Headlines Thursday 9th April 2009

Crosses and bibles banned in hospital chapel
A NSW hospital is under fire for ordering worshippers at its chapel to get rid of crucifixes, bibles and icons for fear of offending other religions.

Union boss accused of credit card rort
A union meeting has erupted into a brawl after another Labor figure was accused of using his union credit card at the same Sydney brothel MP Craig Thomson allegedly visited.

Teens arrested after fleeing fatal crash
Two teenage boys have been arrested after fleeing an horrific car crash, leaving their dying friend behind in a stolen car.

Crew fights back against Somali pirates
A US cargo ship's crew have fought back a group of Somali pirates on Wednesday, attempting to trade a pirate hostage for their own captive captain.

Men caught selling drugs to school boys
Two men have been charged with selling drugs to minors after police caught them allegedly selling cannabis to a group of Sydney schoolboys.

I am the anti-Christ: Mother shot son 'to save him'
A woman who shot her son in the head then killed herself at a shooting range said she was the anti-Christ and she needed to send her son to heaven and herself to hell.
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$47 billion to be flushed down a broadband pipe dream
Piers Akerman
TWO years ago Federal Labor pledged to deliver a new world-class national broadband network (NBN) costing $4.7 billion over five years.
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DEGRADING, MENACING, DISTRESSING CHICKENS
Tim Blair
The Age‘s Samantha Lane reports:
A video depicting degrading sex acts filmed in the rooms of the North Melbourne Football Club and posted online by one of the side’s young footballers is being investigated by the club.
Do read on. The alleged “degrading sex acts” don’t actually involve any people – or any sex, for that matter. Or any living creatures. Here are the video’s stars:

This is before, as Lane writes, “the storyline becomes increasingly menacing”:
The real chicken seemingly plays the role of a woman. The storyline becomes increasingly menacing as the two characters go to the pub — he has beer, she has white wine — and end up having sex in the toilet.
He? She? Having sex? It’s a toy and a frozen chicken. See for yourself, if you can make it past the Age‘s desperate warnings ("WARNING: This video contains material that some viewers may find distressing”; “WARNING: SOME IMAGES MAY OFFEND"). A more complete version may be found here.

The video was viewed fewer than 200 times over a month before it was yanked from YouTube by North Melbourne officials (following Age questions). Bizarrely, Lane’s item concludes:
The North Melbourne video incident has come to light just days after Adelaide Crows champion Nathan Bock was charged by police for allegedly assaulting his girlfriend.
Not sure I’m seeing any common topic here. The video also came to light mere months after Sarah Palin was filmed in front of dying turkeys, a connection sure to dawn on Age staff in coming days. The paper is in an absolute chicken frenzy. According to one Age headline, the video reveals the “disturbing presence” of football’s “dark side”. And there’s a poll:
Is a fine adequate punishment for the North Melbourne players responsible for the chicken video?
Those fines aren’t exactly chickenfeed:
Suspensions are unlikely, but Simpson and Pratt - and maybe more players - face fines of up to $5000.
That last link is from Melbourne’s Herald Sun, which is similarly chicken-crazed.

UPDATE. Further from Samantha Lane:
North Melbourne will today fine a handful of players who have admitted to making and circulating a violent video that degraded women.
UPDATE II. It’s the Age‘s front page story.
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CHURCH DE-JESUSED
Tim Blair
Pre-emptive timidity 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.

The decision by Royal North Shore Hospital has outraged patients and their families, many of whom have turned to the chapel for comfort in their darkest hours.

Hospital managers ordered the ban on symbols of any kind because the chapel was increasingly being used by a number of different faiths …

A hospital spokeswoman said it was appropriate to “move with the times”.
Working on this story yesterday, a number of Daily Telegraph staffers noted that these decisions were almost always taken prior to any actual complaints. And so it happens again:
Last night Islamic leaders criticised the move and feared a backlash.

Keysar Trad, from the Islamic Friendship Society, said Muslims would not be offended to use a multi-faith chapel and see images of the cross.

“It’s a multi-faith room. It is not offensive to see another religion’s symbol,” he said. ”We would not have asked for this and these sorts of things cause rage and backlash from others.”
Aiming to avoid conflict and anger, the Royal North Shore Hospital has instead increased it.
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GREEN UNSEEN
Tim Blair
Vanity Fair drops its shiny, expensive, advertiser-packed, Manhattan-sourced, tree-processing, internationally-delivered green issue:
For the past three years, the monthly glossy has made much of dedicating its May issue to the environment: from Leonardo DiCaprio posing on an iceberg to last year’s open letter from Robert Kennedy Jnr to the next president calling for action on global warming. This year, the incipient tradition has been quietly dropped.
It won’t be a difficult change. Just have a celebrity pose on something else.
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FUME SQUAD
Tim Blair
Queensland’s tobacco cops extinguish exhalers:
More than 1030 people have been caught in the past four years for illegal smoking, including 331 for smoking within 4m of non-residential buildings, 327 at major sports facilities and 336 at bars and restaurants. Another 25 have been fined for smoking at children’s playgrounds and 17 on beaches.
How else are you meant to occupy yourself if you’re stuck at a children’s playground?
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GAFFES HIGHLIGHTED
Tim Blair
Silvio Berlusconi lashes out:
An exasperated and angry Mr Berlusconi said he was fed up with the way the media treated him and threatened a news blackout. “I will no longer talk to you. I am working for Italy while you work against it. I will no longer give news conferences.”

He later added: “Enough with this. Go to the devil! This is slander towards me and disinformation to newspaper readers.”
Berlusconi isn’t following George W. Bush’s successful media tactic: never explain, never complain. The Italian Prime Minister continues:
“I don’t want to say that I’m calling for direct and tough action towards certain newspapers and members of the press. But frankly I’m tempted. One shouldn’t behave like this,” said Mr Berlusconi …

“The Italian press seems to have no other objective than to say that I made bad impressions or gaffes.”
Maybe Barack Obama can help with some coping tips. Oh, wait …
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Too mobile for Rudd’s lumbering plan
Andrew Bolt
Michael Stutchbury hears the gobbling of a $43 billion turkey. The problem with Kevin Rudd’s new fibre-to-the-home broadband plan isn’t just that it costs so much, comes with no business plan to justify it, relies on bureaucrats picking winners and saddles taxpayers with all the risks:

Optical fibre will likely retain a technical edge over other delivery modes in its ability to pump data from one fixed place to another. But wireless broadband has the advantage of being mobile. And latest figures show a “dramatic slowdown” in fixed line broadband demand and a “hastening” shift to wireless broadband, according to Goldman Sachs JBWere. Fixed broadband customers rose by 108,000 in the six months to December, compared with 650,000 extra mobile broadband customers.

“There is a real possibility of the NBN (national broadband network) failing to eventuate as a result of the poor returns,” suggests Goldman Sachs JBWere’s telco analyst, Christian Guerra. The shift to wireless means there won’t be enough demand to justify the $43 billion price tag.

UPDATE

Does this really ring no warning bells?

Mr Rudd conceded that his Government had no business study to back the venture’s viability.

Er, we’re talking about spending $43 billion - or $2150 from every man, woman and child - with not a single study to check if it makes financial sense? Is Rudd mad?
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Garrett and the death of reason
Andrew Bolt
The Australian edges to an openly sceptical position, in line with the science:

PETER Garrett understands the advantage of telling people what they want to hear. On Monday night, the Environment Minister appeared on ABC TV’s Lateline program in what was less an interview than a yes-fest. When Tony Jones made a statement in the form of a question, that an Antarctic ice shelf had collapsed because of global warming, Mr Garrett replied that while he had no advice on the issue, he was sure this was right. When Jones mentioned sceptics suggested this was no big deal, the minister delivered the expected answer, that global warming was to blame. And when Jones referred to a forthcoming report from the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, which warns that melting Antarctic ice could cause sea levels to increase by 6m by the end of the century, Mr Garrett said he had not seen the report but he was sure global warming was responsible. They then went on to agree about other issues.

Mr Garrett’s performance shows the way “global warming” has become shorthand for whatever environmentalists want to attribute to humanity...

Read on.

In the past week alone I’ve talked to three federal frontbenchers (two Labor and one Liberal), one very prominent union leader and two well-known stars of the electronic media who are all global warming sceptics but do not dare say so publicly. I know of many more well-known Australians in the same boat. It is extraordinary that people should be so scared to say what they believe, especially when what they believe is confirmed in this case by clear scientific evidence - that world hasn’t warmed this century, contrary to predictions.

It says something damning about our media in particular, and of the decline of reason generally, that this should be so. I might also add that I’m sorry that more people in positions of influence do not have the courage to speak their minds on an issue of such immense importance - not just to the economy and people’s jobs, but to the defence of reason. It’s telling that those who do speak are often retired from positions in politics, academia or science, and in no need of funds, votes or preferment.

Overseas there is more debate, but too many people of reason here have let themselves be cowed or bought. Yet if all sceptics of communitiy standing spoke as one, they would be as powerful as the boy who cried that the emperor has no clothes.

This lack of daring dooms us to be the prey of priests, carpet-baggers and the barking mad. To those to fail to speak up now, be careful how you will one day be remembered - not least by yourselves.
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We either wreck the economy, or do nothing
Andrew Bolt
Here’s just a partial list of the times Kevin Rudd has used his standard defence of his actions: that we either Do Something, or do nothing. What strikes me is how often his Doing Something involves Doing Something Stupid.

UPDATE

Even old Marxist Kenneth Davidson of The Age, counting all the noughts of Rudd’s Do Something broadban plan, now asks:

KEVIN Rudd is a political genius, but can the nation afford him as Prime Minister?
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Global warming licences liars
Andrew Bolt
There’s something about global warming that allows even Barack Obama’s Interior Secretary to spin utter fantasies:
Secretary (Ken) Salazar ... raised eyebrows when he said offshore wind farms could replace 3,000 coal-fired plants. He contends that the offshore wind potential just in the Atlantic—the easiest region to develop–totals about 1,000 gigawatts.

Let’s put that in context. The entire electricity-generation capacity of the U.S., including coal, gas, nuclear, hydropower and other renewables, is just over 1,000 gigawatts. There are only about 1,400 coal plants in operation in the U.S., accounting for about 336 gigawatts of power. So that would indeed be a lot of wind.

But of that nominal 1,000 gigawatts of Atlantic wind potential, 770 gigawatts are in deep waters (that is, 200 feet or more). There are currently no deep-water wind farms anywhere in the world…

Secretary Salazar focused on the wind-power potential of the mid-Atlantic, which is about 463 gigawatts. Realistically, he said, 40% of that could be developed—or about 185 gigawatts. That’s still almost double the power potential of the U.S. nuclear fleet.

But ... offshore wind farms in Europe are lucky to generate 40% of their listed capacity. So that limits that mid-Atlantic resource to about 74 gigawatts. And that doesn’t even consider the technical and economic hurdles that still dog offshore wind power and make it less competitive than its onshore cousin.

But with global warming, it’s not about reason but faith. Not about doing but seeming. Not about facts but the word of Gaia. Madness reigns.
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The shame would be the card, not the hookers
Andrew Bolt
They are only allegations - and are denied:

A SECOND influential ALP figure has been accused of spending union money on escorts, with enemies of Victorian union boss Jeff Jackson releasing bank statements showing payments to the same Sydney brothel where federal MP Craig Thomson’s credit card was allegedly used....

Mr Thomson yesterday strenuously denied allegations his union credit cards were used to pay for escort services and to help bankroll his election campaign for the federal NSW seat of Dobell in 2007… Mr Jackson stressed that - unlike the Commonwealth credit card statement alleged to be Mr Thomson’s - his name was not even listed on the union Bendigo Gold Visa card concerned.

The most embarrassing thing about these allegations, of course, is the claim that these men would actually use a credit card rather than cash in a brothel. A taste for hookers we might forgive in a politician, but stupidity never.
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China helps out a little mate
Andrew Bolt
Astonishing news. Helen Liu isn’t just a Canberra landlady, digging into her private funds to help her tenant run for high office:

THE Chinese Government had a substantial stake in the company used by businesswoman Helen Liu to help fund Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon’s 1998 re-election campaign.

A company called Ausboc Pty Ltd was the second-biggest shareholder in Ms Liu’s property development firm, Wincopy, which in 1998 donated $20,000 to Mr Fitzgibbon’s NSW Hunter electorate campaign fund.

Documents show the ultimate holding company for Ausboc was the Bank of China, which at that time was wholly owned and directed by the Chinese Government in Beijing…

The US security analysis website GlobalSecurity.org says that the Chinese military intelligence service has used commercial entities, including the Bank of China, to provide cover for its operatives.

But is it really fair to expect the Minister of Defence to detect a potential security risk in his landlady, even after she’d paid for him to fly to China to meet 60 Chinese generals?
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Racism detected
Andrew Bolt
Ben Groundwater says demonising a whole race or nation of people is wrong:

From what I can tell, most of that fear, hatred and mistrust is borne out of ignorance… I’m constantly surprised by the people I meet and places I go around the world - usually for the better.

But, wait - Ben Groundwater thinks demonising one particular nation of people is OK:
That’s the thing about Australia - on the surface we’re a pretty happy, knockabout bunch of larrikins, but underneath lies a sad undercurrent of casual racism and xenophobia.

Which suggests the writer is righter than he thinks:
No matter how much I think I know about a country and its people before I visit, I usually find I’m wrong.

But don’t bother trying to tell Groundwater - of The Age, of course - that he’s wrong again to think the worst of foreigners or even foreign Australians. He’s now making other wild xenophobic stereotypes of a typically self-admiring kind:
Are the raving lefties more likely to want to travel, or does travelling turn you into a raving lefty? Probably a bit of both, I’d say.

UPDATE

A further thought: I’ve lived in or visited some 50 countries now, and have not only lost my Lefitsm but actually come to precisely the opposite conclusion to that of young Groundwater. My observations confirmed my suspicions that in fact Australia was not half as racist as people like Groundwater preferred to believe. Not in comparison to others, that is.
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Rudd’s $43 billion gamble
Andrew Bolt
Exactly why is the Rudd Government’s $43 billion broadband plan bad - potentially a gigantic white elephant? A round-up of expert opinion:
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People smugglers back in business under Rudd
Andrew Bolt
The people smugglers’ verdict is now in - Kevin Rudd has put out the welcome mat:

A BOAT carrying up to 40 asylum seekers, believed to be Iraqi men, women and children, has arrived at Christmas Island undetected and unescorted… It is the third vessel to arrive in Australian waters in a matter of weeks.

Watch the costs mount. And pray that we don’t once more see boats sinking at sea, their passengers victims of Rudd’s kindness.
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Pull over some bikies instead
Andrew Bolt
Harrassing the lawful is so much easier than arresting the unlawful:

SOUTH Australian police have been pulling over motorists just to tell them they are doing a good job, Road Safety Minister Tom Koutsantonis has revealed.
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Withdrawals not his only problem
Andrew Bolt
Not a good look - even in these free cash times:

THE federal Labor MP and former union boss Craig Thomson faces allegations that his union credit cards were used to pay for escort services and to withdraw more than $100,000 in cash, as well as bankroll his election campaign for the central coast seat of Dobell.

Documents provided to the Herald show that Health Services Union officials concluded last year that union credit cards issued to Mr Thomson - and other financial resources - were used for election campaign spending. These had not been disclosed under electoral law.

Mr Thomson, 44, was the union’s national secretary from 2002 to 2007 and is chairman of the House of Representatives economics committee…

But Mr Thomson ... strenuously denied the allegations.
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2020 summit couldn’t make even 2009
Andrew Bolt

A YEAR ago next week, 1000 of our “best and brightest” flew to Canberra to tell the Rudd Government precisely how to run our country.

They had so many good ideas - not surprisingly, since they’d been chosen as the cleverest of us all - that just the most important ones from their two-day 2020 Summit could barely be crammed into the 405-page final report.

And so excited was Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to have those ideas - or so he said - that he promised they would “help us shape a long-term strategy for the nation’s future”.

Indeed, so vital were they to our future that Rudd vowed to respond to each of them by the end of last year.

Oh, how hotly the summiteers applauded this leader who so flattered them, and had gathered them in a Parliament House actually built for our elected, not these selected.

How full of praise for Rudd’s wisdom in heeding them they were - Cate Blanchett, Tim Flannery, Joan Kirner, Robert Manne, Julian Burnside, Phillip Adams, Maxine McKew, Ian Lowe, Sharan Burrow, and the vast same-same like, including the woman who best represented them all: Elena Jeffreys, of the Scarlett Alliance collective of prostitutes.

Indeed, you could almost hear their group omming from the moment the summit opened, as a sacred ice cube from deep Antarctica was presented for worship while didgeridoos groaned.

And for two days, live and uninterrupted on ABC television, you could see these “best and brightest” propose plan after plan, convinced not only that the nation was watching, but that the Prime Minister was noting their every thought on his to-do list.

Suckers.
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Save the planet! Fry a pensioner
Andrew Bolt
THE green jihad against airconditioners must stop. Too many elderly Australians have died already.

Victoria’s chief health officer, Dr John Carnie, this week said some 374 Victorians may have been killed by the January heat wave, most of them old.

In South Australia, the toll is estimated at 80.

Just how many died because power blackouts knocked out their airconditioning is not known. And I doubt either government will ever say.

But what we are told is that both states now have plans to cut off the airconditioning - or make it too costly for pensioners to use - just when the heat is at its most lethal and the lives of the elderly hang in the balance.
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Deeper and deeper in debt
Andrew Bolt
I’m getting a sick feeling:

TAXPAYERS may pay be forced to pay for the $43 billion broadband network, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy admits.

The federal government announced it would take a 51 per cent stake in a new company charged with installing fibre-optic broadband with speeds that are up to 100 times faster than existing networks.

Senator Conroy said the government would pay for the remaining 49 per cent stake in the company in the unlikely event that private investment was not forthcoming.

I’m glad the Government is at least spending on something more productive than free cash, pink bats and public housing. But if this is such a good investment, why aren’t private companies building this thing instead?

But here’s why this truly frightens me at a time when government revenues are actually sinking like a stone, not rising:

Broadband rollout: $22 billion plus

First stimulus package: $10.4 billion

Second stimulus package: $42 billion

“Nation building” package: $4.7 billion

COAG funding package (with states) $15.2 billion

Car makers rescue: $6.2 billion

Homeless plan: $6.1 billion

New jobs and training package: $950 million

Local council stimulus: $300 million

Exposure in new “Rudd bank’’: $2 billion

And there’s more to come, including a pension increase in the next budget, and an infrastructure package later this year. We are being drowned in debt, with no sign of being able to repay it for many, many years to come.

I fear we will one day wonder how this happened with so few voices raised in alarm and protest.
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How wrong can the CSIRO be?
Andrew Bolt
The CSIRO’s peak-oil prediction last July:

THE price of petrol could soar to a crippling $8 a litre over the coming decade...

Oil prices today:
OIL prices sank again today, falling below $US50 a barrel in New York… The global economic slump has slashed energy demand, with prices now far below last July’s record peaks above $US147.

I’ve wondered before how ideologically driven CSIRO research now is. The CSIRO’s predictions of fast-rising temperatures have likewise been followed by a fall.
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Does White House Spin on Obama's Trip Hold Up?
By Bill O'Reilly
First of all, I said to my staff Monday that President Obama would go to Iraq even though it was not scheduled. I've studied the president so much I feel like I know what he's thinking.

The Iraq stop was necessary to bolster his credibility among the military and those who support them back home. Also, some Americans are upset that Mr. Obama criticized his country while speaking overseas and he was a bit subservient to the Muslim world. That bow deal is getting a lot of reaction.

Of course, the White House and its supporters are spinning the trip as a great success:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID AXELROD, WHITE HOUSE SENIOR ADVISER: We feel this was an enormously productive trip.

ROBERT GIBBS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Based on the reaction that the president has had, he's felt as if the trip has been a success, that we've taken concrete steps.

NANCY PELOSI, SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I think he made tremendous progress on changing the opinion of the world about America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

Well let's hope that's true because the president did not get much economic help or military help, so it is important that the "good will factor" be real. Otherwise, the trip was simply a very expensive public relations exercise.

The most frustrating part of the world today is that there is little justice in it. If the world united against Iran and North Korea, those countries would break and the threat they pose would be nullified. If the world joined together to defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan, those threats would be pretty much wiped out. But the world will not.

President Obama is a far different leader than President Bush, but so far the results are exactly the same. The world either sits out the struggle against evil or helps the bad guys.

With the great exceptions of Britain, Canada, Australia, Poland and a few other nations, the world is content to be selfish and cowardly. And if you call them on it, they hate you. That's why Obama has not called them on it. He figures having apathetic nations at least neutral toward America is better than having them work against us.

There is some logic in that, but to Americans who understand how much blood and treasure we are spending to fight evil, the president's failure to confront weak nations can be annoying.

"Talking Points" understands the big picture here and believes the president's trip was a plus, but not a major win. The world remains dangerous and chaotic, with Israel on the verge of attacking Iran.

President Obama is now the most powerful man in the world, and I hope he's thinking ahead because a wider conflict may be inevitable.
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Another Tall Tale From VP Joe Biden
By Bret Baier
Stretching the Truth?

Vice President Joe Biden may have engaged in some revisionist history Tuesday when he said during an interview on CNN: "I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office... 'well Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said, 'Mr. President, turn around look behind you. No one is following.'"

Biden has repeated similar stories in the past. But a number of former Bush aides dispute his assertions. Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer tells FOX: "I never recall Biden saying any of that." Former White House chief of staff Andy Card says: "This does not ring true to me. I doubt that it happened." Former White House political adviser and current FOX News contributor Karl Rove adds: "I remember checking on such a Biden exaggeration while at the White House and no one witnessed the meeting and his comments in remotely the same way."

A spokesman for the vice president says he stands by his remarks.