Steve shrilling.....and Nick pontificating

Sometimes a glimpse of Family First's Senator Steve Fielding breaks a fella out in hives and sometimes it just brings on a burst of laughter.
His shrill impotence in the Senate last Wednesday was a joy to behold; "I am deadset serious about this. This is just a joke. I may not be the best negotiator. I am just a kid from Reservoir, but, sure as all heck, I know when someone is stuffing around.....We need a stimulus package. It is just a shame that the government think that they need no other ideas except their own. It is very sad. It is a very sad day."
Yer - you tell 'em Little Stevie. Twist and shout, drum your heels into the carpet while the adults look the other way.
Fair dinkum, it's a joke.

At the same time Independent Senator Nick Xenophon tried and failed not to sound pompous as he threw his political weight around; "Do I support the package? My biggest concern about the package has been not simply what we are spending but also what we are buying. I do know that targeted infrastructure spending will serve generations to come, which is important because, if future generations are going to pay off this debt, the deal we do now must benefit them too. When faced with complex global crises and equally complex economic responses as we deal with this response package, it is important to be clear about what we know, what we do not know and what we cannot know. I believe this is an important point to make even if I risk sounding a little like Donald Rumsfeld."
And then later smug when interviewed on the 7.30 Report.

What is amusing in all this is that the Senate Inquiry into the Nation Building and Jobs Plan (on which both these men sat as participating members) recommended in its final report that the Senate pass those 6 bills immediately.
As the Committee hearing evidence was evenly balanced between Labor and Coalition senators whose votes along party lines cancelled each other out, then some of the remaining 6 minor party/independent senators must have voted to recommend that the Senate pass the second stimulus package post haste.
I wonder if somebody was overcompensating here?
Of course the plaintive mewing gave him away - it was bound to be Fielding.
However, Xenophon is by far the more cynical pollie of the two.
He honestly thinks that no-one will dare utter so much as a peep when he repeats the supposed rational for his blatant money grab ie., that throwing water buyback money at irrigators in the Lower Murray Darling (for water that doesn't yet exist) and similar measures will make the skies open and the rain fall.
He is happy to blackmail the country and can't hide the frisson as he contemplates the power he has greedily grabbed with both hands.
Yup, the man sounds and acts a lot like Rumsfeld.

* Possum over at Pollytics hopes that Xenophon will come to his senses later today Friday 13th;
"In 15 hours we’ll know whether Australia passes a package that minimises the economic and human costs from the GFC induced slowdown, or whether these blokes [Xenaphon, Turnbull and Joyce] become the 3 Stooges of the Recession.
Parochial Stooge, Political Stooge and from watching the Senate committee on this package, a bloke not too far removed from a bag of hammers.
I’m flabbergasted - let’s hope Xenophon comes to his senses tomorrow or he will carry a very heavy burden.
The real irony here is it’s the bloke in the middle that’s probably the one completely sh*tting himself, because if this package fails to get through the Senate, the fallout against Turnbull by the public will be enormous. Every piece of bad news will become his fault in the mind of a huge chunk of the public - Labor will make sure of it. That better economic manager series we looked at earlier might become a nostalgic golden age for the Coalition."

UPDATE 1.10pm:

The Federal Government's $42 billion economic stimulus package will pass the Senate after a deal was struck today between Labor and the independent Senator Nick Xenophon.
Senator Xenophon said he would vote for the package after winning $900 million in extra funds for the ailing Murray-Darling basin and other water projects.
It involves bringing forward an extra $500 million over the next three years for water buybacks, $200 million in grants to assist local communities save water and to better manage water and $200 million in stormwater harvesting projects.

Friday the 13th

A sop to superstition from Photobucket

Paid good money for a gig and been denied entry?

If your answer is "YES", then this should be of interest.


inthemix.com.au reports that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) are said to be investigating claims made by disgruntled punters following the Laneway Festival in Melbourne earlier this month. The Age report that the ACCC are following up on accusations made against the event’s organisers after several hundred ticket purchasers were left stranded outside one of the festival’s stages, unable to gain entry to see artists they’d paid up to $100 to see.

At 7.30pm access to the Little Lonsdale Stage was closed for “safety reasons”, meaning many festival goers did not get the chance to see headline acts Girl Talk and Architecture In Helsinki. Following the event, organisers laid blame on a small number of punters who were causing trouble, as well as on an eleventh hour issue which forced them to greatly reduce capacity to the area. Complaints lodged with the ACCC contend that it was not noted on tickets that there would be limited access available.

In the days following the event groups began appearing on Facebook, with many irate punters demanding a refund on their ticket purchase. One group in particular, named ‘Cheated by St Jerome’s Laneway Festival 2009 – I want a refund’, has almost 800 members and included direct links through to the ACCC website for disgruntled fans to lodge complaints.

Laneway’s directors, Jerome Borazio and Danny Rogers, were understandably upset by the unfortunate incident at their Melbourne event, and are said to have promised a ‘personal phone call’ to any punter who complains to them direct. “Danny and I have read every single complaint,” Mr Borazio told The Age. “We care about what has been said and we’re looking at the reality of what we can do to restore faith in the festival. We’re devastated.”

Send your emails to :info@lanewayfestival.com.au

Image above from http://www.lanewayfestival.com.au/main#l=news/15

Happy Birthday, Charles Darwin. The theory of evolution rocks!

Today; two hundred years ago Charles Robert Darwin, the English naturalist, was born and human society became all the richer for this fact.

Do companies really have the corporate will to green their IT?

In Computer World this week:

Should CIOs get ready to add "energy czar" to their list of job roles?

McKinsey & Co., a management think tank, seems to believe as much. In a study presented last year at the Uptime Institute's Green Enterprise Computing Symposium, McKinsey called on companies to move accountability for facilities operations to the CIO and to appoint an internal energy czar to better focus on the true cost of data center ownership, which includes both equipment and facilities expenses------

With no takers willing to publicly sign on to McKinsey's challenge, Computerworld sought out companies -- including Google and Yahoo -- that are leading the charge to take control of data center energy costs. The conclusion: Corporate America is indeed thinking seriously about data center energy costs, but many companies aren't yet ready to commit to changes as sweeping as what McKinsey proposes.

Why does McKinsey advocate such a radical shift in responsibilities? Forrest points out several reasons behind the recommendation. First, data centers are usually the biggest users of energy in a corporation. Second, IT would be charged with developing and implementing the technology -- such as dashboards -- required to measure and monitor energy efficiency anyway.

And third, it's important that companies designate someone who can be held accountable for total data center costs and energy efficiency, he notes. Even in companies that have set up a "green champion," if that person isn't given the power and authority to deliver results, "it makes the job very limited," says Forrest. The company may trumpet a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 8 percent a year, for example, "but there's no means of tying that to any real executive action."

Microsoft offers free toll to calculate business carbon footprint.

Will they tar 'n' feather Danny in Corryong?

Corryong February 2009 from Flickr

Catch the Fire Ministries' Danny Nailah went into the religious twilight zone last Tuesday when he tried to say that this month's Victorian bushfires were God's punishment for abortion law reform.

Bet the poor sod's a bit worried now.

Next Saturday he's due in Corryong (which is in a northern part of the bushfire belt) for a holy spirit revival meeting.

He'll be lucky if he's not cursed all the way out of town!

Copy of Corryong revival leaflet - complete with catchy flame graphics.

"The Age" gets taken for a ride and creates serious michief along the way

On Saturday 7 February 2009 when Victoria was beginning to reel under the impact of the worst natural disaster in modern Australian history, The Age in Melbourne ran an article which baldly stated: AUSTRALIA has been singled out as a target for "forest jihad" by a group of Islamic extremists urging Muslims to deliberately light bushfires as a weapon of terror.

The group calling for this jihad is supposedly currently active and going by the name Al-Ikhlas Islamic Network and it allegedly posts on the Internet, presumably on a forum website hosted out of Malaysia and written in three or possibly four languages.

The earliest mention of this supposed forest fire jihad that I can find comes from WorldNetDaily in 2003, when it also mentioned: "Australian security authorities are aware of reports that al-Qaida has considered starting bushfires in the U.S. as a form of terrorist attack," said a spokeswoman Australian Attorney General Daryl Williams. "Arson attacks are just one of a wide range of scenarios which have been considered as part of our investigations into al-Qaida's ability to conduct attacks in Australia."

Specific mention of a jihad website occurred in April 2004 when it was reported that: Meanwhile, there is evidence terrorism was behind other wildfires in Europe and Australia last summer.

According to the wingnuts, so far this 'group' appears to be responsible for forest fires in France, Greece, Italy, Australia and the U.S.

It supposedly has a six-point plan which included: setting of fires in the forests – "especially those that provide the American market with the raw materials for the wood and paper and byproducts industries";

The entire forest fire jihad plot was rehashed in January 2008 when WorldTribune ran with it again .

Now there are only 18 terrorist groups officially listed on the Australian Attorney-General's departmental website and none of these are this supposed extremist group.

Indeed if you look for this group on the world wide web it is has a remarkably low profile.
So low in fact that it is only ever mentioned by secondary sources.
It seems to be nothing more than a blustering website, which is sometimes not even online.
A situation which should have alerted The Age reporter to the fact that he might have been building with straw and, that this Internet forum was unlikely to be a group nor a credible threat.

The supposed threat reads more like a post 9/11 urban myth and The Age looks as though it was attempting a potentially divisive, hurtful and downright dangerous beat up.

Snapshot is of The Age article as displayed 10.02.09