The UN's "Nothing to see here, move along" attitude to Zimbabwe (not to mention other countries like Sudan) demonstrate, at best, what a feckless institution it is and, at worst, how corrupt and morally bankrupt it is.
The Preamble to the Charter of the United Nations reads:
WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
AND FOR THESE ENDS
to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours, and
to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and
to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and
to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples...
A couple of Articles of the Charter read:
Article 4 1. Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.
Article 6 A Member of the United Nations which has persistently violated the Principles contained in the present Charter may be expelled from the Organization by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.
Here are the opening Articles of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Article 1 All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2 Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Article 3 Everyone has the right to live, have liberty, and security of person.
Article 4 No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Article 5 No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.
So how is it that Zimbabwe is still a member state of the United Nations?
Is this what the UN means by "...the right to live, have liberty, and security of person"?
Is this what the UN means by "...to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person"?
Is this what the UN means by "...to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom"?
The Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, sounding ever more pugnacious, said Saturday that he was prepared to go to war if he lost a runoff election to the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on June 27.
Speaking at the burial of a former army general, Mr. Mugabe, who at 84 has held power for 28 years, was quoted by Reuters as saying, “These pathetic puppets taking over our country? Let’s see. That’s not going to happen.”
...The opposition party’s secretary general, Tendai Biti, was arrested Thursday at the airport in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, as he returned to the country after a self-imposed absence of two months. His lawyers had not been allowed to see him or been informed of his whereabouts until Saturday, when he was brought handcuffed to court by armed police officers.
The session was closed to the news media, but afterward one of Mr. Biti’s lawyers said his client was being accused of “treason and making malicious statements detrimental to the interests of the state,” charges that could bring the death penalty.
Inflation in Zimbabwe is now a mind boggling 100,000%. In Australia we get all jumpy when it hits 4%.
Life expectancy in Zimbabwe is now down to 37 for men and 34 for women. In 1985 it was 59. A 15% HIV infection rate does not explain such a human calamity.
So how does the UN deal with Zimbabwe?
From last week:
Western leaders expressed outrage yesterday as Robert Mugabe flew into Rome in defiance of an EU travel ban to attend a United Nations world food summit while millions of people are starving under his brutal rule in Zimbabwe...Mr Mugabe, 84, is subject to a travel ban to the European Union because of sanctions imposed after his rigged re-election in 2002 but Italian officials said that they had had no choice but to allow him to attend UN meetings in Rome, as he did in 2002 and 2005...Zimbabwe, once the bread basket of southern Africa, is facing acute food shortages and the UN has issued a warning that near-drought in parts of the country could damage the maize harvest. Agriculture has collapsed since Mr Mugabe embarked on “land reforms” involving the expropriation of thousands of white-owned farms, which critics say he has handed over to his associates. Mr Mugabe, who will address the summit, is expected to blame his country’s crisis on sanctions imposed by the US and the EU.
From 2007:
Zimbabwe has been elected to head the UN's commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) despite strong objections from Western diplomats.
They had said Zimbabwe was unsuitable because of its human rights record and economic problems. It is suffering food shortages and rampant inflation.
But Zimbabwe has dismissed such criticism, calling it an insult.
The country was chosen by other African nations. The CSD post rotates every year between the world's regions.
A complete disaster is happening but as late as June 13, 2008, the UN was still to take any action against Zimbabwe at all:
The U.S. called on the United Nations Security Council to start an immediate discussion of the political crisis in Zimbabwe.
``We believe the time has come for the United Nations Security Council to take up immediately the issue to prevent further deterioration of the region's humanitarian and security situation,'' White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said in a statement issued yesterday in Rome where President George W. Bush was visiting.
It is long past the time when a new organisation made up only of democratic states be created. An alternative is to remove UN voting power from non-democratic members of the UN but, as that would require a vote by the UN General Assembly, it is an impossible outcome.
The Animals were an English music group of the 1960s known in the United States as part of the British Invasion. Known for their gritty, bluesy sound and deep-voiced frontman Eric Burdon, as exemplified by their signature song "The House of the Rising Sun", the band balanced tough, rock-edged pop singles against rhythm and blues-oriented album material. The Animals underwent numerous personnel changes and emerged as an exponent of psychedelic rock before dissolving at the end of the decade.
Formed in Newcastle-upon-Tyne during 1962 and 1963 when Burdon joined the Alan Price Rhythm and Blues Combo, the original line-up comprised Eric Burdon (vocals), Alan Price (organ and keyboards), Hilton Valentine (guitar), John Steel (drums), and Bryan "Chas" Chandler (bass).
They were dubbed "animals" because of their wild stage act and the name stuck. The Animals' moderate success in their hometown and a connection with Yardbirds manager Giorgio Gomelsky motivated them to move to London in 1964, in time to be grouped with the British Invasion. They performed fiery versions of the staple rhythm and blues repertoire (Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, etc). Signed to the Columbia Graphophone subsidiary of EMI, a rocking version of the standard "Baby Let Me Follow You Down" (retitled "Baby Let Me Take You Home") was their first single. It was followed in June 1964 by the transatlantic number one hit "House of the Rising Sun". Burdon's howling vocals and the dramatic arrangement created arguably the first folk rock hit. Whether the arrangement was inspired by Bob Dylan's version of the song (which in turn was inspired by folk singer Dave Van Ronk) or by blues singer Josh White's (who recorded it twice in 1944 and 1949) or by singer/pianist Nina Simone (who recorded it in 1962 on Nina at the Village Gate, predating Dylan's interpretation) remains a dispute, as does whether all five Animals deserved credit for the arrangement and not just Price.
As the world continues to cool, probably due to the lack of the sun going into Solar Cycle 24 and changes in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the hysteria from those with their snouts in the public trough continues to rise.
Last week Australia's capital city hosted the climate change equivalent of PM Kevin Rudd's 2020 Summit. Of the 200 delegates a sum total of zero, nil, nada, none were in the skeptical camp. Imagine my surprise at that fact.
It therefore comes as no shock at all that these Climate Shysters should produce a statement telling us that we all need to slash our economic wrists.
A statement from the 2008 Manning Clark House Conference: “Imagining the Real Life on a Greenhouse Earth”, 11-12 June, Australian National University, Canberra.
Global warming is accelerating. The Arctic summer sea ice is expected to melt entirely within the next five years, - decades earlier than predicted in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 4th Assessment Report.
Scientists judge the risks to humanity of dangerous global warming to be high. The Great Barrier Reef faces devastation. Extreme weather events, such as storm surges adding to rising sea levels and threatening coastal cities, will become increasingly frequent.
There is a real danger that we have reached or will soon reach critical tipping points and the future will be taken out of our hands. The melting Arctic sea ice could be the first such tipping point.
Beyond 2ºC of warming, seemingly inevitable unless greenhouse gas reduction targets are tightened, we risk huge human and societal costs and perhaps even the effective end of industrial civilisation. We need to cease our assault on our own life support system, and that of millions of species. Global warming is only one of many symptoms of that assault.
Peak oil, global warming and long term sustainability pressures all require that we reduce energy needs and switch to alternative energy sources. Many credible studies show that Australia can quickly and cost-effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions through dramatic improvements in energy efficiency and by increasing our investment in solar, wind and other renewable sources.
The need for action is extremely urgent and our window of opportunity for avoiding severe impacts is rapidly closing. Yet the obstacles to change are not technical or economic, they are political and social.
We know democratic societies have responded successfully to dire and immediate threats, as was demonstrated in World War II. This is a last call for an effective response to global warming.
Comparing global warming, which has killed nobody, flooded no homes, inundated no islands and made no species extinct with World War II shows how hysterical these people are prepared to be. Do they really want us to devote one-third of our economic activity to dealing with climate change? That's how much - and more - we spent during WW2.
In WW2 democratic societies took action against undemocratic, totalitarian regimes in Germany, Italy and Japan. It's ironic that the undemocratic, totalitarian regime of the Climate Movement has made more inroads into undermining our societies than those countries ever were.
The following are some of the profoundly immoral alarmists, confused do-gooders and political opportunists that signed on the the statement:
Climate scientists: Prof Barry Brook, Prof Ian Enting, Prof Janette Lindesay, Prof Graeme Pearman, Dr Barrie Pittock, Prof Will Steffen; Earth and prehistory scientists: Dr Geoff Davies, Dr David Denham, Dr Andrew Glikson (conference convenor), Dr Simon Haberle, Prof Malcolm McCulloch, Dr Bradley Opdyke; Political leaders: Senator Lyn Allison, Dr Carmen Lawrence, Senator Christine Milne, Barry Jones; Environmental lawyer: Phillip Toyne; Health and population experts: Prof Stephen Boyden, Dr Bryan Furnass (conference co-convenor), Prof Tony McMichael, Dr Sue Wareham; Humanists: Phillip Adams, Dr Paul Collins, Tony Kevin, Dierk von Behrens; Poet: Mark O’Connor.
That's important, having the support of a poet. Or Phillip Adams...! A humanist...! A person less able to understand climate change science you would struggle to find.
I've said before that I reckon one of the reasons for such a rush to action is that climate scientists know full well that the world is going to enter a cooling phase due to low solar activity and they 1) want to ensure funding and 2) want to take the credit of a cooling world due to driving a reduction in CO2.
According to a pack of Climate Change Parasites there are hundreds of thousands of Australian homes at risk from climate change's "wild storms and rising sea levels".
That global warming causes more storm activity has been shown to be even greater junk science than what underpins global warming in the first place. It's the first sign that someone is trying to drive up hysteria levels in order to stick their snouts in the pork barrel. How 700,000 homes are under threat by the IPCC's 59cm predicted rise in the 21st century is beyond me.
Australia has about 10 million homes so 7% are apparently at risk. Man the lifeboats!
More than 700,000 coastal homes are at risk from wild storms and rising sea levels caused by climate change, the federal government says.
It will map most major Australian cities to work out which homes are most at risk.
Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane and the Gold Coast would be mapped in a $2 million digital model, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said as she announced the funding in Fremantle.
"Already, more than 700,000 residences across Australia are estimated to be at threat from the effects of climate change, including storm surges and extreme weather events," she said.
"Acting on climate change is all about doing the responsible thing for the economy and for the future."
The new digital elevation model will build on the government's knowledge of which areas are most exposed to inundation. There is already a model in place, although it has a lower digital resolution.
The new version will be put together by scientists and commercial mapping companies.
Groups involved include the CSIRO, Geosciences Australia, the Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information, and the Australia and New Zealand Land Information Council.
Ms Wong also announced $310,000 for a web-based tool to allow planners and policy-makers to incorporate rising sea levels into planning codes.
There's also $479,000 to develop a tool to forecast how climate change affects wave patterns.
"Taking action on climate change will be very hard, but we have already had too many years of neglect and delay," Ms Wong said.
"Further delay is economically irresponsible."
Pissing taxpayer money up against the wall to no good end is the most immoral action a government can take. To talk of delaying action on climate change as "economically irresponsible" goes into my list as one of the most cognitively dissonant statements ever made.
Adding these millions of dollars to the $70 million that the Federal and Victorian state governments shoveled down Toyota's throat for no reason last week shows how deeply, deeply immoral the government is prepared to be in order to show the world that it is a Green Government.
Beware the Jolly Green Giant of government. From it none of our money is safe.
This has to be right up there with the worst ideas ever to combat drink driving.
OCEANSIDE, Calif. — On a Monday morning last month, highway patrol officers visited 20 classrooms at El Camino High School to announce some horrible news: Several students had been killed in car wrecks over the weekend.
Classmates wept. Some became hysterical.
A few hours and many tears later, though, the pain turned to fury when the teenagers learned that it was all a hoax — a scared-straight exercise designed by school officials to dramatize the consequences of drinking and driving.
As seniors prepare for graduation parties Friday, school officials in the largely prosperous San Diego suburb are defending themselves against allegations they went too far.
At school assemblies, some students held up posters that read: "Death is real. Don't play with our emotions."
Michelle de Gracia, 16, was in physics class when an officer announced that her missing classmate David, a popular basketball player, had died instantly after being rear-ended by a drunken driver. She said she felt nauseated but was too stunned to cry.
"They got the shock they wanted," she said.
Some of her classmates became extremely upset, prompting the teacher to tell them immediately it was all staged.
"People started yelling at the teacher," she said. "It was pretty hectic."
Others, including many who heard the news of the 26 deaths between classes, were left in the dark until the missing students reappeared hours later.
"You feel betrayed by your teachers and administrators, these people you trust," said 15-year-old Carolyn Magos. "But then I felt selfish for feeling that way, because, I mean, if it saves one life, it's worth it."
Officials at the 3,100-student school officials defended the program.
"They were traumatized, but we wanted them to be traumatized," said guidance counselor Lori Tauber, who helped organize the shocking exercise and got dozens of students to participate. "That's how they get the message."
The plan was to tell the truth to the students at an assembly later in the day. But word that it was all a hoax began to spread before the gathering. Tauber said some counselors and administrators revealed the truth to calm some students who had become upset.
Oceanside Schools Superintendent Larry Perondi said he fielded only a few calls from parents, while the PTA chapter said it had not heard any complaints. Perondi said the program would be revised, but he would not say how. And he said he was glad that students seemed to have gotten the message.
"We did this in earnest," he said. "This was not done to be a prankster."
One can understand why school officials felt that they had to go so far over the top to get their message across. What with all of the other hysteria students have to deal with (global warming and other environmental alarmism etc) they are building resistance to hysterical messages and officials needed to go to the next level to get kids to listen.
All of the school officials who participated in the program should be sacked.
Heterosexuals are just as likely to get AIDS as homosexuals and intravenous drug users.
Time Magazine - 1992
Ignorance and indifference kill.
Michael Fumento was pilloried by the medical profession for his 1990 best seller The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS...
...it turns out that Fumento was right and that the AIDS Faithful were hopelessly wrong, which has now been acknowledged by the WHO:
A quarter of a century after the outbreak of Aids, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has accepted that the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared.
In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major Aids organisations may have been misdirected, Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO's department of HIV/Aids said there will be no generalised epidemic of Aids in the heterosexual population outside Africa.
Dr De Cock, an epidemiologist who has spent much of his career leading the battle against the disease, said understanding of the threat posed by the virus had changed. Whereas once it was seen as a risk to populations everywhere, it was now recognised that, outside sub-Saharan Africa, it was confined to high-risk groups including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers and their clients.
Obtaining funds for AIDS research was a top priority back in the 80s and 90s. 'Bending' the truth was considered OK by medical researchers in the field in order to get that funding.
Lying in the name of doing good always has unintended consequences. Not focusing on the really big problem - AIDS in Africa - has caused a human catastrophe there.
There has not been a major scare in my lifetime that has come to pass. That hasn't stopped the media from promoting the hysteria du jour with all its might. No doubt, we'll be looking back at the global warming scare in twenty years with the same disdain as we do the heterosexual AIDS scare.
The recent sharp jump in the unemployment rate in the US was taken as a sign that its economy, hamstrung by rising oil prices and the impact of the sub-prime fiasco, is in clear decline. Doom and gloomers predict a coming recession. No surprises there; even a broken clock is right twice a day.
As Jerry Bowyer points out, the rise in unemployment does not correlate with corporate layoffs. How can that be?
Ironically, it's an iconic left wing policy that is the cause of the problem.
It wasn’t Bush, it wasn’t greedy corporations, or free trade, or history’s most over-predicted recession. It was not the oil companies, income inequality, or the excesses of cowboy capitalism. None of these things caused the unemployment rate to jump a half a percentage point in one month.
Ask yourself a few questions: Why did unemployment surge at a time when unemployment compensation claims are historically low? More to the point, how could unemployment spike this much without a coinciding spike in corporate lay-offs?
The answer to all of these questions is same: because very few people lost jobs last month. This huge jump in the size of the unemployed comes from new entrants to the economy – hundreds of thousands of them. In short, well over 600,000 people who were not job seekers in April became job seekers in May. And who starts looking for work at the end of Spring? That’s right – students. Hundreds of thousands of students are looking for work right now, and they’re not finding it.
Congress is to blame. Last year Congressional Democrats (along with some Stockholm-Syndromed Republicans) passed the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, which started a phased hike of the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25. Free market economists warned them that this would increase unemployment – that rapid increases in unemployment compensation hit teens and minorities the hardest. But the class-warriors are running the people’s house now, and they would hear none of that, so they took to the floor, let loose the dogs of demagoguery, and saddled America’s pizza parlors, municipal swimming pools, house painting businesses and lawn mowing services with a huge cost increase.
Now, we see the perfectly logical outcome of wage controls – rising unemployment among the most economically vulnerable. The chart above tells the story: Friday’s unemployment spike occurred overwhelmingly among teenagers, and secondarily among African Americans. Just like we said it would. A kid who is at entry level of job skills may be a good deal at 5 bucks an hour, but not at 7. Our anointed leaders gets to glory in their generosity (with other people’s money) and just so long as very few people in the media know that a demand curve slopes downward (a good bet, there), no one calls them on it.
This summer the left will make political lemonade out of a tough student job market. Heck, it may provide a small army of angry unemployed youth to man the campaign, hungry for hope and (loose) change, never once realizing that they’re working to entrench the leftie war on business which left them jobless this summer in the first place.
The minimum wage is an extremely misunderstood concept. Here's Milton Friedman in 1975 being interviewed by Richard Hefner on Open Mind:
FRIEDMAN: Let me give you a very simple example. Take the minimum wage law. Its well-meaning sponsors -- there are always in these cases two groups of sponsors. There are the well-meaning sponsors and there are the special interests who are using the well-meaning sponsors as front men. You almost always when you have bad programs have an unholy coalition of the do-gooders on the one hand and the special interests on the other. The minimum wage law is as clear a case as you could want. The special interests are, of course, the trade unions, the monopolistic craft trade unions in particular. The do-gooders believe that by passing a law saying that nobody shall get less than $2 an hour or $2.50 an hour, or whatever the minimum wage is, you are helping poor people who need the money. You are doing nothing of the kind. What you are doing is to assure that people whose skills are not sufficient to justify that kind of a wage will be unemployed. It is no accident that the teenage unemployment rate -- the unemployment rate among teenagers in this country -- is over twice as high as the overall unemployment rate. It's no accident that that was not always the case until the 1950's when the minimum wage rate was raised very drastically, very quickly. Teenage unemployment was higher than ordinary unemployment because, of course, teenagers are the ones who are just coming into the labor market -- they're searching and finding jobs, and it's understandable that on the average they would be unemployed more. But it was nothing like the extraordinary level it has now reached -- it's close to 20%.
HEFFNER: Why?
FRIEDMAN: Because the minimum wage law is most properly described as a law saying employers must discriminate against people who have low skills. That's what the law says. The law says here's a man who would -- has a skill which would justify a wage rate of $1.50, $2.00 an hour. You can't, you may not employ him. It's illegal. Because if you employ him you have to pay him $2.50. Well, what's the result? To employ him at $2.50 is to engage in charity. Now there's nothing wrong with charity. But most employers are not in a position where they can engage in that kind of charity. Thus the consequences of minimum wage rates have been almost wholly bad, to increase unemployment and to increase poverty. Moreover, the effects have been concentrated on the groups that the do-gooders would most like to help. The people who have been hurt most by minimum wage laws are the blacks. I've often said that the most anti-Negro law on the books of this land is the minimum wage rate. And so I think the real answer to your question is that you must not judge a bottle solely by its label. You have to look at what's inside and see what the law or the measure produces.
HEFFNER: If one looked at the label, though, and perhaps one of those government regulations that you would look askance at, is that we look at labels. If one looked at the label and identified the objective of minimum wages, are there no positive, legitimate objectives achieved by minimum wage?
FRIEDMAN: None whatsoever. In my opinion, there's absolutely no positive objective achieved by minimum wages. It's real purpose is to reduce competition for the trade unions and make it easier for them to maintain wages of their privileged members higher than the others...
All inputs into any product, including labour, have a market clearing rate. If the application of a minimum wage law prices labour at a higher rate than the market can bear then guess what? Unemployment rises.
The idea of a minimum wage is sold on the basis that it helps 'the poor'. What the vast majority of people do not know is that around three-quarters of those people earning the minimum wage are the tertiary earner in a household (i.e. a teenage child of two working parents) and that ninety percent of them will have increased their earnings above the minimum wage rate within a year as they obtain skills through work. The minimum wage has the insidious effect of denying low-skilled people - primarily young school leavers - the opportunity to obtain employment and gain skills.
Friedman touched briefly on the impact on young blacks and one of his disciples, the great Thomas Sowell, expands on the history of black youth unemployment:
Let us go back a few generations in the United States. We need not speculate about racial discrimination because it was openly spelled out in laws in the Southern states, where most blacks lived, and was not unknown in the North.
Yet in the late 1940s, the unemployment rate among young black men was not only far lower than it is today but was not very different from unemployment rates among young whites the same ages. Every census from 1890 through 1930 showed labor force participation rates for blacks to be as high as, or higher than, labor force participation rates among whites.
Why are things so different today in the United States -- and so different among Muslim young men in France? That is where economics comes in.
People who are less in demand -- whether because of inexperience, lower skills, or race -- are just as employable at lower pay rates as people who are in high demand are at higher pay rates. That is why blacks were just as able to find jobs as whites were, prior to the decade of the 1930s and why a serious gap in unemployment between black teenagers and white teenagers opened up only after 1950.
Prior to the decade of the 1930s, the wages of inexperienced and unskilled labor were determined by supply and demand. There was no federal minimum wage law and labor unions did not usually organize inexperienced and unskilled workers. That is why such workers were able to find jobs, just like everyone else, even when these were black workers in an era of open discrimination.
The first federal minimum wage law, the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, was passed in part explicitly to prevent black construction workers from "taking jobs" from white construction workers by working for lower wages. It was not meant to protect black workers from "exploitation" but to protect white workers from competition.
The union movement really does have an ugly history on matters of race. How many people know that it was the union movement in South Africa that led to what became known internally as the policy of Separate Development and externally as Apartheid?
It's almost axiomatic that the New York Times would never publish a piece defending the left wing meme that "Bush lied, people died" so it's to the credit of the left-leaning Washington Post that they do.
The Washington Post must understand that it is the one that will become America's leading paper if the 'paper of record', the NYT, continues is parlous spiral into irrelevance. The NYT blames its decline on the 'new media' but it's much more likely that readers are getting sick of the massive pro-Democratic Party stance the paper takes. Thus, the editorial pages of the Washington Post are generally quite reasonable and balanced.
Search the Internet for "Bush Lied" products, and you will find sites that offer more than a thousand designs. The basic "Bush Lied, People Died" bumper sticker is only the beginning.
Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, set out to provide the official foundation for what has become not only a thriving business but, more important, an article of faith among millions of Americans. And in releasing a committee report Thursday, he claimed to have accomplished his mission, though he did not use the L-word.
"In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent," he said.
There's no question that the administration, and particularly Vice President Cheney, spoke with too much certainty at times and failed to anticipate or prepare the American people for the enormous undertaking in Iraq.
But dive into Rockefeller's report, in search of where exactly President Bush lied about what his intelligence agencies were telling him about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, and you may be surprised by what you find.
On Iraq's nuclear weapons program? The president's statements "were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates."
On biological weapons, production capability and those infamous mobile laboratories? The president's statements "were substantiated by intelligence information."
On chemical weapons, then? "Substantiated by intelligence information."
On weapons of mass destruction overall (a separate section of the intelligence committee report)? "Generally substantiated by intelligence information." Delivery vehicles such as ballistic missiles? "Generally substantiated by available intelligence." Unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to deliver WMDs? "Generally substantiated by intelligence information."
As you read through the report, you begin to think maybe you've mistakenly picked up the minority dissent. But, no, this is the Rockefeller indictment. So, you think, the smoking gun must appear in the section on Bush's claims about Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to terrorism.
But statements regarding Iraq's support for terrorist groups other than al-Qaeda "were substantiated by intelligence information." Statements that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda "were substantiated by the intelligence assessments," and statements regarding Iraq's contacts with al-Qaeda "were substantiated by intelligence information." The report is left to complain about "implications" and statements that "left the impression" that those contacts led to substantive Iraqi cooperation.
In the report's final section, the committee takes issue with Bush's statements about Saddam Hussein's intentions and what the future might have held. But was that really a question of misrepresenting intelligence, or was it a question of judgment that politicians are expected to make?
After all, it was not Bush, but Rockefeller, who said in October 2002: "There has been some debate over how 'imminent' a threat Iraq poses. I do believe Iraq poses an imminent threat. I also believe after September 11, that question is increasingly outdated. . . . To insist on further evidence could put some of our fellow Americans at risk. Can we afford to take that chance? I do not think we can."
Rockefeller was reminded of that statement by the committee's vice chairman, Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), who with three other Republican senators filed a minority dissent that includes many other such statements from Democratic senators who had access to the intelligence reports that Bush read. The dissenters assert that they were cut out of the report's preparation, allowing for a great deal of skewing and partisanship, but that even so, "the reports essentially validate what we have been saying all along: that policymakers' statements were substantiated by the intelligence."
Why does it matter, at this late date? The Rockefeller report will not cause a spike in "Bush Lied" mug sales, and the Bond dissent will not lead anyone to scrape the "Bush Lied" bumper sticker off his or her car.
But the phony "Bush lied" story line distracts from the biggest prewar failure: the fact that so much of the intelligence upon which Bush and Rockefeller and everyone else relied turned out to be tragically, catastrophically wrong.
And it trivializes a double dilemma that President Bill Clinton faced before Bush and that President Obama or McCain may well face after: when to act on a threat in the inevitable absence of perfect intelligence and how to mobilize popular support for such action, if deemed essential for national security, in a democracy that will always, and rightly, be reluctant.
For the next president, it may be Iran's nuclear program, or al-Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan, or, more likely, some potential horror that today no one even imagines. When that time comes, there will be plenty of warnings to heed from the Iraq experience, without the need to fictionalize more.
Now that is a pretty damning assessment of not only Rockefeller himself but also the lunatics who think that Bush did lie or that the war was all about oil. Current oil prices make that last idea somewhat preposterous don't they?
However, the real key is in the last three paragraphs. In the same way that billions of dollars are being diverted into the bogus area of climate change remediation meaning that they are not available to be put to better use on water projects etc in developing nations, the passing off of the shocking failure of Western intelligence agencies about the true extent of Saddam's WMD program as a 'lie' will mean that those agencies do not suffer the intense scrutiny that they should. The fact that Saddam had his own senior advisers and military leaders duped about his WMD program is no excuse.
What's also notable is that while the left runs around bleating about the President lying the country into a war that cost tens of thousands of people their lives they completely ignore the millions of people that die each year due to the left's own campaign against the use of DDT.
What about this? "The left lied, millions died."
Or this? "Mao didn't lie, 60 million died."
Or this? "Che lived, hundreds died."
More people died at the hands of the left in the 20th century than have been killed in all religious wars through history. In fact, Stalin topped that number by himself without having to add in the massive number of dead in Mao's China. As I've said before, I reckon that the left will cause the death of more people in the 21st century with their radical environmentalism than they pushed into early graves in the 20th.
The left likes labels and slogans and "Bush lied, people died" is just the current fashion. No doubt once Bush is gone from office they will come up with a new one.
Bo Diddley (December 30, 1928 – June 2, 2008) was an American rock and roll singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Often cited as a key figure in the transition from blues to rock and roll, he introduced more insistent, driving rhythms and a hard-edged guitar sound. He was also known for his characteristic rectangular guitar.
Another rock and roll great has passed away this week. They seem to be falling like flies recently but I guess that's what's going to keep happening given how old all of the original rockers now are.
A security van was sent on a 120-mile round trip to move a prisoner 200 yards to avoid breaching his human rights.
People who think that European civilization is not going down the gurgler at a rapid rate simply need to take a long, hard look at what passes for 'human rights' these days.
Mark Bailey, 35, was taken to a Crown Court but after a brief hearing sent immediately to the magistrates' court across the road.
Police said Bailey could not be walked across the street in handcuffs because it would breach his human rights - so a van was scrambled from 60 miles away for the 30 second journey.
Campaigners and MPs branded the decision "a shocking waste of money" and said it was "no wonder" Britain's criminal justice system was in such a state of chaos.
Bailey appeared from custody before Northampton Crown Court Tuesday morning charged with stealing cable from a railway line.
A judge decided it was better dealt with by magistrates and Bailey was ordered to appear the same day. However, by this time the prison van had gone. Police refused to walk him across Victoria Road, which separates the buildings, so a van was called from Cambridge, 57 miles away, to pick him up and drop him off.
Police refused? What sort of police are these? Pathetic.
He finally arrived at the magistrates' court two hours and 40 minutes after the van was called. Charged with theft and going equipped, Bailey, from Northampton, was remanded in custody.
A spokeswoman for Northamptonshire police said it would "not be appropriate" to walk a prisoner down a public street. She said: "Once a person is in the courts system, they are no longer in police custody and police are not responsible for their transportation.
"It would not be appropriate for prisoners to walk in a public area while in custody for many reasons, including public safety issues, as well as the safety and human rights of the prisoner.
"Until someone has been convicted of an offence they are innocent in the eyes of the law and it would therefore be inappropriate for them to be escorted across a busy main road in handcuffs."
Brian Binley, Conservative MP for Northampton South, said: "I've never heard such nonsense. Why we should have to suffer such ludicrous incompetence, and pay for it, is beyond me.
"In my view, Bailey should have been escorted across the road but if they were worried about him absconding, they could have put him in a squad car - the police station is just around the corner."
Matthew Elliott, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, added: "This is absurd and a total waste of money.
"No wonder our prisons are in such a state of chaos, if they can't even manage to escort a prisoner 200 yards between buildings.
"If anyone had shown a bit of initiative this could have been sorted out in five minutes, but instead taxpayers had to foot the bill for this wasteful trek."
A barrister at the court - who wishes to remain anonymous - said: "The transport of prisoners to court is ludicrous and a joke."
A spokesman for Global Solutions Limited, responsible for the movement and security of prisoners, said: "It was an unplanned movement and the van had gone to do other things. It is not a taxi service and has a range of duties to make best use of taxpayers' money.
"It is more efficient doing it this way than having a load of vehicles sitting around outside court just in case." He said he did not know whether the van came from Cambridge.
On one hand the PC police are doing the politically correct thing while on the other being completely un-PC by pumping out all of that unnecessary CO2 because they couldn't be bothered using a squad car.
Does that mean human rights trumps climate change in the grand politically correct scheme of things?
It's great, this Kyoto protocol thing, as it gives huge CO2 emitters like India and China a free pass while tying up the world's major economies in climate controlled red tape.
That India has quite rightly placed economic development above reduction in greenhouse gases shows what a crock the science supporting AGW really is. Why is that? Imagine if the issue was mercury or lead or some demonstrably dangerous substance. Would India snub its nose at the world in the same way?
India will not reduce greenhouse gas emission at the cost of development and poverty alleviation, Minister of State for Environment and Forests Namo Narain Meena said Thursday.
'India is struggling to bring millions of people out of poverty. We cannot accept binding commitments to cut down greenhouse gas emission,' Meena said at a function to mark the World Environment Day.
Though India has no commitment to reduce the global warming gases under the Kyoto Protocol, in recent climate change conferences many developed countries have said India needs to reduce the greenhouse burden.
Meena, however, said climate change was becoming a crucial issue, and needed immediate action. He added that consumptive lifestyle was putting severe pressure on biological resources. 'Each of us has to become a saviour of the environment.'
'Each of us can help curb the adverse impact of climate change,' he said adding that afforestation will go a long way in reducing the carbon level in the atmosphere as 'forest is the natural sink for CO2'.
S. Regupathy, who is also the minister of state for environment and forests, has said the World Environment Day provides an opportunity every year to reaffirm the commitments to work towards the sustainable conservation of environment.
The major issue for the world is alleviating poverty and improving the standard of living in Third World countries. That the Climate Faithful care less about the world's poor than bringing down capitalism shows exactly what sort of leftists they are.
What's also worth considering is the impact of soot on any warming that we're seeing:
Black carbon pollution, or soot, produced by burning wood, coal, cow dung and diesel fuel, may be a much greater contributor to global warming than previously suspected, according to a study released this week.
The report concludes that the atmospheric warming effect of black carbon pollution is as much as three to four times the consensus estimate released last year in a report by the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The findings are of concern to areas such as the Indian subcontinent, where retreating glaciers in the Himalayas have the potential to flood densely populated areas and affect the drinking water of billions of people.
Unlike carbon dioxide, which traps solar energy radiating back from Earth’s surface, black carbon particles absorb solar radiation as it enters Earth’s atmosphere, increasing its heat. In addition, when they precipitate onto snowy areas, they increase heat absorption that leads to glacial melting.
The particles come from burning dung, wood, coal and other materials for household use, and travel in “brown clouds.”
“In Los Angeles, it’s what you see outside your door on the horizon,” said V. Ramanathan, an atmospheric scientist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. Ramanathan performed the study with Greg Carmichael, a chemical engineer at the University of Iowa.
The paper concluded that black carbon’s warming effect in the atmosphere is about 0.9 watts per meter squared, compared with the climate change panel’s consensus estimate of 0.2 to 0.4 watts.
The report, titled “Global and regional climate changes due to black carbon,” confirms similar conclusions of three previous model studies released in 2002 and 2005.
The paper concludes that carbon pollution contributes to global warming at a level that is about 60% of carbon dioxide’s warming effect, which makes black carbon the second most important contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide.
A mass of black carbon in the atmosphere causes about 300,000 times as much instantaneous warming as the same amount of carbon dioxide, said Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University who worked on the 2002 study. But whereas black carbon disappears within a couple of weeks, carbon dioxide continues to build up and can take centuries to completely dissipate from the atmosphere.
About 25% to 35% of black carbon in the atmosphere comes from South and East Asia.
In Europe and the U.S., diesel fuel, wood-burning fireplaces and barbecues are major sources of black carbon. Forest fires also are large sources of black carbon emissions.
Black carbon emissions in Western Europe and the U.S. have decreased about 300% in the last 30 years because of more-efficient coal combustion, a move away from wood-burning fireplaces, and cleaner, more efficient technology.
“The positive side of this discouraging story is we know how to cut down black carbon,” Ramanathan said. “We have reduced it. So this is something we can do now.”
Ramanathan said the new figure was higher than previous estimates because the study took into account the atmospheric range of black carbon, which can rise several miles into the atmosphere and is more effective at heating the higher it travels. It also explores the increased heating effect that occurs when black carbon particles mix with sulfates and other organic particles in the atmosphere. Because the other particles in the brown cloud reflect light, these reflections are bounced around and eventually absorbed by the black carbon particles, further magnifying their heating effect.
The report’s data was drawn from NASA satellites and ground stations and from field studies near the Indian Ocean and California coast. Those numbers were then extrapolated to create a global figure for the black carbon warming effect.
“There’s an uncertainty in the actual number, but what it does seem to confirm is really the main point,” Jacobson said. “Black carbon warming is much stronger than the IPCC consensus number had estimated.”
The study was funded by the California Energy Commission, the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA. It was published Sunday in the online edition of Nature Geoscience.
The report concluded that black carbon pollution, which scientists blame for the premature deaths of more than a million people, is one of the major contributors to the retreat of the Himalayan glaciers. Black carbon particles that land on snow absorb more solar radiation and accelerate the melting of ice, previous studies have said.
China is a massive source of atmospheric particulate matter.
By introducing cap and trade in the West, manufacturing is forced to jurisdictions that have no, or lax, environmental laws - such as China - that not only causes an increase in CO2 emissions but also increase the amount of crap in the atmosphere leading to a loss of ice cover.
Well done, Big Green. Well done. The Climate Faithful must be so proud of themselves.
Here is a classic example of the type of rent-seeking that the world will see more of in the not too distant future - small nations trying to pick the pockets of rich nations using the guilt of climate change as the reason.
This story contains one of the great lines ever showing what a crock the whole Climate Scam really is.
WELLINGTON: The President of the low-lying Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati says his country may already be doomed because of climate change.
Doomed! Doomed! We're all doomed, I say! Lost In Space's Dr Smith would have loved global warming.
Anote Tong says communities have already been resettled and crops destroyed by seawater in some parts of the country, made up of 33 coral atolls straddling the equator.
I'm sure that Anote Tong is well aware that Kiribati is a coral atoll located in an active seismic region. The water isn't rising, the island is collapsing as are many similar islands in the pacific in that region. Check out the Wikipedia entry on what an atoll is; it has an animation that shows what's happening to Kiribati and other places like it.
Although scientists are still debating the extent of rising sea levels and their cause, Mr Tong told a news conference marking World Environment Day that changes were obvious in his country of 92,000 people.
I suppose they would be obvious. The place is sinking.
“I am not a scientist but what I know is that things are happening we did not experience in the past,” the President said.
That's right. It's sinking.
“We may be beyond redemption, we may be at the point of no return where the emissions in the atmosphere will carry on to contribute to climate change to produce a sea-level change that in time our small low-lying islands will be submerged.
“Villages that have been there over the decades, maybe a century, and now they have to be relocated.
“Where they have been living over the past few decades is no longer there, it is being eroded.”
The Climate Faithful know that Kiribati is a sinking atoll but they're still happy to use it and Tuvalu and other places as 'proof' of the already apparent effects of climate change aka living in an advanced society.
At international meetings others had argued that measures to combat climate change would hurt their countries' economic development.
“In frustration, I said, 'No, it's not an issue of economic growth, it's an issue of human survival'.”
Human survival! The place is sinking! Break out the life jackets! Prepare the life boats! Get the local band to crank out Nearer My God To Thee! Women and children first!
Here it comes. One of the great lines ever delivered by a Climate Rent Seeker.
A classic.
One for the ages.
One that will take some topping.
Ready?
Under the worst-case scenario, Kiribati would be submerged by the end of this century and its people would have to be resettled in other countries, Mr Tong said.
Excuse me?
"...worst-case scenario...end of this century...?"
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
That is hilarious.
Quick, write that man a cheque to save his great-great-grandchildren from sinking without trace.
Do these people have no shame?
Oh, wait, they are the Climate Faithful after all. Truth is not an important value for them.
Think about the consequences of a Barack Obama victory in November...
The United States President
The British Prime Minister
The Australian Prime Minister
The most left wing US President ever (in fact, a radical leftist) + a populist, spineless British PM + a populist, incompetent Australian PM = bad news for the world.
This triumvirate would be Kim Il Jong's and Ahmadinejad's and Assad's and Hezbollah's and Hamas' and Al Qaeda's dream come true.
The UN would remain feckless. Nobody would do anything about Mugabe or any of the other miserable dictators in the world.
The English Speaking World leads, the rest follow.
Would there have ever been a weaker combination of leaders of their respective countries than these three? If so then I can't name them.
The Jeremiah Wright issue has been a festering sore in the Obama campaign for too many weeks now and it was clear that he was going to have to exorcise his petulant spiritual guide sooner rather than later in order to have some time pass until the November election in which he could recover.
After defending Wright and making a speech on race in America (vapid though it was) Obama would have hoped the controversy would die down but the fact that even a supine press, enamoured as they are with the idea of President Obama, continued to labour the point showed him that the issue was more of a danger to his campaign than was anticipated.
Clearly, he couldn't switch positions overnight and therefore needed some other, glaring reason to throw Wright under the bus.
What better way than to have Wright come out and make a series of profoundly loopy and way out there statements that Obama could then use as a catalyst to distance himself from Wright?
It smells like a set up to me.
Obama thought that abandoning his spiritual advisor of 20 years, the man who married him and Michelle, the man who baptised his children, the man who he referred to as 'uncle' and the man who gave him the title of his second book would be enough to placate the masses.
Clearly not.
Being associated with a church that has preached hatred for at least as long as Obama has been a member, which has been a leading force in the inculcation of Michelle Obama into a leftist radical and which promotes racial hatred is still a bridge too far.
So what's the answer?
Press the exit-stage-left button on the church.
What better way to generate what looks like a legitimate excuse than to have the profoundly lunatic Pastor Michael Pfleger give a sermon? A sermon that everyone knew was being recorded. A sermon that everyone knew would find its way into the mainstream. A sermon so profoundly politically unacceptable that it would leave Obama with no choice but to resign from the church?
It is waaay too convenient for me.
From women fainting at his rallies (which mysteriously stopped once it was highlighted in the media) to throwing Jeremiah Wright under the bus to abandoning the Trinity Church to making gaffe after gaffe that expose his economic illiteracy, his foreign policy naivety and his ignorance of history there is one change we can all believe in - it certainly is a change from the normal campaign of a presidential hopeful.
Andrew Bolt links to an article by Peter Schweizer, author of “Makers and Takers: Why Conservatives Work Harder, Feel Happier, Have Closer Families, Take Fewer Drugs, Give More Generously, Value Honesty More, Are Less Materialistic and Envious, Whine Less ... And Even Hug Their Children More Than Liberals” that crosses into an area that is close to my heart - the self-deception and moral ambiguity that is fundamental to being on the left in the 21st century.
The headline may seem like a trick question — even a dangerous one — to ask during an election year. And notice, please, that I didn’t ask whether certain politicians are more honest than others. (Politicians are a different species altogether.) Yet there is a striking gap between the manner in which liberals and conservatives address the issue of honesty.
I have addressed this issue before. There's a difference between telling lies and believing lies. All politicians tell lies; it's axiomatic. The left, by and large, believes lies. It has to believe that values are relative, that group identity is more important than one's values and that policies that have failed the test of time (at a macro level, socialism, or at a lower level things like socialised medicine, for example) can be made right with just a bit of tweaking because 'it hasn't been done properly before'.
Consider these results:
Is it OK to cheat on your taxes? A total of 57 percent of those who described themselves as “very liberal” said yes in response to the World Values Survey, compared with only 20 percent of those who are “very conservative.” When Pew Research asked whether it was “morally wrong” to cheat Uncle Sam, 86 percent of conservatives agreed, compared with only 68 percent of liberals.
Ponder this scenario, offered by the National Cultural Values Survey: “You lose your job. Your friend’s company is looking for someone to do temporary work. They are willing to pay the person in cash to avoid taxes and allow the person to still collect unemployment. What would you do?”
Almost half, or 49 percent, of self-described progressives would go along with the scheme, but only 21 percent of conservatives said they would.
When the World Values Survey asked a similar question, the results were largely the same: Those who were very liberal were much more likely to say it was all right to get welfare benefits you didn’t deserve.
The World Values Survey found that those on the left were also much more likely to say it is OK to buy goods that you know are stolen. Studies have also found that those on the left were more likely to say it was OK to drink a can of soda in a store without paying for it and to avoid the truth while negotiating the price of a car.
Another survey by Barna Research found that political liberals were two and a half times more likely to say that they illegally download or trade music for free on the Internet.
A study by professors published in the American Taxation Association’s Journal of Legal Tax Research found conservative students took the issue of accounting scandals and tax evasion more seriously than their fellow liberal students. Those with a “liberal outlook” who “reject the idea of absolute truth” were more accepting of cheating at school, according to another study, involving 291 students and published in the Journal of Education for Business.
A study in the Journal of Business Ethics involving 392 college students found that stronger beliefs toward “conservatism” translated into “higher levels of ethical values.” And academics concluded in the Journal of Psychology that there was a link between “political liberalism” and “lying in your own self-interest,” based on a study involving 156 adults.
Liberals were more willing to “let others take the blame” for their own ethical lapses, “copy a published article” and pass it off as their own, and were more accepting of “cheating on an exam,” according to still another study in the Journal of Business Ethics.
Now, I’m not suggesting that all conservatives are honest and all liberals are untrustworthy. But clearly a gap exists in the data. Why? The quick answer might be that liberals are simply being more honest about their dishonesty.
However attractive this explanation might be for some, there is simply no basis for accepting this explanation. Validation studies, which attempt to figure out who misreports on academic surveys and why, has found no evidence that conservatives are less honest. Indeed, validation research indicates that Democrats tend to be less forthcoming than other groups.
The honesty gap is also not a result of “bad people” becoming liberals and “good people” becoming conservatives. In my mind, a more likely explanation is bad ideas. Modern liberalism is infused with idea that truth is relative. Surveys consistently show this. And if truth is relative, it also must follow that honesty is subjective.
Sixties organizer Saul Alinsky, who both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton say inspired and influenced them, once said the effective political advocate “doesn’t have a fixed truth; truth to him is relative and changing, everything to him is relative and changing. He is a political relativist.”
During this political season, honesty is often in short supply. But at least we can improve things by accepting the idea that truth and honesty exist. As the late scholar Sidney Hook put it, “the easiest rationalization for the refusal to seek the truth is the denial that truth exists.”
It's a topic that the left will dismiss with a quick pejorative or two, as it's impossible for them to defend.
What's ironic is that it's the left that thinks it has the moral high ground because of its 'support' for the downtrodden, minorities, women and the environment etc when in fact it's the clear thinking right that has a better claim to the high ground.
The Kinks were an English pop/rock group formed in 1963, and categorised as a British Invasion band, along with the other members of the so-called Big Four (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who). Despite being less commercially successful than these three contemporaries, mostly because of a four-year ban from the United States in the mid-to-late 1960s, the Kinks are cited among them as one of the most important and influential rock bands of all time.
The band's early hard-driving singles set a standard in the mid-1960s for rock and roll, while albums such as Face to Face, Something Else, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, Arthur and Muswell Hillbillies are highly regarded by fans, critics, and peers, and are considered amongst the most influential recordings of the era.
One of my favourite conversation tricks is to ask young people up to 30 years of age whether they've heard of The Kinks. When they say no I bet them that they know at least two of their songs. I'm yet to lose a bet. The last time I did it - with one of my female colleagues - I started with some of the more obscure tunes before getting to Lola. Her eyes lit up and a broad smile crossed her face. "My car is called Lola!" she exclaimed. Good for the car. Hand over the money.
These songs are timeless. If you haven't listened to much of The Kinks' music then do yourself the proverbial favour and do so.
There are two types of control freak: in-control and under-control.
An in-control freak has to be involved in every decision being made. An under-control freak has to be sure that his management team is on top of things and executing policy effectively.
Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd, is an in-control freak and the latest example is the mess that he has created with the government's FuelWatch policy.
FuelWatch is meant to reduce petrol prices by keeping an eye on petrol outlets. It has come to light via a leak from a government source that cabinet rejected advice from four departments that FuelWatch would probably lead to increased pricing, as has been the case in Western Australia where the scheme was first implemented a few years ago.
FuelWatch is yet another example of this government's penchant for style over substance, of symbolism over outcomes.
Andrew Bolt has been providing the best coverage of the issue and The Australian's Dennis Shanahan has written the best article on the matter:
KEVIN Rudd has been sent a strong message this week with the emergence of leaked departmental briefings to cabinet: change your style and political approach or face more debilitating crises such as this week’s petrol price disaster.
...The issues now go far beyond the potent issue of petrol prices to the conduct, direction, style and substance of the Rudd Government.
The damaging leaks revealing deep rifts within the cabinet over the FuelWatch price monitoring scheme have come at a crucial time for the Government. It is six months since the federal election and, although still popular, Rudd and the ALP are showing signs of losing their first blush. In addition to frustration within the bureaucracy over delays caused by funnelling too many decisions through the PM’s office, there is concern that good policy is being sacrificed to solve publicity problems.
That last sentence highlights what an in-control freak Kevin Rudd really is.
Shanahan finishes:
The leaks - wherever they came from - underline the fact that without a coherent, definitive articulation of what the Government stands for, it can’t hope to hide behind stunts that don’t deliver.
With all the weight and responsibility of managing an economy and the knowledge that this isn’t going to finish the Government, somebody’s bound to blow the whistle.
Wise words. Will Rudd listen? Don't bet on it. Rudd is a micro-manager in a macro job.
Which leads me to articulate for the first time my view of the man. As I've posted previously, leadership changes people. Sometimes they surprise people, step up to the mark and become real leaders in the way that Howard did. Sometimes they crash and burn, as Mark Latham did, though that was much more predictable. Therefore, it's always wise to let some time pass before making a judgement.
Six months into his term I think I've seen enough to have a clear view of Kevin Rudd.
Leadership: As a leader, Rudd is more Custer than Patton; more Whitlam than Hawke or Keating. He is a manager, not a leader. Australia is in a terrific position economically, small inflation worries notwithstanding, and so it's possible that a competent manager can be successful. The job of prime minister at the moment and for the next few years can be done effectively in management mode so Rudd's lack of leadership ability may not work against him - as long as things don't go pear-shaped in the world economy and we don't otherwise face a major crisis.
Competence: Here's a big statement that I think people will come to reflect on the wisdom of in years to come - Kevin Rudd is profoundly incompetent to be prime minister. Profoundly. In fact, I'd go so far to say that when his time has come and gone Rudd will be seen as one of our worst ever PMs. He has Gough Whitlam's understanding of economics and Paul Keating's understanding of the ordinary bloke. I think he will be seen to have squandered a huge opportunity to move Australia forward at a time when international competitiveness is growing ever tougher.
Vision: It is now clear that Rudd has no vision for Australia. His policy of symbolism and populism over outcomes and substance is proof. From the economic disaster of ratifying Kyoto to the Stolen Generations' Apology to a plethora of inquiries into all sorts of issues and to FuelWatch itself Rudd has been focused more on his personal popularity than achieving positive outcomes for Australians. Can you imagine this man taking the tough, unpopular decisions on illegal immigration, workplace relations and even the Iraq war as Howard? Even his most ardent supporters must wonder what he stands for.
Personality: Rudd has no charm and no charisma, traits that are important to hold a leadership team together, especially when times get tough. It can be quite justifiably said that Howard lacked charm and charisma. He turned out to be one of this country's best ever leaders so why can't Rudd follow suit? The fact is that Howard slept the sleep of a leader. Rudd sleeps the sleep of a manager.
My hope is that the government will continue to run large surpluses and not interfere too much with the business community's ability to be successful. The former should be guaranteed. The latter looks unlikely given the union movement's current strategy of testing their strength.
If Rudd can at least achieve these two outcomes then he will still be PM at the next election. If not then I think we'll be seeing a different person leading the Labor Party, and probably a female at that.
