Believing the vicious worst of America
Andrew Bolt
A new website, AmericaInTheWorld, has commissioned a poll to check how ignorant the British are about America. Answer: Very. For instance:
A poll of nearly 2,000 Britons by YouGov/PHI found that 70 per cent of respondents incorrectly said it was true that the US had done a worse job than the European Union in reducing carbon emissions since 2000. More than 50 per cent presumed that polygamy was legal in the US, when it is illegal in all 50 states. . . .
The survey showed that a majority agreed with the false statement that since the Second World War the US had more often sided with non-Muslims when they had come into conflict with Muslims. In fact in 11 out of 12 major conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims, Muslims and secular forces, or Arabs and non-Arabs, the US has sided with the former group. Those conflicts included Turkey and Greece, Bosnia and Yugoslavia, and and Kosovo and Yugoslavia.
Asked if it was true that “from 1973 to 1990 the United States sold Saddam Hussein more than a quarter of his weapons,” 80 per cent of British respondents said yes. However the US sold just 0.46 per cent of Saddam’s arsenal to him, compared to Russia’s 57 per cent, France’s 13 per cent and China’s 12 per cent.
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Waves of gold from China will soon end
Piers Akerman
AUSTRALIA faces a hard landing as the Olympic distraction ends. In the real world, things are beginning to look worse and worse for the Australian economy.
Having blamed China’s expansion for the economic successes of the Howard-Costello government, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and his Treasurer Wayne Swan will soon be given the opportunity to demonstrate their claimed economic skills as the Chinese start to deal with their own inflation problems.
According to a number of hard-headed business leaders in Beijing during the Games, senior Chinese officials were quite frank about their major concerns about China’s inflation rate, which was 0.3 percentage points higher in July than the 5 per cent rise recorded in June, making July the second successive month China’s inflation exceeded 5 per cent.
The Chinese were also admitting that their economy would not be immune to the ongoing fallout from the US subprime crisis (which shows no sign of easing) nor the global factors which have sent the G7 nations into recession.
Rudd and Swan scoffed at their predecessors’ enviable record but, while Australia’s economy may have been buoyed by the commodities boom, that also is beginning to come to an end.
The prices of Australian commodities will suffer for a variety of reasons including the natural market reaction to the greater available supply - as well as the pressure on growth within China.
The Rudd Government seems to believe that China’s appetite for our coal and iron ore, particularly, is endless but that may not be so.
Nor is it apparent that prices for these commodities will remain unaffected by the usual fundamental market pressures.
The Rudd team has already demonstrated that by any measure it belongs in the same class as the Whitlam government. Though Rudd last week attempted to bluster that he has held office for just “six to eight months” when confronted with his administration’s serial policy failures, it is only a few days short of nine months since the last federal election and, apart from his grand symbolic gestures, he has achieved nothing.
The nation has gone backwards in every regard from the fiscal to the environmental.
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Lectures from business class
Andrew Bolt
The hypocrisy of global warming preachers is now less a laugh than a pattern:
SIENNA Miller is a spokeswoman for the charity Global Cool. Last year she went to Mumbai to tell the natives: “If each one of us does our bit, we will be able to keep global warming from harming our countries.” She flew there. She later announced on (radio) that “as an actress” she simply couldn’t stop flying, but she will take slightly cooler showers. Sheryl Crow embarked on a Stop Global Warming tour of America last year accompanied by three trailers, four buses and six cars.
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Greer the racist
Andrew Bolt
Langton is right:
MARCIA Langton has delivered a stinging rebuke to Germaine Greer, describing her views as outdated and simplistic and condemning the feminist for a “cleverly disguised” racist attack on Aboriginal people.
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Those empty seats explained?
Andrew Bolt
Growing support for a rumor I reported last Wednesday:
The mystery of the half-filled stands at many events at the 2008 Olympic Games has been solved, according to Chinese internet users, who say it is the result of a policy to prevent the gathering of large and possibly uncontrollable crowds.
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China detects threat
Andrew Bolt
China confiscates subversive literature:
Chinese customs officials confiscated more than 300 Bibles on Sunday from four American Christians who arrived in a southwestern city with plans to distribute them, the group’s leader said.
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Georgia is the new front line
Andrew Bolt
The front line of the new Cold War runs through Georgia:
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday that Russia is playing a “very dangerous game” with the U.S. and its allies and warned that NATO would not allow Moscow to win in Georgia, destabilize Europe or draw a new Iron Curtain through it. On her way to an emergency NATO foreign ministers meeting on the crisis, Rice said the alliance would punish Russia for its invasion of ... Georgia and deny its ambitions by rebuilding and fully backing Georgia and other Eastern European democracies.
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Green democracy: when the leaders pick the citizens
Andrew Bolt
Some guys from the ANU think they have invented a new kind of democracy, “designed to overcome the limitations of existing processes”:
The aim of this project is to establish and research an Australian Citizens’ Parliament, which will be one of the most ambitious exercises in democratic citizen deliberation in the world so far. The idea is to use the Citizens’ Parliament to generate some recommendations for reform of the Australian system of government. The Citizen’s Parliament will be composed of one person selected from each of Australia’s 150 federal electoral districts, constituting a diversity of citizens reflective of the broader public.
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Flannery washed out again
Andrew Bolt
Alarmist of the Year Tim Flannery really should stay out of the predictions business, unless he’s just rehearsing a comedy act.
Four years ago, there was his prediction for Perth:
Speaking last night at the State Government’s Sydney Futures forum, Dr Flannery warned of a city grappling with up to 60 per cent less water. As temperatures around the world warmed by 2 to 7 per cent, Sydney could glimpse its future by looking at the devastating impact that global warming had already had on Perth… ”I think there is a fair chance Perth will be the 21st century’s first ghost metropolis,” Dr Flannery said.
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News flash! Press falls for Obama
Andrew Bolt
The Washington Post’s Ombudsman admits the Obamania of its reporters looks bad:
Democrat Barack Obama has had about a 3 to 1 advantage over Republican John McCain in Post Page 1 stories since Obama became his party’s presumptive nominee June 4. Obama has generated a lot of news by being the first African American nominee, and he is less well known than McCain—and therefore there’s more to report on. But the disparity is so wide that it doesn’t look good…
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Hot debate for warming priest
Andrew Bolt
No wonder global warming prophets such as Al Gore, Greenpeace and Clive Hamilton dodge debates. Warming worrier Richard Littlemore of DeSmogBlog.com runs up the white flag after a radio debate with sceptic Christopher Monckton:
In hindsight, I played perfectly into the hands of Monckton and his happy radio host, Roy Green, who share the same goal - not to win an argument about global warming science, but merely to show that there still IS an argument. Of course there’s not. But while we danced angels around the head of a pin, I can imagine Green’s listeners thinking, “Oh my. This is very confusing. No wonder the government says it’s too early to take action.” Score one for Monckton....
It was also a tactical error to start pointing people to helpful websites with clear graphs and reliable science that could support my position. It left open the possibility for Monckton to say, “I could produce 35 graphs” to the contrary - which fiction then drifted to the listeners as if it were, well, accurate in the real world.
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“We need to stop being such cowards about Islam.”
Andrew Bolt
Johann Hari explains:
There is now a pincer movement trying to silence critical discussion of Islam. To one side, fanatics threaten to kill you; to the other, critics call you “Islamophobic”. But consistent atheism is not racism. On the contrary: it treats all people as mature adults who can cope with rational questions. When we pulp books out of fear of fundamentalism, we are decapitating the most precious freedom we have.
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Name just one, Robert
Andrew Bolt
I haven’t read Robert Manne’s latest essay on global warming, a subject on which he’s now apparently expert having recently read two scary books. Reader Candygram for Mongo tells me what I never needed telling - that he’s a warming worrier, of course - and says his piece also includes the kind of howler I’ve come to expect from the Manne.
Candygram has, as a result, drafted this letter to The Monthly’s non-existent letter’s page (so convenient for the factually-challenged writer):
Robert Manne wishes to render a public service by conveying to us the fruits of his recent reading in the literature of climate change. He will render a further service, to one reader at least, if he can advise us exactly when and where Professor Ross Garnaut invited climate-sceptic Mr. Michael Costa to “debate the science before a public audience”. On the face of it, this seems unlikely: Professor Garnaut is an economist and, by his own admission, no expert on the science of climate change. Nor does he seem like the sort of person to be flinging off challenges to those who dare to cross him.
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Temperatures don’t rise, but green taxes do
Andrew Bolt
No wonder the cash-hungry NSW Government loves the the Great Global Warming Scare. What a wonderful excuse to raise a lazy few hundred million with a new green tax. And so reader Ken picks up his power bill from Integral Energy to find he’s been made to donate to the Government’s new Climate Change Fund.
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My Baby Calls It Meals On Wheels
Tens of thousands of people are expected to flock to Auckland, New Zealand, tomorrow to watch topless women riding on motorbikes after a judge dismissed a council's attempt to ban the parade.
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Saudis deny Musharraf asylum plan
Article from: Agence France-PresseFont size: + - Send this article: Print Email
SAUDI Arabia has denied it has a plane waiting to take former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf to the Muslim kingdom, a press report said today, amid speculation Riyadh could offer him asylum.- he is a good person, nothing like Idi Amin. -ed.
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