Let's Avoid More Rows!

[icyfroth]

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono says "precise measures" must be taken to avoid a repeat of the spying which caused a deep rift in relations with Australia.

Dr Yudhoyono on Tuesday met with some of his closest advisers and senior ministers to discuss an official response to a letter from Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

The letter was received on Saturday in response to demands from Jakarta for an explanation over the tapping of the president's phone in 2009.

While Indonesian officials have refused to reveal the contents of the letter, a spokesman for the president said before the high-level meeting at the presidential palace that it was in line with expectations.

Indonesia last week suspended all military co-operation with Australia, as well as co-operation in combating people smuggling, intelligence gathering and anti-terrorism efforts.

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[polocross58]

Australians pay over the top prices for most consumer goods

Current Affairs revealed several years ago that major retailers such as Katies, Rockman's, etc. were paying only $4.50 (at that time) for women's blouses which were priced in the stores at $39.95 and $49.95.  Some retailers were prepared to speak to the camera and said they believed they were paying too much and would be reducing payment to below $4.00 in the coming year.  Asian migrants were shown, working in suburban garages -- mothers, fathers, grandparents and children who were being kept home from school to work on button-holes.  The migrants were complaining.  They wanted union rates.  They could not or would not comprehend that by operating as back-yard family factories and undercutting producers who were paying union rates, they were the problem and not entitled to union protection

Since then, most retail goods are made in asian factories owned by the same Aussie companies.  Those companies have been provided massive incentives to produce out of asia.  The profit margins of those companies has eclipsed what they were making when the same items were being produced in Australia

Australian consumers are still paying the same prices for the same goods !  The only difference being that Aussies who were once employed by those companies are now unemployed. 

Millions of Aussies are without work

They are still paying the same price for their goods, however

The winners of course are the manufacturers

Banks have outsourced to asia and the sub-continent

Insurance companies

Government contracts

It's endless

The jobs have gone overseas.  Overseas nations have grown prosperous as a result.  Aussies are scrabbling for paid employment and required to pay the same for goods

So where's the money supposed to come from ?  Trees ?

All we've had from the free-trade agreements has been a transfer of employment and wealth from Aussies to Asians

Aussies pay amongst the highest prices for most goods.  We pay far more than Americans, for example. Yet we're closer geographically to Asia than is the US

On the Ikea Facebook page, people have asked Ikea why Aussies in West Australia pay on average $100 more per item than Aussies on the East coast.  Ikea's answer was:  storage and transport.  Really?  Storage is more expensive in WA?  Isn't WA first port of call for shipping ?

When it comes to the massive mark-up for electronic gadgetry as imposed on Australians, companies claimed (a) Aussies are 'rich' and (b) we do it because we can

How much are Aussies charged for natural and LPG gas, compared with the price it's sold by Australia to south-east asia ?  We're subsidising them massively?  Why?

Aussies and Australia are hugely in debt.  Those who pay the piper call the tune.  Asia, newly rich due to the fact it now has most Aussies' jobs, owns our government and our land as well as having control over our lives and futures

What did Aussies get out of it ?  What did Aussies get out of the Lima Declaration of March 1975, which sent an initial 30% of Aussie jobs and manufacturing to Asia ?  That original 30%  is now closer to 85% of course

What did Aussies get out of it ?  When they're still paying the same prices?

Clearly, Aussies got shafted, that's what they got

Where are the apprenticeships and public service positions and factory work which used to soak up workers who were not academically inclined ? 

Why were bank tellers and other workers sacked, in order to first give their jobs to foreign migrants, later to outsource most of the jobs to Asia and the sub-continent?

WHO benefited from the destruction of the Aussie workforce and manufacturing base?

Companies benefited, obviously

Making consumer items for peanuts and selling them to Aussies for hundreds of dollars

Of course companies benefited

Aussies certainly didn't

And now the claims' being made that we 'need' Asia to buy our goods

Asia always bought our goods !  Plus we supplied our national and other overseas markets

Now we supply next to nothing except dirt from the ground and live animals

Less than 2% of Aussies are employed in mining.  2%

Far less are employed in raising and selling live animals

We went from exporting to the world and supplying ourselves -- to consumers of imported  junk living on credit

Asia gained

Companies gained

We lost and are continuing to lose

[colic2bullsgirlore]

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@polocross58 wrote:

Yes, it probably is very difficult for vegetarians to admit that they're inadvertently using products derived from animals

As vegetarians opposed to animal cruelty, they're trying to make a difference, trying to spare the suffering and deaths of animals.  I commend them for that, don't you ?

I feel sorry for vegetarians who're caught in a consumer world where it's almost impossible not to consume animal products in one form or another.  I'm sure that given the choice, they would not do so

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Well if they want to make a difference rather than lambasting those that eat meat  they should research first and understand that animals not only supply meat but also supply many other goods and if they want to take the holier than thou route they should also not buy or use leather, insulin, soap, most cosmetics or in fact any other derivative made in part of bovine extract rather then just stop at "the flesh".

[colic2bullsgirlore]

So I think manyvegetarians ignorantly deny their use of animal derived products rather than inadvertantly "forget" where leather

 tallow insulin and other medicines actually come from

inadvertantly

1. Not duly attentive. 2. Marked by unintentional lack of care.

ignorantly

 Lacking education or knowledge. 2. Showing or arising from a lack of education or knowledge: an ignorant mistake.

[freshwater-2]

Well if they want to make a difference rather than lambasting those that eat meat  they should research first and understand that animals not only supply meat but also supply many other goods and if they want to take the holier than thou route they should also not buy or use leather, insulin, soap, most cosmetics or in fact any other derivative made in part of bovine extract rather then just stop at "the flesh".

Colic, show me anywhere on this thread where those who eat meat were  lambasted by any poster, including my Post No. 7. 

The subject was humane slaughter.  Diet choices are just that...choices, and does not deserve the defensive  over-reaction by those who like their steak.  

[silverfaun]

Spying has been admitted by Indonesia & laughed about. Whatever the wash up is with this storm in a teacup it will be business as usual.

The only good thing to come out of this is PM Abbott did not crawl & ask for forgivness, offer apologies for something he had nothing to do with & that seems to be what all the luvvies wanted.

[icyfroth]

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@***super_nova*** wrote:

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@polocross58 wrote:

Quote:  letter was ' in line with expectations'

What a pantomime when Indonesian ministers have laughingly admitted Indonesia's been spying on us for decades

Yes, I'd like to stop live exports.  I'd like us to become self-sufficient.  I'd like an Australian government -- ANY party -- to provide incentives to manufacturers prepared to produce our needs right here, in Australia.  I'd like to see the millions of shipping containers filled to the brim with mass produced rubbish to be sent from our shores and forced to cart their stuff home

I'd like to see Australians being provided cheap gas and fuel, instead of putting Aussies in the work-house so we can provide ultra-cheap energy to Asia

I'd like to see full employment in Australia, which would happen if Aussies produced their own stuff, earned a wage from producing their own stuff and bought the stuff and to hell with rubbish imports that even the Salvos don't want

Currently, corporations are being provided incentives by Asians to set up slave-factories in Asia.  Corporations are creaming in the profits while Aussies are being forced to submit to Centrelink for jobs which don't exist -- farmers are forced to sell the farm because Chemtrail droughts have sent them bankrupt -- allowing Saudis and Asians to buy our irreplaceable faming lands.  And the government wastes my time with pretend concerns over posturing third-worlders who've been spying on us at the same time we've been providing them billions (WHY?) and training them on our lands in preparation for their future invasion

Cattle are raised and fattened for slaughter

So are we

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that all sounds very attractive, but I wonder if it will also sound as attractive when you realise that if we stop all the imports of the cheap rubbish and try to produce all our consumer goods here we will not be able to afford them, unless we also reduce the wages to to the workers to the slave wages o/s.  Not to mention that if we do not buy anything from o/s other countries will not take our exports. 

You're right, we probably would'nt be able to afford as many of the goods we're importing cheaply if we made our own. But who needs all that junk anyway?

We simply don't need the influx of cheap throwaway rubbish goods swamping global markets which pollute in the manufacture, have minimal use then pollute again in the disposal.

Quality goods manufactured by a workforce on sustainable wages will last longer resulting in less need for the costant manufacture of cheap throwaway junk. Which in turn will mean less raw materials needed and less pollution pumped into our atmosphere and less rubbish collecting in our waterways.

The government has no option but allow foreign investment in farms because plainly there is nobody rich enough to afford those huge stations like Cubby.  That was on market for years and years, and there were no local takers. 

The government has other options, but is too scared to take them. With good reason. And no government in the past few years has been in power long enough to implement any lasting policies, anyway, see the latest Gonski debacle.

What we need is a Government regulated Bank, a bank that is financed by public credit and in turn invests in Australian Enterprise and Agriculture. Like the Commonwealth Bank used to be before it was privatised by then treasurer Paul Keating.

"Through the government direction of credit, in World War II Prime Minister John Curtin and his Treasurer, later Prime Minister himself, Ben Chifley, transformed Australia almost overnight into a powerful industrial economy. After Curtin's death in July 1945, Prime Minister Ben Chifley planned to continue the wartime expansion into postwar reconstruction through a national bank, as the mighty engine of national prosperity. He described his majestic vision to the Parliament:"

and:

"The essential difference between a sovereign nation-state and a financier-rentier-dominated form of feudal, or pro-feudalist—e.g. financier-oligarchical—society, is expressed, typically, as the difference between national banking and central banking....It is precisely, the intentional and vicious elimination of such protectionist measures, peculiar to the modern nation-state institution which have brought the world as a whole to the now-catastrophic, rapidly worsening, global financial and physical-economic state of affairs today. The placing of the world under the control of private banking interests, would quickly doom civilization for perhaps decades to come."

From Here

[lakeland27]

'The only good thing to come out of this is PM Abbott did not crawl & ask for forgivness, offer apologies for something he had nothing to do with & that seems to be what all the luvvies wanted.'

how do you know ?  i think he's got an sby brown nose right now. in addition, he knew of the spying at the time as he should . 3 australians were killed in Jakarta in the weeks beforehand in attacks  you know, an Australian government who didn't listen in at such a time would be negligent ?

even IPA hack Berg agrees

''And Tony Abbott's first response to the reports Australia had spied on the Indonesian political leadership was, "That's hardly a surprise. It's hardly a shock."

In other words, the adults already knew. And adults don't apologise for doing adult things. ''   http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-26/berg-a-reputation-for-competence-must-be-earned/5117118

[newstart2380]

Onja Tony, no aplogogy as it should be and you have been very strong but diplomatic, you have not blamed Kevin Rudd which is admirable and at the same time kept our integrity intact. Congratulations PM I am proud of your response to the Indonesians.

[newstart2380]

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@spotweldersfriend wrote:
Can killing a healthy animal be considered humane?

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YES afterall we are predominately meat eaters just ask Sam Neil LOL, if they are shipped as live export they should be slaughtered as we do here which is quick and painless, killing should be monitored to make sure it is done without any stress or pain.

vegetarians are a minority which is a spendid choice if you don't like meat, me, I eat meat about once a week and other than that chicken and fish.

[spotweldersfriend]

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@icyfroth wrote:

Are you a vegetarian, Spot?

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Yes. Anything that goes with a good steak.

😄