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The Guardian, 30 December 2023 |
Saturday, 6 January 2024
Quotes of the Week
"The sort of ballsy Rutherglen Shiraz that comes out of the bottle dragging its knuckles."
[Alex Csar on Twitter/X, 30 December 2023]
“It [SARS-CoV-2 subvariant JN.1] is very competitive if you look at the numbers compared to the other variants, its growth advantage is very, very high.”
[UNSW Associate Professor& virologist at The Kirby Institute Stuart Turville writing in The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 December 2023]
Friday, 5 January 2024
South Africa seeks to take Israel to the International Court of Justice alleging violations of obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the “Genocide Convention”) in relation to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip
South Africa’s ruling African National Congress affirmed its position on the conflict in the Middle East on 14 October 2023. President Cyril Ramaphosa stating 'the A.N.C. remained steadfast in advocating for peace between Israel and Palestine. He said the A.N.C. stood with Palestine and its citizens, who have been oppressed for more than 70 years. “As the A.N.C., we have always pledged our solidarity and have always insisted that the only solution, especially with the issues of Palestine, is a two-state solution. We stand here because we are deeply concerned about the atrocities occurring in the Middle East, and we have passed our condolences to the people of Israel just as we are passing condolences to the people of Palestine....”' [America: The Jesuit Review, 18 October 2023]
Given that strong support this next step was almost inevitable.
I'm sure a great many people of good will around the world are hoping that this application leads to a change in attitudes and behaviours on the part of the Likud Government of Israel, the Israeli Defence Force and the military arm of the Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (HAMAS).
International Court of Justice, The Hague, Netherlands
Press Release Unofficial [excerpt]
No. 2023/77
29 December 2023
THE HAGUE, 29 December 2023. South Africa today filed an application instituting proceedings against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, concerning alleged violations by Israel of its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the “Genocide Convention”) in relation to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
According to the Application, “acts and omissions by Israel . . . are genocidal in character, as they are committed with the requisite specific intent . . . to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group” and that “the conduct of Israel — through its State organs, State agents, and other persons and entities acting on its instructions or under its direction, control or influence — in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, is in violation of its obligations under the Genocide Convention”.
The Applicant further states that “Israel, since 7 October 2023 in particular, has failed to prevent genocide and has failed to prosecute the direct and public incitement to genocide” and that “Israel has engaged in, is engaging in and risks further engaging in genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza”.
South Africa seeks to found the Court’s jurisdiction on Article 36, paragraph 1, of the Statute of the Court and on Article IX of the Genocide Convention, to which both South Africa and Israel are parties.
The Application also contains a Request for the indication of provisional measures, pursuant to Article 41 of the Statute of the Court and Articles 73, 74 and 75 of the Rules of Court. The Applicant requests the Court to indicate provisional measures in order to “protect against further, severe and irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people under the Genocide Convention” and “to ensure Israel’s compliance with its obligations under the Genocide Convention not to engage in genocide, and to prevent and to punish genocide”.
Pursuant to Article 74 of the Rules of Court, “[a] request for the indication of provisional measures shall have priority over all other cases”.
The complete press release can be read and downloaded at:
https://www.icj-cij.org/sites/default/files/case-related/192/192-20231229-pre-01-00-en.pdf
International Court of Justice: APPLICATION INSTITUTING PROCEEDINGS, December 2023 by clarencegirl on Scribd
Thursday, 4 January 2024
Yet another Clarence Valley development application with wet feet?
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| MASTER PLAN DA 2023/0711 Click on all images to enlarge |
Clarence Valley Independent, 20 December 2023:
A development application DA 2023/0711 for a $6.65 million 95 lot manufactured home estate at South Grafton is currently being assessed by Clarence Valley Council and submissions from the public are invited.
The DA lodged by John Codling is for the demolition of existing buildings at 252 to 298 Rushforth Road and construction of a 95 dwelling manufactured home estate, a community building, a 25m by 10m swimming pool, children’s play area, community gardens, recreation areas and community title subdivision.
The Statement of Environmental Effects SEE, lodged with the DA states the 95 home manufactured housing estate will take up 8.57 hectares of the 11.54-hectare property, with proposed residential sites varying from 282 square metres to 450 square metres.
The Manufactured Home estate will be located on the southern and eastern portions of the property, with the northern and western areas remaining unimpacted by construction.
“The proposed large community clubhouse, centrally located at the entrance to the development, will act as an indoor and outdoor meeting place for residents of the estate and their visitors,” the SEE states.
“The proposed dwelling sites and community facilities will be set in a landscaped environment supported by recreational facilities.”......
Sounds like low income retirees heaven, doesn't it?
Until one realises that an existing wide drainage channel easement dissects the planned manufactured home estate and discharges into what appears to be marshland and creek. Which sets the mind a-wondering.
From there it is easy to discover that the entire manufactured home estate on that lot will be directly in the path of the maximum possible Clarence River flood (based on probable maximum precipitation) according to Clarence Valley Council 2022 flood modelling.
Clarence River very dark blue, 1 in 100 probability in any given year for a flood event is coloured darker blue and, the full range of a maximum probability flood coloured light blue with est. 11.5 ha DA site in dark red.
IMAGE: https://maps.clarence.nsw.gov.au/intramaps910/
In addition the "Stormwater Management Plan & Preliminary Flood Assessment" (17 October 2023) at Page 10 supports this view and adds another dimension:
2. The subject site is subject to Clarence River flooding during an ‘extreme event’. This is limited to the northeastern portion of the site (Figure 4).....
5. The entire site is subject to flooding during a Probable Maximum Flood (PMF) event (Figure 8). Depth and velocity information is not available.
6. Site inundation due to 1:100 storm event runoff from the Rushforth Reservoir (Figure 9) is similar but of a lesser extent than what is mapped as fluvial inundation (Figure 5). Nine lots are affected by shallow (<0.2m) inundation (Figure 11).
7. A Rushforth Reservoir dam break would inundated a large component of the northeastern site precinct (Figure 10). The inundation depth in the northeastern part of the site where the lots are is generally below 0.5 metres (Figure 12), but it increases to 0.8 metres along the eastern site boundary (past the lots).
The developer cannot fail to be aware that the site will experience everything from episodic, low-level nuisance flooding from the creek to a probable maximum full inundation from the river 13.6-13.7m in height potentially sending on a conservative calculation 0.6-3.8m or somewhere between 2-12 feet of rushing water though the manufactured home estate.
Bottom line is that the next time climate change throws a record breaking Clarence River flood at valley communities, South Grafton will possibly have another 190+ people to evacuate to higher ground - as is advised at Page 18 of the developer's document "Stormwater Management Plan & Preliminary Flood Assessment".
Not sounding quite as attractive now, does it?
SEE FULL DETAILS AT: https://cvc-web.t1cloud.com/T1PRDefault/WebApps/eProperty/P1/eTrack/eTrackApplicationDetails.aspx?r=CVC.P1.WEBGUEST&f=%24P1.ETR.APPDET.VIW&ApplicationId=DA2023%2f0711
Wednesday, 3 January 2024
New South Wales might still be in the grip of drought, however December rains did some good
Those rolling thunderstorms, wind, rain and flash flooding that plagued the state in December were not just uncomfortable - at times they were dangerous.
Even now in the first two days of 2024 the NSW State Emergency Service (SES) has responded to more than 115 incidents in the past 24 hours, in response to the impacts of storms and flooding in the north east of the state.
However, all that weather has produced one set of images to bring smiles to the faces of some people in a number of coastal districts.
It's not enough to come out of drought but areas of intense drought have shrunk somewhat.
The Northern Rivers region has seen the Intense Drought category sink back down to 14.5 per cent from a Spring high of an est. 42.8 per cent of all land. While the Drought category fell from 41.6 per cent to 29.1 per cent, with those decreases moving over to being Drought Affected land sitting at 56.3 per cent of the region.
This of course is 2024, the year of accelerated global warming and erratic weather patterns, so it feels like a coin toss as to whether the Australian east coast and the Northern Rivers in particular have three months of destructive storms ahead or a return to below average rainfall until Winter arrives.
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NSWDPI Combined Drought Indicator |
Tuesday, 2 January 2024
Will the Australian general public ever find out exactly what then Prime Minister John Howard told the National Security Committee and Cabinet which convinced them to endorse & enter an unlawful war fought on the basis of a lie?
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| Prime Minister John Winston Howard playing at 'war leader' circa 2003 Photograph: The Sydney Morning Herald/Fairfax Media/Getty Images |
The Guardian, 1 January 2024:
The release of the 2003 cabinet papers “barely scratches the surface” of the Howard government’s “disastrous decision to go to war in Iraq” and reinforces the need for a parliamentary vote before committing Australia to future wars, Greens senator Nick McKim has said.
McKim has demanded the full release of all national security committee and cabinet documents related to the 2003 decision, which committed Australia to the US-led “coalition of the willing” to invade Iraq.
The cabinet papers, released by the National Archives on Monday, had been heavily anticipated for the insights they would offer into the decision by the Howard government.
They show that the cabinet signed off on the decision based on “oral reports” from the prime minister, John Howard.
“There was no submission to cabinet on costs, benefits and implications of Australia’s entry into the war,” Prof David Lee from the University of New South Wales Canberra wrote in an essay on the release of the papers.
“This indicates that cabinet’s national security committee was the locus of decision-making on the war.”
Under legislation, cabinet documents are released after 20 years, but national security committee documents that do not go to cabinet are precluded from automatic release. They can be applied for released independently from 1 January, with a decision made by the information commissioner on a case-by-case basis.
On Monday it was revealed that the Morrison government had failed to hand over some national security-related cabinet documents from the time of the Iraq war to the National Archives for potential public release.
The blunder means the archives were unable to scrutinise some of the documents for potential public release in time for its usual publication of 20-year-old cabinet documents.
The archives said it intended to make a decision about the release of the additional documents “as a matter of priority”.....
McKim said the papers that had been released “still don’t reveal the entirety of the flawed intelligence and failures of political leadership” and were “a missed opportunity to learn the lesson that war should never be entered into on the basis of a lie”.
“It’s critical that additional intelligence documents, including national security committee documents used to justify the war on false grounds, are released,” he said.
“Massive questions remain unanswered about exactly when John Howard promised George Bush he would take Australia to war in Iraq, how that stacks up with the timeline of flawed intelligence, and how this informed national security committee and cabinet decisions to proceed with one of the worst foreign policy disasters in Australian history.”
The decision to join the US in 2003 was justified by unconfirmed reports the Iraqi regime had weapons of mass destruction and was harbouring terrorists. An investigation by US and UN inspectors found no such weapons at the time of the invasion and concluded Saddam Hussein had destroyed his last WMDs at least a decade before. About 200,000 Iraqi civilians were killed during the conflict......
Monday, 1 January 2024
Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet
Monday 1 January 2024 | Media release
Transfer of 2003 Cabinet records to the National Archives of Australia
In 2020 the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (the Department) transferred 2003 Cabinet records, including those prepared for the National Security Committee of Cabinet, to the National Archives of Australia (the Archives).
This is the normal process and allows time for appropriate consultation with relevant agencies to ensure content released is compliant with exemptions in the Archives Act 1983.
The 2020 transfer of a small number of additional 2003 Cabinet records did not take place as it should have due to apparent administrative oversights by the Department, the Archives and security agencies. These oversights were likely as a result of COVID-19 disruptions at the time.
The additional records were located by the Department on 19 December 2023, and the Department and the Archives jointly inspected the records on 22 December 2023. These additional records have now been transferred to the Archives.
The Archives will review the additional records in consultation with relevant agencies, including security agencies, to ensure content released is compliant with exemptions in the Archives Act 1983.
The Secretary of the Department has appointed Mr Dennis Richardson to undertake an independent review of the 2020 transfer process and confirm that all relevant records have been transferred to the Archives. Mr Richardson will complete his review by the end of January 2024.
Only the Archives decides which documents are released and to whom. Neither the Department, nor any Minister, has any role in this decision. [my yellow highlighting]
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How the newspapers saw the situation on 1 January 2024......
The Guardian
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