"For me, what we’ve got to do now is hunker down. The units of survival are going to be local communities, so I’m urging local communities to get together. Finland is offering a great example because the Finnish government has sent a letter to all of their citizens warning of future emergencies, whether they’re earthquakes, floods, droughts, or storms. They’re going to come and they’re going to be more urgent and prolonged. "Governments will not be able to respond on the scale or speed that is needed for these emergencies, so Finland is telling their citizens that they’re going to be at the front line of whatever hits and better be sure you’re ready to meet it. Find out who on your block can’t walk because you’re going to have to deal with that. Who has wheelchairs? Who has fire extinguishers? Where is the available water? Do you have batteries or generators? Start assessing the routes of escape. You’re going to have to inventory your community, and that’s really what we have to start doing now." ‘It’s too late’: David Suzuki says the fight against climate change is lost ipolitics.ca/2025/07/02/its-…

IRAN: Tehran is facing an acute water emergency. Historic drought and low rainfall have depleted reservoirs, prompting warnings from President Masoud Pezeshkian that the capital may need to be relocated. The Amir Kabir Dam holds only 8 % of its capacity, leaving less than two weeks of drinking water. Authorities are urging citizens to reduce consumption as rationing looms.

Fine piece by @PaulBongiorno on utterly illegal sacking of #GoughWhitlam 50 years ago this week. John Kerr was a drunk who plotted with power hungry Malcolm Fraser to flout our #Constitution. Australian coup: Reflecting Whitlam’s dismissal thesaturdaypaper.com.au/comm… via @SatPaper

I've been so disenfranchised with politics for the last 5 years. Zack Polanski is an absolute breath of fresh air. He's completely flipped the way I see the world politically in about 2 months. God I hope there's a green wave in the next election. #lastleg #votegreen

Australia has a long history of dodgy deals around offshore detention. We’ve repeatedly paid hundreds of millions of dollars to companies linked to alleged criminal activities. Again and again the Morrison and Albanese govts have hidden the details of those deals. It’s a disgrace. theage.com.au/national/mind-…

👏 @ZackPolanski absolutely nailed the tone that the mainstream has lost 👉confident, compassionate, and funny - with great grooves 🕺 at the end! Just the antidote we need to Starmer’s managerial dead air and Farage’s cynical populism.

Murdoch denies my account of our lunch. I stand by it. He was intimately involved with Fraser in the Dismissal. And my Tokyo appointment. #theDismissal #Whitlam #Murdoch #auspol johnmenadue.com/post/2025/11…

Chemical companies called her "hysterical" and an "unmarried spinster." She was dying of cancer while they attacked her. Her book started the environmental movement. They tried to destroy her. She won. Rachel Carson was 54 years old, already one of America's most celebrated nature writers. Her book The Sea Around Us had spent 86 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. With great Sketches! She was respected, successful, financially secure. She could have retired comfortably, written more lyrical books about the ocean, enjoyed her success. Instead, she wrote a book that would make her the most hated woman in corporate America. Silent Spring hit bookstores in September 1962. Within months, it changed everything. But the chemical industry—worth billions of dollars—decided to destroy her. And Rachel Carson was dying. They just didn't know it yet. Rachel had grown up loving nature. As a child in rural Pennsylvania, she'd explored forests and streams, collected specimens, dreamed of becoming a writer. She'd become a marine biologist at a time when women in science faced constant discrimination. She'd worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, writing bulletins about conservation, studying ocean ecosystems. In 1951, she published The Sea Around Us—a poetic exploration of ocean science that became a surprise bestseller. Suddenly, Rachel Carson was famous. She could write full-time. She was happy. Her life was good. Then, in 1958, she received a letter from a friend, Olga Huckins. Olga described how state officials had sprayed DDT pesticide over her private bird sanctuary. Afterward, birds died by the hundreds. The sanctuary was silent. Rachel had been hearing similar stories. DDT—dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane—was being sprayed everywhere. On crops. On forests. On suburban neighborhoods to kill mosquitoes. Children played in yards where DDT had just been sprayed. And birds were dying. Eagles. Falcons. Songbirds. Their eggshells were thinning. Chicks couldn't survive. Entire species were declining. Rachel started researching. What she found horrified her. DDT and other synthetic pesticides were poison. Not just to insects—to everything. They accumulated in soil, in water, in the bodies of animals and humans. They moved up the food chain, concentrating at higher levels. Birds of prey were especially vulnerable. And nobody was regulating them. Chemical companies were making billions selling pesticides, claiming they were perfectly safe. Government agencies accepted the companies' safety claims without independent testing. Rachel decided to write about it. She knew it would be controversial. The chemical industry was powerful. But the truth needed to be told. She spent four years researching. Reading scientific papers. Interviewing researchers. Documenting case after case of pesticide damage. And then, in early 1960, she found a lump in her breast. Cancer. Rachel's doctors recommended aggressive treatment: surgery, radiation. The prognosis wasn't good. Breast cancer in 1960 was often fatal. She could have stopped writing. Focused on her health. Told her publisher the book would be delayed indefinitely. She didn't. She had surgeries. She endured radiation treatments that left her weak and nauseated. She lost her hair. And she kept writing. She wrote in hospital beds. She wrote between treatments. She wrote through pain and exhaustion. Because she knew: if she didn't finish this book, nobody would. And people needed to know the truth. Silent Spring was completed in early 1962. It was published in September, first serialized in The New Yorker, then as a book. The response was explosive. Silent Spring opened with a haunting passage: a description of a town where spring came, but no birds sang. The orchards bloomed, but no bees pollinated. Children played in yards dusted with white powder, and then got sick. It wasn't fiction. Rachel was describing what was already happening in towns across America. Via A Solo Traveller

Five environmental NGOs from Japan and Indonesia submitted a request and a questionnaire to Hanwa Co. Ltd. today, demanding the company cease imports of wood pellets from Indonesia. Voices of strong concern are rising in the local area stating, "Indonesia's forests are not fuel."

Maria Corina Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and one of the bravest voices against Venezuela’s dictator, sent a message from her hiding place to the Berlin Parliament where the World Liberty Congress gathers freedom fighters who are each a nightmare to the dictators ruling their nations. This is the Berlin Parliament, in the city where the fall of a wall once divided a nation, and later became the symbol of freedom. Today, alongside representatives from dozens of countries ruled by dictators, I stand here in this symbolic city, calling on democratic nations to unite against tyranny, just as dictators unite to protect their power. @MariaCorinaYA @WLCongress #unitedagainstdictators

Solidarity with @pcs_union workers at the British Library. 300 workers on strike. Some of them having to take second jobs or taking out loans just to be able to survive. A Pay "award" below inflation is a pay cut. Unacceptable. Solidarity - and keep organising! ✊🏼

Well what’d ya know? “Pentagon confirms the ‘benefit’ of AUKUS deal” for US Indo-Pacific defence. @michaelkoziol SMH/Age. Yes $A368B to prop up US N subs production .. and Australia gets expanded US bases on its soil and is now a nuclear target in US war with China over Taiwan.

Focusing on the EPBC but dropping the ball on protection johnmenadue.com/post/2025/11… Queensland has announced an expansion of native forest logging, while Victoria has reneged on key forest protections and paved the way for logging to restart in its state forests. #springst #qldpol

Istanbul, a city of 16 million, could run out of water by 2050. Iraq’s biggest reservoir has already hit “dead water” for the first time in half a century. This is what collapse looks like: rivers drying, cities thirsting, and leaders lying that we still have time.

"For essentially the last 25 years every single resources minister, bar one, has left Parliament and gone to work for the resources industry." - Senator Larissa Waters at our Revenue Summit 2025 @larissawaters #auspol

A mask-drop moment: Developers’ true attitudes to the poorer end of society.

“The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and clearest signs of a culture descending into barbarism.” Hannah Arendt

“China is now making more money from exporting green technology than America makes from exporting fossil fuels. This trend will continue simply because renewables are cheap.” Gift link: China’s clean-energy revolution will reshape markets and politics economist.com/leaders/2025/1…

“The more Australians learn about the #AUKUS sub program, the more skeptical they become”. People don’t have to be a submariner (as I am) to work out the $368B ‘deal’ is a dud, they just need common sense. Clearly that’s missing from our national security leadership. #auspol

FOR THE SWIFT PARROT piped.video/efmMVS9MEZ8?si=txhO… via @YouTube Lonnavale Forests, Huon Valley, Tasmania Critical breeding habitat #SaveSwifties #SPIBA