On The Edge

*



After the invasion of Iraq in 2003 this joint US/UK task force appeared. Its primary mission was to kill or capture high value targets. Individuals detained by this Task Force often included non-combatants caught up in the search for high value targets. The use of secret detention centres within Iraq has negated the need to use Guantanamo Bay whilst allowing similar practice to go unnoticed...

Throughout my time in Iraq I was in no doubt that individuals detained by UKSF and handed over to our American colleagues would be tortured. During my time as member of the US/UK Task Force, three soldiers recounted to me an incident in which they had witnessed the brutal interrogation of two detainees. Partial drowning and an electric cattle prod were used during this interrogation and this amounted to torture. It was the widely held assumption that this would be the fate of any individuals handed over to our America colleagues. My commanding officer at the time expressed his concern to the whole squadron that we were becoming “the secret police of Baghdad”.

As UK soldiers within this Task Force a policy that we would detain individuals but not arrest them was continually enforced. Since it was commonly assumed by my colleagues that anyone we detained would subsequently be tortured this policy of detention and not arrest was regarded as a clumsy legal tool used to distance British soldiers from the whole process.

During the many operations conducted to apprehend high value targets numerous non-combatants were detained and interrogated in direct contravention of the Geneva Convention regarding the treatment of civilians in occupied territories. I have no doubt in my mind that non-combatants I personally detained were handed over to the Americans and subsequently tortured.

The joint US/UK Task Force has broken International Law, contravened The Geneva Conventions and disregarded the UN Convention Against Torture. British soldiers are intimately involved in the actions of this Task Force. Jack Straw, Margaret Beckett David Miliband, Geoff Hoon, Des Browne, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown. In their respective positions over the last five years they must know that British soldiers have been operating within this joint US/UK task force. They must have been briefed on the actions of this unit.

As the occupiers of Iraq we have a duty to uphold the law, to abide by the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture. We are also responsible for securing the borders of Iraq on all counts we have failed. The British Army once had a reputation for playing by the rules. That reputation has been tarnished over the last seven years. We have accepted illegality as the norm. I have no doubt that over the coming months and years increasing amounts of information concerning the actions of British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will be become public.

Whilst the majority of British Forces have been withdrawn from Iraq, UKSF remain within the US/UK Task Force.

¹Torture, according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, is "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession.”

Ben Griffin
25 February 2008




As if a free wheeling sky, shadows curving into attack, vacant spaces as he relaxed out of the holiday. All they wanted was to be protected from the looming financial crisis. The rich pull up their draw bridges. The farmers simply stop spending. Many other houses simply stop spending; except for the bare necessities. He could see that wooden hut on the side of the hill at Uki, where his grandparents eked out a simple living. They were at the bottom of even that undistinguished social set. Here in isolation, in the profound distance from civilisation, in the shadows and the enfolding warmth of the summer air, the screech of cicadas, the gusts of heat.

His grandfather's skinny frame was covered with soot when he arrived home from the cane fields. His grandmother had already washed and fed the tribe. Their simple aspirations, she learnt to drive in her 60s, came from a poverty stricken background where one could expect nothing, where the shadows of the ancestors were always there, little monuments on the sides of Asian roads. All those stories of his grandparents came out to play now, when the world was threatened with recession, even depression, when panic stricken politicians repeated glum nonsense ad nauseum, and they, like everybody else, tightened their belts.

$48 it cost to take me and the kids to the movies last night, to see some stupid thing called Tropic Thunder which my teenage boy thought was hysterical. They wouldn't see anything more serious. We couldn't really afford it. There's the absence of something, the failed consciousness. We're brave, we're strong, we'll still be here. The betrayals were so fluid, so deep. These images were clear. Did we adhere to the vision of a noble little house on the side of a lantana choked hill. Did we stay loyal to these past indignities, bear noble pride, decency in poverty, poor but true. Did the children scabble along the hilltop, as their father made his way home from the fields?

There was always an absence. Confusion was always part of the package these days. Superannuation savings have plummeted, although we have been told repeatedly how important it is to save for our own retirement. Classified as unimportant, God kicked their lives about like a child with a Lego set, ripping up and rearranging the patchwork quilt of the land, rearranging lives. They were simple folk and proud of it. About as fancy as it got was cheese and tomato on toast. He was reclassified as insane. He was shadow stricken, and searching for inner peace. He was reclassified, and nothing could bring him back.

It must have been melancholy, he thought, of his own mother's visit to her mother's grave. Grandmother, Sarah Audrey, had always been a wonderful person. Even at university, when his life was full of books and alcohol, he journeyed out to spend the night on their couch at the housing commission homes at Narrabeen, and the tomato plants were booming in the tiny tracks of dirt around the unit, and the peas were neatly staked. They came from an era when your own home garden was a vital part of survival, and a great deal of pride and energy went into the few vegetables they were able to grow.

A smile lit up their faces when they saw him. Family was everything to this generation. They needn't know about all the modern illnesses, the modern drugs which were distorting his consciousness, making him sick. To them he would always be their first grandson, first grandchild, and nothing he did or had done was worth bringing into this proud but simple place, cheap but comfortable, his grandfather's glass of beer on the veranda with the coaster placed on top to stop it going flat. One of the proudest days of his grandfather's life was when he took his eldest grandchild down to the boozer and introduced him around to everyone. This is my grandson, he said proudly. He's at university. While in reality his classroom schedule was chaos and he was behind in his essays, to them the fact that he was going to university was a source of great pride, as if the achievement was theirs as well as his. And in a way, he thought, as he ate the simple meal his grandmother had prepared, it really was. The blood line continued, even through the Great Depression; they had survived.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.news.com.au/business/money/story/0,25479,24481708-14327,00.html

THE Federal Government is poised to raise the level at which it guarantees consumer bank deposits after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd held a crisis meeting in Canberra yesterday in response to the continuing global financial meltdown.

With governments around the world moving to back their national institutions, Mr Rudd joined key Cabinet ministers, Treasury head Ken Henry and Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Terry Moran to discuss the latest financial developments and their implications for Australia.

The Sunday Mail understands from those involved in the meeting that the Government is now likely to increase its guarantee of bank deposits above the current $20,000. Previously Mr Rudd has refused to commit to raising the deposit protection, citing the stability of the Australian banks.

Cabinet sources said yesterday the $20,000 limit was likely to be lifted, though to what level is uncertain.

Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull has called for a $100,000 guarantee in the wake of Ireland, Britain and the US governments' decision to lift bank guarantees.

A spokesman for Mr Rudd confirmed yesterday's agenda included "an examination of the broadening of Financial Claims Scheme following recent decisions by foreign governments about related schemes" but refused to give details.

Yesterday's crisis meeting followed an overnight conversation between Mr Rudd and US President George W. Bush and as an emergency session of finance ministers from the G20 group of countries was held as part of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington.

Treasurer Wayne Swan, who attended the emergency session, yesterday warned that unemployment in Australia was set to rise and Budget spending would take a hit.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE49A1VQ20081011

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Saturday said the financial crisis will require a global coordinated response and the top industrial nations will work together to solve it as quickly as possible.

"All of us recognize that this is a serious global crisis and therefore requires a serious global response," he told reporters after an unusual Saturday gathering with the Group of Seven economic chiefs. "I'm confident that the world's major economies can overcome the challenges we face."

He said the crisis would require a coordinated global response and the United States will use all the tools at its disposal to deal with the crisis. But he cautioned that it will take time to resolve the credit crunch.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Financial_crisis_hits_poor_nations_as_well/articleshow/3583295.cms

WASHINGTON: As the world's richest nations debate how to bring a catastrophic financial crisis under control, international groups are warning that its reach now goes far beyond the developed world.

Poor countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, which are already dealing with a surge in food and energy prices, are now finding it harder to sell goods abroad and encourage investment in their own economies.

Rich nations are falling well behind on their aid pledges as they face problems at home. As many as 30 countries are dealing with severe balance of payment problems, in other words, a shortfall of cash, according to the World Bank.

That lack of investment could lead to a rash of bank and business failures in poor nations, similar to the chaos that has played out since September in the United States and Europe.

As a result, the World Bank has "tentatively" cut its forecast for 2009 growth in developing countries to about 4 percent, down from an April prediction of 6.6 percent, World Bank President Robert Zoellick told reporters Thursday.

While that compares favourably with the likely recession many advanced economies will face next year, Zoellick said the slowdown in poorer nations was "so sharp as to feel like a recession".

The International Monetary Fund said it was ready to make emergency loans to developing countries to meet the cash shortfall from the broadening financial crisis.

The Shadow Of The Great Depression

*



When the economic history of the credit crisis is written, September and October 2008 will be seen as the months that pushed the banking and financial systems of the industrial world to the brink of collapse.

While the crisis has been running for more than a year, it has reached a new and more virulent phase, with the past two weeks a view-changing shock for policy makers everywhere.

Inevitably, the US, Britain and Europe are going to end up with nationalised banking systems in one form or another, and with governments guaranteeing not only their deposits but probably all their liabilities. The nationalisation will be a temporary emergency measure. But for some time at least the systemically important banks effectively are going to be public utilities and must be regulated accordingly.

This taxpayer rescue of banking systems opens up a new and potentially very important avenue for unfreezing bank lending and restoring the flow of credit. If governments effectively control the banks, what is to stop them from demanding that they start lending again? ...

However, the deeper and more prolonged downturn in the Group of Seven economies now in prospect means it will take a miracle for Australia to avoid a recession. As in other high-income economies, just how nasty it gets will depend a great deal on how households respond, particularly as unemployment rises.
Alan Wood.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24472447-24631,00.html

NEW YORK, Oct 10 (Reuters) - U.S. stocks tumbled in a turbulent session on Friday, as panicked investors dumped stocks in a global sell-off on mounting fears that frozen credit markets would push the world into recession.

Uncertainty about what steps the finance chiefs of the world's major economies will take over the weekend to confront the financial crisis further fueled the market's anxiety. Stocks added to losses after a G7 official said the Group of Seven major nations is unlikely to adopt Britain's proposal to guarantee lending between banks when it meets on Friday.

Shares of Morgan Stanley (MS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Goldman Sachs (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) tumbled after credit ratings service Moody's said it might cut their ratings, reviving concerns about the viability of their banking models. [ID:nHKG162100]

Energy companies dragged on the broader market as oil prices fell 10 percent to a 13-month low below $78 a barrel on fear a faltering global economy will curb demand for crude.

Volume was heavy across the board and trading was extremely volatile. Shortly after the open, the Dow Jones industrial average slid about 8 percent to break below 8,000 for the first time since April 1, 2003, and then briefly turned positive, before turning sharply lower again.

With less than an hour and a half left in the trading session, the benchmark S&P 500 index was on track for its worst week on record.

"It's a disaster. It's far worse than people thought it was going to be," said Dave Rovelli, managing director of U.S. equity trading at Canaccord Adams in New York.

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN1039473420081010




Everywhere there is fear of another Great Depression. The pundits and the politicians attempt to reassure a troubled population that the Australian banking system is strong, that it couldn't happen here. No one believes them any more. My parents grew up in the Great Depression and everywhere in our lives were signs of their upbringing. My father would get angry if we used too much soap in the shower. Even though he had a well paying job, he never spent any money, at least not on us. Barely a cent. Once, once, during my entire childhood, we went out to dinner, to the Chinese restaurant in the neighbouring suburb. It seemed like a wonderful adventure.

There was none of the casual sophistication of my children, who pester me to go get croissants at the local Vietnamese hot bread shop, or Sammy who pesters constantly to go and get chocolate gelato from Bar Italia in Leichhardt, which the kids maintain is the best gelato in Sydney. They ought to know, having dedicated a childhood to the quest. Or Henrietta moans, not Thai takeaway again. What we would have given for Thai takeaway when we were kids, well we wouldn't have even known what Thai takeaway was; as we lined up yet again for a chop with one piece of potato, one piece of pumpkin, beans, always the same, as my parents sat glowering and the trees continued their manic rustling all around.

Both my grandmothers brought up six kids each during the Depression. It seemed a common number, back then. These women never expected anything, certainly not the casual luxuries of today; certainly not the glamorous lifestyles portrayed on television, here in the Oprah age when vast wealth is admired and peered at every day, envious windows, shadows of ferment, torment, as we long to be taken out of our own lives and granted custody of our own futures, as we measure success in terms of physical acquisitions, as the Audis queue at the lights, gleaming black and silver, and the idea that their grandparents might not have worn shoes to school seems to them a fantasy.

Dreamed up, escape hatches everywhere, movies to lift into wonder or divert our tales of humble action, try hard, work hard, cut your garment according to your cloth. No saying could be less appropriate, as the gleaming four wheel drives line up to escape the supermarket, their boots packed with the shopping as the children watch DVDs or play electronic games in the back seat. It's a different era. Mary Anne would make us kids eat pumpkin with the skin on it, and we weren't allowed to leave the table until we did. The chooks scrabbled in the back yard. Nothing was wasted. No money was spent. Through the depression, they contributed pennies to insurance schemes which when they were finally realised decades later were only worth a few hundred bucks.

As for Sarah Audrey, the maternal grandmother, in the family tree there were two characteristics listed, piercing blue eyes, and the ability to make "something out of nothing" when it came to feeding the tribe. And it was true. She could always rustle up something to eat, even if it was simple. That generation never spent anything they didn't have to, counted every penny, saw no pleasure and no point in useless frivolities, couldn't imagine the groaning malls of the modern era. My mother always told of the heartbreak her father caused, when he dank the household money and would come slurring home to a reproachful house.

Or of the days, those terrible days it sounded, when she was sent down to fetch him, to say, mum says, dinner's on the table, never knowing the reaction, as she poked her little face through the fearsome front door of the bar, daring to embarrass him. And running and running, so he wouldn't hit her. And the shame of it all, when there was no money for anything and they kept the pumpkins growing, because they would certainly need it. All was right, all was clear, there far away; there was no money. There weren't any matches bought casually at the shop. There weren't any needles, to sow up second hand clothes. There just wasn't, really, any money at all; no casual consumer goods, no casual gluttony, no flash cars and credit cards and lost houses; for all had already been lost, and the scrabble to survive, to feed the kids, to get through the day, to put the dinner on the table in the evening, that was all that occupied them.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-10/10/content_10174940.htm

BRUSSELS, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- The eurozone economy is now on the brink of recession as the financial crisis is devastating the 15-nation bloc sharing the euro currency.

For the first time, economic growth in the eurozone recorded a quarterly decrease in the three months from April to June this year, figures from the European Union (EU)'s statistics bureau Eurostat showed Wednesday.

But things have been getting worse after the negative growth in the second quarter, mainly due to the escalating financial crisis, which suggests that there is little chance of the eurozone economy rebounding in the following months.

In technical terms, recession means negative growth in two consecutive quarters.

As EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said Thursday, forecasts of a recession in Europe and the United States could become the "central scenario."

Forecasts for recessions on both sides of the Atlantic "run the risk of becoming the central scenario in the coming months," Almunia told a conference in Madrid, Spain.

The financial crisis, which originated in the United States, has deepened in Europe in recent weeks, with several European banks falling prey to the global credit crunch, prompting EU governments to save their banks by injecting large amounts of money or even nationalizing them.

Without any knowledge of which one would be the next victim, financial institutions in the eurozone have become extremely reluctant to lend to each other, resulting in a more serious credit crunch.

Despite furious efforts by the European Central Bank (ECB) to inject liquidity into the financial markets, no big turn was observed.

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=12&theme=&usrsess=1&id=226221

It's bad and may get worse, but it's no depression

By Hamish McRae
The world's monetary authorities are at last really trying to reassert their power over the financial markets. They have not yet succeeded and they will have to do more, may be much more, but eventually they will win. Or at least they always have in the past 75 years. You have to think that the world is facing something akin to the Great Depression of the 1930s to believe that they will fail.
To begin with, the fire-power of the world's central banks, particularly when acting together, is huge. They can flood the world with unlimited money, hence reinforcing the changes in interest rates such as they agreed on yesterday. Central banks don't act in concert very often. The last time I recall was a pact in 1985 to support the dollar. This time there will have to be more interest rate cuts around the world, but one of the messages yesterday was that there will be. This is the beginning of global interest rate disarmament. It was also great in show-biz terms to get the Chinese on board, since the Chinese economy has become the principal source of growth in the world.
The second way in which the authorities are taking charge is by supporting the banks. The response has had to come from governments and it has been pretty mixed. You would expect that. Governments had to make it up as they went along.
Not all have succeeded. The wooden spoon clearly goes to Iceland but the USA has done none-too-well either. Continental European governments have done rather better with their bank rescues and this latest British plan makes a great deal of sense because it goes to the heart of the problem. It will give the banks access to whatever capital they need to keep functioning. You cannot do this well for that is not in the nature of the beast, but the British authorities are doing it better than most.
Getting the world's banking system moving again is a necessary precondition to averting a serious economic slump. There was always going to be some sort of global slowdown but the loss of confidence in the financial markets has made matters worse, potentially much worse. Markets reflect what they think will happen to the economy, but also help shape it. The markets are now in blue funk mode, signalling they believe that the forthcoming downturn will be serious indeed. They are not in the utter despair of the mid-1970s, the feeling that governments have lost control over monetary policy, their budgets, everything.
But the negative response to the British bank rescue plan and to the global interest rate cuts is undoubtedly troubling. You could say that what they are suggesting is that this downturn will be similar to that of the 1990s, a nasty but "conventional" post-war recession. That may happen, though my own view is that the UK may pull through in somewhat better shape than it did then. But could it be worse still ~ something more akin to the 1930s Depression?

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24478527-5013871,00.html

Christian Kerr | October 11, 2008

THE Prime Minister has lost his chief of staff as the waves from the global financial crisis wash across Australia, with David Epstein tendering his resignation yesterday.

The long-time Labor loyalist will be replaced by his 29-year-old deputy, Alister Jordan.

Mr Epstein will formally leave the Prime Minister's Office on November 14 and plans to take up a new role outside government in the new year.

His departure comes just 10 days after Labor national secretary Tim Gartrell announced he was leaving his position after taking federal Labor to their first election win in 14 years.

A senior member of Mr Rudd's media team, George Wright, left the office in August and another senior member of the Prime Minister's staff is also expected to leave soon.

The Prime Minister has paid tribute to Mr Epstein, saying his leadership "played a pivotal role in federal Labor's election victory".

"David's professionalism and experience were vital ingredients in establishing a new Australian Government," Mr Rudd said.

Mr Epstein is a well-regarded political veteran, the director of the feared ANiMaLS attack unit during the Hawke and Keating years, a communications director at Labor's national secretariat and chief of staff to opposition leader Kim Beazley. He also worked for an industry peak body in telecommunications and for lobbyists Government Relations Australia.

Mr Jordan is another matter. He will be the youngest person at the heart of power since the 22-year-old Ainsley Gotto was appointed principal private secretary to John Gorton in 1968.

In June, an investigation by The Weekend Australian of the first six months of the Rudd Government described Mr Jordan as "at any given time the person likeliest to be in his office".

It found he was "by far Rudd's closest confidant: the first associate the PM speaks to most mornings and usually the last he speaks to at night".

Christine Jackman, a senior writer with this newspaper, revealed in her book Inside Kevin07: "Rudd and Jordan shared strikingly similar personal stories."

There are fears that the two are too close. The Rudd-Jordan relationship has been described as having a certain father-son quality.

There are worries Mr Jordan, who joined Mr Rudd's staff in 2002 straight from university, will not be able to stand up to his boss or undertake other tasks that fall to the Prime Minister's chief of staff, such as disciplining wayward caucus members and even ministers. The appointment has raised the issue yet again of the Prime Minister's micromanagement. Not that Mr Epstein did not cause controversy. He has been pursued by the Opposition over possible conflicts of interest given his former job with GRA. His wife, Sandra Eccles, now runs the firm's Canberra office.



Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on the Rove Live Show, image using mobile phone.

Don't Believe Anyone

*



Fundamentally, the drive for expanded presidential authority was about power. Cheney and Addington "viewed power as the absence of restraint, which is why they didn't go to Congress," Jack Goldsmith, a conservative legal scholar and former Justice official, explained. In the days after 9/11, they spoke often of wanting "maximum flexibility." What was lost in this view, however, was any appreciation for the legitimacy in a democracy that stems from winning consensus, including the consent of the governed. Also overlooked was the original reason for checks and balances; they were designed to offset human fallibility.

Jane Mayer, The Dark Side.



"I don't believe anyone any more," Sammy said, sitting strapped in the child care seat in the back of the car. It was a strangely sophisticated thing for a four year old to say.
"Why not?" his father asked. "What makes you say that?"
"I don't know, I just don't," he replied.
"Something must have happened..." but at that point he was distracted by the traffic. And when he thought of some of the lies that those close to him told on a daily basis, it wasn't that surprising a conclusion to reach. All it showed was perception and intelligence. Trust no one, as Mulder was inclined to say. Don't believe a word you're told.

But this level of common sense scepticism has dissolved in the modern era. The world swallowed global warming just like that, just because of a film called The Inconvenient Truth, peddled by a politician for God's sake. He would always remember Al Gore's jet parked at Sydney airport, the ultimate in hypocrisy. While my daughter turns off light bulbs as she moves from room to room, all to save a species and protect a planet, the man most responsible for this hysteria has his US Air Force 747 idling on the tarmac. Why do so many believe such nonsense?

A crotchety old thing, he didn't believe any of the other shibboleths of the age either. Domestic violence hysteria has now got worse, and with the left in control virtually everywhere in the country, only the West Australian state government has now moved back across the line into conservative territory, not that they were any good either, the waves of hysteria have just got worse. Everywhere. Battered women lurk behind every door, with marauding bastards, those evil creatures called men, do everything they can to keep them in servitude. All based on lies. All based on selective choice of statistics. Yet hundreds of millions of dollars, nay billions, get funnelled into the industry. Yet a five minute search finds mountains of documentation to show men and women are equally guilty in their private wars.

Caught on the wrong side of the belief systems that had strangled the country, turned it into a communist state, he kept his mouth shut for fear of appearing reactionary. The party at the block has been escalating; and yesterday, Thursday, pay day he assumed, little gangs kept walking up and down to the pub for another slab of beer. It had never crossed the minds of any of these people to get a job. As they stayed drunk and lapped up the welfare dollar, and spat on the white bastards who had done all this to them, who had taken their land, their dignity, their identity. While some poor bastard had to work in a factory to pay for that slab of beer.

He saw them, the hypocrites, in their comfortably middle class self referencing packs, daring to go to Lakemba to prove for themselves what a wonderful success multiculturalism had been in this city. They would never dare to go alone. Trust no one. Believe no one. And there they were, going on about how wonderfully authentic the shiskebabs were, while in the hidden prayer centres just behind them the jihadists railed against the evils of the west, including multiculturalism itself. If you believe in everything you believe in nothing, they say. But no one asks the original host population, hiding in fear behind their doors, or already having fled. And the wonderful chaos that the city could be, with people from everywhere, was all a dream in an academic's eye.

Bring back scepticism, bring back honesty. Bring back the faith that we all once had, in the state, in the church, in each other. But everything, the city's heart and soul, has been eroded by self interest and the endless lies; and we mopped them up like fools. No wonder so many just wanted to flee. This glorious city was glorious no more.



http://co2sceptics.com/news.php?id=1906

Yes, global warming "is just propaganda"
by Nigel Calder: Besides being a former editor of New Scientist, Nigel Calder has written three books on climate change. His latest is The Chilling Stars (Icon Books) co-authored with the Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark and described by The Times as 'the new totem of the climate-change sceptics'.

Worldwide interest in my quite run-of-the-mill comment, on the need to debate the manmade global warming hypothesis, is pleasing but not surprising. It confirms that my fellow science writers have miscalculated badly. Most readers don't want endless scare stories about climatic doom, accompanied by authoritarian lectures about their carbon footprints. They're hungry for a variety of opinions.

Unfortunately only 1% of the huge number of articles on climate change in the posh London newspapers deviate from the official line of the Intergovernmental Panel. That's not my reckoning. It comes from researchers at Oxford University who complain about the more balanced reporting in the not-so-posh papers, with a deviancy rate of 23%. They say it has 'skewed public understanding of human contributions to climate change'. In other words, kindly abandon the journalistic principle that different points of views should be heard on controversial matters, or else a lot of dreadful people out there (you or me) may not truly believe that climate change is their fault.

Yes, you've got it. Man-made global warming is just propaganda. My father Ritchie Calder was a science writer too, but during the Second World War he played a leading part in Allied propaganda against Nazi Germany. He told me quite a lot about the tricks, employed in what was then a good cause. Now I watch them being used every day by the global wamers.

For example: exaggerate small facts. A brilliant wartime example came when someone in occupied Belgium was chalking V on public walls. He meant V for Vrijheid, or freedom. But London announced that in occupied Europe people were writing V for Victory everywhere. So people listening secretly to the BBC went out and did just that, to annoy the Germans and hearten their neighbours.

The polar bears qualify as a similarly astute exaggeration from the global warming camp. Some years ago, a small family of bears was caught in a violent storm, and drowned. That could have happened a hundred or a thousand years ago. But no, the Disneyesque sob story is put about, by Al Gore and others, that bears are drowning because the Arctic ice is melting. Total rubbish, because the polar bears are thriving. But it's dazzling propaganda.

Another technique is to hush up unfavourable news. In wartime that can mean not informing even the bereaved relatives if an important warship has sunk without the enemy knowing. Again the polar ice provides a modern parallel. Last year you were told – shock, horror! -- that Arctic sea ice was at its lowest extent since satellite measurements began. What went unreported was that Antarctic sea ice was simultaneously at a record high. The collusion of my fellow journalists in the deception is disturbing. Although the big freeze in Antarctica was plainly announced in a press release from the US weather bureau, NOAA, not a single newspaper in North America or Europe carried this unfavourable story.

My Dad's chief opponent was Hitler's propaganda minister Josef Goebbels. Among many meditations on his craft, he wrote, 'The English follow the principle that when you lie, you should lie big, and stick to it.' And of course Goebbels did the same himself – most wickedly in the case of the Jews.

One big lie about climate change is that man-made global warming is proven scientifically. Not so. On the contrary, any objective physicist would say that the evidence is strongly against it. The very mechanism for the supposed greenhouse warming, reinforced by that extra CO2, requires tropical air temperatures to rise faster at high altitudes (6 miles above the ground) than they do lower down. Weather balloons that routinely carry thermometers to those heights and beyond have shown no such trend over recent decades.

That negative result was an important element of what I had in mind when remarking, in my comment last Monday, that the scientific evidence is far stronger for a rival explanation of climate change. It's the discovery that the Sun controls the cosmic rays that help to make the Earth's clouds. The supporting observations and experiments are explained in simple terms by Dr Henrik Svensmark and me in our book The Chilling Stars.

The biggest lie of all, breathtaking in its audacity, is the insistence that mankind's misbehaviour means that global warming is getting worse. The measurements for August 2008 are just in, and they confirm the world is distinctly cooler this year than last. It's fair enough to argue about whether the Earth's temperature has stopped rising, or merely paused, or gone into reverse. But the key fact is that, despite that indisputable increase of CO2 in the air, the Earth is no warmer now than it was 12 years ago.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7d1127b0-932c-11dd-98b5-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1

The slowing economy and financial crisis are testing Europe’s goal of becoming a world leader in greenhouse gas reduction.

Industry has seized on the slowdown to lobby for delayed or watered down regulations, arguing that directives set out by the European Commission earlier this year would force them to cut jobs or relocate factories outside the European Union.

Some politicians also acknowledge that the financial crisis could hinder efforts to forge international agreements on reducing emissions.

“This crisis changes priorities,” Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, last week told a conference on transatlantic climate and energy cooperation in Berlin. “One cannot rule out that interest in protecting the climate will change because of such a crisis.”

On Tuesday the European Parliament’s environmental committee is to vote on measures at the heart of the EU’s commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020.

Among the proposals are plans to expand emissions trading, accelerate the development of carbon capture and storage and a measure that would ban the construction of power plants that emit more than 350 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour – essentially ruling out coal-fired plants.

The results of the vote, on what is dubbed “Super Tuesday,” will form the basis for negotiations with the EU’s 27 member states. With members of parliament facing re-election in the spring, it is seen as a last chance for Europe to pass meaningful climate legislation before an international summit to renegotiate the Kyoto treaty next year.

“It is very important that the EU is ambitious because the EU will have to be a leader if we want to have an international deal that means something,” said Delia Villagrasa, the EU climate project co-ordinator at the World Wildlife Fund.

However, the economic environment has deteriorated since the Commission first spelled out its climate change proposals in January. Just last week, France confirmed that it had fallen into recession and Spain reported that unemployment had surged past 11 per cent, while governments were forced to bail out banks amid a growing financialcrisis.

http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/2468/218/

Global Warming Hoax Weekly Round-Up: Oct. 10, 2008 Print E-mail
Written by The Daily Bayonet

on Oct 9, 2008, 04:23 PM E.S.T.

Waiter

Welcome to the weekly round-up of all things a growing climate skeptic needs. This week might be more linky than snarky, I reached a personal high of being Snark McSnarky of the Snark People last week, and I'm not quite over it yet.

Lots of good stuff for you this week, and if you've ever read a round-up before, you're going to love this week's return hottie. Don't forget to return up here to read the good stuff after you've gone and had your sneaky early look at her. You're so predictable.
Part One: Al Gore and Friends

Al Gore loves his Nobel Prize almost as much as he loves his Oscar. Too bad the Nobel committee might have broken the rules when they decided to award it to him then. Expect the 'they'll tear this award from my cold, dead hands' speech within the week.

Dodgy strides
Al Gore with his Illegal Award, and a friend in odd trousers

Al loves him some burgers, which means he can't love the planet. Poor Al.

You will recall that Al likes to confuse weather with climate, as long as it fits the alarmist cause. Well, he's done it again, blaming the Iowa floods on AGW. Al says:
"In 66 of your 99 counties, the flood damage was truly historic. No one has ever seen a flood like this."

When asked, Noah was unavailable for comment.

It's election season of course, so Al has been busy raising cash for politicians that hope to be far better at being politicians than Al was. I wonder if that bothers him. No word on whether Al cycles to these events or takes the jet.

US network ABC refused to air a Gore alarmist advertisement. Of course, that means that they are evil, right?

Al likes it when his advice to be green is taken. Michigan was a leader among States in greening its economy. Oh, wait. What economy?

In Canada's election, proof that Greens can be useful; as long as you like the lefty votes being split three ways. Like I do.

Global warming muppet James Hansen isn't a muppet at all. He's a grinch.

David Suzuki does like you. In fact, he's no fan of humans at all. Fair enough; after you, Dr. Suzuki.
Part Two: AGW Scaremongers and Propagandists

Scaremongers have had a very busy week, so this section is packed with more linky goodness than usual. Did you know that penguins are this weeks doomed species? I hope that's not true, they are just so perfect with a chilled white wine.
Waiter
dressed for disaster

The radical AWG zealot group Plane Stupid (irony alert) have decided that an airport expansion is an act of war. Consequently the Iraq conflict has been re-labeled a civil engineering project.

Avian flu, tick-borne babesia, cholera, ebola, parasites, plague, lyme disease, red tides of algal blooms, Rift Valley fever, sleeping sickness, tuberculosis and yellow fever. Betcha can't guess what causes all those afflictions.



UN chief Ban Ki Moon thinks that global warming is the defining challenge of our era. New York still thinks that getting Moon's people to pay their parking tickets is the defining challenge of their era.

Preferring to live in the dark, useless people in Quebec protest sprucing up a nuclear power station. Let's take their names and unplug these folks first. Please?

Tom Nelson picks on Leo DiCaprio, a man that wants to blow be Al Gore.

Fresh from driving his 4mpg racing car at 200mph, Lewis Hamilton is all for reducing carbon footprints. And he has a jet.

The EU is keen to make sure that its people will have no chance to read at night. Or cook anything, or stay warm, or watch television...

Teaching Al Gore's movie to kids? Just your friendly neighborhood green facsists at work.

Will the Greens please just fade away? We can hope.

Tom Nelson picks on Eric Mortenson, a man that wants to blow be Leo DiCaprio.

Organic food is good for you. Except that it's not.

Lord Stern thinks that going green can save the economy. Lord Lenient was unavailable for comment.

Vaclav Klaus, Czech President says that global warming alarmism is unacceptable and should be confronted. He and I would get along great. I'd call him my Czech mate. (insert groans here)

A comic strip picks on skeptics. I'm hurt.

Would nuclear energy be better accepted if it were called 'terrestial energy'? It's an interesting idea, but relocating all the other energy sources to the moon might be costly.

New Jersey Governor Corzine equates the size of wind turbines in the distance to seeing Lindsay Lohan up close. OK, I made that up, go see what Tom says.

Global warming is just propaganda. See, I told you so.

Farting isn't funny. OK, it is, unless you're a green moron.

Making green cars will save money. Oh, wait.
Sweet greens
Well, it's painted green

Skier goes carbon neutral. Will he walk to the mountain tops from now on?

Greens really are scared of everything. Including 78 year-old retirees using walking sticks.

Part Three: Inconvenient Truths

The green sahara is proof that global warming is a hoax. Says a Sopranos wannabe.

European Aluminium industry may get killed by EU green rules. (Translation for US readers: European Aluminum industry may get killed by EU green rules.)

Scientists agree, it's getting colder. There goes the consensus credibility.

British people agree, global warming scare is media hype.

Lots of money for no return. The inconvenient truth of dealing with global warming.

China says that rich countries are failing to deliver on climate change, rich countries say China is failing to deliver melamine free foods. Impasse reached.

The economy is killing the global warming hoax, proving that there is an upside to watching 25% of your portfolio vanish.

It's cold in Ireland.

Poland, not buying into the global warming hysteria.

It's getting colder.

Wind farms are good for the planet, bad for people.

Back To The City Back To The Present

*



Over a lunch at a genteel Upper East Side French restaurant in Manhattan in 2006, the year before he died, Schlesinger, a liberal Democrat but also an admirer of muscular foreign policy, chose his words slowly and carefully. When asked what he thought of President Bush’s policy on torture, he peered over his glasses and paused. Schlesinger’s The Imperial Presidency had described Richard Nixon as pushing the outer limits of abuse of presidential power. Later, his book The Cycles of American History had placed these excesses in a continuum of pendulum swings. With his trademark bow tie askew, Schlesinger considered, and finally said, “No position taken has done more damage to the American reputation in the world–ever.”

While there was nothing new about torture, its authorisation by Bush Administration lawyers represented a dramatic break with the past. As early as the Revolutionary War, General George Washington vowed that, unlike the British, who tortured enemy captives, this new country in the New World would distinguish itself by its humanity. In fighting to liberate the world from Communism, Fascism, and Nazism, and working to ameliorate global ignorance and poverty, America had done more than any nation on earth to abolish torture and other violations of human rights.

Yet, almost precisely on the sixtieth anniversary of the famous war crimes tribunal’s judgement in Nuremberg, which established what seemed like an immutable principle, that legalisms and technicalities could not substitute for individual moral choice and conscience, America became the first nation ever to authorise violations of the Geneva Conventions. These international treaties, many of which were hammered out by American lawyers in the wake of the harrowing Nazi atrocities of World War II, set an absolute, minimum baseline for the humane treatment of all categories of prisoners taken in almost all manner of international conflicts. Rather than lining prisoners up in front of ditches and executing them, or exterminating them in gas chambers, or subjecting them to grueling physical hardships, all enemy prisoners–even spies and saboteurs–were from then on to be accorded some basic value simply because they were human. America had long played a special role as the world’s most ardent champion of these fundamental rights; it was not just a signatory but also the custodian of the Geneva Conventions, the original signed copies of which resided in a vault at the State Department.

Any fair telling of how America came to sacrifice so many cherished values in its fight against terrorism has to acknowledge that the enemy that the Bush Administration faced on September 11, and which the country faces still, is both real and terrifying. Often, those in power have felt they simply had no good choices. But this country has in the past faced other mortal enemies, equally if not more threatening, without endangering its moral authority by resorting to state-sanctioned torture. Other democratic nations, meanwhile, have grappled with similar if not greater threats from terrorism without undercutting their values and laws.

But to understand the Bush Administration’s self-destructive response to September 11, one has to look particularly to Cheney, the doomsday expert and unapologetic advocate of expanding presidential power. Appearing on Meet the Press on the first Sunday after the attacks, Cheney gave a memorable description of how the administration viewed the continuing threat and how it planned to respond.
“We’ll have to work sort of the dark side, if you will,” Cheney explained in his characteristically quiet and reassuring voice. “We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies–if we are going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in. And, uh, so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal basically, to achieve our objectives.”

Soon afterward, Cheney disappeared from public view. But his influence had already begun to shape all that followed.

Jane Mayer, The Dark Side.



As if anything could change, as if this city meant something. The crowded angst that was Sydney crowded around him. It is school holidays and the Block is crowded with rat bags molesting commuters and stealing from the neighbourhood's cars. The Lebanese next door had an almost new car stolen from outside their house yesterday afternoon. Next to them the back window of their wagon had been smashed. Police were up and down the street all evening, attending to inquiries. The nation said sorry but we still get robbed. It's always someone else's fault.

Petrol has dropped back to a $1.50. A year ago it was barely a dollar. The Australian dollar has plunged in value. There is talk of Depression everywhere. Our cartoon politicians keep repeating the same mantra: the fundamentals of the Australian economy are strong. The Rudd government looks shocked and out of its depth. Rudd himself spews forth verbiage and lies and garbage at an unseemly rate, and he still gets support because the other side proved themselves to be a pack of bastards, and just as dishonest in many of the same and different ways. No one paid the slightest attention to voices of dissent.

Dissent had become fashionable, and therefore neutralised, in the universities of the day. Next door the mad Alsatian continues to bark; and bark; and bark. The brothers share a bong in the back lane, setting off another stream of barking. One foul swoop in the modern era and he was transferred from the country to the city, the humming of machines, the tolls, from a sleepy land that time forgot, Tambar Springs, to the curdling city choking on itself, drowning in fumes. He made one confident prediction: The Emissions Trading Scheme will be a fiasco of the very first order.

The predictions of massive job losses and huge price jumps will come back to haunt Labour, which is caught by its own hysteria. They could have picked a proper, sceptical scientific type to be their climate change guru, instead they picked the princeling Professor Garnaut, a pompous twit with a messianic complex who thinks he has been burdened with saving the planet, and purrs to the ABC interviewers about how difficult the whole process has been. His girth has grown with pride and self conceit. These people already know that none of it's real.

His heart had been hardened by a thousand wrongs. Be happy, healthy, productive, he ordered, be strong, wise, compassionate, funny. And not the funny farm. It's spring and the country roads are lined with blossoms. Twenty years ago a kid threw an apple out a car window, and now a tree is covered with blossoms and buzzing bees, and the country takes on a new era of hope. The Depression cometh, sayeth the Lord. He grew up with stories of the Great Depression of the 1930s, which had hurt his family profoundly.

No shoes for school. The rejoicing over a single needle to do the sewing. The simple meals that could be stretched out to make way for their own happy, curling laughter. His grandfather who drank everything, the family fortune, who bequeathed him in part his own anxious soul, who sat on the veranda at 6am as the morning heat flushed on the first wave of cicada screech, getting in the first drink of the day before anyone was awake to disturb him in the bliss that passed down through generations; the bliss of intoxication, the first of the day, the first happy memory wiped, that beautiful taste, the bubble of beer, yet he was forced to face a world, a city, a complex path, beyond anything they would have known, simple farming folk. And he came back to the city, back from Tambar, and he shuddered at the pressure of it all. Why did people do it to themselves? No wonder so many were leaving. No wonder people went bush; and stayed there; the sleepy drone of the bees; insects adrift on the first flush of heat in the summer air.




THE BIGGER STORY:

http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCATRE49763N20081008

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund, in its bleakest forecast in years, said on Wednesday the world economy was set for a major downturn with the United States and Europe either in or on the brink of recession.

The IMF said the worst financial trauma since the Great Depression would exact a heavy economic toll as investors wrestle with a crisis of confidence and global credit is choked off.

"The world economy is now entering a major downturn in the face of the most dangerous shock in mature financial markets since the 1930s," the IMF said in its World Economic Outlook.

The assessment was written before a coordinated half-percentage point interest-rate cut on Wednesday by the U.S. Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of England, Switzerland, Canada and Sweden.

China also joined the move with a more modest cut.

The IMF's new chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, said the coordinated drive was a step in the right direction but more action may be needed as the world economy slows.

"Fifty basis points is not nothing," Blanchard told a news conference. But he said monetary policy was only part of the answer and further measures were needed to clear up clogged credit markets. "More is needed, in particular in Europe," he said.

In an interview with Reuters, Blanchard said the rash of crises in recent weeks had convinced world policy-makers that it was time to work together to find a way out of the credit crisis, which has raged for 14 months.

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24466439-5007132,00.html

THE NSW Labor Party today stands disgraced, with 139 criminal charges recommended over the Wollongong sex-for-development scandal including 20 against four former Wollongong Labor councillors and a high ranking Labor official.

The ICAC yesterday labelled the saga as the most entrenched corruption it had witnessed with all involved facing possible jail sentences of up to five years if charged.

And it took aim squarely at the State Government, blaming a failure to properly administer planning regulations that could have prevented it.

Gallery: The main players in the scandal

But the most damning findings, as expected, were reserved for the woman at the centre of the scandal, former town planner Beth Morgan, with 27 recommended charges stemming from her sexual exploits with developer Frank Vellar, and the gifts she received for approving his $100 million Quattro development.

Mr Vellar faces a possible 19 charges for bribery when a brief is prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions. Ms Morgan could face criminal charges of corruptly taking benefits. It was the affair between Ms Morgan and Mr Vellar from which all other corruption flowed.

Listen: Hear the Wollongong phone tapping tapes

ICAC found Joe Scimone, a former council manager, had acted corruptly during his time with the council by giving favourable treatment to developers Frank Vellar and Bulent "Glen" Tabak.

He also failed to disclose his knowledge of the affair between his boss, Ms Morgan and Mr Vellar. He possibly faces two criminal charges.

Mr Scimone was a former campaign worker for Transport Minister Mr Campbell and friend of Ports and Waterways Minister Joe Tripodi.

Gallery: Beth Morgan's life

The "unprecedented level of corruption described by commissioner Jerrold Cripps, led to 10 people in total being found to have engaged in corrupt conduct. They included Ms Morgan, Mr Vellar, Mr Scimone, Mr Tabak, former council general manager Rod Oxley, senior manager John Gilbert and four Labor councillors Valerio Zanotto, Kiril Jonovski, Zeki Esen and Frank Gigliotti.

Criminal charges were recommended against all, except for Mr Oxley and Mr Gilbert who, while found to be corrupt, had not engaged in conduct that warranted charges.

How Beth headed home as the scandal broke

A further three men recommended for charges including the pair who posed as ICAC officials, Ray Younan and Gerald Carroll, who solicited bribes from council officers and developers claiming to be able to destroy evidence against them.

One of those developers, Lou Tasich could also face charges.

"It is not uncommon to find cases where multiple layers of management fail to detect corrupt conduct or mismanage known corruption risks," Mr Cripps said. "But to establish actual corrupt conduct within five levels of a NSW public sector organisation is without precedent."

Premier Nathan Rees will now go to by-elections in Ryde, Cabramatta and Lakemba with the stench of corruption girdling his Government.

http://news.theage.com.au/national/ocean-abyss-yields-new-marine-species-20081008-4wll.html

A voyage of discovery by Australian scientists into the uncharted depths of the Southern Ocean has found hundreds of new marine species, the CSIRO says.

The discovery of 274 fish, ancient corals, molluscs, crustaceans and sponges new to science has been announced at the CSIRO's Marine and Atmospheric Research unit in Hobart.

The astounding discoveries of creatures never thought to have existed were found in waters up to 3,000 metres deep, among scores of extinct volcanoes whose great mountains and canyons provide vital, thriving habitats.

Scientists mapped 80 undersea mountains and 145 canyons, some larger than the Grand Canyon, for the first time.

The finds were made 100 nautical miles south of Tasmania during two two-week CSIRO voyages in November 2006 and April 2007.

New sonar technology, video and water samples were analysed from the Huon Commonwealth Marine Reserve and the Tasman Fracture Commonwealth Marine Reserve.

The discoveries will in some cases force the re-writing of textbooks, the CSIRO scientists say.

Dr Kate Wilson, director of the CSIRO Wealth from Oceans National Research Flagship, said more was known about the surface of Mars than the depths of the world's oceans.

"In Australian waters, for example, more than 40 per cent of the creatures brought to the surface by our scientists on a voyage of discovery have never been seen before," she said.

About 70 per cent of the fish, crustaceans, molluscs, sponges and corals identified on the two voyages are new to science.

He Shrank Inside At The Thought

*



The hunchback in the park
A solitary mister
Propped between trees and water
From the opening of the garden lock
That lets the trees and water enter
Until the Sunday sombre bell at dark

Eating bread from a newspaper
Drinking water from the chained cup
That the children filled with gravel
In the fountain basin where I sailed my ship
Slept at night in a dog kennel
But nobody chained him up.

Like the park birds he came early
Like the water he sat down
And Mister they called Hey Mister
The truant boys from the town
Running when he had heard them clearly
On out of sound

Past lake and rockery
Laughing when he shook his paper
Hunchbacked in mockery
Through the loud zoo of the willow groves
Dodging the park keeper
With his stick that picked up leaves.

And the old dog sleeper
Alone between nurses and swans
While the boys among willows
Made the tigers jump out of their eyes
To roar on the rockery stones
And the groves were blue with sailors

Made all day until bell time
A woman figure without fault
Straight as a young elm
Straight and tall from his crooked bones
That she might stand in the night
After the locks and chains

All night in the unmade park
After the railings and shrubberies
The birds the grass the trees the lake
And the wild boys innocent as strawberries
Had followed the hunchback
To his kennel in the dark.

Dylan Thomas



Oh colapse, oh eat your soul, little starved, nightmare putrid, he prayed for positivity and was marked by a cringing scorn. I'm going to sleep with someone and see what you make of that, I'm going to have an affair, she said loudly and angrily to her drunken husband, who had woken up the publican for a six pack of that local favourite Bundaberg (Bundie) Rum and Coke early that morning and now, at three pm, had moved on to schooners of beer while he searched for something more lethal. See if I care, she shouted, and then stormed into the interior of the pub, the children scattering quietly because they knew their mom was angry.

He raised an eyebrow. In the mud? he asked. Don't worry about it, Phillip said, shrugging and fighting with a new cigarette packet. She gets ahead of herself. Sure enough, she was back within minutes clutching a red soft drink and sitting next to him, steaming and fuming. See you're alright! she said. Thought I'd get myself a drink. He shrugged and murmured something the bystanders couldn't hear. Up she stormed again. I'm going to have an affair and he's going to root me and then see what you think you lazy dot dot, she proceeded, and he shrank inside at the thought of his mate being publicly humiliated, and wondered too why having an affair with any of the dogs in this flea pit would be an act of revenge on anyone but yourself.

These were querelous times. Far off, there was news of Wall Street collapsing. The radio was full of apocalyptic visions from climate change hysterics. And no one trusted anyone anymore, the political debate was so corrupted. They had been very poor, their leaders. Oh bring us hither, bring us nigh. He had seen her only the night before, sitting up at the pub in plump glory talking loudly about perfume, almost everyone in that place talked loudly, and she declared with what was meant to be sophiscticated allure that as a courting girl she had loved the smell of Opium.

It was all to deny the reality, that she lived in a dirty chaotic mess of a house with five varyingly difficult children and a chronically alcoholic husband; who's good features, his cute looks, his blonde hair, his wiry figure, his lust for her, were long forgotten in the mess that was their backyard, their kitchen, their life. He watched only slightly, out of the corner of his eyes, hoping she didn't see him as an observer, someone to impress, even though he came from the city and had a proper job. She could have been a normal person, a real person with a real life and with real possibilities forthe future, the way she had sat up there in the evening cool, with the local blokes all around, talking about perfume.

Not now, as she yelled at her drunken husband and he just kept on drinking. It was impossible to imagine Phillip sober. Would he put up with her, for a start? Or would she cope with someone she could no longer manipulate, control, berate, put down. He saw all these things in flashes of time, in a place like Tambar where time forgot, where he could stand in the night and watch the stars and know there was almost no one in a 70 mile radius, a few farm houses, the remnants of people who lived in this village, old fingernails, the woman's who's purple painted claws made her an eccentric out of eccentrics.

They gathered on the veranda to watch the sunset. Even long before the dust had settled and the sky turned to pink. Across the Liverpool Plains, the gentle lines of colour, of rising land, of distant hills. Population 103 the sign said. Not likely. And most of the local lads were off the road, now there was a copper in town. They'd almost all been done for unregistered. Who could afford to register a car these days? This place was built on the depression, in a far off time when the trucks didn't roar through town and television didn't offer a world somewhere else.

He could see it in the houses, in the broken frames, in the unpainted walls. He could see it in the faces of people who had never had any ambition to do anything, or go anywhere, but here. They were happy to be here and they were happy to die here; and the rest of the world was a mirage. The gay blokes who owned the pub have taken up the lease again; after they bought a caravan and a brand new Landcruiser and set off to see Australia; only to get as far as Lake Keepit and call it quits. The scrabby Depression scarred family who took over the lease went broke, never restocking; barring all the wrong people, you can't bar people in a place like Tambar. And they were back at the Royal, on the veranda, watching the sunset, making faces as Phil swilled his beer and Marge shouted about having an affair; looking out across the settling plain. Why would anyone want to be anywhere else?



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://business.theage.com.au/business/consumer-confidence-home-loans-dive-20081008-4w78.html

Consumer confidence plunged in October as turmoil in global financial markets spurs concerns about the economic outlook on the same day home loan numbers contracted for the seven consecutive month.

The Westpac-Melbourne Institute consumer sentiment index dived 11%, or 10.2 points, to 82.0 in October one day after the Reserve Bank shocked the market by cutting interest rates by a full percentage point to 6% in order to spur the economy.

"Seven consecutive monthly declines in housing finance commitments and another sharp decline in consumer confidence towards multi-year lows adds further credibility to the RBA's dramatic move yesterday," said Matt Robinson of Moody's Economy.com.

The tumble in consumer confidence more than reversed September's 7% bounce and left the index down 28.9% on October last year. It was the biggest single contraction since August 2006.

"The deterioration in sentiment was expected," said JP Morgan economist Helen Kevans in a note to clients.

"Financial market volatility also was elevated and the global economic outlook was deteriorating rapidly."

The picture of melting consumer confidence comes as Australian housing finance commitments for owner-occupied housing fell 2.2% in August, seasonally adjusted, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said. It was the seventh consecutive month of declines.

The decline to 48,903 loans is the lowest since March 2001, seasonally adjusted.

http://www.forbes.com/afxnewslimited/feeds/afx/2008/10/07/afx5521763.html

SYDNEY, Oct 8 (Reuters) - The Australian dollar hovered close to four-year lows against the U.S. currency on Wednesday, hurt by expectations of more interest rate cuts amid mounting fears of a sharp slowdown in the global economy.


* The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) on Tuesday stunned markets by lowering the cash rate by 100 basis points, double market expectations, and left the door open for more cuts as the deepening credit crisis threatened economic activity.

* Australian bill futures are pricing in chances of more rate cuts by year end, further narrowing Australia's yield advantage over the United States.

* The spread between the two-year U.S. and Australian government bond yields eased to 280 basis points on Wednesday from 335 points at the start of the week, eroding some of the Aussie's high-yield appeal.

* By 9:45 a.m. (2245 GMT), the Aussie eased to $0.7120 from $0.7216 late here on Tuesday.

* The Aussie slumped to a four-year low of $0.6970 earlier this week, when it was hammered on fears that a global recession would hurt the nation's commodity exports and speculation the central bank would cut rates aggressively to cushion the economy.

* Worries about a global slowdown weighed down on stock markets and benefited the safe-haven yen. The Aussie fell to 72.30 yen from 74.22 yen late here on Tuesday, not far from a five-year low of 70.27 yen struck earlier this week.

* The housing finance report for August is out at 11:30 a.m. (0030 GMT), with activity expected to have remained sluggish. Analysts forecast the amount lent to decline by 1.2 percent from the previous month.

http://www.livenews.com.au/Articles/2008/10/08/Diving_star_Mitcham_sad_to_be_only_gay_in_Olympic_village

Matthew Mitcham, the 20-year-old Australian who produced a sensational final dive to stun the diving world and take gold at the Beijing Olympics, said it is “sad” he was the only openly gay man at the Games.

Mitcham’s gold has propelled him into the spotlight, and he now hopes to pave the way for others after being the only man out of 10,500 Olympic athletes to publically say he was gay.

“I was actually very surprised I was the only ‘out’ male at the Olympic Games,” Mitcham told reporters yesterday.

“It’s a little bit sad I think, because statistically there should be a lot more but, you know what, it’s each to one’s own.

“I’m not going to pressure anybody else to come out of the closet because it’s their own choice.

“But I’m proud to be there, proud to be that one, that lots of other people can look up to.”

Before the games Mitcham struggled for money as he juggled diving training with an office job.

Now, with Ian Thorpe’s manager Dave Flaskas representing him, the new-found attention is set to bring in the sponsor dollars and make life easier in the lead up to London 2012.

“Money was a huge stress leading into the Olympics for two years and for that to not be a massive burden on me leading into the next Olympics would be nice,” Mitcham said.

“But that’s an ideal world and who knows what’s going to happen.”

Half Coke Half Port With Ice

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: We have to work the dark side, if you will. We’re going to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies.



AMY GOODMAN: In her new book The Dark Side, Jane Mayer chronicles how the Bush administration crafted its interrogation and detention policies. She writes, “As part of the war on terror, for the first time in its history the United States has sanctioned government officials to physically and psychologically torment American-held captives, making torture the official law of the land in all but name.”


Jane Mayer joins us now in our firehouse studio for the hour, staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. Again, her book called The Dark Side. Welcome to Democracy Now!


JANE MAYER: Thanks so much. I’m really glad to be with you.


AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to have you here. Talk about the Red Cross report that got a lot of coverage, but not quite the way you cover it in this book.


JANE MAYER: Well, I think it’s particularly interesting today and the day after former Attorney General Ashcroft testified in Congress, saying that everything they did was not torture, that waterboarding did not constitute torture, because that is absolutely not the point of view of the Red Cross, which is really the world’s authority on the subject of treatment of prisoners of war. And the Red Cross sent investigators down to Guantanamo. They were the first independent outside people to be able to talk to the CIA’s prisoners. There were fourteen of them who had been emptied out of the black site prisons and were down in Guantanamo.


AMY GOODMAN: Where were the black site prisons?


JANE MAYER: The black site prisons—well, there’s been a lot of speculation about where they were. They seem to have been, among other places, ironically in eastern Europe and possibly even facilities that had been used by the communist world before the fall of the Soviet Union.


So, at any rate, when the Red Cross talked to these prisoners, the stories they got were harrowing and, in the view of the Red Cross, constituted torture. It was not—there had been earlier Red Cross reports that have said that mistreatment by the US government of prisoners was tantamount to torture. This was no longer just tantamount; this was categorically torture, in their view, and constituted grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, which is why we say—I say in the book that they were warning that the top officials of the United States could be prosecuted.


AMY GOODMAN: How do you know what was in the Red Cross report?


JANE MAYER: Well, you know, it comes from not seeing the Red Cross report, which is a confidential report that’s only circulated into the hands of a few people at the very top of our government. It comes from interviewing a number of sources who have seen it and cross-checking with them the details over and over again ’til I had a level of confidence that what I’ve got in here is absolutely correct. And I hope—we can note that nobody has contradicted it yet.


AMY GOODMAN: And just to be clear, the Red Cross gives their reports to a government. That’s why people, the public, doesn’t see it.


JANE MAYER: Yes, they work behind the scenes. The whole—and this is—it was, you know, an ethical decision—complication about whether or not to report on this, because I certainly support the work of the Red Cross and what they are doing all around the world. And so, in order to get the access they need to monitor these cases, they agreed to do it quietly and behind the scenes and to just talk to the convening authorities—is what they call the government—that are holding the prisoners. But after seven years since 9/11, I thought that it was important, as a journalist, for the country to understand what’s being done in—by our government. And so, it was in this—weighing the scales, I thought, time for people to understand this.


AMY GOODMAN: Jane Mayer, you also report that back in 2002, the CIA warned that up to a third of the prisoners at Guantanamo may have been imprisoned by mistake.


JANE MAYER: Isn’t that—to me, this is one of the amazing anecdotes in this book. It’s not the ACLU. It’s not, you know, some kind of outside human rights group. It’s the CIA that warned the government. They sent—the CIA sent a particular expert down to Guantanamo in the summer of 2002 to figure out what’s going on. Why are we not getting better intelligence out of these detainees down in Guantanamo? And he was an Arab speaker and an expert in Islamic fundamentalism.


He interviewed a number of the detainees in Guantanamo, and he came back saying, “Bad news. The reason we’re not getting better intelligence, part of the reasoning anyway, is that about a third of the people are innocent.” From what he could tell, they were just mistakes. They were locked up—you know, they were just brought in by—herded in by mistake. And—


AMY GOODMAN: Mistake, like, for example, bounty hunters.


JANE MAYER: Right, sure. Bounty hunters who were—you know, and people who were put—there were people put in to—because of personal grudges. There was one—one detainee was there because he had been a teacher of somebody and given them a bad grade, and the person that he’d flunked pointed him out as a terrorist, and he was rounded up.


So there were all kinds of stories, but—and it’s not to say, you know, that there aren’t people down there who are probably serious suspects. It’s just that they mix them all in together, which was a consequence of when they got rid of the Geneva Conventions, they got rid of the screening process. And so, there was—it’s just kind of collective guilt instead of individual guilt. They didn’t give people a chance to say whether they were innocent or not.


AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to President Bush’s statement on September 6, 2006. He acknowledged for the first time the CIA has been operating a secret network of overseas prisons, but he denied the United States ever used torture.


PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: We knew that Zubaydah had more information that could save innocent lives. But he stopped talking. As his questioning proceeded, it became clear that he had received training on how to resist interrogation. And so, the CIA used an alternative set of procedures.


These procedures were designed to be safe, to comply with our laws, our Constitution and our treaty obligations. The Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods extensively and determined them to be lawful.


I cannot describe the specific methods used. I think you understand why. If I did, it would help the terrorists learn how to resist questioning and to keep information from us that we need to prevent new attacks on our country. But I can say the procedures were tough, and they were safe and lawful and necessary.


I want to be absolutely clear with our people and the world, the United States does not torture. It’s against our laws, and it’s against our values. I have not authorized it, and I will not authorize it.



AMY GOODMAN: That’s President Bush in 2006. Jane Mayer, on that last assertion, and then let’s talk about Abu Zubaydah.


JANE MAYER: OK. Well, I mean, it’s absolutely contradicted by so many facts. I have to say the President’s words are—if you read this book, you can see that there’s many experts in the military and the FBI, even some of the lawyers inside the Bush administration, have a completely different view from what the President said. And he was warned, as was the Vice President, very early on that you may be crossing criminal lines here.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/7/18/the_dark_side_jane_mayer_on



Oh cry, sour country, he wrought his wide hand across the steppes, persperation across the sky, dark shadows and warnings, squirrels on happy summer days, he wanted to take in everyting, know everything, be warned and be a warning, embracing all. They stood still, the three of them, the woman standing behind the two useless blokes, the blokes with a beer in their hands, the beers neatly placed inside a cooler, as always. They hadn't shaved. They certainly hadn't dressed up. The sky was full of the history of humanity, the whole world, caught up in the sweeping flow of the atmosphere across the plains, he could smell them, he could hear them, the millions far away.

And the three of them stood in a haphazard tableau, staring towards the mountain as if there was a message in the wind. But more, as if the meanig of their whole lives, his life, their reason for being here in this isolated spot, was there for the taking. He bowled up, only to be struck instantly by their silence. They felt no need to talk, unlike these city folk. He was crass and beaten and full of babble. Smoke stained from the city. Crass with the barbaric urgency that had overtaken that terrible place. They looked at him, suprised, perhaps, by his need to say anything. What was there to say, after all, about this life, the messy garden, the chaotic loungeroom, the kitchen that looked like a health threat, despite, or perhaps because, of the five children.

What's happening, he asked, embarrassed by the infinite depth of the moment, the time when he was not on his own turf, but on their patch, their life, their country. Nothing much, Waynie answered, stating the obvious. Nothing much. As if it bore repeating. He couldn't tell what they were looking at, why they were all looking in the one direction, what could possibly be revealed from the low mountain hanging over them. There was the sound of insects and the heat in a swirl of wind. Waynie turned his weather and alcohol beaten face towards him, making a friendly gesture, swilling his beer.

The woman's presence made him feel awkward. It was alright for a couple of half pissed blokes to be standing in the front yard staring at the mountain for no good reason, but didn't she have better things to do? That mountain of unwashed clothes? That pile of unwashed dishes? She sensed his embarrassment quickly, there was always an awkwardness between them. It was all about status. She was worried that he was going to make his house better than theirs, and therefore alter the hierarchy of the village, make them look as feral as their reputation. He wasn't used to people who just did nothing, who just got pissed.

I'll be doing things, she said, and headed indoors, as if she needed an excuse in her own front yard. He grunted. I should probably get back to painting, he said. And instead just stood, staring at the mountain, as the woman bustled inside. There was everything in the known universe whirling in the dust, all the stories of this distant place. Phillip drained the bottom of his beer, a sign for action of some sort. He turned it upside down to drain the last drop, as if to make a point. Then he ordered one of the kids to go and get him another out of the fridge. And one for Waynie. There was some mumbling from Waynie about paying him back. He brushed it aside.

Want one? He asked, for the umpteenth time. Nup, can't drink, my liver's shot, he said. One won't hurt, Waynie pushed, but he shook his head again. One day you'll be as old as me, and you won't be able to drink either, he said. Not the way you two drink. They looked at him with some vague sense of disbelief, as if they would rather be dead. Phillip never had a drink out of his hand from morning to night, and when he wanted to get truly snickered drank schooner glasses of half coke half port with ice, downing them until he was no longer lucid and no longer knew where he was, stumbling around the paddocks in the middle of the night, searching for something he would never find.

The skinny young girl arrived with their beers, and they went through the ritual of discarding the empty bottles and placing the fresh beers into their coolers, all done with an elaborate, reverent intensity. And then they went back to staring at the mountain, there in the front yard, just standing there drinking and staring and thinking of nothing much. For a minute he thought of going, getting on with his chores, but instead he stood with them, looking at the moment. Is there anything in particular you're looking at? he asked. City slcikers were allowed to be stupid. Nothing, Waynie said, nothing at all.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com/2008/09/that-would-be-courageous-very.html

Thursday, September 25, 2008
That Would Be Courageous, Very Courageous, Mr Prime Minister

According to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd the most important challenge that Australia and indeed the world faces is global warming caused by man made carbon emissions. But what if its not? The issue is of such critical importance to the PM that during the last week's `one in a centuary" global financial meltdown, the Australian PM seemed hopelessly out of touch with reality.

As the global financial system and indeed Capitalism teetered on the verge of destruction, the PM's contribution was to announce the government was investing $100 million a year to make Australia the Hub of global climate change fighting technology. His other contribution was to announce a symposium of local government councilors. As Senator Barnaby Joyce put it so well on yesterday -

"This guy [the PM] is getting completely disconnected from what's going on and sooner or later he's going to realise that the main game is actually in this nation, not some other nation."


Indeed it is fair to say that the Kevin Rudd on the advice of his scientific adviser has staked his whole governments future on leading the world in the fight against global warming. But what if its not? What if James Hansen and his global spokesperson Al Gore are really the two swindlers from the fairy tale The Emperors New Clothes?



Certainly research from the Space and Science Research Center (SSRC) which quotes itself on its web site as "the leading science and engineering research company internationally, that specializes in the analysis of and planning for climate changes based upon the "Theory of Relational Cycles of Solar Activity," believes its not. In July of this year John L. Casey, Director of the Space and Science Research Center, Orlando Florida, issued what he described as a landmark declaration on climate change.

"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."


In the statement Professor Casey specifically mentions the difficulty in over coming the dogma of political and media consensus on global warming.

"I have consulted with colleagues world wide who have reached a similar conclusion. They have likewise been attempting to advise their own governments and media of the impending cold era and the difficult times that the extreme cold weather may bring. They are to be commended for their bold public stances and publication of their research which of course has been in direct opposition to past conventional thought on the nature and causes of the last twenty years of global warming. "


Professor Phillip Stott in his article "Cogitative dissonance" details why the media and politician are having such difficulty with the world is not warming paradigm.

"How can you talk of the climate `warming' when, on the key measures, it isn't? .. Such media behaviour exhibits a classic condition known as `cognitive dissonance'

This is experienced when belief in a grand narrative persists blindly even when the facts in the real world begin to contradict what the narrative is saying.

Sadly, our media have come to have a vested interest in `global warming', as have so many politicians and activists.


Casey Goes on:

"Casey detailed the solar activity cycles that have been driving the Earth's climate for the past 1,200 years. He condemned the climate change confusion and alarmism which has accompanied seven separate periods over the past 100 years, where scientists and the media flip-flopped on reporting that the Earth was either entering a new `ice age' or headed for a global meltdown where melting glacial ice would swamp the planet's coastal cities.


Casey also touches on the impacts of the onset of global cooling on Agriculture.

"On the subject of cold climate effects on agriculture, Casey was not optimistic. "I can see," he added, "just like the last time this 206 year cycle brought cold, that there will be substantial damage to the world's agricultural systems. This time however we will have eight billion mouths to feed during the worst years around 2031 compared to previously when we had only one billion. Yet even then, many died from the combined effects of bitter cold and lack of food."


Casey called on all leaders to immediately move from the past global warming planning to prepare for the already started change to a cold climate.

"Now that the new cold climate has begun to arrive, we must immediately start the preparation, the adaptation process. At least because of the RC Theory we now have some advance warning. No longer do we need to wonder what the Earth's next climate changes will be two or three generations out. But we must nonetheless be ready to adjust with our now more predictable solar cycles that are the primary determinants of climate on Earth."


Now I'm not saying that John L Casey has got it right either. Readers should click on the links to his site and read the research. He certainly makes a compelling case and we will actually know if his research is ground breaking within the next 2 decades (as he predicts the planet will be 1-1.5 degrees C cooler between 2030 - 2040).

Certainly it is difficult to give the PM's science adviser James Hansen any where near the credibility that Kevin Rudd does after his warming predictions to date have been wildly inaccurate / over stated and his promotion of the universally discredited Mann Hockey Stick theory.



Is Prime Minister Rudd racing to far ahead of the science on global warming? If he is, he is doing the Nation of Australia and its people an enormous disservice and will be remembered by history as a "fool".

On the other hand if he has backed the right horse in James Hansen / Al Gores take on the science he will be viewed by history as a "great visionary" and will probably end up as head of the UN. One thing is for certain - ` he is willing to put it all on the line, no each way bets for our PM and he won't die wondering'. As a great fan of the BBC series Yes Minister, Sir Humphrey Appleby words of wisdom ring true: "That would be courageous, Minister, very courageous."

(leader of the Welsh), who is trying to impress the Prince, declares: “I can call spirits from the vasty deep.” Hotspur (Henry Percy, known as Hotspur, Northumberland’s son) responds dryly: “Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?”


http://web.mac.com/sinfonia1/Global_Warming_Politics/A_Hot_Topic_Blog/Entries/2008/9/24_Middle-Class_Greenery_Only_%E2%80%98Ski%E2%80%99_Deep.html


In his Labour Party Conference speech yesterday in Manchester, Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, was minded to raise his target of 60% for cutting carbon emissions by 2050 to 80% - “And I am asking the climate change committee to report by October on the case for, by 2050 not a 60% reduction in our carbon emissions, but an 80% cut.” This really is the very worst of political hot air, and I am afraid it is difficult to take seriously such blather, especially in the light of two highly-revealing surveys reported today.


The Beastly Bourgeois


First, a study carried out at Exeter University has exposed the mind-numbing depths of middle-class hypocrisy over ‘global warming’, of the very people who pontificate daily to the rest of us about carbon footprints and eco-lifestyles. Middle-class ‘greenery’, it seems, is only ski deep [‘Green idealists fail to make grade, says study’, The Guardian, September 24]:


“Stewart Barr, of Exeter University, who led the research, said: ‘Green living is largely something of a myth. There is this middle class environmentalism where being green is part of the desired image. But another part of the desired image is to fly off skiing twice a year’ ... ‘Some people even said they deserved such flights as a reward for their green efforts’, he added.”


A classic reply to the survey went as follows: “Questioned on their heavy use of flying, one respondent said: ‘I recycle 100% of what I can, there’s not one piece of paper goes in my bin, so that makes me feel less guilty about flying as much as I do.”


Don’t you just love it! In the (also hypocritical) words of D.H. Lawrence:


“How beastly the bourgeois is!

Standing in their thousands, these appearances, in damp England

what a pity they can’t all be kicked over

like sickening toadstools, and left to melt back, swiftly

into the soil of England.”


And nobody captured the beastly bourgeois better than Georg Grosz [see picture], granted in his case in 1920’s Berlin. Is Guardianista London any different? Unsurprisingly, Barr concludes:


“The findings indicate that even those people who appear to be very committed to environmental action find it difficult to transfer these behaviours into more problematic contexts.”


What a splendid piece of ‘academese’!


But Public Not Fooled


All this is then beautifully supported by the results of a new opinion poll carried out by Opinium [‘British public “unwilling” to pay for climate change costs’, The Guardian, September 24]:


“... seven out of 10 of the nearly 2,000 people questioned said they were unwilling to pay higher taxes to combat environmental issues, and a similar number believed the green agenda had been ‘hijacked’ to increase taxes.”


Gordon, you are talking absolute recycled rubbish. You claim “you can call spirits from the vasty deep.” “Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?”


I think not. And, in those immortal words attributed to Abraham Lincoln:


“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”


80%! Your ‘global warming’ rhetoric has become worse than that of David Cameron and Nick Clegg. It really is that bad:


“Anything you can do,

I can do better.

I can do anything

Better than you.”


No, you can't. Not one of you!


The Guardianistas must be weeping into their lattes, poor things.