Extreme heatwaves, droughts, raging fires. What we are observing is climate change in action. The debate is over.
by Nick Miller
The Global Warming Policy Forum in Britain has striven greatly to sow doubt on climate science and counted high-profile politicians in its ranks. It has hosted former prime ministers Tony Abbott and John Howard. The former said climate change, if it existed, was “probably doing good” and the latter dismissed global warming as a “religion” and the “latest progressive cause”.
“It just doesn’t make sense any more in 2018 and, in the middle of this summer, it just isn’t good enough any more to just frame the debate ‘is climate change real?’
“If you ask an adult of 30 years or older how was it like when you were young, they can tell the difference themselves. It’s the same story all around the world.” and we can all now observe it.
“As long as the BBC and other media give the impression that there is any significant doubt about this … then people won’t take action.”
It’s part of a bigger trend: extremists have weaponised free speech, insisting on platforms to publicly debate the absurd, to spread conspiracy theories and clog up sane debate. Any move to ignore them is branded censorship.
With its attempt to falsify statistics and whitewash uncomfortable facts about poverty in America, the White House once again demonstrated its “contempt” for the poor, one critic argued
The annual State of the Climate Report, compiled by more than 450 scientists from over 60 countries, describes worsening climate conditions worldwide in 2017, the same year that US President Donald Trump pulled out of the landmark Paris climate deal.
The United States is the world’s second leading polluter after China, but has rolled back environmental safeguards under Trump, who has declared climate change a “Chinese hoax” and exited the Paris deal signed by more than 190 nations as a path toward curbing harmful emissions.
The 300-page report issued by the American Meteorological Society and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) mentioned the word “abnormal” a dozen times, referring to storms, droughts, scorching temperatures and record low ice cover in the Arctic.
“Between 2005 and 2017, the finance ministry has taken in $706.23 billion dollars in foreign exchange” from oil, it said in a statement.
According to parliament the equivalent of $227 billion in public funds in Iraq, OPEC’s second largest crude exporter after Saudi Arabia, has gone missing through shell companies.
The vast majority of American Muslims oppose extremism and violence by Muslims or anyone else and have no wish to live under the brutal rule practiced by jihadist fanatics. As a religious minority in a country where their faith makes them potential victims of hate crimes, Muslims have stronger reasons than most Americans for believing in and practicing religious tolerance, not holy war. Keeping Muslim Americans as allies and maintaining their trust in our common values and political and legal institutions will be critical in successfully opposing extremist violence. Losing that trust and driving them away, as the Islamophobes’ ugly falsehoods inevitably will, can only help the terrorists.
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — The Israeli Magistrate Court of Nazareth sentenced Palestinian poet Darin Tatour, from the al-Reineh village in northern Israel, to five months of prison and 6 months of suspended sentence on Tuesday.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. (Grayzone Project / YouTube)
Since the sudden outbreak of protests and violence last April, an uneasy calm had fallen over Nicaragua. President Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista government have claimed victory over what they call a coup attempt, but they now face condemnation from the US and its allies, who accuse them of unleashing lethal violence against peaceful protesters.
I spent much of July inside Nicaragua, speaking with supporters of the government and their opponents. I learned that Washington’s narrative of a despised dictator mowing down unarmed demonstrators wasn’t exactly accurate. Across the country, I observed widespread support for Ortega and the Sandinista movement. It also became apparent from the moment I arrived that Western media had covered up the brutality of the opposition, as well as its anti-democratic agenda.
In the midst of what seemed to be a misinformation campaign reinforced by right-wing members of Congress and the Organization of American States, I approached the Nicaraguan government for a chance to hear Ortega’s side of the story. He agreed, granting me one of his first interviews in eleven years.
Here are 13 takeaways from our wide-ranging discussion on July 25 in Managua:
Two Israeli companies are at the forefront of this commercialization of dirty ops: NSO Group and Black Cube. Those following the Harvey Weinstein scandal will remember that Black Cube was the cyber-surveillance firm that Weinstein’s lawyer, David Boies, hired after former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak introduced Weinstein to the company. Black Cube employed covert schemes to trick Weinstein’s accusers into exposing themselves so that his legal defense might have more ammunition to discredit them in court and in the public realm.
Amazingly, Tamimi used the experience of being jailed, as many colonial subjects in imperial detention cells have–including Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi–to her advantage. Kuwait’s KUNA news service reported:
Australians said an Emphatic “No” to the LNP’s Drift Back to Abbott’s Right-Wing White Pacific Dream. This was a “No” to Right-Wing Drift of Turnbull’s LNP Policies, Media Influence and intrusion, IPA Lobbying and benefiting of the few who only believe in the “me” and not the collective “we”who make up this multicultural country called AUSTRALIA that was also a proud global team player. (ODT)
Labor has secured a major victory over the Turnbull government in a marathon political contest across five byelections, gaining ground in key seats in a show of strength ahead of the next general election.
Labor held its four electorates while the Coalition failed to regain one of its old strongholds, in an outcome that dashed government hopes of turning the tables on its rivals.
The Vanuatu Foreign Minister, Ralph Regenvanu, has welcomed the intensified Chinese investment and aid efforts in his country while conceding it does come with some extra diplomatic pressure. In an extended interview with Independent Australia’s Lee Duffield at his Foreign Ministry office, Mr Regenvanu took stock of incidents upsetting the Australian Government and many Australians, like the story of China wanting a naval base in Vanuatu, which his government has denied.
MAKING AUSTRALIA MORE INTERESTED
ABC election analyst Antony Green predicts the ALP will win the Braddon and Longman by-elections and that Centre Alliance candidate Rebekha Sharkie will defeat Liberal candidate Georgina Downer in Mayo.
According to Israeli born Professor Edward Said, “no country and no lobby” has been as effective at spreading media propaganda and “misinformation” in the United States better than the government of Israel.[67] Naturally, as the field of media and journalism have branched out into the internet, so too has their capabilities to manipulate public opinion.
Back in 2009, the Israeli government announced plans to employ citizens in the dissemination of online propaganda.[68] In 2012, the Electronic Intifada broke a similar story about leaked documents claiming that Israeli students were offered an alluring $2,000 a month, to work from home for just several hours a week of online propaganda. And in 2013, the government setup a University scholarship program for students willing to peddle their agenda.
Alon Liel, former director-general of the Israeli foreign ministry went on record expressing his outrage, by calling it “quite disgusting… University students should be educated to think freely. When you buy the mind of a student, he becomes a puppet of the Israeli government grant… You can give a grant to do social work or teach but not to do propaganda on controversial issues for the government.”[69]
The kind of merger announced today between Channel Nine and Fairfax was bound to happen the moment the cross-media legislation introduced by the Hawke government 30 years ago was suspended.
The so-called cross-media rule gave Australia 30 years of media diversity, especially between Australia’s major television networks and its capital city print.
Those barriers in the wholesaling of news underwrote diversity of opinion, guaranteeing an altogether better informed and livelier public debate.
The absence of those legislative barriers, in the media free-for-all the Turnbull government is permitting, will, because of the broadly maintained power of those outlets, result in an effective and dramatic close down in diversity and, with it, opinion.
The sudden change of approach sent the president’s critics in the media and the online #Resistance movement into disarray. Here was Trump actually agreeing with them that Russia was meddling in US elections – then amplifying that argument by claiming Moscow would do so on their behalf, not his.
“If Ecuador expels Assange from its London embassy, it’s essential the U.K. not become party to any U.S. effort to prosecute him for merely publishing classified information the same way journalists regularly do.”
Federal investigators have an audio recording in which then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and his personal attorney Michael Cohen discussed in late 2016 making payments for the story of Playboy centrefold Karen McDougal, who allegedly had an extramarital affair with Trump, according to two people familiar with the tape.
This is not an acceptance of reality it’s the official denial of Democracy, the Constitutional recognition and Institutionalization of a Theocracy.(ODT)
The other message, the inverse, meant for Palestinians, is: this is not your land; this country does not belong to you, irrespective of whether you are an Israeli citizen living in the home of your great-grandparents or a refugee yearning to return to the land of your grandparents; your culture, language, and history are at best tolerated — this is not their home, this is not your homeland.
The Jewish Nation-State Law states, implicitly and explicitly, that Israel belongs not to all of its citizens, over 20 percent of whom are not Jewish. Instead, it declares that Israel belongs to the Jewish people, some half of whom are not Israeli citizens.
For all of those reasons nobody should be able to feign surprise at the Jewish Nation-State law. The principles it elevates to constitutional status have been around as long as the country it defines. That it sits squarely on a predictable trajectory, however, does not minimize its danger.
Separation of Power the esscence of Democracy has officially been wiped from Israel’s Constitution. Every Institution every law will be viewed oficially through the prism of Jewishness. So your a Christian you can’t live here, work here, marry her or do medicine if we choose not to let you. Your officially a Goy not a Gentile! Your Coloured your mother was a Shiksa. 20% of Israeli’s have been officially downgraded (ODT)
“I think we are seeing an escalation that did not begin with the new Basic Law, but rather is a result of the contradiction between the fundamental identities of the state as Jewish and democratic. What we are seeing now is Jewish identity encroaching more and more on the social and political life of Israel’s citizens, while the ‘democratic’ identity of the state is experiencing a regression.”
The Netanyahu and the State of Israel Shame the Jewish People Creating an Apartheid State. My Mother is on the Wall of the Righteous and today would be a Second Class Citizen in Israel
Legislation stipulates only Jews have right of self-determination in the country
In a moment of ironic timing, the legislation was passed just hours before Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, welcomed a visit by Hungary’s far-right leader, Viktor Orbán, who Israeli critics have accused of praising Nazi-era antisemitic collaborators.
Malcolm Turnbull Has Turned : Racist In Desparation for a Vote (ODT)
The Project‘s Waleed Aly has launched a scathing attack on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, writing off his recent comments about Sudanese gangs as a last-ditch votes grab before Super Saturday byelections next weekend.
Adding that while the Sudanese community is clearly over-represented in the crime stats, Aly said that what’s more interesting is that “Australian-born Victorians were responsible for 71.7 per cent of the crime committed last year”.
“According to Victoria’s Crime Statistics Agency, crime has actually dropped 9 per cent in the last year in Victoria,” he said. “Sudanese Victorians make up 0.1 per cent of the population and account for just 1 per cent of all crimes committed last year.”
“This week the Prime Minister said something interesting,” Aly started, cutting to a video of Turnbull in a 3AW interview earlier this week.
“There is real concern about Sudanese gangs,” Turnbull says in the video. “You have to be walking around with your hands over your ears in Melbourne not to hear it.”
Since being elected president, Donald Trump has vociferously claimed he engaged in “no collusion” with Vladimir Putin’s attack on the 2016 US election and that the investigation of any interactions between him and his associates and Russians was a “witch hunt” or a “rigged witch hunt.” Yet his historic Helsinki summit with Putin—and particularly the unsettling joint press conference they held—provided a clear indication that Trump is indeed guilty of one form of collusion: colluding with Putin to cover up Moscow’s criminal assault on American democracy
US President Donald Trump has publicly dismissed his own intelligence reports on Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election, saying he preferred to believe Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “extremely strong and powerful” denial.
In a surprise twist to the pair’s much-anticipated meeting in Helsinki, the US President said, after hearing Putin’s side of the story, that he didn’t see any reason to believe Russia had interfered – despite his own spy chief, director of national intelligence Dan Coats, telling him the opposite
Like many other countries, Australian business and consumers have left their political leaders behind, opting for renewables backed up by gas, hydro and, to a smaller but growing extent, batteries.
I believe Rudd in this instance. News Corp wants to see Sky as Fox News is in the USA, So does the IPA and the Conservatives in the LNP government. Australia is fast becoming embarassment to itself allowing all our current public institutions to become politicized by the appointment of heads as in Treasury recently. Murdoch and the IPA are the voices of Corporate lobbyists. They make mistakes at times and regret the Royal Commission into Banks but are calling to socialize the energy sector.
How obvious is this. Abbott destroyed the NBN, tried to do the same to the ABC and wants to kneecap Renewables and News Corp and the IPA have been behind this American business model and Dream all the way currently ranking us the worst in the world on Climate inaction (ODT)
In October last year, he suggested the Coalition government was deliberately hamstringing the NBN at the behest of Rupert Murdoch, who he said wanted less competition for his cable television network.
Then in November, Rudd used the Saturday Paper to call for no less than a Royal Commission into what he called the News Corporation “cancer” and its impact on democracy — in spite of the fact, as writer Karen Middleton pointed out, that the company had backed his rise.
Will the Charities Commissioner have reason to investigate this operation for it’s politicization?(ODT)
More than $22 million in taxpayer funds will be paid directly to a private foundation hand-picked by the Turnbull government to dispense Australia’s largest single Great Barrier Reef funding package, raising fresh questions over the controversial deal.
It has also emerged that the foundation will pocket interest earned on the record-large funding windfall, despite previous claims the interest would be directed back into projects to help rescue the natural wonder.
Democrats need to learn what the Republicans have understood for decades: that to win, the party needs a message that embraces the passions, values, and agenda of grassroots leaders.
There are three reasons why it will be difficult for Trump to confront Putin in any meaningful way in Helsinki.
First, he seems to share a mystical affinity with the strongman who rules his nation with apparent impunity.
Second, Trump was the beneficiary of Russia’s meddling. Accepting the existence of election interference
Third, interpersonal conflict doesn’t come naturally to Trump. This may be surprising given his penchant for starting fights. But Trump’s stoushes are usually initiated via media interviews or tweets; rarely does he confront a fellow leader face-to-face. This week Trump bagged German leader Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Theresa May behind their back, only to turn docile when they got in the same room.
The indictment issued against 12 Russian intelligence officers on Friday, local time, offers Trump a simple choice for the Helsinki summit: to aggressively rebuke Putin – both in rhetoric and policy terms – or to look a coward and a dupe in front of the whole world.
Five countries are currently fighting in Syria. Russia, Iran, the United States, and Turkey have stationed troops. Israel regularly drops bombs and fires missiles.
President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will discuss Syria at their Helsinki summit July 16. The Trump administration is pressuring Russia to reduce the Iranian role in Syria, but will not likely succeed, according to Professor Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.
“Iran is there to stay,” he told me. “Russia is not going to kick Iran out.”
“Europe needs to decide whether it wants to live and prosper, or it will disappear.” Those words belong not to former White House senior adviser Steve Bannon or the chairwoman of the ultranationalist Alternative for Germany, Frauke Petry, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who shared them with his Hungarian counterpart, Viktor Orban, in Budapest last year. As Noa Landau argues in Haaretz, this was not merely a prescient glimpse of Israel’s “systematic warming” to the Visegrád Four but an abandonment of the governing principles upon which it claims to pride itself.
Climate activists across the globe celebrated Thursday after the lower house of the Irish legislature passed a divestment bill with support from all parties, effectively ensuring that Ireland will become the first nation in the world to fully divest public money from the fossil fuel industry.
Murdoch Media fails Journalistic Standards Yet Again: Does anybody care?
Follow Irelands lead and Divest from a failing Industry. Abbott doesn’t care about your hip pocket at all when he says the government we must invest in coal (ODT)
More than ever we need our journalists to be frank and fearless, to check their sources and to speak truth to power. The latest article by The Australian proves them to be more of a propaganda wing for big polluters rather than serious journalists.
essay On Disruption lays out for the reader a useful insider’s view of how the news industry and journalism are struggling to cope with the changes wrought by digital technologies and collapsing business models.
If you have any interest in understanding how the news establishment sees itself and its prospects for surviving the crisis of profitability and trust it is worth reading this pamphlet.
Imagine the outcry if he were a Trade Unionist who owed $14,000 (ODT)
The father of jailed Liberal Party director Damien Mantach, who stole nearly $1.5 million from the organisation, has pleaded with the party to forgive his son’s debt, saying it would be “vindictive” to force him to repay the cash.
America’s Trumpland Politics is arriving in Australia. Public Agencies are being politicized in the manner of the USA (ODT)
Chris Bowen says the government is politicising commonwealth agencies
Chris Bowen has objected to the appointment of former Liberal staffers to the Treasury and the Productivity Commission. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP
Labor has raised concerns about the Turnbull government’s decision to appoint former political staffers to key bureaucratic roles in proximity to the federal election expected either later this year, or in the first half of 2019.
Mark Latham might think Jacinta Price has “impeccable credentials for speaking on indigenous issues”. Some think Tony Abbott does too.
Every time I hear Alice Springs councillor and political hopeful Jacinta Price speak, I cringe.
Ms Price has announced her ambition to contest the NT seat of Lingiari in the next federal election as a CLP candidate, a move welcomed by Mark Latham and Warren Mundine who both sing her praises.
After Citizens United, says director Kimberly Reed, “you could just see political power slipping out of the hands of the average citizen and into the hands of a handful of super-rich people.”
According to the proposed ‘Jewish Nation-State Law,’ Israel does not belong to Israeli citizens, more than 20 percent of whom are not Jewish. Instead, it is the state of the Jewish people, roughly half of whom are not even Israeli.
All in all, we should feel confident that important science is solid (and peripheral science unvalidated) due to peer review, transparency, scrutiny and reproduction of results in science publication. Nevertheless in some fields where reproduction is rare or impossible – long term studies depending on complex statistical data – it is likely that scientific debate will continue.
But even in these fields, the endless scrutiny by other researchers, together with the proudly guarded reputations of authors and journals, means that even if it will never be perfect, the scientific method remains more reliable than all the others.
Bolt kept quoting W.A police for quite the opposite police attitudes and admissions against the Indigenous Australians guess Bolt will remain silent on this admission. (ODT)
The Western Australian police commissioner has issued a historic apology to the state’s Indigenous people, saying he took ownership for “past wrongful actions that have caused immeasurable suffering” and fuelled a sense of mistrust towards the force.
Tony Abbott Closed Radio Australia and opened the door to China in the region. Now the LNP are trying to correct that threatening an economic backlash. A rolling stone gathers moss and it started with Abbott the Pillock of the Pacific the Europhile (ODT)
The security pact, known as Biketawa Plus, is being considered by members of the Pacific Islands Forum and builds on the Biketawa Declaration signed in 2000 that has guided the forum’s collective response to crises such as natural disasters and civil unrest.
The Global Times warned it would be a “strategic mistake” if the new security agreement was aimed at China.
“Instead of being overly cautious about China’s rise, Australia and New Zealand should avoid misleading the region on China’s role, and other regional countries should be clear about the consequences of being misled,” its editorial said.
“The region will only suffer more losses from containing China.”
The New Zealand Government has also copped criticism after it released its Strategic Defence Policy Statement last week which said China was challenging the existing international rules-based order.
At a press conference in Beijing on Monday China Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying urged New Zealand to “correct its wrong words and deeds and contribute more to the mutual trust and cooperation between our two countries”.
Self Interest is fast becoming the Cabal that controls governments and tries to carve up the world, By no means has Johnson resigned to the bacbench to be corraled like Tony Abbott. (ODT}
“Boris Johnson’s a friend of mine, he’s been very, very nice to me, very supportive and maybe I’ll speak to him when I get over there,” Trump said. “I like Boris Johnson, I’ve always liked him.”
Johnson previously said in a leaked audio recording that he wished Trump was overseeing the Brexit negotiations. His departure from Cabinet was followed by the resignation of junior, low-profile ministers late on Monday night and two MPs from party roles on Tuesday.
Israel’s interferance with the domestic laws of the USA and it’s constitution (ODT)
South Carolina passed a law this week codifying a discredited definition of anti-Semitism that conflates criticism of Israel and Zionism with anti-Jewish bigotry.
“The law will inevitably violate students’ First Amendment rights if enforced to restrict or punish campus speech critical of Israel,” Dima Khalidi, director of the civil rights group Palestine Legal, told The Electronic Intifada.
Students now face increased scrutiny, investigations, censorship and possible punishment for their activities advocating for Palestinian rights on South Carolina campuses, Palestine Legal has warned.
The anti-Semitism definition, which has been pushed by Israel lobby groups in the US and Europe, is sometimes referred to as the “State Department Definition” because a version of it was adopted by the US State Department.
The measure was added as a rider on South Carolina’s 2018-2019 budget bill, which makes the law valid for only one year.
It will require state-funded institutions to use the definition when investigating alleged incidents of anti-Semitism on campuses.
Under the cover of darkness 2 aggressors plot with willing dupes the Saudis who need an alternative energy source (ODT)
This is not the first suggestion of nuclear cooperation between Tel Aviv and Riyadh. In May, it was reported that Western security agencies believed that Israel is selling nuclear information to Saudi Arabia in an attempt to bolster it as a viable opposition to Iran.
Israel shut down Gaza’s ability to conduct trade because of flaming balloons and kites that Palestinians have been floating over the border. There is no security justification, just collective punishment.
12.1% Global Renewable Energy Production and Accelerating.(ODT)
The worldwide investment in renewable energy touched $279.8 billion in 2017, taking cumulative investment since 2004 to $2.9 trillion. Globally, the percentage of electricity generated by renewables was at 12.1% in 2017. This reduced carbon dioxide emissions of about 1.8 gigatons as per the UNEP report.
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