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The Forest Wars reveals how vested interests make life difficult for the scientists and activists who attempt to defend the environment, a war waged through deforestation on one hand and deception and obfuscation on the other. Linenmayer asks: if we continue to allow vested interests to drive deforestation, how long before the forests — and the future they promise — are lost beyond repair?
The illusion of warfare as a contest between professionals should have disappeared forever as the twentieth century brought numerous examples of barbarous armies butchering civilians. And unfortunately, the pattern now is that some 90 per cent war casualties are civilians.
This rush to the missile age is part of a broader escalation of the arms race in previously peaceful regions, distancing countries like Australia and New Zealand from their roles as honest brokers in a nuclear-free Pacific.
In recent years, Australian policies in relation to asylum seekers and refugees have been unnecessarily mean, cruel and disorganised. The election of the Albanese government provides the opportunity for a reset, putting behind us the past mistakes of both Coalition and Labor Governments in the last 20 years.
Author Gideon Goosen estimates the percentage of those involved in reform groups in Australia is 5 per cent or less. Given the passivity of the laity, his view is that reform proponents should seek to engage the 40 to 45 per cent who might change their thinking. What forums or media, with sufficient audience reach and influence, facilitate respectful discussion of change in the Catholic Church?
Some days I feel like a people trafficker, though I'm not making a zack out of the trafficking. Other days I see myself as a latter-day Oskar Schindler. But mostly I just feel trapped along with the 1000 refugees and asylum seekers I'm doing my not-very-successful best to get the hell out of an open prison called Bangkok.