Headlines Friday 27th March 2009

Bikies stockpiling weapons, preparing for war: member
Sydney's bikie gangs are flying in reinforcements from overseas and stockpiling weapons amid growing tension between criminal groups, a senior member says.
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Rudd warns Fitzgibbon: 'Lift your game'
Kevin Rudd has told an embarrassed Joel Fitzgibbon to lift his game, but has rejected Opposition calls to sack the Defence Minister.
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Pentagon Plans to Regrow Human Body Parts
Soldiers wounded in combat will someday regrow their limbs -- if the Pentagon has its way.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has just given Massachusetts' Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) a $570,000, one-year contract to get a mammal, preferably a human, to regenerate a large body part such as a finger or even a limb.
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Hackers hijack govt classification site
Hackers have hijacked the Australian government's film and videogame classification website, protesting Communication Minister Stephen Conroy's trial of mandatory internet filtering.
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'Sexting' teens sue over child porn charge
Three teenage girls are suing a prosecutor who accused them of peddling "child pornography", after semi-nude pictures of them were sent by mobile phone to friends.
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Afghan war could last 'another decade'
The war in Afghanistan could last for another decade, a US government counter-terrorism expert says.
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FLEE OBAMALAND
Tim Blair
American readers who’ve always wanted to visit Australia but were dismayed by the expense: you no longer have an excuse.
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TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL
Tim Blair
Earth Hour looms. What if your kids are into it? NT News cartoonist Colin Wicking has a solution:
The damned school has told William all about Earth Hour. He wishes to participate. Fine by me, but he’ll have to do it in his own room. By himself. He won’t last three seconds in there, especially with me scratching at his door cackling like a witch. Ha ha ha.
William is 17, but this should also work on younger children.
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DESOLATE BAVARIAN
Tim Blair
By how much did BMW’s profit decline last year? 20%? 30%? 40%? 50%? Keep going …
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RETROBALL
Tim Blair
Tiger tragic George Megalogenis previews tonight’s season-opening AFL match between Carlton and Richmond.

Some 90,000 are expected at the MCG; an estimated $2 million rides on the result. Neither team has made the finals since 2001.
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BASICALLY, SOME LIGHTS WILL BE TURNED OFF
Tim Blair
The Toronto Star rounds up global plans for Saturday night’s Earth Hour
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BISCUIT BAN
Tim Blair
Clover Moore’s Tim Tam ban was backed yesterday by World Vision boss Tim Costello …

“I don’t think any Australian who loves Tim Tams, and I do, wants child labour’s sweat and blood on their teeth,” Mr Costello said yesterday.
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Chorus of disapproval for Einfeld
Andrew Bolt
How utterly selfish is Marcus Einfeld? Selfish enough to associate fellow Jews with his lying, using a Jewish choir as a prop to show his goodness:

Marcus Einfeld’s Four Corners interview has sparked a spat between the Sydney Great Synagogue and the ABC. A furious synagogue president, Rosalind Fischl, emailed the congregation yesterday after members complained about footage of Einfeld singing with the synagogue choir was broadcast during Sarah Ferguson’s report on Monday. The Diary understands they were upset about having the disgraced judge so publicly associated with their synagogue. Fischl blames Einfeld and the current affairs program.

The ABC isn’t to blame, having no brief to protect the synagogue from the bad repute of one of its members. Let the community ostracise Einfeld instead.
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Class war won’t work
Andrew Bolt
Former Labor NSW Treasurer Michael Costa is right:

WAYNE Swan’s legislation requiring shareholders to approve executive termination payments worth more than a year’s base salary is another political stunt from a government that has run out of economic policy steam.... It is another childish attempt to blame our economic problems on executive greed. It also is an attempt by a desperate government to extricate itself from its failure to get Pacific Brands to change its decision to move part of its operation offshore.

Barack Obama at least has belatedly realised that bashing bosses and the desire for self-benefit must stop, because his recovery plans rely on both:
Bankers and executives on Wall Street need to realise that enriching themselves on the taxpayers’ dime is inexcusable. At the same time, the rest of us can’t afford to demonise every investor or entrepreneur who seeks to make a profit. That drive is what has always fuelled our prosperity, and it is what will ultimately get these banks lending and our economy moving once more.
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Nitschke’s troubling trail of death
Andrew Bolt
When my mother was just days from dying of cancer, I finally agreed to ask a doctor for help so she could kill herself.

Few people could have been more in favour of euthanasia than was I.

My only regret back then was that mum’s brave attempt failed, and she took more than another week to die.

Decades later, I’ve changed my mind completely. Legalised euthanasia now horrifies me, and not just because I learned much in mum’s last days.

In fact, what most influenced me far more has been—ironically—Philip Nitschke, founder of Exit International.

It’s Australia’s most famous lobbyist for euthanasia who has best shown me how dangerous it can be and what evil might be unleashed in legalising it.

I saw how he started by helping people to die who were not in pain or dying. I saw him move on to helping people to die who were not even sick.
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Earth Hour for the unearthed
Andrew Bolt
IT’S Earth Hour tomorrow, warming worriers - your chance to prove how much you don’t care.

For a start, you’ll prove how much you don’t care about being a hypocrite.

Last year people celebrated Earth Hour not just by turning off lights for an hour to “save” us from global warming gases. They celebrated also by burning forests of candles instead, and this year they’ll go one better, by marking it during the Grand Prix, amid clouds of burning rubber and sacred exhausts.

Still, that’s just symbolic hypocrisy. Worse is the hypocrisy that even Earth Hour’s sponsors have given up hiding.

One such sponsor is The Age, which this week printed a 24-page colour liftout to promote tomorrow’s stunt—expending more gas in praising Earth Hour than it will save in observing it.
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Lights off, as are brains
Andrew Bolt
Professor Bjorn Lomborg finds another reason to wonder if Earth Hour worshippers have any idea what they are doing or why:

When asked to extinguish electricity, people turn to candlelight. Candles seem natural, but are almost 100 times less efficient than incandescent light globes, and more than 300 times less efficient than fluorescent lights. If you use one candle for each extinguished globe, you’re essentially not cutting CO2 at all, and with two candles you’ll emit more CO2. Moreover, candles produce indoor air pollution 10 to 100 times the level of pollution caused by all cars, industry and electricity production.
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Fitzgibbon admits to Chinese gifts
Andrew Bolt
Suddenly the allegations against Joel Fitzgibbon grow more serious:

THE future of Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon was in doubt last night after he was forced to apologise for failing to declare two trips he made to China that were paid for by Chinese businesswoman Helen Liu…

Revelation of the trips came after it was reported yesterday a covert investigation by officials from Mr Fitzgibbon’s own Defence Department allegedly unearthed security concerns about his links with Ms Liu…

When questioned yesterday about his relationship with Ms Liu, whose family has been friends of the Fitzgibbons for more than 20 years, the Defence Minister said they had exchanged only small gifts. But last night, the minister’s office said that, following a review, Mr Fitzgibbon had identified two trips sponsored by Ms Liu that had not been declared to the registrar of members’ interests.

One reason Fitzgibbon will probably not be cut loose:

Last year, Mr Rudd and senior ministers Wayne Swan, Stephen Smith and Tony Burke came under pressure over trips to China paid for by a company run by Ian Tang, an associate of Chinese gambling entrepreneur Stanley Ho. The trips were declared.

Yes, but wasn’t the ultimate sponsor of some of Rudd’s travel actually the Chinese Government?

UPDATE

The Sydney Morning Herald adds:

Ms Liu has been mentioned in Australian intelligence reporting regarding her ties to Beijing. She is well connected in China, having rubbed shoulders with a range of senior leaders including the former premier Li Peng… Intelligence officials in Canberra have noted Ms Liu’s business activities and contact with Chinese officials in the context of Chinese Government activity in Australia.
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Unearthed hour
Andrew Bolt
Tim Blair checks which cities are doing what for Earth Hour:

Brisbane: Sir Richard Branson is hosting the Charity Hangar Ball during Earth Hour, a candlelit dinner for 3,000 at Brisbane Airport. The carbon-neutral event will feature performers Marcia Hines, Rogue Traders, Evermore and Housequake.

Branson is based in the UK. Hines lives in NSW. The Rogue Traders are from Melbourne. Evermore came from New Zealand and are now based in Victoria, along with Housequake. Carbon neutral? How? Are they replanting the Amazon?

From the rest of his check list it seems that Earth Hour on Saturday will be a marvellous way to raise awareness of global yawning.
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Fake journalist
Andrew Bolt
Jonathan Green, editor of Eric Beecher’s Crikey, demonstrates again what Beecher’s ”quality journalism” looks like.

Just a couple of weeks after his web site incited some readers to pose on my blog as racist supporters, Green now tells the ABC he posted on Twitter as a fake Pauline Hanson:

Guests

Fake Stephen Conroy (Leslie Nassar)

Fake Wilson Tuckey (anonymous)

Fake Pauline Hanson (Jonathan Greene)

What’s more, he admits that he gave as his contact address on Twitter the email address of the chairman of the Fairfax media group, Ron Walker. Exactly how many breaches of the journalists’ code of ethics does this represent?

UPDATE

This confession is now deleted from Green’s site:

Okay, time for a confession.

At about this time last week, a vaguely devilish thought occurred to me. Pauline Hanson had not so long ago announced her candidacy for Beaudesert (how do ordinary Queenslanders pronounce that? Just wondering) and I thought, as you do, what we need is a fake Pauline Hanson on Twitter.

For those not Twitter-literate, there is currently something of a fad for fake public personas on Twitter. What is Twitter? Oh dear.

Thus we read the often many-times-daily 140-character musings of fake Stephen Conroy, presumably fake Gerard Henderson, fake Ann Coulter (I think), fake Andrew Bolt (tricky to tell), fake Darth Vader, The F-cking Pope (probably fake), and The Queen (might actually be real).

The user name Pauline Hanson was available, and I sent out what would be my one and only Hanson Tweet: “Elect me!”

In quick order I had eight followers. This was of course where my problems began. Each time someone follows you on Twitter (you follow other Twitterers so you can read their posts) an email is sent to the address used to register the user name. Last Friday afternoon must therefore have been a slightly confusing time in the private offices of Fairfax chairman Ron Walker, or for whoever it is that has access to the address rwalker@fairfax.com.au. It isn’t me, I’m afraid.
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The sliming of Freeman Dyson
Andrew Bolt
One of the world’s greatest scientists was actually a hero of the Left until ... well, you know:

Lately, however, since coming “out of the closet as far as global warming is concerned,” as (Freeman) Dyson sometimes puts it, there has been noise all around him. Chat rooms, Web threads, editors’ letter boxes and Dyson’s own e-mail queue resonate with a thermal current of invective in which Dyson has discovered himself variously described as “a pompous twit,” “a blowhard,” “a cesspool of misinformation,” “an old coot riding into the sunset” and, perhaps inevitably, “a mad scientist.” Dyson had proposed that whatever inflammations the climate was experiencing might be a good thing because carbon dioxide helps plants of all kinds grow…

Dyson agrees with the prevailing view that there are rapidly rising carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere caused by human activity. To the planet, he suggests, the rising carbon may well be a MacGuffin, a striking yet ultimately benign occurrence in what Dyson says is still “a relatively cool period in the earth’s history.” The warming, he says, is not global but local, “making cold places warmer rather than making hot places hotter.” Far from expecting any drastic harmful consequences from these increased temperatures, he says the carbon may well be salubrious ... “Most of the evolution of life occurred on a planet substantially warmer than it is now,” he contends, “and substantially richer in carbon dioxide.”
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Far Left Losing Its Grip in Media, But Viciously Fighting Back
By Bill O'Reilly
A recent commentary on NPR by media guy David Folkenflik cited the tremendous ratings the FOX News Channel is currently getting. That, in contrast to the collapse at MSNBC and CNN.

As you know, the liberal media ran wild during the election cycle supporting Barack Obama. Because of that, some Obama voters tuned in to the left media. Apparently, they have left as fast as they arrived.

Sixty-two million Americans voted against Mr. Obama, and many of those people are now worried because of the bold moves the president has made. So folks who are uneasy with the direction of the country are not going to watch or read product from news organizations that are in the tank for Barack Obama. That's why some committed-left newspapers are failing and the liberal cable networks are getting hammered.

That is galling radical-left zealots, and they are on the attack. FNC's Glenn Beck is a good example of what's going on. The usual smear merchants on NBC are now attacking Glenn personally, and the Internet nutcases are doing the same. The more successful Mr. Beck becomes, the more these people try to hurt him.

As we told you on Monday, NBC President Jeff Zucker allows these hateful attacks on a daily basis, forever branding his network as a place of cheap and dishonest discourse.

Along with Zucker, former Bill Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta is also driving the hate industry. Podesta runs the Center for American Progress, a far-left hate group partially funded by our pal George Soros.

In addition to working for President Clinton, Podesta was the co-chairman of Barack Obama's transition team, and here is where the story takes a very serious turn. Podesta's Web site is devoted to hurting any prominent person who disagrees with liberal politics, and that includes critics of President Obama. And Podesta's mainstream media outlet is, of course, NBC News.

After we reported on Podesta's deputy, Amanda Terkel, harming a rape victim and her family because of Ms. Terkel's hatred for me, she showed up almost immediately on NBC News. NBC says it has no connection to Ms. Terkel and says I am disregarding the truth. Sure.

Finally, why should you care about any of this? Well, because it's your country. A well-coordinated, well-financed cabal attacking dissent is a pretty big story, especially because it involves Podesta, who has access to the president and NBC, which along with it's parent company General Electric is misusing its power.

Bottom line: The far left wants to silence and damage opposition, whether it's Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity or anyone else in the public eye. And those people will do just about anything to achieve their goals.