Category: thus far…
Hot on the heals of Deputy Prime Minister, Wayne Swan’s revelations about the inspiration to him that is Bruce Springsteen, Tony Abbott, Federal Opposition leader and former Director of Australians for Consitutional Monarchy, has come out swinging, expressing his eternal adoration of 50’s US singing sensation, Pat Boone:
“Pat’s moral compass was evident, his course set. He navigated fame and stardom with sincerity and panache. I uhmm mean, quite frankly, he is sheer, uhmm, talent as a singer and actor, combined with his old-fashioned values, contributing to his popularity…”
Touching on Boone’s role as a cheerleader for fascist US politicians, Mr Abbott added:
“At the end of the day, Patty campaigned for Ronald Reagan to become Governor of California in 1966 and 1970, and actively supported Ronnie’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination in ’76. He was quite frankly absolutely right in arguing that Democrats and others who were against the president during the Iraq War could be questioned for their patriotism.[24] On Fox News he often had the courage and fortitude to express his outrage toward opponents of George W. Bush He said that their criticisms of the president showed they did not “respect their elders”
Boone’s spokesperson, Ben Harridan, was unavailable for comment.
‘The wrecking by Rumsfeld of Iraq and Afghanistan, two countries that had not and could not have done us the slightest harm. Simultaneously as their cities were being knocked down at enormous expense to us, the tax payers, contracts were being given to the vice-president’s company, Halliburton, to rebuild those same cities that his colleague at the Defense Department had knocked down. This is a win-win situation for the higher corruption that governs us.’
Gore Vidal
Point to Point Navigation, 2006.
Belarus has now vowed to hold accountable those involved in parachuting teddy bears from a Swedish plane with slogans of human rights into the country, after initially denying their existence. Now there are fears for young journalist Anton Suryapin. Andrei Aliaksandrau reports for the Index on Censorship, (26/07/12):
Belarus has finally admitted the flight of a small Swedish plane that parachuted teddy bears into the country (as reported by Index on Censorship) did happen. The authorities had previously denied the incident had taken place, in spite of video evidence. President Lukashenko promised today that “the ones to blame will be punished”. He did not mention, though, if Anton Suryapin, a journalist who has been detained as a result of the case, will be among those appointed to be “to blame”.
Suryapin, 20, is being held at the KGB detention centre in Minsk for posting pictures of the bears on his website. Around 1,000 “plush paratroopers” were parachuted over Belarus earlier in July from a plane flown from Lithuania by members of Swedish advertising agency Studio Total; each of the toys held a small poster with slogans in support of human rights and the freedom of expression in the country. The government has allegedly accused the journalist of assisting the breach of the state border.
“This case demonstrates that Belarus remains one of the most hostile media environments on earth, where law enforcement is used to silence free voices,” Index on Censorship said in a statement today.
Index on Censorship also called on the authorities of Belarus to immediately release Anton Suryapin and return his professional equipment confiscated by the KGB.
There is little information on the development of the case. According to the Belarusian law, the prosecution has 10 days to bring official criminal charges to a suspect. As the 10-day limit on detention without charge has passed, it may mean official criminal charges have been brought against the young journalist.
Andrei Aliaksandrau is Index on Censorship’s Belarus and OSCE Programme Officer
Hey Milt, sir, howdeedoodlee?
4th quater earnings wayyyy off. We needta work harder and smarter, Larry. Harder and smarter.
Milt, sir, iya, I have a kinda neat proposal to realise your direction….implement immediate cessation of discretionary leezure time at plant C.
Keep talkin, keep talkin Larry. I’m kinda…
And, and in addition to the cessation of discretionary leezure, we can enhance the plant C iSlave diet with MOERP…
MOERP?
motiv-ation-al optimum efficiency realisation powder…
Motivational opti…powder….for the iSlave function enhancement?
Sir, Milt, sir…heck, that’s affirmative.
Pop me the topline on current iSlave time and motion…
Yesssir, Milt sir…presto pronto…
Opinion: Bailed-out banks facilitate $21tn offshore cash hoard
July 23rd, 2012 | by Nick Mathiason | Published in All Stories, Views from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (+ another jfreos pic)
Investigative economist James Henry exhaustively trawled through financial information held by the IMF, World Bank, Bank for International Settlements, central banks and national treasuries to come up with the most definitive report ever written on the super-rich and offshore wealth.
Henry’s Price of Offshore Revisted report, commissioned by Tax Justice Network, shows:
– between $21 trillion and $32 trillion of financial assets is owned by High Net Worth Individuals in tax havens. This does not include real estate, art or jewels.
– a conservative 3% return on that $21tn taxed at 30% would generate $189bn – a figure easily eclipsing what OECD industrialised nations spend on overseas development aid.
– the top 50 private banks collectively managed more than $12.1tn in cross-border invested assets for private clients, including their trusts. This is up from $5.4tn in 2005.
– fewer than 10 million members of the global super-rich have amassed a $21tn offshore fortune. Of these, less than 100,000 people worldwide own $9.8tn of wealth held offshore.
Accompanying the Price of Offshore Revisited is a separate paper (which I co-wrote). It reveals that data used by individual countries to assess the gap between rich and poor is inaccurate. And as a result, inequality is far more extreme than policymakers realise. This is because economists calculating inequality fail to include the vast majority of offshore cash in their findings. So the wealthy are far better off than the studies suggest.
In Inequality: you don’t know the half of it, eight of the world’s leading economists were asked whether offshore wealth was largely excluded from inequality studies. Ranging from the World Bank’s acting chief economist to academics at the Paris School of Economics and the Brookings Institute in the US, they all confirmed this was the case.
Click above to view new and fabo vimeo short of Earth from space – (we’re working on the embed view).
“We used to think that climate worked like a dial – slow to heat up and slow to cool down – but we’ve since learned that it can also act like a switch.”
Laurence C Smith, Professor of Earth and Space sciences, UCLA.
Climate change very slow but real. So far all cures worse than disease. Shale gas huge breakthrough for US. Half carbon of coal and oil.
(via the aptly named Twitter)
Mott Rimney?
Mett Rimnoy?
Ok, let’s just call the fucker “Mitt Romney”.
The latest disgraceful episode of sex crimes against children by Catholic priests and their covering up and inaction by the church hierarchy including Cardinal Pell, has again failed to awaken police, courts or legislators to the need to bring churches in Australia under the rule of law.
How many more atrocities against children will be allowed because politicians are too afraid to take on the mainstream religions which happily involve themselves in sexual politics being debated in our parliaments yet call for separation of powers to enable them to keep their criminal behaviour hidden from the public view?
It is not only the Taliban who continue to carry on practices and prejudices that belong to the Dark Ages of human history. The Christian Churches continue to discriminate against women and homosexuals in ways that are considered to be unlawful and a breach of human rights by our national laws and conventions.
What other organisations are allowed to prevent women from attaining the highest levels of office, or in the case of the Catholic Church, any level of office. The same discrimination applies to homosexuals who are even denied the right of full participation as lay members of the church.
Thank goodness they don’t practice female circumcision.
The question needs to be asked, what constitutes a church? Is it a hierarchy of priests or is it the body of worshippers? After all did not Christ say, “Do not set your-self up and call yourself father”
I cannot think of any other organisation that can insist that its workers, paid or unpaid, must be male and must not be married. If priests are not workers, what is their status and to whom must they answer?
This leads to more questions such as, does the state have the constitutional power to force the church to conform to the laws of the state? And who is responsible for ensuring compliance?
The practice or doctrine of forced chastity on young men wanting to be priests is cruel, stupid and abhorrent, and to my mind sets in place a dangerous set of circumstances for both the psychological health of young priests and the safety of children in their care.
For the many lives lost and for the many brutalised children, the Australian Government must summon the courage to end the appalling criminal homophobic and inhumane practices of the Christian Churches in this country.
Their criminal behaviour, cover-ups and contempt for state law rivals the outlaw bikie gangs that seek to be a law unto them-selves.
“Throughout the world now there is a gradual movement towards seeking a more compassionate way of living. Although we’ve learned that we can build efficient systems, cut our costs and do things increasingly cheaply, this is not a very pleasant way to live. We can end up in an efficient world that is uninhabitable – except for the relatively few wealthy.”
Professor Paul Gilbert, University of Derby and director of Derbyshire Mental Health Trust (UK)
“In a stalled economy, in a period of public discontent, in a dead heat less than five months out, Romney is primed for a victory in November. But it won’t come by default.” (the Caucasian, 13/6/12)
Ben Harridan filed his copy. Heck, he was breathless. He had such a warm, almost euphoric sensation as he dispatched. This business of his felt good again…darn good. “Rootin’ for Mitt! Mitt Romney USA…and all the way!” he exclaimed.
As is his usual custom upon concluding a significant piece, he ripped the lid off his tupperware container with his right hand and high fived his freshly ironed pair of socks. “rock ‘n roll”, Janette…Janette, get me…get me Turk Thrust. Ya know…Turk in the Romney camp…
“Turk, Turk it’s Ben here. Ben Harridan calling from Oz…”
Ben. Ben! Buddy. Ben, howarya?
“Tip top, Turk. Tip top.”
Greyate, Benn. Now, what can we dooo fir ya?
“Splashed with “Romney primed for victory”
Good boy, Ben. Heck, ma freyend, we won’t forget ya…
“Do you think MR will see my piece, Turk? Will he, will he…will he?…”
Will he? well, ….
(TBC)
Appearing on The Julian Assange Show late June 2012, alongside renowned linguist and political theorist Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali argues that the “infectious” Arab Spring has spread to the US and Russia, and is still underway. Criticising the “extreme centre”, a political consensus of centrist neoliberal orthodoxy that destroys political diversity and opposition, Ali talks about how the speed and flair of the Arab Spring caught everyone, from dictators and their sponsors to the Western media, by surprise.
Banks and insurers are are severely under-performing when it comes to transparency, according to a report from anti-corruption NGO Transparency International.
‘Transparency in Corporate Reporting: Assessing the World’s Largest Companies’, published today, examines the policies of the 105 largest, publicly-traded companies around the world.
Companies were awarded a score between 0 and 10, with 0 being the least transparent.Financial institutions scored a very low 2.3 on Transparency International’s country-by-country reporting.
13 of the 24 financial institutions disclosed no information at all on a country-by-county basis, and six disclosed almost nothing.
Banks also scored badly on reporting on their anti-corruption policies, compared to the other industry groups:
Amongst the 24 financial institutions assessed by the NGO is UK bank Barclays. The bank, which scored 4.0 overall, has recently been at the centre of the Libor rate-fixing scandal. They are ranked 71st out of the 105 companies.
The human race was dying out
No one left to scream and shout
People walking on the moon
Smog gonna get you pretty soon
Ship of fools, ship of fools. Ship of fools, ship of fools…
(Jim Morrison)
A Journey From the Higgs Bosun to Extinction:
This week the media exultantly praised the brilliant scientific work that has resulted in the finding of the elusive “God Particle” or the Higgs Bosun. The Australian media is also trumpeting their own success at undermining the equally brilliant scientific work of climate scientists in making us aware that by failing to deal with man made global warming we are on the path to our own extinction.
According to recent polls, Australians who once strongly supported government action on climate change now oppose a tax that has been put on carbon emissions into the atmosphere. This is despite the tax being imposed on only the largest emitters of carbon, and despite householders being compensated for cost rises caused by the tax.
It also disregards the strong probability that the early embracing of low carbon technology will put more money in the pockets of Australians than by continuing on our current high carbon pathway.
To achieve these negative polls the mainstream media has lent their support to the deceitful campaigns of shock jocks and avaricious coal barons aimed at denigrating the findings of climate scientists. These findings show that we are already locked into damaging and highly expensive levels of climate change.
While denying the science, they studiously ignore the economic analysis that shows that a carbon tax is the cheapest and most effective method of reducing carbon related climate change.
Disregarding the rapid increase in plant an animal extinctions which point to to our own demise, the media focus on short term impacts and the cost of the tax on consumers, and selected businesses that are high energy users. In doing so they only look at one side of the climate balance sheet.
To balance the ledger, here are just a few of the massive costs of not dealing with the human related causes of climate change:
In reducing carbon emissions we also reduce the health bill from the health impacts of toxic pollutants billowing out of industrial chimneys.
In Europe this cost is estimated to be at least 102-169 billion Euro’s per annum. Furthermore only 2% of the facilities cause 50% of this health cost and these are the same type opf facilities targeted by Australia’s carbon tax. In the USA, air pollutants are estimated to reduce agricultural output by 4% per annum.
According to CSIRO, the human health cost is estimated at between A$3 billion and A$5.3 billion every year, and annual damage to materials, property and buildings is between A$3 billion and A$5 billion – one per cent of gross domestic profit (GDP).
The savings on avoiding adverse health impacts from pollution alone outweighs the cost of the carbon tax on the economy.
A rise in floods and other extreme weather events like those experienced across Australia has resulted in massive infrastructure damage that costs billions of dollars in crop losses and mineral production. Thousands of houses and their furnishings have been destroyed and as a result insurance premiums have risen massively.
Conversely extreme heat is causing more intense and more damaging bushfires than have occurred in the recorded past. As with the floods, many houses and lives were lost in bushfires, and again the cost was in the billions.
The result in the more frequent swings between El Niño and La Niña oceanic oscillations has been accompanied by an emerging pattern of major floods followed by years of extreme drought. This has caused havoc with horticulture and agriculture and with native vegetation and fauna. Even marine species are at threat with the warming of the ocean, the changes in ocean currents and the acidification of the marine environment.
In fact our whole ecosystem is teetering on the brink of a major collapse. To add to this massive problem for humanity their is a twenty to thirty year lag time in the conversion of CO2 in the atmosphere to a change in the climate.
The current impacts of global warming was caused by the CO2 levels of twenty years ago. With our current CO2 output, global warming will be significantly worse in twenty years time even if we reduced our emissions right now. But if we do not make a massive change there is a very bleak future for our grandchildren.
As Chief Seattle is reported to have said:
“Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find that money can not be eaten.”
While the enlightened continue to seek out the God particle, the ship of fools is sailing on a high wind. Blinded to the truth by the high priests of greed and selfishness they speed on to oblivion. Will you join them?
Greg Sheridan in the current Weakened Caucasian:
“ONE of the main reasons the Gillard government is so unsuccessful in selling its carbon tax is that its overall narrative is so utterly dishonest.”
Greg Sheridan has great insight into “utterly dishonest” narratives, as he himself pitches bullshit for a living. He was cheerleader for the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq; an obsequious apologist for the likes of Bliar, Cheney and George Dubya Bush too. There’s obviously a dollar or two in spouting such craven tripe, and he probably keeps an eager eye on Woopert’s twitter rants for inspiration.
The National Indigenous Radio Service Limited (NIRS) is a national service provided from a hub station residing in Brisbane. It networks material for Indigenous media organisations that don’t have the staffing or capital requirements to provide a 24-hour high quality broadcast to their audience.
Here at the interpretOr, we’ve now added NIRS to our friend & links menu – or, simply clickthrough here – great NIRS site features include live streaming and a weekly news review podcast. |
Romney people upset at me! Of course I want him to win, save us from socialism, etc but should listen to good advice and get stuck in!
(via the aptly named Twitter)
“In 1949, shortly after Israel’s War of Independence, the Hebrew writer S. Yizhar published a story that became an instant classic. “Khirbet Khizeh” is a fictionalized account of the destruction of a Palestinian village and the expulsion of all its inhabitants by Israeli soldiers in the course of the war. The narrator, a soldier in the unit that carries out the order, is sickened by what is being done to the innocent villagers. Sixty-three years have passed since Yizhar wrote “Khirbet Khizeh.” I wish I could say that what he described was an ugly exception and that such actions don’t happen any more. This week I find myself in Susya, in the South Hebron hills, whose inhabitants, if the Israeli Civil Administration gets its way, will be, quite literally, cast into the desert…”
story continues here at the New York Review of Books (please click)
A conversation with Nelson, on a Freo street corner:
“See that dog over there? Tied up for fuckin’ ages. The owner’s left ‘im. Hours! If ‘e comes back, I’ll thump ‘im.”
“I remember a dog on a beach, sometime in Asia. It was staked in the water so that it’d be half up to its ears at high tide. I shouted at the owner, he ran towards me and screamed…”
“If I was a dog, would you save me? ….Ma…dad chopped half his leg after he was taken away. 8 kids in our family. All gone. So where you from?”
“England”
“We was there. Brighton, Gloucester – real cold. An’ we went to South Africa.”
“God, what was that like?”
“My last name Nelson. Special in Africa….Ain’t nothing goin to happen to you here. You’re on sacred land.”
Current issue: July 2012
…Egypt in transition; Libya’s election; Europe, German fears; Norway a year on; who really rules Mexico? the Kazakhs speak out; China, where your iPad is made; Ecuador’s environmental misstep; special report, the cult of tourism; London’s summer of celebration…and more…
click here for stories (freely avail. in English from Le Monde)
“Le Monde diplomatique is a crusading voice in journalism with especially good foreign coverage”
William Dalrymple
(South Asia correspondent of the New Statesman)
Amidst the hoopla of the London Olympics, a new report by the (Amnesty International award-winning) Bureau of Investigative Journalism reveals that men in the more deprived parts of London are living up to 12 years less than those living in the wealthier boroughs.
The shocking disparity was revealed in a Bureau investigation into male health in the capital. It showed that a man in Queen’s Gate, in the borough of Kensington and Chelsea, lives to the average age of 88.3. But in Lewisham Central, South East London, life expectancy is only 70.8.
The poor life expectancy figures for men living in some parts of the capital was in sharp contrast to female life expectancy. In almost two-thirds (61%) of London’s wards, the gap between men and women’s life expectancy is wider than the national average of 4.1 years.
The national average of women’s life expectancy is 82.3 years; for men, it is 78.2 years – just over four years shorter. However, in London, the average life expectancy for men is 77.1 years, and for women it is 81.7 years – a wider gap of 4.6 years.
The gap is most notable in the more deprived parts of the capital, where women out-live men by more than 12 years.
In one ward in the heart of the city: Cathedrals, in Southwark, the Bureau found that women live on average 12.72 years longer than men. Men’s life expectancy there is 73.75 years, while women live on average until they are 86.47 years old. That’s worse than the average disparity between men and women in Russia, the country where relatively, men live the world’s second shortest lives compared to their female counterparts.[1]
June 25th, 2012 | by Dan Bell and Emma Slater @ The Bureau of Investigative Joirnalism –
[1] Source: WHO 2009 Life expectancy at birth (years) datahttp://apps.who.int/ghodata/?vid=710#
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Mick Gooda has expressed concern about mentally ill people being kept in jail after they have been ruled unfit to stand trial.
Four mentally disabled men are being kept in prison near Alice Springs, even though they have not been convicted of a crime.
Mr Gooda says there needs to be appropriate facilities and support outside of the prison system.
“People get caught up in a system where they are unfit to plead and therefore get immersed in things like the Mental Health Act,” he said.
“Because there are no appropriate places outside jail that is where they end up.
“There has to be support on the outside of prison systems to cope with this, but also there has to be some law reform around the Mental Health Act.” (ABC News 26/06/12)
[1] ‘Prisoners in Australia’, ABS 2007; ‘Population Distribution, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians’,
Read more: http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/law/aboriginal-prison-rates.html#ixzz1yxOpa1Hg
Retiring Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, lets rip at Old Etonian Cameron Toryism in his new book, Faith in the Public Square, excerpts of which are appearing in the Observer newspaper (UK):
“Practically speaking, at the individual and the national level, we have to question what we mean by growth. The ability to produce more and more consumer goods (not to mention financial products) is in itself an entirely mechanical measure of wealth.”
“By the hectic inflation of demand it creates personal anxiety and rivalry. By systematically depleting the resources of the planet, it systematically destroys the basis for long-term wellbeing. In a nutshell, it is investing in the wrong things.”
Afghan refugee, Arif Ruhani, shared his harrowing story with me in 2009. In April of that year there was a burning boat near Ashmore reef that reignited debate on refugee policy and responses. Then Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, acknowledged that deteriorating conditions, particularly in countries like Afghanistan and Sri Lanka, were causing people to flee their homelands.
Perhaps we need to ask ourselves as human beings, what would it be like for us if we awoke to the armies of the night? What would we do if we were no longer safe due to sporadic acts of violence, murder on our doorstep? What steps would we take to try and survive the carnage? What would we do to protect those that we love? We may find answers to some of these fundamental human questions in Arif’s candid and courageous account:
Arif Ruhani’s story begins in Afghanistan in 2001 when the Taliban seized control of Oruzgan Province. This was not a unified event as Mujahedeen factions were fighting between each other for power and populations were being murdered. His family became homeless and were displaced from village to village.
“We were trying to lead a ‘normal life’ after the Taliban came in to power and then the whole thing changed. The threat to our life was more imminent. They were killing people for no reasons, oppressing people and trying to make everyday life harder and harder. That was causing my family to choose for me to flee Afghanistan.”
The family pooled money for Arif to escape…”there was not even a single office in my area of any international government or organisation. Impossible.” His father made a deal with people smugglers on the ground in Afghanistan. Arif was then taken with a group of people to Pakistan and “from there my journey starts.”
Traveling under a false passport, he flew to Indonesia where he spent three months in hiding before boarding a small boat bound for Australia. Suitable for 20 people, but with 80 on board, the boat’s engines stopped working after 6 hours at sea. It was night and the vessel began taking on water. Two of his friends drowned before reaching land. Arif returned to Jakarta where other Afghan asylum seekers were arrested by Indonesian police. While there, he became aware of the Tampa Affair where in 2001, 400 asylum seekers were picked up from their sinking vessel by the Norwegian container ship Tampa and then refused entry to Australia. He also learned of the Howard Government’s Pacific Solution, which saw those refugees set offshore to places including Nauru.
“We heard the news about the Pacific Solution, about the (Australian) Government trying to stop people coming by boat, but we still had no choice. We couldn’t go back to Afghanistan”
After a month in hiding, he boarded another small boat that was soon intercepted off Christmas Island by a large Australian Customs vessel. Women and children were taken aboard the customs ship, while Arif and many other men were detained aboard their boat for 13 days…
“This was a really difficult part of my journey coming to Australia. We were prisoners. The fishing boat was very cramped. They didn’t allow us to move freely and we were watched the whole time. We even had to wait for permission to go to the toilet…some people that spoke out were then sleep deprived. It was like torture.”
The Australian authorities tried to fix the boat to send it back to Indonesia, but it started leaking and was deemed too dangerous. The remaining passengers were transferred to the customs ship and after two days, they were detained at Christmas Island detention centre, which was still being built at the time. After two months on Christmas Island, they were transferred to Nauru, arriving on December 22, 2001. They were initially interviewed by the Australian Department of Immigration and refused refugee status. Many people were wrongly classified as Pakistani, reportedly due to inept interpreters working for the Australian Government. Arif too was initially classified as Pakistani.
“Many of my friends were sent back to Afghanistan and were killed.”
So began a long period of detention on Nauru that was to last until June 2005. Over this period, Arif and other detainees had no access to telephones or the Internet; in fact, no access to the outside world. Arif estimates that there were over 100 children also in detention, ranging in age from 1 to 17 years old. One young boy was detained on Nauru, his mother had died and he was separated from his father who was in Australia under a Temporary Protection Visa (TPV). After three years, the boy was repatriated with his father.
The detention centre on Nauru was funded and administrated by a body called The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and Chubb were contracted for security. Arif said he and others were told repeatedly by Australian authorities (during the Howard years):
“If you don’t go back to Afghanistan, we will send you back by force.”
“We were living in constant fear of being deported by force”, said Arif. Many detainees arrived on Nauru with chronic PTSD (Post Traumatic stress Disorder), while others also developed other severe psychological problems and had no access to treatment. Hunger strikes were also symptomatic of people’s acute distress.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was finally able to visit detainees an Nauru in 2004. This prompted the Australian Department of Immigration to interview individual detainees – Arif was among 29 Afghan asylum seekers whose cases were rejected. He was told by Australian officials that they had reached a new agreement with the Afghan Government whereby he and other remaining Afghan refugees would be sent back. After an agonising delay, Arif was later told that he would be accepted after all, and gained entry to Australia under a TPV, arriving in June 2005. Under the terms of these visas, refugees were denied the right to travel and there was no right of even temporary family reunion.
Arif was granted permanent residency in 2008 and lives in Perth, where he talks of the relationships he has made with local people:
“I am very thankful to them: they have helped me a lot. I will be thankful to them forever.”
Asked about his experiences and the plight of other refugees, Arif Ruhani said:
“It is very difficult to express how I feel. I would definitely say to anybody who will read this, please, please help these people. These people are putting their lives at risk for a safe life, for peace and for freedom.”
source: UN, Al Jazeera (2012)
‘In February 2008, two newspapermen debated on Today, the BBC radio program that starts the day and sometimes sets the political agenda. One was Nick Davies, aGuardian reporter of the good old-fashioned kind who diligently ferrets out stories, the latest of which was “phone hacking,” by journalists and others. There had been rumors of tabloid reporters clandestinely accessing voicemails on the mobile telephones of public figures well before something happened to the cell phones of the young princes William and Harry in late 2005. Numerous messages on their cell phones and…’
Jeffrey Wheatcroft’s extensive article on ‘Dial M for Murdoch’, including background and chronology of hacking, political influence and more, can be freely accessed here at The New York Review of Books
(source UN & Al Jazeera 2012)
Tartus (Arabic: طرطوس / ALA-LC: Ṭarṭūs; also transliterated Tartous) is a city on the Mediterranean coast of Syria. Tartus is the second largest port city in Syria (after Latakia), and the largest city in Tartus Governorate. The population size is 115,769 (2004 census).[2]
During the 1970s, similar support points were located in Egypt and Latakia, Syria. In 1977, the Egyptian support bases at Alexandria and Mersa Matruh were evacuated and the ships and property were transferred to Tartus, where the naval support base was transformed into the 229th Naval and Estuary Vessel Support Division. Seven years later, the Tartus support point was upgraded to the 720th Logistics Support Point.[9]
(source: AFP & Wikipedia)
The first Earth Summit was held 20 years ago – greenhouse gas concentrations continue to spiral upwards – this week will see 50,000+ people converge on Rio de Janeiro for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, aka RIO+20 Earth Summit.
Here at the interpretOr, we’ll be sharing Al Jazeera infographics on a daily basis in the run up to RIO+20:
(source U.N. & Al Jazeera 2012)
“An advocate of freedom of expression is necessarily also a practitioner. The basic law for those who want to defend freedom of expression is that they must demonstrate their commitment by practising what they preach. When we speak out for our right to freedom of speech, we begin to exercise it. When we write about our right to freedom of expression, we begin to practise it. There can be no theoretical advocacy of these freedoms, there can only be practical, practising advocacy.”
Aung San Suu Kyi is leader of the National League for Democracy. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Price in 1991 and collected it in Oslo 16 June 2012.
According to Hannah Krakauer in New Scientist, North Carolina legislators have found a novel way to ameliorate climate change.
They plan to stop climate change in North Carolina by legislation. By creating legislation that bans the current method of calculating sea level rise and replacing it with a linear method of calculation that gives inaccurate but much lower level outcomes, they hope to save millions of dollars in reparation.
Hannah Krakauer reported that :
The 8-inch model, based solely on historical records from the last 100 years, flies in the face of modern climate science. Sea level rise is due to a combination of climate-driven factors: warmer temperatures cause ocean water to expand, and rising temperatures are melting the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps. The combined feedback makes for exponential – not linear – growth. Yet the North Carolina bill states: “Rates of sea-level rise may be extrapolated linearly to estimate future rates of rise but shall not include scenarios of accelerated rates of sea-level rise.”
“This is unprecedented,” says Orrin Pilkey, professor emeritus of geology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. “It’s the first time a law has dictated the shape of a curve.”
NC-20, the group behind the bill, has argued that incorporating the 39-inch predictions would be an enormous economic burden on coastal communities. “The legislature has declined to face the problem of what we’re going to do about it, and instead has attacked the science,” contends Pilkey.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21934-north-carolina-tries-to-outlaw-climate-models.html
To celebrate this miraculous occasion I have created a new but nostalgic anthem for North Carolina.
Carolina Climate Anthem
Wishing is good time wasted,
Still it’s a habit they say;
Wishing that swimming I had mastered
That’s what I do all day.
But speaking of wishing I’ll say:
Maybe there’s nothing but fishing but
Chorus
Nothing could be finer than to float round Carolina in the morning
No one could be wetter than my paddling red setter when I feed her in the dawning.
Where in the morning dories
Sail around my door
I love to hear the stories
Of when we lived onshore
Throwing out my burley but the water is too swirly in the morning
Butterflies still flutter up to kiss the salty buttercups but there all drowning
If I had Aladdin’s lamp for only a day,
I’d make a wish and here’s what I’d say:
Nothing could be finer than to float around Carolina in the morning
Though everything could be better and we’d be less wetter if we listened to the warning
Dreaming was meant for night-time
I live in dreams all the day;
I know it’s not the right time,
But still I dream away.
What could be sweeter than dreaming,
Just dreaming and drifting away.
(Repeat Chorus)
Apologies to Gus Khan and Walter Donaldson
*theinterpretOr is looking at an alternative melody based on Frank Zappa’s “Carolina Hardcore Ecstasy”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21934-north-carolina-tries-to-outlaw-climate-models.html
Rupert Murdoch joined in an “over-crude” attempt by US Republicans to force Tony Blair to accelerate British involvement in the Iraq war a week before a crucial House of Commons vote in 2003, according to the final volumes of Alastair Campbell‘s government diaries.
‘The fact that Kim Kardashian’s marriage lasted only 72 days can have a longer-lasting impact on the news in America than any environmental policy initiative. High gasoline prices (in the US “high” means that a liter of gasoline costs the equivalent of €0.77, or less than half the price of gasoline in Germany) are so important to so many people that they could decide the election. The fact that 52 percent of Republicans in Mississippi believe that Obama is a Muslim, or that 46 percent of Americans believe that man was created precisely as is written in the Bible can make political debates extraordinarily tedious…’
The President of Disappointments: How Obama Has Failed to Deliver click through to Der Spiegel
By Ullrich Fichtner, Marc Hujer and Gregor Peter Schmitz
Christmas 2010, David Cameron had a festive lunch at the home of Rebekah Brooks, also in attendance was her then boss, James Murdoch…oh, and Elisabeth Murdoch and Matthew Freud too. Cosy…(see earlier interpretOr circa mid 2011)
June 2012 and Old Etonian, ex Carlton Communications PR man, David Cameron PM is before the Leveson inquiry.
Just how was that lunch, David Cameron?
Fear-trade ambassadors, arms dealers, ‘logistics profiteers’ and associated disaster capitalists now have their own chain of C21 luxury hotels in conflict zones, according to German news magazine ‘Der Spiegel’:
‘Enclosed by towering concrete walls and barbed wire, the sand-colored building is surrounded by lush green lawns and manicured flower beds — a haven of luxury amid chaos. Snipers patrol the roofs, and entry, strictly controlled, is subject to numerous security checks. Guest are patted down, while their baggage is scanned twice and sniffed for explosives by large dogs…’
