An open thread, where at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
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Convergence ripple effect in action:
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/01/20111511144554651.html
The Federal Government bows to the inevitable
Doubtless, the undisclosable sum paid by the taxpayer to Habib is a considerable one.
Of course, it is impossible to fund Habib’s compensation from a garnishee order upon the generous pensions paid to John Howard, Philip Ruddock and Alexander Downer. Thus the taxpayer suffers injury as well as insult.
Will Howard, Ruddock and Downer ever apologise for the damage they have done to Australian sovereignty and to Australian rule of law? Of course not.
Thus the only legal means available to punish this dismal trio is to keep alive the memory of their perfidy.
This is not a criticism, Katz, but I should point out that Ruddock is still drawing a salary. His generous pension awaits his retirement from Parliament. I’m not sure whether Parliamentary privileges would prevent his salary being garnisheed. At any event, as you say, we are unlikely to find out. Just as Kevin Andrews has been rescued by the taxpayer for his defamatory lies about Dr Haneef, so it will be for the moral and legal liabilities bequeathed by the other evil clowns of the Howard regime. More’s the pity.
Habib may have some justice at last, but that doesn’t compensate the heinous damage to his reputation. ASIO should put up the evidence they have for him being a security risk, but they won’t, because if its wrong, they know Habib will sue the pants off them. Past experience has proven that while ASIO is doing a good job,or at least a much better one than the Federal police. they don’t always get things right. However, they did get it right on Haneef, and the Feds just ignored them.
On a lighter note, I took the risk and bought and watched Spartacus: Blood and Sand. Its astonishingly violent,I mean really astonishly violent, has a minor sex scene I never expected to see in a TV show, lots of modern day swearing, and the novelty of ancient Romans speaking in Australian and New Zealand accents as well as British accents. Over all, though, I enjoyed it greatly. The final episode is like something out of Jacobean theatre or the gorier final acts of some Skakespearean dramas. And they seem to have made an effort to get it historically accurate, if not in narrative, then in the historical detail.
heard John Ralston Saul on radio yesterday that after 30 years of training Western economics graduates in deregulation, privatisation and avoiding government debt, the system they created has led to: the most monstrous level of government debt in recorded economic history.
Ideology FAIL!!
No, srsly: it has failed – even on its own criteria.
What replaces it? and how do we free the academy from its failed, evidence-resistant orthodoxy?
Boycott Harvey Norman, anyone? Gerry now enlightens us with his views on the homeless.
http://www.homelessnessinfo.net.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=703%3Ain-the-news-charity-for-the-homeless-a-waste-says-gerry-harvey&catid=146%3Ahomelessness-news&Itemid=43
I’ve been boycotting Harvey Norman for years, Lefty E
Good Lord! From LE’s lik:
“So did that million you gave them help? It helped to keep them alive but did it help our society? No. Society might have been better off without them but we are supposed to look after the disadvantaged and so we do it. But it doesn’t help the society … At the end of the day, the more quality individuals you develop in the community, the better off the community should be.”
So where should the quality mums and dads go to sign little Quality Billy up for the Harvey Youth?
Tim Colebatch is beating his drum to increase the age at which Australians can access superannuation, access super tax free now, rather than gradually.
He is basing his arguement on emotive statistics saying that in 1906 there were 200,000 aged pensioners and now there are 1 million aged pensioners without saying the population in 1906 was 4 million and today the population is 25 million. There are another 1.7 million self funded superannuants – who cost society nothing they pay their own way from their savings.
Of more relevance is the statistic that in 1906 a man lived for 11 years on the pension, today a man can expect to live 18 years.
He alludes to the fact that most men in 1906 were working from 14 years to 65 years whereas today people enter the workforce at 18 or older. Colebatch ignores the fact that people find work increasingly harder to obtain over the age of 45 [due to our employer based superannuation systems]
That people have very high health costs at the end of their lives [as well as at the start] also worries him. Perhaps the Pharmacuetical Benefits System needs to get tough with big pharma who wrap up drugs in patents so that generic product can’t be supplied. Perhaps in the future nursing home patients won’t be rushed off to acute care hospitals when they fall as happens now. Acute care hospitals pride themselves on saving everyone whether its in the patients interest or not. Strenuous efforts to save an elderly persons life needs to be balanced against loss of independence, mobility, social connectedness as your friends die and hearing and sight become impaired.
Perhaps Gerry Harvey should watch The Pursuit of Happyness. I’m sure the gentleman featured in that movie considers himself to be a “quality” person.
Its hard to avoid Hardly Normal in this town, the alternatives tend to go out of business before long, but to the extent possible I will also boycott them from now on.
But then having traded 2 12 year old cars today on a new one to get money to send to my son overseas so that he can get a cheap car, I don’t suppose I’ll be buying any more stuff any time soon.
Effing America
Birgitta Jónsdóttir’s twitter feed
Jacob Appelbaum
I nominate Gerry as the first ‘non-quality individual’ selected for whatever treatment such folk deserve.
In Abbott’s latest thought bubble, it seems that dams can mitigate floods, supply water for various purposes and power too.
It seems to have eluded him that which a dam can, in theory, do each of these things, this is not the same as a dam doing all of these things. These are alternative usages. A dam does one of these things to the extent that it doesn’t do the other two.
oops: that
which{while}Is it relevant that the SMH story about Gerry Harvey quoted in the link dates back to September 2008?
Is it known for a fact that Harvey holds the same views on the subject as he did back then?
Fran, along the same lines we have an insane op-ed on water policy Barnaby Joyce.
I’ve been meaning to do a post on the batshit-insanity of Barnaby’s missive, but it’s hard to know where to begin. For instance:
FFS, so if those engineers decide that using a nuclear explosive to create a massive crater where St. George currently is, is the most effective way to create a dam, he’ll be fine with it?
Nice to think of Gerry Harvey suffering from a free-floating anxiety about not having enough money which just won’t go away!
“WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Four previously abundant species of bumblebee are close to disappearing in the United States, researchers reported on Monday in a study confirming that the agriculturally important bees are being affected worldwide.
They documented a 96 percent decline in the numbers of the four species, and said their range had shrunk by as much as 87 percent.
“We provide incontrovertible evidence that multiple Bombus species have experienced sharp population declines at the national level”
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=12545468
Here’s a worthy cause: if you’re sick of the appropriation of the notion of “family” by invariably sanctimonious, homophobic, misogynist godbothering happyclappers, then Jeremy at An Onymous Lefty is putting together the “Australian Family Lobby” to reclaim it from them.
I like it because I’m heartily sick and tired of these wankers babbling on endlessly about the “family”, their conception of which bears no resemblance to mine – nor just about any of my friends’.
Yeah CJ that thing jeremy has done is great.
Duncan, bees are in the shit here too, to an extent anyway.
No pollination for the avo tree this september…
Robert quoted Joyce:
Yes indeed. Let’s forget entirely about the health and integrity of riparian biomes, the utility of the dam to local agricultural and residential usages, questions of NPV (gosh didn’t that vanish quickly as a concept when something new and shiny appeared?) etc
I saw Rudd this week on China’s new 24hr English news network CCTV News.
The interviewer started off saying that he was covering the G20 last year and it was unfortunate that Rudd couldn’t make.
Rudd’s response was “Yes, indeed”.
Speaking of bees Jules, a swarm turned up at my place recently and has decided to build a hive in my compost bin.
Ive bought a new compost bin, and am looking at buying a proper hive and trying to convince them to move in.
Ive wanted a hive for ages, so having had a swarm move in of their own accord is pretty cool.
This are two links I’ve found useful GregM:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/01/pakistan-flooding.html
http://www.pakresponse.info/
Gerard Harvey’s opinion is quite normal,except he hasn’t been bashed by the homeless yet.And with so much money tied up in mortgages and repayment,his 2008 statement,would not make him unacceptable as homeless.Remember when the Plasma TV’s came out and Howard was in Japan looking at a $10,000 job before the election!?That figure remains still elusive for me.But nothing has changed at all under Labor.What does that amount buy you as part of a house!? Well! How much does Harvey Norman sell plasma TV for now!?The homeless are cheaper now than they have ever been.Gerard hasn’t done his homework!
If anybody wants a beehive, there’s an active one in the wall and floor cavity next to my bedroom here in Melbourne. It has been there for 26.5 years, swarmed four times this spring, and I’m fed up with not being able to open my bedroom windows at night without being invaded by the guards.
Just let me know …
Gerry Harvey is copping it in buckets at the tech site I frequent (whirlpool.com.au), he is being lauded, however, for promoting the concept of online bargain hunting.
I knew Gillard wasn’t bright, but even I didn’t think she was stupid enough to pay off this serial liar. Oh well, it’s not her money. Can’t expect any better.
The bee stuff reminds me of “Generation A” by Douglas Coupland, a futurist novel set in a world that has been almost entirely depopulated of bees.
it seems that dams can mitigate floods, supply water for various purposes and power too.
These are not mutually exclusive as far as I know, why do you think they are?
1. Barney is a nutjob. He is blaming Julia for the floods. The syllogism goes like this: Julia spent money on BER. Julia gave $x million to flood relief which was just a fraction of what the BER cost. Instead of flood relief she should have built dams. Dams would have prevented the floods.
Barn only means this theoretically because a huge system of flood mitigation dams in Queensland would have had to cover all the rivers as Julia would not have known which rivers would break their banks in the future and where the rain would fall, as these are unprecedented events. Also, Julia’s dams wouldn’t have been built in the time she has been PM. The blame should go to John Howard. But what if the dams wouldn’t have worked? A hydrologist’s Maginot Line.
2. Gerry Harvey has made a tactical mistake. The very people he has pissed off by demanding an online tax, are a major part of his customer base – tech-heads and early adopters.
I’ve always taken reflexive negativism to be the height of stupidity myself, but ymmv, CraigMc.
McLelland’s spokesman says: “The terms of the settlement cannot be disclosed as they are subject to a legally binding confidentiality agreement.”
Isn’t it amazing how governments invoke binding confidentiality agreements as a reason that they cannot come clean, when the government are the party insisting on the agreement, to save their own embarassment!
Who would be hurt by announcing the figure? I am sure Habib would be quite willing to waive his right to privacy. Unlike Dr. Haneef, Habib was actually tortured and lost almost four years of his life. I hope he got a decent payout, regardless of his primitive views.
I’m wondering whether there’s a wikileak to come that mentions Habib and the Gov decided settling now would be prudent.
So you allege that Habib lied about being tortured?
And you allege that no Australian government agencies knew at the time that Habib was being tortured?
I presume you have evidence to support those assertions.
If not then … oh well…
Oh, come on.
Since when did Habib need evidence?
There’s about as much truth in his accusations as there was in this.
We have a sugarwood [Myoporum macrocarpa]tree at the front of our place and every time it flowers, which it does profusely, native bees come and service it.
I don’t know much about them but a visitor who is an expert identified them for us and even showed us a ‘hive’, actually a small hole, in one of our mallee trees.
Duncan @ 23 maybe the hive mind heard you think it and took it as an invitation.
I was talking to someone the other day about this. There’s a guy who has hives and puts em out round here at times, He’s a nice old fella, yummy honey, I dunno where his honey goes all the time, but last I talked to him that particular lot was going to Fundies in Byron bay. A friend was talking to him the other day, he does the same thing where my friend lives, he follows certain trees round as they flower, all or most of the year all over the place. (Different species obviously)
My friend said the old guy showed him the hives on my friends place, they were swarming with beetles. Aethina tumida Murray possibly, my friend said “that Africa hive beetle” or words to that effect. IT had basically wrecked the hives. I assume there were no bees left or not enough to get a functioning colony cos my friend said they were reaching in and pulling out handful after handful of the things.
Its obviously something thats happening here and now – implications of losing bees are quite disturbing. I don’t really want to think about the sort of disaster an instant (relatively speaking) loss of that much pollination power would have.
Maybe you should try and somehow get the hive in the compost more accessible to yourself, and encourage them to stay, cos its a more robust environment than a wooden hive. If the bees have established themselves they should be ok, but there are plenty of insect predators in and around my compost, probably yours. That might make it harder for the bees to get established. Maybe thats why they moved from their last site too.
Maybe just having a wooden hive next to where they are would achieve the same thing.
I did notice the absence of bees this year, and it coincided with a shitload of rain too. It basically hasn’t stopped since, so they might not have bothered going all out, especially to a tree that probably lost 95% of the pollen in that rain.
It doesn’t usually rain heavily when that particular tree flowers in Sept.
Any Billy Bragg fans out there.
oops
Try again.
Craig Mc @36: Since evidence is no longer necessary I think it’s time we told the world about your other career as a serial killer.
Zoot: Yes, but it was the torture that made me do it. Send money now.
Torture? What torture? You just can’t be trusted to tell the truth.
Habib didn’t need evidence of his being tortured. The CIA and ASIO already have that evidence.
The Attorney General’s Department has decided to pay off Habib because they decided that a court case would probably compel disclosure of that evidence.
That minor traffic incident is irrelevant to the torture case, except insofar as it demonstrates that disclosure of evidence often establishes the truth of the matter.
Australian authorities don’t want disclosure.
Craig Mc, I don’t understand why you find it necessary to defend (by implication) loathsome people like Howard, Ruddock, Andrews, and those criminal thugs who infested the Bush government.
I would have thought that even the tribalism of the loony Right should have some limits.
Craig Mc,
Okay, just to take the focus off Habib for a moment. You do accept that the CIA uses rendition (ie transfer of prisoners to countrie with poor human rights records) so they can be interrogated with torture because legally the Americans can’t conduct such interrogations ub the US. (Which, btw, is one of the reasons Bush/Cheney set up Guantanamo, because it was beyond the jurisdiction of the American courts and they could legally conduct military kangaroo courts.) They are after all, all part of the history of the Great War on Terror.
If you accept rendition and if you accept the legal extr-territoriality of Guantanamo Bay,the refusal to classify combatants as POWS (however abhorrent we find their military tactics, which most people do)and the mistreatment of people who were kept there to exclude them from the protection of the Geneva Convention, there is no reason to really doubt Habib’s claims. He was not the only person in the hands of the Americans to be treated like this.
An examination of the forces that prompted the Arizona massacre.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2041408,00.html
It is interesting to note the sudden back-pedalling of Ruprt’s FOx News on this, since it was undoubtedly their RWDB rhetoric that created the atmosphere in which such a thing could occur.
Yep, the Giffords atrocity is the starting gun for a new and toxic round in the US Culture Wars.
This blog site compiled the alleged shooter’s YouTube videos.
FWIW, in the YouTubes the alleged shooter comes across as more generally loony than RWDB. (There is a difference, you know).
However, it is also reported that Congresswoman Giffords was a prominent hate object on Sarah Palin’s blog. Make of that what you will.
BTW, you can’t see Mexico from Tucson, AZ, but maybe Sarah Palin could.
There has to be an extended comment in this – the most recent rant from Mr Akerman.
A man who has spent over 30 years serving his country and leading men – is dismissed so derisively. His crime? accepting appointment from a labour government
Even for Mr Akerman this is a vile and evil comment.
Rather than wishing the Major-General well – the people of central Queensland need his knowledge, integrity and determination – Akerman (again?) stoops almost as low as one can go.
I don’t often be a Sir Walter Raleigh, but, may I come to Fiona Reynolds assistance!I noticed recently in one of the Cheap shops in Coffs Harbour, fly screens or window screens that are made of the same cotton reinforced material that one uses to cover like an umbrella a hot pot roast out in the great outdoors.Not knowing exactly the measurements and or style of window,it would seem to me, a little preplanning would go a long way,instead of feeling completely useless about it.First do some measurements, then wether one can bang a nail in,or tape a material that is see through enough and allows the breezes too.Come on Fiona,if you want to see out or the breeze,then think.I am not being harsh.If , you have a problem keeping the window up, a piece of timber placed strategically does it for me.There are even white curtain materials that can allow a bit of breeze.There are also hooks curtain rods etc.Do a drawing and then be specifically strategic by asking oneself what is it that you really want in lifting the window.The bees are great security.Bees will not always be active, thus planning and readiness uses ones observation skills.Mosquitos are the next problem after bees Fiona.So having another curtain type piece of material that fits where you want it,can be placed , and for the odd horizontal water drop.
Toxic? I don’t know, Katz. It might just bring some of these RWDBs calling for a Second amendment solution to their problems with the Democrats to their senses.
As to whether the alleged shooter is just a loony, its early days yet. I’m waiting for more information before I jump to any conclusions.
Here, btw, is an interesting take by Gordon S. Wood on the Tea Party.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jan/13/no-thanks-memories/
Paul @51.
I hope so.
What happened in Egypt, with the Muslim community’s apparent solidarity with Copts after the recent bombing was a hopeful sign.
Maybe people’s better natures will prevail.
er @52
Have got my microwave working again. Easy. Just left it unplugged for four days.Relief!
You know, I hope all the LPers in Queensland are managing to stay safe during the flooding. My thoughts and sympathies are with all those affected by the catastrophe.
Meantime I’ve been following the thread on the Arizona shootings, and a couple of folks over there have, reasonably enough, wondered aloud why I’m not jumping into the fracas.
My reasons for being quiet about it are:
a) it’s taken a while for all the facts to come to light, and I’m not even sure we’re completely done yet.
b) a child was killed, which lends a full extra dimension of horror to something that would be totally horrible with even only one death. It makes it all the more difficult to find words.
c) One of the briefs of LP is to blog the news, and this is news, so it’s quite natural for you folks to get right into it. But in California, where I am at the moment, I walked out of a hotel the other day and noticed that the flag was at half-staff. I assume it’s a general order throughout the nation. So that’s sort of where we are for the time being.
d) Not surprisingly, this whole thing has hit a lot of raw nerves, and so tempers over on that thread are rather high. While I don’t think it’ll come as a shock to anyone here, to learn that I disagree with a great deal of what’s being said over there, sometimes vehemently (on my part, I mean), at the same time I don’t see that there’s anything useful to be had by adding another adversarial voice at this particular time.
I’m sure a lot of you have guessed that I’ve been sorely tempted to fisk various arguments over there that I think lack intellectual or moral integrity. But y’all are over there and I’m over here, and at present I just want these people to bury their dead in peace, and have the dust settle a bit more quietly. Maybe in the future there’ll be another thread on this that I can contribute to, in a way that sheds a bit of light. But for me, this just ain’t that time.
In the meantime, as I say, safety and good fortune to all affected by the Queensland floods.
– japerz
Well said and point taken, japerz. If anything I put on there was intemperate or wrong, please excuse me as my child is over there. Makes the political personal.
Since I am not in Qld I thought this would be the appropriate place to post this comment re the fact that our local town Halls Gap is cut off from the outside at present by dint of the floods from up to 250mm over the last 3 or 4 days.
Town water is cut off, sewerage is also disrupted and electricity is cut too. The basic cause is the velocity and volume due to the fall and the narrow convergience meaning extreme force cutting through roads and tearing out infrastructure.
Although a lot of visitors took the warnings to heart and left many didn’t and are now stuck with it until the water gets out to the flats.
Once there of course the water travels slowly and coming from other ranges as well, could hamper movement for some time.
People by and large are stoic and accepting and helpful with many backpackers and accommodation guests joining us in the day long downpour yesterday to help us with sandbagging etc.
Cleanup started this morning for local businesses and we took it all on cheerfully enough although even the dozens of kids couldn’t make much impression on the hundreds of cans of icecream that had to be thrown out.
Halls Gap has had more than it’s share of hard yards recently what with the fortnight long fires of ’06 the twelve years of drought, incredible locust plague and a second wave to come, and now these flash floods.
Most if not all of the 400 inhabitants rely on visitor numbers and all of the above affect the viability of this tourist destination.
japerz, thank you for a civil and reasoned (and reasonable) response to the situation. If only I could follow in your footsteps.
BTW, while the most horrific floods are happening in QLD, parts of NSW, VIC, TAS, and WA have also been hit hard. Apologies if I have omitted particular problems in SA and NT – and I know that there are flood problems in the ACT Brindabellas – but the latter ain’t troubling all that many people.
Zorronsky,
hope you’re okay.
I’m about to turn into a pumpkin.