(31 Aug 2009) “......Forty years after the death of the “last lion,” Great Britain is producing men of straw rather than of Churchillian iron. It was only six months ago that the British government humiliatingly and shamelessly bundled visiting Dutch politician Geert Wilders back on to a plane to his native Holland to appease Muslim public opinion. Wilders had been invited to show his documentary film, “Fitna,” at Britain's House of Lords, but, in a gross outrage, was denied entry to the country That watershed moment of capitulation, however, was surpassed last week when the Scottish government released Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Magrahi from prison on “compassionate” grounds after serving only seven years of a life sentence for murdering 270 people.....To add insult to injustice, Libya welcomed al-Megrahi home with a hero's reception – despite official promises that it would not do so..... good example of this accomodationist policy occurred in July 2007, when Gaddafi, ever the artful schemer, shook down the European Union for $400 million for an HIV outbreak in a Libyan children's hospital. Six foreigners, five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor, were blamed for intentionally infecting 438 children and held for almost eight years in Libyan dungeons where they were tortured, raped and sentenced to be shot......” Europe's Dark Hour . Stephen Brown, FrontPage.com “.....Some said it was the CIA. Others said it was the Mossad Israeli intelligence. They carried out an experiment on these children,” said the Libyan leader with a straight face at a 2001 African summit.But instead of sending aircraft carriers to deal with Gaddafi's criminal treatment of its citizens ( Bulgaria is an EU member), the EU gave in to tyranny. Even though two European AIDS experts, one of them the co-discoverer of the virus, had concluded the outbreak had started a year before the Bulgarian nurses had even arrived in Libya, the EU, like in the days of the Barbary Coast pirates, simply paid the ransom. France mediated this devil's deal and even sent the president's wife to escort the nurses.... Even more recently, the Swiss president was forced to apologize to the Gaddafis for Swiss police having arrested Gaddafi's son, Hannibal, and his pregnant wife in 2008 for beating their servants...Europe may still pride itself on its commitment to human rights, but a cold look at the evidence shows that in recent years EU countries have been more determined to please the Islamic world – even rogue-states like Libya – than stand up for those very rights it claims to hold dear. Whether cynical business interests are to blame, or whether the flaw lies in the burgeoning fear of militant Islam, is immaterial. At the end of the day, Europe has lost its nerve.....”
Fears, as Chinese food pours in, farmers claim lost markets and biosecurity risk
(31 Aug 2009)“......China is supplying an ever increasing quantity of food to Australian consumers, raising concerns about food safety and the capacity of local farmers to compete with cheaper imports. According to the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service, between January 1 last year and May 31 this year more than 4200 tonnes of prawns were imported from China into Australia. This was in addition to 153 tonnes of frozen broccoli and cauliflower, 65 tonnes of fresh apples, 95 tonnes of fresh pears, 325 tonnes of garlic, 72 tonnes of peas and 4292 tonnes of peanuts and peanut butter. Last year, imports of Chinese vegetables rose by 35 per cent from 2007, making it the second-biggest importer, behind New Zealand. As imports have risen, local production has declined..."Chinese imports are putting the industry in Australia on a very unsound footing and I think Australians should be very concerned about food security," said Tasmanian vegetable grower Mike Badcock, a former chairman of peak body Ausveg. "The biggest problem we have got is the government attitude that we have to meet the market, but it is not a fair market and I think the government is playing a very risky game for a short-time cheap product.....” Fears, as Chinese food pours in, farmers claim lost markets and biosecurity risk , The Australian “.....Once the Chinese have ruined our industries in Australia the prices will go up," he said. Mr Badcock cited the example of the Australian garlic industry. Chinese garlic, a quarter the cost of the local product, had flooded the market. "But once they ruined the producers of garlic in Australia, they put the price back up." He said 90 per cent of garlic now sold in Australia came from China.... A US Department of Agriculture report last month said the most common reasons Chinese products were refused entry to the US were "filth", unsafe additives, inadequate labelling and lack of proper manufacturer registration, and potentially harmful veterinary drug residues in farmed fish and prawns. Trevor Anderson of the Australian Prawn Farmers Association worries about the risk of diseases such as white spot and yellow head virus that exist in China but not in Australia. He said a number of antibiotics had been found in Chinese prawns that resulted in bans and restrictions into the US, "who are much more rigorous than we are about these things". Mr Anderson said Australian farms were run under "rigorous environmental standards....”.
(30Aug 2009) Single molecule, one million times smaller than a grain of sand, pictured for first time
(29 Aug 2009) “.....In February 2005 the Australian journalist Pamela Bone, already close to her death from cancer, published an article in the Melbourne Age entitled "Where are the Western Feminists?" Some of us would still like to know. The immediate spur to Pamela Bone's article had been the piercing silence from Western feminists on the subject of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's condemnation of how women were being treated in Islamic culture. In asking her question, Pamela Bone already knew why the Western feminists were saying so little. They were saying little not just about Islam, but about Hinduism or any other culture which, when the behaviour of its more extreme groups towards women attracts criticism, bridles as if it is being attacked as a whole. Of all the liberal democracies, Australia is the one where the idea is most firmly entrenched among the local intelligentsia that the culture of the West is the only criminal, all other cultures being victims no matter what atrocities they might condone even within their own families... in Australia multiculturalism is not only a social aim, largely attained, it is also an ideology, in which form, to borrow Pascal Bruckner's useful phrase, it becomes the racism of the anti-racists. Australian multiculturalist ideologues will call anyone a racist who dares to suggest that another culture than the one in which they flourish might have aspects more repellent than their own. And it was just such accusations that Pamela Bone heard ringing in her ears when she made her exit .... My own impression, drawn over the course of these past ten years or so, is that the amount of protest about honour crimes from Western female thinkers has diminished as the news about honour crimes has proliferated, and has steadily shrunk towards nothing even as news about honour crimes among immigrant populations in the Western countries has become more conspicuous.....” A Veil of Silence Over Murder , Clive James “......In Britain especially, the worse it gets, the fewer objections we hear from writers in the serious newspapers..... there is a paragraph I saw in 2001, before the twin towers were brought down, that I have never been able to get rid of..... here is the clipping, reduced to the form of a single quotation, with a credit for the speaker. "All women killed in cases of honour are prostitutes. I believe prostitutes deserve to die."Abdul Karim Dughmi, the former Minister of Justice in Jordan, quoted in the Sunday Times Magazine, 8 July 2001..... In Jordan, to expiate the shame brought upon a family by loss of honour, a woman is murdered every two weeks. Not only the crime of having been raped brings loss of honour. A rumour can bring loss of honour. Apparently there is little to encourage fathers in these cases to the consideration that there might be loss of honour involved in murdering their helpless daughters...... In Pakistan about 1,000 women get killed every year, and a startling, if lesser, incidence of ritual murder is true wherever Pakistanis live in the outside world. When a girl in a British Pakistani community is set on fire by her brothers, or has her face ruined with acid by a rejected candidate for the role of husband, we hear about it in the newspapers, although seldom for long. But in Pakistan such incidents aren't news at all.... In late July 2009, the newspapers were featuring — but for not more than the usual few days — a case in which a woman had been "warned" after the men around her poured acid down the throat of the man she had been seeing. The man ended up in hospital with his tongue destroyed, but it appears that the tongues of the police had been destroyed too, because a "warning" was the only help they could give, apparently for fear that the local immigrant community might take offence.....there are men all over the world who really do want to kill women on a point of honour. What kind of honour is that? When are these dreadful men, and all who encourage and "understand" them, to be condemned as the homicidal maniacs they are?...”
Tone down hype on renewable energy
(24 Aug 2009) “....Stripped of the political grandstanding, Australia's Renewable Energy Target would fail any reasonable cost-benefit test. However much internal warmth the thought of more windmills and solar panels might generate, the cold hard truth is that renewable energy targets have serious economic implications that warrant close scrutiny. Unfortunately, in handing alternative energy companies a subsidised monopoly to supply 20 per cent of our electricity, the RET scheme is unlikely to reduce emissions cost effectively, if at all. The economics are simple. Given current technology, the electricity generated from renewables will be much more expensive. In May last year, the Productivity Commission calculated that next year, the cost of one megawatt hour of electricity from Australia's vast black coal reserves would be $30-35. Wind power would cost twice as much -- $55 to $80 per megawatt hour. And however scorching the Australian summers, solar power will cost $200 to $400 per megawatt hour...” Tone down hype on renewable energy , The Australian “.......In practice, the RET scheme will favour technology that has already been developed, such as solar and wind power, compelling government to pick winners and subsidise businesses that would not otherwise hold their own in a competitive market. There is little if any incentive to develop new technologies that might eventually do a better job. The Productivity Commission warns that this is a bad precedent.....Faced with higher power bills from the renewable energy target, consumers will ask: what's the point? The answer lies in a failure of the political class. On both sides, politicians are eager, however tokenistic their efforts, to appear environmentally friendly. No one should be fooled by the promise of 28,000 RET-inspired "green" jobs in the next decade. A recent study by King Juan Carlos university has exposed similar claims in Spain where for every "green" job created from renewable energy in Spain, two others were lost...... Australians are fast wising up to the limited benefits of feel-good green stunts that do nothing to reduce atmospheric carbon.....”
Australia is multiracial but it should not be multicultural, contends Barry Cohen
(21 Aug 2009) “…..When I hear the word culture, I reach for my pistol." Whether Hermann Goering or someone else spoke those words is immaterial; the sentiment is clear. I feel the same when I hear the word multicultural. By now the language police will have concluded that I am a rabid racist not fit to mix in polite society. It is the standard epithet hurled at those who question multiculturalism. How has it come to this?.... It is not in the least surprising nonetheless that when Australia, under Ben Chifley, abandoned its practice of only seeking migrants from Britain, and turned to Europe there was some apprehension about how it would work. It was, as we know, a great success. First came the Italians, Poles, Germans, Balts, Dutch and others, followed by those from wherever there was suffering. Millions sought safe haven from wars, oppression, famine or poverty. They came to a country that offered the freedoms they had been denied, provided them with the opportunity to earn a decent living and enabled them to rear a family free from the threat of violence….” Not all cultures are good . Barry Cohen, The Australian “…..So why, I hear you ask, do I bridle at the word multiculturalism? We are a multiracial society and a harmonious one. What I object to is the idea promoted by the multicultural lobby that not only should we be a society of a hundred cultures but it is the government's duty, nay obligation, to see that we remain permanently culturally divided. If some groups wish to remain separate from mainstream Australia, then that is their choice, but they should not expect governments to aid and abet those divisions…. In return, migrants have a responsibility to learn about Australia's history and culture, including indigenous Australia and those of Anglo-Celtic origin, which was the dominant culture for 150 years. Strangely, it is the Anglo-Celtic culture that is continually denigrated. No culture is perfect but few can match the British tradition of equality before the law, respect for minority views, freedom of speech and association, political and civil rights and above all, democracy. The word that best fits that heritage is "tolerance". Oddly, those most critical of that culture often come from the most oppressive and repulsive regimes, those ruled by feudal monarchies, military and theocratic dictatorships and one-party states. The idea that all cultures are equally good is arrant nonsense….”
Global Warming or Global Governance
(21 Aug 2009)Take 1 hour 20 minutes out of your life and witness the greatest fraud in the history of humanity. And you're about to become a victim. Global Warming or Global Governance
How China's taking over Africa and why the west should be VERY worried
(20 Aug 2009) “.........Reminiscent of the West's imperial push in the 18th and 19th centuries - but on a much more dramatic, determined scale - China's rulers believe Africa can become a 'satellite' state, solving its own problems of over-population and shortage of natural resources at a stroke. With little fanfare, a staggering 750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa over the past decade. More are on the way. The strategy has been carefully devised by officials in Beijing, where one expert has estimated that China will eventually need to send 300 million people to Africa to solve the problems of over-population and pollution. The plans appear on track. Across Africa, the red flag of China is flying. Lucrative deals are being struck to buy its commodities - oil, platinum, gold and minerals. New embassies and air routes are opening up. The continent's new Chinese elite can be seen everywhere, shopping at their own expensive boutiques, driving Mercedes and BMW limousines, sending their children to exclusive private schools. The pot-holed roads are cluttered with Chinese buses, taking people to markets filled with cheap Chinese goods. More than a thousand miles of new Chinese railroads are crisscrossing the continent, carrying billions of tons of illegally-logged timber, diamonds and gold..... Fuelling its own boom at home, China is also desperate for new markets to sell goods. And Africa, with non-existent health and safety rules to protect against shoddy and dangerous goods, is the perfect destination......” How China's taking over Africa and why the west should be VERY worried. Andrew Malone, MailOnline “...... The result of China's demand for raw materials and its sales of products to Africa is that turnover in trade between Africa and China has risen from £5million annually a decade ago to £6billion today. However, there is a lethal price to pay. There is a sinister aspect to this invasion..... Almost 30 years ago, Britain pulled out of Zimbabwe - as it had done already out of the rest of Africa, in the wake of Harold Macmillan's 'wind of change' speech. Today, Mugabe says: 'We have turned East, where the sun rises, and given our backs to the West, where the sun sets.' Despite Britain's commendable colonial legacy of a network of roads, railways and schools, the British are now being shunned. According to one veteran diplomat: 'China is easier to do business with because it doesn't care about human rights in Africa - just as it doesn't care about them in its own country. All the Chinese care about is money.'..... In Angola, the government has agreed that 70 per cent of tendered public works must go to Chinese firms, most of which do not employ Angolans. As well asenticing hundreds of thousands to settle in Africa, they have even shipped Chinese prisoners to produce the goods cheaply. In Kenya, for example, only ten textile factories are still producing, compared with 200 factories five years ago, as China undercuts locals in the production of 'African' souvenirs. Where will it all end? As far as Beijing is concerned, it will stop only when Africa no longer has any minerals or oil to be extracted from the continent.......”
Is “mistake” another word for a warming lie?
(20 Aug 2009) From the Andrew Bolt Sun Herald Blog, It doesn't get any better than this Is “mistake” another word for a warming lie?
Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme
(20 Aug 2009) This is an excellent, tangible illustration of what we're are dealing with respect to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme by using measurements over a kilometre as an expression of percentages....It puts the entire debate into a context that people can understand.
Leader dismisses overcrowding 'excuse'
(18 Aug 2009) “.....An Aboriginal community leader who has campaigned to eradicate youth suicide in indigenous communities has accused her people of contributing to the Aboriginal housing crisis by letting "everyone and everybody" into their homes. Mary O'Reeri has taken her people to task over the "excuse" that overcrowding in communities is an acceptable, normal part of indigenous culture.... Speaking at the National Museum in Canberra yesterday, Ms O'Reeri said there was an element of the indigenous housing crisis that was not being spoken about. "I'm talking about how it's an excuse in many indigenous communities that overcrowding is acceptable, normal and part of our culture....." Leader dismisses overcrowding 'excuse' , The Australian “.....We let everyone and everybody into our homes. It may sound harsh but we contribute to the housing problem in this way, too." Ms O'Reeri described her own childhood, which she said had been blighted by the presence of drunken relatives who tried to sexually assault her and and her siblings in the family home. "What (my parents) didn't know at that time -- they know now -- is that, as a 12-year-old girl, I was living a chaotic and frightening life, where I was often defending myself against the sexual advances of drunken relatives, pushing beds against the bedroom door and protecting my younger siblings from the same sort of attacks,"... Ms O'Reeri offered a measured assessment of the intervention. "There are some things that I'm for, and ... some things I'm against," she said, without elaborating. She said Aborigines had to take responsibility for their lives rather than have governments making laws on how they should live....”
(16 Aug 2009) “.....In the 15 months that the $672m Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program has been on foot -- the biggest project in remote housing -- the three communities have been abuzz with talk. Endless conversations have taken place. Designs have been drafted and re-drafted in a mania of consultation that has even included discussions on prospective residents' desired bathroom tile colours. Yet not one house has been built and the pool of money available for building is shrinking day by day. Housing was the big-ticket item of the federal intervention into remote Aboriginal communities in the Territory ordered by the Howard government in 2007. But the rollout of the big-budget SIHIP has exposed a bureaucratic rip-off of long standing in the Territory, where money for Aboriginal programs is systematically eaten up in bureaucratic expenses and consultants' fees or not spent on its allocated purpose at all. It is now clear the system, which for years has churned through billions in public money meant for combating disadvantage, has instead been responsible for entrenching it.... As the wheels of the machine for indigenous reform continue to grind and the urban consultancy class grows fatter, great risk lies ahead for the federal Labor government...... At Nguiu, a peg has been hammered in the ground. It marks the spot where Territory Alliance will put its construction camp, which has yet to arrive on the island despite 12 months of consultations over housing. Tiwi Islands Training and Employment Board chief executive Norm Buchan is deeply frustrated. "The only visible evidence that the people have got that something is happening here is this peg on the ground," he says. "The charter planes are coming in and out, the airlines are making a killing. There's lots of people making money out of this but there's nothing on the ground yet....” Refugees in their own land , The Australian “..... On the edge of the gunbarrel Stuart Highway running through the middle of the town, which is 500km north of Alice Springs, a large federal and NT government-endorsed sign declares: "Site under construction". But in the town's seven town camps, there is no sign of any construction and very few "sites". As in the rest of the NT, there is an Aboriginal population boom in Tennant Creek. And for more than two years it was planned that the town's growing indigenous population would be the recipients of "major housing works in the Northern Territory". The reality is there are no new houses planned at all. And of the nine unoccupied homes that have been cleaned and earmarked for an upgrade in the past couple of months, there are just two that are still weeks away from having their refurbishments completed, despite the fact that works were supposed to begin in November last year.... Far to the north in Darwin, tradesmen put the finishing touches to the capital's new billion-dollar waterfront development, the proud legacy of the Labor government. As the sun sets on another perfect late dry season day, parents fish their children out of a huge wave pool, which sits behind the city's convention centre, a silver-steel symbol of modernity. The waterfront is an idyllic playground for Darwin locals, the kind of place where the town's public servants might go to relax on the weekend with their families. In the remote enclaves, such a life is something that Aborigines can still only dream of.....”
What the Media Refuses to Tell You About Rahm Emanuel
(16 Aug 2009 Glenn Beck: What the Media Refuses to Tell You About Rahm Emanuel (Obama's Chief of Staff)
Ignorant activists opposed to the Top End intervention do more harm than good
(14 Aug 2009) “.....It is strange how the private passions of educated, powerful people residing in far-off metropolises can contrive to overwhelm the wellbeing of distant Aborigines. These crusaders are long on ego and certainty but short on experience in dealing with the problems of the indigenous frontier world, where remnants of traditional lifestyles meet the full force of modernity's excesses. But the crusaders dedicate much of their lives to pro bono activism in support of situations that lock many Aborigines into a spiral of self-destruction. Lately certain sports stars and their speechwriters have fallen into step with the crusaders. They idealise the outlooks and struggles of Aboriginal leaders who have invested their lives in the assertion of power in the name of self-determination but who often have poor records when it comes to action onkey issues that lie within their reach toinfluence. Some of these leaders are unable to see the difference between a right and a rapid path to self-destruction, while their urban saviours are inordinately fond of the media spotlight. The Alice Springs-based Intervention Rollback Action Group and Sydney-based Stop the Intervention Collective encourage these divas by providing supportive publicity and a framework of rolling propaganda campaigns that thrive on inaccurate claims....” Stop the silly city crusaders Bob Durnan, The Australian “...... Rollback's lawyer George Newhouse has been frank about his desire to embarrass Kevin Rudd and Family, Housing, Community Services and Aboriginal Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin internationally over the intervention, and his campaign is proceeding apace....I work in several central Australian communities and see the evidence every day. I have absolutely no doubt that support for income management (the quarantining of 50per cent of welfare income) has grown significantly and it is popular, particularly with women. I have recently witnessed several fair and well-conducted consultations by public servants where representative groups of Aboriginal men and women expressed almost total support for the NT emergency intervention's main measures... Welfare income management, alcohol supply reduction, work programs and youth diversion projects will help, but they have to be accompanied by many people shifting to more responsible decision-making in their daily lives. Territory MP Alison Anderson speaks this sensible language, as do Rudd, Macklin, federal opposition families, community services and indigenous affairs spokesman Tony Abbott and Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson....It would be appropriate for the crusaders to acquaint themselves more intimately with some of these facts before they strike heroic poses on the national stage.....”
Hezbollah TV comes to Australia
(12 Aug 2009) “…..Hezbollah's TV station, twice banned in Australia for supporting terrorism, has been given permission to broadcast into this country after an investigation found it did not breach the anti-terrorism standard…..Hezbollah, a militant Lebanese Muslim party, is banned in the United States as a terrorist organisation, but only its armed wing is proscribed in Australia. Its TV programs endorse suicide bombers, call for Israel's annihilation, and refer to Jews as the offspring of pigs and apes. ACMA has twice stopped al-Manar — popular with the Arabic community, who receive it by satellite — from being broadcast into Australia…..” Hezbollah TV comes to Australia . Barney Zwartz, The Age “…..In 2004 it stopped a Sydney provider transmitting it as part of an Arabic package, and introduced the anti-terrorism standard in 2006….al-Manar was ‘‘viciously anti-Semitic and interlaced anti-Israel and anti-US rhetoric with medieval anti-Semitic stereotypes, including the infamous blood libel'' (that Jews kill Christian babies for their Passover meal). Australia/Israel Jewish Affairs Council director Colin Rubenstein said the decision was regrettable but unsurprising, because the anti-terrorism standard had been so diluted last December that it was ‘‘grossly ineffective''….‘‘The hatred, incitement to violence and racism broadcast on al-Manar, and its attempts to raise funds for a terrorist organisation has not changed in recent years,'' he said. ‘‘What has changed are Australian standards — for the worse — that allows such an organisation to broadcast its message in this country. Al-Manar is banned in France, Germany, Spain and the United States. It should also be banned in Australia…..''
Political ‘stranger danger' in classrooms
“..In the past, governments advocated world-class education because it was a good thing in its own terms; nowadays, education is promoted as a simplistic device to achieve other non-educational, instrumental objectives..”.
(11 Aug 2009) “……School children are being brainwashed with an environmental message in the classroom. Children are not just being pinned down in the classroom and force-fed what to think: it's worse than that. The next generation - from primary schoolchildren through to college students - is being taught not to think, merely encouraged to accept the official line. It ought to be a national scandal but no one seems to think that there is anything controversial about environmental indoctrination in schools…. In its latest action plan, Living Sustainably, the Australian government states - with Orwellian overtones - that it will be "reorienting education". Who would have thought that any government would have the chutzpah to boast it "seeks to ensure that education is integrated with other policy tools utilised to deliver Australian government policy and program outcomes."…. Julia Gillard, argues: "Higher education is pivotal to achieving environmental sustainability, improving social inclusion…..Al Gore's propaganda movie An Inconvenient Truth was sent to every school in Britain. On the back of government endorsement, non-governmental organisations are sneaking into the education system…” Political ‘stranger danger' in classrooms , Austin Williams, The Australian “….…If brainwashing is too strong a word, it might be more acceptable to say that children are being nudged in the right moral direction. Whereas parents and teachers would be horrified to find political parties wandering into schools to push their partisan agendas, everyone seems happy for environmental lobbyists - presumably thought to be the epitome of political impartiality - to wander around schools, handing out leaflets, writing lesson plans, and preparing coursework and subject matter….If governments want to sell an environmental policy, in normal circumstances they would have to convince the public through active political engagement. Nowadays, they simply get third-party agencies to do it for them…...Activists and advocates for a particular environmental position no longer need to get their hands dirty with hard arguments; they can simply choose to ride in through the back door of schools' policy. Where once children were perhaps overly protected from the nefarious influences of adults with political agendas, nowadays schools erstwhile in loco parentis are willingly offering up their charges to be used, manipulated, and made to manipulate others…..”
Compensate Aborigines or leave, says minister
Some rather disturbed, scrambled and wooly-minded thinking from the principal of Ridley College, the main Anglican theological college in Victoria.
(11 Aug 2009) “....All non-Aboriginal Australians should be prepared to leave the country if the indigenous people want that, making restitution for the vile sin of genocide, an Anglican leader said last night. If they stayed, they would have to provide whatever recompense indigenous peoples thought appropriate, the Reverend Peter Adam said. ''It would in fact be possible, even if very difficult and complicated, for Europeans and others to leave Australia. I am not sure where we would go, but that would be our problem,'' he said. Dr Adam, principal of Ridley College, the main Anglican theological college in Victoria, was giving the NSW Baptist Union's annual lecture at Morling College, at Macquarie Park....” Compensate Aborigines or leave, says minister, Barney Zwartz, Sydney Morning Herald “....If those who arrived after 1788 did not leave, they would need to ask each of the indigenous peoples what kind of recompense would be appropriate. This would be complicated and extensive but must be done or the genocide would be trivialised. ''No recompense could ever be satisfactory because what was done was so vile, so immense, so universal, so pervasive, so destructive, so devastating and so irreparable... Dr Adam said churches shared responsibility because the land and wealth of churches came from land stolen from indigenous people. ''The prosperity of our churches has come from the proceeds of crime. Our houses, our churches, our colleges, our shops, our sport grounds, our parks, our courts, our parliaments, our prisons, our hospitals, our roads, our reservoirs are stolen property....''
(10 Aug 2009) “......It has no comparison in importance, but like the Washington Post writers on Watergate, every time I write on the Australian carbon crisis I feel this will be my last commentary on the subject. But every time I write, new information is put before me to encourage me to keep going..... Having got through the GFC this is without doubt Australia's biggest looming crisis and it will effect all citizens. Effectively large segments of global energy capital will either black ban Australia or demand much higher returns with enormous consequences to this nation, including consequences for new renewable energy projects... Let's go step by step through what is about to happen to our nation because of an inexperienced government and an incompetent opposition.....In most parts of the world, apart from Australia, it is believed that the form of carbon trading scheme being proposed by Australia will not promote investment in lower carbon energy alternatives. We are about to prove the rest of the world right.... When a nation or a company is doing something stupid there will be a trigger that explodes the wrong strategy. In this case it is the Latrobe Valley brown coal power stations. These stations have huge debt repayments and emit a lot of carbon so the Canberra plan was that they should go broke and be bought at token prices.....” Trading carbon for a disaster , Robert Gottliebsen, Business Spectator “......The plan was that the market would do its job and the power companies that own the stations and the banks that funded them will suffer well-deserved losses because they knew the risks they were taking when they made the investments and loans. If only it were so simple..... The power stations say who in their right mind would spend cash when they have no idea whether the generators will be viable in the short and long term because the level of carbon charges and carbon policy is not known. Last summer every Latrobe Valley station went without a break down – the first time that has happened. This summer the odds are that they will break down...... Victorian Premier John Brumby's staff know exactly what is going to happen to their state and realise that although this is a Canberra induced crisis they will cop the blame. Brumby's people have gone to Canberra and been met with a wall of Godwin Greches. They might not fake emails, but they have no interest what so ever in the truth about what is going to happen..... So how do we get out of this? Step one is to vote down the crazy carbon trading legislation and forget the massive grants needed to offset the cost of carbon permits. There will be no double dissolution because by the time one is due the disaster will be apparent.....”
(10 Aug 2009) “......It has taken the print media seven months to catch up on the fact that Latrobe valley coal is looming as Australia's greatest infrastructure and banking crisis. As BusinessSpectator originally explained ( Power at any price , December 18) the banks are owed about $5 billion by the four Latrobe Valley power stations, which are worth a fraction of that sum. Moreover, the loans will mature in the next two years.....Neither the owners of the effectively bankrupt power stations nor the banks want to invest more money in the Latrobe valley generators, so just how long the brown coal power is produced at the current rate is simply a matter of luck.....” Charging into the abyss , Robert Gottliebsen, Business Spectator “.....We simply can't quickly replace 25 per cent of our power with renewable on the basis of present technology. There are a lot of interesting new developments in the long term pipeline but it is vital to act quickly, particularly as the looming Latrobe Valley crisis will affect NSW, Queensland and South Australia as much as Victoria. What Canberra does about carbon quotas is academic. There is simply is no more capital for brown coal power on the basis of current technology....The worst outcome is that the politicians dither. But if they do, then voters will take it out on them via the ballot box.....”
Abu Dawud :: Book 11 : Hadith 2045
(9 Aug 2009) Narrated Ma'qil ibn Yasar: A man came to the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) and said: I have found a woman of rank and beauty, but she does not give birth to children. Should I marry her? He said: No. He came again to him, but he prohibited him. He came to him third time, and he (the Prophet) said: Marry women who are loving and very prolific, for I shall outnumber the peoples by you. The Demographic Jihad
Goldman Sachs = Neo-Slavery = Government
(7 Aug 2009) THIS IS MUST WATCH!!!! CRONY CAPITALISM LIKE YOU'VE NEVER SEEN BEFORE
Sanity still blowing in the wind
(6 Aug 2009) “......The Rudd Government's 'green power' strategy has been utterly shredded by detailed analysis which shows the total uselessness of the one form of power on which it is almost entirely based - wind. Further, this independent analysis is a damning indictment of not only the federal government and all state governments for their betrayal of their most fundamental duty to the public interest. But it also exposes the disgrace of the so-called 'public service' bureaucracies.....Where is the official analysis of what wind power generation does in practice - at either federal or state level? Which, if it had been done, would have embarrassingly exposed its uselessness.....What makes the analysis even more damning is that wind fails even in the main reason for its costly and ineffective existence - to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Precisely because of that pesky little problem....” Sanity still blowing in the wind , Terry McCrann, Herald Sun “...... An unreliable 484MW wind farm would not only cost more than two times a gas-fired 550MW power station. But it would allow perhaps only 25MW of coal-fired generation to be shut down - whereas the gas plant could close its full 550MW. The analysis comes in a series of papers. The first, from weather analyst Andrew Miskelly and physicist Tom Quirk, tracks the performance of the wind farms across Victoria, South Australia, New South Wales and Tasmania for the entire month of June in five-minute intervals.....Two huge and unmistakable messages leap out of the graph. Wind farms spend most of their time not generating power, or not generating very much. They can move quickly from producing a lot or quite a lot of power to zero. Second, even though spread right across southern Australia, they tend to produce or not produce at much the same time. That makes impossible any practical ability to ask nature to 'turn on', say, Victorian wind farms when nature has turned off SA ones. Or even 'distant' Tasmanian ones...Every wind turbine that goes up anywhere in Australia is not just a statement of some primitive theology but testament to government and public service betrayal......”
A Turning Tide in Europe as Islam Gains Ground
A review of the book Reflections on The Revolution In Europe, by Christopher Caldwell
(6 Aug 2009) “......Christopher Caldwell's “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West” is a hot book presented under a cool, scholarly title..... Through decades of mass immigration to Europe's hospitable cities and because of a strong disinclination to assimilate, Muslims are changing the face of Europe, perhaps decisively. These Muslim immigrants are not so much enhancing European culture as they are supplanting it. The products of an adversarial culture, these immigrants and their religion, Islam, are “patiently conquering Europe's cities, street by street.” Mr. Caldwell is a vivid writer, and like an action-movie hero he walks calmly away from his own detonations while fire swirls behind him....Muslim cultures “have historically been Europe's enemies, its overlords, or its underlings,” he deposes. “Imagine that the West, at the height of the Cold War, had received a mass inflow of immigrants from Communist countries who were ambivalent about which side they supported,” he writes. “Something similar is taking place now.”.... Mr. Caldwell is not anti-immigration. He traces the historical movements of various peoples across continents and nationalities and notes both successes and failures. But there has been nothing, he suggests, quite like the recent influx of Muslims into Europe — he refers to it as “a rupture in its history.” A Turning Tide in Europe as Islam Gains Ground , Dwight Garner, New York Times “....... These immigrants are further swamping Europe demographically, he adds, because of their high fertility rates. He points to small facts as well as large ones. In Brussels in 2006, the seven most common given boys' names “were Mohamed, Adam, Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine, and Hamza.” .... The problem, in Mr. Caldwell's view, is less about sheer numbers than cultural divergence. What's happening in Europe is not the creation of an American-style melting pot, he writes, because Muslims are not melting in. They are instead forming what he calls “a parallel society.” What's happening in Europe is not the creation of an American-style melting pot, he writes, because Muslims are not melting in. They are instead forming what he calls “a parallel society.” The most chilling observation in Mr. Caldwell's book may be that the debate over Muslim immigration in Europe is one that the continent can't openly have, because anyone remotely critical of Islam is branded as Islamophobic. Europe's citizens — as well as its leaders, its artists and, crucially, its satirists — are scared to speak because of a demonstrated willingness by Islam's fanatics to commit violence against their perceived opponents. There exists, Mr. Caldwell writes, a kind of “standing fatwa” against Islam's critics...... It is hard to argue with his ultimate observation about Europe today: “When an insecure, malleable, relativistic culture” (Europe's) “meets a culture that is anchored, confident, and strengthened by common doctrines” (Islam's), “it is generally the former that changes to suit the latter.”
(1 Aug 2009) How much does human activity affect greenhouse gases??
Inside Goldman Sachs, America's most successful, cynical, envied, despised, and (in its view, anyway) misunderstood engine of capitalism.
(1 Aug 2009) “......Ever since the bank crossed paths with U.S. taxpayers, getting saved with at least $10 billion in government aid last year and then parlaying that into $5.1 billion in profits in 2009 (so far), the firm has been seen as the ugly essence of capitalism at its most cynical—by Washington, by the public, by the financial press, even by some of its clients.....A recent Rolling Stone article called Goldman “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity” and accused it of rigging every major market bubble since the Great Depression..... Before the market crashed, Goldman Sachs was betting 28 times its underlying capital. After the events of the fall, it bet half that: $14 for every dollar it had on hand. But that was still more than its nearest competitor, Morgan Stanley, was willing to gamble.... There is no evidence that Goldman was directly gambling with taxpayer money. But it seems clear that none of this would have been possible without government intervention—without the AIG bailout, the TARP money, the FDIC bonds, the fact that without Lehman Brothers it had one less competitor in the field...... This doesn't sit right with some. “Much of their recent profits seemed to be derived from ‘trading,' which typically means gambling—not lending,” says Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize–winning economist who teaches at Columbia University. “It is lending which is required if our economy is to be revived; it was gambling that got our financial system into trouble.” Even Goldman alumni were struck by the company's shameless posture in ramping up the leverage again so soon after the government bailouts. “It's a statement of arrogance,” says one former executive. “What they're saying by keeping leverage high is, ‘We're smarter than anybody else.....” Tenacious G, New York Magazine “..... There's been a lot of head-scratching of late about how it is that Goldman does what it does, namely make more money than anyone else... if a big investor wants to buy into, say, the energy market, Goldman Sachs, by virtue of its knowledge of what other big investors are trading and what its corporate energy clients are doing (on Goldman's own advice), can offer a highly accurate view of what's likely to happen with the energy market. It can also do damned well on its own energy trades—in fact, before the market crashed, the firm made vast profits on “proprietary trading,” bets made on its own balance sheets.....Basically, it is legal card-counting, which most clients accept as a necessary evil to deal with the company with the most information.”...Goldman Sachs sold subprime-mortgage investments to its clients for years, but then in 2006 began trading against subprime on its own balance sheet without informing its clients, a hedge that ultimately let it profit when the real-estate market cratered.... Earlier this month, Goldman had an ex-employee arrested for allegedly stealing computer codes that could be used, as the prosecutor noted, “to manipulate markets in unfair ways.” Some hedge-fund traders and financial bloggers have speculated that Goldman itself could have been using the codes for the same purpose..... If Goldman's database knows nearly every trade that is about to be made, sophisticated computer codes could, theoretically, instantly execute fail-safe trades on Goldman's behalf milliseconds beforehand. This, some are insisting, is where the company is manipulating the markets and making hundreds of millions of dollars a day.....”
REPOSTED from March 20, 2009 Few jobs replace carbon clouds
GREEN JOBS OR CON JOBS?
(Reposted from March 20, 2009) “.....A new US study claims that prospects for green jobs are being grossly overhyped. Undertaken at the Institute for Energy Research by a group including Andrew Morriss of the University of Illinois and Roger Meiners of the University of Texas-Arlington, the study argues that organisations such as the UN Environment Program, the US Conference of Mayors and the American Solar Energy Society have all "overhyped the potential to create good jobs" and overlooked the job losses in conventional industries..... There is no standard definition of a green job but in the US it seems to include large numbers of clerical, bureaucratic and administrative positions that do not produce goods and services for consumption. The big flaw is the promotion of more American jobs instead of more productivity. The institute suggests that the real purpose of the green jobs initiative is not to create jobs but to remake society. To shift economies away from decentralised decision-making in favour of central planning. To determine the choices faced by consumers and workers and, I would add, investors....” Few jobs replace carbon clouds , Keith Orchison, The Australian “......Says the study, "By wrapping these shifts in the green jobs mantle it is hoped to avoid a debate over the vast cost of the changes proposed." The problem is perfectly illustrated by a submission to the Australian Senate's fuel and energy committee by Hydro Aluminium Kurri Kurri, which operates a Hunter Valley smelter and provides 2500 direct and indirect jobs in the region. The company is evaluating a $4 billion investment in the smelter to achieve world-class efficiency, a large rise in production and carbon dioxide capture capability. If the project goes ahead, it will generate 3000 new long-term jobs and 15,000 construction jobs over three years. But the company points out: "The investment is contingent on the regulatory regime in Australia (including emissions trading and the renewable energy target) not materially eroding competitive advantages." The CSIRO report appeared well before the global economic tsunami hit these shores - and must have been researched even earlier when the boom was booming - but it made one observation that is still highly relevant. Thirty per cent of Australian workers, it noted, are employed in the industries that create up to 90 per cent of the carbon impacts, including: agriculture, food and drink production, mining, petroleum, manufacturing, aluminium production and road transport. Shifting them to green jobs seems highly improbable.....”
(1 Aug 2009) Max Keiser- Goldman Sachs are scum