"It was Christmas Eve and just as Santa was preparing to squeeze down millions of chimneys, the Victorian Supreme Court delivered a beautifully wrapped present to famous tobacco litigant Rolah McCabe.

Well, not to Rolah, because the cigarettes killed her in 2002. The present is for her daughter Roxanne Cowell, in whose name McCabe fights on.

Justice Stephen Kaye's judgment got a new front off the ground in the fight against the giant British American Tobacco. There is more work to be done with the exquisite finery of the lawyering, but essentially fresh judicial oxygen has been breathed into the lungs of this choked piece of litigation.

But at what cost and for how long? For this is an instance of litigation by exhaustion, physical, mental and monetary. So far it's into its ninth year and about $10 million.

Here is a nutshell version of what has been going on..."

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/big-tobacco-and-its-posse-still-in-the-saddle-after-eight-long-years-20100107-lwlv.html

accessed Friday 8 January 2010

"The NSW Oppostion Leader, Barry O'Farrell, has called on the State Government to restore the subsidy it once provided for companies transporting fuel by rail, rather than road.

''Labor should acknowledge their mini-budget mistake [in November 2008], reinstate the subsidy and start promoting greater use of rail to transport freight, especially hazardous goods, across NSW," he said..."

"The current way we price road use is no longer sustainable," Mr Nye said. "For example, I also own a farm, and to register a nine-tonne truck cost me less than to register my ute..."

Philip Laird, a freight and logistics expert at the University of Wollongong, used a benchmark established by a NSW road freight inquiry to calculate that the unrecovered costs of road transport were $3 billion a year. These included $1.5 billion in construction and maintenance, $850 million in road trauma and $850 million in pollution and carbon emissions..."

Andrew West and Louise Hall

Push to make trucks pay

SMH 8 January 2010

http://www.smh.com.au/national/push-to-make-trucks-pay-20100106-ludb.html

accessed Thursday 7 January 2010

"A LAST-MINUTE rush to take advantage of the Government's 50 per cent business investment tax break propelled new car sales to a record high in December, with a total of 88,700 vehicles being driven off lots...

Although budgeted at a cost of $3.7 billion, the true cost will not be known until businesses put in their tax returns.

Tax Office promotional material referred to spending on items such as computers and two-way radios, but the motor industry appears to have been the biggest beneficiary..."

Peter Martin Economics Correspondent
Rush for tax break drives car sales to a record high
SMH 8 January 2010

http://smh.drive.com.au/rush-for-tax-break-drives-car-sales-to-a-record-high-20100106-ludg.html

accessed Thursday 7 January 2010

Who Killed The 'Lectric Street Car Named Desire Line?

"Ever wonder why the U.S. has the worst mass transportation system in the industrialized world? Using historical footage and investigative research, this film tells how GM fought to push freeways into the inner cities of America, and push public transportation out..."   

"New South Wales, Australia

In 1988, the newly elected Greiner State Government commissioned a report into the State Rail Authority (SRA) of New South Wales by American consultants Booz Allen Hamilton. The report, delivered in 1989, recommended widespread job losses, up to 8000, including the withdrawal of staff from 94 country railway stations, withdrawing services on the Nyngan-Bourke line, Queanbeyan-Cooma line and Glen Innes-Wallangarra line, the axing of several country passenger services (the Canberra XPT, the Silver City Comet to Broken Hill and various diesel locomotive hauled services) and the removal of sleeper trains from services to Brisbane and Melbourne. The report also recommended the removal of all country passenger services and small freight operations, but the government did not consider this to be politically feasible. The SRA was divided into business units- CityRail, responsible for urban railways; CountryLink, responsible for country passenger services; FreightRail, responsible for freight services; and Rail Estate, responsible for rail property. Upon the formation of the business units in 1988, CityRail adopted a black and yellow 'L7' logo (later to become blue and yellow), and Countylink adopted its present blue and green 'Mountains' logo and livery..."

Booz Allen Hamilton, Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booz_Allen_Hamilton

accessed Wednesday, 6 January, 2010

"A POWERFUL coalition of rail unions, transport and motoring groups is urging federal and state governments to ban the movement of dangerous goods by road, following a spate of fatal accidents over Christmas and the new year...

''If companies choose to put commercial imperatives ahead of doing the right thing by the thousands of families that depend on our roads, governments should pull them into line...''

Andrew West

Push to ban trucks from the highway

SMH January 7, 2010

http://www.smh.com.au/national/push-to-ban-trucks-from-the-highway-20100105-lsei.html

"Time magazine named it the most prestigious management firm in the world, with longstanding relationships with federal intelligence agencies, with current and former employees including former Director of Central Intelligence, R. James Woolsey, former CIA employee Miles Copeland, Jr., and former NSA Director Mike McConnell, who was the second Director of National Intelligence..."

Booz Allen Hamilton, Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booz_Allen_Hamilton

accessed Wednesday, 6 January, 2010

"A recent NSW parliamentary research paper found trucks carried 89 per cent of freight between Sydney and Melbourne and 76 per cent of that between Sydney and Brisbane. Mr Nanva said 3000 trucks thundered up and down the Hume Highway every night.

The union said it would enlist the support of the Australasian Rail Association and the motoring body NRMA to back its campaign, after both organisations expressed concern about the increasing amount of road freight..."

Andrew West

Push to ban trucks from the highway

SMH January 7, 2010

http://www.smh.com.au/national/push-to-ban-trucks-from-the-highway-20100105-lsei.html

"Booz Allen's core business is contractual work completed on behalf of the US federal government, foremost on defense and homeland security matters, with limited engagements of foreign governments specific to U.S. military assistance programs..."

Booz Allen Hamilton, Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booz_Allen_Hamilton

accessed Wednesday, 6 January, 2010

"The NSW Minister for Transport, David Campbell, said the State Government had set a target of 40 per cent of freight being moved by rail from its expanded Port Botany terminal and had also signed an agreement with the Federal Government to lease more rail tracks in the Hunter Valley and to other states."

Andrew West

Push to ban trucks from the highway

SMH January 7, 2010

http://www.smh.com.au/national/push-to-ban-trucks-from-the-highway-20100105-lsei.html
accessed Wednesday 6 January 2010

Adelaide to Darwin railway- Kellogg, Brown and Rooted?

"It still amazes me that the CEO of Halliburton so recently slipped in and out of South Australia so quietly. His previous visit was to represent private interests at the opening of the Adelaide to Darwin Railway. Instead of the bells and whistles of yore, all we heard was that Lesar had already been and gone. Halliburton subsidiary KBR, says their website “led the delicate financial negotiations between the three governments, the financial backers and the consortium that saw the private sector contribute about 60 per cent of the project cost ($850 million of the $1.4 billion project). The deal won two international finance awards." The company, apart from being constructors, kept a 38 per cent share of the specially formed operators Freightlink, and former head of Halliburton Australia Malcolm Kinnaird became Chairman of the board.

Within eighteen months there was an obvious cash-flow problem: KBR reported to the U.S. Government that

In 2006, we recorded $58 million of impairment charges related to an investment in a railway joint venture in Australia. This joint venture has sustained losses since the railway commenced operations in early 2004 and incurred an event of default under its loan agreements by failing to make an interest and principal payment in October 2006. The write-down of our investment in this joint venture in the first and third quarters of 2006 resulted from lower than anticipated freight volume, a slowdown in the planned expansion of the Port of Darwin and the joint venture's unsuccessful efforts to raise additional equity from third parties.

"... and a delay in mining operations that resulted in reduced freight" wasn't sent to the SEC, but was added in a later Halliburton media release. What mining operations might that be? Uranium, do you think? Well, Freightlink did go on to run a three month trial transporting uranium for BHP, and it had been expected that the uranium oxide ore from the new Honeymoon mine would run up to Darwin on the tracks. Northern Territory Minerals Council chief executive Kezia Purick said a while back that uranium ore could only go offshore via Darwin, so it's more than a fair guess that Halliburton had expected the Howard Government to have moved more efficiently in creating a nuclear industry..."

Richard Tonkin

Adelaide to Darwin railway- Kellogg, Brown and Rooted?

Web Diary Patron Power

http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/2363 
accessed Wednesday 6 January 2010

"It is cheaper to keep the rail line into Newcastle than to remove it according to the Kellog Brown Root report commissioned by the NSW Government (KBR)[1] to examine various options for the Newcastle Line..."

[1] Kellog Brown Root. Newcastle Transport Options Planning Study, NSW Government, October 2003.

Reasons for Retention of Newcastle Rail Services
Submission prepared for Save Our Rail NSW Inc.

http://saveourrail.org.au/why.html#ref1
accessed Wednesday 6 January 2010

KBR (Kellogg Brown & Root) Pty Ltd

GPO Box 2702
ADELAIDE SA 5001

Donations made to:...

Name	Financial year	Type
Kellogg Brown & Root Pty Ltd	2007/2008	Donor
Kellogg Brown & Root Pty Ltd	2004/2005	Donor
Halliburton KBR Pty Ltd	2001/2002	Donor

Australian Electoral Commission
Donor Annual Return
http://fadar.aec.gov.au/Donor.aspx?SubmissionID=6&ClientID=18953
accessed Wednesday 6 January 2010

"Booz Allen Hamilton traces its roots to Edwin G. Booz. A student at Chicago's Northwestern University in the early 1900s, Booz received a bachelor's degree in economics and a master's degree in psychology, upon completion of his thesis 'Mental Tests for Vocational Fitness.' In 1914, Booz established a small consulting firm in Chicago, and, two years later, he and two partners formed the Business Research and Development Company, which conducted studies and performed investigational work for commercial and trade organizations. This service, which Booz labeled as the first of its kind in the Midwest, soon attracted such clients as Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, Chicago's Union Stockyards and Transit Company, and the Canadian & Pacific Railroad."

Booz Allen Hamilton, Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booz_Allen_Hamilton

accessed Wednesday, 6 January, 2010

"The Great American streetcar scandal (also known as the General Motors streetcar conspiracy and the National City Lines conspiracy) is a conspiracy theory in which streetcar systems throughout the United States were dismantled and replaced with buses in the mid-20th century as a result of alleged illegal actions by a number of prominent companies, acting through National City Lines (NCL), Pacific City Lines (on the West Coast, starting in 1938), and American City Lines (in large cities, starting in 1943)..."

Great American streetcar scandal, Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Streetcar_Conspiracy
accessed Wednesday 6 January 2010

I can only suppose that it is a matter of spite that some of the last remaining visible tram tracks in Sydney are in Odea St adjacent Victoria Park, previously site of a General Motors saw-tooth roofed factory, which I guess was constructed from super six corrugated asbestos sheeting. But that's only a guess.

Meanwhile in the american cities where light and heavy rail is being reintroduced the suits are riding the rails while the scrubs are taking the bus. And as we all know, "only losers take the bus" much to the chagrin of the motor vehicle manufacturers who have only been convinced to turn to eel-ectric with the promise of a share in the electricity producing bounty (random guess) via ownership links to Halliburton, Carlyle or Booz Allen, or shares in a jump up uranium mining co...

Thank unfetted biological imperatives for the 'short bus'. 

More cars gridlocked on more roads more often - can we put the RTA and NRMA in charge of suicide prevention

MORE PEOPLE IN MORE CARS MORE OFTEN

"... Within a decade, road accidents could be one of the main causes of death, overtaking diseases such as tuberculosis and AIDS. The toll also carries a high economic cost. Accidents cost India 1 to 3 per cent of its gross domestic product.

Thirty years ago there were only about 5 million cars in India; now there are more than 75 million. The road toll is rising at 8 per cent a year and, on current trends, will reach 200,000 by 2015.

A road safety expert, G. Gururaj, says his research shows that most victims are men aged between 15 and 44 who belong to the ''poorer sections of society''.

''Their access to quality health care is limited,'' Mr Gururaj wrote recently.

Most of those killed or injured are pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists and pillion riders rather than car drivers.

The most recent official figures, for 2007, showed that an average of 13 people died every hour on Indian roads for an annual toll of almost 115,000 - well above China's toll of about 90,000. But India's road carnage is not just a result of its large population. The US has six times more vehicles than India but its road toll is about a third.

Many factors contribute to the toll. Roads are often crowded and poorly maintained..."

http://www.smh.com.au/world/more-cars-more-deaths-india-counts-the-cost-of-affluence-20100103-lnf5.html

accessed Monday 4 January 2010

"AN ALARMING number of Australians wrongly believe suicide is not preventable, new research shows, highlighting the need for better education programs...

Lifeline argues in a joint submission to a Senate inquiry into suicide that suicide prevention is not taken seriously enough. Lifeline, the 24-hour telephone counselling service, experienced its busiest day in years on Christmas Day, Ms O'Neil said. As well, between midnight on Christmas Day and and midnight on January 2 the service received 9948 calls, a 10 per cent increase on last year.

Ms O'Neil said suicide was the leading cause of death of men and women aged under 44. More people died from suicide than car accidents.

But there was a ''massive gap in spending on suicide prevention compared to reducing the road toll''.

Last year's road toll reached just over 1500. This prompted public outrage and demands for action.

http://www.smh.com.au/national/suicide-can-be-stopped-lifelines-message-20100103-lndf.html
accessed Monday 4 January 2010

As Jesus would say, can we put the RTA and the NRMA in charge of suicide prevention? More cars gridlocked on more roads more often. Just far enough away from just enough rope to never feel the beneficial effects of just enough exercise... 40 minutes per day in a non-airconditioned environment at 70 - 80% of your resting heart rate and decrease the alcohol and sugar white death (alcohol in waiting) and voila... I can see a punch up line on the horizon from just enough road rage. Or, not. 

How about it Ms Keneally? Want more folk joining you in your daily bicycle ride to and from the office, (your new years resolution broadcast ch 9 preceding fireworks). How about getting those at the top of the Government department responsible for the provision of safe streets and roads to join you a couple of times a week, a bike bus of bureaucrats starting from Port Botany and heading to Macquarie Bank St via Technology Park.

Then we could follow in the footsteps of those folk who brought us  fetted capitalism, greedliness is next to godliness, the glorious revolution, and hemp... and two-lips... and safe streets for children, grandparents, the fast and the slow, and cyclists of all ages, to ride and walk and skate and flâneur upon.    

A year is a long time in comedy.

“You know the world is going crazy
when the Best Rapper is a white guy,
the Best Golfer is a black guy;
the Tallest Guy in the NBA is Chinese,
the Swiss hold the America’s Cup,
France is accusing the USA of arrogance,
Germany doesn’t want to go to war,
and the two most powerful men in America
are named Bush and Dick.”

- Chris Rock

How to turn a Draisine into an A380

Futurist Alex Pang believes the products, technology and designs of tomorrow are being discovered today by people who like 'tinkering'. Tinkering isn't just wasting time in the back shed, it's taking objects, or even ideas, and making them better. From open-sourced software to a hotted-up motor-mower, it's all tinkering according to Mr Pang.

More... http://www.abc.net.au/rn/futuretense/stories/2009/2722560.htm

Listen... Tinkering with the Future (MP3 download), More Tales of Tinkering (MP3 download).

What is Tinkering?

"You can define tinkering in part in contrast to other activities. Mitch Resnick, for example, talks about how traditional technology-related planning is top-down, linear, structured, abstract, and rules-based, while tinkering is bottom-up, iterative, experimental, concrete, and object-oriented. (Resnick is very big on creating toys that invite tinkering.)

Anne Balsamo and Perry Hoberman have looked at a wide variety of tinkering activities, ranging from circuit bending to paper prototyping to open source to blogging. They argue that these varied activities are unified by a common set of principles or practices. (The following are just highlights.)

• Tinkerers improvise, iterate, and improve constantly.
• Tinkerers use materials at hand, combining heterogeneous parts and components (e.g., raw and finished materials, handmade and industrial objects, customized and personalized consumer products) in ways that push beyond the boundaries of their original contexts. As a result, tinkered objects tend to be collages, appropriations, and montages. Tinkering is bricolage.
• Tinkerers are also social animals. Their success depends in part on being able to tap into porous and ad-hoc communities. For most of what they do the manual is useless; other tinkerers are the only ones who are likely to have the information you need.

Tinkering isn't so much a specific set of technical skills: there tends to be a pretty instrumental view of knowledge. You pick up just enough knowledge about electronics, textiles, metals, programming, or paper-folding to figure out how to do what you want. It certainly respects skill, but skills are a means, not an end: mastery isn't the point, as it is for professionals. Competence and completion are..."

More... http://askpang.typepad.com/relevant_history/2008/10/reflections-on.html

Just as the draisine can be justly defined as the beginning of self propelled personal vehicle transport it lead, through various iterations to the safety bicycle, motor vehicles and powered flight (including human powered flight), so the Green Ring draws upon the skills of 'tinkering' to improve or add to existing ideas and to bring them to completion. It's not brain surgery, although there is a nod to that in the history of Callan Park. It's not rocket science although the City Farm seeks to be included where the Glovers Garden has stood for years. We certainly don't disparage the input of professionals, but the end users are not the rarefied professionals of the disciplines invoked from advocates for active transport to inner urban landcare managers, more the general population from where we emerged to participate in bringing the Green Ring to each iteration. There is just as much art as science, poetry as pragmatism, involved in the Green Ring and we are excited about its future and the future in general given the level of interest in the humble art of tinkering.       

Save lives, move petrol by rail: Greens - Save money, save lives move people by bicycle: GreenRing

Save lives, move petrol by rail: Greens

JOSEPHINE TOVEY AND AMY CORDEROY

December 31, 2009

 

"THE state's increasing reliance on trucks to move freight is putting motorists' lives at risk, the Greens said yesterday, following Monday's fatal petrol tanker crash at Batemans Bay.

Long-term under-investment in railways, the closure of rural branch lines and the failure to recover road costs had increased the number of trucks on NSW highways, said Greens MP Lee Rhiannon

.

''The lessons from this horrific accident need to be acted upon to prevent more deaths and injuries,'' she said..."

More... http://www.smh.com.au/environment/save-lives-move-petrol-by-rail-greens-20091230-ljy7.html

Transport fares, tolls rise

BRIAN ROBINS

December 31, 2009

 

"PUBLIC transport fares and road tolls rise from next week, while for businesses tomorrow's increases in vehicle registration fees and some toll road charges will wipe out planned cuts in payroll taxes.

Drivers on the Cross City Tunnel, the Lane Cove Tunnel and the M7 Westlink will face higher tolls travelling home from new year celebrations tonight, when quarterly CPI-linked charges take effect at midnight..."

WHAT YOU PAY

Train fares +4.7%
Bus fares +3.4%
Lane Cove Tunnel $2.76 from $2.73
Cross City Tunnel $4.28 from $4.24
M7 Westlink $6.73 from $6.67

More... http://www.smh.com.au/national/transport-fares-tolls-rise-20091230-ljy9.html

Vanunu arrested for alleged foreign contact

"December 30, 2009

JERUSALEM: The nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu was ordered to be put under house arrest yesterday after being charged with violating a condition of his 2004 release from an Israeli prison...

His lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, said Mr Vanunu was arrested at the Ambassador Hotel in Jerusalem, where he has been living, because he has a Norwegian girlfriend whom police have interrogated.

He told Israeli media that ''until now the authorities were aware that they cannot forbid him from being in contact with every foreign national''...

Mr Vanunu was jailed in 1986 for disclosing the workings of Israel's Dimona nuclear plant to a British newspaper. Since his release in 2004, he has been detained several times for violating his parole.

Israel maintains a policy of nuclear ambiguity and is widely believed to be the only nuclear power in the Middle East, with about 200 nuclear warheads.

It has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or allow international surveillance of Dimona, in the southern Negev desert.

Mr Vanunu became an international cause celebre during his time in prison.

At home, he is widely reviled for converting to Christianity shortly before he was kidnapped in Italy and jailed after being covertly shipped back to Israel."

http://www.smh.com.au/world/vanunu-arrested-for-alleged-foreign-contact-20091229-liv1.html

accessed 30 December 2009

" Vanunu has been characterized by some as a whistleblower and by others as a traitor. Daniel Ellsberg has referred to him as "the preeminent hero of the nuclear era"...

Between 1976 and 1985, Vanunu was employed as a nuclear plant technician and shift manager at the Negev Nuclear Research Center, an Israeli facility used to develop and manufacture nuclear weapons, located in the Negev Desert south of Dimona. Most worldwide intelligence agencies estimate that Israel developed nuclear weapons as early as the 1960s, but the country has intentionally maintained a "policy of deliberate ambiguity", neither acknowledging nor denying that it possesses the weapons. It was during his employment there that one of the left-wing groups in which Vanunu held membership protested against Israel's 1981 destruction of Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, which was part of the Iraqi nuclear weapons development programme. The Jerusalem Post stated that Vanunu took active part in these protests, arguing that this showed that he was motivated by antipathy to Israel's policies in his later actions.

It is believed that at Dimona, Vanunu became increasingly troubled about the Israeli nuclear weapons programme on which he worked and possible Israeli nuclear strategies in the event of war. When he was laid off from Dimona in 1985, Vanunu left Israel. He arrived in Nepal and considered a conversion to Buddhism, later travelling to Burma and Thailand. In 1986, he travelled to Sydney, Australia. While there, Vanunu lived in a hostel in Kings Cross and worked in odd jobs, first as a hotel dishwasher and later as a taxi driver.

Vanunu began to attend the local church, St. John's, Darlinghurst. There he met the Reverend John McKnight, who worked with the homeless and drug addicts. Vanunu converted to Christianity and was baptized as John Crossman into the Anglican Church of Australia, making him further estranged from his family.

While in Sydney, he met Peter Hounam, a journalist from The Sunday Times in London. In early September 1986, Vanunu flew to London with Hounam, and in violation of his non-disclosure agreement, revealed to The Sunday Times his knowledge of the Israeli nuclear programme, including photographs he had secretly taken at the Dimona site..."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Vanunu

accessed 30 December 2009

A previous version of this story in Wikipedia had Vanunu offer the story to the Sydney Morning Herald while in Australia and was refused... is that true or did you read it in Wikipedia or the Herald? Or..? 

iRadium 2.0. Yum! 

More... http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/accidents/accidents-1980%27s.htm

Israel Sent Its Spies To Australia To Find Vanunu, Says Newspaper

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday April 22, 2004

Ed O'Loughlin, Herald Correspondent, in Ashkelon, Israel

"Israel secretly sent a team of Mossad and Shin Bet agents to Australia in 1986 to hunt for the nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli newspaper said yesterday.

According to the Haaretz article, published on the morning of Mr Vanunu's release from prison, the agents were unable to find him in Sydney but traced him to London ``by studying passenger lists and border crossing information". The article cited information provided by a former top Mossad official who was involved in Mr Vanunu's eventual capture.

Because such information is normally confidential or classified, this raises the possibility that Australian citizens or security officials colluded in Israel's hunt for the man who was threatening to release details of its covert nuclear weapons program. Haaretz said that Israeli officials had considered assassinating Mr Vanunu but decided not to on the grounds that he was an Israeli..."

 http://www.shin.com.au/shin-articles/2004/4/22/israel-sent-its-spies-to-australia-to-find-vanunu-says-newspaper/

accessed 30 December 2009

Ari Ben-Menashe on the Capture of Mordecai Vanunu

"...Among the faithful in the prayer group was a Colombian, Oscar Guerrero. A freelance journalist, he had fallen on hard times and had taken up house painting and listening to Bible readings. When Guerrero saw the photographs, he told Vanunu that the two of them could spread "the word" by getting the photographs published - for a fee.

 

First, Guerrero approached the Sydney Morning Herald, but the photographs were rejected on the grounds that Guerrero seemed a suspicious character. However, his approach was passed on to the internal intelligence service, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, then to the external service, the Australian Security Intelligence Service, which mentioned it to Israel. Now Tel Aviv realized it had a problem. And, there were no easy answers..."

Ari Ben-Menashe - Profits of War: The Sensational Story of the World-Wide Arms Conspiracy, Allen & Unwin, Sydney 1992.

http://mailstar.net/vanunu.html

accessed 30 December2009

Who pays attention to the news the first monday after christmas?

"Michelle Obama, became the first occupant of the White House since the Depression to have a working vegetable garden, the last being Eleanor Roosevelt...

The hidden costs of our food system are high. There is the obvious cost in health as our diets have an abundance of bulk and taste but an increasing paucity of nutritional value. The energy cost is extremely high, with a mass-distribution system built on transportation, packaging, refrigeration, storage and preservation. The moral cost is also high as food animals, especially chickens, live out their lives in an abject state of constriction.

The solution is partly within our grasp. One of Australia's sustainability visionaries, Michael Mobbs, whose famous inner-city house is completely self-sufficient in energy and water, has developed the embryo of a system of urban street gardens - communal food production in the spare space on our footpaths.

His street, Myrtle Street, Chippendale, has multiple but unobtrusive fruit and vegetable patches, and communal composting bins. If you didn't know, you might not even realise it. You'd just think the street was unusually bushy. His scheme has had no problems from City of Sydney council, quite the contrary. ''The council has taken what we've done in Myrtle Street and made it draft policy for the whole council area,'' he says. ''That's a real win...

The council is even considering setting up an urban farm on one of its green spaces to grow vegetables and produce eggs...

 

Australia's food security is going backwards. Our lax food-labelling laws are being exploited by the giant retail chains to import cheap food from abroad, mix it with Australian product and, if more than 50 per cent of the value of the mix is Australian, to label it ''Made in Australia''. The consumer is being duped and the practice is sending some local farmers broke."

 

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/neglect-of-food-sources-has-the-chooks-coming-home-to-roost-20091227-lg5y.html  

accessed 28 December 2009

 

Costs of travelling a tourist turn-off

My family and I are Australians living in the United States. We arrived for a family vacation two weeks ago and were outraged to be charged $5.50 each ($22 total) to transfer between the Sydney Airport international terminal and the JetStar terminal for a flight to Queensland.

We travel all over the world and have never been charged to transfer between terminals. How can this be justified?

On Christmas Day, we had to work out how to buy an e-tag online to pay the Harbour Bridge toll - the form on the Roads and Traffic Authority website does not allow for a non-Australian address.

We keep encouraging our overseas friends to visit Australia, and regularly see TV advertisements for it - but we need to make it easier for overseas tourists and not put barriers in their way.

Phil Montgomery Pleasanton, California
 

http://www.smh.com.au/national/letters/worlds-heavy-polluters-are-emitting-hypocrisy-20091227-lg5u.html 

accessed 28 December 2009

NELSON HIT PARADE

Nelson Parade, Hunters Hill, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia - the worlds only housing built on a known nuclear waste dump. Where successive Governments and Government Departments knew the existence of toxic contamination and covered it up, on a 'regular' basis.

Radioactive waterfront home to be razed

BEN CUBBY ENVIRONMENT

December 28, 2009

KNEW plans to clean up the site of a former uranium smelter in Hunters Hill mean a four-storey waterfront mansion the NSW Government has repeatedly declared safe will be demolished.

In addition, 3000 cubic metres of radioactive earth will be dug out of two neighbouring properties and another 500 cubic metres are likely to be scraped from the harbour floor in front of the site at 11 Nelson Parade, subject to more tests by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation.

A secretive tendering process for removing the earth, in which bidders were forbidden from visiting the site or talking to neighbours, is under way. No environmental assessment or planning approval has been granted yet. The Herald understands the tests show elevated background radiation levels that in some cases exceed health guidelines, reinforcing results from independent tests last year by a private company, Australian Radiation Services. These showed that in some spots contamination was 350 times normal levels.

The Government's State Property Authority, which took over management of the site from NSW Health this year, said in tender documents that the home might need to be demolished, subject to ANSTO's findings.

The house was bought back from private owners for $3.4 million in an out-of-court settlement, after the Government said for six months that it was safe.

The clean-up plans are another climbdown for the Government, which maintained for years that the street was safe. Six people who lived in affected properties in the street are known to have died from cancer, though there is no proven link between their deaths and the radioactivity...

NSW Liberal MP Michael Richardson, who has campaigned for years for a thorough clean-up, said the secrecy of the tendering process was alarming. "I understand the sensitivity of this issue but the people of NSW are entitled to know the full story,'' he said.

The documents classify the soil as ''restricted solid waste'' but Mr Richardson said some of it should be classified as hazardous waste, which poses a problem for disposal.

An ANSTO spokesman said the agency was supplying results to the NSW Environment Department, which would decide the level of clean-up required.

The site was home to a uranium smelter owned by Radium Hill Company from 1908 to 1915. Uranium ore from South Australia was processed for export to Europe for cancer treatments.

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/radioactive-waterfront-home-to-be-razed-20091227-lga9.html 
accessed 28 December 2009

Australia's first female high court judge, Mary Gaudron and her husband and family lived at 11 Nelson Parade for a time,
   
Ex-judge fled toxic address

Alexandra Smith
July 5, 2008

THE former High Court judge Mary Gaudron was forced to move her children from their Hunters Hill home in 1980 after a cancer cluster was discovered in the street that once housed a uranium smelter, an inquiry was told yesterday.

Almost 30 years after the family left Nelson Parade, her eldest daughter, Danielle, 42, has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, the parliamentary inquiry into the former smelter site has heard.

Yesterday Ms Gaudron's former husband, Ben Nurse, told the inquiry the family lived at 11 Nelson Parade for six years and Danielle slept in the bedroom which has since been identified as having the highest levels of radiation.

Mr Nurse, an engineer, said he paid $30 for a certificate from the Department of Health in 1973 that declared his land "clear", but 30 years later the house he built on the block was now deemed unfit for human habitation.

Peter and Michelle Vassiliou, who now own the house, are suing the State Government for failing to warn of the dangers.

Giving evidence to the inquiry with his other daughter, Julienne, Mr Nurse said that when a neighbour living at 9 Nelson Parade was diagnosed with leukaemia, panic set in. Ms Gaudron and her two daughters fled.

The family sold the house to the Health Department in 1980, for a third of its value, Mr Nurse told the inquiry.

He had no recollection of the department doing any testing and the first he knew of possible contamination was when a retired professor began investigating cancer clusters in Nelson Parade.

Earlier, Gavin Mudd, a civil engineer, told the inquiry that cleaning tonnes of soil on the site of the former uranium smelter would be difficult, even risky.

"It's a high-profile area. It's something with residents around, so I don't think it would be easily done in that sense," he said.

 http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/exjudge-fled-toxic-address/2008/07/04/1214951042657.html

accessed 28 December 2009

Read more about their experience here, and here. Sorta makes you wonder if one of the latest crop of practicing catholic politicos could pray to Mary McKill-all to have God, Santa Claus and the Truth Faerie render all uranium products benign. A sorta adjunct miracle just in case one of the others falls through. Then we could advocate new clear power for all. Whooopee!

Mary Gaudron and Michael Kirby

"...On the High Court, Kirby has frequently been in dissent, particularly in constitutional cases. "This," stated Kirby, "is not a badge of honor; but neither is it a mark of dishonor. The dissent is an appeal to the future" since in the history of jurisprudence, dissents from the status quo have often proved to be harbingers of social change.

Journalist Monica Attard has noted that Kirby's "judgments are notoriously long and detailed. His reputation is that of a compassionate man who won't allow precedent to trample the rights of ordinary people. It's a huge responsibility that he's assumed."

Kirby noted that he was often joined in dissent by Justice Mary Gaudron, the only woman to have served on the High Court and who has since retired. He stated that "those who have witnessed discrimination may sometimes be more inclined to perceive legal injustice. This point helps to explain a number of cases in which [we] dissented together."

Kirby lamented the paucity of women in the higher echelons of the Australian judicial system, saying, "A woman's experience of society, in the law, and in the legal profession, is different from that of a man. . . . Their presence on the Court can be a corrective."

So, he eventually concluded, could be the presence and visibility of an openly gay man."

http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/kirby_m.html
accessed 28 December 2009

Mary Gaudron and Mabo 2 (June 3, 1992)

"...The action which brought about the decision had been led by Eddie Mabo, David Passi and James Rice, all from the Meriam people (from the Murray Islands in the Torres Strait). They commenced proceedings in the High Court in 1982, in response to the Queensland Amendment Act 1982 establishing a system of making land grants on trust for Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders, which the Murray Islanders refused to accept. The Plaintiffs were represented by Ron Castan, Bryan Keon-Cohen and Greg McIntyre...

Five judgments were delivered in the High Court, by (1) Justice Brennan, (2) Justice Deane and Justice Gaudron, (3) Justice Toohey, (4) Justice Dawson, and (5) Chief Justice Mason and Justice McHugh."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabo_v_Queensland
accessed 28 December 2009

Lists of civilian nuclear accidents and civilian radiation accidents, as distinct from military accidents, therefore civilian governments were tasked with responsibility. Nelson Parade does not get a guernsey although in these (yet), other instances the Health and Environment Departments were there to assure the safety of citizens and employees. Makes you feel all warm and gooey inside knowing that those in charge of the NSW Health and Environment Departments are not also looking after these other incidents and giving false information and sending out WRONG MESSAGES.

It was the Kellys Bush fracas, the Labor Left and concerned citizens that set in train the planning instruments that made developers and public servants accountable to the public, planning instruments since rendered toothless as the NSW Planning Minister's portfolio swallowed all the departments and independent bodies meant to provide accountability. To whom do we turn now, a catholic "God"? 

How the worm has turned. Dr Meredith (not touching that one) Burgmann even sits on City of Sydney Council, alongside Cr Shayne Mallard. While a Liberal Party MP, Michael Richardson champions the anti-nuclear cause in a blue ribbon Liberal seat. As inverse is the turn that saw George Peterson an ex communist, champion the cause of gay rights, pressuring Neville Wran to repeal laws against buggery and "indecent act with consent"...

Mind you if the Liberal Party has a policy on nuclear waste it is probably to bag it and send it to the western suburbs for sale as enriched top soil to dress their Sir Walter buffalo sods. You could also bag it and sell it as four wheel drive camouflage and marvel along with Marie Curie how it makes the metal glow a pretty shade of green.

Would be interesting to see the social connections of the heads of departments etc., for each stage of the cover up, non? Maybe we could build a hostel on the site to house the Rainbow Warrior bombers now that the French Government has decided to pay compensation to those still living with the after effects of radiation poisoning from testing peaceful deterrents. 

Instead of thinking of your backyard as a backyard, think of the biosphere as your whole world. Or, think of your gametes... as the whole world. In any case think, don't just buy, lest you end up buying a product like Radithor.