Category: thus far…
Momentum continues to build for the next UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Paris this December, with nations realising the huge benefits of climate action and getting on with the job of developing their national emissions reduction plans for the negotiations. These action plans – known as “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions” (INDCs) – marry national goals reflecting individual circumstances and ambitions with a UN framework to keep average global warming below the internationally agreed 2DegC red line.
So far, Switzerland, the European Union, Norway, and Mexico have all submitted plans, but Australia has further cemented its reputation as a coal-obsessed wrecker by not only ignoring the deadline, but dragging its feet and only now calling for public submissions on what it should do. Its discussion paper ignores the 2DegC red line, it attempts to cook the books (again) by describing its current target as “equivalent to a reduction of 13 per cent below 2005 levels” instead of referring to its inadequate five percent below 1990 levels commitment. It also totally ignores the “5-25 per cent range” ittrumpeted in early 2010.
While the rest of the world moves forward, Australia’s climate change policy is “on course for ‘disastrous’ 4DegC warming” as it allows polluters to increase emissions as much as they like without penalty. While railing against the age of entitlement, the Abbott government is looking for special treatment to keep burning and selling coal. It claims it is determined to reduce emissions “without destroying jobs”, but its actions demonstrate that it does not understand the health, employment, environmental and economic benefits that come with cleaning up its economy. The Government has been captured by a dying coal industry, is fighting the future for it, and dooming Australia to climate pariah status on the world stage for its dim prospects.
Related Tree Alerts
- Australia cooking the books to meet emissions target as carbon pollution soars
- Climate Change Authority finds Australia’s 5% emissions target “not credible”
- Australia on a wing and a prayer as momentum builds for global climate deal
- Study shows keeping most coal in the ground is the only way to contain climate change
- Australian government’s “hard-line ideological agenda” at COP19 damaging reputation
Tweets…
- MT @Mattias_S: #Australia – when can we expect your #climate contributions, #INDC , You’re already behind #Mexico – Is that leadership?
- MT @MattGrudnoff: PM ‘Australia open for business’. Unless you’re an industry the govt is ideologically opposed to #auspol #climate http://t.co/E7UjKBOIqS
- MT @fionamcrobie: Submissions on Australia’s post-2020 emissions reduction target can be made here: http://t.co/v65OQQe89B #auspol #climate
By Rami Khouri / AlterNet
April 3, 2015
BEIRUT — The agreed parameters of a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran’s nuclear program that were reached Thursday between Iran and the P5+1 powers represent a monumental achievement that affirms the power of reason and diplomacy over the ravages of fear and warfare. The technical details of the complex understanding remain to be completed. For now, though, the lasting significant aspects of this development are about the past and the future: The past being the bold leadership that Iran and the United States have shown in launching and advancing the diplomatic negotiations, and the future being about the potential significant regional changes that will follow the implementation of a full agreement…
::: click here for piece in full @ AlterNet :::
Rami G. Khouri is was founding director and now senior policy fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. Follow him on Twitter @ramikhouri.
The Booker prize winner Ian McEwan on the Charlie Hebdo attacks and freedom of speech…
“…We need to teach everyone just how important freedom of speech is…”
“…Talking and writing is all we’ve got. Slaughtering eacother is going to bring us to the very gates of hell.”
One of the six realms on the Buddhist Wheel of Life is the Hungry Ghost Realm, its inhabitants “creatures with scrawny necks, small mouths, emaciated limbs and large, bloated, empty bellies. This is the domain of addiction.”
A ravaged German-Canadian man is one day quoting the final lines of Goethe’s Faust, the next delivering a drug-fuelled anti-Semitic diatribe; a woman, very pregnant and intent on keeping her baby, is found beaten up on the sidewalk and screaming for drug money: these are among the hungry ghosts Dr. Gabor Maté encounters in his job as resident doctor at the Portland Hotel on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
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TOP STORIES THIS WEEK
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It’s clear that Rahm Emanuel is out for himself and his rich friends, not for Chicagoans. BY RICK PERLSTEIN Anti-fracking forces pushed Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) to pass the ban, and proved conventional wisdom wrong. BY ERIC WELTMAN In order to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we should forget, not dwell in, an ancient past. BY SLAVOJ ZIZEK
Palestinian children are taken from their beds in night raids and not returned to their families for months. BY BETH MASCHINOT
By any other name, it still smells like torture. BY FLINT TAYLOR
The redesigned New York Times Magazine aims for a global outlook, but comes off as elitist. BY SUSAN J. DOUGLAS Public mental healthcare has been gutted in the past 50 years. An innovative Illinois law may provide an answer. BY ANNE-MARIE CUSAC Does a story-sharing program offer a chance at Southern reconciliation? BY THEO ANDERSON
While money poured into the recent elections, voters showed that they are tired of business as usual. BY KARI LYDERSEN
Kent Russell seeks to lay claim to the raw, serious stuff of the American male past. BY CHRIS LEHMANN The city’s progressives should claim no easy victories. BY MARILYN KATZ The victory wouldn’t have been possible without agitation from the grassroots. BY JAY CASSANO |
| WORKING IN THESE TIMES |
| How Chicago’s Grassroots Movements Defeated Rahm Emanuel at the Polls
The progressive swing in Chicago’s recent elections was no coincidence, it came out of years of grassroots organizing. BY AMISHA PATEL |
Panel members said phone data had limited role preventing terrorism in testimony before Senate judiciary committee
- Spencer Ackermanin Washington
- com,Tuesday 14 January 2014 21.44 GMT
excerpt…
The members of president Barack Obama’s surveillance review panel on Tuesday rejected some of the central contentions offered by the National Security Agency for its bulk collection of phone records, including the program’s potential usefulness in preventing the 9/11 attacks.
Testifying before the Senate judiciary committee, members of the panel said that restricting the NSA is necessary in order to rebalance the competing values of liberty and security.
Richard Clarke, who was the White House’s counter-terrorism czar on 9/11, echoed the 9/11 Commission in saying that the biggest obstacle to preventing the terrorist attack was not the NSA collecting an insufficient amount of data, but a failure to share information already collected.
“If the information that the federal agencies had at the time…
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Here’s an extract from the report of the National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention, Australian Human Rights Commission, 2014…
9.3.1 Torture and trauma prior to arrival in Australia
Since more than 90 per cent of children in immigration detention over the period of the Inquiry have been found to be refugees, it follows that many children in immigration detention are likely to have been affected by prior experiences of trauma.(46)
The Inquiry commissioned a literature review to consider factors affecting the psychological well-being of child and adolescent refugees and asylum seekers.(47)The paper concludes that:
research clearly demonstrates that refugee children and adolescents are vulnerable to the effects of pre-migration, most notably exposure to trauma. It is also apparent that particular groups in this population constitute higher psychological risk than others, namely those with extended trauma experience, unaccompanied or separated children and adolescents and…
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Asbestos Bishop – The Real News Channel | Facebook
Asbestos Bishop. … It just so happens that Julie… Bishop was also a Lawyer, but worked for … Edo Voloder Julie Bishop was a solicitor for ASBESTOS MINERS!
Bishop’s lawyer work a source of shame | Herald Sun
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/…/bishops–lawyer…/story-e6frf7kf-1226525303…Nov 27, 2012 – … attack on deputy opposition leader Julie Bishop for her work as a lead lawyer … compensation claims from workers dying of asbestos diseases.Powerhouse | Asbestos: Dust Settles On The Low Moral Ground
powerhouse.theglobalmail.org/dust-settles-on-the-low-moral-ground/Jun 3, 2013 – And guess which former lawyer-turned-federal-politician counted James …That would be the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, Julie Bishop.
Julie Bishop’s legal past: Clayton Utz work in wake of AWU scandal …
http://www.crikey.com.au/…/julie–bishop-on-her-own-legal-past-the-interview-…Nov 30, 2012 – I wouldn’t…
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Current issue: January 2015
… Cuba in from the cold; drugs companies’ hard sell special report; rise and rise of Boko Haram;Darfur: the trouble with UN sanctions; Turkey: farewell to post-Ottoman dreams, Romaopening; Central Asia’s shifting plates; US special report: the meaning of Ferguson, is Iraq the new Vietnam? Australia courts the Chinese dragon; India’s car workers fight for rights… and more…
“I detest what you write, but I would give my life
to make it possible for you to continue to write…”
Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, Letters, 1770.
Rupert Murdoch Maybe most Moslems peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible. (07/01/15)
Big jihadist danger looming everywhere from Philippines to Africa to Europe to US. Political correctness makes for denial and hypocrisy. (10/01/15)
Saudi Arabia lashes a liberal blogger 50 times in public, despite widespread international outrage and calls for clemency from human right groups…
Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, said on twitter that blogger and activist, Raif Badawi, was lashed outside a mosque in the Red Sea coastal city of Jeddah on Friday, (09/01/15).
Badawi is due to undergo 50 lashes every week after Friday prayers, which will continue for 20 weeks until his punishment is complete.
Amnesty International says Badawi, who started the “Free Saudi Liberals” website, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes on charges related to accusations he insulted Islam on the online forum.
He was also ordered by Jeddah’s Criminal Court to pay a fine of $266,000.
Synthesis Report (2014) – IPCC
The Synthesis Report distils and integrates the findings of the three working group contributions to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Fifth Assessment Report — the most comprehensive assessment of climate change yet undertaken, produced by hundreds of scientists — as well as the two Special Reports produced during this cycle.
Summary for Policymakers
SPM + Longer Report
Headline Statements
Factsheets
Video
Quick link to report PDFs
Gaza City – Since this summer’s devastating war in the Gaza Strip, the number of patients seeking help from the Gaza Community Centre’s mental health programme has jumped by close to 50 percent.
The centre, which previously handled about 15 patients daily, is now seeing up to 25, administrators say – and the Gaza City centre is just one of three branches of Gaza’s mental health network. The NGO’s psychiatry, social work and physiotherapy services are available for free to residents, but social stigma still prevents an untold number from seeking help.
Psychologist Hasan Zeyada spoke with Al Jazeera about the challenges facing Gazans in the wake of a war that killed 2,200 Palestinians, and amid an ongoing, crippling siege.
Al Jazeera: How has your patient load changed since the summer war?
Hasan Zeyada: We have more cases that are referred to our centres. It’s the immediate reaction after war. A lot of people had psychological and behavioural consequences because of the trauma during the military Israeli aggression. A lot of people, they are in need of consultation, they are in need of intervention. We started to do our intervention immediately through field visits for the families who lost their homes and lost their family members, and for the injured people…
“The war was brutal and it was for a long time, and it’s the third experience for the children here in Gaza, so a lot of people have already developed acute stress disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. They are in need of intervention.”
::: click on through to piece in full @ Al Jazeera :::
This is not your sanitized, Hollywood version of Dr. King.As “Selma” opens in a number of cities this week and expands to nationwide release in a couple of weeks, the country is given a chance to assess the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. Doing so is particularly relevant right now, in light of boisterous protests against police brutality that have been going on since the summer…
…just click image for piece in full @ AlterNet…
Doubts as water from giant China South North Water Diversion Project reaches capital
http://t.co/0xjqZvJcRWhttp://t.co/gGIeKsj6kZ
Prayer vigil held in New York for slain police officer
http://t.co/jzOcfZ2HKchttp://t.co/jiMBTQnhFn
Malaysia’s worst flooding in decades has forced some 118,000 people to flee their homes http://t.co/lx2IeJhDPGhttp://t.co/dAX4MGDm7n
Swedish protesters denounce mosque arson attack
Orphaned by 2004 tsunami, UK flip-flop kings repay Sri Lankan kindness
Chief UN investigator of North Korean human rights abuses, Michael Kirby, discusses the allegations of crimes against humanity:
North Korea is truly a totalitarian state … It is not content to take control of the physical lives of the citizens, it has to intrude into their way of thinking, into their attitudes to government … [It implements] the system of characterising citizens according to their loyalty to the government and the party. This is truly a state without any real equivalent in the modern world.
Michael Kirby
The UN-mandated inquiry team says the country’s leadership should be hauled before at the International Criminal Court:
…the inquiry found that pregnant women are starved, while their babies are fed rats and snakes; more than 100,000 people are in gulags; there is systematic torture; everyone is forced to inform on each other; entire communities are denied adequate food; and the bodies of the dead…
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As Australia picked up its shameful fourth Fossil of the Day award at the Lima climate talks Thursday (11/12/14), Climate Action Tracker (CAT) released a new analysis showing that creative accounting and years of diplomatic manoeuvring are allowing Australia to increase emissions while still meeting its minimum five per cent reduction commitment. CAT says in real terms Australia’s emissions are likely to be 26 per cent above 2000 levels by 2020, and a huge 47-59 per cent above its original Kyoto pledge.
Yet while its actual emissions are soaring, Australia can still meet its already lax commitments with barely any action thanks to being selective on baseline emission sources, and its creative approach to accounting for land use change and forestry. Australia has now taken to making threats if it is not allowed to use these favourable rules, which would allow it to emit a further six per cent more carbon on top of its already worst-in-show per capita emissions.
extract…
International law prohibits the granting of immunities to public officials who have engaged in acts of torture. This applies not only to the actual perpetrators but also to those senior officials within the US Government who devised, planned and authorised these crimes.
As a matter of international law, the US is legally obliged to bring those responsible to justice. The UN Convention Against Torture and the UN Convention on Enforced Disappearances require States to prosecute acts of torture and enforced disappearance where there is sufficient evidence to provide a reasonable prospect of conviction. States are not free to maintain or permit impunity for these grave crimes.
It is no defence for a public official to claim that they were acting on superior orders. CIA officers who physically committed acts of torture therefore bear individual criminal responsibility for their conduct, and cannot hide behind the authorisation they were given by their superiors.
However, the heaviest penalties should be reserved for those most seriously implicated in the planning and purported authorisation of these crimes. Former Bush Administration officials who have admitted their involvement in the programme should also face criminal prosecution for their acts.
President Obama made it clear more than five years ago that the US Government recognises the use of waterboarding as torture. There is therefore no excuse for shielding the perpetrators from justice any longer. The US Attorney General is under a legal duty to bring criminal charges against those responsible.
Torture is a crime of universal jurisdiction. The perpetrators may be prosecuted by any other country they may travel to. However, the primary responsibility for bringing them to justice rests with the US Department of Justice and the Attorney General.”
(*) Check the Special Rapporteur’s full report: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/RegularSession/Session22/A-HRC-22-52_en.pdf
Ben Emmerson (United Kingdom) is the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism. On 1 August 2011, he took up his functions on the mandate that was created in 2005 by the former United Nations Commission on Human, renewed by the UN Human Rights Council for a three year period in December 2007, in September 2010 and again in March 2013. As Special Rapporteur he is independent from any Government and serves in his individual capacity. Learn more, log on to:http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Terrorism/Pages/SRTerrorismIndex.aspx
The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures’ experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.
UN Human Rights, country page – United States of America: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Countries/ENACARegion/Pages/USIndex.aspx
“Why the Global Warming Skeptics Are Wrong”
William D. Nordhaus is Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale. (March 2012)
His evidence based article is freely available below and above at
the New York Review of Books…
www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/22/why-global-warming-skeptics-are-wrong/
the interpretOr 