Saturday, August 9, 1pm. Israel's brutal assault on Gaza has killed more than 1450 people so far, 85% of whom are civilians, including more than 350 children. Thousands more are maimed and injured. Gaza's infrastructure is wrecked. Even if the latest ceasefire holds, the longstanding Israeli siege and blockade will continue. The Palestinian people need our solidarity. State Library, 328 Swanston St, City.Organised by Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid
Public meeting: The campaign for a free Palestine
Wednesday, August 13, 2pm.Guest speakers:Samah Sabawi (a Palestinian-Australian writer, playwright, producer, political analyst and commentator on human rights) &Farrah Agha (student eyewitness just returned from West Bank). RUSU meeting room, Building 8, Level 3, Room 18, RMIT (entrance from Swanston St). Organised by Resistance: Young Socialist Alliance & Green Left Weekly. For more info ph 0431 311 520.
Green Left Weekly Comedy Debate 2014
Can we survive the Abbottoir?
Friday, August 15, doors open 6:30pm (for 8pm start)
Brunswick Town Hall, cnr Sydney Rd & Dawson St
MC:ROD QUANTOCK with the comedic talents of Carlo Sands, Corey White, Morven Smith, Rose Callaghan, Sean Bedlam (other TBA)
Meal served from 6:30pm. Bar available.
Tickets (does not include meal): $40 solidarity, $25 waged, $12 concession. Bookings essential. Book now at www.trybooking.com/FHBP or ph 9639 8622.
A fundraiser for the progressive newspaper Green Left Weekly.
This is a special edition of the Green Left Weekly Activist Calendar, made necessary by Israel's assault on and siege of Gaza. Our next regular edition will be dated August 13..
Tess Lawrence has sent this article to me for which I thank her. It was first posted in Independent Australia yesterday. In Melbourne, we have had strong winds this week. I am sure many are like me and remember the winds of three years ago with their smoky greyness casting a dramatic pall. For me, in the wind, I remember them.
To-day is the 3rd anniversary of the apocalyptic Victorian bushfires — as well the 45th of a similar tragedy that befell Tasmania in 1967. Contributing editor-at large Tess Lawrence was touched by both calamities. The following is a piece written while the embers still smouldered in Victoria.
Only tears of angels can extinguish these flames, bathe charred hearts and our incinerated souls.
We have never seen such apocalyptic fire in Victoria, demonic flailings lashed by hellfire winds, delivering an Armageddon well prophesied upon a sunburnt country already dying of thirst.
Embers, like anger, still smoulder. Nature’s mighty force is one thing.
When she is aided and abetted by human accomplices, then she is seduced into believing she is invincible. C’mon baby, light my fire. The impotent goading the omnipotent. Make no mistake, arsonists are terrorists, turning our beloved land into valleys of death and destruction.
As we haul the twisted corpses of our brothers and sisters from their still warm tombs in scenes reminiscent of another kind of war zone, we must not capitulate to the despair, the horror and the sadness we now feel.
As we count and bury our dead, the undead amongst us must embrace the dying and the injured.
As we smell the burnt flesh of the wounded, the smoke is smeared as strong as paint upon our landscape and upon our heartscape.
We salute our mighty fireys, fire-fighters and rescue workers. And brave neighbours and friends and family members who risked all to save and help others. Some forfeiting their own lives, and even loved ones and property as they toiled.
All are heroes, whether in the uniform of the CFA or the Salvos; whether they bear the Jaws of Life or administer healing cups of tea, offer hugs, words of encouragement or talk gently to us of a happier future far from today’s nightmare.
As we begin to bulldoze the corpses of livestock and animals trapped in stables, cages, pens, that we left behind, or bury pets that died with their owners, and as we put down hundreds of half-burned, bloated, blinded and near dead creatures with half-beating hearts; eyes crazed white with fear and pain — I can promise there is a guilt of the human survivor even in this; that we did not, could not, protect those trusting creatures in our care.
We must all help in whatever way we can and even if we don’t have money to spare, we can lend a hand in so many other ways, either on an individual basis or with community working bees.
So often, in the heat of disaster, we inundate crisis centres with support. But it is in those lonelier days into the future, when the blistering subsides and the emotional regrowth starts to show that we need to be there for those of us forever scarred by these fires.
Tasmanians know this only too well. Black Tuesday 1967 is like a welt upon the memory of those of us who lived through it. We lost 62 of our own during that maelstrom, when the air turned into a blood-red solid element. Like Icarus, our State was hurtling towards the sun.
About 900 of us suffered burns and injury, some forever disfigured, disabled, deformed and reformed by the fire, its heat reforging our molten skin like play dough. This too, too solid flesh did melt.
More than 7,000 Taswegians found themselves homeless. My own family amongst them.
In a bizarre co-incidence, both Black Tuesday and Victoria’s fires happened in February – and exploded on the same date – the 7th — 42 years to the day!
The post traumatic impact of tragedy leaves a different imprint on us all. It manifests in different ways. On different days. Even decades later.
It is always with us. It becomes part of our emotional ringbarking. One is not even conscious of it. But it is a psycholgical stigmata that reappears during these times of stress and particularly when there are similar recurrences.
The embrace of family, friends, schoolmates, and the kindness of strangers becomes a parliament of healing and support; a Loving Cup, a shared humanity in which we find comfort in one another.
You find such precious jewels amongst the ashes of razed houses and dreams. You learn from bitter experience these are the truest. They are to be polished and cherished and placed like runes in a safe place in your heart.
And they do sustain you and remind you of the goodness in the hearts of others. And you find yourself fingering them in moments of insecurity and fear. In such places as Ethiopia, Iraq, Kuwait, I have done this to calm myself.
It is knowing you are not alone in such horrendous difficulties that can salve wounds and the hurt. No amount of anaesthesia will numb the emotional pain.
Experiencing these horrors gives us empathy with those who daily live with the nightmare of war and bombs, disease and starvation. It brings us a little closer to the 800,000 human beings who were disembowelled, mutilated and hacked to death by their own species in Rwanda.
None of us is immune from tragedy. Not even those of us who report the news, good or bad. Channel 9′s famous newsreader Brian Naylor and his wife Moiree are you or I on another day, another place.
I covered the Ash Wednesday fires for the now defunct Melbourne Herald – now merged into the Herald Sun, sister paper to The Mercury – where I did my wonderful and happy cadetship and covered everything from Courts to Shipping.
At the time of Black Tuesday, our Dad was a sub-editor on The Mercury – most of us kids were still at school. Dad’s workmates and families were fantastic to us. Everyone was. People lent us their homes and lent us their hearts.
Our next door neighbour Fred Scheppein and his beloved wife Pat (who has since died) bought our block and told Mum and Dad, if ever they wanted to rebuild, it was theirs. Just like that. We never did rebuild. But thank you Fred and Pat.
I do believe that every death diminishes us all. In Victoria, the number of deaths is increasing. The bell has yet to toll for others.
2009 Victorian bushfires
Somewhere there is the person/or persons responsible for some of this bloody murder most foul. Getting their rocks off as they monitor the international media response to their cowardly deeds. Perhaps filming on their mobile phone for a Youtube boast.
The same Queen who sent Dame Elisabeth Murdoch congratulations for her 100thBirthday, also sent her condolences to Victorians who lost loved ones.
The arsonist (s) would pin this on a chest like a badge of dishonour. But beware, forensic teams have already moved in to analyse your handiwork.
Anyone who has smelled the burning flesh of humans never forgets it. Those of us who have to identify corpses will never forget it. To see your loved one(s) and animals grotesquely disfigured by fire is a spectre that haunts one forever.
Imagine, too, the psychological impact upon those who find the bodies and the paramedics, police, medical and Defence and other teams now working to save us and mend us.
One thing I do know, is that the human spirit seems to be greater than the adversity that challenges it.
We can overcome tragedy and we can rebuild. We can rebuild our lives and we can rebuild property and we can rebuild broken hearts and broken spirits. We have before and we will again.
But we should not be embarrassed or afraid of seeking psychological help and de-briefing counselling.
I hope the fires are extinguished by St Valentine’s Day; more an act of mercy than Love.
I hope that the tears of angels fall like rain on the smouldering earth about us to put out the fires that rage on the land and in our hearts. And that we use these tears to bathe wounds and cleanse us from the smoke, in our throats and in our eyes.
Life goes on. Not always in the same direction as originally planned; often with an increased faith in humanity and a greater sense of community.
How true it is, that tragedy often brings out the best in people; so it’s there — inherent. The Phoenix is already risen, borne aloft by the collective indomitable human spirit.
The murderous person(s) who set the torch that ignited this current inferno also lit a candle to a shared humanity and turned a nation into a family.
(Tess Lawrence’s family has been burned out twice — and lost everything on both occasions. Once in political riots — and once in bushfires. She still grieves and cries about the family’s five beloved dogs who died in these fires.)
Laurelle Keough (international media) on +66 86 530 8394, laurellek@oxfam.org.au
Uamdao Noikorn (regional media) on +66 81 855 3196, unoikorn@oxfam.org.uk
Flooding in the Philippines Highlights Urgency of Climate Leadership
Climate change is already affecting South-East Asia
LONDON - September 28 - The worst flooding the Philippines has seen in decades highlights the urgent need for US leadership to push UN climate change negotiations in Bangkok forward to help ensure the best chance of securing a global climate treaty in Copenhagen.
In the Philippines, with many dead and 330,000 displaced by flooding in Manila, climate-related factors are blamed for an increased burden on the health budget, which is struggling to keep up with increased cases of nutritional deficiencies and diseases such as dengue, malaria and cholera.
Oxfam research shows that the number of people affected by climate crises is projected to rise by 54 per cent to 375 million over the next six years, threatening the world's ability to respond.
Oxfam International Senior Climate Policy Adviser Antonio Hill said the content of the new US Climate Change and Energy Bill due to be introduced in the Senate this week, and moves from US officials in Bangkok from today, would provide a stronger picture of whether the US was willing to step up and provide the momentum desperately needed in the negotiations.
Mr Hill said recent announcements by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the EU on climate financing, and Japan and China's stronger language last week on emissions reductions and finance, would put extra pressure on the US to step up and signal its intentions on its role in a global deal.
"Despite good intentions and warm words over the past six months, the US didn't deliver real leadership last week at the UN Climate Summit and G20. Either the US lifts its game, or the next two weeks in Bangkok could go down as just a holding pattern before a fatal nosedive in Copenhagen," he said.
He said while many key countries, including China, India, Japan, the African Union, the Least Developed Countries and the Alliance of Small Island States, had shown they were ready to enter the final, more detailed phase of negotiations, intransigence on the part of rich countries like the US, Canada and Australia was proving an obstacle to progress.
Key sticking points remain the emissions reductions developed countries are willing to deliver - current commitments are around 15 per cent instead of the science-based 40 per cent reductions on 1990 levels by 2020 - and the amount of financing they will put on the table for developing countries to both adapt to the impacts of climate change and develop on a low carbon pathway.
The two-week negotiations, held in South-East Asia, one of the world's most vulnerable regions to climate change, is the penultimate negotiation session before Copenhagen in December, when a fair and safe global climate change treaty must be secured.
Mr Hill said that whilst last week's summits in the US were forums for world leaders to signal their intentions, the UN negotiating process continuing in Bangkok was the only place where countries could forge an agreement to avoid catastrophic climate change.
"It's crunch time," Mr Hill said. "What is needed for a breakthrough is a clear commitment from developed countries - responsible for three-quarters of the carbon in the atmosphere - to commit to substantial finance, additional to existing aid levels, to developing countries."
Climate change is already affecting South-East Asia: extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts, floods and tropical cyclones have increased in frequency and intensity in recent decades, exacerbating water shortages, hampering agricultural production and threatening food security, causing forest fires and coastal degradation, and increasing health risks.
Mr Hill said a study in Thailand found that aquaculture farmers in Bang Khu Thian were spending an average of US$3,130 per household every year to protect their farms from coastal erosion and flooding between 1993 and 2007 - a fourth of annual household income.
"Once developing countries have confidence about the scale of resources rich countries are prepared to negotiate, then they can turn their attention to how they might achieve emissions reductions in their own countries, and work can begin on how a global climate fund could operate. These detailed negotiations must not be left till the eleventh hour in Copenhagen," he said.
Mr Hill said it was crucial that this finance be over and above existing aid commitments otherwise decades of development gains would be reversed and millions more people would be plunged deeper into poverty.
He said the Copenhagen framework also needed to help enable smallholder farmers make agriculture resilient to climate impacts and achieve emissions reductions from the sector.
Notes to editors
Oxfam calculates that at least US $150 billion is needed to help people in developing countries adapt to the escalating impacts of climate change and reduce their emissions, and proposes a fair and transparent global fund operated through the UN system.
The Asian Development Bank estimates that for Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam as a whole, the cost of adaptation for the agriculture and coastal zones (mainly for the construction of sea walls and development of drought and heat-resistant crops) will be about US $5 billion per year by 2020 on average.
Investment in adaptation will pay off, with the annual benefit in terms of avoided damage from climate change likely to exceed the annual cost after 2050.
For the next two weeks, Oxfam will have policy experts and spokespeople in Bangkok from countries including Indonesia, Bangladesh, Germany, Spain, the US, the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, Malawi, Australia and New Zealand. We can arrange interviews in a range of languages.
Events throughout the two weeks organised by civil society groups including Oxfam include:
Thursday 1 October:
Women's Rally, Bangkok, 11am - 1pm (Rachadamnoen Road and around the UNESCAP building)
Celebrities including Miriam Quiambao (Philippines) and Oppie Andaresta (Indonesia) will join with hundreds of women from across the region to raise awareness of the disproportionate impact climate change has on women;
Tuesday 6 October:
Asian People's Climate Court, Bangkok, 9am - 11am
People from countries including Thailand, Bangladesh, Philippines, Indonesia and Nepal will tell their personal stories of how climate change is affecting them now, in front of a judge and panel of experts.
Interviews are available.
###
Oxfam International is a confederation of 13 like-minded organizations working together and with partners and allies around the world to bring about lasting change. Oxfam works directly with communities and that seeks to influence the powerful to ensure that poor people can improve their lives and livelihoods and have a say in decisions that affect them.
courtesy of that great Networker, Activist & Environmental Researcher
Maria Reidl of Mildura, Victoria.
Thank you Maria.
And thank you to the DustWatch Team in Gunnedah, NSW.
The Network would welcome any similar reports from across the country.
I commend the work of this group because it highlights not only the agricultural and economic impact of this disaster, but the social and health aspects as well.
In fact, for many Australians, it has impacted every part of their lives this week.
I don't know what to say, except that some of us are thinking of the realities faced by many Australians across the nation
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DustWatch interim report 22-23September
Prepared by John Leys and the DustWatch Team, Gunnedah
Dust storms have been occurring regularly in western NSW and around Lake Eyre in South Australia for the last two months.
Dust is from drought-affected areas in Western NSW and the eastern Lake Eyre Basin. It is not from the Riverina as reported.
We are losing about 75,000 tonnes of dust per hour off the NSW coast north of Sydney.
This information is sourced from the DustWatch community- based monitoring project. This has and is being funded by NHT, Caring for our Country (C4oC), from grants from Lower Murray Darling, Murray and Lachlan Catchment Management Authorities plus in-kind contributions from all inland CMAs. The project is supported by DECCW in NSW and nationally via Griffith University with funding from LandCare and C4oC.
Two Dust Storms
On Tuesday 22, a dust storm passed though Canberra (picture below) which was about 200km wide and came from the lower Lake Eyre Basin
The second dust storm started on Wednesday 23 and hit Sydney the same day. It started Tuesday 22 in South Australia (can be seen in the far west of the picture as a rolling dust storm) and arrived in eastern NSW on very strong (80-100km) westerly winds today.
There is no satellite image for this dust storm at the time of writing.
This storm is huge! We are losing about 75,000 tonnes of dust an hour off the NSW coast north of Sydney.
Worst event since the 1960s.
The event extends from the Queensland border down to the Riverina. It missed Hay and the south west corner of the State.
The dust results from low ground cover exacerbated by the extended drought and very high winds (80-90km/h).
Description of Dust Storm
The DustWatch community network has recorded the following events:
Broken Hill: first storm Monday 3 hours duration – severe dust storm. Second storm Tuesday 6 hours duration - severe dust storm,
Bourke: 6 hours duration – severe dust storm, started Tuesday night now finished
Cobar: 12 hours duration, still going at 8am– severe dust storm
Condobolin: 3 hours duration – severe dust storm, still going and dusty
Coomba: 3 hours dust on Monday –moderate dust storm
Cowra: 4 hours duration – severe dust storm, clearing now
Dubbo: 6 hours duration – severe dust storm, and still going
Gunnedah: 5 hours duration, still going on – severe dust storm and still going
Hay: no dust storms
Hillston: no data
Ivanhoe: 2 hours duration – severe dust storm
Lake Victoria: no dust storm
Parkes: 4 hours duration – severe dust storm, clearing but still very dusty
Menindee: 4 hours duration – severe dust storm and now clear
Moree: 3 hours duration – severe, still going
Temora: 1 hour duration - mandate dust storm, still hazy
Tibooburra: 30 hours of dust –since Monday night! – two severe dust storms, finished midnight
Walgett: 6 hours duration – severe and still going
West Wyalong: 4 hours duration – moderate and clear now
White Cliffs: 7 hours duration – severe dust storm and the dustiest place in the state!
Implications
Soil loss from farming land
Disruption to transport: airlines, motor cars, ferries
Dust pollution, e.g. filters in air conditioners
Health implications from fine particles
Cancellation of sporting events – imagine if this happened on Saturday!
Deposition to oceans of iron rich dust, like this dust, will cause phytoplankton blooms in oceans
Dust on snow decreases aledo and makes glaciers melt faster
Red, fine dust tends to warm the upper atmosphere so has impact on climate
Solutions
Keep ground cover above 50% by using good land management practices
Wind breaks and trees in the landscape
John Leys, Stephan Heidenreich and Mike Case
The DustWatch Team
Dr John Leys
DustWatch Southern Co-ordinator Principal Research Scientist,
Scientific Services Division,
Department of Environment and Climate Change
PO Box 462, Gunnedah NSW 2380, AUSTRALIA
Ph +61 2 6740 2345 Fx +61 2 6742 3129
E-mail john.leys@environment.nsw.gov.au
DustWatch is funded by the Lower Murray Darling, Lachlan, and Murray CMAs, the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water NSW and Griffith University.
Acknowledgements:
The MODIS image is courtesy of MODIS Rapid Response Project at NASA/GSFC, the fire data is courtesy of the Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) and the rainfall map of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. This project would not be possible without the assistance of all the DustWatchers who provide observations and help with maintenance of the instruments at the DustWatch stations. We gratefully acknowledge their contribution.
February 7, 2009 is now referred to as Black Saturday because of the bushfires which gripped Victoria. They were Australia's worst natural disaster. The Age has to-day issued on line a collection of four videos updating the re-emergence of Marysville. To see them, please go here. For photos, please go here.
To-day was a big day - a major demonstration outside the office of Jenny Macklin, the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA). Our emphasis was on the Indigenous Affairs part of her portfolio. In particular,the Northern Territory Emergency Response(NTER) commonly known as The Intervention. The Intervention must stop.
So the banners were out.
Music was there - a major necessity
The Literature Table
carried the voices of Aboriginal communities
across the Northern Territory.
Some of us came on wheels...
...of various designs.
Cheryl was there of course...
...with a postcard
which Sister Joan was busy handing out complete with stamp
Here's a close-up
There was a police presence
...and lunch turned up thanks to the people over at Monash Uni
