I WILL BLESS THOSE THAT BLESS THEE, AND CURSE THOSE THAT CURSE THEE. "
AUSTRALIA JUDGED ON ROSH HASHANAH!
Sydney Wakes to ‘Nuclear Winter’ as Dust Covers City
By Nichola Saminather and Rebecca Keenan
“It’s like a nuclear winter morning,” Peter Wilson, 53, a visitor from Queensland state, said at Circular Quay in central Sydney as fog horns echoed across the harbor. “It is so eerie.”
The Harbor Bridge was hidden by a thick haze as the early morning sun struggled to pierce the blanket of dust blown in from the dry interior of the continent. Train commuters, some wearing masks or clutching handkerchiefs to avoid breathing in the dust, stood on the platform snapping photographs of the spectacle on their mobile phones.
The Bureau of Meteorology issued a severe weather warning for wind gusts as fast as 90 kilometers (56 miles) an hour, while the New South Wales state government said air quality in parts of the city was “hazardous.”
Schools were advised to keep pupils indoors and keep a close eye on students with asthma, the New South Wales state Education Department said. Sports lessons were canceled.
Ferry services on the harbor resumed after being suspended and high winds and low visibility disrupted flights at Sydney airport, with some aircraft diverted to Melbourne and Brisbane.
“I haven’t seen dust storms like this since I was in China a few years ago,” said solicitor Jim Harrowell, 55, as he stood in the financial district, where office windows were clogged with dust. “We’re lucky it’s not raining, otherwise there would be little red spots all over us.”
Dirty Yachts
Yachts on the harbor, usually gleaming white, had a dull yellowy sheen. Drivers shuffled slowly over the Harbor Bridge, their windscreens smeared and filthy.
The cloying dust left many residents of Australia’s most populous city tight-chested with a metallic aftertaste in their mouths as they made their way to work through the haze.
“There is a smell of dust in the air and there is this eerie orange glow in the sky,” Barry Hanstrum, the Bureau of Meteorology’s regional director for New South Wales, said by telephone from Sydney.
The storm was caused when an “intense north low pressure area” formed and generated gale-force westerly winds which “picked up a lot of dust from the very dry interior of the continent,” Hanstrum said.
Orange Cloud
The orange cloud, possibly the city’s worst dust storm on record, may remain over Sydney and the rest of the state for the remainder of the day, he said.
Qantas Airways Ltd., Australia’s largest airline, said in a statement there were “severe delays” to all flights at Sydney airport, with all international arrivals in the city diverted to Brisbane or Melbourne.
Today’s horse racing at Canterbury Park in the city’s southwest was abandoned because of the weather, the Sydney Turf Club said.
The state Ambulance Service said it had experienced an increase in calls from asthma sufferers and some were taken to hospital, the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported.
Oakdale, in the city’s southwest, recorded a level of 1,719 on the Department of Environment’s air quality index. A reading of 200 and above is considered hazardous and people with heart or lung disease, the elderly and children should avoid exercising outdoors, according to the department’s Web site.
The state Fire Brigade experienced a 10-fold increase on its usual call rate as the dust tripped automatic fire alarms and smoke detectors, spokesman Graham Kingsland said.
ANTI-SEMITISM ON AUSTRALIAN TV?
HonestReporting.Com 22 Sept 2009
Jewish civilian towns on the West Bank have featured prominently in the news in recent months. There is no consensus on the issue in Israel or the Diaspora and it would be naive to expect any positive coverage from a hostile media.
We should, however, expect the media to cover the story without prejudice and to accurately reflect the realities on the ground without becoming advocates for the Palestinian position. On this, Australian Channel Nine's 60 Minutes fails.
- Broadcast on Friday September 18, reporter Liam Bartlett starts with the wholly erroneous statement that "hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers are moving into the West Bank, building new towns on Palestinian land."
Putting aside the thorny issue of what actually constitutes "Palestinian land," hundreds of thousands of Jewish citizens are certainly not moving into Judea and Samaria. Instead, the civilian population continues to grow within existing communities mainly due to natural growth. While this has allowed building and development within existing boundaries, the Israeli government has not authorized the creation of any new towns for many years.
- Referring to "a day in the life of the West Bank," Bartlett focuses on a video of a settler shooting a Palestinian in Hebron, replaying it throughout the report, replete with dramatic background music for added effect. Bartlett interviews a Palestinian virtually helping him to "reconstruct" the incident without question.
This shooting is certainly not indicative of "a day in the life of the West Bank" and caused something of an uproar in Israel in December 2008 - some nine months before Bartlett's report. As is the case in a democracy where the rule of law is taken seriously, this incident was thoroughly investigated by the police and the suspect involved was charged with and prosecuted for assault.
While Bartlett takes the video and his Palestinian interviewee at face value, ensuring that it fits his agenda, the other side of a more complicated story did not appear in the report. Nor did the judge's statement that the Palestinians were partly at fault for what had transpired. "In their behavior the Palestinians contributed greatly to the incident's grave consequences."
- Bartlett is clearly attempting to use the above incident and an interview with Nadia Matar to portray all Israeli settlers as extremists, contributing to the demonization of an entire sector of Israeli society.
Matar is a prominent leader of the right-wing Women in Green group and whether one agrees with her politics or not, she is certainly not representative of the mainstream settler leadership - something that Bartlett does not share with his audience. Indeed, Bartlett takes an aggressive line of questioning with Matar in stark contrast to his interview with the Palestinian resident of Hebron.
- Likewise, Bartlett interviews Palestinian official Mustafa Barghouti, adding his own commentary, claiming that Israeli setters "look down on Palestinian towns through barbed wire and boom gates. To protect the settlers, Israel controls the movement of Palestinians. To travel from one town to another, there can be humiliating delays at checkpoints."
Nowhere in his report does Bartlett expand on the Palestinian terrorism that has necessitated Israeli security measures, while one is left wondering what "humiliating delays at checkpoints" could actually entail, short of sitting in a traffic jam.
- Bartlett allows Barghouti to employ inciteful language against Jewish settlers including analogies to "cancer" and "rape."
- Bartlett reports from what, according to him, is a "peaceful demonstration" outside of a settlement. The location, in reality, appears to be that of the Israeli security fence during regular Friday protests by Palestinians, probably from the village of Bil'in. These "peaceful" demonstrations usually descend into something more violent as Palestinians and international volunteers throw stones and riot against Israeli security forces who are forced to respond with tear gas and rubber bullets.
In conclusion, this 60 Minutes report is an example of the worst kind of demonization of Israeli citizens driven by Liam Bartlett's unhidden and overtly biased agenda.
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