They Knew Better

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Two teenage girls to face court after pursuit across Sydney

2008-09-21 05:39:05

Two teenage girls will face court today after stealing a taxi and
engaging police in a lengthy pursuit across the city and western suburbs
yesterday morning.

About 5am (Saturday 20 September 2008) a taxi driver stopped at a petrol
station on Victoria Road, Rozelle. The driver entered the shop to pay
for fuel and returned to the forecourt where he found his Ford Falcon
taxi had been stolen.

A short time later police from Ashfield saw the vehicle on Lyons Road,
Rozelle and followed it across the Iron Cove Bridge and Anzac Bridge
before attempting to stop the vehicle on the Harbour Bridge. The driver
ignored police directions to stop and a pursuit was initiated.

The vehicle was followed along the Gore Hill Freeway, Pacific Highway,
M2 Motorway and M7 Motorway where it is alleged the driver drove toward
a police officer who was deploying road spikes. The police officer took
evasive action to avoid being hit by the vehicle however successfully
deployed the road spikes causing a rear tyre to deflate.

The female driver allegedly drove through a number of red traffic lights
and conducted a number of u-turns on Wallgrove Road and the Great
Western Highway before the pursuit ended when two police vehicles
collided with the taxi.

The driver and passenger were both arrested at the scene and taken to
Mount Druitt Police Station.

The driver, a 16-year-old girl from Pyrmont, was charged with eight
offences including driving in a manner dangerous to the public,
predatory driving, using a weapon to avoid apprehension, driving a
conveyance without consent and a number of other traffic offences.

The passenger, a 16-year-old girl from Marrickville, was charged with
being carried in conveyance taken without consent. Both girls were
refused bail and are expected to face Parramatta Children's Court today.

Police Media.


“Our systematic exposure to fear and other arousal stimuli on television can be exploited by the clever public relations specialist, advertiser, or politician.” - Al Gore



If only, if only he had been born normal, if these terrible afflictions did not curdle every waking moment; when he had sat by the sea wall and thought, this is it, it's all coming undone, the waves crashing under the melancholy sky, the white sprays of jumbled fear emphasising one thing: he was all alone. No one would understand this time. No one would sympathise. The loss of his last job had been a terrible thing; now there was going to be another. He was walking on the bottom of the lead aquarium. No matter how much he knew their behaviour was wrong, he couldn't stop.

Remember how happy we were when we met? she had asked. When we used to go to meetings. When we weren't in a constant, desperate, daily scrabble for money. When every cell in our bodies did not shriek for oblivion. When he thought seriously about the value of his life insurance, hoping it would be enough to get the kids by. Ask your kids, do they want the life insurance or their dad, the ambulance officer was to ask. But this was before all that, before the resolution, when choking times and canned laughter and frozen expressions mixed together to leave him there, in the car by the sea wall, watching the sea gulls land on the broken concrete, away from anyone and everyone, hoping there would be some change in the burden of his psyche, hoping like hell he would die a peaceful death, at last.

Instead here he was, getting on the flight to leave Eritrea, mixing cheerfully with the group from the charity, swapping jokes, accepting the attention as his due. He was, after all, a newspaper reporter; and people courted him for what they could get on the page. Through him. Through this despairing cipher where the internal world was shades of leaden grey and everything murmured out from a deep well - and it was clear to everyone around him that his attachment to the real world was marginal at best. Pretend to be a real person, he told himself sternly. Pretend to be normal. No one can tell what's really going on, how close to suicide he was all over again, how gloomy and distorted his every waking moment had become.

They changed planes in Bangkok and he couldn't wait to ditch the crew he was travelling with and do what he always did in Bangkok, seeking out those certain bars, the pool table in the back, the fast and accommodating service. Bangkok, now a massive and astonishing place, with whole blocks of Russian criminals, where the world comes to spend its suspect cash, where men come in their thousands to satiate their desires, where all he wanted to do was change the colour of the universe, switch channels, switch heads, switch personalities, become an ordinary soul in an ordinary world, not this mewing sad wreck crying out for relief, talking earnestly, drunkenly in bars, reaching out, reaching out, for the slightest human contact.

There are things that should never be written, never said, never acknowledged, incriminating things which would show him up in a less than favourable light. The boldest stare needed tempering. The most honest account was censored. And so it was that he found himself back in Tempe, and the kids were crawling all over him, and his return was greeted with the greatest of relief, for a while. Until the money tighten3ed up again. Until the days crawled one after another back into that leaden cave, where he could not see much, where the walls were monochrome and the emotions flat, almost non-existent. If he knew despair that was all he knew, there was no fascinating intellectual content to his angst, no despairing, productive creativity.

He was curdled and he knew it. God had forsaken him. Even here, with these gorgeous children, the young blonde wife, the new house, the great optimistic hope for the future, here where everything looked so wonderful, the good looking young family, even here things were going wrong at the most basic level. She would scream and scream, everything was his fault, there was never enough money, the dope was never good enough, the moments of oblivion never long enough. And he let it all happen, just like that. He let it all run out of control. He knew better. They both knew better. But that didn't stop so many things from happening, the progressive falling in their social status, the weary, leary looks that their once best friends gave them. The decline in visitors. The decline in public standing. The creeping desperation that swept them up once more. And worse, worst of all, they knew better, even in the depths of those terrible times, they knew better.




THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/carnage-pakistans-reality-check/2008/09/21/1221935456444.html

IT WAS a chilling warning that Pakistani insurgents have the capability to strike almost anywhere and underscored the scale of the terrorist challenge facing nuclear-armed Pakistan.

In a suicide attack, a huge truck bomb exploded at the gate of the Marriott Hotel in the capital, Islamabad, on Saturday night, turning the city landmark into an inferno.

About 60 people were killed and more than 200 injured by the massive blast that could be heard 15 kilometres away. Authorities warned the death toll could rise as rescuers picked through the ruins.

The blast went off just half a kilometre from the Pakistan Prime Minister's residence where the President, Asif Ali Zardari, was dining with dignitaries.

Earlier the President, who was inaugurated a fortnight ago, had addressed the National Parliament for the first time and promised to "root out terrorism and extremism wherever and whenever they may rear their ugly heads".

But the attack on the Marriott, which came only hours later, made a mockery of those words.

No one has yet claimed responsibility for the blast but the Pakistan Taliban based in the tribal areas along the Afghanistan border is believed to be behind the attack.

Mr Zardari gave a televised address after the blast in which he appealed for "all democratic forces" to help to save Pakistan.

"Terrorism is a cancer in Pakistan. We are determined, God willing, we will rid the country of this cancer," he said. "I promise you that such actions by these cowards will not lower our resolve."


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Comments and reports about global warming are getting silly and even ridiculous. Al Gore says we have ten years left. We’re told cooling is due to warming. More rain and flooding and less rain and drought are both due to warming. More hurricanes are predicted while fewer occur. Global temperatures declined as much in the first few months of 2008 as they increased in the previous 100 plus years due to warming. Recently we were told global warming is causing an increase in kidney stones in a travesty of geographic correlation assuming cause and effect. One blogger who began recording, with tongue in cheek, all the events attributed to global warming was John Brignell.

Actually, ridiculous statements and definitive claims of doom are a good sign. Good because they are a sign of desperation as evidence accumulates that human CO2 is not causing warming or climate change. Good because people and governments are changing their positions faced with the evidence and the costs already incurred by wrong policies and actions. Good because governments are coming to their senses and getting their priorities right. India putting development to feed starving citizens ahead of unsubstantiated threats of climate change is a great advance. It also provides an argument that transcends and regains the moral high ground environmentalists claim.

There are troubling aspects with how far the myth of human caused climate change has been carried because so much has already become entrenched in legislature, commerce and behavior. For example, the fact they have the direction wrong as we prepare for warming while cooling occurs and is expected to continue. Director of the Space and Science Research Center, John L. Casey, declared:

“After an exhaustive review of a substantial body of climate research, and in conjunction with the obvious and compelling new evidence that exists, it is time that the world community acknowledges that the Earth has begun its next climate change. In an opinion echoed by many scientists around the world, the Space and Science Research Center (SSRC), today declares that the world’s climate warming of the past decades has now come to an end. A new climate era has already started that is bringing predominantly colder global temperatures for many years into the future. In some years this new climate will create dangerously cold weather with significant ill-effects world wide. Global warming is over – a new cold climate has begun.”–Space & Science

More extreme stories predicting disasters at worst or unprecedented change at best are due to growing desperation as awareness builds among the public that humans are not causing warming or climate change. However, they are also the legacy of the mandate and procedures of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). We heard about the 2,500 members being a consensus of scientists, but this is anything but the truth. A majority, 1,900, only look at the impacts of global warming or climate change. Most are bureaucrats not scientists. Worse, they start from a false assumption because they accept the results of the Science Report that changes are due to human activity and then speculate on the impacts.

IPCC Reports engender many of the news stories about the impending doom and disaster. This has created the severe bias against any benefits from warming. I received more attacks and nasty emails over an article I wrote suggesting many of the benefits of warming, especially for cold climate countries. This reaction and the pattern of responses to evidence that human CO2 is not causing climate change will lead to more extreme claims and statements.

While climate science was taken over by politicians, environmentalists and scientists with political agendas, the steady but inexorable search for scientific truth continued. This was inevitable as skeptical scientists tested and challenged what is known as the Anthropogenic Warming Theory (AGW). Atmospheric CO2 levels would increase because of human contributions and since it was a Greenhouse gas temperatures would increase. That has not happened.

Instead the major assumptions of the theory have collapsed. Since 2000, global temperatures have declined while atmospheric CO2 levels increased. All records of any duration for any time period from the 600 million year geologic record to the 600,000 year ice core record to the modern instrumental record show temperature increases before CO2 increases. Even more damaging is the growing evidence that CO2 causes cooling not warming.

As more and more experts examine climate science they find it wanting at the most basic levels. Jim Peden wrote,

“As a dissenting physicist, I simply can no longer buy the notion that CO2 produces any significant warming of the atmosphere at any rate. I’ve studied the atomic absorption physics to death, from John Nicol’s extensive development to the much longer winded dissertation by Gerlich & Tscheuschner and everything in between, it simply doesn’t add up.–Qando.net

Dr. Kelvin Kemm, former scientist at South Africa’s Atomic Energy Corporation, wrote, “There is no evidence man-made CO2 causes climate change.”—Engineering News

More and more people are questioning and learning about the bad science. They see and hear the contradictions in the claims, the failure of previous disaster predictions. Enough reports trickle through to raise questions about previous threats. For example, hysteria about arctic sea ice last year dominated the news while the fact Antarctic sea ice reached record levels was barely reported. Similarly, we are not hearing in main stream media about the current situation because the situation has returned to ‘normal’ and that is not good news for the purveyors of doom.

“On a global basis, sea ice anomalies in May 2008 continue to be above the long-term average during the 1979-2008 satellite period - the 10th highest on record. SH (Southern Hemisphere) sea ice is off a bit (in anomaly terms) from record levels earlier in 2008, but remains at near record levels (3rd highest May anomaly).”—Climate Audit
Thanks to the Internet, enough people hear about the real story and enough trickles through to an increasingly skeptical public. They receive the information in the context of their knowledge that weather forecasts are frequently wrong especially beyond 48 hours.

Why does the myth of humans causing global warming or climate change persist? The obvious answer is money and that is certainly true. In fact it is increasingly true as more and more individuals, companies and countries profit from carbon credits, cap and trade, business opportunities and taxes. We must never forget that a major proponent and marketer of carbon credits was Ken Lay as CEO of Enron or that Al Gore has a company that benefits from them. But there are other forces at work. The mix of socialist ideology with environmentalism as a religion, especially among the few select scientists associated with IPCC tends to transcend financial reward. Dogma has a very powerful determination.

We also have the problem of why apparently intelligent people and especially scientists persist in the face of evidence. Leo Tolstoi, Russian author provided one explanation when he wrote ”I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”

Debate exists on many blogs about whether their actions are malfeasance or incompetence. Were the errors made in the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) data showing 1998 the warmest year in the US record when it was actually 1934 a genuine error or an adjustment that reinforced the claim by the Director James Hansen and his friend Al Gore that the warming in the 1990s were evidence of the human cause of warming and climate change? It is a debate that will and should expand once it reaches the public forum through mainstream media. The question of accountability for the damage done is another issue.

Al Gore’s ten year threat implies a tipping point. James Hansen and others similarly warn we are close to such a point. Ironically, we are reaching a tipping point, but it is not the one they envisioned. Rather it is the tipping point created by their extremism. A point were the increasing claims and threats become so irrational and ridiculous that they force people to change their perspective even if they still don’t understand the science.

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Assault on Reason

It would be fitting, after just reporting on a recent appearance by Former Vice President Al Gore (ref. Al Gore and Innovation), to review his latest book “The Assault on Reason.” The premise of the book is that modern mass media constitutes a relentless march towards “one way conversations,” where money and power dictate what radio, then television, have force-fed into the minds of vulnerable and impressionable human psyches. Gore then offers hope that the internet and the Democratic party can reverse this trend.
Gore’s concerns about mass media are certainly not unfounded, but what struck me again and again when reading the book was how easily you could substitute the canards he accuses his Republican political adversaries of manipulated the media into brainwashing into the body politic, with Gore’s own canards.

“Our systematic exposure to fear and other arousal stimuli on television can be exploited by the clever public relations specialist, advertiser, or politician.” - Al Gore

One of the favorite arguments of global warming alarmists is the so called “precautionary principle.” If some future scenario is sufficiently horrific, then taking steps to prevent it, even if it isn’t likely it will happen, is simply prudent and rational behavior. But Gore himself debunks the precautionary principle:

“Another psychological phenomenon that is important to understanding how fear influences our thinking [is] ‘probability neglect.’ Social scientists have found that when confronted with either an enormous threat or a huge reward, people tend to focus on the magnitude of the consequence and ignore the probability.” - Al Gore

That might be Saddam’s nukes. Then again, it might be the spectre of sea level rising 300 feet, too. Fear indeed is a powerful selling tool. Once again, to quote Gore:

In the immediate run up to the election campaign of 2002, a new product - the war against Iraq - was being launched. For everything there is a season, particularly in the politics of fear.” - Al Gore

Now we’re in the election season of 2008, and what high profile $300 million advertising campaign is about to be launched - in the “immediate run-up to the election campaign?” None other than Al Gore’s climate change advertising blitz. Look for footage of extreme storms, burning deserts, endangered mega-fauna, and starving children. Yet when it comes to co-opting media by using hype to trump logical analysis, Gore is at his outraged best:

“I don’t remember a single newspaper, commentator, or political leader ever questioning the president’s claim that our nations objective should be to ‘rid the world of evil.’ Further, I heard precious little questioning of the preposterous logic by which the president and vice president had conflated Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. It was as if the nation had decided to suspend the normal rigors of logical analysis…” - Al Gore

Well how many newspapers, commentators, or political leaders are questioning global warming alarm? How many are pointing out that the reality of climate change, the reasons for climate change, the severity of climate change, and the steps to mitigate climate change - are all worthy of vigorous debate? Gore’s propaganda machine has silenced them all, using the same tactics he deplores throughout his new book. It is as if we have “suspended the normal rigors of logical analysis.” Climate change alarm has become a secular faith. And speaking of faith, what about this?

“Bush has stolen the symbolism and body language of religion and used it to disguise the most radical effort in American history to take what belongs to the American people and give as much of it as possible to the already wealthy and privileged.” - Al Gore

If the absolute intolerance of the global warming alarmists, who dominate the media and call those of us who simply call for reasoned discussion “deniers,” isn’t evocative of religious extremists, I don’t know what is. Similarly, if making Americans pay punitive prices and endure rationing of government controlled energy, water and land - so attorneys, CPAs, Wall Street traders, huge and heavily subsidized corporations, well-heeled environmentalist nonprofits, the U.N., and academia can harvest the proceeds to enrich themselves - isn’t being seen as ”the most radical effort in American history to take what belongs to the American people and give as much of it as possible to the already wealthy and privileged,” it is only because Gore’s media machine has done its work well.

These are just a few examples of how Gore’s criticisms of media and Republicans could just as easily apply to his own campaign. Indeed Gore slips at one point and pretty much admits he’s cut of the same cloth, when he writes “there are, of course, many historical examples of vivid imagery producing vicarious traumatization that has been used for positive purposes.” Such as those Polar Bears perched precariously on a rapidly melting fragment of sea ice, perhaps? Or New York City covered with mountains of glacial ice? Apparently Gore doesn’t really mind the assault on reason represented by modern media one bit. He just minds when he can’t control it.

Not to worry. Gore’s vision is on the ascendancy these days. Ever seen the bumper sticker that says “Endless War,” with a few letters crossed out so it actually reads “End This War”? That is how anyone who can see what Gore and the radical environmentalists - who now control the environmental lobby here in the USA and most other places in the world - should view the war on anthropogenic “greenhouse gas.” They won’t succeed in reducing greenhouse gas emissions to anywhere near where those supposedly accurate “general circulation models” indicate they need to go in order to avert planetary catastrophe. But that isn’t the point. The objective is to take over huge new sectors of the economy, to put America on a war footing, to ration energy, land and water, and as with all socialist totalitarian states, this will benefit the rich and hurt the poor. This is the “endless war” we should all fear. Gore’s remarks on page 143 of his new book summarize the threat of reinventing our political economy according to the gospel of global warming alarmism quite well:

“There are also reasons for concern this time around that what we are experiencing may no longer be the first half of a recurring cycle, but rather the beginning of something new. For one thing, this war is predicted by the administration to last for the rest of our lives. So we are told that the conditions of national threat that have been used by other presidents to justify arrogations of power will persist in near perpetuity…it will become a more or less permanent struggle that occupies a significant part of our law enforcement and security agenda from now on. If that is the case, then when - if ever - does this encroachment on our freedoms die a natural death?” - Al Gore