Author: Geoff Ebbs

Brisbane native Grace Scholl will be graduating from the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) in December, with a Bachelor of Arts degree, majoring in Geography. After graduating, she will move to East Sale to start her training as an Air Combat Officer in the Royal Australian Air Force

An Air Combat Officer helps navigate F-18 Super Hornets. Her first year of training at the School of Air Warfare will prepare her for her future role.

Grace considers a career in the Australian Defence Force to be very exciting.

“ADFA has already taken me around the country and has given me many opportunities. I recently had the chance to participate in an international cadet exchange to the United States Air Force Academy, something I would have never done if it wasn’t for ADFA.

“I have certainly enjoyed the challenge. However, the most memorable moments have occurred under pressure. The bonds you create with people in these circumstances are powerful and I have definitely made friends for life.”

All ADFA officer cadets and midshipmen participate in a Graduation Parade at the end of each year to celebrate the completion of undergraduate degrees.

“There is a sense of pride, partaking in an event which is a milestone for the Third Year class. I am excited about graduating and moving onto my professional training, but I will certainly miss the friends made at the Academy, who I now consider my family. I am proud to serve with this motivated and dedicated group of people,” Grace said.

“I was the only girl who wanted to attend ADFA in my year at high school, but if I was to say anything to any other women who wanted to join ADFA, it would be that it’s not as hard as people think; the physical element is not that much of a shock. Joining ADFA can be a challenge, yet in the end it is extremely rewarding.”

ADFA enables officer cadets and midshipmen to develop the necessary skills to be successful junior leaders of the Australian Defence Force. These future leaders embody the best values of the services: Professionalism, Loyalty, Integrity, Courage, Innovation and Teamwork.

ADFA is currently recruiting for its 2015 intake. For further information on military training and study at ADFA and careers in the Army, Navy or Air Force go to: www.defencejobs.gov.au or call 13 19 01.

Hot Brown Honey Burlesque is raunchy, intelligent and confrontational.

Three very sexy ladies and one cross dressing man titillate, challenge and confront the audience from every which way over about an hour of action packed burlesque crossing genres and genders like most of us cross lines in the footpath.

In a year where this reviewer saw about a dozen different theatrical performances, I certainly left the best til last seeing the New Year in at Woodford Folk Festival with the smartest, sassiest show I saw during 2013.

I can’t say whether you will feel confronted or not. That will depend on your ancestral relationship with colonial exploitation, your sexual orientation and comfort with sexual imagery. Woodford on New Years Eve is not Queensland’s most straight laced crowd by a long shot but I’d say most people in the audience were confronted at some stage during the evening.

The chorus of a song about colonial sperm, “Milky milky the milkman, spreading his cream all over the land” may well shock some. The sight of a man of Dutch heritage picked at random from the audience and dressed as a baby, sucking from the teats of a large black woman singing those words is bound to shock a few more. An extra frisson is provided by a dissertation about the behaviour of colonists “taking women without asking … just like they took the land”. With the added nuance that most white South Africans of note were raised and nursed by black nannies the frisson becomes a palpable tension relieved by laughter as the scene unfolds and the song begins.

By the time the song ends and 350 white hippies are shouting “black power” and “black  is beautiful” it is perfectly clear that the hot brown honeys have the situation in hand, the audience in the palm of their hands and their subliminal messaging well down our collective gullet.

I find myself humming “Milky Milky the Milkman” a full week later as I write and my hair standing on end all over again at the audacity of these very, clever women.

And that is just one of the dozen or so numbers delivered during the course of the evening.

The Hot Brown Honey’s last performed in Brisbane in November. Let’s hope they’ll be back as soon as possible. You can betcha bippy that Westender will be letting you know when they do.

Westender is relaunching its popular Poetry Prize in conjunction with Bent Books. Bent Books is providing a $50 book voucher for the winning poem each month. The Reverend Hellfire of Kurilpa Poets will be judging the poetry award.

The Reverend Hellfire will act in the capacity of judge and contact point for poets wishing to participate. Poems may be submitted using the comments form below or by email to info@westender.com.au

The best entries received before Feb 24th will be published in the March edition of Westender.

Twighlight Markets and Joynt regular Karl S Williams is taking Woodford by storm. With at least one gig every day the West End troubadour has turned heads with his gutsy passion, huge vocal register and eclectic material.

Diners at the Pineapple Bar last night postponed their departure as Williams slipped seamlessly from piano ballads to dark banjo pieces that gave a new dimension to that generally underdeveloped instrument.
Sound techs are raving about the clean, spare sound that mixes swamp, remote hilltop and Hootanany back block with Williams’ Brisbane Southside roots.
Williams is not the only local turning heads at Westend’s cultural summer sojourn. Joe Hallestein of community hub Turnstyle presented his rousing talk on windmills, Jo Sri from Rivermouth is in the running for a free ticket to next year’s Woodford as a “walk up” to the Poet’s Breakfast. Rivermouth itself has been rocking the after midnight crowd at the Joy Luck Club. Of course, there is lots going on from places other than West End but that is not our concern, is it?

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Greens at Woodford came together yesterday in a climax of hilarity at the Great Green Debate. Proceedings commenced with the prolific, clever and hilarious Ben Law listing the horrors of Abbot’s first 100 days In government. In a wry aside, “you have to admire their efficiency”. Professor Ian Lowe followed with a rousing douse of realism culminating in a passionate song about climate change (to the tune of Waltzing Matilda). The surprises continued. Comedian Rod Quantock broke every rule in the debating rule book by changing sides mid-debate, pregnant ex-politician, Kate Jones, settled for breaking one of the fundamental rules by turning really personal and nasty, all to the full throated laughter of around 1200 patrons.

Given that the topic of the debate was that every cloud has a silver lining, there was plenty of material  in the  current political environments to draw on. West End identity and the longest serving environmental lawyer in the EDO, Jo Bragg valiantly attempted to find the silver lining in the defunding of the organisation in which she has spent most of her professional life.

The debate followed neatly from a stirring bout of activism at the Blue King Brown concert where fists were raised in unison over the plight of the West Papua subjects of a murderous Indonesia Sian regime. Other patrons had prepared themselves a the more theoretical Green Tent where Get Up guru, Simon Sheik, reflected on activism vs politics.
The confluence of entertainment and politics left everyone in no doubt that Woodford itself is the inspiring proof that a better life is possible. The opportunity for the Tribe to gather well out of the influence of the Murdoch Press and everything it represents and have a good belly laugh at our own expense is invaluable.
The natural crossover between West End and Woodford is evident in the number of locals on the ground. Expect further postings.

This page has been posted here because the original has been hacked – http://phys.org/news/2013-12-koch-brothers-reveals-funders-climate.html

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Dr. Robert J. Brulle is a professor of sociology and environmental science at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Credit: CASBS

A new study conducted by Drexel University’s environmental sociologist Robert J. Brulle, PhD, exposes the organizational underpinnings and funding behind the powerful climate change countermovement. This study marks the first peer-reviewed, comprehensive analysis ever conducted of the sources of funding that maintain the denial effort.

Through an analysis of the financial structure of the organizations that constitute the core of the countermovement and their sources of monetary support, Brulle found that, while the largest and most consistent funders behind the countermovement are a number of well-known conservative foundations, the majority of donations are “dark money,” or concealed funding.

The data also indicates that Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, two of the largest supporters of climate science denial, have recently pulled back from publicly funding countermovement organizations. Coinciding with the decline in traceable funding, the amount of funding given to countermovement organizations through third party pass-through foundations like Donors Trust and Donors Capital, whose funders cannot be traced, has risen dramatically.

Brulle, a professor of sociology and environmental science in Drexel’s College of Arts and Sciences, conducted the study during a year-long fellowship at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. The study was published today in Climatic Change, one of the top 10 climate science journals in the world.

The climate change countermovement is a well-funded and organized effort to undermine public faith in climate science and block action by the U.S. government to regulate emissions. This countermovement involves a large number of organizations, including conservative think tanks, advocacy groups, trade associations and conservative foundations, with strong links to sympathetic media outlets and conservative politicians.

“The climate change countermovement has had a real political and ecological impact on the failure of the world to act on the issue of global warming,” said Brulle. “Like a play on Broadway, the countermovement has stars in the spotlight – often prominent contrarian scientists or conservative politicians – but behind the stars is an organizational structure of directors, script writers and producers, in the form of conservative foundations. If you want to understand what’s driving this movement, you have to look at what’s going on behind the scenes.”

To uncover how the countermovement was built and maintained, Brulle developed a listing of 118 important climate denial organizations in the U.S. He then coded data on philanthropic funding for each organization, combining information from the Foundation Center with financial data submitted by organizations to the Internal Revenue Service. The final sample for analysis consisted of 140 foundations making 5,299 grants totaling $558 million to 91 organizations from 2003 to 2010.

Key findings include:

• Conservative foundations have bank-rolled denial. The largest and most consistent funders of organizations orchestrating climate change denial are a number of well-known conservative foundations, such as the Searle Freedom Trust, the John William Pope Foundation, the Howard Charitable Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation. These foundations promote ultra-free-market ideas in many realms.
• Koch and ExxonMobil have recently pulled back from publicly visible funding. From 2003 to 2007, the Koch Affiliated Foundations and the ExxonMobil Foundation were heavily involved in funding climate-change denial organizations. But since 2008, they are no longer making publicly traceable contributions.
• Funding has shifted to pass through untraceable sources. Coinciding with the decline in traceable funding, the amount of funding given to denial organizations by the Donors Trust has risen dramatically. Donors Trust is a donor-directed foundation whose funders cannot be traced. This one foundation now provides about 25% of all traceable foundation funding used by organizations engaged in promoting systematic denial of climate change.
• Most funding for denial efforts is untraceable. Despite extensive data compilation and analyses, only a fraction of the hundreds of millions in contributions to climate change denying organizations can be specifically accounted for from public records. Approximately 75% of the income of these organizations comes from unidentifiable sources.

“The real issue here is one of democracy. Without a free flow of accurate information, democratic politics and government accountability become impossible,” said Brulle. “Money amplifies certain voices above others and, in effect, gives them a megaphone in the public square. Powerful funders are supporting the campaign to deny scientific findings about global warming and raise public doubts about the roots and remedies of this massive global threat. At the very least, American voters deserve to know who is behind these efforts.”

This study is part one of a three-part project by Brulle to examine the climate movement in the U.S. at the national level. The next step in the project is to examine the environmental movement or the climate change movement. Brulle will then compare the whole funding flow to the entire range of organizations on both sides of the debate.