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Category: General news

Managing director of Ebono Institute and major sponsor of The Generator, Geoff Ebbs, is running against Kevin Rudd in the seat of Griffith at the next Federal election. By the expression on their faces in this candid shot it looks like a pretty dull campaign. Read on

  • The end of coal? Ellen Sandell, with Adam Bandt

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    The end of coal?

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    Ellen Sandell
    11:04 AM (1 hour ago)
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    Last night, ABC’s Four Corners program declared we’re now witnessing the end of coal. But in Australia, the old parties are continuing to support this dirty and uneconomic industry. We need to push the old parties to give up on coal and invest in clean, renewable energy, starting with closing Australia’s dirtiest power station, Hazelwood — will you join us?

    Dear Neville,Last night, ABC’s Four Corners delivered a damning report on coal — the age of coal is over. But in Australia the old parties are still prioritising their short-term political interests over the health of our communities and the planet. Just this morning we heard that Victorian Labor has approved exploration for new coal mines here in Victoria.

    We must come together and force the old parties to cut pollution and help transition communities to the new, clean and sustainable jobs of the future. Join me and thousands of Australians in calling for Australia’s dirtiest power station to be replaced with renewable energy.

    Despite Tony Abbott declaring that “coal is good for humanity”, across the country we’re seeing signs that coal is in its death throes. One month ago, the company running Anglesea coal-fired power station announced it will close. And just last week, the company behind two coal-fired power stations in South Australia’s Port Augusta declared they will be shut down as early as next year.

    It’s clear that coal’s time is up. Despite this, the old parties are still supporting their big business friends in the coal industry. We must hold the Liberals and Labor to account and stop millions of tonnes of pollution now by replacing Hazelwood with clean, renewable energy. Add your name to our call.

    Hazelwood is Australia’s dirtiest power station and one of the most polluting in the world. Right now, the Victorian government must create a plan to transition away from coal and replace Hazelwood with renewable energy. This would stop millions of tonnes of pollution being pumped into the atmosphere and support the communities that rely on Hazelwood to transition to sustainable jobs.

    Join us in calling on the Victorian Labor government to close Hazelwood, and recognise that the time for coal is over — add your name now at http://www.replacehazelwood.com.au.

    Thanks for powering the fight for a clean economy,

    Ellen Sandell, with Adam Bandt

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    Citizens’ Climate Lobby (Australia)

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    howardwitt@ccl.org.au via bigpond.net.au
    		10:55 AM (6 minutes ago)

    Neville, Recently I was sent a list of people who have expressed interest in Citizens’ Climate Lobby. CCL is a well-established US based lobby organisation (http://citizensclimatelobby.org/) currently establishing in Australia (http://au.citizensclimatelobby.org/)We have started lobbing – but still very early days here in Oz. We hope you are interested in becoming involved in setting up and participating in our lobby groups. Please let me know.  Regards, Howard Howard Witt

    to me, roseyfaire

  • The truth hurts Claire, Solar Citizens
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    The truth hurts

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    Claire, Solar Citizens
    10:29 AM (1 hour ago)
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    Dear Neville —

    It seems like we’re living in some kind of bizarre alternate universe, when the Prime Minister of our sunny country admits that he’s been out to destroy clean energy’s future from the get-go.

    When Tony Abbott said on national radio on Thursday that he was managing to “reduce the current growth rate of this particular sector as much as the current Senate would allow”*, I’m sure you were just as dismayed as I was. It’s the last thing we should expect from the leader of a country that’s blessed with plentiful sunshine and 1.4 million homes with solar on the roof!

    Today our politicians are back in Canberra for the final fortnight of Federal Parliament and will debate the future of the Target in the Senate – will you share this image on Facebook so people can see what’s at stake for our sun-powered future?


    Right now a cut from 41,000 to 33,000 gigawatt hours is on the cards for the large-scale part of the Target. And I have to say that when I hear our politicians celebrate cutting back where our energy system needs to go it makes me despair – how can we be so far from where we were only a couple of years ago?

    Investment in clean energy dropped by a whopping 88% last year, with millions in investment gone. Right now, thousands of jobs are at risk.

    The best chance we have to pull the debate about the future of our energy system out of the political quicksand is by demonstrating that people everywhere want solar and clean energy to be #1. Will you share this image now and ask your friends to Stand Up For Solar? (If you’re not on Facebook, simply forward this email to your address book.)

    Like you, I know that we can win, even when multiple attacks on solar and renewables confront us. I know this because we’ve done it before. Together we saved the small-scale part of the scheme, known as the SRES, that helps people with the cost of installing solar systems of up to 100 kilowatts.

    And the good news is that when it comes to what’s next, we’re making progress already. Stand Up For Solar’s national launch has only just wrapped up, with hundreds of people who care about solar turning up at each meeting – we’re building momentum for a vision for clean energy that people across our great nation want to see.

    And the launch events were only the first step in our campaign to win a renewable energy goal of at least 50% by 2030, a fair go for solar owners and help for people struggling with their power bills. Solar Citizens supporters and volunteers around Australia are booking meetings with local MPs, holding stalls, letter boxing and pledging to take Stand Up For Solar to their friends, family members and neighbours.

    You can be part of it today by sharing our Facebook post or by forwarding this email to your networks. Ask your friends if they support solar – and when they say yes – ask them to Stand Up For Solar with you.

    For sunshine, every time

    Claire, National Director

    P.S. We’ve got big plans coming up for Stand Up For Solar in the weeks and months ahead and we need your help to make them happen. Make your tax-deductible donation today and help us win big for Aussie solar and renewables.

    * http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/abbott-says-ret-policies-designed-to-reduce-visually-awful-wind-farms-66619

    Solar Citizens
    http://www.solarcitizens.org.au/

  • Thank you for speaking up ALYSIA GET=UP
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    Thank you for speaking up

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      aKLYSIA
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    NEVILLE,

    Week after week, we continue to hear the disturbing evidence from those who have worked inside Australia’s detention centres and witnessed the trauma being inflicted on children as young as two.

    This week was no different, as we learnt that a newborn baby – just five months old – was sent to Nauru. In spite of all we know, the Government is still desperately clutching on to the idea that what they’re doing is somehow justified. But for years now, GetUp members have been chipping away at this idea, which looks flimsier by the day.

    While the Government may have been successful in pushing children out of sight, they will never be pushed out of mind. GetUp members made sure of that last week, when we presented Parliament with a 102,220 signature-strong petition calling for the immediate release of all children and their families. Members in Canberra braved below zero temperatures to stand alongside 231 silhouettes of children on Parliament Lawns, each one representing a child still locked in detention.

    None of this would’ve been possible without the dedication and support of amazing GetUp members like you, so thank you!

    231 childrens' silhouettes

    On the day, the 231 silhouettes stood as a solemn symbol of the 231 children in detention. Bashir Yousufi, who was detained on Christmas Island as a child, spoke of the impacts detention had on him and how he still carries them to this day. He spoke on behalf of all the children who are still being locked up and denied the opportunity to enjoy their childhood.

    Bashir speaking at petition delivery

    GetUp members were joined by Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, Melissa Parke MP, Anna Burke MP and Andrew Wilkie MP, who accepted the petition on behalf of Parliament and spoke passionately about the urgent need to release all children from detention. (Immigration Minister Peter Dutton was also invited to accept the petition, but advised he was unable to attend.)

    Politicians speaking at petition delivery

    This shameful policy of detaining children is supported by both major parties, which is why it’s so important to champion those who are courageous enough to speak out against it. If you’re on Twitter, can you take 30 seconds to send a message of thanks to those who stood with us last week, by clicking here?

    It’s not easy, but every day our fight is emboldened by GetUp members – like you – who don’t give up and keep raising your voice to speak up for all children locked in detention.

    Thank you so much for being part of the fight!

    Alycia and Ricky for the Getup team

    PS. Last week, our message was trending across the country as people posted photos from their childhood and shared a story to remind Australians of the 231 children in detention who are being denied a childhood. You can check out some of the stories here: https://storify.com/GetUp/kidsout

  • [New post] NSW Nationals want smaller seats – how?

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    [New post] NSW Nationals want smaller seats – how?

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    The Tally Room <donotreply@wordpress.com> Unsubscribe
    7:04 PM (1 hour ago)
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    New post on The Tally Room

    NSW Nationals want smaller seats – how?

    by Ben Raue

    Last month, Nationals MLC Ben Franklin announced that he would seek a parliamentary inquiry into the size of the western NSW electorates of Barwon and Murray, which cover a majority of the New South Wales land mass. Today, according to a tweet from the party’s account, the NSW Nationals passed a motion calling for smaller electorates in regional NSW.

    It’s true that these electorates are huge, and are a challenge to represent, but this simply reflects the low populations living in these areas. While there are some variations in electoral boundaries which could make Barwon at the least slightly smaller, any legislative changes would likely require increasing the population contained within seats in Sydney and along the coast, unless the Nationals are considering a proposal to increase the size of the Legislative Assembly.

    The proposal also ignores the fact that the Nationals actually benefit from our electoral system. In 2015, the Nationals polled about the same as the Greens, but won 17 seats to the Greens’ 3, due to their vote being concentrated in particular parts of the state.

    Franklin ignores all the other conditions that can make it harder to represent an electorate, such as having a large number of residents who don’t speak English, many residents with problems needing support from their local MP, such as public housing issues. It’s a lot easier to measure the landmass a seat covers, but it doesn’t mean it is the only problem faced by MPs in representing their electorate. Yet we don’t discuss weighting electoral power based on any other type of disadvantage – it’s one person, one vote.

    There is a long and ugly history in Australia of electoral laws being used to increase the voting power of rural voters at the expense of urban voters – in effect MPs represented land, not just people. In New South Wales at a state level, and in most other jurisdictions, different quotas were set in rural and urban areas, meaning that there were much smaller numbers of voters in a rural seat than in an urban seat. Read more of this post

    Ben Raue | June 13, 2015 at 7:04 pm | Tags: Electoral reform, New South Wales, Redistribution | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/ppI95-6RJ
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  • The John James Newsletter 64

     

    The John James Newsletter 64

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    John James
    		2:06 PM (3 minutes ago)

    The John James Newsletter 64
    13 June 2015 – Provence


    The ugly truth is out there, but you have to want to know it Sheldon Richman

    Global Apollo programme seeks to make clean energy cheaper than coalSir David King calls for £15bn a year R&D spending on clean energy to make it cheaper than coal, in emulation of the space race. Making electricity 100% renewable by 2050 would require affordable energy storage, both on the domestic and national scale, with better batteries, heat storage in water, soil or molten salt, compressed air, flywheels and hydrogen. Sir David Attenborough said: “The exciting thing about the Apollo report is that it is positive – at last someone is saying we can do things.”http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/02/apollo-programme-for-clean-energy-needed-to-tackle-climate-change
    Snowden: balance of power has shifted as we “turn away from reaction and fear towards resilience and reason”Bulk data collection programmes had been declared illegal and disavowed by the US Congress. “After the White House found that this program had not stopped a single terrorist attack, even the president who once defended its propriety has now ordered it terminated.”http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/05/snowden-balance-power-shifted-people-defy-government-surveillance-nsa?CMP=ema_565
    From Multi-Year Drought To Flash Flooding: ‘Weather Whiplash’ ExplainedExtreme weather is becoming longer and stronger because of changes in our atmosphere that cause weather patterns to get “stuck.”http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/06/02/3664087/weather-whiplash/ and a deeper analysis of where it is heading in “The coming Age of Storms”https://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/
    Is it any wonder that the Arctic is melting so fast?Watch the beguiling movement of C02 – click here and go to the second picturehttp://www.designntrend.com/articles/26311/20141119/swirls-of-carbon-dioxide-dictate-severity-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions.htm

    Britain’s Student Union Votes to Boycott Israel over violations of Palestinian human rights. The motion explicitly aligns the union with the Palestinian-instigated Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions [BDS] campaign. The NUC is the UK’s umbrella student organisation for some 600 higher education institutions representing seven million students. http://www.timesofisrael.com/britains-student-union-votes-to-boycott-israel/ Australasia’s largest specialist college to divest £1.2m from fossil fuels http://www.theguardian.com/environment/keep-it-in-the-ground-blog/2015/jun/05/australasias-largest-specialist-college-to-divest-12m-from-fossil-fuels?CMP=EMCENVEML1631
    Fossil fuels warm the planet for an instant, but the C02 continues to warm the planet for decades The warming induced by CO2 over its lifetime in the atmosphere would exceed the warming from direct combustion by 100,000.  http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/news-stories/article/study-claims-greenhouse-gas-warming-felt-in-months.html C02 half-life possibly less than 30 years. See fascinating discussion inhttp://euanmearns.com/the-half-life-of-co2-in-earths-atmosphere-part-1/
    Hollywood still grapples with nuclear falloutThe US turned swathes of desert radioactive during the cold war and denied it. The mystery still haunts Hollywood and rural Mormon communities. By the time John Wayne succumbed to stomach cancer in 1979, of 220 cast and crew, 91 had contracted cancer,http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/06/downwinders-nuclear-fallout-hollywood-john-wayne?CMP=ema_565
    US Officials Consider Nuclear Strikes against Russia“The options go so far as one implied—but not stated explicitly—that would improve the ability of US nuclear weapons to destroy military targets on Russian territory.” In other words, the US is actively preparing nuclear war against Russia.http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-officials-consider-nuclear-strikes-against-russia/5453655 Sleepwalking to Another Mideast DisasterDenied crucial information about Syria, the American people are being led toward the precipice of another Middle East war, guided by neocons and liberal hawks who are set on “regime change” even if that means a likely victory for Sunni terrorists,https://consortiumnews.com/2015/06/04/sleepwalking-to-another-mideast-disaster/ andhttp://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42043.htm 
    8.2 Million Iraqis In Need of Emergency Humanitarian AssistanceAll segments of Iraqi society – Yezidi, Christian, Shabak, Turkmen, Shia, Sunni and Kurd – have been affected by the violence. http://worldpress.org/link.cfm?http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/06/8-2-million-iraqis-in-need-of-emergency-humanitarian-assistance/

    Varoufakis: Greece’s creditors have turned negotiations into a warIt is not true that they made concessions and we made concessions and that there is a deadlock. They made no concessions. When we met the first time in February they came up with pretty much what they have now offered. Then we had months of negotiations in the so-called Brussels group. http://www.euractiv.com/sections/euro-finance/varoufakis-greeces-creditors-have-turned-negotiations-war-315247 Greece is playing to lose the debt crisis poker gameGreece has shown its best cards too early and may have missed opportunity to end destructive austerity imposed by Germanyhttp://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/09/greece-is-playing-to-lose-the-debt-crisis-poker-game
    The Vatican talks Climate Change: The Pontifical Academy of Sciences Climate  change  from  unsustainable  consumption  by  15%  of  the population has become the dominant moral issue for society.http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2068632/climate-change-and-the-common-good.pdf andhttp://www.climatecodered.org/2015/06/winning-carbon-war-vatican-talks.html
    Obama Sidelines Kerry On Ukraine PolicyKerry was reaffirming the position of Merkel and Hollande, the key shapers of the Minsk II agreement; and Nuland was nullifying them. Obama now has sided with Nuland on this; it’s a slap in the face to the EU: Poroshenko can continue ignoring Kerry and can blatantly ignore the Minsk II agreement; and Obama tacitly sides with Poroshenko and Nuland, against Kerryhttp://www.countercurrents.org/zuesse070615.htm
    Sea-level rises has accelerated to 4.4mm a year from earlier average of 3.2mm. http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/sea-levels-in-retreat-a-sure-sign-el-nios-grip-is-tightening-20150603-ghdwix

    US politicians call for release of secret 9/11 reportWhite House urged to release 28-pages of classified information alleging Saudi officials helped finance attacks.http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/06/politicians-call-release-secret-911-report-150603035342175.html
    WikiLeaks releases 17 secret TISA documentsThis agreement would hamstring governments and citizens by focussing on services. Like both TTIP and TPP, one of the central aims of TISA is to remove “barriers” to trade in services. It  ensures that services are deregulated and opened up to private companies around the world, and that once privatised, they cannot be re-nationalised.http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/06/wikileaks-releases-secret-tisa-docs-the-more-evil-sibling-of-ttip-and-tpp/ andhttp://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/06/03/wikileaks-strikes-again-leaked-tisa-docs-expose-corporate-plan-reshaping-global
    Some Israeli Leaders Do Tell The TruthStill today, 48 years on, few know the truth about how Israel set the stage for war in June 1967 to grab more Arab land. The single most decisive event that made war inevitable happened on Thursday 1 June, four days before Israel launched its attacks. What was it?http://www.countercurrents.org/hart030615.htm
    On the e-waste trailAn investigation into the toxic trail of illegal e-waste that is ushered from the first to the third world. At the beginning of 2011, the number of containers had gone up to 500 a month. Now, the average is up to 600 a month, with a noticeable increase in the months just after Christmas when many consumers are discarding gadgets after having found new ones under the Christmas tree.http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/witness/2014/09/e-waste-trail-2014924132443417118.html
    Compare Australia and China with the US prison populations China takes 7th place in the world in incarceration rate. Which of course makes you wonder, what the hell is going on in America? Are we just a society of misfits, rabble-rousers, and outright criminals? Or, is it something else?http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article42064.htm

    to John