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Rudd not calling China over Aussie 'spy'
Kevin Rudd says he has no immediate plans to discuss with the Chinese president the controversial arrest of an Australian Rio Tinto executive accused of spying.
Julia Gillard announces new 'super teacher' plan
Radical new plans to boost exam results by enticing a new breed of super teachers to work in the worst performing schools have been unveiled by Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard. - Barry O'Farrell was right to question what will be implemented, and he was horribly maligned for his stance. Gillard is being mealy mouthed with this half baked plan. She can defend it, but until she provides detail, it is only a gimicky pipe dream that she isn't capable of implementing as she describes it . Gillard has failed in all of her other plans, why should we suspend disbelief for this? - ed.
Asylum seeker boat still missing: Smith
The search is continuing for 74 asylum seekers whose boat is feared to have sunk in treacherous Indonesian waters en route to Australia. - how many more deaths will Rudd be responsible for? - ed.
Man under siege sexually assaulted 80yo
A man who stabbed a policeman and stole his patrol car has sexually assaulted an elderly hostage at a remote South Australian property.
Aussie small fish secures Jerry Seinfeld
Comedy megastar Jerry Seinfeld had only done two ad campaigns in his career - for Microsoft and American Express - but somehow Newcastle's Greater Building Society has signed him up.
France passes tough anti-piracy laws
France's Senate has approved a bill allowing judges to cut off Internet connections of users who...
Michael Jackson's doctor dodges paternity questions
Michael Jackson’s former doctor has denied he is the father of the late singer’s two oldest children – as far as he knows.
Kevin Rudd talks up would-be saint Mary MacKillop to Pope
POPE Benedict XVI has expressed great interest in the achievements of Mother Mary MacKillop amid hopes she might one day become Australia's first saint. The Pope discussed MacKillop's achievements with Kevin Rudd during a 20-minute private audience with the prime minister in his private library at the Vatican overnight. Mr Rudd said after the meeting that the Pope had shown great interest in MacKillop, who was beatified in 1995, and fondly recalled his visit to her tomb in Sydney in mid-2008, which the prime minister said had clearly "left a deep impression on the holy father".
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We're not getting what we were promised
Alan Jones thinks he can't be the only person in Australia scratching his head at the lost election promises.
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Chicago chills
Andrew Bolt
No, weather is not climate. But could someone please eplain that to warming hysteric Professor Barry Brook?
Brook, director of climate science at Adelaide University’s Environment Institute, freaked over Melbourne’s hottest day since 1851, claiming it was caused by global warming:
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has released a detailed analysis of the 2009 southern Australian heatwave. Some of the figures presented are staggering, with numerous temperature records smashed. Indeed, a colleague at BOM pointed out just how exceptional this event was:
“Given that this was the hottest day on record on top of the driest start to a year on record on top of the longest driest drought on record on top of the hottest drought on record the implications are clear…
It is clear to me that climate change is now becoming such a strong contributor to these hitherto unimaginable events that the language starts to change from one of “climate change increased the chances of an event” to ”without climate change this event could not have occured”.
I couldn’t have said it better.
Brook was of course as wrong on the evidence as he was on the conclusion. Melbourne had not its hottest day on record, but its hottest day since 1851.
And if the hottest day in Melbourne for 158 years is proof of global warming, what, then, does he conclude about the coldest July 8 in Chicago in 118 years?
Only one other year in the past half century has hosted so many sub-70-degree days up to this point in a summer season — 1969, when 14 such days occurred. Wednesday’s paltry 65-degree high at O’Hare International Airport (an early-May-level temperature and a reading 18 degrees below normal) was also the city’s coolest July 8 high in 118 years — since a 61-degree high on the date in 1891.
But, of course, this is rather more significant evidence than either:
Note, incidentally, that the sole period of warming which the IPCC concludes shows a human influence - that rising carbon dixoide concentration - amounts to just 25 years. Bear that in mind when alarmists tell you that eight years of cooling since is, of course, far too short a period to make any conclusions about climate trends.
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Garrett’s hearing suddenly improves
Andrew Bolt
Peter Garrett yesterday couldn’t hear many people opposing the idea of banning climbing on Ayers Rock:
Yesterday Environment Minister Peter Garrett - who would give final approval to the plan - said he was not hearing “many voices” in favour of keeping it open.
Actually, Garrett today hears one voice, which alone should be more than enough:
KEVIN Rudd has called the idea of closing Uluru to climbers “sad”, and said he hopes it doesn’t happen.
Poor Garrett, foiled again. So far he hasn’t banned Gunn’s proposed paper mill, has dropped the promise to prosecute Japan for whaling, has delayed attempts to ban plastic bags, has been stripped of responsibility for global warming policies, has had to defend the delay in the emissions reducation scheme and all in all must be wondering what’s happened to his agenda.
UPDATE
Paul Toohey:
PETER Garrett has been left looking like a shag on a lonely rock after Kevin Rudd undermined him by saying tourists should continue to be allowed to climb Uluru.
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Like a sinking stone
Andrew Bolt
I don’t think Barack Obama is travelling as well as you’d guess from the headlines here.
UPDATE
As I’ve said, Obama speaks so sweetly that you tend not to notice how little there is in what he says. For instance, note how Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson now explains to the Senate Armed Services Committee the truth behind Obama’s grand promise to close the wicked Guantanamo facility by the end of the year and put on trial its 229 prisoners, who actually include many very dangerous terrorists:
Martinez: If we are doing Article III [civilian] trials...we then also are talking about closing Guantanamo by the end of the year. There’s no way for 220-some-odd people to be prosecuted through some proceeding, whether Article III or military commissions, in that time frame. So where will they then be? I guess they’ll be here. And what about those who are acquitted? Where do they go? What happens to them?
Johnson: You’re correct. You can’t prosecute some significant subset of 229 people before January. So those that we think are prosecutable and should be detained, we will continue to detain, whether it’s at Guantanamo or someplace else. The question of what happens if there’s an acquittal...I think that as a matter of legal authority, if you have the authority under the laws of war to detain someone...it is true irrespective of what happens on the prosecution side.
Martinez: So therefore the prosecution becomes a moot point?
Johnson: Oh no, I’m not saying that at all. You raised the issue of what happens if there’s an acquittal, and in my judgment, as a matter of legal authority...if a review panel has determined this person is a security threat...and should not be released, if for some reason he is not convicted for a lengthy prison sentence, then as a matter of legal authority I think it’s our view that we would have the ability to detain him.
Jacob Sullum notes the trickery and spin:
So the Obama administration is all for due process, as long as it produces the correct result. Obama already has said that Guantanamo detainees who cannot be successfully tried by military commissions or civilian courts can still be imprisoned indefinitely if they are considered too dangerous to release. Now Johnson is saying that even those who are prosecuted can be kept imprisoned regardless of the verdict. The only point of prosecuting them, it seems, is to create an impression of due process while continuing the Bush detention policies that Obama condemned during the campaign.
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Ho hot line to Beijing, after all
Andrew Bolt
There’s at least two reasons here why Stern Hu might wish he’d stolen a bar mat instead:
BEIJING last night claimed that detained Australian mining executive Stern Hu had caused “huge loss” to China’s economic interests by stealing state secrets.
As Kevin Rudd resisted demands to personally intervene in the case, Canberra’s diplomatic representatives will today gain access to Mr Hu, Rio Tinto’s general manager of iron ore operations, for the first time since the Chinese-born Australian was arrested by secret police on Sunday.
Despite China’s claims:
“My sense is it’s part of the very complicated context of the Chinalco deal,” said John Frankenstein, a China business watcher at the City University of New York.
Mr Frankenstein said he often recited the advice of a leading lawyer: “What foreign businesses just can’t understand is that the Chinese system can legitimately interfere in any business deal at any time under any context.”
Michelle Grattan defends Rudd’s softly-softly approach, but even she can’t help wondering:
The fact is, we just don’t know enough to judge whether the Government is going about things the right way. Obviously, it doesn’t want to offend the Chinese. But would being stronger in language be more appropriate and get better results, or simply make things worse?
It certainly sounds strange to hear this called a “consular” matter.
John Garnaut:
Some official sources involved in the predicament of Mr Hu and Liu Caikui, Wang Yong and Ge Minqiang say the fact that the investigation has got this far shows the Rudd Government has lost political traction with Beijing.
The truth may actually be that no one has traction with Beijing, no matter how much they flatter themselves. The leaders of this deeply authoritarian regime simply do what they must to keep their grip on power - and privileges.
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Take your pick
Andrew Bolt
Daily Telegraph:
WOMEN in NSW are bearing the brunt of the recession, with the number of females in full-time jobs plunging 15,000 in just one month.
The Age:
WOMEN are the surprise winners from the changes that have flowed from the global financial crisis, with the latest jobs figures showing that female employment has been climbing at a time when male employment has been sliding.
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Three bad reasons to close the rock
Andrew Bolt
PETER Garrett said yesterday he hadn’t yet heard good arguments against a plan to ban us from climbing Ayers Rock.
Well, right back at you, Pete. I haven’t yet heard a single good argument for you to do what you now threaten.
In fact, my dear Environment Minister, the people who have got your ear on this ban should fix up their homes before shooing us off the rock. Until then, excuse me if I doubt the sincerity of their concern about tourists who have paid $25 a pop to come marvel at - and walk on - the rock next door.
It’s actually a breach of faith that we must even argue now for our right to climb Ayers Rock, or Uluru.
After all, when the Hawke government in 1985 handed it to the traditional Anangu owners, the deal was that for the next 99 years Ayers Rock would still be open to tourists, who would still be free to climb it. Some 100,000 tourists a year, or a third of all visitors, do just that.
Yet now the national park staff and Anangu people who today oversee the site say that must stop. The deal is off.
And here’s the argument they put in their new draft management plan, now awaiting Garrett’s approval: “For visitor, safety, cultural and environment reasons, the director and the board will work towards closure of the climb.”
Which means, of course, banning Australians from completing a climb that to many is a pilgrimage to the heart of this country. A sacred rite, even.
But how serious are these arguments that traditional owners give and which Garrett now unthinkingly repeats?
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Commissions propose, politicians dispose
Andrew Bolt
THE Bushfires Royal Commission seems to have got a bit big for its fireman’s boots.
Its senior counsel, Jack Rush QC, this week savaged the Brumby Government for having the cheek to act now to save lives, with the next bushfire season just 15 weeks away.
And in doing so Rush has seemingly forgotten that while commissions may advise, politicians must decide. Or so it must be in a democracy.
The fuss started last Friday, when Premier John Brumby announced changes to the Government’s bushfire policy which he felt couldn’t wait for the commission’s interim report on August 17 into the Black Saturday disaster.
They included improvements to warning systems and fire prediction services, and the identifying of “neighborhood safer places” where bush people could flee to in a fire.
In revealing them, Brumby was keen to smooth the royal commission’s fur, saying of course he knew it might recommend things very different to what he planned. Of course, it might recommend things the Government would be then glad to take up as well.
But he clearly didn’t stroke hard enough, given that Rush furiously attacked him for announcing changes without first running them by the commission, whose work apparently was now undermined.
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And Al Gore is Moses
Andrew Bolt
The Sydney Morning Herald’s Elizabeth Farrelly sees good in making a faith out of global warming:
Titling his talk The Theology of Climate Change, (Ian Plimer) dismissed the global climate movement as “an urban fundamentalist atheistic religion” shaped to plug the hole left by “failed Western socialism and failed Western Christianity”. It’s true that climate change has taken on a deistic tinge. Phillip Adams praised John O’Brien’s recent book, Opportunities Beyond Carbon, thus: “Verily I say unto you: this is a new New Testament, containing hope of a planetary resurrection ... should be set to music and sung aloud by all policy-makers.” Adams was mildly tongue-in-cheek, of course. But only mildly. Tony Blair spoke for the masses when he positioned climate change as the moral issue of our time. And what’s wrong with that? Religion has always swayed behaviour by giving moral heft to certain rules of practical living, from not eating shellfish to not coveting your neighbour’s wife.
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Tried before
Andrew Bolt
Leaders of the world’s most powerful countries, the G8, have agreed to limit the rise in global temperatures to no more than 2C.
Moreover, it’s non-binding, doesn’t include mega-emitters China or India, and Russia’s already backing away.
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Feds May Crack Down on Oil Speculators
By Bill O'Reilly
The federal government may crack down on oil speculators, the people who hurt us all very badly by manipulating gas prices and giving the oil companies an excuse to artificially raise prices. That, of course, has greatly contributed to the brutal recession we are experiencing right now.
For more than three years, more than three years, I have been telling you that the oil companies are rigged, the markets are rigged, with supply and demand having little to do with what we pay at the gas pump or what the power companies charge us to heat or cool our homes. Now you'll remember, I was hammered for my analysis:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAC JOHNSON: But they're not speculators. They're future traders. What they are doing is sharing risk.
JOHN STOSSEL, CO-HOST, "20/20": You're allowed to speculate, and mommy government is not going to watch every move you make.
TOBIN SMITH: You're right about one thing. There is speculation in the markets. That's what makes the markets, Bill. It's this speculator who keeps the money flowing.
O'REILLY: Am I making any mistakes here on the oil? I think it's rigged. What do you think?
KARL ROVE: Well, this is one of the few moments where I may disagree with you.
O'REILLY: So you just answered my question that I'm right in my analysis that it doesn't have anything to do with supply and demand. It has to do with speculation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It has everything to do with the fundamental…
NEIL CAVUTO: That is a strong economy.
O'REILLY: Right.
CAVUTO: That is…
O'REILLY: We also have people manipulating the oil futures markets.
CAVUTO: We have no one manipulating.
JONATHAN HOENIG: I can't believe you didn't learn anything about economics, with all due respect, Bill, at Harvard.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Well Wednesday, the front page headline in The Wall Street Journal is: Oil Speculators Under Fire. U.S. weighs more trading regulations as U.K., France seek international action.
Well, it's about time. The Bush administration did nothing to control the speculators, and that was a major reason why our economy crashed. Americans had to divert millions of dollars to pay the four bucks a gallon gas price, while ExxonMobil and the other oil companies made record-breaking profits. Yeah, the mortgage mess contributed to the recession, but the oil con was just as big a factor.
Now, many of you watch "The Factor" because you know we'll tell you the truth even when it's unpopular. I received thousands of e-mails calling me an idiot, a madman, even a communist for telling the truth about the rigged oil industry. But now the truth is coming out, and you heard it here first.
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To Tell the Truth
Has the CIA been lying since 2001 or are Democrats covering for Speaker Pelosi?
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