Enough already, Julia
Piers Akerman – Sunday, March 20, 11 (12:22 am)
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard cannot be believed - on anything. She doesn’t just tell a lie, she finds it necessary to compound it. Just like a child caught telling fibs, she doesn’t know when to stop talking.
471 DAYS UNTIL LABOR’S SUPER CHINA CARBON TAX
Tim Blair – Saturday, March 19, 11 (11:03 pm)
One reason we simply must tax carbon dioxide, according to Julia Gillard and Ross Garnaut, is because China is reducing its number of old-school coal power stations. These things are directly connected, somehow. Yet Chinese “carbon pollution” is only increasing, as Terry McCrann points out:
The facts on China are simple and irrefutable. It has a coal-fired system equal to more than 13 times our entire electricity generation. Between now and 2020, it is going to add between 400GW and 500GW to its existing 670GW of coal-fired power generation.
That’s its projections. And that’s net. So if they close, say, 200GW of really dirty old stations, they will be building 600GW to 700GW of new ones, all pumping out carbon dioxide …
Total power generation in Australia is about 50GW.
Add a pointless tax, and this is what we get:
Household electricity prices could skyrocket by as much as $200 a year if Julia Gillard’s controversial carbon tax is introduced, the WA Treasury has warned.
The increase would mean that the average family’s power bill, presently $1443 a year, would have gone up by $640, or a staggering 64 per cent in four years.
And all because … China is opening new coal plants. It just doesn’t add up. A protest is planned this Wednesday in Canberra.
WARM FAVOURITE
Tim Blair – Saturday, March 19, 11 (06:40 pm)
The world’s greatest horse triumphs again, this time in the prestigious Betfair Handicap.
(Via Mick, who texts: “I just backed a horse because of u ... and it won!")
UPDATE. The race call is an audio masterpiece: “They can’t catch it! Globalwarmnsceptic is clear!”
(Via TQS)
COMPOSED: AN ALENE COMPOSTA TIMELINE
Tim Blair – Saturday, March 19, 11 (05:26 pm)
February 6. Alene appears. The Seddon-based carer modestly announces that “a century or more from now, because nothing ever entirely vanishes on the Internet, whatever is left of mankind will be able to consult this historical record.”
February 10. In comments at this site, attention is drawn to Alene’s correspondence with activist Tony Kevin, who fully believes in Alene and her mission. Commenter Consuela Potez, however, immediately suspects “some sort of extraordinarily clever satire”.
March 3. Alene seeks to inform Fairfax readers:
These assaults on our PM are nothing but sexism and woman-hatred. The outpouring of Tea Party-style hate could easily lead to violence, sooner or later. If our PM introduces the licensing of commentators and a peer-review panel of media professionals (Laura Tingle, Phillip Adams, Virginia Trioli, Mike Carlton, Hartcher, for example) to determine what constitutes “fair” free speech and to stamp out the noxious, inappropriate variety, I would support her 100%.
March 7. Leftist types are invited to visit Alene’s site. Again, commenters quickly detect satire:
• “brllliant parody site”
• “Alene is a RWDB doing leftoid stand up parody and it’s excellent”
• “My money is that it is a spoof site.”
• “Mine too. Come on.”
• “Of course.....’Composta’ is a dead give away.”
• “Brilliant send up for sure.”
• “I think it must be a joke”
• “That’s a joke site, right?”
• “Is this site for real? Surely its a spoof?”
• “That HAS to be a joke, right?”
• “It has to be satire”
• “It’s that bloody Prof. Bunyip cutting them to ribbons, yet again, betcha.”
• “Definitely a spoof. And not too bad an effort.”
• “It’s parody, has to be, the bit about ‘moose knuckles’ had me pissing myself with laughter.”
• “I see the grubby paw marks of Pseudo Activist Cultural Operation all over this.”
• “It’s a parody site.”
• “I’d say a hoax. It just hits too many buttons.”
• “It’s a comedy skit isn’t it?”
• “This has GOT to be a joke site”
March 8. Andrew Bolt declares his love for Alene.
March 8. Clueless Drum editor Jonathan Green publishes Alene’s moose theory regarding NSW Premier Kristina Keneally:
The real reason the Liberals are using “moose” and chuckling about it is because it is a flat-out sexist obscenity commonly used to describe female genitalia. It gets worse, much worse.
It soon does. Mostly for Green.
March 9. Fairfax reports:
The ABC pulled a blogger from its The Drum Unleashed website after she named the Liberal Party state director, Mark Neeham, as supposedly making a below-the-belt attack on Kristina Keneally. The blogger, Alene Composta, an admitted agoraphobic who said she used the internet to make the world a better place …
March 9. Green explains:
turns out it was a fake. apparently. we were had. it seemed plausible. i was wrong. i pulled it.
March 9: Crikey, Green’s previous employer, also believed in Alene.
March 10. Green’s earlier involvement in media hoaxes is explored. He doesn’t seem so happy now that the boot is on the other foot.
March 11. Crikey calls for the Press Council to examine the bullying of a non-existent person.
March 12. The Australian‘s Media Diary reports:
Diary touched base with Green this week, at a time when he still believed that Composta (rhymes with imposter) could be real. When told that she was certainly a parody of a Lefty blogger, he said the piece had been taken “in good faith”. All contact with Composta was done via email and “when you are [publishing] pieces from the public sphere, there is an act of faith involved”. Green says he will investigate whether Composta was in fact a hoax, and if so, would consider writing a note to readers about it.
Nice of him.
March 15. Alene reveals humiliating correspondence from two of her fans.
March 15. Appearing again in Fairfax comments, Alene urges responsible carbon action:
One area where Sarah and Bob and Julia can go further, however, is the threat posed by carbonated drinks. Every time we open a bottle of soft drink, drink a beer or pop the cork on champagne, we release another jolt of invisible CO2 poison into the ecosphere. In addition to the proposed measures, this threat needs to be addressed in a responsible and appropriate way.
March 17. Alene publishes one of her emails to Jonathan Green that convinced him she was genuine:
It seems to be that if we can link the Liberals to this crotch talk then there is still a chance we can nudge the election toward Labor, or at least do something to limit what looks like it will be catastrophic damage inflicted by voters …
The important thing is that we do everything we can, use every tool we know, to help Kristina out of the jam some silly moves and a lot of Murdoch venom has put her in.
One or two buttons pushed, there.
March 17. Media Watch host Jonathan Holmes investigates the Composta saga:
According to The Drum’s editor, Jonathan Green, the piece was quickly taken down because it had “appeared inadvertently in a pre-legalled form. “On advice… we thought it safer to take it down”.
Green seems to have changed his story. Earlier, he’d written that the item was removed because it was fake. Further from Holmes:
I have to say, as someone who’s been working off and on for the ABC for 30 years, and for the BBC for a dozen years before that, if an unknown blogger had offered me a piece like that for publication on an ABC website in an election period, I’d have run a mile …
I asked Jonathan Green whether it hadn’t occurred to him that Alene Composta might be a hoaxer. He responded:
“To be honest no. The style of material on her blog was not all that unusual in the online space. Her name certainly seems ridiculous in hindsight, but that’s hindsight, not the urgency of a busy working day.”
Was the decision to publish Alene’s piece made in the course of a single “busy working day”? This seems unlikely, given the correspondence between Alene and her editor. Besides which, Green’s day would be considerably less busy if he didn’t spend so much of it playing on Twitter. Green replies:
My humiliation is complete.
Not quite yet, mate.
March 19. Andrew Bolt reviews events to date:
Anyone not blinkered by, say, ideological fervour might first have done the most basic check on the author of all this weirdness. Indeed, Composta urged Green in another email to “feel free to examine my other writings”.
If he’d done so, he would have started with her blog, a cornucopia of the most psychedelic Leftist hate. Imagine a cross between Catherine Deveny and Marieke Hardy.
I’d rather not.
March 19. Green clings to his “no bias” defence:
For what it’s worth i agree it wasn’t my finest moment. Obviously. But nor was it some leftist rush of blood. Ridiculous. Cock up is all.
You just keep telling yourself that. And still Alene’s profile remains on the ABC’s site, as though scripted by Edgar Allan Poe …
TURKEYS VOTED FOR CHRISTMAS
Tim Blair – Saturday, March 19, 11 (02:33 pm)
“All of our jobs could be gone if the coal industry isn’t cleaned up,” warned pretend coal workers before the 2007 election. In South Australia, their wishes for cleansing may soon be granted.
And they’ll lose their jobs.
(Via Fiona)
NBN will be our financial tsunami
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, March 19, 11 (05:23 pm)
Terry McCrann struggles to describe the scale of the waste:
Japan tragically provides that scale:
AUSTRALIAN companies are scrambling to assess the financial impact of the most devastating earthquake in Japan’s history. The shattered nation’s damage bill is tipped to reach $US50 billion.
(Thanks to reader John.)
No, still not enough radiation even to make you sick
Andrew Bolt – Saturday, March 19, 11 (04:24 pm)
David Derbyshire, the writer of this Daily Mail piece, is a despicable scaremongerer, misrepresenting the tears of the boss of the Fukushima plant and verballing the Japanese Government with a fake admission:
The boss of the company behind the devastated Japanese nuclear reactor today broke down in tears - as his country finally acknowledged the radiation spewing from the over-heating reactors and fuel rods was enough to kill some citizens
Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency admitted that the disaster was a level 5, which is classified as a crisis causing ‘several radiation deaths’ by the UN International Atomic Energy....After Tokyo Electric Power Company Managing Director Akio Komiri cried as he left a conference to brief journalists on the situation at Fukushima, a senior Japanese minister also admitted that the country was overwhelmed by the scale of the tsunami and nuclear crisis.
The truth, as announced today:
RADIATION levels being detected in Japan and beyond in the wake of Japan’s post-earthquake nuclear crisis do not pose any harm to human health, an IAEA expert says.
“Regular dose information is now being received from 47 Japanese cities,” Graham Andrew, scientific and technical adviser to the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said.
“Dose rates in Tokyo and other cities remain far from levels which would require action. In other words, they are not dangerous to human health.”
The IAEA has just sent a radiation monitoring team to Japan to help authorities determine whether any dangerous radiation has been released from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant, 250km northeast of Tokyo.
“First measurements in Tokyo showed no indication of iodine 131 or cesium 137. These are fission products which come from the fuel,” Mr Andrew said.
UPDATE
(Thanks to reader John.)The Science Ministry said radiation levels about 30 kilometers (19 miles) northwest of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant briefly spiked Friday to 0.15 millisieverts per hour, about the amount absorbed in a chest X-ray. While levels fluctuate, radiation at most points at that distance from the facility have been far below that. The ministry did not have an explanation for the rise.
UPDATE
Reader Geoff suggests I am wrong to say the Fukushima emergency has killed nobody. Having carefully checked the evidence, he writes:
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Yukiya Amano, who is visiting the country, said the crisis at the nuclear facility - where there have been fires and explosions - was a “very grave and serious accident”.andrew bolt .. your contempts for humanity have earned you a sentence of spirit death .. you will dream first andrew .. dreams from which you cant escape .. then you will die in total .. never remembered by a living soul .. ;-)
Reader thirdborn, raised in the art of Marxist semiotics, concludes that if I do not agree Fukushima has sentenced a million Japanese to die in excruciating agony, I must of course mean there there is absolutely nothing at all at the plant to worry about:
You’re right, they are worried about nothing. Someone should tell the Japanese Govt, and the US Govt, and the French Govt, and the Chinese Govt..........someone is obviously feeding them all the wrong information.
Often my sternest critics do most to convince me I must be right.
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