The intention of zero tolerance is to reduce harm by reducing drug taking. But the reality is that zero tolerance does not work and that people will continue to use drugs. 

The federal Attorney General’s case against a defendant dubbed “Witness K” began in the ACT Magistrates Court on September 12. Media reports say Witness K is a serving Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) officer. 

“We don’t need to pray for rain, we need to take serious climate action, now”, was the blunt message farmers delivered to the federal parliament on September 10. They said the drought gripping NSW and Queensland is a wake-up call for politicians to take climate change seriously.

Charlie Prell, deputy chair of Farmers for Climate Action, which organised the action, said: “Our country is locked in drought, yet elected leaders are still fiddling and pretending climate change isn’t happening.” Prell is a sheep farmer from Crookwell.

The farmers' rally warned the federal Coalition government not to ignore the impacts of climate change, such as worsening droughts and bush fires in winter. They are also concerned that the government is attempting to stymie the development of wind power, which provides income for farmers and rural communities when agricultural income falls.

An indefinite strike by 1600 Alcoa workers in Western Australia that began on August 8 has entered a new stage with the start of a Fair Work Commission (FWC) hearing in which the company is seeking to terminate the existing enterprise agreement. If the company's move is successful, workers at the multi-billion dollar company’s aluminium refineries and bauxite mines would be forced onto an inferior agreement that offers no job security and a possible wage cut of up to 50%.

With a bold call for protests against Israel’s crimes of apartheid, US-based pop band Of Montreal has dropped out of Israel’s Meteor Festival on September 4, just days before it was set to begin.

Call of the Reed Warbler: A New Agriculture, A New Earth
By Charles Massy
University of Queensland Press, 2017
592, paperback

In Call of the Reed Warbler: A New Agriculture, A New Earth, Monaro farmer Charles Massy has written an excellent book on agricultural change to restore the environment.

Massy talks about his transformation from a land degrader to a land regenerator, and the inspiration he received from dozens of other Australian farmers who have done the same.

The book discusses five key landscape functions that conventional agriculture degrades and which regenerative agriculture addresses: solar, water, nutrient recycling, biodiversity and the human mind.

Plants convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into carbohydrates and humus, but cannot do it on bare ground or short pasture. Therefore year-round ground cover and rotationally grazed livestock are essential.

The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
Daniel Ellsberg
Bloomsbury, 2017
420 pages

After the controversy of US Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning being refused a visa on “character” grounds, Phil Shannon takes a look at a book by one of Manning’s forerunners – Daniel Ellsberg, best known for leaking the Pentagon Papers in 1971, exposing US military secrets.

One of the first reactions of Daniel Ellsberg to his revelatory acquaintance with US nuclear war planning in the 1960s was to decline to join the superannuation scheme of his company, the RAND corporation.

The private sector consultant to the White House and Department of Defence had concluded that he would not last the distance to collect on any retirement pension. He believed that US atomic war strategy made nuclear Armageddon more likely, and frighteningly near.

In recent days, Malaysia attained international notoriety for caning two women after their being convicted in a religious court of attempting to have sex in a car.

In striking contrast, on September 6, the Indian Supreme Court held that section 377 of their penal code, which criminalised consensual acts between adults of the same sex, was unconstitutional. That is a mature decision that gives 1.2 billion people in India the freedom to have consensual sex.

Were these two contrasting judicial responses in our two Asian countries a breakdown of Asian values? Certainly not. Both Malaysia and India have been using a British colonial-era law that legislated Britain’s Victorian-era contempt aimed at the LGBTI community.

All over the world, not just in the West, the times are changing. There are now more countries allowing consensual sex between adults than prohibiting it.