David Hicks embarks on new jihad

Piece of human excrement and darling of the anti-freedom left David Hicks has apparently decided to redirect his jihad towards fighting for the environment.

David Hicks claims he is embarking on a new mission as a soldier for the environment.

While adapting to life in the high-security division in Adelaide's Yatala jail, Hicks now identifies more with Australian environmentalist Tim Flannery than Osama Bin Laden.

Flannery is a high priest of enviro-religion while Osama Bin Laden is a leader of the Islamic religion. Having already demonstrated his mental and moral weakness it comes as no surprise that Hicks could succumb to this new-age religion.

Hicks now spends his days reading and considering his future environmental career options, while turning down the option of having a television in his small cell, his lawyer David McLeod told The Bulletin.

Consider this: Not only does Hicks believes that he has 'career options' and that being an unrehabilitated Islamic terrorist won't hold him back but also that he considers the environmental movement a natural landing place...

Flannery, who was recently named Australian of the Year, has signalled his interest in advising Hicks on his green crusade.

...Flannery agrees by wanting to advise Hicks. Is there anything this profoundly foolish man won't say to see his name in print?

"People who've had a hard life often find nature a more easy and forgiving place to engage," Flannery says. "The natural world offers you some solace."

Hicks, who arrived back in Australia on May 20 after five years in Guantanamo Bay, will be freed on December 29.

Will the blithering ninnies in the Green movement that were so vocal in supporting Hicks during his time in Guantanamo Bay enthusiastically embrace him as one of their own when he leaves prison?

I'll bet they don't.

UK's cultural Marxism in the spotlight

There are signs that the over the top political correctness, aka cultural Marxism, that currently afflicts Western Europe in general and the United Kingdom in particular is being recognised as the root cause of many of that country's problems.

In this article from one of the world's best news organisations, The Times, the writer of the wonderful British comedy Yes Minister, Antony Jay, 'fesses up to the problems of institutional BBC liberalism.

In the past four weeks there have been two remarkable changes in the public attitude to the BBC. The first and most newsworthy one was precipitated by the faked trailer of the Queen walking out of a photographic portrait session with Annie Leibovitz.

It was especially damaging because the licence fee is based on a public belief that the BBC offers a degree of integrity and impartiality which its commercial competitors cannot achieve.

But in the longer term I believe that the second change is even more significant. It started with the BBC’s own report on impartiality that effectively admitted to an institutional “liberal” bias among programme makers. Previously these accusations had been dismissed as a right-wing rant, but since the report was published even the BBC’s allies seem to accept it.

It must have come as somewhat of a surprise to those at the BBC who believed the organisation presented a fair and balanced view to the public. As I've pointed out previously, to the BBC 'fair and balanced' means a left wing presenter and a panel consisting of someone from the left, the hard left and the loopy left all bashing the United States, Israel or the Tories.

It has been on parade again these past few weeks on the Radio 4 programme The Crime of Our Lives. It included (of course) the ritual demoni-sation of Margaret Thatcher (uninterested in crime . . . surprisingly did not take a closer interest), a swipe at Conservative magistrates and their friends in the golf club and occasional quotes from Douglas Hurd to preserve the illusion of impartiality, but the whole tenor of the programme was liberal/ progressive/ reformist.

The series even included a strong suggestion that Thatcher’s economic policies were the cause of rising crime. So presumably she shouldn’t have done what she did?

There is a perfectly reasonable case for progressive liberal reform of penal policy. There is also a perfectly reasonable case for a stricter and more punitive penal policy.

This programme was quite clearly on the side of the former and the producer/writer was a member of BBC staff. Can you imagine a BBC staff member slanting a programme towards the case for a stricter penal policy?

A pretty good question, that, and a clear example of the BBC's bias. The left in the UK still can't get over the fact that Thatcher saved the place from a societal meltdown induced by foolish leftist policies.

The growing general agreement that the culture of the BBC (and not just the BBC) is the culture of the chattering classes provokes a question that has puzzled me for 40 years. The question itself is simple – much simpler than the answer: what is behind the opinions and attitudes of this social group?

What is behind it? Intellectual immaturity. Most of these people are the product of left-biased education institutions who then enter places like the BBC or return as university lecturers and never have to experience the 'real world' in which they have to create real value.

They are that minority often characterised (or caricatured) by sandals and macrobiotic diets, but in a less extreme form are found in The Guardian, Channel 4, the Church of England, academia, showbusiness and BBC news and current affairs. They constitute our metropolitan liberal media consensus, although the word “liberal” would have Adam Smith rotating in his grave. Let’s call it “media liberalism”.

It is of particular interest to me because for nine years, between 1955 and 1964, I was part of this media liberal consensus. For six of those nine years I was working on Tonight, a nightly BBC current affairs television programme. My stint coincided almost exactly with Harold Macmillan’s premiership and I do not think that my former colleagues would quibble if I said we were not exactly diehard supporters.

But we were not just anti-Macmillan; we were anti-industry, anti-capitalism, anti-advertising, anti-selling, anti-profit, anti-patriotism, anti-monarchy, anti-empire, anti-police, anti-armed forces, anti-bomb, anti-authority. Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place – you name it, we were anti it.

Do they award knighthoods for honesty and clarity? If not then they should and Antony Jay should be the first recipient. "Almost anything that made the world a freer, safer and more prosperous place – you name it, we were anti it." Bravo! The United States has been the cause of peace and stability in the world since WW2 and it's the leftist cultural elites typified by those at the BBC, the Guardian and the universities etc that breathe life into those movements that challenge our liberty. Now that communism is dead they enable Islamic terrorism through their policies of cultural and moral relativism and envy of the success of free market economics.

Although I was a card-carrying media liberal for the best part of nine years, there was nothing in my past to predispose me towards membership. I spent my early years in a country where every citizen had to carry identification papers. All the newspapers were censored, as were all letters abroad; general elections had been abolished: it was a one-party state. Yes, that was Britain – Britain from 1939 to 1945.

I was nine when the war started, and 15 when it ended, and accepted these restrictions unquestioningly. I was astounded when identity cards were abolished. And the social system was at least as authoritarian as the political system. It was shocking for an unmarried couple to sleep together and a disgrace to have a baby out of wedlock. A homosexual act incurred a jail sentence. Procuring an abortion was a criminal offence. Violent young criminals were birched, older ones were flogged and murderers were hanged.

It's hard to imagine, isn't it? A time when a free country like the UK could institute such draconian measures.

So how did we get from there to here? Unless we understand that, we shall never get inside the media liberal mind. And the starting point is the realisation that there have always been two principal ways of misunderstanding a society: by looking down on it from above and by looking up at it from below. In other words, by identifying with institutions or by identifying with individuals.

To look down on society from above, from the point of view of the ruling groups, the institutions, is to see the dangers of the organism splitting apart – the individual components shooting off in different directions until everything dissolves into anarchy.

To look up at society from below, from the point of view of the lowest group, the governed, is to see the dangers of the organism growing ever more rigid and oppressive until it fossilises into a monolithic tyranny.

Those who see society in this way are preoccupied with the need for liberty, equality, self-expression, representation, freedom of speech and action and worship, and the rights of the individual. The reason for the popularity of these misunderstandings is that both views are correct as far as they go and both sets of dangers are real, but there is no “right” point of view.

The most you can ever say is that sometimes society is in danger from too much authority and uniformity and sometimes from too much freedom and variety.

I think we're a little way away from having too much freedom and variety.

In retrospect it seems pretty clear that the 1940s and 1950s were years of excessive authority and uniformity. It was certainly clear to me and my media liberal colleagues in the BBC. It was not that we in the BBC openly and publicly criticised the government on air; the BBC’s commitment to impartiality was more strictly enforced in those days.

But the topics we chose and the questions we asked were slanted against institutions and towards oppressed individuals, just as we achieved political balance by pitting the most plausible critics of government against its most bigoted supporters.

Ever since 1963 the institutions have been the villains of the media liberals. The police, the armed services, the courts, political parties, multi-national corporations – when things go wrong they are the usual suspects.

But our hostility to institutions was not – and is not – shared by the majority of our fellow citizens: most of our opinions were at odds with the majority of the audience and the electorate. Indeed the BBC’s own 2007 report on impartiality found that 57% of poll respondents said that “broadcasters often fail to reflect the views of people like me”.

I bet they didn't expect that result. I'm concerned that it's only 57%.

There are four new factors which in my lifetime have brought about the changes that have shaped media liberalism, encouraged its spread and significantly increased its influence and importance.

The first of these is detribalisation. That our species has evolved a genetic predisposition to form tribal groups is generally accepted as an evolutionary fact. This grouping – of not more than about five or six hundred – supplies us with our identity, status system, territorial instinct, behavioural discipline and moral code.

We in the BBC were acutely detribalised; we were in a tribal institution, but we were not of it. Nor did we have any geographical tribe; we lived in commuter suburbs, we knew very few of our neighbours and took not the slightest interest in local government. In fact we looked down on it. Councillors were self-important nobodies and mayors were a pompous joke.

We belonged instead to a dispersed “metropolitan media arts graduate” tribe. We met over coffee, lunch, drinks and dinner to reinforce our views on the evils of apartheid, nuclear deterrence, capital punishment, the British Empire, big business, advertising, public relations, the royal family, the defence budget – it’s a wonder we ever got home.

The second factor that shaped our media liberal attitudes was a sense of exclusion. We saw ourselves as part of the intellectual elite, full of ideas about how the country should be run. Being naive in the way institutions actually work, we were convinced that Britain’s problems were the result of the stupidity of the people in charge of the country.

This ignorance of the realities of government and management enabled us to occupy the moral high ground. We saw ourselves as clever people in a stupid world, upright people in a corrupt world, compassionate people in a brutal world, libertarian people in an authoritarian world.

Powerful, powerful stuff. I wonder when Antony Jay was mugged by reality, as the saying goes? One of the features of leftist thinking is to claim that their opponents on the right are stupid or bad while on the right we simply think that the left is wrong.

We were not Marxists but accepted a lot of Marxist social analysis. We also had an almost complete ignorance of market economics. That ignorance is still there. Say “Tesco” to a media liberal and the patellar reflex says, “Exploiting African farmers and driving out small shopkeepers.” The achievement of providing the range of goods, the competitive prices, the food quality, the speed of service and the ease of parking that attract millions of shoppers does not register on their radar.

"...an almost complete ignorance of market economics. That ignorance is still there." - I wonder what any of those people who work at the BBC or identify with its positions think about that. No doubt they disagree with Jay's statement.

The third factor arises from the nature of mass media. The Tonight programme had a nightly audience of about 8m. It was much easier to keep their attention by telling them they were being deceived or exploited by big institutions than by saying what a good job the government and the banks and the oil companies were doing.

Can you imagine? "Here is the 6PM news' headlines. Exxon today was voted the world's best company for its environmental program, great employment conditions and contribution to society over the last 50 years..."

The fourth factor is what has been called “isolation technology”. Fifty years ago people did things together much more. The older politicians we interviewed in the early Tonight days were happier in public meetings than in television studios.

In those days people went to evening meetings. They formed collective opinions. In many places party allegiance was collective and hereditary rather than a matter of individual choice based on a logical comparison of policies.

These four factors have significantly accelerated and indeed intensified the spread of media liberalism since I ceased to be a BBC employee 40 years ago.

But let’s suppose that I had stayed. Would I have remained a devotee of the metropolitan media liberal ideology that I once absorbed so readily? I have an awful fear that the answer is yes.

The Internet has been a key factor in bringing together people with 'out there' political views, who would normally have had their voices drowned out by the mainstream, into more powerful political blocs. The most obvious example of this is DailyKos, which now exerts so much influence over the Democratic Party that it has pushed it leftwards and into an almost unelectable position in the United States. Unless their nomination for President moves back towards the centre, and Hilary Clinton seems the most likely one to do so, then their chances come November '08 are zero.

Congratulations to Antony Jay for his clarity and honesty. As the old saying goes, there are only two types of people in the world - the decent and the indecent - and I'd suggest Jay is the former.

ALP to push up rent prices

Let's see. The Australian Labor Party has announced that it will have a petrol watchdog in order to ensure there's no collusion. As Jimmy Carter found in the United States the effect of this type of policy was to push prices up and artificially create fuel shortages for everybody. The ALP has also announced policies to monitor the prices of groceries and child care.

Now they've rolled out a policy to spend even more on providing housing to those at the bottom end of the scale.

The Federal Opposition has announced a new scheme that it says would mean 50,000 low to middle-income families get new housing and pay rent that is 20 per cent below the market rate.

Labor housing spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek says $60,000 tax breaks will be available for big investors who agree to build new rental accommodation and then charge tenants the low rental rate.

The scheme would be carried out in conjunction with state governments, who would provide an extra $2,000 a year to the investors.

Ms Plibersek says the investors would have to agree to take tenants who can show that they have been paying more than 30 per cent of their household income on rent for the last year.

"It's low to moderate income people who are struggling to pay the rent," she said.

"What we know from superannuation companies and other large investors is that they'd love to invest in affordable rental accommodation in Australia, but at the moment, it's just not attractive enough for them.

"It's easier for some of our big superannuation companies to invest in affordable rentals overseas.

"At a time when the rental market's so tight, when people are struggling to find a home, it's just mad to have our big superannuation companies for example not able to invest in affordable rental in Australia."

So what happens when these people's income increases? Do they get chucked out? Obviously they won't be so this is a one-time, here-and-now, populist 'solution'. What is a 'moderate' income anyway?

This is another clear example of the Labor Party's dearth of understanding of basic economics. If the government provides funding for any particular goods or services then the price will go up. It's pretty simple. Government provides a first home owner's grant - prices up. Government provides private health insurance rebates - prices up.

Labor seems to think that it can keep the price of petrol, groceries, rent and child care down while introducing a climate change policy that calls for a CO2 reduction of something like 100% by next Wednesday and at the same time control inflation in a wages-growth market. Good luck with that. If Labor wins the next election then we'll be lucky not to have double digit interest rates within their first term.

Labor leader Kevin Rudd has an understanding of economics akin to Gough Whitlam and the temperament of Mark Latham. It's not a good combination.

Sunday night Aussie rock

As Stevo pointed out in comments last week, The Triffids had some great songs, especially on their iconic Born Sandy Devotional album from 1986.

The Triffids were an Australian rock band who achieved some international success in the 1980s. Formed in Perth in the late 1970s and disbanded in 1989, their best known songs are "Wide Open Road" and "Bury Me Deep In Love". Their vocalist and principal songwriter was David McComb (1962-1999).

McComb suffered from back pain which worsened over the years. He also struggled with alcoholism, and amphetamine and heroin abuse, which greatly affected his health. He developed cardiomyopathy, a heart condition that, when found in young men, is most commonly induced by alcoholism. In 1996, he underwent a successful heart transplant, but continued his drinking and drug use. In January 1999 he was driving a car which was involved in a collision. He was hospitalised overnight and released with bruising. A few days later he died at home, just before his 37th birthday.

Red Pony



Bad Timing



Wide Open Road

Arctic sea ice not static all year around

When Climate Brown Shirts trot out their daily dose of dire drivel about glaciers melting due to global warming they always make sure to include dramatic video of glaciers calving into the ocean to support the reality of their argument.

Most people don't know that this is an entirely natural phenomenon and takes place every summer. The following video animation shows the seasonal advance and retreat of sea ice over the Arctic from 2005-2006:



As you can see, the change in ice mass through a period of just a year or two is significant but it's a natural cycle and nothing to be worried about.

Ever heard of Hubbard Glacier? Probably not. Hubbard Glacier is a tidewater glacier and, in spite of the aforementioned climate drivel, is busily advancing.

After a fairly static year in 2003, Hubbard picked up speed the last two springs. On May 3, 2004, the gap was estimated at 640 feet (195 meters). Last year, the gap closed from 1350 feet (410 m) in February to 660 feet (200 m) by mid-May.

That glaciers advance and retreat is completely normal. Just ask the guys that study this stuff - geologists - a group of people spectacularly skeptical about the global warming hysteria. I wonder why that is?

NASA changes US surface temperature record

After it was pointed out that celebrity NASA scientist James Hansen's work on the US surface temperature record contained flaws that resulted in 1998 being listed as the warmest year on record, NASA quietly changed its records.

The work being done by Steve McIntyre at Climateaudit is truly outstanding. First up, he completely debunked the statistical validity of the iconic Hickey Stick and now he has demonstrated that the US surface temperature record is wrong.

Climate Brown Shirts, of course, claim that the correction only makes a 1-2% change to the global record and that 1998 is still the warmest year on record.

The problematic nature of surface station temperature gathering is being uncovered at Anthony Watts' terrific Surface Stations project in which he and his growing army of volunteers are studying the method used to collect the data.

Here's an example of well-sited equipment along with the temperature record:



And now here's an example of one that is clearly got a few problems:



The good site shows no temperature increase while the poor site has a clear warming bias.

Check out Surface Stations and be prepared for some common-sense-curdling placement of recording equipment.

We're told that thousand of climate scientists agree et blah but it only took a couple of amateur investigators to uncover the truth. Naturally, they're accused of being part of a well-funded industry conspiracy to obfuscate the argument - which comes as news to them.

Bit by bit the data underpinning the anthropogenic global warming argument is being debunked. Will the media do their job properly and report this stuff honestly so that the public can understand how it's been deceived or will the media's political agenda continue to rule the day?

With 1998 being replaced by 1934 as the warmest year in the record when will we see the mainstream media print the following data?

Top 10 GISS U.S. Temperature deviation (deg C) in New Order 7-Aug-07:

Year	Old	New
1934	1.23	1.25
1998	1.24	1.23
1921	1.12	1.15
2006	1.23	1.13
1931	1.08	1.08
1999	0.94	0.93
1953	0.91	0.90
1990	0.88	0.87
1938	0.85	0.86
1939	0.84	0.85

Here’s the old order of top 10 yearly temperatures.

Year	Old	New
1998	1.24	1.23
1934	1.23	1.25
2006	1.23	1.13
1921	1.12	1.15
1931	1.08	1.08
1999	0.94	0.93
1953	0.91	0.90
2001	0.90	0.76
1990	0.88	0.87
1938	0.85	0.86

From Anthony Watts' site:

Four of the top 10 years of US CONUS high temperature deviations are now from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004) fell well down the leaderboard, behind even 1900. (World rankings of temperature are calculated separately.)

There is an urgent requirement for the quality of all surface station temperature data from around the world to be quality checked. Somehow, I don't think that Climate Brown Shirts will be moving too quickly to get that task done.

Racists oppose Australian government's morally correct intervention to protect Aboriginal communities

If I disagree with an position held by an Aboriginal politician, lobbyist or supporter then I'm automatically a racist. Unfortunately, the real racists are those on that side of the fence pointing the finger. They are the ones quickest to invoke the 'racist' slur upon their opponents, following the Left's normal modus operandum to take the supposedly high moral ground. Here are just a few of the most disgusting racists in Australia (and NZ, too):

A delegation of the Northern Territory's top Aboriginal leaders will arrive in Canberra to try and stop parliament passing the federal government's emergency legislation...Ms Turner and former NT government minister John Ah Kit will lead the delegation, which will include Arnhem Land elders and the leaders of the Northern and Central Land Councils.

Disgusting racist and former head of ATSIC, Pat Turner.

The funny part is that John Ah Kit is involved in protesting the government's intervention while at the same time being on record in 2002 that "it is almost impossible to find a functional Aboriginal community anywhere in the Northern Territory" - from a speech that caused controversy at the time that included "I am talking of the dysfunction that is endemic through virtually all of our communities, both in towns and the bush. We cannot pretend that a community is functional when half the kids don't go to school because they have been up most of the night coping with drunken parents, or because they themselves have been up all night sniffing petrol. We cannot imagine that a community is functional where less than one in ten people can read or write. Or where people are too ill through chronic disease or substance abuse to hold onto a job let alone receive training. Or where kids are born with illnesses that have largely disappeared from most of the third world and those who survive into adulthood can be expected to die two decades earlier than their non-indigenous counterparts. Or where only 14% of our kids reach year 12 compared to 80% of their non-indigenous brothers and sisters in the cities and major towns."

And now our Kiwi mates have joined the racist gang.

Appalling racist and Maori Party (NZ) MP Hone Harawira - A New Zealand Maori Party MP who has called Australia's Prime Minister a "racist bastard" has arrived in Alice Springs to protest against the Commonwealth's intervention in Aboriginal communities.


ACT's Racist Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope - "This is racist and I don't believe that you can hope for long term sustainable change by engaging in behaviour that impinges human rights," he said.


Greens racist, Rachel Siewert - "Basically this is racist legislation, the Government knows it is and they're exempting themselves from the act," she said.

Do these people think they're racist? Of course not. Why do I call them racists? The truth is that they support and implement policies that have had a profoundly negative impact on Australia's indigenous communities for over 30 years. That's why the communities are the crime-ridden, dysfunctional and appalling social wrecks they are now. The 'soft paternalism' built in to the policies of these people is the most insidious form of racism of all.

Governments from both sides of politics have continued these absurd and destructive practices for far too long and they're both equally culpable for the catastrophic outcome. At least now someone has the gumption and political courage to do something about it.

Shame on Pat Turner. Shame on Hone Hariwara. Shame on Jon Stanhope. Shame on Rachel Siewert. And shame on all those who support the racist outcomes of their positions.

There are, though, true patriots in the indigenous community that deserve recognition.


Patriot - Director of the Cape York Institute, Noel Pearson - You know, I hear people bleat uphill and down about self-determination and in my view self-determination is about people taking responsibility for themselves, for their own families and for their communities and, you know, it's an absolutely shameful hour that has descended on us, absolutely shameful hour where even an emergency intervention to protect the safety of our children is hindered, is hindered by people who supposedly have good will for Aboriginal people and in fact, those people are willing, they are willing the protection and succour to Aboriginal children to fail in the same way and as vehemently as they will failure in Iraq.


Patriot - Warren Mundine, former National President of the Australian Labor Party - Indignous leader Warren Mundine says he is “disgusted” that people are describing the federal Government’s intervention in the Northern Territory as an invasion and has called on the Labor Party’s left wing to get “real” and accept the plan. Mr Mundine, a former Labor Party national president, said John Howard’s plan was not a “land grab”.

Climate Brown Shirts need money to protect non-threat to Sydney Opera House

Those friendly neighbourhood Climate Brown Shirts are at it again, trying to stick their snouts deeper into the public trough with prophesies of doom and gloom if we don't all fall into line with their socialist agendas. This time it's to save the apparently inundation-threatened Sydney Opera House.

Water could one day be lapping at the doors of the Sydney Opera House, one of many cultural icons vulnerable to the effects of climate change, experts warn.

Heritage experts will this week urge the federal government to increase funding to protect Australia's cultural heritage sites from the rising sea water levels and destructive weather patterns associated with climate change.

It's always about money. Just give them money and they'll shut up.

The call will come at the National Cultural Heritage Forum (NCHF) on Friday in Canberra, where heritage groups will meet with the Assistant Environment Minister John Cobb.

Dr Michael Pearson, a cultural heritage consultant and expert on the Antarctic and Arctic regions, said the most fragile and valuable heritage sites, not just in Australia but worldwide, were in danger because the heritage industry and government departments were not prepared.

"The Opera House is potentially at risk. It has a disaster strategy plan, but I also hope they have some strategy for climate change impact," he said.

"Rising water levels is something where a small impact can cause a bigger impact down the line."

He said, for example, a one-metre rise in water levels could translate into hundreds of metres of damage along a horizontal plane, potentially devastating coastal areas.

Not even that political jackass of an organisation, the IPCC, is forecasting a one metre rise in sea levels. If they really did have a strategic plan for dealing with climate change then I'd sack their Director.

Dr Pearson said important Aboriginal burial and sacred sites, and not just those along the coast, were at risk from the effects of climate change such as erosion, salt and storms.

"We need a multi-pronged approach. There needs to be strategy to reduce risk to some really important heritage sites and then these sites need good maintenance and further protection," he said.

The president of the Australian chapter of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, Peter Phillips, said climate change and funding would be the hot topics at the NCHF.

"We will ask the minister for more investment. More than ever before, we need to assist people to do basic maintenance of historic sites, especially with the increasing threats nature throws at us," Mr Phillips said.

There you go. As the ABBA song goes - Money, money, money.

"Yes, I believe water could really be lapping at the Opera House's doors one day ... " he added.

Then he's an ass-clown for believing it.

The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) said northern Australia, particularly the far north Queensland coastal communities and Torres Strait island communities, were already feeling the effects of climate change.

Note that the idiotic ACF says that communities are already feeling the effects of climate change while at the same time the representatives from those communities are looking to protect themselves from future change.

"Because they are low-lying communities they're suffering from beach erosion, storms and increased cyclonic activity," ACF program assistant Sue Hayes said.

You mean - all of the normal things that low-lying communities suffer from? I live at high altitude. Can I sue for getting nose bleeds?

"Grave sites in these areas are being inundated with water because of rising sea levels and the more intense and frequent cyclonic storms."

Where? If it was really happening and was clearly due to abnormal weather patterns then it'd be all over the press.

A spokesman for Mr Cobb said: "We look forward to speaking with any individuals at the NCHF. We are keen to hear what they have to say."

Wait for it. Here's the best bit of the whole article. Are you ready?

An Opera House spokeswoman laughed off the dire suggestions, saying: "Parts of Australia would experience difficulties well ahead of the Opera House, given that we sit 12 ft above sea level."

Tada! The Opera House is 12 feet (roughly 3.8m) above sea level, which means at the IPCC's average sea level rate of increase it'll be fine for the next 900 years or so.

The most amusing thing about Climate Brown Shirts exaggerating like this is that they expect us to take them seriously.

How about we tell them to piss off and stop bothering us with drivel? Seriously.

UPDATE: Note how the leftist ABC reports on the same story

"If sea levels rise, they will all be gone," Mr Phillips said. "We want the Minister to realise that there are genuine threats but there are genuine solutions. At its most extreme example, it could mean building a dam around the Opera House."

As I said, ass-clown.

Another example of why people think Kiwis are thick

To Australians, Kiwis are like a kid brother. Aussies are allowed to make fun of them and beat them up but if someone else has a go then we come running to their defence.

We all know that Kiwis have a well deserved reputation for being a little bit...how can I put this gently? Well, a nation of intellectual butter knives. A few slices short of a loaf. A few sheep missing in the top paddock. You get the gist.

Here's an example of exactly why they end up with that reputation.

A New Zealand couple is looking to call their newborn son Superman — but only because their chosen name of 4Real has been rejected by the government registry.

You're joking?

Pat and Sheena Wheaton say they will get around the decision by the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages by officially naming their son Superman but referring to him as 4Real, the New Zealand Herald newspaper has reported.

Why not name the kid Michael and refer to him as 4Real?

The Wheatons decided on the name after seeing the baby for the first time in an ultrasound scan and realising their baby was "for real".

Then name him Foreal!

They decided 4Real was the best way to write it, but the name was rejected because the registrar said a name had to be a sequence of characters.

Ah. Apparently SMS is an official language in New Zealand.

Pat Wheaton said he was considering appealing against the decision through the courts, but whatever happens he won't be budged on his choice.

"No matter what its going to stay 4Real," Wheaton told the Herald, "I'm certainly not a quitter".

One of the only talents he has, surely?

A spokesman for the Department of Internal Affairs, which operates the registry told the Herald discussions with the Wheatons about their son's name were continuing.

The baby is now two months old, after the Wheatons first applied to register his name in later June.

A few years ago Channel 9 in Australia screened a show, IQ Test Australia, which allowed viewers to test their IQ. There were live participants split up into different groups of between 15 and 20 including, from memory, Blondes, Teachers and New Zealanders etc. I've forgotten the other categories. Truckies might have been in there, too.

At the end of the show the average IQ of each group was read out with teachers winning and the Blondes doing quite well. The average IQ of the Kiwis was not read out, which led one to think that our cousins from across the water might not have fared too well. However, the number of questions the Kiwis answered correctly was read out, which allowed me to calculate their average IQ at an embarrassing 92. Clearly, they sent the creme de la creme to represent their nation; that seems 8-10 points higher than I would have expected from them.

Don't like the way the poll is going? Just change the question

Ninemsn has a chequered history with its online polls. They are regularly manipulated (I assume by outsiders) to reflect the anti-government position on political questions.

Yesterday's poll questions was: Is John Howard too old to be Prime Minister?

At 9:10 and 9:30 the results were:





The Yes vote represents just under 80% of the No vote.

Clearly, that wasn't the result that ninemsn was looking for so they changed it to: Is John Howard past it as Prime Minister?

At 10:45, 12:04 and 14:19 the results were:







The Yes vote catches up and overtakes the No vote at around 2PM, which allowed ninemsn to include a line in an article referring to the fact that most voters thought he was past it.

Professional pollsters know that the way you ask the question is very important in determining the outcome. Questions are designed to be as neutral as possible unless they're being sponsored by lobby groups or political parties etc.

From the above I deduce that people do not think that John Howard is too old but they do think that he's past it. For Howard, that's an important distinction. He can't do anything about his age but he can demonstrate his vigour and commitment to the job between now and the election.

C02 as cause of climate change debunked in 1990

In 1990 Australia's SBS broadcast this documentary debunking CO2 as the cause of global warming. It's interesting to see that way back then there were the types of poorly-sited weather stations that Anthony Watts is uncovering in his Surface Stations project.

Given the massive lurch to the left that the now aptly nicknamed Soviet Broadcasting Service has taken the fact that they showed this documentary must give them cold sweats.

Remember that this documentary is now quite old. Not a lot seems to have changed in the pro- or anti- sides of the argument. The threat to Tuvalu is trotted out. Those poor, old people must have trouble sleeping at night what with the threat of imminent inundation.

It's true - McDonalds tastes better

This is great, though the study has a few flaws that disqualify it from being taken seriously.

Anything made by McDonald's tastes better, US preschoolers said in a study that powerfully demonstrates how advertising can trick the taste buds of young children.

Evil advertising. So tricky.

Even carrots, milk and apple juice tasted better to the children when they were wrapped in the familiar packaging of the Golden Arches.

The study had youngsters sample identical McDonald's foods in name-brand and unmarked wrappers. The unmarked foods always lost the taste test.

That's great. Wrap your kids' food in McDonald's wrappers every so often in order to get them to eat healthy food. What's the problem?

"You see a McDonald's label and kids start salivating," said Diane Levin, a childhood development specialist who campaigns against advertising to children. She had no role in the research.

Forget kids; I start salivating.

Levin said it was "the first study I know of that has shown so simply and clearly what's going on with (marketing to) young children."

That is drawing quite a long bow...

Study author Dr Tom Robinson said the kids' perception of taste was "physically altered by the branding." The Stanford University researcher said it was remarkable how children so young were already so influenced by advertising.

The study involved 63 low-income children ages 3 to 5 from Head Start centres in San Mateo County, California. Robinson believes the results would be similar for children from wealthier families.

And here's one problem with the study. McDonald's is a treat for low-income families meaning that the brand is going to resonate more powerfully with them than the more well to do for whom McDonald's is a more frequent meal.

The research, appearing in August's Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, was funded by Stanford and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The study will likely stir more debate over the movement to restrict ads to children. It comes less than a month after 11 major food and drink companies, including McDonald's, announced new curbs on marketing to children under 12.

McDonald's says the only Happy Meals it will promote to young children will contain fruit and have fewer calories and less fat.

"This is an important subject and McDonald's has been actively addressing it for quite some time," said company spokesman Walt Riker. "We've always wanted to be part of the solution and we are providing solutions."

But Dr Victor Strasburger, an author of an American Academy of Pediatrics policy urging limits on marketing to children, said the study shows too little is being done.

"It's an amazing study and it's very sad," Strasburger said.

"Advertisers have tried to do exactly what this study is talking about - to brand younger and younger children, to instil in them an almost obsessional desire for a particular brand-name product," he said.

Let me get this straight. For the socialists that now want to control what we eat, advertising to kids is a negative but this same group of people are quite happy to indoctrinate kids at school with drivel like An Inconvenient Truth and Heather Has Two Mommies?

Just two of the 63 children studied said they had never eaten at McDonald's, and about one-third ate there at least weekly. Most recognised the McDonald's logo but it was mentioned to those who did not.

The study included three McDonald's menu items - hamburgers, chicken nuggets and French fries - and store-bought milk or juice and carrots. Children got two identical samples of each food on a tray, one in McDonald's wrappers or cups and the other in plain, unmarked packaging. The kids were asked if they tasted the same or if one was better. Some children did not taste all the foods.

If they didn't taste all of the foods then it's not much of a study, is it?

McDonald's-labelled samples were the clear favourites. French fries were the biggest winner; almost 77 per cent said the labelled fries tasted best while only 13 per cent preferred the others.

Fifty-four percent preferred McDonald's-wrapped carrots versus 23 per cent who liked the plain-wrapped sample.

The only results not statistically clear-cut involved the hamburgers, with 29 kids choosing McDonald's-wrapped burgers and 22 choosing the unmarked ones.

Fewer than one-fourth of the children said both samples of all foods tasted the same.

Pradeep Chintagunta, a University of Chicago marketing professor, said a fairer comparison might have gauged kids' preferences for the McDonald's label versus another familiar brand, such as Mickey Mouse.

Correctamundo.

"I don't think you can necessarily hold this against" McDonald's, he said, since the goal of marketing is to build familiarity and sell products.

He noted that parents play a strong role in controlling food choices for children so young.

But Robinson argued that because young children are unaware of the persuasive intent of marketing, "it is an unfair playing field."

Yep, it is an unfair playing field and that's why indoctrinating kids with any political message is so profoundly wrong. That's what the Soviet Union did. The Nazis did. Cuba does. North Korea does. The first sign of a totalitarian mindset is thinking it's OK to indocrinate kids.

Shock! IPCC agenda-driven, not science-driven!

It may come as news - and a shock - to some that the IPCC is agenda-driven and not science-driven. Who would have thought that? A United Nations' agency that has a political agenda. Name one that doesn't have a political agenda! Even UNICEF does these days.

From one of the world's most reliable organisations, The Financial Times, comes this article:

Almost from the beginning, critics have attacked the Bush administration for the way it has dealt with science. In many areas - and emblematically in the case of climate change - well-qualified accusers have complained that the White House and its political appointees across the federal government have interfered with the work of scientists, misrepresented their findings and censored their public statements. Many of these cases are shocking - or at least they were, until people became inured to them. The administration's record on managing the government's own scientific efforts, and on respect for science more broadly, is awful.

So when the White House disagrees with most other governments in the world and expresses doubts about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that view is contemptuously dismissed as one more instance. To be sure, the administration has destroyed its own credibility on scientific integrity and has nobody to blame but itself.

A true statement and one that future governments need to pay close attention to. We did it in Australia, as well, in the belief that the crappy science underpinning the climate change argument would be exposed. However, too many vested interests are now involved on the pro-side of the debate and with business caving in to some extent politicians have to respond.

For the rest of us, however, this is a pity - because to put it bluntly the IPCC deserves the administration's disdain. It is a seriously flawed enterprise and unworthy of the slavish respect accorded to it by most governments and the media. In the decisions which have already been made on climate-change mitigation, to say nothing of future decisions, the stakes are enormous. In guiding these momentous judgments, the flawed IPCC process has been granted, in effect, a monopoly of official wisdom. That needs to change and the IPCC itself must be reformed.

There are three chances of that. Nil, nada and none.

For a fully documented indictment, read the article by David Henderson in the current issue of World Economics. Mr Henderson, a distinguished academic economist and former head of economics at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, has been tangling with the IPCC for some time. Five years ago, he and Ian Castles (a former chief of the Australian Bureau of Statistics) first drew attention to a straightforward error in the way emissions scenarios were being calculated. The projections had used long-range cross-country projections of gross domestic product that were based on exchange rates unadjusted for purchasing power. This mistake yielded projections for individual countries that were in some cases patently absurd. Far from acknowledging the point and correcting the projections, the IPCC treated these eminent former civil servants as uncredentialed troublemakers. Its head, Rajendra Pachauri, issued a prickly statement complaining about the spread of disinformation.

Does anyone else think that having as the head of the IPCC someone from a country in whose best interest it is to inflict a carbon tax on the rest of the world is somewhat unsound?

As Mr Henderson's new article makes clear, the episode was symptomatic of a wider pattern of error (often, in the case of economics, elementary error) and failure to correct it. How can this be possible? The IPCC prides itself on the extent of its network of scientific contributors and on its rigorous peer review. The problem is, although the contributors and peers are impressively numerous, they are drawn from a narrow professional circle. Expertise in economics and statistics is not to the fore; sympathetic clusters of co-authorship and pre-commitment to the urgency of the climate cause, on the other hand, are.

McIntyre and McKitrick demonstrated beyond doubt the lack of statistical training among those 2,500 scientists that supposedly make up a consensus. That they have no economics ability either should come as a surprise to nobody.

Add to this a sustained reluctance - and sometimes a refusal - to disclose data and methods that would allow results to be replicated. (Disclosure of that sort is common practice these days in leading scholarly journals). As a result, arresting but subsequently discredited findings - such as the notorious "hockey stick" chart showing the 1990s as the northern hemisphere's hottest decade of the millennium - are left to be challenged by troublesome outsiders.

Why does the IPCC and its contributing scientists refuse point blank to release data and methodologies that were developed on the public coin?

Underlying it all is a pervasive bias. From the outset the IPCC network was fully invested in the idea that climate change is the most pressing challenge confronting mankind and that urgent action far beyond what is already in prospect will be needed to confront it. In the minds of the panel's leaders and spokesmen, this conviction justifies public pronouncements that often go beyond the analysis which the IPCC's own scientists have presented.

Speaking of the panel's Fourth Assessment Report, Mr Pachauri said: "I hope this will shock people and governments into taking more serious action." The rules under which the IPCC operates tell it to be "neutral with respect to policy" - and the reports themselves strive to comply. But statements such as that, and many more besides, align the institution and its network of scientists with a programme that goes much further than science alone dictates.

The IPCC may be right: climate change may indeed be mankind's biggest and most urgent challenge. It would be wrong to demand certainty before doing more. The scientific consensus, though not quite as strong as usually claimed, is surely strong enough to warrant a carbon tax or equivalent.

But if governments are to get the best advice, they need information and analysis from an open and disinterested source - or else from multiple dissenting sources. With the environmental risks calmly laid out, framing the right policies demands proper political accountability and a much wider range of opinion and expertise than the IPCC currently provides.

Here comes the best part of the whole article...

One incompetent institution, committed to its own agenda, should never have been granted this degree of actual and moral authority over the science, over public presentation of the science and over calls for "more serious action" that go well beyond the science.

Terrific stuff! Couldn't say it better myself.

Sunday night Aussie rock

Australian Crawl was an Australian rock band formed by James Reyne (lead vocals/piano) and Simon Binks (lead guitar) in 1978 and joined by Guy McDonough (co-lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Bill McDonough (drums, percussion), Paul Williams (bass guitar), and Brad Robinson (rhythm guitar). The band was named after the front crawl swimming style also known as Australian crawl. The band's music was a defining feature of Australian surf culture during the 1980s.

They had a number of #1 albums through the 1980s including The Boys Light Up, Sirocco and Sons Of Beaches with the hits being The Boys Light Up, Beautiful People, Downhearted, Errol, Oh No Not You Again and Shutdown.

Beautiful People



Downhearted



Errol



The Boys Light Up

Indian teachers give corporal punishment a bad name

When I went to school the threat of getting the cane was a sobering factor in any plan to create mischief and mayhem. It didn't stop us, mind you, but it sure did make us think about the consequences of getting caught.

Indian teachers seem to have gone a tad overboard...

HYDERABAD: In a shocking incident, the principal of a school in Andhra Pradesh gave electric shocks to a 10-year-old student. Police in Tuni town on Saturday registered a case against the principal of a residential school run by a Christian mission. Police were on the lookout for the principal, who allegedly justified the punishment before escaping to evade arrest.

...The incident came close on the heels of another one where a school teacher allegedly pushed a five-year-old student so hard that he injured his tongue badly.

... Last month, the head master of a private school in Mahabubnagar district was arrested for allegedly chaining a Class III student as punishment.

And what will the negative consequences of all this be?

The series of incidents has evoked strong protest from student organisations and rights groups, who are demanding a ban on all forms of corporal punishment in school.

Yep. Teachers might lose their God-given right to thrash recalcitrant and stupid students to within an inch of their lives.

What is the world coming to?

Peace and Prosperity through Productivity

Reason magazine's Ronald Bailey has an insightful piece about the link between peace and prosperity and productivity that really highlights why the paternalistic, charity-based approach currently being applied to poorer nations and communities is not working.

Minneapolis—Productivity can save the planet and produce peace and prosperity for all. Productivity is the tool that can eliminate all of the scourges of humanity—poverty, hunger, disease and war. Norwegian-American economist and business consultant Tor Dahl passionately made this argument in his keynote presentation at the World Future Society's annual meeting. Dahl is the chairman emeritus of the World Confederation of Productivity Science. One must be on guard against the exaggerated claims of the mavens of any discipline for the significance of their field. Of course, mavens believe that what they do is vitally important, otherwise why would they do it? That said, Dahl was very persuasive.

What is productivity? Simply getting more output from the same or less input. Dahl showed in his talk the institutional context in which productivity improvement flourishes. His findings will gladden the heart of any libertarian, and anyone else who wants a prosperous future for the billions of people on this planet who are mired in poverty. He began by asking why South Asians and Cubans are more productive outside of India and Cuba? Why do Russians have the highest per capita income of any ethnic group in the U.S., but very low per capita income in Russia? Why are Mexicans five times more productive in the U.S. than in Mexico?

The answer is that productivity flourishes when people are free, safe, and justly treated. Dahl calls this the framework for prosperity. "This principle holds not only for nations, but for any organization or institution that seeks to unleash its potential to achieve improvement and growth," declared Dahl. As evidence for the salience of freedom, Dahl showed the correlation between the Index of Economic Freedom and each country's per capita gross domestic product (GDP). The Index of Economic Freedom encompasses trade freedom, investment freedom, freedom from corruption, and the protection of property rights. The top 10 countries' scores cluster around 80 on a 100 point scale. The U.S. is number four, after Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia. The poorest countries are also the least free, e.g., Zimbabwe, Burma, Libya, Turkmenistan, and Chad. They generally scored in the 40s on the 100 point scale.

Dahl did a polynomial regression to see how prosperity correlates with freedom. He found that approximately 55 percent of prosperity (R2 = .55) can be attributed to the prevalence of economic freedom.



"The freer you are, the faster you grow," said Dahl. As a stand-in for safety, Dahl looked at lost years of life per 100,000 population due to hunger, disease and conflict in each country. He got an amazing R2 of .51, which he said means that about 51 percent of prosperity can be attributed to people living in safety.



The safest countries included Iceland, Japan, Israel, Singapore, and Australia. The U.S. was number 31 on the list. And his final regression looked at how prosperity correlates with justice. Using a freedom from corruption index, Dahl got an R2 of .83, which he interpreted as meaning that approximately 83 percent the variation in prosperity across countries can be explained by good governance.



"Justice is incredibly important to prosperity," said Dahl. The least corrupt countries included Finland, New Zealand, Singapore, Canada and United States. Among the most corrupt were Nigeria, Madagascar, Indonesia, and Moldova.

Dahl divides the economy into three sectors which he calls transformational, transactional, and the knowledge economy. Today in the U.S., about 10 percent of Americans work in transforming raw materials into finished goods and another 10 percent work in routine transactional jobs, e.g., bank tellers and grocery check-out personnel. This means that 80 percent of Americans are knowledge workers. Dahl then argues that there is no ceiling on the productivity of knowledge workers since knowledge is abundant, and not scarce.

This is an insight that Stanford University "New Growth" economist Paul Romer endorses. In addition, this means that future economic growth depends less and less on the amount of physical resources, and more on transforming those resources into high value products and services. Perhaps one way to think of it is to compare it to gourmet dining: The difference in the price of meal at Denny's and one at the French Laundry does not depend so much on the cost of the calories that go into the meals, but on the differential in the knowledge and artistry of the chefs. About 80 percent of wealth of the world turns out to be of this intangible sort that is embedded in human capital and well-functioning social institutions.

Take South Asians, Cubans, Russians or Mexicans, transplant them to the US and watch them blossom. Is there any better argument for democracy, free trade and globalisation?

The greatest threat to our way of life is the nanny state; the state that tells you that you have rights but not obligations you first need to meet in order to gain those rights.

Hate Crime vs Art

Hate Crime



Government funded art - "Piss Christ"



Nothing further to add about that, really.