Now why would the Australian Federal Police have thought this necessary?
ACCUSED terrorist Jack Thomas has been hit with Australia’s first control order, placing him on a curfew and banning him from contacting Osama bin Laden.
I mean, didn’t three judges from the Court of Appeal free Thomas this month?
Oh, wait. They overturned his convictions and freed him even though their judgment clearly appears to concede he did indeed hang out with terrorists, receive their money and return to Australia on a doctored passport to help disguise the fact he’d been training with them.
I guess the police haven’t yet read the bit in the judgment that says, no worries, Thomas is innocent. Or maybe, just maybe, they tink he’s not that innocent after all, and are trying to clean up a mess.
Federal magistrate Graham Mowbray, at least, believes they may be right to worry:
Mr Mowbray found that Thomas is “an available resource” who could be used to commit terrorist acts on behalf of al-Qaeda or similar terrorist cells, after submission from the federal police to the Federal Magistrates Court.
THE man credited with sealing the defeat of the Kirner government 14 years ago has quietly assumed a key role in Liberal leader Ted Baillieu’s bid for office.
Federal Liberal MP Petro Georgiou is regularly attending meetings of the state Liberal Party’s high-powered campaign strategy committee. ...
Mr Georgiou’s constant presence at committee meetings has raised eyebrows among some Liberals, who describe him as the new “de facto head” of Mr Baillieu’s office.
Others have linked Mr Georgiou—a leading moderate—with Mr Baillieu’s progressive stances on issues such as abortion and gay civil unions.
Is the word “moderate” simply the adjective given to politicians who push policies that journalists tend to like? And are the policies these “moderates” push ones that voters actually tend to hate?
Still, we now know that it’s actually a plan, not merely a bad accident, that the Liberals under Baillieu are marching to the Left of Labor. If it ends in tears, Petro’s federal colleagues will be better able to assess his advice to them to “moderate”, too.
While it is true ALP policy (what ever THAT might be) appeals to ALP voters, ALP voters will never support any conservative policy, no matter how moderate.
IT’S no exaggeration to say that generations of Australian children and young parents have grown up with the ABC’s Play School.
Whether it was Big Ted, Little Ted, Noni or Benita, Lorraine, John or Don, viewers of all ages found some character they could identify with over the 40 years of its existence.
But the harmless happy-family content has fallen victim to the nauseating politically-correct agenda that drives so much of the ABC’s news and current affairs programming on radio and television.
ABC Children’s Television head Claire Henderson says Play School owes its success to the fact “we respect the child, we respect the audience. We don’t patronise, we don’t exploit them, we don’t preach to them, we don’t talk down to them. We will always have the nursery rhymes and things children know and love, but the program will always be a program for today.”
Except it isn’t. The show does patronise kids, it does exploit them, it does preach to them, it does talk down to them and it doesn’t have the nursery rhymes the children know and love, it has bowdlerised humbug that the ABC’s in-house ideologists know and love.
Take Play School’s recent treatment of the classic nursery rhyme Baa Baa Black Sheep, for example, as rendered by Christine Anu and an associate, which began:
“Ba Ba Woolly Sheep/Have you any wool?
Yes, O, Yes, O/Three bags full. One for the jumper/And one for the socks,” etc, etc.
You get the drift. Black sheep are out, as probably are diminutive people of the male gender, but the reader who sent this in was so bemused by the attempt to scour any possibly offensive material from the nursery rhyme that she didn’t pay attention to the rest of the verses.
But if black sheep have been magically erased, it seems likely that words such as “master”, “dame” and “sir” have also been banned for fear of upsetting the sensitivities of the ABC’s young audience.
This sort of hamfisted attempt to induce culturally anodyne thinking into the minds of youngsters would be laughable were it not of a piece with the efforts of the trade union movement and the ALP to ensure that organised Labor’s messages, too, are pushed upon malleable young minds.
Having exposed Labor’s “real life” cases campaign against the Howard Government’s industrial reforms as bogus, The Daily Telegraph can also reveal that the union movement is asking teachers to assist it in wooing school students to its cause with a campaign based on xenophobia and outdated class war materials.
Just as parents should pay more heed to Play School’s rewriting of the classics of nursery, it would also pay them to monitor the “factsheets”, “case studies” and other resources provided for teachers on Labornet’s UnionTeach website.
With union membership rapidly eroding, the die-hards are trying to staunch the flow and save their jobs by pandering to youthful insecurities with scenarios designed to create fear and insecurity.
In a “case study” of “globalisation, redundancy and Australian workers”, for example, “Ben”, a network administrator in his 50s who has been in the telecommunications industry for the past 20 years is advised by a new manager that all jobs in his team’s field are to be declared vacant and staff must reapply for their positions.
At the same time there is also an announcement that about “300 jobs in the company are going to be performed from India”. The discussion points suggested for the lesson include “What are the advantages and disadvantages of union membership in a call centre?” and “How could the union assist in dealing with workplace conflict?”
Suggested activities include calling the ACTU for a call centre charter on workplace rights and responsibilities, designing a brochure promoting the role and benefits of a union in a call centre, developing a pamphlet or poster showing how to contact call centre unions, and watching a video titled Working it Out: ACTU.
In the proposed group activity, the teacher role-plays with the students as the call-centre employer and changes the conditions of work by setting time-limits or quotas on simple tasks, “students complete tasks and teacher pressures them. Conflict is created.”
There are laws designed to protect the young and impressionable from perverted adults who target them for sexual abuse. This campaign and the pap served up by the ABC’s Play School would suggest that there should be laws protecting them from adults who want to rape them intellectually.
The new workplace reforms contain specific protections for young workers, in addition to those which cover employees generally, and concerned parents can contact the Office of the Employment Advocate.
The ALP’s media arm, the ABC, is well-known for its ducking and weaving whenever its core ideologies are challenged, from its recent biased Behind the News program on Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel, to its four-year refusal to admit that the Palestinian groups Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah are terrorist organisations.
ALP or ABC, it doesn’t matter. The exploitation of young people is rife with misinformation, disinformation and blatant untruths and propagandising being foisted on unsuspecting minds.
The young must be able to learn without having their minds mortgaged to politically-correct causes by their teachers and agenda-driven institutions.
Well written article, firmly anchored in bitter experience. I happen to know that you have not gone overboard and mentioned everything possible, but you have used specific, undeniable examples.
I won't try to list ABC bias, but I will point out that the ABC have consistently, over many years, made the claim they don't understand conservatives. It is this lack of understanding (hence balance) that leads to UN Secretary General Annan to meet with terrorists, when he will not meet with the Israeli PM. It is that lack of balance that allows Beazley to oppose foreign policy, but claim competence in the security sector. It is that lack of balance that allows a journalist of a local rag to accuse Mr Debnam of not supporting any of Iemma's failed policy.
The Boulder District Attorney has confirmed in her District Court motion to quash the arrest warrant against John Mark Karr over the JonBenet Ramsey murder that his DNA did not match DNA found on the victim’s underwear. The motion to quash also shows for the first time the grounds prosecutors used to have Karr arrested in Thailand, including their fears he was posing a threat to young children at a school in Bangkok.
You can read the motion to dismiss document, dated August 28 and signed by Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy, here.
It details how Karr used the name “Daxis” to communicate by email with Boulder academic Professor Michael Tracey. Professor Tracey eventually persuaded Karr to make contact by telephone. The calls – 11 in all - were traced to Thailand, which is how authorities were able to identify “Daxis” as Karr.
In emails and telephone calls Karr expressed sexual interest in a number of young girls at the Bangkok school where he was about to start teaching. “They were also able to confirm that he was having personal involvement with at least one of the girls he had previously identified as the target of his personal and sexual interest,” the DA’s motion says.
The motion to quash also revealed that Thai authorities tried to obtain DNA samples from Karr off objects that he had touched, but the quality of the samples was not good enough to test accurately.
The DA says that investigations aimed at confirming Karr’s claims and trying to put him in Boulder at the time of the murder in 1996 could not begin until he was arrested because of fears he might disappear if he discovered from relatives and friends back in the USA that police were asking questions about him.
Karr will now be extradited to California to face child pornography charges dating back to 2001. He fled overseas before his trial on those charges.
On unfortunate side effect of the Karr saga and the enormous publicity it has generated is that authorities will be all the more cautious in their ongoing investigation and reluctant to move against any suspects in future, unless they have watertight evidence. They won’t want to get caught out twice by someone like Karr.
The Cannonball Run – the long-distance race held on public roads made famous in the Hollywood movie on the same name - looks set to return to the roads of the Northern Territory and other Australian states despite opposition from the Territory’s Chief Minister. Less than a month ago Clare Martin said declared “I do not support a Cannonball Run” after the prospect of its return was first raised. But yesterday the London-based organisers of a number of international Cannonball Runs announced the Australian event would make a return in 2007 - 13 years after the one and only time it was held here ended in a high speed crash that claimed four lives.
The Cannonball Run – the long-distance race held on public roads made famous in the 1980s Hollywood movie on the same name - looks set to return to the roads of the Northern Territory and other Australian states despite opposition from the Territory’s Chief Minister. Less than a month ago Clare Martin said declared “I do not support a Cannonball Run” after the prospect of its return was first raised. But yesterday the London-based organisers of a number of international Cannonball Runs announced the Australian event would make a return in 2007 - 13 years after the one and only time it was held here ended in a high speed crash that claimed four lives.
Organisers Cannonball World Events say the race will start in Brisbane on May 20 and end 4000 kilometres and five days later on the Gold Coast on May 25. The route in between hasn’t been disclosed.
In an attempt to emphasise safety over speed, the organisers claim the object of the race will be to maintain an average speed of 100 kph over the course and all speed limits will have to be observed. But in the Northern Territory, of course, there are no speed limits.
The organisers say the race will include up to 75 contestants, which will have to pay a $10,000 entry fee. This will cover organisation, overnight accommodation along the way and “partying”.
“Safety is paramount to this event and in the previous 6 years and 8 major events held in Europe we have never had a serious accident and we believe this is due to the way we police our own event with very strict rules,” said Tim Porter, Managing Director of Cannonball Run World Events in a media release yesterday. “Drivers must complete the course with an average speed at or below the national speed limit rather than racing to be the first car to arrive.”
A target time has been set for each stage between checkpoints, which organisers say is achievable without breaking the speed limits. The winner will receive a free entry to the Cannonball world title in America in July 2007.
The Cannonball was first held in Australia in 1994. It ended in tragedy when a Japanese driver in a Ferrari spun out of control on a NT highway and killed himself, his co-driver and two race officials.
The prospect of bringing back the Cannonball was floated by Territory Senator Nigel Scullion at the end of July. He said that enough time had passed since the earlier tragedy and the Territory would gain enormous publicity from the event.
Clare Martin has remained unimpressed with the idea. “We want safe open highways, we want to develop a stronger culture of Territorians driving safely. We have the highest death rate on our roads of any part of the country and I do not support a Cannonball Run.”
I hate car races. I don't watch channel 10 on weekend afternoons because of auto stuff. However, I have no problem with the race in principle, so long as it raises money for me, not sucking dollars in.
It is my understanding that Islamic peoples have not sexualised children, as Islamo-Fascists have done. IF need threats and punishments to keep their victims in line. So a beautiful girl who wants to be a model endures IF spokespeople discussing death sentences. So a journalist who has the temerity to be jewish can be seen to be beheaded, while IF broadcasters show the world.
The ABC, in pursuing this policy, is creating the illusion that words have deeper meanings than they have. There is a suggestion that some battle is being fought that isn't. The ABC, under the guise of political correctness, are grabbing the same rhetoric weapon as IF terrorists.
It’s the first time water restrictions have been imposed in Melbourne after the introduction of permanent water-saving rules.
When will this Government realise that the solution to having a growing population using a faling water supply might require actually finding more water to go around, rather than simply tying a knot in our hoses? Building a dam worked for centuries. May we try it again, or will the green gods damn us?
Mind you, we’re not alone in having this religious objection to new dams. That’s largely why so many of our cities are on water restrictions - Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Canberra, Mebourne, the Gold Coast, Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, Perth....
When faced with a decision of letting someone profit, or regulating supply, the ALP have tended to favor government regulation. It comes as no surprise that the ALP would prohibit water access in Victoria in preference to starting a dam .. or acquifer.
Health Minister Tony Abbott, under attack from anti-Christian bigots in the media, makes an excellent point:
Rather than worry obsessively about the “religious Right”, commentators may more often pause to consider whether business ethics, family life or personal motivation is likely to be improved in a society with less Christian consciousness.
I get a little tired of being told by ignorant media persons what my beliefs are. I'm a Christian. I'm conservative, yet I know few others who are like me. My friends tend to be atheist, lefty and self absorbed. When my friends claim to have an opinion, it is frequently something that Mike Carlton thinks is clever.
I am appalled by Christian leaders who are extreme left, but many are. As for the religious right, I don’t think that exists in Australia. I think there are some individuals, decent men like Abbot, or Cardinal Pell, who are influential, but I know of no organized conservative grouping to compare with the silly Moral Majority or the lefty Anglican Church.
THIS is how far we have come in the past year or so. When an ICM poll of Britain’s Muslims in February this year revealed that 40per cent (that is, about 800,000 people) wished to see Islamic law introduced in parts of Britain, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality responded by saying that they should therefore pack their bags and clear off. Trevor Phillips’s exact words were these: “If you want to have laws decided in another way, you have to live somewhere else.”
My guess is this: if such a statement had been made by a member of the Tory party’s Monday Club in 1984 - or, for that matter, 1994 - he would have been excoriated and quite probably would have been kicked out of the party. “If you don’t like it here then go somewhere else” was once considered the apogee of racism.
In Australia, sadly, it still is.
Witness, for instance, the spluttering of Lateline‘s Tony Jones when Treasurer Peter Costello made exactly that same point - that if you preferred shariah law you might be happier moving to another country:
TONY JONES: But isn’t this the sort of thing you hear in pubs, the meaningless populism you hear on talkback radio? Essentially, the argument is if you don’t like it here, you should go back home.
And the ABC rounded up the usual baying suspects from our race industry:
AMEER ALI, FEDERATION OF ISLAMIC COUNCILS: I have a feeling that they aren’t very happy about this policy of multiculturalism. Either they want to go back to the White Australia policy at worst, or keep multiculturalism minus Muslims at best.
BOB BROWN, GREENS LEADER: The Prime Minister is a master at blowing the dog whistle and now Mr Costello’s joined him.
PETER BEATTIE, QUEENSLAND PREMIER: I know what I’m saying will not be popular in some places, but someone’s gotta have the guts to say to Peter Costello, “If you want to be PM, find the things that bring us together, not the things that divide us.”
Victorian Multicultural Commission chairman George Lekakis also jumped in:
He is propagating fear when he should be alleviating it.
Waleed Ali, regular Age columnist and Islamic Council of Victoria spokesman added:
It seems quite clearly calculated at marginalising a part of mainstream Australia...
Beattie seems to know a thing or two about uniting Queenslanders. All those who vote for him next month will support his hospital, water, transport, health and education policy.
More seriously, there is a difference between the xenophobic Hanson wanting to evict refugees and the prudent Costello wishing to secure the border from terrorists and drug dealers. I know the Sydney Morning Herald can't see the difference, but it is there.
Jackie Huggins, Aboriginal academic, addresses the Howard Government’s history summit:
Now, as a historian myself, when school students ask me sometimes, “How old are you?”, I tell them I’m 70,000 years old.
The great, liberating idea of our Hellenic and Judeo-Christian traditions is that we are individuals - that we are to be judged only by what we are and do, and not by our race, class, tribe or ancestry. But now we see this gift menaced by the new cult of the tribal, even in the universities that should be monuments to the power and dignity of the individual and his reason.
I remember my father's disgust, some years ago, when an aboriginal elder asked the university system to help his people get an excellent western education. Some of the smaller Universities turned around and offered courses in aboriginal culture that provided no bridge into Math, Science or English.
Respect is not being blind to difference. Equality does not mean being the same. No one, in modern times, has ever lived to be 150. Not even non smokers.
The thing is, none of us were present in 1788, and none of us was working in 1901. We are part of today, having contributed little to it. Our gift is tomorrow, which some would deny us in the vain belief that to be fair, one needs to be dumb.
The ICC disgraces itself as it sccessfully switches the topic from cheating Pakistanis to greedy Hair:
DARRELL Hair’s lawyers have declared that the umpire was encouraged by the International Cricket Council to make an offer to quit, directly contradicting the ICC’s version of events.
Hair, the umpire at the centre of last week’s controversy when Pakistan forfeited the final Test against England after being penalised for alleged ball tampering, said on Sunday his emailed demand for $660,000 to quit, which was subsequently withdrawn, “wasn’t a spur of the moment thing”.
“I was encouraged to make the offer that was disclosed by ICC on 25 August 2006,” Hair said. “During an extended conversation on 21 August 2006 with Mr Cowie, the Umpires’ Manager for ICC, I was invited to make a written offer.
Hair was encouraged to make a offer to quit for compensation, and then had his confidential letter of offer given to the media by the ICC in a way that made him look like a grasping, untrustworthy standover man.
The Age, that Bible for the social justice activist, publishes the Good Food Guide, which this year punishes the Flower Drum for serving riff raff:
The 2007 Guide praises Flower Drum for its produce and skills in the kitchen but notes that the restaurant had largely abandoned innovation for a “classics only” approach, service had slipped, and the refined air had been sullied by “hordes of casually dressed diners on junkets (treating) the place with less respect than it deserves”.
“Standards had been incrementally slipping for the last couple of years to a point where it was no longer the world-class restaurant it used to be,” said Wilden.
Going out to eat is personal choice. Different restaraunts cater to different aspects of the market for profit. It is easy to upset the expectations of the refined, cultural elite. That is why I'm a recluse.
The Sydney Morning Herald is shocked by the assault of a 16-year-old girl by a car load of men last night, and have tried to identify the attackers as best it can so you can help to arrest them:
The three men involved in the attack were described to police as having dark “mullet-style” hair cuts.
One of the men was believed to be aged 20 to 25, 170cm tall and clean shaven, police said.
Well, in fact the SMH has refused to publish one vital clue on the grounds of good taste. Here is the description of the men that the police actually gave the paper:
The attackers have been described as being of Middle Eastern/ Mediterranean appearance with dark, mullet-style hair cuts.
What is that old saying of theirs at the SMH? Better that one more woman get gang-raped than that we describe her attackers’ race? Something like that.
Missing clue? How about "He is an irresponsible, irresponsive individual. He is cunning, manipulative and abusive." Compare that with "He is the ALP leader."
Even Malaysia has trouble showing the world there is nothing to fear from Islam:
From the scant personal details that can be pieced together about Lina Joy, she converted from Islam to Christianity eight years ago and since then has endured extraordinary hurdles in her desire to marry the man in her life.
Her name is a household word in this majority Muslim country. But she is now in hiding after death threats from Islamic extremists, who accuse her of being an apostate.
Five years ago she started proceedings in the civil courts to seek the right to marry her Christian fiancé and have children. Because she had renounced her Muslim faith, Ms. Joy, 42, argued, Malaysia’s Islamic Shariah courts, which control such matters as marriage, property and divorce, did not have jurisdiction over her.
In a series of decisions, the civil courts ruled against her. Then, last month, her lawyer, Benjamin Dawson, appeared before Malaysia’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, to argue that Ms. Joy’s conversion be considered a right protected under the Constitution, not a religious matter for the Shariah courts.
Some legal background here. And Malaysia’s Prime Minister says he wants to enforce bans on even trying to convert Muslims.
I remember a tragic story of Sarajevo. A couple, one Albanian, the other Serb, negotiated a cease fire so they could flee and start life fresh without war. They were killed leaving Sarajevo, but no one was sure which side fired first. Don't know where David Hicks was that day. Point is, it is racism that delivers such tragedy. Racism of the type favored by Islamo-Fascists, but not isolated to IF.
Now why would the Australian Federal Police have thought this necessary?
ReplyDeleteACCUSED terrorist Jack Thomas has been hit with Australia’s first control order, placing him on a curfew and banning him from contacting Osama bin Laden.
I mean, didn’t three judges from the Court of Appeal free Thomas this month?
Oh, wait. They overturned his convictions and freed him even though their judgment clearly appears to concede he did indeed hang out with terrorists, receive their money and return to Australia on a doctored passport to help disguise the fact he’d been training with them.
I guess the police haven’t yet read the bit in the judgment that says, no worries, Thomas is innocent. Or maybe, just maybe, they tink he’s not that innocent after all, and are trying to clean up a mess.
Federal magistrate Graham Mowbray, at least, believes they may be right to worry:
Mr Mowbray found that Thomas is “an available resource” who could be used to commit terrorist acts on behalf of al-Qaeda or similar terrorist cells, after submission from the federal police to the Federal Magistrates Court.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/jack_cant_come_out_to_play/#commentsmore
One feels that the Howard government must have known that Australia's jurisprudence, under daily assault from Beazley, needed propping.
Red Ted Baillieu puts some Petro in his tank:
ReplyDeleteTHE man credited with sealing the defeat of the Kirner government 14 years ago has quietly assumed a key role in Liberal leader Ted Baillieu’s bid for office.
Federal Liberal MP Petro Georgiou is regularly attending meetings of the state Liberal Party’s high-powered campaign strategy committee. ...
Mr Georgiou’s constant presence at committee meetings has raised eyebrows among some Liberals, who describe him as the new “de facto head” of Mr Baillieu’s office.
Others have linked Mr Georgiou—a leading moderate—with Mr Baillieu’s progressive stances on issues such as abortion and gay civil unions.
Is the word “moderate” simply the adjective given to politicians who push policies that journalists tend to like? And are the policies these “moderates” push ones that voters actually tend to hate?
Still, we now know that it’s actually a plan, not merely a bad accident, that the Liberals under Baillieu are marching to the Left of Labor. If it ends in tears, Petro’s federal colleagues will be better able to assess his advice to them to “moderate”, too.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/petros_moderate_contribution/
While it is true ALP policy (what ever THAT might be) appeals to ALP voters, ALP voters will never support any conservative policy, no matter how moderate.
IT’S no exaggeration to say that generations of Australian children and young parents have grown up with the ABC’s Play School.
ReplyDeleteWhether it was Big Ted, Little Ted, Noni or Benita, Lorraine, John or Don, viewers of all ages found some character they could identify with over the 40 years of its existence.
But the harmless happy-family content has fallen victim to the nauseating politically-correct agenda that drives so much of the ABC’s news and current affairs programming on radio and television.
ABC Children’s Television head Claire Henderson says Play School owes its success to the fact “we respect the child, we respect the audience. We don’t patronise, we don’t exploit them, we don’t preach to them, we don’t talk down to them. We will always have the nursery rhymes and things children know and love, but the program will always be a program for today.”
Except it isn’t. The show does patronise kids, it does exploit them, it does preach to them, it does talk down to them and it doesn’t have the nursery rhymes the children know and love, it has bowdlerised humbug that the ABC’s in-house ideologists know and love.
Take Play School’s recent treatment of the classic nursery rhyme Baa Baa Black Sheep, for example, as rendered by Christine Anu and an associate, which began:
“Ba Ba Woolly Sheep/Have you any wool?
Yes, O, Yes, O/Three bags full. One for the jumper/And one for the socks,” etc, etc.
You get the drift. Black sheep are out, as probably are diminutive people of the male gender, but the reader who sent this in was so bemused by the attempt to scour any possibly offensive material from the nursery rhyme that she didn’t pay attention to the rest of the verses.
But if black sheep have been magically erased, it seems likely that words such as “master”, “dame” and “sir” have also been banned for fear of upsetting the sensitivities of the ABC’s young audience.
This sort of hamfisted attempt to induce culturally anodyne thinking into the minds of youngsters would be laughable were it not of a piece with the efforts of the trade union movement and the ALP to ensure that organised Labor’s messages, too, are pushed upon malleable young minds.
Having exposed Labor’s “real life” cases campaign against the Howard Government’s industrial reforms as bogus, The Daily Telegraph can also reveal that the union movement is asking teachers to assist it in wooing school students to its cause with a campaign based on xenophobia and outdated class war materials.
Just as parents should pay more heed to Play School’s rewriting of the classics of nursery, it would also pay them to monitor the “factsheets”, “case studies” and other resources provided for teachers on Labornet’s UnionTeach website.
With union membership rapidly eroding, the die-hards are trying to staunch the flow and save their jobs by pandering to youthful insecurities with scenarios designed to create fear and insecurity.
In a “case study” of “globalisation, redundancy and Australian workers”, for example, “Ben”, a network administrator in his 50s who has been in the telecommunications industry for the past 20 years is advised by a new manager that all jobs in his team’s field are to be declared vacant and staff must reapply for their positions.
At the same time there is also an announcement that about “300 jobs in the company are going to be performed from India”. The discussion points suggested for the lesson include “What are the advantages and disadvantages of union membership in a call centre?” and “How could the union assist in dealing with workplace conflict?”
Suggested activities include calling the ACTU for a call centre charter on workplace rights and responsibilities, designing a brochure promoting the role and benefits of a union in a call centre, developing a pamphlet or poster showing how to contact call centre unions, and watching a video titled Working it Out: ACTU.
In the proposed group activity, the teacher role-plays with the students as the call-centre employer and changes the conditions of work by setting time-limits or quotas on simple tasks, “students complete tasks and teacher pressures them. Conflict is created.”
There are laws designed to protect the young and impressionable from perverted adults who target them for sexual abuse. This campaign and the pap served up by the ABC’s Play School would suggest that there should be laws protecting them from adults who want to rape them intellectually.
The new workplace reforms contain specific protections for young workers, in addition to those which cover employees generally, and concerned parents can contact the Office of the Employment Advocate.
The ALP’s media arm, the ABC, is well-known for its ducking and weaving whenever its core ideologies are challenged, from its recent biased Behind the News program on Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel, to its four-year refusal to admit that the Palestinian groups Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah are terrorist organisations.
ALP or ABC, it doesn’t matter. The exploitation of young people is rife with misinformation, disinformation and blatant untruths and propagandising being foisted on unsuspecting minds.
The young must be able to learn without having their minds mortgaged to politically-correct causes by their teachers and agenda-driven institutions.
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/piersakerman/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/red_ted_play_school_and_hidden_agendas/
Well written article, firmly anchored in bitter experience. I happen to know that you have not gone overboard and mentioned everything possible, but you have used specific, undeniable examples.
I won't try to list ABC bias, but I will point out that the ABC have consistently, over many years, made the claim they don't understand conservatives. It is this lack of understanding (hence balance) that leads to UN Secretary General Annan to meet with terrorists, when he will not meet with the Israeli PM. It is that lack of balance that allows Beazley to oppose foreign policy, but claim competence in the security sector. It is that lack of balance that allows a journalist of a local rag to accuse Mr Debnam of not supporting any of Iemma's failed policy.
The Boulder District Attorney has confirmed in her District Court motion to quash the arrest warrant against John Mark Karr over the JonBenet Ramsey murder that his DNA did not match DNA found on the victim’s underwear. The motion to quash also shows for the first time the grounds prosecutors used to have Karr arrested in Thailand, including their fears he was posing a threat to young children at a school in Bangkok.
ReplyDeleteYou can read the motion to dismiss document, dated August 28 and signed by Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy, here.
It details how Karr used the name “Daxis” to communicate by email with Boulder academic Professor Michael Tracey. Professor Tracey eventually persuaded Karr to make contact by telephone. The calls – 11 in all - were traced to Thailand, which is how authorities were able to identify “Daxis” as Karr.
In emails and telephone calls Karr expressed sexual interest in a number of young girls at the Bangkok school where he was about to start teaching. “They were also able to confirm that he was having personal involvement with at least one of the girls he had previously identified as the target of his personal and sexual interest,” the DA’s motion says.
The motion to quash also revealed that Thai authorities tried to obtain DNA samples from Karr off objects that he had touched, but the quality of the samples was not good enough to test accurately.
The DA says that investigations aimed at confirming Karr’s claims and trying to put him in Boulder at the time of the murder in 1996 could not begin until he was arrested because of fears he might disappear if he discovered from relatives and friends back in the USA that police were asking questions about him.
Karr will now be extradited to California to face child pornography charges dating back to 2001. He fled overseas before his trial on those charges.
On unfortunate side effect of the Karr saga and the enormous publicity it has generated is that authorities will be all the more cautious in their ongoing investigation and reluctant to move against any suspects in future, unless they have watertight evidence. They won’t want to get caught out twice by someone like Karr.
http://blogs.news.com.au/news/crime/index.php/news/comments/dna_clears_jonbenet_suspect/
I'd understood he knew things only the killer knew. Did he guess them? Did he communucate with the killer?
One sicko behind bars, another to follow.
The Cannonball Run – the long-distance race held on public roads made famous in the Hollywood movie on the same name - looks set to return to the roads of the Northern Territory and other Australian states despite opposition from the Territory’s Chief Minister. Less than a month ago Clare Martin said declared “I do not support a Cannonball Run” after the prospect of its return was first raised. But yesterday the London-based organisers of a number of international Cannonball Runs announced the Australian event would make a return in 2007 - 13 years after the one and only time it was held here ended in a high speed crash that claimed four lives.
ReplyDeleteThe Cannonball Run – the long-distance race held on public roads made famous in the 1980s Hollywood movie on the same name - looks set to return to the roads of the Northern Territory and other Australian states despite opposition from the Territory’s Chief Minister. Less than a month ago Clare Martin said declared “I do not support a Cannonball Run” after the prospect of its return was first raised. But yesterday the London-based organisers of a number of international Cannonball Runs announced the Australian event would make a return in 2007 - 13 years after the one and only time it was held here ended in a high speed crash that claimed four lives.
Organisers Cannonball World Events say the race will start in Brisbane on May 20 and end 4000 kilometres and five days later on the Gold Coast on May 25. The route in between hasn’t been disclosed.
In an attempt to emphasise safety over speed, the organisers claim the object of the race will be to maintain an average speed of 100 kph over the course and all speed limits will have to be observed. But in the Northern Territory, of course, there are no speed limits.
The organisers say the race will include up to 75 contestants, which will have to pay a $10,000 entry fee. This will cover organisation, overnight accommodation along the way and “partying”.
“Safety is paramount to this event and in the previous 6 years and 8 major events held in Europe we have never had a serious accident and we believe this is due to the way we police our own event with very strict rules,” said Tim Porter, Managing Director of Cannonball Run World Events in a media release yesterday. “Drivers must complete the course with an average speed at or below the national speed limit rather than racing to be the first car to arrive.”
A target time has been set for each stage between checkpoints, which organisers say is achievable without breaking the speed limits. The winner will receive a free entry to the Cannonball world title in America in July 2007.
The Cannonball was first held in Australia in 1994. It ended in tragedy when a Japanese driver in a Ferrari spun out of control on a NT highway and killed himself, his co-driver and two race officials.
The prospect of bringing back the Cannonball was floated by Territory Senator Nigel Scullion at the end of July. He said that enough time had passed since the earlier tragedy and the Territory would gain enormous publicity from the event.
Clare Martin has remained unimpressed with the idea. “We want safe open highways, we want to develop a stronger culture of Territorians driving safely. We have the highest death rate on our roads of any part of the country and I do not support a Cannonball Run.”
http://blogs.news.com.au/news/crime/index.php/news/comments/cannonball_rolling_on/
I hate car races. I don't watch channel 10 on weekend afternoons because of auto stuff. However, I have no problem with the race in principle, so long as it raises money for me, not sucking dollars in.
I’m prepared to be sympathetic, given some of the lyrics of songs my own children like:
ReplyDeleteSome Iraqi families have requested their children not participate in music subjects at two Shepparton primary schools…
Some devout Muslims have concerns with lyrics in popular music and girls and boys dancing together, according to Islamic community groups.
But I’m also prepared to worry that if even a primary school seems too sinful to such folk…
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/wicked_singing/
It is my understanding that Islamic peoples have not sexualised children, as Islamo-Fascists have done. IF need threats and punishments to keep their victims in line. So a beautiful girl who wants to be a model endures IF spokespeople discussing death sentences. So a journalist who has the temerity to be jewish can be seen to be beheaded, while IF broadcasters show the world.
The ABC, in pursuing this policy, is creating the illusion that words have deeper meanings than they have. There is a suggestion that some battle is being fought that isn't. The ABC, under the guise of political correctness, are grabbing the same rhetoric weapon as IF terrorists.
Dam rules:
ReplyDeleteIt’s the first time water restrictions have been imposed in Melbourne after the introduction of permanent water-saving rules.
When will this Government realise that the solution to having a growing population using a faling water supply might require actually finding more water to go around, rather than simply tying a knot in our hoses? Building a dam worked for centuries. May we try it again, or will the green gods damn us?
Mind you, we’re not alone in having this religious objection to new dams. That’s largely why so many of our cities are on water restrictions - Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Canberra, Mebourne, the Gold Coast, Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, Perth....
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/knot_the_hose/
When faced with a decision of letting someone profit, or regulating supply, the ALP have tended to favor government regulation. It comes as no surprise that the ALP would prohibit water access in Victoria in preference to starting a dam .. or acquifer.
Health Minister Tony Abbott, under attack from anti-Christian bigots in the media, makes an excellent point:
ReplyDeleteRather than worry obsessively about the “religious Right”, commentators may more often pause to consider whether business ethics, family life or personal motivation is likely to be improved in a society with less Christian consciousness.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/abbotts_useful_sermon/
I get a little tired of being told by ignorant media persons what my beliefs are. I'm a Christian. I'm conservative, yet I know few others who are like me. My friends tend to be atheist, lefty and self absorbed. When my friends claim to have an opinion, it is frequently something that Mike Carlton thinks is clever.
I am appalled by Christian leaders who are extreme left, but many are. As for the religious right, I don’t think that exists in Australia. I think there are some individuals, decent men like Abbot, or Cardinal Pell, who are influential, but I know of no organized conservative grouping to compare with the silly Moral Majority or the lefty Anglican Church.
Rod Liddle in the Times:
ReplyDeleteTHIS is how far we have come in the past year or so. When an ICM poll of Britain’s Muslims in February this year revealed that 40per cent (that is, about 800,000 people) wished to see Islamic law introduced in parts of Britain, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality responded by saying that they should therefore pack their bags and clear off. Trevor Phillips’s exact words were these: “If you want to have laws decided in another way, you have to live somewhere else.”
My guess is this: if such a statement had been made by a member of the Tory party’s Monday Club in 1984 - or, for that matter, 1994 - he would have been excoriated and quite probably would have been kicked out of the party. “If you don’t like it here then go somewhere else” was once considered the apogee of racism.
In Australia, sadly, it still is.
Witness, for instance, the spluttering of Lateline‘s Tony Jones when Treasurer Peter Costello made exactly that same point - that if you preferred shariah law you might be happier moving to another country:
TONY JONES: But isn’t this the sort of thing you hear in pubs, the meaningless populism you hear on talkback radio? Essentially, the argument is if you don’t like it here, you should go back home.
And the ABC rounded up the usual baying suspects from our race industry:
AMEER ALI, FEDERATION OF ISLAMIC COUNCILS: I have a feeling that they aren’t very happy about this policy of multiculturalism. Either they want to go back to the White Australia policy at worst, or keep multiculturalism minus Muslims at best.
BOB BROWN, GREENS LEADER: The Prime Minister is a master at blowing the dog whistle and now Mr Costello’s joined him.
PETER BEATTIE, QUEENSLAND PREMIER: I know what I’m saying will not be popular in some places, but someone’s gotta have the guts to say to Peter Costello, “If you want to be PM, find the things that bring us together, not the things that divide us.”
Victorian Multicultural Commission chairman George Lekakis also jumped in:
He is propagating fear when he should be alleviating it.
Waleed Ali, regular Age columnist and Islamic Council of Victoria spokesman added:
It seems quite clearly calculated at marginalising a part of mainstream Australia...
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/whereis_the_australian_trevor_phillips/
Beattie seems to know a thing or two about uniting Queenslanders. All those who vote for him next month will support his hospital, water, transport, health and education policy.
More seriously, there is a difference between the xenophobic Hanson wanting to evict refugees and the prudent Costello wishing to secure the border from terrorists and drug dealers. I know the Sydney Morning Herald can't see the difference, but it is there.
Jackie Huggins, Aboriginal academic, addresses the Howard Government’s history summit:
ReplyDeleteNow, as a historian myself, when school students ask me sometimes, “How old are you?”, I tell them I’m 70,000 years old.
The great, liberating idea of our Hellenic and Judeo-Christian traditions is that we are individuals - that we are to be judged only by what we are and do, and not by our race, class, tribe or ancestry. But now we see this gift menaced by the new cult of the tribal, even in the universities that should be monuments to the power and dignity of the individual and his reason.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/no_older_than_i_am/
I remember my father's disgust, some years ago, when an aboriginal elder asked the university system to help his people get an excellent western education. Some of the smaller Universities turned around and offered courses in aboriginal culture that provided no bridge into Math, Science or English.
Respect is not being blind to difference. Equality does not mean being the same. No one, in modern times, has ever lived to be 150. Not even non smokers.
The thing is, none of us were present in 1788, and none of us was working in 1901. We are part of today, having contributed little to it. Our gift is tomorrow, which some would deny us in the vain belief that to be fair, one needs to be dumb.
The ICC disgraces itself as it sccessfully switches the topic from cheating Pakistanis to greedy Hair:
ReplyDeleteDARRELL Hair’s lawyers have declared that the umpire was encouraged by the International Cricket Council to make an offer to quit, directly contradicting the ICC’s version of events.
Hair, the umpire at the centre of last week’s controversy when Pakistan forfeited the final Test against England after being penalised for alleged ball tampering, said on Sunday his emailed demand for $660,000 to quit, which was subsequently withdrawn, “wasn’t a spur of the moment thing”.
“I was encouraged to make the offer that was disclosed by ICC on 25 August 2006,” Hair said. “During an extended conversation on 21 August 2006 with Mr Cowie, the Umpires’ Manager for ICC, I was invited to make a written offer.
Hair was encouraged to make a offer to quit for compensation, and then had his confidential letter of offer given to the media by the ICC in a way that made him look like a grasping, untrustworthy standover man.
Something stinks.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/hair_is_mankaded/#commentsmore
With Speed in control of the ICC, nothing surprises me. World cricket will be better when he leaves, but not as good as when he arrived.
The Age, that Bible for the social justice activist, publishes the Good Food Guide, which this year punishes the Flower Drum for serving riff raff:
ReplyDeleteThe 2007 Guide praises Flower Drum for its produce and skills in the kitchen but notes that the restaurant had largely abandoned innovation for a “classics only” approach, service had slipped, and the refined air had been sullied by “hordes of casually dressed diners on junkets (treating) the place with less respect than it deserves”.
“Standards had been incrementally slipping for the last couple of years to a point where it was no longer the world-class restaurant it used to be,” said Wilden.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/waiter_please_throw_out_those_disadvantaged_wretches/#commentsmore
Going out to eat is personal choice. Different restaraunts cater to different aspects of the market for profit. It is easy to upset the expectations of the refined, cultural elite. That is why I'm a recluse.
The Sydney Morning Herald is shocked by the assault of a 16-year-old girl by a car load of men last night, and have tried to identify the attackers as best it can so you can help to arrest them:
ReplyDeleteThe three men involved in the attack were described to police as having dark “mullet-style” hair cuts.
One of the men was believed to be aged 20 to 25, 170cm tall and clean shaven, police said.
Well, in fact the SMH has refused to publish one vital clue on the grounds of good taste. Here is the description of the men that the police actually gave the paper:
The attackers have been described as being of Middle Eastern/ Mediterranean appearance with dark, mullet-style hair cuts.
What is that old saying of theirs at the SMH? Better that one more woman get gang-raped than that we describe her attackers’ race? Something like that.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_missing_clue/
Missing clue? How about "He is an irresponsible, irresponsive individual. He is cunning, manipulative and abusive." Compare that with "He is the ALP leader."
Even Malaysia has trouble showing the world there is nothing to fear from Islam:
ReplyDeleteFrom the scant personal details that can be pieced together about Lina Joy, she converted from Islam to Christianity eight years ago and since then has endured extraordinary hurdles in her desire to marry the man in her life.
Her name is a household word in this majority Muslim country. But she is now in hiding after death threats from Islamic extremists, who accuse her of being an apostate.
Five years ago she started proceedings in the civil courts to seek the right to marry her Christian fiancé and have children. Because she had renounced her Muslim faith, Ms. Joy, 42, argued, Malaysia’s Islamic Shariah courts, which control such matters as marriage, property and divorce, did not have jurisdiction over her.
In a series of decisions, the civil courts ruled against her. Then, last month, her lawyer, Benjamin Dawson, appeared before Malaysia’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, to argue that Ms. Joy’s conversion be considered a right protected under the Constitution, not a religious matter for the Shariah courts.
Some legal background here. And Malaysia’s Prime Minister says he wants to enforce bans on even trying to convert Muslims.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/islam_love_and_and_a_christian_in_hiding/
I remember a tragic story of Sarajevo. A couple, one Albanian, the other Serb, negotiated a cease fire so they could flee and start life fresh without war. They were killed leaving Sarajevo, but no one was sure which side fired first. Don't know where David Hicks was that day. Point is, it is racism that delivers such tragedy. Racism of the type favored by Islamo-Fascists, but not isolated to IF.