JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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I imagine that the subject of gun control won’t be appreciated world wide but in the US we’re about to see attempts at severely restricting Second Amendment rights. This largely on the heels of the Sandy Hook tragedy.
The Left has always wanted to disarm the general population and looking back through history this often ends badly. I’ll be looking to see if Free Speech advocates (First Amendment) stand up and loudly speak against these attacks on the Second Amendment.
The Founding Fathers knew precisely why this should be a basic freedom. The evidence is simply that it is the “Second” amendment only after Free Speech. We need to keep that firmly in mind.
96
Hi Mar
Times change; when that Second Amendment was formed the Power was though the gun.
Today the second amendment might read:
“A well regulated Community Banking and Financial System, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and operate such Community Financial System, shall not be infringed.”
“The People” have been sucked dry in recent years by Government Protected Banksters; they don’t need guns any more.
KK
115
Mark
Need to proof read.
30
A thought-provoking suggestion there, KK. Given the collapse of AIG, the GFC, it would seem a good question to ask why the USA Bill of Rights is silent on banking.
The short answer is, a central bank of the USA did not exist at the time the Constitution and Bill of Rights were first written (1789), however the first central Bank of USA was created 2 years later – the same year the bill of rights was ratified by the States.
Edward Flaherty of Charleston College writes this history of banking in the USA:
I think the money supply, currency devaluation, government indebtedness, and derivatives shenanigans can all have nearly as much deleterious effect on the health of the nation as a junta. So I think you are correct that a Constitutional document ought to at least mention banking.
However I disagree that this could replace the right to bear arms.
<rant type="researched">The form of tyranny that Jefferson, Washington, Madison, etc, were trying to protect the people against may not have been apparent for 200 years, but in the last 12 years it has become increasingly manifest. In the last 2 years it has become glaringly obvious.
It is because it is rapidly approaching the time in the USA when tyranny wishes to exert itself again that the push to forcibly deprive the people of their guns is now being made. The armed law-abiding public outnumbers the armed police and DHS by a large factor and tyranny does not like that level of resistance. That is the only plausible reason why the DHS has purchased 1200 million rounds of ammunition in 2012 alone. Yes that is over 1 billion, that is not a mistake. Some of the order quantities included 450 million rounds of hollow point ammo, and most recently an extra 200 million rounds, with the DHS using censorship to hide some of the most recent order quantities.
For an organisation that only operates domestically it does not take much imagination to see the intended target of all this ammunition, which one commentator estimated to be enough to wage war against the American people for nearly 7 years. A sad chapter of history looks likely to repeat itself in the next year or two.
The 2nd amendment couldn’t stop JP Morgan from stealing private investment money from MF Global customers, but one wonders how the 2nd amendment could allow those customers to take back what is rightfully theirs without creating a crime of their own. The 2nd amendment doesn’t give people the right to take all matters of law into their own hands. There is in theory a fair justice system to do that. What is shown by the MF Global scandal, the raiding of AIG, and other cases, is the corruption of government banking regulators and their reluctance to bring cases of banking fraud to court.
So the government that won’t protect people’s property when banks steal it now wants to remove the people’s last remaining method of self defence whilst at the same time buying huge amounts of ammo for domestic use. And this new round of gun control is a knee-jerk reaction to a mass shooting the public is inadequately informed about. Join the dots.
When tyranny comes to visit, americans are not going to retain their family, friends, rights, and property by simply waving a balanced bank statement in their face as though paper and greenbacks were bulletproof. A fair banking amendment could not replace the 2nd amendment, that should be obvious.
The fact that a “forced” buy-back scheme that is illegal under the Bill of Rights is actually being proposed in the USA is a sign that the 2nd amendment, and the willingness to exercise it, has unfortunately never been more necessary than today. Americans will have to exercise their 1st amendment a lot more in the next few months, just as one marine has done, if they want to hold on to the 2nd amendment peacefully.
(And yes, it’s easy for me to sit here in Australia and make such lofty statements when we’ve already lost that particular battle. )
</rant>80
Yes Andrew,
The purpose of my redirected 2nd amendment was just to remind people that there is more than one way to skin a cat, or for Influential Power Groups to damage us and effectively enslave us.
Here in Australia many would not be aware of the damage done to the savings of older people near retirement.
We suffered at the hands of fraudulent share manipulators and dirty deeds by groups acting with government consent, they didn’t need guns.
Even now after all this, the US still has pipeline into the Australian share market and easily milking $280 million a year from high Speed trading platforms. This is just criminal, there is no other waty to dress it up.
keep looking over your shoulder.
KK
10
Yes, regarding superannuation, if it’s not overseas banks and hedge funds stealing it, it’s the government.
It’s happened in a raft of other countries and soon it will be our turn to get shafted. (BarnabyIsRight dares you to ignore that article.)
When I found the chairperson of my super fund had joined the board of the Climate Change Authority I nearly fell off my perch.
20
I see it.
Australian super – sounds sort of patriotic.
KK
00
America’s Permanent War Agenda By Stephen Lendman
http://www.countercurrents.org/lendman010310.htm
Which should be disarmed first,the government or its citizens?
30
Kevin,
I see you’re still a conspiracy buff. I thought we had seen the last of you but it wasn’t to be. However, enough is enough. So how about this, we don’t disarm either one. That sounds like a good compromise to me. What do you think?
17
I thought Kevin had morphed into Sonny
00
One thing that all pro gun supporters always seem to forget about the second amendment, is the first part of it (my bold) …
What part of “A well regulated militia” do people not understand? It means that people who want to own guns have to be part of an organised group, regulated into a militia. That means some basic level of compulsory training, compulsory organisation and compulsory regulation. I have no problem with anyone who has been trained, organised and regulated owning a gun. To drive a car you need to get a licence which involves knowledge tests, driving tests and a probationary period. Why would we treat guns with any less level of safety and skill training?
The second amendment does not mean the ability to buy guns from the supermarket.
134
The “well regulated” meant that the militia should be a well-trained regular part of everyone’s life. To use the word “regulation” as it is currently used is almost completely contrary to the meaning of “well regulated” in this context. Here’s Alexander Hamilton:
The project of disciplining all the militia of the United States is as futile as it would be injurious if it were capable of being carried into execution. A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not a day, nor a week nor even a month, that will suffice for the attainment of it. To oblige the great body of the yeomanry and of the other classes of the citizens to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people and a serious public inconvenience and loss.
— The Federalist Papers, No. 29.
In other words, since a well-trained and equipped militia is important, everyone must have immediate access to the equipment necessary to make that happen. Restricting that equipment will disarm the militia, and thus leave both the people and the country defenseless.
90
The USA has come a long way in the couple of hundred years since it was controlled by Britain, with enforcement by the unpopular, poorly trained Redcoat army. Anyone taken a look at the size of the US armed forces and law enforcement agencies lately? There is no way that an individual or militia, no matter how organised, with the right to bear arms, could hope to wrest back civilian control from a ruthless dictatorial government unless they have full support of the military and police.They would be dispatched very quickly and their motives dismissed as those of yet another lunatic fringe.
So, how relevant to 21st century reality is the right to bear arms really?
92
Tell that to Vietnam, Afghanistan, Cuba (FFS), Iraq…
The Roman Empire didn’t fail because of inadequate military resources, they failed because they lost the will to use them properly. At one point, it became fashionable in Rome to judge the scale of a military encounter by how many of your own men died. As a result, generals deliberately arranged the slaughter of their armies, to gain acclaim and fortune.
Couldn’t happen here, today? Consider the insanity of the Vietnam War rules of engagement – the doctrine of escalation, of meeting force with equal force, rather than sending in an overwhelming force to crush your opponents.
81
Eric, the current value public assessment of military engagements is how few of your men died. Body bags are what “success” is measured by, such that too many body bags and it is considered a public failure regardless of any military success. The problem with the Vietnam war was the doctrine of overwhelming force. The “hearts and minds” approach and very specific targeting that was being run by the CIA was working. It was when the big green machine thought that it knew better that things started to go wrong. Also it was the sight of causalities coming home that again but limits on the military engagements when the only way out of the hole was to go further in.
21
I’m sorry, but this is just wrong. The initial clause is secondary to the meaning of the sentence, and frankly, the amendment wouldn’t make sense if it were construed as you suggest: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, EXCEPT FOR PROPER TRAINING AND TESTING” Here’s the problem: “shall not be infringed” is absolute, and testing/licensing equals infringement.
The issue lies in your take on the word “militia” – it does not mean what you think it does. To the founders, quite literally, “militia” meant “the whole of the people,” so they do not have to become part of a group, because they ARE that group. A dictionary circa 1780 will reveal this. But honestly, that is not necessary. The founders wrote copiously on the constitution and its related subjects. A simple search on the net yields these thoughts rather quickly:
Richard Henry Lee:
“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms…”
Tenche Coxe:
“Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man gainst his own bosom. Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American…[T]he unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.”
Patrick Henry
“Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?”
Thomas Jefferson:
“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”
They meant for the whole of the citizenry to arm themselves with whatever weaponry modern soldiers could use, with the main intent being military superiority over the government. In this context, the amendment makes perfect sense. The militia isn’t drawn from the people, but rather, the people ARE the militia, and the only way to insure that they are all armed and practiced in the use of guns (well-regulated) is to not infringe their pre-existing right to “keep and bear” (own and use) guns.
Agree with it or not, but it says what it says.
************************
And before someone labels me a republican, I will state plainly that I am an anarchist. Forced into “cleaning up” politically, I can pass for a libertarian (democrats call me a capitalist pig and republicans call me a dirty hippie), but I am an anarchist. To this end, I mean to say that I am no apologist for my country’s constitution. Like all good ideas, it depends wholly on the people living it. And as Lysander Spooner observed, if it brought us to our current situation, then it is unfit to exist.
102
Keith, I am sorry, but you are just wrong. If the initial clause is secondary to the meaning of the sentence, it would not be the initial clause. If the meaning was intended as you put forward, then the term “well regulated” would not have been included. It is the combination of the terms “well regulated” with “militia” at the very beginning of the sentence (thereby establishing the context) that sets the intended tone for this amendment.
The amendment is clearly intended to ensure that any citizen is entitled to bear arms as part of a well regulated militia. It is this right that is being protected by the authors of the constitution.
Freedom of the individual does not mean freedom from responsibility. Not a concept that would sit well with an anarchist.
44
Truthseeker you argue that Kieth is wrong. Are you one of the many fools that believe a “well regulated militia” i.e. “governed militia” is what was defined by the second amendment? Let me ask you just who will be the governors of the militia you have in your small view?
Obviously it can’t be the government because that is where tyranny usually begins.
Your understanding of what was the intent of the Founding Fathers is confused. Do better in seeking the truth please.
21
Mark D, no I am not one of many fools of any particular type. I believe that a “well regulated militia” is just what it says – a citizen based militia with rules and structure. You seem to be only of the many fools that believe that “a well regulated militia” does not even exist in the amendment or at least has no meaning. You also seem to forget the bit about “government of the people, for the people, by the people”. The founding fathers had no problem with government or with the rule of law which is fundamental to the purpose and structure of the US constitution.
Your small minded view seems to be that government is OK unless it gets in the way of me doing whatever the hell I want to.
I do fine at truth seeking. You seem to have a problem with truth itself.
22
I see,
then please provide evidence supporting your view. Do I need to mention that we still have relatively free gun ownership despite no (apparently) required “well regulation”? Then please look up the history and the aversion to standing armies. The “militia” consists of every able bodied male. There is no federal organization, nor federal “regulation” as that would have been understood to be an “infringement”.
I’ll not bore you with links since I doubt it would change your thinking. You obviously have made a treacherous error in assuming that language and meanings of words are static through time. If you bother to read the letters and documents from the period you’d have a different understanding.
You appear to be the type that the Founders were most concerned with.
22
The position of the clause in the sentence in no way speaks to its relevance. “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state” is an incomplete sentence, hence it is secondary and supports the main point. “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” is a complete sentence, hence it can stand on its own, and therefore represents the main thrust of the amendment. Regarding the words, when “militia” means the entire population, “well-regulated” means that all people are practiced in the use of guns. They wanted everyone to freely own and use, intending that the “army” be called up from the populace as needed, as was done during the war.
Nonetheless, your opinion displays a stunning and willful lack of historical context. I gave you actual quotes from the founders. You do not argue with me, but rather with THE MEN WHO DEBATED AND WROTE THE DOCUMENT. Yet you claim they intended the amendment to protect the right of the people … to request permission of the government to own and use guns. Protecting the right of citizens to be subservient to the government is crazy talk, something a petty dictator would have engraved on a statue of himself as proof of his beneficence. And what of the Declaration of Independence from the crown? Or Jefferson: “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.” How well might these principles be effected if government acts as gatekeeper to the means of revolt?
And responsibility? Responsibility is not the product of forced behavior. It is paying the price or reaping the benefits of your actions. You cannot insure responsibility by the sword any more than you can legislate morality. These things grow out of the actions of free people. Anything else is slavery.
42
Mark D, you demand evidence and yet provide none of your own. There is a word for that – hypocrisy. Look it up if the word is unfamiliar to you.
You seek to define “militia” and proceed to ignore the “well regulated” part of the description.
Language is indeed not static through time, but these words were written at a specific point in time and it is that static meaning that is the issue here.
Language is not the only thing that changes over time. Technology does as well. What do you think the authors of that amendment would think about mini-guns, grenade launchers and the Abraham Tank? Do you think that these are acceptable or intended items under the “bear arms” part of this amendment? Taking your ideas to the logical conclusion, means that an RPG is an acceptable weapon for home defence.
Hey, I have no problem with people having single shot, muzzle loading pistols and muskets. After all these were the “arms” of the time when this amendment was written. Without adequate training, you are just as likely to blow yourself up as anyone else. It is that training that was an intended requirement and is conveniently forgotten by those who gloss over the “well regulated” part of this amendment.
12
Keith,
You get to my point here …
That is the requirement that I believe is critical here. I am happy to have anyone who has been trained in the use of guns to own one, just as I am happy to drive on the road with other drivers that have been similarly trained as I have. The road toll shows that compulsory driver training is not perfect, but it helps. I am just saying the same about guns. You cannot be a “well regulated militia” if you are just as likely to shoot yourself or the person next to you as you would be to shoot a potential enemy.
12
Truthseeker you are now doubling down on stupid. For “proof” I don’t have to offer evidence, you see, I have guns. My rights have not {yet} been infringed. I have never been part of a “well regulated militia” (as you define it). So flat out you are wrong and I offer my own experience and that of millions of legal gun owners here in the US. The interpretations of exactly what the Founders meant is well understood you just deny it.
Wikipedia does a pretty good job of listing the past Supreme Court decisions supporting the notion that the meaning is and was the individual that has the right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
You’ll note that in every version of text the house and senate debated, the “right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” was always the same.
Then this majority opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in Heller, stated:
Then go to Wiki here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_case_law_in_the_United_States
So Truthseeker, your screen name appears to be the only hypocrisy.
Thanks too, for the very friendly way you take up the discussion…………the rest of your reply is just mindless ranting over strawmen. I’ll not bother to go far into except for one thing: It is not the tank or grenade or RPG or large capacity magazine or caliber or looks of any weapon that creates a criminal act. You’d do well to remember this.
32
Mark D, you say
and then go on to the circular argument of being right about having because you have a gun. You are the one doubling down on hypocrisy. At no point do I expect anyone act in a way that I do not do myself. You try and use the word “hypocrisy” and continue to practice it.
You quote previous legal decisions about rulings on this amendment, which is fine, because that is the process of the rule of law. As I have said previously on this thead. I have no problem with a person owning a gun, as long as they have taken the responsibility of learning how to use it, maintain it and store and/or carry it safely.
No law will prevent criminals from doing what they are motivated to do. That is why they are criminals. It is not the criminals commiting acts of random slaughter. It is also not the responsible gun owners doing it either. The real point of having a “well regualated militia” is to enforce a level of training and compitence which has some chance, not 100% but some chance of identifying the crazies before they decide to walk into a school or shopping mall and just open up at random.
Take the Swiss approach by all means. Everyone is trained with guns and everyone has one. There is a “well regulated militia” for you.
10
Keith,
I’ve long had an interest in the writings of Lysander Spooner.
His writings can shake one out of their brainwashed perspective.
Any power a politician has is usurped.
Here’s a short excerpt.
http://lysanderspooner.org/node/60
Not voting is a yes vote to reject a corrupt system.
00
A well regulated militia (being necessary to the security of a free state), and the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
More people are killed each year in the US by people wielding hammers than “assault rifles”. In fact, more people are killed by simply being kicked or punched than assault rifles. As for mass shootings, 85 people die each year compared to 200 from “deer strikes”.
Banning semi-automatic guns does infringe on the right to self-defense — all you’d be left with is revolvers and shotguns.
30
Tongue-in-cheek Daniel? Just in case…
More people are killed by people wielding hammers? Source?
Can’t one defend oneself with a revolver or shotgun?
00
Well I believe the source is the FBI crime stats, and yes, you could try to protect yourself with a hammer, but I doubt more than one in ten would have the slightest chance against someone larger or stronger, or against more than one attacker. Also older folks would be out of luck I guess. The point missed when discussing guns and self defense is that they are the great equalizer. A person with a gun can easily defend himself from one or more attackers, often without even firing it. A granny can kill a prize fighter. No other weapon requires so little skill to present so much deterrence, and yes, I do happen to have experience in this regard as a gun owner who has had opportunity to use one in defense of my life.
00
Daniel, poke fun if you want but please remember where free speech gets it’s spine.
00
“A well regulated militia” – sort of like Australia’s Army Reserve. A back up army to call on when needed.
03
Brookes, I’ll put up our present “well regulated militia” against your AU reserve any day.
You’d be wise to use better diplomacy.
00
It seems that climate change is better understood than the Second Amendment. I’m always sure when it’s gotten wrong because the arguments get long and convoluted. The words, “…, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” don’t permit any equivocation about the matter. The Supreme Court has agreed with this interpretation, the people have a right to own guns and to use them for both sport and defense.
No one in his right mind wants to have fully automatic or any military grade weapons in the hands of civilians and no one wants guns in the hands of criminals, children, the mentally unstable or any other classification that makes the gun a real risk to others. So for that reason we do restrict the kinds of guns you can own and who can own them.
Even so, I expect a major grab to confiscate at least all semiautomatic weapons. We shall soon see how that goes.
10
Its impossible to prevent ordinary people from obtaining fully automated weapons. The Owen Gun, an Australian invention, had fewer moving parts than a revolver. Anyone with even basic machine skills could make one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Gun
As for the cartridges, the chemicals required to make munitions are widely available. Granted it would take a bit of effort to refine them into modern, reliable cartridges, but I have fond memories of my brother and I making powerful homemade fireworks from chemicals we bought at the local hardware store. You’ll forgive me if I don’t provide any of the recipes we used. Even fulminates for detonators can be readily made from household or freely available chemicals.
Then we had the best teacher – our Grandpa was a machinist during WW2
21
Indeed this would seem to be a sensible reaction to the Sandy Hook tragedy – the least that could be done for all those innocent and young lives taken and their poor families.
In Australia civilians are not permitted to own Automatic or semiautomatic weapons. Not being American I can only formulate an opinion based upon my own common sense. That common sense tells me there is no valid reason for civilians to have possession of such weapons. Criminals will get their hands on such weapons regardless of the law but tragedies like Sandy Hook are far less likely if Automatic or semiautomatic weapons are not being kept in ordinary homes within easy access of mentally disturbed persons.
41
Australia is awash with illegal guns. Criminals tend to be more careful about when they use them, but I would argue this is more to do with our culture than a lack of supply. For example, Switzerland has a gun ownership rate comparable to the US, and hardly any gun violence, because of cultural differences.
It is horribly easy to make dangerous guns – for example, an illegal gun factory was recently raided in Geelong, with a substantial stock of silenced Owen machine guns. http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/07/22/1090464799535.html The Owen Gun, which for a long time was the standard gun of the Australian forces, was designed to be mass produced with simple technology under restricted wartime conditions – so it is no challenge for a few competent machinists to make such a weapon.
All banning guns does is give confidence to outlaws, when they use a gun to terrorise a law abiding citizen.
50
The trouble is Eric, I agree with both you and Cookster.
KK
10
Agreed. Reinstating their previous assault weapons ban, and banning high capacity magazines will be a pretty worthwhile achievement politically IF they can bring it off. However, i have no idea how, or even if, they will go about getting the existing examples out of the community.
12
At least we know that most of the law abiding citizens will hand their guns in, albeit grudgingly.
That’ll just leave the crims with the guns then. Problem solved, well, for the crims anyway.
Tony.
102
it does have to be said though Tony that not many actual crims break in to schools and gun people down.
34
It not being the crims i am actually that worried about.
Its the nuttbaggers who just what to kill a load of people. They just want to kill, and with the kind of firearms that are so prevalent in the US they can do it easily.
But hey, arming teachers sounds like a great idea!!,, Until one of the overworked, underpaid sods goes off the deep end and starts shooting with their legal concealed weapon.
22
Catamon says:
Worthwhile politically?
Methinks you are part of the problem not part of the solution.
00
In spite of the tragedy at Sandy Hook, unfortunately you’re wrong because it’s being used as an excuse to disarm the people. It isn’t about safety; it’s about power and control.
They will tell you about the 100 thousand plus number of deaths from firearms every year but they won’t tell you that about 65% of those deaths are suicides. Only about 15% actually involve a criminal attack on the victim. That changes the meaning around a bit, doesn’t it?
It’s obviously very unpopular for me to stand up for what The Constitution actually says in plain language or what the Supreme Court has ruled about its Second Amendment. Yet that document is what we say defines who and what we are as a nation. Do we follow it or are we hypocrites? Frankly, I have had enough — more than enough — of a government that thinks The Constitution can be ignored, bent and broken for political convenience.
There are many gun free zones in the USA. Among them are our schools, where it is a crime to take any kind, size or description of firearm for any purpose. So guess where someone with a grudge and looking for satisfaction can go to pull off a killing spree like Sandy Hook without fear of opposition? I think you can answer that without my help.
The criminal will always go where there is the least danger. They may not be very wise but they aren’t stupid. No one messes with the strong man. They go after the weak and the unprepared. And many examples have already shown that if you ban a weapon the criminal will still have it. Only the defenseless victim will be without it.
If you want greater safety let me propose a good beginning — stop glorifying violence as a means of solving problems in our daily entertainment. Stop providing your children with video games. Take them off the Internet and give them back their parents.
I’ll say it again.
11
Ah another mindless rant from the moron, perhaps you can pass judgment as to why Americans are required to pay income tax (hint 16th amendment)? When you are ready Jb i dont want to rush you.
Overall i dont think it to be fair of people outside the US stating what should and should not be done, we need to remember the 2nd amendment is not so they can go hunting every summer. It is a fundamental right of every citizen to bear arms against a tyrannical government. After watching Boooosh wipe his arse with the constitution and Obama flushing it down the toilet i would have thought that time is very near. Therefore this is probably the worst time for them to give up their weapons.
Rather than take weapons away, i would suggest they stop giving weapons to people who take mind altering “prescription” medication, this like SSRI’s etc. Secondly i would suggest the whole country throw away their pills as big pharma is making a fortune with no benefit to the people.
Too many pills too many weapons.
10
If its so important, why wasn’t it in the original constitution, but only an amendment?
34
You’ve clearly never engineered a real product have you, you blithering idiot, otherwise you’d not ask that fín stupid question/.
21
John,
They intentionally did it that way, knowing it would provide John Brookes of Perth, Australia the opportunity to make another flippant, ill considered statement just for the fun of it. And you fell for it. 🙁
30
The incredibly wise Brookes says:
For the same reason they didn’t put free speech there.
I wish you’d stop Sandy Hooking speech John. Just because you have a high capacity keyboard. Maybe you should need a limit or a license.
Dumbass……
30
The Federal Government, State Governments and Police departments already have the power to confiscate illegal guns now, why don’t they start there?
00
There’s a little matter of knowing where they are so they can be confiscated. It’s called the Fourth Amendment and it requires probable cause before a search can be done. It means that without prior knowledge or good reason for suspicion that I have an illegal weapon you cannot search my home or me.
Fishing expeditions aren’t tolerated by the courts. They take the Fourth Amendment even more seriously than the Second.
20
Warren Burger the conservative former Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court on the second amendment:
History shows that giving civilians firearms offers no protection against government tyranny. This is because governments are always vastly better armed and organised than the people.
Many despotic states, including Iraq and the former USSR, have had high levels of private firearm ownership. In Iraq Saddam Hussein simply gassed his well armed opponents.
00
Greenpeace and the Australian Greens complained that Australia were seeking exemptions from counting carbon Emissions from natural disasters such as bush fires. Whereas the Green position was ’emissions are emissions’ and should be part of our targets.
Bushfires in Victoria alone are estimated to have released 70 million tonnes of CO2 in 2000 – 2009.
“Bushfires in Australia burn over 500,000 km² annually, mainly in the northern half of the country. They account for about 6-8% of global fire emissions and contribute significantly (about 3%) to the nation’s net GHG emissions.”
But one study tells us bush fires can account for up to 5% of Carbon Emissions in Australia in a bad year.
Yet another study claimed the bush fires in just January 2003 represented more than one-third of Australia’s total emissions for that year.
Knowing this, makes a joke of the announcement just a couple of months ago by the Tasmanian Labor-Greens Government “to secure rivers of green gold: $2.4 billion in carbon credits from protecting forests.”
In fact doesn’t the certainty and regularity of bush fires in Australia make any payment for ‘locking up’ carbon in forests about as viable as storing water in a paper bag? We can’t act all surprised if the paper bag leaks. But in the case of a forest, or other carbon farming initiatives such as the already on the rocks Henbury Station project to which the Federal Government already gave $9 million, what do we do when they don’t deliver, or go up in smoke?
That’s the problem with problem with proposing to give people money for doing nothing much. It’s very easy to give it away, very difficult to get it back, or actually make them do something constructive for it, if things don’t work out.
The sooner our government rejects any notions of carbon trading, carbon credits and participating in a global market which will actually create nothing but cost tax payers a great deal of money – the better. It would be far more responsible to use that money to improve land use, rehabilitate land, and develop excellent fire warning and fighting services.
180
Seems that bushfires and the consequent CO2 emitted are part of the natural cycle in Australia. Surely sweet old Mother E knows just how much CO2 is needed to be emitted to preserve her paradise? Perhaps the greens should seek to have a carbon tax on lightening given about half of our bushfires are started by lightening strikes.
“Bushfires devastated Victoria’s bushlands long before white settlement but the earliest recorded bushfire was in 1851, climaxing on 6 February or ‘Black Thursday’. By 11am that day the temperature had soared to 47 degrees celsius in the shade, conditions which saw the bush burn from Barwon Heads to Mount Gambier, South Australia, claiming at least 10 lives.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/dna/place-lancashire/plain/A127423
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” Bushfires devastated Victorias bushlands long before white settlement”
I’m not certain that is accurate Llew.Before European settlement, naturally occurring bushfires, due to lightening strikes,together with fires lit by the indigenous people for hunting purposes, were allowed to burn themselves out, and tended to keep the accumulation of dry ground fuel in check, so that devastating bushfires were quite rare. Along with settlement came a degree fire control where small outbreaks were often quickly extinguished, thus allowing ground fuel to build up year after year to the point where the situation becomes virtually uncontrollable once a fire gets going.
My own 45 acre bush block in the Yarra Ranges was burnt through in the 2009 Black Saturday fires.There are hundreds of dead gum trees now that are drying out and will fall down within a few years and would create more fuel for the disaster if I were to obey the Greens dictate to leave all this dead fallen timber alone, as it considered a habitat for termites, insects etc.
Stuff the Greens from now on. I’ll protect my life and those of my neighbors to the best of my ability and resources by keeping the build up of bushfire fuel to manageable levels. There’ll still be plenty of habitat left for for the creepy crawlies.
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William, having seen many fires lit by aborigines to help hunting, I can say with confidence that some took off at a rate that could not be saved by a snowflake from hell.
30
I don’t believe you are that old Geoff.With Indigenous ‘hunting’ fires,I was referring to pre European settlement, and AFAIK Aboriginals haven’t been permitted to light ‘hunting’ bushfires in the more common bushfire prone zones for many many decades, certainly not on the Eastern seaboard at any rate.
10
It is my understanding that bush fires are part of the natural ecology in Australia. Various insects require heat in order to move from the chrysalis stage to the adult stage, and those insects are necessary for pollination of the plants that make up the bush. It is a symbiotic relationship.
Stop bush fires, and you ultimately kill off all the bush and its dependent ecology, Once gone, it can never be reclaimed.
This is nothing but another excuse for a money-grab perpetuated by the uneducated, urban dwelling, greens (with a small “g”).
233
Not to mention the array of plant seeds that require fire to germinate.
120
Rereke,
I disagree, I think that the local community greens (small “g”) are general OK. It is the political Greens (large “G”) that are the real problem.
40
Yep, typed in haste, you are quite correct.
20
Rereke,
How could ANYBODY give you a thumbs down for this post?
What you have stated is KNOWN FACT – so just makes you wonder if trolls know even less than we think they do? (Unless of course it was done in error but that being the case they should have commented that it was an error).
Cheers mate,
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Rereke
can i recommend this book to you, apologies if you have read it, and others on this site.
The Biggest Estate on Earth
How Aborigines made Australia
Bill Gammage. ISBN:9781742377483 Allen and Unwin publishers.
“With details of land-management strategies from around Australia, The Biggest Estate on Earth rewrites the history of this continent, with huge implications for us today. Once Aboriginal people were no longer able to tend their country, it became overgrown and vulnerable to the hugely damaging bushfires we now experience. And what we think of as virgin bush in a national park is nothing of the kind.”
Should be compulsory reading for all greens and government departments of the environment, then a rigorous exam set……failure to get 100% and they loose their CAGW funded job.
31
Exactly Redress
The whole book is a bit too much at one sitting but the first few chapters convey the idea.
Modern Australian bush is NOT what the Aboriginals saw as their ideal living habitat.
They lived in a world which they controlled and molded to their own best interests and as a byproduct created, probably, a higher CO2 output in total in 1770 than we have now in 2012.
KK
20
It is an interesting book but like other papers on the subject, it doesn’t mention the fact that Aborigines were also responsible for the local and sometimes total extinction of different types of flora and fauna which could not cope with their ‘land management’ techniques.
Mega fauna and various other animals died out completely either through over hunting or their inability to easily relocate and survive predators when their territory was burnt out. Fauna which didn’t have or couldn’t develop fire resistant strategies also became extinct. Australia’s museum warehouses are chocka block full of records of plants and animals which were prevalent before the arrival of humans in Australia and co-existed for a time with Aborigines but had disappeared before the arrival of white-man. In the absence of any major climatic change in that time, hunting or ‘land management’ practices by Aborigines can be the only real suspect in the extinction process.
So while the book review states “…….early Europeans commented again and again that the land looked like a park, with extensive grassy patches and pathways, open woodlands, and abundant wildlife. Bill Gammage has discovered this was because Aboriginal people managed the land in a far more systematic and scientific fashion than most people have ever realized.” The latter part of the statement has no evidential support. The outcome of grassy plains surrounded by forests which happily supported the types of animals Aborigines liked to hunt and eat could merely have been a happy coincidence as long as you don’t think about the other animals and plants which did not survive their ‘land management’ and hunting techniques.
Personally I believe this is all part of the evolutionary process, I don’t hold humans outside the evolutionary process, so I don’t have an issue with it. But the topic usually goes un-mentioned for fear of breaching the myth that Aborigines were environmentally friendly land managers.
Examples of relevant reading: http://www.pnas.org/content/105/34/12150.abstract and http://www.adelaide.edu.au/news/news37722.html and http://www.pnas.org/content/99/23/14624.full
30
And then we come back to the definition of “Environmentally Friendly”.
KK
10
Jaymez
The point I think is that if we are going to lock up huge tracts of forest and saltbush plains in national parks, then we need to manage them in the same manner as they were being managed by the aborigines when we [Europeans] arrived.
Once we do this, the wildfires we see today will become a thing of the European past management.
10
The Tassie governement must be wishing that they shut their mouths..
a sorry day for Dunally. They are NOT protecting house, or forests. !
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Given the preponderance of little green beings with very small craniums in Tasmania, there will no doubt be a hue and cry about that awful global warming and what it did to all those houses.
The Met off ice is saying that the 41.8 in Hobart is a record “since records were kept” in 1873. I distinctly remember 42 in February 2009. Can anyone remind me of the URL for the “unrevised” temperature records of the BOM?
BTW, the Red Queen’s car has apparently been pinged for eight driving offences in the last year. The PMO won’t release the name of the driver. Emerson perhaps? Or the Queen bee herself?
70
These are the raw data records for 2009 for Hobart (Ellerslie Rd). There was a 38.3C in Dec of that year but nothing approaching 42C in Feb.
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=122&p_display_type=dailyDataFile&p_startYear=2009&p_c=-1768284031&p_stn_num=094029
10
Thanks Ian, perhaps that temp was at Ross in the Northern Midlands.
10
It’s interesting to see that there were quite a few Hobart temperatures in the 40’s in the late 19th/ early 20th centuries e.g. Feb 1889 – 40.1; Dec 1897 – 40.6; Jan 1900 – 40.6 etc. etc.
The previous highest record in the data for Ellerslie Rd. (Hobart) is 40.8 in Jan 1976 although I seem to recall a highest temperature at Hobart of 41.8 in 1881 it apparently pre-dates the Ellerslie Rd records.
Notwithstanding the new record history seems to indicate that there could be other factors than anthropogenic CO2 that cause high temps in Hobart.
BTW – in typing this I tried to abbreviate anthropogenic and the spell-checker returned anthrax !!! Scary
20
When the world in general has been coming out of something called “Little Ice Age”, one would expect a bit of warming, and the occasional new maximum temperature, (especially when the temp record only exist for a probably less than half of that period), otherwise, the world wouldn’t be coming out of the LIA , would it !!
The world has been warming for a couple of hundred year at least .. THANK GOODNESS !!!
10
Jaymez,
How does one handle the situation when some of the trees that were destroyed were receiving a carbon credit subsidy for sequestering CO2? Like you, I agree that there are many ways to redress the situation, let’s hear some more. My favourite is that tree carbon sequestration subsidies are a scam in any case as the trees will inexorably return their CO2 to the air over short or long times. Your storage of water in a brown paper bag is a lovely analogy.
40
The obvoius answer is that the people who got the carbon credits have to pay them back, with, say 20% interest. 🙂
10
per annum , of course.
00
Geoff, I say this only slightly tongue in cheek!
If the financial interests who are keen on pushing carbon trading give this much thought I am sure they will come up with a solution along the following lines.
After doing some actuarial calculations and the obligatory computer modelling, they will suggest that a certain percentage be added to every carbon credit sold or issued. This dollar amount would then go into special carbon credit insurance funds which of course they would manage for a fee.
There would also be armies of carbon credit loss assessors in the new ‘green economy’ not to mention a corresponding number of government bureaucrats to oversee all of this activity.
After a natural disaster, or deliberately set fire an assessor would go out and calculate how much of the sequestered carbon had been lost. Then sufficient funds would be paid from the relevant carbon credit insurance fund (provided that particular fund manager hasn’t suffered from imprudent investing and lost all the money – after taking out hefty management fees), to replant the number of necessary trees to recapture the carbon credits lost.
You see it’s easy!
00
Bush fires are effectively zero emission. Every bit of CO2 emitted had previously been removed from the atmosphere by plants.
So anyone, whether green, or any other colour, who thinks that the direct emissions from bush fires should be counted, is silly.
This is different from deliberate bush fires to clear land for other uses.
Mind you, Jaymez is right, if the carbon sequestered in the forest has been used in some carbon accounting scheme, then any such accounting entry would need to be reversed.
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“Every bit of CO2 emitted had previously been removed from the atmosphere by plants.”
umm.. just like COAL !!
53
….and oil and gas…though over many hundreds of millions of years.
10
That’s either plain ignorant or extremely sloppy.
First; plants cannot exist with CO2 levels below about 120 ppm; so not every bit can possibly be removed.
Second; there is a whole lot of CO2 dissolved in the waters of the oceans; accounting for a whole lot that’s not been removed from the atmosphere by plants.
Third; CO2 dissolved in water was absorbed from the water by “plants” and not the atmosphere, ending up in the food chain and eventually sequestered as e.g. carbonates.
and … there’s a bunch of other stuff that happens such as abiotic processes in soils absorbing atmospheric CO2.
31
JB,
If bushfires are essentially zero emission, you might want to dig and report why the Northern Territory electricity supplier in Darwin payed out $millions over the last decade or so to reward aborigines for lighting ‘cooler’ fires.
00
Being a UK-ite, I stand ready to be corrected, but wasn’t the Second Amendment phrased in the context of a state militia? I believe the text is: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Now I’m all in favour of people being able to own firearms for hunting and for sport. Indeed I once owned a beautiful Lee Enfield Ensign which I could have kept at home, but I chose to keep (far more securely) in the armoury at the Shooting Club to which I belonged. And I think the current UK legislation which makes it illegal to own a pistol (other than a black-powder one) is absurd.
But I do not understand why people should own and keep at home military weapons such as machine guns or automatic rifles and pistols. I certainly wouldn’t have been happy to bring home some of the weapons I used when I was in the Army! Maybe in a shooting club, but not at home or carrying them around. Back in the eitheenth century, the situation for militiamen (both in US and UK) was quite different: the weapons then were, frankly, hugely less dangerous – and also much more difficult to use effectively.
In summary, I don’t understand why it should not be illegal for a person to own and carry around the kinds of automatic weapons provided to today’s military. But perhaps someone would care to enlighten me?
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I’ll try to enlighten you.
In the USA it is illegal for a person to own and carry around the kinds of automatic weapons provided to today’s military. However, in some states it is possible, but difficult, to own a military style automatic weapon manufactured prior to 1968.
If your understanding of USA laws is different, then you are the victim of main stream media propaganda.
30
I thought the Bushmaster was a slightly modified M16?
03
If your government becomes a tyranny, if you lose the rule of law, and the abuse of the public by those in authority becomes commonplace – how do you hold them to account if you are disarmed.
20
In US Law, the term “machine gun” includes “automatic” firearms, which at base is defined as more than one round from a single trigger squeeze (ie burst-mode). These have been restricted for decades Federally, and banned in some States. It is possible to obtain lawfully; I would refer to a simple search for requirements. Also as above, except the date is transposed; 1986 is the correct date.
The so-called “debate”, however, is over “semi-automatic”. If you read or listen to what is reported, you will notice that phrase has been used in nearly all articles and discussions for the past few weeks. You may also notice the embarassingly incorrect or awkward usage of “semi-automatic”. That is now being pushed as a scarey phrase. I do not remember the last time an “automatic” firearm was used in a crime, though my guess would lean toward gang-usage.
As for the 2nd Amendment, if you want the lawyerly response, it has to do with a dependent and independent clause. You can look that up if you are interested. Basically I read the militia portion as a simple statement. It can always be Amended; however, They wish to mold the Document to mean what they want. I have no sympathy for disregarding the Rule of Law as it is written, and intended. So They can bleep bleep bleepin bleep.
I understand the era is different. Banning “guns” appears to be a cure; yet crime would not cease; hand-to-hand combat would be required and the aggressor would usually be the dominant actor; we are the front-lines to any event such as invasion, societal breakdown, mass-loss of electricity, and just as, if not more, important is the check on government. As unlikely as any of those are, life and history teach us otherwise. There are, by some estimates, 200-300million guns in the US. If there was no logical fallacy perpetrated, we would not have 300million persons living here.
The collectivists wish to disarm the populace as that is the last line of defense against their intentions. The EU is communistic, the UN is the same, China is attempting fascism in order to acquire what is needed for regional dominance, Turkey and the MB are consolidating toward a caliphate. The US is bombarded by woe-is-me tales daily and subversion of our Constitution (as there seems to be no political resistance at all). If we fall, global administration will be guaranteed…shared misery.
An armed individual is a citizen; and unarmed individual is a subject.
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being a Uk ite you don’t actually get a say in what our friends in the US do. BTW didn’t your people and theirs, a while ago exchange words about this… and bullets?
10
A little context for those who haven’t studied this question:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”.
Now, does this mean that “the people” as in individuals, have the right to bear arms? Or does it mean that only people who are members of, “a well regulated Militia”, have the right to bear arms? That was the debate when I worked in the states in the 1980’s.
I understand that this was resolved in 2008, by a Supreme Court decision in the case of the District of Columbia v. Heller. In its judgement, the court reasoned that the first two phrases applied to the purpose of the amendment, but did not limit or qualify the second tow phrases in the clause.
The historic rationale for this debate, stems from the fear that a Government of the day could order military force against members of the population, if they were unarmed. This fear was very real to the Founding Fathers because the French Revolution was still within living memory, and had somewhat of a reprise in the American War of Independence, and the British navel blockades, and the American declaration of war against the British, towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
With the increase in regulation, and regulatory enforcement policies in the United States, it is argued that the risk of the Government taking force against the population is just as real today as it was in the late 18th Century.
Please correct me if any of the above is incorrect.
60
An addenda:
The original Militia actually became organised as an arm of the US military, in the form of the National Guard (George W Bush chose to do military service as a pilot in the Guard, thereby avoiding the Draft).
The National Guard have actually used force against American citizens in the past, in the form of firing tear gas and rubber bullets at students during the university campus “riots” (nee protests) during the Vietnam war.
That doesn’t seem to be mentioned today, at all.
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Do NOT forget the 4 Students that were shot down at Kent State Uni in Ohio.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnOoNM0U6oc
30
Not exactly the case. The “original” militia was an informal citizens’ army very much NOT attached to the Federal Government. We could debate how the National Guard was formed from independent State militias, but the bottom line is: the Founders of the US did not believe in putting all the power into the hands of the Feds. It’s clear in context that military weapons as good as any the government had were to be a part of the citizens’ army. If the Second Amendment falls, the rest will soon fall, too. All power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
40
Aside from an extra comma in your quote of the Second Amendment you have it exactly right.
00
Things like this happen with uncanny frequency. I hope it helps to understand the desire to keep a gun in the house.
If this woman had needed another shot she would have been out of luck, a problem that is mitigated considerably by semiautomatic pistols with a magazine capacity of as many as 10 rounds rather than the six you have with a revolver. And if necessary the semiautomatic can be reloaded in just 2 or 3 seconds instead of the 20, 30 or more required to reload a revolver. These are very real considerations if you ever need the gun for defense.
You don’t see nearly all the incidents like this one on your evening news because the media is usually on the gun control side and these successes make their cause look bad.
10
With a speed loader it takes no longer to reload a revolver than a semi.
00
Our all singing Labor Minister Craig Emerson decided to put pen to paper to explain 13 reasons why Australians should be optimistic. You can read that here: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/australians-increasing-optimism-in-the-economy-is-soundly-based/story-e6frg6zo-1226547739244?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheAustralianOpinion+%28The+Australian+%7C+Opinion%29
My response to Craig Emersons grasping at straws:
1. First, the GFC was largely a northern hemisphere phenomenon. The Asian Financial Crisis which the Howard/Costello Government dealt with without a mining boom hit Australia’s economy much harder than the GFC.
2. Second, Australia’s inflation rate is low because economic activity in Australia is low. Unemployment is high and businesses and consumers are not buying.
3. Third, the cut in the Reserve Bank’s key interest rate from 6.75 per cent at the end of the previous government to just 3 per cent is a desperate attempt by the reserve bank to stimulate the economy. However any savings in mortgage are significantly offset by the dramatic decline in the real value of homes those mortgages were taken out on.
4. Fourth, national savings have returned to more sustainable levels. The period of the mid-2000s – when households spent more than they earned – was abnormal. Now the household savings ratio has returned to its normal average of about 10 per cent because people are scared about the future under the incompetent Labor Government.
5. Fifth, unemployment is a little more than 5 per cent, except if you add the mothers who want to return to the work force but can’t or the hundreds of thousands who are underemployed at just a few hours a week who don’t count in the statistics. Then the real unemployment rate is closer to 10% and up to 20% in younger age groups. Unfortunately few people see any improvement on the horizon.
6. Sixth, the federal budget is in a mess. We are spending $100 Billion a year more than the Howard Government, Revenues are up nearly 50% since the Howard years, yet we have managed to spend the surplus, and blow the debt out to $250 B and growing. The promised 2012-13 surplus is most likely going to be a deficit of at least $10B – $20B. A surplus the following year is unlikely since we have no idea how we will fund the NDIS, Gonski and a range of other announcements. The NBN is an off budget white elephant and we are putting no money away to pay for the growing unfunded Federal Government Super Scheme which has a further liability of at least $77 B currently and will grow to $100B by 2016. Yes our debt is lower than The US or Ireland or Greece or Italy etc, but their debt levels were similar to ours less than a decade ago. It doesn’t take long to become an economic disaster and we are well on the way.
7. Seventh, international rating agencies rated the US, Iceland, The UK and other financial basket cases as AAA before the GFC!
8. Eighth, China’s economy is resuming its rapid expansion, its manufacturing output growing at its fastest rate in 19 months. But without a recovery in the markets China sells to this is virtually meaningless.
9. Ninth, the US fiscal cliff has been kicked down the road a couple of months, that is all. The US will still spend three Trillion Dollars and only get in receipts of $2 Trillion over the next 12 months. Total debt will rise above $16 Trillion and there is no believable means that the US will ever be able to repay that debt unless they aggressively print money and go through a sharp fast period of devaluation.
10. Tenth, the bad news out of Europe has subsided. Ha ha ha! What news is Emerson watching? 24% unemployment in Spain and Portugal, 16% in Greece and Italy, 14% in France, The only thing keeping rioters out of the streets is the freezing weather!
11.Eleventh, investment in Australia is at 50-year highs. While the mineral price peak has passed, the prices of iron ore and coking coal have recovered some of their 2012 losses as China’s economy expands at a faster rate than last year. Australia’s mining investment is about to peak but that is done for a purpose – to expand production and exports. Australia’s minerals and energy production peak is a long way into the future. Wayne Swan told us the complete opposite as a reason why revenues were not as high as expected because prices are lower than expected. The investment pipeline is shrinking by $Billions every day as project after project is called off or delayed. Emerson needs to keep up to date. $50B in resource projects cancelled just the quarter ended in December.
12.Twelfth, Australia has already put a price on carbon which has been a complete wast of financial and economic effort. Contrary to all IPCC Climate Models, there has been no statistical warming for the last 16 years which falsifies the theory that man made CO2 emissions cause rapidly rising temperatures as carbon emissions have increased by 58% since 1990 levels.
13. Thirteenth, productivity growth, which has been achieved in Australia is almost totally related to the mining and agricultural sectors over recent years with almost every other sector struggling. These sectors are significantly exposed to global competition, yet it is these sectors which the Government have decided to choke with regulations and taxes.
Not much to be optimistic about unless there is a change of Government.
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Excellent critique of Emerson’s idiocy. Bear in mind, his intellectual capacity is so limited he once had an affair with the Red Queen!
You didn’t mention the horrific attacks on basic freedoms, especially the freedom of speech.
I for one don’t think that any mob could be this incompetent. The other possibility of course is that the outcome that you outline is their intent.
190
The only thing governments can do is to foster economic activity. In other words to get out of the way of private enterprise which is the driver of a country’s wealth creation.
Excellent criticism of this present meddling ALP government that is run essentially by those who have never been usefully employed before or after entering politics but were mostly union officials none of whom could successfully run a corner store.
Emerson can’t sing either.
170
“Its as simple as that isn’t it?”
Yes as long as the present government doesn’t complicate it, aka known as stuffing it up, by getting involved in the process.
70
I’ve closed down my business as there is just not enough work to keep me going.
Jumping in my car tomorrow and heading from Brisbane to Perth. Commence a position in eight days as a construction project manager. No FIFO or anything to do with the mining industry.
Been in business for decades and have never experienced such a long drawn out downturn. There is just no confidence out there…thanks Gillard!
90
Fifth, unemployment is a little more than 5 per cent,
I think the other point to take with this stat is that many of these ‘jobs’ are a LOT lower paying then they were 5 or so years ago.
I was retrenched in late 2011 after Gillard and friends destroyed my industry and while I am technically working again now, it is not in my profession of choice and is certainly paying a LOT less.
And if people like me don’t have spending money then retail and hospitality are going to suffer.
Like has been said by others, if there is any reason for Australians to be optimistic in 2013, then it is because it is election year.
30
MudCrab – yes I did miss this important group of people!
10
On the subject of bush fires….only a bit OT, I hope everyone in Tasmania is OK. I know Blackswan lives there.
Swanny, if you’re OK let us know how things are. Haven’t seen you posting recently.
10
I have an idea to make the MET office totally self funded which also allows Julia to scrap the Carbon Tax.
Its horse racing!
What the CSIRO, Government climate zealots and the MET Office need to do is SIMPLIFY their modelling techniques to just five variables. Weight of jockey and penalty;
horses historic form; the form of all competitors; track condition, and distance to the finish line.
For these guys it should be a breeze. For a start they can take comfort that they only have to forecast the future to less than a couple of minutes rather than years for instance. There currently exists a distinct correlation between the MET’s forecast accuracy of weather patterns over time and its ability to get these right.
Just imagine how well they will do with their government funded “Cray Computers” if they put them to use predicting the future in mere seconds instead of millennia!
The racing industry would be distraught of course but hey, we all like giving the bookies a caning? All those winnings would eliminate the need for the carbon tax and research grants and simultaneously deliver a huge boost in confidence to the community that the so called “experts” were in fact able to predict the future!
By a process of incremental creep they could advance forward from predicting the time it will take for each horse to run 1,200 metres (say three minutes or so)to forecast hours then days and even years (five variables for a horse race instead of the million or so variables that affect weather).
Its as simple as that isn’t it?
20
Good response Jaymez.
Of course the sad thing is that it is Australian politicians who get mentioned in the international news.
That is why a large proportion of the world continues to think of Aussies as being very loud, a bit dim, and inebriated before lunch time.
We Kiwis know that at least one of those is not true. 🙂
71
Yeah well Rereke us Aussiees r BETTER AT EVERYTHING THAN U KIWIIS.
So ha ha Oh bugger! I spilled me beer on the mouse thingy ….. hang on
Ahh that’s better now me pointy thing goes round and round
ANYWAYS, I SEEN MAPS WHERE NZ dozen exist, so U GUYS CAN’T TALK. Why are there squiggly red lines under some words?
{insert smiley face here} Hmm that dozen work, Oh bugga, he’s so smart he can figure it out.
Hmm time for a morning snooze
80
The maps where NZ has vanished are artifacts of the Wizard Of Canterbury,who retired to OZ?
Great foresight on his part, when agenda 21 kicks in these will be the official UN worldmaps.
Under the rule of bureaucracy, if its not official it does not exist.
Sort of like the IPCC models versus real world measurements.
20
Oh Oh That’s what happens when one gets involved thinking of the ALP. #5.3 should be a #6.x, a response to the excellent #6 suggestion.
“Its as simple as that isn’t it?”
Yes as long as the present government doesn’t complicate it, aka known as stuffing it up, by getting involved in the process.
30
Twenty four hours ago I sat pondering the latest gift from the Green Dream mafia in Tasmania.
Once again a town, Dunalley, and residents have been devastated by the lack of rational sensible precautions against bush fire despite recent highlighting of the issue with fires in inner Sydney suburbia only a few weeks ago.
Communities seem to be mesmerised by the idea that Fire occurs as a result of Global Warming and that the only solution is bigger and faster helicopter firefighting equipment and lots of rallying around and Government Disaster Relief funds after the event.
This is a lie, and attitudes towards bush management over the last forty years have been a strong departure from what was once normal procedure.
There is little doubt that most of the deaths and property damage and ensuing human pain in Australia in the last ten years, are a direct result of the ban on back Burning during colder months.
This “Emperor’s New Clothes” style of government must end with a return to rational behaviour which acknowledges the reality of nature, not some Green pipe dream.
KK
151
Hi KK
I picked up this story.
http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2013/01/04/369647_tasmania-news.html
and this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEvKn2h6bVs
Any more news?
I remember the tragic fires of Victoria were made worse by the inability to fell trees near to houses. Do similar rules apply is Tasmania
70
KK
Gave you a “Thumbs up” but you, like many others, are confusing “Back burning” with “Hazard reduction”.
Doug
50
Hi Doug
I appreciate that as a farmer you may see specific differences but as a layperson with a strong Non Green interest in the environment all I was trying to do was get a point across.
Whatever type of fire it is is designed to reduce undergrowth infill between trees and homes so that there is less to burn later.
This distinction sounds a bit like the ever going argument on the Slayers thread about the definition of GH Effect but I guess when it’s law that damages your income you sit up and take notice?
I know that farmers have been particularly hard hit by crazy laws about farm management and hope to see some common sense return to lift the green burden and help you guys soon.
Since you mentioned it is there a politically correct term for using fire instead of weed-scrub and grass herbicide/killer to make Australia safe?
KK 🙂
00
KK
Don’t know of a politicaly correct term. Generaly we “put the red steer in”.
And this is where the problem starts. The “atmosphere” of fear and restriction generated by the media and supported by the authorities causes managers to not do it …. or “sneek” and fires get out of hand.
Sorry to be pedantic but it makes argueing difficult if we aren’t using the same definition. (Though I’m certainly not argueing with you.) Back burning is a last minute effort where as hazard reduction is done months before with plenty of organisation and unfortunatly with plenty of tape to get in the way.
Doug
10
OK
Thanks Doug
Can see the important difference between the two.
I think I got the “red steer”.
As a 14 year old can always remember going down a pass out near Mount Victoria in the Blue Mountains.
Going down the cliff we came across a small plaque near the top that marked the spot where two bush walkers had been overcome by fire.
Hazzard reduction wouldn’t have saved this pair but it was a warning to me that Australia can be a dangerous place.
In recent months we have had bad fires in the burbs both in Newcastle and Sydney.
Both of these were out of control and there is absolutely no reason for getting this close to danger when there is a sensible alternative.
KK 🙂
00
http://www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/global/climate2.htm#global_cooling_heat-wave
Does global cooling cause heat-waves in summer? A vexing question.
40
Since we don’t have global cooling, its a pretty silly question.
17
soon
10
US budget and debt ceiling explanaiton
This puts things into a much better perspective.
Lesson # 1:
* U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
* Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000
* New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
* National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
* Recent budget cuts: $ 38,500,000,000
Let’s now remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget:
* Annual family income: $21,700
* Money the family spent: $38,200
* New debt on the credit card: $16,500
* Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
* Total budget cuts so far: $38.50
Got It ?????
Lesson # 2:
Here’s another way to look at the Debt Ceiling:
Let’s say, You come home from work and find there has been a sewer backup in your neighbourhood….and your home has sewage all the way up to your ceilings.
What do you think you should do ……
Raise the ceilings, or remove the shit?
150
Rod – Great post and there was more that I received from the original email as per below.
Lesson 3:
Australia today FROM ROSS GREENWOOD
Quoted by: Ross Greenwood of Money News..
Right now the Federal Government is at pains to tell everyone – including us the mug-punters and the International Monetary Fund, that it will not exceed its own, self-imposed, borrowing limits.
How much? $200 billion. And here’s a worry.
If you work in a bank’s money market operation; or if you are a politician; the millions turn into billions and it rolls off the tip of the tongue a bit too easily.
But every dollar that is borrowed, some time, has to be repaid. By you, by me and by the rest of the country.
Just after 5 o’clock tonight I did a bit of math for Jason Morrison (Sydney radio presenter). But it’s so staggering its worth repeating now.
First thought; Gillard, Swan, Wong, before that Rudd, all of the Labor Cabinet, call these temporary borrowings, a temporary deficit.
Remember Those Words: Temporary Deficit.
The total Government debt will end up around $200 billion. So here’s a very basic calculation.. I used a home loan calculator to work
it out….. it’s that simple.. $200 billion is $2 hundred thousand million.
The current 10 year Government bond rate is 4.67 per cent. I worked the loan out over a period of 20 years. Now here’s where it gets scary…. Really scary.
The repayments on $200 billion, come to more than one and a quarter billion dollars – every month – for 20 years.
It works out we – as taxpayers – will be repaying $15.4 billion in interest and principal every year..
$733 for every man woman and child – every year. The total interest bill over the 20 years is – get this – $108 billion.
Remember, this is a Government, that just 4 years ago, had NO debt. NO debt.
In fact, it had enough money to create the Future Fund, to pay the future liabilities of public servants’ superannuation, and it had enough to stick $20 billion into the Building Australia Fund…
A note was sent to me which explains that the six leading members of the Government, from Ms Gillard down, have a collective work experience of 181 years, but only 13 in the private sector.
If you take out of those 13 years the number that were spent as trade union lawyers, 11, only two years were spent in the private sector.
So out of those 181 years:
– no years spent running their own business
– no years spent starting their own business
– no years spent as a director of a family business or a company
– no years as a director of a public company
– no years in a senior position in a public company
– no years in a senior position in a private company
– no years working in corporate finance
– no years in corporate or business restructuring
– no years working in or with a bank
– no years of experience in the capital markets
– no years in a stock-broking firm
– no years in negotiating debt facilities with banks
– no years running a small business
– no years at the World Bank or IMF or OECD
– no years in Treasury or Finance.
But these people have plunged Australia into unprecedented debt. Well, in a way you can’t blame them. It’s clear the electorate did not do their homework, because the Government is there by right.
Ah, but they are Labor and people vote for them because Labor is good for the working family – right???
So what are you going to do about it???”
REALLY concerns me to think that they may even have a REMOTE chance of getting voted back in – who the f*%k would vote for these pretending CLOWNS?
Cheers,
120
Thanks Popeye.
That message needs to be spread as wide as possible.
People take note of money when it concerns them.
KK
10
Hi Rod,
That’s the same analogy that I use – however you have to also chuck in the “unfunded promises” – I.e. social security, medicare, and medicade.
For the family budget analogy – its another $1.2M in promises to look after your extended family in retirement and pay for all their medical bills.
All on $21K (and a printing press…).
10
Judith Curry picked up another bit of nonsense. Growing obesity is due to global warming.
My take on this deep insight is that it is another, extreme, example of ignoring magnitudes and ignoring a host of other, far more plausible, hypotheses.
http://manicbeancounter.com/2013/01/05/are-climate-change-and-obesity-linked/
40
C02 increases good for the planet, based on evidence , not models !!!
http://www.thegwpf.org/matt-ridley-fossil-fuels-greened-planet/
62
If you are going to make erroneous posts about the supposed benefits of carbon dioxide you should at least write CO2 rather than the erroneous C02.
01
So, the other day I read the banks were going to lower interest rates without he direction of the RBA. Reporters were hailing this as great as it will save people $X on their morgage rates.
But why don’t I trust this?
Sure, the banks lower rates once out of line of the RBA, to sucker us all in to their kindness, then I guarantee the banks will raise rates the frequently out of line of the RBA.
This is the banks detaching themselves from the RBA. This is the banks taking control. They have prooved often enough they are the ones in control by not passing on rate cuts.
40
Excerpts from:
“Our Banking System Operates With Zero Reserves”
http://barnabyisright.com/2011/06/24/our-banking-system-operates-with-zero-reserves/
There’s only $53 billion in actual cash notes issued by the RBA. In total. For the whole country.
Versus $986 billion in Deposits that businesses and private citizens you and I think we have in the banks.
That’s about one (1) actual dollar in face value, for every eighteen dollars fifty (18.50) that we falsely imagine is deposited in the bank under our name.
If the money lent to you by banksters was only the money they had on deposit from other customers, then how would you explain the fact that (according to the RBAs Bank Lending by Sector Australian households owed $1.18 Trillion to the banks at December 2011 (including $721 billion for Owner-Occupier housing) and Australian businesses owed a further $773 billion?
$53 billion in legal tender cash notes issued by the RBA.
$1.95 Trillion in bank loans to households and businesses at interest.
That’s $36.80 in bank loans at interest for every $1 in actual cash printed by the RBA*.
It is time to ban Usury; usury in the original meaning of the word.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury
And if our elected representatives refuse to act against the banksters interest, in our best interest?
Then the following essay outlines my suggestion for one way to beat the bastards at their own game –
“The Peoples NWO: Every Man His Own Central Banker”
http://barnabyisright.com/2011/07/07/the-peoples-nwo-every-man-his-own-central-banker/
Some may correctly point out that Australian banks do not only take deposits from Australians; they also borrow money from abroad, in order to lend in Australia. Indeed, this gives rise to the ever-controversial topic of the banks claiming that increases in the cost (ie, interest rate) they are paying for wholesale money they have borrowed from abroad supposedly justifies their refusal to pass on the full value of official interest rate cuts by the RBA. Nevertheless, the central point of this article remains unchallenged. According to the RBA at December 2011, AFIs (All Financial Intermediaries) held $308.6 billion in Offshore Borrowings a very far cry from the $1.95 Trillion in loans-at-interest to Aussie households and businesses. More important to note is that these Offshore Borrowings too, are mere electronic digits, not actual cash.”
30
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/01/weekend-unthreaded-7/#comment-1218635
10
A study of American Colonial history will reveal that Benjamin Franklin went to England as a representative of the Colonies.
The English officials asked how it was the Colonies managed to collect enough taxes to build poor houses, and how they were able to handle the great burden of caring for the poor. Franklin’s reply was most revealing: “We have no poor houses in the Colonies, and if we had, we would have no one to put in them, as in the Colonies there is not a single unemployed man, no poor and no vagabonds.” Think long and hard about this. In the American colonies before the American Revolution, there was “not a single unemployed man, no poor and no vagabonds”. — no one on Welfare, no one on Social Security, no homeless, no income tax, no alphabet agencies, No IRS, BATF, FBI, DEA, CIA, HEW, OSHA, SBA, and on and on and on to provide for the “general welfare” of our villages, towns, cities and states. How did Benjamin Franklin explain this to the British officials of his day?
How would he explain it to today’s lawyers, judges, politicians and other government officials? “It is because, in the Colonies, we issue our own paper money. We call it Colonial Script, and we issue only enough to move all goods freely from the producers to the Consumers; and as we create our money, we control the purchasing power of money, and have no interest to pay.”
-Benjamin Franklin
This system guarantees HONEST MONEY. It was not controlled by a private corporation with a monopoly on the credit of the nation as it is today.
There was no inflation or deflation, as long as the MONEY SUPPLY WAS KEPT EQUAL TO THE VALUE OF GOODS AND SERVICES TO BE PRODUCED AND MOVED (distributed).
http://kamron.com/economics/people_who_opposed_the_frb.htm
http://kamron.com/Liberty/colonial_script.htm
50
Hi Kevin
Sounds too sensible to be implemented anywhere in 2013.
KK
30
Heard someone talking about why the big banks were working together. Apparently one organisation owns around 15% of each of the big 4. Enough of a stake for them to force the banks to act as a cartel and thus increase the returns of this investor.
No idea if its true.
21
The ‘one’ organisation which would come close to that figure would be the Industry Super funds collectively which are essentially Trade Union Controlled!
10
Thought you might be interested in a movie due to be released some in the US. It is sure to be inflicted in Australia where it will cause some issues.
The movie is Promised Land with Matt Damon. Damon saves a community from naughty Frackers that want to destroy the town. He shows a group of school kids how they are going to burn to death when the ground catches fire. I have only seen the shorts and don’t think I will bother. One good thing is the receipts on the opening weekend were crook. Only hope this movie sinks without trace.
52
Also of note: the making of the movie was paid for by the Saudis.
10
I share emails on a daily basis with a friend who lives in Stockton in California. On Wednesday last, he sent me an email with an article about gun control in the U.S.
It was long, hey, it was very long, but it was so well worth reading. After some searching, I located the site where the original came from, and I contacted him, and asked permission to copy the article across to the site I contribute at.
He replied that would be OK as that was his intent, to get the word out. He also mentioned that the article had been Posted at his site for just on ten days, and he’d had more than half a million visits to read the article since posting, it had been copied to a large number of other sites, taken by some media outlets, and sent around the U.S. and the World for that fact via emails.
This guy is an author and also an accountant, but for a long number of years he has been a firearms instructor, so he’s coming from a background of actually having some idea of what he’s talking about.
So, while the article is indeed very long, it is so well worth reading, even if, like me, you have no real interest in firearms. He makes some really good points.
While this is the link to the article copied across to my home site, I have the link back to his home site and also his profile as well.
An Opinion On Gun Control an article by Larry Correia
Tony.
101
Should be a “must read” for anyone with an opinion about guns!
51
It should be required study in Washington, DC. Too bad they’ll miss it completely for the most part.
31
It’s odd how the effective, simple, free option is so often avoided.
People on FB have tried to rip me a new one for suggesting the same thing.
10
Tony,
As usual you have raised the level of debate by including information that is relevant, well thought out, well communicated and using data gained at the “coal face” of the issue involved.
I agree with Larry Correla completely and it is entirely compatible with my earlier comments on this thread. Owning a gun means owning the responsibility that comes with it. Anyone who demonstrates that acceptance of the responsiblity by getting training and instruction in the use, care and safety of a firearm is entitled to have one in my book.
Criminals will always ignore the law. That is why they are criminals. With a good training infrastructure, the crazies have a good chance of being spotted before they get the chance to kill lots of people.
10
The banks (well most of them) are just business people. The politicians are attacking the banks because they are a convenient scapegoat. You’re being robbed blind people, but not by the bankers – at least, not by the bankers I care about. I was until recently working for the banks, directly with the traders, and had an inside view of what was happening. What happened is nothing like what you’ve been told.
Read your Atlas Shrugged http://www.mises.ch/library/Rand_AtlasShrugged.pdf – think of Orren Boyle and Hank Rearden as the managers of different banks, and you will have a much clearer idea of what really happened. In the story, what do you think the politicians told the people every time Wesley Mouch handed a new bank bailout to Orren Boyle? They would have told them “we can’t let Orren Boyle’s business fail, it would cause too much economic damage”. What happened every time the crooked politicians created a new regulation to steal more profits from Rearden? The people were told “we need better and stronger regulation to stabilise the economy and ensure future prosperity”. Wake up and smell the napalm people, your politicians are thieves – and they’re laughing at the gullible fools who let them get away with it.
When they have finished looting the banks, the politicians will focus on attacking a new industry. The new focus of their attack is obvious – after the banks, the mining sector is the next plum ripe for the plucking.
22
Hi Eric
Yes, perhaps the term Bankster sends our attention in the wrong direction.
It is not so much the people working at the banks.
Probably the correct target of our curiosity should be the Bank Owners and their Politician companions.
KK
30
If the politicians were doing the robbing – where are their $billions?
Follow the money – not enough of it sticks to the politicians for them to be the “thieves”.
Tools yes – thieves no.
20
Amazing how many retired PMs and other senior politicians buy Sydney Harbour houses, and win lucrative consultancy deals. Of course, its because of their contacts right? Nothing to do with any favours done while they were in office.
00
Well paid tools, but that’s not where the big bucks are.
00
Who is looting who?
The stuff we call money is monopoly money, it represents debt, the opposite of money!
Australians work and create value. Banks do no work and create debt.
All of that which is of value is produced by Australian workers who with their signatures, pledges, promises to pay etc, receive the Banks debt issuance called money, which they create out of nothing.
The Commonwealth of Australia is a chapter 11 bankrupt and a servant to the Babylonian money lenders.
The Reserve Banks issuance of interest bearing debt ‘money’ is not backed by gold; it is backed by the creators of real wealth, you and me! The Australian people are in fact the Real Bank!
As all that is called money is issued as a debt, how then is it possible to pay a debt with a debt?
Man makes Goods, Banks make Money [debts] out of nothing!
While we, the people, have at great cost throughout our lives created the real wealth and give services, we have permitted an anti-Christian institution — the Banking System, which creates nothing but debt money [ Financial Credit and Ledger Entries ] at practically no cost, and lends it out at interest on the wealth we have created and propose to create.
By so doing they possess a debt or lien, or actual ownership of all the wealth the people create.
10
Noone pays fees of the magnitude the banks charge without getting something pretty important in return. The bankers actually do something important – they mitigate risk.
For example, profit or loss on an export contract can hinge on a few cents difference in foreign exchange rates. If an exporter wants to export to say Indonesia, the export contract will be written in Rupiah, not Aussie dollars. This exposes the Australian exporter to the risk that if Indonesia’s currency plunges, they’ll make a loss. So for a fee, companies in such an exposed situation buy forward contracts at a fixed rate of exchange from banks – they sacrifice some of their profit in return for safety from losing all of it.
Now the banker has a problem – they’re carrying the risk. So what they have to do is find someone in Indonesia who wants to export to Australia, and is worried about the risk of the Australian dollar dropping. The banks charge the Indonesian exporter a fee for offering them a fixed exchange rate.
As long as the banks have done their homework, they now have a risk free profit – but so does everyone else. The exchange of Aussie dollars to Indonesian Rupiah which they have agreed with the Indonesian exporter is balanced by the exchange of Indonesian Rupiah to Australian dollars which they agreed with the Australian exporter. Everyone walks away with the security of knowing they’ll make a profit, regardless of what happens to currency exchange rates.
Of course this is a gross simplification, but at heart this is what banks do for people, and why they can charge such extraordinary fees.
31
On Thursday, 3rd January 2013, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology released it’s Annual Australian Climate Statement for 2012.
.
Q. Would drought be classified as evidence of a significant event in Australian climactic conditions by the BoM?
It appears so, with categories “serious” & “severe” to further describe the situation.
Here, the BoM describes how the last 12 year drought was “severe’, the most extreme definition available.
Even the BoM homepage has an interactive on drought for your area.
.
So, wouldn’t the end of a “severe” 12 year drought qualify a mention in the BoM Annual 2012 Climate Statement?
It seems it qualified in April 2012:
Issued on 5th April 2012 by the National Climate Centre
No Drought Statement issued for April
And, not only there was it mentioned:
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/australia-drought-free-for-first-time-in-decade/21535
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/australia-officially-drought-free/story-e6freuy9-1226340513377
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/weather/its-official-australia-no-longer-in-drought-20120427-1xpsp.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2012/may/11/weatherwatch-drought-australia-floods
.
Rhetorical question time.
Does this significant climate event, It’s Official: Australia is Drought Free, get a mention in the BoM Climate Statement of 2012?
Does it get a mention in significant events chapter?
Does it get a mention in the 2012 Annual Highlights Chapter?
.
Why would the BoM not want to highlight this wonderful news on our climate at a time of “predicted man made catastrophic alarmist global warming”?
Would previous failed predictions have something to do with it?
90
Jo,
Maybe this is final evidence of “AGW?
Snow covered desert
Cheers,
10
New species discovered
from DeHavelle.com where there are a few other interesting observations.
81
From “A decade of progress in Eugenics”, proceedings of the third international congress of Eugenics, New York
http://ia700402.us.archive.org/2/items/decadeofprogress00inte/decadeofprogress00inte.pdf
p30 – 31
In Java I first perceived the disturbing influence of the introduction of machinery and mass production on the old uncivihzed economic order. While checked by introduced diseases in the South Sea Islands, the Javanese population is mounting with alarming rapidity, having jumped from 12,000,- 000 to 40,000,000 in an incredibly short space of time, a naturally fertile race being protected from disease and multiplying under their original mat- ing customs. But even in these countries, relatively immune from the dangers of civilization, we begin to observe the initial effects of world interaction.
The outstanding generahzations of my world tour are what may be summed up as the “six overs”; these “six overs” are, in the genetic order of cause and effect
Over-destruction of natural resources, now actually world-wide;
Over-mechanization, in the substitution of the machine for animal and human labor, rapidly becoming world-wide;
Over-construction of warehouses, ships, railroads, wharves and other means of trans- port, replacing primitive transportation;
Over-production both of the food and of the mechanical wants of mankind, chiefly during the post-war speculative period;
BIRTH SELECTION VERSUS BIRTH CONTROL 31
Over-confidence in future demand and supply, resulting in the too rapid extension of natural resources both in food and in mechanical equipment;
Over-population beyond the land areas, or the capacity of the natural and scientific resources of the world, with consequent permanent unemployment of the least fitted.
01
Overpopulation! Hmm!
Is the Northern Hemisphere top heavy?
I suppose this falls into the category of useless information.
Did you know that 90% of the World’s total population lives in the Northern Hemisphere.
So, extrapolating from that, maybe the melting North Polar ice cap is a good thing. All that ice covering Antarctica balances out the World and stops it from tipping over.
(Hey, do I really need to add /sarc)
I was in our local shopping centre the other day, and there was a young man and a young lady in one of the aisles, you know, the ones who try to collar you as you walk by, with stuff you don’t need. They had a lectern and some brochures, and I didn’t even bother to see who they were
flogging offrepresenting.Despite my attempts to look the other way as I walked by, the young man approached me and asked if I was concerned about the melting North Polar Ice Cap and rising sea levels.
I just replied with one word ….. Archimedes.
The look on his face was priceless. He had no idea what I was alluding to.
I think he was stunned, and with no reply, I just walked off with my good lady wife, who told me that I should stop doing that.
Haven’t had that much fun in ages.
Tony.
100
In the past they would have worn a sandwich board and tolled a bell…
20
That is truly a sad indictment on the state of apprenticeships in this country.
The warmists can’t even train their minions in physically plausible propaganda any more. 🙂
Now if he said the Greenland Ice Sheet was metling, well he might have survived the first round… only to be K.O.’d in the 2nd.
Speaking of horrors in the Arctic, don’t you hate it when you can’t get those takeaway food containers open…
Ask this guy whether he thinks the Polar bears need saving from us this week!
20
“There is no way that an individual or militia, no matter how organised, with the right to bear arms, could hope to wrest back civilian control from a ruthless dictatorial government unless they have full support of the military and police.”
Really?
Ireland 1916?
40
In Switzerland, after finishing your national military service, you get to keep your rifle. UNLESS you have been convicted of a criminal act involving violence or have been subject to psychiatric treatment at any point.
So the Swiss are all armed to the teeth EXCEPT the crims and loonies.
There has never been a gun massacre in Switzerland.
70
Hi Peter
I agree with your basic comment but just to contradict you there was a multiple shooting a few days ago in the area around Sion.
I like the balance, law abiding , trained citizens armed: untrustworthies Unarmed.
KK
21
Wow. And it wasn’t the only one either.
Clearly the Swiss are tougher than Aussies, and soon we will find out if the Swiss are also tougher than the Yanks.
30
Last month I saw on Facebook a poster piccie from the anti gun lobby quoting international annual deaths from handguns with the punch line of “Handguns are evil – help free American” (or words to that effect).
Problem with the numbers quoted was that they forgot that the USA has a population of some massive magnitudes greater then the Swiss and hence per head of population, based on their own numbers given by this anti gun lobby type poster, it was shown that you were actually more likely to be killed by a handgun in Switzerland then the US.
Guess it just shows that you need to be careful what you try and prove with numbers.
20
On personel security and gun possession, the laws do not matter.
The police are always minutes away when seconds count.
Politicians always want a disarmed public when they are stealing.
Here in Canada every criminal has more respect paid to their civil rights than a person licensed to possess a firearm.
Govts world wide have no respect for private property.
Working for 40 yrs will get you a pension of about $12000/yr.With the yearly insult of stealing 1/2 the return on your labour for all 40 years
We will spend $100 000 to provide a convicted criminal a home.
Strange times when disregarding the laws makes you safer and if caught pays better.
40
Steve McIntyre is on great form at the American Geophysical Union annual convention, where one of the convenors was Lewandowsky:
He is unimpressed by a list of speakers straight from Alarmists ‘R’ Us — Mann, Gleick, Orestes, Cook of SKS, Hausfather etc.
And he is gobsmacked by AGU honoring Gleick as a new AGU fellow…
60
Sounds like the American Geophysical Union is incorrectly named
KK
30
It has Union in the name – that part is correct.
30
Hi all,
Does Richard Holle still post in this forum?
Yesterday the Adelaide weather station recorded 45 which is the 6th hottest day on record. I have just had a look at Richard Holle’s map which predicted that it would snow in Adelaide yesterday, see here:
http://www.aerology.com/?location=Australia&mapType=Snwd&date=1%2F4%2F2013
Any idea why Mr Holle’s maps are so inaccurate
The temperature map is inaccurate too. It estimated a temperature in the high 30s or low 40s, but it made it to 45, see here:
http://www.aerology.com/?location=Australia&mapType=Tmax&date=1%2F4%2F2013
14
It predicts ground snow for tomorrow as well. That would be welcome relief from the predicted 41C. BUT
See at the bottom of the map this line referring to the software used.
Copyright © 2010 Australia Bureau of Meteorology All rights reserved.
No further comment necessary.
83
Um, the map of Australia is from the BOM.
The weather predictions are Mr Holle’s that’s why the very bottom of the page says:
You can read about Mr Holle’s weather prediction methodology here:
http://www.aerology.com/Home/About
10
Yes I still post in this forum,Graeme is partially right, the data is (supposed to be) the raw data from the BOM products noted at the bottom of the maps page. In the past the precipitation that included hail, freezing rain, snow, or sleet was all recorded as “frozen precip” the archived records do not separate out hail diameter from snow depth, but the program I used to sort the archived data cannot tell the difference from hail or snow. There are very few stations that record snowfall or snow on ground in the archives. the nearest neighbor selection is set to search up to 8 degrees from each sampled grid square (on 0.005 degree centers) so the reports of hail that falsely show up as snow or snow on ground in the data base, are reflected as such.
There was originally an effort to match the color/temperature scheme that NOAA uses, which results in the whole spread of temps from ~30C to ~45C to range only a few shades of yellow/orange to red/lighter red, so the scale is inadequate to show the finer graduations in temperatures. For NOAA this was a feature, for me it is a bug! I have set up a better color scale for the temps and will be reloading the same csv files of raw data through the map making process and changing the color/temperature scale on my site when a significant number of maps have been stored. The new scale will be located on the left side of the maps, with no more than ~5Cdegrees between color shifts, and individual tone shifts on single degrees of F.
One of the problems My process has with the data from Australia is the sparse and scattered locations that are in the data base, lowering the definition possible in the map making process. There is so little data on Snow and Snow on ground that that set of maps is probably mostly useless except in South East mountains, where the real occurrence shows up in the data base with regularity.
I was assured that the data sets I bought and paid dearly for were the real raw data. Maybe they are?
If you left click on the map in question it will open in another tab with HD resolution, which helps with the temperatures and will improve when the new color scale goes live. I have been refraining from posting on here too much until I can get the modifications finished.
Sorry for any inconvenience this might have caused any one, I am considering removing the snow and snow on ground from the Australian maps, (simple page layout code modification). I was not able to incorporate the local forecast zoom maps for Australia as you use a 4 digit postal code and North America uses a 5 digit zip code, I have not found software that will allow me to do it all, so by request of several large farm concerns in the USA that have operations in several zip codes in multiple states, the North American local maps feature will be returning with the improved color/temp scale.
If you want to contact me in this forum or the info@ email on the site, I can give you more information/updates on changes. The announcement of the completion of the changes, should be soon (two weeks to a month:)
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This is just plain wrong. It hardly ever snows in Adelaide during WINTER, let alone during Summer!
Is it possible that your maps don’t account for the fact that Australia is in the southern hemisphere?
The fact your map suggested it was going to snow on a day that actually reached 45 (that’s 113 Fahrenheit!) suggests to me that your methodology for predicting weather is fatally flawed. Your maximum temperature estimate was also out by almost 10 degrees C!
For the record, the Bureau of Meteorology predicted that the temperature in Adelaide would reach 44, so they were out by 1 degree.
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The “Forecast maps” on my site are the composites of the daily data from the records of four different dates 6558 days apart. What the maps show is the background Lunar declinational tidal effects from these last four cycles averaged together. Most of the time the composite data does a fair job of predicting what the atmosphere will do this cycle, And these maps can be generated for the next 18 years out.
The periods of time that my method breaks down is when the Earth passes one of the slower outer giant gas planets, and the magnetic and gravitational effects of the outer planet focus some concentrated solar wind interactions with the earth at the Synod conjunction, and then decouples as the alignment drops by almost a degree per day, so to must the part of the earths interaction with the temporary increase in magnetic flux, resulting in a displacement of earth from her orbit of about 1,200KM, and a decrease in the LOD for the earth, up to the point of conjunction,along with an increase of global pole to equator charge gradient due to homopolar generator laws and effects related to the earth.
The five days before Synod conjunction with Jupiter on the 3rd of December there was an increase in the total number of ions available in the atmosphere, because the enhanced charge gradient drove more +Positive ions out of the sea along the ITCZ, to match the extra free electrons that cascade down through the Northern lights, push into the mid-latitudes to Neutralize out the charge difference as the Earth passes the maximum interaction area of the solar wind, and starts the process in reverse.
From the day of Synod conjunction the earths fields start dropping and in response those temporary increased volume of aerosol ions (carrying opposite charges) start precipitation out of the frontal clashes of the ion fronts, that is intense and rapid moving most of the time. The atmosphere is awash with tidal currents all the time, these charge/discharge patterns of the movable temporary ions, that follow the increase in magnetic field strength by being the effects of electrostatic repelling forces, that prevent precipitation process from forming in most clouds. Then comes the pulse in the current surge Negative from the poles and Positive from the ITCZ. The lunar declinational tides in the sea and the atmosphere which being un-bounded, has much more zonal and meridional flows added to what the moon less earth would have.
Now that we are past the Jupiter synod conjunction that pushed up a lot of ions into the atmosphere, and helped rain out the H2O with a through ionic cleaning while we had larger than normal meridional flows at the conjunction which resulted in the severe or extreme weather. The net effect of all that washing is there is a large section of the southern hemisphere global circulation consists of clean de-ionized dry air, the results of natures (re-breather air particle filtering) methods.
The highs that set these records, along with the warmer than usual temps are due to the increased solar insolation through clear calm skies, devoid of frontal systems of note. The byproduct of the declinational tides of the moon and the post conjunction dry air mass, enhancing warming. The only problem is there won’t any more contact with outer planets until we pass Saturn on April 28th and the spring tornadoes in the USA will start surging in on the combined solar and lunar declinational tides, and have an enhancement effect on the tornado production, and timing from the usual patterns.
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Thank you for your elaborate explanation of your weather prediction methodology.
Unfortunately this doesn’t change the fact that your method is fatally flawed because it keeps producing completely inaccurate predictions including some that are just absurd, i.e. predicting it will snow in Adelaide on a day that it reached 45 (the 6th hottest day on record).
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s methodology is far superior because it actually produces results that are quite accurate most of the time.
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Hey Adam how are you its good to see you back here again.
Cheers
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Hey Adam how are you its good to see you back here again.
Cheers
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With such monumentally wrong predications, why publish it at all? Heaven help anyone who uses these predictions
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Because these maps reflect the average of the natural variability of the weather that are the results of when the Lunar declinational tides, lunar phase, perigee/apogee, cycles are all the same as the last four cycles reference date for each map generated.
There is an observable outer planetary effect, if you view animated GOES satellite photos synchronized to the timing of the moon’s crossing of the equator moving North to start the cycles to view this pattern on this repeating global circulation effects of the lunar declinational cycles, the disruption of these slow system changes, by the rapid shifts to extreme weather generating outer planet synod conjunctions, along with the solar system SSB effects on the suns activity levels combined, is what is really driving the weather and climate.
The amount of a highly soluble trace gas that is part of the cleaning turnover, and when freed from solution upon Arctic ice freezing, accounts for most of the (NH) winter season increase of measured atmospheric PPM, but I think has very little control over the global weather/climate.
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In this instance, I really don’t care what your theories are or what theories you don’t subscribe to and which theory is right or wrong, the fact that you are publishing stuff that is wrong is little better than mischief making.
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I see Gee has figured out my stance of why I don’t believe the IPCC, he says the same thing about me as I think about the Cagw crowd.
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You have it snowing over central queensland. This is observably wrong! You being really badly wrong does not have anything to do with anything the ipcc writes.
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It is wrong precisely because the small amounts of snow records in Australia is so sparse that there is not near enough data base to say anything of real worth in regard to snow falls out side of the South eastern Mountains. I have said this several times over the past couple of months since I first posted the “Forecast maps” of how I expected the weather to respond to the usual lunar declinational tides in the atmosphere.
When episodes of more active weather affects the global circulation due to the interactions of the earth with the outer gas planets, it shows up in the patterns of these excursions when the usual LD Tidal effects are over powered by the outer planets. Just as the normal variability of the weather from the effects of these patterns, hides the CO2 signal.
I would hope that there could be some use of these further modulations of the global circulation patterns to define the strength, timing, and scope of the outer planetary caused excursions, that could be used as an adjustment algorithm to improve the maps as they now stand to account for the expected outer planet induced extremes. Changes to ward dryer periods, caused by the ion rinsing effects mentioned above, would then be much more forecast able.
[how much snow did the IPCC forecast for any set/known length of time that is any better than my attempt?)
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The reasons sparse data records cannot be over come by more wide area smoothing, is the same reason that the GISS data from the polar areas cannot be used. There results in the homogenization process these types of truly awful errors due to data smoothing over too large an area to infill gaps. You see I cannot do it just as they cannot do it using the same methods. I kept the maps active so I could continue to learn from the excursions. The under reported areas of the world by the same token cannot be used as a basis for setting the world’s average temp, (a fools errand by any method but satellite coverage.)
I will be pulling the publicly viewable snow maps for Australia soon to use for myself off line.
the map making process generates the maps from each of the four cycles and the actuals for the date of forecast, if hind casting is done from the data base itself, and a composite of the average of the total four cycle pattern. (it is the composite that is posted on the publicly viewable, “forecast pages”.) I will soon be automating the search for patterns that can be found in the 15 day long windows of time that are centered +/- 7 days, on the Synod conjunctions of each of the outer planets. Results will be used as corrective algorithms to improve the capability of including adjustments for the extremes in the usable density data bases, Temperatures and Precipitation totals for the days.
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I make mistakes too. I don’t publish them and claim they are the truth.
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Anyone seen The Hobbit yet??
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We saw Les Miserables?
KK
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Saw both – recommend both.
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Well I hope Hugh and Russell did us proud!
With 3 young kids under 5, the last movie I saw at the Cinema was The Lord of the Rings…
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The Hobbit??
Yes…
It was (cough) Shorter then I Expected… 😀
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Russell sort of fell over a bit in Les Miserables.
KK 🙂
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Are u talking about the movie?
Or the Hobbit himself?
Or Catamon’s attention span??
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Hobbit was good. Saw it in 3D at 48 frames per second – very impressive – but when the camera zoomed around the place too much, I felt sea sick!
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Well worth the price of admission, although I’m hard put to see how they’ll get the implied 9 hours worth of trilogy out of what’s in the book. No way to know except to wait for the rest of it.
It’s also gun free. 🙂
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Yes it is gun free, but it has swords, axes, clubs, bows and arrows … lots of good stuff.
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Yes. A close up fight is definitely a bigger attraction for action fans. It’s a wonder that they don’t knock some poor actor senseless (or worse) before they get it choreographed right for the camera.
Good stuff indeed! 🙂
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Aaahhh Summer in Australia !!
Cricket, Tennis, Golf, Bushfires, Summernats, Cold Beer ….
Well done Mike Hussey and Ricky Ponting on great careers !
Now, just waiting for all the greenies to blame our hot weather on us !
Thank god this website doesn’t stop for summer!!
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http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-04/how-fiat-currency-leads-collective-corruption
I find the link a great read, and short. I did not watch the videos within; however, I did read the Scribd. Not sure how true it rings outside of USA; personally found it dead on.
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Imagine if the Howard Government gave $16.5 million dollars to employer lobby groups like The Business Council of Australia, or Australian Industry Group, or the Australian Chamber of Commerce for things like travel expenses to attend global employer conferences, establishment and running of training courses on say improving cooperative workplace relations and improving the knowledge and skills of employer representatives, hire of venues for employer meetings, or to cover the costs of learning what the employer obligations are under different Government regulations.
Then what if those same employer lobby groups not only provided the greatest amount of election funding for the Howard Government, but most of the Howard Government members of parliament actually came from those employer lobby groups? Wouldn’t you think the media and general public would have accused Howard of funding his own election campaign? And rightly so!
Well in just over 3 years to February 2011 the Rudd/Gillard Governments have given that amount to various Trade Unions for just those activities (just replace employer with employee), and YES, the biggest donors to the ALP are the Trade Unions, and YES, a majority of ALP members of parliament come from Trade Unions.
Yet there is no outrage for this blatant pork barrelling by the ALP from the main stream media!
See list of grants here: http://michaelsmithnews.typepad.com/.a/6a0177444b0c2e970d017ee6fb4ac4970d-pi
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“In the kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is king” Erasmus
http://kangaroocourtofaustralia.com/2012/10/28/money-laundering-the-labor-party-and-union-way/
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This is a scandal, which will be reported by the ABC…
…after the next federal election!!
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Information on the Sun and its control of mankind sparked the scientific revolution after Copernicus concluded in 1543 the Sun is a fountain of energy at the center of the solar system. That empirical fact threatened the grandiose illusions of world leaders with their natural tendencies toward ego-, geo-centricity. Almost a century later, Galileo had to defend himself at trail in 1633 by saying the Copernican structure of the solar system is simply a Divine order that other persistent observers could decipher.
Despite great advances in science and society, the basic personality traits of humans have remained the same. Today, we face the same conflict of scientific reality with the grandiose illusions of politicians and their armies of publicly financed advisors.
George Orwell apparently realized the approaching demise of society (and his own death) and “moved to the sodden, remote, windswept Scottish island of Jura” [1] in 1946 in order to complete his most famous novel and warn the public about the future they would awaken to in “1984”:
http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/
The best available nuclear and space-age measurements and observations agree with Galileo’s legal defense argument: The Sun in fact made our elements, birthed the world, sustained the origin and evolution of life, and – by some poorly understood Divine order or Intelligent Design – endowed mankind with creative talents and inalienable rights. Like the Hindu trinity, the Sun is, and has been, the creator, preserver and destroyer of the world and life.
A Hungarian astronomer suspected that in 1977 and published a question in Nature before disappearing from view. Nature now has the opportunity to publish the answer [“Yes, the Sun is a pulsar,” Nature (submitted 12 Dec 2012)]: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10640850/Yes_the_Sun_is_a_pulsar.pdf
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA Principal
Investigator for Apollo
[1] John J. Ross, “Tuberculosis, Bronchiectasis, and Infertility: What Ailed George Orwell?” Clinical Infectious Diseases 41, 1599-1603 (2005)
http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/41/11/1599.full.pdf
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Steve McIntyre finds the Usual Suspects show up at the AGU Conference. Glieck, Lewandowsky and Mann.
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Was amused to see in ‘The Sunday Mail’ yesterday (6 Jan) a very tiny article on page 26 on the bottom left side about El Nino. It seems that over the millennia (using coral samples) that NO change has occurred in the cycles of El Nino and La Nina. What a shame. I wonder if this will be in an IPPC report?
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reported on abc news too!
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Looking at Spencers work, see here
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_Dec_2012_v5.51.png
It would appear that there was a step change around 1998 as either side of this year is relatively flat, first 15 years flat slightly below “0” whilst the latter 15 years is slightly above “0”.
Stats are not my strong point but by my calcs the planet has warmed 0.5C in the last 30 years or if you like 0.016C per year, as i said stats or not my thing but based on these numbers and the nature of the why the planet has warmed (98 step change) does this add weight to the AGW theory or does it dismantle it?
Thoughts?
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I received an email this morning from the University of Graz. It is in relation to my letter of complaint earlier.
The email refers to this URL
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