Australia alters stance on climate change pact – National – www.theage.com.au: “Bush Administration officials at the conference opposed the use of the phrase ‘climate change’ in favour of the more benign ‘climate variability’.”

And I thought that Climate Change was a watered down version of Global Warming!!!

EPIC 2014: This is certainly worth a watch, particularly for anyone even vaguely interested in the Internet, blogs, democracy, the future and so on and so forth.

Goes for 8 mins but is well worth it.

George Monbiot is rightly concerned that the recent out break of violence in Rwanda has received bugger all media attention and is on a scale that is astronomical (already over 3 million dead).

So I thought I’d evoke the power of the blog to try and draw your attention to this…

George Monbiot � A Deadly Reversal: “The Rwandan army appears to have crossed back into north-eastern DRC. Rival factions of the Congolese army – some of them loyal to Rwanda – have started fighting each other. As usual, it’s the civilians who are being killed – and raped and tortured and forced to flee into the forest. Last week, before the fighting resumed, the International Rescue Committee reported that over 1000 people a day are still dying from disease and malnutrition caused by the last conflict. Nearly half of them are children under five.”

Blow for Blair as Blunkett resigns – World – www.theage.com.au: “Britain’s Blair Government has been rocked just months from an expected general election by the resignation of its third most important member, Home Secretary David Blunkett, whose stellar political career has been effectively snuffed out by a failed love affair.”

It was not so long ago that people also resigned for this sort of thing in Australia – as they rightly should. However dishonesty seems to have become the norm. I’m sure can think of several instances of late where Australian PMs have just shrugged these sorts of things off.

A really nice point:

Geof Stone: “It’s also important to point out a critical feature of free speech. Few people rationally believe that their decision to sign a petition, send an email, or march in a demonstration will have any effect on national policy. Thus, the benefit to them of speaking out is very small. If they have any reason to fear that doing so will land them in jail, or subject them to government questioning or harassment, or threaten their current or future employment, they will quickly decide that it’s not worth the risk to sign the petition, send the email, or march in the demonstration. This is what we mean by ‘chilling effect.’ The danger, of course, is not just that a lone individual will be silenced, but that an entire segment of the population that would otherwise be critical of the government will be stifled, thus mutilating the thinking process of the community.”

I’m reading Ann Capling’s All the way with the USA.

It is quite an interesting read and what I have read so far is about the history of trade agreements and the various sorts that are around (unilateral, bilateral, multilateral, regional and global).

The book argues that with the exception of a few rare cases global trade agreements (GATT and WTO) are the most beneficial and benefit everyone ultimately. Rare exceptions include the Aust/NZ FTA which is widely regarded as a highly effective bilateral agreement because both side are beneficial and it is not a ‘preference’ agreement which, as Capling correctly points out is often more a case of ‘exclusion’ to other trade partners.

Now if I put aside for a moment my problems with FTAs, and point out that the biggest problem lies with the phoney FTAs that are around the world the fact of the matter is that the current US/Aust FTA is flawed on an economic level for many reasons.

The GATT was partly created to prevent future world wars. It is arguable that a key factor that triggered WWII was that many countries started to develop regional trade agreements which were highly exclusionary and created further economic instability as Australia gave preferential treatment to Brittan and other commonwealth countries at the expense of Japan and the USA.

So if big multilateral agreements are stabilising then the current trend of the US to form bilateral agreements (motivated by several factors, not least of which is frustration at the time it takes for these agreements to be met) is concerning as it is strategically destabilising. This is no way to fight a ‘war on terrorism’. It also put the economic interests in Iraq in a new light.

While it hasn’t been alluded to I have a feeling that the military industrial complex is playing a part in this active destabilisation on a strategic and economic front.

Further the significance of the Aust/US FTA is that it is the first agreement that has strategic/military significance – traditionally quite a no-no. And if this is the case then why aren’t labour and environmental regulations built into these agreements as they were in the economically insignificant Jordan/USA FTA?

2005 Australian Blog Awards – Nominations:

I know I’ll never get a nomination but I think this is a really interesting exercise and process.

I never wanted to submit my blog to a competitive process anyway – stop judging me MAN!!!

I have a new link – Dream on Black Girl.

Not only is it a great blog but indigenous voices are much needed in what is an increasingly dark hour for our indigenous population and I suspect our non-indigenous population as well.

Thank you to Robert Corr for this post and this post. Both showing a much better level of research than mine on this issue of mutual obligation contracts, their failure and racist undertones.

He points out that community introduced face washing programs have already been put in place and incidence of trachoma are now at a 7 year low because of it – however there are no repercussions for not partaking. People partake because they are now informed about the benefits of it and are happy to take control of their own destiny. More over the community has put in several applications for the petrol bowser in the past and all have been rejected because there are no mutual obligation contracts in place – the sort that would not be necessary for a white community.

As Corr points out: “If it can be shown that outback towns with predominantly white populations receive funding for things like petrol bowsers without being forced to sign Mulan-style contracts (and given the Nationals’ pork rorts it presumably wouldn’t be hard), there’s a reasonable argument that it is illegal due to racial discrimination.”

Moreover he indicates that there could be serious repercussions with regards to land rights should the community elders speak up against the contracts.

I can’t repeat it enough. Top down approaches simply don’t work. Communities in control of their own destiny have much lower incidence of just about every negative social indicator. This has been proven time and time again.

RIP Dimebag – you rocked it like a mother fucker!