Free insulation as Rudd tries to revive economy
The Rudd government's latest plan to boost the country's struggling economy will see millions of Australians benefit from free insulation....
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Get rid of IMF, G7 to save world economy: Paul Keating
A worldwide political and economic overhaul is the only way to overcome the global financial crisis, former Australian prime minister Paul Keating says....
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First Google Earth, now Google Ocean
The search engine Google has launched a new service to allow internet users to explore the depths of the world's oceans from the comfort of their homes on dry land....
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Why Roy is a risk
Former national captain Steve Waugh believes it would be a huge gamble to include Andrew Symonds in Australia's tour party for South Africa....
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Interest rates to hit 45-year low
Interest rates are tipped to reach a 45-year low today, when the Reserve Bank board meets in Sydney. ...
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Miranda Kerr gets steamy for Orlando
Miranda Kerr has been spotted giving boyfriend Orlando Bloom a steamy lap dance in a nightclub....
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Emma Watson confused by 'sexy' label
'Harry Potter' star Emma Watson finds being called sexy "embarrassing and confusing" and has no interest in starring in raunchy photo-shoots....
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Protester throws shoe at Chinese PM
A young protester hurled a shoe at Chinese premier Wen Jiabao as he gave a speech at Britain's Cambridge University on Monday, echoing an Iraqi journalist's shoe attack on former US President George Bush last year.
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Passer-by kills dog as it attacks woman
A man armed only with a pocketknife stabbed a bulldog to death after it attacked a 77-year-old woman in her front yard in Iowa, officials say.
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Graffiti girl jailed for three months
A Sydney teenager with no prior criminal history has been jailed for writing graffiti on the wall of a Sydney cafe.
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Woman charged after baby left in car
A Gold Coast woman has been charged after allegedly leaving a seven-week-old baby boy alone in an unlocked car in the afternoon heat.
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NT intervention to go before the United Nations
Heavy snow brings Britain to a standstill
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Airlines prove customers have no protection
With consumers already being left behind by the government's handling of the economy, our airlines are also giving customers a raw deal, write Alan Jones.
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INSULANOMICS
Tim Blair
Worried about Australia’s sudden $115 billion revenue loss? Be calm, people. Kevin Rudd – lately disowning previously-held economic beliefs – will solve our problems with ceiling insulation:
More than 2.2 million owner-occupied homes will qualify for free ceiling insulation under the Prime Minister’s plan, an element of a multi-pronged economic stimulation package expected to be announced tomorrow.
The Government will also double, from $500 to $1000, ceiling insulation subsidies for owners of 500,000 rental properties.
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HEY, AT LEAST HE DELIVERED CHANGE
Tim Blair
Star letter in the February edition of Viz:
I don’t know why everyone is so pleased about America getting a black president. Zimbabwe has had one for years and he’s s**t.
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STILL THEY DO BELIEVE
Tim Blair
May 27 will mark the 2000th day since the fabled fake turkey of idiot legend was born. And still this superb bird gathers new fans, including Sarah Baxter of the Sunday Times:
The fake turkey at Thanksgiving while visiting troops in Iraq.
And the Minnesota Independent‘s Paul Schmelzer:
The apparently fake turkey photo-op.
At the New York Times – which previously published a fake turkey correction – Errol Morris and Associated Press photo editor Santiago Lyon now discuss fake turkey provenance:
SANTIAGO LYON: And there [George W. Bush] is, serving a turkey to men and women of the military. It was the classic photo-op, but also pretty daring when you think that, at that time, Baghdad is a dangerous place.
ERROL MORRIS: Wasn’t there an accusation (at the time) that the turkey was a fake turkey.
SANTIAGO LYON: Yeah, I remember something about that, too. There was something as to whether that was an ornamental turkey. The way these mess kitchens work, there’s no time to actually carve a turkey. It’s all pre-carved and put into hot plates. And the troops move along the counter, and the stuff is slopped into their trays, and then off they go. So we concluded that it was a real bird. But that it wasn’t one that was necessarily going to be eaten at that meal at that time.
Or abandoned as an article of faith at any time.
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ROCK’S CLIMBERS
Tim Blair
Mark Steyn on modern British royalty:
Over the years I’ve met kings, princesses, dukes and all the rest, and none of ‘em were as hung up on precedence as the aristorockracy. A decade or so back, Sting had to issue a formal apology because at one of his big save-the-rainforest banquets at his country pile he committed the ghastly social faux pas of seating Jools Holland (of the band Squeeze) next to some no-name session musician.
In Britain, these guys all live in stately homes, and any of their number who makes it to 50 without choking on his own vomit or being found face down in the swimming pool gets knighted – Sir Elton John, Sir Mick Jagger, Sir Paul McCartney, etc. Obama’s pal Bono has a knighthood. You say you want a revolution? Sorry I’m having tea with the Prince of Wales that day.
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BURNING MAN
Tim Blair
Marlena Gangi interviews Oregon eco-terrorist and loser Jeff Luers, due to be released from an Oregon prison later this year:
When Jeff “free” Luers and Craig “Critter” Marshall drove away from Romania Chevrolet in the early morning hours of June 16, 2001 after igniting the wicks of two one gallon milk jugs filled with Coleman fuel, they could not have known that this action would come to significantly alter their lives.
These boys aren’t very imaginative. On with the interview:
MG: What are you most looking forward to upon your release? What are you most apprehensive about?
JL: There are so may things that I am excited about. No more walls is a big one. I think that within my first weeks I’ll find myself camped deep in the woods reconnecting with nature.
And trying to forget about Big Vern in the showers.
JL: My biggest challenge I think, is going to be living indoors and paying rent.
The “living indoors” part shouldn’t be much trouble.
MG: What moved you to follow through with the arson at Romania? Did you feel that there was any other alternative at all to raise awareness about global warming? And, what was running through your mind when you set flame to incendiary?
JL: Our world is being physically and geographically altered by the greenhouse gasses that we’re putting into the environment.
So Jeff thought he’d improve things by setting fire to a bunch of Chevrolets. Read on to learn that “things have not changed much since the time of kings”, that Obama’s America is still a “capitalist, imperialist monster”, and that Jeff and Critter are friends again.
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PRESIDENT DOESN’T CARE
Tim Blair
At least 42 people are dead and possibly one million are without power and water – while their President hosts cocktail parties and watches the Superbowl. Bush has really blown it this time. The media will tear him apart.
UPDATE. Apparently Bush is no longer President. It’s some new guy instead. Boy, is he ever in trouble!
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WEATHER FIXED
Tim Blair
It once snowed in Robert Fisk’s hometown of Maidstone, sometime during his childhood. It didn’t snow much in following years, which Fisk took to be a sign that the weather was broken. Well, take a look, Robert:
Snow today in Maidstone. All is as it should be.
UPDATE. England’s super snowdown comes mere days after a couple of sad poley bears were floated down the Thames … “to raise awareness of climate change.”
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PUF FURY
Tim Blair
AFP reports:
Indonesian Islamic hardliners have called for a ban on international organisations the Rotary Club and the Lions Club, saying they are part of a Zionist conspiracy, reports said today.
The People’s Ulema Forum (FUU) said the clubs were “infidel’’ fronts for Freemasonry …
The People’s Ulema Forum … FUU? No; they’re the fearsome PUF, surely. Another view:
Raja Juli Antony of the Maarif Institute, a moderate Islamic group, told The Jakarta Post there was no evidence that the Lions or Rotary clubs posed a threat to Islam.
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Not “stolen”, but “chosen”
Andrew Bolt
Faith Thomas, who played cricket for Australia, explains how she became a member of what others call the “stolen generations”:
FAITH THOMAS: Nursing’s taken me everywhere, sport’s taken me everywhere, you know? Everywhere I’ve wanted to go. All Mum knew what to do was to cook...in kitchens. Pub kitchens. And she’d say, “Why bring that girl up in that environment?” So she rang Sister Hyde up from Colebrook, and she popped up to Copley, picked me and Mum up, brought me down to Quorn. And Mum said to Sister Hyde, you know, “This’ll now be your child. I haven’t named her. You give her a name."…
I loved it. Yeah. It gave me opportunities that I wouldn’t have had, you know, if I...if Mum...and I really appreciate Mum, you know, for doing that. So I ended up with three wonderful mums - Sister Hyde, Sister Anna and my natural mum, who didn’t, um...you know, who kept in touch with me. She had to learn to read and write so that she could, um...you know, write, keep that contact. Visited every other year, so I suppose I was one of the lucky ones. I don’t consider myself a stolen generation, I consider myself a chosen...generation.
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Let them first predict next month’s weather
Andrew Bolt
Climate Change Minister Penny Wong and her fellow alarmists claim they saw last week’s heat wave in Victoria and South Australia coming:
Federal Climate Change Minister Penny Wong says the heatwave gripping south-east Australia is part of what scientists predicted would happen… “All of this is consistent with climate change, and all of this is consistent with what scientists told us would happen.”
Funnily enough, though, the Bureau of Meteorology - which shares Wong’s faith in man-made warming - was caught by surprise. On January 22, only a week before the heat wave hit, it issued this prediction for February to April:
The outlook for daytime temperatures for the February to April period shows no significant shift towards either warmer or cooler than normal conditions over most of southeastern Australia with the exception of northwestern South Australia where the odds slightly favour cooler days.
Not a word of the scorcher just over the horizon.
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Forgiving Obama for Bush’s sins
Andrew Bolt
George Bush was a war criminal for permitting such things, and Hollywood made films flaying him for it. But Barack Obama is the Messiah and is no doubt right to do what he thinks he must:
Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.
And watch the Bush haters turn on a dime. For example, under Bush, Human Rights Watch insisted the US ”permanently discontinue the CIA’s rendition program”.
But under Obama, Human Rights Watch concedes that “under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place” for renditions.
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More billions to go
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd reveals the centrepiece of his plan to rescue the economy:
More than 2.2 million owner-occupied homes will qualify for free ceiling insulation under the Prime Minister’s plan, an element of a multi-pronged economic stimulation package expected to be announced tomorrow.
The best that can be said for it is that at least the batts won’t disappear in the pokies.
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Africa asks dictator to lead
Andrew Bolt
His own people can’t vote for him, but fellow African leaders do:
LIBYAN leader Muammar Gaddafi took the reins of the 53-nation African Union at a summit today… Mr Gaddafi, elected in a closed-door vote at the summit in the Ethiopian capital....
Nor is Africa’s shame limited to the fact that Gaddafi is unelected. He’s also a primitive:
Hoping to burnish his standing, he recently had a group of traditional leaders name him the “king of kings” of Africa, and brought an entourage of seven local monarchs dripping in gold jewellery with him to the summit.
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Where’s the applause?
Andrew Bolt
I’m sure this man will be made a media hero, too:
A PROTESTER who threw a shoe at Chinese premier Wen Jiabao at Cambridge University overnight surrendered peacefully, police and security staff said.
I mean, what’s the difference - other than that he threw his show at a leader of an authoritarian regime which oppresses people, not liberates them?
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Foreign influence
Andrew Bolt
Why do we allow such large foreign donations in the first place?
NSW Labor has washed its hands of one of the country’s most generous political donations, from a company linked to Hong Kong gambling billionaire Stanley Ho, while accepting another $400,000 directly from the man himself.
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How can they blow hot so often?
Andrew Bolt
Britain’s Met Office peered into its forecasting models last September and predicted:
The Met Office forecast for the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average.
Now, with just four weeks of winter to go, Britain’s Telegraph reports:
Arctic blizzards are set to cause a national shutdown on Monday as forecasters warn of the most widespread snowfall for almost 20 years… This winter has already been the coldest for 13 years, delaying the arrival of snowdrops in gardens.
The odd thing is that the Met Office has a consistent record of making long-range predictions of warmer and drier temperatures than actually occur. And it’s not just the predictions for Britain’s weather that it gets wrong:
In nine of the last ten years, they have overpredicted global temperatures and the amount of warming.... In 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, and 2007 the Met Office predicted that the next year would be either the hottest or the second hottest on record… The accumulated error over 10 years is around +0.6 degrees.
Steven Goddard now asks:
The Met Office is one of the most vocal advocates of human induced global warming, and they have gotten into a consistent pattern of warm seasonal forecasts which seemingly fall in line with that belief system. Is it possible that their forecasts are unduly influenced by preconceived notions about the climate?
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Rudd disowns the economics he once claimed
Andrew Bolt
Just nine months ago, Kevin Rudd thought John Howard’s economic policies were so good that he boasted Labor thought of them first:
MICHAEL EDWARDS: Kevin Rudd says this type of legacy was achieved by the Hawke/Keating Labor governments.
KEVIN RUDD: They floated the currency, they cracked open the hidden protection which had shielded the airlines, the banks and many other industries. They modernised Labor markets by introducing enterprise bargaining. These were reforms which helped open the Australian economy to the world.
MICHAEL EDWARDS: But Mr Rudd says this period of reform came to a crashing halt with the election of John Howard’s government in 1996.
KEVIN RUDD: By comparison, the period since ‘96 has been relatively inactive in terms fundamental economic reform.
Get it? John Howard’s sin was that he didn’t open the economy enough.
Treasurer Wayne Swan agreed: Labor, in fact, deserved the credit for the economic policies that were pinched by John Howard:
Well I think most people in the business community acknowledge that the foundation of our current prosperity was laid in the days of the Hawke and Keating Governments. Those very big reforms of that era have enabled us to take maximum advantage of the mining boom and the strongest world economic conditions in over 30 years.
But now these jokers are claiming these very same policies were a disaster, and that John Howard, not Keating or Hawke, was responsible for them. Here’s Rudd disowning what he once claimed was Labor’s child:
The time has come, off the back of the current crisis, to proclaim that the great neo-liberal experiment of past failed, that the emperor has no clothes… (This crisis) is the culmination of a 30-year domination of economic policy by a free-market ideology that has been variously called neo-liberalism, economic liberalism, economic fundamentalism, Thatcherism or the Washington consensus… The political home of neo-liberalism in Australia is, of course, the Liberal Party.
Some may admire Rudd’s “cleverness”. But can any serious thinker call him honest? Or is Rudd really claiming that Hawke and Keating were just stupid neo-liberals, promoting a disastrous culture of greed?
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Kirby shows it’s good he’s gone
Andrew Bolt
Michael Kirby shows in his final judgment all the qualities that made him an appalling justice of the High Court:
JUSTICE Michael Kirby has retired from the High Court in a blaze of controversy, accusing fellow judges of exercising racial bias against Aborigines in the Northern Territory intervention case.
Justice Kirby’s attack drew an extraordinary rebuke from Chief Justice Robert French, who attacked the departing judge for his “gratuitous” suggestion that the bench had made a ruling based on the “Aboriginality” of those involved in the case.
And not for the first time, Justice Kirby was the sole dissenter in a 6-1 decision....
Abuse, sanctimony and yet another dissenting judgment that seems more influenced by Kirby’s politics than by reference to our laws.
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Story shot
Andrew Bolt
More claims of Israeli atrocities in The Weekend Australian:
Threee witnesses have claimed that Israeli soldiers shot in cold blood two civilians who had their hands in the air on the second day of the Israeli offensive in Gaza.
But what the witnesses said to the journalist is very different from what they said to a human rights group. And Israelycool has some questions:
1. How come in the Australian version, the IDF soldiers who shot the palestinians were on a balcony of a house they had taken over, and shouted for the palestinians to pull over, yet in the B’tselem version, the soldiers were “about 300 meters from al-‘Atatrah Square” and fired without saying anything?
2. How come in the Australian version, Nabeela Abu Halima and Omar Abu Halima were shot, but not so in the B’tselem version in which they managed to run away?
3. How come in the Australian version, a man was shot through the arm because he refused to strip naked, but in the B’tselem version, there is no mention of this?
I don’t know what the truth is here. I only know that the facts are very far from clear.
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