That block of dirt of our own - The Dream - 30.11.07

That block of dirt of our own - The Dream - Entry for 30 November 2007

Braembel said:

In the US, liberal is more often applied to the Democrats, who tend more and more to move toward socialism.I would say, I perceive the Clintons to be very liberal, and very socialistic. My opinion of Bush since the last election has drastically changed, but his party the Republicans tend to lean the other way, in some way they tend to atleast pretend to embrace my moral values, but from an economic point of view, it's almost a live and let die.
The economic level that you seem to describe as the norm, seems to be about what I see here. That block of dirt of our own is a large part of the "American Dream". I think it is getting harder here, but I think the wars contribution to oil prices, which affect everything else, because everything we get is moved across the country in petro fueled trucks, and the last couple of years of weather haven't helped our crops. I know there are alot of people who have just been getting by, and with the jump in prices I've seen in the stores the last few weeks, I don't know how they will make it. Back to the subject, I agree, the "haves" liberal or conservative make the policies to their own advantage.
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Thanks for your comment ff, as I may have mentioned, Liberal and Labor traditionally look after different social sectors but Kevin Rudd promised to be PM for all Australians when he gave his victory speech. I hope he's a man of his word because the small business sector, for example, is important to our maintaining our current standard of living and they might well go begging under a Labor regime.

The "Australian Dream" is also to own our own homes. It's a dream, I believe, that builds not only independence into a population but a feeling of belonging, when your shelter and the land it's built on are your own.

I grew up in the UK through the 1950's/60's and, in the UK, it was quite normal for people to live in Council owned housing estates. I did, all of my friends did, and a majority of the kids where I schooled did. We were among the 'baby boomer" generation who were born after the war but close enough to the war years to be living under its shadow, and there was a sudden population increase which necessitated the rapid widespread growth of public funded housing.

Wikipedia places the most commonly accepted duration for the baby boom between 1946 and 1964. It says "The Baby Boom reflected the sudden removal of economic and social pressures that kept people from starting families..." due to the Depression which was then followed by WWII. After which ..." Marriage became again a cultural and career norm for most women — and one result was babies."

Arriving in Australia with its long public housing lists my English-born husband and I elected to rent rather than aiming for home ownership. Then after being widowed I re-married and my Australian-born husband's parents owned their own home, so the jump from rental accommodation to home ownership for him was very small but it took me an age to bend my head around the idea because I'd been brought up in a domestic and social setting that deemed public housing as the 'norm'.

I'm happy to say that hubby and I own our own place now and I realise now how very trapped I was in the post-war socialist vision for the future.

It blinded me to the possibility of owning that 'little bit of dirt'. In particular where I'm an expatriate, aside from my Aussie citizenship certificate, being a home owner is the thing that allows me to call Australia, my country, and see myself as an Australian. To be a home owner is responsible citizenship, to me, and I hope all couples (or singles) can achieve that.

So while the home loan rate rises as a hedge against inflation cannot be blamed on the government in power, these are set by the Reserve Bank, high on a long agenda the new government has, must surely be holding down inflation without stifling business - a hard juggling act - to guard Aussies against the loss of their dreams.

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That block of dirt of our own - The Dream - Friday 30 November 2007

Isn't the Labor party for the working men and women? - Entry for 27 November 2007

Isn't the labor party for the working men and women there? I kinda got the idea that the one that lost was for the rich because they said here that bushie lost his ally in Aussie. Who do you describe as liberal there? What are they for? LOL. I guess I ask to many questions. Zena P
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Intriguing questions, Zena, thanks for your comment.

I think it's probably true that, in earlier times, a worker voting for the conservative party - the Liberals in Australia - would have been considered a class traitor but times change. We tread warily around the concept of class distinction nowadays and, besides, families might live quite well on the proceeds of two or more incomes, workers are also often homeowners and the modern fiscally challenged Australian is generally not destitute in the same horrifying way that his/her counterpart was when the ALP was created in the 1890's.

We even have bathrooms! We ordinary folk are no longer called 'the great unwashed' or the huddled masses - though we might sometimes still be in fact.

And admittedly the reforms that led to improving the worker's lot are due in some large part to the Labor movement. But even under Labor, so that's a socialist government, there still remains a big monetary (and power) gap between the filthy rich and the average income earner. Neither is socialism an antidote to the problem of inequality but it comes with its own inbuilt set of detractions (and keep in mind that Russia was once socialist when it was the USSR).

While whichever party is in power, oddly, due to commercialism, a perception has been, I think, created of a smaller gap between the have's and have not's (which I would put down to the magic of capitalism) when the average Australian worker has not only a job, but often a mobile phone, a car, a block of dirt he/she can call his/her own (or at least a mortgage), perhaps one or more computers along with a host of other electrical gadgetry - our bread and circuses no doubt, which creates the illusion of workers being fairly affluent. We are at least well entertained from cradle to grave even if not born with silver spoons in our mouths.

To answer your question, Liberals today are probably people who have an aversion to socialism. The Labor party is prone to be reformist (and so experimental) and, with its welfare programmes, socialist governments in Australia (and England) have in the past created welfare states producing a sub-culture (over more than one generation) of poor people, dependent on government handouts rather than their learning self-sufficiency, while their lives are strictly regulated by government officials. Often enough, unions become a virtual separate 'arm of government' by force of a tradition that Labor governments treat with union bosses, the unions also providing Labor with some of their rank and file. And because of the opportunism found in human nature, the system originally geared by social conscience to lift the whole of society up a notch or more, does sometimes ultimately grind into the ground, the very people it was originally spawned to help lift their game the most, those who are vulnerable, the poor, the homeless, the old, the young, the infirm. And a Labor party in power either means big government or, in the modern world, outsourcing the work to private firms, but taxes still have to be raised to pay for it all, thus the standard of living can become lowered generally.

So despite that I'm a worker, I'm aware of the pitfalls of socialism in that, in principle it seems to offer a brilliant answer to all of our needs and wants while, in practice, it fails to overcome the flaws in human nature of people often being miserable, selfish, lazy, ruthless and conniving. But then were we all honest and well meaning, there would be no need of govenments.

For our sins, we have to have politicians.

Farewell, John. We will never forget you - 25.11.07

Farewell, John. We will never forget you - Entry for 25 November 2007

The battle lines were drawn yesterday (the 24th November) and the Howard government went down in a screaming heap after the Liberals gave us 11 years of conservative rule (96-07) with John Howard guiding us through what has been a frightening period in world events.

Or should I say yet another frightening period in world events.

Kevin Rudd now stands in John Howard's place at the helm of Australian politics, and I didn't vote for Rudd or his party. But like a lot of Aussies, I felt that the choice was a hard one, something I've not had before. I was tempted to take a pin along to the polling booths and let fate make the choice for me, but decided against this.

It was easier when John Howard came to power, because he was a 'known'. He had a solid parliamentary background and as the "little Aussie battler " he was considered a fighter, someone who had bottle.

While Kevin Rudd's track record in politics isn't well known, even if we’re aware that he’s no newcomer, something that he’s taken pains to point out leading up to the election.

I decided against voting for Labor ultimately because, watching Rudd on tv, I thought he showed a mite too much zeal for getting on with the job of running the country, getting more zealous the closer we got to election time.

It possibly was an unfair bias because he comes across as an erudite and intelligent man but I thought - just what the world needs another bloody zealot running a country. And I'm not traditionally a Labor voter anyway.

Anyway, the Libs conceded defeat to Labor last night and the deed is done.

I sincerely hope the new PM will justify the faith a majority of Aussies have put in him and that we won’t, from hereon, proceed to be be victimised by the unions running the country with their interminable strikes - Australia has done so well without them.

What we know we’re looking at is that the new government will take steps to immediately sign the Kyoto Protocol, withdraw troops from Iraq and they’ll rewind the IR laws, and that’s just for starters.

I think we will miss the rule of John Howard. Aussies in the majority have not credited his government with the return of prosperity to Australia – or the Libs would have been returned. Ultimately we may learn that they should have been.

Typically for me, a highlight of the Howard government’s time in power was to do with Mr Howard backing the East Timorese against the Indonesians – his ‘Aussie battler’ streak coming out.

For me, this is what has earned him the title of “Mister”. Saying along with the writer of the following para, "Farewell, John. We will never forget you ...

" East Timor: Despite Australia's cosy relationship with Indonesia over the previous 25 years, in January 1999 Mr Howard signalled to then Indonesian president Jusuf Habibie that Australia would be pressuring Jakarta to allow the East Timorese to vote on self-determination. The vote was allowed but, the day after the August ballot, violence erupted in the East Timorese capital, Dili. Despite being under incredible pressure from the Indonesian government not to interfere, Australia led a significant international peacekeeping force, which stabilised the situation and was vital in ensuring the independence East Timor enjoys today."

The Age
John Roskam
November 25, 2007

Population Inflation - 12.11.07

Population Inflation - Entry for 12 November 2007

Published first on Multiply

jtnewson wrote today at 12:18 PM - This is a point that must be driven home to every corner of the globe. We are nowhere close to this dream yet many of us can see the end of our civilization already creeping up. At the rate we are killing Planet Earth, only a handful of humans will actually leave and they will die in a generation or two due to the insufficient gene pool.
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I guess a big part of the problem is that ultruism IS an acquired feature of human nature - this dependant on people being exposed young enough to think deeply about the world around them, to be curious, to have idealistic inclinations, to care about life even in the dim distant future, and to see the worth of following the dream of interplanetary travel which, for many people, is a waste of public money when there are so many homeless people and hungry mouths to feed even in wealthy countries.

So it's a perspective thing, perhaps, where the individual is standing now, what kind of environment he/she lives in, what he or she sees in the world around him/her in the every day, how he/she will view the subject.

Fear the thought as we may, for some people life is still short and brutish.

You and I are indeed fortunate that our dreams are so elegantly made that we can wish for the stars and expect the human race to be given them at some future juncture. To not believe in it though, is to lose hope of it.

However, if we look at just one man-made problem - population growth; a planet the size of the Earth, alone, even with all its animal, vegetable and mineral riches, will not be able to support a population increase for ever, the problem will come home to roost one day - probably not in the far dim distant future - and the predictions are kind of dire. [check the pop clocks here: ]

"The world population increased from 3 billion in 1959 to 6 billion by 1999, a doubling that occurred over 40 years. The Census Bureau's latest projections imply that population growth will continue into the 21st century, although more slowly. The world population is projected to grow from 6 billion in 1999 to 9 billion by 2042, an increase of 50 percent that will require 43 years." more

Monthly World Population Figures: here So, it's expected over 77 million children will be born world wide in a 12 month period betwen 1 July 2007 and 1 August 2008.

We have to ask ourselves, are we going to let the bad old standby's of poverty, famine, disease and war deal with the problem of a population blow-out as they have always done when people have failed to?

Or do we as a collective of world peoples have a mixture of some short, some medium and some long term strategies that can help to alleviate the approaching problem and make it manageable, like making contraception freely available everywhere, like the education of people everywhere on the need to limit family size, with the possibility of space travel to other solar systems not being ruled out because it seems like a pipe dream?

Especially since the other things mentioned in the above paragraph also have about them the feel of a pipe dream, in the present.

And I've not even spoken about the damage that is now being and will further be caused to the environment by the population explosion - already on its feet and gathering speed.

The Heavens above - 10.11.07

"Oh yes both systems seem to have many flaws, it's time for all people to fit into a new system that works for all of humanity!Friday 9 November 2007 - 10:35PM (EST)"
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Thanks for your input, Greg.

But how is this new system to be made up?

How do we sift and sort between a range of different lifestyle patterns to find one that not only delivers the good life to all people but which doesn't conflict with what people consider culturally important to them, to hold onto?

There probably is no way to forward plan such a system in the short term, and in the longer term, where we are only short lived, those who come after us will see the problem with different eyes.

They may develop their own meantime solution to the problem of billions of people having to share the finite bounty on this planet. Forsaking the hopes that we have in the present day - when looking to the heavens and seeing a saving grace in space flight and interplanetary space travel.

Do you feel it, an inward tingle that we may be at the very beginning of an eventual exodus of the human race to the stars?

Which definitely won't happen, not if the generations alive today fail to conserve our present day knowledge and put in place, for those to come, societies that permit an open exchange of ideas.

I'm sorry Shi Tao ... I know you didn't ask for the moon but you might as well have

I originally published this (this morning on Multiply) with the title I'm sorry Shi Tao ... I know you didn't ask for the moon but you might as well have

My friend, jtnewsom wrote today at 4:09 AM 10.11.07

"I have always thought it was a mistake to get into bed with the Reds. In fact I dedicated over half my life in protecting our freedoms from this very oppressive government. I have to look back at the US leaders who chose to kick our friends to the curb to take up relations with such governments. I ask who is really at fault?"
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True, Jon. It's been demonstrated, communism doesn't work. If we were insects, maybe, but we're mammals and a novel category of mammal. We have unusual forces at work in our brains that give us the capability to go beyond the struggle for survival and mere existence, for each of us to live a well-spent life. And we only have one life.

Communism is not a system of self regulation and group organisation that works in line with the whole of our human nature. It seeks to suppress those parts of our human nature that give us our maturity of intellect by stunting imagination, enquiry and well-rounded self-expression. It is a paternalistic style of government that maintains order via repression and dictatorship by the few, of the many. It is the complete antithesis of democracy - which is not perfect - but because of it the many are given, as a right, some powers to curb the excesses of the few, those who are given the powers to govern. Necessary when human nature is not perfect.

We're not inborn with a morality to take care of others, that's something we have to be taught like telling the time is something that we have to be taught. Natural selection took us to the level of being a social kind so cooperativeness will be embedded in maybe a low grade form - perhaps reciprosity, the you scratch my back, I'll scratch your back kind of thinking. In which thinking, of course, are the seeds of corruption when, for example, someone with a small power base treats with another someone with a big power base, which results in a gentle, trusting soul who only wants a little bit of freedom to be himself - being thrown into prison for 10 years! Shi Tao didn't ask for the moon!

I doubt, personally, (from learning about my kind) that there is an investment in our actual human natures of self-sacrifice for the good of others, beyond that which extends as the mothering role which we see in society, the nurturing angle. This could also, however, be an acquired characteristic and, if it is, the natural inclination of all people would then be for self-service. If that's the case, we have to accept that human nature is incomplete and, for completion, we need an accompanyment of laws and social rules ("add ons") that are suitable to gear the human brain to think with "all its might".

Because of our evolved nature, so because of what we are capable of - in my opinion, capitalism also doesn't work if a dog-eat-dog ethic is the accepted "norm" in a society. It's not only people in authority who we rely on to behave ethically for capitalism to work - so serving the physical and emotional needs of not a majority but all people. A society must be able to trust that a large percentage of its business people who are elevated into a position of privilege when compared with their employees, will have policies in place to encourage fair dealings with staff with customers with suppliers, and so on.

The society being structured with an inbuilt integrity, as it were, from the "top down".

Having integrity flowing only from the "bottom up" or - worse - "middle up" would surely - always! - doom a society to ultimate failure

Selling people up the river is not good business practice - 9.11.07

Selling people up the river is not good business practice - Entry for 09 November 2007

First point of information for this blog: Y360 Refugees
If you want to read further articles on this
Quotes taken from

It's been well publicised that Jerry Yang (Yahoo's CEO) and General Counsel Michael Callahan were raked over the coals by congress for Yahoo "providing Chinese officials with information that contributed to the 10-year prison term of a Chinese journalist. The dissident journalist was jailed after Yahoo turned over information about his online activities to Chinese authorities."

Living in China would be the Orwellian nightmare (1984) come to life that the deadly tentacles of a totalitarian regime can reach out and ruin the lives of its people with impugnity.

Some of the comments that came out of the above enquiry by congress follow.

"Yahoo claims that this is just one big misunderstanding. Let me be clear — this was no misunderstanding," House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos, D-Calif., said as his panel's hearing got under way. "This was inexcusably negligent behavior at best, and deliberately deceptive behavior at worst."

Explaining why the company had cooperated with the Chinese government, Jerry Yang argued that Yahoo responded to an official order from them.

"Furious, Lantos interrupted. "These were demands by a police state to make an American company a co-conspirator in having a freedom-loving Chinese journalist put in prison," he said. "Will you continue to use the phrase 'lawful orders,' or will you just be satisfied saying 'orders'?""

He further told Jerry Yang "While technologically and financially you (Yahoo) are giants, morally you are pygmies".

But it's not only Yahoo who are playing false with online users - so us - who are put in a position to trust that providers of public forums are trustworthy.

"Human rights and free-speech advocates have lambasted U.S. companies including Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. for helping the Chinese government stifle the flow of ideas in exchange for greater access to the country's rapidly growing Internet market. But the convictions of Shi and another Chinese journalist Yahoo provided information about have focused the most strident criticism on Yahoo."

The good ole Aussie phrase "keeping the bastards honest" has relevance here I think.

Hopefully the US will continue to put pressure on American corporations to maintain a moral high ground.

Wikipedia

Note: The moral high ground, in ethical or political parlance, refers to the status of being respected for being in the right and adhering to and upholding a universally recognized standard of justice or goodness.

The Low down on MyLogBlog - 8.11.07

The Low down on MyLogBlog - Entry for 08 November 2007

After 360, the name MyLogBlog is a bit staid and unimaginative and abbreviated it's even worse. MLB has the look about it of a medical insurer, but the important question in the minds of a lot of people is, will my friends join me there?

The funny thing about this site is if you join MLB and your online friends don't, it won't necessarily stop you mixing with them.

The MLB profile I see as a kind of portal. MyLogBlog is not a blog. But it is a community of bloggers.

You go into your MLB profile and, depending on how you set it up, stored in there can be links to all of your blogs, your Youtube account, your Meem account, your Photobucket account, your Digg account, your Delicious account, and so on.

And with the vaunted changes coming up for 360 bloggers many of us joined Multiply and/or Mash in an attempt to stay together with our 360 friends. There again some of us have spread ourselves even thinner throughout the blogosphere by joining a number of other blogs for the fact of seeing what will make the best alternative when 360 disappears next year. And one thing we might be glad of is that we have been given plenty of advance warning not only that Yahoo is going to "scuttle" 360 but roughly when - it's thought some time through the first quarter of 2008.

To my point, though, given the fact that we might have a range of blogs, the rather useful feature about MLB is that - rather than loading down your browser with a heap of tabs (albeit that your browser is Flock) - or logging in and out of the different blogs - you can have all the blogs that you have authored at your fingertips, in the one place, accessible via links on your MyLogBlog profile.

So (at least in the first instance) you log onto only one membership in which you can view your other memberships.

It's in fact a simple but effective solution to the complexity of our having memberships to all manner of sites spread all over the web, and I know my situation is out of control.

Further, in normal Yahoo tradition, there are communities either set up or building which you can join to vary your blogging experience even wider than you currently do. I don't know why you would want to but you can join up to 15 communities a day - that's voluntarily joining, while if your settings permit auto-join, those you join by default of auto-join, don't count towards the limit.

In answer to your question before you ask it, when you visit a community a number of times, if your settings allow for it you become a member of that community automatically. If the idea doesn't appeal, turn off the auto-join setting.

There is no compulsory fee of $25/year (that's per blog incidentally) but you can maintain a free version of the site.

The difference? Okay so there might be more to this than I've been able to pick up in a couple of short hours looking at this but, what Yahoo themselves have to say is this:

The benefits of BlogLog Pro - "Real time stats. If you don't have a lot of traffic, the free version may be sufficient. ... Simply the pro version gives you more robust stats."

Pro also allows for a longer list of top links while with the free version, the top links showing are limited to 10.

I'm not coming down on MLB. I see it has potential to offer a unique service to me and maybe many other bloggers.

The Race that Stops a Nation - Entry for 07 November 2007

Efficient wins the Melbourne Cup

Yesterday was the Melbourne Cup horse race and we all dutifully lined up for our lukewarm chicken, salad and champagne, well I had orange juice the party pooper's alternative, and paid hard earned moneys into various sweeps.

I had a $5, 2 $2 and 1 $1 which, for the mathemeticians amongst us, totals $10 ... all down the drain I have to tell you - no I was not a winner (sob) hang on I have a smiley to do that ... next year mebbe!

Like with all gambling when you pays yer money, you reckon on losing it. But it was a nice little break ... and then back to the grindstone.

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish - Entry for Friday 2 November 2007

Anyone who has read Douglas Adams books will know immediately from the title what this blog is about.

It's about DOUGLAS ADAMS.

Who is Douglas Adams, for the unaware? Simply put, he wrote The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and various other books including So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.

" One Thursday lunchtime the Earth is unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. For Arthur Dent, who has only just had his house demolished that morning, this seems already to be more than he can cope with. Sadly, however, the weekend has only just begun, and the galaxy is a very strange and startling place."

He was a brilliant man who introduced the world to an extraordinary way of looking at life. You are never quite the same after reading his books.

I just wanted you to know, it's now 204 days and some hours minutes and seconds until Towel Day 2008

The above link will take you to the site which will tell you all about that.