Thursday, April 26, 2007
VIOLENCE OPPOSED
Reuters reports:
Palestinians attend a demonstration against violence in Gaza April 23, 2007
DISSENT CRUSHED, AGAIN
Crazy Al Gore’s climate change comedy is shown in schools from Australia to Norway; the old-school southern religious huckster shakes down scared Saskatchewanites, and is allowed to meddle in the politics of far-away nations.
You’d think the movement behind Gore might, given all of this, be able to tolerate a little dissent; maybe just one DVD’s worth. You’d be wrong:
Dozens of climate scientists are trying to block the DVD release of a controversial Channel 4 programme that claimed global warming is nothing to do with human greenhouse gas emissions.
Sir John Houghton, former head of the Met Office, and Bob May, former president of the Royal Society, are among 37 experts who have called for the DVD to be heavily edited or removed from sale. The film, the Great Global Warming Swindle, was first shown on March 8, and was criticised by scientists as distorted and misleading.
Merely misleading? Well, that’s nothing like being completely and provably wrong, as is Gore’s claim that the US “can’t sell our cars in China today because we don’t meet the Chinese emissions standards”. Edit that, truth-seekers! (By the way, if Gore can be so wrong about something so easily checked, why should we trust him on rather more complex scientific issues?) Martin Durkin, the maker of Great Global Swindle, doesn’t seem too alarmed:
“The DVD will be on sale shortly at a shop near you.”
Which is just as well, because few TV networks are likely to screen it, preferring to throw ratings away on warmening shows. Then again, perhaps the mood on climate change is changing …
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
NARROWSHEET
Shrinkage at the SMH:
The size of The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper will be reduced from its current broadsheet size next year as part of a significant restructure by publisher Fairfax Media.
The changes will include another round of redundancies at the SMH and The Sun-Herald, the third in less than 3 years.
Under the change, the current A3 height of the SMH and its sister publication, The Age, will remain the same - as will the price - but the width of the pages will be cut.
Never mind the quality …
EXPENSIVE AL
Big Al hits Calgary:
Climate change crusader Al Gore stepped into Canada’s energy heartland on Monday and warned global warming is the most dangerous crisis humans have ever faced.
I like when Al warns us mere humans of these problems. It shows that even ExPandoBots from other planets have feelings.
The Columbia glacier in the Alberta Rockies, the source of water for many rivers and streams, is melting rapidly, he said.
Thus delivering more water, presumably.
As for the here and now, Gore said Albertans need look no further than the mountain pine beetle invasion of the province’s forests, a pest that was once kept in check by long, cold winters.
Down with bio-diversity!
His Academy Award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, has played around the world, grossed $45 million US, and occupies several shelves of many Calgary movie rental stores.
Why aren’t people renting it instead of leaving it on those shelves?
Roughly 1,800 tickets to his talk Monday night at Jack Singer Concert Hall sold out in three days, most of the seats costing $159.
They must be way comfy.
In Regina, where Gore also spoke Monday, SaskTel covered the $208,000 tab to put on the event, which included Gore’s $125,000 fee.
Whoa!
Not everyone was keen to see Gore in Calgary. A small group of protesters blasted his message as fear-mongering, contending carbon dioxide created from burning fossil fuels is not contributing to global warming.
“Al Gore and Chicken Little,” read a sign carried by a protester dressed in a yellow chicken suit. “Partners in false panic.”
He’s no false profit, though, at $125,000 per speech. Why might Gore need all that cash?
Friends of Al Gore have secretly started assembling a campaign team in preparation for the former American vice-president to make a fresh bid for the White House.
ADVANTAGE NOTED
Andrew Klavan: “The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don’t have to lie.”
POOCH PUNKS PUNDITS
The Age’s football experts tip the winner (and winning margin) of yesterday’s Collingwood-Essendon match:
Caroline Wilson Essendon 10
Jake Niall Essendon 23
Michael Gleeson Essendon 16
Robert Walls Essendon 30
Stephen Rielly Essendon 41
Geoff McClure Essendon 25
Grant Thomas Essendon 25
Martin Boulton Essendon 23
Rohan Connolly Essendon 6
Emma Quayle Essendon 20
Lyall Johnson Essendon 9
Greg Baum Essendon 28
Martin Blake Essendon 29
Samantha Lane Essendon 5
Len Johnson Essendon 17
Collingwood won by 16 points. The only Age pundit to predict this was a dog:
Black Dog Collingwood 7
PEARL CHASE
Phillip Adams claims:
The appalling Donald Rumsfeld observed shortly before the attack on the twin towers that political survival “needed a Pearl Harbor” ...
That quote doesn’t turn up in a Google search, although similar claims have appeared in comments at various commie blogs. Sometimes the Pearl Harbor line is attributed to Dick Cheney:
Perhaps if I didn’t KNOW the NEOCONS long range goals, I wouldn’t be so quick to question 9/11 at all. But cheney said it - WE NEED A PEARL HARBOR…coincidence? I DON’T THINK SO.
And again:
Bush was hobbled from Day 1 and Cheney famously remarked that they needed a Pearl Harbour Day to shake things up and get them moving - or words to that effect.
Adams in 2005 ran the alleged Rumsfeld quote:
The word was out - via White House leaks - that Rumsfeld was for the chop. When poor Donald was forced to read the names of likely replacements, he said he’d need a Pearl Harbor to save him. Osama bin Laden obliged.
Note that Adams now directly quotes Rumsfeld; he’s previously been exposed as a quote doctor. It’s possible that the line evolved via leftoid paranoia over this Project for the New American Century document:
Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor. Domestic politics and industrial policy will shape the pace and content of transformation as much as the requirements of current missions. A decision to suspend or terminate aircraft carrier production, as recommended by this report and as justified by the clear direction of military technology, will cause great upheaval. Likewise, systems entering production today - the F-22 fighter, for example - will be in service inventories for decades to come. Wise management of this process will consist in large measure of figuring out the right moments to halt production of current-paradigm weapons and shift to radically new designs. The expense associated with some programs can make them roadblocks to the larger process of transformation - the Joint Strike Fighter program, at a total of approximately $200 billion, seems an unwise investment. Thus, this report advocates a two-stage process of change - transition and transformation - over the coming decades.
Musician Matt Bellamy summarised the above:
The outspoken singer says, “September 11 is clearly an inside job, there’s massive evidence that suggests that it was either allowed to happen or even worse, deliberately made to happen.
“There was a document called PROJECT FOR THE NEW AMERICA CENTURY which was made by neo-Con (right wing) writers in the 90s who supplied most of the agenda that (GEORGE W) BUSH is putting into place now, which clearly says, ‘We need a Pearl Harbor-level of event so we can have an excuse to invade the Middle East.’”
Even Adams hasn’t gone that far. Yet.
LINCOLN LOCATED
Stuart Skelton, this site’s official opera ambassador, emails from sunny Tel Aviv:
Just followed your link to Iowahawk’s Virtual Cruise for Earthweek, and had to send you this pic:
Stuart and his wife will shortly be relocating to Florida, hence the need for some serious Lincoln cool:
So I’m doing a little online automobile searching and I find this dealer of fine American automotive know-how and I imagine myself and the lovely one cruising beachside Florida, raping Gaia as we go.
You gotta know, I MUST have this car. Already talked to the guy, so we shall see.
Stuart visits Sydney later this year prior to his Florida move; performance dates and ticket details to follow.
CIRCLE OF HATE
Robert Fisk rails against:
... the internet hate machine, the circle of hell in which any political filth or personal libel can be hurled at the innocent without any recourse to the law, to libel lawyers or to common decency ... There is no end to the internet’s circle of hate.
It’s a circle, Bob; they tend not to have ends. Fisk seems unusually worked up about this for someone who claims to avoid the internet (“Instead of searching the internet for information or references, I prefer to go to the field”), so maybe he’s hearing about this “circle of hate” deal from someone else. By the way, Fisk would like to remind everyone that he is daring:
I had dared to ask the ‘Why’ question; Why had 19 Arabs flown aircraft into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania?
Take any crime on the streets of London and the first thing Scotland Yard does is look for a motive. But when we had international crimes against humanity on the scale of New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, the first thing we were not allowed to do was look for a motive. How very odd.
How very odd that Fisk needs to ask why Arabs flew an aircraft into Pennslyvania; it was because passengers forced them.
ANZAC DAY CELEBRATIONS CONTINUE
Glenn McGrath is on a hat-trick; South Africa is collapsing at the World Cup. Currently five wickets down for just 27.
UPDATE. South Africa now 7/93.
UPDATE II. South Africa 8/103.
UPDATE III. South Africa all out for 149; their lowest-ever World Cup score.
ANZAC DAY
Jules Crittenden and Gemma Jones on Australia’s day of remembrance.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
SWINGS AND ROUNDABOUTS
Kevni Ruff loses an economics advisor, but gains a lunchtime pal.
CODE OF PRACTICE TRANSGRESSED
Media Watch catches Alan Jones:
“Now I’m going to check this today with Mal Brough because I think the Commonwealth is a bit of a nigger in the woodpile here.” - 2GB, Alan Jones Show, 22nd February, 2007
Wicked Alan! Media Watch host Monica Attard wasn’t pleased:
A few years ago ABC Newsradio listeners were appalled when presenter David Lord used the same expression - a nigger in the woodpile.
He had to apologise.
But Alan Jones has his own set of standards.
And Media Watch has its own standards, too. See, it’s bad when conservative Jones or crusty old sports presenter Lord use the n-word, as the Newsradio host did in 2002. But Attard failed to mention a more recent case of n-word deployment:
An ABC listener complained that Margot Kingston used the term “nigger in the woodpile” on Late Night Live, and that Philip Adams had appeared to be amused by this incident. The ABC agreed that the use of this term transgressed the ABC’s Code of Practice.
No demand from Media Watch that lefties Phil and Margo apologise following their 2003 n-word moment. In fact, then-Media Watch executive producer Peter McEvoy actually defended them:
Media Watch is a program about the media and journalism that promotes a number of principles, including free speech. The phrase “nigger in the woodpile” is a colloquialism, which means a hidden or unacknowledged problem. Some people may feel it’s in bad taste, but we wouldn’t pick up someone for using the term in context.
I’d love to know what he meant by “in context”. Media Watch has form when it comes to different rulings for identical crimes; take this case, also from 2003, in which conservative columnist Miranda Devine was criticised for describing people (terrorists, in fact) as “cockroaches”. Media Watch was shocked by Miranda’s insensitivity. But just a few years earlier, and to bring this item to a neat circular conclusion, Media Watch itself had described people as cockroaches.
Among the so-described was ... Alan Jones.
FOUR THINGS
A fine speech from John Howard.
A new island!
A moron.
Monday, April 23, 2007
SHOW PROVES AN EMBARRASSMENT
A bold prediction last year from the Independent’s Kathy Marks:
The Australian government would prefer the world to forget about David Hicks, an Adelaide man detained at Guantanamo Bay. That is unlikely to happen, with the opening of a theatrical work highlighting his plight at the Sydney Opera House.
Honour Bound, by a leading Australian director, Nigel Jamieson, was created in conjunction with Mr Hicks’ father, Terry, and stepmother, Bev ...
The show will prove a severe embarrassment for Australia ...
But the show turned out to be more of an embarrassment for its producers:
What hurt was the failure of their two bigger shows, the David Hicks-inspired Honour Bound and the drama, Eldorado, to attract audiences.
“In retrospect, they weren’t production failures so much as victims of our expectations,” [executive producer Stephen] Armstrong says.
Yes. You expected people to turn up. But, despite rave reviews ...
The best show I have seen so far this year is HONOUR BOUND. Reading all the harping about the theatre on this site there seems to be only one other entry re HONOUR BOUND. Not surprising really - it gets rave reviews but I saw it with an audience of 25.
Just a timing problem, according to Armstrong:
“We were one-and-a-half steps ahead of public interest (in Hicks),” he says. “If the show had been on five months later it would have sold out.”
Interesting that those rave reviews did nothing to generate public interest.