Three blind IAEA watchdogs

Not content with appointing the unbelievably incompetent Hans Blix to head the IAEA and then following up with his even less competent but equally feckless successor Mohamed ElBaradei they've done it again and appointed Japan's Yukiya Amano, a man whose first statement is that there's no sign that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons.

The world's top nuclear watchdog chose Japan's Yukiya Amano as its next head on Thursday -- and he touched on the devastation U.S. atom bombs wreaked on his country in pledging to do his utmost to prevent the spread of nuclear arms.

The decision by the 35-nation International Atomic Energy Agency board ended a tug of war on who should succeed Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, who saw his agency vaulted into prominence during a high-profile 12-year tenure.

North Korea left the nonproliferation fold to develop a nuclear weapons program on ElBaradei's watch and his agency later launched inconclusive probes on suspicions that those to nations were interested in developing nuclear weapons.

ElBaradei's activist approach to his job often rankled with Washington -- and it had a strong preference for Amano, seen by the U.S. as a technocrat amenable to pursuing a hard line on Iran's nuclear ambitions.

So how has that worked out for the US?

The incoming head of the UN's nuclear watchdog said on Friday he did not see any hard evidence that Iran was trying to gain the ability to develop nuclear weapons.

"I don't see any evidence in IAEA official documents about this," Yukiya Amano told Reuters in his first direct comment on Iran's nuclear program since his election, when asked whether he believed Iran was seeking a nuclear weapons capability.

There really must be something in the water at the UN. How is Ahmadinejad going to uphold his promise to wipe Israel off the map without nuclear weapons?

Current IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei told the BBC last month it was his "gut feeling" that Iran was seeking the ability to produce nuclear arms, if it desired, as an "insurance policy" against perceived threats from neighboring countries or the United States.

What a piece of crap ElBaradei really is.

He knows full well that Iran's intentions are not to provide insurance against attack but to allow it to expand its influence in the region.

We seem to be living in an age where unserious people are calling the shots.

(Nothing Follows)

Green shoots precede black economic hole

Ben Bernanke's so-called 'green shoots' are little more than the temporary result of a massive injection of money into the market that can only have the effect of ensuring that the economy of the United States contracts quickly and painfully in the near term and remains moribund for at least a decade after that.

Markets always find their mark and the US government's and Fed's interference are disrupting this natural process.

US employers are voting with their chequebooks with the consequence that unemployment is up significantly more than economists expected in June. Parenthentically, economists' predictions over the last 12-18 months have been about as accurate as James Hansen's or Tim Flannery's climate predictions.

From Chart of the Day:

Today, the Labor Department reported that nonfarm payrolls (jobs) decreased by 467,000 in June. The stock market declined sharply on the news. Today's chart puts that decline into perspective by comparing job losses during the current economic recession (solid red line) to that of the last recession (dashed gold line) and the average recession from 1954-2006 (dashed blue line). As today's chart illustrates, the current job market has suffered losses that are nearly three times as much as the average. In fact, if this were an average recession/job loss cycle, the number of jobs would have begun to increase three months ago

Based on just this information would you take a guess that the green shoots are working or not having any effect?

Does this data give any credibility to President Obama's statement that the stimulus package is designed to 'save or create' jobs?

Australian economist Gerard Jackson on the situation:

The Institute for Supply Management reports that May was the "16th consecutive month of contraction in the manufacturing sector". Even though the contraction appears to be slowing the demand for capital goods continues to drop with no sign of a reversal in sight as of yet. Of course, this fall in demand has hit the producers of capital goods. In the meantime unemployment continues to rise with some commentators expecting it to reach 11 per cent before the year is out and maybe even climb to 12 per cent next year. Therefore the current signs suggest the US could be sliding into an actual depression, if it isn't there already.

It seems that Obama's borrow, spend and inflate policy is proving to be a complete failure. The idea that government borrowing is counter to recession was always a myth. The notion that transferring purchasing power from individuals to bureaucrats and politicians would expand aggregate demand is so stupid that — as George Orwell said with respect to another matter — only the intelligentsia could "believe a thing like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool". And Keynes was no fool. When he spoke of deficits and borrowing it was always with reference to monetary expansion. It's his disciples who keep getting it wrong.

Regardless of your political affiliation do you think that:

A deepening economic crisis

plus cap and trade

plus socialised health care

will help the economy, harm the economy or have no effect on the economy?

The answer can only be one of the three.

(Nothing Follows)

Obama - slow to support real democracy, quick to support autocracy

President Obama is the most popular man in the world.

Elected on a platform of hope and change that included 'listening' to the rest of the world and ending America's 'bullying' tactics of George W Bush he carries a special power to help oppressed people all around the world.

Thus, his tardiness in speaking up for real democracy in Iran rather than continuing to support the old men of Iran's misogynist theocracy is deeply troubling.

More troubling, however, is how quickly he joined the worst of Latin America's left wing autocrats in denouncing the removal from power of Manuel Zelaya in what has been termed a 'coup'.

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday the coup that ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was illegal and would set a "terrible precedent" of transition by military force unless it was reversed.

"We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras, the democratically elected president there," Obama told reporters after an Oval Office meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

Zelaya, in office since 2006, was overthrown in a dawn coup on Sunday after he angered the judiciary, Congress and the army by seeking constitutional changes that would allow presidents to seek re-election beyond a four-year term.

Isn't it remarkable that the person who was meant to re-establish America's moral authority in the world would throw his hat in with Chavez, Castro, Morales et al?

So who are they supporting?

In Honduras they have a one term limit for the position of president. The limit was introduced to ensure that the country did not go down the path of other Latin American countries that historically have seen democratically elected leaders usurp power for themselves in the same way that Chavez has in Venezuela.

Zelaya was trying to circumvent the Constitution by ensuring he could get elected for further terms.

It must be understood that Zelaya is a nutjob in the Chavez and Allende category.

His own party took action against him after the country's highest court had ordered him to stand down. They asked the army to intervene, which they did, and the parliament then replaced Zelaya with a member of his own party.

In fact, what has happened in Honduras is not only not a coup but also not illegal.

So why is Obama supporting anti-democratic forces in South America?

One reason could be pure political pragmatism. He takes the same position as China by not caring who is in power as long as the US can deal with them to advantage.

The other is that he has more sympathy for left wing dictatorships and autocrats than he does for those seeking liberty and freedom.

Whatever the case, history will not be kind to a president that did not stand up for democracy when he had both the moral authority and obligation to do so.

(Nothing Follows)

Steve Fielding doesn't believe in man made climate change

Steve Fielding is exactly the sort of fellow who drives the left mad.

A strong believer in god, Fielding does not believe in man made global warming which at first blush seems contradictary, as they are both religious positions but makes sense if you compare it to his believing in Christianity but not Islam.

Family First senator Steve Fielding has made up his mind on climate change - the world is not warming now, and humans aren't changing the climate.

The government and the country's top scientists have tried to convince Senator Fielding, who holds a crucial vote in the upper house, that global warming is real.

But he's released a document setting out his position.

"Global temperature isn't rising," it says.

On emissions trading, Senator Fielding said he wouldn't risk job losses on "unconvincing green science".

The document says it is a "fact" that the evidence does not support the notion that greenhouse gas emissions are causing dangerous global warming.

Senator Fielding later sought to clarify his position, saying he believed in global warming, but he did not think the world was warming now and did not think humans were causing global warming.

"Over the last 15 years, global temperatures haven't been going up and, therefore, there hasn't been in the last 15 years a period of global warming," Senator Fielding told AAP.

"I think that global warming is real, and climate change is real, but on average global temperatures have stayed steady while carbon emissions have increased over the last 15 years.

"Man-made carbon emissions don't appear to be causing it."

Because of the numbers in the upper house, Senator Fielding's verdict means the government will have to rely on the opposition to get its emissions trading scheme (ETS) legislation passed.

I was with Steve Fielding a couple of months ago and politely asked him to defeat the emissions trading scheme, which would allow Australia to avoid having its economy ruined for no good reason.

He responded that he didn't think he had the power.

Perhaps he sought advice from a higher power and has been rewarded?

Whatever the case may be if the emissions trading scheme is nobbled then Australia will have dodged a bullet.

(Nothing Follows)

Sarkozy is right to abhor the burqa

Good on Sarkozy for having the balls to say what too many of today's multi-culti cowards will not.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy says the Muslim burqa is a sign of subservience for women that undermines their dignity.

For clarity. This is a burqa:

And for the nitwits who think a hijab and a burqa are basically the same thing here's the difference:

Mr Sarkozy made the comments during a historic address in a special sitting of both houses of the French Parliament at the Palace of Versailles.

For more than a century, French presidents have been banned from speaking directly to Senators and MPs.

The argument has always been that parliament should preserve its independence from the president but Mr Sarkozy changed the rules.

That was controversial enough, but perhaps not as controversial as what he used the address for: stating that the burqa was an affront to women.

"The burqa is not a sign of religion. It is a sign of enslavement. It is a sign of subservience," he said.

Exactly correct. There are few greater symbols of oppression than the burqa. It's up there with the swastika, the hammer and sickle and the KKK insignia.

The French leader spoke in favour of a recent call by 65 French MPs to create a parliamentary commission to study a small but growing trend of wearing the full body religious garment in France.

"I want to say officially, it will not be welcome on the territory of the French republic," he said.

"We cannot accept in our country women imprisoned behind netting; cut off from any social life, deprived of any identity.

"This is not the idea the French republic has of a woman's dignity."

Some parliamentarians boycotted Mr Sarkozy's historic speech, dismissing the President's address as nothing more than a public relations stunt.

But Mr Sarkozy struck a chord among the French population, who voted overwhelmingly in favour of his centre right UMP party in the recent European elections.

The head of European research at the Global Policy Institute at the London Metropolitan University, Jacques Reland, is a keen observer of French politics.

"I think a lot of people in France feel really ill at ease with the burqa," he said.

I went to the local shopping mall on the weekend and there was a woman dressed in a burqa. It is a confronting sight. How it can be defended as a personal choice when it's clearly not is yet another sign of the cognitive dissonance of the left.

"I am pretty sure that a lot of French people are saying yes, [what Mr Sarkozy said] is the way it should be."

Sarah Joseph is the editor of Britain's only Muslim lifestyle magazine, emel.

She says many Muslim women use the burqa as an expression of their faith and are not forced to wear it by anyone else.

"I mean, I colour my hair. I don't wear [some forms of Islamic dress] myself but I will defend someone's right to do so or not to do so," she said.

"If you deny a woman's right to choose, that is denying them dignity and denying them their freedom, and it won't create a society of more integrated French citizens, it will create a division in France which will be very unfortunate and deny women their right to participate fully in French society."

Cognitive dissonance on full display in all its glory...

Mr Sarkozy says he is just defending a secular state.

France is home to an estimated five million Muslims. In 2004, the country passed a law forbidding any conspicuous religious symbols from state schools, including veils, which were also banned in government offices.

Charles Johnson at LGF used a very appropriate quote from Christopher Hitchens the other day, "The secular state is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths."

The burqa is a symbol of a backward, unenlightened society.

If we in the modern world accept such a symbol of oppression then do we advance our society, do nothing to our society or diminish or society and values?

Paradoxically, those on the left think that accepting the burqa is an example of our advancement.

Clear thinking people have a different view.

(Nothing Follows)

Of course they should be sacked

Do civil libertarians do anything other than undermine standards and decency?

Civil libertarians have criticised a proposal to sack police officers if they are convicted of drink-driving.

Queensland Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson is expected to release a new policy this week following a number of drink-driving offences by off-duty police.

Eight officers have been caught driving over the limit this year.

Queensland Council for Civil Liberties vice-president Terry O'Gorman said dismissing police convicted of drink-driving was harsh and amounted to "double punishment".

"Drink-driving disqualification periods generally are onerous and in some cases have a harsh flow-on effect on employment and family financial stability if a person as a result of losing a licence can't work," he said.

"This is as true for police as it is for the general community."

Mr O'Gorman said police convicted of drink-driving already faced being taken off the road and given desk jobs, often resulting in less pay.

Officers could also miss out on promotion, he said.

So, officers who are convicted of drink driving could earn less pay and miss out on promotion?

How sad for them.

What about if they use racist language and are convicted?

Or shoplift a Snickers Bar?

Police officers who drink drive have no place in the police force, as they obviously have disdain for the law.

They should be sacked let alone lose pay and promotion.

(Nothing Follows)

Barbara "dumb as a box of hammers" Boxer vs Dr Evil

Compare Barbara Boxer's ridiculous request to a General, for fricksake, with Austin Powers' Dr Evil to the United Nations (at the 0:43 mark of 2nd clip):

(Nothing Follows)

Tax the rich

Here's a great video from the Cato Institute giving just 5 reasons why taxing the rich is a crap idea.



The video uses an argument I've employed against my left wing, economically illiterate (I know, I know, it's tautologous) mates. They want to use taxation to reduce a person's consumption of alcohol or cigarettes but then aren't able to make the connection that taxing productivity will have exactly the same effect - there's less of it.

The economy destroying emissions trading scheme currently being debated in Australia works on the same principle. Use the tax system (or a credit system, which is the same thing) to reduce output of CO2.

More tax. Less whatever.

Tax productivity. Less productivity.

It's not too hard to understand, surely?

(Nothing Follows)

Some quick questions

Having a look at events in the US over the last week or so I have some questions.

Why did President Obama give his speech to the 'Muslim world' in Egypt rather than in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation? Or India with the second largest Muslim population?

Why is it racist for the right to attack Sonia Sotomayor but not when the left attacks Alberto Gonzalez?

Why is it OK for the US government to steal General Motors from its shareholders?

The government claims that it is going to turn GM into an efficient, profitable organisation.

Why should anyone believe that when Amtrak and the US Postal Service are such inefficient, low quality, massively expensive organisations?

If the government does manage to turn GM into an efficient, profitable organisation then will it turn its attention to Amtrak and US Postal, as well?

Does anyone understand that socialised health care means East German Trabants for everyone and not Mercedes?

This is the fallacy of 'quality' health care. The reason that high quality health care exists is because there are people who are able to pay for it. Rich people. Over time, those health technologies become more efficient and cheaper to bring to market meaning that a larger cross-section of the population has access to it. A one size fits all health system creates the situation where not only do new, life saving health technologies do not come to market as quickly as they should, if ever, but also that care is rationed by faceless government bureaucrats to those that will achieve the best outcome. If you're an older person then you'll be given less priority than younger people, as it is in the UK and Canada.

The US is stuffed for a generation thanks to the intervention of government into markets. President Obama's trillion dollar deficits will only make things worse.

Economic recovery comes about through capital growth.

None of the policies implemented in the US or the UK or Australia will result in one dollar of capital growth.

Why would anyone expect the economy to recover any time soon?

(Nothing Follows)

Sunday night rock 'n' roll covers

I'll tell you someone who was a terrific performer who is generally overlooked when considering the great guitar men - Rory Gallagher. How he didn't make Rolling Stone magazine's top 100 guitarists of all time beats me.

Rory Gallagher (pronounced "Ro-ree Gall-a-her") (born Liam Rory Gallagher, 2 March, 1948– died 14 June, 1995) was an Irish blues/rock guitarist. Born in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, Ireland, he grew up in Cork City in the south of the country. He is best known for his solo albums, and for his tenure in the band Taste during the late 1960s. A multi-instrumentalist who gained a reputation as a gifted and charismatic live performer, Rory Gallagher's albums have sold in excess of 30 million copies worldwide.

Bullfrog Blues is a 'traditional' blues rock tune for which Gallagher is recognised as having the best version. The following are audio only. I picked them because they are the best versions I could find.

Rory Gallagher - Terrific live version



Canned Heat - Monterey '67



(Nothing Follows)

Immigrants attacking Indian and Chinese students proves Australia is racist

The Indian community in Australia staged a quite large and noisy protest to highlight the fact that many of them, and particularly students, are being targeted in deliberate racist attacks.

Our Prime Minister has been forced to intervene in a diplomatic spat with India over the attacks.

Over the last week I have been watching the media reporting to see whether they're reporting on who the perpetrators of the attacks are.

Not one report has provided the information that is most salient to the crimes - that they're being mostly carried out by immigrants to Australia, mainly from Africa.

So what do we have now?

The nitwit leftists who jump on any opportunity to kick Australia and accuse it of being a nation of racists are howling from the rooftops.

In the People's Republic of Victoria, Rob Hulls has introduced new hate crimes legislation:

HATE crime could soon be an offence in Victoria as the State Government moves to crack down on violent attacks against Indian students, homosexuals and other targeted groups.

Under a plan being pushed by Attorney-General Rob Hulls, judges would have to take into account "hatred for or a prejudice against a particular group of people" as an aggravating factor when sentencing offenders.

Tougher sentences would apply to crimes deemed to be based on victims' race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

Of course, the only problem with such legislation is that the government will never have the courage to charge anyone other than white, male Australians.

The Chinese never miss the chance to put the boot in and take advantage of a situation:

THE future of the $15.5 billion overseas student industry is under threat after the Chinese Government went public with concerns about violence against its students in Australia.

Battling to contain the damage arising from attacks on Indian students, university vice-chancellors fear Australia's third-largest export industry may face sanctions from the Chinese and Indian governments.

Chinese embassy counsellor Liu Jin yesterday said his Government was intervening to ensure the safety of Chinese nationals.

"There are over 130,000 Chinese students in Australia," he said. "They have, on the whole, had a good study and living environment in Australia, but attacks on Chinese students also occurred in recent years.

"The Chinese embassy and consulates in Australia attach high importance to the safety of Chinese students … It is hoped that the Australian Government will provide better protection to international students from China and other countries and ensure their legitimate rights in Australia."

At least we have a Prime Minister who can tell the Chinese to pull in their heads in their own language. Not that he has the balls for that.

Not letting an opportunity to get her noggin into the media again, Australian minor Bollywood starlet, Tania Zaetta, has 'begged' Bollywood to stop a boycott against Australia.

Aussie Bollywood star Tanya Zaetta has pleaded with the Indian film industry not to boycott Australia over the spate of attacks on Indian students in Melbourne.

The actress, who appeared in the Melbourne-produced Bollywood movie Salaam Namaste, said she was "horrified" to hear of the race violence but added that any boycott would do more harm than good.

“I understand completely Indians being upset over the recent racial attacks, I’m appalled by them myself," Zaetta told ninemsn.

"It makes me ashamed to be Australian when you hear about attacks on people of other cultures.

"But I think everyone needs to take a deep breath and calm down. Bollywood boycotting Australia will only drive the two countries further apart."

Zaetta is 'ashamed to be Australian' due to attacks that are mostly carried out by a country whose intake of immigrants exceeds any other in the world on a per capita basis.

Why can't the truth be told?

Australia is among the least racist nations on earth. Not that you'd know that from reading the media.

(Nothing Follows)

Top Gear Muslims

During last night's Australian version of Top Gear during Warren Brown's interview with swimmer Liesel Jones I took the following photos:

Is it just me or is the presence of a couple of obviously Muslim kids in the background (one is just in shot in the 3rd photo) look staged?

(Nothing Follows)

Defence Skippy

I was out at the Department of Defence's Campbell Park offices the other day.

Campbell Park, together with Russell Offices, is the headquarters of the Australian Defence Force. It is located in Canberra, the national capital of Australia, in the suburb of Campbell, Australian Capital Territory.

The building looks eastward across the Majura Valley and Canberra International Airport and backs onto Mount Ainslie. The offices have seven floors of varying width, staggered back on tall concrete pillars to match and blend with the profile of the hill to the west. Four numbered sections, numbered from the south, bend slightly eastward at each 'node' where lifts take people between floors. Nodes B, C, D, and E also have spiral staircases. Access is by main security entrances at B and D Nodes, between CP1&2 and CP3&4 respectively. Underground document storage and work space is below part of the building.

Apparently, it's the longest building in the southern hemisphere.



Anyhoo, there happened to be a few kangaroo kicking about and so I took a few photos to prove to our overseas friends that these things really do bounce down the streets of our cities.

By the way, they are definitely not friendly and should not be approached if you happen to come across one. They'll do you some serious damage if you stir one up.

(Nothing Follows)

Sunday night rock 'n' roll

No cover version tonight. I'll post a few videos of the remarkable Rory Gallagher.

Rory Gallagher (born Liam Rory Gallagher, 2 March, 1948– died 14 June, 1995) was an Irish blues/rock guitarist. Born in Ballyshannon, County Donegal, Ireland, he grew up in Cork City in the south of the country. He is best known for his solo albums, and for his tenure in the band Taste during the late 1960s. A multi-instrumentalist who gained a reputation as a gifted and charismatic live performer, Rory Gallagher's albums have sold in excess of 30 million copies worldwide.















(Nothing Follows)

Australia should really be the lucky country

Gerard Jackson's latest commentary on the Australian economy and the Rudd government's unbelievable mismanagement of the global financial crisis is a good place to start today's post.

The economic commentary swirling around Rudd's budget reveals how bad economic thinking is in Australia. What none of our so-called pundits have grasped is that government spending in the form of borrowing from the public is never stimulatory — and it certainly is not Keynesian. When the government borrows from A to put B to work it is not expanding aggregate demand but merely transferring purchasing power from one person to another. A economic fundamental fact that every classical economist fully understood.

The Keynesian approach consists of monetary expansion to fund deficits and government borrowing. In case you are wondering, this is called inflation. Unlike Rudd and Treasury head Ken Henry the devious Mr Keynes knew exactly what he was about. He also understood the inherent inflationary danger of such a policy. This is why in in 1937 he publicly called on the British government to end new public works projects, warning it against the inflationary effects of any "general stimulus" even though unemployment stood at 12.5 per cent. (T. W. Hutchison, Keynes v. the 'Keynesians'...?, The Institute for Economic Affairs, 1977, p. 11).

What we need to look at is the money supply. A vital factor in the economy's behaviour that our all-knowing economic commentariat keep overlooking. (This lot even manage to talk about the Reserve's monetary policy without ever referring to the money supply). Reserve figures show that since last September all measures of inflation have been falling. They also show that the prices of materials used in manufacturing started to drop in the same month and that the CPI flattened out at the same time. Therefore it should be no surprise to see that GDP also started to slow in September and has obviously continued to do so.

...Allow me to once again repeat a basic economic fact: entrepreneurship drives an economy and savings fuel it. Savings are what produces capital accumulation, otherwise called economic growth. The idea that GDP and growing productivity always indicate growth is a grave error. A situation can actually emerge where GDP and productivity continue to rise even as the capital stock is consumed and heavy unemployment continues to burden the economy. This is what happened in the US during the Great Depression. For example, from 1929 to 1936 labour productivity rose by 25 per cent.

Jackon's basic economic fact - entrepreneurship drives an economy and savings fuel it - should be taught in school so that the next generation can aspire to become entrepreneurs, as well as focus on saving for the future rather than spending now and paying (more) later.

In 50 years' time those societies that have enabled their people to look after themselves will have advanced past those who ensure their people are reliant on government doing things for them.

In 1964 Donald Horne released The Lucky Country, a book about how lucky Australia has been to have, as the Wikipedia page describes, "...natural resources, weather, history, distance from problems elsewhere in the world, and other sorts of prosperity."

As Horne put it, "Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck."

It's hard to argue that we are lucky to have so many natural advantages over the rest of the world. It's unfortunate that from time to time we end up with second rate governments and, in the case of the current one, third rate.

The Rudd government's predicted public debt is $300 billion, which is about $380 billion lower than when they came to office in 2007 due to the surplus built up by the previous government.

If you want to get a sense of how lucky we are then check out the following:


(click to embiggen)

The itty bitty decrease on the right hand side is Australia.

There's no doubt that things are going to get much worse in the world before things get better.

However, there's also no doubt that the policies of the Rudd government are going to make Australia's recovery slower and more painful than they would otherwise be.

The same goes for the US where Obama's policy of bailing out failed states could lead to the country losing its AAA credit rating.

Ditto Great Britain.

It's unfortunate that at a time of global financial crisis that we have such incompetents as Obama, Brown and Rudd.

(Nothing Follows)

Non-scientist scrutinises real scientist

Computer teacher Tim Lambert has a history of beclowning himself when it comes to analysing those things he disagrees with.

For example, he denies there's a UN ban on DDT and, anyway, even if there isn't then mosquitoes are resistant to it so there's no point using it.

Facts, you see, are not one of Lambert's strong points.

DDT is listed as a persistent organic pollutant by the UN and if a country wants WHO funding then they can only get it if they don't use DDT.

Lambert does not believe this is the case. One of my close relatives was directly involved in the issue, working in Africa and representing the UN. What he told me, and showed me, proves Lambert and other DDT detractors dead wrong. When my relative retires from working and is not subject to the blowback of disclosure then I'll give the details.

Anyhow, Lambert has undertaken to critique Ian Plimer's new book, Heaven and Earth, subjecting it to exactly the sort of scrutiny they should be undertaking on anything produced by Hansen, the Hokey Stick team, Lonnie Thompson and the rest of the useless scientists that support the IPCC's ridiculous position on global warming.

Check out the latest posts:

Ian Plimer lies about source of his figure 3

Ian Enting is checking Plimer's claims

Sales of Heaven and Earth

Reaction to Ashley's review of Plimer

An astronomer reviews Ian Plimer's book

The Australian's War on Science 38: more denial from Ian Plimer

Ian Plimer 'can not recall' where his graph came from

Plimer does the Gish gallop

Ian Plimer and the health effects of mercury poisoning from land mines

The science is missing from Ian Plimer's "Heaven and Earth"

The fact that the left has reacted so violently, and irrationally, to the success of Heaven and Earth demonstrates how worried they are that the so called science supporting their position is about to be exposed for the sham it is.

Lambert is a self professed computer expert and I have no doubt he has a fair bit of skill in that area.

Why doesn't he analyse how climate models are created and why they have a zero percent successful forecasting rate?

That would be the intellectually honest thing to do if he really wanted to make a contribution.

(Nothing Follows)

Rudd government to lower Australian living standards

Gerard Brookes has been knocking it out of the park lately in his critique of the reckless spending of both the Australian and US governments.

The only outcome can be reduced living standards into the future.

There is no other outcome possible.

In an effort to avert the nonexistent danger of another Great Depression the Labor Government has decided to spend like a squad of drunken Obama's. The real increase in government spending for this financial year and the next will be in the region of 18 per cent, with outlays running at about 29 per cent of GDP for this year. This lot is beginning to make the feckless Whitlam and Cairns — the latter being Whitlam's cretinous Treasurer — look like a pair of pikers.

Unlike some commentators I haven't bothered to wade through that monstrosity called the budget because most of it doesn't matter. For example, revenue and growth figures are utterly worthless. You would be better off reading tea leaves. One thing and one thing only matters here: sound economic principles. In this respect the budget — like the great majority of budgets everywhere — is a disgrace, just like most of our economic commentary.

It is being argued that this spending is basic Keynesian counter-cyclical fiscal policy and is necessary to keep unemployment below the 10 per cent level. For Swan this is a sacred duty and one that extends to eliminating long-term unemployment. As part of this duty he and Rudd plan to ruthlessly raid Australians' superannuation funds in an effort to offset part of their $58 billion deficit. This is what they call responsible fiscal management. The rest of us call it stealing. Not only does this proposed act of grand larceny reveal an absence of anything resembling ethics it also exposes their total economic illiteracy.

Allow me to return to my basic premise that what really matters are sound economic principles. For starters, the financial crisis is not a crisis of capitalism but of dangerous economic fallacies that central banks have been indulging in and which their staff learnt from their economics lecturers, not all of whom were Keynesians. These banks caused the world's money supply to explode by massively expanding credit. Much of this credit eventually turned up as "idle deposits" which were then immediately labelled by central bankers, treasury official and the usual band of useless economic commentators as "surplus saving".

It would have been obvious anyone actually versed in monetary economics and the history of economic thought that these so-called surplus savings were — like "excess investment" — a symptom of inflation. Let me put it this way, when savings exceed investment it is inflation. And that is exactly what we got on global scale.

Irrespective of what our economic pundits say Australia was fully embroiled in this world-wide lunacy. For example, from March 1996 — when Howard was elected — to last October currency rose by 129 per cent, bank deposits by 201 per cent and M1 by 185 per cent. It was this reckless monetary expansion that fuelled the boom and the government's surplus, not decent economic management. Booms, which are never good things, always come to an end. This brings us back to sound economic thinking.

Every boom creates distortions. When the boom busts these extortions are revealed as idle capital and rising unemployment. Moreover, before the bust makes itself fully felt it first emerges in manufacturing. I spent ages pointing out that Australian manufacturing was contracting and that this was evidence that the boom was coming to an end which meant that it was only a matter of time before the rest of the economy was hit and the rate of unemployment rose. The likes of Terry McCrann disagreed, writing nonsense about a "dual economy". Well, I was right and they were wrong. (And yes, I am one of those people who will tell you "I told you so").

The first thing to note is that there is nothing Keynesian about Rudd's spending binge. Nor can it halt a real rise in unemployment. This is not what Keynes was about. When Keynes spoke of deficits and borrowing he didn't mean that the government should borrow a pound from Fred the butcher to put Bill the bricklayer to work. This would be nothing but a transfer of purchasing power from one person to another via the government.

The essence of Keynesianism is that the central bank should expand the money supply. Even our economic pundits should be able to see that running down the surplus adds nothing to the quantity of money. Moreover, any stimulatory effects will be very short-lived. Unfortunately our economic Solons cannot even work that one out. Government borrowing for the sake of keeping people off the dole is self-destructive. It increases the national debt without providing a genuine net return to the country.

In a free market the emergence of a large pool of unemployed after a bust is always a temporary phenomenon so long as governments allow labour markets to clear. (This is a fundamental economic fact that Australia's so-called free market economists failed miserably to convey to both the public and to politicians, partly because the don't understand it themselves). Nevertheless, the government insists on running up a massive deficit which is bound to eventually raise interest rates and crowd out genuine productivity-raising investment.

In a pathetic and thoroughly immoral attempt to lessen the impact of their own profligacy Rudd and Swan are targeting pension funds. Now pension funds are savings. Without savings capital accumulation is not possible. It therefore follows that taxing these funds amounts to taxing future living standards. The same goes for venture capital and capital gains. Once again, it is entrepreneurship that drives an economy and savings that fuel it, not politicians and bureaucrats.

Ultimately the government will have to turn to the Reserve to pump up the money supply to increase what Keynesians call demand and what real economists call inflation. But using inflation to escape a recession is like trying to cure a drug addict by pumping him full of cocaine. The sad truth is that no one in our think tanks, the Reserve or the Treasury have any genuine understanding of the dangerous economic forces that are now at work. And this is why they keep getting it wrong. No wonder they are afraid of an open debate.

Economic blatherers on the left are blathering on like professional blatherers about how saving jobs has to be the government's top priority.

It's drivel, of course, because they're the wrong jobs and need to be washed out of the system.

That's what a recession does.

Australia has much more pain to come directly because of the policies of this government, the worst in Australia's history.

The US is going to be stuffed for more than a decade as a result of what Mr Obama as done...

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Ideological enemies embrace

Notre Dame giving time to President Obama is like the Simon Wiesenthal Center giving time to David Irving.

In this embrace of competing ideologies Notre Dame will soon find that they're in a death embrace with a Black Widow they can't win.

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Sunday night rock 'n' roll covers

"Get It On" (retitled "Bang a Gong (Get It On)" in the U.S.) was the second UK number one song for the British rock group T. Rex. It was released from their best-known album, Electric Warrior.

While it only spent four weeks at the top in the UK, starting July 24, 1971 ("Hot Love" was number one for six weeks from March-May), it was the group's biggest hit overall, selling nearly a million copies in the UK. It peaked on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 at number ten in January 1972, becoming the band's only major U.S. hit. The song reached #12 in Canada in March 1972.

The Hollywood and Vine version has had less than 200 views on Youtube but it's actually a pretty good version and the girls have really good voices.

Bang A Gong (Get It On) - Terrific live version



Power Station - what was Robert Palmer (R.I.P.) thinking?



Hollywood & Vine - not bad at all



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The Real Rudd Budget

The history of Australian politics is that Labor gives us deficits and Liberals pay it off.

Not too different to the rest of the world in which the left insists on spending the next generation's wealth to pay for supposedly progressive policies in the here and now.

It's completely immoral, of course.

After the budget was released the other day the shadow treasurer, Joe Hockey, released a short video showing the reality of Labor's past, as well as uncomfortable truth about Rudd's budget.



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20 minutes of complete fabrication - "The Story of Stuff"

I tell you whose opinion I respect the least when they make pronouncements on the economy - those people who went to school, went to university and have then spent their entire careers on the public payroll.

These people have no concept - nil, nada, none - at all about what it means to create value and to be judged on their real ability in the real world.

Unless you have had to sell skills or product into the market you simply do not understand how markets really work.

One such ignoramus is Annie Leonard, a former Greenpeace employee, who has developed a 20 minute screed on how bad American consumerism really is for the world.

She is a piece of crap.

Why?

Because the solutions these people propose have been tried before and not only failed miserably but also been massively damaging for the environment let alone caused the premature deaths of tens of millions of people.

There really is a reason that capitalist societies have the best environmental record.

From the New York Times:

The thick-lined drawings of the Earth, a factory and a house, meant to convey the cycle of human consumption, are straightforward and child-friendly. So are the pictures of dark puffs of factory smoke and an outlined skull and crossbones, representing polluting chemicals floating in the air.

Which is one reason “The Story of Stuff,” a 20-minute video about the effects of human consumption, has become a sleeper hit in classrooms across the nation.

The video is a cheerful but brutal assessment of how much Americans waste, and it has its detractors. But it has been embraced by teachers eager to supplement textbooks that lag behind scientific findings on climate change and pollution. And many children who watch it take it to heart: riding in the car one day with his parents in Tacoma, Wash., Rafael de la Torre Batker, 9, was worried about whether it would be bad for the planet if he got a new set of Legos.

“When driving by a big-box store, you could see he was struggling with it,” his father, David Batker, said. But then Rafael said, “It’s O.K. if I have Legos because I’m going to keep them for a very long time,” Mr. Batker recalled.

The video was created by Annie Leonard, a former Greenpeace employee and an independent lecturer who paints a picture of how American habits result in forests being felled, mountaintops being destroyed, water being polluted and people and animals being poisoned. Ms. Leonard, who describes herself as an “unapologetic activist,” is also critical of corporations and the federal government, which she says spends too much on the military.

Ms. Leonard put the video on the Internet in December 2007. Word quickly spread among teachers, who recommended it to one another as a brief, provocative way of drawing students into a dialogue about how buying a cellphone or jeans could contribute to environmental devastation.

So far, six million people have viewed the film at its site, storyofstuff.com, and millions more have seen it on YouTube. More than 7,000 schools, churches and others have ordered a DVD version, and hundreds of teachers have written Ms. Leonard to say they have assigned students to view it on the Web.

It has also won support from independent groups that advise teachers on curriculum choices. Facing the Future, a curriculum developer for schools in all 50 states, is drafting lesson plans based on the video. And Ms. Leonard has a contract with Simon & Schuster to write a book based on the video.

The enthusiasm is not universal. In January, a school board in Missoula County, Mont., decided that screening the video treaded on academic freedom after a parent complained that its message was anticapitalist.

But many educators say the video is a boon to teachers as they struggle to address the gap in what textbooks say about the environment and what science has revealed in recent years.

“Frankly, a lot of the textbooks are awful on the subject of the environment,” said Bill Bigelow, the curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools, a quarterly magazine that has promoted “The Story of Stuff” to its subscribers and on its Web site, which reaches about 600,000 educators a month. “The one used out here in Oregon for global studies — it’s required — has only three paragraphs on climate change. So, yes, teachers are looking for alternative resources.”

Environmental education is still a young and variable field, according to Frank Niepold, the climate education coordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There are few state or local school mandates on how to teach the subject.

The agency is seeking to change that, but in the interim many teachers are developing their own lesson plans on climate change, taking some elements from established sources like the National Wildlife Federation and others from less conventional ones like “The Story of Stuff.”

Ms. Leonard is self-educated on where waste goes and worked for Greenpeace to prevent richer nations from dumping their trash in poorer ones. She produced the video, with the Free Range Studios company, and with money from numerous nonprofit groups; the largest single giver was the Tides Foundation. She did so, she said, after tiring of traveling often to present her views at philanthropic and environmental conferences. She attributes the response to the video’s simplicity.

“A lot of what’s in the film was already out there,” Ms. Leonard said, “but the style of the animation makes it easy to watch. It is a nice counterbalance to the starkness of the facts.”

The video certainly makes the facts stark and at times very political: “We’ll start with extraction, which is a fancy word for natural resource exploitation, which is a fancy word for trashing the planet,” she says at one point. “What this looks like is we chop down the trees, we blow up mountains to get the metals inside, we use up all the water and we wipe out the animals.”

Mark Lukach, who teaches global studies at Woodside Priory, a Catholic college-preparatory school in Portola Valley, Calif., acknowledged that the film is edgy, but said the 20-minute length gives students time to challenge it in class after viewing it.

“Compared to ‘An Inconvenient Truth,’ ” he said, referring to Al Gore’s one-and-a-half-hour documentary on climate change, “it is much shorter and easier to compact into a class segment. You can watch it and then segue into a discussion.”

Mr. Lukach’s students made a response video and posted it on YouTube, asking Ms. Leonard to scare them less and give them ideas on how to make things better. That in turn inspired high school students in Mendocino, Calif., to post an answer to Woodside, with suggested activities.

Dawn Zweig, who teaches environmental studies at the Putney School, a private academy in Vermont, said that the very reason the video appealed to teachers — it shows students how their own behavior is linked to what is happening across the globe — could also raise sensitive issues. She said students, particularly affluent ones, might take the critique personally. “If you offend a student, they turn off the learning button and then you won’t get anywhere,” Ms. Zweig said.

Sometimes teachers observe the opposite: children who become environmental advocates at home after seeing the video. After Jasmine Madavi, 18, saw it last year in Mr. Lukach’s class at Woodside Priory, she began nagging her parents to stop buying bottled water. Her mother resisted, saying that filtered tap water, Jasmine’s suggested alternative, would not taste as good. But Jasmine bought the filter on her own, and the household is now converted.

“You just have to be persistent,” said Ms. Madavi, who is now a community college student. “When you use a water bottle, it just doesn’t disappear. That’s Annie’s message.”

Most parents take such needling with humor. But Mark Zuber, a parent of a child at Big Sky High School in Missoula, had a stronger reaction when a teacher showed the video to his daughter last year. “There was not one positive thing about capitalism in the whole thing,” Mr. Zuber said.

Corporations, for example, are portrayed as a bloated person sporting a top hat and with a dollar sign etched on its front.

He described the video as one-sided. “It was very well done, very effective advocacy, but it was just that,” he said.

Mr. Zuber argued before the Missoula County School Board that the way in which “The Story of Stuff” was presented, without an alternative point of view, violated its standards on bias, and the board agreed in a 4-to-3 vote.

Still, Ms. Leonard is hoping the video will circle the globe. “I’ve heard from teachers in Palestine and Papua New Guinea,” she said. “It is just spreading and spreading.”

Capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system.

Capitalism has been more positive for the environment than any other system.

Not that you'd know that from watching The Story of Stuff.

Here's the critique (part 1 of 4, follow the links for the other 3 parts):

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Plastic shopping bag ban lunacy

Ok. Ok. I know I said I'm busy and I am but this one just has to be commented on.

Tim Blair highlights an article about the South Australian government banning plastic shopping bags.

CHECKOUT-style plastic bags will disappear from South Australian shops from the close of business today as the state becomes the first in the nation to ban them.

All retailers - from large supermarkets to small takeaway food shops - are subject to the ban and will offer compostable as well as reusable bags at a cost to consumers instead.

"By banning checkout-style plastic bags we'll be cutting waste to landfill, we'll reduce the amount of litter on our streets, in our parks and our waterways,'' said state environment and conservation minister Jay Weatherill in a statement.

"Producing four billion of these bags across the country each year is an enormous waste of energy and resources and the ban will slash South Australia's share of that waste.''

The ban is expected to remove about 400 million plastic bags from SA's waste each year.

When stores open tomorrow shoppers will either have to carry the reusable so-called "green bags'', or pay up to 25 cents at major retailers for biodegradable bags.

How, exactly will this save even one marine animal's life, which is part the justification for banning them?

This is the lifecycle of a plastic shopping bag:

• manufacturer makes bag
• bag goes to supermarket
• consumer buys goods, which are put in bag
• bag happily transports goods home
• groceries unpacked, bag stuck in a bag holder/other bags
• when its time comes, bag removed from holder and used for rubbish
• when full, bag tied up and thrown in garbage bin
• garbage bin goes out on bin night
• dirty, great garbage truck turns up and empties bin
• truck wanders off to local tip, deposits contents
• bag buried
• R.I.P bag

Here are some plastic bag facts from Canada and I'm sure Australia would be similar:

Environmental Impact

• They are one of the greenest and most energy-efficient bag materials produced today.
• Compared to plastic shopping bags, paper bags use 3.4 times more energy, produce 2 times the green house gas emissions and use 17 times more water in their manufacture.
• The amount of resin used in each bag has been decreased or “lightweighted” over time.
• Today’s plastic shopping bags use 75 % less resin than they did 20 years ago and 63 % less energy in their manufacture, while maintaining the same strength and durability.
• Yearly, the manufacture of all the plastic shopping bags used in Canada account for less than one-tenth of 1% of the annual oil and natural gas use in Canada.
• It takes 7 trucks to haul 2 million paper bags, and only 1 truck to haul 2 million plastic bags.

Health and Safety

• Plastic shopping bags protect our food from external contaminants, and other serious food borne risks such as Salmonella and e Coli.
  

Reuse and Recycling

• Plastic shopping bags enjoy high re-use among Canadians. Independent waste audits show that at least 50% of all plastic bags are reused eg. as kitchen catchers, picking up after pets, carrying lunches and books etc.
• Conventional plastic shopping bags are 100% recyclable.
  

Landfill

• If all of the plastic bags used in Canada were to end up in landfill, they would make up less than 1% of residential solid waste by weight.
• Percentage breakdown of municipal landfill is: Organics 45%, Paper 22%, Plastics 9%, Glass 5% and Metals 3%.

Litter

• Plastic shopping bags are not a major component of litter. Studies of Greater Toronto area communities show plastic shopping bags consistently account for less than 1% of urban litter.

The banning of plastic shopping bags is simply an act of bastardy by a government enthralled to environmental interests.

It's the poor who will be hit hardest, of course, which is why the SA government is an immoral piece of crap.

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Please explain

Haven't got time at the moment to post as frequently as normal.

In the meantime, if someone can explain to me how this works then that would be great.

From today's The Australian:



Apparently, falling employment + lower house prices = increased stock market.

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