Jacob's Soap Box

22 February, 2009

Whilst the bushfires in Victoria are still burning, the worst ever in Australia, judging by, at least, the human casualties, and whilst firelighters from all other Australian states, New Zealand, Canada and the USA are here to help, out of ashes THEY come, they, the greenie loony eco-whacko, global warming scare mongers, pointing long fingers at us and saying: Yep! Definitely! Global warming! … I told you so! … [verbal diarrhoea continues].

By now we are used to the idea that, according to the eco-whackos, global warming is the source of all evils from natural disasters such as bushfires and floods to ingrown toenails.

True, southeast Australia suffered a sever scorcher at the time, one of the worst since recording started in Australia 122 year ago. Remember, when we say record we are talking about a record of the last 122 years, not the billion years history of the planet. Less so when we are talking about satellite data we talking about record going back to 1979, And in any event these recent scorchers were not record temperatures.

It was hot but as I understand it, summer temperatures usually are.

What is also true is that bushfires NEVER erupt unless the weather is hot and dry, surprise surprise, thus please cut out the crap about global warming. We know that there are no bushfire during snow storms.

However, the ferocity of these particular set of bushfires that took about 200 lives, destroyed more then 1,800 homes, left some 7,000 people homeless and wiped off a number settlements do have a “green” connection. You see, it was the green policies adopted by all level of government, federal, state and local, that paved the way and created the “ideal” conditions for such human, social and environmental destruction.

The problem is that FOR THE LAST 30 YEARS, with the sole exception of the state of Western Australia (capital Perth), environmental policies prevented bushfire hazard reduction such as clearing of trees near houses, clearing fallen branches, trees and other debris from the forest floor, trimming grass either mechanically or by allowing cattle and sheep to graze on it, in national parks and near houses.

(Hey Charley, get your cows off that grass, it is native vegetation.)

To bushfire it all means one thing, FUEL. The heat generated from the fire feeding on such environmentally friendly policies created such heat that firelighters could not get within 100 meter (about 300ft) from the fire to fight it, their protecting gear notwithstanding.

This time these bushfires were culmination of at least 30 years of dereliction of duty of care by the authorities in favour of electoral “care”, i.e. votes. Successive governments submitted to the Greens and their propaganda and put the environment above people’s safety. In fact the destruction to environment that was caused but the bushfires is a monument that such measures are not even eco- friendly.

For 30 years now, fire-fighting authorities could not obtain permits to back-burn during winter to reduce the fuel on the forests floor. They were also prevented from clearing fire trails and maintaining fire barriers. Even average Joe was not allowed to collect fallen branches from the floor of the forest as firewood or just to clear the area adjacent to his property because it disturbs the bio-diversity of a sustainable eco-system under the leaves. Save the planet! Aren’t you getting emotional yet?

Permits to build a houses are contingent on replacing the trees that are taken down in enable construction with species, number and location dictated by the greenocrats, IRRESPECTIVE OF FIRE HAZARD they pause.

Meaningless words such as sustainability, bio-diversity, eco-system, biosphere ruled the corridors of Greenophila. Grrenophiles talk about protecting all species of fauna and flora EXCEPT the most important specie on earth; we HUMANS are pests to the environment. Save the planet! Don’t you feel warm on the inside?

* * * * *

Liam Sheahan a resident of Reedy Creek, Victoria, has his house still standing despite the fact that no other house within a radius of 2 km ( 1.25 mile) survived the fire that engulfed the area. The reason is that in 2002 Mr. Sheahan disregarded the Council’s environmental protection laws and bulldozed 250 trees off his hilltop property as a fire protection safety measure. All hell broke loose.

The Council took him to court, Liam was fined $50,000 (and paid additional similar amount in legal costs) but his property is now still standing as a vindication for his action.

Says Mr. Sheahan:

The house is safe because we did all that ,… We have got proof right here. We are the only house standing in a two kilometre area.

Although we are yet to see the outcome of the foreshadowed inquiry or royal commission, you can already hear the sprouts of the spins yet to come about the government’s dereliction in duty of care as if the actual damage would have occurred in any event even had they exercised fire hazards reduction measures.

Bull dust! The truth of the matter is simple, had there been fire hazard reduction in place, the fire would have NEVER reached the temperatures it did.

Bushfire, or any fire for that matter, has tree elements in it, ignition, oxygen and fuel, otherwise known as the fire triangle. In a case of bushfire, the ignition may be deliberate (arson) or accidental, we cannot do much about either of the ignition types. Nor can we do anything about oxygen in the atmosphere which leaves fuel as the variable on which we have peridial control.

The fuel includes the trees, shrubs, grass, the undergrowth and the forest debris (branches leaves etc). We cannot eliminate the fuel altogether but we can reduce it. Reduced fuel means reduced fire temperatures thus giving the fire-fighters much better chances of control it and control it earlier, meaning less damage.

There is nothing new about it and for nearly 30 years post-bushfires inquiry after inquiry came up with similar findings. Piers Akerman writes in the (Sydney) Daily Telegraph of 16 February 2009 that:

Start with Judge Leonard Stretton’s 1939 inquiry into the Black Friday fires, fast forward to the 1984 review of the Ash Wednesday fires the previous year, the report on fire prevention by the Auditor-General in 1992, the CSIRO fire management paper prepared by Phil Cheney in 1994, the Victorian inquiry and the federal inquiry – A Nation Charred – in 2003 [in Canberra], and you will find that the principal problem constantly identified over the span of your life as a determinant in the ferocity of the fires is the level of fuel available.

Note that Pierce Akerman is talking only about the state of Victoria and the ACT, There were similar outcomes from inquiries in all other states of which Western Australia is the only one exercising an effective fire hazard reduction schems. He continues:

Each of the inquiries I have mentioned made note of the fuel levels with your predecessor, Judge Stretton, noting: “The amount of (controlled) burning which was done was ridiculously inadequate,” in 1984, the level of reduction burning was found to be “too low”, in 1992, the “failure” of the Victorian Department of Conservation and Environment to meet its fuel-reduction targets was found to have made the forests “more susceptible” to fires, and this story is repeated in various forms right through 2003 and, without pre-empting your findings, remains the case today.

The Victorian Government, and local councils, have ignored all the warnings.

Alan Mull is a former farmer and a former fire brigade captain and an environmental activist who knows the bush. In the same Telegraph’s article Mr Mull summarises the history:

Aborigines used to start fires on the ridge lines as they came down after feasting on bogong moths every year …

When the forests were commercially logged and under the control of the old Forestry Commission, the forestry workers did the same thing.

But the [Victorian] state government since the days of (former Labor premiers) John Cain and Joan Kirner have allowed green ideologues to take over. The forests have been locked up, the fire trails have been closed, they are full of weeds and feral animals. The state has failed in its duty of care. Our national parks and reserves are now national disasters, whether burnt or not.’

[Square brackets, emphasis & highlight provided]

Hardly rocket science.

* * * * *

Suppose a group of terrorist of a certain Abrahamic Religion (Shshshsh, Victoria has anti defamation laws) entered Australia, murdered 200 people with countless injuries and blow up 1800 house, can you imagine the outcries?

Further suppose that the perpetrators of such massacre are caught. We can all apply out innovative skills as what punishment we would inflict on such terrorists. I can just hear the calls for retrospective application of the death penalty, how crude.

My question is simple, what is the difference between people who pull triggers or blow fuses that kill 200 innocent victims and those who caused these people to be incinerated by bushfire? No difference, they are all murderers!

The fires were not predictable, they were predicted. David Packham, himself a veteran academic on the issue writes in The Australian of 10 February, 2009 that:

Every objective analysis of the dynamics of fuel and fire concludes that unless the fuels are maintained at near the levels that our indigenous stewards of the land achieved, then we will have unhealthy and unsafe forests that from time to time will generate disasters such as the one that erupted on Saturday.

It has been a difficult lesson for me to accept that despite the severe damage to our forests and even a fatal fire in our nation’s capital [Canberra in 2003], the political decision has been to do nothing that will change the extreme threat to which our forests and rural lands are exposed.

The decision to ignore the threat has been encouraged by some shocking pseudo-science from a few academics who use arguments that may have a place in political discourse but should have no place in managing our environment and protecting it and us from the bushfire threat.

Does anyone out here still really believes that environmentalism is about the environment? It is not! It is not about the environment and it is not about people, in fact theses morons, the eco-whacko, could not care less if we human, the cause of all evil, burn to ashes in bushfires or freeze to death for lack of power to heat our homes. With humans the planet is a better place to their way of thinking

It is not accident the green movement as a whole rose out of the ruins of the Soviet communism. Also, it is not accident that all the liberals are environmentalists and all environmentalists are liberals. Therefore the two are interchangeable. I often say that the Greenies are like watermelon, green on the outside and red on the inside.

(Note: The term “liberal” does not include or denote supporters of the Australian Liberal Party who are, in essence, conservatives. Confusing, I know.)

Total control is a pre-requisite to a successful socialism and environmentalism is the tool to achieve control.

Environmentalism is not about green trees, clean air, clean water or pretty flowers, environmentalism is all about social engineering, it is all about control, controlling us all.

It is also all about power and money, not about welfare, or about social justice or the poor the sick or the weak. Social engineering is about setting unattainable goals to ensure perpetual source for power and money as the goal is never achieved.

Rather then target air and water pollution, that are achievable, socialists talk about global warming. We as humans have as much hope as changing the climate as to stop the earth rotating by turning our back sides eastward and release our bodily gases in unison.

Whilst the northern hemisphere experience one its coldest winter in generations, and down under we have the mildest summer in years, the recent heat waves notwithstanding, the eco-whackos scare campaign about global warming ratchet up as temperatures outside plummet.

If you wish to question the science behind global warming the climate alarmists will tell you that the science has settled, nothing to discuss further. Excuse me sir, but if the science is settled why are we still spending obscene amounts of money on “climate change research?”

Just look at the “stimulus”, yes yours, whichever country you are in, your government allocated vast sums to “climate change”, talking about spending money on something we can have for free! We sure can use that money for …for what? … I know! How about teaching kids to read and write instead of watching Al Gore’s docoganda?

Still Al Gore, Kevin 747 and, as we speak, Hillary Clinton circle the globe in private jets (Charley, is there a hybrid version for 747?) trooping world stages for “talks” about this that and the other AND climate change. Couldn’t they just give exchange Skype ID’s and “talk” till their heart content. These guys and goyls could not arrange a piss-up in a pub yet they pretend that they can rearrange the climate on earth.

Hey Charley, how much carbon dioxide was released into the atmosphere during the recent bushfires? How about using lawn mowers engines in lawn mowers that cut down of “native grass” instead of putting them into cars?

* * * * *

We will have yet another bushfire inquiry in which those who perpetrated the disaster will appears with a solicitor on one side a box of Kleenex on the other, swearing that public safety is paramount on their mind. Nothing is furthest from the truth, once more the arsonist turns up as a firemen.

12 February, 2009.

When I wrote the original Thank God There Is A Global Economic Crisis about two and a half months ago, I did not expect my cynicism to materialise, or at leat not so soon.

It was a mere two weeks after another self-proclaimed fiscal conservative Barack Obama joined the host of fiscal conservatives world leaders, including our own hollow man, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

Fiscal policy is about government active involvement (or not) in the economy through government revenues (taxes) and expenditures (services such as the law and order, security, social security etc.), fiscal conservativism is keeping the government books balanced.

The collapse of the American Sub-Prime market had little direct affect on Australia, thank to the pervious conservative government who had paid off all of its successive Labor governments debts and left office with nice cushion of budget surpluses, shovel ready for new socialist government to put to waste.

Despite its love affair with globalism, The Howard government ensured that Australian banks were regulated sufficiently to shield them from the effect of the collapse sub-prime market as act of prudence, long before the ugly sub-prime raised its head.

This is not to say that we have not been affected by the economic downturn that followed the financial meltdown on Wall Street, but to spell out that our state of affairs is a lot different from that of the US and Europe by a country mile.

* * * * *

However, being in a better situation does not suit our illustrious hollow man Kevin 747 who wants to be like the big boys on world stage so he can play with them. He wants to appear doing something BIG, anything, thus stimulus out of all proportion to our size is the way to go.

We are going to get it, whether we need it or not, just because Kevin 747 wants to grand stand on world stage as if he is a decisive statesman.

The new buzz word is stimulus. It is a code word that describe how YOUR MONEY and mine is wasted by our governments without any accountability on social agendas, supposedly to create economic activity.

The idea is that a dollar that is spent by our government on building a bridge, as an example, may circulate a number of times and create economic momentum through what economists call the multiplier.

Say, the government build a bridge. They hire workers, buy cement, steel and other components and put it together. To have cement, there must be a cement factories that convert mined limestone, soda ash and other chemical and energy into cement.

To have still, we must have steel mills that need iron ore, coal, scrap and other trace metals and energy to make steel and they also all need ships trains and trucks to move raw materials and bridge components.

The workers on the bridge, the cement factories, the still mills, the ships, trains and trucks get paid and buy food, clothing, cars and plasma TV which in turn need more factories, shops and transport.

In other words, a dollar spent on, say, building a bridge, is spent a number of times through the economy depending on the multiplier of building bridges. This is the theory anyway.

This theory was developed by an English mathematician, turned economist and INVESTOR, John Maynard Keynes and what later became known as Keynesian Economics. Keynes believed that government should make the most of its economic powers and use it to achieve socio-economic goals.

On the other side of the scale is Milton Friedman was an economists who believes in the exact opposites, in free market with minimal government interference in the economy, also known as Friedmanism.

Whilst there is no decisive evidence that Keynes himself was communist or a communist sympathiser, nevertheless, Keynes is the darling of communism, socialism, liberalism and all other social engineering isms. Keynes has given them the left side of politics “scientific” all the excuses to interfere with the economy they need and, as we see, they use.

Here we have two diametrically opposing theories that beg the question “which is the correct one?” The simple answer is: none!. There are many conceptual contradictions and “cherry picking” of “facts” in both theories.

Economics is not a science, it is a set of theories based on empirical studies using (selective) quantitative and non-quantitative observations. Unlike science, economic theories are not results of proven hypotheses, they are just that, theories!

Some say that economics is the science that explains why its last prediction did not maderised.

Some goes as far as describing the economy as a power station and the people in charge of it as engineers who open and close valves, turn dials, switch pumps on and off, whereas the valves, dials and pumps are interest rates, taxation rates, government spending, surplus or deficit and so on – absolute crap!!!

In many case one cannot predict with certainty the outcome of a particular economic measure. Increase in official interest rate may be inflationary or deflationary, there are recent historical example to both. The same goes for other deliberate measures.

Just before Christmas Kevin747 use a stimulus of $ 14 billons and paid Australian age and disable pensioners a one off bonus. The idea was that because government pensioners are one of the poorest people in the land their propensity to spend is high thus most that money will be spent.

Wrong, whilst I had no objection to the bonus as such, stimulus it was not.

As it turned out , although there was improvement is Christmas retail sales, it was a oncer. Much of the money that was spent on Christmas presents ended up in China where it was only a drop in the ocean in tern of stimulating anything but Kevin’s standing in the opinion polls.

* * * * *

I cannot recall so much identical rhetorical hard sell of policies in so many countries, although the circumstances in each vary dramatically. Do you really believe that there is the one, and only the one, medicine that cures all economic ailments? Come-on!

Stimulus will “kick-start” your country’s economy, create employment, unfreeze credit, eliminate toxic assets, get rid of inflation, improve your country’s terms of trades, balance of payments etc. etc. etc. If you believe in it, I have bridge across Sydney Harbour and a fancy looking opera house to sell you.

Although Keynesian economics was dead and buried for many years in many countries, its flame kept burning in the corridors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), after all John Keynes was one of its founding father. Together with global socialism, which is now in control the governments of most developed nations, they all got this dead theory out of its grave, polished it, resuscitated it so it can be reused and push the socialist agenda once more.

Indeed the IMF has been used as a fig leaf for the socialisation of the western democracies . The IMF, the bastion of globalisation, an organisations with no electoral accountability or allegiance to anyone but itself, is cited by our politicians as the economic authority for enslave us, our children and grandchildren in gigantic debt.

Just look at the proposed “stimulus” of your country and you will quickly realise that it is no more then a badge social engineering agenda. Most, if not all, of the proposed expenditures covers IDENTICAL ITEMS of socialist agendas and common budgetary expenditure that belong in a regular budgetary process. Much like it all came from one place, well it has, the IMF.

Repairs to infrastructure, particularly bridges, “investments” in schools, Internet infrastructure, buildings insulation, alternative energy are no doubt familiar to you from debates about the so-called stimulus in your own country. BUT you may not realise that the actual items that make the stimuli in all countries (that have one) are identical.

So is the rhetoric about the “urgency” to adopt the stimulus measures. Our very basis of democracy, the parliament is being portray as obstruction, that may bring a “catastrophe” upon us, only because it wants to do what houses of parliaments do in democracy. Cesar does not like it when the senate asks question.

Incidentally, if you listen carefully, you will quickly notice the similarity between the scare mongering of the stimulus and that of global warming. The connection is self evident, both are spins of a socialist agenda.

Would you buy a car when the salesman pushes you to hurry up and sign on the dotted line, not ask too many question because you would loose this unique, one in hundred years, opportunity?

Remember these are the very people who want you to live in a dark and have cold showers to save the planet from a looming global warming.

By and large the global financial crisis and the subsequent global economic downturn is a direct consequence of globalism. It is the free market that enabled the toxic assets to freely move across borders among countries as contagious disease would spread across an hospital without an isolation ward.

Now that we have nearly all the hospital’s patients and staff infected, the cure, we are told, is to give them all the same medicine BUT NOT isolate them because they must all get well together, or not at all. This is what globalism is all about.

* * * * *

One of the few idea that made any sense to me in the American stimulus proposal was that stimulus money must be spent on American made goods. After all the idea is that the steel and cement used to construct a bridge should come from home production and generate employment.

The idea that American money (I use America as an example, the same is true to any contry), borrowed by the American people, which the American taxpayer would need to repay back is used to create American Jobs by using it to purchase American goods horrified the globalists who opened a scare campaign about “trade wars”.

Suppose that you may fall on hard times and may consider to severely curtail this year’s Christmas presents for your kids, but the government tells you: “Oh no! don’t even think about as much as symbolic cut in the level of presents you have been giving to your neighbours kids, if you do we’ll call you protectionist or, God forbid, isolationist” – this is in fact what the IMF saying to every country these days. We don’t care what you do to your own people but you must continue and protect other people.

In a recent speech to the governors of the South East Asian Central Banks (SEACEN) the Managing Director of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Khan said (inter-alia):

Some countries are trying to make government support of banks conditional on their giving priority to domestic borrowers, to the detriment of financing across borders. This will hurt emerging economies, whose growth depends on access to foreign bank financing. It is protectionism in the financial markets, and its consequences could be as damaging and dangerous as the trade protectionism of the 1930s.

Bull dust!

What got America out of the great depression of the 1930’s was not globalism, but the American manufacturing industry production efforts for the war AND the fact that by the end of WWII American industry was the only one standing. Beside, traditionally America always knew how to protect its own interest.

For years American aid was contingent on the fact that the recipients of such aid must use it, as much as practicable, to purchase American goods. For years, at least 50% of American aid MUST be carried on American flags ships, although freight on American flag ships were twice as dear as other flags – those were the rules.

Anyone who tell you that you can stimulate your economy and remain globalist at the same time is a liar, a fool or both. Throughout history you will not find a single instant of economy developing into world class without actively pursuing protection.

Britain of the industrial revolution until 1846 when they repealed the Corn Act, the USA from 1860 to 1914, Germany from 1870 to 1914, Japan, Korea, and India of after WWII and of course China of today all pursue protectionists policies. As a matter of interests all four American presidents carved out in Mount Rushmore, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt were protectionists.

In the face of “cheap” imports from the USA and Continental Europe, even the darling of the stimuluphiles, John Keynes, advocated tariffs barriers in 1930 to protect British industry.

As you see, stimulus is not about kick-starting the economy, it is not about job creation and protection, it is all about IDEOLOGY.

* * * * *

Yet we the people can only watch in horror how our elected representives allow our governments condemn us and our descendants to generations of economic turmoil of debt, high interest, high taxation and inflation. Is this the planet we suppose to save from global warming?

When all those obscene amounts of money be wasted, nothing much will change except we each have national debt of colossal proportion. The so-called stimulus will not work because it cannot work. If you want to rebuild our economy, rebuild our own productive capacity first.

We cannot have economy without a strong manufacturing, construction and agricultural industries. Serving each others’ drinks and making each others’ bed is not an economy.