2000 years ago, it wasn’t conquered, the jews just moved out to get a freer and more pleasant life elsewhere. That’s my reckoning! Unfortunately, the Jews were not welcomed with open arms in their new countries, mainly because they kept asserting that they were superior because they were gods chosen, but until Hitler, they were tolerated and could, therefore, live much as they pleased. It will happen again, people don’t like being made to be miserable, Oliver Cromwell tried it in England and he soon got tossed out. The Muslim world will find that with the passage of time there people also will not want to stay living in the Middle Ages conditions. It all sorts itself out, that is evolution at work, but it takes so long and is so unnecessarily inefficient when the solutions are available elsewhere. With regard to the question of why we can sort out skin colour in one or two gererations, the answer is easy, with people of different colour you can negotiate and make allowances for differences and if they are nice they are accepted. This also applies to religious differences, as I’ve said before, no one ever asks what religion you belong to when getting to know you. However, with religious differences, there is always some priest, imam, rabbi etc in the background telling his flock that they are different and they can never be like the others. This is a matter of misguided faith because as a point of fact, they are all like one another, and in the case of the Jews and Palestinians, they are actually ethnically the same human group. There was a piece on Catalyst tonight where a young scientist, I mean young, like 12 or so, had done some experiments and had made up a gene chain. He made the comment that he had learned that he was, I forget the exact figures now, 10% banana, 80% chimp, etc. He made the point quite well that the genes make us kin to almost every other form of life so why are we fighting to prove we are so different one from the other?

who believes in God?

grandad — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:12:40 +0000

Just a ramble to relieve my horror at the oppression of the people of Iran by the clerics of Islam. It is quite obvious to me that the clerics of Islam have no belief in Allah/God because of their behaviour. They claim that they have the authority of Allah and follow the tenets of the Prophet, however, the Prophet and all other prophets, comdemned murder as a mortal sin which would be punishable by eternity in hell. This sentence would be enough for any believer to take notice and to refrain from committing murder to ensure that they have a chance of ending up in heaven. This is not the case for the clerics of Islam, here we have the Ayatollar and his side kicks, not only endorsing the murder of Iranian citizens that disagree with them but they encourtage the murders and even offer a reward for those that commit the murders in the name of the Ayatoller and therefore Allah/ God. It is obvious that the heads of Islam, and all the other religions, have no more belief in God than I do and I'm a confirmed atheist. It is clear that sience has now answered most of the questions that gave rise to the belief in gods as an answer to questions such as the origins of life and evolution etc. Now the need to ensure that a belief in gods continues is purely to give authority and power to the likes of Ayatollars, Popes and Rabiis and the like and they have shown over time that they are prepared to commit murder and mayhem to ensure that their authority is maintained. This is not a recent development, the not too distant case of the Muslim thug that filmed as he carved the head off an innocent, good man in Iraq and then held the head aloft and shouted " Allahu Akbar " must have been the greatest act of blaspheme ever. The act of murder was blamed directly onto Allah, but not one cleric thought that it was worth condemning this act of blaspheme. However, when a Danish cartoonist depicted the Prophet with a bomb in his turban, that was an act of blaspheme that warranted the calling of murder of the cartoonist and the cartoonist wasn't even a Muslim. Such hypocrisy can only further show that these clerics are infact just using the naivity of the brain washed general population to abuse power and advance their own ends. Isn't it a blessing that old age will eventually rid the world of these cursed creatures, but unfortunately, they seem to often get replaced by others that have similar desires.

caring?

grandad — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:22:16 +0000

I recently had cause to visit the gym at the hospital where my wife needed physio, I accompanied my wife but could naturally take no part in her treatment. However, I was able to observe the other patients being treated in the gym. This situation was both inspiring and depressing. Many of the patients being treated were old as would be expected but a surprising number were young men suffering paraplegia, there were no women suffering this way there in the gym at this time. I could only guess that the majority of these young men were so handicapped from having been involved in awful accidents. The inspiring part of this visit was to observe the gentle and kindly way in which the staff dealt with these men. I thought that it must have been very hard to go to work each day to be faced with such sad cases knowing that despite all your efforts there is little that you can do for these young men other than keep them sane and comfortable. In particular there was one young man that seemed to be paralysed completely and could only move his mouth, he also had a life support system fixed to the wheel chair and pipes going into his every part. Sad indeed but he was accompanied by a young woman that appeared to be his wife. This got me thinking about what is caring? It is all very well to be kind to these people but I wonder if they have ever been asked the question as to what they want for a future. I can imagine this young man looking at his wife and thinking how terrible it must be for her, and what the future holds for her. He must feel that his incapacity had not only ruined his life but has ruined the life of someone that is most beloved to him. I wonder if the medical profession has put it to him that if he finds that it is all too hard and that he doesn't feel that he can cause so much suffering in the future, then he has only to say the word and the profession will facilitate his gentle and dignified demise. I am aware that if you asked a loved one the question about whether this young man should be allowed to terminate his life, they couldn't make the decision, it would be too hard and it would maybe make them feel guilty. However, I think that the difficulty in making a decision that would avoid this young man's mental and physical suffering is the result of our having been raised to think that death is a punishment rather than a necessary part of life. I am not heartless and I can well understand the terrible trauma that such situations place ordinary people in, situations that they can't be trained to face up to in the normal every day run of the mill life, but I feel that the person that is most effected by the situation is the person that has the least say in what his/her future should be. I can't accept all the crap about the sanctity and " right to " life, life is for living and once one is not able to participate in living, then the choice should be there to finish life painlessly. This is a matter that I am increasingly mindful of since my wife and I are now of an age when the onset of dementia and other age related incapacitating complaints become ever more a possiblility. I read all this rubbish about the old becoming and increasingly high cost to the community because of the espense of operating nursing homes and the like to house all these zombie like creatures. This problem is a self imposed problem not a real problem. I together with most of my friends of similar age, don't want to be kept alive sitting drooling, eating gunk, knowing no one, being bathed, put to sleep probably with sleeping pills etc. When I don't know that I am me and can't remember, recall or act out, my life in a meaningful way, then I am dead, the fact that others still have the ability to keep my body functioning is not keeping me alive. I am the sum of all my feelings and experiences and once those functions of the brain have gone then I no longer exist Surely, caring is providing what is best for the patient and if the patient is suffering because of unwanted treatment, then the caring becomes a way of satisfying the needs of the carer more than a true caring for the patient!? I know that things like dementia block out all memories and feelings but whilst I am still able to think, I have already decided that I don't want to be a cause of pain and unnecessary euffering to my loved ones, far better that they can only remember me as me and not come and look at drooling zombie!

Populate and Die !

grandad — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:40:25 +0000

I see that recent predictions for Australia's population is set to reach 40 million by the year 2040 and this news has been well received by the powers that are supposed to run this country for the long term. They claim that it will produce great growth and development possibilities and will enable this country to assume a greater roll in the world. This all seems to me to be a load of utter rubbish! These people haven't yet realised that though we may well be able to manage the population of 40 million I very much doubt that we could manage too many more. They haven't worked out that in 2040 the population won't suddenly stop growing, infact, the increase obtained to that date will speed up the rate of population growth such that if the same rate continues for another 30 years, we will then be looking at a population of over 60 million. I wonder how they will manage that growth? We are still trying to build the rail system first suggested some 100 years back so it is hard to imagine that we will be able to cater for another 20 million in a mere 30 years. We then won't just be looking at rail and transport systems, we will be looking at desalination plants, sewage water reclaim systems, and still we will be arguing about how to lower the carbon footprint to stop the global warming,get wate flowing in our rivers, etc. To exacerbate this problem, the rest of the world will also have an increasing population such that, at the present rate of increase, the world population will have grown from today's 6 billion to something like 14 billion and, of course, it won't stop there unless the problem is properly addressed. I wonder if any of today's scientists are looking at the problem of an ever increasing population, surely they must realize that the population can't keep expanding indefinitely without eventually collapsing in on itself? Furthermore, I can't understand what is the objective of an ever increasing population when we know that it is just exhausting the resources available at an ever increasing rate, surely we must eventually ( provided we survive the global warming threat ), start looking at the world population level that can be sustained without destroying life itself? Population stabilisation is a problem which makes global warming look like childs play, to obtain a steady sustainable population will require review of the fundamental principles by which we presently organize our communities. I wonder if we can do it?? Not in my time of course!

rich private v poor public schools

grandad — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:35:11 +0000

I will start by saying that I'm an atheist so I am against the public funding of any religious school, I feel that it is both immoral and a waste of public money to subsidize the teaching of matters of faith for which there is no evidence of there being any basis for the faith. Knowing my views on religious education, you can imagine my outrage when I read that the Shore School had been able to outbid the Federal Government for a property adjacent to their school. To think that a school that is subsidized to the extent of $9,000,000 annually could put up $35,000,000 for a property which it only required to house a museum and sporting facilities left me astounded and annoyed. My annoyance wasn't in anyway abated when I heard the School Governor, an ex business CEO of course, state on the talk back radio that the school had not used the subsidy to pay for the property but had been saving for this purchase over a number of years. I suppose that the Governor didn't listen to the rest of the broadcast when a member of P and C for a state school came on and explained that their school had just had a very successful fete and had raised $7000. From these two talk back subjects it is easy to work out that if the public school was really keen to raise enough money to make a similar purchase it would only take a successful fete every month for the next 444 years to raise the necessary $35,ooo,ooo There were a number of other men that rang in about this subject and many were ex students of this and other rich private schools. I was surprised at their apparent honesty when they admitted that the education that they had received wasn't any better than a public school education, some even said that it wasn't as good; however, the thing that they did get out of the attendance of the private school was an access to networking. Many seemed to be admitting that they had been able to get appointed to jobs, for which they were not really the best applicant, purely on the basis of having been to a private school and knowing the right people.This seemed to me to be a reasonable enough claim since when I was a working person I found that the majorith of the executive jobs seemed to be held down by nincompoops whose only talent was to be able to surround themselves with enough advisers to be sure that they would get some things right. It is actually no wonder that the international banking system collapsed and that we can't find solutions to global warming. It is obvious that the powers that be are not really able to appreciate that the global warming isn't something that will hang around whilst they dither and try to please every one. Our problem now is that we are in a position when we need scientific solutions if we are survive and we are still run by people that are there because of their contacts and old school associations. It is no wonder that Ken Henry is pessimistic about the ability of out Governments to be able to solve the problems of global warming and over population which is forecast to occur over then next 40 years.

the law and justice?

grandad — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:10:12 +0000

I find that it is frightening the way that the law is administered by a well proven justice system and then overruled by weak politicians as a result of pressure from daily papers which have very little cridibility but a largish reader base. The latest of these " lynch mob " type interferences by weak and popular vote catching politicians is the Victor Chan killer release on parole case . I can understand the family of Victor Chan being annoyed by the release of Lim on parole but they are naturally biased, most normal people would be quite prepared to kill someone that had killed their father in cold blood for no reason other than to make money. However, such emotions will, if unchecked, lead to never ending killing where everyone is trying to exact the revenge that they feel entitled to To stop such lawlessness we have a the law of the land which is administered by qualified and, we hope, unbiased and wise legally knowledgeable Judges. Unfortunately, the laws of the land are formulated by politicians and these seem to have no back-bone and are only looking to get re-elected. As a consequence, the laws of the land are frequently manipulated by rabble rousing daily papers which rouse the mob instinct of the populace and pressurize the politicians into making dangerous laws which eventually will be used in a way that they are not intended. Lim was sentenced under the law and it is proper that that sentence be enacted in accordance with the judges sentence. We have to presume that the judge, who probably listened to days if not weeks of testomony, will have taken all things into consideration and arrived at a judgement that was as just as could be humanly expected. It is absolutely stupid to allow some elected politician to toss the law out on a whim to aid in his re-election prospects. It is obvious that we need a new constitution that protects the people not the States, which seems to be the main function of the present Australian constitution. It is possible to argue that we would be better off as a country of Australia with one government and not have all these divided loyalties to various States. We also need a Bill of Rights which sets out clearly what the politicians can do legally. At present, each political party in power in the Commonwealth and States and Terrortaries can enact any law as they see fit, or so it would appear. An example of this abuse of power is the special laws enacted against the paedophile Ferguson, his crime is one that is most distastful but he is entitled to the protection of, and justice from, the law. Once he has finished his sentence and provided that he complies with the law, then he is entitled to his liberty. If we have a problem with this, we should change the law to take into account the circumstances of various crimes. I understand that paedophilia is a complaint for which there is no cure. If this is so, then we have to adjust the law to permit the euthanasia of people that have this affliction or adopt the less humane option of shutting them away for life in a, usually, most unfriendly prison. It is certainly not acceptable that we should enact laws that relate to individuals, there is no end to the possiblilties of giving politicians such powers. Also we have to accept that if we allow a paedophile to have his freedom after a prison sentence, then we have to allow him to have the means to support his life style and work etc to feed himself, it is inhumane to expect that he will sit down and starve himself to death to avoid contact with his fellow human beings. We have to have a system such as a Bill of Rights and a person orientated Constitution, to ensure that the laws that these politicians enact are not just political ploys to appease the, generally ill informed, public. I have listened to people like John Howard argue that if we have a Bill of Rights the power will rest with the judiciary rather that the elected parliament. This is a valid arguement but we need to set out what the politicians can do and have the judiciary administer those rights, the judges don't have to present themselves to the people for re-election every three years or so. Having seen the way in which our politicians have behaved with their strutting the stage to show that they are the stronger on crime and punishment, I'd have much more faith in a judgement by a judge even though I know that the judges are appointed by the politicians in the first place. From past judgements in the High Courts we have seen that judges don't always go the way that one would expect knowing their political persuasions. By comparison we have the rantings of Rees and O'Farrell both of whom seem to think that the Daily Telegraph has some credibility, a belief that is most difficult to understand. I still can't understand why it is that we are supposedly so well educated but we don't think beyond what we are told and just follow like sheep and allow the dismantling of a legal system that has grown and proven itself over many hundreds of years. We should be looking to improve and widen our liberty and rights rather than trying to persecute those that have fallen foul of the law and suffered the consequences thereof.

The Law and Justice

grandad — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:11:54 +0000

I have looked at this blog and can see why it is not too clear what is being ranted about if one hasn't been following the same news stories. The stories which initiated the rant were the stories, in all forms of media, which related to the release of the convicted murderer of Dr Chan ( a Mr Lim ) some years back and the reaction to this release on parole, and then the other story indicating a similar interference from the government, was the hounding of the paedofile, Dennis Ferguson. My rant was a consequence of coming to the conclusion that present day politicians would override any legitimate legislation to suit their political aims without regard to justice or the rule of law. It also seemed that there is no sound constitution or bill of rights setting limits to the extent to which the government of the day can over ride existing legislation to obtain its own political aims It was and is my conclusion, that because the law makers are the politicians, and because the politicians have to go to the people to be re-elected and because the politicians have no set restrictions on their legislation, then they will enact the laws that are politically most expedient at any one time without regard for the long term consequences of any such legislation. This enables any rabble rousing tabloid paper to put pressure on the government of the day to make a headline without regard to the consequences of issuing such rubbish. It was my conclusion that to obtain really safe legislation, free of political exploitation, it is essential that we have a genuine overhaul of the existing constitution and add to it a bill of rights. Unfortunately, I haven't kept a record of the press releases referred to but I trust that this addition will somewhat clarify my earlier rant.

what is education?

grandad — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:33:41 +0000

If we look at the Grand Inquisition, it was made up of the educated of the time and they were well aware, inter alia, of the fact that the world is the centre of the universe, accordingly, it was quite right of them to incarcerate someone that should suggest that this was not so. Unfirtunately for them, Galileo was right. Even though Galileo was educated in the same system as the Inquisitors, he was able to ask the question why is this so and is it right. Some hundreds of years later Darwin was likewise persecuted for again questioning the accuracy of the details of the subject matter being taught at that time by the educated elite. and again, Darwin was right. This has happened throughout the years and every one that questions the teachings of the day is reviled and often persecuted, some times severely so but eventually they are frequently right and their ideas win the day. I am hoping that the being right continues to win the day because we are presently faced with a global problem which is not just an academic problem for the advancement of our knowledge, this problem could well result in the extermination of all life on this planet for a number of years, if not correctly addressed. My worry is that we have now an opposition which is just like the Inquisition, it knows that there is no global warming caused by human activity and there is no need to do anything about it because we have god to look after us. Unfortunately, we seem to be ruled presently by these people of strong religious belief such that one of our senators claims to believe in god when there is no evidence of the existance of such a creature, whereas, he claims that, despite all the evidence of global ice caps melting etc, there isn't enough evidence of global warming for him to press for some appropriate action. It seems to me that there is too much teaching in our education system and not enough questioning! We should be teaching our students priciples of maths, science, etc but we should also be encouraging them to question what they are taught and to understand why things are considered to be so. The trouble with our present leaders is that they have been taught things from a religious aspect and they are unable to put that training aside and consider things from a logical view point, for example, Kevin Andrews preaches freedom of choice but when the Northern Territory voted for voluntary Euthanasia, he was able to override that choice as being not one that he could live with, so much for freedom of choice? Frankly, I'm pleased to be old because I can't really see that, with the world leadership we have today, there can be any great odds that they will be able to come up with a solution to the global warming problem, and if they should get so lucky, there is no chance that they will be able to solve the over population problem. The trouble is, now days parents send their children to school to be disciplined and taught comformity and not to be a pain in the arse by asking awkward questions and to just do as they are told. Which makes for disillusioned young adults with no aim other than to make money which is their measure of success or to be no hopers! Where is the old fashioned idea of learning for learnings sake?

Population Growth

grandad — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 04:07:36 +0000

The This Day Tonight program on the 25th January, had a piece on this subject which I feel inclined to comment upon as follows. It would appear that the population problem is really matter of having an available area for expansion whilst keeping the needed space to support that population within the confines of a finite fixed area without destroying the environment for all other life forms. We have evolved to a degree where we are now the first life form that has the option of controlling our reproduction or breeding our selves to extinction. Mr Rudd has formed the opinion that we will be better off with a bigger population. This is based on the impossible belief that we can have everlasting growth; which would need everlasting growth of population. Since there is only a finite space available, adoption of a policy of everlasting growth will inevitably lead to our extinction as a species! It is not now necessary for human beings to breed flat out to obtain the survival of the species so we should now be working out what we do want from life and how we can balance our breeding to obtain this state, in balance with the rest of the environment, such that we can have a long term future for ourselves and the rest of the life forms! When I say long term I mean thousands of years not fifty years, one gets the impression that our world leaders feel that they only have responsibility for looking after the events happening within their life span whereas I would hope that, such a magnificent life form as we have evolved into would be able, by application of this powerful brain, ensure that life goes on as long as our planet will support it. Frankly, I don't think that the world is yet ready to address the problem of over population, they have too many religious and personal freedoms hang-ups and not enough responsibility commitments. It will need a realization that there is a fast approaching apocalypse to jolt the masses into a state of action and this may well be too late!

Survival of Life on Earth

grandad — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:42:51 +0000

This concern of mine is not one that in the long term effects me, I won’t be around that long; however, I feel that I must record my concerns, hence this blog. I have recently been listening to the 7.30 Report on channel two which had a series of programmes relating to the population growth in Australia, and tonight I listened to Treasurer Swann talking about the problems we face regarding aging population and global warming. I also have been listening to people like climate sceptic Monkton and others such as Senator Joyce, Senator Fielding, and others such as economists and industrialists and have been impressed by the fact that none of them appear to have been able to address the real problem. The only one that made any sense was Dick Smith, and Lindsey Tanner poo-hood him as being naïve. Firstly I would observe that no one seems to have appreciated that this wonderful planet could well be able to support life for another two or three billion years providing we don’t suffer an astronomical catastrophe. The leadership that is charged with the responsibility of guiding us through the present global warming and population problems seems to be unable to visualize anything beyond three terms of parliament. Consequently, they only plan for a maximum of 50 years population growth and then extrapolate that this will cause economic growth from which we will all benefit. They haven’t yet appreciated that long term planning with regard to life survival should be measured in thousands of years, if not billions...Nor do they seem to appreciate that continuous growth is just not sustainable, even over relatively short periods of 100 years, the planet must run out of its finite supply of resources and space. I will first talk about the problem of global warming. When talking about global warming we still seem to talk about our ability to afford to address this problem as if our economic state is of any real importance to this issue! Global warming is a consequence of our not abiding by the requirements of the real force that controls the universe i.e. science. The universe evolves and operates within set parameters set out by physics and chemistry and if we break these laws then we suffer the consequences. We are polluting our environment and if we do not effectively address this problem we will all possibly suffer extinction. Therefore, it is imperative that we keep the problem as the objective and possibly use economists and the like as they should be used, i.e. to advise the best way to obtain the required solution and minimize the effects on the population of the world. This is a problem which we have to solve, even it means that we have to make drastic changes to our present life styles.. Listening to the global warming sceptics and opposition politicians reminds me of when I was much younger the similar argument was about asbestos and smoking. Then we had these sceptics and bogus scientists making statements that asbestos and smoking were safe and it wasn’t necessary to shut down the mines and factories or stop smoking. These charlatans managed to keep the mines working for years and the miners kept their jobs, likewise, the smokers still kept boasting that they would smoke if the chose and there was proof or evidence of smoking related cancer. The charlatans walked away rich, the companies paid out massive compensation and the workers and users are still dying, often in great agony! The consequences of ignoring global warming will be far worse than those resulting from asbestos mining and smoking!! Regarding population growth, this is a really interesting and difficult problem to solve. Firstly we, like all other forms of life on the planet, are programmed to reproduce. Over the millions of years of our evolution, we had arrived at a position where we reproduce at a rate that matches the expected death rate from natural predators and disease and as a result the total environment stayed in balance and all was in harmony. However, our evolution has taken us to a situation where we have almost nullified all the natural methods that existed to control our growth. It is still necessary to reproduce for the species to survive; however, it is now possible to over reproduce and threaten our very existence, therefore, it is essential that we devise a means by which it is possible to keep the population within sustainable limits. Today I heard both Dick Smith and Lindsey Tanner state that the world population is expected to plateau out at 9 billion. How can they make this statement without having set maximum population target and having put in place a means by which the population can be forced to not exceed this limit. Again we are confronting the ultimate power controlling the universe and if we don’t control the population to a level in harmony with the environment we will breed ourselves out of existence. This is a really hard social problem because we will somehow have to determine who will be allowed to breed and who will have to be celibate. The problem will be further complicated by the fact that we will have to make a choice but ensure that we don’t destroy the diversity of population or make racial or national based selections. Another problem with population control is that we no longer have the reason for breeding we inherited through our genes. Our politicians and industrialists would have us believe that the reason for our existence is to work in factories and create growth and money for someone else. Something like an ant community? However, I would prefer to think that we could have a very good future where we live in harmony with the ecology and yet by education learn to enjoy the sciences and arts and other wonders that exist in this world. This is a problem in that we will not be able to call on our self made gods for a solution, in fact we will have to make sure that we ignore the religious indoctrinations we have been subjected to over the millennia, we certainly can’t afford to breed at a rate of 8-10 children per family, if we do we will very shortly, (less than 100 years), reach above 60 billion and this will most certainly stretch the limit of the available resources! The language of science is mathematics and since the problem we face is a consequence of science, we must surely be able to come up with a model that would enable us to work out almost exactly the population the world can support comfortably and even a way to obtain the necessary birth regulation system. Remember, we are looking for a solution effective over a couple of billion years not 50 or 100 years

Australian Constitution Needs to be updated.

grandad — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 12:57:58 +0000

It is quite obvious that the Australian Constitution was compiled to suit the British Parliament and induce it to give Australia a nominal sense of self-government. It is written to ensure that we have a minimum capability to modify and amend the constitution to best suit our evolution as an independent, sovereign state. For example, the constitution is mainly about The State rights and has little reference to the citizen rights. It divides the country from the word go and ensures that we have not one government but seven, which ensures that we can never have a real consensus between the seven levels of government to obtain what is best for the country, e.g. the present in ability to legislate to obtain a health scheme which will serve the whole country because each state wants to ensure that it gets the maximum even though they have all proven that they are incapable of coming up with a scheme that would make their own health systems work. Furthermore, it ensures that we have a colonial powers’ head of state as our head of state which, no matter how you look at it, means that we are still virtually a colony. I know that the monarchists talk about how the “ diggers “ fought for the Queen/King and country, but this is because no other alternative was available at that time. I’d bet my life on the fact that if the English monarchy were to try to impose its will on Australia again, there would not be too many ex-diggers out the fighting against our government, irrespective of what persuasion it may be, to prop up the will of the Queen. The “diggers” were fighting for Australia. They would have fought, regardless of what government was in power. Australia was what was important not monarchs or governments. This can be seen where in countries such as Russia the people fought most fiercely to defend their country against the Nazis, even though a great many did not approve of the communist government of Stalin. The first thing that we need to do on the way to establishing our nation-hood is to get rid of the states and have one government responsible for the running of the country together with our own national Governor/ President, head of state The second thing that is necessary to have reformed on our way to nation-hood, would be to reform the parliament to obtain a more democratic system more in line with the British parliament. When we adopted the near British parliamentary system we overlooked one of the main protections to of democracy which exists in the British parliament, the British parliament has a House of Review (The House of Lords), it is a real house of review, it can not deny the elected government the means to govern i.e. it can not deny the elected government access to the finances necessary to govern, nor has it the power to even delay any financial bills. The House of Lords acts as a real house of review, it can delay a bill and send it back to the Commons for reconsideration, I believe it can do this twice. However, if the elected government decides to resubmit the bill for a third time it is decided on the majority vote in the Commons and is passed. This is democracy at work. Our system is a joke, i.e. the continuous thwarting of the elected government in the Senate where the rejection is accomplished on the vote of Senators of somewhat dubious quality representing a few hundred people on the electoral roll. The present situation is ridiculous where we have an elected government which can not pass its legislation because of a hostile house of review, this is not the function of a house of review, it is just a ploy by the opposition to get back into power by fair means or foul without regard for the intentions of the electorate. Our parliamentary system is supposed to be based on the British system but I can assure you that there is no way that you could induce the British electorate to modify their system to match ours, they are not that stupid. It is no wonder that many still consider Australia as a colony together with many other nations that would certainly never accept another countries head of state as theirs’. The constitution as it stands does allow for it to be changed by having a referendum; however, this is also made as hard as possible. The result of the referendum requires, not only the majority of people to vote for it to be passed but there must also be a majority of states vote for it. This is once again a travesty of the understanding of democracy, under this requirement it is possible to have the big states want to accept the changes but have a couple of the small states want to reject the changes and as a consequence many millions of voters may be thwarted by several hundreds of thousands, hardly democratic! If we do eventually manage to get the constitution changed to be more citizen friendly and protective of our democracy, we could then push on to obtain recognition and protection of citizen rights. We could start by enshrining the right to freedom of speech, nation wide secular education curriculum, freedom of choice for things such as euthanasia, single sex marriage and other things that are interfered with by governments based on their religious beliefs rather than individual rights Now that so many of us are no longer believers in any gods and not at all impressed by any of the religion, and also that those that are believers in gods are not of Christian belief, we should work to ensure that the laws of the land are based on justice and legal and psychological grounds not religious beliefs that have not any real substance.

Australian Constitution needs to be updated

grandad — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 11:17:21 +0000

Well the health update has been made a mockery off by the latest agreement between the State Governments and the Federal Government. Any improved administration of a more effective health system has basically been thwarted. It would appear that the now proposed agreement has negated any remaining meaningful and progressive changes to the National Health Scheme. We have the Western Australian Government just claiming that it wants to maintain control over its GST allocation, even though it is made part of a pool established by Federal and all the State Governments to be exclusively used for the health services. It seems illogical to have an agreement where the State can put money into a pool but then be able to take it out as it deems fit, without regard to the joint requirements of the Federal and the rest of the State Governments Similarly, the other States will have the administration of the national fund pool and this is already the cause of the existing blame game. There is no way that having the States trying to allocated the pool of health money will just continue the scrambling of each State to ensure that it gets what it considers its share without regard to the actual need of each State to supply an appropriate amount of money to suit medical needs. The allocation of the fund money will be based on the political status assumed by the State Governments and their perceived pecking order. I cannot see how the new structure will in any way stop the stupid aimless behaviour of these somewhat irrelevant State Government. Frankly, I do not reckon that the Federal Government will be able to get this effort to improve the national health service operation past the obstructive Senate or past the almost impossible hurdles of a referendum! If it did manage to get the agreement past the existing hurdles, the agreement has been so emasculated that it is virtually ineffective in its existing form!

ETS application

grandad — Wed, 26 May 2010 11:34:53 +0000

I note that Rudd is being condemned for deferring the introduction of an ETS bill to parliament. This seems to me to be quite unreasonable and unjustifiable. I think that it isn't Rudd that should be condemned but the opposition parties. We have sitting on the opposition benches a certain individual named Ian McFarlane that in good faith negotiated a version of the ETS that would be acceptable to both the Government and the Opposition, he did this at the request of his then leader Mr Turnbal. Next McFarlane betrayed the leader and then when the bill that he had helped to draft was introduced to the Parliament he voted it down, indicating that he will do anything stay in power regardless of the consequences of his vote. McFarlane is the sort of person that, if in a service capacity you found that you had him to protect you back and you were called into action, the first step you'd take to secure you back would be to shoot McFarlane! I feel that when Rudd said that the introduction of an ETS was an urgent and essential requirement to protect the future of the human existence, I think that he was right. Unfortunately, he is faced by an obstructive opposition which is of the opinion that economic security is more important than ecological security. Hence it seems sensible to abandon the introduction of an ETS bill till the waters are washing around the feet of these global warming sceptics, then it will probably be too late to present an effective bill; however, there will then be more chance of getting a bill passed! God help us if we ever get the present coalition parties in Government, they are absolutely hopeless and I feel that they are more interested in pleasing big business and other powers than doing what is good for the ordinary Aussie bloke of either sex!

Mines Super Profit Tax

grandad — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 13:06:28 +0000

I think that it is essential that we take an interest in the mines super-profit tax legislation. We should consider what this tax is intended to do and how it is to be applied and for whose profit. Firstly the tax is the brain child of Mr Ken Henry who is a Senior Public Servant commissioned by the Howard/ Costello government, and that was a government that couldn’t see how they, together with the other governments of the same ilk, by removing all restrictions from control of banks and the like, was heading for a failure of the world system of economics. Further more, Ken Henry has a personal interest in that he has to protect his not insignificant, annual income, possibly as much as a million dollars a year. Obviously, Mr Ken Henry has a barrow to push, whereas in the opposite corner we have the genuine Australian interests represented, these are the mining magnates, the mine companies and the Coalition Parties. Mine magnates have only their annual salary to protect and, since it is only a mere ten million dollars or so a year, it is easy to understand why they have to so strongly resist any erosion of their income. How could they advertise the advantages of this country to their friends overseas on less? The mining companies have the problem of having to either pay a fair return for the super profits or move their operations off shore where their profits will be reduced because they will not get the same stable political conditions, climatic conditions or, in the case of Asia, transport availability. We know that the companies will do what is best for Australia because we have the examples of other international companies in similar cases. For example we have James Hardy that continued to fight for the right of their workers to keep their jobs at the mines and asbestos works as long as they could. Similarly, we have had the tobacco companies fighting to keep our right to smoke without being pestered by anti smoking agitators. The tobacco companies are still working to try to ensure that the peoples of Indonesia and Malaysia, etc are not worried by the anti smoking fanatics. We are well aware that these international companies are fully aware of their obligations and wouldn’t think of doing anything that would not be in this countries best interest. With regard to the Coalition Parties sound objections to the supertax laws, we have only to look at their representatives. We have Mr Ian McFarlane, previously trusted to negotiate in good faith with the opposition’s Penny Wong to obtain a bill relating to the global warming control problems that would be acceptable to the Government and Opposition and good for the country. When Mr McFarlane successfully accomplished this task, he still had the courage to oppose the bill when it was presented to the Parliament for consideration. This together with Mr Abbott’s promise to cut wasteful expenditure on schools, hospitals and the like but will give 12 months maternity leave on full pay, makes one realize just how well Mr Abbott will manage the economy and not waste money on improving the nation’s infrastructure and services. We must make sure that we don’t have this super profit tax enacted; it will destroy the profitability of the mines and all we would get is the possible improvement in our hospital, universities, schools, superannuation and pensions etc. The miners and other workers can be sure that the mines will always look after their interests as exhibited in the recent recession when they made sure that they didn’t carry any redundant staff! Come on Australians, give the mines a free hand, we did the banks and look how well they have served us!

the greatest injustice of the 20th century

grandad — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:40:59 +0000

I observe with interest that the esteemed US reporter Helen Thompson has been virtually fired for making a statement about the Israelis going back to Poland and Germany etc where they came from and to vacate Palestine where they are unwelcome intruders. I don't think that she should have been fired because she is stating a fact that many of us, of her vintage, think is a correct requirement if we are ever to have peace in that region again. We are not anti Jewish or pro Palestinian, we are bemused by the decisions made in 1948 by the Unite Nations Organization to punish the Palestinians for the atrocities committed against the Jewish people of Europe by the Nazis, when they appear to have had no part in those acts of cruelty. Further,to then dispossess the Palestinians of their land, which they had occupied for tens of thousands of years, and give the land to European Jews that had no connexion or relationship to that area, is quite inexplicable. As stated in my previous blog on this matter, when people have been unjustly dispossessed of their lands, they don't forget such acts nor forgive them. Examples of such foolish government mistakes are the Northern Ireland conflict, which dates back centuries, the Balkans conflicts that dates back even further, and others. Israel may think that it is winning and unassailable today but I'm sure that in years to come things may not be so good and they won't have so many willing allies to blindly support them. Unfortunately, this problem has developed into a religious war. When Palestine was first invaded it was a country where Muslims, Jews, Christians and even, Atheists lived in relative peace but once the Israelis set up a sectarian state things changed for the worse. Now we have the Muslims migrating to Europe and America and all over the world and as their political influence increases so they will be able to better bring pressure to bear on Israel by causing their supply lines to be cut. I think that Helen Thompson was right when she expressed her sentiment and the world will regret the stupid and unjust decision made by the UN in 1948!