Archive | June, 2014

Cuts to Aged Care

30 Jun

Here is what Kaye Lee found out:

Kaye LeeJune 29, 2014 at 3:18 pm

To just underline the society we now live in…..

Tony Abbott’s $1.7bn cut to the Commonwealth Home Support Program will affect services including Meals on Wheels, respite care, cleaning, maintenance and other in-home services for elderly Australians living in their homes.

The government said the $1.7bn in savings from this measure would be directed to repairing the budget.

A $1.5bn scheme to fund wage increases for the aged-care workforce will also be scrapped, but the money will be redirected into boosting subsidies to aged-care providers by 2.4 per cent.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/budget-2014/cuts-to-aged-care-to-rake-innbsp25bn/story-fnmbxr2t-1226916709506

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Book Review: The Price of Inequality, by Joseph Stiglitz

27 Jun

I wanted to reblog the above book review by Kay Rollison. Since I could not find how to do it I just publish here the URL link to this very interesting book review.

 

http://theaimn.com/book-review-price-inequality-joseph-stiglitz/?subscribe=invalid_email#blog_subscription-3

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Our What the Frack Tour – June 21, 2014

27 Jun

The Most Revolutionary Act

 taranaki frackings siteslegend: red triangle: fracking well sites

red flame: gas/oil production stations

red pin: deep well injection sites

green pin: “land farms” and land treatment sites.

 source: Climate Justice Taranaki

We Have Been Invaded

As you can see from the above map, pristine Taranaki dairyland has been totally invaded and colonized by foreign oil and gas companies. New Zealand’s lax regulatory environment has produced a feeding frenzy. Eager to offshore as much profit as possible, they have transformed our clean green countryside into an industrial site.

A recent report by the New Zealand Commissioner for the Environment is highly critical of both Taranaki Regional Council (TRC) and New Plymouth District Council for their failure to regulate foreign energy companies in accordance with existing New Zealand law.

The PCE, bless her, makes the link between fracking and climate change front and center in her report. In her introduction, she questions…

View original post 698 more words

Die Trümmerfrau

26 Jun

 http://www.laenvie.com/2007/05/helene_lohe_my_.html

This is a link to a story about a Trümmerfrau, a woman  in Berlin who during and after the war started working as a ‘rubble’ woman. She did this for ten years. This woman, who apparently had come from a well to do family,  lost everything during World War II: Her husband, her seven room apartment, everything.

A ‘rubble’ woman worked to clear the rubble away that was left after all the bomb raids. Peter’s mother became one at the end of the war until she could go back to her post-office position.

 

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Napoleon Bonaparte

26 Jun

https://www.debate.org/debates/Napoleon-Bonaparte-Was-Not-a-Warmongering-Conquerer/1/

The following is taken from an online debate Above is a link to it.

” . . . ..   Not even being the ‘First Consul for Life’ satisfied him. No, he had to become ‘An enlightened despot’ *** He became Emperor of the French and his satellite nations. He aspired to style himself as the famed Roman emperor Augustus Caesar (who, I may also add, initiated many conflicts).
“Why were the conscripts actually eager to sign up? Why, in 1815, when he returned to France, not a single soldier fired on him and joined him instead? He was immensely popular with the army and continued to be until the very end.”

this, in itself, is a peculiar statement. Conscripts eager to sign up? Isn’t that oxymoronic? Conscripts are forced to sign up; there may be a few who do so willingly, but the majority of them do it so that their families do not get persecuted. Let us compare it to Hitler’s armies. He utilize conscription and thousands and millions signed up for the ‘Fuhrer’ and the ‘Reich’. Everybody was pleased to be a German soldier in 1939, 1940 and 1941, when Hitler owned Europe, the Allies torn, Russia invaded and England besieged. It is a like manner that men conditioned by propaganda would sign in Napoleon’s armies – for their nation. While the nation expands and is victorious, they can earn medals, eat well, receive payment and treat life as plentiful. When the fighting gets grim, do you really think that these conscripts and soldiers were happy, as you proclaim? Of course not! As I have also mentioned, these men were carefully conditioned by propaganda. They were soldiers of the ‘greatest’ and most victorious nation of Europe. Why not fight? To their doom.

I have never denied that he was very considerate in his political, administrative and religious achievements. This is true, but it is also irrelevant as to whether or not he was a warmonger. He precipitated and began several conflicts. He ruthlessly consolidated power and manipulated leaders until he controlled a vast portion of Europe – of which very little naturally belonged to him.

“vassal states”, as my opponent agrees, are too true. Napoleon created many of which were subjugated by him.

Here are some quotations that the reader may find interesting from the book, “The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon.”

“But it was Napoleon, however, and not the Russian ruler who actively prepared for aggression.” *

Thus, I have clearly demonstrated that Napoleon, by definition in Round 1, was a warmonger. He certainly advocated every war that he fought in. He endorsed them all and precipitated most of them (such as mobilizing and attacking before Austria even realized that war had been declared in England and France, or marching on Russia while Russia was astonished), even if he only actually declared war for a few of them. I proved that Napoleon grasped power and always attempted to consolidate more of it; such was his greed. He also was paranoid to lose it, as many other famed warmongers have been – Hitler and Stalin foremost among them.

Thanks for a wonderful Debate, Nazgul. I think I’ll take you up on that offer. this has been most interesting!

Readers, since I have clearly shown that Napoleon was, no matter how many civil achievements, a warmonger. Vote Con!”

~
“The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon.” * http://books.google.ca…

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WORLD WAR II

25 Jun

I browsed through a number of pages about the two World Wars in the English section of the German magazine DER SPIEGEL.  It is a topic that interests me since I did experience WORLD WAR II as a child in Germany. I would like to understand how sliding into wars could be avoided. Here is the introduction to these articles and a link to them:

 

 

An Endless Legacy

World War II brought more suffering to humanity than any other event in the 20th century. Nearly 60 million people died throughout six years of war, which saw atomic bombs, cities flattened and the Holocaust. Out of the war sprung the atomic age, the Cold War and the division of Germany.

 

http://www.spiegel.de/international/topic/world_war_ii/

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The Association for Good Government

24 Jun
I copied here another page about an association promoting the teachings of Henry George:

About the Association and a little History PDF Print E-mail
The general framework of George’s social philosophy is rooted in the view of Thomas Jefferson that the cause of social problems is an inequality of rights.The problem Henry George addresses is the problem of involuntary poverty.  He sees this problem essentially as one of unequal rights to land.  His teaching is founded upon the right to use land, land being the whole material universe, the “reservoir” as he says, from which all production comes. Because we are many the right to use land is an equal right.Henry George argues that the task of government is to secure these equal rights to land for everyone. However, George points out that observation of the institution of private property in land shows that it entails the very opposite of equal rights in land.In the social law of rent (the fact that productivity is enhanced by location) George finds an “adjustment” in nature that permits government to secure the equal right to land. For, if government took the value of locations, each would be left with land of equal value.   By discouraging the holding of land for gain this charge would also permit all to use land.

The value given by location is land value. If collected, taxes on production might be done away with. For that reason his proposal was called a ‘single tax’. Some have reduced that proposal to some limited use of land value taxation.

More generally George gave a proposal that assists in the resolution of many land problems.    Where land is held exclusively the occupant must pay for the social and natural advantages that constitutes the value of its location. Other land is common and subject to the equal right of all to use. The “market value” of such land and of those common services on it are captured in the value of land held exclusively.

George considered that the value of land would rise faster than wages as a proportion of production. He also believed that it exceeded the needs of government and that it might be made use of for cultural puposes or distributed among the citizens as a kind of ‘dividend’.

History


The Association for Good Government began in September, 1901, as the Sydney Single Tax League until 1913 when the name Free Trade and Land Values League was adopted. One of many organisations inspired by the influence of Progress and Poverty (1879) and by the visit of its author, Henry George, to Australia in 1890.

The usual name taken by these organisations had been ‘Single Tax Clubs’. Its founders, however, now chose a different name ‘Free Trade and Land Values League, to represent its changing policies. That name generally alternated with ‘NSW Henry George League’ until 1965 when the name ‘Association for Good Government’ was adopted. At the same time its magazine (founded in December, 1905, as The Standard) was renamed Good Government.

The organisation consolidated all Georgist organisations in Sydney into one. A.G. Huie the first Secretary made ‘country visits’ by car to collect subscriptions, speak at open air meetings and maintain contact with members in outlying towns in NSW.  Huie must hold something of a record since he became Secretary in 1901 and only retired in 1955. He also edited the journal.

During its over 100 years of history the Association has maintained a remarkably consistent set of activities, holding conferences, seminars, courses and committee meetings, maintaining a journal and writing submissions to government and letters to the press and others upon issues as divergent as civil liberties, privatisation and taxation.

At all times it has held to the main concerns of its founders, to bring to the attention of the public the importance of equal rights in the earth and an understanding of economic rent to social stability and prosperity.

In 2006 the Association formed a Branch in Canberra.

 

Here is another link about the Association for Good Government:

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