Cyclone Baby

"Amid the chaos and devastation of Cyclone Yasi, a yet-to-be named baby girl has been born at a Cairns evacuation centre. Akiko Pruss went into labour at the evacuation centre at Redlynch State College at 2.45am Australian Eastern Standard Time. The baby girl was delivered healthy at 6.09am after a three-hour labour. Akiko and her German husband Christian, live in Cairns, and the baby will be their second child.... there were no scales equipment at the evacuation centre to weigh the newborn. English midwife Carol and her husband Andrew Weeks, who are celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary on holidays in Cairns, delivered the baby. Ms Pruss gave birth in the first aid room of the college and was supported by her mother, who had travelled from Japan to be with her."

- The Age

The most life-threatening storm in generations

As I'm write the front of potentially the most destructive cyclone in Australian history is sweeping in to make landfall between Cairns and Innisfail, Queensland. By mid this afternoon, it was too late to leave the area.

The Bureau of Metereology expects this to be "the most life-threatening storm in generations".

It will not be safe to be outdoors for the next 24 hours, and it is hitting now at high tide, in flood ravaged areas. A surge of 6.5 to 7.0 metres above the normal high tide is possible.

10,680 people are now in evac centres. About that many homes in Townsville are at risk of inundation from 12 metre waves.

I was in this part of the country, albiet briefly, about 5 months ago. It really is beautiful.

We'll see what the night brings.

Some years ago the former Queensland premier prayed for rain after a decade of drought. Now floods...

El Niño/La Niña-Southern Oscillation... happens in cycles, but appears to be getting worse. Alternating warming and cooling in the Pacific Ocean. El Niño in 1998 caused an estimated 16% of the world's reef systems to die.

Elsewhere... India is shivering through sub-zero temperatures, Brazil has the worst flooding in decades, and an epic winter storm is sweeping the central United States.
Where I am the heat is muggy. If I could spend all day in my jocks it'd be great. Summer didn't used to be like this...

What happened?
Dare we suspect... ?

Quoting a scientific paper:

"Observations show that the tropical El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability, after removing both the long term trend and decadal change of the background climate, has been enhanced by as much as 60% during the past 50 years. This shift in ENSO amplitude can be related to mean state changes in global climate."

and from The Telegraph:

"Scientists say there is a likely climate change link to the current La Nina through higher sea surface temperatures. The world’s oceans and atmosphere have steadily warmed over recent decades and that warmth could be providing monsoons and storms with an extra kick.
A major global study in 2010, based on complex computer modelling, found that tropical cyclones will become stronger, with the intensity increasing between 2 and 11 percent by 2100.
And while in some regions, such as the western Pacific and around Australia, the average number of storms might decrease, the number of intense storms in the category 4 and 5 range will increase, along with wind speeds and the amount of rainfall. "

Don't tell me you can see Jesus in bread - but we're all just imagining all this...

I got sick of that during the fires.

Magpie's Football Update

The international game (soccer):

Australia against Japan in the Asian Cup final at Khalifa Stadium in Doha, Qatar.
It's the Socceroos sixth game in three weeks. Japan is hot after downing South Korea, though it cost them striker Shinji Kagawa to injury. South Korea will play Uzbekistan, whom Australia defeated 6-0, for third place.

Captain Lucas Neill says everyone is calm. I wish I could believe him.
Either me or my wife is going to be happy. By tomorrow we should know who.


Update January 30th:
Japan won 1-0 in extra time.
"As long the young guys take the hurt from this day and turn it into a positive, I'm sure the future's bright," Neill said.

Political note:

Apparently the Qatari authorities met ticket-holding fans with riot police. Estimates range up to 5000 people being shut out.
These were people from Australia and Japan and elsewhere who were well-behaved and just wanted to see the match, as they had paid for. Rows and rows of empty seats inside Khalifa stadium. People who did get in noted not one person checked tickets and the bar code readers weren't working.

If Qatar can't deal with this properly how the heck are they going to manage the World Cup in 2022?
Tolerance for the host nation just doing it as a investment promo and not taking the game and its fans seriously will be nil... and THOSE fans aren't going to be so calm about it.

Australia Day January 26th

Australia Day.

Or "Invasion Day" for indigenous Australians, and they have a point.

I don't really see how the date of the arrival of the First Fleet - and Britain annexing the eastern coastline of what was then New Holland - has anything to do with the spirit of modern Australia. Aren't we meant to be the antithesis of empire?

It's a bit of a problem. The obvious alternative - Federation - happened on New Years Day, and ANZAC Day is by far the more emotive national day anyway. If ANZAC Day is the mourning of wars just or dubious... then Australia Day is some sort of vague "fuck aren't we lucky we live here" day.

It is a day of puzzle about how exactly we give prideful national symbolism to a nation that often eschews prideful national symbols. Of watching sport and heading for the beach.

Some feel differently of course (some strenuously so...) but is there not something slightly unAustralian about running the Australian flag up a pole? It's like a loudspeaker proclaiming how peaceful your local park is.

But Australia Day has one redeeming feature... It is in summer. And summer is a beautiful time.

Special thoughts to the people struggling with the floods, and our people serving in Afghanistan.

The Green and Gold

The action...

I don't dig cricket but Shane Watson catching England's Ian Bell out off Watson's own bowling is pretty impressive:



Harry Kewell gets the header for Australia to take out Iraq in the Asian Cup 118 minutes into the match:

Magpie patiently awaits his Australian Rules Football, and World Cup Rugby....

Religious extremism in Australia

It exists. It is microscopic, almost without open political representation, and it is loathed. But it exists.

Danny Nalliah is an Australian Christian evangelical pastor, president of Catch the Fire Ministries, and a former candidate for the Family First Party.
He posted the following on the Catch the Fire Ministries website last Thursday, to enlarge on his idea that the floods in Queensland are God's punishment:

" As I was recently getting my hair cut, my barber said to me, “Danny, I cannot understand as to why a loving God is punishing people.” My barber is a Christian, but does not go to church. In fact I led him to the Lord a few months ago.
I promptly responded, “If my daughter or son tell me that they are leaving home because they don’t like all the rules and regulations, but I tell them that the rules and regulations are because we love them and want to protect them from getting into trouble. But if they still choose to go and I hear that they got into some trouble, would it be fair for them to blame me??” "

I see... you would drown your own children and destroy the lives of thousands for not following your weirdo ideas. Thanks, Danny, for clarifying that, you pathetic jerk.

By the way, a number of comments were deleted on his blog, and there was an interesting one allowed to stand: one praising Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church.

If you're an Australian reading this... the Westboro Baptist Church are the people who picket funerals in America, taunting the grieving families with slogans like "God hates fags", and they assert that Nazi Germany was run by Jewish homosexuals.

That is the level of astoundingly stupid that Danny thinks is quite all right, apparently.

This isn't Marlboro Country

Corporate scumbaggery... Not their worst unfortunately.

Philip Morris, the tobacco giant, are trying to insert "investor state" provisions in the upcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.

The background of this is that Australia and the United States signed off on a Free Trade Agreement in 2005. As is normal with our puppy dog desire to be a good mate to our immensely more powerful friend, we rolled over and had our balls scratched on some of that deal.

There was one thing about which, however, that we said "no".

We will NOT sign up for "investor state" provisions, those being provisions that allow corporations to sue governments that happen to legislate in ways that limit their business activities.

So, for example, if it should be found that certain building materials are found to be bad for bushfire prone areas, and those materials are excluded from new safe-building codes, the producer of those materials, who could be a foreign company, cannot sue our government.

Sorry... make better materials. Not "sorry... we'll compensate you because you make crap".

In effect Philip Morris, dedicated as they are to getting my children addicted to their carcinogenic filth, want to take my taxes as recompense for being frustrated in the attempt.

"Negotiations relating to the trade agreement - between the US, Australia, New Zealand and six South American and south-east Asian countries - intensified last year and are expected to be completed in September.

In a submission on the proposed trade agreement last year to the Office of the US Trade Representative, Philip Morris cited Australia's plain packaging laws among ''initiatives of concern''. The company said it supported laws to reduce the harm caused by tobacco (yeah sure...), but opposed, ''extreme and disproportionate regulation … which has the effect of violating international law and expropriating intellectual property rights''.

Simon Chapman, a professor of public health at the University of Sydney, said the company's stance was consistent with the tobacco industry's history of attempting to use trade agreements to defeat individual countries' health laws.

''It's yet another sign of the degree to which the industry will go to defeat and delay any measure that will actually work to cut smoking rates,'' he said.

He said the World Trade Organisation's Uruguay Round had established the right of countries to put health considerations above international trade considerations.

The laws that Philip Morris are getting stroppy about related to packaging regulations.

"Craig Emerson, the federal Minister for Trade, would not commit to insisting investor state provisions be excluded from the regional trade pact, saying he was not prepared to make policy on the run. But he said Philip Morris would be ''whistling in the wind'' if it tried to undermine national anti-tobacco laws.

''I will not be recommending the empowering of Philip Morris or any other tobacco company to overturn Australian government policy on plain packaging of cigarettes.'' "

Not exactly stone-cold determination.

What if this costs us the treaty...?

"Patricia Ranald, the convener of the Australian Fair Trade & Investment Network, an alliance that advocates on human rights and environmental issues, said Australia would receive little export benefit from the treaty, because it already had AUSFTA and strong trade partnerships in the region."

Screw it then. By the way... Marlboro is the biggest selling cigarette brand in the world, and is made by Philip Morris.

Getting stuff done

This is why we can be proud to be Australians:

"As the floodwaters neared their peak yesterday, the people of Brisbane could have been forgiven for panicking. Fortunately, the opposite happened.
Rarely can an emergency mass movement of people have happened so swiftly and with so little fuss. People rolled up their sleeves and got to work...
Thousands sat on street corners until the early hours of yesterday morning, mingling with refugees from nearby suburbs and neighbours they had never met. They watched the sluggish brown tide slowly rise - eerie, a bit frightening, but not the end of the world...
Yesterday volunteers were hard at work - the organisation managing volunteering said 11,000 people had already officially registered for clean-up duties, but the actual figure would be far higher, because most people just turned up and set to the task. Often a person in a sandbagging chain would not know the name of the person next to them."

Queensland

Toowoomba
Warren McErlean sees a water gauge on a street rise 20 centimetres in 10 seconds on Monday afternoon. He attempts to save the Rice family...

Jordan Rice, 13 years old, insisted his brother Blake, aged 10, be rescued first. He and his mother Donna, 43, do not make it.

''I thought I would push it backwards but by the time I walked 20 metres, it [the water] was up on the bonnet and coming up the windscreen.''
Mr McErlean grabbed a rope, tied one end to a post, the other around his waist and set out to rescue the woman and two boys but the fast-moving water swept him downstream.
Another rescuer, known only as Chris, pulled Mr McErlean to safety before tying the rope to himself and approaching the car to grab Jordan.
But Jordan wanted his brother to go first so Chris took Blake, handing him to Mr McErlean part way across before heading back to the car.
''I had the boy in one hand, the rope in the other. I wasn't going to let go but then the torrent came through and was pulling us down,'' Mr McErlean said.
''Then this great big tall fellow just came out of nowhere, bear hugged us and ripped us out of the water.
''When I got back I turned to look at the guy [Chris]. He looked at me and we knew it was over. The rope snapped and the car just flipped.''
Chris, who had been holding Jordan's hand until it was torn from him, flew metres in the air before locking his legs around a post in the centre of the road, said Mr McErlean.
''The others were just gone, just disappeared,'' he said.

South East Queensland

Clive Palmer, one of Australia's richest men, uses his private helicopter to rescue 60 people from floodwaters in and around his horse stud farm. 80 horses drown in their field.

"This is all very sad and distressing but the welfare of our people must come first. They have been traumatised and it's vital that they are rehabilitated. There will be a cremation and burial for the horses," Mr Palmer said.

Grantham in the Lockyer Valley

"...in "lock down", with police and the coroner going from building to building looking for survivors."

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh says "This is a valley that has been completely and utterly devastated".

Prime Minister Julia Gillard is on the ground. Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd wades through water to help his constituents recover property.

15 confirmed dead
61 unaccounted for
4000 in evac centres
75% of Queensland is a natural disaster zone
120,000 homes and businesses without power

Deep Water

"I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of drought and flooding rains, I love her far horizons, I love her jewel sea, Her beauty and her terror - The wide brown land for me."

- Dorothea MacKellar 1906

12,400 people were killed in Mexico's narco-wars in 2010.

36 known criminals were murdered in the gangland wars in Melbourne Australia between 1998 and 2010... and we made a TV miniseries about it.

Last Mile Home

Song by Australian country music singer Troy Cassar-Daley. Very gentle on the mind.

Hope you like it.

Bittersweet

Life is a bag of shit sometimes.

At least we have the Hoodoo Gurus.

Walkabout

A sort of sequel to the last post.

Jenny Agutter when she was beautiful (and I was only about 5 years old). Heck of a film... Definite classic.

"Where the plains forever roll..."

"Raining On The Rock" by John Williamson.

Animal Kingdom

A film about the Melbourne underworld, based around a true and horrific event I remember.

Megalopolis Down Under

State parliament yesterday voted for expanding Melbourne by another 43,600 hectares. Or 134,000 homes as the city's population rises and housing demand spirals.

We already span 100 kilometers east to west which makes Melbourne one of the world's largest cities by land area (population density is a fraction of what it is in comparable sized cities elsewhere). The decision was opposed by the Greens but supported by the Coalition and there is no suprise in either of these positions.

With population a leading topic of an otherwise scrappy, tepid Federal election campaign, this decision makes us wonder where we are headed.

The farms and cow and horse dotted farms just out of town that I remember as a child are vanishing under a sea of houses, and I like that not at all.

"It will put Victoria in a better position to retain its competitive advantage over other states in terms of housing affordability - it is a pity it took so long to do" the newspaper quotes some shmuck from a developers group.

I don't want an "advantage" over other states... they're Australians as well, last time I heard. I want a city that has sustainable service delivery and I frankly don't believe in 'the plan'. The politicians who champion it will be cosily retired before it ever catches up with them.

The newspaper polled the question "Do you support the move to expand Melbourne's city boundaries?"
75% of responders said no. Unfortunately this was passed by a Labor government, meaning both they and the conservatives (who never turn away an opportunity to trash the environment) want it.

It also kills prime food-growing land.
With climate change an indisputable fact (except to religious nuts and Right-wing morons) don't tell me we won't regret this some day....

Oh... and one more thing...
Where's the water going to come from?

The Man from Snowy River

My friend Bob enjoyed his wedding anniversary yesterday.

As a little tribute I'd like to post this segment I found last night. It's the love story from The Man From Snowy River, a tale of colonial Australia based on the famous poem by Banjo Paterson (1864-1941).

The song is a recent US pop ballad and very nice.
Happy anniversary Bob and Chris!



As an aside...
This is the original poem, a hymn to the high country stockmen and wild bush horses of Australia...

Oh Mercy - Get you back

A few dream magpies in this. It's short but sweet.

Weird Week

This week isn't even over yet but it has been an extraordinary one in local news.

Magpie lists his five biggest items for the 'How-The-Fuck-Does-That-Happen?' award...

1/ Carl Williams, the baby-faced kingpin of a vicious gang war in the Melbourne underworld in jail for 2 years of a 35 year sentence... beaten to death by another prisoner - on CCTV in a maximum security prison at Barwon Heads.

2/ National Rugby League club Melbourne Storm stripped of two major and three minor premierships and fined $1,600,000 for salary cap breaches in one of the biggest scandals ever in Australian sport.

3/ Nearly 300 allegations of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in this state since 1996, perpetrated by approximately 100 priests.... and in all that just 1 priest has been defrocked as a result.

4/ On the day of the worst bushfires in Australian history the state police commissioner got her hair done and went out for dinner. She now heads the reconstruction authority.

5/ Crown Casino in Melbourne has confirmed that gamblers leave about $4000 a week at tables and poker machines. After 2 years it goes to the State Revenue Office.