Issue No.16-17 January-February 2004
The Rape of Tasmania... THE FULL LINK
It's been a tad hard to come by ... the Summer Edition of The Bulletin containing
Richard Flanagan's eviscerating account of Tasmania's
forestry history, industry and continuing battles ... with theories sweeping the
cafes about giant corporations buying up all available copies from the state's newsagencies.
Perhaps it is just too sought after. Whatever, Flanagan's 5-page special - with acute
observations like this excerpt - has had
an enormous impact, locally, and nationally ...
There is in all this a
constant thread: the Bacon government's real mates are
not workers, but millionaires. Behind the smokescreen of
statistics, beyond the down-home cant of "timber folk"
peddled by the woodchippers' propagandists, is a simple, wretched truth:
great areas of Australia's remnant wild lands are being reduced
to a landscape of battlefields in order to make a handful of very rich people even richer ..."
The Bulletin yesterday restored its full link to the article ...
THE BULLETIN... THE FULL LINK
AND
LETTERS ... it's boring
The way the world sees Tasmania
... Mainland Aussies love to laugh at Tasmania, but after visiting the island,
Edward Bishop decides the joke's on them
...
LETTERS
Eddie Falls in Love
...
Back in the mosh at night I bounced barefoot to American speed punk
merchants 'Pennywise' trying to miss the feet flaying around my head from
the crowd surfers and the shod feet crushing my toes but due to ...
EDDIE STORACE
The media malaise
...
For many years now, we’ve endured the blandness, gutlessness and irrelevance of much of mainstream
journalism in John Howard’s new relaxed-and-comfortable Australia ...
NEIL CREMASCO
Tasmanian Media Awards
I think, therefore I write ...
New literary competition
Mr Barns is obsessed
Nauru offer should be applauded
Time to see the green light (SMH Link)
Stop logging the Styx (The Age link)
Well done, Geoff
The common trend (Africa, online)
New Year thoughts
LETTERS
Attending to business
...
The company’s managing director,
Mick Galpin, also mentioned the
“monopoly stranglehold” of Gunns on logging trucks which he said meant a
constant forcing down of drivers’ pay and pressure to do longer hours
...
THE ROVING EYE
Riviera where?
... Secondly, in trying to put it in the context of Tasmania,
it’s really old hat. It was done a long time ago - in some lyrically descriptive
boosterism for that gem off our East Coast: Maria Island
...
THE OLD BEAR
The Queensland Greens
The Greens in Queensland are little more than the fifth faction of the ALP and would back the
Beattie Government regardless of its environment policies
...
GREG BARNS
I think, therefore I write ...
Normal letters' service haphazardly resumes ...
These people know only too well what would happen to
them at home, so they are choosing death on Nauru ...
We most definitely do not need any more saviours,
messiahs, mahagurus, mumbo-jumbo practitioners, charismatists, et al ...
It should be
compulsory reading to all the politicians who are blinded by the staus quo
of short term financial gain by pandering to big business demands ...
LETTERS
Dear Jesus ...
AND,
JOY-FULL CHRISTMAS beloved TT readers ...
AND,
Open the champagne and join a toast to
Reader magazine for voting tasmaniantimes.com in the Top 5 Aussie Current
Affairs websites (in such illustrious company as the ABC, The Sydney Morning Herald,
Crikey and onlineopinion!) Golly, gosh, awshucksgeewhiz, thanks Reader
... on
top of the earlier rating as Top 10 Aussie larrikin Larrikin!
AND,
There will be a slightly interrupted supply of articles and letters as TT dives into
a vast vat of champers ...
AND,
If you haven't got a Chrissy tree to dance around, here's one:
World's largest and most wondrous Christmas tree
Big kiss, LINZ (Life is to be found at the edge of chaos, George Soros)
Odd movements...
Here’s an odd thing. I was on Hobart’s Davey Street Monday when a log truck went past
...
THE OLD BEAR
Imagine ...
Public ownership of key sites in the Cove will
protect it from the same fate as Darling Harbour.
The income generated by a comprehensive cultural
precinct will be far more sustainable than the quick money fix that will result from the
fire sale of releasing all our public spaces to developers. ...
ANNA PAFITIS
Breathing again ...
Hobart’s a masterpiece, flawed as they all are. We’ve done well but we don’t want any more fly spots
...
M. JOHN LATHAM
Ruffling Jim
I see where the aldermen of Hobart City Council have managed to ruffle the
feathers of our top man for roads, Infrastructure Minister Jim Cox
...
THE OLD BEAR
Has WA Labor's Saving Old Growth
policy been a disaster for the state?
Paul Lennon: Mr Speaker, the Manjimup Shire has been greatly affected by the reduction of resource ... The flow-on effect of this on
the community has been absolutely devastating
...
Geoff Couser: I travelled to WA last month,
and drove down the main street of Manjimup ... the Manjimup statistical region has
an unemployment rate lower than the rest of WA; lower than the national average; lower than Tasmania’s.
WA is doing well because
it has not been held back by the small-minded, blinkered thinking
which is prevalent in our government ...
GEOFF COUSER
The cruellest cuts
Having people without accountability for health outcomes making critical
decisions that affect patient health is a serious and egregious error ...
A. MEDICAL-PROFESSIONAL
Beware the Christmas nasties
There was Premier Crispy donning the robes of an
artistically-inclined Santa Claus to offer us a bag
of goodies embracing a “world-class cultural hub,
designed to rival France’s Louvre in Paris or the Spanish Guggenheim in Bilbao”.
A Guggenheim-type creation? Haven’t we heard that tune before ... ?
THE ROVING EYE
Tenure ... what tenure?
...
Perhaps this is what tenured, successful
and respected academics can expect in a
future where universities show less commitment
to excellence in teaching than to a business plan's bottom line
...
ANONYMOUS
Labor ecstacy as the Ambitious falls ...
... Quite the contrary in fact - Hidding agrees
with Bacon and Lennon so much that he has been nicknamed “Noddy”.
Gutwein the Ambitious, on the other hand, was never
afraid to scream across the floor of parliament
in a bid to put a Government member in place ...
RODNEY DELTA-POST
Keeping Islington safe ...
Preserve what we have. It will be too late once it’s changed ...
THE ROVING EYE
Jim meets the Bruvvers ...
Well what a day it was for the uneasy brotherhood that is the Tasmanian
union movement and its political masters, the state Labor government ...
so this prompted a question from me
inquiring if the phasing out of old growth logging
by 2010 would still be a reality. To this he answered ... not if it meant losing Tasmanian
jobs as that is all he and his government were about - people not trees. Dear oh dear, silly me
...
EDDIE STORACE
PLUS, Links:
Flaming fools kill forest giant
Protection call as giant dies
Libby Lester
LETTERS
Speaking up for Andrew Bartlett...
It is a question of
whether this decent Senator should be punished for a moment of human
weakness and should have his voice untimely cut off in Australia's public
life, in a time when so many evil things are happening in our society now,
and when he personally has shown great courage in resisting them ...
LETTERS
PLUS, Link:
Those brutal pressures, Greg Barns, SMH
For mercy's sake, let them go...
The sad and horrific saga of the Al Mosawi family - an Australian nightmare
... she was so traumatised by her experiences that
she became mute and has not spoken since that time ... it is estimated that the government has spent in excess of $1,000,000 detaining this family since 2001,
and the meter is still ticking ...
A REFUGEE NIGHTMARE
What I did on my holidays ...
A wonderful piece of writing by ...
PETE HAY
Heritage adulterated ...
... I was horrified and angered on reading
of development proposals by the new overseas
owners who have bought Islington ...
THE OLD BEAR
Aw shucks, gee whiz
Thus it is with great pride that TT finds itself listed in Reader in the Top 10 larrikin, iconoclast media organisations in Oz ...!!!
WOW
LAST
MONTH
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