Kudos to Kelvin Thompson, federal Labor MP, for having the courage to stand up to the “eternal growth” fools who currently dictate economic and development policies in the western world and point out that excessive population growth is the root cause of most of our serious problems.

It is time for governments and policy makers around the world to come to their senses and take steps to stabilise the world’s population,” he said. “It needs to happen in every country, including here in Australia – especially here in dry, arid Australia.

This probably qualifies Mr Thompson as a member of the ‘green fascists’ that The Australian is always banging on about.

In short: housing is extremely expensive in Australia; we may well be in line for a major correction in house prices; and there appears to be an oversupply of housing, not the oft-cited undersupply.

It’s very interesting to note that for all the talk of how Gen X/Y should just tighten their belts, learn some financial discipline and put in the hard yards to save money if they want to purchase a house, the ratio of income to housing in Australia is far, far worse today than it was in the 1980s, or indeed up until about 1997.  It will be a disaster for the future of the country if an entire generation is talked into excessive debt and then left with houses worth only a fraction of what was paid for them, rising unemployment and rising interest rates.  If that does happen I trust that the real estate institutes, bankers and politicians who constantly talk up the housing market will be the first against the wall.

Similar issues are canvassed in this piece in today’s Age, which is also a good read (and less economics-heavy).

It’s often tempting to think that politicians are all the same and that the Obama administration in reality represents only a miniscule shift towards the centre.  In reality, this seems to be another sign that the Obama administration is prepared to operate in wholly “reality based” environment rather than the “faith based” administration of Bush (and Blair).  In Obama’s America, a war on a concept is seemingly no longer a valid way to describe foreign policy.

The War on Terror has dominated our lives in the West for nearly a decade now.  I doubt many will mourn its passing.

George Bush looks bored. The Supreme Court looks extremely cranky. The Clintons look like they’re listening but don’t look all that happy about the whole situation. Dick Cheney looks like Darth Vader. Al Gore looks like an alien…

(thanks to Joe)

Despite the fact that (a) the laws have nothing to do with bikies per se and can be applied to virtually any organisation in an unreviewable and arbitrary manner and (b) the fact that there is no evidence so far that they actually work at all, and indeed evidence that laws like this don’t work, it seems the South Australian government now well and truly has the bit between its teeth.

Today the SA Police Commissioner has indicated that there are more laws on the way which assume guilt and require the accused witch and/or bikie to prove his or her innocence. It sounds like these ones will be based on prior convictions, whereby a person who has “unexplained” assets and has previously been convicted of a criminal offence will be liable to have those assets seized unless they can prove how they came by them.

You need to look at seizing their assets; we’re looking at new laws, one of them is about unexplained wealth, where you don’t have to prove the connection with committing crime, where you’ve got somebody with a criminal history and they have a certain amount of assets and no known income,

Commissioner Mal Hyde tells us.  He goes on to explain that:

…it should be up to them to show that it has been legitimately acquired and, if not, then it should be able to be seized, so that’s one of the new pieces of legislation being considered

Now, based on Mal’s offhand remarks, I’m guessing that Magna Carta and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights aren’t part of the SA Police basic training program, but here are some tips, Mal:

• Article 17 of the Universal Declaration states that “(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others” and “(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.”  If you are wondering, Mal, the Universal Declaration is an international document setting out the commonly agreed basic rights to which all humans are entitled.  For the avoidance of doubt, people who ride motorbikes, criminals, and Commissioners of Police are all examples of “humans”.
• Magna Carta, Mal, although of mostly symbolic relevance today in that it underpins the common law and many of the basic premises of liberal democracy, clearly pointed out in its 1297 iteration that it’s not ok for the police to roll around seizing stuff from people they don’t like the looks of: “No constable or other bailiff of ours shall take the corn or other chattels of any one except he straightway give money for them, or can be allowed a respite in that regard by the will of the seller. “
• Magna Carta also pointed out a few home truths about the problems which arise when arbitrary executive decisions replace due process: “No bailiff, on his own simple assertion, shall henceforth any one to his law, without producing faithful witnesses in evidence. “
• And of course, Magna Carta 1297 (did I mention that it is “widely regarded as one of the most important documents in the history of democracy” according to the UK National Archives, Mal?) stated more fundamentally that “NO Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs…”

So, to summarize, because we don’t like organised crime (and despite what various members of the SA Government would say in light of the foregoing, I don’t like it either), we propose to abandon wholesale:

• the presumption of innocence (again);
• the notion that no-one will be deprived of property without due process of law;
• the crazy idea that the state actually prove that someone acquired something illegally before it is taken from them by force of law; and
• the notion that it should not be within the power of law enforcement to arbitrarily seize and retain assets.

This goes along with those things we have already abandoned:

• freedom of association;
• presumption of innocence more generally and the notion that actual evidence is generally required before personal freedoms are interfered with;
• the idea that if rights and freedoms should ever be interfered with by a law, it should be with maximum oversight and to the smallest extent possible to achieve the objective of the law in question.

Greg Barns helpfully summarises the effect of SA’s current anti-association laws as follows:

The new law gives the Attorney-General the right to call an organisation, which could be anything from an informal group of people who meet at the local pub for a weekly drink through to a football club or a business, a declared organisation. The Attorney-General just has to be satisfied that he thinks that members of the organisation associate for the purpose of planning, organising, facilitating or engaging in serious criminal activity-which is basically anything except traffic offences-and that the organisation represents a risk to public safety and order. The Attorney-General can use secret and untested evidence in making that declaration, and his decision can’t be challenged in the courts.

The Commissioner of Police can ask a court to make a Control Order against a person if that person is a member of a declared organisation, or regularly associates with members of the declared organisation. A Control Order may be issued by a court without giving any notice to the person affected and the Order can stop people from even speaking with members of a declared organisation or going anywhere near where members might happen to be. Once again, these Orders can be made on secret evidence that the person affected cannot see.

And if a friend of yours is subject to a Control Order or is a member of a Declared Organisation and you meet with them six times or more in one year you can go to jail for up to five years.

And finally, the icing on the cake. The SA police have the power to make a Public Safety Order if they are satisfied that a person or a group of people pose a serious risk to public safety or security.

Even if a person or a group is gathered somewhere for a protest rally or a strike action, the police can still make a Public Safety Order and have them removed from the area. These Orders can even be made on the spot, verbally, by the police.

I looked at the Act back in early 2008 when it was still a bill.  And of course I’ve mentioned before that this same benevolent SA Government is the one which is spying on random ‘citizens of interest’ for no known reason.

No doubt these new laws will be tailored to address the particular problem with the same level of care and attention to detail as the current SA “bikie” laws, i.e. none.  Although of course, by some strange quirk the legislation will be inapplicable to current and former politicians and high profile business people.

In summary, the big labels know that people paying $30/album and $2/track for recorded music is not going to last forever, and have plans in place to deal with that eventuality. Those plans seem to mostly revolve around artists being beholden to the labels not only in terms of copyright in their recordings, but every other aspect of their professional lives too – performance, endorsements, mandatory blood donations, sexual services and so forth.

The really warm and fuzzy part, though, is that they are well aware that they are completely pissing off most of their current users by employing super-aggressive litigation tactics and generally behaving like dickheads.  But the thing is, you see, that

spreadsheets and financial models dictate that suing customers and partners just makes too much sense

I’ve written about the music industry’s war on its customers before. This kind of frank acknowledgement is exactly the kind of “fuck you” that reminds us that these aren’t just bumbling incompetents with no clue what they’re doing, naively floundering in a high tech future they were never ready for – they are ruthless pirhanas determined to cheat, scratch and claw their way to every cent they can get their filthy hands on.  Like a good political organisation, they are able to cover their pure cynicism with a helpful layer of feigned cluelessness.

Even at this very moment they are doing their best to brutally aurally violate Australians even further by charging outrageous amounts for the honour of having terrible music blasted in gyms (one of the many reasons I don’t go to the things).  Apparently $4.54/month PER GYM MEMBER is totally reasonable in exchange for having a shit Rogue Traders song which flagrantly rips off Elvis Costello blasted into your ears while you extreem-yogacize (aside: more on jerks who rip off Elvis Costello’s Pump It Up here).

However, there is an answer.  For you see, at present, we are all filthy, filthy collaborators.  Every artist who signs for a major label; every consumer who pays a cent of money to these people so that they can continue to molest us.  We are, quite literally, funding frivolous lawsuits against ourselves by buying products from major labels.

So, here’s my random five point plan:

• stop buying music if any of your money will go to a major label;
• do support artists like Nine Inch Nails who have chosen to go label free by offering free downloads combined with optional non-free stuff which is actually good and worth owning;
• do support independent labels who do not demonise you in exchange for your custom;
• do go to as much reasonably-priced live music as possible; and
• start paying attention in a political context to the terrible, regressive amendments which are slipped into our copyright laws year after year to enforce these dying monopolies – politicians should care more about what the general public wants than a select group of corporations, yet those corporations have almost 100% of the influence when it comes to lawmaking in this area.

And for $5 per gym member per month, it would be well worth it for most gyms with a few hundred members to hire their own musicians.  You know, real music, performed by humans with talent.  There is certainly no shortage of underemployed musicians going around…

I noticed some very sensible remarks in relation to this article at Larvatus Prodeo from a guy calling himself “hannah’s dad” who actually lives on the Murray and is seeing the destruction of the lower river system first hand.  In particular, this seems to be the indisputable truth:

There is only one perspective that will solve the problem, it has been recommended by studies and reports but essentially ignored.

Too hard politically.

That is to treat the entire river as a catchment and drainage basin as nature has organized it.

Firstly, allocate TO THE RIVER the amount of water it requires to be healthy. Which is probably double or treble or even more the current ‘environmental’ flows. [As an aside the river level has dropped more than a metre in my region in the last month or so and the ferry landings are going to need rebuilding so the ferries can operate.]

Secondly, allocate the necessary amount needed for URBAN purposes, after all this is people we are talking about and they need bugger all when you look at the numbers. 2 million or so people use a fraction of the water used for irrigation.

Finally, irrigation can have what is left over.

And if that is not enough to sustain present levels of irrigation, and it won’t be, then something will have to be done about that won’t it?
But the point is that there is simply not enough water for all at the moment and its NOT going to get any better in the future, probably worse.

Stupidly, these ideas would be regarded as extremist, ‘un-Australian’ and just not worth discussing in the national discourse on this topic.  So strong is the desire to serve political expediency that actual rationality is being completely excluded from the discussion.

As well as talking a lot of sense, some of what he has to say is just incredibly depressing.  Like this:

We had a bat detector at our place for a week some years ago back in the good ol’ days when we had water.
Its a recording device which measures the ultra sound calls of bats and then identifies them by those calls.
We had 9 different species of bat flying around for each night of that week, I had no idea there were that many species.
One was Myotis macropus [or adversus], Large-footed Bat, so called because it flies over the smooth lagoon waters trailing its feet in the water and catching tiny fish with the aid of its sonar. It weighs 8 grams for Pete’s sake.
It’s tiny.
There is no lagoon anymore.

It’s one thing to be slightly paralyzed by a problem as massive as global warming – but it’s something else entirely that we have an obvious problem, an obvious solution, and instead of solving the problem just sitting back and helplessly watching an entire ecosystem die right before our eyes.

Happy news

Of course the NSW police would never, for example, be corrupt, so there’s no need to worry about planting evidence or other abuses of the power or anything like that.  And as always, those who obey the law have nothing to fear from the police secretly going through their private possessions and emails while they are away on holiday.  So that’s fine then.

Meanwhile here in South Australia, the State Government has been building files on thousands of innocent people who have seemingly done little to bring themselves to the attention of the powers-that-be.  The files include:

well-known business people, company directors, sports personalities, people in the entertainment industry, religious groups, the media and legal profession

So, yes.  I’m not exactly sure why we bothered with that whole World War II thingo, might have been cheaper to just let the Germans impose an efficient police state on us rather than killing them and then building our own over the course of the next 60 years.

I only hope Labor is serious about a national charter of rights, although I have my doubts at this stage.  The proposals currently in vogue generally make it a trivial exercise for governments to sidestep their operation with the stroke of a pen.

So why do we persist in calling trade agreements with countries that lack basic labour and environmental standards “free” trade agreements?

Prediction 1: in 20 years we will look back and wonder why the hell we didn’t realise that we were trading the basic modern standards we have fought for for and developed over the last century or so for cheaper goods and services in the short term.

Things are only “cheaper” to make in these countries in instant dollar terms – the actual costs are borne by the workers there who suffer extraordinarily poor conditions, the workers here who lose their jobs or have their conditions eroded in the name of ‘competitiveness’ and ‘efficiency’, and by all of us who live in a degraded and polluted environment thanks to outsourcing our productive industries to countries with poor environmental standards.

Prediction 2: at some point in the future, the notion of ‘protectionism’ will be revised to permit the imposition of tariffs on countries whose standards fall significantly below our own in order to defend those standards in our own country and remove the economic incentive to exploit labour and destroy the environment.  It will be recognised that there is a distinction between using trade barriers to protect inefficient industries and using trade barriers to protect legitimate human rights and environmental standards.

As Robert A Heinlein put it, TANSTAAFL (“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”, a theme in Heinlein’s novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress).

I find it very disturbing to read words put forward by Telstra which closely mirror my own views.  I wonder if I have woken up in some kind of parallel universe, or perhaps I have become a being of pure evil myself and suddenly Telstra’s views and my own coincide for that reason.  There are also odd overtones of A Christmas Carol – has the Ghost of Christmas Present touched Telstra’s cold, corporate heart by showing it the sight of Australian families weeping around their Internet bills for $12,323 in excess use charges for December?  Anyway, Telstra says, for example, that the common law alone is too ‘soft’ to support human rights and:

The more responsive but equally unsatisfactory notion of responsibility to parliaments – the slim convention of ministerial responsibility – is also no substitute for clearly articulated, enshrined, human rights protections.

The notion of ‘speaking truth to power’ usually gets applied to the courageous little guy fighting for what is right, not the hive-mind megacorporation fighting for… well, something:

The available data suggests that Australia’s human rights record does not compare overwhelmingly favourably with other countries.

There is a hint in the article linked above to Telstra’s true motivation: corporate self-interest, of course:

However, Telstra says in its submission that apart from a general concern for human rights, the company is particularly interested in values such as due process and free speech, “given the highly regulated nature of much of its business”.

In other words, Telstra realises that it is in the difficult position of being a private company which, despite privatisation, is almost entirely controlled by the political whims of the Federal Government, and it wants to have stronger positive rights to throw back at its former masters when things don’t go to suit it.  No doubt it finds the idea that every ministerial decision be subject to a raft of reviewable rights which it can then unleash its extremely high powered legal resources on is very appealing.

Realising that strong systems of due process and accountability are an effective way to achieve independence shows an unusually high degree of insight and creative thinking for such a big, slow moving organisation.  I still loathe many aspects of Telstra – case in point, the guy I saw on TV in a story about the Victorian bushfires who had just returned to his destroyed home to find nothing but his mailbox with a Telstra bill in it (one assumes that Telstra’s billing department has some manner of robotic, fire-proof suit to deliver bills in firestorms and make sure that no-one can shirk their obligations through wussy excuses like “my entire home was razed to the ground”).

But if the push for a serious set of human rights in this country gets a boost from Telstra’s considerable financial and propaganda resources that’s absolutely fine by me.  I just hope no-one mentions to it that it’s not actually human, and therefore may find it hard to take advantage of human rights…