Headlines Sunday 29th March 2009

Rees to propose tough new bikie laws
NSW Premier Nathan Rees is considering draconian new laws that would make it illegal for criminal bikies to associate with one another. - of course enforcing current laws might work too. - ed.

Rudd arrives in London for G20 summit
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has arrived in London ahead of a second busy week of meetings leading up to Thursday's G20 summit of leaders of the world's largest economies.

Police monitor bikies convoy to Canberra
NSW Police have been monitoring a convoy of Rebels bikie gang members travelling from Sydney to Canberra for the funeral of a colleague murdered last week.

Over 830 landmarks to join Earth Hour
The Vatican is one of more than 830 landmarks around the world that will be plunged into darkness for Earth Hour, organisers have learnt overnight.

Pakistan Military supporting al-Qaeda, Taliban
There are "indications" that elements of Pakistan's intelligence service are lending support to al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, the top US military officer said.
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Labor’s Chinese whispering
Piers Akerman
THERE are some 1338 million people in China, give or take a million or so. Businesswoman Helen Liu is but one of them. - There is an excellent reason why China would wish to engage the ALP and not the conservatives. The conservatives would stand up for Australian interests. On the other hand, the ALP can be bought for a high price .. and compromised in many ways.
The idea that China bought the ALP by campaigning in Bennelong and compromising the leaders is not remarkable. The fact that mainstream media won’t report it is disappointing, but par for the course. That the defense minister could be caught red handed and excused his untidiness is unforgivable. Rudd had an opportunity to show some action when he was talking about Fitzgibbon, but he is lauded for doing nothing. I notice that the calm and assertive Turnbull was dismissed by Lateline as being desperate .. completely at odds with the picture evidence being shown .. Rudd was lip licking and furtive.
China want the same thing now that they wanted when they employed my ancestor Mak Sai Ying. Influence. The manufactured GFC is an opportunity .. there will be more. - ed.
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JOURNALISTS KILLED JESUS
Tim Blair
Charles Waterstreet calls for a “sense of proportion” over his friend Marcus Einfeld’s crime. Then, fewer than 80 words later:
Has there ever been a more pernicious avalanche of bile and hate by the press directed at a man who spent the previous 70 years of his life attempting to build a better Australia, a better world? A less circumspect man than myself might have written that he is not the first Jew they have crucified.
Nice sense of proportion you’ve got there, Chuck.
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HOUR OF POWER 2009
Tim Blair
Click! Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click.

As an ultra-orthodox Hour of Power participant, I’m required to turn on every single light in the house. We’re glowing like irradiated lab mice here. A text message arrived earlier from a Daily Telegraph colleague:
Just preparing for earth hour. Max is loving running through the house turning all our switches on. We think he’s really learning something important!
Knowledge is power, Max. And so is beautiful coal-fired electricity.
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For Human achievement hour ..
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SAVINGS NOT SO GREAT
Tim Blair
The UN’s Vannina Maestracci attempts – several times – to work out how much money will be saved by turning off the lights at UN headquarters:
Maestracci initially estimated the savings would be $81,000 before revising it to $24,300. She ultimately estimated the savings would be just $102 for the darkened hour.
Meanwhile, a Lileks reader will rely on an alternative illumination source:
I won’t need lights because of the glow of the burning tires I plan to ignite.
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GANGS FIXED
Tim Blair
A future Parliamentary speech from Police Minister Tony Kelly:

Mr Speaker, I respond to Opposition claims that the Government of NSW is not doing enough to combat violent bikie gangs. In fact, my department has done a great deal of work in this area.

Obviously, some avenues have not been productive. Banning or outlawing bikie gangs is difficult.

Yet other measures are available, Mr Speaker. I refer to the Government’s innovative new “Collective Nomenclature Bill (Motorcycles)”. Under legislation provided by this Bill, motorcycle gangs may freely assemble and ride only if they do so while prominently displaying the particular name of their gang.

As I understand it, bikie gangs – including the Bandidos, the Hells Angels, Notorious, the Rebels and so on – enjoy this sort of thing. Under new legislation, however, bikie gangs will only be assigned names from the following government-approved list:

* We Met at a Recital
* I Have Two Daddies
* You Must Try My Homemade Risotto
* Hell’s Netballers
* The Petersham Power Lispers
* Lilith Fair
* Cuter in Chiffon
* The Uniting Church
* Earth Hour
* Trinny and Susannah
* We Do Pedicures
* Jane Austen Reading Society
* Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
* The Guildford Salad Riders
* Roland’s Bath Toys
* The Slim-Hipped Bachelors
* Cirque du Soleil
* The Cloth Napkins
* Plus-Sized Lingerie
* Dancing With Quentin
* The Pedestrian Council of Australia
* Hair by Eduardo
* The Crystal Street Lycra and Lace Cuddle Fellowship
* On Our Way to Jenny Craig
* The Tanty Chuckers
* Really Getting Into Slow Food
* The Fabric Softeners
* Pass The Chafing Gel
* The Sous Chefs
* Dunny Boyz

It’s important to note, Mr Speaker, that even in cases where gangs refuse to ride under their new names, courts and the media will be obliged to use the mandatory government-appointed titles.

For example, reports of bikie violence will read: “Members of I Have Two Daddies today attacked rival gang The Cloth Napkins in a bloody confrontation at Sydney airport.”

I feel confident that these changes will reduce the attraction of gang membership to many violent young men in our community, Mr Speaker, particularly when combined with the latest all-pastel colour range now compulsory for bikie-Australians.

Also, Mr Speaker, may I mention the Harley-Davidson buy-back now under way. You possibly noticed Dancing With Quentin protesting outside Parliament today aboard their replacement Honda 110 step-throughs.

I’m happy to report that they all went home after a friendly visit from The Crystal Street Lycra And Lace Cuddle Fellowship. At least, I think they all went home.
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SUDDEN GLOOM
Tim Blair
A pre-emptive Earth Hour in Johannesburg:
We have a problem here. One of the floodlight towers has gone off and there is a sudden gloom around the ground. Play has stopped, understandably so, and the umpires consult each other. Hopefully, whoever’s in charge, will get it fixed asap.
It’s only a few hours until all the Earth Hour excitement begins. Prepare your lights.
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Bringing Beirut to NSW
Andrew Bolt
How charmingly our new arrivals are fitting in at their new Sydney home. A little bit of Beirut, circa 1975, is just what the joint needed:

THEY call themselves MBM - the Muslim Brotherhood Movement - a gang of 600 men who boast they are the toughest and best young street fighters of Middle Eastern descent in Sydney. MBM claims to be the biggest of four new gangs to emerge on Sydney streets in the past year…

Even hardened private security guards have expressed concern to police about the indiscriminate “punch and run” tactics of MBM members… Police say that a fortnight ago MBM members embarked upon a campaign of random assaults on men who crossed the path of a mob of about 100 toughs stalking Darlinghurst and Kings Cross during the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. A week ago about 30 MBM members intimidated private security guards at government car auctions at Smithfield.

The emergence of MBM also coincides with the rise of two other urban Sydney gangs - the Parra Boyz or Asesinoz MC and Brothers For Life or BFL.

Police say BFL - with a logo featuring crossed machine-guns - is not dissimilar to MBM in its extremist views, but membership numbers are unknown. Police describe Asesinoz, comprising teenagers of Middle Eastern decent, as “tough kids” who use the video-sharing website YouTube to promote Islamic extremism and anti-Australian actions…

Its creation follows that of the Notorious bikie gang, comprising members of Middle Eastern and Pacific Islander extraction, more than a year ago after a split in the membership of the Nomads motorcycle club.
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Save water. Die of thirst
Andrew Bolt
The Age reports this insanity as if it were a serious option:

THE controversial $750 million north-south pipeline is unnecessary and the desalination plant could have been avoided with greater efforts to cut water use, according to top-level advice delivered to the State Government just weeks before both projects were announced… If the water crisis deepened, the consultants suggested going to level 4 restrictions and “rationing" water to 130 litres a day for each person. This would save about 30 to 36 billion litres a year.

And cutting rations to none would save even more.

Memo to consultants: People already struggle to meet the Government’s 155 litres a day target, even with gardens left to die and ovals left to burn. The dams are now down to 30 per cent of capacity, with water restrictions now likely to last for years, if not forever, especially with Melbourne growing so fast. People want water, people like water, and people like the gardens that water produces. Simply denying them this stuff of civilisation is the recommendation of green zealots.
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Frozen scientists in the dark over Earth Hour
Andrew Bolt
From the Twitter page of the troubled three-man Arctic Survey of global warming believers:

Temperatures of -39’C are being experienced once again, as the team continue to travel north for day 28 of the expedition.

about 1 hour ago from web
Today the Catlin Arctic Survey team are switching off their lights to support Earth Hour.

about 5 hours ago from web

Temperatures have dropped off the thermometer once again, reaching lows of -40 and lower!

10:43 AM Mar 27th from web

It’s hard to believe how many ways reality is being denied by these frostbitten scientists, sitting in the dark on an ice floe, turning off a torch to stop a warming when it’s 39 degrees below freezing. Meanwhile the expendition’s sponsor, Prince Charles, blew all the saved emissions and more of this shivering crew, lightless on the dark ice, just by driving to the jet that’s blasted him from country to country on his grandly gassy global warming tour of South America:
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Warming worriers burn with indignation
Andrew Bolt
The Age and Sydney Morning Herald sponsored last night’s Earth Hour, in which warming worriers demanded we turn off lights and stop burning stuff to save the world from our nasty gases. But the papers’ gallery of pictures of the event shows that none of the believers seemed to think the message applied actually to them:

The Age detects some apathy:

However, while the world embraced the third annual Earth Hour, only 500 Victorian businesses signed up to last night’s event online, a third of last year’s total. Australia-wide, there were 2,500 businesses against last year’s 7230. Apathy, financial woes and the whine of the Grand Prix were among reasons cited by Melburnians for staying alight amid so much darkness.

Pardon? Melburnians say they’d cut their emissions, if it wasn’t that the sound of fast cars stopped them? We can’t be bothered now even trying to make a good excuse.
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Rudd can’t dine out on Obama
Andrew Bolt
Greg Sheridan says Kevin Rudd got a far cooler reception from Barack Obama than reported:

At one point the US President was supposed to host our Prime Minister for lunch during his Washington visit. The President was too busy, so the lunch duties went instead to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.... Rudd travelled 10,000km to see Obama but Obama chose to spend no more than the more or less minimum time that any Australian prime minister would get with the President.

This is actually a significant setback for Rudd.... (I)t is hard to imagine any US president cancelling a lunch with John Howard and this not being reported as a serious snub.

And there’s this wise warning:
Rudd is also in very grave danger of making a fatal miscalculation in the way he handles China. Everyone knows Rudd speaks Mandarin and knows quite a lot about China. But he is seriously overdoing it. He looks obsessive and a bit plaintive in the way he is always promoting China internationally. It is Rudd’s job to talk up Australia, not to talk up China.
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Can’t take the lad out of lady
Andrew Bolt
Miranda Devine is wondering what “graduation” actually occurred:

It’s a pity some of the ladettes from Channel Nine’s fairytale reality show, Ladette To Lady, chose to celebrate their graduation from a posh British finishing school by stripping for lads’ magazine Zoo Weekly.

The serious point, though, is that the culture in which we find ourselves can profoundly influence behaviour, especially of the weak and vulnerable. The winner of the show, a former stripper who didn’t bare it later for Zoo Weekly, shows how a toxic culture of family disintegration affected her, at first, too:

The root of her troubles lay in her troubled childhood, shunted between foster homes after being removed from her mother at age seven.
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Facts punished
Andrew Bolt
A frustrated parent (name withheld) writes:

I attended a school debate on Thursday night, at which my year 11 son participated. The topic involved the question of pre-ordained seats for Aboriginals. My son was part of the negative side’s team, who were not from the hosting school (name of school withheld).

The adjudicator was from the hosting school. As anticipated, the affirmative side raised the issue of the ”Stolen Generation” as part of their argument in support of such a move. Naturally, the negative side was well-prepared for that argument, and to be sure, I had suggested some points to consider as part of my son’s preparation.

The affirmative side won the case by 2 points. However, during the delivery of the negative side’s case, whenever the point was made denying the validity of the Stolen Generation on racist grounds, the Adjudicator displayed a reaction indicating the point caused him some distress. Further, during his delivery of the adjudication, he said that ”he disagreed with the argument that there was no Stolen Generation based on racist grounds.” I believe on that basis he immediately disqualified himself from any claim to objectivity, and thus should have been denied the right to adjudicate.

Afterwards, even before I opened my mouth, the three boys on the negative side were all over his lack of impartiality. They wanted to complain, however, I suggested they take counsel from their teacher the next day who was, unfortunately, unable to attend on the night. She subsequently, as I understand, suggested they not pursue it, due to the unlikely “return on investment” . I feel this sort of outright unfairness AND downright bias, all in the name of PC, is pretty intolerable. And, not to mention, the 2 point loss.

Next step? Complain or stay silent?
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Dying for Gaia
Andrew Bolt
Big Green Brother will soon be able to kill the frail at the flick of a remote:

ELECTRICITY companies could soon ration power by remotely turning off your television or air-conditioner… Electrical Transmitters South Australia (ETSA) Utilities wants to install a new electronic control box in every Adelaide home, starting in 2011.

ETSA chief executive Lew Owens said the device could prevent the kind of suburban blackouts that Adelaide experienced in January, by reducing demand across the city…

It is operated by FM radio signal and can be controlled house by house. It follows successful trials by ETSA of a less sophisticated “peak breaker” box attached to air-conditioners in Mawson Lakes and Glenelg, and used to turn off compressors in periods of peak demand in heatwaves.

Why is this scheme so deadly to the poor and frail? Just check what happened during Adelaide’s last heat wave:
Health Minister John Hill last night told The Advertiser he was concerned there had been 22 sudden deaths in yesterday’s 43.1C heat – the third consecutive day above 40C. Today there have been eleven sudden deaths across metropolitan Adelaide and country SA…

“There is a high probability that a number of the deaths are associated with the hot weather,” he said."About 14 of (the 22) deaths were elderly....”

Those deaths, especially among the elderly, led to this appeal, backed even by the green-mad State Government:

Health officials are asking all GPs to contact vulnerable patients to ensure they are coping… Council on the Ageing chief executive John Yates yesterday told the elderly: “If you have airconditioning, use it.

“Many older South Australians were brought up in an era before airconditioning and some of them are reluctant to use it, partly from anxiety about the cost of running their system, given electricity costs have just been increased,” he said. “In the extreme weather conditions we are currently experiencing, it could literally be fatal for older people not to use it.”

Yes, it can be fatal to the elderly not to use airconditioning in a heat-wave. But now that airconditioning can be switched off by remote control. And who is most likely to opt in to such a scheme, which promises to save them a few dollars? Precisely the kind of people most in danger of dying in a heat wave.

A word to the green politicians pushing this mad plan. The answer to not having enough power in a heat wave is to install more generators, not bump off more people.
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The Chief Justice of White Australia
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd picked his perfect Chief Justice - a man who believes we should formally divide ourselves by race, with different laws for each:

THE Chief Justice of the High Court, Robert French, has dismissed the legal argument used by the former prime minister John Howard against the reaching of a treaty with indigenous Australia.

Justice French disagreed with the view that a treaty was impossible because Aboriginal Australia was not a sovereign nation… The Mabo decisions and the Native Title Act recognised indigenous rights without undermining Australia’s sovereignty and could provide the basis for an agreement, Justice French said in a speech at the University of Melbourne Law School.

”Such an agreement could recognise and acknowledge traditional law and custom of indigenous communities across Australia, their historical relationship with their country, their prior occupancy of the continent and that there are those who have maintained and asserted their traditional rights to the present time,” he said.

Who’d have thought the Left would one day actually promote apartheid, and have the legal and political clout to consider imposing it? Witness the cultural suicide of the West.

UPDATE

Remember when Attorney General Robert McClelland foolishly tried to reassure us that his new Chief Justice was actually a “black-letter lawyer” and no creature of the Left? What is now more worthless: McClelland’s word or judgement?