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Steynposts
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Sunday, 20 February 2011
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Remember the way all those Curly Fry Lightbulbs governments are forcing us to use are going to lead to massive savings in our energy bills? The great Australian wag Tim Blair draws my attention to this story from The Scotsman:
Cutting carbon emissions through reducing energy consumption may not be as effective as it seems, if consumers spend the money they have saved on environmentally unfriendly products, an economic think-tank has warned.
A report on energy and pollution from the Fraser of Allander Institute at the University of Strathclyde, in partnership with accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), has claimed that the “rebound effect” may mean that people who have saved cash through cutting back energy use, or generating their own renewable energy, could use the money to take an extra flight – or splurge it on electrical goods shipped from overseas…
“You have to think about what the effect is all the way down the chain – that if you use less, you might actually end up consuming more.”
And forget about the big-ticket items. Installing CFLs and then spending a mere six quid of the savings on a couple of imported beers will increase your carbon footprint:
Mr Timar warned that people who had saved £100 by cutting their energy bills could use the cash to fund extra leisure activities, such as drinking imported alcoholic beverages in bars – or electronic gadgets, which are often shipped from overseas.
It has been calculated by environmental experts that one single bottle of imported beer uses 900g of CO2 – wiping out two-thirds of the annual carbon savings made by replacing all light bulbs in an average home with energy-saving models.
A householder who switches to energy-saving bulbs can save £40 a year, according to the Energy Savings Trust, meaning he can afford to treat himself to an extra 12 bottles of Mexican beer Corona at an average city bar price of £3.35.
So, as the First Church of the Settled Science worshippers would say, just as snowier winters are evidence of global warming, likewise installing environmentally-friendly devices will only increase the rate of environmental devastation.
Clearly the only solution is for Big Government to control every aspect of human existence 24/7.
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Steynposts
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Saturday, 19 February 2011
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Well, that’s what Perry Mason would have called it. But 21st century Europe is a long way from Erle Stanley Gardner. On Tuesday, in a story headlined “Austrian Court Upholds Islam’s Blasphemy Rules“, Nina Shea reported:
Today, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, a young Viennese mother, was convicted under section 283 of the Austrian penal code of vilifying religious teachings for her negative commentary on Islam in a lecture before a political-party gathering in Vienna; she was fined 480 Euros. Sabaditsch-Wolff, a diplomat’s daughter, had lived and worked for several years in various Middle Eastern Muslim countries, and at the lecture in question spoke critically of the treatment of women and the practice of jihad in Iran, Libya, and other places that she had lived in.
Frau Sabaditsch-Wolff’s case came up while I was off with various health issues, but I said a few words about it when I was in Ottawa. This was Austria’s contribution to the hottest trend on the Continent – heresy trials. Officially, Mrs Sabaditsch-Wolff and Geert Wilders and Lars Hedegaard are in the dock as heretics against post-Christian Europe’s new religion of “multiculturalism”. But that’s just a transitional stage. As I wrote of the Wilders trial:
The good news is that the Openbaar Ministerie is doing such a grand job with its pilot program of apostasy prosecutions you’ll barely notice when sharia is formally adopted.
Elisabeth’s case attracted less attention than most of the others. In a follow-up, Nina Shea speculated as to why that might be:
This is probably due to the fact that she is an ordinary person and not an acclaimed writer, politician, or celebrity (think Mark Steyn, Geert Wilders, and Brigitte Bardot) — the most prominent examples of the growing ranks of Western Europeans and Canadians who have faced legal problems for criticizing Islamic teachings.
I think it’s also that Austria does not resonate in the imagination as a beacon of individual liberty in the way that the anglophone democracies and certain Continental countries do – or did. Nevertheless, this is a very dark decision. If Lars Hedegaard was acquitted on a technicality, Mrs Sabaditsch-Wolff was convicted on one. See if you can follow the judge’s “thinking“:
The integration of Muslims is surely a question of particular public interest – you are allowed to be critical – but not incitement of hatred…
The language used in the seminars were not inciting hatred, but the utterances regarding muhammad and paedophilia were punishable.
“Paedophilia” is factually incorrect, since paedophilia is a sexual preference which solely or mainly is directed towards children. Nevertheless, it does not apply to Mohammad. He was still married to Aisha when she was 18. It is a “denigration of religious teachings” and are found guilty and sentenced to 120 days, which approaches the minimum of € 480.
So, although Mohammed deflowered Aisha when she was nine, it is “factually incorrect” to call him a pedophile because he was still hot for her when she was in her late teens? As a point of law, it’s not where you start, it’s where you finish – and you’re gonna finish on top! Does this judicial ruling apply to all Austrians partial to a piece of underage totty? For example, Wolfgang Priklopil:
The Austrian girl who was kidnapped at the age of ten and imprisoned for eight years in a dungeon-like basement room by a pedophile predator who committed suicide when she escaped last week…
Whoa, whoa, hold up there. How can you say Herr Priklopil was a “pedophile” when he was still having sex with her when she was 18? And so were all his friends:
A dormant investigation into one of Austria’s most notorious kidnap cases is likely to be reopened after suggestions that Natascha Kampusch, the schoolgirl who vanished for eight years, was not held in a cellar throughout her ordeal as had been widely believed and may have been the victim of a paedophile ring rather than of a lone perpetrator.
Hey, don’t worry, says an Austrian judge. It’s not a “pedophile ring” if she still turns you on a week after she reaches the age of consent.
Or does this dispensation only apply to the Prophet (peace and get-out-of-jail-free cards be upon him)?
In 1998, Terrence McNally wrote Corpus Christi, a hit Broadway play about a gay Jesus. Could you write one about a gay Mohammed? Or would that also be ruled “factually incorrect”?
During my difficulties with the “human rights” regime in Canada, Kathy Shaidle liked to taunt the state enforcers with the line “You’re not smart enough to tell me how to live.” They’re certainly too stupid to tell us what to think. Yet, in torturing logic and law and liberty in ever more inane ways, judges and prosecutors send a consistent message that makes perfect sense to Islamic imperialists – that Islam is hedged off from the norms of intellectual scrutiny that apply to any other ideology, and that in recognition of that privileged protection judges, prosecutors and governments are happy to toss core western values overboard.
This is a disgraceful decision. Elisabeth is appealing it, and she deserves your full support.
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