I'm in two minds about this. Firstly surely it can't be right for the law changed only last December by the Abbott gov to be retroactive to anything done before that date. That's just kangaroo court stuff. Also, one of the blokes in the report did jail time in the 1980's in New Zealand and had never been to jail here in Australia. That just doesn't seem fair, and a system that is unfair will obviously draw criticism and protest. On the other hand..... If someone has been in Australia for 20-30 years, why on earth haven't they become a citizen in that time? Myself I did it a few years after getting here in 1985 when Paul Keating was jumping up and down about the republic. But more than that I realy really hated that I was paying tax and a productive member of society, but I couldn't vote. That to me was the biggest reason I became a citizen. The law was changed in the late 1990's and now Kiwi's aren't allowed to become Australian citizens at all. Period. As well, one of the main people in the report was a bloke who had a "road rage incident", or to put it more accurately committed a serious assault on a person to the point of being jailed for two years. Given our experience with my psycho nephew, it's really hard to feel sorry or any kind of empathy for the bloke in the report. There was nothing about what the consequences were for the victim of his assault.
The Lieberals keep saying they "stopped the boats" but in reality, how could they have? They merely turned them around. So here we have the Turnbull gov's reaction to Amnesty International's assertion about new evidence showing that Australian officials paid people smugglers to turn their boats back to Indonesia. Hardly the "success" Abbott asserts it is to Europe. All they've got is, Amnesty is on an ideological crusade against them. The Lieberals? Accusing Amnesty of an ideological crusade? Come on...... Quite a bit of projection going on there I'm afraid.
I went shopping at Aldi earlier, the German supermarket that offers brand prices way way cheaper than Coles or Woolworths; the two traditional major supermarket chains here in Australia. Those two have been busy chopping wages and casualising staff, whilst still charging top dollar for what they sell. I used to shop at Coles in the same centre all the time, but they keep expanding the self serve electronic aisles to cut back on staff even more. So the customer has to do it all themselves, and pay through the nose for the privilege. Aldi has turned out much better than I expected. Although there's no express aisle, the registers are extremely well managed. There are no electronic self serve type do it all yourself checkouts, all real live human beings. Their staff are treated well, with breaks and they sit on chairs at the checkout. Well paid too I've read, can be up to $25 an hour for a store worker. In short, it's obvious the companies that are investing money in tax avoidance and financial airy fairy stuff that produces absolutely nothing. And a company that does otherwise.
The US and other petrodollar countries are not happy. This is being called the biggest discovery of electrical generators since 1832, and challenges physicists understanding of the properties of space. Previously it was thought that power generation greater than 100% efficiency was impossible. Yet it is, using all the same materials readily available now to make existing electric generators. The machines are still in the stage of design improvements but will soon reach production stage.
I believe, as do the engineers in India, that this is the biggest breakthrough in rotating electrical machine design since Faraday’s invention of the electrical motor in 1832. The elimination of back torque allows all the energy generated to pass through the machine. Power output is determined by the strength of the excitation magnets and the synchronous reactance (resistance at 50/60 Hz) of the stator windings. Current models can be cascaded for higher output. Each machine can produce at least 2.38 times the input and can be configured in a self-running mode. Due to concentration on efficiency and design improvements the machine has not yet been configured in this manner.
During a visit to witness tests in December of 2012, we were guests of the engineering director of a large utility company, and we toured a generation facility which the director pointed out was ready for RLG systems as soon as they are scaled to the required size. In March 2015 we returned to India for licensing discussions. Current plans call for introductory models to be marketed at 10 KVA and 25 KVA. A second company is involved in manufacturing discussions and the Karnataka Power Corporation, which supplies Bangalore, is investigating the use of 200 KVA units in a wind farm application as described in the April 7th edition of Asia Times.
The concept that efficiencies cannot be greater than 100% is due to an incomplete understanding of the properties of space. The second law of thermodynamics must be modified to account for the fact that space is not empty, as has been taught for the last 150 years. The RLG operates at what has been called “over unity.” Many experienced electrical engineers engaged in the manufacture of AC generators have independently tested the RLG and confirmed the efficiency ratings that I have observed. It’s time for the physicists to get out of the way and modify their theories while the engineers go about the business of design and production. The Tap Blog
This changes everything....
A big congratulations to India for such an amazing discovery. The west should be engaged in research and development of such new technologies instead of digging up coal and fighting over oil reserves in the Middle East. The fossil fuel dinosaur needs to be euthanised.
Oh my how out of touch these entitled and privileged are. Trump boasts on the telly that he made himself after getting a "small $1million loan" off his father when he left home. Then went on to make it or some shit. Um, I left home in a rage at 17. My asshole father gave me $200 (in 1979) and declared I'd be back in two weeks. I fucked off for good from there and made my own way, free from the shackles of my family and hick town New Zealand. Worked full time for nearly 35 years from there, only spending two weeks in that entirety on the dole. I can say I'm much prouder, than the privileged, of my accomplishments. It was all my own doing, and the credit all goes to me. Dad one time threatened to write me out of his will much later on. I laughed at him, literally. Told him to keep his money and I didn't want it, much to his surprise. He left me in the will in the end, but it wasn't a lot because big family bla. I've always been so happy though that it has been my life and not my families. I have something that the privileged will never know; independence. I take great pleasure now after the recent bashing of David by my brother's son in telling them to FUCK OFF :)
The fallout from Abbott's delusional and self aggrandised preaching speech to Europe and it's asylum seekers, is still happening aplenty here in Australia. Yes folks, Australia has once again recoiled in horror at the revolting scenes that unfolded in England the other day. Our ousted leader, done in by his own bastardry, chose to preach hate and separation to Europe as a way out of the refugee crisis now engulfing it. It gave the opportunity for the cartoonists to once again have a go at Abbott. Unshackled by domestic politics, he was now able to put himself to the world as the demented and insidious fuckwit he's always been. More so however, there have been opinion pieces and articles all over the net here condemning him for this, perhaps the most disastrous of all his self inflicted political fuck ups. Again he showed to all Australia (this time as well as the world) that he did not represent us. He's not one of us. Perhaps only in citizenship papers but that's all. His mind and heart lie in the ultra conservative world of entitlement and prestige that he grew up in. I can't imagine him ever lasting in a public school. He'd have been laughed out of the grounds FFS. The article that I've found the best analysis on his speech is from Barry Cassidy of the ABC. A short but very on the ball read. He points to our being the most immigrant nation and how we simply don't agree with hating people like Abbott wanted us to.
Abbott's speech in the end was a missed opportunity. Why do our leaders not tell our real story when they travel abroad?
George Megalogenis in his latest book "Australia's Second Chance" topically raised the question that Australian leaders should respond to: "How did you make the world's greatest migrant nation?"
Good question. And the answer is obvious, or should be.
Megalogenis writes:
Our unique strengths are social cohesion; our ability to turn the disparate querulous cultures of the world into a unified people.
That's our story; that's the real story. It's not one that preaches hardnosed indifference to the tragedies befalling the rest of the world. It's not one that favours tough action, force if necessary, to prevent the suffering of others from spoiling our utopia, a utopia built on migration.
And it's not one - at home - that favours force and the will of a single leader over negotiation and consensus. The Drum
Is Abbott a true Australian? Certainly a question to ponder...
There are three Republican presidential candidates (Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal) who have been organised to speak at the National Religious Liberties Conference in November. One of the key organisers of this conference (Kevin Swanson) suffers a terrible case of far right extremism the poor dear, calling for the death of gays and all. This must be something to do with religious freedom I guess :s Likely he needs to be on some sort of medication to alleviate his illness.
In any case, Right Wing Watch have documented the long list of symptoms of his extremism, calling for this and that to happen to us evil gays. The parent organisation of Right Wing Watch People For the American Way, has now officially called on the three presidential candidates to abandon their speaking engagements at this event.
People For the American Way is calling on Republican presidential candidates Sen. Ted Cruz, Gov. Mike Huckabee and Gov. Bobby Jindal to withdraw from a conference in Iowa next month hosted by a far-right pastor who has defended capital punishment for homosexuality and who has blamed forest fires on women who wear pants.
People For the American Way’s Right Wing Watch has documented the long history of extreme anti-gay, anti-women rhetoric from Kevin Swanson, the Colorado activist and pastor who is organizing next month’s “National Religious Liberties Conference” in Des Moines, which event organizers say Cruz, Huckabee and Jindal are scheduled to attend.
“We already knew that the Republican Party opposed LGBT rights and women’s equality, but this is taking things to a new level,” said People For the American Way President Michael Keegan. “We can respectfully disagree on matters of public policy, but someone who supports gay people being put to death should have no place in our public discourse, much less be sharing the stage with a major party’s presidential candidates.”
“If Cruz, Huckabee and Jindal are serious about wanting to hold the nation’s highest office,” Keegan said, “they should back out of this conference and denounce the extremism of its organizer.” People For the American Way
Surely even to attend the conference, let alone speak at it, is an endorsement of far right religious nutbags that have no place in Washington?
I still get blown away by the internet at times. This occasion is no different. Early animation included a viewing device called a "Phenakistoscope" which somehow or other used a spinning disk and a mirror to create the perceptions of motion. This site has a whole bunch of them that have been digitised as gif's. This is the first one at the link, titled Happy Halloween, 1833. Amazing.
More love from the bloody christians..... So a christian school in Western Australia did this to the child of a gay couple:
A 7 year old girl attending Foundation Christian College in Mandurah spoke about her family at school. Her father is gay and in a same-sex relationship. Her father was told by the principal, Andrew Newhouse, that had they known about his sexual orientation when she was enrolled, they would never have accepted her as a student. The principal also warned that the child could not speak about her father's relationship with a man as this was seen as promoting homosexuality and that if other parents complained about his daughter she would be asked to leave. Her father removed her from the school rather than having to live with the threat of expulsion if she accidentally spoke about her family. It's a sad story for the little girl involved, but what's most shocking is that educational institutions established for religious purposes can freely discriminate against someone on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender history. petition about it here
Bloody lovely isn't it :s The girl is only 7 FFS, and the school is chucking a hissy fit about what her parents do in the privacy of their own bedrooms.
Many of these religious colleges receive public secular money to educate children. Surely they should be accountable to the public if they continue to hold outdated and discriminatory religious views on sexuality. My opinion is they should all be told to either stop discriminating or don't take any more tax payer's money. Why should they have it both ways? Is this the way we want to treat 7 year old children in 2015 Australia? Vote no here.
This is outrageous. And for it to happen in a so called gay friendly country that the US tries to be is even worse. I've said before here that the Sydney LGBT have a long history of difficulty with the New South Wales police, even with the Mardi Gras starting as a protest march and ending up in a cop free for all of gay bashing. The police are much friendlier now, but it has come at a constant struggle. Recent Mardi Gras parades have seen more excesses of police power and violence. To address such a situation there has been liaison between the police and the gay community to come together in agreement about policing in eastern Sydney. One of the recommendations was to not have homophobic police dealing with the LGBT. It's just in no way an acceptable situation. So in this case an obviously homophobic cop, off duty but still in uniform, took offence to a lesbian couple kissing in a supermarket that he was in ("religious freedom" anyone?). The Huffington post continues the story. Honestly, it reads like something out of one of those gay hate countries:
They were walking through the aisles holding hands and at one point hugged and kissed, the lawsuit said:
Officer Bobby Harrison, who was shopping in uniform, "observed their consensual romantic contact and, in a loud voice, ordered plaintiffs to stop and 'take it somewhere else.'"
The women complied and continued shopping, the lawsuit said.
When Harrison again saw them being affectionate with each other, he threatened to have them thrown out of the store.
"We're used to people making remarks here and there," Wilson said of their two-year relationship.
While the women were in the check-out line, Harrison grabbed Wilson by the wrist, and she started to call 911, she said.
"He was bumping his belly against Courtney," Guerrero said. "He said, 'you girls don't know how to act. You don't know the difference between a motel and a grocery store.'"
When Guerrero tried to get in between her girlfriend and the officer, he shoved her. She kicked him as she was falling, she said.
"The whole situation got physical," Wilson said. "I got punched in the face by him."
Because Harrison didn't have any handcuffs on him, store employees helped restrain the women, as customers watched. "You can't really blame them for not getting involved," Wilson said of the bystanders. Huffington Post
Gay men died of AIDS because a virus sneaked into their bodies. Just as straight people did. HIV doesn't discriminate. People do. Here this christian bloke blames gays for dying of AIDS, saying "The reason they died is because they chose to have sex with men", putting the blame squarely with them. How vile it is to blame someone for illness.
The logic (if you can call it that) goes like this. God changes climate not man. We are being told climate has no borders. Therefore climate change is a conspiracy to bring in a one world government. Which the antichrist will lead. The stupidity is mind boggling.
The prime minister of Fiji Frank Bainimarama, has launched a blistering attack on industrialised nations, and in particular Australia and the Lieberal love for coal. He has demanded there be a moratorium on any new coal mines and for Australia to move from coal to clean renewable energy, citing the very survival of Pacific island nations. He also notes the groundswell of public opinion in Australia against coal, and the 61 prominent Australians who want to stop all new coal mines in Australia.
Yet, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen. I fear that the Small Island Developing States - and least developed nations the world over – are destined to leave the French capital empty handed. I fear that our interests are about to be sacrificed. That might will triumph over reason. Over justice.
This will happen even though the argument for urgent and decisive action is unassailable. Three of our Pacific neighbours – Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands – are destined to physically sink beneath the waves altogether. Other nations will lose large tracts of arable coastal land. And we will all be more vulnerable to the extreme weather events that already come out of nowhere, kill our people and ravage our economies. All because of the inaction and gross irresponsibility of what I have unashamedly called “the coalition of the selfish”.
Even our nearest developed neighbours – Australia and New Zealand – have failed to back us in this struggle. The Australian Government, in particular, seems intent on putting its own immediate economic interests first. The Lucky Country determined to stay lucky, at least for the short term, at the expense of its unlucky island neighbours.
To Malcolm Turnbull, the new Australian Prime Minister, I want to send a special plea. Make good on your previous strong stance in favour of deep and binding cuts in carbon emissions. Do not do deals with those who have enabled you to gain high office and betray your principles and our position.
I implore you to put our welfare and our very existence as Pacific islanders before your energy sector. I implore you to highlight to your people that such economic practices are only for short term gain and not sustainable economically and environmentally. Thereby undermining future growth potential. I urge you to impose a moratorium on the development of further reserves of Australian coal. It is the dirtiest of energy sources. And there is no place for it in a world that desperately needs cleaner energy to halt the present rate of global warming.
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am very encouraged by the recent groundswell of public opinion within Australia calling for a ban on new coalmines and the expansion of existing ones. This includes an appeal by 61 prominent Australians published yesterday for such a ban to be placed firmly on the agenda of the Paris summit. And for the carbon reduction targets contained in the Suva Declaration to be adopted by the entire world.
I urge you, Mr Turnbull, to heed that call. And to side with us in the Pacific against the proponents of coal and the climate change deniers in your own government. You have shown leadership on this issue before. Now that you have the job of prime minister and can really make a difference, please show leadership again. Fiji gov
More love from the christians..... This is Ted Cruz's father, Pastor Rafael Cruz, father to Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz. Here he asserts that gays are in an evil plot to legalise pedophilia.
LGBT activists’ next goal is legalizing pedophilia, Pastor Rafael Cruz — father of Republican senator and presidential candidate Ted Cruz — told BuzzFeed News on Wednesday. “I think that’s the next thing that they’re going to push, to try to legalize pedophiles,” Cruz said. “Pedophilia, you have all these laws to forget about — we have laws on the books about statutory rape. You have to basically throw away the statutory rape laws to legalize pedophilia.” Buzzfeed
The Turnbull veneer is starting to look a touch faded.
So Turnbull has kept Abbott's vile "stop the boats" border policy, which has now reached the point of a case being made in the Hague's International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, and most recently the UN Human Rights Commission has demanded Australia address the conditions in it's Nauru asylum seeker gulag. As if that's not bad enough, now Abbott has used a speech in England to praise his "stop the boats" policy and recommended Europe take it up to address their border concerns, least the flood of humanity created by the west bombing Syria and failing in Iraq and Afghanistan wash across their shores. FFS, could it get any worse than that? So what does Turbull do to Abbott, now a backbencher who has chosen to represent Australia to Europe by preaching racism and xenophobia? He praises Abbott. Turnbull is really starting to look like a lemon in a nice suit. Come on Malcolm, get real. No more Mr nice guy. Deal with fuckwit Abbott. The electorate will praise you for it.
Now Mr Abbott has taken his twisted logic and flawed morality to the international stage, audaciously lecturing other nations about their handling of the refugee crisis, saying European governments have been too compassionate, and narcissistically claiming the challenge can be solved with an Australian-style closure of borders. Oh, and also by going to war.
And what was the Prime Minister’s response?
According to media reports, he declined to reprimand Mr Abbott for meddling in the affairs of other sovereign nations, and defaulted to praising the man who should be a pariah with the claim the former PM’s views are “in hot demand everywhere in the world”.
How does that lame response fit with Mr Turnbull’s pre-coup promise of a style of leadership that respects the people’s intelligence? The New Daily
Amnesty International claims to have new damning evidence that people smugglers were paid $32,000 to go back to Indonesia. If this is so it would mean Australian officials were complicit in the very crime the gov was claiming to be stopping by the "stop the boats" mantra. Amnesty is now demanding a Royal Commission into operation sovereign borders.
This is Abbott's suposed successful border protection policy he's been telling the Europeans about.
Far from saving lives and stopping people smuggling, we have strong evidence that Operation Sovereign Borders officials have endangered and abused people seeking asylum and illegally paid for people smuggling.
In May, border officials intercepted a boat with 65 people seeking asylum, including a pregnant woman and 3 small children. Video footage and witness testimonies indicate that officials paid the crew US$32,000 to return to Indonesia with their passengers where they risk further abuse and are unable to rebuild their lives.
This could constitute funding people smuggling and is the very act that the government is claiming to combat.
Sadly, our evidence suggests this isn’t the only time our government have grossly abused their power under the banner of Operation Sovereign Borders.
This is not right. We must hold our leaders to account.
Officials must also answer to allegations of abuse and endangerment of the passengers seeking asylum.
After paying-off the crew, our research indicates that officials unlawfully detained the men, women and children in hot, overcrowded cells for a week.
The passengers were then moved onto two ill-equipped boats bound for Indonesia.
Just when Australia thought it was safe from Abbott, Abbott goes over to England and opens his fuckin mouth. OMG it's an absolute clanger too. A real cringe moment when you want to reach through the internet and slap his gormless face. So Abbott, his Australia asylum seeker stopping the boats policy is pretty much in tatters. Truth is he never stopped them, just didn't report new ones being intercepted. Currently what's left of Team Abbott under Turnbull has raised the ire of the UN human rights commission, which has demanded action on it's Nauru gulag. There's also the case building in the Hague at the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity over it all. But that doesn't worry Abbott. According to him it's that pesky conscience and human kindness getting in the way of his "stop the boats" sloganeering. And that thing that Australia is a multicultural society with the highest number of immigrants per capita in the world, enriching us and making us stronger as a nation. No according to him the more immigrants a country takes the weaker it gets. WTF?
Australians across the country are now shaking their head in despair. FFS will someone bring the village idiot home? We're missing ours. We think he's gone rouge.
He used the occasion to promote the Coalition's hardline asylum seeker policies as a solution to Europe's migrant crisis, which has seen hundreds of thousands of people, mainly from the Middle East, cross into the continent.
He urged regional leaders to act by "turning around boats [and] denying entry at the border for people with no right to come".
"It will require some force, it will require massive logistics and expense; it will gnaw at our consciences," Mr Abbott said.
"Yet it is the only way to prevent a tide of humanity surging through Europe and quite possibly changing it forever."
He outlined his concern that "misguided altruism" was "...leading much of Europe into catastrophic error".
"No country or continent can open its borders to all comers without fundamentally weakening itself," he said.
He cautioned, "too much mercy for some necessarily undermines justice for all".ABC
Turnbull appears to have his hands tied with marriage equality because of his deal to oust Abbott. He's stuck with Abbott's stupid plebiscite idea, to get the people to do the politicians job for them. A very unpopular thing to do. Bill Shorten has written a piece for the papers pointing out just how unpopular a plebiscite would be for the LGBT. I wonder how straight people would feel having a national debate about whether they should be treated as equally as everyone else in the community. Whether their love for their partner is real or not. Or whether because of their sexuality rights should be denied them.
But I don't think enough attention has been paid to the biggest risk a plebiscite brings – the danger and the damage of unleashing a divisive, drawn-out debate.
A plebiscite could act as a lightning rod for the very worst of the prejudice so many LGBTI Australians endure. A platform for people to attack, abuse and demean Australians on the basis of who they love.
The fact is, casual, unthinking discrimination and deliberate, malicious homophobia are still far too common in our society.
It's not confined to keyboard warriors and Twitter trolls. It's in our schoolyards, our workplaces, our sporting clubs. This takes a heavy toll on mental health, particularly for young people.
Two out of five young Australians who are gay have thought about self-harm or suicide.
A young Australian who identifies as gay is six times more likely to consider taking their own life, compared to their sibling, classmate, colleague or teammate.
It's especially hard for young gay people in our regions and the bush where physical remoteness can aggravate a sense of isolation. sydneymorningherald
The United Nations office for the high commissioner of human rights has demanded the Australian gov take urgent action for the rape victim "Abyan", who was returned to Nauru without treatment for her pregnancy from the rape. They have been in direct contact with her. They also voice strong concerns about the ongoing treatment of asylum seekers on the island, citing further sexual assaults with seeming impunity by the perpetrators. Will Turnbull act? Or will his gov simply tell the UN to fuck off as Team Abbott did? The damage Team Abbott did to Australia is still unfolding. Here is the UN press release:
Spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: Rupert Colville Location: Geneva Date: 27 October 2015 Subject: Nauru / Australia
We call upon Australia and Nauru to urgently provide a decent option for 'Abyan,' (the pseudonym of a Somali refugee) to obtain adequate mental and physical care and to terminate her pregnancy if she desires. Abyan was allegedly raped in Nauru in July, and is now 15 weeks pregnant as a result. She was returned 11 days ago from Australia to Nauru, without a termination having taken place.
OHCHR has been in direct contact with her. Abyan is in a very fragile mental and physical condition and is deeply traumatised by her experiences since the day of the alleged rape. She has refused to give information to the Nauru police about her attacker because she is understandably afraid of reprisals. She does not feel safe, given that her alleged attacker lives on Nauru, which is a very small island State with a population of around 10,000. OHCHR is concerned about reports that the Nauru police have failed to take action against alleged perpetrators of violence against women, particularly when the victims have been asylum seekers and refugees.
We are aware of a growing number of sexual assault and rape allegations since Australia restarted its policy of transferring asylum seekers to Nauru for processing in 2012. For instance, one Iranian asylum seeker was allegedly sexually assaulted last May. She was subsequently evacuated to Australia where she is still receiving medical treatment for both mental and physical consequences of the ordeal. Her brother and mother, however, have been left behind on Nauru and do not know when they will be able to reunite with her. Another Somali refugee has claimed that she was raped in August. The police report, which included the name of the alleged victim and details about the rape allegation, was inappropriately given to the media. No one has been arrested in any of these cases.
OHCHR is very disturbed by this trend, since impunity for such serious crimes increases the risk they will be repeated. It is a matter of particular concern that asylum-seeker and refugee women who have allegedly been raped or sexually assaulted are left in unsafe conditions, given their own vulnerable status and the close proximity of their attackers, and tend to be stigmatized by the population and by members of the Nauru police force. Women are also less likely to speak out if they fear reprisals and see little-to-no chance of justice being done.
This is so very well put together. The quintessential list of Abbott's gaffes and fuck ups. An excellent watch.
I read today an opinion piece that Australians are suffering post traumatic shock after two years of Abbott. I think that's very true. Indeed he must surely go down in history as the most bumbling, stupid, village idiot of a prime minister Australia's ever had.
It was a terrible dark time in our history. Whatever happens from here, nothing could ever come close to prime minister Abbott's reign of buffoonery. That's not the right word, but really are there any words to describe what we went through under him?
This video is very comprehensive, but in reality it just scratches the surface. We would go daily wondering what next nightmare would come out of his vacuous mind. Today we are still getting used to being able to go to bed at night and not wake up to one of these nightmares flooding the news.
Turnbull's lame assed love affair with coal is just not good enough. His attempts to push forward a new biggest coal mine in the southern hemisphere transporting it through the Great Barrier Reef just before the Paris climate talks are stupid in the extreme. Yet the market's aren't listening to the ideologues any more. The writing is on the wall for coal, and those who want to invest in big new coal ventures will find themselves investing in useless stranded assets. Now 61 prominent Australians have written to the Paris climate talks to get the Turnbull gov on the agenda there and pressure it to stop building these stupid coal mines.
Backed by green and social action organisations, the 61 eminent persons have signed an open letter featured in full-page advertisements in Fairfax Media newspapers, calling on the host of the December talks, French President Francois Hollande, and Mr Turnbull to oppose new coal developments - including the Carmichael mine in Queensland's Galilee Basin.
The Paris climate change meeting is the largest global gathering on the environment since the Copenhagen summit in 2009, which ended in widespread disappointment.
The signatories, which include erstwhile Australians of the year Professors Fiona Stanley, Peter Doherty and Tim Flannery as well as one time Reserve Bank Governor Bernie Fraser, current Wallabies flanker Pocock and Anglican churchman Bishop George Browning, have called on Mr Turnbull and other world leaders to recognise that it is not just the fossil fuels a country burns for its own energy that matters, but those dug up for export to others.
"We, the undersigned, urge you to put coal exports on the agenda at the 2015 Paris COP21 climate summit and to help the world's governments negotiate a global moratorium on new coal mines and coal mine expansions, as called for by President Anote Tong of the Republic of Kiribati, and Pacific Island nations," the 61 say.
CanberraTimes
Well, Team Abbott appears to still have it's tentacles in the Lieberal gov of Turnbull. In fact Turnbull was very close to Abbott's "coal is good for humanity" assertion. He said this:
Turnbull instead told them their idea was wrong-headed, arguing there are no moral properties to different energy sources - they are just "things" and things with various physical properties.
"Coal is a very important part, a very large part, the largest single part in fact, of the global energy mix and likely to remain that way for a very long time, so that's not my forecast but the International Energy Agency's forecasts and many others so coal is a very important part of the agenda."
canberratimes
So there you have it folks. Coal is "very important" and will be here "for a very long time" according to Turnbull. Nothing appears to have changed.
Is it just that I'm well on the way to being an old fart, or is there something more significant wrong? With chronic illness a question like that can be quite common. My wife used to say the worst thing about illness is not knowing what exactly it is if something new comes along.
Anyway I've been getting a bit worried lately about my seemingly worsening health. Have had to spend most of the day in bed yet again today after taking my pills in the morning. All ten of them. Felt dizzy and really sick. Entirely unpleasant :( Managed to keep the pills down but chucked up about three hours after taking them.
The latest addition to them was the gout thing, which you have to start at a low dose for some reason. They don't appear to be doing much but I'm told it takes a while for them to work.
Then I have to see the doctor next month for the results of my cholesterol, which mysteriously is sky high. I say mysteriously as I've never had high cholesterol before, and I eat all the same stuff as David and his is fine. So iot looks like another pill fopr that.
That'll make a grand total of 12 for the day. It's a wonder I don't rattle.
What's this? Fawlty Towers building? The Lieberals had a media event, supposedly of a hospital's first concrete pour. So they dig a hole and poured concrete for the cameras. The hole was filled in later the same day :s
The cost so far for the hospital? $56 million. For a hole filled in..... Here's the hospital so far. This is what you get for $56 million:
Palmerston Hospital's contentious concrete pour "media stunt" has drawn in the Federal Opposition, which says the Commonwealth gave the Northern Territory $35 million to build the hospital based on construction milestones that are now in dispute, including a "stairway to nowhere".
In response, the federal Department of Health said the money was paid on October 7, more than a week before the NT Government held a press conference to mark the first concrete pour at the hospital site — a long-awaited project due to have begun in 2014.
At the time, NT Health Minister John Elferink described the pour as a "major landmark".
But five days later the slab has been covered with dirt.
According to Labor's Luke Gosling, the Opposition candidate for the federal seat of Solomon currently held by the Liberal's Natasha Griggs, the hole was filled in the same day as the media event.
Labor's federal health spokesperson Catherine King described the pouring of concrete at the base of the stairwell as a "stairway to nowhere". ABC
Of course the elephant in the room is Adani in Australia. The latest on that is that Turnbull wants to use taxpayer's money to prop it up. However this latest report out of the US shows a massive $2.6 Trillion of fossil fuel assets have been committed to be dumped by divestment.
To date,
436 institutions and 2,040 individuals across 43 countries and representing $2.6
trillion in assets have committed to divest from fossil fuel companies.
The divestment
movement has grown exponentially since Climate Week in September 2014, when Arabella
Advisors last reported that 181 institutions and 656 individuals representing over $50 billion
in assets had committed to divest. At that time, divestment advocates pledged to triple these
numbers by the December 2015 Paris UN climate negotiations. Three months before the
negotiations,
we have already witnessed a fifty-fold increase in the total combined assets of
those committed to divest from fossil fuels.Measuring the Growth of the Global Fossil Fuel Divestment and Clean Energy Investment Movement
A study commissioned by major auto manufacturers has found that young people want to buy electric cars instead of petrol. The highest number is in the 14 year old age group, of which 81% of them want their first car to be electric.
Maybe then the west will get the fuck out of the Middle East.
It would appear we are in good hands, as a new study conducted on kids aged 14 to 17 shows that the vast majority of them plan on buying an electric car as their first vehicle purchase.
The internal combustion engine (ICE) is apparently living its last decades, as more and more signs seem to point toward its ultimate demise. Yesterday, Toyota announced that it would cut its CO2 emissions by 90% by 2050, which means giving up on cars using ICEs other than as range extending generators for the electric motors on just some of their models.
Today, a study conducted in the UK shows that no less than eight in ten (81%) 14-year-olds intend to buy an EV when the time to own a car comes. That percentage decreases as the age of the respondents grows, but it remains over 50 percent. Autoevolution
SSJoe accused new mothers of "fraud" when he wanted to stop them from accessing both the gov and privately funded paid parental leave schemes, even though the schemes were set up with just that in mind. This was at the same time as he was charging taxpayers to stay in his wife's Canberra home. Now if he heads to Washington as our new glorious ambassador, rules changed in 2010 mean that he can still get 50% of his parliamentary pension even though he's still working. It's one rule for the unrepresentative swill, and another rule for the rest of us.
Joe Hockey has been labelled a “double-dipper” and called on to reject his $90,000-a-year parliamentary pension while he collects a $360,000 a year in wages if he is appointed as ambassador to the United States.
Just days after saying in his farewell speech to parliament that Australians should “live within our means” to end “the age of entitlement”, it was revealed that Mr Hockey’s taxpayer-funded income could top $450,000 a year, substantially more than he earned as Treasurer.
On Sunday, independent senator Nick Xenophon said he wanted to help the former Treasurer achieve his aspiration of ending the age of entitlement by saying no to his pension.
“I just want to help Joe Hockey fulfil his dream of ending the age of entitlement by Joe Hockey setting an example for the rest of us,” Mr Xenophon said.
“What Joe Hockey can do is to refuse to accept his parliamentary pension in addition to getting $330,000 [$360,000] a year as ambassador.”
Senator Xenophon told reporters that if Mr Hockey doesn’t co-operate, he would draft a bill to stop politicians collecting their pensions while taking up diplomatic posts. At present, Mr Hockey would be entitled to both the pension and the ambassador’s salary.
According to rules enacted in 2010, the former Treasurer is entitled to 50 per cent of his parliamentary pension should he take a diplomatic posting – for Mr Hockey this would be a reported $90,000 per year.
Mr Hockey and his wife Melissa Babbage enjoy a reported net personal wealth of more than $10 million, thanks to owning various multi-million-dollar properties. New Daily
Latest dialysis and no migraine. Whew. Have dropped to 72.5 kilos after this session so slowly getting back to normal weight. Doc says he is...
About me
After 30 years of very physical full time work in the printing industry our print dept was outsourced and we all lost our jobs. As I'd gotten HIV beforehand and was having trouble attending and doing work I discussed with my HIV doctor whether I should apply for the Australian Disability Support Pension. He agreed,and I became a DSP pensioner under the new Gillard rules of adherence that now sees 75% of DSP applicants rejected.
Have been diagnosed with PTSD, severe depression, chronic kidney failure, and of course HIV. I'd become suicidal in 2009 after 3 extreme life events in a row; My best friend killed herself in the US (I don't make friends easily BTW), my teenage/young adult daughter had me charged by the police with a minor problem, and I was diagnosed with HIV. All in three weeks.
Some say god won't give you more than you can bear, my reply is "Well what happened to me?" If not for the HIV support here in Australia and me being able to have access to it I'd likely be dead by now. Unbearable pain often causes suicide, no matter physical or mental.
Today I've not worked since being made redundant. I remain with episodes of depression and panic attacks, sometimes severe. I may be fine and happy to leave the house, at times I'm paralised in bed, secure and safe and not willing to face the world.
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