David Morris, Killeen Daily Herald / AP
Authorities search apartment of Fort Hood suspect Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who reportedly gave away his furniture and copies of the Koran to neighbors before the shooting
Space Tourism a Reality by 2012
The latest trend in eco-tourism is completely out of this world ... and right around the corner. Routine commercial travel to outer space may be the norm as soon as 2012, as the next generation of spacecraft — designed by private sector firms like Virgin Galactic, Orbital Sciences Corp., Space Exploration Technologies Corp. and others — transport adventure-seeking civilians into low-Earth orbit. There, they can see the sun rise many times a day, and experience the breathtaking curve of planet Earth that only NASA astronauts such as Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin have previously seen. If they want to extend their stay, they can check in to the solar system’s first orbiting hotel, The Galactic Space Suite Hotel, set to open in three years.
TV watchdog decries ads that suggest the popular teen drama 'Gossip Girl' will depict a threesome on air; CW executive Dawn Ostroff has yet to respond to uproar.
Health Care Revolt
Before thousands of protesters shouting 'Kill The Bill,' House Republicans rally on the steps of the Capitol against the Democrats' health care legislation
The Three-Hour 'De'Tour
Military was not contacted about wayward Northwest jet for almost three hours, not one, sources tell Fox News
NFL Player's Gay Slurs a Personal Foul?
Petition calls for Kansas City Chiefs' Larry Johnson to be sacked following homosexual slurs posted on Twitter
You would have thought a fur coat would have been the ultimate bear necessity. But not for Dolores, who has lost all her body hair and has been left with just a few tufts around her head
Boat not my problem, says Rudd
AS the Oceanic Viking stand-off enters its 19th day, Kevin Rudd insists it is Indonesia's issue.
Cabbies must know English, main roads
ASPIRING cabbies will need to pass minimum standards before being allowed on the road.
Teens going under knife for liposuction
COSMETIC surgery a billion-dollar industry - with $130m spent on boob jobs and liposuction.
Murdoch beats Rusty to $23m mansion
LACHLAN Murdoch outbids Russell Crowe to buy French Government's former consulate.
Stars will have to disclose lip-synching
NEW laws forcing promoters to reveal if shows are live designed to stop fans being ripped off.
Day leave cancelled after fatal stabbings
CONTROVERSIAL leave pass program at psych hospital hastily shut down after stabbings.
Beer companies are pulling out all the stops to lure punters, with Guinness the latest to unveil their "big" ad, featuring waterfalls and elaborate special effects - but do these ads really work?
Young crims out of control
CHILDREN as young as six are running riot across the state, terrorising many residents, breaking into homes and passing out drunk in public places.
WHO warns to keep up swine flu fight
SWINE flu is now the predominant flu strain worldwide and Aborigines have been disproportionately hit.
=== Journalists Corner ===
November 4, 1979 — 52 Americans are condemned to 444 days of hell.
Now, the decision-makers, power players, and hostages speak out on our first face-off with radical Islam!
Watch as Greta Van Susteren hosts 'Fox News Reporting: Americans Held Hostage in Iran
===
Guest: Google CEO Eric Schmidt
What really needs to be done to slow this unemployment surge? It's an exclusive with Eric Schmidt!
===
Congressional Confrontation!
How will lawmakers respond as Oscar winner Jon Voight rallies against 'Obamacare' on Capitol Hill? Sean gets answers!
===
Guest: David Plouffe
Secret strategies & never before heard stories - what really went on behind the scenes? The architect of Obama's presidential campaign comes forward
=== Comments ===
Why President Obama Should Hire O'Reilly as His Primary Adviser
By Bill O'Reilly
First of all, this is a no gloat zone. I've heard some conservatives gloating about the Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey, but that gets us nowhere.
Tuesday's vote demonstrates that many Americans believe President Obama's policies are not working. Fair-minded Americans want good policy. They want America to prosper, and when that doesn't happen, they vote the party in power out of power. See George W. Bush.
So President Obama should get the message and immediately appoint me, your humble correspondent, his top adviser.
Like me or not, I would bring a common sense perspective to the Oval Office. There would be no gloating there, no nutty ideology, no attacks on Fox News. Instead, I would encourage President Obama to start solving problems.
The Obamacare deal will create more problems than it will solve. That's now obvious, and voters in Virginia and New Jersey knew it. The economy is still very shaky and raising taxes will hurt it big time. Again, voters on Tuesday went for the candidates who offered lower taxes.
In Afghanistan, you've got to give the commanders in the field enough troops to provide security. So do it, Mr. President, or I will throw a tantrum inside the White House.
Now, many Americans could provide President Obama with a dose of common sense, not just me. The government must stop the out of control spending. It must begin to shore up the U.S. dollar. It must stop social engineering that could bankrupt America.
Did you know that in California, which is bankrupt, they will now withhold an extra 10 percent of everybody's paycheck? They are gangsters out there in Sacramento. They just came in and whacked every working person with a 10 percent tax surcharge. Yeah, people might get it back after they file, but come on. That's not responsible government; that's hurting honest working people.
The liberal legislature in California has destroyed the state economically, and now they're stealing money from the folks to cover their horrendous mistakes.
That could happen on the federal level. Already Nancy Pelosi and her far-left crew want to raise the top federal tax rate to 45 percent. That's not capitalism. That's Fidel Castro stuff, confiscating wages that people honestly earn.
So President Obama needs a dose of reality, quick, and I am here for him.
===
FAITH IN GOVERNMENT
Tim Blair
A telling tweet from ABC Washington correspondent Lisa Millar:
“I love my country, it’s the govt I’m afraid of” Slogan on best selling t shirt at DC airport today No wonder health care reform is a battleThe ABC is government-funded, of course.
===
INFORMATION LEARNED, CONCEALED
Tim Blair
The evasiveness of media in the immediate wake of the Fort Hood murders is astonishing. The ABC’s Lisa Millar opened her midday report claiming to have “learned quite a lot about the gunman”, then revealed very little of it – apart from that Malik Nadal Hasan had “attracted a lot of harassment because of his last name” and “family background”. This came about, Millar reported, despite Hasan being born and raised in the US. Not mentioned in eight minutes of coverage: Hasan’s faith, which in a case like this is surely of interest. America’s ABC eventually gets around to it, after listing various other biographical details. In descending order of interest to that network:
• Hasan was an “army psychiatrist”
• He’d trained in Maryland
• He didn’t get good reports while assigned to Walter Reed
• He wasn’t married
• No kids
• His parents came from Jordan
Oh, and by the way ...
• A cousin describes him as “a pious lifelong Muslim”.
UPDATE. Ed Driscoll’s attack timeline.
UPDATE II. Among responses at Muslim Village:
“12 Criminals Shot Dead In Pre-emptive Strike”The moderators over there are in for a busy day.
“They are more than criminals they are mass murders who deserve what came to them, best story I’ve read in ages, thanks foe posting it.”
“Attack on criminal organisation kills 12”
UPDATE III. An interview with someone who worked alongside Hasan:
UPDATE IV: Is the gunman still alive? And he may have been shot by a female soldier, which won’t do his attitude any good. (Via Andrea Harris in comments)
UPDATE V. Yep – still alive.
UPDATE VI: “I wish his name was Smith.”
UPDATE VII: “Federal law enforcement officials say the suspected Fort Hood, Texas, shooter had come to their attention at least six months ago because of Internet postings that discussed suicide bombings and other threats.”
UPDATE VIII. A shout-out from Obama, whose immediate reaction to the murders is two minutes of waffle:
It’s Obama’s Pet Goat moment. The Age edits Obama’s shout-out.
UPDATE IX. Might 19-year-old Amber Bahr be the woman who stopped the rampage? If so, cool.
UPDATE X: “News Channel 25’s Henry Rosoff is reporting Nidal Malik Hasan’s neighbors who say Hasan was giving away all of his furniture and copies of the Qu’ ran Thursday morning. They also say he was supposed to deploy to Afghanistan in the coming days.” From the ABC:
The shooter’s cousin, Nader Hasan, says the 39-year-old did not want to be deployed to Iraq.The NYT is running similar lines. For someone terrified of combat, Hasan has an unusual way of showing it.
“He is a good American and we are shocked,” he said.
“We just found out the news that he was being deployed. He never even told us because we’ve known for the last five years that it was probably his worst nightmare.”
Mr Hasan said his cousin had been harassed by other members of the military for being a Muslim.
UPDATE XI. Just follow Jim Treacher. And Patterico.
===
BELIEVE IT
Tim Blair
We first met Tim Nicholson during his attempt to secure religious rights for environmentalists. Mission accomplished:
In a significant decision today, a judge found Nicholson’s views on the environment were so deeply held that they were entitled to the same protection as religious convictions, and ruled that an employment tribunal should hear his claim that he was sacked because of his beliefs.Here’s Nicholson himself:
The judgment could open the door for people to take their employers to tribunals over their stance on a range of issues, from animal rights to feminism …
In today’s ruling, Mr Justice Michael Burton decided that: “A belief in man-made climate change, and the alleged resulting moral imperatives, is capable if genuinely held, of being a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Belief Regulations.”
“It is the moral and ethical values that I hold that have motivated me to action on climate change and these moral and ethical values are similar to those promoted by the world’s major religions.”Further on the case here. Now’s the time to get a job with Greenpeace UK, then take them to court when they fire you for denialism.
===
LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE SOY
Tim Blair
Meat is bad for the environment, but tofu is bad for people:
Americans consume over $4 billion of soy foods each year because of their many health benefits. But new studies suggest that eating large amounts of soy’s estrogen-mimicking compounds might reduce fertility in women, trigger early puberty and disrupt development of fetuses and children.Lord only knows what all that mock-estrogen does to men. Maybe this is how vegans were invented.
===
KIDDYPEDIA
Tim Blair
This explains a great deal:
Wikipedians are 80 percent male, more than 65 percent single, more than 85 percent without children, and around 70 percent of them are under the age of 30.
===
My tip? No ransom, and they’ll be eating by Christmas
Andrew Bolt
Four Australians threaten to cut their carbon footprint for good unless the world hands over a $160 billion ranson - each year. ABC’s AM thinks this is a serious demand that entitles the head of the gang to air time.
A news editor needs replacing.
===
What other trough is this racist entitled to drain?
Andrew Bolt
A New Zealand voter tells her politician she’s not impressed that he skipped a meeting in Brussels during a taxpayer-funded trip so he could go sightseeing with his wife in Paris instead. His response?
White motherf..kers have been raping our lands and ripping us off for centuries and all of a sudden you want me to play along with their puritanical bullshit.The MP is Hone Harawira of the Maori party, so the normal standards of probity and accountability do not apply. Nor does any prohibition of racist abuse.
Interesting how he thinks Maori dispossession is best tackled by sending him to Paris for a bit of fun.
===
US base attacked
Andrew Bolt
Three gunmen in this attack on a US military base? So what kind of attack is this?
Investigators say at least seven people have been killed and 12 wounded in a shooting at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas.
KCEN-TV in Waco is reporting that one gunman is in custody, the other is involved in a standoff with police. The station is also reporting that the gunmen were wearing military uniforms.
Police have surrounded the PX at Fort Hood. The station is reporting that there is a third shooter.
===
Pilger sees no terrorists
Andrew Bolt
John Pilger, apologist for terrorists, can’t see any even in Afghanistan:
Last July, Kevin Rudd said: ‘’It’s important for us all to remember here in Australia that Afghanistan has been a training ground for terrorists worldwide, a training ground also for terrorists in South-East Asia, reminding us of the reasons that we are in the field of combat and reaffirming our resolve to remain committed to that cause.’’Australians died in attacks in New York and Bali that were financed and masterminded by terrorists in Afghanistan. Australian soldiers have been killed defending Afghan citizens from terrorists.
There is no truth in this statement…..
Pilger is contemptible.
===
Deal delayed, world doomed, Rudd shagged
Andrew Bolt
Dear God, not another year of scaring us into supporting this extortion note:
A U.N. climate treaty may need an extra year beyond a December deadline to agree details, delegates at U.N. talks said on Thursday ...So remind me again why Kevin Rudd insists on rushing through his own colossal tax on emissions before the Copenhagen meeting? Is there a special prize for the shag on the rock?
So does this delay mean we’re doomed, and may as well do nothing? After all:
GORDON Brown has warned there are fewer than 50 days left for world leaders to set a course of action to save the planet from devastating climate change…That was two weeks ago. So either Brown was lying or it’s all over, red-faced Rover.
Speaking yesterday to representatives of 17 countries, including the United States and China, Mr Brown said: “In every era, there are only one or two moments when nations come together and reach agreements that make history – because they change the course of history. Copenhagen must be such a time. There are now fewer than 50 days to set the course of the next 50 years and more.”
UPDATE
Senator Cory Bernardi is running an on-line petition against Australia signing this treaty.
===
Rudd’s financial strategy falls apart
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd in May:
The worst global recession since the Great DepressionReserve Bank Glenn Stevens today:
This appears to have been one of the mildest downturns we’ve had.So Rudd got that wrong. Pity is that he’s spent or committed $80 billion of our savings to fight a terrible slump that didn’t actually happen - leaving us with huge debts and little of worth to show for that huge spending spree. Which sure worries the Productivity Commission:
THE Rudd government has been warned by its chief economic adviser that it should be taking advantage of the improved economy to defer its school spending and major infrastructure programs to get a better productivity gain.And he’s alarmed as I am by the tremendous misapplication of the $14.7 billion school buildings fund, spend mainly on school hallsm which he singles out as ripe for winding back:
Chair of the Productivity Commission Gary Banks said more ambitious economic reform was needed if the heavy debt burden left by the financial crisis were to be paid off…
He said that poorly conceived or executed infrastructure projects imposed a double burden on the economy, “with future generations having to service higher debts from incomes that are lower than they would otherwise be”.
“Among the infrastructure spending that is primarily stimulus-based, the main potential candidate is the school buildings program,” he said.But politically the Government cannot, and not just because the schools which would miss out would scream blue murder. Worse is that the schools which got the biggest handouts - for halls or even swimming pools - included the richest private schools, which had the capacity to rush through shovel-ready plans. But poorer state schools…
We have here a financial disaster that will take a long time to crash.
===
So many interviews, so little to say
Andrew Bolt
Lenore Taylor on Kevin Rudd’s curious media blitz:
The Prime Minister has now conducted 14 media interviews in the past few days, every time repeating how tough he is on people-smugglers, how humane he is towards asylum-seekers, how “calm and methodical” he is and how the whole issue is very, very complex.Christian Kerr:
All of which is probably true. But in none of the interviews was he able to explain what he intended to do about the Oceanic Viking stand-off, or about the increase in asylum-seeker arrivals by boat. Kevin Rudd seems to believe that if people just understand that the issue is difficult, they will judge him less harshly for not having clear answers for a problem where clear answers don’t really exist.
The risk is that he is simply broadcasting to every corner of the country the fact that he doesn’t have the kind of answers they want to hear, while the intricacies of how difficult it is go over most listeners’ heads or exceed their level of interest.
The whole exercise becomes even less credible when Rudd tries to claim it has nothing to do with the fact Labor dropped seven percentage points in Monday’s Newspoll.
He thinks if he explains what he is trying to do, ordinary voters will understand. But they’re not listening. They don’t care what he’s trying to do. They just want him to do it.
===
Some compassion, that leads to such deaths
Andrew Bolt
TWELVE more dead. Now will the Rudd Government finally see that its “compassion” kills?
The sinking on Sunday of a boat carrying Sri Lankan asylum seekers brings to 54 the number of boat people who have died this year trying to reach us.
Yes, 54. That’s the price of the “compassion” this Government showed last year by weakening the laws that once deterred boat people from risking their lives like this.
What counts most? Noble intentions, or bodies fished from the sea?
And don’t tell me I have no right to be angry. I’ve warned a dozen times, in print and on air, that people would die as a consequence of what Rudd had done.
Just last week I showed that 42 boat people had died already in sinkings off Malaysia and Indonesia, and in an explosion at Ashmore Reef, proving the Government had again deceived you in claiming there was “no evidence” of these deaths.
Now we have these latest deaths - including two boys - and more will die, too, unless this deceitful and opportunistic Prime Minister undoes the mischief he has wrought.
No, I do not blame Rudd directly for these deaths. He didn’t man the boats or sink them.
But I do blame him directly for luring people into such lethal voyages through his sheer foolishness, political opportunism and vanity. And I blame him for then deceitfully disclaiming all responsibility.
Let’s first nail the worst of those deceits - his claim that he’s actually been “tough” on boat people, and this year’s 12-fold increase in arrivals has nothing to do with his policies.That it’s outrageous to suggest that he’s luring people to their deaths.
Well, look at the graph on this page, taken from the website of his own Department of Immigration.
See the red dot?
===
Blanchett muffs her greatest role
Andrew Bolt
LOVE Cate Blanchett’s work. No, really. And I wouldn’t dream of giving her acting tips if I hadn’t just read this:
“American reviewers have been lunging for superlatives to describe Cate Blanchett’s performance in the Sydney Theatre Company production of ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ in Washington.”Even then, I’d be too shy to advise an Oscar winner, for heaven’s sake, had I not then read even worse news:
“A PLAY based on the shocking death of a Florida toddler, to be staged in Australia by a Cate Blanchett-backed theatre company, has provoked outrage in the US.Oh, Cate. How could you have made such a basic blue as to slip out of character? No, no. Not the character of Blanche DuBois. I mean your character as Conscience of the Nation.
The murder of two-year-old Caylee Anthony, whose rotting remains were found stuck together with duct tape, has been dramatised by award-winning director Steven Soderbergh… “
You see, what’s odd about Blanchett taking an American play about America to America, and staging an American play about America in Sydney is that just two years ago she said this:
“We’re so in America’s back pocket it’s embarrassing. We have to claim our individualism, but also reconnect to the world in a better way. We’ve really isolated ourselves from Asia. I think that’s politically and culturally very foolish.”
===
Paid not to breed
Andrew Bolt
We give government handouts to the most unfit people to have children:
A WOMAN who murdered her seven-year-old daughter by starving her to death has been sentenced to life in jail - her husband will spent 12 years behind bars. Their autistic daughter, known only as Ebony, was a mere 106cm tall and weighed just nine kilograms when she died in squalid conditions at the family’s Hawks Nest home, north of Newcastle, in November 2007.. A New Zealand mayor, Michael Laws, says we should actually do the exact opposite:
Mr Laws goes on to write: “it would be far better for this appalling underclass to be offered financial inducements not to have children, given the toxic environment that they would provide for any child in their care.” The mayor believes “the consequent financial and social savings to our community would be considerable… There’d be less dead children and less social problems.’’ ...
He was commenting on the latest death of a toddler, two-year-old Karl Perigo-Check, who was the son of a convicted murderer and gang member. New Zealand is placed third among OECD nations for child deaths due to maltreatment, four spots ahead of Australia, according to UNICEF.
===
Obama threatens blaspheming scientists
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama will not tolerate a scientist who dares question his faith:
Last month, President Obama gave a somewhat chilling, if somewhat ignored, speech on climate change at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He stated that any scientific debate about the magnitude of global warming is unscrupulous, decrying “those who . . . make cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence when it comes to climate change, whose only purpose is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary.”Galileo knew Obama’s type well.
Then, the president talked tough, saying, “We’ll just have to deal with those people,” language familiar to anyone who knows the vagaries of Chicago politics.
===
Too gentle on Gore by half
Andrew Bolt
The ABC’s Leigh Sales gently, very gently tests the monumental hypocrisy of Al Gore, whose corpulence belies his protests:
LEIGH SALES: Lord Stern also said that people ought to become vegetarians to deal with climate change because meat is a wasteful use of water and it creates a lot of greenhouse gases. Is that something you’ve given thought to? Becoming a vegetarian?Er, so demands that we become vegetarian must wait until ... later? And please note that Lord Stern hasn’t given up meat, either. Which makes two preachers who won’t take their own medicine.
AL GORE: I’m not a vegetarian but I have cut back sharply on the meat that I eat, and it’s absolutely correct that the growing meat intensity of diets around the world is one of the issues connected to this global crisis. Not only because of the CO2 involved but also because of the water consumed in the process. You could add in the health consequences as well… I’ve made those changes and though I don’t go quite as far as Nick in saying everybody should become a vegetarian, partly because I think that’s a difficult ... it’s difficult enough to get the agreement without adding that on top of it, in my view.
But it’s a legitimate point of view. Nick Stern is a very able advocate for whom I have enormous respect.
And I just wish Sales had prepared better, to catch out the old fraud:
LEIGH SALES: Professor Sir David King the former chief scientist in Britain recently told “The Times” newspaper that he wasn’t impressed with exaggeration regarding climate change. That he feared that non-governmental organisations were causing great damage and playing into the hands of sceptics by linking events such as storms or heatwaves to global warming, when normal climate variations were a large part of it.In fact, hurricane activity is near 30 year lows. So how does Gore explain his use of the Hurricane Katrina storm to market his wildly exaggerating An Inconvenient Truth:
What do you think about the argument that there’s too much scaremongering going on?
AL GORE: Well, I certainly count David King as one of my closest allies and friends within the effort to stop global warming and he and I have always agreed on the particulars of this. That’s why I’ve always been careful to say that the scientists caution against linking an individual storm as being caused solely by global warming… But over-linking a single event to a single cause does cause the scientists to say, “Wait a minute, you have to be careful in the way you present that.” I always have been and I think that’s an important caution.
How does he explain the nine errors and exaggerations identified in his film by a British judge, whose findings included this:
In scene 12 Hurricane Katrina and the consequent devastation in New Orleans is ascribed to global warming. It is common ground that there is insufficient evidence to show that.And how does Gore account for this shameless linking of two other storms to global warming:
Last year a catastrophic storm . . . hit Bangladesh. The year before, the strongest cyclone in more than 50 years hit China, and we’re seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.Leigh, the man is a fraud, in my opinion, and his record is littered with such examples. I appreciate your attempt to confront him with the evidence I put up last week, but that wasn’t nearly enough of an attempt to hold him accountable.
===
Stimulating higher prices
Andrew Bolt
If the Rudd Government’s stimulus package has caused the price of building school halls to soar, what’s it done to the prices of anything else that people want to build?
The federal government has been forced to stall $500 million worth of school building projects slated for the financial year 2010-11…
The government has blamed labour and material shortages for pushing up costs. However, the change comes amid criticism that the programme’s tight schedules were responsible for both inflating prices and leading state governments to impose unsuitable buildings
===
The Copenhagen con: same demand, different excuse
Andrew Bolt
The same old dream.
In 1970, the United Nations called on rich countries such as Australia to give 0.7 per cent of their wealth to the Third World - minus handling fees for the UN, of course. This was necessary to ensure “human dignity”:
(43) In recognition of the special importance of the role which can be fulfilled only by official development assistance, a major part of financial resource transfers to the developing countries should be provided in the form of official development assistance. Each economically advanced country will progressively increase its official development assistance to the developing countries and will exert its best efforts to reach a minimum net amount of 0.7 per cent of its gross national product at market prices by the middle of the Decade.No go? Then let’s try again, this time wrapped in green.
In 2002, the United Nations called on rich countries such as Australia to give 0.7 per cent of their wealth to the Third World - minus handling fees for the UN, of course. This was necessary for “development” and to “conserve, protect and restore the health and integrity of the Earth’s ecosystem”:
Make available the increased commitments in official development assistance announced by several developed countries at the International Conference on Financing for Development. Urge the developed countries that have not done so to make concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7 per cent of gross national product as official development assistance to developing countries.Damn. Try yet again.
In 2004, the United Nations called on rich countries such as Australia to give 0.7 per cent of their wealth to the Third World - minus handling fees for the UN, of course. This was necessary to ensure “peace”, “collective security” and a “more secure world”:
The many donor countries which currently fall short of the United Nations 0.7 per cent of gross national product (GNP) for official development assistance (ODA) should establish a timetable for reaching it.Still not? Hmm.
In 2005, the United Nations called on rich countries such as Australia to give 0.7 per cent of their wealth to the Third World - minus handling fees for the UN, of course. This was necessary to ensure “millennium development goals” and fight poverty:Still not! OK, let’s go for broke at Copenhagen next month.
Ours is the first generation in which the world can halve extreme poverty within the 0.7 envelope. In 1975, when the donor world economy was around half its current size, the Goals would have required much more than 1 percent of GNP from the donors. Today, after two and a half decades of sustained economic growth, the Goals are utterly affordable.
In 2009, the United Nations in a draft treaty calls on rich countries such as Australia to give 0.7 per cent of their wealth to the Third World - minus handling fees for the UN, of course. This is necessary to ensure “serious adverse effects of climate change as well as threats to their future economic potential due to insufficient access to shared global atmospheric resources”:
[Financial resources of the “Convention Adaptation Fund"] [may] [shall] include:The excuses change, and global warming is the most recent. But the hunger for 0.7 per cent of your cash is a constant.
(a) [Assessed contributions [of at least 0.7% of the annual GDP of developed country Parties] [from developed country Parties and other developed Parties included in
Annex II to the Convention] [taking into account historical contribution to concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere];]
===
It’s about making cash, not cutting gas
Andrew Bolt
Even greens say emissions trading is more about hot money than hot air:
The world’s carbon trading markets growing complexity threatens another “sub-prime” style financial crisis that could again destabilise the global economy, campaigners warn today.
In a new report, Friends of the Earth says that to date “cap and trade” carbon markets have done almost nothing to reduce emissions but have been plagued by inefficiency and corruption that render them unfit for purpose…
The carbon market, mainly based in Europe, was worth $126bn in 2008 and is predicted to mushroom to $3.1tn by 2020 if a global carbon market takes off.
However, FoE fears that the area has been hijacked by speculators on the financial markets.
But surely Kevin Rudd’s scheme will be better. Right?
No comments:
Post a Comment