Australasia

Mmmm. Kitteh-Fingers

Australasia, Climate change, Food, Kittens!, Substance abuse
Published on

If like me you watched the BBC’s Pacific Abyss programme last night you’ll be aware of the glory that is the South Pacific’s fish population. Also like me, you probably felt impotent fury at the expedition’s discovery of destruction of fish habitat and species decimation.

But if the fish disappear, it’ll be, paradoxically, partiallybecause of our love of animals – specifically our cats:

Spoilt Western cats endangering global fish supply

Cats with a fondness for gourmet meals are threatening fish supplies, an Australian scientist says.

Deakin University scientist Dr Giovanni Turchini has discovered an estimated 2.48 million tonnes of forage fish – a limited biological resource – is consumed by the global cat food industry each year.

“That such a large amount of fish is used for the pet food industry is real eye-opener,” Dr Turchini said.

“What is also interesting is that, in Australia, pet cats are eating an estimated 13.7 kilograms of fish a year which far exceeds the Australian average (human) per capita fish and seafood consumption of around 11 kilograms.

“Our pets seem to be eating better than their owners.”

I can’t even feel slightly smug; although I don’t eat fish at all, wild or farmed, and don’t buy fish for the cats, except for the occasional farmed-salmon, offcut-based wet food, even then I’m not off the hook, so to speak. Many dry catfoods contain fishmeal and bone, even the ones labelled things like ‘100% Fresh’ or ‘100% Natural, Human Grade’, or ‘100% Organic and Oven-Baked!’, or any of those other little codewords that appeal to the middle-class, ecologically aware cat lover. Like me.
Whole populations of wild forage fish like sardines and herrings are hunted almost to extinction by giant factory ships for this stuff. Buying these foods also adds to the enormous profits of giant international feed and commodity corporations – and commercial foods can kill.

The only ethical course I suppose is to feed them what I eat. Here kitteh, have a nicey mint imperial…

No, won’t work.

Last week I found myself paying 25 euro, twenty quid, for a bag of renal catfood for our Monty, who’s somewhere around 15 and slowly tottering towards eternity. I didn’t enquire what was in it: he’s our cat, he’s sick, we love him. And that’s the problem right there. Even someone who’s silly about fish, like me, is inadvertently contributing to their destruction in many different ways, inadvertent and not so inadvertent (see above).

There seems no way out of this dilemma – except to try and develop less self-indulgent, more utilitarian attitudes towards our pets. We can go aaah at tiny baa-lambs can’t we, and then happily eat a slice of the leg with a helping of mint sauce, or a kebab with extra shish, so why can’t we farm cats when the fish runs out? We’ll have to find something else to cover in breadcrumbs and feed to small humans when the oceans are empty – so why not the kitteh-finger?

Comment Of The Day

Australasia, bigotry, Civil liberties, Comment of the Day, Corruption, liberalism, Life under Capitalism, Manufacturing consent, Media, New Labour, Policing, Poverty, Sensible Liberals, UK politics
Published on

Comes from the Guardian, to Polly Toynbee’s column on New Labour’s welfare reforms:

stillthinking

Jul 22 08, 10:18am (about 2 hours ago)

My brother (now 45) has chronic schizophrenia (inherited not drug induced). He is best cared for in the stress free environment of the family home. His interpersonal skills and levels of paranoia means he is best away from groups of people and their demands such as at work. He looks odd, is utterly naive and vulnerable and his personal grooming isn’t great. He would not last 5 minutes. Any changes to his routine trigger severe migraine and violent sickness. There is also the damping effect and other side effects of his miscellaneous necessary medication. He is tired, dopey and grumpy. When the doctors try messing with his medication to achieve a lighter touch he spirals downwards again.

I think there is more though because he also seems to be a little limited in intelligence (he was in several remedial classes as a child) and EEG for his headaches which he even had back then. My mother reports being told that it showed ‘a shadow on his brain’ though nothing more was ever said about this. He writes like a child. It pains me to say all this of my own brother.

I have watched him twice descend into complete psychosis and at other times hover on the edges. Seeing him forcibly hospitalised was a horrific experience. This is distressing in the extreme for him and for our family. I cried simply writing this at the prospect of him being put through this process of re-assessment which will unleash the terrors on him and potentially push him into another massive psychotic breakdown. So to those commentators advocating these measures go on get all muscular and tough about these so-called fraudulent long-term Incapacity Benefit claimants for this is the impact you will have on our family. Hope they will all be happy.

When interviewed on Channel 4 news, David Freud, a banker, who came up with the estimates for those he thought should not be on IB, could not give a convincing account of how he had arrived at the figures when repeatedly pressed. They were simply back of the envelope estimates. He seemed to be saying that he had taken the increase in the number of people on IB and the decrease in the number of people claiming unemployment benefit and read this directly across without any further evidence.

Hope the media commentators who affect to know what’s best for others can live with their consciences knowing the enormous harm that is about to be perpetrated on people like my brother.

This will totally finish my mother off. She is nearly 70 and also caring for her husband who is in the first stages of dementia. She will have to negotiate the system for/with him as well as deal with his inevitable mental health deterioration as a result of this extra pressure and she is just not up to it. He is a poor communicator, will not be able to take in what people are saying to him and is incredibly suggestible. The best thing for him is to be kept gently stable and shielded from unnecessary stress.

THE most important thing for managing my brother is to get him to take his medication and to see the professionals involved in his case. Start bombarding him with another set of professionals pressurising him -any professional asking him questions is a pressure- and you can see the problem here.

The terrible distress that is about to be visited on our family seems to be accepted as some kind of necessary collateral damage. I would suggest that there should be some facility to seek an exemption negotiated by their carers and professionals from the routine quizzing of people like my brother.

I have been staggered at the amount of vitriol towards benefit claimants out there on the comment boards. It is quite frightening.

Indeed it is frightening. But the commenters are merely following the lead of that nice young Mr Purnell, who wants to turn the poor disabled and mentally ill into slave labour for the state.

Anyone who has a disabling physical condition, even with a job, is teetering over a chasm of poverty, as they are only working at the whim of their employer and tend to be dependent on complicated, fragile and expensive support systems. Those who can’t work are only one housing benefit screwup or gas bill from complete and utter disaster. For an nunqualified operative of a private company to overrule your own doctor’s advice and withdraw your income with no effective avenue of appeal – that virtually guarantees disaster.

As for forcing non-working people to do ‘community service’ – community service is a judicial punishment imposed for having committed a crime.

Privately employed, unaccountable know-nothings will be given the power to impose the same punishment – with no judicial process – for the crime of being sick, addicted, inadequate in some way, or just plain out of a job, whatever the reason. The mentally ill are already treated as criminals; regularly jailed physically or chemically rather than treated like human beings and stigmatised by the tabloids as dangerous unpredictables to be avoided and shunned and now the same is to be done to the poor and/or unemployed.

But why? Why would New Labour stigmatise and even criminalise poverty?

The government itself is almost as insecure as an Incapacity Benefit claimant itself, and one more bank crash away from total implosion. Aid to the poor is being cut just as it’s most needed and it’s not co-incidental. Brown and Darling certainly see the depth and severity of the coming recession, their public optimism notwithstanding; hence their desperation to cut, cut and cut some more. Knowing how bad things may get the government has certainly been planning for some time for civil disorder and mass movements of people (this from the organisers of the Jarrow march). That’s why there are all those spiffy new laws restricting protest and why the police have been given handy new toys to contain and control potentially rebellious crowds. Now comes the propaganda painting the unemployed as lesser humans. It’s easier to accept police use of their new toys on chav scum and lazy scroungers.

To have Labour, Labour mark you, the supposed champions of the poor and oppressed, cynically whipping up such hatred is sickening, though hardly unexpected, given the events of the last 11 years. The only comfort to be had is the hope that Parnell, Brown, Harman and all the rest of the jumped up town hall clerks in government will soon themselves be on the dole, picking litter for peanuts, with their tabloid friends joining them as the print industry collapses.

Oh yes, and just as a matter of interest and to show just how these things work, one of the people set to benefit from all this is the wife of the Australian prime minister. Yes, really.

Question: Which Australian company under fire for its shabby treatment of workers in Australia fled overseas and is now in hot water for under-cutting its competitors bids by escaping employment conditions designed to protect staff?

Answer: WorkDirections UK, part of Ingeus, the multinational group founded and run by Therese Rein, wife of Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd.

Question: Which Australian company was found to have underpaid its workers by up to $4000 and was forced to repay them after shifting them from awards to common law contracts?

Answer: WorkDirections Australia, the Australian arm of the multinational group founded and run by Therese Rein, wife of Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd.

Question: Which Australian company sacked 300-400 workers after failing to meet the standards required by the Australian Government for employment agencies?

Answer: WorkDirections Australia, etc, etc. Now, before Rudd’s chief of staff, David Epstein, the Sultan of Spin, the Master of Muck, and former chief ANiMaLS operative arcs up and unleashes the full force of the ALP’s mindless army of bloggers and Howard-haters, let it be noted that the latest confrontation between Rein’s company and its staff was revealed in the pages of The Guardian, the principal Labour daily in the UK.

The details were not revealed by anyone from the Coalition’s non-existent dirt unit, despite what Rudd’s deputy, the strident Julia Gillard, might honk, or shadow Treasurer Wayne Swan might insinuate, or mud-slinger extraordinaire Anthony Albanese might bray, nor in some crypto-fascist neo-con sheet bankrolled by aged nazi war criminals. The Guardian is a left-wing newspaper which still believes in class war, like some in the Left of the ALP, and no doubt published its story to highlight what it believes is an attack on workers and their conditions.

Rein’s company won six of 15 contracts worth more than 85 million ($A196,560,000) from the British Government under a scheme which aims to get disabled people off welfare. According to The Guardian: `’Unions and charities are furious that Mr Hain (the work and pensions secretary) has handed over the lion’s share of the first tranche of privatised services to the Ingeus group under a deal which will not include union recognition and will not safeguard jobs on the same conditions as in Whitehall.”

The competitors, mainly charities, factored in the costs of TUPE staff benefits – which cover employees when their employers are taken over – into their bids. Rein’s company had legal advice it did not need to provide those benefits and was able to undercut its competition. Charitably, and with an enviable display of the sportsmanship associated with thugs from the Graham Richardson school of “whatever it takes” right-wing Labor politics, Rein’s UK manager William Smith said the charities were `’whingers”. `’Frankly its their own fault. They should have bloody read the questions and answers documents.” Indeed. If they hadn’t been busily looking after the handicapped, widows and orphans, they may well have employed a firm of smart lawyers to look for such an edge.

Interestingly, The Guardian quoted angry and disappointed officials from two interested parties, the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations and the Public and Commercial Services Union, in its article about Rudd’s wife’s company. Stephen Bubb, the volunteer groups’ representative, said he intended to ask the UK Government whether it had decided there was no future for voluntary organisations in delivering services. PCSU general secretary Mark Serwotka said: `’Not only has the voluntary sector been used as a Trojan horse by the private sector but the Government has handed a large chunk of work to a firm which is failing and mired in controversy in Australia. The Government is giving a green light to a company who we fear will try and circumvent TUPE regulations.”

Ingeus has been given nearly half of the British governments contracts for privatised benefits. There’s more on Pathways To Work and the theft of tax money that should have gone to the poor by a government who’s handing up to 120 billion quid of it to the Aussie PM’s wife, here.

Thar She Blows

Australasia, Natural World
Published on

Geologists like to say we are living in a new geological eon, the post-Holocene, in which humankind affects the planet by deliberate actions as much as if not more than natural processes do.

A case in point: Indonesian land, livelihoods and wildlife is being destroyed over an exponentially increasing area by Lusi, a man-made, unexpected mud volcano , thought to have been caused by unregulated drilling for oil and gas in a tectonically active area. Perhaps not the best idea ever.

Time magazine has a very informative article with excellent graphics:

The destruction is total. At the eruption’s epicenter — known to workers at the site as the Big Hole — a 100-ft. (30 m) plume of white smoke billows into the sky, obscuring the sun and spreading the sulfurous odor of rotting eggs. On a narrow causeway leading to the caldera, dozens of trucks idle in a queue, waiting to deliver soil for the massive earthworks meant to contain the mud. Already, they have transported more than 88 million cu. ft. (2.5 million cu m) of dirt to build eight miles (13 km) of levees around the site. Dozens of cranes work late into the evening piling the dirt atop bulwarks nearly 65 ft. (20 m) tall in places. As the mud rises, so must the levees, but so far Lusi seems to be outpacing human engineering. Twice the earthworks have been breached — most recently on Jan. 4 — flooding more houses. On Nov. 22, 2006, the weight of the soil ruptured a natural-gas pipeline, causing a massive fireball that incinerated 13 workers. According to an International Monetary Fund estimate, Lusi has already cost Indonesia $3.7 billion in damage and damage control. And things are likely to get worse. As mud spews up from the ground, the area around the eruption is gradually sinking. Eventually, Porong could become a giant sucking wound in the Earth.

I find it hard to get my head around the sheer volume of mud that Lusi is vomiting up, millions of cubic feet of it per day. It’s the inexorability of it that’s so impressive; everything they’ve thrown at it so far has failed to plug it or contain it and Lusi just keeps on pumping out vast acres of corrosive goo.

The geology of the region is so volatile and so complex that there’s no telling what reaction from other regional active tectonic features (as pressure is released far below) will be.