Hamas proves conventional wisdom wrong. Again.

Noah Pollak has a great post at Michael J. Totten's site dealing with the reality versus the predictions of Hamas' rise to power in Gaza.

I’ve had little time to post over the past week, as we’re in full production mode at the journal I work for and my days have been busy. But I wanted to make a brief observation about the situation today in Gaza, as by my lights there are three fundamentally important premises of recent Middle East diplomacy that the lawlessness there has overturned -- and quite violently, at that.

The first is the notion that power would moderate Hamas. After the terrorist group was elected in January 2006, western interpreters of "the conflict" dreamily predicted that its stridency and absolutism would attenuate; with its constituency being the entire Palestinian population, this thinking went, Hamas’ war against Israel would be necessarily curtailed by the mundane requirements of governance and incumbency. At the time, President Bush said, "I think people who generally run for office say, vote for me, I’m looking forward to fixing your potholes, or making sure you got bread on the table." The AP’s Jerusalem Bureau Chief wrote, "if the elections pull the Islamic militants off the streets and into the corridors of power -- shifting their focus from terror to governance -- prospects for peace could be improved." Not only has Hamas not moderated, it has actually become even more self-confident. Islamists, like most people, aren’t "moderated" by winning political power; they only compromise when a more powerful force, or necessity, compels them to.

Why anyone would think that power would moderate Hamas' and reduce its terrorist activities is beyond me given it hasn't worked for the Taliban, the Syrian Baathist regime or in Iran.

The second is an idea that dates back at least to the start of Olso in the early 1990’s. It is the belief that Israel must make concessions in order to validate and strengthen the Palestinian moderates and marginalize the radicals. Another piece of conventional wisdom holds that Hamas won the 2006 election primarily due to a widespread feeling of disgust among Palestinians with Fatah’s corruption and fecklessness. Yet Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza happened just four months before the election, and the commotion surrounding that event distracted many people from taking note of what the withdrawal meant for the Palestinians themselves.

And what it meant for the Palestinians, especially the residents of Gaza, was that Hamas’ fierce resistance over the decades had finally forced an Israeli retreat. It was the Shia reaction to the 2000 Lebanon pullout all over again, with Hamas playing Hezbollah. Hamas was able to campaign proudly on this victory, which was viewed as additional evidence of Hamas’ strength and competence. And so it seems clear that a massive Israeli concession -- its departure from Gaza -- did not strengthen the Palestinian moderates at all, but in fact did the opposite: it vindicated the extremists, who unlike the moderates could declare a great victory and bask in the ensuing public admiration -- and collect a lot more votes when election day arrived.

Exactly as could have been predicted given the Middle Eastern man in the street's propensity to support the 'strong horse'.

And finally, there is the matter of foreign aid and its relationship to democracy-promotion. The Arab states and Iran have always spoken with great high-mindedness about the plight of their brothers in Palestine, but these regimes in practice have always lustily enjoyed seeing their brothers become permanent wards of UNRWA, settle into never-ending refugee status, and stagnate in extremism and violence. Since Hamas came to power, as David Frum helpfully notes, the gushers of largess that flow into the Palestinian territories have actually increased.

It is a little-known fact that international aid to the Palestinian territories has actually risen since Palestinians elected a Hamas government in January, 2006. According to International Monetary Fund and UN figures, the Palestinian areas received a total of $1.2 billion in official aid in 2006, up from $1 billion in 2005.

America's contribution rose from $400 million in 2005 to $468 million in 2006. Aid from the European Union and other international organizations also increased handsomely, and the UN has called for still greater increases in aid in 2007.

Look at the incentives that have been created for the Palestinians: vote for terrorism, get an increase in your foreign aid. The Palestinian areas now receive more than $300 per person, per year, making them the most aid-dependent population on Earth. (The people of sub-Saharan Africa receive only $44 per person per year.)

And yet the UN, EU and every NGO operating in the place wants us to pour more money into this illegitimate, festering cesspool. Makes you wonder, really.

Meanwhile Hamas’ supposed pariah status has allowed it to strike a deal with a generous fellow-pariah, Iran, which since the election has spent well over $100 million directly on the terrorist group. Iran, whose economy is rapidly falling apart, is not providing this money out of altruistic solidarity, or even as cheap symbolism, as Saddam Hussein used to do with his payments to the families of suicide bombers. Iran is purchasing terrorism against Israel and improving its already substantial ability to foment crises in the region, which is one of mullahs' greatest deterrent capabilities.

Add all of this money up, and one confronts the reality that Hamas and the PA today are awash in unprecedented sums of money, absolving both Hamas and Fatah of the need to fulfill the most basic requirements of governance. This largess has so taken the pressure off Hamas that it is free to indulge almost exclusively in its greatest interest, and a major interest of its new patron, Iran -- waging jihad against Israel.

Why would anyone think that Hamas would do otherwise given its constitution that explicitly states what its goals are?

The primary givers to the Palestinians -- America and the EU -- have for years insisted on democracy without demanding accountability, or even a modicum of initiative and self-sufficiency. This is not aid; it is welfare. If there should ever be a moment when the institutions that are charged with improving the plight of the Palestinians take stock of what their benevolence has wrought, that moment it now, amidst Hamas' acts of war against Israel, its entente with Iran, and its civil war with Fatah. Have all of these billions been helping the Palestinians, or hurting them?

Is there anywhere on earth where aid without accountability has provided a positive, ongoing benefit? If there is then I'm yet to see it.

Many observers of Hamas’ rise to power have noted that the U.S. wishes for the Hamas government to collapse under the weight of its own narcissistic radicalism and unrestrained ambition. But the U.S., UN, and EU are pumping so much money into the Palestinian territories that they’re preventing that collapse, and the ensuing recognition among Palestinians that their votes were perhaps cast unwisely. With its prolific foreign aid, the West is not just infantilizing the Palestinian people and continuing to thwart any possibility, however implausible, of a Palestinian state. It is now underwriting the emerging Palestinian-Iranian alliance.

This is an important point. Not only is the Israel-Palestine conflict a proxy war between the US and Iran, Syria etc, it's also a proxy war between the EU and the US in order to gain political leverage at the UN and elsewhere. The moral malnourishment of the UN and Europe is thus exposed for all to see.

This will all end in tears, of course, and people will blame the one nation that had been trying to achieve peace in the region. Any guesses which one?

Islam for Dhimmis

Hey, it's been done a few times before but that doesn't mean I shouldn't make my contribution to the genre.


(click on the image to embiggen)

Lots of work by my brother, coz I'm too retarded with Photoshop.

Crap in, crap out. Welcome to climate science.

Anthony Watts has been questioning the validity of temperature readings due to what appears to be a completely inappropriate placing of recording devices.

Check out how the device is placed at Marysville's Fire Station.

Hmmm, asphalt. Doesn't that get a little warm? Even in winter it's much warmer than the surrounding environment.


It sure does look like a nice BBQ. Just the thing to increase temperature around the sensor.



Unsurprisingly, there's an upward trend to the data.

Meanwhile, in Orlando, which is just 50 miles away, Anthony shows us what a proper recording station looks like along with its temperature graph.




We always told that the Urban Heat Island Effect has been factored out of the data but when pressed to show how that has been done, given evidence to the contrary, climate scientists do what they do best - attack the man.

Check out part two of Anthony's How Not To Measure Temperature posts, which I hope will expand with input from all over the world.

Zbigniew Jaworowski's demolition of climate science

If you haven't seen it yet then Zbigniew Jaworowski's demolition of the state of climate science is well worth catching up with. Jaworowski is an old school scientist, one of the type that still believe in those pesky things that climate scientists and their Brown Shirt brigade have so much trouble with - facts.

He refers to the Four Basic IPCC Lies:

1. Carbon dioxide, the most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas, increased markedly as a result of human activities, and its atmospheric concentrations of 379ppmv (parts per million by volume) in 2005 by far exceeded the natural range of 180 to 300ppmv over the last 650,000 years.
2. Since 1750, human activities have warmed the climate.
3. The warmth of the last half-century is unusual, is the highest in at least the past 1,300 years, and is "very likely" caused by increases in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.
4. Predictions are made that anthropogenic warming will continue for centuries, and between 2090 and 2099 the global average surface temperature will increase 1.1C to 6.4C. Various scare stories of global catastrophes are prophesied to occur if man-made emissions are not curbed by drastic political decisions. The obvious beneficial effects of warming for man and all of the biosphere are downplayed.

When people say that the "science is settled" why is it that there seems to be such a growing contrarian body of science? It's a strong article and well worth reading the whole thing.

10 Questions to test your political nuance and judgement faculties

The recent Amnesty International annual report comparing Australia to Zimbabwe and America to North Korea confirmed two things. One is the shocking demise of Amnesty into just another loony left wing anti-US advocacy group. The other is the lack of nuance that makes up postmodern leftist thought.

Here are 10 questions that require you to make nuanced judgements.

1. Where would you rather live? a) Cuba; b) United States
2. Where would you rather live? a) North Korea; b) Israel
3. Where would you rather live? a) Mugabe's Zimbabwe; b) Ian Smith's Rhodesia
4. Where would you rather live? a) East Germany; b) Post 1990 Germany
5. Would you rather? a) Withdraw from Iraq, fight Al Qaeda in Afghanistan; b) Stabilise Iraq, fight Al Qaeda wherever they are
6. Who would you rather be tortured by? a) Al Qaeda; b) the United States
7. Who was the better President? a) Bill Clinton; b) Ronald Reagan
8. If your child converted religions then which would you prefer them to change to? a) Islam; b) Buddhism
9. If you see Muslims praying loudly and shouting "Allahu Akhbar" in an airport departure lounge what would you do?: a) Not worry about it because all cultures are equal; b) Be happy to see airport security questioning them
10. You believe that the science of Global Warming is: a) settled; b) inconclusive and subject to ongoing research

Score 1 point for all A answers and 0 points for all B answers.

0: Congratulations! Your nuance and judgement faculties are intact and fully working.

1-3: A disappointing result. Perhaps you haven't yet been mugged by reality after being indoctrinated by all of those years in the education system. There's still hope for you, though, if you recognise the danger to your moral compass early enough.

4-7: I bet you think that the New York Times is the world's best newspaper, don't accept blame for the 3 million deaths caused by the US withdrawal from Vietnam, have a 'War is not the answer' bumper sticker on your car, believe Global Warming is man made and that world wide terrorism is the United States' fault and nothing to do with Islam. You are absolutely part of the problem and not the solution.

8-9: You are definitely a Useful Idiot. You contribute nothing to the world while also complaining about everything.

10: Holy smoke, Batman! We have a real Cindy Sheehan, DailyKos, Huffington Post type on our hands. You need to move to Cuba. Or Camp Casey. Just go. And good riddance.

Sunday night Aussie rock

The Masters Apprentices were a raw-edged Aussie rock 'n' roll band from the 1960s and early 70s that included a couple of industry notables - Jim Keays and Glenn Wheatley.

Here's a couple of their classics.

Because I Love You



Turn Up The Radio

More inconvenient truth about those peskily inaccurate climate models

Here's a question. If billions of dollars were spent developing financial forecasting models so we could tell what the markets would be like in 50 years' time and they had almost no ability to predict what happened in the past then should politicians bet trillions of dollars of the world's economy on their accuracy?

The climate change debate degenerated into a propaganda war long ago. Lacking a sound scientific basis for making outrageous claims of planetary catastrophe, those organisations promoting the most dire consequences of increasing CO2 emissions did what all ideology-based movements do - ratcheted up the level of propaganda to drown out opposition, paying particular attention to 'playing the man and not the ball'.

The proof of this particular climate pudding was definitely shown to be in the eating when the IPCC released its Fourth Assessment Report, which included reduced predictions about the next one hundred years including a sea level increase of 18-59cm (7-23 inches), the lower end being below what actually happened in the twentieth century. In a moment of pure comedy gold, activist organisations, previously in lock-step with the IPCC, suddenly turned on the organisation accusing it of not being alarmist enough.

The climate propaganda machine had previously been able to point to the so-called science of the IPCC to validate their claims. Deprived of this validation, enviro-fascists have made a complete spectacle of themselves by making even more hysterical claims that require us to, basically, stop using energy now, now, now. Of course, by 'us' they mean we in the rich West. They impose no such requirements on India, China or Brazil - which pretty much gives away their socialist, regressive agenda.

Climate science is based on a number (I think it's around 26) of recognised climate models from around the world. The IPCC ranges tend to represent the low and high ranges provided across all of the models.

I remind readers of a couple of steps in the Scientific Method:

Predict: Use the hypothesis to predict the results of new observations or measurements. Often, advanced mathematical and statistical hypothesis testing techniques are used to design experiments that attempt to effectively test the plausibility of hypotheses.

Verify: Perform experiments to test those predictions. Attempting to experimentally falsify hypotheses is thought by many to be a better choice of term here.

The fact is that there's a huge elephant in the room for climate scientists, namely that these models have a diabolical predictive record. No wonder they have to make up new statistical methods in order to 'validate' their methodologies.

It's always worth keeping an eye on what Roger Pielke Sr is writing over at Climate Science. He's old enough to not have to worry about criticism from self-interested climate scientists and dishonest, play-the-man climate propagandists.

Climate Science has already weblogged on the claim in the 2007 IPCC WG1 report that,

"Projecting changes in climate due to changes in greenhouse gases 50 years from now is a very different and much more easily solved problem than forecasting weather patterns just weeks from now. To put it another way, long-term variations brought about by changes in the composition of the atmosphere are much more predictable than individual weather events." [from page 105]

One of the criticisms of climate science is that it's like trying to predict the weather 50 or 100 years out. If they can't get it right next week what chance in 50 years? The IPCC deals with this issue by making the clearly preposterous claim above. A clear analogy would be a financial forecaster telling you what the market will be doing in 50 or 100 years when he's only right about next week a small percentage of the time.

This weblog provides a short summary of why such a claim is absurd.

First, all climate and weather models include two components; a dynamic core (which involves advection, the pressure gradient force, and the gravitational acceleration) and parameterized or prescribed) physical, chemical and biological processes. Only the dynamic core is basic physics. All parameterizations are engineering code which means they include tunable components.

Weather prediction models parameterize long- and short-wave radiative flux divergence, stable clouds and precipitation, deep cumulus clouds, turbulence, and air-sea and air-land fluxes. The state variables in weather model are the three components of velocity, temperature, pressure, density of air, and the three phases of water (and sometimes other gaseous and aerosol components). A detailed discussion of this type of model is given, for example, in Pielke, R.A., Sr., 2002: Mesoscale meteorological modeling. 2nd Edition, Academic Press, San Diego, CA, 676 pp. [Table of Contents]

The state variables are initialized from real world observations such as from radiosonde and satellite data. If the weather model is a regional model, it obtains information through lateral boundary conditions. The dynamic core of the weather model, therefore, is constrained by the real-world initial conditions and lateral boundary conditions. Most of the surface boundary conditions are prescribed. This includes, for instance, sea surface temperature, sea ice coverage, vegetation, and snow cover. Only certain quantities, such as soil moisture and land surface temperature may be permitted to change in response to the land-air fluxes. When the initial conditions of the weather model are "forgotten", the parameterizations must skillfully predict the evolution of the state variables from that time forward, which is the reason that the weather prediction accuracy degrades and becomes of no value after a certain time period (e.g. see).

A climate model, in contrast, must model more processes than in a weather model (such as biogeochemistry of vegetation on land and plants in the ocean; sea ice dynamics; aerosol processes; ocean circulation; ground freezing and thawing; snow accumulation and melt and sublimation, etc. - see). For some of these climate processes (which involve physics, biology and chemistry) they are modeled, as with a weather model, by a dynamical core and by parameterizations. These include sea ice dynamics and ocean circulation, which both have advection, pressure gradient and gravitational parts, as well as the parameterization of other effects (such as turbulence, phase changes of water). Some of the climate processes, such as biogeochemistry and biogeography have no dynamical core, and are completely parameterized models.

Thus, a climate model involves more parameterizations with their tunable components than for a weather model, as well as additional new state variables (such as salinity, ice, snow, vegetation type and its root depth etc) for which initial conditions are required for all of these variables.

The climate model also has no real world constraint such as supplied by real-world initial conditions (and for a regional model lateral boundary conditions). This real-world data constrains its predictions. Instead, the state variables required for the dynamic core of each component of the climate model (i.e. the state variables for the atmosphere, land, ocean and continental ice) must be generated from the parameterizations!

The claim by the IPCC that an imposed climate forcing (such as added atmospheric concentrations of CO2) can work through the parameterizations involved in the atmospheric, land, ocean and continental ice sheet components of the climate model to create skillful global and regional forecasts decades from now is a remarkable statement. That the IPCC states that this is a "much more easily solved problem than forecasting weather patterns just weeks from now" is clearly a ridiculous scientific claim. As compared with a weather model, with a multi-decadal climate model prediction there are more state variables, more parameterizations, and a lack of constraint from real-world observed values of the state variables.

Climate modelling is non-trivial stuff. It's clear that none of the models are anywhere near getting it right in spite of the billions of dollars that have been spent on them.

Backwards, socialist environmentalists might want us to spend trillions on these models but that's because they 1) don't understand where money comes from; 2) don't understand what motivates people; and 3) paradoxically, don't understand the environment (or socialism's catastrophic impact on it).

One day people will look back at the money sent down the climate model hole, look at the health debacle in Africa and wonder what the heck we were thinking.

The real catastrophe of climate catastrophism

George Reisman has a great piece published on the Mises Institute site, The Arithmetic of Environmentalist Devastation.

Most people don't understand the real impact of implementing a 25% or 60% reduction in CO2 by 2050. There are real consequences. Here's the whole article.

A major demand of the environmental movement, put forward as essential to combating global warming, is the imposition of a massive rollback in global emissions of carbon dioxide accompanied by a freeze on such emissions at the sharply reduced level imposed.

In this spirit, Britain's Stern Review, published in the fall of 2006, seeks a reduction of 25 percent by the year 2050. Going considerably further, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has urged a 60 percent reduction.

Such pronouncements can be made openly and repeatedly only because the immense majority of people do not take the trouble to understand their implications. They do not because what is required to do so is a combination of making connections between various facts and performing calculations. These are activities that are widely perceived as onerous. Nevertheless, this level of thinking is essential if people are to understand the implications of environmentalism's demands.

In purely verbal terms, those implications are that environmentalism seeks the destruction of the energy base of the modern world, along with the elimination or radical reduction in the supply of all goods and services that depend on that energy base. It seeks this on the grounds that these goods and the energy on which they depend entail the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The goods and services in question are air conditioners, automobiles, airplane travel, housing, food, clothing, refrigerators, freezers, television sets, telephones, washers, dryers, books, computers—everything that depends on the production and use of oil, coal, or natural gas, which all release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in being burned. The destruction of the energy base and the production of goods and services is implied by the fact that in order to rollback the emission of carbon dioxide, it is necessary to rollback the production and use of energy in these forms. But rolling back the production and use of energy reduces the production of goods and services.

Turning now to the arithmetic of environmentalist destruction, I will proceed to calculate the extent of the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions per person that is entailed in the environmentalist demands. This will serve as a guide to the extent of the reduction in the production and use of energy per person and thus as a guide to the reduction in the production of goods and services per person. Proceeding in this way, it will be very easy to prove that environmentalism seeks the destruction of the energy base of the modern world, along with the elimination or radical reduction in the supply of all goods and services that depend on it.

Let me start with the 25 percent reduction in global carbon dioxide emissions urged by the Stern Review. Its application across the world would imply a 25 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions here in the United States by that year. Yet the population of the United States in 2050 is projected to be approximately 400 million people. Since the US population is currently 300 million people, this means that four-thirds of the present population of the US would be expected to generate only three-fourths of present carbon dioxide emissions. Three-fourths divided by four-thirds is nine-sixteenths, or 56.25 percent. That would be the projected per capita level of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States in 2050, i.e., a reduction of 43.75 percent from today's level.

If the reduction in global carbon dioxide emissions is to be 60 percent rather than 25 percent, then, with the same increase in population, the reduction in per capita emissions in the United States would be to a level found by dividing 40 percent (the emissions remaining after the 60 percent reduction) by four-thirds. Since division by four-thirds is always multiplication by three-fourths, the per capita reduction would be to a level of 30 percent of today's emissions instead of 56.25 percent. The per capital reduction in emissions in the United States would be 70 percent rather than 43.75 percent.

But there is yet a further major reduction in US per capita carbon dioxide emissions to contend with. And that is that while global emissions will be reduced by 25 percent, or by 60 percent, emissions in China, India, and the rest of the so-called third world will be allowed to go on increasing, presumably until there is equality in per capita emissions across the world.

At present, even though it has only 5 percent of the world's population, the US consumes 25 percent of the world's supply of energy and is responsible for approximately 25 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. Assuming the US population to remain at 5 percent of the world's population, the achievement of global equality in per capita carbon dioxide emissions would require a reduction in US energy consumption from its present 25 percent to 5 percent, corresponding to the size of its population. This implies a further reduction of 80 percent in per capita emissions in the US. This is because 5 percent divided by 25 percent is 20 percent; a fall to 20 percent of the initial percentage is a decline of 80 percent from the initial percentage.

This further decline of 80 percent in per capita carbon dioxide emissions would apply to the already very substantial percentage declines calculated above. Thus, with a rollback of 25 percent in global emissions, the decline in the US would be to 20 percent of 56.25 percent, i.e. to 11.25 percent. This, of course, would be an 88.75 percent reduction in per capita US carbon dioxide emissions. With a rollback of 60 percent in global emissions, the decline in the US would be to 20 percent of 30 percent, i.e. to 6 percent. This would be a 94 percent reduction in per capita US carbon dioxide emissions.

Whether the per capita reduction in carbon dioxide emissions is to 6 percent or to 11.25 percent, whether or not a few percentage points of reduction can be avoided by virtue of obtaining additional power from windmills and solar panels (the environmentalists will not allow atomic power, which they regard as the death ray and oppose even more than carbon dioxide emissions, nor will they allow hydro-power insofar as it interferes with the migratory patterns of fish), the clear implication is economic devastation. It is devastation in the production and use of energy and devastation in the production of everything that depends on energy.

The implications of imposing environmentalism's demands include those that I have discussed in previous articles on the subject. In terms of the life of individuals, they are precisely of the kind described in the newspaper articles I quote in "After the Hideous Light Bulbs." They also include such paradoxes as attempting to fight global warming by means of destroying air conditioners, refrigerators, and freezers. (I presented this particular paradox in "Environmentalist Zen." That it is present in environmentalism is something that should be glaringly obvious from the present article.)

It follows that inasmuch as anything may serve as an opening wedge in getting people to accept environmentalism's agenda of destruction and impoverishment, it needs to be opposed as strongly as possible. Such is the case with the organized campaign now underway to get people to accept the use of compact fluorescent light bulbs in place of customary, incandescent bulbs. As a prelude to their imposition by law, the sale of these bulbs is currently being highly subsidized by business firms seeking to curry favor with environmentalists, in order to mitigate the harm that they expect would otherwise be done to them. It should be obvious that it is necessary to fight acceptance of these bulbs, as I argue in "Say No to the Hideous Light Bulbs."

There is tremendous public pressure today to join the environmentalist cause. Business firms that had long opposed it are now rushing to join it. Opposition is evaporating. Where there are still pockets of serious resistance, environmentalist smears serve to undercut their effectiveness. This has been the case, for example, with respect to the British television documentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle," which presents the views of numerous scientific experts on climate and the causes of climate change who are opposed to the environmentalists' claim that global warming is caused by carbon dioxide emissions.

The public embrace of a movement as dreadfully destructive as environmentalism brings to mind the rush to embrace Hitler and the Nazi Party in the Germany of 1932 and 1933, once their victory at the polls seemed to become inevitable, and then once they actually came to power. However the views of serious people, who hold their views first-hand, based on their own, independent judgment, do not change merely because the views of others have changed.

Nazism was a catastrophe. Environmentalism has the potential to be an even greater catastrophe—a far greater catastrophe than Nazism: one that will result in the deaths of billions rather than millions. This is because it is the diametric opposite of economic liberalism on a global scale. In contrast to liberalism and its doctrine of the harmony of the rightly understood self-interests of all men, environmentalism alleges the most profound conflict of interests among people. It implies that there is a major economic benefit to be obtained through the death of billions of fellow human beings, that, indeed, the well-being and prosperity of the survivors depends on the extermination of those billions.

Thus, for example, from the depraved perspective of environmentalism, if global carbon dioxide emissions equal to 25 percent of present emissions were to disappear, because those responsible for them ceased to exist, there would be no need for the global cutback in emissions urged by the Stern Review, and thus no need for any diminution in economic well-being on the part of the survivors (provided, of course, their number did not increase). If still more emissions could be eliminated by the elimination of still more people, there would be room for actual economic improvement among the survivors, according to environmentalism. Obviously, the magnitude of mass murder that is invited is the greater, the greater is the alleged need to curb carbon dioxide emissions.

Those who recognize the astoundingly evil nature of environmentalism must never cease opposing it.

Well, I'm opposing it and fully intend to continue.

The follow up to the poem 'When'

In February, 2007, reformist Saudi author Wajeha Al-Huwaidar published a satirical poem titled "When" that lamented conditions in the Arab world; now she has written a sequel, which was posted on the Arab liberal website Aafaq on May 13, 2007. The following are excerpts:

"When your neighbor throws trash in your path, and calls you foul names, and urges his sons to accost your sons at school and in the street, and incites the men and women of the neighborhood against you so that they will harass your wife and daughters - and the reason [for all this] is that you are from a minority that doesn't belong - this is ugly racism that has taken root. And you can be sure that it is not a Western conspiracy that has been hatched against you; this is a product of your own country.

"When you feel that whenever you leave your house there are hidden eyes that spy on you, follow your movements, watch you with suspicion and misgiving, and make you return quickly back from where you came - this is part of the culture of fear. And without the least bit of doubt, it is not a Western conspiracy that was hatched against you; this is a product of your own country.

"When your young children come home from school and tell you that they learned that day that the 'others' are despicable people who do not deserve any respect, acceptance, or appreciation, and that God commanded them to hate ['the others'] and to fight them, at all times and everywhere - this is an institutionalized plan for disseminating hatred. Don't worry, this is not a Western conspiracy against you; this is a product of your own country…

"When you are banned from many of the opportunities given to others, like studying, working, and the basics of living in dignity, just because you do not make hypocritical displays [of loyalty] to corrupt high officials and do not flatter the clerics who enjoy the favors of the regime - beware not to think that this is a Western conspiracy that has been hatched against you; this is a product of your own country.

"When all the years of your life are stolen from you… and your vitality, your mind, and your soul are wrested away, all in the name of religion, customs, traditions… and an outmoded heritage - and you know that this has usurped your right to life - don't weep and don't cry, and don't imagine that this is a Western conspiracy against you; these are actions and behaviors that are a product of your own country.

"When everything around you, around the clock, reminds you that you are a worthless human being in the view of the political or religious powers, and that you and the soil on which your shoe treads are equals, for the sole reason of your being the citizen of an Arab land - this is the height of arbitrary [rule]. But know that this is not a Western conspiracy that has been hatched against you; this is a product of your own country…

"When the number of those wanting to emigrate is twice that of those who wish to live in the country, and everyone [who can] takes up their belongings and leaves, and there is no place for intellectuals, artists, or even for regular people - you should be very sad, because this is premeditated debasement and deportation. But please don't think that this is a Western conspiracy that has been hatched against you; this is a product of your own country.

"When your diligent university-student daughter informs you that she received a one-week suspension from her studies because she did not fully cover her face when leaving campus - something the country's laws [consider] disgraceful - whereas in the palaces of high and influential officials there are evenings of debauchery, where whores and harlots are brought in from all over - well, this is 'mastery of one's soul' and 'breaking [the desires of] one's soul.' This is not a Western conspiracy that has been hatched against you; this is a product of your own country…

"When everything you hear, see, feel, and perceive tells you that women were created to be a receptacle for you, and that [a woman] is an incubator for your pure offspring, and that you can replace this receptacle whenever you want, and do with her whatever you see fit, and when your friends add a harem of miserable women to their lairs, and think of them as their very private possessions, like hens in a coop or ewes in a pen… don't be surprised. Know that this is not a Western conspiracy that has been hatched against you; this is a product of your own country.

"When you see poverty and hunger gaining ground… and the ruler tells the people to tighten their belts and to not waste electricity and water, claiming that the country has been going through an economic crisis for [several] long decades, and then all of a sudden you hear that the venerable ruler, may God keep him, has bought an island, with all its palaces, in the Indian Ocean, for millions of dollars - this is theft of the country's resources. But don't take it hard, please, don't take it hard. Just believe that this is not a Western conspiracy that has been hatched against you; this is a product of your own country.

"When you, an adult in your full senses, have your pen intentionally taken away from you, and are treated as a person not responsible [for their own actions], and you are not allowed to be under your own charge, and everyone becomes your legal guardian, and it is they who determine your political, religious, and national morals - this is abasement of a human… And this is not a Western conspiracy that has been hatched against you; this is a product of your own country.

"When the political and religious establishment ignites your feelings over things that take place beyond the borders of your country, and urges you to demonstrate your rage… over what is going on here or there, and you hold up signs, and organize marches, and walk in long demonstrations throughout the day and the night, and you forcefully condemn and criticize - and then after the event ends, you feel tired and sluggish, and you go home to your sagging, broken-down house, and there isn't a slice of bread there to give to your young children - but you don't have the right to go out and protest, or march, or even to write a two-line petition - this is the worst kind of iniquity. And this is not a Western conspiracy that has been hatched against you; this is a product of your own country…"

New UN IPCG committee looks to heavens to save world

The United Nations' newest committee, the International Panel on Colliding Galaxies, has warned that the Earth will be destroyed in 2 billion years unless urgent action is taken to ensure that the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies do not collide.

Global warming, the Iraq war, economic woes, fears of terrorism -- and now, just when it appeared things couldn't get any worse, astronomers predict the sun -- and Earth along with it -- will be hurled into deep space when our galaxy collides with a neighboring galaxy.

The galactic collision won't happen for a few billion years, but when it does, the entire solar system will be expelled from its current place in the bright galactic "suburbs" into the galactic boondocks, where there will be far fewer stars to guide sailors and to inspire the romantic.

Never again will the night skies be as pretty as they are now.

This less-than-sunny news comes from Harvard astronomer Thomas Cox and his colleague Avi Loeb, who used a supercomputer model to predict how the two galaxies will begin colliding in about 2 billion years.

Former Vice President Al Gore immediately released a statement warning that galaxy collisions are clearly due to the popularity of the reality TV series like Big Brother and Survivor.

"Collisions are simply the galaxies' way of hitting their heads against a wall and they're lining up to do that now," railed Gore, "We must urgently cease transmitting these intellectually offensive shows into space."

Gore supported the United Nations' sponsored Burkina Faso Protocol, which seeks to introduce a cap and trade scheme in order to limit reality TV show output.

"Cap and trade is the only way I can see to deal with the issue," Gore said. "In response, I will be buying my own Collision Credits so that I can continue to watch those crazy Japanese reality shows and recommend everyone else does, as well."

Hollywood production houses immediately voiced their support for the Burkina Faso Protocol.

Effeminate, poncy, sub-intellectual, crap actor, Leonardo Di Caprio, the self-appointed spokesperson for Hollywood's morally malnourished, overpaid, reality deniers immediately voiced his support.

"I just love Al Gore," he said with his typical stunned-rabbit look. "What are Galaxies? They sound important! We must stop them from colliding. I'm sure Fidel Castro can help!"

UN negotiators are currently working out the reductions in TV reality shows that each nation will need to bear. It's predicted that the United States will be hit hardest, as they're blamed for inventing the genre and creating most of the content. The French, who haven't produced a reality show for 10 years, suggested that 1997 should be used as a benchmark.

Whatever the outcome one thing's for sure. Unless we urgently address TV reality shows there'll be no stopping the galaxies colliding in 2 billion years.

And then we'll be sorry.

The Reagan Diaries

Vanity Fair has a long article by Douglas Brinkley, editor of the newly published The Reagan Diaries, mostly made up of excerpts from the diaries. It's a fascinating insight into the Presidency of this great man who was loved the world over for his determination, strength of values and good nature, especially by those in Eastern Europe who owe their freedom to him.

All the qualities that made Ronald Reagan one of the most popular presidents in modern American history are reflected in the diaries, to be published this month, that he kept throughout his eight years in office. Here he is, losing his temper with the Soviets (and his son Ron), cracking jokes about Castro, protecting Nancy, holding the weeping mothers of Marines killed in Beirut. An exclusive excerpt, edited and introduced by Douglas Brinkley, recalls the turbulent sweep of the era Reagan dominated, including his takes on being shot, Israel's bombing of Iraq, the Challenger explosion, Iran-contra, and his chemistry with Gorbachev.

Here are some of his daily entries.

Mon. Jan. 26, 1981 • A meeting on terrorism with heads of F.B.I.—S.S.—C.I.A. Sec's of St. Defense & others. Have ordered they be given back their ability to function. Next a cabinet meeting on the deal with Iran. Hostages will arrive in country tomorrow. It seems some of them had some tough questions for Carter in Germany as to why they were there so long and why they were there to begin with.

Jimmy Carter is not only the worst President in US history, as evidenced by his incompetent, bumbling four years in office that included his micro-management of the Iran hostage rescue debacle but also the worst ex-President ever with his deranged ramblings on the Middle East that demonstrate he never really understood what goes on there. The hostages were quite right to get stuck into him once they were released.

Wed. Feb. 11 • Intelligence reports say he Castro is very worried about me. I'm very worried that we can't come up with something to justify his worrying.

It's a pity that the Soviet Union didn't fall during his Presidency, as he would probably have been able to free the Cuban people along the way.

Mon. March 30 [written Sat. April 11] • My day to address the Bldg. & Const. Trades Nat. Conf. A.F.L.-C.I.O. at the Hilton Ballroom—2 p.m. Was all dressed to go & for some reason at the last min. took off my really good wrist watch & wore an older one.

Speech not riotously received—still it was successful.

Left the hotel at the usual side entrance and headed for the car—suddenly there was a burst of gun fire from the left. S.S. Agent pushed me onto the floor of the car & jumped on top. I felt a blow in my upper back that was unbelievably painful. I was sure he'd broken my rib. The car took off. I sat up on the edge of the seat almost paralyzed by pain. Then I began coughing up blood which made both of us think—yes I had a broken rib & it had punctured a lung. He switched orders from W.H. to Geo. Wash. U. Hosp.

By the time we arrived I was having great trouble getting enough air. We did not know that Tim McCarthy (S.S.) had been shot in the chest, Jim Brady in the head & a policeman Tom Delahanty in the neck.

I walked into the emergency room and was hoisted onto a cart where I was stripped of my clothes. It was then we learned I'd been shot & had a bullet in my lung.

Getting shot hurts.

Reagan's famous sense of humour is evident throughout his diary entries even when he's been almost fatally wounded. What would the world look like if the attempt had been successful? What would Bush 1.0 have done?

Tues. July 14 • We are still meeting & stewing about East-West trade and now we must take on the problem of what to do or if to do something to help the Polish people. Their economy is going bust. Here is the 1st major break in the Red dike—Poland's disenchantment with Soviet Communism. Can we afford to let Poland collapse? But in the state of our present economy can we afford to help in a meaningful way? We can't alone but if our nato allies could really unite we could handle it.

It's clear throughout the entries that Reagan understood the United States' moral obligation to help those suffering under the tyranny of totalitarian regimes.

Wed. March 23 • The big thing today was the 8 p.m. TV speech on all networks about the Nat. Security. I did the bulk of the speech on why our arms build up was necessary & then finished with a call to the Science community to join me in research starting now to develop a defensive weapon that would render nuclear missiles obsolete. I made no optimistic forecasts—said it might take 20 yrs. or more but we had to do it. I felt good.

You know, there is an irony in the parallel between Star Wars (SDI) funding and Global Warming funding in that once it was announced as a priority by the government scientists appeared out of nowhere with their hands out, miraculously delivering science that supported the funding's purpose.

Sat. Oct. 22 & Sun. Oct. 23 • About 2:30 in the morning awakened again: This time with the tragic news that more than 100 Marines in Beirut had been killed by a car bomb driven by a suicide driver who drove the truck right into the H.Q. building & blew up with it. All our plans changed—we arranged to depart the cottage [in Augusta, Georgia] at 6:30 a.m. & go back to Wash. Of course by this time it was Sun. Oct. 23. I've spent the day in meetings on this & Grenada. We're going to go on with the invasion. Tonite our men are staging a landing to gather intelligence. If everything is O.K., tomorrow night is D. day—well actually it will be early morning Tues. Meanwhile Gen. Kelley (Marines) is leaving for Lebanon. We all believe Iranians did this bombing just as they did with our embassy last April.

Iran's terror-supporting theocracy has been killing Americans for more than 25 years. At some point the account is going to be settled.

Tues. March 20 • During the day I called Congressman Ireland in a Fla. Hospital with pneumonia. He is the 4th Dem. Rep. to turn Republican since we've been here. We lost the school prayer amendment in the Senate. We had a majority but needed a 2/3 majority. The sad thing is about 15 Sens. were convinced the amendment was a mandate that schools would have to have prayer. Lowell Weicker [Connecticut senator] was the head ringmaster against us as he is on everything we want. He's a pompous, no good, fathead.

Good call, Ronnie. Tell us what you really think!

Wed. Sept. 3 • The Soviets are holding American journalist (U.S. News & World Report) [Nicholas Daniloff] charging him with being a spy. It is of course a frame up & the 4th time they've done it. Each time we have arrested one of their KGB agents they have done this. The last time before this one was in '78. Each time before they grabbed an American businessman. Then they try to arrange a prisoner exchange.

Wed. Sept. 17 • The press is obsessed with the Daniloff affair & determined to paint all of us as caving in to the Soviets which they of course say is the worst way to deal with them. The simple truth is we've offered no deal and are playing hard ball all the way.

We've notified the Soviet U. we're sending 25 of their U.N. staff home—all are KGB agents.

I have a question. How can you tell the difference between a KGB agent at the UN and a normal delegate given their parallel anti-US views?

Mon. Sept. 28 • Staff meeting started with Bob Woodward's claim in his book & his interview last night on 60 min. that he'd interviewed Bill Casey [director of central intelligence] just before Casey's death. He's a liar & he lied about what Casey is supposed to have thought of me.

Reagan's view comports with those of the people who worked directly with Woodward. He is nothing more than a Democratic Party hack and, as I've said before, if Watergate had have occurred with a Democratic President then Woodward would never have reported it.

Tues. May 3 • The press have a new one thanks to Don Regan's book. We make decisions on the basis of going to Astrologers. The media are behaving like kids with a new toy—never mind that there is no truth in it.

Wed. May 4 • A short meeting—some talk about this astrology mess Don Regan's book has kicked up. Some gal in L.A. claims she's a visitor to the W.H. & that she gives us frequent readings. She even claims she advised me on choosing Geo. B. for V.P. We've never seen her in our lives & don't know her at all.

To this day people on the Left believe the nonsense about Reagan and astrology. It's hard for the Leftist Intelligentsia to swallow the fact that this man, who they so viciously derided as being dumb, senile and out of touch, achieved so much greatness for the world through an opposing political philosophy. They're even rewriting the fall of the Soviet Union to give the credit to the devout Communist Gorbachov who to this day defends the 'righteousness' of the Soviet Union.

Thurs. June 16 • Zia has declared Islamic Law is law of Pakistan. That puts them into the Fundamentalist Revolution with the Ayatolah & Qaddafi.

Wed. Aug. 17 • At 7:30 a.m. phone call from Colin Powell. One of our C-130's in Pakistan—the Punjab where a mil. demonstration of one of our new tanks was taking place crashed on takeoff killing all on board. This included Pres. Zia of Pakistan, our Ambas. & 2 [one] of our Generals. We're waiting further word as to others & possible cause of crash.

General Zia was playing both sides of the coin for a little while but eventually fell in with the 'strong horses' of the region - Iran and Libya. It was no surprise that his plane had an 'accident'. The US was blamed but responsibility clearly lies with his opponents in Pakistan.

Thurs. Jan. 19 • Soviets propose reducing it's nuclear tactical battlefield weapons. This may be a ploy to win approval of German people who are aware their country would be the battlefield for an exchange of such weapons.

Dick Thornburg [Attorney General Richard Thornburgh] came in to see me about pardons. He doesn't believe I should pardon Patty Hearst, North, Poindexter or McFarlane. I'm afraid he's right. Nick Brady [secretary of Treasury] came by to say goodbye & thank me. Same with Alan Greenspan [chairman of the Federal Reserve]. Then it was the V.P.'s turn. All of my W.H. staff was gathered in the Roosevelt room for him to thank & say a goodbye.

Tomorrow I stop being President.

What a great man.

Where are Islam's supposedly moderate leaders?

Hold a German festival and thousands will turn up, drink beer and eat sauerkraut. Hold a French festival and thousands will turn up, drink wine, eat croissants and look at a the works of some of the world's greatest painters. Hold a Danish festival and thousands will turn up to see Viking relics. Hold an anti-Israel festival and all sorts of loons will turn up to denounce the Middle East's most democratic and progressive nation.

Hold an American festival in Europe and Islamist extremists threaten to turn up and kill innocent people.

A Paris festival celebrating US music and culture has been called off following a series of anti-American threats, organisers said on Sunday.

Called "Three Days in America", the festival featuring country and gospel concerts, line-dancing, sales of US paraphernalia and a tribute to Elvis Presley was to take place from May 26 to 28 in Saint Cloud, southwest of Paris.

Organisers issued a statement saying they were forced to postpone the event following "persistent pressure and threats of an anti-American nature".

"At first we thought it was a joke when we received a letter with a mixture of threats, mentioning Al-Qaeda and full of spelling mistakes," said Chantal Tenot, the festival's press officer.

But after several threatening phone calls the organisers decided Friday to file a police complaint and call off the event.

Paris anti-terrorism investigators have been alerted and the festival organisers are to meet foreign ministry officials on Monday to discuss the situation, Tenot said.

She said the organisers hoped to reschedule the festival -- which last year drew 15,000 visitors -- in the autumn.

Where are the supposedly moderate Muslim leaders speaking out against these threats? If a few senior Imams spoke out and supported the event's continuance then things could continue and there'd be no problems. The fact that the event went ahead peacefully last year proves my point.

Unfortunately, silence equals agreement. It beggars belief that there is a majority of Muslim leaders that don't support, even tacitly, the violence committed in their name. If they exist then they have a moral obligation to denounce terror done in the name of Islam.

Conversion to Islam a cause for concern?

According to the extremely useful CIA World Factbook, Australia's population is broken down religiously as:

Catholic         26.4%
Anglican         20.5%
Other Christian  20.5%
Buddhist          1.9%
Muslim            1.5%
Other             1.2%
Unspecified      12.7%
None             15.3%

So let's try a bit of a thought experiment.

If your 19 year old son came home and announced that he had converted his religion then which one would you be least comfortable with? Catholicism, Buddhism or Islam?

Which one would concern you that your son had fallen in with a bad crowd, prone to violence?

A woman charged at the weekend with plotting to bomb Sydney was a convert to Islam who planned the attack at the behest of a jailed murderer angered over anti-Muslim race riots here late last year.

Jill Courtney, 26, was arrested at her suburban Sydney home on Friday in a swoop by Federal and local police operating under anti-terrorism laws.

She was charged with conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosives to be placed in or near a public place.

The court granted a request by Courtney's lawyer that the woman be assessed by a psychiatrist.

Why is it that when Muslims commit acts of aggression it's always claimed that they're mentally unstable?

Muslims represent 1.5% of Australia's population but receive nearly 100% of the news coverage where religion is a factor. The Cronulla 'anti-Muslim' riots were caused by the ongoing display of violence and intolerance by gangs of Lebanese Muslims. That it took as long as it did (a couple of years) to goad a reaction from locals demonstrates how tolerant Australians really are.

Is there any other religion whose followers seem to support violence so naturally? Whose leaders consistently fail to denounce the most appalling acts of brutality committed in their name? Whose leaders consistently attack Australia's fundamental freedoms and values?

Of course you should be concerned if your 19 year old son came home and said he'd converted to Islam.

Sunday night Aussie rock

Mi-Sex, 1978-85, was another New Zealand band to come to Australia, enjoy success and be adopted as one of our own in the same way we did with Split Enz, Crowded House, Swingers etc.

Mi-Sex were a post-glam, electronic rock band using synthesisers and whatnot in a similar way to people like Gary Numan. They had a number of hits including those on display here. I really liked But You Don't Care and Computer Games was also a big hit.

Unfortunately, lead singer Steve Gilpin was killed in a car crash in 1992 aged just 42.

But You Don't Care



Computer Games



Space Race

Throw away the key

Terrorist, family-abandoning, piece of crap, embarrassment to Australia, Mohammed Dawood (aka David Hicks), is entitled to government support according to his long suffering father, Terry.

The federal government is likely to wash its hands of the David Hicks case once the confessed terrorism supporter returns to Australia, his father says.

"Terrorism supporter"? 'Terrorist', you morons!

David Hicks is expected to arrive in Adelaide on Sunday, although details of his trip on a privately chartered flight from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are being kept secret. The Adelaide-born father of two spent more than five years in US military custody at Guantanamo Bay before he received a seven year sentence in March, with all but nine months suspended.

Serves him right for being a terrorist. Should have been locked up for life.

He will serve the remainder of his sentence in Adelaide's Yatala maximum security prison and is expected to be released at the end of this year. His father Terry Hicks said on Saturday he believed the federal government would say the Hicks matter was now a state government concern. "I don't think it is, I still believe it is the Commonwealth government's (responsibility)," Mr Hicks told reporters in Sydney. "David is a federal prisoner, not a state prisoner, so therefore the federal government are the ones that should be looking after him.

"Looking after him"??? This piece of human excrement and poster child for the deranged Left should be tied behind a team of wild horses and dragged halfway around the Simpson Desert before having his sorry carcass thrown in jail for the remainder of his natural.

"The federal government are the ones who should be taking a belting in the backside for how they've handled all this."

No belting in the backside for Mohammed, Terry? It's all the government's fault, is it, that your son chose to follow a sub-human religion and buy into its violent ways? He's lucky to still be alive.

He said he would talk to his son "in general terms" once he returned but had received no information on the arrival. "These meetings with David and the family and anyone that visit David will be monitored, so, not that is going to bother us anyway, because we'll just be talking in general," Mr Hicks said. The family had five-and-a-half years of catching up to do.

Surely it's more than that given that he'd well and truly disappeared before that?

"The last thing on our mind at the moment is asking what David was doing there, I mean that is part of history," Mr Hicks said.

It would be the first thing on my mind, I must admit. So, what else would you talk about? I have absolutely no sympathy for Dawood, his father or his lunatic supporters. If anyone deserves sympathy it's the people that have hardly been mentioned in the more than five years since his arrest - his wife and kids.

Time to boycott Danny Glover movies

Why is it that Hollywood celebrities continue to turn a blind eye to the appalling human rights records of socialist dictators like Mao, Stalin, Castro and now, Chavez?

What is wrong with Danny Glover that he supports socially destructive megalomaniacs like Chavez?

The Venezuelan government has approved nearly $US18 million ($A22 million) to finance a film by Hollywood star Danny Glover, one of President Hugo Chavez's closest celebrity supporters.

Venezuela will tap proceeds from a recent bond sale with Argentina to finance Toussaint, a movie Glover plans to direct documenting the life of Haitian revolution leader Toussaint Louverture.

Time to boycott Danny Glover movies, which is a shame as I liked some of his work.

Wolfowitz resignation demonstrates World Bank corruption

What does the resignation of Paul Wolfowitz from the World Bank tell us about the moral compass of that particular organisation?

From AAP:

Controversial though he was as successor to James Wolfensohn, especially among European countries that had opposed the Iraq war, the Bush administration engineered his move from the Pentagon to the World Bank presidency without dissent.

Once there, he quickly reached out to poor African nations, where he encountered little criticism over Iraq, and pushed a deal to cancel the debts of highly indebted poor countries.

Soon after, he moved with characteristic zeal to launch a controversial anti-corruption campaign at the bank where he again clashed with European governments, who worried the effort could punish the poor by slowing the flow of aid.

Wolfowitz, however, prevailed and offered no apologies for the bruising campaign, which drew criticism both within and outside the bank.

But just weeks after securing a deal on anti-corruption, the former Pentagon deputy ran into a storm last month over charges of preferential treatment in his handling of a promotion and pay rise for his companion and bank employee Shaha Riza.

It's been clearly demonstrated that Wolfowitz stepped back from the process involving his girlfriend, though he surely would have lobbied on her behalf, and the Board's setting of the bar at the high level it now has is somewhat problematic for them, as the WSJ points out:

In the winter of 2006 an email was sent to the investigations hotline of the World Bank's Department of Institutional Integrity, or INT. Its subject was the "Hypocrisy of ED Tom Scholar."

"Please know," read the text of the email written by a bank employee, "that UK ED Tom Scholar is continuing an affair with [a bank employee]. This woman has been given preferential treatment in [the department] because of her relationship with this powerful ED, this affair is well known, and is in violation of the Bank Staff Rules and the Boards Standards of Conduct."The double standard is palpable. For me, though, the really troubling issue is the World Bank's lack of will to attack corruption both within its own walls and in those countries to which it provides significant help.

I'm preparing a post on the amount of aid the West has given to Third World countries in the last 50 years - a staggering $2.3 trillion - and how small the positive impact has been.

The World Bank is used for buying the political favours - votes at the UN and various world bodies - of Third World nations by the Europeans. Wolfowitz rained on their parade and now the Europeans have managed to unseat a man demonstrably dedicated to weeding out corruption and achieving real results in Africa.

Let's hope that George W Bush sends a signal to the World Bank that he is serious about dealing with the issues at the World Bank and appoints someone that will build on Wolfowitz's good work.

Will the Sun help Climate Brown Shirts?

It's impossible to take an objective view of science and be anything other than extremely skeptical of the wild claims made about the consequences of climate change. Impossible.

As I've pointed out before, when the answer is socialism you should be extremely suspicious of what the problem is that's trying to be solved. When it relates to the environment then your suspicion should be raised to the proverbial eleven out of ten given socialism's catastrophic impact on the environment wherever it's been inflicted upon the poor, unsuspecting, about-to-be-immiserised masses.

It's completely obvious to anybody taking a fair minded look at the climate issue that the main driver of our climate is the great, orange, especially hot ball of energy in the sky known as the Sun.

According to the World Wide Fund for Nature we haven't got much time to act before it's too late...!

Our planet is just five years away from climate change catastrophe - but can still be saved, according to a new report.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) warns governments have until 2012 to "plant the seeds of change" and make positive moves to limit carbon emissions.

If they fail to do so, the WWF's Vision For 2050 warns "generations to come will have to live with the compromises and hardships caused by their inability to act".

Now, the sum total of real scientists that infest socialist front organisations masquerading as the environmental movement is somewhere less than 10%. However, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand how changes to the Sun's activity is going to play right into their hands.

According to NASA, which might have the odd rocket scientist working for them:

The Sun's Great Conveyor Belt has slowed to a record-low crawl, according to research by NASA solar physicist David Hathaway. "It's off the bottom of the charts," he says. "This has important repercussions for future solar activity."

The NASA article was released on May 2006, which seemed to be closely followed by even more shrill hysterics from the Climate Brown Shirts. I wonder why?

The Great Conveyor Belt is a massive circulating current of fire (hot plasma) within the Sun. It has two branches, north and south, each taking about 40 years to perform one complete circuit. Researchers believe the turning of the belt controls the sunspot cycle, and that's why the slowdown is important.

"Normally, the conveyor belt moves about 1 meter per second—walking pace," says Hathaway. "That's how it has been since the late 19th century." In recent years, however, the belt has decelerated to 0.75 m/s in the north and 0.35 m/s in the south. "We've never seen speeds so low."

...Hathaway's prediction should not be confused with another recent forecast: A team led by physicist Mausumi Dikpata of NCAR has predicted that Cycle 24, peaking in 2011 or 2012, will be intense. Hathaway agrees: "Cycle 24 will be strong. Cycle 25 will be weak. Both of these predictions are based on the observed behavior of the conveyor belt.

...If the trend holds, Solar Cycle 25 in 2022 could be, like the belt itself, "off the bottom of the charts."

I see. So in 2011-12 activity is going to be at its maximum and that will have what effect on our climate, exactly? Warm it up? OK. And in 2022 we're probably going to be in for a change that could bring on another Little Ice Age. And 2012 is the year they're telling us is when we have to changes in place...

Therefore, if we follow the green-wrapped socialists' advice and slash our wrists now by reducing carbon emissions, things will warm up for a bit before really cooling down as the 'effect' of cutting emissions kicks in.

What a remarkably cynical guy I am to think that those supposedly sooo concerned with the environment would play political games. Why, it's almost like saying that the only reason 1990 was picked as the base year for Kyoto was so that there would be little effect on Western Europe's economy. Oh, wait...

If Climate Brown Shirts continue to make their claims based on the entirely predictable effects of solar activity then the Sun will indeed be a great friend for them.

SNL: Fringe Candidates Debate

Saturday Night Live spoofs the current round of candidates debates with this pretty funny sketch.

ClimateAudit and the Climate Team's hypocrisy

Steve McIntyre's ClimateAudit is the place to go to read about the reality of major climate scientists' refusal to subject their findings to scrutiny by their critics.

In a recent post Swindle and the IPCC TAR Spaghetti Graph one of the critics of The Great Global Warming Swindle stated:

If a practising scientist selected a 1987 data set over more recent versions, failed to cite it correctly, altered the appearance of the data without a clear explanation and didn’t include the data from the last 20 years then I think we’d all be asking serious questions about their professionalism.

The irony of the statement was not lost on McIntyre who has spent the last three years attempting to gain the data upon which a lot of major climate science is based and is asking questions about why recent data is not being included in current publications.

In the context of putting data into the public domain, it is actually the required standard for any science published in any of the major scientific journals. Unfortunately, a number of these journals including Science, Nature and New Scientist are on the global warming bandwagon and do not only not enforce their own published standards on the requirement for scientists to provide their data but also actively interfere with attempts from those scientists in the 'denier' camp to access any data and subject it to further scrutiny.

If you want to get a full understanding that the science is not only nowhere near settled but also that the science is actually mumbo jumbo then ClimateAudit is a good place to visit from time to time. If you want to get your comments censored then go over to Realclimate and make a comment that climate models are wildly inaccurate. Then again, it is run by the Hockey Stick Team and facts are quite inconvenient to their case.

Loewenstein the censor machine

Semi-literate, historically ignorant, pretend journalist and author Antony Loewenstein has a well deserved reputation for censoring comments that he disagrees with at his site. Apparently, factual accuracy is undesirable in the world of Loewenstein and his deluded sidekick, Andre.

JF Beck has been on the case exposing Loewenstein's glass jaw for a little while now but if there's one thing that can be said for the serial censor it's that his skin is as thick as his intellect.

In response to a post Is the US headed for another great depression? that describes US military expenditure as an 'insane burden' I wrote what I considered a reasonable response and included a link to a piece I'd done showing US defence spending as a percent of GDP since 1940.

Post submitted. Post censored within about 15 minutes.

Here it is. You work out why it would be censored:
I then responded to another comment with:

That's all true and correct in the real world but it's completely contradictory to what passes as reality in Loewenstein's truth-barren parallel universe.

I then responded to a post Oil law hit's more bumps in the road with:

By 'almost none' it's actually around 16% but people have a view that it's the major source and that's why we're involved in Iraq. I'm actually preparing a post on that subject at the moment. This post was sunk immediately and you can see below that BenZ makes a very similar enquiry about the apostrophe an hour and a half later and...that it's fixed.


According to a post at JF Beck's site, Andre states that "Ant and I are strongly against censoring comments unless of course, they get seriously out of hand."

Do my comments really constitute being "seriously out of hand"? Perhaps I'm being censored for having a history of calling Loewenstein's intellect into question, a position that puts me in the vast majority of people familiar with his work.

I've been blogging for three months, have had a surprising 13,000+ unique visits and have not ever censored a comment.

Unlike Loewenstein, I'm not afraid of being challenged on, and arguing, any of my positions.