Imagine a third world nation was mired in corruption so deeply that the ruling class were able to stealthily steal the rights to vast acreage of private property from landowners without paying any compensation.
Imagine that one of the victims of this injustice had approached every court of the land and had not even had his case heard, even after more than 200 attempts. In desperation, and with no other avenue available, having officially “lost the farm”, he starts a hunger strike, which has now gone for 28 52 days unbroken, threatening to starve to death if he has to.
Welcome to Australia — right on track for Third World Status.
Get ready to be shocked. This is an moving example of why “policy by accident” is a dangerous way to govern. In this case, innocuous feel-good laws end up crushing upstanding citizens. Peter Spencer is still alive (though he may only have 12 – 20 days to go) but how many other farming men were put through the environmental-ringer, and drowned themselves in brandy, picked up a gun, or crashed the car into the only tree near the road? None of these deaths would be recorded as victims of bureaucracy.
Peter Spencer bought a farm south of Canberra in the early 1980’s. In the mid 1990’s new laws rolled into action that prevented land clearing. That meant, even though the land belonged to him, Peter could no longer clear the regrowth. Eighty percent of what he paid for was effectively confiscated. He received nothing in return and there was no way out. He couldn’t sell the property — who would buy a piece of land they have no right to use?
But Peter still had a mortgage to pay, and no way of earning the money to do it. Recently, his last legal avenue was exhausted, and the sherriff gained a warrant to take the farm off him. That was the final straw…
Peter Spencer has issued the Prime Minister of Australia with a letter of his demands. He wants a Royal Commission and compensation for all the farmers who have lost the right to use their land.
Compensation would cost billions. But Kevin Rudd’s “stimulus package” (spend-for-the-sake-of-spending), was 42 billion dollars big.
This is what happens when big government gets your money. It gives a “free” handout of $950 per tax-payer to randomly “stimulate the economy”, and uses the rest to build school halls, even in schools which already had a hall, or in schools which desperately needed a library.
The long story
ABC Radio National (Counterpoint) has one of the best descriptions of his story in the transcript of an interview with Michael Duffy. It’s clear that Spencer has been willing to try to work around the laws, and be creative about managing his property. After the land-clearing laws came into effect, Peter paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to set up ponds for trout fishing. But new water laws ended that too (and also without compensation). Tenaciously Peter then set up a fine-wool breeding program, but the bushfires of 2003 (that destroyed 500 homes in Canberra, and native forest near Peter) meant that hundreds of wild dogs were forced out of burnt areas. They over-ran his property, killing hundreds of sheep.
Spencer: Every one of my projects is destroyed, every one of my…it’s just disgraceful, Michael, I just feel sick. I was just thinking last night, I can remember going off to court, day after day, sometimes the last eight or nine weeks I would come back, spend one night [unclear], change all my files, back to Sydney again. I spent nearly five weeks there non-stop the last two months. And I’d watch sheep dying in the paddock and I couldn’t go round and shoot them because I had nobody left to help me. I had to let them die on their own, just kicking and struggling because they couldn’t stand up anymore, nothing to feed them with, it was just unbelievable.
Spencer points out that the land-grab by the Australian Government meant the nation met it’s Kyoto commitments, a target that would otherwise have been blown away. The carbon stored in confiscated land amounts to about $10.7 billion in carbon credits. Probably the total value lost (with interest) from the productive use of that land would be many times higher.
The Australian has only covered this story as an attack Barnaby Joyce. The man who hasn’t eaten for four weeks, and who is a victim of a fascist government illegal action, doesn’t make a news story in his own right. (This spans both sides of politics). I can’t find a mention of the hunger-striking “Peter Spencer” in the Sydney Morning Herald, or in The Age. Did you think you were buying one of our major dailies because they would tell you all the news…
A search of The Australian site over the last month reveals just the one mention of Peter Spencer within the piece on Barnaby Joyce, but 94 mentions of Tiger Woods. This is our national masthead?
If your property was stolen by a creeping cancerous form of government, and you are prepared to die for your rights, you might get a passing mention. But if you are a foreign sportsman who had … affairs (!), it’s front page news.
If we don’t have full meaningful ownership of our own land, then we have already been conquered by fascism. What use is the “free press” if they don’t warn us as it comes, inform us as it happens, or even bother to report the coup, post hoc?
This is the Alan Jones radio interview with Peter Spencer, and his lawyer with images overlaid. Listen to just how articulate and well spoken Peter is.
More information:
Peter Spencer‘s site on Agmates.
A Current Affair visited Peter Spencer and got some moving footage of the tower and him speaking.
Carbongate (Crickey.com) – Steve Truman exposes The Great Carbon Heist: How 83.7 million tonnes of Carbon Credits was stolen from farmers.
Justin Jefferson in Quadrant looks at the legal side of the question, and explores the bigger picture of why both National and State governments are palming this off to the other.
Under the Australian Constitution, if the Commonwealth wants to acquire a person’s property, it must do so on just terms, i.e. pay fair compensation. Since land-use rights form part of the equity of a property, the taking of those rights, and vesting the control and benefit of them in government bodies, is in effect a compulsory acquisition of property rights.
In the High Court, the Commonwealth is arguing that the Constitution was not intended to protect against forced acquisitions of property by the executive arm of government! The absurdity, or dishonesty, of this argument should be obvious. If it were accepted, it would make the very idea of private property, and constitutional and limited government, meaningless.
The Alan Jones interview. The ABC “Rural News” coverage.
Peter Spencer has been fighting this since 2005. His thoughts back then are here.
To contact the PM Kevin Rudd about this shameful case http://pm.gov.au/PM_Connect/Email_your_PM
UPDATE1 : There is a fund developing to help farmers like Peter. You need to register as a member of Agmates to see this page.
ONGOING UPDATES: All posts tagged Peter Spencer.
Jan 12th – What does an Australian Farmer have to do to make the news!?
If you have not seen the UN Wildlands project you have certainly run into it (as has Mr. Peter Spencer). I am more familiar with the “project” as it looks in the USA but I’m sure that the wonderful folks Down Under are equally on the radar.
Do a web search on “UN Wildlands Project” and you’ll have sleepless paranoid nights ahead.
We should note the things in common a few here: the UN, Government “takings” of private land, Maurice Strong, etc.
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[…] The self imposed green ruling class. Green fascism. Where green has become red, and the environmental movement is more about ugenics and population control than it is about the environment. This is self evident in how the current trillion dollar schemes to cut carbon do nothing for the environment. Green fascism destroys the lives of hardworking Australians. […]
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I read that Joanne says “She has received no funding for the Skeptics Handbook or to create and maintain this site.”
This site takes a lot of time to maintain. Most sites like this are funded, directly or indirectly, by organisations like the Cato, Heartland, the coal and oil industry.
I am skeptical about Joannes’s statement that she has received no funding.
Please provide publicly verifiable evidence.
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This is what happens when Ideology overrides pragmatism.
Once again, the fact that we only hear about this at this late stage is an absolutely shameful disgrace.
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Phagor,
Joanne recieves donations.
What would it matter if she did receive funding from any of the abovementioned groups?
It doesn’t change the fact that there is no empirical evidence for Co2 causing catastrophic global warming.
Unless you can provide that paper, move on.
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Dude, what information would you believe?
The “fact” is that in your mind this whole site and all the different people here are either not real or on the payroll of your personal enemies (or demons) world wreaking giant corporation.
I seriously doubt that short of a personal guided tour of Joann’s bank accounts (not going to happen) you’d believe any “evidence” Therefore I think you should go away before the real troll haters come out of the wood work.
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Phagor, you really don’t want to go down the funding road. The gravy train is flowing firmly in the direction of alarmist climate science. What’s $80 billion to usher in a new tax worth trillions?
You obviously don’t understand how tiny the amount of funding is from exxonmobil.
Check out exxonsecrets.org – it’s a greenpeace run smear campaign against exxonmobile. The problem is, they score an own goal by highlighting just how pathetic the amount of money is supposedly distorting the science.
Exxon over 11 years: $23,000,000 (2m/yr)
US government over 20 years: $79,000,000,000 (3950m/yr)
Next!
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We have a similar problem all over this country. The whole central valley of California is now a desert because a judge ordered pumps shut down to save a 3 inch fish. $3 billion/year worth of agriculture has been taken without compensation. We are broke and need that economic activity but the fish is more important than the Constitution or the welfare of California.
I sympathize with Peter Spencer.
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Nice post, thanks. The US is having plenty of similar issues, with various Gov entities essentially confiscating land/property. it will get worse with upcoming carbon plans, EPA rulings, etc. Our hope is that the voters are as sick of this nonsense as some polls make us out to be.
And here it was thought, by some, that communism (state ownership of the means of production, etc.) was dead. Nope. Very much alive, but with better labels and PR.
About the comment above: Pro-warming funding is at least 1,000 times that of skeptic funding. (Many billions in various grants and projects Vs. whatever millions Exxon has spent.) Let the credibility meter be adjusted appropriately.
BTW, most sites like this are not funded by Cato, Oil, etc. Most are by honest skeptics who see major holes in the Global Warming hypothesis. They probably should put more advertising on their sites to help defray costs, though.
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I bet food prices in Australia are higer as a result of farms being shut down, so there are even more victims of the AGW scam.
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Near where I live, in Evans Head, Australia, a land developer lost a court case after environmentalists discovered some kind of supposed endangered species on the site of the proposed development. The project would have injected much needed money into the community but the environmentalists, mostly professional protestors. Few protestors were locals. Instead, they were a bunch of mislead activists hell bent on stopping any kind of progress.
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Phagor:
You murdered someone somewhere in the past. Prove to us that you didn’t. If you can’t, it proves that you are a murderer.
It’s that sort of reasoning that shows that people like you have no idea. You demand of sceptics that they prove that AGW does not exist or that Jo does not receive funding.
You cannot prove a negative.
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Exactly what they want. The United Nations Biodiversity concept is to confine people to existing population centers. It isn’t logical unless you think of humans as the problem. That means all their developments (especially the things that employ more people) are BAD.
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@ phagor
As Dean Turner politely suggests, don`t go there.
Attack Jo`s message if you have the wherewithal,wit and most important, the science. However If you can only slight this most venerable site by spurious implication you reveal yourself as only half prepared for a battle of wits. you may wish to consider a dietary change as the greens you have stuffed yourself with appear to have rendered you permanently constipated.
have a nice day.
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Except that really that regrowth gets hit by a bushfire before long and the carbon comes right out again. A regular grown then burn cycle for Eucalypt trees has the same long-term carbon footprint as regular cycle of planted crop then harvest.
The only way to get a carbon credit out of bush regrowth is to use dodgy accounting (i.e. ignore bushfires) or somehow magically make the fires go away (strangely government departments haven’t figured that one out yet).
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Phagor,
How about Dr Rajendra Pachauri (head of the IPCC) publishes his personal accounts? Maybe just publish the finance details for TERI and Tata as well as a list of the major payments they have received out of the UN and the EU. I guarantee it will be several orders of magnitude larger than the sum total incomes of everyone who posts on this blog.
I’m not entirely against the idea of full disclosure being the rule for such things but only if it applies equally to all parties concerned — including Al Gore’s property investments, Dr Phil Jones’ juicy grant money (and details of where that was spent), and exactly who is sitting on large books of carbon credits.
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Wasn’t the inability to clear regrowth one of the reasons for the shocking fatalities, due to the speed of the Victoria fires?
When I was studying political science I used to burst out laughing at the stupidity of the excesses of the Stalin and Mao regimes. I went on to work for the government for a few years. I watched a generational change take place. The older blokes who had lived through the war were mostly pragmatic and had empathy for the voters. They moved on, and a new lot of zealots gained far too much power – they cared for vague and general “causes” far more than for people and their rights. Just like Stalin and Mao. I don’t laugh at such idiocy any more. The consequences are far too close to home.
The blokes listed on the memorials just up the road from Peter at Canberra would be outraged.
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This is happening quite a lot. People must remember, that when you ‘own’ property in Australia, you have no property rights in the real sense. Local Councils, State Governments and Federal Governments can over ride those rights. This is probably a simplistic notion and I may be wrong. However, I have seen this sort of thing a number of times. Before the tragic bush fires in Victoria, just see what would have happened if you dare to cut a tree down on your own property. For a minority Party, the Greens have a lot of pull, when giving preferences to the main Parties – which usually go to Labor anyway – given their REAL political leanings.
Good luck to Mr Peter Spencer.
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The Government puts you in a position where sometimes the best hassle-free solution to escape their insanity is to shoot yourself.
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Jo,
The assault on private property started in 1991 when Native Title was implemented. I mentioned to devout lefty friends in Perth that Native title was more about the UN diminishing private property rights via these native title processes than anything else. My comment was met with stunned silence, meaning, of course, that my analysis was totally on target. The Fabian goal is to emancipate land from individual and class ownership and as Paul Keating is a Fabian, his act then is simply following the Fabian agenda. Land is being alienated also via the process you have reported above, plus various national parks, buy backs in the name of conservation etc. The goal is to destroy private property.
Oh incidentally, while Copenhagen is a flop for them, remember we still have the burden of the various climate change departments to deal with. And if Tony Abbot is now stressing reducing CO2 emission by 5% then I am afraid we are probably in for an ETS next year.
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The irony of the whole situation is that the whole carbon savings of the Austrailian initiative will be wiped out by the volcano eruption in the Philipines in four or five day with thousands of tons of emissions per day. This shows how pointless carbon remediation is to even attempt. The arrogant puny efforts of the IPCC can be dwarfed by Mother Nature at her whim in seconds.
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Jo,
Terrible story; well written. It is extremely distressing. I do hope that reason prevails.
I have become increasingly concerned in recent months that the strong emotions being stirred up among people wanting to “save the planet” would result in the creation of modern martyrs among their opponents; I dearly hope that Mr Spencer is not the first of them.
I’ve sent the following email to your PM (thanks for the address); he might hear a plea even from New Zealand:
Best,
Richard Treadgold,
Convenor,
Climate Conversation Group.
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When will Australia wake up ??…
The PM has no intention of doing the right thing for any Australian affected by this a matter…
The penny is yet to drop perhaps, but Australians do not seem to understand exactly where they stand as citizens anymore !! We must all stay close and demand a fair go!
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Rod,
You are correct – the lack of clearing up regrowth (and the removal of waste) did contribute substantially to the victorian bushfires. The Department of Sparks and Embers (DSE) refused to allow people to even cut up fallen trees for firewood and left them lying on the side of the road.
Apparently the desire of people to see trees (both dead and living) on either side of the road overrode common safety concerns.
I can only hope we can return to the great sound of chainsaws cutting on the weekends again.
Once again, Ideology is for imbeciles.
P.S. Ignore phagor. S/he is obviously a troll. Just dislike their post and leave the comments to the unpaid public.
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@ Jo,
I`m not sure whether the `main stream media` is ad hoc, post hoc or in hoc… but, in hoc is the best bet adjudged by the creeping light that is spreading slowly over the grasping tentacles of the UN/IPCC…..
Remember, there are NO lengths that the smurfs of the new world order will not go to as the end justifies the means.
Illegitimi non carborundum
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Re Tel, Comment 14.
I agree. Young vigorously growing plant life, especially forest, binds huge amounts of carbon dioxide up as cellulose and does so even faster now that CO2 is slightly greater than a few centuries ago. Harvesting timber and locking it up in housing and furniture should please those with a wilderness between the ears but I’m one of those who reckon the whole warming debate was sham from the beginning. All these carbon credit and political environmental schemes simply detract from cheap common-sense conservation of our world which can be done without a World Government, or “top down” management principles such as those experienced by Mr Spencer.
Surely there must be a balance. If Mr Spence left a 10m band of of native bush along the boundary and fenced-off all water-courses and hill-tops and land steeper than 15º, he’d have plenty of useable space left and be able to co-exist with, and preserve bio-diversity, and reduce soil and wind erosion. I doubt that the Rudd’s of the world care or understand common sense. Their agenda is far different.
JPAK.
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The mainstream media (bar a token few) are dogs. How could the masses not have been told of this story ?? This is outrageous! There must be more that a man can do, than to have to resort to self-harm….or, maybe there isn’t an alternative ??
Well I guess that if Mr Rudd continues to be ignorant and Mr Spencer dies, we will all know exactly where we all stand!! What goes around….
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I haven’t back to your site for a while, Joanne, and was surprised to see this story. I should say I’m no surprised it’s happening, but that it’s happening in Australia is a blow to many of us who work agriculture in America.
I post a blog for many of my farm customers and some year and a half ago I reported on some U.S. environmentalists and government types that were piecing together a formula for transforming America into a virtual ‘green’ country—not that it isn’t already, but in the political sense their notion is that “X” amount of (by definition) marginal agricultural land will go back to trees while the remainder is used for food production. Of course just like your Mr Spencer those farmers here whose lands went to trees would essentially be giving up all free enterprise returns on these lands, while food production acres would increase exponentially in value.
We’ve yet to enjoin the fracas on the ag issue in the U.S., but we will. I suspect we’ll be facing similar nightmares here. In the meanwhile, add my and a host of friends and customers’ names to support for Peter Spencer. If a time comes that Peter needs financial assistance, I believe we could drum up some over here.
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The big compensation buck-pass between Commonwealth and State Govts lies in that under the Commonwealth constitution property taken (or rendered worthless) for public benefit must be compensated. The States are not bound to pay compensation for land economically sterilised. So the last States to implement clearance controls, especially over regrowth, were bribed or bullied to implement these controls. The Commonwealth then appropriated the Kyoto created carbon credits for the benefit of all Australians. Cosy deal – just shaft the farmers as their votes do not count.
South Australia was the first state to implement controls on clearance of Native vegetation in 1983, amended in 1985. For a short period (until 1991) limited compensation (diminution) was available if landowners voluntarily placed land refused clearance permission under a heritage agreement – effectively sterilising historical (grazing) and further economic use. From the start, administrators and decision makers gamed their powers, insisting that landowners qualifying for allowable clearance consent FIRST sign a heritage agreement before clearance consent. In effect “putting the cart before the horse”, ie exceeding powers.
Things could get sticky when the heritage demand was over land external to an application, therefore not subject to clearance refusal, and therefore not eligible to be processed under the NVM Act 1985 which had some compensation available. This happened to us, started by a regrowth application for permission to complete clearace for enough cropping land to be viable (we only had 10% cleared arable land). We never got that clearance consent.
The impact of Australian native vegetation controls has been vicious for many farmers, especially those unlucky enough to have significant areas of native vegetation remaining. In addition, years of public officers and decision makers gaming their powers has seriously undermined rural trust in the integrity of rule of law. That’s when those who cannot afford legal redress, or have been legally sterilised from redress, take up drinking or guns. Many of us are with you, Peter.
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http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/putting_our_economy_in_the_hands_of_chavez_fans
Nothing is real in Copenhagen – not the temperature record, not the predictions, not the agenda, not the “solution”. In fact, here’s how fake it all is:
The lead negotiator for the small island nation of Tuvalu, the bow-tie wearing Ian Fry, broke down as he begged delegates to take tough action.
“I woke up this morning crying,” and that’s not easy for a grown man to admit,” Mr Fry said on Saturday, as his eyes welled with tears.
”The fate of my country rests in your hands,” he concluded, as the audience exploded with wild applause.
So moving. But let’s now learn more from Samantha Maiden about this former Greenpeace official from “Tuvalu”:
But the part-time PhD scholar at the Australian National University actually resides in Queanbeyan, NSW, where he’s not likely to be troubled by rising sea levels because the closest beach at Batemans Bay is a two-hour, 144km drive away. Asked whether he had ever lived in Tuvalu, his wife told The Australian last night she would “rather not comment”….
Still, it’s a long way from the endangered atolls of Tuvalu, with his neighbour Michelle Ormay confirming he’s lived in Queanbeyan for more than a decade, while he has worked his way up to being “very high up in climate change”.
Who is this cry baby?
Is he a phony resident of Tuvalu?
The greenie weenies seem to be loaded with dishonesty.
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This quote from Maurice Strong, a rabid environmentalist and high up mover at least as of the Kyoto Protocol which he apparently is largely responsible for, should be very instructive.
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
If you Google this exact text you’ll find more than 600 references to it. There’s little doubt that he said it. Humans are polluting their precious Earth by their very presence is the way I read that. The objective is to get rid of millions of us. Not all are in it for this reason, some smell money, others (the UN) smell power, others simply want to be on the PC side of things and some are just Kool-Aid drinkers. But if we can’t stop it millions will die when it’s carried to its logical conclusion. And that’s literally an intended result. I’d bet anything on it.
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Phagor,
In your earnestness to smear Joanne, you have forgotten two very important and over-riding principles.
In a democracy, freedom of speech & freedom of association is perfectly legal.
Furthermore, in a democracy any company or organization can distribute its funds to whoever it likes.
I don’t here you crying foul over DeSmog Blog or RealClimate.
Tell me…who funds those two sites?
I personally don’t like their disinformation but as unpalatable as their fraudulent science is, I stand by their right to express their opinion publicly.
That my friend is what divides us.
I believe in free & open debate.
You believe in a brand of totalitarianism.
Aqua Fyre
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The Australian Labor Party’s ideology/love of everything UN and Rudd’s coveting of a seat on that despot ridden body, will probably over ride any appeal sent by Mr Richard Treadgold – who must be commended for his effort. Along with their Internet Censorship, they feel that they have a mandate to do what ever they wish. This lot, with their ‘progressive brand’ of democracy, give real Democracy a bad name.
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Follow up to my above comment. A link to a sample, of the Australia of the future.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/21/conroy_domain/
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This is the first time I have heard of Peter Spencer and I have much sympathy for him, for as a fisherman, we also had Government destroy our independence and our industry.
The Queensland Commercial Fishing industry was destroyed by eco regulations also Jo. Unremarked and unreported, or pretty much so by the media.
The Queensland East Coast Trawl Fishery in particular was hard hit. Though Compensation was paid, in sorts, via a buy back of licenses… Thanks mainly to the hard work of Nationals senator Ron Boswell, otherwise we fishermen would probably have been pushed out with nothing.
The buy back of a licence worked out to about a years gross earnings, perhaps a year and half max…. Not much to give up a livelihood for… But there was no choice. You either took it or the State government was going to simply get rid of most of us anyway….
On top of that, they reduced the areas that could be trawled overall and ran closure lines through some of the best trawl and scallop grounds. No science involved, just ideology… The trawl fishery is now a shadow of its former self… and most of the support industries like engineers, mechanics, electricians, chandleries, slipways, refrigeration businesses, freighters, seafood outlets, painters, netmakers, etc, went broke when the number of fishing boats dropped below sustainable limits…. all these small private, self employed people thrown away by an ecofascist State Government…
These people were 100% earners. Not one cent went into subsidising them… Yet the bloated bureaucracy that now manages fisheries and marine parks is 100% taxpayer funded. University trained Socialists stole the livelihoods of ordinary Australians. Artfully replaced them and got the rest of us to fund them.
So I can sympathize with Peter Spencer whole heartedly…. I am in awe of his energy and determination to bring this ecofascism to account.
So that was fishermen, farmers, primary producers shackled by environmentalism…. ordinary folks next. Be warned. Support the Peter Spencer’s of Australia… There are not that many with the drive to stand against them and see tyranny undone.
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Hi BJM, thanks for posting that link. Here is the new website which is outside of the control of auDA.
http://stephen-conroy.com/news.php
It is hilarious.
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Cheers Thumbnail.
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I was about to ask if you go to Agmates nowadays Jo… and click on the link and lo and behold… Agmates. I’m a big fan of Steve’s to be honest.
But hey I own a suburban block and I’m not allowed to build either a skyscraper or a pub on it! Where is the outrage for us poor city folk?
Lastly – Jo are people aware that your hubbie wrote the “model” that told Howard how locking up land rights would meet his Kyoto targets at the stroke of a pen?
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This is so immoral and disgusting. Following is the email I fired off to the PM just now.
As a lifelong labor supporter, I wish to formally register my disgust at the treatment of NSW farmer Peter Spencer.
The THEFT of his farming rights is akin to the behaviour of 3rd world tyrants.
I understand the back n forth between federal and state govts. on this issue, but I place it squarely ON YOUR SHOULDERS Prime Minister.
Well may we say merry christmas, how about a christian act to help this man? whos plight is overwhelmingly supported by those Australians who are aware of it.
Make no mistake Prime Minister, although Peters hunger strike hasn’t quite hit the MSM as yet, it inevitably will as he gets closer to death. Guess who will be blamed for not attending to his plight? No amount of deflecting this issue to the states will change the fact that people will see your readiness to spend their taxes helping other countries with the global warming issue, whilst washing your hands of such an important issue to the very people who feed us, who feed your family, OUR FARMERS.
My advice sir, is twist whatever arms you have to twist, adjust whatever rules and laws you have to adjust but FIX THIS ISSUE OF LAND USE. Otherwise, coupled with the issue of boat people and the Copenhagen farce, an image of the way you play politics will be burnt into the populaces heads, and any little perceived errors you make in the future will be amplified. You know what I mean, this is the very concept that brought down Howard, only yours has started so early in your tenure.
I’m just one vote, but my late dad used to say “drop by drop you can form a lake”. A lake is forming sir.
Merry christmass to you and your family and your overworked staff
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Actually Jo it would make a really interesting blog were Dr Evans to ouline the kinds of pressure his team worked under and dubious modelling assumptions made to ensure that Australia’s Kyoto commitments were met just by stopping land clearing. Surely there was a lot of pressure for the “model” to produce the “correct” results. Dr Evans could be to FullCAM what “Harry” was to CRU.
Lets not beat about the bush here – this whole scenario was implemented by the battlers’ here John W. Howard.
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“In the High Court, the Commonwealth is arguing that the Constitution was not intended to protect against forced acquisitions of property by the executive arm of government! The absurdity, or dishonesty, of this argument should be obvious. If it were accepted, it would make the very idea of private property, and constitutional and limited government, meaningless.
And now to compound the offence, faced with Peter Spencer’s hunger strike, the Commonwealth says it’s all a State matter.”
This is from the Australian constitution, Part 5: The States….. “109. When a law of a State is inconsistent with a law of the Commonwealth,
the latter shall prevail, and the former shall, to the extent of the
inconsistency, be invalid.”
I’d say Peter is backed up by the Constitution… This is a Federal responsibility, not a State one.
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I wonder what the emission / pollution effect that the AGW alarmists will place on the recent Mt mayon volcano activity in Manilla will be. Combine that with the variuos science data supporting a future cooler climate (sun, PDO,irradiance, etc)then no doubt any future global cooling will be assigned to “successful” ETS initiatives and COP15 outcomes. Then its more money through the ticky handed.
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J Hansford in #40 – indeed Howard knew exactly what he was doing when he stopped the clearing in a manner that made no compensation due.
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Just to put this front and square, from Dr Evan’s own CV:
“Carbon Accounting, Canberra, 1999 – 2005
Australian Greenhouse Office. Produced FullCAM, a 200,000 line commercial-quality Windows GUI application written in C/C++ and based on the Borland VCL. FullCAM is used by the Australian Government to calculate its land-use carbon accounts for the Kyoto Protocol. FullCAM models forests and agricultural systems and their exchanges of carbon with the atmosphere. It models individual plots, estates of plots, and spatial arrays of plots connected to spatial information such as rainfall, temperature, soil type, farming practices, and satellite images of clearing and revegetation.”
So Tel I saw above you comment on regrowth just releasing CO2 back when it burns… well FullCAM would account for this… wouldn’t it.
Here we are lead to believe that the entire world of climate modellinbg is corrupt… then surely a program that allowed a nation to meet Kyoto targets just by stopping landclearing needs some scrutiny?
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Matt B in #42…. I think you over state the role Howard had in it…. With the Labor States eager to abuse the situtation, lets not forget.
Though yes, Howard responded to eco fascism by bowing and prostrating himself before the violence of that movement, thus casting us all into the maelsrom of this unconstitutional outcome that now sits firmly upon Rudd’s sloped shoulders.
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Now now J.Hansford… if AGW is a hoax and this poor bloke is to be championed then you simply cannot avoid the fact that John Howard locked up vast amounts of land from clearing as a “trick” to meet his Kyoto targets. The “Australia Clause” is infamous – and love it or loathe it it was brilliant politics – but it had consequences and this bloke is one of them.
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MattB in #43…….”Here we are lead to believe that the entire world of climate modellinbg is corrupt… then surely a program that allowed a nation to meet Kyoto targets just by stopping landclearing needs some scrutiny?”
Absolutely, Good to see you up to your elbows in the Muck that is AGW policy, MattB;-)
It was Howards mistake to even try…. What is the expression… Don’t argue with idiots. They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
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When will people understand that this is not some left/right split, it is governments seizing an opportunity to gain more power. Howard did it, Rudd is doing it. Vote for Abbott, he will do it too. It is the way government works when the people have given up any semblence of respect for democracy and will let the government get away with anything if they just put a bit of money in their pockets.
A society gets the government it deserves, if the Australian people were truly wanted responsible government, we could get it. But all the Australian people care about are bonuses of $1000 every so often. Which began with Howard, by the way. The man was a disgrace and no kind of conservative, Rudd is just the same but with a sales pitch more suited to contemporary culture.
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MattB…. Now that we have acknowledged Mr Howard’s shortcomings on AGW, and now that the World accepts that there are serious problems with the science behind AGW…. whilst also acknowledging the fact that Mr John “the skeptic” Howard is no longer PM and a certain silver haired lad is…. Then obviously there needs to be a great amount of setting to rights, the vast damage Global warming ecofascist policies have caused this country and it’s citizens.
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John
There are two things that I don’t think are widely enough recognised in carbongate:
1 First, the real scam in this is that much of the land that has been locked up would probably never have been cleared and certainly not “clear felled”. So our dishonest politicians used carbon that was never going to enter the system to offset what the coal miners are putting out. (It reminds me a bit of the bloke who died and his executors were chasing up various debtors. One of them says: “No, I paid that bill. Wrote hin a cheque and tucked it in his pocket when I went down for the viewing at the undertakers.”) A substantial part of the “carbon debt” against the Kyoto agreement was paid with a cheque that was never going to be cashed. Now THAT is dishonest and it has been used to con the rest of the world. I suspect it is only because the international carbon accountants are absolutely clueless that the Australian government got away with it.
2 Second, on Peter Spencer’s situation specifically, he didn’t want to clear fell his land. As I understand it, he wanted to thin regrowth and restore the previously pastured areas (like many other landowners). In other words, Peter wanted to restore it to much the same productive condition that the aborigines had maintained it in (and I think there would be historical descriptions to verify that). Now, if the Government is saying that Peter cannot restore his property to pre-European vegetation cover but that his land is to be used (at his expense) to store additional carbon for the benefit of other industries, that puts an entirely different light on his case.
I would like to see a good lawyer take up that line.
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MattB you finally make some sense. I don’t have enough knowledge to get into “whos fault it was” arguement, but I thought you deserved a tick in thumbs up box.
So now stop complaining about thumbs up thumbs down lol
p.s. they miss you at Andrew Bolts blog.
merry christmas
10
Cheers Humbug… but look I’m getting thumbs downs for posting that the Oz Government has scammed farmers based on a model developed by the AGO… have I slipped in to some crazy parallel universe? 🙂
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Yes, Mattb. You have slipped into the parallel universe where Co2 is causing runaway global warming, right next to Al Gore, the IPCC and every other vapid and irrational creature. In this place you reside, people are jailed without any evidence, science is conducted by immortal demi-gods who cannot be questioned and little green pixies inhabit your front garden.
But by all means, keep on with your mindless crap. Besides, it is sometimes mildly entertaining, however pointless and witless!
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Ok Guys,
Go easy on Mattb, he’s a member of a rare breed – an ideological AGW advocate.
I hear GAW advocates are about to be put on the endangered list in leau of polar bears.
In all fairness, he is pro nukes, so that gives him a thumbs up from me.
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MattB I think you are payiong for your past sins. lol
Hey I think i’m getting a sense that you may be leaning a little to the skeptic side, are you? If so welcome
10
If there is a man in this most insidiously surveilled, once-free and now effective (particularly post the effective traitors, the ignominiously dismissed-for-cause, Whitlam (Australia’s very own self-and-own-culture-loathing Buraq Hussayn 0zero prototype — and the as-execrable, Hawke – a well-lubricated match for any Chicago hood … um “politician”) police state, who is not himself evil, envy-motivated, rage-engined and hatred-driven, who has a higher than room temperature IQ and/or who is not mean-spirited, greedy and/or fascistic, who believes Australia to be other than the most efficaciously-insidiously-effected fascist (“modified” Marxist, that is) state on Earth, let him step forward and say so.
For the past few decades have witnessed the creation, in this once free land, of that most fascistic of police-state institutions, state-provided universal “health care,” the means by which the elitist statists — or fascists by any other name (including by, such names as “socialist,” and communist and Marxist and “progressive” and/or of “Labour” – and/or who are as often as not, these days, Mr Turnbull, (il)”Liberals,” and/or who are of Australia’s actual government: its self-anointing, self-appointing and self-perpetuating permanently-parasitical permanent “public service”) — have ensured that Australia remains forever in their grip.
In their fervor to control everything and to permit the actual ownership of absolutely nothing, Australia’s feral gummint’s statists but further demonstrated their contempt for every Australian – and their tyranny — by their cynical misuse of Australia’s Constitution’s treaty provisions to “justify” and to “rationalize” their signing away of great chunks of Australia’s Sovereignty and of its states’ rights to international fascists and their apparatchiks in such matters as the states’ building of dams and of other critical infrastructure. And by their shoving down Australians’ throats those other tyrannical terminal cancers upon nation and in the end upon Judeo-Christian/Western/Human Civilization: “multiculturalism” and “political correctness.”
Once the fascistic ownership was effected, by way of what is called and since passes for “health care,” of Australia’s very bodies and their every function, every oAustralian – and not just that Modern Australian Man of Courage, Peter Spencer – was forever up the pole!
Was shafted.
And now, as the Canberra-driven mad spiral into the third world continues, what aught be the richest per-capita nation on this planet is dictated to by a person who has never had a job, made a profit nor met a payroll nor turned down a free-loaded feed or “carbon” spewing trip and who appears to be a clinical and given-to infantile temper-tantrums, narcissist, a duck’s-bum-mealy-mouthed kowtow-er to Peking’s predators, a Socialist International sycophant – and, closer to “home” (which he deigns from time to time to visit) of the pathologically-envy-driven, epidemically-alcoholic, mobbed-up, stand-over/shakedown unions that both gave us Bob Hawke and have for way too long held every Australian to ransom.
Meanwhile around 99% of every species that has ever existed has gone extinct — most of them during the fourteen and a half billion or so years before KRudd’s ancestors appeared — and presently at the rate of about twenty-five per day. Add to them truths that the “climate science” science was all along but an extension of the similarly-corrupted, gummint-dole-financed, “science” that once drove the lunatic Left’s “military industrial complex” (and that Ronald Reagan’s winning of the Cold War killed in its tracks) has been put beyond dispute by Climate Gate — and what’s left to fear? only that “climate change” is a fascist fraud!
So, Good Luck up your pole, Good Sir. I pray and trust that Almighty God will note your courage and your moral integrity, for God knows Canberra’s fascistic élite will not. And may every other Australian be afforded the dignity of the consequences of his habitually voting cowardice ahead of courage and by his having placed the Euro-peonized ideal of helping himself to the gummint’s hand-outs of the confiscated wealth of other, more creative, more innovative, more productive and more-industrious Australians ahead of his God-given opportunity to help himself; — and of his thus having turned this once potentially-great nation into another New Zealand, another Canada, another Fiji and, inevitably, another Rhodesia-Zimbabwe, another Tibet … another Yugoslavia. Every one of them to some degree the kind of enslaved-by-tribalism offshoot of Mecca or Peking or somewhere similar — the kind of “country” you have when you are no longer a nation. When you stand for nothing and will fall for anything.
Merry Christmas!
Brian Richard Allen
Lost Angels – Califobambicated 90028
And the Far Abroad
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Humbug I’m old enough that I’ve spent plenty of time being in the significant public minority when it comes to AGW. I’ve been lampooned on AGW at dinner parties well before it became fashionable to be a warmist, and I have found it quite uncomfortable being on the same side as the great ignorant masses and mainstream media:)
For the record I’m still on the warmist side of the fence… but I DO think that inconvenient truth was baloney, that Gore has alterior motives, and the ETS is a sham. I think I’m the only true sceptic here:) But you can look at the blogs and AGW even splits the traditionally sceptical community. I went to a Michael Shermer lecture last year and he admitted to having been on both sides of the fence, and he was arguing with the local sceptical society in front of all these school kids, and PZ Meyer’s blog is a great example of a warmist-rationalist-science based blog.
I’d wager I’m far closer to beoing a true sceptic than say Dean Turner, or Aqua “End of Times” fyre.
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“I’d wager I’m far closer to being a true sceptic than say Dean Turner, or Aqua “End of Times” fyre. ”
Right. So, the fact that you still consider yourself a warmist (meaning you still think Co2 is causing catastrophic global warming) also qualifies you as a sceptic?
The lack of evidence for AGW makes you believe it more? How creative! How faithful of you!
Your mind has been split right down the middle with a rusty axe. You are indeed living in an alternate reality, where you can both be gullible and (call yourself) sceptical at the same time.
Make no mistake about yourself, MattB, you are a hipocrit.
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Hi MattB:
Science is not decided by the majority or by ‘even split’ between camps. I reject the ruthless indoctrination of our nations children on the evils of AGW without balance. It is my current belief that this indoctrination through our schools has actually created irrational “Hitler Youth” who have been duped into thinking that because the majority say so, therefore this AGW must be true.
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Lol don’t dare call me a denialist but feel free to call my kids “hitler youth” funny stuff.
Dean Turner, make no mistake about yourself, you are an irrelevent parody of the ignorant right.
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MattB,
You have shown in your above posts why you are a hipocrit.
Why am I an “irrelevent parody of the ignorant right” ???
Enlighten me.
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I like the way Peter Spencer has the Aussie flag flying…. Not like those Greenie protesters you see up trees with their Greenpeace banners and Rainbow flags….
Peter is an Australian Patriot fighting for a better Australia. He isn’t protesting for change, just merely that the Government lives up to the spirit of its own constitution.
The billions we have spent on education so as to have an educated populous of lawyers and professionals… and it boils down to a lonely farmer sitting atop a tower pointing out what a thousand Lawyers should have seen years ago.
‘Onya Pete. Give ’em hell.
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Matt (and I mean this in the most loving way) I tag you as dislike even before I read your posts. Do you know how many times I have regretted disliking you?????? NEVER
For gods sake shut up pleeease
You pretending to be the sceptic!?!?!??!?
10
Its becoming obvious that Kevin Rudd has ambitions greater than that of being Prime Minister of the greatest country on earth. Its looking more and more like he is aiming to be Secretary General of the UN or some other big wig position.
Evidence?
1. This guy above.
2. Trying to force through the biggest Cap and Trade bill in the world before the Copenhagen event.
3. Working past his bed time getting China to agree to some kind of agreement.
Is it just me or is he looking after his career first, and the country second?
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Dean – it just rolled off the tongue to make an unbackable generalisation as you did for me (but of course you think yours is justified).
BTW I love your 90+ thumbs down post on the other thread! See many people around here are mindless lemmings – clickety click on the thumbs down if that is what others have done. It was pretty clear to me what you were saying.
Mark D you can take your loving sentiment and stick it cheers.
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Hi MattB
Wow I am a theist.
Red Herring alert….
Unhappily for you Matt, the world is full of 3 dimensional people who have multi-faceted belief systems.
Unhappily for you, they are also capable of acknowledging the boundaries between faith and fact.
Or has your alleged uber~skepticism so blinded you, that you dismiss out of hand anthing that a theist might have to say on AGW ?
Well that’s a problem now isn’t it ?
After all : Mr Rudd is a believer in God, so is Penny Wong, so is Obama, so is Al Gore.
Do you think their points of view on AGW should be equally dismissed simply because they believe in God ?
Similarly, do you believe that Charles Darwins’ belief in God so taints his “Theory of Evolution” that it has to be dismissed out of hand ?
Do bother answering … it;s purely rhetorical.
My advice to you is this.
Quit your pontificating and stick to researching the raw data as I have.
In the matter of alleged AGW : nothing else matters.
Respectfully.
Aqua Fyre
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Oh, you mean the one of me asking if there were any papers showing empirical evidence for Co2 causing LESS than 1.5 degrees? This is not assuming all other papers show MORE warming. That was a simple question asked without any presumptions.
Not sure why that got such a bad response. Looks very much like there are some trigger happy comment raters around here who don’t actually read things before clicking. In that aspect I do agree with you.
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My heart weeps for Mr. Spencer and his fellows.
And to think that only yesterday I was daydreaming about emigrating to the sanity of Australia and its sound dollar. Clearly there is plenty of government insanity there too, and if justice were to be served to Australian farmers, your government will have to borrow nearly as much from the Chinese as ours has. (Meanwhile China goes on with producing as much harmless – actually beneficial – as they damn well please!) Crikey, indeed.
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oooh this is fun!
back at ya (and still in a loving way) cheers
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AF – where did I comment that you should be dismissed for being a theist? That’s right – nowhere. I do however dismiss your concerns that current events mark the lead up to the apocolypse as to be literally interpreted from the Bible. I was not having a go because you believe in God, but because you are a nutter cloud-cuckoo land whako!
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– oops, that should have been: producing as much CO2 as they please.
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Lol Dawin the believer… you may like to read http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/darwin.html
and please note that is a very Christian website that does not need to counter Darwin by lying about his beliefs. If you believe Darwin believed in God then you are hardly a sceptic – your just mining for opinion that suits your own.
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While you are looking up Project Wildlands search for UN Agenda 21. Here is one link:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/un_agenda_21_coming_to_a_neigh.html
It is the socialists dream. A fully controlled populace stuffed into tiny islands of habitation with virtually no commerce and the rulers flying around to keep it all under control.
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Matt said…
Right here Matt.
You insinuate it here by bringing it into line with your claims to be the truer skeptic. This is called conflation or inputing by false argument.
I did not say ‘literally’ in the Bible. I said it’s referred to in certain passages in the Bible.
You must pay closer attention to what people write in reply.
You do know what an Ad Hominem is ?
Hint…It’s a way of bringing the house down on your own head… eg : by hurling unfounded insults at other posters.
But do keep it up Matt.
I’m itching to invoke Godwins’ Law.
Cheers
Aqua
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MattB,
so Darwin NEVER believed in God?? Better back up and do your research again bud!!
By the way, Darwin also believed in Plagiarism!! His most famous theory was mostly lifted from another gentleman. Funny how people tend to lose their morality and faith all at the same time!!
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Well folks, a very good friend of mine, who treated me like a son, said of the “terrorism” laws being rushed thru at the time.. “this is just the tip of the ice berg, when you allow politicians to control our lives so easily with a few bits of legistlation, there is no turning back. They will find any excuse to introduce more laws to control more aspects of our lives in the future”.
He was/is absolutely correct.
Oh yeah, he also said he could name more than a 100 things that hurt or killed Australians more often than terrorists, we had our priorities wrong. Sounds a bit like naming a 100 things that affect climate more than CO2
10
MattB you can’t keep effectively sitting on the fence regards AGW. You’ve had ample opportunity to study, consider and evaluate the situation. Time to make a decision. Either you believe the warmmongers that there is a catastrophy looming, or the just incasers who want to pay up huge insurance bills or the coolists who say get a grip, take a breath and settle grettle.
Now if you choose the second option, boy have I got some cheap insurance deals for you 🙂
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It’s a sad story. Not something farmers in the USA and EU suffer, since they get huge government protection in the form of subsidies and tarifs.
I congratulate Peter for his stand on this, by drawing attention to the unfair treatment of landowners in rural Australia. I hope this ends well for him. A 28 day (so far) hunger strike is certainly, I think, beyond the discipline and fortitude of myself.
Carbon issues aside (which as we know is really a non-issue), there ARE serious environmental issues like soil errosion, soil salinity and water manegement.
Unfortunately the ecomentalists think farmers are just evil people who are raping the natural world for self gain. The fact is they know their land better than anyone else. Their future depends on the continued fertility and productivity of the land. They have a vested interest in a healthy local ecology.
If the government wants to fix these problems they need to engage the farmers in a more constructive way, instead of blank regulation that bans all land clearing without exception, and without compensation.
10
I know this is probably a little off subject but I just had to share this link. This is Australia’s newest columnist. Chavez and Mugabe were otherwise detained at Copenhagen so their copy was not ready for publication.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/copenhagen-the-moment-of-truth-20091222-lb3l.html
And one wonders why the Australian MSM is somewhat on the nose with the Australian public. Perhaps it also explains their silence on ClimateGate and Conroy’s Internet Censorship – or am a being a little cynical here.
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Thank you for exposing this story and writing about it, it has been ignored and covered up by Australian Main Stream Media, as Commissar Kevin Rude fears losing the coming election as his whole Global Warming scam would be blown wide open, seeing he has the Australian Left Wing Media successfully suppress any news on CLIMATEGATE, people in Australian still don’t even know what ‘an ETS is’!? Even though the government was toppled on vote on it TWICE and the leader of the major Liberal Party got sacked over it!
When will the world, no when will Australia wake up to the Eco-Fascism that is run by stealth through AGENDA 21 and all the pseudo organisations (WWF, ACF, Greenpeace, UN stuff etc..) backed by those ‘whose name we do not speak’. They have strategically placed all the Extreme Left winged Fabian Socialists in strategic positions, like Clover Moore Mayor of Sydney (Eco-Fascism at it’s best, and anti-christian anti-Christmas), Anna Bligh (Flouride in the water in Dec08 without plebiscite).shall I go on!?
Peter Spencer is only a small stroke in the equation, and representative of you an me.
If we ignore him, we ignore ourselves and our future.
Huxley is popping champagne in his grave now.
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Matt.
My knowledge of Darwin is far from complete.
But equally, I suspect your is also far from complete.
I have never read the entire Origin of the species in its original form. I have it on my bookshelf, but have not read it in its entirety. Victorian English is so often convoluted.
Nevertheless, what I do know of Darwin is this.
1. He struggled with his faith and as he grew older he dismissed ‘religions’.
However, that doesn’t mean that such a position instantly made him an Atheist.
2. In his autobiography he wrote..
“
”
But he also vacillated.
In a letter to Letter to John Fordyce in 1879.
He wrote..
“
.”
I also know, that through-out his life, he tried to keep above the theological / scientific arguments finding the baiting between the two camps distasteful.
“
”
So you may accuse me of cherry picking but no-one can say with absolute certaintly that Darwin was an atheist, and Agnostic or yes…even a theist. ie someone who believes in a divine creator, but not in religions.
And on that note, I repeat myself.
One should not believe or disbelieve the ‘Theory of Evolution‘ based on whether a person supporting it, is a Theist, an Aethiest or an Agnostic.
That was my point in drawing the parallel between it and AGW supporters who are also theists.
Respectfully
Aqua Fyre
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Is Godwins law the one that says “when you invoke Godwins law you’ve lost the argument”? hmm I think you just did it. Anyway I’m pretty sure the term “Hitler youth” appears in #58.
And oh yes I know what Ad-hom is… if you read threads you’ll see them directed towards me regularly. But seriously we can all run around pretending we are Dr freaking Spock or that we are normal people – up to you.
If you don’t think that current events are as predicted for the end of times in the bible then I take the cloud cuckoo land comment back… but I wonder why you said it if that is the case. We all know there are passages in the bible that refer to the end, you made the link to climate change.
Many of my friends believe and attend church etc and I don’t think they are nuts. I have close friends who are priests, CDP candidates, the whole range, so you can quit with whatever logical fallacy you were heading along with there.
I get how you feel though – kuhnkat somehow thinks I believe that Darwin “never” believed in God. Not sure where that came from. Heck I believed in God once.
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AF Darwins belief or lack of is not something that I consider relevent to anything I’ve ever come across actually. For me God may or may not exist (although I think it probably does not) it bears no influence on my day to day life, as Nick Cave sings “I do not believe in an interventionist god”. If I’m wrong I’ll get judged and will either get in to heaven or will be burning in hell along with everyone else who claim to believe and judge others while leading lives that are totally against any teachings of the Bible other than thinking gay people are bad.
p.s. yes my 4yo puts a new nativity scene piece each day on his advent calendar, and knows that Jesus said some pretty cool stuff in his time, and in the future I’ll add that it is a shame that most who believe in him ignore most of it but think that token “believing” and alone will get them to heaven.
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And humbug in 77 – clearly I’m not on the fence and I am of the strong opinion that increases in greenhouse gases will lead to global warming, and that this warming will have significant and serious consequences for civilisation. Science may be wrong as suggested here who knows I’ve no crystal ball, so in some way I also fit in your insurance category I guess.
My readings lead me to the opinion that the AGW skeptical opinion is as grounded in science as is the anti-nuclear opinion. That is just what I think.
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10
Daniel Fierro (#81) – Thank you!
One small correction, if I may, though: As the 1950s’ gummint-dole-corrupted faux “science” of the military-industrial variety went through several mutations before, in the 1970s, being the gummint-dole-corrupted faux-“science” then “predicting” the coming “ice age,” before morphing into the “global warming” industry, before morphing through “climate change” and eventually into Climate Gate, so has Fabian “progressivism” mutated and morphed through Fabian “socialism,” Fabian “democratic” socialism, Fabian “communism,” Fabian Marxism and into its latest manifestation, full-blown Fabian “modified Marxism:”
Fascism by any other name.
Welcome to the FRee World!
Cordially – Brian
B A – L A – CA — and Far Away
10
You know the Satanists claim that there is no heaven and there is no God, all anyone gets is burning in hell regardless of what they believe or how they behave. Long ago, the master of hell had a problem when the people suffering in hell would say, “Well sure I’m suffering for eternity, but at least I enjoyed my life, and you can’t take that back from me.”
Pondering on the truth of this, the evil lord invented religion and the false promise of heaven so the silly buggers would waste their entire lives trying to be pious only to be told, “Welcome to hell, sucker!”
Not that I believe a word of any of this 🙂 just good practice to remind ourselves of the full spectrum of possibilities.
I might also point out that the Buddhists (in their own way) developed the precepts of Darwin’s theory long before Darwin did, and the Zen Buddhists showed intuitive recognition of Godel’s theorem which shows some rather deep metaphysical thinking compared to the followers of Moses (who admittedly have been extremely efficient at organised killing, and that does tend to be the trump card when it comes to religion).
I include Christians and Muslims under the umbrella of “followers of Moses”, just for anyone who didn’t appreciate the reference.
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MattB said
Please go back & check.
So what are we readers to make of this post of yours ?
MattB: said.
Pretty clear evidence wouldn’t you say ?
Cheers
Aqua Fyre
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Matt.
One last thing.
Tell me why I shouldn’t treat that last quote of yours that I used, as a logical fallacy ?
Can you see why it might be considered one ?
Aqua Fyre
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Sad story, but helps confirm by belief about urban environmentalists who typically haven’t the first clue about land management. Where do they think their food comes from?
We did similar things in the UK with set-aside to take farm land out of production. That spawned food price increases and profits for our supermarkets, and created a massive bureaucracy to manage a complex compensation scheme. All backed by IT systems that failed, weren’t fit for purpose and resulted in us paying a few hundred million in compensation to the EU. Not to farmers though, they’re not ‘green’. It also meant less money for our agencies to actually do sensible environmental work, so more flood damage and more costs to compensate for that.
I also encountered it doing some work on improving emergency radio networks for the US. Not allowed to clear land around installations because it wasn’t environmentally friendly. I suppose allowing fuel loads to increase and create more severe and damaging wildfires is natural in some way.
One thing I really don’t understand is why farming is considered anti-CO2. I always thought CO2 uptake was best during growth stages. Surely agriculture is a more effective sequestration process by repeated conversion of CO2 into sugars and food then harvesting than leaving older, less efficient growth in place?
10
The wholesale theft of Freehold property rights is not just in the name of carbon.
Have a look at the replacement of Common Law riparian water rights in Australian States over the last 20 years with Statute Laws.
All a convenient preparatory step to separate water “entitlements” and “rights” from land so water could be sold in the recently created water markets thereby providing yet another new gaming table at the the carpet-bagger/speculator/banker Casino.
10
Joanne,
Great post – thank you!
10
Setup a cable tv channel and broadcast to the masses perhaps?
Dont know how thatd happen in Auz but in the US private citizens can do just that.
Might have to look into it in the uk……
Otherwise, blogs such as this one ( thanks Jo) and youtube channels can make a difference.
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G’day MattB,
Merry Christmas to you and your family mate. Hope 2009 has been good to you. Sue, Peter and JeffT would all want me to say hi.
Cheers mate
10
Hey Steve! I never could figure out your new blog software sorry:) and then I found someone new to annoy. Happy Christmas to the Agmates crew. I may pop in to send my personal greetings.
Matt
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G’day MattB,
Thats because it not a blog – its a social network / community. Joanne is fortunate she has you to “annoy’ her folks. Mate come and join us anytime you like – only you might not like it because we don’t allow anyone to post with there real name – so MattB won’t cut it – sorry about that – but its the communities code – real people – real names. Joanne is a new member and we are very pleased to have her on board spreading the word about this Peter Spencer business. She really has done a very good post here on the issue.
Excited to catch up with you again mate – I see you are in your usual good form.
Merry Christmas mate – Steve
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Aqua Fyre, ok I went back and checked and I quote directly from the previous thread:
“Lord Monckton is right.
…No doubt some posters here will rather I don’t mention the Bible.
But the fact of the matter is that the Bible speaks of a World Government with one false religion at its core.
So, I am not surprised by this coming vision.
Take a look at the book of Daniel and Revelations.
Truly, we are living in the end days.
Aqua Fyre”
you can spin that any way you like I guess – but to me that is linking current politics about climate change with the apocalypse. crystal clear.
As for Darwin… to be honest I did assume that anyone with even the most fleeting in Darwin would be aware that he was brought up with religion, and then ceased to be religious, and the only occasional debate is whether he repented towards the end (which he didn’t according to any biographer of note, but he did if it helps a devout christian win an athiest/evolution debate).
So to me if you are someone who argues that “Charles Darwins’ belief in God” may “taint his “Theory of Evolution”” to me, then it confirms you as someone who is not interested in evidence, merely soundbytes that help you in a bloggy debate.
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This is not world government, this is mass hysteria. It most certainly is not the end times.
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Steve I’m outed here don;t worry. I posted under my name until a chance of computer and Mattb just pops up and I’m lazy. There you go I’ve changed it:) just for you!
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Jeepers Steve what in the heck do you need my phone number and address for? Have you seen the kind of people I deal with here??? Last thing I need is Jeff turning up on my verandah with a banjo and shotgun!
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G’day Matt,
The only thing you need is your name, email address and birth date – so we can wish you a happy birthday on you big day each year 🙂
We’ve banned the shotguns – so its just the banjo’s you need worry about – But you know what Kevin Rudd once said – heading north from Sydney you know when you cross the Tweed river you can hear the banjo’s. 🙂
You and Jeff always did belt out a fair tune.
Cheers mate
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Matt Buckels,
After reading all that you’ve posted I can only conclude that you lose the debate. As Joanne has so often (and so well) pointed out, there simply is no evidence supporting any theory that CO2 can cause any noticeable warming of the planet. No one to my knowledge has ever been able to show her to be wrong. The evidence simply is not there.
If you know of something that would show Joanne to be wrong it behooves you to make it known.
Darwin vs. scripture, while maybe interesting to you, has no bearing on hard science. We might debate this in some other venue, but not here.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
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you’ve clearly not read the thread Roy.
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@Mattyb, this one`s for you. This is a prime investment, ground floor opportunity for a dude of vision, a dude who can see the virtue in bob brown and the evil in CO2. This `brilliant concept` makes even the swankiest carbon capture devices obslete…. It Is… Nathan Myhrvold’s Anti Global Warming Scheme I`ve put in a good word @MS for you to be Nathans emisary on Oz. This is so you Mattyb, carpe diem!
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Mark Stevens:
I figure there is a significant engineering challenge to “just run a hose up into the stratosphere”. The garden variety hose would weigh something like 13 tons (which means it won’t support it’s own length. We haven’t even considered wind loads and such. I think Nathan Myhrvold should stick to software design.
MattB this got you awarded my first thumbs up! :
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Matt,
Can you argue back at me with a straight face that you do not believe warming caused by CO2 is a real possibility?
Just asking…
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What a horrid result for Peter Spencer. While not knowing all the ins and outs of his situation, it makes one thing clear: country people really have no voice any more.
Good to see the Nationals are showing some attention to this case; but what has happened to the farming groups ? Have they been involved? where’s the NFF for example ?
This might be one bloke up a pole, but there’s probably also a family below going through many horrors right now, and a wider community under stress.
With so many now walking away from farming due to many other reasons in addition to ones like this, it won’t be long before we actually start importing food, but I guess the chardonnay set will be fine with this. If other countries have similar policies however, there won’t be much food available to import. I guess the hunger striking Greenies are just ahead of the curve – they are showing us our future under these policies.
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Nathan Myhrvold, You’re our Grand National Kook Award Winner for This Week!
The sulphur particles would quickly oxidize to SO2 then SO3 as a result of ozone, and eventually making its way to the troposphere as sulphuric acid, all of this occuring in the matter of 1 to 6 months, depending on the size of the particles involved.
The lack of people’s ability to apply rational thought to natural processes and to analyze the consequences of things they do twenty minutes into the future is the hallmark of today’s education system, wherein polar bear extinction is equated with electricity generation in a one-sequence train of logic and lack of empirical data is assigned more validity than one billion years of verifiable history of the physical Earth
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@LB. sez
You can call it what you like, LB, but the clowns who couldn`t administer a two week prayer camp to the numb nutts already converted are the hoaxsters that wanna rule the world. You didn`t hear Ban KI-moon boasting about global governance,didn`t read the draft treaty and you don`t understand what the implementation and policing of the ‘international framework’ is????? Mass hysteria can occur esp in a flock, when one person can appear to faint and flocking members upon seeing the unexplained collapsing, panic and are overcome the same way. EG. A once respected loser presidential candidate, with maybe an axe to grind with those who `failed` him in his bid for the whitehouse, has found a way to get his hand/paw/trotter on the most powerful prize. HE screams from the rooftops ” we are all going to fry, look what we`ve done, the polar bears and dingo`s are eating their babies, the icecaps have melted and that diabolical manmade carbon dioxide is to blame…. AAAArrrggghh.” those close to this near messiah are infected by this scary news, add the ripple effect and hey presto,mass hysteria. AS for the “end times” your right. as long as some tribal people gather around sites like this we will avoid `end times`. now,LB, go save the baby polar bears from the non unionised danish hookers otherwise we`ll never hide the decline, but don`t wash your car. clear?
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Ba-Ki Moon’s Problem: impotence
The bureaucrat kind, wherein a person is given a big staff and a big office and big salary and and travel budget and lots of flunkies but has no real authority.
So why wouldn’t Ban-Ki clamor for world government?
And there must certainly be a reason to have one – and none better than to ration and tax energy and skim the profits for yourself and the people who helped you.
Can anyone think of a better scheme or any other scheme for that matter to give Ban-Ki the authority that ought to but does not acocmpany his big chair in his big office in New York?
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Brian, Mark, and others,
The UN has long sought control over the internal affairs of nations. Have you read their Convention on the Rights of the Child? It literally takes a way a parents right to determine anything about their children’s upbringing.
They have wanted to impose taxes on citizens of sovereign nations.
Then there’s the UN Wildlands project.
I’ve no idea how much more they may have gotten away with or tried to get away with. And none of this is part of their charter — absolutely none.
But clearly they already think themselves to be the world’s government since years ago.
Forgive my wishful thinking but the best move that developed nations could possibly make would be to withdraw from the UN and kick them out of the country.
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Yes, I too can feel for Mr. Spencer…There are similar doings happening here in the U.S.! This man, Ron Ewart, has a Web Site to hopefully wake the American Public up to this fiasco that slowly ebbs across our Country and of course yours. His Web Site is: http://www.narlo.org/ Mr. Ewart has a similiar story of a man out West that had to fight humongous Government and Environmentalist organizations… Very good post, Joanne! We are fortunate to have you…
His Mission is:
NARLO’s mission is to begin the long process of restoring, preserving and protecting Constitutional property rights and returning this country to a Constitutional Republic. Government has done a great job of dividing us up into little battle groups where we are essentially impotent at a national level. We will change all that with the noisy voices and the vast wealth tied up in the land of the American rural landowner. The land is our power, if we will just use that power, before we lose it. We welcome donations and volunteers who believe as we do, that government abuses against rural landowners have gone on for far too long and a day of reckoning is at hand.
I, as President of the National Association of Rural Landowners, am but a humble writer who believes deeply in freedom and liberty; a freedom and liberty for the individual. An individual freedom and liberty that is natural, as comes from nature, not from governments; a freedom and liberty that was envisioned by our Founding Fathers and codified into the law of man through our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. I believe that when governments, or groups of people attempt to stifle freedom and liberty, or remove man from them, man’s progress through time is depressed and he retreats further backwards into depravity, immorality and serfdom. I believe that freedom and liberty are our strengths not our weakness and if we inhibit freedom and liberty by any means, we as a people become weaker. If we as a people become weaker, we lose our creative ability, we lose our ingenuity, we lose our industriousness, we lose our productivity, we lose our can-do spirit, we lose our pride in our accomplishments, we lose our strength and courage to right a wrong when we see it and we lose our generosity. We believe that if the people look to government to solve their problems and acquiesce to its unauthorized power, they abdicate their duty and responsibility to control their own lives and hand it over to a collective. Having done so, they are no longer free men. And further, they empower and encourage the government to usurp even greater power.
If someone comes along and steals your car or other prized possession, or harms a family member, any of us would be angry and seek justice for the perpetrator. Most would call the police and ask for their assistance. Others might be so angry they would take matters into their own hands and seek their own justice. But let the government come along and steal your freedom and liberty and we roll over and say “what can I do?”. So why does freedom and liberty have less of a value than your car, or injury to a loved one? Is it because we can’t define freedom and liberty? Is it because the government is now too powerful and we risk our own well-being if we call into question government’s actions or their authority for those actions? Have we become so soft and afraid of consequences that we would sacrifice liberty for security? Would we prefer slavery to freedom? Has the bar of courage sunk so low, that we would allow a rope to be put around our necks without so much as a whimper? Is the price of peace appeasement, conciliation and pacification? Or are we so blind that we can’t see the freight train of socialism, radical environmentalism, the one-world-order and world domination by religious-driven fascism, bearing down upon us at high speed?
Ronald Reagan, in a speech in 1964 said:
“I wonder who among us would like to approach the wife or mother whose husband or son has died in South Vietnam (now Iraq) and ask them if they think this is a peace that should be maintained indefinitely. Do they mean peace, or do they mean we just want to be left in peace? There can be no real peace while one American is dying some place in the world for the rest of us. We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars (now Islamo-Fascism) and it has been said if we lose that war, and in doing so lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well, I think it’s time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.” (This was said by Ronald Reagan in 1964, 42 years ago and unfortunately not enough were taking heed.)
“Not too long ago two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, “We don’t know how lucky we are.” And the Cuban stopped and said, “How lucky you are! I had someplace to escape to.” In that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”</em>
“You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down–up to a man’s age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order–or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.”
Billions of words on freedom and liberty have been proffered since that speech and billions of words were proffered before it. Throughout our history, millions of brave American soldiers have sacrificed their lives, limbs and minds in defense of our freedom. But words and sacrifices, in and of themselves, cannot change ignorance, or apathy, or a misguided mindset, or a purposeful desire to self-destruct. In spite of those words and in spite of that massive sacrifice, each day we allow ourselves to slide deeper and deeper into the abyss of socialism and radical environmentalism and the people who call themselves free Americans watch silently as this ship of freedom and liberty slips quietly into the depths of a man-made Hell on Earth, self-induced bondage.
I can only say that he who watches in paralyzed fear, or refuses to acknowledge a clear and present danger without defending his person, his life and his freedom, deserves to die. Is that America’s fate? Are we doomed by our own ignorance and apathy? Or does peace at any cost, including enslavement, have a greater value than freedom and liberty?
Even though we are growing in number, there are still way too few of us because so many have been bought off by the fleeting and flimsy promises of government. Will you please join with us and others in the defense and the pursuit of your own and that of all America’s freedom and liberty, before it is too late? Let this next year be the year that people seek freedom over comfort and they pursue liberty over security. The future of your children and grand children rest in your hands. You would do anything for them. Then why not preserve, protect and defend freedom for them as the greatest of all gifts? The fate of individual freedom and liberty and the final fate of America hang in the balance.
Ron Ewart
Check Him out, you are NOT alone People..When ever you have a Government as big as Ours!! In time, this is what will happen…
Regards,
Denny
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Mark Stevens, you seem to thinkthat because I do not believe all the paranoid nutters that believe AGW is ushering in a Brave New World that I some how thnk baby polar bears need saving. I do not. Some people may be trying to use the mass hysteria to usher in a world government, but as you say yourself they are no where near competent enough to manage it. No need to get hysterical about it.
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Matt,
You clearly have trouble with reasoned debate.
Best we move along.
Cheers
Aqua Fyre
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That’s a shame AF as I was looking forward to you explaining how I have misinterpreted this:
“But the fact of the matter is that the Bible speaks of a World Government with one false religion at its core.
So, I am not surprised by this coming vision.
Take a look at the book of Daniel and Revelations.
Truly, we are living in the end days.
Aqua Fyre”
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Agreed, but I suggest they are competent enough to get a lot of people hurt in the process (which is substantially easier to achieve, and well demonstrated by every previous attempt to usher in a world government).
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The left in the U.S. is trying to redefine “navigable” waterways and
“wetlands” in an effort to increase control of private property management
decisions,even at the small property level. This effort is thirty years
old, and neverending.Eventually the left will so distort the “concept”
of “titled property” we shall all be serfs again.
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MattB said:
“But the fact of the matter is that the Bible speaks of a World Government with one false religion at its core.
So, I am not surprised by this coming vision.
Take a look at the book of Daniel and Revelations.
Truly, we are living in the end days.”
Are you serious? Christians and others have been predicting the end days for a couple thousand years now. Its one of those currently unfalsifiable beliefs – just like climate change.
For interest:
1. What evidence would it take for you to decide that AGW is a crock?
2. What evidence would it take for you to decide that Religion is a crock?
It does seem that you serially believe things without evidence. Why aren’t you a Muslim? At least we know Mohammed was real.
I think I might have a bridge that you’d be interested in.
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Marty I think you are confusing yourself – that quote about the end of days was from Aqua Fyre and I agree with you 100%.
Also I can’t predict what evidence will make me decide AGW is a crock. As an exampe I could not predict that new paper that claims that ozone depleting gases and cosmic rays are the cause of warming. Chances are that if I am convinced it will be by some new groundbreaking science that turns our understanding of the atmosphere on its head. It will start with a rumour, and a paper that is rubbished but gains momentum, some more papers, growing support and then suddenly the theory of AGW will be thrown out the window and we will all revel in the wonders of science to surprises us yet again. If I could predict it I’d set myself up as a researcher at a major university and revel in the kudos I get when I produce the evidence.
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Imagine that government has decided to widen the road in front of your house, for the good of the community. Instead of compensating you to the market value of your house they have simply built the road over the top of your front garden. And now your front door opens onto the gutter of a major road.
When you complain they simply say “what are you complaining about we haven’t touched your house. And besides you now have excellent access to a very good road” This is a situation that many Australian farmers find themselves in, the potential earning capacity and capital value of their farms had been slashed significantly (supposedly for the good of the general community) yet they have received no compensation.
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Matty matty Matty, your internal confusion is confusing my confusion about your confused state.
To be clear, you need some new “groundbreaking new science” to possibly convince you, yet you are already convinced by the IPCC “science”? How is the IPCC science groundbreaking? It is at the very very best dubious and QUESTIONABLE is it not? So how come that convinced you?
Cmon, convince me of your convincement (sic)
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Peter mate, get off your hungerstrike. I have read your story and I know how frsutrating this thing must be. But you need your strength to fight this. And fight this you must. And you are not alone, we are with you to fight this terrible injustice.
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well ok it may not be groundbreaking, it could well be death by a thousand cuts. Come on you know the basic warming arguments, do I really have to repeat them for you? CO2 is a GHG, we have significantly increased GHG levels, temp record shows earth warming, and strong correlation with predictions based on GHG theory, it is all there in the IPCC reports, yibbadah yibbadah that’s all folks and say hi to you mum.
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MattB: .. you know the basic warming arguments, ..CO2 is a GHG [correct], we have significantly increased GHG levels [correct], temp record shows earth warming [correct], and strong correlation with predictions based on GHG theory – WRONG
For example if the temperature rise is to = 3.5C, in accordance with the prediction of IPCC at the current rate of increase of CO2, at the end of the century then the trend should be around 0.4C/ decade (it rises faster in the beginning and slightly less towards the end). Alas even at the nominal trend of 0.2C/decade the current trend falls outside the ±95% uncertainty intervals.
Thats an extraordinarily poor prediction.
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Well you’ve lost me now MattB
Now explain what you mean by your last 5 words
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The thing that galls me about the likes of Peter Spencer is that primary producers in general are being driven down to become a peasant underclass. Whether they are fishermen, horticulturalists, or farmers the Leftist/Greenies are doing all they can to make it difficult and more costly to produce the goods which sustain life.
Meanwhile the “do nothings” and celebrities get on with living a “worthless” life and wallowing in wealth. When Greenpeace in NZ engaged a bunch of actors/actresses/celebs to front their campaign for a 40% reduction in GHG emissions I was really annoyed. Those who produce the goods that maintain life’s essentials should be the celebrities of the world being well rewarded for their efforts. Philandering sports stars and actors and actresses should be vilified. Their unnecessary contribution to life on the planet should be rewarded in direct proportion to their value to life (i.e. 0). Man would that lead to a reduction in man-made GHG emissions.
Whether Spencer’s plight has been brought about by unintended consequences or not, the intrusion of Government in business and property rights and personal responsibility needs redressing.
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Humbug – meant to be say hi to your mum. A bit of Rex Hunt, Aussie Rules commentator. I just threw it in there for some holiday spirit.
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yeah ok. You may be well advised to reconsider using that in the future, there are many bloggers who are not from Oz, saying hi to your mum has totally different and rude connetations in other places.
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Lol no for the record I’m not suggesting I’ve had relations with anyone’s parents:) Well other than my kids’!
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Baa Humbug…
In which “places” is it frowned upon to greet your mother, to say hello (because that is what “hi” means)???
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Jo,
Thanks for doing this site and all the tireless work you have done to date against this global madness.You are one of our leading soldiers and I am feeling optimistic for Peter Spencer’s cause now.
I cancelled TIME mag subscription after 40 odd yrs coming to this house. Seems that they totally overlooked “climategate”. I can remember we had “Watergate” every week for two years. Seems it is just a case of who is funding the agendas as to what the pathetic MSM report.
Some deviant kissing kids on the “lips” at McDonald’s gets two days of headline fear and titillation (for some?) or some greenies earn high praise from Bob Brown for climbing on the opera house.
Meanwhile a true Snowy Mountain man of great courage and intellect has been starving himself to death in a last desperate attempt for a hearing! This isn’t a boat refugee; this is an Australian citizen. So thanks for your efforts Joanne.
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As the Holidays are almost here — actually are here for you on the other side of the date line — I hope Peter Spencer can be persuaded to end his hunger strike before it becomes fatal.
I hesitate to comment on government in a place where I don’t live. But government is not very likely to take notice of his passing except maybe lip service. He deserves life and by now he should have numerous supporters to help him carry on the fight. I hope he can win through to a decent agreement and get back the use of his property. Or better yet, get completely free of restrictions.
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Didn’t notice this before but according to the linked article, George Bush got something right after all. Whadaya know? Right out of the mouth of an avowed enemy…
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Roy has done a superb job of saying what I have been thinking:
Thank you Roy.
Thank you Peter Spencer (but I will not be happy if your life value is reduced to nothing because of politicians and their colective failure to act sensibly)
Thank you Joanne for all the rest.
In the spirit of the season: Thank you to all the very bright blogers here.
Finally, thank you to the persistant semi-trolls here because without you this would be less fun.
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Mark D.,
Thank you for your kind words.
I speak from a personal conviction that life is worth holding onto, even in the worst of circumstances and don’t seek any credit for saying so. Let justice be done here and Roy Hogue be forgotten afterward.
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Jo,
Do you (or anyone) have an update on Peter Spencer’s situation?
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“Under the Australian Constitution, if the Commonwealth wants to acquire a person’s property, it must do so on just terms, i.e. pay fair compensation.”
Isn’t it appalling that a government can simply ‘acquire a person’s property’ at all? There’s a word for that: Communism.
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G’day Roy,
Just saw your comment. I have just got off the phone from Peter. Will post the contents of my conversation with him on his Supporters / Causes site shortly – Here is the link, you’ll be able to read all the updates and information there.
Cheers Steve
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Steve,
Thanks very much! This man’s plight is something that simply insults my sense of justice and I’ve been unable to ignore it.
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G’day Roy,
Thank you mate and thanks for joining Peters Support group.
Cheers Steve
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I couldn’t help but notice PM Rudd’s intention to have nothing to do with Mr. Spencer. As Prime Minister his responsibility is the welfare of the whole nation, is it not? His arrogance rivals that of Obama. Men unfit to lead nevertheless thrive while good men suffer.
I shall be following Peter’s situation as closely as I can.
And again, thanks for the link to your site.
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Dave, while forcing someone to sell their land to the government at market price is distasteful,it still recognises the rights of private property. It is also able to be challenged in the courts. Communism does not recognise private property at all.
It is not communism, just wrong.
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When the property is taken “at fair price” by the government, in the USA that means it will no longer be taxed. Thus heaping the load of government upon a smaller group (and continually smaller) Ultimately this will be good because????
oh; MattB please fill in for my misunderstandings please….
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Mark D.
Here in the USA we seem to take property at “fair market value” and then give it to developers to build shopping centers and other commercial property, all of much greater value than the homes that were seized. Thus the tax base is increased, not decreased. Of course there’s not a trace of a public purpose as demanded by the Constitution. But the Supreme Court has spoken, even while Benjamin Franklin cries out, “NO!” from his grave.
I remember this from long ago when the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles and the city condemned all the property in Chavez Ravine to make way for a new baseball stadium.
Thankfully public outcry has stopped some of these land grabs by local governments greedy for tax revenue.
But the same question arises:
I’ve never understood why this is a good thing. Can someone help us here?
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I agree, they take it for both reasons. I was referring to land that becomes parks, reserves, forests etc. Even land that is tax forfeited but never gets sold back into private ownership. In the scenario you mention, at least they ARE paying taxes and the land is still in private ownership.
Add to the property grabbers list; the Nature Conservancy. Essentially buying and trading lands, usually back to goverment ownership to “conserve” them. In the end the result is mostly the same. The rest of us pick up the tax burden.
If you look at the Wildlands project you’ll note that this “no tax base” land taking fits nicely with the Wildlands model. By reducing the amount of privately owned land you can squeeze people into “acceptable” zones leaving tracts and corridors for all the furry woodland creatures to roam about.
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Mark D.
We agree.
The Wildlands thing is a particularly egregious land grab to me.
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Seriously
Add Dr Tim Mitchell to the Timeline
HE wrote the code (1997 -2004)(Harry_read_me.txt) in the CRU hack
He is in the emails and as the CRU computer model is central to Climategate and the IPCC. His work and other articles definetly explain the mindset of the AGW ‘religion’
see earliar posts above
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I suppose I’ve made myself an enemy of the Australian Government by doing this but Peter Spencer’s being totally ignored by PM Rudd just rubs me the wrong way. So I have sent off the following email to your Prime Minister. It may do nothing. But then again, weight of numbers sometimes does move politicians.
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Hi All
Copy of my email to Kevin Rudd for your information.
I urge you all to take some action to call for these wrongs to be remedied, and to bring them to the notice of the mass media.
Regards
Justin Jefferson
“Dear Mr Rudd
I urge you to respond to Peter Spencer’s protest by:
1. establishing a Royal Commission into the corruption and defects underlying the climate ‘science’ that is the basis of the Kyoto Protocol, and the subversion of the Constitution that was effected by the large-scale confiscation of property rights pursuant to that Protocol; and
2. remedying the grievance of all property-holders adversely affected pursuant to the Kyoto Protocol by paying fair compensation on just terms, defined as the difference between the market value of each property with and without the restrictions on use-rights enacted pursuant to the Kyoto Protocol or native vegetation law.
Yours sincerely
Justin Jefferson”
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Carter Edwards, on radio talkback, has been giving frequent updates on Peter Spencer. Peters family has just arrived from the US and spent the day with their dad. It’s raining in Cooma and as his daughter says the rain helped wash away the tears. The family apparently will allow Peters wishes to guide them when he eventually loses consciousness. We all hope and pray that before that happens Krudd will intervene. I have emailed Krudd and his minister for the environment, Peter Garrett. Garrett had the hide to say that Peter should go through the courts. Peter has been doing nothing else for years, over 200 court appearances. Garrett recently stopped a dam from being built because of a bottom breathing turtle but he is willing to let an old farmer die. The man is an arrogant idiot. As an Australian farmer I appreciate all the heartfelt empathy from both here and overseas. I have a feeling there will be many more cases similar to Peters before this maddness is defeated. Strength and courage to you all.
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A thought just struck me: is it not ironic that carbon, the stuff that makes human life possible in the first place, should now be declared by the EPA to be a danger to humans?
We have lost our way!
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I realise its holiday time but we don’t seem to be hearing about the flow on from Climategate. To our American friends; what’s happening? Nothing here of course. Pollies and MSM in closed mouth mode hoping it will just die if no one says anything. news most welcome to lawrie@activ8.net.au.
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I sent this off to our PM But it is doubtful he ever reads them anyhow, I am yet to ever receive a reply from any Labor member.
Subject: Complete breakdown of Australian Government
Comment:
Dear MR Prime minister I must protest to you in the strongest language about
the gross mistreatment of Australian farmer Mr Peter Spencer and the stealing
of his property without just compensation by your government.
In all my years as an Australian who loves his country this has to be the
lowest act any government had committed on one who it is pretending to serve.
Just how low can you cowardly people get, you steal a mans property,
manipulate so he cannot gain access to the courts then you turn a blind eye
while he slowly starves to death and pretend you are innocent!
If this man dies I tell you his blood will be clearly upon your hands.
As our prime minister I urge you to urgently and immediately take action and
do the right thing by this man and all of us Australians in promising that
the government will do the right thing.
Sorry but At this stage I have nothing but the lowest of contempt for you who
are pretending you govern for all Australians.
That has to be the joke of the millennium.
See the lates article here.
http://joannenova.com.au/2009/12/wholesale-theft-in-the-name-of-carbon/
Rob
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http://www.climatejusticefast.com/
Just thought for completeness I should mention this bunch of people who did 43 days of fasting. They are all a lot younger and stronger than Peter, and somehow I don’t think they actually ever intended to die.
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Good on you Rob.
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It seems that Peter Spencer does intend to die and that will be a great tragedy. He’ll be just one more in a long line of those dead over loss of their farms and will likely be forgotten. His supporters probably can’t make much of a case without Peter to give it credibility. And that’s their opinion, not mine.
I’ve been following his story on Agmates. With the supporters he now has there’s a good chance to get his story before the public. And that could change his likelihood of getting the independent hearing he wants. But he has to be persuaded to end his hunger strike or someone must get him down by force before it’s too late.
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In this world you only have the rights and freedoms you are prepared to fight for.
[snip… sorry Harry. No incitements to do anything illegal].
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So it’s OK to have our rights stolen but not OK to hit back? The influence that has created this situation has nothing to do with the democratic process so how else to fight back? The methods I described worked very well for the Viet Cong giving them contol over a large tract of Vietnam before the North got involved in the Vietnam war.
What I’m seeing here is the usual journalistic posturing. Still should keep the listening audience happy. Perhaps we should all check “Peter Spencer” on Facebook.
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Harry,
I understand your frustration but the method you propose must lead you down one of two possible paths.
1. Be prepared to be in full scale insurrection against the government of Australia
2. Be cold blooded murderers
The first requires significant public support and the ability to withstand the Australian military — which if I’m not mistaken you dare not take lightly.
The second leaves you simply as criminals lurking in the dark lest you be discovered, while any possibility of public support is eroded by what you do.
Either way your own losses will be large. Are you prepared for that? Do you have the large number of “soldiers” enlisted in your cause to keep it going?
The American Revolution is instructive. It succeeded largely because of the resolve of one man to never give up. It hung by a thread until near the end. The colonists chose a very dangerous road with a high probability of failure when they sent that Declaration of Independence to King George. Study up on the role of George Washington in the revolution.
What you’re proposing is to go down that same road. Either way you do it you’ll need large numbers of people willing to risk their lives or at minimum, their freedom. Do you have that? Are you prepared to be the leader that Washington was? That’s what it will take.
For everyone’s sake it’s best that you reconsider what you’re proposing. The late Martin Luther King Jr. would be an excellent example to learn from. If this fight can’t be won in the court of public opinion then it can’t be won. If we achieve the power to overthrow our oppressors by force, that power will corrupt us as it has those we now fight. Then we are the oppressors.
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foxnews.com is reporting this today.
I’m sure you all have better information than I have. So I’m not telling you anything new. But it’s interesting to me that the fires are in a farming and sheep ranching district, since it’s been pointed out here that prohibiting clearing and good land management practices has been a big contributor to the out-of-control fires that raged across parts of Australia in the past.
I don’t know anything about the area around Perth. Is it under the same restrictions that plague Peter Spencer?
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Roy,
I for one appreciate the interest you have taken in this subject. Our biggest problem is the MSM, with one notable exception, refuse to run the story. Radio Station 2SM (Sydney) is syndicated across a lot of eastern Australia and has run the Peter Spencer story via talk back for a week or more. There will be a protest movement to Peters place on Monday and then a drive on Canberra. Can’t predict the outcome but there are alot of very angry people out there. There has been a number of individual cases where farmers have been taken to court over the “Native vegetation” laws, usually begun by one of the environmental groups such as Australian Conservation Foundation. They pick up clearing by satellite imaging and then fly over the land to “confirm”. Not one of the court cases been won by ACF or the Dept of Lands but they have managed to bankrupt a number of farmers with court costs. During the recent phone ins one farmer described being taken to court and fined over a million dollars for illegally clearing a strip of his property adjacent to a road. The clearing was 75 metres wide and 1000 metres long. On appeal he showed the clearing had been done by a power company to run a transmission line. The fine was dropped but he still faced court and legal costs. After that story there was a flood of similar cases. None of this injustice makes it to the city press. They would rather hear if Brittany is drunk this week.
Unfortunately our lucky country is anything but. Our rural press is good but it doesn’t have the reach where it counts. I was hoping Fox might even run some stories here and in the States. I sent an email to Glen Beck but he’s on holidays apparently.
After Climategate I’m convinced that these farmers are suffering for nothing. Our PM is still talking about his Emissions Trading Scheme. Unless the US Senate has an enquiry into Climategate I feel all is lost. Our only hope is Mother Nature herself. The cold winter in NH must be embarrassing for the warmisters.
Thank God for JoNova and a few others for providing the means to make people aware of this abuse of Government power. I’d buy her a chocolate but I’m not keen on PayPal.
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Lawrie,
Thanks for your kind words. I have to aupport this man, Peter Spencer, any way I can for two reasons. First I have a deep personal conviction that life is worth holding onto even in the worst of circumstances. If a man’s life doesn’t have an intrinsic value that transcends property, home, whatever he made himself, any possession or circumstances then none of our lives are worthwhile either. We’re all in this world together for better or for worse.
The other reason may be a little selfish, don’t know, you be the judge. But Peters fight is a fight we all face. It’s here as well as in Australia. And every victory can count, so if you can shake off even some of this nonsense the rest of the world will notice. They may deny it, but they will notice. So every victory can count. Your victory over the ETS might prove temporary, I know. But it was heard in the halls of government and the UN. You can bet on it. So they now know they may face a more organized opposition — and may it cost them a lot of sleepless nights!
I never thought I would become any kind of an activist at all. Sending email to the Prime Minister of a foreign country would have seemed unthinkable only a few short years ago. But now my anger over the blatant dishonesty has seen me send Rudd a message.
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Can anyone help me. You hear all these quotes of massive amounts of CO2 emissions when you fly or drive somewhere so what is the formula for the conversion of for example a tonne of fuel plus as much air intake as you need into energy, heat, noise and CO2 output etc in kj and kg etc.
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Lawrie,
Getting adequate media attention is a big problem here too. Fox News, especially foxnews.com does the only continuing coverage I know about.
Glen Beck tends to be his own boss about what to cover. So I don’t know how effective email to him will be.
Protests, if peaceful, sticking to facts and large enough, tend to get media attention better than anything else. Judging from what I see here, as many as possible in the country’s biggest cities would have the best chance. It simply has to outweigh whether Brittany is drunk or not by force of numbers and persistence.
I probably shouldn’t be preaching to you. Forgive me! But our own civil rights struggle and Dr. Martin Luther King’s leadership might be worth studying as an example. What has already succeeded seems like a good starting point.
In any case — Peter has got to be convinced to end his strike or gotten down by force. Only he can give his story the credibility it needs. Per my other post, I see no good reason to simply stand by and agree with a man’s desire to starve to death in protest.
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Wait a minute Roy, wasn’t it you that just chastised someone for use of force?
I would guess that pound for pound, Mr. Spencer is probably armed better than the Aussie military. He probably planned for that possibility and harm could come to more than just him if an attempt is made to remove him against his will. Just because he has given up his fight for land use doesn’t mean he has no will to fight for his last bit of dignity.
I say all energy should be spent on persuasion, directed at and on the politicians. With a sign of success in a political way, I’ll wager that Peter Spencer will come down freely, with the dignity he deserves.
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Roy,
I don’t know Peter apart from the news and several radio interviews he has given. His family live in Grand Rapids Mich and have come over to be with him at this time. His daughter is the family spokeswoman and has only said that her father is determined to die for his cause and should there be no response from Rudd then that is what will happen. At the moment the sherrif is waiting at the bottom of the tower to serve him with an eviction notice. Peters ability to repay his mortgage has been completely curtailed due to the lock up of his land. Peter does not hold a grudge against his bank for he says they have been very understanding of his circumstances and his genuine honesty.
Every one would like Peter to survive and lead or at least be the rallying point for the fight to come. He has galvanised farmers everywhere to come together and has given them the knowledge that they have more sympathy than they knew. They are no longer alone. His sacrifice can not be in vain.
Several non-government politicians are speaking out and we have to support them as much as the farmers. Very few politicians in Aus, state and federal, have clean hands on this. Pandering to the latte sippers and greens has cost this country dearly.
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Re: 158-160
Thanks Roy, [snip… Harry… please. I realize you are frustrated. No incitement to violence. Bury those you dislike with strategically bad PR, or find ways to sue them… there are other legal options. – JN].
Gaining power by any means is self defeating since you are then subjected to the political process, and can still be white-anted by the public service, press and lobby groups. The most we can ever hope for is to alter the balance of influence.
Facebook now has a group page “Helping to kill Peter Spencer” no need to join. Filling that page with Names, adresses and (importantly) photos of people who have contributed to these pathetic laws may make some small impact. At least it gives people something to do.
I seriously doubt that the emergence of a few “madmen” will adversely affect public opinion. The likely result is that compliance would then require the presence of a team of officers greatly increasing cost to all levels of Government, Departments do not like that erosion of their budgets. Meanwhile playing on the connection between these policies and the losses to bushfires is always worthwhile.
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Jo You NEED to snip again!
Harry Butt ler I doubt that is your name, And I doubt most everything you say. If you truly served any democratic people:
I sincerely thank you.
As for the rest of what you have said, it does NOT belong here.
GO AWAY!
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Lawrie, I live close enough to Grand Rapids Mich to say that is close to home. That only makes my helplessness in resolving this more tactile. If the family needs help in any way…..
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Mark D.,
I spoke against armed rebellion and murder. These kill people and unless you have literally an army at your disposal I can’t see them succeeding. Murder almost certainly will not get you the public support you need. There is a difference between these two paths and saving a man’s life.
It’s fine if you disagree with me but I don’t want to be misunderstood.
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Roy, don’t take that badly. I think you and I would get along very well in any situation.
I will tease you tho with the question of defining murder in the context of the last few posts. Was the killing during the American revolution armed rebellion or murder?
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Harry Butler,
I disagree with murder, no I disapprove of it — extremely so!
Again, it’s fine if you disagree with me, but I don’t want any part of it. I will not advocate it, encourage it, or support it.
I advised against rebellion as well because better means seem to be more worthwhile.
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OK Mark D You are of course right My real name is not Harry Butler though I am sure that the Federal Police would have no trouble working out who I am. In the past I was the National president of an Australia political party and stood for Federal parliament myself. I do understand how the political process in Australia protects itself.
I am no longer young, I have multiple degrees in Science as well as Education and Economics. My IQ was over 150 for most of my life.
The reason I appear here is that this is the blog on “Wholesale theft in the name of carbon”. I am an Australian, I have been asked by several primary producers to intervene simply because I have a good record of winning against Government Departments in the past. Indeed I was able to completely shut down a Government department in this State for over three months, they had no funding to pay for compliance officers by the time my supporters had finished with them.
Despite the wonderfull support, I see no usefull ideas here. Peter is not alone in his position in Australia. With the predictable damage done by the bushfires we are seeing a slight rallying amoungst the urban people, rallying the farmers is critical. Their own groups are drawn into Government “consultation” and are now largely useless.
If the things I suggest make some people nervous then in the words of that famous American patriot “DUH”.
Australia did not have this Police State attitude untill we were effectively disarmed some years ago.
The situation is dire, in this State we do not even have a constitution as such, the Government can do anything it likes to property. This is why the Commonwealth chooses to work through States. Political solutions do not work. The belief exists that the environmental vote is large enough to turn an election. Personally I doubt that. If the Mums and Dads were properly aware of what is going on things could change.
Rudd gambles that Peter will be seen as just another nutter when he dies.
For many though he will be a Martya and that can really rally people. Not for conflict as such. That must always be circumspect.
Even though it is regretable the methods I may use are necessary.
The public servants and lobbyists we deal with are patient. I have beaten them, briefly, after several years they resume and it all starts again. I am impressed that so many of those I have worked with before have approached me. I’d have thought them burnt out.
Remember that if you cannot handle the solution you may be part of the problem.
As for your believing what I say? Fortunately beliefs, yours or mine have no affect on the truth!
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Mark,
I think largely armed rebellion (the British thought differently of course). Even the smaller groups not directly associated with Washington’s army stuck to fighting uniformed British soldiers. I am far from the greatest revolutionary war expert though. But even believing as I do that every man’s life is worthwhile I can get a grip on what a fight is all about and if you must do it then you do it. I don’t enjoy seeing it, but I can understand it.
I think there’s a difference according to motivation and method. If you kill individuals it’s assassination, which I regard as murder. You are simply taking out one-by-one those you regard to be in the way and you hide lest you get caught. You may not be able to tell when you’ve achieved your goal. If you’re a real rebellion you’re out in the open with a clear goal to accomplish, in this case, the overthrow of a government. You know or should know exactly how to tell when you’ve accomplished it. And you better know what you’re going to put in place of what you’ve just torn down. You do not necessarily kill. You take prisoners where possible and you demonstrate as much respect for life as your circumstances permit. And yes, of course you do kill when you must. It’s not an easy road to travel.
Now let me ask you a question: many have condemned President Truman’s decision to drop the two atomic bombs. But I think he was right. When faced with the probability of hundreds of thousands of casualties I think its better that they be your enemy’s people than your own. What do you think? And we’re getting way off topic for sure.
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All right, to be clear I do not know the politics of Aussies. If you allowed yourselves to be disarmed…..Damn I wish I could have helped.
You write as someone with intellegence, but with a lack of prudence.
But, You could be the person you describe, or you could be a government plant; a capital letter TROLL a radical or just a bit off. Only you know the truth. Your inciteful language doesn’t fit with anything here. It could be the kind of thing that leads to efforts to discredit what is going on here. I am not a moderator (but I have experience doing that) so we’ll leave it to the balance of power at joannenova.com
These days a government plant is a real possibility. Obviously any blog that is successful in bucking the system could be targeted. Regardless, I can speak freely (at least so far). If you are who you say, you’ll know what I am saying is true. You’ll also do what ever you know you have to do. I say GO AWAY because your language is troublesome to the balance of what is discussed here.
For reference: I firmly believe in the concepts of the US constitution. I am a good study of history. If you are what you say, you’ll know all that that means.
Or unfortunately, beliefs, yours or mine have no affect on reality.
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Harry, the details of how you brought about that action would be interesting. I’m all for legal ideas on how we raise awareness, or stop the creep of fascism.
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Roy,
Read the US Declaration of Independence for some instructive detail.
The only legitimate government is a government that respects and defends individual rights. When a government turns into a gang of thugs who’s actions violate individual rights, it’s time to do something about it. Such action is legitimate based upon the right of self defense which, in turn, is based upon the right to life. A thug by violating the rights of others, has abandoned all claim to rights for himself. That he is wearing the insignia of a government makes not one wit of a difference beyond the increased force he can project against you.
We have a RIGHT to our lives, our liberty, our property, and our pursuit of our own happiness. We have a RIGHT that our government both respects and defends those rights. We have the right to secure that condition by whatever means necessary. We have those rights by our nature as a human being and by the nature of our relationship to reality.
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Roy, there should never be a doubt about the decision to drop the atomic bombs. YES it was the right thing to do.
My philosophical question was (and is) a test. Convictions often crumble under scrutiny. Your answer would be your own. I won’t judge you (I might argue but that’s different). Armed rebellion is one sides view, the other side would call it murder (and the difference is propaganda). If you asked me the same question I would have said their behavior was justified by the inactions of King George and I am happy with the outcome. Nevertheless it was murder and treason under the law of their time.
Morals and philosphy rightfully keep you up at night.
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I concur with Lionell about reading the US declaration of independence for insight. I would add to that as mandatory, the constitution and significantly the discussions before that wonderful document was ratified.
Excerpt:
Indeed those of us in the USA have such rights (at least today) I’d like to think those values are what we fight for around the world in proxy fashion. It seems that our friends down under have not been so well protected by their supreme laws lately.
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Mark,
Fair test. Convictions are a good thing to have if you don’t make them lightly or foolishly.
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Roy, a little more information: The decision to drop those two bombs is very likely why I am here on this earth. My father was onboard an Army troop transport in the Pacific, headed to some enemy held Island to fight. The survival rate in those places was not good. My father said that the prevailing thought of the soldiers onboard was that they would not be retuning home alive. The bombs fell on Japan when that transport was half way to it’s destination.
It was war, Japan was a significant foe. It would have been carpet bombing if it were not H-Bombs. Ponder for a moment, how different the world would be if all those young American and Japanese men (and more) had to fight it out instead. We would not have had a baby boom (there wouldn’t have been enough fathers), by stopping the war and defeating Japan quickly She had young men left to build her to the technology and economic giant she became. The Soviets probably would have emerged as a greater power than the US (for a lot of reasons). Therefore communism might have won out. The world is shaped the way it is today entirely because of that decision.
It may be off topic, or it may be spot on. The fact that we are even here on ths blog supporting Mr. Spencer is connected to those two bombs.
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OK Joanne, you have some rights here. Though this will take some space. Edit if you like.
My name is Gary Kimlin; I was president of the Australian Reform Party. A Party formed over a decade ago because we in Australia have no Rights other than those given by Government. Neither the Magna Carta nor your Declaration of Independence or Consitution holds here, nor any other instrument that guarantees rights. Our Party system is corrupted such that any large minority lobby group can control policy regardless of who rules. The press is not much help.
The Party formed as a protest to our disarmament. The Party was white-anted by plants and no longer exists. The Party aside, the first major issue where we appeared to win involved the Environmental Protection Act Queensland 1996. This act targeted business and was actually quite reasonable, ensuring that there would be no unreasonable financial burdens. Few people want to polute. Problem was that the State delegated compliance to the Local Councils; their compliance officers were simply incompetent. The Local Government Liaison Officer charged with training these people ignored the Act and it’s regulations and set up her own “guidelines”. The people she trained as compliance officers had no idea that they were outside the Act. I came across a tough old coot in tears at a party meeting and offered to help. I read the Act and went from there.
At a meeting I challenged the Local Government Liaison Officer and demonstrated that she was deliberately manipulating the compliance. Eventually she angrily stated that the EPA and her compliance officers would continue until the courts told them otherwise. We were ready for that.
I told her that we would canvass the State and sue the first of these Council officers who caused a loss to a business.
We actually had a Right wing Government at the time, even so the Minister made it clear that he would not take on the Department unless we gave the appearance of public support.
In Queensland the Regulations that implement Acts must be reviewed at set intervals. This was due, that meant that the EPA needed to hold public meetings across the State for “Consultation”. The first was in Toowoomba and in attendance we had every bush lawyer and angry businessman we could get. The Man got through the first two pages in two hours. I found later that they had been told to expect armed men. Two of us then raced around the State to the other meetings I remember having to stand on a desk at the Brisbane meeting. I was still ignored until the gentlemen present insisted on hearing me. Anyway after that things changed. The licence was in two parts a free approval and an expensive license.
A business that had no charges for two years went onto the approval system.
That removed the funding base for Councils who soon lost their compliance officers.
The businessmen are very independent and difficult at first. We tried to bring in Farmers but they believed that they were safe.
But you asked about something else.
I rode trail bikes, no one is perfect. When the State Forests were being converted to National Parks trail riders and other bush users were invited to “consultation”. It soon became apparent that Mill owners, Qld Government and the Queensland Conservation Council, had already signed a document, The South East Queensland Forestry Agreement. I was asked to represent bike riders because I was now accepted as knowledgeable in Environmental Law and Conservation issues generally. Eventually push came to shove and I got a little tired of the taunting. We were told that allocations would be based on the use of the old permit system. Permits were free and applications needed to be processed within two weeks of receipt. That was and is the key. Bear in mind that the Department did not want to end up in court, just like Peter I guess.
There are about 60 Forestry areas in the State; generally we had an agreement with rangers that we would not use all of them. At that time the Schools around the Bunya Mountains ran non-competitive trail rides about once a Month. Typically 800 to 1000 riders would turn up. I would give a report at the Riders Briefings. We ran off copies of the application forms for each area. To apply for a permit to use the roads you needed a vehicle registration, a licence number and a name.
A number of Bike shops offered prizes for the most permits obtained. They need not have bothered. One guy had over 100 names, regos and licence numbers. He applied for each combination several times. He even had a permit with the name and licence number of his dog.
A fun time. As the protest grew each district ran out of funds for overtime and pretty much anything else. By then most recreational Forest users in the State were involved and I could not have stopped it if I wanted.
That was thirteen years and a broken neck ago.
Am I still up to it? I’d like to think so, I am a little bored and my new knee doesn’t bend enough for me to ride. Problem is I’m only as good as my supporters. The farmers have proved difficult to unite. I am cynical however if they really are ready to have a go I’ll find a way. I have started the softening up, just in case. Check the “Helping to Kill Peter Spencer” group on Facebook.
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Peter B #16
Look here a carbon calculator, the site is powered by “wind and solar” via green tag offsets!
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#164 I meant
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Mark D. @ 180:
You omitted the most important part.
Our rights are ours and not given to us by government. They can be recognized and defended or ignored and violated but they cannot be abolished. The same is true of our friends in Australia. Unfortunately, government in all its current forms ignores that fact and is the major violator of these rights. It is up to us to do something about it.
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Lionell, I was hoping that you’d pick up my subtle hint. (to leave it lie)
You are correct, I left out the part that could cause another debate. You paraphrased the actual statement: “endowed by our Creator.” We have those rights because they are “endowed by our Creator.”
Need we say more? I don’t want to debate the existence of a “Creator” in this forum, there is no reason to do that. Further, the resulting debate would change nothing with regard to those rights.
Anyone that would like to catch up look here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2008/10/agw-is-a-religion/ Start at about #413
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Mark D.,
We have no disagreement at all. I’m glad your father survived. The invasion would indeed have been living Hell.
Lionell,
The theoretical correctness of your argument is undeniable. I don’t know if we misunderstand each other or not. But my whole point is that starting any killing or massive insurrection should be very carefully considered. The consequences will probably not be what you want. When you undertake something you can’t afford to underestimate your enemy.
I follow Peter Spencer’s situation on Agmates and they are beginning to organize protests, looking at bulldozing down the growth on Peter’s land and possibly other civil disobedience. These things are also problematical, but history teaches me that they have a better chance of success than what Harry Butler AKA Gary Kimlin was proposing.
How this will end is anyone’s guess. But anything that gets it into the court of public opinion and keeps it there is the best possible thing.
A lesson from history: When I grew up here in California I had never heard of segregation. In school a black kid was just another kid and I had no reason to even consider skin color. But I was isolated from the truth by my circumstances. Along came the Watts riots the protest marches in the south, Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. I had the night janitor where I worked confronting me with his own story of discrimination. I not only had to rethink my own position (sadly just default) but I watched the public pressure and the constant confrontation of everyone with reality turn the tide completely. We now have black elected officials in states where in the 1950s they had to use separate restrooms and couldn’t go into public buildings by the same door as whites.
Only a few died in any violence compared with the number of people involved in overturning segregation. Public opinion changed when confronted with the truth. Government could not withstand that.
Things in Australia may be close to the point where another such action will win. Go for it!
Here in the states we’re nowhere near that point. But when we get there the backlash will be terrible to behold.
Kimlin’s idea leads to destruction. If you kill, others will kill. We have degenerated into that too far already. Two days ago my ISP’s home page news announced that a 10 year old and her boyfriend had set her mother on fire. We need to move away from there, not closer.
If you mount a full scale revolt and you don’t win it your cause is down the drain forever.
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Roy: If you mount a full scale revolt and you don’t win it your cause is down the drain forever.
1. That should not be used as an excuse to do nothing otherwise a loss is guaranteed.
2. The only battle in a full scale revolt you MUST win is the last one. It must be treated as an all or nothing event.
3. Its not down the drain forever, its just down the drain for you because you will be dead.
4. Our battle is intellectual, philosophical, and moral. In that kind of battle, the rule should be take no prisoners and give no quarter. The consequences of failure are just as deadly as one fought with arms and ordinance. Its not as swift but the ultimate body count is just as high.
It is the fourth point that is the most critical and most powerful – in the long run. If a war is won without having a sound intellectual, philosophical, and moral foundation, it won’t stay won for long. See the succession of wars in recorded history for instructive detail – especially those in the 20th Century.
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Lionell,
I don’t propose doing nothing. Far from it. I’ve suggested civil disobedience for instance. And I have absolutely no quarrel with your intellectual, philosophical and moral foundation.
The world however is an unfair, uncaring place. Many times it’s very cruel and never does it pay any mind to the intellectual, philosophical or moral arguments of men, much less their needs, wants, rules or laws. It minds us not in the slightest. If it did then dictators could not flourish as they so often do.
I’ve spoken what I believe to be true and correct. It’s perfectly OK if any of you disagree with me. Now I think this needs a good ending somewhere.
To over simplify my position — be sure you don’t bite off more than you can chew!
Peace! I don’t oppose taking action as my last post will show.
May your new year be blessed with success. And from me personally, Happy New Year!
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Lionell Griffith: Post 178,
Very good point Lionell!! Have you seen this?? Received it yesterday in my email…
http://patriotupdate.com/stories/read/2295/Obama-Orders-1-Million-US-Troops-to-Prepare-for-Civil-War
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Denny @ 191,
This is my first encounter with such material. I don’t think its beyond the realm of possibility. It may be the result of paranoid delusions but who would have thought our current situation was a realistic possibility even two years ago. As near as I can tell, events are going to get very ugly a lot sooner than any of us would like.
I can identify four alternatives.
Plan A is to mount an intellectual, philosophical, moral revolution. I suspect this will take several generations so, being over 72 years old, I won’t see it completed but I can, do, and will participate to the best of my ability.
Plan B is to delay events until the next election and redress the balance of power. This is iffy and risky but the alternatives are deadly.
Plan C is to withdraw the products of our minds and produce only what we need to exist. I know how to do this but I have medical issues that require technological civilization to continue to functions. So here, my chances of survival to a successful conclusion are less than with Plan A. Even so, I will participate to the best of my capacity.
Plan D is physical confrontation. Here things get really grim. I have little to contribute. I am a man of mind. I am an inventor. I can design and build things that work. I can’t fight a physical fight worth a damn. As a consequence I would likely be among the early casualties.
However, the ground truth is that the political elite are at war with reality. It is a war they cannot win. Unfortunately, it is a war in which we all can lose.
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Lionell,
Thought you would find it interesting…But when you think of the amount of threatening emails and letters Obama has received this past year, he has to be scared….Did you know there was already one person arrested for the attempt of His life…The “biased Media” don’t print this…why should they! Obama has control over most of them already…Proof is what happened a year ago…So I wouldn’t put it past Obama doing this…Plus the ammunition shortage is still around…gun sales have gone up over 200%. I just took notice of an article that Crime has dropped in states where gun laws have relaxed…There is one area I could check into..I’ll let you know what I find…
I’m not as close to you in age but I’m also experiencing alot of physical problems…I’ve always worked hard and now my body is saying “enough is enough”!! I know there’s more to come..
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Hi people, in case you missed this from Agmates I’ll reproduce it here. Most cases are from Queensland where the legal situation is somewhat worse than other States. Much of it simply is not against the law, doesn’t help much. They rely on breaking you financially. Am I still being extreme? Probably but then I’m getting old and cranky.
Enjoy!!
Reply by Kathy Ottrey 1 day ago
Hi, I found this website that discusses the ‘BRIGALOW CORPORATION’ and similar activities by various state governments. I have attached a copy of some stories on that site below
http://sosnews.org/newsfront/documents/brigalow.htm
1 QLD fellow – prosecuted by an officer of the State for cutting native tea tree to feed his starving livestock in this time of severe drought. The Warrant to Enter executed by the public officials of this State was not for his property but was for a property approximately 17 kilometres away. The District court Judge stated that the fellow had purchased the property in the 1980’s, in fact he had never owned that property. Cost of remediation – $350,000.
1 QLD fellow – prosecuted by an officer of the State for repairing severe erosion on a watercourse on his property by filling the degraded areas in with dead and dying black wattle and other vegetation and weeds which were of no value to the livestock as a food source. He then covered the vegetation with soil and replanted the areas with pasture grass. Fine – $27,559.25
1 QLD couple in their 60’s – long-term Lychee farmers, using regulation low-voltage electricity structures to deter common fruit bats. Obeying all necessary legislation. A University lecturer, with a fondness for bats, complains to the Environmental Defenders Office EDO, who institute legal proceedings. The farm was raided by police, who went through every cupboard and drawer in the house, including the families underwear drawers, ostensibly searching for paperwork and dead bats. The bat protection was removed, destroyed and within 1 week the entire orchard and farming enterprise had been destroyed by bats. The couple have had no income for 4 years are unable to access govt financial support while the case is ongoing.
1 QLD fellow who dug a huge dam on his property with the view of supplying water free to a nearby retirement village in exchange for future accommodation. Department of Lands Q have refused him the right to fill the dam, and are pumping the water out when necessary.
1 QLD lady in her late 60’s – Mrs Burns – who wanted to develop 23 acres and sell it off in order to build a home for her retirement. All land around her had been developed with the exception of a parcel that had a restricted animal order over it – for the Mahogany Sugar Glider. Her land had been checked previously and was not included. At this time, she was refused the right to develop in case the animals wanted to visit her land. Judge White of the Planning and Environment Court in Cairns stated – : I just find this astounding. Soviet Russia would be proud of these laws.” Yet he upheld them.
1 Warwick couple – applied for permission to extend decking and received it. They notified council who did not come to check it. 12 months later, council contacted them wanting to know who gave them permission to build. Demanded it be pulled down. The couple protested, police came with a warrant, the owner was arrested, now faces $125,000 fine and/or 5 years in jail. After high level complaints about the police treatment, the couple have had their computers bugged, they have been followed and returned home to find an attempt had been made to destroy the decking, with drill holes, piers knocked askew and etc. They received 3 different copies of the same court transcript none of which matched their witnesses versions.
1 QLD lady – bought 18 acres and received council permission to move a house to the land, providing she put a veranda around it. She moved the house, lodged a DA for the veranda. Since Christmas 2006, she has alternately been refused the DA and yet is received threats from the council re not having the veranda finished. Her land is adjacent to a large development in which her local council has an involvement, she finds gates left open, tyre shredding devices in her driveway etc. She believes she is being forced off her land.
1 72 year old QLD gentleman who entered a contract with a major telecommunication company for a connection. Ongoing problems – he spoke to staff in the office asking for compensation for his travelling costs and was arrested. Upon being asked whether he was guilty or not guilty, he replied guilty with mitigating circumstances. The judge replied she was not interested in his defence.
A NSW farming family cleared land adjacent to the protected Gwydir Wetlands. Their land was not protected and they had all necessary departmental permission. The Wilderness Society flew over the land taking photos and the EDO began legal proceedings. Both that farm and a property they owned in QLD were raided and all farming operations on both properties were forcibly closed down. This story is still being used by the media and the Wilderness Society to point the finger at farmers re land clearing, even though the government themselves agreed this family had been given permission. Yet that family are now having to legally battle this issue, trying to recover their rights to farm. Please note, the aerial photographs were digital, which is illegal to use in court.
A NSW family retired on a small holding in 2 portions, being environmentally conscious and prepared to keep the land natural because of eagle eyries. Minerals were found on the property, right at the access between both properties and the owner was expected allow ongoing truck access through his main acreage, and to forego his right to enter the second property. Local council passed the miner’s DA before any financial negotiations had begun, and the owners were told to agree or the Warden’s Court would decide for them. The Warden’s Court is specifically for mining issues.
We have a portion of creek through our property, where a rock bar has become exposed and is spearing the water into soft soil on our boundary, causing very considerable erosion. We discussed blowing a small channel through the rock bar in order to return the creek to its original path and were told by the Lachlan Catchment Management officials that the “creek had the right to do whatever it wanted.” These were the same men, from the same government organization, who entered into a scheme with our opposite neighbour to fence off the creek to a distance of 40 metres from the watercourse, on our land without any discussion with us whatsoever. Needless to say, these gentlemen were informed of the rules of trespass.
Peter Spencer, a Cooma NSW farmer. Environmentally sensitive land, he spent many years developing a plan for it, and was refused. Began a fish farm with eco-tourism in mind, the rules were changed and he lost that business. Began farming sheep in conjunction with the University of New England, the disastrous alpine bushfires and wild dogs destroyed that enterprise. He was then told he could not access federal drought funding as he was not viable. He is now suing the Federal Government for $10.5billion in carbon credit income.
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These recent posts could prompt a comment such as, “Only we humans are so stupid as to foul our own nest!” And we certainly are. But it’s too serious for cliche.
Denny @191, I’ve seen various rumors thrown around, even concentration camps for dissenters daring to object to the Obama’s plans. I can’t find any substantiation for any of it. So I would be a bit skeptical about what I believe — skeptical, but watchful. Any large troop movements would be hard to hide for instance, even if done small numbers at a time. So it should be detectable and then we would know. The shifting around of military personnel would be known to family and friends and would be really hard to keep the lid on if it involved 200,000.
I do foresee the possibility of widespread violence if things become unviable economically for large numbers of people. But then, against whom do you take up arms? In any case, as you know, I’m not exactly enamored of armed rebellion. And even Barack Obama would be well within his constitutional responsibility if he put down any large scale revolt — and it might turn out to simply be violence for the sake of anger and frustration (remember the Watts riots), which is not at all productive under the circumstances. Yet it may happen. I wonder which side of it I’ll hope will win if it does.
Lionell, you have that gift of getting right to the essential point. I have to hope that plans A and B will work out in the long run. Like you, at 70 I’m in no position to put up much of a fight physically. But I fear for my country and the world. My hope really is that the fight now going on because of Peter Spencer will succeed and be heard around the world. Am I on a fool’s errand? Only time will tell.
What Harry Butler AKA ??? doesn’t say is that large protests are getting organized in Peter’s behalf (check Peter’s group on Agmates.ning.com). If these are done right and kept up they can change things. Nothing was any more institutionally entrenched than segregation in the southern states. But it fell from unrelenting exposure to the light of day.
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Harry, those examples you have provided make my blood boil. How have your courts and government systems been overrun by such anti-democratic thinking? It would appear to me that you have some serious house cleaning to do with your politicians and judges.
We (US) can make an example of what is happening when the “poison carbon” laws start coming via the EPA here. The more news about your government intrusions we can get run here, the more likely we can obstruct attempts to create similar do the same. We still have enough rational thinking voters and a legal system that we can work with. I THINK……
It is time we start our efforts!. The first step is to get these stories into our news. We might have to do an end run and start feeding this information directly to House and Senate members that are on the right side. There are farming and land owner groups here we can work too.
Harry, where can we find these stories (including more detail). Is there newspaper clippings or web linking that we can pass on?
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Sorry that should read:
We (US) can make an example of what is happening when the “poison carbon” laws start coming via the EPA here. The more news about your government intrusions we can get run here, the more likely we can obstruct attempts to create similar laws that will do the same here. We still have enough rational thinking voters and a legal system that we can work with. I THINK……
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To Roy and Lionell, I suggest that you have plenty of fight left. The pen has been proven to be mightier than the sword. Start by creating a list of everyone you can count on to carry the message. Then write down a list of influential connections that the first list can produce. Invariably somebody will know an elected official. If they are elected they can be valuable (at any level of government). They tend to listen to people they know.
I know that there are already existing land use defender groups in many states. There has been a great success with the Tea Party groups in the states. Join these groups. Even if you can’t get to their meetings you can still be counted. In my own area we have loggers that have organized to protect their business. Think about and find other groups that are already exist. Hunting and shooting organizations all should be easy to get a friendly hearing with. It’s numbers of voices that impress elected officials. With the technology we have today we can reach these voices quickly. 2010 has a nice ring to it (like 1776).
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Harry, I have to ask this: Your name comes up as a poster on at least one radical green web site. What is your true motive here? Are you playing both sides? Are you one of the white ants from your defunct party? I’d like to think you can be trusted.
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Joanne, (or anyone) Is there a place where I can find a list of the “respected” climate science skeptics (lindzen as an example) Preferably ones with enough credentials to paper over the usual “amongst respected scientist” foil.
I would like to create a summary document with those names and a summary of each of those peoples’ basis for being skeptical and links to web information if a recipient wanted more information. Once created, this would be sent via e-mail to all university scientists and researchers that can be found. Most university faculty members have e-mail addresses that can be easily found on the “U’s” web sites. With a few people searching out universities it would be fairly easy to get a message out that there are very reasonable counter theories about AGW. I believe that many in the scientific community aren’t aware that this information exists. They have been caught up in their own world without investigating (believing in the “peer” system they work around).
Doing this would require some helpers because the messages would have to go out a few at a time and from different e-mail sources to avoid being caught in spam filters. At the same time, locating scientists in the private sector to be directly contacted with the same information (as well as local press and news agencies).
If I can find help I will create a web site similar to the Agmates to allow the helpers to coordinate their efforts. I am very familiar with Ning (the Agmates host) and I could have a site up and running in literally a few hours. Ning allows different levels of security and the site could be private or open to the public (by choice of the helpers)
If 10 people can send 100 e-mails in 10 days and repeat the process we might start to see a change in attitude. The CRU climategate issue I have to believe has caused some quiet disbelief in the science community at large. It is time to beat the propagandists with truth; in volume. If this works out soon it would be very timely in the US (because after health care climate can’t be far behind). It is also an approach that could work anywhere.
Any takers?
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In NSW we have a particularly inept Government. It has been in power from before the introduction of the native vegetation laws. Over that time it has been resposible for many other laws which impinge on peoples freedoms and rights. Many laws were introduced simply to curry favour with the greens and secure their preferences at election time. Most of these laws impacted freehold land alienating both mainstream farmers and an increasing number of so called hobby farmers. Having farmed all my life I am now one of the latter. There are probably more hobbyists than proper farmers these days and a lot of them have time and money to devote to a worthwhile cause. Thats background.
It is 14 months til the next state election. Fourteen months in which to gain committments from opposition wannabees to scrap these laws. Either they do or we wage war against them. They are desperate to win and they get no support from the greens anyhow. This is the best opportunity in a long time so it can’t be allowed to pass. Peters strong stance should be the catalyst for change.
We should also target marginal seats in the federal election. Our cause would be strengthened if the CRU scandal morphs into serious doubt about AGW.
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Roy Hogue: Post 195,
Roy, thanks for the input..Yes, you would think on amassing that kind of troup levels the word would get out…You can put Soldiers on alert and 1 million is practically all of the U.S.Air Force personel. When I was in the Air Force, I had to do basic Riot control training…Of course, I was in Security Police in SAC. The Service has changed since I served but the basics should be the same.
Lionell, I searched for authenticity on that article and Snopes stated they had nothing on it…As you can see it is from Europe News Agency…Reliable??? Unknown!!!
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Mark D.: Post 196,
Mark, could you explain how to get the “stories into our news”…In the U.S. the only one that will give any notice would be Fox News!!! Good luck on getting any other “biased Media” outlet to help spread the word! As you already know..this is how Obama got elected..Because of the way the “biased Media” treated Obama’s campaign..He couldn’t do anything wrong…Media wouldn’t print anything else…The ONLY way to find the “other” side was the Internet…
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Hi Mark,
As you noted I do post on various sites. Remember that I am a serious biologist amoungst other things. I’ve done a fair amount of work on forestry systems generally and revegetation in particular. A lot of the knee jerk “green” solutions are based on incomplete science and simply can not work. In Australia we have found that we simply cannot carry out agroforestry because of the water use, each tree using 1000 L a day if it can get that much. We still have community groups trying to refill aquifers by planting trees to help water infiltration into the sub-soil. Until the water table actually falls they cannot understand that they were always wrong.
Other groups are planting strips of trees across the overland flow to prevent water from reaching saline systems where we have dryland salinity and need to keep the salt down to farm. That works, if it is dryland salinity to start with. Half baked environmental grads actually try the same thing near the coast where the salt is effectively a fossil deposit. Naturally that does not work, there it is best to allow that salt to wash out.
Actually I was not aware that I still came up in searches.
I certainly have opinions and sometimes they change. Many years ago a student wrote that she could never win an argument with me because if she was convincing enough I would change sides. Quite a compliment to an objective Scientist.
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Just finished listening to Carter Edwards (2SM) talking to Peter Spencer. Peter recounted his efforts to make his farm viable within the constraints of the NV laws. He tried fine wool sheep; killed by dogs coming out of the adjacent National Park. His trout farm was stopped by Govt intervention which prevented him from harvesting the necessary water. A wind farm has been proposed but unable to pay his mortgage, his farm is to be sold to the wind farm developers so they no longer need to pay royalties. He was allowed use of just ten percent of his land and even that was stymied by govt and circumstance.
The protest move to Canberra has lost it’s buses and now will travel by cars. The buses pulled out when a threat supposedly from a Roads and Traffic Authority inspector was made to delay indefinitely the buses at checking stations along the way. We really are up against some dirty players.
Barnaby Joyce, Opposition Senator, has stated that the govt should pay compensation. The govt spokesman, Finance Minister Tanner said it was financial madness http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/barnaby as it would cost far too much. So its OK in Australia to steal from farmers. We are no longer the lucky country, we are fast becoming a socialist dictatorship.
Much as I like trees I think the only solution to this mess is for farmers to wait til the next hot dry day and drop a match into Kevin Rudds trees. Burn the lot.
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I’m not too good at links. Try this http://www.theaustralian/politics/barnaby-joyce-attacked-over-land-use-claim.
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http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/barnaby-joyce-attacked-over-land-use-claim/story-e6frgczf-1225811553771 This works,finally. sorry to be so inept. The story is worth reading just to show the disdain in which Labor holds it’s farmers.
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From Steve, doesn’t need much comment from me.
I have spoken to COOEE Bus Drive coordinator Bob Jones and he has confirmed that two of the buses that were booked to go – the one from Coffs Harbour and the one from Qirindi have been cancelled due to RTA harassment.
People who were booked on those buses have now made private travel arrangements and will still be attending the March.
Bob said that he’d received a call from an RTA inspector who was in a motel at Coffs Harbour. Bob was not prepared to release the RTA officers name and number, but he has handed the details on State National party member for Barwon Kevin Humphries who is following the matter up with the minister.
The RTA officer told Bob that 5 inspectors had been dispatched to the North and the West of the state to target the buses heading to Canberra for the COOEE March.
Buses can be held for up to 6 hours in the road side inspection places whilst being assessed for mechanical defects and and driving breaches.
It is an outrageous action and as the RTA officer told Bob, they were just following orders from above. Bob told me that Kevin Humphries was also outraged by this and was talking about taking it to the highest possible authorities.
I was under the impression that we lived in a free and democratic country. This is an outrageous Sate Government sponsored attempt to intimidate and disrupt a peaceful demonstration of grass-roots Australian citizens.
If you are not as mad as hell about Peter’s situation, than you should be now. It is time for the ordinary citizens of this great country to band together to end this excessive Sate & Federal control of our lives.
This is huge.
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Yes we have fight left — a lot of it. But the tea party groups, at least up to now, are protesting the excessive spending and the healthcare overhaul. So may be of no immediate use. Perhaps some of us can get their focus widened a bit.
Since the Senate has not shown an interest in acting on cap-and-trade the EPA is the immediate problem. They are subject to FOIA requests to disclose the basis for their ridiculous determination. They can also be sued.
This whole thing is a political infection (have I said that already?). And the best possible disinfectant is the cold hard light of day.
I’m encouraged a lot to see that anger over Peter’s plight is turning into action.
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Latest on the protest and dear old aunty ABC. I rang Ian Chappel on his Australia all Over Program. He wanted to know what people were doing today. I wanted to talk about the protest but the gatekeeper after much checking with some higher authority just left me. No sorry or can’t do. Just nothing. Censorship is alive and well at the ABC. That’s good. We must be seen as a problem. It will be interesting to see if the cameras are there tomorrow at MAGNA CARTA park and at Parliament House. Then we’ll know if there is a blackout. A small number of protesters will be a disaster but then we don’t have access to rent-a-crowds so ours at least will be all genuine.
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Denny at 203:
The following is based around USA markets. I won’t pretend to understand Australia much.
Denny, How you approach the media depends on a few things.
The size of your market area is one, who you know is two, finding a local big purchaser of advertising that agrees with your opinion is three. Actually who you know is probably one.
The best success initially will be in small to mid size markets. The big news companies won’t budge easily from what they think is “selling”. Remember, news is a selling business. The Main Stream Media might be bought or owned already but they still have to sell their end product. Don’t be discouraged though because there are lots of hungry media outlets that are looking for news stories. In the local news business, the various outlets do pay attention to each other. The day of the scoop is long past but if you can make one news outlet think the other is on to something you can make some headway. This is easier if you are in a smaller regional markets although too small and they might not use anything but news feeds. I suggest you work first with the outlets you like. Odds are talk radio stations are a good place to go first. By all means if you know the business world in your area and can find a big spender on advertising you could possibly leverage this. That person’s advertising budget WILL be known to every media outlet. The person that spends those dollars has a lot of local influence. The people that sell advertising will carry news worthy ideas back to their respective news outlets. (how do you think the MSM got the way they are?). Don’t be surprised if ideas get turned down at first (be gently persistent). Everybody else does the call and e-mail thing. You need to get a personal contact. Have the big ad spender make the introduction if you can.
Don’t forget specialty print outlets either There is almost no end to the number of small specialty papers and regional magazines. Your success with television will be unpredictable (try anyway but they think a lot of themselves). Certainly, if you have made progress getting stories in other media, they will be easier to get interested.
At first try to stay away from the subject of AGW. Instead these human interest stories (as from down under) will be better. Don’t be one track either. The news people will disregard everything you offer if you keep bugging them with polar bear stories.
Remember, there are a lot of skeptics out there. They have been quiet because they didn’t think anyone else felt the same. There is a big opportunity to show them they are not alone and whats more the number is big and growing. (these are their advertising buyers!)
Naturally, these are just a start. If a few people try this it will blossom.
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Roy, the tea party groups are all very worried about constitutional issues, sovereignty issues, they generally hate the UN and happily are made up of a lot of people that thought they were Democrats. In reality, very many democrats, farmers and labor people (in the USA) are not happy with things as they are.
The question I have is anyone willing to step up and work for this cause in the USA? I have the coordinating web site built already on Ning. If three people (or more) here say the word I’ll put up a link.
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Mark,
Unfortunately right now I’m sitting here recovering from a back injury. But soon I’ll have to go back to work and then my time is going to be quite a bit more limited. I’ll by all means help but I can’t be a central player with 40 plus hours a day 5 plus days a week locked out — have some other issues also.
IS ANYONE ELSE HERE IN THE US INTERESTED IN WHAT MARK PROPOSES? Let me know on this thread.
It should not be very hard to get a hold of some of the tea party organizers. I’ll start looking (haven’t been involved directly up to now, but I’m getting mad enough to start).
Thanks Mark!
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Thanks Roy, I too have other things I should be doing. That would be selfish given the state of affairs. The Founding Fathers gave almost everything they had, most died in poverty. Perhaps we owe a little bit back.
I am almost 50, I have a business with employees and I have a family; wife of 25 years and 3 children. I know what busy is. I also know that we are near a crossroad in American life. Either we get people to help or we shutup and watch most of what we had slip away. I mean this sincerely. I see hope after finding this (JoNova) site. I wish I could do more for our friends down under. I am pretty sure we can do more here in the US.
To give folks an idea about what I am proposing here is the Mission Statment of “The 2010 Club”:
The mission of this club and web site is to organize and coordinate people in the pursuit of truth in science. The primary focus will be to gather valid skeptical data regarding Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and disseminate that valid information to the scientific community, news agencies, and elected officials through any practical method.
Secondary goals will be to defend principles of a free democratic system of government, such as the US Founding Fathers envisioned and to expose any person or organization that behaves in a way contrary to those principles.
Initially the goals will be accomplished by the efforts of an ad-hoc group of volunteers. With time, a board of directors will be assembled from the ad-hoc group and the mission of the organization developed further. In the near term it will operate as a non-profit volunteer club.
Membership in the 2010 club will require agreement with the principles of the mission.
The purpose will NOT be a forum to debate, and will not by any means replace or compete with anything here at JoNova. We will take valid debate and infomation to the masses. This will be a “clearing house” and resource for people to get the truth out to the rest of the country.
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Mark D.: Post 211,
Sounds indeth Mark! Now to get the monies around and see who will promote the “Realist” side! I’m sure your right. Fox is breaking the ice but your idea sounds interesting….Thanks!
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Mark,
It’s been my hope since I saw the action developing in Peter Spencer’s case that the matter can become recognized internationally. One success can jump-start another. The details of how the Australian government has operated need to get out. But if history has taught me anything I know it all hangs on getting attention in the Australian press to give it credibility anywhere else.
Your charter for the 2010 club is good. I see you’ve thought this thing out quite well. Now we need members. Denny, are you with us?
I went searching the net for “tea parties” yesterday and got so many hits I couldn’t begin to look at them all. It can make your head spin. Need to refine my search.
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Mark,
After some thought I wonder if The 2010 Club will make us look credible enough. How about The 2010 Project, The 2010 Initiative or something similar?
My search for tea party stuff leaves me thinking they are largely faded into the background now. The last activity of note seems to be last April 15. I’ve had one wild idea though. The name Michelle Malkin comes up in my search and she has supported several groups from what I see. She usually has her finger right on top of what’s going on, so I fired off email to see what she can tell me about current activity, contact information, and even possible support from her if we can become credible.
I’ll post what she tells me.
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I think of this as a behind the scenes group. We won’t be making news we’ll be passing information out. As such our name is not important (it should just be easy to remember. We can use another name and create additional web sites if we want to have a public face later. I am worried about wearing out our welcome here with this conversation.
Here is the invitation link: http://2010club.ning.com
The site is private by invitation for now so you have to use the above link. My biggest fear is being overwhelmed with interest or attacked by trolls. Stay tuned! it will be a good thing (I’ll just have to get busier)
Joanne, I hope that putting this link up here is ok.
Lionell, I hope you can help too.
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Mark, had trouble getting in. It wanted a password, says I have one, but the reset password process didn’t let me in either.
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Roy, I just tried the link and it worked for me.
The page you first got to should have a place for you to enter your name, a password and a re-enter password, your birthdate (I don’t care what birth date you enter), an athentication code word type in and a sign up red button. Did you see that?
Check the “problems logging in” and see that your web browser meets their specs. You may have to loosen up your security settings temporarely (like pop up blockers)
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Mark, I figured out the problem. I have been a member of Agmates also hosted by Ning. It wanted the same password for 2010 club as for Agmates. So I’m in. Apparently one email address, one password.
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Mark – may I also have an invitation? I am 67, retired from 40 years in the oil and gas industry and looking to take my country back from the so-called “progressives” in office today.
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You certainly are welcome. You can click on the same link I used for Roy. Anyone else in the US that would like to join us go ahead and use that link too. It might take a while for us all to get familiar with each other but lets go ahead!
Thanks
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Mark D,
I went through the sign up procedure and was required to answer a question about committing to the 2010 Club program. I don’t know what it is so I can neither say yes or no.
I suggest full disclosure prior to having to answer that question. Until such is available, count me out.
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Lionell, I put that there so that if we get a pro-AGW warmer I can feel good about kicking them out. Also the Ning site asks for date of birth You are welcome to invent anything you want for that. Mine is April 1, 1900.
Here is the mission statement (which is all I am asking people to commit to.) It isn’t intended to be a blog like here, only an easy way for us in the US to communicate and organize. I will accept your input as to the direction we take.
To give folks an idea about what I am proposing here is the Mission Statment of “The 2010 Club”:
The mission of this club and web site is to organize and coordinate people in the pursuit of truth in science. The primary focus will be to gather valid skeptical data regarding Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and disseminate that valid information to the scientific community, news agencies, and elected officials through any practical method.
Secondary goals will be to defend principles of a free democratic system of government, such as the US Founding Fathers envisioned and to expose any person or organization that behaves in a way contrary to those principles.
Initially the goals will be accomplished by the efforts of an ad-hoc group of volunteers. With time, a board of directors will be assembled from the ad-hoc group and the mission of the organization developed further. In the near term it will operate as a non-profit volunteer club.
Membership in the 2010 club will require agreement with the principles of the mission.
The purpose will NOT be a forum to debate, and will not by any means replace or compete with anything here at JoNova. We will take valid debate and infomation to the masses. This will be a “clearing house” and resource for people to get the truth out to the rest of the country.
Is that what you need to see?
I’d appreciate your input
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Mark D.,
That’s fine. I can go with it.
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Mark D I don’t mind you using this blog “to organize and coordinate people in the pursuit of truth in science” at all. I don’t have much time, but would appreciate being informed (with brutally short, concise summaries), and perhaps I can help spread the word.
If you get going I’d like to blog on it, and help. People can openly discuss plans in the comments below it. Obviously a “members only” blog is useful if you want details like private emails or addresses, but many strategies can be posted and discussed publicly.
One of the things I would like help with is that there are many keen volunteers out there, I’ve tried to harness that partly and it’s been successful, but managing volunteers is a big job in itself. Sometimes it can use more time to arrange for someone else to do a spot of research than to do it myself. Knowing the volunteers, and their expertise and skill level would be useful. I have ideas and plans of what needs to be done, I would really appreciate a team of experts who I could approach with questions about scientific links, papers, or resources. It would free me up to do more writing and cartooning, and lobbying the press.
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2old4this,
If you subscribe to the basic mission statement then just use the invitation link Mark D. posted for me and join up. We’ll be glad to have anyone on board who wants to help.
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Dear Aussies, we Kiwis are also having our property rights raped and abused through this John Key National government’s disgraceful emissions trading scam that was rammed through parliament under urgency only days before Copenhagen.
Since Copenhagen John Key has pldeged $130 million to the UN.
This is a totally unjustified disgrace and assault on the freedom of our country and citizens, it amounts to around $6,000 per annum for a family of four already struggling in a harsh recessionary environment. The country was kept in the dark on what was happening and supported by a corrupt NZ media who only ever told one side of the story.
You must not let Rudd or Abbott do it to you.
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[…] event that you thought the Kelo opinion and all that it represented was ominous, look at the tragic proceedings Down Under for a glimpse of your […]
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It’s not just carbon or Australia. This kind of thing is happening all over the world in different ways, but with the same goal:
By the UN: The Year of Biodiversity. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8449506.stm
For some background on this: http://discerningtoday.org/wildlands_map_of_us.htm
And: http://www.twp.org/cms/index.cfm?group_id=1000
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Air-head Ted Turner of CNN and Hanoi Jane fame is doing the same with his own money. He buys vast tracts of farm land and can do it by offering a price that not many can resist. He then not only lets it go wild, he imports wolves and other predators that his neighbors who still farm just love to death.
At some point the backlash against this is going to be terrible!
We are already a net importer of food. The word stupidity is not adequate to describe this nonsense.
A couple of quotes are instructive of the mindset.
“Man is always and everywhere a blight on the landscape.” John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club.
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” Maurice Strong, once high up in the UN IPCC and apparently the main architect of the Kyoto Protocol.
The environmentalist goal is nothing less than the death of perhaps several billion human beings and throwing the rest back 2 or 3 hundred years into the past.
Google these exact quotes. There is no doubt that they were said. I’m scared and I’ve no good way to fight back unless thousands of others get the word and start to fight along with me.
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Peter Spencer’s courage must be recognized, supported and encouraged to grow into an overwhelming positive, ubiquitous and contrary force. Up against unbelievably powerful forces, his struggle must not now be dismissed and forgotten as one of those – ultimately irrelevant – events in the annals of history. We could all, each and every one of us, find ourselves in exactly the same predicament. And indeed, sooner than we think. Many of us already have. Peter Spencer has made himself a focus to force his fellow Australians to face up to what is happening in this country. Let us use his courage as the focal point to return this country to its true potential.
Learn about the corrupt forces which Peter Spencer is ultimately fighting. It’s doubtful at this advanced stage, that even a Royal Commission – let alone our High Courts of “Justice” – can prevail. Nevertheless, these roads must still be followed.
What will vindicate Peter Spencer’s stand is contained in the following:
Essential reading – and listening – for everyone, from the – also courageous – pen of an insider whistleblower!
http://www.thebigbadbank.com/
Have you heard of “The World Conservation Bank” of Edmund de Rothschild and Maurice Strong – and Michael Sweatman, it’s President, who speaks of the 80% of the globe’s population, aka “cannon fodder” – wich must be eliminated to “save the planet”? And for whose benefit, you will not be allowed “to buy or sell” unless you pay a “conservation” or “carbon” tax on every single item, down to your tin of baked beans!
Download your own copy of “The Big Bad Bank” Manual at
http://www.thebigbadbank.com/
(BTW I don’t receive any remuneration!)
No Man May Buy or Sell except he hath the mark of the beast, etc……. – ad nauseam.
Now, Who do you think were the real authors of the New Testament “Book of Revelation”, now bringing their own “prophecies” to fruition? Just imagine, a “Committee of Experts” charged with the task of producing a document – “The New Testatment” – to instruct, inculcate, and educate the masses, into accepting this new religion!
If you know your New Testament history, you will realise that the Council of Nicaea of 325 AD was a Committee of dedicated, some fanatical, self-declared arbiters of what Books were suitable for inclusion in the New Testament. That Committee decided which Books (writings, papers, etc.)would be, and which would not be, included! Above all, none of the Books of the Arianism “heresy” or the Gnostics, would be included. These “sceptics” (deniers”?) must not be allowed to pollute the minds of the “cannon fodder” ! Indeed, their books – or those of which survived – were placed on an “Index” by the Church Powers – and their reading was forbidden!
Does that description sound familiar and remind you of recent Climategate revelations?
Remember the Spanish Inquisition which followed – centuries later – the most horrific and barbarous torture, the fear it engendered, that most necessary tool of all those who seek power over their fellow creatures. You were lucky if you only receiving excommunication from fellowship.
http://www.thebigbadbank.com
These power-obsessed individuals have enormous patience in developing their own dynastic ambitions. Remember all the dynastic struggles of all the royal families throughout history in an effort to retain their power? Today is no different, exept that these aspiring “royal families” prefer to keep their ambitions , methods and processes to themselves an an “inner circle” of “useful idiots”.
Don’t let Peter Spencer (and his few loyal supporters) fight a lone battle. Let us also follow Peter – and Martin Luther before him – “HERE I STAND”!
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[…] Jo Nova has been following the story closely. Here’s the eco-political background: As a part of Australia’s commitment to protect native vegetation and to reduce carbon emissions under the Kyoto protocol, Peter Spencer and thousands of farmers like him, have been subjected to a government imposed ban on land clearing. […]
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I FINALLY I got to read your article, there is definately a problem with your XHtml. Have you tried verifying it through W3? It could just be A theme problem though… Just thought I would warn you from one webmaster to another because I would hate to lose my traffic if I had an issue and didn’t notice.
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[…] “Wholesale theft in the name of carbon” – […]
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[…] Jo Nova has been following the story closely. Here’s the eco-political background: As a part of Australia’s commitment to protect native vegetation and to reduce carbon emissions under the Kyoto protocol, Peter Spencer and thousands of farmers like him, have been subjected to a government imposed ban on land clearing. […]
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Land Theft – NOW WATER THEFT
See
http://fw.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/general/who-is-the-wentworth-group/1848446.aspx
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Surely the most water that the system would need would be the pre-settlement flow. The current flow even with droughts and irrigation is still higher than that. How is this so, you may ask? OK!
In any catchment most of the rainfall is used by the vegetation, well trees right? So the clearing even in this sparse landscape increased the River flow. The amount of water used for irrigation, though large, is still less than that increase.
On the surface the Wentworth Group is stating that the River to be healthy needs more water than it had before white settlement.
From there we go to two tricky bits.
The Wentworth Group eventually want the farmers out and the trees back. So anything that reduces farming is good.
Unfortunately it would not even stop there. The vegetation in Australia had already been reduced by burning by the Aboriginals for up to 60,000 years prior to white settlement.
The Wentworth group want re-vegetation without burning. That tree density would reduce the water available for the rivers to mostly zero. Even the biggest floods would be unlikely to flow through.
So the policies of the Wentworth Group would destroy the River System completely.
Why would they want that? OK I’m pretty sure that they don’t really want that but I didn’t say they actually understood what they were doing did I?
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In 2008 a tremendous breakthrough occurred in Australia. Papers written for the Murray Darling Commission stated that Forestation, including re vegetation were a major threat to overland flow in the catchment and indeed any catchment.
Sure we always new that after all the flow in the system was a result of the historic clearing, as a “natural” system the Rivers only flowed in flood time.
The important change was that this information changed Legislation at the Federal level. It is now illegal to plant trees, even for revegetation, in most catchments without first purchasing an existing water entitlement. That is near impossible in stressed catchments and seems to have stopped the Carbon Trading Scheme cold.
Look for the changes in the Environment Act.
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