Konnecke.com

CAR DAMAGE 2010-02-01

2010-02-01T22:28:00.001+11:00

CAR DAMAGE 2010-02-01

2010-02-01T22:28:00.000+11:00

CAR DAMAGE 2010-02-01

2010-02-01T22:27:00.000+11:00

2010-01-17T13:53:00.001+11:00

STORMY EVENING 2 2010-01-02

2010-01-03T10:33:00.001+11:00

STORMY EVENING 2010-01-02

2010-01-03T09:45:00.001+11:00

Show Your Vote for COP 15

2009-12-02T18:47:00.002+11:00

EPIC FAIL

Sent to you by Peter Konnecke via Google Reader:

Show Your Vote for COP 15

via Official Google Australia Blog by Lucinda Barlow on 1/12/09

One of the benefits working at Google is the ability to spend 20% of your time on projects you are passionate about. Recently I was lucky enough to attend the Australian Conservation Foundation's Climate Project Summit where I met Al Gore and was trained as a Climate Project Presenter. I developed in my 20% time an open source platform called Show Your Vote to allow people around the world to tell the world's leaders to seal a fair and effective climate deal.

Some major environmental campaigns (including Earth Hour) as well as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are now using Show Your Vote to help visualize the world's public support of the upcoming Copenhagen Climate Summit, the COP15.

You can see all the ways in which you can participate in the COP15 from wherever you are in the world on their "Virtual participation in COP15" page.

Visiting with the UNFCCC in Bonn, Germany to present Show Your Vote

One of the big challenges around activating people on the issue of climate change is that there are a myriad of campaigns, big ones, small local ones, all over the world. I really wanted to address this issue, to provide a single platform that all campaigns and websites can use to collectively show the vote. So I developed a "web element" similar in function to Google's Web Elements, which anyone can insert to allow people to vote, show the vote and provide educational tools on their own website by simply filling out the publisher form, and copying and pasting a single line of HTML code.

Google App Engine provides the hosting solution that makes this all possible.

Show Your Vote has three tabs: Vote, Explore, and Learn. The Vote tab allows individuals and organisations to show their vote.

The Explore tab displays individual votes aggregated by post code, and organisations by their own custom icons. The voting map is powered by Google Maps API. Additionally, social networking tools powered by Google Friend Connect allow people within the global community to share their messages of support. Individual votes are aggregated into post codes, and organisations can upload their own icon to the map.

Finally, the Learn tab contains rich educational pieces, narrated by some of the top names in science, NGOs and the political world. These tours were created by the Google Earth Outreach team using Google Earth's new touring capabilities.

In the countdown to the Copenhagen Climate Conference, I'm hopeful that we can collect enough of the world's public show of support to help amplify the need to change climate change, to drive collective action and to reinforce the need for our world leaders to act now. Please join me in helping to show the vote!

I'd like to thank fellow Googlers Pamela Fox, Bob Aman, Rupert Breheny and Benjamin Kott for volunteering their time in helping to make Show Your Vote possible.

Posted by Justin Baird, Innovationist, Google Australia

Things you can do from here:

Subscribe to Official Google Australia Blog using Google Reader
Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

Google News: Virgin opens Melbourne-Los Angeles route

2009-12-01T22:09:00.001+11:00

Virgin opens Melbourne-Los Angeles route

Sydney Morning Herald - ‎8 hours ago‎

There were roller girls in denim hotpants, a conga band belting out rhythms, a slew of celebrities and a lone State Government minister in the international ...

V Australia launches third Aussie destination from LA Peanuts! Low Cost Airline News

V Australia launches Melbourne operation Aviation Record

Los Angeles Times (blog)

all 12 news articles »

Browse all of today's headlines on Google News

Google News: How Jetstar is devouring Qantas

2009-12-01T22:07:00.001+11:00

How Jetstar is devouring Qantas

Crikey - ‎7 hours ago‎

Forget any hope of a quick revival in business demand for those nice big "full service" Qantas seats. Qantas this morning posted figures ...

Australia's international passenger traffic rise 'best since 2005' micebtn

Qantas hopes to make price rises stick Sydney Morning Herald

Business Spectator - TopNews New Zealand - Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (subscription) - The Australian

all 33 news articles »

Browse all of today's headlines on Google News

2009-11-30T21:22:00.005+11:00

2009-11-30T21:22:00.003+11:00

2009-11-30T21:22:00.001+11:00

2009-11-30T21:21:00.001+11:00

2009-11-29T21:49:00.001+11:00

2009-11-29T21:48:00.006+11:00

2009-11-29T21:48:00.005+11:00

2009-11-29T21:48:00.003+11:00

2009-11-29T21:48:00.001+11:00

2009-11-29T21:32:00.003+11:00

2009-11-29T21:32:00.001+11:00

2009-11-29T21:31:00.004+11:00

2009-11-29T21:31:00.003+11:00

2009-11-29T21:31:00.001+11:00

UN Sanctioned Thievery of every Nation's Soverignty

2009-11-29T17:45:00.000+11:00

Andrew Bolt of The Herald Sun writes :
Wednesday, November 04, 2009 at 07:20am

NEXT month Kevin Rudd flies to Copenhagen to help seal a United Nations
deal to cut the world's emissions - and to make Australia hand over part
of its wealth

So keen is the Prime Minister to get this new global-warming treaty
signed that he's been appointed a "friend of the chairman" to tie up
loose ends.

So here's the question: is Rudd really going to approve a draft treaty
that could force Australia to hand over an astonishing $7 billion a year
to a new and unelected global authority?

Yes, that's $7 billion, or about $330 from every man, woman and child.
Every year. To be passed on to countries such as China and Bangladesh,
and the sticky-fingered in-between.

And a second question, perhaps even more important: is Rudd really going
to approve a draft treaty which also gives that unelected authority the
power to fine us billions of dollars more if it doesn't like our green
policies?

It is incredible that these questions have not been debated by either
the Rudd Government or the Opposition, whose hapless leader, Malcolm
Turnbull, on Monday admitted he did not even have a copy of this treaty.
Australia's wealth and sovereign rights may soon be signed away, so why
hasn't the public at least been informed?

In case you think what I'm saying is just too incredible - too
far-fetched
- to be true, let me quote this draft treaty.

Here is paragraph 33 of annex 1, which has already been discussed at UN
meetings involving Australian negotiators in Bangkok and now Barcelona.
Brackets indicate phrases which still need final agreement:

"By 2020 the scale of financial flows to support adaptation in
developing countries must be [at least USD 67 billion] [in the range of
USD 70-140 billion] per year."

Plus, says paragraph 17 of annex III E, developed countries such as
Australia should "compensate for damage" to the economies of poorer
countries "and also compensate for lost opportunities, resources, lives,
land and dignity" allegedly caused by our gases.

And here comes the bill, in paragraph 41 of annex 1 of this extortion
note: "[Financial resources of the Convention Adaptation Fund"] [may]
[shall] include: (a) [Assessed contributions [of at least 0.7% of the
annual GDP of developed country parties] ... "

In fact, deeper in the draft our bill for our "historical climate debt,
including adaptation debt" climbs to at "at least [0.5-1 per cent of
GDP]".

Wow. Let's do the sums. Australia's GDP is about $1000 billion a year.
So this demand for 0.7 per cent of our annual wealth works out to $7
billion a year, to be handed over to a new global agency of the United
Nations.

That's your money, folks. Billions to be sent to Third World governments
and authoritarian regimes to allegedly deal with a warming that actually
halted in 2001. And all funnelled through the UN, which brought us such
fast-money wheezes as the Oil-for-Food corruption scandal.

Never have the Third World's demands for the First World's cash been so
brazen.

But wait, there's more. Because never has the Left's mad goal of world
government been so close, either.

This draft treaty, on which Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has
worked, also calls for the creation of a new "board" of global warming
bureaucrats appointed by the countries signing the Copenhagen deal.

The powers this board will have over us are astonishing. For a start, it
will check our emissions, and could "impose financial penalties, at a
minimum of 10 times the market price of carbon, for any emissions in
excess".

Work it out: if we exceed our emissions target by, say, as much as Rudd
warned two years ago we'd overshoot by 2012, we'd be up for a fine of
$1.4 billion even with the very lowest carbon price under Rudd's plan.

Even more outrageously, this new world body could impose "penalties and
fines on non-compliance of developed country parties" such as Australia
that failed to honour "commitments to ... provide support in the form of
financial resources, technology transfer and capacity building".

All this gives a remote and unelected world body a huge and
unprecedented say in how we run our own economy and our foreign affairs.
For instance, any Australian government that decided to keep gassy
coal-fired power stations running to avoid blackouts or to save
Australian jobs potentially faces huge fines from foreigners.

Likewise, if it stopped handing over technological breakthroughs to a
China or some African leader it no longer trusted, it could be fined
again.

But wait, there's still more.

You'd think this draft treaty that Rudd has worked on would at least
give us a say over how our billions are spent.

But no. UN bodies are already notoriously hard for any one nation to
supervise or restrain. Even the United States, the biggest donor of all,
could not stop the corruption at UNESCO two decades ago, and was forced
to walk out in protest. Nor could it stop dictatorships such as Libya
and Cuba from later holding key roles in the UN's human rights bodies.

And with this new global warming body, the vote of the paying West will
be overruled even more decisively by the spending rest.

Under this draft treaty, the new board's biggest spending arm - the
"adaptation fund" - will be managed by a "governing board comprising
three members from the five United Nations regional groups, two members
from small island developing nations and two members from the least
developed countries".

That formula means the industrialised nations which pay most could hold
just one of the nine seats on the body which will then spend their cash.
Our cash.

That's the treaty being prepared for the Copenhagen meeting. That's the
billions we risk having to hand over. That's the power we risk losing
over our own affairs.

Now ask: why hasn't this been the subject of furious debate? Where's the
Government? Where's the Opposition?

Well, here's Rudd's one response to this threat, given only this week:
"At this stage there's no global agreement as to what long-term
financing arrangements should underpin a deal at Copenhagen."

That's a "trust me", with no bottom line. In fact, Rudd is already
reaching into his - your - wallet: "Australia, once a global agreement
is shaped, would always be prepared to put forward its fair share."But
how much? Seven billion dollars a year? Five? Three? Hello?

As for Turnbull .... well, it's tragic.

Badgered by Alan Jones on 2GB on Monday on this very point, he said: "Of
course the poorest countries are going to need assistance ... (But)
there is no way that anything like this would be accepted without
extensive debate."

So where is that debate, Malcolm? Why aren't you screaming from the
rooftops for reassurances that our wealth won't be squandered and our
powers handed over?

Just this week the European Union said it would pay its share of an $82
billion cheque to this new body if countries such as ours come on board,
too
- so who's applying the brakes?

Not our politicians, for sure.

So if you oppose this surrender of our billions and our freedom, better
start saying so now, before it's all too late.
http://blogs.news.com.au:80/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/com

2009-11-08T22:20:00.004+11:00