Don’t shoot the messenger! Michael Swanton.

Whether you agree with them or not the young ones have the courage to stand up for what they believe in and for the future of our planet. Wish more would get up and let the pollies know exactly what we think and what we want rather than tugging the forelock and bowing down to those of little intelligence and even less integrity.

Time for the Wilderness Society and ET to dump the Principles agreement. All they are doing is making sure the big old trees in Tasmanian are felled while the moratorium start date is argued over. At the same time they appear to have sold us out over Gunns pulp mill. This is a farce. Admit it?

Good on the protestors…At least these young ones are fighting for the rights of the planet and not bowing to pressure from the bureaucrats who only see their financial reward in obscene salaries for sitting behind a desk, occasionally, in some plush taxpayer funded office. I am too old for their kind of caper, but if I was younger I would be with them.

To be proud of these young people would be a under statement,they believe in their conviction and follow them through, so you are quite right #1/#2 keep up the good work we are right behind you, don’t give in

Well done protesters. Need to find ways to put more pressure on the state government to honour their undertaking. Can’t the Greens act on this as a dodgy dealing by state Labor? Might be the end of the Greens ministers however it would be for a good cause. Need to get some more high profile independent candidates like Wilkie was in March 2010, standing for state parliament lower house.

Just a big joke for them isn’t it.  I wonder if some of the protestors included students from Melbourne where there is advertising to pay for protestors?

Great work people.
So will they be charged with being a member of the public on public land and property.
It is hard to imagine that they could be charged with trespassing on public property.
We are the owners after all and the have my permission to be there. For what it counts.

Sensational.

I would be proud if they were my kids.

Nice pics Matthew.

Get them out into the wild blue asap!!

Arrests… portent of things to come!

#7.Provide us with some evidence of this allegation Mark.  Michael Swanton.

Fantastic work people. #7 if only it was a joke, but alas so many of those in power demonstrate so well that intelligence does not come with age. Thank goodness we have a generation of kids who care passionately about the future of the world, especially our forests.Young people that are prepared to put their lives on hold to protect the future. The very idea of cutting down trees that have been growing hundreds of years before the state was even discovered is obscene. That some think we can have the same forest in a 90 year rotation -  sadly thats the joke.

@ #7.
Is it really just a big joke for them??
If so, then tell us how?
Do you think you could post a link to the said advertising for us?

You’re kidding yourself if you think these people are nothing but pranksters.
These are the sorts of people that have the guts to draw attention to the ongoing industrial greed and the rapacious destruction it continues to employ.

These people are freely and willingly exercising their democratic rights.
You don’t have to bus these ones in and pay ‘em off with a full days pay and a couple of sandwiches.
These are people who willingly help wrongs to be righted.
These people will be the folk-law heroes of tomorrow.
These people have the courage of their convictions.

Weak-kneed and soft spined politicians have to be reminded that there are items on the agenda other than appeasing company boards, shareholders and cronies.

TerryS.

Inspirational, it is a pity there is not a simliar movement to preserve tropical rainforests.The rape of the planet is just being depleted in the name of palm oil and coconuts etc.
In other words profits but not ‘good sense’ and essentail and sustainable produce.

We do not need to destroy forests when there are other alternatives for producing fibre and so much farm land that is poorly used, especially in Tasmania. We need to seriously look to alternative ways of growing what we need.

#12 Rachael just a small correction. Forestry Tasmania is not planning for 90 year rotations, at the moment they are actually logging at a rate that is more like a 42 year rotation.
They do some pretty creative accounting and take their logging figures and rate them against the whole estate they control.
Of course we know that at least half of that land is in reserves, such as formal reserves and streamisde reserves, button grass or cliffs.
So the true figure is 42 years, not good.

#7
Mark, I think you have the joke mixed up.

Are any forestry spokesmen paid under $100,000 per year?
That’s the joke!

Protesters are not in this for the money, Mark.
We are here to uphold a principle, and that is to stop wealthy profiteers from obliterating the forests that belong to all of us.

Forestry has taken and taken and taken more than their share, fucked up innumerable beautiful places, and continue to want more and more.
Look at who gets the big bucks.
That’s the joke.

Forestry has squandered timber logs when there were chip shortages, destroyed millions of veneer burls, craftwood pieces, boat timbers, and sawlogs.
That’s the joke.

Forestry advocates have actively fostered community division, turning friends and family members against each other with their lying propaganda about the perpetual magic of forestry and the terrorism of greenies.
You know this to be true, Mark.
Still laughing?

Every premier from Gray to Giddings has lied to Tasmania about the state of forestry and artificially propped it up with sweetheart deals and subsidies and assistance of all sorts; the millions of dollars and personal favours will never be completely uncovered.
At the same time anyone objecting to or even questioning the sensibilities of corporate socialism is set upon with personal abuse and derogatory insults.

Witness Paul Lennon’s cowardly parliamentary (privileged) pillory of Bill Manning, an honest Forest Practices Board inspector.
And, Lennon’s sustained ‘UnTasmanian’ attacks on Richard Flanagan, a real Tasmanian who’s done more for the good of this place than Lennon ever did.
But Lennon wouldn’t take on the old soldier, Peter Cundall.
Cundall would’ve had Lennon in a half Nelson and a Burmese BallSnapper quicker than you could say “That’s yer bloomin’ Royal Commission, Arsehole”.

The majority of Tasmania’s politicians are ego-inflated, lily-livered nobodys with little talent apart from telling incredible lies with a straight face and deliberately dividing communities for their own political advantage.

On occasion, Tasmanian political leaders and certain business ‘identities’ have encouraged violence toward protesters.
Witness the Farmhouse Creek incident, twenty five years ago, Monday.

Two busloads of forestry employees were fed a stack of beer and taken to a protest and told to “sort these bastards out”.
They complied.
(The night before, a Liberal minister’s wife quietly telephoned to say that protestors were going to be “roughed up…tomorrow morning”.)
Every protester there was kicked, belted, and many had clothes ripped off them in the sustained violence.
One had a hangman’s noose thrown around his neck and was dragged off into the bush and was beaten and threatened with murder for ten or fifteen minutes.
(Thirteen police onsite including an inspector and three detectives refused to intervene, despite witnessing numerous assaults on two members of parliament. It is most likely the (uncomfortable, embarrassed) police inaction resulted from a cabinet-level instruction.)
Protestors endured saw operators using their Stihls at full revs, within inches of feet and hands and bodies, cutting banners, felling brush on top of protesters (and police) and dropping small trees with people suspended in them. This random frenzy went on for hours, watched closely by police, and directed by two well known sawmill/hardware millionaires.
I had chainsaw oil sprayed on the front of my shirt, that’s how reckless these psychos were.
That no one was hospitalised was akin to a miracle.
Then they ran a 32 tonne excavator over the campsite, just to be extra nasty.

(End Part One) continued below

(Part 2) continued from above

None of us protestors got paid for that one, Mark.
The turkeys that assaulted everyone did, though.
Paid day off, big stack of piss, police protection and free burgers on the way home.
I thought that was a bit of a joke.
What was really funny though, was when the Farmhouse Creek protest site and 660,000 hectares was added to the south west World Heritage Area. This was due partly to increased public support following this government/industry sponsored bashing.
That’s my kind of joke, Mark!

I sense you and I have different senses of humour, different ways of life, different size RangeRovers: and that’s great.
I welcome diversity and difference because that’s what this democracy is, a big mess of ideas that mostly moulds into a coherent, functioning, tolerant society.

But that’s not what forestry in Tasmania is about.
Forestry is about making BIG BUCKS for a SMALL GROUP out of EVERYONE’S FOREST.
Forestry and it’s adherents foster hate and division in Tasmania so they can make fast money while the divided public argue to and fro about forestry’s merits.
The small group I speak of above isn’t the forestry workers - they get paid shit.
Their wages are low, small owner operated mills have gone while the amount of woodchip and bush obliterated has multiplied over and over.
My mates in the bush get paid subsistence wages while ‘industry leaders’ like Gray and Gay have banked millions, sorry, tens of millions of Tassie dollars, coming largely from public forests given over to their companies for peanuts.
That’s a bit of a joke, eh Mark?

You show me a well-off forestry worker.
There aren’t many.
It’s the small group of contractors, Forestry Tas. management, and industry executives driving BMWs who are fleecing Tasmania.
Now, with the ‘sorely needed’ payouts the ‘battler’ contractors will be trading up to Jags and Mercs while their employees drive the same old shitboxes most timberworkers always did drive and always will drive.
Big Joke, Mark?

And, since you have claimed “...some of the protestors included students from Melbourne where there is advertising to pay for protestors?” would you mind pointing me toward some evidence of this, please?
Like so many claims from the forestry claque it sounds fabricated to me for these reasons.
1)Protestors don’t get paid. It’s a longtime lie propagated by forestry to discredit us. Bring the advertisement here, Mark, show me your wares.
2)It’s the beginning of the academic year and if any students from anywhere were at parliament the other day, good on ‘em. Missing the beginning of semester shows a dedication to the cause.

I think you are mistaken about what drives these protesters.
And I think you know that yourself.

Finally:
The most difficult thing to do in life is to admit that one’s self has been wrong.

Forestry Tasmania has made such a giant fuck up of managing our resources it’s hard to believe, and this is why it’s supporters maintain the status quo; it is just too hard for these denialists to admit any fault.

This handful of multimillionaires has climbed up there over the shoulders of timberworkers, who get payed little and then get betrayed, like at Scottsdale; and this is wrong.

Governments paying the profits of private companies owned and run by their friends is just corruption, straight up.
It’s wrong.

In the 21st century, woodchip driven forestry’s had it’s day, damaged the landscape and the people too much, and only a fool or a beneficiary could disagree.

Care to disagree, Mark?  mjf?  crf?  Mr Poynter?

Please do, I welcome your input.

Come on, have a go!

Have a happy day!

BogusFiasco

#16 & #17.Is that your opening address? I want you on my team. I do not like responding to nom de plumes, however there are always exceptions to the rule. Michael Swanton.

#17. ‘Come on, have a go’ is clearly taunting and inflammatory. You’re on the protected list as well and enjoying a clear media advantage. I won’t bother wasting any more of my time on this post as any extra won’t be published.

#18. Hypocritical.

#16 & #17 BogusFiasco.

Impressive couple of posts.

For those of us who are familiar with those incidents of which you remind us, we also know full well that these are only but a sample of a plethora of similar p*ss weak antics and injustices played out over the last 30 odd years by the same scuzzbuckets.

Good luck, and good on you and your companions BogusFiasco for your stand.
Oh…and I would think that we won’t hold our breaths waiting for any logical response to your challenge.

The trollers move on and will mindlessly continue attemps at negation of such truths.

TerryS.

Re#18
Hypocritical.  Why arent you asking for his real name, pecuniary interests blah blah blah?