Sunday night rock 'n' roll covers

"Hallelujah" is a song by Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen originally released on his 1984 studio album Various Positions. A live recording of the song from 1988, containing additional lyrics, appears on the 1994 album, Cohen Live.

Hallelujah has now been recorded more than 180 times for release and has been featured in the soundtracks of numerous movies and television shows

"Hallelujah" was originally written and composed over the course of a year, and is said to have been a frustrating and difficult process for Cohen. Cohen says he wrote at least eighty verses, filling two notebooks - discarding most of the verses in the process of crafting the song.

Cohen first recorded the song at Quadrasonic Sound, New York in June 1984, working with producer John Lissauer. The next recording of this song by Leonard Cohen was captured live in Austin, Texas on October 31, 1988 with production by Leanne Ungar and Bob Metzger.

"Hallelujah", in its original studio version, is a 4 minute 39 second song in C major. The released live version, with its different lyrical content, clocks in at 6:54. On the song's melody, Rufus Wainwright has commented that "It's an easy song to sing. The music never pummels the words. The melody is almost liturgical and conjures up religious feelings. It's purifying." In the section of the lyrics "the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift", the chords move as described in the lyrics as follows: F ("the fourth", in the tonality of C major), G ("the fifth"), Am ("the minor fall"), F ("the major lift").

The Original - Leonard Cohen



Remarkable - Jeff Buckley (audio only)



Excellent - K.D. Lang



(Nothing Follows)

NASA senses global warming funding under threat, proposes new catastrophic danger

NASA, home of the modern day Trofim Lysenko, James Hansen, must be concerned that the fraudulent science created by Hansen and his ilk is about to be exposed with the consequence being a reduced ability to feed on the public teat through government funding.

So what do they come up with?

Another catastrophe that could threaten the world, which must be funded.

Nothing like having a bet each way.

A once-in-a-century solar storm would threaten catastrophic destruction if a worst-case scenario event transpired, a new NASA report has found.

That's in a "worst-case scenario". What about in the expected scenario?

Governments would be powerless to curb the loss of crucial infrastructure including power grids, potable water and sewage disposal, the report said, potentially crippling our way of life for months.

Yeah, OK. That's worst case but what is expected to happen?

The forecast is based in part on a similarly sized solar storm that took place in 1859, which melted telegraph wires and ignited widespread fires in Europe and the United States, Fox News reports.

If a repeat event happened now, scientists warn the consequences would be far more serious — even "potentially catastrophic" — because modern technologies have made our infrastructure more inter-reliant.

The danger lies in the sun emitting solar flares so intense that they produce magnetic pulses with the force to destroy power grids by melting transformers.

This would be the sun that has been remarkably quiet over the last decade or so?

The power outages could spur a series of devastating consequences:

"Impacts would be felt on interdependent infrastructures with, for example, potable water distribution affected within several hours; perishable foods and medications lost in 12-24 hours; immediate or eventual loss of heating/air conditioning, sewage disposal, phone service, transportation, fuel resupply and so on," the report writes.

"Emergency services would be strained, and command and control might be lost."

Or, the "worst-case scenario" never happens and water distribution is OK, food and medications are fine, heating and air conditioning continues to run etc etc.

The sun operates on an 11-year cycle, with the next "active" phase due in 2012 likely to present the nearest danger.

Ooooooh. Scary. Just a few years away. Better throw a few billion of the public's money at it. Sounds like the same sort of prediction as that promoted by the Climate Faithful.

Though worst-case storms are only expected to occur once every hundred years, smaller solar flares have caused major disruptions in modern times.

In 1989, a sun storm was so powerful it blacked out the whole province of Quebec in Canada — an area almost the size of Queensland.

Another event in 2003 knocked out two satellites circling the Earth and destroyed a piece of equipment on a Mars orbiter.

Satellites are designed to withstand solar radiation but the shields degrade over time and they tend to get knocked out toward the end of their anticipated life span.

"Obviously, the sun is Earth's life blood," NASA spokesman Richard Fisher was quoted as saying.

"To mitigate possible public safety issues, it is vital that we better understand extreme space weather events caused by the sun's activity."

So NASA wants to understand 'space weather events' caused by the sun's activity but doesn't want to understand 'earth weather events' caused by the sun such as our climate?

There must be some sort of political battle going on at NASA...

(Nothing Follows)

Hamas would kill more if they could

The intellectual minnows on the left who bleat on about Israel's 'disproportionate' response to Hamas lobbing thousands of rockets into its territory in the hope of killing as many Jews as they can miss an important point.

Hamas would kill more if they could.

Thousands more.

The fact that most of the Hamas rockets do little damage is described by many on the left as nothing more than an annoyance, an inconvenience to be stoically borne by Israel.

In making the statement they demonstrate their understanding that Israel is 'better than that'; a society that has higher standards than their opponents and therefore should show restraint.

How do we know that Hamas would kill more if they could?

Because they have a long history of suicide bombing attacks inside Israel that resulted in scores of dead Israelis - mostly young people in nightclubs and people on public transport - and always with the goal of inflicting as much death as possible.

There's a reason why Israel built the Israel-Gaza Strip and Israel-West Bank barriers.

I commented on the idiotic issue of proportionality yesterday but, in fact, for Israel to be truly proportionate they would need to:

• Fire thousands of randomly targeted rockets into Gaza
  
• Send in suicide bombers to blow up as many Gazans as they can
  
• Use women and children as human shields against incoming rockets
  
• Fire their weapons from schools and hospitals
  
• Store ammunition in people's houses
  
• Use ambulances to transport troops
  
• Employ a bunch of people to stage photos and fake videos for the world's press
  
• Talk about a two state solution while doing everything they can to avoid ever having to implement one
  
• Siphon off hundreds of millions of dollars in donor aid to private bank accounts
  
• Spend the rest on weapons
  

Hamas, and their soulmates on the left in the West, truly are pieces of human excrement.

Let's hope that Israel has the determination to flush them into the sea.

(Nothing Follows)

Gazans seem to live pretty well for being poor, starving and occupied

The question is partly rhetorical but why is it that when the facts are so clearly against them the mainstream media continues to not only allow their networks to be used as vehicles for anti-Israeli propaganda but also blatantly promotes that propaganda themselves?

Why do they still allow their guests and analysts to talk about the so-called 'occupied territories' when those territories have not been 'occupied' since 2005?

Why do they continue with the myth that the people of Gaza are no better off than starving Ethiopians?

Check this short video out to see how dire things are for Gazans.



The issue of proportionality is another staple of media talking heads' 'analysis'.

Isn't it shocking that big, bad Israel has such a powerful defence force and ability to inflict destruction with its arsenal?

Critics point to the 14:1 ratio of Palestinians killed to Israelis killed, as if that somehow is relevant.

What do they want Israel to do to be proportionate?

Throw stones?

Take the guidance systems off their missiles so they end up landing in random places?

Proportionality has an accepted definition under the Geneva Conventions and is summarised as not using any more force than necessary in order to achieve your military objectives.

i.e. If Israel wanted to take out a rocket manufacturing facility in Gaza then it's not allowed to carpet bomb, or nuke, the whole place. It's only allowed to use such force as is necessary to destroy the factory.

If you're sitting at home one night, are disturbed by a loud banging on the door and look out to see a madman with an axe trying to break in then should you grab your axe or your gun?

Using the gun is disproportionate but it achieves your objective of stopping the threat.

Such is the situation facing Israel.

The media is keen to promote the views of nearly anyone who accuses Israel of war crimes but doesn't apply that same standard to Hamas or Hezbollah.

Placing military facilities among civilian populations is a war crime.

Using schools and hospitals to launch rockets is a war crime.

Transporting troops in ambulances is a war crime.

That the United Nations tolerates Hamas using its schools and ambulances for military purposes shows clearly which side that organisation supports.

No surprise there, though.

(Nothing Follows)

V Australia unveils its colours

Some readers may know that I am somewhat of an aircraft nut.

As a kid I traveled all over the world due to my father being a diplomat. I used to have the plane's captain fill in my log book and visit the flight deck when I could.

Paradoxically, with all of those miles in the air, I'm also a nervous flier.

However, the bigger the aircraft the less nervous I am and it's good to see that Virgin Blue's international arm, V Australia, has got itself a dirty, great Boeing 777 aka the "Rolls Royce of the sky".



V Australia takes to the sky on February 27.

If their service lives up to Virgin Blue's then they'll be worth flying.

My last 41 flights have been with Virgin Blue so I think I speak with some authority in that regard.

(Nothing Follows)

Culture wars continue in Australia - the arts under attack

In an age when governments around the world are pump-priming their economies in a vain attempt to prove Keynes was right by splurging money on all sorts of failing businesses in order to avoid recession there is one group of rent-seeking non-producers who would normally expect to be the beneficiary of government largesse that has been conspicuously overlooked - the arts community.

The Yartz community, as it is commonly referred to here in Australia, has been a festering parasite on the wallets of Australian taxpayers for years.

As Andrew Bolt pointed out:

Film Finance Corporation boss Brian Rosen spends $70 million a year of taxpayers’ money on Australian films which barely get watched.

As well as How Baz blew our $80 million and Why only .1 per cent of our films make money.

Now comes a new blow for the Yartz community - arts subjects are being 'ignored' in the national curriculum currently being put together and the precious luvvies are up in arms - so they've created a lobby group to pressure the government into including the arts in the curriculum.

The Federal Government's new national curriculum for schools is focused on the basics of education: English, maths, science, history, geography and languages.

The fact is that standards in the above subjects have fallen dramatically in the last couple of decades. One has to applaud the government for taking action.

But a new lobby group says the visual arts, drama, dance and music should also be included.

That's right. We'll watch movies, go to the theatre and generally dance and sing our way out of recession, as well as guarantee the future health of the nation.

The National Advocates for Arts Education (NAAE) is calling on the Federal Government to include the arts in the work of the National Curriculum Board and Early Years Learning Framework.

Ausdance's Julie Dyson, who is a member of the NAAE, says sidelining subjects such as art and drama deprives students of essential skills for the 21st century.

Who knew that performance art was an essential skill for the 21st century? What about mime? Or yodeling? The mind boggles.

"If they're not flagged in the national curriculum they don't seem to have the weight and the credibility given to them by decision makers," she said.

By 'decision makers' she means the general public.

"The arts contribute to literacy and numeracy in all sorts of ways that have been well researched and proven, so they have an instrumental effect on the curriculum, but they also have an intrinsic value in promoting innovation and creativity."

I don't know about you but my experience is that the more arty-farty the person the lower their literacy and numeracy skills are.

Both sides of the political divide claimed victory when the Senate passed the $28 billion funding bill, which included the national curriculum, on the final parliamentary sitting day of the year.

But Ms Dyson says after a meeting with politicians and arts advisors in Canberra, the group was told that subjects such as music, visual art, dance and drama would not be considered among the first two phases of the new curriculum.

"We were told fairly definitely by a number of political sources that although they might eventually appear in the national curriculum, this was certainly not on the immediate agenda," she said.

The NAAE is planning a campaign to raise awareness about arts education, but the chair of the National Curriculum Board, Professor Barry McGaw, says the arts are still considered a key learning area in state and territory curricula, and therefore their status as an important part of a rounded education is assured.

He says it will be up to the new body, the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority, which came into effect on January 1, to decide what subjects will be introduced and when.

"That authority has as its policy body the ministerial council, which is the Commonwealth, state and territory ministers, and if they collectively decide that they want to have more subjects come in, then they will come in," Professor McGaw said.

But Ms Dyson says while she is confident the arts will eventually be included, any delay is a concern.

"We're very anxious that they get to it pretty quickly, at least that they flag them in the planning process as something that is going to be part of the national curriculum down the track," she said.

If dancing, singing, miming, acting, yodeling, writing or painting could lower CO2 emissions then the Yartz would be swimming in money.

There are a couple of comments at the ABC site that nicely sum up both sides of the argument.

From Merlin 23:

Hi G,

I have seven kids so I think I am pretty well placed to answer your query.

1. If any of my kids showed either an aptitude and/or preference for any of the arts then I would support them whole heartedly. The difference is I would fund thier support and not expect the government to do it for me. At the same time would educate them to be realistic about their aspirations.
2. This is not an argument about the arts being superfluous (although I admit my initial post may have given that impression). Its about priorities. As Dragon correctly pointed out there are not that many vacancies for artists at the moment. So like or not this comes down to the fundamentals of supply and demand.
3. I believe being honest with your kids about the realities of life is one of most important lessons that you can teach your kids. Prioritising arts funding at the expense of the basics - particularly given the global nature of the economic crisis simply does not make sense.

and from G:

1. I'm sorry, I don't understand why you believe arts should be supported only by the individual - Do you believe that it is only the individual artist that benefits from the products of art? Is it not the case that the entire of humanity, for untold centuries, can benefit from art?
2. As I responded to dragon, the apparent dearth of vacancies has more to do with the availability of artists. An arts culture will not develop where there are no artists. You are confusing cause and effect.
3. The current economic situation is expected to be short term, i.e. a few years. Your children's education now will affect them, and the rest of the country, for the rest of their lives. Which priority are you choosing?

The fundamental difference between them is not that the arts do not have a place in, or impact on, culture but that it should be government funded.

'G' makes one of the great comments of all time - "...the apparent dearth of vacancies has more to do with the availability of artists. An arts culture will not develop where there are no artists."

There are not enough artists?

Seriously?

So let's do a short thought experiment.

Let's go to one extreme and imagine the result if the government funded anyone who wanted to be an artist and paid them a wage of, say, the average wage in Australia. How many school leavers would choose to be 'artists'?

Tick tock, tick tock.

Obviously not everyone can be an artist even if the government is pissing taxpayer money up against the wall paying for it.

So who in the government then chooses how many extra leeches society needs hanging off it?

Was Monet government funded?

How about van Gogh?

Or Picasso?

Here's one that was to show that they exist, and a great one at that - Sergei Eisenstein.

Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein (January 23, 1898 – February 11, 1948) was a revolutionary Soviet Russian film director and film theorist noted in particular for his silent films Strike, Battleship Potemkin and October, as well as historical epics Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible. His work vastly influenced early film makers owing to his innovative use of and writings about montage.

That it was a murderous dictatorship that paid Eisenstein a salary is probably lost on the general Yartzie.

When John Howard was in charge he copped the blame for the Culture Warriors making no progress.

Now that it's Labor in power it must come as a shock to the system to be so comprehensively excluded.

(Nothing Follows)

Jaaaaaaaack's back...!

Heeeeere's Jack!



...it seemed appropriate.

Hope your Christmas and New Year break was peaceful, you added less than 3kg and are able to keep your New Year's Resolution for more than a month.

So who can expect to feel Jack's Wrath in 2009?

Obviously, the Climate Faithful will continue to be exposed as the charlatans and fascists that they really are.

Everyone who proposes government intervention in markets as the answer to the financial difficulties facing the world.

Terrorists and their soulmates on the left.

By the way, the word 'soulmates' brilliantly describes the relationship between terrorists and the world's left.

People have tried to understand why the left provides such succor to the bastards who killed hundreds in Mumbai, terrorist organisations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, and make excuses for Al Qaeda's atrocities in Iraq.

What ideology do they share that creates such a partnership?

The fact is that they are both totalitarian ideologies that seek to create a better world through the agency of government - one religious using terror and the other political using cultural institutions against the population.

Thus, they are soulmates.

It's a word that our side should use when discussing the left's positions.

i.e. Instead of "Hamas and their supporters on the left" use "Hamas and their soulmates on the left".

It's not only more accurate it's more powerful.

Good luck to everyone in 2009 in what I predict will be the most tumultuos year for many decades.

(Nothing Follows)

Sunday night rock 'n' roll covers

In 2009 I'll be playing rock 'n' roll songs that have been covered by other artists, which have made the song more famous.

To kick things off here's All Along The Watchtower.

"All Along the Watchtower" is a song written and recorded by singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. It initially appeared on his album John Wesley Harding. It has been covered by other artists in different genres, most notably by the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

The song was recorded by the artist as a quiet three-chord Folk song on November 6, 1967, at Columbia Studio A, Nashville, Tennessee. Accompanying Dylan, who played acoustic guitar and harmonica, were Charlie McCoy on bass guitar and Kenneth Buttrey on drums. The producer was Bob Johnston, who had been Dylan's producer since Highway 61 Revisited in 1965.

The Original - Bob Dylan



The Best - Jimi Hendrix



Classic Rocker - Neil Young



(Nothing Follows)

Taking a break over Christmas

I'm taking a break over Christmas so regular posts will resume in the new year.

Thanks to everyone who dropped by and took the time to add a comment.

Have a great Christmas holiday.

(Nothing Follows)

Climate facts not important to Climate Faithful

In any argument with the Climate Faithful the first response to inconvenient facts undermining the AGW proposition is to dismiss the credentials of the information's source.

"He's not a climate scientist" is a common statement.

Neither, one should point out, is Rajendra Pachauri, the head of IPCC.

Having failed to bring the argument to an end by questioning people's qualifications the Climate Faithful then move on to associating scientists with the oil industry.

When David Evans comments on climate science it's a bit hard to question his credentials:

Dr David Evans worked for the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005, building the carbon accounting model that Australia uses to track carbon in its biosphere for the purposes of the Kyoto Protocol. He is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees including a PhD from Stanford University.

He must be a cigarette smoking, oil industry consultant...

Here's his opinion piece on the government's new emissions trading scheme:

Rudd has failed to see through the vested interests that promote anthropogenic global warming (AGW), the theory that human emissions of carbon cause global warming. Though masquerading as "science based", the promoters of AGW have a medieval outlook and are in fact anti-science. Meanwhile carbon is innocent, and the political class is plunging ahead with making us poorer because they do not understand what science really is or what the real science is.

The Renaissance began when the absolute authority of the church and ancient texts was overthrown. Science then evolved as our most reliable method for acquiring knowledge, free of superstition and political authority. Suppose you wanted to know whether big cannonballs or small cannonballs fell faster. In medieval times you argued theoretically with what could be gleaned from the Bible, the works of Aristotle, or maybe a Papal announcement. In the Renaissance you ignored the authorities and simply dropped cannon balls from a tower and observed what happened - this was science, where empirical evidence trumps theory.

From 1975 to 2001 the global temperature trended up. How do you empirically determine the cause of this global warming? It turns out we can learn a lot simply by observing where the warming occurred: each possible cause of global warming heats the atmosphere differently, heating some parts before others. The pattern of warming is the cause's "signature".

The signature of an increased greenhouse effect consists of two features: a hotspot about 10 km up in the atmosphere over the tropics, and a combination of broad stratospheric cooling and broad tropospheric warming. The signature of ozone depletion consists just of the second feature. These signatures are theoretically derived by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and are integral to our understanding of how the atmosphere works.

We have been observing temperatures in the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes - weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. The radiosonde measurements for 1979-1999 show broad stratospheric cooling and broad tropospheric warming, but they show no tropical hotspot. Not even a small one.

Empirically, we therefore know that an increased greenhouse effect was not a significant cause of the recent global warming. (Either that or the signatures from the IPCC are wrong, so its climate models and predictions are rubbish anyway.)

Human carbon emissions were occurring at the time but the greenhouse effect did not increase. Therefore human carbon emissions did not increase the greenhouse effect, and did not cause global warming. So AGW is wrong, and carbon is innocent. Suspect exonerated - wrong signature.

Alarmist scientists (supporters of AGW) objected that the radiosonde thermometers were not accurate and maybe the hotspot was there but went undetected. But there were hundreds of radiosondes, so statistically this is unlikely. They have also suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers, and use the radiosonde wind measurements instead. When combined with a theory about wind shear they estimated the temperatures on their computers - and say that the results show that we cannot rule out the presence of a hotspot. But thermometers are designed to measure temperature, so it's a bit of a stretch to claim that wind gauges are accidentally better at it. Serious alarmist scientists do not claim that the hotspot was found, only that we might have missed it. The obvious conclusion is that the hotspot was too weak to be easily detected. We cannot collect any more data from the past warming, and there is no sign of the hotspot in the data that was collected - so the occasional claims that appear on the Internet that the hotspot has been found are simply wrong.

So can we tell from the observed warming pattern what did cause the global warming? Unfortunately we have little idea of the signatures of some of the suspects, such as cosmic rays or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, so we cannot say except to note that ozone depletion was one of the causes.

Is there any observational evidence in favor of AGW? As of 2003, none at all.

The only supporting evidence for AGW was the old ice core data. The old ice core data, gathered from 1985, showed that in the past half million years, through several global warmings and coolings, the earth's temperature and atmospheric carbon levels rose and fell in lockstep. AGW was coming into vogue in the 1980s, so it was widely assumed that it was the carbon changes causing the temperature changes.

By the late 1990s ice core techniques had improved. In the old ice cores the data points were a few thousand years apart, but in the new ice core data they were only a few hundred years apart. In the early 1990s, New Scientist magazine anticipated that the higher-resolution data would seal the case for AGW.

But the opposite occurred. By 2003 it had been established to everyone's satisfaction that temperature changes preceded corresponding carbon changes by an average of 800 years: so temperature changes caused carbon changes - a warmer ocean supports more carbon in the atmosphere, after delays due to mixing. So the ice core data no longer supported AGW. The alarmists failed to effectively notify the public.

After several prominent public claims by skeptics in 2008 that there is no evidence left for AGW, alarmist scientists offered only two points.

First, laboratory tests prove that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. But that observation tells us nothing about how much the global temperature changes if extra carbon enters the real, complicated atmosphere. Every emitted carbon atom raises the global temperature, but the missing hotspot shows that the effect is negligible.

Second, computer models. Computer models are just huge concatenations of calculations that, individually, could have been performed on a handheld calculator. They are theory, not evidence.

Governments have spent over $50 billion on climate research since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence for AGW.

So if there is no evidence to support AGW, and the missing hotspot shows that AGW is wrong, why does most of the world still believe in AGW?

Part of the answer is that science changed direction after a large constituency of vested interests had invested in AGW. The old ice core data provided support from 1985, the IPCC was established by the UN in 1988 to look into human changes to climate, and the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in 1997 to limit carbon emissions. By 1999 the western political class were doing something, the western media were rallying behind "saving the planet", and scientists were being paid by governments to research the effects of human-caused global warming.

But then the evidence took science off in a different direction: the new ice core data in 2003, the missing hotspot in 2007, and the global temperature has stopped trending up since 2001. Governments, the media, and many scientists did not notice.

The remainder of the answer for the current belief in AGW is darker and more political. An offbeat theory in the 1970s, AGW was adopted by a group of about 45 atmospheric modelers and physicists. That group dominated climate science journals, peer reviewed each others papers, and hindered competing ideas by underhand methods. AGW gained political support from proponents of nuclear power, and vice-president Gore appointed AGW supporters to science positions in the USA.

AGW grabbed control of climate funding in key western countries. Lack of diversity in science funding has been a major problem since government took over funding science in WWII. Science is like a courtroom - protagonists put forward their best cases, and out of the argument some truth emerges. But if only one side is funded and heard, then truth tends not to emerge. This happened in climate science, which is almost completely government funded and has been dominated by AGW for two decades. Skeptics are mainly scientists who are retired or who have moved on to other areas - their funding no longer depends on allegiance to AGW. The alarmists are full time, well funded, and hog the megaphone.

AGW was always promoted as being supported by nearly all scientists (though polls and history do not support this). Counting numbers of supporters and creating a bandwagon effect by announcing you are in the majority is a political tactic.

AGW always advanced principally by political means; as a scientific theory it was always weak, and now the evidence contradicts it. It's like a return to medieval times, where authority rules and evidence is ignored. Notice how the proponents of AGW don't want to talk about evidence of the causes? Anything but evidence of cause - attack people's motives, someone else "has the evidence", theoretical models, evidence that global warming is occurring, how important they are, what credentials they have, how worthy they are, the dog ate my evidence, "the science is settled", polar bears, anything. Talking about the evidence of the cause of global warming does not advance their cause. Politics says AGW is correct; science says it is wrong.

Science demands evidence. Evidence trumps theory, no matter what the political authority of those promoting the theory, even if they dress up in lab coats and have job titles that say "scientist". The hotspot is missing and there is no evidence for AGW. The alarmists cannot ignore this and continue to play political games forever. They are entitled to argue the case for AGW, but they should also acknowledge the evidence and inform the political class that AGW appears to be wrong - even if it means risking their status and their jobs (and yes, we scientists are also people who have kids and mortgages).

There are two central lies in the political promotion of AGW.

The first appears in Gore's movie. He gave the old ice core data as the sole reason for believing AGW (the rest of the movie presents evidence that global warming occurred, a separate issue). He said that increases in carbon caused increases in temperature in the past warming events. But Gore made his movie in 2005, two years after the new ice core data had established the opposite! Gore's weasel words when he introduced that segment show he knew what he was about to say was false. Who would have believed his pitch if he added "and each temperature rise occurred 800 years before the corresponding rise in carbon that caused it"?

The second lie is the hockey stick graph, which presented the last thousand years of global temperature as the flat handle of a hockey stick and the next hundred as the sharply rising blade. The hockey stick graph was heavily promoted by the IPCC in 2001, and the IPCC even adopted it as its logo before it got discredited. It is significant because most non-scientist AGW supporters seem to believe some version of the hockey stick. When the IPCC "scientists" who produced the graph were asked to show their data for past temperatures, they refused (true scientists share data). But one of those scientists was a British academic and subject to the British Freedom of Information Act, and after two years of stonewalling all was revealed. It showed they had grossly skewed the data (even omitting inconvenient data to a folder labeled "Censored"), and that the computer program used to process the data had the hockey stick shape built into it - you could feed it stock market data instead of tree ring data and you would still get a hockey stick! In reality it was warmer in the Middle Ages than today, and there was a mini ice age around 1700 from which we have since been warming ever since. Finally, the sharply rising blade of the hockey stick is contradicted so far by actual temperatures, which from 2001 to 2008 have been flat - something all of the climate models got wrong.

Among non-scientists, AGW appeals strongly to two groups. Those who support big government love the idea of carbon regulations - if you control carbon emissions then you control most human activity. And those who like to feel morally superior to the bulk of their fellow citizens by virtue of a belief (the "warm inner glow" and moral vanity of the politically correct) are firmly attached to AGW. These groups are politically adept, are planning to spend your money and tell you how to eat, travel and how to live, and they are strenuously avoiding the evidence.

The media has avoided presenting information that undermines AGW, until recently. Instead they promoted alarmism, and discredited skeptics as being in the pay of big oil - while giving a free pass to Gore, who made a movie based on an obvious lie then made millions selling carbon offsets. The media is very keen to present evidence that global warming is occurring, but have you noticed how quiet it is on evidence that carbon emissions caused it?

In 2007 almost no one in the west knew that the hotspot was missing, that there was no evidence for AGW, that temperatures had been flat for six years, that the hockey stick was a fraud, or that Al Gore lied when he gave the old ice core data as a reason for blaming carbon. But due to the Internet the public is gradually finding out anyway, which risks further discrediting many media outlets. Why buy a newspaper if it's not going to tell you the actual news?

And as the public become generally aware, what politician is going to risk being so ideologically stupid as to unnecessarily wreck the economy by slashing carbon emissions? Hmmm, Kevin Rudd?

In summary, the IPCC committed an unbelievable scientific fraud in its use of the Hokey Stick in its Third Assessment Report.

It has not yet been called to account for that fraud by media and cultural elites.

Climate models are also demonstrably fraudulent in the same way that financial models are (and you'll recall that working on financial models is something I do).

The hot spot signature in the troposphere that MUST exist for CO2 to be the primary driver of climate change does NOT exist.

Therefore, as Evans points out, CO2 has been exonerated of the charge of heating the climate.

Not that these incontrovertible facts will get in the way of the Climate Faithful pushing their socialist agenda.

Unfortunately, these facts are not getting in the way of the Australian government destroying our economy.

PS - It's bluddy cold here in Canberra. Summer should have well and truly arrived by now. My fingers are almost too cold to type this article. Must be all of that global warming they're talking about.

(Nothing Follows)

The fascist roots of the modern environmental movement

Lubos Motl has a timely reminder of the roots of the modern Environmental movement.

I should note that there are two types of environmentalist.

The first is the one associated with Big Green (Sierra Club, Greenpeace etc) who use those organisations' political clout to achieve socialist policies.

The second are those who are genuinely interested in protecting the environment.

This article relates more to the former than the latter.

Many environmentalists seem to think that their movement is cool, new, original, and thought-provoking. They think that their "modern" ideas were invented by their widely promoted icons. It is hard to believe that they think so but some of them probably do. Well, the reality is very different. Similar ideas have been around for centuries and their incorporation within the modern industrial society began roughly seven decades ago.

Let me begin with the following quote:

"We recognize that separating humanity from nature, from the whole of life, leads to humankind's own destruction and to the death of nations. Only through a re-integration of humanity into the whole of nature can our people be made stronger. That is the fundamental point of the biological tasks of our age. Humankind alone is no longer the focus of thought, but rather life as a whole... This striving toward connectedness with the totality of life, with nature itself, a nature into which we are born, this is the deepest meaning and the true essence of ******** ********* thought."

Beautiful, isn't it? You may ask who wrote these sentences. Was it Jared Diamond in 2005? Or was it Al Gore in 1992? Or Rachel Carson in 1962? Or Alexander Ač in 2007? No, someone else was the author. It was Prof Ernst Lehmann, a leading German biologist.

You may also want to know that he was the leading biologist of the Nazi regime and the asterisks above replaced the words "National Socialist". The words were written as early as in 1934 and I borrowed them from Peter Staudenmaier's insightful essay, Fascist Ecology: The "Green Wing" of the Nazi Party and its Historical Antecedents. In Staudenmaier's text, you will see that the Nazis were centuries ahead of the contemporary environmentalists in their own discipline.

Of course, we're not talking about one biologist here. Like Rajendra Pachauri, Adolf Hitler was an avid vegetarian. His beloved German shepherd dogs had to become vegetarians, too. ;-) Organic farming in the Nazi Germany flourished and the country was the world's leader in this activity. SS leader Heinrich Himmler had his own organic farm and used the herbs to treat his favorite troops (Hitler preferred homeopathy to achieve the same goal). The national parks in Germany were expanding, especially in the "sacred forests".

Medical experiments on animals were banned by Hitler himself. Unfortunately, the Jewish children were exempt. Incidentally, the previous two sentences are not unrelated. One of the most important Nazis' problems with the Jews was that the Jews were promoting the alienation of man from nature: they were "anti-natural". What a sin! We know quite many ideologues who criticize the "alienation" (and its proponents) even today: these ideologues usually no longer use the word "Jews" for the "anti-natural" people.

You should also notice, as someone has quipped, that people who want to treat animals like humans also want to treat humans like animals - because these two assertions are logically equivalent.

Himmler, the regime's chief mass murderer, was actually a strict animal rights advocate, too. He considered shooting birds or animals as "pure murder" and waxed lyrical about the ancient Germanic "respect for animals" that they may have borrowed from Buddhism. Himmler was impressed by the ancient Germans who put rats on trial and gave them a chance to improve their behavior. :-)

The main person who prevented Hitler from imposing much more radical environmentalist regulations may have been Goering who liked fishing and shooting. Nevertheless, even Goering had to be politically "correct" in the 1930s so he assured Prussia that the years of maltreatment of animals under the democracy were over and anyone who flouted the Nazis' concern for animal rights would be imprisoned. Oh, he was so nice - almost as politically "correct" as Heidi Cullen.

At this moment, many green hearts among the readers must feel very jealous but let me assure you that you first have to take over the military, police, and courts, and only later, you will be able to do the "great" things that your predecessors did in the 1930s.

Hitler needed to abolish trade unions at the very beginning of his reign but there was one ban that was even more urgent and occurred earlier: in 1933, he passed the Enabling Act that regulated cooking of lobsters (this great friend of Nature hated their screams when tossed into boiling water). A few years later, hunting with dogs (and on horseback) was banned, too.

Another activity that kills many people - and that some of the "deniers" tried to justify - is second-hand smoking, right? Well, Adolf Hitler cared about it, too. In 1943, smoking was prohibited in the NSDAP offices. It was banned in streetcars in 1944. However, the great regulator realized that the ban in the Wehrmacht could weaken his military power so it was always allowed to smoke in their military offices.

Appraisal

Now, let me emphasize that the contemporary environmentalists haven't done the same set of bad things as Adolf Hitler and his comrades. On the other hand, it is equally important to notice that the contemporary greens also haven't invented any ideas or views that would be really new. Everything has been around for quite some time.

What many of these people share with Adolf Hitler - and all fundamentalists in the world - is the identification of their own views with the "perfect morality". This "perfect morality" must be imposed upon other people, too. This attitude to ethics is always dangerous. And it may become extremely dangerous if the proponents of the ideology are given the right opportunities.

In his book, The Green and the Brown: a History of Conservation in Nazi Germany, Frank Uekoetter analyzes many aspects of the tight symbiosis between the Nazi and the green movements. He also considers the ordinary greens in Nazi Germany to be opportunists.

Well, many of them have surely been opportunists and there are thousands of opportunists in the contemporary green movement, too. But you shouldn't forget that for the opportunists to exist and benefit, there must also be an opportunity. The desire of a regime, the Nazi regime in this case, to regulate human life and to prescribe everyone his or her values and behavior is an excellent opportunity for everyone whose basic goal can be described in the same words.

So it was not really a coincidence that the most environmentalist major regime in the world's history so far was the Nazi regime. If Adolf Hitler had avoided the war and the mass murder, if he had died in peace, and if the green movement began to contaminate the society in the late 20th century anyway, Adolf Hitler would surely be viewed as one of the classics of the environmentalist movement.

Unfortunately, he has also done other things which is why most contemporary greens are going to pretend that they have almost nothing to do with him, even though 90+ percent of their ideology has really been plagiarized.

And that's the memo.

I sometimes wonder whether the Useful Idiots of the Climate Movement understand exactly who they are involved with.

I doubt it.

(Nothing Follows)

US is in the eye of the storm. More financial shocks to come.

This piece from 60 Minutes shows that things are far from rosy in the United States.

If a $700 billion bailout is required to deal with the problems so far then how much is needed to cope with the next wave of financial shocks?



Will Obama be able to navigate the correct course in order to get the economy back on its feet in the shortest possible time?

It seems unlikely given the Keynesian instincts of the economic team he has appointed.

That said, I think that a McCain presidency would have also taken the wrong decisions.

(Nothing Follows)

Poll - 2009 Islamic Terrorist Death Toll

How many people do you think will be killed by Islamists in 2009?

I'll be using The Religion of Peace's count as the data source.



This poll will be open until 31 December at which time I'll publish the result.

(Nothing Follows)

Australia's economy is tanking. Government doesn't care, outlines economy killing emissions trading scheme.

The irreverent Gerard Jackson points out that Australia's economy is tanking at an alarming rate.

In response, the government proposes classical Keynesian pump-priming, which will not only kick the can down the road but make things even worse when we have to take tough decisions to fix things.

It has also brought forward infrastructure development to help. While I agree in general that we should maintain a strong level of infrastructure investment it's also true that less than 25% of funding is spent in the first year after plans are announced meaning that it will have little effect in the next couple of years, which are the most critical.

On top of that the government has laid out plans for its emissions trading scheme, which starts with a modest-looking 5% reduction target but in reality is a Trojan horse for the fell hand of government interference in the economy.

Accountants and lawyers should be rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of plunging their snouts into the public trough thus joining a bevy of fraudulent climate scientists whose pseudo-science supports the AGW position.

The Australian economy is on the skids and our economic commentariat don't even know it. The AIG (Australian Industry Group) report for November states that "manufacturing activity fell for a sixth month in a row". How can this be when unemployment has barely budged from 4.3 per cent? The important thing to note about the AIG performance manufacturing index is that anything below 50 indicates a contraction.

In June both production and the PMI fell below 50 and stayed there. Starting in September all three indicators began to rapidly fall, with employment dropping from 46 to 33.2, the PMI from 47.2 to 32.7 and production from 48.7 to 30.4. Like a bunch of bunnies caught in the headlights of an oncoming car our commentariat were mesmerised by the low unemployment rate. So long as this remained low there could be no recession. Hence their current confusion.

In 1999 I warned the US economy was heading into recession. I stressed that emphasis on the falling unemployment rate would conceal the vitally important fact that manufacturing was contracting and shedding labour. What was being called a "dual economy" was in fact and economy that was experiencing the emergence of masses of malinvestments that signalled the beginning of a recession. The economy still appeared sound to economic commentators because unemployment was still falling.

But what they could not grasp — and still can't — is that monetary expansion had increased the demand for labour at the lower stages of production; those close to the point of consumption. Eventually the recession would work its way down the production structure, cutting output and raising the level of unemployment. This is exactly what happened, just as it happened to Clinton it happened to Bush. The same thing is also happening to the Australian economy.

Despite the fact that statistics clearly show the recession first striking at manufacturing (the higher stages of production) our brilliant economic commentariat insist on promoting the Keynesian snake-oil recipe of increased consumption spending to "counter the downturn". We had eight "prominent economists", apparently led by former Treasury secretary Tony Cole, proposing that Rudd temporarily cut superannuation contributions in order to increase consumption spending.

What they are proposing is based on the mercantilist myth — taken up by Keynes — that consumption drives the economy. Not one single member of the financial media know this. George Megalogenis, a senior writer for The Australian, is typical of the breed. According to this genius there need be no rise in unemployment because

"The case for business hanging on to staff is stronger than it was during recessions in 1990-91 and 1982-83 because the economy is in a radically different shape."

This is sheer economic illiteracy. Completely undeterred by economic laws, Megalogenis went on to argue that dismissing labour simply because the demand for a company's products is dropping is really "dumb" because it

"will only make any recession deeper than it need be because every dismissed worker drags down consumer spending with them. (Business's new mantra, The Australian, 6 December 2008)."

This is the purchasing power of wages fallacy which holds that it is higher wages that raises living standards. This argument leads to the utterly absurd conclusion that poor countries can easily lift themselves out of power by legislating for wages to be raised to Western levels. To make is so simple that even Megalogenis can grasp it, wage rates are determined by the value of the worker's marginal product. In plain English, his productivity. And the only thing that can bring about a sustained increase in productivity is capital accumulation.

Completely blind to what ought to be self-evident errors Megalogenis pursues the fallacy, arguing that the beneficial effects Rudd's $8.68 billion binge that is directed at "those with the most pressing living expenses" could be offset by higher income earners increasing their savings.

Let us understand something fundamental here: Savings fuel an economy and entrepreneurship drives it. Without savings there can be no capital accumulation, i.e. economic growth. Increased consumption is the result of this process, not the cause. The classical economists understood that what a country needs if it wants more consumption is more production.

What our media economists have yet to understand is that though consumption is something like 66 per cent to 70 per cent of GDP, the latter greatly underestimates economic activity because it does not take account of the expenditure of intermediate goods on the false grounds that it would be double-counting. My own rough estimate put consumption at about 33 per cent of total spending, meaning that nearly two-thirds of this spending would be by business. Given this approach it is easy to see that it is business spending that propels the economy and not consumption. John Stuart Mill presented the classical view on this matter when he wrote:

"What a country wants to make it richer, is never consumption, but production. Where there is the latter, we may be "sure that" there is no want of the former. (John Stuart Mill, Essays on Economics and Society 1824—1845, Liberty Fund, 2006, p. 263)."

Once again the economic commentariat find themselves without a clue. But surely Rudd's spending of the surplus could help stop the recession? No way. I do not know of a single case where consumption spending lifted an economy out of recession. Although it's possible for a government to trigger a consumption boom, such a boom would be marked by a largely stagnating manufacturing sector.

Moreover, from a purely economic perspective consumption alone could only be relied on to avert or overcome recession in a two-stage economy. This one in which there is a single production stage. The maintenance and supply of capital would then depend entirely on consumer demand. It goes without saying that this would be an impossible state of affairs. We live in a world of multiple stages of production. It can be no other way. However, the two-stage model brings into focus the fact that the argument for consumer spending to rescue the economy from recession is actually based on the fallacy of underconsumption.

In any event, recession has arrived and I consider an unemployment rate of 10 per cent to 12 per cent a distinct possibility, particularly when one considers Rudd's reactionary approach to wage rate determination.

Consider the following from the Australian Industry Group.

Performance of Manufacturing Index

• Manufacturing activity fell for a sixth month in a row in November.
  
• The seasonally adjusted Australian Industry Group-PricewaterhouseCoopers Australian PMI® fell solidly, by 7.7 points to 32.7, well below the 50 point mark separating expansion from contraction. This represents a second consecutive new low for the series since it was begun in 1992.
  
• Recent results reflect an accelerating loss of consumer and business confidence, driven by worsening news on the global economy, falling household wealth, and the weak housing sector. This climate is being reflected in falling demand for manufactures.
  
• November’s fall in the Australian PMI® reflects declines across all components of the index. Production fell for the sixth consecutive month and more strongly than in recent months. This reflected the ongoing decline in new orders, which fell rapidly and for the seventh consecutive month. In line with the easing of production, employment fell for the ninth month in November.
  
• On the positive side, wages growth eased slightly and selling price growth was broadly stable. Input cost growth rose marginally.
  
• Inventories fell moderately, while supplier deliveries fell solidly. Exports fell sharply in line with the decline in global manufactures trade.
  
• Manufacturing activity fell in all states with New South Wales the best and Tasmania the worst performing states.

Performance of Services Index

• Services sector activity contracted for an eighth consecutive month in November, with the turmoil in global financial markets continuing to batter consumer and business confidence.
  
• The seasonally adjusted Australian Industry Group/Commonwealth Bank Performance of Services Index (Australian PSI®) fell 4.3 points to 37.8, below the key 50.0 level separating expansion from contraction.
  
• The sales, new orders and employment sub-indexes all fell to new record lows in November, while supplier deliveries and inventories also declined significantly.
  
• The falling price of oil and commodities lead to a moderation in input cost increases, while selling price growth remains subdued.
  
• While the weakness in services remains broadly-based, the rate of contraction did slow in personal & recreational services; accommodation, cafes & restaurants; and finance & insurance.
  
• Activity fell in all states, with the rate of contraction slowing only in Tasmania.
  

Performance of Construction Index

• The national construction industry contracted further in November, and at a more rapid pace than the previous month, as the global economic and financial crisis and heightened aversion to risk continued to take a heavy toll on activity.
  
• The seasonally adjusted Australian Industry Group/ Housing Industry Association Performance of Construction Index (Australian PCI®) fell by 4.4 points to 32.0, to remain below the critical 50 point level (which separates expansion from contraction) for a ninth consecutive month. Moreover, it signalled the second steepest fall in industry conditions since the survey began in September 2005.
  
• The decline reflected reductions in activity on a broad industry front, although the worst conditions were evident in the house building and apartment sectors where activity fell to new survey lows.
  
• Most firms linked the reduction in total construction activity to the on-going economic crisis and poor market demand. There were also reports that competition to secure contracts had intensified, resulting in a higher level of unsuccessful tenders and diminishing new project work.
  
• For the industry as a whole, levels of activity, new orders and employment all fell substantially in November and at record rates (for this survey). As a consequence, firms were forced to further scale back their deliveries from suppliers.
  
• While construction material (input) costs increased, the rate of growth moderated for a second consecutive month.

This is all bad, bad news for Australia.

Our economy is held up by the IMF and others as an example for the rest of the world to follow. I suspect that this opinion has lulled political leaders in Canberra into a false sense of security that has led them to make the shocking decision to stick $10 billion into the economy to try to avoid the recession.

Note to Labor. The recession has arrived and it's impossible for a dose of Keynsian economics to subvert the laws of financial gravity.

(Nothing Follows)

Shoe throwing incident confirms Bush's greatness

Iraqi journalist Muntazer al-Zaidi from Al-Baghdadia television network achieved glory throughout the Ummah and from their left wing soulmates in the rest of the world when he undertook the time honoured Arab tradition of throwing one's shoes at an opponent.

Check out Dailykos, Firedoglake, HuffPo etc etc and you'll see many posts supporting al-Zaidi and sliming President Bush.

Parenthetically, when has a mainstream right wing blog or news outlet been anything other than outraged when a Democratic president is treated so shabbily?

By working for an organisation that didn't exist under Saddam and attending a press conference that would never take place under Saddam hosted by a democratically elected leader that didn't exist under Saddam and enjoying the newly minted freedom that didn't exist under Saddam and shouting "It is the farewell kiss, you dog" showing he did not feel the threat to his personal safety that existed under Saddam and throwing his shoes at a world leader that under Saddam would have seen him fed feet first into a tree shredder, Muntazer al-Zaidi - journalist, nascent pin up boy of the Muslim world and hero of the world's left - confirmed Bush's greatness.

That is the irony that the left has missed in its pathological hatred of George W Bush.

Freedom reigns in Iraq.

Bush made it happen.

It would never have happened under a President Gore.



The old feller has pretty good reflexes, too, don't you think?

That's impressive stuff.

The fact that he kept his composure and gave his response within the framework of the legitimacy of dissent in a free society probably taught the Iraqis a valuable lesson.

(Nothing Follows)

Sunday night rock 'n' roll

Carlos Augusto Santana Alves (born July 20, 1947 in Jalisco, Mexico) is a Grammy Award-winning Mexican rock musician and guitarist. He became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, Santana, which created a highly successful blend of rock, salsa, and jazz fusion. The band's sound featured his melodic, blues-based guitar lines set against Latin percussion such as timbales and congas. Santana continued to work in these forms over the following decades. He experienced a sudden resurgence of popularity and critical acclaim in the late 1990s. Carlos Santana has been known as "The Carlos". Rolling Stone also named Santana number 15 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time in 2003.

Black Magic Woman



Oye Como Va



Evil Ways



(Nothing Follows)

Eurofascists do not fear media scrutiny

Christopher Booker has attracted the ire of the Euro-left in general and Climate Faithful in particular for his unwelcome habit of pointing out that the emperor has no clothes.

Vaclav Klaus is another who has attracted the same ire but being the leader of a member state of the EU makes it harder to dismiss his views.

Not that it stopped Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a Green Franco-German MEP, from assailing Klaus for his views on the Lisbon Treaty and climate change.

Imagine that a Franco-German MEP, invited to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace, plonked down in front of her an EU "ring of stars" flag, insisting that she hoist it over the palace alongside the Royal Standard, and then proceeded to address her in a deliberately insulting way. The British people, if news of the incident leaked out, might not be too pleased.

Something not dissimilar took place at a remarkable recent meeting between the heads of the groups in the European Parliament and Vaclav Klaus, the Czech head of state, in his palace in Hradcany Castle, on a hill overlooking Prague. The aim was to discuss how the Czechs should handle the EU's rotating six-monthly presidency when they take over from France on January 1.

The EU's ruling elite view President Klaus, a distinguished academic economist, with a mixture of bewilderment, hatred and contempt. As his country's prime minister, he applied to join the EU in the days after the fall of Communism in the 1990s. But now Klaus is alone among European leaders in expressing openly Eurosceptic views, not least about the Lisbon Treaty, which the Czech parliament has yet to ratify.

Klaus was an outspoken dissident under the Communist regime, and he has come to regard the EU as dangerously anti-democratic. But he compounds this sin with highly sceptical views on global warming, on which he recently published a book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles. He likens the extreme environmentalism favoured by the EU to Communism, as a serious threat to democracy, freedom and prosperity.

So when Klaus was due to meet the MEPs, one of them decided this was a moment to display the Euro-elite's hostility to him. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who is German born but lives in France, first came to prominence in Paris in 1968 as a student agitator. He is now leader of the Green MEPs. Talking loudly in the plane to Prague, he made no secret of his intentions, and brief French journalists on how to get maximum publicity for his planned insults.

I happen to know the splendid room in which the meeting took place, because I sat there myself with President Klaus in 2005, when he had arranged for a history of the EU I had co-authored to be published in Czech. As Cohn-Bendit was aware, the only flag that flies over the castle is the presidential standard (though the "ring of stars" is much in evidence elsewhere in Prague, flown outside every government ministry).

As described to me by someone present, President Klaus greeted the MEPs with his usual genial courtesy. Whatever his own views, he assured them, his countrymen would conduct their presidency in fully "communautaire" fashion. Cohn-Bendit then staged his ambush. Brusquely plonking down his EU flag., which he observed sarcastically was so much in evidence around the palace, he warned that the Czechs would be expected to put through the EU's "climate change package" without interference.

"You can believe what you want," he scornfully told the president, "but I don't believe, I know that global warming is a reality." He added, "my view is based on scientific views and the majority approval of the EU Parliament".

He then moved on to the Lisbon Treaty. "I don't care about your opinions on it," he said. If the Czech Parliament approves the treaty in February, he demanded, "Will you respect the will of the representatives of the people?"

He then reprimanded the president for his recent meeting in Ireland with Declan Ganley, the millionaire leader of the "No" campaign in the Irish referendum, claiming that it was improper for Klaus to have talked to someone whose "finances come from problematic sources".

Visibly taken aback by this onslaught, Klaus observed: "I must say that no one has talked to me in such a style and tone in the past six years. You are not on the barricades in Paris here. I thought that such manners ended for us 19 years ago" (ie when Communism fell). When Klaus suggested to Hans-Gert Pöttering, the president of the EU Parliament, that perhaps it was time for someone else to take the floor, Pöttering replied that "anyone from the members of the Parliament can ask you what he likes", and invited Cohn-Bendit to continue.

"This is incredible', said Klaus. "I have never experienced anything like this before."

After a further exchange, in which Cohn-Bendit compared Klaus unfavourably with his predecessor, President Havel, he gave way to an Irish MEP, Brian Crowley, who began by saying "all his life my father fought against the British domination [of Ireland]… That is why I dare to say that the Irish wish for the Lisbon Treaty. It was an insult, Mr President, to me and the Irish people what you said during your state visit to Ireland." Klaus repeated that he had not experienced anything like this for19 years and that it seemed we were no longer living in a democracy, but that it was "post-democracy which rules the EU".

On the EU constitution, Klaus recalled that three countries had voted against it, and that if Mr Crowley wanted to talk about insults to the Irish people, "the biggest insult to the Irish people is not to accept the result of the Irish referendum". This provoked Crowley to retort angrily, "You will not tell me what the Irish think. As an Irishman, I know it best."

Everntually Pöttering closed the meeting by saying that he wanted to leave the room "in good terms", but it was quite unacceptable to compare himself and his colleagues with the Soviet Union. Klaus replied that he had not mentioned the Soviet Union: "I only said that I had not experienced such an atmosphere, such a style of debate, in the Czech Republic in the last 19 years."

This bizarre confrontation, which has been recounted and discussed with shock across formerly Communist eastern Europe, confirms the inability of the Euro-elite to accept that anyone holds different views from their own, on Lisbon, global warming or anything else. As we see from the way our own political parties are run, when it comes to "Europe", the system has no place for opposition. Everything must be decided by "consensus", directed from the top. There is only one approved "party line". Apart from a few little powerless dissidents round the edges, the EU is thus in essence a one-party state.

It was a sense of this that powerfully influenced the French, Dutch and Irish people, when they were given the chance, to vote against the constitution which will cement that one-party state into place more firmly than ever. And it explains why, last week, the European Council told the Irish that they must hold their referendum again, on the understanding that this time they will get it right. That is the way one-party states behave – as President Klaus, who lived under one for the first 50 years of his life, knows only too well.

Do people ever stop to analyse exactly why it is that a Marxist such as Daniel Cohn-Bendit would not only hold the strength of views he does about Lisbon and climate change but also feel that he had the freedom in which to act like a child?

The media's silence is deafening on his motives.

No doubt they have the same philosophy as him.

Eurofascists like Cohn-Bendit and Crowley are ruining Europe.

The result will be bloody and terrible.

(Nothing Follows)