The company that advertises itself as the "Spirit of Australia" has turned on its own customers, causing untold suffering and stress to thousands of travellers around the world. Tonight John Bursill returns to TNRA  to report on the unfolding disaster at Qantas, which has grounded its entire fleet in a reprisal against industrial action.

The grounding of the Qantas fleet was done with no warning to passengers, which makes this action far more disruptive than a strike which would require the union to give 72 hours notice.

The image of Qantas is further tarnished by the fact that the CEO of Qantas received a 71% pay rise before the fleet was grounded.

A summary of the current situation is provided by ABC News:

• Industrial action by three unions, representing engineers, baggage and catering staff and long-haul pilots, has been ongoing for several months over pay and conditions.

• Qantas says that the strike action had until Saturday resulted in 70,000 passengers being affected, more than 600 flights cancelled and seven aircraft grounded.

• More than 68,000 customers affected since grounding at 5pm (AEDT) Saturday. About 447 flights have been cancelled.

• The fleet grounding will impact 108 planes at 22 airports, domestically and internationally.

• Jetstar flights, QantasLink flights and Qantas flights across the Tasman operated by Jetconnect will continue. Jetstar capacity is very limited.

Photo: Coal seam gas wells south of Chinchilla in south-west Queensland. (AAP: Supplied)

A man-made environmental and human disaster is looming and nobody in power seems to have the will to stop it. It's called coal seam gas (CSG), and it's making aggressive inroads into the Australian landscape, causing illness, despair and dislocation for those unlucky enough to live in its path.

This crime against nature is being carried out by large mining corporations like Santos, with the rubber stamp of your government, which of course is raking in the money from the sale of the mineral rights, while the owners of the land are being ignored and driven off the land.

Today Jess Moore from stop-csg-illawarra.org joins us to discuss these horrors, and what you can do about the situation.

From the website:

15 coal seam gas (CSG) wells have been approved for development in the northern Illawarra. Further wells are being discussed and applied for in the region.

These wells are in and around the Sydney Water Catchment, and pose a direct threat to our water supply.

We are worried because CSG mining:

Always involves contaminated water as extraction of gas draws water out of the coal seam that is highly saline and can contain toxic and radioactive compounds, endocrine disruptors and heavy metals;

When using hydraulic fracturing (or fracking), contaminates large quantities of fresh water with sand and chemicals that are pumped underground;

Lowers the fresh water table;

Is a fire hazard, as wells, processing plants and pipelines leak;

Risks a range of direct and indirect health impacts such heart, lung, kidney and neurological problems and cancer;

Related Links

• Alan Jones MUST SEE speech on Coal Seam Gas
• Lock The Gate: A national alliance of 90 community, industry and environmental groups fighting CSG
• Gasland Australia: See the trailer for the Oscar nominated documentary, plus the latest news on CSG.
• British firms urged to 'pack suitcases' in rush for Libya business
• An Open Message to the 99% (Occupy Wall Street)

Back in the UK, after several months spent in Libya covering NATO war crimes and uncovering mainstream media lies, freelance journalist Lizzie Phelan continues to fight for truth and justice on behalf of the Libyan people. Her testimony below is a gripping example of her commitment.

Lizzie Phelan spent her last days in Libya - where she was reporting for PressTV - trapped in the Rixos Hotel, together with Thierry Meyssan, Mahdi Nazemroaya and two other members of the Voltaire Network team.

She said a Western-backed genocide is taking place in Libya and there are no independent journalists left on the ground to cover the story.

Tonight we welcome Joanne Nova to the show.

Joanne is one of Australia's most articulate and outspoken climate sceptics. Her website is an international hub for informed discussion on questions of climate, carbon trading and the economy.

Joanne's husband, Dr. David Evans, is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees including a PhD from Stanford University, who formerly worked at the Australian Greenhouse office (now the Department of Climate Change), modeling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, forestry and agricultural products. Together, Joanne and her husband have lectured extensively across the country on why the carbon tax is a flawed solution to a non-existent problem.

In tonight's discussion Joanne talks about the reasons why she became sceptical of mainstream climate science, and gives us her opinion on the possiblility of rolling back the carbon tax. We also talk about the Occupy Australia movement and our hope that this popular movement may come to realise that "carbon trading" is an extremely dubious commodity market overseen by a predatory and corrupt banking system - the very thing they are protesting against.

From Joanne's website:

Jo Nova is a science communicator, she’s presented science on TV, radio, on stage, in cartoons, exhibitions, reports and now in her blog which over 200,000 people visited in 2009.

After winning prizes in her science degree in molecular biology, Joanne joined the Shell Questacon Science Circus and spent five years touring Australia first as a performer, then as manager of the half million dollar exhibition with a team of twelve. As an associate lecturer at ANU Joanne helped to develop the Graduate Diploma in Science Communication in its earliest years.

In the last two years Joanne has focused on the science of monetary systems, financial history, the gold market, and has also become heavily involved in communicating the science of carbon’s role in Climate Change. Joanne attended the UNFCCC in Bali Dec 07 as a delegate, has spoken in New York at the International Climate Change Conference, and to Staffers of the US Senate in Washington, as well as to Australian leaders of business and banking at Consilium, for the Centre for Independent Studies.

Over 220,000 copies of The Skeptics Handbook have been published, printed and distributed in the US, Australia, NZ and Sweden. It was done entirely pro bono, and volunteers have translated it into French, German (twice), Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Turkish, Japanese, Danish, Portuguese, Balkan, Spanish and Thai. Italian, Lao, Slovenian and Dutch versions are coming.

In the final segment of the show I am joined on the phone by protester Steph, directly from the the Occupy Sydney rally at Martin Place. In this bombshell interview Steph confirms that the movement is being co-opted and infiltrated by the Green Left, exactly as we described in our previous show.

The good news is that many of the people at the protest are awake to what is going on, and are working hard to keep the group open and, as Steph puts it, beyond the left/right paradigm, which is merely a tool for the oligarchy to keep people controlled and divided.

I hope you enjoy tonight's show!

Related Links

• Pharmacists paid by drug company for patient details
• Revealed: What Julia Gillard will tell the nation in the event of a terrorist attack
• Skeptics Handbook
• JoanneNova.com.au

Tonight I am joined by Craig Stanford to reflect on the occupy Reserve Bank protest which we filmed on 15 October 2011.

In our discussion we look at some of the techniques being used to create "group consciousness" at the protests here and overseas, such as hand signs and chanting, and we ask whether such tendencies are supportive of human freedom.

Although the protesters claim they are the 99%, our finding is that they are largely made up of anti-capitalist, socialist, collectivist and eco-fascist minorites within our society.

There was no sign of the huge anti-carbon tax movement, which, according to many polls, represents the views of the vast majority of Australians.

Speakers at the event were heavily promoting the "action on climate change" mantra, and the strong presence of the socialist alliance and green left weekly further reinforces the impression that this movement is essentially owned by the radical left.

Does the socialist flavour we saw in Sydney reflect the tendencies of the wider global movement? According to Charles Gasparino of the Murdoch-owned New York Post,

It’s not an overstatement to describe Zuccotti Park as New York’s Marxist epicenter. Flags with the iconic face of the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara are everywhere; the only American flag I saw was hanging upside down. The “occupiers” openly refer to each other as “comrade,” and just about every piece of literature on offer (free or for sale) advocated socialism in the Marxist tradition as a cure-all for the inequalities of the American economic system.

In Rome, the violence has been blamed on left-wing groups, which is predictable, but possibly an attempt to demonise groups which the government wishes to suppress.

Overall, there is still much potential for this movement to become a force for positive change, but there is also a huge opportunity for it to become merely another vehicle for those who think they can steer human civilsation in a particular direction.

Under the title "Why are we outside the Reserve Bank of Australia?", Occupy Sydney features this comedy sketch from 2008.

The "occupy" groups have been conducting what they call "general assemblies", a term reminiscent of the United Nations.

The Sydney group has stated:

The GA works on a basis of consensus decision making, and therefore is the only accurate way of representing what the entire group wants the world to know. The Occupy Sydney general assembly at Martin Place aims to provide a forum for all voices to be heard and are constantly learning better ways to be inclusive of all perspectives.

Related Links

• Occupy Sydney
• Numbers shrink but spirit strong at Sydney protest
• Rally occupies itself in most polite company | SMH
• Occupy Melbourne
• Zombie training? OWS Atlanta turns into collective hypnosis 'one voice' weirdness
• Truth News talks to Occupy Australia - Part 1
• Truth News talks to Occupy Australia - Part 2

Today TNRA welcomes Tempe Harvey to the show.

Tempe Harvey, who has a Master of Laws, practised for 11 years as a solicitor and currently works full-time in her role as a mother of four children in Brisbane.

Her interest in politics led her to found Kids First Parent Association of Australia in 2009, to lobby the federal government to end childcare funding discrimination against the majority of families opting for parent care.

On the economic front, Tempe is dedicated to defeating both the Carbon Tax and the political party behind it, The Greens. To this end, she has designed a simple, highly effective, low cost campaign to do so.

Tempe has developed some excellent techniques for creating mass awareness, and she discusses some of these on the show.

We also take a look at the unfolding occupy Australia movement which is due to launch protests in a number of capital cities across the country this week. Is this truly a movement of the people, or is it another controlled opposition with a socialist flavour?

All this and more covered in today's show!

Related Links

• CARBON TAX: The one-woman protest
• DIY cheap "No-Carbon-Tax" signs
• Occupy Australia Facebook Page
• http://occupysydney.blogspot.com/
• AxeTheCarbonTax.org

Tonight's show is a round table discussion conducted at Rudolf Steiner House in Sydney.

Do we need money? Is economic competition healthy or unhealthy? How should we organise society? These perennial questions are finally answered in tonight's show!

Our guests tonight are:

• Darrell Wheeler from the Social Threefolding Organisation
• Chris Wilkins from Zeitgeist Australia
• Lisa Devine from Anthroposophy in Australia
• Truth News co-anchor Josh Jackson

This is the third (and last) in our series on Building a Creative Economy.

Coincidentally, there is a newly released rap news video from thejuicemedia.com which covers some of the topics which we addressed in this show.