Listen To Your Elders

Adele Horine, Saturday Morning Herald wrote an article on this subject which seemed to me to be more about the problems created for the relatives than the wishes of the afflicted person.

All the problems that Adele made comment about are accepted but, I am now about my 80’s, one year off infact and my wife is of similar age, and we don’t want to become a mass of heaving flesh that has no realization of any of the surrounding beauties of life.

I can’t see how they can ever effect a cure of alzheimers desease since it is a destruction of the brain cells that are ones memory. It may be possible to reverse the deterioration of the brain but it is hard to imagine a situation where you can reimplant the memories experienced in the past. Consequently, if I forgot my wife and children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, the recovery of my brain could only mean that I could again learn who these people are. However, they couldn’t reimplant the memories of the experiences that I have had with these people so, they would never regain the closeness they have at this time.

If I have made such a bad job of raising my family that they are unable to amicably sort out my estate then they deserve all the problems that they inherit. I like to consider that we have made a relatively good job of raising our off spring and that they will be more interested in continuing to live as a cohesive family rather than fighting over the pittance that we will leave.

I would like to have access to the drugs that would allow me to terminate my life with dignaty and not have my wife of some 60 years left with the responsibility of having to see me turn into a useless burden, and I certainly don’t want to see my wife submitted to the indignaty of becoming a drooling lump of flesh. What happens to the estate isn’t really relavent to this problem, it is the dignity of the persons that feel that they are turning into the living dead. Iam the total of my memories and experiences and without these I am dead!

I cannot accept that I have a right to life but I do think that I have a right to decide when I am ready to die. The course of nature will determine if I am allowed to survive and it has nothing to do with any right I may think that I have to be allowed to live, I can work hard and fail and, alternatively, I can loaf around and make no effort to get on and end up a millionaire, we have no rights only a hand to play to the best of our ability  with the luck we inherit. I have no more right to life than a child born with aids in Africa but I have had better luck so have enjoyed a far better and happier life.

I find it most annoying to have people tell me that I have to live because it will enhance their prospects of getting to heaven and inheriting eternal life, but they don’t want to pay taxes and donate their time to really helping people that should be able to live but through circumstances beyond their control have little chance of living a happy life. It would be different if I were to propose that the rules should be changed to make it mandatory that people be euthanazed when they have dementia, then they would have something to worry about and it would be me imposing my system on them instead of vice versa.

What we want is freedom of choice with controls to ensure that the idea isn’t corrupted to make it more easy for ” rotten ” families to get their filthy hands on estates sooner than would normally be the case

I recently read an article by Chris Keene regarding the actions of Prof. Michael Reiss and in most of the comments was struck by the continuous reference to religion and science. Evidently, the Prof is also a priest with a religion, I presume a Christian religion and these references and Prof’s belonging to a religion seem to have bemused the readers into thinking that science and religion are comparable in some way and both should be taught in our education facilities.

All the commentators seem to overlooked the fact that, whereas, there is only science which is an explanation of all happenings in the universe, there are many religions all of which are an effort to explain how we got here and where we are going after we die by making one or several gods responsible for our existence.

As there is only Science it is possible to prove or disprove any theories of the existance of the earth and all that is there upon it. However, since there are so many religions, it isn’t possible to prove anything before one proves which religion is right.

As all religions are based on absolute unquestioning faith, none of them will ever accept that it is wrong so it isn’t possible to prove anything one way or the other. Consequently, it is wrong to teach any religion in an educational establishment, if anything, it should be more the responsibility of education establishments to ensure that its students are taught to question all things and not rely on just an acceptance of the teachers or their parents etc.

I recently came across a reference to transformity, a word that was new to me and which I couldn’t locate in the Oxford Dictionary, as is my usual wont, I referred to my Grandson for an explanation. He referred me to an article by Sean Seefried.

I have read the article by Sean and found it most interesting and easy to follow, I’m not able to comment on the actual figures used but the concept isn’t surprising. However, I did find the article a little hard to relate to the immediate problem of global warming.

If one acknowledges the transformity to obtain solar cells or wind turbines, it would indicate to me that we have to gamble that the extra dirty power must be used to produce the clean power as soon as possible no matter what.  As the article points out, solar radiation is, to all intents and purposes, an infinite constant energy input to the earth. We can’t use it up and we can’t increase its input, nor can we stop it.

The solid, dense energy sources laid down by the suns input over millions of years, has been discovered and used in a big way since the industrial revolution, and, unfortunately, use of these fossil fuels to produce power also releases the gases removed from the atmosphere when they were laid down. The release of these gases seems to be our main problem, I’m no expert but it appears to me that we are again producing the atmosphere required by the dinosaurs some millions of years ago, not too good for modern homosapians!

If we are to reverse the production of the greenhouse gases in time to save life as we know it, I would suggest that we need to modify our use of power produced using dirty fuels. This could be done by making sure that the power was used to produce the clean power generators rather that the rubbish that we present produce. I wonder how much power is presently wasted in producing weapons to further pollute the atmosphere, how much power is used to produce all the junk mail that is put into letter boxes every day, etc, etc.

I would also think that we would have to get over this mad drive to have growth. No one seems to know why we need the growth other than to make profits for some few so called entrepreneurs, as a consequence we keep on populating and needing more energy etc but for no purpose. As a result of this feverish population expansion, we like any other animal species will eventually reach pest proportions and, like for the other animals, we will die out.

It is time that we started to use our brain power to work out just what is the future aims of humanity. This could well mean controlling the population to a sustainable quantity and then also deciding on how we can make life for all the members of the population exciting, enjoyable  and satisfying. Surely it must be possible to rid ourselves of doctrines inherited from thousands of years ago and start to accept responsibility for our own future. If we don’t we are doomed, I think personally that we are too late already!

I have just read the Sydney Herald Garnott report and was struck by the seeming lack of understanding of how the scheme should be paid for and also the unforgiving nature of the problem and the consequences of not doing enough to limit its finality if we fail to meet the demands of a solution. if such a solution is still possible!

We are always talking of the need to implement the user pays principle but it never seems to apply when it is the really rich and greedy that will be asked to pay.

If we go back to primary school arithmetic we can easily work out how it is that the cost of any trading scheme will impact most on the less able to pay and this will have the least effect on the pollution problem.

We all need a basic amount to survive which can be set at say, $300 per week, this will meet the food and yearly bills for a family of 4 say. I am not an expert so I don’t have the exact figures, but let us assume that this is the case. Now this figure applies to any family to provide the basic living requirements and therefore any surplus is used to raise that living standard to incorporate more luxury items.

Garnott talks of giving tax relief and social services to help the less able to afford more costs but this will not reduce the pollution and carbon use. A few dollars to the less well off will maybe help them to survive but it will not impress the rich by one iota so they will grumble but, simply go on using the resources with gay abandon! To really make people cut back it is necessary to make the onus on all more or less equal which means making the more well off feel the pain of the increased charges.

I believe that to make the community equally share the burden of saving the planet, it is necessary to make the ones that do the most polluting pay the most for the clean-up. Going back to my original statement, it takes $300/week to survive so any one living on this basic standard will have a minimal effect in pollution. As we have the more affluent spending, they will be doing more polluting and when we get to the people with a real surplus of money spending their surplus on yachts, sporty cars, speed boats, international holidays etc, they are really doing a lot of polluting. Accordingly, it is only fair that the richer the people the more they pay towards the carbon emmissions trading scheme.

When I was young after the end of the second world war in the UK we had taxation which was graded to make the ones that took most out of the country pay most back through taxation, top rate was 19s6d in the pound. Now we have got to the stage where the top income earners pay the least percentage of their income in tax and moan most if they have to pay more. At the same time they are often wasting the money on such things as transporting polo horses around the world for a game here and there.

It seems to me that we are now faced with a global problem which could well see the end of all life on this planet and we can’t now afford these greedy and selfish idiots that think that the destruction of the environment will only effect the poor and they will be able to buy their way out of the situation. If we fail to control the pollution, it will kill us all!

I suggest that we again reconstitute a taxation system which makes the rich pay their way and feel the pain of survival. This is an almost impossible solution to this problem because these CEO’s and the like are not really interested in anything but their own careless lifestyle so if Australia were to impose a more equitable tax system they would simply move off shore and continue to hasten the their own destruction together with the destruction of the rest of us!

If we are really going to save the world we have to have international agreement to limit the greed of these executives and thee like so that if they give themselves $10000/week they pay a greater proportion of it back into the cost of keeping a viable environment. In the long term it is in their best interests to feel the pain like the rest of us!

As I’ve said in previous posts, probably unread, the existence of the planet isn’t really influenced one way or the other should life survive or fail, so it is up to us to do what we can to ensure that life goes on if we really want this to be the case!

My grandson advised me that he thought that this this interview with Hofstadte was interesting and that I should read it, which I did and then comment back to him as set out below. I was quite flattered and surprised to have my grandson recommend that I should put my comments out as a blog, my comments are really my own thoughts derived from a long experience of life but not a really good education. compared with what is available today.

Here is my email with my thoughts on the interview -

Well I read the artical and some of it was in line with my thinking, without the advantage of the cogitations of these great minds, but a lot of it I thought was rather pointless!
I explain as set out hereunder.

1/ I could find nowhere in the interview where the symbol AI is defined? Possibly this is from a lack of my knowledge of modern things.

2/ I have always thought that I’d live on only from my reactions to other people during my life time. I suppose one could also put my genetic make-up in this category but the effect of my genes is lessened with each generation. As expressed before, I have never been able to accept the claim to everlasting life having the one form throughout.

3/ What is the point of being able to reproduce the brain operation of an individual as a piece of soft wear? The circuitry of the brain is changing continuously with the experiences of the associated body, so what is the use of the electronic imaging obtained if it isn’t associated with the same body. Do they propose to take out the soft tissue of the brain and replace it with a chip?
I get the impression that these people are conning pseudo intellectuals into thinking a lot about this as though it were deep and important science whereas it is just ravings of misguided scientists that have been sucked in by reading too much science fiction in their youth. At no point do they explain how they will experience everlasting life from having this chip, imaging their brain function, stuck away in someones drawer after they themselves have died?
There is absolutely no good reason in imaging brain functions as a means of obtaining everlasting life since the brain in a bottle isn’t my idea of life.

4/ All these deliberations seem to have missed the point that the environment around us is always changing and the effects of the changes of the environment on our bodies has been the basis for the evolution of our brains. If there is no body housing this brain, then how will it react to external changes.
If this electronic brain is housed in a robotic body that will experience environmental changes the new requirements of the robotic body will be not the same as our soft tissue bodies?

5/ We are well aware that the universe is continuously changing and that the life of the solar system is finite so it would appear far more intelligent for these great thinkers to think about how they can understand the working of the brain we have and how mental illnesses can be cured and brain defects corrected, rather than getting their knickers in a knot over saving their wishy-washy deep thoughts onto hard drive? The comments of the readers of the interview really prove to me that these people are really up themselves ( excuse the expression ), although a couple of the comments did seem to wish to say they thought that the whole thing was rubbish. I suppose they were frightened of appearing less than brilliant if they dared to question such a great thinker! The great interlectual who made the comment that the interviewee was one of the 100 greatest mind of our time was talking absolute rubbish! What had the interviewee accomplished of such great significance, his best seller was no Shakespeare or even an Enid Blyton!

I feel sure that I must have missed something here because it seems implausible that some one of obvious ability can spend so much time in deep thought about something of so little consequence, surely this Hofstadter has made his reputation doing something of relevance to life? As for the other authers mentioned such as Ray Kurzweil, they seem to be also wasting time on useless experimentation which has no practical application.
I agree with you that the interview was interesting but I don’t think that we ended up with the same appreciation of the genius of the persons involved in the interview!

These were the ravings to which my grandson said publish my thoughts with suggestions of things that I had not seemingly taken into account in my rantings, his reply is set out hereunder-

AI = Artificial Intelligence. AI is "achieved" when it passes the Turing
test - that is where it can have a conversation with a person without the
person knowing that it is a machine.

As for 3/ I believe that's what the guy being interviewed is saying -
transferal of mind to computer is the destruction of mankind itself.

These are postulations and thoughts, predictions for what the future might
hold. You can never predict the social ramifications, can you imagine what
the church would say if all of a sudden you could throw away your body when
you got old and live eternally on the internet?

As for 4/ Maybe the whole POINT of transfering conciousness to a robot or
computer entity is to see what it's like? If you've experienced life in your
soft tissue body for the last 80 years, maybe you'd like to know what it's
like to be a robot. There would be certain advantages which our soft bodies
can not provide (diving, going into outerspace, extreme heat/cold, seeing in
different spectrums (how pretty would that be!) etc)

I don't think you give sci-fi writers enough cred. These people shape our
world. I do not kid you. Submarines were written about before they were
developed. Space ships, space stations, aliens, AI, computers - all from
sci-fi. Sure, a lot of it doesn't come to pass, but a lot of scientists are
sci-fi readers, "Imagination is more powerful than knowledge" (albert
einstein).

And anyway, here you are, with a pace maker, telling me whats the point of
transferring your conciousness to a computer - what happens when they
replace your arm with a bionic one, then the other, then both your legs. At
what point is it different to having your conciousness transferred to a
computer? At what point do you say: "No, if I got that replaced by a
mechanical bit then I would no longer be human" ? So long as you could
experience the world around you, maybe even MORE richly than when you were a
lump of meat, you'd say you were human because of your thoughts.

I don't think thinking about tech is a waste of time and unproductive,
shaping future ideas is a hell of a lot easier than changing ingrained ones,
that's why religions teach children.

An interesting read anyway.

Here's a good philosophical question for you - Say they invented
teleportation where all of your molecules are recreated at the other end,
exact image, thoughts and all, and then your original body is destroyed.
Then one day there is a malfunction, and the original body isn't destroyed.
Is it murder to then kill that living breathing entity? To them they're
alive, they're not connected to this other person, albeit an exact copy.

To my Grandsons memo I commented as follows-
I’m pleased that you found my comments interesting, I was afraid that you would dismiss them as the rantings of a doddering old fool!

On reading your comments I found out the meaning of AI, thanks.
It also gave me second thoughts about the gains from having my intelligence transferred to a robbot. Imagine the wonder of being able to set out on a couple of light years trip and actually get there without having aged, although I may have rusted up a bit!

I realized that the actual interviewee was not really accepting the concept of having his brain functions transferred to a chip and getting everlasting life, I was just surprised that there were so many people that were involved in what seems to be an exercise that offers no actual resolution.

With regard to your ethical problem, if teleporting takes place and the two bodies end up co existing, then they are from that point onward two identities.
I think this way because I have always thought that this idea of cloning to provide spare parts is absolutely ridiculous. If you cloned me and then let my clone live until I wanted the spare part; then the clone would develop as I had and, since I’ve always been a selfish bugger, by the time I wanted my spare parts my clone would have developed to the extent that he would laugh as he watched me die! Well the same would apply to the two bodies, as soon as they exist separately, then they would experience different things which would develop their minds/brains differently so they would immediately start to form separate identities and be different people. Sounds like manufactured identical twins!

I would pose you a question, what if the teleporting malfunctioned and both of the bodies ended up only partially complete, would the body that didn’t initiate the teleporting be able to sue the other body for damages?

If we ever decide that we are to continue our human knowledge as this planet dies, then the only solution is to pack all the human experiences into a hard shell body such as a robot and launch it off to some other space site which can support it. If it is a real hard body, it won’t need oxygen but oil and rust inhibitors. However, to extend the human experience, the robot would have to carry the history of how the intelligence it has was developed, but what other planet would want to have our intelligence and experiences forced upon it? I really think that all our dreams are just that, and in the best interest of evolution, we will have to end when our planet ends.

I don’t like the idea of posting my thoughts as a blog because I think that they only seem to invite spam mail and any one else that reads them will not have your bias towards my ramblings.

The last comment on this matter is as set out from my Grandson, and I now seem to be at an end to my immediate thoughts on this subject; however, it is certainly something that I have found a challenge to my consideration between the values of the past ages and modern thinking.

Someone here at work pointed out exactly what you did - the teleportation
thing is irrelevant, the point is that a clone was created. So it's not
teleportation per se, but cloning that could create scenarios like this. 

A sci-fi book I read had a "global consiousness" which was basically
someones brain uploaded to a computer. But the computer was shared by many.
That individuals conciousness stayed around whilst their children were
alive, and maybe their grand children, but eventually they grew detached and
just faded away into the "global conciousness". It was an interesting idea
anyway.

As for putting these on your blog - I really think you should. It doesn't
"invite" spam, they aren't people that read it and go "hey I'll spam that
up", it's a robot (heh!) that searches the entire web, finds sites that have
a "Post Comment" and then posts up a spam comment. The idea is that 1 out of
a million people will click the link or approve the post. So they spam out
10 million of those, and get a couple of clicks through. It's horrible and a
scourge on the internet, but don't worry, they reckon 50% of the traffic on
the internet is spam.

I recently read two articles on the availability of housing and town planning to meet future needs. These articles were very interesting and the comments from readers were also very informative; however, there was no attempt to address the real reason for the existing and ever expanding problem. The articles were a Greens blog and a blog in The Age which were mainly based on the provision of housing into the future.

When reading these articles I began to wonder if any one had thought about why we were in such dire straights regarding over crowding of our cities and pollution every where and global warming. To me the answer is quite straight forward, we have assumed a ” better than you attitude ” towards all other creatures and life forms on this planet whereas we are really just another animal that has to live within the confines and parameters set by our natural environment.

We are prepared to accept that other animal forms can over breed and destroy their environment but we seem to think that we can keep on breeding without any regard to our effect on the environment for, not only ourselves but for all other life forms. We are prepared to cull other creatures that we consider are over breeding but we don’t apply the same logic to our own over breeding

I notice that the Greens talk of halving the carbon output of each person but if one thinks about this it is only a temporary solution. If one of the many godheads we have created, could perform a miracle and halve the output of every individual tomorrow, the pollution would be back to todays figure in 50 years because of the doubling of the population and there will also then be the need for added space to accommodate the extra population.

Nature will solve this problem in its own way, we will eventually have a cull to satisfy the ambitions of our political and religious leaders but, with the destructive powers of todays weaponry, this could well be an act of overkill which would wipe out all human and possibly all other life forms. Accordingly, I think it would be better to devise a more acceptable means of population control.

If we could negate the powers of the various religions we should be able to accept that death isn’t a punishment and is really a part of life which enables life to update and refresh itself. Once we accept this fact, we can then look at controlling life and accepting that some people wish to die, others don’t wish to breed, other life forms are born monsters and should not be kept alive to satisfy the selfish desires of some frustrated woman rather than being allowed to die as would be the way of nature. There are many ways in which the population could be humanely regulated.
Furthermore, not all women want to devote their lives to children and raising families so they should be discouraged from just having babies at a late time of life to be able to say they are a “full woman”. Being a mother is actually a full time and very worthwhile station in life. Rather than having part time mothers that farm out their offspring we should encourage those women that really lust for motherhood, and would devote their whole waking hours to their children, to have children. As we know, in the present social system, those people that have lots of children are usually hard pressed to give those children the necessities of life. The system should be changed to ensure that good and willing parents are supported and are in a position to raise the future generation to the best available standards. And at the end of the parenting period, there should be a national pension scheme for these people to enable them to retire and enjoy all the life pleasures enjoyed by the career population.

I’m sure that if we could rid ourselves of all these gods and religions, we could devise a system whereby we could stabilize the world population at a level that would enable us to make full use of all the beauties of this world without destroying it and also live in peace. The latter would I think, require men to give up their sense of being the top dog, and there would have to be an acceptance of the fact that sex and sexuality are not the criteria by which you can make reasonable, logical and long-term decisions.

I wonder if we will ever generally develop a brain that appreciates that what is in our best interests isn’t always in the best interest of the future generations and others?

It was interesting to read Elizabeth Farrelly’s article on Sydney has been APEC-ed.

It was encouraging to hear that someone else had noted with alarm the copycat gestapo strutting around Sydney intimidating the citizens and taking over our city.

It is worth noting that the gestapo in occupied Europe had unrestrained power to take what ever action they considered necessary to stop the terrorist ( freedom fighter in those days ), they even wiped out whole villages to obtain their ends all to no avail. They would wipe out a village and next week another train would be blown up or convoy attacked, terror tactics will not stop terrorist. However, such tactics seem to intimidate law abiding citizens as witnessed by the cowering of the Australian public since the world politicians have used 9/11 to induce unreasonable fear into their people.

Howard and Ruddock are the main offenders but I fear that a change of government won’t bring about a restoration of our freedoms and liberties.

It would appear that Mr Costello is once again prepared to put the profits of industry before the interests of the good reputation of the nation; I refer to the introduction of Trade Practices Amendment (Small Business Protection) Bill 2007. 

With the application of this bill, if one objects to a company using slave labour,or any other immoral practices, to make a profit, and as a consequence of that objection the company loses money, it is possible for that company to sue you for all you’ve got and still not give up the use of the practice used to make the profit.. A truly Christian attitude towards economics and morality.
Thank goodness that we have a good Christian government, it is to be hoped that they are re-elected so that they can press ahead with their corruption of all that was so proudly proclaimed as Australian in the interest of sound economic management!

I would refer to the latest Howard statement setting out his plans for our future if we are stupid enough to re-elect his government at the next election.

He opens the statement expressing a desire to “press on with aspiration and fairness”, a most honourable aim but I fear that he isn’t aware of how fairness works.

To obtain fairness there must be a level playing field and the new Industrial laws do every thing possible to destroy a level playing field and create one sided competition. Howard claims to be a new system in the work force; however, I’m old enough to remember that when I first started work we had much the same situation and I believe that this was the catalyst that lead to the formation of the strong Trade Unions. Because the workers had been on the receiving end for so long, when the unions were formed they became very confrontational which in turn lead to the industrial problems of the 60’s and 70’s.

If Howard wasn’t so dogmatic in his desire to put the workers in their place, he would be wise enough to realize that a combined management/workforce is the only real way to go and obtain the fairness he expresses the desire to obtain.

In the second paragraph, Howard talks of “the rising tide of prosperity lifting all boats” and balancing the climatic problems. I presume that the reference to “lifting all boats “is intended to indicate that all the boats would lift equally i.e. we would all share in the national wealth fairly, if not equally.

Again you couldn’t argue with this ambition; however, in the last ten years of the Howard government, the gap between the rich and the poor has widened and the state education system has been almost decimated. Money has been invested in the private religious schools, but this does nothing to encourage advancement of our democracy. Religious education is the last thing we want to unite our nation, secular education which teaches facts not fiction and faith, is the only way forward in a multinational/religion population.

As to climate control, well for the first nine years of the Howard government it denied that global warming even existed and now that it has been forced to accept that global warming is a fact, it is only prepared to tackle the problem if it doesn’t jeopardize the economy. Howard hasn’t yet realized that the global warming is happening as a consequence of our prosperity and economic success, which, would indicate to any fool, that the only way to minimise, and turn back the trend of warming, is to reduce the race for more money, or to change the way in which that race is managed.

The problem of changing the manufacturing methods to suit changes in conditions, is not a new one and has been done before, e.g. when the industrial revolution came in and we got the automobile and steam train, the black smiths as a trade suffered a set back. However, eventually, the black smiths all became mechanics and from too many smiths it became not enough mechanics. I’m sure that the change to clean power generation will be accomplished and some will have to change their profession but in the long run, we will end up with a shortage of skilled staff in the new processes.

Howard then turns his attention to our national security and here he has been a disaster. The invasion of Iraq did more to give credibility to the terrorist movements than they would have believed possible, in fact they must have blessed the stupidity of the Bush, Blair, Howard alliance. Now we are involved in an illegal war with no obvious way out without admitting to the error of our first having invaded.

Furthermore, because we have done so much damage in Iraq and caused so many casualties, we are obliged now to do what we can to put that country back on a level footing. Not an easy job when the country is divided by such strong sectarian beliefs.

As for internal security, again the Howard government hasn’t moved beyond the Hitler level of thinking. Masses of jack booted well armed stormtroopers and police just do not stop terror activities. Hitler gave the SS and the Gestapo unlimited powers, they could wipe out whole villages if they thought that they were involved in anti German activities. But the people that were involved in the terror (then known as patriots), were not intimidated and were still able to successfully carry out their anti German activities.

By making us all fearful and afraid of our own shadows, the security of the nation is diminished. What we need is a vibrant population which is alert and watchful. I can remember that in the 2nd world war, the population didn’t quiver in fear but got out and worked towards victory. Perhaps Howard should try to encourage people rather than frighten them.

Unfortunately, the past ten years of lies and suppression of our civil liberties, has made me very sceptical of anything that Howard says. His behaviour as Prime Minister isn’t what I’d call an uplifting period, there is more money around and whenever the government talks of its success it means that it has a budget surplus. It forgets to mention that the schools, universities, hospitals are all just about busted and the aboriginal affairs are a disgrace and shows that Howard hasn’t improved his opinion of aborigines since his opposition to Marbo!

Furthermore, he talks of security but our transport infrastructure is just about on its last legs. If we want to move our new tanks from Victoria to the Northern Territory, they would have to go by boat, the roads and rail facilities just couldn’t bear the loads

Actually, I reckon that the Howard years have been a time of regression and rundown and eventually all that budget surplus will have to be spent, plus more, to re-establish all the run down services that have occurred during this disasterous period.

I am surprised and rather disgusted by the lack of courage shown by my fellow Australians.

As a young man in Europe in the 2nd world war I saw places like London, Coventry, Berlin, Dresden, Starlingrad, etc bombed for nights, even months on end and the populations of these places not only didn’t surrender under this duress but actually developed a stubborn defiance towards their aggressors, they certainly didn’t feel continuous fear for their lives although they were aware that they could be killed any day or night.

Now, here I observe that the Howard government has managed to instill a fear of a terrorist threat such that they have been able to confiscate a great number of rights, freedoms and dignities from us on the pretext that they will provide us with greater protection from this terrible terrorist threat. What a load of bollocks. There is a far greater threat to our lives from road rage, home invasion, accidents in the home,etc, in fact, death from a terrorist act is so remote as to be of little consequence.

I am not saying that the possibility of a terrorist attack doesn’t exist, but I’m sure that blundering around raiding homes in the middle of the night and arresting all and sundry will in no way improve my safety.

I would feel safer if the government were to encourage the population to be vigilant and be aware that these terrorist organisations exist and are a danger to our way of life. During the war years it wasn’t necessary to give up our freedoms, however, people were encouraged to report any activities or strangers in the area which they noticed. The police would then discreetly investigate these reports and take appropriate action. I’m not sure, but I never noticed the police jumping in and frightening off any suspect or otherwise intimidating the innocent. However, I do know that they apprehended a number of bailed out enemy pilots and the like as a result of these observations by the public.

Unfortunately, the fear campaign has now been adopted by the State Labor governments and even more of our liberties are being eroded. The problem with all this generation of fear to take away our liberty is that it will become a part of the law of the land and we will have to have a revolution to get even some of our rights back.

I wish that my fellow Australians would start to realize that to give up their freedom and rights is to surrender, these are the very things that make our country worth fighting for and to give them up is to submit to terrorism be it home grown or foreign in origin. What matters what or who runs this country if we have no rights and freedoms, we are then of no real importance, just fodder for working or fighting.