We chose Professor Noam Chomsky for inspiring the convictions of millions about ways to achieve those universal human rights, which bolster peace with justice.
For more than 50 years he has been a world champion of freedom of speech, of the value of transparency in government and the need to challenge secrecy and censorship.
In his study of the political economy of human rights, he exposed state crimes, induced by US foreign policy, across South America, the Middle East and South East Asia.
With unfailing moral courage he has challenged abusive uses of power and the false claims made about democracy.
He has offended almost every establishment figure and institution: Chomsky is anathema to the Israeli government, was the only scientist or philosopher on the Nixon White House enemies list and the Soviet Union imposed a total ban on his works.
In his analyses of democracy and power he identifies the “manufacture of consent” by governments, corporations and the media.
Professor Chomsky has always argued that forces for change should be non violent.
The witnesses said that the settlers kicked the woman, who was only saved by a group of Palestinian passersby, adding that the settlers tried to ignite a bigger scuffle.
The army does not deny leaving the devices, but would not identify them and suggested they were left over after training exercises. But the area where they were found does not feature on an army map of designated training areas and the canisters appeared new and unweathered.
‘In light of these surrounding circumstances, including the failure of Israel to live up to its announced promise after the attack in 2010 to lift the blockade, it shocks our moral and legal sensibilities that the UN Secretary General should be using the authority of his office to urge member governments to prevent ships from joining Freedom Flotilla 2.’
But like in Hungary of 1920, so too in Israel of 2011, the spirit of the law is more important than the language, and everyone is clear on its purpose: to get rid of the Haredim and the Arabs. The state is the one that exempted them from mandatory military service and now wants to punish them for alleged “evasion.”
Americans see in Israel their own preferred reflection of themselves. They see a lone, devout and free people on the edge of a vast continent full of dusky, hostile natives. Like the European colonists who settled North America, the destiny of this free people is to build a “city on a hill” on virgin land, a beacon of freedom and civilisation in a tragic world.
Phil Monsour addressed protesters gathered outside in the mall: “We will not be silent over the continuing oppression of Palestine. We have a message to politicians, to condemn Israel over its aggression against the Palestinians.
The “Land of Israel” is a phantasm. Withdrawing from “parts of it” is presented as a “concession” even by supporters of the move. But the only concession we needed to make, even back in 1967, was giving up the messianic claim that this is our land, from the Bible, and therefore we have a right to it. In comparison with this claim, the Serbs, with their preoccupation over the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, are rational, secular people.
Life is in no need of “ancestral rights.” Most of us were born here. That has no connection with the Bible, which for the most part is a very nice book. It has no connection with the prayers of the religious. We don’t need religion, either as a menu in a restaurant or as a strategic analysis.
In a remarkable video from 1978, 28 year old MIT grad Benjamin Netanyahu debates whether there should be a Palestinian state created on the West Bank and Gaza. Netanyahu argues that such a state would have but one goal: to destroy the Jewish state of Israel.
With its credibility seriously eroded by Wikileaks, the US government is digging its hole deeper with Department of Justice subpoenas of the private DM messages of Wikileaks supporters.
Birgitta Jonsdottir, an MP for the Movement in Iceland, said last night on Twitter that the “USA government wants to know about all my tweets and more since november 1st 2009. Do they realize I am a member of parliament in Iceland?”
She said she was starting a legal fight to stop the US getting hold of her messages, after being told by Twitter that a subpoena had been issued. She wrote: “department of justice are requesting twitter to provide the info – I got 10 days to stop it via legal process before twitter hands it over.”
She said the justice department was “just sending a message and of course they are asking for a lot more than just my tweets.”
Jonsdottir said she was demanding a meeting with the US ambassador to Iceland. “The justice department has gone completely over the top.” She added that the US authorities had requested personal information from Twitter as well as her private messages and that she was now assessing her legal position.
“It’s not just about my information. It’s a warning for anyone who had anything to do with WikiLeaks. It is completely unacceptable for the US justice department to flex its muscles like this. I am lucky, I’m a representative in parliament. But what of other people? It’s my duty to do whatever I can to stop this abuse.”
Twitter would not comment on the case. In a statement, the company said: “We’re not going to comment on specific requests, but, to help users protect their rights, it’s our policy to notify users about law enforcement and governmental requests for their information, unless we are prevented by law from doing so.”
Most of Twitter’s messages are public, but users can also send private messages on the service.
Marc Rotenberg, president of the online watchdog the Electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC) in Washington, said it appeared the US justice department was looking at building a case against WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, over its publication of secret US documents.
EPIC has already requested that the US authorities hand over information about their investigations into people who have donated to WikiLeaks via Mastercard, Visa or PayPal.
“The government has the right to get information, but that has to be done in a lawful way. Is there a lawful prosecution that could be brought against WikiLeaks? It seems unlikely to me. But it’s a huge question here in the US,” said Rotenberg.
Suffice to say, this is a serious escalation of the DOJ’s efforts to probe, harass and intimidate anyone having to do with WikiLeaks. Previously, Appelbaum as well as Bradley Manning supporter David House — both American citizens — had their laptops and other electronic equipment seized at the border by Homeland Security agents when attempting to re-enter the U.S.
The US government contortions increasingly remind me of those of Bjelke Petersen’s Queensland police state when faced with the Fitzgerald Inquiry. This inquiry was mentioned by Julian Assange in his “Jerilderie letter” published in The Australian the night before his incarceration. In the absence of a Royal Commission and the unwillingness of the superpower to incorporate and submit to international law however, we have Wikileaks, which in one sense is a form of open jurisdiction.
UPDATE
@rixstepnews Send all your secret Twitter stuff to tracy.mccormick@usdoj.gov or fax it to +1 703-299-3981 #Assange #subpoena #WikiLeaks #
@rixstepnews Everybody collect their tweets and DMs and email them to tracy.mccormick@usdoj.gov. Send at least two copies. #Assange #subpoena #WikiLeaks #
@ioerror It seems quite wrong that I feel safe in Iceland while simultaneously having a sense of apprehension about returning to the USA next week. #
@wikileaks Note that we can assume Google & Facebook also have secret US government subpeonas. They make no comment. Did they fold? #
@ioerror Now’s a good time to note that *the world* needs strong anonymity. Help out: https://www.torproject.org/getinvolved/volunteer.html.en #
@ioerror I wonder if the subpoena is merely a front to legally introduce evidence captured by the confirmed NSA wiretaps two blocks from Twitter HQ? #
@Jinjirrie RT @TheJusticeDept January is National Stalking Awareness Month. http://is.gd/klycZ #irony #wikileaks #
@Colvinius Does this mean you? “@spyblog Subpoena demands usernames & IP addresses of all 634.892 current Followers of the “wikileaks” Twitter account” #
UPDATE 2 (recording my tweets for the stalking DOJ’s convenience since the ‘DOJ does not collect comments or messages through this account.’)
@Jinjirrie Hey @TheJusticeDept if you want to know about me, follow me, you might learn something about justice3 #
@Jinjirrie Instead of harassing & repressing Wikileaks & hr activists, US govt shd end its crimes against humanity & prosecute its torturing criminals #
@Jinjirrie The more the US govt attempts to suppress the truth about its crimes & protects its torturing crims, the less its credibility #
@Jinjirrie The less the US govt’s credibility, the less people will choose to holiday there, invest there, or have anything to do with it. #
@Jinjirrie Tourism is of course, the second biggest US export earner after defence. The US govt’s behaviour is thus inimical to its peoples’ welfare. #
@Jinjirrie The US debt is now $14t – the US needs every export dollar it can manage, the chinese aren’t happy about US printing more money #
@Jinjirrie China and Russia have already moved to trading bilaterally in their own currencies #
@Jinjirrie The devaluation of the USD due to the Fed printing more money devalues Chinese investments in the US – there are consequences, US #
@Jinjirrie What happens when the world tires of carrying the US, which has attained its wealth from global exploitation? #
The irony remains, however, that it is the intolerant Americans, Europeans, and the Israelis and their extremist intolerant, though at times unwitting, local allies, namely the violent minority of sectarians among Islamists, who stand to benefit most from the Alexandria tragedy. Unless intellectuals in Egypt and the Arab world, Muslim and Christian, religious and secular, resist joining this international alliance of the intolerant, they may very well help them achieve their goals.
Like it or not, the fact is that the rabbis simply put into clear words the anti-democratic implications of the term “Jewish State”. It is the privileges of Israel’s Jewish citizens and the policy of progressively marginalizing the Arabs that are the source of racism. The rabbis are outspoken about it, the Knesset and government prefer a more subtle approach. In order for Israel to be a Jewish State in the moral sense, that is, do not unto Arabs what is hated by Jews, it must be democratic. Democracy is the institutional manifestation of the Jewish doctrine that we are all created in His image.
Last month, Swedish Radio, Medierna, uncovered the fact that Johannes Wahlström, son of Israel Shamir, ‘is the gatekeeper of the cables in Scandinavia, and “has the power to decide” which newspapers are provided access and what leaks they are allowed to see.’
In the light of this, it is peculiar that Aftenposten editor, Hilde Haugsgjerd, won’t own up as to where her paper obtained the documents. It would be welcome if Wikileaks could clarify, particularly since Hilde is claiming that Assange is “angry” about Aftenposten’s access.
The editor of Oslo-based newspaper Aftenposten was fending off reaction Tuesday to a commentary she wrote on her paper’s access to all of the more than 250,000 diplomatic cables initially leaked to the non-profit organization WikiLeaks. She had called it a “paradox” that WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange reportedly is angry that Aftenposten now can report freely from the leaked cables.
Aftenposten’s editor-in-chief, Hilde Haugsgjerd, elaborated on her media company’s access to the WikiLeaks documents.
“Paradoxically enough, the chief of one of our times’ biggest leaks is angry because there was a leak from his own leak,” editor-in-chief Hilde Haugsgjerd wrote in her commentary in Monday’s edition of Aftenposten. She wrote that Aftenposten’s own access to the cables, with no strings attached, “destroyed Assange’s own strategy for when and how documents about international conficts and themes should be made public.”
WikiLeaks, Haugsgjerd claimed, had a media plan to “secure themselves the best possible coverage and contribute to the most international debate possible around the leak’s content.” Aftenposten, she noted is not adhering to WikiLeaks’ plan, which she referred to as a “news monopoly” that involved a consortium of international media outlets.
“We have not signed the confidentiality clause that hinders (the media outlets) from publishing stories without an explicit agreement with WikiLeaks,” Haugsgjerd wrote.
That sparked a reaction from journalists at The Guardian in the UK, which has been among the media outlets that secured access to the cables from WikiLeaks. Nick Davies of The Guardian’s editorial staff told the web site for Norway’s journalists’ union, Journalisten, that Assange has had “zero influence” on The Guardian’s editorial decisions regarding its use of the WikiLeaks cables.
The Guardian also scotched Aftenposten’s boast about having exclusive access to all the documents.
Davies claimed that the agreement signed between The Guardian and WikiLeaks determined, in fact, that Assange would not have any influence, and he has not.
David Leigh, another editor at The Guardian, told Journalisten on Tuesday that his paper has all the cables as do the other newspapers in the original agreement with WikiLeaks. Leigh told Journalisten that the papers themselves have decided what they will publish, and when. After writing their stories, he said, edited copies of the relevant cables are sent to WikiLeaks (with some identities deleted, for example, for security reasons) so that WikiLeaks can publish the documents at the same time.
Amongst other striking releases, Aftenposten has published cables relating to German commercial spy satellite development.
12.2.2009: GERMANY SEEKS U.S. PARTNER TO DEVELOP OPTICAL SPACE IMAGERY CAPABILITIES – “Eckardt said that DLR explored various scenarios for international partnerships, but in the end came to the conclusion that a U.S. partnership (DG) made the most “business sense.” “Should DLRs partnership with DG materialize, DLR indicated that the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) would be the “prime customer identified”, with DG serving as the U.S. market entry point.” 15.2.2009: GERMANY EXPANDING OVERHEAD RECONNAISSANCE PROGRAMS AND EYE CLOSER USG PARTNERSHIP –
“(S//NF) On 8 April 2009, US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) officers met with German Intelligence Service (BND) officials to discuss Germanys plans for expanded nationally operated overhead reconnaissance resources.”
This cable above is weird because the contents refers to a meeting in April, 09 whereas the cable is dated 15th Feb 09. The date for removal of embargo is 05/14/2034 … so the cable may really be dated 05/14/09.
Neither Wikileaks commander or his spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson have so far wanted to comment on his relationship to Aftenposten. The newspaper claims to have gotten all the so-called “Cable Street” – over 250,000 diplomatic documents – without having to enter into any agreement with Wikileaks. . It has, however, the site’s so-called media partners – reject as El País, The Guardian and Le Monde – concluded.
COLD FEET? Even though the temperature was around freezing, went Assange in the base stone. DN is not aware whether it was a conscious choice or a consequence of bad times.
- Aftenposten is currently a media partner of Wikileaks, says Julian Assange to DN before reporting to the police.
- However, Aftenposten said that it is not it?
- Events are treated as other media partners.
- It’s amazing to hear him say it. We are not a media partner of Wikileaks, says chief editor of Aftenposten Hilde Haugsgjerd.
“Lite content”
December, it is not known whether the leak of Wikileaks documents to Aftenposten has happened alerts directly from the site, from one of its media partners or others with access to the material.
Commenting on Monday wrote Hilde Haugsgjerd that Wikileaks “after what we know, to say the least [is] unhappy with the newspaper Aftenposten also has received the so-called” Cable Street “with 251 287 U.S. diplomatic documents from a source” . Haugsgjerd stressed that “the Aftenposten is not included in the Assange refers to as the consortium, the few international editors who from the start was invited to participate in the publication of all documents,” and that the newspaper is free to publish cases from the documents without having to deal with Wikileaks.
- I can not comment. I have not read the comment, “said Assange.
Assange would not say anything more about the relationship to Aftenposten – a relationship which, however, has become more and more inflamed in the past two weeks. The reason for Haugsgjerd comment will be telephone calls between journalists in Aftenposten and Wikileaks few days before Christmas. In the calls attempted and Julian Assange spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson to conduct negotiations to bring Aftenposten publication of documents in controlled circumstances.
Would negotiate
- I know Assange have had contact with a few reporters with us. I do not know the details of these conversations, except that he has expressed a desire that we should be included as one of Wikileaks’ media partners. He has also expressed a desire to talk to me, but I have not heard from him, “said Hilde Haugsgjerd.
She denied that anyone in Aftenposten has entered into any agreement with Assange, and stressing that the newspaper is free to use the Wikileaks material.
- Since he has not spoken with either me or the other of the Aftenposten editors, it goes without saying that the newspaper has not entered into any agreement with him.
- Assange claims the now, however, that you are a media partner. What do you think about it?
- It seems as if Assange wish and believe that we will be media partners. Men at han ønsker og mener det, betyr jo ikke at vi er en mediepartner. But he wants and believes it, does not mean that we are a media partner.
- So what are you then?
- We have not had access to this material from Wikileaks. And I know that we have gained access to the material without having entered into any agreement on use. We are now keen to use the material in a responsible manner, “said Haugsgjerd.
Newspapers gossip
The agreements between Wikileaks and media partners have never been made public, and the details in them are not known.. But Julian Assange said himself to The Guardian, 3 December that part of the agreement is that the media partners will review and contribute to sladding of the documents that the papers reviews before they are published on the Wikileaks website. . In this way, Wikileaks escaped much of it is very time consuming skidding work. It has been known that the agreement also contained a release date for when the first cases could be released.
After the DN understand the Evening Post’s journalists have refused to acquiesce to the demands of Assange. They showed that the Event has been given access to the documents without any prior agreement.
Aftenposten has the last three weeks published cases each day from the disputed documents, but Wikileaks has little posted the documents referred to Aftenposten, the site makes such alerts when the other media partners publish cases based on diplomatic documents
Presenting the work of India-based friend, Pranav Waghmare @pranav_waghmare, Freelance Cartoonist. Pranav believes in freedom of expression – he is not an actor or soldier, but a proud thinker. Enjoy!
The head of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip has told United Nations Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon that the group supports any steps leading to the creation of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, according to the Palestinian news agency Ramattan.
The letter – written by Ismail Haniyeh on Tuesday to coincide with a UN conference currently underway in New York – stated that, “We would never thwart efforts to create an independent Palestinian state with borders [from] June 4, 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital.”
The missive also comes as Barack Obama prepared to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for his first Mideast summit as United States president.
Haniyeh’s message was only covered by Xinhua and was identical to the Haaretz story.
“AJ: .. to carry out their own independent investigations into their conduct during the war … a request Hamas told us they’d be happy to carry out if it means the international community will then take seriously claims in the report that Israeli soldiers committed warcrimes.
Ahmed Youssef (Deputy Foreign Minister, Hamas): Regarding Hamas firing rockets on the civilian areas, this is something easy to do the investigation by looking where these rockets hit and where is the target of these rockets if these rockets really intended to be targetting civilian areas or military bases in the neighbourhood.”
The closest approximation to Youssef’s position was in the NYTimes, where crucial parts of his statement presented on Al Jazeera were omitted. Youssef was reported substantially in the third person, unlike the plethora of howling Israeli apologists contained therein:
Ahmed Yousef, a senior adviser to the Hamas government in Gaza, said the local authorities would investigate the relevant cases in the report. But he reiterated his government’s position that Israeli civilians killed by rockets were victims of the fact that the Palestinians had only “primitive weapons, and with such weapons, mistakes are to be expected.” The rockets, he added, were fired in self-defense.”
The Age recycled and then withdrew an unsourced story “Islam group urges forest fire jihad” which it previously published on 7 September, 2008, quoting those ubiquitous, unnamed US intelligence sources.
The Age journalist, Josh Gordon, apparently scavenged his material from an outfit called World Tribune, who published the story on January 15, 2008. The World Tribune in turn sourced it from their brother operation, a subscription site called Geostrategic.com.
The Geostrategic teaser headlines give one an idea of the sensational thrills which lie in store for the intrepid subscriber – “Commission: Iran nuke program could be replicated throughout region”, “Rape case spotlights U.S., Algerian counter-insurgency ties” and the Backgrounder “Iran opening ‘offices and a lot of fronts’ throughout Latin America”, wherein we find those canny unnamed US intelligence officials quoted once again.
“U.S. intelligence officials believe the Iranian subversive activity is aimed at preparing to create a network of terrorists and other groups that could be called on to attack the United States and U.S. interests in the Western Hemisphere in response to any future U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.”
Perhaps these unnamed ‘intelligence officials’ feel it’s time for another Venezuelan coup attempt?
Here’s some unconscious irony – Robert Gates says ““They’re [Iran] opening a lot of offices and a lot of fronts, behind which they interfere in what is going on in some of these countries.”
According to Ben McGrath at The New Yorker, The World Tribune is associated, like the Washington Times with the World Unification Church.
Its editor and publisher, Robert Morton, is an assistant managing editor at the Washington Times and a former “corporate editor” for News World Communications, the Times’ owner and the publishing arm of the Unification Church, led by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon. (Morton and his wife, Choon Boon, are themselves followers of the Reverend Moon.)
…
Among the World Tribune’s other recent half-ignored scoops are that Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for last month’s blackout and that a North Korean defector stressed, during a meeting in July with White House officials, the need for a preëmptive military strike against Kim Jong Il.
Morton said last week via e-mail that he founded the site as an experiment, back in 1998, while serving as a media fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank.
…
World Tribune.com more fairly qualifies as something between a newspaper and a rumor-mongering blog. Call it “blews.” In this sense, it is part of a loose network of mostly conservative sites—WorldNetDaily, Dr. Koontz’s National Security Message Board, debka File (produced by a pair of Jerusalem-based journalists thought to have moles in Israeli intelligence)—whose dispatches sometimes serve as the journalistic equivalent of trial balloons: a story may not be based on knowable facts, but it nevertheless may occasionally turn out to be right. (Much of the time, of course, it more closely resembles a Bat Boy update in the Weekly World News.)
The Age reports that US intelligence channels identified the jihad website earlier in 2008, whereas the World Tribune says the information was posted on the net in November 07.
A terrorist website was discovered recently that carried a posting that called for “Forest Jihad.” The posting was listed on the Internet on Nov. 26 and reported in U.S. intelligence channels last week.
According to both Age and World Tribune stories Abu Mus’ab al-Suri, who has vanished after apparently being rendered by the US to Syria since his capture in Quetta sometime between October and December 2005, said sulphuric acid and petrol should be used to start forest fires.
He is wanted in Spain for the 1985 El Descanso bombing and (as a witness)[2][4] in connection with the 2004 Madrid train bombings, and wanted in Syria[4].
Nasar [al-Suri] was initially mentioned by British media as a possible suspected planner in the 2005 transport bombings in London. Subsequent investigations have not revealed any evidence of his role in the terrorist attacks.
Al-Suri published his 1604 page masterwork on jihadist theory and strategy “The Call for a Global Islamic Resistance” in December 2004. In it he “strongly cautions against operations in which many ordinary Muslims, or non-hostile non-muslims, are killed”.
“I was searching for a method which the enemy has no way of aborting,” al-Suri explains in “The Call,” “even when he understands the method and its procedures, and arrests two-thirds of his operators.”
Rather than reestablish a loose network of terrorist cells with the remnants of a command-and-control structure, al-Suri urged aspiring terrorists to simply murder people in the organization’s name. One could become a member of Al Qaeda by “a system of action, not a centralized, secret organization for action.”
In a sense, by associating bushfires with Al Qaeda, the Age and World Tribune are assisting Al-Suri’s strategy.
The goal, he writes, is “to bring about the largest number of human and material casualties possible for America and its allies.” He specifically targets Jews, “Westerners in general,” the members of the NATO alliance, Russia, China, atheists, pagans, and hypocrites, as well as “any type of external enemy.”
Again, Al-Suri is quoted warning about targeting innocents:
Suri urges his readers to reject their own repressive governments and to rise up against Western occupation and Zionism. Although the leaders of Al Qaeda have long excused the slaughter of innocents, and many of its attacks have been directed at other Muslims, Suri specifically cautions against harming other Muslims, women and children who may be nonbelievers, and other noncombatants.
Not having read his book I am unable to confirm that al-Suri mentioned using sulphuric acid and petrol to start forest fires, as claimed in the World Tribune and Age, however none of the reviews I’ve come across of his book mention this, and such an act would seem to be in contradiction with his thoughts about innocents expressed above.
After searching several Google layers deep, I still have not found any sign of Abu Thar Al-Kuwaiti or the Al-Ikhlas Islamic Network which are mentioned in the Age and World Tribune – it would be appreciated if anyone reading this who can read Arabic can confirm the existence of these nefarious entities.
Why would such a badly sourced story which appeared in January 08 in the World Tribune about something allegedly posted on the net on November 07, 2007 be dredged up months later by the Age, then again in another 3 months?
Attorney-General Robert McClelland said the Federal Government remained “vigilant against such threats”, warning that anyone caught lighting a fire as a weapon of terror would feel the wrath of anti-terror laws.
Did McClelland base his comments on the September story in the Age?
Kevin Rudd, prime minister, said he was outraged that many of the fires had been lit deliberately. “There’s no words to describe it, other than it’s mass murder,” he said.
Robert McClelland, Australia’s attorney-general, warned that arsonists could face murder charges if they were caught.
“Anyone who lights fires deliberately, with reckless disregard for the safety of their fellow Australians, in our view establishes the requisite criminal intent that would sustain a charge of murder,” he said.
Although arson is a factor in the bushfires that hit Australia in most years, evidence has been mounting that the proportion of those being lit deliberately has been increasing.
The Victorian Country Fire Authority said it believed a number had been deliberately relit by firebugs, as Australians call arsonists, after being -extinguished or made safe by firefighters.
According to the Australian Institute of Criminology, about half of all the country’s bushfires are started deliberately or prompt strong suspicions of arson.
Fires are an everpresent threat in Australia – many catastrophic blazes are lit by firebugs. With soaring temperatures in Victoria and New South Wales, dozens of people have died in the latest bush fires.
Fierce winds were fanning the fires and pushing them in unpredictable directions in Victoria on Sunday, after temperatures reached a state record of 47 degrees Celsius.
Forecasters said hot and uncertain weather conditions would continue through the day on Sunday.
Blair Trewin, a climatologist with the National Climate Centre in Melbourne, told Al Jazeera: “They are the most extreme conditions that we have ever seen in historic record in parts of southeastern Australia.
“We are seeing an upward trend in temperatures in Australia as elsewhere in the world.”
More than 600 houses have been destroyed by the fires.
The worst wildfires in recent memory killed 75 people and razed 2,500 homes in Victoria in 1983.
In south Queensland we continue to enjoy pleasant summer weather, while in the north of the state, there’s flooding. Australia – a land of climatic extremes.
UPDATE FEB 9
107 people are now known to have perished in the fires, which are still raging through Victoria and New South Wales.
Authorities suspect arsonists are responsible for some fires and police are treating some razed towns as crime scenes.
The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, says deliberately starting the fires is mass murder.
…
The fire that is of most concern is burning out of control in Victoria’s north-east, threatening the townships of Stanley and Eskdale.
…
The other major fire of concern, the Murrindini Mill fire, is moving north-east and is now about 93,000 hectares in size.
Fire authorities are also warning it will take several more days to control a large blaze burning near Victoria’s biggest electricity generator, the Loy Yang power station.
There are 50 fires raging across New South Wales. A 31 year old Gosford man has been arrested for arson.
173 people have now died, and blame is being thrown here, there and everywhere. Beyond the predictable media frenzy, I see this as a tangible expression of denial, the first stage of grief. 911 had the same effect on folks – blame everyone except the culture which through its practices, contributed to the calamity.
There’ll be plenty of time to look for answers, if there are any which can really be addressed, given our frustrating 200 years of braindead whitey farming practices, 40,000 of pre-colonial firing techniques which preceded these and folks’ unwillingness to learn from science and successful models of integrating human habitation with the environment on which it depends.
How many people know that most eucalypts are weeds in Australia, which create the conditions they need to colonise, whose seeds only germinate when fired? It is more popular to romanticise about the noble Australian aboriginal living in ‘harmony’ with ‘nature’ than look with a scientific eye at the result of their nomadic farming experience.
Once the large slow moving forest dwelling herbivorous marsupials were hunted to extinction, it became traditional for our traditional owners to use fire to promote grassland for kangaroos – which conveniently breed like – kangaroos.
Always a joey in the pouch, one out grazing, always another on the way.
And eucalypts, with their need for fire, thrived at the expense of hardwood wet forest timber.
Clearing and much, much more firing by whiteys have increased the problem – along with the urban sprawl into Victoria’s bushland. You’d think we’d have learnt the lesson by now – this land can’t support the people it has – not enough water or arable farmland to depend upon. Yet our stupid government ignores the very real environmental impacts and limitations whilst mouthing rubbish about a sustainable economy needing more people. This bleating has been going on since whitey arrived here – the first settlers saw an empty land which needed wave on wave of migrants, with Australia’s rivers and forests bearing the brunt.
The choices are stark – either live with the forests – which make rain and oxygen on which we depend, revegetate with non-fire dependent species as much as possible, and take sensible precautions against bushfire catastrophes; or chop down even more of our precious bushland, till most of our land becomes as dry as the Simpson Desert.
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