From the Australian:
BARNABY Joyce, who has built his political career opposing foreign investment, is under fire for hypocrisy after giving his blessing to the sale of two of the Northern Territory’s best known cattle stations to Indonesia’s biggest live cattle importer.
The Agriculture Minister, who two weeks ago asked Australians to “make a big noise” and oppose the Indonesian government’s plan to purchase a million hectares of cattle country, said he supported the latest sale after talking to the Northern Territory cattle industry.
The Santori company – a subsidiary of the Indonesian agribusiness Japfa group – is purchasing two large Northern Territory cattle properties, Riveren and Inverway stations.
Mr Joyce said last night he made the decision to support the sale after talking to northern Australian cattlemen.
“They wanted the sale to go forward,” he said.
The Deputy Nationals Leader said the purchase of the two cattle stations was a joint venture on lease-hold land, that would kick-start the live cattle trade to Indonesia.
He dismissed the charge of hypocrisy, declaring the Greens wanted to “shut down the trade all together” and Labor had created the slump in cattle exports in the first place. “We are just trying to sweep up the dishes they dropped,” he said.
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Mr Joyce’s decision to support the sale is a stark departure from his public call – about two weeks ago, before being appointed to the ministry – for Australians to “make a big noise” and oppose a similar plan from the Indonesian government to buy farmland and raise cattle for the domestic market.
“I cannot possibly see how it is in the national interest, what benefit is it to Australian farmers, to Australian taxpayers, if another entity buys our land to breed their cattle, exports them to their own facilities and pays tax in another country,” Mr Joyce said at the time.
The Nationals deputy leader’s about-face received a mixed reception from his party colleagues yesterday. Some of them have flagged a tough fight on the potential sale of Australia’s largest listed agribusiness, GrainCorp, to US firm Archer Daniels Midland if it is approved by Joe Hockey.
NSW Nationals senator John Williams said Australia should own its own farmland, with the profits going back into regional and rural towns.
“Have the owners of those stations had them on the market for a long time?” Senator Williams said. “Are they desperate to get out? If they can’t get a local buyer, then I wouldn’t blame them for selling to a foreign buyer. But I like to see Australians own our farmland. I want to see the profits of those farms spent locally in our regional towns.”
Queensland LNP MP George Christensen said Mr Joyce was only meeting the demands of industry.
“You have to talk to the local industry, and my understanding is that they are all behind it.
“In that case, as Australia’s Agriculture Minister, he is (fulfilling) the wishes of the Australian agricultural industry,” he said.
Barnaby Is Right 
It appears it is the lease that is being sold. As I have always been told most Northern cattle stations are lease hold, not freehold, which is a completely different kettle of fish. Australian profits from enterprises, whether foreign owned or not pay their Australian taxes. Also their employees in Australia pay Australian taxes. What is the problem ?
Fukushima will see food prices multiply many fold. All Blue Fin Tuna caught off the USA have increases of radiation. Radiation and other pollutants due to ocean currents and wind vectors,tend to keep all this pollution in the northern hemisphere.
When people in the northern hemisphere realise how clean our land is compared to theirs, food and land prices will escalate beyond our reach and that of our children.
Well, looks like a sellout to me. Made all the right sounds before the election and backflips almost immediately after. Indonesia have played us like a fiddle while demanding that we respect their soveriegnty, they must be laughing at us. Australia doesn’t seem to have a clue about it’s own soveriegnty. Of course the farmers want to sell for a profit, the National Interest doesn’t enter into their calculations but it should enter into the calculations of the government.
“The Medium Is The Massage”
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http://theenergycollective.com/rodadams/265286/fear-mongering-over-water-leaks-fukushima-dai-ichi
Be alert – not alarmed
http://deepseanews.com/2012/06/detectable-but-not-hazardous-radioactive-marine-life-of-fukushima/
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“There’s nothing like a terrifying headline to point out how differently scientists and the public see the world. On Monday, a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS) found that Pacific bluefin tuna had carried detectable radiation from the Fukushima meltdown across the Pacific, and the headline freakouts began. As NPR reporter Richard Harris* pointed out, “What snarky headline writer could resist a story about ‘hot tuna?’ Or how about ‘tuna meltdown?’”
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The mere mention of radiation terrifies people – and certainly the Fukushima meltdown was scary. But there’s a big difference between DETECTABLE radiation and HAZARDOUS radiation. The ocean is absolutely filled with detectable radiation, mostly from naturally occurring compounds like potassium-40. There’s human-introduced radiation too – in fact, traces from nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s is used to estimate when deep ocean water last “breathed” at the surface. This doesn’t mean that a watery version of Chernobyl lurks in the deep, just that radioactive materials are sometimes so rare in the world that tiny quantities can be linked to specific happenings.
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The same thing is happening with the Fukushima fallout, at least in the ocean (I can’t speak to radiation on land). Fukushima did increase cesium (Cs) isotopes in waters off Japan by 10–1,000 times, but that’s because previous levels were very, very low. So this increase is DETECTABLE but not HAZARDOUS. (Have you started to notice a theme here?) Same thing for the radiation found in zooplankton and marine fishes in June 2011. From another PNAS study by Buessler et al. released this April:
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Concentration factors—essentially the degree of radionuclide enrichment in biota relative to ambient water—are used to evaluate the radiological risks associated with seafood consumption and were determined by dividing the radionuclide concentration in biota by the dissolved concentration in surface water. Median values were 44 for 137 Cs and 36 for 134 Cs, comparable to the recommended International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) value of 40 for zooplankton….The median concentration of 137 Cs in micronektonic fish (secondary consumers) was less than that in zooplankton (primary and secondary consumers) and about 150-fold below the Japanese legal limit for fish of 500 Bq·kg−1 wet weight.
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So teeny fish in the waters off Japan just a few months after Fukushima had such low levels of radioactivity that they are considered safe to eat under Japanese law. And of this radioactivity, only 10-30% of the total radioactivity found in marine life was attributable to the Fukushima discharges – the rest was from naturally occurring radionuclides, mostly potassium-40.
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So this brings us to the new study by Madigan et al. on big fish that used to be in the waters off Japan, but went and swam over to California – the Pacific bluefin tuna. This study examined 15 juvenile bluefin that were spawned in Japan and caught off San Diego, California. Again, the researchers found a DETECTABLE increase – the bluefin tuna caught in 2011 had total 134+137 Cs concentrations about 10 times higher than bluefin tuna caught in previous years. But was it HAZARDOUS?
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The tuna contained 134 Cs at 4.0 ± 1.4 Bq per kg and 137 Cs at 6.3 ± 1.5 Bq per kg. (Here’s an explanation of the Becquerel (Bq), which is the unit of radioactivity.) In contrast, the FAO limit for both cesium radionuclides in human food (including infant food) is 1,000 Bq per kg. The United States FDA limit is 1,200 Bq per kg. Japan’s limit used to be 500 Bq per kg, but they just lowered it to 100 Bq per kg – but the tuna caught off California contains ten times LESS radiation than even the strictest food limit. What’s the theme? DETECTABLE but not HAZARDOUS. As Richard Harris put it:
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Really, the result is a testament to how well scientists can now measure tiny amounts of radiation. And of course it’s a remarkable lesson in how wildlife can be traced using accidental “tags” instead of using the labor-intensive plastic ones.
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If you are still worried about the cesium from Fukushima, Robert Emery at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston says you’d need to eat 2.5 to 4 tons of tuna in a year to get a dose of cesium-137 that exceeds health limits. That’s a lot of sushi………………..”
Kevin suggest you read articles by Dr Helen Caldicott. New research by 3 Russian scientists show that a million people have died from cancer due to Chernobyl.
Fukushima is far worse and continues to spew radiation into the air and oceans.300 tonnes per day of radioactive water enters the Pacific Ocean since the accident. I’ve seen estimates of 15000 times radiation to that of the Hiroshima.
It is the hot particles that are hard to detect which are the danger since they mimic elements in our bodies and emit radiation in our cells for the rest of our lives. No amount of hot particle radiation is safe.
At Fukushima they are about to remove over 1100 spent fuel rods in reactor 4 and this is dangerous at the best of times. Many of the frames which contain these rods are damaged. If they go up, Dr Caldicott says they will have to evacuate Tokoyo. How do you evacuate 30 million people?
Govts have always lied to us and they are not about to change old habits.
There are over 11,000 spent fuel rods on this site and we’d better hope TEPCO know what they are doing.
It seems that there are extremes of opinion Ross –
http://www.arpansa.gov.au/News/MediaReleases/Japan1YearOn.cfm
A comparison to the Chernobyl accident
“………..The Fukushima and Chernobyl accident both released significant amounts of radioactive material. However, the accidents and the extent of the radioactive releases are different. During the Chernobyl accident, the reactor core was instantaneously destroyed, resulting in a graphite fire that burnt for 10 days releasing large amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere. Some of the workers who dealt with the emergency lost their lives due to acute radiation effects (commonly referred to as acute radiation syndrome (ARS)). This material affected not only the areas close to the accident, but also affected many other countries in Europe. Exposure to radioactive iodine, mainly in food, led to increased thyroid cancer in children living in the affected area. The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation has published a series of reports on the health effects of the Chernobyl accident.
The radioactive releases from the Fukushima Dai-ichi NPP accident have significantly contaminated areas in the Fukushima and surrounding Prefectures, but the radiation levels in other parts of Japan and in countries outside Japan were low and are of minimal health consequence. There were no worker deaths attributed to direct radiation exposures, nor any cases of acute radiation syndrome, but at least six workers exceeded lifetime legal occupational limits for radiation. Exposure to the public from radioactive iodine occurred but protective measures limited this exposure…….”
B.I.,
This is not on topic – just sent it because i thought you would be interested –
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http://therebel.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=699992:joe-vialls-ari-and-jim-stone-in-the-mouse-that-roared&catid=318:andrew-macgregor&Itemid=1229&acm=3891_840
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“………The key to understanding the entire story surrounding Ari ben Menashe, Alexander Henri Legault and the company, ‘Dickens and Madson’ are ‘fairy-tales’ is that when the supposed facts are properly examined, they do not make sense, the time lines are out, and the various legalities are ignored. One of the classic errors is demonstrated in that on the 4th of December 2001, Ari ben Menashe was supposed to have celebrated his 50th birthday at the meeting with Morgan Tsvangirai, yet on the evening of the 3rd/4th of December 2012, somebody forgot to mention what a lovely present the house-fire was for Ari’s 61st birthday.
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The significance of the three men on the Broad Arrow Cafe balcony
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The interesting thing in regard to identifying the three men holding an impromptu meeting on the balcony of the Broad Arrow Cafe shortly after the massacre occurred within the Port Arthur Historic Site was the role each of these men, being Constable Justin Noble, Johannes Overbeeke and Joe Vialls played.
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The BCI (Bureau of Criminal Intelligence) policeman, Constable Justin Noble, is a classic example. Constable Noble was a member of the New South Wales Police, seconded to the BCI which is based in the Federal Attorney General’s Department.
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However, the BCI in Tasmania is actually part of the State of Victoria’s BCI, and when Constable Noble stated that his ‘private’ motor vehicle was registered ‘OEY 903’, which was a new ‘Victorian Motor Registration Authority’ registration number, that informs any experienced person that Constable Noble’s vehicle was in fact his police vehicle. In other words, Constable Justin Noble was ‘on duty’ when he was at the Port Arthur Historic Site on that particular day.
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That simply means that Constable Justin Noble was ‘In Charge’ of the Port Arthur Historic Site part of the government psy-ops. His job would be to report back to his ‘Superior’ exactly how the massacre went down and any possible outcomes that would affect the Federal Attorney General’s Department………’
Thx Kevin.
http://therebel.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=701011:andrew-macgregor-s-rebuttal-of-the-responses-to-his-controversial-jim-stone-article&catid=318:andrew-macgregor&Itemid=1229&acm=3891_857
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http://educate-yourself.org/cn/jimstonethefugitivehero03mar12.shtml
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http://educate-yourself.org/cn/japanquakemanufactured12mar11.shtml
Since Australia began the de-regulation of trade in 1973, the balance of payments has been in chronic deficit. Australia spends more on foreign goods and services than it sells to foreigners. The reason is easy to find; the things we want to buy (cars, i-phones, civil airliners, etc.) are expensive, the things we have to sell (minerals, agricultural commodities, etc.) are not. To balance the national ledger we need to either get new investment from foreigners, borrow money from them or sell them stuff we already have. The current balance of payments deficit is around $50 billion a year. Barnaby Joyce may have his heart in the right place, but the fact is that Australians will have to sacrifice economic sovereignty for so long as this deficit persists. The best solution is to re-impose controls on imports, re-regulate the currency and apply industrial policy to recover some of the manufacturing that we’ve lost to cheap labour countries. Australia’s a bit like a family that’s earning $100k a year and spending $105k while eating out at restaurants most nights. This can work for a while, until the savings are gone and the credit cards are maxxed out, but eventually the decision has to be made; either earn more dough or start eating at home.
wheras , with the rest of the world than it earns
“…re-impose controls on imports, re-regulate the currency and apply industrial policy to recover some of the manufacturing that we’ve lost…”
From my perspective, you’re preaching to the converted here Craig. Actually, not just with this bit, but your entire comment. We’re on the same wavelength.
Politics is about giving the “appearance of solidity to pure wind”.
http://andrewgavinmarshall.com/2013/10/07/empire-under-obama-part-1-political-language-and-the-mafia-principles-of-international-relations/
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“…..When it comes to words like “democracy,” Orwell wrote: “It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.”………
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……..Thus, noted Orwell: “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms… All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia… But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can be spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.” Political language, wrote Orwell, “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
We all have to realise that change has always comes from the grass roots where the pain is the greatest. Barnaby Joyce is just another polly whose past suffering is long forgotten.
Real change always comes from the masses and we cannot rely any perceived hero to make freedom a reality.
Yep, well said Ross.
You need to realise that’ll was the old Barnaby who railed against land sale to foreigners. The new Barnaby thinks it’s ok now he is in government. Call it the Garret syndrome.
Fiscal responsibility. That’s the old Barnaby. New Barnaby has got his snout in the trough. Weddings, parties, anything can be called a study trip if you just look at it in the right light. Might be an idea to call the sight “Barnaby was right”. Because he won’t be rocking the boat now he’s settled in to his bigger office.