Recriminations have started over the handling (or should that be mishandling) of the latest chapter in the JonBenet Ramsey saga. The police chief of Boulder, Colorado, and three prominent attorneys involved in the original investigation into the decade old murder have defended the way it was conducted, denying that the opportunity of catching the real killer was lost because of the initial focus on her parents as the prime suspects.
Police Chief Mark Beckner posted a statement on his department’s website saying that over the past 10 years no less than 160 suspects had been investigated over the brutal 1996 murder of six-year-old JonBenet.
“A few people have accused the department of focusing too narrowly in its investigation of this homicide when that was not the case,” said Chief Beckner. “People who have spoken out that way have relied on the department’s inability to discuss case specifics, but I cannot allow the misperceptions to go unanswered any longer.”
The statement was prompted by comments from former Boulder deputy district attorney Lawrence “Trip” DeMuth to a local newspaper that he was stopped from chasing leads that pointed to an unknown intruder committing the crime.
“We were restricted to reading police reports, from which we developed a lot of intruder leads,” said Mr DeMuth, who worked on the case for 21 months. “And then we were prohibited from pursuing those leads.”
The three attorneys involved in the investigation described Mr DeMuth’s claims as “ridiculous”. “Mr. DeMuth’s assertion that the Boulder Police Department refused to pursue a variety of theories is also ludicrous,” they said in the statement posted by the police chief. “In our opinion, the Boulder Police Department…conducted an exhaustive and wide-ranging investigation of this matter.”
Meanwhile the luxury house in Boulder where the murder took place has been withdrawn from sale. The house, which has changed hands a number of times in the intervening years, had been on the market for US$1.7 million just before John Mark Karr made is dramatic claim last month that he was JonBenet’s killer.
The agent handling the sale, Joel Ripmaster of Colorado Landmark Realtors, said the house at 749 15th Street was selling for about US$300,000 below its true value because it was “stigmatized” by the murder.
But it’s now been delisted on a local real estate website.
A buyer who had put in an offer on the house said the vendors withdrew it from the market when Karr came forward. They hoped that the solving of the decade-long mystery might see the house’s price return to its full value.
It one point the address of the house, which had been 755 15th Street when the Ramseys owned it, was changed to 749 by new owners in the hope of distancing it from its lurid past.
One might imagine the poor girl's last moments, but it is better to recall, imagined aspects of her life. Parents can be overly protective of their young, but that wasn't the Ramseys. Kids with self confidence can be a delight.
I don't understand the minds of those who would hurt a child. I understand frustration when dealing with the young, My father almost strangled my older sister when she wouldn't eat ice cream where the chocolate had been touched by strawberry. However, that wasn't what happened to Jonbenet.
While Jonbenet was focused on home politics which all kids engage in, with various degrees of success, another person was plotting to capture and use her. That person may still be free, but has never faced justice for this crime.
In NSW the prospect of having a publicly accessible child sex offenders register has been rejected by the State Government, despite the Opposition making it an election promise. In Victoria the State Government has taken legal action to stop a newspaper identifying the identity and whereabouts of a paedophile being released into the community. That same government has been fighting to stop the release of documents showing why they allowed another notorious pedophile to live on a school route. It seems that governments are determined to ignore growing community demands to know details of serious sex offenders living in their midst. Is this right?
The issue of having a public sex offenders register similar to that in the USA, which Gotcha raised a little more than two weeks ago, is hard to keep out of the headlines.
NSW Opposition Leader Peter Debnam made the promise of a public register on the weekend, saying the community had the right to know where serious child sex offenders were located. Under his plan the names, addresses and photographs of high risk offenders would be published on the Internet, as they are on the US sex offenders register. Details of offenders considered medium risk would be available to schools, childcare centres and people working with children. Offenders deemed a low risk of re-offending would remain on the child sex offenders register which is not accessible by the public. He said the police would ensure offenders were not targeted by vigilantes.
Police Minister Carl Scully said the plan would not work and could put children at risk because paedophiles scared of vigilantes might go underground and breach their parole conditions.
In the US only an estimated 80 per cent of sex offenders comply with requirements and are on the public register, compared to 97 per cent in Britain, where the register is not public. And despite tough laws in the US prohibiting harassment and physical attacks on those on the register, a number of paedophiles have been murdered by vigilantes.
The NSW Opposition has won the support of the Daily Telegraph newspaper, which has begun a campaign for the introduction of a public sex offenders register including running an online petition.
In Victoria the Herald Sun (both the Daily Telegraph and Herald Sun are published by News Ltd, the publishers of news.com.au) has been stopped by the state government from disclosing the identity or whereabouts of a pedophile released into the community in Ararat.
Ararat is where another notorious pedophile Brian Keith Jones, better known as “Mr Baldy”, recently violated parole by breaking his curfew and leaving the grounds of the local prison, where he is living. The Victorian Government has been fighting in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to stop the release of documents relating the a decision to initially place Jones in a house in Melbourne on an access route to a local school.
The possibility of NSW going it alone and having a public sex offenders register raises the disturbing prospect of sex offenders disappearing underground to avoid being on it and then fleeing to other states.
Until there is a cure for paedophilia, paedophiles need to be monitored.
I applaud Debnam's efforts, yet recognise that he is not recomending a cure. I am upset the NSW Gov is doing so little for those who voted for it.
One suggestion I have is that pedophiles be placed in work circumstance, with wages garnished to pay for their monitoring. The more elusive types could be charged a lot.
Greens can achieve a sea-change in public perception. They don't have to do much either. There are many who would be willing to support an environmental movement that could responsibly promote environmental issues. Perhaps they might support a reduction in greenhouse gas production through a sensible application of nuclear power generation.
No doubt this will get exactly not the reaction it deserves from our professional damners of hate-speech:
“God willing, a conference on the Holocaust will be held in the autumn. The Holocaust is not something sacred that no one can touch,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi told reporters.
“When I was ambassador I visited several Nazi camps in (the former) East Germany and Poland. I think it has been exaggerated,” he said.
Question: What sick priorities lead the government of a country like Iran to hold such a conference and to sneer that the Holocaust was a con? A once proud civilisation is halfway back to the primitive. Except, of course, this primitive will soon have not a club but a nuclear weapon.
Irfan Yusuf, Muslim lawyer, joins the crowds condemning John Howard for saying a small minority of Muslims have trouble integrating and should learn to speak English:
What possible gains in national security or integration are achieved by singling out one group from the multi-faith broad church of insufficiently integrated Australians? ... But when he singles out Muslims for adverse comment, he (is) manufacturing a larger pool of marginalised Muslims.
That is Irfan now. This was Irfan only last year:
All state Islamic councils (bar Victoria) are dominated by migrants with few English skills…The imam can rarely, if ever, speak proper English. Imams are almost all from overseas, from non-Western environments and are unable to assist the young even if they want to….
There, these thick-sheiks … pass this isolationist theology and paranoid mentality onto young people and converts… Most are funded by Saudi-based institutions. …
(B)efore migrant Muslim leaders go pointing the fingers at others, they should start getting their own house in order.
It isn't about integration, assimilation or multiculturalism, although many pushing their barrow would like it to be so. Assimilation or multiculturalism is political in statement, like supporting Liberal or ALP. The big issue is that a large minority are supporting terrorist activity.
These terrorists are well connected, well resourced and very manipulative. Local politics is being twisted to the ends of terrorists. There is no way the NSW Police Chief is party to terrorism, yet his political rhetoric occasionally places him at odds with the AFP chief. Such division is exploited by terrorists.
These terrorists are not recognisably Muslim, although their rhetoric (and profound support from despicable leaders) places them from an Islamic community. They aren't Jewish or Christian or Hindu or Budhist.
Thing is, the ALP have a longstanding tradition of intolerance to community values over individualism. This is a test of leadership for all, but for the ALP it is more difficult because they are a collection of minority interests. So far, Howard is playing strong, but Beazley is failing.
It was 10 years ago last week that then president Bill Clinton passed into law a bill requiring people to find a job or lose their benefits after five years.
Critics warned that the 1996 law would be catastrophic for single parents and their children. One Democratic senator predicted that the US would look like Brazil, with “children begging for money, children begging for food, and eight- and nine-year-old prostitutes”. Another senator said it would lead to “something approaching the Apocalypse”.
So what actually happened?
IN one of the greatest political and economic success stories of the past decade, the number of families receiving welfare in the US has fallen by 60 per cent since claimants were told they had to seek work or ultimately lose their benefits. The result has been a revolution - not only in welfare, but also in attitudes towards poverty. Single mothers, once considered to be helplessly dependent on the state, have led the way out of welfare into work.
In 1994, 5.1 million American families were on welfare. By 2004, the number had plunged to two million.
Teenage births fell from 58 per 1000 to 41 per 1000 during the same period, while employment rates for unmarried teenage mothers rose by two-thirds.
“It’s amazing,” said Kay Hymowitz, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank championing reform. “Nobody thought there would be a 60 per cent drop. We’ve seen a resilience among the poor that people didn’t anticipate and it’s been a very good lesson for Americans.”
Color me astonished. But back to the Howard Government’s devastating workplace reforms that will make slaves of poor workers and send the economy into a tailspin.
Tim Blair pulls together the various attempts by journalists to describe what didn’t happen in the Hoax of the Hole Ambulance:
* Shalin was inside the ambulance and outside the ambulance while it was moving and parked at the moment the rockets, missiles, Israeli bombs, small weapons, and large explosion hit.
And that’s just point five of 10. Read the lot for the full absurdity.
For me the funniest thing has nothing to do with that hoax. A few years ago, I severely burned myself when I spilled a bowl of superheated (microwaved) tomato soup over myself. I had no cash to catch a taxi to hospital and was stuck at home for a month (school holidays) recuperating. When I went to the hospital, a month later, triage nurse examined the wound and said "If we'd known it was this serious we would have sent the ambulance .." NSW health, you gotta laugh.
THE so-called “leaders” of Australian Muslims must accept responsibility for the disconnect between them, some in their community and mainstream Australia.
While a few are desperate to bridge that gulf, many others too quickly find offence where none exists and make wild accusations that serve no purpose but increase the breach between our cultures.
They have been assisted by the liberal media and civil liberties elites, who have convinced themselves that they stand shoulder-to-shoulder with an oppressed minority in its fight against an uncaring authoritarian government determined to exploit it for political purposes.
Examples of those who hear only dog whistles when other Australians hear the unvarnished truth are journalists like Peter Manning, author of a recent polemic against the mainstream media’s depiction of Muslim Australians, and Misha Schubert, who covers federal politics for Melbourne’s intellectually-challenged newspaper The Age.
Manning, a veteran graduate of the ABC who has taught media studies at UTS, dresses his demagoguery with the cant of such postmodernist idols as Edward Said, author of Orientalism, and Noam Chomsky, guru to the anti-Western bloc, and predictably finds widespread bias against Muslims in the news reports in Sydney’s daily newspapers.
Schubert, however, remains a working member of the federal parliamentary press gallery and is representative of the younger generation striving to make their arguments out of what seems to be extremely thin, if not threadbare, philosophical cloth.
In an astounding demonstration of this mental vacuity, Schubert launched an extraordinary attack during the ABC’s Insiders television program on Sunday on Prime Minister John Howard’s cautious call to a small number of Muslim migrants to hasten their integration by learning English and embracing Australian culture, particularly its regard for equality for women.
Resorting to the shallow relativism beloved of graduates since the erosion of education standards in the ‘70s, Schubert made the truly astonishing claim that the Christian marriage vows contained an admonition for women to honour and obey their husbands, and also mentioned the church’s resistance to the ordination of women.
Just as those who vociferously defend the self-named “Jihad” Jack Thomas adamantly refuse to believe that his training in the use of explosives and automatic weapons was ever to be put into use, Schubert is blind to the differences between the practise of Christianity and Islam.
It is, for example, a matter of fact that women who do not wish to include the vow to honour and obey their husbands can in fact get married in a Christian church. It is also a matter of fact that some strands of Christianity do permit the ordination of women.
Schubert might not be a student of the Islamic world but she should be aware of such basics as the reality that in a number of Muslim nations women are still stoned to death for adultery, and though religion may not be her field of expertise, her ignorance should not preclude her from knowing that men and women who opt to leave Islam can be sentenced to death as apostates.
The politically correct compulsion to depict a handful of aggrieved Australian Muslims as being representative of a wider caste of Howard Government victims is apparently so insistent that any attempt at objective reasoning doesn’t stand a chance. Maybe Schubert’s studies at New York’s uber-liberal Columbia University had a more profound influence on her than even she is aware of.
It is interesting to contrast Schubert, who yesterday asked “what are Australian values” on Sky News’ Agenda program, with Muslim woman Sherene Hassan, who sits on the executive of the Islamic Council of Victoria.
During our discussion yesterday Hassan told me she agreed wholeheartedly with the Prime Minister’s view and said she found the criticism repulsive.
“I have no problem with the concept that Australian Muslims should abide by Australian values,” she said. While she admitted to concern that some might use the remarks as an excuse for Muslim-bashing, she volunteered, “Many cultural practices in so-called Muslim countries actually contradict Islamic teachings and, yes, there is no place for them here in Australia or any place in the world for that matter.”
While the Mannings and Schuberts of the nation attempt to blame Australia or the West for the world’s problems or see some relativity between the actions of the West and Islamofacist terror, Hassan (who is clear on what constitute Australian values) makes no bones about her abhorrence of terror.
“I can’t see how people can get it so wrong,” she said.
Nor is she a supporter of the view that the Koran condones suicide bombings, saying: “Suicide is forbidden. Killing innocents is forbidden. You can’t commit two heinous crimes and claim martyrdom.”
Apologists for the violent activities of a handful of deranged Islamists should take note. They are out of step with Muslims like Hassan who embrace Australia and its culture and hope to make a contribution to the nation.
Pathologically anti-social behaviour is not necessarily indicative of victimhood – crimes are also commonly committed by people who just happen to be criminal.
I've just heard media watch sidestep an issue raised by you regarding political correctness on the ABC. I've just read a 2 year old (CNN Report http://conservativeweasel.blogspot.com/2006/09/thank-you-steve-irwin.html) media assault on Steve Irwin after he had the temerity to admire John Howard. For the record, I agree that political hacks are pushing their barrows and inflating their opinion to match their political dreams.
It isn't about Islam, or Christianity or judaism. The Islamofascists are using Islam as an excuse, in much the same way as Chomsky points to victim oppressors, I've played chess against Chomsky, he is smart, but cleverness does not make one balanced. Subtle thinkers can be misled by the subtle .. or the obvious.
Were one to believe the Islamic leaders of today, one might think that Islam is incapable of what it's adherents once achieved. That is the divide being exploited by IF merchants. ALP ideology is particularly susceptible to IF exploitation. And so, using Chomsky analysis, one can see that ALP, ABC and Fairfax press really support terrorism.
Recriminations have started over the handling (or should that be mishandling) of the latest chapter in the JonBenet Ramsey saga. The police chief of Boulder, Colorado, and three prominent attorneys involved in the original investigation into the decade old murder have defended the way it was conducted, denying that the opportunity of catching the real killer was lost because of the initial focus on her parents as the prime suspects.
ReplyDeletePolice Chief Mark Beckner posted a statement on his department’s website saying that over the past 10 years no less than 160 suspects had been investigated over the brutal 1996 murder of six-year-old JonBenet.
“A few people have accused the department of focusing too narrowly in its investigation of this homicide when that was not the case,” said Chief Beckner. “People who have spoken out that way have relied on the department’s inability to discuss case specifics, but I cannot allow the misperceptions to go unanswered any longer.”
The statement was prompted by comments from former Boulder deputy district attorney Lawrence “Trip” DeMuth to a local newspaper that he was stopped from chasing leads that pointed to an unknown intruder committing the crime.
“We were restricted to reading police reports, from which we developed a lot of intruder leads,” said Mr DeMuth, who worked on the case for 21 months. “And then we were prohibited from pursuing those leads.”
The three attorneys involved in the investigation described Mr DeMuth’s claims as “ridiculous”. “Mr. DeMuth’s assertion that the Boulder Police Department refused to pursue a variety of theories is also ludicrous,” they said in the statement posted by the police chief. “In our opinion, the Boulder Police Department…conducted an exhaustive and wide-ranging investigation of this matter.”
Meanwhile the luxury house in Boulder where the murder took place has been withdrawn from sale. The house, which has changed hands a number of times in the intervening years, had been on the market for US$1.7 million just before John Mark Karr made is dramatic claim last month that he was JonBenet’s killer.
The agent handling the sale, Joel Ripmaster of Colorado Landmark Realtors, said the house at 749 15th Street was selling for about US$300,000 below its true value because it was “stigmatized” by the murder.
But it’s now been delisted on a local real estate website.
A buyer who had put in an offer on the house said the vendors withdrew it from the market when Karr came forward. They hoped that the solving of the decade-long mystery might see the house’s price return to its full value.
It one point the address of the house, which had been 755 15th Street when the Ramseys owned it, was changed to 749 by new owners in the hope of distancing it from its lurid past.
http://blogs.news.com.au/news/crime/index.php/news/comments/jonbenet_blame_game_begins/
One might imagine the poor girl's last moments, but it is better to recall, imagined aspects of her life. Parents can be overly protective of their young, but that wasn't the Ramseys. Kids with self confidence can be a delight.
I don't understand the minds of those who would hurt a child. I understand frustration when dealing with the young, My father almost strangled my older sister when she wouldn't eat ice cream where the chocolate had been touched by strawberry. However, that wasn't what happened to Jonbenet.
While Jonbenet was focused on home politics which all kids engage in, with various degrees of success, another person was plotting to capture and use her. That person may still be free, but has never faced justice for this crime.
In NSW the prospect of having a publicly accessible child sex offenders register has been rejected by the State Government, despite the Opposition making it an election promise. In Victoria the State Government has taken legal action to stop a newspaper identifying the identity and whereabouts of a paedophile being released into the community. That same government has been fighting to stop the release of documents showing why they allowed another notorious pedophile to live on a school route. It seems that governments are determined to ignore growing community demands to know details of serious sex offenders living in their midst. Is this right?
ReplyDeleteThe issue of having a public sex offenders register similar to that in the USA, which Gotcha raised a little more than two weeks ago, is hard to keep out of the headlines.
NSW Opposition Leader Peter Debnam made the promise of a public register on the weekend, saying the community had the right to know where serious child sex offenders were located. Under his plan the names, addresses and photographs of high risk offenders would be published on the Internet, as they are on the US sex offenders register. Details of offenders considered medium risk would be available to schools, childcare centres and people working with children. Offenders deemed a low risk of re-offending would remain on the child sex offenders register which is not accessible by the public. He said the police would ensure offenders were not targeted by vigilantes.
Police Minister Carl Scully said the plan would not work and could put children at risk because paedophiles scared of vigilantes might go underground and breach their parole conditions.
In the US only an estimated 80 per cent of sex offenders comply with requirements and are on the public register, compared to 97 per cent in Britain, where the register is not public. And despite tough laws in the US prohibiting harassment and physical attacks on those on the register, a number of paedophiles have been murdered by vigilantes.
The NSW Opposition has won the support of the Daily Telegraph newspaper, which has begun a campaign for the introduction of a public sex offenders register including running an online petition.
In Victoria the Herald Sun (both the Daily Telegraph and Herald Sun are published by News Ltd, the publishers of news.com.au) has been stopped by the state government from disclosing the identity or whereabouts of a pedophile released into the community in Ararat.
Ararat is where another notorious pedophile Brian Keith Jones, better known as “Mr Baldy”, recently violated parole by breaking his curfew and leaving the grounds of the local prison, where he is living. The Victorian Government has been fighting in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to stop the release of documents relating the a decision to initially place Jones in a house in Melbourne on an access route to a local school.
The possibility of NSW going it alone and having a public sex offenders register raises the disturbing prospect of sex offenders disappearing underground to avoid being on it and then fleeing to other states.
http://blogs.news.com.au/news/crime/index.php/news/comments/pedophiles_and_the_publics_right_to_know/
Until there is a cure for paedophilia, paedophiles need to be monitored.
I applaud Debnam's efforts, yet recognise that he is not recomending a cure. I am upset the NSW Gov is doing so little for those who voted for it.
One suggestion I have is that pedophiles be placed in work circumstance, with wages garnished to pay for their monitoring. The more elusive types could be charged a lot.
The Greens now recoil from their own:
ReplyDeleteTHE Greens have developed a strategy to change their image and convince Victorians they are not a “bunch of feral tree-huggers”.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/a_muted_green/
Greens can achieve a sea-change in public perception. They don't have to do much either. There are many who would be willing to support an environmental movement that could responsibly promote environmental issues. Perhaps they might support a reduction in greenhouse gas production through a sensible application of nuclear power generation.
No doubt this will get exactly not the reaction it deserves from our professional damners of hate-speech:
ReplyDelete“God willing, a conference on the Holocaust will be held in the autumn. The Holocaust is not something sacred that no one can touch,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi told reporters.
“When I was ambassador I visited several Nazi camps in (the former) East Germany and Poland. I think it has been exaggerated,” he said.
Question: What sick priorities lead the government of a country like Iran to hold such a conference and to sneer that the Holocaust was a con? A once proud civilisation is halfway back to the primitive. Except, of course, this primitive will soon have not a club but a nuclear weapon.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/iran_baits_jews_again_tick_tick_tick/#commentsmore
He's got a point, the holocaust is not untouchable. He and his hate filled bretheren are intending to exceed the Nazis.
Irfan Yusuf, Muslim lawyer, joins the crowds condemning John Howard for saying a small minority of Muslims have trouble integrating and should learn to speak English:
ReplyDeleteWhat possible gains in national security or integration are achieved by singling out one group from the multi-faith broad church of insufficiently integrated Australians? ... But when he singles out Muslims for adverse comment, he (is) manufacturing a larger pool of marginalised Muslims.
That is Irfan now. This was Irfan only last year:
All state Islamic councils (bar Victoria) are dominated by migrants with few English skills…The imam can rarely, if ever, speak proper English. Imams are almost all from overseas, from non-Western environments and are unable to assist the young even if they want to….
There, these thick-sheiks … pass this isolationist theology and paranoid mentality onto young people and converts… Most are funded by Saudi-based institutions. …
(B)efore migrant Muslim leaders go pointing the fingers at others, they should start getting their own house in order.
Hear, hear.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/but_when_john_howard_says_it/
It isn't about integration, assimilation or multiculturalism, although many pushing their barrow would like it to be so. Assimilation or multiculturalism is political in statement, like supporting Liberal or ALP. The big issue is that a large minority are supporting terrorist activity.
These terrorists are well connected, well resourced and very manipulative. Local politics is being twisted to the ends of terrorists. There is no way the NSW Police Chief is party to terrorism, yet his political rhetoric occasionally places him at odds with the AFP chief. Such division is exploited by terrorists.
These terrorists are not recognisably Muslim, although their rhetoric (and profound support from despicable leaders) places them from an Islamic community. They aren't Jewish or Christian or Hindu or Budhist.
Thing is, the ALP have a longstanding tradition of intolerance to community values over individualism. This is a test of leadership for all, but for the ALP it is more difficult because they are a collection of minority interests. So far, Howard is playing strong, but Beazley is failing.
The anniversary of an apocalypse is marked:
ReplyDeleteIt was 10 years ago last week that then president Bill Clinton passed into law a bill requiring people to find a job or lose their benefits after five years.
Critics warned that the 1996 law would be catastrophic for single parents and their children. One Democratic senator predicted that the US would look like Brazil, with “children begging for money, children begging for food, and eight- and nine-year-old prostitutes”. Another senator said it would lead to “something approaching the Apocalypse”.
So what actually happened?
IN one of the greatest political and economic success stories of the past decade, the number of families receiving welfare in the US has fallen by 60 per cent since claimants were told they had to seek work or ultimately lose their benefits.
The result has been a revolution - not only in welfare, but also in attitudes towards poverty. Single mothers, once considered to be helplessly dependent on the state, have led the way out of welfare into work.
In 1994, 5.1 million American families were on welfare. By 2004, the number had plunged to two million.
Teenage births fell from 58 per 1000 to 41 per 1000 during the same period, while employment rates for unmarried teenage mothers rose by two-thirds.
“It’s amazing,” said Kay Hymowitz, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank championing reform. “Nobody thought there would be a 60 per cent drop. We’ve seen a resilience among the poor that people didn’t anticipate and it’s been a very good lesson for Americans.”
Color me astonished. But back to the Howard Government’s devastating workplace reforms that will make slaves of poor workers and send the economy into a tailspin.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/bastardry_works_poor_rescued/
The good thing about the reforms is that by the time of the next federal election the ALP position will be exposed as lies.
I'm just enjoying the wait, with all this evidence piling up that the labour movement is hostile to workers interests.
Tim Blair pulls together the various attempts by journalists to describe what didn’t happen in the Hoax of the Hole Ambulance:
ReplyDelete* Shalin was inside the ambulance and outside the ambulance while it was moving and parked at the moment the rockets, missiles, Israeli bombs, small weapons, and large explosion hit.
And that’s just point five of 10. Read the lot for the full absurdity.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/how_the_ambulance_turned_into_an_omnibus_of_dumb_explanations/
For me the funniest thing has nothing to do with that hoax. A few years ago, I severely burned myself when I spilled a bowl of superheated (microwaved) tomato soup over myself. I had no cash to catch a taxi to hospital and was stuck at home for a month (school holidays) recuperating. When I went to the hospital, a month later, triage nurse examined the wound and said "If we'd known it was this serious we would have sent the ambulance .." NSW health, you gotta laugh.
THE so-called “leaders” of Australian Muslims must accept responsibility for the disconnect between them, some in their community and mainstream Australia.
ReplyDeleteWhile a few are desperate to bridge that gulf, many others too quickly find offence where none exists and make wild accusations that serve no purpose but increase the breach between our cultures.
They have been assisted by the liberal media and civil liberties elites, who have convinced themselves that they stand shoulder-to-shoulder with an oppressed minority in its fight against an uncaring authoritarian government determined to exploit it for political purposes.
Examples of those who hear only dog whistles when other Australians hear the unvarnished truth are journalists like Peter Manning, author of a recent polemic against the mainstream media’s depiction of Muslim Australians, and Misha Schubert, who covers federal politics for Melbourne’s intellectually-challenged newspaper The Age.
Manning, a veteran graduate of the ABC who has taught media studies at UTS, dresses his demagoguery with the cant of such postmodernist idols as Edward Said, author of Orientalism, and Noam Chomsky, guru to the anti-Western bloc, and predictably finds widespread bias against Muslims in the news reports in Sydney’s daily newspapers.
Schubert, however, remains a working member of the federal parliamentary press gallery and is representative of the younger generation striving to make their arguments out of what seems to be extremely thin, if not threadbare, philosophical cloth.
In an astounding demonstration of this mental vacuity, Schubert launched an extraordinary attack during the ABC’s Insiders television program on Sunday on Prime Minister John Howard’s cautious call to a small number of Muslim migrants to hasten their integration by learning English and embracing Australian culture, particularly its regard for equality for women.
Resorting to the shallow relativism beloved of graduates since the erosion of education standards in the ‘70s, Schubert made the truly astonishing claim that the Christian marriage vows contained an admonition for women to honour and obey their husbands, and also mentioned the church’s resistance to the ordination of women.
Just as those who vociferously defend the self-named “Jihad” Jack Thomas adamantly refuse to believe that his training in the use of explosives and automatic weapons was ever to be put into use, Schubert is blind to the differences between the practise of Christianity and Islam.
It is, for example, a matter of fact that women who do not wish to include the vow to honour and obey their husbands can in fact get married in a Christian church. It is also a matter of fact that some strands of Christianity do permit the ordination of women.
Schubert might not be a student of the Islamic world but she should be aware of such basics as the reality that in a number of Muslim nations women are still stoned to death for adultery, and though religion may not be her field of expertise, her ignorance should not preclude her from knowing that men and women who opt to leave Islam can be sentenced to death as apostates.
The politically correct compulsion to depict a handful of aggrieved Australian Muslims as being representative of a wider caste of Howard Government victims is apparently so insistent that any attempt at objective reasoning doesn’t stand a chance. Maybe Schubert’s studies at New York’s uber-liberal Columbia University had a more profound influence on her than even she is aware of.
It is interesting to contrast Schubert, who yesterday asked “what are Australian values” on Sky News’ Agenda program, with Muslim woman Sherene Hassan, who sits on the executive of the Islamic Council of Victoria.
During our discussion yesterday Hassan told me she agreed wholeheartedly with the Prime Minister’s view and said she found the criticism repulsive.
“I have no problem with the concept that Australian Muslims should abide by Australian values,” she said. While she admitted to concern that some might use the remarks as an excuse for Muslim-bashing, she volunteered, “Many cultural practices in so-called Muslim countries actually contradict Islamic teachings and, yes, there is no place for them here in Australia or any place in the world for that matter.”
While the Mannings and Schuberts of the nation attempt to blame Australia or the West for the world’s problems or see some relativity between the actions of the West and Islamofacist terror, Hassan (who is clear on what constitute Australian values) makes no bones about her abhorrence of terror.
“I can’t see how people can get it so wrong,” she said.
Nor is she a supporter of the view that the Koran condones suicide bombings, saying: “Suicide is forbidden. Killing innocents is forbidden. You can’t commit two heinous crimes and claim martyrdom.”
Apologists for the violent activities of a handful of deranged Islamists should take note. They are out of step with Muslims like Hassan who embrace Australia and its culture and hope to make a contribution to the nation.
Pathologically anti-social behaviour is not necessarily indicative of victimhood – crimes are also commonly committed by people who just happen to be criminal.
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/piersakerman/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/hiding_from_truth_behind_paper/
I've just heard media watch sidestep an issue raised by you regarding political correctness on the ABC. I've just read a 2 year old (CNN Report http://conservativeweasel.blogspot.com/2006/09/thank-you-steve-irwin.html) media assault on Steve Irwin after he had the temerity to admire John Howard. For the record, I agree that political hacks are pushing their barrows and inflating their opinion to match their political dreams.
It isn't about Islam, or Christianity or judaism. The Islamofascists are using Islam as an excuse, in much the same way as Chomsky points to victim oppressors, I've played chess against Chomsky, he is smart, but cleverness does not make one balanced. Subtle thinkers can be misled by the subtle .. or the obvious.
Were one to believe the Islamic leaders of today, one might think that Islam is incapable of what it's adherents once achieved. That is the divide being exploited by IF merchants. ALP ideology is particularly susceptible to IF exploitation. And so, using Chomsky analysis, one can see that ALP, ABC and Fairfax press really support terrorism.