Tag Archives: australian

Breaking: Sydney on Lockdown As Dramatic Siege Unfolds

by Glory Miche Posted on December 15, 2014

Mother Jones

The heart of Sydney, Australia, is currently in lockdown, as a siege unfolds at a downtown cafe. Reporting is still fuzzy and ongoing, but here’s what we know so far: Police are responding to a situation at the Lindt Cafe in Martin Place, a central plaza in the city surrounded by banks and law firms, and not far from the state parliament buildings and the Sydney Opera House.

The number of hostages taken have not been confirmed. Channel Seven, a TV station with studios and offices in Martin Place, is reporting police sources as saying there are 13 people being held. The number of hostage-takers has also not been confirmed.

Twitter users have posted images of people, apparently hostages, with their hands against the windows of the cafe and holding up a black flag with Arabic writing on it. Guardian Australia is reporting the flag reads, “There is no god but the God, Muhammad is the messenger of God.” It is not the Islamic State flag. Large parts of the area have been cordoned off.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which has unlocked its live stream for an international audience, is providing rolling coverage. Channel Seven is also providing live coverage here.

The Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, has released a statement saying his government is convening an emergency session of the National Security Committee of Cabinet:

A statement from the Prime Minister on the events at Martin Place @7NewsSydney pic.twitter.com/GbBx4W1hBV

— Matthew Snelson (@matthewsnelson7)

December 15, 2014

UPDATE: Sunday, December 14, 2014, 9 p.m. EST: The Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has addressed reporters in Australia’s capital, Canberra. He didn’t provide any further factual detail about the unfolding saga in Sydney. Notably, he did not outline potential reasons for the attack. “We don’t yet know the motivation of the perpetrator,” he said, though he added that “obviously there are some indications” the attack could be political in nature. Abbott said the normal business of government would continue:

I can understand the concerns and anxieties of the Australian people at a time like this, but our thoughts and prayers must above all go out to the individuals who are caught up in this. I can think of almost nothing more distressing, more terrifying than to be caught up in such a situation and our hearts go out to these people.

UPDATE 2: Monday, December 15, 2014, 12:15 a.m. EST: It appears that at least three hostages have gotten free, though whether they escaped or were released is not yet clear.

BREAKING: NSW Deputy Police Commissioner confirms three people have been freed from the Lindt cafe http://t.co/ETfkG5y3Jj

— Jen Ryall (@jennijenni)

December 15, 2014

As things unfold, we’ve compiled a list of sources on Twitter to follow. Find it here.

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Breaking: Sydney on Lockdown As Dramatic Siege Unfolds

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A Tiny Island. Millions of Crabs. Terrifyingly Awesome Photos.

by EulahWhitfeld Posted on December 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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An Australian wildlife official inspects migrating red crabs on Christmas Island, in 2013. Xu Yanyan/Xinhua/ZUMA

This month, an eerily precise annual migration began in earnest on a tiny Australian island about 500 miles off the coast of Indonesia.

Every year, millions of adult red crabs—first the males, then the females— scamper out from Christmas Island’s central forests, across the island, and finally to beaches that meet the Indian Ocean. Their goal is to stage one giant crab sex party: to mate and spawn.

The local government has constructed underground crab-ways to accommodate the migration. Parks Australia

According to Christmas Island National Park authorities, “the females will spend two weeks brooding their eggs before making their way to the cliffs and beaches to spawn. This should occur about the 18th-19th of December. Before sunrise on these mornings the females will release their eggs into the ocean—timed perfectly for the receding tide.”

Amazing.

Ian Usher/Wikimedia Commons

Watch them below making their slow, deliberate, hard-wired journey:

So. Many. Crabs. Max Orchard/Parks Australia

Parks Australia says that there are tens of millions of crabs—20 species in total—that live on the island. Their migration occurs between October and December and is triggered by rains characteristic of the island’s tropical wet season.

The local government closes roads for the invasion to prevent the little guys from getting squashed by cars. Xu Yanyan/Xinhua/ZUMA

Max Orchard/Parks Australia

Ruling the island! Crab Power! Xu Yanyan/Xinhua/ZUMA

Wildlife rangers have installed up to 7.5 miles of crab fences along the roads, according to Parks Australia—and every year they add up to three miles of additional temporary fencing—to help protect the crabs and their mating rituals. There are already 34 “crab crossings,” which are basically culverts under the roads so the crabs can avoid the cars. Here’s a video explaining just how elaborate the preparations have become:

Behind the scenes of the red crab migration – Christmas Island 2012 from Parks Australia on Vimeo.

But this spectacular beach invasion may be threatened by global warming. Research conducted by Princeton University found that increasingly unpredictable rainfall—potentially a symptom of climate change—could harm the red crustaceans’ chances of a successful journey, and therefore imperil their survival.

The study, published in Global Change Biology, found that if fluctuations in rainfall become more extreme and frequent, the crabs might get scrambled and not even start their migration, which is what happened during an exceptionally dry 1997 season. “We found that the start date of the migration was really dependent on the rainfall they received in the weeks before the migration,” said Allison Shaw, an author of the study, and now an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota. “The issue for the crabs is that they have to migrate if they want to produce. If they can’t make it to the water, they won’t produce offspring.” Disturbances in the migration patterns were linked in particular to strong El Niño years, which tend to make Christmas Island dry, Shaw says.

There’s still a lot of science yet to be done to clear up the connection between El Niño and climate change, but trends are emerging. “The 20th century is significantly, statistically stronger in its El Niño Southern Oscillation activity than this long, baseline average,” Kim Cobb, Associate Professor of Climate Change at the Georgia Institute of Technology, told me last year. That is, El Niño events have gotten worse.

If that’s the case, Christmas Island, home to the crabs, will experience more intense, and therefore drier periods, says Shaw. A lack of rain can delay or entirely cancel the crimson tide of crabs, and the resulting swarms of crab offspring, seen below.

Finally, waves of baby crabs appear. Parks Australia

Parks Australia

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A Tiny Island. Millions of Crabs. Terrifyingly Awesome Photos.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Prepara, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged australia, australian, climate, climate desk, climate-change, december, ocean, Prepara, radius, university | Comments Off

The World’s Biggest Climate Villain Just Agreed to Help Fight Global Warming

by MarceloKirke Posted on December 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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The Prime Minister of Australia is called Abbott. His deputy, Bishop. And together they head a group of ministers who are running an anti-climate campaign with an almost religious fervor.

In a report issued this week by Climate Action Network Europe and Germanwatch, Australia was ranked as the “worst industrial country in the world” on climate action—and second-worst among all countries, above only Saudi Arabia. Australia’s open hostility toward climate action began in earnest last year, when the right-wing Liberal Party led by Prime Minister Tony Abbott took power in a landslide victory. So far, Abbott’s team has repealed carbon pricing laws, scrapped or eroded funding for government agencies that deal with climate policy, and spoken out against the UN’s international Green Climate Fund, which is designed to help poorer countries fight the effects of global warming.

Now, at least one of those things has changed. This week, Deputy Prime Minister Julie Bishop—who is also the country’s minister for foreign affairs—finally caved to international pressure and announced a $200 million (AUD) commitment to the Green Climate Fund. That’s about $166 million (US). “Our pledge to the Green Climate Fund will facilitate private sector-led economic growth in our region,” she said this week at the UN climate talks in Lima, Peru. Bishop added that the plan would allow Australia to “focus on investment, infrastructure, energy, forestry and emissions reductions.” Australia joins 21 other nations, including the United States, which last month announced a contribution of $3 billion.

The fund has become an important focal point of international climate negotiations because poorer countries typically get the rough end of global warming: Not only are they more likely to feel the brunt of its impacts—such as rising sea levels and increased extreme weather—they also don’t have enough money to face the problem. Meanwhile, rich countries are largely to blame for the crisis. The fund tries to remedy that imbalance.

Australia’s announcement is a policy back-flip. Asked about the UN fund before a climate meeting in Warsaw last year, Abbott said, “We’re not going to be making any contributions to that.” He’s also called the fund a “Bob Brown bank.” Let me explain that one: It’s an attack on the former leader of Australia’s left-wing Greens Party, whom Abbott loves to caricature as the sort of bleeding-heart, tree-hugging socialist who only knows how to wreck an economy. To American ears, it’s basically like the Republican trope around Obama’s job-killing “war on coal.”

Australia faced strong criticism from European nations after its negotiators engaged in what one European official described as “trench warfare” in an attempt to prevent the fund’s inclusion in a G20 communiqué following a G20 summit in Brisbane last month. Australia also refused to join other world leaders at a conference in Berlin last month that was aimed at raising $10 billion for the fund.

And wow, did Abbott sound utterly miserable when he was asked about the government’s dramatic reversal in the face of international pressure. (He’s quite transparent when he doesn’t like something.) The video of Abbott reacting to the funding announcement is telling.

“Well…” Big, exasperated sigh. “Look, uh…” Sad face. Big Pause. “You know…” he went on.

Abbott now admits that he did make “various comments some time ago” criticizing the fund, but he says that “we’ve seen things develop over the last few months.” Indeed, a lot has happened over the last few months that might have helped change Abbott’s mind. The Canadians—with whom he’s enjoyed a kind of anti-climate bromance—recently agreed to cough up cash for the fund. Last month, Abbott was humiliated at his very own party—the G20 meeting in Brisbane—when world leaders ganged up on him in the dispute over the communiqué. And then there was the news that China, Australia’s massive trading partner, had inked a landmark emissions reduction deal with Australia’s most important ally, the United States.

Now, Abbott’s message has grudgingly changed: “I think it’s now fair and reasonable for the government to make a modest, prudent and proportionate commitment to this climate mitigation fund: I think that is something that a sensible government does,” he said. “That money will be strictly invested in practical projects in our region.”

The announcement was praised, hesitantly, by environmental groups. There was, after all, a catch. The money will be drawn from Australia’s existing international aid budget—a budget has already been cut by $7 billion over the next five years.

Climate success or otherwise, these developments appear to be a fascinating continuation of the “climate change as political kryptonite” narrative that has dominated Australian politics for years. As Lenore Taylor, political editor for the Guardian Australia, once told me, climate change is the “killing fields” of Aussie politics. And now it appears the guns are out and loaded once more—dividing the cabinet and leaving the leader out on a limb.

Bishop was, at first, reportedly blocked by the prime minister’s office from even traveling to Peru for the UN meeting—Australia has recently spurned climate meetings. But Bishop is perhaps the most popular minister in an increasingly unpopular government, and she took the disagreement to the nation’s cabinet, which overruled the boss. Then, Australia’s political press was laced with anonymous sources suggesting that Bishop was furious—”went bananas,” according to one—when she learned she would be not be traveling alone to represent Australia. Instead, Bishop would be accompanied by another minister (described in the Australian press as a “chaperone“), reportedly to make sure she didn’t get swept up in the momentum to get a global emissions deal done—something that Abbott has desperately tried to avoid. (Bishop has denied she was angry).

Discord! Strife! Media intrigue! It would all seem so petty if it weren’t part of a familiar pattern, one that’s deeply foreign to American politics: Climate policy has hung over Australia’s politicians like a dark storm cloud since at least 2006, and it has been instrumental in the downfall of multiple political leaders. Here’s a short summary:

2009: The conservative opposition party (called the Liberal Party) replaced its leader, Malcolm Turnbull, who supported a cap-and-trade scheme, with Tony Abbott, a man who is vehemently opposed to the idea.
In the meantime, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd—from the Labor party—failed to get the votes to pass his carbon legislation through parliament and subsequently was overthrown by a popular deputy prime minister, Julia Gillard, who promised not to introduce carbon legislation.
Gillard did in fact introduce carbon pricing in 2011. Cue vitriolic opposition from an invigorated conservative opposition led by Abbott. Gillard’s popularity plummeted as opponents attacked her credibility; she was then challenged and defeated by a resurgent Kevin Rudd, in 2013.
Abbott took office in a landslide and has proceeded to repeal the carbon legislation, which he called a “toxic tax.”

Signs that Bishop may be using climate change to outflank her leader must be worrying to Abbott. As one political commentator put it: “smaller slights than this have proved the defining moment in the descent into division of governments past. A bushfire can begin with just one match.”

Excerpt from:

The World’s Biggest Climate Villain Just Agreed to Help Fight Global Warming

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ISIS Magazine Promotes Slavery, Rape, and Murder of Civilians in God’s Name

by TraceyTearle Posted on October 14, 2014

Mother Jones

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ISIS, the self-proclaimed Islamic state that’s attempting to establish a caliphate across large areas of Iraq and Syria, publishes a glossy English-language propaganda magazine called Dabiq, complete with slick graphics and high-quality photos. Dabiq is one of the group’s recruitment tools, coupled with its strong social media presence. The magazine, whose name references the location of Islam’s mythical Armageddon (a town in northern Syria), bills itself as an “informative” source for the activities of ISIS fighters, while preaching on holy topics and issuing decrees. Its producers claim that Allah approves the message: ISIS has “not a mustard seed of doubt regarding this.”

In any case, the fourth issue of Dabiq just came out, and it justifies all sorts of terrible things ISIS and its fighters may do in the name of Allah. Here are 10 of the worst examples, with quotations:

1. Sack other people’s cities

“We will come to your homeland by Allah’s permission.”

“We will conquer your Rome.”

“We will not rest from our jihÄd until we are under the olive trees of Rome, after we destroy the filthy house called the White House.”

2. Condemn other people’s beliefs

“We will…break your crosses.”

“And those who have disbelieved—unto Hell they will be gathered.” (Although, to be fair, some Christians believe the same thing.)

“You are the best people for people. You bring them with chains around their necks, until they enter Islam.”

3. Enslave people, in some cases to save ISIS’s men from temptation

“We will…enslave your women, by the permission of Allah, the Exalted. This is His promise to us…”

“Our children and grandchildren…will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market.”

“The desertion of slavery had led to an increase in fÄhishah adultery, fornication, because the shar’Ä« alternative to marriage is not available, so a man who cannot afford marriage to a free woman finds himself surrounded by temptation towards sin.”

4. Threaten and kill people

“You will not feel secure even in your bedrooms.”

“You will pay the price when your sons are sent to wage war against us, and they return to you as disabled amputees, or inside coffins, or mentally ill.”

“You must strike the soldiers, patrons, and troops of the tawÄghÄ«t unbelievers. Strike their police, security, and intelligence members, as well as their treacherous agents. Destroy their beds. Embitter their lives for them and busy them with themselves. If you can kill a disbelieving American or European—especially the spiteful and filthy French—or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be.”

5. Turn women and children into sex slaves and concubines—those you don’t kill

Yazidi “women could be enslaved unlike female apostates who the majority of the fuqahÄ’ jurists say cannot be enslaved and can only be given an ultimatum to repent or face the sword. After capture, the Yazidi women and children were then divided according to the SharÄ«’ah amongst the fighters of the Islamic State who participated in the Sinjar operations, after one fifth of the slaves were transferred to the Islamic State’s authority to be divided as khums taxes.”

“One should remember that enslaving the families of the kuffÄr unbelievers and taking their women as concubines is a firmly established aspect of the SharÄ«’ah that if one were to deny or mock, he would be denying or mocking the verses of the Qur’Än and the narrations of the Prophet.”

6. Plunder

“His provision becomes what Allah has given him of spoils from the property of His enemy,” because “wealth” was only sent to earth to create prayer and “people with obedience to Allah are more deserving of wealth.”

“Send them very much, for it will end up as war booty in our hands by Allah’s permission. You will spend it, then it will be a source of regret for you, then you will be defeated. Look at your armored vehicles, machinery, weaponry, and equipment. It is in our hands.”

Allah “legalized war booty” for Muhammad and his ummah nation. “War booty is more lawful than other income for a number of reasons.”

7. Murder civilians

Americans—”die in your rage.”

“Kill the disbeliever whether he is civilian or military, for they have the same ruling.”

“We did not come as farmers, rather we came to kill the farmers and eat their crops.”

8. Ethnically cleanse

“It has become necessary for a trial to come, expel the filth, and purify the ranks.”

9. Use suicide as a weapon

Muslims “are a people who through the ages have not known defeat. The outcome of their battles is concluded before they begin. Being killed—according to their account—is a victory. This is where the secret lies. You fight a people who can never be defeated.”

10. Purport to help people even as you commit horrible atrocities

Dabiq

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ISIS Magazine Promotes Slavery, Rape, and Murder of Civilians in God’s Name

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged australian, canadian, citizen, French, house, islam, islamic-state, lai, murder, Ona, radius | Comments Off

How deforestation helped unleash Ebola

by ShermanTackett Posted on October 13, 2014

Treebola

How deforestation helped unleash Ebola

By Amelia Urry

13 Oct 2014 5:38 PM

How deforestation helped unleash Ebola

Perhaps you have heard about Ebola, otherwise known as The Most Terrifying Disease Of Our Modern Times (Sorry, MERs; panic is a fickle friend). But you might not have heard that Ebola’s origin story also features a favorite environmental arch-villain? And by “favorite,” I mean “actually the worst”: deforestation.

You see, the most recent outbreak of this extra-deadly strain of the Ebola virus began last December, in a town called Meliandou in the sleepy “Forest Region” of Guinea. That is, it used to be forested, as a recent article in Vanity Fair pointed out:

Trees were felled to make way for farms or burned down for charcoal. Endless truckloads of timber were shipped to construction companies. The forest suffered another trauma as mining interests — the Anglo-Australian Rio Tinto, the omnipresent Chinese — pushed aggressively to exploit the country’s natural resources (bauxite mostly). As the forests disappeared, so too did the buffer separating humans from animals — and from the pathogens that animals harbor.

And that buffer was not in place when one fateful fruit bat came into contact with a human toddler late last year:

Ordinary life in Meliandou came to an end on the day last December when the Ebola virus, which had last claimed a fatality thousands of miles away, arrived in the village, most likely in the body of a fruit bat — its natural non-human reservoir, according to a virtual consensus among scientists. Mining and clear-cutting had driven bats from their natural habitats and occasionally closer to people, like those of Meliandou. And fruit bats love palm and mango, which ripen in the village’s remaining trees. Bats also feed in colonies, which makes them tempting targets: a single shotgun blast can bring down 10.

While in many ways Ebola qualifies as a natural disaster, it’s worth remembering that the distinction between “natural” and “human-made” is a fine one. Sandy was a “natural” disaster, for example, but New York City’s bad coastal infrastructure made it worse. Same with Ebola: What could have been an exclusively harmless fruit-bat affair instead took a leap across the thinning fringe of wilderness, traveled by land and by air in our increasingly interconnected world and — well, here we are.

There’s a lot more deep and very sad thinking about epidemics, mourning, and the risks health-workers take to care for others in the Vanity Fair article here. Read it — but maybe bring a box of tissues and a hazmat suit.

Source:
Hell in the Hot Zone

, Vanity Fair.

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How deforestation helped unleash Ebola

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Guy Buys First New iPhone, Immediately Drops It On National TV

by pfmufle Posted on September 19, 2014

Mother Jones

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It’s new iPhone day! All around the globe thousands of hungry ducks are lining up to be one of the first few to get their hands on Cupertino’s fresh new phones. In Perth, “a boy called Jack” got the very first one. Naturally, he was swarmed by media, which led to this:

Thankfully, the iPhone was not hurt.

Mother Jones Senior Australian James West was not immediately available for comment.

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Guy Buys First New iPhone, Immediately Drops It On National TV

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Beware, Makers of Cake Mix and Almonds: Putin Going After US Foods

by WilburRomano Posted on August 6, 2014

Mother Jones

After Ukrainian rebels used Russian missiles to shoot down a passenger airliner last month, the United States and the European Union escalated sanctions against Russia, cutting off Russian firms’ and individuals’ access to western markets and western financing. Now Russian President Vladimir Putin is striking back—by taking aim at his people’s ability to buy western-produced food.

On Wednesday, Putin issued a new decree warning that he plans to ban or limit imports of food products and agricultural goods from the US and the EU. Putin didn’t specify the exact products he wants to target; instead, he asked Russian government agencies to draft lists of products that should be limited or banned. (The Russian government has already reassured citizens that imports on wine and baby food are safe.)

Nevertheless, Russians and western ex-pats living in Russia are already venting their frustrations, the New Republic reports. “American whiskey, Dutch cheeses, German beer, Australian beef, Greek olives. Say bye-bye to all that,” an independent Russian TV channel tweeted. Russia imports a wide range of American food and agricultural products—$1.3 billion worth in 2013 alone. Here’s a list of some of the food and agricultural products that could be threatened by Putin’s move:

Kale: According to the United Nation’s commodity trade database, the US exported to Russia in 2013 about 338,266 pounds of cabbage, cauliflower, kohlrabi and kale, both fresh and chilled, worth about $93,894.
Whiskey: Russia bought $85 million worth of various whiskeys from the US in 2013, per the UN’s commodity trade database. “It is well known that Russians like to drink alcohol,” the US Department of Agriculture noted in a report released last year. Kentucky bourbon and Tennessee whiskey are increasingly popular in Russia, according to the report. Russia’s consumer protection agency recently announced that it was investigating Kentucky Gentleman bourbon due to fears that it contains chemicals that could produce infertility and cause cancer, and was already proceeding with plans to ban that specific brand in the country. (A spokesperson for the Sazerac Company said they had not been contacted by Russia’s Rospotrebnadzor, and had no comment at this time.)
Fruit: Russia imports more apples and pears than any other country, according to USDA. Shipments from the US only constitute a small share of those imports—less than 1 percent of the total apple market in Russia—but that still amounted to $7.7 million worth of apples in 2012. “U.S. apples have a niche market in Russia as many consumers prefer the large and richly colored apples, which are characteristics that U.S. suppliers can normally provide,” a USDA report said.
Almonds: In 2012, the United States supplied about 92 percent of the Russian almond market, USDA reported. In 2013, the US exported about $132,189,826 worth of shelled almonds to Russia, according to the UN.
Cows: In 2012, Russia imported 74,734 bovine animals from the United States. “Russia was the second largest market for the U.S. breeding cattle exports (30 percent of total U.S. live cattle exports) after Canada during the first 8 months of 2013,” the USDA reported.
Cake mix: In 2013, the United States exported about 2.2 million pounds of bread, pastry, biscuit mixes and dough worth $1,191,464 to Russia, according to the UN.
Soybeans: In 2013, US exported $157 million worth of soybeans to Russia.
Caviar: In 2013, the US exported $1,014,848 worth of preserved fish, fish eggs, and caviar to Russia.

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Beware, Makers of Cake Mix and Almonds: Putin Going After US Foods

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Westerners Are Flocking to Iraq’s Top Terror Group—and There Seems to Be Very Little We Can Do About It

by LannyCurtiss Posted on August 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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In May, Moner Mohammed Abusalha, a 22-year-old American who had joined Jabhat al-Nusra, an Al-Qaeda-allied group in Syria, drove a bomb-laden truck into a restaurant in the northern province of Idlib, killing dozens.* Before carrying out this suicide bombing, the New York Times reported last week, Abusalha had briefly returned home to his native Florida. Abusalha’s story underscores a mounting concern among Western national security officials, for though he detonated his truck bomb in Syria he could have easily struck within the US. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State, the Sunni extremist group that has seized control of a swath of territory in Syria and northern Iraq, has enlisted thousands of fundamentalist volunteers from Germany, France, the Netherlands, Australia, the US, and elsewhere. Counterterrorism officials fear that jihadists like Abusalha, holding European Union or US passports, can all too easily return to their home countries and possibly import terrorism. US officials, says former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean, who co-chaired the 9/11 Commission, are “scared, really scared.” FBI Director James Comey recently told reporters that the threat of Westerners with European Union and US passports joining the Islamic State “keeps me up at night” and that he believes another wave of September 11-style attacks are a possibility. Attorney General Eric Holder told ABC News, “in some ways, it’s more frightening than anything I’ve seen as attorney general.”

Recruits have flocked to Baghdadi’s cause from places such as Austria, where in April, two girls, 15 and 16 years old, left their homes in Vienna and flew to Adana, Turkey, leaving notes saying they had “chosen the right path”—that is, they were likely trying to join up with the Islamic State. A month earlier, a young Austrian man, now a foot soldier in Baghdadi’s crusade, posted footage online of Islamic State fighters obliterating a Shia mosque in the Syrian city of Raqqa, according to Der Standard. All told, about 100 young Austrians have left the country to answer Baghdadi’s call for jihadist recruits.

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Original article –

Westerners Are Flocking to Iraq’s Top Terror Group—and There Seems to Be Very Little We Can Do About It

Posted in Anchor, ATTRA, Citizen, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged american, attra, australian, baghdadi, france, g & f, islamic-state, Ona, pur, venta, western | Comments Off

Australia repeals carbon tax, scientists freak out

by ClayMontgomery Posted on July 17, 2014

crikey

Australia repeals carbon tax, scientists freak out

By John Upton

Shutterstock

The cartoonish stereotype of Australia of yesteryear featured a rough-headed bloke in an Akubra hat wrangling crocodiles. That image has finally been scrubbed from our collective memories – only to be replaced with something worse. Today, when we read news dispatches from Australia, we’re seeing a dunderheaded prime minister cartoonishly wrangling commonsense, becoming the first leader in the warming world to repeal a price on carbon.

It’s like George W. Bush, Crocodile Dundee-style.

Conservative prime minister, climate change denier, and accused misogynist Tony Abbott was elected in September. He started working as the nation’s leader almost immediately, but he had to wait until this month for newly elected senators to take their seats. Abbott’s (conservative) Liberal party still doesn’t control the Senate, but it has found Senate allies in a powerful party that was founded just last year by kooky mining magnate Clive Palmer. Palmer held a press conference with Al Gore last month to announce that he opposed some of Abbott’s climate-wrecking policies, and that he wanted a carbon-trading program to replace the carbon tax. That now seems to have been smokestacks and mirrors. When it came to repealing Australia’s $US23.50 per metric ton carbon tax, the immodestly named Palmer United Party fell into line on Thursday, helping the repeal pass the Senate by a vote of 39 to 32, without demanding the establishment of any alternative.

The vote came just days after new modeling and research revealed that climate change is worsening drought conditions in Australia. Apparently, the drought is also of the intellectual variety.

Abbott has proposed replacing the carbon tax with something he calls Direct Action. That would involve handing out billions of dollars to corporations to help them reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. But Direct Action has not been passed by the Senate, and it might never be passed, meaning that one of the worst per-person climate-polluting countries now has no overarching strategy for reducing that pollution.

“Today’s repeal of laws that price and limit carbon pollution is an historic act of irresponsibility and recklessness,” said John Connor, CEO of The Climate Institute. “Today we lose a credible framework of limiting pollution that was a firm foundation for a fair dinkum Australian contribution to global climate efforts.”

We could bore you with visceral reactions from politicians Down Under. Instead, here are some reactions to the repeal from Australian scientists and academic analysts:

Roger Jones, Victoria University: “It’s hard to imagine a more effective combination of poor reasoning and bad policy making. The perfect storm of stupidity. Bad economics and mistrust of market forces.”

Hugh Outhred, University of New South Wales: “With climate change already underway, repeal of the carbon tax represents dereliction of duty with respect to the rights of young people and future generations. The coalition plan to replace a ‘polluter pays’ policy with a ‘pay the polluter’ policy will exacerbate the budget imbalance while being simply inadequate to the task.”

Roger Dargaville, University of Melbourne: “The Government’s replacement strategy, Direct Action, will fail to reduce emissions as it fails to penalise the largest emitters. Also, Direct Action risks not gaining approval in the Senate as it is unlikely to get the support of [Palmer United Party] Senators. The repeal of the price on carbon is a backwards step and a sad day for the global climate.”

Jemma Green, Curtin University: “Without a domestic emissions trading scheme, Australia will probably use international offsetting to meet its commitments. The Renewable Energy Target and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation will play some role in retooling for the low-carbon economy, but other new policies may be required to fully address this need.”

Peter Rayner, University of Melbourne: “I’m a carbon cycle scientist, my job is to monitor, understand and predict the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As an Australian, I’m proud of how much we have contributed to that understanding, but today I’m embarrassed by how poor we are at putting that understanding into practice.”

Correction: This post originally stated that The Climate Institute was a former Australian government agency that morphed into a nonprofit after Abbott took power, but in fact it has always been a nonprofit.

Source
Carbon tax is gone: Repeal bills pass the Senate, Sydney Morning Herald
Expert reaction: Carbon tax repealed, Australian Science Media Center
Carbon tax repealed: experts respond, The Conversation
Clive Palmer’s changes may doom proposed emissions trading scheme, The Guardian
Australia lurches backwards as pollution is free again, The Climate Institute
New NOAA climate model shows Australia’s long-term rainfall decline due to human-caused climate change, NOAA

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Happy Birthday, Twitter! Here Are 50 Things the Media Says You’ve Revolutionized.

by Kristof0239 Posted on July 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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Twitter launched July 15, 2006. Since soon after its inception, the media has been heralding Twitter’s significance. Here is a not-at-all exhaustive list of things the media has credited Twitter with changing forever.

Social media.

The media world.

The world.

The world of Australian political journalism.

UK Political journalism.

Journalism.

“Journalism for an entire generation.”

Washington relationships.

Politics.

Local politics.

The way politicians communicate with voters.

The way people communicate with people.