Federal Libs remain a headless chook

I don't know what it's going to take to stop the Liberal Party of Australia from tearing around the post-federal election backyard like a chook that has just been parted from its wattled head, but the elevation of Malcolm Bligh Turnbull to parliamentary leadership isn't it.

What little commonsense they had obviously went begging on Monday night.

In a country where the ordinary voter is feeling more and more financial pain and much of that pain is considered to flow from domestic and international corporate irresponsibility, with the R-word looming over us; an egotistical, monied silvertail politician with an HIH court case hanging over his head now leads the Opposition.

How embarrassment will be the least of it if his leadership goes pear shaped!

Costello on the pension ...

Decisions, decisions, decisions!!

Former treasurer Peter Costello must be a worried man. The poor bugger has a dilemma - he has to decide when he will leave the federal parliament.

Peter Martin, The Age's economic correspondent, has taken a look at the options Costello has.

1. As a backbencher, the former treasurer is earning $127,000 a year. But calculations performed by The Age using tables prepared by the Finance Department suggest that if he retired instead, his annual income would jump to $176,633 courtesy of Australia's parliamentary superannuation scheme.

That payment would grow with increases in parliamentary salaries and would stay with the 51-year old for the rest of his life.

2. If he wants, he can halve his $176,633-a-year pension and turn the rest into a lump sum of $1.77 million.

Let's put all that into perspective.

Single old-age pensioners get $273 a week.

Yes, they get $14,196 a year.

Putting it another way, that's "a mere 8% of what the former treasurer will make."

Perhaps Costello is looking for a shoulder to cry on as he contemplates how he'll survive after he departs the Canberra scene.

US 08: Children of the Revolution

I suspect that a Democrat U.S. president in 2009 who turns out to have a similar foreign policy and anti-terrorism stance as a Republican president in 2008, will come as no surprise to the British and Australian national governments.
However, I suspect that it will come as a big surprise to many across the blogosphere and more than a few hopeful idealists around the world.

So it was good to see Jeff Sparrow of the Overland Magazine writing in Crikey yesterday remind us that Obama is no 60's peacenik:

But the Bush presidency hasn’t been the work of a single idiot. There’s plenty of smart people behind W., making decisions that by and large reflect the concerns of the US elite. Had a Democrat occupied the White House for the last two terms, US policy might have been sold better, but it’s doubtful that decisions have been very different.
Pick any of the Bush administration’s most heinous policies and you’ll implicate a Democrat. "Extraordinary rendition", for instance, was pioneered under Clinton, with that cuddly environmentalist Al Gore playing a leading role.

And Derek Shearer quoted in The Age observes:

"One of the interesting things about the Obama campaign is almost all of the policy advisers are former Clinton administration people — so many of my good friends are involved day to day," he said.

From the latest published Gallup poll of registered voters, I doubt whether it will come as any surprise to the American children of the 60's revolution, as they have currently settled down to what is basically a statistical tie between Democrat Obama at 45% and Republican McCain at 48% preference in their age group.

Update:

According to the New York Post today.

WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.
According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

Monsanto's role in "Fat Boy" A-Bomb

It is nice to see that Mr. Monsanto still follows North Coast Voices and clicks on to read what we may have to say on biotechnology.

So as not to disappoint this reader, here is the following from Wikileaks which suggest that Monsanto apparently had a contract with the US Government team when the atomic bomb Fat Boy (which eventually devastated Nagasaki) was being created at Los Alamos:

Scale of American effort where known Appreciable;

Monsanto contract on Po. Chem. 1-2 Physicists 3-5 chemists at Los Alamos

From MetroActive:

1939-1945--Monsanto conducts research on uranium for the Manhattan Project in Dayton, Ohio. Dr. Charles Thomas, who later served as the company's chairman of the board, was present at the first test explosion of the atomic bomb.

From Dayton Daily News in February 2007:
While they worked on the atomic bomb in the 1940s, employees of Monsanto Chemical Co.'s Dayton Project unknowingly were exposed to radiation that would be a carcinogenic time bomb for some of them.
Now, thanks to a federal decision this month, dozens of cancer- stricken Cold War workers and their widows may finally be compensated for on-the-job toxic exposures they sustained some 60 years ago.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt has approved special status for the Monsanto workers, meaning they don't have to prove an occupational link if they have suffered from any of 22 cancers known to be caused by radiation.

Yes, GM seed giant Monsanto really has a corporate track record to be admired.

It truly inspires confidence in their assurances that genetically modified crops are always benign and will be so in Australia.

Photo of Fat Boy from Google Images

Two faces of the Australian pensions debate

A well-fed and expensively attired Leader of the Opposition displays his hypocrisy when debating his futile and belated wedge in support for an increase to old age pensions.

Photo from The Australian

Australian bloggers display their heartlessness.

Tuesday 9 September 2008, 3:58 pm #Wah
Farmers should shut the f**k up and grow things. And pensioners should accept that they are now useless to society thus should only get the crumbs. In the animal world they would know when to just f**k off and die - it’s about the herd, not the individual. [edited to avoid filters]

NSW Inc. - Rudders whistles in the wind

Poor old Rudders. Opinion polls still going his way nationally, but the entire ball of wool unravelling at state level.
The Prime Minister wants NSW Premier Rees and Co to get their act together and go to the next election with a fighting chance.

Problem is that more than one or two senior members of the NSW ALP are now openly saying that the only way to fix factional problems and lack of political talent, or ensure true generational change, is for Labor to "spend some time on the Opposition benches".

That remark has been echoed by party members on the NSW North Coast and could be overheard outside local government election polling booths last Saturday.

The GM moguls advance with Weidemann et al assisting

According to The Age on 11 September 2008, Rupanyup farmer Andrew Weidemann brags that:

Much of his 92 hectares of GM canola is now in flower and is on track for harvest in about 11 weeks.

Now this farmer's crop reads as if it was first intended as non-commercial:
To allow a detailed comparison of the 10 canola varieties on his farm, all were planted in the same paddock on the same day in early May, in distinct plots.
Yesterday about 20 farmers from South Australia visited Mr Weidemann's farm to inspect the GM canola. South Australian law prohibits commercial production of GM canola.

In February this year he told ABC News that:
"There is an up-front fee that we pay and you can grow as many acres as the seed is available for this year and there is a royalty payment on the end which is the best situation in rewarding the researcher, the marketeer and the grower," Mr Weidemann said.

The Commonwealth Office of Gene Technology states that there is a current licence granted to Bayer Crop Science Pty Ltd which cover amongst other areas, Rupanyup and Wimmera.
So one might wonder if Andrew Weidemann, now VFF grains group deputy president, was originally in partnership with Bayer or affiliates.

Either way, Weidemann joins the ranks of those Australia may learn to curse in the future.

Here is a 1995 photo and brief bio of this foolish man who thinks that simply everyone will buy GM food if it is cheaper (found at the Birchip Cropping Group).

Mr Andrew Weidemann Farming 2500ha with his family in the Victorian Wimmera, producing a range of pulses, cereals, oilseeds and fat lambs, Andrew is a dedicated community member. He holds a range of positions with the VFF, currently the Wimmera District Council Grains Councillor, and is current President of the Rupanyup Football and Netball Club. Andrew is an inaugural Committee member on the 1st Bendigo Bank Community Bank. He has held past positions of VFF Rupanyup Branch President and Wimmera Farming Systems Deputy Chairman. Andrew has an Advanced Diploma of Agriculture, was the 2000 recipient of the Wimmera Conservation Farming James Muller Award and 2000 recipient of the Powercor Best Achievement in Primary Production....
Email: weidpast@wimmera.com.au. t 03 54922787 f 03 54922753

Monsanto, another GM giant operating in Australia, is not having much luck in France these days.

Apparently this is the first year that all its French GM test sites have been destroyed by activists.

At the same time the film The World According to Monsanto is actively circulating with a bad PR look for this company:

How much outrage can a single multinational corporation inspire? How much damage can they inflict? The breathtaking new film, The World According to Monsanto, features a company that sets the new standard. From Iowa to Paraguay, from England to India, Monsanto is uprooting our food supply and replacing it with their patented genetically engineered creations. And along the way, farmers, communities, and nature become collateral damage.

Seeds of Deception has also released a pdf document listing where in your personal food and grocery item chain GMO ingredients may be found once GM crops spread in Australia.