Intellectual powerhouse

Anything But with Tim Wilson - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

I would have thought being a superhero called Selfie Man would have been more his style, but no, Tim Wilson goes with the classics:

If you were to be an action hero, which one would you like to be?

I think I'm going to have to go Batman, but not like Christian Bale,
über-cool Batman, much more 1960s, soul, Adam West Batman. You know, a
little bit camp, prepared to go out there and fight for a good cause,
and occasionally enjoy a good outfit from time to time. Though I don't
slip into the Batsuit. The equivalent I've got, you know, from looking
at today, is a grey suit with a green checked shirt and a blue and green
dot tie, but you have to take these things a little bit seriously if
you want to live your life and achieve things, so the outfit makes sense
as well. But you can't discount the campness factor behind Adam West's
Batman, because it's important to have almost a cartoonish approach
where every time you're achieving some objective it's sort of a "Pow" or
a "Gazump" as part of the process.

 Look, I already thought Timbo was an intellectual lightweight with a chronic interest in self promotion, but there are so many, many other passages in this ill considered interview that help confirm my assessment of him, I can't be bothered repeating them...

Fascist! (About that immigration bill success)

So, I gloated prematurely about how The Guardian thought that Scott Morrison was not going to get his immigration legislation through.

And, it has to be said, that there are aspects of the deal, apparently suggested by Clive Palmer of all people, as to how former detainees can get work towards getting a more secure life in Australia, that are not all bad.

And, of course, some cross benchers were motivated by the "take the least worst option" which would at least get some children out of Christmas Island detention, although  Lambie (and the Greens) did have a point that Morrison was using then as a bargaining chip, given that he had the ability to remove them from the island any time he wanted, and he was the one setting up pre-conditions on their release.

That all said, if this summary in The Guardian is right, I don't really see why people shouldn't think "fascist" when there read about his powers:

Previous immigration ministers have decried the burden and the caprice of “playing God” with asylum seekers’ lives, but the government has chosen, instead, to install even greater powers in the office of the minister.

With the Senate’s acquiescence, Scott Morrison has won untrammelled power.

No other minister, not the prime minister, not the foreign minister, not the attorney-general, has the same unchecked control over the lives of other people.

With the passage of the new law, the minister can push any asylum seeker boat back into the sea and leave it there.

The minister can block an asylum seeker from ever making a protection claim on the ill-defined grounds of “character” or “national interest”. His reasons can be secret.

He can detain people without charge, or deport them to any country he chooses even if it is known they’ll be tortured there.

Morrison’s decisions cannot be challenged.

Boat arrivals will have no access to the Refugee Review Tribunal.

Instead, they will be classed as “fast track applicants” whose only appeal is to a new agency, the Immigration Assessment Authority, but they will not get a hearing, only a paper review. “Excluded fast track applicants” will only have access to an internal review by Morrison’s own department.

The bill is a seismic piece of legislation – one that destroys more than it creates.

 And how did libertarian local hero vote on this? :

 Muir and most other crossbenchers said their support was secured by the concessions made to change the bill. The government had already secured the support of the senators Nick Xenophon, David Leyonhjelm and Bob Day. The two Palmer United party senators also eventually showed their support on Thursday after Clive Palmer held a press conference earlier in the day.

Now, as I made it clear, this was a very difficult situation for all cross benchers, yet you would have thought that the libertarian one should have been the most conflicted of all.   But, yeah nah, we heard more concern from the Palmer Party...

Update:  on The Drum last night, there was Adam Creighton, a man with small government, IPA credentials, enthusing that the government's immigration policies had been a clear "win", with no reservations expressed at all about the unbridled discretion this legislation vests in one Minister.

Yet more reason for me to hold him in contempt.

Update 2:  Greg Barnes writes today :

 The powers given to an Immigration Minister and an internal bureaucratic process to determine the claims of those persons who arrive by boat seeking protection under the Refugees Convention, a fundamental human right, are an abrogation of the principle that questions of legal right and liability should be resolved by the application of the law and not on the basis of power being exercised by government officials.

The Abbott Government's law removes the right of individuals to have their case reviewed by the Refugee Review Tribunal and the courts. This new law is frightening in a genuine sense. It shows contempt by the executive and by legislators who support the unparalleled powers given to the Immigration Minister and the bureaucracy for any check and balance in the exercise of their power.

One is tempted to observe, how dare politicians in Australia criticise Russian president Vladimir Putin for his similarly distorting of Russian democracy when Minister Morrison and his legislative supporters have taken a leaf out of the Putin handbook.

The more I think about it, the more I find it genuinely outrageous that the libertarian commentairiate lets this slide, and prefers to prattle on about too much government spending and same sex marriage.

Fracking not all that it's cracked up to be (ha..)

Natural gas: The fracking fallacy : Nature News & Comment

Here we go on one of these wild energy forecast swings again - switching from wildly optimistic to middling pessimistic.

Worth looking at, anyway.

Blob-ish 4

I have an observation: all beers which are sold as "Golden Ale" seem to be nice. It's a good rule of thumb...

And then he tied an onion to his belt...

Seriously, if you can get more than a third of the way through this rambling, cranky white man whinge about - I dunno, what is it about? - good luck.  I have a bag of onions for you - it's time that fashion came back, I'm sure you'll agree.

Is the National Library still recording that blog for posterity?  How embarrassing if it is...

The awful state of Pakistan

Blasphemy in Pakistan: Bad-mouthing | The Economist

This is so horrifying it's almost blackly funny:

The police are also prey to the radicalising forces that are eating away
at Pakistan. In November a man arrested for alleged blasphemy was
killed by an axe-wielding policeman. 

And there is more:

The country’s clerics are united in defending the existing laws. The
most vociferous opponents of reform are not the Saudi-style extremists
empowered during the Zia era, but Barelvis, a school of Islam that some
once looked to as a moderate bulwark against extremism.

Unsurprisingly, many conclude they can cry blasphemy with impunity.
In poor villages and urban slums countless vendettas can be settled in a
blasphemy allegation. Almost two years after mobs burned down 100
Christian homes in Lahore the only person behind bars is the man whose
alleged blasphemy triggered the riots.

Ouch

The Australian Ran A Photo Of Larissa Waters’ Young Daughter This Morning Because Journalism Or Something | Junkee

Christian Kerr gets thoroughly attacked for his contribution to the Australian today.  Deservedly so.

Colour me unconvinced

From The IPAustralian:

The OECD puts Australian governments’ tax take at 26.5 per cent of national income, bless than the unweighted average share of 34.1 per cent among the 34 member nations, a long-term discrepancy that has prompted trade unions, statists and welfare lobbies to argue for tax increases rather than spending cuts to fix the federal budget.
“We are constantly being told that Australia is a low-tax country, but that is a complete myth”, said Mikayla Novak, a senior research fellow at the Institute of Public ­Affairs who wrote the report.
“Adding in compulsory super and private health insurance mandates raises Australia’s effective level of tax,” she added, arguing that they added 4.7 per cent and 1 per cent of GDP respectively to Australian governments’ tax haul in 2011, lifting the total to 32.2 per cent.

Isn't it just a wee bit dishonestly inventive to call compulsory super contributions part of "the Australian government's tax haul"?   They've convinced Adam Creighton though, apparently.

I'm also looking at the graph at the article of some of those low taxing to GDP ratio nations that I'm sure we would all love to emulate - India, Peru, Russia, Philippines.   Yes, says the IPA, why can't we live in such happy and socially equitable countries like that?  

Google's balloons

Project Loon: How Google’s Internet balloons are actually working.

You have to love the way Google carries on research that may or may not work out, and this article contains some fascinating details about their wacky sounding balloon internet project.

Blob 3

Keeping prices high

High risk: drug war fought with dollars

Ross Gittins considers the "counterfactual" of drugs prohibition, something that the "war on drugs is a MASSIVE FAILURE" decriers routinely fail to do. 

I didn't want to know this...

Eating less meat essential to curb climate change, says report | Environment | The Guardian: Curbing the world’s huge and increasing appetite for meat is essential to avoid devastating climate change, according to a new report. But governments and green campaigners are doing nothing to tackle the issue due to fears of a consumer backlash, warns the analysis from the thinktank Chatham House.

The global livestock industry produces more greenhouse gas emissions than all cars, planes, trains and ships combined, but a worldwide survey by Ipsos MORI in the report finds twice as many people think transport is the bigger contributor to global warming.

The report goes on to note that some are calling for a meat tax to curb eating it.

Gee, and the "nanny state" whiners freak out over the suggestion of a sugar tax.   They'll see a meat tax as a direct threat to their (probably unwise anyway) intensely meaty diet.

No doubt I could do with eating less meat myself.  But it is very - satisfying.

Oh dear, another bit of huffing and puffing fails to blow the Senate into line

Asylum bill to reintroduce temporary protection visas faces Senate defeat | Australia news | The Guardian

The government faces another major Senate defeat with Labor, the Greens, the Palmer United party (PUP) and other crossbench senators insisting that 30,000 asylum seekers living in limbo in Australia receive the possibility of a permanent visa.

Couldn't happen to a more deserving Minister.

The Antarctic ice that matters

West Antarctic melt rate has tripled

A comprehensive, 21-year analysis of the fastest-melting region of Antarctica has found that the melt rate of glaciers there has tripled during the last decade.

Much more important an issue than what sea ice is doing around the continent. 

They're messing with their own minds

I heard on the radio that Tony Abbott gave an end of year pep talk to the party room yesterday emphasising how great a year of achievement it had been - you know, end carbon tax, mining tax, stop the boats, etc.

I then heard Christopher Pyne run the same line - it's been a tremendous year of achievement for the government, apparently. 

This is pretty hilarious - a government trying to spin its way out of depression, in the public eye.  It is, of course, likely to have the completely opposite effect on the public, who will see a bunch of self satisfied, arrogant, dissembling twits out of touch with reality.

Blob 2

New Abbott government strategy

Update: Ha! I posted this and then saw Abbott on Sunrise this morning, again talking in front of a Christmas tree. (He was also full of hesitation, again. He needs a long holiday - like for 30 years or so, that should do it.)

Update 2:  See:

Blob

An explanation: Christmas is a busy time, and I'm feeling a bit blog exhausted lately. Seems to me I have been completely and utterly vindicated in predictions that Tone would be a bad, bad PM; I suspect that a mild El Nino is on the way that will remove all temperature hiatus talk; David Leyonhjelm keeps on giving speeches that prove he is an intellectual lightweight wannabe populist whose party will not achieve anything electorally major again; the IPA has the sulks because it can't bend the Coalition completely to its will; Catallaxy has devolved into a place only frequented by the aging, angry white male contingent (and their oddball female admirers with anti feminist obsessions); fundamental physics seems to have hit a bit an impasse now that the Higgs has been found - probably; the Catholic Church is in the final, but still decades long, throes of revising its understanding of sexuality and theology more broadly; Fairfax will make a stunning comeback in corporate fortunes. (OK, I may be exaggerating on that last point.)

So I'm feeling a bit out of fresh material. I thought maybe I should spend a month just posting unexplained and pointless blobs and doodles. But then I felt like ridiculing Tony again, and I couldn't resist. But I'm still tempted to go into blob mode...

Changing shape

[1411.7402] Global monopoles change Universe's topology

I've always had a hard time getting my head around the matter of the topography of the universe; it's not something easily visualised.   But to make matters worse, a couple of scientists here suggest that the topography of the universe might be able to change.  A big crunch may yet happen, seems to be one of the implications.

What a funny old part of the world...

Iraqi army revealed to have 50,000 ‘ghost soldiers’ on its roll - Middle East - World - The Independent

His spokesman Rafid Jaboori said: "The prime minister revealed the existence of 50,000 fictitious names.

“Over the past few weeks, the PM has been cracking down to expose the ghost soldiers and get to the root of the problem.”

The announcement is an indication that he intends further action against state corruption in the military and beyond. Earlier this month he sacked 36 army commanders in a move intended to improve the efficiency of the military and to reduce graft.

Mr Jaboori added: “Haidaral-Abadi is setting integrity, efficiency and courage as the criteria to
appoint a new military leadership. This weeding out process will extend beyond the military to all state institutions.”

Fictitious soldiers, known as 'fadhaiyin', are created to provide extra income for officers and the more senior the rank the more ‘ghost’ incomes there are.

We need more ghosts in ISIS, I know that for sure...