Headlines Tuesday 21st April 2009

Media have it both ways .. Turnbull criticized for suggesting effective policy.
Federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull's push to revisit the issue of temporary protection visas (TPVs) appears likely to create unrest in parts of the Liberal Party.

Mr Turnbull on Monday said he wanted to reinstate TPVs designed to make permanent residency status harder to get for people who arrive by boat.

Debate on the issue was sparked by last week's boat explosion near Ashmore Island off the northwest coast of Australia, in which five asylum seekers were killed and dozens more injured.

Liberal Party member and former MP Bruce Baird said "it's not on" to bring back TPVs.

"We have moved on as a country. We have recognised the injustice of the previous system, and that's the way it should be," he told ABC Radio on Tuesday morning.

Hell's Angels bikies ordered to shoot rivals on sight
There are fears the bikie war is about to escalate again, with Hell's Angels leaders reportedly ordering their troops to shoot Commancheros on sight.

Unemployment to surge as small businesses cut jobs
The unemployment rate is expected to surge again over the next three months, with a quarter of small to medium sized businesses planning to slash jobs.

Sudan clashes leave more than 170 dead
Clashes between rival ethnic groups in south Sudan have left more than 170 people dead, a district official said on Monday.

Bum-flashing law lecturer to appeal convictions
A Japanese law lecturer who bared her bottom to a judge will appeal against her recent convictions for threatening to kill court officials.

Al-Qaeda's number two says Obama 'did not change anything'
The second-ranking leader of the Al-Qaeda network says that US President Barack Obama "did not change anything" in the Muslims' perception of the United States.

India's eunuchs avoid voting
India's one million eunuchs face a unique dilemma every election season - do they stand in the men's or women's queue at polling stations or stay away altogether?

In the past, eunuchs - the term used for cross-dressers, pre- and post-operative transsexuals known here as hijras - have largely abstained from casting their ballots because they are unwilling to identify themselves as male or female on voter registration forms. - In Australia, under the ALP, they would be fined and possibly jailed - ed.
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Truth overboard as Rudd’s policy sinks
Piers Akerman
THE usual rump of Labor enthusiasts are demanding we “remember the Tampa” in the wake of last week’s lethal exercise aboard a boatload of asylum seekers. - I like migrants and I want more of them. I want them to come here in safety, not desperately. I want them to have a home, education and jobs. I want them to have the best health care. I am appalled at ALP policy which denies migration to many people who deserve it, and encourages dangerous queue jumping. UN camps house millions of refugees worldwide. These people need homes. That some feel they can skip the refugee camps and buy their way to Australia, risking the lives of themselves and their loved ones is unacceptable. I take umbrage at being called racist and xenophobic because I am conservative. But I denounce as evil Rudd’s populist policy. - ed.
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GRANDKIDS WARNED
Tim Blair
Declining horse-racing audiences puzzle Ken Callander:
I just cannot understand some people. Only 18,130 were at Randwick on Saturday to watch the mighty Takeover Target while just 800 metres away at the SCG 30,834 turned up to watch a run-of-the-mill Aussie rules clash between the Swans and Carlton.

I’m not bagging the AFL, good luck to their yuppie supporters, but at Randwick it was history, it was something you will be telling your grandkids about.
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HATEFEST TURNS HATEFUL
Tim Blair
Civilisation declined to attend the UN’s anti-Israel festival. Other representatives left once they realised what kind of atrocity they’d blundered into:

They can’t say they weren’t warned.
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Rudd’s message received
Andrew Bolt
The media apologists for the five boat people deaths claim there is no way the Rudd Government lured these people to their deaths.How would Afghanis have known Rudd had softened the laws against illegal immigrants?

The ABC’s Jon Faine claimed on Friday that the Rudd Government’s softening was a message sent only to Australians, and wasn’t heard beyond our coastline. The Sydney Morning Herald’s David Marr agreed on Insiders on Sunday there was no way the boat people knew of Rudd’s changes. Indeed, Marr even added: the five killed at Ashmore Reef were actually killed by John Howard’s wickedness, because they hadn’t heard Kevin Rudd had abolished his harsh policy to turn back boats like theirs (Rudd hasn’t, actually).

But there is actually evidence that boat people and their smugglers indeed study our laws carefully, and noted Rudd’s changes.

In his 2003 book Dark Victory Marr himself blamed the Howard Government for luring women and children into grave danger by introducing Temporary Protection Visas, which stripped illegal immigrants of their right to family reunion:

Rather than working as a deterrent to boat people, the new visas were turning wives and children into new, very vulnerable customers for the people smuggling trade.

Rudd changed that rule, scrapping TPVs:

The Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, said the three-year visas, which allowed refugees to stay in Australia with no guarantee of permanency, never deterred asylum seekers but “just made them suffer”. Holders of the visas had fewer rights than other asylum seekers, such as access to family reunions.

And that message seems to have been heard by these latest boat people, who clearly realised that under Rudd they no longer needed to bring their wives and children with them:

HMAS Albany intercepted the vessel, carrying 49 Afghan men and boys...

Rudd’s message was heard, and the increase in boats is not the only evidence of it. Why is that so hard for his apologists to admit?

UPDATE

Not boat people, but this is still bad timing for those trying to bury the debate on illegal immigrants:

POLICE have brought a riot amongst illegal immigrants at a detention centre in Maribyrnong under control. Sources confirmed that as many as 20 Chinese inmates had smashed windows and doors.

UPDATE 2

Gerard Henderson wonders what happened to the Rudd Government’s promise of openness:

It’s just under a month since the Special Minister of State, John Faulkner, declared that “the best safeguard against ill-informed public judgment is not concealment but information”. He added that “there is a growing acceptance that the right of the people to know … is fundamental to democracy”.

But:

Five days after this tragedy, there has been virtually no official information released on the event, even though the Government would almost certainly have received a brief from the navy. HMAS Albany had intercepted the boat and some navy personnel were on board it, and were injured, when the explosion took place.

UPDATE 3

We’re not allowed to know anything that might reflect badly on the Rudd Government or the boat people who blew up their own vessel. Only happy news is to be fed to us:

SEVERAL sailors and an RAAF Reserve doctor will be recommended for bravery awards in the wake of last week’s boat-people tragedy off northern Australia…

The commander of the Darwin-based Northern Command, Commodore David Gwyther, provided the Chief of Defence, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, with a detailed briefing about the incident and the response by the patrol boat crew. An internal navy inquiry will determine exactly what awards will be recommended, but they could include high level bravery and leadership medals such as the Medal for Gallantry, Distinguished Service Medal and Conspicuous Service Cross.

If the Government doesn’t know what happened, how comes it knows enough to know that what happened deserves medals? Let’s see what else that “detailed briefing” says.

UPDATE 4

The great circus begins again, with human rights lawyers as the prime attraction and taxpayers as their dupes:

A human rights lawyer says the Federal Government could be liable to pay compensation to the families of those killed and injured after the Ashmore Reef asylum boat explosion.
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UN starts great festival of Jew hatred
Andrew Bolt
The UN conference against racism becomes - as predicted - a conference for racists:

British delegates joined a dramatic diplomatic walkout today when President Ahmadinejad of Iran told a major UN conference against racism that the state of Israel had been founded “on the pretext of Jewish suffering” during the Second World War.

Around 20 delegates, including envoys from the UK, France, and Finland stood up and left the room at what was considered an anti-Semitic remark by the Iranian leader, who has repeatedly called for Israel to be wiped off the map.

Nine Western countries including Israel and the United States had already decided to boycott the conference entirely because its draft declaration endorsed the conclusions of an anti-racism conference in South Africa eight years ago in which Islamic nations pushed through a text equating Zionism with racism.

Sad that it took until last weekend for the Rudd Government to realise this would indeed be the hate-fest against Jews that it is. But be grateful that the decision was indeed made.

And was this a complete coincidence?
The conference opened as Israel marks Holocaust Remembrance Day - which falls this year on the 120th anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s birth.

UPDATE

Professor John Langmore, former Labor MP and head of the UN Association of Australia, suffers from the Left’s traditional weakness - to judge by words and seeming, not deeds and doing. Here’s his oped deploring Australia’s refusal to attend this hate-fest - written before Ahmadinejad’s speech, but appearing in The Age after it:

Opponents of the conference argue that the risks of attending are too great because the conference may be misused for anti-Semitism. Yet the draft outcome explicitly “recognises with deep concern the negative stereotyping of religions … including Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianophobia and anti-Arabism” and urges all states to counter them (paragraph 11).

Check the document, not the raving bigot holding it up.

UPDATE 2

Reader Daniel says the Sydney Morning Herald editor was also caught out by Ahmadinejad, who confirmed within hours the fears the editor had just pooh-poohed:

Much of the campaign by Israel and Jewish diaspora groups against the Durban Review has been jumping at the shadows of what might happen.

And why is the opposition to this circus portrayed as merely a self-serving “campaign by Israel and Jewish diaspora groups”? I’m not Jewish, and I certainly am not alone among non-Jews in deploring the hate-fest. There’s a nasty smell to the SMH’s caricature.
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No backers for Rudd’s reckless plan
Andrew Bolt
2008: Climate Change Minister Penny Wong is convinced the consensus on global warming must rule:

(T)he debate really about whether human activity has contributed to climate change is effectively over. The vast majority of scientists, the consensus science, that we have contributed and we’ve already feeling the impact.

2009: Climate Change Minister Penny Wong is convinced the consensus on her global warming policy doesn’t matter:

FEDERAL Climate Change Minister Penny Wong has been unable to name a single supporter of the proposed Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) after spruiking the Government’s carbon reduction plan in Sydney.

UPDATE

Here’s the real growing consensus among the public - that global warming theory is wildly exaggerated. Professor Ian Plimer’s book Heaven and Earth, countering the warming hysteria, has sold 5000 copies in just its first week. It’s already getting a second printing.

I’ll ask again: is the climate changing?
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What is it with the Left and crazies?
Andrew Bolt
You don’t have to be mad to be of the Left, but the pictorial evidence from Zombietime shows it sure helps. WARNING: some pictures in this gallery of ferals and the frenzied will offend.
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But Rudd is buying the Ferrari - with your cash
Andrew Bolt
Why would Kevin Rudd’s $43 billion broadband plan work here when it makes little sense in bigger, more compact Britain?

Digital Britain Summit BT chief executive Ian Livingstone defended his firm’s limited plans for faster broadband today, arguing there is not enough demand for fibre to the home to justify its cost. He was appearing on a panel with his opposite numbers at Virgin Media and O2 at the Digital Britain summit this morning.

“Of course a Ferrari is faster than a Ford,” Livingstone said. “But most people are happy with a Ford.”
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Rudd concedes: both a giant debt and a recession
Andrew Bolt
Billions of dollars of stimulus spending didn’t save us from recession:

KEVIN Rudd has conceded for the first time that Australia will sink into recession…

“The worst global economic recession in 75 years means it’s inevitable that Australia too will be dragged into recession,” he said.

That spending has just left us with a frightening debt - and one that’s growing as Rudd keeps spending:

The mini-budget contained a provision for the nation’s gross debt to reach $200 billion… There was also the $42 billion for the second stimulus package. Should revenues be substantially worse than forecast in the mini-budget, there may be a need to borrow beyond the $200 billion limit.
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Girls, tatts and other presents from Rudd
Andrew Bolt
So, how are battlers spending that $900 free money that Kevin Rudd gave them? The Cairns Post asks:

This is just some of the free-money spending that will leave us eventually with debts Rudd estimates at $200 billion - so far. I don’t think these handouts will leave us better able to pay that off, do you? But at least our ferals will have had some sex.
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The BBC’s innate instinct to vilify Israel
Andrew Bolt
This time it’s the BBC itself which - reluctantly, and after much pushing - nails one of its own as an Israel-basher. But it’s hard to ignore the malice in this:

...Zionism’s innate instinct to push out the frontier
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Why was there petrol on a diesel boat?
Andrew Bolt
How much of an “accident” could the explosion that killed five boat people last week have been?

Lieutenant Commander Learoyd said he could not comment on the cause of the explosion, as it was under investigation, but confirmed the boat had a diesel engine.

Diesel?

Diesel engines typically offer several inherent advantages over spark ignited petrol engines. These include: Diesel fuel is considered safer in that it is less volatile. Since it has a much higher flash-point, the risk of an explosion or fire is greatly reduced.

This point is confirmed to me by several readers, including Cobber:

I was a volunteer fire fighter for 14 years I can tell you diesel will not explode like the explosion on that boat unless it has many times the amount of petrol mixed with it.

If you really want an explosion, you’d best choose petrol. So if reports are right and petrol was indeed poured into the bilge to create an explosive fuel-air mix, where did that petrol come from? Why was it brought on board? To burn or blow up the boat at journey’s end?
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Drought not proof of global warming
Andrew Bolt
Top graph shows phases of Indian Ocean Dipole back to 1880. Normal rain declines in positive phase. Grey bars indicate drought. Bottom graph shows rainfall anomalies (mm).

No, the recent big dry is not unusual and not proof of global warming, according to a new study from the University of NSW Climate Change Research Centre:

The causes of south-eastern Australia’s longest, most severe and damaging droughts have been discovered, with the surprise finding that they originate far away in the Indian Ocean.

A team of Australian scientists has detailed for the first time how a phenomenon known as the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) - a variable and irregular cycle of warming and cooling of ocean water - dictates whether moisture-bearing winds are carried across the southern half of Australia…

It also reveals the causes of other iconic extreme droughts in recorded history, notably the World War II Drought from 1937 to 1945 and the Federation Drought from 1895 to 1902, and challenges the accepted understanding of the key drivers of Australia’s climate.

The researchers do pay a respectful nod to warmer temperatures in Australia “which may be linked to human-induced climate change” (my emphasis), but they haven’t explained whether the lack of rain may in turn cause our temperatures to be higher than they would normally be.

Any chance that the Rudd Government’s Climate Change Minister now ceases making this unscientific claim?

PENNY WONG: There is a great deal of scientific advice about the impact of climate change on rainfall, particularly in southern Australia.

Strange, the more we learn, the less certain the theory of man-made apocalyptic warming seems.
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Save the planet! Stop eating
Andrew Bolt
First breathing was turned into a crime against the environment. Now eating is, too:

Overweight people eat more than thin people and are more likely to travel by car, making excess body weight doubly bad for the environment, a new UK study has found.

This, of course, makes this porker an eco-criminal:

UPDATE

Reader AndrewS protests:

He’s not fat - he’s just sequestering carbon.
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Letting fly in Obama’s general direction
Andrew Bolt
If words were deeds, how Iran would tremble at Barack Obama’s:

Barack Obama calls on Tehran to release reporter Roxana Saberi

Instead, I expect Iran’s response to be rather like this:

Or indeed like this effort by Venezuelan socialist Hugo Chavez last week, handing Obama a book on wicked Yankees:

Or this one given by Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega at the same summit:

Gee, the world’s leaders seem to be lining up to slap Obama’s young face.
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Is America a Torture Nation?
By Bill O'Reilly
President Obama personally ordered the release of some CIA memos on tough interrogation techniques in play after the 9/11 attack, and I say good. I want a national debate on the issue.

Here are the headlines Friday in The New York Times and The Washington Post. The Times opining: "Memos Spell Out Brutal CIA Mode of Interrogation." The Post bannering: "New Interrogation Details Emerge." Quite a difference, right?

The Times takes the far-left view that any rough stuff is torture. That newspaper wants no coerced interrogation at all. If you go beyond posing questions in an even voice, you are torturing, according to The Times.

Although a left-leaning paper as well, The Washington Post at least presents both sides of the story and does not use editorial opinions in its headlines, as The Times did Friday.

By the way, that is a breech of journalistic standards. I'm sure the Columbia Journalism Review will point that out in its next edition.

The debate is fairly simple. No rough stuff at all, as opposed to the limited use of harsh techniques which have produced lifesaving information.

According to the memos, water-boarding was used on just three people and produced good intel. A doctor was standing by during the process, which lasted less than 40 seconds. Sleep deprivation, cold rooms, and the threat of a caterpillar were also used on captured terrorists — about 30 of them — the CIA questioned.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal Friday, former CIA Chief Michael Hayden and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey say:

"The (harsh) techniques themselves were used selectively against only a small number of hard-core prisoners who successfully resisted other forms of interrogation, and then only with the explicit authorization of the director of the CIA ... fully half of the government's knowledge about the structure and activities of Al Qaeda came from those interrogations."

But the Obama administration now says it will not use those techniques. So if Americans are killed again by terrorists, the process of striking back will obviously be much harder.

It is your duty as citizens to make the call here.

The left-wing media has sold the world a brutal falsehood: that we are a torture nation, that the USA indiscriminately and sadistically harmed human beings on a massive scale. The New York Times and NBC News have made a campaign out of this propaganda.

To his credit, President Obama has shut down any mechanism that would allow a witch hunt over harsh interrogations. But it is clear that the president is playing to his committed left-wing base by sympathizing somewhat with the witch-hunters.

It is the president's job to protect Americans from harm, and like him or not, President Bush did that after 9/11. It remains to be seen whether Mr. Obama's anti-terror vision will be more effective.