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2006 Journal
July 20 - The Land where Pinocchio is King
July 3 - Power Down, Pecker Up
June 16 - The Dread of Being a Bystander
May 18 - The Flower Children's Daughters
April 21 - Blinded by Science, Trapped in a Paradox.
March 20 - johnhowardpm.org - storm in a teacup
March 1 - Syriana and the Shifting Winds
January 25 - Whose bread you eat, Whose song you sing.
2005 Journal
December 19 - Was it worth it after all the dagger arguments and designer drugs?
November 20 - The Land That Said No
September 30 - Washington, Warporn and Wild Wild Weather
August 29 - Retreat Australia Fair
August 10 - World Torture Tour
July 4 - The America I Love
June 21 - DOWNFALL! The dream of violence that sank a nation.
June 3 - This is the house of Bush
May 23 - John Howard's Underpants
April 20 - '10 reasons why the USA the most dangerous nation on earth and 3 reasons for hope.'
March 3 - 'Sex in the Stroke Ward'
2004 journal
December 16 - 'To do with Ghengis Kahn?'ece
December 6 - 'The Bad Santa'
November 15 - 'The Future of Fascism'
October 14 - 'The Future of Dissent'
September 29 - 'The Future of Freedom'
August 30 - 'Why the future haunts John Howard'
August 9 - 'The Future of Death - body, mind, soul, a people, a Parliament'
July 8 'The politics of consciousness'
May 31 'Who killed Nick Berg - extended version'
April 19 'An existential vacuum armed to the teeth'
April 1 'What lies ahead'
March 9 'The knock on the PM's door at midnight'
February 13 'Netizens of the world unite'
February 3 'Hey Ho from the world social forum'
2003 journals
December 16 'The three hit men from the west'
November 17 'How Iraq is re-shaping the future'
October 30 'How to rescue the future'
September 25 'The mass production of serial killers'
September 5 'Poor fellah my planet'
August 7 'Slam Bam thank you frisco'
July 10 'From PornoPopϨ ro agit prop, the coming age of social justce.
June 16 'The doors of deception, a death metal soundtrack'
May 26 'Murdering the matrix, marketing missiles, marrying machines'
May 8 'Smile, you're on combat camera'
April 12 'Proud to be a peacenik'
April 1 'Forty years ago today'
March 27 'Uncle Sam's underwear'
February 26 'The art of war, the poetry of freedom, a jittery pope'
February 12 'Why the warhorses stomp and snort'
January 28 'Getin' ready for a good ol' Texan Barbecue'
2002 journals
December 29 'Maybe Dr Evil isn't who you think'
November 4 Balaclavas, shock-jocks & Lean Cuisine for the Conscience
October 21 Sick of the Sound of My Own Voice
September 23 The Divine Right of US Citizens
August 22 The cook, the wife, two dogs, the CIA, a mobile, a Massacre
August 17 32 Revelations about the War that Never Ends
August 2 Fuming Fathers & Pedophile Bishops
June 26 Pre-emptive strikes, bad acid & collective guilt
June 10 Lock Up Your Daughters
May 30 High Tea with the Black Dwarf
May 24 Refugee Blues & wild accusations
May 22 Back Among the Gum Trees in Fortress Oz
April 10 Beyond Good and Evil
April 1 Bloody Easter, Joyful Nation
February 26 The 14 wiley whoppers of Philip Ruddock
January 31 Making the world a better place for arms dealers, millionaires and screwed up weirdos
2001 journals
December 29 Ruddock - Wanted
December 28 Hi - Christmas and New Year Message
December 23 Good & Evil, Beyond Rich & Poor, the legacy of Islam's Holy Killer
November 23 For Truth, Lies, Paranoia, Cruelty & the Truth that can't be Silenced.
November 7 Eek - Censorship is back!... Or am I paranoid?
October 25 Death of global consciousness, the decline of CNN, the brutality of warlords, East & West
October 13 Citizens!.. A new awakening or the same Old Testament
October 1 But what would you do if you were George Bush?
August 12 A bull with future shock

KILLING NEWS
Journal of a Futurist - 31 August 2006

The first death known to me, that was precipitated by a Rupert Murdoch headline, occurred in Sydney in March,1964, when a schoolboy committed suicide. More of that later. These days, the casualties resulting from military invasions championed by Murdoch are numbered in the thousands, though he is not the sole agent of destruction. One of his former TV producers in the Middle East, Serene Sabbagh, resigned from Fox recently because of its “bias and racism”. What tipped her over the edge was the bombing of Qana.

“As a mother of three, watching the images, the raw images of children being pulled out of the rubble … and then I switched to Fox News to hear some of their anchors claiming that these little kids that were killed, these innocent victims that were killed, were human shields used by Hezbollah. And one of the anchors went as far as saying they were planted there by Hezbollah to win support in this war. And it was unbelievable. For me, that was the breaking point…”

On August 6, Serene Sabbagh and a colleague sent a joint letter of resignation to Fox News: "Not only are you an instrument of the Bush White House, and Israeli propaganda, you are war mongers with no sense of decency, nor professionalism." A verdict which is widely echoed. “Fox News has had reporters running around northern Israel chronicling every rocket attack and every Israeli mobilisation, but has shown little or no interest in anything happening on the other side of the border”, noted Andrew Gumbel in the UK’s Independent.

News Corp had “walked away from professional journalism and crossed over into dutiful propaganda”, wrote another analyst,” a dangerous new chapter even for Fox News”. The whole organization had shifted beyond warmongering into deep censorship, where it “purposely cordoned off topics of discussion… In fact, I could not find a single, authentic, independent expert on Arab politics and history who appeared on Fox News to discuss the roots of the escalating violence. Not one.”

BLAZING AWAY WITH
THE TOOLS OF HIS TRADE

In the editorial pages of Murdoch’s antipodean flagship, The Australian, the bombing of Beirut is presented as “Israel doing Lebanon a favour” and restive Arabs are described as “Nazis”. None of this should be surprising, as Murdoch revealed to the Hollywood Reporter that his media ventures are “not as important to me as spreading my personal political beliefs" (November 23, 2005). And these beliefs are dangerous. Murdoch’s influential Weekly Standard advocates the pursuit of “regime change in Syria …. and a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait?”

It does not seem to figure in Murdoch’s personal accounting that over half a million civilians are now dead or disfigured as a result of the wars he has already promoted. Instead of reconsidering his politics, like other lapsed neocons, Murdoch is still blazing away with his tools of the trade: hate, lies, fear and censorship.

So here’s the nub. In a world facing a series of crises, should an unelected billionaire with a militant agenda and key politicians in the palm of his hand be allowed to preside over a global empire of propaganda? An empire continually expanding, one that gobbles up competitors and is now even blocking free speech on the internet. (See MySpace Is The Trojan Horse Of Internet Censorship)

DIRTY DIGGERS’ DEADLY DIARIES

On top of this, Murdoch’s minions reject the inconvenient facts of climate chaos and attack the greens as “a threat to the prosperity and well-being” of the world (The Australian September 02, 2004). Whereas a real threat to the well-being of the world and its people is Rupert Murdoch, as I first discovered long ago.

These days, Murdoch’s war-mongering is compulsive and his disregard for human wreckage is both calculated and global; but in the beginning, what marked his output was a casual (and sometimes fatal) disregard for the frailties of humans.

Murdoch’s rise to power took off in Sydney in 1964, when he acquired an afternoon tabloid, the Daily Mirror. On March 12, the Mirror front paged a report on “promiscuity” among the pupils of a city high school, which was based on the contents of a young girl’s diary. The resulting uproar led to the diarist and a fellow student being expelled from school. A job well done.

That’s where the story ended as far the Mirror was concerned, though not for those involved. The 13 year old schoolboy named in the diary, Digby Bamford, was found hanging from his backyard clothesline, having committed suicide. This news was “cordoned off” from public consumption. Even rival papers kept the secret, until a disgruntled Murdoch journalist tipped off an independent magazine. The author of the “school sex” diary was examined by a doctor from the Child Welfare Department and found to be a virgin.

During an interview years later, I reminded Murdoch of this event and his reaction was sharp: “Don’t you ever make mistakes?” Of course I do. Many. After acquiring the News of the World in London in 1971, Rupert discovered another diary, while he was campaigning against a popular BBC TV show, Top of the Pops. His paper accused its stars of “promiscuity” with young dancers in the audience. One of these was Samantha MacAlpine, aged 15, whose “leatherette bound book”, according Murdoch’s news desk, “could well blow wide open the scandal at the BBC”. The day after this report, Samantha MacAlpine committed suicide.

The News of the World tried to cover itself with the headline, THIS GIRL WAS A VICTIM … NOW SHE IS DEAD, but the coroner stated that Samantha’s diary was “pure fantasy…. unconnected with reality”, (like much Murdoch journalism). A Scotland Yard officer accused the paper of being “ludicrous and irresponsible”. As is the Murdoch style, the evidence from the inquest was kept from the readers. Also suppressed was the statement of the forensic pathologist, that in his opinion, Samantha had died a virgin.

OSAMA BIN LADEN
BLOWS UP
MELBOURNE TRAM?

Two weeks ago, when young Australian Jack Thomas appealed his conviction for receiving funds from Al Qaeda and holding a false passport, he was acquitted by the Victorian Court of Appeal. FURY AFTER JIHAD JACK WALKS FREE, headlined The Australian, although the fury was largely confined to Murdoch’s newsroom. A jury had previously acquitted Jack Thomas of two more substantial matters. The Victorian Court quashed his conviction on the lesser charges, because police statements had been taken from the defendant while he was incarcerated in Pakistan without access to a lawyer and subjected to assaults. (A US interrogator told Thomas he would crush his testicles, rape his wife and put her breasts in a vice). When the Appeal judges freed Thomas, as they were obliged to do under Australian law, the Murdoch media called for public outrage and demanded “rapid amendments to ensure that no judge can make the same mistake”. One of the first steps in the Third Reich’s campaign to win over the hearts and minds of the German people was to attack the judges. Another step was to consolidate the media. A third step was to fan the flames of fear.

In response to criticism of its assault on the judiciary, The Australian hit back: ‘what will it take to get Mr Thomas’s apologists to take the terror threat seriously? Suicide bombers detonating aboard Melbourne’s trams? A USS Cole-style strike on the Manly ferry?” And sure enough, as I write, another Murdoch missile hits the front page. SYDNEY WILL BE ATTACKED.

After interviewing 572 citizens, the Daily Telegraph has decided that “most Australians believe we are locked in a losing war against Islamic terrorists and an attack on our home soil … is inevitable”. The number who cite Murdoch’s compulsive belligerence as a factor in the escalation of terror is not revealed. On the same day, Jack “Jihad” Thomas is arrested on the beach, slapped with a newly introduced “control order” and ordered home, where his movements are to be restricted. Questioning voices are merely a “civil libertarian lobby that believes John Howard is a greater threat to our way of life than bin Laden”, according to MurodchWorld. No, the greatest threat is the control of information from the top. “Fascism ought to more properly be called corporatism”, said Mussolini, “since it is the merger of state and corporate power.” Beware of a global Goebbels.

FRIENDS, ROMANS, COUNTRYMEN

How Mark Antony might have viewed Murdoch’s bloodlust:
Rupert Murdoch is an honourable man,
otherwise he would not be honoured so,
by other honourable men,
Like Mr Bush, Tony Blair and Mr Howard
Who, you all know, are honourable men.
Let’s not do them wrong; I’d rather choose
To wrong the dead. And the dead are many.
If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.

Ran Rupert’s dagger through a free and open press
Dismembering truth and good intent,
Then what a rent the cursed Bush-ites made
Upon the battered peoples of Iraq
Whose tears and gore besmirched the Tigris.

Mark how the blood of Afghans stained the sand,
And tearful Qana infants torched from sky.
Judge, free citizens, how loudly Murdoch brayed
To feed his oily thirst for power, growth and wealth
Beyond all proportion, cheered by underlings.

O, what a fall was there, my tarnished Democrats.
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,
Whilst bloody mindedness flourish'd over us.
O, now you weep; and, I perceive, you feel
The dint of shame: Our good name squandered.
Our laws abused, our governance marr'd with traitors.

O piteous spectacle!
The evil that men do lives after them
.

THE LAND WHERE
PINOCCHIO IS KING

Journal of a Futurist - 20 July 2006


Visit - Mati Klarwein - 1996

Familiar lies are music to our nation’s ears. Australians always punch above their weight. We are the most generous people on earth. Our soldiers are the most professional in the world. In fact, we’re so professional, that even when our troops shot at the Iraqi Trade Minister’s bodyguards in June, killing two people and wounding four others, our military carried out an investigation without bothering to interview any Iraqis. Defence Force chief, Angus Houston, found that our soldiers had “acted in accordance with their rules of engagement”. In November, when the US Marines murdered Iraqi women and children in their homes in Haditha, this action was also said to comply with the “rules of engagement”. In that case, the toll was 24. Perhaps it was this death disparity that led Air Marshall Houston to conclude, “the Australian soldiers might have been over-cautious”. While the government has agreed “in principle” to pay compensation, it has decided “in principle” not to apologise.

The Australian media have lately been enthralled by a public spat between the country’s Treasurer, Peter Costello, and its Prime Minister, John Howard. The treasurer publicly stated that the PM promised to hand the top job over to him before the start of the next next year’s election but John Howard denies this. On Monday, a poll of 1416 voters showed that most Australians believed the Treasurer’s version of events, which is not all that surprising, given our PM’s forked tongue. The rest of the poll is illuminating. Despite their judgment that John Howard is a liar, Australian voters still prefer him to stay on as Prime Minister. Part of me understands this. In today’s explosive world, there is something reassuring about a grey suited leader in a regimental tie who has, for over a decade, been shrinking our minds on the TV news, while spooning out imperial inanities. Iraq is doing great. Afghanistan is off and running. Kyoto is biased. Since our forefathers took possession of Australia, the treatment of indigenes has been even handed. We can be a future energy superpower, riding clouds of yellow cake and soot. The Pentagon’s Military Commissions are just. Foreign footy referees are weird. Gays mustn’t marry gays. Israel has the right to inflict collective punishment. And so on, endlessly repeated until the brain snaps.

Sandra Stanton "YEMAYA"
Yemaya, the Yoruba Mother of the Sea,
Mother of all life


Howard works hard for his country. The economy is purring. His unconditional embrace of White House is derived from a belief it will guarantee future security. From the outside, Australia looks good; the Opera House, Nicole Kidman, the Barrier Reef, jocks in hotpants. Some of this is an illusion. The interior of the Opera House is a letdown and the Barrier reef is dying. Sport dominates the media-scape. Listening to political debate today is like being locked in the Alzheimer ward with the treasurer and a shock jock. After ten years of John Howard, the image that speaks to the inner self is Edvard Munch on the Harbour Bridge, screaming. But this is a minority view.

JOHN WAYNE PLAIN-SPOKENNESS
AND VIGOUR

Not only have most Australians fallen in love with our self applauding fantasies, but citizens from other nations are following suit. “God, I love Australia”, writes Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post, “an island of tranquility in a roiling region … Australia has no illusions about the ‘international community’ and its feckless institutions… For Americans, Australia engenders nostalgia for our own past, which we gauzily remember as infused with John Wayne plain-spokenness and vigour”. (Actually, that sounds like America’s present). Most of all, according to Krauthammer, Aussies are “sympathetic to America’s predicament as reluctant hegemon”. True, our government couldn’t be more sympathetic if it tried.

José Roosevelt "Autumn Story"
Soundscape - Mati Klarwein – 1982

In his dubious role as deputy sheriff, our Prime Minister is assisted by powerful friends, especially global mogul Rupert Murdoch, a fervent supporter of George Bush and concocted invasions. VOTERS TELL PM TO STAY is a front page Murodchian headline and his commentators chorus it’s in everyone’s interest. Readers are being softened up for another term of amnesia. Oh, the Middle East Crisis? Turn to page 6, where we learn that valiant Israel is “resisting help” from an “international military force”, as it punishes the citizens of Lebanon. So far 254 people killed, over 500 wounded, “all but 13” civilians. Numerous tourists and Lebanese nationals are trapped, terrified and starving. Israel has denied the Australian government safe passage for its citizens. George Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard and the Murdoch media agree that Israel had been “obliged to strike back in self defence”, following the capture of its soldiers – one in Gaza, two in Lebanon. No mention that the number of Palestinian children currently in Israeli custody is 388. No comment on the unashamed sadism of Israel wanting “no one to sleep at night in Gaza.” No reference to the fateful 9 June explosion on a Gaza beach, which wiped out 8 Palestinians and injured another 30. Nor is the “valiant Israel” narrative clouded by mention of Palestinian casualties since September 2000, the killing of almost a thousand children and minors, the injuring “in various degrees” of another 18,800+.

STILL BLOWING HIS BUGLES

Such data cuts no ice with Bush, Blair or Howard, three leaders who put the match to Iraq, the ones who are loaded with moral responsibility for every innocent death and mutilation triggered by that squalid invasion, since descended into pack rape, pillage, torture and terror. More than 14,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq in the first half of this year.

Yesterday, 50 corpses, 100 wounded. Maybe the three leaders barracked for Israel’s right to commit war crimes to divert attention from their own. They trashed Geneva, let Ehud Olmert trash Geneva. Murdoch’s still blowing his bugles, eager for cheap oil. His paper’s editorialist glanced at the flames of Beirut from his Sydney office and concluded, “Israel is doing Lebanon a favour….”

Meanwhile, on the ground, Robert Fisk reports on the massacre of Marwaheen, “All the civilians killed by the Israelis had been ordered to abandon their homes in the border village by the Israelis themselves a few hours earlier. Leave, they were told by loudspeaker; and leave they did, 20 of them in a convoy of civilian cars. That's when the Israeli jets arrived to bomb them, killing 20 Lebanese, at least nine of them children”. In Haaretz, Gideon Levy puts it like this: "In Gaza, a soldier is abducted from the army of a state that frequently abducts civilians from their homes and locks them up for years with or without a trial - but only we're allowed to do that. And only we're allowed to bomb civilian population centers." There are bastards and angels on both sides, but noble leadership on neither. Israel has the right to defend its citizens, but not to annihilate neighbours.

All this carnage on the 70th anniversary of the fascist bombing of Guernica, which prophesised calamity. Four Islamic lands now under aerial bombardment, more in the firing line. For all the bright lights, witty musicals and executive jets, the world is reeling. Polluted heavens, clouded judgments, melting glaciers, declining oil, burning forests, rising seas and … that sinking feeling. At the dawn of the 21st Century, we are stuck with leaders whose mindset is medieval.


Annunciation - Abdul
Mati Klarwein - 1961

Info about Mati

  • Lush Life: Mati Klarwein (The Wire / 1998) - An extensive article on Mati by Rob Young, for The Wire in 1998.
  • A Thousand Windows - An interview with Mati by David Jay Brown in 1992 while Mati was visiting Santa Monica, California.
  • In Memory of Abdul Mati Klarwein 1932- 2002 by Alex Grey

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Adam Cvijanovic

POWER DOWN, PECKER UP
Journal of a Futurist - 3 July 2006

Beware the old duffer who warns that the end is nigh. While bright young things throng the bars and the beaches, trailing clouds of credit in the aromatic spa baths, jetting off to base camp for sunsets irresistible, the duffer’s next stop is the nursing home. No wonder he’s cranky. For the fit, the smart and the moderately well heeled, there’s oodles of fun to be had at Global Mall, until – all too soon – the wells run dry. Supplies of oil and groundwater are in decline, and neither resource can be swiftly substituted. Oil is the universal elixir, used for petrol, pesticides, fertilizers, factory farmed food, transportation, refrigeration, heating, lighting, medicines, cement, much of the stuff in shops, in the office, in the factory, in the sky, in the home, in the hospitals, in computers, in our every day life. Peak oil heralds the end of the party, like when the grog runs out. Only worse.

No ride home, except on a bike; no morning Jacuzzi, unless you’ve got plentiful water tanks and solar panels; no breakfast without an edible garden or a local food co-op. Perhaps malls will morph into farmers’ markets. Fast companies will slow down. Tomorrow’s hot jobs will be those now considered uncool, as in organic agriculturalists, water diviners, orchardists, recyclers, compost lavatorians, geologists, petrol siphoners, builders of bamboo bikes, renewable energy boffins… Numerous voices are urging people to powerdown, to adapt to a post carbon future.

It’s an issue that remains below the media radar. It will not attract advertising. The life-after-oil scenario embraces a web of perils, such as the depletion of phosphates, topsoil, species; climate chaos, endless war and population overshoot. It foresees the collapse of the consumer society, the end of suburbia, the return of localization, now re-branded as re-localization. It is not a re-run of hippie druggie free love communes, despite the whiff of lentils and dandelion. The powerdown project is practical, community-engaged and globally aware. It rests on the assumption that cheap fossil fuels are the lifeblood of modern civilization, and that their imminent decline invites catastrophe. So chop wood, carry water, put a windmill on the roof, re-skill and get to know your neighbours.


Every object in this picture is derived from oil

BEYOND PEAK OIL AND GAS ALREADY?

No other energy source comes near to replacing oil. The Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO), puts a “high probability” of global Peak Oil occurring before 2010 or 2015. In a presentation to the US Department of Defence on June 20, Matthew R Simmons, the founder and chairman of the world's largest energy investment bank, said the world was “probably beyond peak oil and gas”.

ASPO is scornful of attempts to create synthetic crude oil from coal, gas or tar-sands (costly and impractical). Bio fuels are limited by the lack of arable land not devoted to food. Hydrogen is an energy carrier, not an energy source and has little likelihood of delaying the impact of peak oil. According to ASPO, Britain would need 100 nuclear power plants to produce enough hydrogen to replace its existing use of transport fuel. A Cornell University study has concluded that each unit of ethanol energy requires 117 percent of fossil fuel energy to produce. As for natural gas, Australia only has 1.4% of the world's known reserves and we’re selling it to China for a song. While an Oil Vulnerability Task Force is a matter of urgency for Australia, our leaders seem unaware of problem. As for the oil companies, only Chevron and Total have so far admitted the situation is dire. On June 19, an industry conference in Darwin was warned that exploration costs had lately jumped by over a third, to little effect, and that progress was further threatened by lack of equipment.

Let’s step back a bit. Keep in mind that our addiction is absolute. Oil fuels 90% of all transportation. It is involved in the production of 95% of all the goods in shops, including 95% of all food - produced as it is, mainly by industrialized means and carted across the world, sometimes in refrigerated planes. Current global consumption is 85 million barrels a day, rapidly rising, as China, India, and the rest of Asia gets hooked. Back in 2001, these issues surely plagued the minds of Dick Cheney and his colleagues from Exxon Mobil, Shell and BP America at their Energy Task Force summit, held at White House. Here, the most powerful people on Earth poured over maps of oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals in Iraq. The minutes of this meeting remain classified, but its significance is obvious. Saudi Arabia’s oilfields are less extensive than advertised and some are polluted, “brine stained with oil”. The oilfields of Iraq are known as the last of the ripe overhanging fruit. “Sagging so low”, notes Linda McQuaig “that it practically touches the ground under the weight of its ripeness”. No permafrost, no contamination. Vast pools of oil, yearning for exploitation. In 2001, Iraq was a sitting duck. Ruled by a hated dictator, its geography offered a platform for the US to control the Gulf.. The point of the invasion was to establish a garrison on top of an oil field. What’s next? Only last week, President Vladimir Putin's top political adviser put it bluntly: the US is seeking “international energy domination under the guise of promoting democracy”. No-one is allowed to mess with the consumer society. The White House credo is powerup; Venezuela beware, don’t mention the Greenhouse.


Art Speigelman

HAIRCUTTING, FRIED CHICKEN,
OPEN-HEART SURGERY

While demand for oil keeps accelerating, the current rate of decline is about 8% per annum, according to energy specialist, Mathew Simmons, so that by 2020, the total supply could have dropped from 85 to 25mb/d barrels a day. But by 2030, oil demand is expected be 115 million barrels a day. Could this be why Bush & Co have been acting like outlaws? Worldwide, a few billion addicts might be facing cold turkey, and right now, weapons are probably being stockpiled in suburbia. Enter the Powerdown scenario, the “path of cooperation, conservation, and sharing”. Small, self-sustaining communities that are touted as cultural lifeboats in times to come.

The only realistic alternative to endless resource wars, according to Richard Heinberg in his book, Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World, is a strategy that shrinks per-capita resource usage in wealthy countries, develops renewable power, and “humanely but systematically reduces the size of the human population over time. Powerdown would mean a species-wide effort toward self-limitation.” Heinberg believes that once the processes and implications of resource depletion are understood, the pro-growth argument will collapse.

The 21st century is not going to be about mobility, writes John Howard Kunstler in The Long Emergency. “It’s going to be much more about staying where you are, not about being in constant motion. It's going to be about being in a place that you care about and you have to care for and that is going to change the basis of how we live”. Does this seem far fetched? Not to the esteemed Trends Research Institute, which is tracking the “rapidly growing desire of more people to be self-empowered, non-reliant, and ‘off the grid’”.


Allora & Calzadilla's video, Under Discussion.

Kunstler’s depiction of sprawl as the “dirty secret of the American economy” has relevance to Australia, with its bottom line also stoked by spreading McMansions, and their endless accessorizing, furnishing, servicing and renovating. Once this is activity is subtracted from the GDP, there isn't much left, according to Kunstler “except for haircutting, fried chicken, and open-heart surgery”.

BUY NOW, SETTLE IN 2010

What are the possible stages in the collapse of civilization? Richard Heinberg says energy shortages will start to bite in about five more years, leading to economic turmoil, frequent and lengthening power blackouts, and chaos. Over several years, food production plummets, resulting in widespread famine, even in formerly wealthy countries. Wars – including civil wars – rage intermittently. Meanwhile ecological crisis also tears at the social fabric, with water shortage, rising sea levels, and severe storms … One after another, central governments collapse. Empires devolve into nations; nations into smaller regional or tribal states. But each lower stage reaches its own moment of unsustainability and further collapse ensues. Between 2020 and 2100, the global population declines steeply, because of climate chaos and crop failure.

It’s a grim picture, which perhaps under-estimates human ingenuity, though its warning is timely. Over a 100 post carbon local groups have already joined the network.


http://relocalize.net

While some believe that humans are facing the greatest challenge in their history, other are still striding the last beach fronts with charts, publicists and compliant architects. Australia’s Gold Coast developers are offering “sculptured residential skyscrapers of unrivalled luxury living with uninterrupted views of the (rising) ocean from every stunning apartment”. One 77 floor tower is called Soul. Another tower phallus is called Oracle, though designed for a future of non Greenhouse skies and gushing wells. You can buy an apartment now, and settle at the end of the decade.

The Oracle offers three outdoor swimming pools/lagoons, water features; indoor lap pool, spa, steam room, sauna, state of the art gym, executive lounge and private wine lockers, plus in house cinema, surround sound, a vast screen, perhaps for watching The Day After Tomorrow. Should that day come, residents can retreat to the zen gardens and tai chi lawn, to stay focused and fit, in case the lift fails. Seventy seven floors is a long hike home, but at least your head will be back in the clouds. ends


Promoted as the “new vision” for Australia’s Gold Coast

RESOURCES: Courtesy of Communities magazine -

The Party’s Over and Powerdown, Richard Heinberg. Two of the most popular books that present this information in a readable way to lay people. New Society Publishers, 2003 and 2004, respectively.

The End of Suburbia. This 78-minute video (on VHS or DVD), describes, with humor and fact, the energy crisis and how it happened, with testimony by leading petroleum engineers and Peak Oil researchers, including Julian Darley, Richard Heinberg, James Howard Kunstler, and others. www.EndOfSuburbia.com

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, Meagan Quinn and The Community Solution. Inspiring, hopeful 60-minute documentary of Cuba’s crisis and recovery when they ran out of oil 12 years ago, from permaculture design and solar energy, to city gardening on rooftops and balconies, to organic farming with oxen.

High Noon for Natural Gas, Julian Darley. A hard-hitting look at an energy source that rapidly went from nuisance to crutch, and the implications of our increased dependence on a resource that will soon be in rapid decline. Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2004.

Relocalize Now!: Getting Ready for Climate Change and the End of Cheap Oil, Julian Darley.. New Society Publishers, 2006.

The Long Emergency, James Howard Kunstler. Kunstler’s view of what life in the near future will be like, post Peak Oil. Grove Press, 2006.

The Oil Age is Over: What to Expect as the World Runs Out of Cheap Oil: 2005-2050, Matt Savinar. With a question and answer format, one of the easiest resources to understand what’s happening and why; also one of the least optimistic (some would say “most realistic”) perspectives of what’s going to happen. Available mail-order or paid download from the author’s website: www.LifeAfterTheOilCrash.net.

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Meet the faces behind the war crimes.
Read John Howard's latest whoppers on Iraq.


The fire this time
(note: graphic images)

The collapse of elightenment

Click through to Richard's story in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Image credit: "Hula Hoop Blues" by Amy Crehore

Grandchildren of the Revolution

Link to The Age or download the PDF (1Mb)

Who Killed Cock Robin?

The death and burial of justice and truth.

Richard's blog - 20 Oct

Richard's blog...26 July

Hotlinks

Links for 31 August Journal
The liquid bomb mystery
Twenty Things We Now Know Five Years After 9/11
Why Bush will Choose War Against Iran
WELCOME TO FREEDOM. IF YOU'RE A JOURNALIST, BEND OVER AND SPREAD 'EM!
In case you still think Iran's President is Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying
Islamo-fascist who has threatened to "wipe Israel off the map"
A quick insight into the shifting wind
Russia Overtakes Saudi Arabia as World’s Leading Oil Producer — OPEC
Puts Truth back into Christianity
An alternative view of the fate of Flight 93
A bucket of piss dumped on Sky News
Links for 20 July Journal
Blitzing the milk supply
“Israel is doing Lebanon a favour” – The Australian 17 July
The black futurist speaks: “It’s World War Three”, tell the people.
Energised Neocons Say Israel's Fight Is Washington's
If this isn’t civil war in Iraq – what is it?
CNNNNNNNNNNNNN
“No end to the war on terrorism, because there is no end to the injustice that produced it
The situation in a nutshell
British bomb Afghan homes
Never challenge the Israeli narrative
It’s not only cowboy diplomacy that’s dead at this point in the Bush era, but also functioning democracy as we used to know it.
The unvarnished truth, By Israel Adam Shamir
Blocking free speech at the border
Killing free speech in “sovereign” Iraq
You raped the country, why not rape the people?
The “Amazing Special Forces” in action
Report: US 'systematically' violates Geneva, Supreme Court
And the West is silent
While the mad dog wags the tail of the White House
“We gleefully blow up an oil platform off the Venezuelan coast.”
“Another piece of anti-Venezuelan propaganda that serves only the U.S. military...”
A SIX-YEAR-OLD Palestinian girl, her mother and elder brother killed as Israel tightens grip on Gaza
Ever tighter…
Obvious war crimes to anyone with a brain or a heart, but not to the US/Oz mainstresam media
“I want nobody to sleep at night in Gaza”, but New York Times yawned
2,000 air strikes conducted in Afghanistan between March and May 2006, each missile & bomb encased with depleted uranium
MurdochWorld pushing for censorship
“I Was a Mouthpiece for the American Military”
Links for 1 July journal
A nun would walk in and I started to shake
Orwell in Downing Street, genocide in Iraq
An intense campaign of deceit and trickery
Amnesty International accuses Israel of war crimes
Rape and murder Iraq
The Israeli government is losing its reason
Torture taught at Guantanamo
Why Bush's Iraq is Worse Than Saddam's
Funny. It wasn’t in the papers
Gorged on blood, but still thirsty
World Cup as cover for Murder
Fallujah Update: “Virtually every home destroyed or damaged”
Mission Rejected. The true heroes
Washington escalates slaughter in Iraq
Professional Child killers
Out of control cowboys in Kabul
Another impending war crime? US military airforce strikes at residential quarters in Ramadi
War scarred Afghanistan is an enigma wrapped in pain with a future that is anyone’s guess.
Over 40 percent of Iraqi professionals have fled. Global refugees now 12 million.
Dangerous Mind – the Berg Affair
Lawyers barred in terrorism cases
Murder galore: 340 airstrikes fromB-52’s, using 2000 pound bombs on Afghanis in mud huts.
The concentration camp that Australia applauds
Iraq's Pentagon Papers
Links for 14 June journal
The Dark Side just got a whole lot darker
It’s hard to know what to believe anymore
Insights into the role of Zarqawi
Prison Planet
CNN sanitises the words of Michael Berg
What next? Medical experiments on prisoners?
Afghanistan's Second Intifada
Pain Ray – “torture weapons used against civilians”
Israel tightens the notch of apartheid
After 39 months, US media starts listening to Iraqis
"American snipers don't make any distinction between civilians or fighters”
Freedom’s beacon shines not on freedom’s victims
Graphic photos from Ishaqi show what you’re not meant to see
A possible military 'cover-up'
This movie won’t make it to the multiplex
Links for 18 May journal
For the marines, killing civilians is sport, except when there are too many witnesses
Don’t say you weren’t warned!
Police State: The largest police data base ever assembled
What took him so long?
Uncovering the Roots of American Terrorism in Iraq
Crying Wolf: Media Disinformation and Death Squads in Occupied Iraq,
The Dirty War in Iraq
Was deposed CIA head Porter Goss really once a member of the CIA's super-secret Operation 40, an assassination squad?
Did White House know an approve of torture before the Abu Ghraib scandal?
Amnesty delivers the bloodstained goods
Excluded from Oz media by lame dick time servers, John Pilger, serves it up hot
Again at Columbia University with Seymour Hersh & Robert Fisk: the compliance of mass media
This time it’s the British who torture & an Australian who cops it
Epoch Times Reporters Jailed in China
“Okay, we promise not to use water torture in future, but that doesn’t mean we’ve used it in the past”. Sure.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's letter to President Bush: An non corporate-media appraisal
The full text
Wall Street Journal extracts
Another blog voice
Meanwhile, Baghdad suffered over 700 deaths in April
Links for 21 April journal
VIDEOS
Words fail me ….. and Bush
Losing our country – a video memoir by the Baghdad Blogger
Losing the war: Marines under attack – and not only by mortor
Seymour Hersh on CNN
Thanks, Boston Legal
Alleged murder of civilians, again
And again + footage
BEYOND ORWELL: No wonder Zacarias Moussaoui changed his tune
NBC news reporter suggests Moussaoui is wearing a "Stun belt" underneath his clothing, controlled by US Marshals.
HELPING TO RESTORE SHARIA LAW
The bravest soldiers of all: YOU WON’T SEE THIS ON 60 MINUTES
CHENEY’S HOTEL DEMANDS
Mystery clip
HOTLINKS
War Crimes And The Struggle For Truth
400 million at risk
Bush Admin. Classifies Golf Traps, Man-Made Ponds As "Wetlands”
An Australian scientist reports to Brussels, ignored at home, “War on Terror as in actuality a War on Women and Children”
Oh no, not again: The Fallujah Option?
The death count they dare not print
Straight from the horse’s mouth
Zarqawi-gate: More important than you think
The Earth is closing in on her – 300 shells fired into Gaza each day
Cut & Run, the War’s Begun
Sick, sad, sadistic – slow motion war crimes
Women in Iraq: Worse off than before
If the legend of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was a psy-ops concoction, then who killed Nicholas Berg?
Three years of hell
War on the Web
Paid $200M, U.S. Contractor Fails To Complete 122 Of 142 Health Clinics In Iraq...
Civil war?
Still more American atrocities in Iraq, reported by the mainstream
For those who still don’t believe in psy-ops
Sorry, it was a Mosque after all, and yes, our troops were present
Tsk tsk. Officers “relieved of their duties” after the massacre of civilians
Why war lovers are the Walter Mitty’s of our times
From My Lai to this Lie, and a thousand lies in between
Radioactive tanks forever
Top Ten Mistakes from Vietnam repeated in Iraq
Tickety tickety tock
Just in case you didn’t know
Why those who knew the war would breed terror didn’t have a chance
The war on children
My source for many of these links is: www.whatreallyhappened.com
Links for 1 March journal
PUT OUT MORE FLAGS
Simple wisdom that makes you want to spit at Blair
A FUN SITE
HIGH LEVEL COMPLICITY IN TORTURE CONFIRMED
A 3 year old girl who carries the truth of what’s really happening
I confessed to escape Guantanamo torture
Remind me, How long has this been going on?
80,000 Americans not allowed to catch a plane
Even I don’t believe this
37 mill below the poverty line
Night life in Baghdad suburbia
Soldiers coming to their senses
The axis of child abusers
WORSE THAN GUANTANAMO
Iraq the Disaster, Officially Speaking
Excerpts from the State of the Union address they never showed you
THE ACCIDENTAL JOURNALIST PUNISHED FOR HIS PICS
War was a done deal – here’s the proof
The Christian who still wants to Chavez to be murdered.
The world’s deadliest terrorist network-
20 reasons to question the official story of 9/11
The smell that doesn’t fade
Links for 19 December journal
First, three creepy video links:
DECLINE OF THE WEST 1
During a live video game contest, a 9 year old argues with his mother over Chocolate Milk ..
DECLINE OF THE WEST 2
DECLINE OF THE WEST 3 Security contractors provided by British mercenary firm, Aegis Defense Services, shooting Iraqi civilians for fun and profit
A TERRORIST SABOTAGE MANUAL:
From smalltime sabotage to concocting Molotov cocktails, it’s all here, yet the Australian Government has still not placed this organization on its terror list
WHAT THE CIA HELPS HAPPEN
THEATRE OF THE ABSURD’S LATEST SCRIPT
Okay, so Harold Pinter got the Nobel Prize, Condoleezza Rice got the approval of CNN, but the White House gets the laughs
Pinter demands war crimes trial for Tony Blair
The secret $300 million Pentagon psy-ops war.
The America I Love: US civil rights group to sue CIA
Worse than Watergate? America is facing the mother of all Constitutional crises -- and the media remains silent
A media that would make STALIN smile
A former media Ikon turned PR hack
The worst job in the world
WHY THE MEDIA IS RIGHT WING, VICIOUS & DECEITFUL
“I'll go to jail to print the truth about Bush and al-Jazeera”
Links for 20 November journal
Why Uncle Sam should sit in the dock with Saddam - Initially reported by the BBC on Nov 8/05, it went through several updates
And took another week for the news to reach the Australia press, which, like the BBC, omitted this vital proof
From the horse's mouth
Which George Monbiot put in context
You’ve heard the lies, now see the stills
Finally, here’s the documentary
Without the Blogs, you wouldn’t get this
THE SAME ATTEMPT TO HOAX THE WORLD ABOUR NAPALM ALSO BACKFIRED.
What the US Info office claims
What its own generals admit
AND EVEN CNN CAN NO LONGER IGNORE
Political commentary at its best
It goes on and on……
And on and on….
Bush is driving those who know what’s going to the edge, maybe over the edge
The Red Cross had access to Nazi prisons, but not to Uncle Sam’s secret gulags
The Devil in America
You already knew this
In case you haven’t yet seen the shadow of a police state
And now fragmentation bombs
A bit too late, Bishops
Farewell Kuwati Oil?
Even the pro war Washington Post tries to set the record strait
Links for 30 September journal
al-Zarqawi and the undercover soldiers, John Pilger, A voice virtually banned in his own land
MADMAN AT THE HELM
Phillip Donahue – I salute you!
MAINSTREAM: Over 100,000 protesters in Washington
Participants & Blogs: BETWEEN 300,000 AND 500,000 protesters
Oil & war & the future
WARPORN
“Ours is the most humane army in the world” – Richard Armitage, the much admired (by Oz media) former US deputy secretary of state and Vietnam-era covert operative and Contra-era figure. WARNING! The images of these atrocities in Iraq are traded by their perpetrators for free access to porn.
Clip entitled “Fun in Falluja – just some boys testing their weapons on live targets”. (Click download).
Saddam 1 Bush 0
What were these be-wigged British “undercover soldiers” really up to?
Explosives and a detonator? Why?
STRANGER AND STRANGER
Let the prisoners die
Sick of being straight? Take a trip
RECORD DAMAGE TO OIL RIGS
Who is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi?
GREAT DEBATE – Click link to Hitchens Galloway.
In for the long haul
Bush in a bottomless pit
Kill Kill Kill
If true, this is murder. If murder, they will not be charged
Strategy Includes Preemptive Use Against Banned Weapons
THE BEST ACCOUNT YET OF WHAT WENT ON IN NEW ORLEANS
India on the rise, but not for all
No surprise, no action, no remorse
How Long Can The Pentagon Lie About Depleted Uranium?