Linkage

On Monday, MPs will mark the UDHR’s anniversary by gathering for a candlelight vigil, under the title ‘Parliamentarians for Peace.’ How ironic that the majority have given the green light to some of the most appalling levels of death and destruction we have witnessed in decades.

[…] 

Across the board, our political representatives are showing monstrous hypocrisy in their commitment to a document they show no signs of respecting. As we speak, our government is attempting to circumvent international law in order to implement its assault on the rights of refugees. And they are emboldened by an opposition front bench that refuses to make the moral case for the right to asylum. The Tories have not ‘failed’ on immigration because they have ‘lost control of the borders’. They have failed because they have proven incapable of protecting the human rights of those seeking a place of safety. Refugees are not political pawns to be debated and disempowered. They are human beings, whose hopes and dreams should not be sacrificed to appease the right-wing press. 

Undated, with the usual quotes plus quite a few that are new to me.

According to the Bank of England;

"... Whenever a bank makes a loan, it simultaneously creates a matching deposit in the borrower’s bank account, thereby creating new money.
The reality of how money is created today differs from the description found in some economics textbooks.".

Recently, an Australian-Palestinian friend of mine was invited to appear on Australia’s national television network to discuss the situation in and around Gaza. His white interviewers posed all the usual questions: Can you defend what we’ve seen from Hamas militants? How has the Palestinian cause been helped by this violence? How can anyone defend the slaughter of young music lovers at a music festival? Do you defend Hamas? They probably expected a defensive reaction from him, but calmly, in his smooth Australian-accented English, my friend had already turned the interview on its head. “I want to know why I’m here today, and why I haven’t been here for the past year,” he said gently. By the eve of October 7, he pointed out, Israeli forces had already killed more than two hundred Palestinians in 2023. The siege in Gaza was more than sixteen years old, and Israel had been operating outside international law for seventy-five years. “Normal” in Palestine was a killing a day—yet a killing a day in a decades-old occupation was hardly news; it certainly wasn’t justification for a live interview on a national television network. Palestinians were being given the opportunity to speak now because the Western media suddenly cared, and they cared (“as we should care,” my friend added) because, this time, the victims included Israeli civilians. In the days after October 7, Australia made a strong show of support for Israel: Parliament and the Sydney Opera House were lit up in the colors of the Israeli flag; the Prime Minister said pro-Palestinian rallies should be called off out of respect for the Israeli dead; the foreign minister was lambasted for saying Israel should endeavor to minimize civilian deaths in Gaza. “Well, what about our lives?” my friend asked.

"What about lighting up a building for us? When our government lights up every building blue and white, how are we [Australian Palestinians] supposed to feel? Are we not Australian? Should nobody care about us? A 14-year-old boy was set on fire in the West Bank by Israeli settlers. What about us?"

The news anchors were caught off guard. This isn’t how these interviews are supposed to go.

This report provides an assessment of how well public transport is accounted for in Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

We can reduce urban emissions and decarbonise people’s daily mobility faster, more reliably and affordably with public transport and active mobility.

Society will benefit from every increase in modal share to public transport, through fewer road fatalities and injuries, more inclusive access to opportunities, reduced congestion, improved air quality and freeing up space in our cities.

The first Global Stocktake (GST) shows we are off track, but what national policies and measures are already in place in NDCs and what are the opportunities for more climate action with public transport over this critical decade?

This report identifies a range of options for more ambitious NDCs, which can form the basis of an outline policy template for public transport and active mobility. Building capacity to support its adoption and implementation can provide the strong foundation necessary to progressively and effectively enhance climate ambition.

This is just staggering.

Council to Homeless Persons chief executive Deborah Di Natale says homelessness has changed dramatically across the country, and families living rough like this in Bendigo are not uncommon.

“What we used to see before was mainly single people,” she says.

“But the trend that is emerging is that we’re seeing families setting up tents in the bush because there is simply nowhere left for them to go.”

As the weather warms up, there’s another pressing concern for these families.

Fire.

“It’s really alarming that some Victorians find themselves sleeping rough in bushland during what’s tipped to be a hot, dry summer,” Sarah Toohey, from the Community Housing Industry Association Victoria, says.

Sorbonne University's open science policy is reflected in its firm stance in negotiations with commercial publishers, its strong support for the HAL open archive and its encouragement of open access to research data. As it is developing open access to publications and research results and enabling its academic  community to regain control over  the results of their own work and opening up science to society, promoting open research information about its publications and scientific output is a priority.

Sorbonne University has therefore decided to discontinue its subscription to the Web of Science database and Clarivate's bibliometric tools in 2024. Furthermore, Sorbonne University has decided to redirect its efforts towards the exploration of open, free and participative tools. This decision is in line with the University’s overall policy of openness, and it is now working to consolidate a sustainable, international alternative, in particular by using OpenAlex.

A partnership agreement will soon be signed between Sorbonne University and OpenAlex to formalize their mutual contributions and commitments to improve the quality of data relating to Sorbonne University and to support developments that will meet the needs of its community, and thus the international research community.

Sorbonne University's choices are in line with those of Leiden's CWTS (The Centre for Science and Technology Studies), which has announced that it is making the openness of research information a priority, and is currently working on a fully transparent and reproducible version of its rankings, based on open data from CrossRef and OpenAlex.

 The ancient Library of Alexandria aimed to create a universal collection of scholarship, indexed using the first library catalog, the Pinakes. We're working toward that same goal, but making it completely open:

• Our data is free and reusable, available via bulk download or API,
• our code is fully open-source, and
• we're governed by a sustainable and transparent nonprofit.

We believe the global research system is one of humankind's most beautiful creations. OpenAlex aims to make that whole beautiful creation available to everyone, everywhere. 

"What is the message we are sending Palestinians if we cannot unite behind a call to halt the relentless bombardment of Gaza?" Deputy UAE U.N. Ambassador Mohamed Abushahab asked the council. "Indeed, what is the message we are sending civilians across the world who may find themselves in similar situations?"

[…] 

Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Robert Wood told the council that the draft resolution was a rushed, imbalanced text "that was divorced from reality, that would not move the needle forward on the ground in any concrete way."

"We do not support this resolution's call for an unsustainable ceasefire that will only plant the seeds for the next war," said Wood.

The U.S. had offered substantial amendments to the draft, including a condemnation of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks that Israel says killed 1,200 people and in which 240 people were taken hostage.

Britain's U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward said her country abstained because there was no condemnation of Hamas.

"Israel needs to be able to address the threat posed by Hamas and it needs to do so in a manner that abides by international humanitarian law so that such an attack can never be carried out again," she told the council.

Public lecture on 21 November 2023 by Prof Carl Bergstrom from The University of Washington. This lecture was part of the AIMOS 2023 conference (http://aimosconference.com/).

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