Headlines Friday 13th March 2009

Jobs sent to China to 'keep them happy': Rees
Thousands of Australian jobs are being sent to China because the NSW Premier says it keeps the rising superpower happy.
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Oil slick spreads from Qld spill
Local government authorities will send in heavy machinery to clean up foul smelling blankets of oil threatening wildlife and ecosystems on several southeast Queensland beaches.
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German gunman 'made online threat'
A teenager who went on a rampage in his old school announced his intentions on the internet just hours earlier, an official says.
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Iraq court jails Bush shoe-thrower for three years
A court has sentenced the Iraqi journalist who became an Arab world hero after throwing his shoes at US President George W Bush to three years in prison.
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5.2%: Jobless rate jumps, but PM says it could've been worse
Australia's unemployment rate was a seasonally adjusted 5.2 per cent in February, compared with an revised 4.8 per cent in January, figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show.
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North Korea satellite plan has US worried
NORTH Korea wants to launch a satellite early next month, but the US wants it to scrap what it sees as a disguised missile test.
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Principal apologises over wristband ban
A SCHOOL backs down after telling a pupil to remove a Victoria bushfire appeal wristband.
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Kiwi linguists up in arms over 'dodgy' Underbelly accent
Emissions trading scheme blamed for power bill hike
Shark spotted at Manly beach
Horse bites off man's testicle
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How non-immunising parents put us all at risk
A handful of irresponsible parents are putting Chris Smith's kids at risk. Why?
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Wong's ETS: What a joke
If there were any doubts about Penny Wong's emissions trading scheme being a complete joke they should be completely gone now, according to Alan Jones.
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SPEAK MORE ABOUT FIRE
Tim Blair
In the Age, Melbourne writer Jill Sutton experiences an overload of deep thoughts following Victorian bushfires:
Given that we are doomed to mention “fire” in a fire warning, how do we shape a judicious public policy about bushfire prevention?

I suggest we could better come to terms with the role of fire in our imaginative and social experience.
In recent experience, it burns houses and kills people.
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NATIONAL ELF CARE
Tim Blair
Aluminium company Alcoa encountered problems five years ago in Iceland:
Before Alcoa could build its smelter it had to defer to a government expert to scour the enclosed plant site and certify that no elves were on or under it. It was a delicate corporate situation, an Alcoa spokesman told me, because they had to pay hard cash to declare the site elf-free but, as he put it, “we couldn’t as a company be in a position of acknowledging the existence of hidden people.”
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50 YEARS FLY BY
Tim Blair
Time magazine lists the ten most endangered newspapers in America, including the Miami Herald and the Boston Globe
“I think it’s going to be a very, very long time before newspapers disappear,” Mr. Sulzberger said. “Anyway, we’re not buying just a newspaper. We’re buying an organization that gathers the news, transmits the news. And if it turns out in 50 years that it’s all electronic, we’re ready for that too.”
The electronic age arrived a little faster than Sulzberger (and many – probably most – of us) expected. Gathering and transmitting news is still a viable business, but the paper element of it is vanishing at almost the same rate as the authority of the New York Times. As always, culture and technology run at the same speed.
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ZOMBIE ECONOMY
Tim Blair
A question for Kevin Rudd:
“What does he expect dead people to spend money on to stimulate the economy?”
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THE FUN PART IS HARVESTING THEM
Tim Blair
Dozens of battery-farm Kermits make a dandy fashion statement:
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BEGIN AT ANOTHER SITE
Tim Blair
A question for Antony Loewenstein, and his humble reply:
Q: What do you regard as your best blog entry?

A: Where to begin?
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MONKEY INSULTED
Tim Blair
Trouble on Iranian TV, involving a toy monkey:
When the presenter of Amoo Pourang, a programme watched by millions of Iranian children three times a week on state TV, asked the name of the toy the boy had been given as a reward for behaving himself, the child replied: “Well, my father calls him Ahmadinejad.”
The live show now faces closure due to “financial and spiritual damage”. At least the matter never went to court.
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VALUES JET
Tim Blair
Perhaps Australia should attend the UN’s anti-Israel, kiss-up-to-Islam hate fest in Geneva … but only if our delegates fly there in the sports illustrated model plane

Southwest’s decorative aircraft features Israeli model Bar Refaeli. A certain message would be delivered even before our representatives spoke.
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More hope in hell of Ruddernomics working
Andrew Bolt
I doubt even Kevin Rudd’s $42 billion is enough stimulus to help the dead - but it is surely too much to help the living:
THE bank accounts of dead people and tourism operators in Niagara Falls are among the latest beneficiaries of the Rudd Government’s stimulus package, as details emerge of the bizarre ways the money is being distributed.
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Boycott this hate fest
Andrew Bolt
WHY on earth is the Rudd Government going to a festival of hate against Israel and the West?

Actually, it’s not hard to work out why the Government won’t join a boycott by other democracies of next month’s United Nations bizarre conference on “racism”.

You see, the Prime Minister is desperate to win the cheap votes of African and Muslim nations in his bid for a temporary seat at the United Nations Security Council, where we would join great powers such as Burkina Faso, Libya, Costa Rica and Croatia.

It is to win this paltry prize that the Rudd Government this week announced it was even sending $10 million in aid to the Zimbabwean regime of Robert Mugabe, who is still a hero in much of Africa.
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Liberals give Activist General a warning
Andrew Bolt
THE Opposition has called out Quentin Bryce and she now has no choice.

She should quit playing at being a Labor politician—a partisan hack—and be a real Governor-General. Or risk a constitutional crisis.

The Opposition said nothing when Bryce backed the Rudd Government’s plans for paid maternity leave.

It said nothing when she last year launched in book version the report of the Rudd Government’s global warming adviser, Ross Garnaut.

It said nothing when she went to Dubai for a conference on renewable energy and spoke as if the Rudd Government’s climate change minister, vowing Australia would be part of a global “solution” to global warming.

But Bryce now seems to have abandoned completely the convention that the Governor-General be bipartisan and above politics—a figure of unity. And the Opposition has had enough.
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Obama’s gift for offending
Andrew Bolt
BARACK Obama vowed to make friends with America’s foes. But it seems he literally has a gift for making friends foes.

Last week the new President hosted his first visit by a major ally—British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

It started badly. Obama may want talks with enemies such as Iran and Hamas, but has less time for talks with the Brits. To Brown’s reported dismay, the traditional joint press conference was cancelled, robbing him of TV glory.

But worse was to come with the equally traditional exchange of gifts.

Brown thought hard about his presents, giving Obama a desk pen-holder carved from the timber of a Royal Navy anti-slavery ship of the 19th century. To that he added the framed commission for HMS Resolute, a British ship saved from Arctic ice by America and whose timbers a grateful Queen Victoria had made into a desk now standing in the Oval Office.
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Ruddernomics rejected
Andrew Bolt
Alan Wood says confidence in Barack Obama and his team is falling:

Despite early optimism, Barack Obama’s attempts to stimulate the economy and fix the banks are running into growing criticism at home and abroad… On Wednesday The Wall Street Journal reported that Obama and his Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s performance was given failing grades in the Journal’s latest survey of US economists. The story was headed “Economists Give Obama an ‘F“‘, and Geithner now has a worse rating than George Bush’s Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Europe is rejecting the Ruddernomics of Obama - and Kevin Rudd:

But don’t expect the G20 Leaders meeting in London in early April to solve anything. The US and Europe are already in disagreement about the appropriate fiscal policy response. The US wants Europe to implement aggressive fiscal stimulus, but EU finance ministers meeting in Brussels this week insisted they were already doing enough and didn’t want to go on running up deficits and debt.

Former NSW Treasurer Michael Costa warns that Rudd is dangerously “self-absorbed” with a “misplaced self-confidence” that’s affecting his response to the crisis.

None of his policies - including his emissions trading scheme and workplace laws - are helping, either:

RETAIL companies employing hundreds of thousands of workers have demanded the Rudd Government delay its overhaul of award conditions by 12 months, warning that the revamp would force up costs and cost jobs. Echoing the concerns of the hospitality sector, the Australian Retailers Association said two-thirds of its members believed Labor’s workplace laws would lead to job cuts and “force many to close their doors”.
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We’re going
Andrew Bolt
The newspapers are dying, one by one, in America. Melbourne, too, will likely lose one of its two daily papers in a few years, Speaking selfishly, I’m glad it won’t be the one that employs me.
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Some projection - and not just of a shoe
Andrew Bolt
If he’s such an Arab hero, why is he in an Arab jail?

AN Iraqi journalist who became an Arab hero after throwing his shoes at US President George Bush has been jailed for three years.
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Save our planet. Scrap our rights
Andrew Bolt
To “save” the planet from a warming that halted a decade ago, the Rudd Government has decided to scrap a few of your civil rights - including the right to silence and to not incriminate yourself.
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Let those sweet victims go
Andrew Bolt
Another innocent freed:

The Taleban commander responsible for increasingly sophisticated bomb attacks on British soldiers in Afghanistan is a former detainee of Guantánamo Bay released from prison in Kabul last year by Hamid Karzai’s Government, The Times has learnt. Abdullah Ghulam Rasoul was held in Guantánamo for six years before being released to Afghan authorities in December 2007, after a US military review board decided unanimously that he was no longer a threat.

How many more will be released when Barack Obama closes Guantanamo?
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This crisis will last longer than Rudd’s dollars
Andrew Bolt
Worse than expected:

AUSTRALIA’S jobless rate has soared to 5.2 per cent for the first time in nearly four years after 47,100 people joined the dole queue in February. The rise in the unemployment follows a similar spike to 4.8 per cent in January, Australian Bureau of Statistics data released today…

Economists had forecast the jobless rate to rise to 5.0 per cent and employment to fall by around 20,000.

Where did that $10.4 billion stimulus package go? How will we now repay it?

And is this really the time to pass new workplace laws making it harder to hire workers, or new global warming laws that force companies to pay more for their energy?

Whether you are Labor, Liberal or Green, you should now become seriously alarmed that we’ve led now by politicians who do not understand this crisis and have wasted billions on useless cures.
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Speaking of Aboriginal justice…
Andrew Bolt
Of course, the boy could just have had very brittle bones:

Gwen Brown, 53, one of the most awarded and senior ACPOs [Aboriginal Community Police Officers] in the Territory, has been sacked for hitting her nephew with a stick, but she says she has the cultural right to do so…

“I got him and hit him on the butt with a stick, about three times,” she said. “It was just a long, thin ceremony stick. He put his arms behind him and I accidentally broke his arm."…
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O’Donoghue admits: black parliaments don’t work
Andrew Bolt
Lowitja O’Donoghue, who once claimed to be ”stolen”, says in private what she should have admitted in public:

FORMER ATSIC chief Lowitja O’Donoghue has unleashed a furious attack on the disbanded body, claiming its male leaders were preoccupied with drinking, gambling and womanising… Ms O’Donoghue said the organisation she headed for six years in the 1990s “supported the greedy, not the needy”.

ATSIC was a “joke” because decisions were made at casinos instead of the board table, its foundation chairwoman and one-time Australian of the Year said. ..

“In the afternoons there are empty seats all around the room because too many people are off gambling on horse races or poker machines,” she said.

“Aboriginal leaders have a major problem with drinking, smoking and using illicit drugs. The other big problem with indigenous men is they womanise too much—they don’t know how to curb their womanising behaviour. It is something they enjoy, and it affects their decision-making as leaders.”
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Honesty in advertising at last
Andrew Bolt
After all, it’s not to serve the planet but your ego.