Timber workers
This weekend (26-29 November) environmentalists from all over the country will be congregating in East Gippsland as part of the ongoing campaign to stop woodchipping. In the past woodchipping campaigns have been fought as a battle between environmentalists and timber workers, a false dichotomy fostered by the mainstream media leading many people to think that the interests of timber workers are irreconcilably opposed to the environment.
In actual fact the timber industry is, in its current form, unsustainable even from purely economic criteria, meaning inevitable job losses and increased pressure on wages and conditions.
Therefore, timber workers have as much reason as environmentalists to push for sustainable plantation logging. In order to stop logging in old-growth forests, environmentalists need to build a broad mass campaign, uniting all those opposed to an unsustainable timber industry. This must involve alliances with timber workers, as well as frequent mass mobilisations in the city.
It is time to learn the lessons and return to the methods of campaigning developed in the campaign that saved the Franklin River. Blockading can be an important component of a mass campaign that would also involve education, petitions, letters, mobilisations, media stunts and public forums for discussions.
A campaign of this sort needs to be organised through broad open campaign committees. In order to be successful in saving East Gippsland, East Gippsland Forest Alliance needs decision making forums, in Gippsland and in the city, open to all interested in stopping woodchipping. Only in this way can a mass campaign be built.
Yours for a sustainable future.
Alex Bainbridge, Wendy Robertson, Rachel Evans, Lachlan Anderson
Melbourne Environmental Youth Alliance members
Pasteur and Bechamp
It may be that I have an advantage over those who were taught in orthodox medical schools, but Doug Everingham (GLW, November 10) has totally misinterpreted the discoveries of Bechamp because he has not let go of current medical dogma. To understand Bechamp one must let go of preconceived beliefs.
Doug begins by an invalid criticism of Bechamp's choice of words — Bechamp called the tiny ferments he discovered "microzymas" which according to Doug himself means tiny ferments! Doug then states surprise at the microzymas being similar to DNA — but I said as much in my article! He also suggests I said microzymas were not chemicals — which is utter rubbish.
The point I made is that Bechamp discovered that living organisms are definitively different to mere chemicals (Bechamp researched their chemical breakdown), but that they possess additional qualities. To be more precise, the microzymas possess the common feature of all living things — they display a four phase energy pulse which has been described by some researchers as — tension, charge, distension, discharge — or by others more physiologically as — hunger, digestion, growth, excretion or desire, copulation, pregnancy, birth or desire, sex, orgasm, release of fluids. Lifeless chemicals simply don't do these things.
And Pasteur most certainly did claim that life came from germs of the air. He stated on 7th April 1864 at a lecture at the Sorbonne, after describing an experiment of his "... I have kept it from the only thing man cannot produce, from the germs that float in the air, from Life, for life is a germ and a germ is life."
We aren't taught this because Pasteur was continually forced to update his baseless claims to keep ahead of Bechamp's actual discoveries; originally he merely plagiarised Bechamp but later on he adopted contrary (thus necessarily false) theories to obviate Bechamp disputing the right as the discoverer (see Comptes Rendus — the historical documents of the Academy of Science in Paris of which Pasteur was the head].
Further corroboration of this claim comes from Dr Tissot quoted in The Times newspaper in October 1947: "Bechamp's experiments showed that, contrary to Pasteur's conclusions, dead bodies, meat, milk, etc have within them the causes of putrefaction, which is not necessarily caused by germs in the air. I have been able to prove the accuracy of Bechamp's discoveries. This means that the theory that inoculation creates immunity from disease is false."
And further to that — Pasteur is reputed to have admitted on his death bed something like — the "soil" is everything, the germ nothing (the "soil" here means the body tissues — not dirt). The history of medicine is controlled by the people who stand to make the most bucks. Orwell's 1984 was not a futuristic fiction, it was a current critique.
But Doug Everingham's inaccuracies are more serious. To state "infections ... which fairly reliably meet Koch's four postulates" is to all but admit they don't. What do the "theories of cause and effect" have to do with it? Koch's postulates are a lame duck. His first postulate is simply not true of "infectious" diseases (Kalokerinos. Every second child). The second is irrelevant. The third postulate originally did not mention susceptibility — but this exclusion clause was added later because the postulate is contrary to the fact.
The fourth postulate is an interesting red-herring; it should state that the disease germs must be found in the air we breathe if it is to prove that is where we catch them from, but it states the opposite.
The fact is that disease germs revert back to healthy states in a pure environment, because they are pleomorphic (their form is changeable not fixed).
Orthodox medicine has always denied Bechamp's discovery of pleomorphism and yet they glancingly admit to it now, though it is opposite to medical dogma. I quote from New Scientist paper No.54 (last year): "... HIV is extraordinarily variable. The HIV infecting one person may diverge to form many different strains ... Different individuals will have different strains, even within the same city ..."
This pleomorphism has relevance to another of Doug's inaccurate claims. The original smallpox vaccine was certainly not vaccinia and it is not known if it was cowpox or some other concoction (see The Blood Poisoners, L. Dole]. Even Pasteur admitted smallpox vaccination had no scientific basis, whatever it was made of. Vaccinia was a new name invented more recently when vaccinators discovered the substance they were inoculating was a completely new and accidental creation.
It is also not true that smallpox has been eradicated, because the creation of certain new diseases, as in all forms of herpes, Epstien Barre syndrome and many others, are clearly the result of smallpox germ alterations due to the inoculation of unnatural viruses which cause pleomorphic changes. Pasteur was also known to have created a new disease with his rabies vaccines — paralytic rabies. Though Bechamp demonstrated that the same effect of paralysing rabbits could be had by inoculating healthy human saliva.
Bechamp can only be criticised after disproving his claims.
Rob McKinnon-Lower
Denmark WA
Land rights and lies
If the saying that "where there is money there are lies" is true there must be a lot of money associated with the McArthur River lead deposit if the amount of furphies coming from the proponents of that mine is any guide.
One of the main purposes of these lies is to convince the transitory electors of the Northern Territory, who know nothing of the facts, that the Federal Government and the Aboriginal people are some sorts of ogres bent on depriving the fledgling NT Government of its legitimate authority.
One lie is that the Federal Government is breaching the NT Self Government Act. If so, why is there no attempt at legal redress?
Another lie is that 95% of the Northern Territory could become Aboriginal land. This is a most despicable lie and a total impossibility.
It is said that the Federal Government took back the Ashmore Reef and Cartier Island. From whom?
Another lie is that land under inalienable freehold is removed from the control of the NT Government and comes under the control of the Federal Government. What rot!
While it is possible to name some areas under Federal control there are also areas of Aboriginal land, such as Nitmiluk National Park, which are under NT Government control.
It has been stated that there is a rapidly shrinking land base that places severe pressure on the NT Government's ability to effectively govern — in fact, it is the rapidly increasing debt load incurred by our prancing buffoons in the name of infrastructure development, with its particular emphasis on white elephant farms.
Claims that the Territory has lost control of 50% of its land are not borne out by any evidence of Territory legislation that does not apply on Aboriginal land.
It is a lie to say the Northern Territory has been crucified with the Lands Rights Act, rather, large numbers of the population have received a marked improvement in their previously unenviable position, with little or no detriment to the majority.
C.M. Friel
Alawa NT
[Edited for length.]
Appalled at Gorton
I am appalled (although, I must say not surprised) by ex-Liberal PM John Gorton's comments re: Aborigines being "inferior".
At this stage of history, with Mabo and reconciliation well overdue, this would have to be the most regressive action in 205 years!
Things are bad enough in Court's fascist, anti-Koori regime without dickheads like Gorton opening their holes. The only thing the Lib/Nat coalition are going to do is start a race war. Wake up Australia! This was Aboriginal land for centuries before we stole it.
The Aborigines should not be given parts of Australia back. They should be given allof it back; now.
G. James Elliott
East Victoria Park WA
Defining 'welfare'
The recent forum on A Current Affair — "Welfare: Right or Ripoff" — is typical of the narrow understanding of "welfare" and only serves to cultivate jaundiced, prejudiced and one-sided opinions concerning "welfare". The debate so far, as elucidated by our media, has been narrow and intellectually shallow. Quite frankly, we are being misled.
The current debate defines"welfare" only in terms of cash transfers to the poor and less privileged. A full definition of "welfare" should also include "fiscal" and "occupational" welfare which are also transfers of wealth, typically to the wealthier sections of society.
In this regard, we have "welfare" policies for some and "economic" policies (usually couched in terms like "incentive") for others. This misleading terminology hides the fact that wealth is increasingly becoming concentrated in the hands of a few to the detriment of the wider society.
A 1986 ABS survey showed that 10% of the population held 55.2% of Australia's personal wealth. Despite recent reports of increased company profits, we are still faced with chronic unemployment and threats to our health and education systems. Increasingly, economic rationalists deflect blame away from capital intensive development and restructuring in pursuit of increased profits as causes for our current problems, and blame "selfish" workers and "lazy dole bludgers".
The current view of welfare perpetuated by the media and those in power is an indication of the growing vilification of the poor and less privileged in the search for scapegoats to explain the failure of the current economic system to live up to expectations. I challenge the Australian media to fully and frankly report on this issue.
Adam Cunningham
Hazelbrook NSW