March 5, 2011
page 1 of Core of my Heart (My Country): Image via Wikipedia
A lovely little essay by Clive James in Standpoint gently chiding the pretension of the alarmists who see global warming in every weather event and bringing some much needed perspective into weather and climate after the decade of Murray-Darling droughts and the recent Queensland floods:
The Drumming of an Army
…….. Before the floods, proponents of the CAGW view had argued that there would never be enough rain again, because of Climate Change. When it became clear that there might be more than enough rain, the view was adapted: the floods, too, were the result of Climate Change. In other words, they were something unprecedented. Those opposing this view — those who believed that in Australia nothing could be less unprecedented than a flood unless it was a drought — took to quoting Dorothea Mackellar’s poem “My Country”, which until recently every Australian youngster was obliged to hear recited in school. In my day we sometimes had to recite it ourselves, and weren’t allowed to go home until we had given evidence that we could remember at least the first four lines of the second stanza, which runs like this.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains……
…. It was Green pressure that stymied the construction of dams. Probably, from now on, dams will come back into favour, in recognition of the fact that the climate of the sunburnt country, in all her beauty and her terror, is still the way it always was. After the First World War, the desirability of up-river flood control was already well understood. Indeed Australia pioneered such engineering, and the Tennessee Valley Authority borrowed the idea from Australia, not the other way about.
If, from now on, dams are built instead of desalination plants — which in recent years have been proved to yield a fraction of the water at a multiple of the cost — then we will be able to tell that sanity has returned to at least one section of the vast area covered by the pretensions of the climatologists.
Dorothea Mackellar’s poem “My Country” was published in 1908 and her description of the Australia “of droughts and flooding rains” remains just as accurate a century later and is quite indifferent to global warming. .
“My Country” is an iconic patriotic poem about Australia, written by Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968) at the age of 19 while homesick in England. After travelling through Europe extensively with her father during her teenage years she started writing the poem in London in 1904 and re-wrote it several times before her return to Sydney. The poem was first published in the London Spectator in 1908 under the title “Core of My Heart”. It was reprinted in many Australian newspapers, quickly becoming well known and establishing Mackellar as a poet.
Tags: Australia, Clive James, Dorothea Mackellar, droughts, floods, Queensland floods. global warming
Posted in Australia, Climate, Weather | Comments Off on Australia – A country “of droughts and flooding rains”
March 5, 2011
To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the first Spitfire flight, a replica of the plane will be flying over Kent.
The Spitfire Society's facsimile of the prototype Spitfire: image The Spitfire Society
The first Spitfire prototype took off on 5 March 1936 from Eastleigh airfield, which is now Southampton airport. This weekend, a replica spitfire is making frequent flypasts over the Battle of Britain Memorial site at Capel-le-Ferne. Visitors will also be able to see a facsimile of a Spitfire K5054.
The Spitfire Society is working with the Battle of Britain Memorial Trust to mark the anniversary of the Spitfire’s first flight on 5 and 6 March. A group of Spitfire Society members built the K5054 which will be on display over the weekend at the Battle of Britain Memorial site and visitors will be able to sit in its cockpit. There will also be technical experts and pilots at the memorial in Capel-le-Ferne on hand to talk to the public. There is also the opportunity to fly alongside the airborne Spitfire (Mark Five) BM597 in a helicopter.
Supermarine Spitfire: image mstation.org
Essential for British air defence in the Second World War the Spitfire’s wing design allowed for a higher top speed than many of its contemporaries and afforded the plane a manouverability that many pilots credited with saving their lives.
Designed by R.J Mitchell in 1931 the Spitfire initially saw action as an interceptor though it’s popularity with pilots soon led to it finding roles as a fighter-bomber, photo-reconnaisance and training plane.
About 25 Spitfires are still in flying condition.
Tags: Capel-le-Ferne, Spitfire, Spitfire 75th Anniversary, Supermarine Spitfire, World War II
Posted in 2nd World War, Aviation, UK | 2 Comments »
March 5, 2011
Gaddafi's singers
Singers who were quite happy to accept lavish fees from the Gaddafi clan are now rushing to distance themselves from the dirty money. A number of charities will no doubt benefit and these donations will of course be tax deductible. Singers must after all sing for their supper and cannot be expected to worry about where their fees come from. And publicity is always welcome:
Lionel Richie and Jose Carreras performed at a 2006 concert in Tripoli to mark the 20-year anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Libya — it’s not known how much they were paid.
Nelly Furtado announced on Twitter that she would donate the $1 million she was paid by the Gaddafi “clan” in 2007 to play a concert at an Italian hotel.
Mariah Carey was paid $1 million to sing just four songs at a lavish New Year’s Day 2009 bash on the Caribbean island of St. Barts, hosted by Col. Gaddafi’s son and national-security adviser, Muatassim.
It was Beyonce (Beyoncé Giselle Knowles) , 50Cent ( Curtis James Jackson) and Usher (Usher Raymond IV) who provided the “million-dollar personal concert” at Muatassim’s St. Barts blowout in 2008.
Tags: 50 Cent, Beyoncé Knowles, Gaddafi's singers, Jose Carreras, Libya, Lionel Richie, Mariah Carey, Nelly Furtado, Usher
Posted in Behaviour, Libya | Comments Off on Gaddafi’s singers
March 5, 2011
Though there have been reports that Former President Hosni Mubarak is in Saudi Arabia and undergoing chemotherapy for colon cancer, it seems that he and his family are still in Egypt.
Hosni Mubarak
Egypt’s ousted strongman Hosni Mubarak is at his residence in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, a spokesman for the chief prosecutor’s office told al-Ahram daily on Friday, dismissing reports that Mubarak was in Saudi Arabia. “The deposed president and his family are still in Sharm El-Sheikh,” Egypt’s chief prosecutor’s office spokesman Abdel al-Said told al-Ahram.
Egypt on Monday imposed a travel ban on Mubarak and his family while prosecutors probed complaints about their wealth, estimated by Arabic media reports at up to 70 billion euros. The public prosecutor froze the bank accounts and assets of Mubarak and his family after complaints they acquired their alleged vast wealth through illegal means, the prosecutor’s office said.
The Egyptian Embassy in Riyadh has also denied reports that he was in Saudi Arabia.
Tags: Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, Sharm El-Sheikh
Posted in Behaviour, Egypt | Comments Off on Mubarak is still in Egypt
March 4, 2011
The purpose of an Interpol Orange Notice is – To warn police, public entities and other international organizations of dangerous materials, criminal acts or events that pose a potential threat to public safety.
http://www.interpol.int/
LYON, France – INTERPOL has issued a global alert known as an Orange Notice against Colonel Al-Qadhafi and 15 other Libyan nationals, including members of his family and close associates, in a bid to warn member states of the danger posed by the movement of these individuals and their assets, to assist member states in their efforts to enforce sanctions under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1970 (2011), and to support INTERPOL’s assistance to the International Criminal Court investigation into alleged crimes against humanity in Libya.
- Qadhafi, Muammar Mohammed Abu Minyar DATE OF BIRTH: 1942 in Libya
- AL-BAGHDADI, Dr Abdulqader Mohammed DATE OF BIRTH: 01/07/1950
- DORDA, Abu Zayd Umar DATE OF BIRTH: 04/04/1944
- Jabir, Major General Abu Bakr Yunis DATE OF BIRTH: 1952 in Jalo, Libya
- Qadhafi, Aisha Muammar DATE OF BIRTH: 1978. Place of birth: Tripoli, Libya
- Qadhafi, Hannibal Muammar DATE OF BIRTH: 20/09/1975 in Tripoli, Libya
- Qadhafi, Mutassim DATE OF BIRTH: 1976. Place of birth: Tripoli, Libya
- Qadhafi, Saadi DATE OF BIRTH: 25/05/1973. Place of birth: Tripoli, Libya.
- Qadhafi, Saif al-Islam DATE OF BIRTH: 25/06/1972. Place of birth: Tripoli, Libya
- DIBRI Abdulqader Yusef DATE OF BIRTH: 1946- Houn in Libya
- Matuq, Matuq Mohammed DATE OF BIRTH: 1956 in Khoms
- Qadhaf Al-dam, Sayyid Mohammed DATE OF BIRTH: 1948. Place of birth: Sirte, Libya
- Qadhafi, Khamis Muammar DATE OF BIRTH: 1978. Place of birth: Tripoli, Libya
- Qadhafi, Mohammed Muammar DATE OF BIRTH: 1970. Place of birth: Tripoli, Libya
- Qadhafi, Saif al-Arab DATE OF BIRTH: 1982. Place of birth: Tripoli, Libya
- Al-Senussi, Colonel Abdullah DATE OF BIRTH: 1949. Place of birth: Sudan
The Interpol Notice is here.
Tags: Gaddafi and family, International Criminal Court, Interpol, Interpol orange notice, Libya, Muammar al-Gaddafi
Posted in Behaviour, Libya | Comments Off on Interpol orange notice against Gaddafi, family and friends
March 4, 2011
Top down view of Taurus XL carrying OCO: Image via Wikipedia
The US space agency’s (Nasa) attempt to launch its latest Earth observation mission has ended in failure. This is the second straight failure for the Taurus XL rocket, which appears to be connected to the rocket failing to release its payload. The Glory satellite lifted off from California at 0209 local time (1009 GMT), but officials became aware of a problem five minutes into the mission.
The Glory spacecraft was scheduled for launch today Friday, March 4 after technical issues with ground support equipment for the Taurus XL launch vehicle led to the scrub of the original Feb. 23 launch attempt. Those issues were thought to have been resolved. Data from the Glory mission is expected to allow scientists to better understand how the sun and tiny atmospheric particles called aerosols affect Earth’s climate. The Taurus XL also carries the first of NASA’s Educational Launch of Nanosatellite missions. This auxiliary payload contains three small satellites called CubeSats, which were designed and created by university and college students.
From Nasa’s blog:
After Liftoff of Taurus XL Rocket, Fairing Fails to Separate
The Glory spacecraft and Taurus XL rocket lifted off this morning on time at 2:09:43 a.m. PST/5:09:43 a.m. EST.
About six minutes into the launch, a spacecraft contingency was declared by Launch Director Omar Baez. Data indicates the rocket fairing did not separate. More information will be provided at a news briefing later on NASA TV.
Project management for Glory is the responsibility of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The launch management for the mission is the responsibility of NASA’s Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., is the launch service provider to Kennedy of the four-stage Taurus XL rocket and is also builder of the Glory satellite for Goddard.
Tags: aerosol study, Glory, Glory mission fails, NASA, Solar science, Taurus XL
Posted in Science, Solar science, Space | Comments Off on Nasa Glory mission fails again after launch
March 4, 2011
Sir Howard Davies: Image via Wikipedia
Not only did the UK government provide Gaddafi with absolution for all his sins for the sake of weapons deals and oil contracts, they also orchestrated the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
And the LSE was part of the process of providing legitimacy to a bunch of thugs and murderers – of course in return for a suitable remuneration. The LSE Director has now resigned.
BBC:
The director of the London School of Economics has resigned over its links to Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi. Sir Howard Davies said he recognised the university’s reputation had “suffered” and he had to quit. He said the decision to accept £300,000 for research from a foundation run by Col Gaddafi’s son, Saif, “backfired”.
The LSE council has commissioned an independent inquiry into the university’s relationship with Libya and Saif Gaddafi. It will seek to clarify the extent of the LSE’s links with Libya and establish guidelines for future donations.
Lord Woolf, former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales and former chairman of the Council of University College London, has been appointed to carry it out. Sir Howard said he regretted visiting Libya to advise its regime about financial reforms, calling it a “personal error of judgement”. …..
The LSE has already announced it is investigating claims that Saif Gaddafi plagiarised his PhD thesis, which was awarded in 2008. The Libyan leader’s son had studied at the LSE, gaining both an MSc and PhD.
The Guardian:
A leaked US diplomatic cable indicates that the British government was also party to the deal to bring 400 Libyans to Britain for leadership training. The cable, published by WikiLeaks, suggests that other UK universities were involved in similar schemes, though there is no independent confirmation of this.
The university’s reputation has taken a battering over links with the Libyan regime, which include a donation of £1.5m from a charitable foundation run by Saif, who studied at the LSE. On Tuesday, the LSE agreed to put £300,000, equivalent to the cash it has received from the foundation, into a scholarship for north African students. …..
Ashok Kumar, the education officer of the LSE students’ union said : “The recent revelations have shone a light on one part of the relationship between the upper echelons of the LSE and the Gaddafi family, which is deeper and more perverse than we would have ever imagined.
“This issue is damaging the reputation of the school – it should be a place of learning – not at the centre of unscrupulous dealings with Libyan regime.”
Tags: corruption, Libya, London School of Economics, LSE, Muammar al-Gaddafi, Plagiarism, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi plagiarism, Saif al-Islam Muammar Al-Gaddafi
Posted in Corruption, Education, Libya, Politics, UK | Comments Off on LSE head quits over suspect ties to Gaddafi & son
March 3, 2011
Police have tracked down a 19-year-old male high school graduate in the Tohoku region who may have been involved in seeking answers online for questions from entrance examinations held in February at four prominent universities while the tests were in progress, investigative sources said Wednesday.
Police have already established that the same mobile phone was used during the four separate exams at Kyoto and Doshisha universities in Kyoto, and Waseda and Rikkyo universities in Tokyo, the sources said.
An Internet user going by the online name of “aicezuki” sought answers on Yahoo Japan Corp.’s “chiebukuro” (pearls of wisdom) website for questions from entrance exams at Kyoto, Doshisha, Waseda and Rikkyo universities from Feb. 8 to 26.
Icons indicating the questions were posted via mobile phone appear on the posts. The police located the Internet Protocol address of the user who posted the questions under the name “aicezuki” and found a DoCoMo mobile phone was used after linking the IP address to the handset number, the sources said. Investigators suspect the questions were posted online from the test rooms and are examining if any of the test-takers appeared to have copied the answers provided by third parties on the Yahoo site on the answer sheets.
Cases of cheating at entrance exams for Japanese universities are now so numerous that the universities are considering the jamming of mobile signals.
Cell phone jammers have come under the spotlight in the wake of recent cheating incidents during entrance exams at four prominent universities, including Kyoto University. Such jammers transmit radio signals in the 800 MHz frequency band, which is used as the mainstream carrier frequency band for NTT DoCoMo’s and KDDI’s au phones. Products targeting other frequency bands are also available.
Tags: cell phone exam cheating, entrance exam cheating, Japan University exams, mobile phone jamming
Posted in Education, Ethics, Japan | Comments Off on Japanese Universities plan anti-cheating mobile jammers
March 3, 2011
As around 150,000 foreign workers – mainly from the oil industry – gather at the border with Tunisia thousands of them have already been evacuated. China and Turkey were the fastest in getting their evacuations under way followed by Egypt and India and Greece.
- A total of 35,860 Chinese citizens had been evacuated from Libya up to 23:10 Wednesday Beijing time (1510 GMT), according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Among them, 20,745 are already back in China, Vice Foreign Minister Song Tao said.
- Almost 20 per cent of an estimated 18,000 Indians in Libya have been evacuated even as the government received landing clearance for 3 special flights daily from India to Tripoli up to March 12, extending the March 7 time period.
- After several consecutive meetings, Turkish officials decided to evacuate the close to 25,000 Turkish citizens in Libya. The Turkish government launched its largest evacuation operation ever. Close to 7,000 people have been evacuated from Libya via air, sea and land transportation. Several countries with communication problems with the Libyan administration and a lack of logistical means have asked Ankara for support to get their citizens out of the protest-ridden country. Turkey is so far believed to be the most successful country in evacuating its people from Libya.
- Tripoli has given Cairo a green light to carry out 37 evacuation flights for Egyptians caught up in the Libyan uprising. Some 1.5 million Egyptians work in Libya. Thousands have streamed back through the Salloum border crossing on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast into oil-producing eastern Libya. Egypt also plans to send ships to Tunisia to pick up nationals who fled Libya by going west.
- Foreign Affairs Minister Ali Shami thanked on Wednesday Egypt for facilitating the evacuation of Lebanese in Libya through the Egyptian border.
- The last Europeans who want to get out of Libya will be evacuated within days, an EU official said Monday. Only about 500 European Union passport-holders are still waiting to leave and about 1,000 wish to stay.
But in the meantime a Swedish Hercules plane was denied landing permission in Tripoli and had to return empty to Malta. 56 Swedish citizens have left Libya and of the 45 left 41 have indicated that they want to stay.
It is mainly foreign workers trying to get out and there does not seem to be any great number of Libyans trying to “invade Europe” as was feared by the Italians. The oil industry in Libya will suffer from an acute shortage of workers for some time to come.
Tags: Evacuations, foreign workers, Libya, Muammar al-Gaddafi
Posted in Behaviour, Libya, Politics | Comments Off on Mass evacuations of foreign workers from Libya – oil industry will be hard hit
March 3, 2011
Image via Wikipedia
UK MP’s have been, for a long time, using expense claims to pad their incomes and many of these expenses are for generating income for family members as part of their staff. The Telegraph took the lead in exposing the culture of greed among these “servants of society”. Some rules have changed but it is not a culture that will be changed easily.
Now the Telegraph reports that even those MP’s already found to have been cheating on expenses and who had decided not to stand again have now claimed – and received – substantial sums for closing down their operations:
More than 200 MPs claimed the payments of up to £42,732, which they were entitled to use for staff salaries and office costs if they were leaving Parliament, receiving a total of £6.8 million. A large number of employees who would have received the payments were MPs’ relatives hired to run their offices, meaning that the cash would have gone straight into their household income.
- Labour’s Jim Devine, who was convicted last month of false accounting on his expenses, was paid £19,832.
- David Chaytor, who was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for cheating on his Commons allowances, received £10,089.
- Jacqui Smith, quit as home secretary after putting her husband’s pornographic films on her expenses. He worked as her office manager and would have been entitled to some of the £37,868 she claimed.
- Mark Oaten, the disgraced ex-Liberal Democrat MP for Winchester, claimed £41,518 to wind up his office – four years after announcing he would not stand again after his affair with a male prostitute emerged.
- Several MPs who have now become peers also claimed the winding-up allowance, despite now being entitled to set up new offices just yards away from their former rooms in the House of Commons. Lord Howard, the former Conservative leader, and Lord Boswell, Tory MP for Daventry until May, received £26,590 and £42,708 respectively to wind up their offices having both announced that would not stand again in 2006.
- Lord Reid, the former Labour home secretary was paid £37,157 after announcing that he would not contest his Airdrie & Shotts seat at the election in 2007.
As well as a winding up allowance, departing MPs are also entitled to a “resettlement grant” of up to £64,766, a year’s salary, to allow help them make the “transition” to normal life. The former MPs received a total of £10.3million in “golden parachute” payments.
For parliamentarians, and not just in the UK, serving a party line has long ago replaced the notion of serving constituents’ interests and the allure of becoming a parliamentarian remains the many different ways of generating income that it affords.
Tags: David Chaytor, ethics, expenses fraud, Jacqui Smith, Jim Devine, Lord Boswell, Lord Howard, Lord Reid, Mark Oaten, MP corruption, UK MP expenses
Posted in Corruption, Ethics, Politics, UK | 1 Comment »
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