Headlines Tuesday 14th April 2009

Two dead as Thailand violence escalates
Thousands of Thai anti-government protesters clashed with armed soldiers and Bangkok residents overnight, leaving two dead and 113 injured.

ALP secretly planning Costello takeover
Malcolm Turnbull's future is under yet another cloud, with claims the Liberal Party is preparing to install Peter Costello as leader. - Every year. Every election. Every poll Costello's name was used to suggest division within the Libs of the conservative government. Never was the prediction accurate. However, the ALP leadership changes were never predicted. - ed.

Teen hospitalised after NRL fan fight
A pregnant teenager is being assessed in hospital after a fight at the Bulldogs/Rabbitohs match at Homebush last night.

Prison guards slam govt over bikie brawl
Prison officers will walk off the job today, angry at the NSW Government's handling of a bikie brawl at Parklea on Good Friday.

Childcare centres to fly Aboriginal flag
Childcare centres could be forced to teach children about racism under new federal government guidelines.

Sydney Metro impossible under current plan
The controversial Sydney CBD metro network has suffered another major setback.
This will not delay the Metro... Sydney Metro CEO Les Walinga

Floods wreak havoc in southeast Qld
A young girl remains missing and five English tourists have been plucked to safety among several......

Dialling drivers rack up $9m in fines
Drivers caught using their mobile phones have racked up a total of $9.3 million in fines in a year,......

Woman dies in NSW flash flooding
A woman has died after being caught in flash flooding in south western NSW....
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Let the cannonball fly and hang them high
Piers Akerman
DESPITE the popularity of successive Pirates of the Caribbean films, real pirates are not cuddly criminals.

Nor are they members of an oppressed minority group suffering from low self-esteem. They are murderers and kidnappers who live by the gun and understand only one thing - force. - This could have been Obama’s Carter moment, where he declared action and things went south. Carter did not have the luxury of a functioning military which Obama has, courtesy of President GW Bush. Instead, when Carter sent his troops into Iran, they were suffering from nearly four years of his dismantling following on with the Ford inspired policy vaccuum in the wake of Nixon’s loss.
However, there will be many more such tests for Obama, and Obama will fail some of them, probably because he will not maintain an effective military asset.
It may be a salient lesson for Australians as we see how Rudd has devalued Australian assets. Already there has been an explosion of casualties the like Mr Howard said could happen, but didn’t on his watch.
Under Rudd, Australia is not compromising, but being compromised. - ed.
re the article on Easter bunny Rudd walks on eggshells by Akerman - Tim replied to DD Ball
About 20% of the press are objective 60% are left wing 20% are right wing.

The Canberra Press Gallery and the ABC are deep pink left. A mere glance at the contenders the ABC has sent onto the Labor benches confirms their bias.

This is why a coalition victory at the next federal election is a remote prospect at best - Rudd’s mistakes are not being analyzed by the ‘Fourth Estate.’ By any objective measure the guy has done nothing but f_ck up - The hamfisted backing of the banks should have sunk the Rudd government yet the media gave him a free pass. This mistake alone did more damage to our non banking financial sector than the entire credit crunch combined.

The kicker is that Rudd is damaging our economy at a faster rate than Keating, Kirner & Carr combined. It took Keating 13 years to build up the 96 billion deficit - Rudd will have done 200 billion in his first term. Maybe the press is in a state of disbelief ? More likely they don’t understand.

The only rival Rudd has in modern times is the Brown government of Britain. The guy looted 3/4 of that nation’s gold reserves to pay for left wing causes, encouraged Canary Wharf to create debt that will take 4 decades to pay back, a housing bubble that is taking the entire British economy with it as it collapses and the murder of any hope that Britain will see an unemployment rate lower than 10% for the next 5 years (longer probably)

The real difference between Labor and Liberal is Liberal says NO from time to time where as Labor indulges any whim regardless of the long term consequences. The media don’t like the word ‘no.’

The other thing left wing media organisations do is mildly attack Labor mid term - This is how they convince themselves they are objective. Laurie Oats Ray Martin and Red Kerry play it this way. Come election year they fall in line. By the way - Their mid term attacks are usually based on issues that no one gives a stuff about.

Party on. - Tim, I see the argument, but I think it falls into the category of self fulfilling prophecy. It adequately explains things, but doesn’t explain why it is that the conservatives are ever successful.
What you write is correct, but it (left wing bias) is more pernicious than it is given credit for. Throughout the western world left wing bias has been noted since the days of Horatio Nelson and the press have it so that it is considered by some conservatives that conservative parties require an extra five percent to gain office ahead of liberal left.
There are legitimate reasons given for not analyzing the past bias .. ‘different times’ ‘debate has moved on’ ‘overanalyzing’ and so on. It is almost as if a lefty person that drops an atom bomb on a civilian population twice can’t be charged with war crimes.
Thing is conservatives are often successful .. more often than the five percent hurdle suggests and your analysis doesn’t account for it.
A conservative leader must appeal to conservative constituents. Thatcher, Churchill, Nixon, Reagan, GW Bush and Howard were scrupulously even handed, but uncompromisingly conservative. Whereas GHW Bush, McCain, Fraser, McMahon, Hewson and Major attempted to appeal to the left for arguments of central positioning. No conservative will ever compromise enough to appeal to the left. Insane Obama beats gentleman McCain every time.
It is true the press will campaign against the conservative leader. However the conservative leader can break through and speak directly to the public if they are even handed, uncompromisingly conservative and identified as such by the public. - ed
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NAIVE, TRUSTING UNION MEN TRICKED SOMEHOW
Tim Blair
Sweet-natured unionists feel they’ve been betrayed by the Prime Minister:
Kevin Rudd has been accused of making false promises to senior union officials about the future of the controversial building industry watchdog before they handed over cheques to Labor totalling $500,000 before the last federal election.

In a secret meeting on April 12, 2007, officials of the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union gave the money to then ALP national secretary Tim Gartrell, only after Mr Rudd, then the opposition leader, committed to abolishing the Australian Building and Construction Commission, it has been claimed.

In a second secret meeting at around the same time, officials of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union also received a promise to abolish the commission and were told by Mr Rudd to “trust me” on the issue, it has been alleged.
Perhaps the Prime Minister needs instruction in ethical issues. Fetch the persona dolls! By the way, the unionists involved in these claims are CFMEU state secretary Bill Oliver and Electrical Trades Union state secretary Dean Mighell.
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BET OFFERED
Tim Blair
The Los Angeles Times last week listed the terrible effects of global warming upon Australia, including:

• depression
• weeping
• broken families
• drought
• floods
• mosquito-borne illnesses
• economic collapse
• killer heat waves
• koala deaths
• destruction of entire towns
• Ferris wheel ruination
• rail warpage
• flying fox annihilation
• field desiccation
• tree shriveling
• orchard abandonment
• business closures
• collapse of agriculture “and the nation’s ability to feed itself”
• Victorian farmers killing themselves at rate of one per week ("hanging is the preferred method")
• pear stunting
• burned apples
• water restrictions in ”every capital in Australia’s eight states and territories”
• urban bucketing
• toilet drinking
• surviving on rainwater or “what they can scrounge or buy”
• delayed burials
• crocodile attacks
• hemorrhagic dengue fever
• bleached coral
• reef extinction
• retreating forests
• white lemuroid ringtail possum endangerment
• abandoned settlements, and
• unliveable coastlines

The Times now revisits this subject in an editorial:
In the 1959 Gregory Peck classic “On the Beach,” humanity’s last holdouts in the aftermath of a global nuclear war huddle in Australia and wait for the inevitable atomic wind to carry the rest of the species away. When it comes to today’s real-world climate crisis, though, Australia is going first, not last …

Climate skeptics believe that Australia is simply in the midst of a cyclical change in weather patterns, or that the steel-warping temperatures turning the interior into a Martian landscape are the result of a natural warming period rather than a phenomenon with human causes. Most of these skeptics live outside Australia.
Only someone who lives outside Australia would refer to the interior being turned into a Martian landscape; it’s been that way for as long as humans have known it. Does anyone at this paper care for a wager? I’ll put a lazy billion on Australia (and Australians) outlasting the LA Times. Hell, let’s make it $100 billion. They need the money, after all.
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PASSIVE PREZ
Tim Blair
The NYT reports:
President Obama came to office promising swift and comprehensive action to combat global climate change, and the topic remains a surefire applause line in his speeches here and abroad.

Yet the administration has taken a cautious and rather passive role on the issue …
That’s because there’s nothing to be done, short of shutting down America, which might run contrary to Obama’s re-election plans. Besides, he’s got other clowns to deal with:
Somali pirates on Monday vowed to retaliate for the deaths of three colleagues who were shot dead by U.S. Navy snipers hours before in a daring nighttime assault that freed a 53-year-old American captain …

“Every country will be treated the way it treats us,” said Abdullahi Lami, one of the pirates holding a Greek ship anchored in the pirate den of Gaan, a central Somali town.

“In the future, America will be the one mourning and crying,” he told The Associated Press by telephone. “We will retaliate for the killings of our men.”
Just try to keep your carbon footprint modest, chaps. Speaking of footprints, the pirate zone isn’t exactly tiny.

Yet.
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SEDANPHOBIA
Tim Blair
Another chopped headline debacle, this time from the SMH:
Car makers fear worst Aussie sedans
So it says on the SMH’s opening screen. And who doesn’t fear certain Australian sedans? But the full headline is slightly different:
Car makers fear the worst for big Aussie sedans - still, not as good as the Frank Devine find, involving bizarre parties, "Brisbane broken down by age and sex" - ed
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Labour slimes
Andrew Bolt
Labour damns:

Communities Minister Hazel Blears made a speech to the Hansard Society yesterday in which she criticised political bloggers in the UK. ”Political blogs are written by people with disdain for the political system and politicians, who see their function as unearthing scandals, conspiracies and perceived hypocrisy,” she said.... “The most popular blogs are right-wing, ranging from the considered Tory views of Iain Dale, to the vicious nihilism of Guido Fawkes...”

Labour does:

DOWNING Street emails setting out plans for a vicious smear campaign against the Tories have forced the resignation of one of Gordon Brown’s most senior aides.

The emails, seen by The Sunday Times, expose how the British Prime Minister’s head of strategy and planning wrote to a Labour spin doctor proposing a campaign of unfounded personal slurs against senior Tories.

The smears were part of a strategy to “destabilise” the Opposition in the run-up to the general election, targeting Conservative leader David Cameron, shadow chancellor George Osborne, and three other Tory MPs. The messages from Damian McBride, a longstanding Labour aide, were sent from an official No 10 email address.

The smears were aimed at “putting the fear of God” into Mr Osborne by spreading rumours that he took drugs and had sex with a prostitute, and about the mental health of Mr Osborne’s wife; challenging Mr Cameron to reveal details of an “embarrassing illness”; and accusing a gay Tory MP of promoting his partner’s business interests in the Commons.

Mr McBride’s emails were sent to Derek Draper, a former aide to Business Secretary Peter Mandelson and prominent Labour blogger.

The Daily Telegraph explains:

Secretly Mr Draper was also working on another plan to fight Mr Staines and his Guido Fawkes blog with the same fire. This was to be a website called “Red Rag”, which would be dripping sleaze and innuendo about top Conservatives.
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The Left are now pirates, too
Andrew Bolt
African pirates hijack ships owned by white capitalists. So whose side are you on if you’re a columnist of the hard Left?

Let’s ask Johann Hari of the Independent:

In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its 9 million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.
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Obama appoints watermelon green
Andrew Bolt
This doesn’t inspire confidence:

The man appointed as a special environmental adviser to the White House recently was as an admitted radical communist and black nationalist leader.

Van Jones, president and founder of Green For All, a nonprofit organization that advocates for building a so-called inclusive green economy, has been tapped to serve as the special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. According to the White House blog, Jones’ duties will include helping to craft job-generating climate policy and ensuring equal opportunity in the administration’s energy proposals.

Jones, formerly a self-described “rowdy black nationalist,” boasted in a 2005 interview that his environmental activism was a means to fight for racial and class “justice.”

Background, with links, on Jones’ Marxist past here. Madness is on the hoof. And all this not two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the declared death of the far Left dream.
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Sceptic spared a sliming: is the climate changing?
Andrew Bolt
Normally this would be an invitation to slime the blasphemer:

AN Adelaide professor says climate change is unavoidable - but that humans are not the cause of it.

University of Adelaide Professor of Mining Geology Ian Plimer this week launches his seventh book, Heaven and Earth, Global Warming: The Missing Science, which aims to refute every scientific argument that humans are responsible for global warming.

Professor Plimer embarked on the project after being incensed by increasing public acceptance of the idea that humans have caused global warming.

Yet it may just be that Plimer, perhaps our most distinguished geologist, has in fact produced his book just when there’s a new mood to finally challenge the global warming hysterics, hypocrites and carpet baggers.
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Canberra gets new owners
Andrew Bolt
A dramatic crime shocks Canberra, traditional home of the who-knows-exactly:

The Ngunnawal people are currently recognised as the traditional custodians of the land, but the title is contested by the Ngambri people.

The standing disagreement took a dramatic turn earlier this week when ‘’Welcome to Canberra’’ signs were illegally changed. Five signs at entry points to the territory were altered from Ngunnawal Country and replaced with Ngambri Country some time between the weekend and Wednesday morning. The professional-looking Ngambri stickers were placed over the top of Ngunnawal to convincingly change the greeting…

ACT TAMS Minister Jon Stanhope echoed the plea (to report the offenders to police), labelling the change as vandalism.

And, my goodness, but Stanhope is particularly careful about the politics of his sacred signs, announcing:

The signs incorporate the text from the old signs of ‘Welcome to Ngunnawal Country, Sister Cities of Nara (Japan) and Beijing (PRC China)’ as well as ‘Friendship City with Dili (East Timor)‘.

But wait - if the Ngambri are the fake traditional owners of Canberra, how did this happen?:

This video from the ABC website shows Matilda House, Ngambri Elder, giving the Welcome to Country speech at the opening of the 42nd Parliament, Parliament House, Canberra, 12 February 2008.

It turns out that House had restickered herself, too, just like some Welcome to Canberra sign:

Matilda House - who now identifies herself as a Ngambri woman after claiming in the past to belong to the neighbouring Ngunnawal tribe - had been invited to give the formal welcome when parliament opens.

And to be honest, she could just as easily call herself a member of several other ethnic tribes