Echo 3-01-2006 pg14, Chess - threat humanity halliburton, lismore campus, timber, house, houses, leader

January 3, Byron Shire EchoCommentThe deadly doctrine of Capitalismerrorism last year killed about four people a day. Capitalism, according to LiveAid, killed , children a day by avoidable starvation, treatable pandemic, land mines, toxic water, bombed Iraqi hospitals and the social anguish, orphanhood and slumside murder that comes with global economics or, as we used to call it, intercontinental slavery. And yet no War on Capitalism has been suggested by any Western leader, or even any Communist leader, or any leader writer. The numerical equivalent of one Hiroshima a week is not, it seems, a good enough reason to criticise a system that spends on a war in Iraq million dollars a day that might have fed, schooled and treated for AIDS thirty million children pretty lavishly. If one were to blame the United States for most of this, and I think one can, it would mean their wilful or accidental killing of 8,, children in the past year, a gure much worse than the Holocaust, adds up to a policy much like Hitlers, and American capitalism, the kind that denies AIDS drugs to African orphans who cant pay a globalised free market price for them, is as vile and vicious a doctrine as well Fascism, also known in Mussolinis s as Corporatism. Yet noone does the numbers or joins the dots like this, preferring to see a few young ag-draped skinheads in Cronulla smashing headlights with baseball bats or a few foul-hearted Muslim clerics threatening hellre in Lakemba not, like Fred Nile, hellre hereafter but hellre now, by jihad as a greater threat to humanity than even Halliburton.TThere is no greater threat to humanity than Halliburton. And its clear from the current rate of human slaughter who the enemy is, and he as Pogo memorably put it is us. he fascistication of The Bulletin the theft of a lot of gold bullion the buying up for top dollar of Laurie Oakes and Ray Martins and Jana Wendts once worthwhile souls the cheated Great Debates in which Howard was lit and framed and microphoned to his advantage and always mysteriously won the toss the baseballisation of Test Cricket the slow castration of the good television journalism of A Current AffairTI met him only once he was as big as a concrete mixer and showed me mountainous contempt, and he owes my wife a hundred thousand dollars for a Channel Nine mini-series, Bush Nurses, that he illegally cancelled. But I knew his brother Clyde quite well, a big soft kindly pot-puffing fellow who loathed the family racket and sold off his half in to Kerry for, would you believe, three million dollars Corporate prices have gone up a good bit since then and that sum is scarcely now a third of ones average golden umbrella and with the tens of billions Kerrys kind now yearly steal from us we are in, I guess, the New Edwardian Age of castlesAnd yet no War on Capitalism has been suggested by any Western leader, or even any Communist leader. by Bob Ellisand Sunday the waste of twenty years of the irreplaceable talent of Patrick Cook the impoverishing by Crown Casino of Australias more frantic working classes and the murder, it is said, of a female drug courier on Palm Beach, are among the known evils Kerry Packer inicted on his grateful, fearful, cowering nation. But it is hard to think of anything good he did, unless it was the ruining of Alan Bond by selling him Channel Nine for a billion dollars he couldnt afford and, to be fair, the way Test Cricket is now with brilliant multitudinous uidity shot and edited. and mansions and chefs and butlers and, in the far-off noisome cities, universal burglary, prostitution, busking, begging and drugs. Kerry Packer helped restore that envenomed injustice to the known world, and we should spend two minutes in the next few days, I think, in silently, reverently cursing his name.Far from spreading democracy through the Middle East the Iraq War has made it easier for the Egyptian president to arrest and gaol the opposition leader. It hasnt even brought democracy to Iraq, only accord-ing to the CIAs pet candidate Allawi electoral fraud, social chaos and Abu Ghraib torture worse than in the dread days of Saddam. Was there ever a stupider act of US foreign policy in history It has multiplied a hundredfold the number of young men yearning to be suicide bombers a better lifestyle choice, they judge, than working in a Pizza Haven Call Centre for twenty dollars a week, made Americans hated everywhere on earth and Saddam during his trial more admired, quadrupled the price of crude oil and made a global economic collapse worse than very likely. Yet idiots like Henderson, Bolt, Jones, Ackerman and Shanahan still support it and under our new harsh laws might elsewhere be gaoled for sedition, I am cheerily advised. Theyve certainly endangered the nations good governance, if Cronulla is any indication of good governance gone rancid, of a minority persecuted and the common weal endangered by printed or uttered words whose likely outcome was violent disruption by local suburban terrorists freshly encouraged to acts of massacre, arson and bad language under the bloodstained Australian ag on a sunny summer Sunday against blameless, cowering Lebanese. Perhaps a small posse of Labor Attorneys-General could arrest them, and see how piteously they plead their stark ignorance of the law and sobbingly beg to be spared, this once, the nine years in Goulburn or Pentridge they now, under Ruddocks new demented strictures, so pleasingly deserve.New home for House of the FutureThe innovative

timber house

of the Future has a new home at Southern Cross Universitys Lismore campus. The Timber House was one of six houses in the Houses of the Future project run by the NSW government as part of theYear of the Built Environment in . The project featured six architect-designed houses made from timber, concrete, steel, cardboard, glass and clay. Houses of the Future were required to be prefabricated, affordable, environmentally sustainable and futuristic. The Timber House of the Future, now at the Kellas Street entrance to the Lismore campus, was on display at Sydney Olympic Park from February to October last year, and at the Sydney Opera House in October . A major sponsorship from Hurford Hardwood allowed SCU to fully purchase the Timber House following its time at Sydney Olympic Park. Hurford Hardwood is also the supplier of the Grey Box timber used for the ooring and benches in the living room of the house. SCU also received sponsorship from Boral Timber, which assisted in setting up the house. SCU forestry researcher Professor Jerry Vanclay said it was exciting to incorporate the innovative building, transported to Lismore from Sydney, into SCUs campus and programs. Its by no means a traditional design and the practical demonstration and testing of timber use in design is a progressive step, Professor Vanclay said. The building breaks down into ve modules, which can be variously congured. The surface or skin of the structure is made from timber-bre cladding and is a water catchment, shading mechanism and solar collector. The cladding is simultaneously oor, walls and roof. Australian hardwoods came from eco-select sustainably managed forests and timber cladding from renewable plantation pine. Architects for the house were Innovarchi. Computer assisted geometries, cutting patterns and tolerances, and a focus on sustainable features are a significant development in prefabricated timber houses. Mike Cooper, Director of Facilities at SCU, organised relocation of the -squaremetre house. It arrived in Lismore on four semi-trailers and was off-loaded by crane the following day. An interesting part of the design is the reed bed on the deck. Its a pond to lter rainwater from the roof before going to the solar hot water system, Mr Cooper said. More information on the Houses is available at www. housesofthefuture.com.au.