First Dog and Ned the Bear with a few home truths about the Moon and Mars...

Sometimes when the mainstream media is in full flight commemorative flight as it was last week over the 40th anniversary of the U.S. landing on the Moon, one can sometimes feel out of sync with supposed public sentiment when thoughts and memories don't appear to coincide with mass recollection.

However, in this instance all those not in lock step were rescued by First Dog on the Moon and Ned the Bear.

Click on images to enlarge

Thank the gods for Australian cartoonists.

Cartoons from First Dog at Crikey and Ned the Bear

Regional arts - what do you want to see happen in your area? Survey

Regional Arts Australia is conducting a survey this month:

What do you want for the arts in your community?

Do you want more creative and artistic opportunities in your local community? How can the arts play a stronger role in your region? Regional Arts Australia encourages you, your colleagues and friends to help shape the creative future of regional communities as part of a national survey. The survey results will be combined with the outcomes from a series of public consultations to find out what communities really want and to help regional Arts Australia determine its future directions. Click HERE to take the survey.

End-of-life decision-making: a disturbing observation by the NSW Ombudsman

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Excerpt from NSW Ombudsman March 2008 submission to the Special Commission of Inquiry into Acute Care Services in NSW Hospitals.

Remember when? Seattle 1999

From Seattle Times 1999 photo gallery

It is ten years ago this November that the World Trade Organisation convened its 1999 ministerial conference in Seattle ,Washington USA and, what the media dubbed The Battle of Seattle anti-globalisation protests began.

This is what the Washington education department is telling current students about that five-day protest which brought the WTO to its knees:

The protests against the World Trade Organization that rocked Seattle, Washington in late 1999 were an incredibly significant moment in the history of popular protests. Not only did the protestors succeed in disrupting the meetings of the world's most influential trade-governing bodies, but the event drew together incredibly diverse constituencies that represented a wide range of interests, many of which would seem to be incompatible at first light.

Day 1 - November 29 1999

Day 2 - November 30 1999

Day 3 - December 1 1999

Day 4 - December 2 1999

Day 5 - December 3 1999

Repercussions

Blistering blizzards, Batman! Turnbull wants weak national emissions trading scheme just like Rudd - who would've guessed?

Breakdown showing percentages of get-out-of-gaol-free cards availble to greenhouse gas emitters until 2026 in the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill aka U.S. Clean Energy and Security Act 2009.

If you thought that the Rudd Government's plan to compensate industry super polluters was a fizzer (to such a degree that a national emissions trading scheme would see virtually no significant change for the better in relation to Australia's greenhouse gas pollution) then hang on to your hats as Leader of the Opposition Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberal Party pretend to engage with the thorny issue of climate change by putting forward these nine demands:

Specific Issues

1. An Australian Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) should offer no less protection for jobs, small business and industry than an American ETS which is being developed and is presently in the form of the Waxman Markey Bill which has been approved by the House of Representatives but is yet to pass the US Senate. The final form of any legislation may be materially different from Waxman Markey and will not be known until later in the year.

2. To that end there must be an effective mechanism, such as a regular review by the Productivity Commission or a similar expert independent body, to ensure that the Australian ETS does not materially disadvantage Australian industries and workers relative to American industries and workers. The legislation must bind the Government to correct any disadvantage identified by the review process.

3. In order to ensure that an Australian ETS does not simply result in futile carbon and production leakage – exporting the emissions and the jobs – Emissions Intensive Trade Exposed industries (EITEs) should at least be on a level playing field with the United States and other advanced economies and should therefore receive full compensation for higher energy costs until the bulk of their competitors (measured as in Waxman Markey by global market share) face a similar carbon cost.

4. Fugitive methane emissions from coal mining should be treated in the same way as they are in the United States and Europe.

5. As in the Waxman Markey legislation agricultural emissions should be excluded from the scheme and agricultural offsets (eg. biosequestration or green carbon) should be included. Australia's greatest near term potential of reducing its CO2 emissions are to be found in the better management of our own landscape.

6. The scheme design must ensure that general increases in electricity prices are no greater than comparable countries to minimise the impact on all trade exposed industries, to reduce the need to compensate for households and to avoid a needlessly high increase in taxation.

7. In order to ensure continuity of electricity supply, electricity generators should be fairly and adequately compensated for loss of asset value to ensure capacity to invest in new abatement technology and to fund maintenance of existing facilities for energy security purposes.

8. Effective incentives and/or credits must be established to capture the substantial abatement opportunities offered by energy efficiency, especially in buildings.

9. There must be adequate incentives for voluntary action which can be added to Australia's 2020 target.

Besides simply restating some of the broad aims already expressed by government, it appears that Turnbull would like Australia to adopt certain aspects of the proposed U.S. Clean Energy and Security Act 2009.
Yet another watered down climate change bill.
Just as importantly, he does not want to enact our own emissions trading scheme until after the Americans have theirs in place.

Now attempting to tie Australia's legislative response to an American timetable is a nice time waster, as this yet unborn act only passed the U.S. lower house by 7 votes and is facing a hostile upper house before it can be become legislation, with no guarantee that the eventual act will even remotely resemble the current bill or that its final provisions will be seen in a favourable light by the rest of the world.

Indeed (like the Rudd Government's proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Act here in Australia) in America there are citizens who believe that the proposed Clean Energy and Security Act is so weak that it should never become law, others who simply see it as better than nothing, Republicans in the U.S. Senate who won't rule out blocking it and, many Americans who see it as a free give-away to major polluters.

While Turnbull obviously hopes that he can put off the evil day when he actually has to genuinely address emissions trading, his principle aim appears to be to further increase protection and compensation for Australia's super polluters under any national scheme.
Which may please his mates at Goldman Sachs whilst ever that group is involved with energy and mining industries, but may not appeal to the international community generally because Turnbull's solution seems to favour tariffs.

Turnbull's favourite climate change bill.

Graphic form The Wall Street Journal online.

Bless their cute curly heads! Monsanto blogs on morality

From Monsanto according to Monsanto post on 20 July 2009:

In this video I discussed the issue of other farmers saving patented seed with farmers who don't believe in that type of farming practice.

If you think about it, it's pretty simple. The law is the law. When you sign an agreement, you must obey that agreement. Just like when I buy a CD of my favorite artist (which I do have quite the collection), I don't burn it for friends. At the same time, I download quite a bit of songs to jam to on my iPod and I buy each and every one of those songs from iTunes.

Although these examples are on a much smaller scale, it's the right thing to do.

My parents raised me to always do the right thing, even if it costs more or doesn't seem like the most appealing option. I was raised on good morals, which I credit and thank my parents daily for. Just as I was raised on these morals, so were the two farmers featured in this video.

I hope you see it that way.

Leaving aside the ungainly stretch inherent in likening perpetual seed patents to music copyright, the irony of Monsanto blogging about morals is readily apparent.

This is the same company which spent years happily spreading dioxin/PCB contamination across the world. Here is a brief potted history of its recent transgressions and another about heavy metal contamination due to Monsanto mining operations.

Sadly Monsanto does not appear to see that its recalcitrant past concerning environmental degradation and denial of human rights makes a mockery of its current claim that; The law is the law.

Picture from Google Images

* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.

Fairfax misleading digital headline of the week

First Australians were Indian: research was the headline posted on The Sydney Morning Herald website on Thursday 23 July 2009.

Now that isn't exactly what is in the body of the newspaper article (which rather looks to be based on a media release) and it's definitely not what is in the published research Reconstructing Indian-Australian phylogenetic link.

What the researchers appear to be asserting is that early Australians were descended from out-of-Africa migration.

The complete mtDNA sequencing indicate that both Australians and New Guineans exclusively belongs to the out-of-Africa founder types M and N, thus ultimately descended from the same African emigrants ~50 to 70 kyBP, as all other Eurasians.

The researchers, who based their finding on the particular mtDNA sequences of 8 Indians and 6 Aboriginals, are postulating a migration journey which took the ancestors of Australia's traditional owners along what is known as the southern route (Horn of Africa to the Persian/Arabian Gulf and further along the tropical coast of the Indian Ocean to southeast Asia and Australasia) ~ 60 to 50 thousand years before the present day and that migration likely occurred before or at the beginning of N group population growth in pre-history India.

Pity that The Sydney Morning Herald decided on the colourful headline, the published research deserved better.