Lest we forget
Thousands have paused for a minute's silence to remember those who died in defence of Australia at Anzac Day dawn services around the country.
Rudd to announce huge military build-up
Rudd is set to announce Australia's biggest military build-up since World War II.
Aboriginal diggers commemorate Anzac Day
An Anzac Day service in the Sydney suburb of Redfern will be held to commemorate Aboriginal diggers.
Firie, paramedic make off-duty rescue
An off-duty firefighter and paramedic who happened to be passing a burning house in Sydney kicked in the door and rescued a person before fire crews arrived.
New Orleans levees 'not strong enough'
New levees being built after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans are not strong enough and a breach could allow catastrophic flooding, a report has found.
Two suicide bombers kill 66 in Baghdad
Two female suicide bombers hiding explosives in their purses have struck worshippers outside a......
Mexico shuts schools over deadly flu
Mexican authorities on Friday closed all schools in the capital and central Mexico as the WHO......
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Misery of China shouldn't be replicated here
The 'green' one-child policy being proposed for Australia isn't just offensive to Catholics - it's offensive to everyone, according to Chris Smith.
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Anzac Day time to remember a forgotten hero
The name Thomas William Glasgow may not mean a lot to most Australians, but it should, according to Chris Smith.
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MATE!
Tim Blair
It’s been removed from YouTube, but we’ve got the tape:
A man who filmed two teenagers on his phone after they allegedly robbed a house was attacked by the pair before they stole his mobile and posted the footage on the internet.
The man had warned the pair that he had just recorded them and was taking the footage to police before they sprinted across a road and attacked him.
They then posted the footage on YouTube titled “IN GREENACRE AUSSIE GUY GETS HIT FOR RECORING JOSH ND HAMAD ROLLING A HOUSE” (sic).
Running at 18 seconds and viewed 780 times, it shows two young men running out of a house bare-chested and with T-shirts over their head before slowing to a brisk walk down the street.
The man then calls out in a broad Australian accent: “Hey mate. This is going to the police mate. I’ve got you on video.”
That may have been a poor decision.
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ONE ROOM, EIGHT ROOMS
Tim Blair
In Sydney:
Worshippers at one of the state’s largest hospital chapels have been ordered to get rid of crucifixes and Bibles and pull down religious pictures and symbols for fear of offending other religions.
In Melbourne:
Professor Kirk said [the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology] provided separate Muslim prayer rooms for men and women at four locations, comprising eight rooms.
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MANNE VS WOMAN
Tim Blair
Sally Warhaft – a friend – quits her job at The Monthly, apparently over a dispute with academic powerhouse superbrain Robert Manne:
The magazine’s publisher, Morry Schwartz, issued a terse statement late yesterday declaring that “as of today, Sally Warhaft is no longer editor of The Monthly”.
“Sally and The Monthly editorial board had different visions for the future of the magazine.”
Industry sources say Professor Manne, who chairs the magazine’s editorial board, had sought to increase his influence over the content of the publication since mid-last year.
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BRING ON THE SAVING
Tim Blair
“It occurs to me,” writes Mark Steyn, “that the best chance of saving the U.S. newspaper industry would be if the New York Times collapsed.”
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TEN POINTS IS KIND OF EXCESSIVE
Tim Blair
Your instructions for the Tata Nano online driving game, lately attracting 1.2 million players:
• Drive successfully through all three exciting levels to win the game.
• Give Sumo Wrestler a lift and way through the busy city.
• Avoid knocking the pedestrians, else you’ll lose 10 points.
• Avoid running into man-holes or incoming traffic.
These are basically the driving rules I observe every day. I recommend them.
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DITCH CARP OF DEMOCRACY
Tim Blair
A highlight from P.J. O’Rourke’s Sydney speech:
America has wound up with a charming leftist as a president. And this scares me. This scares me not because I hate leftists. I don’t. I have many charming leftist friends. They’re lovely people - as long as they keep their nose out of things they don’t understand. Such as making a living.
When charming leftists stick their nose into things they don’t understand they become ratchet-jawed purveyors of monkey-doodle and baked wind. They are piddlers upon merit, beggars at the door of accomplishment, thieves of livelihood, envy coddling tax lice applauding themselves for giving away other people’s money. They are the lap dogs of the poly sci-class, returning to the vomit of collectivism. They are pig herders tending that sow-who-eats-her-young, the welfare state. They are muck-dwelling bottom-feeders growing fat on the worries and disappointments of the electorate. They are the ditch carp of democracy.
And that’s what one of their friends says.
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Some parents should be sacked
Andrew Bolt
Surely we should remove children - and permanently - from such parents a lot faster:
TWO young children have been found living in squalor while under the watch of welfare authorities.
A boy aged three and his six-year-old sister were removed from the filthy Dandenong squat by police this week. Their father is in prison and their mother has allegedly been prostituting herself on nearby streets to pay for drugs.
The two youngsters were left in the care of a male friend of the mother’s in the house, which family members say is a notorious drug haunt… “Every inch of them smelt like they’d been in urine-soaked clothing for days. The little girl had no shoes,” he said…
The Department of Human Services has had a long history of contact with the troubled family.
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Protest lodged against Henderson’s verdict
Andrew Bolt
Gerard Henderson is wrong. How could he have voted John Hewson and Guy Rundle’s efforts as more deserving of scorn this week than this effort from Fran Kelly, listed by Henderson as an also-ran:
Sometimes, listening to ABC Radio National Breakfast, you get the impression that presenter Fran Kelly should have a go at interviewing herself. This might stop her from lacing her questions with suggested responses. Fran Kelly invariably has trouble when interviewing politicians and others who do not agree with her on such matters as Iraq, national security, David Hicks, asylum seekers, climate change, gay rights, reconciliation and so on....Read (click link) and judge for yourself. Who gets your vote: Hewson, Rundle or Kelly?
So it was on Monday 20 April when Fran Kelly interviewed Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull on asylum seekers. Kelly interrupted a Turnbull claim that the increase in asylum seeker activity was not principally due to the “push” factor but could be explained by a relaxation in border security in Australia following the election of the Rudd Government in 2007. Let’s go to the transcript:
Malcolm Turnbull: ….Iraq in many respects, in fact in almost every respect, is a much more peaceful place, relative to what it was four or five years ago.
Fran Kelly: [interrupting] I don’t think the same could be said for Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. And if you’re going to quote the IOM you should also acknowledge the UNHCR says there are more people on the move right now because of push factors. But just before going down that debate, we should stick with what we need to do here in this country and I want to ask you directly about the cover-up claims in a moment, but just finishing on temporary protection visas….[Emphasis added. By the way, the IOM is the International Organisation for Migration].
You get the drift. First Kelly interrupted Turnbull’s response. Then she stated what the Opposition leader “should” say. Then she declared that the interview “should stick to what we need to do” in Australia. Later on Kelly suggested that the Liberal Party, which left office in late 2007, was somehow responsible for the increase in asylum seekers in mid 2009.
And then she editorialised that it did not matter as to how the fire started on the SIEV 36. And then she asked Turnbull a leading question - proposing that the Opposition should wait for the official version of what caused the fire on SIEV 36 before leaping ahead with its own conclusion. And then she declared:
I suppose what I’m saying is, it is valid for them [i.e. the Rudd Government] to say “we’re waiting for the police”.
Sure, this was precisely what Fran Kelly was saying, in her barracking way. It’s just that she is employed to ask the questions, not to editorialise or, indeed, barrack
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Why does Rudd hate?
Andrew Bolt
Peter Craven baulks at Kevin Rudd’s hate-mongering:
Five people are dead and many more are in hospital as a consequence of the petrol-induced explosion on a refugee boat carrying Afghans into Australian waters. The refugee issue has some chance of blowing up in the Government’s and the nation’s face, and what does Kevin Rudd say to calm things down?I’m not sure Craven actually nails this pronounced tic of Rudd. Perhaps it’s because the explanation may be too simple, and Craven is too sophisticated - and of the Left. Perhaps truth is simply that Rudd is, as I’ve long said, a deeply insecure and emotionally unattached man under that protective bombast and arrogance, and reacts with fear and anger to any challenge to his authority or dignity. Thus the populism, the abuse, the highhandness towards underlings, the demonisation of opponents, the un-prime ministerial rantings against the Opposition, the seeking of scapegoats… Thus the rage against people smugglers who real sin was to dare make his policy look weak and stupid.
He says people-smugglers are “the vilest form of human life” and that “they should rot in jail and, in my own view, in hell”.
These sentiments irresistibly bring to mind the Rudd who referred to the arsonists who contributed to the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria not just as sick or reprehensible people but as mass murderers. It reminds us too that it was Rudd who described the work of the country’s most celebrated photographer, Bill Henson, as disgusting…
This is an extraordinary sentiment from the man who made such a song and dance before he was elected, for the benefit of liberal Australia, about his veneration of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the pastor and theologian who died opposing the Nazis…
And why is Rudd carrying on in what has been widely perceived as this exaggerated way about the people-smugglers?… It’s in fact a way of raging against the aliens who are responsible for this boat coming into our waters without technically attacking the corpses of the dead or the bodies disfigured with burns.
When Rudd’s power wanes, and with it his patronage, insiders will tell more of what too few dare tell today.
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Does Rudd know he’s spent it all already?
Andrew Bolt
Kevin Rudd has already announced $100 billion in extra spending, just when his tax revenues have gone through the floor and the national debt will exceed $200 billion.
Now this:
KEVIN Rudd is set to announce Australia’s biggest military build-up since World War II, led by a multi-billion-dollar investment in maritime defence, including 100 new F-35 fighters, a doubling of the submarine fleet, and powerful new surface warships…
Senior government sources say Mr Rudd has insisted that defence spending remain largely insulated from the Government’s budget difficulties, but the Defence Department will still have to find at least $15 billion of internal savings over the next decade to help pay for the $100 billion-plus long-term equipment plan.
There is something almost insane about this wild spending of money that’s no longer there. Every senior minister going alone with this risks throwing their reputation on Rudd’s bonfire, much as almost every Whitlam minister did in the 1970s.
And one more thought about “Australia’s biggest military build-up since World War II”.
Er, why?
UPDATE
David Penberthy regrets:
In my former job editing Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph, we decided to back the Rudd Government in our 2007 election eve editorial in large part because we believed (like the voters, as it happened) that John Howard had run his race, that the clunky leadership transition he had put in place was a recipe for instability and that the Liberals had failed to outline a fifth-term vision.
While I still don’t think the clapped-out Libs left us with any choice, the creeping fear now is that we have an ascendant, unquestioned leader who’s suffering from a surfeit of vision, who with his zany cheque handouts has gone overnight from fiscal conservative to game-show host, who is risking the livelihoods of blue-collar workers with environmental policies that will hurt jobs and the economy, belt household budgets and achieve no significant reduction in our carbon footprint, and who has embraced a broadband scheme that’s so mind-blowingly expensive that it may have been cheaper if the Government simply bought back Telstra.
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Appeal to a closet sceptic #1
Andrew Bolt
Resources Minister Martin Ferguson,
You have been identified by colleagues and friends as a sceptic - someone who accepts there is no proof man is warming the world dangerously.
It is your public duty to now say so, before the global warming fearmongering costs Australia more jobs, dollars and sense.
Why won’t you?
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Warming predictions preferred to cold facts
Andrew Bolt
Two weeks ago the warming alarmist Age carried this prediction:
UP TO one-third of all Antarctic sea ice is likely to melt by the end of the century...
It blamed man:
… the evidence was showing how quickly the effects of global warming were showing up in the Antarctic region
This week the warming alarmist Age glossed over this actual measurement of Antarctic sea ice:
Scientists in the United Kingdom have produced a study which shows ice has grown by 100,000 square kilometres each decade in the past 30 years...
But even in conceding that inconvienent truth, the ABC trotted out two difference blame-man excuses within just three paragraphs:
But it seems that global warming may actually be leading to an increase in sea ice… The increase is being put down to the hole in the ozone layer.
Steven Goddard sighs:
So Antarctic ice is disappearing faster than expected due to man, and it is also expanding in size due to man.
Some people seem really, really anxious to blame man, who is seen as really, really powerful - in an awesomely wicked way. Small problem, though, with the blame-man’s-ozone theory:
The ozone hole occurs during the Antarctic spring, from September to early December - but the positive ice anomaly occurred during the autumn and winter (March through July) ...
UPDATE
What will warming believers do when the consensus swings against them? The Geological Science Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences now declares itself sceptical:
The phenomenon observed today, in particular the temporary rise of global temperature, are the result of the natural rhythm of climate change.
And there’s a warning against doing a Rudd:
Taking radical and expensive economic measures aiming at implementing the emission only of few greenhouse gases, with no multi-sided research into climate change, may turn out counterproductive.
(Thanks to Benny Peiser.)
UPDATE 2
Christopher Monckton, in evidence to Congress, shows that the planet since 2002 is cooling at such a rate that if it continues the 21st century will lose all the warming of the 20th.
Quotes from his evidence:
- global temperatures have been falling rapidly for seven years, contrary to the predictions of all of the computer models on which the UN relies.
- in the past 25 years at least 670 scientists from 391 institutions in 40 countries have contributed to peer-reviewed papers in the learned literature establishing that the medieval warm period was real, global, and warmer than the present.
- Schulte (2008), in a review of 539 papers published since January 2004 and containing the search term “global climate change” found that not one paper offered any evidence to the effect that “global warming” would prove to be “catastrophic” in any particular. That is the true scientific consensus.
- in recent years the Maldives have been subjected to a more thorough sea-level analysis than almost anywhere else on Earth, by a talented multi-disciplinary team under Professor Nils-Axel Moerner, the world’s ranking expert on sea-level rise, who has written 520 peer-reviewed papers on the subject. The early conclusions of that continuing research, published in 2004, demonstrated that there had been no net sea-level rise in the Maldives for 1250 years… Moerner (2004) projects a sea-level rise of just 8 inches to 2100, similar to the sea-level rise that was observed in the 20th century.
- The proportion of the atmosphere occupied by carbon dioxide has increased by just one part in 10,000 in the quarter of a millennium since 1750. That is all.
- in the five years since the elaborate network of 3175 automated bathythermographs of the Argo project were deployed throughout the world’s oceans, there has been no statistically-significant rise in sea temperatures and, indeed, if anything there has been a slight fall.
- Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is no longer rising exponentially, as predicted by the UN, but linearly, and at a rate well below the least of the UN’s projections, requiring that all of the UN’s temperature projections to 2100 be approximately halved
- The diminution in outgoing long-wave radiation over time is one-seventh to one-tenth of that which the UN’s models predict, demonstrating that the UN has overstated climate sensitivity sevenfold to tenfold, and that it has overstated the projected anthropogenic temperature increase in the 21st century by as much as sixteenfold.
- You have been fairly and clearly warned that a single penny more spent on “global warming” would be a penny wasted.
UPDATE 3
Surprised?
A former science advisor to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher says he has been uninvited to appear before a House Energy and Commerce hearing today on global warming.
Lord Christopher Monckton told “Climate Depot” that committee Democrats rescinded his scheduled joint appearance with former Vice President Al Gore because, according to him, they don’t want “Gore humiliated” over evidence or lack of evidence about global warming.
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Robbing Peter to pay Kevin
Andrew Bolt
Follow me closely here. So to get money into people’s pockets and stimulate the economy, Kevin Rudd has to take money out of people’s pockets to save the Budget:
The Rudd government may slug high-income earners with higher taxes to bolster its budget and keep rising debt levels within a self-imposed $200 billion limit.
And Reuters just repeats Rudd’s spin:
Next month’s federal budget is set to be one of the toughest in years, against a backdrop of plummeting taxation revenues and an economy tipping into recession.
Memo Reuters: Yes, the recession is cutting tax revenues. But one more reason the Government needs a huge sock-the-rich tax grab is that it’s spent or promised another $100 billion in spending in just the past six months alone. Don’t let it off the hook so eagerly.
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Marr vs asylum seeker: who’d best know?
Andrew Bolt
The question is: is Kevin Rudd’s softening of rules against illegal boat people luring more to take to the sea? Check who has the more credible answer.
David Marr, Sydney-based Howard hater:
The ABC’s Jon Faine, The Monthly’s Sally Warhaft, and The Sydney Morning Herald’s David Marr agreed mere Afghans could never have known of Rudd’s changes.
Iraqi asylum seeker:
An Iraqi refugee in Indonesia has told the ABC he plans to board a boat to Australia because he is encouraged by changes to asylum seeker policies....
One man said he plans to attempt the boat journey even though his refugee status is already confirmed, because he has heard he is more likely to be accepted by Kevin Rudd’s Government than its predecessor....
In 2001 he left from Lombok to Australia before the Australian Navy intercepted the boat he was on and turned it back to Indonesia. But from family already in Australia he has heard that the country and its leader have changed.
“Kevin Rudd - he’s changed everything about refugee. If I go to Australia now, different, different,” a second asylum seeker told the ABC.
“Maybe accepted but when John Howard, president, Australia, he said come back to Indonesia.”
He says Kevin Rudd will not send him back to Indonesia and that is why he will be getting on a boat again.
Just a reminder to my friends of the Left: the answer isn’t what you want it to be, but what it in fact is, for better or worse.
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Memo to Rudd: no more free cash
Andrew Bolt
The IMF’s chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, had a message on the 7.30 Report that Kevin Rudd desperately needs to hear before he blows even more billions on free cash handouts, pink batts and other rush-rush spends that leave us no more productive:
OLIVIER BLANCHARD: Well, the ideal measures from the point of view of this crisis are basically measures which move infrastructure projects which were scheduled for, say, 2013, 2014 or 2015, back to 2010, 2011.
Typically with this type of measures is that it takes so long to actually get them going, that by the time you put them in place, the recession is gone. We are lucky or unlucky, but that this time we have a long recession, a slow recovery, so even with projects can be basically be thought about and started now, even if it takes a year for them to fully play out, there’ll still be a need for them. These are the ideal fiscal measures that we think should be used.
KERRY O’BRIEN: But what is the place for stimulus measures that simply put money into people’s pockets to spend quickly?
OLIVIER BLANCHARD: If people were to spend it, it would be great. The main problem is basically that at this stage we think if we put money randomly in people’s pockets, they’re going to save most of it, and they may feel good about it, but in terms of what this does to the economy, it’s not very good. At this stage what we need is basically an increase in demand. So you basically want to put the money where it’s going to be spent. So, basically, this is one of the reasons we’re focusing on spending measures rather than tax measures, because spending at least in the first round gets you $1 for $1, and then maybe more after that.
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Obama’s words no longer enough
Andrew Bolt
Barack Obama starts talking about the great economic crisis. His economic advisor, Larry Summers, pays all the attention due to him:
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Will General Electric Get Paid for Supporting President Obama?
By Bill O'Reilly
As everyone knows, GE, which owns NBC, has been very aggressive in helping Barack Obama. First, supporting the president in the election, and now attacking his critics.
There is also emerging evidence that GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt and NBC News chief Jeff Zucker told CNBC personnel to stop criticizing Obama's economic policies. That would be a major breech of journalistic ethics. In fact, Obama critic Rick Santelli is reported to have said he was sent to a "re-education camp" by NBC.
In addition, the hateful MSNBC network continues to air vicious attacks everyday, like this one about the tea parties:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JANEANE GAROFOLO, ACTRESS: This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of teabagging rednecks, and there is no way around that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
This week, Immelt met with GE stockholders in Florida and there was near revolt. That's no surprise, as this week Forbes magazine has labeled Immelt one of the worst performing CEOs in the country.
"Factor" producer Jesse Watters was at the Florida meeting:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JESSE WATTERS, "FACTOR" PRODUCER: Last week on MSNBC, Janeane Garofalo said that Americans who attended tea parties and were protesting high taxes and government spending were racist rednecks. She was not challenged by the anchor on MSNBC. Are you OK with that, and do you consider that a form of hate speech, sir?
JEFFREY IMMELT, CEO, GENERAL ELECTRIC: Again, we have not censored MSNBC. Again, my own personal beliefs aside, I believe that MSNBC has some standards that they follow and that's what you are seeing.
WATTERS: With all due respect, this is the kind of hate that MSNBC traffics in on a regular basis. Are you comfortable with this? And do you think this hurts the GE brand?
IMMELT: Again, we're in the network business. We're in the MSNBC business. We compete with FOX News and CNN and others. And again, I don't censor what they do or what they say despite the fact that I might disagree with some of it, or much of it, some of the time.
WATTERS: So do you condemn those statements, Mr. Immelt?
IMMELT: Yes, sir, next question, microphone No. 2.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
And then GE turned off the mic.
Now most CEOs would have stopped NBC's corruption a long time ago, but Immelt may be looking for a big payoff.
According to reporting by The Washington Examiner, GE is heavily lobbying the Obama administration for bailout money. The company is also pushing for the proposed cap and trade program. Apparently GE has set up a joint venture it hopes would manage billions of dollars in cap and trade contracts should that carbon tax pass Congress.
Think about this. A failing corporation, General Electric, might reap billions of dollars if the feds OK the carbon deal. It is not a stretch to assume Immelt would want to help President Obama as much as possible.
We have asked Mr. Immelt a number of times to appear on "The Factor," but he will not. That's why we sent Jesse to see him.
This is a major story when a powerful company, which controls a major part of the American media, may be using its power to influence politics in order to make money from government contracts. That kind of corruption would make Watergate look small. We hope it's not true.
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