Real markets have real customers, who notice when things don’t add up. Fake markets are an invitation to criminals.
The state forced payments from citizens for the wrong reasons, to solve a non-problem with the wrong method.
In this case, state organized crime meets independent organized crime.
Mafia probe nets $1.7bn in clean energy assets
Italian police have seized assets worth 1.3 billion euros ($1.7 billion) from a Sicilian renewable energy developer in the biggest ever seizure of mafia-linked assets.
The assets, including 43 wind and solar energy companies, 98 properties and 66 bank accounts, belonged to Vito Nicastri, a 57-year-old businessman dubbed the “Lord of the Wind” for his prominent role in the business.
“This is a sector in which money can easily be laundered,” Arturo de Felice, head of Italy’s anti-mafia agency, told local media.
“Operating in a grey area helped him build up his business over the years.”
The anti-mafia agency in a statement said it was the biggest seizure of mafia-linked assets.
This was not a free market, but a free-for-all.
Italy’s renewable energy sector has been heavily infiltrated by the mafia because of once-generous state subsidies and lax controls, as well as the availability of land in areas of southern Italy with a strong mafia presence.
As far as Italy’s environment and emissions go, we know that it probably makes no difference whether the renewables were actually running or not. But it does matter if a system feeds criminals. They get empowered at the expense of honest people.
Ironic given the number of times climate alarmists and the renewable energy zealots accuse climate skeptics of being ‘profit motivated’ or funded by the fossil fuel industry. Did no one wonder why all those Italian guys in the wide double breasted pin-striped suits with the white ties were attending the global climate conferences?
Has anyone run the name ‘Vito Nicastri’ through the Climategate files? It would be interesting to see if he was wining and dining any of the climate scientists.
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Lets keep in mind Prof. Flannery has and or still hold shares in at least one major renewable energy project. If anyone has a genuine link to an accusation of vested interests and market manipulation in this debate its Tim.
211
I reckon if we dug deep enough we find mafia corruption in our own backyeard with all the greenie companies popping up!!!
62
Union movement is the Australian Mafia and a Royal Commission into their decades of corruption is essential
100
Flannery is actually tied up at least two major wind organisations. Quote from the article:
Full article @ ‘Stop These Things’; ‘Tim Flannery derides wind farm sickness’
http://stopthesethings.com/2013/03/28/tim-flannery-derides-wind-farm-sickness/
91
Snafu,
I didn`t know he was in the pay of Big Wind as well , why is it that standard conflict of interest rules seem to not apply to anyone involved in the fashionable renewables scam ?
40
I wonder that nobody has queried the conflict of interest rules for David Cameron and Nick Clegg. The former’s FIL earns a whopping amount for ‘hosting’ wind turbines on his land and the latter’s wife’s family is involved in their manufacture.
20
Safety guy ,
That would be the Geodynamics boondoggle , it has been given $100 million of taxpayers’ money it has not yet generated a single watt of energy,
41
Yeah thats the one.
Also I did not know about his involvement with wind. I feel dirty now 🙁
So how is this not something like a vested interest/insider trading ? How is this being allowed to happen in broad daylight ?
50
Maybe this is the mob Roger Pielke jnr was thinking of when he referred to the ‘Climate Mafia’
100
I hate to mention it again, but the best analogy for selling carbon credits is a hooker selling her ‘assets’.
You’ve got it, so you sell it, but you’ve still got ir, so you sell it again, but you’ve still got it, so you sell it again, ……………………………..
Is it any wonder the Mafia involved in renewables, carbon credits etc, as it is just like their long established investments in the world’s oldest profession.
110
There is lots of exciting news on the wind front — sorta related even… The courts are having a field day!
See here:
http://ontario-wind-resistance.org/2013/04/03/nexterror-energy-sent-me-a-cease-and-desist-demand-what-would-you-do/
Article Title says it all: Nexterror Energy sent me a ‘cease and desist demand’. What would you do?
A dispute about altering the Logo and renaming the company (NextEra) to something considered more appropriate.
Cheers!
30
La Cosa Nostra is now La Cosa Clima? For some reason, I am not shocked.
I wonder how often the bag man for the green mafia makes it collections? What are they getting in total from the climate scam? How about the land and money they shake down from land developers or the manufacturers of products that are not “environmentally friendly?”
I’ve written it before and I do so again: it always gets down to the money.
The CAGW scam will continue as long as they can milk the taxpayer.
183
Nice windmill you got there Eddy… shame if something were to happen to it…
Hey, maybe that’s why some windmills caught fire. Maybe they forgot to pay for ‘protection.’
71
Well some may think I am over the top for saying opponents of the Green Industry risk their lives….but now that cannot be denied.
61
lol
The Mafia have issued a press release disclaiming any connection with the “Real Climate Mafia” as mentioned by Roger Pielke Junior:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/fixing-marcott-mess-in-climate-science.html
“We are merely siphoning off the odd $$$billion here or there for research purposes, not seeking to influence governments and subjugate the world to our lame computer models” said a visibly outraged Mafia spokesman. “We don’t use hockey-sticks” the spokesman added.
150
Only 1.7b?
I had more respect for the Mafia. If all they could get was 1.7b then they’re a pretty amateur operation…….
70
Don’t confuse the liquid asset with the annual interest payable on that asset.
The family always declares the interest on their liquid assets, primarily because the banks are required to tell the Government as a cross check, but also because they are law abiding citizens.
50
Wot????
oh yah “law abiding”…….
and the government
is in ontaxes the “business”.What a happy arrangement that is.
30
I work for one of the largest manufacturers and installers of wind turbines in the world. (please dont hold it against me lol) One thing I can tell you is if the same sort of probe was done in Australia, the same sorts of things would be found (maybe not on that scale). What happens to any market when the Govt. of the day pumps money (subsidies) into it ? Prices rise and people profiteer. Its no different in Australia, everything from the hire and running of the main cranes to the rentals in the towns near the projects is rapidly over priced as the locals smell the blood of easy money in the water.
Watch this, and just substitute the word “Windfarm” for “Monorail” and you basically get the picture of how the industry operates.
http://youtu.be/AEZjzsnPhnw
Ive said it a number of times, I should be like a poster boy for skeptics (if it didnt mean I would be unemployed the next day). I have nothing to gain and everything to lose from holding the views I hold. I have been formally cautioned within my conmpany for posting on forums such as this, even though I dont identify my employer. I have basically been told, sing the company song or #@!$ off. While thats not an unfair position for anyone paying good wages (and they do). I see this now as a political struggle and I am quite prepared to test the discrimination laws in court if it comes to it, so I keep on singing.
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Safetyguy66.
The attitude of your employer is deplorable, it would be a very interesting case to see how much our constitutional rights have been eroded.
Not saying I want you to end up in that scenario! HA HA but I don’t envy you at the moment.
Stay strong and smart.
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Carbon markets are the only market I know of where fraud benefits all participants.
Fraud benefits suppliers of carbon credits – they get to make money for nothing.
Fraud benefits purchasers of carbon credits – it drives prices down.
Fraud benefits the regulators – they get a nice extra income from turning a blind eye.
There is no incentive from any participant to report fraud. This is why the carbon price in all markets to date which don’t have a floor price rapidly spirals down to zero – so many fraudsters get into the market, the price collapses.
And markets with a floor price? If supply outstrips demand, but the price is not allowed to drop, then the market stops being a market and becomes a beauty contest. When its a beauty contest, who do you think gets to make the sale? The contestant who sleeps with the judge of course – or in this case, the seller who gives the biggest illegal kickback. And the people who can afford the biggest kickbacks are the fraudsters – because they don’t have any real costs at all, other than the occasional bribe to a regulator.
The only people who don’t benefit from this system are the idiots who thought it would make a difference, and ordinary people, who ultimately have to stump up the cash, through higher energy bills etc., which ends up in the pockets of the fraudsters.
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Exactly; carbon trading, ETSs, carbon taxes etc are essentially about making money from nothing; the criminal element has been involved in it for some time:
http://cironline.org/blog/post/carbon-carousel-european-market-haven-tax-fraud-732
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/what_you_get_in_a_trade_in_something_invisible/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/20/euro-carbon-market-fraud-trade-suspended/
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/050610-532610-europes-carbon-mafia-and-ours.htm
The huge subsidies invoved with the nothing produced by renewables is just another part of the vast scam which is AGW.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for someone to be put in the slammer in Australia for fiddling the books; because all of AGW and renewables is a fiddle of the books.
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Further to Cohenite’s list is a Telegraph article from 18 months ago when none other than the Australian Crime Commission said the carbon tax and ETS would be a “honeypot” for fraud because it was already happening in Europe.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/archive/national-old/carbon-schemes-a-mafia-honeypot/story-e6freuzr-1226150401409 :
I caution my fellow skeptics about allowing this mafia “illegitimate fraud” talking point to overshadow the “legitimate fraud” of our government extracting a carbon tax from all Australians without yielding any decent return on their investment. Pay your income tax and you get roads, police, and ambulances. Pay your company tax and you get ASIC, and standardised basic rules of trade, which is more of a protection against shady deals than a hindrance. Pay the carbon tax and you get….uh…a lighter wallet?
I thought there was this little law called The Constitution that said the government can’t deprive people of their property without “just compensation”. (It’s the vibe of the thing.) Well a 0.00001 degree forestallment of warming in 50 years and 15% of the carbon tax being sent to the UN does not exactly sound like “just compensation” to this little black duck.
40
Safetyguy66 – I work for one of the largest manufacturers and installers of wind turbines in the world. (please dont hold it against me lol) One thing I can tell you is if the same sort of probe was done in Australia, the same sorts of things would be found (maybe not on that scale). …
None of us begrudge someone their living Safetyguy. What we feel for you is sympathy that the damage done to the real economy by excessive red tape, uncompetitive taxes, and the carbon madness, is what depressed the job situation to the extent that you have to work for people you despise.
The problem is noone can do that forever. I tried a few times, I have the same bills everyone else does. But have you noticed – many of your colleagues also hate what they are doing, despise the true believer fanatics in your midst, feel the same toxic frustration.
When you can’t speak your mind, work becomes a chore. You can never really relax around your colleagues. in the end you can’t take it anymore – you can’t keep your mouth shut, you say or do something which gets you fired, or you leave because you just can’t turn up to work anymore.
Hopefully if we’re lucky, we will be able to break this evil stranglehold on the modern world, and real businesses with genuine products will flourish again. There will be real choices again, and you can find a job you like, rather than having to do what you must to survive.
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Eric responding to safetyguy:
I agree.
(I have sympathy, being someone who stayed put when they called for a WHS volunteer and everybody else stepped backwards.)
Also had a problem keeping my mouth shut, until “Plan B” looked like it would work. Silence resulted in colleagues asking me if I was ill.
If you are 55 or over and have some super, maybe consider pulling the pin? I now get bad-mouthed by at least one local greenie, but it has the unintended effect of encouraging people to contact me to employ my services, so I have no case for defamation 🙂
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Eric & Martin,
A few years ago I had an opportunity to work on a wind farm project which paid an obscene amount of money for my profession.
After researching the company involved and seeing the heavy trade union influence in the job I declined.
I had that choice but for someone already employed to have that policy change forced on them makes for very tough decisions indeed.
However I will never regret my decision and it gave me unexpected opportunities in employment.
“It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness”.
Thomas Jefferson
40
This is most certainly right thinking.
I do wonder, though, how different the quote would be if his name was Thomas Rothschild…….
31
Eric,
You and Safetyguy have a lot in common
12
At least the Mafia have a certain honesty about them compared to the major players in this scam. I meant at least they will freely admit that they are just in it for the money they can scam. It is not like we have to listen to the Mafia boss rambling on about how his blatantly self serving corruption is somehow saving the planet.
51
— C. S. Lewis (1898 – 1963)
20
Considering the state of the eurozone are we sure this isn’t an asset grab the the Italian Government!
Thats one way to cut the cost of subsidies, Just declare the assets as proceeds of crime?
21
This is probably one of the Bolter’s best efforts regarding our GAIA brained Timmy.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/flannerys_warnings_arent_really_worth_hearing/#commentsmore
Also included in the Bolt link, Prof Murry Salby weighs into the Climate Commission’s latest ” Angry Summer” report.
I just wish we could easily read that Salby article online.
I hope Jo reads that Salby article, very interesting graphs.
21
Seems to be a comparison with the carbon offset program in British Columbia.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2013/04/02/auditor-general-slams-carbon-offset-system/
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2013/04/03/what-the-auditor-didnt-say/
20
And sadly, they’re just doing what we’ve given them a great big incentive to do!
The Mafia is in business, believe it or not. They may be in a business we don’t like but they’re running a business. So if we hand them a business opportunity should we complain if they take it?
Frankly I have a whole lot more respect for the Mafia than I have for our political leaders. At least a Mafia Don pays close attention to business.
But maybe I’m forgetting something — our leaders know what they’re all about too and they also pay close attention to what they’re doing. It’s the followers who don’t know what the leaders are about because they aren’t paying attention, isn’t it?
And they say people don’t get what they deserve…
00
Tony Abbott was interviewed yesterday by Ray Hadley on radio 2GB Sydney, Daily Telegraph, Piers Akerman reported today in part: Abbott lives in the real world and understands that with the carbon tax gone there will be no need for four huge bureaucracies to support it.
“When the carbon tax goes all of those bureaucracies will go and I think you’ll find that particular position you’re referring to will go with them,” Abbott said.
Abbott is considering dumping the Howard government’s renewable energy target, which he says is “significantly increasing the cost of power”.
Speaking to Sky News last night, he equivocated on his previous support for the scheme, which aims to ensure 20 per cent of electricity comes from renewable sources by 2020.
“There is going to be a serious review of this, should there be a change of government,” he said. “We’ll wait for the review before deciding what we do, but I take your point that renewable energy is increasing the price of power.”
41
3 April: Ottawa Citizen: Mike De Souza: Stephen Harper’s government paid over $200k for carbon offsets at Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games
The Harper government paid $226,450 to conserve trees in a British Columbia forest to prevent its activities at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics from contributing to global warming, say newly released internal memos obtained by Postmedia News…
The costs of offsetting federal activities at the Olympics ended up being about 51 per cent higher than initial projections of $150,000 from February 2010 that underestimated the greenhouse gases generated by security measures at the games…
Kent was told that the process to offset federal emissions, first announced by former environment minister Jim Prentice, involved forest conservation efforts in the Darkwoods Forest Carbon Project in interior B.C.’s Selkirk Mountains.
This project, selected through a competitive bidding process, also benefited from funding through a $25-million federal conservation program…
The firm was later purchased by a sponsor of the games, Offsetters Climate Solutions…
“It’s a way that Canada could restore its international reputation as a country that is acting responsibly,” said Tansey (president and CEO of Vancouver-based Offsetters Climate Solutions), whose firm also has similar projects in B.C.’s Great Bear Rainforest and the Congo…
The memos also indicated that a similar process was adopted to offset emissions from the 2010 G8 and G20 economic summits in Ontario, to be paid by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
After this story was published online, an Environment Canada spokesman emailed Postmedia News to say the government would not implement a carbon tax.
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/technology/environment/Stephen+Harper+government+paid+over+200k+carbon/8190818/story.html
2 April: Surrey Nth Delta Leader: Greenhouses, cement plant all got carbon offset cash
While a damning audit of B.C.’s Pacific Carbon Trust focused on carbon offset spending in far-flung corners of the province, public money from school and hospital budgets also fed projects across the Lower Mainland.
And a leading critic of the made-in-B.C. carbon offset strategy says the legitimacy of the local projects is just as questionable as the Darkwoods and Encana offsets B.C.’s Auditor General decided were not credible…
Greenhouses in the Fraser Valley were among the recipients – Quiks Farm in Chilliwack, Randhawa Farms in Abbotsford, Sun Select Farms in Delta and Langley’s Katatheon Farms and Glenwood Valley Farms all got money to subsidize energy efficiency upgrades or to convert from natural gas to wood waste fuel.
“The greenhouses were responding to spikes in natural gas pricing,” Simpson said.
The entire sector should have been excluded, he argues, because farmers in other jurisdictions were doing the same thing without carbon offset subsidies…
Kruger Products tissue mill in New Westminster also got carbon offset money to retrofit to burn wood waste fuel instead of natural gas, even though it also received a federal green transformation grant for the same purpose and therefore double-dipped, according to Simpson…
He said nobody appears to be monitoring Lafarge to ensure the cement plant actually burns the agreed amount of wood…
But while the trust paid businesses to burn wood waste instead of natural gas in the name of fighting climate change, its calculations didn’t consider whether local air pollution might worsen as a result, which concerned air quality advocates.
“Off of wood waste you get ash,” Simpson noted. “You don’t get high particulate content off of natural gas. You’re trying to substitute one questionable practice for another.”…
Canadian Taxpayers Federation B.C. director Jordan Bateman said he doesn’t really care whether the offsets are credible or not, the entire logic of the push to carbon-neutral government is flawed.
“You’re trying to buy absolution with tax dollars,” Bateman said. “How do you blame a hospital for polluting? All they’re doing is heating a facility and sterilizing tools to save lives.”
http://www.surreyleader.com/news/201151941.html
21
12 March: Globe & Mail, Canada: Margaret Wente: Carbon offsets: B.C.’s looniest green scheme yet?
Here’s a neat idea. Declare that you’ll help solve the climate crisis by making all your public institutions carbon-neutral. Schools, hospitals, the works. Now that’s leadership.
There’ll be some challenges, of course. Unfortunately, no matter how hard they try, your schools and hospitals can’t possibly eliminate all their greenhouse-gas emissions – they’re too old and drafty, the ambulances and buses still run on fossil fuel, and solar panels are still too darned expensive…
Every public institution is now required to pay $25 a tonne for the carbon dioxide it emits. That’s money that’s no longer available for textbooks, teachers and nursing care…
Millions more have gone to the Nature Conservancy of Canada and aboriginal groups connected to the Great Bear Rainforest; they were paid for not cutting down trees they wouldn’t have been allowed to cut down anyway. The prices are all negotiated by Pacific Carbon Trust, a Crown agency that specializes in voodoo carbon accounting…
The B.C. government has agreed to compensate the school boards because people got so mad. But the extra money still comes from taxpayers. Although schools and other public institutions pay $25 a tonne for their carbon credits, Pacific Carbon Trust, which buys the offsets on their behalf, pays only $9 to $19 a tonne to the sellers…
Do any of these shenanigans actually reduce emissions? Probably not. As Cornelis van Kooten, an economics professor at the University of Victoria, told me, “The problem is that you cannot keep track of what exactly is being taken out of the atmosphere or going into the atmosphere.” Nonetheless, these schemes are popular with environmentalists and business. Why? “Money. There’s tonnes of money in this.”…
B.C.’s carbon-neutral green dream is a multimillion-dollar boondoggle. But that doesn’t mean it will be shut down any time soon. As Environment Minister Terry Lake told The Globe and Mail’s Mark Hume last month, “it’s important to show … leadership through example.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/carbon-offsets-bcs-looniest-green-scheme-yet/article9623584/
11
4 April: Vancouver Sun: Carbon offsets trade prone to shady scams
Letter to Editor from JIM FARRELL, Victoria
I was reminded of a day in 2007 when I was in New Delhi and spotted a front-page headline in The Times of India that proclaimed the predicted cold winter in Europe promised economic good fortune for India.
The story explained how increased consumption of natural gas to heat European homes would send European carbon credit traders scouring the world for offsets. Since India (like China) was a major source of carbon credits the people of India could rejoice in their coming good fortune.
“How can this be” I asked an Indian-based colleague? India and China weren’t even signatories to the Kyoto accord. And the carbon emissions of those two nations were skyrocketing…
My colleague explained that not being a signatory to the accord excused those skyrocketing emissions but didn’t mean that Indian companies couldn’t market carbon credits for alleged reductions of carbon emissions. In fact, India and China were major suppliers of carbon credits to Europe.
But carbon credits being essentially only paper documents, scams were flourishing, my colleague went on to explain. A ruse might involve a steel company previously known to emit huge amounts of carbon from its blast furnaces and coking ovens. That company would set up a separate but associated company and “spin off” its carbon-emitting facilities to the new company while maintaining the company’s original name for its non-emitting rolling mills. Voila! At one fell swoop, the company, with the connivance of local paid-off officials, had achieved a massive reduction in carbon emissions. It could then sell carbon offsets to the credit-hungry Europeans…
Six years later, it seems the folks who gave us the great Wall Street meltdown that involved subprime mortgages, collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps and derivatives have discovered a new brand of snake oil they can market to an idealistic but naive public.
Eric Hoffer eloquently described the game in 1967. He might have been talking then of religion, or patriotism, or whatever. Were Hoffer still alive, he might be talking about the “save the planet” movement. “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Thursday+April+Carbon+offsets+trade+prone+shady+scams/8191619/story.html
22
Oh dear, it goes further up the chain:
Evidently they got the idea from some guy in Greece, just a short distance across the Ionian Sea, so there wouldn’t be all that much disruption for those prevailing winds from those hills in Greece.
My Friend The Wind
And here’s that secret being shared.
They Have This Offer That’s Too Good To Refuse
Tony.
43
Speaking of pointless gusts of warm wind
http://www.skynews.com.au/national/article.aspx?id=860252
Im surprised the good Professor still needs the money so bad considering how much he has bludged out so far. 3 days per week at 180K per year, nice
scamwork if you can get it.Meanwhile I saw CSIRO advertising for a senior research fellow in statistical analysis techniques and offering 79-98K.
Somethings wrong here ?
20
Flannery is truly deluded
The deniers in Australia are …. wait for it! men over 65. These are often the people (mainly engineers) who have built the power plants which are now causing the problems. When they built the plants they had no idea that they would cause so much trouble. But then they discovered that young people are turning around and seeing them as virtually criminals because they built this stuff that is destroying the future. So I think they are very disillusioned with that and the first response is denial and to say that these youngsters are wrong.
30
One of Nicastri’s corporations was Falck Renewables, whose chairman was….Lord Oxburgh, chair of the Oxburgh committee investigating climategate.
I recall noticing his name at the time.
151
And a warm welcome to Mr McIntyre, though how on earth he finds time to lurk on Jo’s blog between busting hockey sticks (three from three now?) and spraying paint stripper on whitewashed walls is beyond my comprehension.
Hey Steve, what chance is there of the Marcott et al paper being retracted from the journal? Surely they cannot persist with comparing fresh oranges with rusty apples?
Do you think statistical deviations from Benford’s Law can be used to detect carbon emissions trading fraud, or are the crooks too smart for that now?
60
Ooooh, lots of hits for “falck oxburgh nicastri” on google. Lots of action circa 2010. Popcorn time.
20
Agreed 🙂 🙂
20
Off-topic(?)
Dutch Bank ABN AMRO grabbed the gold and precious metals being kept “securely” for depositors. Zerohedge. Depositors can no longer withdraw the physicial commodity; as though they never physcially owned it.
As a side effect, it is possible (if not legal) for ABN AMRO to sell more precious metals than they physcially hold because they no longer have have to secure the deposit. They can pay out the nominal cash value. One has to trust the bank to back the virtual quantities being traded with the physical amounts.
This has some parallels to how the banks “make money”. The amount of credit that banks provide is, in Europe, backed by only 1% to 3% in cash holdings. The money is actually made by people paying off their loans, to fill the money holes made by the banks when they provided credit. You have to trust the banks that they will not make a corporate money holes so big that an economic blip results in loan defaults anywhere near the size of the cash held.
Banks borrow cash from each other. The governmemnt controlled reserve banks have almost no “signal” as to the credit exposure. THe reserve banks are also subjected to political pressure andits officials are not beyond corruption when it comes to turning a blind eye in terms of oversight.
Which brings us back to ABN AMRO. If depositiors cannot get their hands on the gold, etc., then there is no way of checking if e.g. all the gold is gold. It might be a tungsten repository, as was a significant part of Ethiopia’s in (?)2009.
40
I’ve always believed the government leave loop-holes in laws so that they themselves can exploit the loop-holes.
But when somebody like Lord Oxburgh chairs a mafia owned company, well, words fail me.
20
Just have a look at the ongoing, ever growing ICAC inquiry into government activities under Labor in NSW, and the questions developing over the running of our federal government also under the same organisation. Corruption has a firm foothold. Is this just the tip of an iceberg?
And it is by no means certain that the inquiries will ever bring charges under our justice system, because so much documentation has been destroyed.
10
So for all you nay sayers who deride big wind profitability, “here’s your sign” as Bill Engvall (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Engvall) would say. There really is money to be made harnessing the wind. Not much energy, mind you, but there are untapped fortunes out there for those whose moral compass always points at a money pile.
30
Just noting some of your coincidental terminology there Jo.
For thirty+ years now the self styled intelligentsia have been flogging us with the terms “The Market” and “Free Markets”.
None of these commentators have comprehended that “The Market” is not free if it is not free for all. There is no such thing as a Free Market.
And it can never be free for all, because if government fails to manage it properly, organised criminals will. As we see here.
20
A wind company currently hell-bent on jamming wind farms up against Australian towns, villages and rural residences has Italian share bundles. To protect Jo’s site I won’t name it, but I have often wondered where its substantial shareholder (with an innocuous name) sources its purchase money.
The AGW scam underpins the wind racket; it is the sleaze that excuses their existence. It may not be too strong to say that AGW pseudo-science is primarily there to maintain the world-wide vile wind business. That Flannery has ties to wind outfits comes as no surprise but should be cause for outrage and maximum publicity.
Does any university in Australia benefit from wind? May be worth a long hard look, too.
11