curtains

The [Australian] navy is "very unlikely" to select a hybrid nuclear submarine design that combines both British and American technology, as it looks to replace Australia's ageing Collins-class fleet.

settlements

WASHINGTON, Oct 26 (Reuters) - The United States on Tuesday said it strongly opposed Israel's plans for Jewish settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank as damaging for peace prospects between Israelis and Palestinians, in the Biden administration's harshest public criticism of Israeli settlement policy to date.

"We are deeply concerned about the Israeli government's plan to advance thousands of settlement units tomorrow, Wednesday, many of them deep in the West Bank," State Department spokesperson Ned Price told a briefing.

"We strongly oppose the expansion of settlements, which is completely inconsistent with efforts to lower tensions and to ensure calm, and it damages the prospects for a two-state solution," Price said.

The Israeli Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

cowcreek

The prime minister has dismissed claims from his deputy Barnaby Joyce that the Nationals secured the exclusion of livestock methane emissions in negotiations over the government’s net zero 2050 target.

On Thursday, the Nationals leader said he had successfully negotiated a “carve out” commitment from Scott Morrison to exclude agricultural methane emissions from Australia’s emission reduction task.

A report published in The Australian on Thursday indicated this related to Australia opting out of the global methane pledge, which is a commitment to reduce methane emissions 30% by 2030 that will be launched at the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow next week.

Joyce said the document signed off by Morrison to secure the Nationals’ support for the net zero pledge by 2050 had excluded methane cuts, “100%”.

tango

ROME — After a six-week diplomatic spat that involved a scuttled nuclear-powered submarine deal and a recalled ambassador, President Biden began a one-on-one effort to mend fences with President Emmanuel Macron of France by saying U.S. handling of the matter had been “clumsy.”

“What we did was clumsy,” Mr. Biden told reporters, sitting beside Mr. Macron just before they began a private meeting. “It was not done with a lot of grace.”

He added, “I had been under the impression long before that France had been informed.”

hot

One of the major problem with storing electricity is charge/discharge affecting the life of the batteries. 

The lithium iron battery was — according to some record — invented by Sony to power small items. This technology was improved upon for about thirty years and now many items, from smartphones, electric tools to electric cars, the power supply comes from small rolled up lithium film “toy-sized" AA batteries. This is okay for moveable items, though as the bigger the lithium battery pack is, one starts to need a lot of cooling. Eventually, the number of charge and discharge reduce the efficiency and life of the batteries.

On a large scale, such battery system can become inefficient. And be demanding on the manufacturing in regard to the purity of the material used. 

inventor

Key Coalition-held seats will be targeted by a wave of independent campaigns at the next federal election, with the aim of achieving stronger action on climate change.

Previously, at the 2013 federal election, independent Cathy McGowan led a successful grassroots campaign to oust Sophie Mirabella in Indi, and climate action was a cornerstone of her platform.

In 2019, Winter Olympian Zali Steggall led an independent campaign that hinged on climate action to win the seat of Warringah from Tony Abbott.

These victories have spawned similar campaigns like Voices of North Sydney and Voices of Kooyong, as well as other nationwide efforts that will focus on multiple key electorates.

truth vs justice

Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has devised [a] chart to the various legal pathways that can result after the High Court hearing in the U.S. appeal against the decision not to extradite Julian Assange.

Posted to Twitter by Assange Australian lawyer Kellie Tranter:

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/10/27/assanges-legal-maze-australian-foreign-ministry/

cowvat

No one group has done more to damage our global agriculture and food quality than the Rockefeller Foundation. They began in the early 1950s after the War to fund two Harvard Business School professors to develop vertical integration which they named “Agribusiness.” The farmer became the least important. They then created the fraudulent Green Revolution in Mexico and India in the 1960s and later the pro-GMO Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa since 2006. Money from the Rockefeller Foundation literally created the disastrous GMO genetically altered plants with their toxic glyphosate pesticides. Now again, the foundation is engaged in a major policy change in global food and agriculture and it’s not good. 

fudge

People who present fake vaccination certificates in an attempt to enter a cafe or pub could be fined under an amendment to NSW’s public health order signed by Health Minister Brad Hazzard last night.

The new rule reads: “A person must not provide, display or produce to another person information or evidence, including vaccination evidence, purporting to show the person is a fully vaccinated person, unless the information or evidence is true and accurate.”

The maximum penalty for breach of a public health order in NSW is $11,000 or six months imprisonment.

Security experts have raised concern about a rising number of people selling fake vaccination certificates online.

Read more:

jens

One of the things one finds constantly amazing is the ability of western politicians, or political figures, to describe the world in a way that is unrecognisable to the averagely informed citizen. A classic illustration of this point was recently evident in an interview given by NATO’s Jens Stoltenberg to the London Financial Times (China is Coming Closer to the United States. Financial Times 19 October 2021.)

An illustration of NATO’s complete absence of relevant historical memory is reflected in Stoltenberg’s discussion with the Financial Times. He seems completely unaware of, or chooses not to remember, the assurance given to then Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev by then United States secretary of state James Baker when seeking the reunification of Germany that NATO would not expand “one inch” to the East.

leunig

Cartoonist Michael Leunig, sometimes referred to as Australia’s “living national treasure,” has revealed that he was forced out of his position on the editorial page of The Age daily newspaper after publishing a political cartoon criticizing the government’s push for mandatory vaccination.

zero

There’s a major greenwashing event taking place in Australia. After decades of attacking the climate movement, the Liberal Party and the Murdoch press have—so they tell us—finally seen the light, jumped aboard a newly minted “green and gold” bandwagon, and set course for “net zero by 2050”.

by Anneke Demanuele, James Plested

pitt

A key aim in the appointment is for the Nationals to have a senior minister who is across the detail of the climate policy to make sure the party secures the safeguards it is being promised to prevent climate measures hurting regional communities.

The Nationals are confident of gaining changes to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation to ease what they see as “green tape” on farmers and miners, sparking a likely fight in Parliament over the scale of the changes when Labor and the Greens want stronger checks on new projects.

More infrastructure spending will also be part of the final package, including support for an extension of the inland rail project being built from Melbourne to Brisbane.

turgidity...

I’m impressed with federal Education Minister Alan Tudge’s contribution to the national curriculum debate (“Tudge push on history ‘plays politics with children’,” October 23-24). The minister’s farcical statement: “Our society is the wealthiest, most liberal, most egalitarian and most tolerant society that has ever existed in all of humankind” is so facile and biased I suggest it has a place as a discussion proposition in upcoming HSC history exams. This would provide a broad platform for students to discuss their understanding of nuance, perspective and complexity when analysing the impacts of significant events in Australian history.

- Adrian Brown, Cammeray

gnats

Consistency, persistence and stubbornness. They can be tremendous virtues, so long as you are sure you are right.

And, if you're not, then as economist John Maynard Keynes is said to have stated: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"

National Party leader Barnaby Joyce and his key lieutenants may finally have capitulated after months of internal bickering over whether to endorse a carbon emissions reduction target at the upcoming climate summit in Glasgow.

The last-minute deal was short on detail, with vague mentions of regional jobs and uranium but nothing on renewables.