A Western Heart

Mitt Romney's taxes: An Australian perspective

2012-01-28T21:13:00.000+11:00

Let’s face it. The two-year-long process leading to the inauguration of an American president has more in common with Madison Avenue and Sunset Boulevard than Pennsylvania Avenue, so we should not be surprised or shocked. But it is downright bizarre to see one Republican candidate tearing into another Republican candidate for not paying enough tax. After all, aren’t these guys supposed to favour a lower tax burden?

Newt is criticising Mitt because he pays only 15% income tax. If Mitt had been caught evading tax, Newt would be onto something, but Mitt is just complying with the tax code created by a Republican president, George W. Bush. If Mitt had paid more, he would be making voluntary contributions to the public purse, which as the late Kerry Packer once said is a mug’s game.

Soon the US media will go into a frenzy over Mitt’s tax affairs because he will have to go through that obligatory ritual for all presidential candidates of making public tax returns for the past few years. (Thank goodness our candidates for high office don’t have to do that.) But there is a perfectly good reason why Mitt’s overall tax rate is low: his income is mainly from capital gains and dividends, which are taxed at 15% in America. Australia prevents double taxation of dividends through the imputation system; the United States mitigates it by taxing dividends at a low rate. But taking into account the 35% company tax rate and the 15% rate on dividends in America, any dividends paid out of taxed profits are in fact taxed at almost 45% in the hands of the shareholder. The 15% rate on capital gains in America is approximately half the top marginal personal rate, as is the case in Australia.

The real issue is not whether Mitt is paying too little but whether the tax system as sketched above is right. There is nothing exceptional about taxing capital income more lightly than labour income. Australia does it to a point, and even the Henry review said we should keep doing it (albeit in different ways). The real worry in America isn’t so much the fate of Newt or Mitt at the hustings but that if the Republican primary campaign can take this bizarre turn, perhaps the populism of Barack Obama, Warren Buffett, and the Occupy crowd is setting the terms of the public debate on tax policy more than anyone realised.

SOURCE

Israel's shameless Arabs

2012-01-28T16:35:00.001+11:00

Arab parliamentarians endorse tyrants, terrorists while slamming 'undemocratic' Israel

“The shahid is honored throughout the history of nations. He is the one who blazed the trail for us. No value is more noble than martyrdom," Knesset Member Ahmad Tibi waxed poetic a few days ago on the occasion of “Palestinian Martyr Day.” Of course, he did not forget to present the obvious flip-side, whereby in Israel “the real terrorist murderer is considered a hero or a minister.”

Immediately after that, Tibi made sure to make it clear to all his fans that "Israelis are ignorant with regards to the term 'shahid' and misunderstand it. It refers to anyone who was killed by the occupation for the homeland or died for a national cause." That is, there is the active, bogus type of martyr, who seeks to slaughter as many Jews as he can. Then there is the real martyr, the passive, noble type, the most amazing and glorious of all human beings, which only incurable Israeli ignorance fails to appreciate.

Former Palestinian leader Arafat apparently only referred to them, the passive martyrs, when he spoke of Shahids, just like his former advisor Tibi, who did the same while serving in Israel’s Knesset.

The Talmud says that when a person keeps repeating an offence, it’s as though he receives permission to keep doing it. And so, Mr. Tibi can praise the qualities of the martyr while at most prompting weak journalistic protest, and then go back to that same Israeli media in the role of Dr. Tibi and express his amazement about the very question regarding his right to endorse Shahids.

Tibi can also slam others as if he was the lowliest chauvinist, while hurling crude sexual hints at MK Anastasia Michaeli, and at the best prompt a minor reprimand from the media and from various women’s rights groups, which on normal days would harshly slam any harm done to women, by certain men that is.

Gaddafi's friends

Similarly, Hanin Zoabi and other Arab parliamentarians can put their trust in the guardians of Israeli democracy in the media, High Court, academia and the cultural world every time they write a forward to venomous anti-Semitic books, as Zoabi just did in her forward to anti-Semitic British writer Ben White’s book. These Arab MKs also board various Gaza-bound ships or visit Hamas leaders or enlightened Arab rulers such as Gaddafi, may he rest in peace.

Indeed, Arab MKs use these opportunities to talk about Israeli injustice, the apartheid regime adopted there, and the racism that has spread everywhere. Mostly, they explain in their visits to such models of democracy like Hamas or Libya how un-democratic Israel is.

Yet nonetheless, even if only a handful of Israel’s Arabs crossed the lines (for example, “only” some 200 Arab Israelis were involved in terror attacks in the years 2001-2004 that claimed the lives of 136 Israelis,) the vast majority of the Arab sector regularly votes for the same representatives, who view the eradication of the Zionist enterprise and Jewish State as their utmost mission, while serving as members in the Jewish State’s parliament.

Still, we’ll always find the good Jews among us who will keep explaining to us that the involvement of Arab Israelis in terror, their hugely disproportionate share of crimes (in 2011, Arabs were involved in 67% of murders in Israel,) illegal construction or road accidents is all our doing. We are the ones who sinned and mistreated the Arabs. We are the ones at fault, rather than Tibi, Zoabi, or any other Arab victim.

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Mosley v Google censorship battle

2012-01-28T16:29:00.001+11:00

We read:

"Google has removed hundreds of web pages relating to former motorsport boss Max Mosley's sex life from its search results index, Britain's Leveson Inquiry on press standards has heard.

But the internet giant said it dealt with requests for material to be excluded on a country-by-country basis, meaning articles and videos might remain accessible on other national versions of its site.

Mr Mosley told the inquiry in November he had spent over £500,000 ($750,000) trying to restore his reputation after a March 2008 News of the World article alleging he had a "sick Nazi orgy", something he strongly denied.

He described his strenuous efforts to get articles removed from websites, adding: "The fundamental thing is that Google could stop this appearing but they don't or won't as a matter of principle."

Google legal director Daphne Keller on Thursday confirmed that someone in Mr Mosley's position would have to apply individually to have web pages, known as URLs, removed from the company's sites in different countries. She told the inquiry: "I would hope that wouldn't be a terribly difficult thing to do, and I can tell you that in his case we have removed hundreds of URLs."

Ms Keller said a defamatory video could be removed from one of Google's national sites but remain up on another. "If there is a country whose law says that that should stay up, then in that country we would comply with that law," she said.

But the lawyer rejected a suggestion that Google should block certain search terms. She said: "In the Max Mosley case, obviously there has been all kinds of news coverage about this very inquiry, and other coverage that's legitimate, and that you wouldn't want to disappear from search results."

Source

The libel judgment in his favour obtained by Mosley was handed down in London by The Hon. Mr. Justice Eady. Mr Justice Eady is well-known for leaning towards the plaintiff in libel suits, bringing that entire area of British law into disrepute. His notorious judgments often lead to censorship of material that most people would think should remain uncensored. His ruling was particularly obnoxious in the Rachel Ehrenfeld case, causing the NY legislature to pass a special law to protect her from any consequences of Eady's judgment. So I have no confidence in Eady's ruling favouring Mr Mosley

That lack of confidence is strongly supported by the fact that Mosley has made strenuous efforts to have the video of his behavior suppressed. If the video just showed him having a cup of tea, why would he want it suppressed? Clearly it does at least in part support the allegations made.

To help circumvent the Mosley/Eady censorship attempts, I have made a copy of one report of the matter that is still up and reposted it here. Under U.S. law it would be regarded as in the public interest for public figures to have information about their deeds known.

I am not in fact particularly critical of Mr Mosley's actions in this matter. As I see it, it is Mr Justice Eady who has poisoned the well in the matter. He appears to have developed de novo a law of privacy that has no regard to the truth or merit of the allegations. The USA is not alone in having unelected judges who create law that would never pass muster before a democratically-elected legislature.

So until the British parliament steps in, I will continue in skepticism towards British libel judgments. The problem is well-known in Britain and the present government has promised corrective legislation -- but no such legislation appears to be on the horizon yet.

Correlating CO2 And Temperature In The Geologic Record

2012-01-28T16:28:00.001+11:00

If we accept Warmist claims about the accuracy of temperature and CO2 proxies we get some very awkward findings about long-term trends

During the Ordovician, CO2 was more than ten times higher than at present. Global temperatures ranged between very hot and an ice age. We can state with 100% certainty that as CO2 increases, temperatures will either go up, go down, or stay the same.

SOURCE

UWA academic Farida Fozdar told 'go back to your own country'

2012-01-28T16:26:00.001+11:00

I think criticism of her is justified. She did apparently use the term "racist", which is very inflammatory. Many people would see it as including Hitler-type behaviour and she had no evidence that the people she described would endorse such behaviour.

There are many possible gradations of opinion about race-related matters. It may be noted, for instance, that the man who declared war on Hitler (Neville Chamberlain) was himself an antisemite of sorts -- so any implicit or explicit claim that there is such a thing as a monolithic entity called racism is unscholarly.

And any social scientist making or implying such a claim is ipso facto a very low-grade intellect. Though it might be noted that mean minds are common among sociologists. Many of them are still devoted to the writings of an obsolete economist and proven stimulator of hate named Karl Marx. The term "racist" of no use for anything except abuse. I use the term only in mockery of Leftist abuse.

I made some technical remarks about her research here on 24th. but readers may also be interested in an alternative to her kneejerk reaction to the old "white Australia policy". See here for a more philosophically sophisticated look at the issues involved

A PERTH professor whose study found people who fly Australian flags on their cars are more racist than those who don't, says she has received over 70 critical emails which include demands that she go back to her "own country".

Brunei-born University of WA Professor Farida Fozdar [Judging by the name she is ethnically an Indian Muslim], who moved to Australia when she was seven, said she was shocked by the national reaction to her study which also spread as far India and the United States.

“Some emails have been quite polite and I’ve been able to reply and we’ve actually had quite a positive interaction out of it which, I really really value," Professor Fozdar said.

"But some are straight out lots of swear words and suggesting that I should go back to where I came from.

“I’ve also had a couple of emails from people implying that I’m the Grinch that killed Christmas and that now nobody is going to fly a flag because they think it shows that they’re racist.”

Professor Fozdar, a sociologist and anthropologist, said that although the study was reported “relatively accurately” in the media, some people have misinterpreted its findings.

“What has struck me most is that the media has reported the research relatively accurately in most cases, perhaps apart from some headlines, but people have taken it up in the wrong way,” Professor Fozdar said.

“People have taken it as though I was saying that anyone who flies a flag on their car for Australia Day is racist and that flying the flag generally is a racist thing to do and that certainly wasn’t what I was saying.”

Professor Fozdar said the study revealed flag-flyers were significantly less positive about Australia’s ethnic diversity than “non-flag flyers” but that the attitude is not shared by all Australians.

“The fact that there were significant differences doesn’t mean that everybody who flys the flag feel negative towards minorities but it means that a larger proportion of them did compared with people that weren’t flying flags,” she said.

Professor Fozdar said many people ignored her findings that the majority of both flag-flyers and non-flag flyers, interviewed by her research team, felt positive about Australia’s ethnic diversity.

“But that’s not what gets picked up by people,” she said. “That statistic was there, in a lot of media reports, but people took out of it that I’m saying they shouldn’t fly a flag for Australia Day because it’s racist and that we shouldn’t celebrate Australia Day. “That was just nowhere in the research and so that is what has surprised me.”

SOURCE

Just give us an election

2012-01-28T12:03:00.002+11:00

The Left are totally baffled by the ongoing success of the Federal Opposition leader and seek to undermine him at every opportunity. Their latest effort involved a member of the Prime Minister's staff engineering a race riot to bring discredit on Tony Abbott.

Of course there is nothing this incompetent government can not stuff up:

Gillard staffer quits over role in riot.

But why wouldn't they keep trying? It's worked in the past. It was widely suspected a PM staffer had a role in leaking Tony Abbott's travel plans to embarrass him by revealing he had refused to accompany the PM on a trip to Afghanistan.

Abbott cites jet lag for turning down Afghanistan trip.

The Prime Minister denied any complicity.

Gillard denies playing low-rent politics.

The Sydney Morning Herald reader poll shows how the smear worked.

Update: The PM's office would like to speak to you.

One of the founders of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, Michael Anderson, said Ms Sattler had spoken to him as well.
"There was a lady running around here when I was doing a radio interview and she said the prime minister's office wants to talk to you and I thought she was joking and said I'll talk later," he told reporters.
"I know that woman to be Kim Sattler."
Mr Anderson said Ms Sattler recognised who he was.
"She came and then she went away and, because I didn't respond, she went to other people," he said. "All she said was `Michael. the prime minister's office would like to talk to you.'"

Eight out of ten Brits claiming disability benefits ARE fit to work, according to new incapacity tests

2012-01-27T17:12:00.000+11:00

Eight out of ten people tested for new incapacity benefits were found to be fit for work, official figures revealed yesterday. The Department for Work and Pensions decided that 57 per cent of claimants were no longer eligible for the hand-outs. A further 21 per cent could carry out some sort of work with the right support.

Just one fifth of claimants – 22 per cent – were found unable to do any form of employment.

Around 1.5million people who have been claiming Incapacity Benefit are being reassessed for its replacement – the Employment Support Allowance – to see if they are able to carry out work.

The latest figures show the numbers claiming ESA and Incapacity Benefit have dropped to their lowest level since 1996 following the introduction of the tests.

There are still 2.6million people claiming the benefits, nearly a million of whom have been on them for more than a decade.

Figures relating to claims lodged between March and May last year show that 38 per cent were dismissed at the first stage – before face-to-face assessments were carried out – while 48 per cent were subjected to further consideration. A further 14 per cent of claimants are still being assessed.

The latest analysis also shows there has been a decrease in the number of people claiming for drug and alcohol-related conditions – from 105,110 in May 2010 to 100,120 in May last year.

Employment Minister Chris Grayling said: ‘These reforms are changing the landscape of our country. ‘By concentrating on what people can do, we will help people back into work and out of the trap of benefits that has blighted communities.

‘We want to help everyone who can be in work to get there, not just for themselves but for their children. It is clear that the majority of new claimants to sickness benefits are in fact able to do some work.’

But critics have warned that the new testing regime is flawed – and a report by MPs on the work and pensions select committee recently found that large numbers of seriously unwell claimants have been wrongly refused support and high numbers of appeals have proved successful.

Prime Minister David Cameron has insisted the new system is much better at putting people through their ‘paces’.

Claimants who pass the first stage of assessment are then placed in three groups: Those who need permanent support, those who might be able to work after a few months and those fit to work. If placed in the latter category they are told to resubmit a benefits application – but this time for Jobseekers Allowance.

SOURCE

"Food stamp" and "janitor" are racist words?

2012-01-27T17:11:00.000+11:00

Crazy black Mamma says so:

Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee on Friday accused Newt Gingrich of using racial “code words” in calling President Barack Obama the “food stamp president” and saying schools ought to hire children to do janitorial work.

The Texas congresswoman’s comments came in response to a question about remarks she made on the House floor Wednesday, when she said there are “candidates like Newt Gingrich who want to throw fuel and matches and fire to develop sort of an explosiveness in this country” and there are “underlying suggestions” to calling Obama the “food stamp president.”

“These are code words. It’s inappropriate,” Jackson Lee told MSNBC’s Martin Bashir Friday. “Let me say that the code words, as far as I’m concerned words that generate and signify race.”

“[With Gingrich] It is ‘I will use race to divide. I will call the president the food stamp president,’” she said. “Telling us that a janitor who makes $37,000 would be in a better position to give his job up so that the children of the poor in New York…can pick up a broom and work.”

Source

Global Cooling Coming? Archibald uses solar and surface data to predict 4.9°C fall (!)

2012-01-27T17:09:00.000+11:00

A fact-based alternative to the British Met Office model-run

David Archibald, polymath, makes a bold prediction that temperatures are about to dive sharply (in the decadal sense). He took the forgotten correlation that as solar cycles lengthen and weaken, the world gets cooler. He refined it into a predictive tool, tested it and published in 2007. His paper has been expanded on recently by Prof Solheim in Norway, who predicts a 1.5°C drop in Central Norway over the next ten years.

Our knowledge of they solar dynamo is improving, and David adds the predicted solar activity ’til 2040 to the analysis. Normal solar cycles are 11 years long, but the current one (cycle 24) is shaping up to be 17 years (unusually long), and using historical data from the US, David predicts a 2.1°C decline over Solar Cycle 24 followed by a further 2.8°C over Solar Cycle 25. That adds up to a whopping 4.9°C fall in temperate latitudes over the next 20 years. We can only hope he’s wrong. As David says ” The center of the Corn Belt, now in Iowa, will move south to Kansas.”

He also predicts continuing drought in Africa for another 14 years, with droughts likely in South America too.

If he’s right, it’s awful and excellent at the same time. Cold hurts, but wouldn’t it be something if we understood our climate well enough to plan ahead?

Much more HERE (See the original for links, graphics etc.)

DCP under fire over Aboriginal baby's death

2012-01-27T17:08:00.000+11:00

Another kid dies because of the "stolen generation" myth. Welfare bodies are afraid to take black kids away from feral black families in case they are accused of "stealing" the kid

The [WA] Department of Child Protection has come under scrutiny over its handling of the case of a baby who died under her parents' care.

A coronial inquest has heard this week that while the DCP knew the little girl and her twin sister were at risk, it ignored requests from police and hospital staff for them to be taken into protective custody.

The seven-month-old died while sleeping next to her father at their home in Kalgoorlie in June 2008.

The cause of death was undetermined but was consistent with Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

The babies' father Shannon Benfield broke down in court today as he gave evidence to the inquest and said he had no idea of the risks of co-sleeping.

He said the DCP gave him no advice on caring for the babies and said co-sleeping was normal in Nyoongar culture.

Mr Benfield cared for the babies, and the couple's other young toddler, after their mother Terrilee Smith was involuntarily admitted to a mental ward after giving birth.

Mr Benfield admitted leaving the babies with two 11-year-old children on one occasion as he went to call his partner. He was arrested by police the same day and sent to jail for unpaid fines.

The DCP then facilitated an informal agreement with a relative to care for all three children.

But three months later, when Mr Benfield was released from jail and Ms Smith from hospital, a rift developed within the family and the couple took their children back.

The inquest heard that because no formal agreement had been reached, the couple were legally entitled to take the children from the temporary carers.

In his opening address on Monday, counsel assisting the coroner Sergeant Lyle Housiaux said the DPC ignored a request from police to take custody of the twins and the couple's other child.

He said the couple had a history of domestic violence and appeared unprepared to care for their children.

"It is unclear who held authority or responsibility over these children. It would appear that there was still a very real risk of harm to the children because Mr Benfield or Ms Smith could have taken the children at any time," he said.

Former DCP Kalgoorlie team leader Gabrielle Egan told the inquest this afternoon that while the department had concerns for the children, it was deemed in their best interests to leave them with family members rather than place them into care.

She said the department played a "supportive role, in the background."

Under questioning from coroner Dominic Mulligan, she admitted that formal assessment of neither the relatives nor the children's parents had been carried out.

But she said the relatives were deemed to be suitable short-term carers, and she had no idea that the couple had planned to take the children back.

Mr Benfield said he was often left confused by his interactions with the DPC, and said it would have benefited him if an Aboriginal staff member had worked with him.

"Why put my kids away when they just could have come and helped me and Terrilee," he said.

SOURCE

It's all clear now

2012-01-27T10:09:00.002+11:00

I have closed my Qantas blog because it has become clear what was going on at Qantas: The constant equipment failures on Qantas planes were deliberate sabotage by Qantas maintenance staff. The union knew that the work they do was gradually going overseas and that they were all in danger of losing their jobs so in their addled way they thought that their constant undermining of Qantas reliability would lead Qantas to come to terms with them and give them "job security" -- i.e. guarantee no more transfer of maintenance work overseas.

When Mr Joyce grounded the fleet, however, it became clear to them that they were dealing with a man who was not going to buckle and who would weather the storm of taking ALL their work away.

So what happened? The constant maintenance problems Qantas was having suddenly ceased. From that time to this Qantas has not had to turn back a single flight due to equipment malfunction. It is that sudden large change which speaks louder than words in revealing what was going on. The unions realized that the equipment malfunctions were a good reason to give them all the boot so have stopped their constant sabotage.

Further evidence that the union concerned is now shit-scared for their jobs is the fact that they were first to reach a settlement with Qantas under the Fair Work Australia negotiating process. They went from being the most militant union to being the tamest. And they settled despite Qantas refusing them one of their major demands: Bring the A380 maintenance to Australia.

These are totally despicable people who repeatedly risked the lives of Qantas passsengers with their sabotage. I think Qantas should still fire the lot of them and have all Qantas maintenance done in Germany -- JR

Schools of education

2012-01-27T00:59:00.001+11:00

By Walter E. Williams

Larry Sand's article "No Wonder Johnny (Still) Can't Read" -- written for The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, based in Raleigh, N.C. -- blames schools of education for the decline in America's education.

Education professors drum into students that they should not "drill and kill" or be the "sage on the stage" but instead be the "guide on the side" who "facilitates student discovery." This kind of harebrained thinking, coupled with multicultural nonsense, explains today's education. During his teacher education, Sand says, "teachers-to-be were forced to learn about this ethnic group, that impoverished group, this sexually anomalous group, that under-represented group, etc. -- all under the rubric of 'Culturally Responsive Education.'"

Education majors are woefully lacking in academic skills. Here are some sample test questions for you to answer. Question 1: Which of the following is equal to a quarter-million? a) 40,000, b) 250,000, c) 2,500,000, d) 1/4,000,000 or e) 4/1,000,000. Question 2: Martin Luther King Jr. (insert the correct choice) for the poor of all races. a) spoke out passionately, b) spoke out passionate, c) did spoke out passionately, d) has spoke out passionately or e) had spoken out passionate. Question 3: What would you do if your student sprained an ankle? a) Put a Band-Aid on it, b) Ice it or c) Rinse it with water.

Guess whether these questions were on a sixth-grade, ninth-grade or 12th-grade test. I bet the average reader would guess that it's a sixth-grade test. Wrong. How about ninth-grade? Wrong again. You say, "OK, Williams, so they're 12th-grade test questions!" Still wrong. According to a Heartland Institute-published School Reform News (September 2001) article titled "Who Tells Teachers They Can Teach?", those test questions came from prospective teacher tests.

The first two questions are samples from the Praxis I test for teachers, and the third is from the 1999 teacher certification test in Illinois. According to the Chicago Sun-Times (9/6/01), 5,243 Illinois teachers failed their teacher certification tests. The Chicago Sun-Times also reported, "One teacher failed 24 of 25 teacher tests -- including 11 of 12 Basic Skills tests and all 12 tests on teaching learning-disabled children." Yet that teacher was assigned to teach learning-disabled children in Chicago. Departments of education have solved the problem of teacher test failure. According to a New York Post story (11/14/11) titled "City teacher tests turn into E-ZPass," more than 99 percent of teachers pass.

Textbooks used in schools of education advocate sheer nonsense. A passage in Enid Lee et al.'s "Beyond Heroes and Holidays" reads: "We cannot afford to become so bogged down in grammar and spelling that we forget the whole story. ... The onslaught of antihuman practices that this nation and other nations are facing today: racism, and sexism, and the greed for money and human labor that disguises itself as 'globalization.'"

Marilyn Burns' text "About Teaching Mathematics" reads, "There is no place for requiring students to practice tedious calculations that are more efficiently and accurately done by using calculators."

"New Designs for Teaching and Learning," by Dennis Adams and Mary Hamm, says: "Content knowledge is not seen to be as important as possessing teaching skills and knowledge about the students being taught. ... Successful teachers understand the outside context of community, personal abilities, and feelings, while they establish an inside context or environment conducive to learning."

That means it's no problem if a teacher can't figure out that a quarter-million is the same as 250,000. Harvey Daniels and Marilyn Bizar's text "Methods that Matter" reads, "Students can no longer be viewed as cognitive living rooms into which the furniture of knowledge is moved in and arranged by teachers, and teachers cannot invariably act as subject-matter experts." The authors add, "The main use of standardized tests in America is to justify the distribution of certain goodies to certain people."

Schools of education represent the academic slums of most any college. American education can benefit from slum removal.

SOURCE

Fury as British Defence Dept. fires hundreds of troops in job cuts... but not one penpusher

2012-01-26T18:02:00.000+11:00

Public servants are a specially protected class just about everywhere

Not a single penpusher has been sacked under Ministry of Defence job cuts despite the 'grotesque' axing of hundreds of troops, a damning report reveals today.

MPs say it is 'stark and shocking' that no bureaucrats have been made compulsorily redundant yet 40 per cent of the military personnel culled were forced out.

In a scathing attack on the MoD, the Commons defence select committee hints that civil servants might also have received a better voluntary redundancy package.

'The MoD should consider whether the terms offered to either the military or civilian staff [were] fair or appropriate,' the MPs' report says.

The committee also criticises the claim by top MoD mandarin Ursula Brennan that civilians were more likely to apply for voluntary redundancy because they were more 'flexibly employable'. The report says: 'This runs contrary to our experience.'

Under the Government's Strategic Defence and Security Review, unveiled in 2010, the Forces must lose 17,000 personnel by 2015 – 7,000 from the Army and 5,000 each from the RAF and Royal Navy.

The MoD will eventually lose around 32,000 civil service posts. Ministers have been ordered to make £4.7billion of savings within four years and to plug a £38billion equipment overspend.

Some 2,900 servicemen and women were selected for the first tranche of redundancies last year, with the Army and RAF each losing 920 posts, and 1,020 being cut from the Navy.

But only 60 per cent applied for redundancy, meaning around 1,200 members of the Forces were sacked. A second round of 4,200 cuts was announced last week.

By comparison, not one civil servant has been forced to quit the MoD in the first two redundancy rounds, set to total 15,000 penpushers. Instead, all volunteered to leave.

The report says: 'For military redundancies to be compulsory in 40 per cent of cases, yet for civilian redundancies to be compulsory in none, is so grotesque that it requires an exceptionally persuasive reason, which we are yet to hear.'

MPs say Forces personnel should be retrained in areas of the military where there are shortages, such as bomb disposal, logistics and healthcare.

Labour defence spokesman Jim Murphy said ministers were treading a 'thin line between callousness and carelessness' over the job cuts. 'Thousands of service personnel are being unceremoniously sacked,' he said. 'It is essential that the painful impact of David Cameron's decisions is minimised wherever possible.

'The committee are right to suggest retraining for all those made compulsorily redundant.'

The MPs' report – into the MoD's annual report 2010–11 – also expresses dismay that the National Audit Office spending watchdog had refused to give the seal of approval to the department's accounts for the fifth successive year.

SOURCE

Apology sought from Wisconsin school superintendent who bullied Christian teen over homosexual adoption

2012-01-26T18:01:00.001+11:00

This disgraceful episode is now in the hands of the lawyers

"A 15-year-old Wisconsin boy who wrote an op-ed opposing gay adoptions was censored, threatened with suspension and called ignorant by the superintendent of the Shawano School District, according to an attorney representing the child.

Mathew Staver, the founder of the Liberty Counsel, sent a letter to Superintendent Todd Carlson demanding an apology for “Its unconstitutional and irrational censorship and humiliation” of Brandon Wegner.

Wegner, a student at Shawano High School, was asked to write an op-ed for the school newspaper about whether gays should be allowed to adopt. Wegner, who is a Christian, wrote in opposition. Another student wrote in favor of allowing gays to adopt. Wegner used Bible passages to defend his argument, including Scripture that called homosexuality a sin.

The school immediately issued an apology – stating Wegner’s opinion was a “form of bullying and disrespect.”

But Staver said what the school system did next was absolutely outrageous. He said the 15-year-old was ordered to the superintendent’s office where he was subjected to hours of meetings and was accused of violating the school’s bullying policy.

“The superintendent called him ignorant and said he had the power to suspend him,” Staver said. “He’s using his position to bully this student. This is absolutely the epitome of intolerance.”

FOX News & Commentary offered Carlson a chance to address the allegations. He refused to submit to questions, but did say he would send a statement. That statement never arrived.

Staver said an apology from the superintendent may not suffice – and they may consider taking legal action. “It was a very intimidating situation for this 15-year-old boy,” he said.”It was uncalled for. He crossed the line. It’s absolutely outrageous and he needs to apologize for his actions.”

Source

A good illustration of how twisted a Leftist mind can get. The kid was the one being bullied but he was accused of bullying!

Obama has an epiphany on the road to Damascus this year's election

2012-01-26T17:59:00.000+11:00

Backs fracking and more drilling for oil. Whether his rhetoric will translate into action is the big doubt

President Barack Obama pushed drilling for gas in shale rock and support for cleaner energy sources to boost the economy in his final State of the Union address before facing U.S. voters in November. He also pledged more oil drilling.

Hydraulic fracturing, the process of injecting water, sand and chemicals underground to free gas trapped in rock, could create more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade, Obama said yesterday. The process, called fracking, is among a list of energy policies Obama said would fuel economic growth.

“We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years, and my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy,” Obama said.

Obama reiterated support for conservation and cleaner sources of power and pledged more oil drilling as part of an ‘all-out, all-of-the-above’’ policy “that’s cleaner, cheaper, and full of new jobs.” He said domestic energy production is at an eight-year high and imports of foreign oil were declining, prompting criticism from Republicans.

“It’s just a blind accident, if in fact we are producing more oil or natural gas than in previous years, it’s not because of any of his efforts,” Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican and head of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said after the speech.

Republicans also sought to contrast Obama’s pledge to use energy policy to create jobs with his denial of a permit to TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline to connect Canada’s oil sands to refineries on the Gulf coast.

SOURCE

Aussies love one thing more than beer - freedom

2012-01-26T17:58:00.000+11:00

That must be sour news to Leftists

WE love our beer, we love our beaches and we love our barbecues. But, like the swaggie who sprang into the billabong back in 1895, we love our freedom most of all.

We asked you to name the three things that made it great to be an Aussie, and got more than 15,000 responses. Sam Kekovich can rest easy: barbecues, meat and mates all got significant support.

But freedom topped the list - and there was daylight between that and the second most popular response, beer.

SOURCE

Stimulus was Designed to Provide Pork and Payoffs, Not to Revive the Economy

2012-01-25T18:45:00.001+11:00

Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron argued that the $800 billion stimulus package wasn’t even designed to stimulate the economy, but rather to benefit special-interest groups, since it flunked even old-fashioned Keynesian policy prescriptions about how to revive the economy. Recently-disclosed memos obtained by the New Yorker provide more evidence for this argument: “over the objection of his economic advisors, President Obama replaced $60 billion of ‘highly stimulative spending’ with a slow-spending but ‘inspiring’ $20 billion for high-speed trains and $40 billion in pork for his Senate Democratic allies. And this is starting from a point at which he knew that his advisors thought that not more than $225 billion of the $826 billion total was high-quality, fast-spending, efficient stimulus.”

This is not the only way that Obama ignored economics in favor of politics when drawing up the stimulus. Originally, economists wanted the stimulus to include the kinds of transportation spending that could boost the economy. But the stimulus package was purged of most investments in roads and bridges, and filled instead with welfare and social spending, out of political correctness, after feminist leaders complained that fixing roads and bridges would put unemployed blue-collar men to work, rather than women.

Christina Hoff Sommers points out that “of the 5.7 million jobs Americans lost between December 2007 and May 2009, nearly 80 percent had been held by men,” because men “predominate in manufacturing and construction, the hardest-hit sectors.” But when some administration officials floated the concept of “an ambitious . . . stimulus program to modernize roads, bridges,” and infrastructure as a way of “reinvigorating the hardest-hit sectors of the economy,” “Women’s groups were appalled,” denouncing “The Macho Stimulus Plan.”

The Obama administration quickly knuckled under to this pressure, resulting in a “stimulus” package that spent money instead on social services like welfare that are administered mostly by female employees. As an AP story noted “Stimulus Aid Favors Welfare, Not Work, Programs.” (The stimulus package largely repealed welfare reform).

The little “transportation” spending that remained in the stimulus package was disproportionately wasted on laying the groundwork for “high-speed” rail boondoggles that are not actually “high” in speed. These multibillion dollar rail boondoogles would provide work at inflated wages for politically-powerful unions. But these projects are expensive white elephants that would be used by very few travelers at an enormous cost per mile, and not enable trains to go anywhere near as fast as they do in Europe, Japan, or China. (Other union-backed provisions in the stimulus package wiped out jobs in America’s export sector.)

Similarly, the “green jobs” Obama promised in the stimulus package never came into being, as even The New York Times has conceded. Instead, the stimulus package’s green-jobs spending ended up inadvertently outsourcing American jobs to China. The administration’s green-energy programs also wiped out jobs in the furniture industry.

Obama relied on exaggerated claims to push through the stimulus package, claiming it was needed to prevent an “irreversible decline” in the economy, even though the Congressional Budget Office admitted that the stimulus package would shrink the economy “in the long run.” Even an old-fashioned Keynesian stimulus might have been something that America could not afford at a time of record deficits. The Congressional Budget Office, ignoring the above flaws in the stimulus package, argued that it would boost the economy in “the short run.” But even the CBO conceded that the stimulus would shrink economic output in “the long run” by increasing the national debt and thus crowding out private investment.

SOURCE

India to complain to US over Jay Leno joke

2012-01-25T13:54:00.001+11:00

Indian religions might seem strange to us but Indians take then very seriosly -- almost as seriously as cricket. A Prime Minister of India (Indira Gandhi) was assassinated for desecrating the Golden temple. I would advise Mr Leno to apologize profusely. There are a lot of Sikhs in the USA.

India is to formally object to a joke by US TV host Jay Leno in which he said that the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine for Sikhs, was a summer home for wealthy presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Minister Vayalar Ravi termed the gag by "The Tonight Show" host as "quite unfortunate and quite objectionable" and said the Indian embassy in Washington would raise the issue, the Press Trust of India reported on Monday.

In a dig at Mr Romney's privileged background during a show last week, Leno used a photo of the ornate Sikh shrine in the northwestern Indian city of Amritsar during a segment on the vacation homes of US Republican presidential candidates.

Angry members of the Sikh community in the US circulated an online petition protesting the "derogatory depiction" of the Golden Temple, adding that "Jay Leno's racist comments need to be stopped right here".

Overseas Indian Affairs Minister Ravi said he had not watched the show himself but that the Sikh community in the US had lobbied him to take action against it.

"Freedom does not mean hurt the sentiments of others ... This is not acceptable to us and we take a very strong objection for such a display of an important place like Golden temple," Mr Ravi was reported to have said.

Source

It was just a joke but humor can be dangerous these days. Perhaps it always was.

A THIRD of inmates at British youth jail are Muslims... and more convert to get better food

2012-01-25T13:52:00.002+11:00

A third of inmates at one of Britain’s most notorious youth jails are Muslims and the religion is attracting a large number of converts.

There are 229 Muslims out of a total of 686 youngsters detained at Feltham Young Offenders’ Institution in West London, according to Ministry of Justice figures.

There are now so many worshippers at Friday prayers that they have to be split between Feltham’s mosque and its gym.

Sources claim that converts are attracted by the chance of better food and a more comfortable regime.

But there are also fears that some are being radicalised.

During Ramadan, Muslim prisoners are given food in separate hot and cold containers so they can eat what they choose at the end of their daylight fast.

A source revealed: ‘Over the last few years there has been a huge surge in those attending Muslim services. ‘The popularity of the faith has surprised people. We are seeing a large number of inmates converting to Islam.'

He added: ‘There is a difference between mainstream believers and extremists, but the fear is that some in the jail are being radicalised. 'Others convert for protection or to have what they believe is an easier lifestyle.’

Prison insiders say most non-Muslims are locked up during Friday prayers because so many guards are needed to monitor the lunchtime service.

The Ministry of Justice said: ‘The Prison Service is committed to ensuring the religious needs of prisoners of all faiths are met.’

SOURCE

China too had a Medieval Warm Period comparable to temperatures today

2012-01-25T13:47:00.000+11:00

Discussing: Zhou, XJ. 2011. "The characteristics and regularities of the climate change over the past millennium in China". Chinese Science Bulletin 56: 2985.

The author, Zhou (2011), - who is with the State Key Laboratory of Severe Weather of the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences in Beijing - writes in an introductory editorial in a special issue of the Chinese Science Bulletin (October 2011) that "research on global climate change has been at the frontier of the contemporary sciences," and within this context he further states that "debate has focused on whether the greenhouse effect produced by human activities is a major factor responsible for modern climate warming."

Against this backdrop, Zhou reports that "in 2009, the major project 'Research on tree-ring and millennium climate change in China' was implemented under the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China." Noting that eight articles published in this special issue of the Bulletin "present partly preliminary results obtained by the project over the past two years," he then goes on to summarize, in the broadest possible sense, their findings.

In the words of Zhou, the eight articles "reveal some characteristics and regularities of changes in temperature and precipitation in China and in East Asian monsoons over the past 1000 years," and he says that "notable conclusions," of which he lists only two, are that (1) "temperatures in the Medieval Warm Period are comparable to those in the current warm period over China," and (2) "the effect of solar activity on climate cannot be neglected in any period of the millennium."

These two findings stand in stark contrast to what is generally claimed by the world's climate alarmists, which is no small matter, as they apply to a significant portion of the planet. Hence, they should give everyone reason to reconsider the climate-alarmist claim that modern warming has been unprecedented over the past millennium or more, which claim is also refuted by many additional scientific studies we have reviewed in our Topical Archive under the heading Medieval Warm Period.

SOURCE

A brass age?

2012-01-24T19:27:00.001+11:00

By Thomas Sowell

This may be the golden age of presumptuous ignorance. The most recent demonstrations of that are the Occupy Wall Street mobs. It is doubtful how many of these semi-literate sloganizers could tell the difference between a stock and a bond.

Yet there they are, mouthing off about Wall Street on television, cheered on by politicians and the media. If this is not a golden age of presumptuous ignorance, perhaps it should be called a brass age.

No one has more brass than the President of the United States, though his brass may be more polished than that of the Occupy Wall Street mobs. When Barack Obama speaks loftily about "investing in the industries of the future," does anyone ask: What in the world would qualify him to know what are the industries of the future?

Why would people who have spent their careers in politics know more about investing than people who have spent their careers as investors?

Presumptuous ignorance is not confined to politicians or rowdy political activists, by any means. From time to time, I get a huffy letter or e-mail from a reader who begins, "You obviously don't know what you are talking about..."

The particular subject may be one on which my research assistants and I have amassed piles of research material and official statistics. It may even be a subject on which I have written a few books, but somehow the presumptuously ignorant just know that I didn't really study that issue, because my conclusions don't agree with theirs or with what they have heard.

At one time I was foolish enough to try to reason with such people. But one of the best New Year's resolutions I ever made, some years ago, was to stop trying to reason with unreasonable people. It has been good for my blood pressure and probably for my health in general.

A recent column that mentioned the "indirect subsidies" from the government to the Postal Service brought the presumptuously ignorant out in force, fighting mad.

Because the government does not directly subsidize the current operating expenses of the Postal Service, that is supposed to show that the Postal Service pays its own way and costs the taxpayers nothing.

Politicians may be crooks but they are not fools. Easily observed direct subsidies can create a political problem. Far better to set up an arrangement that will allow government-sponsored enterprises -- whether the Postal Service, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or the Tennessee Valley Authority -- to operate in such a way that they can claim to be self-supporting and not costing the taxpayers anything, no matter how much indirect subsidy they get.

As just one example, the Postal Service has a multi-billion dollar line of credit at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Hey, we could all use a few billions, every now and then, to get us over the rough spots. But we are not the Postal Service.

Theoretically, the Postal Service is going to pay it all back some day, and that theoretical possibility keeps it from being called a direct subsidy. The Postal Service is also exempt from paying taxes, among other exemptions it has from costs that other businesses have to pay.

Exemption from taxes, and from other requirements that apply to other businesses, are also not called subsidies. For people who mistake words for realities, that is enough for them to buy the political line -- and to get huffy with those who don't.

Loan guarantees are a favorite form of hidden subsidies for all sorts of special interests. At a given point in time, it can be said that these guarantees cost the taxpayers nothing. But when they suddenly do cost something -- as with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- they can cost billions.

One of the reasons for so much presumptuous ignorance flourishing in our time may be the emphasis on "self-esteem" in our schools and colleges. Children not yet a decade old have been encouraged, or even required, to write letters to public figures, sounding off on issues ranging from taxes to nuclear missiles.

Our schools begin promoting presumptuous ignorance early on. It is apparently one of the few things they teach well. The end result is people without much knowledge, but with a lot of brass.

SOURCE

The Ever-Expanding Concept of "Bullying" Casts an Ominous Shadow Over Free Speech‏

2012-01-24T15:28:00.001+11:00

Excerpt:

A school superintendant has labeled a column in a school newspaper that criticized homosexuality as “bullying.” (The Shawano High School newspaper decided to run dueling student opinion pieces on whether same-sex couples should be able to adopt children; the student article that was labeled as “bullying” answered the question “no.”)

Whatever the wisdom (or lack thereof) of featuring something like that in a school newspaper, it seems strange to argue that a viewpoint in a student newspaper is “bullying.”

A conservative Christian who thought that homosexuality was immoral successfully challenged a school “harassment” code that punished students with such viewpoints in Saxe v. State College Area School District (2001), a case in which a federal appeals court ruled that there is no “harassment” exception to the First Amendment for speech which offends members of minority groups.

But schools and anti-bullying activists have adopted incredibly overbroad definitions of bullying. The anti-bullying website NoBully.com, and schools like Fox Hill and Alvarado Elementary, define even “eye rolling” and other expressions of displeasure or hostility as bullying, even though doing so raises First Amendment problems.

Since “creating web sites” that “make fun of others” also is deemed “cyberbullying,” conservative websites that poke fun at the president are presumably guilty of cyberbullying under this strange definition.

Source

From Canada, Ezra Levant offers a concise summary of the Keystone calamity

2012-01-24T15:27:00.001+11:00

Patriotism "racist"?

2012-01-24T15:24:00.001+11:00

The study seems to have overlooked the origins of those who did not fly flags. Many may have been foreign-born. Perth has a very large contingent of Brits and whites from Southern Africa who may know little of Australian history. Had Australian-born people only been interviewed, there may have been no difference between flag flyers and others.

But the most important confounding variable would be social class. Middle class people are less likely to display patriotism and more "correct" in their expressed opinions

And it is after all reasonable to say that the long-term exclusion of blacks was beneficial -- given very high black crime-rates worldwide. It could be seen as rational rather than "racist"

DRIVERS who fly Australian flags on their cars to celebrate Australia Day are "more racist" than people who do not, according to research from UWA.

University of Western Australia sociologist and anthropologist Professor Farida Fozdar and a team of assistants surveyed 513 people at the Australia Day fireworks on Perth's Swan River foreshore last year to find out whether there was a link between car flag flying and racist attitudes, Perth Now reports.

Professor Fozdar said the team found that of the 102 people surveyed on the day who had attached flags to their cars for the national holiday, 43 per cent agreed with the statement that the now-abandoned “White Australia Policy” had “saved Australia from many problems experienced by other countries”.

She said that only 25 per cent of people who did not fly Australia car flags agreed with the statement.

Under the “White Australia Policy”, which was non-official government policy until after World War II, non-Europeans were barred from migrating to Australia.

The survey also found that a total of 56 per cent of people with car flags feared for Australian culture and believed that the country’s most important values were in danger, compared with 34 per cent of non-flag flyers.

Thirty-five per cent of flag flyers felt that people had to be born in Australia to be truly Australian, compared with 22 per cent of non-flag flyers. Twenty-three per cent of flag flyers believed that true Australians had to be Christian, while 18 per cent of non-flaggers agreed with the statement.

An overwhelming 91 per cent of people with car flags agreed that people who move to Australia should adopt Australian values, compared with 76 per cent of non-flaggers.

A total of 55 per cent of flaggers believed migrants should leave their old ways behind, compared with 30 per cent of non-flaggers.

“What I found interesting is that many people didn't really have much to say about why they chose to fly car flags or not," Professor Fozdar said.

"Many felt strongly patriotic about it - and for some, this was quite a racist or exclusionary type of patriotism - but it wasn't a particularly conscious thing for many.”

SOURCE

Obama's Phony War on the Rich

2012-01-23T19:15:00.000+11:00

Ever since the First Couple entered the White House, their social life has swirled around the very rich. Hollywood actors, pop star singers, Wall Street hedge fund managers, billionaire investors — these are the fabled "top 1 percent" in terms of income and wealth.

The Obamas invite them to White House dinners. They vacation with them on Martha’s Vineyard. They party with them. They sup with them at $35,000-a-plate fundraisers.

(Have these affairs ever included an auto worker? A mine worker? How about someone who is unemployed and looking for a job? What about someone who has lost his home? As far as I can tell, the bottom 99 percent never seems to make the cut.)

Here is what we are being asked to believe. During his three years in office, the president has come to realize that all of the people he plays golf with, has dinner with and collects millions of dollars from have too much. All of the people he never sees, never talks to and never socializes with have too little. So the president’s campaign-for-re-election theme will be: take from his friends and give to all those strangers.

Is any of this believable?

If you are inclined to take it seriously, let me remind you that you have heard it all before. Remember the 2008 presidential campaign? Health care was the number one issue. Remember the Democratic primary mantra? It was "universal coverage." And how was it to be paid for? Almost every serious candidate for the Democratic nomination gave the same answer: taxes on the rich. Barack Obama was explicit: "If you make less than $200,000 your taxes will not go up at all."

So what happened? We got Obama Care, at a cost of almost $1 trillion over the next ten years. And who is going to pay for all that? You are. And so is everybody else. My best estimate is that only about one-fifth of the cost of this measure will fall on the shoulders of the "rich." The vast bulk of the burden will fall on everyone else.

According to the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, about 73 million Americans earning less than $200,000 a year will see their direct taxes rise as a result of ObamaCare.In addition there are indirect taxes that no one will be able to avoid. These include:

-A "medical devices" tax that will reach everything from bedpans to wheelchairs and crutches will raise $20 billion over the next ten years; it will hit pacemakers and artificial hips and knees, as well.

-A tax on health insurance plans will raise about $60 billion.

-A tax on prescription drugs will raise another $27 billion.

The Republican staff of the Senate Finance committee estimates that these three taxes alone will ultimately push up health insurance premiums for a typical family of four by about $1,000 a year.

A tax on tanning salons is already collecting revenues from ordinary folks. Because of new restrictions on the use of medical accounts (Health Savings Accounts, Health Reimbursement Arrangements, and Flexible Spending Accounts), people are now paying more for such over-the-counter items as Claritin, aspirin and Advil. All told, "medicine cabinet" taxes are expected to raise about $45 billion over the next ten years.

Then there is the tax on sickness. Right now, people can deduct medical expenses in excess of 7.5 percent of their income. That figure will soon rise to 10 percent. Families who have the misfortune of incurring high medical bills will have to pay more to Uncle Sam as a result.

Pity the elderly and the disabled. More than half the cost of the health reform bill will be paid for by reduced spending on Medicare — a whopping $523 billion reduction over the next ten years. Although this is technically a spending reduction rather than a tax increase, the economic impact is the same.

Medicare’s chief Actuary predicts that in eight more years, Medicare will be paying doctors and hospitals less than what Medicaid (for poor people) pays. If so, senior citizens will be lined up behind welfare mothers, seeking care at community health centers and at the emergency rooms of safety net hospitals.

Will seniors be able to survive by paying more out of pocket to offset the reduction in Medicare spending? Maybe. But if they do so, it’s going to them 10 percent of their Social Security checks within eight years.

Here’s the bottom line: when President Obama talks taxes on the rich, expect even more taxes on the middle class.

But what about the rich? Is the president really going to sock it to his friends and golfing buddies?

Would you believe that under the president’s higher-taxes-on-the-rich proposals most of Warren Buffett’s income won’t be taxed at all. More on that in a future column.

SOURCE

British student atheists under fire over Mohammed cartoon

2012-01-23T14:24:00.001+11:00

We read:

"A row has erupted over an atheist society at a top London University posting a cartoon sketch featuring the prophet Muhammad having a drink with Jesus on its Facebook page.

A student Muslim group is demanding the 'offensive' image of Jesus and Mo having a drink at the bar, taken from an online satirical sketch, be removed from the social networking site.

The president of the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist society at the prestigious University College London (UCL), Robbie Yellon, has stepped down over the controversy. But the Society still refuses to take down the image - claiming its right to defend 'freedom of expression'.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association's protest against the photo has been backed by UCL's Union. A UCL Union statement said: 'The atheist society has agreed they will take more consideration when drawing up publicity for future events.

Source

Scare: Unprecedented, man-made trends in ocean’s acidity

2012-01-23T14:23:00.001+11:00

Just another modelling exercise and one based on admittedly poor data. Amusingly, it makes a mockery of its own warnings. Its authors say that "anthropogenic CO2 emissions over the last 100 to 200 years have already raised ocean acidity far beyond the range of natural variations". So where is the evidence of harm from that? There is none

Nearly one-third of CO2 emissions due to human activities enters the world’s oceans. By reacting with seawater, CO2 increases the water’s acidity, which may significantly reduce the calcification rate of such marine organisms as corals and mollusks. The extent to which human activities have raised the surface level of acidity, however, has been difficult to detect on regional scales because it varies naturally from one season and one year to the next, and between regions, and direct observations go back only 30 years.

Combining computer modeling with observations, an international team of scientists concluded that anthropogenic CO2 emissions over the last 100 to 200 years have already raised ocean acidity far beyond the range of natural variations. The study is published in the January 22 online issue of Nature Climate Change.

The team of climate modelers, marine conservationists, ocean chemists, biologists and ecologists, led by Tobias Friedrich and Axel Timmermann at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa, came to their conclusions by using Earth system models that simulate climate and ocean conditions 21,000 years back in time, to the Last Glacial Maximum, and forward in time to the end of the 21st century. They studied in their models changes in the saturation level of aragonite (a form of calcium carbonate) typically used to measure of ocean acidification. As acidity of seawater rises, the saturation level of aragonite drops. Their models captured well the current observed seasonal and annual variations in this quantity in several key coral reef regions.

Today’s levels of aragonite saturation in these locations have already dropped five times below the pre-industrial range of natural variability. For example, if the yearly cycle in aragonite saturation varied between 4.7 and 4.8, it varies now between 4.2 and 4.3, which – based on another recent study – may translate into a decrease in overall calcification rates of corals and other aragonite shell-forming organisms by 15%. Given the continued human use of fossil fuels, the saturation levels will drop further, potentially reducing calcification rates of some marine organisms by more than 40% of their pre-industrial values within the next 90 years.

“Any significant drop below the minimum level of aragonite to which the organisms have been exposed to for thousands of years and have successfully adapted will very likely stress them and their associated ecosystems,” says lead author Postdoctoral Fellow Tobias Friedrich.

“In some regions, the man-made rate of change in ocean acidity since the Industrial Revolution is hundred times greater than the natural rate of change between the Last Glacial Maximum and pre-industrial times,” emphasizes Friedrich. “When Earth started to warm 17,000 years ago, terminating the last glacial period, atmospheric CO2 levels rose from 190 parts per million (ppm) to 280 ppm over 6,000 years. Marine ecosystems had ample time to adjust. Now, for a similar rise in CO2 concentration to the present level of 392 ppm, the adjustment time is reduced to only 100 – 200 years.”

On a global scale, coral reefs are currently found in places where open-ocean aragonite saturation reaches levels of 3.5 or higher. Such conditions exist today in about 50% of the ocean – mostly in the tropics. By end of the 21st century this fraction is projected to be less than 5%. The Hawaiian Islands, which sit just on the northern edge of the tropics, will be one of the first to feel the impact.

The study suggests that some regions, such as the eastern tropical Pacific, will be less stressed than others because greater underlying natural variability of seawater acidity helps to buffer anthropogenic changes. The aragonite saturation in the Caribbean and the western Equatorial Pacific, both biodiversity hotspots, shows very little natural variability, making these regions particularly vulnerable to human-induced ocean acidification.

“Our results suggest that severe reductions are likely to occur in coral reef diversity, structural complexity and resilience by the middle of this century,” says co-author Professor Axel Timmermann.”

SOURCE

Insane NSW education bureaucracy

2012-01-23T14:22:00.001+11:00

CROSSING the Murray felt significant. It was sunny and, after years, we were coming home to good ol' Newsouth, where it is always sunny and always Saturday morning, and the unimpeachable joys of childhood dwell in a never-to-be-disturbed bliss. The real significance hit later.

If I were a plumber, accountant or massage therapist, it would have been irrelevant: one could live in Melbourne one week then move to Sydney the next and simply front up to an employer and say: "Yep, I'm fully qualified, vastly experienced and I've just moved interstate." If the paperwork was up to scratch and they fitted the job description, it'd be: "No worries. Start on Monday."

Teachers, however, are different. We are what you might call the professional equivalent of refugees, fleeing the presumed disastrous condition of education of other Australian states.

Of course, before you can set foot inside a school, you're whipped off to the Institute of Teachers, where sniffer dogs investigate your deodorant status. That done, you front up to a corpse-like quasi KGB agent with perfect dentures and an interest in your credentials bordering on the pathological.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the need for caution; I'm cool with the fact that they need to see every piece of documentation I've received since I was 18, potentially even shopping dockets and bus tickets. This is standard bureaucratic fare.

After the interview, I go home and wait. And wait. Five weeks on, there's a letter: "Further documentation required." Nothing wrong with being thorough.

"Mother's birth certificate." Could be tricky. I google "Irish Embassy". Another six weeks and the necessaries are in the mail, with a note confessing how hard it is to feed a family without a job and could they maybe speed the process up a tad?

Ninety-seven days exactly after that fateful river crossing, I receive permission to teach in the state of NSW. My wife and children are too weak with hunger to join in the celebration. I ring the Institute and thank them warmly, but I still have one query concerning the 40 per cent cut in my rate of pay.

"A New Scheme teacher," the officer explains, "is a graduate teacher, or equivalent."

"Then there must be some mistake, because I've been a teacher for 20 …"

"Or equivalent," she repeats. "You haven't taught in NSW for the past five years." "Yes but," I begin. "In New South Wales."

And the articulation of that name is nothing less than the passing of a sentence. I break down and beg forgiveness. She's not sure what the policy is on that, but she'll get back to me.

SOURCE

Are religious people better adjusted psychologically?

2012-01-23T01:46:00.002+11:00

The academic article below offers some interesting facts but the perspective appears to be a Leftist one so I thought I might offer a different perspective. I add some comments at the foot of the article

Psychological research has found that religious people feel great about themselves, with a tendency toward higher social self-esteem and better psychological adjustment than non-believers. But a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that this is only true in countries that put a high value on religion.

The researchers got their data from eDarling, a European dating site that is affiliated with eHarmony. Like eHarmony, eDarling uses a long questionnaire to match clients with potential dates. It includes a question about how important your personal religious beliefs are and questions that get at social self-esteem and how psychologically well-adjusted people are. Jochen Gebauer of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Constantine Sedikides of the University of Southampton, and Wiebke Neberich of Affinitas GmbH in Berlin, the company behind eDarling, used 187,957 people's answers to do their analyses.

As in other studies, the researchers found that more religious people had higher social self-esteem and where psychologically better adjusted. But they suspected that the reason for this was that religious people are better in living up to their societal values in religious societies, which in turn should lead to higher social self-esteem and better psychological adjustment. The people in the study lived in 11 different European countries, ranging from Sweden, the least religious country on the planet, to devoutly Catholic Poland. They used people's answers to figure out how religious the different countries were and then compared the countries.

On average, believers only got the psychological benefits of being religious if they lived in a country that values religiosity. In countries where most people aren't religious, religious people didn't have higher self-esteem. "We think you only pat yourself on the back for being religious if you live in a social system that values religiosity," Gebauer says. So a very religious person might have high social self esteem in religious Poland, but not in non-religious Sweden.

In this study, the researchers made comparisons between different countries, but another study found a similar effect within one country, between students at religious and non-religious universities. "The same might be true when you compare different states in the U.S. or different cities," Gebauer says. "Probably you could mimic the same result in Germany, if you compare Bavaria where many people are religious and Berlin where very few people are religious."

SOURCE

The original journal article is "Religiosity, Social Self-Esteem, and Psychological Adjustment: On the Cross- Cultural Specificity of the Psychological Benefits of Religiosity" by Jochen Gebauer et al.

Two things to note: 1). As is so common in psychological research, the "sample" is in fact no sample at all. We have no idea how representative of the community at large are "Lonely Hearts"; 2). The assessment of mental health appears to have been rudimentary. A few queries about self-esteem and depression are a poor substitute for a proper mental health survey such as the MMPI. So again, the results must be taken with rock-salt.

Setting aside those reservations however, the interpretation also seems to make an assumption that may not be correct. The assumption is that only positive rewards are at work. It may be the other way around. The difference in interpretation is not large but it may be important.

I live in Australia, which, like Norway, is a very irreligious place, where regular churchgoers are something of a rarity. So I may have some insight into the results from Norway above

So I would summarize the research findings above as showing that religion does normally make you happier but that only shows up in places where it is accepted. Where religion has little acceptance and may be mocked (as it not uncommonly is in Australia) the social "punishment" for religious belief may cancel out that happiness. It may be bias against religious people that was the key driver of the national differences observed above.

An uninsightful look at racist attitudes

2012-01-23T01:44:00.000+11:00

Below is an academic journal article which claims that "racists" have low IQs. I append some comments at the foot of it

Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes

Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact

Gordon Hodson et al.

Abstract

Despite their important implications for interpersonal behaviors and relations, cognitive abilities have been largely ignored as explanations of prejudice. We proposed and tested mediation models in which lower cognitive ability predicts greater prejudice, an effect mediated through the endorsement of right-wing ideologies (social conservatism, right-wing authoritarianism) and low levels of contact with out-groups. In an analysis of two large-scale, nationally representative United Kingdom data sets (N = 15,874), we found that lower general intelligence (g) in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology. A secondary analysis of a U.S. data set confirmed a predictive effect of poor abstract-reasoning skills on antihomosexual prejudice, a relation partially mediated by both authoritarianism and low levels of intergroup contact. All analyses controlled for education and socioeconomic status. Our results suggest that cognitive abilities play a critical, albeit underappreciated, role in prejudice. Consequently, we recommend a heightened focus on cognitive ability in research on prejudice and a better integration of cognitive ability into prejudice models.

SOURCE

What the article ignores is that the mental gymnastics required by political correctness are considerable. A simple soul who sees a lot of black crime is likely to have a low opinion of blacks and say so. But, as is often said, some ideas are so stupid that only an intellectual would believe them. And concluding that chronic black criminality is all Whitey's fault is one such idea. So all the study really shows is that brighter people are more able to absorb the counterintuitive but politically correct cult that the elite have made normative in society. Only simpler people take their views from observable reality.

And we must also note that we are talking here about ADMITTED attitudes. And where some attitudes are much decried -- as are racially-denominated attitudes -- the truth of any admissions can only be speculated on. It could well be that attitude to blacks (say) is the same at all levels of IQ but only the simpler members of society are foolish enough to admit what they really think.

I could go on but I think it is already clear that this study proves nothing.

End of the Line for Bullet Trains

2012-01-22T13:30:00.000+11:00

High-Speed Rail is Coasting to a Stop, and Not Just in California

The way high-speed rail projects have been collapsing around the world, you’d think they were corrupt, outrageously expensive, fiscally ruinous, poorly planned government efforts to build a 19th century means of transportation for which there’s no demand.

The Obama Administration’s bullet-train dream is dead. Florida Gov. Rick Scott last year rejected $2 billion in federal funds rather than commit the Sunshine State to such an expensive project. California’s high-speed rail effort is in turmoil, recently suffered a purge of top management, and is unlikely to meet its September deadline to break ground on a federally mandated leg universally termed the “train to nowhere.”

New York State’s effort to build a Buffalo-New York City line is also stalling out. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) trekked out to the village of Bergen in Genesee County the other day only to face hostile questioning from reporters and the local mayor. Schumer’s photo opp by the side of an existing CSX track highlighted a trait the Empire State’s project shares with California’s: It proposes to destroy a proven business – freight rail – to make room for a bullet train that would not be self-supporting even according to the rosiest estimates.

Don't trust SEIU colors. Bullet trains are having even less luck outside the United States – where, the cognoscenti never tire of reminding us, international sophisticates are way ahead of us Yankee bumpkins. Spain’s high-speed rail system, until recently a model for new bullet train construction (and, to be fair, a line that replaced one of the slowest railways in Europe), is sinking under low ridership and dragging that kingdom even deeper into a swamp of bad public debt.

The unkindest cuts of all are occurring in China, whose bullet train once drew hosannas from California governors and bully-worshipping toadies like New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman. Rail minister Liu Zhijun, the putative “Father of High-Speed Rail,” was removed from office and arrested last year; Liu’s deputy, “Grand Designer” (and owner of a five-bedroom home on 30,000 square feet in Los Angeles County) Zhang Shuguang, is also facing corruption charges. An early investigation by the Ministry of Rail revealed that the Chinese bullet train’s budgeting is extremely murky (with some parts of the initiative costing two or three times as much as projected); its ridership is low (after only two months of operation, the Beijing-Fuzhou line was quietly shut in 2010); and ticket prices are beyond the means of lower-income people who actually use mass transit. HSR-related debt increased by a factor of 22 over only three years, from 77.1 billion yuan in 2007 to 1.68 trillion in 2010. In July a bullet-train crash in Zhejiang killed 32 people and injured more than 200.

Railroads have always been favorites of dictators. (Note that nobody was ever brought to a concentration camp on a bus.) But they somehow retain their fascination for popularly elected politicians as well.

A substantial majority of Californians oppose the bullet-train in its current form. That’s a remarkable turnaround in a state where 53 percent of voters approved $9.95 billion in high-speed rail bonds during the high-turnout 2008 election. It seems like just a month ago that the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) was an object of wonder for its reality-distorting public relations influence and political strength. Now even the left-leaning media treat with scorn the CHSRA and its plan to make a non-operational Bakersfield-Fresno run the great project’s first phase.

Meanwhile, the CHSRA’s CEO and board chairman have both fled the collapsing project, in a move that neither the Brown nor the Obama Administration appears to have seen coming. The authority is in a dispute with its former PR firm, which was unable to distract public attention from the glaring truth that since 2008 the estimated cost of the project has more than doubled, from around $40 billion to $98.5 billion. (The suspiciously steep increase in projected costs has prompted calls for a new referendum on railway debt, on the grounds that the voters were hoodwinked the first time around.) The authority’s own peer review group and the Legislative Analyst’s Office have strongly recommended delaying and rethinking the project. A larger percentage of voters would now vote No on HSR bonds than voted for them in 2008.

These are all steps in the right direction, but there’s another intellectual hurdle for the populace to clear. These failing, costly high-speed rail catastrophes are not cases of a good idea poorly carried out. Failure is built into the concept. There is neither need nor demand nor real popular will to bring trains back in a spiffier form. In this respect, one part of Jerry Brown’s speech was accurate: High-speed rail is not a new idea. Passenger railroads had their day. To pretend otherwise is truly to believe our civilization is in decline.

SOURCE

Muslim fanatics who called for execution of gays face up to seven years in jail in Britain

2012-01-22T13:29:00.001+11:00

Doubtful that they will get ANY jail -- unlike the white holocaust denier who got 4 years

"Muslim extremists who handed out leaflets calling for homosexuals to be hanged, stoned and burned to death were facing up to seven years in prison last night.

The group handed out the material in the street as well as posting it through letterboxes in a hate-filled campaign calling for the execution of gay people who they claimed were at the root of society’s problems.

Ihjaz Ali, Kabir Ahmed and Razwan Javed are the first to be prosecuted under new laws against inciting hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation.

Yesterday as they were found guilty at Derby Crown Court, residents spoke of how the three fundamentalists wanted to transform their small area of Derby into a ‘medieval state’ under Sharia law. Anyone who dared to question their extreme agenda was branded an ‘M15 agent’ or a ‘sell-out,’ they said.

Source

Obama’s Misleading Green-Jobs Ad: Taking Credit for Imaginary Jobs

2012-01-22T13:28:00.001+11:00

There are only 140,000 jobs in the whole renewable-energy sector, but in a new ad, Obama is taking credit for a “clean energy industry” that has “2.7 million jobs.” Obama inflated the number of “clean-energy” jobs by adding people who have nothing to do with clean-energy, like “trash collectors” and bureaucrats. By inflating the total, Obama was able to paper over his complete failure to live up to his utterly unrealistic campaign promise “to create 5 million new green jobs.” Most of America’s existing green jobs predate the Obama Administration, which did not create them: “from 2003-2010, the rate of growth for clean jobs was 3.4 percent.”

Indeed, the Obama Administration used federal green-jobs money to outsource American jobs to countries like China: “Despite all the talk of green jobs, the overwhelming majority of stimulus money spent on wind power has gone to foreign companies, according to a new report by the Investigative Reporting Workshop” at American University. “79 percent” of all green-jobs funding “went to companies based overseas,” with the largest payment going to a bankrupt Australian company. “Most of the jobs are going overseas,” said Russ Choma at the Investigative Reporting Workshop.

Meanwhile, America actually lost jobs in wind-manufacturing: “Even with the infusion of so much stimulus money, a recent report by American Wind Energy Association showed a drop in U.S. wind manufacturing jobs last year.” (CBS News recently reported that there are 11 more companies, in addition to Solyndra, that are embroiled in financial trouble after receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer money; five have already filed for bankruptcy).

Obama’s mythical green-jobs are like other imaginary jobs he claimed to have created with the $800 billion stimulus package. The Obama Administration took credit for jobs created in 440 non-existent Congressional districts, such as Arizona’s 15th and 86th districts (Arizona only had 8 Congressional districts, as ABC News noted with amusement). The Washington Examiner noted that at least “75,000 jobs” Obama has claimed credit for are “clearly imaginary” or “highly doubtful.” Readers can view its interactive map of “Inflated Jobs by State.”

The Obama Administration claimed that the stimulus package would keep unemployment from ever rising above 8 percent, but it peaked at over 10 percent. Obama claimed the stimulus was needed to prevent an “irreversible decline,” but the Congressional Budget Office admits that the stimulus package will shrink the economy “in the long run.”

Obama’s green-jobs pledge isn’t his only broken promise. Obama campaigned in 2008 on a promise of a “net spending cut,” but soon after taking office, he proposed budgets that would add $4.8 trillion to the national debt.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

Julia breaks another promise

2012-01-22T13:27:00.001+11:00

JULIA Gillard's axing of the pokies reform promise that secured her power has triggered independent Andrew Wilkie's abandonment of the Labor minority Government. The move means the PM is back to a one-seat buffer in the event of a no-confidence vote that could force an election.

Mr Wilkie said yesterday: "Frankly, a deal's a deal and it must be honoured." "Our democracy is simply too precious to trash with broken promises and backroom compromises. So I will walk, take my chances and so be it," Mr Wilkie said.

The Tasmanian MP scrapped his agreement to automatically support the Government on Budget Bills and defend it against Coalition motions of no-confidence after Ms Gillard tore up her agreement with him to overhaul poker machine laws - meaning there will be no $1 bet limits, and only a limited trial of technology that forces punters to pre-program how much they are prepared to lose.

The decision by the Government to break its commitment to Mr Wilkie followed a major campaign by Clubs Australia and fierce lobbying from Crown casino boss James Packer.

Ms Gillard defended the compromise plan, arguing the support among other key independents was not there for further reforms. "You do have to make compromises, that's the nature of politics," she said.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said the outcome only reinforced that the Prime Minister had secured the keys to the Lodge under false pretences.

But Mr Wilkie said he would not back Tony Abbott or an early election in the interests of stability, with the Prime Minister retaining a one-vote buffer even if Mr Wilkie were to switch camps.

Government spin doctors seized on Mr Wilkie's pledge not to back a no-confidence motion that could spark an election unless serious misconduct or corruption was proved, arguing this was similar to his original deal with the PM.

If the Liberals' Peter Slipper had not defected for the job of Speaker late last year the Prime Minister would now be be on a knife edge, but the political coup rendered Mr Wilkie's repeated threats to bring down the Government hollow and cleared the way for Ms Gillard to walk away from the agreement.

Hopes of a $1 bets compromise to reduce losses rather than forcing punters to register to bet were rejected by the Government, which said it would cost $1.5 billion.

The compromise was a first step, Mr Wilkie said, but remained "in breach" of the Prime Minister's original agreement with Mr Wilkie to deliver by 2014. "I can no longer guarantee supply and confidence for the Government because the Prime Minister has told me she can't honour the promise to introduce mandatory pre-commitment on poker machines by the end of 2014," Mr Wilkie said.

"Consequently, I regard her to be in breach of the written agreement she signed, leaving me no option but to honour my word and end my current relationship with her Government."

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon agreed: "How can you respect someone who backstabs the very person that backed her into office?"

Clubs Australia, whose anti-reforms campaign cost millions, welcomed the Government's trial. "Clubs are not seeking the status quo on gambling policy," executive director Anthony Ball said. "However, this reform must be evidence-based and should not destroy the club and hotel industry as we know it."

SOURCE

Nudge, nudge, here come the Germans

2012-01-21T21:13:00.001+11:00

Peter Saunders

Okay, forget, for a moment the monumental folly of the European common currency, which wasn’t really the Germans’ fault. It was pressed on them by Mitterand as the price for French agreement to [German] reunification.

Consider, instead, German social policy. We might all learn something from the way the Germans tackle problems that the Brits (and to some extent the Aussies) struggle with.

Consider, for example, family policy, and the child support rules for absent fathers.

The German civil code establishes a principle called the ‘solidarity of the generations.’ This stipulates that ‘lineal relatives’ (children, parents and grandparents) have a legal obligation to maintain each other. The primary obligation to support dependent children falls on parents, but if they lack the means or will to pay, grandparents become liable.

While our politicians voice platitudes about strengthening family life, the Germans give extended families real duties. Before taxpayers are asked to contribute to the costs of maintaining other people’s children, German law insists that the extended family should draw on its own resources.

So if a father defaults on his child support payments, both sets of grandparents are required to pay. Grandparents know they may become financially liable for their grandchildren, so they do all they can to ensure that the parents discharge their responsibilities properly in the first place. Brilliant!

Another example of German ingenuity concerns education. Ever since Britain abolished state grammar schools, bright kids from poor backgrounds have been consigned to what one Labour minister infamously called ‘bog standard comprehensives.’ In many parts of Britain, the only way to get a good education now is to pay for it. Even firebrand Labour MPs pay for their kids to be educated privately.

The trouble with the old system was nobody liked the 11+ exam which determined whether you went to a grammar, technical or general (‘secondary modern’) school. Too many middle class children failed the exam, and pressure built to overthrow the whole system. But in Germany they still have it. So why do German parents still accept selection when British parents don’t?

A key reason is that German parents are offered some control over the selection process. Head teachers in primary schools recommend to parents which type of secondary schooling would best suit their child, but if a parent insists their dull child should go to a grammar school against the head’s advice, this can still happen. When such children then struggle (as they almost certainly will), they are transferred after a year or so, disrupting their education and fragmenting their friendship networks. Most parents therefore go along with head teachers’ recommendations.

A lot of policy wonks in Britain, Australia and the United States got excited a few years ago about the idea of ‘nudging’ people into doing the right thing, but these two examples suggest the Germans have been ‘nudging’ for ages.

If a father falls down on his child support obligations, the Germans don’t send for the bureaucrats at the Child Support Agency (CSA). Rather, they mobilise the extended family to put pressure on him.

And the Germans didn’t antagonise parents to the point where grammar schools lost public support and got shut down. Rather, they allowed parents the chance to discover for themselves that their dull children really are dull, which legitimises selection.

SOURCE

Dear Nanny

2012-01-21T13:54:00.000+11:00

Peter Saunders

In England, where I live now, I let a house to a group of students. In 2004, the Blair Labour government passed a new Housing Act which, among other things, required landlords like me to install a hand basin in every bedroom, ‘where practicable.’ This clause is now operative, so just before Christmas, I met at the house with my tenants, a qualified plumber, and an inspector from the local Council to determine whether it was ‘practicable’ to install basins in the five bedrooms.

I admit I wasn’t much in favour of the idea; it is an expensive job and I have visions of drunken students heaving basins off the wall and flooding the whole house. My tenants didn’t like the idea either. They thought basins would take up valuable wall space that could be better occupied by desks, book cases or Che Guevara posters. The man from the Council thought the new rule was ridiculous, too, but his hands were tied. And my plumber had to admit that, with a soil pipe immediately outside two of the windows, it would be quite ‘practicable’ to install basins in two of the five bedrooms.

So we all agreed that in two of the five rooms, basins would have to be installed to comply with the Act, even though it made no sense to do so. The tenants promptly asked me to delay this ‘improvement’ until after they move out.

At the last election, the Tories promised to scrap all unnecessary red tape, so I wrote to my local Conservative MP and suggested that this particular provision of the 2004 Housing Act might be a good place to start. She forwarded my letter to the (Liberal Democrat) Minister responsible for such matters (the Tories are in coalition, remember, and all the boring jobs have been given to Lib Dems). He has just replied to me.

He tells me that the law requiring a hand basin in every room is necessary ‘to ensure that standards are decent.’ The implication seems to be that, unless we are tightly controlled, we avaricious landlords will condemn students to live ‘indecently’ (in my experience, many students manage this quite nicely with no prompting from me).

I have written back to the Minister asking why he thinks a politician in Westminster is a better judge than the landlord who owns the house, the tenants who live in it, and the local council that regulates it, to determine whether or not a bedroom requires a hand basin. I’ll let you know if I get an answer.

Meanwhile, on the same day that I received the Minister’s letter, I had an email from a certain Ben Plowdon, who tells me he is ‘Director of Surface Planning’ at something called ‘Transport for London’. I don’t know Ben, but he seems to know me, for he addresses me personally. He writes: ‘Dear Mr Saunders, I am writing to both drivers and cyclists reminding them to take care on London’s roads.’

I can’t remember the last time I drove or cycled in London. Nevertheless, I was so touched by Ben’s concern for my welfare that I decided to write back immediately:

Dear Mr Plowden,

Thank you for your email telling me to “take care on London’s roads.”

Up until now I did not realise it was necessary to take care when driving in London.

I will do my best to follow your advice in the future – just as soon as I have taught my grandmother to suck eggs.

Yours sincerely

Peter Saunders

PS How many GCSEs do you need to do your job?

SOURCE (GCSEs are a junior High School qualification, well short of a degree)

Sea Level Rise During The Hottest Year Ever

2012-01-21T13:51:00.001+11:00

According to NASA’s Dr. Hansen, 2010 was the hottest year ever, and Greenland temperatures were also the hottest ever. We are told this led to record melt in Greenland, which caused massive amounts of water to pour into the ocean. Additionally, thermal expansion from the record heat caused the oceans to get much deeper.

Satellite data shows us that sea level has been falling steadily since the start of 2010, which tells us that the missing water and the missing heat must be hiding at the bottom of the ocean – along with the missing intelligence and integrity of government scientists.

SOURCE (See the original for links)

I'll turn back every boat, says Tony Abbott

2012-01-21T13:49:00.001+11:00

A COALITION government will order the navy to turn around asylum-seeker boats and return them to Indonesia in an assertion of Australian border protection, Tony Abbott revealed. The Opposition Leader is determined to impose a new and tougher policy whereby Australia uses its navy to secure its borders.

If elected prime minister, Mr Abbott will tell Jakarta Australia will no longer passively accept the arrival of asylum-seeker boats from that country, The Australian reported last night.

A radical policy departure, this has far-reaching and unpredictable consequences for Australia-Indonesia relations.

In recent talks with his colleagues, Mr Abbott said: "This is a test of wills and Australia has lost. "What counts is what the Australian government does, not what it says. "It is time for Australia to adopt turning the boats as its core policy."

Mr Abbott said this would involve an increase in the number of naval vessels to force the boats back, including the capacity to remove asylum-seekers from deliberately sabotaged boats before repairing those vessels to enable the boatpeople to be returned to Indonesia.

The Coalition has also ruled out a political deal to revive Labour's Malaysia Solution and is planning a tougher regimen of temporary protection visas.

This includes a quota on the number of permanent visas issued to temporary protection visa holders to favour authorised asylum-seekers and to provide a disincentive to people making the journey by boat.

SOURCE

Capitalism = Freedom

2012-01-20T19:38:00.001+11:00

There are a few things Mitt Romney needs to do in order to energize the Republican base -- and, not coincidentally, define the debate over his record as a businessman that will be the subject of harsh criticism from the President and his allies.

First, he needs to make clear what the choices are. As Donald Luskin points out in a brilliant piece in today's Wall Street Journal, capitalism is really about freedom (cf Milton Friedman). Contrary to the President's view, it's not about leaving people to "fend for themselves" -- it's about trusting that people are smart enough and capable enough to make better choices for themselves than big, intrusive government can make for them. It's about leaving people free to have an opportunity to use their God-given talents to make of their life what they will, without constant government interference.

Obviously, there is always a balance that must be struck between freedom and "equality" (or "security"). Of course, we must do for those who truly cannot do for themselves. We are a compassionate country, and no one wants to change that. But the President has gotten the balance wrong. What he seems to forget -- and what Romney must remind him, and Americans generally -- is that we DO do for others, but that government isn't always the best (or only) agent of help. In fact, sometimes (not always, but sometimes), people are helped more effectively through the operation of the free market than through mandates from government bureaucrats.

What Americans need to understand is that every effort to insulate every American (or American business) from the possibility of failure comes at a price. The price is economic growth, opportunity and personal responsibility. Are there bad, greedy people in business? Absolutely. But there are bad, greedy people in government, too. That's the human condition in a fallen world. And working for the government doesn't automatically make you virtuous, any more than working in the private sector makes you evil.

Second, Romney has to stop worrying about the fact that he's rich. It fits with the story of opportunity that he's telling. His father was born in humble circumstances and didn't even finish college. His wife has roots in a humble Welsh mining village. He has worked hard for his money and should explain that his story (and theirs, and the President's, for that matter) is only possible in a land of opportunity.

In fact, it's wrong for those who have already "made it" -- like the President and First Lady -- to deny all credit to America for their opportunities. It's wrong for them, and people like them, to decide instead that their accomplishments are uniquely theirs (because of their superior intellect or whatever) and then use those positions to reduce the opportunities for those who come after them, in the name of supposedly "helping" others. And make no mistake: Every time achievement is penalized -- and those who succeed are denigrated -- it sends a message and it reduces opportunity.

Contrary to what the President, Occupy Wall Street (and, sadly, some Republican presidential candidates) would have us believe, as long as it's done honestly, there's nothing wrong with earning money. In fact, it's the money that people like Mitt Romney have earned that allow people like Barack Obama the luxury of "spread[ing] the wealth around." Big government types should be thanking the rich, not demonizing them.

In the end, the election is about one thing: Opportunity and freedom vs. government control and stagnation. It's about whether Americans want a President who wants the government to give them a fish (at least until the country goes bankrupt) -- or one who wants to help create the conditions where Americans can fish for themselves, for life. Let's hope Romney says so, without apology.

SOURCE

Racist Norwegian child protection authorities

2012-01-20T19:36:00.000+11:00

Indian couple have children taken away by Norwegian social workers because they were feeding them by hand. Behaviour that is good enough for a billion Indians is not good enough for tiny Norway, apparently. There is a lot of authoritarianism in the Nordic countries

An Indian couple have had their children taken away by Norwegian social workers because they were feeding them with their hands and sleeping in the same bed as them.

Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya lost custody of their three-year-old son and one-year-old daughter eight months ago after authorities branded their behaviour inappropriate.

The drastic measure led to intervention from the Indian government who contacted Norwegian authorities in an a desperate attempt to return the children.

Norwegian Child Protection Services removed the youngsters from their home in May, 2011, leaving their parents horrified with the outcome of the report.

Father Anurup told Indian television channel NDTV: 'They told me ‘why are you sleeping with the children in the same bed?’. '(I told them) this is also a purely cultural issue. We never leave the children in another room and say goodnight to them.'

Anurup added: 'Feeding a child with the hand is normal in Indian tradition and when the mother is feeding with a spoon there could be phases when she was overfeeding the child. 'They said it was force feeding. These are basically cultural differences.'

Mrs Bhattacharya said: 'My son was sleeping with my husband. They said he should sleep separately from your son.'

The parents have been told that they can only see their children twice a year, for an hour during each visit until the kids turn 18 when they will no longer be bound by the current restrictions under current Norwegian law.

Despite the Indian government's intervention, Norwegian officials are refusing to meet the request for any further explanation.

Norway's Child Protective Service has come under much scrutiny in the past for excessive behaviour in their handling of child cruelty. Lawyer Svein Kjetil Lode Svendsen said: 'There has been a report in UN in 2005 which criticized Norway for taking too many children in public care. 'The amount was 12,500 children and Norway is a small country.'

With the Bhattacharyas' visas set to expire in March, they have revealed that they will be forced to stay against their will until the return of their infants.

SOURCE

NJ Assemblyman Apologizes for Calling Philadelphia Eagles ‘Gaybirds’ in Facebook Status‏

2012-01-20T19:35:00.001+11:00

Homosexuality is supposed to be a good thing and yet it also offensive to say someone is homosexual? Very confused! What happened to "gay pride"?

A Giants fan and Jersey City police detective who represents his Legislative District in the New Jersey State Assembly has been in hot water since posting a message on his Facebook profile Sunday night after the Giants’ shocking win over the Green Bay Packers:

“We are not going to just lay down, we come to play. Who the hell do you think we are the DALLAS COWGIRLS OR THOSE GAYBIRDS FROM PHILLY… NO WE ARE THE NEW YORK GIANTS.”

Assemblyman Charles Mainor‘s ’GAYBIRDS‘ and ’COWGIRLS’ comments have been criticized as anti-gay and anti-woman.

Steven Goldstein, chair and CEO of gay-rights group Garden State Equality, told The Jersey Journal Monday that Mainor’s comments were “inadvisable,” adding that they “hurt a lot of people.”

Mainor has apologized for the comment, even though he says he only wrote half of it. The Journal reports:

“Mainor was in Jersey City last night at a party to watch the Giants play the Green Bay Packers when he posted almost the entire above message on his Facebook page, he said. A friend of his sat at the computer and added the comment about the ‘gaybirds from Philly,’ Mainor said.

Source

Why Everybody Seeing Climate Changes Now Is Uninformed Or A Liar

2012-01-20T19:33:00.000+11:00

Lots of Warmists are shrieking about disasters already taking place as a result of climate change and making dire predictions for the near future -- but even the IPCC models now predict nothing of the sort. They predict temperature stasis for at least the next 20 years

In its latest “Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX)”, whose “Summary for Policymakers” is dated November 18, 2011, the IPCC writes:

(p9) “Projected changes in climate extremes under different emissions scenarios generally do not strongly diverge in the coming two to three decades, but these signals are relatively small compared to natural climate variability over this time frame. Even the sign of projected changes in some climate extremes over this time frame is uncertain”

Therefore people trying right now to discern/portray climate change of the extreme variety, (“disasters [that] produce widespread damage and cause severe alterations in the normal functioning of communities or societies“, according to the IPCC – in other words the only changes of actual practical interest), are placing themselves outside mainstream science, perhaps out of naivety, perhaps due to personal gain.

In any case, not one of the usual suspects will lament such a manipulation of the best evidence we have. Who needs skeptics when believers are so determined to sustain each other through long-distance charades?

SOURCE

The Australian economy withstood the global financial crisis but a Leftist government is too much for it

2012-01-20T19:32:00.000+11:00

It survived the global financial crisis and won acclaim for its strength in adversity. But the Australian economy now finds itself at the crossroads, spooked by a jobs crisis not seen since Paul Keating's "recession we had to have".

Australia's economy shed 100,000 jobs last year, the first time more jobs were lost than created in any year since 1992, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Falls in employment were also seen in 1982, 1990 and 1991. However those years all followed periods of recession when the Australian economy went backwards. By comparison, even at the height of the GFC in 2008, 194,000 jobs were created.

In May last year, Treasurer Wayne Swan made headlines when he pledged his budget would create 500,000 new jobs and drive unemployment to 4.5 per cent. But with 18 months left until the end of the government's term, analysts have questioned whether it can make good on the promise to reduce the number of unemployed people nationally by at least 100,000.

"It's going to be a tough ask to get unemployment that low, unless more people start to give up and not look for jobs any more," one analyst, who declined to be named, said last night.

Acting treasurer Bill Shorten last night admitted global turbulence throughout 2011 had made the government's job harder and caused job creation to slow. "While employment growth has slowed in the face of heightened global uncertainty, we've seen workers pick up a few extra hours of work each week," Mr Shorten said.

The opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey last night said the fact that more jobs were lost than created last year made a mockery of Mr Swan's claim to focus on "jobs, jobs, jobs".

NSW bore the brunt of the slump, with total unemployment jumping by 0.4 per cent to 5.6 per cent. But while overall unemployment remained steady at a respectable 5.2 per cent for December, analysts suggest the official figure could have been much more dire. "If the participation rate remained at 65.5 per cent, then the unemployment rate would have risen to 5.6 per cent," TD Securities head of Asian-Pacific research Annette Beacher said.

However the participation rate - a gauge of the population working or looking for work - in fact sunk to 65.2 per cent, its lowest level in almost two years. "This is the first definitive sign that some people have started giving up looking for work, and to be honest the situation in NSW is most likely going to get worse before it gets better," CommSec economist Savanth Sebastian said.

SOURCE

Consequences

2012-01-20T16:33:00.002+11:00

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."
--- T.S. Eliot

A follow-up to my "Coolest Video Ever" post:
While filming a piece for National Geographic, Jeb Corliss broke both legs in this crash on Table Mountain in South Africa, but survived and is reportedly in good spirits.

He knew the risks but flew anyway.
The timid will never know his type of defeat
....or his type of victory.

{hat-tip to PatDollard.com}

Why Wikipedia is doing the right thing on SOPA and PIPA

2012-01-19T19:21:00.001+11:00

Today, with the closure of one of the internet's richest resources. the English-speaking world stands greatly impoverished. In protest against two proposed bills in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate (the 'Stop Online Piracy Act' (SOPA) and the 'Protect IP Act' (PIPA) respectively), the English-language version of Wikipedia has taken itself offline for 24 hours. [That includes the Wikipedia links in this post, lest ye take the open internet for granted — ed.]

The provisions put forward in SOPA and PIPA enable the closing down and harassment of websites (not even necessarily located in the US) on the flimsiest of pretences: government censorship masquerading as copyright protection. But what exactly makes the laws so odious? There are four key, objectionable provisions, all of which are ripe for manipulation by rent-seeking parties (summarised from this link):

1. The Anti-Circumvention Provision, allowing the US government to close sites who offer advise on merely circumventing censorship mechanisms;

2. The “Vigilante” Provision, which would grant immunity from prosecution to internet service providers who pre-emptively block potentially offending sites, leaving them inherently vulnerable to pressures from a host of interested parties;

3. The Corporate Right of Action, enabling copyright holders to obtain an unopposed court order which would cut off foreign websites from payment processors and advertisers;

4. Expanded Attorney General Powers: therein giving the Attorney General the power to block any domain name and have their results barred from search engines: they would effectively cease to exist.

You don't need to be a rabid libertarian to realise both SOPA and PIPA are anathema to a society which readily proclaims its commitment to spreading liberal democracy; an integral part of which is the freedom of expression. After all, western nations have waged war purportedly in support of 'freedom' and regularly (this time rightly) criticise those nations which continually suppress freedom of expression online.

On their own turf however, governments seem evermore reluctant to allow the internet to remain the vital bastion of freedom that it is. Away from the stifling proclamations of state broadcasters and the mass media, the internet has revolutionised Joe Bloggs's ability to think independently: little wonder it is increasingly browbeaten from governments worldwide.

Economic consequences must considered too. If a website is to avoid being picked-off by the keen-eyed legal-sharpshooters that would undoubtedly thrive with the passing of these laws, they would have to employ an army of workers to constantly micromanage their site's content: one slip-up and it's potentially 'Game Over'. Who would want to invest in company stifled in a quagmire of draconian legislation, able to be shut down with the hit of 'Enter'? The internet's position as a motor of modern innovation would be seriously jeopardised.

SOURCE

The anachronism of public service broadcasting

2012-01-19T14:49:00.000+11:00

In last week’s Spectator, Charles Moore bemoaned the dumbing down of BBC Radio 3. In this week’s issue, several letters to the editor make the same point. Now, you may dismiss this as the snobbery of classical music afficionados. Or you might agree that Radio 3 presenters are indeed ruining the listening experience by telling you how you should feel about particular pieces of music (e.g. “blown away”) and entreating you to to email, text or tweet about what you are hearing. Frankly, I’m too much of a musical moron to have an opinion on the subject.

What this story really highlights is the futility of compulsorily funded “public service broadcasting”. The point of public service broadcasting is, one would assume, to address some failure in the broadcast market – to produce and air content which benefits the public, and which would not otherwise be produced or aired by commercial players. But if you buy this market failure argument, you have to concede that ‘public service broadcasting’ is likely to be a fairly elitist project. The intention may be to bring high culture to the masses, but in reality you will probably end up subsidising the tastes of the relatively wealthy and well educated with a tax paid largely by those who have no interest in such things. This is clearly a rather perverse outcome.

On the other hand, if you “dumb-down”, if you chase market share with populist programming, then the rationale for compulsorily funded public service broadcasting disappears. By way of illustration, let’s look at tonight’s broadcast schedule for the BBC 3 TV channel.

At 7pm, we get Pop’s Greatest Dance Crazes, “a top 50 countdown of the hippest, sexiest, quirkiest and campest dance crazes of the last 40 years.” At 8pm, it’s Don’t Tell the Bride, a reality TV show in which a man gets £12,000 to arrange his wedding, but isn’t allowed any contact with his wife-to-be while he does it: “Four weeks apart will push their relationship to the limit.” At 9pm, it’s How Sex Works, which is a documentary about twenty-somethings who get around a bit. At 10pm, it is time for Eastenders (a miserable soap opera), followed by documentary Bizarre Crimes (self-explanatory), and a series of cartoons imported from the US. If you are lucky enough to still be awake at 4.25am, you get to watch Cherry Healey look for “essential truths amongst the tales of sex and debauchery to see if losing your virginity is about more than just having sex for the first time.”

Can anyone really argue that programming like that justifies forcing television-owners, on pain of imprisonment, to pay £145.50 a year to a government agency? It’s a rhetorical question.

Public service broadcasting is caught between a rock and a hard place. If it sticks to its ‘market failure’ remit it will appear elitist and lose public support. If it chases a larger market, it will undermine any reasonable case for public funding. Ultimately, public service broadcasting and the licence fee that sustains it are an anachronism – something which might (just) have been appropriate when we had two TV channels and limited broadcasting spectrum, but no longer make sense in a world of thousand-channel satellite television and high-speed internet streaming. With almost limitless choice available at the click of a button, we don’t need government to entertain us, inform us, or filter our cultural diets for us. Curiously enough, the way that technology has democratized the media means that democracy itself no longer has any valuable role in broadcasting. It’s time the BBC and the government realized that.

SOURCE

The Tankard lady can dish it out but can't take it

2012-01-19T14:48:00.000+11:00

If she really is a committed Christian -- and it seems she is -- she is pretty pissweak to be offended by mention of it. Maybe she should read Matthew 10:33

"A blogger who characterised anti-porn activist Melinda Tankard Reist as a "fundamentalist Christian" says she has been asked to apologise - or be sued.

Tankard Reist - who briefed lawyers to warn off liberal blogger Jennifer Wilson - says it's not being called Christian she objects to, but the claim that she is "deceptive and duplicitous about her religious beliefs".

While Tankard Reist has not gone so far as to issue court proceedings yet, she complains social media has intensified the level of vituperation against outspoken figures such as herself.

The defiant blogger, who goes by the nom de plume No Place For Sheep, said she would continue to make strong criticisms of Tankard Reist - who can also dish it out. "I believe someone who makes public comment about morality really needs to be upfront about where they are coming from."

She insists that author Tankard Reist, whose resume includes advising anti-abortion senator Brian Harradine, is loath to discuss her links to evangelical Baptism.

"[Her] involvement with fundamentalist Christians opposed to abortion, contraception, surrogacy and homosexuality are well documented, and I have to wonder why she's singled me out at this point in time for writing about her religious beliefs," she said in a post written after the lawyer's letter.

Source

Dangerous religious fanatic masquerading as a scientist

2012-01-19T14:47:00.000+11:00

Islamic fundamentalism is not the only religion threatening the wellbeing of the West

The Alberta Tar Sands are believed to contain the planet’s second-largest deposit of oil, after Saudi Arabia, and extracting it takes a lot more energy than traditional drilling. If we start down that path, warns James Hansen, a climate activist and scientist with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, it will be “game over for the planet.”

For most of the last 600 million years, atmospheric CO2 was much higher than at present. The planet survived just fine. The planet flourished. Live evolved on land and in the sea. Corals evolved with CO2 more than 10X current levels. Shellfish evolved. Mammals evolved. Reptiles evolved.

Our country needs the energy – he should be fired immediately. This country was not founded by idiots, and will not survive them for long.

SOURCE

"FREE" (GOVERNMENT) HOSPITAL ROUNDUP

2012-01-19T14:45:00.001+11:00

Why would people go and buy something that they can get elsewhere for free? Lots of Australians spend big on private health insurance despite Australia's "free" (taxpayer-funded) hospitals because they know how poor bureaucratically-controlled healthcare can be. Three current articles on that below

"Free" hospital treatment not so free if they refuse to treat you

Brisbane pensioner Merv McLean furious after waiting more than 15 years for cataract surgery only to receive letter urging him to have surgery done privately

A BRISBANE pensioner waited more than 15 years to get his cataracts treated only to receive a letter urging him to have the surgery done privately. Retired public servant Merv McLean is furious after being told by the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital he had been dumped from the list because his condition was considered "non-urgent".

And he's not alone. In what doctors see as an affront to Queensland's free public health system, The Courier-Mail has obtained two letters sent by the RBWH to patients requiring cataract surgery telling them to go elsewhere.

Mr McLean has accused the hospital of giving him false hope, and robbing him of years of quality of life. "If I had known they were going to tell me to get lost I could have had the surgery 10 or 15 years ago," said Mr McLean, 75.

Australian Medical Association state president Richard Kidd described the Queensland Health strategy as "penny wise and pound foolish". "There are a number of studies from around the world that have shown that cataract surgery, if you do that in a timely way, you prevent over 30 per cent of the falls that people would otherwise have," Dr Kidd said.

Mr McLean, a former education department administration officer from Brookfield in Brisbane's west, said he had to wait nine years just to get on the waiting list for cataract surgery. He said he was staggered to get a letter last November from the hospital's executive director, David Alcorn.

"The length of the waiting list has meant we have not been able to provide this appointment for you," the letter said, suggesting he consider "alternative management options" with his doctor, optometrist or ophthalmologist.

The Courier-Mail has obtained a copy of a similar letter sent to another patient around the same time. Mr McLean is now having the cataracts removed privately. He said the surgery will cost him nearly $4000 - even with a pensioner discount. He complained to his local member Bruce Flegg (LNP, Moggill) who said Mr McLean had been treated appallingly.

Dr Alcorn said patients who urgently needed treatment received priority.

SOURCE

Victorian woman forced to fly 400km to give birth after hospital turns her away

PREGNANT women in rural Victoria are being forced to travel hundreds of kilometres to give birth because of a shortage of hospital beds. A Mildura mother was yesterday forced to fly to Bendigo after she was turned away from Mildura Base Hospital because there was no room for her.

It comes as the Herald Sun revealed today a baby boom had put pressure on hospital maternity wards.

Martine Fletcher gave birth to twin boys Lachy and Thomas this morning in Bendigo, more than 400km from her Red Cliffs home. Mrs Fletcher's mother, Susan van Steenis, said it was the second time her daughter had been turned away from the hospital. Ms van Steenis said her daughter was turned away from Mildura Base Hospital about 8am yesterday morning because the nursery was full.

She said after discussions with hospital staff her daughter, and son-in-law Toby, were taken by air ambulance to Bendigo. "It is absolutely ridiculous, this is twice it’s happened now," she told the Herald Sun this morning. "There's six beds in there. For a regional hospital in a place the size of Mildura. It’s totally inadequate," she said.

Ms van Steenis, herself a theatre nurse, said her daughter was flown to Adelaide during her first pregnancy three years ago where she gave birth to twin daughters, Bella and Romy. "It’s simply appaling."

She said her daughter had been left "absolutely distraught" by the ordeal. "She’s got two little girls here who are missing her, and we don’t know how long it will be until she can come home," she said.

Mildura Base Hospital chief Dane Huxley said the decision to fly Mrs Fletcher out was made in her best interests. “The clinical advice I had was that it wouldn’t be wise to keep her in our hospital,” he said.

“We have a six-bed special care nursery, last week it was almost empty, this week for whatever reason it was full. “If you put too many babies in special care nursery it does become dangerous and you have to make a decision on what is best for the patients. “You don’t want a specal care nursery that is full."

Mr Huxley said the incident was not indicative that there was a hospital bed crisis.

SOURCE

52% of Australians flee public hospitals

MORE THAN half of Australians now have private health insurance - and the insurance industry is reaping the benefits, boosting its revenue from premiums by more than $1.25 billion last financial year.

According to the Private Health Insurance Administration Council's annual report, the gap between insurers' revenue, which totalled $15.4 billion last year, and insurance payouts is widening, with increases in premiums in some cases outstripping inflation.

The Gillard government has seized on the revenue figures to argue 30 per cent health insurance rebate should be means-tested, which could save the budget up to $2.4 billion.

Legislation to strip high-income earners of the 30 per cent rebate on their private insurance has twice been rejected in Parliament, but the government's chances of a third effort succeeding received a massive boost in December when Labor secured an extra vote in the House of Representatives with the resignation of Harry Jenkins as Speaker.

With the votes of Greens MP Adam Bandt and independent MP Andrew Wilkie in hand, Labor only needs the support of just one more crossbenchers. West Australian Nationals MP Tony Crook has indicated he could support the bill, saying he was open to further discussions with the government.

The report showed that 52 per cent of Australians have general private health insurance and 45.4 per cent have private hospital cover. The latter exempts the policyholder from paying the Medicare surcharge of 1.5 per cent of income and guarantees the rebate.

According to Health Minister Tanya Plibersek, that is placing a massive strain on the scheme's financial position.

Means-testing the private health insurance rebate would affect 2.4 million health fund members, stripping individuals earning more than $80,000 a year and families earning more than $160,000 of the right to claim the tax break.

According to Treasury modelling, almost 8 million private health insurance policyholders would not be affected by the changes.

Ms Plibersek said it was not fair for ordinary workers to pay for the health cover of the wealthy. "Because the private health insurance industry is in a strong financial position, it is not appropriate for lower and middle-income Australians to be subsidising the health insurance of millionaires," she said."And while the industry grows, so does the cost to taxpayers of the private health insurance rebate - so that if we don't act now, the rebate will deprive the wider Australian health system of $100 billion over the next 40 years."

The report showed that while the industry's revenue stream from premiums grew by 8.8 per cent, benefits paid out to members only increased by 7.6 per cent.

Private health insurance incentives were introduced in 1997 to encourage Australians to take out insurance policies to support the struggling sector.

The rebate is now one of the most expensive and fastest growing areas of the health budget and is projected to cost taxpayers about $5 billion in 2011-12.

Treasury modelling estimates also showed that, if the changes to the private insurance rebate were to come into effect, 99.7 per cent of people would remain in some form of private cover as a result of the incentives of Lifetime Health Cover and the Medicare levy surcharge.

SOURCE

HRT breast cancer alert that led to thousands of women abandoning treatment was 'based on bad research'

2012-01-18T22:21:00.002+11:00

I have been pointing this out for years

British research which linked HRT to breast cancer and led to hundreds of thousands of women abandoning the treatment was ‘unreliable and defective’, says a damning review.

It is almost ten years since the study – the largest of its kind – contributed to a worldwide scare about the safety of Hormone Replacement Therapy. It was one of three major pieces of research which undermined the confidence of women and doctors in the therapy.

As a result GPs were advised to prescribe it on a short-term basis only to combat menopausal symptoms such as hot flushes and night sweats. They were also told not to use it as a treatment for the bone thinning disease osteoporosis – which can lead to deadly fractures. An estimated one million women gave up HRT in Britain, halving the number using it.

Scientists at Cancer Research UK’s Epidemiology Unit at Oxford, who carried out the MWS, said HRT doubled the risk of breast cancer and blamed it for an extra 20,000 British cases over the decade.

However, the new review led by Professor Samuel Shapiro, a leading epidemiologist at Cape Town Medical School, South Africa, says the size of the study was irrelevant because the design was flawed and this skewed its findings. Professor Shapiro claims the study failed on a number of criteria accepted in good quality research.

For example, cancers detected within a few months of the study’s start would have already been present when women were enrolled, but these were not excluded and this skewed the findings.

Women in the study were contacted through breast screening – but this in itself would have increased the number already aware of lumps or pre-cancerous changes and led to a bias in higher numbers of cancers being detected.

A key criticism is the ‘biological implausibility’ of HRT promoting new cancers – and of this effect being ‘switched off’ within months of a woman stopping using it.

The researchers also said the name Million Women Study implies an authority beyond criticism or refutation. ‘Size alone does not guarantee that the findings are reliable,’ said the review. ‘HRT may or may not increase the risk of breast cancer, but the MWS does not establish that it does.’

The review, published in the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care, is the final in a series looking at research linking HRT to breast cancer, which found flaws in two other major studies.

Review co-author Dr John Stevenson, consultant metabolic physician at Imperial College, London, and Royal Brompton Hospital London, said: ‘So much damage has been done by frightening women off HRT, in terms of reducing their quality of life, preventing bone loss and fractures and improving the risk of cardiovascular disease.

‘HRT is one of the cheapest treatments in medicine and we have yet to count the cost to the NHS because of women not having HRT.’

Professor Dame Valerie Beral, who led the Million Women Study, said the review authors were influenced by work as consultants to HRT manufacturers, and that 20 other studies had come to the same conclusion as MWS. [An "ad hominem" attack is about as weak a rejoinder as you get]

SOURCE

British Liberal leader hits out at Israel

2012-01-18T15:23:00.000+11:00

Israel doing 'immense damage' to peace process Nick Clegg says

Nick Clegg tilted Britain’s Middle East policy sharply towards the Palestinians on Monday with an attack on Israel’s settlement policies in the West Bank.

The Deputy Prime Minister drew a hostile reaction from Israel by saying the government’s continued construction on internationally recognised Palestinian land was “an act of deliberate vandalism” that undermined the basis of the Middle East peace process.

In some of the most critical language ever used by a senior European politician in government, Mr Clegg accused Israel of making the likelihood of a negotiated settlement to the conflict impossible to deliver. “It is an act of deliberate vandalism to the basic premise on which negotiations have taken place for years and years and years,” Mr Clegg said.

He said there was “no stronger supporter of Israel than myself as a beacon of democracy in the region”, but added: “The continued existence of illegal settlements risks making facts on the ground such that a two-state solution becomes unviable.

“That, in turn, will do nothing to safeguard the security of Israel itself or of Israeli citizens. That is why I condemn the continued illegal settlement activity in the strongest possible terms.”

He was speaking alongside Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, who is on a visit to London.

Mr Clegg’s comments reflect growing European impatience with the government Benjamin Netanyahu, the hawkish Israeli prime minister, who is seen by many Western officials as an obstacle to peace because of his refusal to freeze settlement building.

But while European and even American government officials regularly criticise Israel’s settlement policies, few have done so quite as bluntly, a fact that will strain the Government’s increasingly tense relations with Mr Netanyahu.

Israel reacted with predictable hostility, with a foreign ministry spokesman accusing Mr Clegg of “gratuitous bashing”. “It would be much better to contribute to peace by encouraging the fragile revival of Israeli-Palestinian talks,” the spokesman said.

Mr Abbas was delighted by so strong an endorsement of the Palestinian position. “That is exactly what we wanted to hear officially from the government of the United Kingdom,” he said.

Officials in Jerusalem say they now view Britain as one of the most hostile states to Israel in Europe, although the Government bowed to Israeli pressure by agreeing to abstain if a vote on Palestinian statehood was held in the UN Security Council.

The Palestinian Authority has refused to join peace talks with Israel unless Mr Netanyahu agrees to halt all settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, seen by the Palestinians as the capital of their future state.

With more than 600,000 settlers living on land occupied by Israel in the Six Day War of 1967, any further expansion of Jewish construction would make a Palestinian state unviable, Mr Abbas says.

Palestinians also claim that previous peace talks have led to an escalation of settlement construction as a result of Israeli leaders having to pacify the powerful Right-wing in the Jewish state.

David Cameron, who also met Mr Abbas in Downing Street yesterday, signalled his support for his deputy. “We think that time, in some ways, is running out for the two-state solution unless we can push forward now, because otherwise the facts on the ground will make it more and more difficult, which is why the settlement issue remains so important,” the Prime Minister said.

SOURCE

Stupid censorship in Germany

2012-01-18T15:22:00.001+11:00

You can read the whole thing on the net anyway

Annotated extracts of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" will be republished in Germany next week for the first time since the Nazi dictator's fall in 1945, the British publisher of the text says.

Peter McGee says "a brochure of 12 to 15 pages" will be published on January 26 "in which extracts from Mein Kampf will be printed on one side and commentary from a well-known historian on the other".

"Everyone knows (the book) and sees it as a sort of diabolical Nazi Bible," he said. "But people haven't read it and therefore haven't seen that it is the poor-quality and confused work of a totally twisted mind," said McGee.

Mein Kampf (My Struggle) has been banned in Germany since the end of World War II, and the southern state of Bavaria holds the rights until 70 years after the Nazi dictator's death in 1945.

Source

Update:

I actually regard Mein Kampf as an important educational resource that should be available to everyone. To understand the Nazi disaster, you need to understand the mind of Hitler and he sets out his thinking at great length in Mein Kampf.

Though I understand why the Green/Left would not want you to read it. You will find there, for instance, an echo of the constant Greenie panic about running out of resources. Hitler invaded Russia because he thought Germany was running out of resources and therefore needed to grab Russian resources.

Increase in temperatures will cut short lives, says "expert"

2012-01-18T15:21:00.001+11:00

What a lot of rubbish. It's cold that is bad for you. Deaths are much higher in winter. Another "modelling" exercise, no doubt. New Nostradamus also has a laugh at this "study"

A GLOBAL temperature rise of 2C by 2050 would result in increased loss of life, a new Queensland study has found. Scientists from the Queensland University of Technology and the CSIRO examined the "years of life lost" due to climate change, focusing on Brisbane.

"A two-degree increase in temperature in Brisbane between now and 2050 would result in an extra 381 years of life lost per year in Brisbane," lead researcher Associate Professor Adrian Barnett, from the university's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, said.

"A two-degree increase in temperature is the figure in the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says is dangerous, but could be reached unless more aggressive measures are undertaken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

Prof Barnett said the "years of life lost" measurement gives greater weight to deaths at younger ages instead of focusing only on elderly people. "We suspected that many temperature-related deaths were in the elderly, which would reduce the public health importance of temperature compared with other issues," he said. "In fact, we found the opposite, with a surprisingly high years of life lost figure."

Prof Barnett said that an increase of more than two degrees would be catastrophic. "A four-degree increase in temperature would result in an extra 3242 years of life lost per year in Brisbane."

Interestingly, the study found that a one-degree increase would result in a decrease in the number of lives lost. This is believed to be because the increase in heat-related years of life lost are offset by the decrease in cold-related years of life lost. The researchers said cold-related deaths were significant, even in a city with Brisbane's warm climate.

And many deaths could be avoided if people had better insulation in their houses. "Many houses in Brisbane are built of thin planks of wood and are poorly insulated, which means the occupants are exposed to whatever the temperature is outside," Prof Barnett said.

The researchers believed that while their work was focused on Brisbane, it contained helpful information to decision-makers in other areas as well.

The study has been published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

SOURCE

Europcar trying to suppress criticism of their practices

2012-01-18T15:19:00.002+11:00

There have been multiple complaints against this firm, both in Australia and overseas. I would never hire from them

CURRENT affairs show Today Tonight is in legal hot water for the second time this month after a hire-car company claimed the program had falsely reported that it was ripping off customers by charging them for damage they had not caused.

Europcar has launched Supreme Court action against the Seven Network over a show that aired on January 5, which claimed the company was scamming drivers by leaving dents on cars for months and charging three or four different people for the same damage.

Today Tonight claimed "victims" in three states were charged hundreds or thousands of dollars for dents and scratches they had not caused.

According to a former employee, dubbed a whistleblower by the show, when a car came back with a minor scratch the customer would be charged more than $3000.

But Europcar said the claims had been "found to be baseless". Europcar is claiming the show maliciously published the false statements and is seeking damages.

Today Tonight's producer Craig McPherson said: "We are aware of the claim and we'll be defending it. Since the report we have received more complaints from Europcar customers, which we are investigating. We are preparing another story which Europcar is aware of."

SOURCE

What Happened to the GOP's Free-Market Principles?

2012-01-17T22:52:00.001+11:00

You expect Democrats to accuse former businessman Mitt Romney of “putting profits over people — making a buck or a few million of them no matter what it took or who it hurt,” as Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse did in releasing a new Web video.

But it’s sad to see the economic ignorance displayed by Romney’s Republican rivals. Rick Tyler, long the closest aide to Newt Gingrich who is now running the pro-Gingrich super PAC, Winning Our Future, declares, “His business success comes from raiding and destroy businesses — putting people out of work, stealing their health care.” The PAC’s ad calls Romney “a predatory corporate raider.”

Gingrich himself says that Romney’s work buying and selling companies at the investment firm Bain Capital was comparable to “rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company.”

Rick Perry ran TV ads in Iowa saying that Romney “made millions buying companies and laying off workers.”

In a growing economy, companies succeed and fail every day. Technology changes. Consumer tastes change. New competitors offer a better product or a better price. Raw materials or labor becomes too expensive. Some companies just aren’t viable, and some investments turn out to have been mistaken.

That’s what the “creative destruction” of a market economy is all about. Companies constantly seek to serve consumers better. And often one company’s success means that other companies fail. Manufacturers of obsolete products often go out of business. Jobs and investments are lost, but what’s the alternative? Should we be keeping the firms that once made horse-drawn buggies, gramophones, and slide rules in business? No, we understand that the process of economic change makes us all better off, even though there can be short-term pain for the owners and employees of failed firms.

Republicans are supposed to know all this. That’s why they proclaim their devotion to free markets and oppose industrial policy, government subsidies, bailouts, and other schemes to override the market process and keep current firms in business even when they’re no longer meeting consumers’ needs.

But when a businessman runs for president, all bets are off. Republicans let fly with the same denunciations of normal business practices that Democrats do.

Think back to the 2008 campaign when Romney first ran for president. During a Republican debate at the Reagan Library on May 3, 2007, Sen. John McCain derided Romney’s leadership ability, saying, “I led ... out of patriotism, not for profit.” Challenged on his statement, McCain elaborated that Romney “managed companies, and he bought, and he sold, and sometimes people lost their jobs. That’s the nature of that business.” He could have been channeling Barack Obama.

There are plenty of good criticisms of Mitt Romney. His health care mandate in Massachusetts was a model for President Obama’s national mandate. No one knows what he really thinks about abortion and same-sex marriage, after he dramatically changed his positions at age 57 as he prepared to run for president. He wants to increase military spending by $2 trillion. Many of his foreign policy advisers helped to get us into the disastrous Iraq war.

But the fact that sometimes he closed companies and laid off workers is not a good reason to criticize him. We’d never get new companies like Staples, Domino’s, Bright Horizons, and Sports Authority — companies that Romney helped fund and nurture at Bain Capital — if investment capital was locked into existing companies.

And sometimes, as the movie “Other People’s Money” demonstrated, it takes a “predatory corporate raider” to go in and shake up a company, moving the land, labor, and capital to places where they can be more productive.

Republicans should stop attacking Romney for his role in the dynamic market process and spend more time explaining how they would limit government and improve the environment for business and economic growth.

SOURCE

My take on an ancient controversy

2012-01-17T16:52:00.000+11:00

The Roman Catholic church claims special authority for itself on account of the alleged fact that the disciple Peter was the first Bishop of Rome and that Christ had given Peter special powers that Peter passed on to later bishops of Rome. The Bishop of Rome is these days referred to as the Pope, which simply means "father". So there are 3 claims there in need of validation.

1). There is no mention in the NT that Peter was ever in Rome. It was Paul who went to Rome according to the NT. But could Peter have followed on later? If so, such an important event would surely have been noted somewhere at the time in the 1st century. The Catholic Encyclopedia can rustle up just 3 alleged 1st century references:

"Earlier still is Clement of Rome writing to the Corinthians, probably in 96, certainly before the end of the first century. He cites Peter's and Paul's martyrdom as an example of the sad fruits of fanaticism and envy. They have suffered "amongst us" he says, and Weizsaecker rightly sees here another proof for our thesis.

The Gospel of St. John, written about the same time as the letter Clement to the Corinthians, also contains a clear allusion to the martyrdom by crucifixion of St. Peter, without, however, locating it (John 21:18, 19).

The very oldest evidence comes from St. Peter himself, if he be the author of the First Epistle of Peter, of if not, from a writer nearly of his own time: "The Church that is in Babylon saluteth you, and so doth my son Mark" (1 Peter 5:13). That Babylon stands for Rome, as usual amongst pious Jews, and not for the real Babylon, then without Christians, is admitted by common consent (cf. F.J.A. Hort, "Judaistic Christianity", London, 1895, 155).

It should be obvious that these are all weak reeds to lean upon.

What did Clement mean by "amongst". That it meant "in Rome" is just one interpretation. Since Clement was bishop of Rome, however, it may be this selfsame sly allusion that gave rise to the later belief that Peter reached Rome. As Bishop of Rome, Clement would have an obvious interest in fostering such a myth.

I pass over the second "reference" in polite silence.

The third reference asserts that there were no Christians in Babylon at the time. But there certainly were Jews and the famous Babylonian Talmud eventually emerged as the product of their deliberations. So it is entirely plausible that Peter did go there in an attempt to make converts and had some success. So this passage too is no proof of anything.

I would have entertained the idea that "Babylon" was symbolic if the reference had come from a sometimes gnostic writer like St. John but Peter writes a perfectly straightforward book of instructions. I think we must take him at his word. He went to Babylon, not Rome.

2). Special powers conferred? The basis for this claim is the passage in Matthew 16:18. "And Jesus answering said to him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven. And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven."

Transliterating the relevant Greek of the original we get: "ou ei petros kai epi tautee tee petra oikodomeeso mou teen ekkleesian". That shows that Christ was using two different words for Peter and the rock upon which he was to build his "church'. He was making a distinction, not an equation. I go into more detail about the Greek passage here

An issue seldom addressed, however, is that Christ spoke Aramaic, not Greek. So what we read in Matthew is itself a translation. So what was Christ most likely to have been saying in Aramaic?

Alfred Persson has done the most extensive exploration of the Aramaic background to the text but he really rambles on so I will try to summarize: He points out that "petros" is the Aramaic word for "firstborn" but that it was also known at the time (educated Israelites at the time spoke Greek, as indeed did educated Romans) that the same word in Greek meant "rock". So Jesus was using that known double meaning to make a point vivid.

What point? What was the rock upon which he would build his group of followers? That is no mystery at all. There are numerous references in the NT which equate Jesus's TEACHINGS with a rock -- e.g. Matthew 7:24; 1 Corinthians 10:4. So Jesus expected his teachings to form the foundation of a new group. He was certainly right about that! To encourage his followers, Jesus then goes on to say that the wisdom he imparts is very special indeed. It will give his followers entry into the kingdom of heaven. So the new group will be a privileged one indeed. Orthodox teachings among the Israelites at the time foresaw a resurrection to life on earth, not a transformation into spirit beings.

But what about: "And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven."? Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Catholics claim that the passage gives Christians on earth the power to control events in Heaven. But that is surely absurd. Christ was surely saying that his teachings are an accurate guide to what has already been bound or loosed in Heaven.

3). But say we ignore all of the above and concede that Peter was given some special power. Where is there any statement or evidence in Christ's words that this power could be passed on? There is none. So all three of the Roman claims are mere assertions with no obvious truth value.

An Alarming Trend Across the Continent

2012-01-17T13:54:00.000+11:00

Last Thursday the emeritus Norwegian Labour politician Thorbjørn Jagland, now an apparatchik in the EU superstate, expressed his concern “that other countries, and not just Norway, will start to demand to govern themselves.” The horror!

Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer has kindly translated Mr. Jagland’s piece. The translator includes this note:

"Have a look at this op-ed authored by Thorbjørn Jagland, former Norwegian Labour Prime Minister, now current Secretary General of the Council of Europe and Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel committee. It was published a couple of days ago, and gives us an insight into the totalitarian mentality of diehard EU fanatics."

An excerpt from the translated op-ed from Nye Meninger:

In the current political climate in Europe he can expect the support of the nationalist right to break up not only the vast open European market which Norway is part of through our EEA membership, but also the euro and the entire EU cooperation.

This will be the starting point of a renationalizing process of politics in a wide range of areas, including human rights policies. Politicians would then be able to emulate the behavior of Prime Minister Orban in Hungary when he answered the critics of the new Hungarian constitution: “Nobody has the right to tell us which laws we adopt.”

Yes, we do. This is precisely why we built the new Europe after the war: the obligation and the right to interfere in each other’s internal affairs. European countries accepted the commitments stipulated in the European Convention on Human Rights which requires us to do so. A court was even established in order that citizens could take their own countries to court. The European nations are collectively responsible for ensuring that the verdicts are upheld.

The single market of which Norway is a part through the EEA agreement, is an expression of the same: mutual rights and obligations.

I see an alarming trend across the continent at the moment: more and more people are talking about taking back the decision-making processes from the EU. Ørnhøi’s wish may come true, but perhaps not in the way he had intended, namely that other countries, and not just Norway, will start to demand to govern themselves.

In an age when Wilders, the True Finns and Le Pen’s daughter appear in the shadows, it’s simply too dangerous to jeopardize what is built through agreements and legislation.

SOURCE

Huge new energy source

2012-01-17T13:52:00.000+11:00

A discovery by scientists may have more than doubled the world’s energy reserves. They have found vast amounts of natural gas frozen into the sea bed, potentially containing more energy than all the world’s known coal, oil and gas reserves combined. The methane gas is mixed with water, and frozen solid by the high pressure and low temperatures in the deep sea.

Methane hydrate, as the substance is known, has long been regarded by oil and gas companies as a nuisance, because it can block marine drilling rigs. Now a study by Statoil, Norway’s state oil firm and a leading global gas producer, suggests it should be reclassified as a significant fuel resource, with enough buried in the oceans to power the world for decades or even centuries.

“The energy content of methane occurring in hydrate form is immense, possibly exceeding the combined energy content of all other known fossil fuels,” said Espen Andersen, Statoil’s exploration manager in unconventional hydrocarbons, who will present his study at an energy conference next week.

Such claims will anger environmentalists, who fear that global exploitation of the deep sea bed would put marine life at risk, especially whales and dolphins, which are sensitive to noise. It would also mean an increase in the burning of fossil fuel — so worsening climate change.

The research follows the growing excitement generated by Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (Jogmec), which has been drilling test wells into methane hydrate reserves in the Nankai trough, off Japan’s southwest coast.

It predicts the first gas will be extracted this year, and suggests there could be enough methane hydrate in the trough to supply all Japan’s energy for 300 years.

Such discoveries have sparked a global search to find other areas with high concentrations of methane hydrate, with Statoil one of the leading companies involved. Huge reserves are already believed to lie off China, South Korea and India, countries that are all currently reliant on imports.

SOURCE

Joblessness to rise this year: ANZ

2012-01-17T13:51:00.000+11:00

The Labor Party is gradually destroying the healthy economy that John Howard left them

AUSTRALIA is set for a higher rate of unemployment in 2012, new figures show. The number of job advertisements on the internet and in newspapers fell 0.9 per cent in December compared with the previous month, ANZ said today. Total job ads were 2.6 per cent lower than in December 2010 - the first negative annul growth rate since February 2010.

ANZ also reported a fall of 0.8 per cent in the trend measure of total job ads in December.

The bank's head of Australian economics Katie Dean said this "points to, at best, modest employment gains for the Australian economy over the coming months''. "Indeed, the current trend rate of employment growth is unlikely to be fast enough to absorb the forecast growth in the labour force in the short term,'' Ms Dean said. "As a result, ANZ forecasts the unemployment rate to rise to 5.5 per cent by mid-2012.''

She said she expected the unemployment rate to stay at this elevated level for most of 2012, before falling modestly in 2013 as economic activity started to pick-up, in response to strong mining and infrastructure investment and a likely extended period of relatively-low domestic interest rates.

Australia's unemployment rate was last reported to be 5.3 per cent in November.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday releases official employment figures for the month of December. The median market forecast is for 10,000 jobs to have been added in the month with the unemployment rate staying at 5.3 per cent.

SOURCE

The Lords are the only decent politicians left in Britain

2012-01-16T21:47:00.000+11:00

It’s always a poor day for politics when the House of Lords becomes not simply the nation’s second Chamber but its conscience, as it did with the Welfare Reform Bill this week. Does it take being ennobled and stuck in an anachronistic institution to be able to speak up for the very poorest and sickest among us?

Anyone who had glibly assumed that Cameron’s own family experience of disability may make his Government less keen to cut the benefits of those who really can’t work was wrong. His experience is of profound disability, not profound poverty.

As the Bill unravels, few deny the need for reform or cutting the deficit. What we cannot stomach is picking on the ill or dying. Is a child born with multiple disabilities, never able to work or pay National Insurance, a ‘something for nothing’ scrounger? Should those with a terminal diagnosis have to worry if they have enough money to get through the week? This is the cruel reality of what was proposed.

Classifying all those on benefits as workshy semi-criminals will not wash, if we get back to basics. We care for the weakest out of decency, not statist ideology. Cuts to the Disability Living Allowance mean the disabled and their families living on less money, and continual assessments.

Lord Patel put it forcefully in the debate: ‘I am sympathetic to cutting the deficit, but I am highly sympathetic to sick and vulnerable people not being subject to something that will make their lives more miserable.’

What does he know? Aren’t the Lords just a bunch of inbred toffs?

Actually, I have had to reassess my view. Lord Patel is an expert on the rights of the disabled. The British-Tanzanian son of Indian immigrants, he is an obstetrician who has specialised in high-risk pregnancies, foetal-growth retardation and standards in health and clinical provision. He may indeed know a thing or two in a way the average supine MP doesn’t.

Indeed, I’ve been impressed the last few times I’ve been to the Lords. Yes, there are elderly hereditaries and pompous bishops – but also people with all types of expertise who would never have been MPs.

As the political class narrows to comprise privileged clones who have done nothing but PR, law or media, we need a Lords full of those who have lived differently. If political success is won only by thrusting, photogenic youthful people with perfect families, we are all poorer for it.

SOURCE

Obama’s Politics of Deceit

2012-01-16T21:44:00.001+11:00

Dick McDonald

Probably 75% of Americans pay no attention to politics except for what they hear on late night comedy shows. That leaves most of them vulnerable to Hollywood-based liberal propaganda fed to them on television and in movies. Listening to the latest propaganda out of President Obama’s mouth proves his writers are nothing but clones of Aaron Sorkin and his liberal socialist “West Wing” writers spewing populist lies and deceit. We read:

Obama asked Congress for the authority to consolidate the roles of several federal agencies which he said would lead to streamlined services and a smaller government workforce.

The proposal comes at a politically opportune moment for the president, who has faced sustained Republican criticism that his administration has failed to tame a bloated federal bureaucracy.

With an eye squarely on his reelection campaign, Obama announced that he would initially focus on merging sprawling entities that deal with small businesses in a bid to save $3 billion by eliminating more than 1,000 jobs over the next decade.

Just how dumb does Obama think the American people are? Trying to steal the Republican issue of a smaller government, this arrogant community organizer plans to save 1,000 jobs after adding 200,000 new Federal jobs since he took over.

His in-house lame stream media will now have an Obama speech to publicize that he is a reformer of the bloated bureaucracy. I want to throw up – a feeling I get nightly watching Letterman, Stewart, Leno, etc.

Comment received via email

Britain's nasty black racist politician again

2012-01-16T14:44:00.002+11:00

We read:

"Ed Miliband faced new calls to rebuke Labour frontbencher Diane Abbott last night after she told a young, Tory-voting black graduate who asked her for work that she wasn’t doing the ‘black thing’ and should ‘go and work for a white Conservative’ instead.

The new race row involving Ms Abbott comes two weeks after she was forced to apologise for saying ‘white people love to divide and rule’ following the trial of the killers of black teenager Stephen Lawrence.

Politics graduate Jade Knight, 25, told yesterday how she approached Ms Abbott about the chances of work after recognising her at a branch of Boots in London’s Piccadilly.

‘So I went downstairs and found Ms Abbott and said I hoped she didn’t mind me asking her, but if there was any kind of work I could do for her, I would love the opportunity.

‘She said, “You’d be better off working for a white Conservative. You’re a black conservative, you don’t do the black thing.” I couldn’t believe she had said it.

‘She was basically accusing me of selling out, which is not true. I told her being a conservative wasn’t going against my heritage. Anyone who understands black culture knows black culture can be very conservative. I thought she would understand that as she is educated.’

Source

Time-lapse video shows how a glacier disappears in just FOUR YEARS

2012-01-16T14:41:00.000+11:00

This proves only that photographers are not big on history. See the article following the one immediately below

This shocking time lapse video shows how a glacier has receded thousands of feet in just four years. The footage of Alaska's Columbia glacier was taken by expert and photographer James Balog and his team between May 2007 and September 2011.

Balog used to a climate change skeptic himself but eventually went on to start the Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), the most comprehensive photographic study of glaciers ever conducted.

His new documentary Chasing Ice will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, on January 21, the Huffington Post reports.

The EIS team currently has 27 time lapse cameras in 15 places in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska and in the Rocky Mountains. Their next venture will be a comprehensive study in British Colombia, Canada.

Balog told the Idaho Press: 'Shrinking glaciers are the canary in the global coal mine. 'They are the most visible, tangible manifestations of climate change on the planet today.'

SOURCE

The Glacier Climate Scam

One of the more popular climate scams employed by the EPA, Katherine Hayhoe and many others – is to show photographs of glaciers from the 1940s (or later) next to recent photos. The implication being that these glaciers started to retreat sometime recently, and that it is due to global warming.

This is blatant fraud. These glaciers have been retreating for hundreds of years, and it has nothing to do with CO2. The glacier in the EPA photograph above retreated eight feet per day between 1794 and 1879.

As you enter Glacier Bay in Southeast Alaska you will cruise along shorelines completely covered by ice just 200 years ago.

Explorer Captain George Vancouver found Icy Strait choked with ice in 1794, and Glacier Bay was barely an indented glacier. That glacier was more than 4000 ft. thick, up to 20 miles or more wide, and extended more than 100 miles to the St.Elias Range of mountains.

By 1879 naturist John Muir found that the ice had retreated 48 miles up the bay. By 1916 the Grand Pacific Glacier headed Tarr inlet 65 miles from Glacier Bay’s mouth.

Same story for glaciers in Europe.

Clarence and Richmond Examiner Tuesday 14 October 1902

SOURCE (See the original for links)

Whaler in Aust waters stand-off

2012-01-16T14:40:00.000+11:00

This report is from a couple of days ago but it shows the weak position of the Gillard government. If Gillard expects respect from Japan while she gives safe harbour to ships that attack the Japanese fleet, she is very optimistic indeed. There's probably an international convention against protecting piracy too, which Japan could accuse Australia of breaching.

It would be a great loss of face for Japan to surrender in the face of Greenie attacks so the Greenies by their actions ensure that Japan will continue whaling.

Whale meat is not popular in Japan and the trade would die out of its own accord without Greenie meddling. As it is, Japan has resorted to handing out free whale meat in schools in order to reduce their unused stocks of it

A Japanese whaling ship has defied high level Australian complaints and has stayed in the waters of World Heritage-listed Macquarie Island. The harpoon-equipped whale hunter, Yushin Maru No3, was still there late yesterday, hours after Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the ship was leaving.

"I'm aware that there has been one vessel which I'm advised has been in Australian territorial waters and I'll advise that it will leave Australian territorial waters," Ms Gillard said.

The Australian embassy told the Japanese Government on Tuesday that whaling vessels were not welcome in the country's waters, repeating earlier complaints. But the Japanese ship was photographed yesterday within a few miles of the coast of Macquarie, which is part of the state of Tasmania.

The Sea Shepherd anti-whaling group said the harpoon ship continued trailing the vessel Bob Barker inside the 12 nautical mile territorial limit all day. The Bob Barker's first mate, Peter Hammarstedt, said, "Things seem to be reaching a boiling point here. "It has followed us on circuits of the island, keeping right inside the 12-mile zone."

The Bob Barker sought refuge at Macquarie in an attempt to shake the harpoon ship off its stern. As long as some vessels of the Japanese fleet are able to keep tabs on Sea Shepherd activists, the others can keep clear and continue whaling.

Meanwhile, Sea Shepherd leader Paul Watson said from far south of Western Australia last night that the Japanese security ship Shonan Maru No2 had left the tail of his vessel, Steve Irwin, to be replaced by the harpoon ship Yushin Maru No2.

SOURCE

Britain's finest again. Nobody can tell them anything. All they know is political correctness. Do they even learn first aid any more?

2012-01-16T00:45:00.000+11:00

Woman driver dying from a stroke was arrested by traffic police who thought she was drunk

Traffic police arrested a woman for drink driving when she was actually dying from a stroke, an inquest heard today. Julie Hawkins, 55, crashed her car and was tended by another motorist who noticed the side of her face was drooping.

But when police arrived on the scene they arrested her on suspicion of drink driving - even though another driver told them Mrs Hawkins was displaying the classic symptoms of a 'catastrophic' stroke.

The officers breathalysed the mother-of-three because her speech was slurred and she could only give them one-word answers.

The inquest heard mother-of-three Mrs Hawkins collapsed as she was taken from her car in Pontyclun, Wales, on October 14 and died of a stroke less than five hours later. A post mortem examination showed Mrs Hawkins, from nearby Pontypridd, had no alcohol in her blood or urine at the time of the accident, as she drove home for a 50th birthday party.

Driver Jonathan Sharpe told the inquest how he went to help after seeing Mrs Hawkins’ Peugeot 107 swerve into an oncoming car. He said: 'I opened the car door and at first I thought maybe she had too much to drink. 'But then I saw her face was drooping, I think on the left-hand side. 'They were the classic symptoms of a stroke. I would liken it to the advert on TV.'

Mr Sharpe said as soon as police arrived he told them about Mrs Hawkins' symptoms but they went ahead and arrested on suspicion of drink-driving. After Mrs Hawkins collapsed and an ambulance arrived paramedics noticed her lips were purple.

Pc Rhodri Wilson told the inquest Mrs Hawkins gave only single word answers to his questions and he arrested her on suspicion of drink driving. He said her speech was slurred and she replied 'no' when he asked if she had been drinking.

A spokeswoman from South Wales Police said: 'The officers acted in good faith based on the information presented to them in difficult circumstances.' [Rubbish!!]

The Cardiff inquest heard Mrs Hawkins was taking painkillers for headaches in the weeks before the crash. She died at 3.30am on October 15 at the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff, after a scan revealed a stroke.

Mrs Hawkins is survived by sons Kristian and Nicholas and daughter Laura, all in their twenties.

Pathologist Dr Allen Gibbs told the hearing: 'In my opinion she lost control of the car when she began to have a stroke which later became catastrophic.'

The jury returned a narrative verdict that Mrs Hawkins, of Llanharan, near Pontypridd, South Wales, died of a stroke.

SOURCE

Even Obama opposes SOPA

2012-01-16T00:42:00.001+11:00

He probably sees that in a year's time there may be a Republican president who might use it to censor Democrats

The Obama administration said Saturday that it strongly opposed central elements of two congressional efforts to enforce copyrights on the Internet, all but killing the current versions of legislation that has divided both political parties and pitted Hollywood against Silicon Valley.

The comments by the administration's chief technology officials, posted on a White House blog Saturday, came as growing opposition to the legislation had already led sponsors of the bills to reconsider a measure that would force Internet service providers to block access to websites that offer or link to copyrighted material.

"Let us be clear," the White House statement said, "online piracy is a real problem that harms the American economy." But, it added, "We will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet."

The bills under consideration in Congress were designed to combat the theft of copyrighted materials by preventing U.S. search engines such as Google and Yahoo from directing users to sites that allow for the distribution of stolen materials. They would cut off payment processors such as PayPal that handle transactions.

The bills would also allow private citizens and companies to sue to stop what they believed to be theft of protected content. Those and other provisions set off fierce opposition among Internet companies, technology investors and free speech advocates, who said the bills would stifle online innovation, violate the First Amendment and even compromise national security by undermining the integrity of the Internet's naming system.

SOURCE

Don't mention the word fat, says Weight Watchers

2012-01-15T15:00:00.000+11:00

We read:

"Weight Watchers Australia has banned the word "fat" from its online message board in what appears to be another case of political correctness going too far.

Disgusted members of the Weight Watchers community forum are being told the three-letter word is no longer considered acceptable language on the site.

Posts containing any mention of "fat" are blocked and attract an automated reply: "Sorry, but your message contains language that we consider to be inappropriate for WeightWatchers.com.au message boards and violates our community standards and conduct guidelines, which are part of our terms and conditions.

"The following word is not permissible on our site: FAT. "If you would still like to send your message, go back and delete the word." A member, who contacted The Courier-Mail, said "fat" had become a "dirty word" on the Weight Watchers message board last month.

Source

"We cannot rule out..."

2012-01-15T14:59:00.001+11:00

The paper below looks into the much touted "runaway" greenhouse effect and concludes that it is not likely until billions of years into the future. But to remain safe from vengeful Warmists, the authors say "We cannot rule out" such an effect happening sooner.

I cannot rule out the possibility that some of the hardcore Warmists will one day admit to their fraud but I would be foolish to plan on it.

And the paper commits a scientific howler about Venus. The high surface temperature on Venus is predictable as an adiabatic effect. It is caused by the great weight of the huge Venusian atmosphere. Invoking a greenhouse effect is unparsimonious

The ultimate climate emergency is a "runaway greenhouse": a hot and water vapour rich atmosphere limits the emission of thermal radiation to space, causing runaway warming. Warming ceases only once the surface reaches ~1400K and emits radiation in the near-infrared, where water is not a good greenhouse gas. This would evaporate the entire ocean and exterminate all planetary life. Venus experienced a runaway greenhouse in the past, and we expect that Earth will in around 2 billion years as solar luminosity increases. But could we bring on such a catastrophe prematurely, by our current climate-altering activities? Here we review what is known about the runaway greenhouse to answer this question, describing the various limits on outgoing radiation and how climate will evolve between these. The good news is that almost all lines of evidence lead us to believe that is unlikely to be possible, even in principle, to trigger full a runaway greenhouse by addition of non-condensible greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. However, our understanding of the dynamics, thermodynamics, radiative transfer and cloud physics of hot and steamy atmospheres is weak. We cannot therefore completely rule out the possibility that human actions might cause a transition, if not to full runaway, then at least to a much warmer climate state than the present one. High climate sensitivity might provide a warning. If we, or more likely our remote descendants, are threatened with a runaway greenhouse then geoengineering to reflect sunlight might be life's only hope

SOURCE

Lubos Motl also has a laugh at this paper

Long distance rail travel dying

2012-01-15T14:56:00.000+11:00

Both the Indian Pacific and the Ghan now to run only once a week

WA'S travel and tourism rail icon the Indian Pacific is under threat and will slash services to stay afloat.

The world-famous train linking WA with the eastern states via the Nullarbor Plain is battling competition from low-cost airlines and the cruise ship market, amid slumping tourism and a high Australian dollar.

But its owner, Great Southern Railway, says China could come to the rescue as visitor numbers from the US, Britain and Europe drop.

GSR has been forced to cut back services on the Indian Pacific, which runs between Perth and Sydney via Adelaide, dropping back to one service a week from March 28 two months earlier than it usually scales back for the low season.

The Ghan, linking Darwin and Adelaide via Alice Springs, will from April 4 also only operate one service a week.

The Indian Pacific, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2010, and The Ghan are regularly mentioned in lists of the world's great rail journeys.

GSR interim general manager Russell Westmoreland could not rule out staff cuts in the future. "This is a commercial decision, like we saw Qantas had to do last year," he said. "We know it will have an impact on guests, but it is what we need to do for the survival of the industry.

"We have a lot of fixed costs before we even put a guest on the train. We have to hire the locos, hire the track and put staff on train, before we welcome one paying guest. But we're competing with airlines, cheap holidays in Bali, Fiji and places like that, so have to be smarter about the ways we do things."

The biggest threat is cruise ships. With most ships flying under international flags, operators pay staff wages based on offshore awards in different currencies.

Tourism group Australia's Golden Outback chief executive Jack Eerbeek said GSR could ensure its future by "freshening up" its "fantastic" product and catering for an army of retiring baby boomers.

"While the Indian Pacific has been well maintained, there is nothing new, like an observation deck, or a double-decker train cabin," he said. "Some of these new things could rekindle some interest in the product."

GSR is promoting travel to Perth and a hire car to drive to Albany and Esperance, then up via Wave Rock to Kalgoorlie. But Mr Eerbeek said GSR should promote an alternative.

"We'd like to see them take their car on the train and get off at Kalgoorlie, then drive down to Esperance and Albany and then up to Perth," he said. "Unfortunately, there are no facilities for taking cars off at Kalgoorlie at the moment."

SOURCE

Voter ID: Necessary or Discriminatory?

2012-01-14T22:30:00.002+11:00

You need a proper form of government ID to drive a vehicle, buy alcohol or tobacco products, and even to apply for welfare assistance, so why not require an ID to vote?

That’s the line of thinking of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who, along with South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, are filing suit against the U.S. Department of Justice, which recently rejected the state’s new Voter ID law, enforcing provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Last May, South Carolina state lawmakers passed a law requiring voters show a valid, state-approved photo ID before they cast a ballot. But the U.S. Justice Department rejected the law saying it discriminated against minority voters.

But when you need a valid form of government ID in so many other daily situations, how is it discriminatory to ask for one before exercising your right to vote?

States like Georgia, Indiana, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Kansas, Tennessee and, if approved by the Department of Justice, Texas, all have strict photo ID voting laws. South Carolina hopes to join them.

Supporters of voter ID say it helps to prevent voter fraud. “Voting in this country is one of our most valuable honors and rights as U.S. citizens,” says Bill Wilson, president of Americans for Limited Government (ALG). “If people lose trust in the voting system then our entire democracy and the framework of our government is lost. Requiring voters to show a valid ID is an easy step to take that keeps people’s trust in the system.”

On the other hand, many agree with the concerns coming from the U.S. Justice Department that voter ID can lead to discrimination.

When voter ID was passed in Mississippi last year, many felt it was an attack on non-whites. “Our analysis shows that Mississippi’s voter ID law is another example of a law with a racially discriminatory effect being implemented over minority voters’ strong objections,” Barbara Arnwine, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told the Huffington Post. “Seventy-five percent of minorities in the state said no to having to comply with what amounts to a modern-day poll tax in order to exercise their fundamental right to vote.”

Voter ID is a contentious topic that clearly strikes a nerve with those who are adamantly against it as well as those who fully support it, which is likely why many states have no voter ID laws at all.

But despite the arguments for or against voter ID, America’s past does contain allegations and some possible shreds of proof of voter fraud.

One such controversial election was in 1984 in Indiana’s 8th district. The election battle was so tight between Rep. Frank McCloskey (D-IN) and Republican-challenger Rick McIntyre that the results were decided upon in Congress. After a recount of votes by Indiana’s Secretary of State that ruled McIntyre the winner, the Democratic-controlled House refused to seat either candidate until it conducted its own investigation. With a task force leading the investigation composed of two Democrats and one Republican, McCloskey took his seat in the House where he was claimed the winner by only four votes. Republicans temporarily left the House Chamber in protest.

In another instance, during the 1996 Congressional elections, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) came under fire of Republicans as she took her place in the House replacing former incumbent Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-CA) in California’s 46th district.

House sources to this day say former Rep. Dornan’s seat was stolen from him. The House Oversight Committee, then led by Republicans, launched an investigation into the race and found that non-U.S. citizens voted in the election, possibly attributing to Rep. Sanchez’s lead over Dornan.

Speculation still ensues over recent elections such as now Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) winning over former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) in the 2008 Senate election in Minnesota State. Also, the Washington State governor’s race of 2004 was decided by 133 votes out of 2.8 million cast. Recounting the votes a third time was the ticket for Democrat Christine Gregoire who was declared a winner by a state judge even after losing in two separate recounts against Republican Dino Rossi.

These states that want a strict voter ID law want to protect the rights of voters and the honor of the voting system. Their objective is not to discriminate.

What happens when citizens lose trust in a nation’s government is they become subjects instead of citizens. In the words of Joseph Stalin: “The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” Those words should never ring true in America.

SOURCE

Doubts about Harry Reid's most recent win might also have been mentioned above

"Worse than Apartheid" in the new South Africa

2012-01-14T14:55:00.002+11:00

While South Africa has seen steady economic growth in the 17 years after apartheid, it has also experienced an abiding racial divide. That partition is expressed in enduring prejudice on both sides and persistent economic segregation. Remarkably, income inequality rose after apartheid ended: redistribution programs have mainly benefited a politically connected elite. Most whites and a few blacks live in the first world. But out of a total population of 50 million, 8.7 million South Africans, most of them black, earn $1.25 or less a day. Millions live in the same township shacks, travel in the same crowded minibuses (called taxis in South Africa) and, if they have jobs, work in the same white-owned homes and businesses they did under apartheid — all while coping with some of the world's worst violent crime and its biggest HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The ANC blames apartheid's legacy and, as party spokesman Keith Khoza describes it, "the reluctance of business to come to the party." But 17 years is almost a generation. The government's failure to transform South Africa from a country of black and white into a "rainbow nation," in Archbishop Desmond Tutu's phrase, means black poverty is still the key political issue. A second, related one, however, is the ANC's dramatic loss of moral authority. At 93, Mandela is still among the most admired people on earth. But his party has become synonymous with failure — and not coincidentally, arrogance, infighting and corruption. Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and, at 80, still the nation's moral conscience, encapsulated South African political debate last year when he came out of retirement to give two speeches. In the first he asked whites to pay a wealth tax in recognition of their persistent advantage. In the second he called the ANC "worse than the apartheid government."

Africa is littered with liberation movements that, upon victory, forgot the people in whose name they fought. That era is coming to an end as the continent becomes more democratic and prosperous. The International Monetary Fund says seven of the world's 10 fastest growing economies are African, despite holdovers like Zimbabwe. Is South Africa, the continent's economic and political powerhouse, a gateway to this bright future or a window on its unhappy past?

The national Special Investigating Unit, which targets corruption, reckons that up to a quarter of annual state spending — $3.8 billion — is wasted through overpayment and graft. The Auditor General says a third of all government departments have awarded contracts to companies owned by officials or their families; in December it found that three-quarters of all tenders in one ANC-ruled province, the Eastern Cape, rewarded officials in this way. Those being investigated for suspected corruption include two ministers, the country's top policeman and the head of the ANC's Youth League, Julius Malema. (All deny the charges.)

Since [President] Zuma was elected, the DA says the state has spent $50 million on refurbishing his homes. Tellingly, Zuma goes after those who would check his behavior. In November the ANC-led Parliament passed a law known as the "secrecy bill," which penalizes whistle-blowers or journalists in possession of secret documents and allows no public-interest defense. He has installed unqualified allies in top positions across the justice system. Meanwhile, internal party politicking, particularly Zuma's rivalry with Malema, has overshadowed government, something that will only increase in the run-up to a party conference in Bloemfontein in December at which Zuma is running for re-election as ANC President.

More HERE

Jews who don't know a Nazi symbol when they see one???

2012-01-14T14:54:00.001+11:00

This is a complete absurdity. New York Jews sure should keep away from India. Symbols like the one above are plastered up everywhere in India.

On the Nazi symbol the arms face forward. Above you see that they face backward, which the way they usually (though not always) face in Asia. They are a common Asian good luck symbol.

And this might be an occasion to note that the Nazis did NOT call their symbol a swastika. They called it a "Hakenkreuz" (hooked cross). It was only purblind Anglo-Saxons who confused it with the Asian symbol known in India as a "swastik".

And why did the Nazis choose that symbol? Because one of their American predecessors (a "Progressive") said it was two entwined letters "S". And why "S"? For socialism, of course! The Hakenkreuz is a symbol of socialism!

I might as well straighten out all the confusions about this so I will also mention that the swastik associated with the Indian elephant god (Ganesha) goes the same way as the Nazi symbol. Don't ask me why but Ganesha devotees were doing it that way long before Hitler came along.

I in fact have on my wall a copper swastik with a Ganesha figure in the middle of it but I guess I had better not take it with me if ever I go to New York again. People who can't see which way the arms are facing above probably would not be able to see the Ganesha figure in the middle of my swastik either!

The owner of a Brooklyn jewelry store criticized for selling swastika earrings will reportedly stop selling the controversial item.

New York City Councilman Steve Levin, D-Brooklyn, visited Bejeweled in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, on Wednesday and met with owner Young Sook Kim, who agreed to remove them from the shelves, the Daily News reports.

A day earlier, politicians and advocates told FoxNews.com that the earrings were the latest example of anti-Semitism in New York and New Jersey. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer demanded that the store immediately stop selling them.

"Let me be clear -- a swastika is not a fashion statement," Stringer said in a statement to FoxNews.com. "It is the most hateful symbol in our culture, and an insult to any civilized person."

But the store's manager defended the $5.99 earrings, saying the swastika is a symbol of eternity in Tibetan Buddhism, not just a symbol popularized by Nazi Germany. "It's not a Nazi symbol," Kim told FoxNews.com on Wednesday. "I don't know what's the problem. My earrings are coming from India as a Buddhist symbol."

Source

Ozone holers expect a cooling Arctic!

2012-01-14T14:53:00.002+11:00

What happened to all that melting that was supposed to be going on in the Arctic? Ya gotta laugh! To explain why the Montreal ban on CFC's is not stopping ozone depeletion, they let global cooling in the door

GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 38, L24814, 5 PP., 2011
doi:10.1029/2011GL049784

Arctic winter 2010/2011 at the brink of an ozone hole

B.-M. Sinnhuber et al.

Abstract

The Arctic stratospheric winter of 2010/2011 was one of the coldest on record with a large loss of stratospheric ozone.

Observations of temperature, ozone, nitric acid, water vapor, nitrous oxide, chlorine nitrate and chlorine monoxide from the Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS) onboard ENVISAT are compared to calculations with a chemical transport model (CTM). There is overall excellent agreement between the model calculations and MIPAS observations, indicating that the processes of denitrification, chlorine activation and catalytic ozone depletion are sufficiently well represented. Polar vortex integrated ozone loss reaches 120 Dobson Units (DU) by early April 2011. Sensitivity calculations with the CTM give an additional ozone loss of about 25 DU at the end of the winter for a further cooling of the stratosphere by 1 K, showing locally near-complete ozone depletion (remaining ozone <200 ppbv) over a large vertical extent from 16 to 19 km altitude.

In the CTM a 1 K cooling approximately counteracts a 10% reduction in stratospheric halogen loading, a halogen reduction that is expected to occur in about 13 years from now. These results indicate that severe ozone depletion like in 2010/2011 or even worse could appear for cold Arctic winters over the next decades if the observed tendency for cold Arctic winters to become colder continues into the future.

SOURCE

Federal government aid to Australian private schools to continue

2012-01-14T14:48:00.003+11:00

Even under a Leftist government. With 39% of Australian teenagers going to non-government schools, anything else would consign the Left to years in the political wilderness. "Biffo" Latham's threat to private schools was a major factor in his undoing

PETER GARRETT has predicted a shake-up of school funding will not reignite class divisions, declaring the nation has moved on from debates about funding private schools.

The panel charged with reviewing funding, chaired by the businessman David Gonski, handed its report to Mr Garrett, the School Education Minister, shortly before Christmas.

Mr Garrett is developing the government's response, which will be released with the report early in the new school year.
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The opposition's education spokesman, Christopher Pyne, has predicted the government will cut funding to private schools, forcing them to increase fees or sack staff.

But Mr Garrett said despite Mr Pyne's "mischievous" contributions, the debate on funding schools had been "mature."

"I would certainly caution against the opposition thinking that there is some window of opportunity once a report of this kind is released to reignite those stale old ideological warfare exercises," Mr Garrett said. "We're in a different place as a country now. We recognise that we have a government system and non-government systems of education and we need to have an approach that applies to all systems, and that's what we're aiming for."

Mr Pyne said the opposition was taking its cues from Mr Garrett's refusal to rule out cuts to school funding indexation.

"Millions of parents with children in non-government schools are waiting to see how much their school fees will be going up because of the Gillard government's changes to school funding," Mr Pyne said.

Labor went to the 2007 election promising to preserve the Howard government's system for four years, and in the 2010 campaign sought to neutralise the issue by promising to extend those arrangements until the end of next year. Mr Garrett said Labor had boosted funding while the Coalition had promised cuts.

SOURCE

Compulsory education: The slippery slope

2012-01-13T19:14:00.001+11:00

"I believe that every child should have the opportunity, even if they don't go, to at least apply to a college," gushed Washington, D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown last week.

That’s nice. What a sweet guy – thinking about kids. I believe every child ought to have opportunities too. Certainly, if a kid, after finishing high school, desires a chance to apply for admission to a college, he or she ought to have the opportunity to do so. It’s part of the American dream: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Is that what Councilman Kwame is talking about? Liberty? Freedom? Opportunity? Equality under the law?

Unfortunately, no; I’m afraid it’s the opposite. He’s talking about forcing his own personal agenda upon every young man and woman within his ambit of political power whether they like it or not. He introduced a bill to require every high school student to apply to a college or trade school even if the student has no interest or desire in attending.

The bill would establish a "mandatory workshop" to teach teenagers how to apply for aid and admission. It would then require all to apply to at least one post-secondary school before graduation, and further require that every kid take the SAT or ACT college admission tests..

Brown says he’s worried that that some D.C. students aren't going to college simply because they "don't know how to navigate the enrollment process," and he wants to make sure they all learn it whether they want to or not. He doesn’t care what they want for themselves. He just wants to exercise his power over them.

Actually, Brown has it ass backwards. These kids don’t know how to navigate the college enrollment process because they simply don’t want to go to college. It’s as simple as that. Why should they learn it? They aren’t interested in pursuing more formal education. They lack the skills and aptitude for college. They’re sick and tired of compulsory education, teachers, principals, school administrators and people who think they know better about how to lead their own lives than they do. They want their freedom!

The main reason why high school and undergraduate college education in America is quickly becoming worthless these days is because of the attitudes and statist thinking of Authorities like Councilman Kwame Brown. When every kid graduates from high school, including those who are dumber and less ambitious than a bag of marbles, a high school diploma is next to meaningless. When every kid is admitted to college, college loses its value.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that compulsory education laws in America are patently unconstitutional, despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled otherwise. Incredibly, the highest court in the land has ignored the Constitution altogether and held that the state as a proper function of its police power may require school attendance – for their own good.

Forget about liberty. Forget about the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments; the right to free speech; freedom of religion and personal conscience; freedom of association; due process; and the rest of the Bill of Rights – none of it matters when the Authorities want to dictate how you lead your own life.

If the Authority is looking for justification for ObamaCare and the individual mandate for every person to buy health insurance whether they want to or not, there is no better precedent than the laws mandating and upholding compulsory education.

If the state can compel the attendance of children in school, it can compel the conduct of adults to buy health insurance – or to do anything else for that matter – for their own welfare; for their own good.

And the United States Constitution may be damned.

SOURCE

Egyptian Christian Media Mogul Put on Trial for ‘Insulting Islam’ With Cartoon of Bearded Mickey Mouse, Burqa-Clad Minnie‏

2012-01-13T17:13:00.001+11:00

You may recall that back in June of 2011, The Blaze reported on a prominent Christian Egyptian media mogul who elicited widespread outrage by Islamists over tweeting cartoon images of Mickey and Minnie Mouse clad in Islamic-garb. In the tweet, Minnie donned a burqa while Mickey sported a traditional Islamic beard.

Now, that man faces trial on a charge of insulting Islam, lawyers said Monday, based on his relaying the cartoons on his Twitter account.

The case dates back to June, when Naguib Sawiris posted a cartoon showing a bearded Mickey Mouse and veiled Minnie. He made a public apology after Islamists complained, but his action set off a boycott of his telecom company and other outlets. He said it was supposed to be a joke and apologized, but lawyer Mamdouh Ismail filed a formal complaint against him.

After investigation, the prosecution set the trial for Jan. 14. Sawiris was not available for comment.

The case is linked to developments in Egypt after the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak last February. Sawiris and Ismail belong to competing political parties, and sectarian violence between Christians and Islamists has been on the upswing. In Egypt’s parliamentary elections, Islamist parties have won a large majority, leaving liberals far behind.

Sawiris co-founded a liberal party, and Ismail heads a party representing ultraconservative Salafi Muslims.

The case has added to fears among many that ultraconservative Islamists may use their new found powers to try to stifle freedom of expression.

Ismail countered that, saying he took legal action against Sawiris because he wants the law to be respected by all, even a famous businessman and politician, in the post-Mubarak era. “The revolution came about because we all are seeking the rule of law without any exceptions,” he said. The charge is punishable by up to one year in prison.

Rights lawyer Gamal Eid said the contempt of religion law, in place even before Mubarak came to power, has been used against scholars and activists whose comments about Islam angered conservatives. He warned that the wording of the law is vague, and it can become a tool in the hands of prosecutors to punish opponents and appease authorities. “Contempt of religion is a very vague term, and the prosecution has taken the radical interpretation,” he said, “raising questions of whether this is a legal or a political matter.”

Last week, a Coptic Christian student was arrested and referred to trial for posting a drawing of the Prophet Muhammad on Facebook. That triggered two days of violence in southern Egypt.

Muslims generally oppose any depiction of the prophet, even favorable ones, for fear it could lead to idolatry. This drawing showed four women asking for the prophet’s hand in marriage.

SOURCE

Evolutionary Psychology of Climate Change

2012-01-13T17:10:00.000+11:00

Yet another attempt by the Green/Left to portray their opponents as mentally defective. That people who believe in unvalidated prophecies are the ones with a problem he does not consider

Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard University and the author of “Stumbling on Happiness,” argues that the human brain is poorly equipped to respond to global warming.

Our ability to mentally time-travel between the past, present and future and act in accordance with personal and shared goals is a result of the magnificent human-prefrontal cortex. Evolution, guided by natural selection, has tinkered with this brain region for millions of years, aiding us in the unrelenting pursuit of survival and reproduction. By learning from the past and imagining alternative futures, we perform complex cognition functions that inform decision making and allow us to respond to threats that endanger our well-being.

Among the many threats on our radar, it is evident from the political discourse in the United States that global warming is unique. Though scientific studies confirm that rising global temperatures and shifting climate patterns threaten human health, biodiversity, ecosystem sustainability, food security, water and air quality, and other ecosystem services on which we depend, less than half of adults worldwide see global warming as a threat to themselves and their families. Why aren’t we more worried about this looming disaster?

Daniel Gilbert argues that human brains evolved to respond to threats that have four features, ones that global warming lack.

Firstly, global warming isn’t tied to social intention or plotting. Our brains are highly specialized for thinking about the devious schemes of others because social interaction (both in terms of cooperation and detecting defecting) crucial to the survival of our species. Unlike anthrax and terrorism, climate change lacks agency, and is instead an emergent property of more nebulous interactions.

Secondly, global warming doesn’t violate our moral intuitions. Unlike dangers that are tied to emotional aversions, such as hurting an animal or burning a book, chemicals in the atmosphere do not make us angry or repulsed.

Thirdly, humans are masters at responding to immediate threats (such as a zooming baseball or a hungry predator), but are novices at acting to resolve worries of the distant future.

Lastly, Daniel Gilbert argues that global warming occurs so gradually that it goes undetected by the brain. Though the human brain is very sensitive to chemical and psychical changes such as light, temperature, pressure, sound, size, and weight, incremental differences largely go unnoticed.

SOURCE

Macquarie University teaching migrant students how to use a toilet correctly

2012-01-13T17:09:00.000+11:00

A UNIVERSITY is teaching migrant students how to use a toilet correctly after complaints from cleaners that they were leaving them in an unhygienic state.

The toilet lessons, given on a poster on the backs of cubicle doors at Macquarie University, come after opposition citizenship spokeswoman Teresa Gambaro said migrants should be taught to use deodorant and wait in line, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Posters put up by the university show a person standing on the toilet seat and squatting over the bowl with a line through it. Another crossed-out image shows a person squatting on the floor.

Students are taught how to use sanitary bins, how to flush the toilet and wash their hands in other parts of the diagram under the heading: Protecting each other, use of female toilets. A person sitting on the toilet seat is marked with a tick.

The signs were installed 15 months ago after complaints from a company contracted to clean campus toilets. "We received a complaint from our cleaning contractors about the state of some toilets, they believed that some students may have been squatting above the toilet rather than using them in a conventional western fashion, they were concerned about the cleanliness." a Macquarie University spokesman said.

"They thought it was a health concern and they raised it with the management of the university. We put those posters around the campus in collaboration with the international students group and got advice on what information should be contained." He said the problems had stopped since the signs went up.

Ms Gambaro was forced into an embarrassing apology this week after she suggested migrants on work visas should be taught about hygiene.

The comments caused outrage and Ms Gambaro apologised and said she had been taken out of context. She later said her comments calling for migrants to have lessons covering the use of deodorant and how to wait in line were not Coalition policy.

"Without trying to be offensive, we are talking about hygiene and what is an acceptable norm in this country when you are working closely with other co-workers," she said.

SOURCE

Supreme Court Rejects Obama Administration Power Grab Over Churches in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC

2012-01-13T00:58:00.001+11:00

The Supreme Court has rejected the Obama administration’s argument that it can dictate who churches hire as ministers or clergy in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Obama administration unsuccessfully argued that the government can dictate who churches hire, as long as it also subjects secular employers to the same dictates regarding who they hire (so-called rules of general applicability).

Taken to its logical conclusion, this argument would allow the government to ban a church or synagogue from hiring based on religion (defeating the whole purpose of religious freedom, which is to allow churches to promote their own religion) or sex (preventing the Catholic Church from having a male priesthood). No Supreme Court justice bought the administration’s argument, made on behalf of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The Supreme Court unanimously found that such government control over who churches can hire would violate the religion clauses of the First Amendment.

If federal antidiscrimination laws covered churches’ hiring of clergy, as the Obama administration demanded, they would have to not just avoid discriminating based on things like sex or religion, but would also have to radically alter sensible hiring criteria by eliminating longstanding, neutral church practices that have the affect of inadvertently screening out more members of a minority group than of other groups (so-called “disparate impact” or “unintentional discrimination”).

For example, some branches of the Lutheran Church have hiring criteria for religious broadcasters on their radio programs, such as “knowledge of Lutheran doctrine,” and “classical music training,” that few minorities satisfy (only 2 percent of all people with Lutheran training are minorities, and only 0.1 percent of people with both Lutheran training and classical music training are minorities), given the Lutheran Church’s historical roots in overwhelmingly white areas like Germany, Scandinavia, and Minnesota. Even though they are happy to have black applicants, and do not treat black applicants worse based on their race, the EEOC could easily sue them for racially disparate impact if the Obama administration’s argument had been accepted. (The religion clauses of the First Amendment not only protect who churches hire as ministers, but also other people who serve as “voices of the church,” such as theology professors, and religious broadcasters on behalf of a church.)

We previously wrote about ways that the Obama administration is attacking religious freedom and separation of church and state at this link. We described how the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is wiping out jobs and discouraging hiring and job creation through onerous interpretations of federal employment laws, at this link.

The extreme position taken by the Obama Justice Department in the Hosanna-Tabor case is a reflection of ideologically-based hiring. Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department has chosen to hire only liberal lawyers, not moderates or conservatives, for key Justice Department posts that are supposed to be non-political career appointments. Although many experienced lawyers are out of work in the current economic slump, the Obama Justice Department has hired many liberals who have no real-world legal experience, rather than hiring based on merit.

More commentary about the Hosanna-Tabor case can be found at this link. (The Obama administration suggested in its briefs that freedom of association could provide a theoretical check on government demands that institutions not hire based on specified criteria, even if — as it claimed — religious freedom does not limit the reach of employment laws that apply to both secular and religious employers. But this suggestion was disingenuous, since the administration and the EEOC have argued in other cases that free-association rights are outweighed and overridden by the government’s compelling interest in eradicating discrimination. And free-association defenses, unlike religious-freedom defenses, are generally losers, as the Supreme Court’s Hishon, Jaycees , and New York State Club Association decisions illustrate. Those rulings held that the government’s compelling interest in eradicating discrimination overrode the mere free-association rights of a law firm and various private clubs.)

SOURCE

At last: Britain prosecutes MUSLIMS for "homophobia"

2012-01-12T14:27:00.001+11:00

The Muslims had to be pretty blatant for it to happen but it has happened. They'll get a slap on the wrist at most, of course. A white holocaust denier got 4 years jail for things he said on his website so it will be interesting to see what this lot get

Five Muslims who distributed leaflets calling for gay people to be executed have appeared in court accused of inciting hatred. One leaflet said the death penalty had been passed against all homosexuals and showed a mannequin hanging from a noose. Another showed a figure burning in a lake of fire with a list of punishments for homosexual acts.

The five defendants, all from Derby, are the first to be prosecuted under new laws banning the stirring up of hatred due to sexual orientation.

Ihjaz Ali, 42, Razwan Javed, 28, Kabir Ahmed, 28, Umar Javed, 38, and Mehboob Hussain, 44, were arrested following complaints about leaflets distributed in Derby before a gay pride parade in July 2010. The material was handed out in the street as well as posted through letterboxes.

The first, called Death Penalty?, claimed that Allah permitted the destruction of gay people and ‘the only question is how it should be carried out’.

The second, called Turn or Burn, featured the figure in a blazing lake with the warning that the decriminalisation of homosexuality was ‘the root of all problems’. A third, GAY – God Abhors You –told of severe punishment for homosexuals.

Bobbie Cheema, prosecuting, told Derby Crown Court the pamphlets were threatening, offensive, frightening and nasty and had been ‘designed to stir up hatred and hostility against homosexual people’.

Gay men who received the leaflets told the court they feared they had been personally targeted. One witness, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said he was handed one leaflet in person and received three more in the post. ‘Being a gay man, I thought it was meant for me,’ he said. ‘I felt like I was being targeted. I thought it meant I was going to be burned or something like that.’

Another, who received two of the leaflets in the post, said: ‘I felt threatened. I wondered whether I would be getting a flaming rag through my letter box.’

The jury heard that in the weeks before the gay pride parade, Ihjaz Ali approached police about staging a protest against it.

Ali, who the prosecution say organised the distribution of the leaflets, showed officers a list of slogans intended for use on placards and literature. The slogans included ‘paedo gays, you will pay’, ‘turn forever or burn forever’ and ‘Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve’.

His request was refused and he was later arrested on the back of the welter of public complaints about the leaflets.

Ali allegedly told the officers who questioned him that it was his duty to express laws laid down by Allah.

Miss Cheema told the jury: ‘These five defendants were part of a small group who distributed horrible, threatening literature, with quotations from religious sources and pictures, which were designed to stir up hostile feelings against homosexual people.’

The court heard that all five defendants accept they distributed the leaflets but deny charges of intending to stir up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation under laws introduced in March 2010.

The maximum penalty for the offences is seven years in jail. Ali faces four charges while Hussain and Umar Javed are charged with two counts each. Razwan Javed and Ahmed are charged with one count each. The trial, which is expected to last three weeks, continues.

SOURCE

Shale gas pollution fears dismissed

2012-01-12T14:24:00.000+11:00

It is "extremely unlikely" that ground water supplies would be polluted by methane as a result of controversial "fracking" for shale gas, UK geologists have said.

And although the process, which uses high-pressure liquid pumped deep underground to fracture shale rock and release gas, caused two earthquakes in Lancashire last year, the quakes were too small to cause damage, they said.

Campaigners have called for a moratorium on fracking in the UK in the face of the earthquakes and amid fears it could lead to pollution of drinking water by methane gas or chemicals in the liquid used in the process.

Fracking has proved controversial in the US, where shale gas is already being exploited on a large scale and where footage has been captured of people able to set fire to the water coming out of their taps as a result of gas contamination.

But Professor Mike Stephenson, of the British Geological Survey, said most geologists thought it was a "pretty safe activity" and the risks associated with it were low.

He said the distance between groundwater supplies around 40-50 metres below the surface and the deep sources of gas in the shale a mile or two underground, made it unlikely methane would leak into water as a result of fracking.

There was no evidence in peer-reviewed literature of pollution of water by methane as a result of fracking, he said, adding that the presence of the gas in US water supplies was likely to be natural. But a survey was currently being conducted in the UK, to establish a baseline of any gas naturally found in groundwater before drilling took place.

"If you don't know what the baseline is, you don't know if people are running a tight ship. There's natural methane in groundwater and you have to distinguish between what's there already and what might have leaked in."

He said two cases of methane pollution of water in the US, neither of which were due to fracking for shale gas, were the result of mismanagement. The UK has one of the strictest regulatory regimes in the world, he added.

Fracking by energy company Cuadrilla was halted in the Blackpool area last year, after two small quakes in the area which the geologists are certain were caused by fracking. Although they were felt by around 50 people in the area, they were too small to cause any damage.

SOURCE

Carbon tax will eat car grants, says industry

2012-01-12T14:22:00.000+11:00

LABOR'S latest grants to the struggling Australian car industry risk being undermined by its own clean energy plans, with millions of dollars of the subsidies to be eaten up by the carbon tax and higher electricity costs associated with the new regime.

Anger in the industry over the impact of the carbon tax - and the fact that domestic manufacturers will have to absorb the cost while many importers will not - has permeated negotiations as the government has sought commitments from Ford and General Motors Holden to continue their operations in Australia.

Manufacturing Minister Kim Carr clinched a deal with Ford in Detroit this week, agreeing to contribute $34 million of federal government funds towards a $103m package to improve the efficiency of its local cars and maintain its Australian operations to 2016.

But calculations based on Ford's previous emissions suggest that, when the $23-a-tonne carbon tax begins on July 1, its maximum bill for direct emissions may be $3.3m over the next four years.

It could also pay a maximum $19.8m in higher prices as the cost of the carbon tax is passed on by suppliers, particularly electricity providers.

The government is adamant the final carbon tax bill will be significantly lower for Ford and all other car companies because not all of its operations are in facilities that emit more than 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, the liability threshold for the carbon tax.

The government also believes that Ford's indirect costs will be much lower as the full cost of the carbon tax price will not be passed on by suppliers of electricity or other components.

Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries chief executive Ian Chalmers said that the carbon tax was expected to cost the local manufacturers $50m-$60m over the next four years. He said this would have to be absorbed because many imported cars were not facing a comparable carbon pricing regime.

Opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt said Ford's potential carbon tax liabilities showed the "senselessness of the government's policies".

"On one hand, they are handing out taxpayers' money to supposedly protect jobs, while on the other they are taking back that money via the carbon tax," he said. "It is a ridiculous situation and will . . . put Australian jobs at risk."

Senator's Carr's rescue mission to Detroit comes as the local industry has been hit by the high Australian dollar, which has made foreign-made cars more attractive, and a global economic downturn that has stymied exports.

Senator Carr and the South Australian government are negotiating with General Motors to maintain its local operations, with a deal that could be as high as $100m. Based on the same emissions calculations, Holden's domestic operations could face a worst-case scenario of $3.1m in carbon tax over four years for direct emissions and $11.6m for indirect emissions.

Toyota, the only other local car manufacturer, faces up to $4.1m for direct emissions and $12.6m for indirect emissions. However, the actual carbon tax liabilities are expected to be much lower.

A spokeswoman for Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said it could be misleading to use company-wide emissions data, possibly aggregated from a few facilities, to determine the cost exposure of a particular facility. Facilities such as manufacturing plants will not have to pay the carbon tax if they produce less than 25,000 tonnes of CO2 a year. "Due to individual facility-level coverage thresholds, not all direct carbon emissions will be subject to liability under the carbon pricing mechanism," Mr Combet said.

"In addition, 'Scope 2' electricity emissions reported in states with highly emissions-intensive generators, such as in Victoria, will significantly overstate the cost pass-through of a carbon price. It is also important to note that key emissions intensive inputs into car manufacturing, such as aluminium, steel and glass, will be provided 94.5 per cent assistance in free permits under the Jobs and Competitiveness Program."

The South Australian Liberal opposition said yesterday any state taxpayer funds used to prop up Holden's ailing Elizabeth plant should be used as a carbon tax subsidy, as the company faced massive increases in costs from July.

Opposition industry spokesman Steven Marshall said Holden's South Australian plant, which builds the Commodore and Cruze, would be the first victim of the carbon tax when it came into operation on July 1.

Last June, Holden managing director Mike Devereux estimated a carbon price of between $20 and $30 a tonne would raise the company's costs by $40m to $50m.

SOURCE

Australia's PM-in-waiting talks about freedom

2012-01-11T16:50:00.003+11:00

Bill Shorten is credited with the ruthless political execution of first-term ALP Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. The woman installed in Rudd's place has hardly been a success story, so now there is talk of the assassin himself being elevated into the top job if Julia Gillard's poll numbers continue to plumb the depths.

In a Daily Telegraph article, Shorten provides some advice to a man who runs his own business who had the temerity to say penalty rates were harming profitability.

He also looks within his soul and gives us his line on freedom.

Please tell me he is joking...

WEEKENDS and holidays are for hitting the beach, family barbecues in the park, watching Disney movies at home in the afternoon, mowing the lawn, visiting grandma, going to Luna Park or playing cricket with a bunch of mates who look suspiciously like Max Walker.

It's different for all of us of course, but the grand Australian genius of weekends is that it's about taking a break from work and being able to do what you want. Our American friends make sweeping speeches about freedom -- we just get on with it.

Freedom is having your weekend free?

A likeness not greatly dissimilar to Shorten:

Opponents of homosexual marriage to be discriminated against?

2012-01-11T15:40:00.000+11:00

The hostility below is undoubted but it is unlikely to convert into action because the biggest critics of homosexuality are Muslims. And discriminating against Muslims would be deemed unacceptable. Muslims seem to be higher on the hierarchy of political correctness than are homosexuals -- otherwise Muslims would long ago have been condemned for their "homophobia"

One of my superstar former students, writing about his experience at one of our nation's premier law schools, sent me a note after reading my MOJ post on marriage, religious liberty, and the "grand bargain." Here is the text, with names removed to protect the innocent:

I had a first-hand experience with this reality in law school. One of my constitutional law professors taught the section of our course relating to same-sex marriage under the "inevitability" banner. I met with him in office hours later to talk to him about something else, but I brought up a question that I have been wrestling with: if the SSM advocates are right and opposition to SSM becomes analogous to racism in our society, what will happen to Catholics and others whose views on SSM cannot and will not change? Are they to be excluded from public office, political and judicial appointments, or places of trust and responsibility within private institutions (e.g., law firm partnerships)? I posed the question to him because I was curious to hear his response, since he is generally a kind and reasonable person who seemed open to other viewpoints.

His response was very disappointing, and it shook my confidence in him. He responded to me by saying something along the lines of:
"Well, they [Catholics and others] will either have to change their views or be treated in the same way that white supremacists and the segregationist Senators were treated. They were excluded from the judiciary entirely for decades because of the South's views on race."

He evinced no sympathy for the traditional marriage position or those who hold it. They were to be relegated to the ash heap of history. He said all of this to me knowing full well (because I had foolishly just told him) that I was a Catholic who opposed SSM.

Is anyone prepared to say that the view expressed by the professor is merely a fringe opinion in the contemporary academy? Is anyone prepared to say that it is the view of only a small minority, or a minority at all, in what University of Virginia sociologist Jonathan Haidt calls the liberal tribal-moral community of contemporary academia? Would anyone deny that there is a significant element in the elite sector of the culture---an element with real power over the lives and careers of people like my former student---that wishes to penalize or discriminate against those who refuse in conscience to yield to the liberal orthodoxy on issues of sex and marriage? Consider the professor's own words. He made no effort to hide his goals and intentions. On the contrary, he made it abundantly clear that Catholics and others who persist in their dissent are to be treated the way we treat white supremacists. They are to be stigmatized, subjected to discrimination, and denied the right to hold certain offices.

And this professor, as my student observed, is a "generally a kind and reasonable person who seems open to other viewpoints." What are we to expect, then, from those who are even less "open to other viewpoints"?

SOURCE

Volkswagen's latest car in controversy over 'black up!' model

2012-01-11T15:38:00.001+11:00

We read:

"As a leading carmaker Volkswagen is revered for its radical thinking and engineering genius. Sadly for the German business, it is a little less adept when it comes to extricating itself from a PR nightmare.

With the launch of its new ‘up!’ supermini looming, the firm decided on a few special editions to boost sales of the model.

One, however, proved a little controversial. While the ‘white up!’ was always on safe ground, the ‘black up!’ was clearly heading for trouble.

UK bosses blocked the name fearing that if it was used in Britain, it could give offence to ethnic minorities – because of the connotation of white actors and singers ‘blacking up’ to perform as minstrels.

The solution they came up with however was hardly inspired. Bosses simply decided to reverse the words and call it the ‘up! black’.

Funnily enough, no one has been convinced and a PR storm that could have been averted now refuses to blow over. Matthew Collins, of campaigning organisation Hope Not Hate, branded the name ‘insensitive’. He said: ‘In this country at the moment we seem to be dealing with an explosion in racism and these are not the wisest of words to have been chosen.’

Source

Pretty absurd.

Irrational Greenie hatred of "chemicals" kills people

2012-01-11T15:37:00.002+11:00

Deadly cantaloupe listeria outbreak blamed on non-chlorinated wash

The enviro war against chlorine claims more victims. From the House Energy and Commerce report about the 2011 outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe:

… According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 146 people in 28 states have been infected, 30 people have died, and one person has miscarried as a result of this outbreak. It was the deadliest foodborne illness outbreak in over 25 years…

On [sic] precaution that Jensen Farms took in 2010, which it dropped in 2011, was to use an antimicrobial solution, such as chlorine, in the cantaloupe wash water. The front page of the August 2010 audit stated, “[t]his facility packs fresh cantaloupes from their own fields into cartons. The melons are washed and then run through a hydro cooler which has chlorine added to the water. Once the product is dried and packed into cartons it is placed into coolers”…

FDA officials emphasized to Committee staff that the new processing equipment and the decision to use a packing and washing technique involving non-chlorinated water were two probable causes of the outbreak. Both of these significant changes were implemented at the packing facility in 2011.

Here’s another example of the enviros’ deadly war against chlorine. As Michael Fumento And Michelle Malkin pointed out in “Rachel’s Folly: The End of Chlorine” (March 1996):

There is no plainer example of the health benefits of chlorine, and the health risks of its absence, than the cholera epidemic in Latin America. In February 1991, the first cholera outbreak to hit Peru since the turn of the century was reported. According to the journal Nature, U.S. and international health officials blamed the occurrence on Peruvian government officials who made a “gross miscalculation” in not chlorinating the water supply.

Local water officials in Lima had decided to stop chlorinating many of the wells because U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) studies conducted in the mid-1 980s showed an increased hypothetical cancer risk from trihalomethanes (THM), a chlorination byproduct. One of those studies (based on high-dose experiments on animals exposed over their lifetimes) estimated a risk of up to 700 additional cancer cases per year in the U.S. from THMs; by contrast, however, the Latin American cholera epidemic claimed nearly 4,000 lives in 1991 alone.

EPA administrators denied that risk communication failures on their part could be faulted for touching off the epidemic. Many researchers, however, questioned whether EPA should have given more emphasis to the disaster potential of not disinfecting municipal water supplies. Whatever the actual impact EPA calculations had in Lima, a follow-up study in Peru’s second largest city, Trujillo, pointed to the two bottom-line causes of the outbreak and its rapid spread. Plain and simple, they were lack of chlorinators and a shortage of funds to buy them.

Preliminary data examined by Mintz et al. suggest that intervention costs for point-of-use disinfection in developing countries is low: “The annual cost per family for both a special water storage vessel and (chlorinated) disinfectant, for the shortest estimated useful life of the vessel and the highest cost of hypochlorite, would be between $1.17 and $1.62, an amount affordable almost anywhere in the world.” In the March 1995 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association, the researchers endorsed the expanded use of sodium and calcium hypochlorite – deemed “relatively safe, easy to distribute and use, inexpensive, and effective against most bacterial and viral pathogens” – to prevent persistent waterborne disease. In addition to cholera, these infectious diseases include typhoid fever, amoebic dysentery, bacterial gastroenteritis, shigellosis, salmonellosis, Campylobacter eteritis, Yersina enteritis, Pseudomonas infections, schistosomiasis, giardiasis and various viral afflictions, such as hepatitis A.

In a campaign to increase access to potable water in poor countries, the World Health Organization declared the 1 980s the “Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation” decade. Access to proper chlorination, however, remains a major barrier and efforts to improve both municipal water treatment and home storage techniques continue. At last count, the WHO estimated that 25 million people – 70,000 per day, mostly children under five – die around the world each year from dirty drinking water. While nonchlorine disinfectants like iodine, ozone and short-lived free radicals have been used to treat water on a limited basis, none has demonstrated the safety and cost-effectiveness of chlorination.

As the Latin American cholera epidemic escalated, environmental activists a world away were building their arsenal against chlorine. Greenpeace, the international environmental advocacy group, launched the first salvo in early 1991 with its call to phase out completely “the use, export, and import of all organochlorines, elemental chlorine, and chlorinated oxidizing agents (e.g. chlorine dioxide and sodium hypochlorite).” As Greenpeace’s Joe Thornton concluded, “There are no uses of chlorine which we regard as safe.”

SOURCE (See the original for links)

Must not speak the truth about "boat people"

2012-01-11T15:35:00.000+11:00

("Boat people" are illegal immigrants, mostly Afghans and other poorly educated Muslims, who arrive in Australian waters by boat. They are immediatey imprisoned on arrival while their claims to be asylum seekers are assessed)

SERCO, the company that runs immigration detention, has stood down an officer who posted Facebook comments saying Muslim children in detention did not deserve Christmas presents and male detainees taught their children it was acceptable to beat wives.

The Serco officer, who has direct contact with asylum seekers held at the Darwin Airport Lodge, posted the Facebook comments on Monday, after an incident in which Christmas presents for 200 children were not handed out by officers until 12 days after Christmas.

"A member of Serco Immigration Services staff has been suspended pending the outcome of an internal investigation," a spokesman for the company said yesterday.

In the first Facebook comment, the officer wrote: "Sad for all the Christian kids! Not sure why Islamist (sic?) would want Christmas present."

A short time later he posted: "I don't know of any country in the world that you can enter illegally an be granted freedom immediately! No one abuses them, perhaps u forget the saying it takes two to tango. Maybe you need to come and face these men who teach their children that women have no rights. I guess you must think there is nothing wrong with domestic violence."

Victoria Martin-Iverson, a West Australian refugee advocate, saw the comments posted on Serco Watch, a Facebook page that monitors news about the multinational company that runs prisons in Britain as well as Australia's immigration detention network. The officer had boldly included his real name, which linked back to his own Facebook page that stated he was a Serco officer in Darwin.

"I thought they were pretty outrageous comments," Ms Martin-Iverson said. "What he essentially said is they are wife beaters. It is horrific and he is working directly with asylum seekers." She contacted the immigration department and the department's compliance division responded.

An immigration department spokeswoman said: "The department is aware of the incident. The detention services provider is investigating the matter as they are required to do under the terms of their contract."

SOURCE

Bibi and Barack

2012-01-10T16:48:00.000+11:00

Personality conflicts between the American president and the Israeli prime minister don’t bode well for the US-Israel relationship.

Barack Obama has an Israel problem. Almost three years in, the US president still can’t decide whether he wants to pander to the Israeli prime minister or pressure him. The approach of the 2012 elections makes the former almost mandatory; the president’s reelection may make the latter possible.

Buckle your seat belts. Unless Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu find a way to cooperate on a big venture that makes both of them look good, and in a way that allows each to invest in the other, the US-Israel relationship may be in for a bumpy ride.

The president’s view of Israel is situated in two fundamental realities. The first is structural and is linked to the way Obama sees the world; the second is more situational and is driven by his view of Netanyahu and Israeli policies. Together they have created and sustained a deep level of frustration bordering on anger.

Unlike his two predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama isn’t in love with the idea of Israel.

Intellectually he understands and supports the pro-Israeli trope – small democratic nation with dark past confronts huge existential threats – but it’s really a head thing.

Clinton and Bush were enamored emotionally with Israel’s story and the prime ministers who narrated it.

Clinton sat at the feet of Yitzhak Rabin – the authentic leader and hero in peace and war – as a student sits in thrall of a brilliant professor. (Some even said like a son to a father). “I had come to love him,” the former president wrote in his memoirs, ”as I had rarely loved another man.”

And George W. Bush, though often frustrated in the extreme with Ariel Sharon, loved his stories of biblical history and more contemporary war tales. Bush reacted – as he did on so many issues – from his gut, certainly when it came to Israel’s security. While flying with Sharon over Israel’s narrow waist, the then-governor said, “We have driveways in Texas longer than that.”

The tendency to look at Israel analytically instead of emotionally, and to view the conflict through a national-interest prism rather than some sort of moral filter, dovetails with Obama’s poisonous relationship with Netanyahu. Obama doesn't like him, doesn’t trust him and views him as a con man. The Israeli prime minister has frustrated and embarrassed Obama and gotten in the way of the president’s wildly exaggerated hopes for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which he’s been pursuing with more enthusiasm than viable strategy since his inauguration. To make matters worse, when the president went after a settlements freeze, Netanyahu called his bluff and Obama backed down – a terrible humiliation.

In the end, the Barack-Bibi relationship is likely headed south because the trust and capacity to give each other the benefit of the doubt has long ago evaporated.

More HERE

Human carbon emissions could put OFF a lethal new ice age, say scientists

2012-01-10T16:47:00.002+11:00

There is no evidence that CO2 causes warming and a lot of evidence against it but it is fun when Warmists admit that warming could be beneficial: Rather a case of being hoist with their own petard

Cambridge University paleoclimatologist Luke Skinner says that even if carbon emissions stopped today, levels would remain elevated for at least 1,000 years, and stored heat could prevent the next Ice Age from happening

Cambridge university scientists say that a new Ice Age is due to start within 1,500 years. But due to human carbon emissions, the lethal 'big freeze' could be put off.

Levels of CO2 in the atmosphere could actually insulate against a catastrophic ice age which would see glaciers advance over Europe and north America.

The scientists admit that we would be 'better off' in a warmer world - but caution that this is 'missing the point'.

In a paper published in Nature Geoscience, Cambridge University paleoclimatologist Luke Skinner says that even if carbon emissions stopped today, levels would remain elevated for at least 1,000 years, and stored heat could prevent the next Ice Age from happening. Instead, things would cool down, but not quite so severely.

Thanks to elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the earth would not experience 'glaciation' - periods of severe cold where glaciers advance.

The current level of carbon dioxide is 390 parts per million. Scientists believe that level would need to drop to 240 parts per million to allow glaciation to take place. 'It's an interesting philosophical discussion. Would we better off in a warm world rather than a glaciation? Probably we would,' says Dr Skinner.

'At current levels of CO2, even if emissions stopped now, we'd probably have a long interglacial period,' says Dr Skinner.

'Interglacial' periods are warmer periods between periods of glaciation. The last ice age ended 11,500 years ago, and scientists debate over when the next one is 'due'. The cycle is dictated by tiny variations in Earth's orbit around the sun.

Ice ages are marked by glaciers advancing over continents. At the peak of the last ice age, large areas of Europe, Asia and North America were covered in ice. The effects on human civilisation would be catastrophic.

He says, 'This is missing the point, because where we're going is not maintaining our currently warm climate but heating it much further, and adding CO2 to a warm climate is very different from adding it to a cold climate.'

SOURCE

Political correctness does not come easily to Italians

2012-01-10T16:45:00.001+11:00

If that's a stereotype then its a complimentary one in my view. I say what I think and I think well of others who do likewise. And few people could have been more "incorrect" than former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (known for saying Obama had a "nice suntan", among other things. That one still cracks me up). And he was the longest serving Italian Prime Minister for many years.

Even in America think of the "incorrect" Tom Tancredo, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the late Joey Vento, and now maybe Rick Santorum -- all of Italian descent

A RIGHT-wing Italian deputy mayor has found himself at the centre of a political storm after his anti-gay slurs against a left-wing governor provoked widespread outrage - and a rebuke from his own party.

And much of the drama has been played out on the Facebook pages of the politicians involved.

Giuseppe Ripa, deputy mayor of the southern town of Lecce, launched his attack on Nichi Vendola, the governor of Apulia, in a posting on Facebook.

"In nature, there exist only two types human beings: the man and the woman," he wrote. The rest were psychiatric cases apt for psychoanalytic treatment, said Ripa, a member of Silvio Berlsuconi's People of Freedom party.

Lecce's mayor, Paolo Perrone, was quick to distance himself from the remarks. "I like to practice politics by debating with my adversaries on the issues, not on the sexual preferences of this or that person, which are a matter of one's private life," he wrote in his own Facebook posting.

Source

Note that the speaker in the post below is also of Italian ancestry

Migrants don't know how to wear deodorant or queue up, says Liberal Teresa Gambaro

2012-01-10T16:43:00.001+11:00

This would certainly be true of the Afghans, from a very primitive society

MIGRANTS should be taught about the importance of wearing deodorant and waiting in queues without pushing in, the Federal Opposition says.

Cultural awareness training should also be given by employers bringing skilled migrants into Australia under the 457 visa program, the coalition's citizenship spokeswoman Teresa Gambaro told The Australian.

In an interview with the newspaper, Ms Gambaro said she was concerned about new migrants on work visas not integrating into the community because Australia had failed to teach them about cultural issues related to health, hygiene and lifestyle.

"Without trying to be offensive, we are talking about hygiene and what is an acceptable norm in this country when you are working closely with other co-workers," she said.

Wearing deodorant and waiting in line politely were about "teaching what are norms in Australia".

The MP for Brisbane said while her comments may upset people, migrants also needed to be educated about their rights and how to improve their chances of getting work.

SOURCE

Note to Toaf

2012-01-10T13:23:00.000+11:00

I really haven't got time for this but the tofu man, Toaf, amuses me. He has that characteristic Leftist certainty that he is right even when he is wrong. And I won't mention his "black" partner (who is actually a light-skinned Chinese).

A little while ago he thought it hilarious when I remarked that America had fallen into "alien hands". Showing complete ignorance of American usage, he thought I was talking about men from Mars or the like.

Hint: When Americans talk about "illegal aliens" they are NOT talking about men from Mars. They mean non-Americans or people who are not really Americans. Toaf claims to be an educated man but to me he seems idiotes kai agrammatos.

Hint to Toaf: If you are Greekless too, that is a quote from the New Testament. See if you can find it. Google won't help.

Do as I say, not as I do

2012-01-09T20:34:00.000+11:00

The British Labour party opposes private education but a prominent Labour politician sent her son to a private school. It reminds me of Barbara Castle in the Wilson Labour government. She said it was obscene to carve your way to a hospital bed with a chequebook but when her son got sick she sent him to a private hospital -- under an assumed name

Brief background on the Diane Abbott story here. She is a black British Leftist politician and something of a loose cannon

The black Labour MP accused of racism after claiming that white people ‘love to divide and rule’ sent her son to be privately educated – in a former British colony.

Diane Abbott caused outrage last week after she used Twitter to comment on the Stephen Lawrence murder trial, saying: ‘White people love playing divide and rule. We should not play their game,’ and referring to ‘tactics as old as colonialism’.

Now it has been revealed that when Left-winger Ms Abbott’s son was 16, she shunned the British education system in favour of sending him to a fee-paying school in Ghana, a country run by the British as the Gold Coast Colony between 1874 and 1957.

James Abbott, now 20, was sent to study in the sixth form of the £6,000-a-year SOS-Hermann Gmeiner International College in Tema, Ghana, which boasts facilities such as a ‘near-Olympic-sized pool’ and declares that its students ‘graduate with an internationally recognised baccalaureate and are then able to study at almost any university in the world’. It worked for Mr Abbott – he is now a student at Cambridge University.

The college, established in 1990, also says in its promotional literature that it ‘seeks to focus pupils’ attention on the development of Africa in order to instil a sense of social responsibility and commitment to the continent’.

Ms Abbott was humiliated last week when her party leader, Ed Miliband, rang her while she was being interviewed on television and ordered her to retract her comments.

‘Divide and rule’ was a central strategy of British imperial policy, under which different ethnic groups – including those in Ghana – were encouraged to use up their energies fighting among themselves, rather than plotting to overthrow their colonial masters.

It is not the first time Ms Abbott’s decisions over her son’s schooling have raised eyebrows.

When she was running for the Labour leadership in 2010 she was attacked for sending James to the £13,000-a-year City of London School, despite her party’s opposition to private education.

She explained: ‘I knew what could happen if my son went to the wrong school and got in with the wrong crowd. ‘They are subjected to peer pressure and when that happens it’s very hard for a mother to save her son. Once a black boy is lost to the world of gangs it’s very hard to get them back.’ She added, in an interview with BBC pundit Andrew Neil: ‘West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children.’

Mr Neil hit back by demanding: ‘So black mums love their kids more than white mums, do they?’ Ms Abbott responded: ‘I have said everything I am going to say about where I send my son to school.’

James Abbott himself once defended the decision, insisting that his mother was only following his own wishes.

‘She’s not a hypocrite, she just put what I wanted first instead of what people thought,’ he said, adding that he had wanted to go private rather than attend one of the comprehensives in Ms Abbott’s Hackney constituency. ‘It’s a good school. The facilities, the resources and the teachers seem better than the state school,’ he said.

Community leaders complain that black pupils are frequently failed by the state system. Nearly three-quarters of black boys in London leave school without managing to achieve five GCSE passes at grade C.

When James took his GCSEs at the City of London School four years ago, he earned 11 A* grades.

Ms Abbott married James’s father, architect Richard Thompson, in 1991, but they divorced two years later.

SOURCE

Taking Fears Of Acid Oceans With A Grain of Salt

2012-01-09T20:31:00.000+11:00

Matt Ridley

Coral reefs around the world are suffering badly from overfishing and various forms of pollution. Yet many experts argue that the greatest threat to them is the acidification of the oceans from the dissolving of man-made carbon dioxide emissions.

The effect of acidification, according to J.E.N. Veron, an Australian coral scientist, will be "nothing less than catastrophic.... What were once thriving coral gardens that supported the greatest biodiversity of the marine realm will become red-black bacterial slime, and they will stay that way."

This is a common view. The Natural Resources Defense Council has called ocean acidification "the scariest environmental problem you've never heard of." Sigourney Weaver, who narrated a film about the issue, said that "the scientists are freaked out." The head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calls it global warming's "equally evil twin."

But do the scientific data support such alarm? Last month scientists at San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography and other authors published a study showing how much the pH level (measuring alkalinity versus acidity) varies naturally between parts of the ocean and at different times of the day, month and year.

"On both a monthly and annual scale, even the most stable open ocean sites see pH changes many times larger than the annual rate of acidification," say the authors of the study, adding that because good instruments to measure ocean pH have only recently been deployed, "this variation has been under-appreciated." Over coral reefs, the pH decline between dusk and dawn is almost half as much as the decrease in average pH expected over the next 100 years. The noise is greater than the signal.

Another recent study, by scientists from the U.K., Hawaii and Massachusetts, concluded that "marine and freshwater assemblages have always experienced variable pH conditions," and that "in many freshwater lakes, pH changes that are orders of magnitude greater than those projected for the 22nd-century oceans can occur over periods of hours."

This adds to other hints that the ocean-acidification problem may have been exaggerated. For a start, the ocean is alkaline and in no danger of becoming acid (despite headlines like that from Reuters in 2009: "Climate Change Turning Seas Acid"). If the average pH of the ocean drops to 7.8 from 8.1 by 2100 as predicted, it will still be well above seven, the neutral point where alkalinity becomes acidity.

The central concern is that lower pH will make it harder for corals, clams and other "calcifier" creatures to make calcium carbonate skeletons and shells. Yet this concern also may be overstated. Off Papua New Guinea and the Italian island of Ischia, where natural carbon-dioxide bubbles from volcanic vents make the sea less alkaline, and off the Yucatan, where underwater springs make seawater actually acidic, studies have shown that at least some kinds of calcifiers still thrive—at least as far down as pH 7.8.

In a recent experiment in the Mediterranean, reported in Nature Climate Change, corals and mollusks were transplanted to lower pH sites, where they proved "able to calcify and grow at even faster than normal rates when exposed to the high [carbon-dioxide] levels projected for the next 300 years." In any case, freshwater mussels thrive in Scottish rivers, where the pH is as low as five.

Laboratory experiments find that more marine creatures thrive than suffer when carbon dioxide lowers the pH level to 7.8. This is because the carbon dioxide dissolves mainly as bicarbonate, which many calcifiers use as raw material for carbonate.

Human beings have indeed placed marine ecosystems under terrible pressure, but the chief culprits are overfishing and pollution. By comparison, a very slow reduction in the alkalinity of the oceans, well within the range of natural variation, is a modest threat, and it certainly does not merit apocalyptic headlines.

SOURCE

Foreign aid money feeds fat profits for corporations

2012-01-09T20:30:00.001+11:00

Foreign aid is a joke and a racket. As the late Peter Bauer once said, it is "an excellent method for transferring money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries."

AUSTRALIA'S booming foreign-aid program is delivering handsome profits to a group of seven corporations that has scored a staggering $1.81 billion in taxpayer-funded contracts.

But the lack of scrutiny of their profits, and huge sums being provided to agencies such as the World Bank, which receives $450 million a year, is under challenge.

Aid experts and the Opposition are demanding greater accountability for the money being spent to tackle global poverty.

GRM International had $500 million in AusAID contracts over the past 18 months, including $92 million to encourage Africans to study here.

Cardno, which lists former defence chief Peter Cosgrove on its board of directors, and which reported a record $59 million profit last year, has $442 million in contracts.

Coffey International booked $353.4 million in contracts, including $31 million to weed out corruption in Papua New Guinea.

The dividends for shareholders and executives will grow even fatter because Australia's aid budget is forecast to soar to about $8.5 billion by 2015-16.

Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd has pledged to spend record sums trying to tackle poverty in some of the world's poorest countries, but the rise in spending is causing resentment among ministerial colleagues.

Contract information listed on the Government's AusTender site shows SMEC International, which grew out of the Snowy Mountains scheme, had $202.9 million in contracts since July, 2010.

Aid money is also encouraging global firms to establish Australian branches, including the US-based URS, which had $170 million listed in contracts.

Stephen Howes, part of the high-level review of the foreign-aid program, wants a "greater level of scrutiny", particularly given the large increases in funding.

"There are risks that as quantity goes up, quality goes down," said Prof Howes, who is director of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre. "As the money goes up, the scrutiny should go up as well," he said.

The review recommended the Government establish an independent evaluation committee to oversee AusAID's effectiveness in delivering tangible results.

Coalition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop is demanding Mr Rudd urgently announce how he plans to better measure performance benchmarks of the aid program, as recommended by the review.

SOURCE

The great American taboo again

2012-01-09T20:26:00.001+11:00

I am glad I am not American. The way race must not be mentioned distorts thought even among very smart Americans. The article below fumbles around trying to explain why the American poor are more likely to stay poor than the poor in other countries. The obvious explanation that a large slice of the poor in America are blacks -- the great majority of whom lack the ability to rise in society -- is ignored. Any responsible social scientist should separate out statistics into separate groups for whites and blacks but that is largely taboo

“Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe.” That’s how the New York Times began a page-one news story yesterday.

It is a thoughtful story that offer a variety of explanations — some of them mitigating — for the so-called “mobility gap.” This subject merits attention because we should aspire to live in a society in which someone born in (relative) poverty can work his or her way up to better material circumstances, even if lower-income people are richer than their earlier counterparts.

Those who advocate the freeing of markets have no reason to receive the news of the gap defensively. If we are right about the breadth and depth of bureaucratic interference with the peaceful, creative activities of individuals, as well as the extent of government privileges for the well-connected – and we are – then drags on mobility are at least partly the consequence of that interference. In other words, the mobility gap can’t be the result of the free market because there isn’t one. The economy is systematically misshapen by intervention. (The Times cites concern about the gap among some conservatives.)

The Minimum Wage and Public Schools

When I think “limits to mobility,” two phrases immediately occur to me: minimum wage and public schooling. If you wanted to impede upward mobility, there could hardly be better ways than to scuttle job creation for the unskilled and to give poor people a bureaucratically produced “education.” Those are not features of the free market.

Nor are these the only ways government throws sand in the eyes of the those who start out with little. In the current issue of The Freeman, Gary Chartier discusses this matter at length: “Government Is No Friend of the Poor.” (For more, see Charles Johnson’s “Scratching By: How Government Creates Poverty as We Know It.”)

This will be readily conceded by free-market advocates, but some harbor a belief that the U.S. economy is much freer than Europe’s and Canada’s socialistic welfare states and so to make negative comparisons with those countries is to cast aspersions at freedom. Not so. The economies of America, Canada, and Europe are all variations of corporatism, in which government power primarily benefits the well-connected and well-to-do, with secondary interventions intended in part to ameliorate some of the harsher consequences of the primary interventions. As I wrote on another occasion:

In reality the debate [between America and Europe] is not between socialism and free enterprise. Rather it’s between two forms of corporatism, America-style and European-style. I don’t want either, but it’s not obvious to me a priori that the American variant is superior in every respect to the European variant. . . . One variant may indeed cushion the victims of political privilege-granting better than others. Considering who writes the rules over here, I see no grounds for thinking that we necessarily have it better than the Germans do in every possible way.

The Gap

Here are some particulars in the Times story:

At least five large studies in recent years have found the United States to be less mobile than comparable nations. A project led by Markus Jantti, an economist at a Swedish university, found that 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults. That shows a level of persistent disadvantage much higher than in Denmark (25 percent) and Britain (30 percent) — a country famous for its class constraints.

Meanwhile, just 8 percent of American men at the bottom rose to the top fifth. That compares with 12 percent of the British and 14 percent of the Danes. [The study, in PDF format, is here.]

Despite frequent references to the United States as a classless society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised in the top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to research by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Similarly, 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths. [See PDF here.] . . .

While Europe differs from the United States in culture and demographics, a more telling comparison may be with Canada, a neighbor with significant ethnic diversity. Miles Corak, an economist at the University of Ottawa, found that just 16 percent of Canadian men raised in the bottom tenth of incomes stayed there as adults, compared with 22 percent of Americans. Similarly, 26 percent of American men raised at the top tenth stayed there, but just 18 percent of Canadians.

Not the Whole Story

As usual, the statistics don’t tell the whole story, and Timesman Jason DeParle acknowledges this.

Skeptics caution that the studies measure “relative mobility” — how likely children are to move from their parents’ place in the income distribution. That is different from asking whether they have more money. Most Americans have higher incomes than their parents because the country has grown richer.

. . . A Pew study found that 81 percent of Americans have higher incomes than their parents (after accounting for family size). There is no comparable data on other countries. [Emphasis added. PDF here.]

Higher U.S. rates of poor single motherhood and of incarceration could also help explain the relative lack of mobility.

DeParle notes further that 1) “[s]ince they require two generations of data, the studies also omit immigrants, whose upward movement has long been considered an American strength,” and 2) “The income compression in rival countries may also make them seem more mobile.”

Even by measures of relative mobility, Middle America remains fluid. About 36 percent of Americans raised in the middle fifth move up as adults, while 23 percent stay on the same rung and 41 percent move down, according to Pew research. The “stickiness” appears at the top and bottom, as affluent families transmit their advantages and poor families stay trapped.

Any way we slice it, the mobility gap impugns economic intervention by the bureaucratic State. We have every reason to think that mobility would be maximized in a freed market.

SOURCE

Newt Gingrich on Media Bias

2012-01-09T06:21:00.002+11:00

During the Republican candidates' debate Saturday night in New Hampshire, Newt Gingrich added some remarks about the news media in response to a question on gay marriage.

"I just want to raise the point about the news media bias. You don’t hear the opposite question asked.

Should the Catholic church be forced to close its adoption services in Massachusetts because it won’t accept gay couples? Which is exactly what the state has done.

Should the Catholic church be driven out of providing charitable services in the district of Columbia because it won’t give in to bigotry?

Should the Catholic church find itself discriminated against by the Obama administration on key delivering of service because of the bias of the administration?

The bigotry question goes both ways. There’s a lot more anti-christian bigotry today than there is concerning the other side. None of it gets covered by the news media."

I agree. To mainstream journalists, objectivity means the toast always lands butter-side down.

Wharfies back in old form now Gillard's in charge

2012-01-08T22:17:00.000+11:00

They were famous for their outrageous demands until they were crushed during the Howard government

INDUSTRIAL action that would have shut down half of the Port of Melbourne for 48 hours from Sunday night has been called off, the wharfies' union says.

About 500 DP World stevedores were to stop work in Melbourne for 24 hours from 10pm (AEDT) today following an eight-month dispute between the company and the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) over pay and conditions.

The company was set to retaliate with a 24-hour lock-out of its staff to begin immediately after the stoppage.

The action would have shut down half of the container terminal facilities in the Port of Melbourne for 48 hours.

After a 48-hour stoppage by the union last week in Adelaide, DP World retaliated with a 24-hour lock-out, disrupting operations for 72 hours.

The stoppage by Melbourne workers was called off on Saturday after they accepted an in-principle agreement for a new enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA).

The agreement was reached following a seven-hour meeting between the union and the company in Sydney on Friday night, MUA assistant national secretary Warren Smith said in a statement.

"The in-principle agreement will still need to be put to members but in the meantime it will be business as usual at the Port of Melbourne," he said.

The union was asking for a pay rise of 15 per cent over three years, improved conditions and an increase in superannuation.

SOURCE

Italy's state-owned train firm accused of racism for using Indian family on advert promoting fourth-class seats

2012-01-08T22:14:00.000+11:00

We read:

"Italy's national train company has been accused of racism after an advert promoting its new four-class system showed a family of Asian immigrants in the cheapest seats.

Trenitalia's advertising campaign for its high-speed Frecciarossa (Red Arrow) intercity trains spectacularly backfired because white Italians were used for each of the other classes.

The state-owned firm's online brochure was hastily removed and replaced with a more 'politically correct' version following a series of complaints.

Blogger Alessandro Gilioli highlighted what he described as 'xenophobic overtones' of the advert on the website of weekly L'Espresso.

He said: 'If the concept [of social segregation] wasn't clear enough, here is the image chose to publicise the lowest class: an Asian family, presumably immigrants. 'Curiously, all the clients in the Premium and Executive classes are white.

Source

Indians in Italy will almost certainly be recent immigrants and, as such, mostly poor. So what is wrong with depicting the poor as more likely to use the most economical service? Is reality incorrect?

Ten per cent of all murders in Britain are carried out by bail bandits

2012-01-08T22:13:00.000+11:00

More than 10 per cent of murders in are committed by criminals released on bail for another crime. In the last five years, more than 350 killings were carried out by so-called ‘bail bandits’. It means that more than one violent death a week could have been prevented if the suspect had been locked up instead of being
let out.

Despite the worrying scale of serious crime by bailed suspects, ministers are planning a huge rise in the use of bail for suspects. Thousands more could be released every year before their cases reach trial in an effort to save millions in prison costs.

But the move is raising concerns that more innocent people will be victims of suspects who would otherwise have been behind bars.

Javed Khan, chief executive of Victim Support, said: ‘It’s traumatic enough being a victim of serious crime. It adds insult to injury when a victim finds out that the offender was on bail at the time. ‘These figures are a cause for concern and could further undermine confidence in the justice system.

‘We know that victims want an effective criminal justice system that cuts crime and stops reoffending. ‘That is why justice agencies need to work harder at stopping people committing serious offences while on bail.’

The Tory MP for Witham, Priti Patel, said: ‘The Government has to look at these figures carefully and address how the public can be protected from these individuals. ‘They should also look at how they can clamp down on bail order breaches and, most importantly, make sure these individuals are properly prosecuted. ‘This is making a mockery of the criminal justice system.’

Official figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show that over five years, 11 per cent of murders were committed by offenders bailed over another offence. Between 2006 and 2010, some 238 murders were committed by in England and Wales by bailed suspects out of a total of 2,107. Bail bandits committed 125 offences of manslaughter in the same period out of a total of 1,305. They were also responsible for 446 rapes, or nearly 90 every year. That is four per cent of all rapes carried out in the period. In addition, more than 900 sexual offences were committed against children by bailed criminals.

Overall, suspects who could have been locked up were responsible for seven per cent of all serious crimes, including murder, manslaughter, serious assault, rape and sex offences against children.

Bailed suspects commit one crime every four minutes, including a fifth of all burglaries and one in six robberies.

Cases where bailed criminals have committed horrific crimes are among the most notorious in recent years. Father-of-three Garry Newlove, 47,was kicked to death in 2007 after confronting drunks who damaged his wife’s car. His killer, teenage thug Adam Swellings, had been released on bail that morning after being convicted of assault.

Other cases include Jonathan Vass, a 30-year-old ex-bouncer, who slit the throat of his former girlfriend while on bail for raping her.

The figures are the latest to provoke fears that too many criminals are escaping with ‘soft justice’. Last month the Daily Mail revealed that 50 people a day suffer a violent or sexual attack by a convict who has been spared jail.

Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke has proposed a huge increase in the use of bail. Thousands more suspects could be released on electronic tags that alert the authorities if they do not comply with their curfew. Around 9,200 fewer criminals every year will be remanded into custody before trial.

Officials insist the measure will be used only when the alleged offence means there is ‘no prospect’ of the suspect being jailed if found guilty. They say prosecutors will be given the power to challenge bail decisions if they fear the public may be at risk.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: ‘Dangerous offenders who pose a threat to society should always be remanded into custody while they await trial.

‘To strengthen this, the Government recently signalled its intention to allow prosecutors to challenge a Crown Court bail decision where they feel a potentially dangerous prisoner could be bailed. 'Bail is only being modified for minor offences where the defendant would not receive a jail sentence if convicted. ‘The decision to grant bail is taken by the police and courts based on the full facts of each case.

'They take extreme care, particularly when making decisions about cases involving violent crimes.

‘The overwhelming majority of people bailed do not reoffend and are often given strict conditions such as electronic tags and curfews. ‘Anyone who reoffends while on bail will usually receive a longer sentence as a result.’

SOURCE