Post #145 The Great Storm of Perth - 2010

Yeah, we had a storm. There are some pictures at this site which serve as material evidence. Here's the ABC's take on it. This episode of anomalous weather isn't distinguished by the volume of rainfall, the velocity of wind or the mass of the hail. It didn't surpass all-time records in any of these media of tempest. It was distinguished by the rapidity of the rate of precipitation and the persistence of the wind. Those golf-ball-sized hailstones were distinctive too.

The usual suspects emerged to proclaim the advent of Global Warming, someone suggested that a good line could be had in printing "I survived the Great Storm of Perth (2010)" T-shirts and a natural disaster was declared.

I found the most enlightening aspect of this episode to be the demonstration of the fragility of our construction and infrastructure. It just goes to show how mild the weather is here. In most parts of the world that "storm" would be a joke. I'd hate to show the data to the inhabitants of Bangladesh or the American "Tornado Alley".

Post#144 What Katy Did...and the Daleks can't. (Katy Manning and the Daleks)

And heeeere's Katy!! I thought she was the ideal kind of English girl I'd like to....make the respectful, adoring acquaintance of. In addition to most of the other chicks the Doctor picked up. Doctor who? Yes, Doctor Who. If you travel with Doctor Who, I'll be very jealous, Anastasia! I want to go in the Tardis first!! (I've already made your respectful and adoring acquaintance after all. You respect and adore me dontcha?) Alright, enough of my antique joke collection. I respect and adore you...that's not joking.

Now, on with the show: Katy has had a life and loved and made two children. Along the way she also became an Australian and hooked up with Barry Crocker. Katy's looking her age in the later photo which adorns the Wikipedia article about her but the delightful young woman is still there...it's just the travelling machine that's suffered some damage. Katy also injured her prospects of appearing in BBC children's television. As follows:

From: "Doctor Who - The Key to Time - A Year-by-Year Record" by Peter Haining:
1978 : May 5 Another former companion makes headline news. Katy Manning poses in the nude with a Dalek for a girlie magazine, and tells journalists: "I did it for the money. Iwas skint. I'd had two good holidays abroad, three months out of work - and to top it all, the VAT man was after me. So why say no when an offer like that is manna from heaven?" Of the photographs, she jokes: "I'd never pose for full frontal pictures. Anyway, why should there be a fuss about my going topless? To catch a glimpse of anything you'd pretty well have to put me under a microscope!" Jon Pertwee comments: "Typical Katy!"

This is a tribute to the above from a Flickr contibutor.

In the meantime, in the real world, the Daleks have made repeated efforts to take over the Universe. This wasn't a mystery when I was a child; evil aliens would naturally seek to take over the Universe. As time passes, it becomes increasingly inexplicable. The Daleks were genetically engineered to have none of the finer sentiments; they have no art, no music, no humour and no philosophy but megalomania. This was the work of the Kaled scientist Davros who anticipated the mutation of his race by shortcutting to their abominable ultimate form.

The question eventually occurred to me: What happens if they win? They spend the rest of Eternity...sitting around,swivelling their turrets in bewilderment and asking each other..."Is this it?" Perhaps they've figured this out and keep sparing their arch-enemy, The Doctor, because he gives their existence purpose. All those times they set him up for a slow death when they could have zapped him in a millisecond...What a horrible fate for The Doc if it was true. He can't let them win but he's their puppet in an endless dance through time and space. And why did the Daleks only ever build one Tardis of their own? In "The Chase" series they send a crew after him in one, but that's the end of that idea once they're flogged. (I know there's a heap of ever-more complicating Dalek yarns in the revived series but I believe the programme really died with the Tom Baker Doctor so I don't give a damn about what followed.)

So what would you rather be, a Katy or a Dalek? Katies die, Daleks don't (have to)...Katies have a reason to live...Daleks don't know what living is. If the Katies could live forever in beauty and youth, that would be a Universe worth having control of.

Post#143 Living the high life, Korean-style

Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-Il’s personal shopper has written a book. No, that’s not a mistake; you read correctly; the North Korean dictators had a personal shopper. His name is Kim Jong Ryul, a former colonel in the Korean army, now seventy-five years old and living in Austria. His book- so far only available in German – is called Im Dienst des Diktators (At the Dictators Service).

In this he tells of the two decades he spent coming to the west on spending sprees, buying such essentials of the dictatorial life as gold-plated handguns and silk wallpaper. There were also the luxury cars- of course –, metal detectors, hunting rifles, crystal chandeliers and monitors capable of detecting the heart beats of people hiding behind walls! Well, one clearly needs to know if there is anyone there, any potential assassin, anyone who wants a glimpse of a fantastic and forbidden world.

Then there was the food. Kim and Kim liked takeaways, as in takeaway everything, and for some reason they both had a particular fondness for Austrian cuisine. Kim Il-sung went so far as to send a team of cooks to Austria to learn the art behind Wiener schnitzels and the like- “The crazy dictators heard rumours that Austrian cuisine was world-famous and that’s why they wanted the foreign cooks to come here.” All this while ordinary Koreans, the citizens of the termite state, those who did not live in the palaces, often had to live on tree bark to survive periodic mass famines.

Kim Jong Ryul eventually had enough of this farce, taking the decision not to return home in 1994, having faked his death on a final shopping trip. In a press conference he said;

I wanted the truth to come to light before I die so people know how horrendous and brutal it is, as well as to highlight how western companies have – for years – been making money through their dealings with the dictatorship, and helping to support the regime and that these dealings, despite all the embargos that are in place, are still in full swing today.

Well, it has. :-)

Post#142 "Teach Yourself The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" (Zionism, our response to it and USS Liberty)

I started writing this in 2008 and was prompted to rescue it from draft limbo by the discovery that Australian passports were forged by Mossad and used as cover in the assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai.

I noticed the book with the title referred to above on the library shelf and couldn't resist it. It provoked some wry thoughts along the lines of; "Does it come with bomb designs or toy tanks?"

Stewart Ross, the author, appears to me to have made a sincere effort to achieve the balance he promises in the book's introduction but I'm sure he'll attract the fury of many nonetheless. There's nothing that can be said about this topic that doesn't vex somebody. As I was reading it I could see where various statements that seem perfectly reasonable to me would have some of the partisans frothing at the mouth. In fact, the words "Israel" or "Palestine" alone will provoke some to deny that one or the other of those places even exist. "There is no Israel! It is a false state!"; "Palestine is a fiction of history!", and so on.

That reminded me of what I felt when reading the Wikipedia article on the USS Liberty incident. In this episode Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats attacked and severely damaged a US Navy intelligence-gathering vessel in June 1967. This was during the Six Day War and the dispute about it has become a forty-one year war of words. The two combatant factions are those who accept the Israeli claim that the attack was erroneous and that the Liberty was misidentified as an Egyptian ship and those who believe that the attack was deliberate and intended to prevent the US passing intelligence about Israel's deployments to the Egyptians, either deliberately or through falling victim to Soviet intercepts. I had seen some TV documentaries about this matter but didn't take a strong interest until I read James Ennes' book, Assault on the Liberty*. It convinced me that the attack was deliberate and that was good enough for me to settle for. (I don't really buy that the Israelis are as incompetent as they would need to be to make such a mistake.) One day, out of idle interest, I looked at the article on Wikipedia. The version at the time (several months ago) was so frantically pro-Israeli that it offended me. I felt like adding a flashing banner header to the article, saying "Shalom! This article is brought to you by Mossad! Enjoy!" On the talk page I found the edit war in full blast. The Zionists and their nemeses had been slugging it out for quite a while and were expending millions of keystrokes and were (and are) apparently happy to continue until Doomsday with it.

I am in earnest about Mossad skewing the Wikipedia article. It would be the height of naivety to think that the intelligence agencies of the world don't prowl the Internet putting the case for their nation's interests. As the most commonly-accessed research site, Wikipedia is probably a high priority target in the propaganda wars. I don't have a problem in principle with agencies of governments contributing to websites. They probably correct a lot of errors and provide information that would otherwise be omitted. However, they don't confine themselves to defending the truth. Nor even the truth as they perceive it. They tell downright lies. As do their opponents.

This ruthlessness is what exasperates me about the so-called "Middle-East conflict". I've seen the same film footage used to illustrate television documentaries about the subject which have utterly opposing messages. One is pro-Israel, the other anti-Israel. The footage is cut and voiced-over to give a completely different significance to it, according to the purpose of the propagandist. Another manifestation of this is in the letters pages of the newspapers. In The Australian last year I read a letter from a person purporting to be a professor at an Eastern States university. I hadn't read the letter which he was responding to but it apparently had contained an argument against those who refer to the "Holocaust" as a justification of the existence of Irsael. The writer had apparently made the fairly obvious and well-worn argument that two wrongs don't make a right and that the Palestinian Arabs had nowt to do with killing Jews in Europe, etc. The professor set out to show that the Palestinians were complicit in the genocide of Jews in Europe because...the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was a confrere of Hitler and had conspired with the Nazis against the Jews. Now that's the sort of thing that jacks me off. This professor is obviously a Zionist partisan and is using sophistic argument of the most tawdry kind. Here's a perfect comparator for this allegation: I know of a country whose leader admired Hitler and was prepared to make a deal with him. He visited Hitler both in a private and official capacity to build the relationship. He was fully aware of Hitler's anti-Jewish ferocity and obviously found it no obstacle to friendship. Think about that for a few moments. Think hard, then read on...

That country was Australia. Its head of state was King Edward VIII, later abdicated to the Duchy of Windsor. He was also Emperor of all British dominions, including the UK itself. So much for that type of reasoning.

Another example of this Zionist hard-heading is the response to any attempt to point out the fact that there is a Zionist lobby group. The recent publication of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy has provoked the typical attacks on the authors as anti-semites and dupes of terrorists. I'm not going to attempt an analysis of the work; I haven't yet read it and I doubt that I could improve on what's in the Wikipedia article or the discussion page that goes with it. My interest is in the fact that plenty of people who also hadn't read it, or had only apparently skimmed it, pitched in with boots and all to attack the authors. They neither knew nor cared about the facts. The authors weren't wholeheartedly on Israel's side so they were legitimate targets. This is the Zionist pattern: You are with us or you are a Nazi, Jew-hating, anti-semitic, terrorist-loving, etc. If you claim to be a Jew, you must also be a "self-loathing Jew" or not really a Jew at all.

By now, any Zionist reading this will be shouting, "What about the terrorists? Why does this Retarius not care about the terrorists? He's obviously a Nazi, Jew-hating, anti..."

Not that the Zionists will care about my credentials. I'm not with them so they won't give a damn about my motives. For those with remotely open minds I'll specify that I am an Australian of British Isles descent (some of my Irish cousins would take violent exception to that phrase, "British" Isles) . My great-grandparents all arrived in this country in the 1850's. All of my antecedents at that point and a couple of people I know of further back don't include any Jews or Muslims. My religious position is agnostic.

I once accepted the commitment of Australia to the cause of Zionism without a second thought. It was simple; the Israelis were the good guys and whatever they did was right. I'm amazed and ashamed now to remember that, even as a teenager, I had no idea of the circumstances in which Israel was created or the fate of the Arabs who had occupied that land for millennia. Trawling my memory of the early 1970's, I can't remember myself having more than a very simplistic and ill-informed view on the issue. To go back to those terrorists; at that time the PLO and PFLP were emerging into the consciousness of the international community with their various attacks, particularly the 1972 Olympics incident. Palestinian militants were abandoning talk and trying to make the supporters of Israel feel some pain. Talk hadn't gotten them anywhere; terrorism wasn't going to either, but they didn't know that yet. As for many Australians, these gutless murders were my introduction to the fact of the existence of a Palestinian national movement. My first reaction, formed by the ignorance of anything but the terrorism, was that they were thoroughly vicious and deserved whatever they got. It's very hard now, looking back on childish or teenaged perceptions to remember exactly what I did know or think. I don't suppose I thought much about it at all. It's really only in the past twenty years that I've revisited and rethought the matter. A long-held opinion is like a forgotten item in a stored trunk. It can be very surprising to unpack it and look at it. It's like that with old clothes you haven't looked at for a while. You see them with fresh eyes and wonder at how they ever fitted you or that you wore something like that in public. When I looked again at my opinions filed under "Israel" I received a rude shock. I realised that I'd never given the matter any careful adult thought. Like so many others, I'd accepted the necessity of Israel's existence as a response to the "Holocaust". With older, more skeptical eyes, I saw that the acceptance of this belief was a propaganda victory for the most obnoxious kind of Zionist.

I keep putting that word "Holocaust" in those quotation marks for a good reason. That reason is not a disbelief in the genocidal campaigns carried out against Jews during the Second World War. Anyone in this age who thinks that the great pogroms of the Nazis and their collaborators are fictional is either the supreme fool or a lunatic. My dispute with its usage is that it is a melodramatic term which has been conscripted to unethical ends. The history of European animosity towards Semitic peoples is a very long one. I believe that it can be traced to origins in the Punic Wars. It probably didn't escape the attention of the Romans that the sacred language and script of the Jews were identical to the everyday language and script of their ancient foes, the Phoenicians/Carthaginians.

The term "Holocaust" excessively particularises the matter. There is an implication that the persecution of Jews in Europe is a phenomenon of Nazism and its collaborators in occupied countries. This is very convenient for other nations such as Britain and Spain which have deep histories in this field. It obscures the escalation in anti-Judaic activity which occurred throughout Europe in the 19th and early 20th Centuries.

Australia's official position has been one of relentless sycophancy towards Israel. "Official" in that sentence means the political class, not the citizenry. More and more of us are wearying of the Zionist intransigents. Perhaps even the politicians are beginning to wonder. I have with me the edition of  The Australian for Friday, 26 February, 2010. Above the banner headline "Aussies caught in Israeli spy hit" is a quote from Stephen Smith, Australia's Foreign Minister:

"If ... the abuse of Australian passports was in any way sponsored or condoned by Israeli officials, then Australia would not regard that as the act of a friend."

This is his response to the discovery that a Mossad hit squad used forged Australian passports as part of their cover for the assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai. For the Australian government, in the context of Israel doing a naughty, that's tough talk.

One of the things that delayed my writing this post was that I didn't want to add another dead blowfish of opinion to the massive pile that's been dredged up on this topic over the past 62 years. They usually boil down to "Drive the Jews into the sea!" or "Drive the Arabs into the desert!" These entrenched diametrics are so worn out that you'd have to be mad to bother writing in support of either. I finally came up with an innovative solution. It's about as likely to come to fruition as all the others..not at all...so no harm done in indulging in this flight of fancy.

My plan to solve the Israel-Palestine problem: Wind the place up. The Western countries that supported this lunacy can take the Israelis into their lands. I'll even suspend my support for zero immigration and suggest that Australia could take a few hundred thousand.

Like I said, no chance. However, the fact that the problem will never be solved doesn't mean it won't be
resolved. What the Zionists can't see is that final victory for them will be the removal of the last restraint upon the most fanatical of Palestinians. When all hope is extinguished for them they will  have no reason to refrain from the detonation of  nuclear weapons in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Yes, even Jerusalem. And the rest of us shall sit and watch. In  that regard we shall enjoy the judgement of history that we were consistent if nothing else.

*Assault on the Liberty: The True Story of the Israeli Attack on an American Intelligence Ship, by James M. Ennes, Jr. (ISBN 0-9723116-0-2) Currently in its 9th printing.

Post#141 One Small Step - Years of the Rocket

There was a time when science fiction ripped out of the pages of paperbacks and melted through the celluloid of moving film and took hold of our waking, banal everydays. That time when great rockets roared skyward and seemed to be the vanguard of a nascent imperium; the interstellar Empire imagined by Asimov taking its first steps to glory.

From the early 1960's the pledge of JFK to land a man on the moon was the spring driving the increasingly regular and efficient launches. Gemini followed Mercury, Apollo followed Gemini. It seemed to be an unstoppable progression. Tragedies and mishaps such as the Apollo 1 fire or the loss of Grissom's capsule after splashdown didn't appear to hinder the advance of the machine.

Then came the triumph of Apollo 11 in July of 1969. A genuinely outstanding moment in history; the first recorded voyage to and landing on another celestial body by human beings. The television broadcast must have set a record for the most-watched programme of the most abysmal visual quality. The headline on the West Australian newspaper was massive: MAN LANDS ON MOON.

The missions that followed were, as is now well-remarked, anticlimactic. But for the near-fatal events of Apollo 13, they would have received even less attention. That's one of the most astounding things about these events; people became blase about them in an eye-blink.

The last Apollo moon-mission was in November of 1972. An Apollo launch system and capsule which could and should have gone to the moon were wasted in the Apollo-Soyuz farce of 1975...a pointless exercise in the name of "detente". The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 showed what that was all worth. Caught between the Kennedy-hate of Nixon and the apathy and skepticism of Congress and the American public, the programme was extinguished. Its remnant equipment was used as "lawn furniture" at NASA establishments. As a Australian I can't damn the American taxpayers for this...they were paying for it and it would have proceeded only if they had really wanted to continue paying for it. Still, it was depressing to see.

The "space-race" provoked the imaginations of humanity, then became a historical landmark which was progressively receding. The expression "We can put a man on the moon..." became part of the treasury of cliche...it was usually hooked up with "but we can't - " followed by whatever the speaker felt was outlandish for being undoable. This saying is used less often now and I suspect that there are many now who have completely forgotten that it ever happened or never knew. Imagine that...a child who has never heard of it is probably not a rarity today.

From Perth, Western Australia, my home town, the Moon is now the only celestial body which is easily observable at night. Light pollution has progressed to the point where even the most prominent stars and planets are feeble in the clearest viewing conditions (except for Venus, goddess of UFO's). The stars of "our radiant Southern Cross" are winking out. No one seems to even think it's worth a comment. As for the moon, I feel that Stephen Baxter put it best in his short story "Moon Six"; it has become "just a light in the sky that no one cares about".

The initiative in lunar colonisation has passed from the democracies and is now being pursued by China.( I covered that in Post#22, way back when.) It's difficult to see how the withering away of will can ever be reversed. Perhaps the simple answer is that it won't. There's always going to be a Proxmire, a world recession or some damned thing to soak up government money. In the West private enterprise is the best hope for progress...if a profit can be demonstrated in the venture. Not much chance then.

The rockets are dormant now. Fizzled out. Snuffed out. By economic necessity; by failure of imagination. Those of us who lived in the years of the rocket had a great historical privilege. We heard those words:

"This is Tranquility base...the Eagle has landed"

For a moment we had a glimpse.

Post#140 Retarius where are you?

Have you given up? I miss you. I don't feel that I can contribute any more to what is chiefly a blog from Oz. :-) Anyway, my dear friend, I hope you are well, wherever you are, and a happy New Year. Love from the Imp.

Post#139 Thoughts on Myanmar

Will the military dictatorship in Myanmar, Burma, if you prefer, survive? An interesting question, I think. I would have to say that Myanmar shows the very same structural factors that have served to weaken democracy in Pakistan on the other side of the Indian Subcontinent: it has a strong military tradition, a fairly weak civil society, and a fear of national disintegration. The situation in Myanmar is further complicated by a fear of outside intervention.

Remember, too, that the country did not gain its independence by the same political process at work in India and Pakistan. Rather, it emerged as a result of the war against Japanese occupation, involving local Burmese as well as Allied forces. This means that the significant leaders who emerged in 1945 all had a military rather than a civilian background. It's one of history's ironies that the greatest of these leaders, Aung San, the father of Aung San Suu Kyi, the voice of the democratic opposition, is also the iconic figure who has helped sustain the special place of the military in Burmese politics

This has also been supported, as I have said, by the relative weakness of civil society. During the days of British rule the native Burmese played very little part in managing day- to-day affairs, with administrators being recruited from among colonial Britons or Indians. Excluded from the civil service, the ethnic Burmese nevertheless formed an important part of the police and the army. Although an embryonic native middle-class was beginning to emerge in the course of the early twentieth century, it was almost completely wiped out in the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Fear of national disintegration has roots in the early evolution of the Burmese state. In the two hundred years prior to the advent of the British in the 1820s, the Burmese kings had expanded their control out of the lowlands into areas inhabited by different ethnic and linguistic groups. The Shan, the Karen, the Arakanese, the Mon, the Chin, the Karenni and the Kachin, all non-Burmese speaking, now make up approximately one third of the total population, occupying two-thirds of the national territory. Fears that these centrifugal forces will destroy the integrity of the nation have been fuelled by the long-standing insurgencies of the Shan and the Karen. The opportunity this might provide for foreign intervention has strengthened the army's sense of paranoia, creating a siege mentality and a persistent mood of xenophobia amongst the generals. As far as the military is concerned it is they who are the guardians of the nation, the one guarantee that Myanmar/Burma will survive as a unitary state.

Afterthought

As a postscript to the above let me add a guilty admission and a recommendation, not that I have the least hope that anyone is listening!

A few years ago, after leaving school, but before going up to university, I took a gap year, an opportunity to travel to various places in the world, including south-east Asia. While there I visited Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. I also went to Myanmar, though I struggled with my conscience over that, mindful of the request by Aung San Suu Kyi for the world-large and small-to boycott the tyrants. She's a gallant and courageous lady, the leader of the opposition, the rightful leader of the country by democratic decision, the conscience of a nation; it's difficult to ignore her.

Look at the other side of the world, to Cuba. Here the vile Castro regime has been kept in power for so long I would say precisely because of the American boycott, not in spite of it. The one sure way of undermining Castro would have been to allow contacts of all kinds; tourist, cultural and commercial. He would no longer have been able by this process to have identified his Communist tyranny-as he has-with Cuban nationalism.

So, too, in the east the best way of opening up Myanmar to the prospect of change is for the west to abandon sanctions and boycotts. There is every sign-as The Economist has rightly pointed out-that the generals want to follow the same development path as China and Vietnam before them. Isolation has given them security, not legitimacy, and it is this they badly need. Economic development is likely to bring political development, which is likely to bring change. Aung Sun Suu Kyi is courageous, yes, but she is also wrong. There, I've said it!

Post#138 The Protocols of the Purveyors of Pap, or the Fraud of Global Warming!

I'm back, Retarius!

I’m a student of history, not a scientist. I’ll go further: science bores me. Still, it cannot be ignored; aspects of scientific ‘knowledge’ cannot be ignored. And the one aspect that has invaded my consciousness through multiple media, with all of the silent finesse of a Blitzkrieg, is the whole global warming argument

Let me just say to begin with that I always suspected there was something wrong with this, partly on the basis of an understanding of the historical record, and partly on the basis of simple intuition. You see global warming (GW), or climate change, to use a more exact expression, has been a fairly regular feature of human history: there have been quite significant ups and downs over time. Indeed, one period I call to mind is the early fourteenth century, when conditions were so bad that it is sometimes referred to as the ‘mini-ice age.’

The second level of suspicion, which I attribute to intuition, might be better described as instinct. The simple fact is I don’t like being preached at; I react against both the message and the messenger, whether it is that little clot Lawrence McGinty on ITV news, or that big clot Al Bore, and his relentless promotion of ManBearPig, his phantom terror (South Park fans will understand!) And if The Guardian and The Independent, those voices of the uni-dimensional, lead me to think in one way I invariably think in the other. But, of course, they, Super Obama-that socialist in socialist’s clothing-, Joker Brown and all the other promoters of GW have ‘science’ on their side; I only have instinct. Not any more; oh no, not any more. I am happy to declare that we have all been the victims of a massive conspiracy: the Protocols of the Purveyors of Pap!

For, you see, at last one scientist has had the courage to speak out against this phoney consensus-Professor Ian Plimer, an Australian geologist. His book, Heaven and Earth: Global Warming-the Missing Science, so frightened the liberal establishment that it was rejected by every mainstream publishing house in his native land. He had quite literally to go to the outback to find a small company courageous enough to take him on. The first print run sold out. Further editions followed, one hard upon the other, as the news spread. It’s now to be published in England and the States.

I don’t want to dwell on Plimer’s thesis at length but the chief elements are as follows. First, the GW model is based on the narrowest of explanatory frameworks, with data drawn from less than two hundred years. Second, and even more important, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere amounts to 0.001 of the total held in the environment. More than that, human activity accounts for a tiny amount of this tiny percentage. Oh, yes, there is one other thing about GW: it stopped over ten years ago. In the last two years global cooling has reversed some thirty years of temperature increase.

Serious attempts have been made to discredit Plimer by those wedded to the GW paradigm but the data, for once, speaks for itself. Measurements complied by the University of Huntsville in Alabama confirm that temperatures have fallen. In March Alan Carlin, an senior analyst for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the US, produced a detailed report questioning the carbon dioxide argument upon which GW is based. The report was ignored on the grounds that it was too late to change the EPA’s official policy. No surprise, really. After all Super Obama needs some justification for the $7.4 trillion tax hike he intends to inflict on his fellow Americans as part of his environment bill.

And so it goes on with those committed to GW pushing all the way. A political battle is being fought out in Plimer’s Australia, where Kevin Rudd managed to have his own environment bill pushed through the lower house aimed at curbing CO2 emissions, curbs so drastic that they are likely to devastate the national economy, dependant as it is on coal. The Senate votes on the bill next month. Here opinion is so evenly divided that the whole measure is set to rise or fall on the casting vote of Stephen Fielding, an independent Senator. Given the importance of his vote Penny Wong, the climate change minister, agreed to see him in person. A series of questions were put about the GW data. The answers produced by the minister’s own scientific advisors were so unconvincing, so shot with errors and contradictions, that Fielding’s team produced a counter-response, published as Due Diligence, which tears the whole argument in pieces. The Senator has announced that he will be voting against Rudd’s bill.

I seriously hope that the Australian bill fails, but can anything be done to counter the momentum that GW has gathered across the world, promoted by the G 8 or the G 20 or however many clowns that can be gathered in one place for a spectacular junket, producing more carbon emissions-and hot air-than you and I in a lifetime? Alas, the prospects are not good. GW is the new doxy, uniting all sorts of vested interests, political, academic, institutional, broadcasting and publishing; uniting the American and British governments, on the one hand, and interest groups like the idiotic Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth on the other. Given time the paradigm may shift but only after horrendous damage has been inflicted on the western economy, to the benefit, I imagine, of political tyrannies like China.

I suppose I started writing this in a lightly ironic mood, suggesting the existence of a global conspiracy. I finish in a more sombre frame of mind because I now believe that such a conspiracy does exist, not one born of malice and design but of blindness and stupidity. Say no to Green Fascism; say no to the Copenhagen Treaty, say no to stealth taxes, say no to attempts to undermine our already fragile economy. Global Warming is a lie.

Post#137 Glorybaby (Glory Jagas), Happinesslove, Maldaline Yahaya, Lancy Mokan, Atonia and Edith Zaky [or Edith Zarky] ( African Email Scams)

Well, that title's cumbersome, but with good cause; it's to guide here any searcher who's encountered this character and wants the inside track. I posted before about the 419Eater site at my Post#89 "African Scam Babes" and this is the further story I promised about my correspondence with a scammer.

Several months ago, I listed my blog at Spicypage (This post has been in draft mode since October '08 and I long ago lost interest in Spicypage) just to see what it was about and whether there was any merit to using the site. I'm still not sure on that (I am now) but I did discover that there seem to be a lot of spammers targeting the site. My first message, other than from the site's welcome wagon, was titled "Hello dear", coming from a person using the handle "Glorybaby" and providing a Gmail address for GloryJagas. The message said that they'd seen my profile on the site (which was, apart from my handle, non-existent) and that they found me interesting and would like to get better acquainted. I was urged to send a message by email so that I could receive a photograph of this character. After this little ritual "we can get going!" promised the correspondent. The sign-off was that race and distance should be no obstacle to love. I used the options on the site to report this obvious come-on as spam and deleted it.

That would have been the lot, but an identical message turned up the next week using the handle "Lovehappiness" (or "Happinesslove; I can't remember now). This time I responded with a message to the correspondent through the Spicypage site, using "The Voice of Sweet Reason". I pointed out that there are many legitimate ways of making a profit through the Internet without engaging in unethical behaviour. I enquired as to what the spammer's motives were. I wasn't expecting this type to reform, I just wanted to see what the response might be. Nothing as it happens.

Then, next week, same message again, using the handle "Maldaline". This time I responded, "Why would I want a photograph of a spammer?"

The next week...same message from "Lancy" something-or-other. I left another Spicypage message saying, "Welcome back Glorybaby, Happinesslove, Maldaline, etc! Your nomenclatural innovations are most delightful but your pitch needs some work, sweetheart."

And the next week...same message from "Edith" - but with the added provisos that I must reply by email and not through the Spicypage site.

At this point I became somewhat irritated. This character not only wants to rip me off, they want me to be an obedient and submissive sap and get ripped off their way! Now any good con has to give the mark something approaching respect (before it shows its teeth) and this scammer wanted to be prescriptive from the word go. Okay, I'll give you something, bastard.

I created an email account in the name of "Bogus Maximus" (no kidding) and sent the message below:

From: Bogus Maximus
To: edzak83@yahoo.com
Sent: Friday, 3 October, 2008 2:20:51 PM
Subject: Your message at Spicypage

I read your message at Spicypage and here's my reply!

Promptly came this reply:

From:edith zaky
To: Bogus Maximus
Sent: Friday, 3 October, 2008 5:19:35 PM
Subject: I WILL LIKE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT YOU.

Hello my love,
i am so happy in your mail to my mail.How was your day?,Mine is a little bit cold over here in Dakar Senegal.
My name is Edith from Ivory Coast in West Africa,5.4ft tall, dark in complexion,(never married before ) 23Yrs old and presently i am residing in the refugee camp here in Dakar as a result of the civil war that was fought in my country.My late father Dr Frederick Zarky was the managing director of Fredcocoa and Associates (Ltd) and he was the personal advicer to the former head of state (Late Dr Robert Guei) before the rebels attacked our house one early morning and killed my mother and my father in cold blood.It was only me that is alive now and I managed to make my way to a near by country Senegal where i am leaving now.I could like to know more about you.Attached here is my picture and I will send another picture in my next mail.I will also like to see your picture.
Hoping to hear from you soonest,
Edith



(Of course, the probability of the sender being female or looking remotely like these photographs is infinitesimal. As in x -> 0. However, for ease of writing, I won't bother putting inverted commas around "Edith" after this. I've reduced the photos for convenience and the slogan on the red t-shirt is now illegible. It says, "I'M AN ACTRESS Can I take your order?" This apparently is a joke about how most aspiring actresses have to support themselves. Ironic in the circumstances.)

My preferred option was to lure Edith into contributing to a blog which I could change from private to public once we'd finished exchanging confidences - it saves work copying emails. So:

From: Bogus Maximus
To: edith zaky
Sent: Monday, 6 October, 2008 1:05:20 PM
Subject: I WILL LIKE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT YOU

Hello Edith! I have sent you an email inviting you to join a private blog which only you and I can read! Please accept my invitation and send your photographs and messages to the blog. I look forward to hearing from you!!

And here is the second "script":

From: edith zaky
To: Bogus Maximus
Sent: Monday, 6 October, 2008 4:43:46 PM
Subject:HONEY THIS IS MY FULL LIFE STORY WITH LOVE AND TRUST

Hello Dearest ,I am happy in your reply to my mail. How are you?, hope is alright, mine is a little bit boring.In this camp we are only allowed to go out from the camp only on Mondays and Fridays of the week, its just like one staying in the prison and i hope by Gods grace i will be free someday, i don't have any relative now whom i can go to, all my relatives ran away in the middle of the war, the only person i have now is Rev. Genadine Isaac who is the pastor of the (Kingdom's Assembly Int'l Churches) here in the camp, he has been very nice to me since i came here but i am not living with him rather i am leaving in the women's hostel because the camp have two hostels one for men the other for women. The Pastors Tel number is (+221761202124) if you call and tell him that you want to speak with me he will send for me in the hostel. As a refugee here i don't have any right or privileged to any thing be it money or whatever because it is against the law of this country, i want to go back to my studies because i only attended my first year before the tragic incident that lead to my being in this situation now took place..Please listen to this,i have my late father's statement of account and death certificate here with me which i will send to you latter,because when he was alive he deposited some amount of money in one the leading banks in Europe which he used my name as the next of kin,the amount in question is $5.7( Five Million seven Hundred Thousand US Dollars). So i will like you to help me transfer this money to your account and from it you can send some money for me to get my traveling documents and air ticket to come over to meet with you. I kept this secret from people in the camp here the only person that knows about it is the Reverend because he is like a father to me. So in the light of above i will like you to keep it to yourself and don't tell it to anyone for i am afraid of loosing my life and the money if people gets to know about it. Remember i am giving you all this information due to the trust i deposed on you, i like honest and understanding people and a man of vision, truth and hardworking, our main language is french but English is my favorite because i also speaks it fluently. Meanwhile i will like you to call me like i said i have a lot to tell you, have a nice day and think about me, awaiting to hear from you soonest,
Yours in love. Edith.

Love? Well, I grit my teeth over receiving protestations of love from a correspondent who is probably male and soldier on:

From: Bogus Maximus
To: edith zaky
Sent: Tuesday, 7 October, 2008 1:46:52 PM
Subject: Re: HONEY THIS IS MY FULL LIFE STORY WITH LOVE AND TRUST...

Edith, I am puzzled by your answer. Please accept the invitation I have emailed you to use the blog to communicate. Email is dangerous because it is traceable. The blog is impossible for security agencies to track so it is best to use it to talk. Once you have signed on to the blog you will be able to see the messages I left you and you can leave your photos and messages there. Because of my position here I cannot risk communicating by email any longer. Please use the blog or I will not be able to help you.

Nice try, Retarius, but:

From: edith zaky
To: Bogus Maximus
Sent: Tuesday, 7 October, 2008 2:57:14 PM
Subject: PLEASE HONEY WRITE TO THE BANK TODAY WITH LOVE AND TRUST....

My Dearest.How are you today, hope you are fine, dear i want to thank for all your effort and love towards me, you have given me hope and i will also like to see you face to face,i like you very much and i want you to know that before i contacted you i saw your profile that you matched mine and you are the type of man i am looking forward to spend the rest of my life with.I am not going to give your love to any other man you will satisfy me,so needless of looking for another man.

Please i have not told anyone except you and the Reverend about the existence of this money and i will like you to please keep it secret to other people because since it is (MONEY) all eyes will be on it.

Remember i trust you honey that is why i am giving you all this information!. My love is for you and you alone,i will like to hear your voice please,just call the Rev and tell him that you want to speak with me and he will send for me immediately.You can call the Reverend and ask him the best time to call me.His office phone no (00221-761202124)


I have informed the bank about my plans to claim this money and the only thing they told me is to look for a foreign partner who will stand on my behalf due to my refugee status and the laws of this country.You will have 15% of the total money for helping me and the remaining money will be managed by you in any business of your choice while i go back to my studies. In this regards iwill like you to contact the bank immediately with this information below,tell them that you are my foreign partner and that you want to know the possibilities of assisting me transfer my 5.7 million dollars deposited by my late father which i am the next of kin to your account in your country.

The contact information of the bank are as follows,

Royal Bank Of Scotland PLC

Email address

(acctsbkroyal2@uk2.net)
(rbsintaccts@icmail.net)

The name of the transfer officer is (Sir.Gilly Bafford).

Telephone number +44-702-4093-601 or +44-702-4094-117
Office Fax number+44-703-1941-816.


The Account Number Is (RBS-343I08701364-QB).

Contact them now on how to transfer the 5.7 milliondollars deposited by my late of which i am the next of kin.I have mapped out 15% for your assistanceMy dear iam glad that God has brought you to see me out from this situation and i promise to be kind and will equally need you in every area of my life including investing this money since iam still too young to manage it.

As i told you before,this camp is just like a prison and my prayers is to move out from here as soon as possible.Please make sure that you contact the bank so that after the transfer you can send some money from that money for me to prepare my traveling documents to meet with you in your country.I will send you another picture latter when i know your mind about this.Awaiting to hear from you soonest!.Yours forever in love,Edith.

As the regulars at the 419Eater site know, it's hard to break through to the consciousness of the scammer and persuade them to respond to what you are actually writing. Another try:

From: Bogus Maximus
To: edith zaky
Sent: Thursday, 9 October, 2008 1:39:03 PM
Subject: Your predicament

Edith, I don't wish to take any of your money. I will be very glad to help you with no reward other than the satisfaction of doing a favour for a genuine lady. But, I regret, I cannot proceed to help you by any means of communication other than the secret blog that I have invited you to join. Please access the blog and I will begin to make arrangements with you for your escape to Australia.

Further, I recommend that you do not trust that Reverend gentleman. I believe that he is actually not your friend and is conspiring with the government of Cote D'Ivoire to steal your inheritance.


Looks like success:

From: edith zaky Saturday, 11 October, 2008 6:10:13 PM
To: Bogus Maximus
Sent: Saturday, 11 October, 2008 6:10:13 PM
Subject: HONEY PLEASE WRITE TO THE BANK TODAY ....

Hello my sweeth daerling Maximus ,honey good morning to you and please how are you today hope you are fine and please how is your family hope thrir alright thank God for that as for me am not fine honey here is too hort to me please help me out.My love i saw your mail just now and m so much happy about it and i also understand you well . Honey please how about the bank ? have you write to them as i told you in my last mail please my love if no please try to mail them today so that they will tell you how to transfer the money please .See honey i told the bank every thing about you all you need to do is to send them mail and you tell them that you are my partner that you want to no the possibilities of this transfer and i believe with this they will understand you better and please do let me no as soon as you write to them ok thank you and kisssss to you bye .Your's sweeth baby Edzak .

Still trying for the blog..the lies are becoming wilder:

From: Bogus Maximus
To: edith zaky
Sent: Sunday, 12 October, 2008 3:01:05 PM
Subject: Your escape to Australia...


Edith, I am concerned that you are under coercion and are not able to communicate freely. If you are able to deal freely, please accept the invitation to the blog. I have placed your emails there but I need you to load your photographs to the blog directly. I cannot help you unless you do this. For reasons of security I cannot go into more detail through email but if you sign onto the blog all will be explained.

Is he off the hook?

From: Bogus Maximus Monday, 20 October, 2008 3:16:50 PM
To: edith zaky
Sent: Monday, 20 October, 2008 3:16:50 PM
Subject: Why no response?...

Edith, I'm concerned. Has something happened to you? Why don't you respond to my invitation? I can help you.


To:Bogus Maximus
From: edith zaky
Sent: Tuesday, 21 October, 2008 9:03:20 PM
Subject: PLEASE MY DARLING LOVE...

Hello my rising sun,How are you doing today ? i hope that you are fine please darling i got your mail and i am very happy to read from you again since my last mail to you we have been without electric light and that is why you haven't heared from me again.Please its likely that i am disturbing you but you have to bear with me because when i try to think about something else i can't help my self i start thinking about you. you know they say that time heals every wound but i think not love and hunger , Ilove you and i am hungry of you.Now darling i will also like to know if you have confirmed from the bank or not please try to write or call them and know if i am telling you the truth or not.i love you today, i love you tomorrow and i will love you forever.yours ever Edith

Today, tomorrow and forever...I shall despise you. But my creative writing impulse had taken hold, so - the grand flourish. Also known as "friends in high places".

From: Bogus Maximus
To: edith zaky
Sent: Thursday, 23 October, 2008 5:41:07 PM
Subject: Consular assistance...

Edith, I am very glad that you are able to make contact.I have arranged for the Australian consular staff in Senegal to assist you in leaving the country and retrieving your funds. My friend, Stephen Smith, the Australian Foreign Minister, has told me that your application for refugee status and resettlement in Australia will be given very favourable treatment.However, there is a slight difficulty. You have not identified the location of the camp you are in. Please provide this information so that the Australian officials can visit you and begin the process of liberating you from the camp. Be careful not to discuss this with others in the camp. There are people in such places who will attempt to extort money from you in order to facilitate your departure.There is some sort of firewall problem preventing the transmission of the photgraphs you have sent by email. Please upload them to the blog I told you about in my previous messages. I will forward them to the diplomatic staff so that they will be able to recognise you. This will prevent any imposture by others.

Yes, I'm so solicitous for poor, sweet Edith. And then look what the ungrateful bitch writes:

To: Bogus Maximus
From: edith zaky
Sent: Saturday, 25 October, 2008 8:02:53 PM
Subject: Transfer of Funds...

Hello My dear,
how are you doing at this weekend?, hope you are doing alright, darling thanks for your mail and your suggestion on how i will be freed by your foreign afairs diplomats, i appreciate your efforts but i don't think is safe for me, i am here and i know what happends here, you don't understand the situation here, please i don't want to be a problem to any person or a group of people and that is why i told you to first of help me to transfer my late fathers money from which you can send me some money to get the valid documents, i don't want to an ubject of pity, no matter my condition, again i don't want you to futher discuss my issue with any person here in Africa, my life is very much of important to me, now if you really want to help me, i want you to tell me so that we can continue with the transfer, if not, i will know my next steps, have a nice weekend as i am hopping to hear from you soonest, yours,
Edith.

Next steps? He's definitely being too overbearing. Let's throw down the gauntlet:

From: Bogus Maximus
To: edith zaky
Sent: Sunday, 26 October, 2008 3:44:44 PM
Subject: Transfer of Funds

Edith, I am increasingly puzzled by your responses to my messages. I appreciate that there are significant cultural differences between us and I have not seen fit to comment upon your expressions of affection and trust towards me. They are somewhat surprising in that I am a complete stranger to you. To an Australian this seems rather disproportionate to our relationship.

Because of my position in the Western Australian government I must use a nonsense pseudonym and common email account to correspond with you. I could not contemplate identifying myself because of the difficulty it could create. I am a senior official in the office of a prominent Minister of the Crown in this State. I have offered to assist you in escaping from Senegal by exercising what would be considered by some to be improper influence through a personal contact in the Federal government of Australia.

I don't regard you as pitiable; you have a serious problem; you have reached to me for help and I am able to render it if you will accept my advice. What is the use of sending me money? Your liberation could be effected within 24 hours without any Australian being paid a penny. I also could not contemplate receiving any payment from you because it would create a serious scandal if the matter became public.

Please reconsider your position. If you refuse I will, regretfully, have to conclude that you are acting under duress or that your story is simply not true.

Four days without reply...he's off the hook. Damn. Well, now for the coup de disgrace:

From: Bogus Maximus
To: edith zaky
Sent:Thursday, 30 October, 2008 2:46:19 PM
Subject: Royal Bank of Scotland Account CLEANED OUT!!...

Greetin's mugu!!! You has bin had mah fraynd. Yays, you has been corryspondin' wid de Bogus Maximus. Ahnd he is a verra wicked fella dat Bogus. He lahks to tell lies in de email and get de poor scambaiters all vexated, mah mon!

Now, really, you should know a phony when you meet one. Your 4-1-9 advance fee scam is not one of the more sophisticated, but, lacking in imagination as you appear to be, you still might think it strange to find a friend of the Australian Foreign Minister offering to save little "Edith" from the terrible conspirators.Thanks to your efforts in responding to my messages Interpol are now in the process of tracing your emails to their transmission site. Impossible? A bluff? Well, you'll find out soon enough if you keep using that Internet cafe.

No reply. With that subject line I'll bet he read it. Was he discouraged? Perhaps I made him a little uneasy about using that Internet cafe. I certainly wasted some of his time and got him to think about what he was writing instead of simply copying and pasting scripts. Along the way I searched for the other names on the Spicypage messages. I turned up "Edith Zarky", "GloryJagas", "Lancy Mokan" and found, in related links the name "Atonia", apparently another alias. Then there's "Maldaline Yahaya" whom you can see "a picture of" at this page at Stop-Scammers.com. Once you open the door to this world of utter falsity you find an infinitely-recurring pattern. In my estimate, Stop-Scammers is itself a scam. It has a monthly registration fee, registration is required to access anything past the front pages and it carries Googleads for the very kind of sites that are most scam-infested , E.g. "Russian Women" etc... I left a message on their guestbook calling them on it and saying, "What a great scam...let the scam-suckers provide you with site content to attract other suckers and get them to pay for the privilege of reading each others' cautionary tales". Strange it is that their Guestbook Moderator did not choose to publish my comment. Far better is the 419eater site which I commend, if only for some bloody entertaining reads. Check out their "Main Scambaiting Forum".

Also you can look at this and make your own conclusions..Maybe this site is on the level...but why run ads for dating services on a site about dating scams? It's not as though they look exceptionally ethical.

There is an ancient proverb which tells us that a fool and his money are soon parted. Another says that there is no coming between fools and their follies. In Australia it is held of old that "You should never argue with a mug". (Or a mugu perhaps.) True as these are, I can't help being provoked by the scum who are luring the fools. Behind the cons is the depressing fact of the enormous and desperate loneliness of so many millions. There is no laughter in that.

Post#136 The Stern Gang of One (Stern Hu, Malcolm Turnbull and the Chinese Espionage Allegation)

Kevin Rudd knows better than anyone else that he has only so much credit with the Chinese government. The arrest in China of Stern Hu, an Australian Chinese man has prompted Malcolm Turnbull to suggest that Rudd should be taking robust action and exploiting his Chinese connections to the full. This is the last proof I need that Turnbull is just saying any damned stupid thing that pops into his head. If an aggressive approach was tried and failed, there would be no prospect of reversing and successfully engaging in quiet reason. If Turnbull is really concerned for Hu's welfare he should subside and let Rudd pick his way through this minefield without jogging his elbow.

Post#135 Michael Joins Elvis

Okay, so Michael Jackson is dead. I believe you, already. When Elvis died in 1977 I heard a good line from a friend who was still attending the school which I had recently left. A teacher, who was renowned for his vicious humour, had called my friend's class to order and announced in a mock-solemn tone: "Elvis Presley has died...and now we are all going to go through Purgatory."


Nor was he wrong. And after the post-mortem eruption of Elvis-mania he stayed at a higher level of public profile than he had experienced before death. The impersonators came out in their white jumpsuits and the legend of his non-death began. I can't remember how soon the Elvis sightings began after his death (alright, alleged death - you happy now?) but I do recollect that they coincided in their early phase with the reports of a character called "Lizard Man". In the 70s all sorts of weird apparitions were being reported from the southern USA and this reptilian pedestrian was seen promenading along several highways. (This isn't the more recent Lizard Man of the late 80s, this is an earlier Lizard Man.) Elvis and Lizard man were reported (probably not by a person expecting to be believed) to be walking along the roadside together on one occasion.

I doubt that Michael Jackson will generate a resurrection mythology, although it was suggested by the rumour-mill that his death would prove to be a publicity stunt for his tour. It's a conspiracy which would require so many conspirators by now that the idea is untenable. If he did leap from the coffin at the wake, (singing "Thriller" of course) he'd probably regret it. The suckers would not be happy, to say the least.

Way back when he really was revered a commentator said that he feared that one day Jackson would "awake to a terrible silence". Well, that never happened. When his music faded the scandals and weirdness kept him in the public eye. Now that he is safely dead the reconstruction of his legacy is being pushed along. I heard a speech being made by someone over the radio who was insisting; "He belonged to us - this blaaack maaan!!! We shared him with everybody else." The audience shrieked their approval.

This is really the limit; if Jackson is famous for anything it is the renunciation of his racial identity by mutilation and poisoning of his body. Elvis also carved out a niche in history for his self-destructive behaviour. The Channel 10 TV network has recently been using the excruciating Elvis movies as a filler before their Sunday evening news and I was amazed to see Elvis looking healthy and slim in a 1968 production. I hadn't realised how quickly he had gone downhill and I'm curious about how recently before his death he had become the bloated, dissipated mess of 1977.

I didn't feel devastated when either of them died. I was very sad when Pavarotti went and gutted by the demise of Steve Irwin...but Elvis and Michael didn't bring me grief when they left us. I wondered what I really thought of either of them and concluded that my response was simply pity. All that money, all that hullabaloo and a miserable untimely death. Both had obviously been surrounded by a coterie of people who said "yes" to them. What a powerful and poisonous evil sycophancy is.

Post#134 A Brief Reflection on Trolls

No, not that kind; the real ones!

I first came across the race of trolls in the Norwegian folk-tales of Asbjørnsen and Moe. Beguiling they can be, ugly they certainly are, scheming they try to be; intelligent they most assuredly are not! These creatures, the creatures of the kind of popular tales that began to emerge in the Romantic era, are but a dim reflection of the trolls of more ancient traditions, who were altogether more demonic. But, in the end, I suppose they are all really quite boring; for, as Oscar Wilde says, ogres have limited conversation, bears, one suspects, of very little brain. :))

Post#133 PMP

It really amuses me the way in which some people resort to jargon, not occasionally, but continuously. I’m thinking specifically here of ‘lol’. Yes, it’s OK now and again, but you know, I know, most sensible people know that when it appears, as it does in discussions on social networks, that the person in question could not possibly be ‘laughing out loud’ again and again and again. More than that, it often follows a remark, or an observation, that is not in the least bit funny.

Oh, I’m a rebel; I’ve always been a rebel; when the shoal swims one way I invariably swim the other. I’ve stopped using lol altogether, both in social networks and in texting. I would like to invent my own personal jargon. Hmm, what shall I use when I find something particularly funny? Yes, I’ve got it; it shall be Pissing my Panties, or pmp for short. I like that. The trouble is, though, I shall have to be economical in application. Nobody could possibly believe that my bladder has an unlimited capacity.

Post#132 The Power of Seven

Have you read Tristram Shandy, Laurence Stern's roller-coaster of a novel? If you have you may recall the conversation between Dr Slop and Uncle Toby on the significance of the number seven: the seven sacraments, the seven days of the week, the seven deadly sins, the seven wonders of the world, the seven planets and the seven plagues.

Is there magic in the number seven? Perhaps there is. I've certainly been told that seventh children have extraordinary powers, though I've been unable to verify this, never having met a seventh child. :-)

Post#131 The Great Kings and The Grech Who Stole Ute-Gate

In the past week mayhem and havoc have been wracking several parts of the world, as usual. The most vivid image from the reportage is of the beautiful young woman dying on a Teheran street. This alone should be evidence enough to the people of any country that they are up the infamous creek.

Iran/Persia, call it how you please, was regarded once as the home of a great civilisation. That was three thousand years ago. Of course, that type of greatness wasn't about democracy and the value of human life wasn't significant in measuring the worth of ancient states. If someone had said "human rights" to one of the Great Kings of Persia the hearer would have been bewildered...until it occurred to him that it must describe his proprietory rights over the human inhabitants of his kingdom; in a similar vein to "water rights", "land rights" and "tribute rights". Among the "human rights" of the Great King would have been the right to dispose of human life as he pleased. In that sense, depending upon one's perception of it, no progress has been made in Iran or the traditional standards have been maintained. I have no special insight into what the average Achmed in the streets of Iran desires in his innermost heart, but I don't think the majority of his type would mind a departure from this ancient custom. The crowds who are demonstrating are being played for fools by the "reformer" candidate and his sponsors, but their desire for freedom is no less genuine. What a precious jewel a genuine electoral franchise must seem to them; the right to cast a vote and have it honestly counted. An aspiration to die for...

And what was the great news here in the Magic Islands of Australia this past week? The dispute about the ute. Our Prime Minister has been accused of helping a car dealer of his acquaintance to
obtain special access to the application process for financial assistance. The car-dealer has made a gift of a utility sedan to the PM and is alleged to have received special favour as quid pro quo. In the course of this tiresome saga a wriggling, writhing bureaucrat was trawled up in the net of a Senate committee hearing. Godwin Grech (pronounced "Gretch" apparently) gave a very good impersonation of Woody Allen doing his neurotic nerd schtick and appeared to have given the Coalition some ammo to use against the Government. It has all gone wrong for the boys in Conservative blue, with Grech now appearing to be securely in the clutches of the Federal Police for forging the "incriminating" evidence. I won't dwell on this story in particular..the details can be Googled easily enough if anyone wants to search "Rudd, Grant, ute, Grech". The story is known as "Ute-gate" and the collapse of the scandal upon its proponents is well-addressed in many sources.

What I'm most interested by is the triviality of the matters that a mature democracy is occupying its public fora with. The wars we are engaged in are not remotely won, the economic crisis is not past, the serious administrative challenges that confront government have not all been resolved. The media (yeah, let's blame them) find it easier to cover these scandal yarns than to grapple with the complex matters, but does the average Adam in our street really want to hear it? When I heard Malcolm Turnbull call for Rudd's resignation over Ute-gate I thought, "Oh for the love of...." I think the triteness of these tactics and the triviality of the confected "issues" play a large role in why fewer people are voting, despite the statutory requirement to do so. The "draft dodgers" who don't register and the enrolled electors who abstain would amaze those Iranians who are getting their heads kicked in for sake of having a real vote. But could they keep a revolutionary fire burning after 100 years of this sort of performance?

Well, let poesie have a try where prose is puzzled:

Godwin Grech, the woeful wretch,
Gave Malcolm Turnbull cause to kvetch.

But when the forgery was found
Malcolm's glee was quickly drowned.

The people wonder what's to boot
In all this yarn about a ute.

Can we not find a better use
For the right to speak
Without they shoot?

Post#130 Reading Clive James

A few weeks ago, while watching part of a poetry season being screened by the BBC in England, I came across Clive James, a writer and a broadcaster, being interviewed on the American poet, E. E. Cummings, while reading some of his own poetry. I was so impressed by what he was saying that I wrote a piece on my Ana the Imp blog, headed Serendipity: Discovering Clive James.

As part of the process of exploration I acquired one of his books, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of my Time. It’s a series of essays on all sorts of people, artists, poets, musicians, writers, politicians, all sorts of people; some noble, some who have made significant contributions to human understanding; others, well, vile. As I said in Serendipity, I never thought to find Anna Akhmatova and Josef Goebbels between the same covers!

When I say essays I should make it clear that while each piece is headed by the name of the individual involved, with some biographical details by way of introduction, what follows is really subtle, as the author explores thoughts within thoughts and themes within themes, most often on the basis of a preliminary quotation. As much as anything it’s an odyssey through the James’own life, with dissertations on the things and the people that have moved or influenced him in one way or another. It’s impressive; the range of his thought is impressive. His maze-like mind reminded me of my own; of the way I think and the way I deconstruct, disassemble and reassemble ideas!

At one point James describes himself as a product of the Australian educational system. He was born in 1939, so he’s clearly talking about the style of teaching going back, oh, some fifty years. I really hope, without too much exaggeration, that if Clive James is a typical product that the Australian educational system has not changed too much. Sadly, given my cultural pessimism, I suspect that this is not at all the case. :-))

Post#129 It's Glow-ball War, Ming!! (Ian Plimer's Attack on Climate Change Believers)

Ian Plimer's recently-published work, Heaven and Earth. Global warming: the missing science, has struck the first significant blow for the skeptics in Australia in a long while..perhaps just the first significant blow ever...I can't remember any skeptical Australian writing on the topic attracting the attention that has been given to this work.

There was a flurry of mobilisation from those who felt called-upon to defend the honour of "climate scientists" and a very interesting attack article appeared in the Weekend Australian. I'm reproducing it here in full because it struck me as a very effective piece of polemical writing, whatever else may be said about it:

"No science in Plimer's primer
Michael Ashley May 09, 2009

Article from: The Australian

Heaven and Earth by Ian Plimer (Connor Court, 503pp, $39.95)

ONE of the peculiar things about being an astronomer is that you receive, from time to time, monographs on topics such as "a new theory of the electric universe", or "Einstein was wrong", or "the moon landings were a hoax".

The writings are always earnest, often involve conspiracy theories and are scientifically worthless.One such document that arrived last week was Ian Plimer's Heaven and Earth. What makes this case unusual is that Plimer is a professor -- of mining geology -- at the University of Adelaide. If the subject were anything less serious than the future habitability of the planet Earth, I wouldn't go to the trouble of writing this review.

Plimer sets out to refute the scientific consensus that human emissions of CO2 have changed the climate. He states in his acknowledgments that the book evolved from a dinner in London with three young lawyers who believed the consensus. As Plimer writes: "Although these three had more than adequate intellectual material to destroy the popular paradigm, they had neither the scientific knowledge nor the scientific training to pull it apart stitch by stitch. This was done at dinner."

This is a remarkable claim. If Plimer is right and he is able to show that the work of literally thousands of oceanographers, solar physicists, biologists, atmospheric scientists, geologists, and snow and ice researchers during the past 100 years is fundamentally flawed, then it would rank as one of the greatest discoveries of the century and would almost certainly earn him a Nobel prize. This is the scale of Plimer's claim.

Before reading any further, I examined Plimer's publication list on the University of Adelaide website to see what he has published in refereed journals. There are a scant 17 such papers since 1994, two as first author with the titles "Manganoan garnet rocks associated with the Broken Hill Pb-Zn-Ag orebody" and "Kasolite from the British Empire Mine". Absolutely nothing on climate science.

Now, before I am accused of attacking the man and not the argument, let me point out that scientists regard peer-reviewed journal publications as fundamental for advancing science. They allow ideas to be exchanged, tested, improved on and, quite frequently, discarded. If Plimer can do what he claims, and can prove that human emissions of CO2 have no effect on the climate, then he owes it to the scientific community and, in fact, humanity, to publish his arguments in a refereed journal.

Perhaps we will find a stitch-by-stitch demolition of climate science in his book, as promised? No such luck. The arguments that Plimer advances in the 503 pages and 2311 footnotes in Heaven and Earth are nonsense. The book is largely a collection of contrarian ideas and conspiracy theories that are rife in the blogosphere. The writing is rambling and repetitive; the arguments flawed and illogical.

He recycles a graph, without attribution, from Martin Durkin's Great Global Warming Swindle documentary, neglecting even to make the changes that Durkin made following an outcry over the fact that the past two decades of temperature measurements had been mysteriously deleted.
Plimer claims that scientists such as himself, who do not agree with the consensus, are labelled deniers, "yet their scientific doubts are not addressed". Nothing could be further from the truth. All of Plimer's arguments have been addressed ad nauseam by patient climate scientists on websites or in the literature.

To appreciate the errors in Plimer's book you don't have to be a climate scientist. For example, take the measurement of the global average CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. This is obviously important, so scientists measure it with great care at many locations across the world.
Precision measurements have been made daily since 1958 at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, a mountain-top site with a clear airflow unaffected by local pollution. The data is in excellent agreement with ice cores from several sites in Antarctica and Greenland. Thousands of scientific papers have been written on the topic, hundreds of scientists are involved from many independent research groups.

Plimer, however, writes that a simple home experiment indoors can show that in a week, CO2 can vary by 75 parts per million by volume, equal to about 40 years' worth of change at the present rate. He thinks this "rings alarm bells" on the veracity of the Mauna Loa data, which shows a smoothly rising concentration.

While it is undoubtedly true that if you measure CO2 in your home it could vary by large amounts from day to day -- depending, for example, on whether you have the windows open or closed, or how many people are in the house at the time -- this is not the right way to measure a global average. That's why scientists go to mountain-tops or Antarctica or to the isolated Cape Grimm on the Tasmanian coast rather than measuring CO2 in their living rooms.

Incredible as it may seem, this quality of argument is typical of the book. While the text is annotated profusely with footnotes and refers to papers in the top journals, thus giving it the veneer of scholarship, it is often the case that the cited articles do not support the text. Plimer repeatedly veers off to the climate sceptic's journal of choice, the bottom-tier Energy and Environment, to advance all manner of absurd theories: for example, that CO2 concentrations actually have fallen since 1942.

Plimer believes "global warming" occurring on Mars, Triton, Jupiter and Pluto proves human emissions of CO2 don't affect Earth's climate. He believes that once CO2 levels reached 200ppmv (about half of today's value) the CO2 had absorbed almost all the infrared energy it could, and further increases will not have much effect. He believes global warming does not lead to biological stress. He believes volcanoes emit significant quantities of chlorofluorocarbons. He believes the sun formed on the collapsed core of a supernova. All these ideas are so wrong as to be laughable: they do not offer an "alternative scientific perspective".

Plimer probably didn't expect an astronomer to review his book. I couldn't help noticing on page120 an almost word-for-word reproduction of the abstract from a well-known loony paper entitled "The Sun is a plasma diffuser that sorts atoms by mass". This paper argues that the sun isn't composed of 98 per cent hydrogen and helium, as astronomers have confirmed through a century of observation and theory, but is instead similar in composition to a meteorite.
It is hard to understate the depth of scientific ignorance that the inclusion of this information demonstrates. It is comparable to a biologist claiming that plants obtain energy from magnetism rather than photosynthesis.

Plimer has done an enormous disservice to science, and the dedicated scientists who are trying to understand climate and the influence of humans, by publishing this book. It is not "merely" atmospheric scientists that would have to be wrong for Plimer to be right. It would require a rewriting of biology, geology, physics, oceanography, astronomy and statistics. Plimer's book deserves to languish on the shelves along with similar pseudo-science such as the writings of Immanuel Velikovsky and Erich von Daniken.

Michael Ashley is professor of astrophysics at the University of NSW."

Now I'm mighty eager to read Plimer's book to see whether that attack sticks! When searching for Ashley's article I discovered a blog which takes an opposing view, Australian Climate Madness. Here is a link to the particular post about Ashley's article. The comments to that piece are an interesting slice of all the usual postures on this. As I said in an earlier post:

"Global warming? Who knows. The majority of us are sitting back bemusedly watching the savants/high priests hurling incantations and curses at each other. Who to believe? Most of us think there's something funny with the weather but, then, everybody always has. If we wait for those guys to agree before we act we'll wait till the heat death of the Universe. So what to do? Forget about global warming. Yes, forget it! What is the argument about really? More to the point, (and leaving aside whether it's real) why are people prepared to pay money to some stooge to gainsay global warming? After all, funding for scientific research is always damned hard to come by, unless there's a military/industrial payoff for someone. So, cui bono, when the stooge causes someone to waiver on believing in GW? The only visible beneficiaries are the carbon-fuel industries. Here's my simple answer to it all: Forget GW and talk about how we unhook from carbon-based fuels. We're going to have to one day; they're finite. The sooner we do it the better. That way, what's left can be used for materials, rather than put up the chimney. If there really is such a thing as global warming and cutting out carbon fuels ameliorates it, that'll be a nice bonus for the future generations."

That was my second post and I wouldn't change a word of it. I can't grapple with the teched-up scientific types or the statistically-empowered lobbyists but I do know when a stalemate is in evidence. My response is pragmatic agnosticism. I expanded further on my skepticism about the global warming issue in this post. Since then I've thought of a few more wrinkles in the issue:

1. One of the experimental platforms left on the moon by the Apollo missions was a laser reflector which allows very precise measurements be made of the distance between Earth and the moon. The results over the past 40 years have shown that the moon is receding from Earth at 3 centimetres a year. A trivium per annum, but multiply it over hundreds of years and think about the fact that the increased radius, multiplied by Pi, is added to the circumference of the moon's orbit. I don't know enough about orbital mechanics and gravitational equations to say whether this means the moon takes longer to orbit Earth, does it in the same time (but faster) , reduces the moon's tidal effect, the intensity of light reflected from the moon to Earth or any other damn thing...but it must be having some effect on Earth's environment.

2. I saw a documentary about a guy who discovered a rise in surface temperatures in the USA coinciding with the period of aircraft grounding after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Apparently the vapours and particulate pollution caused by the massive air traffic in that country were shielding the surface from solar radiation. This "global dimming" effect would be very difficult to quantify and to assess in terms of its relative effects on strata in the atmosphere. If it's cooling the surface layer by absorbing radiant energy, perhaps it's also warming the upper atmosphere by reradiating it at night. It could be either a net cooling or heating effect. (Sheesh.)

3. Apparently the Sun is progressively becoming brighter...I have a distinct feeling that this has an effect on the Earth's climate...

The foregoing 3 paragraphs are risibly superficial analysis. No argument there. Now I could stuff this section full of links and study the subject up to the best of my layman's ability but that really isn't germane to what I'm trying to convey. The fact remains that we really are in the hands of the incessantly disputing "experts". The real issue is how we, the laypersons, perceive this whole question and the answer is...it's going to have to be from a position of ignorance. We can't learn enough about climatology to make our own analysis.

There is a remarkable truth. We are being solicited for votes, menaced with new taxation regimes; all founded upon a premise which most of us have no hope of verifying. This is a modern form of religious proselytisation. The high priests of doomsday science and their skeptical nemeses perform their incantations and conjurings and we must decide with our limited analytical resources whether to believe them.

Post#128 Ramsay Street, or Thoughts on Gordon the Gormless

I see that that boorish and foul-mouthed cook, Gordon Ramsay, has been shooting of his f*****g mouth in Australia. Not wise, I feel sure; definitely not wise, especially as it even attracted the disapprobation of the esteemed Kevin Rudd.

I’m sure people know that there are some brands that have a very short shelf-life; such is with Gordon the Gormless, a man with little charm and less talent. I would really hope that people in Australia, not reluctant to express an opinion themselves in-how shall I say?-the earthiest of terms, do not take the Great Gormless as just another ‘whinging pom.’ He’s not; he’s a useless whinging pom, something altogether different!

Please, guys and gals of Oz, don’t be taken in by this man. You may think that while his remarks about and to Tracy Grimshaw were completely over the top, he is at least excused by his talent. Talent, what talent? I would not go near any of the restaurants and bistros he runs in London; none of my friends would and none of my family would. You may not have heard of this but he runs a back street kitchen here, which ships ready-made meals to his various establishments; meals made with cheap ingredients and then marked up some 600%. Yea, that’s right, 600%! Gordon the Gormless is not worth the energy of your contempt.

Look, I know this is an awful cheek, but would you mind keeping him? I feel sure that you will be able to find some use for him, even if it’s only as bait for crocodiles! :-))