Where the Heart Is - The Home Hospice

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Helen Garner

When they told our sister Marie that her untreatable lung cancer would kill her in less than a year, she said she wanted to die at home. She was a difficult, bossy person, but we rolled up our sleeves and resolved, with her friends and children, to wing it.

One Sunday, seven months later, a widow who had home-nursed her husband emerged from Marie’s bedroom at the end of her shift and saw us drawing up a roster for the coming fortnight. She said gently, “You won’t need that, girls. She’s only got a few days left.” A palliative nurse from Caritas Christi Hospice came that Wednesday to check Marie’s morphine. At the door she said, in a tone so simple it was almost casual, “She’ll die tonight.” She did, and another woman from the hospice came and laid her out.

One hundred and thirty people like these – seasoned, unflappable, all but eight of them women – gathered, one Friday last autumn, in a pale, clean, suitably tomb-like underground room in Sydney’s CBD, for a conference called Live, Talk, Die.

Organised by a pragmatic community outfit called Home Hospice, and moderated with a delicate touch by journalist Caroline Baum, the day was advertised as “conversations about where and how we die”. Formal addresses and panels kicked discussion along but what I found most moving about the event was the camaraderie that flowed between people who’ve risked this intimate, hard, but deeply rewarding endeavour: helping a loved person through to the very end of life.

Eight in ten Australians, says Home Hospice, express the wish to die at home, but only two in ten end up being able to. A chasm lies between the health professionals and the timid longings of ordinary people. So Home Hospice trains volunteer mentors to support carers in their homes, and to put them in touch with resources that are already available in the community but that many people – even some general practitioners – don’t know exist.

Gill Batt, director of support services at the Cancer Council NSW, told the conference about a woman who was informed that her GP would be “the conductor” of her dying husband’s home care. “I found the conductor,” said the wife, “but where was the bloody orchestra?”

It is hard at first to speak plainly of death. Even in the underground room, where everyone was familiar with the bare facts of dying, a delicacy inhibited us. Caroline Baum risked the discreet expression “bodily fluids”. When someone blurted out the word “shit”, a laugh of relief ran round the room.

Another troublesome word is ‘palliative’. The thing dying people fear most is pain. The sooner they accept palliative care, the less they are likely to suffer, but the term strikes fear into many hearts, and there exists a great public ignorance about it. Sharon Wiley, from the Sacred Heart Hospice at St Vincent’s in Sydney, remarked that euthanasia has hijacked contemporary debate about the end of life. One doctor asked his new patient, a man whose wife had recently died, “What do they actually do, in palliative?” “Words,” the man replied, “could not explain it.”

The ethicist Simon Longstaff pointed out that in our desire for control and mastery, and in the noble ambition to prolong life, we have unfortunately invented the technology to make people die slowly. Gill Batt asked a black riddle: “Do you know why they nail coffin lids down? To stop the oncologists.”

Dr Jonathan Gillis, a physician with long experience in paediatric intensive and palliative care, said that, while 50% of children with cancer die at home, other parents feel safer in a paediatric ward, and find solidarity there with fellow parents enduring unbearable suffering and grief.

“Yet in the whole of palliative literature about children,” said Gillis, “there is not one mention of parental love.” He quoted a haiku written after the death of his young child by the Japanese poet Issa, whose Buddhist philosophy of non-attachment did not save him from his anguish: “The dewdrop world / Is the dewdrop world / And yet—”. Poetry, as always, stilled the room.

There was a generosity here, an eagerness to listen. Nobody was running a line. People had been to some hard places, and returned wearier and wiser. I asked a woman at my table where she was from. She laughed and said, “I’m from the trenches.”

Research shows that you have more chance of dying at home if you’re female, married and have health insurance. Men carers are better at asking for help, and more likely to get it. No one should have to take on full-time home care alone but women make a stick for their own backs: they believe they should be able to manage without help, and feel guilty when they find they can’t.

In the day’s final panel, which I had been invited to join, the talk turned to anger and hurt and forgiveness. Can you care intimately for a dying member of your family, if what’s wrong between you is too impacted to resolve? This was a fraught matter. Several people shed tears. I recalled our surprise that with my hypercritical sister we had been able to step around this obstacle; that a very simple, practical love can be born at the approach of death.

“What does ‘dying with dignity’ mean?” asked the moderator.

“To me,” said Kathy Lee, Home Hospice mentor, who had nursed her father and her husband in quick succession, “it means dying quietly at home, with my family around me.”

Joel Nathan, a cheerful-looking survivor of leukaemia and heart disease, who founded a service called Life Goes On, made a blunt reply: “It depends on what you think you’re worth.”

A brief silence fell. It was too close to the end of the day for this mysteriously jolting remark to be analysed, but it had pulled us up short, before we could drift into soft-lit fantasy.

I went out on a limb and said that my idea of a dignified death would be to cop a bullet for my grandchildren. We laughed, but rather wildly. People had had enough. At four o’clock we surged up the stairs into the remains of a tenderly sparkling autumn afternoon, the kind that makes you want to live forever.

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The Monthly: Sex Before Soccer #SBS

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Margaret Simons

There is possibility and burden in a name. When, more than 30 years ago, the Fraser government created the Special Broadcasting Service as the first multicultural public broadcaster in the world, few anticipated that in 2011 the question might be whether it was special enough.

“This mean-spirited, greedy little television station,” fulminated the Australian’s media critic Errol Simper recently. “A tasteless, asinine, lunatic little fringe station that would struggle to justify its existence were that existence to be seriously called into governmental question,” Simper continued, before admitting the “paradox” that it nevertheless produced some of the best television available in Australia. The support group Save Our SBS speaks in similar terms, which may be why SBS management wonders whether, with friends like that, it needs enemies. As always seems to be the case with public broadcasters given the passions they arouse, those who love SBS most are also its most virulent critics.

Not many countries have public broadcasters funded through the taxpayer’s purse. Hardly any have two. In 1978 the government saw SBS as a key piece of public infrastructure to support one of Australia’s greatest social experiments: the transformation from a white European nation to a multicultural, partly Asian, society. SBS arose from then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser’s belief that, with leadership, education and encouragement, Australians could overcome the fear of the stranger, and be the better for it.

Then as now, the charter of the existing public broadcaster, ABC, was broad enough to accommodate any bandwagon parked within it. SBS was to be different – special. Its charter stated that its “principal function” was to provide radio and television in multiple languages to “inform, educate and entertain all Australians and, in doing so, reflect Australia’s multicultural society”. The words “all Australians” were important. It was never intended that SBS would be ‘ethnic TV’. Rather, it was conceived as creating a space in which new and old Australians could meet and learn about each other, as well as helping new arrivals to be incorporated into the Commonwealth.

The charter, however, moving on from its principal purpose, expanded outwards into ever broader phrases, finishing by enjoining the broadcaster to “contribute to the overall diversity of Australian television and radio services”, and “reflect the changing nature of Australian society, by presenting many points of view and using innovative forms of expression”.

Some of those who care most deeply about SBS argue that those phrases have become the parking lot, not so much for bandwagons as for juggernauts of commercial convenience. Since the early 1990s when SBS became a unique hybrid public broadcaster – taking advertising dollars as well as government money – multilingual material has disappeared from prime time on SBS1 to be replaced by mainstream fare, such as Top Gear, which has since gone to Channel Nine, and Mythbusters. Even Malcolm Fraser has said that SBS has lost its way, that it is now too mainstream.

What, then, is special about SBS, now its audience is predominantly white middle-class Australia? As one Channel Ten executive charmingly put it to me: “All the ethnics are watching Masterchef”. What is its continued claim on the taxpayer purse when anyone who wishes can download foreign language films from the internet, as well as news in any language? “Sex Before Soccer” is what the wags say the initials stand for. Is it only about art-house movies and The World Game? By seeking commercial income, has it abandoned its raison d’être?

Our second public broadcaster is at a turning point in its history. It has never been so neglected by government or so strapped for cash. Eighteen months ago it got a new chairman, Joseph Skrzynski, replacing the outgoing Carla Zampatti. Skrzynski was seen as signalling a change of direction – away from a high-end indie approach and back towards SBS’s core purpose, although Skrzynski himself describes this view of his agenda as an oversimplification and misunderstanding.

Just a few weeks ago, it was announced that the retiring managing director, the controversial Shaun Brown – who dramatically ramped up advertising on SBS – was to be replaced this month by Michael Ebeid. Ebeid’s appointment was greeted with a mix of puzzlement and sniping, including from those passed over for the job.

Most recently the director of corporate strategy and marketing for ABC, Ebeid has been a backroom boy, a name many in SBS and in Canberra had never heard before. Previously he has held senior management positions with IBM, Optus and Westpac, and was on the board of the subscription television industry association, ASTRA. So what does this appointment signal for SBS?

Ebeid faces an immediate and urgent challenge. SBS, like ABC, is funded on a triennial basis, with the next allocation to be announced in the 2012 budget. That means the next six months will be crucial in persuading the government of SBS’s claim to more funding. Can Ebeid, from a standing start, convince Canberra that SBS is special enough to deserve more? If not, the future relevance and power of this child of ’70s reformism could be at risk.

SBS began as a couple of experimental radio stations in Sydney and Melbourne, broadcasting in eight languages. By 1980 it was broadcasting in 47 languages and about to be joined by a television channel, 0/28. Now, like all broadcasters, it is fragmenting, spawning new channels and media presences. There are two television channels – the second created without any extra funding having been given for programming. There is a radio network in 68 languages, streaming and podcasting online, and two dedicated digital music channels – SBS Chill and SBS PopAsia. SBS Online records more than 1 million unique browsers per month, and there are two commercial subscription television channels, STVDIO and the World Movies Channel, which specialise in arts programming.

There is huge potential in investing further in SBS, but equally enormous risk. The advent of digital broadcasting and the internet mean SBS could, better than ever before, cater for its multicultural audience. Yet Shaun Brown is on the record as saying that funds are insufficient to allow the station to serve multilingual Australia as it should.

In recent weeks, headlines have suggested the station is in financial crisis. Brown rejects this. He says: “We are always tight. We are always balanced a little on the edge.” But others, speaking in confidence, describe the position as dire.

The same media innovations that open up opportunities for a multi-niche broadcaster also threaten its sustainability. It is more expensive to buy content, because so many multichannel broadcasters are competing to fill their airtime. At the same time, there is a proliferation of advertising real estate, meaning it is harder than ever to charge a premium price.

Chairman Joe Skrzynski says he has been misunderstood by those who see him as advocating a ‘back to basics’ approach; it is more complex than that. The new channels and the many digital media platforms “give us the opportunity to respond to our charter in a more nuanced way than previously”. Yes, most content – and all of that on prime time – on SBS1 is in English, but on the new SBS2, 76% is in other languages, including on prime time. SBS can be many things, says Skrzynski, but it is not a mass broadcaster. It aims to serve niches. He says that, if Australian broadcasting were a newsagent, ABC and Channels Seven, Nine and Ten would be the banner posters out the front; SBS would be the collection of specialist magazines down the back. What niches does it aim to serve, then, other than ethnic groups? Skrzynski nominates foreign films and documentaries. Could not that content be provided on any other organisation’s multichannels? Not, he says, with the “particular twist” of SBS’s charter.

It was in 2006 that Shaun Brown announced advertisements, which had until that time been confined to between programs, would be introduced into the middle of the shows. He insisted the move was necessary to improve news coverage and local drama.

The then Opposition Minister for Communications Stephen Conroy was scathing of the move, promising to redress it if in government. Now in government, Conroy has been silent on the issue. Action on the matter has been left to the Greens, who have proposed a bill to force ads back into the breaks between programs.

However, most commentators see the results of the 2009 funding round, the first of Labor’s terms in office, as reflecting government displeasure. ABC had suffered through the Howard years but was big enough to hunker down, re-allocate funds and battle through. In 2009 it did well, while SBS was left begging, the poor relation and with less room to move cash around internally than Aunty ABC. Brown says he would like to be remembered as the man who increased the broadcaster’s commitment to local drama and documentary but says that instead, “I suspect I will forever be remembered as the man who introduced advertising in the middle of programs. I think it has been successful but I am well aware that my critics would say, ‘Well, we don’t want you to be commercially successful.’”

Brown says the two forms of success are different sides of the same coin. When he arrived at the organisation in 2001, as head of television, he reviewed the schedule. What stuck out was the lack of Australian content. Before in-program advertising, he says, it had been possible to do it in short bursts and pockets. Only increasing commercial income made possible the sustained effort. Thanks to commercial income, SBS has been able to commission not one but three series of the award-winning drama East West 101. It has also screened Australian history documentaries such as Immigrant Nation.

Brown told a recent Senate estimates hearing that the five minute advertising break between programs had been rejected by advertisers. Too many people simply switched off or made a cup of tea. If SBS dropped in-program ad breaks, advertising revenue would be cut by two-thirds, leading to a $36 million shortfall. That means, he says, very little Australian drama, and no groundbreaking Australian documentaries. Be that as it may, Brown’s critics say his main failure has been in arguably the most important area of all – getting money from the government.

In the lead-up to 2009, ABC’s managing director Mark Scott adopted a canny strategic game of pitching ABC’s interests in terms of broader public policy. ABC3, the new children’s channel, for example, was sold as a way of driving uptake of digital broadcasting technology so the government could meet its target for switching off analog television.

Brown, on the other hand, pitched SBS’s claim on the basis of entitlement. Shortly before the crucial budget, he made a speech rebutting the argument that SBS should not ask for more government funding because its advertising income was going up: “Imagine that SBS is a widow with small children in a Dickensian workhouse. She barely feeds her family on a bowl of gruel a day and is grateful for it.

“One day she sells a posy of dried flowers for a penny and buys her children half a loaf of yesterday’s bread. That afternoon the overseer inspects the workhouse and sees the children with the stale breadcrumbs around their mouths. He peers over his round belly and says, ‘I don’t imagine you’ll be needing your gruel this evening!’

“Anyway, at the risk of emulating Oliver Twist, we are asking for more, because we can barely survive on what little subsistence we get and because there are vital new challenges to be met.”

It didn’t work. To put it mildly, portraying government as the bloated and heartless overseer in Oliver Twist didn’t help Brown cut mustard with Canberra, and his demand on the basis of need and entitlement cut no ice either. Brown admits today that this was his lowest point in the job; it was “a disappointment” and “particularly hard to stomach when the ABC did better”. He claims his intelligence was that SBS was well lined up until the global financial crisis swept budget projections off the map. Others say he had lost the race long before that.

Now, less than a year before the next three years of funding is decided, projected revenue from advertising is falling. In the corporate plan, income from advertising and sponsorship was projected to be $86.6 million in 2010–11. In answers to questions in Senate estimates last November, Brown admitted that this had now fallen to $84.6 million, with similar cuts in projections for future years. Industry gossip suggests the situation has worsened since that admission. Now SBS must turn with even greater urgency to government at a time when, commentators already claim, we will be seeing a horror budget. So why was Michael Ebeid chosen to replace Shaun Brown?

Skrzynski makes it clear that part of the reason was Ebeid’s association with the successful funding submission strategy of the ABC. Ebeid, he admits, is not primarily a content man, but SBS already employs many talented producers and enablers of content. What it wants from Ebeid is leadership and strategic thinking, particularly in relations with government. “We need to make sure that it is clear and visible to government how SBS’s interests and the national interest align,” he says.

Today, says Skrzynski, there are twice as many people in Australia born overseas and from non-English-speaking backgrounds as there were when SBS was founded. The job of integrating them has become more complicated as the mix has moved from Europe to Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Meanwhile, Australia is in stiff competition with other OECD countries for skilled migrants. This competition will become all the more desperate as the population ages. There is also competition for international students, who have become vital to our higher education sector. SBS, he argues, is part of the infrastructure that makes Australia attractive, and that can keep us educated, tolerant, and in conversation with and across our diverse community.

The word around the traps is that, while Ebeid is “capable” and “pleasant”, he falls a long way short of ABC boss Mark Scott’s strategic nous and communication skills. “Success has many fathers,” one of those involved said, when told that Ebeid owed his new position partly to the perceived success of ABC’s strategy. But there are also plenty who speak well of him. Foxtel boss Kim Williams describes him as “an effective, thoughtful and strong individual”, while acknowledging that SBS’s hybrid model is a “centrepiece of difficulty”. And there are those who point out that Scott, too, was described as bland by many people before he came into his own at ABC.

Whatever Ebeid’s strategic qualifications, he has few runs on the board as a communicator. After ten days of trying, SBS was unable to organise an interview with him for this article. Ebeid, to be sure, was overseas on a break prior to taking up the job but he could not be made available by telephone or Skype. It doesn’t bode well for his role as the organisation’s chief communicator.

This year the federal government, not before time, initiated a review of broadcasting regulation in the convergent media age. It is intended to be a root-and-branch review of the relationship between government and media at a time of almost universal change. Within the industry, the convergence review is recognised as a defining event, with the report likely to determine the landscape for media for the first half of this century. It would be strange if the old chestnut of a merger between ABC and SBS didn’t get another run.

ABC gives the impression of liking the idea of having SBS as part of its empire, while not wanting the extra work unless there is more money to come with it. Meanwhile, Aunty’s claim to be able to reflect multicultural Australia is weakened by the lack of diversity in the faces on prime time. Anyone watching ABC’s main news and current events shows could be forgiven for thinking that Australia was still a nation composed of blond or red-headed, blue-eyed Anglo Celts. Skrzynski says that SBS needs to be a separate organisation because of the “unique twist to our charter” – the injunction to bring Australia into conversation with its multicultural self.

All those involved expect the commercial broadcasters to make the case that, given they are faced with competition from internet content providers, falling advertising revenue and increasing costs, they should be released from Australian content quotas. If content quotas are dropped or relaxed, then government intervention will have to switch to the subsidy model, says Skrzynski – meaning more money for the public broadcasters that commission local drama and documentaries.

Within this framework, he says, SBS has a particular place. He mentions a documentary now in production, which brings the conventions of reality television to the asylum seeker issue. In Go Back To Where You Came From, six Australians with deeply differing views towards immigration are plunged into the life of the refugee, undertaking a journey as illegal aliens in Australia. They are deported to East Timor in a fishing boat, and transported to Africa, where they spend a week in the world’s largest refugee camp, along with 400,000 desperate people, theoretically in the ‘queue’ for a better life. This, says Skrzynski, is the essence of the character of SBS – its role as a “catalyst for discussion about what matters in a diverse society today”. That requires, he says, a separate organisation, a separate charter, a particular focus and, yes, more government funding.

In 12 months’ time, when the 2012 budget is handed down, we’ll find out whether the federal government agrees, or whether, through neglect, it decides that conversation either won’t happen, or will happen largely elsewhere.

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State of Origin 2: Fast and furious ... Stuart's bold gamble puts Blues on the brink

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Phil Gould

The Blues were brilliant. They were tough, resilient, creative, explosive, and above all, relentless. The NSW boys finally broke free of the shackles of self-doubt. They played with a confidence and maturity not seen for many years.

The most pleasing part of the whole game was the way they went about the latter stages of the contest when they held a narrow four-point lead. Gone was the nervousness and negativity of previous games when they held a lead going into the back end of the contest. Gone was the submissiveness of waiting for the famous Maroons comeback. Gone was the attitude of trying to protect the narrow margin and hoping for the siren to sound early.

This time the Blues looked hungry and full of self-belief. This time they took the fight to their opponents and played at full tilt for the entire 80minutes. The professional and confident way they dominated the final 10 minutes and the fact they scored the final try of the match after a period of sustained pressure was inspiring. It was like they did a Queensland on Queensland.
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My only disappointment of the evening was the fact this series should be over. I stated after game one that NSW were the better team in that match and should have won.

Last night's victors should have had their names engraved on the Origin trophy. However, it does set up a mouth-watering decider for game three, and the Blues are in this one right up to their eyebrows.

The key feature of last night's performance was the success of the team selections. Many saw it as a gamble to choose only two front-row forwards and surround them with seven tough, skilful, quick, nimble-footed, workaholic back-row forwards.

The plan worked to perfection.

Paul Gallen, playing his first game as a front-rower, was simply outstanding, while Ben Creagh, Greg Bird, Beau Scott, Luke Lewis and Anthony Watmough provided tremendous support.

In attack, the extra leg speed and footwork of these athletic types kept the bigger Queensland forwards chasing all night. In defence, the extra mobility of these boys had Queensland's long side attacking raids covered at every turn. Their ability to scramble and regroup after Queensland made line breaks managed to close down a number of potentially dangerous situations.

Their ability to keep getting off their defensive line on the fifth tackle to pressure the Maroons' kickers, Jonathan Thurston and Darren Lockyer, was a huge feature of the play.

The NSW halves, Mitchell Pearce and Jamie Soward, came of age last night. They were targeted by the big Queensland forwards but bravely stood their ground to make the important tackles. In attack they provided plenty of ball movement to ignite the quicker men out wide.

Pearce had a hand in two tries. Soward set up the clincher in the final minutes to put an exclamation mark on the win. These boys will derive a lot of benefit from this hard-fought success.

Queensland tried hard, as they always do. They didn't appear comfortable with the extra pressure being applied by the faster moving Blues' defensive line. They never really had any rhythm in their play.

Their normally composed execution in tight finishes escaped them last night. They will learn from the error of their ways, and provide even sterner opposition in the decider. They are a champion team with plenty of pride. They will not surrender their title cheaply. Nevertheless, they now know they are in a real fight.

Mark down the date July 6 in your diaries. Do not miss – I repeat – DO NOT MISS, Origin III 2011. This could well be one of the greatest Origin matches of all time.

NSW players have rattled the sabres and staked their claim as worthy contenders for this year's Origin trophy.

If the Blues were to win game three in Queensland, against this champion Maroons team, on the night Darren Lockyer, one of the greatest Queenslanders of all time, plays his final match in these famous colours, it could well go down as one of the greatest coaching and team performances in Origin history.

Click for more photos

State of Origin - game two from ANZ Stadium, Sydney

Jarryd Hayne feels the pinch. Photo: Quentin Jones

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Paul Marsh: There's been an artificial push towards youth in Australian Cricket

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Australian cricket is undergoing a major review of its structure, and Paul Marsh, the players' association chief, talks about its outcomes, the academy's identity crisis, his hopes for the new Big Bash League, and more

Interview by Daniel Brettig

Strong opinions run in Paul Marsh's family. He is the son of former Australia keeper Rod Marsh, and his brother Dan made his name as a fighting first-class cricketer for Tasmania. Paul, meanwhile, ventured into the corporate and sporting worlds, and has been the chief executive of the Australian Cricketers' Association since 2005. In that time he has worked closely with Cricket Australia, most recently thrashing out the compromise deal over the MoU for player payments. He has trenchant views about Australia's decline in world cricket, and spoke to ESPNcricinfo at the end of MoU negotiations.

Your relationship with Cricket Australia is a functional one, despite frequent differences of opinion. How important is it to keep that state of conciliation?

At our core we have both got the best interests of the game at heart. I think CA would say that about us, and we'd certainly say it about them. There are times, however, where we have differing views on how to reach that objective, and we do have our moments where we don't agree. But the one thing we have always been able to do with CA is find a way forward. We have never had a situation where players have gone out on strike. I think that's a real credit to the relationship between the two organisations. 

What, to you, are the major problems that have caused Australian cricket's slide from the top of the global game?

I think there are two major issues. I think we lost 10 players from the Australian first-class system to the ICL, and those players were, in most cases, our senior state cricketers. So we lost the likes of Jimmy Maher, Michael Kasprowicz, Jason Gillespie, Ian Harvey, Stuart Law, Michael Bevan - those types of players, who were year in and year out making nearly 1000 runs and taking close to 50 wickets. They were the core of experienced players in our state system who improved the standard of state cricket. You take a number of senior players out of the state system and the standard has to drop.

Those guys were the ones who were maintaining that standard, and therefore the experience that guys like Steve Smith or Phil Hughes are getting is not what it used to be. Those guys have missed out on the development opportunities that the generation before them got. 

There have been three periods in Australian cricket in my lifetime where we have had below-par results: the first one being World Series Cricket and the Australian Test team around that particular time, the second being the rebel tours to South Africa, on the back of the retirements of Dennis Lillee, Rod Marsh and Greg Chappell. And in recent times the players going to the ICL. 

There are very similar circumstances in each case, where a group of experienced players were taken out of our state system, and you could only choose your state teams and your Australian team from what was left. 

The second issue is this push towards youth in our system - I think an artificial push towards youth. I honestly believe you need to have a mix of youth and experience, and we have gone too far towards youth. The Futures League, with the restriction of only having three players over the age of 23, has made that a very weak competition, and the players would say almost universally that the gap between grade and first-class cricket has never been larger than what it is now. So the Futures League or second XI competition, which sits in between those competitions, is more important than ever, yet it's being made artificially weak by these age restrictions. 

One of the outcomes of the playing conditions committee meeting was that they will lift that restriction to allow six players over the age of 23, which is a step in the right direction. From our perspective I'd prefer to see no age restrictions in there. 

You only need to have a few good young players coming through your system, but you want to make sure that they are getting the best possible development opportunities. If we are filtering one new player into the Australian team every year, you'll have a very strong team. You want them to have the best possible development through that pathway. I think we have gone away from what has made us strong through our grade system and through our first-class system. 

I think we've got a responsibility to make sure each one of the pathway competitions is as strong a standard as it can be so that these players are getting the best possible development they can get. I don't think that's happening as well as it used to. 

Do you feel the ambivalence towards the group that disappeared to the ICL, and then the introduction of measures like the Futures League by Cricket Australia, result from the comfortable feeling that comes from being the world's best for a long time?

What you're asking me is: did Australian cricket become somewhat complacent, and I think the answer to that is yes. I know my dad, having run the cricket academy for many years, when he left, one of the things he said to CA was that he had real concerns about the quality of batsmen we had coming through, and his view was that that wasn't taken on board seriously. I think what we have seen in recent times would back up the concerns he had at that time. I think there was a view certainly that "we're going to keep on keeping on, we have the best pathway system in the world" etc. 

But it's international sport, it's competitive. There are international boards, particularly the Indians, who have far more money than we have got, and it was only a matter of time before they started to get their act together. 

I think CA have now recognised that and this review they are going through is very comprehensive. They have got good people involved in it, and I know they are trying very hard to get to the bottom of what the issues are. I'd expect there are going to be some very strong recommendations that come out of that review. 

Your father's close involvement with the academy was at a time when it was used as a finishing school for talented juniors who were on the cusp of first-class cricket. Was that a better model than the present one geared towards preparing state players for the international arena?

There are some really good people at the Centre of Excellence (CoE), but I would say it's got an identity crisis. Ask 10 people what it is supposed to be doing and you're quite likely to get half a dozen different responses. And that makes it very difficult for the people who are running it. My view is that it needs to go back to what it was initially set up to be, which was to get the best players from the Under-17s and Under-19s and prepare them for first-class cricket. 

One of the issues we have got here now is that when it first started up, we didn't have the contract system we have now got in place. That complicates things because the state associations are contracting players on an annual basis, and they are questioning why they should send those players to the CoE, when, what they would say - it may vary a little from state to state - is that the CoE is basically replicating what they can and are doing in their home states. 

I think by going back to these younger players who aren't contracted, you kill two birds with one stone. You're then getting kids of the right age into the programme, and you don't have the complications of the contract system, where you've got this ongoing arm-wrestle between CA and the state associations over the CoE. 

The CoE really needs to be offering a programme that is a level above what the states are offering. I think that needs to become part of their focus. Then the states will want to send their players there because they will be getting a better development experience than possibly what they are getting at the moment. 

Concern about the governance structure of Cricket Australia has manifested itself in a review of that governance. What do you think needs to change there?

We have major concerns - and I wouldn't just limit this to Cricket Australia, but with Australian cricket's governance model. I think this governance review needs to look at not only CA but the state associations as well. Our very strong view is that cricket needs an independent governance model at both CA and state levels. This is just about making sure that those organisations running the game are making decisions in the best interests of the game, and not just along state lines or at a state level along club lines. You want to get the best people into a structure that's making decisions with the best interests of the game at its core. 

If we can get to that point, I think first, you're going to see Australian cricket move ahead very quickly, and second, all the key stakeholders are going to be happy. I don't think we're getting that at the moment. There's a fundamental flaw, putting aside the composition of the boards of the states, in that to be on the CA board you have to be on a state board. Straight away there's a conflict of interest there that is unavoidable. The people who are on these boards are all decent people, but when you have to make a decision on the state association board and the CA board, you've just got this automatic conflict of interest. 

Secondly, because of that structure, where you have to, in many cases, come through the club structure to get on the state board to then get on to the CA board, it's just too hard a pathway for some quality people to want to go through. I think we're actually missing out on the calibre of board member we could be getting because of the structure and the path they've got to go down to become board members. We would certainly like to see an independent commission at CA level, where you've got a good mix of cricket people, commercial people, financial people, legal people etc., covering all the skill sets the game needs. Then we'd like to see at state level a similar structure, where you've got independent expertise on all the state boards. 

We have seen a very dramatic week surrounding the removal of Simon Katich from the list of CA contracts. Michael Beer, the incumbent Test spinner, was also missing. Did the re-jigging of the rankings to include Twenty20 cricket come at a cost to Test specialists?

I don't think that's a fair conclusion to draw. The rankings for players are still weighted heavily towards Tests. So if you're ranked 10 in Test cricket and you don't have a ranking in one-day cricket or Twenty20, or you're ranked No. 10 in limited-overs cricket, but don't have a Test ranking, you're going to get more money as a Test player. The second point is, I don't think there are any of the players you'd consider Test players who won't also get a Big Bash contract. Simon Katich or Marcus North or Phil Hughes - each one of those guys will get a Big Bash contract, assuming they want one.

The total player-payment pool is going up by 10%. There's a 6% reduction in the CA retainer pool, the state retainer pool is reduced by about 30%, but then you've got this new pool of Big Bash money. So everyone will get two contracts: the traditional contracts are going to be less, but they will get a Big Bash contract on top of that. So all things being equal, players are going to push forward here. We have thought of all these different scenarios, and I honestly think we have maintained that prioritisation of Test cricket as well as we can. There is a market force here for Twenty20 cricket that was unavoidable. The BBL is an important future competition for CA and the players and we can't ignore that. But we have tried to balance Test and one-day cricket in this model so players are still motivated to play all three forms of the game. 

A lot of money and time is going into the expansion of the Big Bash League. The introduction of city-based teams means abandoning a state versus state structure that has the benefit of history.

State cricket, for the last three decades or more, really hasn't had any cut-through with the public. This new format has been reinvigorated to a degree, but I think that's been largely to do with the format rather than necessarily the identity of the teams. So, in short, yes it can work. If we had launched this competition with six teams, there was nowhere to go from an expansion perspective - you can't introduce a seventh state to Australia. So going to city-based - they have gone to eight teams and there's no reason that can't increase going forward - means you can get teams into the Gold Coast, far north Queensland, Geelong, or wherever it might be, and get cricket to new audiences. 

The trick is going to be how well this is promoted. Now that we have signed off on the deal, there'll be a player recruitment period coming up. From there the challenge for CA and the franchises is to make some noise and get the public excited about what's coming. Once players are linked to the teams, it's going to be an easier thing to do. 

There is a heavy use of the Indian Premier League as the example for the BBL to follow. Yet the reasons Australians and Indians go to cricket in their countries is quite different. How optimistic are you about the new competition?

You can draw on how successful the Big Bash has been over the past few years. I don't hear anyone who has been going to Big Bash games say they're not going to watch the new format of the Big Bash because they have changed to city-based teams. I'm not hearing that from people, so I'd like to think we will at least continue at the levels of interest we have. But more optimistically than that, you'd think it's going to grow, and I would expect high-quality overseas players in this competition, now that we have got money to attract them. And we're going to have Australian players hopefully available for parts of the competition in the short term and for the whole thing in the longer term. There's plenty of optimism and opportunity around this competition. 

Daniel Brettig is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo

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Should We Take United Nations’ Projections Seriously?

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Dr. Gary Peters, author of Population Geography.
 
The United Nations warned recently that the global consumption of natural resources could almost triple to 140 billion tons a year by 2050 unless nations take drastic steps to decouple economic growth from an ever-expanding use of natural resources.  The United Nations also recently projected that the world’s population would exceed 9 billion by 2050.  Neither of these projections makes sense and neither will happen.

The world’s population reached 2 billion in 1927; it is expected to reach 7 billion later in 2011.  Much of what neoclassical economists consider “normal,” mainly sustained economic and demographic growth, has actually occurred during a period unprecedented in economic and demographic history.  Both their models and underlying assumptions evolved during an era that cannot be duplicated, leaving us with numerous and serious questions about how good their models will be in a very different demographic future, especially if that future is constrained by flat or declining crude oil production, rising energy costs, and spiking food costs.  The era of cheap fossil fuels has ended, but the kind of thinking that accompanied it has not, which bodes poorly for our ability to deal with the future.

It is easy to see why economists suffer from “physics envy.”  After all, that proverbial apple that fell on Isaac Newton’s head in the 17^th century, supposedly prompting his discovery of the law of gravity, would have fallen at the same rate then that it would today.  The acceleration of gravity has not changed.  On the other hand economics as a field of study didn’t even exist then; if it had it would have created “laws” that would probably be of little or no value today because economic laws exist within a much broader world of social and cultural conditions, which are always subject to change.
Consider the notion of tripling our use of natural resources over the next forty years, starting with one example:  crude oil.  According to the EIA, total oil production in January, 2011, averaged 88.2 million barrels per day (mbd).  There are still “experts” who believe that total oil production can be pushed to perhaps 100 mbd, but I know of no one who believes it could approximate three times that, or 244.6 mbd.

The figure below (from Gail Tverberg) shows how total oil production has increased during the last decade.  Even if this rate of increase could be maintained over the next 40 years, which is virtually impossible, total oil production would still fall far short of 245 mbd.  Both the United Nations and most economists are living in another era, the nineteenth century, when cheap fossil fuels were being discovered and extracted as if there would be no tomorrow.

Figure 1. World “Liquids” Production through January 2011, Based on Energy Information Administration

But tomorrow has arrived! That is critical because if oil cannot be expanded by nearly that much (a tripling), neither can the use of most other natural resources because they are so dependent on the use of oil for their extraction and usage.

Even Nobel laureate economist and New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman wrote last year (Dec. 26, 2010), “What the commodities markets are telling us that we’re living in a finite world, in which the rapid growth of emerging economies is placing pressure on limited supplies of raw materials, pushing up their prices.”  Unfortunately, after admitting that Earth was finite, he left that reality behind and in the end embraced the nineteenth century illusion that economic growth can go on forever.  As he put it, “This won’t bring an end to economic growth….It will require that we gradually change the way we live, adapting our economy and our lifestyles to the reality of more expensive resources.”

That may be OK for the well off everywhere, at least for a while, but more expensive resources for the poor will translate into more expensive food and an even more marginal existence.  Those living in growing shanty towns throughout the poor world know little about economics, but they are living proof that the promises of neoclassical economics have been hollow, and that the distribution of benefits has been extremely skewed.  They do not know, either, that their continued reproduction is seen by economists as little more than a steady supply of cheap labor that will be easily exploited in order to supply the rich world with all of the stuff that people want at low prices.

What kind of thinking has so little concern for the welfare of the many even as the few live like royalty?  What has happened to justice for all?  Why has economic growth over the last century or so resulted not in a better world for all but in a much more populous world of mostly poor people?  Economists point at China’s success in raising the living standards of perhaps 300 million people—a rising middle class.  They seldom point to the remaining billion or so in China who are still poor and sometimes desperate.  With only 5 percent of the world’s people, Americans consume about 25 percent of the world’s energy and other resources, yet most Americans see that as fair and want even more.

The figure below (from the United Nations FAO) shows what has been happening in recent years to world food prices.  While Americans and others in rich countries complain about high food and gas prices, people in Third World cities will become more desperate and death rates, especially for infants, may well increase, leading to what I have referred to previously as a “third demographic transition.”  It is only a matter of time before death rates in poor countries start to rise.

Figure 2. FAO Food Price Index, June 7, 2011

It is inhumane for the United Nations, most economists, politicians, corporate leaders, and others to pretend that economic and demographic growth are sustainable.  They are not, period.  Given how nearly 7 billion people are living today, it seems irresponsible to project a population of more than two billion more forty years from now.

Because it has become the overwhelmingly dominant view today, one accepted by the UN, IMF, the World Bank and others, we should look more closely at neoclassical economics.  As an example of this view, consider Tim Harford, who wrote  in his book The Logic of Life, “[O]ur rational behavior can also produce wonders.  The more of us there are in the world, living our logical lives, the better our chances of seeing out the next million years.”  Don’t worry about how few other species there might be by then, or what a million years really is, just consider how many humans there might be.  If you need an additional image, consider all the cows, pigs, sheep, goats, and chickens that will be needed in order to provide all those humans with enough food to keep them healthy, wealthy, and wise.  Harford provides no hint of how many more of us he’d like to see, so let’s consider a couple of examples.

In round figures the world is growing at 1.2 percent annually.  If growth continued at that rate, the population would double in about 58 years.  But that growth rate is gradually slowing, so to provide our first example of future growth let’s start by slowing the rate of growth to one with a doubling time of 100 years (about .7 percent annually).  If we round the current world population off to 7 billion, then we can make some simple calculations.  By 2111 there would be 14 billion humans; by 3011, only a thousand years from now, the population would be 7.168 trillion.  That is about as far into the future as the Vikings are into the past, so don’t even think about a million years from now.

What if we assume a much slower growth rate, so that human numbers double only every 1,000 years?  Then it would take ten thousand years for our numbers to reach 7.168 trillion, still far short of the next million years.  That would be about as far into the future as the agricultural revolution is into the past.   Keep in mind that Homo sapiens have been around for about 200,000 years and we are struggling to provide 7 billion of us with sufficient food, clothing, and shelter to lead decent lives.  There cannot be an economist on the planet who thinks Earth could support 7.168 trillion people.  Human population growth cannot go on forever, no matter how optimistic economists might be.
In the meantime we know what has been happening to other species as our own numbers have become rapidly more numerous.  The figure below (Source) leaves nothing to your imagination, but these species seem to be written off as little more than collateral damage in the quest for the holy grail—endless growth.

Figure 3. Species Extinction Since 1800

As Gail Tverberg noted recently:

We are consuming a huge amount of fossil fuels, and to maintain anything close to our current economic state, we would need to continue to consume a very large amount of fossil fuels.  If a person stops and thinks about it, no level of fossil fuel is sustainable, because we only have a finite amount of fossil fuels.  At best, we would be talking about stair-stepping extraction—reducing it to a lower level than today, and holding there for a while.

Even using fossil fuels at current high rates has not been enough to move more than a fraction of the world’s population to a standard of living that most would consider “well off,” let alone extravagant.  Billions struggle to survive on a dollar or two a day; hundreds of millions are malnourished.
Widespread evidence of the failure of the modern neoclassical economic model, with its underlying assumption of sustained economic growth, so far has not loosened its grip on the world’s leaders, in part because most of them have not experienced the downside of that model.  Most also ignore, or even fail to admit the existence of, externalities that have piled enormous costs on Earth’s environment and on the backs of its people and other residents.

Robert Jensen wrote recently, and perhaps presciently:

More difficult is facing the possibility that the human species has been cast as a tragic hero. Tragic heroes aren’t characters who have just run into a bit of bad luck but are protagonists brought down by   an error in judgment that results from inherent flaws in their character.  The arrogance with which we modern humans have treated the living world—the hubris of the high-energy/high technology era—may well turn out to be that tragic flaw. Surrounded by the big majestic buildings and tiny sophisticated electronic gadgets created through human cleverness, it’s easy for us to believe we are smart enough to run a complex world.  But cleverness is not wisdom, and the ability to create does not guarantee the ability to control the destruction we have unleashed.

We can still pull back from the abyss, but only if we recognize that we are approaching it.  In order to succeed we must confront some basic facts, however inconvenient or unpleasant they might seem.  As a geographer, I like to think that we can help by combating ignorance about the natural world in which we live and replacing it with firsthand knowledge about interactions between people and places.
First, we need to make it clear that physical growth of any one or any thing is unsustainable on our planet, so we can either change our ways, which would probably mean on a worldwide scale moving from competition to cooperation, or we can let nature decide for us.  Nature is impartial; it will not care whether we win or lose.   The sooner this lesson is learned, the better.  Geopolitics will complicate the issue of cooperation considerably, but it would help if thinking at the United Nations and elsewhere would switch from believing in infinite growth to telling people that the world really is finite, that our numbers are already far beyond what can be sustained at any reasonable standard of living for all, and that our current economic models are inappropriate for the 21^st century.  Ecological and biological economists need to be elevated to a more respectable position in the field of economics as it is remolded to fit the world in which we now live—we’ve entered an era of rising fossil fuels costs.  According to Richard Heinberg:

The stark reality we face is that humanity has embarked on the era of extreme energy, where there are no simple solutions. The inexpensive, high-yield fossil fuels that powered the industrial revolution and that helped make the U.S. the world’s wealthiest and most powerful nation are dwindling, and all of them emit dangerous levels of greenhouse gases. While enormous amounts of natural gas, oil, and coal remain, the portions of those fuels that were cheapest and easiest to produce are now mostly gone, and producing remaining reserves will entail spiraling investment costs and environmental risks. Moreover, while alternative energy sources exist—including nuclear, wind, and solar—these come with their own problems and trade-offs, and none is capable of replicating the economic benefits that fossil fuels delivered in decades past. There is no likely scenario in which the decades ahead will see energy as abundant or as cheap as it was in decades past.

Second, we need to develop methods to weigh such environmental damage as forcing species into extinction or warming Earth’s climate with the benefits of expanding human numbers and gross national products.  Neoclassical economics is amoral, but the times call for a much more careful consideration of morality.  We cannot continue on our current trajectory without hitting a ceiling, perhaps soon.  Whether that ceiling is a lack of sufficient cheap energy, water scarcity, collapse of an important ecosystem, war, or something else, prudence dictates that we act now.  William Catton may have been right when he wrote, at the end of his book Bottleneck, “Too late, we have begun to see the runway’s end.  I have pity for all who insist ‘there’s still time.’  I deplore those who naively count on merely ‘stopping the clock’ by some yet-to-be-made miraculous breakthrough.”

Third, we must recognize the potential negative consequences of freeing all that carbon stored in fossil fuels for tens of millions of years and sending it back into the atmosphere.  Over the last 160 years or so the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has risen from about 280 parts per million to 390 parts per million and it continues to tick upward steadily.  Since carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, our atmosphere is getting warmer.  As a result, it contains more moisture than it used to and that moisture is showing up in the form of more dramatic storms and more severe flooding.  Wet areas in all likelihood will become wetter; dry ones drier.

Fourth, we must focus more attention than ever on ourselves.  It is possible that the low total fertility rates in Europe and elsewhere will spread more quickly than we think to the poor countries, especially in this era of modern communications.  We should do everything possible to aid that process, from providing effective contraceptives to anyone who desires them to facilitating the education and empowerment of females around the world.  That trend needs to be encouraged; in reality, it may be a necessity.  Worse yet, it will probably be forced on us sooner rather than later.

As Ian Morris wrote recently, in his book Why the West Rules—For Now, “The great difference between the challenges we face today and those that defeated Song China when it pressed against the hard ceiling a thousand years ago and the Roman Empire another thousand years before that is that we now know so much more about the issues involved.  Unlike the Romans and the Song, our age may yet get the thought that it needs.”  We can hope that he is right, but it will not come from economists and others who insist on holding on to 19^th century models to explain the world economy in the 21^st century.

No matter what humans do to the Earth, it will survive.  But to our only planet—with all its wonder, beauty, and mystery—we are nothing, so if we fail to get the thought that we need and instead meet the same fate as the Dodo, we will not be missed. One clear lesson from the geological record is that all species sooner or later go extinct; we should not rush the inevitable.

My name is Gail Tverberg — Our Finite World. I am an actuary interested in finite world issues – oil depletion, natural gas depletion, water shortages, and climate change. The financial system is also likely to be affected.

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IPA: Pentagon Papers: Lessons for Today/Whistleblowers: “Rescind Obama’s ‘Transparency Award’ Now!”

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Institute for Public Accuracy

Forty years ago today, on June 13, 1971, the New York Times began publishing the Pentagon Papers, top-secret government documents that showed a pattern of governmental deceit about the Vietnam War. In the weeks that followed the Nixon White House worked to stop the Times and other newspapers from publishing the Papers, with the Supreme Court ultimately ruling against prior restraint. Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers and later that month got them to Sen. Mike Gravel, who late in the evening of June 29 to June 30 entered them into the Congressional Record; he was conducting a filibuster against the draft.

MIKE GRAVEL, mg at mikegravel.us, http://www.mikegravel.us
Gravel is a former two-term senator from Alaska; his books include A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man’s Fight to Stop It. He said today: “It’s particularly ridiculous that the government is putting out a version of the Pentagon Papers now because the government approach to Ellsberg and myself is being echoed in their approach to Bradley Manning, the alleged source of the WikiLeaks revelations. Our oaths bind us to loyalty to the Constitution and not to government officials who lie us into wars.”


See:
Footage of Gravel from 1971 placing the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record
Gravel talking about publishing the Pentagon Papers with Ellsberg in 2007

Today’s Guardian has a piece by Ellsberg titled “Why the Pentagon Papers Matter Now,” which states: “The declassification and online release Monday of the full original version of the Pentagon Papers — the 7,000-page top secret Pentagon study of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam 1945-67 — comes 40 years after I gave it to 19 newspapers and to Senator Mike Gravel (minus volumes on negotiations, which I had given only to the Senate foreign relations committee). Gravel entered what I had given him in the congressional record and later published nearly all of it with Beacon Press. Together with the newspaper coverage and a government printing office (GPO) edition that was heavily redacted but overlapped the Senator Gravel edition, most of the material has been available to the public and scholars since 1971. (The negotiation volumes were declassified some years ago; the Senate, if not the Pentagon, should have released them no later than the end of the war in 1975.)

“In other words, today’s declassification of the whole study comes 36 to 40 years overdue. Yet, unfortunately, it happens to be peculiarly timely that this study gets attention and goes online just now. That’s because we’re mired again in wars — especially in Afghanistan — remarkably similar to the 30-year conflict in Vietnam, and we don’t have comparable documentation and insider analysis to enlighten us on how we got here and where it’s likely to go.

“What we need released this month are the Pentagon Papers of Iraq and Afghanistan (and Pakistan, Yemen and Libya). We’re not likely to get them; they probably don’t yet exist, at least in the useful form of the earlier ones. But the original studies on Vietnam are a surprisingly not-bad substitute, definitely worth learning from.”

Ellsberg recently said: “ALL the crimes he [Nixon] committed against me — which forced his resignation facing impeachment — are now legal. That includes burglarizing my former psychoanalyst’s office (for material to blackmail me into silence), warrantless wiretapping, using the CIA against an American citizen in the U.S., and authorizing a White House hit squad to ‘incapacitate me totally’ (on the steps of the Capitol on May 3, 1971). All the above were to prevent me from exposing guilty secrets of his own administration that went beyond the Pentagon Papers. But under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, with the PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendment Act, and (for the hit squad) President Obama’s executive orders, they have all become legal.

Whistleblowers: “Rescind Obama’s ‘Transparency Award’ Now!”

Over 20 noted whistleblowers have just released a petition calling for rescinding a “Transparency Award” President Obama recently received. The signatories including Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers; former CIA analyst Raymond McGovern; former Pentagon analyst Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski; and former National Security Agency analyst Russ Tice.

SIBEL EDMONDS, sibeledmonds at boilingfrogspost.com, boilingfrogspost.com
COLEEN ROWLEY, rowleyclan at earthlink.net

Edmonds and Rowley drafted the petition. Edmonds is a former FBI official and whistleblower. Rowley is a former FBI Special Agent and Division Counsel whose May 2002 memo described some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures and was named one of Time Magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002.
The petition begins: “On March 28, 2011, President Obama was given a ‘transparency award’ from five ‘open government’ organizations: OMB Watch, the National Security Archive, the Project on Government Oversight, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and OpenTheGovernment.org. Ironically — and quite likely in response to growing public criticism regarding the Obama administration’s lack of transparency — heads of the five organizations gave their award to Obama in a closed, undisclosed meeting at the White House. If the ceremony had been open to the press, it is likely that reporters would have questioned the organizations’ proffered justification for the award, in contrast to the current reality:

* “President Obama has not decreased but has dramatically increased governmental secrecy! According to a new report to the president by the Information Security Oversight Office — the federal agency that provides oversight of the government’s security classification system — the cost of classification for 2010 has reached over $10.17 billion. That’s a 15 percent jump from the previous year, and the first time ever that secrecy costs have surpassed $10 billion. Last month, ISOO reported that the number of original classification decisions generated by the Obama administration in 2010 was 224,734 — a 22.6 percent jump from the previous year. See ‘The Price of Secrecy, Obama Edition.’


* “There were 544,360 requests for information last year under the Freedom of Information Act to the 35 biggest federal agencies — 41,000 requests more than the year before. Yet the bureaucracy responded to 12,400 fewer requests than the prior year, according to an analysis by the Associated Press.

* “Obama has invoked baseless and unconstitutional executive secrecy to quash legal inquiries into secret illegalities more often than any predecessor. The list of this President’s invocations of the ‘state secrets privilege’ has already resulted in shutting down lawsuits involving the National Security Agency’s illegal wiretapping — Jewel vs. NSA and Shubert vs. Obama; extraordinary rendition and assassination — Anwar al-Aulaqi; and illegal torture — Binyam Mohamed.

* “Ignoring his campaign promise to protect government whistleblowers, Obama’s presidency has amassed the worst record in U.S. history for persecuting, prosecuting and jailing government whistleblowers and truth-tellers. President Obama’s behavior has been in stark contrast to his campaign promises which included live streaming meetings online and so forth, and rewarding whistleblowers. Obama’s Department of Justice is twisting the 1917 Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national-security leaks — more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous Administrations combined.

* “The Obama DOJ’s prosecution of former NSA official Thomas Drake who, up till June 9, faced 35 years in prison for having blown the whistle on the NSA’s costly and unlawful warrantless monitoring of American citizens typifies the abusive practices made possible through expansive secrecy agreements and threats of prosecution.

* “President Obama has set a powerful and chilling example for potential whistleblowers through the abuse and torture of Bradley Manning, whose guilt he has also publicly stated prior to any trial by his, Obama’s, military subordinates.

* “Obama is the only president who has reenacted Fahrenheit 451 by actually having his agency collect and burn a book due to a never-justified classification excuse: Lt. Col Tony Shaffer’s -Operation Dark Heart. …”

For the full petition and list of signatories, see: http://takeawardback.org


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