Climate change... Oh Yeah?

"Well now, in my opinion it is warmer sometimes and colder sometimes. Either way I can grin and bear it."

From the San Francisco Examiner. Via JunkScience

Washington, D.C. (Map, News) - The U.S. government says the population of polar bears has increased four-fold since the 1960s, so the bureaucrats whose job security depends on stirring up environmental distress have classified the huge white beasts as an endangered species. Surely Alice in Wonderland has donned a disguise that makes her look and sound exactly like Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne. Alice issued a decision last week under Kempthorne’s signature that effectively mandates nothing can be done anywhere by anybody in the lower 48 states if it increases the greenhouse gases that fuel the global warming that is allegedly melting the Artic ice the polar bears require for survival.

It’s hard not to think the government’s left hand doesn’t know what its other left hand is doing on this issue. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says the polar bears have increased their numbers from as low as 5,000 in the 1960s to an estimated 20,000 today. As Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., notes, the credit for this “should be given to protection already provided the polar bear by way of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the several international conservation treaties including the 1973 Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears and the U.S.-Russia Polar Bear Conservation and Management Act of 2006, as well as conservation, education, and outreach agreement with native peoples.” Inhofe is the ranking GOPer on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. So, if the polar bear population is increasing because of laws, treaties and education programs that have been on the books for decades, what might be the real motive behind this latest global warming-induced lunacy?

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Wow! - Australian TV news reports Antarctica growing and also shows interview with a skeptic!

By the blogowner, honestclimate, April 24, 2009

I almost fell off my chair yesterday whilst watching TEN news.  They aired a news report about how the Antarctic was growing and that despite the recent ice shelf collapse, Antarctica was growing in other regions and that the overall effect was an increase in ice. (They showed us a nice illustration on this). Introducing the news report they said the debate on climate change is heating up (Yes, tell that to Al Gore!)

Further more, they went on to show us an interview with Australia’s ‘Inconvenient Professor” Ian Plimer.

The Australian media is finally giving us balanced reports regarding climate change. Last Saturday, The Australian newspaper was bombarding us with skeptical articles and this week balanced climate change news on TV.

The hypothesis that humans can actually change climate is unsupported by evidence from geology, archaeology, history and astronomy.

The Earth is an evolving dynamic system. Current changes in climate, sea level and ice are within variability. Atmospheric CO2 is the lowest for 500 million years. Climate has always been driven by the Sun, the Earth’s orbit and plate tectonics and the oceans, atmosphere and life respond. Humans have made their mark on the planet, thrived in warm times and struggled in cool times. The hypothesis that humans can actually change climate is unsupported by evidence from geology, archaeology, history and astronomy. The hypothesis is rejected.

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Stuck in the arctic ice that doesn’t exist. (file photo: EcoPhotoExplorers)

Last year as arctic sea ice melted to record levels, panic set in for many. But then, as the sea ice rebounded and froze again quickly in the 2007/2008 winter, making up for that record loss and reaching heights not seen for several years, many exclaimed that even though the ice areal extent had recovered, this new ice was “thin” and would likely melt again quickly. There were also many news stories about how the Northwest Passage was ice free for the first time “ever”. For example, Backpacker Magazine ran a story saying “The ice is so low that the photos clearly show a viable northwest passage sea route along the coasts of  Greenland, Canada, and Alaska.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece

Chen Liu's skull nailed. Police cannot pin it on anyone..

• Friday 24 April 2009 10.02 
• Article history

An x-ray of the skull of Sydney man Chen Liu, whose decomposed body was found in marshland in Sydney's south in November 2008. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

An x-ray showing around 30 nails piercing a skull has been released by Australian police, vividly revealing the gruesome death of a 27-year-old man.

Police released the shocking picture in the hope of finding the killer who used a high-powered nail gun to fire the metal spikes, up to 85mm (3.3in) long, into the victim's head and neck late last year.

Two children, aged nine and 14, found Chen Liu, who was also known as Anthony, as they canoed down Georges river in south Sydney last year.

As they paddled past mangroves at dusk on 1 November, they spotted a badly decomposed body wrapped in a rug and raced to tell their parents.

Mr Liu, who had been dead for 12 days, was bound with electrical wires and an extension cord and then rolled in a domestic rug with the ends neatly tucked in, which was then tied with three pieces of wire.

"In 36 years of investigation, I've never come across a murder of this nature using a nail gun. May I say it's a particularly brutal and vicious murder and we are seeking information from the public so we can bring this inquiry to a conclusion," the head of the homicide squad, Geoff Beresford, said.

Police believe Mr Liu was killed then driven to the river in his blue 2005 Range Rover Sport 4WD. But no arrests have been made and the weapon is yet to be found.

Two weeks before the children discovered Mr Liu's body, a male friend reported him missing.

• Clinton makes surprise visit to Iraq
• 04:21pmWoman stung by Irukandji jellyfish
• 03:36pmSerial sex offender jailed
• 03:33pmPassenger tries to break into cockpit
• 03:25pmSmith honours troops at Gallipoli service
• 02:55pmWoman, three children hit by car
• 01:59pmTorture yields 'unreliable information'
• 01:36pmThousands attend Anzac service in France

History:Churchill was no friend to Australia.

Oil storage tanks at Darwin hit by Japanese bombs 1942.

BRITISH PRIME MINISTER CHURCHILL BETRAYS AUSTRALIA AT THE ARCADIA CONFERENCE

WINSTON CHURCHILL - NO FRIEND TO AUSTRALIA

Although happy to take all the sailors, soldiers and airmen that Australia was prepared to place at his disposal for the defence of Britain, Churchill had no concern about Australia's fate when Japan's conquering armies menaced Australia. His assurances of British military support for Australia against the Japanese were lies. He had already betrayed Australia to the Japanese at the Arcadia Conference held in Washington in late December 1941. Churchill even resisted the return of Australian troops from the Middle East to defend their own country; he wanted to use them In Burma to defend India against the advancing Japanese.

The Dutch surrender left Australia as the last effective bastion against Japan in the South-West Pacific and exposed to the threat of a Japanese invasion. If the Japanese had immediately landed troops at Port Moresby or Darwin after the Dutch surrender, Australia would have had nothing to throw at them except poorly trained and equipped militia recruits and obsolete aircraft.

Having lost faith in British promises, Prime Minister Curtin appeals to the United States for help to defend Australia

On 14 March 1942, with British Malaya and the Netherlands East Indies now occupied by Japanese troops, and the Japanese on Australia's doorstep, Curtin addressed the people of the United States in another famous radio message. The Australian Prime Minister urged Americans to stand with Australia to resist Japanese aggression. Curtin accurately reminded Americans of their own danger when he used these words:

"Australia is the last bastion between the west coast of America and the Japanese. If Australia goes, the Americas are wide open."

Curtin did not need to address these words to the Commander in Chief of the United States Navy, Admiral Ernest J. King, who was already convinced of the importance of Australia to the United States and the compelling need to keep Australia an American ally and a bastion of freedom. Since his appointment in December 1941, following the Pearl Harbor disaster, Admiral King had been fighting the demands by top United States army generals that South East Asia, including Australia, Malaya, and the Philippines, be abandoned to the Japanese so that all military resources, including those of Australia already under British control, could be directed to the war against Germany.

Read on.

http://www.users.bigpond.com/battleforAustralia/battaust/Britain_betrays_Australia.html

MACARTHUR - A FLAWED GENERAL TAKES COMMAND OF AUSTRALIA'S DEFENCE

General MacArthur is appointed Supreme Commander, South West Pacific Area

On 22 February 1942, President Roosevelt reluctantly ordered General Douglas MacArthur to abandon his hard-pressed army in the Philippines and assume the office of Supreme Commander, South West Pacific Area (SWPA) with headquarters in Australia. Roosevelt believed that General MacArthur had personally compromised the defence of the Philippines through serious errors of military judgment, but MacArthur had promoted an image of himself in the United States as a hero and brilliant general, and Roosevelt came under enormous public pressure to save MacArthur and give him a new command. MacArthur ordered his starving and desperate troops to fight on to the end, and gave them false hope of survival with a cruel lie that substantial military relief would soon arrive from the United States.

General Douglas MacArthur possessed a deeply flawed personality. He was vain, aloof, and showed no interest in the welfare of the troops he commanded. His mind was too closed and inflexible for him to readily deduce an enemy's strategic and tactical goals or options. He ignored unpleasant realities when it did not suit him to acknowledge them, and tended to surround himself with servile staff officers who were aware of this dangerous weakness and indulged it. A surprise move by an enemy could produce paralysing indecision at MacArthur's headquarters.

On 11 March 1942, under cover of night, MacArthur departed for Australia with his family and senior staff officers. He left his troops, his army nurses, and American civilians to face the fury of a Japanese army frustrated and humiliated by the courageous, but pointless, resistance of the American and Philippine troops.

On 17 March 1942, MacArthur's B-17 touched down at the RAAF Batchelor Field which was located 72 kilometres (45 miles) south of Darwin. He was accompanied by his wife, his child, the child's nurse, and thirteen of MacArthur's senior staff officers. The presence on the flight of thirteen of MacArthur's staff officers, known as "The Bataan Gang" by fighting soldiers on the Philippines, defied General Marshall's authorisation for Major General Sutherland alone to accompany MacArthur and his family to Australia.

MacArthur arrived in Melbourne on 21 March 1942, and immediately installed himself in the best suite in the Menzies Hotel. In the climate of great anxiety in Canberra for Australia's survival, the Curtin government was greatly relieved by General MacArthur's appointment as Supreme Commander of the South West Pacific Area and the location of his headquarters in Australia. The self-styled "Hero of the Pacific" was greeted with adulation by Australian politicians, public and media. Despite this adulation, MacArthur's passion for self-glorification drove him to lie about the manner in which he had arrived in Australia. He told the press that his aircraft had been closely pursued by Japanese fighter planes and had narrowly escaped Japanese bombers as it was landing at Batchelor Field. This story captured the public imagination but it was all a lie. Master Sergeant Dick Graf, who was the wireless operator on MacArthur's flight from the Philippines, later exposed MacArthur's story as a figment of his imagination. According to Graf, the flight to Australia was uneventful. MacArthur's aircraft was never under threat from the Japanese.

MacArthur came to Australia with an obsession to return to the Philippines as a hero. With his mind unwaveringly fixed on a triumphant return to the Philippines, MacArthur would neglect the northern defences of Australia and almost hand the Japanese a victory on the Kokoda Track.

In March 1942, the first American troops were sent to Australia from the United States (read on via index)).

Hanging onto a tiger's tail.

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.America, a country whose corrupt and inept banking and financial system is bringing down the whole world economy...(Ric)

Enlarge

Ron Sachs-Pool

President Obama visited the CIA's headquarters in Langley, Va., on Monday, soon after his decision to release Bush-era memos that offered a legal justification for the use of harsh interrogation tactics.Getty Images

 

NPR.org, April 22, 2009 ·President Obama has long insisted that he wants to look forward — not back — at the alleged misdeeds of Bush administration officials who signed off on harsh interrogation tactics after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

But that path to the past became increasingly inevitable in recent days.

First came the release of controversial Bush-era torture memos that detailed the administration's legal justifications for the use of extreme tactics.

Then came reports — the results of a Senate Armed Services Committee investigation — revealing that the controversial interrogation method of controlled drowning, known as waterboarding, was proposed by the CIA in 2002, shortly after the capture of a suspected terrorist, and three months before Bush lawyers secretly approved the technique. Those aggressive techniques, the investigation found, were exported to military detainee facilities, including Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

And so, though Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, appeared to rule out an investigation of the memo's authors just days ago, Obama now says it will be up to Attorney General Eric Holder to determine whether any official broke the law.

'That's Not How History Works'

"The Obama administration had a choice: whether it would cover up Bush administration crimes, thereby becoming complicit, or to hold true to the president's pledges of transparency and accountability," says Amrit Singh, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union.

"He has certainly delivered on transparency by releasing the memos," she said. "But transparency itself wasn't sufficient."

A chorus of voices on the left has long urged Obama to protect his self-touted accountability brand by pursuing an investigation on behalf of a country still debating the merits of what was done, in its name, in the pursuit of national security.

MoveOn.org on Wednesday sent a Web ad to its millions of members, urging them to call on Holder to appoint an independent special prosecutor to investigate the torture memo authors — including Jay Bybee, who is now a federal judge, and John Yoo, now a tenured law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

An Intelligence Committee memo declassified by the Obama administration contains a committee-generated timeline that indicates that CIA interrogators asked to use waterboarding three and a half months before then-Bush lawyer Bybee wrote a memo signing off on the "enhanced interrogation technique." The timing, officials say, strongly suggests that the memo was shaped by the CIA's request.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) told NPR on Wednesday that he wants an independent panel to look into whether top officials who authorized the use of harsh interrogation tactics should be punished.

Meanwhile, historians suggest that presidents, no matter how full their plates — and Obama's is plenty full — simply can't ignore the alleged misdeeds of the previous administration, particularly when those deeds have divided a nation. concerning the enquiry into torture... 

In my opinion it will be a long drawn-out judicial procedure with no one taking the blame and no jail time for anyone (Ric)

 IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Photograph: Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty images.

The global financial sector faces write-downs of $4.1tn (£2.8tn) from the toxic assets that have crashed in value since the start of the credit crunch 20 months ago, the International Monetary Fund said today .

In its first comprehensive study of the impact of the crisis on banks and other financial institutions, the Fund said that it had increased its estimate of the potential losses in the US from $2.2tn to $2.7tn as a result of the deepening economic slump over the past three months. Europe and Japan between them account for $1.3tn of the write-downs, with UK banks facing losses of $316bn (£216bn).

The Fund warned that the damage to the balance sheets of institutions would take years to fix and would lead to a credit famine in Britain, the US and Europe.

In addition, it said the open-ended taxpayer bailouts provided to the crippled financial sector in recent months risked adding to the debt burdens of western countries already facing a demographic time bomb.

"The global financial system remains under severe stress as the crisis broadens to include households, corporations, and the banking sectors in both advanced and emerging market countries", the IMF said in its half-yearly Financial Stability Report. It called for the redesign of the global financial system to provide a "more stable and resilient platform for sustained economic growth."

Although the Fund said government support packages were helping to stabilise the financial system, it added that further decisive, effective and internationally co-ordinated actions would be needed to sustain the improvement.

"Shrinking economic activity has put further pressure on banks' balance sheets as asset values continue to downgrade, threatening their capital adequacy and further discouraging fresh lending," the report said. "Thus, credit growth is slowing, and even turning negative, adding even more downward pressure on economic activity."

It added that even if policy actions were swift and worked as planned, recovery for the financial sector would be long and painful and economic recovery would be protracted. "The accompanying de-leveraging and economic contraction are estimated to cause credit growth in the US, the United Kingdom, and euro area to contract and even turn negative in the near term and only recover after a number of years."

The IMF said the key challenge was to break the "downward spiral" between a weakened financial system and the global economy. It set out a detailed programme of reforms – including curbs on credit growth during booms, tougher regulation of a limited number of institutions considered "too big to fail" and better cross-border supervision.

Lending between banks came to a halt in August 2007 when the financial markets first became aware of the impact of losses in the US sub-prime mortgage market, but the IMF said there had been some signs of improvement in the interbank markets since the intervention of governments to prevent a global financial meltdown last October.

It added, however, that funding strains had persisted and banks, despite being bailed out by the taxpayer, were still short of capital. "As a result, many corporations are unable to obtain bank-supplied working capital and some are having difficulty raising longer-term debt, except at much more elevated yields."

In its breakdown of the losses on toxic assets, the IMF said two-thirds of the writedowns affected banks. But the FSR warned that pension funds and insurance companies had also been hit hard by the crisis. Pension funds had seen the value of their assets tumble and life insurance companies had suffered losses on equity and corporate bond holdings, in some cases depleting their regulatory capital surpluses.

What's a trillion dollars?

A trillion dollars = $1,000,000,000,000.

That's 12 zeroes to the left of the decimal point. A trillion is a million million dollars.

The U.S. government spends more than the entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Australia, China and Spain combined. If you laid one dollar bills end to end, you could make a chain that stretches from earth to the moon and back again 200 times before you ran out of dollar bills! One trillion dollars would stretch nearly from the earth to the sun. It would take a military jet flying at the speed of sound, reeling out a roll of dollar bills behind it, 14 years before it reeled out one 

What's a trillion dollars?(It doesn't look much, does it?)

A trillion dollars = $1,000,000,000,000.

That's 12 zeroes to the left of the decimal point. A trillion is a million million dollars.

The U.S. government spends more than the entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Australia, China and Spain combined. If you laid one dollar bills end to end, you could make a chain that stretches from earth to the moon and back again 200 times before you ran out of dollar bills! One trillion dollars would stretch nearly from the earth to the sun. It would take a military jet flying at the speed of sound, reeling out a roll of dollar bills behind it, 14 years before it reeled out one trillion dollar bills.

What is frightening is that government will continue to grow in America unless citizens prevent it. If government stays on the course it's been on for the past forty years without a radical change, the federal government will have a $10 TRILLION BUDGET by the year 2010.

Foolish politicians make pronouncements about the strength of the economy. The total debt obligation of the United States now exceeds 46 TRILLION DOLLARS.

American workers now net almost 30 percent less in real wages than they did in 1973. After taxes, two paychecks in a family barely equal the purchasing power one had thirty years ago.

The Muslim world wonders, what makes Obama tick.

Ayman al-Zawahiri previously described Obama as a 'house negro'. Photograph: HO/AFP/Getty

Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's second-in-command, has urged Muslims not to be fooled by Barack Obama's policies – which he insisted were no different from those of George Bush.

"America came to us with a new face, with which it is trying to fool us,"Osama bin Laden's deputy said in a video message posted on a Jihadi website. "He is calling for change, but he aims to change us so that we abandon our religion and rights.

"It is America that is still killing Muslims in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It is America that steals their fortunes, occupies their land, and supports the thieving, corrupt, and traitor rulers in their countries. And consequently, the problem is not over. Rather, it is likely to deteriorate and escalate."

Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor, issues statements far more frequently than Bin Laden, and terrorism analysts say he often seems to be reflecting al-Qaida's preoccupations. Last November he described the new US president as a "house negro"

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And another opinion......................

Mahmoud is not always a nice man. He has homosexuals hanged and women stoned to death, but he told it as it is about Israel. (Ric)

Play VideoAP  – Raw Video: Iran's leader sparks Western walkout

• Play VideoVideo:Wigged Men Heckle Iranian Pres. ABC News
• Play VideoVideo:U.S., Israel lead U.N. racism summit boycott AP
• Play VideoVideo:AP Top Stories AP

AP – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, left, delivers his speech in front of United Nations Secretary-General …

GENEVA – Dozens of Western diplomats walked out of a U.N. conference and a pair of rainbow-wigged protesters threw clown noses at Iran's president Monday when the hard-line leader called Israel the "most cruel and repressive racist regime."

The United States decried the remarks by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as hateful — reinjecting tension into a relationship that had been warming after President Barack Obama sought to engage Iran in talks on its nuclear program and other issues.

Ahmadinejad — the first government official to take the floor at the weeklong event in Geneva — delivered a rambling, half-hour speech that was by turns conciliatory and inflammatory. At one point he appealed for global unity in the fight against racism and then said the United States and Europe helped establish Israel after World War II at the expense of Palestinians.