Monday, December 03, 2007
NO TO HUGO
Venezuelans vote against Hugo Chavez’s plan to abolish term limits, among other power grabs:
The outcome is a stunning development in a country where Mr. Chávez and his supporters control nearly all of the levers of power. Almost immediately after the results were broadcast on state television, Mr. Chávez conceded defeat, describing the results as a “photo finish.”
Quico says: “Venezuela rejects authoriarianism. It’s a historic day. The myth of Chávez-the-invincible is no more.”
Sunday, December 02, 2007
COUNTRIES VULNERABLE
The UN warns:
Some of the most vulnerable countries of the world have contributed the least to climate change, but are bearing the brunt of it.
This is exactly right. New Zealand, for example, contributes just 0.2 to 0.3 per cent of total global emissions, yet is bearing the brunt of climate change cash-grabbery:
The New Zealand Treasury estimates New Zealand’s Kyoto liability currently stands at NZ$708 million …
At that rate of increase, at the end of the first Kyoto commitment period in 2012, New Zealanders will owe about NZ$4.2 billion - or about NZ$1000 per person.
Australia, too, contributes only a tiny amount (1.2 to 1.4 per cent) to global warming, but is similarly vulnerable to protocol penalties:
Australia faces high penalties for exceeding its greenhouse-gas emission targets under the Kyoto Protocol, Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd says …
“We are currently likely to ... overshoot our Kyoto target by one per cent,” Mr Rudd told ABC Radio today.
(Via 1.618)
UPDATE. James Lileks in comments:
I was in a church basement last week for Pizza Night with 23 adults and 942345 children, most of whom were watching the television with glazed immobile faces. A commercial for an animated-penguin movie came on. The child next to me (not my own) said “all the penguins and the polar bears are going to drown to death.”
“Where did you learn that?” I asked.
“The TV said so,” she said. She shrugged and took another bite of her pizza. She had already incorporated the inevitable extinction into her worldview, along with any number of eco-clusterfraks.
Life will be a constant source of delightful surprises for these kids, I think.
MORGAN STREET ERUPTS
Following death threats over bear crime and Indian autobiographies, British author Kes Gray de-Islamifies a mole:
A British children’s author who called one of his characters Mohammed the Mole to promote multiculturalism has renamed him Morgan so as not to offend Muslims.
Bad move. Now he must face the infinitely greater wrath of the Morgan car company and hostile Morgan drivers.
LAWSUIT FORECAST
A possible legal case against climate alarmism:
Central Florida’s most famous hotel owner, Harris Rosen, lashed out at hurricane expert Dr. William Gray for his gloomy storm predictions saying they have damaged state tourism.
Rosen said he believes Florida lost billions of dollars in business because of Gray’s outlook and even threatened a lawsuit.
“Look, doctor, you’ve made these forecasts and you were wrong once,” Rosen said. “You made the forecast and you were wrong twice. Are you going to continue to make these forecasts?”
Interestingly, Dr Gray is a Gore sceptic. Nevertheless, writes Dan Moffett - with stats to suppport his claim - “it’s time to officially depose William Gray as the nation’s foremost tropical storm forecaster.” Back to Rosen:
The hotel mogul said surveys show 70 percent of guests not returning to his hotels cited hurricane fears as the reason why.
Perhaps Rosen will also challenge hurricane-booster Tim Flannery. It does seem a little unfair that hotel owners lose all that business while warmenists are cashing in:
“So, I’m not supposed to earn a living?’’ Flannery told Crikey.
NEAR INDECENCY
The New York Times on cars, January 3, 1899:
There is something uncanny about these newfangled vehicles. They are unutterably ugly and never a one of them has been provided with a good or even an endurable name. The French, who are usually orthodox in their etymology, if in nothing else, have evolved “automobile,” which being half Greek and half Latin is so near indecent that we print it with hesitation.
That quote also appears in Sonia Shah’s Crude: The Story of Oil. Hopefully the Times is happier with modern vehicle names, such as Mazda Bongo Friendee Turbo.
AUSTERITY NOT ENOUGH
Despite leading a monkish life, David Freddoso still exceeds future cave-dwelling emission standards:
For all of my needless austerity, I still emitted more than 3,500 kg of carbon dioxide in October (as calculated here), almost entirely because I took two plane trips. Great Britain, in its effort to meet its Kyoto obligations, has as its goal to limit subjects to an average of just 8,000 kg of carbon dioxide per year — and in the future they want to cut that in half to 4,000 kg per year! There’s no way I’m going to meet that standard.
There’s no way anyone is. Unless we become actresses, like Toni Collette, in which case our flight emissions don’t count.
CHOPPER KHAN
Jemima Khan, ex-wife of Imran, on her former husband’s parenting skills:
When my son was four years old I found him playing with a one-armed Action Man. I asked him what had happened to Action Man. He replied, “[Daddy] said he’d been stealing.” Imran’s idea of a joke.
Actually, that’s not bad. I’ve an uncle with a scarred face (farming accident); when I was four or so, I asked what caused it. Thereafter followed a spontaneously-composed, brilliantly-told tale of sword battle with a rival farmer, ending with the line: “And then I cut his head off.”
REVEALING MOMENT
The NYT’s Paul Krugman in 2004:
There was actually a kind of revealing moment recently - Bush gave an interview, was more or less dragooned into an interview on Meet The Press and the interviewer said: “Well, what if you lose the election?” And he said: “I’m not going to lose the election.”
And the interviewer said: “But what if you do lose?” He said: “I’m not going lose the election.” The possibility that they just would not regard it as a legitimate thing if someone else were to take power.
Let’s see, then, what Krugman has to say about Hillary Clinton:
Democrats who’d been in awe of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s perfect campaign believe she made her first serious blunder last Monday by indicating to CBS’s Katie Couric that her election as president is inevitable.
Couric asked, “How disappointed will you be” if she doesn’t win; Clinton replied: “Well, it will be me.” “Clearly,” the CBS anchor persisted, “you have considered” the “possibility of losing”? “No, I haven’t,” said Clinton. “So you never even consider the possibility?” “I don’t. I don’t.”
She doesn’t regard it as “a legitimate thing”, apparently. Krugman will be aghast.
FOG OF FOER
Some 6,750 words late, The New Republic’s Franklin Foer pens a promising introduction:
When I last spoke with [Scott Thomas] Beauchamp in early November, he continued to stand by his stories. Unfortunately, the standards of this magazine require more than that. And, in light of the evidence available to us, after months of intensive re-reporting, we cannot be confident that the events in his pieces occurred in exactly the manner that he described them. Without that essential confidence, we cannot stand by these stories.
Further on this from PJM; also check blogger reaction. The Beauchamp debacle follows TNR’s Glassing of a decade ago, and is added to Randall Hoven’s list.
NO VOTES IN BEAT-UP
Overlooked in all the, er, excitement of Election 07 was the vital matter of Wentworth preferences. As Media Watch breathlessly reported:
An independent candidate [Dani Ecuyer] in one of the most crucial, marginal seats to be decided at the election says a senior reporter from The Australian tried to persuade her to direct her preferences to the sitting Liberal member, Malcolm Turnbull. Caroline Overington of The Australian emailed the candidate saying that Malcolm Turnbull would be a loss to the parliament - denigrating the value of the ALP’s George Newhouse as a potential MP.
Let’s hand all of Ecuyer’s 684 primary votes to Newhouse. That takes him from 22,889 votes to 23,573 ... still substantially short of Turnbull’s 37,191. Didn’t turn out to be much of an issue, did it?
POST-ELECTION TURMOIL UPDATE:
Philip Ruddock today declared he would not be available to serve on the opposition front bench, joining Peter Costello and Alexander Downer as senior MPs who will no longer figure in the Liberals’ upper echelons.
MESSAGE BREEDS
“There they go again,” observes the New York Daily News:
Like the avengers who vowed death to novelist Salman Rushdie for his affront to Islam, like those who slew Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh for his, like the mobs who ran mindless riot across Europe in protest of cartoons they deemed offensive to their prophet, now tens of thousands of Sudanese Muslims are demanding the execution by firing squad of British schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons, who made the mistake of letting her 7-year-old charges name a teddy bear Muhammed.
Gibbons’ arrest and imprisonment for bear crime resonates in the UK, writes Shiraz Maher:
For almost two decades we’ve allowed the message of political Islam to breed unchallenged within the British Muslim community, preaching separation and confrontation. The blame for that must rest solely with Muslims and, as a former member of the intemperate Hizb ut-Tahrir, I’m willing to accept more than my share.
Our indifference has allowed Islamism to become the dominant political discourse among young British Muslims.
So we’ve noticed. And over in India:
A feminist author is to rewrite her autobiography after she was forced to flee from Muslim extremists who placed a bounty on her head.
Taslima Nasreen, 45, a former doctor, said today that she hoped that the move would appease fundamentalist groups and end a controversy that forced her to leave Calcutta last week ...
“I have done what I have never done in my life. I have compromised even in a secular India.”