Here is North Korea by night - and capitalist South Korea, too.
And Foreign Minister Alexander Downer explains what he told the North Korean ambassador yesterday:
I pointed to this photo and I said the policies of his Government had led to this shameful situation where the people of South Korea lived in relative prosperity and the people of North Korea lived in poverty.
22 comments:
FEDERAL Education Minister Julie Bishop touched a very raw nerve with her challenge to state and territory governments on education standards.
Even before she had delivered her speech to the History Teachers’ Association in Fremantle last Friday, the air waves were crackling with comments from outraged teachers’ union representatives and state government spokesmen.
The ultra-Left Australian Education Union’s Victorian secretary, Mary Bluett, told the ABC’s AM program that Bishop’s comments - which she had yet to make - were ill-informed and insulting.
“Those comments are so far away from the reality. Teachers are not ideologues or fad followers, they are educated, committed and caring professionals,’’ she said.
But the AEU, which claims to represent 155,000 teachers, is the epitome of an ideological, fad-following organisation and it bankrolled the ALP’s 2004 election campaign with a $1 million fighting fund.
Its policies include the abolition of “heterosexist’’ language, rejection of assessment to measure the value of programs or assess the work of individual teachers, abolition of mass-standardised testing, opposition to selective schools and accelerated progression for “gifted children’’, and cutting taxpayer money for private schools.
NSW Premier Morris Iemma, fresh from backing down on his promise to insist that school reports actually grade student performance, said Bishop was launching a federal takeover of the curriculum.
Federal Opposition education spokesman Jenny Macklin said the prospect of a nationally-run education system was frightening: “We don’t want John Howard and his ministers determining what is taught.’’
But Bishop’s actual remarks probably resonated with parents across the nation. She said she was concerned students were leaving school without the fundamental grounding necessary to take them on to further education or training or a job.
“When you’ve got universities lamenting the fact that they have to introduce remedial English classes for tertiary students then it seems we’re not providing students with the basic numeracy and literacy skills at school,’’ she said.
Bishop made it plain she was not attacking teachers but the social engineers who set the agenda of state and territory governments, such as those who pushed the West Australian Government into introducing its ridiculous outcomes-based education system (which has been withdrawn).
She was correct in asserting that there is widespread concern about the content of curricula being developed by the various government education authorities, particularly in the areas of English, history and, more recently, geography.
At the recent history summit in Canberra it was agreed the study of Australian history be planned through primary and secondary schooling and be a distinct subject in Years 9 and 10 and an essential and required core of all students’ learning experience.
Bishop suggested the model history curriculum being developed could be mirrored in other core subjects and questioned whether it was reasonable to fund eight separate curricula for physics, chemistry, English and history between the states.
The duplication, which even Victorian Education Minister Lynne Kosky admits is unnecessary, currently costs the states and territories more than $180 million a year just to run their separate boards of studies and curriculum councils - which develop courses that are often not dissimilar.
“There are some similarities between the states and that is why we are developing a national test around literacy and numeracy,’’ Kosky said, adding, “while we are, as state and territories, co-operating, I really don’t think Canberra, by dictating what is essential in terms of learning, will actually make a difference for our students and indeed will not be beneficial for our students’’.
Bishop has not suggested that Canberra dictate the content of a national curriculum but has opened the door to discussion of a set of key core topics to be included in each of the curricula which would ensure some coherence in education across the nation.
Though this initiative has been welcomed by families in the armed services, one of the groups most likely to have children transferring between state education systems, the states and territories still feel exposed to the wrath of the teachers unions if they take a commonsense approach to educational standards and course content.
That there are problems with teaching standards across Australia is well known. This is not to say that all, or even a majority of teachers are at fault but public concern is palpable.
Anecdotally, a Chinese-born taxi driver in Sydney yesterday asked why his child was not taught the grammatical rules governing English at his NSW school, as he had been when he learnt English at a school in China.
He said it was inexcusable he could learn more about English in China than his son could in Australia.
Nor are ideological problems relevant only to primary and secondary schooling, as many university students will testify.
All too frequently students complain their lecturers expect a certain political point of view or their work will not receive a favourable mark.
The vehemence of the attack on Bishop by those who are in the thrall of ideologues and troglodytes would indicate that she is on the right track.
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/piersakerman/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/teach_an_old_trog_a_new_trick/
The nation with the most number of English speaking peoples is China :D
I agree that a national body could be a big improvement, but as Dame Leonie Kramer pointed out over a decade ago, it might also be a collective travesty.
There are a number of objective measures not used in assessment of teacher practise.
For me, the issue is the blatantly political bias evident in textbooks and coursework in civic subjects.
Western Australia’s police commissioner has apologised to Andrew Mallard for his wrongful jailing for almost 12 years for a murder he didn’t commit. Releasing the results of a cold case investigation that found the murder was most likely committed by another man who has since died in prison, Commissioner Karl O’Callaghan said he had apologised to Mr Mallard “for the role of the WA Police, as part of the criminal justice system that incarcerated him”.
A statement released by the WA Police said full details of the cold case investigation into Pamela Lawrence’s murder would not be released until the completion of a WA Corruption and Crime Commission inquiry into the circumstances surrounding Mr Mallard’s wrongful conviction.
It said the review had found sufficient evidence to implicate Simon Rochford in the murder. A palm print found at the scene of the murder in 1994 is understood to have been matched to Rochford using modern forensic techniques. Rochford was found dead in his cell in Albany prison in May, where he was serving a life sentence for the murder of his girlfriend, Brigitta Dickens.
Mr Mallard was released from jail in February after the High Court found evidence that was crucial to his defence had been withheld during his trial. The CCC is inquiring into the circumstances surrounding that. You can read details of the withheld evidence in one of Gotcha’s earlier postings on the Mallard case here.
Five senior police officers involved in the Mallard case were stood down during the cold case review, but have since been reinstated.
The official clearing of Mr Mallard now opens the way for what is expected to be a significant compensation payout.
In a statement this afternoon the CCC said public hearings into the Mallard case were expected to be held early next year. It said it had requested details of the cold case review be kept confidential, particularly from those police involved in the original investigation.
http://blogs.news.com.au/news/crime/index.php/news/comments/police_apologise_for_wrongful_conviction/
I would like to apologise for the WA Justice Minister’s hamfisted and backhanded apology. I suspect the police were not alone in this failure.
Gotcha’s recent look at the decision by Queensland’s Crime and Misconduct Commission not to recommend an expansion of that state’s legal sex industry sparked a lot of interest on the blog from people curious about sex workers. Now “Nikki”, who gave evidence to the CMC inquiry, has given Gotcha a detailed account of her life as a sex worker, including why some men need to pay for sex. And she has a message for wives whose husbands visit prostitutes. Here’s Nikki’s story:
“Hello - I am the Nikki referred to in Gary Hughes original post. I sat before the CMC and made a presentation on behalf of Sole Operator Sex Workers in Qld in regards to Outcall Services. ( http://www.cmc.qld.gov.au ) I must say thank you and commend the CMC on their final recommendations - we are very pleased.
“I understand and respect other people’s opinions in regards to the sex industry, however you cannot pass judgement on something unless you have actually walked in the same shoes.
“In other words, unless you have been a sex worker yourself, how do you know what it is really like? And how can you pass judgment on something you have no personal experience in?
“Everybody has individual experiences in any aspect of life. My experience in this industry has been positive, therefore I am inclined to stay on my chosen path.
“Do I feel exploited? No, I guess mostly because I work for myself and call my own shots. I have also worked in a licensed brothel - I have had nothing but positive experiences with both. Anything negative that has happened has been very minor and not worth mentioning.
“About me - I have been a Sex Worker for 10 years now, with no plans of retiring soon.
“My background - parents, married 50 years, 1 brother, 3 sisters, never been abused by any of them.
“Education - high school, hairdresser and partially completed psychology course.
“Work history - nail technician, tax consultant, owned my own Hair and Beauty Salon then sex work.
“Mental Health - excellent.
“Physical Health - excellent.
“Drugs – no, except weed, 2 or 3 times in my life. No prescription medications either except the pill.
“Alcohol - no.
“Sound kinda regular don’t I?
“I know this business has its nasty side and this is what most people seem to focus on - but you can avoid this by not putting yourself in a situation where nastiness is involved.
“It’s not all sleazy clients that I see. In fact I try to avoid the sleazebags that troll around the sex industry.
“Some of the men I see are widowers looking for company and a transition back into being intimate with a woman.
“Overweight men, who vain and vapid women in society can’t see past their weight to the person they really are.
“Disabled men that women and society reject because of their inflictions - they need sexual release too. These men I like the most because they are much more appreciative of the avenue they have to pursue physical intimacy.
“Some of the rest - just guys looking for some consensual adult fun.
“Sure, yucky guys slip under my radar every now and then - but I deal with them as they come.
“I never judge a client for their reasons for seeing me. It is not my place to. Whether they be married or single, it is their choice to make.
“The most common reason a man comes to see me is that their partner is not satisfying their needs at home. I don’t mean that their ladies aren’t being kinky in the bedroom or anything. In fact, it is the most basic of wants that aren’t being fulfilled. Most attached men tell me that they don’t want to pressure their partner for sex. It is easier to come to a sex worker to take care of their needs.
“Fact - inhibitions in the bedroom and holding out once you are in a relationship will eventually drive your man to seek sex elsewhere ladies.
“Back to the sex industry in general. Most ladies I know pay taxes and invest their money in property and towards their future retirement. Sound familiar?
“It is simply a business - supply and demand. Sure, it’s not your run of the mill business, but if you have what it takes, can keep a level head and stay away from drugs or bad situations, then you will be fine working in this industry.
“If you saw me at the mall, you would not know what I do for a living. I don’t live the lifestyle. I don’t “slut” around. Women in society need not feel threatened by sex workers.
“Personally, I don’t date clients. I don’t want your man. I will service him safely and send him home for you to cook dinner for. Never fear, he is yours to keep!
Nikki xoxox
http://blogs.news.com.au/news/crime/index.php/news/comments/my_life_as_a_sex_worker
I don’t think it is the transaction that worries mature adults. Putting aside religious issues, intimacy is a gift. Being involved with others is part and parcel of a healthy community, everybody has to face yucky, dangerous people, but it is undesirable to be intimate with such. Most people I know have boundary issues, boundaries are things we learn socially. How do you find yourself with the socially inept? With those who can’t finish a sentence, but demand your attention, so that you almost have to be rude to get away? How are you with friends who might support you, or children, who both need you, and need to learn from you?
There is, in modern times, the cult of the individual. People believe that as long as the individual is healthy and well paid, everything is all right. However, many express disatisfaction and surprise when all is ok for their individual self, but not satisfying.
I believe, and you, Nikky, may disagree, that an individual is happy to sacrifice their self to be part of a living, growing, healthy tribe. I believe intimacy is a glue that cements their place within a tribe. Sexual release is all very well, but nothing compared to the kindness of strangers who help the distressed, or community who help those unrelated to them out of simple compassion.
On another tack, police become police as they grow into their role. As do teachers become teachers and nurses, nurses. Work tends to bend people to its demands, so that as we grow older, we see our schoolfriends become their parents. What will you become?
There’s concern that a world-wide glut of heroin caused by a bumper opium harvest in Afghanistan could lead to a jump in fatal overdoses. The warning coincides with Australian Customs stopping more than four kilograms of heroin being smuggled through Sydney Airport in the one week.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which issued the international warning on heroin overdoses, said global oversupply of the drug had in the past led to an increase in the purity of the end product, rather than lower street prices.
“The abundant supply of Afghan heroin is likely to result in dramatic increases in the purity of street heroin,” UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa said. “This, in turn, is likely to prompt a substantial increase in the number of deaths by overdose as addicts are not used to injecting doses containing such high concentrations of the drug.”
UNODC’s 2006 Afghan Opium Survey, published last month, showed that illicit opium production in Afghanistan was a record 6,100 tons this year, an increase of 49 per cent on 2005. Afghanistan accounts for 92 per cent of total world supply of opium.
Last week Australian Customs seized 2.2kg of heroine being brought in by a woman from Vietnam and 800 grams of heroine found in the luggage of a woman arriving from Singapore. And yesterday Customs revealed that a man and woman had been caught on September 27 after trying to smuggled a total of 1.36 kilograms of heroin inside capsules they had swallowed. The man almost died after one of the capsules burst in his stomach during the flight from Vietnam.
http://blogs.news.com.au/news/crime/index.php/news/comments/pure_death
Perhaps our state parlaiments need to open injecting rooms .. just to be safe.
Fascinating how each time there is a ‘win’ in the war on drugs, people come forward to demand surrender.
There are losses in this war, and will continue to be, but not as many as there were to be should we surrender.
To complete my day, I’m waiting for Ryan to say something has been proven.
Should we be surprised that a new survey by a security company says one in five CVs submitted by job applicants contain significant lies, including omitting court convictions and adding fabricated academic qualifications? Or do we all lie when trying to get a job?
The Risk Advisory Group in the UK, which carries out background screening of employees, surveyed more than 3,700 CVs submitted by job applicants in 2006.
Half of the CVs contained mistakes. Twenty per cent contained “significant lies”, including the use of forged university degrees.
“This year’s results have yet again brought to our attention how unscrupulous candidates can be when applying for jobs, and highlight their apparent lack of conscience towards potential new employers,” the Risk Advisory Group said.
Australia has had it own share of high profile examples of such CV fudging recently. Steve Vizard’s former book keeper Roy Hilliard, who allegedly relieved his employer of $3 million, admitted he got the job by pretending he had two New Zealand university degrees. “I regarded it as window-dressing,” he told a Melbourne Court.
And doubts have been raised about the CV of former Federal Court judge Marcus Einfeld, who is under police investigation for allegedly avoiding a speeding fine by claiming a dead woman was driving his car at the time. One of the doctorates he has is from America’s Pacific Western University, which was debunked in the US Congress as a “diploma mill” that handed out PhDs for a flat fee of $US2595 ($3413). His other doctorate is from the Century University in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is not accredited with the relevant American legal bodies.
Three years ago an “expert witness” claiming to be a psychologist was exposed in the middle of a Victorian Supreme Court criminal case as being a fraud, after it was discovered the University of NSW had no record of her having graduated as a psychologist, as she said she had.
http://blogs.news.com.au/news/crime/index.php/news/comments/faking_it
In public service, we don’t need to lie about credentials. We ignore or despise anything that isn’t ours, and we produce copious amounts of back slapping adverts for our favoured sons that no number of outside credentials can assail successfully
The battle for justice by victims of Catholic Church abuse hasn’t been well served by Kathy O’Beirne, the author of a best selling account of her physical and sexual abuse as a young girl that increasingly looks as if it might be more fiction than fact. The book “Kathy’s Story”, which purported to expose abuse in Dublin’s Magdalen laundries, sold more than 350,000 copies in Ireland and the UK, despite denials from the outset by the Catholic Church. It was released in Australia last year. Now the book’s ghost writer has admitted he saw no documentary evidence to support O’Beirne’s claims. The admission follows public statements from O’Beirne’s own family that her story is made up.
Seven of Kathy O’Beirne’s siblings held a news conference in Dublin last month to denounce her book, in which she says that her father and two brothers abused her from the time she was seven and that she bore a child after being raped in the Magdalene Laundries, institutions run by Sisters of Our Lady of Charity.
“The anger and frustration we feel at seeing our father branded worldwide as a horrific abuser is indescribable,” said Mary O’Beirne, a younger sister. “The allegations are untrue. We can’t go on living like this, we can’t eat, we can’t sleep.”
The siblings also produced O’Beirne’s birth certificate, saying that her claim to have been adopted was false.
O’Beirne hit back at her siblings, claiming they were bitter because she won a family dispute to keep her mother’s house, which they wanted to sell. “I am not a liar. I am not mad,” she said. She also promised to produce sworn statements from other Magdalene Laundries survivors supporting her claims.
But O’Beirne’s ghost writer, who initially back her, has now said he didn’t see any documents supporting her tale while working on the book. “There are no documents. Those documents are either falsified or destroyed. There is no evidence or records of Kathy in the two Magdalene Laundries. There never was,” said Michael Sheridan.
The Sisters of Our Lady Charity has consistently denied O’Beirne’s allegations. “We can categorically state that Kathy O’Beirne did not spend any time in our laundries or related institutions,” the order said in a statement last year. The order said it had found that O’Beirne had spent six weeks attending one of its schools. But that was the only time she was in the order’s care. It has called on the Irish Government to independently investigate O’Beirne’s claims.
Meanwhile the book’s UK publishers Mainstream Press, which still has O’Beirne’s book listed as its current number one best seller on its website, is standing by it as a work on non-fiction.
http://blogs.news.com.au/news/crime/index.php/news/comments/doubts_grow_on_abuse_book
Literary hoaxes are always difficult to accept. Darville may have had more to contribute from a fictional classification, but then it is doubtful the publisher would publish.
I have an account of my life I can substantiate .. but it isn’t critical of the Catholic Church or conservatives ..
How do you stop rape victims being victimised all over again when they go through the criminal justice system? That’s the issue confronting state governments as they finally begin to address the reality that the vast majority of sexual assaults are never reported to police. And the reason for that is because victims not only have no faith that justice will be done, but fear the ordeal of being a witness and coming under attack while giving evidence in court. The lack of faith is well-founded. Less than 15 sexual assaults out of every 100 are estimated to ever reach the criminal justice system, and of those less than 10 per cent result in guilty verdicts - in other words 99 out of every 100 sex attackers get away with it. Now the NSW government has announced a series of reforms, including making judges and police attend education sessions on sexual assault victims. Special “one-stop” sexual assault centres where victims can get treatment and help will also be established to encourage more to come forward and report crimes. And in Western Australia a motion has been put before state parliament to establish an inquiry into why prosecution rates for sexual assault are so low. Victoria and South Australia have both had inquiries in the search for improving the justice system’s treatment of sexual assault victims. But much remains to be done to win the trust of victims.
According to an Australian Institute of Family Studies report released in June 2005, one in five Australian women and one in 20 Australian men over the age of 18 have been “forced or frightened into unwanted sexual activity” at least once. One of the reasons for the drastic under-reporting of rape and sexual assault is that in many cases the attacks are carried out by a partner. And one of the reasons for not reporting this kind of attack, according to the AIFS, is that many police “a substantial proportion of non-specialist police officers believe that a high proportion of rape allegations are false, and that victim-complainants often withdraw complaints of rape against intimate partners because they are false”.
The kind of rapes most likely to reach the justice system and result in convictions are ones that also involved physical assaults that leave injuries. It seems this kind of physical evidence is more likely to make victims be believed.
According got the AIFS report, the successful prosecution rate in NSW for sexual assault was just 10 per cent of those cases reported to police. In Victoria it’s 4.2 per cent and in South Australia its as low as 1.8 per cent. And remember, that’s out of the 15 per cent of cases that are reported to police to start with. Which means that in most states barely one in every 100 sexual assaults and rapes ends in a guilty verdict.
Little wonder that victims have no faith in the system.
“Where a matter does proceed to trial, evaluations of trial transcripts consistently show that many complainants are: accused of lying or making false reports; asked questions about behaving in a sexually provocative way; asked about alcohol intake on the day of the offence and asked about the way they were dressed at the time of the offence,” the AIFS report says.
Ballarat University researcher Dr Caroline Taylor, who has written a book with advice for sexual assault victims going through the court system based on her own experiences as a victim, has pointed to the male dominance of the justice system as a problem. “In law, women’s experiences of sexual, physical and emotional violence don’t count unless accorded as ‘real’ experiences by men,” she has said.
The NSW reforms announced at the weekend are designed to address such problems by trying to educate the mostly male judges, police and prosecutors by sending them off to seminars. Other measures to make the process less confronting will include changing committal procedures to reduce the number of times victims must give evidence and be cross-examined.
“These changes are directed essentially at making it easier for a victim to give evidence in court against offenders charged with sexual assault,” NSW Attorney General Bob Debus said.
“There is nothing more traumatic in the practice of criminal law than the situation in which the victim of a violent sexual assault has to give evidence in the presence of the person who is accused of having offended against them.”
In WA the state parliament was told last week that the conviction rate for sexual assault was less than five per cent. The opposition, presenting a motion for a parliamentary inquiry into the problem, said there was concern at the number of cases that were reported to authorities, but did not make it to court. There was also no specialist sexual assault squad within the WA police.
I’d be interested to hear the experiences of any victims who have been through the criminal justice system, from victims who decided not to bother, or from those with first hand experience of dealing with sexual assault cases in the courts or law enforcement. Just how big is the problem of obtaining justice for victims?
http://blogs.news.com.au/news/crime/index.php/news/comments/failing_rape_victims
I was about twelve years old when I was entrusted to a family friend overnight. I was supposed to see my dad as part of a divorce settlement agreement my mother had made. However, he’d beaten me the last time, and the family friend was a temporary compromise. I was born overseas, and had only recently come to Australia to live. I trusted no one.
The family friend treated me well, taking me to play putt putt and playing board games, not giveing an opportunity to watch tv or read a book. When it was bed time, he insisted I shower. With him. He felt it important I soap him, above the waist, as he did me. We towelled and he wanted to show off the harbour view. I was naked and he carried me on his shoulder, my genitals pressed into his neck. I was uncomfortable. I had asked to shower alone. To dress. To not bother with the view. I was also trying to be polite, as I’d been rude (or ungrateful) during the putt putt game.
The next morning (I didn’t sleep), he asked if I wanted a whisker rub, which is where, as a younger child, he would rub his night growth on my bare stomach. I refused politely.
I told my mother what had happened when I returned home. She said I had a choice, either visit the family friend or see my father. I saw my father.
Months later, my Mother organised a dinner for the family friend. She instructed me to behave. She said if I behaved, we could holiday at his north coast cottage. Afterwards, she said to me “He didn’t rape you”
“What?”
“He didn’t rape you, I saw how you behaved with him ..”
“I didn’t tell you he had raped me. I told you he had showered with me and made me ride him piggy back when I didn’t want to.”
“He’s a good man.” She said. “He will let use the cottage if you keep behaving.”
Years later, when I left home, she gave him my telephone number at several addresses and asked him to call me on my birthday. I told her not to do that, and she agreed she wouldn’t, if I moved back home with her. I was 23, having left home at 20, and I was graduating from university. She told him on my birthday I was living with her .. handing me the phone with him on the line. Then she invited him to my graduation ceremony, years later admitting she had hoped to humiliate my father. I have not talked to her since.
I have no legal remedy for what that man did, or my mother or father. My siblings treat me as pariah. I am now a recluse. At the age of 40, I’ve never dated, and don’t wish to.
Ryan
It is deeply disappointing to me that your hubris takes away from some valid points.
“And on the case of DDBALL, where is the supposed sexual abuse??
From his own description of what happened, no abuse occurred.”
I never made the claim that I was raped. I claim to have been abused. Are you questioning the abuse? I now know, intelectually, that were I to be presented a similar story for a child, I would treat the case as rape and support that child. Ryan, maybe, doesn’t know, but the age gap, the child being under 13, brings into play issues not present were we discussing two adults. I wrote my story as a counterpoint to compliment Gary’s introduction.
Ignoring Ryan’s inarticulate rage for a moment, there are some valid points that fiddling with the justice system doesn’t advance the cause of the victim. Legal principles such as innocent until proven guilty are important, and should not be put aside lightly. The onus on proof of consent is not one I think will work to advance the victim’s cause.
I see the sneering faces of those pleasure cruise wolves in the Brimble case, and I would love to see them punished even were they innocent of the murder. Their actions and attitudes condemn them in my eyes.
Date rape is not about dating. It has a history extending back over a thousand years in written history. If there were easy judicial remedies we would do that.
Justice is not about victim support. Welfare is. Justice is about keeping the community safe, and compensation to avoid blood fued. If we link welfare to justice, we corrupt justice. However, it is a move that many would like to make because there is a view that money may be made through the link, either by expanding welfare astronomically or by cutting welfare through replacing it with justice.
Victims have rights, and those rights should not be predicated on the need to demonstrate crime, but on the need for support. The truth, as I see it, is that the situation is political, in the sence that we want to see tax dollars spent a certain way. We want to feel safe from those dogs that assaulted Mrs Brimble. The justice system is not set the proper body to deal with victim support. It is the proper body to deal with community safety and compensation for crime.
I think it might be better that people NOT use criminal justice courts to seek compensation for rape.
What I think would be better, were there to be a rape victim support group with legislative authority that pursue rapists on behalf of victims. This would seperate the victim from the court process, placing professional advocates in position to speak on their behalf. Removing the petty accusation of gold digging from the victim, as it wouldn’t be their decision, nor would it necessitate further involvement.
Of course, people like Ryan would oppose such a move, as it is more fun to denounce others thank think, and because pollys wouldn’t be able to use the funding lever to highlight inneficiency in election campaigns .. remember, 1% conviction rates are wonderful to advocate change, and little need be done to improve them.
Lancet, allegedly a professional journal on the latest news in medicine, does it again, and once more just before an election:
A controversial new study contends nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died because of the war, suggesting a far higher death toll than other estimates.
Like Nature and Science, Lancet seems increasingly to be run by people motivated by politics rather than science, who prefer a slogan to a reputable survey.
I suspect even activists will have trouble this time swallowing this wild guess at a shame-America figure. And the reception has indeed been cool:
An accurate count of Iraqi deaths has been difficult to obtain, but one respected group puts its rough estimate at closer to 50,000. And at least one expert was skeptical of the new findings.
“They’re almost certainly way too high,” said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington. He criticized the way the estimate was derived and noted that the results were released shortly before the Nov. 7 election.
“This is not analysis, this is politics,” Cordesman said.
Note what this survey means by “excess” deaths:
In the new study, researchers attempt to calculate how many more Iraqis have died since March 2003 than one would expect without the war.
Which means the survey’s authors are claiming that the invasion caused not just 650,000 deaths, but also the deaths of as many Iraqis as would have died under three years of Saddam.
What a shameful, shameful beat-up.
(Via the Drudge Report.)
UPDATE. Even Human Rights Watch is treating this very cautiously:
This viewed was echoed by Sarah Leah Whitson, an official of Human Rights Watch in New York, who said, “We have no reason to question the findings or the accuracy” of the survey.
“I expect that people will be surprised by these figures,” she said. “I think it is very important that, rather than questioning them, people realize there is very, very little reliable data coming out of Iraq."
No wonder:
It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group…
The same group in 2004 published an estimate of roughly 100,000 deaths in the first 18 months after the invasion. That figure was much higher than expected, and was controversial. The new study estimates that about 500,000 more Iraqis, both civilian and military, have died since then—a finding likely to be equally controversial.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/lancet_misdiagnoses_iraq_again
Troubling, if true:
A RELIGIOUS feud between a Muslim father and his teenage daughter may have sparked a bloody domestic dispute on the Gold Coast which left the man’s wife dead and him fighting for life in hospital.
Police are investigating suggestions the violence erupted after the 17-year-old girl told her father she wanted to opt out of the Islamic faith and convert to Christianity. The girl’s mother is believed to have stepped in to protect her daughter, only to be fatally stabbed with a kitchen knife.
UPDATE. The ABC reports:
Police say they are not prepared to speculate on whether religion was a motive in the attacks.
I’d urge posters to remember that nothing about what happened and why is proven, all is speculation, and it is unfair to assume anything in their comments.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/gold_coast_honor_killing/
The fashionably non-racist way to save Aboriginal children today:
NORTHERN Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin knew about young girls being “prostituted for petrol” in central Australia 18 months before she ordered an inquiry into violence and child abuse in remote Aboriginal communities.
Ms Martin reported to a state cabinet colleague that “social dysfunction” at Mutitjulu, a community in the shadow of Uluru, was driven by chemical addiction and passive welfare that left two-thirds of its children malnourished or underdeveloped.
She detailed these concerns in a memo on November 26, 2004, but did not announce an inquiry into abuse in Aboriginal communities until June this year - the day after ABC’s Lateline program aired several allegations about sexual abuse at Mutitjulu.
Isn’t it wonderful how we no longer take such children away to save them from selling their bodies for more petrol with which to sniff their brains into jelly?
I repeat: The “stolen generations” theory is killing Aboriginal children. Its gurus are complicit in crimes against humanity.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/at_least_we_wont_steal_them_from_prostitution/
Is a church that works so closely with Phillip Adams - atheist, baiter of Christianity and former Communist - really likely to appeal to Christians?
Says Adams:
For the past decade this atheist has been working with Jesuits and Josephites on the causes we care about, among them Aboriginal issues, refugee policy and Iraq. To a large extent what’s left of the Left finds sanctuary with progressives in the church.
It’s the “progressive” churches, of course, who have seen their congregations fall most.
They’ve lost worshippers, but gained Adams. Is that a fair swap?
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/adams_in_the_deserted_pews/
When the obvious seems so daring, something is wrong.
Tony Abbott is a fine writer, yet it says more about our intellectual decline than it does about his prose that his words ring so loudly true and insightful:
Then there’s the reluctance to study British history lest this offend “all-cultures-are-equal” sensitivities. Chinese history, for instance, is very important to understanding modern China (and Australia’s relationship with it) but otherwise casts little specific light on our country. Except in a trivial sense, the Australian nation did not begin in 1788 and its history is not confined to what’s happened here. Its history is entwined with that of Western civilisation, the fount of ideas and values that animated our early settlers and permeate our society.
For too long, history has been taught with little respect for the cultural and religious traditions without which Australia’s past, present and future is an intellectual jumble sale. It’s as if the First Fleet arrived from nowhere. Modern Australia owes a debt to many cultures but our basic civic institutions, the rule of law, parliamentary democracy and political pluralism, were made in England. Good and bad, we have to learn the lessons of our history, not ignore it or wish it away.
Test: Ask the staff at the Melbourne Museum why there is no mention at all there of the founders of Mebourne, or the early settlers. Three people who have asked so far report back that the answer is: “We don’t do invasion history.”
UPDATE. The decline of history teaching doesn’t just hurt us:
HISTORY teaching at A, or advance, level in British schools is so fragmented that pupils are left with no understanding of the orderin which important events occurred and little idea of what went before or after them, one of Britain’s leading academics claims.
Television historian David Starkey, a fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, says ... “History, if properly taught, should give people a sense of time and a map of time. You should be able to place yourself in time.”
And the decline isn’t just seen in the teaching of history:
THE Australian Defence Force Academy, alarmed by a decline in mathematics standards in high schools, will force almost half of its first-year engineering students to sit a remedial maths course.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/first_fleet_from_nowhere/
We’ve been warned and warned again, but will the green gurus in government actually do anything about it?
AUSTRALIA is in danger of drying out as politicians failed to adequately address the nation’s water crisis, a visiting expert has warned.
Canadian water campaigner Maude Barlow says Sydney could be out of clean drinking water within three years.
And Melbourne could be dry within 15.
We’re in for an interesting experiment. What will collapse first - Melbourne or the green faith that dams are evil and a crime against Nature?
The trouble is, of course, that it may be too late to build another dam by the time our politicians admit one might save us.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/dam_straight/
Salman Rushdie gives Jack Straw not-so-veiled support:
"Speaking as somebody with three sisters and a very largely female Muslim family, there’s not a single woman I know in my family or in their friends who would have accepted wearing the veil.
“I think the battle against the veil has been a long and continuing battle against the limitation of women, so in that sense I’m completely on [Straw’s] side.
“He was expressing an important opinion, which is that veils suck, which they do. I think the veil is a way of taking power away from women.”
Odd how this debate on the burqa seems dominated by men. You’d expect feminists to have a lot more to say on this, wouldn’t you?
Oops. sorry. One does. Says Madeleine Bunting, director of Demos:
Does it not occur to men opining on their sense of “rejection” at the niqab (hijab) that it could be equally prompted by separatist lesbians? Or on another even more obvious tack: how comfortable does the woman wearing the niqab feel coming to visit her MP ensconced in his cultural context, at ease with enormous power and authority?
I guess that given the choice between savaging the West or liberating Muslim women, a feminist’s duty is clear.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/hijabs_suck_says_rushdie_thats_oppressive_says_feminist/
First North Korea demanded talks and aid or it would develop nuclear fuel that could be processed for weapons. It got them.
Then it demanded talks and security assurances or it would build nuclear weapons. It got some of its demands.
Now a North Korean official demands:
‘’We want this situation to be concluded before the unhappy situation arises in which we fire nuclear missiles and this depends on how the United States acts,’’ the official said.
What will be the next demand? More aid or it will fire those nuclear missiles - into a city?
And to think that Jimmy Carter promised it would never come to this, thanks to the caring-sharing deal he made with North Korea in 1994 on behalf of Bill Clinton. As he told CNN back then:
CARTER: What the North Koreans were waiting for was some treatment of their exalted leader with respect and a direct communication. I didn’t have to argue with him. When I outlined the specific points that were the Clinton administration’s position, I presented them to him. And with very little equivocation, he agreed. I think it’s all roses now. I’ve known that there were people in Washington who were sceptical about any direct dealing with the North Koreans. They were already condemned as outlaws. Kim Il-sung was already condemned a criminal.
Question: Are you absolutely convinced that the North Koreans are going to honour this agreement, that while talks are going on that it’s not just a matter of buying time on the part of the North Koreans, that they will not secretly pursue the nuclear program they were pushing earlier?
Carter: I’m convinced. But I said this when I got back from North Korea, and people said that I was naive or gullible and so forth. I don’t think I was. In my opinion, this was one of those perfect agreements where both sides won. We should not ever avoid direct talks, direct conversations, direct discussions and negotiations with the main person in a despised or misunderstood or condemned society who can actually resolve the issue.
Of curse we now know North Korea just kept building away.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/korean_roulette/
RELIGIOUS bigots are dangerous in politics. Just see what federal Labor frontbenchers Kelvin Thomson and Anthony Albanese will do in the name of their green faith.
Thomson, the human services spokesman, has written to business chiefs declaring “global warming is happening, it is man-made, and it is not good for us.”
But, he sighs, “propaganda and misinformation” is being spread by “sceptics.”
“I am writing to ask if your company has donated any money to the Institute of Public Affairs . . . or any other body which spreads misinformation or undermines the scientific consensus concerning global warming . . . If so, I request that your company cease such financial support.”
This bid to shut down debate is scary enough in a likely minister in any Labor government. But it’s worse when you see what Albanese, Labor’s environment spokesman, considers to be the truth about global warming.
This week he claimed Tuvalu, a Pacific island, “is expected to become uninhabitable within 10 years because of rising sea levels”.
In fact, our South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project has found the seas there have risen just 4.3mm a year recently, and a much longer record kept by the University of Hawaii shows an even smaller rise—just 0.9mm a year.
The project’s report concludes: “Hence, even with 22 years of data the trend cannot be established without sizeable uncertainties.”
No doubt this fact “undermines the scientific consensus concerning global warming”. So what would Labor do to a scientist who says such a thing, or a business that publishes it?
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/column_nagged_by_green_labor/
The National Council of Churches (the rebadged Australian Council of etc) has angrilly rebuked me for arguing that our mainstream churches preach too much politics - and from a position too far to the Left.
Was I wrong?
On the very same day I read the latest politicking of the new Anglican Archbishop of Perth:
THE Anglican Archbishop of Perth is alarmed at the return of the “Hanson phenomenon” and has dismissed as a waste of time the Federal Government’s [actually Labor’s - ed.]
call for migrants to sign agreements on Australian values.
In his address to 500 ministers and parishioners at this weekend’s 46th synod at Mirrabooka, Archbishop Roger Herft hit out at several Government policies, including offshore processing of boat people and its support of the detention of David Hicks at Guantanamo Bay…
“Our media, law-enforcement agencies and politicians make an art of negative profiling.”...
The Federal Government’s unwillingness to stand up to the US was another cause for grave concern, the Archbishop said.
“In foreign policy, we are devoid of any independent viewpoint,” he said.
“We deport citizens with a mental illness who happen to have a foreign accent and we do nothing for our own (being) held without trial in detention centres managed by our friends, the USA.”
The Archbishop also fixed his aim on the church, criticising its obsession with sex.
He said issues such as the blessing of same-sex couples, having homosexuals as church leaders and the ordination of women had dominated church debate, creating rifts between members of the faith.
Archbishop Herft said it was “ironic and unedifying” that the Anglican communion was preoccupied with sex when there were other more significant events competing for attention.
These included the continuing carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan, the rising conflict between Israel and Lebanon and environmental issues.
Memo to the NCC - your problem is exactly as bad as I said. Less denial and more introspection, please, while you still have some parishioners left.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/another_church_painted_red/
An ACNielsen poll measures which of five values Australians rate most highly:
PEOPLE put freedom of speech and tolerance of different religions and cultures much higher in their lexicon of “Australian values” than mateship or a fair go.
The Age‘s take?
Mateship fails ‘values’ test
In fact, it’s human nature to value more highly that which is more threatened. For so many Australians to rally around free speech right now is a worry, in a way. I’m sure they would once have taken that right as a given, but now? And just wait until Kelvin Thomson gets into power.
Ditto with tolerance. Our sense of being one community is under attack. Perhaps more tolerance - better still, affection - for mainstream Australian culture would help ease concern.
AND BY THE WAY…
Mainstream church leaders tend to be hard to the Left, echoing the political rhetoric of Labor and the Greens.
Talk about sleeping with the enemy. The ACNeilsen survey also asks people if churches have too much power. Answer:
Labor (43 per cent) and Green (48 per cent) voters were most likely to believe it had excessive influence.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/rallying_to_free_spee/
Labor’s environment spokesman, Anthony Albanese, gets hysterical about global warming:
Tuvalu is expected to become uninhabitable within 10 years because of rising sea levels, not in many decades...
The CSIRO feeds his alarm:
A CSIRO report released Monday raised concerns that millions of people on low-lying islands and lands in Asia-Pacific nations will be left homeless in the next 40 years due to rising sea levels induced by climate change.
In fact, the Australia’s South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project monitors the sea level at Tuvalu and its latest report says the seas have risen in the short term by just 4.3 mm a year - not a rate of rise that will drown the island any time soon, even if it keeps going. (Yes, in some years the sea level falls.) But the report notes that the University of Hawaii has monitored the seas of Tuvalu for much longer - from 1977 to 1999 - and recorded an annual average rise that’s much smaller still - just 0.9mm a year.
The report concludes:
Hence, even with 22 years of data the trend cannot be established without sizeable uncertainties.
Don’t tell the hyperventilating Albanese. He’s as dogmatically certain as any religious convert.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/albanese_drowns_in_warming_hype/
Brilliant analysis of North Korea by Robert Kaplan here. It which makes clear that few of the options for that crippled country look good for us, and that includes a collapse of Kim Jong-il’s insanely cruel regime. A taste:
The threat from north of the DMZ is formidable. North Korea boasts 100,000 well-trained special-operations forces and one of the world’s largest biological and chemical arsenals. It has stockpiles of anthrax, cholera, and plague, as well as eight industrial facilities for producing chemical agents—any of which could be launched at Seoul by the army’s conventional artillery. If the governing infrastructure in Pyongyang were to unravel, the result could be widespread lawlessness (compounded by the guerrilla mentality of the Kim Family Regime’s armed forces), as well as mass migration out of and within North Korea. In short, North Korea’s potential for anarchy is equal to that of Iraq, and the potential for the deployment of weapons of mass destruction—either during or after pre-collapse fighting—is far greater.
For a harbinger of the kind of chaos that looms on the peninsula consider Albania, which was for some years the most anarchic country in post-Communist Eastern Europe, save for war-torn Yugoslavia. On a visit to Albania before the Stalinist regime there finally collapsed, I saw vicious gangs of boys as young as eight harassing people. North Korea is reportedly plagued by the same phenomenon outside of its showcase capital. That may be an indication of what lies ahead. In fact, what terrifies South Koreans more than North Korean missiles is North Korean refugees pouring south. The Chinese, for their part, have nightmare visions of millions of North Korean refugees heading north over the Yalu River into Manchuria.
As for North Korea’s nuclear test, let us remember how Bill Clinton “solved” it in 1994, with a bribe that simply encouraged North Korea t keep going and encouraged the world to put off truly dealing with the problem until it was all far too late. Here‘s the US account of the agreement Clinton reached then. Excerpt:
After sixteen months of negotiations, the United States and North Korea have reached an agreement that ends the recent threat of nuclear proliferation in Northeast Asia and provides the basis for more normal relations between North Korea and the rest of the world.
Still, we should not see this as just a Clinton failure. The US has had to keep troops in South Korea for more than 50 years because no US president has been able to “solve” North Korea, and it would be fantasising to believe any could. If we must blame any other country for not acting sooner, we should blame China.
UPDATE. Good timing? The United Nations has elected its new secretary general - South Korean foreign minister Ban Ki-Moon. He won’t need a briefing on his first and most immediate crisis.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/north_korea_no_solution_and_little_to_hope_for/
It is not often that bad news from Iran gives us reason to hope for that country - and for Islam. Michael Ledeen explains:
The news has finally caught up with the ongoing saga of the Ayatollah Hossein Kazemeini Boroujerdi, who has been challenging the legitimacy of the Iranian mullahcracy for many years. Both he and his father–who died 4 years ago, and whose grave has been desecrated–refused to embrace the Khomeinist doctrine that only a Shi’ite sage was fit to govern the Islamic Republic....
Boroujerdi was dragged off to his destiny on Sunday, in a dramatic confrontation that involved thousands of demonstrators, some in Tehran, and some on the road to Qom, where many of the country’s most prestigious religious schools and scholars are located. The official news media reported that more than two hundred supporters were arrested at the house in Tehran, but this is the least of it. Two Iranian friends in Europe, and one in the United States, have received reports that speak of more than seven hundred people murdered on the road to Qom. If that, or anything approaching it, is true, it testifies to two important facts. The first is the truly vicious and totalitarian nature of this regime, which will stop at nothing to silence any sign of criticism from the Iranian people. Somebody should tell Richard Armitage about this, since he has yet to announce any second thoughts about his infamous claim that Iran is “a kind of democracy.”
The second fact is widely, in fact compulsively, denied by a plethora of self-proclaimed experts on Iran. And that is the bravery of Iranians who wish to be free to practice their religion and politics as they see fit, rather than as their tyrants insist. Thousands of people stood up to the regime’s killers, in defense of a solitary mullah whose crime was to preach traditional Shi’ite values.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/massacre_in_iran_a_shiite_protest_we_must_support/
The penny is at last dropping. Catholic News reports:
In a further sign that European bishops are hardening their positions, Bishop Jesus Sanz of Huesca and Jaca, Spain, wrote in a pastoral letter this week that it is not possible to dialogue “with the most belligerent strain of extreme Islam - nor similarly with any terrorist group - much less establish any accord”.
Cardinal Karl Lehmann of the German Catholic Bishops Conference also says enough is enough:
Accusing Muslim critics of mounting a campaign against the Pope following a 26 September call issued by the 56-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference for Pope Benedict to retract his Regensburg statement, the Cardinal writes that “these open or hidden threats have to stop.”...
“There is freedom of religion and speech in our civilisation. The Pope can also be criticised. But there are elementary rules that apply for factual and fair contacts with each other and with clear statements,” he wrote.
“One cannot constantly repeat completely unfounded misunderstandings when the texts are so clear,” the Cardinal added.
Catholics have a tradition of self-flagellation - in some cases literally - but I sense the mood of the church, and of the West generally, is hardening. Faith in our own civilisation’s virtues may once again become fashionable, given that we tend to prize most what we’re most at risk of losing.
My guess is that Geoffrey Blainey agrees:
I suppose, for a long time, I’ve expressed a fairly patriotic point of view about Australia. Not rah-rah-rah, but, on the whole, I see Australia as a success story. (On the other hand) the present generation of historians ... (was) raised in a counter-cultural environment and (is) inclined to show greater enthusiasm over the ills and perceived errors of society. But I think this is a passing phase.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/bishop_calls_off_the_western_intelligentsias_hunt_for_the_dodo/
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