A Circus on the road to nowhere
Shivam Patel at Reuters reports that the G20 summit in New Delhi made no specific, agreed-upon statement on climate and energy goals. The 20 richest countries in the world agreed to triple renewable energy by 2030 and to cut way back on coal, but did not set out specifics. They also said nothing about electrifying transportation to avoid use of petroleum. (Cough [Saudi Arabia] cough.)
World powers line up against Donald Trump on climate change, reaffirming their support for efforts to fight global warming.
Financial officials from the world’s biggest economies have dropped from a joint statement any mention of financing action on climate change, reportedly following pressure from the US and Saudi Arabia. Finance ministers from the G20, which comprises more than 80 percent of the global economy, debated the wording of their final joint statement on trade at their summit in the German resort of Baden-Baden.
Source: US ‘forces G20 to drop any mention of climate change’ in joint statement | The Independent
Stephen Harper changes mind, saying he is prepared to contribute to UN fund to help poor countries adapt to climate change Last year Tony Abbott and Stephen Harper had jointly dissented from support for the Green Climate
Canada – one of the few countries previously in line with Australia’s opposition to the international Green Climate Fund – now appears to have changed its mind, with Tony Abbott’s close friend prime minister Stephen Harper saying he is preparing to make a contribution.
Abbott has defied global pressure to commit to the fund, designed to help poor countries adapt to climate change, because Australia is already spending $2.5bn on its domestic Direct Action fund and providing $10bn in capital to a so-called “green bank” – which he is trying to abolish.
World leaders forced Australia to include stronger language about the Green Climate Fund in the G20 communique – and during the summit Barack Obama pledged the US would contribute $3bn to it and the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, offered $1.5bn. But soon after the conference was over Abbott indicated it would make no immediate difference to Australia’s position.
On Sunday Harper said Canada was preparing to make a contribution to the UN fund, the Globe and Mail and other Canadian media outlets reported. He did not nominate an amount.
Last November, Abbott and Harper “made history” by jointly dissenting from support for the Green Climate Fund in a communique from the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting.
Speaking after a meeting on Sunday night with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, Abbott said Direct Action – which funds Australia’s domestic emissions reduction, not international efforts – was already “quite a substantial fund”. He also cited the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which he is committed to abolish.
“We also have a Clean Energy Finance Corporation which was established by the former government and there is $10bn in capital which has been allocated to this,” he said. “In addition to those two funds a proportion of our overseas aid, particularly in the Pacific, is allocated for various environmental schemes including schemes to deal with climate change. So, we are doing a very great deal and I suppose given what we are doing we don’t intend, at this time, to do more.”
Environment minister Greg Hunt tried to compare Obama’s $3bn commitment to the international fund to be spent in poor countries with Australia’s $2.5bn spending on its own domestic policy, saying that if the Direct Action fund was implemented in the US “on a like for like basis it would be the equivalent of a $25bn fund”.
Neither Abbott nor Hunt ruled out making a contribution to the fund at some time in the future and it is understood the Department of Foreign Affairs, which leads Australia’s international climate negotiations, has been considering a donation. The fund is seen as a critical part of a successful outcome at the United Nations Paris conference next year, which will discuss a global emissions pact to take effect after 2020.
But Abbott’s trenchant opposition to the fund is seen as an impediment to any contribution. He has publicly disparaged it as an international “Bob Brown bank” – another reference to the CEFC, which he wants to abolish but he also cites as evidence of Australia’s climate action.
As revealed by Guardian Australia, Abbott told world leaders at the Brisbane summit that as the leader of a major coal producer he would be “standing up for coal”.
The communique references demanded by other leaders, including Obama, were reluctantly accepted by Australia at the last minute. They included a call for contributions to the fund and for the “phasing out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”.
An EU spokesman reportedly described the climate negotiations with Australia as being like “trench warfare”. Other officials said it had been “very difficult” and protracted.
Speaking to the media after the summit, Abbott downplayed the importance of the fund. He took a similar line on the greenhouse reduction pledges unveiled by Obama and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, immediately before the summit.
He said all nations “support strong action … to address climate change”, but added: “We are all going to approach this in our own way and there are a range of [climate] funds which are there.”
Obama and the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, both urged G20 countries to contribute to the Green Climate Fund. In the end, at Australia’s insistence, the communique called for contributions to financing funds “such as the Green Climate Fund”.
Hunt suggested a regional rainforest fund, to which Australia recently pledged $6m, could substitute for contributions to the Green Climate Fund.
President Vladimir Putin gave a lesson in diplomacy before he left the G20 Summit in Brisbane after he had finished his programmed schedule praising the hosts of the venue for the “favorable, friendly and businesslike” atmosphere. While some media outlets have been trying to sidetrack the real questions under discussion…let’s see the real issues.
Predictably, the West in general and the ASS (Anglo-Saxon Syndicate, namely USA and chief poodle UK, ably attended by lackeys Canada and Australia) in particular, doing the work of the FUKUS Axis (France-UK-US), trying to justify imperialist ventures and foreign policy disasters such as Iraq, Syria and Libya, were in full song in Brisbane. Before I continue, I have one word to say to Cameron, Harper, Abbott and Obama: Iraq.
The hype had started before the Summit with puerile diatribes by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, bully-boy words in a clipped Eton accent from alleged former Bullingdon Club member Cameron, some cracked expressions and crackly words from an Obama trying to crack the whip, one who has suddenly aged exponentially and the cherry on the cake, a lesson in arrogance from Harper, the Canadian – you know, the country which allows its citizens to hack baby seals to death or else skin them alive and leave the skinless bodies floundering in panic on the ice. Before I continue, I have one word to say to Cameron, Harper, Abbott and Obama: Iraq.
The diatribes were about Ukraine – you know, the country whose democratically elected President (Viktor Yanukovich) was ousted by mob law orchestrated from the US of A (who else) as obediently, the other ASS members fell into line, praising the new Government whose supporters committed Fascist massacres in Eastern Ukraine, burning people alive, strangling cleaning ladies with telephone wire, then tossed charred bodies from windows as the crowds looked on applauding and jeering. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is the side that Harper, Cameron, Abbott and Obama support. Ukraine, the country which refuses to pay its bills then steals resources like a crack-headed whore, ready to jump into bed with anyone, hey! even Hunter Biden, the son of the US Vice-President, who (surprise surprise) appears in a position of power inside the Ukrainian energy lobby. Maybe he can tell his hosts to pay Russia what they owe, for once. Ukraine, where the first shots fired were against the police and the crowds at the same time, from the sixth floor balcony of Hotel Ukraine in Independence Square, Kiev, to start a cause and incriminate President Yanukovich. Before I continue, I have one word to say to Cameron, Harper, Abbott and Obama: Iraq.
After the Fascist Massacres, it is hardly surprising that the residents of Donbass took up arms and defended themselves. The notion that Russia is involved is doubly ludicrous – those of us who know Donbass and its residents are fully aware that they need Russia for nothing, nor even desire military aid, and secondly of course if Russia were involved, Kiev would have been occupied within 48 hours, the Fascists would have been removed and the murderous scum gravitating around the new forces in Kiev and their foreign… bootlickers…would have been sent to prison. Before I continue, I have one word to say to Cameron, Harper, Abbott and Obama: Iraq.
So much for Ukraine. And Iraq. Just one final point. Those who support the foreign policy of Cameron, Harper, Obama and that Abbott, why don’t they man up and go to visit north-eastern Syria and Northern Iraq? Sterling job their countries did there. Kiss Kiss.
Now, back to the point.
After completing his programmed schedule of activities, Vladimir Putin set off for Vladivostok and Moscow, praising his hosts after giving a lesson in diplomacy and a gentlemanly answer to the arrogance of Cameron and Harper in particular, labelling the Brisbane Summit as “favorable, friendly and businesslike”. Contrary to what some would like to believe, President Putin did not leave the Summit “early” because his agenda was completed and after all, the answer to quips about Ukraine is “ah so you support the Fascist massacres and now we’re at it, what about Iraq?”
As Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov reported on Russia’s contribution to the Ebola Virus Disease outbreak in West Africa, Vladimir Putin was able to reflect on the outcome of the last two days, ending a hectic week of three major Summits. Firstly, despite the attempts by Tony Abbott to remove climate change from the list of priorities, the words Climate Change were audible. How this is addressed in practical terms is another issue.
Secondly, a clear commitment on Ebola Virus Disease was stated, although not quantified, while at the same time individual nations are committed to sending teams, aid and equipment to the region, in which Russia is one of the countries leading the effort (unmentioned in most Western media outlets, as usual, is the tremendous degree of support being provided by Cuba, despite the inhumane Fascist blockade mounted by the US of A).
Thirdly, further steps were taken towards curtailing tax evasion with a commitment to share information.
And now for the main issue: economic growth, translated into the four-letter word: JOBS. We will remember that the Soviet Union offered guaranteed employment and an unemployment rate of zero per cent, while at the same time it provided free housing, free pre-school facilities, free education, free general healthcare, free dental care, free maternal healthcare, free higher education, free sports and leisure facilities, free training for sports and cultural activities, social mobility, free coaching in other extra-curricular activities, free participation in youth movements, free heating, free electricity, free water, subsidized fixed-rate telephone networks, safety on the street, security of the State, and 250 billion USD in overseas development programs in the countries which the Union and its allies had freed from the yoke of Imperialist tyranny.
The Promise of Brisbane is to deliver, at least, a two per cent growth rate globally by 2018, creating millions of jobs in the process and adding some two trillion USD to global GDP (we must remember that the budget for the North Atlantic Treaty [Terrorist] Organization, NATO, is 1.2 trillion USD each and every year, a trillionaire budget trading in murder and destabilizing sovereign states).
The three-word Promise of Brisbane is investment, trade and competition, employing another 100 million women, focusing specifically on youth employment, fomenting mechanisms which favor international trade and establishing a Global Infrastructure Hub, taking steps to eradicate poverty and reduce inequality.
The text of the G20 Leaders’ Communiqué from the Brisbane Summit is presented below. We could read it and applaud. We could also read it and gag, saying when there is money for submarines, there is money for development. When there is 1.2 trillion dollars each and every year available for NATO and the lobbies which control its policies, there is money available for human development and not cynical exercises in verborrhea. There is money for deployment; where is the money for development?
The point is, there were huge progresses made in the last century as regards children’s rights, women’s rights and workers’ rights. In the last ten years, since the FUKUS (France-UK-US) ASS (Anglo-Saxonic Syndicate) lobbies went globe-trotting, many of those rights have been swept off the table and so what legal framework exists today for the G20 to make their verborreaic statements and promises?
How hollow is the Promise of Brisbane?
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
With Rupert’s rabid tabloids in full McCarthy mode today, it’s almost like the Berlin Wall didn’t come down — 25 years ago this week, writes Dr Martin Hirst.
WHAT A STRANGE BUNCH OF HEADLINES today in Rupert Murdoch’s Australian tabloid newspapers.
It’s almost as if the last 25 years never happened. In the week that the world is celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall ‒ the most potent symbol of the end of the Cold War ‒ Murdoch’s crazy liquid modern tabloid editors have raised spectre of
THE REDS ARE COMING
You couldn’t make this stuff up, but Murdoch’s minions apparently can and will.
The Russian boats are not even close to Australia’s territorial waters (see below), but the editors ‒ juiced up on Rupert’s kool-aid ‒ cannot resist a good old-fashioned front page
RED FLAG
Without a moment’s hesitation the claxon sounds and it’s all hands on deck as the plucky crew of HMAS NutsandBolts rallies ’round the flag to repel all boarders and
STOP THE BOATS
Yes, even that classic, elastic, all-purpose, sea-going three-word slogan gets another run and is put to a good secondary dog-whistle use.
Who said Mr Abbott wasn’t into recycling?
As if thing aren’t already bad enough in the #CityofFear as it locks down in anticipation of the visigoth horde of visiting G20 dignitaries, the good burghers of Brisbane will have to contend to most of the city’s CBD being closed to ordinary folk, lest they wander into the view of the snout-in-trough great and good.
And, Brisbane’s CuriouS Mell has been reminding THE ENTIRE NATION for months, marauding anarchists are also sneaking into the country to wreak havoc on unsuspecting civilians and to wage jihad on 20,000 heavily armed police mobilised to instil the RULE OF LAW into anyone stupid enough to think about protesting injustice, criminal tax fraud, the fleecing of the world’s poor to fund extravagant global orgies of greed (like the G20) or demanding serious action on climate change, not the weak DIRECT ACTION proposed by TWO PUNCH TONY.
For months, the CuriouS Mell has been warning of anarcho-terror threats to the #CityofFear
Today the CuriouS Mell has been reinforced by the other titles in Murdoch’s stable – THE HUN, THE AGONIZERand THE DAILY TERROR– to remind us JUST HOW VULNERABLE Australia is to maritime attack by a ‘fleet’ of Russian naval vessels which are somewhere well away from us, but possibly heading into international waters ‘somewhere off Queensland’ by
RASH PUTIN
Even the NORMALLY RELIABLE AUSTRALIAN got in on the act. With a news story, an opinion piece by Abbott’s court jester Greg Sheridan and an editorial.
Talk about
OPERATION OVERKILL!
If that doesn’t have the Russian admirals quaking into their seaboots, nothing will.
OPERATION OVERKILL: meaningless graphics, Greg Sheridan and a tub-thumping editorial
Well the Russian ships are still over 200 nautical miles outside Australia’s extensive Exclusive Economic Zone — so at least 400 nautical miles away. It’s unlikely they’ll come much closer.
If you were Bougainville, you might have reason to worry, but not us.
CALM DOWN! The fleet is not even close.
Territorial waters, or a territorial sea, as defined by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,[1] is a belt of coastal waters extending at most 12 nautical miles (22.2 km; 13.8 mi) from the baseline (usually the mean low-water mark) of a coastal state. The territorial sea is regarded as the sovereign territory of the state, although foreign ships (both military and civilian) are allowed innocent passage through it; this sovereignty also extends to the airspace over and seabed below. Adjustment of these boundaries is called, in international law, maritime delimitation.
The term “territorial waters” is also sometimes used informally to describe any area of water over which a state has jurisdiction, including internal waters, the contiguous zone, the exclusive economic zone and potentially the continental shelf.
(Yes, this is from Wikipedia.)
Well, if Russia wants to sail its ships into our region it is free to do so. It has full rights in all international waters and also the right of ‘innocent passage’ all the way into Australia’s territorial seas. This means they can come within 12 nautical miles of the mean low water mark.
That’s pretty close! But it is unlikely that the Russians will want to do that.
However, it would be very funny if they did. The Murdoch papers would go apeshit and they’d probably want to mount a Dunkirk style flotilla. Maybe Rupert could lead them out one of his superyachts. He could ram the Russian flagship and go down all guns blazing.
No doubt, Abbott would give him a state funeral and he might even get that knighthood that’s eluded him for sixty years.
When our Prime Minister threatens to “shirtfront” the leader of another nation it should not be a surprise when that nation then decides to use its far superior naval power to return the gesture.
The alarmist headlines and Cold War rhetoric of the Murdoch papers is just stupid under the circumstances.
It is propaganda aimed at the readers of the Terrorgraph, the Hun, the CuriouS Mell and the Agonizer to keep them worried and alarmed.
It is the generation of what philosopher Zygmunt Bauman calls ‘liquid fear’. The generation of irrational scare tactics in order to hide the true purpose — social and political control of the population.
Given the Murdoch empire’s great love of our own dear leader, it is natural that they would generate a moral panic involving imaginary SOVIET MILITARY HARDWARE and that they would use a ‘hammer and sickle’ motif to illustrate their RED SCARE stories, even though the old Soviet regime has been dead and buried for more than a quarter of a century.
The RED FLAG is way more frightening than the RED, WHITE & BLUE of the Russian Federation and it has the added advantage of associating the approaching Russian fleet with communism and THE LEFT, which is, as we know so well, the real enemy of the News Corpse mercenaries.
Australia is resisting a last-ditch push by the US, France and other European countries for G20 leaders at next week’s meeting in Brisbane to back contributions to the Green Climate Fund.
The prime minister has previously rejected the fund as a “Bob Brown bank on an international scale” – referring to the former leader of the Australian Greens.
The Green Climate Fund aims to help poorer countries cut their emissions and prepare for the impact of climate change, and is seen as critical to securing developing-nation support for a successful deal on reducing emissions at the United Nations meeting in Paris next year.
The US and European Union nations are also lobbying for G20 leaders to promise that post-2020 greenhouse emission reduction targets will be unveiled early, to improve the chances of a deal in Paris, but Australia is also understood to be resisting this.
As reported by Guardian Australia, Australia has reluctantly conceded the final G20 communique should include climate change as a single paragraph, acknowledging that it should be addressed by UN processes. Australia’s original position was that the meeting should focus solely on “economic issues”.
The text that has so far made it through the G20’s closed-door, consensus-driven process is very general, and reads as follows:
“We support strong and effective action to address climate change, consistent with sustainable economic growth and certainty for business and investment. We reaffirm our resolve to adopt a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that is applicable to all parties at the 21st Conference of the Parties in Paris in 2015.”
Australia had previously insisted the G20 should discuss climate-related issues only as part of its deliberations on energy efficiency, but the energy efficiency action plan to be agreed at the meeting, revealed by Guardian Australia, does not require G20 leaders to commit to any actual action.
Instead it asks them to “consider” making promises next year to reduce the energy used by smartphones and computers and to develop tougher standards for car emissions.
But as the negotiations on the G20 communique reach their final stages, European nations and the US continue to argue strongly that leaders should back the need for contributions to the Green Climate Fund.
More than $2.8bn has been pledged to the fund so far – including $1bn by France and almost $1bn by Germany. More pledges are expected at a special conference in Berlin on 20 November. The UK has said it will make a “strong” contribution at that meeting.
It is understood the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which leads Australia’s negotiating position, is considering whether Australia should make a pledge.
Asked about the fund before last year’s UN meeting, the prime minister said “we’re not going to be making any contributions to that”. It was reported that at one of its first cabinet meetings the Abbott government decided it would make no contributions to a fund that was described as “socialism masquerading as environmentalism”.
The government also pointedly dissented from support for the fund in a communique from last November’s Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting – a stance backed by Canada.
Abbott told the Australian newspaper at the time; “One thing the current government will never do is say one thing at home and a different thing abroad. We are committed to dismantling the Bob Brown bank [the Clean Energy Finance Corporation] at home so it would be impossible for us to support a Bob Brown bank on an international scale.”
Deputy Labor leader responds to Abbott’s ‘shirtfront’ threat, saying Russia needs to know how seriously Australia takes the MH17 investigation
Plibersek echoed the words of the Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, who said “serious politicians should choose their words” more carefully.
Overnight, the president’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the Russian government did not intend to respond to Abbott’s “colourful language”, but that as a part of the G20, the Russian president was “free” to visit the summit in Brisbane
On Tuesday Abbott said his office had not requested a meeting with Putin as his schedule was being finalised and the summit was still a month away. However Abbott made clear his expectation Putin would meet him.
“I certainly expect that while he’s a guest of Australia, he will undertake to have a conversation with the Australian prime minister.”
Russia is a part of G20 and the Russian president is free to visit the summit in Australia,” Peskov said.
“His visit isn’t going to be a bilateral visit upon the invitation from the Australian side.
“As soon as Mr Putin confirms his visit we’ll make a relevant statement. The Russian government does not intend to respond to Mr Abbott’s colourful language.
“Mr Putin is unlikely to seek bilateral talks with Mr Abbott. Mr Putin’s office will be waiting for more diplomatic and pleasant occasion to get in touch with Mr Abbott’s office.”
“Inevitably, though, having made such pains of ourselves insisting on the G20 as the steering room of the global economy, the expectations on Australia in its host year are enormous.”
Australia has “gone from lifter to leaner” on action against climate change, and must not block the topic’s inclusion on the agenda for the G20 summit in Brisbane next month, the former treasurer Wayne Swan will say.
When asked about climate change in February the prime minister said:
“We do not want to clutter up the G20 agenda with every worthy and important cause because if we do, we will squander the opportunity to make a difference in the vital area of economic growth.”
But Swan, the Labor treasurer from 2007 to 2013, says climate change previously sat at the core of the G20 agenda “not just as an environmental issue but as a core issue of sustainable economic growth”.
“In the corridors of Washington, Berlin and elsewhere, there is genuine dismay about the lack of attention to climate change in the G20 agenda,” he says.
Referring to the Gillard government’s carbon pricing scheme, which has since been abolished by the Abbott government, Swan says: “Australia has been recognised around the world as an energy-intensive nation and a beneficiary of significant commodity exports, for taking seriously its international obligations to reduce its carbon emissions.”
“At best, Australia has gone from leader to laggard on climate change,”
Swan says.
“At worst, it’s gone from lifter to leaner. This is at the very time significant players like the US and China are more willing than ever to address climate change, and international financial institutions like the IMF are highlighting the strong links between climate change action and positive economic outcomes
Mining companies are campaigning for the G20 to support continued use of coal as a solution to the global “energy poverty” crisis.
Abbott said on Monday coal should not be demonised because it was “good for humanity”.
On Tuesday the treasurer, Joe Hockey, dismissed the finding that Australia was the highest per-capita emitter of greenhouse gases in the OECD.
Tony Abbott says he is going to “shirtfront” Vladamir Putin at the G20, but managing editor David Donovan says he may just be in for a shock.
IT WASN’T JUST WHAT HE SAID, it was also the way he said it.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Tony Abbott ‒ fresh from saying coal is good for humanity ‒ stood in front of an enormous coal truck in Central Queensland and, like a punch drunk pug trying to trash talk a much more highly fancied opponent, said he was going to “shirtfront” Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Firstly, “shirtfront” — what does that even mean?
When I first heard Abbott say that yesterday afternoon, I thought he meant he was going to grab Putin by his shirt and not let him get away until he gave him a piece of his mind — something, I would suggest, he could ill afford to lose.
Then, however, I began hearing people from the AFL states offering their footy code’s definition — which would seem to be the act of illegally scruffing someone by the shirtfront – or laying the hip and shoulder into them – and knocking them to the ground.
Could Abbott really have just threatened assault on a foreign head of state?
Then I heard another take, which is two drunks in a bar holding onto each other’s shirtfront to stop the other from falling down so they could keep on punching. What?
Whichever one Abbott meant ‒ if any ‒ he has committed an appalling breach of diplomatic protocol in advance of a major international summit and shamed the nation.
Of course, Abbott has consistently behaved in an offensively aggressive manner toward Russia ever since he started tough-talking over Russia’s intervention in the Ukraine earlier in the year. He followed up with all manner of threats and bluster when MH17 went down in June, standing up in Parliament the next day to effectively accuse the Russians of shooting the plane down. The rashness of this statement is manifest when we consider the incident is still being investigated by Dutch authorities, who still appear be no closer to announcing the real cause. Then, of course, we were going to ban Russia from attending, and then we had to let them come and now this.
Whatever he is trying to do — it ain’t working. It is the diplomacy of the town drunk, yelling incoherent abuse into the street.
But again, it wasn’t simply what he said, it was the way he said it.
Here is a direct transcript of Abbott’s words [IA emphasis]:
“Look, I’m going to … ahh … ‘shirt front’ Mr Putin. You bet you are… ahh … you bet I am. Ahh…”
You bet you are… What?
You get the impression he had just been prepped and fired up by an advisor, perhaps his ubiquitous chief of staff Peta Credlin, who had fed him his lines and he had forgotten to personalise them.
Either way, it was a truly facepalming moment for the nation.
It must be said that Abbott is a woeful public speaker.
When he reads his remarks, he sounds like an eight year-old who has never read a book without pictures before and is still coming to grips with the written word.
When he doesn’t read his speeches and speaks off the cuff, he sounds somewhat more composed, but then usually makes some hugely embarrassing faux pas or blunder — like when he promised before the election to spend his first week as PM in Arnhem Land, for example, or this one:
But even when he is trying to parrot simple rehearsed lines, he still can’t quite get them right.
Did he even mean “shirtfront”? Who would know? One can only imagine the anxiety and distress in the prime minister’s office every time they watch him appear in front of the media.
No wonder Peta Credlin drinks.
Really, Tony Abbott should never have become Australian prime minister. John Pilger pigeonholed Abbott perfectly when he described him on IA recently as ‘aggressively weird’. He is aggressive and he is weird — and it often also appears as if all his synapses are not firing effectively.
He makes blunder after blunder and doesn’t seem to care as Australia more and more becomes a laughing stock and international pariah.
We should also note that Vladamir Putin, apart from being a former KGB agent, is reportedly an eighth dan black belt judo champion — ninth being the highest awarded and judo being the sport in which the object is to grapple or throw the other person to the ground.
Putin’s nickname is Vlad the Impaler — and after threatening violence on him, Tony Dum Dum may finally have bitten off more than he can chew.
A Cairns grandmother was charged with wilful damage to property after she allegedly placed a sticker on a pole.
Four police officers raided the home of Myra Gold, 60, on August 24.
The sticker, which was found by police on a pole at Raintree Shopping Centre, said ‘G20 benefits the 1%’.
Ms Gold told Daily Mail Australia the raid was an attack on freedom of speech.
‘It’s almost like the Thought Police,’ she said.
Myra Gold (left), pictured with a climate change poster, and the G20 stickers she was charged over.
As many as 800 extra police are being sent to Cairns to guard the G20 finance ministers’ meeting, held on September 20 and 21 at the city’s Convention Centre.
The finance ministers of the G20 – an influential international body – will hold a meeting in Cairns at the weekend.
As many as 800 extra police are set to arrive in Cairns early this week.
‘Over in Europe when they have things like this, they have thousands of people turn up to protest,’ she said.
‘They’re allowed to protest. They understand people have a different different view.’
Ms Gold said she has no memory of placing the sticker on the pole.
She said she never expected this could happen to her.
‘(It) was quite stunning,’ she said.
Ms Gold is scheduled to appear in court on October 1.
A spokeswoman for Queensland police refused to comment further because the matter is before a court.
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