![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYjSa6kt0ZVaYIQzwxAQaCXrAib_5btA8TLJwYRt3ec9PNiSH-tdXxpISxdT7zlCMh1POP_Q_rAKtzFdNCAV5TZB2Uwv0279ETi-e_V7DParePx93XKfOpQvWcVp8EfQff_Z06xSLzLJ3a/s200/ScreenHunter_01+Dec.+10+07.23.gif)
March meeting points on Saturday 12 December 2009:
Can't walk on that day? Sign the petition being sent to Kevin Rudd at Walk Against Warming website.
This is The Greens Senator Christine MiIlne writing from Copenhagen:
This blog is open to any who wish to comment on Australian society, the state of the environment or political shenanigans at Federal, State and Local Government level.
19. Substantially scaled up financial resources will be needed to address mitigation, adaptation, technology and capacity building. It is essential to strengthen the international financial architecture for assisting the developing countries in dealing with climate change and to improve access to financial support. Resources will derive from multiple sources and flow through multiple bilateral and multilateral channels.
20. The Parties share the view that the strengthened financial architecture should be able to handle gradually scaled up international public support. International public finance support to developing countries [should/shall] reach the order of [X] billion USD in 2020 on the basis of appropriate increases in mitigation and adaptation efforts by developing countries.
21. The Parties confirm climate financing committed under this agreement as new and additional resources that supplement existing international public financial flows otherwise available for developing countries in support of poverty alleviation and the continued progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. In this regard:
- Developed country parties commit to deliver upfront public financing for 2010-201[2] corresponding on average to [10] billion USD annually for early action, capacity building, technology and strengthening adaptation and mitigation readiness in developing countries as set forth in Attachment C;
- From [2013] The Parties commit to regularly review appropriateness of contributions and the circle of contributors against indicators of fairness based on GDP and emissions levels and taking into account the level of development as set forth in Attachment C.
22. Recalling article 4 of the Convention, Parties decide that a Climate Fund be established as an operating entity of the Financial Mechanism of the Convention, which should function under the guidance of and be accountable to the COP as set forth in article 11 of the Convention. The Fund should be operated by a board with balanced representation, which will develop the operational guidelines for the Fund and decide on specific allocation to programmes and projects. The COP will formally elect members of the Fund Board and endorse the operational guidelines and modalities for the Fund. The Fund should complement and maximise global efforts to fight climate change through up-scaled support for climate efforts in the developing countries, including mitigation, adaptation, technology and capacitybuilding. Support from the Fund may be channeled through multilateral institutions or directly to national entities based on agreed criteria. Parties commit to allocate an initial amount of [$x] to the Fund as part of their international public climate support. Medium term funding should be based on a share of no less than [y%] of the overall international public support. Parties decide to operationalise the work of the Fund following the modalities set forth inannex/decision [Y].
23. In the context of the commitment in paragraph [14] Parties commit to global financing contributions from international aviation and international maritime transport generated through instruments developed and implemented by the ICAO and IMO respectively should be channeled through the Climate Fund from [2013], [mainly for adaption purposes], taking into account the principle of common but differentiated responsibility.
24. To enhance transparency and overview The Parties decide to establish an International Climate Financing Board under the UNFCCC to monitor and review international financing for climate action and in this context identify any gaps and imbalances in the international financing for mitigation and adaptation actions that may arise. The Board will consist of [x] representatives from developed countries and [y] representatives from developing countries.
[Z] Representatives from international institutions will participate in the Board as permanent observers. Decision making will be by consensus. [If all efforts to reach a compromise have been exhausted and no agreement has been reached, decisions shall be taken by a two-thirds majority]. The UNFCCC Secretariat will serve as secretariat for the International Climate Financing Board. Parties endorse the further guidelines as set out in attachment D and decision X7/CP.15.
Full text here courtesy of Wikileaks.
Click on image to enlarge
MySpace also has a Law Enforcement Investigators Guide, now available on Wikileaks along with Microsoft's Computer Online Forensics Evidence Extractor.
MOST of us make mistakes and survive. We pick the wrong car to get into, go to the wrong party, kiss the wrong boy or girl, drive when we should have walked, walk when we should have caught a cab, say yes when we should have said no, try things not worth trying, trust someone not worth trusting, wake up in dumb places.
Most of us make mistakes and get away with it. We survive with no awful, lifelong consequences. Not wrapped around a tree at high speed. Not overdosed on the bathroom floor. No fatal outcome.
Robbie Edgar didn't get away with his mistakes. He paid for them. He died recently because of them.
No one publishes obituaries for junkies. That's what his sister Rosey wrote to me. You usually have to be a fine upstanding citizen, sportsman, businessman, dedicated Rotarian or notable academic.
Junkies, really, don't rate. Once we see the word junkie, it sort of makes all the other words in our head disappear. "Junkie" negates everything else. It makes a big, complex, sometimes beautiful, life disappear into one small judgmental word.
"What of someone who did not rise high above his demons, from whom others might feel entitled to withhold their respect? Who will speak to keep his name alive? I will," writes Rosey.
"I will write of Robert Edgar, born 17 May, 1954, to Thomas and Eileen Edgar in Brisbane, precociously interested in the sciences, with a voracious appetite for knowledge and a sharply detailed memory."
He left school early, started an apprenticeship with an optician, but threw that in to come to northern NSW for the Aquarius Festival and the blossoming of the emotional, intellectual and spiritual freedoms promised in the counter-culture.
Robbie embraced transcendental meditation, became vegan, practised yoga, grew organic vegetables, his evenings glowed under kerosene light, he rose early, was fit from long walks, swam with platypus, found glow-worm caves, sought enlightenment.
"He created food gardens at each place: Nimbin, Tuntable Valley and Jiggi," writes Rosey. "He lived by his belief in karma. He did not steal; neither did he drink alcohol nor smoke. He abhorred hard drugs.
"His passions were for food, knowledge meditation and women.
"With the smooth golden skin, a ponytail of long wavy black hair to his waist and a beautiful face, he was a hippie heart-throb."
So what went wrong? One morning Robbie was arrested for possession and supply of drugs – LSD. By his standard, these were not hard drugs. His logic differed from the court's. He was jailed. By the time he was released, he smoked cigarettes, he ate meat and had developed a bad habit that he never came clean of – heroin.
Around this time, he acquired the hepatitis C virus. He continued to live in northern NSW, a junkie. His health suffered from his lifestyle.
But, says Rosey, his humour was resilient and as dry as the dust that swept over Lismore the afternoon of his death. Wicked sarcasm, misquotes, deliberate Spoonerisms: "Time wounds all heals" – were things Rosey loved about her brother. And always pertinent facts, a snippet of history. "Did you know that Pope Leo VIII died of a stroke while committing adultery?" he'd ask.
He made his mark in the community, with well-written and wry articles and letters to various magazines and newspapers.
"He would decimate prejudice with logic and facts," writes Rosey, "and lambast and enlighten with irony and history and humour."
His last article was published posthumously in The Northern Rivers Echo. He wrote, in part: "Greedy people smugglers . . . sneaking unwashed, unwanted aliens with a very different and foreign religion, with superstitious dietary rules and modes of dress . . . incapable of assimilation and as part of a world-wide creed bent on the destruction of our way of life. None but a soft-headed government or left-wing intellectuals would hesitate to intern, in the remotest possible location. Welcoming these illegals and queue-jumpers would open the floodgates to millions of their brethren . . . Ideally, they could all be returned immediately to where they should be waiting, in an orderly manner to be properly and legally processed.
"From a press release from the Swedish Nazi Party, late 1941, in response to the arrival of 90 per cent of Denmark's Jewish population on Sweden's shores, aboard Denmark's fishing fleet.
"Signed Robert Edgar, Lismore."
When Robbie wasn't being Robbie the junkie, he sounds like a bit of a ratbag. Back a couple of years violinist Richard Tognetti, director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, spoke on ratbags and why we need them in society. "The ratbag is one of the essential bacteria in our culture . . . By breathing in ratbaggery, we become less likely to fall to the illness of moral hypocrisy. Ratbags have no moral agenda; they have a hyperactive bullshit detector; they cannot be entrusted with money, for if they are given money, they will use it on valueless things, such as adventures and storytelling; and the ratbag should confound, astonish, query and disrupt, rather than confirm and soothe."
I think of this reading Rosey's words about her brother. "So much knowledge, such a beautiful, perverse, sharp, contradictory mind. Such a placid nature. He was not demonstrative; he never yelled or lost his temper (except that one time when the Nolan's cow gorged on his vegie patch). His laughter was a chuckle, his rage was a scowl, and his retaliation was a roll of the eyes. And grief did not fall in tears but was breathed as a sigh. Except for that one time, two weeks ago when told that he had terminal liver cancer."
Robbie died on September 22 aged 55. I spoke to Rosey the day after she and her father Tom had seen his body for the last time. Grief threatened to shipwreck her. She spoke of the waste of her whip-smart brother and the care the doctors, nurses and other staff of the Lismore Base Hospital and community nurses who cared for him with non-judgmental respect and loving kindness.
Coming home late the other night, I turn the corner near South Bank and there's a young man near the train station, too drunk or off his tree on something to be a threat. He's thin, that dry, papery Yellow Pages-thin of the addicted. I watch him shuffle off through a dirt-filled empty block, his feet breathing dust in the moonrise.
Many families have a Robbie, someone who makes mistakes and doesn't get away with them.
They don't publish obituaries for junkies. Rosey, you're right. They – we – don't usually see past the word "junkie". It's like the moon blocking out the sun in an eclipse. Everything else they are and they have done in their lives is hidden by the dark side. So let's make the exception. Just because we got away with our mistakes, doesn't make us better than anyone. Because we all make mistakes and we are more than our mistakes.
AND ANOTHER THING
Noonan had this piece in her column the following week:
Last week's obituary for Robbie brought such a strong response from readers, who emailed, wrote and phoned, stopped me in cafes and in the street to say thanks to Rosey and her family for sharing his life. Which makes you think that in this crazy world, there are deep pockets of tolerance and gentleness and open-mindedness. "It made me believe a little more," wrote Ben, who spent a year in jail for something stupid when he was 19 and is now a fine upstanding citizen, putting his kids and two foster kids through uni.Source: The Courier Mail
To rectify in some measure this doubtful call by these newspapers here is an excerpt from that editorial of 7 December 2009:
Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.
Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.
Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.
The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based...........
Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature".
It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too.
The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.
Hi! My name is Boy. I'm a male bi-coloured tabby cat. Ever since I discovered that Malcolm Turnbull's dogs were allowed to blog, I have been pestering Clarencegirl to allow me a small space on North Coast Voices.
A false flag musing: I have noticed one particular voice on Facebook which is Pollyanna-positive on the subject of the Port of Yamba becoming a designated cruise ship destination. What this gentleman doesn’t disclose is that, as a principal of Middle Star Pty Ltd, he could be thought to have a potential pecuniary interest due to the fact that this corporation (which has had an office in Grafton since 2012) provides consultancy services and tourism business development services.
A religion & local government musing: On 11 October 2017 Clarence Valley Council has the Church of Jesus Christ Development Fund Inc in Sutherland Local Court No. 6 for a small claims hearing. It would appear that there may be a little issue in rendering unto Caesar. On 19 September 2017 an ordained minister of a religion (which was named by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in relation to 40 instances of historical child sexual abuse on the NSW North Coast) read the Opening Prayer at Council’s ordinary monthly meeting. Earlier in the year an ordained minister (from a church network alleged to have supported an overseas orphanage closed because of child abuse claims in 2013) read the Opening Prayer and an ordained minister (belonging to yet another church network accused of ignoring child sexual abuse in the US and racism in South Africa) read the Opening Prayer at yet another ordinary monthly meeting. Nice one councillors - you are covering yourselves with glory!
An investigative musing: Newcastle Herald, 12 August 2017: The state’s corruption watchdog has been asked to investigate the finances of the Awabakal Aboriginal Local Land Council, less than 12 months after the troubled organisation was placed into administration by the state government. The Newcastle Herald understands accounting firm PKF Lawler made the decision to refer the land council to the Independent Commission Against Corruption after discovering a number of irregularities during an audit of its financial statements. The results of the audit were recently presented to a meeting of Awabakal members. Administrator Terry Lawler did not respond when contacted by the Herald and a PKF Lawler spokesperson said it was unable to comment on the matter. Given the intricate web of company relationships that existed with at least one former board member it is not outside the realms of possibility that, if ICAC accepts this referral, then United Land Councils Limited (registered New Zealand) and United First Peoples Syndications Pty Ltd(registered Australia) might be interviewed. North Coast Voices readers will remember that on 15 August 2015 representatives of these two companied gave evidence before NSW Legislative Council General Purpose Standing Committee No. 6 INQUIRY INTO CROWN LAND. This evidence included advocating for a Yamba mega port.
A Nationals musing: Word around the traps is that NSW Nats MP for Clarence Chris Gulaptis has been talking up the notion of cruise ships visiting the Clarence River estuary. Fair dinkum! That man can be guaranteed to run with any bad idea put to him. I'm sure one or more cruise ships moored in the main navigation channel on a regular basis for one, two or three days is something other regular river users will really welcome. *pause for appreciation of irony* The draft of the smallest of the smaller cruise vessels is 3 metres and it would only stay safely afloat in that channel. Even the Yamba-Iluka ferry has been known to get momentarily stuck in silt/sand from time to time in Yamba Bay and even a very small cruise ship wouldn't be able to safely enter and exit Iluka Bay. You can bet your bottom dollar operators of cruise lines would soon be calling for dredging at the approach to the river mouth - and you know how well that goes down with the local residents.
A local councils musing: Which Northern Rivers council is on a low-key NSW Office of Local Government watch list courtesy of feet dragging by a past general manager?
A serial pest musing: I'm sure the Clarence Valley was thrilled to find that a well-known fantasist is active once again in the wee small hours of the morning treading a well-worn path of accusations involving police, local business owners and others.
An investigative musing: Which NSW North Coast council is batting to have the longest running code of conduct complaint investigation on record?
A fun fact musing: An estimated 24,000 whales migrated along the NSW coastline in 2016 according to the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service and the migration period is getting longer.
A which bank? musing: Despite a net profit last year of $9,227 million the Commonwealth Bank still insists on paying below Centrelink deeming rates interest on money held in Pensioner Security Accounts. One local wag says he’s waiting for the first bill from the bank charging him for the privilege of keeping his pension dollars at that bank.
A Daily Examiner musing: Just when you thought this newspaper could sink no lower under News Corp management, it continues to give column space to Andrew Bolt.
A thought to ponder musing: In case of bushfire or flood - do you have an emergency evacuation plan for the family pet?
An adoption musing: Every week on the NSW North Coast a number of cats and dogs find themselves without a home. If you want to do your bit and give one bundle of joy a new family, contact Happy Paws on 0419 404 766 or your local council pound.