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The right to disarm

The right to disarm

'Further to Craig Forbes' piece about political chew toys [C8]. I recently found a Donald Trump squeaky dog toy,' reveals Jonathan Vincent of Emu Heights. 'My puppy loved it, but within five minutes she had removed both his arms. This silenced Trump's squeak [Result! – Granny], and the disarmament is great for world peace.'
'My siblings and I learnt about antimacassars [C8] very early in life,' says David Pigott of North Parramatta. 'The letter 'A' was my mum's favourite when playing I Spy with my Little Eye.'
Warren Menteith of Bali describes the antimacassar as 'a classic marketing ploy. Create the problem so you can flog the solution'. He also explains that 'Macassar, the capital of Sulawesi (Celebes) gave its name to this item. It seems long before Brylcreem and other pomades, ebony oil from Makassar was the top-selling product.'
While well aware that former PM Bob Hawke was a bit of a ladies man, Ron Besdansky of Northbridge was still taken aback when viewing Wikipedia 's Born on This Day page: 1929 – Hazel Hawke, Australian social worker and pianist, 23rd Spouse of the Prime Minister of Australia (died 2013).
Jeff Stanton of Strathfield has a decidedly European take on signalling (C8) when he says: 'using indicators is seen by many as providing information to the enemy'.
'Mishaps really do come in threes,' reckons Viv Mackenzie of Port Hacking. 'A friend should be enjoying the best snow in ages. However, she has been hospitalised with asthma, her husband has come down with COVID and another member of the party has broken a knee. Otherwise, everyone else is having a great time.'
Generational talent Greg Leisner of Blackhead writes: 'I'm of an age now where the only comfortable shoes are expensive stretchy sneaker types (black for weddings and funerals) but resist the pejorative term 'Boomer', and I am proposing that we be called the INDY generation. As in, 'I'm Not Dead Yet', any thoughts?'
Column 8's recent Coldplaygate (C8) headline got Richard Jary of Waitara thinking: 'Perhaps at 61, I'm too young to remember, but why does every scandal now have to be somethinggate? What did they call scandals before Watergate?'
'I purchased a mood lamp which soon put me in a bad mood as it required an app to set it up,' laments Susan McLaren of Windradyne. 'This 'free' app was soon asking for my credit card details.'
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Investment bank to face heat over climate commitments
Investment bank to face heat over climate commitments

Perth Now

time20 minutes ago

  • Perth Now

Investment bank to face heat over climate commitments

Australia's largest investment bank will be in activists' sights when shareholders gather at its global headquarters for its annual general meeting. Environmental group Market Forces plans to have a four-metre-tall mock gas flare outside Macquarie Group's new Martin Place offices in Sydney on Thursday morning, representing the bank's financing of climate pollution. At the meeting Macquarie faces its first climate-focused shareholder resolution calling on the $86 billion company to outline how its financing for fossil fuel projects is aligned with its net-zero commitments. Activists say they're concerned about Macquarie's commitment to global climate goals after the bank followed US peers JPMorgan, Citi and Bank of America in exiting the Net Zero Banking Alliance in February, not long after President Donald Trump took office. Macquarie has more than doubled its financing for oil and gas in the past two years, Market Forces says. "Macquarie's reputation as a green financial institution is completely at odds with its investments in one of Australia's biggest new gas developments," said Market Forces policy analyst Morgan Pickett, referring to its financing of a $100 million gas fracking project in the Northern Territory's Beetaloo Basin. Macquarie in late 2024 provided the funding for two of the gas companies most active in the Basin, Beetaloo Energy Australia and Tamboran Resources. Australia's Department of Industry, Science and Resources says Beetaloo has the potential to rival the world's best gas projects, and developing it could create thousands of jobs and drive significant economic growth in the territory. Activists say moving ahead with another gas project is irresponsible as the planet tips further into a climate emergency. "As a climate scientist, I'm appalled that Macquarie Group is claiming to be green yet is lending to companies blasting ahead with new gas projects adding to irreversible global warming," Lesley Hughes, climate change scientist and emerita professor of biology, said in a statement provided by Market Forces. Macquarie is recommending shareholders reject the climate resolution, which asks the bank to disclose its exposure to fossil fuel companies and detail its approach for funding them in light of its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. Macquarie says the science behind climate change is "clear and unequivocal" but it believes in "a managed, orderly and just transition". "This means supporting carbon-intensive industries and companies including those in the oil/gas, electricity, agriculture, mining, transport and waste sectors to decarbonise, while protecting the vital services and jobs that our communities rely on," Macquarie said. Market Forces says four global investors have backed the shareholder resolution: the pension funds of New York City, the UK's Church of England and the largest private pension fund in Norway, as well as Melbourne-based fund manager ELM Responsible Investments.

Countries have a duty to battle climate change: court
Countries have a duty to battle climate change: court

West Australian

time20 minutes ago

  • West Australian

Countries have a duty to battle climate change: court

An international court says countries have an obligation to prevent harm from climate change and redress damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Activists welcomed the non-binding advisory opinion issued by a 15-judge panel at the International Court of Justice in the Netherlands overnight as a step in the right direction. The move to ask the world court to opine on the issue was initiated by Vanuatu University law students who argued the people of Pacific island countries were unjustly bearing the brunt of climate change compared to high-emitting economies. "The degradation of the climate system and of other parts of the environment impairs the enjoyment of a range of rights protected by human rights law," presiding judge Yuji Iwasawa said, reading out the court's opinion. The ICJ decision "confirms that states' obligations to protect human rights require taking measures to protect the climate system ... including mitigation and adaptation measures," judge Hilary Charlesworth, an Australian member of the court, said in a separate opinion. "The ICJ's decision brings us closer to a world where governments can no longer turn a blind eye to their legal responsibilities," Vishal Prasad, director of the Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, said. "It affirms a simple truth of climate justice: those who did the least to fuel this crisis deserve protection, reparations and a future". The 133-page opinion was in response to two questions that the United Nations General Assembly put to the UN court: what are countries obliged to do under international law to protect the climate and environment from human-caused greenhouse gas emissions; and what are the legal consequences for governments when their acts, or lack of action, have significantly harmed the climate and environment? Vanuatu Minister for Climate Change Adaptation Ralph Regenvanu called the deliberation a "very important course correction in this critically important time". "For the first time in history, the ICJ has spoken directly about the biggest threat facing humanity," he said at The Hague. Judge Iwasawa said the two questions "represent more than a legal problem: they concern an existential problem of planetary proportions that imperils all forms of life and the very health of our planet". "International law, whose authority has been invoked by the General Assembly, has an important but ultimately limited role in resolving this problem," he said. "A complete solution to this daunting, and self-inflicted, problem requires the contribution of all fields of human knowledge, whether law, science, economics or any other. "Above all, a lasting and satisfactory solution requires human will and wisdom - at the individual, social and political levels - to change our habits, comforts and current way of life in order to secure a future for ourselves and those who are yet to come." with AP

Planning a trip to the US? Don't mention the Donald
Planning a trip to the US? Don't mention the Donald

Sydney Morning Herald

time2 hours ago

  • Sydney Morning Herald

Planning a trip to the US? Don't mention the Donald

There are those who misguidedly believe that not only should sport and politics never mix, travel and politics shouldn't ever coexist either. Fat chance. As the world has witnessed with international sport over the decades, the notion that it and world events can be separated has proved historically risible, and now we witness overseas travel becoming markedly more politicised. Nowhere is it more starkly illustrated than what appears to be the weaponisation of tourism for political purposes by the Trump administration and its facilitators, who appear to be Googling overtime in search of any criticism of the president and his policies. This article, and others I've written critical of US treatment of tourists under the Trump administration in my role as travel editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, will likely render any visit by me to the United States a risky proposition. I'm not complaining. For me, it's no loss. It's still a wide, wonderful and mostly welcoming world out there, and word has it that our far more rational Canadian friends could do with a little Antipodean love in the form of a holiday there. Loading So forget about yours truly, and consider the recent case of a reader of the Traveller title of the above publications. Only a few hours before the departure of his flight earlier this month to visit his daughter in the US, Australian Bruce Hyland received notice from American immigration authorities that he would not be permitted to enter the country. This news came after having been approved to visit. 'No reason for a cancellation was provided [for the decision to refuse entry],' Hyland writes in his Traveller letter, 'so one is in the Kafkaesque situation of having breached some official procedure, while having no way to appeal the decision or determine what that procedure could be.'

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