By Adam Gartrell
Australians are better educated, hard-drinking and childless car addicts with massive mortgages and a growing penchant for alternative medicines, according to a new statistical snapshot.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) annual report on social trends says the number of people aged 25 to 64 with a degree, diploma or certificate jumped from 46 to 59 per cent between 1996 and 2006.
But despite better qualifications, almost half of all Australians aged 15 to 74 had literacy skills below the minimum level required to "meet the complex demands of a knowledge society", the report said.
The report also looked into fertility, showing the number of women of peak child-bearing age without kids is on the rise.
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Monsters deserving justice
Piers Akerman
THE capture of mass murderer Radovan Karadzic was due as much, if not more, to concerns about Serbia’s economic links to the European Union than to a desire for justice, but that’s no reason not to celebrate.
Karadzic, who is credited with coining the expression “ethnic cleansing” had been indicted along with his sidekick Ratko Mladic by the UN War Crimes Tribunal for genocide and crimes against humanity.
According to the UN indictment “Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat civilians were persecuted on national, political and religious grounds throughout the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“Thousands of them were interned in detention facilities where they were subjected to widespread acts of physical and psychological abuse and to inhumane conditions.
“Detention facility personnel who ran and operated the Omarska, Keraterm and Luka detention facilities . . . intended to destroy Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat people as national, ethnic, or religious groups and killed, seriously injured and deliberately inflicted upon them conditions intended to bring about their destruction.”
Further, the indictment says, between April 1992 and July 1995, the men were “criminally responsible for the unlawful confinement, murder, rape, sexual assault, torture, beating, robbery and inhumane treatment of civilians; the targeting of political leaders, intellectuals and professionals; the unlawful deportation and transfer of civilians; the unlawful shelling of civilians; the unlawful appropriation and plunder of real and personal property; the destruction of homes and businesses; and the destruction of places of worship.”
Historically, it is the sort of charge sheet that might have been drawn up against Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong, such is the enormity of the crimes committed by Serbs fighting for the self-declared Republic of Srpska, with the backing of President Slobodan Milosevic.-Similar in nature to the world's acceptance of that murderous act at the start of this current intifada, when two Israelis were lured by calls for help, captured and murdered in front of the world's press. We still have the circulated pictures of the killers showing their bloodstained hands to the world through a window of the jail where the two had been held. cf unfinished report- ed
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Four Leftists agree one conservative would be biased
Andrew Bolt
No, this is not satire - and the idiocy of such a panel discussing “media bias” is, quite typically, lost on Age reporter Matthew Ricketson:
Gather together four luminaries of the media to discuss whether the media is biased and what do you get?
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Planet saved, baby dead
Andrew Bolt
Utterly tragic, but in some ways a grim metaphor:
Homicide Detective Senior Sergeant Ron Iddles said: “Sadly, about 5.30, a gentleman living on a rural property went out to put out his rubbish bins, went to a bus shelter and found a green shopping bag, looked in the bag and found the body of an infant or a baby, aged somewhere between one or two weeks and three months old.”
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For a sliming, Crikey’s effort stinks
Andrew Bolt
I see that Crikey, Eric Beecher’s scandal sheet, has drifted off even further to the lunar Left, especially since Christian Kerr jumped ship. Now it’s into publishing the standard abusive slop of the green fanatics, as I discovered today when it ran this attack by “Queensland scientist” Michael James.
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A warming Arctic should make drilling easier
Andrew Bolt
Sounds reassuring to me - so reassuring that greens will be sure to stop it:
The Arctic holds as much as 90bn barrels of undiscovered oil and has as much undiscovered gas as all the reserves known to exist in Russia, US government scientists have said in the first governmental assessment of the regions resources.
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Silly you, clever him
Andrew Bolt
Oh, you got the impression Kevin Rudd would pull our soldiers out of Iraq?
THE 1000 Australian soldiers, sailors and air force personnel in and around Iraq will be there ”for a long time to come”, Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon has warned.... That completes a comprehensive adjustment of the ALP’s policy on Iraq and a significant shift from the impression created by Labor in opposition that Australia’s role in Iraq was all but over.
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Cold comfort up North
Andrew Bolt
So much for the tens of thousands of scary reports earlier this year that the North Pole could melt clean away this summer. The Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Illinois shows ice cover at the North Pole yesterday (right) compared to the same day last year. And ice cover in the Southern Hemisphere is above the long-term average:
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Obama feels the warmth down his leg, too
Andrew Bolt
The McCain campaign has released a video exploring the media love affair with Barack Obama.
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Rudd the incomprehensible
Andrew Bolt
Baden Eunson, a Monash University communication expert, analyses Kevin Rudd’s extraordinary attempts to communicate, even running his speeches through a linguistics calculator to diagnose the problem:
Well, even when we make allowances for the approximateness of such scores, Rudd’s Brussels speech about synergy and architecture rates at Flesch-Kincaid, 18.5; FOG, 22.4; and SMOG, 15.2. That means that 50 per cent to 80 per cent of Australians would have difficulty understanding what their leader was saying.
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Billions of reasons not to doubt
Andrew Bolt
Wow, that’s sure some incentive:
(Kevin Rudd’s global warming guru Ross) Garnaut says a review of existing climate change research and development areas—presently valued at $2.7 billion following a $1.15 billion funding boost in the May budget—may be warranted.
What’s the budget for saying global warming theory is a crock?
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A taxpayer-funded booga-booga
Andrew Bolt
There is no way that the Rudd Government’s global warming commercials are standard government advertisements to ”provide the public with information about their programs”. This is pure fear mongering to sell a program that hasn’t even been developed yet.
Rudd’s promise to stop political advertising by government is his shortest-lived yet.
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Rudd’s latest empty symbol
Andrew Bolt
Anything symbolic, involving more paper than action, is irresistible to this man:
KEVIN Rudd today declared it was time to recognise the rights of indigenous people in Australia’s Constitution.
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CHILD UNNAMED
Tim Blair
It could have been worse:
A New Zealand judge has ordered a name change for an embarrassed nine-year-old girl called Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii.
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SILENCE, BOGANS!
Tim Blair
The Age‘s Kenneth Davidson is becoming a little frustrated:
It is not surprising that climate sceptics are out in force. The history of this country is the squeaky wheel gets the oil. When powerful vested interests speak on behalf of coalmining, privatised fossil-fuel electricity generators and motoring bogans, the rest of us are forced to listen and politicians on both sides appear eager to do their bidding.
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FRIENDS LISTED
Tim Blair
Celebrated halo magnet and love toy Barack Obama commits yet another gaffe:
“Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s,” he said, in a statement that even his opponents could not quibble with.
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PLACE YOUR BETS
Tim Blair
Scientists versus bears!
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ALL THOSE ANTI-WEST DOCUMENTARIES? A SMOKESCREEN
Tim Blair
London’s Sun reports:
The Taliban were in disarray last night after their Helmand province leader surrendered - fearing the SBS was about to kill him.
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THEY RUN AWAY
Tim Blair
Further to previous war-is-over news:
There is an interesting piece of graffiti on a bridge near Basra. A fleeing militiaman has scrawled “We’ll be back”; underneath an Iraqi soldier has scribbled in reply “And we’ll be waiting for you”.
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RULING IN
Tim Blair
Barack Obama—he bows to nobody in his understanding of this world!—declares us Asian:
Seek New Partnerships in Asia: Obama will forge a more effective framework in Asia that goes beyond bilateral agreements, occasional summits, and ad hoc arrangements, such as the six-party talks on North Korea. He will maintain strong ties with allies like Japan, South Korea and Australia; work to build an infrastructure with countries in East Asia that can promote stability and prosperity; and work to ensure that China plays by international rules.
Thus ends all geographical debate. The Obama has ruled.
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THE LOAN ARRANGER
Tim Blair
Don’t mess with a man called Daud:
A man reportedly killed three local Taliban in the Hassan Khel area of Frontier Region Peshawar on Monday, sources said. Sources said that the Taliban went to the house of a man called Daud, who reportedly was lending money on interest, to order him to stop his ‘un-Islamic’ business.
Daud was, however, drunk at the time and opened fire on his ‘visitors,’ killing them. He managed to escape from the scene. Local Taliban later attacked his house and destroyed it.
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