The Art Show kicks off at the Wooli Hotel Motel with the Opening Night Cocktail Party at 7pm on Friday 22nd April, and continues during Saturday 23rd April.
A craft market in conjunction with the exhibition will be held on April 23 from 7am-12pm.
Proceeds from the ArtShow 2011 will support the efforts of the Coastal Communities Protection Alliance-Wooli (CCPA)
Enquiries: gayeshield@hotmail.com
The tactics used by Fortescue Metals in its patronising, heavy-handed and divisive negotiations with the Yindjibardi people is mirrored by details found in this application to the National Native Title Tribunal on the 15 April 2011 concerning negotiations with the Njamal people and in this 2009 press release
Looks like Andrew Twiggy Forrest is a serial offender. My way or the highway could very well be his personal motto.
* The Sydney Morning Herald photograph of Forrest when he topped the BRW Executive Rich list 2011
It was a ridiculous story to start with, Kate Middleton jelly bean expected to fetch £500, and some joker thought that royal wedding mania had gone far enough because this URL (censored here to avoid the Filtering Dragon) was inserted on The Independent newspaper’s website:
Despite its explanation and apology the Indie (like many other online media organisations) can’t get rid of that usurper URL. Every so often the website’s software redirects from the legitimate URL back to the fake. Classic! So I tried to spoof a couple myself and to my surprise it worked - albeit briefly for The Oz URL:
Houston, the MSM has a problem. J
Sometimes it is hard to decide whether media reporting driven by opinion polls represents solid fact or ephemeral fancy………
On 18 April 2011 The Age published an article based on the results of Nielsen survey from 14-16 April 2011 based on 1,400 respondents:
a carbon price has become steadily more unpopular
On the same day The New Zealand Herald told the world that:
While ABC Radio AM online echoed these reports with:
Based on the same Nielsen poll used by the mainstream media, Crikey opined:
Then the BusinessGreen news site on 18 April decided to muddy waters by mentioning a second survey taken in March 2011:
The Australian government's flagship plans for a new carbon tax and emissions trading scheme are facing growing opposition, according to two new polls suggesting that public and business support for the proposals is wavering. A survey of 1,400 people commissioned by Fairfax newspapers and published earlier today found that 59 per cent of respondents opposed the government's proposals, up three points on the last survey in March. Another Essential Media poll of just over 1,000 people carried out late last month reported that 51 per cent of respondents opposed the plan while only 34 per cent supported it.
However on the very same day all of the above articles were published, Essential Research released results of an online survey from 13-17 April 2011 based on 1,002 respondents showing another way of gauging support:
Support among men increased from 39% to 47% and for women increases from 38% to 55%.
It will be interesting to see how the media responds to this particular Essential Research survey, given that it runs somewhat counter to the main narrative when compensation for any price rise is factored into the equation. At the time of writing only Crikey had bothered to mention this second survey.
So what does one believe with regard to the Australian electorate’s sentiment concerning placing a price on carbon pollution?
I suspect that, faced with conflicting information, we all believe that the majority agrees with whatever is our own personal position.
Snapshot 19th April 2011As skennedybooks said: Who the hell would want @Centrelink tweets showing up in their stream? about 2 hours ago via Echofon
In January 2011 Australia had donated USD $13,047,051 to the Global Crop Diversity Trust’s Svalbard seed vault in Norway, with another USD $8.1 million.Australia is currently the third largest national government financial donor to the Trust after Norway, Britain, and the United States. Chairperson of the Cooperative Research Centre for National Plant Biosecurity (Australia), Professor John Lovett, sits on its board.
Among the individual foundation/corporation donations to the Trust so far, only the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation/UN Foundation has given more than Australia or Norway, Britain and America.
In February this year Victorian farmer Dr. Tony Gregson travelled to Norway with 301 samples of field peas and 42 rare chickpeas, presumably for inclusion in the Australian Gene Banks held in the vault.
The Svalbard seed vault has been in operation for three years and has been plagued with budgetary and operational problems which seriously threaten ongoing seed viability.
Climate change impacts are predicted to hit Australia hard and those successive natural disasters we have experienced since late 2010 have shown us the possible scale of these impacts.
So what is the Australian Government doing to ensure that all these well-meaning geneticists, biologists, farmers and other seed collectors (attempting to insure that the country’s food security is assured) are not working hard in vain? Are the Global Crop Biodiversity Trust’s activities being monitored closely at ministerial level?
Pic from Bloomberg interview on 11th January 2011
Sol is obviously living off the fat of the land since leaving Telstra and is beginning to look as padded as the popular cartoon image of the merchant banker he's become:
Garcia Trujillo Holdings LLC....After being CEO of three $45 billion market cap companies on three different continents, Sol Trujillo who serves on the board of directors of Target (NYSE:TGT) and WPP Group (NASDAQ: WPP) says that companies have a “domestic emerging market” with just as great a potential as other international markets. Trujillo joined forces with Charles P. Garcia, a member of the Board of Directors of Winn-Dixie Stores (NASDAQ:WINN) as well as Nina Vaca, Gary Trujillo who sits on Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona and Well Fargo Bank Desert Region, Alejandro Silva, who sits on the Board of Directors of Walgreen’s (NYSE: WAG), and other Hispanic business leaders in this new venture.
Welfare cheats rack up $9 million debt screams The Australian online ‘Top Story’ headline last Sunday above an article concerning a Centrelink review of 500 cash transfer recipients and, that cry was echoed throughout the mainstream media. With at least one publication, The Daily Telegraph, attempting to link this debt to money laundering on behalf of organised crime in its Cheats and criminals hit jackpot article.
It is obvious that this mini-frenzy over ‘high-flying’ gamblers was triggered by a recent media release, as the wording across diverse media outlets is almost identical in many instances. None of the online articles mentioned the very real possibility that some of these Centrelink review decisions might go before the Administrative Decisions Tribunal of Australia.
One has to wonder if this media release came from a Gillard Government minister ploughing the ground ahead of the May 2011 budget’s implementation of more ‘welfare reform’.
In comparison the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s March 2011 report Centrelink: The Right Of Review – Having Choices, Making Choices, highlighting problems with Centrelink review processes, created barely a ripple. As did those instances where both Centrelink and the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions erred by pursuing Centrelink clients who had not committed fraud and, other instances where Centrelink sought to have its own previous decisions overturned in order to unsuccessfully pursue the mirage of financial gain inferred by a client’s gambling losses.
The vast majority of those receiving pensions, allowances, benefits, family payments or disaster relief are neither cheats, criminals or out-of-control gamblers and I suspect that many who live on the NSW North Coast are becoming rather tired of the media's almost unrelenting focus on a negative view of welfare recipients.
Centrelink: Right to review–having choices, making choices—0411 (195.46KB) PDF download
Excerpts from The culture and discourse of climate scepticism by Andrew J. Hoffman* (2011) which looks at the American experience:
The scientific community has concluded that human activity is a major cause of GHG emissions and that these emissions influence global warming (this author subscribes to this view, most notably stated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] and the National Academies of Sciences). However, there is clearly more than science at play in shaping the public and political debate on climate change. It is striking that one of the strongest predictors of an American’s beliefs regarding climate change is his or her political party affiliation. According to a 2009 Pew survey, 75 percent of Democrats believe there is solid evidence of global warming compared to 35 percent of Republicans and 53 percent of Independents (Pew Research Center, 2009b). This variance can only be explained by the presence of a deeper ideological and cultural influence on both the definition of the problem and consideration of solutions…………………..
I recently began a study onthe climate skeptic movement and climate skepticism more broadly to better understand the cultural and ideological issues at play by systematically analyzing the frames used to mobilize the counter-movement. As part of this study, several cultural themes have emerged as dominant among the skeptic movement (Hulme, 2009).
For skeptics, climate change is inextricably tied to a belief that climate science and climate policy is a covert way for liberal environmentalists and the government to interfere in the market and diminish citizens’ personal freedom. In the words of a conference speaker at a 2010 climate skeptic conference, skeptics believe ‘the issue isn’t the issue’ and ‘the environmental agenda seeks to use the state to create scarcity as a means to exert their will, and the state’s authority, over your lives’. Many skeptic conference presenters invoked the idea that ‘climate change is just another attempt to diminish our freedom’ and climate policies will decrease personal liberty. One went so far as to suggest that a binding international agreement on climate change would end with individuals being required to carry ‘carbon ration cards’ on their person.
A second prominent theme among the skeptic movement is a strong faith in the free market. Members of the skeptic movement consistently argued that climate legislation will hinder economic progress and that renewable energy is not feasible without large government subsidies. Another skeptic suggested that ‘doing nothing about climate change is doing something [because] it enables people to keep their money and invest it in the future’.
Finally, one of the most intriguing themes that has emerged from the study is a strong distrust of the scientific peer review process. Skeptics argue that public funding of science in the post-Second World War era through organizations like the National Science Foundation (NSF) corrupted the scientific process. In their view, ‘peer review’ turned into ‘pal review’, and establishment scientist editors only published work by their friends and those whose scientific research findings agreed with their own. This frame was particularly salient at the skeptic conference in the wake of the 4 Strategic Organization 9(1) 2009 ‘Climategate’ controversy, in which thousands of emails were leaked from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. Skeptics argue that these emails support their claims that dissenting scientific papers have been suppressed, although multiple investigations have cleared the scientists………..
Some may argue that the climate skeptic movement is small and thus irrelevant to the debate on what to do about climate change, but as social scientists, we cannot endorse such flippant dismissal. If, as we suspect, skeptics invoke climate frames that resemble abortion politics, this has serious policy implications. As long as members of the skeptic movement are included in the policy debate and sway the opinions of some lawmakers, their discourse is critically relevant.
* Andrew J. Hoffman is the Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan; a position that holds joint appointments at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business and the School of Natural Resources and Environment. Within this role, Andy also serves as associate director of the Frederick A. and Barbara M. Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise. His research uses a sociological perspective to understand the cultural and institutional aspects of environmental issues for organizations. He has published eight books and over 90 articles and book chapters on these issues.
