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Recent Commentsby Gus Leonisky on Fri, 2012-02-10 09:50
“This is destruction!” complained Nouri Ftais, a 51-year-old commander, who offered a rare, unheeded voice of reason. “We’re destroying Libya with our bare hands.” The country that witnessed the Arab world’s most sweeping revolution is foundering. So is its capital, where a semblance of normality has returned after the chaotic days of the fall of Tripoli last August. But no one would consider a city ordinary where militiamen tortured to death an urbane former diplomat two weeks ago, where hundreds of refugees deemed loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi waited hopelessly in a camp and where a government official acknowledged that “freedom is a problem.” Much about the scene on Wednesday was lamentable, perhaps because the discord was so commonplace. “Some of it is really overwhelming,” said Ashur Shamis, an adviser to Libya’s interim prime minister, Abdel-Rahim el-Keeb. “But somehow we have this crazy notion that we can defeat it.”
The contristadores are mitigatedly happy... the oil flows out in their direction while the country self-destructs... See toon at top... And the contristadores want the same thing to happen in Syria... Who could have ever thought? Ha ha (sarcastic laughter) ... Meanwhile in Egypt, the religious mafias want to take over the government... Who could have ever thought? Ha ha (sarcastic laughter) ...
by Gus Leonisky on Fri, 2012-02-10 08:03
A northern Sydney abattoir has been forced to close after footage emerged showing animals being beaten before their slaughter. Late on Thursday the New South Wales Food Authority suddenly closed down the Hawkesbury Valley Abattoir after viewing video footage which it says reveals "acts of gross animal mistreatment". The footage, taken secretly inside the abattoir, has been given exclusively to Lateline. The NSW Food Authority is promising a full investigation of slaughter practices during the shutdown. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-09/abattoir-shut-down-over-cruelty-concerns/3821302?WT.svl=news0 by Gus Leonisky on Thu, 2012-02-09 18:24
Senior members of the Howard government and the Defence Department are denying claims that Australian soldiers were involved in transporting Iraqis to secret prisons during the war. A United States military document obtained by The Guardian newspaper identifies an Australian SAS squadron of 150 men and says it was "integral" to the operation of a secret facility, known as H1, in Iraq's western desert in 2003. ... Former foreign affairs minister Alexander Downer dismisses claims that Australia played an integral role in the so-called black sites - secret prison facilities hidden from the Red Cross. "I think that's likely to be complete nonsense," Mr Downer said. "I don't think the SAS would have known anything about black sites at that time and certainly we didn't in the Australian government. "But we did have protocols in place. "If memory serves me well... we didn't actually detain prisoners ourselves but we handed them over to countries that, and obviously to the Americans and the British in particular at that time, which signed up to international norms of treatment of prisoners in circumstances like that." http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-09/defence/3820886?WT.svl=news1 See toon at top... by Gus Leonisky on Thu, 2012-02-09 16:52
The State Department has asked each component of the massive U.S. diplomatic mission in Baghdad to analyze how a 25 percent cut would affect operations, part of a rapidly moving attempt to save money and establish what a top official on Wednesday called “a more normalized embassy presence.” “We’re going to be looking at how we’re going to do that over the next year,” said Deputy Secretary of State Thomas R. Nides. “What we’re not going to do is make knee-jerk decisions” that could jeopardize the security of the thousands of U.S. citizens working in Iraq, he said... by Gus Leonisky on Thu, 2012-02-09 15:45
There is NO improvement on the horizon for Tony... The dead budgies you see are the rotten budgies you get... His policies, his mindset, his thoughts are atrociously slanted and totally cynical, even when delivered with gravitas. They do not deserve any attention from the media, except total rejection. His survival in politics in only due to a few (a lot) of rabid "journos" (who are not doing a journalist job but that of "commentariators") who hate Labor, who hate the ideas of doing anything about climate change, who hate the reality that — despite a few hiccups — Labor has managed to get Australia through the GFC without a scratch. Tony lies — expressing silly concepts in a skewered nasty ambiguous way with that underlying huge cynicism... He and his mates would certainly wreck the economy and of course blame Labor for it... by John Richardson on Thu, 2012-02-09 15:29
The invitation to fire questions at Tony Blair via Twitter was intended to honour Interfaith Harmony Week. There was little concord, however, as the "AskTony" tech event was hijacked by hostile inquiries about the former prime minister's tax affairs, the Iraq war and his tempestuous relationship with Gordon Brown. Mr Blair, a known technophobe, uploaded a picture of himself seated at a keyboard to convince sceptics that he was actually posting replies in person to the questions sent to his Faith Foundation. Ruth Turner, the Foundation's chief executive, revealed that her boss had been taking "Twitter lessons" but warned "he thinks quicker than he types". However, he was smart enough to avoid loaded questions such as "How did you manage to earn £12m and yet only pay £400k in income tax?" and "Did you ever throw a mobile phone at Gordon, and if not, why?" Amid unhelpful queries over the whereabouts of those WMDs, the wisdom of making nice with Colonel Gaddafi and his relationship with Carole Caplin, one mischievous member of the public did pierce Mr Blair's shields. Adam Jacobs, a medical statistician, asked: "How's this whole Middle-East peace gig working out for you?" "Very tough, but then I always knew it was going to be," replied Mr Blair. But he failed to answer Jacobs' first question: "When you read 1984 were you aware that it was a novel, and not an instruction manual?" "Is Malcolm Tucker a good characterisation of Alastair Campbell?", a researcher for a Tory MP asked. Mr Blair replied: "I've never seen the programme [The Thick Of It], but people tell me Malcolm Tucker's a bit better looking. Is he?" Serious questions included Mr Blair's opinion on Christopher Hitchens, the late atheist intellectual. "Chris was great, deeply spiritual if not religious. People of faith should never be afraid of secular dialogue," Mr Blair wrote. After revealing he had "read more, thought more, studied more" since leaving office, Mr Blair announced after an hour: "Sorry everyone, time's up, but thanks for your questions." The "AskTony" initiative was perhaps summed up by Samantha McGowan, a WaterAid worker: "Why oh why would you open yourself up to all that abuse? Ouch." Question Time: Tweets to 'Ask Tony' In hell @Gunna_burn Did you ever throw a mobile phone at Gordon, and if not, why not Jimmy Wales @jimmy_wales How can US+Europe/UK help the Palestinians with their internal conflicts and to get better leaders? Mr Scaff @scaff1974 Do you and Harry Redknapp use the same accountant? Mark Lambert @sitsio What's your opinion on the philosophical dichotomy between relativism & objective reality? SorryI'llGetMyCoat @woweegoodstuff How did you manage to earn £12m and yet only pay £400k in income tax? by Gus Leonisky on Thu, 2012-02-09 15:27
BBC accused of 'liberal paralysis' after ruling that 'extremist implies value judgment'BBC journalists have been told not to describe Abu Qatada as an extremist. This is despite the Muslim cleric being labelled by a British judge a "truly dangerous individual" who holds "extreme" beliefs. The Daily Telegraph has seen notes from the BBC's newsroom editorial meeting yesterday morning which read: "Do not call him an extremist - we must call him a radical. Extremist implies a value judgment." BBC journalists have also been told not to use pictures of him which suggest that he is overweight, because he has "lost a lot of weight".
by Gus Leonisky on Thu, 2012-02-09 12:35
From Robert Manne ... In July 2011, one of the most extreme climate change denialists, Lord Monckton, accepted an invitation to take a trip to Australia – a country that matters greatly in the struggle against global warming because of its vast deposits of coal. According to several reports, his trip was funded by Gina Rinehart, the coal and iron ore billionaire, now one of the wealthiest people on the globe and the devoted daughter of the Western Australian mining magnate, the late Lang Hancock, one of the most right-wing Australians of the postwar era. As reported recently by Jane Cadzow in the Good Weekend, Hancock once suggested enticing unemployed Aborigines, and in particular “no good half-castes”, to a central location for the collection of their welfare cheques: “And when they had gravitated there, I would dope the water up so that they were sterile and would breed themselves out in the future.” In Perth, Lord Monckton delivered for Gina Rinehart the Lang Hancock Memorial Lecture. He also attended a strategy meeting of the fundamentalist free market think-tank, the Mannkal Economic Education Foundation, whose Chairman, Ron Manners, was once a close friend of Lang Hancock and is now a close friend of Gina Rinehart. http://www.themonthly.com.au/blog-lord-monckton-and-future-australian-media-robert-manne-4575 by Gus Leonisky on Thu, 2012-02-09 12:30
Bristol University glaciologist Prof Jonathan Bamber, who was not part of the research team, said: "The very unexpected result was the negligible mass loss from high mountain Asia, which is not significantly different from zero." The melting of Himalayan glaciers caused controversy in 2009 when a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change mistakenly stated that they would disappear by 2035, instead of 2350. However, the scientist who led the new work is clear that while greater uncertainty has been discovered in Asia's highest mountains, the melting of ice caps and glaciers around the world remains a serious concern. "Our results and those of everyone else show we are losing a huge amount of water into the oceans every year," said Prof John Wahr of the University of Colorado. "People should be just as worried about the melting of the world's ice as they were before." His team's study, published in the journal Nature, concludes that between 443-629bn tonnes of meltwater overall are added to the world's oceans each year. This is raising sea level by about 1.5mm a year, the team reports, in addition to the 2mm a year caused by expansion of the warming ocean. The scientists are careful to point out that lower-altitude glaciers in the Asian mountain ranges – sometimes dubbed the "third pole" – are definitely melting. Satellite images and reports confirm this. But over the study period from 2003-10 enough ice was added to the peaks to compensate.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/08/glaciers-mountains by Gus Leonisky on Thu, 2012-02-09 09:43
GEOFF THOMPSON: It's the death in Iraq the Department of Defence and the Howard government never wanted revealed to the Australian public. |
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