It is also unacceptable that these British captives should be made to talk on television and say things that they may regret later. If the Iranians put duct tape over their mouths, like we do to our captives, they wouldn’t be able to talk at all. Of course they’d probably find it even harder to breathe – especially with a bag over their head – but at least they wouldn’t be humiliated.

And what’s all this about allowing the captives to write letters home saying they are all right? It’s time the Iranians fell into line with the rest of the civilised world: they should allow their captives the privacy of solitary confinement. That’s one of the many privileges the US grants to its captives in Guantánamo Bay.

The true mark of a civilised country is that it doesn’t rush into charging people whom it has arbitrarily arrested in places it’s just invaded. The inmates of Guantánamo, for example, have been enjoying all the privacy they want for almost five years, and the first inmate has only just been charged. What a contrast to the disgraceful Iranian rush to parade their captives before the cameras!

What’s more, it is clear that the Iranians are not giving their British prisoners any decent physical exercise. The US military make sure that their Iraqi captives enjoy PT. This takes the form of exciting “stress positions”, which the captives are expected to hold for hours on end so as to improve their stomach and calf muscles. A common exercise is where they are made to stand on the balls of their feet and then squat so that their thighs are parallel to the ground. This creates intense pain and, finally, muscle failure. It’s all good healthy fun and has the bonus that the captives will confess to anything to get out of it.

And this brings me to my final point. It is clear from her TV appearance that servicewoman Turney has been put under pressure. The newspapers have persuaded behavioural psychologists to examine the footage and they all conclude that she is “unhappy and stressed”.

What is so appalling is the underhand way in which the Iranians have got her “unhappy and stressed”. She shows no signs of electrocution or burn marks and there are no signs of beating on her face. This is unacceptable. If captives are to be put under duress, such as by forcing them into compromising sexual positions, or having electric shocks to their genitals, they should be photographed, as they were in Abu Ghraib. The photographs should then be circulated around the civilised world so that everyone can see exactly what has been going on.

As Stephen Glover pointed out in the Daily Mail, perhaps it would not be right to bomb Iran in retaliation for the humiliation of our servicemen, but clearly the Iranian people must be made to suffer – whether by beefing up sanctions, as the Mail suggests, or simply by getting President Bush to hurry up and invade, as he intends to anyway, and bring democracy and western values to the country, as he has in Iraq.

Terry Jones is a film director, actor and Python
www.terry-jones.net

Dear Friends

This is a critical moment in Australia’s history.

The future of uranium mining in Australia is to be discussed at this conference (Sydney 26th-28th April).If the ALP decides to change its policy on uranium mining Australia will be committed by both major parties to an open slather pro uranium mine platform at election time.

I have followed closely the nuclear issue for the last three decades. I’ve made three major films on the issue. Because there is no genuine debate in the media showing the downsides of mining more uranium and encouraging its exponential growth overseas, I have made another documentary that specifically addresses the nuclear issue in Australia.

I am writing to request your support. You can help stop uranium mining in Australia by screening the film, A Hard Rain, in the lead up to the Labor party conference…and beyond.

Sitting on 40% of the world uranium reserves, we have a huge responsibility to human kind to make the right decision about what we do with that reserve. We can no longer turn a blind eye and rely on overseas shaky guarantees that our uranium is not being used in nuclear weapons manufacture.

We owe it to our children and our grandchildren, to all species who inherit this land, to be wise and knowledgeable in deciding whether to open Pandora’s box still further by allowing uranium mines to dot the country.

Everything I have learnt in the previous three decades of following this issue tells me this will unleash a radioactive tailings nightmare upon Australia. That radioactivity will weep into our water supply and blow in the wind for hundreds of thousands of years. It will create untold extra and unnecessary cancers in this country. Is that the future we really want to bequeath the next generation?

A Hard Rain exposes the myths of the nuclear cycle from uranium mining to nuclear power to waste and weapons (see synopsis below).

I’ve made A Hard Rain on a shoe string and to a tight deadline. It has been made as a tool to inform the debate on the nuclear issue. I have released it now and made a simplified 20 minute version of it specifically to convince the ALP that it should not overturn the ‘no new mines’ policy this April.

Please do whatever you can to support this effort.

Details of how you can help are below

Kind Regards

David

Synopsis: A Hard Rain

This is a documentary that had to be made! Twice Academy award nominee and five times AFI winner David Bradbury’s latest contribution, A Hard Rain, explores the ‘other side’ of the nuclear debate.

Governments and most mainstream media are promoting that nuclear is now an attractive alternative to fossil fuels – the magic fix that will save us all from global warming. Nuclear power has taken on a clean and green spin from the low point 20 years ago which saw the Chernobyl meltdown.

Traversing five countries – China, France, UK, Japan and Australia, and using what Bradbury learnt from his previous three nuclear documentaries (Public Enemy Number One, Jabiluka and Blowin’ in the Wind), A Hard Rain takes a closer look at the global nuclear industry in its entirety – from the mining of uranium through to the nuclear power plant to the radioactive waste and weapons manufacturing. It exposes the hidden agendas behind this latest push for Australia to go nuclear.

Included are interviews with some of the world’s top scientists and environmentalists on the subject such as Dr Rosalie Bertell from Canada, Dr Chris Busby from the UK, and from Australia, Dr Mark Deisendorf (Ex CSIRO) who heads up the Environmental Institute at the University of NSW, Dr Ian Lowe, President of the Australian Conservation Foundation, and Dr Gavin Mudd from the Monash University Engineering Department.

Interviews with traditional owners who have been locked out of genuine consultation with what is happening on their country is also included in this film.

By looking at the experience of countries overseas that have gone nuclear, A Hard Rain debunks some of the myths of the nuclear industry: that nuclear is safe, cheap, health and green with little chance of another Chernobyl happening.

If you want vital and factual information to debate the issue intelligently and overthrow the myths that the nuclear and pro uranium mining lobby has so successfully implanted in the media, in the government and the Labor Party, then this documentary is a must see.

Using Hard Rain to oppose Uranium Mining

Get your community to lobby your local Labor Party delegates prior to the ALP conference that begins on April 26^th. Show Hard Rain to as many people as possible, get it into the hands of all the most influential people you can. There are two versions available.

Hard hitting simplistic version (for politicians and news media)

A 20 minutes version of Hard Rain will be sent to ALP delegates and politicians prior to the conference. Free copies of this version are available from April 13^th until the conference starts on April 26^th.

Your order needs to be received by the 6th so you can receive the film by the 13th.

Email hardrain@…. or order through www.onestopgreenshop.com.au

Full documentary film – plus screening kit (for community screenings)

We encourage you to screen this film as widely as possible. Ideally your community screening will take place around April 13^th. We will be notifying the media nation wide that the film is available and that community screenings are taking place.

A community screening kit is available to help you promote your screening.

1. Screen it at home among friends, and use the information that comes in the DVD case to generate discussion and spread the word.
2. Screen it within your group and download promotional information and letters to help your group make a difference. Support the film maker, collect donations.
3. Hold a community screening and really galvanise the broader community in your area, into action. You can download or purchase a printed screening kit to help with this. We ask you to charge an entry fee and donate half to Frontline Films.

The quickest way is to get the film is through OnestopGreenShop.com.au paying by PayPal or credit card. You can also download the screening pack there, for free, or order a printed version to go with the DVD. You can also get DVDs for sale to raise money for your group and Frontline.

Screening pack includes: DVDs, posters, press release, template letters to politicians and newspapers, order forms, together with other information about lobbying on this issue.

DVDs for fundraising sell well after a screening so it is great to have some on hand. Order DVDs with the screening pack to reduce postage costs and save time. To reduce your upfront cost, we will send you XX number of DVDs at $15.00 each plus postage, prepaid by you when you organise the screening pack. The DVDs and the ‘screening pack’ are sent together.

DVDs that are sold on the night retail at $40.00 (rrp). You keep $5.00 per DVDas part of your fund raising and to cover your costs. You write a cheque to Frontline Films for $35 per DVD sold plus half your takings minus the amount you paid when you organised the screening.
Any DVDs not sold are returned to the distributor, with return postage paid by you.

People who cannot buy a DVD on the night can fill out an order form that comes with the screening pack and you can post them to us along with the amount owing on the screening. It’s much easier if they pay you on the night, but we understand that is not always possible.

One of the most memorable scenes in An Inconvenient Truth is when Al Gore makes the sea level rise 20 feet and inundate various low-lying regions of the world, including Manhattan and Florida. It was suitably squirm-inducing, especially if the viewer happened to live in one of the areas shown. For the rest of us, or at least for me, however, the lingering question has been, "what would it look like where I live?"

Now, thanks to Google’s mapping API and the ingenuity of one Alex Tingle, we have Flood Maps, where you can view any part of the world and raise the sea level in 1 meter increments, up to 14 meters (about 46 feet).

Source: Grist  

How long will the poles stay frozen?

By Mary Carmichae
Newsweek International

April 2, 2007 issue – Every year, the cap of sea ice floating atop the North Pole dwindles from about 14 million to 7 million square kilometers—a number that would panic scientists if it weren’t a normal occurrence, courtesy of nature. Most of the summer shrinkage is caused by melting, and the pack ice grows again once winter arrives, freezing the choppy water back into solid sheets. Because it’s a recurring cycle, scientists have never found this phenomenon worrisome. Until this year, when Ronald Kwok of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory rang the alarm. He’d noticed that in 2005, little of the ice that had formed the previous winter had gone on to survive the summer—making the Arctic cap the smallest it had been in five decades.

The polar regions are notorious shape-shifters. Complex ecosystems, they can be swayed by factors from wind to water to warming, and their forbidding climate makes on-site research difficult. As a result, they’re a bit of a mystery to scientists, and their future is hard to predict. But with ever more omens foretelling the death of the ice caps—possibly, in some models, by the year 2040—researchers are launching a major effort to make such a prediction. Mark Serreze of the University of Colorado’s National Snow and Ice Data Center says the 2040 doomsday forecast "has gotten thrown around too loosely." We might have more time than that, he says: it could be 2060, 2070, 2080. On the other hand, it could be sooner. "We may already have had a kick to the system that has sent it over the edge," says Serreze. Either way, he adds, most researchers agree it’s a question of "when," because it’s too late for "if."

Full story, go to Newsweek International  

A leaked report by the United Nations Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change paints a devastating picture of Australia’s future.

The report was revealed on the ABC’s The 7.30 Report and predicts the average coastline temperature could rise by up to 3.4 degrees by 2050 and by more than 6 degrees by 2080.

This will result in the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, more frequent and intense floods, fires, droughts and storms. The Murray-Darling Basin will further suffer from dwindling of streamflows.

Ironically, Prime Minister John Howard says that although he has not yet read the draft report on Australia, he believes that "we need to take action in a balanced and measured fashion."

Source: ABC News Online  

Reduced tillage makes only small diference: "Lesion nematode populations under pastures were more variable – possibly due to movement of soil and water from adjoining cropping blocks. Changing from conventional tillage to reduced tillage or direct drilling has had beneficial effects on general soil microbial activity but the impact is small and inclusion of pasture leys has a much larger beneficial impact due to greater and more continuous inputs of organic matter.”

Long fallows a bad idea: Bell said long fallows common to the northern region severely impacted on some components of the soil community and reduced its ability to carry out key functions such as assist crops to accumulate nutrients and to suppress the build up of pathogens like lesion nematodes.

Queensland Country Life, 4/1/2007, p.17