Perceptric Forum

The State Of New South Wales

Chris Gilbey — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 17:55:05 +1100

The State of New South Wales is nothing short of abominable.

The new Premier is out of his depth (but if you live in Australia you knew that already). Eric Roozendahl, the Minister for Roads a couple of weeks ago, and now the Treasurer (and if Reese goes on sacking ministers at the rate he is going perhaps the two of them will be the last men standing as ministers for everything), has just delivered a budget that is so utterly wrong it just beggars belief.

Without taking it apart piece by piece, let me just cover a few issues.

We know that there is a shortfall in the state's finances. Bob Carr spent up big basically to get re-elected. Morris Iemma dithered and Nathan Reese now has to deal with pay back to his sponsors for getting the big gig.

There are some realities that he needs to consider:

If NSW was in this mess on its own I could understand the powers that be delivering the budget that they just did. But we are in a flat world and we are not decoupled from the nation or from the rest of the world.

Demand for commodities are down and since we are a country that produces commodities without too much value being added, regardless of price we are going to see companies laying off workers, reducing costs, and battening down the hatches for the coming storm.

As the financial markets continue to unwind companies in that sector are going to lay off people too. All that knocks a hole in the demand for real estate. And since the stamp duties on property transfer are a big chunk of the revenue for the state, clearly things are going to get a little rocky.

So what the state needs is stimulus in every area that will help compensate.

We may not be able to afford to build new rail connections and keep our AAA rating, but think of what could be done... We could introduce a totally free service for commuters on buses and trains. That would be a much better way to get cars off the road than to introduce a congestion tax. People would have to register for free travel passes by demonstrating that they live in one place and work in another and would only be permitted to travel from A to B. That immediately puts pressure on the travel infrastructure, granted. But it has a tremendous positive effect in terms of the reduction of green house gasses from private transport. Sell the carbon emissions saved to cover the cost of the lost revenue from the tickets issued for free. It also means that the fiasco of ticket machines can be forgotten, and instead of having people collecting tickets, put them to work on the trains to ensure that there is a reduction in crime.

Oh and one other important thing: Since the ministers in the government want everyone in the state to reduce their expectations of service from the government, then let the ministers take a salary cut... It would be a great example of what they expect from everyone else...

The power industry and the sale or non-sale, which is a key part of the problem... Introduce significant benefits for people to install solar. Not the half baked proposal that is in place at the moment - but a serious levy on power exported into the grid. Make it possible for ordinary people to make back the cost of the capital investment to install solar within two years. That will really boost the solar industry and will reduce the need to update the power industry. Then increase the costs of power to everyone, industry included, so that the incentive to install solar is even stronger!

This is all about needing to look at the unconventional wisdoms.

At the moment you can pretty much guarantee that everything that the current state government is proposing and unfortunately is doing, is 180 degrees wrong. So look at the opposite and a way to monetize it and forget about the triple A ratings...

What Crisis Are These Guys Talking About?

Chris Gilbey — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:51:14 +1000

There is apparently going to be a new crisis. And it is going to happen sometime soon after January 21st 2009.

This is what Colin Powell and Joe Biden said separately over the last week...

Here is what Joe Biden said:

In remarks made over the weekend in Seattle, Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Biden warned that Barack Obama, if elected president, would be compelled to take deeply unpopular actions in both domestic and foreign policy within months of taking office.

In closed-door gatherings with two audiences of Democratic Party insiders and fundraisers, Biden forecast a major international crisis in the first six months of an Obama administration.

He compared Obama to John F. Kennedy, the last senator to be elected president. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy," Biden said. "The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Watch. We're going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

Biden mentioned the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, North Korea and Russia as potential points of conflict, but did not spell out the exact nature of such a crisis, observing, "I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate." He made it clear that Obama would respond forcefully: "They're going to want to test him. And they're going to find out this guy's got steel in his spine."

The most politically significant portion of Biden's remarks came when he admitted that the decisions of an Obama-Biden administration were likely to be deeply unpopular, and he called on the Democratic Party regulars to stand behind the new president even when public opinion turned against him.

"He's going to need help," Biden said. "He's going to need you—not financially to help him—we're going to need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not going to be apparent initially, it's not going to be apparent that we're right."

He continued, "There are going to be a lot of you who want to go, ‘Whoa, wait a minute, yo, whoa, whoa, I don't know about that decision.' Because if you think the decision is sound when they're made, which I believe you will when they're made, they're not likely to be as popular as they are sound. Because if they're popular, they're probably not sound."

And listen to what Colin Powell says in this interview on Meet the Press. Fast forward to 2 minutes 40 seconds and you will hear him say very specifically that there will be a crisis on January 21st - which happens to be the date that the inauguration takes place. Synchronicity or what?

Tom Tomorrow

Chris Gilbey — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 06:05:17 +1000

Fascinating Legal Machinations

Chris Gilbey — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 15:50:34 +1000

I find the legal machinations that governments have gone through over the last seven years, since 9/11 quite fascinating.

In Australia we had a period of time under Howard where the immigration minister did some things that were quite amazing and logic defying as well as humanitarian defying.

I just came across this article by an American lawyer that is truly amazing.

Here are a couple of pars:

"Our proof is a top-secret classified document, which the government accidentally gave to Al-Haramain's lawyers in August of 2004. We call it "the Document." It appeared in a stack of unclassified materials that the lawyers had requested from OFAC. Six weeks later, after the government realized its blunder, FBI agents personally visited each of the lawyers and made them return their copies of the Document. But the agents made no effort to retrieve copies that the lawyers had given to two members of Al-Haramain's board of directors, who lived outside the United States.

I can't publicly reveal what's in the Document because, well, it's a secret. I would be committing a crime -- a violation of the Espionage Act of 1917 -- if I were to do so. But we assert the Document as proof of allegations we have made that in March and April of 2004 the National Security Agency conducted warrantless electronic surveillance of attorney-client communications between a representative of Al-Haramain and two of its attorneys, and that in May of 2004 the NSA gave logs of those surveilled communications to OFAC."

Things Are Going Seriously Wrong

Chris Gilbey — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 10:40:07 +1000

When you see stories like this one, you have to wonder how close we all are to a serious societal meltdown.

The UK government is meeting with supermarket chains to encourage them to stockpile basic foodstuffs in anticipation of supply chain failures caused by a national truckers' strike.

The big issue here is not the strikers but the fact that the infrastructure is totally reliant on one strand of the supply chain. And what do they say?: "We are only seven days food supply away from revolution"....

NSW Government Screwing Fire Department

Chris Gilbey — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:59:48 +1000

On the way home tonight from buying a new battery for my laptop from the Apple store in Woolongong I got caught in a traffic jam. It was at the end of Agar's Lane - about 2 or 3 k's from my house. I found out that the local pre-school teacher had come too fast into a corner where the council are doing some road work, and lost control of the car. The car skidded, hit an embankment and rolled. Fortunately the driver was ok.

The local fire brigade was at the scene doing traffic control while a tow truck manoeuvred to get the car right side up in order to tow it.

I got all this from one of the fire men as I was waiting.

We started to chat.

He told me that unknown to most of the people in NSW - the state government changed the regulations a couple of years ago and that now the NSW Fire Brigade is not allowed to attend motor accidents that are outside of towns. They have deemed that the Bush Fire Brigade is to attend accidents on the highway outside of Berry, for instance, rather than the NSW Fire Brigade.

What this means is that if a car has an accident on the highway at say, Foxground, about 10k's outside Berry, it falls under the jurisdiction of the Bushies.

The problem is that the Bush Fire Brigade typically takes longer to get to the scene of a fire than the NSW Brigade because they have different performance criteria. They also have different equipment, and often have to call the NSW guys in after they have arrived. Bottom line is that the NSW guys have more equipment. And they also get paid. Clearly the NSW Government is penny pinching on costs and it is putting you and I at risk.

They are both volunteer organizations, but in the case of the NSW Fire Brigade, the guys get paid an hourly rate for their community service rather than being total volunteers.

A couple of years ago when there was an accident on the highway outside of Berry and the driver was incinerated. He died. There was a truck driver who called in the accident to the emergency phone line. The local NSW guys were ready to go within 8 minutes but couldn't attend. The Bush fire guys took over 20 minutes to get to the accident.

This is not to in any way put down the Bush Fire Brigade. They do a marvellous job. But according to the guy I was talking to the point is that all the NSW guys have to live within one k of the Fire Station, and the Bush guys don't. And they have the specialist equipment that is required for some of the more critical accidents.

This seems to be another case of the Iemma government trying to scrimp on costs and putting the public at risk.

Dr Mahatir on the US

Chris Gilbey — Mon, 26 May 2008 15:00:26 +1000

Paul Keating called him recalcitrant. But Dr Mahatir Mohammed, the ex PM of Malaysia, certainly knows how to hit the rational high notes when he gets going...

Here he is talking about the US:

Conspiracy Theories

Chris Gilbey — Mon, 26 May 2008 14:26:20 +1000

Why are they called theories when so many of them are actually facts?!

Here is a very interesting take. Why? Because it is really about the people who have been put into place to do things, rather than about the events themselves. When you get the people being appointed to positions of power it is rarely, if ever, by accident.

This story is about the guy who is Hank Paulson's chief of staff. Very interesting history he has too...

Who do you think was one of the Bush Administration's key players on the economy?

If you say Paulson or Bernanke, you might be half right. But there's another no-name lurking around in the background who tends to be doing the wrong thing at every key moment in the covert history of the Bush (or should we day "Bush League") Republic.

His name is Jim Wilkinson. He helped organize the GOP "protest"/obstruction of the Miami election recount in 2000. He was the White House's key media spinner at the Doha Coalition Media Center in 2003. A reporter from Texas said he used techniques first perfected by Stalin. He was an architect of the Republican convention in New York in 2004. He was later dispatched to keep an eye on, and act as "dissembler-in-chief" for Condi Rice.

But at a crucial moment in the history of the Western world, Mr. "I work in the shadows" Wilkinson became chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, the Goldman Sachs embed in the Cabinet.

Operative Wilkinson was then given the assignment of monitoring the world's financial markets in a secret operation modeled no doubt on the great intelligence plan that produced the Iraq War.

Read the rest of the story here.

A Community Problem

Chris Gilbey — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:00:49 +1000

Well, I moved to Berry in January, and I thought that I was going to be part of a beautiful small community where life just meanders on blissfully...

How was I to know that a proposed by pass to the town would change that...

The problem is that some residents on one side of town don't like the decision that the RTA has made about the building of a by pass road to take the trucking traffic away from the town. It seems like this is being driven by several people who are mainly from Sydney and who have weekend houses and are concerned about the proximity of the new road impacting their real estate values. One of the people is apparently connected to the Labour Party in Sydney and is trying to stir up discontent in the town and then motivate his buddies in Sydney.

Here is a video that was shown on State Line putting forward the views of the people who want the RTA study to stand.

My view is that with Peak Oil the state government should be focusing on investing in improving rail transportation rather than spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer's money on building more roads. However, there are probably more votes in building roads than in improving rail.

What has happened now is that a peer review has been commissioned to check the original studies. The problem with this is that I can see this being made into a method of hiding the shenanigans that take place in MacQuarrie Street behind closed doors.

As We Are Distracted, Cheney Moves The World To War

Chris Gilbey — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:54:32 +1000

William Wordsworth wrote sometime in the 1800's:

The world is too much with us, late and soon,
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers...

I remember the quote from school some 50 odd years ago - so hopefully it is right.

But the point is that it so true of us today. We are all pre-occupied with spending, with self, and not with what is really happening.

What is really happening is that Dick Cheney and his buddy, George, are moving the world ever closer to not just another war, which would be bad enough, but a nuclear war.

And whether Iran is good, bad or indifferent, nuclear is not an option in my book. Nor is another unprovoked first strike on another country.

Here is what Paul Craig Roberts has to say about it. (He was the Assistant Secretary to the Treasury during Reagan's time in the WH). Its worth reading the whole article...

The US Congress, the US media, the American people, and the United Nations, are looking the other way as Cheney prepares his attack on Iran.

If only America had an independent media and an opposition party. If there were a shred of integrity left in American political life, perhaps a third act of naked aggression--a third war crime under the Nuremberg standard--by the Bush Regime could be prevented.

On March 30, the Russian News & Information Agency, Novosti, cited a high-ranking security source: "The latest military intelligence data point to heightened US military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran."

According to Novosti, Russian Colonel General Leonid Ivashov said "that the Pentagon is planning to deliver a massive air strike on Iran’s military infrastructure in the near future."

The chief of Russia’s general staff, Yuri Baluyevsky, said last November that Russia was beefing up its military in response to US aggression, but that the Russian military is not "obliged to defend the world from the evil Americans."

On March 29, OpEdNews cited a report by the Saudi Arabian newspaper Okaz, which was picked up by the German news service, DPA. The Saudi newspaper reported on March 22, the day following Cheney’s visit with the kingdom’s rulers, that the Saudi Shura Council is preparing "national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom following experts’ warnings of possible attacks on Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactors."

And Admiral William "there will be no attack on Iran on my watch" Fallon has been removed as US chief of Central Command, thus clearing the way for Cheney’s planned attack on Iran.

The Iranians don’t seem to believe it, despite the dispatch of US nuclear submarines and another aircraft carrier attack group to the Persian Gulf. To counter any Iranian missiles launched in response to an attack, the US is deploying anti-missile defenses to protect US bases and Saudi oil fields.

Two massive failures by the American media, the Democratic Party, and the American people have paved the way for Cheney’s long-planned attack on Iran. One failure is the lack of skepticism about the US government’s explanation of 9/11. The other failure is the Democrats’ refusal to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush for lying to the Congress, the American people, and the world and launching an invasion of Iraq based on deception and fabricated evidence.

If an American president can start a war exactly as Adolf Hitler did with pure lies and not be held accountable, he can get away with anything. And Bush and his evil regime have.

Hitler launched World War II with his invasion of Poland after staging a "Polish attack" on a German radio station. On the night of August 31, 1939, a group of Nazis disguised in Polish uniforms seized a radio station in Germany. Hitler announced that "last night Polish troops crossed the frontier and attacked Germany," a claim no more true than the Bush Regime’s claim that "Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction." Hitler’s lie failed, because his invasion of Poland, which began the next day allegedly in reprisal for the Polish attack, had obviously been planned for many months.

Iran is a beautiful and developed country. It is an ancient civilization. It has attacked no one. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Iran is permitted by the treaty to have a nuclear energy program. The Bush Regime’s case against Iran is based on the Bush Regime’s desire to deny Iran its rights under the treaty.

The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have repeatedly reported that they have found no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Despite all the disinformation from US Gen. Petraeus and other Bush Regime military lackeys, Iran is not arming the Iraqis who are resisting the American occupation.

If Iran were arming insurgents, the insurgents would have two weapons that would neutralize the US advantage in the Iraqi conflict: missiles to knock down US helicopter gunships and rocket-propelled grenades that knock out American tanks. The insurgents do not have these weapons and must construct clumsy anti-tank weapons out of artillery shells. The insurgents are helpless against US air power and cannot mass forces to take on the American troops.

Indiscriminate American violence has reduced Iraq to rubble. The civilian infrastructure is essentially destroyed--electricity, water and sewer systems, medical care and schools. Depleted uranium is everywhere poisoning everyone, including US troops. There is no economy, and half or more of Iraqis are unemployed. Literally no Iraqi family has escaped an injury or a death as a consequence of the US invasion. Millions of Iraqis have become displaced persons. A developed country with a professional middle class has been destroyed because of lies told by the President and Vice President of the US. The Bush Regime’s lies are echoed by a neoconservative media, and have gone unchallenged by the opposition party and an indifferent American public.

In Afghanistan, death and destruction rains on even the smallest village from the air. America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are wars against the civilian populations.

Just as the world could not believe Hitler’s next horror and thus was always unprepared, the Iranians despite all the evidence cannot believe that even the Great Satan would gratuitously attack Iran based on nothing but lies about non-existent nuclear weapons.

Iran’s only chance would be to strike before the US delivers the first blow. Instead of using its missiles to take out the Saudi oil fields and to sink the US aircraft carriers, instead of closing the Strait of Hormuz, instead of arming the Iraqi Shi’ites and moving them to insurgency, Iran is perched like a sitting duck in denial even as the US and its Iraqi puppet Maliki move to eliminate Al Sadr’s Iraqi Shi’ite militia in order to avoid supply disruptions and a Shi’ite rebellion in Iraq when the US attack on Iran comes.

It is important to emphasize that Iran is making no moves toward war. Having tamed, blackmailed, and purchased Congress, the US media, and US allies and puppets, Cheney might delight in the arrogance with which he can now attack Iran free of any restraint or fabricated provocation.

On the other hand, he might cover himself by orchestrating an "Iranian provocation" to justify his attack as a response. But like Hitler’s planned attack against Poland, Cheney’s attack on Iran has long been in the works.

On March 29 the Associated Press reported that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi "poured contempt on fellow Arab leaders" at the Arab summit that day. Gadhafi told the Arab "leaders," many of whom are on the American payroll, that their American masters would turn on them all, just as America turned on Saddam Hussein after using him to fight a proxy war against Iran.

Saddam had once been an ally of Washington, Gadhafi reminded the Arabs, "but they sold him out." Gadhafi told the American puppets, "Your turn is next."

Gadhafi asked, "Where is the Arabs’ dignity, their future, their very existence?" If Arabs remain disunited, he predicted, "they will turn themselves into protectorates. They will be marginalized and turn into garbage dumps."

Indeed, it is this disunity that permits the US to bomb and murder at will in the Middle East.