Gillard's counterproductive carbon tax conversation

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Barrie Cassidy

Julia Gillard recently called on a John Maynard Keynes quote to try and explain why she broke a promise never to introduce a carbon tax.

"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?" he once asked.

Well here's a 2011 variation on that for the Prime Minister and her Government.

When the conversation gets stale, boring and repetitive, I change the subject. What do you do?

Surely it's time for the Government to break from the incessant carbon tax debate and start talking about something else, anything else.

The Government had hoped that the release of the details would act as the circuit breaker. It didn't. The polls suggest the escalation of the conversation made a bad situation even worse.

Perhaps the emphasis on compensation only served to ring alarm bells in the minds of the public about the cost of living issue. It's like asking people not to panic. Why are they asking us not to panic? Why are they offering us compensation? What are they about to do to everyday prices to warrant that?

The Prime Minister talks about playing a long game, and maybe that's the only strategy left open to the Government. Let the issue slow burn. Of course, the Government will have to come back to it when the legislation is debated in the Parliament. And they will need to visit it again, aggressively, when the policy comes into effect in July next year. By then perhaps some of the heat will have gone out of it.

But in the meantime, the public needs a spell. The Government should respond to questions, but not encourage the conversation.

Tony Abbott will, of course, continue to beat the drum. But after a while, he will sound shrill and off the pace. The public will soon tire of him banging on about it.

It is symptomatic of today's politics that any leader can set aside months at a time for a single issue, to the exclusion of everything else. Never in the past has this indulgence been possible. It only happens now because government by and large is run for the benefit, not of the country, but the media. Some of the ministry have a direct or a passing interest in the climate change issue. What on Earth do the rest of them do?

It is said that "silence is golden", and sometimes it is.

The 17th-century English poet, Thomas Carlyle, once wrote : "Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge full formed and majestic."

The 21st-century columnist, Michelle Grattan, once wrote (Wednesday actually) that Julia Gillard "recently indicated she would be broadening into issues beyond just carbon pricing".

"The quicker she does so, the better for her. This high-profile dashing around the country talking carbon, carbon, carbon has become counterproductive. It doesn't look prime ministerial and it continues to boost the status of Tony Abbott to political equal, effectively helping him to amplify his fear pitch."

Silence on the issue – or something approximating silence – is now needed.
Nothing else is working.

Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of ABC programs Insiders and Offsiders.


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NFL star Dave Duerson and the brain injuries that destroyed him

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Ed Pilkington

Before the former American football player Dave Duerson killed himself, he asked that his brain be left to researchers studying head injuries among athletes. What it revealed shocked the scientists


• Watch a video of neuropathologist Dr Ann McKee examining the brain of an American football player

Dave Duerson in action for the Chicago Bears in 1985.

Dave Duerson had so much going for him. A former professional American football player, he still carried himself with the bearing of a star. In Chicago, he was feted as a member of the legendary 1985 Bears that won the Super Bowl, thrashing the New England Patriots 46-10. In New York, too, he was fondly remembered as a member of the Giants team that took the Super Bowl championship five years later, squeaking to victory over the Buffalo Bills by just one point.

He had friends throughout the sport, acquired over an 11-year career with the National Football League (NFL) and many years subsequently helping younger and less fortunate players find their way. He had a loving family with three sons and a daughter and a former wife, Alicia, who kept in regular touch, as well as a girlfriend to whom he had recently become engaged. He lived in a condominium that he owned on Sunny Isles Beach in Florida, a barrier island close to Miami dubbed the Venice of America. He was smart, charming, as kind and gentle off the field as he had been aggressive and ruthless on it.

But he knew that he had a problem. There were the outward signs of difficulties – the collapse of his business, the breakup of his marriage, the debts. But there were also the internal changes. The lapses in memory, the mood swings, the piercing headaches on the left side of his head, the difficulty spelling simple words, the blurred eyesight. And hanging over it all was his fear that both his material and physical decline might not be coincidental, that they might have been caused by injuries to his brain suffered playing the game he loved so much – football.

On 17 February 2011, aged 50, Duerson killed himself inside his Florida apartment. He did so in a manner that was in keeping with his unimpaired earlier self – meticulously, neatly, and with a thought to others. He had placed his NFL Man of the Year trophy, awarded in 1987, on a table beside the spot at which he fell, along with several notes setting out his financial and other arrangements. One of the notes carried a request that he repeated in a text message earlier that day to his ex-wife, Alicia. "Please, see that my brain is given to the NFL's brain bank," he said.

The request might have been deemed a quirk had it not tallied with the unusual method of Duerson's suicide. He shot himself in the heart.
 
The Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy – a research facility so clunkily named that it's unsurprising Duerson used a semi-accurate abbreviation, "the NFL's brain bank" – sits in the pleasantly green and airy grounds of the Bedford VA medical centre in Massachusetts, about an hour's drive outside Boston. It was set up three years ago by concerned former athletes who joined forces with Boston University scientists to grapple with the long-term effects of concussions on sportsmen and women, soldiers and other people subjected to brain injuries.

Security is tight as you enter the building through heavily bolted metal doors. We pass rooms lined with shelves of jars carrying human brains pickled in formaldehyde. At the end of a corridor, we arrive at a small room into which several stainless steel refrigerators have been packed, one of which is marked: "Feet first. Head by door."

In this morgue the world's largest bank of athletes' brains is being stored on dry ice. It has grown exponentially in the past couple of years to include 75 brains, mostly of American football players but also of hockey enforcers – the tough guys who do the bare-knuckle fighting – and of former soldiers caught in bomb blasts. A further 400 living athletes have promised to donate their brains upon death, including some of the biggest names in their sports. They include "Irish" Micky Ward, the boxer played by Mark Wahlberg in the film The Fighter, and American footballers Matt Birk (Baltimore Ravens), Lofa Tatupu (Seattle Seahawks) and Sean Morey (Arizona Cardinals).



Neuropathologist Dr Ann McKee, a leading expert on degenerative diseases caused by repetitive blows to the head, looks at the brain of an American football player who recently died Link to this video

  Dr Ann McKee, a neuropathologist who jointly heads the lab, retrieves a brain from a plastic container and places it carefully on a workbench. At the request of the family, she will not tell me who the brain belonged to, other than to say "he was a very skilled NFL player, very well known".

If you were a fan of American football, I ask her, would you know the name?

"Right," she replies.

McKee is a world expert on chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a progressive degenerative disease similar to Alzheimer's in its symptoms – memory loss, irritability, mood changes – but with its own distinct pathology. The disease has long been recognised: it was first described in 1928 and for many years was thought to be confined to boxers, hence the name "punch drunk" syndrome or "dementia pugilistica". But in the past three years, largely as a result of the work of McKee's brain bank, it has come to be seen as a danger to anyone who suffers repetitive concussions.

McKee begins her examination of the unidentified football star's brain by turning it in her surgically gloved hands with the tender concentration of a fruit-lover inspecting a pineapple. "It's too small for an adult male's brain," she says. "There's shrinkage pretty much throughout the brain."

Using a long knife, she cuts the organ sideways – from ear to ear, as it were – so that the front half is separated from the back. The sliced surface glistens under the morgue's neon lighting.

The dissection reveals three huge holes in the brain – one large triangle right in the centre of the brain, and two ovals parallel to each other at the base. It is apparent that McKee, who has studied more athletes' brains than probably any other person, is shocked by what she sees.

"This is an extreme case," she says, "but it is also very characteristic." She points to the triangular hole, consisting of the lateral ventricles, and says it clearly shows "tremendous disruption". There should be a membrane separating the two ventricles, but it has been so battered by the footballer's repeated blows to the head that only the thinnest of filaments is left. The two oval holes are the ventricles of the temporal lobe and they too are extremely enlarged to compensate for tissue lost from the lobes themselves, another classic sign of having your head bashed repeatedly. "The temporal lobes are crucial to memory and learning and you can see they are very, very small, as miniaturised as possible."

McKee takes a deep look at the cross-section of this brain and momentarily appears sad. "This is a brain at the end-stage of disease," she says. "I would assume that with this amount of damage the person was very cognitively impaired. I would assume they were demented, had substantial problems with their speech and gait, that this person was Parkinsonian, was slow to speak and walk, if he could walk at all."

Without being melodramatic about it, I say, you are holding in your hands an example of the price that is paid for being a professional footballer at the top of his game.

She hesitates a second. "At least in this case, yes," she says.

As a kid, Duerson was an exceptional all-round sportsman who could have pursued a career in baseball or in basketball. But it was football that he loved best. He started playing the game aged eight and carried on through school and into the celebrated football college, the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, picking up numerous awards along the way. He had 24 full seasons before he hung up his boots.

He tended to play strong safety, a key position at the back of the team that is the last line of defence. He would be lined up against the big offensive players on the opposing side, men who can weigh 300lb and whose job it is to drive and grind their team forward. It was Duerson's job to stop them, even if that meant crunching head first into the human equivalent of a brick wall.

It was when he was playing for Notre Dame at the Sugar Bowl, the annual showcase of American college-level football in New Orleans, that he met his wife of 25 years, Alicia. She wasn't interested in football. But she was instantly struck by him the first time she saw him at a party.

"Dave could walk in and capture a room. He had a lot of charisma, he had a lot of magic to him. He was 6ft 2in, but the way he carried himself he seemed like a bigger guy," she says when we meet in Chicago.

They married in 1983 after he graduated with a degree in economics. He had thoughts of going to law school or entering politics, but the draw of a professional career in football proved irresistible and he was selected to play for the Chicago Bears that same year.

Alicia and their four children attended every game. It was hard watching him take a battering in such a physical contact sport, but he was tough and competitive and she comforted herself that it was usually Duerson who delivered the pounding. "He wasn't taking the hits, so much as giving them out."
But over the 11 years he played as a professional, the family can recall at least 10 concussions that he suffered on the pitch. That's the bare minimum, as he may have had many other knocks to the head that weren't registered.

"He never came off the field and would always continue to play, so a lot of times I wouldn't learn 'til after the game," Alicia recalls. Duerson would tell her: "I took a strong hit to the head, I'm a little dizzy, let's drive home," and would try and shake it off.

"Back then it was a man's game," she says. "Gladiator. Ra, ra. He'd say he felt nauseous and need to rest, and go and lie down for a while." Within days, sometimes hours, he'd be back on his feet and back on the field.

For a long time, everything Duerson touched turned to gold. On top of his two Super Bowls, he was declared NFL Man of the Year in 1987 and NFL Humanitarian of the Year the following year.
After he retired from the game in 1993 the successes continued. He refreshed his economics degree with a business course at Harvard and entered the food business, purchasing three McDonald's franchises in Louisville, Kentucky, before setting up his own business, Duerson Foods, supplying sausages to chains.

When times were good, they were very good. They owned a house in Highland Park, a leafy town on the shore of Lake Michigan north of Chicago. They travelled the world, flying Concorde.
But from around 2005, almost a decade after he had given up football, their fortunes started to turn. It was such a slow process, like watching a child grow, that Alicia hardly noticed at first. It started with Duerson making bad business calls in a way that was unlike him.

"He was making hasty decisions. A lot of things that would come natural to him wouldn't any more. He started to lose his ability to function, to think things clearly through," Alicia says.

The business started to suffer, profits to fall and debts to mount. At the same time, Duerson himself began to decline. He had severe headaches with increasing frequency. He would have sharp mood swings, happy one moment, sad or angry the next. He would lash out verbally at those around him. Small things annoyed him, particularly his own inability to do simple things. He would get lost going to places he had been to umpteen times before, as his memory started to fail.

Then in February 2005 he was charged with assault after he attacked Alicia in a hotel room in Indiana; she had to have hospital treatment. They separated two years later. By then Duerson had lost everything, not just his marriage. Duerson Foods went bust and he went bankrupt. They had to surrender the house. The celebrity lifestyle that the Duersons enjoyed on the back of his NFL days had entirely vaporised. He took that hard. "David was so disappointed in himself," Alicia says. "He was a very proud person, and he couldn't handle the failure of it. We had built this beautiful life together, and he lost it all."

It took McKee about two months to carry out her investigation into Duerson's brain. The process involved taking many slices of crucial areas of his brain and staining them with a fluid that highlights the buildup of abnormal proteins. The slices are then turned into slides for microscopic study.

McKee pulls up photographs of the slides on her laptop. They look like images you might find on Google Earth showing a satellite picture of an island whose coastline is broken up with deep inlets. Much of the coastline and several of the inlets are stained a dark brown.

This indicates the presence of tau, an abnormal protein that forms in the brain as a result of a trauma or injury often caused by a blow to the head. McKee explains, the accumulation of tau in nerve cells clogs them up and eventually kills them, and over the years it can spread to neighbouring cells and shut them down too, progressively destroying the brain's function.

"This amount of damage in a 50-year-old is really profound, it's huge," McKee says, pointing to the brown inlets on Duerson's slide. "To show this degree of degenerative disease at that young age is quite extraordinary."

The areas of Duerson's brain in which she found the accumulations of tau matched perfectly Alicia's description of his deterioration: there was damage visible to the inferior and dorsal frontal lobes that are crucial in regulating impulsive behaviour, and in the amygdala, which controls emotions such as rage. "With this kind of injury I would expect the person to display exaggerated and at times assaultive responses," she says.

Duerson's fear, that so many years of taking blows to the head on the football field were catching up on him, was confirmed under the microscope. He did indeed have CTE at an advanced stage.
McKee stresses that Duerson's donation of his brain in a suicide note was not something that they would wish repeated in any way. It was a tremendous tragedy. "Our first and foremost concern is that in no way do we want this to happen to any other individual. There's actually great hope for people who are concerned about themselves – this is a very slow-progressing disease and our understanding of CTE is growing every day."

But the diagnosis helps understand why Duerson ended his life the way he did. Of the 50 cases that have so far been diagnosed as having CTE at the brain bank, no fewer than 10 of them killed themselves, while others died in strange and violent ways such as wild car chases, gun accidents or drug overdoses.

For Alicia Duerson, her former husband's diagnosis has given her some comfort. "I'm really glad for our kids, it's brought closure. Their father killed himself and they really didn't understand why. Now they know he was sick, they know why."

Looking back on all the years on the football field, she's angry that nothing was ever said about the dangers. The NFL has in recent years begun to take CTE seriously, amending its rules and bequeathing the Bedford VA brain bank $1m to fund its research. "We were never educated about brain injuries," Alicia says.

In Duerson's heyday, she recalls, if a player took a knock, the coach would hold up two fingers and say "how many can you count?", the player would say "three" and the coach would send them back on to the field.

"They treated it like a joke," Alicia says. "But that wasn't a joke."

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Climate Change - Wrong #Monckton simply can't get his house in order @crikey_news

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Dr Richard Denniss, executive director of The Australia Institute

The House of Lords says that Christopher Monckton is not entitled to claim he is a member of that House, but he disputes this. The internet is full of scientists carefully debunking the claims about climate change made by him, but he is similarly impervious to correction.

Put simply, Lord Monckton is a case study of the emphasis placed by the media on confidence over content. A harder question for the media, however, is why they have given so much prominence to climate sceptics with no qualifications in science when they pay virtually no attention to immunisation sceptics without qualification in epidemiology or fluoride sceptics with no qualifications in chemistry or biology?

So, how do you debate someone who is impervious to evidence? It’s not easy, but here are a few suggestions.

Step one is to agree with them. If Lord Monckton really believes that climate change is a conspiracy of self-interested “warmists”, then talk to the audience about the real consequences of such a conspiracy.

Does Lord Monckton really believe that NASA under George Bush and the CSIRO under John Howard were part of this conspiracy? Does he believe that Andrew Peacock, John Howard, Brendan Nelson, Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott (at least half of the time), not to mention Arnold, Margaret Thatcher and Angela Merkel are in on it as well?

Of course it is not just conservative politicians who accept the science of climate change. Ralph Hillman, the head of the Australian Coal Association, Mitch Hooke, the head of the Minerals Council, do and even Marius Kloppers, the head of BHP, not only accepts the science but supports the introduction of a carbon tax.

Does Lord Monckton really believe that these politicians and business people are all part of some warmist conspiracy?

The next step is to embrace genuine scepticism. One of the reasons that so many hard-working and sincere scientists are genuinely flummoxed by entertainers such as Lord Monckton is that they see themselves as sceptics. That is, the whole basis of scientific inquiry is one of scepticism and questioning, and the whole point of peer-reviewed publications is that science is critically evaluated before it is published.

In claiming scepticism Lord Monckton, who is not a scientist, is actually claiming science for himself. But as a sceptic, Lord Monckton should have no problem accepting the possibility that he himself is wrong. To do otherwise would be an admission that he is simply a zealot.

So in debating Lord Monckton it is important to ask him, and the audience, to think about the consequences if he is wrong.

What if NASA, CSIRO and the world academies of science are right when they tell us that the world is warming, that this warming is caused by our pollution and that the only way to stop it warming further is to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions? We insure our homes against the unlikely event of fire and we plan to spend more than $50 billion on 12 new submarines in case we are one day attacked but, by Lord Monckton’s logic, we shouldn’t pay a price for pollution as an insurance premium against catastrophic climate change.

The third point to make in such a debate flows on from the second. Sceptics increasingly argue that while climate change might be happening the costs of tackling it will be far greater than the costs of ignoring it. In order to maintain such an argument, however, they have to make their conspiracy theory far bigger than the one linking NASA, Greenpeace, John Howard and Marius Kloppers. Indeed, to maintain the argument against a carbon price Lord Monckton has to include the entire economics profession as well.

A good question to ask climate sceptics in general, and one I put to Lord Monckton, was why he was so opposed to a carbon price and so quiet about Tony Abbott’s far more expensive direct action scheme. Tony Abbott has not found a single economist to publicly back his scheme, and an analysis by the Australia Institute estimates that bureaucrats will likely have to process more than 150,000 grant applications to achieve the Coalition’s target of 713 million tonnes of abatement by 2020.

The administration costs will likely be enormous.

So if you ever wind up in a debate with a sceptic try not to take the bait. They want to be attacked; because their conspiracy theory requires them to be seen as possessing dangerous knowledge, which makes powerful people want to silence them. And they want to sound conservative when, of course, their views about climate science, and if you scratch the surface a range of other things, are actually quite extreme.

We live in a democracy, and I hope we always respect free speech. Climate sceptics aren’t the only people in the country who knowingly or otherwise mislead the public, but there is no doubt that their co-ordinated efforts to mislead people have slowed down our efforts to prevent the catastrophic climate change our scientific bodies warn us of.

Only the media can explain why they have given so much attention to extreme and ill-informed views about climate change and choose not to give a similar platform to a range of other conspiracy theorists. But when these debates do go ahead, my advice is that it is best to focus on the risks and consequences and unlikeness of the sceptics being right rather than try and prove that they are wrong.

Not even the House of Lords can convince Lord Monckton that he is wrong.

*Dr Richard Denniss is executive director of The Australia Institute, a Canberra-based think tank.

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Background Briefing - The Lord #Monckton roadshow

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The Scottish peer Lord Monckton has been raising hell against the carbon tax in barnstorming rallies and public meetings around the country. But just who is Lord Monckton and who are the forces behind him? Chief amongst them a mysterious group called the Galileo Movement and mining magnate and now media player Gina Rinehart. Reporter Wendy Carlisle

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Further Information

The Tobacco Institute Memorandum from Samuel D Chilcote

Science Economics and Environmental Policy: A critical examination by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution

IPCC Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. See chapter 5 page 409 for details of predicted sea level rises

Email from the University of Winnipeg regarding Professor Timothy Ball

The paper on drowned polar bears cited by Lord Monckton

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Murdoch's World: Demagoguery, Propaganda, Scandal, Sleaze, and Warmongering

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 - by Stephen Lendman

Famed journalist George Seldes (1890 - 1995) condemned press prostitutes in books like "Lords of the Press," denouncing their corruption, suppression of truth, and news censorship before television reached large audiences, saying:

"The most sacred cow of the press is the press itself - the most powerful force against the general welfare of the majority of the people."

Australian journalist Bruce Page authored a book on Murdock titled, "The Murdoch Archigelago," calling him:

"one of the world's leading villains (and) global pirate(s)," rampaging the mediasphere, telling world leaders what he expects from them and what he'll offer in return. It's "let's make a deal," Murdoch-style that's uncompromisingly hardball, some on the receiving end calling it an offer they can't refuse.

On air and in print, his operations support allies and beat up on adversaries, enough at times to affect political outcomes his way, especially in Britain and his native Australia, but also helping hard-right US candidates.

For mass audiences, he specializes in sensationalist pseudo-journalism, distorting the truth, at the same time juicing-up reports on murder, mayhem, mishaps, celebrity gossip and soft porn for audiences that love it.

He's so beyond respectability, in fact, that former Chicago columnist Mike Royko (1932 - 1997) once said "no self-respecting fish would (want to) be wrapped in a Murdoch paper....His goal (isn't) journalism, (it's) vast power, political power," and, of course, bottom line priorities. If ideologically acceptable and sells, he'll feature it and has for decades.

From his early beginnings to his current unrivaled media world status (unless scandal now brings him down), he's wielded unchallenged power ruthlessly as a world class predator, using deception, chicanery, arrogance, artfulness, charm, cunning, sheer muscle, will, intimidation, poisonous influence and toadying to get his way by bullying people to prevail.

Bereft of ethics, his media empire includes a bordello of print and broadcast outlets. In his book titled, "The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch," Michael Wolff called him a monarch, gangster and con man, interested only in power, control and profits.

Given his history, clout, connections, manipulativeness, and hardball style, a fitting headline in the wake of the News of the World (NOTW) scandal would be Murdoch comes a cropper.

If only true, bringing down the world's leading media villain, purveyor of sleaze, and power hungry news baron - clawing, exploiting, and hacking his way to notoriety and fortune.

In fact, however this affects him going forward (at age 80), expect his media empire to survive like caught-in-the-act Wall Street bandits - stealing billions, penalized millions, a few insiders at times going down, then back to business grabbing more.

So far, however, a bumpy ride followed London Guardian writers Nick Davies and Amelia Hill breaking the story, headlining on July 4, "Missing Milly Dowler's voicemail was hacked by News of the World," saying:

Murdoch's UK tabloid "illegally targeted (her) and her family in March 2002, interfering with police inquiries into her disappearance, an investigation by the Guardian has established."

After that it was all downhill, evidence showing Murdoch's NOTW hacked into phones and electronically spied on prime ministers, other politicians, celebrities, royal aides, Prince William, perhaps the queen, and innocent victims like Milly Dowler.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's Peter Hart said he "may have hoped that....clos(ing) down News of the World" would make the story "go away, but (it's) getting bigger by the day if not by the hour."

Even prime ministers aren't immune, according to London Independent writers Oliver Wright and Nigel Morris, headlining on July 16, "Revealed: Cameron's 26 meetings in 15 months with Murdoch chiefs," saying:

Since becoming UK prime minister, David Cameron met with Murdoch "executives no fewer than 26 (times) in just over a year...." In fact, Rebekah Brooks, News International's chief executive and former NOTW editor "is the only person (Cameron) invited twice to Chequers (UK prime ministers' private country house since 1921), a privilege not extended even to the most senior" cabinet members.

Eight months ago, Murdoch's son James (his heir apparent as News Corp. chairman and CEO) was also a Chequers guest, as well as NOTW editor Andy Coulson, arrested this week "in connection with police corruption and phone hacking...."

Moreover, documents revealed that News International executives and editors had 15 private meetings with Cameron since May, showing the grip Murdoch has on British politics, able to make or break aspirants in print or on air. In fact, veteran Labour MP Dennis Skinner calls him "a cancer on the body politic" because of his influence on electoral outcomes.

According to former Times of London editor/Murdoch employee Simon Jenkins:

"There's no doubt it's been hugely damaging to" his UK interests. However, rivals like The Guardian, BBC, and other news organizations exploited it out of proportion, hoping to capitalize advantageously. So did Carl Bernstein (of Woodward and Bernstein fame), calling the scandal another Watergate.

At the same time, Conservative MPs like Zac Goldsmith said, "(p)oliticians have suddently started to distance themselves from Murdoch....Other times (members) of both major parties craved his attention in the most groveling fashion."

That despite knowledge of prior illegal hacking. Examples include:

-- In March 2002, hacking Milly Dowler and her family's voicemail.

-- In November 2005, NOTW writing about Prince William injuring his knee, prompting royal officials to suspect voice mail hacking.

-- In November 2007, NOTW royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire convicted of phone mail hacking and jailed. NOTW's editor claimed no knowledge but resigned.

-- In June 2008, News Corp. pays soccer executive Gordon Taylor 700,000 pounds to settle charges of phone hacking.

-- In March 2010, NOTW paid a celebrity PR agent over one million pounds to drop his lawsuit.

-- In September 2010, former NOTW journalist Sean Hoare alleged that phone hacking was common practice, encouraged by former editor Andy Coulson.

-- On January 21, 2011, Coulson resigned as David Cameron's spokesman over allegations of phone hacking.

-- On April 5, 2011, NOTW chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck and former editor Ian Edmondson were arrested on suspicion of hacking voice mail messages.

-- On April 10, NOTW formally apologized for voice mail hacking from 2004 - 2006. It also agreed to compensate victims.

-- On April 14, senior NOTW journalist James Weatherup is arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to hack communications.

-- On June 7, NOTW paid actress Sienna Miller 100,000 pounds in damages and legal fees.

-- On June 23, freelance journalist Terenia Taras was arrested on suspicion of phone hacking.

-- On July 4, Milly Dowler's hacking story broke.

-- On July 7, News International announces that NOTW will cease publishing after July 10.

-- On July 8, Coulson is arrested. Former royal editor Clive Goodman is again arrested on corruption allegations.

-- On July 11, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown accuses News International newspapers of illegally obtaining private information about him.

-- On July 12, UK lawmakers summon Rupert and James Murdoch, as well as Rebekah Brooks to testify before Parliament.

-- On July 13, News Corp. withdraws its takeover bid for UK satellite broadcaster BSkyB. In addition, Prime Minister Cameron announces a wide-ranging public inquiry into the scandal.

-- On July 14, the FBI launches an investigation into whether News Corp. may have hacked into phones of 9/11 victims after members of Congress requested it.

-- On July 15, Brooks resigns as News International CEO. In addition, Dow Jones head Les Hinton resigns.

-- On July 15, New York Times writer Don Van Natta Jr. headlined, "Stain From Tabloids Rubs Off on a Cozy Scotland Yard," saying:

The Times learned that former NOTW editor Neil Wallis "report(ed) back to News International while he was working for the police on the hacking case. Executives and others at the company also enjoyed close social ties to Scotland Yard's top officials."

"Since the hacking scandal began in 2006," Metropolitan Police Service assistant commissioner John Yates and other police officials "regularly dined with editors from News International papers, records show. Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, met for lunch or dinner 18 times with company executives and editors during the investigation," including eight times with Wallis while employed by NOTW.

On July 15, Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed the FBI investigation, saying:

"There have been serious allegations raised....There have been members of Congress....who have asked us to investigate (and) we are progressing in that regard, using the appropriate federal agencies in the United States."

What'll come of it isn't known. Watergate didn't topple Nixon. Harming powerful interests did, so it remains to be seen if Murdoch committed similar transgressions. If so, retirement at age 80 may follow, but not the demise of News Corp. and its flagship Fox News operation, a cash cow New York magazine's Gabriel Sherman believes will be more valuable than ever.

That depends, of course, on what, if any, wrongdoing FBI investigations disclose and whether or not prosecutions follow.

For sure Murdoch sustained a body blow. Calling it coup de grace strength, however, exaggerates how News Corp will be affected. It likely will survive long after its aging head steps down, but imagine a Murdoch-free media landscape. Then imagine freedom from all managed and junk food news. Tune out and make it happen.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.


http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

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Decarbonising the economy will sit quietly atop changes already going on

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To a lot of thoughtful people, Julia Gillard's plan to virtually ''decarbonise'' our economy represents one of the most radical attempts at reform in our history.

It will present a profound challenge to the Australian way of life, we're told, requiring changes to our lifestyle, spending patterns, taxation burdens and possibly even people's chosen field of employment.

As well as changing our everyday practices, it will change the structure of the country's fiscal and industrial systems and the way we trade with the rest of the world.

Fortunately, however, the adjustment needed to achieve a low-carbon economy won't be nearly as drastic as the thoughtful observers expect.

The first point is that the very reason economists advocate the use of the price mechanism is their confidence this will be the least-cost way to bring about the desired changes. Least-cost primarily refers to least reduction in the rate of improvement in our material standard of living (which reduction Treasury's modelling estimates to be less than 0.1 percentage points a year, totalling about 0.5 per cent by 2020).

Something that has such a modest effect on our standard of living is unlikely to have much effect on our way of life. If it doesn't, that will be by design.

Decarbonising the economy isn't as radical as it sounds. It's not too much of an oversimplification to say the main change we need to achieve is just in the means we use to generate electricity.

It's not likely to involve any reduction in our use of electricity, nor much reduction in the rate of growth in that use. That's true despite all the talk about the higher price of electricity encouraging householders and businesses to use it less wastefully. By definition, wasting electricity contributes nothing to our standard of living.

The majority of the economy will be largely unaffected by carbon pricing. Get this: Treasury estimates that industries employing more than 90 per cent of the workforce account for less than 10 per cent of emissions.

Note, too, that Treasury expects about half the eventual reduction in emissions achieved by our big polluting industries to be brought about in other countries, where reducing emissions is cheaper. This, too, is a design feature intended to minimise the cost and disruption to our economy.

Remember that the decarbonising of the economy won't happen overnight. It will be brought about over the next 40 years. And much of it will happen relatively smoothly as electricity producers install emissions-efficient generators when their old power stations come to the end of their useful lives.

This is why it's so important to leave those producers in no doubt that the cost of emissions will be high and rising. Paradoxically, the more they believe that, the more their actions will cause it to be less true.

Tony Abbott claims the scheme obviously involves the end of the coal industry because Treasury's projections envisage coal accounting for less than 10 per cent of electricity production in 2050.

This is dishonest for several reasons. It ignores the 15 per cent of production expected to come from coal that's been subject to carbon capture and storage. More significantly, it ignores the high proportion of coal produced for export, including coking coal for steel-making. (And this guy calls Gillard a liar.)

Decarbonisation should also involve a major reduction in our use of fossil fuels for transport, of course. But, if the world price of oil keeps rising, over time that change will come about regardless of Gillard's carbon pricing.

The assertion that decarbonisation will bring marked and disturbing changes in our way of life reveals a lack of appreciation of how much things are always changing - especially over a period as long as 40 years.

Our spending patterns change over the years as we buy proportionately fewer goods and more services, as new electronic gismos are invented, as more women leave the home to work and as enterprising businesses dream up new services to sell us. Do we notice? Not really.

It's funny to have some critics asking why they're levying a new tax then giving back most of the proceeds (including by reductions in income tax) and then have others talking about significant changes in the tax burden and the fiscal structure.

The beauty of taxes that are used to change the relative prices people and businesses face is that you can then use the proceeds to reduce other, ideally more inefficient, taxes. This, too, is a design feature.

John Howard used the surge in company tax revenue associated with the resources boom to cut personal income tax five years in a row then proposed increasing it to eight years (with the Rudd government obliging). This significant change in the mix of taxes was brought about without anyone much noticing.

It's true the carbon price will cause employment in the small proportion of the economy that's emissions-intensive to grow less quickly than otherwise, while employment in the small proportion of the economy producing renewable energy grows more quickly than otherwise.

While ever the overall economy is growing, such modest changes in employment shares won't cause much angst. And get this: each year about 2 million people change jobs, including about 500,000 who change industries.

The structural change the carbon price will bring isn't likely to be all that history-making. According to Treasury, ''the changes to the Australian economy from pricing carbon are [projected to be] small by historical standards and small compared to the changes we are already seeing in our economy as it adjusts to accommodate the pressures of mining boom mark II''.

A carbon tax is nothing compared with an exchange rate that stays above parity with the greenback.

Ross Gittins is the economics editor.


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It all seems so long ago. Kevin Rudd was riding high in the polls and had all the political capital he needed to push through essential pieces of legislation to secure Australia’s future. The Australian led the charge at the start of 2010, relentlessly attacking Labor for alleged shortcomings of the BER program. Never mind that it served its function brilliantly, supporting the construction sector when it needed help the most. The mining tax legislation was then announced, culminating in what can only be described as a capricious industry revolt by the billionaire mining barons. The Murdoch press was all too eager to help move things along, and the rest is history.

Fast forward to today. We still have a Labor government, one which seems to have found a backbone under Gillard’s leadership and resurrected its plans to put a price on carbon. Rabid sections of the media are still alive and well, both in the Murdoch press and on the shock jock airwaves. It seems clear to me, as it does to many, that the facts behind climate change and the government’s plans to combat it have become lost in a sea of deliberate misinformation and obfuscation by these very sections of the media. While Fairfax appears to be making valiant attempts to set the record straight, their efforts are nowhere near enough to combat Murdoch’s control of almost 70% of Australian print media.

“What can we do?”, you might ask. The internet presents a remarkable opportunity to bypass the media filters of old. Last year I created a site called Mining Tax Facts (http://www.mining-tax.com.au), a site which sat at the top of the Google rankings for many mining tax related keywords for a very long time. This year, I’ve decided to create something similar for the so-called carbon tax at http://www.carbontax.net.au. Along with help from John Cooke (from Skeptical Science) as well as the Environment Defenders Office of Victoria, I have compiled a list of common questions surround both climate change and the government’s plans to put a price on carbon. All answers are fully referenced and should provide a useful resource to anyone trying to combat misinformation. It should also help those who have yet to make up their minds. The site is fully interactive; people can post comments and questions and debate any of the finer points of the legislation.

If you’re wondering how you can help promote the site, please do one (or many) of the following:
- If you run a blog, consider placing the site in your blogroll (call it “Carbon Tax Facts”. Also consider posting a link in your next post. These sorts of links are extremely useful for gaining a high Google ranking.
- If you have a Twitter or Facebook account, share it on one or both.
- If you have a Google account, click the +1 button on the site (it’s up the top)
- Email the link to your friends.

JJ Fiasson

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