On the 267th day of the year I took part in a global day of action: Moving Planet – a worldwide day to move beyond fossil fuels.
Archives for category: On This Day
On the 248th day of the year I learned that fighting has killed something like 35,000 civilians in Pakistan in the last 10 years.
On the 247th day of the year Jakob Kellenberger, the head of the Red Cross was permitted to enter Syria, scheduled to meet with the president in Damascus.
Meanwhile, I wasted hours of my life at a disappointing and pointless Sydney Opera House performance. Hours I will never get back.
On the last day of winter:
Police car marked “DOG” with siren, pushing through us at the lights.
Heavy traffic near home causing me to take the alternative route.
A helicopter circling our neighbourhood.
Three, separate, not all that unusual, unrelated events in my morning.
Or so I thought.
Until the evening news revealed a man had been near-fatally stabbed; found bleeding in that street of heavy traffic.
Elsewhere today, the High Court ruled Australia’s Malaysia swap asylum seeker deal illegal: “made without power and is invalid”. The Government’s plan to send boat arrival immigrants to Malaysia – who is not a signatory to the UN Refugee convention – is now scrapped.
…it is an agreed fact that Malaysia does not recognise the status of refugees in domestic law” – High Court ruling
Too much to do. Not enough time. Apparently the weather is gorgeous. Too busy to notice.
Japan has a new Prime Minister, Yoshihiko Noda, and today’s good news story is of the emperor penguin found stranded on a New Zealand beach in June; after four operations, he is back on his feet and returning home today to Antarctica.
Day 240. Time out between work, stepped away briefly from the computer, for Spring Dance at the Sydney Opera House. Chunky and DV8 were sublime.
It is very, very easy not to be offended by a book. You just have to shut it.” — Salman Rushdie
New York survived Hurricane Irene – which left a 1000 mile trail of destruction and shut down a nuclear plant in Maryland.
With things a little quieter in Tripoli, eyes turn to the human toll. The bodies uncovered, the grief, the dire lack of basic necessities like clean water, food, access to cash, as millions of civilians come out of hiding.
On the 27th day of the eighth month I wished bon voyage to several friends off on overseas holidays and noted how unusually quite the city was. Another one heads off to Europe on Tuesday. It’s that time of year.
In Abuja, Nigeria the UN headquarters was attacked by a suicide bomber, killing at least 9 UN staff and hospitalizing dozens more. Islamist extremist group, Boko Haram has claimed responsibility.
On the 238th day of 2011 the penny dropped. Why all the seriously fit, springy people running around Sydney suddenly? They must be training for the Sydney marathon.
Today esteemed Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat is in a bad way, recovering from abduction by armed gunmen who broke his hands and left him by a roadside. They told him “this is just a warning“. Assad and other dictators don’t take kindly to satire or criticism.
On the 4th Thursday in August I passed up the chance to write my initials in that fresh concrete out the front of my flat. Later, at precisely the moment I was listening to the awful news report of a 14 year old boy convicted of the murder of a man with a machete, and that the distressed boy broke down in tears in court, a car drove out of a side street and I had to swerve to miss it. Nerve rattling.
On day 234 I had to have shaky words with the driver of a large black 4WD because she’d just driven way too close and cut me off – on the same bike path where that car crashed into me in June. Clearly she’d been distracted with the stress of running late and trying to get her kids to school – it was after 9am. Cyclists: Beware the big black 4WD. Beware the Ute.
All eyes are on Libya – the rebels are in Libya, people are dancing in the streets, and the ICC claims Gaddafi’s son’s Saif has been detained.
365 days of a year 