Headlines Thursday 1st May

Truth is a sharp spear
Piers Akerman
AUSTRALIAN reporter Paul Raffaele, wounded in a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan on Tuesday, is a journalist’s journalist. A fighter for truth.
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Premier held to ransom by ALP hardmen
Premier of NSW is being hammered by heavyweights from his own party with no mandate at all, according to Alan Jones.
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Five killed in Sydney Harbour boat collision
Five people are dead after two private boats collided on Sydney Harbour early this morning.
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Police ransack journalist's office over article criticising government
A Perth journalist has labeled a police raid on his office, sparked by an article criticising the Perth Labor government, an astounding attack on free speech.
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No new powers for Haneef inquiry
Lawyers for Mohamed Haneef have failed in a bid for a judicial inquiry into the detention of the Indian doctor on terrorism charges to seek the powers of a royal commission.
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Police stream into Redfern in huge coordinated raid
Over 100 police officers have stormed seven houses on Redfern's Eveleigh St, armed with sledgehammers and chainsaws, in a huge coordinated operation.
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Court hears Corby took and sold drugs
A Sydney court has heard the sister of convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby took and sold drugs.
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Aussie soldier shot in Afghanistan
Another Australian soldier has been wounded in Afghanistan, just days after a commando was killed in a Taliban strike.
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If none, then this tax is just fiddling
Andrew Bolt
Thinking further on the Rudd Government’s strange decision to fight binge drinking by singling out alcopops for a huge tax increase… So how many alcopops did Kevin Rudd have when he wrote himself off at Scores?
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Paying respect to ALL owners of this land
Andrew Bolt
How sweet - little lessons on how to divide people by race:

VICTORIAN schools are being encouraged to begin assemblies with Welcome to Country ceremonies acknowledging traditional Aboriginal owners of the land.

Wasn’t the great gift of humanism the principle that we judge people as individuals, not as members of a race, tribe, clan or even family tree? Which would make all Australians owners of this land, of course.
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Bomb dodged
Andrew Bolt
Fascinating CIA video briefing on the Syrian reactor destroyed by Israel last year. Conclusion: the reactor was unsuited to prodcuing power, and seemed configured instead to produce plutonium, used for weapons. North Korea is implicated in the construction of the reaction - and then cleaning up of the site.
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It tells us nothing but that evil exists
Andrew Bolt
I’ve resisted commenting on the case of the Austrian man who locked his daughter in his cellar for 24 years and had seven children with her. It’s too horrific - fathomlessly horrific.
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China declares war on Vegemite
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It’s not yet illegal to be Liberal
Andrew Bolt
From the start, I condemned the several Liberals who handed out fake leaflets purporting to be a radical Islamic group praising Labor. Foul stuff. But magistrate Pat O’Shane has no business preaching this kind of hiss-boo damn-Howard politics from the bench, or demanding a Liberal go with the new political flow
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Farrelly freaks
Andrew Bolt
Elizabeth Farrelly, the Sydney Morning Herald‘s chief green, has a bad case of apocalyptis
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All hail our superwoman
Andrew Bolt
I KNOW exactly when Queen Elizabeth mysteriously became our new head of state. It was when she left her four-day-old baby to give a florid speech at Kevin Rudd’s summit, praising artists . . . like herself.

How that crowd of our “best and brightest” cheered. And cheered again when she said she heard her baby cry in the corridor. Such hearing!

In fact, such was her hold on the audience that she looked less like Elizabeth for a moment and more like the magical Galadriel she’d also been, once more entrancing hobbits.

Then she sat with the self-possession she’d shown as Charlotte Grey, another of her heroic incarnations.

What a triumph it all was for the hardly more real character also known as Cate Blanchett, now cast as the country’s most admired woman.
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Booze blast a bit rich
Andrew Bolt
I WOULD be the first to sign up to fight our booze culture, so I must ask the Health Minister: have you been slurping a few too many alcopops?

I ask because her sneak tax rise of 70 per cent on pre-mixed drinks sounds like the kind of great idea you have the happy night before the morning after.

According to Nicola Roxon, the weekend hike, to raise the price of drinks such as a Vodka Cruiser or Tequila Slamma by at least $1 a bottle, is all about looking after the kids.

These satanically sweet alcopops were luring young girls in particular to binge drink, Roxon declared. Making temptation more expensive might now stop the swill: “We think that this measure will have a health impact. That’s why we’ve introduced it.”

And at that, all opposition melts away. Well, if it’s for the kids . . .

Except this announcement is a few glugs short of a glass.
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Two standards on rights
Andrew Bolt
OUR top human rights body is so savage on Australia that it claims we’re guilty of “genocide”. But when it comes to China, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission can’t grovel enough.

China, it claimed last week, has actually “contributed” to human rights and should not be so criticised by the West and nasty Tibetan protesters. It’s doing its best.

You think I exaggerate HREOC’s double standards? Then check the astonishing interview HREOC president John von Doussa gave on Chinese state television last week.
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Abbott predicts
Andrew Bolt
Tony Abbott says Kevin Rudd has nothing of substance to say
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Vanity Fair’s lesson in seducing 15-year-olds
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Reinventing the AWA wheel
Andrew Bolt
First Labor abolishes individual Australian Workplace Agreements, and then it struggles to find new ways to achieve exactly the same flexibilities