The Latest on Civil Rights in Australia

I suppose that anyone with access to a radio, television, a newspaper, or a vocal next door neighbour, has been hearing about what's happening in the Northern Territory of Australia.

An "emergency response" to a report on the levels of child sexual abuse (among other things) that is happening within indigenous communities.

The army, the police, and a horde of public servants have been dispatched to Central and northern Australia to deal with this 'emergency'.

The levels of child sexual abuse, petrol sniffing, alcohol abuse, ill health, violence, lack of education, inadequate housing etc. etc. have been known about for at least the last decade.

So what's new? Why is it an emergency today that requires a level of intervention that appears to be virtually unprecedented?

Some cynical observers have noted that it is an election year and that the Howard government has a history of creating media "beat ups" when it wishes to focus attention away from those areas where it is vulnerable and shift attention to "crises" - whether they are real or unreal.

Take the "children overboard" example from a few years ago.

Perhaps that's true, perhaps not. Regardless of what past history has suggested about the motivation of the current government, every citizen of this country needs to ask whether we are heading towards a form of fascism.

What's to stop the government in future deciding that some other group in society that it singles out is not acting 'responsibly'?

In Hitler's Germany there were certain groups who were singled our for "special treatment" and we know how that little experiment in social engineering ended up.

Is this the thin edge of the wedge for Australia? Are indigenous people just the first group selected who are likely to "require government intervention" so that they can "manage their lives responsibly"?

There are some realistic questions that need to be asked - for example:

1. is the government seriously trying to deal with internal domestic issues by sending in the armed forces?
   
   If so, this does NOT augur well for the way in which this democracy has progressed over the years. The army should be available to deal with security issues or when an external force invades or threatens to invade our country. At a pinch, it could be sent in to rescue people who have been devastated by the impact of a catastrophic natural or man made disaster.
   
   To use the armed forces in this context simply sets a precedent which I believe is unfortunate and dangerous.
   
   I have no quarrel with the reality that the armed forces represent a resource that is "available" in the remote regions in which this intervention is planned.
   
   I have no quarrel with the fact that the army actually has the resources in place to provide a whole range of services that may be needed.
   
   The message that is sent to those of us who are not involved however, is as follows - if we accept that it's OK to use the armed forces in this context then we also tacitly accept that it is OK to use the armed forces in other domestic contexts.
   
   This is NOT something I am prepared to accept.
   
   
2. Is the government entitled to simply step in and hold back people's entitlements to social security payments, because it considers that they are unable or unwilling to manage their money responsibly?
   
   I don't think so!
   
   What this type of action indicates is that there is a risk that any one of us, at some future time, is at the mercy of some decision making that could strip us of our entitlements to a pension or an allowance.
   
   Let's not get cute about this - if we permit this to happen for indigenous persons, whatever the pretext and however well intentioned it may seem in this instance, it opens the flood gates to the opportunity to abuse our rights.
   

It sets a precedent and - at least in my view - is paternalistic and racist in the extreme!

It's not for me to comment on the legality of what the Federal government is doing - that's for people who are interested in civil rights and the law.

My concern is that both sides of politics support this unprecedented intervention AND that if it goes unchallenged, it threatens our civil rights by setting a precedent that can be exploited by any future government when it declares an emergency!

Civil rights are obviously suspended for indigenous people, a locally elected government is bypassed and an all knowing and all powerful central bureaucracy takes over and anyone who protests is labelled as hysterical, a supporter of child abuse, a pedophile or worse.

I have no issue with the government taking swift action to ensure that children are protected from harm.

I do have concerns about how this is being done.

I do NOT want to be one of the silent majority who permitted what I think of as fascism, to arise in this country. I know from my reading of history that this is irresponsible.

Something needs to be done to ensure that the children are protected, but that something is NOT what the Howard government is doing.

Getting older

I was reading some of the news today about the oldest man in the world a Japanese Tomoji Tanabe, a 111-year-old resident of Miyakonojo. Born in September 1895 apparently. The oldest woman currently alive is also Japanese.

Maybe there is something to this story about hard work and fish as the main item of the diet - alternately - it could just be good genes I guess.

I keep wondering what it would be like to be 111 or in her case 114 years old? As someone who has not as yet managed to reach the three score years - much less the three score and ten which seems to be mentioned (if not promised) in biblical references I have to say I am envious.

Just imagine what it must be like to have lived not once but twice the life span that is mentioned in biblical accounts.

Water on Mars?

There are two interesting stories about findings on Mars that may well have some significant impacts for the planet we happen to live on.

One story header is:

"Mars Pole Holds Enough Ice to Flood Planet, Radar Study Shows"

Another has:

"Mars Once Had Oceans, New Evidence Suggests"

It is really this second header that is important for what we are experiencing on this planet. The story goes on to say:

"The researchers believe that Mars's poles, along with the axis the planet spins on, have moved about 1,850 miles (3,000 kilometers) during the past two or three billion years. The process, known as "true polar wander" can cause dramatic topographic changes in a planet's surface—in this case making the once-flat shorelines rise and fall over enormous distances.

The phenomenon occurs because planets contain irregular and shifting distributions of mass. Any change in the distribution of a planet's mass, whether on its surface or in its interior, will make it spin around a different axis as it shifts areas of large mass to its equator—the area farthest from the rotation axis."

What interested me in this story was that any change in the distribution of the planet's mass can cause dramatic changes in the topography.

We KNOW that the ice caps on our planet are melting faster than they should, we think we know that the nature of the water trapped in the ice of our polar regions is NOT salt water, but fresh water.

So what will be the effect of the melt?

On the one hand it is blatantly obvious, if it is indeed fresh water, that there is likely to be a change in the salinity content of the oceans of the world.

What effect this will have on life in the oceans is moot.

Another blatantly obvious effect of global warming could be that certain species which are entirely temperature dependent - for example Loggerhead turtles whose gender is dependent on the temperature in the nest into which eggs have been laid could be decimated by the combined effects of the rise in water surface and temperatures.

Another effect could - based on the information we are gathering, be to change the way that mass is distributed on the surface.

A rise in ocean levels alters, by definition, the way that the mass of that water is distributed over the surface of the planet.

Since the mass is no longer contained at the poles, but is likely to spread towards the equator, it seems obvious that the spin rate of the planet will most likely slow. As this takes place - will it be responsible for massive shifts in the molten liquid core of the planet as well? If so what will this mean for life on the surface?

It's not likely to happen in my lifetime - but the possible impacts of such massive geological changes simply stagger the imagination.

When we talk about global warming perhaps what we are NOT talking about is the extent to which we are making changes that will inevitably impact on our ability to continue to inhabit this planet.

Will people with a lot more education about these things than I have actually care to enter a comment that will be reassuring to me and others?

Speaking entirely for myself, it would be nice to know - for a change - that I am not only wrong but simply WAY off base!

The state of the economy

Isn't it marvellous, that just when you want to escape from the vagaries of the whole political debate that is almost overpowering at "lets get to the election" time the worlds suddenly closes in around you and it is almost impossible to escape the drivel that permeates our environment.

Just today sitting and listening to the politicians have a 'meaningful' discussion during the last few days of the parliamentary sitting before the winter break there was one senior politician who shall remain nameless extolling the virtues of the hard work undertaken by the government to 'get the economy right'.

I used the word drivel a little earlier because that is exactly what it is. There is no hard work required to understand that there is a once in a century opportunity that has come about no thanks to the Australian government - of any persuasion. The fact of the matter is that the Chinese and the Indians have finally become part and parcel of the developing world and as such they have begun the process of changing the shape of the world around them.

Two nations with some of the biggest and poorest populations on the planet have finally entered the domain of becoming manufacturing countries. It is not surprising that considering their wages structure most industries would make a beeline to help set up factories in China and India to take advantage of cheaper production costs so that everyone can make a profit.

China is Australia's largest trading partner and as such we sell to them all of the raw products that we have in abundance (at least for now) and in return we obtain from them most of the manufactured goods that we use in daily life. Have a look at the things you can buy in the stores these days and check out how many items you have purchased at the end of your shopping spree. Separate the items into categories of where they were made. You may be shocked at the number of items that were made in China and India. Then again maybe you will not be shocked - maybe you will simply thank your lucky stars that you can buy all these things at the prices that you can afford.

If and as you think about things you will also realise that in Australia our full employment is likely to be less attributable to the hard work of the government - as they claim and more likely due to the inevitable ageing of the population so that as people head off into retirement and there are fewer jobs in the manufacturing sector so there are still jobs around in the service sectors and elsewhere that are being vacated at a rate of knots by those heading off into retirement - more than enough to soak up the number of children moving from childhood into the adult earning years. Indeed there are those who suggest that we actually require some hefty migration into the country to try and keep pace with the growth in all those industries and the lass that is being occasioned by the departure of many baby boomers into retirement.

What happens in the next ten to twenty years will be interesting to watch for those people who are still around. Some of us who may not be so fortunate as to see the eventual results can only contemplate a fantasy of what the world could look like in say ten to twenty years time.

I would worry more if I was living in the USA than I do in Australia. This continent is still relatively unexplored and uninhabited and given our resources it is likely to survive at least the next 50 years in relative comfort as all of our natural resources are sought to fuel the world economy.

I am most unlikely to see what happens in that time frame however I can certainly foresee the day when our natural resources - something we seem to take for granted are becoming scarcer and scarcer while our populations continue to increase in size and use up more and more of those resources more and more quickly.

To be perfectly honest I am somewhat glad that I am unlikely to live long enough to have to worry about it!

From Management Issues.com

Does having a tyrannical boss leave any kind of lasting imprint on the employee - or are employees just fond of complaining?

Well, that is the headline. It's interesting to speculate about who is complaining about whom more often.

Bosses maintain that all they are doing is taking younger employees and trying to instill in them some sense of a work ethic, propriety, respect for due process etc. while employees complain about their bosses being too hard on them.

It's all a bit of a "Catch 22" (if you aren't old enough to know what this means - LOOK IT UP!) on the one hand I am sure that there are ogres among the bosses and really incompetent and slack younger workers, but then again it has ever been thus.

What worries me of course is whether some of the younger generation of people in the UK and in Australia realise that there are really ambitious and hard working people by the BILLIONS in some of the less well developed parts of the world who are NOT conditioned to expect high wages, rights, and easy times?

As these people try to make their fortune in the world of business and work, the competition will become really fierce.

If there is a boss out there who is trying to ensure that some reality enters the heads of staff that expect to chat through the day, watch a video, listen to a CD, browse the web, or just slope off because work is all too dreadful and stressful, I say, "Good on you! Keep it up - it's not harassment to try and drum something like common sense into the heads of people who appear to have none!"

And if you want to complain about THAT then find someone who cares!