Asbestos - Incoming Suburban nightmare.

Recent revelations from the ongoing James Hardie asbestos saga has fired up Scrubba Dub Dub to take a quick overview on where the damage has been done.

Just like Dupont's profitable contribution to destroying the world by inventing CFC's that continue to destroy large tracts of our ozone layer, James Hardie along with relative minor player CSR managed to spread asbestos across our beautiful planet, setting of a potential time bomb of immense proportions.

From WWII to the 1960's a large proportion of Australian Homes were built using the tough and fire-proof wonder product "fibro" which as we all now know was not so tough and made from deadly lung-cancer causing asbestos.

In Sydney alone nearly 200,000 homes were built using this poison, in an area now known as the "fibro-belt" stretching from Bankstown to St.Marys. Check out my approximate asbestos map above to get an idea of the size of the problem.

The harsh reality is that the baring down of time means homes in this toxic belt are falling apart, and as is widely known, falling apart means a slow splintering and crumbling which releases asbestos fibres onto the surrounding winds. A similar story is played out across cities large and small across Australia and indeed around many parts of the world.

Something that hardly rates a mention in Australia's corporate media is that each and everyone of these properties will increasingly become less than worthless, and in fact selling one amounts to nothing less than passing on the ticking time-bomb. Selling one to a young family with children should be immediately banned, and bringing children into these suburban areas at all should be considered the height of negligence and running very close to abuse.

But you wont hear anything about this from the real estate agent slime who will be happy to take their % conscience free from anything that moves on the sacrosanct market. And NSW has a major web of corruption permeating local councils and the state government, so it is extremely doubtful that anything will be seriously done to address the issue.

Scrubba dub dub says STAY AWAY FROM THE AREA!

Can anyone produce similar maps of your local area??

Corruption is back – and how Joh Bjelke-Peterson created Punk Rock.

Tony Fitzgerald returned this week to drop yet another bombshell of a yarn about how the Queensland government was sliding back into corruption levels not seen since his Fitzgerald inquiry of the late 80’s that managed to expose the notorious dealings of the very close to insane Joh Bjelke-Peterson, his police bovver boys, and odd ball ministers.

This Fitzgerald fella sure knows how get the good stories. He’d make any jouro insanely jealous, however we must remember that the Queensland corruption thing was in the first instance largely kicked off by Chris Masters incredible report on Four Corners in 1987.

The Fitzgerald inquiry managed to topple 18 years of one of the most bizarre right wing police states Australia has ever seen. The good news was as a reaction to things like prison for trying to protest, Bjelke-Peterson can be thanked for creating one of the most genuinely subversive art and music scenes around. And from this The mighty Saints were formed, the band that taught the English about real punk rock in 1976 - the year before the Clash and Pistols. That's right folks. Without that insane “don’t you worry about that Jana” peanut farmer Joh Bjelke-Peterson we would never have had “Know Your Product” or “(I’m) Stranded” or Ed Keupper or the wonderful red wine fuelled ramblings of the master poet himself Chris Bailey.

But back to corruption, NSW was soon to follow with the creation of ICAC – The Independent Commission Against Corruption. This managed to bust open some of the deeply entrenched police corruption in NSW.

But there was always one piece of the puzzle that went missing. How come Victoria managed to dodge the corruption inquiry bullet? VIC State governments of all colours have always managed to slip and slide away from any “expensive” cleaning out of there dodgy brothers closet, but we know corruption brews there like everywhere else.

So Queensland needs another sweep out, as Fitzgerald noted amongst other things, political patronage can now be bought. I’m glad to hear QLD Premier Anna Bligh suddenly finding favour with the idea of banning all political donations, what a bright idea. Of course the Greens have been calling for this for years, but watch the hacks of both parties squirm when this question is raised for real.

My final word is what a crime it was that the old bastard Joh Bjelke-Peterson never followed his police minister into gaol for a really long time – see the wonderful show “Joh’s Jury” featuring a young spritely Noah Taylor (before Charlie and the Chocolate Factory kids)) that shows how Joh managed to worm out of that one.

BP - The PR mask falls away

Loved an article spotted in the Sydney Morning Herald last week BP's spin doctors can now breathe easy by Julian Lee. Somewhat ironic that it could be found in the section on Media and Marketing, because this presumably is mostly only read by those in that industry.

In essence the article is the sorry tale of the mighty green-wash attempt that BP has been pushing down our throats for the last ten or so years. Short of attempting to market the US military as "liberators" of Iraq ( I believe that job was largely taken up by Liar Supertarts Burson-Martsellar) this has to be among the most laughable PR exercises ever.

BP - known as Brittish Petroleum to most of us - seriously attempted to re-brand itself as "Beyond Petroleum". Yep suddenly one of the worlds biggest petro-chemical corporate monsters really truly deeply cared about the environment.

Me and my little bunch of greeny freaky friends were rather amused from the start - and the big rumour was they were spending substantially more on advertising their new found enviro credentials than actually doing anything about it.

Sure they bought a couple of little solar start-ups, but nothing that would get in the way of their far more serious business of selling oil and the by-products.

Well it now appears all fears were justified..like all cons it crumbles in the end,

But it is yet another example as to why we cannot trust commercial media or news outlets that are not constantly vigilant against this level of mass PR. The amount of money and energy that such mighty corporations can pump into such concepts is staggering, and such campaigns can largely be taken seriously even when they are as dumb as this one...

Religion in Oz politics

Interesting article in today's Sydney Morning Herald has got us thinking - see
In the name of the Father
It follows Melb uni academic Anna Crabb's work on religion in speeches by Australian parliamentarians.



While this blogger has no problems with politicians holding religious beliefs, I do have a major problem with the concept of ultra-right-wing fundamentalist nut jobs of any flavour attempting to hijack the political debate like they managed to do so well in the the US of A under Bush.

"Values" is the catchphrase they so hideously like to use, as if left wing drug addicted homosexual abortionists can't have any values...well I met one in a bar once, and I'm telling you they do.

The closest organisation we got to the US style groups is probably the Australian Christian Lobby who are a bunch of self appointed wonks with lobbyist passes and biased survey questions, who run around parliament house trying to drum up support for "values". Very self appointed, not taken so seriously I'm told by the bigger churches. However they have had some success from time to time but also some big failures like RU486. In the usual ultra right-wing style they hate abortion and euthanasia and gays and embryo science and blah blah but in a very unchristian way they also want to force everyone else to live like them. At least they aren't quite as mad as the saltshakers (who we can file under UL = Extreme Loony) and others (like anti-science Family First?) but aside from the major religious bodies they are the most organised in Canberra.

My issue is - haven't we got more important things to worry about?
I mean where was the ultra right Christians like these on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars? People die there - even embryos sometimes. Where are they on developing world debt that is killing millions from starvation and cheaply preventable disease? More dead. No they'd prefer that we all focus our attention on some slightly wayward pissy teenage girl from Queensland who once forgot to take her pill. Well i for one think that most middle class Queensland teens are good enough to deal with there own problems. Most.

There was a show about 6 months ago on the Radio National's religion report that suggested some of the US christian fundamentalists are toning down and are actually becoming genuinely concerned with social justice issues and even the environment. There are also rumours about that the happy clapper kings at Hillsong are similarly leaning away from their supposed "prosperity theology" roots, (you're rich cos god loves you - you're poor cos god HATES you!) and over to a little more social justice. Next step folks- enhance music tatses.

Lets hope more of the fashion for a little social justuce around the world trickles down to Australia - to our right-wing nut bags, and to our politicians.

Buckminster Fuller - there was an interesting chap

There I was rabbiting on about Dadaism and Nikola Tesla even got a tick in my opening blog. But I should have also recalled that Buckminster Fuller is another worthy name that should be added to the Scrubba Dub Dub big time influence list.

And with good reason too! Check out the wikipedia entry on the guy here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller
How many other good folk have - Occupation: Visionary in their wiki entry.

I wonder how well that would go down in your CV? I'd certainly take that Arts course at uni...

But he was pretty amazing, an early environmentalist, a little loopy sure, but what great minds, sorry - how many "visionaries" don't have a little touch of the "eccentricities" as my mother would euphemistically put it.

SO what did ol' Bucky do, i hear you ask..well what didn't he do - and don't just get caught up on your humble old geodesic domes - although they do look pretty good sitting on your suburban roof, and guaranteed to have your local CIA informant knocking on your door trying desperately to get themselves invited to your children's birthday party.

For one thing, he was a major designer, of all kinds of things - I always liked his idea to make tough plastic moulded rooms that connected together as housing, were super cheap and completely fireproof. Then there was the entire communities based on recycling, and a whole world of new language.

Impossible to have the time to do this mans life any justice in a few hundred words, but I know i'm not the only one who has been completely inspired by his rather unusual approach to the universe...

Earth to Family First, has anyone there heard of science?

Goodness me that Senator Steve Fielding. With his latest views on climate change, he’s just managed to raise the stakes in senatorial stupidity to the next level. With the exception perhaps of Victorian Labor Senator Stephen Conroy who was the very man who engineered the famous “own goal” preference deal that managed to get Family First into the senate in the first place.

So poor old Steve Fielding has got himself into a fine pickle by heading off to the USA to do his “own research” on climate change by going to visit a fine bunch of corporate extremists known as the Heartland Institute. You may remember them as the mob that argued laws against smoking were based on “junk science”. Oh and yes they got money from big tobacco for that. And now they argue there is no climate change. And yes they have a long history of major support from the Fossil Fuel Empire, particularly ExxonMobil, however they have recently gotten wise to the criticism and sensibly now hide who their donors are.

I was pleased to see a great piece in the Sydney Morning Herald by Stephanie Peatling on the issue – “Senator blows hot and cold on science” http://www.smh.com.au/environment/senator-blows-hot-and-cold-on-science-20090610-c3ox.html
Ouch - You couldn’t get much more to the point in the mainstream media.

If Fielding is not capable of understanding how peer reviewed science works, surely someone out there in Family First land can give him a hand – they can’t all be that bewilderingly blind and so easily swayed by the most basic of Corporate Manipulation 101. We know Family First are supposed to have been the love child of fundamentalist Christian Assemblies of God Church, surely some of them can manage to begin the debate on climate change within the realms of actual science rather than corporate PR?

Reminds me of another passion of mine - to keep up with the arguments of similar Corporate propaganda outfits in Australia – keep an eye out for the particularly loony Jennifer Marohasy and her extremist think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. More on this soon. Perhaps Steve Fielding could do some of his “own research” on the deliberately manipulative aspects of these kinds of think tanks and PR units. I know you are busy senator – look me up if you need a hand with the research.

In the meantime see you at the Climate Emergency Rally happening in cities all around Australia this Saturday.

Dadaism

I was reminded how great dadaism was when I began this blog idea.
Check out the wiki entry for it and you get a great starter.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dada
What a bunch of wacky amazing kooks.
Completely inspiring, and take note of the influence all you young punks!

Big News for the Ogoni people and Shell Oil

Big news this week is the forking out by Shell Oil of US$15 million as an out of court settlement to the long oppressed Ogani people in Nigeria.

Scrubba will not forget Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other 8 environmental activists who were hung by the Nigerian military regime for standing up for their community and against Shell's devastating environmental practices in November 1995

As many commentators are suggesting - this decision opens the door for environmental, human rights and community activists to stand up against the appalling behaviour of corporations like Shell in this example.

Sure the money is not everything, and is a drop in the ocean for a big multinational like Shell, but a powerful principle remains. Through this settlement Shell may well claim they weren't to blame for the actions of the Nigerian government, and this is the pattern of mining companies around the world, where they hide behind brutal oppressive regimes, take the resources and pretend any management of the "local problem" is out of their hands.

Hey Shell - you did the drilling, you caused the mess, you didn't fairly deal directly with the local Ogani people when you knew the Nigerian Regime was oppressive and couldn't care less about the locals so long as they could get their hands on royalties from you. There is no excuse and the blood is on your hands and those that invest in you.

Check out a good article from the Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2009/jun/09/saro-wiwa-shell

And the same goes for Australian companies like Newcrest. Check out their record at the Indonesian Toguraci gold mine in Halmahera, North Maluku province. In January 2004 local community rights and environmental protesters were shot at and beaten up, one protester was shot dead. But Newcrest argued it wasn't their fault, just an internal Indonesian problem. Invest and be damned.

And lets not forget Rio Tinto's foray into Indonesia's most oppressed province of West Papua.
Not certain if they are still directly involved in the Freeport debacle but the brutality certainly lives on. http://www.survival-international.org/news/3700

Welcome to Scrubba Dub Dub

Welcome to the new blog Scrubba Dub Dub, where Scrubba gets to put together his thoughts on all things political and artistic that amuses him.

Scrubba tries to keep up with Global Politics, Original Alternative Music, Global Green Politics, Classical Music, Human Rights Law, Progressive Fine Arts, Political Economy, Australian Community Radio (like 3CR, Fbi 3RRR, 2SER, 3PBS, 4ZZZ) Heterodox Economics, ATTAC, Nikola Tesla, Industrial blues and folk music, Justice for the Developing World, Dadaism, Tax Evasion and Corporate Law. And there is nothing wrong with that.