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  • $2billion water fund does nothing for Murray River

    $2 billion Australian water fund untouched; not a single drop of environmental flow has gone back into Murray: Labor questions Govt commitment

    Although the 500 gigalitres of water the Federal Government had committed to putting back into the Murray was only a third of what was needed, even that had not been achieved over the last three years, said Labor’s shadow Treasurer Simon Crean in the Federal Parliament on 14 August 2007.

    Another election promise: "If you simply look at the water initiatives, you see that we have a government presiding over the worst drought in recorded history and it actually cut funding in terms of water," Crean said. "The only time it made a commitment to new funding, short of this latest initiative that we are debating, was just before the introduction of the water fund. This was part of the Prime Minister’s ‘drunken sailor spree’ — $60 billion spent in total by the government to get itself reelected. The problem with the $2 billion Australian water fund is that it has not been spent. So here we have a promise being made just before an election to get themselves into the frame of looking active, yet the funding has not been committed.

    Commitment to spend five-fold increase doubted: "Worse, not a single drop of environmental flow has gone back into the Murray, even though, at the same time as making that $2 billion commitment, they committed to putting 500 gigalitres back into the Murray. We say that the 500 gigalitres was deficient. We argued, and actually proposed, that it be 1,500 gigalitres. That was our policy. The government not only committed to merely going a third of the way; in the three years since, not one drop of water has gone into the Murray as a result of that commitment. Here we are, three years down the track, with another election pending, and we have another commitment. But it is not $2 billion this time; it is $10 billion. It is five times as much — but, as we know, with all the wriggle room in the world by which the government, if it is to be re-elected, can get out of making that spend."

    Reference: Simon Crean, Shadow Treasurer for the Australian Labor Party, Member for Hotham, House of Representatives, Commonwealth, 14 August 2007.

    Erisk Net, 19/8/2007

  • One Cow One Planet

    One Cow One PlanetOur existence on this planet is precarious.

    How to save the world DVD exposes globalization and the mantra of infinite growth in a finite world for what it really is: an environmental and human disaster.

    But across India marginal farmers are fighting back. By reviving biodynamics an arcane form of agriculture, they are saving their poisoned lands and exposing the bio-colonialism of multinational corporations.How to save the world DVD tells their story through the teachings of an elderly New Zealander many are calling the new Gandhi.

    Find out more at One Stop Green Shop

     

  • Escape from suburbia

    The sequel to the ground breaking End of Suburbia will be available from the Ebono Institute as ofCover of Escape from Suburbia October 1. The film deals with different approaches to tackling a low energy future and examines the obstacles people face as they attempt to implement a low carbon lifestyle.

    See a snip from the film and read reviews at One Stop Green Shop  

    Premier screenings will be held in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne during October. Stay tuned for details of those events. 

  • Israel asks US to pay aid in Euros

    Secretary of State Rice has acknowledged a communique from Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Levni which requests that all foreign aid payments and loans from the United States be made in Euros rather than in Dollars. Foreign Minister Levni cited the rapidly declining dollar and it’s disfavor as a world currency as reasons for the request.

    "In the spirit of Yom Kippur, the United States will not hold Israel to any agreements obligating them to accept Dollars as payment for their foreigh aid. We will translate our obligations into Euros or whatever currency that best fits Israel’s needs" Secretary RIce said in the Friday, Sept 21 announcement.

    "We need to place our Israeli obligations at the top of our national prioriy list. Israel should not suffer any inconvenience due to currency fluctuations" said Rice before heading off to Camp David.

    A similar request from Egypt was declined last week.

  • UK claims South Atlantic


    Relying on detailed geological and geophysical surveys by scientists and hydrographers, any state can delineate a new "continental shelf outer limit" that can extend up to 350 miles from its shoreline. Data has been collected for most of Britain’s submissions and Chris Carleton, head of the law of the sea division at the UK Hydrographic Office and an international expert on the process, said preliminary talks on Rockall are being held in Reykjavik, Iceland, next week.

    Mr Carleton believes the Falklands claim has the most potential for acrimonious political fallout. Britain and Argentina fought over the islands 25 years ago, and the value of the oil under the sea in the region is understood to be immense: seismic tests suggest there could be up to 60m barrels under the ocean floor.

    Britain has been granted licences for exploratory drilling around the islands within the normal 200-mile exploration limit and any new claim to UNCLCS would extend territorial rights further into the Atlantic.

    "It would be beyond the 200-mile limit but less than 350 miles," said Mr Carleton, who is involved in preparing the submission. "It effectively joins up the area around South Georgia to the Falklands. It’s a claim but how it’s handled has not been decided yet. The Argentinians will say it’s not ours to claim. It’s all a bit tricky."

    Martin Pratt, director of research at Durham University’s international boundaries research unit, added: "The Russians may be claiming the Arctic but the UK is claiming a large chunk of the Atlantic. Some states might ask why a big power is entitled to huge stretches of the ocean’s resources thousands of miles away from its land, but that’s the way the law is."

    Because of the sensitivities – earlier this year Buenos Aires scrapped a 1995 agreement with the UK to share any oil found in the adjacent waters – the first formal application from the UK is likely to centre on Ascension.

    The volcanic island, 1,000 miles from the African mainland, sits just to one side of the mid-Atlantic ridge. No gas or oil is likely to be found below the surrounding waters but there could be significant mineral deposits on the ocean floor.

    Talks have already begun between Ireland, Iceland and Denmark for the division of rights far out into the north Atlantic. It includes the island of Rockall and the sub-sea Hatton ridge. The competing claims are nowhere near final resolution although Ireland and the UK have agreed a common boundary.

    Other countries that have submitted claims to the ocean floors around remote overseas dependencies have run into fierce resentment from neighbouring nations. France, which this summer registered its claim to thousands of square miles around New Caledonia, in the Pacific, has received protests from Vanuatu warning that the claim has "serious implications and ramifications on Vanuatu’s legal and traditional sovereignty". Russia was criticised this summer for making claims beneath the Arctic Ocean.

    The UN body has been progressing slowly through its casework. The process of extending the normal 200-mile limit requires volumes of technical evidence of submarine soundings. According to the convention on the law of the sea, applicant states may register their rights by "establishing the foot of the continental slope, by meeting the requirements stated for the thickness of sedimentary rocks".

    Once demarcated, the ocean floor may then be claimed up to 60 nautical miles from the bottom of the continental slope. When territorial rights have been obtained, states have the right to extract any minerals, natural gas or oil discovered in the annexed seabed.

    There is a deadline of May 2009 for claims from the UK and other countries to be submitted, although states that ratified the treaty later have more time. "The amount of technical data required is massive," said Mr Pratt. "Australia recently submitted 80 volumes."

    In the past, Greenpeace has described the process as a "land grab".

  • Sri Lanka blacks out in self defence

    Amusing Rambo-like contradictions: According to Eric Ellis, reporting in The Sydney Morning Herald, (22/9/2007), p. 44, flying into Colombo’s civil war on a tourist-less Sri Lankan Airlines flight, the three plugs in the inflight magazine from the country’s in­vestment board extolling the island’s corpor­ate virtues were arresting, if not amusing:

    • "generous fiscal incentives";

    • "transparent legal system"; and

    • "one of the most liveable countries in Asia".

    A government for sale: "Generous fiscal incentives" seemed an apt advertisement for Sri Lanka’s public service, for this seems a government for sale;

    • Police posts along Colombo’s locked-down corniche were sponsored by a leasing company;

    • a steelmaker advertises on the checkpoint to the city’s besieged military HQ, which is fre­quently infiltrated by Tamil Tiger separatists intent on blowing up the brass.

    Cult of personality of the Presi­dent;"The growing cult of personality of the Presi­dent, Mahinda Rajapaksa, is plastered all over the central bank’s offices, though its governor insists he and the bank are unflinchingly inde­pendent. The statistics tell their own story:

    • interest rates at 18.3 per cent;

    • inflation at 16 per cent; and

    • a money supply that grew by 17 per cent in April to finance the escalation of an unwinnable war.

    Lanka has just eight kilo­metres of motorway, and infrastructure Churchill would recognise as new. When last here, in April, I saw the war frighteningly up close.

    ack-ack lights the night:"When the board switched off the power, Colombo was immediately bathed in light, and the HQ of the National Intelligence Board, Sri Lanka’s MI5 and "high-value target", blazed brighter than most. A gun tower barked into action 50 metres from my room in the Galle Face hotel. Its ack-ack lit the night, as excitable grunts on the tower blazed away Rambo-like at nothing in particular, including the hotel".

    The Sydney Morning Herald, 22/9/2007, p. 44