BRAYS BLOG

How Coal Damages The Economy

Thu, 02 May 2013 23:19:15 -0400

After being forced to admit that “clean coal” will never happen, the coal industry has fallen back on an old argument to justify itself — that Australia cannot live without the industry because it does so much for the economy by providing jobs and creating wealth.

the coal industry says they directly employ 49,300 people, indirectly employs almost 130,000 people and its economic contribution is valued at $43 billion, a growth of 20% over six years.

The coal industry is not unique in indirectly employing large numbers of people. Every industry leads to other employment, but the coal industry uses this figure as a way to seem more important than it actually is. Renewable energy investment, for instance, would see a similar employment multiplier effect

Its contribution, as measured, is about 3.14% of GDP, yet only employs directly and indirectly 1.55% of those working in Australia.

Tourism — which has been negatively affected by the mining boom — by comparison, contributed a total of about 5.3% of GDP in April last year and directly and indirectly employed 7.9% of those working. Even the growth rate of coalmining must be modified by the fact that inflation from 2007 to the end of 2012 was 16.3%, leaving a real growth rate of 3.7% over five years.

How the $43 billion in economic activity is distributed is something the industry does not want to discuss.

As of May last year, the average yearly wage for those in mining was $124,176, the highest of any industry in Australia. But mining wages as a percentage of “contribution” to the economy is 14.2%.

The overall wages for coalminers is more than $6 billion a year, compare this to the worth of Gina Rinehart which is estimated at $17 billion, which is worth almost three years of work of every single coalminer in the country.

It must be remembered, though, that this contribution is built on the back of public subsidies. The Australian Institute estimated that at least $4 billion a year goes to the mining industry from the Commonwealth, with coalmining representing about one third of the mining industry. This $2 billion-a-year subsidy amounts to an $87 yearly handout from every Australian.

Just on the health impacts, a study released in the US found that when it comes to air pollution, its costs “were at best 80% of industry value added and at worst 5.6 times greater”.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on April 24: “Exposure to polluted air increases the risk of heart disease and stroke by speeding up the hardening of the arteries, according to new research.” Greens Senator Richard Di Natale pointed out in the same article that the “number of Australians who died from air pollution each year was more than twice the national road toll”.

Coal is a major contributor to global climate change. The Guardian reported on September 26: “Climate change is already contributing to the deaths of nearly 400,000 people a year and costing the world more than $1.2 trillion, wiping 1.6% annually from global GDP, according to a new study.”

In reality, the development of clean energy will also “contribute” to the economy, be much more job intensive than the coal industry and won’t have nearly the same economic and health costs that coal mining has. (Fuck Off Coal)

http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/53936

But don’t tell me this is natural.This is nurturing.And there’s a difference between...

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 21:23:13 -0500

But don’t tell me this is natural.
This is nurturing.
And there’s a difference between sexism and sexuality.
I have different desires prior to my role-remodelling.
And at six years of age you don’t challenge their claims.
You become the same.
I think that’s exactly what I did.
I tried to sever the connections between me and them.
I fought against their further attempts to convince a kid
that birthright can bestow the power to yield the subordination
of women and do you know what patricentricity means?
I found out just a couple of days/months/years/minutes ago.
It means male values uber alles and hey!
Whaddaya know… sex has been distorted and vilified.
I’m scared of my attraction to body types.
If everything desired is objectified then maybe

eroticism needs to be redefined.

And I refuse to be a “man”.

Propagandhi- Refusing To Be A Man

ANZ financing climate destruction | Green Left Weekly

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 08:02:58 -0500

http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/53166

A short article about Anti-coal activist Jonathan Moylan, he gained some media attention after he posed a false release in the name of ANZ bank on January 7. The spoof declared that the bank was withdrawing a 1.2 billion dollar lone, which would finance the Maules Creek coalmine project, owned by Whitehaven Coal.

“The Leard State Forest is the largest remnant of native vegetation in the Liverpool Plains. It is made up of critically endangered ecological communities of Whitebox, Bimblebox, Pilliga Box and Yellowbox and is habitat for 34 vulnerable species of birds, bats and lizards”

“If it is cleared for mining, it would undermine the biodiversity of the entire north-west of NSW. The forest provides a scrub rain that is critical for local farmers. This kind of vegetation is not allowed to be cleared by anybody, including forestry, but mining companies are given free rein to clear-fell and blow up the ground.”

“Before the last election the [Barry] O’Farrell government promised to protect certain agricultural lands, biodiversity hotspots and drinking water catchments from mining, and they have spectacularly broken that promise by allowing mining everywhere in NSW with no limits.”

“This mine is a perfect example of politicians feathering their nests. In addition to Mark Vaile, former deputy prime minister and leader of the Nationals, being the chair of Whitehaven Coal, we also have the former secretary of the Nationals and former chief of staff to Barry O’Farrell, Liam Bathgate, doing the lobbying for the mine.”

“People are now starting to realise that the money behind big coal projects is the same money as they have in their bank account or superannuation funds.We need to remember that as the world’s largest exporter of coal, Australians have more influence than anybody else in the world to help prevent catastrophic climate change.”

“One final thing to remember is to constantly check the Department of Primary Industry’s website for new coalmining lease applications. You don’t have the right to be notified if a mining company is applying for a coalmining lease over your property, but if you find out and object within 21 days on the basis that your land has been agricultural land for more than 10 years, the mining lease application has to be rejected”

This a poignant example of large corporate conglomerates and their endless ties with politcians and lobbyists, aswell as the salient ideals of the national party and their profit driven relations. Regardless of the impact on local farming, or the environment.

twofinches replied to your post: UN launches inquiry into drone killings People told me I was stupid...

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 09:42:11 -0500

twofinches replied to your post: UN launches inquiry into drone killings

People told me I was stupid when I told them this. There was another attack on the day of the sandy hook massacre all to divert the attention of the stupid crowd in hypnosis with the media mantra

I didn’t know that, but that’s interesting, it reminds me eerily of the day columbine happened, and clinton dropped more bombs on kosovo than other other time during that war. National tragedies tend to distract the public from the national tragedies america is causing everywhere else. It’s also creates alot of fear, which is vital for american policy.

Invasion? Genocide? Black deaths in custody? Let's move on..

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 10:30:23 -0500

http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/53098

It is nearly that time again, the time to celebrate all that is great about this nation on the date that commemorates its founding by Europeans who discovered what they considered an empty continent.

We have made a lot of progress since then. For instance in 1967 we agreed in a landmark national vote that Aboriginal people were people, and not fauna.

Yes, it might have been founded on stolen land, made possible by the genocide of another race, but we sure have a great cricket team!

Take Queensland’s former police commissioner Bob Atkinson, who retired in September just hours after a court banned him from deciding the fate of six police officers involved in two official police cover-ups over the killing of Aboriginal man Mulrunji Doomadgee in 2004.

Then take the case of Roy Bramwell, who told the third inquest into Doomadgee’s death in 2010 that he saw Hurley repeatedly kick and punch Doomadgee. He said: “I told police he kicked him and all that, but he [Detective Darren Robinson] crushed it and put it in the trash. He then took me and made a second statement. They told me if I told anyone what I saw they would come after me.”So Bramwell was tragically forced to make a false statement and Detective Robinson was tragically forced to waste a piece of paper. We can only hope it got recycled.

Yes, because as tragic as these events were “for all involved”, it is not like Black deaths in custody is any kind of constant systematic feature of Australian life. After all, since the Royal Commission into Black deaths in custody handed down its final report in 1991, there have only been nearly 300 more Black deaths in custody, which is only a rate of about one a month.

So let’s just move on. We have an invasion to celebrate.

UN launches inquiry into drone killings

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 10:03:42 -0500

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-21176279

UN is launching an inquiry into the impact on civilians of drone strikes and other targeted killings.

There is a need for “accountability and reparation where things have gone badly wrong”, the British lawyer heading the investigation told journalists.

Between 2004 and 2013, CIA drone attacks in Pakistan killed up to 3,461 people - up to 891 of them civilians, according to research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

The vast majority of the strikes were carried out under the administration of President Barack Obama, it said.

"Obama’s Dirty Wars Exposed at Sundance." By Amy Goodman

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 09:55:53 -0500

https://soundcloud.com/democracynow/obamas-dirty-wars-exposed-at

As President Barack Obama prepared to be sworn in for his second term as the 44th president of the United States, two courageous journalists premiered a documentary at the annual Sundance Film Festival. “Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield”.Obama administration’s reliance on shadowy special forces to conduct military raids beyond the reach of oversight and accountability, were summarily missed over the inaugural weekend by a U.S. press corps obsessed with first lady Michelle Obama’s new bangs.

Scahill told me: “In Gardez, U.S. special operations forces had intelligence that a Taliban cell was having some sort of a meeting to prepare a suicide bomber. And they raid the house in the middle of the night, and they end up killing five people, including three women, two of whom were pregnant, and … Mohammed Daoud, a senior Afghan police commander who had been trained by the U.S.”

They interviewed survivors of that violent raid on the night of Feb. 12, 2010. After watching his brother and his wife, his sister and his niece killed by U.S. special forces, Mohammed Sabir was handcuffed on the ground. He watched, helpless, as the U.S. soldiers dug the bullets out of his wife’s corpse with a knife. He and the other surviving men were then flown off by helicopter to another province.

It was not a Taliban meeting, but a lively celebration of the birth of a child that the raid interrupted. Rowley described another video: “You can hear voices come over it, and they’re American-accented voices speaking about piecing together their version of the night’s killings, getting their story straight. You hear them trying to concoct a story about how this was something other than a massacre.”

The film shows an image captured in Gardez, by photographer Jeremy Kelly, sometime after the massacre. It showed a U.S. admiral named McRaven, surrounded by Afghan soldiers, offering a sheep as a traditional gesture seeking forgiveness for the massacre. The cover-up had failed

Photo

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 22:33:25 -0500

bangbangrockandroll: Winnipeg punk godfathers Propagandhi at...

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 21:13:55 -0500

bangbangrockandroll:

Winnipeg punk godfathers Propagandhi at the Button Factory in Waterloo on December 17, 1996. Two hundred kids packed into the 100-capacity arts loft in Uptown. Chris Hannah kicks off his clothes during one of the opening numbers, and plays the entire show buck naked. Somehow no one is arrested for fire hazards or public indecency, although not too long afterwards the Button Factory stops being a live music venue.

Photos by Mark Miller, now a professional photographer in Buffalo NY with work at http://www.hmniphoto.com, reproduced with kind permission.

Photo

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 17:59:16 -0500

Some vegans, not just here on tumblr, but everywhere. Guys you really need to excercise...

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 07:42:32 -0500

Some vegans, not just here on tumblr, but everywhere. Guys you really need to excercise “Effective Advocacy” in getting the point across, there is no real merit in insulting meat eaters and certainly wishing death and other horrible thigns upon them….fuck.

It’s not beneficial at all, especially on the behalf of the animals. However snoopy and ignorant a meat eater being challenged with the horror and suffering of his lifestyle can act, it’s not necessarily acceptable for you to act like a self righteous pantheon of moral demi gods. It may be frustrating and digusting to sit back and watch the egomaniacal cruelty humans perpetually inflict upon billions of animals per year. It may also be down right disgusting for you to sit there and watch them gurgle up their secretions too, but needlessly attacking and bickering with meat eaters on the internet sure as hell doesn’t do much for it. It’s just creates more and more fucking hatred and reluctance for them to change.

“Veganism should not be about purity or superiority, it should be about extending moral consideration to other inhabitants of a complex planet in a morally ambivalent universe where, despite the statistical improbability of it all, we earthlings (human and non human) appear to be the only instance of sentient life that is or has ever been. That is some heavy shit.” -Chris Hannah

Effective Advocacy kiddies, Effective Advocacy. Stop being such snobby pricks it’s not helping anything.

"Opinions are like orgasms… mine matters most and I really don’t care if you have one."

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 00:40:25 -0500

“Opinions are like orgasms… mine matters most and I really don’t care if you have one.”

- Sylvia Plath (YES)

Photo

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 09:11:42 -0500

Photo

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 09:10:22 -0500

Photo

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 09:05:27 -0500

Photo

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 09:03:21 -0500

exit29collapsed: Hot Cross

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 09:02:25 -0500

exit29collapsed:

Hot Cross

Photo

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 09:02:06 -0500

Photo

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 09:01:37 -0500

johnpeelizalive: Drive Like Jehu Yank Crime (1994) #60

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 09:01:10 -0500

johnpeelizalive:

Drive Like Jehu

Yank Crime (1994)

#60