Target Australia isn't making Maud feel good....

Maud up the Street pointed out to me that some of the clothing she's brought from her local Target store (owned by Wesfarmers) is labelled "Target MADE IN CHINA from Australian fabric".

Seems the stuff her knickers are made of is probably grown and definitely woven here, rolled into bolts and shipped overseas - only to return as clothing items.

Can't think of any reason other than employee wages are in all likelihood much lower in China.

Bit naughty of Wesfarmers, isn't it.

Graphic from Wikipedia

Christine Hazell wins Grafton Art Club’s 41st Jacaranda Art Exhibition

Well done, Christine.

Photograph from The Daily Examiner 5 November 2009

I shouldn't read 'denialist' blogs.....

With global warming scepticism in full swing out in the blogosphere in the lead-up to the UN Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009 it is hard to resist opening some of the 'denialist' blogs referred to in passing by other bloggers.
A bad habit which can temporarily addle the brain.

This week I came across Denial Depot which apparently went online in April 2009 and boasts in its sidebar that:

We are not afraid to be called climate "deniers". In fact we embrace it as medal of honor bestowed on us by our alarmist foes. Galileo was a Denier. It is not an insult. I call this blog "Denier Depot" for that reason.
Welcome to my climate science blog.
I believe that one day all science will be done on blogs because we bloggers are natural skeptics, disbelieving the mainstream and accepting the possibility of any alternative idea.
We stand unimpressed by "textbooks", "peer review journals" and so-called "facts". There are no facts, just dissenting opinion. We are infinitely small compared to nature and can't grasp anything as certain as a fact.

The DD blogger Inferno (who has a twin blogging on Rouge Force with the occupation of Bum) comes out with confusing little gems which cast doubt on how well researched the main arguments being put forward in his posts are.

The latest brow furrow is this:

The difference between fraud and no fraud turns out to be about 0.4 degrees C ('C' means Cold, sometimes spoken in latin, 'Celcius').

Here I was thinking that C meant Celsius (named after the formulator of an early centigrade temperature scale, Anders Celsius) and that the usual Latin words for cold and very cold/icy are frigidus and gelidus respectively.

However, there is a rather large kernel of suspicion that Inferno and his {a presumption of gender} anti-global warming blog might actually be a giant leg pull.
The constant decrying of others cloaking identity behind a pen name, while continually doing the same on Denial Depot and repeated over-the-top boasting (along the lines of six impossible things to believe before breakfast) does make one wonder if he is having fun at the expense of others.

If Inferno is indulging in a little spoofing, I suspect that Britain, New Zealand or Australia might be where he hails from.

What is obvious from many of the comments attached to Inferno's posts is that he is taken very seriously by some readers.

Some of the most depressing online posts about the Internet this week - confirming that we're all just mushrooms to the powers that be

From Boing Boing:

Secret copyright treaty leaks. It's bad. Very bad.
The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:

• * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

• * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

• * That the whole world must adopt US-style "notice-and-takedown" rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused -- again, without evidence or trial -- of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

From An Onymous Lefty:

Why shouldn't a US media company kick you off the internet with no right of appeal?
Do you remember voting for the government to force your ISP to spend your money sifting through your internet logs to check that you're not infringing a foreign corporation's potential copyright? No? That's weird

From Michael Geist:

The ACTA Internet Chapter: Putting the Pieces Together
The Internet chapter raises two additional issues. On the international front, it provides firm confirmation that the treaty is not a counterfeiting trade, but a copyright treaty. These provisions involve copyright policy as no reasonable definition of counterfeiting would include these kinds of provisions. On the domestic front, it raises serious questions about the Canadian negotiation mandate. Negotations from Foreign Affairs are typically constrained by either domestic law, a bill before the House of Commons, or the negotiation mandate letter. Since these provisions dramatically exceed current Canadian law and are not found in any bill presently before the House, Canadians should be asking whether the negotiation mandate letter has envisioned such dramatic changes to domestic copyright law. When combined with the other chapters that include statutory damages, search and seizure powers for border guards, anti-camcording rules, and mandatory disclosure of personal information requirements, it is clear that there is no bigger IP issue today than the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement being negotiated behind closed doors this week in Korea.

From The Huffington Post:

Transparency of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)
Unlike nearly all other multilateral and plurilateral discussions about
intellectual property norms, the ACTA negotiations have been held in
deep secrecy. This has led to a chorus of criticism, and demands that
the ACTA process be opened up, and that documents in ACTA negotiations
be disclosed, as they are routinely in intellectual property
negotiations at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or
the World Trade Organization (WTO).
After a year of criticism over the secrecy of this negotiation, the
White House United States Trade Representative (USTR) recently began a
policy of offering some persons access to documents in this negotiation,
on the condition that they sign a non disclosure agreement (NDA) that
prevents any public discussion of the contents of those documents. The
opportunity to see the ACTA documents under the NDA was offered to a
large number of business interests, but very few public interest or
consumer groups, and there were no opportunities for academic experts or
the general public to review the documents.
USTR officials have indicated that this policy of access by invitation
and NDA fully addresses the legitimate demands for more transparency of
the negotiation, and it is being considered as a model for the future.
We are opposed to this approach because it creates a small special class
of citizens who have rights superior to the majority of the population,
and because it gives the government too much discretion in deciding who
can monitor and criticize its operations. We have no confidence in this
new approach.

And this pretence at transparency from the Australian Government's Dept of Foreign Affairs and Trade, in which we're given a short one page general summary and the meeting agenda:

Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA): Public information and consultations on the ACTA
The ACTA was first announced publicly by the US on 23 October 2007....
A detailed summary of all elements currently under discussion has been drafted by all ACTA negotiation participants, setting out the topics being addressed in ACTA discussions. This paper is intended to provide greater information to the public on the matters being negotiated, and guide stakeholders seeking to make submissions on ACTA negotiations...
As noted in Mr Crean's media release, Australia seeks an enhanced, practical international standard on IPR enforcement with broad international support, to compliment the existing international IP architecture. Australia regards the extent to which the ACTA can attract support from countries in our region as a critical issue in determining the real value of the ACTA for Australia. Taking part in the negotiations does not oblige Australia to join any resulting treaty.....
Australia will next participate in the sixth round of negotiations to be held in Seoul in November. The agenda for this meeting can be found here. We also intend to continue to promote enhancing the transparency of negotiations at this round, to ensure the Australian public is kept well informed and has further opportunities to give input. Australia expects negotiations to extend into 2010.