Headlines Tuesday 31st March 2009

Sydney’s mass blackout reveals flaw in city’s warning system
The mass blackout across Sydney appears to have exposed a major flaw with counter terrorism measures.

Stimulus bonus decision possible today
We're likely to hear today whether seven million Australians can bank on the government's promised $900 stimulus bonus, or whether it's being held up in the High Court.

Bomb found in Bandidos bikie’s garage
Neighbours of a Bandidos bikie at Merrylands had to be evacuated overnight after a home-made bomb was found in his garage.

Two men fighting for lives after Bondi gas blast
The majority of residents in a Bondi apartment building have returned home after a major gas explosion, but two plumbers injured in the blast are fighting for their lives.

Eight killed in Pakistan police school siege
Pakistan security forces on Monday overpowered gunmen who stormed a police academy in a spectacular commando-style raid in which eight police recruits and four attackers died.

Web filter won't stop child porn: Conroy

British govt praises Rudd the ‘roving ambassador’- as British press tear lackluster Rudd apart
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been praised for pursing a greater role for China by the British government's top money-man.
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Earth Hour of power in green ivory tower
Piers Akerman
EARTH Hour is just a waste of energy. It is not a passive symbolic gesture, it is a loss-leader in the green propaganda war against modernity. Environmental fear-monger Al Gore has a lot to answer for.
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AND HIS HARLEY NEEDS WAXING
Tim Blair
Hardcore bikers aren’t usually so fussy about hygiene:
A barrister has accused police of drip feeding the release of evidence about Sydney airport’s fatal bikie brawl while his Comanchero client remains locked up without clean underwear.
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ART LIFE
Tim Blair
“The Kingpins are four artists exploring ideas about identity,” explains the ABC’s Andrew Frost. Then again, Frost also believes “ambiguity is the natural by-product of art that mocks the whole idea of certainty,” so who knows what the hell he’s talking about.
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WE ANSWER TO WARMING
Tim Blair
The Archbishop of Canterbury shuffles God down the spiritual order:
Dr Rowan Williams did not say there was no God. But he said that God is not a “safety net that guarantees a happy ending in this world.” He warned that the pillaging of the world’s resources meant it was facing a “whole range of doomsday prospects” that went far beyond the consequences of global warming. Humanity faced being “choked, drowned or starved” by its own stupidity, he said.
This man is out of his mind.
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SNOWBANK MELTED, BANKERS BURNED
Tim Blair
A fine Earth Hour tactic:
“Turning off all the lights can save electricity,” said eight-year-old Samantha Stegmeier, as she stuck a candle in a snowbank. “And it’s fun.”
That’ll help get the Big Melt underway. In other progressive news, here’s the Guardian‘s April 1 protest schedule:
11am Groups will converge at London stations Moorgate, Liverpool Street, London Bridge and Cannon Street. Each group goes on a parade to the Bank of England.

Noon Carnival at the Bank of England with live music and street theatre, including the hanging of bankers’ effigies. Climate Camp will march on the European Climate Exchange, Bishopsgate.
The Guardian also reports:
Thousands of G20 Meltdown campaign posters show a mannequin wearing a suit being hanged, while an anarchist website has the slogan: “Burn a banker!”
London is full of bankers. Think of the carbon.
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IT’S JUST SO OBVIOUS
Tim Blair
Marrying frogs was the solution all along.
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EARTH HOUR II
Tim Blair
Much of central Sydney—including the Daily Telegraph‘s office—is without electricity. Traffic lights, street lights, everything’s out. Been like this for, oh, about 40 minutes.
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WAGONER ROLLED
Tim Blair
This seems noteworthy:
The Obama administration asked Rick Wagoner, the chairman and CEO of General Motors, to step down and he agreed, a White House official said.
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AL LIGHTS UP
Tim Blair
Just like Times Square, Al Gore’s mansion displayed a planet-hating glow during Earth Hour.
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Fear for Pakistan
Andrew Bolt
Pakistan is in deep, deep trouble when the attacks are as brazen as this:

TERRORISTS dressed as police and armed with machineguns and grenades launched a deadly attack on a police academy in Lahore yesterday, triggering an eight-hour gun battle that killed as many as 34 policemen and wounded 92 others.
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G20 spin unspun
Andrew Bolt
Peter Wilson has had enough of the spinning, even before the G20 meeting starts:

The Prime Minister’s spin in Australia has largely been about his own role in shaping the summit, for instance offering some rather unnecessary advice to the Americans and others that they should deal with their toxic bank assets.

Mr Rudd said last night at a news conference with Mr Brown that the spending initiatives being taken by individual governments around the world to bail out their economies had actually been “in response to the call” by the last G20 summit for co-ordinated action.

There is no evidence of any such co-ordination, nor that any government has cut a tax or spent a dollar in response to the G20’s urgings.

Mr Rudd, we are told, has supposedly been in constant brain-storming contact with Mr Brown, a fact that has somehow eluded the notice of senior aides in Downing Street. When Mr Brown spoke last week about his contacts with foreign leaders he named Barack Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and leaders from Europe, Latin America, India, Japan and China. There was no mention of Mr Rudd, although Mr Brown did add that he had consulted “all the members from the Asian countries”.
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How the Defence Minister was groomed
Andrew Bolt
Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon’s Chinese benefactor has an interest in military affairs:

THE wealthy Chinese businesswoman who befriended Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon and showered him with gifts is a leading member of an organisation with strong ties to the Chinese military.

Helen Liu, who was born in the northeastern Chinese province of Shandong and is now an Australian citizen, is a member of the editorial committee of Shandong Ming Jia. The organisation, which translates as Shandong Celebrities Family, promotes the work of leading people from Shandong. It has extensive membership within the China’s military, the Peoples Liberation Army, especially its logistics division.

The woman who gave Fitzgibbon a $20,0000 donation, a suit (later returned), flights to China and other gifts also has high-level contacts within China’s communist party and foreign affairs establishment:

She is vice-chairwoman of the World Federation of Overseas Chinese Associations, which ... is linked to the Overseas Affairs office of the United Front Ministry of the State Council, China’s cabinet. Among its goals are to work towards China’s reunification.

Liu’s military links are confirmed by the company she introduced Fitzgibbon to when she flew him to China on Christmas Day 2002, away from his three young children:

Mr Fitzgibbon attended a Chinese military art exhibition with Ms Liu in Beijing on Boxing Day 2002 with six three-star generals, 60 lower-ranking generals and 700 Chinese VIPs....

At the function, held to commemorate chairman Mao Zedong’s birthday, Mr Fitzgibbon circulated with Li Jing, commander of China’s naval air force, Zhou Kegu, deputy chief of the People’s Liberation Army political department, Li Jingsong, president of China’s military science academy, and Zhou Tienong, vice-chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Ms Liu played a key role in the event and was photographed at the centre of four document-signing ceremonies,

No doubt Fitzgerald just left the gift behind somewhere:

At the function Mr Fitzgibbon was presented with a large painting by artist Li Chengxiu, but the minister’s spokesman last night said he did not bring the artwork back to Australia with him. Mr Fitzgibbon did not declare the painting as a gift received in the Federal Parliament’s register of members of interests.

And no wonder Kevin Rudd - who kept secret from the Australian media his recent meeting with China’s propaganda chief - is fussy about who he sits next to in public:

The Prime Minister’s staff asked the BBC to move him from his position beside the Chinese ambassador to Britain, Madam Fu Ying, when the two appeared on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show at the weekend.
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Obama now runs GM, too
Andrew Bolt
Former community organiser Barack Obama thinks he deserves a say now in how even a big manufacturing company should be run:

The Obama administration asked Rick Wagoner, the chairman and CEO of General Motors, to step down and he agreed, a White House official said…

Obama and his aides may have honed in on Wagoner for two reasons. First, his company is asking for the most in total federal aid: $26 billion… Second, the GM chief ... is considered responsible for increasing GM’s focus on trucks and SUVs—at the expense of the hybrids and fuel efficient cars that have become more popular in the last couple of years.

If Obama is upset Wagoner didn’t focus more on his preferred green hybrids, what future will an Obama-bossed General Motors have, given this:

Although vehicle sales have declined across the board, sales of gas and electric-powered hybrids have fallen faster than most, dropping to only 15,144 nationwide last month...
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Boycott these academics instead
Andrew Bolt
Here is a list of Australian academics who - from a world that includes tyrannies and sponsors of terrorism and genocide - have singled out just one state for collective punishment.

But these academics haven’t just singled out Israel for a demonisation it has spared countries with infinitely worse records of abuses against human rights, including neighbors of Israel who demand and seek its annihilation. They have also signed a petition demanding a collective punishment of all who live within Israel, regardless of their personal views and merits.

Further, the punishment they demand is a crime against reason and the exchange of ideas - a severing of academic ties. They seek thereby to ban the currency of the civilised.

For these reasons, I regard the following academics as insults to their profession. If I were a student, I would question their judgment in even small matters, when their judgment on such a big one is so profoundly wrong. I would not trust them to teach me anything worth knowing, unless it was through learning from their mistakes.

Here are the academics I would avoid:

Dr. Anthony Ashbolt, University of Wollongong; Jumana Bayeh, Macquarie University; Professor Ann Curthoys, The University of Sydney; Dr Ned Curthoys, Australian National University; Professor John Docker, The University of Sydney; Ann El Khoury, Macquarie University; Professor Heather Goodall, University of Technology, Sydney; Laila Hafez, University of Wollongong; Professor Terry Irving, University of Wollongong; Dr Evan Jones, The University of Sydney; Dr Jon Jureidini, University of Adelaide; Dr Ray Jureidini, American University in Cairo, Egypt; Professor Peter Manning, University of Technology, Sydney; Dr Morris Morley, Macquarie University; Dr David Palmer, University of Adelaide; Rosemary Pringle; Professor Lyndall Ryan, University of Newcastle; Dr Ron Witton, University of Wollongong.
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Jobless? Blame the infidel
Andrew Bolt
Islamic philosopher and sociologist Hossein Adibi knows why so many Muslims are unemployed here:

Muslim people already suffer twice the unemployment rate of other workers in Queensland and the global economic crisis is likely to make matters worse, research shows.

A study undertaken by Queensland University of Technology researcher Dr Hossein Adibi found there was a huge gap between the level of unemployment in the general population and Muslims, something that was likely to worsen in the declining economic climate… Dr Adibi found that Muslims were disadvantaged due to four main factors: racism, discrimination, media bias and the lack of Muslim representation in decision-making bodies.

That’s odd: The four main reasons Dr Adibi gives for very high rates of unemployment among Muslims all involve them being picked on or ignored by non-Muslims. Talk about feeding a nasty culture of victimhood. Isn’t is likely that Muslim unemployment might be better explained by poor English, poor skills, poor assimilation, poor education of women and a culture among some of rejection of our wider society?
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37 people vanish
Andrew Bolt
Good news, of course, but very curious:

THE death toll from the Black Saturday bushfires has been downgraded to 173 - 37 fewer than previously estimated by authorities.
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Obama’s warming isn’t
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama does a Tim Flannery, implicitly blaming the North Dakota floods on global warming:

I actually think the science around climate change is real. It is potentially devastating. … If you look at the flooding that’s going on right now in North Dakota, and you say to yourself, ‘If you see an increase of 2 degrees, what does that do, in terms of the situation there,’ that indicates the degree to which we have to take this seriously.

Watts Up With That checks the NOAA temperature records:

In fact, temperatures in North Dakota have been running about 5-10 degrees below normal for the entire winter and spring.

Again I ask: if the evidence for apocalyptic man-made global warming is so overwhelming, why do the believers need to tell so many porkies?
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Stolen from what?
Andrew Bolt
The “stolen generations” farce exposed:

ALMOST two-thirds of Aboriginal children in Victoria who have been removed from their homes are placed with non-Aboriginal carers, raising the spectre of another stolen generation.

Despite legislation stating that every Aboriginal child in out-of-home care must have a cultural support plan to keep them connected with their community, fewer than 10 per cent of children have one.

Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency chief executive Muriel Bamblett warned the state could face class actions in the future for failing to comply with the legislation.

So the state could be sued because too many Aboriginal parents were bad, and too few other Aboriginal adults could be found to look after their children for them. Exactly why should the children rescued from this dysfunctional culture be kept plugged into it?

PS

The legal action is being threatened by Muriel Bamblett. Could she not do more good by fostering some Aboriginal children herself, rather than attacking the whites who do it instead?

And a question for The Age: Does “stolen generation” now actually mean children who were rescued from harm, and who have no Aborigines prepared to look after them? If so, isn’t that - as I’ve said from the start - a deceitful use of the word “stolen”?
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It’s now global yawning
Andrew Bolt
The doom-mongering finally met consumer resistance during Earth Hour, even in post-heat-wave Melbourne:

Electricity consumption in the city centre fell by 2 per cent from 8.30pm on Saturday, when people were encouraged to switch off their lights in a united call for political leadership on climate change. This was down markedly on a year ago, when electricity use for the hour plunged 10.1 per cent.