The aerial spraying (using helicopters) of plantation timbers appears to be responsible for large-scale losses of commercial oyster following heavy rainfall events. The normal environmental protection methods do not appear to be in place and no policing of the State’s own Forestry Code of Practice appears to be occurring. More disturbingly, the problems associated with oysters also correlate with tumours and mortality in Tasmanian Devils. Further there appears to be a risk to human health as contamination of local drinking water supplies is also possible
Loony fundie US conservatives have failed in their bid to change the American Constitution to ban gay marriage. The retarded monkey boy had urged Congress to support a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage after several states moved to make it legal. But the proposal failed to win enough support in the Senate. The head of the human rights campaign, Cheryl Jacques, said: Today we saw President Bush and the Republican leadership attempt to divide America and it backfired
. Michael Organ gave the finger to the fundies who are trying to same stunt locally
The Thailand-Australia Free Trade Agreement gives corporations the power to sue government, in either domestic courts or through international arbitration, riding over democracy
Professor Lessig will be flown in at the 11th-hour
to testify on the intellectual property provisions of Australia’s pending Free Trade Agreement. The IP section of the FTA is modeled after the DMCA — via Lessig News
A million hectares of land with the most significant areas wilderness outside of the national parks system will be sold off at only three percent of its market value to current leaseholders, after the Carr Government successfully passed legislation it had fought to prevent in 1993
The President’s handlers foolishly granted a Presidential interview (Indymedia have an MP3 available or you can read the transcript) to a non-White House Press Corps journalist, Carole Coleman, the Washington correspondent for RTE, the Irish national television network. When she asked him pointed, pertinent questions, he became upset when his stock answers failed to satisfy her. An aide to the President later complained that Coleman had overstepped the bounds of politeness
— via BoingBoing
John Howard, showing his usual love of money over environment, has offered a $5 million bribe to the notorious eco-vandal Gunns for a proposed $1 billion pulp mill. The Greens are far from impressed
It may soon be possible to carry around an AK-47 assault rifle and an iPod with you down the street — and be arrested for carrying the iPod. That’s according to critics of a Senate amendment to the copyright code proposed by Senator Orrin Hatch this week called the Induce Act
. He wants to make the intentional inducement of copyright infringement
an offence, and this will extend liability to any manufacturer of a device which plays infringed material, or a shop that sells such a device, they say — via BoingBoing
The NSW Government has made official its push into open source, launching a $1.5 million deployment of what may be the state’s largest-ever rollout of open source software on the desktop
Amnesty International charges of Iraqi prisoners being subject to cruel and inhumane treatment were notified to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in June and July of 2003, Australian Defence Forces chief General Cosgrove told a Senate estimates committee
Peter FitzSimons has a good write up on how Peter Garrett‘s independent views highlight Alexander Downer’s kow-towing — via GeneWeb.info
The US Fish and Wildlife Service recently reported that a record 55 red wolf pups [BugMeNot] have been born in 11 litters in North Carolina this spring. More than 100 red wolves now roam 1.5 million acres in the northeastern part of the state. This year’s promising wolf census comes on the heels of a judge’s decision that temporarily halted the building of a landing field by the US Navy that Defenders and others charged would be harmful to wolves and migratory birds in the area
The chief of the defence force General Cosgrove has been caught misleading the people [BugMeNot] yet again. He told Senate Estimates this week that Australia had an agreement with the Americans that they would detain POWs in Iraq on our behalf so we could avoid our responsibilities under the Geneva Conventions to ensure they were not tortured
Australia’s overseas aid spending is up, but not all the money goes to worthy projects to alleviate poverty. (Australia’s Official Development Assistance outlay for 2004-05 is an estimated $2133 million.) Increasingly, money is being allocated to beefing up regional security and promoting good governance. Much of what should be pure aid money has gone to managing refugees in Nauru and on the recent Solomons mission. Overseas aid is being redefined to include things such as counter-terrorism measures. The Parliamentary Library has a two-page Research Note that lays it all out — via journoz
John Howard‘s blatant attempt to pander to the fundies by declaring that the Government will only recognise marriages between a man and woman his got the silly bastard in shit with a group he pretends doesn’t exist. A Perth person with no fixed gender says new legislation which would ban all but traditional marriages is unlawful and undemocratic. Alexander MacFarlane has both male and female physiology and says the legislation will prevent all intersex people from marrying. Dr MacFarlane has vowed to take the matter to the High Court
Pressure group Amnesty International has said the United States is bankrupt of vision and bereft of principle in its fight against terrorism and its occupation of Iraq. In its annual report, Amnesty criticised US policy for sanctioning abuses in the name of freedom
A federal judge threw out the US government’s attempt to shut down Greenpeace. In the clearest indication that the case was harassment, the judge didn’t even need to hear the Greenpeace defence before he acquitted them of all charges and dismissed the jury. This is a great victory for freedom of speech, but the question remains: Why did the US spend all that time chasing us instead of tracking down the illegal mahogany they were protesting against?
John Howard has rejected a report that an Australian military officer stationed in Baghdad was aware of abuse allegations late last year, after viewing a Red Cross report. The lying piece of shit maintains he first become aware of the scale of the mistreatment last month and has told Parliament that no Australian soldiers were involved in the abuses
Same-sex marriages in Australia will be outlawed and gay couples blocked from adopting children from overseas under laws proposed by the conservative government on Thursday that echo similar moves made in the United States. But changes would also be made to allow same-sex couples to nominate their partners as beneficiaries for superannuation — tax-free pension death benefits. The Greens have told John Howard to get a fucking clue
Nine months after Congress shut down a controversial Pentagon computer-surveillance program, the US government continues to comb private records to sniff out suspicious activity, according to a congressional report obtained by Reuters
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