Age cartoonist Michael Leunig on terrorist boss Osama bin Laden:
Might we, can we, find a place in our heart for the humanity of Osama bin Laden and those others? On Christmas Day can we consider their suffering, their children and the possibility that they too have their goodness? It is a family day, and Osama is our relative.
Age cartoonist Michael Leunig on the editors of the Iranian newspaper which ran a Holocaust-mocking cartoon competition on the orders of the country’s fascist president, and agreed to withdraw from it one of Leunig’s own:
They were courteously apologising, they had been co-operative. They cared.
But Age cartoonist Michael Leunig last weekend on US president George W. Bush: (see picture)
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/leunig_osama_is_our_relative_but_bush_is_the_devil/
THE latest Newspoll showing support for Kim Beazley has slumped to 20 percentage points below that of his predecessor, Mark Latham, immediately before the 2004 election puts enormous pressure upon the federal ALP to change leaders yet again.
ReplyDeleteIt’s certainly not without precedent. Bill Hayden was dumped in favour of Bob Hawke a month before the 1983 poll.
The only person being mentioned is Kevin “Pixie” Rudd, and while it must be remembered that he put himself forward with a marked lack of success at the last leadership ballot, some say he believes he has gained a little begrudging support since then - but not a lot.
Still, there is movement beyond that in his own mind, and that is the difference now.
Beazley’s problems seem painfully obvious. There is a critical lack of consistency, bordering on irrationality that raises serious questions about his capacity to handle the pressures of leadership.
This goes well beyond his embarrassment over an inability to recall the names of some of the ALP’s South Australian senators and stumbling over the pronunciation of broadcaster Alan Jones’ name in parliament.
Of greater concern is his determination to cut and run from Iraq on day one if there was ever a Beazley-led government, leaving only sufficient troops to guard Australian diplomats.
He has, of course, long advocated pulling Australian troops out of Iraq, claiming that they’d be better off guarding Australians “here in south-east Asia” but he renewed the call last week in the wake of a strategic leak from a US National Intelligence Estimate on aspects of the Iraq war.
It goes without saying that there is a certain amount of hypocrisy in claiming support for a party policy using precisely the same US intelligence sources which the ALP and others opposed to the US policy on Iraq have long been ridiculing for supposedly providing false intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s armoury of weapons of mass destruction. Not that it was ever a secret that he had them; even those in President Clinton’s administration such as his National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, warned: “He will use those WMD again, as he has 10 times since 1983.”
(On the matter of the missing WMD, critics might care to read Iraqi general Georges Sada’s book Saddam’s Secrets, in which the former second-in-command of Saddam’s air force says Iraq moved WMD into Syria before the war by loading biological, chemical and nuclear weapons he was trying to build into civilian 747 aircraft from which all passenger seats were removed.)
But it goes without saying that if Beazley were to pull Australian troops out of Iraq, he would, as Prime Minister John Howard said, “guarantee a victory for the terrorists in Iraq - it’s as simple as that”.
Howard’s view of the National Intelligence Assessment was backed by an unlikely ally in Beazley’s former chief-of-staff Michael Costello, a former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, who wrote in The Australian: “Bush constantly emphasises that the spread of democratic processes, pluralism and support for moderate forces will eventually work against the terrorists.
“So does the NIE, not just once but in several places.
“It says democratic reform efforts in Muslim majority nations during the next five years will drive a wedge between intransigent extremists and groups willing to use the political processes to achieve their local objectives. There is a risk that such reforms could be destabilising in the transition period, but that’s the case whenever countries move towards democracy.”
As for the oft-repeated mantra that the terrorist threat has increased since Iraq, just consider that the World Trade Centre was first bombed in 1993, a 1994 plot to bring down US passenger planes over the Pacific was foiled by Philippines police, al-Qaeda triggered a 100kg bomb in Riyadh in 1995 and bombed the barracks of US pilots there in 1996, in 1997 bin Laden declared war on the US, and in 1998 al-Qaeda simultaneously bombed US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
An al-Qaeda plot to bomb targets from Los Angeles to Jordan was thwarted in 1999 but, the following year, the group almost sank the USS Cole.
There is one other point that needs to be made.
If Beazley proposes stationing our troops in south-east Asia to combat terrorism, where does he suggest they go?
The biggest local threat is Jemaah Islamiah based in Indonesia, but he is seriously deluded if he thinks the Indonesians, or anyone else, would permit our troops to prevailupon their sovereignty.
Whether the Bomber had a brain snap or not, his errors, misjudgments and mis-statements are starting to add up. And they’re being tallied by those who control the numbers.
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/piersakerman/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/beazleys_misjudgments_are_starting_to_add_up/
As John of Lismore demonstrates, it doesn’t matter how bad the leadership of the ALP is the media led assault on the conservatives can see them to success next election.
Maybe Mr Beazley will ask the Indonesian president to intercede on Michelle Corby’s behalf. Maybe Mr Beazley will return those billions he lost as finance minister. Maybe Mr Beazley will forget about his holiday pancreatitis long enough to commiserate with Hurricane victims .. maybe.
Maybe Mr Beazley will change his mind on some issues .. he could claim that he decided to be practical or sensible.
THE bushfire season has well and truly begun and the Carr-Iemma government has been caught flat-footed. Again.
ReplyDeleteIt would seem Emergency Services Minister Tony Kelly, Police Minister Carl Scully and Attorney-General Bob Debus are not strong believers in pro-active policy-making.
Scully, a serial repeat offender, was forced last week to reinstate police arson squad Strike Force Tronto.
It had been quietly disbanded after Rural Fire Service Commissioner Phil Koperberg admitted that arsonists were probably to blame for some of the more than 50 bushfires that hit NSW during the unseasonably hot weather the weekend before last.
Why the strike force was demobilised has not been satisfactorily explained and given the lack of transparency that is a feature of this Government’s policy decisions, probably never will be.
Yet arson has been a major factor in many of the most serious blazes experienced in the state over the past 30 years.
With the hottest, driest August on record and gale force winds and unprecedented temperatures over that last September weekend, it is little wonder that most experts are predicting a bushfire seasonto rival the 1993-94 and 2001-02 conflagrations.
Wet and windy weather severely cut opportunities to conduct hazard reduction burns during the cooler months and the National Parks and Wildlife Service lacks the manpower (and some believe the will) to run burns through its vast tracts of land.
Debus, as Environment Minister, must take responsibility for this, just as he must, in his role as Attorney-General,accept responsibility for the relatively lenient penalties that apply to criminals who deliberately set bushfires.
According to the Bureau of Criminal Statistics, the number of people prosecuted under new bushfire laws in 2003 was seven, in 2004 there were five and in 2005 just four.
In 2003, three of the offenders were jailed for terms of eight months, four years and three months, and five years.
One was given a 15-month suspended sentence, two received community service orders of 500 hours and 150 hours and the other was given an 18-month bond.
In 2004, one offender was jailed for nine months, two received periodic detention of four months and 12 months, another was placed on a two-year bond and the other was given a community service order of 500 hours.
Last year, two were jailed for 12 months, one was placed on a three-year bond and the other was given a fine.
The reality is, however, that deliberately lighting a fire in the Australian bush is akin to committing an act of terrorism in a city. No one can predict the consequences of that act.
Though the training in the NSW RFS is as rigourous as any for volunteers, the nature of fire is such that thousands of factors can come into play and any strategy can be undone ina second.
Proof of this was unfortunately demonstrated at Ebenezer the weekend before last when a fire lit on a farm under the supervision of the local rural fire brigade spread to Cattai and Maroota South near the Hawkesbury.
The firefighters failed to see that the fire they had started to clear a pile of poplar logs was still smouldering deep beneath the surface when they left, though they had apparently taken all precautions to ensure it was completely out.
The extraordinary winds managed to find an ember or two and fan them into life, creating the monster fire that eventually accounted for the destruction of three houses.
This should be a cautionary tale for all who live in or visit rural areas. Fire is not always obvious and while that campfire may appear to be extinguished to the best trained eye, it is always worth making absolutely certain that it is dead and not just dormant.
Fires can travel underground along root systems which act like slow-burning fuses.
The majority of NSW is now in a fire danger period during which penalties for unauthorised fires range from 12 months imprisonment to fines of up to $5500.
During a total fire ban, the same penalties apply but penalties for a fire that escapes and damages or destroys life, property or the environment can attract much greater fines and jail terms with maximums at $100,000 and/or 14 years.
These penalties still seem paltry when the risk of danger is so well known. Arson is a considered act, no matter what the mental state of the firebug at the time. It is an act of terror and should be dealt with justas severely.
Most of us don’t stand in the RFS front line, putting our lives at risk. For those who do, it is doubly galling to know that the fire they are fighting was lit deliberately for no good reason and that the idiot responsible will get a slap over the wrist.
ADMISSION: I am a member of an active RFS brigade and am dreading the long nights of anxiety the summer inevitably brings.
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/piersakerman/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/put_heat_on_rural_terrorists
The streets are a mean place. While overall crime rates have fallen in recent years, the level of assaults and sexual assaults has been steadily rising. In 2003 there were 158,629 recorded assaults in Australia, up from 114,156 in 1996. Recorded sexual assaults rose from 14,542 in 1996 to 18,237 in 2003. According to the Australian Institute of Criminology, assaults consistently make up the vast majority of recorded violent crimes.
ReplyDeleteNow an investigation by the Herald Sun in Melbourne has highlighted how dangerous city streets have become after dark, with bashings, drug dealing and overdoses common. Crime blackspots are the cities nightclub districts.
While in Sydney, a spate of violent attacks has left one dead and another in a critical condition in hospital. War veteran Robert Narramore, 83, was killed after allegedly being pushed in front of a car on Saturday in what appeared to be a random attack. It followed the bashing of Irish tourist John Counihan, who was left in a critical condition in a medically-induced coma in hospital after being viciously assaulted by four people outside a hotel in Bondi.
Says Melbourne paramedic Alan Eade: “A lot of the people we take to hospital who have had the living hell beaten out of them were doing nothing other than waiting at a tram or bus stop minding their own business, and they’ve been set upon by someone, or a group of people, who might be intoxicated.”
Have you been a victim of violent crime? We’d like to hear your experiences.
http://blogs.news.com.au/news/crime/index.php/news/comments/mean_streets/
For “Mary”, domestic violence was something that happened to other people. Until it happened to her. She suddenly found the man she thought she knew physically assaulting her. Following recent debates on Gotcha on domestic violence – and questions raised about why women don’t immediately leave abusive relationships - “Mary” agreed to tell her story in the hope it would help people understand the problem from the victim’s perspective. Here is her story:
ReplyDelete"To say I was stunned the first time he hit me was an understatement. I was left angry, hurt and confused. There had been another couple in our house and HE had hit HER and I turned on my partner demanding why he wasn’t man enough to step in. He hit me.
“This was out of my experience. I felt guilty that I’d harassed him and yet distressed he had hit me. The fact that another couple were there and had gone through the same incident confused me as to the culture of the moment. That might sound odd but I hadn’t been raised with any particular sense of what one should expect from community and I honestly didn’t know whether I deserved what had happened or not.
“I had had an emotionally, psychologically and sexually abusive childhood and although I am very well educated and can talk about the issues intellectually, it has taken me more than half a lifetime to resolve the way I was set up in childhood to expect and accept abuse.
“For me it had nothing to do with how I dressed or where I hung out, but who I chose to be with and why. I found wounded souls just as I was and so, when something really significant happened in the relationship that hurt me, I tended to be forgiving both because I knew what it was to be hurt and because being hurt was a learned expectation.
“The first time I was hit he reacted some hours later with great apology and distress. He clung to me and I felt assured by his heartfelt response to my distress. I felt so convinced by the level it wouldn’t happen again but it did. The scenario played out almost exactly the same – groundhogs day over and over.
“This abuse went one for about three years before I brought an end to it. I’ve given a reason why I allowed the situation to commence and why I forgave the first few times but what about afterwards. What kept me there?
“There were pragmatic reasons at times. During one period we lived in a small village and I had no level of personal money of my own. On top of that my parents had divorced and neither wanted to know my situation. I was certainly never offered the opportunity to go home despite the fact my mother knew about the abuse.
“Looking back I also felt emotionally trapped and stifled. After a while I adopted a type of prisoner response; head down, not speaking often and so on. When he was angry nothing would have stopped him from hitting me; I could not have agreed, disagreed, tried to placate, stay silent, nothing, nothing, would have prevented the punch when it came.
“The reader may wonder how anyone can be so lucid about the circumstance and stay, but remember, I’m talking in hindsight and at the time you just are in the moment; you’re surviving and not thinking too much beyond the boundaries of what is required to exist in the situation.
“But perhaps worst of all everything that is happening is like the processes of your childhood enlarged several times over. You were constantly told as a kid that you were worthless and nothing you did was ok. Here you are as an adult feeling worthless and that nothing you do will be ok.
“Something has to happen to either make the situation so bad that the person reaches a numbness or alternatively extreme fear beyond what is usual, that allows them to seek external help or to leave.
“Childhood abuse carries a lot of shame with it and marital abuse adds and reinforces that shame. The person usually loathes themselves deep down and finds it hard to communicate with others in a safe and reasoned manner. A lot of work has to be done by the person who has been abused just as the abuser may need to heal their own childhood.
“There are certain suggestions I would make about screening people in terms of their potential for being abusive (and I mean this at any or all levels).
“I would be wary of people who:
1. Display rage moments and/or moments of resorting to childish backstabs or comments intended to denigrate you.
2. Act to prevent equality in the relationship. If you don’t feel able to face the person without fear and without knowing you are equal to them this should concern you.
3. Appear to have unresolved issues with the past. Many people do of course but some can talk about their difficult backgrounds with a level of dispassion. People with baggage to be wary of show their evident pain or anger each time they mention the issue (which they often will).
4. Make everything about them.
5. Don’t make you feel well regarded.
http://blogs.news.com.au/news/crime/index.php/news/comments/falling_victim_to_domestic_violence
Thank you Mary. You are erudite, putting forward your feelings well. You don’t mention as to wether you’ve been counselled, and I haven’t, but I’ve found talking about issues helpful. Your list is insightful and highlights realities for me.
I’m told that as people get older, they tend to overcome their childhood issues. Even severely abused people. I hope you have found someone who treats you respectfully, and lovingly. You deserve that.
Police working rotating shifts and logging large amounts of overtime could be so tired they are a public safety hazard. That’s the warning from a new US study into the impact of shift work and long hours on police officers. The study says that “tired and cranky” police pose a special problem for the community compared to other shift workers because of the scope of their duties and the powers they have.
ReplyDelete“Officers decide when and how to drive emergency vehicles, confront disturbed and violent individuals, make arrests and use deadly force - and they most often do so without any direct supervision,” says the study published in an international medical journal. “Many of their most difficult and complex decisions are made in fluid, ambiguous, and emotionally charged situations where lives, property, and liberty can be lost in a split second.”
The study looked at previous surveys and research in a number of US police forces. It found that in one force 41 per cent of officers were suffering sleep disorders bad enough to warrant medical treatment. Another survey found stress from police work added to the already disrupted sleep patterns.
“Thus, it appears that long work hours and insufficient good quality sleep often are likely to impair officers’ performance even though public safety and justice itself depend on the soundness of their decisions and the skill with which they operate the tools of their job,” the study in the latest American Journal of Industrial Medicine said.
“Tired cops are a public safety hazard, and a substantial portion of the fatigue they experience is avoidable.”
The warning comes as a report in the Medical Journal of Australia says the impact of fatigue on a shift worker’s performance is similar to having a blood alcohol concentration of 0.05.
Professor Dr Doug McEvoy from the Adelaide Institute of Sleep Health recommended shift workers take 10-15 minute “power naps” on the job to overcome the risks of fatigue.
http://blogs.news.com.au/news/crime/index.php/news/comments/tired_cops_a_safety_risk
I’m a sleep apnea sufferer. I went some thirty years without proper sleep, waking some 100 times an hour .. according to two sleep studies.
I think diminished responsibility overstated. I think it true that there is increased risk, and I think risk management needs to be applied, but I don’t think that police want to have their work time spread across more of a week.
The effects of long term sleeplessness are awful. However, any parent knows that sleeplessness is an occasional part of life
Joanne Lees says she wrote her tell all book about her ordeal in Australia’s outback for her dead boyfriend Peter Falconio and to set the record straight after “lurid” mistruths published in the media. What she doesn’t mention is the money. She’s already picked up a reported $630,000 for the book No Turning Back before a single copy has been sold. And it’s possible she might get a percentage of the estimated $300,000 in rights paid to the publisher for extracts published in British and Australian newspapers. There’s also the likelihood of future movie rights.
ReplyDeleteAnd it’s not the first time she’s cashed in on her story.
On March 2002 Lees was paid about $120,000 to speak to high profile television reporter Martin Bashir. That was the infamous interview in which Bashir asked her outright: “Did you kill Peter Falconio?” She seems to have forgotten this deal when she says in the book that she rejected substantial offers from UK media to tell her story.
For some reason Joanne Lees has never enjoyed great sympathy from the public, both here and in the UK, perhaps because of the lack of emotion she showed in public after the 2001 abduction and murder. Even after the conviction last year of Bradley James Murdoch for Falconio’s murder, conspiracy theories abound about what might have really happened.
Lees blames much of her image problems on the media, which she says in the book treated her unfairly and encouraged rumours and speculation about her role in Falconio’s disappearance “all but accused me of murder”.
But the financial windfall from telling her story might add to her problems with the public.
“…she would need to be careful,” says Greg Philo, media research director from Glasgow University. “She may have an agent, which would help if she’s trying to make a sizeable amount of money, but. It could backfire if she asks someone for too much - she could end up just looking like a greedy person.”
http://blogs.news.com.au/news/crime/index.php/news/comments/lees_cashes_in
There is nothing wrong with profit. Or with Ms Lees. Her long term boyfriend was murdered by a creep, and she was poorly served by the media.
What is wrong with her, that she is on the nose? Do some still fell she is guilty or complicit? Does she have a strange religion? Does she vote conservative?
Her life will never be normal again.
One of Australia’s longest-running serial murder investigations, the Claremont killings in Perth, has taken a new twist with the emergence of a suspect in Britain. The 35-year-old British man, who has been charged with the brutal murder of an 18-year-old girl, lived in WA at the time of the three unsolved Claremont murders. And there are intriguing similarities between the Perth murders and the killing in Britain. Perth police have asked for DNA records of the British suspect and are reportedly preparing to fly to London to question him. But if he does turn out to be the elusive Claremont serial killer, it will raise serious questions about how he was able to slip through the net, given he had been arrested for a sex offence in Perth about six years ago and deported.
ReplyDeleteMark Dixie, a pub chef, was arrested in June and charged with the murder of 18-year-old model Sally Anne Bowman in the south London suburb of Croydon in 2005. He had been caught after providing a DNA sample to police following a pub punch-up earlier this year. The DNA sample tied him to the Bowman murder and an incident in south London in 2001, when he allegedly masturbated in front of a woman making a call from a public phone box.
The possible link between Dixie and the Claremont murders was revealed by a south London newspaper last week.
Sally Anne Bowman fits the profile of the three young women killed in Perth. All were attractive young blondes. And all were killed on their way home after being out at nightspots with friends.
Sally Anne was knifed to death, then sexually assaulted not far from her home. Bite marks were found on her body. Only two of the bodies of the Claremont murderer have been found. Police have always refused to reveal details of the cause of death or the injuries they suffered. Sarah Spiers, 18, disappeared in January 1996 and her body has never been found. Jane Rimmer, 23, was murdered in August 1996 and Ciara Glennon, 27, was killed in March 1997. Perth police have also always refused to say whether DNA of their killer was recovered from the bodies, although this seems likely because DNA testing has since been used to eliminate a number of suspects. It would also explain why Dixie’s DNA samples are being sent to Perth for testing.
According to the Perth Sunday Times, Dixie used the alias Shane Turner while working as a chef in Perth and other areas of WA in the 1990s. He became an illegal immigrant when he overstayed his visa and was eventually caught when he exposed himself to a woman in a telephone box about six years ago – the same type of crime he allegedly committed in London in 2001. He was deported back to the UK about six years ago.
WA police will only say that their contact with London police over Dixie was “standard practice of looking at perpetrators of major crimes and their possible links to offences that occurred in WA during their time here”. London police are believed to have already interviewed former friends of Dixie’s in WA.
If Dixie proves to be the Claremont serial killer, it will solve one of the intriguing aspects of the case – why the string of abductions and murders suddenly stopped. Most serial killers keep offending until they are caught.
Perth police had all but given up on ever catching the Claremont killer. In November 2004 a special panel comprising two Australian, two British and one US criminal experts was assembled to review all the evidence gathered to date in the investigation. In September last year the Macro taskforce which had been working on the killings was scaled back and the investigation handed to a new cold case unit.
http://blogs.news.com.au/news/crime/index.php/news/comments/uk_link_in_wa_serial_murders
I think this illustrates that cooperation between law enforcement of different nations .. and press, works. Still, I wonder how many more crimes might be solved through sharing databases of criminal DNA.
Like the old saying goes, never bet on anything that talks. Gotcha thought a fitting way to celebrate one of Australia’s biggest weekends in sport was to look at some of he great sporting fixes. Where there’s sport there’s always people willing to bet on it. And where there’s people willing to bet, there’s always others willing to fix the results to make a profit. Whether it’s horse racing, soccer, cricket or baseball, the fix has been in. Here’s a list of just some, although we’d like to hear your additions.
ReplyDelete• Australia’s most famous racing scam was the 1984 Fine Cotton ring-in. It involved substituting a horse called Bold Personality for the under-performing Fine Cotton at a race at Eagle Farm in Brisbane. The substitution was clumsy at best – Bold Personality was a bay and Fine Cotton brown with different markings. On race day a huge betting plunge saw the ring-in backed from outside odds of 33/1 to 7/2. Bold Personality won the race, but the heavy betting plunge alerted stewards, who uncovered the substitution. It’s estimated that if the ring-in had worked, those behind it would have netted $1.5 million.
• In 2000 South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje rocked the cricketing world by admitting that hae had taken US$ 140,000 from UK-based bookies to undermine the way his team played. After a lifetime ban, Cronje took many secrets to the grave with him about the extent of the alleged match fixing when he died in a 2002 plane crash. Needless to say, conspiracy theories followed the crash, with speculation that powerful people wanted Cronje silenced.
• In 1999 a plot was uncovered to disable lighting at the home ground of the Charlton football club in the UK during a premiership match with Liverpool. The plot was traced back to Malaysia, where large scale betting on UK soccer matches was common. It was estimated that the plot, if successful, would have netted Asian betting rings more than A$70 million. Unlike in the UK, where an abandoned match invalidated all bets, the Asian bookies normally paid out on the score at the time the game stopped. There were suspicions that a number of other UK matches dating back two years had been artificially stopped with pre-arranged lighting failures.
• The famous fixing of the 1919 baseball World Series in the US involved eight players from the favoured team, the Chicago White Sox , accepting bribes to allow the opposition team the Cincinnati Reds to win. The players were promised US$100,000 by professional gamblers. Rumours were rife about what had happened and the following year the players were charged, but eventually acquitted.
• In 1998 Australian cricket was rocked by revelations that Shane Warne and Mark Waugh had accepted cash from an Indian bookmaker known only as John for “pitch and weather information’’ during a tour of Sri Lanka in 1994. The pair admitted to accepting about $5000 each and were secretly fined by the Australian Cricket Board. The incident was eventually revealed by the media. Warne and Waugh denied the payments had in any way influenced the way they played.
• Eight players in the Italian Football Federation were found guilty of match-fixing in 2000 after Atalanta scored a 1-1 draw with Pistoiese in an Italian Cup first round match. Atalanta scored at the end of the first half and Pistoiese equalised three minutes from full time. There was suspiciously heavy betting on the result and many of the bets were for a 1-0 halftime score and a fulltime score of 1-1.
• And here’s what happens when you foul up a sporting sure thing for powerful people who don’t like to lose. In the 1994 FIFA World Cup Colombia suffered a shock 2-1 defeat from the USA after Colombian defender Andres Escobar scored an own goal. The Colombian Medellin drug cartel was rumoured to have bet heavily on Colombia to win. Ten days after returning to Medellin, Escobar was gunned down as he left a bar in what was widely believed to be a revenge “hit” by the drug cartel. According to Escobar’s girlfriend, the killer shouted “¡Gooooooooooooool!” (mimicking south American sporting commentators for their calls after a goal is scored) for each of the 12 bullets fired.
http://blogs.news.com.au/news/crime/index.php/news/comments/putting_in_the_fix
When it comes to match fixing, it is very hard to prove, and probably not as common as people imagine.
That 1919 White Sox scandal occurred because people lost money backing the favorites .. that can happen in baseball, where the best team in both the US conferences will lose 40% of its matches in any year.
Because betting involves money for non players, there is a significant, but unkown, group willing to discredit legitimate results. For example, when Marsh and Lillee had a flutter under Kim Hughes’ Captaincy in ‘81 in England. Botham’s brilliance (and Peter Willey) and Hughes’ mismanagement won England the Ashes .. but the gamblers need to point at someone.
Mark Waugh’s unvetted weather reporting got him in trouble.
Which isn’t to say matches aren’t fixed. St George of the mid 80’s could never win a game while Kevin Roberts refereed. However, it wasn’t that Roberts was neglectful or maliscious .. in fact he was the best referee of his day. However, Roberts did not ‘see’ fairly in St George matches and administrators found it convenient at the time.
Albert Trott, one of Australia’s greatest cricketers relied on proceeds from gamblers and ended his days as a cricketing parody .. slogging when once he commanded.
One felt that the 60’s and 70’s Tennis pros of Australia, like Newcombe, Laver, Hoad and the others backed themselves.
Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi copped plenty when he dared to call the September 11 conspiracy theorists “clinically insane”
ReplyDelete(N)othing could have prepared me for the deluge of f...-you mail that I actually got. Apparently every third person in the United States thinks George Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks.
But Taibbi fires right back at these madmen (who are with us, too, encouraged by wild-eyes like Robert Fisk), and wonders how the CIA-what-done-it conspiracy is supposed to have worked:
Just imagine how this planning session between Bush, Rummy and Cheney must have gone:
BUSH: So, what’s the plan again?
CHENEY: Well, we need to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. So what we’ve decided to do is crash a whole bunch of remote-controlled planes into Wall Street and the Pentagon, say they’re real hijacked commercial planes, and blame it on the towelheads; then we’ll just blow up the buildings ourselves to make sure they actually fall down.
RUMSFELD: Right! And we’ll make sure that some of the hijackers are agents of Saddam Hussein! That way we’ll have no problem getting the public to buy the invasion.
CHENEY: No, ####, we won’t.
RUMSFELD: We won’t?
CHENEY: No, that’s too obvious. We’ll make the hijackers Al Qaeda and then just imply a connection to Iraq.
RUMSFELD: But if we’re just making up the whole thing, why not just put Saddam’s fingerprints on the attack?
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/a_rolling_stone_gathers_more_nuts/
Tom Calma, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, is complaining about a new Howard Government bill to stop killers, wife beaters and child abusers from using the excuse of tribal law to avoid proper punishment.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt Calma will have the support of Noble Savage devotees - and not a few murderers - but he should know that the first paragraph of this excerpt from his silly and irresponsible argument is mocked by the last:
The problem is that this bill does not address family violence in the bill indigenous communities in any meaningful way. Rather, it will undermine attempts to solve the problem and perpetuate harmful stereotypes about Aboriginal customary law.
If we are serious about preventing family violence in indigenous communities we need to focus on the root causes of the abuse. We need practical strategies to target the poverty, substance abuse and low levels of education and employment, which continue to destroy indigenous men, women and children’s lives.
Customary law does not permit family violence.
If customary law does not permit such violence, then what’s the harm in removing it as a excuse for bashing women and kids? Calma gives the unfortunate and no doubt mistaken impression that he is more worried about the damage to the image of the sweet tribal laws than he is about the damage such laws are causing to women and children.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/never_mind_the_children_admire_the_laws/
Yet another parent is stumped by her child’s homework:
ReplyDeleteShe is in a years 3-4 class with children ranging from eight to 10. Her entire assessment is based on one piece of work, a modest project on Greek mythology.
It includes a “critical question: is Greek mythology still relevant today?” and a “rich task: create a poster that shows the roles that Greek gods, heroes and creatures would be seen doing today”.
The work is assessed with a rubric that, among other things, is said to examine my child’s ability to “analyse history ... and relate this to present possibilities” and “write texts ... which show awareness of different audiences and purposes”. The rubric is defined as a scoring guide, but my dictionary does not provide this definition.
Apparently this form of assessment “compliments” the teaching strategies the school uses and encourages the students to “explore a topic deeper”. It also leads a parent to despair. I know that I am supposed to work out that Greek mythology is only a “vehicle” for assessing areas of competence, but within minutes of receiving this assessment (and choosing to ignore the numerous inconsistencies therein) I concluded that it was nonsense. There is no mention of maths, reading and spelling, which are my main concerns…
Many children in my eldest child’s Year 6 class cannot hold a pencil correctly, do not start sentences with capital letters or use full stops and do not read at their chronological age. When I discussed this with the teacher I was told: “Hardly any of them are reading at their correct reading age: we may have to do something about the tests.”
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/tessting_tessting/
Swedish free-market guru Johan Norberg wonders at the stupidity of anti-capitalists:
ReplyDeleteIn the past 100 years, we have created more wealth than in the 100,000 years before that and not because we work more. To the contrary: in the past century, work hours have been halved in the Western world. It is because new ideas have made it possible for us to work smarter and find easier ways to satisfy our needs and demands…
That the anti-capitalists’ particular concerns have been proven wrong again and again doesn’t help for long because soon they find a new excuse to condemn free markets. The latest variety is Marx on his head: he said that capitalism is bad because it creates poverty and slavery. Today, critics say that capitalism creates wealth and freedom, but this is bad for wellbeing because we become stressed, frustrated by the constant demand to choose, working too hard and consuming too much to keep up with the Joneses.
Don’t expect the critics of capitalism to change their minds any time soon. As long as they don’t believe in the creative ability of mankind or that the market is a plus-sum game, they will continue to think that someone, somewhere, is victimised whenever and wherever we see growth and innovation.
Hmm. That reminds me of one such blind man, David Suzuki. In fact, I shall write about him tomorrow.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_fear_of_wages/
I apologise. It seems I’ve been wrong - we really are racist, after all, but in the sweetest possible way:
ReplyDeleteMURDERERS in the Northern Territory will find it harder to plead manslaughter under reforms designed to eliminate “reverse racism” from the justice system.
As foreshadowed by The Australian last month, Attorney-General Syd Stirling yesterday announced changes to the Criminal Code following concerns about the high rate of convictions in the Territory for lesser charges instead of murder.
Mr Stirling said the reforms, to be introduced in parliament this month, would remove drunkenness and any reference to cultural or ethnic backgrounds as partial defences to murder.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/some_races_are_just_nicer_killers/
Much is being made of this latest Lowy Institute survey:
ReplyDeleteAN overwhelming eight out of 10 Australians believe the Iraq war has not reduced the threat of global terrorism.
Here the commentators cheer: Smart public!
Less is being made of these other findings of the same survey:
When asked to name the other country’s leader, only a quarter of Indonesians and one-fifth of Australians could do so correctly.
And:
MARK COLVIN: On a broader level, what does this poll show you about how realistic Australians are about foreign affairs? I was struck, for instance, by the fact that a majority don’t know who Kofi Annan is, the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
ALAN GYNGELL: There are certainly high levels of ignorance, but I think you’d find that in almost any country.
Er, no offence, but does the public actually know enough to reliably judge what’s happening in Iraq?
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/doesnt_kofi_come_from_brazil/
Former politician Phil Cleary - now a Channel Nine commentator and communications official for the Electrical Trades Union - says his Cleary clan would be with the terrorists behind the slaughter in Iraq:
ReplyDeleteInvasions always breed fanatical resistance. If the Cleary girls or their cousin Donncadh OhAnnagain were living in Baghdad, I know which side they’d be on.
They’d wear the label of insurgency and be proud of it.
I think Phil, the IRA admirer, would be no different. Some people can’t see the corpses for the cause. But why be so shameless in supporting fascists whose main activity is kiling civilians?
I guess I should ask that of John Pilger and Arundhati Roy, too.
UPDATE. Gerard Henderson adds:
In a recent essay titled The Left and the Jihad, Professor Fred Halliday (who is no barracker for Bush or Blair) has expressed concern that “many groups of the left” appear to see radical Islamism as “exemplifying a new form of international anti-imperialism” which they welcome. Halliday points out that since the formation of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, jihadists have targeted the left. This suggests that the Western left’s self-hatred is still with us.
We’ll kill off our our own civilisation before the terrorists do, at this rate.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/any_enemy_of_the_english_is_a_friend_of_phils/
Let’s see if a Norwegian television station is allowed today to discuss - and show - the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed wihout Islamist extremists whipping up deadly riots as they did when the same cartoons were printed last year.
ReplyDeleteMind you, the Norwegian Government is bracing itself for trouble:
The Norwegian foreign ministry said the program did feature the cartoons and said it had alerted its embassies in some Muslim countries about the broadcast.
“There’s nothing dramatic in this. We have sent a message” to our embassies in countries most affected by the cartoons crisis, said foreign ministry spokeswoman Anne Lene Dale Sandsten, who had seen the documentary.
Nothing dramatic? How often must a government alert its embassies that the right to free speech is being exercised back home?
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/lets_try_again_with_those_cartoons/
An astonished Sydney Morning Herald reader writes:
ReplyDeleteAbout four weeks ago at our school, Mount Annan Primary, the crossing guard was sick for a week. The first day, there was some confusion. The second day, teachers assisted children and parents at the crossing. The crossing guard is employed and trained by the Roads and Traffic Authority but it could not supply a replacement.
I was surprised on Friday of that week to see a police car out the front of the school. Because of the litigation-fearing bureaucracy that runs our governments, the police were there to warn the teachers they would be fined if they persisted in helping with the road crossing, because they are not trained crossing guards.
The police stayed there until the children went into school, to make sure no teachers assisted at the crossing but didn’t get out of the car to assist the children. I guess the police weren’t trained as crossing guards, either.
It seems the value of a child’s life is not equal to the risk of litigation.
Steven Cull
Mount Annan
Sadly, the anecdote is completely unsurprising in these legalistic times in which even the school bake-a-cake fundraiser has almost been regulated into extinction.
Can someone explain to me why on earth the Sydney Morning Herald publishes this, and whether we should fear for its author, Jack Marx?
ReplyDeletehttp://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/is_there_an_editor_in_the_house/
My father took me to see “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” when I was 27 and my kid sister 12. It was the only movie of appropriate rating for her. It wasn’t appropriate.
Some years later, I saw “Something About Mary.” The text of that film was that romance was ok for beautiful people.
My colleagues at a former work place deemed me Fafugly (fat and f.. ugly). They were correct. I like good comedy, but such material as Marx, or the above, aint funny.
WhenThe Age runs a columnist who concludes of the Bush Administration that “they want the country they run to transform itself into a facsimile of its evil adversaries” you know that the truth wasn’t a factor in any decision making by anyone.
ReplyDeleteUPDATE. A new blog on The Age and its sins against good sense has been launched: http://www.agewatch.blogspot.com . I do recommend the posting for Saturday, September 23.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/i_doubt_even_the_age_seriously_believes_what_it_prints/
Four Corners breathlessly reports that workers for a timber-using company infiltrated a green group, to help discredit these “unkempt” people:
ReplyDeleteMULTINATIONAL packaging company Amcor stacked the Labor Party, infiltrated environment groups, sent people pretending to be greenies to forest protests and paid bribes overseas to secure its supply of native hardwood in the 1990s.
Company documents obtained by the ABC’s Four Corners show that, for more than a decade from 1989 to 2001, the company funded its staff, through the so-called “A-team”, to spy on and sabotage its opponents.
But isn’t it more interesting and more important that green worshippers have “infiltrated” Four Corners, and used it to discredit the “voracious” and “self-serving” forest industry?
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/whos_infiltrating_who/
I would have thought it normal practise that the Greens have spokespeople that don’t represent their members concerns. Ditto Labor and ABC. Or do the liberal left argue, as conservatives have said, that there are no regional differences to leftwing thought?
Remember, it isn’t who you know, it’s whom you know.
Bracks hates bans on cloning human cells:
ReplyDeleteAUSTRALIA will lose billions of dollars in income and lag behind the world scientific community if the ban on therapeutic cloning is not lifted, Victorian Premier Steve Bracks has warned.
But his own ban on cloning plants - that prevents GM food crops from being planted - would have cost us far more for far less reason.
But I guess that cloning plants is a greater sin against the nature gods than cloning wicked humans.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/send_in_the_clones/
Certain pain for highly uncertain gain:
ReplyDeleteThe cost of curbing the soaring emissions of harmful gases that are blamed for causing global warming has been estimated at $1 trillion by a major study of the cost of climate change.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/earth_worshipping_isnt_cheap/
This new video might be old news to you, showing as it does the ringleader of the September 11 attackers, Mohammed Atta, reading his “martyrdom” will inside the headquarters of al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
ReplyDeleteBut its still video that needs to be broadcast widely - because many Islamists and their conspiracy-minded apologists in the West have long claimed that the September 11 attacks were probably not by al-Qaeda at all.
They’ve run the bizarre argument instead that it was all the work of the CIA or Mossad, and if we’ve not nicer to Muslims there will be, er, more attacks like it. Yes, I know that makes no sense, but that’s the kind of irrational enemy we’re dealing with here.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_giggling_killers/
Terrorism - and our exaggerated fear - is killing a wonderful island:
ReplyDeleteAUSTRALIA has been accused of discriminating against Bali with an “ongoing frenzy” of travel warnings that have slashed Australian tourism to the island by 25 per cent.
On the anniversary of the Jimbaran Bay and Kuta restaurant bombings, the Bali Tourism Board has complained to the Australian Government, asking it to tone down warnings by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade against travel to Indonesia because of potential terrorist attacks.
Nor do all these commemorations in Bali of the terror attacks help. It means the only time Bali is in the news is when it’s linked to terrorism.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/bali_needs_us/
Among some good news from Iraq:
ReplyDeleteAl-Qaeda in Iraq has recruiting problems. Allah be praised!
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/hearts_and_minds_battle_lost_in_iraq_by_al_qaeda/
AFP reports:
ReplyDeleteFrench anti-terrorism authorities Friday opened an inquiry into death threats against a philosophy teacher who has been forced into hiding over a newspaper column attacking Islam, legal officials said.
Robert Redeker, 52, is receiving round-the-clock police protection and changing addresses every two days, after publishing an article describing the Koran as a “book of extraordinary violence” and Islam as “a religion which… exalts violence and hate”.
He told i-TV television he had received several e-mail threats targeting himself and his wife and three children, and that his photograph and address were available on several Islamist Internet sites.
“There is a very clear map of how to get to my home, with the words: ‘This pig must have his head cut off’,” he said.
Now he knows how the Pope feels.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/philosopher_who_called_islam_violent_is_threatened_with_death/
Note first that Rebecca Hossack was educated in top Melbourne private schools and runs a swish London art gallery. Note also that she was appointed cultural attache to our High Commission in London - and was even elected a local counciller for the Conservative Party:
ReplyDeleteRebecca Hossack has two Aboriginal burial poles in her basement: one for herself and one for her husband. When she dies, Hossack says, her bones will be bleached on the roof of her London house, placed in her burial pole and sent back to Australia. The pole will be buried near Gembrook where her parents have a farm.
Wonder who lives in her house while the bones are drying on the roof? Do the neighbours’ houses look over the cheery site of a modern sophisticate’s final homage to savagery?
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/in_love_with_the_noble_savage_1/
Chloe Hooper joins Australians on an enlightenment tour to the Dalai Lama:
ReplyDeleteIn front of me was a woman from Byron Bay who wanted to have a private audience with the Dalai Lama because she felt she had a lot to teach him. His language, she said, was too judgemental; he was always instructing people, “You should do this, you should do that.” By chance the bus stopped briefly on the roadside where marijuana grew wild and she collected a few leaves as bookmarks. Her teenage son sat next to me, drawing busty androids. When his mother put her seat back and squashed his legs he kicked it repeatedly, but she ignored him. He then grabbed her hair and pulled while pouring bottled water over her head…
Many of the people on the bus sponsored monks with whom they had formed close attachments. They had brought over bags of presents for them. Soon novice-monks of seven or eight were wandering around holding giant jars of lollies. They were wearing sunglasses and head-phones and digital watches, and playing GameBoys…
Everyone on the tour now seemed to be dressed in Indian clothes: sparkling sequined shoes, embroidered vests and scarves, ballooning silk pants. Buddha may have taught that craving worldly things caused suffering, but he didn’t have a pocketful of hard currency. It is said that even in the earliest days pilgrims were overcome by greed and rivalry. In the Middle Ages some became embroiled in wars, others turned to banditry. Now fights broke out among the Australians about who got to sit where in the temple, who got to stay in which hotel, and who then got the upstairs room. As the holy starts to dim, the profane takes centre stage. One pilgrim admitted a downside to her ongoing spiritual quest: due to her extended time in ashrams she’d had diarrhoea for the past three years.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/in_love_with_the_noble_savage_2/
Smells like blackmail to me, if true:
ReplyDeleteTHOUSANDS of public pay phones around schools, universities and hospitals will be axed by Telstra in the lead-up to next year’s federal election, under secret plans designed to take on the Howard Government.
If the Telstra bosses had good arguments for whatever handout they now want, why would the need to rely on something as crude as this?
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/a_thug_on_the_phone/
It’s a mistake to rely on the sanity of strangers. Here, for instance, are some of the excuses given by people in New South Wales for dodging jury duty:
ReplyDelete“I’m a clairvoyant and therefore I would know whether a person was guilty or innocent. I would be concerned that I may not be able to convince my fellow jurors.”
“I wish to be excused because I do not want to endure the antics of the legal profession.”
“Only retired people should serve on juries.”
“Thousands of people are unemployed or on disability pensions. Make them do it for God’s sake - they don’t do anything else.”
Doctor on behalf of patient: “This person should not do jury duty as he has a mind like a computer. Sometimes it is overloaded and crashes then he needs to reboot, sometimes causing his thoughts to be scrambled.”
“I can’t leave home due to the impending holocaust.”
“I am hearing voices that tell me I shouldn’t attend."
Of course, not everyone is like that. Some people would instead have heard voice insisting they did attend.
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/poor_excuse_for_a_juror/