India Shelves Inter-Linking Of Rivers
Minister says plan is 'a human and ecological disaster'
Gandhi's remark drew flak from the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) ally the southern Dravida Munnetra Khazagham DMK, which said it was the idea introduced by former prime minister and Gandhi's grandmother, Indira Gandhi, who set up the National Water Development Agency in 1982 to study the possibility of water transfers from surplus basins to deficit areas.

Millions of gallons of raw sewage taints Missouri waters, state agency data show

Two More Exonerations Stress the Need for Credible Evidence
Two more innocent men have been freed from death row. Just last week, Yancy Douglas and Paris Powell became the 137th and 138th people to be exonerated from death row. The two men were convicted of a drive-by shooting in 1993 based on the testimony of an in-custody informant who had been offered leniency from the prosecution. The prosecutors at trial withheld information about this plea-deal from the defense, which resulted in a new trial. All charges against the two men have now been dropped because of the unreliability of the in-custody informant’s testimony, the only evidence that linked Douglas and Powell to the crime.

( Rather it is proof the 'Justice' system suffers from an institutional bias of rewarding prosecution past the point where it is accurate. It is in this context we hear complaints that it is necessary to pervert things further towards untrammeled state power to imprison indefinitely without review or censure for the 'public safety': 'anti-terrorism' being the all enabling 'Mission Statement' to exercise Terror. )

The Justice Project

Latest News

New Report on Georgia’s Broken Criminal Justice System

The Justice Project’s new publication,Convicting the Innocent in Georgia: Stories of Injustice and the Reforms that Can Prevent Them highlights twenty individuals who were wrongfully convicted for crimes they did not commit. Their stories underscore the systemic problems in Georgia’s criminal justice system.

L.A. TIMES

Flawed county system lets children die invisibly

Miguel Padilla, mistreated and abandoned, killed himself at 17

At least 268 children who had passed through the child welfare system died from January 2008 through early August 2009, according to internal county records obtained by The Times. They show that 213 were by unnatural or undetermined causes, including 76 homicides, 35 accidents and 16 suicides.

Eighteen of the fatalities were deemed the direct result of abuse or neglect by a caregiver, subjecting them to public disclosure under a recent state law aimed at prevention.

But Miguel and many others perished all but invisibly, their deaths attracting little or no public scrutiny.

Pakistani troops rescue hostages after militants attack military HQ

Analysts said the operation underscored the potency of extremist networks despite a recent defeat by the army in Swat and a stream of US drone attacks in the tribal belt, one of which killed the Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud in August.

newshoggers

Civilians Ebb instead of Surge

The New York Times is reporting that the civilian component of the March mini-surge is failing:

many civil institutions are deteriorating as much as the country’s security.

Afghanistan is now so dangerous, administration officials said, that many aid workers cannot travel outside the capital, Kabul...

Advisers to the administration said the military was likely to do much of the civilian work in the foreseeable future, at least until Afghanistan is more secure....

The judiciary is so weak that Afghans increasingly turn to a shadow Taliban court system because, a senior military official said, “a lot of the rural people see the Taliban justice as at least something.”

The Karzai government does not have sufficient presence or capacity to project its legitimacy past Kabul is how I am reading this report. Basic governance and dispute resolution functions are undertaken by the insurgents which illustrates the legitimacy gap as well as the capacity gap. This has long been observed as a key indicator --- the population seems to have decided that the Taliban may be brutal, but they are either fair or the only ones present with the power to compel local dispute resolution.

Replicating the Awakening

By Dave Anderson:

The local IraqiSunni Arab insurgencies flipped in 2006/2007 in the Anbar Awakening because the local elites thought that one group of meddlesome foreigners with declining and increasingly minimalist goals would be more useful to them in accomplishing local political/economic objectives than the other group of meddlesome and heavily armed foreigners who maintained maximalist goals.

Last week, the Boston Globe reported that US military believes the vast majority of the Afghans who are shooting at US forces are doing so for purely local reasons. They are in the words of COIN advocate Col. Kilcullen 'accidental guerrillas' who will not want to engage in inter-continental urban guerrilla or terrorist strikes because that does not serve their local needs.

Nearly all of the insurgents battling US and NATO troops in Afghanistan are not religiously motivated Taliban and Al Qaeda warriors, but a new generation of tribal fighters vying for control of territory, mineral wealth, and smuggling routes...“Ninety percent is a tribal, localized insurgency,’’ said one US intelligence official in Washington who helped draft the assessments. “Ten percent are hardcore ideologues fighting for the Taliban...."

the mostly ethnic Pashtun fighters are often deeply connected by family and social ties to the valleys and mountains where they are fighting, and they see themselves as opposing the United States be cause it is an occupying power, the officials and analysts said.

The missing: Each year, 275,000 Britons disappear

The number of people vanishing is at record levels, with the recession a key factor. Many soon return, but who helps the agonised families of those who stay away?

The long-term missing inhabit a looking-over-their-shoulder world of false names, cash-in-hand jobs, hostels and short lets. For their families, they leave behind not only trauma, grief, guilt, anger and despair, but also, if they are breadwinners, more practical problems. Missing people are deemed neither dead nor properly alive, so salaries are stopped, insurance companies won't pay out, bills can't be paid and corporate "helplines" won't discuss the disappeared's affairs because of the Data Protection Act. But, most of all, the long-term missing leave behind an aching sense of mystery: what has become of them, and why did they go?

China says rich countries undercut climate talks

Su told China's official Xinhua news agency that rich countries were seeking to abandon key principles of the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty that governs nations' efforts to address climate changeup to the end of 2012.

Su said any attempt to abandon the Kyoto Protocol "gravely violated the fundamental basis of the international climate negotiations," Xinhua reported on Saturday.

"With so little time left for negotiations, proposing a new plan that fundamentally violates the basis of negotiations is in effect setting up new obstacles to their progress," he said.

Su heads the climate change policy division of China's National Development and Reform Commission, an agency that steers economic policy and dominates global warming policy.

/balneus

Are these righties serious, hypocrites, or from beyond the grave?

The Science and Pseudoscience of Global Warming

Protesters turn on each other in sea hunt for whalers
TWO anti-whaling groups harassing Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean turned on each other yesterday.
Sea Shepherd chief Paul Watson slammed Greenpeace for refusing to tell him where the Japanese whaling fleet is, even though the Greenpeace ship Esperanza is right on the tail of the whalers' mothership.

The row blew up as the crew of the Sea Shepherd ship, the Steve Irwin, threw 10 butyric acid bottles at the Yushin Maru No. 2. The acid is harmless but smells like rancid butter.

WIRED

Tricked-Out Golf Carts Swarm Florida Communities

Food, nutrients and relief from the common cold

Dr. Ayala

I headed to the online Cochrane library looking for reports on some of these natural remedies.

Before I get into the details of what I found, I’m sure you’ve been wondering how we make sense of study results when one study shows one finding while another study refutes those results. The experience can leave everyone quite confused, not knowing what to believe. But this is how the scientific method works. It’s only through refining and repeating studies that we can arrive at a tentative conclusion. The Cochrane reviews aim to do just that—take into account only the best of studies, and see if there’s enough evidence to prove efficacy.

The global Cochrane Collaboration is an independent network of volunteers that doesn't accept conflicted funding, and whose mission is to gather the best available evidence, summarize and interpret the results and make them readily available as a resource for evidence-based medicine on which to base scientifically grounded health-care decisions. (The full reports require a subscription, but the abstracts and summaries are free.)

Thoughts on Freedom

Australian Libertarian Society Blog

Documentary on environmental alarmism

The documentary “Not Evil Just Wrong” has been described as an anti-AGW film. I haven’t seen it, but I understand that the primary theme is to argue against environmental alarmism and the occasional tendency of humans to let fear drive us to silly policy. If so, then it is an important story worth telling.

The film will be premiered in private showings around the world on 18 October 2009. Various groups have arranged for screenings around Australia, with details on facebook. For those in Sydney, the screening is at Level 3, Manning Building, Manning Road, University of Sydney, and costs $15.

October 11, 2009 Posted by John Humphreys | Environment, Events | AGW, Climate change | 10 Comments

Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

Seriously.

October 9, 2009 Posted by Fleeced | General | nobel, obama, peace prize | 12 Comments

Unemployment & DSP

Good economic news today, with reported unemployment dropping from 5.8% to 5.7%. It is looking increasingly like I was right to be optimistic about the economy.

It’s just a shame that Rudd had to waste billions of dollars on impotent fiscal policy, it’s a double-shame that he will get the credit for a recovery that was always on the cards, and it’s a triple-shame that the hangover from the fiscal policy will lead to a slightly slower economic growth. Still, good news is good news, and low unemployment is worth celebrating.

But a work-mate just pointed out an interesting factoid.

Over the past quarter there has been a rapid increase in the number of people going on the Disability Support Pension (DSP). This makes sense. In a downturn, it becomes relatively more attractive to get DSP payments and so we are hit with an epidemic of “bad backs” and “depression”.

I decided to check the consequences of the “DSP mini-boom” on the unemployment number. DSP recipients don’t count towards unemployment… But without DSP, those people would have been on Newstart Allowance, and would be counted as unemployed.

The conclusion was that without the DSP mini-boom, the unemployment rate would still be 5.8%.

October 8, 2009 Posted by John Humphreys | Economics | GFC, Unemployment | 11 Comments

Left-libertarians

An article in the Australian by a “libertarian social-democrat” sparked a debate among friends about the idea of left-libertarians. It seems to me that this badge is used in two different ways, and it’s worth drawing the distinction between “good” left-libertarians and “bad” left-libertarians.

1. Libertarians who identify with leftist culture, “left” issues and a communitarian moral philosophy. This group believes that human interaction should generally be voluntary, but they want to stress the importance of community groups instead of businesses, they care relatively more about civil liberties, gay equality and drug legalisation, and they have a communitarian vision of how people will voluntarily coordinate. I think this is clearly libertarian, and in my old age I’m starting to shift closer to this vision of society.

Because of the difference in culture and priorities, this group can sometimes appear in conflict with “right-libertarians”. I’ve seen plenty of debates between “left” and “right” cultured libertarians, where both are convinced the other is a political enemy. When I “translate” for them, it becomes clear that they mostly agree on politics. This problem is exacerbated in Australia where we don’t have a strong libertarian tradition and so many people identify with “left” and “right” and learn to see things through that framework.

October 8, 2009 Posted by John Humphreys | Philosophy | | 64 Comments

Economists on strike?

This is a guest post by Chris Brown, who is a lecturer at the Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship at Swinburne University. It was originally published at mises.org and Chris blogs atAustro-libertarian.

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A recent teachers’ union strike that included economists and other business faculty members at my university — ironically and yet unsurprisingly led by an economics lecturer — has motivated me to consider the intended consequences of these strike actions.

Economists are prone to call the consequences of many decisions “unintended,” and thus assume the actors are genuinely ignorant of these effects or would otherwise not choose the actions that cause them. However, I must give these economists qua economists credit for a minimum knowledge of the effects of unions and strikes, and assume they knew the likely outcomes of their actions. If they did not understand these consequences, they surely cannot be worthy of what some consider a noble title: economist.

In the union’s political self-interest, these economists are making nearly everyone else worse off by going on strike. They went on strike to request, inter alia, higher wages and more paid leave.

October 6, 2009 Posted by Guest | Economics | Labour markets | 11 Comments