Headlines Tuesday 24th March 2009

Communication failure: Security watched bikie brawl brewing
Communication problems between airport security and police officers have been highlighted with revelations tension between bikies at Sydney Airport started on board a flight, well before Sunday fatal brawl. ...
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Sydney struck by another drive-by shooting
Shots have been fired into a suburban Sydney house occupied by five people, including three children, in the latest in a spate of drive-by shootings....
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US stocks skyrocket on Obama's bank toxic asset plan
Wall Street shares skyrocketed on Monday as the market cheered a government-private sector plan to clean up toxic assets clogging the balance sheets of banks to help stabilise the US economy....
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Rudd's popularity at near record levels
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's personal popularity has returned to near record levels, while opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull has lost support....
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Mass brawl at Melbourne hotspot sparks investigation
Victorian Premier John Brumby has put Melbourne's nightspots on notice following a mass brawl at a notorious inner-city venue....
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Bligh determined to pick her own cabinet
Anna Bligh isn't just happy to be the first woman to win a state election, she's also determined to be the first Labor premier to pick her own cabinet....
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Williams recovering after heart surgery
US comedian Robin Williams is recovering at a hospital in Cleveland after having heart surgery that his doctors have deemed successful....
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Bikies prove how dodgy Sydney Airport security is
If there was any doubt about the inadequacy of Sydney Airport security, it was put to bed as bikies bashed a man to death in front of shocked passengers. Chris Smith says its time for a change. Now.
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ANZ bank mongrels kill great Aussie institution
Australians have always known the banks are bastards, but it's been proven once and for all by the ANZ killing off the Marrickville Anzac Memorial Club. Alan Jones explains.
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Bikie madmen not afraid of politicians riding spin cycles
Piers Akerman
MICK Keelty, you have to be kidding. A day after a man was bashed to death at Sydney’s Qantas domestic terminal you say that security at the airport is not bad.

As Australian Federal Police Commissioner, you would have to know that airport security around the nation has holes you could fly an Airbus through.

Perth and Melbourne have problems and Sydney has always had problems. - Piers, I don’t think it is Mick Keelty’s fault that the political masters have stripped him bare. We still need him to do the best job he can, and if we allow him to get rolled, as eventually we must, the replacement will be an ALP stooge.
This issue is close to my heart, as I was reading recently when making inquiry into the Newling investigation into Police failure in Cabramatta in the ‘90s. The issues faced by some whistleblowers who were set upon by their government are similar to mine. I note that the possibility of Hamidur Rahman having been murdered has been acknowledged by the government as being something they didn’t feel they needed to investigate
“Given the gravity of the case, was the allegation contained in the letter duly investigated?”

had the reply

“I am advised that a Chief Investigator of the Department’s Employment Performance and Conduct Directorate conducted an extensive phone interview with the former teacher on 19 April 2007, and that Minister Della Bosca later responded to representations by the former teacher’s local Member, providing details of a contact officer should the former teacher wish to discuss matters further.
I am advised that the knowledge by staff at the school of the former student’s allergy to peanuts was a matter extensively examined by the Coronial Inquiry. The findings of the Senior Deputy State Coroner were published on 9 September 2005.”

What the reply glossed over was that there was no investigation following the grave allegations, the phone call having preceded them. Also the referral officer was one named as being a personal threat to the ‘whistle blower’ so my job Minister and my local member threatened me and have bragged about it to the senate.
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But it isn’t solely my issue that I am discussing. The collapse of the 5T gang was not a result of government intervention or community policing but more closely related to a change of heart with gang leaders when some became converts to Christianity thanks to the work of local churches sometimes working in fear of the police.
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Corruption is not the fault of the police. I believe it is directly relatable to ALP corruption which can be publicly trailed back to the thirties (Great Depression). I note Hickie’s and Marr’s ludicrous essay into the issue of Liberal corruption in the seventies and note how poorly they examine the ALP of the time through blame and innuendo. No policeman enters the force wanting to be corrupt. It is sad to see how honest and hard working individuals, such as Keelty can be compromised by their political masters. - ed.
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WHITE GUYS CAN’T BUMP
Tim Blair
In advance of meeting Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd practices his fist bump:

Therese doesn’t seem to be buying it. A more experienced duo demonstrates the correct method:
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WE’VE WON
Tim Blair
George Monbiot concedes:
Quietly in public, loudly in private, climate scientists everywhere are saying the same thing: it’s over. The years in which more than two degrees of global warming could have been prevented have passed, the opportunities squandered by denial and delay. On current trajectories we’ll be lucky to get away with four degrees. Mitigation (limiting greenhouse gas pollution) has failed; now we must adapt to what nature sends our way. If we can.
Okie dokie. By the way, George, when exactly were the years “in which more than two degrees of global warming could have been prevented”? Five years ago? Ten years ago? One hundred years ago?
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HITTIN’ AIN’T BEATIN’
Tim Blair
First we had the TV executive whose network aimed to improve the public image of Muslims, only for him to end up on murder charges after decapitating his wife. And now the holy guy chosen by the Muslim Alliance of North American to be their spokesman on the issue is alleged to be a wife-belter himself, a charge Mauri Saalakhan purportedly denies:
The allegations — which I have since discovered are now on a number of extremely hostile anti-Islam, anti-Muslim websites — are UNTRUE. I have never beaten up any woman in my life. There have been a number of occasions in the PAST (not the present), and few in number, when I have struck a woman with an open hand — an admission that I am not proud of — but I have never beaten a woman! And on the few occasions when this did happen — with three (I can count them) exceptions — it was in response to being struck first.
Saalakhan is Director of Operations at the Peace and Justice Foundation.
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140 BYTES, ALL FAKE
Tim Blair
Nobody on Twitter is real.

UPDATE. In other tech developments, Barack Obama’s willful teleprompter has turned against its boss:

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INDIA ON THE MOVE
Tim Blair
This little guy changes everything:
Under the cover of darkness in the dead of night, when Mumbai’s incessant traffic had slowed down, and pedestrians were few, seven gleaming cars purred their way into the rolling grounds at the Parsi Gymkhana, Marine Drive.

The world’s cheapest car, the Tata Nano, had finally arrived in the city for its unveiling today, with a security guard in each vehicle. The cars reached the gymkhana from the manufacturing plant at Pant Nagar, Uttarakhand, after a stopover at Vashi.
Thus are millions liberated. The Nano might be the most significant car since Ford’s Model T.

UPDATE. On the other hand, Saab is screwed.
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CHUCKLER IN CHIEF
Tim Blair
A view rarely heard over the past eight years:
In a way, it’s heartening to hear our politicians stumble over words, mangle syntax and make inappropriate jokes. It shows politicians are human, too.
Obama redeems Bush! Although it’s difficult to picture Bush being such a gigglepants:
President Barack Obama said he believes the global financial system remains at risk of implosion with the failure of Citigroup or AIG, touching off “an even more destructive recession and potentially depression.”

His remarks came in a “60 Minutes” interview in which he was pressed by an incredulous Steve Kroft for laughing and chuckling several times while discussing the perilous state of the world’s economy.

“You’re sitting here. And you’re— you are laughing. You are laughing about some of these problems. Are people going to look at this and say, ‘I mean, he’s sitting there just making jokes about money—’ How do you deal with— I mean: explain. . .” Kroft asks at one point.

“Are you punch-drunk?” Kroft says.

“No, no. There’s gotta be a little gallows humor to get you through the day,” Obama says, with a laugh.
What a very odd fellow.
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TRAWL SQUAD
Tim Blair
Prepare to be watched:
The Federal Government will begin trawling blog sites as part of a new media monitoring strategy, with official documents singling out a website critical of the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy.
ShadowLands, for one, welcomes our new Ruddian overlords.

UPDATE. Things are worse in Iran, as you’d expect.
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THEY WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG
Tim Blair
“The irreducible starting point of the S.L.A.’s agenda was the belief that the justice system treated blacks differently from whites.” A point proved by court treatment of rich white woman (and former S.L.A member) Sara Jane Olson.
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Risk removed
Andrew Bolt
A news report for Melbourne, now fast running out of water for its booming population:

The demonstrators unfurled a banner saying “No Risky Dams” in metre-high letters. They were detained and thrown out of the country.

But thrown out of the wrong country, alas.
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How to do Something now there’s Nothing?
Andrew Bolt
To fight the recession, the Rudd Government recklessly defined Doing Something as spending billions - and it attacked the Opposition as the party of Doing Nothing for worrying about the debt. But now the Government will be Doing Nothing itself as it runs out of cash:

PROGRAMS could be axed in the May Budget to ‘prioritise’ Government spending, Treasurer Wayne Swan said. Warning of a Budget of sacrifices brought on by the economic crisis, Mr Swan spoke for the first time of reconsidering some programs because the Rudd Government could no longer afford them all.

How will it now explain why we need both more spending and less?
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Your own vote, please
Andrew Bolt
Gerard Henderson nominates - and I’d second:

Chris Uhlmann, the best daily ABC interviewer by a wide margin, asked the Prime Minister on AM six times how increasing the cost of employing labour protects jobs.
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Too dangerous to police
Andrew Bolt
In a society in which the lawful are endlessly policed, the lawless are given room to kill:

THE wild brawl between bikies at Sydney Airport in which a man was bludgeoned to death had started with pushing and shoving 15 minutes earlier in view of security officers, raising serious questions over the adequacy of airport security… It emerged yesterday security guards had helped move passengers away from an initial melee but the fight was able to develop until Mr Zervas, the brother of a Hells Angel, was dead.
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Troops out … of Afghanistan
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd deserves to suffer the kind of the opportunist campaign against this deployment in Afghanistan that he so cynically waged against John Howard’s in Iraq:
NEARLY two-thirds of Australian voters now oppose sending more troops to Afghanistan as Kevin Rudd faces US pressure to send extra military to fight the Taliban.

Difference is, I expect the Coalition to be more responsible in Opposition than Rudd ever was. I hope I’m not wrong:

POPULAR sentiment in Australia towards our involvement in Afghanistan has dramatically turned just as Malcolm Turnbull has begun to reach out for populist causes. Yesterday the Opposition Leader leapt into a law and order campaign following Sunday’s deadly bikie brawl at Sydney Airport, and demanded Kevin Rudd explain his strategy in Afghanistan.

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Kevin Obama
Andrew Bolt
It’s Barack Obama’s own 2020 summit - where gathering the “best and brightest” is more politically useful than actually listening to them:
Six weeks after President Barack Obama appointed a blue-ribbon panel to help him dig America out of its economic crisis, the board has yet to hold an official public meeting.

Straight out of Kevin Rudd’s populist playbook, with Rudd coming up to the first anniversary of the ideas summit he has yet to respond to.

Obama lost again without his teleprompter.
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The Bryce Government speaks
Andrew Bolt
Quentin Bryce, far from staying out a politics as Governor General, has convinced local reporters covering her African tour that she is the government:
Visiting Australian Governor General, Quentin Bryce, on Sunday said that her government is eager to support efforts of improving maternal health in Zambia.

In Namibia:

Bryce had commended Namibia for its position and international role, particularly within the context of the United Nations, Commonwealth, the African Union and SADC. She said Australia would like to assist Namibia in achieving the Millennium Development Goals, through the strengthening of technical cooperation between the two countries and scholarships to Namibians.

It’s astonishing that a woman meant to be above politics is speaking like a minister of the Ruddd Government - or even its leader.
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Rudd won’t pass on Chinese whispers
Andrew Bolt
The"Manchurian candidate” charge is making Kevin Rudd wary of revealing too much:

With Kevin Rudd about to visit Washington for his first meeting with President Barack Obama, who better to bend the Prime Minister’s ear than the propaganda chief of the Chinese Communist Party, Li Changchun…

During Saturday’s talks Mr Li, the head of propaganda, media and ideology and ranked five in China’s nine-person ruling politburo standing committee, also had other issues to discuss: the stalled free trade agreement between the countries, the economic crisis and hopes Australia would lobby for China to play a more central role in the International Monetary Fund.

Normally such a meeting would be big news, but it wasn’t because the Australian media was not told… Australians were therefore none the wiser about what motivated Mr Rudd to declare on Sunday, less than 24 hours after meeting Mr Li, that he would push for China to be given a more central role in the global financial system…

When asked why such an important meeting would be kept from the Australian media at such a crucial time in the bilateral relationship, a spokeswoman for Mr Rudd told The Australian: “It was a private meeting between the two. It is not the Prime Minister of Australia’s role to put out a press release announcing what every visiting politician is doing.”

But to be fair, some journalists were indeed told of Rudd’s meeting with China’s propaganda chief in time to give Rudd exposure in a market that counted most:

Yet China’s state-owned media was ushered into The Lodge and Mr Rudd was splashed across the Chinese press with footage of his talks on the nation’s main television station CCTV. As a result, hundreds of millions of Chinese knew more about Mr Rudd’s diplomatic activities than did his own countrymen.
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Obama: Laughing all the way to the empty bank
Andrew Bolt
He does know what he’s doing, right?

(Barack Obama’s) remarks came in a"60 Minutes” interview in which he was pressed by Steve Kroft for laughing and chuckling several times while discussing the perilous state of the world’s economy.

“You’re sitting here. And you’re— you are laughing. You are laughing about some of these problems. Are people going to look at this and say, ‘I mean, he’s sitting there just making jokes about money—’ How do you deal with— I mean: explain. . .” Kroft asked at one point.

“Are you punch-drunk?” Kroft said.

Or doesn’t he? After already spending so much on “rescue plans” that he’s helped push the deficit to proportions not seen since World War Two, Obama now figures yet another $1 trillion is needed:

The Obama administration’s latest attempt to tackle the banking crisis and get loans flowing to families and businesses will create a new government entity, the Public-Private Investment Program, to help purchase as much as $1 trillion in toxic assets on banks’ books.
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Repeat, but with more love
Andrew Bolt
The ABC decides that this headline is too negative:
Virtually impossible to avoid recession, Rudd says

The rewrite is so much better - for some:

Rudd says jobs are priority as recession looms
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Green greed
Andrew Bolt
When an industry depends on government subsidies to survive, the corrupt sniff an opportunity:

Powerful wind turbines churned the air above La Muela last week but the stir in this small Aragonese town was caused by the arrest of the mayor and 18 other people on charges that reveal a new phenomenon in Spain: eco-corruption.

Windswept La Muela, with its 500 giant windmills, has become one of Spain’s richest towns on the back of what is the new gold for rural communities - renewable energy… Generating companies pay €1m (£940,000) a year to the town hall in rent and taxes. Private landowners, many of whose families worked the hard, unforgiving land for centuries, share a further €0.5m a year. Planting windmills has proved far more lucrative than cultivating crops....

While it was the construction boom that accompanied the wind turbines which led to the arrest of Pinilla and other officials alleged to have demanded backhanders, the renewable energies explosion was already leaving a footprint of sleaze elsewhere in Spain… Inspectors are also busy looking at a sudden boom in solar farms, where subsidies assuring a 12% annual return on investment over 25 years sent Spain’s notoriously corrupt real estate developers into a frenzy…

When Spain’s National Commission for Energy decided to inspect 30 solar gardens, it found only 13 of them had been built properly and were actually dumping electricity into the network.

No wonder renewable energy has attracted the interest of the Mafia in Italy, and of sharp businessmen in Britain.
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Then build your own mosque
Andrew Bolt
Is this about faith - or about power?

Dozens of Islamic students plan to protest today to demand that a dedicated Muslim prayer room replace an existing multi-faith centre at Melbourne’s RMIT.

RMIT University’s acting pro vice-chancellor (students), Maddy McMaster, explains why this secular university won’t cave in to demands for yet more:


RMIT is in the midst of a $500 million capital works program. In 2007, a building on the city campus was gutted in preparation for major works. Among the facilities demolished was a Muslim prayer space. The university continues to offer two other Muslim prayer rooms on the city campus. However, the Islamic Society is campaigning for two multi-faith prayer rooms in RMIT’s city campus Spiritual Centre to be designated as Muslim-only; these are rooms to which Muslim staff and students already receive preferential access. RMIT’s policy, however, is that prayer rooms in its Spiritual Centre are multi-faith, open to bookings by members of all faiths…

RMIT has gone out of its way to accommodate the needs of Muslim students and staff. The university already provides eight Muslim prayer rooms (male and female): two on the city campus, two on the Brunswick campus and four on the Bundoora campus. The rooms have ablution facilities. In addition, RMIT Training is opening an additional Muslim prayer room to meet demand propelled by growing student numbers for English language education at its Swanston Street premises. Our chaplaincy staff includes the imam of the West Heidelberg mosque, Riad Galil.

Yet despite the university’s display of goodwill, we are still at an impasse. Our offers to the Islamic student society have gone more than halfway and gestures of good faith have been rejected.

I also note that the Muslim students are demanding the university build them the de-facto mosque that Melbourne-city Muslims won’t build themselves:

The situation is complicated by the lack of mosques in the inner city… This is a challenge for the whole community, as evidenced by the growing number of non-RMIT students participating in Muslim prayers on our campuses.

Can’t share. Won’t share. Demanding more than their share. Is this the authentic face of young Muslims in Australia?
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Letting loose the dangerous
Andrew Bolt
Victoria Police HQ sends its officers an email to watch out for a prisoner now released into an unsuspecting community:

Likely to return to the Richmond area and come under police notice.

The Office of Corrections have stated that (name deleted) has been released but is a danger to the community. His danger flags include Psychiatric Condition, Suicide Risk and Significant Violence. His extensive criminal history includes, Aggravated Burglaries, Armed Robberies, Assault Police, Drug Offences and Serious Assaults – including slashing the throat of a prison officer with a concealed razor blade.

Er, why is he out if he’s so dangerous? Who will pay for his freedom?
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UN in orbit
Andrew Bolt
How mad is the United Nations, the great hope of the world? Mad enough now to take advice on world peace from actors experienced in battling pretend aliens:

Battlestar Galactica is a sci-fi television series about a rag-tag fleet of spaceships fleeing evil silver robots, the Cylons, who have destroyed the humans’ home world. As sci-fi tends to do nowadays, the show takes itself very seriously. And so its creators and stars probably felt nothing odd about being invited to UN headquarters in New York to give 500 representatives, staff and international terrorism experts the benefit of their wisdom on human rights in armed conflict…

Desperate nowadays to get noticed by anyone, even television actors, the UN gave over the general assembly chamber and threw in Unicef ambassador Whoopi Goldberg as moderator.

Film critic Alan Sepinwall reports on the insanity:

Last night, I had one of the coolest/geekiest experiences of my career, as I got to attend a panel discussion on “Battlestar Galactica” at the United Nations’ Economic and Social Council Chamber, featuring Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell and producers Ron Moore and David Eick and several UN reps, moderated by Whoopi Goldberg…

1. The evening was as much about the UN as about “Battlestar Galactica,” if not more so. There were four segments, devoted to issues like human rights, terrorism, and children and armed conflict. After a clip reel illustrating how the series at one point or another tackled that issue, the UN rep gave a long speech discussing the current state of that problem in our world, often making a token attempt at best to connect their subject to the show. Then Whoopi tried her best to balance discussing the issue currently and discussing it in the context of “BSG.” Some of the panelists admittedly had never watched the show before they were invited to do the event, and some of the subjects had only a tangential connection at best...

There was only one erruption of sense, kind of - a rebellion against the UN’s professional victimologists:

If this wasn’t sufficiently surreal, Edward James Olmos, who plays the Battlestar’s admiral, accused the UN of being illiberal and racially divisive. “Adults will never be able to stop using the word ‘race’ as a cultural determinant,” he intoned. ”There is only one race: the human race. So say we all!” Those last four words, the Galactica’s battle-cry, echoed around the chamber as his audience took up the refrain.
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“Why are Muslims being targetted?”
Andrew Bolt
Khadija Abdul Qahar, a Muslim convert and journalist once known as Beverly Giesbrecht, asks a question on her ”Islam Unspun” website:

Qahar now answers that question in this video for her captors: