Ford Motor Company Will Stop Manufacturing Vehicles In Australia

Most of what follows was not written by me. Although I have lived mostly in Australia for more than 40-years, I was only generally aware of the insidious, but gradual, winding down of local manufacturing. Unlike the UK, which has had to depend heavily on its service industries, Australia has been cushioned by its status as one of the world's leading primary producers. As someone observed during the 1970s, our value to our friends and allies is as a mine, a farm and an 'aircraft carrier' (strategic outpost).

 More than 20-years ago I was teaching Commerce, aka practical business methods, to a class of poorly motivated Year 10 boys. I challenged them to look through their possessions and find something not made in China. I then suggested that the future belonged to those with the education, skills and motivation to join the "knowledge" economy. There was no WWW, Windows had yet to overtake MS-DOS and my pep talk to my pupils received the predictable response. Among them were found some who referred to the SBS as "wog vision". Enough said!

What has kept the United States afloat since 2008 is, in no small measure, its domestic market, its abundance of natural resources and the willingness of its people to accept lower wages as part of the sacrifice necessary to keep costs and prices down. No matter where you go in the US, or how you choose to spend your time and your money, you receive better service and value than you do in Australia, the UK or many parts of the EU.

I am not arguing in favour of the way ordinary wage and salary earners are treated in the United States as compared with similar occupations in Australia. I am arguing for a change of attitude on the part of Australians, especially towards education towards which we pay only lip service.

Much is said of the need for improvement but nothing is done about the social and community issues impacting on our public schools. Far too many children in junior high school lack motivation, self-discipline, parental supervision and basic skills that might reasonably be expected of a 12-year old child who has completed seven or eight years of schooling.

It was hard not to preface this with my tuppence worth after a career spent mostly in secondary school classrooms of one sort or another. This summary came to me courtesy of an old school friend who went to become a senior banking official. It speaks for itself.

Whoever takes office on September 8th will need to address the issue of the decline of Australian manufacturing, notwithstanding the fact that - whatever the rhetoric - governments exercise very little power over the economy in a democratic society.

 Ford Shutdown of Manufacturing in Australia

I've got an old mate who spent his working life with the Ford Motor Company, mainly as a computer programmer, and after the recent announcement of Ford closure in Australia, I asked what his feelings were.

Sorry? Yes - I feel I have been let down, but I am more sorry for Australia. The problem is not just Ford, it is the whole of Australian primary and secondary industry.

When I joined the industry in 1960 Australia had the following Automotive Manufacturers:- Ford Australia - (Plants in Geelong, Ballarat, Broadmeadows, Sydney, and Brisbane). Australian Motor Industries. - (Standard Motor Company and Mercedes Benz, Rambler, and Fiat tractors, - plants in Melbourne and Sydney) British Motor Corporation - (Austin, Morris - Plants in Melbourne and Sydney) Chrysler Australia- (Plants in Keswick, Mile End and Finsbury, Continental and General Distributors -(Peugeot - plant in Heidelberg Melbourne) - bought out by Mitsubishi Fiat - (tractor assembly at the Pressed Metal Corporation plant in Sydney) General Motors Holden - ( Plants in Port Melbourne, Dandenong, Adelaide, and Sydney) International Harvester- ( Plant in Geelong) Leyland Motors - (Albion and Scammel , Plants in Melbourne and Sydney) Renault (Australia) - (assembled by Clyde Industries, Victoria) Rootes ( Australia) - (Plants at Port Melbourne and Dandenong) Rover ( Australia) - ( Pressed Metal Corporation Sydney - most of the land rover was made and assembled in Oz) Volkswagen (Australia) - (Plant in Clayton Victoria) Willys Motors (Australia) - (Plant in Rocklea, Brisbane) White Trucks (Brisbane)

There was also another company assembling one of the early Japanese imports at Kangaroo Point. Then of course there was our own Repco, a major automotive parts manufacturer and engine re-builder at that stage, and a company which was then more than capable of building the first all Australian car.

These were not fly-by-nighters, some of them were in existence as early as 1914 - one hundred years ago !! From that foundation the only one left is GMH, whose very existence as a manufacturing facility is hanging by a thread.

I have no idea what has happened to all the major parts and machine suppliers, Duly and Hansford, Bendix, Borg Warner, Pilkingtons Glass, Zenford, Small, A.C.I, McPhersons, and countless others, all appear to be dead. Do you believe that all fourteen of those fifteen major companies were incapable? Shortly to be fifteen out of fifteen???????

We now have a relative newcomer, Toyota, with a plant in Altona, which will, in all possibility, be last man standing.

You think the Automotive industry is the only casualty? In the last few months Australia has also shut down the Shell refineries in Sydney and Geelong. Don't even worry about the long-dead fasteners, carpet, textile, shoe, clothing etc. industries - they are as numerous as prayer notes in the Wailing Wall.

It's time to ask the hard question, - is something wrong with Australia?

When I left Ford, in round figures it employed 5,000 at the Geelong site, 6,000 at the Broadmeadows site, 700 in the Sydney plant, and 300 in the Brisbane plant - 12,000 people. That is only the start. Then there are all the outside contractors directly dependent on the Company, we used to estimate this conservatively as about another 33% - 4,000. A straight 16,000 total. Then there is on top of that all the people who serviced those 16,000 - I have no idea how you calculate that, and it is a bit nebulous anyway as the 16,000 are still there, just at a lower level of economic importance.

It is blatantly obvious that our political system just does not work - I have been voicing this for the last thirty odd years. I have no idea what it should be changed to, the basis is sound, but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. The political intelligence of the bulk of the Australian voting public is heading to absolute zero, and our politicians depend directly on that.

We continue to elect governments time after time on the basis of platforms of promises to be broken. Promises bordering on lies and deceit. We elect governments that have financial abilities that would make Bart Simpson appear genius material.

Just take a quick look at Singapore - about 10% of our population, no natural resources, just about no industry, and yet they have a large network of underground trains running every three minutes everywhere - just on a scale basis alone we should have about ten such systems here in Oz - well at least one in all the capital cities - that leaves the cost of four of them to throw in a decent road system between the capitals.

As soon as someone hears that they pop up with "yes ! but look at their social welfare system !" my answer - exactly - look at it, almost non-existent from the government, the family is the social security system.

I have seen our system, which is great in principle, abused right left and centre by those it is meant to protect, what should be a safety net is fast becoming an albatross around our necks. Come hell or high water that system has to be returned to the safety net it was intended to be. I don't know about now, but in Germany it was exactly a safety net and nothing else - if you were out of work you received a percentage of your wage for a period of time ( three months? I forget exactly), and then it took a dive to an "emergency payment" which bought food and not much else.

All the government sponsored gifts for new houses, births, carbon tax offsets, GFC handouts etc. are not gifts - they are the currency with which our politicians appear best familiar, in plain English, bribes - bribes for the next election. Time to cut that nonsense - it should never have started.

What is happening in Australia is the failure to recognise the concept of adding value. Build something - make something - repair something - create something - move something - sell something useful - all add value and this is the only thing that creates a healthy economic structure. Add to that the essential services and you are still in business. Replace that lot with fancy accountants, counsellors, psychologists, dole bludgers, excessive bureaucrats, excessive government, teachers who only put in a fraction of the hours of real workers, and a myriad other similar other sinecure type jobs and you land right in the proverbial can, just like Oz.

Have you ever thought what happens in the next war? You think there won't be one? There have been humans fighting humans ever since one stuck his stone axe in somebody else's skull. You think that is going to miraculously stop? Go talk to the fairies.

What do you think wins wars? Certainly not bureaucrats, counsellors and psychologists - not even servicemen alone. It is pure manufacturing muscle - whoever can build the most missiles, aircraft, bombs, guns etc. and have servicemen to deliver the intended result to the enemy. That is what wins wars. What are we going to build them with now? Do we now let our servicemen down as well?

Have a look back at what Ford Oz built for the last major war. Ford turned out thousands of those huge army transporters, hundreds of those huge landing barges, tracked Bren-gun carriers, Ford blitzes, Bofors guns, and no doubt other things that I have either forgotten or never heard of. The Chrysler plant in Adelaide contributed a similar effort, largely in the aircraft sector. Who is going to repeat those efforts?

Our recent engineering workforce had the ability to tool up a plant like Fords and make virtually anything at the drop of a hat. We made all sorts of odd things that nobody knows about - bits for the aircraft industry, tooling for carbon fibre parts for the French Airbus, tooling for those huge Boeing tail spars, blocks for Scalzo engines, right down to microscopic gears for eye surgery instruments. We completed huge tooling contracts for our 'opposition' in the automotive industry. How wrong we were - the real opposition were those WE put in charge of our own country.

Then there are the unseen things - such as the flow of information and skills from the private sector to the Australian Government excuse for an armaments factory. Probably all but dead by now, but when I was active I attended many meetings at the armaments factory, Monash University, and other venues where engineers from private industry passed on manufacturing engineering related information. Much of it gleaned from first hand international experience, and much of it our own experience.

So that is just a small shot at how our politicians have betrayed us and set Oz up for a right royal shafting. A real enemy could not have done the job better. You bet your sweet ass I'm sorry.

P. S. I don't care who you pass this on to - I will probably get an earful from someone who hasn't had his/her feet on the ground for 99% of his/her next to useless existence, but I can handle that.

My own view is that we do have a problem although I do not believe that it is related to our ability to defend ourselves. I am more concerned that, for our own sakes, and for the sake of the environment, we should strive towards self-sufficiency in all things. Globalisation contributes to resource depletion, pollution, environmental degradation, Third World poverty and climate change. It is not for me to spell out how and why this happens; it is well documented.

The communities best equipped to survive future challenges will be those which grow, produce, manufacture, buy and sell locally. There is a movement devoted to the study, theory and practice of sustainability. Its called Deep Ecology. I'd be inclined to vote for someone in September who at least knows what this means. It does not mean that I endorse all the policies of The Australian Greens.

As a rider to the above, my friend in banking also mentioned the point at which, to him, it seems the wheels came off Australian government financial regulation with far reaching consequences for all Australians to this very day.

Thank you for your recent e-mail.  I do not know if you teach Australian 20^th century history, but you have probably heard of Stanley Melbourne Bruce, who I came across while researching the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.  It turns out that he was a bit of a spiv, not only because he was always dressed in top of the range suits and wore spats, but because he changed the CBA’s operating procedures from state banking to private (fractional reserve) banking and in the process condemned all Australians to permanent debt slavery.  As a result of his stupidity (he may also have been bribed) the Australian government since that time has had to pay market rates on its loans, instead of the 2/3^rds of one percent it had paid up to 1924.  Market rates were also applicable to home loans, where formerly only a handling charge was levied.  Within five years his govt. had borrowed £230 million from the international bankers in London and state and federal debt had reached £1 billion.  By 1927 there was a large budget deficit.  I wonder if the “history” books ever bother to mention these facts.

 

Interest is the price we pay to use money we would not otherwise have the use of.  Raised by parents and grandparents who had lived through the 1930s, I was taught that saving is good, borrowing is evil and debt something to be avoided at all costs.

In this day and age the cost of avoiding debt is a simpler, less extravagant and wasteful lifestyle, just as it always has been.  Many, however, would point to the impossibility of home ownership and major community projects like the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the Snowy Mountain Scheme, without first borrowing.  These are questions to be decided by those skilled in such matters. 

What is clear is that we need to learn the lessons of 1929 and 2008 and keep repeating them like a catechism.  An over reliance on credit is a house, or a nation, built on sand.

Five percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020: Too little, too late?

Staring into the climate abyss

Can we avoid the tipping point or, as the Mayans predicted, is mankind once again on the path to near extinction?

While the debate concerning the role of CO2 as a factor in current and future climate continues to rage, a majority of those scientists with the capacity to understand climate change who have put their views on record favours the view that present climate variations are both anthropogenic in origin and directly proportional to the amount of CO2 entering the atmosphere. There are, however, significant dissenting voices which cannot be discounted as mere cranks or tools of the petro-chemical industry.

The proposed Australian carbon tax appears to target the so-called ‘big polluters’, energy companies whose fossil fuel technology ensures that they are also major producers of CO2. The carbon tax presents a number of dilemmas which have not been fully explored by other than devoted followers of the climate change debate. It is these problematical issues which have been poorly presented to the general public by the media, politicians and spokespersons for the scientific community. This accounts in no small measure for the doubt, scepticism and confusion in the public arena regarding climate change.

The carbon tax itself appears to be a blunt edged instrument designed to force the big polluters to change their ways. Energy producers relying on fossil fuels cannot retool their entire industries at the drop of a hat. The notion of even a nation such as Australia, with abundant sunshine, wind and the space to site large energy gathering structures, relying entirely on renewable energy seems like pie in the sky.

Major changes to the way in which energy is produced seeming unlikely in the short term, the cost of the carbon tax to producers is likely to be passed in its entirety to the consumers, ordinary businesses and households. The government has foreseen this and is talking of rebates or subsidies for lower income households. In so doing we are creating, to borrow a phrase from the ABC, a ‘money-go-round’ where the first people to fall off are likely to be those most vulnerable to higher electricity costs, ordinary householders and small business operators.

While some time could be spent envisaging the economic, if not outright physical, pain likely to be suffered by ordinary Australians before they begin to curb their use of electricity to the point that the producer-polluters sit up and take notice, an elegant solution to the likely greatly increased cost of electricity presents itself. By all means tax the major CO2 emitters if there is a genuine belief in the role that manmade carbon dioxide plays in climate variation.

Fossil fuels produce many toxins and pollutants which present a more immediate threat to human life and the environment than otherwise inert CO2. No matter what is happening to our infinitely variable climate, we do need alternatives to fossil fuels, not least because so much of the world’s petroleum is locked up in other countries, many unstable and potentially hostile to the free West. Australian has plenty of coal, but its mostly brown coal, less efficient and not as clean burning as the highly prized black coal.

Be that as it may, how does Australia encourage big energy producers to look at other options without engaging in the pointless exercise of taxing producers, who charge consumers more, the consumers in turn being compensated by the government using the revenue raised from the producers. At every stage of the ‘money-go-round’ there will be compliance and administration costs, perhaps even requiring the creation of yet another government department.

One solution would be to give energy producers the option of offsetting the carbon tax against measurable direct investment in a combination of emissions controls, technology enabling – in the short term – cleaner combustion of fossil fuels and, most importantly, renewable energy sources. Producers claiming deductions against the carbon tax would need to demonstrate that they had not passed any part of the tax onto consumers.

While the United Kingdom, for example, is investing in gas fired power plants, making it heavily dependent on imported natural gas, it is debatable whether the burning of natural gas, or any combustible fuel – however ‘clean’ by comparison with coal and oil – actually produces less CO2. This, presumably, would depend on the efficiency and thermal capacity of the fuel being used in relation to the amount of CO2 produced during combustion. In layperson’s terms, does natural gas give more electricity in return for less CO2 and other pollutants? If so, should we be selling our natural gas to other nations as fast as we can extract it? Is there not a case for taxing the exporters of fossil fuels at source before the fuel disappears overseas and we have no control over the manner in which it is used?

Regarding nuclear, the less said the better. Suffice it to say that no engineer or scientist can, with a good conscience, guarantee the absolute integrity and safety of a nuclear power plant. We might be able to adapt to climate change; we cannot live with radiation at toxic levels which destroys all life exposed to it.

In short, a tax on producers who simply pass to the cost on to consumers, many of whom do not have the capacity to pay more for electricity or the capacity to modify their environments so as to use less energy and/or contribute to ‘green’ energy production, seems both unfair and unlikely to do much to change the status quo in the short term. According to climate theorists, the long term is not an option.

What is needed is a tax on producers who will, in turn, be encouraged to invest directly and immediately in more efficient power generation with lower emissions as well as in renewable energy. A producer who can claim offsets or tax deductions against such investment will not be eligible to ‘double dip’ by passing the entire tax on to consumers/customers.

Lower income households particularly need encouragement to invest in improved insulation, evaporative air conditioning systems rather than energy hungry reverse cycle units, gas heating, solar hot water systems and solar panels connected to the grid. There is no reason why small wind turbines, known as ‘wind chargers’, used extensively to power low voltage electricity systems in rural areas in the not too distant past, should not become a feature of our suburbs. The many large buildings, including government complexes, in Australia which rely on air conditioning 24/7 should long since have been sporting solar arrays. This sort of investment by individual consumers and businesses should be rewarded by tax deductions rather than by the imposition of a punitive indirect tax on consumers.

Further to the point about insulation, as a long-time resident of an area prone to sub-zero winter nights, in a standard brick veneer home ceiling insulation helps but is not enough. Ideally walls, floors would be insulated and windows double glazed, especially if those who say the world will start cooling again are right.

A final note about people renting who cannot easily modify their environment to save on energy costs. Something needs to be done to encourage landlords to make their properties more energy efficient. In a tight rental market, so-called market forces are as likely to encourage landlords to neglect their properties as anything else.

Perhaps the greatest weakness of the emissions reduction campaign has been the focus on an invisible, largely inert and – if one discounts the greenhouse effect – harmless natural element, viz. Carbon dioxide. Climate change, climate alarmism and climate doubt are all fertile grounds for misunderstanding and confusion. The other toxic, health damaging and environmentally degrading by-products of the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels are plain for all to see, whether its miners dying a slow and painful death from lung disease, brain-damaged children in polluted urban environments, oil-soaked sea-birds or, as so movingly portrayed in “The Last Mountain”, the destruction of an entire community and the ecology which supported it, are plain for all to see.

We do need to break the stranglehold of fossil fuels on our community. The only questions to be answered relate to the best and most effective manner to wean ourselves onto green energy. A graduated tax appears at first glance to be an inefficient response; too little, probably too late. We need to cut emissions now and we have to be prepared for the changes to our lifestyle which this will entail. Until we take real, practical action we shall remain slaves to the technology which threatens to destroy us.

Reducing Carbon Dioxide Emissions: Tax households, or target polluters?

Whatever the merits of Australia's proposed carbon tax in terms of CO2 emissions reduction in the long term, in the short term it is - quite simply - a consumption tax.

The lion's share of the direct tax will be borne by electricity producers and suppliers who rely almost entirely on coal fired generating plants. Australia's coal, cheap and abundant as it is even given the high wages - by world standards - paid to our miners, is brown coal, high in sulphur and not particularly clean burning by comparison with quality black coking coal. Be that as it may, faced with a choice between absorbing the tax and passing it on to consumers, there is little doubt that the net effect of the carbon tax will be higher prices for ordinary households across the entire range of household expenditure, not least of which will be an inflated electricity bill.

Shops open until late seven days a week in air-conditioned malls, the proliferation of household appliances and electronic gadgetry, office workers putting in unconscionable hours in heated, air-conditioned, brightly lit buildings which never close as cleaners and maintenance workers move in overnight; as a nation we use electricity prolifically. A tax on electricity consumption is, ultimately, a tax on almost everything Australians do, use, buy and sell.

Without entering into the detail of the controversial climate debate, one fundamental question must be asked of this new tax.

Will Australia's carbon tax succeed in reducing CO2 emissions, assuming other nations adopt equally effective measures, in time to arrest climate change before the Earth's atmosphere reaches the hypothetical tipping point where human activity becomes, as it was perhaps in the distant past, irrelevant to the natural course of events? The threat presented by this is that, once nature reasserts itself, it will do so in a manner inimical to life on Earth as we know it. Even now every natural disaster, or incidence of extreme weather, is singled out by some as further evidence of human induced global warming and the dire consequences thereof if unchecked.

A carbon consumption tax carries with it the expectation that, in the long term, energy producers will move away from fossil fuelled generators in an attempt to avoid the tax. In the short term coal burners will not be able to do this, so the cost will be passed on to consumers who can do one or both of two things: try to use less electricity - which is a challenge for most - or spend less on other things such as food, clothing, travel & entertainment to keep the household budget balanced. The government says that some of the proceeds from the tax will be used to compensate lower income households, but where is the incentive for both households and energy producers to invest in clean energy?

Other than forcing up the cost of living for all Australians, and marginally adding to the government's tax coffers when net of hefty administration and compliance costs along with compensation payments, it is difficult to envisage any short term impact on the volume of CO2 emissions. Producers cannot alter their mode of production overnight. Consumers may choose to reduce spending in other areas without moderating electricity consumption. Households may actually use more electricity if people with less disposable income, thanks to increased costs, choose to spend more time at home.

A blanket consumption tax of this nature may motivate people to rethink the manner in which they both source and consume electricity, but where is the incentive for both consumers and producers to make the switch to clean, green energy sooner rather than later? Only those companies and individuals with a surplus available for investment in new technology will be in a position to act. Everyone else will be playing catch up as the cost of living increases. People living and working in rented premises may not be in a position to substantially modify their energy environment. Those wealthy enough to absorb higher costs without changing their lifestyle may choose to carry on as usual without any substantial leverage for change.

Economists who, rather than scientists, are behind this tax believe in the power of the market to change individual behaviour. It may be asking a little too much of the market to expect a simple, but nevertheless all encompassing, tax to force people to make the necessary changes in time to avoid irreversible climate change.

If the scientists are right, only immediate, dramatic and far-reaching modifications to our lifestyle can avert a looming catastrophe. At this point the political will to make such changes is lacking almost entirely. Short-termism is the disease of the modern world. We lack both foresight and hindsight. For the me generation, now is everything. Few of our leaders are immune from this moral and intellectual myopia, be they politicians, economists, or business moguls. Elsewhere carbon taxes and emissions trading schemes have been distorted and perverted in the name of financial gain for banks and financial institutions. As a species we seem incapable of right thinking and meaningful action even when our very survival is at stake. According to the Mayans, human beings have destroyed the world before now. Will we do it again?

Returning to the everyday, the question arises whether anyone has seriously contemplated the manner in which a carbon tax will operate and its likely impact on our lives. So far the political debate has revolved around the real or imaginary perils of climate change and the fear of being left behind in the race to reduce emissions. The Gillard Government appears to be asking for a blank cheque from the electorate to deal with the problem in its own time and as it sees fit. Details have yet to be announced.

In the absence of informed debate it was refreshing to find an article, aptly titled "Carbon Omissions" by Canberra Times reporter Rosslyn Beeby in the June 4th edition. Although she devotes considerable space to rhetoric from our own Ross Garnaut, material which has been widely mentioned in all sectors of the Australian media, the meat of the article is derived from United States sources. It is these which I found most convincing and from which I have no hesitation in borrowing, placing my trust in Beeby's rendition.

In the United States the Centre for American Progress, the American Enterprise Institute, the Bipartisan Policy Centre and the Economic Policy Institute all argue that a carbon tax will help to reduce the national debt. That in itself should be enough to convince the likes of Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey that Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd are right about the carbon tax. If the tax does nothing else, reducing a nation's debt in these uncertain times is a laudable objective.

The Centre for American Progress takes it further by arguing that a necessary component of a CO2 reduction package must be an import tax on oil from other parts of the world. So, presumably, the aim is not only to burn less oil but to make sure that its our own and that we are the only beneficiaries from its extraction, refining and consumption. Low and middle income earners would be compensated not by direct payments but by reduced income taxes, the short fall in revenue met by the carbon tax and the energy import duty.

To this point the American proposals have much in common with our own. They are fiscal and rely on making the use of fossil fuels more expensive as an incentive to cut consumption and reliance on imports. There is no direct encouragement for people and organisations to embrace renewable energy other than an understanding that common sense will prevail and individuals will seek to meet their energy needs in the most cost effective ways accessible to them.

An impressive departure from what may loosely be termed mainstream thinking on emissions reduction is the proposal by the Brookings Institution for a direct, rather than indirect, approach by targeting the Big Polluters directly. This would take the form of a National Clean Energy Standard as an alternative to carbon pricing. Clean up the energy industry, and there is no need for anyone else to reduce their electricity consumption with all that that entails for the individual and the economy as a whole. The choice between an all encompassing, expensive to administer tax which may hurt people more than its helps the environment, and cutting emissions at source, seems to be a no brainer.

According to Harvard University economist Michael Greenstone, the weakness of a carbon tax is that it would "raise energy prices in a visible way, even though the money goes back in [some] consumers' pockets through tax credits". Greenstone proposes legislating a 'technology neutral' clean energy standard forcing all United States electricity generators to cut carbon dioxide emissions. The standard would become more rigorous over time aiming for a 50-percent reduction in emissions per megawatt hour by 2035. He goes on to mention a number of ways in which emissions cuts could be achieved.

Greenstone is one of the few commentators to factor in the real cost of emissions from fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide is 'clean' and relatively inert at normal atmospheric pressures, harmless to animals and beneficial to plant life. It is this quality of CO2 as much as anything else which attracts the attention of those who downplay its role in climate change. For the past half-century or more, however, we have been aware that fossil fuel emissions are harmful to human beings and to the environment in ways almost too numerous to mention. Of all the products of fossil fuel combustion, CO2 is arguably the least harmful in the short term.

A reliance on fossil fuels in general, and imported fuels in particular, is seen as impacting both on national health and national security. In time to come the wars in the Middle East may be seen as less about human rights, freedom and democracy than about oil security. It is scarcely reassuring that so much of the world's oil is found under the sands of the planet's least evolved and most unstable oligarchies and that the revenue from the sale of this oil to Western nations is used to fund international terrorism and Islamic radicalism.

Closer to home, the United States Academy of Sciences recently estimated the "total non-climate change related damages associated with energy consumption and use at more than $120-billion ... nearly all of which resulted from the effects of air pollution on our health and wellness".

Greenstone: "We estimate it costs about 3.2-cents for an existing coal plant to produce a kilowatt hour of electricity. This appears to be a bargain but the reality is that this kilowatt hour causes 5.6-cents of damages to our well being". Our energy sources, says Greenstone, "Only appear cheap because their costs to our health, the climate and national security are obscured or indirect". Take climate change out of the equation, and we still face the deadly impact of pollution on human and other life forms, and the irreparable environmental impact of certain types of mining.

In Australia we can look forward to a future where satellites may be used to monitor emissions on a global scale, leaving nowhere for polluters to hide, and our trading partners may raise barriers against imports from non-carbon-regulating regions. We must tackle emissions, but is this best done by curbing emissions at source, a direct approach as outlined by Greenstone and others, or an across the board carbon 'consumption' tax, an indirect approach with unforeseeable consequences.

Ross Garnaut has argued that even a $26 a ton carbon price will achieve only a 15-percent reduction in emissions by 2020, and that with the proviso that the balance after compensating households is directly invested in renewable energy. This is the weakness of the indirect approach where a substantial proportion of the revenue raised is swallowed up in administration costs and compensation payments. There is no guarantee that any part of the compensation to households will be applied constructively to reduce energy use and/or embrace renewables.

It is time for Australians to turn off the political noise and turn on to thinkers like Michael Greenstone. We can choose to tinker with the economy, possibly to the detriment of all with no benefit to the environment, or we can take direct action to change the way in which we live and work. The Federal Government could make a start by pressuring New South Wales to get behind the solar panel subsidy, and to look for ways to encourage landlords to enable their tenants to embrace green energy. While politicians posture for the cameras and pander to the likes of Murdoch, precious hours of sunlight are being wasted.

No Future For Set Top Boxes

Australia has been broadcasting television in both digital and analogue formats for ten years since 2001. TV began in Australia in 1956 and PAL colour broadcasting began in the early 1970s.

Australian made equipment can be used in South Africa, but needs to be retuned by a technician since South African analogue broadcasts use a sound-vision separation standard found nowhere else other than the Irish Republic. This was done, apparently, to protect local manufacturers from cheaper, more attractive imports.

Although digital television receivers have been available since 2001, and new analogue sets have not been sold for some years, the Australian government became concerned that, particularly older, Australians on pensions, benefits and otherwise limited incomes might find themselves not able to watch television in 2013 when the analogue transmitters will be shut down.

To this end, a number of households have been deemed eligible to receive - at taxpayer expense - a 'free' digital terrestrial receiver (set top box) or digital receiver providing analogue output compatible with the AV input terminals found on all but the oldest television sets still in service.

As someone with more than a passing interest in technology, my reaction was that this was good money after bad. If really concerned about indigent members of our community, surely the $300 per household budgeted for the STB programme would be better spent on a new digital television?

What follows is the text of a letter I composed to my local member who responded promptly with a wealth of information about the programme. For better or worse it has been running for a while and the government is pressing on with it.

My concern is that, by 2013 if not sooner, a significant number of those who have benefited from the programme could find themselves stuck with a fancy set top box connected to an obsolete analogue TV receiver at the end of its useful life.

As we all know, a cashed up government in search of political advantage never allows common sense reality to interfere with what it perceives as a vote winning agenda.

This is an edited version of a letter I wrote following the budget announcement. At the time I was not aware that the set top box (digital terrestrial receiver) programme was already under way.

I stand by my contention that the programme is not necessary at this point, while analogue broadcasting is to continue for a further two years, and that the amounts from $308 - $350 per household mentioned as the likely installation cost are excessive.

If the object of the exercise is that every low income, technically challenged household should start receiving additional free-to-air digital channels immediately, there may be some point to it, bearing in mind that almost all popular content is available via analogue transmissions. I have a digital television, as well as a digital tuner coupled to a conventional television, but 90% of what I watch is available on analogue.

My set top box is connected to a 12-year old analogue television. Its a moot point which device will die first. The STB receives all free to air digital channels, was very simple to connect and activate, and cost about $50 retail from Dick Smith who would have been pleased to explain to me how to install it had I needed their assistance.

Ongoing support is not an issue since no one bothers to repair cheap devices such as STBs when they break down. With labour costs in the electronics industry greater than $100 per hour, and a shortage of technicians, this is hardly surprising.

1. By 2013, if not earlier, the majority of Australian households will already be receiving digital television by one means or another. For the federal government to provide assistance will not be necessary, any more than it was for innovations such as colour television, the video cassette recorder, the home computer, the mobile telephone, the DVD player or the digital camera. Australians love new technology and have consistently enjoyed one of the highest per capita uptakes of new devices in the developed world.

2. $350 per eligible household is an excessive amount for a device which is both simple to install, currently retails from $50 - $100, and is becoming cheaper by the day. Connecting and installing a set top box is not rocket science.

3. Flashing this sort of money in front of third-party contractors who can source these devices for next to nothing from China, & install them in less than ten minutes, is setting the government, and the taxpayer, up for yet another rort which will do nothing for employment and manufacturing in Australia.

In support of the propositions above:

• Analogue/CRT television sets have not been sold for some years. Analogue television sets currently in use are nearing the end of their useful life and the number still in service by 2013 is likely to be small. The life expectancy of an analogue/CRT television set is between ten and 15-years, with the cheaper brands often failing inside ten years.

• As conventional television sets age, the picture quality declines. The addition of a set top box will do nothing to enhance the picture quality or longevity of older sets. All analogue television sets still in service by 2013 will be “old”.

• Small digital television sets are available for less than$400 and getting cheaper. If the Federal Government is determined to assist needy households with $350, then this money is best spent in the form of a rebate against the purchase of a new, digital television receiver.

• Set top boxes are not designed and built to withstand heavy use or last a long time. Regardless of the manufacturer’s label, most are sourced from the same factories in South China and intended as a stopgap measure pending the purchase of a digital television receiver. I have bought five different STDs from reputable retailers since 2005. One failed during the 12-month warranty period and was repaired, not replaced. Two developed faults outside the warranty period and had to be junked.

• At today’s prices, and getting cheaper, $350 is almost enough for a modest personal video recorder (HD PVR) with built in digital tuner that can be used with both analogue & digital television sets. This is a much better investment of $350 than a set top box.

• Of all consumer electronic devices to reach the market in recent decades, the set top box is one of the simplest to install and use. If you can connect a DVD player to a TV, you can connect a STB. Tuning is automatic; there is nothing to do as long as one’s TV has AV terminals, preferably more than one set of terminals or the DVD player or VCR will have to be disconnected to make way for the STB and/or an additional switching device to enable STB, DVD player & VCR to be connected simultaneously. The oldest analogue television sets, and some sets do last between ten and 20-years, do not have AV terminals and here the only way to connect a STB or DVD player is through a VCR or other conversion device. In other words, connecting a STB to an analogue television more than about ten years old is possible, but not recommended.

• Digital television reception does not require a new aerial in good reception areas. If one’s existing antenna system works adequately for analogue reception it will be perfectly satisfactory for digital reception, no matter what installers hungry for business tell one. In many areas with uncertain analogue reception, digital reception is superior – again without the need to upgrade the antenna unless its already faulty.

In short, most households are likely to have at least one new digital television set by 2013. For people who find that their analogue receivers are still performing satisfactorily, installing a set top box is both cheap and simple. In the not too distant past both television sets and video cassette recorders had to be tuned manually, channel by channel. Most people managed perfectly well using the supplied instructions. Many of us routinely have to resort to the manual twice a year for the purpose of resetting the digital clocks found in so many household devices. This is a chore, but its manageable.

Many elderly people, it is true, do struggle with technology such as mobile phones, computers and the internet. Communities, for the most part, already have support in place. It has never hitherto, to the best of my knowledge, been suggested that the government should supply these devices to pensioners, install them in their homes, and provide ongoing support. A significant number of older people can relate to being shown how to use a mobile phone by, for example, grandchildren.

I believe that there would be no shortage of volunteers forthcoming to assist elderly people in the change from analogue to digital television, including radio amateurs such as myself, CB radio operators and the like. Our first digital television receiver was delivered and installed by the retailer who set it up in our house at no extra cost.

If there are indeed households in Australia so disadvantaged that they do not have a television receiver, then perhaps we should be looking at supplying them with one although, as I have pointed out, the government has not to my knowledge previously directed social security payments – for this is what the programme amounts to – towards particular household items.

The latest JB HiFi catalogue features a 22” Teac digital television receiver with built in DVD player for less than $300 while the taxpayer is expected to contribute more than $300 for a cheap and nasty set top box which, with a bit of luck, will last at least as long as the ageing analogue television receiver to which it is intended to be connected. This simply does not make sense, and I can’t help feeling that our parliamentarians – as busy as I know them to be with a wide variety of issues – have been very badly advised concerning the current state of consumer electronics.

Finally, should the government’s set top box scheme go ahead as planned, then – perhaps - it should be looking at using paid volunteers, as in the case of the forthcoming census, rather than third party contractors. I know that I would be more than happy to go around installing set top boxes, not that I anticipate much demand for them, at a rate equivalent to a day’s wage.

Thank you for your interest and, in particular, the work you are doing regarding the highspeed broadband network, another area bedevilled by misconceptions and misinformation. To know how the WWW works one needs to spend time on it, and I welcome your presence on Twitter which helped to inspire this letter.

And did these feet ...

In the noise surrounding the Middle East conflict, and the entire Middle East - for one reason or another, not least being the despotic, sexist and anachronistic nature of its various regimes - is mired in conflict, it is easy to forget the historical origins of the region formerly known as Palestine and how it came to be divided between two groups of people with an equally valid claim to some part of it.

A Palestinian of my acquaintance, no friend to Israel since his family left Haifa in 1948, who grew up a Christian in Lebanon said, "We were all Jews once, you know. We are the same people".

The accursed legacy of the process that began during the Second World War was the removal and relocation of entire populations, voluntary sometimes but mostly forced, thanks to the racist ideology which divides people along ethnic, cultural and religious lines and conflates all with "nationalism". Nationalism, not to be confused with a natural love of one's place of birth and upbringing, is the wretched doctrine in the name of which unparalleled atrocities were committed in Europe and elsewhere in comparatively recent times.

Although the forces of nationalism began stirring in the 19th Century, most European nations prior to 1914 were polyglot, multicultural and multinational. People other than those who emigrated to the new world tended to live their lives close to where they were born, irrespective of who happened to be ruling that territory at that time. For the most part linguistic and cultural differences were tolerated, although there might be tension between catholic and protestant, Jew and gentile. People were defined by occupation and religion rather than language and culture per se. The evolution of nationalism was a two-edged sword: useful and positive in pursuit of liberty and democracy; unspeakably evil when wielded in the cause of avarice and power.

The geographical expression that is Palestine has become one of those areas of conflict in which evil is done in the name of good, and murder is committed in the name of justice. There is a belief that the former Turkish subjects of Palestine should have become independent after 1917, something on which most agree; but no consensus concerning who the rightful owners of the land, if any, truly are. Paramount for those of the Jewish faith was the need to have absolute control over their affairs in a land where, for the first time since the Roman invasion, they were once again a majority. It was felt, with considerable justification, that nowhere in the world where Jews had been in a minority since the Diaspora had they been able to live in peace and security.

The defeat of the Turks in 1917 meant that once again people of the Jewish faith might aspire to living in a home of their own, for many their ancestral homeland; for many more their spiritual home. That was, and still is, a problem for those Palestinians who were Islamic, or Christian. It was not a problem for their former Turkish rulers who practised their own form of multiculturalism and tolerated all who did not challenge their overlordship at a time when nationalism was not the divisive force it has since become.

Our knowledge of the ancient land which the Romans called Palestine begins with the Old Testament. In the centuries before the birth of the Jewish sage whom so-called Christians have taken to be their own, a number of Greek colonies shared the land with the Kingdom of the Hebrews. Large numbers of Greeks settled in Palestine and Greek was a common language alongside Aramaic and Hebrew. In time the Greek cities states, for there was no Greece, and their respective colonies fell to the Romans. Palestine became a Roman province with a Jewish puppet king. Most of what followed has been the subject of generations of scripture lessons.

About seven centuries after the birth of Christ, Islam began to expand in all directions from its birthplace in the sands of the Arabian peninsula, a land formerly populated by pagans, Jews of the Diaspora and Jewish converts from among the indigenous people. Although Judaism is not a missionary religion, Jews were tolerated in Arabia and Judaism was the first monotheistic religion to take root in the region.

At the time of Mahomet's rise to power Judaism was gaining ground in Arabia and had spread as far as India. It would not be drawing too long a bow to say that this was where the struggle between Islam and its progenitors began, for the early followers of Mahomet did not tolerate other religions or beliefs and were part of a nomadic culture that thrived on conflict.

Mahomet built on the teachings of Moses and Jesus, added his own take on things and claimed to be the last and greatest prophet of the God of Abraham. His followers set about the conversion of pagan, Jew and Christian, by the sword if necessary. The peoples of Arabia were not politically united by this process and remained a collection of independent, nomadic and often feuding tribes, ripe for military conquest by a more co-ordinated and focused nation. Such a people were the Turks, themselves former nomads of Caucasian origin who had embraced Islam, although at least one Turkic tribe became Jews and moved north-west into what is now the Russian Federation.

By the end of the first millenium Palestine, which had survived as part of the Graeco-Christian Eastern Roman Empire after the fall of Rome to Alaric's Goths in 410 AD, had been overrun by the Seljuk Turks, about to become a battleground between predominantly Norman knights of the 'barbaric' Christian west and its Turkish overlords. Palestine was a polyglot territory of former citizens of the Greek and Roman Empires, Turks from the Caucasus and the many Hebrews who had not joined the Diaspora after the revolt against Rome. Some had converted to Islam under Turkish rule. Although there were desert nomads, predominantly Bedouin in the south, Palestine was never what might be described in purely ethnic terms as Arab.

Turkish imperial rule lasted in the former Roman province and Hebrew Kingdom of Palestine until 1917, a period of about eight centuries. The Turks were tolerant of other religions and nationalities, profited from taxing pilgrims and visitors to the Holy Land but otherwise neglected the territory which, by the later 19th Century, enjoyed the reputation of being the poorest regions in the imperium, a waste of malarial coastal swamps, semi-desert and degraded farmland barely fit for goats. When European Jews seeking to escape persecution and periodic murderous pogroms in Imperial Russia sought to return to Palestine, the Turks welcomed and encouraged them as a valuable addition to the flagging local economy. That is not to say that the province did not already have a Jewish character in the persons of the many descendants of the original Hebrews who had survived successive waves of invasion, the fall of the Temple, the Crusades to flourish under relatively benign Turkish rule.

During World War I the Allies, principally the British and the French, fanned the flames of nascent Arab nationalism in what is now Saudi Arabia and sought to unite the desert tribes against the Turks. Islamists in Palestine saw this as an opportunity to take control of that territory once the Turks, inevitably, were defeated and driven out, the rump of Turkey surviving in what was formerly the hub of the Greek speaking Eastern Roman Empire. The British, seeking to enlist the aid of Christians, Jews and Muslims, indeed any residents of Palestine not ethnically Turkish, secretly promised a 'free' Palestine to both Jew and Muslim, Christians throwing their lot in with whomever they chose. How this was to be achieved was never spelt out in detail.

In 1919 the fate of territories forfeited by Austria, Bulgaria, Germany and Turkey was decided by the League of Nations. Areas such as German New Guinea, Palestine and German South-West Africa, deemed too backward and undeveloped, as well as ethnically diverse, to achieve independence were placed in the care of one or another of the allied nations. Palestine became Britain's responsibility, and an embarrassment, as it had been promised to two groups of people divided by religion if only partly by their ethnic origin.

Most people accept that there is no such thing as a Jewish race. Semitic people originated in the Middle East and followers of all religions are found among them, predominantly Judaism and Islam with large Christian minorities, not surprising in view of the common Old Testament heritage of all three. Thanks to the Diaspora, there are also Asian Jews, African Jews, Turkic Jews and so-called European Jews who themselves fall into two distinct ethnic groups. Much research has gone into unravelling whether there is in fact a Jewish gene. That need not concern us here. Strictly speaking there are no significant biological differences between people and the concept of race is seen as a nonsense by most scientists. What truly differentiates people is culture and social and political development.

The problem, for the British, of what to do about Palestine was overtaken by events in the 1930s. Islamic separatists, thinking that they correctly read the portents, threw their lot in with the Nazis against the Jews not only of Palestine but of Europe and the world. That was their first mistake, one of many leading to the polarisation in Palestine that exists to this day. For strategic reasons, if no other, while engaged in a war to the death with Hitler the British elected to stand fast in Palestine.

During the war years Palestine became a beacon of hope for the surviving Jews of Europe and their supporters in all parts of what remained of a once civilized world. Even Russia, which had its share of Jewish blood, Russian, Ukrainian, Baltic and Polish on its hands, threw its weight in behind the long cherished dream of the restoration of Palestine and voted in favour of a Jewish national homeland in the United Nations.

Once Britain saw that the United Nations, apparently, had the matter in hand it wasted no time in withdrawing from Palestine. The UN had partitioned Palestine along ethnic lines with Jerusalem to be an open city. Israel occupied two islands of land joined by a narrow corridor with only limited access to the sea. It comprised those areas in which a majority of inhabitants professed to be Jewish. It was a land of few resources other than agriculture which had flourished thanks to the introduction by 19th Century immigrants of European and North American technology. In strictly economic terms, the lands allocated to Islamic and other non-Jewish peoples were even poorer, having developed little during the centuries of the Turkish imperium. They did, however, enjoy the advantage of powerful, well disposed neighbours like Egypt and greater access to the sea.

The peoples of Jewish Palestine accepted the decision of the United Nations. They had achieved independence in their homeland for the first time since the Roman invasion more than 1500-years earlier. Their borders were, militarily, indefensible and defended by a home guard armed with little more than obsolete rifles. There were no armoured brigades, machine gun regiments or artillery battalions. There was no air force, and the only naval protection had been provided by the now departed British. All this might have been of no consequence, but for the resolution of Israel's "Arab" neighbours to take control of the Eastern Mediterranean seaboard and destroy the fledgling Jewish state. Whatever their motives, it had nothing to do with the well being and future prosperity of those Palestinian residents who had chosen not to become citizens of Israel.

The forces of Egypt, Iraq and Jordan were trained and equipped by the British, those of Syria by the French, although not for the express purpose of demolishing Israel. In 1948 the poorly armed and equipped Israeli Defence Force received no aid from the Western allies who were preoccupied with the Cold War and the necessity of not offending the oil producing nations of the Middle East. As in the Spanish Civil War, military assistance arrived in the form of volunteers, many World War II veterans, from all parts of the world. Material, much of it captured from the defeated Germans in the closing months of the war, was largely sourced from Eastern Europe with - for reasons best known to themselves at the time - the tacit support of the Soviets. Much of it, including former Luftwaffe aircraft, came from Czechoslovakia.

There is a delicious irony in a ruined Germany and a Stalinist Russia atoning in some small way for the millions of Jews who died at their hands. Decades later it emerged that anti-Jewish sentiment was alive and well in Poland and Russia. Israel was seen as the humane solution to their Jewish problem and South-Eastern Europe had itself at various times in its history suffered at the hands of Islamic invaders. As more recent events in the Balkans have tragically demonstrated, the Europeans have long memories.

In 1948, a then puny Israel was invaded from all sides by Syrian, Egyptian, Jordanian and Iraqi forces. The result seemed a foregone conclusion and, in retrospect, it is surprising that at least some nations were not standing by to assist in the evacuation of Israel. What happened next is the stuff of legend, and also the genesis of the some of the current problems in the Middle East.

Initially a defensive war and a struggle for survival in the face of overwhelming odds, an Israeli defence force on the offensive took control of areas necessary for the future defence of Israel. This was regrettably, but necessarily, at the expense of the territory formerly allocated by the 1947 partition to its non-Jewish majority. Many, who had sided with the Egyptian and Arab invaders, fled. Their hosts and former allies rewarded them by settling them in camps and discouraging assimilation and immigration to other parts of the world on the grounds that they would one day return, the day when Israel was finally destroyed.

It was to be another 20-years before an attempt, again involving members of the former United Arab Republic, was made to destroy Israel. This time the invaders faced an army of native Israelis, conscripts trained, armed and motivated in a way that made them the envy of professional soldiers the world over. The invaders, notably the Egyptian forces, also largely conscripts but without the same resolve, were routed and Israel looked to further consolidate its natural defences at the expense of its neighbours. Such is the fortune of war.

The real losers in all this were, of course, the so-called Palestinians. Perhaps the majority of non-Jewish peoples in those lands awarded them by the United Nations in 1947 would have been content with their lot, become part of an inevitable economic union with Israel and even opted, in some cases, to move to Israel and take up citizenship, as many Christians, Muslims and assorted unbelievers have done.

Their neighbours, in a strange melange of religious fanaticism and territorial avarice, made this impossible in the short term. Egypt eventually reached an accord with Israel, but not before a third war in 1973. Iraq, Syria and Iran after 1979 have continued to underwrite assaults on Israeli civilians and to fuel conflict in the regime. Iraq began falling apart after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and was occupied by NATO forces, for better or worse, in 2003; not before Saddam Hussein succeeded in slaughtering thousands of Persians, marsh Arabs, Kurds and other ethnic minorities. Had the League of Nations been prescient in 1919 there probably would never have been an Iraq, an ethnic patchwork which found a shaky unity under the rule of oligarchs and dictators.

Rapprochement between Israel and the so-called Palestinian territories is within reach, but only when nations like Iran and Syria recognise Israel's right to exist as a multicultural nation state and all involved eschew violence against, particularly, civilians as a means to an end which can never be achieved: the elimination of Israel and the creation of a pan-Arab hegemony in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Ironically, a strong, secure and prosperous Israel is the best hope for an autonomous non-Jewish Palestinian state. Iran and Syria, however, have other fish to fry, and the region will remain at risk until such time as both nations embrace secular social democracy and renounce war, territorial ambitions and support for international terrorism.

Israel - Birth of a Nation

James Stuart came to my attention as a result of reading a post on another forum. What follows are, apparently, his words. I can find no fault with them. That being said, we can never have enough evidence in an historical debate and no interpretation is set in concrete.


Millions of people in the ME can be broadly described, in ethnic terms, as Semitic. This includes most Egyptians and many people with ancient roots in the former Roman Province of Palestine, irrespective of religion.

Prior to the establishment of the Hebrew Kingdom in what is now, roughly speaking, Israel and the Palestinian territories, the peoples of the region were disunited and pagan. Judaism is the world's first, and oldest, monotheistic religion. The Jewish tradition also encompasses the world's oldest, continuous written history, written in a language which is still used today.

Judaism is a religion and there is no such thing as a Jewish race. Today Jews of European, or Caucasian, ancestry outnumber Jews of Middle Eastern origin, in Israel and elsewhere in the world. There are also African Jews and Indian Jews.

The Hebrew Kingdom was the first nation state in the area which became known as Palestine. Over time it attracted a large Greek population since the Ancient Greeks were the world's first great colonizers and had colonies stretching from Cadiz all along the Mediterranean and into the Black Sea where to this day Georgians claim to be of Greek descent. When Greece fell to the Romans, the region became a Roman province and it was the Romans who named it Palestine.

The people of Palestine were predominantly Jewish, with a large contingent of Greek and Roman polytheists. In the time of Our Lord, significant numbers of Greeks, Romans and Jews became Christians although, at that time, Christianity was seen as a Jewish cult, of which there were several, and Jesus as a particularly gifted Rabbi and community leader. The Romans did away with him because they saw him as a revolutionary engaged in a struggle for independence.

Modern Christianity owes a great deal to the Ancient Greeks and the Romans who adapted it to suit their own purposes. Jesus remained a Jew until the day he died and is best remembered as such. Paul (Saul) played a similar role in the evolution of Christianity to that played by Mahomet in the evolution of Islam. Both men modified the Jewish tradition to suit their own political ambitions.

Palestine eventually became part of the Eastern Roman Empire. At that time the inhabitants were mostly Christian or Jew. During the 7th Century the region fell into the hands of the Seljuk Turks who were Islamists. Palestine became a Turkish province, with a mainly Jewish and partly Christian population, and remained so until 1917. During the period of Turkish rule some Arabs from other parts of the Turkish Empire settled in Palestine and some Jews and Christians converted to Islam so that they could join the army and/or the civil service.

Palestine was never, strictly speaking, an Arab territory. During the First World War the British whipped up Arab nationalism, persuading hitherto disunited, feuding tribes to revolt against their Turkish overlords. Among the carrots offered to the Arab nationalists was Palestine, a territory to which they had no legitimate claim although there was an Islamic, largely non-Arab, population.

The British also promised to restore the Jewish nation state in Palestine. For the British it was a cynical attempt to enlist all possible sources of aid and support in the struggle against the Germans and their Turkish allies. The League of Nations in 1919 rewarded the British for their ham-handedness by making them responsible for the mandated territory of Palestine, just as Australia inherited New Guinea from the Germans and the Union of South Africa what is now Namibia.

During the later part of the 19th Century many European Jews returned to Palestine to escape persecution in Eastern and Central Europe. They were welcomed by the Turks who were tolerant, if somewhat idle, rulers. Palestine at that time was the most backward province of the Turkish empire, a region of arid drylands, and malarial coastal marshes. What enterprise there was was mainly down to the Jewish citizens, soon to be joined by Jews from around the world.

The movement to return to Israel accelerated through the last decades of the 19th Century and attracted the interest of American Jews who invested capital and provided know-how gleaned from states like Arizona regarding the profitable development of arid lands. This movement continued into the 20th Century and accelerated with the revival of anti-semitism in Europe during the 1930s. At that time Western leaders began to give serious consideration to the idea of an alternative home for European Jews.

There are few who are not familiar with the events in Germany after 1933, the Second World War and the Holocaust which went on for the worst part of a decade from 1936 to 1945. During this time people of the Jewish faith in all parts of the world, in concert with the Allied governments, recognised the necessity for a Jewish homeland or sanctuary. This was never about race, or nationality, but simply about human rights and religious freedom. Historically, and in every other way, Palestine was the logical choice.

During the 20th Century, however, the so-called 'great powers' had become increasingly dependent on Middle Eastern oil. Palestine (Israel) has no resources to speak of. Its one of the world's great 'knowledge economies', like Switzerland. The problem was the Arab nationalists, who saw themselves as the rightful heirs of the Turks, not that they had done anything to deserve the fruits of Turkish civilization, and the desire of the British and the French to avoid antagonising the Arabs, thereby compromising their oil interests. Typically, as they did years later in the case of Rhodesia, the British dilly dallied and shilly shallied until the people of Palestine, mainly Jewish, took matters into their own hands.

The British faced a considerable challenge at the hands of the Jewish liberation movement in Palestine, some of whom resorted to terrorism. In the end they surrendered their mandate - it was all too hard for a nation all but bankrupt after its magnificent stand against the Nazis - to the newly constituted United Nations.

The United Nations, in its wisdom partitioned Palestine in 1948 on religious lines, between Jew and non-Jew (Christians and Islamists). All would have been well had the Arab nations, who had no rightful claim to any part of Palestine, accepted the decision of the UN. Israel was invaded by a coalition of Iraqi, Syrian, Egyptian and Jordanian troops, most of them trained and equipped by the British. The very recently formed Israeli Defence Force had almost nothing in the way of arms and equipment. At the last minute they were able to source captured German equipment, including aircraft, from Czechoslovakia. The Russians, for reasons of their own, were complicit in this and provided tacit support to the Israelis, as did Jews around the world.

The rest is history. Suffice it to say that the Arab nations, and nations like Iraq (Formerly Persia) which are not Arab, and have no connection with the area later than the empire of Alexander the Great, have sworn to obliterate Israel. This is Islamic fanaticism at its worst, and the only 'rational' objective is surely the Islamification of the planet from Pakistan to Morocco. The only Islamic nation to have any historical claim over Palestine is Turkey, a nation which has long since joined the 'civilized' world and is in line to become a member of the EU. The Turks, needless to say, have more in common with Southern Europeans than the people of the Middle East whom they ruled for the best part of 1200-years.

The present population of Israel have as much right, historically, to be there as any other people in any other part of the world. No country is without a history of migration, settlement and conquest. Most parts of the world have undergone so many changes that so-called racial distinctions are all but meaningless. There are, broadly speaking, certain ethnic types but we all have something of each other in us.

The difficulty faced by the non-Jewish Palestinians, currently struggling for independence, is that their territories are not economically viable. Their future lies in an economic union with Israel. At the moment they are mere pawns in a a game played by fanatics seeking the total obliteration of Israel. That is not going to happen.

http://forum.mg.co.za/showflat.php?Number=85504

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Love all, trust a few. Do wrong to none.
- William Shakespeare

http://openforum.mweb.co.za/showflat.php?Number=1802419545

That which is not recorded is soon lost ...

That which is not recorded is soon lost, in many cases as if it had never been. That which is not recorded, is not. Memory is fallible. We choose to share only a small part of that which is in our hearts and minds with others, so our memories - those which survive - die with us.

The ancients, many believe, had prodigious memories. Without them they would not have evolved complex languages, mathematical systems and created the first civilizations, not to mention religious lore and creation stories. While writing may have developed concurrently with the first civilizations, its art was the preserve of a privileged few such as, in Egypt, the priesthood.

Our first and most important skill as homo sapiens, sapientior was the ability to listen to others, to process that information rationally and imaginatively, to learn from others in this way, to retain what was learned and, in turn, to share it with others.

To me the importance of writing, and I am not unique in this perception, is that in addition to being an aide memoire and a means of communicating over distance by a more secure method than word of mouth, it is that of the world's first complex data storage medium. That there were other means of leaving messages for posterity, such as the earliest forms of art, I have no doubt. Writing, however, enabled a mass of detail to be recorded permanently in a relatively small space using a medium which could be preserved, with care, for many years. In this way human beings were able to deal with the growth of knowledge beyond the point at which, as it were, the known world could be encompassed by the mind of a single individual.

The historical record appears to show that cultures which were both without writing, and geographically isolated, changed little over the centuries. In some cases such peoples survived into the 20th Century living much as they might have in paeleolithic, or Stone Age, times. Literacy is not, however, a prerequisite for cultural evolution since peoples sharing the same landmass have shown the propensity to learn rapidly from one another. It is a moot point whether writing developed in Mesopotamia and spread east and west from there, or whether the ancient Chinese or one of the Himalayan cultures pipped the Sumerians at the post.

As all who have sat through school history lessons will know, writing remained an art practised only by the privileged until the invention of the printing press made literature more accessible. It is likely that more people learned to read than to write as well, although modern education tends to develop these skills in tandem.

What followed was a very gradual 'trickling down' of literacy with compulsory education for working folk not introduced in most European nations until the 1880s. In the UK there was considerable resistance to compulsory schooling from the working class, engendering attitudes and values which, regrettably, remain with us now and contribute to the relatively poor performance of anglophone nations compared to the Asian 'economic tigers' where education is revered and teachers receive the respect they deserve.

Nothing new in any of this, of course, but it helps to remind ourselves that the world we take for granted is relatively young. Mass education as a public good grew out of the industrial revolution. Land owners and capitalists needed secretaries, clerks and bookkkeepers in unprecedented numbers. Traditional grammar and elite public schools could not meet the demand for literate, well-informed individuals. Universities were inspired to move beyond the classical curriculum to meet the needs of a burgeoning civil service. A significant number of working class people began to see education as a public good in its own right, and as a means of achieving social and economic emancipation. As factory machinery, and machinery generally, became more common and more complex, its operation could no longer be trusted to illiterate former labourers.

The information economy then begins visibly to emerge about a century after the start of the Industrial Revolution in England. It was enhanced by the steam engine, the railway and the steam ship, accelerated by the electric telegraph in the 1840s and joined by the telephone, the typewriter and compulsory education in the 1880s. In all this we should not forget the camera which came into its own during the American Civil War in the 1860s.

Although there were tremendous improvements in all the aforementioned technologies, with the addition of the electric light and the internal combustion engine towards the end of the 19th Century, this was essentially the same world into which my grandparents were born around the turn of the century, our century.

By the time I was growing up in the 1950s many nations had yet to begin television broadcasting and most homes, my own included, had but one radio receiver, an elegant affair in a wooden cabinet in a corner of the living room. Other than the radio, home entertainment might include a mechanical gramophone with a stack of noisy, fragile 78s and/or a piano for those who were musically inclined. Most entertainment was still enjoyed outside the home, the cinema and - later - the drive-in cinema being major attractions. Our information was found in libraries, few having the budget for vast personal collections, magazines, and the daily newspaper which was delivered to many homes. The habit of listening to radio news broadcasts developed during the Second World War, but many countries - my native South Africa included - had only one state broadcasting corporation modelled on the BBC. We did, however, enjoy the magic of short wave radio, the BBC World Service and the Voice of America. Many homes sported some sort of external aerial in the form of a long wire with egg shaped ceramic insulators at each end, a beacon to fellow short wave listeners.

The status quo of the 1950s remained in place well into the 1970s, although there were significant improvements in technology as the transistor, invented in 1948, went into mass production about 1960. Radio receivers became smaller and more powerful and totally portable. The cassette tape recorder appeared around 1965 and record players were replaced by affordable home 'stereo' systems. These changes, however, can be seen as largely incremental and, for most people, computers were mysterious machines glimpsed whirring in the background of James Bond movies.

The real watershed in communication and information technology has to be the rapid evolution of the personal, or home, computer after 1980. Let it be said, however, that these early machines - however fascinating - were time consuming and frustrating beasts with very limited abilities. For many they were little more than toys although the word processor and the electronic spreadsheet were starting to transform our offices. The value of those early machines was to prepare us for the real magic, the ubiquitous internet, the miracle of instantaneous worldwide communication, seemingly limitless sources of information, and the compulsion of social networking with people one has never met and is never likely to encounter outside the ‘virtual’ world.

But how has this changed the way we do things, and have all of these changes been for the better? Are we smarter and better informed, or are we just extensions of the machines on which we have become increasingly reliant? Are there things at which humans are intrinsically better, and better equipped, than any machine? These are open questions which remain open ... just for now.