Australia's recycling system is in crisis. China, which previously took about half the paper and plastic thrown into yellow-topped bins, has refused to take anything but the most highly sorted, cleaned, and processed waste.

That change of policy has sent the global price for recyclable waste plummeting, leaving Australia's recycling industry at risk of going broke.

But many see the crisis as an opportunity for Australia to build the infrastructure needed to keep our rubbish on shore.

The Greens have proposed the Federal Government invest $500 million over five years as concessional loans to the industry, but the recycling industry itself says it can be done for much cheaper — $150 million.

And the Australian Council of Recycling (ACOR) has even laid out a roadmap for how a reboot could work. It looks like this.....

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-26/how-to-fix-the-recycling-system-in...

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See also the government coach: Sammy J

Series 1 | Episode 12

Yes I know... This is a sports column, but some geezers see war as a sport. Some see war as a business, like sport is a business with professional players, sponsors who want to see return on investment and governments that use sports as a way to appease the populace. This is why I invite you to read again this piece, should you have read it once, but I believe you never did...

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Jacques Chirac continuously repeats that, in the eyes of the Europeans, «war is the worst of solutions, evidence of a failure». As George W. Bush’s favorite essayist, Robert Kagan, highlights this way of thinking is precisely what determines the main opposition between the old Europe and Washington’s neo-conservatives in power, who regard war as a creative event that allows regenerating the world, like the destruction of employments can be a process of modernization of the means of production.

From this point of view, the destruction of Iraq marks the opening of the biggest public market since the end of World War II. Even President Bush launched his ultimatum against Iraq, and the Pentagon, which aims at exercising a military protectorate over the country, had already signed the reconstruction contracts.

Five big US associations share this gigantic cake. First, there is the Bechtel Group. This construction company, the most important in the United States, has belonged to the Bechtel family over the last four generations. One of its administrators is no other than George Schultz, former State Secretary of Ronald Reagan. Schultz also presides over the Advisory Council of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, pro-war lobby financed by Lockheed Martin. The Lockheed Martin-Bechtel alliance opens the door for a new kind of business: the destruction of a country by an arms manufacturer and, later, its reconstruction by a specialist in reinforced concrete.

Schultz also holds a post in the management of Gilead Science, the giant of the pharmaceutical industry whose Administration Council was presided over by Donald Rumsfeld until he returned to the government. This firm has just obtained important public markets in the framework of the prevention of biological and chemical attacks. In effect, Rumsfeld has managed to convince the US public opinion of the fact that Saddam Hussein could have kept some weapons of mass destruction that the US had sold to him during the Iran-Iraq and that Baghdad could use against the American people. Over the last years, Gilead Science has obtained most of its benefits producing antiviral medicines to treat AIDS.

As the very high prices of these treatments do not allow them to spread in the Third World, many countries have tried to create them without a license and they have been sanctioned by the World Trade Organization (WTO). In 1998, identical anti-viral drugs were created by a pirate laboratory in Al-Shifa (Sudan). At the request of Rumsfeld and Schultz, Bill Clinton accused the Al-Shifa center of being a facade to manufacture weapons of mass destruction for Al-Qaeda and had it bombed. Several international investigations later showed that these accusations were unfounded.

In second place, there is the Halliburton Company. A world leader in oil equipment, this association knows very well the country where it has reconstructed the drilling and refining facilities after the Gulf War of 1991. Then, its president was Dick Cheney who had just led the destruction of the country as Defense Secretary of George H. Bush (Sr.). Although Cheney officially gave up his private functions after being appointed Vice-President of George W. Bush (Jr.), he continues to receive residual emoluments to the tune of one million dollars annually. So, from an equivocal position, he will lead this new destruction of Iraq that will give him new bonuses.

The other companies that will benefit from the destruction of Iraq are the Fluor Group, Parsons Corporation and the Louis Berger Group: three associations that have been particularly generous with the think-tanks of the fundamentalists.

In these conditions, we may ask ourselves about the targets of the US bombing in Iraq: will they be only military targets or will they be part of the preparation of the world’s largest reserve?

Read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article30074.html

This was posted 19 MARCH 2003, which was one day before the festivities: 20 March to 1 May 2003. Some of you may not have been born yet or were too young to "understand"... Others had been captured by the "Saddam has weapons of mass destruction" spin...

Donald Rumsfeld, when he was sales representative in weapons of mass destruction, with his customer Saddam Hussein.

Contrarily to Jacques Chirac, our little napoleon macron is all in favour of dropping bombs without looking at the reason for it, except being the little foil for The Donald's empire...

Please check: macron should give us the creeps... and the media is dumb...

Some pundits, even some Labours MPs (you can guess which ones) are spinning this as a disaster. Their argument is that the Tories are so incompetent that Labour should be wiping them off the map. A position with which there are two key problems:

Firstly, there’s the destroyed UKIP vote. They’ve lost over 120 seats, the vast majority of which will go over to the Tories. Even with this influx of UKIP seats, the Tories are running on a net loss.

Secondly, there’s media coverage. This is the most important point.

All of this happened whilst the press coverage of Corbyn, and Labour in general, has been nothing but relentlessly negative. In fact, the press coverage of Corbyn has ALWAYS been negative. The nicest language ever used about the man is to describe him as “principled but out of his depth”. 

Incompetence is what Corbyn’s supposed SYMPATHISERS label him with. His enemies? Well they call him a communist, or a Leninist, or a traitor, or a racist.

For weeks before the elections the only Labour-related stories to regularly make the papers were about supposed “antisemitism”. Varying between stating the dishonest smears, slamming everyone who called them dishonest smears, and then pontificating about how the dishonest smears might “hurt labour in the local elections”. As if it were all just happenstance.

The final damage done?

Well, “antisemitism” may have cost Labour one council. Maybe. Some experts says.

This is a disaster, apparently. I’m not quite sure why, but people are definitely talking about it a lot.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that a lot of these editorials and headlines were written before the results were in, with the expectation that things would go much worse for Labour than they eventually did. One could assume the collective press assumed their “antisemitism” and “Russian bots” coverage hold more water with the public than is apparently the case.

The strength of the reaction certainly isn’t merited, given the results. It rather feels like political theatre. A pre-designed “election humiliation” that never really materialised, which was almost certainly meant to form an argument, a segue, for a new leadership challenge. 

Maybe Hilary Benn would finally come out of the woodwork, or some other craven non-entity. In the end the name and face won’t matter, they will all speak with the same voice. And it won’t be ours.

For all the sound and fury, none of that can happen now. Calling for a leadership election, with a minority government in power and success in local elections, would be ridiculous.

This is just the latest example of Corbyn, and his public support, scuppering the well-laid plans of the PLP.

When Corbyn was first nominated for the leadership in 2015, he was meant to be as an “also ran”. A token lefty to make people think socialism was a dead-end in the Labour movement.

That didn’t work out so well. Corbyn got more votes than all the other candidates combined. It was the first election Corbyn won, which he was supposed to lose. The first time Corbyn didn’t do what he was told. They all found it very frustrating.

The PLP held a vote of no confidence in Corbyn after the Brexit referendum. 172 MPs demanded he step down. Corbyn refused. This was the second time Corbyn didn’t do what he was told.

David Cameron even called for his resignation during one of his final PMQs. Yelling “For heaven’s sake man, go!”.

The result of all of this was a second leadership election. Which Corbyn won with an increased majority.

The local elections in 2015 went well too. Labour candidates also won the Mayoral offices of London, Manchester and Liverpool. For an “unelectable man”, his party wins a lot of elections.

Even when he does lose, he doesn’t do it properly. The “greatest Tory landslide since Thatcher” crumbled to dust. Leaving us with an incompetent and corrupt minority government, desperately clawing at the vestiges of power it still holds.

All of this was achieved with nothing but relentless negativity in the vast majority of the press, and constant attempts at sabotage from his own back-benches. He is playing a rigged game, and refusing to lose. The increasing desperation of the establishment voices is becoming funny.

Epitomised by truly pathetic attempts to cast him as a Czech spy.

We were never supposed to be here. This was never supposed to happen. Corbyn keeps ruining plans and breaking rules and gaining votes and making sense. He says reasonable things, quietly, and people listen. This is not how politics is supposed to go.

The bottom line is that the establishment is getting more and more frustrated with Corbyn because he simply won’t do what he’s told. He won’t bang the war drums on command, betray the unions, sell off the NHS or resign in disgrace. He won’t even lose when he’s supposed to.

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/05/04/reality-check-the-tories-did-not-win...