Couple of quotes

“The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.”

"It is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society."

J. Krishnamurti

Mining tax

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By David Collyer:

Australia is delighted to hear our two world-leading miners, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, announce record profits and giant capital investment programs.

Our pleasure ends right there.

Both these titans are majority owned by foreign interests through the London Stock Exchange. They are effectively headquartered out of London. Management wages are spent there. Most of their dividend streams are channelled through there. The majority of capital gains driven by their swollen profits are enjoyed there.

Can you hear the sucking noise as billions of dollars leave our country every year, never to return?

When mining meant grizzled prospectors panning for gold on remote creeks, it made sense to leave their earnings untaxed. Our world is more complex now.

Mining in Australia is a Goliath. The engineering works to dig up, simply process and move the ore to port are staggering. Rio produced 224 million tonnes of Pilbara iron ore last year; BHP shipped ‘only’ 150 million tonnes. Sure they paid company tax like other corporates. But they didn’t pay for the resource, which belongs to you and me, through the Australian government. And the royalties they pay state governments are laughable.

The new mining tax negotiated by the Gillard government weakens again the proposal in the Henry Review, Australia’s Future Tax System. Treasury estimates the government has sacrificed $60.5 billion over the next ten years. This gap in government revenues will be filled by taxes on you and me, and by providing lower services.

Australian citizens would be rioting in the street if they understood this conspiracy.

The weak new tax falls only on iron ore and coal. BHP’s Olympic Dam contains $1.3 trillion in copper, gold and uranium at current prices. None of this will be subject to the mining tax.

We could sack the Gillard government for being such gormless twits, but the Liberal-National opposition are against the mining tax. They prefer the grossly distorted system we currently have.

Money wasted on the school halls program in the middle of the financial crisis drew strident criticism, yet $60.5 billion in uncollected taxes passes without comment.

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The secular state of Israel-Palestine

A brilliant snippet of this....regarding the future in Israel/Palestine.

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A century ago, G.K. Chesterton identified the fundamental paradox facing critics of religion:

"Men who begin to fight the Church for the sake of freedom and humanity end by flinging away freedom and humanity if only they may fight the Church ... The secularists have not wrecked divine things but the secularists have wrecked secular things, if that is any comfort to them."

Does the same not hold for the advocates of religion? How many defenders of religion started by attacking contemporary secular culture and ended up forsaking any meaningful religious experience?

Similarly, many liberal warriors are so eager to fight anti-democratic fundamentalism that they will throw away freedom and democracy if only they may fight terror. Some love human dignity so much that they are ready to legalize torture - the ultimate degradation of human dignity - to defend it.

As for the Israeli defenders of Jewish purity: they want to protect it so much that they are ready to forsake the very core of Jewish identity.

Self-satisfaction

You'll often hear some people from one political persuasion suggesting that others from a sub-group of another political persuasion are driven by their own sense of self-satisfaction - a sense of self-righteousness that they are doing the 'right' thing while others less thoughtful or sensitive than they are doing or believing the wrong thing.

I am of course referring to the accusations directed at what is thought to be the recycling-organic-yoga-welcome-to-country-green-voting-etc-etc clique

Do they wallow in a sense of self-satisfaction? Well, when they dwell on the righteousness of their lifestyles - yes. But...do people who make these accusations also wallow in a sense of self-satisfaction? Whilst they engage in their labelling and categorising, yes again.

It starts to look like a nasty cycle. One group feels judged, so in an attempt to derive some self-satisfaction (to which we are all entitled, but often struggle to attain), they label another group. The act of labelling and categorising others can generate, even temporarily, a feeling of being above such categorisation - being aware of all points of view and therefore not driven by the same uninformed biases - oooh how self-satisfying!

Feeling thus judged and perhaps a little diminished, the other group (they are starting to sound like opponents now...) dig their righteous heels in, seeking more self-satisfaction. The cycle continues.

One of the catalysts for this nasty cycle is the elephant-in-the-room assumption in the above words - 'groups'. 'Groups' don't make judgements, people do - and usually only a small number of people driven by insecurities. When one feels judged by a categorisable group, rather than an insecure individual - they feel judged by a portion of society - which they can then choose to draw a circle around and find error with.

So if you feel the urge to create a name for, or define and group of people in society based on their lifestyle choice, remember that that 'group' does not believe itself to be living in any way better than you, let them be and deal with the isolated cases of people who consider their way the best way.

"We" are better than "them"

An excellent article by Anthony Lowenstein about Western media and government's two-faced labelling of foreign leaders. When our interests are secure, their atrocities, which our own governments commit on a greater scale to citizens of other nations, are excused . But when their usefulness expires or their actions threaten our interests (e.g. oil price, or idealistic government) they are condemned, quite rightly, as mad men, despots and butchers.

Why? Because of our implicit value judgements that "we" are better than "them".

A lazy post by me, but please read the article and you can make up your own mind.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/44618.html