Markets & Justice

Markets & Justice
Freely operating markets yield a just outcome?

White Australia Has A Black History

White Australia Has A Black History

Sunday 30 November 2014

Eureka 160 @ St Paul's will be celebrated December 3 - remembering the people of Ballarat then and now

Father Constantine Osuchukwu is pleased to welcome you
to a very different celebration of Eureka
- at St Paul's we are celebrating humanity:
the international people of Ballarat 160 years ago
and the multicultural city that Ballarat is to-day.
There will be music, poetry, spirituality - and supper.

This week - on Wednesday December 3 - 
the 160th Anniversary of the Eureka Rebellion
will be commemorated and celebrated in Ballarat.  

and there is

And this year there is a new - and somewhat different - event 
on the Eureka Calendar - at St Paul's Bakery Hill in Ballarat.
St Paul's is the site of the establishment of the Ballarat Reform League.

Wednesday 26 November 2014

Indefinitely, inhumane, and in defiance - we are imprisoning children. Release them! WE ARE BETTER THAN THIS


currently detained indefinitely 

by the Australian government.

_________

Indefinitely.
Inhumanely,
And in defiance of international human rights conventions.
In your name.

Your help will sustain their hope.
You are free to choose how you will stand
against this travesty of justice and morality.
Please do so.

Thursday 20 November 2014

Eureka Vox Pop at M.A.D.E. - this Saturday 22 November 2014

From ABC Open Ballarat
       
      What's your Eureka story?

      Did you learn about Eureka at school? 
      Do you have a family connection? 
      Maybe a car with a Eureka number plate?
      to share your Eureka stories 
      at a video booth this Saturday at the 
      BBQ and drinks provided. 



Other workshops:

Photography
at the Ararat Library this Saturday from 9am to 12 noon. 

Writing
at the Ararat Library this Monday from 6pm. 
The theme is My Secret Fear.  


Peace ecology, water scarcity, and water wars

Published on
by

Peace Ecology: Deep Solutions in an Age of Water Scarcity and War

A key concept of what we term "peace ecology" is grounded in the notion that conflicts and crises driven by scarcity of natural resources—such as water—can also be opportunities for us to reimagine what is possible and ultimately foster mutually beneficial solutions and longer-term sustainability. (Photo: Louis Vest/flickr/cc)

The following is an excerpt of the Randall Amster's latest book, Peace Ecology, and appears on Common Dreams with the kind permission of the author and publisher. All rights reserved. Please note, book citations have been removed for online reading but a fully cited version (pdf) can be accessed here.

Mark Twain once purportedly said that “whiskey’s for drinking—water’s for fighting.” While the evidence for attributing this to Twain is shaky at best, the quote is nonetheless frequently invoked as a foregone conclusion: people will fight over water because it is scarce, essential, and invaluable for the growth and development of human societies. In reality, “water wars” are exceedingly rare, with the overwhelming majority of the world’s 263 shared river basins being subject to treaties, agreements, and other mechanisms for allocating their flow. Still, there is a deeper concern reflected in Twain’s apocryphal quote, namely that while water wars between nations may be rare, modern water utilization on the whole often reflects a collective war that humankind is waging on the environment. All too often, what are coded as “shared waters” and “peaceful resolutions” to human-human conflicts still involve deep incursions against the natural flow of surface waters, including channelizing rivers to fix national boundaries, altering the saline and sediment levels, and damming rivers for hydroelectric plants. Such outcomes are part of a larger orientation that comes to equate peace with control—especially control of nature.

"We must recognize water as boundless... as life."
As human cultures expand, water is emerging as the central resource in local and global politics alike. Pressures to privatize and commodify water are continually being brought to bear, often under the guise of development schemes that are portrayed as linking growth with security. To ensure that water flows even in places where it is highly problematic—from Abu Dhabi to Phoenix—massive delivery infrastructures are contemplated, including energy-intensive desalination plants and circuitous concrete canals transporting water hundreds of miles across deserts. Science fiction scenarios abound, as plans are conceived to capture clouds, drag icebergs, and create mountains and lakes for delivering water supplies to thirsty nations. One of the first high-tech regional water projects, which would serve as a template for similar projects worldwide, was the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) developed in the 1930s, comprised of a series of elaborate dams and hydropower generating stations. When World War II broke out, the project was reoriented toward wartime production, doubling its power generation and producing a majority of the phosphorous used by the U.S. military for bullets, bombs, and chemical weapons, as well as aluminum for aircraft. The “most significant contribution to the war” was created at a TVA-powered laboratory: the fissionable uranium-235 that was used to fuel the Manhattan Project that developed the world’s first nuclear weapon.

peace_ecology.jpg
The TVA example is stark for its specific militarism, yet it reveals something deeper about how we tend to view water. Oftentimes the choice for transnational actors appears to be one of engaging in either water wars or joint development projects—in essence, either militarism or capitalism; a World War and/or the World Bank. If we are inclined to associate the latter with peace, then it obviously becomes preferable to the alternative, and yet deeper questions about the meaning of water remain unresolved. Water is inherently fluid, unpredictable, prone to extremes of either floods or droughts, both transient and in situ, primeval in its simplicity and purity. Water reshapes images beneath its surface and accurately reflects those above it; it is "an active agent, changing all it touches … creating new courses and possibilities yet to be appreciated by humans." As we co-evolve with all of the essential resources in our midst, we must also apprehend "the limitations of instrumental rationality in capturing the meanings of water and shortcomings of modern science in improving our understanding of its treatment in society."

Increasingly, we come to recognize that no peace between nations is possible without reconciling underlying water issues. It has been surmised that the failure to attain peace in the Middle East between Israel and its Arabic neighbors has been due in part to the concomitant failure to achieve a mutually cognizable agreement over the Jordan River and underground aquifers in the region, yielding a climate of "mistrust, fears of dependency, and perceived threats to national sovereignty." In the case of India and Pakistan, where border clashes and warlike tensions have persisted for decades, a treaty governing the Indus River basin was signed in 1960, following a World Bank proposal to divide the waters between the two countries. While the agreement may have helped forestall violent interstate conflict, it also led to "an all-out effort to build a monumental array of dams and canals"—leading one of the Pakistani (formerly Indian) engineers on the project to observe: “This was like a war. These were huge works…. Everybody was after us. They said we had sold the rivers, that we were traitors to our country”.

What we learn from these examples is that water is more than a mere resource, and that both fighting over it and dividing its spoils are equally problematic resolutions to looming global water issues. As we have seen throughout this volume, both the hardware and software of conflict must be addressed, requiring a simultaneous emphasis on peacemaking at both the human-human and human-environment interfaces. As Vandana Shiva documents, efforts to privatize water and dam rivers often result in the displacement of peoples and the despoliation of the environment—as well as an ensuing “centralization of power over water” that conjures a double meaning for the concept of "hydropower." While it may be the case that "the world is more conscious than ever of the unbreakable nexus between water and life," this realization—coupled with depletion of freshwater sources and a rising contingent of global competitors for resources—has led many to speculate that the wars of the 21st century will be fought primarily over water, not oil or other valuable resources. On the other hand, more promisingly, a spate of literature has emerged in recent years suggesting that water can be a powerful basis for transborder cooperation, collaboration, conservation—and peace.

*          *           *

There are myriad lessons to be gleaned from the field of hydro-politics, which we may take as the "systematic study of conflict and cooperation between states over water resources that transcend international borders." Chief among these lessons are that water highlights our innate interdependence with one another and the environment alike, and likewise that water directly connects the economic and ecological spheres of human life. As with other environmental components, "water bodies respect no political borders," thus engendering a wider perspective that is particularly useful in light of global scarcity and the essential nature of the resource. While studies of water in relation to violent conflict have reached varied conclusions…, there is an emerging consensus that scarcity in the context of renewability coupled with the “critical need" for water can provide the impetus for cooperation—yielding "peaceful and successful conflict management schemes" even among "states with recent militarized conflicts."

If we take to heart the premise that scarcity and essentiality can promote cooperation, then the prospects for water to spur transborder peace initiatives are indeed promising. Nearly half of the earth’s land mass abuts river basins shared by more than one nation, and more than three-quarters of the available fresh water flows through an international river basin—reminding us in stark geographical terms that "a river is without a nationality." It is becoming increasingly clear that lasting peace is possible, from the Middle East to the American Southwest, "only if water is taken into account." Highlighting these themes, the United Nations declared 2013 as the "International Year of Water Cooperation" and the years from 2005-2015 as the "Water for Life Decade"—optimistically citing the operative notion that "history has often shown that the vital nature of freshwater is a powerful incentive for cooperation and dialogue, compelling stakeholders to reconcile even the most divergent views. Water more often unites than divides people and societies." In order to reach this ambitious horizon, we must strive to "build bridges between various meanings and understandings" and to enhance "the legitimacy of noninstrumental uses of water." In short, we must recognize water as boundless—as life.

If we are thus seeking the robust peace contemplated by the peace ecology perspective, then we will need to do more than sign treaties that allocate every drop of water among competing users. Control and peace are often dichotomous, at least in the context of transnational security issues and a complex geopolitical landscape where looming resource wars and ongoing processes of economic colonization continue to dominate the discourse. Physical borders between nations are increasingly militarized in the post-9/11 era, even as the barriers to so-called "free trade" and footloose capital are simultaneously relaxed. This has the effect of diminishing the potential for genuine exchange among peoples and communities on opposite sides of national borders, interrupting the natural processes of ecosystems that do not abide the largely artificial lines on maps. It also serves to exacerbate tensions among nations, leading to the creation of permanent war economies whose explicit "national security" focus is the procurement and control of dwindling resources—down to even the essentials of food, water, and energy. The zero-sum logic of scarcity and competition is palpable, and has become a central norm of international relations, even as its workings are becoming little more than a self-fulfilling downward spiral in which vast resources are expended in the attempt to secure more of them.

[A]ny exploration of processes confronting these eventualities is potentially revolutionary in its full dimensions. The set of interrelated themes brought together under the rubric of peace ecology remain grounded in the notion that the crises of scarcity and conflict are also opportunities for mutually beneficial engagement born of necessity yet aimed at longer-term sustainability. The cultivation of a sense of shared destiny and mutual necessity can bring even ardent transnational adversaries to the negotiating table, since, as Alexander Carius reminds us, "environmental problems ignore political borders." This emerging holistic perspective suggests that peoples and nations have the potential to find ways of managing ecological concerns that not only work to avoid conflicts but that can also serve to promote peaceful relations among human communities and with the environment itself.
Randall Amster, JD, PhD, is Director of the Program on Justice and Peace at Georgetown University, and serves as Executive Director of the Peace and Justice Studies Association. His recent books include Peace Ecology (Paradigm Publishers, 2014), Anarchism Today(Praeger, 2012), Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization, and Urban Ecology of Homelessness; and the co-edited volumes  Exploring the Power of Nonviolence: Peace, Politics, and Practice (Syracuse University Press, 2013) and Building Cultures of Peace: Transdisciplinary Voices of Hope and Action.

Wednesday 19 November 2014

Doing what Jesus would do can be dangerous - even in a supposedly Christian nation

Florida priest cited for feeding homeless wants his day in court

the Rev. Canon Mark H. Sims, rector of St. Mary Magdalene Episcopal Church in Coral Springs, is issued with a criminal citation for feeding the homeless.
The Rev. Canon Mark H. Sims (wearing a stole), rector of St. Mary Magdalene Episcopal Church in Coral Springs, is issued with a criminal citation for feeding the homeless.
[Episcopal News Service] A Florida priest who was issued a criminal citation for feeding homeless residents in a local park is fighting back.
“I am suing the city of Fort Lauderdale for the right to continue to feed the homeless on city streets,” according to the Rev. Canon Mark H. Sims, rector of St. Mary Magdalene Episcopal Church in Coral Springs.
Sims told the Episcopal News Service Nov. 13 that he has hired local attorneys Bill Scherer, a well-known trial lawyer, and Bruce Rogow, a constitutional lawyer who teaches at Nova Southeastern University, to defend him “in court against a criminal citation I was issued.
“I want to fight the constitutionality of the ordinance that was passed. As someone issued a citation I have standing and I’m going to use that opportunity.”
Scherer told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel that the city ordinance, passed Oct. 31, which bans feeding of homeless in public places, is unconstitutional and discriminatory.
Police arrive at Stranahan Park where Sims and others were feeding homeless residents.
Police arrive at Stranahan Park where Sims and others were feeding homeless residents.
Local law enforcement officials halted Sims and two others from feeding homeless residents in Stranahan Park on Nov. 2. Sims, 57, said he was detained by police, fingerprinted, issued the citation and released. He is awaiting a court appearance date and faces a $500 fine and a possible 60 days in jail.
“If I get sentenced to jail, I’m going to jail,” Sims said. “But, I’m willing to stay there [in jail] for the right to compassionately feed people who are living on the street,” he added.
City officials have said they want feeding programs moved indoors but Sims and others say there are simply not enough locations to accommodate growing numbers of homeless families and individuals.
“I am determined to allow people to be able to compassionately feed the homeless and people who are hungry on the streets of Florida. I don’t see how we can pass an ordinance that restricts human decency,” added Sims, who has created a legal defense fund on “gofundme.com” and expects “a tough challenge in court.”
He vowed to continue to feed homeless people and on Nov. 12 joined others doing just that at a local beach.
“The Episcopal Church in this diocese feeds people every single day through one of several agencies,” Sims said. “We have on-site places that we use and there are so many social service agencies we have created in Southeastern Florida to help families and individuals as much as we can, but there are still not enough.”
As chair of the board of the Episcopal Charities of Southeastern Florida “we just funded for a two-year cycle $600,000 worth of grants to parishes with at least half of that going to programs that are caring for the feeding of hungry people, homeless people and the elderly,” Sims said.
Typically, during winter months families and individuals who are homeless migrate to Florida from colder climates, so there has been a noticeable uptick in their numbers locally, he said.
On Sunday, Nov. 9, members of his parish returned to the park and served a hot meal of sautéed chicken, rice, vegetables and dessert and distributed “takeout bags of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and apples. We saw more women than we normally see. It was a bit surprising and a bit sad,” Sims said.
But he added that “the city wants them off the streets. They don’t want to do anything to encourage them to be able to stay on the streets. The problem is, there’s no place else to go. They want to make it someone else’s problem.”
Feeding people who are homeless is nothing new for Sims, who said “this has been going on since I was in seminary in 1999 and before that when I was a parishioner in South Florida. I’ve been doing this for 20 years.”
His goal, he said, is for city officials to rescind the ordinance “and I want to sit down with a clean slate and help rework it.”
Meanwhile, local, national and international church communities have rallied in support of Sims, according to the Rev. Canon Donna Dambrot, Episcopal Charities executive director. She compared his legal struggle to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent resistance to unjust laws.
The area has “seen an amazing increase in homelessness and hunger needs,” Dambrot added. “When Fort Lauderdale adopted this ordinance there was already feeding going on in the streets. We’ve gotten … requests for additional funding because the need is so great and food pantries have run out of food and their access to government sources of food is not available.”
She said ECSF “serves hundreds of thousands of meals a year” through partner agencies and that she has noticed at least a 10 percent increase recently in numbers of meals served.
The issue of homelessness is complex and layered, she added. “We have people come out of the woods and the mangroves in the [Florida] Keys; there are homeless folks living in encampments. In Pompano Beach, they’re sleeping under the highway. We even have some people living in canoes in the water, who come ashore to food pantries in Key West.”
There are levels of homelessness, including those who are temporarily without housing who receive job skills and employment training and eventually find permanent living arrangements.
“There is also that layer of folks we serve at St. Lawrence Chapel and our Jubilee Center in South Broward, that will be chronically homeless,” she said. “It’s an ongoing challenge and we’ll be in this for a long time.”
Yet, she added that Sims’ advocacy has inspired others “to take those steps necessary to change what we perceive as unjust regulations.” Sims, the agency and the church community are all simply attempting to respond to Jesus’ directives to help others.
“We follow Matthew 25,” which emphasizes Jesus’s call to serve those in need, she said. “That is our road map. That is our intentional vocational mission.”
–The Rev. Pat McCaughan is a correspondent for the Episcopal News Service.

Saturday 15 November 2014

The G20 Summit occurring in Brisbane : voices of the Anglican Communion speak out : message from Philip Freier, Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia & Archbishop of Melbourne


Anglican Communion voices speak out ahead of the G20 summit 
Posted on: November 13, 2014 4:17 PM 
The G20 is a forum for the governments and central bank governors 
from 20 major economies 
Photo Credit: G20 

By ACNS staff

Leading figures from the Anglican Communion are speaking out before and during this weekend’s G20 meeting in Brisbane, Australia, on a range of economic and development issues.

The G20 is a forum for the governments and central bank governors from 20 major economies that are said to account for around 85% of the gross world product, 80% of world trade and two-thirds of the world population.

 On the sidelines of the meeting will be people from countries not all represented in the G20, reminding world leaders that global growth should not come at the expense of the world's poorest people.

(l to r) Tagolyn Kabekabe and Abp Winston Halapua 
Photo Credit: ABM
 The Anglican Board of Mission (ABM) reports that the Archbishop of Polynesia, Winston Halapua is asking the G20 to consider how they might co-operate to minimise the impacts of climate change which are already being felt by people in the Pacific Islands.

The Anglican Alliance Regional facilitator for the Pacific will also be in Brisbane during the event. Tagolyn Kabekabe works with communities in the Solomon Islands who are experiencing the erosion of their homelands, poisoning of their food gardens by salt water and increasing exposure to extreme weather events.

Tagolyn represented the Anglican Communion, in particular those in the Pacific directly affected by climate change, at the C20 meeting – a civil society forum that met in June to feed in to the G20 discussions.

The Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia, Dr Philip Freier, has issued a statement in which he warns global leaders that “failure to address these issues of economic security and justice will lead to more international conflict and reduce the possibility of human flourishing”. [His full statement is below]

ABM's Greg Henderson has been organising opportunities for people in Brisbane to meet Archbishop Winston and Tagolyn Kabekabe. He says that it is important for Australians to recognise that climate change is a justice issue, "because its impact is being felt most seriously by communities who have the least power to address the causes of anthropogenic warming".

According to the G20 website, the meeting's agenda has been built around the key themes of
  • promoting stronger economic growth and employment outcomes 
  • making the global economy more resilient to deal with future shocks 
  • strengthening global institutions to ensure they reflect the new realities of the global economy.
For more about the G20’s priorities visit  

Statement by Dr Philip Freier
Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia and Archbishop of Melbourne: 

The G20 meeting of the world’s 20 largest economies in Brisbane this weekend takes place in increasingly uncertain times. There are growing fears of global recession, rising international tensions and growing economic inequality between countries and within countries. 

 In the longer term there are vast challenges, such as managing climate change, global population growth and movement, international conflict, food security, water, and potential epidemics. 

It is essential that the countries taking part look beyond their own short-term national interests and seek to address these challenges in a concerted and effective way. I echo Pope Francis, who urged last week that the discussions move beyond declarations of principle to real improvements in the living conditions of poorer families and the reduction of all forms of unacceptable inequality. 

It will require good will and trust on all sides if the G20 summit is to achieve real progress, and it is the nature of international politics that no one wants to go first on such a path. Yet without a clear-sighted optimism, real change will be impossible. 

Failure to address these issues of economic security and justice will lead to more international conflict and reduce the possibility of human flourishing. They cannot be left to fester. The Anglican Church of Australia urges the G20 leaders to search for new and cooperative solutions that can work across the globe. To that end, we offer our support and prayers. 

 +Philip, Primate of the Anglican Church of Australia

Thursday 13 November 2014

Aboriginal art - looking at the sky through Aboriginal eyes

Tuesday 11 November 2014

Red poppies for #Remembrance. White poppies for #Peace. Let's start to wage #Peace not #War

Picture below from here
To-day is Remembrance Day in Australia. At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the nation falls silent for two minutes. Red poppies are in lapels and in the laid wreaths at shrines, cenotaphs and memorials across the country. Red poppies are massed against the names of the war dead at the Australian War Memorial in the national capital, Canberra.

There are news reports to-day that the print media reporting on Remembrance Day is muted compared to that of previous years.  Why is this so?  Is this because Australia is immersing itself in military action at this time in the Middle East?

If we mute our response to Remembrance Day and its memory of "the war to end all wars", is it time to ask the penetrating questions?
  • Do we put the same financial, acquisitive, organisational, and human effort into waging peace as we do to waging war?  
  • Are we prepared to stand up and say to our government that we want it to pay as much attention to training for peace, preparedness for peace, arming for peace, strengthening the ramparts of peace as we do for training for war, preparing for war, arming for war, strengthening the ramparts of war?
One of the most interesting bodies of literary work in English in the 20th century is the "Testament" series by Vera Brittain - Testament of Youth, Testament of Friendship, Testament of Experience. The experience/s that impacted Brittain's life in World War 1 made her a lifelong pacifist and fighter for peace.  Between the two world wars, she was active in the establishment and the promotion of the League of Nations. She also became a member of the Peace Pledge Union and its offshoot, the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship. The secretary of the Australian chapter of the latter, is Bishop Philip Huggins.

The Peace Pledge Union is notable for its White Poppy campaign.  Many people in Britain wear two poppies - the red for remembrance, the white for peace.

Listen to the song in honour of Vera Brittain
written by Sue Gilmurray

Australia is the driest inhabited continent on earth. Have we got what it takes to protect our precious water?

There are two major, major water sources/resources in Australia. 
One is visible --- the Murray Darling Basin
The other is not so visible --- the Great Artesian Basin

Humans have interfered in many and nefarious ways with the Murray-Darling Rivers and their feeders. To try to repair the damage has been a highly controversial exercise. People in remote Australia who depend on artesian water are concerned that fracking will lead to pollution of the Great Artesian Basin and that, should this occur, the basin will never recover and a major and precious resource will be lost to humanity.

#StandUpToProtect against inhumane treatment of refugees and asylum seekers


Monday 10 November 2014

Ballarat Community Garden hosts a Multicultral Luncheon next Sunday 16 November

Ballarat Community Garden
has a special occasion planned -
a Multicultural Lunch.
The garden is located on the corner of Dyte Pde and Queen St., Ballarat, 3350
Enter from Dyte Pde.
What a good way to make new friends!

Dorothy Day, Servant of God - Nov. 8, 1897 – Nov. 29, 1980