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Read or Condemn Yourself to Death by Ignorance

For those courageous souls brave enough to look and see what is,

who are unwilling to blindly accept

the lies and rules of tyrannical authority.


Wednesday 24th July 2019


G’day,

Hope this finds you fit and well!

Here is a sampling of what crossed my digital desk over the last week.

12-THINGS-TO-ALWAYS-REMEMBER

You Learn A Lot About People

Calvin’s Final Talk To Hobbes

Coming To Oz

Not Just Any Old Rock

Corporate Gangster: Adani’s Pursuit of Scientists

Politicians who deny economic reality destroy their constituents

Waste Not

Dance Of Flowers

Get A Grip

Spice Rack

Pulling Back The Curtain On Junk Science

Please Close Gate

Separation would be good for the banks—independent experts

Save The Planet!

New Research Shocks Scientists: Human Emotion Physically Shapes Reality!

I hope you get something from it!

Cheers!

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Mainly a bunch of false data!
 
12-THINGS-TO-ALWAYS-REMEMBER
 
 
 

Wow! Some truth but a lot of codswallop!

1. Anyone who has done any counselling knows you can change your mind about past events so that they are viewed completely diffrently and no longer affect you. So you CAN change the past.

2. One’s opinion DOES define one’s reality. Read the story of the hotdog vendor: https://smithdickson.com/news-resources/articles/article-the-hot-dog-vendor/

4. Things don’t always get better with time. In fact, unless you take positive action to improve them, they most often get worse!

5. Judgements are a necessary part of survival. Unless you can judge who you can and can’t trust you do not survive well at all.

7. Happiness is not found within. Happiness comes from overcoming obstacles in attaining your goals. That is very outward looking.

10. Kindness is not free. It requires effort. You must invest some of your time, intention and care.

11. Not true. Every race has a finish line. You either make it across first or you don’t. Every action has a result. It worked and achieved the desired result - success - or it did not - fail. You have to be prepared to fail often and quickly to be successful. That take more courage than most people are prepared to assume.

12. Not often enough and not fast enough for my linking! Although I did share a very appropriate validation of this on Facebook this week.

 
 
 
 
You Learn A Lot About People
 
You Learn A Lot About People
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
Calvin’s Final Talk To Hobbes
 
Calvin's Final Talk To Hobbes
 
 
 

Get the tissue box, you’ll need it!

 
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Coming To Oz
 
Coming To Oz
 
 
 

Love this!

 
 
 
 
Not Just Any Old Rock
 
Not Just Any Old Rock
 
 
 

Dave Hole had tried everything. Rock saw. Drill. They all just bounced off. The damn rock would not crack. This was his last shot. He gripped the sledgehammer with two hands, raised it above his head, and brought it down as hard as he could. CLANGGG. Nothing. Not even a scratch. “What the hell is this thing?”, Mr Hole thought to himself. The answer, it turned out, was something not of this Earth.

 
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Corporate Gangster: Adani’s Pursuit of Scientists
 
 
 
 

by Binoy Kampmark July 18, 2019

The Adani conglomerate should be best described as a bloated gangster, promising the earth even as it mines it. Like other corporate thugs of such disposition, it will do things within, and if necessary outside, the regulatory framework it encounters. Where necessary, it will libel detractors and bribe critics, speak of a fictional number of as yet non-existent jobs, and claim that it is green in its coaling practices. It will also hire legal firms claiming to be trained attack dogs and hector the national broadcaster to pull unflattering stories from publication and discussion.

As a marauder of the environment, the Indian mining giant has left little to chance. It has politicians friendly to its cause in Australia at both the state and federal level, but it faces an environmental movement that refuses to dissipate. It also has a problem with environmental science, particularly in the area of water management. Conditional approvals have been secured, albeit hurried in the aftermath of May’s federal election, and even here, further testing will have to be done.

Given the inconveniences posed by scientists wedded to methodology and technique, the company did not surprise in freedom of information findings by the environmental group Lock the Gate that it had asked the federal environment department for “a list of each person from CSIRO and Geoscience Australia involved in the review” of the Groundwater Dependent Ecosystem Management Plan (GDEMP) and Groundwater Monitoring and Management Plan (GMMP).

In a bullying note to the Department of Environment and Energy (DOEE) in January 25 this year, Hamish Manzi, head of the company’s environment and sustainability branch officiously gave a five day limit to the request, claiming that it “simply wants to know who is involved in the review to provide it with peace of mind that it is being treated fairly and that the review will not be hijacked by activists with a political, as opposed to scientific, agenda.” Manzi had noted “recent press coverage regarding an anti-coal and/or anti-Adani bias potentially held by experts reviewing other Adani approvals.” For Manzi, the only expert worthy of that name would have to be sympathetic to the mining cause.

The corporate instinct is rarely on all fours with that of the scientific one. The former seeks the accumulation of assets, profits and dividends; the latter tests hypotheses using a falsification system, a process that can only ever have fidelity to itself. The corporate instinct is happy to forget troubling scientific outcomes, and, where necessary, corrupt it for its ends. Where the science does not match, it is obviously the work of ill-motivated activists or those inconvenienced by conscience.

The Union of Concerned Scientists in February 2012, through its Scientific Integrity Program, supplied readers with a list of fields where science, and scientists, have been attacked or compromised. More importantly, it notes how governments become the subject of influence, their decisions ever vulnerable to wobbling. “Corporations attempt to exert influence at every step of the scientific and policy-making processes, often to shape decisions in their favour or avoid regulation and monitoring of their products and by-products at the public’s expense. In so doing, they often attempt to fundamentally alter the decision-making process.”

The methods of corrupting science are not exhaustive, but the UCS report suggests a view tried ones. Research, for instance, is either held up by the company in question or terminated. Scientists are intimidated or coerced through threats to job security, defunding and litigation. Defective methodologies in testing and research are embraced. Scientific articles are ghost written, with corporate sponsorship blurred. Negative results are slyly underreported; positive results are glowingly celebrated. And never forget good old fashioned vilification.

The FOI documents regarding Adani’s conduct show the company as a witchdoctor wooing the federal government into timed releases of information and an obsession with preventing a broader public discussion of findings. A January 9 email from Adani to DOEE demanded that CSIRO/GA reports not be circulated to third parties or the public. The next day, the department obligingly informed the company that it would only share advice with Queensland’s Department of Environment and Science.

The uncovered documents also show a certain degree of cyber stalking at play. On January 15, a staff member of Geoscience Australia wrote to DOEE expressing concern that the company had viewed LinkedIn profiles of employees. Such concerns did little to ruffle the growing accord between the department and the company.

The abdication of government to the corporate sector is one of the more troubling features of this tawdry chapter in Australian non-governance. Corporate giants know they must enlist the support of representatives who they can trust to be of sound mind. History is replete with successful lobbying efforts in the name of corrupted science.

In 2007, ReGen Biologics, a New Jersey company, faced a sceptical Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concerned with Menaflex, a device intended to replace knee cartilage. With the FDA’s rejection came a mobilisation effort. Politicians were sought and cultivated. In December that year, Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, and Rep. Steve Rothman all wrote to FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach. The Commissioner’s ear had been bended sufficiently to lead to a new review headed by Dr Daniel Schultz, head of the FDA’s medical devices division. Scepticism vanished; the product was approved. In 2010, a shamefaced FDA had to concede that it had erred and duly revoked approval.

Instead of defending practices of departments and professionals engaged in the task of assessing the merits of such ventures, individuals such as the Australian deputy prime minister suggest that Adani might have a point in is heavy-handed enthusiasm to root out contrarians. In Michael McCormack’s view, Adani “were made to jump through more environmental hoops than perhaps any previous project in the nation.” They merely “wanted to determine... that those arguing against their proposals were not just some quasi anti-development groups or individuals.” The thug’s narrative has found a home in the hearts of the anti-scientific representatives that currently rule the Canberra roost. Scientists have been warned.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

 
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Politicians who deny economic reality destroy their constituents
 
Mandurah
 
 
 

The local mayor, state MP and federal MP for Mandurah, Western Australia, have attacked the Interests Of The People (IOTP) show “The Economic Massacre of Mandurah” for exposing that their city is the leading edge of Australia’s housing and economic crisis.

The show featured independent economist John Adams and CEC Research Director Robert Barwick briefing host Martin North on their recent visit to Mandurah, where they witnessed streets littered with For Sale signs, and were informed by locals of the area’s serious economic and social problems, including the worst drug problem in the state. Martin North shared his comprehensive survey data of Mandurah’s 30 per cent house price falls, and more than 40 per cent unemployment and underemployment.

In the 17 July Mandurah Coastal Times, Federal Liberal MP for Canning, Andrew Hastie, attacked the show as “over the top”.

By contrast, the show struck a chord among WA locals, with many expressing that they know the show is right. “We’re seeing exactly what they say as fact in this town”, said local sport store owner Hayden Burbidge to Perth’s biggest radio station, 6PR, on 12 July.

The online Daily Mail also covered the show, in an 18 July article headlined “Economists drive through WA town counting endless ’for sale’ signs on properties revealing the true extent of Australia’s housing crisis”.

The problem for Andrew Hastie, who is known to be personally very concerned about the situation in Mandurah, is that if he publicly acknowledges the crisis, he will be contradicting the claims of his own government. The Morrison Coalition government is both denying the crisis, and hustling the population to scam them into thinking that another housing boom is about to start and so they should rush out and buy houses.

They are preying on young households in particular, to lure them into thinking now is the right time to buy their first home. To do so, Assistant Treasurer and Housing Minister Michael Sukkar is trying to spread fear among young families—fear of missing out!

He is urging them to rush out and buy their first home now, before the government’s 5 per cent deposit scheme starts in January. Prices will skyrocket, Sukkar is implying.

“Housing Minister Michael Sukkar has urged first-home buyers to try to snap up a property now, ahead of the government’s signature loan deposit scheme starting next year, warning that housing prices are likely to increase”, Rosie Lewis reported in The Australian on 18 July.

“If you’ve got an opportunity to get a foot in the market before then you should take it, given I think the market is starting to improve,” Mr Sukkar told The Australian. “People who buy now I don’t think will regret it at all. A re-elected Morrison government has put a lot more confidence into the market. We’re seeing green shoots in Melbourne and Sydney in the last quarter and I think with low interest rates, with APRA reducing service-ability buffers, all those factors combine to confirm that optimism.” (Emphasis added.)

Sukkar might be confused. There are green shoots in the housing market—green shoots of weeds taking over abandoned greenfield developments in Sydney and Melbourne from the more than 25 per cent defaults from people walking away from their deposits, unable or unwilling to pay the balance and start building a home.

More likely, Sukkar is not confused, but along with the rest of the government is desperate to con people into the market, in the hope that a rush of buyers will start pushing up prices again.

The question is, if it doesn’t work to drive up prices, and the thousands of buyers who’ve followed Sukkar’s advice find themselves trapped in negative equity, will the Morrison government pay their debts for them?

WA shows that negative equity is a very real danger from these low-deposit schemes. The state’s Keystart program helps people into the housing market with a 2 per cent deposit, but a higher introductory interest rate. After a few years of building equity, the borrowers would refinance at a lower rate with a commercial bank. It worked for years... ...while prices were going up. Since prices have been plunging, however, all it is doing is trapping borrowers in negative equity and high interest rates, because commercial banks are unwilling to refinance their loans if they have no equity.

The insanity of the Morrison government’s approach is that it is trying to put off a crash by reinflating an already overstretched bubble. In reality, the bubble will burst, and it must burst, and house prices must fall a very long way so that once again they become truly affordable, without households chaining themselves to huge, unpayable debts. The longer politicians put it off, the worse the eventual crash will be, and they will destroy their constituents.

Solutions

What politicians should be doing is implementing economic solutions before the crash. The CEC has drafted a number of pieces of legislation:

to reform the banks and protect their customers through a Glass-Steagall separation of banking from speculation; to put a freeze on foreclosures on family homes and family farms while the unpayable mortgage debt is reorganised and written down to affordable levels matching the true value of the property; to direct the Auditor-General to urgently audit the banks to ascertain their true exposure to this crisis, and what needs to be done to clean up their books; and a national bank to invest in productive infrastructure and industries, in order to restructure the economy away from its current focus on financial services, housing construction and raw materials exports, and back to being a powerhouse of manufacturing and agricultural production.

To fight for these solutions, join the CEC!

Click the read more button to watch the IOTP response: The Mandurah Establishment Attacks Adams and North

 
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Waste Not
 
Waste Not
 
 
 

Maximise the value of and return on your assets, time included!

 
 
 
 
Dance Of Flowers
 
Dance Of Flowers
 
 
 

Here’s a riot of colour to add a joyous note to your week!

 
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Get A Grip
 
Get A Grip
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
Spice Rack
 
Spice Rack
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
Pulling Back The Curtain On Junk Science
 
Greenland Map
Petermann Glacier
 
 
 

So if global warming is heating the earth (which it is not) then why has this glacier grown SIX KILOMETERS in 7 years?

 
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Please Close Gate
 
Please Close Gate
 
 
 

Them's pretty sturdy gate posts. Not surprising they outlived the fence.

 
 
 
 
Separation would be good for the banks—independent experts
 
 
 
 

While the major banks, regulators and government have done everything in their power to block any moves towards bank separation, they have ignored one important point: separation would be good for the banks as businesses.

Good for proper banking, that is, not casino banking or predatory customer-fleecing.

In a very important interview on the Digital Finance Analytics (DFA) YouTube channel, “Why APRA is not fit for purpose”, former ANZ director John Dahlsen and DFA Principal Martin North discussed the benefits for banks of demerging with their non-bank entities.

The two are real experts. John Dahlsen was a director of ANZ for 20 years from the mid-80s to the mid-2000s. He also chaired ANZ’s audit committee, which gave him deep insights into the nuts and bolts of its business.

Martin North is an international banking expert, having worked in banking and lectured bankers on advanced financial issues, including capital markets, in the UK, before moving to Australia, where he has analysed the banking system and housing market for many years.

North interviewed Dahlsen on the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) Capability Review conducted by Graeme Samuel. While generally approving of the review, Dahlsen criticised Samuel for praising APRA’s prudential regulation, its core job. “In my view APRA has been fake”, he said. “It has been absolutely misleading to the public, in that it has claimed it’s had a lot of power and [was] doing things, but in fact it’s been doing nothing.”

Referencing Samuel’s support for APRA chairman Wayne Byres’s supervision of the banks’ capital structures, and so-called risk weightings, by which the banks are allowed to assign mortgages a much lower risk rating than business loans and therefore hold much less capital against them, Dahlsen said: “I don’t agree with that, because I believe his risk-weighting policies have damaged the economy in a serious way. The imbalance between residential mortgages and business had led to an explosion—as we’re now getting all the gory details—in residential mortgages. And on the other hand, lending to business, particularly mid-sized and small business, has shrunk. Now that just simply isn’t good for the economy.”

Dahlsen also objected to Wayne Byres allowing the big banks to have lower risk weighting for mortgages than the smaller banks, which penalises the smaller banks and gives the big banks an unfair advantage. APRA’s regulation has helped to concentrate the banking system in the “big four” oligopoly. Martin North pointed out that this was deliberate on APRA’s part, justified on the basis that fewer, larger banks would be better for financial stability and easier to regulate. In other words, competition—the buzzword policy imposed on the rest of the economy—be damned.

North further noted that the risk weightings are uniform virtually worldwide, because they come from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), known as the central bank of central banks, which is the agency through which the world’s major banks effectively regulate themselves. Wayne Byres came to APRA from a lengthy stint at the BIS in Switzerland. “He’s part of the international establishment”, Dahlsen said, “and what’s been driving him is to honour his former role rather than what’s good for Australia.” Dahlsen called APRA’s extreme secrecy “sheer nonsense”.

Separation

The former ANZ director also took exception to Senator Jane Hume’s inquiry into the CEC’s Separation of Banks bill, which Hume went through the motions of conducting by extending it during the election campaign and refusing to hold public hearings.

“There are some people in the community that know a fair bit about that and wanted to participate in that inquiry and give some evidence”, he said. “I would have liked to have given some evidence, I would have liked to join the conversation. And she refused. So that was in my opinion a fake inquiry”, he charged.

“What troubles me”, Dahlsen continued, “is why are you worried about having that conversation?”

John Dahlsen’s argument for the banks demerging is that the imperative is greater than ever before, with greater complication in banking and the emergence of so-called fintechs, internet-based lenders, which are competing with banks for business. He compared the situation for banks to Coles and Woolworths, the latter of which Dahlsen formerly chaired. Australia’s two dominant retailers, they have nevertheless recently undertaken major demergers; for instance, Woolworths recently demerged from the highly profitable Dan Murphy’s liquor wholesaler. Woolworths took the decision because they recognised there is greater value in demerging than in retaining ownership, he explained.

For the banks: “if you demerge them and gave them a simpler structure, where you reduce the distance between the CEO and the customer, where you could streamline the regulation and compliance stuff for that kind of activity, you could take a huge amount of regulatory cost out of it”, Dahlsen argued. “It would enable the demerged entities to much more effectively deal with the competitive threats they’re under.”

Martin North agreed that this is what should be being discussed by banks and regulators. “But I don’t see any evidence of that”, he said.

The CEC’s Banking System Reform (Separation of Banks) Bill 2019 does not wait for banks to come to their senses, as Dahlsen hopes they will, but requires them to demerge from all non-bank entities within two years, not to profit the banks per se, but to protect bank customers and their deposits, and the functioning of the real economy that relies on a safe banking system. It also overhauls APRA by bringing it under much closer parliamentary oversight and stopping it from any interaction with the BIS and other international entities like the Bank of England that is not explicitly approved by a powerful parliamentary oversight committee. This will also stop APRA from bailing in Australian bank deposits under orders from the BIS during an international financial crisis. The BIS demands “independence” for regulators like APRA so it can impose policies like bail-in, but the Separation of Banks bill would not allow APRA to act without parliamentary approval, which means voters would have a chance to tell MPs: “Hands off our deposits!”

To join the fight against bail-in and for a Glass-Steagall separation of banks to simplify the banking system and protect deposits and the real economy, join the CEC.

Click here to sign the petition to the Australian Parliament: Hands off our bank deposits—stop ’bail-in’!

 
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Save The Planet!
 
No_Artic_Drilling
 
 
 

We as a species are overpolluting the planet at an extinction rate. We need to rethink our approach to resource utilisation to conserve our home. Last time I checked there wasn’t another suitable planet within a day’s sailing!

 
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New Research Shocks Scientists: Human Emotion Physically Shapes Reality!
 
Emotions Change Reality
 
 
 

I have known this for decades from studies in other areas so it is pleasing to see mainstream science catching on.

 
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Until next time,
dream big dreams,
plan out how to achieve them,
be continually executing your plans,
enlist people to your causes,
travel and/or read widely, preferably both,
all the while observing what you observe
rather than thinking what you are told to think,
think well of your fellow man,
take time to help your fellow man,
he sorely needs it and it will help you too,
eat food that is good for your body,
exercise your body,
take time to destress,
and do the important things
that make a difference -
they are rarely the urgent ones!

Tom

 
 

Most of the content herein has been copied from someone else. Especially the images. My goodness some people are talented at creating aesthetics! The small bits that are of my creation are Copyright 2014-2019 © by Tom Grimshaw - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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