Category Archives: Politics

Breathing Earth – simulating births, deaths and CO2

Posted on by

This is pretty neat, Breathing Earth is a flash based simulation of the real time statistics of births, deaths and CO2 emissions across the planet. You can mouse over countries to see how many people have died and been born whilst you’ve been watching, how much CO2 has been emitted and the rates.

It also has the per-capita emission numbers which are quite illuminating (especially if you listen to all this noise about getting India and China on board). So, for example, here are a few examples of the annual per capita CO2 emissions (in tonnes) of some countries:

USA : 19.66
Australia : 18.17
Japan : 10.1
UK : 9.23
France : 6.72
China : 3.7
India : 1.17

“We have ‘survival’ emissions, you have lifestyle emissions.” – Shyam Saran, India’s envoy to the UN climate conference in Poznan, Poland

How Depressing

Posted on by

So the Labor Party has decided to set a measly 5% reduction in emissions by 2020. How pathetic. They say that they will consider going to 15% if everyone else cuts their emissions but given that we are one of the worst emitters per head of population that’s just not good enough.

What with this on top of their crazy Great Firewall of Australia internet censorship scheme I don’t think I’ll be able to vote for these people at the next election (and no, I’m not going to vote for the even worse opposition coalition).

Bah humbug..

Dulce et Decorum

Posted on by

Today is the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War, a horrific slaughter of youth from across the world in the name of politics, alliances and patriotism.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
– Wilfred Owens writing from the front.

Lest we forget..

Obama and the World

Posted on by

John Simpson, the BBC’s World Affairs editor has a nice piece on what the world might make of President Obama. He’s right on the money when he talks about the squandering of respect for America by the actions and attitudes of GWB and his neocons, and this is reflected in the fact that:

Last summer a poll for the BBC World Service, conducted in 22 countries, indicated that people preferred Barack Obama to John McCain by four to one. Almost half said that if Senator Obama were elected, it would change their view of the United States completely.

I don’t think Obama is in for an easy ride at all, but I think the world has breathed a collective sigh of relief at an unexpected outbreak of sanity in America.

First Australians

Posted on by

Just wrote an email to an old friend in the UK and this is what I wrote about the SBS docco “First Australians” that has just finished. If you’ve not watched it already please go and watch it on the SBS website or pick up the DVD when it hits the SBS shop in December.

There’s been a really good series on TV here called “First Australians“, it gives the indigenous point of view of their history since the British landed and it’s been pretty heavy stuff. Whilst I knew a bit about the colonisation, killings, poisonings, repression, racism and the Stolen Generation the sheer scale of what was done is still shocking. Donna has been telling me that in school they were never taught at all about the sort of things that happened, just really skipped over the whole issue.

This is really the first time it’s been so publicly presented and I think it’s shocked a lot of people about what has been done by non-indigenous Australia. To their credit SBS (which is sort of like Channel 4 back there) has put it up on the ‘net and allows people to comment on it and it’s interesting, inspiring and depressing to see the various reactions it has had from disbelief and sadness through to denial, revisionism and anger.

I’ve ended up with tears in my eyes after most shows, it’s really quite affected me as I have to acknowledge that I come from the country that was responsible for this. There are stories of resilience, strength, solidarity, courage and dignity in it and also some rare examples of colonists who have seen indigenous people as people and who have stood besides them in mutual respect.

Hmm, that’s all a bit heavy, sorry! That’s because we’ve just watched the final episode about Mabo vs Queensland, the case that finally extinguished the doctrine of Terra Nullis – the myth that Australia was unpopulated before the English arrived because the indigenous people didn’t count and laid the way for indigenous land rights claims. That was only in 1992 when we were both in Aberystwyth! It’s crazy, they were only allowed to vote in federal elections in 1962 and were only really counted as citizens in 1967 after a referendum to change the constitution.. 🙁

Here is what my wife, Donna, wrote about this series.

Returned Afghan Refugees Murdered

Posted on by

Reported at the BBC, talking about Afghan asylum seekers held under the Pacific Solution by the former government:

they were assured by Australian immigration officials that it was safe for them to return home, and told that they would be held in detention for the rest of their lives if they failed to do so.

Sadly these assurances of safety were pure illusion, and it appears that this deception led to a number of those who did return being murdered by the Taleban:

It documented the deaths of nine of the failed asylum seekers at the hands of the Taleban and believes the true figure is actually closer to 20.

The current minister has asked for more information whilst the former minister takes spin and a lack of empathy to new depths:

“It is the case that Afghanistan is a dangerous place but the [United Nations] Refugee Convention does not say you cannot be returned to a dangerous place,” Mr Ruddock said. “The fact that somebody might tragically die [in Afghanistan] may well be as tragic as a road accident in Sydney.”

Hmm, road accident versus murder.. Yes, both tragic, but not quite the same..

No Opt-Out for the Great Firewall of Australia

Posted on by

So it appears there will be no way to escape from being blocked from seeing sites that are false positives due to buggy & broken filters or incorrectly classified, etc.. 🙁

Australians will be unable to opt-out of the government’s pending Internet content filtering scheme, and will instead be placed on a watered-down blacklist, experts say.

According to preliminary trials, the best Internet content filters would incorrectly block about 10,000 Web pages from one million.

I guess if John Howard was still around he’d want us to be blocked from seeing un-American content too.