Critical Times

This is Cate’s year. It’s Angelina’s year, too. Plus it’s a year in which we will see a new Spider-Man, more from Hannibal Lecter and further episodes in the lives of Shrek, Mr Bean, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Harry Potter; a year in which the Caribbean will continue to be troubled by undead Pirates, Jackie Chan will be caught in the Rush Hour for a third time and the Aliens, with slightly wearying predictability, will choose to pit themselves against the Predators for the second time.

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IN 2006, those hoping that humans would finally put aside their differences to live in peace and harmony were once again disappointed. The twin scourges of Islamic extremism and the Bush administration continued to ravage the globe, although militant Islam helpfully restricted much of its outrage to irrelevant personages such as Danish cartoonists and the Pope.

President Bush spent the year on the defensive, showing the finely honed political nous of a man at the height of his capacities for doing nothing.

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Today, on our last broadcast for 2006 – Democracy Now! takes a look at the number of journalists killed this past year. A new report by the Committee to Protect Journalists finds 2006 to be one of the most dangerous years for journalists ever—55 journalists were killed in direct connection to their work.

In Iraq alone, violence claimed the lives of 32 journalists.

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In three years, the continent has suffered a net loss of 46 cubic kilometres of fresh water — enough to fill Port Phillip Bay twice.

Initial results of an extraordinary international satellite project provide yet another indication that Australia is drying out.

Based on current consumption patterns of about 1.

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“The gap between what the science tells us is necessary and what the politics is delivering is still significant.”

Not the words of a environmental campaigner or a frustrated climate scientist, but the plain assessment from Britain’s Environment Secretary David Miliband as the 2006 round of United Nations climate negotiations whimpered to a close.

But environmental campaigners obviously agreed.

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The weather bureau says October in particular was very unusual, with the hottest October day on record, and bushfires followed by severe frosts and even low-level snow.

There were more frosts in November while warm and windy conditions this month made life difficult for firefighters battling blazes in eastern Tasmania.

Senior forecaster Barry Becker said the year also started out strangely.

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A giant ice shelf the size of 11,000 football fields has snapped free from Canada’s Arctic, scientists said.

The mass of ice broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 800 kilometres south of the North Pole, but no one was present to see it in Canada’s remote north.

Scientists using satellite images later noticed that it became a newly formed ice island in just an hour and left a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake.

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The Greens say the findings of a prime ministerial task force on nuclear energy are bad news for the nuclear industry.

Prime Minister John Howard released the final report of the review into nuclear energy, uranium mining and processing this morning.

Greens Senator Christine Milne says the report shows uranium will not be a suitable energy alternative for at least 15 years.

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The US proposes listing polar bears as threatened, the first time it’s singled out climate change as the potential driving force behind the demise of a species.

The proposal by the Interior Department’s US Fish and Wildlife Service is linked to the fact that rising temperatures in the Arctic are reducing the sea ice that polar bears need for hunting, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne told a news conference.

“Polar bears are one of nature’s ultimate survivors, able to live and thrive in one of the world’s harshest environments,” he said.

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people looking for holiday jobs in the first summer of the Work Choices laws are being urged to check employment contracts carefully to ensure they stipulate fair pay and conditions.

Increasing numbers of summer workers, including university and school students, will find it harder to make extra money working nights, weekends and public holidays because employers can now dispense with penalty and overtime rates, union leaders said.

The Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Union pointed to workplace agreements lodged with the Office of the Employment Advocate for a new Subway franchise and a new Oporto franchise.

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Amongst other invaluable work, every year Project Censored (.org) put together what they consider to be the years top 25 under-reported stories. This list for 2007 is out now.

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This is an article written a while back by MediaStrike when the anti-war movement was still kicking. There’s a lot of information in it that’s still relevant.

Proportional to the length of the conflict, there has been more footage recorded of the current phase of the Iraq war than of any other war in history.

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tThe evil Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter himself are leading the field in betting on who will kill the schoolboy wizard in the last of the popular book series, British bookmaker William Hill says.

Author JK Rowling said last week the final installment of the adventures is to be called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, sparking speculation that the hero will meet his end.

“JK mentioned that Harry might be killed off and the general consensus seems to be that … to ensure that Voldemort dies he will need to be sacrificed,” said William Hill spokesman Rupert Adams.

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A COMMON parasite can increase a women’s attractiveness to the opposite sex but also make men more stupid, an Australian researcher says.

About 40 per cent of the world’s population is infected with Toxoplasma gondii, including about eight million Australians.

Human infection generally occurs when people eat raw or undercooked meat that has cysts containing the parasite, or accidentally ingest some of the parasite’s eggs excreted by an infected cat.

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US Toll in Iraq Surpasses That of 9/11 By Christopher Torchia The Associated Press Tuesday 26 December 2006 At least 36 Iraqis died Tuesday in bombings, officials said, including a coordinated strike that killed 25 in western Baghdad. Separately, the deaths of six U.S. read more »

A new study has revealed just how dramatic the ozone loss in the Antarctic has been over the past 20 years compared to the same phenomenon in the Arctic.

The study found “massive” and “widespread” localised ozone depletion in the heart of Antartica’s ozone hole region, beginning in the late 1970s, but becoming more pronounced in the 1980s and
‘90s.

The US government scientists who conducted the study said that there was an almost complete absence of ozone in certain atmospheric air samples taken after 1980, compared to earlier decades.

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A sense of demoralisation has plagued the progressive activists for some time now. This feeling became particularly severe after the invasion of Iraq went a head despite record breaking protests. A lot of activists decided that grass-roots activism could no longer achieve significant social change.

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“Ho ho ho!” may become “ouch ouch ouch!” for Santa Claus impersonators seeking to wing it with a fake beard.

Sweden’s national testing institute has tested six models of beard on sale in the Scandinavian country and found that two of them turned into a raging inferno when coming into contact with a naked flame.

“We placed the beards on a peg in a laboratory.

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Former Ansett employees and their families are calling on the Federal Government to release more than $90 million still owing to more than 9,000 workers.

They have held a protest outside Kirribilli House in Sydney to demand the entitlements left unpaid since the airline’s collapse in 2001.

The Transport Workers Union (TWU) says the Federal Government has raised more than enough money to pay the entitlements with the help of the Ansett ticket levy.

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