Dear Mr Tony Burke, MP,
I don't expect that this letter in and of itself will make a jot of difference to the decision you have made to support the Gunns pulp mill project.
The fact that you lifted and used, word for word, company propaganda which has been long since debunked as blatant confabulation in your sales pitch to foreign investors, suggests that whatever relationship you have with Mr Gay is well and truly established.
You appear to represent the forces that are behind the steady and conscious erosion of quality in our natural world.
You are short term fiscal gain at the expense of my kid's future.
You are the merchant mentality gone mad.
You are economic fundamentalism.
You are the sale of life and breath for profit.
This much is obvious and in that you are not alone. You are surrounded by peers of your own ilk. Why, you probably believe most people think like you because you might not meet those who think otherwise very often, and when you do, they are shouting their message at you from an AFP maintained distance.
Am I right?
Just know, Mr Burke, that you are not a representative of the majority. You might not care what happens to a world that you won't have to live in for more than a few more decades, but being a politician you might care how you will be remembered in history.
Make no mistake Mr. Burke, moves are afoot to ensure that men like you are forever connected, personally, with the decisions that they make whilst in the offices that we, the people, award them.
For too long your class of person have massaged the machinery of mnemonic impunity.
No longer.
You might have gone to school with or joined the same clubs as the men who run the corporations that are eating our future... However, for once, why don't you try something different.
Do what's right for all of our futures instead of hiding behind the pathetic and discredited pseudo-excuses of "jobs" and "economy" to justify your decisions to act in support of your peers investment portfolios.
The age of mnemonic impunity is past. You will be remembered Mr. Burke.
Will it be as the man who sold our inheritance for short term gain and favours to mates? Or will it be as a man in that rarefied strata of leaders who acted to protect something for those who are not yet amongst us.
Don't forget, they will remember you too.
Yours, very sincerely,,
Friday, July 08, 2011
Letter to 4 Corners.
A letter to the ABC "4 Corners" comments page in response to the Australian reaction to revelations about the serious mistreatment of Australian livestock being exported live to Indonesia.
We make many inferences about the nature of foreign cultures based on their approach to ethical challenges. We point our judgmental fingers at cultures who eat endangered wildlife. We cry foul at administrations who execute political dissidents. We have no time for traditions in which the abuse of women is endemic.
Recently, incontrovertible evidence came to light of pointless, gut-wrenching and routine torture of Australian cattle at the hands of our business partners in Indonesia.
The researchers who brought these facts to the attention of the Australian public randomly picked a handful of abattoirs from amongst hundreds of similar Australian built operations. What they found was the systemic torture of the animals being processed in facilities paid for by Australian tax dollars at the hands of Australian trained personnel.
To their credit, Australians everywhere were shocked into action and as a result, the live export industry was taken to task and the trade to Indonesia was put on hold.
In the age old battle between ethics and profit, it looked, for a day or two, like we took the moral high ground. Very rare in today's Australia.
How quickly the tide turns. Since the suspension of this despicable practice, the airwaves have been saturated with the plaintive wails of "poor bugger me" from representatives of the cattle industry. What are we to think of these people who present the argument that their livelihoods should take precedence over the welfare of the very creatures upon which their wealth is built?
Is profit a sufficient argument for the turning of a blind eye to what we know is occurring at the cattle's final destination?
The industry would have us believe that these randomly chosen facilities are anomalies that don't represent the otherwise excellent animal husbandry employed by the Indonesian side of their partnership.
Exactly how stupid do these spokespeople think we are?
It is not going to stop and it is not limited to the outfits into which the cameras were taken. It is in the workplace culture that this horrifying cruelty resides. It's built into the machinery that these animals are driven through; machinery that we helped to build and which we continue to feed.
If we, as a society, continue to permit these crimes of abject cruelty and worse yet, to supply the victims to these monstrous facilities, then we as a society belong in the ranks of the cultures who's civility we ourselves question.
For the first time since the dark years of Howard the Black Heart, I am feeling shame as an Australian.
I've also stopped eating beef. Not because I fear for the treatment of livestock in Australian abattoirs, but rather because I refuse to give a cent to an industry who would knowingly feed their animals into this ongoing atrocity and then seek to justify their choice of business partners without reference to the much greater moral question. If more of us make the same choice, how will that sit with your precious profits.
We make many inferences about the nature of foreign cultures based on their approach to ethical challenges. We point our judgmental fingers at cultures who eat endangered wildlife. We cry foul at administrations who execute political dissidents. We have no time for traditions in which the abuse of women is endemic.
Recently, incontrovertible evidence came to light of pointless, gut-wrenching and routine torture of Australian cattle at the hands of our business partners in Indonesia.
The researchers who brought these facts to the attention of the Australian public randomly picked a handful of abattoirs from amongst hundreds of similar Australian built operations. What they found was the systemic torture of the animals being processed in facilities paid for by Australian tax dollars at the hands of Australian trained personnel.
To their credit, Australians everywhere were shocked into action and as a result, the live export industry was taken to task and the trade to Indonesia was put on hold.
In the age old battle between ethics and profit, it looked, for a day or two, like we took the moral high ground. Very rare in today's Australia.
How quickly the tide turns. Since the suspension of this despicable practice, the airwaves have been saturated with the plaintive wails of "poor bugger me" from representatives of the cattle industry. What are we to think of these people who present the argument that their livelihoods should take precedence over the welfare of the very creatures upon which their wealth is built?
Is profit a sufficient argument for the turning of a blind eye to what we know is occurring at the cattle's final destination?
The industry would have us believe that these randomly chosen facilities are anomalies that don't represent the otherwise excellent animal husbandry employed by the Indonesian side of their partnership.
Exactly how stupid do these spokespeople think we are?
It is not going to stop and it is not limited to the outfits into which the cameras were taken. It is in the workplace culture that this horrifying cruelty resides. It's built into the machinery that these animals are driven through; machinery that we helped to build and which we continue to feed.
If we, as a society, continue to permit these crimes of abject cruelty and worse yet, to supply the victims to these monstrous facilities, then we as a society belong in the ranks of the cultures who's civility we ourselves question.
For the first time since the dark years of Howard the Black Heart, I am feeling shame as an Australian.
I've also stopped eating beef. Not because I fear for the treatment of livestock in Australian abattoirs, but rather because I refuse to give a cent to an industry who would knowingly feed their animals into this ongoing atrocity and then seek to justify their choice of business partners without reference to the much greater moral question. If more of us make the same choice, how will that sit with your precious profits.
Letter to ABC forum on live cattle export to Indonesia.
This letter was sent as a response to a forum discussion on ABC about live export in which someone commented on the new head of the RSPCA. The contributor felt that this person was inserted into the NGO executive to weaken the organisations ability to pursue their charter.
Well said. What we're seeing here is just another example of the "Howardian" subversion of ethical and scientific organisations for whom immediate profit is a secondary concern. These groups exist to take amoral, profiteering industries to task and force us as a society to consider our ethical position in the face of the temptation to abuse the creatures and environment from which we derive our wealth.
The CSIRO, the EPA, the WWF and many other public and private offices for ethical and scientific thought were openly and deliberately infected by Howard's apparatchiks who vetted the output of those offices so as to minimize the inconvenience to the rapacious agenda of that time. Many members of those organisations quit in disgust and despair as a result of the bullying and sidelining they experienced at the hands of those carefully recruited sociopaths managing their workplaces. It was and is a spectacularly effective technique for the taming of NGOs who's charter is to counter the greed-driven feeding frenzy that is our modern corporatocracy.
Why would those same forces not infect the RSPCA at this time of critical reassessment of our moral obligations to the animals we are driving, conscious, through the grinders to our north.
Well said. What we're seeing here is just another example of the "Howardian" subversion of ethical and scientific organisations for whom immediate profit is a secondary concern. These groups exist to take amoral, profiteering industries to task and force us as a society to consider our ethical position in the face of the temptation to abuse the creatures and environment from which we derive our wealth.
The CSIRO, the EPA, the WWF and many other public and private offices for ethical and scientific thought were openly and deliberately infected by Howard's apparatchiks who vetted the output of those offices so as to minimize the inconvenience to the rapacious agenda of that time. Many members of those organisations quit in disgust and despair as a result of the bullying and sidelining they experienced at the hands of those carefully recruited sociopaths managing their workplaces. It was and is a spectacularly effective technique for the taming of NGOs who's charter is to counter the greed-driven feeding frenzy that is our modern corporatocracy.
Why would those same forces not infect the RSPCA at this time of critical reassessment of our moral obligations to the animals we are driving, conscious, through the grinders to our north.
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