A NewGenCoal online advertising link to its website on 24 May 2010
Not everyone stays on a webpage for the complete advertising slideshow and so might not be aware that the people at NewGenCoal are actually referring to climate change denialism in this graphic - not their own stated position on global warming.
Still, this image does feed the prejudice of some in the Australian energy sector.......
* Gen Y is defined as Australians born between 1976 - 1990; Gen Z between 1991 - 2009; Gen X between 1961 - 1975; Baby Boomers between 1946 - 1960; and Pre-Boomers 1945 or earlier. AS Year 6 students we are all sick and tired of inconsiderate vandals destroying our schools almost every weekend, disturbing our schoolwork, costing us money and forcing someone else to clean it up.
These thoughtless people are disturbing our schoolwork. Children can't work in their classrooms if the general assistant or their teacher is cleaning up the mess or something is being replaced.
Vandalism is costing schools across Australia millions of dollars a year. This money could be better spent on school resources, sports equipment and electronics, like whiteboards and computers.
Someone always has to clean up the mess, whether it is the cleaner, general assistant, teachers or maybe even the students. It is very dangerous to clean up broken glass and burnt property.
In conclusion, we insist that these vandals stop what they're doing NOW! If they're so bored on the weekend, why don't they take up a sport or start knitting.
Source: The Daily Examiner, 25/5/2010
Hospitality a hit
I RECENTLY brought my invalid mother Joy Hempenstall to Yamba for a four-night stay.
What started out a logistical nightmare became a seamless dream for her and for us, and I could not have done this without help from services provided by the Clarence Valley.
I have struggled with ways to thank them as everything seemed to pale into insignificance.
I hope these heartfelt words of thanks will reach them.
Firstly, we could not have Joy stay at our home because of stairs etc so we booked her into The Cove. Georgina and Jim were fantastic from the moment of inspecting the most suitable rooms to looking out for us during Joy's stay and various people coming and going. In fact it was hard to get Joy off the balcony overlooking Main Beach and who can blame her.
The girls at Maclean Community Health came to our rescue with the supply of equipment like bed sticks and the like. We were able to create a mirror image of where Joy resides in care in Brisbane and so provide a safe and familiar haven for her.
Clarence Valley Nursing provided overnight care for my mother and this enabled her to have some independent company and someone else to look out for her while I was able to slip off back home. She became so attached to these gorgeous girls she didn't want to let them go or she wanted to take them back to Brisbane with her.
Just when you think everything is going well I damaged a wheelchair I borrowed from a friend and with one desperate call to Janene at RSL Life Care I was able to pick up another chair within 30 minutes.
Joy experienced the very essence of Yamba while shopping at Zig Zag's Boutique, BWL Jeweller and Sweet Vintage where everyone was so kind, patient and helpful to us.
You people are amazing.
You have collectively given an old sick woman more to live for in five days than she has had for the last five years.
FELICITY HEMPENSTALL, Yamba
Australian Opposition Leader Tony Abbott won an award this month when one hundred and fifty people gathered at NSW Parliament House on 17th May 2010 "to award the first ever Gay and Lesbian, Outrageous, Ridiculous and Ignorant comment Awards – the GLORIAs. Abbott got the Golden GLORIA for his admission on TV's 60 Minutes recently that homosexuality makes him feel threatened...Politics: Tony Abbott for his comments about feeling threatened by homosexuality and his follow up comments saying that [homosexuality] challenges the orthodox notions of the right order of things.
Religion: Jim Wallace from the Australian Christian Lobby for saying:
"Some of you won't like this but it is fact. In Australia, in Ireland, in America the people who are prosecuted for sexual offences against minors have in Australia been over 70%, [homosexual] and remember that the churches who have been the victims of this have had a policy where they don't accept homosexuals as part of their clergy. Yet in Australia over 70% of the offences have been committed by homosexual clergymen."
Sport: The Footy Show for skit in May 2009 featuring the fictitious gay brother of NRL siblings Matthew and Andrew Johns called Elton Johns.
In the skit, the Johns's father attempts to return the gay son, played by Matthew Johns, to hospital saying "I want to return this, it's faulty".
Media: Australian Communications and Media Authority for ruling an episode of Dante's Cove breached of the Code of Practice because it simulates male/male sex rather than male/female. Nine is questioning the decision-making and points out that similar depictions between males and females have been aired without incident.
Law US Court of Appeals – 4th circuit for ordering the father of a dead solider to pay $16,000 to Westboro Baptist Church when he took them to court for protesting at his sons funeral. Westboro believes that military deaths are the work of a wrathful God who punishes the United States for tolerating homosexuality.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption is conducting an investigation into lobbying of public officials and public authorities in NSW and the related procedures and regulatory system.
The Commission is seeking input from individuals and organisations through a call for submissions which must be received at the Commission by 5pm Wednesday 23 June 2010. See the guide for making a submission for more information.
Submissions may respond to the Commission's issues paper on lobbying, the investigation scope and purpose and other relevant issues concerning lobbying in NSW.
Lobbying in NSW - issues paper
Guide for making a submission to the ICAC
Scope and purpose of the investigation
The scope and purpose of the investigation is to examine whether the relationship between lobbyists and public authorities and public officials may allow, encourage or cause the occurrence of corrupt conduct or conduct connected with corrupt conduct and to identify whether any laws governing any public authority or public official need to be changed and whether any methods of work, practices or procedures of any public authority or public official could allow, encourage or cause the occurrence of corrupt conduct and if so, what changes should be made.
Is your local council using this tool?
The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has recently released a Development assessment internal audit tool. The ICAC recommends that councils adapt all or part of this tool to address the potential corruption risks within the development assessment process.
A 52-foot-long female Humpback whale and her newborn calf filmed in the South Pacific atoll of Moorea (Polynesia).
Image found at Big Movie Zone
As southern whales begin their annual trek out of the Japanese killing fields in the Antarctic to calve in warmer waters off Australia's far northern coastline and in the wider Pacific Ocean, they move into an evermore uncertain future.
Generally the Japanese media still see the debate as one centred on the good of national scientific research and how little whale meat is in actually eaten in the country. Ignoring any real discussion of environmental, biodiversity and species impacts from sustained killing in the Southern Ocean and the fact that whale meat appears to be entering the local pet food industry.
Wild Politics has promised to post Helsinki conference papers soon. Margi Prideaux deserves a round of applause for that undertaking.
Cetacean Rights Conference May 2010 Opening Address:
Fostering Moral and Legal Change Towards Cetacean Rights and presented conference paper abstracts
New south wales
This week's (7 May to 13 May) NSW Indicator is 1.908 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, the breakdown is as follows:
Patricia Laurie, Councillor for the North Coast Region of the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, has very neatly put a gigantic racist ignoramus on his backside.
Last week James Mackenzie told Byron Shire Council that the Aboriginal nations Arakwal and Bundjalung are a fiction. McKenzie claimed there was no Bundjalung nation, tribe, people, language, culture, clan, nor horde. "No Bundjalung anything." (The Northern Star, 14 May)
Here's Ms Laurie's piece Bundjalung nation 'very much alive'. It's in today's Northern Star.
Some days you wake up better than others. But last Friday, I awoke to discover that I wasn't real.
In the May 14 edition of The Northern Star, a story appeared entitled 'Arakwal, Bundjalung don't exist'.
You can imagine my surprise, given that I am both a Yaegl woman and a member of the Bundjalung nation.
I pinched myself, just in case, and can confirm for Northern Star readers that I am, in fact, real.
I can also confirm that the Bundjalung nation is very much alive, and is one of the best known in the country.
Tens of thousands of Aboriginal people alive today - myself included - identify with the Bundjalung nation, either as their country, or the country of their ancestors.
The bizarre and ridiculous claims have come from 'James McKenzie, a great grandson of pioneer James MacKenzie, who was called Wollumbin Gum Jimmy'.
Mr McKenzie somehow managed to grab a microphone at a meeting of the Byron Shire Council.
By the end of his rant, Mr McKenzie had abolished two nations and called for 'a parliamentary inquiry into the scandals and the politicians involved'. What, all of them?
I'd respectfully suggest to The Northern Star that while coverage of council is important - and in The Star's case generally comprehensive - you don't have to report absolutely everything that is said.
If a man stands and makes a fool of himself, it might make for a colourful headline, but given the ridiculous and divisive nature of what's been said, reporting it doesn't make for harmonious relationships in the community. That, I would suggest, is in everyone's interests.
To my black brothers and sisters I'd make two points: Firstly, you reap what you sow; if you want to help other people question Aboriginal identity because it suits your political agenda, then expect to have your own identity questioned. Secondly, since the British arrived in 1788, Aboriginal people have been kept busy fighting among themselves. It's one of the great 'tools of the oppressor'.
Finally, to Mr McKenzie: I note that you claim to be a 'descendant of the famous MacKenzies', who helped build this region since colonisation.
The fact is, Mr McKenzie, I don't get to define your identity, any more than you don't get to define Aboriginal identity.
You can advance all the bizarre conspiracy theories you like, but it doesn't change who we are. All that's changed is what we think of you.
Sources: The Northern Star and The Daily Examiner (pic)
