Lost In This Particular Hell

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For every soul lost in this particular hell, there are several others locked inside madness - unable to exit the world that stands at the threshold of their bodies. Even though they seem to be there, they cannot be counted as present. The man, for example, who goes everywhere with a set of drumsticks, pounding the pavement with them in a reckless, nonsensical rhythm, stooped over awkwardly as he advances along the street, beating and beating away at the cement. Perhaps he thinks he is doing important work. Perhaps, if he did not do what he did, the city would fall apart. Perhaps the moon would spin out of its orbit and come crashing into the earth. There asre the ones who talk to themselves, who mutter, who scream, who curse, who groan, who tell themselves stories as if to someone else. The man I saw today, sitting like a heap of garbage in front of Grand Central Station, the crowds rushing past him, saying in a loud, panic-stricken voice: "Third Marines...eating bees...the bees crawling out of my mouth." Or the woman shouting at an invisible companion: "And what if I don't want to! What if I just fucking don't want to!"

Paul Auster, City of Glass.




We were crucified at the end of days, and then, no longer the victim, became homicidal, taking out swathes of the population with invisible lasers, anyone who got in his way. A particularly long queue at traffic lights, gone. A traffic jam, gone. Too many people on the side walk, gone. As if they never existed. Grieving relatives unable to explain the disappearance of their loved ones, collateral damage nothing he could worry himself about, the motherless children, the fatherless boys waiting after school at the soccer match, the shocked lovers. No official explanation. None at all. Hundreds of people disappeared in a single morning and they had only one thing in common: they had got in his way.

Any policeman who came near him also vanished. He was guilty. He wanted them all out of the way. The city was too crowded. He would live and die and make barely a ripple on the pond; the universal consciousness would close over his last breath and it would be as if he had never been. He was angry and he didn't know why. His childish psychosis grew worse. He didn't know he could feel so little. He didn't know them. He wasn't one of them. None of them would have crossed the street to help him. His new found super powers gave him pause; he didn't know what happened to them after all, he couldn't know for certain that they were dead. Just vanished. And from what the newspapers began to report, gone for good.

Guilty at last, after three days of mayhem, of cleansing the city, culling to be precise, unlocking free ways and depopulating the city, he drew pause. Panic had entered the streets. There was no explanation, logical or otherwise. His anger bubbled still, a ranting anger about the fabric of things, the indifference of the populace, the frustrations and lack of fulfilment in his own life. But was that really justification for mass murder? He got in his car and drove to work. Luckily for them, there was almost no one on the road. Police lined the route, they were easy to spot, but he did nothing. His head rang with the voices of children: where's daddy, where's mummy?

He began to cry for no good reason. He hadn't meant to kill so many people, he had just wanted them out of the way. He had just wanted the city a little less crowded. He had become frustrated with the traffic, the endless queues, the noise, the pollution, the indifference to each other. He didn't know how to bring them back. Once gone, they were gone, and that was it. A little red car stopped at the traffic lights in front of him, and he thought for a moment of his options, before letting the occupants live. His security pass still worked at the office, but everyone stared at him. His photo had been published in the paper. Is this the man responsible? the captain had asked.

Why is it that this one person survived the massacres, the worse being on the M5, when several hundred cars caught in one of the city's worst traffic jams, after a computer failure, just vanished into thin air. He just drove right on through. Nothing was going to stop him. And one of the tunnel cameras snapped him pottering on through, unscathed, indifferent, just pottering on through on his way to work. Just as well I don't have the power to vaporise people, he had often said, frustrated at the city's endless delays. Unfortunately for them, and for the populace, the day it came true was a terrible day of anger, frustration, spite, when too many people had done him too many wrongs and the city stamped on his every opportunity, squashing his spirit.

Well he wasn't going to take it any more, that's what he said, when he had wished for the umpteenth time that the traffic in front of him would just disappear. And then it did. And he started the engine of his second hand car and just drove on down the ramp, through the tunnel, out the other side. There were people milling around at the exit to the tunnel, unable to believe what they had just seen, and he pottered on past them, just glad to be on the move. They had built this city to be impossible. You couldn't get around anywhere any more. Everything was ridiculously expensive. A normal person just couldn't get ahead, unless they had never stepped a foot out of line all their life, made sensible property decisions, worked hard. Unless, in other words, they had been perfect.

And he wasn't interested in perfect, never had been. The minute he built up assets, position, trustworthiness, he blew it all; in fragrant and extravagant gestures; which on the outside looked like nothing more than cringing madness. Oh help me, help me, he cried. And as he approached his desk he saw the officers standing waiting. It had been a trap. They knew it was him. Would he make them disappear? Would he make the whole world disappear? We need to talk to you, one of the uniformed gents said, clearly nervous. Handsome, pity he was so damn handsome, he thought, as the officer disappeared.




http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24387258-5007132,00.html

Nathan Rees 'filthy', Michael Costa flees

By Simon Benson, Rhys Haynes and Lauren Williams

PREMIER Nathan Rees reckons he is "filthy" - but he wasn't one of thousands of motorists demanding answers yesterday as yet another M5 East tunnel debacle brought Sydney to a halt.

More than 8000 cars were diverted and thousands more crawled for three hours in sweltering heat after a second computer glitch in just three months forced the tunnel's closure just after 9am.

Missed flights, lost job interviews, children late to school and delayed appointments were among a long list of woes forced on commuters by what the RTA described as a "circuit board failure".

Yesterday was the sixth time the $800 million tunnel has been shut since it opened in late 2001. Just two months ago a computer server shut down and forced the tunnel to close in both directions for five hours.

All this despite the tunnel shutting for a staggering 45 hours each month for overnight tests to ensure the mornings run smoothly.

"I've got to say I'm filthy about it," Mr Rees said. But in a fortnight that just keeps getting worse for the new Premier, Mr Rees has been forced to play out a twisted repeat of the failings that plagued his predecessor.

And like Morris Iemma before him, there was tough talk as a tunnel executive was marched up to Roads Minister Michael Daley's office, with threats of tearing up the operator's contract.

Today, when Mr Rees fronts Parliament for the first time as Premier, with a majority whittled down to just four after three MPs resigned, he will face a no-confidence motion by Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell - for "general incompetence". And he won't be alone in the sentiment.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24387945-5013871,00.html

MALCOLM Turnbull has dumped or demoted at least seven of Brendan Nelson's supporters in his first shadow ministry.

Victorian MP Tony Smith, who spent the night before last week's leadership battle on Sky TV talking up Dr Nelson, was relegated from the education portfolio to serve as assistant Treasury spokesman.

Mr Turnbull has also moved Opposition Senate leader Nick Minchin, who was Dr Nelson's chief numbers man, from defence to broadband communications, in what most MPs see as a subtle demotion.

Outspoken MP and long-standing John Howard loyalist Tony Abbott was left in the welfare and indigenous affairs portfolio after embarrassing the Opposition by expressing his desire to move "closer to the main action" despite his portfolio covering the hot issue of pensions.

"He's keen to continue doing that and he will be doing that," Mr Turnbull said about Mr Abbott.

"Tony is very happy in this position. He's happy, he's effective."

Senator Minchin was blunt in a statement about his appointment.

"While I would have been happy to continue as shadow minister for defence, the communications portfolio has a number of issues of vital importance to people across Australia, and especially the bush," Senator Minchin said.

Others who lost their jobs included Bronwyn Bishop, who was moved out of veterans affairs, and Joanna Gash, who was dumped from her position of assistant spokeswoman for tourism.

Pat Farmer from NSW was also dumped, from the youth and sport portfolios.

Bruce Billson, who was a prominent Nelson defender, was also demoted from the shadow cabinet to the outer ministry. He lost his job as the spokesperson for broadband, communications and the digital economy and picked up the newly created portfolio of sustainable development and cities.

Key Turnbull supporters to win promotions included Michael Keenan, who was given employment and workplace relations, and Peter Dutton, who was given health, while Christopher Pyne won the prized job of education.

NSW senator Helen Coonan has become foreign affairs spokeswoman, promoted out of her role as human services spokeswoman.

Environment spokesman Greg Hunt's role has been expanded and Victorian Andrew Robb will assist Mr Turnbull in formulating the Opposition's emissions trading scheme design.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/09/21/do2105.xml

What is the connection between the bankrupt Lehman Brothers and the likelihood that in four years' time our electricity bills will jump another 25 per cent (on top of the rises likely from soaring coal and gas prices)?

The answer is that, before its collapse, Lehman was pitching to become the leader in the vast trade created by the new worldwide regulatory system to "fight climate change" by curbing emissions of carbon dioxide.

The biggest money-spinners will be the schemes whereby industry will pay for permits to emit CO2 at so much a ton, either directly to governments or by buying them on an international market.

This market, soon to be worth trillions of pounds, was where Lehman hoped to be "the prime brokerage for emissions permits", as it set out in two hefty reports on "The Business of Climate Change".

Advised by some of the world's leading global warming activists, such as Dr James Hansen and Al Gore (a close friend of the firm's erstwhile managing director Theodore Roosevelt IV), Lehman bought their message wholesale. GIM, the company set up by Gore to sell "carbon offsets" in return for planting trees, was a prized Lehman client.

The particular market that Lehman hoped to dominate is centred on the buying and selling of carbon permits, through the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) set up in 2005, the UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the "cap and trade" system proposed for the US by both McCain and Obama.
# Read more by Christopher Booker

This may still seem abstract but it will affect all our lives, because ultimately we will all be paying for it, through the colossal costs it will impose on industry, not least electricity.

The EU scheme already adds more than a billion pounds a year to our electricity bills. In four years' time it will become much more obvious when, under phase two of the ETS, permits will be auctioned, at a projected initial figure of £35 per ton of CO2.

On the basis of current wholesale prices, the annual cost of electricity used in the UK alone is around £32 billion. Adding £35 for every ton of CO2 emitted in producing it will mean that our electricity supply companies will have to pay £8 billion for their permits, adding 25 per cent to the total cost. Under EU rules, this must be passed on to all of us in our bills.

The idea is that, to reduce carbon emissions by an eventual 60 per cent, the number of permits auctioned will reduce year by year, leaving an ever larger shortfall which firms will have to account for either by reducing emissions or by buying additional permits - not least from the developing world under the UN's CDM.

Everything about this grandiose scheme betokens the economics of the madhouse.

The new costs it will impose are so colossal that whole industries, including aluminium, steel and Germany's chemical companies, threaten to move their operations outside the EU unless they are given free allocations. It has not even been agreed who - whether national governments or the EU itself - will run the auctions or keep the hundreds of billions of euros a year the scheme will raise.

China, by virtue of having built giant dams to produce electricity, will be a net "carbon creditor", able to sell permits to the EU worth billions more, despite continuing to build a new coal-fired power station every four days.

So will Russia, thanks to it having closed down so much of its polluting industry after the fall of Communism. There is not the slightest indication that the scheme itself will result in any lowering of global CO2 emissions.

What is certain is that it will pile astronomic costs onto everyone in the EU, inevitably impacting most severely on poorer householders that will face bills they cannot afford. The only other certainty - perhaps a consolation - is that those sharing in this bonanza will not include Lehman Brothers, now excluded from cashing in on what threatens to become the maddest scam the world has ever seen.

BBC series stitches up sceptics in counter-attack over climate change

As informed questioning of the global warming orthodoxy rises on all sides, the BBC's three-part series Climate Wars, ending tonight, bears all the marks of a carefully planned counter-attack.

BBC science producers were apoplectic at the attention given last year to Martin Durkin's Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, featuring a galaxy of the world's more sceptical climate scientists. This is their riposte.

Last week, against a range of far-flung locations from Greenland to California, the presenter, Dr Iain Stewart, tackled three of the main arguments of Durkin's film.

In each case the technique was the same. After caricaturing the sceptics' point, with soundbite clips that did not allow them to develop their scientific argument, he then asserted that they had somehow been discredited.

For example, doubts had been raised over the reliability of satellite temperature records which do not show the same degree of warming as surface readings. Dr Roy Spencer, who designed Nasa's satellite system for measuring temperatures, was allowed to admit that a flaw had been found in the system.

But his interview ended before he could explain that, when the flaw was discovered in 1998, it was immediately corrected (although it made little difference to the results).

Likewise, there is a growing case for a correlation between global temperatures and solar activity. Dr Stewart accused Durkin's programme of cutting off a graph which illustrated this at a point when the data failed to support the thesis. Then he did exactly the same himself, not extending his own graph to 2008 in a way that would reinforce the thesis.

Most hilarious of all, however, was a long sequence in which Stewart defended the notorious "hockey stick" graph, which purports to show that temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level on record.

The BBC had a huge blow-up of this "iconic" graph carted triumphantly round London, from Big Ben to Buckingham Palace, as if it were proof that the warming alarmists are right.

There was no hint that the "hockey stick" is among the most completely discredited artefacts in the history of science, not least thanks to the devastating critique by Steve McIntyre, which showed that the graph's creators had an algorithm in their programme which could produce a hockey-stick shape whatever data were fed into it.

There was scarcely a frame of this clever exercise which did not distort or obscure some vital fact. Yet the "impartial" BBC is sending out this farrago of convenient untruths to schools, ensuring that the "march of the lie" continues.


Parramatta River, western Sydney, Australia.