Keneally fiddles why New South Wales burns. Does O'Farrell intend to throw petrol on the fames?

While the Keneally Government has forced New South Wales to bend over and present to the powerful private energy industry sector with its under the table sell-off of the state’s electricity assets, this is how far we are behind in our undertakings regarding reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation between 14 to 24 January 2011.

Surely not even Premier Kristina Keneally can think that the private sector will seriously address this problem and, at less cost to the consumer?

As for Barry O’Farrell – he’ll probably continue with the sell-off once in office and then consider buying shares in Macquarie Generation, Delta, Eraring, AGL, Origin or Tru Energy.

Last week:

• Total emissions grew by 4.1% or 78,000 tonnes, due largely to an increase in emissions from coal-fired generation.
• Emissions from coal-fired generation, which accounted for 90% of electricity generation, grew by 6.4% or 70,000.
• Emissions from gas grew by 5.7% or 9,000 tonnes.
• Emissions from petroleum fell by 0.1% or 1,000 tonnes.
• Electricity demand grew by 3.6%.
• NSW imported 7.8% of its electricity demand to other states, compared to 7.7% the previous week.

Last year:

• This week’s indicator is 1.0% higher than the same week in 2010
• Total emissions to this stage of 2011 were 1.6% lower than the similar stage last year

Baselines:

• 1990: 22% above
• 2000: 4.2% above

Boing Boing blog comes out fighting over word association defamation claim & ACS:Law flounders over mass mail out

Boing Boing blog on 17 January 2011:

Boing Boing has been on the receiving end of one or two stupid legal threats in our day but this one from the firm of Lazar, Akiva & Yagoubzadeh takes the cake, the little cake topper, the frosting and all the candles, as well as the box and the cake-stand and the ornamental forks……………..

There's no legal merit to this, of course. "Commercial libel" is damned hard to make stick (that pesky First Amendment!), and it takes a lot more than a blog post that contains the words "academic" "advantage" and "scam" to make a workable legal case.

No, this is pure legal thuggery, a completely indiscriminate bid to intimidate bloggers and publishers into censoring themselves by threatening dire legal consequences.

And the sad thing is, it probably works. Most people don't know the law (see EFF Bloggers' Rights articles), and can't afford to ask a lawyer what they should do in a situation like this. All we can hope is that the next time someone gets a letter over "academic advantage scam" or similar false positives, they get to this blog post and discover that our legal pals at Dewey, Cheatham and Howe Lazar, Akiva & Yagoubzadeh know even less about the law than they do about the Internet.

Boing Boing again on 20 January 2011:

According to this article in California Watch, the tutoring company Academic Advantage has fired the law firm of Lazar, Akiva & Yagoubzadeh over its ridiculous legal threats against Boing Boing.

For those of you who missed it, Lazar, Akiva & Yagoubzadeh sent us a letter alleging that we had caused "possibly irrevocable damage" to the reputation of its client, Academic Advantage, by publishing a blog post that contained the phrase "academic advantage" and, later, in one of the comments, the word "scam." Neither the original post nor the comment were related to the Academic Advantage tutoring service, and besides, US law clearly places responsibility for message-board posts on the poster, not the people who put up the message board. Lazar, Akiva & Yagoubzadeh's threat was one of the sloppiest, most careless piece of lawyering I've ever seen, a breathtaking example of depraved indifference and bullying.

Text of the original 13 January 2011 legal letter (apparently written by one of the law firm partners) which caused all the fuss can be found at Chilling Effects here:

We represent The Academic Advantage, Inc. (“The Academic Advantage”). It has come to our client’s attention that there is a link on your website which defames The Academic Advantage. This unlawful and impermissible link address is causing my client significant and possibly irrevocable damage.
The Academic Advantage is a well regarded company and community leader, which has received recognition from numerous public officials, including from governors and senators throughout the country, as well as high accolades from scores of parents and children. Unfortunately, however, the BoingBoing website has created an association of “scam” with the Academic Advantage. The following hyperlink is where the libelous web address can be found:
http://boingboing.net/2009/07/16/autism-as-an-academi.html

Enclosed is a printout of the webpage for your convenience.

It is clear there is no purpose to this web address but to falsely accuse the Academic Advantage of being a scam or at least associating the Academic Advantage with a scam. There is absolutely no helpful reason for the website to have the words “Academic,” “Advantage” and “Scam” which leads me to believe it was created for malicious purposes. Claiming that our client’s tutoring services program is a “SCAM” is prima facie defamation and designed to do nothing more than damage our client’s reputation.
We are respectfully requesting that BoingBoing immediately take down any and all such links from the website in order to avoid any further damage to our client’s reputation and business as well as an unnecessary escalation of these matters as between my client and BoingBoing. The Academic Advantage provides tutoring services to thousands of children, from Kindergarten through Twelfth Grade. Given the nature of our client’s services, involving the tutoring of young children, false accusations of lying, cheating, and stealing is particularly damaging to our client’s business. BoingBoing cannot in good conscience allow this hyperlink to remain.

Please kindly remove or rename the above listed link from your site immediately. If you have any questions or would like to discuss things in more detail, please feel free to contact me. In the meantime, I thank you in advance for your cooperation in resolving these matters.

While over at ACS:Law the problems flowing from a mass mail out to alleged copyright infringers and data breach are perhaps a little more serious and, its now blank original homepage and new web site under construction says it all.

Update: Antarctic Killing Fields January 2011

Greenpeace/Culley photograph of Japanese whaling vessell
pulling in slaughtered Minke Whale
Location and date unknown, Google Images

After a 26-day pursuit covering over 4,000 miles, the Steve Irwin caught up with the Nisshin Maru at 1800 hours on January 25^th, 2011 AEST.

“We finally have this serial killing death ship where we want them, and from here on in, we intend to ride their ass until the end of the whaling season,” said Captain Paul Watson from onboard the Steve Irwin. “This whaling fleet belongs to us now – lock, stock, and smoking harpoon gun.”

(Sea Shepherd News, January 25 2011)

Happy Birthday to The Land

The Land rural newspaper has been in existence for the last 100 years today.

Happy Birthday!

I didn't know Clarence MP Steve Cansdell had a sense of humour?

That Nationals good old boy Steve Cansdell was out there hunting local headlines last week and he decided to declare that he wouldn’t “accept a ministry as it would isolate him from his constituents in the Clarence electorate”.
The merriment in our house went on for some time because Barry O’Farrell would have to have rocks in his head to put Steve in change of anything except a chook raffle after the Keneally Government inevitably falls in March.
Anony-mice
Yamba

Ooops! Obamba's beans get spilled

 

A classic piece from Mark Hosenball at Reuters on 18 January 2011 which must have the Wikileaks legal team crowing:

Internal U.S. government reviews have determined that a mass leak of diplomatic cables caused only limited damage to U.S. interests abroad, despite the Obama administration's public statements to the contrary.

A congressional official briefed on the reviews said the administration felt compelled to say publicly that the revelations had seriously damaged American interests in order to bolster legal efforts to shut down the WikiLeaks website and bring charges against the leakers.

"I think they just want to present the toughest front they can muster," the official said.

But State Department officials have privately told Congress they expect overall damage to U.S. foreign policy to be containable, said the official, one of two congressional aides familiar with the briefings who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity.

"We were told (the impact of WikiLeaks revelations) was embarrassing but not damaging," said the official, who attended a briefing given in late 2010 by State Department officials.

WikiLeaks caused a media and diplomatic uproar late last year when it began to dribble out its cache of more than 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables……..

Borowitz on the new era of civil political discourse 'sweeping' America

If one squints when reading this – it could almost be referring to the type of political civility displayed by Tony Abbott et al and News Ltd media.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – Ushering in what it is calling “a new era of civility in American political discourse,” the Republican leadership in Congress said today that from now on it would acknowledge that President Barack Obama was born “near America.”

“It is no longer acceptable for members of our Party to say that the President of the United States was born in Kenya,” wrote Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) in a memo sent to all GOP House members entitled The Official Republican Niceness Pledge. “From now on, we will say that he was born nearish America, and perhaps even as close as Cuba.”

The Boehner memo said that the Party would have “zero tolerance” for Republicans who say that Mr. Obama “pals around with terrorists,” instructing members to say instead, “Obama friends terrorists on Facebook.”

The memo also instructed House members never to call Mr. Obama a “socialist,” and instead to use the less politically polarizing term, “sociopath.”

Mr. Boehner also warned GOP congressmen to stop referring to Mr. Obama’s health care reform bill as “The Job-Killing Health Care Reform Act,” advising them, “There are many perfectly good synonyms for ‘killing,’ such as ‘strangling,’ ‘terminating,’ ‘annihilating,’ and ‘eviscerating.’”

In closing, Mr. Boehner wrote, “You owe it to your families and constituents back home to conduct yourselves in a civil manner, just as President Obama owes it to his relatives and comrades back in Havana.”

Queensland floods 2010-11: little wild roos hitch a ride

I'm taking this photograph at face value - I'm told it was taken in the Theodore area during the December 2010 - January 2011 Queensland floods and shows wild kangaroos willingly being transported to dry land.

Theodore was experiencing its worst flooding on record.

The Good Samaritans remain anonymous at the time of posting.

Regional Australia Committee offered usual tired old 'solutions' including Clarence water diversion

From A Clarence Valley Protest today:

It's more pipelines, bigger dams and inter-basin water transfers

The Inquiry into the impact of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in Regional Australia is being offered a wide range of options to ensure sustainable Murray-Darling Basin river systems.

Few of which admit to any need to limit current water consumption by reducing diversion caps and, some follow that tired old route of more pipelines, bigger dams and inter-basin water transfers.

Here are a few examples.

One option put forward by Wakool Shire Council in its submission:

Look at alternative supply for productive use – i.e.pipeline from river systems to high value use.

Another viewpoint from Lodden Shire Council:

The Authority should also consider the construction of environmental dams in key sites to store significant volumes of water devoted purely to environmental benefits. The cost of such infrastructure projects could be borne by all Australians or at least by those who will receive a direct benefit from the health of the Murray Darling Basin.

Carrathool Shire Council offered this:

New infrastructure projects, including additional and/or expanded water storages……….

Harvesting and redirecting surplus water resources from northern Australia.

While Hay Shire Council complained:

There is no possibility of any harvesting of additional water for the environment by the construction of additional dams or further investigation of diversion schemes. Such water would be harvested in wet periods such as we are now experiencing to be used in providing environmental flows as required in drier seasons. Why as a country are we not investigating this alternative?

Leeton Shire Council put forward these 'solutions':

Harvesting and re-directing surplus water resources form northern Australia and the eastern seaboard in Queensland and New South Wales;………

New infrastructure projects, including additional and /or expanded water storages, for example a new storage at Wellington in South Australia, or expansion of storages such as Lake Buffalo and Lake William Hovell in north east Victoria.

The Citizens Electoral Council informed the Inquiry that:

The proposed Clarence River Scheme would add upwards of 1,000 Gl/y of reliable flows into the Murray‐Darling Basin, which would transform the Basin's productive power.

McDonald's Yamba: when promo goes awry

Finally popped in to see what the old Yes (1,511 members) and No (4,538 members) Facebook sites were saying about McDonald’s new fast food outlet in Treelands Drive Yamba and, I am beginning to wonder what the franchisee rates as busy if this is an example:

28 December 2010

Ange Pateman I just saw a post on the no groups wall saying that the town is full but maccas is empty. I'm not sure when they drive past (or came in!!) but we have been FLAT OUT the last two days while the rest of the town shut down. Which just goes to prove the point that if the rest of the food outlets in Yamba would step up and provide real service to the community, there would be no need for us. But they don't, so there is!! I even had a lady from out of town tell me today how glad she and her family is that we are open because she knows she is guaranteed a good coffee there, unlike most other places.
By the way, we love it when it's busy so keep on coming!!

28 December 2010

Dave Fleming Town busy, maccas empty nice one!

19 December 2010

Ange Pateman It's been a bit slow this morning... Where is everyone?

For the record, casual observation suggests that McDonald's car park usually has between 4 and 10 cars at any given time in its carpark during the traditional hours for eating lunch.

"No kudos for fooling Andrew Bolt -- that's like taking candy from a baby" says Lambert

If your day started badly and a pick-me-up is required - go to this post over at Deltoid and see Andrew Bolt decapitated, hung, gutted and filleted by an expert:

Andrew Bolt can get fooled again

Keneally bombs in NSW floods leadership stakes

In NSW Premier Kristina Keneally only rated 13 per cent in the good leadership stakes re floods according to Essential Report 110124 24th January 2011.

Floods - Leadership

Q. Thinking about the recent floods across Australia, how would you rate each of the following for providing leadership in dealing with the floods?

	Total good	Total poor	Very good	Good	Average	Poor	Very poor	Don't know
Prime Minister Julia Gillard	42%	23%	15%	27%	28%	10%	13%	7%
Opposition leader Tony Abbott	19%	32%	4%	15%	36%	19%	13%	13%
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh	77%	6%	52%	25%	11%	3%	3%	6%
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh (Qld)	71%	9%	48%	23%	17%	2%	7%	3%
Brisbane Mayor Campbell Newman	61%	4%	28%	33%	16%	2%	2%	19%
Brisbane Mayor Campbell Newman (Qld)	75%	7%	46%	29%	14%	2%	5%	4%
Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu	34%	8%	8%	26%	26%	4%	4%	32%
Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu (Victoria)	47%	12%	10%	37%	27%	6%	6%	14%
NSW Premier Kristina Keneally	21%	23%	4%	17%	28%	11%	12%	29%
NSW Premier Kristina Keneally (NSW)	13%	40%	4%	9%	30%	18%	22%	18%

Nationally, 42% think the Prime Minister Julia Gillard provided good leadership and 23% poor – while the Opposition leader Tony Abbott was rated good by 19% and poor by 32%. In Queensland Julia Gillard rated 42% good/26% poor.

Nationally the Queensland Premier Anna Bligh was rated 77% good/6% poor and in Queensland 71% good/9% poor. The Mayor of Brisbane Campbell Newman was rated a little lower nationally (61%/4%) but slightly higher in Queensland (75%/7%).

In Victoria, the Premier Ted Bailieu was rated 47% good/12% poor and in NSW, Premier Kristina Keneally was rated 13% good/40% poor

NSW Electricity - Christ on A Bike!

Christ on a bike! Now The NSW Upper House inquiry into the Keneally Government fire sale of electricity assets has been told that taxpayers will probably come out of the deal with next to nothing!

Now the Keneally-Roozendaal "gen-trader" model in which retailers and generation trading rights have been sold might yield just $2-3 billion.

The Government's sales team admitted yesterday that billions could be ripped from the proceeds because of a web of contract deals.

The Government will spend $1.3 billion building the Cobbora coal mine from the proceeds, which it promised to private sector bidders to supply power stations. It will subsidise the price of coal coming from that mine to the tune of up to $1 billion.

But it also risked losing hundreds of millions out of the $1.3 billion it has been paid by Origin Energy and Tru Energy for the rights to trade power generation.

Former Labor minister Kim Yeadon told the parliamentary power inquiry that, under the bizarre "gen-trader" deal, should power stations fail, some of that money will have to be handed back.

The hundreds of millions it cost to put together the sale will also be deducted.

A senior Government source confirmed there may be "not much money" available to pay for roads and rail.

Seeing Red & Voting Green
Yamba

* Guest Speak is a North Coast Voices segment allowing serious or satirical comment from NSW Northern Rivers residents. Email ncvguestpeak at gmail dot com to submit comment for consideration.

A U.S. job offer for Wikileaks?

This is the latest U.S. attack on Wikileaks reported in The Age on 22 January 2011:

WASHINGTON: WikiLeaks, condemned by the US government for posting secret data leaked by insiders, may have used music- and photo-sharing networks to obtain and publish classified documents, according to a computer security firm.

Tiversa Inc, based in Pennsylvania, has evidence that WikiLeaks, which has said it does not know who provides it with information, may seek out secret data itself, using ''peer-to-peer'' networks, its chief executive, Robert Boback, said.

The company, which has done investigative searches on behalf of US agencies including the FBI, said it discovered computers in Sweden were trolling through hard drives accessed from popular peer-to-peer networks such as LimeWire and Kazaa. The information obtained in those searches had later appeared on WikiLeaks, Mr Boback said. WikiLeaks bases its most important servers in Sweden.

''It would be highly unlikely that someone else from Sweden is issuing those same types of searches resulting in that same type of information,'' he said.

Tiversa's claim was ''completely false in every regard'', said Mark Stephens, WikiLeaks's London lawyer.

So this should put a smile on a few faces this morning courtesy of a mention on @BernardKeane:

Joint Request for Statements of Interest: Internet Freedom Programs

January 3, 2011
Department of State
Public Notice

Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor and Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs Joint Request for Statements of Interest: Internet Freedom Programs

SUMMARY

The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) and the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA) announce a Joint Request for Statements of Interest (SOI) from organizations interested in submitting proposals for projects that support Internet freedom under the “Governing Justly and Democratically” Foreign Assistance program objective. This solicitation does not constitute a formal Request for Proposals: DRL and/or NEA will invite select organizations that submit SOIs to expand on their ideas via full proposal at a later date.

PLEASE NOTE: DRL and NEA strongly urge applicants to access immediately http://www.grants.gov/ in order to obtain a username and password. It may take up to a week to register with grants.gov. Please see the section entitled, “DEADLINE AND SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS” below for specific instructions.

REQUESTED STATEMENT OF INTEREST PROGRAM OBJECTIVES

DRL and NEA invite organizations to submit statements of interest outlining program concepts and capacity to manage projects that will foster freedom of expression and the free flow of information on the Internet and other connection technologies in East Asia, including China and Burma; the Near East, including Iran; Southeast Asia; the South Caucasus; Eurasia, including Russia; Central Asia; Latin America, including Cuba and Venezuela; and Africa. Programming may support activities in Farsi, Chinese, Russian, Burmese, Spanish, Vietnamese, Arabic, French, and other languages spoken in acutely hostile Internet environments. Concepts may be global in nature, regional or country-specific.

Statements should clearly address a) support for digital activists and civil society organizations in exercising their right to freedom of expression and the free flow of information in acutely hostile Internet environments, or b) support for ongoing evaluation and research to enhance global Internet freedom policy and diplomacy. (my emphasis)

Supporting digital activists:

1. Statements of interest should address one or more of the following potential program activities:

Counter-censorship Technology: Development and support of web-based circumvention technology to enable users in closed societies to get around firewalls and filters in acutely hostile Internet environments. DRL and NEA will consider projects that support the deployment of individual technologies in specific environments, as well as projects that identify a lead organization to provide sub-grant and contractual support to non-profit organizations and for-profit companies that develop and maintain circumvention technologies. Statements of interest proposing a consortium of technologies under a lead organization should clearly identify potential technology partners and include an indication of those organizations’ interest in participating in the proposed project. In all cases, preference will be given to peer-reviewed technologies……..

For Gillard & Roxon: A lesson in one easy sentence on the folly of a nation health information database

A server storing sensitive patient information for more than 230,000 people was breached by unknown hackers so they could use its resources to host the wildly popular Call of Duty: Black Ops computer game. [The Register, 14 January 2011]

I can almost see the demand for bigger, better Clarence River levee walls starting

On 21 January 2010 The Daily Examiner ran articles pointing to the findings of a paper presented at 47th Annual Floodplain Management Authorities Of NSW Conference on 27 February–2 March 2007 at Gunnedah, titled BIG LEVEES – ARE THEY A GOOD IDEA?, authored by Drew Bewsher & John Maddocks of Bewsher Consulting Pty, Ltd, Sydney and Ian Dinham of Clarence Valley Council, Grafton.

One of these newspaper articles was careful to inform Clarence Valley residents that overtopping existing levees would have a warning period of only hours:

The paper states that the amount of time communities had to respond varied from town to town. In Maclean, modelling suggests the 100-year flood would overtop the levee there within just three hours.
Grafton comes out a bit more fortunate, taking about 10 hours before the town became inundated with water.

While the conference paper in question did point to some levee wall risk factors (see below), it finally came out in favour of the idea of levee walls in the final paragraph; This is not to say that we shouldn’t build big levees. Depending on site limitations.

Almost as a matter of course it totally ignored the fact that these upriver levee walls make unprotected downriver small villages like Iluka and Yamba more vulnerable during major flooding.

I think it was no accident that at least one Clarence Valley shire councillor made a rather gullible local journalist (renowned for rarely seeking alternative viewpoints) aware of this conference paper – it certainly paves the way to lengthen or create new upriver levees, despite the numerous qualifications it contains.

The former of these two gentleman would be well aware that community pressure on the back of national debate will demand more, not less, physical protection as populations unrealistically squat on ancient floodplains and, it is highly unlikely that either he or his fellow councillors will deny these demands with that last paragraph cop out just waiting to be quoted in any debate within the Chamber.

The Impact of Levees on the Flood Risk

Levees are built to reduce the flood risk to a community. They may be particularly useful in eliminating small or nuisance floods, and depending on their height, may also havesome success in mitigating larger floods. The flood risk to the community ‘protected’ bythe levee is reduced – up to the point that the levee is overtopped or it fails. After thispoint, there may be rapid inundation of the previously ‘protected’ area and deep inundation depths, resulting in a very high flood hazard to residents and occupiers of the area. In some cases, evacuation routes may be cut at an early stage, leaving occupants isolated and trapped in extremely dangerous conditions. In smaller catchments, there may be little warning that the levee will overtop, and virtually no time for the community torespond. There is also the threat of catastrophic levee failure, either before overtoppingor shortly afterwards.When the levee does overtop, the risk and threat to life will nearly always be greater (and often significantly greater) than when there was no levee. When the probabilities and consequences of all sizes of floods are considered, those thatovertop the levee and those that don’t, it may be that in some levee situations where the consequences of overtopping are disastrous, that the levee actually represents a netincrease in flood risk, not a reduction. Clearly where high levees are already ‘protecting’ extensive urban areas andcommunities are complacent about the consequences of overtopping, public awarenessinitiatives are essential to initially establish, and to then maintain the community in a ‘floodready’ state so that the flood risks can be mitigated.

If Baby Boomers were worried aged care might be stuffed by the time they turned 75 - worry no more

Read and enjoy current aged care recommendations in the Caring For Older Australians: Draft report presented to the Gillard Government by the Productivity Commission and released on 21 January 2011.

Less direct accountability for government, less transparency if that is actually possible, a freer hand for aged care providers (including the ability to palm-off aged care bed categories with low profit margins) and the potential for all manner of agencies to increase costs on a whole range of services (including removing the cap on high care accommodation charges), ‘supported’ beds for low-income frail aged eventually assigned to the lowest tenders, a more market-driven provision of aged care services for special needs groups, and as an added bonus, the continuing option of being faced with no nursing home bed available in the area in which you live in your retirement – I give you A framework for assessing aged care: draft recommendations.

However, as has been the case down the centuries, if you enter old age with significant assets and investments you will still be able to afford the best on offer and probably do a little better out of those same proposed aged care provisions.

The entire report can be found here.

We have all been invited to examine this report and make written submissions to the Productivity Commission by Monday 21 March 2011.
Email agedcare@pc.gov.au for further information

One response to urban sinkholes caused by flood waters in the Clarence Valley

Jules Faber cartoon in The Daily Examiner 17 January 2011.
Jules professional résumé can be found at JulesFaber.com

Monsanto-Mahyco GM eggplant toxicity study receives a fail from researcher - wonder what the opinion will be on Monsanto's latest SDA soybean effort?

Slowly, study by study, faith in the safety of food on supermarket shelves is being eroded.

From those such as A comparison of the effects of three GM corn varieties on mammalian health (which in 2009 threw doubt on the reliability of Monsanto findings and whose authors apparently successfully defended against defamatory claims by the biotech lobby) to the BT BRINJAL Event EE1 The Scope and Adequacy of the GEAC Toxicological Risk Assessment: Review of Oral Toxicity Studies in Rats (November 14, 2010 by Dr Lou M Gallagher, PhD, Wellington, New Zealand) which found:

SUMMARY

This evaluation of Bt brinjal studies is based on requirements for a rigorous evaluation of food safety for the people of India and their health. Departures from Indian and international published standards for the 14‐day and 90‐day studies are a cause for concern 1.

The current food safety studies for Bt brinjal were not conducted in accordance with published standards, did not accurately summarize results, and ignored toxic endpoints for rats fed Bt brinjal: in particular, rats fed Bt brinjal for 78 out of 90 days (only one dose level) experienced:

• organ and system damage: ovaries at half their normal weight, enlarged spleens with white blood cell counts at 35 to 40 percent higher than normal with elevated eosinophils, indicating immune function changes.

• toxic effects to the liver as demonstrated by elevated bilirubin and elevated plasma acetylcholinesterase.

Major health problems among test animals were ignored in these reports. The single test dose used was lower than recommended by the Indian protocols. Release of Bt brinjal for human consumption cannot be recommended given the current evidence of toxicity to rats in just 90 days and the studies' serious departures from normal scientific standards.

So, if this is the true state of affairs concerning the humble eggplant once it was unconventionally altered, what hope is there that Monsanto's virtual minion in all things genetically modified Food Standards Australia New Zealand will actually have conducted the following stated process?

FSANZ has not previously assessed a GM food crop with a consumer focused nutritional modification.
FSANZ will need to undertake a safety assessment of high scientific complexity and include a nutritional assessment, which is not normally required for GM crops expressing agronomic traits.
This Application is anticipated to involve an assessment of the risk to public health and safety of above average complexity.

Well might you ask because this is what FSANZ found and signed off on:

On the basis of the data provided in the present Application, and other available information, food derived from soybean MON87769 is as safe for human consumption as other commercially available soybean varieties.

Basically telling Australian consumers that a genetically modified enriched soybean food will be safe to eat because the patent-owner Monsanto says that this is so and, this say so probably doesn't involve any in-depth animal studies because FSANZ does not normally require this level of safety assessment.

Will you be feeding any form of soybean product to your children after May 2011?

Given the lax GM food labelling laws in Australia - would you even know if you were?

Is there "Something Rotten in the State of Windsor?"

From A Clarence Valley Protest on 17 January 2011:

The Australian House of Representatives Standing Committee on Regional Australia's Inquiry into the impact of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in Regional Australia is one strange entity.

Throwing process transparency to the wind, it is now selectively publishing copies of the 535 submissions received to date.

This is a snapshot example of what the list looked like on 17 January 2011 after the first 160 submissions:

So what is being hidden? Naive submissions of which there were already plenty in the first 160 received? A committee or secretariat in organizational disarray?
Or is it that the Chair just doesn't want the bulk of the over 300 unpublished submissions out in the public arena before the mainstream media reports on the public hearings and the Committee delivers its findings?

It goes without saying that such questions would not even come to mind if submissions had been published in the order in which these were received and not as this highly selective hotch potch.

Just who is it that Australia needs protecting from?

On 18 January 2011 yet another national political party has been registered by the Australian Electoral Commission.

This one is called the Australian Protectionist Party.

A small hint as to its world view can be found on the official website homepage at the moment, with headline grabbers like;
Media Admits that Nick Griffin Has Been Right all Along over Muslim Paedophile Gangs and Say no to a Caliphate in Australia, say no to Shari’a in Australia! A vigil against Hizb ut-Tahrir.

While a current poll asks Should we ban the building of Mosques in Australia? and yet another post trumpets Left-wing extremists declare war on our freedom of speech!

As a final example of the mindset one cannot go past its apparent support of Creationism being taught in Australian schools in this 19 March 2010 press release titled; Protectionists Condemn Government Intolerance.

The registered officer of this new political party is one Andrew Phillips, who according to a 2007 Destiny newsletter:

.....has had a long involvement in Australian politics, having been the Senate team leader for the One Nation Party in South Australia, and is now the National Chairman for the Australian Protectionist Party. This article is purely written in his capacity as an independent political commentator. For more of his independent political articles, see the South Australian site for the Australian Protectionist Party....

"Moggy Musings" [Archived Material from Boy the Wonder Cat]

A Christmas musing: Dear furry friends,
All the best for the festive season and the New Year. Please read the card I have for you at http://www.jacquielawson.com/preview.asp?cont=1&hdn=0&pv=3274601&path=98301
Cheers,
Your mate Rex
PS Go easy on the cherry cheer and fruit cake. I know from experience that it plays havoc with me, but I still cannot resist a bit of over-indulgence at this time of year.

A Rats in teh Ranks musing: My little canine friend, Veronica Lake, paid close attention when her humans were at the breakfast table this week and overhead them discussing the fact that someone in the Tweed had the hide to suggest to the Regional Australia Committee that east coast river water should be piped into the Murray-Darling Basin. Now the only east coast river currently under discussion is the Clarence River and Ronnie thinks the chappie has a hide seeing that the Clarence Valley stood with the Tweed and Richmond when they resisted their water being nicked a few years back. Ronnie said her mob were also sniggering at the sly mention being made of Charles Dean's love of dams in an email sent to the Committee.

A ponder musing: In the face of yet another parliamentary inquiry into water security, I wonder who it was that appears to have convinced one free local newspaper that the issue of Clarence River water diversion is just a media beat-up by a rival paper? Hmmmmm.......

A Which Bank? musing: There is one local who is frankly confused. His bank first sent him letter apologising for 'accidentally' sending his phone account details to a total stranger, then followed it with a letter asking him to destroy a letter never received which supposedly had contained someone else's account details. Finally it capped off it's strange banking behaviour by giving his name and number to a survey company so that it could conduct a survey on bank customers. Whatever happened to privacy?

A court house musing: Maclean moggies have been indulging in some catty muttering about the Grafton legal eagle who stubbornly brought a high profile on-going prosecution to a dead halt because he wanted to attend the Jacaranda Festival's Hazy Thursday and wasn't going to accommodate the court, briefs or defendants and their families who may have wished otherwise.

A they should be sacked musing: Rexie tells me that his petit ami Clouseau was saying that although he's endowed with ears that are close to the ground, sometimes the information picked up isn't fit for dogs' ears, let alone humans. In his recent travels around the Northern Rivers he heard that at a licensed sports club which has CCTV cameras a number of blokes (who are club members and/or visitors and perhaps even staff) have availed themselves of the club's camera facilities to observe at least one female member of staff getting changed in the women's rooms. Gee, those blokes are sick! sick! sick!

A bouquet musing: Rex the German Shepherd sent me this email about a very pleased neighbour............ A bouquet for HP (Hewlett-Packard - Australia) and its authorised repairer North Coast Information Technology in Ballina. A bloke I know created a bit of a problem for himself when he inflicted some minor damage on his HP notebook. With the notebook still under warranty, the bloke decided it was best to contact HP and obtain advice about how he should go about having the damage rectified. HP told him he'd need to have an HP authorised repairer do the job - the nearest repairers are in Ballina and Coffs Harbour - so he opted to take it to Ballina, thinking the job would cost him an arm and a leg. A couple of days later North Coast Information Technology rang the bloke and told him the notebook was repaired. The bloke asked how much the service would cost him. NCIT replied, "No charge, it wasn't a very difficult or time-consuming job to fix your notebook." Three cheers for NCIT! PS. NCIT staff members Colin, Jo and a technician, whose name escaped the bloke, are to be commended for their 5-star service.



Boy