politics

We voted (clearly!) against a carbon tax when we elected Tony Abbott as our PM is 2013. But now our plain-speaking, introvert, somewhat politically clumsy, but honest, devoted to the welfare of his country, courageous protector is now an ex-PM. In his place we have a populist waffler who knows how to say all the right things (meaning the things that will get him fine sound-bites on the ABC) and who says nothing of importance until he works out the "popular" thing to say - and who, under no circumstances, ever takes a decision on principle.

Apparently "The Turnbull government will “probably” allow emission reduction permits to be bought from overseas, giving Australia flexibility to increase the targets it pledged at the Paris climate conference..."

The more I see of this man, the more I am convinced he is a willing member of the kleptocracy that seems to be in universal rule throughout the western "democracies". Let me explain why an ETS is infinitely worse than a merely impoverishing carbon tax...

One small suppression of free speech in Australia, one giant leap towards the coming dark age.

Gillard's tame ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) is threatening businesses with million dollar fines if they have pre-carbon tax sales, or blame price increases on the carbon tax.

A few things: First, to non-Australians, the ACCC used to be a service to the country, but I have seen nothing useful done by them since their former chairman Professor Allan Fels retired. Time and again they seem to be refusing to act for the consumer and making lame excuses for not doing so. They aren't anybody's servant, just another tame bureaucracy doing the biddings of their political masters.

Next, this might seem petty. It is far from petty. When this story was reported on Wattsupwiththat.com, a commenter got the entire thing backwards:

The Chairman was quite clear about the organisations’s position in his presentation, which is no different than it has been in the past about any other misleading advertising ... “Business costs increase all the time, and businesses are free to set their own prices. However, if a business chooses to raise their prices they should not misrepresent this as a result of the carbon price when it is not the case.”

Baloney. The cause of a price increase is not a misrepresentation of the same kind as pretending prices have gone down when they went up, for example (which has been happening in Australia with the ACCC as usual doing nothing). And everyone, yes everyone, should have special leeway in commenting on government policy simply because governments are so much more powerful than individuals, or even businesses. If you can't risk being wrong when talking about a government, then you can't risk saying anything. As the writer of the story, Willis Eschenbach, explained to the above commenter:

In "1984", George Orwell warns us of the dangers of allowing central control of language. Here's an example: The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), defines “climate change” as: “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.”

So now, the question: do you believe in "climate change"?

Hmm... Let's say "yes":

Ah ha! So you admit that emissions due to human activity are changing the atmosphere! Clearly we need to DO SOMETHING!!!! (Emissions trading scheme, global world government, shut down the western economies, bankrupt the only viable sources of power generation, you name it, it has actually been both proposed and attempted - whether successfully or not is yet to be seen.)

Okay then, let's say "no":

You are a DENIER! How can you POSSIBLY SAY that humans make NO difference to the atmosphere?

And, of course, that is correct - even an ant exhaling makes a change to the atmosphere, let alone all of human industry; but is it significant and dangerous (or even measurable)? The problem is, of course, that the choice of language definitions makes it impossible to think a simple thought: that human emissions of CO2 are not dangerous (and possibly even beneficial). It relies on a term (in this case "climate change") sounding like one thing (changing climate) and being defined as another (human-caused atmospheric changes). The game is to switch from one meaning to another as necessary to manipulate the argument in your favour. And that is the exact reason why this term is used in the first place.

I don't think the average person is yet aware that the era of freedom, the era of being able to do anything reasonable and say anything short of "fire" in a crowded theatre, is drawing to a close.

The Internet is arguably the greatest invention in the history of humanity, as it transcends the limitations of individual human minds and allows instant access to the thoughts (even the very recent thoughts, even the very sublime or the very base thoughts) of billions of other human beings. An era in which the world as a whole can start to think with the effective IQ of millions of minds reinforcing each other could be about to dawn.

But it will not, unless all freedom lovers do something about the totalitarians who now are on the verge of throwing the planet into a new dark age of secret control and knowledge restricted to the elites. From http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/329888/australian_federal_govern...

The Federal Government will introduce legislative amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act to require all ISPs to block Refused Classification (RC)-rated material hosted on overseas servers.

I have written to the federal minister Stephen Conroy under the title "You are either stupid or a tyrant":

Those who have taken a look at the background materials on this site will know that one of the dangers I see threatening humanity is a widespread psychological malfunction I have called the false religion. This isn't a religion in the old sense, it has no personal god, it isn't an overt competitor with other religions. Indeed, believers in normal religions often are also believers in the core doctrines of the false religion. In fact, because we are immersed in the false religion from birth (it having now taken over as the unofficial religion of the state), we all probably have been suckered by one or another of its beliefs, even if we saw through most of them and even if we later wised up when we looked closely at the evidence.

Perhaps Jung understood it in talking about an expansion of the ego - a belief that the individual, or the human species, has infinitely perfectible nature and powers, instead of being limited, as are all creatures, by the restrictions of our evolution, our environment, and our instincts. The framers of the American Constitution also understood it when they designed a structure that could work in spite of human frailty, rather than gambling on a mass spiritual transformation. So it clearly is a mistake to think the false religion has a single, identifiable manifestation. Human hopes and dreams can outrun reality in a thousand different ways - and how hard it is to reign them in when they are framed in words that uplift the heart and enthuse the spirit, even as they guarantee that the hopes must end in disappointment and tragedy. The false dream can infect any group or any organisation, and it does infect many, all at once. Over the top? Too alarmist? The following video was put together by a black person, Kevin Jackson of theblacksphere.net, so if you want to accuse me of racism for the following, please don't bother. It scares me, and it should scare you too.

I just noticed something on the local TV (9am show, Ten Network) that disturbed me for two completely different reasons.

They interviewed film maker and Orangutan activist, Stephen Van Mil, who discussed "the devastating effects of Indonesian deforestation to plant palm oil plantations, a commonly found substance in our grocery items." I have seen these plantations, and it is the typical 'monoculture' so loved by big business, keeping everything nice and simple and sterile. Nice for business, deadly for native animals. Disturbance number one.

What is the common factor in all these recent issues in Australia:

1. An ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) to reduce carbon emissions and which will ruin the economy and add huge expenses to every single person in the  country;

2. Digging up prime agricultural land to provide coal for China to emit huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, and in the process ruining the standard of living of the rural people, and polluting the water supply and polluting food with heavy metals;