Category: News

Lock the Gate Alliance national president, Drew Hutton, will be the subject of next Monday’s (August 4) Australian Story program on the ABC.

The Lock the Gate campaign was launched on 22 November, 2010 when farmers from south-east Queensland gathered in Brisbane around a farm gate, vowing to take a stand to protect their farms and communities from inappropriate mining.

The Lock the Gate Alliance now includes more than 200 grassroots groups and more than 32,000 supporters comprising farmers, landholders, conservationists and Traditional Owners.

The group transcends political divides and is unprecedented in the history of Australian social movements. Mr Hutton has paid a heavy personal toll during the many years he has devoted to environmental and community activism.

He describes himself as “an ordinary Australian” but he has achieved extraordinary things, including galvinising traditional right and left in the battle against invasive mining.

“My story is of an ordinary Australian who loves his country, doesn’t want to see it ripped up for short term gain for a few and is prepared to stand up to those bullies who want to force us into that future. Fortunately I am not alone in this,” Mr Hutton  said.

“I and all those at Lock the Gate are worried about the impact of mining on our food lands, our access to clean water, our regional communities and our sense of a fair go.” Also appearing on the program will be former Queensland Premier Peter Beattie, outspoken radio presenter, Alan Jones and environmentalist Dr Bob Brown.

Short history of Lock the Gate

The Lock the Gate Alliance was formed in 2010 with Drew Hutton becoming its president in early 2011, following meetings of landholders, organisations and communities concerned about the ongoing and rapid expansion of coal and coal seam gas development.

It was at a meeting at Warra on Queensland’s Darling Downs that a local farmer coined the name “Lock the Gate”.  (Drew had suggested ‘Shut the Gate’ originally.)

So began the campaign calling on all landholders to refuse to negotiate access to coal seam gas companies and refuse to negotiate sale of their properties to coal companies.

Campaigning officially began on 22 November, 2010 when farmers from south-east Queensland gathered in Brisbane around a farm gate, vowing to take a stand to protect their farms and communities from inappropriate mining.

Representatives from more than 40 groups from across Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia met in the Hunter Valley of NSW to discuss the challenges. One of the main concerns was the role of government in the expansion of the coal and coal seam gas industries and the lack of consideration of the will of local residents and communities in the approvals process.

Four years on, under the national leadership of beef farmer Phil Laird, Lock the Gate continues to grow with around 200 member groups and more than 32,000 rural and urban supporters from all over Australia.

One of its main aims is to educate and empower all Australians to demand sustainable solutions to food, clean water and energy production. Drew Hutton is now the group’s National President.

More info: http://www.lockthegate.org.au/

 

Get set for a nice crescent Moon for the start of the weekend and boy, isn’t the sky going to be great for stargazers! This is the month they say our Aussie skies are at their best, especially away from city lights. With bright moonlight lasting till almost midnight it’s a good time to test out a new telescope or go panning around looking for star clusters.  Head just to the right of the Southern Cross and do a sky sweep, then tell me that wasn’t good advice. See all those bright spots? Yep, brilliant clusters and gas clouds. By the way, anything except full moon nights are great for telescope viewing.

It’s hard to imagine Earth without a moon isn’t it? Life itself might have evolved from the ocean to land thanks to tides induced by the moon’s gravity. Astronomers believe a body as big as Mars once smacked into our infant Earth, breaking off a large piece which fell into orbit, eventually forming into the moon we see today.  A lot of that debris fell back on the Earth too making huge craters which, over time, have been smoothed over by volcanism. You know what? Somebody’s actually weighed the Earth! True. The Earth has a mass of 6, million, million, million, million kilograms, or, if you prefer, 6 sextillion tonnes. Try that one at your next trivia night.

In the early evening Saturn with its beautiful ring system is readily visible high in the western sky. Even in small telescopes it’s an amazing sight and never fails to impress. Talking about stunning views, check out what’s hanging low in the eastern sky before sunrise. That bright ‘star’ you see is in reality our sister planet Venus, also known as the evening star.  This week Venus is absolutely spectacular and already generating the odd UFO report or two. If you stare at it awhile it appears to move around or wobble. Try it.

Hey, while you’re in the mood, why not take time out and try my favourite celestial sport, meteor watching. The Perseids meteor shower makes an appearance in the coming week and after midnight a few decent meteors should flit across the starry sky each hour in a spooky display. The meteors peak on August 12 and are produced by debris from an earlier passing of Comet 96P/Machholz.

Perseids typically have fast and bright meteors and are known to create the odd fireball or two with flaming tails that streak across the dark early morning sky. More northern centred this year, the radiant may be a little low, but still worth a try. Fireballs are meteors that actually start to melt and catch on fire! Are they dangerous? The simple answer is no, not at all.

Nobody has ever been injured from watching meteor showers.  Travelling at speeds of up to 60 kilometres a second, most meteors quickly vapourize 50 kilometres above the ground. Almost all are destroyed in this process – the rare few that survive and hit the ground are known as meteorites. The largest ever found was found in Hoba, Namibia. It weighed 60 tons!

Now for an after dinner treat. Want to see the space station passing over your place this week? Well, if you go to www.spotthestation.nasa.gov/sightings and enter your location a chart will come up for the entire week giving dates and times to go and look. Simple huh? There’s also a great aussie app you can download called ISS Flyover.  Just imagine, when you see the space station remember it’s moving at 28,000 kilometres an hour and astronauts onboard see 16 sunrises and 16 sunsets every day! What a cool job!

Did you know that when the station crew return to earth they look forward to a good long hot shower. In space you can’t do that easily. In fact, astronauts wear the same underwear for the entire mission! You don’t sweat as much in space.  Spacesuits are fitted with ‘nappies’ so that astronauts can work outside for long hours especially during spacewalks. They hardly shower at all. You have to remember, in space water doesn’t fall down, it falls up and ‘sponge baths’ are the norm. They use wet cloths for washing and special shampoo for their hair which doesn’t require water.

You know, I get a lot of people telling me they only have a small telescope and want to know if it’s any good to stargaze with. My answer – sure can! Smaller telescopes are capable of doing a lot more than you imagine. I started out with a telescope you could fit in your pocket! Remember, cheapie telescopes under about $200 are made to a price, not a quality, and the trade-off is in the eyepieces.

If your cheapie telescope isn’t giving you satisfactory views I bet it will if you get a good quality brand eyepiece from your camera store. Around $30 -$50 should do it.  Stargazers can take it to the next level with some special software that mimics the night sky. I frequently bring my laptop into the field with me to use Stellarium, a free program that gives a real time view of the sky and labels nearby stars. You can recreate the night sky from almost any era in history, and move forward hundreds of years to view an eclipse yet to happen! Download it, you won’t be sorry.

David Reneke is an astronomy writer, lecturer, broadcaster and media personality. Get David’s free astronomy newsletter and a free 323 page e-book called ‘The Complete Idiots Guide To Astronomy. Visit the webpage: www.davidreneke.com 

Local office supply company Howard Williams has just taken shipment of a new range of safety work wear that includes a range of fire retardant, light weight cotton clothing for use in the food industry. Other stand out products include stock printed vests with popular names such as visitor, staff, traffic controller and first aid. Howard Williams’ Greg Heath told Westender that clients can order gear printed with their own wording.

“We are always looking for new and innovative ways to improve our range as requirements for business supplies have changed,” he said.

The diversification into safety wear has been driven by customer demand, according to Heath, with health and safety regulations paying much more attention to how workers are protected.

Explore the Prime Mover catalogue at Howard Williams website.

Mike Adams, the Health Ranger,  and editor of NaturalNews, reports that NASA has sounded a red alert over a solar flare that nearly wiped out human civilization two summers ago.

The news you are about to read should be front page news everywhere. There is arguably nothing more important to humanity’s survival than the alarming facts presented in this report from NASA, yet most of the world pretends this event never happened in 2012, and they falsely assume it won’t happen again.

They are wrong. According to shocking new research published by NASA, each decade there is roughly a 12% chance of a near-wipeout of humanity’s high-tech civilization. In fact, one such event nearly wiped out technology across the planet during the summer of 2012.

“A powerful coronal mass ejection (CME) tore through Earth orbit on July 23, 2012,” reports NASA.gov. (1)

“If the eruption had occurred only one week earlier, Earth would have been in the line of fire.” NASA goes on to report: Analysts believe that a direct hit by an extreme CME such as the one that missed Earth in July 2012 could cause widespread power blackouts, disabling everything that plugs into a wall socket.

Most people wouldn’t even be able to flush their toilet because urban water supplies largely rely on electric pumps.

Almost everything on Earth with a circuit board would be fried.

NASA’s description of the consequences of an “extreme CME” (Coronal Mass Ejection) just barely begins to paint the real picture of what such an event would cause.

Here’s a more detailed picture of what we would really see unfold:
• Nearly all circuit boards containing microelectronics would be fried, causing across-the-board failures of nearly all communications including cell phone towers, internet systems, radios, computers and mobile devices. And yes, your mobile devices will be long gone, too.
• Nearly all forms of motorized transportation relying on complex integrated circuit boards would be rendered unusable. Some late model automobiles and airplanes might be immune to these effects, but most newer cars, airplanes and ocean vessels would be rendered inoperable. There are some very valuable discussions on this topic at www.SurvivalBlog.com
• Nearly all transportation and delivery of food, water and fuel would immediately cease. • The power grid would go down and stay down. Nearly all systems dependent on power would cease to function. This includes your TV, meaning you won’t be able to turn on CNN to tell you what just happened. Shockingly, people will have to think for themselves.
• Cities around the world would almost immediately fall into total panic and chaos as food, water, fuel and electricity are all cut off. This would set off a wave of desperation, violence, starvation and infectious disease.
• All forms of electronic commerce would cease to function, including EBT cards, ATMs, credit cards and most banking operations. Commerce would effectively grind to a halt.
• As all this is happening, hundreds of nuclear power plants across North America would run out of backup diesel fuel for their generators, causing cooling pump failures and leading to a cascading series of nuclear meltdowns equivalent to hundreds of Fukushima disasters. This might render much of the continent uninhabitable by humans for centuries, if not millennia.
• Interestingly, some of the things that would still work just fine after all this would be: – Low-tech or “no tech” devices such as old diesel engines and farm implements – Wood-burning stoves – Garden seeds – Firearms – Gold and silver – Horse and plow

Essentially, life would be thrust back into the 19th century. The Amish would be King, in other words.

19th-century technology cannot support 7 billion people

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that 19th-century technology cannot support the world’s current population of 7 billion people.

The world population in the year 1850 hovered at just over one billion people. (2)

The world’s current population of over 7 billion people is only made possible by food production and transportation systems which depend heavily on complex electronics. Even the modern tractors that produce food are dependent on electronics and GPS systems. The fuel they burn and the parts they consume must be created and then delivered from thousands of miles away. Food refrigeration, storage, manufacturing and retailing all depends on a complex infrastructure built on integrated circuits.

NASA says there is a 12% chance every decade that this entire infrastructure will be wiped out in an instant. “How many others of this scale have just happened to miss Earth and our space detection systems?” asks Daniel Baker of the University of Colorado. “This is a pressing question that needs answers. “We need to be prepared.” (1)

But we are not prepared

Consider, for a moment, the enormity of this threat to human civilization. Each year there is over a 1% chance of a MCE event which would destroy the power grid, fry most electronics across the planet, and plunge human civilization into the 19th century in terms of technology.

“Initially, I was quite surprised that the odds were so high,” stated Pete Riley of Predictive Science Inc., who published a February, 2014 paper in Space Weather. (1)

“But the statistics appear to be correct… It is a sobering figure.”

The odds of human civilization being plunged back into a pre-technology era are not in dispute. Every day that goes by is another roll of the dice, and a direct hit on the planet by a massive CME is mathematically inevitable. On a larger time scale, in fact, large solar flares might be viewed as a kind of “galactic rebooting” of inhabited planets, humbling civilizations back into the pre-electronics era and causing a massive die-off of the unprepared.

Almost no one is prepared for the reality of “direct hit” solar flares

Today on planet Earth, almost no one is prepared for this. Everybody is too focused on their own problems or ambitions to think about the risk of solar flares. After all, there are political ambitions to pursue, corporate stocks to trade and shiny new cars (or hand bags) to be acquired. There are wars to be fought, housing developments to be constructed and water wells to be drilled.

Everyone is so focused on their own narrow goals or ambitions that almost nobody looks skyward at the sun and says, “That object is repeatedly sending out large bursts of energy that could blast us back into the Agrarian Age.”

And so nothing gets done to protect the national power grid from such events, even though such protections could be installed for only about $2 billion in the U.S. Nothing gets done to shift away from nuclear power facilities or protect their backup generators from solar flares or EMP weapons, and so nuclear power plants remain ticking time bombs capable of unleashing a nuclear apocalypse.

Modern humans have forgotten how to live without electronics

Not surprisingly, humanity is blindly marching into a future of its own demise. By relying so heavily on computerized systems for the production and delivery of electricity, food, water, fuel and supplies, human civilization has placed itself in a non-survivable scenario.

Even if a large percentage of the population wanted to survive following a global electronics wipeout, most people have no real-world skills anymore. They don’t know how to farm, how to ranch animals, how to grow a garden or how to live off the land.

All the skills of the Information Age become instantly useless once a massive solar flare wipes out the electronics. How many people are left who can navigate a street map without using GPS? How many people know how to start a fire in a wood burning stove? How many people purchase books in hard copy format anymore? (Trust me when I say all those survival books you bought on Amazon Kindle won’t be much good after a solar flare wipeout.)

Humans are not wired to process long-term risks

To understand this even better, step back and take an honest look at your own behavior. After reading this article and realizing it’s 100% true and based on a real announcement from NASA, what will you do about it?

Over 99 percent of the people who read this article will do nothing different. They will go back to their lives in the city, working their jobs, paying their rent, and perhaps saying to themselves, “Wow, solar flare. That’s interesting.”

It doesn’t sink in because humans are not wired to process long-term risks. Humans are wired to run from tigers and evade imminent physical danger, but they have almost no innate cognitive ability to understand large systemic risks. That’s why people don’t understand the reality of the coming global debt collapse. They don’t grasp the coming global water collapse. They are unable to recognize the inherent fragility of a highly specialized society with few redundancies.

The ability to ignore these very large systemic risks is sometimes called a “normalcy bias.” That terms refers to the irrational belief that things will stay the way they are because they’ve always been that way. If tap water always comes out of the tap, day after day, year after year, the human mind will automatically assume water automagically will comes out of that same tap forever.

When the solar flare hits, few will know what happened Nearly all humans alive today falsely assume that human civilization is robust and redundant. They do not understand how their food, water, air conditioning, economic activities and personal safety are all heavily dependent on complex electronic devices which will not survive a sufficiently large solar flare. As a result, few people will understand what’s really happening when the CME strikes.

Suddenly, nearly all electronic devices will simultaneously cease to function. The world will fall silent, and within minutes the panic will begin. Thrust back into the 19th century, the world will likely see a loss of billions of lives.

Under-developed agricultural nations like Papua New Guinea will experience the highest survival rates, and rural families will vastly out-live urban dwellers across every nation. Those people who can grow their own food, defend their property against looters and safeguard their health with natural remedies will vastly out-live those who can’t.

This scenario is precisely what nearly unfolded in the summer of 2012. And there is no question that it will happen to our civilization sooner or later.

With a 12% chance of a direct hit every decade, it’s likely to be “sooner” rather than “later.”

Sources for this article include: (1) http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm/
(2) http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/history/world-population-growth.htm

Republished from: http://www.naturalnews.com/046211_NASA_warning_Coronal_Mass_Ejection_civilization_collapse.html

Business futurist and all round stirrer, Morris Miselowski this week called for the country to switch to a 3 day weekend advocating it will enhance our health, well-being, family, society and economy.

It is based on having more time to relax and unwind, it speaks to the ability to be more efficient and focused on your 4 days of work and the possibility of hiring others to work on the other days.

Leading business futurist, Morris Miselowski has explored this notion in detail and concludes that in the next few years the notion of a weekend, a standard 5 day week and 9-5 jobs would all become obsolete as we move into a world that worked on a project and task basis.

He believes getting things done as, where and when they need to be done will be the norm, rather than trying to shoehorn it into an industrial revolution constructed work week.

He also believes the ability to work where and when you want, will allow families to choose together time that suits them all, to be able to come together for important events and school activities and to re-frame family back into the centre of activity, rather than something else that has to be juggled in a busy week.