newsletter sept email
TRANSCRIPT
8/3/2019 Newsletter Sept Email
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/newsletter-sept-email 1/8
The Anarchist SavantsAu tonomy Through Knowledge & Cr ea t i v i t y
home to enjoy it all, after a hard day
of consumption, was the only thing
that mattered! The driver had heard
that the ‘Talbot Farmers Market’
was the trendy place to be, and
lets face it, the only truly beautifulthings are human made or captured.
Anyway, how was the driver, like the
thousands of others that pour through
the Dunach Forest once a month for
the market, to know that ‘Nino’ was
a ‘Barking Owl’? How was the driver
to know that ‘Ninox Connivens’ is an
endangered bird, just like the 20%*
of all birds desperately evading
extinction in their Dunach Forest
home? Nino frequently lamented thathuman terrorists (sorry tourists) were
conquering nature and that it wasn’t
hard to work out why. As an avid
reader of Eric Blairs classic Novels,
Nino knew exactly what Eric meant
when he said, “four legs good, two
legs better”
* (A rate more than twice that of the
National average)
IN THIS ISSUE
M o n t h l y
September 2007Volume 2
At approximately 8.00 pm on Sunday
he 16th of September 2007, Mr
Nino Xavier Connivens (‘Nin’ to his
mates) passed away following a
ragic accident on the roadside in
Dunach. The accident happenedhalf way between Talbot and Clunes
n Victoria’s Central West.
Unfortunately the local media has
not reported this sad loss. Perhaps
his is because Nino had lived in the
Dunach area for his entire life and yet
was hardly known by anyone. Being
a loner who never went out during
he day, he was never seen at the
ocal Milk Bar, Pub, Post Ofce or Cafe’s and as such, simply remained
an unknown recluse.
One of the saddest things about his
shy nature was that very few people
got to spend time with him, to truly
get to know him. Anyone who was
ucky enough to do so couldn’t help
but be impressed by his humble
personality and great wisdom. He
believed fervently in living off his own
ocal patch, getting the nest in food
and supplies from his immediate
surroundings. As one who was lucky
enough to visit him on a regular
basis, I had the enormous pleasure
of witnessing the amazing impact he
had on children. Their faces lighting
up whenever they got to sit with
him as he showed them the many
beautiful things that surrounded him
on the edge of the Dunach Forest.
Nino lived simply and frugally
and had a deep understanding of
balance. He had watched the world
carefully, over time, and understood
exactly where a life of imbalance and
excess could easily lead. One of his
favourite quotes on this topic, was
that of J.K Galbraith’s in his book
‘The Afuent Society’:
“To furnish a barren room is onething. To continue to crowd in
furniture until the foundation
buckles is quite another. To have
failed to solve the problem of
producing goods would have been
to continue man in his oldest and
most grievous misfortune. But to
fail to see that we have solved it
and to fail to proceed thence to
the next task would be fully as
tragic.”
The greatest irony in Nino’s passing
is that the last thing that went
through his mind before he passed
away, was a car windscreen. The
driver, returning home after a day at
the ‘Talbot Farmers Market’, didn’t
stop after Nino bounced off the car
onto the gravel verge. After all, it
was just another dumb bird and
besides, the driver had purchased aboot-full of “Fine Food and Bootiful
Things” from around the town, much
of it from as far away as Melbourne,
South Australia, Queensland, New
South Wales and China. Getting
“Fine Food & Bootiful Things”
“Fine Food & Bootiful Things” (pg 1)
From the Editor (pgs 2,3)
- Why the focus on ‘Nino’?
Somewhere ‘Left’ to Go (pg 4)
That Dream Called Freedom (pg 5)
Beautiful Things You Won’t See(Pg 6)
The Underground Arts (pg 7)
Perspectives On (pg 8)
8/3/2019 Newsletter Sept Email
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/newsletter-sept-email 2/8
“The natural forms of behaviour,
which arise from humanity’s
nmost nature, are today constantly
nterfered with and crippled by theeffects of Economic Exploitation
and Governmental Guardianship.
The consciousness of Personal
Responsibility and that other
precious good that has come down
to humanity by inheritance from
remote antiquity: that capacity for
sympathy with others in which all
Social Ethics, all ideas of Social
Justice, have their origin, develop
best in freedom.”
That was Rudolph Rocker
writing about what he saw
developing around him in the
1930’s.
His wise words are very simply
saying, that inside each and
every one of us, we have a
deep inherent understanding of
what is right and just, and that
he only true way for us to bring
out that understanding, to grow
t and learn to trust it, is for us
o be free, free from economic
manipulations and free from
government interference.
mportantly, when we believe
hat our ‘social’ relationships include
ar more than just the human, when
we begin to include plants, animals
and the earth around us, we are ableo extend what we know to be right
and just to that which sustains us,
nature and our environment.
The current ‘religious’ promotion
of ‘Tourism’ in the Central West
of Victoria; has at its core, both
elements of economic manipulation
and government interference, and
precisely because of this, it lacks
any sincere social understanding.
We need only to read local newsprint
o see the massive amounts of dollars
available for ‘Tourism Promotion’,
dollars dangled by State and Federal
Governments in front of the obedient
and myopic eyes of our ‘community
leaders’. It’s not hard to comprehend
just why these simplistic manipulations
are working.
If as a society we see something that
conicts heavily with what we know
to be right and just and we do nothing
about it, then we become a society
whose inherent values erode over
time. Worse still, if we do nothing
about an issue because we fear the
loss of some personal benet, then
we rapidly become a society without
a conscience.
Increased Tourism is an issue that
conicts with our inherent values, but
before we look at why, lets expand a
little further on what has been saidso far, by going back in time to an era
when society did stand up for what it
believed to be inherently true.
Between 1801 and 1844, massive
numbers of people left the countryside
in England for the cities. Forced off
their lands by government legislation,
they became human fodder, meeting
the demand for factory workers.
They worked 15 hours a day for bare minimum wages. Before long,
children as young as 4 years of age
were also compelled to work, and
all this happened under the guiding
economic light of the government
of the day and business. The
exploitation of children was one of the
‘last straws’ and so the people, right
across the land rebelled. They went
on strike, they withdrew their labour across wide industry sectors, they
boycotted products, they sabotaged
and went on go slow campaign’s,
in short they stood up for what they
believed was just and right against
the draconian economic practice and
government legislation of the day.
Through that, they won many new
rights, rights that much of the wealthy
Western World enjoys today.
Enter 2007 . Massive
numbers of Asian people are
being forced off the land and
into the cities. 1 in 3 children
in Asia live in abject poverty,
they are not educated
because they spend their
long days working, producing
large quantities of cheap
goods for export to rich
Western Countries. Between
20 and 50 men in China lose
their lives every single day
in coal mines that produce
fossil fuel energy, energy
that underpins China’s
manufacturing sector,
industry that produces cheap
goods for export to rich
Western Countries. No doubt the
Asian people are being continually
indoctrinated with economic ideology
from government and business in aneffort to convince them that this is all
happening in ‘their best interests’.
What does our deep inherent nature;
our understanding of social ethics
and justice, our long held beliefs
about what’s right and just, say about
this situation?
Rudolph Rocker believed in the
1930’s that:
“The ever growing power of a
soulless political bureaucracy
which supervises and safeguards
the life of humans from the cradle
to the grave (the nanny state) is
putting ever greater obstacles in
E D I T O R I A L Why the Focus on ‘Nin
8/3/2019 Newsletter Sept Email
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/newsletter-sept-email 3/8
the way of unied co-operation
between human beings and
crushing out every possibility of
new development. Just as for thevarious systems of religion, God is
everything and Human nothing, so
for this modern political ideology,
the state (and its economics) is
everything and the human nothing.
And just as behind the “will of God”
there always lay hidden the will
of privileged minorities, so today
there hides behind the “will of the
state” (and its economics) only the
selsh interests of those who feel called to interpret this will in their
own sense and to force it upon the
people.” (Words in brackets are
the editor’s additions).
n other words, the state and its
economic ideologies have succeeded
n driving a wedge, an economic
wedge deep into the inherent social
ethics and social justice values
hat our societies once held in the
highest of esteem. The Asian origin
of much of the cheap products on
our supermarket and hardware store
shelves attest to that. Economics is
king, and just like God, its invisible
hand will x all before us, all we
need to do is worship it and trust it,
et go of our concerns and keep on
consuming.
Enter Tourism.
We know that 50% of all global fossil
uelled vehicle trafc movements are
elated to Tourism. (Source UNEP)
We know that in Australia, cars
are responsible for 21% of all
Greenhouse Gas Emissions and yet,
amazingly, car based tourism is being
promoted like there is quite literally,
no tomorrow’. (Source TEC)
We know that Tourists generally
use twice as much water when on
holidays as they do when they are
at home and as a consequence
produce twice as much wastewater.
Source UNEP)
: We know that continually increasing
noise pollution from Tourist cars,
buses and recreational vehicles
causes distress to wildlife, especiallyin sensitive areas and impacts heavily
on already threatened or endangered
species. (Source UNEP) (For a full
list of beautiful things you won’t
see around Talbot in the next 10
years if tourism continues, see
page ‘6’).
: We know from 19 of the world’s
most eminent biodiversity scientists
that; due solely to human activity,the earth is facing a “catastrophic
loss of species”. Estimations are that
approximately 30,000 species go
extinct each year, an extinction rate
of about 3 per hour. The scientists are
warning that, “because biodiversity
loss is essentially irreversible, it
poses serious threats to the quality
of life of future generations.” (Source:
The Independent 2006)
: We know that with increased Tourism
we get increased development (often
poorly planned and land intensive),
increased population, land clearing,
construction, consumption and
waste. (Source UNEP)
: We know that when we add the
Greenhouse Gas Emissions from
the transport of products sourced
for the Talbot Farmers Market from
as far away as Melbourne, SA, QLD,NSW and China to the massive
quantities pouring out the exhaust
pipes of visiting tourists, it equates to
nothing more than madness. (Source
Common Sense).
: We know that Tourism increases
low paid service jobs, increases
real estate values, increases rates
and decreases Local Government
Services, turning potentially self sufcient communities and natural
environments into nothing more than
tourism theme parks. (More on this
in later editions).
If we look deeply into our natural
E D I T O R I A L Why the Focus on ‘Nin
understanding of social ethics and
justice, what we inherently know
to be right and just, when we use
that knowledge to look at what ishappening around us, we don’t
need UNEP, TEC, IEA or a panel
of biodiversity scientists to tell us
that things are going pear-shaped.
When things go pear-shaped, those
in authority always doggedly hold on
to their outdated beliefs, whilst trying
desperately to maintain their authority
by mass marketing their agenda’s,
in the hope that this will guarantee
the continuation of what they soldtheir souls for. In 1500, a man called
Erasmus challenged the authority
of the “Earth is Flat” brigade in a
highly charged battle over their rigid
orthodox beliefs. This was a group
of individuals with quaint outdated
ideologies, not unlike the proponents
of the tourism and economic growth
mantras of today. Erasmus said of
them (words in brackets are editor’s
additions):
“They will smother me beneath
six hundred dogma’s; they will
call me heretic and they are
nevertheless folly’s servants. They
are surrounded with a bodyguard
of denitions, conclusions,
corollaries, propositions explicit
and propositions implicit. (Look
out for Eco-Tourism) Those more
fully initiated explain further
whether God (economic growthor tourism) can become the
substance of a woman, of an ass,
of a pumpkin, and whether, if so, a
pumpkin could work miracles, or
be crucied. They are looking in
utter darkness for that which has
no existence whatever.”
When we take personal responsibility
for what is right and just, and when
we make a stand against thosethings that we know to be inherently
wrong, we attain freedom, freedom to
choose a better path, freedom from
false hopes and freedom from false
saviours like those that we are led to
believe exist, in utter darkness.
8/3/2019 Newsletter Sept Email
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/newsletter-sept-email 4/8
The ‘Left’ is lost in its own afuence
and the ‘Right’ is bulging at the seams
with private smugness.
The ‘New Left’ or the ‘Aspiration
Socialists’ abound. Some of them were
practising radicals a few decades ago
when they had something to ght for,
ike a larger slice of the pie. As with
all actions based on fear or greed,
once the monster is sated its host can
settle back into complacency until it
believes it might lose something to
another host or worse still, miss out
altogether.
The ‘Right’ doesn’t suffer from
aspiration, with Darwinian theory
ucked under one arm and free market
economics under the other; it knows
what it stands for. Survival of the ttest,
proteering, human exploitation,
environmental destruction, it marches
arrogantly forward. The politics of
ear and greed are back in town in a
big way which is why the ‘Right’ have
been on a roll. They promise ever
ncreasing net worth and the offer
of security against it being stolen by
any global threat they can dream
up. With their nger rmly planted
on the pulse of human predictability,
hey hide behind their contrivance
by contemptuously stating that; “the
people always get it right at election
ime”.
The ‘New Left’ tags along like a junky,ts desire for the consumption x
easily overcomes its guilt. It goes cold
urkey occasionally, just long enough
o paint a banner and go for a walk with
ts fellow addicts. The ‘New Left’ has
a voice, it’s just that it doesn’t want to
use it too loudly. As reformists vainly
attempting to put a human face on
hierarchical capitalism, the only path
hey can really take is the expansion
of their own pretentiousness.
God of course makes an appearance
n both camps. On the ‘Right’, he
has an open channel through which
his word’ with all its patriarchal
connotations, can be communicated.
On the ‘Left’, as the helper of those
less fortunate, the matriarchal hand of
top down charity, through which she
allows them to assuage their varyingdegrees of ‘aspirational guilt’.
The two camps ght as if their really
is some great distinction between
them. They engage in never ending
arguments over minutiae, focused
primarily of course on welfare,
healthcare and education, the three
factors used to pacify the ‘radicals
way back when’. It was different
then, with a small group of ‘haves’and a large group of ‘have nots’, the
distinction was supposedly clear.
These days the water is muddied by
a large middle group, ‘the think they
haves’. The sales pitch has been
easily swallowed; greed successfully
forging the mistaken belief that the
banks expanding net worth is really
theirs.
With every incremental step up in
the utopian belief of ever increasing
net worth for all, the middle ground
moves further from the equally
utopian concepts of public welfare,
healthcare and education for all.
Make no mistake; the capitalist
system has no room for either.
The widespread realization of this is
yet to dawn and the ‘Left’ as nothing
more than an impotent reformist player
has nowhere to go until it does.
The arguments over what the
‘Left’ should do are incessant.
Should they continue with reform or
adopt revolution? The knowledge
of the outcome of both already
exists. Reform means hierarchical
modication, a shifting of the deck
chairs, whilst revolution, bloodless or
otherwise ushers in a new hierarchy.
Either way, power remains centralisedamongst an elite few. Communism
after all was nothing more than state
based capitalism.
The hierarchical economic growth
model, of which both camps are
proponents and society followers,
is through resource depletion,
environmental destruction, population
growth, global conict and warming,placing civilisation as we know it
on the edge of imminent collapse.
Leadership is frequently touted as the
only solution, with governments being
called upon to reform or regulate their
industries and societies or employ
‘new technologies’ to overcome the
problems. We see nothing more than
the myopic reliance on top down
solutions complete with their own
agendas and ocks of followers. Willthe day ever arrive when they nally
‘get it’?
The answer lies in the individual and it
will become evident only as a result of
consequence or self awareness. The
former, if it happens, will be forced
and may well arrive too late for most.
The latter will only occur when each
individual understands the capitalist
system for what it truly is, actively
works to dismantle it and learns how
to pass on, by example, new found
knowledge to future generations.
It is tempting at this point to believe
that we cannot work on dismantling
a system we rely on for our very
survival. As humans, we shy away
from confronting what we believe
to be ‘irreconcilable differences’.
Confronting them means making a
choice, so its much easier to hidebehind the rationalisation that we
will initially be a small number of
dismantlers, outnumbered by many
potential opposers.
When we begin to confront the
irreconcilable differences however,
we discover that there really is
somewhere left for human kind to go,
a place of freedom, a destination that
is embedded deep in every one of us,a place where autonomy and unity
combine.
All we need is the courage to leave
the outdated ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ behind,
to wallow in their nostalgia.
Somewhere ‘Left’ to Go
8/3/2019 Newsletter Sept Email
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/newsletter-sept-email 5/8
That Dream Called Freedom
“The dream, that dream called
freedom, which is uniquely a part
of Western Democracy ”.
Put your hand on your heart ladies
and gentleman, for this statement
encapsulates just what it means to
be a patriot of ‘Western Democracy’.
Oh, and as an aside, it’s what most
nfuriates those of us who have just
asked for a bucket!
Why is it that ‘Western Democracy’
has the arrogant belief that ‘freedom’
or its pursuit is a unique concept of
he West? Why is it that the West
believes that freedom has only beennvented in the relatively recent
and brief history of the West? The
opening statement shows nothing but
contempt for the millions of people
who have died over thousands of
years ghting for that most elusive of
human desires, the right to be free,
frequently against those with imperial
ist aspirations from the West.
Amazingly, the ‘Founding Fathers’
of the USA, those that escaped
tyranny in Europe, immediately set
about creating their own tyranny in
North America. As Joe Bageant, the
celebrated American writer puts it:
“It was Christian America that
practiced genocide on the Red
Indian and chopped off the feet
of black slaves so they could not
run away from their appointed
duties building the ‘City on theHill’. Chopping off their feet was
practical, sane, clever even. We
are all richer now for our ancestors
cleverness and sanity. Right now
it’s a dusky semitic people and their
oil that occupies our cleverness”.
Or as Stokely Carmichael
so eloquently once said
of the West:
“I often ask myself
whether or not the
West believes that the
third world really loves
them and that’s why
they have obeyed them.
But it’s clear that they
feared them. The west
with all its guns and
its power and its might came into Africa, Asia,
Latin America and the
USA and raped it. And
while they raped it they
used beautiful terms.
They told the Indians,
“we’re civilizing you and
we’re taming the west.
And if you won’t be
civilized, we’ll kill you.”
So they committed
genocide and stole the
land and put Indians
on reservations, and
they said that they had
civilized the country.”
Luckily for the Aborigines
in Australia, they too would be
honoured with the ‘best’ the West
had to offer in ‘civilisation’. Today, as
far as the Australian ‘Democratically
Elected’ Government is concerned,the ‘civilisation’ process directed at
the Australian Aborigine remains
incomplete and probably won’t be
nalised until the race is ‘civilised’
into extinction.
And so this is the ‘freedom’ that
the West invented and is now
attempting to distribute around
the remainder of the world, with
arrogance, hypocrisy and pride.
Is it any wonder that the remainder
of the world is getting just a ‘tad’
upset?
“Mr President, I have a question about Western Democracy?”
8/3/2019 Newsletter Sept Email
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/newsletter-sept-email 6/8
Talbot and Dunach
Grey Goshawk – Vulnerable
Spotted Harrier – Near Threatened
Squared Tailed Kite – Vulnerable
White Bellied Eagle – Vulnerable
Australian Shoveler – Vulnerable
Blue Billed Duck – Endangered
Freckled Duck – Endangered
Hardhead Duck – Vulnerable
Musk Duck – Vulnerable
Australian Bittern – Endangered
Great Egret – Vulnerable
Intermediate Egret – Vulnerable
Nankeen Night Herron – Near Threatened
Inland Dotterel – Vulnerable
Brown Treecreeper – Near Threatened
Diamond Dove – Near Threatened
Black Eared Cuckoo – Near Threatened
Black Falcon – Vulnerable
Brolga – Vulnerable
Whiskered Tern – Near Threatened
Black Chinned Honeyeater – Near Threatened
Painted Honey Eater – Vulnerable
Crested Bellbird – Near Threatened
Speckled Warbler – Vulnerable
Diamond Firetail – Vulnerable
Hooded Robin – Near Threatened
Pied Cormorant – Near Threatened
Swift Parrot – Endangered
Bailons Crake – VulnerablePainted Snipe – Vulnerable
Lathams Snipe – Vulnerable
Pectoral Sandpiper – Near Threatened
Wood Sandpiper – Vulnerable
Barking Owl – Endangered
Powerful Owl – Vulnerable
Glossy Ibis – Near Threatened
Royal Spoonbill – Vulnerable
Little Button Quail – Near Threatened
Growling Grass Frog – Endangered
Brown Toadlet – Endangered
Mountain Galaxias – Listed Under Victorian
Fauna Gaurantee
Brush Tailed Phascogale – Vulnerable
B e a u t i f u l T h i n g s Y o u W o n ’ t S e e i n t h e F U T U R E
Nino
8/3/2019 Newsletter Sept Email
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/newsletter-sept-email 7/8
U n d e r g r o u n d A r t s
8/3/2019 Newsletter Sept Email
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/newsletter-sept-email 8/8
P e r s p e c t i v e s
Anarchist Savants Monthly
PO Box 43 Clunes Victoria 3370
Editor: Andrew Stretton
Layout / Graphics: Kristin Rule
Research: Thomas Hink
Published: Monthly
Contributions at Editorial Discretion
Out of courtesy and respect, please
contact us prior to publishing or using
any of our material.
Printed on 100% Recycled Paper.
The STaTe of The auSTralian environmenT (1996 STaTiSTicS - updaTeS in fuTure ediTionS)
L and
: Only 6% of the Australian continent is arable.
: Approximately 54% is grazed, leaving 40% which is too arid for
agriculture.
: Degraded land, which totalled 1 million hectares in 1900, had risen to
25 million by 1990.
: Approximately 1/3 of Victoria’s irrigated land is saline.
Water
: One third of Australia has limited run off whilst two thirds occurs in
Northern Australia.
: The Murray Darling system drains 1/7th of the nations water but its ow
is less than one day’s ow of the Amazon.
: Approximately 80% of Australia is totally dependent on underground
water.
: Inland water use is greater than supply and therefore unsustainable.
Forests
:Of Australia’s original forest cover of 244 million hectares, only 61%remain and only 5% is untouched or pristine.
: As much clearing has occurred in the last 50 years as did in the previous
150 years.
: Australia has lost 3/4 of its tropical rainforests.
Biodiversity
The proportion of vulnerable, endangered or extinct animals is as
follows:
: 5% of higher plants
: 7% of reptiles
: 9% of birds and freshwater sh
: 16% of amphibians
: 23% of mammals
: Australia has lost 18 of its 197 mammals, the worst rate in the world.
Pollution
: At 4.19 tons, Australia’s per capita Greenhouse Gas Emissions are the
fourth highest in the world.
: Between 1970 and 1990, Australia’s energy use rose 37% with a con-
sequent rise in CO2 emissions of 25%.: Australia’s solid wastes of 618 Kilogram per head is much higher than
the OECD average of 513 KG / Head.
Source, CSIRO Melbourne