Headlines Saturday 29th November

Crowds cheer as workplaces chained
Andrew Bolt
Paul Kelly protests:

KEVIN Rudd shouts from the rooftops each day that the global financial crisis has changed the world, but the Prime Minister does not believe his own words.

A bizarre fate has befallen Australia. At the precise time it faces a global crisis, a business downturn and rising unemployment, the Rudd Government is recasting workplace relations to increase trade union powers, inhibit employment and impose new costs on employers.

Normally this would defy any test of common sense. Indeed, it would seem the essence of irresponsibility. But it has instead won widespread applause, and its architect Julia Gillard has won almost universal acclaim as a political hero.
===
Aborigines offer to strangle business
Andrew Bolt
Is this the best way for Aborigines to secure their future and advertise their presence - as a deterrent to mass tourism?

The traditional owners of an international tourism drawcard in Tasmania are offering to take ownership of the site to protect it from being overrun by tourists.
===
Mumbai still bleeding
Andrew Bolt
Grim finds, as India’s special forces clear the buildings in Mumbai that were stormed by Islamist terrorists:

Mumbai’s chief of police says Indian security forces have found the bodies of five hostages at a Jewish outreach centre… Among the five hostages who died during the operation, was a New York-based Rabbi and his wife…

At least one militant is still holding out in the city’s Taj hotel, where security forces are struggling to secure the building… The authorities have been more successful in securing the nearby Oberoi hotel, where police have found the bodies of 24 people.

The toll rises again - but I suspect there will be more to come yet, once the hotels are cleared and bodies recovered:

More than 150 people have been killed… At least 370 have been injured.

Pakistanis are implicated, as well as local terrorists:

India’s foreign minister yesterday pointed an accusing finger across the border at Pakistan.

“According to preliminary information, some elements in Pakistan are responsible for Mumbai terror attacks,” Pranab Mukherjee told reporters ...

More evidence:

According to the public television broadcaster of India, Doordarshan, police arrested an injured terrorist at the Taj Mahal hotel. The terrorist, who police believe is named Ajmal Amir Kamal, has admitted to being part of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani-based group and one of the largest and most active Islamist terrorist organizations in South Asia.

Two other Pakistani nationals captured on Thursday have also identified themselves “as members of a Lashkar fidayeen squad.” Police believe the three were part of a group of 12 “fidayeen” or suicide squads who left Karachi on a merchant ship early on Wednesday.

Lashkar-e-Taiba is the group for which Australia’s David Hicks fought, and which taught him terror tactics. Yes, that Hicks, now hailed here as a martyr - and by people who now object to these attacks in Mumbai on Jews, foreigners and specifically Americans and British being described as an attack not just India but the West.
===
Labor’s favorite book on Bush
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party has a book it suggests you read. From the ALP website:

In the days immediately following September 11th, the most powerful people in the United States were panic-stricken. The radical decisions about how to combat terrorists and strengthen national security were made in a state of utter chaos and fear; but the key players, Vice President Dick Cheney and his powerful, secretive adviser David Addington, used the crisis to further a long-held agenda to enhance presidential powers to a degree never known in U.S. history, and obliterate Constitutional protections that define the very essence of the American experiment.

The Dark Side is a dramatic, riveting, and definitive narrative account of how the United States made terrible decisions in the pursuit of terrorists around the world—decisions that not only violated the Constitution to which White House officials took an oath to uphold, but also hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda. In gripping detail, acclaimed New Yorker writer and bestselling author Jane Mayer relates the impact of these decisions: U.S.-held prisoners, many of them completely innocent, were subjected to treatment more reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition than the twenty-first century.

In all cases, whatever the short-term gains, there were incalculable losses in terms of moral standing, and the US’s place in the world, and its sense of itself. The Dark Side chronicles one of the most disturbing chapters in American history, one that will serve as the lasting legacy of the George W. Bush presidency.

I believe one chapter is devoted to George Bush being such an idiot that he didn’t even know what the G20 was.
===
And what of Guantanamo’s prisoners?
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama’s promise, to the cheers of journalists:

I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantánamo, and I will follow through on that. I’ve said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture and I’m going to make sure that we don’t torture. Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America’s moral stature in the world.

Er, but what we he then do with the inmates of Guantanamo?
===
Rolf chucks a wobbly
Andrew Bolt
Rolf Harris is now too old to care if he’s being too blunt:

The London-based expat entertainer yesterday hit out at some people in Aboriginal communities who lamented their poverty and filthy conditions.

“You sit at home watching the television and you think to yourself, ‘Get up off your arse and clean up the streets your bloody self, and why would you expect somebody to come in and clean up your garbage, which you’ve dumped everywhere,’ but then you have to think to yourself that it’s a different attitude to life,” he said.
===
Has Baz also lectured Nicole?
Andrew Bolt
Baz Luhrman on the evil of taking indigenous children from their families and making them more “European”:

“The President-elect of the United States is 47,” burbled Baz.

“If he was living in Australia, it is absolutely credible that the government, because he had one white parent and one black parent, could have taken him forcibly from his family . . .

“They would have put him in an institution, probably lied to him that his parents were dead, changed his name and reprogrammed him to be European . . .”

Has Luhrmann discussed with Kidman the evil of raising adopted children from other races as “European”?: