Headlines Tuesday 25th November

Kevin Rudd’s crocodile tears
Piers Akerman
MANY Australians were moved by the Hollywood-style apology to Aborigines delivered by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in February. - There is a danger in buying a line of empty rhetoric, even for noble reasons. I agree with the summation that Rudd is wrong regarding the stolen generations .. which would lead me to question the comparative culture view too.
I have aboriginal ancestry (not a certainty, family lore may be wrong) but I have no problems with my European style education.
Politicians of parties that have made big mistakes and wish to cover them up point to the past to obscure aspects. The truth is Howard’s practical care for Aboriginal peoples will show itself to have been foundational for those leading the best of lives a generation from now. Just as current ALP policy will underpin those suffering the most in the future too.
I was speaking to some Iraqi ethnic children today, many who have bought the Anti Bush line and are pro Obama. The truth there is that in ten years Iraq will be a proud independent nation thanks to Bush, and would never have had the opportunity if Saddam was still there .. or if Obama had been President at the time. - ed.
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Beware man with moustache
Andrew Bolt
The New York Times is so terrified by a global warming sceptic taking the presidency of the European Union that it slips in a few slurs. Spot the worst in this extract:

(Vaclav) Klaus, the 67-year-old president of the Czech Republic - an iconoclast with a perfectly clipped mustache - continues to provoke strong reactions.
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Beware of Climate Chyange
Andrew Bolt
Mornington residents get a communnica comunnic communnka email from their council:

Greetings all,

In August of this year, Council delivered 12 Q&A Forums across the Shire. Part of the work to continue this enagement with you the residents includes publication of information relating to the workshops, info sessions and other related actions that are to come (and 2009 looks like being a busy year for Grrehouse and Climate Chyange related actions.)
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Come visit the racists
Andrew Bolt
US Daily notes that Baz Luhrmann’s Australia sells the country as racist and cruel:

As well as showcasing Australia’s rugged landscape and history, Luhrmann weaves in the controversial issue of the “stolen generation” when Aboriginal children were taken from their families between the 1880s and 1960s and raised as whites.

Which is a hell of a way for Luhrmann to sell Australia to tourists, both through his movie and his $40 million Tourism Australia tie-in:

Luhrmann, who has made a series of tourism ads for a campaign screening in parallel to the movie’s release, says he was initially reluctant to widen his efforts to make Australia be an advert for Australia.

Bizarre. So was Mississippi Burning actually brought to us by the Mississippi Tourism Board? Was To Kill a Mockingbird sponsored by Tourism Alabama? Deliverance by the Welcome to Georgia Association?
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Change we couldn’t believe
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama isn’t even president yet, but Lefitst journalists like the Age’s Anne Davies already feel conned:

HAS BARACK Obama already broken his first promise to voters in his choice of cabinet and White House staff? As candidate Obama, he spent 17 months promising a new vision of politics, a politics that did not divide along partisan lines but would break with the old Washington ways where access to decision-makers was corrupted by donations, lobbyists and a culture of insiders. It would, he said, be a more open politics built along ethical lines.

But so far, President-elect Obama has turned mainly to people who have long histories in Washington and reputations as practitioners of a tough, pragmatic brand of politics.
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Union powers rise as growth falls
Andrew Bolt
This sounds ominous:

A RADICAL overhaul of workplace laws, to be unveiled by the Rudd Government today, will propose a vastly increased role for unions, venturing far beyond the policy Labor took to the election a year ago…
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One Crikey smear regretted
Andrew Bolt
Crikey editor Jonathan Green apologises for a despicable slur:

Over the past fortnight Crikey has polled readers to determine their preferred name for Barack Obama’s new White House puppy. In a crunched-down final 10 drawn from reader nominations we included “A mongrel called Trig”. We were wrong to do that. It’s not funny, it makes no positive point. We deeply regret any offence the reference may have caused.
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IQ beats warming models
Andrew Bolt
What’s the best way to judge the number of polar bears? Here’s a tough choice for a rationalist, and even harder for a Leftist romantic:

Treaties between Nunavut and the federal government make clear that science should not influence decision-making more than “traditional knowledge”, known as Inuit Qaujimaningit, or IQ. Scientists offer statistical projections and computer models; native hunters prefer IQ, which tells them that polar bears are everywhere.
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They couldn’t say no to Zyklon B
Andrew Bolt
The Holocaust was an unspeakable crime - the deliberate murder of 6 million Jews and some 200,000 Gypsies.

Yet some on the Left seem to think that shooting or gassing helpless men, women and children is much the same as selling them stuff they actually want to buy - including stuff that’s actually perfectly healthy:

FOOD guru Margaret Fulton has condemned genetically-modified produce, likening companies pushing its merits to Adolf Hitler.
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Father knows best
Andrew Bolt
Some awards are given more to puff the giver than givee. Take the Father of the Year title:

TV CHEF Gordon Ramsay, who revels in his family man image despite his love of the F-word, has been in an affair with a blonde woman for the past seven years…

In 2006 Ramsay was voted Celebrity Father Of The Year and in 2007 the Ramsays were named Celebrity Family Of The Year. - maybe he wanted to be a father again . -ed.
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Only greens could lack water in a flood
Andrew Bolt
Too little water here, and too much water there. Does the Brumby Government really need someone to join the dots between today’s two water stories?

Problem:

MELBURNIANS will face tough new daily water limits under a State Government move to preserve dwindling supplies.

Solution:

The weather bureau issued flood warnings for six Gippsland rivers, warning residents that major flooding of the Mitchell River was possible...
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Forecast this
Andrew Bolt
Yet another shift in the climate that wasn’t forecast by these alarmists:

NBC Universal made the first of potentially several rounds of staffing cuts at The Weather Channel (TWC) on Wednesday, axing the entire staff of the “Forecast Earth” environmental program during the middle of NBC’s “Green Week,”...
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NSW advises kids: get a good dealer
Andrew Bolt
Your taxes, their idiocy - all you need to turn a “drug awareness” program into a drug advertisement:

TEENAGE school students have been given access to a controversial brochure called A User’s Guide to Speed while attending a State Government-promoted anti-drug and alcohol program.

The 35-page booklet, included among drugs literature displayed to up to 100 Year 8 students and parents during a community information day, contains a section on “tips to avoid getting bad speed”. In it, teenage readers are told: ”If you don’t already have a reliable dealer, try to find one and stick with them.
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The Right’s plot uncovered
Andrew Bolt
Alan Howe:
THE two holocausts of the 20th century both came from the Right.

Hitler’s ferocious Nazi ambition claimed the lives of more than six million Jews across Europe. The other was engineered by Western tobacco companies, brazen racketeers...
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Nixon concedes; but Age conceals
Andrew Bolt
Once the Left howled at such arguments. Now, too late, even Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon concedes them:
It has been suggested that society has reached a “tipping point” where the social and cultural developments have come together to create conditions conducive to violence.

The storm that has been gathering for years is upon us. Factors that I believe have led to this include relentless exposure to violence on television, a rise in single-parent families and young people “growing up” too young.

At some stage the cultural drivers of this growing barbarism must be admitted by our culture makers. Then let us hope we have the will and the smarts to turn it around.
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Decline, not crash
Andrew Bolt
Times business commentator Patrick Hosking says this is serious:

At the risk of hyperbole, we should not be worrying about whether this is going to be a thin Christmas for retailers (it is), but whether Britain and the West are about to plunge into a years-long economic Dark Age – complete with mass unemployment and social unrest.

But Daniel Gross wants to clock the alarmists who warn that this is the Great Depression all over again:

But the two phenomena differ substantially. Instead of workers with 5 o’clock shadows asking, “Brother, can you spare a dime?” we have clean-shaven financial-services executives asking congressmen if they can spare $100 billion. More substantively, the economic trauma the nation suffered in the 1930s makes today’s woes look like a flesh wound…
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We’re “stealing” even more
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd in February:

We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country…

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians. A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.

Oh, really? The news today:

WELFARE workers in NSW are removing Aboriginal children from their homes in numbers far greater than during the Stolen Generations…