Sore loser or clumsy archivist?

This is what came on the screen when I tried to click on to www.chrisgulaptis.com.au to see if unsuccessful Nationals candidate for Page Chris Gulaptis had released a concession speech after 24 November.

Reverse lookup command gone wrong? Or perhaps second thoughts about leaving those campaign bon mots out there for all to see?

Surely not a deliberate attempt to bar North Coast residents from the website.

You are not authorized to view this page

The Web server you are attempting to reach has a list of IP addresses that are not allowed to access the Web site, and the IP address of your browsing computer is on this list.

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Please try the following:

• Contact the Web site administrator if you believe you should be able to view this directory or page.

HTTP Error 403.6 - Forbidden: IP address of the client has been rejected.
Internet Information Services (IIS)

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Big Brother 2007

In the Northern Territory certain Australian citizens can have personal control of money from their own old age pensions taken away, because of how they are thought to be behaving or because of how they just might behave in the future.

Queensland is about to do the same thing to some other citizens.

Other types of welfare payment are also subject to this snatch and grab.

Just how long do you think it will be until every Australian pensioner has to behave as Big Brother orders or lose control of their money? 

I'm betting less than three years, if the Rudd Government continues to be led through the nose by a public service so politicised during the Howard years that it is still actively running a right-wing agenda in advice given to government.

 

Struth, it's so crook that one portfolio within the Deputy-Prime Minister's brief, the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, employs some public servants openly lamenting Howard and Hockey's demise. While loudly criticising everything about the new minister from her IQ to her speaking voice, laying bets on when she shall lose this portfolio and vowing to make sure that everything will be steadily moving forward according to their own agenda.

Word in your ear, boys - when you go home for the hols don't discuss the matter in public if you want to keep your little revolt quiet. Oops! Think you've already opened your mouth.

Wasn't it nice to see Bali delegates finally lose patience with America

Well I'm sure that wasn't something the United States was expecting.

Its delegate to the Kyoto conference in Bali loudly booed from the meeting floor, and then tiny Papua New Guinea rising to tell US representatives that if America was not prepared to lead on climate change solutions it should get out of the way.

Of course by then the US had all but wrecked the efforts of over 190 nations to create meaningful greenhouse gas emissions targets for the world to work towards over the next few years.

Maybe by 2009 Kyoto countries will have found the spine to kick the US right out the conference door if it remains as intransigent.

One can almost hear that famous American sphere of influence beginning to shrink, and the more effects of global warming begin to bite, the quicker that influence will disappear.

 

Where, oh where, has Caro gone?

Journalist Caroline Overington is becoming harder to find than Wally. I haven't seen a recent article by Overington in The Australian online since, well since just before the 24 November federal election.

Is she on holidays, leave of absence, resigned, been 'let go', busy suing bloggers or what?

If anyone sees Caro drop me a comment - would love to know where she finally roosts at full moon.

How 'fat' is fat and why is it a disease?

"The next time someone, even a health minister, tries to make you feel guilty about carrying a few extra kilos, just say no."

Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon gets a slap on the wrist. And not without a measure of reason.

The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday:
 http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/dont-fall-for-the-big-fat-lie-when-proof-of-the-padding-is-thin/2007/12/14/1197568262871.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

'How to stop the US sabotaging a global response to climate change' in one easy lesson

Once again we have witnessed the United States impose its will on a reluctant world. The UN December 2007 conference on the Kyoto Protocol and climate change has bowed to American pressure. The Bali 'roadmap' has been watered down until it is simply another signal that it's acceptable to continue to go slowly on any global response to climate change.

 

Sometimes it seems that US economic might and defence capability leaves us all with no choice but to cave-in when this bully thumps the table to protect what it sees as its own economic 'divine right'. However, concern over global warming is so widespread that ordinary people now have an issue which unites their individual economic power into an international might which could take on the US.

 

So if you are one of those ordinary little people who want to see global warming tackled before it is too late, use your personal economic power to send a message to America to shape up or ship out. Decide today that you will no longer buy goods, services, products or produce which originate in the US or come from US-owned companies.

Boycott America until it decides to become a responsible global citizen.

 

Where to start? Look at the labels on groceries stacked on supermarket shelves, make sure you check company and country of origin on those jeans, CDs, stereos, TVs, washing machines etc., that you are thinking of buying. If you own shares, become an ethical investor and dump any that represent US-owned companies. 

What better way than to start than with the Fortune 500 at:

 http://www.fortune500s.net/fortune500-list.php 

 

If America only views the world through the prism of its own short-term economic bottom line - let us all give it a bottom line to remember in 2008.

Australia leading from the rear on climate change

Fair dinkum, it's embarrassing. There's the Rudd Government huddled at the bottom of a Bali trench yelling "Charge!" and urging other nations over the top in this latest battle of the War on Global Warming.

While the Rudd Government's loyal opposition, protected by its non-combatant status, hands out white feathers to delegates as they move up to the firing steps.

I know Minister for Climate Change and Water Penny Wong is probably breaking her heart trying to do a good job at the UN conference, but it is disappointing to see a new government (which earlier this year promised Australia that it would have 20% renewable energy by 2020 and committed itself to establishing domestic emission reduction targets) publicly and privately knuckle under to American interests in this way.

It's no way to fight a war. It's no way to tackle climate change. It's no way to protect Australia's future.

Like many others on the North Coast I await dispatches from the front this morning and hope for better news.