An alternative view of the earth and a new word

From The Washington Post

Most dastardly quotes of the week + The hoi polloi assess 'Truffles' Turnbull

“Obviously we want to work towards alleviating the pressure on the Australian people,” Mr Joyce told 2GB Radio today. “I do have a concern that if you pay people in lump sums it can end up against the wall, and we don’t want that.“People go to work every day to pay their taxes, and they don’t like seeing it end up in poker machines or plasma TVs.”
Senator Barnaby Joyce, Nationals leader in the Senate, quoted in The Australian last Tuesday on the subject of the December lumpsum payments.

But Senator Joyce said the money could be wasted on Christmas presents..."I'm worried about when big chunks of money turn up in one fell swoop just before Christmas, because a couple of weeks later you see a lot of Australia's $10 billion scattered around the floor with 'Made in China' on the back."
Senator Barnaby Joyce quoted in News.com.au on the same subject.

Portrait of the dozy dastard from the National Museum of Australia

What can't Malcolm do?

Not only did Malcolm Turnbull think up "all the good ideas" (October 16) that Kevin Rudd has being putting into action lately, he also invented the internet, Microsoft and Google, put unmanned spacecraft on Mars, walked on the moon, cured cervical cancer and won World War II singlehandedly.
Not bad for a bloke who started out in life as the son of poor black sharecroppers born in a cardboard box on the lip of an active volcano outside downtown Vaucluse.
Ross Sharp of Toowong (Qld) in The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday

Just a few words for Mr. Monsanto

Hearing a Victorian farmer admitting on the ABC TV Landline program last Sunday that his genetically modified canola test plot took more time and money to raise than his adjoining non-GM plot, I began to feel that North Coast Voices has lately been a bit neglectful of the job security of that Monsanto employee paid to monitor the blogosphere.

To make it up to Mr. Monsanto as he/she is affectionately known Down Under, here are a few updates.

From AFN in late September:

Ninety per cent of Australians want all genetically modified (GM) products labelled and are less likely to purchase such products, according to a recent Newspoll poll.According to the poll, which was commissioned by anti-GM campaigners Greenpeace, when asked if food products from GM crops and animals fed with GM feed should or should not be labelled, 90% of the respondents said they should be labelled. The 25-34 age group was the most keen for labelling of GM food (95%), with the 18-24 age group indicating the least support for GM labelling (86%).
Fifty-four per cent of respondents outlined they would be less likely to purchase GM food if given a choice, while 2% said they would be more likely to buy it and 42 per cent suggested it would have no impact on their purchase. The 18-24 age group was once again the least concerned about GM-food, as 61 per cent reported that it would have no impact on their purchases. Across states the statistics were similar, except in Western Australia and Tasmania. WA consumers were more likely to show little concern as only 45% would be less likely to purchase compared to the Australia-wide leaders Tasmania - where 71% said they would be less likely to purchase GM-food.
The survey questions are here.

A few words on seed servitude were found in Multinational Monitor in its Sept/Oct 2008 issue:

In the United States, industry leader Monsanto has pursued thousands of farmers for allegedly saving and replanting its patented Roundup Ready soybean seeds. An analysis by the Center for Food Safety documented court-imposed payments of more than $21 million from farmers to Monsanto for alleged patent infringement. However, when one includes the much greater number of pre-trial settlements, the total jumps to more than $85 million, collected from several thousand farmers.

In September Worcester Telegram & Gazette News also reported:

Monsanto has filed about 125 lawsuits to stop patent infringement, and it has been able to avoid court in all but eight of those cases, winning those eight.

Open Secrets lists Monsanto as donating $1.3 million to congressmen and senators standing for re-election this year.

Madge and ABC National Rural News that same month told us that GM canola grower Evan Ryan found that drought hits all crops regardless:

Some of the country's first GM canola crops are struggling with the drought. Northern Victorian grain grower Evan Ryan from Yarrawonga says if the rain stays away he may even have to cut his valuable crop for hay.

Now we are in October, Delaware Online told us last week that all was not rosy for Monsanto:

Monsanto Co., the world's largest seed maker, said Wednesday its loss narrowed to $172 million in its fourth fiscal quarter as sales rose 35 percent. Its loss amounted to 31 cents a share in the three months ended Aug. 31, versus a loss of $210 million, or 39 cents a share, in the same period a year ago. Sales rose to $2.05 billion from $1.5 billion last year. Monsanto also reported a smaller loss of 3 cents a share from ongoing business during the quarter, down from 18 cents year ago. Those figures factor in the one-time sale of its Posilac milk hormone business, and a separate legal settlement.

Finally, last Monday GM-Free Ireland published the results of a recent survey:

As well as this growing consumer rejection of GM food in America, GM companies have had to face opposition by US farmers and regulatory authorities to a series of new GM products.

Both GM rice and GM wheat faced such strong opposition from farmers that they never made it out of field trials, and have never been grown commercially in the USA.

Hardly any GM sweet corn1 for human consumption is grown either (as opposed to maize grown for animal feed), for the simple reason that it tastes so bad that consumers wonít buy it. Attempts to launch GM alfalfa, Americaís fourth most widely grown crop, have also fallen flat. Farmers took legal action against the release of the crop and won.

In 2007 the USDA was ordered to withdraw its approval of the GM alfalfa, a ban was placed on all planting of the crop and the sale of GM alfalfa seeds has now been prohibited throughout the USA. There is also evidence that US plant breeders are rejecting GM technology in favour of more reliable and effective methods such as marker assisted selection. Despite soya being one of the most widely grown GM crops, the newest high-yielding soya strains are non-GM.

For the first time in the USA, a major labelling initiative is underway that will finally provide consumers with the option of choosing a wide range of non-GM foods. The biggest companies in the natural and organic industry have united to develop a non-GMO label scheme that offers consumers the choice they clearly wish for, backed up by a robust verification system to ensure that it is a claim they can trust.

This new ëNon-GMO Projectí will be launched next year. It is led by a group of companies with combined annual sales of at least $12 billion - equivalent to almost 10% of the entire UK food and drink industry.

Around four hundred companies across the US and Canada have pledged their support, and at the outset around 28,000 different products are likely to be covered by the scheme. With US consumers, farmers and politicians losing their enthusiasm for GM crops, it is not surprising that the GM industry has scaled up its efforts to find a new market in the EU.

But in Europe, over 175 regions and over 4,500 municipalities and local areas have declared themselves GMO-free.

Major countries that once supported GM, like France and Germany, no longer do so, and the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are all committed to GM-free policies.

Land of the GM-free report here.

So to recap: Monsanto - with uncertainty growing in its 'home' market - is setting Australian farmers up to produce grain crops that many consumers do not really want to use or eat, and probably intends to sue the pants off some of these same farmers to help protect its not so healthy corporate bottom line.

Bravo, Monsanto!

Monsanto graphic from Google Images

Reconnecting to Country grant for Wilson's River project

The Northern Rivers Echo yesterday:

The NSW Environmental Trust has provided $400,000 over three years for a new project called Reconnecting to Country, which aims to improve the health of the Wilsons River catchment through on-the-ground environmental actions and cultural exchanges with Widjabul custodians.

The first step for the project is a series of community workshops to be held throughout the region in November to introduce the project, the Widjabul custodians, and the process of working together as Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.

After getting community input and ideas from the workshops about how people feel they can improve catchment health, working groups to run different projects will be established. These groups could undertake practical measures like tree planting and rehabilitating the banks of waterways. The projects are only limited by the community's imagination.

Spokesperson for the project, Anthony Acret from Rous Water, says that the project aims to build a culture of sustainability, develop creative partnerships, build capacity to employ Aboriginal people in sustainability education and action, and cultivate a sense of place and reconciliation.

The Widjabul custodians have a simple message for everyone: Jahna ngali garimaleh jogun, which means "Let's stand together, looking after country".

A partnership project, it includes the community, Rous Water, the Widjabul custodians and Sustainable Futures Australia.

For further information or to register for one of the free workshops phone Emily at Sustainable Futures Australia on 6685 7194 or email wilsonsriver@sustainablefutures.com.au.

ASIO laugh of the week via Crikey

Crikey on Monday:

"ASIO is advertising for intelligence officers, but to apply, you have to email a recruitment company for an application form (intelligence@tmpworldwide.com.au.) You can see this on the following page. But how good can ASIO's security be if a private company (and a foreign one at that) will have the name of every applicant? TMP may not necessarily know who is successful with their application to become an intelligence officer, but they will have a complete list of applicants and so if anybody later on ever wants to find if someone is a ASIO intelligence officer or works for ASIO they can just see if their name is on the applicant list. Seeing as TMP is a foreign company, how safe can it be giving them a list of all ASIO job applicants? You'd think ASIO would be handling that in-house. Their own website says:

Please note: All applications for employment with ASIO are handled in the strictest confidence. It is essential that you DO NOT discuss your application with others as doing so may adversely affect your application.

But they still outsource the recruiting of Australia's spy agency to a foreign company --- that doesn't seem very good security to me."

Just gotta laugh!

Cartoon came from Dvice.com

Saffin receives a short and sweet note from the Clarence Valley

Here is a copy of an e-mail sent the day after the Rudd Government announced that Disability Support Pensioners were included in a Federal Government lump-sum payment to pensioners for the first time.

From: [edited]

To: Janelle.Saffin.MP@aph.gov.au

Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 1:38 PM
Subject: Please pass on our congratulations.....

JANELLE :

Please pass on our congratulations to all in Canberra who finally discovered Disabled Pensioners.

Thank You and Best Wishes :

John X. Berlin

[address edited for privacy reasons]

Update:

Janelle replies.

From: Saffin, Janelle (MP) [mailto:Janelle.Saffin.MP@aph.gov.au]

Sent: Thursday, 16 October 2008 6:56 AM

To: [edited]

Subject: RE: Please pass on our congratulations to all in Canberra who discovered Disabled Pensioners.

John,

Thanks for the message.

We knew they were around, the Opposition had 12 years and did not find them and are still looking.

Warm regards
Janelle

* GuestSpeak is a feature of North Coast Voices allowing Northern Rivers residents to make satirical or serious comment on issues that concern them. Posts of 250-300 words or less can be submitted to ncvguestspeak@live.com.au for consideration.

At last - a more balanced look at effects of the Howard-Rudd NT Intervention

Finally the long-awaited Northern Territory Emergency Response Review Report has been released.

It tells us what most sensible people predicted when John Howard announced he implementing a fascist and racist approach to indigenous communities in the Top End.

The Executive Summary to the report states:

In many communities there is a deep belief that the measures introduced by the Australian Government under the NTER were a collective imposition based on race.

There is a strong sense of injustice that Aboriginal people and their culture have been seen as exclusively responsible for problems within their communities that have arisen from decades of cumulative neglect by governments in failing to provide the most basic standards of health, housing, education and ancillary services enjoyed by the wider Australian community.

Support for the positive potential of NTER measures has been dampened and delayed by the manner in which they were imposed.

The Intervention diminished its own effectiveness through its failure to engage constructively with the Aboriginal people it was intended to help.......

The benefits of income management are being increasingly experienced. Its compulsory, blanket imposition continues to be resisted, but the measure is capable of being reformed and improved......

If the various NTER measures are to operate as a genuine suite of measures there needs to be adjustments in the machinery of government enabling better coordination of services, greater responsiveness to the unique characteristics of each community and higher levels of community participation in the design and delivery of services.

People who do not wish to participate should be free to leave the scheme. It should be available on a voluntary basis and imposed only as a precise part of child protection measures or where specified by statute, subject to independent review. In both cases it should be supported by services to improve financial literacy.

Income management is in many respects representative of other NTER measures. If it is modified and improved, then the resistance to its original imposition might be negated.

When specifically addressing the selective quashing of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, the report itself stated:

Not surprisingly, there was a convergence among
official commentaries and submissions to the Board
around the fundamental principle of international
human rights law that different classes of rights
cannot be traded off against each other. This
principle is captured in article 5 of the Vienna
Declaration on Human Rights (1993).

It is important to note that criticisms over the
exclusion of the RDA do not simply reflect an
‘academic’ debate. Throughout the Board’s
community visits and consultations with various
organisations and representatives, it was made
abundantly clear that people in Aboriginal
communities felt humiliated and shamed by the
imposition of measures that marked them out as
less worthy of the legislative protections afforded
other Australians.

These concerns were most palpable in the context
of comments and submissions relating to the
compulsory acquisition of land41 and the exclusion
of external merits review in the income management
scheme applied in the Northern Territory.42.....

In the Board’s view, there are no convincing
arguments for excluding human rights principles
and the RDA. Consistent with a key theme of the
review the Board believes the re-engagement
process has to be underpinned by acknowledgment
of the informed consent principle and human
rights provisions.

Predictably Howard's leftovers still on the Opposition front bench oppose any change to the Intervention.

One suspects their objections are based on a fear that human rights may be restored to indigenous communities covered by the Intervention.

If the Prime Minister and Cabinet have any moral courage whatsoever, they will scrap Howard's legislation completely and start again.

Full report can be found here.
The Canberra Times on the subject here.