Energy Efficiency

The following article is by John Hewson, who may have turned out to be a good prime minister; however, like just about every other politician out there, thinks that a green economy, technoligical breakthroughs and new jobs will save the day.

This is not possible in a world already over-populated and under the increasing weight of physical environmental and financial limits to growth.

Also, the idea that government can ride to the rescue and keep policy in place over numerous election cycles or that mainstream media will do anything which might upset the interests of their major advertisers or their owners, doesn’t apprecaie the full picture.

Climate loses political game

John Hewson

One of the most important and urgent challenges in government today is how to make significant longer-term policy change in a political world run essentially as a game over the 24-hour media cycle. Ironically, even though elections are easily won on the promise of “change”, the electorate inevitably resists it in its detail. There is no better current example than Obama!
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Is it pride or fear of ridicule that prevents local government authorities and many fund managers from releasing their poor investment strategies, or is it more that inducements paid to them to make recommendations will be revealed; how many banks in Australia – like NAB – have dealings with and apply pressure through law firms with more than juts a vested interest in these sorts of dealings ?

In Italy they have stopped being nice and putting on appearances; Italy’s financial police are seizing 73.3 million Euros of assets from Bank of America Corp. and a unit of Dexia SA as part of a probe into an alleged derivatives fraud in the region of Apulia.

The Police are investigating losses on *derivatives linked to the sale of 870 million Euros of bonds sold by the regional government in 2003 and 2004, according to an e-mail from the prosecutor’s office in Bari. The banks misled the municipality, located in the heel of Italy, on the economic advantages of the transaction and concealed their fees, the prosecutor said.

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Robert Ludlum was a great author, he cleverly wrote stories of intrigue that revolved around the conflicting worlds of various secret – competing – agencies in the USA and now Messers Obama, the FBI and Homeland Security have written fact, not fiction as the following article reveals.

Congressional hearing reveals US intelligence agencies shielded Flight 253 bomber – by Alex Lantier

February 03, 2010 “WSWS” — A January 27 hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security established that US intelligence agencies stopped the State Department from revoking the US visa of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

The Nigerian student, whom US officials suspected of being affiliated with the Yemeni terrorist group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, attempted to set off a bomb on Northwest Flight 253 into Detroit on Christmas Day. Revocation of Abdulmutallab’s visa would have prevented him from boarding the airplane.

The hearing was reported in a brief article posted January 27 on the web site of the Detroit News, headlined, “Terror Suspect Kept Visa to Avoid Tipping Off Larger Investigation.”

The revelation that US intelligence agencies made a deliberate decision to allow Abdulmutallab to board the commercial flight, without any special airport screening, has been buried in the media. As of this writing, nearly a week after the hearing, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have published no articles on the subject. Nor have the broadcast or cable media reported on it.
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The USA likes to think they brought nothing but truth, justice and the American way; and while there were many positives, the negatives outweigh the positives big time.

Like any relationship, when the negatives out-weigh the positives, its time to call it a day; of course the family law court and other legal jurisdictions see the more vengeful side of a wronged one seeking retribution, sometimes well above what one might considered a balanced response, but be that as it may, the reality is that the American people will pay.

The neo-cons (Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney to name just there) were all about expolitation, a more efficient team of conscious-free thieves looking to self interest and largely protected by a system that is based on taking other people’s possessions and calling them your own.

Just like the League of Nations and now United Nations, the World Bank and IMF (International Monetary Fund), all structured to rip resources from friend or foe (the former usually became the latter, which is pretty much this article). [Read more →]

Several years ago we heard about the plight of koalas – moved to an island to make way for a housing estate in Victoria years before – and the ‘humane culling of same, as they had pro-created more than the surrounding gum trees could feed, leading to starvation.

You would have thought any government with half a brain would have dedicded that if koalas – that have a minimal foot-print – can lay waste of their environment, that so too could humans on the mainland.

Of course we’re a lot ’smarter’, because we can drive to another region, use fertilizers and broad acres farming and if that doesn’t work, sell of some of our resources (which will also eventually run out, but hey, that’s someone elses problem) and buy food in from overseas (which we now do to the order of about 27% in fruit and veg).

But really, should the total focus just be just on water or the almost depleted phosphates used world-wide for broadacre farming … what about topsoil ?

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