Andrew Bolt's Blog, page 1908
January 4, 2011
You may love it, too
Watching, and loving, this series for the second time in nearly 30 years....
Here they go again
I'd watch, of course, but that breathless adolescent anticipation of the next video clip release on Countdown can never be recaptured:
MORE than 30 years after Super Trouper gave them their last No. 1 hit and a decade after turning down a reported $1 billion offer to reunite, it looks more likely than ever ABBA will reform. Singer Agnetha Fältskog - that's the blonde one - has raised the possibility of a one-off show in an interview with a Swedish magazine.
If you were deep you said you preferred the brunette…
Shocked by the slaughter, Muslims blame the Jews instead
The mass murder is sickening enough, but the blood libel is a warning that Egypt is too insane with sectarian hatred to prevent yet worse from occurring:
A coalition of Egyptian lawyers accused Israel of being behind an terror attack in Alexandria that killed 22 members of the Christian Copt sect, Army Radio reported Monday.
"The Mossad carried out the the operation in a natural reaction to the latest uncovering of an Israeli espionage network," the lawyers accused at a rally in memory of the victims, organized by the Egyptian Bar Association, according to the report.
UPDATE
More Muslim lunatics - and one "Christian" - show all the willingness of a Goebbels to project their own sins on the Jews:
Following the New Year's Eve massacre of a score of Coptic Christian worshippers outside a church in Alexandria, Egyptians are wasting no time fingering the likely culprit.
"With careful consideration," observes commentator Ammar Ali Hassan in the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, "the incident could lead to other interpretations, especially the application of the Zionist conspiracy against national unity in Egypt."
Going one better, Essam El-Irian, a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood, says that while he believes "the Israeli Mossad was behind the incident," he won't rule out the possibility that al Qaeda itself may now be under Israeli operational control. And in a bid for Christian-Muslim unity, Gamal Assad, a Christian member of Egypt's parliament, accuses the perpetrators of "carrying out a Zionist scheme aimed at fragmenting the Arab region as a whole."
All of which leads to the depressing conclusion that Egypt, the country that forged a brilliant path to peace with Israel 31 years ago, is becoming something worse than an anti-Semitic cesspool. It is turning itself into a nation of political imbeciles.
Egyptian Marwa Eldeib takes this sick anti-Semitic conspiracy theory to YouTube:
This truly insane scapegoating of the Jews sounds shockingly familiar to someone who has spent the past couple of days reading this:
The hatred is the same, and only the brand of totalitarian thought differs:
As I was saying
I've belatedly realised my Spectator Diary is on line. Go here, if you are interested.
If Thatcher had demanded wind farms, he'd have fought that, too
You'd think a dedicated Leftist would find some contradiction in actor Pete Postlethwaite's two most famous contributions to on-screen activism - both fighting global warming and the closure of coal mines. But no, as Tim Blair discovers to his complete lack of surprise.
Shock. Shivering Britain realises wind power needs wind to work
Only now does this problem occur to them?
Wind farms in Britain generated practically no electricity during the recent cold spell, raising fresh concerns about whether they could be relied upon to meet the country's energy needs.
Despite high demand for electricity as people shivered at home over Christmas, most of the 3,000 wind turbines around Britain stood still due to a lack of wind.
Even yesterday , when conditions were slightly breezier, wind farms generated just 1.8 per cent of the nation's electricity — less than a third of usual levels.
The failure of wind farms to function at full tilt during December forced energy suppliers to rely on coal-fired power stations to keep the lights on — meaning more greenhouse gases were produced.
Experts feared that as the Government moved towards a target of generating 30 per cent of electricity from wind — while closing gas and coal-fired power stations — cold, still winters could cause a problem in the future.
These experts realise only now that the when the wind don't blow, the power won't flow? Next they might even start worrying that solar power won't work in the dark.
(Thanks to reader Mark.)
I guess my play won't open in Perth, then
Staff at His Majesty's, the Playhouse, the State Theatre Centre and other Perth theatres managed by AEG Ogden have been ordered to be green:
All staff are encouraged to incorporate green methodology into the workplace so that it becomes common practice.
Does this apply to playwrights, too?
(No comments in holiday break.)
What other trouble will they have in fitting in?
Yesterday, the report of stabbings in an argument over going to the beach. Today another suggestion of a potentially violent clash of cultures:
Police were called to the family home after the man threatened to kill himself and the 14-year-old girl when he discovered the boy in a room of their home, Parramatta Bail Court heard yesterday.
The man, who cannot be named, allegedly told police the relationship was disrespectful to Muslim culture and brought shame on his family in the Afghan community.
The court heard he tried to detain the boy in the early hours of New Year's Day at the house in Blacktown.
The family called police because they were scared the father would kill the boy.
After police arrived, the man became enraged because they would not arrest the boy, who had been invited into the house by his daughter.
He said the boyfriend would be killed if the incident happened in Afghanistan, the country he and his wife had emigrated from in 1998.
"The accused then stated, as the boyfriend would not be going to jail, the only thing left to do was kill his daughter and himself," police said.
(Thanks to readers Immanuel and Wally.)
And they haven't yet got to Flannery's
FoxNews fact-checks what it says are the eight worst environmental predictions - and asks the (usually shameless) experts responsible for their excuses:
1. Within a few years "children just aren't going to know what snow is." Snowfall will be "a very rare and exciting event." Dr. David Viner, senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, interviewed by the UK Independent, March 20, 2000.
2. "[By] 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots…[By 1996] The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers." Michael Oppenheimer, published in "Dead Heat," St. Martin's Press, 1990.
3. "Arctic specialist Bernt Balchen says a general warming trend over the North Pole is melting the polar ice cap and may produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000." Christian Science Monitor, June 8, 1972.
4. "Using computer models, researchers concluded that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide two degrees by 2010." Associated Press, May 15, 1989.
5. "By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half." Life magazine, January 1970.
6. "If present trends continue, the world will be ... eleven degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age." Kenneth E.F. Watt, in "Earth Day," 1970.
7. "By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people ... If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." Ehrlich, Speech at British Institute For Biology, September 1971.
8. "In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish." Ehrlich, speech during Earth Day, 1970
Question: why do the worst predictions tend to be alarmist?
(Thanks to reader A-J B.)
1998 still the record
A big drop in global temperature in December as the el Nino vanishes and is replaced by a La Nina. Sea temperatures have also fallen
Dr Roy Spencer says 1998 remains the hottest year recorded in modern times.
(Thanks to reader David.)
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